by George Moore
Albert welcomed this show of interest in her project and, hoping to turn Helen’s thoughts from Joe Mackins, she began an appraisement of the shop’s situation and the custom it commanded in the neighbourhood and the possibility of developing that custom. We shall be able to make a great success of that shop, and people will be coming to see us, and they will be having tea with us in the parlour, and they’ll envy us, saying that never have two people had such luck as we have had. And our wedding will be — Will be what? Helen asked. Will be a great wonder. A great wonder, indeed, she replied, but I’m not going to wed you, Albert Nobbs, and now I see it’s beginning to rain. I can’t remain out any longer. You’re thinking of your hat; I’ll buy another. We may as well say good-bye, she answered, and Albert saw her going towards the doorway. She’ll see Joe Mackins before she goes to her bed, and lie dreaming of him; and I shall lie awake in my bed, my thoughts flying to and fro the livelong night, zigzagging up and down like bats.
And then, remembering that if she went into the hotel she might meet Helen and Joe Mackins, she rushed on with a hope in her mind that after a long walk round Dublin she might sleep.
CHAPTER 52.
AT THE CORNER of Clare Street, she met two women strolling after a fare — ten shillings or a sovereign, which? she asked herself — and, terrified by the shipwreck of all her hopes, she wished that she were one of them. They at least are women, whereas I am but a perhapser — In the midst of her grief a wish to speak to them took hold of her. But if I speak to them they’ll expect me to —
All the same her steps quickened, and as she passed the two street-walkers she looked round, and one woman, wishing to attract her attention, said: it was almost a love dream.
Almost a love dream? Albert repeated. What are you two women talking about? and the woman next to Albert said: my friend here was telling me of a dream she had last night. A dream, and what was her dream about? Albert asked. Annie was telling me that she was better than a love dream, now do you think she is, sir? I’ll ask Annie herself, Albert replied, and Annie answered him: a shade. Only a shade, Albert returned, and they crossed the street together.
At the corner of Merrion Square a gallant presented himself; he attached himself to Annie’s companion, and Albert and Annie were left together.
You haven’t told me your name, Albert said, in a sudden inspiration. My name is Kitty MacCan, the girl replied. It’s odd we’ve never met before, Albert replied, hardly knowing what she was saying. We’re not often this way, was the answer. And where do you walk usually — of an evening, Albert asked. In Grafton Street or down by College Green; sometimes we cross the river. To walk in Sackville Street, Albert interjected; and he tried to lead the woman into a story of her life. But you’re not one of them, she said, that think that we should wash clothes in a nunnery for nothing? Oh no, Albert answered. I’m a waiter in Morrison’s Hotel, and, much relieved, the woman began to talk more freely. As soon as the name of Morrison’s Hotel passed Albert’s lips she began to regret having spoken about herself. But what did it matter now? and the woman didn’t seem to have taken heed of the name of the hotel. Is the money good in your hotel? she asked; I’ve heard that you get as much as half-a-crown for carrying up a cup of tea, and Kitty’s story dribbled out in remarks, a simple story that Albert tried to listen to, but her attention wandered, and Kitty, who was not unintelligent, began to guess Albert to be in the middle of some great grief. It doesn’t matter about me, Albert answered her, and Annie being a kind girl said to herself: if I can get him to come home with me I’ll help him out of his sorrow, if only for a little while. So she continued to try to interest him in herself till they came to Fitzwilliam Place; and it was not till then that Annie remembered she had only three and sixpence left out of the last money she had received, and that her rent would be due on the morrow. She daren’t return home without a gentleman, her landlady would be at her, and the best time of the night was going by talking to a man who seemed like one who would bid her a curt good-night at the door of his hotel. Where did he say his hotel was? she asked herself; and then, aloud, she said: you’re a waiter, aren’t you? I’ve forgotten which hotel you said. Albert didn’t answer, and, troubled by her companion’s silence, she continued: I’m afraid I’m taking you out of your way. No, you aren’t; all ways are the same to me. Well, they aren’t to me, she replied. I must get some money to-night. I’ll give you some money, Albert said. But won’t you come home with me? the girl asked. Albert hesitated, tempted by her company. But if they were to go home together her sex would be discovered. But what did it matter if it were discovered, Albert asked herself, and the temptation came again to go home with this woman, to lie in her arms and tell the story that had been locked up so many years. They could both have a good cry together, and what matter would it be to the woman as long as she got the money she desired. She didn’t want a man; it was money she was after, money that meant bread and board to her. She seems a kind, nice girl, Albert said, and he was about to risk the adventure when a man came by whom Kitty knew. Excuse me, she said, and Albert saw them walk away together. I’m sorry, said the woman, returning, but I’ve just met an old friend; another evening, perhaps. Albert would have liked to put her hand in her pocket and pay the woman with some silver for her company, but she was already half-way back to her friend, who stood waiting for her by the lamp-post. The streetwalkers have friends, and when they meet them their troubles are over for the night; but my chances have gone by me; and, checking herself in the midst of the irrelevant question, whether it were better to be casual, as they were, or to have a husband that you could not get rid of, she plunged into her own grief, and walked sobbing through street after street, taking no heed of where she was going.
CHAPTER 53.
YOU CAN SEE the poor creature, Alec, walking through the city back and forth, crossing the bridges, any whither, no whither, distracted by grief, till at last fatigue brought her to the door of Morrison’s hotel.
Why, lord, Mr Nobbs, whatever has kept you out until this hour? the hall porter muttered. I’m sorry, she answered, and while stumbling up the stairs she remembered that even a guest was not received very amiably by the hall porter after two; and for a servant to come in at that time! Her thoughts broke off and she lay too tired to think any more of the hall porter, of herself, of anything; and when the time came for her to go to her work she rose indifferently.
Her work saved her from thinking, and it was not until the middle of the afternoon, when the luncheon-tables had been cleared, that the desire to see and to speak to Helen could not be put aside; but Helen’s face wore an ugly, forbidding look, and Albert returned to the second floor without speaking to her. It was not long after that 34 rang his bell, and Albert hoped to get an order that would send her to the kitchen. Are you going to pass me by without speaking again, Helen? We talked enough last night, Helen retorted; there’s nothing more to say, and Joe, in such disorder of dress as behooves a scullion, giggled as he went past, carrying a huge pile of plates. I loved my old nurse, but I never thought of kissing her like that, he said, turning on his heel and so suddenly that some of the plates fell with a great clatter. The ill luck that had befallen him seemed well deserved, and Albert returned upstairs and sat in the passages waiting for the sitting-rooms to ring their bells; and the housemaids, as they came about the head of the stairs with the dusters, wondered how it was that they could not get any intelligible conversation out of the love-stricken waiter. Her lovelorn appearance checked their mirth, pity entered their hearts, and they kept back the words; I loved my old nurse, etc.
After all, he loves the girl, one said to the other, and a moment after, they were joined by another housemaid, who, after listening for a while, went away, saying; there’s no torment like the love torment; and the three housemaids, Mary, Alice and Dorothy, offered Albert their sympathy, trying to lead her into little talks with a view to withdrawing her from the contemplation of her own grief, for women are always moved by a love story. Bef
ore long their temper turned against Helen, and they often went by asking themselves why she should have kept company with Albert all these months if she didn’t mean to wed him.
No wonder the poor man was disappointed. He is destroyed with his grief, said one; look at him, without any more colour in his face than is in my duster.
Another said: he doesn’t swallow a bit of food. And the third said: I poured out a glass of wine for him that was left over, but he put it away. Isn’t love awful? But what can he see in her? another asked, a stumpy, swarthy woman, a little black thorn bush and as full of prickles; and three women fell to thinking that Albert would have done better to have chosen one of them.
The shop entered into the discussion soon after, and everybody was of opinion that Helen would live to regret her cruelty. The word cruelty did not satisfy; treachery was mentioned, and somebody said that Helen’s face was full of treachery. Albert will never recover himself as long as she’s here, another remarked. He’ll just waste away unless Miss Right comes along. He put all his eggs into one basket, a man said; you see he’d never been known to walk out with a girl before. And what age do you think he is? I put him down at forty-five, and when love takes a man at that age it takes him badly. This is no calf love, the man said, looking into the women’s faces, and you’ll never be able to mend matters any of you; and they all declared they didn’t wish to, and dispersed in different directions, flicking their dusters and asking themselves if Albert would ever look at another woman.
It was felt generally that he would not have the courage to try again, which was indeed the case, for when it was suggested to Albert that a faint heart never wins a fair lady she answered that her spirit was broken. I shall boil my pot and carry my can, but the spring is broken in me, and it was these words that were remembered and pondered, whereas the joke — I loved my old nurse, etc. — raised no laugh; and the sympathy that Albert felt to be gathering about her cheered her on her way. She was no longer friendless; almost any one of the women in the hotel would have married Albert out of pity for her. But there was no heart in Albert for another adventure; nor any thought in her for anything but her work. She rose every morning and went forth to her work, and was sorry when her work was done, for she had come to dread every interval, knowing that as soon as she sat down to rest the old torment would begin again. Once more she would begin to think that she had nothing more to look forward to: that her life would be but a round of work; a sort of treadmill. She would never see Lisdoonvarna, and the shop with two counters, one at which tabacco, cigarettes and matches were sold, and at the other counter all kinds of sweet-stuffs. Like Lisdoonvarna, it had passed away, it had only existed in her mind — a thought, a dream. Yet it had possessed her completely; and the parlour behind the shop that she had furnished and refurnished, hanging a round mirror above the mantelpiece, papering the walls with a pretty colourful paper that she had seen in Wicklow Street and had asked the man to put aside for her. She had hung curtains about the windows in her imagination, and had set two arm-chairs on either side of the hearth, one in green and one in red velvet, for herself and Helen. The parlour too had passed away like Lisdoonvarna, like the shop, a thought, a dream, no more. There had never been anything in her life but a few dreams, and henceforth there would be not even dreams. It was strange that some people came into the world lucky, and others, for no reason, unlucky; she had been unlucky from her birth; she was a bastard; her parents were grand people whose name she did not know, who paid her nurse a hundred a year to keep her, and who died without making any provision for her. She and her old nurse had to go and live in Temple Lane, and to go out charing every morning; Mr Congreve had a French mistress, and if it had not been for Bessie Lawrence she might have thrown herself in the Thames: she was very near to it that night, and if she had drowned herself all this worry and torment would have been over. She was more resolute in those days than she was now, and would have faced the river, but she shrank from this Dublin river, perhaps because it was not her own river. If one wishes to drown oneself it had better be in one’s own country. It is a mistake, she said, to settle in a foreign country. But why is it a mistake? for a perhapser like herself, all countries were the same; go or stay, it didn’t matter. Yes, it did; she stayed in Dublin in the hope that Hubert Page would return to the hotel. Only to him could she confide the misfortune that had befallen her, and she’d like to tell somebody. The three might set up together. A happy family they might make. Two women in men’s clothes and one in petticoats. If Hubert were willing. But Hubert’s wife might not be willing. If Hubert’s wife were dead! Ah! she had never been so long away before. But she would return, and Albert pondered that her own prospect of being allowed to go and live with somebody depended upon the money she could show.
And from that moment her life expended itself in watching for tips, collecting half-crowns, crowns and halfsovereigns. She felt that she must at least replace the money that she had spent giving presents to Helen — and as the months went by and the years she remembered, with increasing bitterness, that she had wasted nearly twenty pounds — on Helen — a cruel, heartless girl that had come into her life for three months and had left her for Joe Mackins, and Albert thanked God that they were now away in London.
She took to counting her money in her room at night.
The half-crowns were folded up in brown-paper packets, the half-sovereigns in blue, the rare sovereigns were in pink paper and all these little packets were hidden away in different corners; some were put in the chimney, some under the carpet. She often thought that these hoards would be safer in the Post Office Bank, but she who has nothing else likes to have her money with her, and a sense of almost happiness awoke in Jier when she discovered herself to be again as rich as she was before she met Helen.
It was found necessary to remove a plank from the floor; one behind the bed was chosen, and henceforth Albert slept securely over her hoard, or lay awake thinking of Hubert, who might return, and to whom she might confide the story of her misadventure; but as Hubert did not return her wish to see him faded, and she began to think that it might be just as well if he stayed away, for, who knows? a wandering fellow like him might easily run out of his money and return to Morrison’s Hotel to borrow from her, and she wasn’t going to give her money to be spent for the benefit of another woman. The other woman was Hubert’s wife. If Hubert came back he might threaten to publish her secret if she didn’t give him money to keep it. An ugly thought, of which she was ashamed and which she tried to keep out of her mind. But as time went on a dread of Hubert took possession of her. After all, Hubert knew her secret, and somehow it didn’t occur to her that in betraying her secret Hubert would be betraying his own. Albert didn’t think as clearly as she used to; and one day she answered Mrs Baker in a manner that Mrs Baker did not like. Whilst speaking to Albert the thought crossed Mrs Baker’s mind that it was a long while since they had seen the painter. I cannot think, she said, what has become of Hubert Page; we’ve not had news of him for a long time; have you heard from him, Albert? Why should you think, ma’am, that I hear from him? I only asked, Mrs Baker replied, and she heard Albert grumbling something about a wandering fellow, and the tone in which the words were spoken was disrespectful, and Mrs Baker began to consider Albert; and though a better servant now than he had ever been in some respects, he had developed a fault which she didn’t like, a way of hanging round the visitor as he was preparing to leave the hotel that almost amounted to persecution. Worse than that, a rumour had reached her that Albert’s service was measured according to the tip he expected to receive. She didn’t believe it, but if it were true she would not hesitate to have him out of the hotel in spite of the many years he had spent with them. Another thing: Albert was liked, but not by everybody. The little red-headed boy on the second floor told me, Mrs Baker said (her thoughts returning to last Sunday, when she had taken the child out to Bray) that he was afraid of Albert, and he confided to me that Albert had tried to pick him up and kiss h
im. Why can’t he leave the child alone? Can’t he see the child doesn’t like him?
But the Bakers were kind-hearted proprietors, and could not keep sentiment out of their business, and Albert remained at Morrison’s Hotel till she died.
An easy death I hope it was, your honour, for if any poor creature deserved an easy one it was Albert herself. You think so, Alec, meaning that the disappointed man suffers less at parting with this world than the happy one? Maybe you’re right. That is as it may be, your honour, he answered, and I told him that Albert awoke one morning hardly able to breathe, and returned to bed and lay there almost speechless till the maidservant came to make the bed. She ran off again to fetch a cup of tea, and after sipping it Albert said that she felt better. But she never roused completely, and the maidservant who came up in the evening with a bowl of soup did not press her to try to eat it, for it was plain that Albert could not eat or drink, and it was almost plain that she was dying, but the maidservant did not like to alarm the hotel and contented herself with saying: he’d better see the doctor to-morrow. She was up betimes in the morning and on going to Albert’s room she found the waiter asleep, breathing heavily. An hour later Albert was dead, and everybody was asking how a man who was in good health on Tuesday could be a corpse on Thursday morning, as if such a thing had never happened before. However, often it had happened, it did not seem natural, and it was whispered that Albert might have made away with himself. Some spoke of apoplexy, but apoplexy in a long, thin man is not usual; and when the doctor came down his report that Albert was a woman put all thought of the cause of death out of everybody’s mind. Never before or since was Morrison’s Hotel agog as it was that morning, everybody asking the other why Albert had chosen to pass herself off as a man, and how she had succeeded in doing this year after year without any one of them suspecting her. She would be getting better wages as a man than as a woman, somebody said, but nobody cared to discuss the wages question; all knew that a man is better paid than a woman.
