An Unpardonable Liar | Page 9

drank the stuff off with a neutral look and
well bred indifference to the distress about her. Or in strode the private
secretary of some distinguished being in London, S.W. He invariably
carried his glass to the door, drank it off in languid sips as he leaned
indolently against the masonry, and capped the event by purchasing a
rose for his buttonhole, so making a ceremony which smacked of
federating the world at a common public drinking trough into a little
fete. Or there were the good priests from a turbulent larruping island,
who with cheeks blushing with health and plump waistcoats came
ambling, smiling, to their thirty ounces of noisome liquor. Then, there

was Baron, the bronzed, idling, comfortable trader from Zanzibar, who,
after fifteen years of hide and seek with fever and Arabs and sudden
death--wherewith were all manner of accident and sundry profane
dealings not intended for The Times or Exeter hall, comes back to
sojourn in quiet "Christom" places, a lamb in temper, a lion at heart, an
honest soul who minds his own business, is enemy to none but the
malicious, and lives in daily wonder that the wine he drank the night
before gets into trouble with the waters drunk in the morning. And the
days, weeks and months go on, but Baron remains, having seen
population after population of water drinkers come and go. He was
there years ago. He is there still, coming every year, and he does not
know that George Hagar has hung him at Burlington House more than
once, and he remembers very well the pretty girl he did not marry, who
also, on one occasion, joined the aristocratic company "on the line."
This young and pretty girl--Miss Mildred Margrave--came and went
this morning, and a peculiar, meditative look on her face, suggesting
some recent experience, caused the artist to transfer her to his notebook.
Her step was sprightly, her face warm and cheerful in hue, her figure
excellent, her walk the most admirable thing about her--swaying,
graceful, lissom--like perfect dancing with the whole body. Her walk
was immediately merged into somebody else's--merged melodiously, if
one may say so. A man came from the pump-room looking after the
girl, and Hagar remarked a similar swaying impulsion in the walk of
both. He walked as far as the gate of the pump-room, then sauntered
back, unfolded a newspaper, closed it up again, lit a cigar, and, like
Hagar, stood watching the crowd abstractedly. He was an outstanding
figure. Ladies, as they waited, occasionally looked at him through their
glasses, and the Duchess of Brevoort thought he would make a
picturesque figure for a reception--she was not less sure because his
manner was neither savage nor suburban. George Hagar was known to
some people as "the fellow who looks back of you." Mark Telford
might have been spoken of as "the man who looks through you," for,
when he did glance at a man or woman, it was with keen directness,
affecting the person looked at like a flash of light to the eye. It is easy
to write such things, not so easy to verify them, but any one that has
seen the sleuthlike eyes of men accustomed to dealing with danger in
the shape of wild beasts or treacherous tribes or still more treacherous

companions, and whose lives depend upon their feeling for peril and
their unerring vigilance can see what George Hagar saw in Mark
Telford's looks.
Telford's glance went round the crowd, appearing to rest for an instant
on every person, and for a longer time on Hagar. The eyes of the two
men met. Both were immediately puzzled, for each had a sensation of
some subterranean origin. Telford immediately afterward passed out of
the gate and went toward the St. Cloud gardens, where the band was
playing. For a time Hagar did not stir, but idled with his pencil and
notebook. Suddenly he started, and hurried out in the direction Telford
had gone.
"I was an ass," he said to himself, "not to think of that at first."
He entered the St. Cloud gardens and walked round the promenade a
few times, but without finding him. Presently, however, Alpheus
Richmond, whose beautiful and brilliant waistcoat and brass buttons
with monogram adorned showed advantageously in the morning
sunshine, said to him: "I say, Hagar, who's that chap up there filling the
door of the summer house? Lord, rather!"
It was Telford. Hagar wished for the slightest pretext to go up the
unfrequented side path and speak to him, but his mind was too excited
to do the thing naturally without a stout pretext. Besides, though he
admired the man's proportions and his uses from an artistic standpoint,
he did not like him personally, and he said that he never