“A woman could wait till I figure out what’s troubling me,” Stan answered, his face set in stubbornness. “It’s not natural, the stillness. Marcia, where are your bees?”

(She should not have met him here. Ah, if he could hear the blood roar in her ears he would not miss the bees! If she was careful—there was no proof, no way for him to know!)

“Why, I guess they’re all dead,” she said, and made her voice plaintive. “Bill always took care of them. I didn’t know what to do. Most of the swarms died that winter after Bill was killed. I had just one hive left. That was winter-killed.” She smiled at him, her hands pulled the overall away from her aching breast. “You—you don’t hold that against me, do you?”

“Bees—and honey—and death,” said Stan slowly. “It begins to fit together, like a puzzle in a nightmare, only I don’t know how. Let’s look at the hives. Maybe I could find out—”

“I burned them,” said Marcia hurriedly. “The bees were dead. I didn’t want the hives around—”

“You burned them? ‘Ask her what she burned up in the stove that night.’ What was it? The frame of the honeycomb Dolly had eaten? Was that it?”

“The doctor has pois—has turned you against me! Oh, don’t let him! You’re free now, free to love me—”

“Were you afraid to speak that word aloud? Poisoned?”

“It was a fresh comb, untouched, unbroken. You said so!”

“You had emptied the syrup jug, hadn’t you? So I’d give it to her. The bees died, Dolly died. It’s monstrous! I can’t believe it! Marcia, what have you done?”

“I didn’t know the honey was poisoned.” Marcia was babbling now, trying with frantic words to draw him back from irrevocable knowledge. “How could I know? I took it out early—to give Dolly—she liked sweets. Later, when the bees died, I was frightened.” (No one could prove she had known. No one had heard Bill say, two years ago, when they lost the first hives, “Damn the law! The honey’s not fit to use. It’s that arsenate we dust the blossoms with—the bees die as they eat. Arsenic honey, a fine note! The law, interfering with a man so his honey’s ruined, or he can’t sell his berries.” No one could prove she had known. She hadn’t planned it when she went out to blow the poison over the blueberry fields. She didn’t know just when she had seen what she could do so cleverly, so surely.) “Stan, you can’t think—” Her hands were restless, not daring to touch him. “Who would have dreamed that bees could carry home enough of the powder with the pollen—”

“My heaven, so that’s it! Why, you sprayed these barrens last spring yourself! You knew!”

“You can’t prove anything!” For a moment Marcia hated him, hated him for the dreadful revulsion in his face, for the fear which so shook her.

He was silent. When at last his lips moved stiffly, he said, “My poor Dolly! I ought to give you over to the law.”

“Give me over?” Marcia’s lips drew back from her strong teeth. “Who fed her the honey? I wasn’t even in the house! I’ll tell them we were lovers, you wanted to get her out of the way. They’d believe me!”

“If they hanged us both,” said Stan grimly, “I might be better off than I will be, knowing what I know.”

“What’s done was done for love of you.” Marcia was desperate now. “To set you free. You wanted her dead, but you wouldn’t admit it. You wouldn’t dare do anything.”

“I wouldn’t dare murder,” said Stan. “If I would, I might choke you now, for being what you are. I never wished for Dolly to die. You couldn’t understand how I felt about Dolly. I—I wanted to take care of her.”

“But you loved me! And you fought it down! That’s why—”

“That’s why you murdered Dolly. The crime is mine, too. There must be evil in me that would hunger for your touch! But you look like a woman, living, beautiful, warm—”

“No one will ever know, Stan! We can forget it!” Marcia flung her arms wide, swaying toward him, her face flushed.

“Don’t touch me,” said Stan sharply. He ground a fist against a wry mouth and went stumbling away from her, back toward the road.

Marcia watched him go, her face sagging into blankness. Around her in the sunlit blueberry barrens was the stillness of death.

THE END

HELEN HULL

lives in New York in winter and in her old Maine farmhouse in summer. Most of her time is spent in writing and in helping others to write in short-story classes at Columbia. She likes cooking, motorboating, gardening, bicycling, and owning a wire-haired terrier.

Transcriber’s Notes

The unabridged latest version of this text was published in: Octave. Coward-McCann, New York, 1947, pp. 259-278.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. Minor typesetting mistakes were silently corrected.