CONSCIENCE
Virginia slept little that night. Her room, one of the smallest and
least expensive in the cosmopolitan boarding-house where she was
staying, was high up, almost in an attic. The windows were small, and
opened with difficulty. The heat, combined with her own restlessness,
made the weary hours one long nightmare for her. Early in the morning
she rose and sat in front of the little window, looking out across the
wilderness of house-tops, where a pall of smoke seemed to convert to
luminous chaos the rising sun. There was a lump in her throat, and
gathering tears in her eyes. It seemed to her that no one could ever
realize a loneliness more absolute and complete than hers. She thought
of the early summer mornings in that tiny farmhouse perched on the side
of the lonely valley, where the air at least was clear and pure and
bright, musical with the song of birds, and the west wind which stirred
always in the pine-woods behind heralded the coming morning. If only she
could have dropped from her shoulders the burden of the last few months,
and found herself back there once more. Then a pang of remorse shook her
heart. She remembered the happiness which through her had come to those
whom she loved, and the thought was like a tonic to her. She forgot her
own sorrows, she forgot that dim tremendous feeling, which had shown
through her life for a minute or two, only to pass away and leave behind
longings and regrets which were in themselves a constant pain. She
forgot everything except the thought of what it might mean to those
others who were dear to her if she should fail in her task. Her face
seemed suddenly aged as she sat there, crushing down the sweeter things,
clenching her fingers upon the window-sill, and telling herself that at
any cost she must succeed, hopeless though the task might seem.
Presently she began to move about the room and collect her clothes. At
half-past nine she had left the boarding-house and departed without
leaving any address behind her. At ten o'clock a great automobile swung
round the corner, stopped before the door, and Mr. Mildmay descended and
ran lightly up the steps. Miss Longworth had gone away, he was told by
the shabby German waiter in soiled linen coat and greasy black trousers.
She had left no address. She had left no message for any one who might
be calling for her. The largest tip which he had ever received could
only send him into the inner regions to interview the proprietress, who
came out and confirmed his words. Mildmay turned slowly around and
drove away.
* * * * *
Stella and Norris Vine lunched together that day in a small West End
restaurant. He had telephoned asking her to come, and she had at once
thrown over another engagement. They were scarcely seated before he
asked her a question.
"Do you know that your cousin is in London?"
"What! Virginia?" Stella exclaimed.
He nodded, and Stella was genuinely amazed.
"Whom did she come with?" she asked. "What does she want here?"
"She came alone, poor little thing," he answered, "and on a wild-goose
chase. I never heard anything so pathetic in my life. She ought to be in
short frocks, playing with her dolls, and she has come here four
thousand miles to a city she knows nothing of, to steal back--well, you
know what. One could laugh if it were not so pathetic."
"Little fool!" Stella said, half contemptuously, and yet with a note of
regret in her tone.
"I thought, perhaps," Vine said, "you might find out where she is and go
and talk common sense to her. If there is anything else we can do, I'd
like to, only I hate the thought of a pretty child like that wandering
about London on such an absurd quest."
"Do you know where she is to be found?" Stella asked quietly.
"I have no idea," Vine answered. "The last time I saw her was in my own
rooms. I am only sorry that I let her go."
Stella looked up at him quickly.
"Your own rooms!" she repeated. "What do you mean?"
"Well," he answered, "with the extraordinary luck which comes sometimes
to babies, she overheard two men talking about me and arranging to meet
at a certain hour at my flat. She actually had the nerve to be there
herself at the same time. While she sat in my sitting-room, they waited
in the bedroom. Mind, a great part of this may be her invention. I have
only her word for it, but she certainly seemed as though she were
telling the truth. I rang up for some one to bring me a change of
clothes, and she answered the telephone. What she said to me sounded
such rank nonsense that I jumped in a hansom and went straight back to
my rooms. However, the men who were listening gathered from what she
said that I was not coming back, and they gave it up and stole out. When
I returned I found her waiting there, and she demanded that I should
give her up the paper she wanted as a matter of gratitude."
"Do you believe her story?" Stella asked.
"I don't know," he answered. "I know that I am being followed about, and
if she could get into my rooms, it is quite as easy for them to do so.
They may have been there, and I dare say that if I had entered
unsuspectingly, and Dan Prince had anything to do with it, I shouldn't
have had much chance. It amused me to see all my drawers turned out and
my papers disturbed."
"Little idiot!" Stella said impatiently. "She ought to be at home,
feeding her father's chickens. She is hopelessly out of place here, just
as she was in New York,"
"I wish we could send her back there," Vine declared.
Stella looked at him with raised eyebrows.
"My dear Norris," she said, "isn't this rather a new departure for you?
I don't seem to recognize you in this frame of mind."
He sipped his wine thoughtfully for a minute or two, and helped himself
to some curry.
"I believe after all, Stella," he said, "that you know very little about
me. I am naturally a most tender-hearted person."
"You have managed," she remarked drily, "to conceal your weakness most
effectively."
"A journalist," he reminded her, "is used to conceal them. Without the
arts of lying and acting, we might as well abandon our profession.
Seriously, Stella, I am sorry for the child. I wish you could find her
and pack her off home."
Stella shrugged her shoulders.
"In the first place," she said, "I have no idea where to look; and in
the second, she is one of those obstinate children who never do what
they are told, or see reason."
"I admit," he replied, "that finding her is rather a difficulty, but
after all, you see, it is you directly, and I indirectly, who are
responsible for her troubles. I think we ought to do what we can. I wish
I hadn't let her go the other night."
"I am becoming," Stella said, smiling, "a little jealous of my cousin."
He looked at her with steady scrutiny, as though he were curious to
decide how much of truth there might be in her words.
"You have no need, my dear Stella," he said, "to be jealous of Virginia
or any other girl. This is simply the dying kick of a nearly finished
conscience."
"If I come across her," Stella said, "I will do what I can. If you see
her again, and I should think you are the more likely, find out her
address and I will go and see her. By the by," she added, leaning across
the table towards him, "you seem very confident of preserving it. Tell
me, where do you keep that paper?"
He smiled.
"Ah!" he said. "All my secrets save one are yours, but I think that that
one I will not tell you."
She frowned at him, obviously annoyed.
"Do you mean that?" she asked. "Surely you do not hesitate to trust me?"
"Not for one moment," he answered. "On the other hand, the knowledge of
a thing of that sort is better in as few hands as possible. You will be
none the better for knowing. Circumstances might arise to make even the
knowledge an embarrassment to you. Take my advice, and do not ask me
that question."
Stella's face had grown darker.
"It is I," she said, "whom you have to thank for the possession of it.
Considering that you go in danger every moment, I think that some one
else save yourself should share in the knowledge of what you have
done with it."
"Let me recommend," he said, studying the menu for a moment with his
horn-rimmed eyeglass, "an artichoke with sauce mayonnaise, or would you
prefer asparagus?"
"I should prefer," she insisted, "an answer to my question."
He looked at her steadily. His face was utterly impassive, his
forefinger was tapping lightly upon the table-cloth. It was a look which
she knew very well.
"The knowledge of where that paper is, Stella, would do you no good," he
declared. "Forgive me, but I do not intend to tell a soul."
They finished their luncheon almost in silence. She only once recurred
to the subject.
"Perhaps," she said, looking quietly up at him, "as your conscience is
growing so susceptible, you will think it right to restore that paper to
my little cousin. Those are wonderful eyes, of hers, you know, now she
has learnt to use them a little."
Norris Vine did not answer, and they parted with the briefest of
farewells.