The Grey Wig. Israel Zangwill
epigrams its freakish fires and witcheries, and, assuredly, flitting in her white gown through the dark balmy garden, she seemed the very spirit of moonlight, the subtle incarnation of night and roses.
When John Lefolle met her, Cecilia was with her, and the first conversation was triangular. Cecilia fired most of the shots; she was a bouncing, rattling beauty, chockful of confidence and high spirits, except when asked to do the one thing she could do—sing! Then she became—quite genuinely—a nervous, hesitant, pale little thing. However, the suppliant hostess bore her off, and presently her rich contralto notes passed through the garden, adding to its passion and mystery, and through the open French windows, John could see her standing against the wall near the piano, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed, her creamy throat swelling in the very abandonment of artistic ecstasy.
"What a charming creature!" he exclaimed involuntarily.
"That is what everybody thinks, except her husband," Winifred laughed.
"Is he blind then?" asked John with his cloistral naïveté.
"Blind? No, love is blind. Marriage is never blind."
The bitterness in her tone pierced John. He felt vaguely the passing of some icy current from unknown seas of experience. Cecilia's voice soared out enchantingly.
"Then, marriage must be deaf," he said, "or such music as that would charm it."
She smiled sadly. Her smile was the tricksy play of moonlight among clouds of faëry.
"You have never been married," she said simply.
"Do you mean that you, too, are neglected?" something impelled him to exclaim.
"Worse," she murmured.
"It is incredible!" he cried. "You!"
"Hush! My husband will hear you."
Her warning whisper brought him into a delicious conspiracy with her. "Which is your husband?" he whispered back.
"There! Near the casement, standing gazing open-mouthed at Cecilia. He always opens his mouth when she sings. It is like two toys moved by the same wire."
He looked at the tall, stalwart, ruddy-haired Anglo-Saxon. "Do you mean to say he—?"
"I mean to say nothing."
"But you said—"
"I said 'worse.'"
"Why, what can be worse?"
She put her hand over her face. "I am ashamed to tell you." How adorable was that half-divined blush!
"But you must tell me everything." He scarcely knew how he had leapt into this rôle of confessor. He only felt they were "moved by the same wire."
Her head drooped on her breast. "He—beats—me."
"What!" John forgot to whisper. It was the greatest shock his recluse life had known, compact as it was of horror at the revelation, shamed confusion at her candour, and delicious pleasure in her confidence.
This fragile, exquisite creature under the rod of a brutal bully!
Once he had gone to a wedding reception, and among the serious presents some grinning Philistine drew his attention to an uncouth club—"a wife-beater" he called it. The flippancy had jarred upon John terribly: this intrusive reminder of the customs of the slums. It grated like Billingsgate in a boudoir. Now that savage weapon recurred to him—for a lurid instant he saw Winifred's husband wielding it. Oh, abomination of his sex! And did he stand there, in his immaculate evening dress, posing as an English gentleman? Even so might some gentleman burglar bear through a salon his imperturbable swallow-tail.
Beat a woman! Beat that essence of charm and purity, God's best gift to man, redeeming him from his own grossness! Could such things be? John Lefolle would as soon have credited the French legend that English wives are sold in Smithfield. No! it could not be real that this flower-like figure was thrashed.
"Do you mean to say—?" he cried. The rapidity of her confidence alone made him feel it all of a dreamlike unreality.
"Hush! Cecilia's singing!" she admonished him with an unexpected smile, as her fingers fell from her face.
"Oh, you have been making fun of me." He was vastly relieved. "He beats you—at chess—or at lawn-tennis?"
"Does one wear a high-necked dress to conceal the traces of chess, or lawn-tennis?"
He had not noticed her dress before, save for its spiritual whiteness. Susceptible though he was to beautiful shoulders, Winifred's enchanting face had been sufficiently distracting. Now the thought of physical bruises gave him a second spasm of righteous horror. That delicate rose-leaf flesh abraded and lacerated!
"The ruffian! Does he use a stick or a fist?"
"Both! But as a rule he just takes me by the arms and shakes me like a terrier. I'm all black and blue now."
"Poor butterfly!" he murmured poetically.
"Why did I tell you?" she murmured back with subtler poetry.
The poet thrilled in every vein. "Love at first sight," of which he had often read and often written, was then a reality! It could be as mutual, too, as Romeo's and Juliet's. But how awkward that Juliet should be married and her husband a Bill Sykes in broadcloth!
II
Mrs. Glamorys herself gave "At Homes," every Sunday afternoon, and so, on the morrow, after a sleepless night mitigated by perpended sonnets, the love-sick young tutor presented himself by invitation at the beautiful old house in Hampstead. He was enchanted to find his heart's mistress set in an eighteenth-century frame of small-paned windows and of high oak-panelling, and at once began to image her dancing minuets and playing on virginals. Her husband was absent, but a broad band of velvet round Winifred's neck was a painful reminder of his possibilities. Winifred, however, said it was only a touch of sore throat caught in the garden. Her eyes added that there was nothing in the pathological dictionary which she would not willingly have caught for the sake of those divine, if draughty moments; but that, alas! it was more than a mere bodily ailment she had caught there.
There were a great many visitors in the two delightfully quaint rooms, among whom he wandered disconsolate and admired, jealous of her scattered smiles, but presently he found himself seated by her side on a "cosy corner" near the open folding-doors, with all the other guests huddled round a violinist in the inner room. How Winifred had managed it he did not know, but she sat plausibly in the outer room, awaiting new-comers, and this particular niche was invisible, save to a determined eye. He took her unresisting hand—that dear, warm hand, with its begemmed artistic fingers, and held it in uneasy beatitude. How wonderful! She—the beautiful and adored hostess, of whose sweetness and charm he heard even her own guests murmur to one another—it was her actual flesh-and-blood hand that lay in his—thrillingly tangible. Oh, adventure beyond all merit, beyond all hoping!
But every now and then, the outer door facing them would open on some new-comer, and John had hastily to release her soft magnetic fingers and sit demure, and jealously overhear her effusive welcome to those innocent intruders, nor did his brow clear till she had shepherded them within the inner fold. Fortunately, the refreshments were in this section, so that once therein, few of the sheep strayed back, and the jiggling wail of the violin was succeeded by a shrill babble of tongues and the clatter of cups and spoons. "Get me an ice, please—strawberry," she ordered John during one of these forced intervals in manual flirtation; and when he had steered laboriously to and fro, he found a young actor beside her their hands dispart. He stood over them with a sickly smile, while Winifred ate her ice. When he returned from depositing the empty saucer, the player-fellow was gone, and in remorse for his mad suspicion he stooped and reverently lifted her fragrant finger-tips to his lips. The door behind his back opened