“I—I believe you,” came my stammered reply.
What I meant, of course, was that no doubt could exist that he was, certainly, Hal Pemberton. His seamed face lighted up; it was plain he believed that establishment of identity made the matter of his detention absurd.
“They have me registered as Chase—John Chase,” he confided. “Come! Would a true story of an artist’s persecution interest you? It is a recital of misunderstanding, bigotry....”
He left the sentence incomplete, and beckoned with a curl of his tapered, spatulate index finger toward a bench set fair in the sunshine just beyond range of blowing mists from the fountain.
I was tempted. A guard was stationed less than two hundred feet distant. Notwithstanding the horrid and distorted legends which shrouded our memories of this man—supposed to have died in far-off Polynesia—he could not harm me easily before assistance was available. Beside, I am an active, bony woman of the grenadier type. I waited until he sat down, then placed myself gingerly upon the opposite end of the bench.
“You are the first person who has not laughed in my face when learning my true identity,” he continued then, making no attempt to close the six-foot gap between us—much to my comfort. “Ignorance placed me here. Ignorance keeps me. I shall give you every detail, Madame. Then you may inform others and procure my release. The cognoscenti will demand it, once they know of the cruel intolerance which has stolen nine years from my career and from my life. You know——” and here Pemberton glanced guardedly about before he added in a whisper, “they won’t let me paint!
“My youth and training are known in part. Alden Sefferich’s brochure dealt with the externals, at least. You have read it? Ah, yes! Dear Alden knew nothing, really. When I look at his etchings of buildings—at his word sketch of myself—I see behind the lines and letters to a great void.
“At best, he was an admirable camera equipped with focal-plane shutter and finest anastigmatic lenses depicting three dimensions faithfully in two, yet ignoring the most important fourth dimension of temperament and soul as though it were as mythical as that fourth dimension played with by mathematicians.
“It is not. Artistic inspiration—what the underworld calls yen—has been my whole life. Beyond the technique and inspiration furnished by Guarneresi, one might scrap the whole of tutelage and still have left—myself, and the divine spark!
“I was one of the Long Island Pembertons. Two sisters still are living. They are staid, respectable ladies who married well. To hell with them! They really believed that Hal Pemberton disgraced them, the nauseating prigs!