The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

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.'