Part 7 (2/2)

This was somewhat of an appalling speech for Morgan, who certainly did not want to cheat his creditors. And, indeed, it now occurred to him that he must be indebted to his tailor for quite a large amount.

Although his horror of debts was far above the average, he never realised the conception ”money” as ordinary people realise it. So far as it figured in his thoughts at all, money was a gorgeous, poetic unit--the treasure of romance, the gold and silver of fairyland. In practice, the very abundance of it at his command had till lately kept his attention from dwelling on it; just as it did not dwell on, say, the second toe of his left foot--an equally constant factor in his existence--till some pain might make him aware it was there. His present forced awareness of the prosaic side of the notion ”money”

gave him somewhat of a sense of being caught amid a swirl of storm-blown icicles.

”The remedy is simple,” he said, at last.

”It is. I have forty thousand a year. Marry me for my money.”

”Declined, with thanks.”

”So blunt, yet so pointed. A pity it's not original. But I know what you meant by your remedy. You don't see it would be a double crime, and you are too good a man even to commit a single one.”

”You mean----”

”I mean I should follow you. It would be just lovely to be rowed across the Styx together. Of course, I should have to pay your obolus.”

”It is getting late. I really think we ought to turn back.”

Lady Thiselton sighed.

”I must confess I am dejected,” she said. ”I should like to have a quiet cry. What are you going to do, Morgan?”

”Nothing.”

But he knew that would mean bankruptcy, and he had also an unpleasant conviction that she meant what she said about following him.

”And even if we did go to throw sugar to Cerberus, your father would step in and inherit your debts, and you will have sacrificed us both in vain. The result is the same, whether we go to Whitechapel or to the other place. You can't make it otherwise. Now, if you won't let me be your wife, at least let me be a sort of mother to you.”

Her thought met his just at the right junction. He did not answer because her argument was unanswerable. How else avoid coming on the paternal purse again?

”I am only asking you, Morgan, to let me help you live just as you want to live.”

She spoke with pleading and humility.

”We shall be towards each other just as we are now,” she continued, ”and although I intended to torment you till you agreed I was worth an occasional kiss on the forehead in return for mine--which would not at all take us out of the platonic, or rather plutonic, regions in which you so sternly insist we must abide--I shall give you my word to cease from active hostilities for six whole months. Just think--I undertake to be content for the next six months with kissing you on the forehead once each time. Is that not sufficiently an earnest of my good faith?”

Again he gave her no answer, and, in the silence that followed, their footsteps seemed to be echoed back to them. Since to die were futile, let it be she rather than another that helped him to live. She was a good friend and a loyal one. Of course, it was repugnant to take money from a woman, but to take it from anybody else would be still more repugnant.

”As is usually the case in life,” she again chimed in his thought, ”the choice is not between the good and the less good, but between the bad and the worse. Believe me, I understand and sympathise with your hesitations. But between such friends as we are and such original people to boot, scruples of a conventional kind ought not to enter.

With us money should count for nothing. So please don't choose 'the worse,' and perhaps 'the bad' won't turn out so very bad after all.”

Still he could not prevail upon himself to accept her generosity, though conscious he was undeserving of her long-sufferance.

”If I could but see the least prospect of repaying you, I should not hesitate so much,” he said at last.

”My dear Morgan, in life one mustn't look too far ahead, else existence becomes impossible. Let us not bother too much about the future, but let us seize the flying moments; which means we ought to go to Whitechapel on Thursday and spend a happy day.”

He was still lost in thought.

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