The Grey Wig

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Title:     The Grey Wig
Author: Israel Zangwill [More Titles by Zangwill]

I

They both styled themselves "Madame," but only the younger of the old ladies had been married. Madame Valiere was still a _demoiselle_, but as she drew towards sixty it had seemed more _convenable_ to possess a mature label. Certainly Madame Depine had no visible matrimonial advantages over her fellow-lodger at the Hotel des Tourterelles, though in the symmetrical cemetery of Montparnasse (Section 22) wreaths of glass beads testified to a copious domesticity in the far past, and a newspaper picture of a _chasseur d'Afrique_ pinned over her bed recalled--though only the uniform was the dead soldier's--the son she had contributed to France's colonial empire. Practically it was two old maids--or two lone widows--whose boots turned pointed toes towards each other in the dark cranny of the rambling, fusty corridor of the sky-floor. Madame Depine was round, and grew dumpier with age; "Madame" Valiere was long, and grew slimmer. Otherwise their lives ran parallel. For the true madame of the establishment you had to turn to Madame la Proprietaire, with her buxom bookkeeper of a daughter and her tame baggage-bearing husband. This full-blooded, jovial creature, with her swart moustache, represented the only Parisian success of three provincial lives, and, in her good-nature, had permitted her decayed townswomen--at as low a rent as was compatible with prudence--to shelter themselves under her roof and as near it as possible. Her house being a profitable warren of American art-students, tempered by native journalists and decadent poets, she could, moreover, afford to let the old ladies off coffee and candles. They were at liberty to prepare their own _dejeuner_ in winter or to buy it outside in summer; they could burn their own candles or sit in the dark, as the heart in them pleased; and thus they were as cheaply niched as any one in the gay city. _Rentieres_ after their meticulous fashion, they drew a ridiculous but regular amount from the mysterious coffers of the Credit Lyonnais.

But though they met continuously in the musty corridor, and even dined--when they did dine--at the same _cremerie_, they never spoke to each other. Madame la Proprietaire was the channel through which they sucked each other's history, for though they had both known her in their girlish days at Tonnerre, in the department of Yonne, they had not known each other. Madame Valiere (Madame Depine learnt, and it seemed to explain the frigidity of her neighbour's manner) still trailed clouds of glory from the service of a Princess a quarter of a century before. Her refusal to wink at the Princess's goings-on, her austere, if provincial, regard for the convenances, had cost her the place, and from these purpureal heights she had fallen lower and lower, till she struck the attic of the Hotel des Tourterelles.

But even a haloed past does not give one a licence to annoy one's neighbours. Madame Depine felt resentfully, and she hated Madame Valiere as a haughty minion of royalty, who kept a cough, which barked loudest in the silence of the night.

"Why doesn't she go to the hospital, your Princess?" she complained to Madame la Proprietaire.

"Since she is able to nurse herself at home," the opulent-bosomed hostess replied with a shrug.

"At the expense of other people," Madame Depine retorted bitterly. "I shall die of her cough, I am sure of it."

Madame showed her white teeth sweetly. "Then it is you who should go to the hospital."

 

II

Time wrote wrinkles enough on the brows of the two old ladies, but his frosty finger never touched their glossy brown hair, for both wore wigs of nearly the same shade. These wigs were almost symbolic of the evenness of their existence, which had got beyond the reach of happenings. The Church calendar, so richly dyed with figures of saints and martyrs, filled life with colour enough, and fast-days were almost as welcome as feast-days, for if the latter warmed the general air, the former cloaked economy with dignity. As for _Mardi Gras_, that shook you up for weeks, even though you did not venture out of your apartment; the gay serpentine streamers remained round one's soul as round the trees.

At intervals, indeed, secular excitements broke the even tenor. A country cousin would call upon the important Parisian relative, and be received, not in the little bedroom, but in state in the mustily magnificent salon of the hotel--all gold mirrors and mouldiness--which the poor country mouse vaguely accepted as part of the glories of Paris and success. Madame Depine would don her ponderous gold brooch, sole salvage of her bourgeois prosperity; while, if the visitor were for Madame Valiere, that _grande dame_ would hang from her yellow, shrivelled neck the long gold chain and the old-fashioned watch, whose hands still seemed to point to regal hours.

Another break in the monotony was the day on which the lottery was drawn--the day of the pagan god of Luck. What delicious hopes of wealth flamed in these withered breasts, only to turn grey and cold when the blank was theirs again, but not the less to soar up again, with each fresh investment, towards the heaven of the hundred thousand francs! But if ever Madame Depine stumbled on Madame Valiere buying a section of a _billet_ at the lottery agent's, she insisted on having her own slice cut from another number. Fortune itself would be robbed of its sweet if the "Princess" should share it. Even their common failure to win a sou did not draw them from their freezing depths of silence, from which every passing year made it more difficult to emerge. Some greater conjuncture was needed for that.

It came when Madame la Proprietaire made her _debut_ one fine morning in a grey wig.

 

III

Hitherto that portly lady's hair had been black. But now, as suddenly as darkness vanishes in a tropic dawn, it was become light. No gradual approach of the grey, for the black had been equally artificial. The wig is the region without twilight. Only in the swart moustache had the grey crept on, so that perhaps the growing incongruity had necessitated the sudden surrender to age.

To both Madame Depine and Madame Valiere the grey wig came like a blow on the heart.

It was a grisly embodiment of their secret griefs, a tantalising vision of the unattainable. To glide reputably into a grey wig had been for years their dearest desire. As each saw herself getting older and older, saw her complexion fade and the crow's-feet gather, and her eyes grow hollow, and her teeth fall out and her cheeks fall in, so did the impropriety of her brown wig strike more and more humiliatingly to her soul. But how should a poor old woman ever accumulate enough for a new wig? One might as well cry for the moon--or a set of false teeth. Unless, indeed, the lottery--?

And so, when Madame Depine received a sister-in-law from Tonnerre, or Madame Valiere's nephew came up by the excursion train from that same quiet and incongruously christened townlet, the Parisian personage would receive the visitor in the darkest corner of the salon, with her back to the light, and a big bonnet on her head--an imposing figure repeated duskily in the gold mirrors. These visits, instead of a relief, became a terror. Even a provincial knows it is not _convenable_ for an old woman to wear a brown wig. And Tonnerre kept strict record of birthdays.

Tears of shame and misery had wetted the old ladies' hired pillows, as under the threat of a provincial visitation they had tossed sleepless in similar solicitude, and their wigs, had they not been wigs, would have turned grey of themselves. Their only consolation had been that neither outdid the other, and so long as each saw the other's brown wig, they had refrained from facing the dread possibility of having to sell off their jewellery in a desperate effort of emulation. Gradually Madame Depine had grown to wear her wig with vindictive endurance, and Madame Valiere to wear hers with gentle resignation. And now, here was Madame la Proprietaire, a woman five years younger and ten years better preserved, putting them both to the public blush, drawing the hotel's attention to what the hotel might have overlooked, in its long habituation to their surmounting brownness.

More morbidly conscious than ever of a young head on old shoulders, the old ladies no longer paused at the bureau to exchange the news with Madame or even with her black-haired bookkeeping daughter. No more lounging against the newel under the carved torch-bearer, while the journalist of the fourth floor spat at the Dreyfusites, and the poet of the _entresol_ threw versified vitriol at perfidious Albion. For the first time, too--losing their channel of communication--they grew out of touch with each other's microscopic affairs, and their mutual detestation increased with their resentful ignorance. And so, shrinking and silent, and protected as far as possible by their big bonnets, the squat Madame Depine and the skinny Madame Valiere toiled up and down the dark, fusty stairs of the Hotel des Tourterelles, often brushing against each other, yet sundered by icy infinities. And the endurance on Madame Depine's round face became more vindictive, and gentler grew the resignation on the angular visage of Madame Valiere.

 

IV

"_Tiens!_ Madame Depine, one never sees you now." Madame la Proprietaire was blocking the threshold, preventing her exit. "I was almost thinking you had veritably died of Madame Valiere's cough."

"One has received my rent, the Monday," the little old lady replied frigidly.

"_Oh! la! la!_" Madame waved her plump hands. "And La Valiere, too, makes herself invisible. What has then happened to both of you? Is it that you are doing a penance together?"

"Hist!" said Madame Depine, flushing.

For at this moment Madame Valiere appeared on the pavement outside bearing a long French roll and a bag of figs, which made an excellent lunch at low water. Madame la Proprietaire, dominatingly bestriding her doorstep, was sandwiched between the two old ladies, her wig aggressively grey between the two browns. Madame Valiere halted awkwardly, a bronze blush mounting to match her wig. To be seen by Madame Depine carrying in her meagre provisions was humiliation enough; to be juxtaposited with a grey wig was unbearable.

"_Maman, maman_, the English monsieur will not pay two francs for his dinner!" And the distressed bookkeeper, bill in hand, shattered the trio.

"And why will he not pay?" Fire leapt into the black eyes.

"He says you told him the night he came that by arrangement he could have his dinners for one franc fifty."

Madame la Proprietaire made two strides towards the refractory English monsieur. "_I_ told you one franc fifty? For _dejeuner_, yes, as many luncheons as you can eat. But for dinner? You eat with us as one of the family, and _vin compris_ and _cafe_ likewise, and it should be all for one franc fifty! _Mon Dieu!_ it is to ruin oneself. Come here." And she seized the surprised Anglo-Saxon by the wrist and dragged him towards a painted tablet of prices that hung in a dark niche of the hall. "I have kept this hotel for twenty years, I have grown grey in the service of artists and students, and this is the first time one has demanded dinner for one franc fifty!"

"_She_ has grown grey!" contemptuously muttered Madame Valiere.

"Grey? She!" repeated Madame Depine, with no less bitterness. "It is only to give herself the air of a _grande dame_!"

Then both started, and coloured to the roots of their wigs. Simultaneously they realised that they had spoken to each other.

 

V

As they went up the stairs together--for Madame Depine had quite forgotten she was going out--an immense relief enlarged their souls. Merely to mention the grey wig had been a vent for all this morbid brooding; to abuse Madame la Proprietaire into the bargain was to pass from the long isolation into a subtle sympathy.

"I wonder if she did say one franc fifty," observed Madame Valiere, reflectively.

"Without doubt," Madame Depine replied viciously. "And fifty centimes a day soon mount up to a grey wig."

"Not so soon," sighed Madame Valiere.

"But then it is not only one client that she cheats."

"Ah! at that rate wigs fall from the skies," admitted Madame Valiere.

"Especially if one has not to give dowries to one's nieces," said Madame Depine, boldly.

"And if one is mean on New Year's Day," returned Madame Valiere, with a shade less of mendacity.

They inhaled the immemorial airlessness of the staircase as if they were breathing the free air of the forests depicted on its dirty-brown wall-paper. It was the new atmosphere of self-respect that they were really absorbing. Each had at last explained herself and her brown wig to the other. An immaculate honesty (that would scorn to overcharge fifty centimes even to _un Anglais_), complicated with unwedded nieces in one case, with a royal shower of New Year's gifts in the other, had kept them from selfish, if seemly, hoary-headedness.

"Ah! here is my floor," panted Madame Valiere at length, with an air of indicating it to a thorough stranger. "Will you not come into my room and eat a fig? They are very healthy between meals."

Madame Depine accepted the invitation, and entering her own corner of the corridor with a responsive air of foreign exploration, passed behind the door through whose keyhole she had so often peered. Ah! no wonder she had detected nothing abnormal. The room was a facsimile of her own--the same bed with the same quilt over it and the same crucifix above it, the same little table with the same books of devotion, the same washstand with the same tiny jug and basin, the same rusted, fireless grate. The wardrobe, like her own, was merely a pair of moth-eaten tartan curtains, concealing both pegs and garments from her curiosity. The only sense of difference came subtly from the folding windows, below whose railed balcony showed another view of the quarter, with steam-trams--diminished to toy trains--puffing past to the suburbs. But as Madame Depine's eyes roved from these to the mantel-piece, she caught sight of an oval miniature of an elegant young woman, who was jewelled in many places, and corresponded exactly with her idea of a Princess!

To disguise her access of respect, she said abruptly, "It must be very noisy here from the steam-trams."

"It is what I love, the bustle of life," replied Madame Valiere, simply.

"Ah!" said Madame Depine, impressed beyond masking-point, "I suppose when one has had the habit of Courts--"

Madame Valiere shuddered unexpectedly. "Let us not speak of it. Take a fig."

But Madame Depine persisted--though she took the fig. "Ah! those were brave days when we had still an Emperor and an Empress to drive to the Bois with their equipages and outriders. Ah, how pretty it was!"

"But the President has also"--a fit of coughing interrupted Madame Valiere--"has also outriders."

"But he is so bourgeois--a mere man of the people," said Madame Depine.

"They are the most decent sort of folk. But do you not feel cold? I will light a fire." She bent towards the wood-box.

"No, no; do not trouble. I shall be going in a moment. I have a large fire blazing in my room."

"Then suppose we go and sit there," said poor Madame Valiere.

Poor Madame Depine was seized with a cough, more protracted than any of which she had complained.

"Provided it has not gone out in my absence," she stammered at last. "I will go first and see if it is in good trim."

"No, no; it is not worth the trouble of moving." And Madame Valiere drew her street-cloak closer round her slim form. "But I have lived so long in Russia, I forget people call this cold."

"Ah! the Princess travelled far?" said Madame Depine, eagerly.

"Too far," replied Madame Valiere, with a flash of Gallic wit. "But who has told you of the Princess?"

"Madame la Proprietaire, naturally."

"She talks too much--she and her wig!"

"If only she didn't imagine herself a powdered marquise in it! To see her standing before the mirror in the salon!"

"The beautiful spectacle!" assented Madame Valiere.

"Ah! but I don't forget--if she does--that her mother wheeled a fruit-barrow through the streets of Tonnerre!"

"Ah! yes, I knew you were from Tonnerre--dear Tonnerre!"

"How did you know?"

"Naturally, Madame la Proprietaire."

"The old gossip!" cried Madame Depine--"though not so old as she feigns. But did she tell you of her mother, too, and the fruit-barrow?"

"I knew her mother--_une brave femme_."

"I do not say not," said Madame Depine, a whit disconcerted. "Nevertheless, when one's mother is a merchant of the four seasons--"

"Provided she sold fruit as good as this! Take another fig, I beg of you."

"Thank you. These are indeed excellent," said Madame Depine. "She owed all her good fortune to a _coup_ in the lottery."

"Ah! the lottery!" Madame Valiere sighed. Before the eyes of both rose the vision of a lucky number and a grey wig.

 

VI

The acquaintanceship ripened. It was not only their common grievances against fate and Madame la Proprietaire: they were linked by the sheer physical fact that each was the only person to whom the other could talk without the morbid consciousness of an eye scrutinising the unseemly brown wig. It became quite natural, therefore, for Madame Depine to stroll into her "Princess's" room, and they soon slid into dividing the cost of the fire. That was more than an economy, for neither could afford a fire alone. It was an easy transition to the discovery that coffee could be made more cheaply for two, and that the same candle would light two persons, provided they sat in the same room. And if they did not fall out of the habit of companionship even at the _cremerie_, though "two portions for one" were not served, their union at least kept the sexagenarians in countenance. Two brown wigs give each other a moral support, are on the way to a fashion.

But there was more than wigs and cheese-parings in their _camaraderie_. Madame Depine found a fathomless mine of edification in Madame Valiere's reminiscences, which she skilfully extracted from her, finding the average ore rich with noble streaks, though the old tirewoman had an obstinate way of harking back to her girlhood, which made some delvings result in mere earth.

On the Day of the Dead Madame Depine emerged into importance, taking her friend with her to the Cemetery Montparnasse to see the glass flowers blooming immortally over the graves of her husband and children. Madame Depine paid the omnibus for both (inside places), and felt, for once, superior to the poor "Princess," who had never known the realities of love and death.

 

VII

Two months passed. Another of Madame Valiere's teeth fell out. Madame Depine's cheeks grew more pendulous. But their brown wigs remained as fadeless as the cemetery flowers.

One day they passed the hairdresser's shop together. It was indeed next to the tobacconist's, so not easy to avoid, whenever one wanted a stamp or a postcard. In the window, amid pendent plaits of divers hues, bloomed two wax busts of females--the one young and coquettish and golden-haired, the other aristocratic in a distinguished grey wig. Both wore diamond rosettes in their hair and ropes of pearls round their necks. The old ladies' eyes met, then turned away.

"If one demanded the price!" said Madame Depine (who had already done so twice).

"It is an idea!" agreed Madame Valiere.

"The day will come when one's nieces will be married."

"But scarcely when New Year's Day shall cease to be," the "Princess" sighed.

"Still, one might win in the lottery!"

"Ah! true. Let us enter, then."

"One will be enough. You go." Madame Depine rather dreaded the _coiffeur_, whom intercourse with jocose students had made severe.

But Madame Valiere shrank back shyly. "No, let us both go." She added, with a smile to cover her timidity, "Two heads are better than one."

"You are right. He will name a lower price in the hope of two orders." And, pushing the "Princess" before her like a turret of defence, Madame Depine wheeled her into the ladies' department.

The _coiffeur_, who was washing the head of an American girl, looked up ungraciously. As he perceived the outer circumference of Madame Depine projecting on either side of her turret, he emitted a glacial "_Bon jour, mesdames._"

"Those grey wigs--" faltered Madame Valiere

"I have already told your friend." He rubbed the American head viciously.

Madame Depine coloured. "But--but we are two. Is there no reduction on taking a quantity?"

"And why then? A wig is a wig. Twice a hundred francs are two hundred francs."

"One hundred francs for a wig!" said Madame Valiere, paling. "I did not pay that for the one I wear."

"I well believe it, madame. A grey wig is not a brown wig."

"But you just said a wig is a wig."

The _coiffeur_ gave angry rubs at the head, in time with his explosive phrases. "You want real hair, I presume--and to your measure--and to look natural--and _convenable_!" (Both old ladies shuddered at the word.) "Of course, if you want it merely for private theatricals--"

"Private theatricals!" repeated Madame Depine, aghast.

"A _comedienne's_ wig I can sell you for a bagatelle. That passes at a distance."

Madame Valiere ignored the suggestion. "But why should a grey wig cost more than any other?"

The _coiffeur_ shrugged his shoulders. "Since there are less grey hairs in the world--"

"_Comment!_" repeated Madame Valiere, in amazement.

"It stands to reason," said the _coiffeur_. "Since most persons do not live to be old--or only live to be bald." He grew animated, professorial almost, seeing the weight his words carried to unthinking bosoms. "And since one must provide a fine hair-net for a groundwork, to imitate the flesh-tint of the scalp, and since each hair of the parting must be treated separately, and since the natural wave of the hair must be reproduced, and since you will also need a block for it to stand on at nights to guard its shape--"

"But since one has already blocks," interposed Madame Depine.

"But since a conscientious artist cannot trust another's block! Represent to yourself also that the shape of the head does not remain as fixed as the dome of the Invalides, and that--"

"_Eh bien_, we will think," interrupted Madame Valiere, with dignity.

 

VIII

They walked slowly towards the Hotel des Tourterelles.

"If one could share a wig!" Madame Depine exclaimed suddenly.

"It is an idea," replied Madame Valiere. And then each stared involuntarily at the other's head. They had shared so many things that this new possibility sounded like a discovery. Pleasing pictures flitted before their eyes--the country cousin received (on a Box and Cox basis) by a Parisian old gentlewoman _sans peur_ and _sans reproche_; a day of seclusion for each alternating with a day of ostentatious publicity.

But the light died out of their eyes, as Madame Depine recognised that the "Princess's" skull was hopelessly long, and Madame Valiere recognised that Madame Depine's cranium was hopelessly round. Decidedly either head would be a bad block for the other's wig to repose on.

"It would be more sensible to acquire a wig together, and draw lots for it," said Madame Depine.

The "Princess's" eyes rekindled. "Yes, and then save up again to buy the loser a wig."

"_Parfaitement_" said Madame Depine. They had slid out of pretending that they had large sums immediately available. Certain sums still existed in vague stockings for dowries or presents, but these, of course, could not be touched. For practical purposes it was understood that neither had the advantage of the other, and that the few francs a month by which Madame Depine's income exceeded Madame Valiere's were neutralised by the superior rent she paid for her comparative immunity from steam-trams. The accumulation of fifty francs apiece was thus a limitless perspective.

They discussed their budget. It was really almost impossible to cut down anything. By incredible economies they saw their way to saving a franc a week each. But fifty weeks! A whole year, allowing for sickness and other breakdowns! Who can do penance for a whole year? They thought of moving to an even cheaper hotel; but then in the course of years Madame Valiere had fallen three weeks behind with the rent, and Madame Depine a fortnight, and these arrears would have to be paid up. The first council ended in despair. But in the silence of the night Madame Depine had another inspiration. If one suppressed the lottery for a season!

On the average each speculated a full franc a week, with scarcely a gleam of encouragement. Two francs a week each--already the year becomes six months! For six months one can hold out. Hardships shared are halved, too. It will seem scarce three months. Ah, how good are the blessed saints!

But over the morning coffee Madame Valiere objected that they might win the whole hundred francs in a week!

It was true; it was heartbreaking.

Madame Depine made a reckless reference to her brooch, but the Princess had a gesture of horror. "And wear your heart on your shawl when your friends come?" she exclaimed poetically. "Sooner my watch shall go, since that at least is hidden in my bosom!"

"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Madame Depine. "But if you sold the other things hidden in your bosom!"

"How do you mean?"

"The Royal Secrets."

The "Princess" blushed. "What are you thinking of?"

"The journalist below us tells me that gossip about the great sells like Easter buns."

"He is truly below us," said Madame Valiere, witheringly. "What! sell one's memories! No, no; it would not be _convenable_. There are even people living--"

"But nobody would know," urged Madame Depine.

"One must carry the head high, even if it is not grey."

It was almost a quarrel. Far below the steam-tram was puffing past. At the window across the street a woman was beating her carpet with swift, spasmodic thwacks, as one who knew the legal time was nearly up. In the tragic silence which followed Madame Valiere's rebuke, these sounds acquired a curious intensity.

"I prefer to sacrifice the lottery rather than honour," she added, in more conciliatory accents.

 

IX

The long quasi-Lenten weeks went by, and unflinchingly the two old ladies pursued their pious quest of the grey wig. Butter had vanished from their bread, and beans from their coffee. Their morning brew was confected of charred crusts, and as they sipped it solemnly they exchanged the reflection that it was quite equal to the coffee at the _cremerie_. Positively one was safer drinking one's own messes. Figs, no longer posing as a pastime of the palate, were accepted seriously as _pieces de resistance_. The Spring was still cold, yet fires could be left to die after breakfast. The chill had been taken off, and by mid-day the sun was in its full power. Each sustained the other by a desperate cheerfulness. When they took their morning walk in the Luxembourg Gardens--what time the blue-aproned Jacques was polishing their waxed floors with his legs for broom-handles--they went into ecstasies over everything, drawing each other's attention to the sky, the trees, the water. And, indeed, of a sunshiny morning it was heartening to sit by the pond and watch the wavering sheet of beaten gold water, reflecting all shades of green in a restless shimmer against the shadowed grass around. Madame Valiere always had a bit of dry bread to feed the pigeons withal--it gave a cheerful sense of superfluity, and her manner of sprinkling the crumbs revived Madame Depine's faded images of a Princess scattering New Year largess.

But beneath all these pretences of content lay a hollow sense of desolation. It was not the want of butter nor the diminished meat; it was the total removal from life of that intangible splendour of hope produced by the lottery ticket. Ah! every day was drawn blank now. This gloom, this gnawing emptiness at the heart, was worse than either had foreseen or now confessed. Malicious Fate, too, they felt, would even crown with the _grand prix_ the number they would have chosen. But for the prospective draw for the Wig--which reintroduced the aleatory--life would scarcely have been bearable.

Madame Depine's sister-in-law's visit by the June excursion train was a not unexpected catastrophe. It only lasted a day, but it put back the Grey Wig by a week, for Madame Choucrou had to be fed at Duval's, and Madame Valiere magnanimously insisted on being of the party: whether to run parallel with her friend, or to carry off the brown wig, she alone knew. Fortunately, Madame Choucrou was both short-sighted and colour-blind. On the other hand, she liked a _petit verre_ with her coffee, and both at a separate restaurant. But never had Madame Valiere appeared to Madame Depine's eyes more like the "Princess," more gay and polished and debonair, than at this little round table on the sunlit Boulevard. Little trills of laughter came from the half-toothless gums; long gloved fingers toyed with the liqueur glass or drew out the old-fashioned watch to see that Madame Choucrou did not miss her train; she spent her sou royally on a hawked journal. When they had seen Madame Choucrou off, she proposed to dock meat entirely for a fortnight so as to regain the week. Madame Depine accepted in the same heroic spirit, and even suggested the elimination of the figs: one could lunch quite well on bread and milk, now the sunshine was here. But Madame Valiere only agreed to a week's trial of this, for she had a sweet tooth among the few in her gums.

The very next morning, as they walked in the Luxembourg Gardens, Madame Depine's foot kicked against something. She stooped and saw a shining glory--a five-franc piece!

"What is it?" said Madame Valiere.

"Nothing," said Madame Depine, covering the coin with her foot. "My bootlace." And she bent down--to pick up the coin, to fumble at her bootlace, and to cover her furious blush. It was not that she wished to keep the godsend to herself,--one saw on the instant that _le bon Dieu_ was paying for Madame Choucrou,--it was an instantaneous dread of the "Princess's" quixotic code of honour. La Valiere was capable of flying in the face of Providence, of taking the windfall to a _bureau de police_. As if the inspector wouldn't stick to it himself! A purse--yes. But a five-franc piece, one of a flock of sheep!

The treasure-trove was added to the heap of which her stocking was guardian, and thus honestly divided. The trouble, however, was that, as she dared not inform the "Princess," she could not decently back out of the meatless fortnight. Providence, as it turned out, was making them gain a week. As to the figs, however, she confessed on the third day that she hungered sore for them, and Madame Valiere readily agreed to make this concession to her weakness.

 

X

This little episode coloured for Madame Depine the whole dreary period that remained. Life was never again so depressingly definite; though curiously enough the "Princess" mistook for gloom her steady earthward glance, as they sauntered about the sweltering city. With anxious solicitude Madame Valiere would direct her attention to sunsets, to clouds, to the rising moon; but heaven had ceased to have attraction, except as a place from which five-francs fell, and as soon as the "Princess's" eye was off her, her own sought the ground again. But this imaginary need of cheering up Madame Depine kept Madame Valiere herself from collapsing. At last, when the first red leaves began to litter the Gardens and cover up possible coins, the francs in the stocking approached their century.

What a happy time was that! The privations were become second nature; the weather was still fine. The morning Gardens were a glow of pink and purple and dripping diamonds, and on some of the trees was the delicate green of a second blossoming, like hope in the heart of age. They could scarcely refrain from betraying their exultation to the Hotel des Tourterelles, from which they had concealed their sufferings. But the polyglot population seething round its malodorous stairs and tortuous corridors remained ignorant that anything was passing in the life of these faded old creatures, and even on the day of drawing lots for the Wig the exuberant hotel retained its imperturbable activity.

Not that they really drew lots. That was a figure of speech, difficult to translate into facts. They preferred to spin a coin. Madame Depine was to toss, the "Princess" to cry _pile ou face_. From the stocking Madame Depine drew, naturally enough, the solitary five-franc piece. It whirled in the air; the "Princess" cried _face_. The puff-puff of the steam-tram sounded like the panting of anxious Fate. The great coin fell, rolled, balanced itself between two destinies, then subsided, _pile_ upwards. The poor "Princess's" face grew even longer; but for the life of her Madame Depine could not make her own face other than a round red glow, like the sun in a fog. In fact, she looked so young at this supreme moment that the brown wig quite became her.

"I congratulate you," said Madame Valiere, after the steam-tram had become a far-away rumble.

"Before next summer we shall have yours too," the winner reminded her consolingly.

 

XI

They had not waited till the hundred francs were actually in the stocking. The last few would accumulate while the wig was making. As they sat at their joyous breakfast the next morning, ere starting for the hairdresser's, the casement open to the October sunshine, Jacques brought up a letter for Madame Valiere--an infrequent incident. Both old women paled with instinctive distrust of life. And as the "Princess" read her letter, all the sympathetic happiness died out of her face.

"What is the matter, then?" breathed Madame Depine.

The "Princess" recovered herself. "Nothing, nothing. Only my nephew who is marrying."

"Soon?"

"The middle of next month."

"Then you will need to give presents!"

"One gives a watch, a bagatelle, and then--there is time. It is nothing. How good the coffee is this morning!"

They had not changed the name of the brew: it is not only in religious evolutions that old names are a comfort.

They walked to the hairdresser's in silence. The triumphal procession had become almost a dead march. Only once was the silence broken.

"I suppose they have invited you down for the wedding?" said Madame Depine.

"Yes," said Madame Valiere.

They walked on.

The _coiffeur_ was at his door, sunning his aproned stomach, and twisting his moustache as if it were a customer's. Emotion overcame Madame Depine at the sight of him. She pushed Madame Valiere into the tobacconist's instead.

"I have need of a stamp," she explained, and demanded one for five centimes. She leaned over the counter babbling aimlessly to the proprietor, postponing the great moment. Madame Valiere lost the clue to her movements, felt her suddenly as a stranger. But finally Madame Depine drew herself together and led the way into the _coiffeurs_. The proprietor, who had reentered his parlour, reemerged gloomily.

Madame Valiere took the word. "We are thinking of ordering a wig."

"Cash in advance, of course," said the _coiffeur_.

"_Comment!_" cried Madame Valiere, indignantly. "You do not trust my friend!"

"Madame Valiere has moved in the best society," added Madame Depine.

"But you cannot expect me to do two hundred francs of work and then be left planted with the wigs!"

"But who said two hundred francs?" cried Madame Depine. "It is only one wig that we demand--to-day at least."

He shrugged his shoulders. "A hundred francs, then."

"And why should we trust you with one hundred francs?" asked Madame Depine. "You might botch the work."

"Or fly to Italy," added the "Princess."

In the end it was agreed he should have fifty down and fifty on delivery.

"Measure us, while we are here," said Madame Depine. "I will bring you the fifty francs immediately."

"Very well," he murmured. "Which of you?"

But Madame Valiere was already affectionately untying Madame Depine's bonnet-strings. "It is for my friend," she cried. "And let it be as _chic_ and _convenable_ as possible!"

He bowed. "An artist remains always an artist."

Madame Depine removed her wig and exposed her poor old scalp, with its thin, forlorn wisps and patches of grey hair, grotesque, almost indecent, in its nudity. But the _coiffeur_ measured it in sublime seriousness, putting his tape this way and that way, while Madame Valiere's eyes danced in sympathetic excitement.

"You may as well measure my friend too," remarked Madame Depine, as she reassumed her glossy brown wig (which seemed propriety itself compared with the bald cranium).

"What an idea!" ejaculated Madame Valiere. "To what end?"

"Since you are here," returned Madame Depine, indifferently. "You may as well leave your measurements. Then when you decide yourself--Is it not so, monsieur?"

The _coiffeur_, like a good man of business, eagerly endorsed the suggestion. "Perfectly, madame."

"But if one's head should change!" said Madame Valiere, trembling with excitement at the vivid imminence of the visioned wig.

"_Souvent femme varie_, madame," said the _coiffeur_. "But it is the inside, not the outside of the head."

"But you said one is not the dome of the Invalides," Madame Valiere reminded him.

"He spoke of our old blocks," Madame Depine intervened hastily. "At our age one changes no more."

Thus persuaded, the "Princess" in her turn denuded herself of her wealth of wig, and Madame Depine watched with unsmiling satisfaction the stretchings of tape across the ungainly cranium.

"_C'est bien_," she said. "I return with your fifty francs on the instant."

And having seen her "Princess" safely ensconced in the attic, she rifled the stocking, and returned to the _coiffeur_.

When she emerged from the shop, the vindictive endurance had vanished from her face, and in its place reigned an angelic exaltation.

 

XII

Eleven days later Madame Valiere and Madame Depine set out on the great expedition to the hairdresser's to try on the Wig. The "Princess's" excitement was no less tense than the fortunate winner's. Neither had slept a wink the night before, but the November morning was keen and bright, and supplied an excellent tonic. They conversed with animation on the English in Egypt, and Madame Depine recalled the gallant death of her son, the _chasseur_.

The _coiffeur_ saluted them amiably. Yes, mesdames, it was a beautiful morning. The wig was quite ready. Behold it there--on its block.

Madame Valiere's eyes turned thither, then grew clouded, and returned to Madame Depine's head and thence back to the Grey Wig.

"It is not this one?" she said dubiously.

"_Mais, oui_." Madame Depine was nodding, a great smile transfiguring the emaciated orb of her face. The artist's eyes twinkled.

"But this will not fit you," Madame Valiere gasped.

"It is a little error, I know," replied Madame Depine.

"But it is a great error," cried Madame Valiere, aghast. And her angry gaze transfixed the _coiffeur_.

"It is not his fault--I ought not to have let him measure you."

"Ha! Did I not tell you so?" Triumph softened her anger. "He has mixed up the two measurements!"

"Yes. I suspected as much when I went in to inquire the other day; but I was afraid to tell you, lest it shouldn't even fit _you_."

"Fit _me_!" breathed Madame Valiere.

"But whom else?" replied Madame Depine, impatiently, as she whipped off the "Princess's" wig. "If only it fits you, one can pardon him. Let us see. Stand still, _ma chere_," and with shaking hands she seized the grey wig.

"But--but--" The "Princess" was gasping, coughing, her ridiculous scalp bare.

"But stand still, then! What is the matter? Are you a little infant? Ah! that is better. Look at yourself, then, in the mirror. But it is perfect!" "A true Princess," she muttered beatifically to herself. "Ah, how she will show up the fruit-vendor's daughter!"

As the "Princess" gazed at the majestic figure in the mirror, crowned with the dignity of age, two great tears trickled down her pendulous cheeks.

"I shall be able to go to the wedding," she murmured chokingly.

"The wedding!" Madame Depine opened her eyes. "What wedding?"

"My nephew's, of course!"

"Your nephew is marrying? I congratulate you. But why did you not tell me?"

"I did mention it. That day I had a letter!"

"Ah! I seem to remember. I had not thought of it." Then briskly: "Well, that makes all for the best again. Ah! I was right not to scold _monsieur le coiffeur_ too much, was I not?"

"You are very good to be so patient," said Madame Valiere, with a sob in her voice.

Madame Depine shot her a dignified glance. "We will discuss our affairs at home. Here it only remains to say whether you are satisfied with the fit."

Madame Valiere patted the wig, as much in approbation as in adjustment. "But it fits me to a miracle!"

"Then we will pay our friend, and wish him _le bon jour_." She produced the fifty francs--two gold pieces, well sounding, for which she had exchanged her silver and copper, and two five-franc pieces. "And _voila_," she added, putting down a franc for _pourboire_, "we are very content with the artist."

The "Princess" stared at her, with a new admiration.

"_Merci bien_," said the _coiffeur_, fervently, as he counted the cash. "Would that all customers' heads lent themselves so easily to artistic treatment!"

"And when will my friend's wig be ready?" said the "Princess."

"Madame Valiere! What are you saying there? Monsieur will set to work when I bring him the fifty francs."

"_Mais non_, madame. I commence immediately. In a week it shall be ready, and you shall only pay on delivery."

"You are very good. But I shall not need it yet--not till the winter--when the snows come," said Madame Depine, vaguely. "_Bon jour_, monsieur;" and, thrusting the old wig on the new block, and both under her shawl, she dragged the "Princess" out of the shop. Then, looking back through the door, "Do not lose the measurement, monsieur," she cried. "One of these days!"

 

XIII

The grey wig soon showed its dark side. Its possession, indeed, enabled Madame Valiere to loiter on the more lighted stairs, or dawdle in the hall with Madame la Proprietaire; but Madame Depine was not only debarred from these dignified domestic attitudes, but found a new awkwardness in bearing Madame Valiere company in their walks abroad. Instead of keeping each other in countenance--_duoe contra mundum_--they might now have served as an advertisement for the _coiffeur_ and the _convenable_. Before the grey wig--after the grey wig.

Wherefore Madame Depine was not so very sorry when, after a few weeks of this discomforting contrast, the hour drew near of the "Princess's" departure for the family wedding; especially as she was only losing her for two days. She had insisted, of course, that the savings for the second wig were not to commence till the return, so that Madame Valiere might carry with her a present worthy of her position and her port. They had anxious consultations over this present. Madame Depine was for a cheap but showy article from the Bon Marche; but Madame Valiere reminded her that the price-lists of this enterprising firm knocked at the doors of Tonnerre. Something distinguished (in silver) was her own idea. Madame Depine frequently wept during these discussions, reminded of her own wedding. Oh, the roundabouts at Robinson, and that delicious wedding-lunch up the tree! One was gay then, my dear.

At last they purchased a tiny metal Louis Quinze timepiece for eleven francs seventy-five centimes, congratulating themselves on the surplus of twenty-five centimes from their three weeks' savings. Madame Valiere packed it with her impedimenta into the carpet-bag lent her by Madame la Proprietaire. She was going by a night train from the Gare de Lyon, and sternly refused to let Madame Depine see her off.

"And how would you go back--an old woman, alone in these dark November nights, with the papers all full of crimes of violence? It is not _convenable_, either."

Madame Depine yielded to the latter consideration; but as Madame Valiere, carrying the bulging carpet-bag, was crying "_La porte, s'il vous plait_" to the _concierge_, she heard Madame Depine come tearing and puffing after her like the steam-tram, and, looking back, saw her breathlessly brandishing her gold brooch. "_Tiens!_" she panted, fastening the "Princess's" cloak with it. "That will give thee an air."

"But--it is too valuable. Thou must not." They had never "thou'd" each other before, and this enhanced the tremulousness of the moment.

"I do not give it thee," Madame Depine laughed through her tears. "_Au revoir, mon amie_."

"_Adieu, ma cherie!_ I will tell my dear ones of my Paris comrade." And for the first time their lips met, and the brown wig brushed the grey.

 

XIV

Madame Depine had two drearier days than she had foreseen. She kept to her own room, creeping out only at night, when, like all cats, all wigs are grey. After an eternity of loneliness the third day dawned, and she went by pre-arrangement to meet the morning train. Ah, how gaily gleamed the kiosks on the boulevards through the grey mist! What jolly red faces glowed under the cabmen's white hats! How blithely the birds sang in the bird-shops!

The train was late. Her spirits fell as she stood impatiently at the barrier, shivering in her thin clothes, and morbidly conscious of all those eyes on her wig. At length the train glided in unconcernedly, and shot out a medley of passengers. Her poor old eyes strained towards them. They surged through the gate in animated masses, but Madame Valiere's form did not disentangle itself from them, though every instant she expected it to jump at her eyes. Her heart contracted painfully--there was no "Princess." She rushed round to another exit, then outside, to the gates at the end of the drive; she peered into every cab even, as it rumbled past. What had happened? She trudged home as hastily as her legs could bear her. No, Madame Valiere had not arrived.

"They have persuaded her to stay another day," said Madame la Proprietaire. "She will come by the evening train, or she will write."

Madame Depine passed the evening at the Gare de Lyon, and came home heavy of heart and weary of foot. The "Princess" might still arrive at midnight, though, and Madame Depine lay down dressed in her bed, waiting for the familiar step in the corridor. About three o'clock she fell into a heavy doze, and woke in broad day. She jumped to her feet, her overwrought brain still heavy with the vapours of sleep, and threw open her door.

"Ah! she has already taken in her boots," she thought confusedly. "I shall be late for coffee." She gave her perfunctory knock, and turned the door-handle. But the door would not budge.

"Jacques! Jacques!" she cried, with a clammy fear at her heart. The _garcon_, who was pottering about with pails, opened the door with his key. An emptiness struck cold from the neat bed, the bare walls, the parted wardrobe-curtains that revealed nothing. She fled down the stairs, into the bureau.

"Madame Valiere is not returned?" she cried.

Madame la Proprietaire shook her head.

"And she has not written?"

"No letter in her writing has come--for anybody."

"_O mon Dieu!_ She has been murdered. She _would_ go alone by night."

"She owes me three weeks' rent," grimly returned Madame la Proprietaire.

"What do you insinuate?" Madame Depine's eyes flared.

Madame la Proprietaire shrugged her shoulders. "I am not at my first communion. I have grown grey in the service of lodgers. And this is how they reward me." She called Jacques, who had followed uneasily in Madame Depine's wake. "Is there anything in the room?"

"Empty as an egg-shell, madame."

"Not even the miniature of her sister?"

"Not even the miniature of her sister."

"Of her sister?" repeated Madame Depine.

"Yes; did I never tell you of her? A handsome creature, but she threw her bonnet over the mills."

"But I thought that was the Princess."

"The Princess, too. Her bonnet will also be found lying there."

"No, no; I mean I thought the portrait was the Princess's."

Madame la Proprietaire laughed. "She told you so?"

"No, no; but--but I imagined so."

"Without doubt, she gave you the idea. _Quelle farceuse!_ I don't believe there ever was a Princess. The family was always inflated."

All Madame Depine's world seemed toppling. Somehow her own mistake added to her sense of having been exploited.

"Still," said Madame la Proprietaire with a shrug, "it is only three weeks' rent."

"If you lose it, I will pay!" Madame Depine had an heroic burst of faith.

"As you please. But I ought to have been on my guard. Where did she take the funds for a grey wig?"

"Ah, the brown wig!" cried Madame Depine, joyfully. "She must have left that behind, and any _coiffeur_ will give you three weeks' rent for that alone."

"We shall see," replied Madame la Proprietaire, ambiguously.

The trio mounted the stairs, and hunted high and low, disturbing the peaceful spider-webs. They peered under the very bed. Not even the old block was to be seen. As far as Madame Valiere's own chattels were concerned, the room was indeed "empty as an egg-shell."

"She has carried it away with the three weeks' rent," sneered Madame la Proprietaire. "In my own carpet-bag," she added with a terrible recollection.

"She wished to wear it at night against the hard back of the carriage, and guard the other all glossy for the wedding." Madame Depine quavered pleadingly, but she could not quite believe herself.

"The wedding had no more existence than the Princess," returned Madame la Proprietaire, believing herself more and more.

"Then she will have cheated me out of the grey wig from the first," cried Madame Depine, involuntarily. "And I who sacrificed myself to her!"

"_Comment!_ It was your wig?"

"No, no." She flushed and stammered. "But _enfin_--and then, oh, heaven! my brooch!"

"She has stolen your brooch?"

Great tears rolled down the wrinkled, ashen cheeks. So this was her reward for secretly instructing the _coiffeur_ to make the "Princess's" wig first. The Princess, indeed! Ah, the adventuress! She felt choking; she shook her fist in the air. Not even the brooch to show when her family came up from Tonnerre, to say nothing of the wig. Was there a God in the world at all? Oh, holy Mother! No wonder the trickstress would not be escorted to the station--she never went to the station. No wonder she would not sell the royal secrets to the journalist--there were none to sell. Oh! it was all of a piece.

"If I were you I should go to the bureau of police!" said Madame la Proprietaire.

Yes, she would go; the wretch should be captured, should be haled to gaol. Even her half of the Louis Quinze timepiece recurred to poor Madame Depine's brain.

"Add that she has stolen my carpet-bag."

The local bureau telegraphed first to Tonnerre.

There had been the wedding, but no Madame Valiere. She had accepted the invitation, had given notice of her arrival; one had awaited the midnight train. The family was still wondering why the rich aunt had turned sulky at the last hour. But she was always an eccentric; a capricious and haughty personage.

Poor Madame Depine's recurrent "My wig! my brooch!" reduced the official mind to the same muddle as her own.

"No doubt a sudden impulse of senescent kleptomania," said the superintendent, sagely, when he had noted down for transference to headquarters Madame Depine's verbose and vociferous description of the traits and garments of the runagate. "But we will do our best to recover your brooch and your wig." Then, with a spasm of supreme sagacity, "Without doubt they are in the carpet-bag."

 

XV

Madame Depine left the bureau and wandered about in a daze. That monster of ingratitude! That arch-adventuress, more vicious even than her bejewelled sister! All the long months of more than Lenten rigour recurred to her self-pitiful mood, that futile half-year of semi-starvation. How Madame Valiere must have gorged on the sly, the rich eccentric! She crossed a bridge to the Ile de la Cite, and came to the gargoyled portals of Notre Dame, and let herself be drawn through the open door, and all the gloom and glory of the building fell around her like a soothing caress. She dropped before an altar and poured out her grief to the Mother of Sorrows. At last she arose, and tottered up the aisle, and the great rose-window glowed like the window of heaven. She imagined her husband and the dead children looking through it. Probably they wondered, as they gazed down, why her head remained so young.

Ah! but she was old, so very old. Surely God would take her soon. How should she endure the long years of loneliness and social ignominy?

As she stumbled out of the Cathedral, the cold, hard day smote her full in the face. People stared at her, and she knew it was at the brown wig. But could they expect her to starve herself for a whole year?

"_Mon Dieu!_ Starve yourselves, my good friends. At my age, one needs fuel."

She escaped from them, and ran, muttering, across the road, and almost into the low grey shed.

Ah! the Morgue! Blessed idea! That should be the end of her. A moment's struggle, and then--the rose-window of heaven! Hell? No, no; the Madonna would plead for her; she who always looked so beautiful, so _convenable_.

She would peep in. Let her see how she would look when they found her. Would they clap a grey wig upon her, or expose her humiliation even in death?

"A-a-a-h!" A long scream tore her lips apart. There, behind the glass, in terrible waxen peace, a gash on her forehead, lay the "Princess," so uncanny-looking without any wig at all, that she would not have recognised her but for that moment of measurement at the hairdresser's. She fell sobbing before the cold glass wall of the death-chamber. Ah, God! Her first fear had been right; her brooch had but added to the murderer's temptation. And she had just traduced this martyred saint to the police.

"Forgive me, _ma cherie_, forgive me," she moaned, not even conscious that the attendant was lifting her to her feet with professional interest.

For in that instant everything passed from her but the great yearning for love and reconciliation, and for the first time a grey wig seemed a petty and futile aspiration.

[The end]
Israel Zangwill's short story: Grey Wig

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