The Grey Wig | Page 8

itself between two destinies, then subsided, pile upwards. The poor "Princess's" face grew even longer; but for the life of her Madame D��pine could not make her own face other than a round red glow, like the sun in a fog. In fact, she looked so young at this supreme moment that the brown wig quite became her.
"I congratulate you," said Madame Vali��re, after the steam-tram had become a far-away rumble.
"Before next summer we shall have yours too," the winner reminded her consolingly.

XI
They had not waited till the hundred francs were actually in the stocking. The last few would accumulate while the wig was making. As they sat at their joyous breakfast the next morning, ere starting for the hairdresser's, the casement open to the October sunshine, Jacques brought up a letter for Madame Vali��re--an infrequent incident. Both old women paled with instinctive distrust of life. And as the "Princess" read her letter, all the sympathetic happiness died out of her face.
"What is the matter, then?" breathed Madame D��pine.
The "Princess" recovered herself. "Nothing, nothing. Only my nephew who is marrying."
"Soon?"
"The middle of next month."
"Then you will need to give presents!"
"One gives a watch, a bagatelle, and then--there is time. It is nothing. How good the coffee is this morning!"
They had not changed the name of the brew: it is not only in religious evolutions that old names are a comfort.
They walked to the hairdresser's in silence. The triumphal procession had become almost a dead march. Only once was the silence broken.
"I suppose they have invited you down for the wedding?" said Madame D��pine.
"Yes," said Madame Vali��re.
They walked on.
The coiffeur was at his door, sunning his aproned stomach, and twisting his moustache as if it were a customer's. Emotion overcame Madame D��pine at the sight of him. She pushed Madame Vali��re into the tobacconist's instead.
"I have need of a stamp," she explained, and demanded one for five centimes. She leaned over the counter babbling aimlessly to the proprietor, postponing the great moment. Madame Vali��re lost the clue to her movements, felt her suddenly as a stranger. But finally Madame D��pine drew herself together and led the way into the coiffeurs. The proprietor, who had re?ntered his parlour, re?merged gloomily.
Madame Vali��re took the word. "We are thinking of ordering a wig."
"Cash in advance, of course," said the coiffeur.
"Comment!" cried Madame Vali��re, indignantly. "You do not trust my friend!"
"Madame Vali��re has moved in the best society," added Madame D��pine.
"But you cannot expect me to do two hundred francs of work and then be left planted with the wigs!"
"But who said two hundred francs?" cried Madame D��pine. "It is only one wig that we demand--to-day at least."
He shrugged his shoulders. "A hundred francs, then."
"And why should we trust you with one hundred francs?" asked Madame D��pine. "You might botch the work."
"Or fly to Italy," added the "Princess."
In the end it was agreed he should have fifty down and fifty on delivery.
"Measure us, while we are here," said Madame D��pine. "I will bring you the fifty francs immediately."
"Very well," he murmured. "Which of you?"
But Madame Vali��re was already affectionately untying Madame D��pine's bonnet-strings. "It is for my friend," she cried. "And let it be as chic and convenable as possible!"
He bowed. "An artist remains always an artist."
Madame D��pine removed her wig and exposed her poor old scalp, with its thin, forlorn wisps and patches of grey hair, grotesque, almost indecent, in its nudity. But the coiffeur measured it in sublime seriousness, putting his tape this way and that way, while Madame Vali��re's eyes danced in sympathetic excitement.
"You may as well measure my friend too," remarked Madame D��pine, as she reassumed her glossy brown wig (which seemed propriety itself compared with the bald cranium).
"What an idea!" ejaculated Madame Vali��re. "To what end?"
"Since you are here," returned Madame D��pine, indifferently. "You may as well leave your measurements. Then when you decide yourself--Is it not so, monsieur?"
The coiffeur, like a good man of business, eagerly endorsed the suggestion. "Perfectly, madame."
"But if one's head should change!" said Madame Vali��re, trembling with excitement at the vivid imminence of the visioned wig.
"Souvent femme varie, madame," said the coiffeur. "But it is the inside, not the outside of the head."
"But you said one is not the dome of the Invalides," Madame Vali��re reminded him.
"He spoke of our old blocks," Madame D��pine intervened hastily. "At our age one changes no more."
Thus persuaded, the "Princess" in her turn denuded herself of her wealth of wig, and Madame D��pine watched with unsmiling satisfaction the stretchings of tape across the ungainly cranium.
"C'est bien," she said. "I return with your fifty francs on the instant."
And having seen her "Princess" safely ensconced in the attic, she rifled the stocking, and returned to the coiffeur.
When she emerged from the shop, the vindictive endurance had vanished from her face, and