The High Cost Of Conscience

"Do I understand you to say"--Mr. Fowler's voice was almost stirred--"that you wish to return my brother's legacy to the family?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Shirley, "only, it wasn't a legacy. It was merely kindness that let me have it. You never can know how kind it was. But we can get on without it now."

Mr. Fowler cleared his throat. To Hugh his manner faintly suggested the cat busy with the yarn, full of a sort of devout curiosity. "Pardon me," he said, gently, "but are you sure--have you given this matter sufficient thought? The sum is a considerable one. Your children--"

"I have talked it over with them. They feel just as I do."

"A very proper feeling," said Miss Fowler, approvingly. "I must say that I never expected it. I shall add part of my share of it to the Marian Fowler Ward in the Home for Deficient Children. A most worthy charity. Perhaps I could interest you--"

"Oh, that would be lovely!" cried Mrs. Shirley. "Anything for children.... I've already spoken to my cousin, who is a lawyer, about transferring the securities back to you."

"I shall communicate with him at once," said Mr. Fowler. His court-room manner had bourgeoned into his best drawing-room blend of faintly implied gallantry and deep consideration. One almost caught Winter getting out of the lap of Spring. Then the three heads which had unconsciously leaned together suddenly straightened up and turned in the same direction.

Hugh stood almost over them. In one hand he held his aunt's knitting, which he had mechanically rescued from the cat. Now he drew out one of the ivory needles and snapped it into accurate halves. "This is atrocious!" he said, with care and precision. His voice shook. "I shall not touch a cent of it and"--he embraced his uncle and aunt in the same devastating look--"neither will you if you have any sense of decency."

"I think--"

"It doesn't matter remotely what you--we think sir. What matters is what Uncle Hugh thought." He turned to Mrs. Shirley with an extraordinary softening of tone. "Couldn't you keep it? When he died ... in the room over this"--with a little gasp her glance flew to the ceiling as though this topographical detail had brought her a sharp realization of that long-past scene--"he made us promise that you should have it, all of it. He felt that you needed it; he worried about it."

"Oh, how kind of him--how kind!" cried the little woman. The poignancy of her voice cut into his disappointment like a sharp ray of light. "Even then--to think of me. But don't you understand that he wouldn't want me to--to take anything that I felt I ought not to take?"

"That's the way out," rippled across Mr. Fowler's face. He was experiencing a variety of mental disturbances, but this came to the surface just in time for Hugh to catch it.

"Oh well," he murmured, wearily. "Only, none for this deficient child, thank you." He walked to the window and stood looking out into the blown spring green of the elm opposite. His ebbed anger had left a residuum of stubbornness. There was still an act of justice to be consummated and the position of grand-justicer offered a certain righteous attraction. As he reminded himself, if you put your will to work on a difficult action you were fain to commit, after a while the will worked automatically and your mind functioned without aid from you, and the action bloomed of itself. This kinetic process was a constant device of the freakish impulse that he called his devil. He deliberately laid the train.

"There is one more thing," the alien was saying. Her voice had gained a wonderful fluency amid the general thaw. "I didn't dare to ask before, but if we thought of me then--I have always hoped he left some message for me ... a letter, perhaps."

Hugh smiled agreeably. "In just a moment," he considered, "I am going to do something so outrageous that I can't even imagine how my dear families are going to take it." He was about to hurt them severely, but that was all right. His uncle was a tempered weapon of war that despised quarter; and as for Aunt Maria, he rather wanted to hurt Aunt Maria for her own good.

Into the eloquent and mendacious silence that was a gift of their caste the voice fell humbly: "So there wasn't? I suppose I oughtn't to have expected it."

"Any time now, Gridley," Hugh signalled to his familiar. Like a response, a thin breeze tickled the roots of his hair. He swung around with the pivot of a definite purpose. With an economy of movement that would have contented an efficiency expert he set a straight fiddle-backed chair squarely in front of Uncle Hugh's girl and settled himself in it with his back to his own people.

"Mrs. Shirley," he began, quietly, "will you talk to me, please? I hope I shan't startle you, but there are things I absolutely have to know, and this is my one chance. I am entirely determined not to let it slip. Talk to me, please, not to them. As you have doubtless noticed, though excellent people where the things not flatly of this world are concerned, my uncle is a graven image and my aunt is a deaf mute. As for me, I am just unbalanced enough to understand anything." He was aware of the rustle of consternation behind him and hurried on, ignoring that and whatever else might be happening there. "That's what I'm banking on now. I intend to say my say and they are going to allow it, because it is dangerous to thwart queer people--very dangerous indeed. You know, they thwarted Uncle Hugh in every possible way. My grandfather was a composite of those two, and all of them adored my uncle and contradicted him and watched him until he went over the border. And they're so dead scared that I'm going to follow him some day that they let me do quite as I please." He passed his hand across his eyes as though brushing away cobwebs. "Will you be so good as to put your veil up."

"Why--why, certainly!" Mrs. Shirley faltered. She uncovered her face and Hugh nodded to the witness within.

Contents