by George Moore
But what Albert would have done with Helen if Helen hadn’t gone off with Joe Mackins stirred everybody’s imagination. What would have happened on the wedding night? Nothing, of course; but how would she have let on? The men giggled over their glasses, and the women pondered over their cups of tea; the men asked the women and the women asked the men, and the interest in the subject had not quite died down when Hubert Page returned to Morrison’s Hotel, in the spring of the year, with her paint pots and brushes. How is Albert Nobbs? was one of her first inquiries, and it fired the train. Albert Nobbs! Don’t you know? How should I know? Hubert Page replied. I’ve only just come back to Dublin. What is there to know? Don’t you ever read the papers? Read the papers? Hubert repeated Then you haven’t heard that Albert Nobbs is dead? No, I hadn’t heard of it. I’m sorry for him, but after all, men die; there’s nothing wonderful in that, is there?
No; but if you had read the papers you’d have learnt that Albert Nobbs wasn’t a man at all. Albert Nobbs was a woman. Albert Nobbs a woman! Hubert replied, putting as much surprise as she could into her voice. So you never heard? And the story began to pour out from different sides, everybody striving to communicate it to her, until at last she said: if you all speak together, I shall never understand it. Albert Nobbs a woman! A woman as much as you’re a man, was the answer, and the story of her courtship with Helen, and Helen’s preference for Joe Mackins and Albert’s grief at Helen’s treatment of him trickled into a long relation. The biggest deception in the whole world, a scullion cried from his saucepans. Whatever would she have done with Helen if they had married? But the question had been asked so often that it fell flat. So Helen went away with Joe Mackins? Hubert said. Yes; and they don’t seem to get on over well together. Serve her right for her unkindness, cried a kitchen-maid. But after all, you wouldn’t want her to marry a woman? a scullion answered. Of course not; of course not. The story was taken up by another voice, and the hundreds of pounds that Albert had left behind in many securities were multiplied; nearly a hundred in ready money rolled up in paper, half-crowns, half-sovereigns and sovereigns in his bedroom; his bedroom — her bedroom, I mean; but we’re so used to thinking of her as a him that we find it difficult to say her; we’re always catching each other up. But what I’m thinking of, said a waiter, is the waste of all that money. A great scoop it was for the Government, eight hundred pounds. The pair were to have bought a shop and lived together, Mr Page, Annie Watts rapped out, and when the discussion was carried from the kitchen upstairs to the second floor: true for you, said Dorothy, now you mention it, I remember, it’s you that should be knowing better than anybody else, Mr Page, what Albert’s sex was like. Didn’t you sleep with her? I fell asleep the moment my head was on the pillow, Page answered, for if you remember rightly I was that tired Mrs Baker hadn’t the heart to turn me out of the hotel. I’d been working ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day, and when he took me up to his room I just tore off my clothes and fell asleep and went away in the morning before he was awake. Isn’t it wonderful? A woman, Hubert continued, and a minx in the bargain, and an artful minx if ever there was one in the world, and there have been a good many. And now, ladies, I must be about my work. I wonder what Annie Watts was thinking of when she stood looking into my eyes; does she suspect me? Hubert asked herself as she sat on her derrick. And what a piece of bad luck that I shouldn’t have found him alive when I returned to Dublin.
You see, Alec, this is how it was. Polly, that was Hubert’s wife, died six months before Albert; and Hubert had been thinking ever since of going into partnership with Albert. In fact Hubert had been thinking about a shop, like Albert, saying to herself almost every day after the death of her wife: Albert and I might set up together. But it was not until she lay in bed that she fell to thinking the matter out, saying to herself: one of us would have had to give up our job to attend to it. The shop was Albert’s idea more than mine, so perhaps she’d have given up waiting, which would not have suited me, for I’m tired of going up these ladders. My head isn’t altogether as steady as it used to be; swinging about on a derrick isn’t suited to women. So perhaps it’s as well that things have fallen out as they have. Hubert turned herself over, but sleep was far from her, and she lay a long time thinking of everything and of nothing in particular, as we all do in our beds, with this thought often uppermost: I wonder what is going to be the end of my life. What new chance do the years hold for me?
And of what would Hubert be thinking, and she a married woman? Of what else should she be thinking but of her husband, who might now be a different man from the one she left behind. Fifteen years, she said, makes a great difference in all of us, and perhaps it was the words, fifteen years, that put the children she had left behind her back into her thought. I wouldn’t be saying that she hadn’t been thinking of them, off and on, in the years gone by, but the thought of them was never such a piercing thought as it was that night. She’d have liked to have jumped out of her bed and run away to them; and perhaps she would have done if she only knew where they were. But she didn’t, so she had to keep to her bed; and she lay for an hour or more thinking of them as little children, and wondering what they were like now. Lily was five when she left home. She’s a young woman, now. Agnes was only two. She is now seventeen, still a girl, Hubert said to herself; but Lily’s looking round, thinking of young men, and the other won’t be delaying much longer, for young women are much more wideawake than they used to be in the old days. The rest of my life belongs to them. Their father could have looked after them till now; but now they are thinking of young men he won’t be able to cope with them, and maybe he’s wanting me too. Bill is forty, and at forty we begin to think of them as we knew them long ago. He must have often thought of me, perhaps oftener than I thought of him, and she was surprised to find that she had forgotten all Bill’s ill usage, and remembered only the good time she had had with him. The rest of my life belongs to him, she said, and to the girls. But how am I to get back to him? how, indeed?... Bill may be dead; the children too. But that isn’t likely. I must get news of them somehow. The house is there, and lying in the darkness she recalled the pictures on the wall, the chairs that she had sat in, the coverlets on the beds, everything. Bill isn’t a wanderer, she said; I’ll find him in the same house if he isn’t dead. And the children? Did they know anything about her? Had Bill spoken ill to them of her? She didn’t think he would do that. But did they want to see her? Well, she could never find that out except by going to see. But how was she going to return home? Pack up her things and go dressed as a man to the house and, meeting Bill on the threshold, say: don’t you know me, Bill? and are you glad to see your mother back, children? No; that wouldn’t do. She must return home as a woman, and none of them must know the life she had been living. But what story would she tell him? It would be difficult to tell the story of fifteen years, for fifteen years is a long time, and sooner or later they’d find out she was lying, for they would keep asking her questions.
But sure, said Alec, ’tis an easy story to tell. Well, Alec, what story should she tell them? In these parts, Alec said, a woman who left her husband and returned to him after fifteen years would say she was taken away by the fairies whilst wandering in a wood. Do you think she’d be believed? Why shouldn’t she, your, honour? A woman that marries another woman, and lives happily with her, isn’t a natural woman; there must be something of the fairy in her. But I could see it all happening as you told it, the maidservants and the serving-men going their own roads, and the only fault I’ve to find with the story is that you left out some of the best parts. I’d have liked to know what the husband said when she went back to him, and they separated all the years. If he liked her better than he did before, or less. And there’s a fine story in the way the mother would be vexed by the two daughters and the husband, and they at her all the time with questions, and she hard set to find answers for them. But mayhap the best bit of all is when Albert began to think that it wouldn’t do to have Joe Mackins hanging r
ound, making their home his own, eating and drinking of the best, and when there was a quarrel he’d have a fine threat over them, as good as the Murrigan herself when she makes off of a night to the fair, whirling herself over the people’s heads, stirring them up agin each other, making cakes of their skulls. I’m bet, fairly bet, crowed down by the Ballinrobe cock. And now, your honour, you heard the Angelus ringing, and my dinner is on the hob, but I’ll be telling you what I think of the story when I come back; but I’m thinking already ’tis the finest that ever came out of Ballinrobe, I am so.
CHAPTER 54.
ONE DAY ALEC said, breaking a long silence: ’tis proud of you they must be in London for the great shanachie that you are; the greatest in all the world, I’m thinking. But maybe, he continued, interpreting my silence as a confession that London had not done justice to whatever small talent may be mine, they are passing you over for the bitter jealousy there is in England always of everything that comes out of old Ireland. And didn’t they strip us of our lands and our laws, of our own language itself? and aren’t all the old houses being emptied now of the fine furniture we made in Dublin? and the pictures, and the silver spoons and dishes, all our handiwork, sold in London, bad cess to them? And aren’t they still at the same old scheming, ferreting out our old stories, turning them all into rags and tatters, for not understanding the significance of anything in them. Isn’t it the truth I’m telling your honour?
Before I could answer him, Alec began again: but you’re a Mayo man like myself, and if you should think it worth your while to be writing out any of the stories I’ve been telling you, it is meself that will be the proud man, for it won’t be taking back a pailful of potato skins you will be doing like the lady in Galway, but fine spuds in which there is a rich diet. Faith and troth that is why I have opened my mind to you, for I wouldn’t have our old stories betrayed and destroyed any longer than I can help it. ’Tis the nature of stories to be travelling; always footing it one way or the other. So ’tis no use trying to keep them to ourselves, I know that, but I would like them to appear in their emigrations clean and tidy, just that, so that they may see over yonder that we have a shanachie as good or better than their own. The stories you have told me, I said, are the gift of the shanachie of Westport to the shanachie of Ballinrobe. If your honour likes to think of it in that way, he answered, ’tis a great honour you’re doing me by comparing me with yourself. Comparing myself with yourself? I rapped out. Why, Alec, we have been telling stories one against the other, and the best of the bunch is “The Nuns of Crith Gaille”; and by far. We will never be agreed about that, your honour. Well, more is the pity, I replied, and if we aren’t agreed among ourselves I don’t know how it is to be settled unless we ring the chapel bell and call a meeting with the priest in the chair.
At the word priest Alec’s face turned grave, and it came into my mind that I was just about to lose the original Alec which it had taken me a fortnight to evoke. It wouldn’t be fair, I said, for me to tell stories against you in your own parish, and the words had no sooner passed my lips than I regretted them. We should do well not to be talking about the priest at all, Alec said, for the clergy do not take kindly to hearing stories told against themselves, even if they be in the years back. And not another word could I get from him. He sat, as it were, frozen in his meditations, and was not roused out of them till at last I said: there have been great shanachies in this world, Alec; greater than we. Now do you think there were any greater than yourself, your honour? I do, indeed, Alec, though I admire “The Nuns of Crith Gaille” more than any of my own stories. You’ll be turning my head if you say any more about that story, he answered, and he asked me who were the world’s great shanachies. Had I shaken hands with any of them? With one, I have. An Englishman? Alec interjected. No, Alec. The Englishman, to my thinking, isn’t a story-teller at all. He tells of parsons and croquet lawns, and is home-sick when he leaves them. He tells a tea-party well enough, and has a quick eye to spy out the difference between one woman’s talk and another; whether she visits the big houses and if she has the talk of the gentry tripping on her tongue. But there is no diet in the Englishman’s stories, if I may borrow one of your own expressive phrases. But there was a great shanachie over in France in the years back. Was there now? Alec interjected. There has been one, troth and faith, I answered, one that overtops all the others, wherever you may go looking for them. Now, your honour, Alec cried, you will be delighting me, begob you will, by telling me something about the great shanachie. Balzac, I said. But no sooner was the name out of my mouth than I began to regret having mentioned him, for it is difficult to pick a story out of the great Human Comedy that would appeal to an imaginative uneducated fellow and of all something that could be related on a June morning in a sunny wood by an old deserted mill.
But Alec was intent to hear one of Balzac’s stories from me, and as an earnest of Balzac’s originality I began to tell a half-remembered, half-forgotten story of a son that acted as executioner to his family, striking off their heads, one after the other; besought, Alec, by every one of them to be brave and to strike firmly and straight. You must know that it fell out in Spain, when the Spaniards who had been conquered by the French were conspiring to rid themselves of their conquerors, and to do this it behoved him on whomsoever the lot should fall to kill the sentry; the family are watching from a window: death if he fails. The cry of a bird, some vague sound attracts the sentry; he turns; all is lost. The Spaniard is seized. The French general is a man of iron, and to make an end of the conspiracies that were always hatching he decides that not only the spy must be beheaded, but the entire family. The blotting out of an ancient lineage, one that was before the Arabs conquered Spain, is not easily apprehended by us. A Spaniard alone could appreciate the father’s despair. All the same I think I understand, Alec said, and I gathered from his tone he was already interested in the story. The father beseeches, he begs that one member may be spared to continue the name — he asks for the life of his youngest son — that is all; if he could be spared, the rest don’t matter; for individual death is nothing to a Spaniard; the name everything, and the family I am telling was, as I have said, before the Arabs; maybe fifty generations had come and gone. The general, I have related, is a man of iron. Yes, one member of your family shall be respited, he answers, but on one condition. To the agonised family, conditions are as nothing. But they don’t know that the man of iron is determined to make a terrible example, one that will make an end of Spanish conspiracy, and they cry: any conditions. He who is respited must serve as executioner to the other. Great is the price; but the name must be saved at all costs, and in the family council the father goes to his son and says: I have been a good father to you, my son; I have always been a kind father, have I not? Answer me that, You will not fail us; you will prove yourself worthy of your great ancestor who defeated the Arabs, remember! The mother goes to her son and says: my son, I have been a good mother, I have always loved you; you will not desert us in this hour of our great need. The little sister goes to him. One by one the whole family goes to him and they kneel down and beg him to save the family from death. He will not prove himself unworthy of our name, they cry; and on the fatal morning the father says: take the axe firmly, do what I ask you; courage, and strike straight. The father’s head falls into the sawdust, the blood all over the white beard. Then comes the elder brother, and then another brother; and then the little sister. She is almost more than he can bear, and his mother has to whisper: remember your promise to your dead father. Therefore he strikes off his sister’s head; his mother lays her head on the block, but he cannot kill his mother. Be not the first coward of our name! Strike; remember your promise to us all. Her head is struck off. The family is saved —
And the son, Alec asked, what became of him? He was never seen, Alec, save at night, walking, a solitary man, beneath the walls of his castle in Granada. And he never married? You’ve guessed rightly, Alec. He never married. ’Tis a great story surely, Alec mu
ttered. We walked a few yards in silence, and finding a comfortable bank to lie upon under the tall trees overhanging the torrent, I related some of the droll stories, causing Alec to chuckle, but only languidly. He prefers his own, I said to myself, and we passed on to the war stories, and he liked Adieu, and seemed to understand the pathetic figure of the retired tradesman who lived in a garret so that his daughters might make rich marriages and shine in society; and I might have heard the story of an Irish Lear from him if I had not been eager to tell another Balzac.
But Balzac, although appreciated by Alec, did not capture his imagination as the Russian writers did. Dostoieffsky discovered horizons more lurid. Tolstoy’s moralities, I said to myself, are not easy to deal with, and I passed on to Tchertkoff, who pleased him, and in much the same way as he pleases me…I longed to speak of Tourguéneff but dared not, afraid that the delicate rhythms and almost pallid beauty of his stories would escape a rustic ear and eye. In this I was mistaken; for every one of the Tales of a Sportman was understood, and the Dream Tales, who would have thought it, were a grand success. It was while telling one of these that we passed out of the wood on to the terraced walk overlooking the park, our eyes fixed; I say our eyes, for so beautiful was the airy prospect that it was impossible for me to think that even Alec who had been watching it all his life, could keep his eyes from the mountain range above the town — hills rising one above the other, buttressing Croagh Patrick, leaving the perfect outlines of the peak showing against a brilliant sky with the shadowy outlines of the Connemara hills far away, shadowy and far away as the tales that I had just been relating.
