The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

what we women want. Don't speak! I know what you're going to say. Skip me. Talk of yourself.'

'You get what you want. The other's only make-believe. It passes like water from a duck's back. You women don't understand. The white fire of your purity cleanses us, and that is why we will have nothing less-'

'Ah, now you have skipped to me. I'm not pretending there isn't an evil spirit in me to match yours. It split away from me and became Nelly O'Neill. You asked which I was? I am both. Here, I am a respectable governess. Let me ring for Mrs. Lee Carter. She'll give you my character. The white fire and all that.' She pressed the bell.

'Don't be so absurd. Give me time to collect my senses.'

'All right, pick up the pieces, while I collect these.' She stooped over the bits of glass.

'But for Heaven's sake don't bring that woman into it-'

The door opened. 'Yes, miss?'

'Another glass, please.' The servant disappeared.

'I do hope you won't break this one. In what country is it that the bridegroom breaks a glass in the marriage ceremonial? Oh, yes, I remember. Fossy told me. Among the Jews. There's a lot in the profession. Not that it's such a marrying profession. And to think I might have been a regular bride! But I've lost you, my dear boy, hero of a hundred hill-fights, I know it-and the moment you've picked your little bits of senses together, you'll know it, too. Alas, we shall never go tiger-hunting together.

''A night of memories and of sighs

I consecrate to thee.''

'I don't say I won't keep my promise,' he said sulkily.

'Your promise! Hoity toity! Upon my word! I'm no breach-of-promise lady-Chops and tomato sauce indeed! I recognise that we could never marry. There would always be that between us!'

Her fascination gripped him in proportion as she let him go.

'I don't know that I should mind if nobody really knows,' he began.

'You! It's I that would mind. And I really know. Could I marry a man who had told me smoking-room stories? No, Eileen is done with you. Good-by!'

'Good-by? No, I can't go. I can't face the emptiness. You've filled me and fooled me with love all these weeks. Good God! Do you owe me nothing?'

'I leave you something-Nelly O'Neill! Go and see her. Now you're off with the old love. You mark what a prophetess I was. Nelly'll receive you very differently. No cant of superiority. You'll be just a pair of jolly good fellows. You'll sit up drinking whisky together and yarning anecdotes. No uncomfortable pretences; no black bog posing as white fire; no driven snow business, London snow nicely trodden, in. And the tales of the world you tell me-how useful they'll come in for stage-patter! Oh, we shall be happy enough! We can still pick up the pieces!'

'Eileen! Eileen! you will drive me mad. What do you mean? You know I could never have a wife on the Halls. It would ruin me in the clubs, it would-'

'In the clubs! Ha! ha! ha! Every member of which would be delighted to have tea with me! But who's proposing to you a wife on the Halls? You said I owed you myself, and it's true, but you don't suppose I could marry a man I didn't respect? I told you we're not a marrying profession. Come, let's kiss and be friends.'

He drew back as in horror. 'No, no, Eileen, I respect you too much for that.'

She looked at him long and curiously. 'Yes, the sexes don't understand each other. Well, good-by. I almost could marry you, after all. But I'm too wise. Please go. I have a headache and it is quite possible I shall scream. Good-by, dear. I was never more than a phantom to you-a boyish memory, and a bad one at that. Don't you know you gave me a pair of black eyes? Good-by: you'll marry a dear, sweet girl in white muslin who'll never know. God bless you.'

XXI.

Sir Robert Maper simply could not get up on the Monday morning. The agony of suspense was too keen, and he lay with closed eyes, trying to drowse his consciousness, and exchanging it in his fitful snatches of sleep for oppressive dreams, in one of which Eileen figured as a Lorelei, combing her locks on a rock as she sang her siren song.

But she did not prolong his agony beyond mid-day.

'MY DEAR SIR ROBERT,-Both of us are dead and gone, so, alas! neither

can marry you. Don't be alarmed, we are only dead to the world, and

gone to the Continent. 'Get thee to a nunnery.' Hamlet knew best. If I

could have married any man it would have been you. You are the only

gentleman I have ever known. But I don't love you. It's a miserable

pity. I wish I did. I wonder why 'love' is an active verb in all

languages. It ought to have a passive form, like 'loquor' (though that

passive should be reserved for parrots). Forgive the governess! I seem

to have undergone 'love' for two men, but one was a fool and the other

not quite a rogue, and I dare say I never really loved anybody but

myself (and there the verb is very active)! I love to coquet, but the

moment a man comes too close, I feel hunted. I dare say I was secretly

pleased to find my hero tripping, so as to send him packing. Was ever

hero in such a comic plight? Poor, unlucky hero! But this will be Greek

to you-the kind you can't read. Oh, the men I could have married! It

is curious, when you think of it, the men one little woman might marry

and be dutifully absorbed in. I could have been a bass chorister's wife

or a Baronet's wife, the wife of an Honourable dolt, and the wife of a

dishonourable dramatist. J'en passe et des meilleurs. I could have

lived in Calcutta or in Clerkenwell, been received in Belgravia or in

Boulogne. Good Lord! the parts one woman is supposed to be fit for,

while the man remains his stolid, stupid self. Talk of the variety

stage! Or is it that they all want the same thing of her?

'Talking of the variety stage, there would have been the danger, too,

of my thirsting for it, even with a Dowager Lady for a stepmother. The

nostalgia of the boards is a disease your love might not have warded

off. You are well rid of both of us.

'You said-at my first and last supper-that money and station are the

mere veneer of life, the central reality is love. That is true, if by

love you read the love of God, of Christ. Do you remember my going one

day over the works with your poor father? Well, after I had been

through rooms and rooms of whirring machinery infinitely ingenious and

diversified-that made my head ache-they took me to a shed where stood

in a sort of giant peace the great engine that moved it all. 'God!' was

my instant thought, and somehow my headache fled. And ever since then,

when I have been oppressed by the complex clatter of life, my thought

has gone back to that power-room, to the great simple force behind it

all. I rested in the thought as a swimmer on a placid ocean. But the

ocean is cold and infinite, and of late I have longed for a more human

God that loved and forgave, and so I come back to the Christ. You see

Plato never satisfied me. Your explanation of the B.C. glories was sown

on barren soil. I grant you a nobility in your Plato as of Greek

pillars, soaring in the sunlight, but somehow I want the Gothic-I long

for 'dim religious light' and windows stained with saints. Oh, to find

my soul again! If I could tell you how the Convent rises before me as a