The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

riches? She will only be wretched-like me.'

'Then why not be happy together?'

'Impossible.'

'Why is it impossible?'

'Because her dollars would stick in my throat-the oil would make me sick. And what would Peter say, and my brother (not that I care what he says), and my acquaintances?'

'What does that matter to you? While you were a dead leaf nobody bothered to talk about you; they let you starve-you, with your genius-now you can let them talk-you, with your heiress. Five hundred thousand pounds. More than you will make with all your operas if you live a century. Fifteen thousand a year. Why, you could have all your works performed at your own expense, and for your own sole pleasure if you chose, as the King of Bavaria listened to Wagner's operas. You could devote your life to the highest art-nay, is it not a duty you owe to the world? Would it not be a crime against the future to draggle your wings with sordid cares, to sink to lower aims by refusing this Heaven-sent boon?'

The thought clung to him. He rose and laid out heaps of muddled manuscript-opera disjecta-and turned their pages.

'Yes-yes-give us life!' they seemed to cry to him. 'We are dead drops of ink, wake us to life and beauty. How much longer are we to lie here, dusty in death? We have waited so patiently-have pity on us, raise us up from our silent tomb, and we will fly abroad through the whole earth, chanting your glory; yea, the world shall be filled to eternity with the echoes of our music and the splendour of your name.'

But he shook his head and sighed, and put them back in their niches, and placed the comic opera he had begun in the centre of the table.

'There lie the only dollars that will ever come my way,' he said aloud. And, humming the opening bars of a lively polka from the manuscript, he took up his pen and added a few notes. Then he paused; the polka would not come-the other voice was louder.

'It would be a degradation,' he repeated, to silence it. 'It would be merely for her money. I don't love her.'

'Are you so sure of that?'

'If I really loved her I shouldn't refuse to marry her.'

'Are you so sure of that?'

'What's the use of all this wire-drawing?-the whole thing is impossible.'

'Why is it impossible?'

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, refusing to be drawn back into the eddy, and completed the bar of the polka.

Then he threw down his pen, rose and paced the room in desperation.

'Was ever any man in such a dilemma?' he cried aloud.

'Did ever any man get such a chance?' retorted his silent tormentor.

'Yes, but I mustn't seize the chance-it would be mean.'

'It would be meaner not to. You're not thinking of that poor girl-only of yourself. To leave her now would be more cowardly than to have left her when she was merely Mary Ann. She needs you even more now that she will be surrounded by sharks and adventurers. Poor, poor Mary Ann! It is you who have the right to protect her now; you were kind to her when the world forgot her. You owe it to yourself to continue to be good to her.'

'No, no, I won't humbug myself. If I married her it would only be for her money.'

'No, no, don't humbug yourself. You like her. You care for her very much. You are thrilling at this very moment with the remembrance of her lips to-night. Think of what life will be with her-life full of all that is sweet and fair-love and riches, and leisure for the highest art, and fame and the promise of immortality. You are irritable, sensitive, delicately organised; these sordid, carking cares, these wretched struggles, these perpetual abasements of your highest self-a few more years of them-they will wreck and ruin you, body and soul. How many men of genius have married their housekeepers even-good, clumsy, homely bodies, who have kept their husband's brain calm and his pillow smooth. And again, a man of genius is the one man who can marry anybody. The world expects him to be eccentric. And Mary Ann is no coarse city weed, but a sweet country bud. How splendid will be her blossoming under the sun! Do not fear that she will ever shame you; she will look beautiful, and men will not ask her to talk. Nor will you want her to talk. She will sit silent in the cosy room where you are working, and every now and again you will glance up from your work at her and draw inspiration from her sweet presence. So pull yourself together, man; your troubles are over, and life henceforth one long blissful dream. Come, burn me that tinkling, inglorious comic opera, and let the whole sordid past mingle with its ashes.'

So strong was the impulse-so alluring the picture-that he took up the comic opera and walked towards the fire, his finger itching to throw it in. But he sat down again after a moment and went on with his work. It was imperative he should make progress with it; he could not afford to waste his time-which was money-because another person- Mary Ann to wit-had come into a superfluity of both. In spite of which the comic opera refused to advance; somehow he did not feel in the mood for gaiety; he threw down his pen in despair and disgust. But the idea of not being able to work rankled in him. Every hour seemed suddenly precious-now that he had resolved to make money in earnest-now that for a year or two he could have no other aim or interest in life. Perhaps it was that he wished to overpower the din of contending thoughts. Then a happy thought came to him. He rummaged out Peter's ballad. He would write a song on the model of that, as Peter had recommended-something tawdry and sentimental, with a cheap accompaniment. He placed the ballad on the rest and started going through it to get himself in the vein. But to-night the air seemed to breathe an ineffable melancholy, the words-no longer mawkish-had grown infinitely pathetic:-

'Kiss me, good-night, dear love,

Dream of the old delight;

My spirit is summoned above,

Kiss me, dear love, good-night!'

The hot tears ran down his cheeks, as he touched the keys softly and lingeringly. He could go no farther than the refrain; he leant his elbows on the keyboard, and dropped his head upon his arms. The clashing notes jarred like a hoarse cry, then vibrated slowly away into a silence that was broken only by his sobs.

He rose late the next day, after a sleep that was one prolonged nightmare, full of agonised, abortive striving after something that always eluded him, he knew not what. And when he woke-after a momentary breath of relief at the thought of the unreality of these vague horrors-he woke to the heavier nightmare of reality. Oh, those terrible dollars!

He drew the blind, and saw with a dull acquiescence that the brightness of May had fled. The wind was high-he heard it fly past, moaning. In the watery sky, the round sun loomed silver-pale and blurred. To his fevered eye it looked like a worn dollar.

He turned away, shivering, and began to dress. He opened the door a little, and pulled in his lace-up boots, which were polished in the highest style of art. But when he tried to put one on, his toes stuck fast in the opening, and refused to advance. Annoyed, he put his hand in, and drew out a pair of tan gloves, perfectly new. Astonished, he inserted his hand again and drew out another pair, then another. Reddening uncomfortably, for he divined something of the meaning, he examined the left boot, and drew out three more pairs of gloves, two new and one slightly soiled.

He sank down, half dressed, on the bed with his head on his breast, leaving his boots and Mary Ann's gloves scattered about the floor. He was angry, humiliated; he felt like laughing, and he felt like sobbing.

At last he roused himself, finished dressing, and rang for breakfast. Rosie brought it up.

'Hullo! Where's Mary Ann?' he said lightly.

'She's above work now,' said Rosie, with an unamiable laugh. 'You know about her fortune.'

'Yes; but your mother told me she insisted on going about her work till Monday.'

'So she said yesterday-silly little thing! But to-day she says she'll only help mother in the kitchen-and do all the boots of a morning. She won't do any more waiting.'

'Ah!' said Lancelot, crumbling his toast.

'I don't believe she knows what she wants,' concluded Rosie, turning to go.

'Then I suppose she's in the kitchen now?' he said, pouring out his coffee down the side of his cup.

'No, she's gone out now, sir.'