An Unpardonable Liar Part 7

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 pa.s.sed 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 m.u.f.fled 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."