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a creature driven and derided by vanity; and
my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
EVELINE
SHE sat at the window watching the evening in-
vade 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 ev-
ery evening with other people s children. Then
a man from Belfast bought the field and built
65
66 Dubliners (Signet Classics)
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 black-
thorn 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.
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Home! She looked round the room, review-
ing 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 di-
vided. 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 fa-
ther. 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
68 Dubliners (Signet Classics)
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, per-
haps; and her place would be filled up by adver-
tisement. 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 wait-
ing?
 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
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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 pal-
pitations. 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 al-
ways gave her entire wages  seven shillings 
and Harry always sent up what he could but
the trouble was to get any money from her fa-
ther. He said she used to squander the money,
70 Dubliners (Signet Classics)
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 usu-
ally 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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