JAMES JOYCE DUeLTNERS

novel and pushed language to its limit, leading Joyce to be widely regarded as the greatest literary genius of the twentieth century. James toyce died in r94r.

Joyce wrote Dùbliners, a miscellaneous collectión of scenes drav,rn from Dublin life, when he was just twenty- five years old. A literary experiment, the stories are as refreshingly original and astonishing tday, as when they were first published in r9r4.

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D U e L T N E R S

J A M E S J O Y C E

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Firsr published r9r4 This edition first published 1926 Published in Penguin Popular Classics r996

4

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C O N T E N T S

THE SISTERS AN ENCOUNTER ARABY

EVELINE

AFTER THE RACE TWO GALLANTS THE BOARDING HOUSB A LITTLE CLOUD COUNTERPARTg CLAY

A PAINFUL CASE

IVY DAY IN TIIB COMMI.TTEE ROOM A M O T H E R

GRACE T H E I E A D

PAGE

7 I 8 29

3 7

I I O I I 9

r32 r 5 3 r69 t99 . €

D U B L I N E R S 'Didn't she say thatl'

'Yes. I heard her.' ' O r t r h e r e ' s a . . . f i b ! '

Oberving me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not en- couraging; she seemed to have sPoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jan that stood like eastern guards at either side ofthe 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 begn to talk of the same subjecL 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 tÌre baz,azr. 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 tlre hall was now comPletely dark.

da"i.tg up into the darkness I saw mlnelf as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with enguish and anger.

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*

Ssr sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. IIer headwas leaned againstthe window curtains, a1d in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.

Few people passed. The rnan out of the last house pa-csed 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 thàre used to be a field there in which they used to play €very evening with otherpeople'schildren. Then aman from Beifast bou[ht the field and built houses in it - not like their little brown to,rro, but bright.brick houses with shining roofs. The children oi tùe ay-enue used to play together in that field - the Devines, the W'aters, the Dunns, Iittle Keogh the cripple, she and hei brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, neveiplayed: 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 gsed to keep zix tndcall out when he saw her father comin-g.

Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her fatirl wzrs notso bad then; and besideg her mother was alive. That was a long time agoi she and her brotlen and sisten were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, bo, and the W'aters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go awallike the otherq tJ leave her home

Home! She looked round the réom, reviewing.all is niliar objects which she had dusted once a *.et'for so

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many yeans, \pondering where on earth dl the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again thce familiar objects from which she had never drq,uned of being divided.

And yet during all thce years she had never found out the na^sre of tlre 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. Iil'henever 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 wisei She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anryay she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of cours€ 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 trhat she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, per- haps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement.

Mis Gavan would be glad. She had "l*y= had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.

'Miss Hill, don't you see tùese ladies are waitingl' 'Look lively, Mis Hill, please.'

She would not c{f nrany t€ars at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she îrould be married - she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her motùer had been. Evèn now, though she was over nineteerb she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that

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fa! eyen her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her,

lite -tre used tó go for"U"rry'.nà Ernest, because she was a gìrl; but latterly-he had begun to tfrlten her and say what he would do tó her only fir her dead mother's sake. And now she had nobody to protect her.

Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorat_

ing businesq was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on

|turday nighe had begun to *ory her unspeakably. She .l*y" gave her entire wages - seven shillings _ and Harry always sent up what he could, but the trouble was ro get any money from her father. He said she used to squanaer the money, that she had no hea4 that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the sir."tq anl much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he .rr"u]g grve her

*..-9yy and ask her h-ad she any intention of bufng Sunday's dinner. Then she had to rusi out as quickly as she could and do her marketing holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elboweJ her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house to_

gether and to see that the trvo young children who had been leftto her-charge went-to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work - a harú fife _iut 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

"î o..Z kind, manlS open-hearted. She wÉut ro go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and t" li* -ití hjm in Buenos Ayr"q where he had a home waiting for her

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How wdl.she remembered the fint time she had seen himi he was lodgrng in a house on the main road where she used to visit Itseemeda few weebago. He wassandingatthe gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of brorvx. 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 *e The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccus- tomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a litde. People knew that they were court- ing and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she alwap felt pleasandy 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 ales of disant 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 narnes of the ships he had been on and the Ram€s of the different services. He had sailed through the Strais of Magelhn and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayreg he said" and had come over to the old country justforaholiday. Ofcourserher father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have.anything to say to him.'I know these sailor chapq' he said.

One day he had quarrelled with Frank, and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.

The evening deepened in tùe avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct One was to Harry; the odrer was to her father. Ernest had been her favouritq but

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she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would mis her. Sometimes he could be verv 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 tàe Hill of Howth. She remem- bered her father putting on her mother's bonnet to make the

children laugh

Her time wzs running ouq but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, in- haling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ plalng. She knew the air.

Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her molher, 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 melan- choly air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and, given sixpence. She remembered her father strut- ting back into the sick-room saying :

'Damned lalians! coming over here!'

As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid is spell on the very quick of her being - that life of common- place sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice safng consantly with foolish insistence:

'Derevaun

Seraun! Dereyaun Seraunlt

She stood up in a sudden impulse of rerror. Escape ! She must escape ! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she

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be unhappy? She had a right to happiness'-Frarik would take hei in his armg fold her in his arms' He would save her.

r r . . ' ; "

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, sayingsomething about-the Passage over-and oo., "ga"in. The statión was full of soldien with brown bag- pases."Through the wide doon of the sheds she caught a ii"**. of the-black mass of the boag lfng in beside the i,rav r"all' with illumined ponholes. She answered nottring' dh"'f"la her cheek pale and cold and, out ofa maze ofdis- tres, she prayed d God to direct her, to show her what

*r" i", d"ty. fn" boat blew a long mournful whisde into the *isi. If she went, to-morrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres' Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after lU r,J had done for herl Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent Prayer.

'

e U.U clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:

'Come!t

All the seas of the world tumbled about her hean' He was drawing her into tfiem: he would drown her' She gripped with both hands at the iron railing'

'Come!'

No! No! No! Itwas impossible. Her hands dutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish'

'Eveline! EwY!'

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He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow.

He was shouted at to go on, but he still czlled 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.

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