The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Part 70

"Yes, we are. They call it a music-hall--it's great fun. But don't tell the mater."

"You naughty boy!"

"I don't see it. All the chaps go."

She shook her head. "Not the nicest."

"Oh, that's tommyrot," he said disrespectfully. "Their women folk don't know--that's all."

Eileen now began to feel like a criminal round whom the toils thicken.

In the most fashionable of her three Halls, she sang a little French song. And she had taught Master Harold his French.

Of course, even if Nelly were seen by Eileen's friends or acquaintances, detection was not sure. Eileen was always in such sedate gowns, never low-cut, her manners were so suppressed, her hair done so differently, and what a difference hair made! In fact, it was in her private life that she felt herself more truly the actress. On the boards her real secret self seemed to flash forth, full of verve, dash, roguery, devilry. Should she take to a wig, or to character songs in appropriate costumes? No, she would run the risk. It gave more spice to life. Every evening now was an adventure, nay three adventures, and when she snuggled herself up at midnight in her demure white bed, overlooked by the crucifix, she felt like the hunted were-wolf, safely back in human shape. And she became more audacious, letting herself go, so as to widen the chasm between Nelly and Eileen, and make anybody who should suspect her be sure he was wrong. And occasionally she paid for all this fever and gaiety by fits of the blackest melancholy.

She had gradually dropped her habit of prayer, but in one of her dark moods she found herself slipping to her knees and crying: "Oh, Holy Mother, look down on Thy distressed daughter, and deliver her from the body of this death. So many wooers and no spark of love in herself; a woman who sings love-songs with lips no man has touched, a lone-of-soul who can live neither with the respectable nor with the Bohemians, who loves you, _sanctissima Maria_, without being sure you exist. Oh, Holy Mother of G.o.d, advocate of sinners, pray for me. If I had only something solid to cling to--a babe to suckle with its red grotesque little face.

You will say cling to the cross, but is not my whole life also a crucifixion? I am rent in twain that a thousand fools may laugh nightly.

Oh, Holy Mother, make me at one with myself; it is the atonement I need. Send me the child's heart, and I will light a hundred candles to you.... Or do you now prefer electricity? Oh, Maria mavourneen, I cannot pray to you, for there is a mocking devil within me, and you will not cast her out." And she burst into hysteric tears.

XVI

As she was about to start one evening for her round, Mrs. Lee Carter's maid brought up a bombsh.e.l.l. Superficially it looked like a letter with foreign stamps, marked "Private" and readdressed with an English stamp from Ireland. But that one line of unerased writing, her name, threw her into heats and colds, for she remembered the long-forgotten hand of Lieutenant Doherty. She had to sit down on her bed and finish trembling before she broke the seal and set free this voice from the past.

"DEAR MOTHER-CONFESSOR,--You will be wondering why I have been silent all these years and why I write now. Well, I will tell you the truth.

It wasn't that I believed you had really gone into the Convent you wrote me you were joining, it was the new and exciting life and duties that opened up before me when I got to Afghanistan, far from post-offices. Afterwards I was drafted to India and had a lot of skirmishing and tiger-shooting, and your image--forgive me!--became faint, and I excused myself for not writing by making myself believe you were buried in the Convent. ["So, after all, he never got the letter telling him I was going to marry back the Castle!" Eileen mused joyfully through her agitation.] But now that I am at last coming home in a few months, no longer a minor, but nearer a major (that's like one of your old jokes)--somehow your face seems to be the only thing I am coming back for. It's no use trying to explain it all, or even apologising. It's just like that. I've _confessed_, you see, though it is hopeless to get straight with my arrears, so I won't attempt it. And when I found out how I felt, of course came the horrible thought that you might be in the Convent after all, or, worse still, married and done for, so what do you think I did? I just sent this cable to your mother: 'Is Eileen free? Reply paid. Colonel Doherty.' Wasn't it clever and economical of me to think of the word 'free,' meaning such a lot--not married, not a nun, not even engaged to another fellow?

Imagine my joy when I got back the monosyllable, meaning all that lot.

I instantly cabled back 'Thanks, don't tell her of this.' ["So that's what mother was hinting at," thought Eileen, with a smile.] It was all I could do not to cable to you: 'Will you marry me? Reply paid.' ["What a good idea for a song!" murmured Nelly.] Put me out of my agony as soon as you can, won't you, dearest Eileen? Your face is floating before me as I write, with its black Irish eyes and its roguish dimples...."

She could read no more. She sat long on her bed, dazed by the rush of bitter-sweet memories. The Convent, her father, her early years, this dear boy ... all was washed together in tears. There was something so bizarre, unexpected and ingenuous about it all; it touched the elemental in her. If he had excused himself even, she would have tossed him off impatiently. But his frank exposure of his own self-contradictoriness appealed subtly to her. Was this the want in her life, was it for him she had been yearning, below the surface of her consciousness, even as she had remained below the surface of his? Here, indeed, was salvation--providential salvation. A hand was stretched to save her--s.n.a.t.c.h her from spiritual destruction. The dear brown manly hand that had potted tigers while she had been gesticulating on platforms--a performing lioness. Distance, imagination, early memories, united to weave a glamour round him. It was many minutes before she could read the postscript: "I think it right to say that my complexion is not yellow nor my liver destroyed. I know this is how we are represented on your stage. I have sat for a photograph, especially to send you."

The stage! Why should he just stumble upon the word, to chill her with the awful question whether she would have to tell him. She was late at her engagements, her performance was perfunctory--she was no longer with "the boys," but seated in a howdah on an elephant's back, side by side with a mighty hunter, or walking with a tall flaxen-haired lieutenant between the honeysuckled hedges of an Irish boreen. It struck her as almost miraculous--though it was probably only because her attention was now drawn to the name--that she read of Colonel Doherty in the evening paper the gasman tendered her that very evening, as she waited at the wing. It was a little biography full of deeds of derringdo. "My Bayard!" she murmured, and her eyes filled with tears.

She wrote and tore up many replies. The first commenced: "What a strange way of proposing! You begin by giving me two black eyes to prove you've forgotten me. I am so different in other people's eyes as well as in my own it would be unfair to accept you. You are in love with a shadow."

The word-play about her eyes seemed to savour of the "Half-and-Half."

She struck it out. But "you are in love with a shadow," remained the _Leit-motif_ of all the letters. And if he was grasping at a shadow it would be unfair for her to grasp at the substance.

The correspondence continued by every Indian mail after his receipt of her guarded refusal; he Quixotic, devoted, no matter how she had changed.

He loved the mere scent of her letter paper. Was she only a governess?

Had she been a charwoman, he would have kissed her cheeks white. The boyish extravagance of his pa.s.sion worked upon her, troubling her to her sincerest core. She would hide nothing from him. She wrote a full account of her stage career, morbidly exaggerating the vulgarity of her performance and the degradation of her character. She was blacker than any charwoman, she said with grim humour. The moment she dropped the letter into the box, a trembling seized on all her limbs. She spent three days of torture; her fear of losing him seeming to have heightened her love for him.

Then Mrs. Lee Carter handed her a cable.

"Sailing unexpectedly S.S. _Colombo_ to-morrow--Doherty." She nearly fell fainting in dual joy. He was coming home, and he would cross her letter.

Before it could return they would be safely married. It should be destroyed unread.

"Is anything wrong?" said her mistress.

"No, quite the contrary."

"I am glad, because I had rather unpleasant news to tell you. But you must have seen that when Kenneth goes to Winchester, there will practically be nothing for you to do."

"How lucky! For I am going to be married."

"Oh, my dear, I am so glad," gushed Mrs. Lee Carter.

Afterwards Eileen marvelled at the obvious finger of Providence unravelling her problems. She had never relished the idea of finding another place, not easily would she find one so dovetailing into her second life; she might have been tempted to burn her boats.

She prepared now to burn her ships instead. Her contracts with the Halls were now only monthly; Nelly O'Neill could easily slip out of existence.

She would not say she was going to be married--that would concentrate attention on herself. Illness seemed the best excuse. For the one week after the _Colombo's_ arrival she could send conscience money. The Sat.u.r.day it was due found her still starred; she did not believe his ship would get in till late, and managers would particularly dislike being done out of her Sat.u.r.day night turn. Perhaps she ought to have left the previous week, she thought. It was foolish to rush things so close. But it was not so easy to give up the habits of years, and activity allayed the fever of waiting. She had sent an ardent letter to meet the ship at Southampton, saying he was to call at the Lee Carters' in Oxbridge Terrace on Sunday afternoon, which she had to herself. Being only a poor governess, she would be unable to meet him at the station or receive him at the house on Sat.u.r.day night, even if he got in so early. He must be resigned to her situation, she added jestingly. On the Sat.u.r.day afternoon she received a wire full of their own hieroglyphic love-words, grumbling but obeying. How could he live till Sunday afternoon? Why hadn't she resigned her situation?

As she was starting for the Halls for the last time, in the dusk of a Spring day, a special messenger put into her hand a letter he had scribbled in the train. He was in London then. Her heart thumped with a medley of emotions as she tore open the letter:

"Oh, my darling, I shall see you at last face to face--" But she had no time to spend under the hall-light reading it. In her cab she struck a match and read another sc.r.a.p. "But, oh, cruel one, not to let me come to-night!" She winced. That gave her a pause. If she had let him come--to the Half-and-Half! He would turn from her, shuddering. And was it not precisely to the Half-and-Half that honour should have invited him? The Half-and-Half arrived at the cab window ere she had finished pondering.

She thrust the letter into her pocket.

XVII

Would she ever get through her three Halls? It did not seem as if she had strength for the Half-and-Half itself. She nerved herself to the task, and knew, not merely from the shrieks of delight, that she had surpa.s.sed herself. Happy and flushed she flung herself into her waiting cab.

She had the 9.45 turn at her second and most fashionable Hall--a Hall where the chairman had been replaced by programme numbers--and then would come her third and last appearance at 10.35. It was strange to think that in another hour Nelly O'Neill's career would be over. It seemed like murdering her. Yes, Eileen O'Keeffe would be her murderess. Well, why not murder what lay between one and happiness? As she waited at the wings, just before going on, while the orchestra played her opening bars, she glanced diagonally at the packed stalls, and her heart stood still.

There in the second row sat Colonel Doherty, smoking a big cheroot.

Instinctively she made the sign of the cross; then swayed back and was caught by the man who changed the programme-numbers.

"Is No. 9 come?" she gasped.

"I think so; aren't you well, Miss O'Neill?"

"For G.o.d's sake, give me breathing s.p.a.ce," she said, with a last wild peep at the Colonel. Yes, there was no mistaking him after the three new portraits he had sent her. He was in cheerful conversation with a stout, sallow gentleman of the Anglo-Indian stage-type. Both were in immaculate evening-dress and wore white orchids. How fortunate she had refused to send any photograph in return, pleading ugliness but really afraid of theatrical sketches that might find their way to the officers' mess!

The band stopped, changed its tune, No. 9 appeared on the board; there was a murmur of confusion.

"No, by Heaven, I'll face the music," she said with grim humour. She almost hustled the hastening juggler out of the way. She was in a whirlwind of excitement. So he was there--well, so much the better. He had saved her from lying. He had given her an easy way of confessing.

Words were so inadequate, he should see the reality: the stage to-night would be her confessional. She would extenuate nothing. She would throw herself furiously into the fun and racket; go to her broadest limits, else the confession would be inadequate. Then ... if he survived the shock ... why then, perhaps, she'd insist on going on with this double life...! He had risen in his seat. No, no, he must not go away, she could not risk the juggler boring him.

"I'm better; I mustn't be late at my next shop," she murmured apologetically as the number and the music were changed back.

"Ah, she's come--she was late," came the murmurs of the audience as it stirred in excited expectation.

She flung on roguish, feverish, diabolical, seductive in low-cut bodice pranked with flowers. It was a frenzy of impromptu extravagance, dazzling even the orchestra; each line accentuated by new gesture, the verses supplemented by new monologue; a miracle of chic and improvisation, and the house rose at it. Out of the mist before her eyes thunder seemed to come in great roars and crashes. She almost groped her way to the wing.

She was recalled. The mist cleared. She bowed direct at him, smiling defiance from her sparkling eyes. He was applauding with his hands, his stick, his lungs! Was it possible?--yes, he had not recognised her!