The Foolish Lovers

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Ugh! Even if John were selfish, he was preferable to these drab women,
these pitiful females herded together. Women in the mass were very
displeasing to look at, and they frightened you. They turned down the
corners of their mouths and looked coldly and condemningly at you. It
was extraordinary how unanimous the girls were in their dislike of
working under women. The woman in authority was more hateful to women
even than to men. Eleanor had done some work for an advanced woman, an
eminent suffragette, who had crept about the house in rubber-soled
shoes so that she might come unexpectedly into the room where Eleanor
was working and assure herself that she was getting value for her
money!... She was always spying and sneaking round! What an experience
that had been! How impossible it had been to work with that woman! A
girl in the club had worked for a royal princess ... not at all an
advanced woman ... and she, too, had had to seek for employment under a
man. The princess was a foolish, spoilt, utterly incompetent person who
did not know her own mind for two consecutive hours. She sneaked
around, too, and spied!... All these women in authority seemed to spend
half their day peering through keyholes.... Perhaps it was because the
club was such a dingy, cheerless hole that she liked to go out with
John. The food was meagre and poor in quality and vilely cooked.
Somehow, women living together seemed unable to feed themselves
decently. Miss Dilldall, gay little woman of the world, had solemnly
proposed that a man should be hired to _growse_ about the meals.
"We'll never get good food in this damned compound," she said, "until
we get some men into it. Bringing them as guests isn't any good.
They're too polite to their hostesses to say anything, but I'm sure
that every man who has a meal in this place goes away convinced that
the food we are content to eat is a strong argument against votes for
women! And so it is. What a hole!"

"That's really why I like going out with him," Eleanor confided to her
reflection in the looking-glass as she brushed her hair. "It's really
to escape from this dreary club! But I can't marry him for that reason.
It wouldn't be fair to him. It would be much less fair to me. Of
course, I _like_ him!... Oh, no! No, no!..."

IV

Lizzie was in the hall when John let himself into the house that night.

"Hilloa," he said, "not gone to bed yet?"

"I never 'ave time to go to bed," she said. "'Ow can I get any sleep
when I 'ave to look after men! You an' Mr. 'Inde!" She came nearer to
him. "You'll get a bit of a surprise when you go upstairs," she said
very knowingly.

"Me!"

She nodded her head and giggled.

"What sort of a surprise?" he demanded.

"You'll see when you get upstairs. It's been, waitin' for you 'ere
since seven o'clock!..."

"Seven o'clock! What is it? A parcel?"

Lizzie could not control her laughter when he said "parcel." "Ow!" she
giggled. "Ow, dear, ow, dear! A parcel! Ow, yes, it's a parcel all
right! You'll see when you get up!..."

He began to mount the stairs. "You're an awful fool, Lizzie," he said
crossly, leaning over the banisters.

"Losin' your temper, eih?" she replied, bolting the street door.

He hurried up to the sitting-room and as he climbed the flight of
stairs that led directly to it, Hinde called out to him, "Is that you,
Mac?"

"Yes," he answered.

Hinde came to the door and opened it fully. "There's someone here to
see you," he said.

"To see me! At this hour?"

He entered the room as he spoke. His mother was sitting in front of the
fire.

"Mother!" he exclaimed, remembering just in time not to say "Ma!" which
would have sounded very childish in front of Hinde.

"This is a nice hour of the night to be coming home," she said, trying
to speak severely, but she could not maintain the severity in her
voice, for his arms were about her and she was hugging him.

"You never told me you were coming," he said. "What brought you over?"

"I've come to see this girl you've got hold of," she answered.

V

"But why didn't you tell me you were coming?" he asked. "I'd have met
you at the station!"

She ignored his question. "This is a terrible town," she said. "Mr.
Hinde says there's near twice as many people in this place as there is
in the whole of Ireland. How in the earthly world do they manage to get
about their business?"

"Oh, quite easily," he said nonchalantly, and as he spoke he realised
that he had come to be a Londoner.

"When I got out at the station," Mrs. MacDermott continued, "I called a
porter and said to him, 'Just put that bag on your shoulder and carry
it for me!' 'Where to, ma'am?' says he, and then I gave him your
address. I thought the man 'ud drop down dead. 'Is it far?' says I.
'Far!' says he. 'It's miles!' By all I can make out, John, you live as
far from the station as Millreagh is from Ballyards. I had to come here
in one of them things that runs without horses ... what do you call
them?"

"Taxi-cabs!"

"That's the name. It's a demented mad place this. Such traffic! Worse
nor Belfast on the fair-day!"

"It's like that every day, Mrs. MacDermott!" Hinde interjected.

"What bothers me," she went on, "is how ever you get to know your
neighbours!"

"We don't get to know them," Hinde replied. "I've lived in this house
for several years, but I don't know the names of the people on either
side of it!"

"My God," said Mrs. MacDermott, "what sort of people are you at all!
Are you all fell out with each other?"

"No. We're just not interested!"

"I wouldn't live in this place for the wide world," she exclaimed. "And
you," she continued turning to her son, "could come here where you know
nobody from a place where you knew everybody. The world's queer! What
was that water I passed on the way out?..."

"Water!"

"Aye. We went over it on a bridge!"

"Oh, the river!"

"What river!" she said.

"Why, the Thames, of course!"

"Is that what you call it?"

Hinde smiled at John. "So you've learned to call it the river, have
you? Mrs. Hinde, in this town we always talk as if there were only one
river in the world. A Londoner always says he's going up the river or
down the river or on the river. He always speaks of it as the river. He
never speaks of it as the Thames. In Belfast, you speak of the
Lagan ... never of the river. The same in Dublin. They speak of the
Liffey ... never of the river. John's become a Londoner. He knows the
proper way to speak of the Thames!"

"London seems to be full of very conceited and unneighbourly people,"
Mrs. MacDermott said.

John demanded information of his mother. How were Uncle William and Mr.
Cairnduff and the minister and Willie Logan?...

"His wife's got a child," Mrs. MacDermott replied severely.

"A boy or a girl?"

"A boy, and the spit of his father, God help him. Thon lad Logan'll
come to no good. Aggie's courting hard. Some fellow from Belfast that
travels in drapery. She told me to remember her to you!"

"Thank you, mother!"

Hinde rose to leave them. "You'll have a lot to say to each other, and
I'm tired," he explained, as he went off to bed.

"I like that man," said Mrs. MacDermott when he had gone. "And now tell
me about this girl you've got. Are you in earnest?"

"Yes, ma!" John answered, using the word "ma," now that he was alone
with his mother.

"Will she have you?"

"I hope so. She hasn't said definitely yet, but I think she will!"

"Who is she? Moore you said her name was. That's an Irish name!"

"But she's not Irish. She's English. Her father was a clergyman, but
he's dead. So is her mother. She has hardly any friends!"

"Does she keep herself?"

"Yes, ma. She works in a motor-place ... in the office, typing letters.
She's an awful nice girl, ma! I'm just doting on her, so I am!"

"Do you like her better nor that Belfast girl that married the
peeler?..."

"Och, that one," John laughed. "I never think of her now ... never for
a minute. Eleanor's the one I think about!"

"Are you sure of yourself?..."

"As sure as God's in heaven, ma!"

"Oh, yes, we know all about that, but are you sure you're sure? You
were queerly set on that Belfast girl, you know!"

He pledged himself as convincingly as he could to Eleanor, and told his
mother that he could never be happy without her.

"And how do you propose to keep her?" she said, when he had finished.

"Work for her, of course!"

"How much have you earned since you came here?"

"Nothing!"

"And you've no work fornent you?"

"No, not at the minute. I had a job, but I lost it!"

He gave an account of his relationship with the _Daily Sensation._

"You'll not be able to buy much with that amount of work," she
interrupted.

He told her of the sketch for the Creams and of the tragedy of St.
Patrick.

"What's the use of writing about him," she said. "Sure, he's been dead
this long while back!"

He did not attempt to make her understand. "And then there's the novel
I wrote when I was at home," he concluded.

"But you've heard nothing of it yet. As far as I can see you've done
little here that you couldn't have done at home!"

"Oh, yes I have. I've learned a great deal more than I could ever have
learned in Ballyards. And I've met Eleanor!"

"H'm!" she said, rising from her seat. "I'm going to my bed now. That
girl Lizzie seems a good-natured sort of a soul. Where does Eleanor
live?"

"Oh, a long way from here!..."

"Give me her address, will you?"

"Yes, ma, but why?"

"I'm going to see her the morrow!"

He had to explain that Eleanor could not be seen in the day-time
because of her employment, and he proposed that his mother should go
with him in the evening to meet her at the bookstall at Charing Cross
station.

"Very well," she said as she kissed him, "Good-night!"

THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

I

Mrs. MacDermott had remained in London for a week. John, eager to show
the sights to her, had tried to persuade her to stay for a longer
period, but she was obstinate in her determination to return to Ireland
at the end of the week. "I don't like the place," she said; "it's not
neighbourly!" She repeated this objection so frequently that John began
for the first time in his life to understand something of his mother's
point of view. He remembered how she had insisted upon the fact that
the MacDermotts had lived over the shop in Ballyards for several
generations; and now, with her repetition of the statement that London
was an unneighbourly town, he realised that Ballyards in her mind was a
place of kinsmen, that the people of Ballyards were members of one
family. She was horrified when she discovered that Hinde had been
stating the bare truth when he said that he had lived in Miss Squibb's
house for several years, but still was ignorant of the names of his
neighbours. Miss Squibb had told her that people in London made a habit
of taking a house on a three-years' lease. "When it expires, they go
somewhere else," she had said. Miss Squibb had never heard of a family
that had lived in the same house in London for several generations. She
did not think it was a nice idea, that. She liked "chynge" herself, and
was sorry she could not afford to get as much of it as she would like
to have.

"I do not understand the people in this place," Mrs. MacDermott had
complained to Hinde. "They've no feeling for anything. They don't love
their homes!..."

But although she had stayed in London for a week only, she had seen
much of Eleanor Moore in that time. It had not occurred to John, until
the moment his mother and he entered Charing Cross station, that Mrs.
MacDermott and Eleanor might not like each other. He imagined that his
mother must like Eleanor simply because he liked her, but as he held a
swing-door open so that his mother might pass through, a sudden dubiety
took possession of him and he became full of alarm. Supposing they did
not care for each other?... The doubt had hardly time to enter his mind
when it was resolved for him. Eleanor arrived at the bookstall almost
simultaneously with themselves. (It struck him then that Eleanor was a
remarkably punctual girl.) "This is my mother, Eleanor!" he had said,
and stood anxiously by to watch their greeting. The old woman and the
girl regarded each other for a moment, and then Mrs. MacDermott had
taken Eleanor's outstretched hand and had drawn her to her and had
kissed her; and John's dubiety disappeared from his mind. They had
dined together in Soho that night, but Mrs. MacDermott had not enjoyed
the meal. The number of diners and the clatter of dishes and knives and
the foreign look and the foreign language of the waiters disconcerted
her and made her feel as if she were a stranger. Above all else in the
world, Mrs. MacDermott hated to feel like a stranger! She demanded
familiar surroundings and faces, and was unhappy when she found herself
without recognition. The menu made her suspicious of the food because
it was written in French. She distrusted foreigners. London appeared to
be full of all sorts of people from all parts of the world. Never in
her life had she seen so many black men as she had seen in London that
day. John had taken her to St. Paul's Cathedral in the afternoon and
had shown her the place where Queen Victoria returned thanks to
Almighty God for her Diamond Jubilee ... and there, standing on the
very steps of a Christian church, was a Chinaman! There were no
Chinamen in Ballyards, thank God, nor were there any black men either.
She realised, of course, that God had made black men and Chinamen and
every other sort of men, but she wished that they would stay in the
land in which God had put them and would not go trapesing about the
world!...

"What about us, then?" said John. "We don't stay in the one place!"

"I know that," she replied. "That's what's wrong with the world.
Everyone should stay in his own country!"

The dinner had not entirely pleased John. Somehow, in a way that he
could not understand, he found himself being edged out of the
conversation, not altogether, but as a principal. His mother and
Eleanor addressed each other primarily; they only addressed him now and
then and in a way that seemed to indicate that they had suddenly
remembered his presence and were afraid he might feel hurt at being
left out of their talk. He was glad, of course, that his mother and
Eleanor were getting on so well together, but after all he was in
charge of this affair.... When his mother proposed to Eleanor that they
should meet on the following evening and go somewhere for a quiet talk,
he could hardly believe his ears.

"But what about me?" he said.

"Oh, you! You'll do rightly!" his mother replied.

"But!..."

"You can come and bring me home from wherever we go," Mrs. MacDermott
continued.

Eleanor had suggested that Mrs. MacDermott should meet her at the
bookstall and go to her club from which John would fetch her at ten
o'clock.

"That'll do nicely, Eleanor!" Mrs. MacDermott said.

John hardly noticed that his mother had called Eleanor by her Christian
name: it seemed natural that she should do so; but he was vaguely
disturbed by the arrangement that had just been made.

"I wonder what she's up to?" he said to himself as he moodily examined
his mother's face.

He sat back in his chair and listened while Eleanor and his mother
talked together. He was not accustomed to taking a subsidiary part in
discussions and he greatly disliked his present position, but he could
not think of any way of altering it.

"Do you like living in London?" Mrs. MacDermott had suddenly said to
Eleanor.

"No, I hate it," Eleanor vehemently answered.

"Then why do you stay?" Mrs. MacDermott continued.

"I have to. A girl gets better-paid work in London than in the
provinces. That's the only reason!"

"Would you rather live in the country, then?"

"Yes!" Eleanor said.

"I wonder would you like Ballyards!" Mrs. MacDermott said almost as if
she were speaking to herself. Then she began to talk of something else.

II

He had taken his mother to Charing Cross station on the following day,
hoping that they would relent and allow him to go to Eleanor's club
with them, but neither of them made any sign of relenting. His mother,
indeed, turned to him immediately after Eleanor had arrived and said,
"Well, we'll say 'Good-bye' for the present, John. We'll expect you at
ten!" and very sulkily he had departed from them. He saw Eleanor lead
his mother out of the station. She had taken hold of Mrs. MacDermott's
arm and drawn it into hers, and linked thus, they had gone out, but
neither of them had turned to look back at him. He had not known how to
fill in the time between then and ten o'clock ... whether to go to a
theatre or walk about the streets ... and had ended by spinning out his
dinner-time as long as possible, and then walking from Soho to
Eleanor's club. He had arrived there before ten o'clock, but they
allowed him to sit with them!... He had an overwhelming sense of being
_allowed_ to do so. Suddenly and unaccountably all his power had
gone from him, his instinctive insistence upon his own will, his
immediate assumption that what he desired must be acceptable to others
and his complete indifference to whether what he desired was acceptable
or not to others... suddenly and unaccountably these things had gone
from him and he was submitting to the will of his mother and of
Eleanor. His mother's conversation, too, had been displeasing to him.
She talked of Ballyards and of the shop all the time. She talked of the
prosperity of the business and of the respect in which the MacDermotts
were held in their town. Mr. Hinde had told her of the harsh conditions
in which journalists and writers had to work, particularly the
journalists. They had no settled life... they went here, there and
everywhere, but their wives stayed always in the one place... and
sometimes money was not easily obtainable. Anything might happen to put
a journalist out of employment!...

"But I don't want to be a journalist, mother!" John had testily
interrupted. "I want to write books and plays!"

"That's even worse." she had said. "It takes a man years and years
before he can earn a living out of books. Mr. Hinde told me that!..."

"He seems to have told you a fearful lot," John sarcastically
exclaimed.

"I asked him a lot," Mrs. MacDermott replied. "If you ever get that
book of yours printed at all, he says, you'll not get more nor thirty
pounds for it, if you get that much. And there's little hope of you
making your fortune with the tragedy you're wasting your time over.
Now, your Uncle William has a big turnover in the shop!..."

"I daresay he has," John snapped, "but I'm not interested in the shop,
and I am interested in books!"

"Oh, well," Mrs. MacDermott murmured, "It's nice to have work that
takes your fancy, but if you get married I'm thinking your wife'll have
a poor job of it making ends meet on the amount of interest you take in
your work, if that's all the reward you get for it. You were a year
writing that story of yours, and you haven't had a penny-farthing for
it yet. However, you know best what suits you. I suppose it's time we
were thinking about the road!" She rose as she spoke, and Eleanor rose
too. "Come up to my room," Eleanor said, "and we'll get your things!"

They left John sitting in the cheerless room. "That's a queer way for
her to be talking," he said to himself. "Making little of me like
that!"

He maintained a sulky manner towards his mother as they returned to
Brixton, but Mrs. MacDermott paid no heed to him.

"Fancy having to go all this way to see your girl," she said, as they
climbed the steps of Miss Squibb's house. "In Ballyards you'd only have
to go round the corner!"

"I daresay," he replied, "but you wouldn't find Eleanor's match there
if you went!"

"No," she agreed. "Eleanor's a fine girl. I like her queer and well.
She was very interested to hear about Ballyards and the shop. Very
interested!"

She turned to him at the top of the stairs.

"Good-night, son," she said. "I'm away to my bed. I'm tired!"

She put her arms round him. "You're a queer headstrong wee fellow," she
said. "Queer and headstrong! Good-night, son!"

"Good-night, ma!" he replied as he kissed her.

He held her for a moment. "I can't make out what you and Eleanor had to
talk about," he said. "What were you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing!" she replied. "Just about things that interest women. You
wouldn't be bothered with such talk. And you know, son, women likes to
have a wee crack together when there's no men about. It's just a wee
comfort to them. Good-night!"

"Good-night, ma!"

She went up the stairs, and when she had disappeared round the bend of
the bannisters, John went into the sitting-room. There was a postal
packet for him lying on the table. It contained the MS. of his novel.
Messrs. Hatchway and Seldon informed him that they had read his story
with great interest, but they were sorry to have to inform him that
conditions of the publishing trade at present were such that they saw
no hope of a return for the money they would be obliged to spend on the
book. They would esteem it a favour if he would permit them to see
future work of his and they begged to remain his faithfully per pro
Hatchway and Selden, J.P.T.

"Asses!" he said, as he wrapped the MS. up again in the very paper in
which Messrs. Hatchway and Selden had returned it to him. Then he tied
the parcel securely and addressed it to Messrs. Gooden and Knight, who,
he told himself, were much better publishers than Messrs. Hatchway and
Selden. He would post it in the morning.

III

And then a queer thing happened to him. He had been about to extinguish
the light and go to bed, when he remembered that the parcel of MS. was
lying on the table and that his mother would see it in the morning. She
would probably ask questions about it ... and he would have to tell her
that Messrs. Hatchway and Selden had refused to publish it. He seized
the parcel and tucked it under his arm. He would keep it in his room
and post it without saying anything to her about it. He did not wish
her to know that it had been declined. Messrs. Hatchway and Selden had
given a very good excuse for not publishing it--conditions of the
publishing trade--and they had manifested a desire to see other work of
his. That could hardly be said to be a refusal to print the book ... at
all events, it could not be called an ordinary, condemnatory refusal.
No doubt, had the conditions of the publishing trade been easier,
Messrs. Hatchway and Selden would have been extremely pleased to print
the book. It was not their fault that the conditions of the publishing
trade were so difficult!... Anyhow, he did not wish his mother to know
that the book had been refused, even though the conditions of the
publishing trade were so difficult. So he took the MS. up to his
bedroom with him.

IV

He had been enormously relieved when his mother returned to Ireland.
Eleanor and he had seen her off from Euston ... Hinde had come for
a few moments snatched from an important job ... and he had been
very conscious of some understanding between the two women which
was not expressible. It was as if his mother were not his mother,
but Eleanor's mother ... as if he were simply Eleanor's young man
come to say good-bye to Eleanor's mother ... and she were being polite
to him, because Eleanor would like her to be polite to him. He felt
that things were being taken out of his control, that he had ceased
to have charge of things and was now himself being ordered and controlled;
but he could not definitely say what caused him to feel this nor
could he think of any notable incident which would confirm him in his
fear that control had passed out of his hands. All he knew was that
he was glad his mother had resisted his importunities to her to stay
for a longer time in London. This state of uncertainty had not begun
until Mrs. MacDermott suddenly and without warning had arrived at his
lodgings. He hoped that it would end with her departure from Euston.
Eleanor's attitude towards him during the week of his mother's visit had
been very odd. She accepted him now without any qualms, but not, he felt,
as her husband to be, hardly even as her lover. She accepted him, instead,
as one who might become her lover if she could persuade herself to
consent to allow him to do so. Once, in a moment of dreadful humility,
he imagined that she accepted him merely as Mrs. MacDermott's son!...
He had watched the train haul itself out of the station and had waved
his hat to his mother until she was no longer distinguishable, and then
he had turned to Eleanor with a curiously determined look in his eye.

"Are you going to marry me?" he demanded.

"Yes," she said, "I think I will. I like your mother awf'lly, John!..."

"It's me you're going to marry. Not her. Do you like me?"

"Yes, I like you ... though you're frightfully conceited and
selfish!..."

"Selfish! Me? Because I try hard to get what I want?" he indignantly
exclaimed.

"Oh, we won't argue about it. You'll never understand. I don't know
whether I love you or not. But I like you. I like you very much. Of
course, we may be making a mistake. It's foolish of me to marry you
when I know so little about you ... and that little scares me!..."

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