The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

by Израэль Зангвилл

  She had the 9.45 turn at her second and most fashionable Hall-a Hall where the chairman had been replaced by programme numbers-and then would come her third and last appearance at 10.35. It was strange to think that in another hour Nelly O'Neill's career would be over. It seemed like murdering her. Yes, Eileen O'Keeffe would be her murderess. Well, why not murder what lay between one and happiness? As she waited at the wings, just before going on, while the orchestra played her opening bars, she glanced diagonally at the packed stalls, and her heart stood still. There in the second row sat Colonel Doherty, smoking a big cheroot. Instinctively she made the sign of the cross; then swayed back and was caught by the man who changed the programme-numbers.

  "Is No. 9 come?" she gasped.

  "I think so; aren't you well, Miss O'Neill?"

  "For God's sake, give me breathing space," she said, with a last wild peep at the Colonel. Yes, there was no mistaking him after the three new portraits he had sent her. He was in cheerful conversation with a stout, sallow gentleman of the Anglo-Indian stage-type. Both were in immaculate evening-dress and wore white orchids. How fortunate she had refused to send any photograph in return, pleading ugliness but really afraid of theatrical sketches that might find their way to the officers' mess!

  The band stopped, changed its tune, No. 9 appeared on the board; there was a murmur of confusion.

  "No, by Heaven, I'll face the music," she said with grim humour. She almost hustled the hastening juggler out of the way. She was in a whirlwind of excitement. So he was there-well, so much the better. He had saved her from lying. He had given her an easy way of confessing. Words were so inadequate, he should see the reality: the stage to-night would be her confessional. She would extenuate nothing. She would throw herself furiously into the fun and racket; go to her broadest limits, else the confession would be inadequate. Then ... if he survived the shock ... why then, perhaps, she'd insist on going on with this double life...! He had risen in his seat. No, no, he must not go away, she could not risk the juggler boring him.

  "I'm better; I mustn't be late at my next shop," she murmured apologetically as the number and the music were changed back.

  "Ah, she's come-she was late," came the murmurs of the audience as it stirred in excited expectation.

  She flung on roguish, feverish, diabolical, seductive in low-cut bodice pranked with flowers. It was a frenzy of impromptu extravagance, dazzling even the orchestra; each line accentuated by new gesture, the verses supplemented by new monologue; a miracle of chic and improvisation, and the house rose at it. Out of the mist before her eyes thunder seemed to come in great roars and crashes. She almost groped her way to the wing.

  She was recalled. The mist cleared. She bowed direct at him, smiling defiance from her sparkling eyes. He was applauding with his hands, his stick, his lungs! Was it possible?-yes, he had not recognised her!

  Now came a new revulsion. Again she felt herself saved. She sang her other songs straight at him, and exaggerated them equally, half to tempt Providence, half as a bold way of keeping Eileen still concealed. She heard his companion chuckling, "By Jove, Willie, she's mashed on you," as she threw a farewell kiss towards him. Then she hurried to her dressing-room and took out his letter. She had transferred it to the pocket of her theatrical gown, but had not as yet found time to finish it. Even before she re-perused it, another emotion had begun to possess her, a rush of resentment. So this was how he amused himself while waiting to clasp her in his arms! How would he ever live through the hours till Sunday afternoon, forsooth! She was jealous of the applause he lavished on Nelly O'Neill, incensed at his levity, at his immaculate evening-dress, at his white orchid. How dare he be so gay and debonair? Her anger rose as she read his protestations, his romantic professions. "O my darling, I shall sit up all night, thinking of you, re-reading all your dear letters, recalling our past, picturing our future. In short, as old Landor puts it:-

  "'A night of memories and of sighs

  I consecrate to thee.'"

  She crumpled the paper in her hand. There was a knock at the door; Fossy poked his head in. He had risen in the world of Halls, even as Nelly O'Neill.

  "Might I present two friends of mine? They want so much to know you."

  "You know I never see anybody, and that I have to hurry off."

  "Then, I was to give you this bouquet."

  He handed in a costly floral mass. Amid it lay a card, "Colonel Doherty." She crumpled his letter more viciously.

  "Tell them I can give them ten minutes only. Oh, Fossy, it's an amusing Show, isn't it?"

  "It was a rattling good show," said Fossy, half puzzled. "Come in, boys."

  Entered the Anglo-Indian twain with shining faces and shirt-fronts, cheroots politely lowered.

  "Oh, smoke away, gentlemen," cried Nelly O'Neill, facing them in all the dazzle of her flesh and the crudity of her stage-paint, and her over-lustrous eyes, "don't mind me. Which of you is the Colonel?"

  The stout, sallow gentleman jocosely pushed his tall flaxen-haired companion forward. "Oh, I knew the Major was out of it," he grinned.

  "Not at all, Major," said Nelly. "I only wanted to know which I had to thank for these lovely flowers."

  "You have yourself to thank," said the Colonel, smartly. "By Jove! You gave us a treat. London was worth coming back to."

  "Ah, you've been away from London?"

  "Just back this very day from India-"

  "And of course the first thing after a good dinner is the good old Friv-" put in the Major.

  "Thank you, Major," said Fossy. "That's handsome of you. And now I'll leave you to Miss O'Neill."

  "That's handsomer still," said the Colonel. And the three men guffawed. Eileen felt sick.

  The Major began to talk of the music-halls of India; the Colonel chimed in. They treated her as a comrade, told her anecdotes of the coulisses of Calcutta. The Colonel retailed a jest of the bazaars.

  "I permit smoke, not smoking-room stories," she said severely. At which the twain poked each other shriekingly in the ribs. After that Eileen let the Colonel have rope enough to hang himself with, though she felt it cutting cruelly into her own flesh. It was an orgie of the eternal masculine, spiced with the aroma of costly cigars.

  "I'm so sorry," she said, when she had let them have a quarter of an hour's run. "I really must fly." And she seized the bouquet, and carefully adjusted his card in the glowing mass. "Won't you come and have tea with me to-morrow? About four."

  The Colonel winced. "I fear I have another appointment."

  "Oh, rot! I'll bring him," said the Major. "Where do you hang out?"

  "22 Oxbridge,"-her hesitation was barely perceptible-"Crescent."

  The Colonel started. "Do you know it, Colonel?" She looked at him ingenuously.

  "No, but how odd! My other appointment is at 22 Oxbridge Terrace."

  "How funny!" laughed Eileen. "Just round the corner. Then you'll be able to kill two ladies with one cab." And she fled from the Major's cachinnation.

  XVIII.

  She had missed her turn at the third Hall, but she did not care. She went on and gave a spiritless performance. It fell dead, but she cared less. Her head throbbed with a dozen possibilities. She was still undiscovered. As she sat resting on her couch ere resuming her work-a-day gown, her nerves stretched to snapping point, and old Irish songs crooning themselves irrelevantly in her brain, a telegram was handed her.

  "He has found out," she thought, going hot and cold. She tore open the pink envelope... and burst into a shriek of laughter. The dresser rushed in, wondering. Nelly O'Neill merely held her sides, jollity embodied. "Oh, the Show, the Show!" she gasped, the tears streaking her painted cheeks.

  The telegram that hung between her fingers in two sheets ran: "Reply prepaid. I don't know the ways of the stage so I send you this as a sure way of reaching you to ask when and where I may have the pleasure of calling upon your friend, Miss O'Keeffe, and renewing the study of Plato.-Robert Maper, Hotel Belgravia."

  "Any
answer, miss?" said the imperturbable doorkeeper.

  The answer flashed irresistibly into her mind as he spoke. Oh, she would play up to Bob Maper. Doubtless he imagined her fallen to the level of her metier, though he wasn't insulting. She scribbled hastily: "Robert Maper, Hotel Belgravia. I am waiting at the Hall for you. Come and take me to supper.-EILEEN O'NEILL." She gave instructions he was to be admitted. Then she relapsed into her hysteric amusement. "Oh, the merry master of marionettes, the night my love comes from beyond the seas, you send me to supper with Robert Maper." She waited with impatience. Now that the long-dreaded discovery had come, she was consumed with curiosity as to its effect upon the discoverer. At last she remembered to wash off the rouge and the messes necessary for stage-perspective. Her winsome face came back to her in the mirror, angelic by contrast, and while she was looking wonderingly at this mystic flashing mask of hers, there was a knock, and in another instant she was looking into the eyes burning unchanged under the white marble mantel-piece.

  "Ah, there you are!" she said gaily, and shook his hand as though they had met the evening before. "Where shall we go?"

  He accepted the situation. "I don't know-I thought you would know."

  "I don't-I never supped with a man in my life."

  He flushed with complex pleasure and surprise. "Really! Oh, Eileen!"

  "Hush! Call me Nelly, if you must be Christian. I suppose you think you may, now."

  "I-I beg your pardon," he stammered, disconcerted.

  "Don't look so gaspy-poor little thing! It shall be thrown back into the water. Will you carry my bouquet?"

  "With pleasure." He grasped it eagerly, and carried it towards the stage door and a hansom.

  "It wanted only that," she said. "Oh, the Show, the Show!"

  "I don't understand you."

  "Do I understand myself?" They got into the hansom. "Where shall we go?" she repeated.

  "Places all close at twelve on Saturday night."

  "Ah, do they? Your hotel also?"

  "No, of course one may eat at one's own hotel. If you don't mind going there-"

  "If you don't mind, rather."

  "I? Who is my censor?"

  "Ah, the word admits I'm discreditable. Never mind, Bob. See how Christian I am."

  "No, no, I've felt it was all my doing. Indirectly I drove you to it-oh, how you have weighed on me!"

  "Really, I'd quite forgotten you."

  He winced and gasped. "Hotel Belgravia," he called up through the trap-door.

  "Very strange you should find me," she said, as they glided through the flashing London night.

  "Not in the least. I knew you blindfold, so to speak. You forget how I used to stand outside the drawing-room, listening to your singing."

  "Eavesdropper!" she murmured. But he struck a tender chord-all the tender chords of her twilight playing that now rose up softly and floated around her.

  "Eavesdropper if you like, who heard nothing that was not beautiful. And so I hadn't to look for you. As a matter of fact, I wasn't looking but consulting my programme to know who number eleven was, when you began to sing."

  "If you had looked you wouldn't have recognised me," she said, smiling.

  "Probably not. The stage get-up would have blurred my memories."

  She began to like him again: the oddness of it all was appealing. "Nevertheless," she said, "it is strange you should just find me to-night, for I-"

  "No, it isn't," he interrupted eagerly. "I've been every night this week."

  "Ah, eavesdropping again," she said, touched.

  "I wanted to be absolutely sure-and then I couldn't pluck up courage to write to you."

  "But you did to-night?"

  "You looked so tired-I felt I wanted to protect you."

  A sob came into her throat, but she managed to say coldly, "Was I very bad?"

  "To one who had seen you the other nights," he said with complimentary candour.

  She laughed. "How is your mother?"

  "Oh, she's very well, thank you. She lives in London now."

  "Then your father has retired from-"

  "He is dead,-didn't you hear?"

  "No." Eileen sat in shocked silence. "I am sorry," she murmured at length. But underneath this mild shock she was conscious-as they rolled on without speaking-of a new ease that had come into her life: some immense relaxation of tension. "A hunted criminal must breathe more calmly when he is caught," she thought.

  XIX.

  "Lucky I'm in evening dress," she said, loosening her cloak as they went through a corridor, shimmering with dresses and diamonds, to a crowded supper-room.

  "But you're always in evening dress, surely."

  "I might have been in tights." And she had a malicious self-wounding pleasure in watching him gasp. She hurried into a revelation of her exact position, as soon as they had secured a just-vacated little table in a window niche. She omitted only Colonel Doherty.

  He listened breathlessly. "And nobody knows you are Eileen O'Keeffe, I mean Nelly O'Neill?"

  She laughed. "You see you don't know which I am."

  "It's incredible."

  "So much the worse for your theories of credibility. The longer I live, the less the Show surprises me."

  "What show?"

  "Oh, it's too long to explain. Say Vanity Fair." Her thumb fell into its old habit of flicking the table. There was a silence.

  "I am sorry you told me," he said slowly.

  "Why?"

  A waiter loomed over them.

  "Supper, Sir Robert?"

  She glanced quickly at her companion.

  "Yes," he said. "Ma buonissima! I leave it to you. And champagne."

  "Prestissimo, Sir Robert." He smirked himself off.

  "Why does he call you that?" she asked.

  "Oh, didn't you know my poor father was made a Baronet, after we entertained Royalty?"

  "No; how strange your lives should have been going on all the time!" The pop of a cork at her elbow startled her. Then she lifted her frothing glass. "Sir-to you!"

  He clinked his against it. "To the lady of my dreams."

  "Still?" She sipped the wine: her eyes sparkled.

  "Yes; I've still a long opinion of myself."

  She put out her hand quickly and pressed his an instant.

  "Thank you!" he said huskily. "That was why I said I was sorry to know that to the world you were still a governess. Of course I was glad, too."

  "I don't understand. I always said you were more Irish than I."

  "I was glad you had kept yourself unspotted from the stage-world."

  "Good God! You call that unspotted! What are men made of?"

  "You were in a bad atmosphere. Your lips caught phrases."

  "Nonsense. I'm a crow, not a parrot; a thoroughly sooty bird."

  "It was your whiteness that attracted-your morning freshness. You don't know what vulgarity is."

  "You don't know what I am."

  "I know you to your delicious finger-tips. And that's why I am sorry you told me so much. I wanted to ask Nelly O'Neill to marry me. Now she'll think I'm only asking Eileen O'Keeffe, the daughter of the Irish gentleman."

  Her eyes filled with tears. "No, they both believe you capable of any folly. Besides, somebody would find out Nelly all the same." And a smile made a rainbow across her tears.

  The arrival of the soup relaxed the tension of emotion. In mid-plate she suddenly put down her spoon and laughed softly.

  "What is it?" he said, not without alarm at her transitions.

  "Why, it would be one of those stock theatrical marriages, into which we entrap titles! Fascinated by a Serio-Comic, poor silly young man. She played her cards well, that Nelly. Ha! ha! ha! Who would dream of Plato's dialogues? And you talk of incredible!"

  "I am content to be called silly." He tried to take her hand.

  "Well, don't be it in public. You will rank with Lord Tippleton who married Bessie Bilhook, and made a Lady of her-the only ladyhood she's ever known."

>   "No, I can't rank with him," he smiled back. "I'm only a Baronet."

  "It sounds the same. Lady Maper!" she murmured. "But, oh, how funny! There'd be two Lady Mapers."

  "My mother would be the Dowager Lady-"

  "That's funnier still."

  He ate in silence. Eileen mused on the picture of the Dowager, her forefinger to heaven.

  "The Royalty-how did that go off?" she said, as he carved the chicken.

  "With fireworks. For the reception father built a new house and furnished it with old furniture. Royalty stopped an hour and a quarter. Oh, she was wonderful. I mean my mother. Copied your phrases-see what an impression you made."

  "And what have you been doing since you came into the title?"

  "Looking for you."

  "Nonsense!" She dropped her fork. "But you knew I had people in Ireland."

  "I never knew exactly where."

  "But what put you on the track of the music-halls?"

  "Nothing. I never dreamed of looking for you there. I just went." Master Harold Lee Carter's phrase flashed back to her memory, "All the chaps go."

  "But what about the Black Hole-I mean the works?"

  "They go on," he said. "I just get the profits."

  "And how about your Socialism?"

  "You taught me the fallacy of it."

  "I? Well, that's the cream of the joke."

  "Yes. Don't laugh at me, please. When you came into my life, or rather when you went out of it-yes, I am Irish-I saw that money and station are the mere veneer of life: the central reality is-Love."

  Again her eyes filled with tears, but she remained silent.

  "And I saw that I, the master, was really poorer than the majority of my serfs, with their wives and bairns."

  "You are a good fellow," she murmured. "I-I meant to say," she corrected herself, "what have you done with your clothes?"

  "My clothes!" he echoed vaguely, looking down at his spotless shirt-front.

  "Your factory clothes! Wouldn't it be fun to wear them at supper here? Do you think they could turn you out? I don't see how, legally. Do test the question. Yes, do. Please do." And she laid her hand on his black sleeve. "I won't marry you if you don't."