by George Moore
Good-night, ma’am, and I hope — No inconvenience whatever, Page, Mrs Baker answered. This way, Mr Page, Albert cried; and as soon as they were in the room Albert said: I hope you aren’t going to cut up rough at anything I’ve said; it isn’t at all as Mrs Baker put it. I’m glad enough of your company, but you see, as I’ve never slept with anybody in my life it may be that I shall be tossing about all night keeping you awake. Well, if it’s to be like that, Page answered, I might as well have a doze on the chair until it’s time to go, and not trouble you at all. Troubling me you won’t be, but I might be troubling you. Enough has been said, we must lie down together whether we like it or whether we don’t, for [if Mrs Baker heard that we hadn’t been in the same bed together all the fault would lie with me. I’d be sent out of the hotel in double quick time. But how can she know? Page cried. It’s been settled one way, so let us make no more fuss about it.
Albert began to undo his white necktie, saying he would try to lie quiet; and Page started pulling off his clothes, thinking he’d be well pleased to be out of the job of lying down with Albert. But he was so dog-tired that he couldn’t think any more about whom he was to sleep with, only of the long days of twelve and thirteen hours he had been doing, with a walk to and from his work. Only sleep mattered to him, and Albert saw him tumble into bed in the long shirt that he wore under his clothes, and lay himself down next to the wall. It would be better for him to lie on the outside, Albert said to himself, but he didn’t like to say anything lest Page might get out of the bed in a fit of ill-humour; but Page, as I’ve said, was too tired to trouble himself which side of the bed he was to doss on. A moment after he was asleep: and Albert stood listening, his loosened tie dangling, till the heavy breathing from the bed told him that Page was sound asleep. To make full sure he approached the bed stealthily, and overlooking Page, said: poor fellow, I’m glad he’s in my bed for he’ll get a good sleep there, and he wants it, and considering that things had fallen out better than he hoped for, he began to undress.
CHAPTER 46.
HE MUST HAVE fallen asleep at once, and soundly, for he awoke out of nothingness. Flea, he muttered, and a strong one too. It must have come from the house-painter alongside of me. A flea will leave anyone to come to me, and turning round in bed he remembered the look of dismay that had appeared on the housemaids’ faces yesterday on his telling them that no man would ever love their hides as much as a flea loved his, which was so true that he couldn’t understand how it was that the same flea had taken so long to find him out. Fleas must be as partial to him, he said, as they are to me. There it is again, trying to make up for lost time, and out went Albert’s leg. I’m afraid I’ve awakened him, Albert said, but Hubert only turned over in the bed to sleep more soundly. It’s a mercy indeed that he is so tired, Albert said, for if he wasn’t very tired that last jump I gave would have awakened him.
A moment after Albert was nipped again by another flea or by the same one, he couldn’t tell; he thought it must be a second one, so vigorous was the bite: and he was hard put to it to keep his nails off the spots. It will only make it worse if I scratch, he said, and he strove to lie quiet. But the torment was too great. I’ve got to get up, he said, and raising himself up quietly, he listened. The striking of a match won’t awaken him out of that sleep, and remembering where he had put the match-box, his hand was on it at once. The match flared up; he lighted the candle and stood a while overlooking his bed-fellow: I’m safe, he said, and set himself to the task of catching the flea. There it is on the tail of my shirt, hardly able to move with all the blood he’s taken from me. Now for the soap, and as he was about to dab it upon the blood-filled insect the painter awoke with a great yawn, and turning round, he said: Lord a-massey! what is the meaning of this? why, you’re a woman! If Albert had had the presence of mind to drop his shirt over his shoulders and to answer: you’re dreaming, my man, Page might have turned over and fallen asleep and in the morning forgotten all about it, or thought he had been dreaming. But Albert hadn’t a word in her chops. At last she began to blub. You won’t tell on me, and ruin a poor man, will you, Mr Page? that is all I ask of you, and on my knees I beg it. Get up from your knees, my good woman, said Hubert. My good woman! Albert repeated, for she had been about so long as a man that she only remembered occasionally that she was a woman. My good woman, he repeated, get up from your knees and tell me how long you have been playing this part. Ever since I was a girl, Albert answered. You won’t tell upon me, will you, Mr Page, and prevent a poor woman from getting her living? Not likely, I’ve no thought of telling on you, but I’d like to hear how it all came about. How I went out as a youth to get my living? Yes; tell me the story, Hubert answered, for though I was very sleepy just now, the sleep has left my eyes and I’d like to hear it. But before you begin tell me what you were doing with your shirt off. A flea, Albert answered. I suffer terribly from fleas, and you must have brought some in with you, Mr Page. I shall be covered in blotches in the morning. I’m sorry for that, Hubert said, but tell me how long ago it was that you became a man. Before you came to Dublin, of course. Oh yes, long before. It is very cold, she said, and shuddering dropped her shirt over her shoulders and pulled on her trousers.
CHAPTER 47.
IT WAS IN London, soon after the death of my old nurse, she began. You know I’m not Irish, Mr Page. My parents may have been for all I know. The only one who knew who they were was my old nurse and she never told me. Never told you! interjected Hubert. No, she never told me, though I often asked her, saying no good could come of holding it back from me. She might have told me before she died but she died suddenly. Died suddenly, Hubert repeated, without telling you who you were! You’d better begin at the beginning.
I don’t know how I’m to do that, for the story seems to me to be without a beginning; anyway I don’t know the beginning. I was a bastard and no one but my old nurse, who brought me up, knew who I was; she said she’d tell me some day and she hinted more than once that my people were grand folk and I know she had a big allowance from them for my education. Whoever they were a hundred a year was paid to her for my keep and education, and all went well with us so long as my parents lived, but when they died, the allowance was no longer paid, and my nurse and myself had to go out to work. It was all very sudden: one day the reverend mother (I got my education at a convent school) told me that Mrs Nobbs, my old nurse, had sent for me, and the first news I had on coming home was that my parents were dead and that we’d have to get our own living henceforth. Nor was there time for picking and choosing. We hadn’t what would keep us till the end of the month in the house, so out we had to go in search of work; and the first job that came our way was looking after chambers in the Temple. We had three gentlemen to look after, so there was eighteen shillings a week between my old nurse and myself; the omnibus fares had to come out of these wages, and to save sixpence a day we went to live in Temple Lane. My old nurse didn’t mind the lane; she had been a working woman all her life, but with me it was different, and the change was so great from the convent that I often thought I would sooner die than continue to live amid rough people. There was nothing wrong with them, they were honest enough, but they were poor, and when one is very poor one lives like the animals, indecently, and life without decency is hardly bearable, so I thought. I’ve been through a great deal since in different hotels, and have become used to hard work, but even now I can’t think of Temple Lane without goose flesh, and when Mrs Nobbs’ brother lost his berth (he’d been a band-master, a bugler, or something to do with music in the country), my old nurse was obliged to give him sixpence a day, and the drop from eighteen shillings to fourteen and sixpence is a big one. My old nurse worried about the food, but it was the rough men that I worried about; the bandsman wouldn’t leave me alone, and many’s the time I’ve waited until the staircase was clear, afraid that if I met him or another I’d be caught hold of and held and pulled about. I was different then from what I am now and might have been tempted if one of t
hem had been less rough than the rest, and if I hadn’t known I was a bastard; it was that, I think, that kept me straight more than anything else, for I had just begun to feel what a great misfortune it is for a poor girl to find herself in the family way; no greater misfortune can befall anyone in this world, but it would have been worse in my case, for I should have known that I was only bringing another bastard into the world.
I escaped being seduced in the lane, and in the chambers the barristers had their own mistresses, pleasant and considerate men they all were — pleasant to work for; and it wasn’t until four o’clock came and our work was over for the day that my heart sank, for after four o’clock till we went to bed at night there was nothing for us to do but to listen to drunken women; I don’t know which was the most revolting, the laughter or the curses.
One of the barristers we worked for was Mr Congreve; he had chambers in Temple Gardens overlooking the river, and it was a pleasure to us to keep his pretty things clean, never breaking one of them; it was a pleasure for my old nurse as well as myself, for myself more than her, for though I wasn’t very sure of myself at the time, looking back now I can see that I must have loved Mr Congreve very dearly; and it couldn’t be else, for I had come out of a convent of nuns where I had been given a good education, where all was good, quiet, refined and gentle, and Mr Congreve seemed in many ways to remind me of the convent: for he never missed Church, as rare for him to miss a service as for parson. There was plenty of books in his chambers and he’d lend them to me, and talk to me when I took in his breakfast over his newspaper, and ask me about the convent and what the nuns were like, and I’d stand in front of him, my eyes fixed on him, not feeling the time going by. I can see him now as plainly as if he were before me — very thin and elegant, with long white hands and beautifully dressed. Even in the old clothes that he wore of a morning there wasn’t much fault to find; he wore old clothes more elegantly than any man in the Temple wore his new clothes. I used to know all his suits, as well I might, for it was my job to look after them, to brush them; and I used to spend a great deal more time than was needed taking out spots with benzine, arranging his neckties — he had fifty or sixty, all kinds — and seven or eight great coats. A real toff, my word he was that, but not one of those haughty ones too proud to give one a nod. He always smiled and nodded if we met under the clock, he on his way to the library and I returning to Temple Lane. I used to look after him, saying: he’s got on the striped trousers and the embroidered waistcoat. Mr Congreve was a compensation for Temple Lane; he had promised to take me into his private service and I was counting the days when I should leave Temple Lane, when one day I said to myself: why, here’s a letter from a woman. You see, Mr Congreve wasn’t like the other young men in the Temple; I never found a hairpin in his bed, and if I had I shouldn’t have thought as much of him as I did. Nice is in France, I said, and thought no more about the matter until another letter arrived from Nice. Now what can she be writing to him about? I asked, and thought no more about it till the third letter arrived. Yesterday is already more than half forgotten, but the morning I took in that last letter is always before me. And it was a few mornings afterwards that a box of flowers came for him. A parcel for you, sir, I said. He roused himself up in bed. For me? he cried, putting out his hand, and the moment he saw the writing, he said: put the flowers in water. He knows all about it, I said to myself, and so overcome was I as I picked them up out of the box that I was seized with a sudden faintness, and my old nurse said: what is the matter with thee? She never guessed, and I couldn’t have told her if I had wished to, for at the time it was no more than a feeling that so far as I was concerned all was over. Of course I never thought that Mr Congreve would look at me, and I don’t know that I wanted him to, but I didn’t want another woman about the place, and I seemed to know from that moment what was going to happen. She isn’t far away now, in the train maybe, I said, as I went about my work, and these rooms will be mine no longer. Of course they never were mine, but you know what I mean.
A week later he said to me: there’s a lady coming to luncheon here, and I remember the piercing that the words caused me; I can feel them here still, and Albert put her hand to her heart. Well, I had to serve the luncheon working round the table and they not minding me at all, but sitting looking at each other lost in a sense of delight: the luncheon was forgotten; they don’t want me waiting about, I said: I knew all this, and said to myself in the kitchen: it’s disgraceful, it’s sinful, to lead a man into sin, for all my anger went out against the woman, and not against Mr Congreve, for in my eyes he seemed to be nothing more than a victim of a designing woman; that is how I looked at it at the time, being but a youngster only just come from a convent school.
