An Unpardonable Liar by Gilbert Parker
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Gilbert Parker >> An Unpardonable Liar
"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"--
"'The rest is silence.' * * * I can remember when mere living was
delightful. I didn't envy the birds. That sounds sentimental to a man,
doesn't it? But then that is the way a happy girl--a child--feels. I do
not envy the birds now, though I suppose it is silly for a worldly woman
to talk so."
"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.
"Her name was Marion Conquest. She was beautiful--they said that of her
then--and young, only sixteen. She had been very happy, for a man said
that he loved her, and she wore his ring on her finger. One day, while she
was visiting at a place far from her home, she was happier than usual. She
wished to be by herself to wonder how it was that one could be so happy.
You see, she was young and did not think often. She only lived. She took a
horse and rode far away into the woods. She came near a cottage among the
trees. She got off her horse and led it. Under a tree she saw a man and a
woman. The man's arm was round the woman. A child four or five years old
was playing at their feet--at the feet of its father and mother. * * * The
girl came forward and faced the man--the man she had sworn to marry. As I
said, his ring was on her finger."
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."
"You see much in her face, of course, for you look at it as an artist.
You see shame, indignation, bitterness--what else?"
"I see that moment of awe when the girl suddenly became a woman--as the
serious day breaks all at once through the haze of morning."
"I know you can paint the picture," she said, "but you have no model for
the girl. How shall you imagine her?"
"I said that I would paint you in the scene," he answered slowly.
"But I am not young, as she was; am not--so good to look at."
"I said that I saw beauty in the girl's face. I can only see it through
yours."
Her hands clasped tightly before her. Her eyes turned full on him for an
instant, then looked away into the dusk. There was silence for a long time
now. His cigar burned brightly. People kept passing and repassing on the
terrace below them. Their serious silence was noticeable.
"A penny for your thoughts," she said gayly, yet with a kind of
wistfulness.
"You would be thrown away at the price."
These were things that she longed yet dreaded to hear. She was not free
(at least she dreaded so) to listen to such words.
"I am sorry for that girl, God knows!" he added.
"She lived to be always sorry for herself. She was selfish. She could
have thrived on happiness. She did not need suffering. She has been
merry, gay, but never happy."
"The sequel was sad?"
"Terribly sad."
"Will you tell me--the scene?"
"I will, but not to-night." She drew her hands across her eyes and
forehead. "You are not asking merely as the artist now?" She knew the
answer, but she wanted to hear it.
"A man who is an artist asks, and he wishes to be a friend to that woman,
to do her any service possible."
"Who can tell when she might need befriending?"
He would not question further. She had said all she could until she knew
who the stranger was.
"I must go in," she said. "It is late."
"Tell me one thing. I want it for my picture--as a key to the mind of the
girl. What did she say at that painful meeting in the woods--to the man?"
Mrs. Detlor looked at him as if she would read him through and through.
Presently she drew a ring from her finger slowly and gave it to him,
smiling bitterly.
"Read inside. That is what she said."
By the burning end of his cigar he read, "You told a lie."
At another hotel a man sat in a window looking out on the esplanade. He
spoke aloud.
"'You told a lie,' was all she said, and as God's in heaven I've never
forgotten I was a liar from that day to this."
CHAPTER II.
THE MEETING.
The next morning George Hagar was early at the pump-room. He found it
amusing to watch the crowds coming and going--earnest invalids and that
most numerous body of middle aged, middle class people who have no
particular reason for drinking the waters, and whose only regimen is
getting even with their appetites. He could pick out every order at a
glance--he did not need to wait until he saw the tumblers at their lips.
Now and then a dashing girl came gliding in, and, though the draft was
noxious to her, drank the stuff off with a neutral look and well bred
indifference to the distress about her. Or in strode the private
secretary of some distinguished being in London, S.W. He invariably
carried his glass to the door, drank it off in languid sips as he leaned
indolently against the masonry, and capped the event by purchasing a rose
for his buttonhole, so making a ceremony which smacked of federating the
world at a common public drinking trough into a little fete. Or there were
the good priests from a turbulent larruping island, who with cheeks
blushing with health and plump waistcoats came ambling, smiling, to their
thirty ounces of noisome liquor. Then, there was Baron, the bronzed,
idling, comfortable trader from Zanzibar, who, after fifteen years of hide
and seek with fever and Arabs and sudden death--wherewith were all manner
of accident and sundry profane dealings not intended for The Times or
Exeter hall, comes back to sojourn in quiet "Christom" places, a lamb in
temper, a lion at heart, an honest soul who minds his own business, is
enemy to none but the malicious, and lives in daily wonder that the wine
he drank the night before gets into trouble with the waters drunk in the
morning. And the days, weeks and months go on, but Baron remains, having
seen population after population of water drinkers come and go. He was
there years ago. He is there still, coming every year, and he does not
know that George Hagar has hung him at Burlington House more than once,
and he remembers very well the pretty girl he did not marry, who also, on
one occasion, joined the aristocratic company "on the line."
This young and pretty girl--Miss Mildred Margrave--came and went this
morning, and a peculiar, meditative look on her face, suggesting some
recent experience, caused the artist to transfer her to his notebook. Her
step was sprightly, her face warm and cheerful in hue, her figure
excellent, her walk the most admirable thing about her--swaying, graceful,
lissom--like perfect dancing with the whole body. Her walk was immediately
merged into somebody else's--merged melodiously, if one may say so. A man
came from the pump-room looking after the girl, and Hagar remarked a
similar swaying impulsion in the walk of both. He walked as far as the
gate of the pump-room, then sauntered back, unfolded a newspaper, closed
it up again, lit a cigar, and, like Hagar, stood watching the crowd
abstractedly. He was an outstanding figure. Ladies, as they waited,
occasionally looked at him through their glasses, and the Duchess of
Brevoort thought he would make a picturesque figure for a reception--she
was not less sure because his manner was neither savage nor suburban.
George Hagar was known to some people as "the fellow who looks back of
you." Mark Telford might have been spoken of as "the man who looks through
you," for, when he did glance at a man or woman, it was with keen
directness, affecting the person looked at like a flash of light to the
eye. It is easy to write such things, not so easy to verify them, but any
one that has seen the sleuthlike eyes of men accustomed to dealing with
danger in the shape of wild beasts or treacherous tribes or still more
treacherous companions, and whose lives depend upon their feeling for
peril and their unerring vigilance can see what George Hagar saw in Mark
Telford's looks.
Telford's glance went round the crowd, appearing to rest for an instant on
every person, and for a longer time on Hagar. The eyes of the two men met.
Both were immediately puzzled, for each had a sensation of some
subterranean origin. Telford immediately afterward passed out of the gate
and went toward the St. Cloud gardens, where the band was playing. For a
time Hagar did not stir, but idled with his pencil and notebook. Suddenly
he started, and hurried out in the direction Telford had gone.
"I was an ass," he said to himself, "not to think of that at first."
He entered the St. Cloud gardens and walked round the promenade a few
times, but without finding him. Presently, however, Alpheus Richmond,
whose beautiful and brilliant waistcoat and brass buttons with monogram
adorned showed advantageously in the morning sunshine, said to him: "I
say, Hagar, who's that chap up there filling the door of the summer house?
Lord, rather!"
It was Telford. Hagar wished for the slightest pretext to go up the
unfrequented side path and speak to him, but his mind was too excited to
do the thing naturally without a stout pretext. Besides, though he admired
the man's proportions and his uses from an artistic standpoint, he did not
like him personally, and he said that he never could. He had instinctive
likes and dislikes. What had startled him at the pump-room and had made
him come to the gardens was the conviction that this was the man to play
the part in the scene which, described by Mrs. Detlor, had been arranging
itself in a hundred ways in his brain during the night--the central
figures always the same, the details, light, tone, coloring, expression,
fusing, resolving. Then came another and still more significant thought.
On this he had acted.
When he had got rid of Richmond, who begged that he would teach him how to
arrange a tie as he did--for which an hour was appointed--he determined,
at all hazards, to speak. He had a cigar in his pocket, and though to
smoke in the morning was pain and grief to him, he determined to ask for a
match, and started. He was stopped by Baron, whose thoughts being much
with the little vices of man, anticipated his wishes and offered him a
light. In despair Hagar took it, and asked if he chanced to know who the
stranger was. Baron did know, assuring Hagar that he sat on the
gentleman's right at the same table in his hotel, and was qualified to
introduce him. Before they started he told the artist of the occurrence of
the evening before, and further assured him of the graces of Miss Mildred
Margrave. "A pearl," he said, "not to be reckoned by loads of ivory, nor
jolly bricks of gold, nor caravans of Arab steeds, nor--come and have
dinner with me to-night, and you shall see. There, what do you say?"
Hagar, who loved the man's unique and spontaneous character as only an
artist can love a subject in which he sees royal possibilities, consented
gladly, and dropped a cordial hand on the other's shoulder. The hand was
dragged down and wrenched back and forth with a sturdy clasp, in time to a
roll of round, unctuous laughter. Then Baron took him up hurriedly, and
introduced him to Telford with the words: "You two ought to know each
other. Telford, traveler, officer of the Hudson's Bay company, et cetera;
Hagar, artist, good fellow, et cetera."
Then he drew back and smiled as the two men, not shaking hands as he
expected, bowed, and said they were happy to meet. The talk began with the
remark by Hagar on the panorama below them, "that the thing was amusing if
not seen too often, but the eternal paddling round the band stand was too
much like marionettes."
"You prefer a Punch and Judy to marionettes?" asked Telford.
"Yes, you get a human element in a Punch and Judy tragedy. Besides, it
has surprises, according to the idiosyncrasy of the man in the greenroom."
He smiled immediately, remembering that his last words plagiarized Mr.
Alpheus Richmond.
"I never miss a Punch and Judy if I'm near it," said Telford. "I enjoy the
sardonic humor with which Punch hustles off his victims. His
light-heartedness when doing bloody deeds is the true temper."
"That is, if it must be done, to do it with a grin is--"
"Is the most absolute tragedy."
Hagar was astonished, for even the trader's information that Telford spoke
excellent French, and had certainly been a deal on red carpet in his time,
did not prepare him for the sharply incisive words just uttered. Yet it
was not incongruous with. Telford's appearance--not even with the red sash
peeping at the edge of his waistcoat.
They came down among the promenaders, and Baron being accosted by some
one, he left the two together, exacting anew the promise from Hagar
regarding dinner.
Presently Hagar looked up, and said abruptly, "You were singing outside my
window last night."
Telford's face was turned away from him when he began. It came slowly
toward him. The eyes closed steadily with his, there was no excitement,
only cold alertness.
"Indeed? What was I singing?"
"For one thing, the chant of the negro woodcutters of Louisiana."
"What part of Louisiana?"
"The county of Tellavie chiefly."
Telford drew a long breath, as though some suspense was over, and then
said, "How did you know it was I?"
"I could scarcely tell you. I got the impression--besides, you are the
only man I've seen in Herridon who looks likely to know it and the song
which you prompted."
"Do I look like a southerner--still? You see I've been in an arctic
country five years."
"It is not quite that. I confess I cannot explain it."
"I hope you did not think the thing too boorish to be pardoned. On the
face of it it was rude to you--and the lady also."
"The circumstance--the coincidence--was so unusual that I did not stop to
think of manners."
"The coincidence--what coincidence?" said Telford, watching intently.
But Hagar had himself well in hand. He showed nothing of his suspicions.
"That you should be there listening, and that the song should be one which
no two people, meeting casually, were likely to know."
"We did not meet," said Telford dryly.
They watched the crowd for a minute. Presently he added, "May I ask the
name of the lady who was singing?"
There was a slight pause, then, "Certainly--Mrs. Fairfax Detlor."
Though Telford did not stir a muscle the bronze of his face went grayish,
and he looked straight before him without speaking. At last he said in a
clear, steady voice, "I knew her once, I think."
"I guessed so."
"Indeed? May I ask if Mrs. Detlor recognized my voice?"
"That I do not know, but the chances are she did not; if you failed to
recognize hers."
There was an almost malicious desire on Hagar's part to play upon this
man--this scoundrel, as he believed him to be--and make him wince still
more. A score of things to say or do flashed through his mind, but he gave
them up instantly, remembering that it was his duty to consider Mrs.
Detlor before all. But he did say, "If you were old friends, you will wish
to meet her, of course."
"Yes. I have not seen her in many years. Where is she staying?"
"At the Tempe hotel. I do not know whether you intend to call, but I would
suggest your not doing so to-day--that is, if you wish to see her and not
merely leave your card--because she has an engagement this morning, and
this afternoon she is going on an excursion."
"Thank you for the generous information." There was cool irony in the
tone. "You are tolerably well posted as to Mrs. Detlor's movements."
"Oh, yes," was the equally cool reply. "In this case I happen to know,
because Mrs. Detlor sits for a picture at my studio this morning, and I
am one of the party for the excursion."
"Just so. Then will you please say nothing to Mrs. Detlor about having met
me? I should prefer surprising her."
"I'm afraid I can make no promise. The reason is not sufficient.
Surprises, as you remarked about Punch and Judy, are amusing, but they may
also be tragical."
Telford flashed a dark, inquiring look at his companion, and then said:
"Excuse me, I did not say that, though it was said. However, it is no
matter. We meet at dinner, I I suppose, this evening. Till then!"
He raised his hat with a slight sweeping motion--a little mocking excess
in the courtesy--and walked away.
As he went Hagar said after him between his teeth, "By Heaven, you are
that man!"
These two hated each other at this moment, and they were men of might
after their kind. The hatred of the better man was the greater. Not from a
sense of personal wrong, but--
Three hours later Hagar was hard at work in his studio. Only those who
knew him intimately could understand him in his present mood. His pale,
brooding, yet masculine face was flushed, the blue of his eyes was almost
black, his hair, usually in a Roman regularity about his strong brow, was
disorderly. He did not know the passage of time. He had had no breakfast.
He had read none of his letters--they lay in a little heap on his
mantelpiece--he was sketching upon the canvas the scene which had
possessed him for the past ten or eleven hours. An idea was being born,
and it was giving him the distress of bringing forth. Paper after paper he
had thrown away, but at last he had shaped the idea to please his severe
critical instinct, and was now sketching in the expression of the girl's
face. His brain was hot, his face looked tired, but his hand was steady,
accurate and cool--a shapely hand which the sun never browned, and he was
a man who loved the sun.
He drew back at last. "Yes, that's it," he said. "It's right, right. His
face shall come in later. But the heart of the thing is there."
The last sentence was spoken in a louder tone, so that some one behind him
heard. It was Mrs. Detlor. She had, with the young girl who had sat at her
feet the evening before, been shown into the outer room, had playfully
parted the curtains between the rooms and entered. She stood for a moment
looking at the sketch, fascinated, thrilled. Her yes filled with tears,
then went dry and hot, as she said in a loud whisper, "Yes, the heart of
the thing is there."
Hagar turned on her quickly, astonished, eager, his face shining with a
look superadded to his artistic excitement.
She put her finger to her lip, and nodded backward to the other room. He
understood. "Yes, I know," he said, "the light comedy manner." He waved
his hand toward the drawing. "But is it not in the right vein?"
"It is painfully, horribly true," she said. She looked from him to the
canvas, from the canvas to him, and then made a little pathetic gesture
with her hands. "What a jest life is!"
"A game--a wonderful game," he replied, "and a wicked one, when there is
gambling with human hearts."
Then he turned with her toward the other room. As he passed her to draw
aside the curtain she touched his arm with the tips of her fingers so
lightly--as she intended--that he did not feel it. There was a mute,
confiding tenderness in the action more telling than any speech. The
woman had had a brilliant, varied, but lonely life. It must still be
lonely, though now the pleasant vista of a new career kept opening and
closing before her, rendering her days fascinating yet troubled, her
nights full of joyful but uneasy hours. The game thus far had gone against
her. Yet she was popular, merry and amiable!
She passed composedly into the other room. Hagar greeted the young girl,
gave her books and papers, opened the piano, called for some refreshments
and presented both with a rose from a bunch upon the table. The young girl
was perfectly happy to be allowed to sit in the courts without and amuse
herself while the artist and his model should have their hour with pencil
and canvas.
The two then went to the studio again, and, leaving the curtain drawn
back, Hagar arranged Mrs. Detlor in position and began his task. He stood
looking at the canvas for a time, as though to enter into the spirit of it
again; then turned to his model. She was no longer Mrs. Detlor, but his
subject, near to him as his canvas and the creatures of his imagination,
but as a mere woman in whom he was profoundly interested (that at least)
an immeasurable distance from him. He was the artist only now.
It was strange. There grew upon the canvas Mrs. Detlor's face, all the
woman of it, just breaking through sweet, awesomely beautiful, girlish
features; and though the work was but begun there was already that
luminous tone which artists labor so hard to get, giving to the face a
weird, yet charming expression.
For an hour he worked, then he paused. "Would you like to see it?" he
said.
She rose eagerly, and a little pale. He had now sketched in more
distinctly the figure of the man, changed it purposely to look more like
Telford. She saw her own face first. It shone out of the canvas. She gave
a gasp of pain and admiration. Then she caught sight of Telford's figure,
with the face blurred and indistinct.