The High Cost Of Conscience

Hugh had ceased to hold her eyes long ago. They looked into the window's square of light. He had no wish to intrude his presence. She was finding it natural to tell him, just as he had acknowledged her right to explore the intimate places of his soul. Things simply happened that way sometimes, and one was humbly thankful.

"'Go on,' he said. 'Don't stop.' He sat in a corner of the sofa, and for a while the impetus of my start carried me on. Then the bottom dropped out of Chopin. I went over and sat in the other corner. It was a long sofa; it felt as long as the world.

"Do you remember that heart-breakingly beautiful voice of his that could make you feel anything he was feeling? It was like magic. He said at last:

"'So you are going home to be married?'

"I nodded.

"'Betty,' he said, 'are you happy, quite happy, about--everything?'

"'Oh yes!' I said. 'Oh yes, Professor Fowler!' The curious thing about it was that I spoke the truth when I considered it seriously.

"He said, 'Then that's all right.' Then he laughed a little and said, 'Do you always call me Professor Fowler, even when you shut your door on the world at night and are all alone with God and the silence?'

"'And Claudia Jones,' I added, stupidly.

"He considered that seriously and said, 'I didn't know about Claudia Jones; she may inhibit even the silence and the other ingredient. I suppose you call me Teacher.'

"I cried out at that. 'I might call you cher maître, as they do her.'

"He said, 'That may do for the present.'

"'We looked into the fire and the lilacs filled the pause as adequately as Chopin could have done. All at once he got up and came over to me--it seemed the most natural thing in the world--across that wilderness of sofa.

"'I suppose,' he said, 'that you won't let me off that promise.'

"'No, no!' I cried, all my old panic flooding over me again. I threw my hands out, and suddenly he had caught them in his and was holding me half away from him, and he was saying, in that tragic voice of his:

"'No, no! But give me something to make it bearable.'"

"Allah, the compassionate!" sighed Hugh, in ecstasy. He had never dared hope for all this. His very being went on tiptoe for fear of breathing too loud.

"We sat there for ages and ages, gazing into the fire, not saying a word. Then he spoke ... every now and then. He said:

"'The horrible thing would have been never to have known you. Now that I've touched you I'm magnetized for life. I can't lose you again.'

"'It isn't I,' I told him. 'It's only what you think me.'

"'You are the only creature outside of myself that I ever found myself in,' he said. 'And I could look into you like Narcissus until I died. You are home and Nirvana. That's what you are. When I look at you I believe in God. You gallantest, most foolhardy, little, fragile thing, you, you're not afraid of anything. You trust this rotten life, don't you? You expect to find lovely things everywhere, and you will, just because they'll spring up around your feet. You'll save your world like all redeemers simply by being in it.'

"No woman ever had such things said to her as he said to me. But most of the time we said nothing. There wasn't any past or future; there was only the touch of his shoulder and his hands all around mine. It was like coming in out of the cold; it was like being on a hill above the sea, and listening to the wind in the pines until you don't know which is the wind and which is you....

"It couldn't last forever. After a while something like a little point of pain began worrying my mind.

"'But there won't be.... This is good-bye,' I cried.

"'Don't you believe it,' he said. 'God Himself couldn't make us say good-bye again.' He got up and drew me with him. It was quite dark now except for the fire, and his eyes ... they were like those of the Djinns who were made out of elemental fire instead of earth. 'You'll come to me in the blessed sunshine,' he said, 'and in music, and in the best impulses of my own soul. If I were an old-fashioned lover I should promise to wait for you in heaven.... Betty, Betty, I have you in heaven now and forever!' ... I felt his cheek on mine. Then he was gone. That was all; that was every bit of all."

"And he had that to live on for the rest of his life." Hugh broke the silence under his breath. "Well, thank God he had something!"

The little woman fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief and shamelessly dried her eyes. As she moved, a brown object fell from the corner of the couch across her lap. Hugh held his hand out for the morocco portfolio.

"It seems to have the homing instinct," he observed; then, abruptly, "Wait a moment; I'm going to call them back." He paused, as usual, before his favourite confidant, the window. "The larger consciousness, the Universal Togetherness," he muttered. "I really believe he must have touched it that once. O Lord! how--" His spacious vocabulary gave it up.

When he followed his uncle and aunt into the room Mrs. Shirley came forward, her thin veil again covering her face.

"I must go," she said. "Thank you once more for letting me come."

With a curious young touch of solemnity Hugh laid the brown case in her hands. "This belongs to you," he said, "and I wanted them to see you receive it."

       * * * * *

"And you intend to permit this, Winthrop?"

Miss Fowler turned on her brother. She had suppressed her emotions before the intruder; she had even said some proper things without unduly speeding the parting guest. But if you can't be hateful to your own family, to whom, in the name of the domestic pieties, can you be hateful?

Mr. Fowler swiveled on her the glassy eye of one who does not suffer fools gladly. "I permit anything," he responded, icily, "that will keep that boy ... sane." He retired anew behind the monastic newspaper and rattled it.

Miss Maria received a sudden chill apprehension that Winthrop was looking much older lately. "But--" she faltered. Then she resolutely returned to the baiting. "I suppose you recall her saying that she has a daughter. Probably," admitted Miss Maria, grudgingly, "an attractive daughter."

"It might be a very good thing," said the world-weary voice, and left her gasping. "Two excellent Virginia families." He faced his sister's appalled expression. "He might do something much more impossible--marry a cheap actress or go into a monastery. His behaviour to-day prepares me for anything. And"--a note of difficulty came into what Hugh had once called his uncle's chiselled voice--"you do not appear to realize, Maria, that what Mrs. Shirley has done is rather a remarkable thing, a thing that you and I, with our undoubted appreciation of the value of money, should probably have felt that we could not afford to do."

Hugh came in blithely, bringing a spring-smelling whiff of outdoors with him. "I got her a taxi," he announced, "and she asked me to come down to their place for Easter. There's a hunting club. Oh cheer up, Aunt Maria! At least she left the money behind."

"Look at my needle!" cried the long-suffering lady. "You did that. I must say, Hugh, I find your conduct most disrespectful."

"All right, I grovel," Hugh agreed, pleasantly. He picked up the cat and rubbed her tenderly the wrong way.

"As for the money, I don't see how her conscience could have allowed her to accept everything. And she married somebody else, too."

"So did Dante's girl. That doesn't seem to make all the difference. Conscience?" Hugh went on, absently. "Conscience? Haven't I heard that word somewhere before? You are the only person I know, Aunt Maria, who has a really good, staunch, weather-proof one, because, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, it altereth not."

"I should hope not, indeed," said Miss Fowler, half mollified.

Hugh smiled sleepily. The cat opened one yellow eye and moved mystified whiskers. She profoundly distrusted this affectionate young admirer. Was she being stroked the wrong way or ruffled the right way?

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright," murmured Hugh. "Puzzle, Kitty: find the Adventuress."

Contents