The Dead Page #5

"The Dead" is not a standalone book but is the final short story in James Joyce's collection, "Dubliners". This story follows the protagonist Gabriel Conroy through a Christmas season feast, where he grapples with issues of identity and Irish Nationalism. The narrative culminates with Gabriel's profound emotional epiphany about love, mortality and the continuity of life and death, invoked by hearing about his wife's past lover who died young.

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had no right to call him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She
had tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and
staring at him with her rabbit’s eyes.

He saw his wife making her way towards him through the waltzing
couples. When she reached him she said into his ear:

“Gabriel, Aunt Kate wants to know won’t you carve the goose as usual.
Miss Daly will carve the ham and I’ll do the pudding.”

“All right,” said Gabriel.

“She’s sending in the younger ones first as soon as this waltz is over
so that we’ll have the table to ourselves.”

“Were you dancing?” asked Gabriel.

“Of course I was. Didn’t you see me? What row had you with Molly
Ivors?”

“No row. Why? Did she say so?”

“Something like that. I’m trying to get that Mr D’Arcy to sing. He’s
full of conceit, I think.”

“There was no row,” said Gabriel moodily, “only she wanted me to go for
a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn’t.”

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

“O, do go, Gabriel,” she cried. “I’d love to see Galway again.”

“You can go if you like,” said Gabriel coldly.

She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs Malins and said:

“There’s a nice husband for you, Mrs Malins.”

While she was threading her way back across the room Mrs Malins,
without adverting to the interruption, went on to tell Gabriel what
beautiful places there were in Scotland and beautiful scenery. Her
son-in-law brought them every year to the lakes and they used to go
fishing. Her son-in-law was a splendid fisher. One day he caught a
beautiful big fish and the man in the hotel cooked it for their dinner.

Gabriel hardly heard what she said. Now that supper was coming near he
began to think again about his speech and about the quotation. When he
saw Freddy Malins coming across the room to visit his mother Gabriel
left the chair free for him and retired into the embrasure of the
window. The room had already cleared and from the back room came the
clatter of plates and knives. Those who still remained in the
drawing-room seemed tired of dancing and were conversing quietly in
little groups. Gabriel’s warm trembling fingers tapped the cold pane of
the window. How cool it must be outside! How pleasant it would be to
walk out alone, first along by the river and then through the park! The
snow would be lying on the branches of the trees and forming a bright
cap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more pleasant it
would be there than at the supper-table!

He ran over the headings of his speech: Irish hospitality, sad
memories, the Three Graces, Paris, the quotation from Browning. He
repeated to himself a phrase he had written in his review: “One feels
that one is listening to a thought-tormented music.” Miss Ivors had
praised the review. Was she sincere? Had she really any life of her own
behind all her propagandism? There had never been any ill-feeling
between them until that night. It unnerved him to think that she would
be at the supper-table, looking up at him while he spoke with her
critical quizzing eyes. Perhaps she would not be sorry to see him fail
in his speech. An idea came into his mind and gave him courage. He
would say, alluding to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia: “Ladies and Gentlemen,
the generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its
faults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality,
of humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and
hypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to
lack.” Very good: that was one for Miss Ivors. What did he care that
his aunts were only two ignorant old women?

A murmur in the room attracted his attention. Mr Browne was advancing
from the door, gallantly escorting Aunt Julia, who leaned upon his arm,
smiling and hanging her head. An irregular musketry of applause
escorted her also as far as the piano and then, as Mary Jane seated
herself on the stool, and Aunt Julia, no longer smiling, half turned so
as to pitch her voice fairly into the room, gradually ceased. Gabriel
recognised the prelude. It was that of an old song of Aunt
Julia’s—Arrayed for the Bridal. Her voice, strong and clear in tone,
attacked with great spirit the runs which embellish the air and though
she sang very rapidly she did not miss even the smallest of the grace
notes. To follow the voice, without looking at the singer’s face, was
to feel and share the excitement of swift and secure flight. Gabriel
applauded loudly with all the others at the close of the song and loud
applause was borne in from the invisible supper-table. It sounded so
genuine that a little colour struggled into Aunt Julia’s face as she
bent to replace in the music-stand the old leather-bound songbook that
had her initials on the cover. Freddy Malins, who had listened with his
head perched sideways to hear her better, was still applauding when
everyone else had ceased and talking animatedly to his mother who
nodded her head gravely and slowly in acquiescence. At last, when he
could clap no more, he stood up suddenly and hurried across the room to
Aunt Julia whose hand he seized and held in both his hands, shaking it
when words failed him or the catch in his voice proved too much for
him.

“I was just telling my mother,” he said, “I never heard you sing so
well, never. No, I never heard your voice so good as it is tonight.
Now! Would you believe that now? That’s the truth. Upon my word and
honour that’s the truth. I never heard your voice sound so fresh and so
... so clear and fresh, never.”

Aunt Julia smiled broadly and murmured something about compliments as
she released her hand from his grasp. Mr Browne extended his open hand
towards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a
showman introducing a prodigy to an audience:

“Miss Julia Morkan, my latest discovery!”

He was laughing very heartily at this himself when Freddy Malins turned
to him and said:

“Well, Browne, if you’re serious you might make a worse discovery. All
I can say is I never heard her sing half so well as long as I am coming
here. And that’s the honest truth.”

“Neither did I,” said Mr Browne. “I think her voice has greatly
improved.”

Aunt Julia shrugged her shoulders and said with meek pride:

“Thirty years ago I hadn’t a bad voice as voices go.”

“I often told Julia,” said Aunt Kate emphatically, “that she was simply
thrown away in that choir. But she never would be said by me.”

She turned as if to appeal to the good sense of the others against a
refractory child while Aunt Julia gazed in front of her, a vague smile
of reminiscence playing on her face.

“No,” continued Aunt Kate, “she wouldn’t be said or led by anyone,
slaving there in that choir night and day, night and day. Six o’clock
on Christmas morning! And all for what?”

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