An Unpardonable Liar.

by Gilbert Parker.

CHAPTER I.

AN ECHO.

"O de worl am roun an de worl am wide-- O Lord, remember your chillun in de mornin!

It's a mighty long way up de mountain side, An day aint no place whar de sinners kin hide, When de Lord comes in de mornin."

With a plaintive quirk of the voice the singer paused, gayly flicked the strings of the banjo, then put her hand flat upon them to stop the vibration and smiled round on her admirers. The group were applauding heartily. A chorus said, "Another verse, please, Mrs. Detlor."

"Oh, that's all I know, I'm afraid," was the reply. "I haven't sung it for years and years, and I should have to think too hard--no, no, believe me, I can't remember any more. I wish I could, really."

A murmur of protest rose, but there came through the window faintly yet clearly a man's voice:

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

The brown eyes of the woman grew larger. There ran through her smile a kind of frightened surprise, but she did not start nor act as if the circ.u.mstance were singular.

One of the men in the room--Baron, an honest, blundering fellow--started toward the window to see who the prompter was, but the host--of intuitive perception--saw that this might not be agreeable to their entertainer and said quietly: "Don't go to the window, Baron. See, Mrs. Detlor is going to sing."

Baron sat down. There was an instant's pause, in which George Hagar, the host, felt a strong thrill of excitement. To him Mrs. Detlor seemed in a dream, though her lips still smiled and her eyes wandered pleasantly over the heads of the company. She was looking at none of them, but her body was bent slightly toward the window, listening with it, as the deaf and dumb do.

Her fingers picked the strings lightly, then warmly, and her voice rose, clear, quaint and high:

"Look up an look aroun, Fro you burden on de groun, Reach up an git de crown, When de Lord comes in de mornin-- When de Lord comes in de mornin!"

The voice had that strange pathos, veined with humor, which marks most negro hymns and songs, so that even those present who had never heard an Americanized negro sing were impressed and grew almost painfully quiet, till the voice fainted away into silence.

With the last low impulsion, however, the voice from without began again as if in reply. At the first note one of the young girls present made a start for the window. Mrs. Detlor laid a hand upon her arm. "No," she said, "you will spoil--the effect. Let us keep up the mystery."

There was a strange, puzzled look on her face, apparent most to George Hagar. The others only saw the lacquer of amus.e.m.e.nt, summoned for the moment's use.

"Sit down," she added, and she drew the young girl to her feet and pa.s.sed an arm round her shoulder. This was pleasant to the young girl. It singled her out for a notice which would make her friends envious.

It was not a song coming to them from without--not a melody, but a kind of chant, hummed first in a low sonorous tone, and then rising and falling in weird undulations. The night was still, and the trees at the window gave forth a sound like the monotonous s-sh of rain. The chant continued for about a minute. While it lasted Mrs. Detlor sat motionless and her hands lay lightly on the shoulders of the young girl. Hagar dropped his foot on the floor at marching intervals--by instinct he had caught at the meaning of the sounds. When the voice had finished, Mrs. Detlor raised her head toward the window with a quick, pretty way she had, her eyes much shaded by the long lashes. Her lips were parted in the smile which had made both men and women call her merry, amiable and fascinating.

"You don't know what it is, of course," she said, looking round, as though the occurrence had been ordinary. "It is a chant hummed by the negro woodcutters of Louisiana as they tramp homeward in the evening. It is pretty, isn't it?"

"It's a rum thing," said one they called the Prince, though Alpheus Richmond was the name by which his G.o.dmother knew him. "But who's the gentleman behind the scenes--in the greenroom?"

As he said this he looked--or tried to look--knowingly at Mrs. Detlor, for, the Prince desired greatly to appear familiar with people and things theatrical, and Mrs. Detlor knew many in the actor and artist world.

Mrs. Detlor smiled in his direction, but the smile was not rea.s.suring. He was, however, delighted. He almost asked her then and there to ride with him on the morrow, but he remembered that he could drive much better than he could ride, and, in the pause necessary to think the matter out, the chance pa.s.sed--he could not concentrate himself easily.

"Yes. Who is it?" said the young girl.

"Lord, I'll find out," said the flaring Alpheus, a jeweled hand at his tie as he rose.

But their host had made up his mind. He did not know whether Mrs. Detlor did or did not recognize the voice, but he felt that she did not wish the matter to go farther. The thing was irregular if he was a stranger, and if he were not a stranger it lay with Mrs. Detlor whether he should be discovered.

There was a curious stillness in Mrs. Detlor's manner, as though she were waiting further development of the incident. Her mind was in a whirl of memories. There was a strange thumping sensation in her head. Yet who was to know that from her manner?

She could not help flashing a look of thanks to Hagar when he stepped quickly between the Prince and the window and said in what she called his light comedy manner:

"No, no, Richmond. Let us keep up the illusion. The gentleman has done us a service; otherwise we had lost the best half of Mrs. Detlor's song.

We'll not put him at disadvantage."

"Oh, but look here, Hagar," said the other protestingly as he laid his hand upon the curtains.

Few men could resist the quiet decision of Hagar's manner, though he often laughed that, having but a poor opinion of his will as he knew it, and believing that he acted firmness without possessing it, save where he was purely selfish. He put his hands in his pockets carelessly, and said in a low, decisive tone, "Don't do it, if you please."

But he smiled, too, so that others, now gossiping, were unaware that the words were not of as light comedy as the manner. Hagar immediately began a general conversation and asked Baron to sing "The Banks o' Ben Lomond,"

feeling sure that Mrs. Detlor did not wish to sing again. Again she sent him a quick look of thanks and waved her fingers in protest to those who were urging her. She clapped her hands as she saw Baron rise, and the others, for politeness sake, could not urge her more.

For the stranger. Only the morning of that day he had arrived at the pretty town of Herridon among the hills and moors, set apart for the idle and ailing of this world. Of the world literally, for there might be seen at the pump-room visitors from every point of the compa.s.s--Hindoo gentlemen brought by sons who ate their legal dinners near Temple Bar; invalided officers from Hongkong, Bombay, Aden, the Gold Coast and otherwhere; Australian squatters and their daughters; attaches of foreign emba.s.sies; a prince from the Straits Settlements; priests without number from the northern counties; Scotch manufacturers; ladies wearied from the London season; artists, actors and authors, expected to do at inopportune times embarra.s.sing things, and very many from Columbia, happy land, who go to Herridon as to Westminster--to see the ruins.

It is difficult for Herridon to take its visitors seriously, and quite as difficult for the visitors to take Herridon seriously. That is what the stranger thought as he tramped back and forth from point to point through the town. He had only been there twelve hours, yet he was familiar with the place. He had the instincts and the methods of the true traveler. He never was guilty of sightseeing in the usual sense. But it was his habit to get general outlines fixed at once. In Paris, in London, he had taken a map, had gone to some central spot, and had studied the cities from there; had traveled in different directions merely to get his bearings. After that he was quite at home. This was singular, too, for his life had been of recent years much out of the beaten tracks of civilization. He got the outlines of Herridon in an hour or two, and by evening he could have drawn a pretty accurate chart of it, both as to detail and from the point of a birdseye view at the top of the moor.

The moor had delighted him. He looked away to all quarters and saw hill and valley wrapped in that green. He saw it under an almost cloudless sky, and he took off his hat and threw his grizzled head back with a boyish laugh.

"It's good--good enough!" he said. "I've seen so much country all on edge that this is like getting a peep over the wall on the other side--the other side of Jordan. And yet that was G.o.d's country with the sun on it, as Gladney used to say--poor devil!"

He dropped his eyes from the prospect before him and pushed the sod and ling with his foot musingly. "If I had been in Gladney's place, would I have done as he did, and if he had been in my place would he have done as I did? One thing is certain, there'd have been bad luck for both of us, this way or that, with a woman in the equation. He was a fool--that's the way it looked, and I was a liar--to all appearances, and there's no heaven on earth for either. I've seen that all along the line. One thing is sure, Gladney has reached, as in his engineering phrase he'd say, the line of saturation, and I the line of liver, thanks be to London and its joys!

And now for sulphur water and--d.a.m.nation!"

This last word was not the real end to the sentence. He had, while lighting his cigar, suddenly remembered something. He puffed the cigar fiercely and immediately drew out a letter. He stood looking at it for a minute and presently let go a long breath.

"So much for London and getting out of my old tracks! Now, it can't go for another three days, and he needing the dollars. * * * I'll read it over again anyhow." He took it out and read:

"Cheer up, and get out of the hospital as soon as you can and come over yourself. And remember in the future that you can't fool about the fire escapes of a thirteen story flat as you can a straight foothill of the Rockies or a Lake Superior silver mine. Here goes to you $1,000 (per draft), and please to recall that what's mine is yours, and what's yours is your own, and there's a good big sum that'll be yours, concerning which later. But take care of yourself, Gladney. You can't drown a mountain with the squirt of a rattlesnake's tooth; you can't flood a memory with cognac.

I've tried it. For G.o.d's sake don't drink any more. What's the use? Smile in the seesaw of the knives. You can only be killed once, and, believe me, there's twice the fun in taking bad luck naked, as it were. Do you remember the time you and I and Ned Ba.s.sett, the H.B. company's man, struck the camp of bloods on the Gray Goose river? How the squaw lied and said he was the trader that dropped their messenger in a hot spring, and they began to peel Ned before our eyes? How he said as they drew the first chip from his shoulder, 'Tell the company, boys, that it's according to the motto on their flag, Pro Pelle Cutem--Skin For Skin?' How the woman backed down, and he got off with a strip of his pelt gone? How the medicine man took little bits of us and the red n.i.g.g.e.rs, too, and put them on the raw place and fixed him up again? Well, that's the way to do it, and if you come up smiling every time you get your pound of flesh one way or another. Play the game with a clear head and a little insolence, Gladney, and you won't find the world so bad at its worst.

"So much for so much. Now for the commission you gave me. I'd rather it had been anything else, for I think I'm the last man in the world for duty where women are concerned. That reads queer, but you know what I mean. I mean that women puzzle me, and I'm apt to take them too literally. If I found your wife, and she wasn't as straightforward as you are, Jack Gladney, I'd as like as not get things in a tangle. You know I thought it would be better to let things sleep--resurrections are uncomfortable things mostly. However, here I am to do what's possible. What have I done?

Nothing. I haven't found her yet. You didn't want me to advertise, and I haven't. She hasn't been acting for a long time, and no one seems to know exactly where she is. She was traveling abroad with some people called Brans...o...b..s, and I'm going to send a letter through their agent. We shall see.

"Lastly, for business. I've floated the Aurora company with a capital of $1,000,000, and that ought to carry the thing for all we want to do. So be joyful. But you shall have full particulars next mail. I'm just off to Herridon for the waters. Can you think it, Gladney--Mark Telford, late of the H.B.C, coming down to that? But it's a fact. Luncheons and dinners in London, E.C., fiery work, and so it's stand by the halyards for bad weather! Once more, keep your nose up to the wind, and believe that I am always," etc.

He read it through, dwelling here and there as if to reconsider, and, when it was finished, put it back into his pocket, tore up the envelope and let it fall to the ground. Presently he said: "I'll cable the money over and send the letter on next mail. Strange that I didn't think of cabling yesterday. However, it's all the same."

So saying, he came down the moor into the town and sent his cable, then went to his hotel and had dinner. After dinner he again went for a walk.

He was thinking hard, and that did not render him less interesting. He was tall and muscular, yet not heavy, with a lean dark face, keen, steady eyes, and dignified walk. He wore a black soft felt hat and a red silk sash which just peeped from beneath his waistcoat--in all, striking, yet not bizarre, and notably of gentlemanlike manner. What arrested attention most, however, was his voice. People who heard it invariably turned to look or listened from sheer pleasure. It was of such penetrating clearness that if he spoke in an ordinary tone it carried far. Among the Indians of the Hudson Bay company, where he had been for six years or more, he had been known as Man of the Gold Throat, and that long before he was called by the negroes on his father's plantation in the southern states Little Ma.r.s.e Gabriel, because Gabriel's horn, they thought, must be like his voice--"only mo' so, an dat chile was bawn to ride on de golden mule."

You would not, from his manner or voice or dress have called him an American. You might have said he was a gentleman planter from Cuba or Java or Fiji, or a successful miner from Central America who had more than a touch of Spanish blood in his veins. He was not at all the type from over sea who are in evidence at wild west shows, or as poets from a western Ilion, who ride in the Row with sombrero, cloak and Mexican saddle.