The Grey Wig

The Grey Wig: Stories and
Novelettes, by

Israel Zangwill
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Title: The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes The Grey Wig;
Chassé-Croisé; The Woman Beater; The Eternal Feminine; The Silent
Sisters; The Big Bow Mystery; Merely Mary Ann; The Serio-Comic
Governess
Author: Israel Zangwill

Release Date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #16408]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WIG: STORIES AND NOVELETTES***
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THE GREY WIG
Stories and Novelettes
by
I. Zangwill
Author of "The Mantle of Elijah" "Children of the Ghetto" etc., etc.
1923

TO MY MOTHER AND SISTERS THIS BOOK Mainly a Study of
Woman IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED

PREFATORY NOTE
This Volume embraces my newest and oldest work, and includes--for
the sake of uniformity of edition--a couple of shilling novelettes that
are out of print.
I.Z.
Mentone, February, 1903.

CONTENTS
THE GREY WIG CHASSÉ-CROISÉ THE WOMAN BEATER THE
ETERNAL FEMININE THE SILENT SISTERS THE BIG BOW
MYSTERY MERELY MARY ANN THE SERIO-COMIC
GOVERNESS

THE GREY WIG

I
They both styled themselves "Madame," but only the younger of the
old ladies had been married. Madame Valière was still a demoiselle, but
as she drew towards sixty it had seemed more convenable to possess a
mature label. Certainly Madame Dépine had no visible matrimonial
advantages over her fellow-lodger at the Hôtel des Tourterelles, though
in the symmetrical cemetery of Montparnasse (Section 22) wreaths of
glass beads testified to a copious domesticity in the far past, and a
newspaper picture of a chasseur d'Afrique pinned over her bed
recalled--though only the uniform was the dead soldier's--the son she
had contributed to France's colonial empire. Practically it was two old
maids--or two lone widows--whose boots turned pointed toes towards
each other in the dark cranny of the rambling, fusty corridor of the
sky-floor. Madame Dépine was round, and grew dumpier with age;
"Madame" Valière was long, and grew slimmer. Otherwise their lives
ran parallel. For the true madame of the establishment you had to turn
to Madame la Propriétaire, with her buxom bookkeeper of a daughter
and her tame baggage-bearing husband. This full-blooded, jovial
creature, with her swart moustache, represented the only Parisian
success of three provincial lives, and, in her good-nature, had permitted
her decayed townswomen--at as low a rent as was compatible with
prudence--to shelter themselves under her roof and as near it as
possible. Her house being a profitable warren of American art-students,
tempered by native journalists and decadent poets, she could, moreover,
afford to let the old ladies off coffee and candles. They were at liberty
to prepare their own déjeuner in winter or to buy it outside in summer;
they could burn their own candles or sit in the dark, as the heart in them
pleased; and thus they were as cheaply niched as any one in the gay
city. Rentières after their meticulous fashion, they drew a ridiculous but
regular amount from the mysterious coffers of the Crédit Lyonnais.
But though they met continuously in the musty corridor, and even
dined--when they did dine--at the same crémerie, they never spoke to

each other. Madame la Propriétaire was the channel through which they
sucked each other's history, for though they had both known her in their
girlish days at Tonnerre, in the department of Yonne, they had not
known each other. Madame Valière (Madame Dépine learnt, and it
seemed to explain the frigidity of her neighbour's manner) still trailed
clouds of glory from the service of a Princess a quarter of a century
before. Her refusal to wink at the Princess's goings-on, her austere, if
provincial, regard for the convenances, had cost her the place, and from
these purpureal heights she had fallen lower and lower, till she struck
the attic of the Hôtel des Tourterelles.
But even a haloed past does not give one a licence to annoy one's
neighbours. Madame Dépine felt resentfully, and she hated Madame
Valière as a haughty minion of royalty, who kept a cough, which
barked loudest in the silence of the night.
"Why doesn't she go to the hospital, your Princess?" she complained to
Madame la Propriétaire.
"Since she is able to nurse herself at home," the opulent-bosomed
hostess replied with a shrug.
"At the expense of other people," Madame Dépine retorted bitterly. "I
shall die of her cough, I am sure of it."
Madame showed her white teeth sweetly. "Then it is you who should
go to the