EVELINE di James Joyce

EVELINE

di James Joyce

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrilswas the odour af 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 the afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red house. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to pley every evening with other people's children. Then a man fron Belfast bought the field and built house in it, not lijìke their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play togheter 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 tohunt them 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 ahd never dreamed af 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 photopgraph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:

"He in in Melbourne now."

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was tah 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 konwn her life about her. Of couerse 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, especcialy whenever there were people listening.

"Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?"

"Look livery,  Miss Hill, please."

She would not cry many tears at the 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 wit respect then. She would not be treatedas 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 har the palpitations. When they weregrowing up he had never gone for her, like he used got for Harry and Ernest, because she was a gril; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And now she had nobody to protect her. Ernest ws dead and Harry, who was in the curch decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages, seven shiiling, and Harry always sent up what he could but the troublewas ti 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 airly bad of a 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 throught 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 her change went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was har 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 liev 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 o 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 konw 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 hjad started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship af the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of th eships he had been on and the names of a 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 konw 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 mother's 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 thye promise to gìher mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she wa againin 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 sixpenec. She remembered her father struttung 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 dfinal craziness. She trembled as she heard gain hefr mother's voice saying constantly with foolish insistece:

"Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun seraun1

she stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape!

Frank would save her. H would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why sould she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness, Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He wouls save her.

She stood among the swaying crowd of the station at the North Wall. He held herhand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers withbrown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the blck mass af 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 mze of distress, she prayed to God to directer, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into a mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been ooked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nasea 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 umbled 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 aws 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 gim no sign of love opr farewell or recognition.