The Falsehood Shop

The servant, opening the door, announced: “Miss Egon.”

I had not quite expected that. A moment previous I had been a thousand years away, among the young empresses of Byzance, whose brilliant lives I was trying and, what is worse for them, was succeeding in etching in dull prose. But, as the girl entered, the dead vanished, exorcised by the living, and I sprang forward to greet her.

“Where is Herbert, do you know?” she agitatedly asked.

To lie to a lady is never nice, yet tell the truth and sometimes it is not only the devil that you shame.

“No,” I answered with affected candor. With an equally assumed appearance of surprise, I added: “Don’t you?”

She stared at me and I at her. In her face was anxiety, uncertainty, constraint, a little panorama of emotions, but most noticeably charm. Ordinarily, not one of all the beauties of Byzance could have been as fair as she. But there were days when she was merely exquisite. This was one of them. She swallowed a sob, sank into a chair and, still looking at me, said, and simply enough: “He is dead.”

Well, yes, in a sense⁠—that is to say, so far as she was concerned⁠—Herbert Brook was dead. But I could not tell her so. I lacked the courage. Even otherwise I lacked the imagination to bury him decently⁠—to bury him, for that matter, at all. In search of cover, I dropped into the vague.

“Nonsense!” I exclaimed. “Why do you say that?”

But, for the moment, I must have overdone it. For the moment, she must have caught, or thought she caught, a note that did not ring quite true, for at once, much as though she suspected that the brute might be somewhere concealed, she looked about, at the bookcases that lined the room, at the windows that gave on the Champs Élysées, at a portrait that hung on the wall⁠—a portrait which displayed me in the resplendent costume of my Heidelberg corps, a great Dane crouching at my boots.

It was ten years ago that the thing was painted. Since then, my historical genuflections have bent me a bit. On the other hand, kneipes and their plenteous beer failing, I am less stout. Otherwise, barring of course the medieval accoutrements, the picture shows me much as I still am, with, moreover, what I shall always retain, the cicatrix of a student duel slashed across my face.

The girl’s eyes turned from the daub to me. Their promenade about the room had occupied but a moment, yet during it, whatever suspicion she may have had must have died. She looked as she had before, exquisite, anxious, constrained.

“Yes,” I reiterated, “why do you say that?”

Then the meager story of it limped forth to me, who knew it all and better, and in particular the key to it, which I was determined she should never get.

Herbert Brook was, confound him, my cousin. Relationship began and ended there. He was alarmingly good-looking and disgustingly rich, while I am but the scarred-faced historian of improbable queens. The role, passably obscure, had prevented me from ever more than tentatively approaching this girl, to whom Herbert had strummed another guitar. It was a way of his, a way which often had aroused in me the sin of envy, to carry everything by storm. But when he met Kate Egon, which he did entirely through my own stupidity, I had no fear of him, and that for the ridiculous reason that he was vehemently in love with a friend of hers, Jenny Price, who, however, as fate would have it, threw him over, whereat, in the rebound, and out of pique perhaps, he made up to Kate.

At the time we were all in New York. As soon as I learned how things were going, I saw that there was nothing for me to do except to be going also. A week later I was in Paris, where, among the Elysian Fields, on the corner of Boetia Street⁠—beautiful and significant names!⁠—I took the apartment which for the present my books and pictures adorn. “Lascia la donna e studia la matematica,” somebody said to someone who happened to be in circumstances such as mine, and it was in an effort to follow that sage advice and forget Kate that I turned, not indeed to mathematics, but to the problematic princesses of the past.

These people diverted me. On one occasion another person did also. This was a neighbor of mine, Madame de Trèfle, a prophetess much frequented by the superselect, whose apartment adjoined my own. A bagatelle of the door favoring, I made her acquaintance, as a result of which a sitting ensued, one that took place in a room furnished in cornflower and silver, filled with costly futilities, and which, like my library, overlooked the Elysian Fields. There, this lady, a tall, dark creature, dressed capriciously in champagne, yet with a face which in repose was strangely noble, looked me graciously over, closed her eyes and, apparently, fell asleep.

“Ah!” she presently exclaimed. “Your home is a city of pineapple cupolas covered with colors, a city in which the people wear painted gauze. But no. I am foolish. That is not your home; it is the home of your thoughts; yet there in the wide, white streets over which chariots roll, always you are looking for someone whom you do not see. No, you do not see her there, but here, in Paris, you will see her soon, and then⁠—”

Madame de Trèfle gave a little convulsive start, opened her eyes, smiled and added: “The fee is fifty francs. You may pay my secretary at the door.”

It was worth it, though of the prophecy part I did not believe a word. In spite of which, or perhaps precisely on that account, the very next day, on the Champs Élysées, I ran into Kate. She and her mother had just come over, and pending Herbert’s arrival, were stopping at a hotel nearby. At tea that afternoon I told them about Madame de Trèfle, or as much, at least, as I judged advisable, and Kate, properly astounded, asked me to take her to her. I promised to do so, but before I could, all of a sudden this thing occurred; or rather and more exactly, one evening, a little later, when I was dressing, abruptly Herbert appeared.

I knew he was looked for that day, but his irruption in my rooms surprised me. By whomsoever else he may have been expected, it was certainly not by me. But I am, I hope, always civil, and, interrupting the tying of my tie to shake hands, I threw out: “Good trip?”

He dodged it, and with laughing eyes threw back: “You remember Jenny Price?”

In the mirror before me I nodded at him.

“She was on the ship. We have made it up.”

I turned on him. “What about Kate?”

Running his long, thin fingers through his thick hair, he gave me a queer little look. “That’s it. You’ll have to explain.”

I had finished with my tie and was putting on my coat, but at the outrageousness of that, I stopped.

“I’ll see you hanged first!”

From a gold case he got out a cigarette, and coolly offered me another. As he did so I looked him over. It is the misfortune of a historian that he is obliged to live the lives of other people, to participate in their vices and virtues⁠—when they have any⁠—and, at the moment, I realized that it is impossible for a man to get himself more into what is vulgarly termed a fix than in becoming engaged to two girls. But I realized also that the penalties for a polite felony of this kind are those which the conscience alone creates, and, as for conscience, I felt that Herbert had about as much as a weasel.

Then immediately I thought of Kate. I could fancy Joy bidding her farewell, Misery offering its arm, I could see her abrupt migration from noon into night. Yet, oddly enough, the picture evoked, instead of inciting me to assault, presented vistas which in some unaccountable manner restrained. I am surely not a hypocrite, and it annoyed me that they should.

At once, with a jerk, I got into my coat, and turning again on the brute, angrily I flung at him:

“It is a surgical operation you are asking me to perform.”

At the charge, his eyes lost none of their laughter. On the contrary, airily he retorted: “Yes, and you are just the chap to know how.”

He had been seated. Now springingly he stood up, looking as he did so quite as though he were dumping on the floor⁠—and on me⁠—any and every care.

At that I could indeed have kicked him. But my servant entered. In a moment Herbert had caught up his hat and gone.

I had planned that evening to dine out and then look in at the Opéra. The mood now for either excursion fell by. I told the servant to fetch whatever was easiest, a bit of chicken, a leaf or two of lettuce; and presently, these things consumed, I sat, an unlighted cigar between my teeth, considering in what manner without anodynes, without narcotics, without mortification morbus setting in, I could safely operate on Kate. Yet from no matter what angle I viewed it, the task of cutting into her the fact that the man of all others was not the man for her, and of cutting it, moreover, without making her wince, resolved itself into a high necromantic feat for which I entirely lacked the art. None the less, it had to be done. But how?

In this dilemma I lost myself until ultimately there surged the gleam of a plan of a falsehood shop, one which I would open and fill with mendacities so spacious and splendid that they would both assuage and console. Only⁠—and here was the hitch⁠—try as I might, I could not conjure one. Had this brute of a cousin of mine not been disgustingly rich, I might have invented some tale of financial turpitudes, though, if I did, any such story would only abase Kate in her self-esteem. Were he not then in Paris, I might have pretended that he had gone suddenly insane, though, if I did, she was just the girl to pack off to him. What then could I do? To open a falsehood shop is all very well, only, to open it profitably, one should be able to stock it, and the shelves of mine were bare. Yet, I told myself, there must be others, and immediately I knew that there were, and very convenient at that, just across the hall, in the apartment of my neighbor, Madame de Trèfle. Thereupon I determined to go to her on the morrow, to ransack her shelves and then to call on Kate.

But before I could, it was Kate who called on me.

Now, as she sat in my library, she told me what little she knew, which, summarily, was to the effect that Herbert had certainly arrived the day before and since then had as certainly disappeared.

“He is dead,” she repeated.

So he was, at least so far as she was concerned, but I had not yet got my wind, and in sparring for it, I again asked why she said that.

The dangers of Paris, she explained, the Apaches, the demon chauffeurs, the tiger bandits, adding that Herbert always had a lot of money with him and concluding with the perhaps natural suggestion that I accompany her to the police.

“I will do better than that,” I replied. “I will take you to Madame de Trèfle.”

She had been looking down and away, but at this she looked up. I could see she was rememorating what I had told her of the prophetess, and I could not but reflect that, coming from anyone but me, the story might have seemed a bit fantastic. But precisely as no grammarian ever wrote a line that was fit to read, so has no historian ever displayed a minimum of imagination. That reassuring fact was in my favor. Her face brightened. She rose to the bait.

Yet at once I realized that, however lacking in imagination I may be, I had been lacking also in forethought. I had neglected to dust the shop, and I asked Kate to be good enough to wait a second while I went and inquired whether Madame de Trèfle were free.

To this Kate assented, and presently I was again in the cornflower and silver salon where the prophetess received. It was a minute or two before she appeared, and meanwhile I looked out on the avenue which, on this high noon, was flooded with sunshine, filled with people, shuttled with fleeting cars.

But now a door was opening. I turned. Madame de Trèfle was before me, and I bowed over her jeweled hand.

“Madame,” I said as I straightened, “I have come to ask a favor. A girl has been thrown over for another. She is unaware of it. She thinks that the brute is dead. Will you let me bring her to you? And when I have, will you tell her⁠—well⁠—whatever you like: that he has tuberculosis, anything gentlemanly and contagious, and that for her own sake she must never see him again.”

As I spoke, I got out my card-case. “Your usual fee is fifty francs. In this instance permit me to make it a hundred.”

Madamie de Trèfle half raised a finger. “Not for a thousand.”

“But,” I protested, “it is an act of charity that I ask.”

She sniffed at me. “Mistaken charity! Truth should never be withheld from those who are worthy to receive it.”

“No doubt,” I retorted. “But it is not a question of that. The girl could not be worthier. The point is, she isn’t fit.”

“Ta-ta-ta!” Madame de Trèfle, in mounting crescendo, replied. With an uplift of the chin she considered me. Her eyes narrowed. “Bring her here; I will judge of that.”

I did not like it⁠—I did not like it in the least; but there was no way out of it. I went across the hall and brought Kate back.

“My child,” that woman said to her, “seat yourself in the chair here by the window and, for a little, while I am looking at you, I beg of you do not speak.”

I stationed myself behind Kate and for a moment stared out at the avenue. Then I turned to Madame de Trèfle, who was not looking at Kate at all. On the contrary, she was comfortably seated, her eyes closed, and appeared to be asleep. But presently and monotonously she began to speak.

“My dear, you are but recently come to Paris. Before coming you thought yourself interested in a man. But he is not good enough for you. You will not marry him. You will marry a man of mark.”

Whether Kate heard or not, certainly she did not heed. She half turned to me and indicated the window, through which, in the avenue below, suddenly I saw my cousin, seated in a heliotrope car, side by side with Jenny Price, whose hand he was holding and in whose face he was gazing with that cannibal expression which men cannot help displaying when they feel that they could eat the lady up.

There is no mistaking that expression⁠—no one could mistake it; and as a congestion of traffic held the motor there, I saw that Kate had not mistaken it; that in spite of my precautions now, at last, she understood. Would she, I wondered, faint? But I should have known her better than to fancy she could do anything so inane. Besides, had her pride needed a moxa, instantly it was supplied. The traitorous pair, shelled by vibrations from the batteries of our eyes, simultaneously looked up. They saw us, flushed, turned and, the congestion relieved, shot on.

“Yes,” Madame de Trèfle was saying, “you will marry a marked man⁠—a man with a scar.”

At that, with a little convulsive start, she blinked, considered us, then, rising, she smiled and added: “You may pay my secretary at the door.”

But, dear me, it was months and months before I was able to discern from Kate even the possibility that in that falsehood shop was truth. It took Kate longer, but, in the end, God bless her, she discerned it, too.