An Unpardonable Liar | Page 5

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 where on the hill the lights of the Tempe hotel showed, and a man and woman, his arm round her, could be seen pacing among the trees. Telford turned away from this, ground his heel into the turf and said: "I wish I could see who she is. Her voice? It's impossible." He edged close to the window, where a light showed at the edge of