The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

'Adieu, ma cherie! I will tell my dear ones of my Paris comrade.' And for the first time their lips met, and the brown wig brushed the grey.

XIV.

Madame Depine had two drearier days than she had foreseen. She kept to her own room, creeping out only at night, when, like all cats, all wigs are grey. After an eternity of loneliness the third day dawned, and she went by pre-arrangement to meet the morning train. Ah, how gaily gleamed the kiosks on the boulevards through the grey mist! What jolly red faces glowed under the cabmen's white hats! How blithely the birds sang in the bird-shops!

The train was late. Her spirits fell as she stood impatiently at the barrier, shivering in her thin clothes, and morbidly conscious of all those eyes on her wig. At length the train glided in unconcernedly, and shot out a medley of passengers. Her poor old eyes strained towards them. They surged through the gate in animated masses, but Madame Valiere's form did not disentangle itself from them, though every instant she expected it to jump at her eyes. Her heart contracted painfully-there was no 'Princess.' She rushed round to another exit, then outside, to the gates at the end of the drive; she peered into every cab even, as it rumbled past. What had happened? She trudged home as hastily as her legs could bear her. No, Madame Valiere had not arrived.

'They have persuaded her to stay another day,' said Madame la Proprietaire. 'She will come by the evening train, or she will write.'

Madame Depine passed the evening at the Gare de Lyon, and came home heavy of heart and weary of foot. The 'Princess' might still arrive at midnight, though, and Madame Depine lay down dressed in her bed, waiting for the familiar step in the corridor. About three o'clock she fell into a heavy doze, and woke in broad day. She jumped to her feet, her overwrought brain still heavy with the vapours of sleep, and threw open her door.

'Ah! she has already taken in her boots,' she thought confusedly. 'I shall be late for coffee.' She gave her perfunctory knock, and turned the door-handle. But the door would not budge.

'Jacques! Jacques!' she cried, with a clammy fear at her heart. The garcon, who was pottering about with pails, opened the door with his key. An emptiness struck cold from the neat bed, the bare walls, the parted wardrobe-curtains that revealed nothing. She fled down the stairs, into the bureau.

'Madame Valiere is not returned?' she cried.

Madame la Proprietaire shook her head.

'And she has not written?'

'No letter in her writing has come-for anybody.'

'O mon Dieu! She has been murdered. She would go alone by night.'

'She owes me three weeks' rent,' grimly returned Madame la Proprietaire.

'What do you insinuate?' Madame Depine's eyes flared.

Madame la Proprietaire shrugged her shoulders. 'I am not at my first communion. I have grown grey in the service of lodgers. And this is how they reward me.' She called Jacques, who had followed uneasily in Madame Depine's wake. 'Is there anything in the room?'

'Empty as an egg-shell, madame.'

'Not even the miniature of her sister?'

'Not even the miniature of her sister.'

'Of her sister?' repeated Madame Depine.

'Yes; did I never tell you of her? A handsome creature, but she threw her bonnet over the mills.'

'But I thought that was the Princess.'

'The Princess, too. Her bonnet will also be found lying there.'

'No, no; I mean I thought the portrait was the Princess's.'

Madame la Proprietaire laughed. 'She told you so?'

'No, no; but-but I imagined so.'

'Without doubt, she gave you the idea. Quelle farceuse! I don't believe there ever was a Princess. The family was always inflated.'

All Madame Depine's world seemed toppling. Somehow her own mistake added to her sense of having been exploited.

'Still,' said Madame la Proprietaire with a shrug, 'it is only three weeks' rent.'

'If you lose it, I will pay!' Madame Depine had an heroic burst of faith.

'As you please. But I ought to have been on my guard. Where did she take the funds for a grey wig?'

'Ah, the brown wig!' cried Madame Depine, joyfully. 'She must have left that behind, and any coiffeur will give you three weeks' rent for that alone.'

'We shall see,' replied Madame la Proprietaire, ambiguously.

The trio mounted the stairs, and hunted high and low, disturbing the peaceful spider-webs. They peered under the very bed. Not even the old block was to be seen. As far as Madame Valiere's own chattels were concerned, the room was indeed 'empty as an egg-shell.'

'She has carried it away with the three weeks' rent,' sneered Madame la Proprietaire. 'In my own carpet-bag,' she added with a terrible recollection.

'She wished to wear it at night against the hard back of the carriage, and guard the other all glossy for the wedding.' Madame Depine quavered pleadingly, but she could not quite believe herself.

'The wedding had no more existence than the Princess,' returned Madame la Proprietaire, believing herself more and more.

'Then she will have cheated me out of the grey wig from the first,' cried Madame Depine, involuntarily. 'And I who sacrificed myself to her!'

'Comment! It was your wig?'

'No, no.' She flushed and stammered. 'But enfin-and then, oh, heaven! my brooch!'

'She has stolen your brooch?'

Great tears rolled down the wrinkled, ashen cheeks. So this was her reward for secretly instructing the coiffeur to make the 'Princess's' wig first. The Princess, indeed! Ah, the adventuress! She felt choking; she shook her fist in the air. Not even the brooch to show when her family came up from Tonnerre, to say nothing of the wig. Was there a God in the world at all? Oh, holy Mother! No wonder the trickstress would not be escorted to the station-she never went to the station. No wonder she would not sell the royal secrets to the journalist-there were none to sell. Oh! it was all of a piece.

'If I were you I should go to the bureau of police!' said Madame la Proprietaire.

Yes, she would go; the wretch should be captured, should be haled to gaol. Even her half of the Louis Quinze timepiece recurred to poor Madame Depine's brain.

'Add that she has stolen my carpet-bag.'

The local bureau telegraphed first to Tonnerre.

There had been the wedding, but no Madame Valiere. She had accepted the invitation, had given notice of her arrival; one had awaited the midnight train. The family was still wondering why the rich aunt had turned sulky at the last hour. But she was always an eccentric; a capricious and haughty personage.

Poor Madame Depine's recurrent 'My wig! my brooch!' reduced the official mind to the same muddle as her own.

'No doubt a sudden impulse of senescent kleptomania,' said the superintendent, sagely, when he had noted down for transference to headquarters Madame Depine's verbose and vociferous description of the traits and garments of the runagate. 'But we will do our best to recover your brooch and your wig.' Then, with a spasm of supreme sagacity, 'Without doubt they are in the carpet-bag.'

XV.

Madame Depine left the bureau and wandered about in a daze. That monster of ingratitude! That arch- adventuress, more vicious even than her bejewelled sister! All the long months of more than Lenten rigour recurred