Part 24 (1/2)

'Well, you see, I could tell them that he'd left the house--Mr. Gideon, I mean--before Oliver ... fell. That would be true. I could say I heard Mr.

Gideon go, and heard Oliver fall afterwards. That's what I thought I'd say. Then he'd be cleared, wouldn't he?'

'Why haven't you,' I asked, 'said this already, directly you knew that Gideon was suspected?'

'I--I didn't like,' she faltered. 'I wanted to ask some one's advice. I wanted to know what you thought.'

'I've told you,' I answered her, 'what I think. It's more than thinking.

I know. You've got to tell them the exact truth whatever it is. There's really no question about it. You couldn't go to them with a half true story ... could you?'

'I don't know,' she sighed, pinching her fingers together nervously.

'You do know. It would be impossible. You couldn't lie about a thing like that. You've got to tell the truth.... Not all you've told me, if you don't want to--but simply that you pushed him, in impatience, not meaning to hurt him, and that he fell. It's quite simple really, if you do it at once. It won't be if you leave it until the thing has gone further and Gideon is perhaps arrested. You'd have to tell the public the story then.

Now it's easy.... No, I beg your pardon, it's not easy; I know that. It's very hard. But there it is: it's got to be done, and done at once.'

She listened in silence, drooping and huddled together. I was reminded pitifully of some soft little animal, caught in a trap and paralysed with fear.

'Oh,' she gasped, 'I must, I must, I know I must. But it's _difficult_ ...'

I'm not going to repeat the things I said. They were the usual truisms, and one has to say them. I had accepted her story now: it seemed simpler.

The complex part of the business was that at one moment I was simply persuading a frightened and reluctant girl to do the straight and decent and difficult thing, and at the next I was wasting words on an egotist (we're all that, after all) who was subconsciously enjoying the situation and wanting to prolong it. One feels the difference always, and it is that duplicity of aim in seekers after advice that occasionally makes one cruel and hard, because it seems the only profitable method.

It must have been ten minutes before I wrung out of her a faltering but definite, 'I'll do it.'

Then I stood up. There was no more time to be wasted.

'What train can you get?' I asked her.

'I don't know.... The 7.30, perhaps.' She rose, too, her little wet crumpled handkerchief still in her hand. I saw she had something else to say.

'I've been so miserable ...'

'Well, of course.'

'It's been on my _mind_ so ...'

What things people of this type give themselves the trouble of saying!

'Well, it will be off your mind now,' I suggested.

'Will it? But it will still be there--the awful thing I did. I ought to confess it, oughtn't I, and get absolution? I do make my confession, you know, but I've never told this, not properly. I know I ought to have done, but I couldn't get it out ever--I put it so that the priest couldn't understand. I suppose it was awfully mean and cowardly of me, and I ought to confess it properly.'

But I couldn't go into that question, not being entirely sure even now _what_ she ought to confess. I merely said, 'Well, why make confessions at all if you don't make them properly?'

She only gave her little soft quivering sigh. It was too difficult a question for her to answer. And, after all, a foolish one to ask. Why do we do all the hundreds of things that we don't do properly? Reasons are many and motives mixed.

I walked with her to the King's Cross bus and saw her into it. We shook hands as we parted, and hers was hot and clinging. I saw that she was all tense and strung up.

'Good-bye,' she whispered. 'And thank you ever so much for being so good to me. I'll do what you told me to-night. If it kills me, I will.'

'That's good,' I returned. 'But it won't kill you, you know.'