Standing upon the porch, she patted me ever so lightly upon the head. “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 fiancée 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.
Colophon
The Cords of Vanity
was published in 1920 by
James Branch Cabell.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Brad Taylor,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2006 by
Suzanne Shell, Virginia Paque, Anuradha Valsa, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Les Belles de Nuit,
a painting completed in 1905 by
Jean Béraud.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
February 7, 2024, 9:04 p.m.
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Uncopyright
May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
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