The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Part 18

As he spoke I became suddenly aware that the gas-lights were paling, and glancing towards the window on my left I saw the splendour of the sunrise breaking fresh and clear over the city of diabolical night, where in the sombre eastern sky--

"G.o.d made himself an awful rose of dawn."

A breath of coolness and purity seemed to waft into the feverish ball-room; a ray of fresh morning sunlight. I looked curiously at the young artist. He seemed transfigured. I could scarcely realise that an hour ago he had been among the rowdiest of the _Comus_ crew, whose shrieks and laughter still rang all around us. Even his duplex costume seemed to have grown subtly symbolical, the diabolical part typical of all that is b.e.s.t.i.a.l and selfish in man, the death-mask speaking silently of renunciation and the peace of the tomb. He went on, after a moment of emotion: "They say that pity is akin to love, but I am not sure that I ever loved her, for I suppose that love involves pa.s.sion, and I never arrived at that. I only came to feel that I wanted to be with her always, to guard her, to protect her, to work for her, to suffer for her if need be, to give her life something of the joy and sweetness that G.o.d owed her. I felt I wasn't much use in the world, and that would be something to do. And so one day--though not without much mental tossing, for we are curiously, complexly built, and I dreaded ridicule and the long years of comment from unsympathetic strangers--I asked her to be my wife. Her surprise, her agitation, was painful to witness. But she was not incredulous, as before; she had learned to know that I respected her.

"Nevertheless, her immediate impulse was one of refusal.

"'It cannot be,' she said, and her bosom heaved spasmodically.

"I protested that it could and would be, but she shook her head.

"'You are very kind to me! G.o.d bless you!' she said. 'You have always been kind to me. But you do not love me.'

"I a.s.sured her I did, and in that moment I dare say I spoke the truth.

For in that moment of her reluctance and diffidence to s.n.a.t.c.h at proffered joy, when the suggestion of rejection made her appear doubly precious, she seemed to me the most adorable creature in the world.

"But still she shook her head. 'No one can love me,' she said sadly.

"I took her hand in mute protestation, but she withdrew it gently.

"'I cannot be your wife,' she persisted.

"'Why not, Ingeborg?' I asked pa.s.sionately.

"She hesitated, panting and colouring painfully, then--the words are echoing in my brain--she answered softly, '_Jeg kan ikke elske Dem_'

(I cannot love you).

"It was like a shaft of lightning piercing me, rending and illuminating. In my blind conceit the obverse side of the question had never presented itself to me. I had taken it for granted I had only to ask to be jumped at. But now, in one great flash of insight, I seemed to see everything plain.

"'You love Axel Larson!' I cried chokingly, as I thought of all the insults he had heaped upon her in her presence, all the sneers and vile jocosities of which she had been the b.u.t.t behind her back, in return for the care she had lavished upon his comfort, for her pinching to make both ends meet without the money he should have contributed.

"She did not reply. The tears came into her eyes, she let her head droop on her heaving breast. As in those visions that are said to come to the dying, I saw Axel Larson feeding day by day at her board, brutally conscious of her pa.s.sion, yet not deigning even to sacrifice her to it; I saw him ultimately leave the schools and the town to carry his clever brush to the welcome of a wider world, without a word or a thought of thanks for the creature who had wors.h.i.+pped and waited upon him hand and foot; and then I saw her life from day to day unroll its long monotonous folds, all in the same pattern, all drab duty and joyless sacrifice, and hopeless undying love.

"I took her hand again in a pa.s.sion of pity. She understood my sympathy, and the hot tears started from her eyes and rolled down her poor wan cheeks. And in that holy moment I saw into the inner heaven of woman's love, which purifies and atones for the world. The eternal feminine!"

The sentimental young artist ceased, and buried his devil's face in his hands. I looked around and started. We were alone in the abandoned supper-room. The gorgeously grotesque company was seated in a gigantic circle upon the ball-room floor furiously applauding the efforts of two sweetly pretty girls who were performing the celebrated _danse du ventre_.

"The eternal feminine!" I echoed pensively.

THE SILENT SISTERS

They had quarrelled in girlhood, and mutually declared their intention never to speak to each other again, wetting and drying their forefingers to the accompaniment of an ancient childish incantation, and while they lived on the paternal farm they kept their foolish oath with the stubbornness of a slow country stock, despite the alternate coaxing and chastis.e.m.e.nt of their parents, notwithstanding the perpetual everyday contact of their lives, through every vicissitude of season and weather, of sowing and reaping, of sun and shade, of joy and sorrow.

Death and misfortune did not reconcile them, and when their father died and the old farm was sold up, they travelled to London in the same silence, by the same train, in search of similar situations.

Service separated them for years, though there was only a stone's throw between them. They often stared at each other in the streets.

Honor, the elder, married a local artisan, and two and a half years later, Mercy, the younger, married a fellow-workman of Honor's husband. The two husbands were friends, and often visited each other's houses, which were on opposite sides of the same sordid street, and the wives made them welcome. Neither Honor nor Mercy suffered an allusion to their breach; it was understood that their silence must be received in silence. Each of the children had a quiverful of children who played and quarrelled together in the streets and in one another's houses, but not even the street affrays and mutual grievances of the children could provoke the mothers to words. They stood at their doors in impotent fury, almost bursting with the torture of keeping their mouths shut against the effervescence of angry speech. When either lost a child the other watched the funeral from her window, dumb as the mutes.

The years rolled on, and still the river of silence flowed between their lives. Their good looks faded, the burden of life and child-bearing was heavy upon them. Grey hairs streaked their brown tresses, then brown hairs streaked their grey tresses. The puckers of age replaced the dimples of youth. The years rolled on, and Death grew busy among the families. Honor's husband died, and Mercy lost a son, who died a week after his wife. Cholera took several of the younger children. But the sisters themselves lived on, bent and shrivelled by toil and sorrow, even more than by the slow frost of the years.

Then one day Mercy took to her death-bed. An internal disease, too long neglected, would carry her off within a week. So the doctor told Jim, Mercy's husband.

Through him, the news travelled to Honor's eldest son, who still lived with her. By the evening it reached Honor.

She went upstairs abruptly when her son told her, leaving him wondering at her stony aspect. When she came down she was bonneted and shawled. He was filled with joyous amaze to see her hobble across the street and for the first time in her life pa.s.s over her sister Mercy's threshold.

As Honor entered the sick-room, with pursed lips, a light leapt into the wasted, wrinkled countenance of the dying creature. She raised herself slightly in bed, her lips parted, then shut tightly, and her face darkened.

Honor turned angrily to Mercy's husband, who hung about impotently.

"Why did you let her run down so low?" she said.

"I didn't know," the old man stammered, taken aback by her presence even more than by her question. "She was always a woman to say nothin'."

Honor put him impatiently aside and examined the medicine bottle on the bedside table.

"Isn't it time she took her dose?"

"I dessay."

Honor snorted wrathfully. "What's the use of a man?" she inquired, as she carefully measured out the fluid and put it to her sister's lips, which opened to receive it, and then closed tightly again.

"How is your wife feeling now?" Honor asked after a pause.

"How are you, now, Mercy?" asked the old man awkwardly.

The old woman shook her head. "I'm a-goin' fast, Jim," she grumbled weakly, and a tear of self-pity trickled down her parchment cheek.

"What rubbidge she do talk!" cried Honor, sharply. "Why d'ye stand there like a tailor's dummy? Why don't you tell her to cheer up?"

"Cheer up, Mercy," quavered the old man, hoa.r.s.ely.

But Mercy groaned instead, and turned fretfully on her other side, with her face to the wall.

"I'm too old, I'm too old," she moaned, "this is the end o' me."

"Did you ever hear the like?" Honor asked Jim, angrily, as she smoothed his wife's pillow. "She was always conceited about her age, settin' herself up as the equals of her elders, and here am I, her elder sister, as carried her in my arms when I was five and she was two, still hale and strong, and with no mind for underground for many a day. Nigh three times her age I was once, mind you, and now she has the imperence to talk of dyin' before me."