The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

When they came home Eileen would gratify her mistress by imitations of comedians. Presently she ventured on the tragedians, without being seen through. She even raised her arm towards the ceiling or shot it towards the centre of the carpet pattern, and Mrs. Maper followed it spellbound.

But from all these monkey tricks she found relief in her real music. When she crooned the old Irish songs, the Black Hole was washed away as by the soft Irish rain, and the bogs stretched golden with furze-blossom and silver with fluffy fairy cotton, and at the doors of the straggling cabins overhung by the cloud-shadowed mountains, blue- cloaked women sat spinning, and her eyes filled with tears as though the peat smoke had got into them.

VII.

In such a mood she was playing one Saturday evening in the interval before dinner, when she became aware that somebody was listening, and turning her head, she saw through the Irish mist a man's figure standing in the conservatory. The figure was vanishing when she cried out a whit huskily, 'Oh, pray, don't let me drive you away.'

He stood still. 'If I am not interrupting your music,' he murmured.

'Not at all,' she said, breaking it off altogether.

As the mist cleared she had a vivid impression of a tall, fair young man against a background of palms. 'Eyes burning under a white marble mantel-piece,' she summed up his face. Could this uncrippled, rather good-looking person be Bob?

'Won't you come in, Mr. Robert?' she said riskily.

'I only wished to thank you,' he said, sliding a step or two into the room.

'There is nothing to thank me for,' she said, whirling her stool to face him. 'It's my way of amusing myself.' She was glad she was in her evening frock.

'Amusing yourself!' He looked aghast.

'What else? I am alone-I have nothing better in the world to do.'

'Does it amuse you?' He was flushed now, even the marble mantel-piece ruddied by the flame. 'I wish it amused me.'

Now it was Eileen's turn to gasp. 'Then why do you listen?'

'I don't listen-I bury myself as far away as I can.'

'So I have understood. Then what are you thanking me for?'

'For what you are doing for-.' his hesitation was barely perceptible-'my mother.'

'Oh!' Eileen looked blank. 'I thought you meant for my music.'

His face showed vast relief. 'Oh, you were talking of your music! Of course, of course, how stupid of me! That is what has drawn me from my hole, like a rat to the Pied Piper, and I do thank you most sincerely. But being drawn, what I most wished to thank the Piper for was-'

'Your mother pays the Piper for that,' she broke in.

He smiled but tossed his head. 'Money! what is that?'

'It is more than I deserve for mere companionship-pleasant drives and theatres.'

He did not accept her delicate reticence.

'But you have altered her wonderfully!' he cried.

'Oh, I have not,' she cried, doubly startled. 'It's just nothing that I have done-nothing.' Then she felt her modesty had put her foot in a bog-hole. Unseeingly he helped her out.

'It is most kind of you to put it like that. But I see it in every movement, every word. She imitates you unconsciously-I became curious to see so excellent a model, though I had resolved not to meet you. No, no, please, don't misunderstand.'

'I don't,' she said mischievously. 'You have now given me three reasons for seeing me. You need give me none for not seeing me.'

'But you must understand,' he said, colouring again, 'how painful all this has been for me-'

'Not seeing me?' she interpolated innocently.

'The-the whole thing,' he stammered.

'Yes, parents are tiresome,' she said sympathetically.

He came nearer the music-stool.

'Are they not? They came down every year for the Eights.'

'Is that at Oxford?'

'Yes.'

She was silent; her thumb flicked at a note on the keyboard behind her.

'But that's not what I mind in them most-'

She wondered at the rapidity with which his shyness was passing into effusiveness. But then was she not the 'Mother-Confessor'? Had not even her favourite nuns told her things about their early lives, even when there was no moral to be pointed? 'They're very good-hearted,' she murmured apologetically. 'I'm often companion-in charity expeditions.'

'It's easy to be good-hearted when you don't know what to do with your money. This place is full of such people. But I look in vain for the diviner impulse.'

Eileen wondered if he were a Dissenter. But then 'the place was full of such people.'

'You don't think there's enough religion?' she murmured.

'There's certainly plenty of churches and chapels. But I find myself isolated here. You see, I'm a Socialist.'

Eileen crossed herself instinctively.

'You don't believe in God!' she cried in horror. For the good nuns had taught her that 'les socialistes' were synonymous with 'les athees.'

He laughed. 'Not, if by God you mean Mammon. I don't believe in Property-we up here in the sun and the others down there in the soot.'

'But you are up here,' said Eileen, naively.

'I can't help it. My mother would raise Cain.' He smiled wistfully. 'She couldn't bear to see a stranger helping father in the factory management.'

'Then you are down there.'

'Quite so. I work as hard as any one even if my labour isn't manual. I dress like an ordinary hand, too, though my mother doesn't know that, for I change at the office.'

'But what good does that do?'

'It satisfies my conscience.'

'And I suppose the men like it?'

'No, that's the strange part. They don't. And father only laughs. But one must persist. At Oxford I worked under Ruskin.'

'Oh, you're an artist!'

'No, I didn't mean that part of Ruskin's work. His gospel of labour-we had a patch for digging.'

'What-real spades!'

'Did you imagine we called a spoon a spade?' he said, a whit resentfully.

Eileen smiled. 'No, but I can't imagine you using a common or garden spade.'

'You are thinking of my hands.' He looked at them, not without complacency, Eileen thought, as she herself wondered where he had got his long white fingers from. 'But it is a couple of years ago,' he explained. 'It was hard work, I assure you.'

'Did your mother know?' Eileen asked with a little whimsical look.

'Of course not. She would have been horrified.'

'Well, but most people would be surprised.'

'Yes. Put your muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero; put your muscle into a spade and you are a madman.'

'You think it's vice versa?' queried Eileen, ingenuously.

'Much more. At least,' he stammered and coloured again, 'I don't pose as a hero but simply-'

'As what?' Eileen still looked innocent.