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 f
or 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.
The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Page 3
