Part 5 (1/2)
”'Because it was the only way to escape--it was the only way out. I never want him to think of me in any other light--I want to be dead to him forever! Nothing else would have done; I should have yielded, for I could no longer master my love for him. Look!'
”She was fumbling at her dress, loosening the top b.u.t.tons close under her chin; then she ripped it clear, exposing her neck and back.
”'This is what was done to me when I was a child!'
”I leaned forward to see the closer. The poor child was one ma.s.s of hideous tattoo from her throat to her stays!
”'Now you know the whole story,' she sobbed, her eyes streaming tears; 'my heart is broken but I am satisfied. I could have stood anything but his loathing.'
”With this she fastened her dress and walked slowly out of the room, her head down, her whole figure one of abject misery.”
Madame leaned forward, picked up her goblet of water, and remarking that walking in the wind always made her thirsty, drained its contents. Then she turned her head to hide her tears.
”A most extraordinary story, madame. Did the young fellow ever speak of the theft?” asked Herbert, the first of her listeners to speak.
”No,” she answered slowly, in the effort to regain her composure, ”he loved her too much to hear anything against her. He knew she had stolen it, for he had heard it from her own lips.”
”And you never tried to clear her character?”
”How could I? It was her secret, not mine. To divulge it would have led to her other and more terrible secret, and that I was pledged to keep.
She is dead, poor girl, or I would not have told you now.”
”And what did you do, may I ask?” inquired Brierley.
”Nothing, except tell fibs. After she had gone the following morning I excused her to him, of course, on every ground that I could think of. I argued that she had a peculiar nature; that owing to her captivity she had perhaps lost that fine sense of what was her own and what was another's; that she had many splendid qualities; that she had only yielded to an impulse, just as a Bedouin does who steals an Arab horse and who, on second thought, returns it. That I had forgiven her, and had told her so, and as proof of it had tried, without avail, to make her keep the topaz. Only my husband knew the truth. 'Let it stay as it is, my dear,' he said to me; 'that girl has more knowledge of human nature than I credited her with. Once that young lover of hers had learned the cruel truth he wouldn't have lived with her another hour.'”
”I think I should have told him,” remarked Louis slowly; the story seemed to have strangely moved him. ”If he really loved her he'd have worn green spectacles and taken her as she was--I would. Bad business, this separating lovers.”
”No, you wouldn't, Louis,” remarked Herbert, ”if you'd ever seen her neck. I know something of that tattoo, although mine was voluntary, and only covered a part of my arm. Madame did just right. There are times when one must tell anything but the truth.”
Everybody looked at the speaker in astonishment. Of all men in the world he kept closest to the exact hair-line; indeed, one of Herbert's peculiarities, as I have said, was his always understating rather than overstating a fact.
”Yes,” he continued, ”the only way out is to 'lie like a gentleman,' as the saying is, and be done with it. I've been through it myself and know. Your story, madame, has brought it all back to me.”
”It's about a girl, of course,” remarked Louis, flas.h.i.+ng a smile around the circle, ”and your best girl, of course. Have a drop of cognac, old man,” and he filled Herbert's tiny gla.s.s. ”It may help you tell the _whole_ truth before you get through.”
”No,” returned Herbert calmly, pus.h.i.+ng the cognac from him, a peculiar tenderness in his voice; ”not my best girl, Louis, but a gray-haired woman of sixty--one I shall never forget.”
Madame laid her hand quickly on Herbert's arm; she had caught the note in his voice.
”Oh! I'm so glad!” she said. ”I love stories of old women; I always have. Please go on.”
”If I could have made her young again, madame, you would perhaps have liked my story better.”
”Why? Is it very sad?”
”Yes and no. It is not, I must say, exactly an after-dinner story, and but that it ill.u.s.trates precisely how difficult it is sometimes to speak the truth, I would not tell it at all. Shall I go on?”