An Unpardonable Liar | Page 5

and parts.
The event increased the interest and respect felt in the hotel for this
stranger. That he knew French was not strange. He had been well
educated as a boy and had had his hour with the classics. His
godmother, who had been in the household of Prince Joseph Bonaparte,
taught him French from the time he could lisp, and, what was
dangerous in his father's eyes, filled him with bits of poetry and fine
language, so that he knew Heine, Racine and Beranger and many
another. But this was made endurable to the father by the fact that, by
nature, the boy was a warrior and a scapegrace, could use his fists as
well as his tongue, and posed as a Napoleon with the negro children in
the plantation. He was leader of the revels when the slaves gathered at
night in front of the huts and made a joy of captivity and sang hymns
which sounded like profane music hall songs, and songs with an
unction now lost to the world, even as Shakespeare's fools are lost--that
gallant company who ran a thread of tragedy through all their jesting.
Great things had been prophesied for this youth in the days when he sat
upon an empty treacle barrel with a long willow rod in his hand, a
cocked hat on his head, a sword at his side--a real sword once
belonging to a little Bonaparte--and fiddlers and banjoists beneath him.
His father on such occasions called him Young King Cole.
All had changed, and many things had happened, as we shall see. But
one thing was clear--this was no wild man from the west. He had
claims to be considered, and he was considered. People watched him as
he went down over the esplanade and into quiet streets. The little
occurrence at the dinner table had set him upon a train of thoughts
which he had tried to avoid for many years. On principle he would not
dwell on the past. There was no corrosion, he said to himself, like the
memory of an ugly deed. But the experiences of the last few days had
tended to throw him into the past, and for once he gave himself up to it.
Presently there came to him the sound of a banjo--not an unusual thing
at Herridon. It had its mock negro minstrels, whom, hearing, Telford
was anxious to offend. This banjo, he knew at once, was touched by
fingers which felt them as if born on them, and the chords were such as
are only brought forth by those who have learned them to melodies of
the south. He stopped before the house and leaned upon the fence. He

heard the voice go shivering through a negro hymn, which was among
the first he had ever known. He felt himself suddenly shiver--a thrill of
nervous sympathy. His face went hot and his hands closed on the
palings tightly. He stole into the garden quietly, came near the window
and stood still. He held his mouth in his palm. He had an inclination to
cry out.
"Good God!" he said in a whisper. "To hear that off here after all these
years!" Suddenly the voice stopped. There was a murmur within. It
came to him indistinctly. "She has forgotten the rest," he said. Instantly
and almost involuntarily he sang:
"Look up an look aroun, Fro you burden on de groun."
Then came the sequel as we described, and his low chanting of the
negro woodcutter's chant. He knew that any who answered it must have
lived the life he once lived in Louisiana, for he had never heard it since
he had left there, nor any there hum it except those who knew the
negroes well. Of an evening, in the hot, placid south, he had listened to
it come floating over the sugarcane and through the brake and go
creeping weirdly under the magnolia trees. He waited, hoping, almost
wildly--he knew it was a wild hope--that there would be a reply. There
was none. But presently there came to him Baron's crude, honest
singing:
"For you'll take the high road, and I'll take the low road, And I'll be in
Scotland before you; But I and my true love will never meet again On
the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Ben Lomond."
Telford drew in his breath sharply, caught his mustache between his
teeth savagely for a minute, then let it go with a run of ironical laughter.
He looked round him. He saw in the road two or three people who had
been attracted by the music. They seemed so curious merely, so
apathetic--his feelings were playing at full tide. To him they were the
idle, intrusive spectators of his trouble. All else was dark about him
save