An Unpardonable Liar Part 5

At that moment there came a loud knock at the outer door, then a ring, followed by a cheerful voice calling through the window--"I say, Hagar, are you there? Shall I come in or wait on the mat till the slavey arrives.

* * * Oh, here she is--Salaam! Talofa! Aloha!--which is heathen for How do you do, G.o.d bless you, and All hail!"

These remarks were made in the pa.s.sage from the door through the hallway into the room. As Baron entered, Hagar and Mrs. Detlor were just coming from the studio. Both had ruled their features into stillness.

Baron stopped short, open mouthed, confused, when he saw Mrs. Detlor.

Hagar, for an instant, attributed this to a reason not in Baron's mind, and was immediately angry. For the man to show embarra.s.sment was an ill compliment to Mrs. Detlor. However, he carried off the situation, and welcomed the Afrikander genially, determining to have the matter out with him in some sarcastic moment later. Baron's hesitation, however, continued. He stammered, and was evidently trying to account for his call by giving some other reason than the real one, which was undoubtedly held back because of Mrs. Detlor's presence. Presently he brightened up and said, with an attempt to be convincing, "You know that excursion this afternoon, Hagar? Well, don't you think we might ask the chap we met this morning--first rate fellow--no pleb--picturesque for the box seat--go down with the ladies--all like him--eh?"

"I don't see how we can," replied Hagar coolly. Mrs. Detlor turned to the mantelpiece. "We are full up; every seat is occupied--unless I give up my seat to him."

Mrs. Detlor half turned toward them again, listening acutely. She caught Hagar's eyes in the mirror and saw, to her relief, that he had no intention of giving up his seat to Mark Telford. She knew that she must meet this man whom she had not seen for twelve years. She felt that he would seek her, though why she could not tell; but this day she wanted to forget her past, all things but one, though she might have to put it away from her ever after. Women have been known to live a lifetime on the joy of one day. Her eyes fell again on the mantelpiece, on Hagar's unopened letters. At first her eyes wandered over the writing on the uppermost envelope mechanically, then a painful recognition came into them. She had seen that writing before, that slow sliding scrawl unlike any other, never to be mistaken. It turned her sick. Her fingers ran up to the envelope, then drew back. She felt for an instant that she must take it and open it as she stood there. What had the writer of that letter to do with George Hagar? She glanced at the postmark. It was South Hampstead.

She knew that he lived in South Hampstead. The voices behind her grew indistinct; she forgot where she was. She did not know how long she stood there so, nor that Baron, feeling, without reason, the necessity for making conversation, had suddenly turned the talk upon a collision, just reported, between two vessels in the Channel. He had forgotten their names and where they hailed from--he had only heard of it, hadn't read it; but there was great loss of life. She raised her eyes from the letter to the mirror and caught sight of her own face. It was deadly pale. It suddenly began to waver before her and to grow black. She felt herself swaying, and reached out to save herself. One hand caught the side of the mirror. It was lightly hung. It loosened from the wall, and came away upon her as she wavered. Hagar had seen the action. He sprang forward, caught her, and pushed the mirror back. Her head dropped on his arm.

The young girl ran forward with some water as Hagar placed Mrs. Detlor on the sofa. It was only a sudden faintness. The water revived her. Baron stood dumbfounded, a picture of helpless anxiety.

"I oughtn't to have driveled about that accident," he said. "I always was a fool."

Mrs. Detlor sat up, pale, but smiling in a wan fashion. "I am all right now," she said. "It was silly of me--let us go, dear," she added to the young girl; "I shall be better for the open air--I have had a headache all morning. * * * No, please, don't accuse yourself, Mr. Baron, you are not at all to blame."

"I wish that was all the bad news I have," said Baron to himself as Hagar showed Mrs. Detlor to a landau. Mrs. Detlor asked to be driven to her hotel.

"I shall see you this afternoon at the excursion if you are well enough to go," Hagar said to her.

"Perhaps," she said with a strange smile. Then, as she drove away, "You have not read your letters this morning." He looked after her for a moment, puzzled by what she said and by the expression on her face.

He went back to the house abstractedly. Baron was sitting in a chair, smoking hard. Neither men spoke at first. Hagar went over to the mantel and adjusted the mirror, thinking the while of Mrs. Detlor's last words.

"You haven't read your letters this morning," he repeated to himself. He glanced down and saw the letter which had so startled Mrs. Detlor.

"From Mrs. Gladney!" he said to himself. He glanced at the other letters.

They were obviously business letters. He was certain Mrs. Detlor had not touched them and had, therefore, only seen this one which lay on top.

"Could she have meant anything to do with this?" He tapped it upward with his thumb. "But why, in the name of heaven, should this affect her? What had she to do with Mrs. Gladney, or Mrs. Gladney with her?"

With this inquiry showing in his eyes he turned round and looked at Baron meditatively but unconsciously. Baron, understanding the look, said, "Oh, don't mind me. Read your letters. My business'll keep."

Hagar nodded, was about to open the letter, but paused, went over to the archway and drew the curtains. Then he opened the letter. The body of it ran:

DEAR MR. HAGAR--I have just learned on my return from the Continent with the Brans...o...b..s that you are at Herridon. My daughter Mildred, whom you have never seen--and that is strange, we having known each other so long--is staying at the View House there with the Margraves, whom, also, I think, you do not know. I am going down to-morrow, and will introduce you all to each other. May I ask you to call on me there? Once or twice you have done me a great service, and I may prove my grat.i.tude by asking you to do another. Will this frighten you out of Herridon before I come? I hope not, indeed. Always gratefully yours,

IDA GLADNEY.

He thoughtfully folded the letter up, and put it in his pocket. Then he said to Baron, "What did you say was the name of the pretty girl at the View House?"

"Mildred, Mildred Margrave--lovely, 'cometh up as a flower,' and all that.

You'll see her to-night."

Hagar looked at him debatingly, then said, "You are in love with her, Baron. Isn't it--forgive me--isn't it a pretty mad handicap?"

Baron ran his hand over his face in an embarra.s.sed fashion, then got up, laughed nervously, but with a brave effort, and replied: "Handicap, my son, handicap? Of course, it's all handicap. But what difference does that make when it strikes you? You can't help it, can you? It's like loading yourself with gold, crossing an ugly river, but you do it. Yes, you do it just the same."

He spoke with an affected cheerfulness, and dropped a hand on Hagar's shoulder. It was now Hagar's turn. He drew down the hand and wrung it as Baron had wrung his in the morning. "You're a brick, Baron," he said.

"I tell you what, Hagar. I'd like to talk the thing over once with Mrs.

Detlor. She's a wise woman, I believe, if ever there was one; sound as the angels, or I'm a Zulu. I fancy she'd give a fellow good advice, eh?--a woman like her, eh?"

To hear Mrs. Detlor praised was as wine and milk to Hagar. He was about to speak, but Baron, whose foible was hurriedly changing from one subject to another, pulled a letter out of his pocket and said: "But maybe this is of more importance to Mrs. Detlor than my foolishness. I won't ask you to read it. I'll tell you what's in it. But, first, it's supposed, isn't it, that her husband was drowned?"

"Yes, off the coast of Madagascar. But it was never known beyond doubt.

The vessel was wrecked and it was said all hands but two sailors were lost."

"Exactly. But my old friend Meneely writes me from Zanzibar telling me of a man who got into trouble with Arabs in the interior--there was a woman in it--and was shot but not killed. Meneely brought him to the coast, and put him into a hospital, and said he was going to ship him to England right away, though he thinks he can't live. Meneely further remarks that the man is a bounder. And his name is Fairfax Detlor. Was that her husband's name?"

Hagar had had a blow. Everything seemed to come at once--happiness and defeat all in a moment. There was grim irony in it. "Yes, that was the name," he said. "Will you leave the telling to me?"

"That's what I came for. You'll do it as it ought to be done; I couldn't."

"All right, Baron."

Hagar leaned against the mantel, outwardly unmoved, save for a numb kind of expression. Baron came awkwardly to him and spoke with a stumbling kind of friendliness. "Hagar, I wish the Arabs had got him, so help me!"

"For G.o.d's sake think of what you are saying."

"Of course it doesn't sound right to you, and it wouldn't sound right from you; but I'm a rowdy colonial and I'm d.a.m.ned if I take it back!--and I like you, Hagar!" and, turning, he hurried out of the house.

Mrs. Detlor had not staid at the hotel long; but, as soon as she had recovered, went out for a walk. She made her way to the moor. She wandered about for a half hour or so and at last came to a quiet place where she had been accustomed to sit. As she neared it she saw pieces of an envelope lying on the ground. Something in the writing caught her eye. She stopped, picked up the pieces and put them together. "Oh," she said with misery in her voice, "What does it all mean? Letters everywhere, like the writing on the wall!"

She recognized the writing as that of Mark Telford. His initials were in the corner. The envelope was addressed to John Earl Gladney at Trinity hospital, New York. She saw a strange tangle of events. John Earl Gladney was the name of the man who had married an actress called Ida Folger, and Ida Folger was the mother of Mark Telford's child! She had seen the mother in London; she had also seen the child with the Margraves, who did not know her origin, but who had taken her once when her mother was ill and had afterward educated her with their own daughter. What had Ida Folger to do with George Hagar, the man who (it was a joy and yet an agony to her) was more to her than she dared to think? Was this woman for the second time to play a part--and what kind of part--in her life? What was Mark Telford to John Gladney? The thing was not pleasant to consider. The lines were crossing and recrossing. Trouble must occur somewhere. She sat down quiet and cold. No one could have guessed her mind. She was disciplining herself for shocks. She fought back everything but her courage. She had always had that, but it was easier to exercise it when she lived her life alone--with an empty heart. Now something had come into her life--but she dared not think of it!

And the people of the hotel at her table, a half hour later, remarked how cheerful and amiable Mrs. Detlor was. But George Hagar saw that through the pretty masquerade there played a curious restlessness.

That afternoon they went on the excursion to Rivers abbey--Mrs. Detlor, Hagar, Baron, Richmond and many others. They were to return by moonlight.

Baron did not tell them that a coach from the View hotel had also gone there earlier, and that Mark Telford and Mildred Margrave with her friends were with it. There was no particular reason why he should.

Mark Telford had gone because he hoped to see Mrs. Detlor without (if he should think it best) being seen by her. Mildred Margrave sat in the seat behind him--he was on the box seat--and so far gained the confidence of the driver as to induce him to resign the reins into his hands. There was nothing in the way of horses unfamiliar to Telford. As a child he had ridden like a circus rider and with the fearlessness of an Arab; and his skill had increased with years. This six in hand was, as he said, "nuts to Jacko." Mildred was delighted. From the first moment she had seen this man she had been attracted to him, but in a fashion as to gray headed Mr.

Margrave, who sang her praises to everybody--not infrequently to the wide open ears of Baron. At last she hinted very faintly to the military officer who sat on the box seat that she envied him, and he gave her his place. Mark Telford would hardly have driven so coolly that afternoon if he had known that his own child was beside him. He told her, however, amusing stories as they went along. Once or twice he turned to look at her. Something familiar in her laugh caught his attention. He could not trace it. He could not tell that it was like a faint echo of his own.

When they reached the park where the old abbey was, Telford detached himself from the rest of the party and wandered alone through the paths with their many beautiful surprises of water and wood, pretty grottoes, rustic bridges and incomparable turf. He followed the windings of a stream, till, suddenly, he came out into a straight open valley, at the end of which were the ma.s.sive ruins of the old abbey, with its stern Norman tower. He came on slowly thinking how strange it was that he, who had spent years in the remotest corners of the world, having for his companions men adventurous as himself, and barbarous tribes, should be here. His life, since the day he left his home in the south, had been sometimes as useless as creditable. However, he was not of such stuff as to spend an hour in useless remorse. He had made his bed, and he had lain on it without grumbling, but he was a man who counted his life backward--he had no hope for the future. The thought of what he might have been came on him here in spite of himself, a.s.sociated with the woman--to him always the girl--whose happiness he had wrecked. For the other woman, the mother of his child, was nothing to him at the time of the discovery.

She had accepted the position and was going away forever, even as she did go after all was over.

He expected to see the girl he had loved and wronged this day. He had antic.i.p.ated it with a kind of fierceness, for, if he had wronged her, he felt that he too had been wronged, though he could never, and would never, justify himself. He came down from the pathway and wandered through the long silent cloisters.

There were no visitors about; it was past the usual hour. He came into the old refectory, and the kitchen with its immense chimney, pa.s.sed in and out of the little chapels, exploring almost mechanically, yet remembering what he saw, and everything was mingled almost grotesquely with three scenes in his life--two of which we know; the other, when his aged father turned from him dying and would not speak to him. The ancient peace of this place mocked these other scenes and places. He came into the long, unroofed aisle, with its battered sides and floor of soft turf, broken only by some memorial bra.s.ses over graves. He looked up and saw upon the walls the carved figures of little grinning demons between complacent angels. The a.s.sociation of these with his own thoughts stirred him to laughter--a low, cold laugh, which shone on his white teeth.

Outside a few people were coming toward the abbey from both parties of excursionists. Hagar and Mrs. Detlor were walking by themselves. Mrs.

Detlor was speaking almost breathlessly. "Yes, I recognized the writing.

She is nothing, then, to you, nor has ever been?"

"Nothing, on my honor. I did her a service once. She asks me to do another, of which I am as yet ignorant. That is all. Here is her letter."