The Foolish Lovers

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"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!..."

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