EVELINE
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.
Of 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 now 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 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 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 her 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 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 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.
