"What a child it is!" she said. "I don't think that, after all, I shall
put twenty-six candles on your cake next week. The fat and lazy literary
gent is not really old enough, not really more than ten."
"--And besides, apart from the proposed discussion of your physical
charms, I have something else quite equally important to tell
you about."
"Oh, drat the pertinacious infant, then I'll come for half an hour. Just
wait until I get a hat. Still, what a worthless child it is! to be
quitting work before noon."
And she would have gone, but I detained her. "Yes, what a worthless
child it is,--or rather, what an unproverbial sort of busy bee it has
been, Bettie dear. For his has been the summer air, and the sunshine,
and the flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes
have been upon him. Now it is autumn. And he has let others eat his
honey-which I take to include all that he actually made, all that wasn't
in the world before he came, as Stella used to say,--so that he might
have his morsel and his song. And sometimes it has been Sardinian honey,
very bitter in the mouth,--and even then he has let others eat it--"
"You are a most irrelevant infant," said Miss Hamlyn, "with these
insectean divagations--Dear me, what lovely words! And of course if you
really want to drag me into that baking-hot garden, and have the only
fiancee you just at present possess laid up by a sunstroke--"
_The Epilogue: Which Suggests that Second Thoughts--_
So I waited there alone. Whatever the four shots implied, I must tell
Bettie everything, because she was Bettie, and it was not fair I should
have any secrets from her. "Oh, just be honest with me," she had said,
in this same garden, "and I don't care what you do!" And I had never
lied to Bettie: at worst, I simply had not told her anything concerning
matters about which I was glad she had not happened to ask any
questions. But this was different....
Dimly I knew that everything must pivot on my telling Bettie. John was
done for, the Hardress woman was done for, and whether or no Jasper had
done for himself, there was no danger, now, that anyone would ever know
how that infernal Gillian had badgered me into, probably, three
homicides. There might be some sort of supernal bookkeeping, somewhere,
but very certainly it was not conformable to any human mathematics....
And therefore I must tell Bettie.
I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. She had pardoned much. It
might be she would pardon even this, "because I had been honest with her
when I didn't want to be." And in any event--even in her loathing,--
Bettie would understand, and know I had at least kept faith with her....
I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. For living seemed somehow
to have raised barriers about me a little by a little, so that I must
view and talk with all my fellows more and more remotely, and could not,
as it were, quite touch anybody save Bettie. At all other persons I was
but grimacing falsely across an impalpable barrier. And now just such a
barrier was arising between Bettie and me, as I perceived in a sort of
panic. Yes, it was rising resistlessly, like an augmenting mist not ever
to be put aside, except by plunging forthwith into hours, or days, or
even into months perhaps, of ugliness and discomfort....
It was the season of harvest. The leaves were not yet turned, and upon
my face the heatless, sun-steeped air was like a caress. The whole world
was at full-tide, ineffably sweet and just a little languorous: and bees
were audible, as in a humorous pretence of vexation....
The world was very beautiful. I must tell Bettie presently, of course;
only the world was such a comfortable place precisely as it was; and I
began to wonder if I need tell Bettie after all?
For, after all, to tell the truth could resurrect nobody; and to know
the truth would certainly make Bettie very unhappy; and never in my life
have I been able to endure the contact of unhappiness.