The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

by Израэль Зангвилл

  They occupied a box and Eileen was glad they did. For instead of undergoing the illusion of the drama, she found it killingly comic as soon as she understood that it was serious. It was all she could do to hide her amusement from her entranced companion, and somehow this box at the theatre reminded her of the Convent room in which she used to sit listening to the pious readings anent infant prodigies. One afternoon it came upon her that here Mrs. Maper had learned her strange pump handle gestures. Here it was that ladies worked arms up and down and pointed denunciatory forefingers, albeit the direction had more reference to the sentiment.

  It was not till a comic opera came along that Eileen was able to take the theatre seriously. Then she found some of the melodies of the drawing room scores wedded to life and diverting action, sometimes even to poetic dancing; the first gleam of poetry the stage gave her. When these airs were lively, Mrs. Maper's feet beat time and Eileen lived in the fear that she would arise and prance in her box. It was an effervescence of joyous life-the factory girl recrudescent-and Eileen's hand would lie lightly on Mrs. Maper's shoulder, feeling like a lid over a kettle about to boil.

  When they came home Eileen would gratify her mistress by imitations of comedians. Presently she ventured on the tragedians, without being seen through. She even raised her arm towards the ceiling or shot it towards the centre of the carpet pattern, and Mrs. Maper followed it spellbound.

  But from all these monkey tricks she found relief in her real music. When she crooned the old Irish songs, the Black Hole was washed away as by the soft Irish rain, and the bogs stretched golden with furze-blossom and silver with fluffy fairy cotton, and at the doors of the straggling cabins overhung by the cloud-shadowed mountains, blue-cloaked women sat spinning, and her eyes filled with tears as though the peat smoke had got into them.

  VII.

  In such a mood she was playing one Saturday evening in the interval before dinner, when she became aware that somebody was listening, and turning her head, she saw through the Irish mist a man's figure standing in the conservatory. The figure was vanishing when she cried out a whit huskily, "Oh, pray, don't let me drive you away."

  He stood still. "If I am not interrupting your music," he murmured.

  "Not at all," she said, breaking it off altogether.

  As the mist cleared she had a vivid impression of a tall, fair young man against a background of palms. "Eyes burning under a white marble mantel-piece," she summed up his face. Could this uncrippled, rather good-looking person be Bob?

  "Won't you come in, Mr. Robert?" she said riskily.

  "I only wished to thank you," he said, sliding a step or two into the room.

  "There is nothing to thank me for," she said, whirling her stool to face him. "It's my way of amusing myself." She was glad she was in her evening frock.

  "Amusing yourself!" He looked aghast.

  "What else? I am alone-I have nothing better in the world to do."

  "Does it amuse you?" He was flushed now, even the marble mantel-piece ruddied by the flame. "I wish it amused me."

  Now it was Eileen's turn to gasp. "Then why do you listen?"

  "I don't listen-I bury myself as far away as I can."

  "So I have understood. Then what are you thanking me for?"

  "For what you are doing for-." his hesitation was barely perceptible-"my mother."

  "Oh!" Eileen looked blank. "I thought you meant for my music."

  His face showed vast relief. "Oh, you were talking of your music! Of course, of course, how stupid of me! That is what has drawn me from my hole, like a rat to the Pied Piper, and I do thank you most sincerely. But being drawn, what I most wished to thank the Piper for was-"

  "Your mother pays the Piper for that," she broke in.

  He smiled but tossed his head. "Money! what is that?"

  "It is more than I deserve for mere companionship-pleasant drives and theatres."

  He did not accept her delicate reticence.

  "But you have altered her wonderfully!" he cried.

  "Oh, I have not," she cried, doubly startled. "It's just nothing that I have done-nothing." Then she felt her modesty had put her foot in a bog-hole. Unseeingly he helped her out.

  "It is most kind of you to put it like that. But I see it in every movement, every word. She imitates you unconsciously-I became curious to see so excellent a model, though I had resolved not to meet you. No, no, please, don't misunderstand."

  "I don't," she said mischievously. "You have now given me three reasons for seeing me. You need give me none for not seeing me."

  "But you must understand," he said, colouring again, "how painful all this has been for me-"

  "Not seeing me?" she interpolated innocently.

  "The-the whole thing," he stammered.

  "Yes, parents are tiresome," she said sympathetically.

  He came nearer the music-stool.

  "Are they not? They came down every year for the Eights."

  "Is that at Oxford?"

  "Yes."

  She was silent; her thumb flicked at a note on the keyboard behind her.

  "But that's not what I mind in them most-"

  She wondered at the rapidity with which his shyness was passing into effusiveness. But then was she not the "Mother-Confessor"? Had not even her favourite nuns told her things about their early lives, even when there was no moral to be pointed? "They're very good-hearted," she murmured apologetically. "I'm often companion-in charity expeditions."

  "It's easy to be good-hearted when you don't know what to do with your money. This place is full of such people. But I look in vain for the diviner impulse."

  Eileen wondered if he were a Dissenter. But then "the place was full of such people."

  "You don't think there's enough religion?" she murmured.

  "There's certainly plenty of churches and chapels. But I find myself isolated here. You see, I'm a Socialist."

  Eileen crossed herself instinctively.

  "You don't believe in God!" she cried in horror. For the good nuns had taught her that "les socialistes" were synonymous with "les athees."

  He laughed. "Not, if by God you mean Mammon. I don't believe in Property-we up here in the sun and the others down there in the soot."

  "But you are up here," said Eileen, naively.

  "I can't help it. My mother would raise Cain." He smiled wistfully. "She couldn't bear to see a stranger helping father in the factory management."

  "Then you are down there."

  "Quite so. I work as hard as any one even if my labour isn't manual. I dress like an ordinary hand, too, though my mother doesn't know that, for I change at the office."

  "But what good does that do?"

  "It satisfies my conscience."

  "And I suppose the men like it?"

  "No, that's the strange part. They don't. And father only laughs. But one must persist. At Oxford I worked under Ruskin."

  "Oh, you're an artist!"

  "No, I didn't mean that part of Ruskin's work. His gospel of labour-we had a patch for digging."

  "What-real spades!"

  "Did you imagine we called a spoon a spade?" he said, a whit resentfully.

  Eileen smiled. "No, but I can't imagine you using a common or garden spade."

  "You are thinking of my hands." He looked at them, not without complacency, Eileen thought, as she herself wondered where he had got his long white fingers from. "But it is a couple of years ago," he explained. "It was hard work, I assure you."

  "Did your mother know?" Eileen asked with a little whimsical look.

  "Of course not. She would have been horrified."

  "Well, but most people would be surprised."

  "Yes. Put your muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero; put your muscle into a spade and you are a madman."

  "You think it's vice versa?" queried Eileen, ingenuously.

  "Much more. At least," he stammered and coloured again, "I don't pose as a hero but simply-"

  "As what?" Eile
en still looked innocent.

  "I simply think work is the noblest function of man," he burst forth. "Don't you?"

  "I do not," answered Eileen. "Work is a curse. If the serpent had not tempted Eve to break God's commandment, we should still be basking in Paradise."

  He looked at her curiously. "You believe that?"

  "Isn't it in the Bible?" she answered, seriously astonished.

  "Whatever the primitive Semitic allegorist may have thought, work is a blessing, not a curse."

  "Then you are an atheist!" Eileen recoiled from this strange young man.

  "Ah, you shrink back!" he said in tones of bitter pleasure. "I told you I lived in isolation."

  Eileen's humour shot forth candidly. "You'll not be isolated when you die."

  His bitterness passed into genial superiority. "You mean I'll go to hell. How can you believe anything so horrible?"

  "Why is that horrible for me to believe? For you-" And she filled up the sentence with a smile.

  "I don't believe you do believe it."

  "There's nothing you seem to believe. I do honestly think that you can't be saved if you don't believe."

  "I accept that. The question, however, is what kind of belief and what kind of saving. Do you suppose Plato is in hell?"

  "I don't know. He invented Platonic love, didn't he? So that might save him." She looked at him with her great grey eyes-he couldn't tell whether she was quizzing him or not.

  "Is that all you know of Plato?"

  "I know he was a Greek philosopher. But I only learned Greek roots at the Convent. So Plato is Greek to me."

  "He has been beautifully Englished by the Master of my College. I wish you'd read him."

  "Is the translation in the library?"

  "Of course-with lots of other interesting books, and such queer folios and quartos and first editions. The collector was a man of taste. Why do you never come and let me show them you?"

  "You'd run away."

  "No, I wouldn't," he smiled encouragingly.

  "Yes, you would. And leave your pipe on Plato!"

  He laughed. "Was I rude? But I didn't know you then. Come to-morrow afternoon and show you've forgiven me."

  The new interest was sufficiently tempting. But her maidenliness held back. "I'll come with your mother."

  Disgust lent him wit. "You're her companion-not she yours."

  "True. Nor I yours."

  "Then I'll come here."

  "Bringing the Plato and the folios-?"

  "Why not? You can't forbid me my own drawing-room."

  "I can run away and leave my crochet-hook behind."

  "You'll find me hooked on whenever you return."

  "Well, if you're determined-by hook or by crook! But you're not going to convert me to Socialism?"

  "I won't promise."

  "You must. I don't mind reading Plato."

  "He's worse. He isn't a Christian at all."

  "I don't mind that. He's B.C. He couldn't help it. But you Socialists came after Christ."

  "How do you know Socialism isn't a return to Him?"

  "Is it?"

  "Aha! You are getting interested.... But I hear my mother coming down to dinner. To be continued in our next. A demain, is it not?"

  He held out his shapely white hand, and hastened through the conservatory into the garden.

  "Going to dig?" Eileen called after him maliciously.

  VIII.

  Eileen became interested in Robert Maper, for the old books he opened up to her were quite new and enlarging. She had imagined the Church replacing Paganism as light replaced darkness. Now she felt that it was only as gas replaced candle-light. The darkness was less Egyptian than the nuns insinuated. Plato in particular was a veritable chandelier. It occurred to her suddenly that he might be on the black list. But she was afraid to ask her Confessor for fear of hearing her doubt confirmed. To tell the good father of the semi-secret meetings in the library would have been superfluous, since there was nothing to conceal even from Mrs. Maper, though that lady did not happen to know of them. Eileen did not even use the garden door. Besides, there was never a formal appointment, not infrequently, indeed, a disappointment, when the library held nothing but books. Robert Maper merely provided that possibility of an innocent double life, without which existence would have been too savourless for Eileen. Even a single line of railway always appeared dismal to her; she liked the great junctions with their bewildering intertanglements, their possibilities of collision. And now that Lieutenant Doherty had faded away into Afghanistan and silence-he did not even acknowledge the letter announcing her approaching marriage-Robert Maper proved a useful substitute.

  One day Mr. Maper senior invited her to drive down with him and go over the factory, and as Mrs. Maper was not averse from impressing her employee by the sight of the other employes, she was permitted to go. Nothing, however, would induce Mrs. Maper to adventure herself in these scenes of her early life, touching which she professed a sovereign ignorance. "Machines are so clattery," she said. "My head wouldn't stand them. I once went to that exhibition in London and I said to myself, never no more for this gal."

  "And you never did go any more since you were a girl?" asked the companion, with professional pointedness.

  "No, never no more," replied Mrs. Maper, serenely, "once is too often, as the gal said when the black man kissed her."

  Eileen laughed dutifully at this quotation from the latest comic opera, and went off, delighted to companion the husband by way of change. He proved quite a new man, too, in his own element, bringing the most complicated machinery to the level of her understanding. Room after room they passed through, department after department full of tireless machinery, and tired men and women, who seemed slaves to the whims of fantastic iron monsters, all legs and arms and wheels. It took a morning to see everything, down to the pasting and drying and packing rooms, and as a last treat Mr. Maper took her to the engine-room, whence he said came the power that turned those myriad wheels, moved those myriad levers, in whatever department they might be and whatever their function. Eileen gazed long at the mighty engine, rapt in reverie. She could scarcely tear herself away, and when at last Mr. Maper brought her into the counting-house, she had forgotten that she must meet his son there. The white-browed clerk in corduroys did not, however, raise his eyes from his ledger, and Eileen was grateful to him for preserving the piquancy of their relation.

  She did not find it so piquant, though, in the library next Sunday afternoon when he was clutching at her hand and asking her to be his wife. She awoke as from a dream to the perception of a solemn and grotesque fact.

  "Oh, please!" and she tried to tear her hand away.

  He clung on desperately. "Eileen-don't say you don't care at all."

  "I'm not Eileen, and I particularly dislike you at this moment. Let me have my hand, please."

  He dropped it like a stinging nettle. "I was hoping you'd let me keep it," he murmured.

  "Why?" She was simple and pitiless. "Because we read Plato together? That was platonic enough, wasn't it?"

  "You can jest about what breaks my heart?"

  "I am very sorry. I like you."

  His breathing changed, "like a fish thrown back into the water," Eileen thought. She hastened to add, "But it's not what a wife should feel."

  "How do you know what a wife should feel?"

  Eileen screwed up her forehead. "If I felt it, I should know, I suppose."

  "No, you mightn't. You've liked to come here and talk to me."

  "Because I like books. And you talk like a book."

  "That was before I fell in love. I didn't talk like a book just now."

  "When you took my hand! More like a book than ever. I've read it all-lots of times."

  "Oh, Eil-Miss O'Keeffe-you are very cruel."

  Eileen smiled. "I am not-I'm very kind-I threw you back into the water."

  He gasped, as though out of it again. "Do you mean I am not grown enough?"

  She fl
ushed and improvised on his theme. "Not quite that. You hooked yourself, as you threatened to do. But suppose I had landed you. You know the next step-hot water. What a lot you would have got into, too!"

  "You are thinking of my mother?"

  "Yes, raising Cain, I think you said once. Oh, dear, swim about and be thankful." And a vision of Mrs. Maper's amazement twitched the corners of her lips and made them more enchanting.

  "I'm not so cold-blooded as all that. But if you do throw me back, let it be with the promise to take me again, when I am grown. I don't say it to tempt you, but you know I shall be very rich."

  "Indigestible, do you mean?"

  "Oh, please let us drop that metaphor! Metaphors can never go on all fours."

  "Certainly not when they have fins."

  "Don't jest, Eil-Miss O'Keeffe! Let me redeem you from your sordid life."

  "Why is it sordid? You said work was divine."

  "You can work in a higher sphere."

  "And this is the Socialist! I really thought you'd want me to turn factory lass."

  "You are laughing at me."

  "I am perfectly serious. I won't drag you down from Socialism, and a head-shawl wouldn't become me."

  "Why, you'd look sweet in it. Dear, dear, Miss O'Keeffe-"

  "Good-by."

  "No, you shan't go." He barred her way. Her airiness had given him new hope.

  "If you don't behave sensibly, I'll go altogether-give notice."

  "Then I'll follow you to your next place."

  "No followers allowed. Seriously, I'll leave if you are foolish."

  "Very well," he said abruptly. "Let's go on reading Plato," and he turned to the book.

  "No, no more Dialogues, in or out of Plato."

  She was smiling but stern. He opened the library door and bowed as she passed out.

  "Remember," he said. "I will remain foolish for ever."