EVELINE
by James Joyce
SHE sat at the window watching
the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the
window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty
cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out
of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his
footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards
crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time
there used to be a field there in which they used to play every
evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast
bought the field and built houses in it -- not like their little
brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The
children of the avenue used to play together in that field --
the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple,
she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played:
he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out
of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh
used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming.
Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was
not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a
long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown
up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the
Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was
going to go away like the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the
room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted
once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the
dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar
objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And
yet during all those years she had never found out the name of
the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the
broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made
to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend
of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor
her father used to pass it with a casual word:
"He is in Melbourne now."
She had consented to go away,
to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side
of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food;
she had those whom she had known all her life about her. O
course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business.
What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out
that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps;
and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan
would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially
whenever there were people listening.
"Miss Hill, don't you see
these ladies are waiting?"
"Look lively, Miss Hill,
please."
She would not cry many tears
at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a
distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she
would be married -- she, Eveline. People would treat her with
respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been.
Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt
herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that
that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up
he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and
Ernest, because she was a girl but latterly he had begun to
threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead
mother's sake. And no she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was
dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was
nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the
invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to
weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages -- seven
shillings -- and Harry always sent up what he could but the
trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used
to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't
going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the
streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on
Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask
her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner. Then she
had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing,
holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she
elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under
her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house
together and to see that the two young children who had been
left to hr charge went to school regularly and got their meals
regularly. It was hard work -- a hard life -- but now that she
was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable
life.
She was about to explore
another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly,
open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to
be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a
home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she
had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where
she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at
the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair
tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to
know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every
evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl
and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the
theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a
little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang
about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly
confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all
it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she
had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had
started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan
Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he
had been on and the names of the different services. He had
sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories
of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos
Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a
holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had
forbidden her to have anything to say to him.
"I know these sailor chaps,"
he said.
One day he had quarrelled
with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.
The evening deepened in the
avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One
was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her
favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old
lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be
very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day,
he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the
fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all
gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her
father putting on her mothers bonnet to make the children laugh.
Her time was running out but
she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the
window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far
in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew
the air Strange that it should come that very night to remind
her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home
together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of
her mother's illness; she was again in the close dark room at
the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy
air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and
given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into
the sickroom saying:"Damned
Italians! coming over here!"As
she mused the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell
on the very quick of her being -- that life of commonplace
sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard
again her mother's voice saying constantly with foolish
insistence:"Derevaun Seraun!
Derevaun Seraun!"
She stood up in a sudden
impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her.
He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to
live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness.
Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would
save her.
She stood among the swaying
crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she
knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the
passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers
with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she
caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside
the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing.
She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress,
she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty.
The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went,
tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards
Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still
draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a
nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent
fervent prayer.
A bell clanged upon her heart.
She felt him seize her hand:"Come!"
All the seas of the world
tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would
drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
"Come!"
No! No! No! It was impossible.
Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a
cry of anguish.
"Eveline! Evvy!"
He rushed beyond the barrier
and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he
still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive,
like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or
farewell or recognition. |