Read Ebook: An Unpardonable Liar by Parker Gilbert

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 470 lines and 24558 words, and 10 pages

"Good God!" he said in a whisper. "To hear that off here after all these years!" Suddenly the voice stopped. There was a murmur within. It came to him indistinctly. "She has forgotten the rest," he said. Instantly and almost involuntarily he sang:

"Look up an look aroun, Fro you burden on de groun."

Then came the sequel as we described, and his low chanting of the negro woodcutter's chant. He knew that any who answered it must have lived the life he once lived in Louisiana, for he had never heard it since he had left there, nor any there hum it except those who knew the negroes well. Of an evening, in the hot, placid south, he had listened to it come floating over the sugarcane and through the brake and go creeping weirdly under the magnolia trees. He waited, hoping, almost wildly--he knew it was a wild hope--that there would be a reply. There was none. But presently there came to him Baron's crude, honest singing:

"For you'll take the high road, and I'll take the low road, And I'll be in Scotland before you; But I and my true love will never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Ben Lomond."

Telford drew in his breath sharply, caught his mustache between his teeth savagely for a minute, then let it go with a run of ironical laughter. He looked round him. He saw in the road two or three people who had been attracted by the music. They seemed so curious merely, so apathetic--his feelings were playing at full tide. To him they were the idle, intrusive spectators of his trouble. All else was dark about him save where on the hill the lights of the Tempe hotel showed, and a man and woman, his arm round her, could be seen pacing among the trees. Telford turned away from this, ground his heel into the turf and said: "I wish I could see who she is. Her voice? It's impossible." He edged close to the window, where a light showed at the edge of the curtains. Suddenly he pulled up.

"No. Whoever she is I shall know in time. Things come round. It's almost uncanny as it stands, but then it was uncanny--it has all been so since the start." He turned to the window again, raised his hat to it, walked quickly out into the road and made his way to the View hotel. As he came upon the veranda Mildred Margrave passed him. He saw the shy look of interest in her face, and with simple courtesy he raised his hat. She bowed and went on. He turned and looked after her; then, shaking his head as if to dismiss an unreasonable thought, entered and went to his room.

About this time the party at Hagar's rooms was breaking up. There had been more singing by Mrs. Detlor. She ransacked her memory for half remembered melodies--whimsical, arcadian, sad--and Hagar sat watching her, outwardly quiet and appreciative, inwardly under an influence like none he had ever felt before. When his guests were ready, he went with them to their hotel. He saw that Mrs. Detlor shrank from the attendance of the Prince, who insisted on talking of the "stranger in the greenroom." When they arrived at the hotel, he managed, simply enough, to send the lad on some mission for Mrs. Detlor, which, he was determined, should be permanent so far as that evening was concerned. He was soon walking alone with her on the terrace. He did not force the conversation, nor try to lead it to the event of the evening, which, he felt, was more important than others guessed. He knew also that she did not care to talk just then. He had never had any difficulty in conversation with her--they had a singular rapport. He had traveled much, seen more, remembered everything, was shy to austerity with people who did not interest him, spontaneous with those that did, and yet was never--save to serve a necessary purpose--a hail fellow with any one. He knew that he could be perfectly natural with this woman--say anything that became a man. He was an artist without affectations, a diplomatic man, having great enthusiasm and some outer cynicism. He had started life terribly in earnest before the world. He had changed all that. In society he was a nervous organism gone cold, a deliberate, self-contained man. But insomuch as he was chastened of enthusiasm outwardly he was boyishly earnest inwardly.

He was telling Mrs. Detlor of some incident he had seen in South Africa when sketching there for a London weekly, telling it graphically, incisively--he was not fluent. He etched in speech; he did not paint. She looked up at him once or twice as if some thought was running parallel with his story. He caught the look. He had just come to the close of his narrative. Presently she put out her hand and touched his arm.

"You have great tact," she said, "and I am grateful."

"I will not question your judgment," he replied, smiling. "I am glad that you think so, and humbled too."

"Why humbled?" she laughed softly. "I can't imagine that."

"There are good opinions which make us vain, others which make us anxious to live up to them, while we are afraid we can't."

"Few men know that kind of fear. You are a vain race."

"You know best. Men show certain traits to women most."

"That is true. Of the most real things they seldom speak to each other, but to women they often speak freely, and it makes one shudder--till one knows the world, and gets used to it."

"Why shudder?" He guessed the answer, but he wanted, not from mere curiosity, to hear her say it.

"The business of life they take seriously--money, position, chiefly money. Life itself--home, happiness, the affections, friendship--is an incident, a thing to juggle with."

"I do not know you in this satirical mood," he answered. "I need time to get used to it before I can reply."

"I surprise you? People do not expect me ever to be either serious or--or satirical, only look to me to be amiable and merry. 'Your only jig-maker,' as Hamlet said--a sprightly Columbine. Am I rhetorical?"

"I don't believe you are really satirical, and please don't think me impertinent if I say I do not like your irony. The other character suits you, for, by nature, you are--are you not?--both merry and amiable. The rest"--

"Whom, then, do you envy?"

There was a warm, frank light in her eyes. "I envy the girl I was then."

He looked down at her. She was turning a ring about on her finger abstractedly. He hesitated to reply. He was afraid that he might say something to press a confidence for which she would be sorry afterward. She guessed what was passing in his mind.

She reached out as if to touch his arm again, but did not, and said: "I am placing you in an awkward position. Pardon me. It seemed to me for a moment that we were old friends--old and candid friends."

"I wish to be an old and candid friend," he replied firmly. "I honor your frankness."

"I know," she added hastily. "One is safe--with some men."

"Not with a woman?"

"No woman is safe in any confidence to any other woman. All women are more or less bad at heart."

"I do not believe that as you say it."

"Of course you do not--as I say it. But you know what I mean. Women are creatures of impulse, except those who live mechanically and have lost everything. They become like priests then."

"Like some priests. Yet, with all respect, it is not a confessional I would choose, except the woman was my mother."

There was silence for a moment, and then she abruptly said: "I know you wish to speak of that incident, and you hesitate. You need not. Yet this is all I can tell you. Whoever the man was he came from Tellaire, the place where I was born."

She paused. He did not look, but he felt that she was moved. He was curious as to human emotions, but not where this woman was concerned.

"There were a few notes in that woodcutter's chant which were added to the traditional form by one whom I knew," she continued.

"You did not recognize the voice?"

"I cannot tell. One fancies things, and it was all twelve years ago."

"It was all twelve years ago," he repeated musingly after her. He was eager to know, yet he would not ask.

"You are a clever artist," she said presently. "You want a subject for a picture. You have told me so. You are ambitious. If you were a dramatist, I would give you three acts of a play--the fourth is yet to come; but you shall have a scene to paint if you think it strong enough."

His eyes flashed. The artist's instinct was alive. In the eyes of the woman was a fire which sent a glow over all her features. In herself she was an inspiration to him, but he had not told her that. "Oh, yes," was his reply, "I want it, if I may paint you in the scene."

"You may paint me in the scene," she said quietly. Then, as if it suddenly came to her that she would be giving a secret into this man's hands, she added, "That is, if you want me for a model merely."

"Mrs. Detlor," he said, "you may trust me, on my honor."

She looked at him, not searchingly, but with a clear, honest gaze such as one sees oftenest in the eyes of children, yet she had seen the duplicities of life backward and said calmly, "Yes, I can trust you."

"An artist's subject ought to be sacred to him," he said. "It becomes himself, and then it isn't hard--to be silent."

They walked for a few moments, saying nothing. The terrace was filling with people, so they went upon the veranda and sat down. There were no chairs near them. They were quite at the end.

"Please light a cigar," she said with a little laugh. "We must not look serious. Assume your light comedy manner as you listen, and I will wear the true Columbine expression. We are under the eyes of the curious."

"Not too much light comedy for me," he said. "I shall look forbidding lest your admirers bombard us."

They were quiet again.

"This is the story," she said at last, folding her hands before her. "No, no," she added hastily, "I will not tell you the story, I will try and picture one scene. And when I have finished, tell me if you don't think I have a capital imagination." She drew herself up with a little gesture of mockery. "It is comedy, you know.

She paused. People were passing near, and she smiled and bowed once or twice, but Hagar saw that the fire in her eyes had deepened.

"Is it strong enough for your picture?" she said quietly.

"It is as strong as it is painful. Yet there is beauty in it, too, for I see the girl's face."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet