"_Tiens!_ Madame Depine, one never sees you now." Madame la
Proprietaire was blocking the threshold, preventing her exit. "I was
almost thinking you had veritably died of Madame Valiere's cough."
"One has received my rent, the Monday," the little old lady replied
frigidly.
"_Oh! la! la!_" Madame waved her plump hands. "And La Valiere, too,
makes herself invisible. What has then happened to both of you? Is it
that you are doing a penance together?"
"Hist!" said Madame Depine, flushing.
For at this moment Madame Valiere appeared on the pavement outside
bearing a long French roll and a bag of figs, which made an excellent
lunch at low water. Madame la Proprietaire, dominatingly bestriding
her doorstep, was sandwiched between the two old ladies, her wig
aggressively grey between the two browns. Madame Valiere halted
awkwardly, a bronze blush mounting to match her wig. To be seen
by Madame Depine carrying in her meagre provisions was humiliation
enough; to be juxtaposited with a grey wig was unbearable.
"_Maman, maman_, the English monsieur will not pay two francs for
his dinner!" And the distressed bookkeeper, bill in hand, shattered
the trio.
"And why will he not pay?" Fire leapt into the black eyes.
"He says you told him the night he came that by arrangement he could
have his dinners for one franc fifty."
Madame la Proprietaire made two strides towards the refractory English
monsieur. "_I_ told you one franc fifty? For _dejeuner_, yes, as many
luncheons as you can eat. But for dinner? You eat with us as one of
the family, and _vin compris_ and _cafe_ likewise, and it should
be all for one franc fifty! _Mon Dieu!_ it is to ruin oneself. Come
here." And she seized the surprised Anglo-Saxon by the wrist and
dragged him towards a painted tablet of prices that hung in a dark
niche of the hall. "I have kept this hotel for twenty years, I have
grown grey in the service of artists and students, and this is the
first time one has demanded dinner for one franc fifty!"
"_She_ has grown grey!" contemptuously muttered Madame Valiere.
"Grey? She!" repeated Madame Depine, with no less bitterness. "It is
only to give herself the air of a _grande dame_!"
Then both started, and coloured to the roots of their wigs.
Simultaneously they realised that they had spoken to each other.
V
As they went up the stairs together--for Madame Depine had quite
forgotten she was going out--an immense relief enlarged their souls.
Merely to mention the grey wig had been a vent for all this morbid
brooding; to abuse Madame la Proprietaire into the bargain was to pass
from the long isolation into a subtle sympathy.
"I wonder if she did say one franc fifty," observed Madame Valiere,
reflectively.
"Without doubt," Madame Depine replied viciously. "And fifty centimes
a day soon mount up to a grey wig."
"Not so soon," sighed Madame Valiere.
"But then it is not only one client that she cheats."
"Ah! at that rate wigs fall from the skies," admitted Madame Valiere.
"Especially if one has not to give dowries to one's nieces," said
Madame Depine, boldly.
"And if one is mean on New Year's Day," returned Madame Valiere, with
a shade less of mendacity.
They inhaled the immemorial airlessness of the staircase as if they
were breathing the free air of the forests depicted on its dirty-brown
wall-paper. It was the new atmosphere of self-respect that they were
really absorbing. Each had at last explained herself and her brown wig to
the other. An immaculate honesty (that would scorn to overcharge fifty
centimes even to _un Anglais_), complicated with unwedded nieces in
one case, with a royal shower of New Year's gifts in the other, had
kept them from selfish, if seemly, hoary-headedness.
"Ah! here is my floor," panted Madame Valiere at length, with an air
of indicating it to a thorough stranger. "Will you not come into my
room and eat a fig? They are very healthy between meals."
Madame Depine accepted the invitation, and entering her own corner
of the corridor with a responsive air of foreign exploration, passed
behind the door through whose keyhole she had so often peered. Ah! no
wonder she had detected nothing abnormal. The room was a facsimile
of her own--the same bed with the same quilt over it and the same
crucifix above it, the same little table with the same books of
devotion, the same washstand with the same tiny jug and basin, the
same rusted, fireless grate. The wardrobe, like her own, was merely a
pair of moth-eaten tartan curtains, concealing both pegs and garments
from her curiosity. The only sense of difference came subtly from the
folding windows, below whose railed balcony showed another view of the
quarter, with steam-trams--diminished to toy trains--puffing past
to the suburbs. But as Madame Depine's eyes roved from these to the
mantel-piece, she caught sight of an oval miniature of an elegant young
woman, who was jewelled in many places, and corresponded exactly with
her idea of a Princess!
To disguise her access of respect, she said abruptly, "It must be very
noisy here from the steam-trams."
"It is what I love, the bustle of life," replied Madame Valiere,
simply.
"Ah!" said Madame Depine, impressed beyond masking-point, "I suppose
when one has had the habit of Courts--"
Madame Valiere shuddered unexpectedly. "Let us not speak of it. Take a
fig."
But Madame Depine persisted--though she took the fig. "Ah! those were
brave days when we had still an Emperor and an Empress to drive to the
Bois with their equipages and outriders. Ah, how pretty it was!"
"But the President has also"--a fit of coughing interrupted Madame
Valiere--"has also outriders."
"But he is so bourgeois--a mere man of the people," said Madame
Depine.
"They are the most decent sort of folk. But do you not feel cold? I
will light a fire." She bent towards the wood-box.
"No, no; do not trouble. I shall be going in a moment. I have a large
fire blazing in my room."
"Then suppose we go and sit there," said poor Madame Valiere.
Poor Madame Depine was seized with a cough, more protracted than any
of which she had complained.
"Provided it has not gone out in my absence," she stammered at last.
"I will go first and see if it is in good trim."
"No, no; it is not worth the trouble of moving." And Madame Valiere
drew her street-cloak closer round her slim form. "But I have lived so
long in Russia, I forget people call this cold."
"Ah! the Princess travelled far?" said Madame Depine, eagerly.
"Too far," replied Madame Valiere, with a flash of Gallic wit. "But
who has told you of the Princess?"
"Madame la Proprietaire, naturally."
"She talks too much--she and her wig!"
"If only she didn't imagine herself a powdered marquise in it! To see
her standing before the mirror in the salon!"
"The beautiful spectacle!" assented Madame Valiere.
"Ah! but I don't forget--if she does--that her mother wheeled a
fruit-barrow through the streets of Tonnerre!"
"Ah! yes, I knew you were from Tonnerre--dear Tonnerre!"
"How did you know?"
"Naturally, Madame la Proprietaire."
"The old gossip!" cried Madame Depine--"though not so old as
she feigns. But did she tell you of her mother, too, and the
fruit-barrow?"
"I knew her mother--_une brave femme_."
"I do not say not," said Madame Depine, a whit disconcerted.
"Nevertheless, when one's mother is a merchant of the four seasons--"
"Provided she sold fruit as good as this! Take another fig, I beg of
you."
"Thank you. These are indeed excellent," said Madame Depine. "She owed
all her good fortune to a _coup_ in the lottery."
"Ah! the lottery!" Madame Valiere sighed. Before the eyes of both rose
the vision of a lucky number and a grey wig.