The truth probably is that they are both self-engrossed, but women can dissemble and men cannot. It is another proof of their invincible boyishness, this total inability to pretend interest. Even the averagest man is no hypocrite. He tries it sometimes, and fails pitifully. The successful male dissembler is generally a crook. But the most honest woman in the world is often driven to pretense, although she may call it savoir faire. She pretends, because pretense is the oil that lubricates society. Have you ever seen a man when some neighbors who are unpopular drop in for an evening call? After they are gone, his wife says:
“I do wish you wouldn’t bite the Andersons when they come in, Joe!”
“Bite them! I was civil, wasn’t I?”
“Well, you can call it that.”
He is ready to examine the window locks, but he turns and surveys her, and he is honestly puzzled.
“What I can’t make out,” he says, “is how you can fall all over yourself to those people, when you know you detest them. Thank heavens, I’m no hypocrite.”
Then he locks the windows and stalks up-stairs, [p22] and the hypocrite of the family smiles a little to herself. Because she knows that without her there would be no society and no neighborhood calls, and that honesty can be a vice, and hypocrisy a virtue.
I know a vestryman of a church who sometimes plays bridge on Saturday nights for money. What he loses doesn’t matter, but what he wins his wife is supposed to put on the plate the next morning. One Saturday night he gave her a large bill, and the next morning she placed a neatly folded green-back on the collection plate as he held it out to her. He stood in the aisle and eyed the bill with suspicion. Then he deliberately unfolded it, and held out the plate to her again.
“Come over, Mazie,” he said.
And Mazie came over with the balance.