The Grey Wig | Page 2

hospital."

II
Time wrote wrinkles enough on the brows of the two old ladies, but his
frosty finger never touched their glossy brown hair, for both wore wigs
of nearly the same shade. These wigs were almost symbolic of the
evenness of their existence, which had got beyond the reach of
happenings. The Church calendar, so richly dyed with figures of saints
and martyrs, filled life with colour enough, and fast-days were almost
as welcome as feast-days, for if the latter warmed the general air, the

former cloaked economy with dignity. As for Mardi Gras, that shook
you up for weeks, even though you did not venture out of your
apartment; the gay serpentine streamers remained round one's soul as
round the trees.
At intervals, indeed, secular excitements broke the even tenor. A
country cousin would call upon the important Parisian relative, and be
received, not in the little bedroom, but in state in the mustily
magnificent salon of the hotel--all gold mirrors and mouldiness--which
the poor country mouse vaguely accepted as part of the glories of Paris
and success. Madame Dépine would don her ponderous gold brooch,
sole salvage of her bourgeois prosperity; while, if the visitor were for
Madame Valière, that grande dame would hang from her yellow,
shrivelled neck the long gold chain and the old-fashioned watch, whose
hands still seemed to point to regal hours.
Another break in the monotony was the day on which the lottery was
drawn--the day of the pagan god of Luck. What delicious hopes of
wealth flamed in these withered breasts, only to turn grey and cold
when the blank was theirs again, but not the less to soar up again, with
each fresh investment, towards the heaven of the hundred thousand
francs! But if ever Madame Dépine stumbled on Madame Valière
buying a section of a billet at the lottery agent's, she insisted on having
her own slice cut from another number. Fortune itself would be robbed
of its sweet if the "Princess" should share it. Even their common failure
to win a sou did not draw them from their freezing depths of silence,
from which every passing year made it more difficult to emerge. Some
greater conjuncture was needed for that.
It came when Madame la Propriétaire made her début one fine morning
in a grey wig.

III
Hitherto that portly lady's hair had been black. But now, as suddenly as
darkness vanishes in a tropic dawn, it was become light. No gradual

approach of the grey, for the black had been equally artificial. The wig
is the region without twilight. Only in the swart moustache had the grey
crept on, so that perhaps the growing incongruity had necessitated the
sudden surrender to age.
To both Madame Dépine and Madame Valière the grey wig came like a
blow on the heart.
It was a grisly embodiment of their secret griefs, a tantalising vision of
the unattainable. To glide reputably into a grey wig had been for years
their dearest desire. As each saw herself getting older and older, saw
her complexion fade and the crow's-feet gather, and her eyes grow
hollow, and her teeth fall out and her cheeks fall in, so did the
impropriety of her brown wig strike more and more humiliatingly to
her soul. But how should a poor old woman ever accumulate enough
for a new wig? One might as well cry for the moon--or a set of false
teeth. Unless, indeed, the lottery--?
And so, when Madame Dépine received a sister-in-law from Tonnerre,
or Madame Valière's nephew came up by the excursion train from that
same quiet and incongruously christened townlet, the Parisian
personage would receive the visitor in the darkest corner of the salon,
with her back to the light, and a big bonnet on her head--an imposing
figure repeated duskily in the gold mirrors. These visits, instead of a
relief, became a terror. Even a provincial knows it is not convenable for
an old woman to wear a brown wig. And Tonnerre kept strict record of
birthdays.
Tears of shame and misery had wetted the old ladies' hired pillows, as
under the threat of a provincial visitation they had tossed sleepless in
similar solicitude, and their wigs, had they not been wigs, would have
turned grey of themselves. Their only consolation had been that neither
outdid the other, and so long as each saw the other's brown wig, they
had refrained from facing the dread possibility of having to sell off
their jewellery in a desperate effort of emulation. Gradually Madame
Dépine had grown to wear her wig with vindictive endurance, and
Madame Valière to wear hers with gentle resignation. And now, here
was Madame la Propriétaire, a woman five years younger and ten years

better preserved, putting them both to the public