The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

He started, and turned his devil upon me. The face was made Mephistophelian, and the front half of him wore scarlet.

'Thanks,' he said, laughing roguishly, when he recognised me. 'It's darned queer that Paris should be the place where they refuse to take the devil's money.'

I suggested smilingly that it was the corpse they fought shy of.

'I guess not,' he retorted. 'It's dead men's money that keeps this place lively. I wish I'd had the chance of some anyhow; but a rolling stone gathers no moss, they say-not even from graveyards, I suppose.'

He spoke disconsolately, in a tone more befitting the back than the front of him, and quite out of accord with the reckless revelry around him.

'Oh! you'll make lots of money with your pictures,' I said heartily.

He shook his head. 'That's the chap who's going to scoop in the dollars,' he said, indicating a brawny Frenchman attired in a blanket that girdled his loins, and black feathers that decorated his hair. 'That fellow's got the touch of Velasquez. You should see the portrait he's doing for the Salon.'

'Well, I don't see much art in his costume, anyhow,' I retorted. 'Yours is an inspiration of genius.'

'Yes; so prophetic, don't you know,' he replied modestly. 'But you are not the only one who has complimented me. To it I owe the proudest moment of my life-when I shook hands with a European prince.' And he laughed with returning merriment.

'Indeed!' I exclaimed. 'With which?'

'Ah! I see your admiration for my rig is mounting. No; it wasn't with the Prince of Wales-confess your admiration is going down already. Come, you shall guess. Je vous le donne en trois.'

After teasing me a little he told me it was the Kronprinds of Denmark. 'At the Kunstner Karneval in Copenhagen,' he explained briefly. His front face had grown sad again.

'Did you study art in Copenhagen?' I inquired.

'Yes, before I joined that expedition,' he said. 'It was from there I started.'

'Yes, of course,' I replied. 'I remember now. It was a Danish expedition. But what made you chuck up your studies so suddenly?'

'Oh! I don't know. I guess I was just about sick of most things. My stars! Look at that little gypsy-girl dancing the can-can; isn't she fresh? Isn't she wonderful? How awful to think she'll be used up in a year or two!'

'I suppose there was a woman-the eternal feminine,' I said, sticking him to the point, for I was more interested in him than in the seething saturnalia, our common sobriety amid which seemed somehow to raise our casual acquaintanceship to the plane of confidential friendship.

'Yes, I suppose there was a woman,' he echoed in low tones. 'The eternal feminine!' And a strange unfathomable light leapt into his eyes, which he raised slightly towards the gilded ceiling, where countless lustres glittered.

'Deceived you, eh?' I said lightly.

His expression changed. 'Deceived me, as you say,' he murmured, with a faint, sad smile, that made me conjure up a vision of a passionate lovely face with cruel eyes.

'Won't you tell me about it?' I asked, as I tendered him a fresh cigarette, for while we spoke his half-smoked one had been snatched from his mouth by a beautiful Maenad, who whirled off puffing it.

'I reckon you'll be making copy out of it,' he said, his smile growing whimsical.

'If it's good enough,' I replied candidly. 'That's why I am here.'

'What a lovely excuse! But there's nothing in my affair to make a story of.'

I smiled majestically.

'You stick to your art-leave me to manage mine.' And I put a light to his cigarette.

'Ah, but you'll be disappointed this time, I warrant,' he said laughingly, as the smoke circled round his diabolically handsome face. Then, becoming serious again, he went on: 'It's so terribly plebeian, yet it all befell through that very Kunstner Karneval. I was telling you of when I first wore this composite costume which gained me the smile of royalty. It was a very swell affair, of course, not a bit like this, but it was given in hell.'

'In hell!' I cried, startled.

'Yes. Underverden they call it in their lingo. The ball-room of the palace (the Palaeet, an old disused mansion) was got up to represent the infernal regions-you tumble?-and everybody had to dress appropriately. That was what gave me the idea of this costume. The staircase up which you entered was made the mouth of a great dragon, and as you trod on the first step his eye gleamed blazes and brimstone. There were great monsters all about, and dark grottoes radiating around; and when you took your dame into one of them, your tread flooded them with light. If, however, the cavalier modestly conducted his mistress into one of the lighted caves, virtue was rewarded by instantaneous darkness.'

'That was really artistic,' I said, laughing.

'You bet! The artists spent any amount of money over the affair. The whole of Hades bristled with ingenious devices in every corner. I had got a couple of tickets, and had designed the dress of my best girl, as well as my own, and the morning before (there being little work done in the studios that day, as you may well imagine) I called upon her to see her try it on. To my chagrin I found she was down with influenza, or something of that sort appropriate to the bitter winter we were having. And it did freeze that year, by Jove!-so hard that Denmark and Sweden were united-to their mutual disgust, I fancy-by a broad causeway of ice. I remember, as I walked back from the girl's house towards the town along the Langelinie, my mortification was somewhat allayed by the picturesque appearance of the Sound, in whose white expanse boats of every species and colour were embedded, looking like trapped creatures unable to stir oar or sail. But as I left the Promenade and came into the narrow old streets of the town, with their cobblestones and their quaint, many-windowed houses, my ill-humour returned. I had had some trouble in getting the second ticket, and now it looked as if I should get left. I went over in my mind the girls I could ask, and what with not caring more for one than for another, and not knowing which were booked already, and what with the imminence of the ball, I felt the little brains I had getting addled in my head. At last, in sheer despair, I had what is called a happy thought. I resolved to ask the first girl of my acquaintance I met in my walk. Instantly my spirits rose like a thermometer in a Turkish bath. The clouds of irresolution rolled away, and the touch of adventure made my walk joyous again. I peered eagerly into every female face I met, but it was not till I approached the market-place that I knew my fate. Then, turning a corner, I came suddenly and violently face to face with Froeken Jensen.'

He paused and relit his cigarette, and the maddening music of brass instruments and brazen creatures, which his story had shut out, crashed again upon my ears. 'I reckon if you were telling this, you'd stop here,' he said, 'and put down 'to be continued in our next.'' There seemed a trace of huskiness in his flippant tones, as if he were trying to keep under some genuine emotion.

'Never you mind,' I returned, smiling. 'You're not a writer, anyhow, so just keep straight on.'

'Well, Froeken Jensen was absolutely the ugliest girl I have seen in all my globe-trottings.... On second thoughts, that is the place to stop, isn't it?'

'Not at all; it's only in long novels one stops for refreshment. So go ahead, and-I say-do cut your interruptions a la Fielding and Thackeray. C'est vieux jeu.'

'All right, don't get mad. Froeken Jensen had the most irregular and ungainly features that ever crippled a woman's career; her nose was-But no! I won't describe her, poor girl. She was about twenty-six years old, but one of those girls whose years no one counts, who are old maids at seventeen. Well, you can fancy what a fix I was in. It was no good pretending to myself that I hadn't seen her, for we nearly bowled each other over-she was coming along quick trot with a basket on her arm-and it seemed kind of shuffling to back out of my promise to her, though she didn't know anything about it. It was like betting with yourself and wanting to cheat yourself when you lost. I felt I should never trust myself again, if I turned welsher-that's the word, isn't it?'

'It's like Jephtha,' I said. 'He swore, you know, he would sacrifice the first creature that he saw on his triumphant return from the wars, and his daughter came out and had to be sacrificed.'

'Thank you for the compliment,' he said, with a grimace. 'But I'm not up in the classics, so the comparison didn't strike me. But what did strike me, after the first moment of annoyance, was the humour of the situation. I turned and walked beside her-under cover of an elaborate apology for my dashing behaviour. She seemed quite concerned at my regret, and insisted that it was she that had dashed-it was her marketing-day, and she was late. You must know she kept a boarding-house for art and university students, and it was there that I had made her