An attack of
indigestion, the failure of some pecuniary speculation, the demise of a
beloved stepsister--these various happenings, so dissimilar to one
another, had yet this feature in common, that they put the fear of God
into the otherwise empty brain of Mr. Parker.
He had been in many tight corners, but never in so tight a corner as
this. Hardly ever. He thought of the lady lying dead upstairs and all
she had done towards establishing and consolidating their social
position; how she had economized for him, yes, and lied for him--better,
far better, than he could ever hope to lie. For she possessed that most
priceless of all gifts: she believed her own lies. She looked people
straight in the face and spoke from her heart; a falsehood, before it
left her lips, had grown into a flaming truth. She was a florid,
improvident liar. There was no classical parsimony about her
misstatements. They were copious baroque, and encrusted with pleasing
and unexpected tricks of ornamentation. That tropical redundancy for
which her person was renowned reflected itself likewise in her
temperament--in nothing more than the exuberance of her untruths which
were poured out in so torrential a flood, with such burning conviction
at the opulence of detail that persons who knew her well used to stand
aghast (Catholics had been known to cross themselves) at the fertility
of her constructive imagination, while the most hardened sceptics
protested that, even if her facts were wrong, there could be no doubt
as to her sincerity, her ingenuousness.
Pages:
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467