A Little Cloud Page #4

"A Little Cloud" is one of the short stories in James Joyce's collection "Dubliners." It follows the story of a man named Little Chandler, who is discontent with his mundane life in Dublin. The arrival of his old friend Ignatius Gallaher, who is now a successful journalist living in London, forces him to reflect on his own life choices with a mix of envy, dissatisfaction and regret. Joyce uses this narrative to expose the struggle and desolation of common individuals in early 20th-century Ireland.

• Children

								

tone:

“But I’m in no hurry. They can wait. I don’t fancy tying myself up to
one woman, you know.”

He imitated with his mouth the act of tasting and made a wry face.

“Must get a bit stale, I should think,” he said.

Little Chandler sat in the room off the hall, holding a child in his
arms. To save money they kept no servant but Annie’s young sister
Monica came for an hour or so in the morning and an hour or so in the
evening to help. But Monica had gone home long ago. It was a quarter to
nine. Little Chandler had come home late for tea and, moreover, he had
forgotten to bring Annie home the parcel of coffee from Bewley’s. Of
course she was in a bad humour and gave him short answers. She said she
would do without any tea but when it came near the time at which the
shop at the corner closed she decided to go out herself for a quarter
of a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar. She put the sleeping child
deftly in his arms and said:

“Here. Don’t waken him.”

A little lamp with a white china shade stood upon the table and its
light fell over a photograph which was enclosed in a frame of crumpled
horn. It was Annie’s photograph. Little Chandler looked at it, pausing
at the thin tight lips. She wore the pale blue summer blouse which he
had brought her home as a present one Saturday. It had cost him ten and
elevenpence; but what an agony of nervousness it had cost him! How he
had suffered that day, waiting at the shop door until the shop was
empty, standing at the counter and trying to appear at his ease while
the girl piled ladies’ blouses before him, paying at the desk and
forgetting to take up the odd penny of his change, being called back by
the cashier, and finally, striving to hide his blushes as he left the
shop by examining the parcel to see if it was securely tied. When he
brought the blouse home Annie kissed him and said it was very pretty
and stylish; but when she heard the price she threw the blouse on the
table and said it was a regular swindle to charge ten and elevenpence
for it. At first she wanted to take it back but when she tried it on
she was delighted with it, especially with the make of the sleeves, and
kissed him and said he was very good to think of her.

Hm!...

He looked coldly into the eyes of the photograph and they answered
coldly. Certainly they were pretty and the face itself was pretty. But
he found something mean in it. Why was it so unconscious and ladylike?
The composure of the eyes irritated him. They repelled him and defied
him: there was no passion in them, no rapture. He thought of what
Gallaher had said about rich Jewesses. Those dark Oriental eyes, he
thought, how full they are of passion, of voluptuous longing!... Why
had he married the eyes in the photograph?

He caught himself up at the question and glanced nervously round the
room. He found something mean in the pretty furniture which he had
bought for his house on the hire system. Annie had chosen it herself
and it reminded him of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull
resentment against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from
his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like
Gallaher? Could he go to London? There was the furniture still to be
paid for. If he could only write a book and get it published, that
might open the way for him.

A volume of Byron’s poems lay before him on the table. He opened it
cautiously with his left hand lest he should waken the child and began
to read the first poem in the book:

     Hushed are the winds and still the evening gloom,
         Not e’en a Zephyr wanders through the grove,
     Whilst I return to view my Margaret’s tomb
         And scatter flowers on the dust I love.

He paused. He felt the rhythm of the verse about him in the room. How
melancholy it was! Could he, too, write like that, express the
melancholy of his soul in verse? There were so many things he wanted to
describe: his sensation of a few hours before on Grattan Bridge, for
example. If he could get back again into that mood....

The child awoke and began to cry. He turned from the page and tried to
hush it: but it would not be hushed. He began to rock it to and fro in
his arms but its wailing cry grew keener. He rocked it faster while his
eyes began to read the second stanza:

     Within this narrow cell reclines her clay,
         That clay where once....

It was useless. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t do anything. The wailing
of the child pierced the drum of his ear. It was useless, useless! He
was a prisoner for life. His arms trembled with anger and suddenly
bending to the child’s face he shouted:

“Stop!”

The child stopped for an instant, had a spasm of fright and began to
scream. He jumped up from his chair and walked hastily up and down the
room with the child in his arms. It began to sob piteously, losing its
breath for four or five seconds, and then bursting out anew. The thin
walls of the room echoed the sound. He tried to soothe it but it sobbed
more convulsively. He looked at the contracted and quivering face of
the child and began to be alarmed. He counted seven sobs without a
break between them and caught the child to his breast in fright. If it
died!...

The door was burst open and a young woman ran in, panting.

“What is it? What is it?” she cried.

The child, hearing its mother’s voice, broke out into a paroxysm of
sobbing.

“It’s nothing, Annie ... it’s nothing.... He began to cry....”

She flung her parcels on the floor and snatched the child from him.

“What have you done to him?” she cried, glaring into his face.

Little Chandler sustained for one moment the gaze of her eyes and his
heart closed together as he met the hatred in them. He began to
stammer:

“It’s nothing.... He ... he began to cry.... I couldn’t ... I didn’t do
anything.... What?”

Giving no heed to him she began to walk up and down the room, clasping
the child tightly in her arms and murmuring:

“My little man! My little mannie! Was ’ou frightened, love?... There
now, love! There now!... Lambabaun! Mamma’s little lamb of the
world!... There now!”

Little Chandler felt his cheeks suffused with shame and he stood back
out of the lamplight. He listened while the paroxysm of the child’s
sobbing grew less and less; and tears of remorse started to his eyes.
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