There was once (said Reginald) a woman who told the truth. Not all at
once, of course, but the habit grew upon her gradually, like lichen on an
apparently healthy tree. She had no children--otherwise it might have
been different. It began with little things, for no particular reason
except that her life was a rather empty one, and it is so easy to slip
into the habit of telling the truth in little matters. And then it
became difficult to draw the line at more important things, until at last
she took to telling the truth about her age; she said she was forty-two
and five months--by that time, you see, she was veracious even to months.
It may have been pleasing to the angels, but her elder sister was not
gratified. On the Woman's birthday, instead of the opera-tickets which
she had hoped for, her sister gave her a view of Jerusalem from the Mount
of Olives, which is not quite the same thing. The revenge of an elder
sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it
arrives in its own good time.
The friends of the Woman tried to dissuade her from over-indulgence in
the practice, but she said she was wedded to the truth; whereupon it was
remarked that it was scarcely logical to be so much together in public.
(No really provident woman lunches regularly with her husband if she
wishes to burst upon him as a revelation at dinner. He must have time to
forget; an afternoon is not enough.) And after a while her friends began
to thin out in patches. Her passion for the truth was not compatible
with a large visiting-list. For instance, she told Miriam Klopstock
_exactly_ how she looked at the Ilexes' ball. Certainly Miriam had asked
for her candid opinion, but the Woman prayed in church every Sunday for
peace in our time, and it was not consistent.
It was unfortunate, everyone agreed, that she had no family; with a child
or two in the house, there is an unconscious check upon too free an
indulgence in the truth. Children are given us to discourage our better
emotions. That is why the stage, with all its efforts, can never be as
artificial as life; even in an Ibsen drama one must reveal to the
audience things that one would suppress before the children or servants.
Fate may have ordained the truth-telling from the commencement and should
justly bear some of the blame; but in having no children the Woman was
guilty, at least, of contributory negligence.
Little by little she felt she was becoming a slave to what had once been
merely an idle propensity; and one day she knew. Every woman tells
ninety per cent. of the truth to her dressmaker; the other ten per cent.
is the irreducible minimum of deception beyond which no self-respecting
client trespasses. Madame Draga's establishment was a meeting-ground for
naked truths and over-dressed fictions, and it was here, the Woman felt,
that she might make a final effort to recall the artless mendacity of
past days. Madame herself was in an inspiring mood, with the air of a
sphinx who knew all things and preferred to forget most of them. As a
War Minister she might have been celebrated, but she was content to be
merely rich.
"If I take it in here, and--Miss Howard, one moment, if you please--and
there, and round like this--so--I really think you will find it quite
easy."
The Woman hesitated; it seemed to require such a small effort to simply
acquiesce in Madame's views. But habit had become too strong. "I'm
afraid," she faltered, "it's just the least little bit in the world too"--
And by that least little bit she measured the deeps and eternities of her
thraldom to fact. Madame was not best pleased at being contradicted on a
professional matter, and when Madame lost her temper you usually found it
afterwards in the bill.
And at last the dreadful thing came, as the Woman had foreseen all along
that it must; it was one of those paltry little truths with which she
harried her waking hours. On a raw Wednesday morning, in a few
ill-chosen words, she told the cook that she drank. She remembered the
scene afterwards as vividly as though it had been painted in her mind by
Abbey. The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.
Miriam Klopstock came to lunch the next day. Women and elephants never
forget an injury.