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, every one 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.