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The Foolish Lovers

by St. John G. Ervine · English · Gutenberg #9461 · 694,426 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Foolish Lovers

Author: St. John G. Ervine


        
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9461]
                Most recently updated: March 29, 2014

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOLISH LOVERS ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, and PG
Distributed Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines.










THE FOOLISH LOVERS

BY

ST. JOHN G. ERVINE


New York


1920


TO MY MOTHER

who asked me to write a story without any "Bad words" in it;

and

TO MRS. J. O. HANNAY

who asked me to write a story without any "Sex" in it.




THE FIRST BOOK OF THE FOOLISH LOVERS

  Why, 'tis an office of discovery, love!
     _The Merchant of Venice._

  Love unpaid does soon disband.
     ANDREW MARVELL




THE FIRST CHAPTER


I

If you were to say to an Ulster man, "Who are the proudest people in
Ireland?" he would first of all stare at you as if he had difficulty in
believing that any intelligent person could ask a question with so
obvious an answer, and then he would reply, "Why, the Ulster people, of
course!" And if you were to say to a Ballyards man, "Who are the
proudest people in Ulster?" he would reply ... if he deigned to reply
at all ... "A child would know that! The Ballyards people, of course!"

It is difficult for anyone who is not a native of the town, to
understand why the inhabitants of Ballyards should possess so great a
pride in their birthplace. It is not a large town ... it is not even
the largest town in the county ... nor has it any notable features to
distinguish it from a dozen other towns of similar size in that part of
Ireland. Millreagh, although it is now a poor, scattered sort of place,
was once of great importance: for the mail-boats sailed from its
harbour to Port Michael until the steamship owners agreed that Port
Michael was too much exposed to the severities of rough weather, and
chose another harbour elsewhere. Millreagh mourns over its lost glory,
attributable in no way to the fault of Millreagh, but entirely to the
inscrutable design of Providence which arranged that Port Michael, and
not Kirkmull, should lie on the opposite side of the Irish Sea; and
every Sunday morning, after church, and sometimes on Sunday afternoon,
the people walk along the breakwater to the lighthouse and remind each
other of the days when their town was of consequence. "We spent a
hundred and fifty thousand pounds on our harbour," they say to each
other, "and then the Scotch went and did the like of that!"--the like
of that being their stupidity in living in an exposed situation.
Millreagh does not admit that it has suffered any more than a temporary
diminishment of its greatness, and it makes optimistic and boastful
prophecies of the fortune and repute that will come to it when the
engineers make a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland. Sometimes an
article on the Channel Tunnel will appear in the _Newsletter_ or
the _Whig_, and for weeks afterwards Millreagh lives in a fever of
expectancy; for whatever else may be said about the Tunnel, this is
certain to be said of it, that it will start, in Ireland, from
Millreagh. On that brilliant hope, Millreagh, tightening its belt,
lives in a fair degree of happiness, eking out its present poverty by
fishing and by letting lodgings in the summer.

Pickie, too, has much reputation, more, perhaps, than Millreagh, for it
is a popular holiday town and was once described in the _Evening
Telegraph_ as "the Blackpool of Ireland." This description, although
it was apt enough, offended the more pretentious people in Pickie who
were only mollified when the innocent reporter, in a later article,
altered the description to, "the Brighton of Ireland." With consummate
understanding of human character, he added, remembering the Yacht Club,
that perhaps the most accurate description of Pickie would be "the
Cowes of Ireland." In this way, the reporter, who subsequently became a
member of parliament and made much money, pleased the harmless vanity
of the lower, the middle and the upper classes of Pickie; and for a
time they were "ill to thole" on account of the swollen condition of
their heads, and it became necessary to utter sneers at "ham-and-egg
parades" and "the tripper element" and to speak loudly and frequently
of the superior merits of Portrush, "a really nice place," before they
could be persuaded to believe that Pickie, like other towns, is
inhabited by common human beings.

Ballyards never yielded an inch of its pride of place to Millreagh or
to Pickie. "What's an oul' harbour when there's no boat in it?"
Ballyards said to Millreagh; and, "Sure, the man makes his livin'
sellin' sausages!" it said to Pickie when Pickie bragged of the great
grocer who had joined the Yacht Club in order that he might issue a
challenge for the Atlantic Cup. Tunnels and attractive seaboards were
extraneous things that might bring fortune, but could not bring merit,
to those lucky enough to possess them; but Ballyards had character ...
its men were meritable men ... and Ballyards would not exchange the
least of its inhabitants for ten tunnels. Nor did Ballyards abate any
of its pride before the ancient and indisputable renown of Dunbar,
which distils a whiskey that has soothed the gullets of millions of men
throughout the world. When Patrickstown bragged of its long history ...
it was once the home of the kings of Ulster ... and tried to make the
world believe that St. Patrick was buried in its cathedral, Ballyards,
magnificently imperturbed, murmured: "Your population is goin' down!";
nor does it manifest any respect for Greenry, which has a member of
parliament to itself and has twice the population of Ballyards. "It's
an ugly hole," says Ballyards, "an' it's full of Papishes!"

Millreagh and Pickie openly sneer at Ballyards, and Greenry affects to
be unaware of it, but the pride of Ballyards remains unaltered,
incapable of being diminished, incapable even of being increased ...
for pride cannot go to greater lengths than the pride of Ballyards has
already gone ... and in spite of contention and denial, it asserts,
invincibly persistent, that it is the finest and most meritabie town in
Ireland. When sceptics ask for proofs, Ballyards replies, "We don't
need proofs!" A drunken man said, on a particularly hearty Saturday
night, that Ballyards was the finest town in the world, but the general
opinion of his fellow-townsmen was that this claim, while very human,
was excessively expressed. London, for example, was bigger than
Ballyards. So was New York!.... The drunken man, when he had recovered
his sobriety, admitted that this was true, but he contended, and was
well supported in his contention, that while London and New York might
be bigger than Ballyards, neither of these cities were inhabited by men
of such independent spirit as the men of Ballyards. A Ballyards man, he
asserted, was beholden to no one. Once, and once only, a Millreagh man
said that a Ballyards man thought he was being independent when he was
being ill-bred; but Ballyards people would have none of this talk, and,
after they had severely assaulted him, they drove the Millreagh man
back to his "stinkin' wee town" and forbade him ever to put his foot in
Ballyards again. "You know what you'll get if you do. Your head in your
hands!" was the threat they shouted after him. And surely the wide
world knows the story ... falsely credited to other places ... which
every Ballyards child learns in its cradle, of the man who, on being
rebuked in a foreign city for spitting, said to those who rebuked him,
"I come from the town of Ballyards, an' I'll spit where I like!"



II

It was his pride in his birthplace which sometimes made John MacDermott
hesitate to accept the advice of his Uncle Matthew and listen leniently
to the advice of his Uncle William. Uncle Matthew urged him to seek his
fortune in foreign parts, but Uncle William said, "Bedam to foreign
parts when you can live in Ballyards!" Uncle Matthew, who had never
been out of Ireland in his life, had much knowledge of the works of
English writers, and from these works, he had drawn a romantic picture
of London. The English city, in his imagination, was a place of
marvellous adventures, far mere wonderful than the ancient city of
Bagdad or the still more ancient city of Damascus, wherein anything
might happen to a man who kept his eyes open or, for the matter of
that, shut. He never tired of reading Mr. Andrew Lang's _Historical
Mysteries_, and he liked to think of himself suddenly being accosted
in the street by some dark stranger demanding to know whether he had a
taste for adventure. Uncle Matthew was not quite certain what he would
do if such a thing were to happen to him: whether to proclaim himself
as eager for anything that was odd and queer or to threaten the
stranger with the police. "You might think a man was going to lead you
to a hidden place, mebbe, where there'd be a lovely woman waiting to
receive you, and you blindfolded 'til you were shown into the room
where she was ... and mebbe you'd be queerly disappointed, for it
mightn't be that sort of a thing at all, but only some lad trying to
steal your watch and chain!"

He had heard very unpleasant stories of what he called the Confidence
Trick, whereby innocent persons were beguiled by seemingly amiable men
into parting with all their possessions!...

"Of course," he would admit, "you'd never have no adventures at all, if
you never ran no risks, and mebbe in the end, you do well to chance
things. It's a queer pity a man never has any adventures in this place.
Many's and many's a time I've walked the roads, thinking mebbe I'd meet
someone with a turn that way, but I never in all my born days met
anything queer or unusual, and I don't suppose I ever will now!"

Uncle Matthew had spoken so sadly and so longingly that John had deeply
pitied him. "Did you never fall in love with no one, Uncle Matthew?" he
asked.

"Och, indeed I did, John!" Uncle Matthew replied. "Many's and many's
the time! Your Uncle William used to make fun of me and sing
_'Shilly-shally with the wee girls, ha, ha, ha!'_ at me when I was
a wee lad because I was always running after the young girls and
sweethearting with them. He never ran after any himself: he was always
looking for birds' nests or tormenting people with his tricks. He was a
daft wee fellow for devilment, was your Uncle William, and yet he's
sobered down remarkably. Sometimes, I think he got more romance out of
his tormenting and nesting than I got out of my courting, though love's
a grand thing, John, when you can get it. I was always falling in love,
but sure what was the good? I never could be content with the way the
girls talked about furniture and us setting up house together, when all
the time I was wanting hard to be rescuing them from something. No
wonder they wouldn't have me in the end, for, of course, it's very
important to get good furniture and to set up a house somewhere nice
and snug ... but I never was one for scringing and scrounging ... my
money always melted away from the minute I got it ... and I couldn't
bear the look of the furniture-men when you asked them how much it
would cost to furnish a house on the hire-system!"

He paused for a moment, reflecting perhaps on the pleasures that had
been missed by him because of his inability to save money and his
dislike of practical concerns. Then in a brisker tone, as if he were
consoling himself for his losses, he said, "Oh, well, there's
consolation for everyone somewhere if they'll only take the trouble to
look for it, and after all I've had a queer good time reading books!"

"Mebbe, Uncle Matthew," John suggested, "if you'd left Ballyards and
gone to London, you'd have had a whole lot of adventures!"

"Mebbe I would," Uncle Matthew replied. "Though sometimes I think I'm
not the sort that has adventures, for there's men in the world would
find something romantic wherever they went, and I daresay if Lord Byron
were living here in Ballyards, he'd have the women crying their eyes
out for him. That was a terrible romantic man, John! Lord Byron! A
terrible man for falling in love, God bless him!..."

It was Uncle Matthew who urged John to read Shakespeare--"a very
plain-spoken, knowledgable man, Shakespeare!"--and Lord Byron--"a terrible
bad lord, John, but a fine courter of girls and a grand poet!"--and
Herrick--"a queer sort of minister, that man Herrick, but a good poet
all the same!"--and Dickens. Dickens was the incomparable one who
filled dull streets with vital figures: Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick and
Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Nickleby and Mr. Mantalini and Steerforth and
David Copperfield and Barkis; and terrible figures: Fagan and Bill
Sykes and Uriah Heap and Squeers and Mr. Murdstone and that fearful man
who drank so much that he died of spontaneous combustion; and pathetic
figures: Sidney Carton and Little Nell and Oliver Twist and Nancy and
Dora and Little Dorritt and the Little Marchioness.

"You'd meet the like of them any minute of the day in London," said
Uncle Matthew. "You'd mebbe be walking up a street, the Strand, mebbe,
or in Hyde Park or Whitechapel, and in next to no time at all, you'd
run into the whole jam-boiling of them. London's the queer place for
seeing queer people. Never be content, John, when you're a man, to stay
on in this place where nothing ever happens to anyone, but quit off out
of it and see the world. There's all sorts in London, black men and
yellow men, and I wouldn't be surprised but there's a wheen of Red
Indians, too, with, feathers in their head!...."

"I'd be afeard of them fellows," said John. "They'd scalp you, mebbe!"

"Ah, sure, the peelers wouldn't let them," said Uncle Matthew. "And
anyway you needn't go near them. They keep that sort down by the Docks
and never let them near the places where the fine, lovely women live.
London's the place to see the lovely women, John, all dressed up in
silk dresses, for that's where the high-up women go ... in the Season,
they call it ... and they take their young, lovely daughters with them,
grand wee girls with nice hair and fine complexions and a grand way of
talking ... to get them married, of course. I read in a book one time,
there was a young fellow, come of a poor family, was walking in one of
the parks where the quality-women take their horses every day, and a
young and lovely girl was riding up and down as nice as you like, when
all of a sudden her horse ran away with her. The young fellow never
hesitated for a minute, but jumped over the railings and stopped the
horse, and the girl was that thankful and pleased, him and her was
married after. And she was a lord's daughter, John! A very high-up
lord! She belonged to a queer proud family, but she wasn't too proud to
fall in love with him, and they had a grand time together!"

"Were they rich?" said John.

Uncle Matthew nodded his head. "It would be a great thing now," he
said, "if a lord's daughter was to take a fancy to you!..."

"I'd have to be queer and adventurous for the like of that to happen to
me, Uncle Matthew," John exclaimed. He had never seen a lord's
daughter, but he had seen Lady Castlederry, a proud and beautiful
woman, who seemed to be totally unaware of his existence when he passed
by her on the road.

"Well, and aren't you as fond of adventure as anybody in the wide
world?" Uncle Matthew retorted.

"Indeed, that's true," John admitted, "but then I never had any
adventures in my born days, and you yourself would like to have one,
but you've never had any!"

Uncle Matthew sat quietly in his chair for a few moments. Then he drew
his nephew close to him and stroked his hair.

"Come here 'til I whisper to you," he said. "D'you know why I never had
any adventures, John?"

"No, Uncle Matthew, I do not!'

"Well, I'll tell you then, though I never admitted it to anyone else in
the world, and I'll mebbe never admit it again. I never had any because
I was afraid to have them!"

"Afeard, Uncle Matthew?" John exclaimed. He had net yet trimmed his
tongue to say "afraid."

"Aye, son, heart-afraid. There's many a fine woman I'd have run away
with, only I was afraid mebbe I'd be caught. You'll never have no
adventures if you're afraid to have them, that's a sure and certain
thing!"

John struggled out of his Uncle's embrace and turned squarely to face
him.

"I'm not afeard, Uncle Matthew," he asserted.

"Are you not, son?"

"I'm not afeard of anything. I'd give anybody their cowardy-blow!..."

"There's few people in the world can say that, John!" Uncle Matthew
said.



III

People often said of Uncle Matthew that he was "quare in the head," but
John had never noticed anything queer about him. Mrs. MacDermott,
finding her son in the attic where Uncle Matthew kept his books,
reading an old, torn copy of Smollett's translation of _Gil Blas_,
had said to him, "Son, dear, quit reading them oul' books, do, or
you'll have your mind moidhered like your Uncle Matthew!"

And Willie Logan, tormenting him once because he had refused to
acknowledge his leadership, had called after him that his Uncle Matthew
was astray in the mind. It was a very great satisfaction to John that
just as Willie Logan uttered his taunt, Uncle William came round
McCracken's corner and heard it. Uncle William, a hasty, robust man,
had clouted Willie Logon's head for him and sent him home howling.

"Go home and learn your manners," he had shouted at the blubbering boy.
"Go home and learn your manners, you ill-bred brat, you!"

Uncle William had spoken very gravely and tenderly to John after that
affair, as they walked home together. "Never let anyone make little of
your Uncle Matthew!" he had said to his nephew. "He's a well-read man,
for all his queer talk, and many's a wise thing he says when you're not
expecting it. I never was much of a one for trusting to books
myself.... I couldn't give my mind to them somehow ... but I have a
great respect for books, all the same. It isn't every man can spare the
time for learning or has the inclination for it, but we can all pay
respect to them that has, whatever sort of an upbringing we've got!"

It was then that John MacDermott learned to love his Uncle William
almost as much as he loved his Uncle Matthew. He had always liked Uncle
William ... for he was his uncle, of course, and a kind man in spite of
his rough, quick ways and sharp words ... but Uncle Matthew had
commanded his love. There had been times when he almost disliked Uncle
William ... the times when Uncle William made fun of Uncle Matthew's
romantic talk. John would be sitting in front of the kitchen fire,
before the lamp was lit, listening while his Uncle Matthew told him
stories of high, romantical things, of adventures in aid of beautiful
women, and of life freely given for noble purposes, until he was
wrought up into an ecstasy of selflessness and longing ... and then
Uncle William would come into the kitchen from the shop, stumbling,
perhaps, in the dark, and swear because the lamp was not lit.

Once, after he had listened for a few moments to one of Uncle Matthew's
tales, he had laughed bitterly and said, "I declare to my good God, but
you'd be in a queer way, the whole pack of you, if I was to quit the
shop and run up and down the world looking for adventures and women in
distress. I tell you, the pair of you, it's a queer adventure taking
care of a shop and making it prosper and earning the keep of the house.
There's no lovely woman hiding behind the counter 'til the young lord
comes and delivers her, but by the Holy Smoke, there's a terrible lot
of hard work!"

It had seemed to John then, as he contemplated his Uncle Matthew's
doleful face and listened to his plaintive admission, "I know I'm no
help to you!" that his Uncle William was a cruel-hearted man, and in
his anger he could have struck him. But now, after the affair with
Willie Logan and the talk about Uncle Matthew, and remembering, too,
that Uncle William was always very gentle with Uncle Matthew, even
though his words were sometimes rough, he felt that his heart had ample
room inside it for this rough, bearded man who made so few demands on
the affection of his family, and deserved so much.

John knew that his Uncle William and his mother shared the common
belief that Uncle Matthew was "quare," but, although he had often
thought about the matter, he could not understand why people held this
opinion. It was true that Uncle Matthew had been dismissed from the
Ballyards National School, in which he had been an assistant teacher,
but when John considered the circumstances in which Uncle Matthew had
been dismissed, he felt satisfied that his uncle, so far from having
behaved foolishly, had behaved with great courage and chivalry. Uncle
Matthew, so the story went, had been in Belfast a few days after the
day on which Queen Victoria had died, and had stopped in Royal Avenue
for a few moments to read an advertisement which was exhibited in the
window of a haberdasher's shop. These are the words which he read in
the advertisement:

       *       *       *       *       *

WE MOURN

OUR

DEPARTED QUEEN

       *       *       *       *       *

MOURNING ORDERS PROMPTLY

EXECUTED

       *       *       *       *       *

When he had read through the advertisement twice, Uncle Matthew broke
the haberdasher's window!

He was seized by a policeman, and in due time was brought before the
magistrates who, in addition to fining him and compelling him to pay
for the damage he had done, caused the Resident Magistrate to admonish
him not merely for breaking the window and interfering with the
business of a respectable merchant, but also for offering a frivolous
excuse for his behaviour. Uncle Matthew had said that he broke the
window as a protest against a counterjumper's traffic in a nation's
grief. "I loved the Queen, sir," he said, "and I couldn't bear to see
her death treated like that!" This was more than the Magistrates could
endure, and the Resident Magistrate made an impatient gesture and said,
"Tch, tch, tch!" with his tongue against his palate. He went on to say
that Uncle Matthew's loyalty to the Throne was very touching, very
touching, indeed, especially in these days when a lot of people seemed
to have very little respect for the Royal Family. He thought that his
brother-magistrates would agree with him. ("Hear, hear!" and "Oh, yes,
yes!" and an "Ulster was always noted for its loyalty to the Queen!"
from his brother-magistrates.) But all the same, there had to be
moderation and reason in everything. It would never do if people were
to go about the country breaking other people's windows in the name of
patriotism. It was bad enough to have a pack of Nationalists and
Papists going about the country, singing disloyal songs and terrorising
peaceable, lawabiding loyalists, without members of respected
Protestant and Unionist families like the prisoner ... for Uncle
Matthew was in the dock of the Custody Court and had spent the night in
a cell ... imitating their behaviour in the name of loyalty. He had
taken into the consideration the fact that the prisoner had acted from
the best motives and not from any feeling of disaffection to the
Throne, and also the fact that he belongs to a respectable family, and
so he would not send him to gaol. He gave him the option of paying a
fine, together with costs and the bill for repairing the window, or of
going to prison for one calendar month; and he warned the public that
any other person who broke a window, however loyal he might be, would
be sent to gaol without the option of a fine.

Uncle Matthew had turned to where Uncle William was sitting with the
family solicitor in the well of the court, and Uncle William had nodded
his head comfortingly. Then the warder had opened the door in the side
of the dock, and Uncle Matthew had stepped out of the place of shame
into the company of the general public. The solicitor had attended to
the payment of the fine and the cost of repairing the fractured glass,
and then Uncle William had led Uncle Matthew away. Someone had tittered
at Uncle Matthew as they passed up the steps of the court towards the
door, and Uncle William, disregarding the fact that he was in a court
of law, had turned on him very fiercely, and had said "Damn your
sowl!..." but a policeman, saying "S-s-sh!", had bustled him out of the
court before he could complete his threat. And an old woman, with a
shawl happed about her head, had gazed after Uncle Matthew and said,
"The poor creature! Sure, he's not right!"

The arrest and trial of Uncle Matthew had created a great scandal in
Ballyards, and responsible people went about saying that he had always
been "quare" and was getting "quarer." Willie Logan's father had even
talked of the asylum. Whose windows, he demanded, were safe when, a
fellow like that was let loose on the town? Uncle William had gone to
see Mr. Logan ... no one knew quite what he said to that merchant ...
but it was evident ever after that he had accepted Uncle William's
advice to keep a civil tongue in his head. The Reverend Mr. McCaughan,
who was manager of the Ballyards National School, went specially to the
house of Mr. Cairnduff, the headmaster of the school, to consult him on
the subject. He said that something would have to be done about the
matter. The MacDermotts, he said, were a highly-respected family ... a
MacDermott had been an elder of the church for generations past... and
he would be very sorry, very sorry, indeed to do anything to upset
them, but it was neither right nor reasonable to expect parents to rest
content while their children were taught their lessons by a man who was
both queer in his manner and very nearly a criminal ... for after all,
he had spent a night in a prison-cell and had stood in the dock where
thieves and forgers and wife-beaters and even murderers had stood!

Mr. Cairnduff was in complete agreement with Mr. McCaughan. He, too,
had the greatest respect for the MacDermotts ... no man could help
having respect for them ... and he might add that he had the greatest
possible respect for Matthew MacDermott himself ... a well-read and a
kindly man, though a wee bit, just a _wee_ bit unbalanced
mebbe!...

"Aye, but it's that wee bit that makes all the difference, Mr.
Cairnduff!" said the minister, interrupting the schoolmaster.

"It is," Mr. Cairnduff agreed. "You're right there, Mr. McCaughan. You
are, indeed. All the same, though, I would not like to be a party to
anything that would hurt the feelings of a MacDermott, and if it could
be arranged in some way that Matthew should retire from the profession
through ill-health or something, with a wee bit of a pension, mebbe, to
take the bad look off the thing... well, I for one would not be against
it!"

"You've taken the words out of my mouth," said the minister. "I had it
in my mind that if something of the kind could be arranged!..."

"It would be the best for all concerned," said Mr. Cairnduff.

But it had not been possible to arrange something of the kind. The
member for the Division was not willing to use his influence with the
National Board of Education in Uncle Matthew's behalf. He remembered
that Uncle Matthew, during an election, had interrupted him in a
recital of his services to the Queen, by a reminder that he was only a
militia man, and that rough, irreverent lads, who treated an election
as an opportunity for skylarking instead of improving their minds, had
followed him about his constituency, jeering at him for "a mileeshy
man." Uncle Matthew, too, had publicly declared that Parnell was the
greatest man that had ever lived in Ireland and was worth more than the
whole of the Ulster Unionist members of parliament put together...
which was, of course, very queer doctrine to come from a member of an
Ulster Unionist and Protestant family. The member for the Division
could not agree with Mr. McCaughan and Mr. Cairnduff that the
MacDermotts were a bulwark of the Constitution. Matthew MacDermott's
brother... the one who was dead... had been a queer sort of a fellow.
Lady Castlederry had complained of him more than once!... No, he was
sorry that, much as he should like to oblige Mr. McCaughan and Mr.
Cairnduff, he could not consent to use his influence to get the Board
to pension Matthew MacDermott....

"That man's a blether!" said the minister, as he and the schoolmaster
came away from the member's house. "He won't use his influence with the
Board because he hasn't got any. We'd have done better, mebbe, to go to
a Nationalist M.P. Those fellows have more power in their wee fingers
than our men have in their whole bodies. I wonder, now, could we
persuade Matthew to send in his resignation. I can't bear to think of
the Board dismissing him!"

Uncle William solved their problem for them. "Don't bother your heads
about him," he said when they informed him of their trouble. "I'll
provide for him right enough. He'll send in his resignation to you the
night, Mr. McCaughan. I'm sure, we're all queer and obliged to you for
the trouble you have taken in the matter."

"Ah, not at all, not at all," they said together.

"And I'll not forget it to either of you, you can depend on that. I
daresay Matthew'll be a help to me in the shop!..."

Thus it was that, unpensioned and in the shadow of disgrace, Uncle
Matthew left the service of the National Board of Education.

John admitted to himself, though he would hardly have admitted it to
anyone else, that his Uncle Matthew's behaviour had been very unusual.
He could not, when invited to do so, imagine either Mr. McCaughan or
Mr. Cairnduff breaking the windows of a haberdasher's shop because of
an advertisement which showed, in the opinion of some reputable people,
both feeling and enterprise. Nevertheless, he did not consider that
Uncle Matthew, on that occasion, had proved himself to be lacking in
mental balance. He said that it was a pity that people were not more
ready than they were to break windows, and he was inclined to think
that Uncle Matthew, instead of being forcibly retired from the school,
ought to have been promoted to a better position.

"If you go on talking that way," his mother said to him, "people'll
think you're demented mad!"


"I wouldn't change my Uncle Matthew for the whole world," John stoutly
replied.

"No one's asking you to change him," Mrs. MacDermott retorted. "All
we're asking you to do, is not to go about imitating him with his
romantic talk!"



IV

John did not wish to imitate his Uncle Matthew ... he did not wish to
imitate anyone ... for, although he could not discover that "quareness"
in him which other people professed to discover, yet when he saw how
inactive Uncle Matthew was, how dependent he was on Uncle William and,
to a less extent, on Mrs. MacDermott, and how he seemed to shrink from
things in life, which, when he read about them in books, enthralled
him, John felt that if he were to model his behaviour on that of anyone
else, it must not be on the behaviour of Uncle Matthew. Uncle William
had a quick, decided manner ... he knew exactly what he wanted and
often contrived to get what he wanted. John remembered that his Uncle
William had said to him once, "John, boy, if I want a thing and I can't
get it, I give up wanting it!"

"But you can't help wanting things, Uncle William," John had protested.

"No, boy, you can't" Uncle William had retorted, "but the Almighty
God's given you the sense to understand the difference between wanting
things you can get and wanting things you can't get, and He leaves it
to you to use your sense. Do you never suppose that I want something
strange and wonderful to happen to me the same as your Uncle Matthew
there, that sits dreaming half the day over books? What would become of
you all, your ma and your Uncle Matthew and you, if I was to do the
like of that I? Where would your Uncle Matthew get the money to buy
books to dream over if it wasn't for me giving up my dreams?..."

John's heart had suddenly filled with pity for his Uncle William whom
he saw as a thwarted man, an angel expelled from heaven, reduced from a
proud position in a splendid society to the dull work of one who
maintains others by small, but prolonged, efforts. He felt ashamed of
himself and of Uncle Matthew ... even, for a few moments, of his
mother. Here was Uncle William, working from dawn until dark, denying
himself this pleasure and that, refusing to go to the "shore" with them
in the summer on the assertion that he was a strong man and did not
need holidays ... doing all this in order that he might maintain three
people in comfort and ... yes, idleness! Mrs. MacDermott might be
excluded from the latter charge, for she attended to the house and the
cooking, but how could Uncle Matthew and himself expect to escape from
it? Uncle Matthew had more hope than he had, for Uncle Matthew
sometimes balanced the books for Uncle William, and did odds and ends
about the shop. He would write out the accounts in a very neat hand and
would deliver them, too. But John made no efforts at all. He was the
complete idler, living on his Uncle's bounty, and making no return for
it.

He was now in his second year of monitorship at the school where his
Uncle Matthew had been a teacher, and was in receipt of a few pounds
per annum to indicate that he was more than a pupil; but the few pounds
were insufficient to maintain him ... he knew that ... and even if they
had been sufficient, he was well aware of the fact that his Uncle
William had insisted that the whole of his salary should be placed in
the Post Office Savings Bank for use when he had reached manhood.... He
made a swift resolve, when this consciousness came upon him: he would
quit the school and enter the business, so that he could be of help to
his Uncle William.

"Will you let me leave the school, Uncle?" he said. "I'm tired of the
teaching, and I'd like well to go into the shop with you!"

Uncle William did not answer for a little while. He was adding up a
column of figures in the day-book, and John could hear him counting
quietly to himself. "And six makes fifty-four... six and carry four!"
he said entering the figures in pencil at the foot of the column.

"What's that you say, John, boy?"

"I want to leave school and come into the shop and help you," John
answered.

"God love you, son, what put that notion into your head?"

"I don't want to be a burden to you, Uncle William!"

"A burden to me!" Uncle William swung round on the high office stool
and regarded his nephew intently. "Man, dear, you're no burden to me!
Look at the strength of me! Feel them muscles, will you?" He held out
his tightened arm as he spoke. "Do you think a wee fellow like you
could be a burden to a man with muscles like them, as hard as iron?"

But John was not to be put off by talk of that sort. "You know rightly
what I mean," he said. "You never get no rest at all, and here's me
still at the school!..."

"Ah, wheesht with you, boy!" Uncle William interrupted. "What sort of
talk is this? You will not leave the school, young man! The learning
you're getting will do you a world of benefit, even if you never go on
with the teachering. You're a lucky wee lad, so you are, to be getting
paid to go to school. There was no free learning when I was a child, I
can tell you. Your grandda had to pay heavy for your da and your Uncle
Matthew and me. Every Monday morning, we had to carry our fees to the
master. Aye, and bring money for coal in the winter or else carry a few
sods of turf with us if we hadn't the money for it. That was what
children had to do when I was your age, John. I tell you there's a
queer differs these times between schooling from what there was when I
was a scholar, and you'd be the great gumph if you didn't take
advantage of your good fortune!"

"But I'd like to _help_ you, Uncle William. Do you not understand
me? I want to be doing something for you!" John insisted.

"I understand you well enough, son. You've been moidhering your mind
about me, but sure there's no call for you to do that. No call at all!
Now, not another word out of your head! I've said my say on that
subject, and I'll say no more. Go on with your learning, and when
you've had your fill of it, we'll see what's to be done with you. How
much is twelve and nine?"

"Twenty-one, Uncle William!"

"Twenty-one!" said Uncle William, at his day-book again. "Nine and
carry one!..."

In this way Uncle William settled John's offer to serve in the shop,
and restored learning and literature to his affection and esteem. John
had not given in so easily as the reader may imagine. He had insisted
that his Uncle William worked much too hard, had even hinted that Uncle
Matthew spent more time over books than he spent over "_the_
books," the day-book and the ledger; but his Uncle William had firmly
over-ruled him.

"Books are of more account to your Uncle Matthew than an oul' ledger
any day," he said, "and it'll never be said that I prevented him from
reading them. We all get our happiness in different ways, John, and it
would be a poor thing to prevent a man from getting his happiness in
his way just because it didn't happen to be your way. Books are your
Uncle Matthew's heart's-idol, and I wouldn't stop him from them for the
wide world!"

"But he does nothing, Uncle William," John said, intent on justice,
even when it reflected on his beloved Uncle.

"I know, but sure the heart was taken out of him that time when he was
arrested for breaking the man's window. It was a terrible shock to him,
that, and he never overed it. You must just let things go on as they're
going. I don't believe you'll foe content to be a teacher. Not for one
minute do I believe that. But whatever you turn out to be, it'll be no
harm to have had the extra schooling you're getting, so you'll stay on
a monitor for a while longer. And now quit talking, do, or you'll have
me deafened with your clatter!"

Uncle William always put down attempts to combat his will by
assertions of that sort.

"Are you angry with me, Uncle William?" John anxiously asked.

"Angry with you, son?" He swung round again on the high stool. "Come
here 'til I show you whether I am or not!"

And then Uncle William gathered him up in his arms and crushed the
boy's face into his beard. "God love you, John," he said, "how could I
be angry with you, and you your da's son!"

"I love you queer and well, Uncle," John murmured shyly.

"Do you, son? I'm glad to hear that."

"Aye. And I love my Uncle Matthew, too!..."

"That's right. Always love your Uncle Matthew whatever you do or
whatever happens. He's a man that has more need of love nor most of us.
Your da loved him well, John!"

"Did he?"

"Aye, he did, indeed!" Uncle William put his pen down on the desk, and
leaning against the ledger, rested his head in the cup of his hand.
"Your da was a strange man, John," he said, "a queer, strange man, with
a powerful amount of knowledge in his head. That man could write Latin
and Greek and French and German, and he was the first man in Ballyards
to write the Irish language ... and them was the days when people said
Irish was a Papist language, and would have nothing to do with it. Your
da never paid no heed to anyone... he just did what he wanted to do, no
matter what anyone said or who was against him. Many's the time I've
heard him give the minister his answer, and the high-up people, too.
When Lord Castlederry came bouncing into the town, ordering people to
do this or to do that, just because the Queen's grandson was coming to
the place, your da stood up fornenst him and said, as bold as brass,
'The people of this town are not Englishmen, my lord, to be ordered
about like dogs! They're Ballyards men, and a Ballyards man never bent
the knee to no one!' That was what your da said to him, and Lord
Castlederry never forgot it and never forgave it neither, but he could
do no harm to us, for the MacDermotts owned land and houses in
Ballyards before ever a Castlederry put his foot in the place. He was a
proud man your da, with a terrible quick temper, but as kindly-natured
a man as ever drew breath. Your ma thinks long for him many's a time,
though I think there were whiles he frightened her. Your Uncle Matthew
and me is poor company for her after living with a man like that."

"Am I like my da, Uncle William! My ma says sometimes I am ... when
she's angry with me!"

"Sometimes you're like him and sometimes you're like her. You'll be a
great fellow, John, if you turn out to be like your da. I tell you,
boy, he was a man, and there's few men these times ... only a lot of
oul' Jinny-joes, stroking their beards and looking terrible wise over
ha'penny bargains!"

"And then he died, Uncle William!"

"Aye, son, he died. You were just two years old when he died, a little,
wee child just able to walk and talk. I mind it well. He called me into
the bedroom where he was lying, and he bid the others leave me alone
with him. Your ma didn't want to go, but he wouldn't let her stay, and
so she went, too. 'William,' he said, when the door was shut behind
them, 'I depend on you to look after them all!' Them was his very
words, John, 'I depend on you to look after them all!' I couldn't
answer him, so I just nodded my head. He didn't say anything more for a
wee while, but lay back in the bed and breathed hard, for he was in
pain, and couldn't breathe easy. Then, after a wee while, he looked
round at me, and he said, 'I'm only thirty-one, William, and I'm dying.
And oul' Peter Clancy up the street, that's been away in the head since
he was a child, is over sixty years of age!... I thought he was going
to spring out of the bed when he said that, the temper come over him so
quick and sudden, but I held him down and begged him to control
himself, and he quietened himself. I heard him saying, half under his
breath, 'And God thinks He knows how to rule the world!' He died that
night, rebellious to the end!... He said he depended on me to look
after you all, and I've tried hard, John, as hard as I could!"

His voice quavered, and he turned away from his nephew. "Your da was my
hero," he said. "I'd have shed my heart's blood for him. It was hard
that him that was the best of us should be the first to go!"

John stood by his uncle's side, very moved by his distress, but not
knowing what to do to comfort him.

"My da would be queer and proud of you, Uncle William," he said at
last, "queer and proud if he could see you!"

But Uncle William did not answer nor did he look round.



V

It was understood, after that conversation between John and his Uncle
William, that the boy should remain at school for a year or two longer,
working as a monitor, not in order that he might become a schoolmaster,
but so that he might equip his mind with knowledge. Mrs. MacDermott
wished her son to become a minister. It would be the proudest day of
her life, she said, if she could see John standing in a pulpit,
preaching a sermon. Who knew but that he might be one day be the
minister of the Ballyards First Presbyterian Church itself, the very
church in which his family had worshipped their God for generations.

John, however, had no wish to be a minister.

"You have to be queer and good to be one," he said, "and I'm not as
good as all that!"

"Well, mebbe, you'll get better as you get older," Mrs. MacDermott
insisted.

"I might get worse," he replied. "It would be a fearful thing to be a
minister, and then find out you wanted to commit a sin!"

"Ministers is like ourselves, John," Mrs. MacDermott said, "and I
daresay Mr. McCaughan sometimes wants to do wicked things, for all he's
such a good man, and has to pray to God many's a while for the strength
to resist temptation. That doesn't prove he's not fit to be a minister.
It only shows he understands our nature all the more because he has
temptations himself!"

But John would not be convinced by her arguments. "I don't know, ma!"
he said. "If I wanted to be wicked, I'm afraid I'd be it, so don't ask
me to be a minister for I'd mebbe disgrace you with my carryings-on!"

Mrs. MacDermott had been deeply hurt by his refusal to consider the
ministry.

"Anybody'd think to hear you," she said, "that you'd made up your mind
to lead a sinful life. As if a MacDermott couldn't conquer his sins
better nor anybody else!"

His mother, he often observed, spoke more boastfully of the MacDermotts
than either his Uncle William or his Uncle Matthew.

John's final, overwhelming retort to her was this: "Would my da have
liked me to be a minister?"

"I never knew what your da liked," she retorted; "I only knew what he
did!..."

"Do you think he would have liked me to be a minister?" John persisted.

"Mebbe he wouldn't, but he's not here now!..."

"You wouldn't do behind his back what you'd be afraid to do fornenst
his face, would you?"

"You've no right to talk to me that way. I'm your mother!..."

"You knew rightly he wouldn't have liked it," John continued,
inexorably.

And then Mrs. MacDermott yielded.

"You're your da over again," she complained. "He always had his way in
the end, whatever was against him. What _do_ you want to be, then,
when you grow up?"

"I don't know yet, ma. I only know the things I don't want to be, and
teaching is one of them. And a minister's another! Mebbe I'll know in a
wee while!"

He did not like to tell her that in his heart he wished to go in search
of adventures. His Uncle Matthew's imaginings had filled his mind with
romantic desires, and he longed to leave Ballyards and go somewhere ...
anywhere, so long as it was a difficult and distant place ... where he
would have to contend with dangers. There were times when he felt that
he must instantly pack a bundle of clothes into a red handkerchief ...
he could buy one at Conn's, the draper's ... and run away from home and
stow himself in the hold of a big ship bound for America or Australia
or some place like that ... and was only prevented from doing so by his
fear that his mother and uncles would be deeply grieved by his flight.
"It would look as if they hadn't been kind to me," he said in
remonstrance to himself, "and that wouldn't be fair to them!" But
although he did not run away from home, he still kept the strong desire
in his heart to go out into a dangerous and bewildering world and seek
fortune and adventures. "I want to fight things," he said to himself.
"I want to fight things and, ... and win!"

Mixed up with his desire for adventure was a vision of a beautiful girl
to whom he should offer his love and service. He could not picture her
clearly to himself ... none of the girls in Ballyards bore the
slightest resemblance to her. Sometimes, indeed, he thought that this
beautiful girl was like Lady Castlederry ... only Lady Castlederry,
somehow, although she was so very lovely, had a cold stupid look in her
eyes, and he was very certain that this beautiful girl had bright,
alert eyes.

There had been a passage of love-making between Aggie Logan and him,
conducted entirely by Aggie Logan. She had taken him aside one day, in
the middle of a game of "I spy," and had said to him "Will you court
me, Johnnie?"

"No," he had replied.

"Do you not love me then?" she enquired.

"No," he said again.

"But I want you to court me," she persisted.

"I don't care what you want," he retorted. "I won't court you because I
don't want to court you. I don't like you. You're too much of a girner
for me!"

"I'm not a girner," she protested.

"You are. You start crying the minute anything happens to you or if
people won't do what you want them to do. I wouldn't marry a girner for
the wide world!"

"I won't girn any more if you'll court me," she promised.

"I daresay," he replied skeptically.

She considered for a moment or two. "Well, if you won't court me," she
said, "I'll let Andy Cairnduff court me!"

"He can have you," said John, undismayed by the prospect of the
schoolmaster's son as a rival.

She stood before him for a little while, without speaking. Then she
turned and walked a little distance from him. She stopped, with her
back turned towards him, and he knew by the way her head was bent, that
she was thinking out a way of retaliating on him. The end of her
pinafore was in her mouth!... She turned to him sharply, letting the
pinafore fall from her lips, and pointing at him with her finger, she
began to laugh shrilly.

"Ha, ha, ha!" she said. "I have you quarely gunked!"

"Gunked!" he exclaimed, unable to see how he had been hoaxed.

"Yes," she answered. "I gunked you nicely. You thought I wanted you to
court me, but I was only having you on. Ha, ha, ha!"

He burst out laughing. "I that consoles you," he said; "you're welcome
to it!"

Then she ran away and would not play "I spy" or "Tig" any more.

He had not told his mother of that passage of love with Aggie Logan. It
did not occur to him to tell anything to his mother. His instinct,
indeed, was not to tell things to her, to conceal them from her.



VI

If anyone had said to him that he did not love his mother as much as he
loved his Uncle Matthew and his Uncle William, he would have been very
angry. Not love his mother more than anyone else on earth!... Only a
blow could make a proper answer to such a charge. Nevertheless his
mother was associated in his mind with acts of repression, with
forbidding and restraint. She seemed always to be telling him not to do
things. When he wanted to go to the Lough with Willie Logan to play
Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday or to light a bonfire in Teeshie
McBratney's field with shavings from Galpin's mill in the pretence that
he was a Red Indian preparing for a war-dance, it was his mother who
said that he was not to do it. He might fall into the water and get
drowned, she said, or, he might fall into the fire and get roasted to
death. As if he were not capable of controlling a raft or a bonfire!...

He felt, too, that sometimes she punished him unjustly. When the Logans
and he had played Buffalo Bill and the Red Indians attacking the
defenceless pale-face woman, he had had a fierce argument with Willie
Logan about the part of Buffalo Bill. Willie, being older, had claimed
the part for himself, and, when denied the right to it, had declared
that neither Aggie nor he would play in the game. Then a compromise had
been arranged: Willie was allowed to play the part of Buffalo Bill and
to slay the Red Indian on condition that John, before being slain,
should be allowed to scalp the helpless pale-face woman. He scalped her
so severely, by tugging tightly at her long hair, that she began to
cry, and Willie, more conscious of the fact that he was Aggie's brother
than that he was Buffalo Bill, bore down upon John and gave him his
"cowardy-blow." They fought a fierce and bitter fight, and in the end,
Willie went home with a bleeding nose, and John went home with a black
eye.

Willie had not played the man over that affair. He went to his mother
and complained of John's selfish and brutal behaviour, alleging that he
had suffered terrible punishment in a chivalrous effort to protect his
sister from ruffianly assault; and his mother, a thin, acidulous woman,
whose voice was half snarl and half whine, carried her son's complaint
to Mrs. MacDermott.

Mrs. MacDermott had not stopped to enquire into the truth of the charge
against John beyond asking if it were true that he had pulled Aggie
Logan's hair and fought with Willie Logan. John had replied "Yes, ma!"
That was sufficient for Mrs. MacDermott, that and the testimony of
John's discoloured eye, and she had beaten him with the leather tawse
that was kept hanging from a nail at the side of the fireplace. "That
my son should do the like of that!" she said over and over again until
a cold fury of resentment against her had formed in his heart. It was
true that he had pulled Aggie's hair much harder than he ought to have
done, but he had not intended to hurt her. What he had done, had been
done, not out of malice, but in the excitement of the game; and it was
not fair to beat him so severely for so little a thing as that. He
would not cry ... he would not give his mother the satisfaction of
hearing him cry, although the lashing he was receiving was hurting his
bare pelt very sorely. She could keep on saying, "That my son should do
the like of that!" but he would not mind her....

Then, as if she understood his thoughts and perceived that he was
unmoved by her outraged feelings, she had changed her complaint against
him. Glancing up at the portrait of her husband which was hanging over
the fireplace, she said, "That your father's son should do the like of
that!" Compunction came to him then. He, too, looked up at the portrait
of his father, and suddenly he wanted to cry. The pale face, made more
pale in appearance by the thick, black beard, and having the faded look
which photographs of the dead seem always to have, appeared to him to
be alive and full of reproach, and the big burning eyes, aflame, they
looked, with the consuming thing that took his life, had anger in them,
anger against him!...

He had not any regret for hurting Aggie Logan ... he did not believe
that he had hurt her any more severely than was necessary for the
purposes of the game, and even if he had hurt her, she ought to have
borne it as part of the pretence ... he did not care whether he had
hurt her or not, for she was a "cry-ba" at all times, ready to "girn"
at anything ... but he had sorrow at the thought that he had done
something of which his father might have disapproved. Mrs. MacDermott,
with that penetration which is part of the nature of people who are
accustomed to yield to stronger personalities had discovered that she
could win John to her obedience by reminding him of his father; and she
used her power without pity. "What would your father think of you, if
he knew!" she would say.

She was not a hard or a cruel woman ... she was very kind and loved her
son with a long clutching love ... but her life with her husband had
contained so many disturbances of comfortable courses, thrilling enough
at the time, but terrifying when viewed in retrospect, that her nature,
inclined to quiet, fixed ways and to acceptance, with slight
resistance, of whatever came to her, made all the efforts that were
possible to it to keep her life and her son's life in peace. She hated
change of any sort, whether of circumstances or of friends, and she
loved old, familiar things. The tradition of the MacDermotts, their
life in one place for generations and the respect with which they were
greeted by their townsmen, gave immense pleasure to her, and her
dearest dream was that John should continue in the place where his
forefathers had lived, and that his son and his son's son should
continue there, too!

And so it was that she was always telling John not to do things. She
loathed Uncle Matthew's romances and his talk of adventures in foreign
parts, and she insisted that he was "away in the mind" when her son
spoke of him to her. She tried to make the boy walk inconspicuously, to
keep, always, in the background, to do only those things that were
generally approved of. His quick temper, his haste with his fists, his
habit of contradicting even those who were older than he was, his
unwillingness to admit that he was in the wrong ... all these disturbed
and frightened her. They would lead him into disputes and set him up in
opposition to other people. His delight in the story of his father's
encounter with Lord Castlederry troubled her, and she tried to convince
her son that Lord Castlederry was a well-meaning man, but, as she knew,
without success. She had delighted in her husband's great courage and
self-sufficiency, his sureness, his strong decision and his
unconquerable pride and independence ... but now, in contemplation,
these things frightened her ... she wondered sometimes why it was that
they had not frightened her in his lifetime ... and the thought that
she might have to live again in contention and opposition roused all
her strength to resist that fate. She had lived down much of the
dislike that her husband had aroused. It was not necessary now to
pretend that she did not see people, that she might escape from the
mortification of being stared at, without a sign of recognition; and
she would not lightly yield up her comfortable situation. If only she
could only persuade John to become a minister! There was nothing in
that to frighten her: there was everything to make her feel content and
proud.

When she took John to Belfast, she made the holiday, so eagerly
anticipated, a mortification to him. While they were in the train, she
would tell him not to climb on to the seat of the carriage to look out
of the window at the telegraph-poles flying past and the telegraph-wires
rising and falling like birds ... she would tell him not to stand
at the door in case it should fly open and he should fall out and be
killed ... she would tell him, when the train reached the terminus in
Belfast, to take tight hold of her hand and not to budge from her
side ... she would refuse to cross the Lagan in the steam ferry-boat and
insist on going round by tram-car across the Queen's Bridge ... she
would tell him not to wander about in Forster Green's when he edged
away from her to look at the coffee-mills in which the richly-smelling
berries were being roasted. When she took him to Linden's to tea ...
Linden's which made cakes for the Queen and had the Royal Arms over the
door of the shop! ... she spoiled the treat for him by refusing to let
him sit on one of the stools at the counter and eat his "cookies" like
a man: she made him sit by her side at a table ... an ordinary table
such as anyone could sit on anywhere ... at home, even!

His Uncle William had taken him up to Belfast one market-day, and that
Friday was made memorable to him forever because his Uncle had said to
him, "Well, boy, what would you like to do?" and had consented, without
demur, to cross the Lagan in the ferry-boat. Uncle William had not
clutched at him all the time in fear lest he should fall into the river
and be drowned, and had allowed him to stand at the end of the boat and
watch the swirl of the water against the ferry-steps when they reached
the Antrim side. He had said to him, too, "I've a wee bit of business
to attend to, boy, that'll not interest you much. Would you like to
stay here in the market for an hour by yourself while I go and do it?"

Would he like?...

And not one word about taking great care of himself or of not doing
this or doing that ... of keeping away from the horse-fair, and not
going too near the cattle. Uncle William trusted him, took it for
granted that he was capable of looking after himself....

"Very well, then," Uncle William said, "I'll meet you here in an hour's
time. No later, mind you, for I've a deal to do the day!"

And for a whole hour, John had wandered about the market, not holding
anyone's hand and free to go wherever he liked! He had walked through
the old market where the horses were bought and sold ... had even
stroked a mare's muzzle while some men bargained over it ... and then
had crossed the road to the new market where he smelt the odour of
flowers and fruit and listened to the country-women chaffering over
their butter and eggs. He spent a penny without direction!... He bought
a large, rosy American apple ... without being asked whether he would
like to have that or an orange, or being told that he could not have an
orange, but must have an apple because an apple in the morning was good
for him...

When he told his mother that night of the splendid time he had had by
himself, she said, "You might have lost yourself!..." That chilled him,
and he did not tell her of the gallant way in which he had rubbed his
hand on a horse's side. He knew very well that she would say, "It might
have kicked you!..."



VII

It was she who was most particular about the dyeing of his Easter eggs
and the ritual of hanging up his stocking on Christmas Eve. She had
wanted to go on dyeing eggs for him at Easter and hanging up his
stocking on Christmas Eve, even when he was twelve years of age and
could not be expected to tolerate such things any longer. He liked the
Easter ceremonial better, perhaps, than that of Christmas. His mother
would bid Uncle Matthew take him out of the town to the fields to
gather whin-blossoms so that she could dye the eggs to a pretty brown
colour. Tea-leaves could be used to dye the eggs to a deeper brown than
that of the whin-blossoms, but there was not so much pleasure in taking
tea-leaves from the caddy as there was in plucking whin-blossoms from
the furze-bushes. The Logans bought their Easter eggs, already dyed,
from old Mrs. Dobbs, the dulce-woman, but John disliked the look of her
eggs, apart from the fact that his mother would not permit him to buy
them. Mrs. Dobbs used some artificial dyes which stained the eggshells
a horrible purple or a less horrible red, and John had a feeling of
sickness when he looked at them. Mrs. MacDermott said that if the eggs
were to crack during the process of boiling, the dye would penetrate
the meat and might poison anyone who ate it; and even if the shells
remained uncracked, the dye would soil the fingers and perhaps soil the
clothes. She wondered at Mrs. Logan!...

And on Easter Monday, she and Uncle Matthew and Uncle William would go
to Bryson's field where there was a low mound covered with short grass,
and from the top of this mound, he would trundle his Easter egg down
the slope to the level ground until the shell was broken. Then he would
sit beside his mother and uncles, and eat the hard-boiled meat of the
egg while Uncle Matthew explained to him that he was celebrating an
ancient Druidical rite.



VIII

But he loved his mother very dearly when she came to him at night to
put him to bed and listen to his prayers. He would kneel down in front
of her, in the warmth of the kitchen so that he might not catch cold in
the unheated bedroom, and would shut his eyes very tightly because God
did not like to see little boys peeping through their distended fingers
at Him, and would say his verse:

  I lay my body down to sleep....
  I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
  And if I die before I wake,
  I pray the Lord my soul to take.

and having said that, he would add a general prayer for his family.
"God bless my Mother" ... he always said _"Mother"_ in his
prayers, although he said _"Ma"_ in ordinary talk ... "and my
Uncle William and my Uncle Matthew and all my friends and relations,
and make me a good boy for Jesus' sake, Amen. Our Father which art...."
Then he would scamper up the stairs to bed, and his mother would hap
the clothes about him and tell him to go to sleep soon. She would bend
over him and kiss him very tightly, and he would put his arms about
her, too. "Son, dear!" she would say.




THE SECOND CHAPTER


I

When John MacDermott was seventeen years of age and entering into his
fourth year of monitorship, his Uncle William said to him, "John, boy,
you're getting on to be a man now, and it's high time you began to
think of what you're going to do with yourself when you are one!"

"You're mebbe right," said John.

"The next year'll be your last one at the monitoring, won't it?" Uncle
William continued.

John nodded his head.

"Well, if I were you I'd make a plan of some sort during the next year
or two, for it would never do for you to come to the years of
discretion, and have to take to the teachering because you couldn't
think of anything else to do. I can see well your heart's not in that
trade."

"It is not, indeed!" John said vigorously. "It's a terrible tiring job,
teaching children, and some of them are that stupid you feel provoked
enough to slap the hands off them! I'm nearly afraid of myself
sometimes with the stupid ones, for fear I'd lose my temper with them
and hurt them hard. Mr. Cairnduff says no one should be a teacher that
has a bad temper, and dear knows, Uncle William, I've a fearful temper!
He's a quare wise man, Mr. Cairnduff: he doesn't let any of his
monitors use the cane, for he says it's an awful temptation to be
cruel, especially if you're young and impatient the way I am!"

"Is that so now?" said Uncle William.

"Oh, it is, right enough. I know well there's times when a child's
provoked me, that I want to be cruel to it ... and I'd hate to be cruel
to any child. There's a wee girl in my class now.... Lizzie Turley's
her name!..."

"John Turley's child?"

"Yes. God knows she's the stupidest child in the world!"

"Her da's a match, for her, then, for he's the stupidest man I've ever
known. That fellow ought not to have been let have children!..."

"It's not her fault, I know," John continued, "but you forget that when
you're provoked. I've tried hard to teach that child ... vowed to
myself I'd teach her ... to add up, but I'm afraid she's beaten me. She
can subtract well enough ... that's the queer part about her ... but
she cannot add up. You'll mebbe not believe me. Uncle William, but that
child can't put two and one together and be sure of getting the right
answer. At first she couldn't add two and one together at all. She'd
put down twelve for the answer as likely as not. But I worked hard with
her, and I got her to add up to two and six make eight ... and there
she stuck. I couldn't get her past that: she couldn't add two and seven
together and get nine for the answer. But if you asked her to subtract
two from nine, she'd say "seven" all right! That's a queer thing, now!
Isn't it?"

"Aye, it's queer enough!"

"There's been times when I've wanted to hit that wee girl ... hit her
with my shut fists ... and I don't like to feel that way about a child
that's not all there ... or any child! I'm afraid I'm not fit to be a
teacher, Uncle William. You have to be very good and patient... and
it's no use pretending you haven't. Mr. Cairnduff says it's more
important for a teacher to be good than it is for a minister, and he's
right, too. He says a child should never be slapped by the teacher
that's offended with it, but by another teacher that knows nothing
about the bother. He doesn't use the cane much himself, but there's
some teachers likes using it. Miss Gebbie does... she carries a big
bamboo about with her, and gives you a good hard welt across the hand
with it, if you annoy her. I wouldn't like to be in that woman's grip,
I can tell you. Some women are fearful hard, Uncle William!"

"Worse nor men, some of them," Uncle William agreed.

"Mr. Cairnduff told me one time of a teacher he knew that got to like
the cane so much that he used to try and trip the children into making
mistakes so's he could slap them for it. Isn't it fearful, that?"

"Terrible, John!"

"I'd be ashamed to death if I got that way. Oh, I couldn't go on with
the teaching, Uncle William. I wouldn't be near fit for it."

"Well, never mind, John. There's one thing, the extra schooling you've
had has done you no harm, and I daresay it's done you a lot of good.
But you'll have to think of something to do!..."

"Yes, I will!"

"Do you never think of anything? Is there any particular thing you'd
like to do?"

"There's a whole lot of things I've fancied I'd like to be, but after a
wee while I always change my mind. The first time I went to Belfast, I
thought it would be lovely to be a tram-driver 'til I saw a navvy
tearing up the street ... and then I thought a navvy had the best job
in the world. You know, Uncle William, it takes me a long while to find
out what it is I want, but when I do find it out, I take to it queer
and quick. I'll mebbe go footering about the world like a lost thing,
and then all of a sudden I'll know what I want to do ... and I'll just
do it!"

"Hmmm!" said Uncle William.

"It sounds queer and foolish, doesn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know, John. Many's a thing sounds silly, but isn't."

"It's true, anyway. I've noticed things like that about myself.
It's ... it's like a man getting converted. One minute he's a guilty,
hell-deserving sinner, the way John Hutton says he was, footering about
the world, drinking and guzzling and leading a rotten life ... and then
all of a sudden, he's hauled up and made to give his testimony and do
God's will for the rest of his life! I daresay I'll drift from one thing
to another ... and then I'll know, just like a flash of lightning ... and
I'll go and do it!"

"That's a dangerous kind of a doctrine," said Uncle William. "It's
easier to get into the way of drifting nor it is to get out of it
again. And you're a young lad to be thinking strange thoughts like
that!"

"I'm seventeen," John replied. "That's not young!"

"It's not oul' anyway. Anybody'd think to hear you, you had the years
of Methuselah. I suppose, now, you never thought of coming into the
shop?"

"I did think of it one time, but you wouldn't let me!..."

"That was when you wanted to help me. But did you never think of it for
your own sake? You see, John, you're the last of us, and this shop has
been in our family for a long while ... it's a good trade, too, and
you'll have no fear of hardship as long as you look after it, although
the big firms in Belfast are opening branches here. The MacDermotts can
hold their heads up against any big firm in the world, I'm thinking ...
in this place, anyway. Did you never feel you'd like to come into the
shop?"

John glanced about the shop, at the assistants who were serving
customers with tea and groceries....

"No," he said, shaking his head, "I don't think I'd like it!"

Uncle William considered for a few moments. Then he said, "No, I
thought you wouldn't care for it. Your da felt that way too. The shop
wasn't big enough for him. All the same, there has to be shops, and
there has to be people to look after that!"

"Oh, I know that right enough, Uncle William. I'm not saying anything
against them. They're all right for them that likes them!..."

He paused for a while, and his Uncle waited for him to proceed.
"Sometimes," he said at last, "I'm near in the mind to go and be a
soldier!..."

"For dear sake!" said Uncle William impatiently.

"Or a sailor. I went down to the Post Office once and got a bill about
the Navy!..."

"Well, I would think you were demented mad to go and do the like of
that," said Uncle William. "You might as well be a peeler!"



II

His mind turned now very frequently to the consideration of work other
than that of teaching. He made a mental catalogue of the things that
were immediately possible to him: teaching, the ministry of the
Presbyterian Church, the shop ... and ruled them all out of his list.
The thought of soldiering or of going to sea lingered in his mind for a
long time ... because he associated soldiering and sailoring with
travel in strange places ... but he abandoned that thought when he
balanced the tradition of his class against the Army, and Navy. All the
men of his acquaintance who had joined the Army or the Navy had done
so, either because they were in disgrace or because they were unhappy
at home. It was generally considered that in joining either of the
Services, they had brought shame upon their families, less, perhaps in
the case of the Navy than in the case of the Army. In any event, his
Uncle William's statement that a MacDermott could not endure to be
ordered about by any one settled his mind for him on that subject. He
would have to get his adventures in other ways. He might emigrate to
America. He had a cousin in New York and one in Chicago. He might go to
Canada or Australia or South Africa ... digging for gold or diamonds!
There was nothing in Ireland that attracted him ... all the desirable
things were in distant places. Farming in Canada or Australia had a
romantic attraction that was not to be found in farming in Ireland. He
had _seen_ farmers in Ireland ... and he did not wish to be like
them!

But, no matter how much he considered the question, he came no nearer
to a solution of it.

He would go out to the fields that lay on the shores of the Lough,
going one day to this side, and another day to that, and lie down in
the sunshine and dream of a brilliant career. He might go into
parliament and become a great statesman, like that man, Lord Salisbury,
who had come to Belfast once during the Home Rule agitation. Or he
might turn Nationalist and divert himself by roaring in the House of
Commons against the English! He wished that he could write poetry ...
if he could write poetry, he might become famous. There was an old
exercise book at home, full of poems that he had made up when he was
much younger, about Ireland and the Pope and Love and Ballyards ... but
they were poor things, he knew, although Mr. Cairnduff, to whom he had
shown them, had said that, considering the age John was when he wrote
them, they might have been a great deal worse. Mr. Cairnduff had given
generous praise to a long poem on the election of a Nationalist for the
city of Derry, beginning with this wail:

  _Oh, Derry, Derry, what have you done?
  Sold your freedom to Home Rule's son!_

but neither Uncle William nor Uncle Matthew had had much to say for it.
Uncle William said that his father would not have liked to think of his
son writing a poem full of sentiments of that sort, and Uncle Matthew
went upstairs to the attic and brought down, a copy of _Romeo and
Juliet_ and presented it to him. But Mrs. MacDermott was pleased in
a queer way. She hoped he was not going to take up politics, but she
was glad that he was not a Home Ruler!

Sometimes, when he had been much younger than he now was ... John
always thought of himself as a man of great age ... he had resolved
that he would become a writer; but although he began many stories and
solemn books ... there was one called, _The Errors of Rome_ in
which the Papists were to be finally and conclusively exposed ... none
of them were ever finished. Then had come a phase of preaching. His
mother read the _Christian Herald_ every week, and John would get
a table cloth, and wrap it round himself to represent a surplice ...
for the Church of Ireland was more decorative than the Presbyterian
Church ... and deliver the sermons of Dr. Talmage and Mr. Spurgeon in a
loud sing-song voice that greatly delighted Mrs. MacDermott. That, too,
had passed, very swiftly indeed, because of the alarming discovery that
he was an atheist! He would never forget the sensation he had created
in school when he had suddenly turned to Willie Logan and said,
"Willie, I don't believe there's a God at all. It's all a catch!..."

Willie, partly out of fright, but chiefly because of his incorrigible
tendency to "clash," immediately reported him to Miss Gebbie, who had
been a teacher even then ... it seemed to him sometimes that Miss
Gebbie had always been a teacher and would never cease to be one ...
and she had converted him to a belief in God's existence at the point
of her bamboo....

Then came a time of mere dreaming of a future in which some beautiful
girl would capture all his mind and heart and service. He would rescue
her from a dire situation ... he would invent some wonderful thing that
would bring fame and fortune to him ... and he would offer all his fame
and fortune to her. His visions of this girl, constantly recurring,
prevented him from falling in love with any girl in Ballyards. When he
contrasted the girl of his dream with the girls he saw about him, he
could not understand how anyone could possibly love a Ballyards girl.
Aggie Logan!...

He would come away from the fields, pleased with his dreams, but still
as far from a solution of his problem as ever.



III

One evening, his Uncle William came into the kitchen where John was
reading _John Halifax, Gentleman_ to his mother.

"I ought to go to Belfast the morrow," he said, "but Saturday's an
awkward day for me. I was wondering whether to send John instead. He's
nothing to do on Saturdays, and it would be a great help to me!"

John closed the book, "Of course, I'll go, Uncle William!" he said.

Mrs. MacDermott coldly regarded them both. "You know rightly," she
said, "that I'm as busy on Saturday as you are, William. How can he go
up to Belfast when I can't go with him?"

"I never said nothing about you going with him," Uncle William
retorted. "He's well able to go by himself!" _"Go by himself!"_
Mrs. MacDermott almost shouted the words at her brother-in-law. "A lad
that never was out of the town by his lone in his life before!"

"He'll have to go by his lone some day, won't he? And he's a big lump
of a lad now, and well able to look after himself!"

"He'll not stir an inch from the door without me," Mrs. MacDermott
declared in a determined voice. "Think shame to yourself, William, to
be putting such thoughts into a lad's head ... suggesting that he
should be sent out in the world by himself at his age!..."

Uncle William shifted uneasily in his seat. "I'm not suggesting that he
should be sent out into the world," he said. "I'm only suggesting that
he should be sent to Belfast for the day!..."

"And what sort of a place is Belfast on a Saturday afternoon with a lot
of drunk footballers flying about? He will not go, William. You can
send Matthew!..."

Uncle William made a gesture of impatience. "You know rightly,
Matthew's no good for a job of this sort!"

"Well, then, you'll have to go yourself. I'll keep an eye to the shop,
forby my own work!..."

John got up and put _John Halifax, Gentleman_ on the window-ledge.

"You needn't bother yourself, ma," he said. "I'm going to Belfast the
morrow. What is it you want me to do, Uncle William?"

Mrs. MacDermott stared at him for a moment, then she got up and hurried
out of the kitchen. They could hear her mounting the stairs, and then
they heard the sound of her bedroom door being violently slammed.

"Women are queer, John," said Uncle William, "but the queerest women of
all are the women that are mothers. Anybody'd think I was proposing to
send you to the bad place, and dear knows, Belfast's not that!"

"What's the job you want me to do?"

"Come into the shop and I'll tell you!"

John followed his Uncle into the shop and they sat down together in the
little Counting House.

"There's really nothing that a postcard couldn't do," Uncle William
said. "That was the excuse. I've been thinking about you, John, and I
thought it was a terrible pity you should never get out and about by
yourself a bit ... out of Ballyards, I mean ... to look round you. It's
no good to a lad to be always running about with his ma!"

"You're a terrible schemer, Uncle William," said John.

"Ah, g'long with you," his Uncle answered. "Here, pay heed to me now,
while I tell you. This is what I want you to do!..."

He showed a business letter to John and invited him to read it. Then he
explained the nature of the small commission he wished him to execute.

"It'll not take you long," he said, "and then you can look about
yourself in Belfast. You'll want a few coppers in your pocket!" He put
a coin into John's hand and then closed the lad's fingers over it.
"It's great value to go down the quays and have a look at the ships,"
he went on, "and mebbe you could get a look over the shipyard! ... And
perhaps when you're knocking about Belfast, you'll see something you'd
like to do!"



IV

In this way, his Saturday trips to Belfast began. He found them much
less exhilarating then he had imagined they would be. He inspected the
City Hall in the company of a beadle and was informed, with great
preciseness, of the cost of the building and of the price paid to each
artist for the portraits of the Lord Mayors which were suspended from
the walls of the Council Chamber. The beadle seemed to think that the
portraits represented a waste of ratepayers' money, and he considered
that if the Corporation had given a contract to one artist for all the
pictures, a great reduction in price could have been obtained.... The
Museum and the Free Library depressed him, precisely in the way in
which Museums and Free Libraries always depress people; but he found
pleasure in the Botanic Gardens and the Ormeau Park. He devised an
excellent scheme of walking, which enabled him to go through the
Botanic Gardens, then, by side streets, to the Lagan, where a ferryman
rowed him across to the opposite bank and landed him in the Ormeau
Park. He would walk briskly through the Park, and then, when he had
emerged from it, would cross the Albert Bridge, hurry along the Sand
Quay, and stand at the Queen's Bridge to watch the crowds of workmen
hurrying home from the shipyards. He never tired of watching the
"Islandmen," grimy from their labour, as they passed over the bridge in
a thick, dusky stream to their homes. Thousands and thousands of men
and boys seemed to make an endless procession of shipbuilders,
designers and rivetters and heater-boys. But it never occurred to him
that there was something romantic in the enterprise and labours of
these men, that out of their energies, great ships grew and far lands
were brought near to each other. He liked to witness the dispersal of
the shipyard's energies, but he did not think of the miracle which
their assembled energies performed every day. By this narrow, shallow
river Lagan, a great company of men and boys and women met daily to
make the means whereby races reached out to each other; and their ships
sailed the seas of the world, carrying merchandise from one land to
another, binding the East to the West and the South to the North, and
making chains of friendship and kindliness between diverse peoples. It
was an adventure to sail in a ship, in John's mind, but he did not
know, had never thought or been told, that it is also an adventure to
build a ship. The pleasure which he found in watching the "Islandmen"
crossing the Queen's Bridge was not related to their work: it was found
in the spectacle of a great crowd. Any crowd passing over the Bridge
would have pleased John equally well....

But the crowd of "Islandmen" was soon dispersed; and John found that
there was very little to do in Belfast. He did not care for football
matches, he had no wish to enter the City Hall again, he could not walk
through the Botanic Gardens and the Ormeau Park all day long, and he
certainly did not wish to visit the Museum or the Free Library again.
He became tired of walking aimlessly about the streets. There was a wet
Saturday when, as he stood under the shelter of an awning in Royal
Avenue, he resolved that he would return to Ballyards by an early
train. "It's an awful town, this, on a wet day!" he said to himself,
unaware that any town in which a man is a stranger is unpleasant on a
wet day ... and sometimes on a fine day. "Somehow," he went on, "there
seems to be more to do in Ballyards on a wet day than there is in
Belfast on a wet day!" A sense of loneliness descended upon him as
he gazed at the grey, dribbling skies and the damp pavements. The
trams were full of moist, huddled men and women; the foot-passengers
hurried homewards, their heads bent against the wind and rain; the
bleak-looking newspaper boys, barefooted, pinched, hungry and cold, stood
shivering in doorways, with wet, sticky papers under their arms; and
wherever he looked, John saw only unfriendliness, haste and discomfort.
There would not be a train to Ballyards until late in the afternoon,
and as he stood there, growing less cheerful each moment, he wondered
how he could occupy the time of waiting. The wind blew down the street,
sending the rain scudding in front of it, and chilling him, and, half
unconsciously, he hurried across the road to take shelter in a side
street where, it seemed to him, he would be less exposed. He walked
along the street, keeping in the shadow of the houses, and presently he
found himself before the old market of Smithfield.

"Amn't I the fool," he said to himself, "not to have come here before?"

For here, indeed, was entertainment for any man or woman or child. In
this ancient market for the sale of discarded things, a lonely person
could pass away the dull hours very agreeably. The auctioneers,
wheedling and joking and bullying, could be trusted to amuse any
reasonable man for a while, and when their entertainment was exhausted
there were the stalls to visit and explore. He stood to listen to a
loud-voiced man who was selling secondhand clothes, and then, turning
away, found himself standing before a bookstall. Piles of books, of all
sizes and shapes and colours, lay on a long shutter that rested on
trestles; and in the shop, behind the trestles, were great stacks of
books reaching to the ceiling. He fingered the books with the affection
with which he had seen his Uncle Matthew finger those in the attic at
home. Some of them had the dreary, dull look observable in books that
have long passed out of favour and have lain disregarded in some dark
and dusty corner; and some, though they were old, looked bright and
pleasant as if they were confident that the affection which had been
theirs for years would be continued to them by new owners. He picked up
old volumes and spent much time in contemplating the inscriptions
inside them ... fading inscriptions in a thin, genteel handwriting that
had the careful look of writing done by people who were anxious that
the record should not offend a schoolmaster's eye ... and as he read
these inscriptions, a queer dejection settled on him. These books,
dusty and disregarded, he told himself, represented love and thought
that had perished. Doubt and damp pessimism clutched hold of him. At
the end of every brave adventure was Smithfield Market. He put down a
book which contained an inscription to "Charles Dunwoody from his
affectionate Mother," and looked about him. Everywhere, secondhand,
rejected things were for sale: clothes, furniture, books, pictures ...
The market was a mortuary of ambition and hope, the burial ground of
little enterprises, confidently begun and miserably ended. Here were
the signs of disruption and dispersal, of things attempted but not
achieved, of misfortune and failure, of things used and abandoned for
more coveted things. John had imagined himself performing great feats
to win the love and favour of some beautiful woman ... but now he saw
his adventure in love ending in a loud-voiced auctioneer mouthing jokes
over a ruined home. Behind these piles of books and pictures and
clothes and furniture, one might see young couples bravely setting out
on their little ships of love to seek their fortunes, light-heartedly
facing perils and dangers because of the high hope in their hearts ...
and coming to wreck on a rough coast where their small cargoes were
seized by creditors and brought to this place for sale, and they were
left bare and hurt and discouraged...

"Oh, well!" said John, shrugging his shoulders and picking up a newer
book.

That would not happen to him. If he failed in one enterprise he would
start off on another. If he made a fortune and lost it, he would make
another one. If the things he built were to be destroyed ... well, he
would start building again....

But the mood of pessimism still held him and he could not bear to look
at the books any longer. An unhappy ghost hid behind the covers of each
one of them. He hurried out of the market into the street. The rain had
ceased to fall, but the streets were wet and dirty, and the air struck
at him coldly. He glanced at his watch, and saw that he could not now
catch the train by which he had intended to return to Ballyards.

"I'll go and get my tea somewhere," he said, and then, "I don't think
I'll come to Belfast again. I'm tired of the town!"

He turned into Royal Avenue and passed across Castle Junction into
Donegall Place where there was a shop in which new books were sold. The
shop was closed now, but he was able to see books with handsome covers
in the window and he stayed for a time reading the titles of them.
There was a bustle of people about him, of newspaper boys and flower
girls, bedraggled and cheerless-looking, and of young men and women
tempted to the Saturday evening parade in the chief street of the city
in spite of the rain. The sound of voices in argument and barter and
bright talk mingled with laughter and the noise of the tram-cars and
carts clattering over the stony street. John liked the sound of Belfast
on a Saturday night, the pleased sound of released people intent on
enjoyment and with the knowledge that on the morrow there would still
be freedom from labour, and as he stood in front of the bookshop, half
intent on the books in the window and half intent on the crowd that
moved about him, the gloom which had seized hold of him in Smithfield
began to relax its grip: and when two girls, jostled against him by the
disordered movement of the crowd on the pavement, smiled at him in
apology, he smiled back at them.

He thrust himself through the crowd, breaking into a group of excited
newspaper boys who were thrusting copies of the _Evening
Telegraph_ and _Ireland's Saturday Night_ at possible purchasers,
and walked towards the City Hall, but, changing his mind
unaccountably, he turned down Castle Lane and presently found himself
by the Theatre Royal. He had never been to a theatre in his life, but
Uncle Matthew and Uncle William, when they were young men, used
frequently to come to Belfast from Ballyards to see a play, and they
had told him of the great pleasure they had had at the "old Royal."

"I've a good mind to go there to-night," he said to himself, as he
crossed the street to examine the playbills which were posted on the
walls of the theatre. Mr. F.R. Benson's Shakespearean Company, he read
on the bill by the stage-door, would perform _The Merchant of
Venice_ that evening. The Company would remain in Belfast during the
following week and would produce other plays by Shakespeare.

"I _will_ go," he said to himself. "I'll go somewhere now and have
my tea, and then I'll hurry back!"

He remembered that he had seen a volume of Shakespeare's plays in the
bookshop in Donegall Place and that Uncle Matthew had each of the plays
in a separate volume in the attic at home. He had read _The Merchant
of Venice_ a long time ago, but had only a vague recollection of it.
In one of the school-books, Portia's speech on mercy was printed, and
he could say that piece off by heart. The Jew had snarled at Portia
when she had said "Then must the Jew be merciful!" "On what compulsion
must I?" he had demanded, and she had replied, "The quality of mercy is
not strained...." The school-book did not print Portia's statement that
the Jew must be merciful or the Jew's snarling demand, "On what
compulsion must I?"; but Mr. Cairnduff had explained the story of the
play to the class and had told them of these two speeches, and John,
interested by the story, had gone home and searched through the attic
for the play, and there had read it through.

His mind went back to the bookshop. "It must be fine to work in a place
like that, with all the books you can want to read all round you," he
said to himself while he hurried through Corn Market on his way to a
restaurant. He stopped for a moment or two, as an idea suddenly
presented itself to him. "I know what I'll do," he said aloud. "I'll
start a bookshop myself. _New_ books ... not old ones. That sort
of life would suit me fine!"



V

He ate his meal in great haste, and then hurried back to the theatre
where a queue of people had already formed outside the entrance to the
pit. Soon after he joined the queue, the doors were opened, and in a
little while he found himself sitting at the end of the second row. He
had chosen this seat so that he might be able to hurry out of the
theatre quickly, without disturbing anyone, if he should have to leave
before the play was ended to catch the last train to Ballyards.

A boy about his own age was sitting next to him, and this boy asked
John to let him have a look at his programme.

"Did you ever see this piece before?" John said to him, as he passed
the programme to him.

"I did not," he replied. "I'm not much of a one for plays. I generally
go to the 'Lhambra on a Saturday, but somehow I didn't go there the
night!"

"That's a terrible place, that 'Lhambra," said John.

"What's terrible about it?" his neighbour replied.

"I don't know. I was never there. This is the first time I've ever been
in a theatre. But I've heard fearful things about that place, about
women coming out and dancing with hardly any clothes on, and then
kicking up their legs and all. I have an uncle went there once, and
when the woman began kicking up her legs and showing off her clothes,
he got up and stood with his back to the stage 'til she was done, he
was that disgusted."

John remembered how shocked Uncle William had been when he told that
story of himself.

"Your uncle must be very easy shocked," said the boy. "I can look at
women kicking up their legs, and I don't think nothing of it at all. I
like a good song and dance myself. I don't like plays much. Gimme a
woman that's nice-looking and can sing and dance a bit, and I wouldn't
ask you for nothing nicer. Is there any dancin' in this bit, do you
know?"

"I don't think so," said John. "I've never seen the piece before, but
I've read it. I don't think there's any dancing in it!"

"And no comic songs?..."

"Sure, you'll see for yourself in a wee minute!"

John's neighbour considered. "I wonder would they give me my money back
if I was to go to the pay-box and let on I was sick!"

"They'd never do that," said John. "They'd know rightly you weren't
sick by the look of you!"

The boy returned the programme to John. "Well, I wish they'd hurry up
and begin," he murmured.

The members of the orchestra came through a door beneath the stage and
took their places, and the sound of fiddles being tuned was heard for a
while. Then the leader of the orchestra came to his place, and after a
pause, the music began.

"A fiddle's great value," John's neighbour whispered to him. "I'm a
great hand at the Jew's harp myself!..."

The music ceased, the lights were lowered in the theatre and the
footlights were raised, throwing a great soft yellow glow on the
picture of the Lakes of Killarney which decorated the drop-curtain.
Then, the curtain was rolled up, and the performance began.

He had been interested by the play when he read it, but now he was
enthralled by it. He wished that the boy sitting next to him would not
keep on asking for the programme every time a fresh character appeared
on the stage and would refrain from making comments on the play while
it was being performed. "Them people wore quare clothes in them days!"
he had whispered to John soon after the play began, and when Shylock
made his first entrance, he said, "Ah, for Jase' sake, look at the oul'
Sheeny!"

"Ssh!" said John. "Don't talk!..."

"Sure, why?..."

"Ah, shut up," said John.

He did not wish to talk during the intervals between the acts. He
wished to sit still in his seat and perform the play over again in his
mind. He tried to remember Bassanio's description of Portia:

  _In Belmont is a lady richly left,
  And she is fair, and fairer than that word,
  Of wondrous virtues...._

He could not think of the words that came after that ... except one
sentence:

  _ ...And her sunny locks
  Hang on her temples like a golden fleece._

He repeated this sentence to himself many times, as if he were tasting
each word with his tongue and with his mind, and once he said it aloud
in a low voice.

"Eh?" said his neighbour.

"I was just reciting a piece from the play," he explained.

"What were you reciting?"

"Do you remember that piece: _and her sunny locks hang on her temples
like a golden fleece?"_

"No!"

"In the first act? When the young fellow, Bassanio, was telling Antonio
about his girl in Belmont?"

His neighbour turned to him eagerly. "I wonder did they just put that
bit in about Belmont," he said. "There's a place near Belfast called
Belmont ... just beyond the Hollywood Arches there! Do you know it?"
John shook his head. "I wouldn't be surprised but they just put that
bit in to make it look more like the thing. What was the piece you were
reciting?" John repeated it to him again. "What's the sense of that?"
the boy exclaimed.

"Oh, don't you see? It's ... it's ..." He did not know how to explain
the speech. "It's poetry," he said lamely.

"Oh" said the boy. "Portry. I see now. Ah, well, I suppose they have to
fill up the piece some way! Do you think that woman, what's her name
again?..."

"Portia?"

"Aye. D'you think she did live at Belmont? Some of them stories is
true, you know, and there was quare things happened in the oul' ancient
days in this neighbourhood, I can tell you. I wouldn't be surprised
now!..."

But before he could say any more, the lights were lowered again, and
there was a hushing sound, and then the play proceeded.

"Oh, isn't it grand?" John said to his neighbour when the trial scene
was over.

But his neighbour remained unmoved. "D'you mean to tell me," he said,
"that man didn't know his wife when he saw her in the Coort?"

"What man?"

"That fellow what-you-may-call-him? The man that was married on the
girl with the red dress on her!..."

"Bassanio?"

"Aye. D'you mean to tell me that fellow didn't know her again, and him
only just after leaving her!..."

John tried to explain. "It's a play," he said. "He's not supposed to
recognize her!..."

"Och, what's the good of supposing a thing that couldn't be!" said
John's neighbour. "Any man with half an eye in his head could have seen
who she was. I wish I'd gone to the 'Lhambra. This is a damn silly
play, this!"

John was horrified. "Silly," he said. "It's by Shakespeare!"

"I don't care who it's by," was the reply. "It's damn silly to let on a
man doesn't know his own wife when he sees her. I suppose that's
portry!" he sneered.

John did not answer, and his neighbour went on. "Well, if it is
portry ... God help it, that's all!"

But John did not care whether Bassanio had recognized Portia in the
court scene or not. He left the theatre in an exalted mood in which he
had little thought for the realities. Next week he told himself, he
would visit the Royal again. He would see two plays on the following
Saturday, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. The bills for
the following week's programme were already pasted on the walls of the
theatre when he came out, and he risked the loss of his train by
stopping to read one of them. _Romeo and Juliet_ was to be
performed in the afternoon, and _Julius Caesar_ in the evening.

He hurried down Ann Street and across the Queen's Bridge, and reached
the railway station just in time to catch his train; and all the way
across the bridge and all the way home in the train, one sentence
passed continually through his mind:

  _...And her sunny locks
  Hang on her temples like a golden fleece._



VI

While he ate his supper, he spoke to his mother and his uncles of his
intention to open a bookshop.

"I'm going to start a bookshop," he said. "I made up my mind in Belfast
to-day!"

"A what?" Mrs. MacDermott demanded.

"A bookshop, ma. I'll have every book you can think of in it!..."

"In the name of God," his mother exclaimed, "who do you think buys
books in this place?"

"Plenty of people, ma. Mr. McCaughan!..."

"Mr. McCaughan never buys a book from one year's end to another," she
interrupted. "And if he did, you can't support a shop on one man's
custom. The people of this town doesn't waste their time on reading:
they do their work!"

John turned angrily on her. "It's not a waste of time to read books,
ma. Is it, Uncle Matthew?"

"You may well ask him," she said before Uncle Matthew could answer.

"What do you think, Uncle William?" John went on.

Uncle William thought for a few moments. "I don't know what to think,"
he said. "It's not a trade I know much about, John, but I doubt whether
there's a living in it in Ballyards."

"There's no living in it," Mrs. MacDermott exclaimed passionately, "and
if there was, you shouldn't earn your living by it!"

John gazed at her in astonishment. Her eyes were shining, not with
tears, though tears were not far from them, but with resentment and
anger.

"Why, ma?" he said.

"Because books are the ruin of people's minds," she replied. "Your da
was always reading books, wild books that disturbed him. He was never
done reading _The Rights of Man_. And look at your Uncle Matthew!..."

She stopped suddenly as if she realised that she had said too much.
Uncle Matthew did not speak. He looked at her mournfully, and then he
turned away.

"I don't want to say one word to hurt anyone's feelings," she continued
in a lower tone, "but my life's been made miserable by books, and I
don't want to see my son made miserable, too. And you know well,
Matthew," she added, turning to her brother-in-law, "that all your
reading has done you no good, but a great deal of harm. And what's the
use of books, anyway? Will they help a man to make a better life for
himself?"

Uncle Matthew turned to her quickly. "They will, they will," he said,
and his voice trembled with emotion. "People can take your work from
you and make little of you in the street because you did what your
heart told you to do, but you'll get your comfort in a book, so you
will. I know what you're hinting at, Hannah, but I'm not ashamed of
what I did for the oul' Queen, and I'd do it again, gaol or no gaol, if
I was to be hanged for it the day after!"

He turned to John.

"I don't know what sort of a living you'll make out of selling books,"
he said, "and I don't care either, but if you do start a shop to sell
them, let me tell you this, you'll never prosper in it if it doesn't
hurt you sore to part with a book, for books is like nothing else on
God's earth. You _have_ to love them ... you _have_ to love
them!..."

"You're daft," said Mrs. MacDermott.

"Mebbe I am," Uncle Matthew replied wearily. "But that's the way I
feel, and no man can help the way he feels!"

He sat down at the table, resting his head in his hands, and gazed
hungrily at his nephew.

"You can help putting notions into a person's head," said Mrs.
MacDermott. "John might as well try to _write_ books as try to
sell them in this town!"

"_Write_ books!" John exclaimed.

"Aye, write them!..."

But Uncle Matthew would not let her finish her sentence. "And why
shouldn't he write books if he has a mind to it?" he demanded. "Wasn't
he always the wee lad for scribbling bits of stories in penny exercise
books?..."

"He was ... 'til I beat him for it," she replied. "Why can't you settle
down here in the shop with your Uncle William?" she said to her son.
"It's a comfortable, quiet sort of a life, and it's sure and steady,
and when we're all gone, it'll be yours for yourself. Won't it,
William?"

"Oh, aye!" said Uncle William. "Everything we have'll be John's right
enough, but I doubt he's not fond of the shop!..."

"What's wrong with the shop? It's as good as any in the town!" She
coaxed John with her voice. "You can marry some nice, respectable girl
and bring her here," she said, "and I'll gladly give place to her when
she comes!" She rocked herself gently to and fro in the rocking-chair.
"I'd like well to have the nursing of your children in the house that
you yourself were born in!..."

"Och, ma, I'm not in the way of marrying!..."

"You'll marry some time, won't you? And there's plenty would be glad to
have you. Aggie Logan, though I can't bear the sight of her, would give
the two eyes out of her head for you. Of course you'll marry, and I'd
be thankful glad to think of your son being born in this house. You
were born in it, and your da, too, and his da, and his da's da. Four
generations of you in one house to be pleased and proud of, and I pray
to God he'll let me live to see the fifth generation of the MacDermotts
born here, too. I'm a great woman for clinging to my home, and I love
to think of the generations coming one after the other in the same
house that the family's always lived in. How many people in this town
can say they've always lived in the one house like the MacDermotts?"

"Not very many," Uncle William proudly replied.

"No, indeed there's not, I tell you, John, son, the MacDermotts are
someone in this town, as grand in their way and as proud as Lord
Castlederry himself. That's something to live up to, isn't it! The good
name of your family! But if you go tramping the world for adventures
and romances, the way your Uncle Matthew would have you do, you'll lose
it all, and there'll be strangers in the house that your family's lived
in all these generations. And mebbe you'll come here, when you're an
oul' man and we're all dead and buried, and no one in the place'll have
any mind of you at all, and you'll be lonelier here nor anywhere else.
Oh, it would be terrible to be treated like a stranger in your own
town! And if you did start a bookshop and it failed on you, and you
lost all your money, wouldn't it be worse disgrace than any not to be
able to pay your debts in a place where everyone knows you ... to be
made a bankrupt mebbe?"

"Ah, but, ma, the world would never move at all if everybody stopped in
the one place!" John said.

"The world'll move well enough," she answered. "God moves it, not you."

John got up from the table and went, and sat on a low stool by the
fire. "I don't know so much," he said. "I read in a book one time!..."

"In a book!" Mrs. MacDermott sneered.

"Aye, ma, in a book!" John stoutly answered. "After all, you know the
Bible's a book!" Mrs. MacDermott had not got a retort to that
statement, and John, aware that he had scored a point, hurriedly
proceeded, "I was reading one time that all the work in the world was
started by men that wrote books. There never was any change or progress
'til someone started to think and write!..."

Mrs. MacDermott recovered her wits. "Were they happy and contented
men?" she demanded.

"I don't know, ma," John replied. "The book didn't say that. I suppose
not, or they wouldn't have wanted to make any alterations!"

"Let them that wants to make changes, make them," said Mrs. MacDermott.
"There's no need for you to go about altering the world when you can
stay at home here happy and content!"

Uncle Matthew rose from the table and came towards Mrs. MacDermott.
"What does it matter whether you're happy and contented or not, so long
as things are happening to you?" he exclaimed.

Mrs. MacDermott burst into bitter laughter. "You have little wit," she
said, "to be talking that daft way. Eh, William?" she added, turning to
her other brother-in-law. "What do you think about it?"

Uncle William had lit his pipe, and was sitting in a listening
attitude, slowly puffing smoke. "I'm wondering," he said, "whether it's
more fun to be writing about things nor it is to be doing things!"

John turned to him and tapped him on the knee. "I've thought of that,
Uncle William," he said, "and I tell you what! I'll go and do
something, and then I'll write a book about it!"

"What'll you do?" Mrs. MacDermott asked.

"Something," said John. "I can easily do _some_thing!"

"And what about the bookshop?" said Uncle Matthew.

"Och, that was only a notion that came into my head," John answered. "I
won't bother myself selling books: I'll write them instead!" He glanced
about the kitchen. "I've a good mind to start writing something now!"
he said.

His mother sprang to her feet. "You'll do no such thing at this hour,"
she said. "It's nearly Sunday morning. Would you begin your career by
desecrating God's Day!"

"If you start doing things," said Uncle, reverting to John's
declaration of work, "you'll mebbe have no time to write about them!"

"Oh, I'll have the time right enough. I'll make the time," John said.

Uncle William got up and walked towards the staircase. "Where are you
going, William?" Mrs. MacDermott asked.

"To my bed," said Uncle William.



VII

Suddenly the itch to write came to John, and he began to rummage among
the papers and books on the shelves for writing-paper.

"What are you looking for?" his mother enquired.

"Paper to write on," he said.

"You'll not write one word the night!..."

"Ah, quit, ma!" he said. "I must put down an idea that's come in my
head. I'd mebbe forget it in the morning!"

"The greatest writers in the world have sat up all night, writing out
their thoughts," Uncle Matthew murmured.

John did not pay any heed to his mother's scowls and remonstrances. He
found sheets of writing-paper and placed them neatly on the table,
together with a pen and ink. He looked at the materials critically.
There was paper, there was ink and there was a pen with a new nib in
it, and blotting paper!...

He drew a chair up to the table and sat down in front of the writing
paper. He contemplated it for a long time while Mrs. MacDermott put
away the remnants of his supper, and his Uncle Matthew sat by the fire
watching him.

"What are you waiting for, John?" his Uncle Matthew asked.

"Inspiration," John replied.

He sat still, scarcely moving even for ease in his chair, staring at
the white paper until it began to dance in front of his eyes, but he
did not begin to write on it.

"Are you still waiting for inspiration, John?" his Uncle asked.

"Aye," he answered.

"You don't seem to be getting any," Mrs. MacDermott said.

He got up and put the writing materials away. "I'll wait 'til the
morning," he replied.




THE THIRD CHAPTER


I

John wrote his first story during the following week, and when he had
completed it, he made a copy of it on large sheets of foolscap in a
shapely hand, and sewed the pages together with green thread. Uncle
Matthew had purchased brass fasteners to bind the pages together, but
Uncle William said that a man might easily tear his fingers with "them
things" and contract blood-poisoning.

"And that would give him a scunner against your story, mebbe!" he
added.

John accepted Uncle William's advice, not so much in the interests of
humanity, as because he liked the look of the green thread. He had read
the story to his uncles, after the shop was closed. They had drawn
their chairs up to the fire, in which sods of turf and coal were
burning, and the agreeable odour of the turf soothed their senses while
they listened to John's sharp voice. Mrs. MacDermott would not join the
circle before the fire. She declared that she had too much work to do
to waste her time on trash, and she wondered that her brothers-in-law
could find nothing better to do than to encourage a headstrong lad in a
foolish business. She went about her work with much bustle and clatter,
which, however, diminished considerably as John began to read the
story, and ended altogether soon afterwards.

"D'you like it, Uncle William?" John said, when he had read the story
to them.

"Aye," said Uncle William.

"I'm glad," John answered. "And you, do you like it, Uncle Matthew?"

"I like it queer and well," Uncle Matthew murmured, "only!..." He
hesitated as if he were reluctant to make any adverse comment on the
story.

"Only what?" John demanded with some impatience. He had asked for the
opinions of his uncles, indeed, but it had not occurred to him that
they would not think as highly of the story as he thought of it
himself.

"Well ... there's no love in it!" Uncle Matthew went on.

"Love!"

"Aye," Uncle Matthew said. "There's no mention of a woman in it from
start to finish. I think there ought to be a woman in it!"

Mrs. MacDermott, who had been silent now for some time, made a noise
with a dish on the table. "Och, sure, what does he know about love?"
she exclaimed angrily. "A child that's not long left his mother's arms
would know as much. Mebbe, now you've read your oul' story, John, the
whole of yous will sit up to the table and take your tea!"

John, disregarding his mother, sat back in his chair and contemplated
his Uncle Matthew.

"I wonder now, are you right?" he exclaimed.

"I am," Uncle Matthew replied. "The best stories in the world have
women in them, and love-making! I never could take any interest in
_Robinson Crusoe_ because he hadn't got a girl on that island with
him, and I thought to myself many's a time, it was a queer mistake not
to make Friday a woman. He could have fallen in love with her then!"

Uncle William said up sharply. "Aye, and had a wheen of black babies!"
he said. "Man, dear, Matthew, think what you're saying! What sort of
romance would there be in the like of that? I never read much, as you
know, but I always had a great fancy for _Robinson Crusoe_. The
way that man turned to and did things for himself ... I tell you my
heart warmed to him. _I_ like your story, John, women or no women.
Sure, love isn't the only thing that men make!..."

"It's the most important," said Uncle Matthew.

"And why shouldn't a story be written about any other thing nor a lot
of love?" Uncle William continued, ignoring the interruption. "I
daresay you'll get a mint of money for that story, John. I've heard
tell that some of these writers gets big pay for their stories. Pounds
and pounds!"

John crinkled his manuscript in his hand and regarded it with a modest
look. "I don't suppose I'll get much for the first one," he said. "In
fact, if they'll print it, I'll be willing to let them have it for
nothing ... just for the satisfaction!"

"That would be a foolish thing to do," Uncle William retorted. "Sure,
if it's worth printing, it's worth paying for. That's the way I look at
it, anyhow!"

"I daresay I'll make more, when I know the way of it better!" John
answered. "What paper will I send it to, do you think?"

"Send it to the best one," said Uncle William.

Mrs. MacDermott took a plate of toast from the fender where it had been
put to keep warm. "Send it to the one that pays the most," she
suggested.

"I thought you weren't listening, ma!" John exclaimed, laughing at her.

"A body can't help hearing when people are talking at the top of their
voices," she said tartly. "Come on, for dear sake, and have your teas,
the whole of yous!"



II

It was Uncle William who advised John to send the story to
_Blackwood's Magazine_. He said that in his young days, people
said _Blackwood's Magazine_ was the best magazine in the world.
Uncle Matthew had demurred to this. "I'm not saying it's not a good
one," he said, "but it's terribly bitter against Ireland. The man that
writes that magazine must have a bitter, blasting tongue in his head!"

"Never mind what it says about Ireland," Uncle William retorted. "Sure,
they're only against the Papishes, anyway!..."

"The Papishes are as good as the Protestants," Uncle Matthew exclaimed.

"I daresay they are," Uncle William admitted, "but I'm only saying that
_Blackwood's Magazine_ is against _them:_ it's not against
us; and I don't see why John shouldn't send his story to it. He's a
Protestant!"

"If I wrote a story," Uncle Matthew went on, "I wouldn't send it to any
paper that made little of my country, Protestant or Papish, no matter
how good a paper it was nor how much it paid me for my story. Ireland
is as good as England any day!..."

"It's better," said Uncle William complacently. "Sure, God Himself
knows the English would be on the dung-heap if it wasn't for us and the
Scotchmen. But that's no reason why John shouldn't send his story to
_Blackwood's Magazine_. In one way, it's a good reason why he
should send it there, for sure, if he does nothing else, he'll improve
the tone of the thing. You do what I tell you, John!..."

And so, accepting his Uncle William's advice, John sent the manuscript
of his story to the editor of _Blackwood's Magazine;_ and each
morning, after he had done so, he eagerly awaited the advent of the
postman. But the postman, more often than not, went past their door.
When he did deliver a letter to them, it was usually a trading letter
for Uncle William.

"Them people get a queer lot of stories to read," Uncle William said to
console his nephew, disappointed because he had not received a letter
of acceptance from the editor by Saturday morning, four days after he
had posted the manuscript. "It'll mebbe take them a week or two to
reach yours!..."

"They could have sent a postcard to say they'd got it all right," John
replied ruefully. "That's the civil thing to do, anyway!"

He remembered that the Benson Shakespearean Company was still in
Belfast and that _Romeo and Juliet_ was to be performed in the
afternoon, and _Julius Caesar_ in the evening; and he went up to
the city by an earlier train than usual so that he might be certain of
getting to the theatre in time to secure an end seat near the front of
the pit. He had proposed to his Uncle Matthew that he should go to
Belfast, too, to see the plays, but Uncle Matthew shook his head and
murmured that he was not feeling well. He had been listless lately,
they had noticed, and Uncle William, regarding him one afternoon as he
stood at the door of the shop, had turned to John and said that he
would be glad when the summer weather came in again, so that Uncle
Matthew could go down to the shore and lie in the sun.

"He's not a robust man, your Uncle Matthew!" he said. "I don't think he
tholes the winter well!"

"Och, he's mebbe only a wee bit out of sorts," John answered. "I wish,
he'd come to Belfast with me!..."

"He'll never go next or near that place again," Uncle William replied.
"He's never been there since that affair!..."

"You'd wonder at a man letting a thing of that sort affect his mind the
way Uncle Matthew let it affect his," John murmured.

"When a man believes in a thing as deeply as he believed in the oul'
Queen," said Uncle William, "it's a terrible shock to him to find out
that other people doesn't believe in it half as much as he does ... or
mebbe doesn't believe in it at all!"

"I suppose you're right," said John.

"I am," said Uncle William.

John was the first person to reach the door of the pit that afternoon.
The morning had been rough and blusterous, and although the streets
were dry, the cold wind blowing down from the hills made people
reluctant to stand outside a theatre door. John, who was hardy and
indifferent to cold, stood inside the shelter of the door and read the
copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ which he had borrowed from his Uncle
Matthew; and while he read the play he remembered his uncle's criticism
of the story he had written for _Blackwood's Magazine_: that it
ought to have had a woman in it! This play was full of love. Romeo,
sighing and groaning because his lady will not look kindly upon him,
runs from his friends who "jest at scars that never felt a wound" ...
and finds Juliet! In _The Merchant of Venice_, Bassanio and
Portia, Lorenzo and Jessica, Gratiano and Nerissa had all made love.
Even young Gobbo, in a coarse, philandering way, had made love, too! In
all the books he had read, women were prominent. Queer and distressing
things happened to the heroes; they were constantly in trouble and
under suspicion of wrong-doing; poverty and persecution were common to
them; frequently, they were misunderstood; but in the end, they had
their consolations and their rights and rewards. Love was the great
predominating element in all these stories, the support and inspiration
and reward of the troubled and tortured hero; and Woman was the symbol
of victory, of achievement. At the end of every journey, at the finish
of every fight, there was a Woman. Uncle Matthew had spoken wisely,
John thought, when he said that you cannot leave women out of your
schemes and plans.

John had not thought of leaving women out of his schemes and plans. In
all his romantic imaginings, a woman of superb beauty had figured in a
dim way; but the woman had been a dream woman only, bearing no
resemblance whatever to the visible women about him. He had so much
regard for this woman of his imagined adventures ... she changed her
looks as frequently as he changed the scene of his romances ... that he
had no regard left for the women of his acquaintance. He nodded to the
girls he knew when he met them in the street, but he had never felt any
desire to "go up the road" with one of them. Willie Logan, as John
knew, was "coortin' hard" and laying up trouble for himself by his
diverse affections; and Aggie Logan, forgetful, perhaps, of the rebuff
that John had given to her childish offers of love, had lately taken to
hanging about the street when John was due to pass along it. She would
pretend not to see him until he was close to her. Then she would start
and giggle and say, "Oh, John, is that you? You're a terrible stranger
these days!..." Once while he was listening to her as she made some
such remark as that, Lady Castlederry drove by in her carriage, and his
eyes wandered from the sallow, giggling girl in front of him to the
beautiful woman in the carriage; and Aggie suffered severely by the
comparison. And yet Aggie had a quicker and more intelligent look than
Lady Castlederry. The beautiful, arrogant woman was like the dream-woman
of his romances ... and again, she was not like her; for the dream-women
had not got Lady Castlederry's look of settled stupidity in her eyes.

John had hurriedly quitted Aggie's company on that occasion. He knew
why Aggie always contrived to meet him in the street, and he thought
that she was a poor fool of a girl to do it. And her brother Willie was
a "great gumph of a fellow," to go capering up and down the road in the
evenings after any girl that would say a civil word to him or laugh
when he laughed!...

All the same, women mattered to men. Uncle Matthew had said so, and
Uncle Matthew was in the right of it. In the story-books, women surged
into the hero's life, good women and bad women and even indifferent
women. And, now, in these plays, he could see for himself that women
mattered enormously. Yet he had never been in love with a girl! He was
not even in love with the dream-woman of his romances. She was his
reward for honourable and arduous service ... that was all. He was not
in love with her any more than he was in love with a Sunday School
prize. It was a reward for regular attendance and for accurate answers
to Biblical questions, and he was glad to have it. It rested on the
bookshelf in the drawing-room, and sometimes, when there were visitors
in the house, his mother would request him to take it down and show it
to them. They would read the inscription and make remarks on the oddness
of Mr. McCaughan's signature and turn over the pages of the book ... and
then they would hand it back to him and he would replace it on the
shelf ... and no more was said about it. Really, his dream-woman
had not meant much more to him than that. She would be given to him
when he had won his fight, and he would take her and be glad to get
her ... he would be very proud of her and would exhibit her to his
friends and say, "This is my beautiful wife!" and then!... oh, well,
there did not appear to be anything else after that. The book always
came to an end when the hero married the heroine. Probably she and he
had children ... but, beyond the fact that they lived happily ever
afterwards, there did not appear to be much more to say about them....

Somehow, it seemed to him now, as he stood in the shelter of the Pit
Entrance to the Theatre Royal, reading _Romeo and Juliet_, that
the heroine was different from his dream-woman. His dream-woman had
always been very insubstantial and remote, but Juliet was a real woman,
alive and passionate, with a real father and a real mother. The odd
thing about his dream-woman was that she did not appear to have any
relatives ... at least he had never heard of any. She had not even got
a name. She never spoke to him. Always, when the adventure was ended,
he went up to the dream-woman, waiting for him in a misty manner, and
he took hold of her hand and led her away ... and while he was leading
her away, the adventure seemed to come to an end ... the picture
dissolved ... and he could not see any more. Once, indeed, he had
kissed his dream-woman ... he had kissed her exactly as he had kissed
his great-aunt, Miss Clotworthy, who was famous for the fact that
she had attended a Sunday School in Belfast as pupil and teacher for
fifty-seven years without a break ... and the dream-woman had taken the
kiss in the unemotional manner in which she took hold of his hand when he
led her away ... and lost her!...

There was something wrong with his dream-woman, he told himself. This
man Shakespeare, so everybody said, was the greatest poet England had
produced ... perhaps the greatest poet the world had produced ... and
he ought to know something of what women were like. Whatever else
Juliet might be, she certainly was not like John's dream-woman. She did
not stand at the end of the road waiting for Romeo to come to her. She
did not wait until the fight was fought and won. She did not offer a
cold hand or cold lips to Romeo. Her behaviour was really more like
that of Aggie Logan than that of the dream-woman!...

Aggie Logan! That "girner" with the sallow look and the giggle! He
could see her now, standing in the street waiting for him, dabbing at
her mouth with the foolish handkerchief she always carried in her hand.
What did she want to keep on dabbing at her mouth with her handkerchief
for! Men didn't dab at _their_ mouths.... Nor did the dream-woman
dab at hers.... But it was just possible ... indeed, it was very
likely, that Juliet dabbed at hers!...

At that moment, the Pit Door opened, and John, having paid his
shilling, passed into the theatre.



III

He came away from the play in a disturbed and exalted state. Suddenly
and compellingly, he had become aware of the fact of Women. While he
sat in the front row of the pit, listening with his whole body to the
play, something stirred in him and he became aware of Women. The
actress who played the part of Juliet had turned towards the audience
for a few moments during the performance and, so it seemed to him, had
looked straight into his eyes. She did not avert her gaze immediately,
nor did he avert his. He imagined that she was appealing to him ... he
forgot that he was sitting in the pit of a theatre listening to a play
written by a man who had died three hundred years ago ... and
remembered only that he was a young man with aspirations and romantic
longings, and that a young woman, in a pitiable plight, was gazing into
his eyes ... and his heart reached out to her. He drew in his breath
quickly, murmuring a soft "Oh," and as he did so, his dream-woman fell
dead and he did not even turn to look at her.

When the play was over, he had sat still in his seat, more deeply moved
than he had ever been before, overwhelmed by the disaster which had
come upon the young lovers through the foolish brawls of their foolish
elders; and it was not until an impatient woman had prodded him in the
side that he returned to reality.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am!" he said and got up and hurried out of the
theatre into the street.

He went along High Street towards Castle Place, and as he walked along,
he regarded each woman and girl that approached him with interest.

"That one's nice-looking!" he said of a girl, and "That one's ugly!" he
said of another. He wondered why it was that all the older women of the
working-class were so misshapen and lacking in good looks, when so many
of the girls of the working-class were shapely and pretty. Mr.
Cairnduff had told him that Belfast girls were prettier than London
girls. "London girls aren't pretty at all," Mr. Cairnduff had said.
"You'd walk miles in London before you'd see a pretty girl, but you
wouldn't walk ten yards in Belfast before you'd meet dozens!" And yet,
all those pretty working-girls grew into dull, misshapen, displeasing
women. "It's getting married that does it, I suppose," he said to
himself. "They were all nice once, but they married and grew ugly!"

He did not look long at the ugly and misshapen women. His eyes quickly
searched through the crowds of passers-by for the pretty girls, and at
them he looked with eagerness.

"There's no doubt about it," he said to himself, "girls are nice to
look at!"

He found a restaurant in the street off High Street. He climbed up some
stairs, and then, pushing a door open, entered a large room, at the
back of which was a smaller room. A girl was standing at a window,
looking out on to the street, but she turned her head when she heard
him entering. She smiled pleasantly as he sat down, and came forward to
take his order.

"It's turned out a brave day after all," she said.

He said "Aye" and smiled at her in return. She had thick, fair hair,
and he remembered Bassanio's description of Portia:

     _And her sunny locks
  Hang on her temples like a golden fleece._

He had a curious desire to talk to the girl about the play he had just
seen, and before he gave his order, he glanced about the room. She and
he were the only persons in it.

"You don't seem to be very busy," he said.

"Och, indeed, we're not," she replied. "We seldom are on a Saturday.
Mrs. Bothwall ... her that owns the place ... thought mebbe some
football fellows might come here for their tea after the matches so's
they needn't go home before starting for the Empire or the Alhambra:
but, sure, none of them ever comes. We might as well be shut for the
custom we get!"

He ordered his tea, and she went to the small room at the back of the
large room to prepare it. He thought it would be a good plan to ask the
girl if she would care to have her tea with him, but a sudden shyness
prevented him from doing so, and he was unable to say more than "Thank
you" when she put the teapot by his side. There was plenty for two on
the table, he said to himself: a loaf and a bap and some soda-farls and
a potato cake and the half of a barn-brack and butter and raspberry
jam. He looked across the room to where the girl was again looking out
of the window. He liked the way she stood, with one hand resting on her
hip and the other on her cheek. He could see that she had small feet
and slender ankles, and while he looked at her, she rubbed her foot
against her leg and he saw for a moment or two the flash of a white
petticoat....

"I was at the Royal the day!" he called to her.

She turned round quickly. "Were you?" she said. "Was it good?"

"It was grand. I enjoyed it the best," he answered.

She came towards him and sat down at a table near to his. "What piece
was it you saw?" she asked. "It's Benson's Company, isn't it?"

"Yes. I saw _Romeo and Juliet_."

"Oh, that's an awful sad piece. I cried my eyes out one year when I saw
it!"

"It's a great play," John said.

"I suppose you often go?" she went on.

"Last Saturday was the first time I ever went to a theatre. I saw
_The Merchant of Venice_. I'll go every Saturday after this, when
there's a good piece on. I'm going again to-night to see _Julius
Caesar!_"

"I'd love to see that piece!"

"Would you?"

"Aye, indeed I would. I'm just doting on the theatre. The last piece I
saw was _The Lights of London_. It was lovely."

"I never saw that bit," John answered. "You see I live in Ballyards and
I only come up to town on Saturdays."

"By your lone?" she asked.

He nodded his head. He poured out his tea, and then began to spread
butter on a piece of soda-farl.

"I'd be awful dull walking the streets by myself," she said, watching
him as he did so. "I'm a terrible one for company. I can't bear being
by myself!"

"Company's good," he said. "Have you had your tea yet?"

"I'll be having it in a wee while!"

"I wish you'd have it with me!" He spoke hesitatingly.

"Oh, I couldn't!" she exclaimed.

"Sure, what's to hinder you?" His voice became bolder.

"Oh, I couldn't. I couldn't really!..."

"You might as well have it with me as have it by yourself. And there's
nobody'll see you. Where's Mrs. Bothwell?"

"She's away home with a headache!..."

"Then you're all by yourself here!" She nodded her head. "What time do
you shut?" he went on.

"Half-six generally, but Mrs. Bothwell said I'd better shut at six the
night!"

He took a cup and saucer and a knife and plate from an adjoining table
and put them down opposite his own.

"Come on," he said, "and have your tea!"

"Och, I couldn't," she protested weakly.

He poured out some of the tea for her, "I suppose you take milk and
sugar?" he said.

"You're a terrible fellow," she murmured admiringly, and he could see
that her eyes were shining with pleasure.

"Draw up to the table," he replied.

She hesitated for a little while, and then she sat down. "This is not
very like the thing," she murmured.

"It doesn't matter whether it is or not," he replied. "What'll you
have ... bread or soda-farl?"

She helped herself.

"You know," he said, "I was thinking it would be a good plan for the
two of us to go to the theatre to-night!"

"The two of us," she exclaimed. "Me and you!"

"Aye! Why not?"

She put down her cup and laughed. "I never met anybody in my life that
made so much progress in a short time as you do," she said. "What in
the earthly world put that notion into your head?"

"There's no notion about it," he exclaimed. "I'm asking you plump and
plain will you come to the theatre with me to-night!..."

"But it wouldn't be like the thing at all to go to the theatre with a
boy that I never saw before and never heard tell of 'til this minute. I
don't even know your name!..."

"John MacDermott," he said.

"Are you a Catholic?"

"No. I'm a Presbyterian."

"It's a Catholic name," she mused. "I know a family by the name of
MacDermott, and they're desperate Catholics. They live over in
Ballymacarrett. Do you know them?"

"I do not. There never was a person in our family was a Catholic ...
not that we have mind of. Will you come with me?"

"Ooh, I couldn't!"

"I'll not take 'No' for an answer!" he said, "and I'll not put another
bite in my mouth 'til you say 'Yes.' D'you hear me?"

"You've an awful abrupt way of talking," she replied.

"What's abrupt about it?" he demanded.

"Well, queer then!" she said.

"I see nothing abrupt or queer about it. Are you coming or are you
not?"

"As if you were used to getting what you wanted, the minute you wanted
it," she went on, disregarding his question and intent on explaining
the queerness of his speech. "I'd be afeard to be _your_ wife,
you'd be such a bossy man!"

"Ah, quit!" he said. "Will you come?"

"I might!..."

"Will you?"

"Well, perhaps!..."

"Will you or will you not?"

"You're an awful man," she protested.

"Will you come?"

"All right, then," she replied, "but!..."

"I'll have some more tea," said John. He looked round the room while
she poured the tea into his cup. "Are there any more cakes or buns?" he
asked.

"Yes, would you like some?"

"Bring a plate full," he said. "Bring some with sugar on the top and
jam in the middle!"

"Florence cakes?"

"Aye!"

"You've a sweet tongue in your head!" She went to the small room as she
spoke.

"I have," he exclaimed. "And I daresay you have, too!"



IV

"You never told me your name," he said, when she returned with the
plate of cakes.

"Give a guess!" she teased.

He looked at her for a moment. "Maggie!" he said.

"How did you know?"

"I didn't know," he answered. "You look like a Maggie. What's your
other name?"

"Carmichael!"

"Maggie Carmichael!" he exclaimed. "It's a nice name!"

"I'm glad you like it," she said.



V

He sat back in his chair while she went to prepare for the theatre. How
lucky it was that he had asked his Uncle William for more money that
morning "in case I need it!" If he had not done so, he would not have
been able to offer to take Maggie to the theatre.... They would go in
by the Early Door. There was certain to be a crowd outside the ordinary
door on a Saturday night. What a piece of luck it was that he had
chosen to take his tea in this place instead of the restaurant to which
he usually went. Mrs. Bothwell's headache, too, that was a piece of
luck, for him, although not, perhaps, for her. He liked the look of
Maggie. He liked her bright face and her laugh and her beautiful,
golden hair. What was that bit again?

  _In Belmont is a lady richly left,
  And she is fair and fairer than that word
  Of wondrous virtue...._

and then again:

    _...and her sunny locks
  Hang on her temples like a golden fleece._

Maggie came out of the small room, ready for the street, and he sat and
watched her as she shut the door behind her.

"I believe I'm in love," he said to himself. "I believe I am!"

"Are you ready?" he said aloud.

"I've only to draw the blinds and then lock the door!" she replied.

"I'll draw them for you," he said, going over to the windows and
drawing down the blinds as he spoke. "Did you ever see _The Merchant
of Venice_?" he asked when he had done so.

"No," she said.

"There's a bit in it that makes me think of you," he went on.

"Oh, now, don't start plastering me," she exclaimed gaily.

"I mean it," he said, and he quoted the lines about Portia's sunny
locks.

"That's poetry." she said.

"It is!" he replied.

"It's queer and nice!"

She opened the door leading to the stairs, and then went back to the
room to turn out the light. The room was in semi-darkness, save where a
splash of yellow light from the staircase fell at the doorway.

He turned towards her as she made her way to the door, and put out his
hand to her. She took hold of it, and as she did so, he caught her
quickly to him and drew her into his arms and kissed her soft, warm
lips.

"You're an awful wee fellow," she said, freeing herself from his
embrace and smiling at him.

He did not answer her, but his heart was singing inside him. _I love
her. I know I love her. I love her. I love her. I know I love her._

They went down the stairs together, and as they emerged into the
street, he put his arm in hers and drew, her close to him. Almost he
wished that they were not going to the theatre, that they might walk
like this, arm in arm, for the remainder of the evening. He could still
feel the warmth of her lips on his, and he wished that they could go to
some quiet place so that he might kiss her again. But he had asked her
to go to the theatre, and he did not wish to disappoint her. They
entered the theatre by the Early Door, and sat in the middle of the
front row of the pit. There was a queer silence in the theatre, for the
ordinary doors had not yet opened, and the occasional murmur of a voice
echoed oddly. John put his arm in Maggie's and wound his fingers in
hers, and felt the pressure of her hand against his hand. When the
ordinary doors of the theatre were opened and the crowd came pouring
in, he hardly seemed aware of the people searching for good seats.
Maggie had tried to withdraw her hand from his when she heard the noise
of the people hurrying down the stone steps, but he had not released
her, and she had remained content. And so they sat while the theatre
quickly filled. Presently an attendant with programmes and chocolates
came towards them, and he purchased a box of chocolates for her.

"You shouldn't have done that," she said, making the polite protest.

"I've always heard girls are fond of sweeties," he replied.

He put the box of chocolates in her lap, and opened the programme and
handed it to her.

"It's a long piece," she said, "with a whole lot of acts and scenes in
it. That's the sort of piece I like ... with a whole lot of changes in
it!"

"Do you?" he said.

"Yes. I came here one time to see a piece that was greatly praised in
the _Whig_ and the _Newsletter_, and do you know they used
the same scene in every act! I thought it was a poor miserly sort of a
play. The bills said it was a London company, but I don't believe that
was true. They were just letting on to be from London. They couldn't
have had much money behind them when they couldn't afford more nor the
one scene, could they!"

"Mebbe you're right," he answered.

The members of the orchestra came into the theatre, and after a while
the music began. The lights in the theatre were diminished and then
were extinguished, and the curtain went up. John snuggled closer to
Maggie.



VI

He was scarcely aware of the performance on the stage, so aware was he
of the nearness of Maggie. He heard applause, but he did not greatly
heed it. He was in love. He had never been in love before, and he had
always thought of it as something very different from this, something
cold and austere and aloof, and very dignified ... not at all like this
warm, intimate, careless thing. He slipped his hand from Maggie's and
slowly put his arm round her waist. She did not resist him, and when he
drew her more closely to him so that their heads were nearly touching,
she yielded to him without demur. He could feel her heart beating where
his hand pressed against her side, and he heard the slow rise and fall
of her breath as she inhaled and exhaled. He could not get near enough
to her. He wanted to draw her head down on to his shoulder, to put both
his arms about her, to feel again his lips on her lips....

He started suddenly. Someone was tapping him, on the shoulder. He
turned round to meet the gaze of an elderly, indignant woman who was
seated immediately behind him.

"Sit still," she said in a loud whisper. "I can't see the stage for you
two ducking your heads together!"



VII

He took his arm away from Maggie's waist, and edged a little away from
her. He felt angry and humiliated. He told himself that he did not care
who saw him putting his arm about Maggie's waist, but was aware that
this was not true, that he deeply resented being overlooked in his
love-making. He did not wish anyone to behold him in this intimate
relationship with Maggie, and he was full of fury against the woman
behind him because she had seen him fondling her. For of course the
woman knew that he had his arm about Maggie ... and now her neighbours
would know, too. The whole theatre would know that he had been
embracing the girl!... Well, what if they did know? Let them know!
There was no harm in a fellow putting his arm round a girl's waist. It
was a natural thing for a fellow to do, particularly if the girl were
so pretty and warm and loving as Maggie Carmichael. The woman herself
had no doubt had a man's arm round her waist once upon a time. He did
not care who knew!... All the same!... No, he did not care!... He
slipped his hand into Maggie's hand again, and then quickly withdrew
it. She was holding a sticky chocolate in her fingers!...

He lost all interest in the play now. It would be truer, perhaps, to
say that he had not begun to be interested in it, and now that he tried
to follow it, he could not do so. His mind constantly reverted to the
indignant woman behind him. He imagined her looking, first this way and
then that, in her efforts to see the stage, getting angrier and more
angry as she was thwarted in her desire, and then, in her final
indignation, leaning forward to tap on his shoulder and beg him to keep
his head apart from Maggie's so that she might conveniently see the
stage. His sense of violated privacy became stronger. His love for
Maggie, for he accepted it now as a settled fact, was not a thing for
prying eyes to witness: it was a secret, intimate thing in which she
and he alone were concerned. He hated the thought that anyone else in
the theatre should know that Maggie and he were sweethearts, newly in
love and warm with the glow of their first affection. And then, when he
had slipped his hand back into hers, he had encountered a sticky
chocolate! While he was burning with feeling for her and with
resentment against the old woman's intrusion into their love affair,
Maggie had been chewing chocolate quite unconcernedly. In that crisis
of their love, she had remained unmoved. When he had released her hand,
she had simply put it into the box of chocolates and taken out a sticky
sweet and had eaten it with as little emotion as if he had not been
present at all, as if his ardent, pressing arm had not been suddenly
withdrawn from her waist because of that angry intruder into their
happiness. She had taken his hand when he gave it to her, and had
released it again when he withdrew it, without any appearance of desire
or reluctance. He had imagined that she would take his hand eagerly and
yield it up unwillingly, that she would try to restrain him when he
endeavoured to take his hand away from hers ... but she had not done
so.

Perhaps she did not love him as he loved her. Perhaps she did not love
him at all. After all, he had met her for the first time about three
hours earlier in the evening. Only three hours ago! It was hard to
believe that he had not loved her for centuries, had not often felt her
heart beating beneath the pressure of his hand, had not frequently put
his lips to her lips and been enchanted by her kisses. Why, he had only
kissed her once. Only once! Once only!... He looked at her as she sat
by his side, gazing intently at the stage. He could see a protuberance
in her cheek, made by a piece of chocolate, and as he looked at her, it
seemed to him to be a terrible thing that this girl did not love him.
His love had gone out to her, quickly, insurgently and fully, and
perhaps she thought no more of him than she might think of any chance
friend who offered to take her to see a play. She might have spent many
evenings in this very theatre with other men. Had she not told him that
afternoon that she hated to be alone! He had put his arm about her
waist in a public place and had been humiliated for doing so, but
nothing of this had meant much to Maggie. She was quite willing to let
him embrace her ... perhaps she thought that she ought to allow him to
hug her as a return for the treat at the theatre ... or perhaps she
liked to feel a man's arm about her waist and did not much care who the
man might be. Some girls were like that. Willie Logan had told him that
Carrie Furlong was the girl of any fellow who liked to walk up the road
with her. She did not care with whom she went; all that she cared about
was that she should have some boy in her company. She would kiss
anybody.

Was Maggie Carmichael like that? Would she kiss this one or that one,
just as the mood took her?... Oh, no, she could not be like that. It
was impossible for him to fall in love with a girl who distributed
kisses as carelessly and impassionately as a boy distributes handbills.
He felt certain that he could not fall in love with a girl of that
sort, that some instinct in him would prevent him from going so. Other
fellows might make a mistake of that kind ... Willie Logan, for
example ... but a MacDermott could not make one. Maggie must be in love
with him ... she must have fallen in love with him as suddenly as he had
fallen in love with her ... otherwise she could not have consented so
readily to accompany him to the theatre. When he had taken her in his
arms and kissed her, she had yielded to him so naturally, as if she had
been in his arms many times before!... Perhaps, though, the ease with
which she had yielded to him denoted that she had had much
experience!... Oh, no, no! No, no! She was his girl, not anybody else's
girl. He could not have her for a sweetheart, if she shared her love
with other men. He must have her entirely to himself!...

Oh, what a torturing, doubt-raising, perplexing thing this Love was! A
few hours ago he had known nothing whatever of it ... had merely
imagined cold, austere, wrong things about it ... and now it had hold
of him and was hurting him. Every particle of his mind was concentrated
on this girl by his side ... a stranger to him. He knew nothing of her
except her name and that she was employed as a waitress in a
restaurant. She was a stranger to him ... and yet a fierce,
unquenchable love for her was raging in his heart. Each moment, the
flames of his passion increased in strength. When he looked away from
her, he could see her in his mind's eye. Each of the players on the
stage looked like Maggie.... And there she was, all unaware of this
strong emotion in him, placidly sitting in her seat, gazing at the
actors! Do women feel love as strongly as men do? he asked himself as
he looked at her, and as he did so she turned, her head to him,
conscious perhaps of his stare, and when her eyes met his in the
glowing dusk of the theatre, she smiled, and, seeing her smile, he
forgot his doubt and remembered only the great joy of loving her.



VIII

He insisted on taking her to her home, although she stoutly declared
that this was unnecessary. She lived at Stranmillis, she said, and
the journey there and back would make him miss his train; but he swore
that he had plenty of time, and would not listen to her dissuasions.
When they reached the terminus at the Botanic Gardens, she tried to
insist that he should return to town in the tram by which they had come
out, but he said that he must walk with her for a while. She would not
let him accompany her to the door of her home ... he must leave her at
a good distance from it ... and to this he agreed, for he knew what the
etiquette of these matters is. He put his arm in hers, again drawing
her close to him, and, listening to her laughter, he walked in gladness
by her side. It was she who stopped. "I'll say 'Good-night' to you
here," she said.

"Not yet," he replied.

"You'll miss your train," she warned him.

He did not heed her warning, but drew her into the shadow and held her
tightly to him.

"Don't!" she stammered, but could not speak any more because of the
strength of his kisses.

Very long he held her thus, his arms tightly round her and her lips
closebound to his, and then with a great sigh of pleasure, he released
her.

"You're a desperate fellow," she said, half scared, and she laughed a
little.

She glanced about her for a moment. "I must run now," she said, holding
out her hand.

"Not yet," he said again.

"Oh, but I must. I must!" she insisted. "Good-night!"

He took her hand. "Good-night," he replied, but did not let her hand
go.

She laughed nervously. "What's wrong with you?" she said.

"I ... I'm in love with you, Maggie!" he murmured, almost
inarticulately.

Her laughter lost its nervousness. "You're a boy in a hurry and a
half!" she said.

"I know. Kiss me, Maggie!"

She held up her face to him. "There, then!" she said.

He kissed her again, and then again, and yet again.

"You're hurting me," she exclaimed ruefully.

"It's because I love you so much, Maggie!" he said.

"Well, let me go now!..." She stood away from him. "You have me all
crumpled up," she said. "I'll be a terrible sight when I get in!
Anybody'd think you'd never kissed a girl before in your life!"

"I haven't," he replied.

"You what?"

"I haven't. I've never kissed any other girl but you!"

"You don't expect me to believe a yarn like that?" she said.

"It's the God's truth," he answered.

"Well, nobody'd think it from the way you behave!"

He regarded her in silence for a few moments. Then he said, "Have you
ever kissed anyone before?"

"I'm twenty-two." she replied.

He had not thought of her age, but if he had done so, he would not have
imagined that she was more than nineteen.

"What's that got to do with it?" he asked.

"A lot," she replied. "You don't think a girl as nice-looking as me has
reached my age without having kissed a fellow, do you?"

"Then you have kissed someone else?"

"I've kissed dozens," she said. "Good-night, John!"

She turned and ran swiftly from him, laughing lightly as she ran, and
for a second or two, he stood blankly looking after her. Then he called
to her, "Wait, Maggie, wait a minute!" and ran after her.

She stopped when she heard him calling, and waited for him to come up
to her.

"When'll I see you again?" he said.

"Oh, dear knows!" she replied.

"Will you come to the theatre with me next Saturday?"

"I might!"

"Will you get the day off, and we'll go in the afternoon and evening,
too!"

"I mightn't be let," she said. "Mrs. Bothwell mightn't agree to it!"

"Ask her anyway!..."

"I will, then. Good-night, John!"

He snatched at her hand. "Listen, Maggie," he said.

"What?" she answered.

"Do you ... do you like me?"

"Ummm ... mebbe I do!"

"I love you, Maggie!"

"Aye, so you say!" she said.

"Do you not believe me?..."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It's true," he affirmed. "I love you!..."

"Good-night," she said.

"Good-night, Maggie!"

He released her hand, but she did not go immediately. She came close to
him, and put her arms about his neck and drew his face down to hers,
and kissed him.

"You're a nice wee fellow," she said. "I like you queer and well!"

Then she withdrew her arms, and this time he did not try to detain her.



IX

He missed the last train to Ballyards, but he did not mind that. He set
out bravely to walk from Belfast. The silence of the streets, the
deeper silence of the country roads, accorded with the pleasure in his
heart. He sang to himself, and sometimes he sang aloud. He was in love
with Maggie Carmichael, and she ... she liked him queer and well. He
could hardly feel the ground beneath his feet. The road ran away from
him. The moon and the stars shared his exultation, and the trees gaily
waved their branches to him, and the leaves of the trees beat their
hands together in applause. "And her sunny locks Hang on her temples
like a golden fleece," he said aloud...

It was very late when he reached the door of the shop in Ballyards. His
Uncle William was standing in the shade of the doorway, peering
anxiously into the street.

"Is that you, John?" he called out, while John was still some distance
away from the shop.

"Aye, Uncle William," John called out in reply.

Uncle William came to meet him. "Oh, whatever kept you, boy?" he said
when they met.

"I missed the train," John answered.

"Your Uncle Matthew, John!..."

Anxiety came into John's mind. "Yes, Uncle?" he said.

"He's bad, John. Desperate bad! We had to send for Dr. Dobbs an hour
ago, and he's still with him. I thought you'd never reach home!"

All the joy fell straight out of John's heart. He did not speak. He
walked swiftly to the house, and passing through the shop, entered the
kitchen, followed by his Uncle William.




THE FOURTH CHAPTER


I

"Your ma's upstairs with the doctor and him," said Uncle William,
closing the kitchen door behind him.

"Is he very bad?" John asked in an anxious voice.

"I'm afeard so," Uncle William replied.

John went towards the staircase, but his uncle called him back. "Better
not go up yet awhile," he said. "The doctor'll be down soon, mebbe, and
he'll tell you whether you can go up or not."

"Very well," John murmured, coming back into the kitchen and sitting
down beside the fire.

"It come on all of a sudden just before bedtime," Uncle William went
on, "He wasn't looking too grand all the morning, as you know, but we
never thought much of it. He never was strong, and he hasn't the
strength to fight against his disease. If he dies, I'll be the last of
the three brothers. Death's a strange thing, John. Your da was the
cleverest and the wisest of us all, and he was the first to go; and now
your Uncle Matthew, that's wise in his way, and has a great amount of
knowledge in his head, is going too ... the second of us ... and I'm
left, the one that could be easiest spared. It's queer to take the best
one first and leave the worst 'til the last. You'd near think God had a
grudge against the world!... What were you doing in Belfast the day?"

"I went to the theatre."

"Aye. What did you see?"

"I saw _Romeo and Juliet_ in the middle of the day, and _Julius
Caesar_ at night!" John answered. "Is my Uncle Matthew unconscious?"

"No. He has all his senses about him. He knows well he's dying. Did he
never speak to you about that?"

John shook his head. "I couldn't bear it if he did. Does he mind, d'you
think?"

"No, he does not. Why should he mind? It's us that's left behind that's
to be pitied, not them that goes. I can't make out the people of these
days, the way they pity the dead and dying, when it's the living's to
be pitied. Did you like the plays, John?"

John roused himself to answer. "Aye," he said, "they were grand. What
happened when he took bad?"

"We had just had our supper, and he started to go up the stairs, and
all of a sudden he called out for your ma, and we both ran to him
together, her and me, and the look on his face frightened me. I didn't
stop to hear what was wrong. I went off to fetch Dr. Dobbs as quick as
I could move. I never saw _Julius Caesar_ myself, but I mind well
the time I saw _Romeo and Juliet_. It was an awful long time ago,
when the oul' Theatre Royal ... not this one, but the one before it,
that was burnt down ... and we saw _Romeo and Juliet_. That's a
tremendous piece, John! It gripped a hold of my heart, I can tell you,
and I came away from the theatre with the tears streaming down my face.
I always was a soft one, anyway. That poor young boy and his lovely wee
girl tormented and tortured by people that was older nor them, but
hadn't half the sense! It grips you, that play!"

"Aye," said John.

"You'll hardly believe me, John, but the play was so real to me that
when they talked about getting married, I said to myself I'd go and see
the wedding. I did by my troth!"

"Eh?" said John abstractedly.

"I was talking about the play!..."

"Oh, aye, aye! Aye!"

"It sounds silly, I know," Uncle William continued, "but it's the God's
own truth, as sure as I'm sitting here. And whenever I pass 'The
Royal,' I always think of _Romeo and Juliet,_ and I see that poor
boy and girl stretched dead, and them ought to have been happy together
and having fine, strong childher!"

"I wonder how he is now. Do you think I should go up now?" John said.

"Wait 'til the doctor comes down. I have great faith in Dr. Dobbs. He
never humbugs you, that man, but tells you plump and plain what's wrong
with you!" He sat back in his chair, and for a while there was no sound
in the kitchen, but the noise of the clock and the small drooping noise
made by the dying fire. There was no sound from overhead.

Uncle William glanced at the clock. He got up and stopped the pendulum.
"I can't bear the sound of it," he said to John as he sat down again.
They remained in silence for a while longer, and then Uncle William got
up and started the clock again. "Mebbe ... mebbe, it's better for it to
be going." he said.

He searched for his pipe on the mantel-shelf and, when he had found it,
lit it with a coal which he picked out of the fire with the tongs.

"Your Uncle Matthew was terribly upset by it," he said, reverting to
the play. "It was a wild and wet night, we had to walk every inch, of
the way, for there was no late trains in them days, John, and we were
drenched to the skin. Your Uncle Matthew never said one word to me the
whole road home. He just held his head high and stared straight in
front of him, and when I looked at him, though the night was dark, I
could see that his fists were clenched and his lips were moving, though
he didn't speak. You never see no plays like that, these days, John.
The last piece I saw in Belfast was a fearful foolish piece, with a lot
of love and villainy in it. The girl was near drowned in real water,
and then the villain tied her on to a circular saw, and if it hadn't
been for the hero coming in the nick of time, she'd have been cut in
two. No man would treat a woman that way, tying her on to a saw! I'm
afeard some of these pieces nowadays are terribly foolish, John, so I
never want to go now!"



II

There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs, and presently Dr. Dobbs,
a lean, stooping man, came into the kitchen, followed by Mrs.
MacDermott. The Doctor nodded to John, and Mrs. MacDermott said,
"You're back!" and then went into the scullery from which she soon
returned, carrying a glass with which she hurried upstairs again.

"Your Uncle's been asking for you, John," said the doctor, drawing on
his gloves.

"Can I go up and see him, sir?" John asked.

"In a minute or two. Your mother'll call for you when he's ready. I'm
afraid there's not much hope, William!" the doctor said.

John leant against the mantel-shelf, waiting to hear more. He listened
in a dazed way to what the doctor was saying, but hardly comprehended
it, for in his mind the words, "I'm afraid there's not much hope!" made
echoes and re-echoes. Uncle Matthew was dying, might, in a little
while, be dead. Dear, simple, honest, kindly Uncle Matthew who had
loved literature and good faith too well, and had suffered for his
simple loyalty.

"He's easier now than he was," the doctor continued, "and he may last a
good while ... and he may not. I _think_ he'll last a while yet,
but he might die before the morning. I want you to be prepared for the
worst. You know where to find me if you want me, William!"

"Yes, doctor!"

"I've left him in good hands. Your mother's a great nurse, John," he
said, turning to the boy.

"Can I go up to him now, doctor?"

"Yes, I think perhaps ... oh, yes, I think you may. But go up quietly,
will you, in case he's dozed off!..."

John did not wait to hear any more, but, walking on tiptoe, went up the
stairs to his uncle's room.

Uncle Matthew turned to greet him as he entered the room.

"Is that you, John?" he said.

"Yes, Uncle Matthew," John answered, tiptoeing to the side of the bed.
"I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier. I never thought!..."

Uncle Matthew smiled at him. "Sure, son, it doesn't matter. You
couldn't know ... none of us did. Well, was the play good?"

But John did not wish to speak about the play. He wished only to sit by
his Uncle's bed and hold his Uncle's hand.

"I'll go downstairs now for a wee while," Mrs. MacDermott said. "I have
a few things to do, and John can call me if you need me, Matt!"

"Aye, Hannah!" said Uncle Matthew.

John looked up at his mother, but she had turned to leave the room, and
he could not see her face.

He had never heard her call his Uncle by the name of "Matt" before, nor
had he often heard Uncle Matthew use her Christian name in addressing
her. He avoided it, John had observed, as much as possible, and it had
seemed to him that his Uncle did so because of his mother's antagonism
to him.

"What are you staring at, John?" Uncle Matthew said feebly.

"She called you 'Matt', Uncle!"

"That's my name," Uncle Matthew replied, smiling at his nephew.

"Aye, but!..."

"She used to call me 'Matt' before she was married, and for a wee while
afterwards, when we were all friends together. Your da's death was a
fearful blow to her, and she never overed it. And she thought I was a
bad influence on you, filling your head with stuff out of books. You
see, John, women are not like men ... they don't value things the way
we do ... and things that seem important to us, aren't worth a flip of
your hand to them. And the other way round, I suppose. But a woman
can't be bitter against a sick man, no matter how much she hated him
when he had his health. That's where we have the whiphand of them,
John. They can't stand against us when we're sick, but we can stand up
against anything, well or sick!..."

John remembered his mother's caution that he was not to let his Uncle
talk much.

"You ought to lie still, Uncle Matthew," he said, but Uncle Matthew
would not heed him.

"I'm as well as I'll ever be." he said. "I know rightly I'll never
leave this bed 'til I'm carried out of it for good and all. And I'm not
going to deny myself the pleasure of a talk for the sake of an extra
day or two!..."

"Wheesht, Uncle Matthew!" John begged.

"Why, son, what's there to cry about? I'm not afeard to die. No
MacDermott was ever afeard to die, and _I_ won't be the first to
give in. Oh, dear, no!"

"But you'll get better, Uncle Matthew, you will, if you'll only take
care of yourself!..."

"Ah, quit blethering John. I won't get better!... What were we saying?
Something about your ma!..."

"Yes. Her calling you 'Matt'!"

"Oh, aye. You'd be surprised, mebbe, to hear that your Uncle William
and me both had a notion of her before your da stepped in and took her
from us? We had no chance against him. That man could have lifted a
queen from a king's bed!..."

"You ought not to be talking so much, Uncle Matthew!"

"Ah, let me talk, John. It's the only comfort I have, and I'll get all
the rest I want by and bye. Was it a girl kept you late the night?"

"How did you know, Uncle Matthew?"

"How did I know!" Uncle Matthew said with raillery. "How would anyone
know anything but by using the bit of wit the Almighty God's put in his
head. What is it makes any lad lose his train, and walk miles in the
dark? It's either women or drink ... and you're no drinker, John. Tell
me about her. I'd like to be the first to know!"

"I only met her the day!..."

"Aye?"

"I hardly know her yet ... but she's lovely!"

"Go on ... go on!"

"I took her to the theatre with me to see _Julius Caesar_ and then
I left her home. She lives up near the Lagan ... out Stranmillis
way!..."

"I know it well," said Uncle Matthew. "Is she a fair girl or a dark
girl?"

"She has the loveliest golden hair you ever clapped your eyes on. It
was that made me fall in love with her!..."

"You're in love with her then! You're not just going with her?"

"Of course I'm in love with her. I never was in the habit of just going
with girls. That's all right, mebbe, for Willie Logan, but I'm not fond
of it," said John indignantly.

"You fell in love with her in a terrible great hurry," Uncle Matthew
exclaimed.

"Aye," said John laughing. "It was queer and comic the way I fell in
love with her, for I had no notion of such a thing when I went in the
shop to have my tea. She's in a restaurant off High Street. I'd been to
the Royal to see _Romeo and Juliet_, and I was full of the play
and just wandering about, not thinking of what I was doing, when all of
a sudden I saw this place fornent my eyes, and I just went in, and she
was there by her lone. The woman that keeps the place had gone home
with a sore head, and left her to look after it!"

"What's her name?"

"Maggie Carmichael. It's a nice name. They don't do much trade on a
Saturday, and her and me were alone in the shop by ourselves so I asked
her to have tea with me, and then I asked her to go to the Royal, and
she agreed after a while, and when it was over, I took her home, and
that's why I missed the train and had to tramp it the whole way home.
She's older nor I am. She says she's twenty-two. She was codding me for
never having kissed any other girl but her!..."

"You got that length, did you?"

"Aye," said John in confusion.

"You're like your da. Take what you want, the minute you want it.
She'll think you're in earnest, John!"

"I am in earnest. I couldn't be any other way. How could a man feel
about a woman, the way I feel about her, and not be in earnest?"

"As easy as winking," said Uncle Matthew. "You'll mebbe be in love a
hundred times before you marry, and every time you'll think it's the
right one at last. There's no law in love, John. You can't say about
it, that you've got to know a woman well before you're safe in marrying
her, nor you can't just shut your eyes and grab hold of the first one
that comes to your hand. There's no law, John ... none at all. It's an
adventure, love. That's what it is. You don't know what lies at the end
of your journey ... and you can't know ... and mebbe when you reach the
end, you don't know. You just have to take your chance, and trust to
God it'll be all right! Is she in love with you?"

"I don't know. I don't suppose so. She made fun of me, so I suppose she
can't be. But she said she liked me."

"Making fun of you is nothing to go by. Some women would make fun of
God Almighty, and think no harm of it. You'll soon know whether she's
in love with you or not, my son!"

"How will I, Uncle Matthew?"

"When she begins to treat you as if you were her property. That's a
sure and certain sign. The minute a woman looks at a man as much as to
say, 'That fellow belongs to me,' she's in love with him, as sure as
death. Anyway, she's going to marry him! Boys-a-boys, John, but you're
the lucky lad with all your youth and health in front of you, and
you setting out in the world. Many's the time I've longed at nights
to be lying snug and comfortable and quiet in a woman's arms, but
I never had that pleasure. Whatever you do, John, don't die an unmarried
man like your Uncle William and me. It's better to live with a cross
sour-natured woman nor it is to live with no woman at all; for even the
worst woman in the world has given a wee while of happiness to her man,
and he always has that in his mind to comfort him however bad she turns
out after. And if she is bad, sure you can run away from her!"

"Run away from her! You'd never advocate the like of that, Uncle
Matthew?"

"I would. I'm a dying man, John, and mebbe I'll be dead by the morrow's
morn, so you may be sure I'm saying things now that I mean with all my
heart, for no man wants to go before his God with lies on his lips. And
I tell you now, boy, that if a man and woman are not happy together,
they ought to separate and go away from each other as far as they can
get, no matter what the cost is. Them's my solemn words, John. I'd like
well to see this girl you're after, but I'll mebbe not be able. No
matter for that. Pay heed to me now, for fear I don't get the
opportunity to say it to you again. Whatever adventures you set out on,
never forget they're only adventures, and if one turns out to be bad,
another'll mebbe turn out to be good. Don't be like me, don't let one
thing affect your life for ever!..." He lay back on his pillow for a
few moments and did not speak. John waited a little while, and then he
leant forward. "Will I fetch my ma?" he asked.

Uncle Matthew shook his head and waved feebly with his hand, and John
sat back again in his chair.

"Life's just balancing one adventure against another," Uncle Matthew
said at last, without raising his head from the pillow. "The good
against the bad. And the happy man is him that can set off a lot of
good adventures against bad ones, and have a balance of good ones in
his favour. But it takes courage to have a lot, John. The Jenny-joes of
the world never try again after the first bad one. I ... I was
staggered that time ... I ... I never got my foothold again. The
balance is against me, John!..."

Mrs. MacDermott came into the room.

"It's time you went to your bed, son," she said, "and your Uncle'll
want to get to sleep, mebbe. Are you all right, Matt?"

"I'm nicely, thank you, Hannah!"

John got up from his seat and said "Good-night!" to his Uncle.

"Good-night, John. Mind well what I've said to you!"

"I will, Uncle Matthew!"

"Good-night, son, dear!" said Uncle Matthew, smiling at him.



III

In the morning, Uncle Matthew was better than he had been during the
night, and Dr. Dobbs, when he called to see him, thought that he would
live for several weeks more. John went down to the kitchen from his
Uncle's room, happy at the thought that his Uncle might recover in
spite of the doctor's statement that death was inevitable within a
short time. Doctors, he told himself, had made many mistakes, and
perhaps Dr. Dobbs was making a mistake about Uncle Matthew.

He had lain late, heavy with fatigue, for Mrs. MacDermott had not
called him at his usual hour and so the morning was well advanced when
he came down.

"There's a letter for you," said Uncle William, pointing to the
mantel-shelf, where a foolscap envelope rested against the clock. "It'll
be about the story, I'm thinking!"

John took the letter in his trembling fingers and tore it open.

"They've sent it back," he said in a low tone.

"There'll be a note with it," Uncle William murmured.

"Yes!..." He straightened out the printed note and read it. "They've
declined it," he said.

"They've what?" Uncle William exclaimed, taking the printed slip from
John's hands. He read the note of rejection through several times.

"What does it say?" Mrs. MacDermott asked.

"It's a queer kind of a note, this!" said Uncle William. "You'd think
the man was breaking his heart at the idea of not printing the story.
He doesn't say anything about it, whether it's good or bad. He just
thanks John for sending it to him and says he's sorry he can't accept
it. If he's so sorry as all that, why the hell doesn't he print it?"

"William!" said Mrs. MacDermott sharply. "This is Sunday!"

"Well, dear knows I don't want to desecrate God's Day," Uncle William
answered, accepting the rebuke, "but that is a lamentable letter to
get. I must say!"

Mrs. MacDermott held her hand out for the letter. "Give it to me," she
said, and she took it from Uncle William.

"This is his way of saying your story's no good, John," she said, when
she had read through the note. "No man would refuse a thing if he
thought it was worth printing!"

Her words hurt John very sorely. He looked at her, but he did not
speak, and then, after a moment or two, he turned away.

"Now, now, that's not right at all," Uncle William said comfortingly.
"There might be a thousand things to prevent the man from printing the
story. Mebbe he doesn't know a good story when he sees it. Sure, half
these papers nowadays print stories that would turn a child's stomach,
and a thing's not bad just because one paper won't take it. There's
other magazines besides _Blackwood's_, John, as good, too, and
mebbe better!" He went over to his nephew and put his hand on the boy's
shoulder. "There, there, now, don't let this upset you! Your Uncle
Matthew was telling me the other day that some of the greatest writers
in the world had their best stories refused time after time. Don't lose
heart over a thing like that!"

"I haven't lost heart, Uncle William. I daresay it isn't as good as I
thought it was, but I'll improve. It wasn't to be expected I'd succeed
the first time!"

"That's the spirit, boy. That's the spirit!"

"Only I'm disappointed all the same. It's likely I don't know enough
yet!"

"Oh, that's very likely," said Uncle William. "You're only a young
fellow yet, you know!"

"Mebbe that story of mine is full of ignorant mistakes I wouldn't have
made if I'd been about the world a bit and seen more!"

"I daresay you're right! I daresay you're right!..."

Mrs. MacDermott came between them. "What are you leading up to?" she
demanded.

"I must travel a bit before I start writing things," John answered. "I
must know more and see more. My Uncle Matthew's right. You have to go
out into the world to get adventure and romance!..."

"Can't you get all the adventure and romance you need in this place,
and not go tramping among strangers and foreigners for it?" Mrs.
MacDermott retorted angrily.

"How can I get adventure and romance in a place where I know
everybody?" John rejoined.

"Are you proposing to leave home, John!" Uncle William asked.

"Aye! For a while anyway," John answered, "I'll go to London!..."

"You'll not go to no London," Mrs. MacDermott retorted, "and your
Uncle, Matthew lying on his deathbed!..."

"I'm not proposing to go this minute, ma!..."

"You'll not go at all," she insisted.

"I will!"

"You will not, I tell you. What would a lump of a lad like you do in a
place of that sort, where there's temptation and sin at every corner!
Doesn't everyone know that the Devil's roaming up and down the streets
of London day and night, luring young men to their ruin? There's bad
women in London!..."

"There's bad women everywhere," John replied. "You don't need to be
your age to know that!"

She listened angrily while John explained his point of view to his
Uncle William. Travel and new experiences were necessary to the
development of his mind.

"Don't you go up to Belfast every week!" Mrs. MacDermott interrupted.

"I was in Belfast yesterday," John retorted, "but there wasn't a thing
happened to me, romantic or anything else!..." He stopped abruptly,
smitten by the recollection of his meeting with Maggie Carmichael.
After all, _that_ was a romantic adventure! Most strange that he
had not thought of his love affair in that way before! Of course, it
was a romantic adventure! He had walked straight out of a dull street,
you might say, into an enchanted café ... and had found Maggie in
captivity, waiting for him to deliver her from it. She had been
lonely ... and he had come to comfort her. He had taken her from that
dull, cheerless ... prison ... you could call it that!... and had taken
her to a pleasant place and made love to her! Oh, but of course it was a
romantic adventure, with love and a beautiful golden-haired girl at the
end of it. And here he was, moping over the misadventure of a
manuscript and talking of travel in distant places in search of
exciting experiences as if he had not already had the most thrilling
and wonderful adventure that is possible to a man! Why, if he were to
leave Ballyards and go to London, he would lose Maggie ... would not
see her again!... By the Holy O, his mother was right after all! Women
_were_ right sometimes! There was plenty of romance and adventure
lying at your hand, if you only took the trouble to look for it.
Mebbe... mebbe a thing was romantic or not romantic, just according to
the way you looked at it. One man could see romance in a grocer's shop,
and another man could not see romance anywhere but in places where he
had never been!...

"Mebbe you're right, ma," he said.

Mrs. MacDermott looked suspiciously at him. "You changed your mind very
quick," she said.

"I always change my mind quick," he replied.

They heard the noise of tapping overhead.

"That's your Uncle Matthew," said Mrs. MacDermott, rising from her
chair.

"I'll go," John exclaimed hastily. "It's mebbe me he wants!"

He ran quickly up the stairs and entered his Uncle's room.

"Yes, Uncle Matthew?" he said.

"I heard you all talking together," Uncle Matthew answered. "What's
happened?"

"Oh, nothing! My story's been refused. That's all."

Uncle Matthew put out his hand and took hold of John's. "Are you very
disappointed?" he said.

"Yes, I am. I made sure they'd take it!"

"There ought to have been a woman in it. You know, John, I told you
that. There was no love in that story, and people like to read about
love. That's natural. Sure, it's the beginning of everything!"

"I didn't know anything about it then, Uncle!..."

"No, but you do now ... a wee bit ... and you might have imagined it.
You'd never be your father's son, if you hadn't a heart brimful of
love. What else were you talking about?"

John told his Uncle of his proposal to go to London in search of
experience.

"Aye, you'll have to do that some day," his Uncle replied, "but there's
no hurry yet awhile. You'd better finish your schooling first, and you
could go on writing here 'til you get more mastery of it. You might try
to write a book, and then when it's done, you could go to London or
somewhere. I'd be sorry if you went just now!..."

"I'm not meaning to go yet, Uncle!"

"Very good, son. I'd like you to be here when I ... when!..."

He did not finish his sentence, but the pressure of his hand on John's
increased.

"Eh, John?" he said.

"Yes, Uncle Matthew!" John replied. He quickly changed the
conversation. "You're looking a lot better," he said.

Uncle Matthew smiled. "Oh, aye," he replied, "I feel a lot better, too.
I'll mebbe beat the doctor yet. He thinks I'm done for, but mebbe I'll
teach him different!"

"You will, indeed. And why wouldn't you? You're young yet!"

Uncle Matthew did not reply to this. He turned on his pillow and
glanced towards the dressing-table.

"Are you looking for anything?" John asked.

"Is there a book there?"

"No," John said. "Do you want one?"

"Your ma read a wee bit to me in the night, after you went to bed. I
thought mebbe you'd read a wee bit more to me. _Willie Reilly_, it
was."

"I'll get it for you," John replied, going to the door. He called to
his mother, and she told him that she had brought the book downstairs
with her.

"Wait a minute and I'll fetch it," she said.

She returned in a moment or two, carrying the book in her hand, and
mounted half-way up the staircase to meet him. She pointed to a place
in the book. "I read up to there to him in the night," she said. John
looked at his mother, as he took the book from her hands, and saw how
tired she looked.

"Did you not get any sleep at all, ma?" he asked with concern.

"I'm all right, son," she answered.

"No, you're not," he insisted. "You'll just go to your bed this minute
and lie down for a while!..."

"And the dinner to cook and all," she interrupted.

"Well, after your dinner then. You'll lie down the whole afternoon.
Uncle William and me'll get the tea ready, and we'll take it in turns
to look after Uncle Matthew!"

She stood on the step beneath him, looking at him with dark, tired
eyes, and then she put out her hand and touched him on the shoulder.
"You'll not leave me, John?" she pleaded.

"No, ma," he answered. "Not for a long while yet!"

She turned away from him and went down the stairs again.

John returned to his Uncle's room, and sat down by the side of the bed.
He opened the book and began to read of Willie Reilly and his Colleen
Bawn. Now and then he glanced at his Uncle and wondered at the
childlike and innocent look on his face. There was a strange simplicity
in his eyes ... not the simplicity of those who have not got
understanding, but of those who have a deep and unchangeable knowledge
that is very different from the knowledge of other men; and once again
John assured himself that while Uncle Matthew's behaviour might be
"quare" when compared with that of other people, yet it was not foolish
behaviour nor the behaviour of the feeble-minded: it was the conduct of
a man who responded immediately to simple and honest emotions, who did
not stop to consider questions of discretion or interest, but did the
thing which seemed to him to be right.

"What are you thinking of, Uncle Matthew?" he said suddenly, putting
down the book, for it seemed to him that his Uncle was no longer
listening.

"I was thinking I wouldn't have missed my life for the wide world!"
Uncle Matthew replied.

"After everything?" John asked.

"Aye, in spite of everything," said Uncle Matthew. "There's great value
in life ... great value!"

John picked up the book again, but he did not begin to read, nor did
Uncle Matthew show any signs that he wished the reading to be resumed.

"Our minds go this way and that way," Uncle Matthew went on, "and some
of us are not happy 'til we're away here and there!..."

"You were always wanting to be off after adventures yourself, Uncle
Matthew!"

"Aye, John, I was, and I never went. I've oftentimes thought little of
myself for that, but I'm wondering now, lying here, whether it wasn't a
great adventure to stop at home. I don't know! I don't know! But I'll
know in a wee while! John!"

"Yes, Uncle!"

"I wouldn't change places with the King of England, at this minute, not
for all the money in the mint and my weight in gold!"

"Why, Uncle Matthew?"

"Do you know why? Because in a wee while, I'll know all there is to
know, and he'll be left here knowing no more nor the rest of you. God
is good, John. He shares out his knowledge without favour to anyone.
The like of us'll know as much in the next world as the like of
them!..."



IV

When the sharper anxieties concerning Uncle Matthew had subsided,
John's mind was filled with thoughts of Maggie Carmichael. It seemed to
him to be impossible that any seven days in the history of the world
had been so long in passing as the seven days which separated him from
his next meeting with her. His work at the Ballyards National School
lost any interest it ever had for him: the pupils seemed to be at once
the stupidest and laziest and most aggravating children on earth.
Lizzie Turley completely lost her power to add two and one together and
make three of them. Strive as he might, he could not make her
comprehend or remember that two and one, when added together, did not
amount to five. There was even a dreadful day when she lost her power
to subtract.... Miss Gebbie, the teacher to whom he was most often
monitor, had always had hard, uncouth manners, but they became almost
intolerable before the seven days had passed by ... and it seemed
certain that there must be a crisis in her life and in his before the
clock struck three on Friday afternoon! If she complained again, he
said to himself, about the way in which he marked the children's
exercise books, he would tell her in very plain language what he
thought of her and her big bamboo-cane. When she slapped the children,
the corners of her mouth went down and her large lips tightened and a
cruel glint came into her eyes!...

It was only during the reading half-hour that his mind was at ease in
school that week, for then he could let his thoughts roam from
Ballyards to Belfast, and fill his eyes with visions of Maggie. The
droning voices of the children, reading "Jack has got a cart and can
draw sand and clay in it," were almost soothing, and it was sufficient
for supervision, if now and then, he would call out, "Next!" The child
who was reading would instantly stop, and the child next to her would
instantly begin....

It seemed to him that he had the clearest impressions of Maggie
Carmichael, and yet had also the vaguest impressions of her. He
remembered very distinctly that she had bright, laughing eyes, and that
her hair was fair, and that she had pretty teeth: white and even. He
had often read in books of the beauty of a woman's teeth, but he had
never paid much attention to them. After all, what was the purpose of
teeth? To bite. It was ridiculous, he had told himself, to talk and
write of beauty in teeth when all that mattered was whether they could
bite well or not.... But now, remembering the beauty of Maggie
Carmichael's mouth, he saw that the writers had done well when they
insisted on the beauty of teeth. Any sort of a good tooth would do for
biting and chewing, but there was something more than that to be said
for good, white, even teeth. If teeth were of no value otherwise than
for biting and chewing, false teeth were better than natural teeth!...
And false teeth were so hideous to look at; so smug, so self-conscious.
Aggie Logan had false teeth. So had Teeshie McBratney and Sadie
Cochrane. Things with pale gums!...

He had wanted to kiss Maggie Carmichael's teeth, so beautiful were
they. Just her teeth. It had been splendid to kiss her lips, but then
one always kissed lips. Men, according to the books, even kissed hair
and ears and eyes. He had read recently of a man who kissed a woman on
the neck, just behind the ear; and at the time he had thought that this
was a very queer thing to do. Love, he supposed, was responsible for a
thing like that. He could not account for it in any other way. He
understood _now_, of course. When a man loved a woman, every part
of her was very dear and beautiful to him, and to kiss her neck just
behind the ear was as exquisite as to kiss her lips. No one, in any of
the books he had read, had wished to kiss a woman's teeth. There were
still hidden joys in kissing ... and he had discovered one of them. He
would kiss Maggie's teeth on Saturday. He would kiss her lips, too, of
course, and her hair and her eyes and ears and the part of her neck
that was just behind her ear, but most of all he would kiss her
teeth!...

He thought that it was very strange that he should think so ardently of
kissing Maggie. He could have kissed Aggie Logan dozens of times, but
he had never had the slightest desire to kiss her. He remembered how
foolish he had thought her that night at the soiree when someone
proposed that they should play Postman's Knock. Aggie Logan had called
him out to the lobby. There was a letter for him, she said, with three
stamps on it. Three stamps! Did anyone ever hear the like of that? And
he was to go into the lobby and give her three kisses, one after the
other ... peck, peck, peck ... and then it would be his turn to call
for someone, and Aggie would expect him to call for her! ... Willie
Logan had called for a girl. He had a letter for her with fifty stamps
on it ... A great roar of laughter had gone up from the others when
they heard of the amount of the postage, and Willie was thought to be a
daring, desperate fellow ... until the superintendent of the Sunday
School said that there must be reason in all things and proposed a
limit of three stamps on each letter ... no person to be called for
more than twice in succession. Willie, boisterous and very amorous,
whispered to John that he did not care what limit they made ... no one
could tell how many extra stamps you put on your letter out in the
lobby....

John had not answered Aggie's call. He had contrived to get out of the
school-room without being observed, and Aggie had been obliged to call
for someone else. Kissing!... Kiss her!... Three stamps!... Peck, peck,
_peck_!...



V

Wednesday dragged itself out slowly and very reluctantly; Thursday was
worse than Wednesday; and Friday was only saved from being as bad as
Thursday by its nearness to Saturday. On the morrow, he would see
Maggie again. Many times during the week, he had debated with himself
as to whether he should write to her or not, but the difficulty of
knowing what to say to her, except that he loved her and was longing
for the advent of Saturday, prevented him front doing so. In any case,
it would be difficult to write to her without questions from his
mother, and if Maggie were to reply to him, there would be no end to
the talk from her. After all, a week was only a week. On Monday, a week
had seemed to be an interminable period of time, but on Friday, it had
resumed the normal aspect of a week, a thing with a definite and
reachable end. It was odd to observe how, as the week drew to its
close, the intolerable things became tolerable. Miss Gebbie seemed to
be a little less inhuman on Friday than she had been on Monday, and
Lizzie Turley marvellously recovered her power to add two and one
together and get the correct result. Beyond all doubt, he was in love.
There could not be any other explanation of his behaviour and his
peculiar impatience. That any man should conduct himself as he had done
during the week now ending, for any other reason than that he was in
love, was impossible. Why, he woke up in the morning, thinking of
Maggie, and he went to sleep at night, thinking of Maggie. He thought
of her when he was at school, and he thought of her in the street, in
the shop, in the kitchen, even in his Uncle Matthew's room. When it was
his turn to sit by Uncle Matthew's side, his mind, for more than half
the time, was in Belfast with Maggie. He had read more than a hundred
pages of _Willie Reilly_ to his Uncle, but he had not comprehended
one of them. He had been thinking exclusively of Maggie.

He wondered whether he would always be in this state of absorption.
Other people fell in love, as he knew, but they seemed to be able to
think of other things besides their love. Perhaps they were not so much
in love as he was! He began to see difficulties arising from this great
devotion of his to Maggie. It would be very hard to concentrate his
mind on a story if it were full of thoughts of her. He would probably
spoil any work he attempted to do, because his mind would not be on it,
but away with Maggie. In none of the books he had read, had he seen any
account of the length of time a pair of lovers took in which to get
used to each other and to adjust their affections to the ordinary needs
of life. He would never cease to love Maggie, of course, but he
wondered how long it would be before his mind would become capable of
thinking of Maggie and of something else at the same time ... or even
of thinking of something else without thinking of Maggie at all....



VI

His mother had looked dubiously at him when he talked of going to
Belfast on Saturday. She said that he ought not to leave home while his
Uncle Matthew was so ill, but Dr. Dobbs had given a more optimistic
opinion on the sick man's condition, and so, after they had argued over
the matter, she withdrew her objection. Uncle William had insisted that
John ought to go up to the city for the sake of the change. The lad had
had a hard week, what with his school work and his writing and his
attention to Uncle Matthew, and the change would be good for him. "Only
don't miss the train this time," he added to John.

Maggie met him outside the theatre. He had not long to wait for her,
and his heart thrilled at the sight of her as she came round Arthur's
Corner.

"So you have come," she said to him, as she shook hands with him.

"Did you think I wouldn't?" he answered.

"Oh, well," she replied, "you never know with fellows! Some of them
makes an appointment to meet you, and you'd think from the way they
talk about it that they were dying to meet you; and then when the time
comes, you might stand at the corner 'til your feet were frozen to the
ground, but not a bit of them would turn up. I'd never forgive a boy
that treated me that way!"

"I'm not the sort that treats a girl that way," said John.

"Oh, indeed you could break your word as well as the next! Many's a
time I've give my word to a fellow and broke it myself, just because I
didn't feel like keeping it. But it's different for a girl nor it is
for a fellow. There's no harm in a girl disappointing a fellow. I hear
this piece at the Royal is awfully good this week. It's about a girl
that nearly gets torn to pieces by a mad lion. I don't know whether I
like that sort of piece or not. It seems terrible silly, and it would
be awful if the hero come on a minute or two late and the girl was ate
up fornent your eyes!"

John laughed. "There's not much danger of that," he replied.

There were very few people waiting outside the Pit Door, and so they
were able to secure good seats with ease. "The best of coming in the
daytime," John said, "is you have a better chance of the front row than
you have at night!"

She nodded her head. "But it's better at night," she answered. "A piece
never seems real to me in the daylight."

"Where'll we go to-night?" he said to her.

"Oh, I can't go with you to-night again," she exclaimed, taking a
chocolate from the box which he had bought for her.

"Why?"

"I have another appointment!..."

"Break it," he commanded.

"I couldn't do that!..."

"Oh, yes, you could," he insisted. "You told me yourself you'd
disappointed fellows many's a time!"

"I daresay I did, but I can't break this one," she retorted.

Suspicion entered his mind. "Is it with another fellow?" he asked.

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," she said.

"Is it?" he demanded.

"And what if it is?"

"I don't want you to go out with anybody else but me!"

She ate another chocolate. "Have one?" she said, passing the box to
him. He shook his head moodily. "Are you going to do what I ask or are
you not?" he said.

"Don't be childish," she replied. "I've promised a friend to go to a
concert to-night, and I'll have to go. That's all about it!"

"Is it a fellow?"

"Mebbe it is and mebbe it's not!" she teased.

"You know I'm in love with you!" She laughed lightly, and he bent his
head closer to her. "Listen, Maggie," he went on, "I know I only met
you for the first time last Saturday, but I'm terrible in love with
you. Listen! I want to marry you, Maggie!..."

She burst out laughing.

"Don't make a mock of me," he pleaded.

She turned to look at him. "What age are you?" she demanded.

"I'm near nineteen," he answered.

"And I'm twenty-two," she retorted. "Twenty-two past, I am. Four years
older nor you!..."

"That doesn't matter," he insisted.

"It wouldn't if the ages was the other way round ... you twenty-two and
me nineteen!"

"It doesn't matter what way they are. It's not age that matters: it's
feeling!"

"You'll feel different, mebbe, when you're a bit older. What would
people say if I was to marry you now, after meeting you a couple of
times, and you four years younger nor me?"

"It doesn't matter what they'd say," he replied. "Sure, people are
always saying something!"

She ruminated! "I like going out with you well enough, and you're a
queer, nice wee fellow, but it's foolish talk to be talking of getting
married. What trade are you at?"

"I'm a monitor," he answered. "I'm in my last year!..."

"You're still at the school," she said.

"I'm a monitor," he replied, insisting on his status.

"Och, sure that's only learning. When in the earthly world would you be
able to keep a wife?"

"I'm going to write books!..."

"What sort of books?"

"Story books," he said.

"Have you writ any yet?"

"No, but I wrote a short story once!"

She looked at him admiringly. "How much did you get for it?" she asked.

"I didn't get anything for it," he replied. "They wouldn't take it!"

She remained silent for a few moments. Then she said, "Your prospects
aren't very bright!"

"But they'll get brighter," he said. "They will. I tell you they will!"

"When?" she asked.

"Some day," he answered.

"Some day may be a long day in coming," she went on. "I might have to
wait a good while before you were able to marry me. Five or six years,
mebbe, and then I'd be getting on to thirty, John. You'd better be
looking out for a younger girl nor me!"

"I don't want anybody else but you," he replied.



VII

When the play was over, they walked arm in arm towards the restaurant
where she was employed. "I promised Mrs. Bothwell we'd have our tea
there," Maggie said to John. "It put her in a sweet temper, the thought
of having two customers for certain. She'll mebbe give up that place.
It's not paying her well. She wasn't going to give me the time off at
first, but I told you were my cousin up from the country for the
day!..."

"But I'm not your cousin," John objected.

"That doesn't matter. Sure, you have to tell a wee bit of a lie now and
again, or you'd never get your way at all. And it saves bother and
explaining!"

They crossed High Street and were soon at the foot of the stairs
leading up to Bothwell's Restaurant. "Mind," said Maggie in a whisper,
"you're my cousin!"

He did not speak, but followed her up the stairs and into the
restaurant where she introduced him to a plain, stoutly-built, but
cheerless woman who came from the small room into the large one as they
entered it. There was one customer in the room, but he finished his tea
and departed soon after Maggie and John arrived. In a little while, she
and he were eating their meal. John politely asked Mrs. Bothwell to
join them, but she declined.

She sat at a neighbouring table and talked to them of the play.

"I don't know when I was last at a theatre," she said, "and I don't
know when I'll go again. I always say to myself when I come away,
'Well, that's over and my money's spent and what satisfaction have I
got for it?' And when I think it all out, there doesn't seem to be any
satisfaction. You've spent your money, and the play's over, and that's
all. It seems a poor sort of return!'"

"You might say that about anything," John said. "A football match
or ... or one of these nice wee cookies of yours!"

"Oh, indeed, you might," Mrs. Bothwell admitted. "Sure, there's no
pleasure in the world that's lasting, and mebbe if there were we
wouldn't like it. You pay your good money for a thing, and you have it
a wee while, and then it's all over, and you have to pay more money for
something else. Or mebbe you have it a long while, only you're not
content with it. That's the way it always is. There's very little
satisfaction to be got out of anything. Look at the Albe

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