The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

by Израэль Зангвилл

  "Please, sir, I thought it was the surest way for me to send them back."

  "But what made you send them back at all?"

  Mary Ann's lip quivered, her eyes were cast down. "Oh-Mr. Lancelot-you know," she faltered.

  "But I don't know," he said sharply.

  "Please let me go downstairs, Mr. Lancelot. Missus must have heard me come in."

  "You shan't go downstairs till you've told me what's come over you. Come upstairs to my room."

  "Yessir."

  She followed him obediently. He turned round brusquely, "Here, give me your parcels." And almost snatching them from her, he carried them upstairs and deposited them on his table on top of the comic opera.

  "Now, then, sit down. You can take off your hat and jacket."

  "Yessir."

  He helped her to do so.

  "Now, Mary Ann, why did you return me those gloves?"

  "Please, sir, I remember in our village when-when"-she felt a diffidence in putting the situation into words and wound up quickly, "something told me I ought to."

  "I don't understand you," he grumbled, comprehending only too well. "But why couldn't you come in and give them to me instead of behaving in that ridiculous way?"

  "I didn't want to see you again," she faltered.

  He saw her eyes were welling over with tears.

  "You were crying again last night," he said sharply.

  "Yessir."

  "But what did you have to cry about now? Aren't you the luckiest girl in the world?"

  "Yessir."

  As she spoke a flood of sunlight poured suddenly into the room; the sun had broken through the clouds, the worn dollar had become a dazzling gold-piece. The canary stirred in its cage.

  "Then what were you crying about?"

  "I didn't want to be lucky."

  "You silly girl-I have no patience with you. And why didn't you want to see me again?"

  "Please, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like it."

  "Whatever put that into your head?"

  "I knew it, sir," said Mary Ann, firmly. "It came to me when I was crying. I was thinking of all sorts of things-of my mother and our Sally, and the old pig that used to get so savage, and about the way the organ used to play in church, and then all at once somehow I knew it would be best for me to do what you told me-to buy my dress and go back with the vicar, and be a good girl, and not bother you, because you were so good to me, and it was wrong for me to worry you and make you miserable."

  "Tw-oo! Tw-oo!" It was the canary starting on a preliminary carol.

  "So I thought it best," she concluded tremulously, "not to see you again. It would only be two days, and after that it would be easier. I could always be thinking of you just the same, Mr. Lancelot, always. That wouldn't annoy you, sir, would it? Because you know, sir, you wouldn't know it."

  Lancelot was struggling to find a voice. "But didn't you forget something you had to do, Mary Ann?" he said in hoarse accents.

  She raised her eyes swiftly a moment, then lowered them again.

  "I don't know; I didn't mean to," she said apologetically.

  "Didn't you forget that I told you to come to me and get my answer to your question?"

  "No, sir, I didn't forget. That was what I was thinking of all night."

  "About your asking me to marry you?"

  "Yessir."

  "And my saying it was impossible?"

  "Yessir, and I said, 'Why is it impossible?' and you said, 'Because-' and then you left off; but please, Mr. Lancelot, I didn't want to know the answer this morning."

  "But I want to tell you. Why don't you want to know?"

  "Because I found out for myself, Mr. Lancelot. That's what I found out when I was crying-but there was nothing to find out, sir. I knew it all along. It was silly of me to ask you-but you know I am silly sometimes, sir, like I was when my mother was dying. And that was why I made up my mind not to bother you any more, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like to tell me straight out."

  "And what was the answer you found out? Ah, you won't speak. It looks as if you don't like to tell me straight out. Come, come, Mary Ann, tell me why-why-it is impossible."

  She looked up at last and said slowly and simply, "Because I am not good enough for you, Mr. Lancelot."

  He put his hands suddenly to his eyes. He did not see the flood of sunlight-he did not hear the mad jubilance of the canary.

  "No, Mary Ann," his voice was low and trembling. "I will tell you why it is impossible, I didn't know last night, but I know now. It is impossible, because-you are right, I don't like to tell you straight out."

  She opened her eyes wide, and stared at him in puzzled expectation.

  "Mary Ann," he bent his head, "it is impossible-because I am not good enough for you."

  Mary Ann grew scarlet. Then she broke into a little nervous laugh. "Oh, Mr. Lancelot, don't make fun of me."

  "Believe me, my dear," he said tenderly, raising his head; "I wouldn't make fun of you for two million million dollars. It is the truth-the bare, miserable, wretched truth. I am not worthy of you, Mary Ann."

  "I don't understand you, sir," she faltered.

  "Thank Heaven for that!" he said with the old whimsical look. "If you did you would think meanly of me ever after. Yes, that is why, Mary Ann. I am a selfish brute-selfish to the last beat of my heart, to the inmost essence of my every thought. Beethoven is worth two of me, aren't you, Beethoven?" The spaniel, thinking himself called, trotted over. "He never calculates-he just comes and licks my hand-don't look at me as if I were mad, Mary Ann. You don't understand me-thank Heaven again. Come now! Does it never strike you that if I were to marry you now, it would be only for your two and a half million dollars?"

  "No, sir," faltered Mary Ann.

  "I thought not," he said triumphantly. "No, you will always remain a fool, I am afraid, Mary Ann."

  She met his contempt with an audacious glance.

  "But I know it wouldn't be for that, Mr. Lancelot."

  "No, no, of course it wouldn't be, not now. But it ought to strike you just the same. It doesn't make you less a fool, Mary Ann. There! There! I don't mean to be unkind, and, as I think I told you once before, it's not so very dreadful to be a fool. A rogue is a worse thing, Mary Ann. All I want to do is to open your eyes. Two and a half million dollars are an awful lot of money-a terrible lot of money. Do you know how long it will be before I make two million dollars, Mary Ann?"

  "No, sir." She looked at him wonderingly.

  "Two million years. Yes, my child, I can tell you now. You thought I was rich and grand, I know, but all the while I was nearly a beggar. Perhaps you thought I was playing the piano-yes, and teaching Rosie-for my amusement; perhaps you thought I sat up writing half the night out of-sleeplessness," he smiled at the phrase, "or a wanton desire to burn Mrs. Leadbatter's gas. No, Mary Ann, I have to get my own living by hard work-by good work if I can, by bad work if I must-but always by hard work. While you will have fifteen thousand pounds a year, I shall be glad, overjoyed, to get fifteen hundred. And while I shall be grinding away body and soul for my fifteen hundred, your fifteen thousand will drop into your pockets, even if you keep your hands there all day. Don't look so sad, Mary Ann. I'm not blaming you. It's not your fault in the least. It's only one of the many jokes of existence. The only reason I want to drive this into your head is to put you on your guard. Though I don't think myself good enough to marry you, there are lots of men who will think they are ... though they don't know you. It is you, not me, who are grand and rich, Mary Ann ... beware of men like me-poor and selfish. And when you do marry-"

  "Oh, Mr. Lancelot!" cried Mary Ann, bursting into tears at last, "why do you talk like that? You know I shall never marry anybody else."

  "Hush, hush! Mary Ann! I thought you were going to be a good girl and never cry again. Dry your eyes now, will you?"

  "Yessir."

  "Here, take my handkerchief."

  "Yessir ... but I won't marry anybody else."
>
  "You make me smile, Mary Ann. When you brought your mother that cake for Sally you didn't know a time would come when-"

  "Oh, please, sir, I know that. But you said yesterday I was a young woman now. And this is all different to that."

  "No, it isn't, Mary Ann. When they've put you to school, and made you a Ward in Chancery, or something, and taught you airs, and graces, and dressed you up"-a pang traversed his heart, as the picture of her in the future flashed for a moment upon his inner eye-"why, by that time, you'll be a different Mary Ann, outside and inside. Don't shake your head; I know better than you. We grow and become different. Life is full of chances, and human beings are full of changes, and nothing remains fixed."

  "Then, perhaps"-she flushed up, her eyes sparkled-"perhaps"-she grew dumb and sad again.

  "Perhaps what?"

  He waited for her thought. The rapturous trills of the canary alone possessed the silence.

  "Perhaps you'll change, too." She flashed a quick deprecatory glance at him-her eyes were full of soft light.

  This time he was dumb.

  "Sw-eet!" trilled the canary, "sw-eet!" though Lancelot felt the throbbings of his heart must be drowning its song.

  "Acutely answered," he said at last. "You're not such a fool after all, Mary Ann. But I'm afraid it will never be, dear. Perhaps if I also made two million dollars, and if I felt I had grown worthy of you, I might come to you and say-two and two are four-let us go into partnership. But then, you see," he went on briskly, "the odds are I may never even have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be that very common thing-a complete failure-and be worse off than even you ever were, Mary Ann."

  "Oh, Mr. Lancelot, I'm so sorry." And her eyes filled again with tears.

  "Oh, don't be sorry for me. I'm a man. I dare say I shall pull through. Just put me out of your mind, dear. Let all that happened at Baker's Terrace be only a bad dream-a very bad dream, I am afraid I must call it. Forget me, Mary Ann. Everything will help you to forget me, thank Heaven, it'll be the best thing for you. Promise me now."

  "Yessir ... if you will promise me."

  "Promise you what?"

  "To do me a favour."

  "Certainly, dear, if I can."

  "You have the money, Mr. Lancelot, instead of me-I don't want it, and then you could-"

  "Now, now, Mary Ann," he interrupted, laughing nervously, "you're getting foolish again, after talking so sensibly."

  "Oh, but why not?" she said plaintively.

  "It is impossible," he said curtly.

  "Why is it impossible?" she persisted.

  "Because-," he began, and then he realised with a start that they had come back again to that same old mechanical series of questions-if only in form.

  "Because there is only one thing I could ever bring myself to ask you for in this world," he said slowly.

  "Yes; what is that?" she said flutteringly.

  He laid his hand tenderly on her hair.

  "Merely Mary Ann."

  She leapt up: "Oh, Mr. Lancelot, take me, take me! You do love me! You do love me!"

  He bit his lip. "I am a fool," he said roughly. "Forget me. I ought not to have said anything. I spoke only of what might be-in the dim future-if the-chances and changes of life bring us together again-as they never do. No! You were right, Mary Ann. It is best we should not meet again. Remember your resolution last night."

  "Yessir." Her submissive formula had a smack of sullenness, but she regained her calm, swallowing the lump in her throat that made her breathing difficult.

  "Good-by, then, Mary Ann," he said, taking her hard red hands in his.

  "Good-by, Mr. Lancelot." The tears she would not shed were in her voice. "Please, sir-could you-couldn't you do me a favour?-Nothing about money, sir."

  "Well, if I can," he said kindly.

  "Couldn't you just play Good-night and Good-by, for the last time? You needn't sing it-only play it."

  "Why, what an odd girl you are!" he said with a strange, spasmodic laugh. "Why, certainly! I'll do both, if it will give you any pleasure."

  And, releasing her hands, he sat down to the piano, and played the introduction softly. He felt a nervous thrill going down his spine as he plunged into the mawkish words. And when he came to the refrain, he had an uneasy sense that Mary Ann was crying-he dared not look at her. He sang on bravely:-

  "Kiss me, good-night, dear love,

  Dream of the old delight;

  My spirit is summoned above,

  Kiss me, dear love, good-night."

  He couldn't go through another verse-he felt himself all a-quiver, every nerve shattered. He jumped up. Yes, his conjecture had been right. Mary Ann was crying. He laughed spasmodically again. The thought had occurred to him how vain Peter would be if he could know the effect of his commonplace ballad.

  "There, I'll kiss you too, dear!" he said huskily, still smiling. "That'll be for the last time."

  Their lips met, and then Mary Ann seemed to fade out of the room in a blur of mist.

  An instant after there was a knock at the door.

  "Forgot her parcels after a last good-by," thought Lancelot, and continued to smile at the comicality of the new episode.

  He cleared his throat.

  "Come in," he cried, and then he saw that the parcels were gone, too, and it must be Rosie.

  But it was merely Mary Ann.

  "I forgot to tell you, Mr. Lancelot," she said-her accents were almost cheerful-"that I'm going to church to-morrow morning."

  "To church!" he echoed.

  "Yes, I haven't been since I left the village, but missus says I ought to go in case the vicar asks me what church I've been going to."

  "I see," he said, smiling on.

  She was closing the door when it opened again, just revealing Mary Ann's face.

  "Well?" he said, amused.

  "But I'll do your boots all the same, Mr. Lancelot." And the door closed with a bang.

  They did not meet again. On the Monday afternoon the vicar duly came and took Mary Ann away. All Baker's Terrace was on the watch, for her story had now had time to spread. The weather remained bright. It was cold but the sky was blue. Mary Ann had borne up wonderfully, but she burst into tears as she got into the cab.

  "Sweet, sensitive little thing!" said Baker's Terrace.

  "What a good woman you must be, Mrs. Leadbatter," said the vicar, wiping his spectacles.

  As part of Baker's Terrace, Lancelot witnessed the departure from his window, for he had not left after all.

  Beethoven was barking his short snappy bark the whole time at the unwonted noises and the unfamiliar footsteps; he almost extinguished the canary, though that was clamorous enough.

  "Shut up, you noisy little devils!" growled Lancelot. And taking the comic opera he threw it on the dull fire. The thick sheets grew slowly blacker and blacker, as if with rage; while Lancelot thrust the five five-pound notes into an envelope addressed to the popular composer, and scribbled a tiny note:-

  "Dear Peter,-If you have not torn up that cheque I shall be glad of it

  by return. Yours,

  "LANCELOT.

  "P.S.-I send by this post a Reverie, called Marianne, which is the

  best thing I have done, and should be glad if you could induce Brahmson

  to look at it."

  A big, sudden blaze, like a jubilant bonfire, shot up in the grate and startled Beethoven into silence.

  But the canary took it for an extra flood of sunshine, and trilled and demi-semi-quavered like mad.

  "Sw-eet! Sweet!"

  "By Jove!" said Lancelot, starting up, "Mary Ann's left her canary behind!"

  Then the old whimsical look came over his face.

  "I must keep it for her," he murmured. "What a responsibility! I suppose I oughtn't to let Rosie look after it any more. Let me see, what did Peter say
? Canary seed, biscuits ... yes, I must be careful not to give it butter.... Curious I didn't think of her canary when I sent back all those gloves ... but I doubt if I could have squeezed it in-my boots are only sevens after all-to say nothing of the cage."

  THE SERIO-COMIC GOVERNESS

  I.

  Nelly O'Neill had her day in those earlier and quieter reaches of the Victorian era when the privilege of microscopic biography was reserved for the great and the criminal classes, and when the Bohemian celebrity (who is perhaps a cross between the two) was permitted to pass-like a magic-lantern slide-from obscurity to oblivion through an illuminated moment.

  Thus even her real name has not hitherto leaked out, and to this day the O'Keeffes are unaware of their relative's reputation and believe their one connection with the stage to be a dubious and undesirable consanguinity with O'Keeffe, the actor and fertile farce-writer whose Wild Oats made a sensation at Covent Garden at the end of the eighteenth century. To her many brothers and sisters, Eileen was just the baby, and always remained so, even in the eyes of the eminent civil engineer who was only her senior by a year. Among the peasantry-subtly prescient of her freakish destinies-she was dubbed "a fairy child": which was by no means a compliment. A bad uncanny creature for all the colleen's winsome looks. The later London whispers of a royal origin had a travestied germ of truth in her father's legendary descent from Brian Boru. He himself seemed scarcely less legendary, this highly coloured squire of the old Irish school, surviving into the Victorian era, like a Georgian caricature; still inhabiting a turreted castle romantically out of repair, infested with ragged parasites: still believing in high living and deep drinking: still receiving the reverence if not the rent of a feudal tenantry, and the affection of a horsey and bibulous countryside. When in liquor there was nothing the O'Keeffe might not do except pay off his mortgages. "He looked like an elephant when he put his trousers on wrong-you know elephants have their knees the wrong way," Eileen once told the public in a patter-song. She did not tell the public it was her father, but like a true artist she learned in suffering what she taught in song. One of her childish memories was to be stood in a row of brothers and sisters against a background of antlers, fishing-rods, and racing prints, and solemnly sworn at for innumerability by a ruddy-faced giant in a slovenly surtout. "Bad luck to ye, ye gomerals, make up your minds whether ye're nine or eleven," he would say. "A man ought to know the size of his family: Mother in heaven, I never thought mine was half so large!" These attempts to take a census of his children generally occurred after a peasant had brought him up the drive-"hat in one hand, and Squire in the other," as the patter-song had it. At the moment of assisted entry his paternal dignity was always at its stateliest, and it was not till he had gravely hung his cocked hat upon an imaginary door-peg in the middle of the hall and seen it flop floorward that he lost his calm. "Blood and 'ouns, ye've the door taken away again."