The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

by Израэль Зангвилл

  "It was plain enough," I broke in. "His Satanic Majesty, of course."

  "I am glad you interrupted me," he said, "for you give me an opening to state that the Kronprinds has nothing to do with the story. You, of course, would have left him out; but I am only an amateur, and I get my threads mixed."

  "Shut up!" I cried. "I mean-go on."

  "Oh, well, perhaps, he has got a little to do with the story, after all; for after that, Froeken Jensen became more important-sharing in my reflected glory-or, perhaps, now I come to think of it, it was only then that she became important. Anyway, important she was; and, among others, Axel Larson-who was got up as an ancient Gallic warrior, to show off his fine figure-came up and asked me to introduce him. I don't think I should have done so ordinarily, for he was the filthiest-mouthed fellow in the atelier-a great swaggering Don Juan Baron Munchausen sort of chap, handsome enough in his raffish way-a tall, stalwart Swede, blue-eyed and yellow-haired. But the fun of the position was that Axel Larson was one of my Cinderella's 'children,' so I could not resist introducing him formally to 'Froeken Jensen.' His happy air of expectation was replaced by a scowl of surprise and disgust.

  "'What, thou, Ingeborg!' he cried.

  "I could have knocked the man down. The familiar tutoiement, the Christian name-these, perhaps, he had a right to use; but nothing could justify the contempt of his tone. It reminded me disagreeably of the ugliness I had nigh forgotten. I felt Ingeborg's arm tremble in mine.

  "'Yes, it is I, Herr Larson,' she said, with her wonted gentleness, and almost apologetically. 'This gentleman was good enough to bring me.' She spoke as if her presence needed explanation-with the timidity of one shut out from the pleasures of life. I could feel her poor little heart fluttering wildly, and knew that her face was alternating from red to white beneath the mask.

  "Axel Larson shot a swift glance of surprise at me, which was followed by a more malicious bolt. 'I congratulate you, Ingeborg,' he said, 'on the property you seem to have come into.' It was a clever double entente-the man was witty after his coarse fashion-but the sarcasm scarcely stung either of us. I, of course, had none of the motives the cad imagined; and as for Ingeborg, I fancy she thought he alluded merely to the conquest of myself, and was only pained by the fear I might resent so ludicrous a suggestion. Having thrown the shadow of his cynicism over our innocent relation, Axel turned away highly pleased with himself, rudely neglecting to ask Ingeborg for a dance. I felt like giving him 'Hail Columbia,' but I restrained myself.

  "Some days after this-in response to Ingeborg's grateful anxiety to return my hospitality-I went to dine with her 'children.' I found Axel occupying the seat of honour, and grumbling at the soup and the sauces like a sort of autocrat of the dinner-table, and generally making things unpleasant. I had to cling to my knife and fork so as not to throw the water-bottle at his head. Ingeborg presided meekly over the dishes, her ugliness more rampant than ever after the illusion of the mask. I remembered now he had been disagreeable when I had dined there before, though, not being interested in Ingeborg then, I had not resented his ill-humour, contenting myself with remarking to my friend that I understood now why the Danes disliked the Swedes so much-a generalisation that was probably as unjust as most of one's judgments of other peoples. After dinner I asked her why she tolerated the fellow. She flushed painfully and murmured that times were hard. I protested that she could easily get another boarder to replace him, but she said Axel Larson had been there so long-nearly two years-and was comfortable, and knew the ways of the house, and it would be very discourteous to ask him to go. I insisted that rather than see her suffer I would move into Larson's room myself, but she urged tremulously that she didn't suffer at all from his rudeness, it was only his surface-manner; it deceived strangers, but there was a good heart underneath, as who could know better than she? Besides, he was a genius with the brush, and everybody knew well that geniuses were bears. And, finally, she could not afford to lose boarders-there were already two vacancies.

  "It ended-as I dare say you have guessed-by my filling up one of those two vacancies, partly to help her pecuniarily, partly to act as a buffer between her and the swaggering Swede. He was quite flabbergasted by my installation in the house, and took me aside in the atelier and asked me if Ingeborg had really come into any money. I was boiling over, but I kept the lid on by main force, and answered curtly that Ingeborg had a heart of gold. He laughed boisterously, and said one could not raise anything on that; adding, with an air of authority, that he believed I spoke the truth, for it was not likely the hag would have kept anything from her oldest boarder. 'I dare say the real truth is,' he wound up, 'that you are hard up, like me, and want to do the thing cheap.'

  "'I wasn't aware you were hard up,' I said, for I had seen him often enough flaunting it in the theatres and restaurants.

  "'Not for luxuries,' he retorted with a guffaw, 'but for necessities-yes. And there comes in the value of our domestic eyesore. Why, I haven't paid her a skilling for six months!'

  "I thought of poor Ingeborg's thin winter attire, and would have liked to reply with my fist, only the reply didn't seem quite logical. It was not my business, after all; but I thought I understood now why Ingeborg was so reluctant to part with him-it is the immemorial fallacy of economical souls to throw good money after bad; though when I saw the patience with which she bore his querulous complaints and the solicitude with which she attended to his wants, I sometimes imagined he had some secret hold over her. Often I saw her cower and flush piteously, as with terror, before his insolent gaze. But I decided finally his was merely the ascendency of the strong over the weak-of the bully over his victims, who serve him more loyally because he kicks them. The bad-tempered have the best of it in this vile world. I cannot tell you how I grew to pity that poor girl. Living in her daily presence, I marked the thousand and one trials of which her life was made up, all borne with the same sweetness and good-humour. I discovered that she had a bed-ridden mother, whom she kept in the attic, and whom she stole up to attend to fifty times a day, sitting with her when her work was done and the moonlight on the Sound tempted one to be out enjoying one's youth. Alone she managed and financed the entire establishment, aided only by a little maid-of-all-work, just squeezing out a scanty living for herself and her mother. If ever there was an angel on earth it was Ingeborg Jensen. I tell you, when I see the angels of the Italian masters I feel they are all wrong: I don't want flaxen-haired cherubs to give me an idea of heaven in this hell of a world. I just want to see good honest faces, full of suffering and sacrifice, and if ever I paint an angel its phiz shall have the unflinching ugliness of Ingeborg Jensen, God bless her! To be near her was to live in an atmosphere of purity and pity and tenderness, and everything that is sweet and sacred."

  As he spoke I became suddenly aware that the gas-lights were paling, and glancing towards the window on my left I saw the splendour of the sunrise breaking fresh and clear over the city of diabolical night, where in the sombre eastern sky-

  "God made himself an awful rose of dawn."

  A breath of coolness and purity seemed to waft into the feverish ball-room; a ray of fresh morning sunlight. I looked curiously at the young artist. He seemed transfigured. I could scarcely realise that an hour ago he had been among the rowdiest of the Comus crew, whose shrieks and laughter still rang all around us. Even his duplex costume seemed to have grown subtly symbolical, the diabolical part typical of all that is bestial and selfish in man, the death-mask speaking silently of renunciation and the peace of the tomb. He went on, after a moment of emotion: "They say that pity is akin to love, but I am not sure that I ever loved her, for I suppose that love involves passion, and I never arrived at that. I only came to feel that I wanted to be with her always, to guard her, to protect her, to work for her, to suffer for her if need be, to give her life something of the joy and sweetness that God owed her. I felt I wasn't much use in the world, and that would be something to do. And so one day-though not without much mental tossing
, for we are curiously, complexly built, and I dreaded ridicule and the long years of comment from unsympathetic strangers-I asked her to be my wife. Her surprise, her agitation, was painful to witness. But she was not incredulous, as before; she had learned to know that I respected her.

  "Nevertheless, her immediate impulse was one of refusal.

  "'It cannot be,' she said, and her bosom heaved spasmodically.

  "I protested that it could and would be, but she shook her head.

  "'You are very kind to me! God bless you!' she said. 'You have always been kind to me. But you do not love me.'

  "I assured her I did, and in that moment I dare say I spoke the truth. For in that moment of her reluctance and diffidence to snatch at proffered joy, when the suggestion of rejection made her appear doubly precious, she seemed to me the most adorable creature in the world.

  "But still she shook her head. 'No one can love me,' she said sadly.

  "I took her hand in mute protestation, but she withdrew it gently.

  "'I cannot be your wife,' she persisted.

  "'Why not, Ingeborg?' I asked passionately.

  "She hesitated, panting and colouring painfully, then-the words are echoing in my brain-she answered softly, 'Jeg kan ikke elske Dem ' (I cannot love you).

  "It was like a shaft of lightning piercing me, rending and illuminating. In my blind conceit the obverse side of the question had never presented itself to me. I had taken it for granted I had only to ask to be jumped at. But now, in one great flash of insight, I seemed to see everything plain.

  "'You love Axel Larson!' I cried chokingly, as I thought of all the insults he had heaped upon her in her presence, all the sneers and vile jocosities of which she had been the butt behind her back, in return for the care she had lavished upon his comfort, for her pinching to make both ends meet without the money he should have contributed.

  "She did not reply. The tears came into her eyes, she let her head droop on her heaving breast. As in those visions that are said to come to the dying, I saw Axel Larson feeding day by day at her board, brutally conscious of her passion, yet not deigning even to sacrifice her to it; I saw him ultimately leave the schools and the town to carry his clever brush to the welcome of a wider world, without a word or a thought of thanks for the creature who had worshipped and waited upon him hand and foot; and then I saw her life from day to day unroll its long monotonous folds, all in the same pattern, all drab duty and joyless sacrifice, and hopeless undying love.

  "I took her hand again in a passion of pity. She understood my sympathy, and the hot tears started from her eyes and rolled down her poor wan cheeks. And in that holy moment I saw into the inner heaven of woman's love, which purifies and atones for the world. The eternal feminine!"

  The sentimental young artist ceased, and buried his devil's face in his hands. I looked around and started. We were alone in the abandoned supper-room. The gorgeously grotesque company was seated in a gigantic circle upon the ball-room floor furiously applauding the efforts of two sweetly pretty girls who were performing the celebrated danse du ventre.

  "The eternal feminine!" I echoed pensively.

  THE SILENT SISTERS

  They had quarrelled in girlhood, and mutually declared their intention never to speak to each other again, wetting and drying their forefingers to the accompaniment of an ancient childish incantation, and while they lived on the paternal farm they kept their foolish oath with the stubbornness of a slow country stock, despite the alternate coaxing and chastisement of their parents, notwithstanding the perpetual everyday contact of their lives, through every vicissitude of season and weather, of sowing and reaping, of sun and shade, of joy and sorrow.

  Death and misfortune did not reconcile them, and when their father died and the old farm was sold up, they travelled to London in the same silence, by the same train, in search of similar situations. Service separated them for years, though there was only a stone's throw between them. They often stared at each other in the streets.

  Honor, the elder, married a local artisan, and two and a half years later, Mercy, the younger, married a fellow-workman of Honor's husband. The two husbands were friends, and often visited each other's houses, which were on opposite sides of the same sordid street, and the wives made them welcome. Neither Honor nor Mercy suffered an allusion to their breach; it was understood that their silence must be received in silence. Each of the children had a quiverful of children who played and quarrelled together in the streets and in one another's houses, but not even the street affrays and mutual grievances of the children could provoke the mothers to words. They stood at their doors in impotent fury, almost bursting with the torture of keeping their mouths shut against the effervescence of angry speech. When either lost a child the other watched the funeral from her window, dumb as the mutes.

  The years rolled on, and still the river of silence flowed between their lives. Their good looks faded, the burden of life and child-bearing was heavy upon them. Grey hairs streaked their brown tresses, then brown hairs streaked their grey tresses. The puckers of age replaced the dimples of youth. The years rolled on, and Death grew busy among the families. Honor's husband died, and Mercy lost a son, who died a week after his wife. Cholera took several of the younger children. But the sisters themselves lived on, bent and shrivelled by toil and sorrow, even more than by the slow frost of the years.

  Then one day Mercy took to her death-bed. An internal disease, too long neglected, would carry her off within a week. So the doctor told Jim, Mercy's husband.

  Through him, the news travelled to Honor's eldest son, who still lived with her. By the evening it reached Honor.

  She went upstairs abruptly when her son told her, leaving him wondering at her stony aspect. When she came down she was bonneted and shawled. He was filled with joyous amaze to see her hobble across the street and for the first time in her life pass over her sister Mercy's threshold.

  As Honor entered the sick-room, with pursed lips, a light leapt into the wasted, wrinkled countenance of the dying creature. She raised herself slightly in bed, her lips parted, then shut tightly, and her face darkened.

  Honor turned angrily to Mercy's husband, who hung about impotently. "Why did you let her run down so low?" she said.

  "I didn't know," the old man stammered, taken aback by her presence even more than by her question. "She was always a woman to say nothin'."

  Honor put him impatiently aside and examined the medicine bottle on the bedside table.

  "Isn't it time she took her dose?"

  "I dessay."

  Honor snorted wrathfully. "What's the use of a man?" she inquired, as she carefully measured out the fluid and put it to her sister's lips, which opened to receive it, and then closed tightly again.

  "How is your wife feeling now?" Honor asked after a pause.

  "How are you, now, Mercy?" asked the old man awkwardly.

  The old woman shook her head. "I'm a-goin' fast, Jim," she grumbled weakly, and a tear of self-pity trickled down her parchment cheek.

  "What rubbidge she do talk!" cried Honor, sharply. "Why d'ye stand there like a tailor's dummy? Why don't you tell her to cheer up?"

  "Cheer up, Mercy," quavered the old man, hoarsely.

  But Mercy groaned instead, and turned fretfully on her other side, with her face to the wall.

  "I'm too old, I'm too old," she moaned, "this is the end o' me."

  "Did you ever hear the like?" Honor asked Jim, angrily, as she smoothed his wife's pillow. "She was always conceited about her age, settin' herself up as the equals of her elders, and here am I, her elder sister, as carried her in my arms when I was five and she was two, still hale and strong, and with no mind for underground for many a day. Nigh three times her age I was once, mind you, and now she has the imperence to talk of dyin' before me."

  She took off her bonnet and shawl. "Send one o' the kids to tell my boy I'm stayin' here," she said, "and then just you get 'em all to bed-there's too much noise about the house."
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br />   The children, who were orphaned grandchildren of the dying woman, were sent to bed, and then Jim himself was packed off to refresh himself for the next day's labours, for the poor old fellow still doddered about the workshop.

  The silence of the sick-room spread over the whole house. About ten o'clock the doctor came again and instructed Honor how to alleviate the patient's last hours. All night long she sat watching her dying sister, hand and eye alert to anticipate every wish. No word broke the awful stillness.