There was some difficulty with the bag. It seemed reluctant to open after Sandy had tripped over it. The old catch was bent. The boy cried out something and Mr. Bonnyfeather's hand slipped. Inadvertently he ripped the old leather while tugging at it. The bag fell open and gaped like a mouth that had nothing more to say. Out of it Mr. Bonnyfeather extracted a long red purse like a tongue—and the madonna. The sun-burst on her head had been bent a little. He straightened it gingerly and put the statue in the niche where the boy evidently wanted it. Somehow it too seemed vaguely familiar. He tried to remember. But all madonnas were alike, more or less. Yet she did seem to belong there, to fit nicely. It was as if she had been there before.
The boy's eyes opened again and now found what they had sought. An expression like that of a little girl whose lost doll has been found just at bedtime flitted over his face. His eyes caressed the statue and closed happily. He began to breathe more easily. Some colour crept into his cheeks as he slept.
After a while Mr. Bonnyfeather ventured to wipe the blood from Anthony's mouth. He saw now that it had come from a small cut in the boy's lip. He sat by the bed and waited. An hour slipped by. As he gazed steadily at the lad's quiet face, the conviction of his first impression of it again attained the feeling of certainty. He felt as though he were being haunted. Below the nostrils the resemblance certainly weakened. There was a firmer and broader chin. He placed his hands across the boy's mouth so as to shield it from his view. Instantly from the pillow the face of his daughter looked up at him. The merchant sat down overcome. His head dropped forward into his hands.
His thoughts were still in a whirl when McNab came back with a ship's surgeon. Searching along the dock, it had taken him some time to find one. The doctor was an orderly soul and it irked him to find the patient's head placed at the foot of the bed. He forthwith shifted Anthony about and Mr. Bonny feather was forced to see the boy's face just where he had tried to avoid placing it. The doctor's examination disclosed no broken bones. He removed the old cloak, and despite the fact that Anthony cried out, went over him thoroughly. Lacking his instruments for bleeding, the surgeon prescribed rest. He departed with the chief clerk after having received one of the gold pieces from the purse that had come in the bag. It was a large fee. Mr. McNab began to recollect audibly that his hat recently sacrificed in the same good cause was of the best quality. Mr. Bonnyfeather, however, was obtuse. In a short while he was left alone again.
This time the face of the boy was exactly where that of the last occupant of the bed had been. In the mind of the man watching, the two faces were already confused or combined. It was hard to tell which. Only his reason refused to consent. He began to go over word by word the nocturnal interview with Don Luis of ten years before. The words, the very gestures of the marquis, precise, formal, not to be evaded, came back now across the warmth of his new yearning like a wind from glacial peaks. He heard the heavy wheels of the coach rolling away again into the night leaving him standing dazed. "Buried in the Alps."
His own wife had died in childbed, too. It had been like that with Maria! If only her child had lived! Whether it had been a boy or girl he did not know. Don Luis had done all the talking. Futile to ask! The man seemed to be in a white rage that night about something. Not a word for Maria. Only the cold facts, and a final farewell. Disappointment, no doubt. Well, he could understand that. Don Luis had never married again either. Gone to Spain. Nothing had passed between him and the marquis afterwards—nothing but the rent. Ought he to write now? About what? A facial resemblance? Certainly not like Don Luis. Mr. Bonnyfeather thought of something and started. Impossible!
Impossible any way you looked at it. Why, he would have to begin by doubting the marquis' word. What a letter that would be. And what a reply! He winced.
He must collect himself. The events of the past few hours were not sufficient to explain the state in which he now found himself. He should not have stayed here alone looking at the boy's face, nor should he have opened her room. That was a mistake after all. If the housekeeper had only not been out. "Damn the woman, would she never come home!" It must be nearly midnight. He drew out his watch. In doing so he became aware that someone was standing in the doorway. He turned about swiftly, terribly startled in spite of himself.
Chapter XIII. THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN
A COUNTENANCE so regular and aquiline as to suggest a bird of prey in forward flight was looking into the chamber where Mr. Bonnyfeather sat grasping his watch convulsively. The face was so pallid and so deep-set in a round straw bonnet that the light from the jade lamp cast a positively greenish hue upon it. It had a broad, low forehead under masses of thick, blue-black hair, a rouged mouth that would have been passionate had it not now been contorted into a grimace of terror and surprise, and a pair of black-brown eyes. These seemed to have something staring through them from behind like those painted on an Egyptian mummy case. The folds of the dress were in obscurity, and a high furbelow from the bonnet seemed to run up like a plume into the night beyond. Mr. Bonnyfeather's grip on his watch tightened. Several seconds, answered by heart beats which he felt throbbing in his hand, passed slowly before he recognized in the plan of the shadows the familiar lineaments of his housekeeper, Faith Paleologus.
"Creest, woman!" said he, "why do ye creep up like that on a body? It's fearsome." He was glad to hear his own voice and continued to talk as he slipped his watch into his pocket allowing the heavy seals to dangle heedlessly. "Whar hae ye been? It's long past midnight, ye ken. Wha hae ye been doin' wee yoursel' the nicht?" She knew he must be excited to question her thus and to lapse into Scotch, to be so direct and familiar. His voice stiffened her. She resented it.
"I'm not so old yet but that I still like a bit of a fling now and then. It was carnival, you know, and I danced. Do you really want to know where?"
"Naw . . . no," he replied, recollecting himself. "But if you had been here I should not have had to put him in this room."
"Who is he then?" she asked. "I saw the light from this room as I came in. You wonder I made no noise ? It's over ten years agone, you know, since . . ."
"Yes, but ..."
"You opened it then ?"
He nodded unwillingly.
"Why?"
He pointed to the boy on the bed.
"John Bonnyfeather," she whispered, "who is it that has come back with her face?"
"Orr-h! You saw it, too?" He went forward and shaded the boy's chin with his hand.
"Saw it! Do you think I need to have you do that? When I looked in here, I thought I was looking at the past again. And I am," she added moving forward so rapidly as to startle him. "Here is a piece of it come back." She snatched the madonna from the niche and bore it to the light. "It is the same, I know." They bent over it together. "Do you think I could ever mistake that? Look!" Under the candles she showed him the almost invisible fracture in the statue to which the knife of the marquis had once pointed so unerringly.
"I gave it to her years ago, here, in this room, long before she left!" The old man reached out for the madonna like a child assuring itself of the reality of an object by touch. But his hands trembled so that she kept the statue and looking at him meaningly returned it to its niche. "How did that come here?" she again flung at him.
"I dinna ken!" said Mr. Bonnyfeather mopping himself where the edge of his wig met his brow. Trying to explain things to himself, he recounted to her all that he knew of Anthony together with the events of the afternoon. They whispered to each other for half an hour by the boy's bedside.