Eveline Page #2

								

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
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