An Unpardonable Liar by Gilbert Parker
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Gilbert Parker >> An Unpardonable Liar
In spite of herself Mrs. Detlor felt her heart come romping to her throat,
for, whatever this man was to her now, he once was her lover. She grew hot
to her fingers. As she looked, the air seemed to palpitate round her, and
Mark Telford to be standing in its shining hot surf tall and grand. But,
on the instant, there came into this lens the picture she had seen in
George Hagar's studio that morning. At that moment Mildred Margrave and
Baron were entering at the other end of the long, lonely nave. The girl
stopped all at once and pointed toward Telford as he stood motionless,
uncovered. "See," she said, "how fine, how noble he looks!"
Mrs. Detlor turned for an instant and saw her.
Telford had gazed calmly, seriously, at Mrs. Detlor, wondering at nothing,
possessed by a strange, quieting feeling. There was, for the moment, no
thought of right or wrong, misery or disaster, past or future, only--this
is she! In the wild whistle of arctic winds he had sworn that he would
cease to remember, but her voice ran laughing through them as it did
through the blossoms of the locust trees at Tellavie, and he could not
forget. When the mists rose from the blue lake on a summer plain, the rosy
breath of the sun bearing them up and scattering them like thistledown, he
said that he would think no more of her; but, stooping to drink, he saw
her face in the water, as in the hill spring at Tellavie, and he could not
forget. When he rode swiftly through the long prairie grass, each pulse
afire, a keen, joyful wind playing on him as he tracked the buffalo, he
said he had forgotten, but he felt her riding beside him as she had done
on the wide savannas of the south, and he knew that he could not forget.
When he sat before some lodge in a pleasant village and was waited on by
soft voiced Indian maidens and saw around him the solitary content of the
north, he believed that he had ceased to think; but, as the maidens danced
with slow monotony and grave, unmelodious voices, there came in among them
an airy, sprightly figure, singing as the streams do over the pebbles, and
he could not forget. When in those places where women are beautiful,
gracious and soulless, he saw that life can be made into mere convention
and be governed by a code, he said that he had learned how to forget; but
a pale young figure rose before him with the simple reproach of falsehood,
and he knew that he should always remember.
She stood before him now. Maybe some premonition--some such smother at
the heart as Hamlet knew--came to him then, made him almost statue-like in
his quiet and filled his face with a kind of tragical beauty. Hagar saw it
and was struck by it. If he had known Jack Gladney and how he worshiped
this man, he would have understood the cause of the inspiration. It was
all the matter of a moment. Then Mark Telford stepped down, still
uncovered, and came to them. He did not offer his hand, but bowed gravely
and said, "I hardly expected to meet you here, Mrs. Detlor, but I am very
glad."
He then bowed to Hagar.
Mrs. Detlor bowed as gravely and replied in an enigmatical tone, "One is
usually glad to meet one's countrymen in a strange land."
"Quite so," he said, "and it is far from Tellavie."'
"It is not so far as it was yesterday," she added.
At that they began to walk toward the garden leading to the cloisters.
Hagar wondered whether Mrs. Detlor wished to be left alone with Telford.
As if divining his thoughts, she looked up at him and answered his mute
question, following it with another of incalculable gentleness.
Raising his hat, he said conventionally enough: "Old friends should have
much to say to each other. Will you excuse me?"
Mrs. Detlor instantly replied in as conventional a tone: "But you will
not desert me? I shall be hereabout, and you will take me back to the
coach?"
The assurance was given, and the men bowed to each other. Hagar saw a
smile play ironically on Telford's face--saw it followed by a steellike
fierceness in the eye. He replied to both in like fashion, but one would
have said the advantage was with Telford--he had the more remarkable
personality.
The two were left alone. They passed through the cloisters without a word.
Hagar saw the two figures disappear down the long vista of groined arches.
"I wish to heaven I could see how this will all end," he muttered. Then he
joined Baron and Mildred Margrave.
Telford and Mrs. Detlor passed out upon a little bridge spanning the
stream, still not speaking. As if by mutual consent, they made their way
up the bank and the hillside to the top of a pretty terrace, where was a
rustic seat among the trees. When they reached it, he motioned to her to
sit. She shook her head, however, and remained standing close to a tree.
"What you wish to say--for I suppose you do wish to say something--will be
brief, of course?"
He looked at her almost curiously.
"Have you nothing kind to say to me, after all these years?" he asked
quietly.
"What is there to say now more than--then?"
"I cannot prompt you if you have no impulse. Have you none?"
"None at all. You know of what blood we are, we southerners. We do not
change."
"You changed." He knew he ought not to have said that, for he understood
what she meant.
"No, I did not change. Is it possible you do not understand? Or did you
cease to be a southerner when you became"--
"When I became a villain?" He smiled ironically. "Excuse me. Go on,
please."
"I was a girl, a happy girl. You killed me. I did not change. Death is
different. * * * But why have you come to speak of this to me? It was ages
ago. Resurrections are a mistake, believe me." She was composed and
deliberate now. Her nerve had all come back. There had been one swift wave
of the feeling that once flooded her girl's heart. It had passed and left
her with the remembrance of her wrongs and the thought of unhappy
years--through all which she had smiled, at what cost, before the world!
Come what would, he should never know that, even now, the man he once was
remained as the memory of a beautiful dead thing--not this man come to her
like a ghost.
"I always believed you," he answered quietly, "and I see no reason to
change."
"In that case we need say no more," she said, opening her red parasol and
stepping slightly forward into the sunshine as if to go.
There ran into his face a sudden flush. She was harder, more cruel, than
he had thought were possible to any woman. "Wait," he said angrily, and
put out his hand as if to stop her. "By heaven, you shall!"
"You are sudden and fierce," she rejoined coldly. "What do you wish me to
say? What I did not finish--that southerners love altogether or--hate
altogether?"
His face became like stone. At last, scarce above a whisper, he said: "Am
I to understand that you hate me, that nothing can wipe it out--no
repentance and no remorse? You never gave me a chance for a word of
explanation or excuse. You refused to see me. You returned my letter
unopened. But had you asked her--the woman--the whole truth"--
"If it could make any difference, I will ask her to-morrow."
He did not understand. He thought she was speaking ironically.
"You are harder than you know," he said heavily. "But I will speak. It is
for the last time. Will you hear me?"
"I do not wish to, but I will not go."
"I had met her five years before there was anything between you and me.
She accepted the situation when she understood that I would not marry her.
The child was born. Time went on. I loved you. I told her. She agreed to
go away to England: I gave her money. The day you found us together was
to have been the last that I should see of her. The luck was against me.
It always has been in things that I cared for. You sent a man to kill
me"--
"No, no. I did not send any one. I might have killed you--or her--had I
been anything more than a child, but I sent no one. You believe that, do
you not?"
For the first time since they had begun to speak she showed a little
excitement, but immediately was cold and reserved again.
"I have always believed you," he said again. "The man who is your husband
came to kill me"--
"He went to fight you," she said, looking at him more intently than she
had yet done.
A sardonic smile played for a moment at his lips. He seemed about to
speak through it. Presently, however, his eyes half closed as with a
sudden thought he did not return her gaze, but looked down to where the
graves of monks and abbots, and sinners maybe, were as steps upon the
river bank.
"What does it matter?" he thought. "She hates me." But he said aloud:
"Then, as you say, he came to fight me. I hear that he is dead," he added
in a tone still more softened. He had not the heart to meet her scorn with
scorn. As he said, it didn't matter if she hated him. It would be worth
while remembering, when he had gone, that he had been gentle with her and
had spared her the shame of knowing that she had married not only a
selfish brute, but a coward and a would be assassin as well. He had only
heard rumors of her life since he had last seen her, twelve years before,
but he knew enough to be sure that she was aware of Fairfax Detlor's true
character. She had known less still of his life, for since her marriage
she had never set foot in Louisiana, and her mother, while she lived,
never mentioned his name or told her more than that the Telford plantation
had been sold for a song. When Hagar had told him that Detlor was dead, a
wild kind of hope had leaped up in him that perhaps she might care for him
still and forgive him when he had told all. These last few minutes had
robbed him of that hope. He did not quarrel with the act The game was
lost long ago, and it was foolish to have dreamed for an instant that the
record could be reversed.
Her answer came quickly: "I do not know that my husband is dead. It has
never been verified."
He was tempted again, but only for an instant. "It is an unfortunate
position for you," he replied.
He had intended saying it in a tone of sympathy, but at the moment he saw
Hagar looking up toward them from the abbey, and an involuntary but
ulterior meaning crept into the words. He loved, and he could detect love,
as he thought. He knew by the look that she swept from Hagar to him that
she loved the artist. She was agitated now, and in her agitation began to
pull off her glove. For the moment the situation was his.
"I can understand your being wicked," she said keenly, "but not your being
cowardly. That is and was unpardonable."
"That is and was," he repeated after her. "When was I cowardly?" He was
composed, though there was a low fire in his eyes.
"Then and now."
He understood well. "I, too, was a coward once," he said, looking her
steadily in the eyes, "and that was when I hid from a young girl a
miserable sin of mine. To have spoken would have been better, for I could
but have lost her, as I've lost her now forever."
She was moved, but whether it was with pity or remembrance or reproach he
did not know and never asked, for, looking at her ungloved hand as she
passed it over her eyes wearily, he saw the ring he had given her twelve
years before. He stepped forward quickly with a half smothered cry and
caught her fingers. "You wear my ring!" he said. "Marion, you wear my
ring! You do care for me still?"
She drew her hand away. "No," she said firmly. "No, Mark Telford, I do not
care for you. I have worn this ring as a warning to me--my daily
crucifixion. Read what is inside it."
She drew it off and handed it to him. He took it and read the words,
"You--told--a--lie." This was the bitterest moment in his life. He was
only to know one more bitter, and it would come soon. He weighed the ring
up and down in his palm and laughed a dry, crackling laugh.
"Yes," he said, "you have kept the faith--that you hadn't in me--tolerably
well. A liar, a coward, and one who strikes from behind--that is it, isn't
it? You kept the faith, and I didn't fight the good fight, eh? Well, let
it stand so. Will you permit me to keep this ring? The saint needed it to
remind her to punish the sinner. The sinner would like to keep it now, for
then he would have a hope that the saint would forgive him some day."
The bitterness of his tone was merged at last into a strange tenderness
and hopelessness.
She did not look at him. She did not wish him to see the tears spring
suddenly to her eyes. She brought her voice to a firm quietness. She
thought of the woman, Mrs. Gladney, who was coming; of his child, whom he
did not recognize. She looked down toward the abbey. The girl was walking
there between old Mr. Margrave and Baron. She had once hated both the
woman and the child. She knew that to be true to her blood she ought to
hate them always, but there crept into her heart now a strange feeling of
pity for both. Perhaps the new interest in her life was driving out
hatred. There was something more. The envelope she had found that day on
the moor was addressed to that woman's husband, from whom she had been
separated--no one knew why--for years. What complication and fresh misery
might be here?
"You may keep the ring," she said.
"Thank you," was his reply, and he put it on his finger, looking down at
it with an enigmatical expression. "And is there nothing more?"
She willfully misconstrued his question. She took the torn pieces of
envelope from her pocket and handed them to him. "These are yours," she
said.
He raised his eyebrows. "Thank you again. But I do not see their value.
One could almost think you were a detective, you are so armed."
"Who is he? What is he to you?" she asked.
"He is an unlucky man, like myself, and my best friend. He helped me out
of battle, murder and sudden death more than once, and we shared the same
blanket times without number."
"Where is he now?" she said in a whisper, not daring to look at him lest
she should show how disturbed she was.
"He is in a hospital in New York."
"Has he no friends?"
"Do I count as nothing at all?"
"I mean no others--no wife or family?"
"He has a wife, and she has a daughter. That is all I know. They have been
parted through some cause. Why do you ask? Do you know him?"
"No, I do not know him."
Do you know the wife? Please tell me, for at his request I am trying to
find her, and I have failed."
"Yes, I know her," she said painfully and slowly. "You need search no
longer. She will be at your hotel to-night."
He started. Then he said: "I'm glad of that. How did you come to know? Are
you friends?"
Though her face was turned from him resolutely, he saw a flush creep up
her neck to her hair.
"We are not friends," she said vaguely. "But I know that she is coming to
see her daughter."
"Who is her daughter?"
She raised her parasol toward the spot where Mildred Margrave stood and
said, "That is her daughter."
"Miss Margrave? Why has she a different name?"
"Let Mrs. Gladney explain that to you. Do not make yourself known to the
daughter till you see her mother. Believe me, it will be better for the
daughter's sake."
She now turned and looked at him with a pity through which trembled
something like a troubled fear. "You asked me to forgive you," she said.
"Good-bye. Mark Telford, I do forgive you." She held out her hand. He took
it, shaking his head a little over it, but said no word.
"We had better part here and meet no more," she added.
"Pardon, but banishment," he said as he let her hand go.
"There is nothing else possible in this world," she rejoined in a muffled
voice.
"Nothing in this world," he replied. "Good-bye till we meet
again--somewhere."
So saying, he turned and walked rapidly away. Her eyes followed him, a
look of misery, horror and sorrow upon her. When he had disappeared in the
trees, she sat down on the bench. "It is dreadful," she whispered,
awestricken. "His friend her husband! His daughter there, and he does not
know her! What will the end of it be?"
She was glad she had forgiven him and glad he had the ring. She had
something in her life now that helped to wipe out the past--still, a
something of which she dared not think freely. The night before she had
sat in her room thinking of the man who was giving her what she had lost
many years past, and, as she thought, she felt his arm steal round her and
his lips on her cheek, but at that a mocking voice said in her ear: "You
are my wife. I am not dead." And her happy dream was gone.
George Hagar, looking up from below, saw her sitting alone and slowly made
his way toward her. The result of the meeting between these two seemed
evident. The man had gone. Never in his life had Hagar suffered more than
in the past half hour. That this woman whom he loved--the only woman he
had ever loved as a mature man loves--should be alone with the man who had
made shipwreck of her best days set his veins on fire. She had once loved
Mark Telford. Was it impossible that she should love him again? He tried
to put the thought from him as ungenerous, unmanly, but there is a maggot
which gets into men's brains at times, and it works its will in spite of
them. He reasoned with himself. He recalled the look of perfect confidence
and honesty with which she regarded him before they parted just now. He
talked gayly to Baron and Mildred Margrave, told them to what different
periods of architecture the ruins belonged, and by sheer force of will
drove away a suspicion--a fear--as unreasonable as it was foolish. Yet, as
he talked, the remembrance of the news he had to tell Mrs. Detlor, which
might--probably would--be shipwreck to his hopes of marriage, came upon
him, and presently made him silent, so that he wandered away from the
others. He was concerned as to whether he should tell Mrs. Detlor at once
what Baron had told him or hold it till next day, when she might, perhaps,
be better prepared to hear it, though he could not help a smile at this,
for would not any woman--ought not any woman to--be glad that her husband
was alive? He would wait. He would see how she had borne the interview
with Telford.
Presently he saw that Telford was gone. When he reached her, she was
sitting, as he had often seen her, perfectly still, her hands folded in
her lap upon her parasol, her features held in control, save that in her
eyes was a bright, hot flame which so many have desired to see in the eyes
of those they love and have not seen. The hunger of these is like the
thirst of the people who waited for Moses to strike the rock.
He sat down without speaking. "He is gone," he said at last.
"Yes. Look at me and tell me if, from my face, you would think I had been
seeing dreadful things." She smiled sadly at him.
"No, I could not think it. I see nothing more than a kind of sadness. The
rest is all beauty."
"Oh, hush!" she replied solemnly. "Do not say those things now."
"I will not if you do not wish to hear them. What dreadful things have
you seen?"
"You know so much you should know everything," she said, "at least all of
what may happen."
Then she told him who Mildred Margrave was; how years before, when the
girl's mother was very ill and it was thought she would die, the Margraves
had taken the child and promised that she should be as their own and a
companion to their own child; that their own child had died, and Mildred
still remained with them. All this she knew from one who was aware of the
circumstances. Then she went on to tell him who Mildred's mother and
father were, what were Telford's relations to John Gladney and of his
search for Gladney's wife.
"Now," she said, "you understand all. They must meet."
"He does not know who she is?"
"He does not. He only knows as yet that she is the daughter of Mrs.
Gladney, who, he thinks, is a stranger to him."
"You know his nature. What will he do?"
"I cannot tell. What can he do? Nothing, nothing!"
"You are sorry for him? You"--
"Do not speak of that," she said in a choking whisper. "God gave women
pity to keep men from becoming demons. You can pity the executioner when,
killing you, he must kill himself next."
"I do not understand you quite, but all you say is wise."
"Do not try to understand it or me. I am not worth it."
"You are worth, God knows, a better, happier fate."
The words came from him unexpectedly, impulsively. Indirect as they were,
she caught a hidden meaning. She put out her hand.
"You have something to tell me. Speak it. Say it quickly. Let me know it
now. One more shock more or less cannot matter."
She had an intuition as to what it was. "I warn you, dear," he said, "that
it will make a difference, a painful difference, between us."
"No, George"--it was the first time she had called him that--"nothing can
make any difference with that."
He told her simply, bravely--she was herself so brave--what there was to
tell, that two weeks ago her husband was alive, and that he was now on his
way to England--perhaps in England itself. She took it with an unnatural
quietness. She grew distressingly pale, but that was all. Her hand lay
clinched tightly on the seat beside her. He reached out, took it, and
pressed it, but she shook her head.
"Please do not sympathize with me," she said. "I cannot bear it. I am not
adamant. You are very good--so good to me that no unhappiness can be all
unhappiness. But let us look not one step farther into the future."
"What you wish I shall do always."
"Not what I wish, but what you and I ought to do is plain."
"I ask one thing only. I have said that I love you, said it as I shall
never say it to another woman, as I never said it before. Say to me once
here, before we know what the future will be, that you love me. Then I can
bear all."
She turned and looked him full in the eyes, that infinite flame in her own
which burns all passions into one. "I cannot, dear," she said.
Then she hurriedly rose, her features quivering. Without a word they went
down the quiet path to the river and on toward the gates of the park
where the coach was waiting to take them back to Herridon.
They did not see Mark Telford before their coach left. But, standing back
in the shadow of the trees, he saw them. An hour before he had hated Hagar
and had wished that they were in some remote spot alone with pistols in
their hands. Now he could watch the two together without anger, almost
without bitterness. He had lost in the game, and he was so much the true
gamester that he could take his defeat when he knew it was defeat quietly.
Yet the new defeat was even harder on him than the old. All through the
years since he had seen her there had been the vague conviction, under all
his determination to forget, that they would meet again, and that all
might come right. That was gone, he knew, irrevocably.
"That's over," he said as he stood looking at them. "The king is dead.
Long live the king!"
He lit a cigar and watched the coach drive away, then saw the coach in
which he had come drive up also and its passengers mount. He did not stir,
but smoked on. The driver waited for some time, and when he did not come
drove away without him, to the regret of the passengers and to the
indignation of Miss Mildred Margrave, who talked much of him during the
drive back.
When they had gone, Telford rose and walked back to the ruined abbey. He
went to the spot where he had first seen Mrs. Detlor that day, then took
the path up the hillside to the place where they had stood. He took from
his pocket the ring she had given back to him, read the words inside it
slowly, and, looking at the spot where she had stood, said aloud:
"I met a man once who imagined he was married to the spirit of a woman
living at the north pole. Well, I will marry myself to the ghost of Marion
Conquest."
So saying, he slipped the ring on his little finger. The thing was
fantastic, but he did it reverently; nor did it appear in the least as
weakness, for his face was, strong and cold. "Till death us do part, so
help me God!" he added.
He turned and wandered once more through the abbey, strayed in the
grounds, and at last came to the park gates. Then he walked to the town a
couple of miles away, went to the railway station and took a train for
Herridon. He arrived there some time before the coach did. He went
straight to the View House, proceeded to his room and sat down to write
some letters. Presently he got up, went down to the office and asked the
porter if Mrs. John Gladney had arrived from London. The porter said she
had. He then felt in his pocket for a card, but changed his mind, saying
to himself that his name would have no meaning for her. He took a piece of
letter paper and wrote on it, "A friend of your husband brings a message
to you." He put it in an envelope, and, addressing it, sent it up to her.
The servant returned, saying that Mrs. Gladney had taken a sitting room
in a house adjacent to the hotel and was probably there. He took the note
and went to the place indicated, sent in the note and waited.
When Mrs. Gladney received the note, she was arranging the few
knick-knacks she had brought. She read the note hurriedly and clinched it
in her hand. "It is his writing--his, Mark Telford! He, my husband's
friend! Good God!"