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_ THE WOMAN WHO TOLD THE TRUTH
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 overdressed 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. _
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