The Cords of Vanity: A Comedy of Shirking by James Branch Cabell (free reads .txt) 📖

all, to comprehend how horrible it was. She was always calling—no, not calling exactly, but just moaning one name, and over and over again. He had been so cruel, she said. He didn't really care for anything, she said, except to write his hateful books. And I had loved her, you understand. And for three whole days I must sit there and hear her tell of what another man had meant to her! I have not been wholly sane, I think, since then, for I had loved her for a long time. And her throat was so little that I often thought how easy it would be to stop the moaning and talking, but somehow I did not like to do it. And it isn't my honour that I mean to avenge. It is Gillian that I must avenge,—Gillian who died because a coward had robbed her of the will to live. For it was that in chief. Why, even you must understand that," he said, as though he pleaded with me.

And yonder Bettie played,—with lithe fingers which caressed the keys rather than struck them, I remembered. And always at the back of my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to how unruffled the man was; and I smiled a little, in recognition of the air, as Bettie began The Funeral March of a Marionette….

"Yes," I said; "I think I understand. There is something to be advanced upon the other side perhaps; but that scarcely matters. You act within your rights; and, besides, you have a pistol, and I haven't. I am getting afraid, though, Jasper. I can't stand this much longer. So for God's sake, make an end of this!"

Jasper Hardress said: "I mean to. But they told me he was here? Yes, I am sure that someone told me he was here."

I think I must have reeled a little. I know my brain was working automatically. Gillian Hardress had always called me Jack; and Jasper Hardress was past reason; and yonder was Bettie, who had made life too fine and dear a thing to be relinquished….

"Jasper," someone was saying, and that someone seemed to laugh, "we aren't living in the Middle Ages, remember. No, just as I said, I cannot stand this nonsense any longer, and you must make an end of this foolishness. Just on a bare suspicion—just on the ravings of a delirious woman—! Why, she used to call me Jack,—and I write books—Why, you might just as logically murder me!"

"I thought at first it was you. Oh, only for a moment, boy. I was not quite sane, I think, for at first I suspected you of such treachery as in my sober senses I know you never dreamed of. And I had forgotten you were just a child—But she was conscious at the end," said Jasper Hardress, "and when I—talked with her about what she had said in delirium, she told me it was Charteris whose son we christened Jasper Hardress some two years ago—"

I said: "I never knew there was a child." But I was thinking of a hitherto unaccounted-for photograph.

"He only lived three months. I had always wanted a son. You cannot fancy how proud I was of him." Hardress laughed here.

"And she told you it was Charteris! in the moment of death when—when you were threatening me, she told you it was Charteris!"

"It is different when you are dying. You see—Gillian knew that eternity depended on what she said to me then—" He spoke as with difficulty, and he kept licking at restless lips.

"Yes,—she did believe that. And she told you—!" I comprehended how
Gillian Hardress had loved me, and my shame was such that now it was the
mere brute will to live which held me. But it held me, none the less.
Besides, I saw the least unpleasant solution.

"I suppose I can't blame you," I said,—"for if she told you, why, of course—" Then I barked out: "He was here a moment ago. You must have come around one corner, in fact, just as he turned the other. You will find him at Willoughby Hall, I suppose. He said he was going straight home."

For I knew that Charteris was at King's College, a mile away from Willoughby Hall; and, I assured myself, there would be ample time to warn him. Only how much must now depend upon the diverting qualities of Lucian! For should the Samosatan flag in interest, John would be leaving the College presently; and there is but one street in Fairhaven.

4

I had my hand upon the garden-gate, and Hardress had just turned the corner below, going toward Cambridge Street, when Bettie came upon the porch.

"Well," she said, "and who's your fat friend, Mr. Sheridan?"

"I can't stop now, dear. I forgot to tell John about something which is rather important—"

"Gracious!" Bettie Hamlyn said; "that sounds like shooting. Why, it is shooting, isn't it?"

"Yes," said I.

"—Quite as though the Monnachins and the Massawomeks and all the other jaw-breakers were attacking Fairhaven as they used to do on alternate Thursdays, and affording both of us an excellent opportunity to get nicely scalped in time for dinner. So I don't mind confessing that it was against precisely such an emergency I declined to turn out an elaborate suite of hair; and now I expect the world at large to acknowledge that I acted very sensibly."

"It is much more likely to be some drunken country-man on his monthly spree—" I was reflecting while Bettie talked nonsense that there had been no less than four shots. I was wondering whom the last was for. It would be much pleasanter, all around, if Hardress had sent it into his own disordered brain. Yes, certainly, three bullets ought amply to account for an unprepared and unarmed and puny Charteris….

So I said: "Well, I suppose my business with John must wait for a while. Besides, Bettie, you are such a dear in that get-up. And if you will come down into the garden at once, I will explain a few of my reasons for advancing the assertion."

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 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.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cords of Vanity, by James Branch Cabell and Willson Follett