The Foolish Lovers

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Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon,
and PG Distributed Proofreaders

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!

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