Emily Dickinson - "Poems [Series 2]"

Maria J. McIntosh - "Evenings at Donaldson Manor"

Herodotus - "THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS, Volume 1"

Edgar Rice Burroughs - "Ce la koro de la tero"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Foolish Lovers

S >> St. John G. Ervine >> The Foolish Lovers




Her hand sought Eleanor's and pressed it. "We must all do what's for
the best," she said. "None of us can do any more!"




THE FIFTH CHAPTER


I

He oscillated between an almost uncontrollable desire to return to
Eleanor and a cold rage against her. Women, he told himself, always
stepped between men and their work. Women drew men away from great
labours and made creatures of comfort of them. They took an aspiring
angel and made a domestic animal of him. He was prepared to endure
hunger and thirst for righteousness' sake, but Eleanor demanded that
first of all he should provide comfort and security for her and her
child. She would gladly turn a creative artist into a small tradesman
for the sake of the greater profit that was made by the small
tradesman. He would not be seduced from his proper work ... and yet,
when he went back to Miss Squibb's after the _Sensation_ had gone
to bed, walking sometimes all the way from Fleet Street, over
Blackfriars Bridge, he would spend the time of the journey in dreaming
of Eleanor as he first saw her or as he saw her in the box at the
Albert Hall when Tetrazzini sang. He would conjure up pictures of her
standing at the bookstall at Charing Cross, waiting for him, or saying
goodbye to him at the steps of the Women's Club in Bayswater or
kneeling beside him in St. Chad's Church as the priest blessed their
marriage or sitting before the fire in Ballyards holding her baby in
her arms. And when these visions of her went through his mind, he felt
an intense longing to go away from London at once and stay contentedly
with her wherever she chose to be. Sometimes his mind was full of
thoughts about his child. He had not felt much emotion about it when he
was at Ballyards ... he had thought of it mostly with amazement and
with some dislike of its shapeless face ... but now there were
stirrings in his heart when he thought of it, and he wished that he
could be with Eleanor and watch the gradual growth of the baby into a
recognising being. His work at the _Sensation_ office had become
mechanical, and he worked at the table in the sub-editors' room without
any consciousness of it; but he consoled himself for the fatigue and
the dullness by promising himself a swift and brilliant release from
Fleet Street when his second book was published. Even if his book were
not to make money, it would establish his reputation, and when that was
done, he could surely persuade Eleanor to believe that his life must be
lived elsewhere than behind the counter of the shop. He had written to
her several times since his return to London, and she had written to
him, but there were signs of restraint in his letters and in hers. He
told her that he had made arrangements for the sub-tenants to remain in
the flat for the present. He wrote "for the present" deliberately. The
phrase that shaped itself in his mind as he wrote the letter was "until
you come back to London," but he changed it before he put his thoughts
into written words. She gave long accounts of the baby to him, and
described her life in Ballyards. She was helping Uncle William who said
that her help was very useful to him. They were going to fight Pippin's
multiple shops and beat them. She had suggested some alterations in the
shop to Uncle William, and he, agreeing that one must move with the
times, had consented to make the alterations. She did not ask John to
come back, but when he read her letters, he felt that she was
preventing herself, with difficulty, from doing so.



II

A month after his return to London, _Hearts of Controversy_ was
published. He took the complimentary copies out of their parcel and
fingered them, turning the leaves backward and forward, and looking for
a long while at the dedication "To the Memory of my Uncle Matthew." How
pleased and proud Uncle Matthew would have been of this book, but how
little pleasure John was deriving from it. He hardly cared now whether
it failed or succeeded. If only something would happen that would
enable him to return to Ballyards and Eleanor with some sort of pride
left! ... Uncle Matthew's romantic dreams had remained romantic dreams
because he had never left Ballyards; but John had gone out into the
world to seek adventures, and all of them had ended dismally ... except
his adventure with Eleanor. He had pursued her and won her and made her
his wife and the mother of his son, and she was still his, even
although he had left her and was living angrily away from her. He
remembered how he had wandered into Hanging Sword Alley when he first
came to London, and had been bitterly disappointed to find that this
romantically-named lane was a dirty, grimy gutter of a street....

"I've been living a fool's life," he said to himself. "I had one great
adventure, finding Eleanor, and I did not realise that that was the
only romance I could hope for!"

He put the book down. "I'm not a writer," he said mournfully, "I'm a
grocer. I'm not even a grocer. I'm ... a hack journalist!"

He had written a tragedy that was dead. He had written a novel that was
dead. This second novel ... in a little while it, too, would be dead.
Perhaps it was dead already. Perhaps it had never been alive. And he
had written a music-hall sketch ... that lived. He had done no other
work than his sub-editing on the _Sensation_ since his return to
London, and he realised that he would never do any more while he
remained in Fleet Street....

Hinde entered the room while these thoughts were in his mind. "When's
Eleanor coming back?" he asked, throwing himself into a chair in front
of the fire.

"She's not coming back," John answered.

Hinde looked up sharply. "Oh?" he said in a questioning manner.

"I'm going to her ... as soon as I can. I've had my fill of this life.
Do you remember asking me why I didn't sell happorths of tea and
sugar?" Hinde nodded his head. "Well, I'm going back to sell them. The
author of _The Enchanted Lover_ and _Hearts of Controversy_
has retired from the trade of writing and will now ... now devote
himself to ... selling happorths of tea and sugar!" He laughed
nervously as he spoke.

Hinde did not make any reply.

"I shall go and see the man who has the flat to-morrow. He wants to buy
our furniture. It's a piece of luck, isn't it? The only piece of luck
I've had.... By God, Hinde, this serves me right. Eleanor always said I
was selfish, and I am. I'm terribly self-satisfied and thick-skinned. I
had no qualification for this work ... nothing but my conceit ... and
I've been let down. I'm a failure!..."

"We're all failures," said Hinde. "The only thing we can do, all of us,
is to lull ourselves to sleep and hope for forgetfulness. Compared with
you, I suppose I'm a success ... as a journalist anyhow ... but this is
the end of my work ... this room, with Lizzie and Miss Squibb and
sometimes the Creams. You've got Eleanor and a son ... what more do you
want? Isn't it enough luck for a man to have a wife that he loves and
who loves him, and to have a child? What's a book anyway? Paper with
words on it. All over the world, there are thousands and thousands of
books ... with millions and millions of words in them. What's the good
of them? We make a little stir and then we die ... we poor scribblers.
And that's all. It's much better to marry and breed healthy babies than
to live in an attic making songs about the stars. The stars don't care,
but the babies may!"

"You're a cheerful fellow, Hinde," said John, rallying a little.

"Don't pay any heed to me. I was always a dismal devil at the best of
times. You see, Mac, I've got ink in my veins. I'm not a man ... I'm
part of a printing press. That's what you'd become if you were to stay
in Fleet Street. Go home, my lad, and get more babies!..."



III

He wrote to Eleanor that night, telling her that he would capitulate.
Immediately he had settled about the flat and had arranged for his
withdrawal from the office of the _Sensation_, he would return to
Ballyards. He would write no more books!... In the morning, there was a
letter from Eleanor. She could hold out no longer. If he would come and
fetch her and the little John, she would do whatever he asked of her.
She loved him so much that she could not keep up this pretence of
strength!...

He laughed to himself as he read her letter. "She wrote before I
did," he said. "I suppose I've won. I suppose I held out longer than
she did ... but I don't feel that I've gained anything!"

The copies of _Hearts of Controversy_ were lying where he had left
them on the previous night. "I don't care what the papers say about
them," he said to himself picking one of them up. "What's a book anyway
when I've got Eleanor!"

He was able to arrange the sale of his furniture to the sub-tenant and
get his release from the _Sensation_ in less than a week, and he
wired to Eleanor to say that he was coming home and would arrive at
Ballyards on Sunday. "I'm going home with my tail between my legs," he
said to himself, as he walked down the gangway from the Liverpool boat
on to the quay at Belfast. He was too early for the Ballyards train,
and he went for a walk to fill the time of waiting. He passed the
restaurant where Maggie Carmichael had been employed, and saw that a
new name was on the lintel of the door. "Well, I hope she's happy with
her peeler!" he said to himself. He went on, and presently found
himself before the Theatre Royal, and when he glanced at the playbills,
he saw that a Shakespearian Company were in possession of it. _Romeo
and Juliet_ had been performed on Saturday night, and he remembered
the line that had sustained him after his love-making with Maggie
Carmichael:

_If love be rough with you, be rough with love._

"How can you?" he said aloud. "You can't, no matter what it does to
you!"

He went at last to the station and caught his train to Ballyards.
Eleanor was waiting on the platform for him. She did not speak when he
arrived. She ran to him and put her arms about him and hugged him and
cried over him. "My dear, my dear!" she said when she had recovered
herself. He took her arm and led her out of the station, and they
walked home together.

"It was terrible." she said. "I had to fight hard to keep myself from
going to you. We've been very foolish, John, haven't we?"

He nodded his head.

They entered the house by the side-door and went into the kitchen where
Mrs. MacDermott was preparing the mid-day meal. She waited for him to
speak to her.

"I've come home, mother!" he said, going to her and kissing her.

"I'm thankful glad, son!" she replied.



IV

Uncle William took him into the shop, and they sat together on stools
in the "Counting House."

"I'm troubled, John," he said, "about the shop. Pippin's have offered
to buy the business!..."

"Buy the business. But we don't want to sell it!"

"I know that. They're threatening me. They say they'll undercut me till
my trade's gone. I'm too old to fight them!..."

John called to his mother and Eleanor. "Come here a minute," he said,
and when they had done so, he told them of Pippin's offer and threat.
"What do you think of that?" he demanded.

"I think we should fight them," said Eleanor.

"So we will," John replied. "The MacDermotts had a name in this town
before ever a Pippin was heard of, and the MacDermotts'll still have a
name when the Pippins are dead and damned!" He stopped suddenly, and
then began to laugh. "By the Hokey O," he exclaimed, "there's a romance
at the end of it all!"

He looked at his mother. "I'm going to carry on the shop, mother!" he
said.

She did not answer. She put out her hands to him, and he saw that she
was smiling with great content. And yet she was crying, too.

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