The Foolish Lovers

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

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!"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27