Her mother, a worried little woman, suffered most. The father was a traveling salesman and not often home, and Mrs. Bates kept from him as much of Henrietta's misdoing as she could, killing herself eventually, crushing herself under the weight of the burden. She would have worried herself away earlier than she did had the Bates family not moved as often as it did. As Henrietta reached high-school age, and later, the Bates family was moving continually, Mr. Bates changing from one job to another and each time taking his family to his new headquarters. Each time Mrs. Bates tried to obscure herself and Henrietta, but never with much success because Henrietta did not wish to be obscured.
One particularly unfortunate lie got Henrietta expelled from a high school she was attending and she was sent to a private school. It was a strict school, and during her entire stay there she met no young men, but her letters to her friends and to her mother were filled with romantic incidents. It was then her famous Billy Vane first appeared in her lies.
Lying—whole-souled, brazen lying—has a strange, half-hypnotic effect on many hearers who are by nature truthful and kind-hearted, as quite a few human beings are. When a man looks me full in the eyes and lies to me, I have a feeling of shame. I want to lower my eyes and not look straight into his. I say to myself, “He is lying, and I know he is lying, and I am ashamed to look him in the eyes; he will see in my eyes that I know he is lying.” Then I say to myself, “But if I look down he will know I am looking down because I know he is lying.” So I continue to look him straight in the eyes, saying to myself, “I know you are lying, but I will not let you know I know it.” Then I say to myself, “It does not matter if you are lying as long as I know you are lying”; and presently I am sorry for him, as a mother is sorry for a cripple child, and I pity him, and pity is akin to love. Some whole-souled, brazen, cheerful liars are among the best-loved men in the world. We know we are being lied to, but we are also being charmed, as the innocent bird is charmed by the serpent.
Although Henrietta never understood it, the ease with which she made herself believed was one reason why she continued to be such a liar. Her eyes compelled belief. No one ever doubted her lies at the moment they were being told. When her eyes looked straight into the hearer's eyes there could be no doubting; that sometimes came later when the self-hypnotism was dissipated. Had Henrietta—especially when she grew older and was a woman—met doubt or distrust when she told her fanciful tales, she might have faltered, thought, and stopped. She might have been cured.
After her mother's death Henrietta taught school. That she taught in a town that had not known her was helpful, undoubtedly. What lies she told there about her romances in other places were readily enough believed. She was a satisfactory, commanding teacher, having little trouble with her students, and a fine, clean figure always, in her black shirt, white shirt-waist, and a peculiarly clean neatness. She had a gesture of smoothing her trim waist downward toward her belt with the edges of her hands that was in itself a certificate of clean spinsterhood.
Her misfortune came suddenly and with catastrophic unexpectedness. She had worked her way upward until she was teaching mathematics (higher algebra, to be exact) in the high school of a southern Illinois town. With the teachers of a near-by river town she had kept in close correspondence and for them she had built a romance of lies, telling of a lover who was impetuous, young, handsome, and brilliant—“too young for poor me,” Henrietta had written, and “his father objects, and if there is a match it will have to be a run-away one. His name”—she had hesitated, fearing to use “Billy Vane” lest she might have used it before—“is Freeman Todder,” she had written, jotting down that of the “A Class” boy who had remained in the classroom while she was writing the letter. Followed much more, romantically untruthful, but interesting and intended to be so. The next week two of her teacher friends to whom she had written, wrote her they meant to make her a visit; they were wild to meet Freeman Todder, they wrote.
Henrietta had one of her sudden panics. She was sitting at her desk in the schoolroom when she read the letter and she looked toward Freeman Todder. The unlucky youth was passing a note across the aisle.
“Freeman, come here!” Henrietta commanded, and he arose and walked to her desk. He was as tall then as he was ever to become. He was one of those boys who think they are already men, and who have begun to accumulate the vices of bad men, considering them evidences of maturity. He was already one of the town dandies.
“What's the matter now?” he asked when he stood at her desk.
“You know what is the matter,” she said. “This cannot go on, Freeman. I want to talk to you. Remain after school.”