"Well, you don't----"
"Yes----?"
But she wouldn't be hurried now. "You take them too much for what they
are. You don't seem to want----"
"To come down on them strong? Oh, but I often do!"
"So much the better then."
"Though I do like--whether for that or not," I hastened to confess, "to
look them first well in the face."
Our eyes met, with this, for a minute, but she made nothing of that.
"When they _have_ no face, then, you can't do it! It isn't at all events
now a question," she went on, "of people's keeping anything back, and
you're perhaps in any case not the person to whom it would first have
come."
I tried to think then who the person would be. "It would have come to
Long himself?"
But she was impatient of this. "Oh, one doesn't know what comes--or what
doesn't--to Long himself! I'm not sure he's too modest to
misrepresent--if he had the intelligence to play a part."
"Which he hasn't!" I concluded.
"Which he hasn't. It's to _me_ they might have spoken--or to each
other."
"But I thought you exactly held they _had_ chattered in accounting for
his state by the influence of Lady John."
She got the matter instantly straight. "Not a bit. That chatter was mine
only--and produced to meet yours. There had so, by your theory, to be a
woman----"
"That, to oblige me, you invented _her_? Precisely. But I thought----"
"You needn't have thought!" Mrs. Briss broke in. "I didn't invent her."
"Then what are you talking about?"
"I didn't invent her," she repeated, looking at me hard. "She's true." I
echoed it in vagueness, though instinctively again in protest; yet I
held my breath, for this was really the point at which I felt my
companion's forces most to have mustered. Her manner now moreover gave
me a great idea of them, and her whole air was of taking immediate
advantage of my impression. "Well, see here: since you've wanted it, I'm
afraid that, however little you may like it, you'll have to take it.
You've pressed me for explanations and driven me much harder than you
must have seen I found convenient. If I've seemed to beat about the bush
it's because I hadn't only myself to think of. One can be simple for
one's self--one can't be, always, for others."
"Ah, to whom do you say it?" I encouragingly sighed; not even yet quite
seeing for what issue she was heading.
She continued to make for the spot, whatever it was, with a certain
majesty. "I should have preferred to tell you nothing more than what I
_have_ told you. I should have preferred to close our conversation on
the simple announcement of my recovered sense of proportion. But you
_have_, I see, got me in too deep."
"O-oh!" I courteously attenuated.
"You've made of me," she lucidly insisted, "too big a talker, too big a
thinker, of nonsense."
"Thank you," I laughed, "for intimating that I trifle so agreeably."
"Oh, _you've_ appeared not to mind! But let me then at last not fail of
the luxury of admitting that _I_ mind. Yes, I mind particularly. I may
be bad, but I've a grain of gumption."
"'Bad'?" It seemed more closely to concern me.
"Bad I may be. In fact," she pursued at this high pitch and pressure,
"there's no doubt whatever I _am_."
"I'm delighted to hear it," I cried, "for it was exactly something
strong I wanted of you!"
"It _is_ then strong"--and I could see indeed she was ready to satisfy
me. "You've worried me for my motive and harassed me for my 'moment,'
and I've had to protect others and, at the cost of a decent appearance,
to pretend to be myself half an idiot. I've had even, for the same
purpose--if you must have it--to depart from the truth; to give you,
that is, a false account of the manner of my escape from your tangle.
But now the truth shall be told, and others can take care of
themselves!" She had so wound herself up with this, reached so the point
of fairly heaving with courage and candour, that I for an instant almost
miscalculated her direction and believed she was really throwing up her
cards. It was as if she had decided, on some still finer lines, just to
rub my nose into what I had been spelling out; which would have been an
anticipation of my own journey's crown of the most disconcerting sort. I
wanted my personal confidence, but I wanted nobody's confession, and
without the journey's crown where _was_ the personal confidence? Without
the personal confidence, moreover, where was the personal honour? That
would be really the single thing to which I could attach authority, for
a confession might, after all, be itself a lie. Anybody, at all events,
could fit the shoe to one. My friend's intention, however, remained but
briefly equivocal; my danger passed, and I recognised in its place a
still richer assurance. It was not the unnamed, in short, who were to be
named. "Lady John _is_ the woman."
Yet even this was prodigious. "But I thought your present position was
just that she's _not_!"
"Lady John _is_ the woman," Mrs. Briss again announced.
"But I thought your present position was just that nobody is!"
"Lady John _is_ the woman," she a third time declared.
It naturally left me gaping. "Then there _is_ one?" I cried between
bewilderment and joy.
"A woman? There's _her_!" Mrs. Briss replied with more force than
grammar. "I know," she briskly, almost breezily added, "that I said she
wouldn't do (as I had originally said she would do better than any one),
when you a while ago mentioned her. But that was to save her."
"And you don't care now," I smiled, "if she's lost!"