A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE.By Elliott E. Shaw.
By Elliott E. Shaw.
I think I must have been dreaming these last few hours. It is all so strange. I wonder if it is always so terrible to do what is right! I don’t believe she ever suffered before in her life. The look that came from those dark eyes of hers when I pushed her away and began to speak will haunt me to my dying day. She almost fainted. Well, it is all over—and there is left for me—nothing but the remembrance of her love and the one thing that I shall ever have to my credit on the books of heaven.
Waiter, some brandy—was that brandy that I just swallowed?—it was? How long have I been at this table? What? Twenty four hours? Ah! I remember now that you are not the first waiter who brought me brandy, nor yet the second, and I think you tried to get me to go home and get some sleep. It was kind of you—but I have no home—and I cannot sleep. I can never do anything more in this world but remember—remember.
By heaven, it was hard to do! But she will see some day that I was right, and perhaps years from now when she is a woman—a mother, perhaps, with a red cheeked boy in her arms repeating his innocent prayers—she may think of me and forgive me. And I may be dead, then. And if I am not dead, I’ll—I’ll be a broken, haggard old man witha chain on my leg and a brand on my shoulder just as I have one now on my soul.
How she cried! I felt like a brute. Ah, I know that feeling well, but it is strange that I should have despised myself so for the first decent thing I have done since I was a laughing boy! How I love her—I who have laughed so at love. Thirty eight years of cynical disbelief against one year of absolute love. Thirty eight years, eleven months, and thirty days of disreputable life against one day of self sacrifice. That is my record. And what a sacrifice it was! To give up the woman one loves and make her despise you, that she may not suffer.
How happy we could have been, but for——it was happiness to me just to sit beside her and watch her at some little womanly act, to see her smile, to know that her soul was as white as the feathers of a swan, and to say to myself, “This woman actually loves me—me, a”—pshaw, I don’t like to say the word even to myself. How sweet she was! She used to put her little hand on my head and stroke my hair and ask me what it was that worried me so much (for with her woman’s intuition she soon learned that there was something that troubled me) and I would laugh and tell her that it was the fear that some day she might cease to love me. Then she would kiss me and tell me that I need never fear such a thing as that. Then she would call me foolish and laugh and kiss me again. I can feel her faint breath on my brow now.
I am sure I could have made her happy, even though I am what I am. If I could have married her I would have guarded her as carefully as the Creator guards the angels. She would never have learned even the alphabet of the black side of human life. We would have been rich and respected and happy—oh, so happy! But that man—that man with the gold rimmed spectacles whom I see everywhere, frightens me. I can feel the atmosphere of Scotland Yard about him, although he looks almost benign. If I could ever catch him looking at me, I should be satisfied that he is not what I fear. But although he seems to be everywhere I go, he apparently pays no attention to me—and therefore I know that hehas been looking at me, and has turned away as suddenly as I have turned to look at him. It was the only thing I had to warn me. It may be after all that he has no interest in the capture of an escaped—but I could not run the risk, for her sake. After all, I am well disguised. I have changed a good deal in a year. It is nearly a month since I first noticed him, and he has evidently been unable to make up his mind yet. I suppose, too, that it is a little hard for him to believe that I could ever have been introduced into the society of the most respectable people in all New England, and be engaged to the daughter of a millionaire. Ha! Ha! These English detectives are slow—but, confound it! They—are—most—disagreeably—sure. Well—I don’t care about it now. It is almost over.
It has been a strange story. To come here a hunted criminal—a convicted one, too—with my ill gotten money in my pocket and my identity a secret—to have been introduced to good society through a chance acquaintance—to have been introduced by that same acquaintance to a woman I could actually love—what is more wonderful still, to win that woman’s love—to be on the point of marrying her and then to fear arrest—to fear far more than that—to fear breaking her heart! It has been a strange story, all of it. I did something, though, that very few men could have done—very few, indeed, of those who have never known a temptation and never done a wrong. I gave her up, that she might not be unhappy—that she might not be disgraced as she would have been some day—for after all, I am certain that my time has almost come. I can wear the hideous clothes of a convict—I can bear disgrace, for I am used to it—I can stand the hard, unceasing, degrading labor, and the disgustingfood—but I cannot disgrace her—I cannot!
And I did it all yesterday. I went to her. She greeted me with a loving smile, the memory of which will solace me in the long years of suffering. She was entertaining, with the aid of her sister, some intimate friends. They were all delighted to see me. Ah, how happy people must be who are respectable! She came to me with outstretched arms as I entered the room, and I pushed her roughly away. Oh, it was agonizing—she burst into tears and threw herself into the arms of her sister. I could not tell her that I was a forger, a professional criminal, but I told her that I was an adventurer—that I did not love her, and that I had intended to marry her merely for her money. I told her, too, that I had learned that her father was on the point of bankruptcy (it was a lie, of course, all of it) and that I wished to be released from my engagement. I said it before them all. I acted splendidly. It broke her heart, it disgusted the rest, it almost killed me—but, thank heaven, it saved her future. Then I mockingly took my leave.
And since then I have not slept, nor eaten, nor felt the effect of the brandy I have poured down my throat—and what is more, I have not cared whether that man with the gold rimmed spectacles was watching me or not. I have done what was right—I have actually done what was right once in my life, thank God!
Ah—there—is—that—man—again! And—he is coming toward me. There are—other men with him. He is looking at me now—deliberately. He knows me. It is all up. Come on, Avenger, come on. I welcome you with both my outstretched hands. Where are the irons?