Dubliners
standing with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a
man making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face,
fragrant in the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he
called out to the man at the furnace:
“Is the fire hot, sir?”
But the man could not hear with the noise of the furnace. It was just
as well. He might have answered rudely.
A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing
in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments
of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of,
broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those
moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together
and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had
not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her
household cares had not quenched all their souls’ tender fire. In one
letter that he had written to her then he had said: “Why is it that
words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no
word tender enough to be your name?”
Like distant music these words that he had written years before were
borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When
the others had gone away, when he and she were in their room in the
hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:
“Gretta!”
Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then
something in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at
him....
At the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab. He was glad of its
rattling noise as it saved him from conversation. She was looking out
of the window and seemed tired. The others spoke only a few words,
pointing out some building or street. The horse galloped along wearily
under the murky morning sky, dragging his old rattling box after his
heels, and Gabriel was again in a cab with her, galloping to catch the
boat, galloping to their honeymoon.
As the cab drove across O’Connell Bridge Miss O’Callaghan said:
“They say you never cross O’Connell Bridge without seeing a white
horse.”
“I see a white man this time,” said Gabriel.
“Where?” asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy.
Gabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he
nodded familiarly to it and waved his hand.
“Good-night, Dan,” he said gaily.
When the cab drew up before the hotel, Gabriel jumped out and, in spite
of Mr Bartell D’Arcy’s protest, paid the driver. He gave the man a
shilling over his fare. The man saluted and said:
“A prosperous New Year to you, sir.”
“The same to you,” said Gabriel cordially.
She leaned for a moment on his arm in getting out of the cab and while
standing at the curbstone, bidding the others good-night. She leaned
lightly on his arm, as lightly as when she had danced with him a few
hours before. He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his,
proud of her grace and wifely carriage. But now, after the kindling
again of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and
strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust. Under cover
of her silence he pressed her arm closely to his side; and, as they
stood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives
and duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with
wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure.
An old man was dozing in a great hooded chair in the hall. He lit a
candle in the office and went before them to the stairs. They followed
him in silence, their feet falling in soft thuds on the thickly
carpeted stairs. She mounted the stairs behind the porter, her head
bowed in the ascent, her frail shoulders curved as with a burden, her
skirt girt tightly about her. He could have flung his arms about her
hips and held her still, for his arms were trembling with desire to
seize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his
hands held the wild impulse of his body in check. The porter halted on
the stairs to settle his guttering candle. They halted too on the steps
below him. In the silence Gabriel could hear the falling of the molten
wax into the tray and the thumping of his own heart against his ribs.
The porter led them along a corridor and opened a door. Then he set his
unstable candle down on a toilet-table and asked at what hour they were
to be called in the morning.
“Eight,” said Gabriel.
The porter pointed to the tap of the electric-light and began a
muttered apology but Gabriel cut him short.
“We don’t want any light. We have light enough from the street. And I
say,” he added, pointing to the candle, “you might remove that handsome
article, like a good man.”
The porter took up his candle again, but slowly for he was surprised by
such a novel idea. Then he mumbled good-night and went out. Gabriel
shot the lock to.
A ghostly light from the street lamp lay in a long shaft from one
window to the door. Gabriel threw his overcoat and hat on a couch and
crossed the room towards the window. He looked down into the street in
order that his emotion might calm a little. Then he turned and leaned
against a chest of drawers with his back to the light. She had taken
off her hat and cloak and was standing before a large swinging mirror,
unhooking her waist. Gabriel paused for a few moments, watching her,
and then said:
“Gretta!”
She turned away from the mirror slowly and walked along the shaft of
light towards him. Her face looked so serious and weary that the words
would not pass Gabriel’s lips. No, it was not the moment yet.
“You looked tired,” he said.
“I am a little,” she answered.
“You don’t feel ill or weak?”
“No, tired: that’s all.”
She went on to the window and stood there, looking out. Gabriel waited
again and then, fearing that diffidence was about to conquer him, he
said abruptly:
“By the way, Gretta!”
“What is it?”
“You know that poor fellow Malins?” he said quickly.
“Yes. What about him?”
“Well, poor fellow, he’s a decent sort of chap after all,” continued
Gabriel in a false voice. “He gave me back that sovereign I lent him,
and I didn’t expect it, really. It’s a pity he wouldn’t keep away from
that Browne, because he’s not a bad fellow, really.”
He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He
did not know how he could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something?
If she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take
her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes
first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.
“When did you lend him the pound?” she asked, after a pause.
Gabriel strove to restrain himself from breaking out into brutal
language about the sottish Malins and his pound. He longed to cry to
her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her.
But he said:
“O, at Christmas, when he opened that little Christmas-card shop in
Henry Street.”
He was in such a fever of rage and desire that he did not hear her come
from the window. She stood before him for an instant, looking at him
strangely. Then, suddenly raising herself on tiptoe and resting her
hands lightly on his shoulders, she kissed him.
“You are a very generous person, Gabriel,” she said.
Gabriel, trembling with delight at her sudden kiss and at the
quaintness of her phrase, put his hands on her hair and began smoothing
it back, scarcely touching it with his fingers. The washing had made it
fine and brilliant. His heart was brimming over with happiness. Just
when he was wishing for it she had come to him of her own accord.
Perhaps her thoughts had been running with his. Perhaps she had felt
the impetuous desire that was in him, and then the yielding mood had
come upon her. Now that she had fallen to him so easily, he wondered
why he had been so diffident.
He stood, holding her head between his hands. Then, slipping one arm
swiftly about her body and drawing her towards him, he said softly:
“Gretta, dear, what are you thinking about?”
She did not answer nor yield wholly to his arm. He said again, softly:
“Tell me what it is, Gretta. I think I know what is the matter. Do I
know?”
She did not answer at once. Then she said in an outburst of tears:
“O, I am thinking about that song, _The Lass of Aughrim_.”
She broke loose from him and ran to the bed and, throwing her arms
across the bed-rail, hid her face. Gabriel stood stock-still for a
moment in astonishment and then followed her. As he passed in the way
of the cheval-glass he caught sight of himself in full length, his
broad, well-filled shirt-front, the face whose expression always
puzzled him when he saw it in a mirror and his glimmering gilt-rimmed
eyeglasses. He halted a few paces from her and said:
“What about the song? Why does that make you cry?”
She raised her head from her arms and dried her eyes with the back of
her hand like a child. A kinder note than he had intended went into his
voice.
“Why, Gretta?” he asked.
“I am thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song.”
“And who was the person long ago?” asked Gabriel, smiling.
“It was a person I used to know in Galway when I was living with my
grandmother,” she said.
The smile passed away from Gabriel’s face. A dull anger began to gather
again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to
glow angrily in his veins.
“Someone you were in love with?” he asked ironically.
“It was a young boy I used to know,” she answered, “named Michael
Furey. He used to sing that song, _The Lass of Aughrim_. He was very
delicate.”
Gabriel was silent. He did not wish her to think that he was interested
in this delicate boy.
“I can see him so plainly,” she said after a moment. “Such eyes as he
had: big, dark eyes! And such an expression in them—an expression!”
“O then, you were in love with him?” said Gabriel.
“I used to go out walking with him,” she said, “when I was in Galway.”
A thought flew across Gabriel’s mind.
“Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl?”
he said coldly.
She looked at him and asked in surprise:
“What for?”
Her eyes made Gabriel feel awkward. He shrugged his shoulders and said:
“How do I know? To see him, perhaps.”
She looked away from him along the shaft of light towards the window in
silence.
“He is dead,” she said at length. “He died when he was only seventeen.
Isn’t it a terrible thing to die so young as that?”
“What was he?” asked Gabriel, still ironically.
“He was in the gasworks,” she said.
Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the
evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he
had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of
tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind
with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him.
He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his
aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians
and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he
had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back
more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his
forehead.
He tried to keep up his tone of cold interrogation, but his voice when
he spoke was humble and indifferent.
“I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta,” he said.
“I was great with him at that time,” she said.
Her voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be
to try to lead her whither he had purposed, caressed one of her hands
and said, also sadly:
“And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?”
“I think he died for me,” she answered.