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 hadseenfarmers 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 ofRomeo and Julietand 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 Romein 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 theChristian Heraldevery 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 readingJohn Halifax, Gentlemanto 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!"
"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 putJohn Halifax, Gentlemanon 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 theEvening TelegraphandIreland's Saturday Nightat 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 performThe Merchant of Venicethat evening. The Company would remain in Belfast during the following week and would produce other plays by Shakespeare.
"Iwillgo," 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 readThe Merchant of Venicea 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.Newbooks ... 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 locksHang 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 Julietwas to be performed in the afternoon, andJulius Caesarin 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 locksHang 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 readingThe 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. Youhaveto love them ... youhaveto love them!..."
"You're daft," said Mrs. MacDermott.
"Mebbe I am," Uncle Matthew replied wearily. "But that's the way I feel, and no man can help the way he feels!"
He sat down at the table, resting his head in his hands, and gazed hungrily at his nephew.
"You can help putting notions into a person's head," said Mrs. MacDermott. "John might as well try towritebooks as try to sell them in this town!"
"Writebooks!" John exclaimed.
"Aye, write them!..."
But Uncle Matthew would not let her finish her sentence. "And why shouldn't he write books if he has a mind to it?" he demanded. "Wasn't he always the wee lad for scribbling bits of stories in penny exercise books?..."
"He was ... 'til I beat him for it," she replied. "Why can't you settle down here in the shop with your Uncle William?" she said to her son. "It's a comfortable, quiet sort of a life, and it's sure and steady, and when we're all gone, it'll be yours for yourself. Won't it, William?"
"Oh, aye!" said Uncle William. "Everything we have'll be John's right enough, but I doubt he's not fond of the shop!..."
"What's wrong with the shop? It's as good as any in the town!" She coaxed John with her voice. "You can marry some nice, respectable girl and bring her here," she said, "and I'll gladly give place to her when she comes!" She rocked herself gently to and fro in the rocking-chair. "I'd like well to have the nursing of your children in the house that you yourself were born in!..."
"Och, ma, I'm not in the way of marrying!..."
"You'll marry some time, won't you? And there's plenty would be glad to have you. Aggie Logan, though I can't bear the sight of her, would give the two eyes out of her head for you. Of course you'll marry, and I'd be thankful glad to think of your son being born in this house. You were born in it, and your da, too, and his da, and his da's da. Four generations of you in one house to be pleased and proud of, and I pray to God he'll let me live to see the fifth generation of the MacDermotts born here, too. I'm a great woman for clinging to my home, and I love to think of the generations coming one after the other in the same house that the family's always lived in. How many people in this town can say they've always lived in the one house like the MacDermotts?"
"Not very many," Uncle William proudly replied.
"No, indeed there's not, I tell you, John, son, the MacDermotts are someone in this town, as grand in their way and as proud as Lord Castlederry himself. That's something to live up to, isn't it! The good name of your family! But if you go tramping the world for adventures and romances, the way your Uncle Matthew would have you do, you'll lose it all, and there'll be strangers in the house that your family's lived in all these generations. And mebbe you'll come here, when you're an oul' man and we're all dead and buried, and no one in the place'll have any mind of you at all, and you'll be lonelier here nor anywhere else. Oh, it would be terrible to be treated like a stranger in your own town! And if you did start a bookshop and it failed on you, and you lost all your money, wouldn't it be worse disgrace than any not to be able to pay your debts in a place where everyone knows you ... to be made a bankrupt mebbe?"
"Ah, but, ma, the world would never move at all if everybody stopped in the one place!" John said.
"The world'll move well enough," she answered. "God moves it, not you."
John got up from the table and went, and sat on a low stool by the fire. "I don't know so much," he said. "I read in a book one time!..."
"In a book!" Mrs. MacDermott sneered.
"Aye, ma, in a book!" John stoutly answered. "After all, you know the Bible's a book!" Mrs. MacDermott had not got a retort to that statement, and John, aware that he had scored a point, hurriedly proceeded, "I was reading one time that all the work in the world was started by men that wrote books. There never was any change or progress 'til someone started to think and write!..."
Mrs. MacDermott recovered her wits. "Were they happy and contented men?" she demanded.
"I don't know, ma," John replied. "The book didn't say that. I suppose not, or they wouldn't have wanted to make any alterations!"
"Let them that wants to make changes, make them," said Mrs. MacDermott. "There's no need for you to go about altering the world when you can stay at home here happy and content!"
Uncle Matthew rose from the table and came towards Mrs. MacDermott. "What does it matter whether you're happy and contented or not, so long as things are happening to you?" he exclaimed.
Mrs. MacDermott burst into bitter laughter. "You have little wit," she said, "to be talking that daft way. Eh, William?" she added, turning to her other brother-in-law. "What do you think about it?"
Uncle William had lit his pipe, and was sitting in a listening attitude, slowly puffing smoke. "I'm wondering," he said, "whether it's more fun to be writing about things nor it is to be doing things!"
John turned to him and tapped him on the knee. "I've thought of that, Uncle William," he said, "and I tell you what! I'll go and do something, and then I'll write a book about it!"
"What'll you do?" Mrs. MacDermott asked.
"Something," said John. "I can easily dosomething!"
"And what about the bookshop?" said Uncle Matthew.
"Och, that was only a notion that came into my head," John answered. "I won't bother myself selling books: I'll write them instead!" He glanced about the kitchen. "I've a good mind to start writing something now!" he said.
His mother sprang to her feet. "You'll do no such thing at this hour," she said. "It's nearly Sunday morning. Would you begin your career by desecrating God's Day!"
"If you start doing things," said Uncle, reverting to John's declaration of work, "you'll mebbe have no time to write about them!"
"Oh, I'll have the time right enough. I'll make the time," John said.
Uncle William got up and walked towards the staircase. "Where are you going, William?" Mrs. MacDermott asked.
"To my bed," said Uncle William.
VII
Suddenly the itch to write came to John, and he began to rummage among the papers and books on the shelves for writing-paper.
"What are you looking for?" his mother enquired.
"Paper to write on," he said.
"You'll not write one word the night!..."
"Ah, quit, ma!" he said. "I must put down an idea that's come in my head. I'd mebbe forget it in the morning!"
"The greatest writers in the world have sat up all night, writing out their thoughts," Uncle Matthew murmured.
John did not pay any heed to his mother's scowls and remonstrances. He found sheets of writing-paper and placed them neatly on the table, together with a pen and ink. He looked at the materials critically. There was paper, there was ink and there was a pen with a new nib in it, and blotting paper!...
He drew a chair up to the table and sat down in front of the writing paper. He contemplated it for a long time while Mrs. MacDermott put away the remnants of his supper, and his Uncle Matthew sat by the fire watching him.
"What are you waiting for, John?" his Uncle Matthew asked.
"Inspiration," John replied.
He sat still, scarcely moving even for ease in his chair, staring at the white paper until it began to dance in front of his eyes, but he did not begin to write on it.
"Are you still waiting for inspiration, John?" his Uncle asked.
"Aye," he answered.
"You don't seem to be getting any," Mrs. MacDermott said.
He got up and put the writing materials away. "I'll wait 'til the morning," he replied.
I
John wrote his first story during the following week, and when he had completed it, he made a copy of it on large sheets of foolscap in a shapely hand, and sewed the pages together with green thread. Uncle Matthew had purchased brass fasteners to bind the pages together, but Uncle William said that a man might easily tear his fingers with "them things" and contract blood-poisoning.
"And that would give him a scunner against your story, mebbe!" he added.
John accepted Uncle William's advice, not so much in the interests of humanity, as because he liked the look of the green thread. He had read the story to his uncles, after the shop was closed. They had drawn their chairs up to the fire, in which sods of turf and coal were burning, and the agreeable odour of the turf soothed their senses while they listened to John's sharp voice. Mrs. MacDermott would not join the circle before the fire. She declared that she had too much work to do to waste her time on trash, and she wondered that her brothers-in-law could find nothing better to do than to encourage a headstrong lad in a foolish business. She went about her work with much bustle and clatter, which, however, diminished considerably as John began to read the story, and ended altogether soon afterwards.
"D'you like it, Uncle William?" John said, when he had read the story to them.
"Aye," said Uncle William.
"I'm glad," John answered. "And you, do you like it, Uncle Matthew?"
"I like it queer and well," Uncle Matthew murmured, "only!..." He hesitated as if he were reluctant to make any adverse comment on the story.
"Only what?" John demanded with some impatience. He had asked for the opinions of his uncles, indeed, but it had not occurred to him that they would not think as highly of the story as he thought of it himself.
"Well ... there's no love in it!" Uncle Matthew went on.
"Love!"
"Aye," Uncle Matthew said. "There's no mention of a woman in it from start to finish. I think there ought to be a woman in it!"
Mrs. MacDermott, who had been silent now for some time, made a noise with a dish on the table. "Och, sure, what does he know about love?" she exclaimed angrily. "A child that's not long left his mother's arms would know as much. Mebbe, now you've read your oul' story, John, the whole of yous will sit up to the table and take your tea!"
John, disregarding his mother, sat back in his chair and contemplated his Uncle Matthew.
"I wonder now, are you right?" he exclaimed.
"I am," Uncle Matthew replied. "The best stories in the world have women in them, and love-making! I never could take any interest inRobinson Crusoebecause he hadn't got a girl on that island with him, and I thought to myself many's a time, it was a queer mistake not to make Friday a woman. He could have fallen in love with her then!"
Uncle William said up sharply. "Aye, and had a wheen of black babies!" he said. "Man, dear, Matthew, think what you're saying! What sort of romance would there be in the like of that? I never read much, as you know, but I always had a great fancy forRobinson Crusoe. The way that man turned to and did things for himself ... I tell you my heart warmed to him.Ilike your story, John, women or no women. Sure, love isn't the only thing that men make!..."
"It's the most important," said Uncle Matthew.
"And why shouldn't a story be written about any other thing nor a lot of love?" Uncle William continued, ignoring the interruption. "I daresay you'll get a mint of money for that story, John. I've heard tell that some of these writers gets big pay for their stories. Pounds and pounds!"
John crinkled his manuscript in his hand and regarded it with a modest look. "I don't suppose I'll get much for the first one," he said. "In fact, if they'll print it, I'll be willing to let them have it for nothing ... just for the satisfaction!"
"That would be a foolish thing to do," Uncle William retorted. "Sure, if it's worth printing, it's worth paying for. That's the way I look at it, anyhow!"
"I daresay I'll make more, when I know the way of it better!" John answered. "What paper will I send it to, do you think?"
"Send it to the best one," said Uncle William.
Mrs. MacDermott took a plate of toast from the fender where it had been put to keep warm. "Send it to the one that pays the most," she suggested.
"I thought you weren't listening, ma!" John exclaimed, laughing at her.
"A body can't help hearing when people are talking at the top of their voices," she said tartly. "Come on, for dear sake, and have your teas, the whole of yous!"
II
It was Uncle William who advised John to send the story toBlackwood's Magazine. He said that in his young days, people saidBlackwood's Magazinewas the best magazine in the world. Uncle Matthew had demurred to this. "I'm not saying it's not a good one," he said, "but it's terribly bitter against Ireland. The man that writes that magazine must have a bitter, blasting tongue in his head!"
"Never mind what it says about Ireland," Uncle William retorted. "Sure, they're only against the Papishes, anyway!..."
"The Papishes are as good as the Protestants," Uncle Matthew exclaimed.
"I daresay they are," Uncle William admitted, "but I'm only saying thatBlackwood's Magazineis againstthem:it's not against us; and I don't see why John shouldn't send his story to it. He's a Protestant!"
"If I wrote a story," Uncle Matthew went on, "I wouldn't send it to any paper that made little of my country, Protestant or Papish, no matter how good a paper it was nor how much it paid me for my story. Ireland is as good as England any day!..."
"It's better," said Uncle William complacently. "Sure, God Himself knows the English would be on the dung-heap if it wasn't for us and the Scotchmen. But that's no reason why John shouldn't send his story toBlackwood's Magazine. In one way, it's a good reason why he should send it there, for sure, if he does nothing else, he'll improve the tone of the thing. You do what I tell you, John!..."
And so, accepting his Uncle William's advice, John sent the manuscript of his story to the editor ofBlackwood's Magazine;and each morning, after he had done so, he eagerly awaited the advent of the postman. But the postman, more often than not, went past their door. When he did deliver a letter to them, it was usually a trading letter for Uncle William.
"Them people get a queer lot of stories to read," Uncle William said to console his nephew, disappointed because he had not received a letter of acceptance from the editor by Saturday morning, four days after he had posted the manuscript. "It'll mebbe take them a week or two to reach yours!..."
"They could have sent a postcard to say they'd got it all right," John replied ruefully. "That's the civil thing to do, anyway!"
He remembered that the Benson Shakespearean Company was still in Belfast and thatRomeo and Julietwas to be performed in the afternoon, andJulius Caesarin the evening; and he went up to the city by an earlier train than usual so that he might be certain of getting to the theatre in time to secure an end seat near the front of the pit. He had proposed to his Uncle Matthew that he should go to Belfast, too, to see the plays, but Uncle Matthew shook his head and murmured that he was not feeling well. He had been listless lately, they had noticed, and Uncle William, regarding him one afternoon as he stood at the door of the shop, had turned to John and said that he would be glad when the summer weather came in again, so that Uncle Matthew could go down to the shore and lie in the sun.
"He's not a robust man, your Uncle Matthew!" he said. "I don't think he tholes the winter well!"
"Och, he's mebbe only a wee bit out of sorts," John answered. "I wish, he'd come to Belfast with me!..."
"He'll never go next or near that place again," Uncle William replied. "He's never been there since that affair!..."
"You'd wonder at a man letting a thing of that sort affect his mind the way Uncle Matthew let it affect his," John murmured.
"When a man believes in a thing as deeply as he believed in the oul' Queen," said Uncle William, "it's a terrible shock to him to find out that other people doesn't believe in it half as much as he does ... or mebbe doesn't believe in it at all!"
"I suppose you're right," said John.
"I am," said Uncle William.
John was the first person to reach the door of the pit that afternoon. The morning had been rough and blusterous, and although the streets were dry, the cold wind blowing down from the hills made people reluctant to stand outside a theatre door. John, who was hardy and indifferent to cold, stood inside the shelter of the door and read the copy ofRomeo and Julietwhich he had borrowed from his Uncle Matthew; and while he read the play he remembered his uncle's criticism of the story he had written forBlackwood's Magazine: that it ought to have had a woman in it! This play was full of love. Romeo, sighing and groaning because his lady will not look kindly upon him, runs from his friends who "jest at scars that never felt a wound" ... and finds Juliet! InThe Merchant of Venice, Bassanio and Portia, Lorenzo and Jessica, Gratiano and Nerissa had all made love. Even young Gobbo, in a coarse, philandering way, had made love, too! In all the books he had read, women were prominent. Queer and distressing things happened to the heroes; they were constantly in trouble and under suspicion of wrong-doing; poverty and persecution were common to them; frequently, they were misunderstood; but in the end, they had their consolations and their rights and rewards. Love was the great predominating element in all these stories, the support and inspiration and reward of the troubled and tortured hero; and Woman was the symbol of victory, of achievement. At the end of every journey, at the finish of every fight, there was a Woman. Uncle Matthew had spoken wisely, John thought, when he said that you cannot leave women out of your schemes and plans.
John had not thought of leaving women out of his schemes and plans. In all his romantic imaginings, a woman of superb beauty had figured in a dim way; but the woman had been a dream woman only, bearing no resemblance whatever to the visible women about him. He had so much regard for this woman of his imagined adventures ... she changed her looks as frequently as he changed the scene of his romances ... that he had no regard left for the women of his acquaintance. He nodded to the girls he knew when he met them in the street, but he had never felt any desire to "go up the road" with one of them. Willie Logan, as John knew, was "coortin' hard" and laying up trouble for himself by his diverse affections; and Aggie Logan, forgetful, perhaps, of the rebuff that John had given to her childish offers of love, had lately taken to hanging about the street when John was due to pass along it. She would pretend not to see him until he was close to her. Then she would start and giggle and say, "Oh, John, is that you? You're a terrible stranger these days!..." Once while he was listening to her as she made some such remark as that, Lady Castlederry drove by in her carriage, and his eyes wandered from the sallow, giggling girl in front of him to the beautiful woman in the carriage; and Aggie suffered severely by the comparison. And yet Aggie had a quicker and more intelligent look than Lady Castlederry. The beautiful, arrogant woman was like the dream-woman of his romances ... and again, she was not like her; for the dream-women had not got Lady Castlederry's look of settled stupidity in her eyes.
John had hurriedly quitted Aggie's company on that occasion. He knew why Aggie always contrived to meet him in the street, and he thought that she was a poor fool of a girl to do it. And her brother Willie was a "great gumph of a fellow," to go capering up and down the road in the evenings after any girl that would say a civil word to him or laugh when he laughed!...
All the same, women mattered to men. Uncle Matthew had said so, and Uncle Matthew was in the right of it. In the story-books, women surged into the hero's life, good women and bad women and even indifferent women. And, now, in these plays, he could see for himself that women mattered enormously. Yet he had never been in love with a girl! He was not even in love with the dream-woman of his romances. She was his reward for honourable and arduous service ... that was all. He was not in love with her any more than he was in love with a Sunday School prize. It was a reward for regular attendance and for accurate answers to Biblical questions, and he was glad to have it. It rested on the bookshelf in the drawing-room, and sometimes, when there were visitors in the house, his mother would request him to take it down and show it to them. They would read the inscription and make remarks on the oddness of Mr. McCaughan's signature and turn over the pages of the book ... and then they would hand it back to him and he would replace it on the shelf ... and no more was said about it. Really, his dream-woman had not meant much more to him than that. She would be given to him when he had won his fight, and he would take her and be glad to get her ... he would be very proud of her and would exhibit her to his friends and say, "This is my beautiful wife!" and then!... oh, well, there did not appear to be anything else after that. The book always came to an end when the hero married the heroine. Probably she and he had children ... but, beyond the fact that they lived happily ever afterwards, there did not appear to be much more to say about them....
Somehow, it seemed to him now, as he stood in the shelter of the Pit Entrance to the Theatre Royal, readingRomeo and Juliet, that the heroine was different from his dream-woman. His dream-woman had always been very insubstantial and remote, but Juliet was a real woman, alive and passionate, with a real father and a real mother. The odd thing about his dream-woman was that she did not appear to have any relatives ... at least he had never heard of any. She had not even got a name. She never spoke to him. Always, when the adventure was ended, he went up to the dream-woman, waiting for him in a misty manner, and he took hold of her hand and led her away ... and while he was leading her away, the adventure seemed to come to an end ... the picture dissolved ... and he could not see any more. Once, indeed, he had kissed his dream-woman ... he had kissed her exactly as he had kissed his great-aunt, Miss Clotworthy, who was famous for the fact that she had attended a Sunday School in Belfast as pupil and teacher for fifty-seven years without a break ... and the dream-woman had taken the kiss in the unemotional manner in which she took hold of his hand when he led her away ... and lost her!...
There was something wrong with his dream-woman, he told himself. This man Shakespeare, so everybody said, was the greatest poet England had produced ... perhaps the greatest poet the world had produced ... and he ought to know something of what women were like. Whatever else Juliet might be, she certainly was not like John's dream-woman. She did not stand at the end of the road waiting for Romeo to come to her. She did not wait until the fight was fought and won. She did not offer a cold hand or cold lips to Romeo. Her behaviour was really more like that of Aggie Logan than that of the dream-woman!...
Aggie Logan! That "girner" with the sallow look and the giggle! He could see her now, standing in the street waiting for him, dabbing at her mouth with the foolish handkerchief she always carried in her hand. What did she want to keep on dabbing at her mouth with her handkerchief for! Men didn't dab attheirmouths.... Nor did the dream-woman dab at hers.... But it was just possible ... indeed, it was very likely, that Juliet dabbed at hers!...
At that moment, the Pit Door opened, and John, having paid his shilling, passed into the theatre.
III
He came away from the play in a disturbed and exalted state. Suddenly and compellingly, he had become aware of the fact of Women. While he sat in the front row of the pit, listening with his whole body to the play, something stirred in him and he became aware of Women. The actress who played the part of Juliet had turned towards the audience for a few moments during the performance and, so it seemed to him, had looked straight into his eyes. She did not avert her gaze immediately, nor did he avert his. He imagined that she was appealing to him ... he forgot that he was sitting in the pit of a theatre listening to a play written by a man who had died three hundred years ago ... and remembered only that he was a young man with aspirations and romantic longings, and that a young woman, in a pitiable plight, was gazing into his eyes ... and his heart reached out to her. He drew in his breath quickly, murmuring a soft "Oh," and as he did so, his dream-woman fell dead and he did not even turn to look at her.
When the play was over, he had sat still in his seat, more deeply moved than he had ever been before, overwhelmed by the disaster which had come upon the young lovers through the foolish brawls of their foolish elders; and it was not until an impatient woman had prodded him in the side that he returned to reality.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am!" he said and got up and hurried out of the theatre into the street.
He went along High Street towards Castle Place, and as he walked along, he regarded each woman and girl that approached him with interest.
"That one's nice-looking!" he said of a girl, and "That one's ugly!" he said of another. He wondered why it was that all the older women of the working-class were so misshapen and lacking in good looks, when so many of the girls of the working-class were shapely and pretty. Mr. Cairnduff had told him that Belfast girls were prettier than London girls. "London girls aren't pretty at all," Mr. Cairnduff had said. "You'd walk miles in London before you'd see a pretty girl, but you wouldn't walk ten yards in Belfast before you'd meet dozens!" And yet, all those pretty working-girls grew into dull, misshapen, displeasing women. "It's getting married that does it, I suppose," he said to himself. "They were all nice once, but they married and grew ugly!"
He did not look long at the ugly and misshapen women. His eyes quickly searched through the crowds of passers-by for the pretty girls, and at them he looked with eagerness.
"There's no doubt about it," he said to himself, "girls are nice to look at!"
He found a restaurant in the street off High Street. He climbed up some stairs, and then, pushing a door open, entered a large room, at the back of which was a smaller room. A girl was standing at a window, looking out on to the street, but she turned her head when she heard him entering. She smiled pleasantly as he sat down, and came forward to take his order.
"It's turned out a brave day after all," she said.
He said "Aye" and smiled at her in return. She had thick, fair hair, and he remembered Bassanio's description of Portia:
And her sunny locksHang on her temples like a golden fleece.
He had a curious desire to talk to the girl about the play he had just seen, and before he gave his order, he glanced about the room. She and he were the only persons in it.
"You don't seem to be very busy," he said.
"Och, indeed, we're not," she replied. "We seldom are on a Saturday. Mrs. Bothwall ... her that owns the place ... thought mebbe some football fellows might come here for their tea after the matches so's they needn't go home before starting for the Empire or the Alhambra: but, sure, none of them ever comes. We might as well be shut for the custom we get!"
He ordered his tea, and she went to the small room at the back of the large room to prepare it. He thought it would be a good plan to ask the girl if she would care to have her tea with him, but a sudden shyness prevented him from doing so, and he was unable to say more than "Thank you" when she put the teapot by his side. There was plenty for two on the table, he said to himself: a loaf and a bap and some soda-farls and a potato cake and the half of a barn-brack and butter and raspberry jam. He looked across the room to where the girl was again looking out of the window. He liked the way she stood, with one hand resting on her hip and the other on her cheek. He could see that she had small feet and slender ankles, and while he looked at her, she rubbed her foot against her leg and he saw for a moment or two the flash of a white petticoat....
"I was at the Royal the day!" he called to her.
She turned round quickly. "Were you?" she said. "Was it good?"
"It was grand. I enjoyed it the best," he answered.
She came towards him and sat down at a table near to his. "What piece was it you saw?" she asked. "It's Benson's Company, isn't it?"
"Yes. I sawRomeo and Juliet."
"Oh, that's an awful sad piece. I cried my eyes out one year when I saw it!"
"It's a great play," John said.
"I suppose you often go?" she went on.
"Last Saturday was the first time I ever went to a theatre. I sawThe Merchant of Venice. I'll go every Saturday after this, when there's a good piece on. I'm going again to-night to seeJulius Caesar!"
"I'd love to see that piece!"
"Would you?"
"Aye, indeed I would. I'm just doting on the theatre. The last piece I saw wasThe Lights of London. It was lovely."
"I never saw that bit," John answered. "You see I live in Ballyards and I only come up to town on Saturdays."
"By your lone?" she asked.
He nodded his head. He poured out his tea, and then began to spread butter on a piece of soda-farl.
"I'd be awful dull walking the streets by myself," she said, watching him as he did so. "I'm a terrible one for company. I can't bear being by myself!"
"Company's good," he said. "Have you had your tea yet?"
"I'll be having it in a wee while!"
"I wish you'd have it with me!" He spoke hesitatingly.
"Oh, I couldn't!" she exclaimed.
"Sure, what's to hinder you?" His voice became bolder.
"Oh, I couldn't. I couldn't really!..."
"You might as well have it with me as have it by yourself. And there's nobody'll see you. Where's Mrs. Bothwell?"
"She's away home with a headache!..."
"Then you're all by yourself here!" She nodded her head. "What time do you shut?" he went on.
"Half-six generally, but Mrs. Bothwell said I'd better shut at six the night!"
He took a cup and saucer and a knife and plate from an adjoining table and put them down opposite his own.
"Come on," he said, "and have your tea!"
"Och, I couldn't," she protested weakly.
He poured out some of the tea for her, "I suppose you take milk and sugar?" he said.
"You're a terrible fellow," she murmured admiringly, and he could see that her eyes were shining with pleasure.
"Draw up to the table," he replied.
She hesitated for a little while, and then she sat down. "This is not very like the thing," she murmured.
"It doesn't matter whether it is or not," he replied. "What'll you have ... bread or soda-farl?"
She helped herself.
"You know," he said, "I was thinking it would be a good plan for the two of us to go to the theatre to-night!"
"The two of us," she exclaimed. "Me and you!"
"Aye! Why not?"
She put down her cup and laughed. "I never met anybody in my life that made so much progress in a short time as you do," she said. "What in the earthly world put that notion into your head?"
"There's no notion about it," he exclaimed. "I'm asking you plump and plain will you come to the theatre with me to-night!..."
"But it wouldn't be like the thing at all to go to the theatre with a boy that I never saw before and never heard tell of 'til this minute. I don't even know your name!..."
"John MacDermott," he said.
"Are you a Catholic?"
"No. I'm a Presbyterian."
"It's a Catholic name," she mused. "I know a family by the name of MacDermott, and they're desperate Catholics. They live over in Ballymacarrett. Do you know them?"
"I do not. There never was a person in our family was a Catholic ... not that we have mind of. Will you come with me?"
"Ooh, I couldn't!"
"I'll not take 'No' for an answer!" he said, "and I'll not put another bite in my mouth 'til you say 'Yes.' D'you hear me?"
"You've an awful abrupt way of talking," she replied.
"What's abrupt about it?" he demanded.
"Well, queer then!" she said.
"I see nothing abrupt or queer about it. Are you coming or are you not?"
"As if you were used to getting what you wanted, the minute you wanted it," she went on, disregarding his question and intent on explaining the queerness of his speech. "I'd be afeard to beyourwife, you'd be such a bossy man!"
"Ah, quit!" he said. "Will you come?"
"I might!..."
"Will you?"
"Well, perhaps!..."
"Will you or will you not?"
"You're an awful man," she protested.
"Will you come?"
"All right, then," she replied, "but!..."
"I'll have some more tea," said John. He looked round the room while she poured the tea into his cup. "Are there any more cakes or buns?" he asked.
"Yes, would you like some?"
"Bring a plate full," he said. "Bring some with sugar on the top and jam in the middle!"
"Florence cakes?"
"Aye!"
"You've a sweet tongue in your head!" She went to the small room as she spoke.
"I have," he exclaimed. "And I daresay you have, too!"
IV
"You never told me your name," he said, when she returned with the plate of cakes.
"Give a guess!" she teased.
He looked at her for a moment. "Maggie!" he said.
"How did you know?"
"I didn't know," he answered. "You look like a Maggie. What's your other name?"
"Carmichael!"
"Maggie Carmichael!" he exclaimed. "It's a nice name!"
"I'm glad you like it," she said.
V
He sat back in his chair while she went to prepare for the theatre. How lucky it was that he had asked his Uncle William for more money that morning "in case I need it!" If he had not done so, he would not have been able to offer to take Maggie to the theatre.... They would go in by the Early Door. There was certain to be a crowd outside the ordinary door on a Saturday night. What a piece of luck it was that he had chosen to take his tea in this place instead of the restaurant to which he usually went. Mrs. Bothwell's headache, too, that was a piece of luck, for him, although not, perhaps, for her. He liked the look of Maggie. He liked her bright face and her laugh and her beautiful, golden hair. What was that bit again?
In Belmont is a lady richly left,And she is fair and fairer than that wordOf wondrous virtue....