The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

He dimly descried her lips pouting. 'We can always send her another when we have one,' she said.

He stood there, dumb, glad of the darkness.

'I must go down now,' she said. 'I mustn't stay long.'

'Why?' he articulated.

'Rosie,' she replied briefly.

'What about Rosie?'

'She watches me-ever since she came. Don't you understand?'

This time he was the dullard. He felt an extra quiver of repugnance for Rosie, but said nothing, while Mary Ann briskly lit the gas, and threw some coals on the decaying fire. He was pleased she was going down; he was suffocating; he did not know what to say to her. And yet, as she was disappearing through the doorway, he had a sudden feeling things couldn't be allowed to remain an instant in this impossible position.

'Mary Ann!' he cried.

'Yessir.'

She turned back-her face wore merely the expectant expression of a summoned servant. The childishness of her behaviour confused him, irritated him.

'Are you foolish?' he cried suddenly; half regretting the phrase the instant he had uttered it.

Her lip twitched.

'No, Mr. Lancelot!' she faltered.

'But you talk as if you were,' he said less roughly. 'You mustn't run away from the vicar just when he is going to take you to the lawyer's to certify who you are, and see that you get your money.'

'But I don't want to go with the vicar-I want to go with you. You said you would take me with you.' She was almost in tears now.

'Yes-but don't you-don't you understand that-that,' he stammered; then, temporising, 'but I can wait.'

'Can't the vicar wait?' said Mary Ann. He had never known her show such initiative.

He saw that it was hopeless-that the money had made no more dint upon her consciousness than some vague dream, that her whole being was set towards the new life with him, and shrank in horror from the menace of the vicar's withdrawal of her in the opposite direction. If joy and redemption had not already lain in the one quarter, the advantages of the other might have been more palpably alluring. As it was, her consciousness was 'full up' in the matter, so to speak. He saw that he must tell her plain and plump, startle her out of her simple confidence.

'Listen to me, Mary Ann.'

'Yessir.'

'You are a young woman-not a baby. Strive to grasp what I am going to tell you.'

'Yessir,' in a half sob, that vibrated with the obstinate resentment of a child that knows it is to be argued out of its instincts by adult sophistry. What had become of her passive personality?

'You are now the owner of two and a half million dollars-that is about five hundred thousand pounds. Five- hundred thousand-pounds. Think of ten sovereigns-ten golden sovereigns like that Mrs. Leadbatter gave you. Then ten times as much as that, and ten times as much as all that'-he spread his arms wider and wider-'and ten times as much as all that, and then'-here his arms were prematurely horizontal, so he concluded hastily but impressively,-'and then FIFTY times as much as all that. Do you understand how rich you are?'

'Yessir.' She was fumbling nervously at her gloves, half drawing them off.

'Now all this money will last forever. For you invest it-if only at three per cent.-never mind what that is-and then you get fifteen thousand a year-fifteen thousand golden sovereigns to spend every-'

'Please, sir, I must go now. Rosie!'

'Oh, but you can't go yet. I have lots more to tell you.'

'Yessir; but can't you ring for me again?'

In the gravity of the crisis, the remark tickled him; he laughed with a strange ring in his laughter.

'All right; run away, you sly little puss.'

He smiled on as he poured out his tea; finding a relief in prolonging his sense of the humour of the suggestion, but his heart was heavy, and his brain a-whirl. He did not ring again till he had finished tea.

She came in, and took her gloves out of her pocket.

'No! no!' he cried, strangely exasperated. 'An end to this farce! Put them away. You don't need gloves any more.'

She squeezed them into her pocket nervously, and began to clear away the things, with abrupt movements, looking askance every now and then at the overcast handsome face.

At last he nerved himself to the task and said: 'Well, as I was saying, Mary Ann, the first thing for you to think of is to make sure of all this money-this fifteen thousand pounds a year. You see you will be able to live in a fine manor house-such as the squire lived in in your village-surrounded by a lovely park with a lake in it for swans and boats-'

Mary Ann had paused in her work, slop-basin in hand. The concrete details were beginning to take hold of her imagination.

'Oh, but I should like a farm better,' she said. 'A large farm with great pastures and ever so many cows and pigs and outhouses, and a-oh, just like Atkinson's farm. And meat every day, with pudding on Sundays! Oh, if father was alive, wouldn't he be glad!'

'Yes, you can have a farm-anything you like.'

'Oh, how lovely! A piano?'

'Yes-six pianos.'

'And you will learn me?'

He shuddered and hesitated.

'Well-I can't say, Mary Ann.'

'Why not? Why won't you? You said you would! You learn Rosie.'

'I may not be there, you see,' he said, trying to put a spice of playfulness into his tones.

'Oh, but you will,' she said feverishly. 'You will take me there. We will go there instead of where you said- instead of the green waters.' Her eyes were wild and witching.

He groaned inwardly.

'I cannot promise you now,' he said slowly. 'Don't you see that everything is altered?'

'What's altered? You are here and here am I.' Her apprehension made her almost epigrammatic.

'Ah, but you are quite different now, Mary Ann.'

'I'm not-I want to be with you just the same.'

He shook his head. 'I can't take you with me,' he said decisively.

'Why not?' She caught hold of his arm entreatingly.

'You are not the same Mary Ann-to other people. You are a somebody. Before, you were a nobody. Nobody cared or bothered about you-you were no more than a dead leaf whirling in the street.'

'Yes, you cared and bothered about me,' she cried, clinging to him.

Her gratitude cut him like a knife. 'The eyes of the world are on you now,' he said. 'People will talk about you if you go away with me now.'

'Why will they talk about me? What harm shall I do them?'

Her phrases puzzled him.

'I don't know that you will harm them,' he said slowly, 'but you will harm yourself.'

'How will I harm myself?' she persisted.

'Well, one day, you will want a-a husband. With all that money it is only right and proper you should marry-'

'No, Mr. Lancelot, I don't want a husband. I don't want to marry. I should never want to go away from you.'

There was another painful silence. He sought refuge in a brusque playfulness.

'I see you understand I'm not going to marry you.'

'Yessir.'

He felt a slight relief.

'Well, then,' he said, more playfully still. 'Suppose I wanted to go away from you, Mary Ann?'