The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

by Израэль Зангвилл

  Two days later she went for a walk along the springy turf of the valley. The sun shone overhead, but from her spirit the mist had not quite lifted. Suddenly a small white ball came scudding towards her feet. She looked round and saw herself amid little flags sticking in the ground. Distant voices came to her ear.

  "This must be the new game that's creeping in from Scotland," she thought. "Perhaps I ought to have a song ready if ever it catches on. Ah, here comes one of the young fools-I'll watch him-"

  He came, clothed as in a grey skin that showed the beautiful modelling of his limbs. His face glowed.

  "Ouida's Apollo," she thought, but in the very mockery she trembled, struck as by a lightning shaft. The blackness was sucked up into fire and light. "Am I in the way?" she said with her most bewitching smile.

  He raised his hat. "I was afraid you might have been struck."

  "Perhaps I was," she could not help saying.

  "Oh, gracious, are you hurt?" His voice was instantly caressing.

  "Do I look an object for ambulances?"

  He smiled dazzlingly. "You look awfully jolly." Later Eileen remembered how she had taken this reply for a line of poetry.

  A week later the Hon. Reginald Winsor, younger brother of an English Earl, was teaching Eileen golf.

  It had been a week of ecstasy.

  She thought of Reginald the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning and dreamed of him all night.

  Now she knew what her life had lacked-to be caught up into another's personality, to lose one's petty individuality in-in what? Surely not in a larger; she couldn't be so blind as that. In what then? Ah, yes, in Nature. He was gloriously elemental. He wasn't himself. He was the masculine. Yes, that was the correlative element her being needed. The mere manliness of his pipe made its aroma in his clothes adorable. Or was it his big simplicity, in which she could bury all her torturing complexity? Oh, to nestle in it and be at rest. Yet she held him at arm's length. When they shook hands her nerves thrilled, but she was the colder outwardly for very fear of herself.

  On the ninth day he proposed.

  Eileen knew it would be that day. Lying in bed that morning, she found herself caught by her old impersonal whimsy. "I'm a fever, and on the ninth day of me the man comes out in a rash proposal." Ah, but this time she was in a tertian, too. What a difference from those other proposals-proper or improper. Her mind ran over half a dozen, with a touch of pity she had not felt at the time. Poor Bob Maper, poor Jolly Jack Jenkins, if it was like this they felt! But was it her fault? No man could say she had led him on-except, perhaps, the Hon. Reginald, and towards him her intentions were honourable, she told herself smiling. But the jest carried itself farther and more stingingly. Could he make an "honourable" she told herself her? Ah, God, was she worthy of him, of his simple manhood? And would he continue proposing, if she told him she was Nelly O'Neill? And what of his noble relatives? No, no, she must not run risks. She was only Eileen O'Keeffe, she had never left Ireland save for the Convent. The rest was a nightmare. How glad she was that nobody knew!

  The proposal duly took place in a bunker, while Eileen was whimsically vituperating her ball. The fascination of her virginal diablerie was like a force compelling the victim to seize her in his arms after the fashion of the primitive bridegroom. However the poor Honourable refrained, said boldly, "Try it with this," and under pretence of changing her golfsticks possessed himself of her hand. For the first time his touch left her apathetic.

  "Now it is coming," she thought, and suddenly froze to a spectator of the marionette show. As the Hon. Reginald went through his performance, she felt with a shudder of horror over what brink she had nearly stepped. The man was merely a magnificent animal! She, with her heart, her soul, her brain, mated to that! Like a convict chained to a log. Not worthy of him forsooth! "There's a gulf between us," she thought, "and I nearly fell down it." And the Half-and-Half rose before her, clamouring, pungent, deliciously seductive.

  "Dear Mr. Winsor," she listened with no less interest to her own part in the marionette performance, "it's really too bad of you. Just as I was getting on so nicely, too!"

  "Is that all you feel about-about our friendship?"

  "All? Didn't you undertake to teach me golf? I haven't the faintest desire not to go on ... as soon as we have escaped from this wretched bunker. Come! Did you say the niblick?"

  Reginald's manners were too good to permit him to swear, even at golf.

  "One's body is like an Irish mud-cabin," Eileen reflected. "It shelters both a soul and a pig."

  XV.

  Nelly O'Neill threw herself into her work with greater ardour than ever. But her triumphs were shadowed by worries. She was nervous lest the Hon. Reginald should turn up at one of her Halls-she had three now; she was afraid her voice was spoiling in the smoky atmosphere; sometimes the image of the Hon. Reginald came back reproachfully, sometimes tantalisingly. Oh, why was he so stupid? Or was it she who had been stupid?

  Then there was the apprehension of the end of her career at the Lee Carters'. The young generation was nearly grown up. The eldest boy she even suspected of music-halls. He might stumble upon her.

  Her popularity, too, was beginning to frighten her. Adventurous young gentlemen followed her in cabs-cabs were now a necessity of her triple appearance-and she never dared drive quite to her door or even the street. Bracelets she always returned, if the address was given; flowers she sent to hospitals, anonymous gifts to her family. Nobody ever saw her wearing his badge.

  A sketch of her even found its way to one of Mrs. Lee Carter's journals.

  "Why, she looks something like me!" Eileen said boldly.

  "You flatter yourself," said Mrs. Lee Carter. "You're both Irish, that's all. But I don't see why these music-hall minxes should be pictured in respectable household papers."

  "Some people say that the only real talent is now to be found in the Halls," said Eileen.

  "Well, I hope it'll stay there," rejoined her mistress, tartly. Eileen recalled this conversation a few nights later, when she met Master Harold Lee Carter outside the door at midnight with a rival latch-key.

  "Been to a theatre, Miss O'Keeffe?" asked her whilom pupil.

  "No; have you?"

  "Well, not exactly a theatre!"

  "Why, what do you mean?"

  "Sort of half-and-half place, you know."

  By the icy chill at her heart at his innocent phrase, she knew how she dreaded discovery and clung to her social status.

  "What is a half-and-half place?" she asked smiling.

  "Oh, comic songs and tumblers and you can smoke."

  "No? You're not really allowed to smoke in a theatre?"

  "Yes, we are. They call it a music-hall-it's great fun. But don't tell the mater."

  "You naughty boy!"

  "I don't see it. All the chaps go."

  She shook her head. "Not the nicest."

  "Oh, that's tommyrot," he said disrespectfully. "Their women folk don't know-that's all."

  Eileen now began to feel like a criminal round whom the toils thicken. In the most fashionable of her three Halls, she sang a little French song. And she had taught Master Harold his French.

  Of course, even if Nelly were seen by Eileen's friends or acquaintances, detection was not sure. Eileen was always in such sedate gowns, never low-cut, her manners were so suppressed, her hair done so differently, and what a difference hair made! In fact, it was in her private life that she felt herself more truly the actress. On the boards her real secret self seemed to flash forth, full of verve, dash, roguery, devilry. Should she take to a wig, or to character songs in appropriate costumes? No, she would run the risk. It gave more spice to life. Every evening now was an adventure, nay three adventures, and when she snuggled herself up at midnight in her demure white bed, overlooked by the crucifix, she felt like the hunted were-wolf, safely back in human shape. And she became more audacious, letting herself go, so as to widen the chasm between Nelly and Eileen, and make
anybody who should suspect her be sure he was wrong. And occasionally she paid for all this fever and gaiety by fits of the blackest melancholy.

  She had gradually dropped her habit of prayer, but in one of her dark moods she found herself slipping to her knees and crying: "Oh, Holy Mother, look down on Thy distressed daughter, and deliver her from the body of this death. So many wooers and no spark of love in herself; a woman who sings love-songs with lips no man has touched, a lone-of-soul who can live neither with the respectable nor with the Bohemians, who loves you, sanctissima Maria, without being sure you exist. Oh, Holy Mother of God, advocate of sinners, pray for me. If I had only something solid to cling to-a babe to suckle with its red grotesque little face. You will say cling to the cross, but is not my whole life also a crucifixion? I am rent in twain that a thousand fools may laugh nightly. Oh, Holy Mother, make me at one with myself; it is the atonement I need. Send me the child's heart, and I will light a hundred candles to you.... Or do you now prefer electricity? Oh, Maria mavourneen, I cannot pray to you, for there is a mocking devil within me, and you will not cast her out." And she burst into hysteric tears.

  XVI.

  As she was about to start one evening for her round, Mrs. Lee Carter's maid brought up a bombshell. Superficially it looked like a letter with foreign stamps, marked "Private" and readdressed with an English stamp from Ireland. But that one line of unerased writing, her name, threw her into heats and colds, for she remembered the long-forgotten hand of Lieutenant Doherty. She had to sit down on her bed and finish trembling before she broke the seal and set free this voice from the past.

  "DEAR MOTHER-CONFESSOR,-You will be wondering why I have been silent

  all these years and why I write now. Well, I will tell you the truth.

  It wasn't that I believed you had really gone into the Convent you

  wrote me you were joining, it was the new and exciting life and

  duties that opened up before me when I got to Afghanistan, far from

  post-offices. Afterwards I was drafted to India and had a lot of

  skirmishing and tiger-shooting, and your image-forgive me!-became

  faint, and I excused myself for not writing by making myself believe

  you were buried in the Convent. ["So, after all, he never got the

  letter telling him I was going to marry back the Castle!" Eileen mused

  joyfully through her agitation.] But now that I am at last coming home

  in a few months, no longer a minor, but nearer a major (that's like one

  of your old jokes)-somehow your face seems to be the only thing I am

  coming back for. It's no use trying to explain it all, or even

  apologising. It's just like that. I've confessed, you see, though it

  is hopeless to get straight with my arrears, so I won't attempt it. And

  when I found out how I felt, of course came the horrible thought that

  you might be in the Convent after all, or, worse still, married and

  done for, so what do you think I did? I just sent this cable to your

  mother: 'Is Eileen free? Reply paid. Colonel Doherty.' Wasn't it clever

  and economical of me to think of the word 'free,' meaning such a

  lot-not married, not a nun, not even engaged to another fellow?

  Imagine my joy when I got back the monosyllable, meaning all that lot.

  I instantly cabled back 'Thanks, don't tell her of this.' ["So that's

  what mother was hinting at," thought Eileen, with a smile.] It was all

  I could do not to cable to you: 'Will you marry me? Reply paid.' ["What

  a good idea for a song!" murmured Nelly.] Put me out of my agony as

  soon as you can, won't you, dearest Eileen? Your face is floating

  before me as I write, with its black Irish eyes and its roguish

  dimples...."

  She could read no more. She sat long on her bed, dazed by the rush of bitter-sweet memories. The Convent, her father, her early years, this dear boy ... all was washed together in tears. There was something so bizarre, unexpected and ingenuous about it all; it touched the elemental in her. If he had excused himself even, she would have tossed him off impatiently. But his frank exposure of his own self-contradictoriness appealed subtly to her. Was this the want in her life, was it for him she had been yearning, below the surface of her consciousness, even as she had remained below the surface of his? Here, indeed, was salvation-providential salvation. A hand was stretched to save her-snatch her from spiritual destruction. The dear brown manly hand that had potted tigers while she had been gesticulating on platforms-a performing lioness. Distance, imagination, early memories, united to weave a glamour round him. It was many minutes before she could read the postscript: "I think it right to say that my complexion is not yellow nor my liver destroyed. I know this is how we are represented on your stage. I have sat for a photograph, especially to send you."

  The stage! Why should he just stumble upon the word, to chill her with the awful question whether she would have to tell him. She was late at her engagements, her performance was perfunctory-she was no longer with "the boys," but seated in a howdah on an elephant's back, side by side with a mighty hunter, or walking with a tall flaxen-haired lieutenant between the honeysuckled hedges of an Irish boreen. It struck her as almost miraculous-though it was probably only because her attention was now drawn to the name-that she read of Colonel Doherty in the evening paper the gasman tendered her that very evening, as she waited at the wing. It was a little biography full of deeds of derringdo. "My Bayard!" she murmured, and her eyes filled with tears.

  She wrote and tore up many replies. The first commenced: "What a strange way of proposing! You begin by giving me two black eyes to prove you've forgotten me. I am so different in other people's eyes as well as in my own it would be unfair to accept you. You are in love with a shadow." The word-play about her eyes seemed to savour of the "Half-and-Half." She struck it out. But "you are in love with a shadow," remained the Leit-motif of all the letters. And if he was grasping at a shadow it would be unfair for her to grasp at the substance.

  The correspondence continued by every Indian mail after his receipt of her guarded refusal; he Quixotic, devoted, no matter how she had changed. He loved the mere scent of her letter paper. Was she only a governess? Had she been a charwoman, he would have kissed her cheeks white. The boyish extravagance of his passion worked upon her, troubling her to her sincerest core. She would hide nothing from him. She wrote a full account of her stage career, morbidly exaggerating the vulgarity of her performance and the degradation of her character. She was blacker than any charwoman, she said with grim humour. The moment she dropped the letter into the box, a trembling seized on all her limbs. She spent three days of torture; her fear of losing him seeming to have heightened her love for him.

  Then Mrs. Lee Carter handed her a cable.

  "Sailing unexpectedly S.S. Colombo to-morrow-Doherty." She nearly fell fainting in dual joy. He was coming home, and he would cross her letter. Before it could return they would be safely married. It should be destroyed unread.

  "Is anything wrong?" said her mistress.

  "No, quite the contrary."

  "I am glad, because I had rather unpleasant news to tell you. But you must have seen that when Kenneth goes to Winchester, there will practically be nothing for you to do."

  "How lucky! For I am going to be married."

  "Oh, my dear, I am so glad," gushed Mrs. Lee Carter.

  Afterwards Eileen marvelled at the obvious finger of Providence unravelling her problems. She had never relished the idea of finding another place, not easily would she find one so dovetailing into her second life; she might have been tempted to burn her boats.

  She prepared now to burn her ships instead. Her contracts with the Halls were now only monthly; Nelly O'Neill could easily slip out of existence. She would not say she was going to be married-that would concentrate attention on herself. Illness seemed th
e best excuse. For the one week after the Colombo's arrival she could send conscience money. The Saturday it was due found her still starred; she did not believe his ship would get in till late, and managers would particularly dislike being done out of her Saturday night turn. Perhaps she ought to have left the previous week, she thought. It was foolish to rush things so close. But it was not so easy to give up the habits of years, and activity allayed the fever of waiting. She had sent an ardent letter to meet the ship at Southampton, saying he was to call at the Lee Carters' in Oxbridge Terrace on Sunday afternoon, which she had to herself. Being only a poor governess, she would be unable to meet him at the station or receive him at the house on Saturday night, even if he got in so early. He must be resigned to her situation, she added jestingly. On the Saturday afternoon she received a wire full of their own hieroglyphic love-words, grumbling but obeying. How could he live till Sunday afternoon? Why hadn't she resigned her situation?

  As she was starting for the Halls for the last time, in the dusk of a Spring day, a special messenger put into her hand a letter he had scribbled in the train. He was in London then. Her heart thumped with a medley of emotions as she tore open the letter:

  "Oh, my darling, I shall see you at last face to face-" But she had no time to spend under the hall-light reading it. In her cab she struck a match and read another scrap. "But, oh, cruel one, not to let me come to-night!" She winced. That gave her a pause. If she had let him come-to the Half-and-Half! He would turn from her, shuddering. And was it not precisely to the Half-and-Half that honour should have invited him? The Half-and-Half arrived at the cab window ere she had finished pondering. She thrust the letter into her pocket.

  XVII.

  Would she ever get through her three Halls? It did not seem as if she had strength for the Half-and-Half itself. She nerved herself to the task, and knew, not merely from the shrieks of delight, that she had surpassed herself. Happy and flushed she flung herself into her waiting cab.