strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often
full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour
itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would
ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused
adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers
running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a
dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken
panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water
playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me.
I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil
themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my
hands together until they trembled, murmuring: `O love! O love!' many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused
that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot
whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar; she said she would love
to go.
`And why can't you?' I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not
go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother
and two other boys were fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings. She
held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite
our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and,
falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. At fell over one side of her dress and caught
the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
`It's well for you,' she said.
`If I go,' I said, `I will bring you something.'
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that
evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work
of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came
between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called
to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern
enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My
aunt was surprised, and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few
questions in class. I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he
hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I
had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between
me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the
evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me
curtly:
`Yes, boy, I know.'
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I felt
the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the school. The air was pitilessly
raw and already my heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat
staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me, I left the
room. I mounted the staircase and gained the upper part of the house. The high, cold,
empty, gloomy rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the
front window I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached
me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked
over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, seeing
nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the
lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the
dress.
When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an old,
garrulous woman, a pawnbroker's widow, who collected used stamps for some pious
purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond
an hour and still my uncle did not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry
she couldn't wait any longer, but it was after eight o'clock and she did not like to be
out late, as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and
down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:
`I'm afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.'
At nine o'clock I heard my uncle's latchkey in the hall door. I heard him talking to
himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his
overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was midway through his dinner I
asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.
`The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,' he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
`Can't you give him the money and let him go? You've kept him late enough as it is.'
My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old
saying: `All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' He asked me where I was going
and, when I told him a second time, he asked me did I know The Arab's Farewell to
his Steed. When I left the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece
to my aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street towards the
station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to
me the purpose of my journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted
train. After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept
onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river. At Westland Row Station
a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters moved them back,
saying that it was a special train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage.
In a few minutes the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed
out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten.
In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name.
I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar would be closed, I
passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling to a weary-looking man. I
found myself in a big hall girded at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls
were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like
that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the centre of the bazaar
timidly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which were still open. Before a
curtain, over which the words Café Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two
men were counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one of the stalls and
examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady
was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents
and listened vaguely to their conversation.
`O, I never said such a thing!'
`O, but you did!'
`O, but I didn't!'
`Didn't she say that?'
`Yes. I heard her.'
`O, there's a... fib!'
Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything.
The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a
sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either
side of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:
`No, thank you.'
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two
young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady
glanced at me over her shoulder.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in
her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the
middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my
pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The
upper part of the hall was now completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity;
and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
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 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 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 Aires, 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 Aires, 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. Ernes! 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 sick-room
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
Aires. 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.
After The Race
The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove
of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in
clumps to watch the cars careering homeward, and through this channel of poverty
and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of
