NO OTHER WAY.
George Hagar was the first to move. He turned and looked at Mrs. Detlor.
His mind was full of the strangeness of the situation--this man and woman
meeting under such circumstances after twelve years, in which no lines of
their lives had ever crossed. But he saw, almost unconsciously, that she
had dropped his rose. He stooped, picked it up and gave it to her. With a
singular coolness--for, though pale, she showed no excitement--she quietly
arranged the flower at her throat, still looking at the figure on the
platform. A close observer would occasionally have found something
cynical--even sinister--in Mark Telford's clear cut, smoothly chiseled
face, but at the moment when he wheeled slowly and faced these two there
was in it nothing but what was strong, refined and even noble. His eyes,
dark and full, were set deep under well hung brows, and a duskiness in the
flesh round them gave them softness as well as power. Withal there was a
melancholy as striking as it was unusual in him.
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!"
For a moment she trembled violently and ran her fingers through her golden
hair distractedly, but she partly regained her composure, came forward and
told the servant to show him into the room. She was a woman of instant
determination. She drew the curtains closer, so that the room would be
almost dark to one entering from the sunlight. Then she stood with her
back to the light of the window. He saw a figure standing in the shadow,
came forward and bowed, not at first looking closely at the face.
"I have come from your husband," he said. "My name is Mark Telford"--
"Yes, I know," she interrupted.
He started, came a little nearer and looked curiously at her. "Ida--Ida
Royal!" he exclaimed. "Are you--you--John Gladney's wife?"
"He is my husband."
Telford folded his arms, and, though pale and haggard, held himself
firmly. "I could not have wished this for my worst enemy," he said at last
"Gladney and I have been more than brothers."
"In return for having"--
"Hush!" he interrupted. "Do you think anything you may say can make me
feel worse than I do? I tell you we have lain under the same blankets
month in, month out, and he saved my life."
"What is the message you bring?" she asked.
"He begs you to live with him again, you and your child. The property he
settled on you for your lifetime he will settle on your child. Until this
past few days he was himself poor. To-day he is rich--money got honestly,
as you may guess."
"And if I am not willing to be reconciled?"
"There was no condition."
"Do you know all the circumstances? Did he tell you?"
"No, he did not tell me. He said that he left you suddenly for a reason,
and when he wished to return you would not have him. That was all. He
never spoke but kindly of you."
"He was a good man."
"He is a good man."
"I will tell you why he left me. He learned, no matter how, that I had not
been married, as I said I had."
She looked up, as if expecting him to speak. He said nothing, but stood
with eyes fixed on the floor.
"I admitted, too, that I kept alive the memory of a man who had played an
evil part in my life; that I believed I cared for him still, more than for
my husband."
"Ida, for God's sake, you do not mean"--
"Yes, I meant you then. But when he went away, when he proved himself so
noble, I changed. I learned to hate the memory of the other man. But he
came back too soon. I said things madly--things I did not mean. He went
again. And then afterward I knew that I loved him."
"I am glad of that, upon my soul!" said Telford, letting go a long breath.
She smiled strangely and with a kind of hardness. "A few days ago I had
determined to find him if I could, and to that end I intended to ask a man
who had proved himself a friend, to learn, if possible, where he was in
America. I came here to see him and my daughter."
"Who is the man?"
"Mr. George Hagar."
A strange light shot from Telford's eyes. "Hagar is a fortunate man," he
said. Then dreamily: "You have a daughter. I wish to God that--that ours
had lived."
"You did not seem to care when I wrote and told you that she was dead."
"I do not think that I cared then. Besides"--
"Besides you loved that other woman, and my child was nothing to you," she
said with low scorn. "I have seen her in London. I am glad--glad that she
hates you. I know she does," she added. "She would never forgive you. She
was too good for you, and you ruined her life."
He was very quiet and spoke in a clear, meditative voice. "You are right.
I think she hates me. But you are wrong, too, for she has forgiven me."
"You have seen her?" She eyed him sharply.
"Yes, to-day." His look wandered to a table whereon was a photograph of
her daughter. He glanced at it keenly. A look of singular excitement
sprang to his eyes. "That is your daughter?"
She inclined her head.
"How old is she?" He picked up the photograph and held it, scrutinizing
it.
"She is seventeen," was the reply in a cold voice.
He turned a worn face from the picture to the woman. "She is my child.
You lied to me."
"It made no difference to you then. Why should it make any difference now?
Why should you take it so tragically?"
"I do not know, but now"--His head moved, his lips trembled.
"But now she is the daughter of John Gladney's wife. She is loved and
cared for by people who are better, infinitely better, than her father and
mother were or could be. She believes her father is dead. And he is dead!"
"My child! My child!" he whispered brokenly over the photograph. "You will
tell her that her father is not dead. You"--
She interrupted. "Where is that philosophy which you preached to me, Mark
Telford, when you said you were going to marry another woman and told me
that we must part? Your child has no father. You shall not tell her. You
will go away and never speak to her. Think of the situation. Spare her, if
you do not spare me or your friend John Gladney."
He sat down in a chair, his clinched hands resting on his knees. He did
not speak. She could see his shoulder shaking a little, and presently a
tear dropped on his cheek.
But she did not stir. She was thinking of her child. "Had you not better
go?" she said at last. "My daughter may come at any moment."
He rose and stood before her. "I had it all, and I have lost it all," he
said. "Good-bye." He did not offer his hand.
"Good-bye. Where are you going?"
"Far enough away to forget," he replied in a shaking voice. He picked up
the photograph, moved his hand over it softly as though he were caressing
the girl herself, lifted it to his lips, put it down, and then silently
left the room, not looking back.
He went to his rooms and sat writing for a long time steadily. He did not
seem excited or nervous. Once or twice he got up and walked back and
forth, his eyes bent on the floor. He was making calculations regarding
the company he had floated in London and certain other matters. When he
had finished writing, three letters lay sealed and stamped upon the
table. One was addressed to John Gladney, one to the Hudson Bay company
and one to a solicitor in London. There was another unsealed. This he put
in his pocket. He took the other letters up, went downstairs and posted
them. Then he asked the hall porter to order a horse for riding--the best
mount in the stables--to be ready at the door in an hour. He again went to
his room, put on a riding suit, came down and walked out across the
esplanade and into the street where Hagar's rooms were. They were lighted.
He went to the hall door, opened it quietly and entered the hall. He
tapped at the door of Hagar's sitting room. As he did so a servant came
out, and, in reply to a question, said that Mr. Hagar had gone to the
Tempe hotel and would be back directly. He went in and sat down. The
curtains were drawn back between the two rooms. He saw the easels, with
their backs to the archway. He rose, went in and looked at the sketches in
the dim light.
He started, flushed, and his lips drew back over his teeth with an
animallike fierceness, but immediately he was composed again. He got two
candles, brought them and set them on a stand between the easels. Then he
sat down and studied the paintings attentively. He laughed once with a dry
recklessness. "This tells her story admirably. He is equal to his subject.
To be hung in the academy. Well, well!"
He heard the outer door open, then immediately Hagar entered the room and
came forward to where he sat. The artist was astonished, and for the
instant embarrassed. Telford rose. "I took the liberty of waiting for you,
and, seeing the pictures, was interested."
Hagar bowed coldly. He waved his hand toward the pictures. "I hope you
find them truthful."
"I find them, as I said, interesting. They will make a sensation. And is
there anything more necessary? You are a lucky man, and you have the
ability to take advantage of it. Yes, I greatly admire your ability. I can
do that, at least, though we are enemies, I suppose."
His words were utterly without offense. A melancholy smile played on his
lips. Again Hagar bowed, but did not speak.
Telford went on. "We are enemies, and yet I have done you no harm. You
have injured me, have insulted me, and yet I do not resent it, which is
strange, as my friends in a wilder country would tell you."
Hagar was impressed, affected. "How have I injured you? By painting
these?"
"The injury is this: I loved a woman and wronged her, but not beyond
reparation. Years passed. I saw her and loved her still. She might still
have loved me, but another man came in. It was you. That was one injury.
Then"--He took up a candle and held it to the sketch of the discovery.
"This is perfect in its art and chivalry. It glorifies the girl. That is
right." He held the candle above the second sketch. "This," he said, "is
admirable as art and fiction. But it is fiction. I have no hope that you
will change it. I think you would make a mistake to do so. You could not
have the situation, if the truth were painted. Your audience will not have
the villain as the injured man."
"Were you the injured man?"
Telford put the candle in Hagar's hand. Then he quickly took off his coat,
waistcoat and collar and threw back his shirt from his neck behind.
"The bullet wound I received on that occasion was in the back," he said.
"The other man tried to play the assassin. Here is the scar. He posed as
the avenger, the hero, and the gentleman. I was called the coward and the
vagabond! He married the girl."
He started to put on his waistcoat again. Hagar caught his arm and held
it. The clasp was emotional and friendly. "Will you stand so for a
moment?" he said. "Just so, that I may"--
"That you may paint in the truth? No. You are talking as the man. As an
artist you were wise to stick to your first conception. It had the heat of
inspiration. But I think you can paint me better than you have done, in
these sketches. Come, I will give you a sitting. Get your brushes. No, no,
I'll sit for nothing else than for these scenes as you have painted them.
Don't miss your chance for fame."
Without a word Hagar went to work and sketched into the second sketch
Telford's face as it now was in the candlelight--worn, strong, and with
those watchful eyes sunk deep under the powerful brows. The artist in him
became greater than the man. He painted in a cruel, sinister expression
also. At last he paused. His hand trembled. "I can paint no more," he
said.
Telford looked at the sketch with a cold smile. "Yes, that's right," he
said. "You've painted in a good bit of the devil too. You owe me something
for this. I have helped you to a picture and have given you a sitting.
There is no reason why you should paint the truth to the world. But I ask
you this: When you know that her husband is dead and she becomes your
wife, tell her the truth about that, will you? How the scoundrel tried to
kill me--from behind. I'd like to be cleared of cowardice some time. You
can afford to do it. She loves you. You will have everything, I
nothing--nothing at all."
There was a note so thrilling, a golden timbre to the voice, an
indescribable melancholy so affecting that Hagar grasped the other's hand
and said, "So help me God, I will!"
"All right."
He prepared to go. At the door Hagar said to him, "Shall I see you again?"
"Probably in the morning. Good-night."
Telford went back to the hotel and found the horse he had ordered at the
door. He got up at once. People looked at him curiously, it was peculiar
to see a man riding at night for pleasure, and, of course, it could be for
no other purpose. "When will you be back, sir?" said the groom.
"I do not know." He slipped a coin into the groom's hand. "Sit up for me.
The beast is a good one?"
"The best we have. Been a hunter, sir."
Telford nodded, stroked the horse's neck and started. He rode down toward
the gate. He saw Mildred Margrave coming toward him.
"Oh, Mr. Telford!" she said. "You forsook us to-day, which was unkind.
Mamma says--she has seen you, she tells me--that you are a friend of my
stepfather, Mr. Gladney. That's nice, for I like you ever so much, you
know." She raised her warm, intelligent eyes to his. "I've felt since you
came yesterday that I'd seen you before, but mamma says that's impossible.
You don't remember me?"
"I didn't remember you," he said.
"I wish I were going for a ride, too, in the moonlight. I mean mamma and I
and you. You ride as well as you drive, of course."
"I wish you were going with me," he replied.--He suddenly reached down his
hand. "Good-night" Her hand was swallowed in his firm clasp for a moment
"God bless you, dear!" he added, then raised his hat quickly and was gone.
"I must have reminded him of some one," the girl said to herself. "He
said, 'God bless you, dear!'"
About that time Mrs. Detlor received a telegram from the doctor of a
London hospital. It ran:
Your husband here. Was badly injured in a channel collision last
night. Wishes to see you.
There was a train leaving for London a half hour later. She made ready
hastily, inclosed the telegram in an envelope addressed to George Hagar,
and, when she was starting, sent it over to his rooms. When he received
it, he caught up a time table, saw that a train would leave in a few
minutes, ran out, but could not get a cab quickly, and arrived at the
station only to see the train drawing away. "Perhaps it is better so," he
said, "for her sake."
That night the solitary roads about Herridon were traveled by a solitary
horseman, riding hard. Mark Telford's first ambition when a child was to
ride a horse. As a man he liked horses almost better than men. The cool,
stirring rush of wind on his face as he rode was the keenest of delights.
He was enjoying the ride with an iron kind of humor, for there was in his
thoughts a picture. "The sequel's sequel for Hagar's brush to-morrow," he
said as he paused on the top of a hill to which he had come from the
highroad and looked round upon the verdant valleys almost spectrally quiet
in the moonlight. He got off his horse and took out a revolver. It clicked
in his hand.
"No," he said, putting it up again, "not here. It would be too damned
rough on the horse, after riding so hard, to leave him out all night."
He mounted again. He saw before him a fine stretch of moor at an easy
ascent. He pushed the horse on, taking a hedge or two as he went. The
animal came over the highest point of the hill at full speed. Its blood
was up, like its master's. The hill below this point suddenly ended in a
quarry. Neither horse nor man knew it until the yielding air cried over
their heads like water over a drowning man as they fell to the rocky bed
far beneath.
An hour after Telford became conscious. The horse was breathing painfully
and groaning beside him. With his unbroken arm he felt for his revolver.
It took him a long time.
"Poor beast!" he said, and pushed the hand out toward the horse's head.
In an instant the animal was dead.
He then drew the revolver to his own temple, but paused. "No, it wasn't to
be," he said. "I'm a dead man anyway," and fell back.
Day was breaking when the agony ceased. He felt the gray damp light on his
eyes, though he could not see He half raised his head. "God--bless--you,
dear!" he said. And that ended it.
He was found by the workers at the quarry. In Herridon to this day--it all
happened years ago--they speak of the Hudson Bay company's man who made
that terrible leap, and, broken all to pieces himself, had heart enough to
put his horse out of misery. The story went about so quickly, and so much
interest was excited because the Hudson Bay company sent an officer down
to bury him, and the new formed Aurora company was represented by two or
three titled directors, that Mark Telford's body was followed to its grave
by hundreds of people. It was never known to the public that he had
contemplated suicide. Only John Gladney and the Hudson Bay company knew
that for certain.
The will, found in his pocket, left everything he owned to Mildred
Margrave--that is, his interest in the Aurora mines of Lake Superior,
which pays a gallant dividend. The girl did not understand why this was,
but supposed it was because he was a friend of John Gladney, her
stepfather, and perhaps (but this she never said) because she reminded
him of some one. Both she and John Gladney when they are in England go
once a year to Herridon, and they are constantly sending flowers there.
Alpheus Richmond showed respect for him by wearing a silk sash under his
waistcoat, and Baron by purchasing shares in the Aurora company.
When Mark Telford lay dead, George Hagar tried to take from his finger the
ring which carried the tale of his life and death inside it, but the hand
was clinched so that it could not be opened. Two years afterward, when he
had won his fame through two pictures called "The Discovery" and "The
Sequel," he told his newly married wife of this. And he also cleared Mark
Telford's name of cowardice in her sight, for which she was grateful.
It is possible that John Gladney and George Hagar understood Mark Telford
better than the woman who once loved him. At least they think so.