Book: The Foolish Lovers

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




"I don't know whether to hug you or slap you," she said. "You impudent
brat!"

"I wouldn't advise you to do either the one or the other," he answered.

She came nearer to him, and laid her hand on his sleeve.

"You're very cold and hard," she said, and then, in a softer voice, she
added his name, "John!"

"What's cold about me? Or hard?" he asked.

"Everything. You must know that I feel more for you than for my
husband!..."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying such a thing, Mrs.
Cream. I want you to understand that I'm not that sort. I come from
Ballyards, and we don't do things like that there. Forby, I'm not in
love with you. I'm in love with somebody else ... a nice girl, not a
married woman ... and I've no time to think of anybody else but her.
I'm very busy the day, Mrs. Cream!..."

"Is she an Irish girl?"

"I don't know what nationality she is. I've not managed to get speaking
to her yet. It'll be an advantage if she is Irish, but I'll overlook it
if she isn't. I'm terrible busy, Mrs. Cream!"

She stood before him in an indecisive attitude.... "You're really a
fool," she said, turning away. "I thought you were clever, but you're
simply thick-headed!..."

"Because I won't start making love to you, I suppose?"

"Oh, no, Mr. MacDermott. You're thick apart from that. You're so thick
that you'll never know how thick you are. I can't think why I wasted a
minute's thought on you!..."

John sat down at his desk again. "_Sticks an' stones'll break my
bones, but names'll never hurt me_," he quoted at her. "_When
you're dead and in your grave, you'll suffer for what you called
me!_"

She came behind him and put her arms tightly round his neck and forced
his head back so that she could conveniently kiss him.

"There!" she exclaimed, hurrying from the room, "I've kissed you
anyhow!"

He leaped up and ran to the top of the stairs and leant over the
banisters.

"If you do that again," he shouted at her, "I'll give you in charge!"

"Bogie-bogie!" she mocked.

Soon after that time, the Creams had gone on tour again, and John, with
a vague promise to Mr. Cream that he would try and do a play for him,
let Mrs. Cream slip out of his mind altogether. She had not attempted
to make love to him again, and her attitude towards him became more
natural, almost, he thought, more friendly. She appeared to bear him no
malice, and her friendliness caused him to shed some of his antagonism
to her. When they bade goodbye to Hinde and John, she turned to her
husband as they were leaving, and said, "I kissed him one morning, and
do you know what he did?"

"No," her husband answered.

"He said he'd give me in charge if I tried to do it again," she
exclaimed, laughing as she spoke.

"Goo' Lor'!" said Cream. "That's the first time that's ever been said
to you, Dolly!" He turned to John. "You're a funny sort of a chap, you
are! Fancy not letting Dolly kiss you. Goo' Lor'!"



II

He had tried hard to see Eleanor Moore again, but without success.
Every day for a fortnight he went to lunch in the tea-shop where he had
first seen her, and in the evening he would hang about the entrance to
the offices where she was employed; but he did not see her either there
or in the tea-shop, and when a fortnight of disappointment had gone by,
he concluded that he would never see her again. He imagined that she
was ill, that she had left London, that she had obtained work
elsewhere, that he had frightened her ... for he remembered her
startled look when she hurried from him into the Tube lift ... and
finally and crushingly that she had married someone else. In the mood
of bitterness that followed this devastating thought, he planned a
tragedy, and in the evenings, when Hinde was engaged for his paper, he
worked at it. But the bitterness which he put into it failed to relieve
him of any of the bitterness that was in his own mind. He felt doubly
betrayed by Eleanor Moore because he had had so little encouragement
from her. It hurt him to think that he had only succeeded in alarming
her. Maggie Carmichael had responded instantly when he spoke to her and
had accepted his embraces and his kisses as amiably as she had accepted
his chocolates he had bought for her; but this girl with the tender
blue eyes that changed their expression so frequently, had made no
response to his offer of affection, had run away from it. If only she
had listened to him! He was certain that he could have persuaded her to
"go out" with him. He had only to tell her that he loved her, and she
would realise that a man who could fall in love with her so immediately
as he had done must be acceptable!... The affair with Maggie Carmichael
had considerably dashed his belief in romantic love, but he told
himself now that it would be ridiculous to condemn his Uncle Matthew's
ideals because one girl had fallen short of them. If Maggie Carmichael
had behaved badly, that was not a sign that Eleanor Moore would also
behave badly. Besides, Eleanor was different from Maggie. There was no
comparison between the two girls. After all, he had not really cared
for Maggie: he had only fancied that he cared for her. But there was no
fancying or imagination about his love for Eleanor, and if he had the
good fortune to meet her again, he would not let anything prevent him
from telling her plump and plain that he wanted to marry her. Whenever
he left the house, he looked about, no matter where he went, in the
hope that he might see her.



III

Hinde urged him to do journalism and advised him to make a study of the
London newspapers so that he might discover which of them he could most
happily work for. "You could do a few articles, perhaps, and then it
wouldn't matter whether you agreed with the paper or not, but I'd
advise you to try and get a job on one paper for a while. You'll learn
a lot from journalism if you don't stay at it too long. It'll be a good
while yet before you can make a living at writing books, and you'll
want something to keep you going until you can. Journalism's as good as
anything, and in some ways, it's a lot better than most things, and let
me tell you, Mac, anybody can make a decent living out of newspapers if
he only takes the trouble to earn it. Half the fellows in Fleet Street
treat journalism as if it were a religious vocation, and they lie about
in pubs all day waiting for the Holy Ghost to come down and inspire
them with a scoop!"

John studied the London newspapers, as Hinde advised him, but he did
not feel drawn towards them. He considered that the morning papers were
very inferior to the _Northern Whig_, and he was certain that the
_North Down Herald_ was far more interesting than the
_Times_. The London evening papers, he said to Hinde, gave less
value for a half-penny than the _Belfast Evening Telegraph_, and
he complained that there was nothing to read in them.

"You'll have to start a paper yourself, Mac," said Hinde. "All the best
papers were started by men who couldn't find anything to read in other
papers. It would be a grand notion now to set up a paper for Ulstermen
who can't find anything in London that's fit to read. By the Hokey O,
that would be a grand notion. We could call the paper _To Hell With
the Pope or No Surrender!_..."

"Ah, quit your codding," John interrupted. "You know rightly what's
wrong with these London papers. They're not telling the truth!"

"And do you think the _Whig_ and the _Telegraph_ are?" Hinde
demanded.

"Well, it's what _we_ call the truth anyway," John stoutly
retorted.

Hinde slapped him on the back. "That's right," he said. "Ulster against
the whole civilised world!"

"If I was to take a job on one of these papers," John continued, "I'd
insist on telling the truth to the people!"

"You would, would you? And do you know what 'ud happen to you? The
people 'ud cut your head off at the end of a fortnight."

"I wouldn't let them."

Hinde sat in silence for a few minutes. Then he leant forward and
tapped John on the shoulder, "The editor of the _Daily Sensation_
is a Tyrone man," he said. "He comes from Cookstown!..."

"I never was in it," John murmured.

"Mebbe not, but it exists all the same. Go up the morrow evening to his
office and tell him you want a job on his paper so's you can start
telling everybody the truth. And see what happens to you."

John answered angrily. "You think you're having me on," he said, "but
you're queerly mistaken. I will go, and we'll see what happens!"

"That's what I'm bidding you do," Hinde continued. "And listen! There's
a couple I know, called Haverstock, living out at Hampstead. They have
discussions every month at their house on some subject or other, and
there's to be one next Wednesday. Will you come with me if I go to it?"

John nodded his head.

"Good! The Haverstocks'll be glad to welcome you as you're a friend of
mine, but it's not them I'm wanting you to see. It's the crowd they get
round them. All the cranks and oddities and solemn mugs of London seem
to go to that house one time or another, and I'd just like you to have
a look at some of them. The minute they find out you're Irish, they'll
plaster you with praise. They'll expect you to talk like a clown, one
minute, and weep bitter tears over England's tyranny the next. They're
all English, most of them, and they'll tell you that England is the
worst country in the world, and that Ireland would be the greatest if
it weren't for the fact that some piffling Balkan State is greater. And
they'll ram Truth down your throat till you're sick of it. You've only
to bleat about Ireland's woes to them, and call yourself a member of a
subject race, and they'll be all over you before you know where you
are. There's only one other man has a better chance of shining in their
society than an Irishman, and that's an Armenian."

"Well, that's great credit to them," John, replied. "I must say it
makes me think well of the English!..."

"Don't do that. Never acknowledge to an Englishman that you think well
of him. He'll think little of you if you do. Tell him he's a fool, that
he's muddle-headed, that he's a tyrant, that he's a materialist and a
compromiser and a hypocrite, and he'll pay you well for saying it. But
if you tell the truth and say he's the decent fellow he is, he'll land
you in the workhouse!..."



IV

It had not been easy to interview the editor of the _Daily
Sensation_. A deprecating commissionaire, eyeing him suspiciously,
had cross-examined him in the entrance hall of the newspaper office,
and then had compelled him to fill in a form with particulars of
himself ... his name and his address ... and of his business. "I
suppose," John said sarcastically to the commissionaire, "you don't
want me to swear an affidavit about it?"

The commissionaire regarded him contemptuously, but did not reply to
the sarcasm.

After a lengthy wait and much whistling and talking through rubber
speaking-tubes, John was conducted to a lift, given into the charge of
a small boy in uniform who treated him as a nuisance, and taken to the
office of the editor. Here he had to wait in the society of the
editor's secretary for another lengthy period. He had almost resolved
to come away from the office without seeing the editor, when a bell
rang and the secretary rising from her desk, bade him to follow her. He
was led into an inner room where he saw a man seated at a large desk.
The editor glared at him for a moment or two as if he were accusing him
of an attempt to commit a fraud. Then he said "Sit down" and began to
speak on the telephone. John glanced interestedly about him. There was
a portrait of Napoleon ... _The Last Phase_ ... on one wall, and,
on the wall opposite to it, a portrait of the proprietor of the
_Daily Sensation_ in what might fairly be described as the first
phase. On the editor's desk was a framed card bearing the legend: SAY
IT QUICK....

The telephonic conversation ended, and Mr. Clotworthy ... the
editor ... put down the receiver and turned to John, frowning heavily at
him. "Well?" he said so shortly that the word was almost unintelligible.
"I can give you two minutes," he added, pulling out his watch and placing
it on the desk.

"That'll be enough," John, replied. "I want a job on this paper!"

"Everybody wants a job on this paper. The people who are most anxious
to get on our staff are the people who are never tired of running us
down!..."

"I daresay," said John.

"Ever done any newspaper work before?" the editor demanded.

"No!"

"Then what qualifications have you for the work?..."

"I've written a novel!..."

"That's not a qualification!" Mr. Clotworthy exclaimed.

"But it's not been published yet," John replied.

"Oh, well!... Anything else?"

"I've written several articles which have not been printed, but they're
as good as the stuff that's printed in any paper in London.."

"Quite so!"

"And I come from Ulster where all the good men come from," John
concluded.

"I've seen some poor specimens from Ulster," Mr. Clotworthy said.

"Mebbe you have, but I'm not one of them."

The editor remained silent for a few moments. He tapped on his desk
with an ivory paper-knife and glanced quickly now and then at John.

"What part of Ulster do you come from?" he demanded.

"Ballyards."

"I've heard of it," Mr. Clotworthy continued. "It's not much of a
place, is it?"

John flared up angrily. "It's better than Cookstown any day," he said.

"Who told you I came from Cookstown?"

"Never mind who told me. If you don't want to give me a job on your
paper, you needn't. There's plenty of other papers in this town!..."

"That temper of yours'll get you into serious bother one of these days,
young fellow," said Mr. Clotworthy. "I'm willing to give you work on
the paper if you're fit to do it, but don't run away with the notion
that you've only to walk in here and say you're an Ulsterman, and
you'll immediately get a position. What sort of work do you want to do?
You know our paper, I suppose? Well, how would you improve it?"

John opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say a word, the
editor stopped him.

"Don't," he exclaimed, "say it doesn't need improvement. A lot of
third-rate fellows have tried that tack with me, as if they'd flatter me
into giving them a job. The fools never seemed to realise that when
they said the paper didn't need improvement they were giving the best
reason that could be given why they shouldn't be employed on it. If you
weren't a plain-spoken and direct young fellow I wouldn't give you that
warning. Go on!"

"In my opinion," John replied, "what's wrong with your paper is that it
doesn't tell the truth. It tells lies to its readers. My idea is to
tell them the truth instead!"

Mr. Clotworthy laughed at him. "You won't do it on this paper," he
said.

"Why not?"

"Because it can't be done. There's no such thing as truth. There
never was, and there never will be such a thing as truth. There's only
point-of-view!..."

"Well, I've got my point-of-view," John interrupted.

"Yes, but on this paper we express the point-of-view of the man that
owns it. That's him there!" He pointed to the companion picture to
the portrait of Napoleon. "If you imagine that we spend hundreds
of thousands of pounds every year to express your point-of-view,
you're making a big mistake, young fellow my lad. What you want is
a soap-box in Hyde Park. You can express your own point-of-view there
if you can get anybody to listen to you. Or you can start a paper
of your own. But this paper is the soap-box of that chap, and his
is the only point-of-view that'll be expressed in it. Do you understand
me?"

"I do," said John "All the same, I believe in telling the people the
truth!"

The editor touched the bell on his desk. "Are you quite sure," said he,
"that you know what the truth is?"

"Of course I'm sure." John began, but before he could finish his
sentence, the door of the editor's room was opened by the lady-secretary.

"Good-morning, Mr. MacDermott!" said the editor, reaching for the
telephone receiver.

"But I haven't finished yet," John protested.

"I have." He tapped the handle of the telephone.

"You can come and see me again when you've learned sense," he added,
after he had given an instruction to the telephone operator. "Good
morning!"

"Ah, but wait a minute!..."

"We've no use for John the Baptists here. Good morning!"

"All the same!..."

The editor impatiently waved him aside.

"This way, please!" the lady secretary commanded.

John glared at her, half in the mood to ask her what she meant by
interrupting him and half in the mood to tell her that it little became
a woman to intrude herself into the conversation of men, but the moods
did not become complete, and, sulkily calling "Good morning!" to Mr.
Clotworthy, he left the office.

"One of these days," he said to the lady secretary when they were in
the outer office, "I'll be your boss. And his, too. And I'll sack the
pair of you!"

"You'll find the lift at the end of the passage," she replied.



V

Hinde mocked him for his failure to make the editor of the _Daily
Sensation_ accept his view of the universe.

"That man sized you up the minute he clapped his eyes on you," he said.
"He's seen hundreds of young fellows like you. We've all seen them.
They come down from Oxford and Cambridge with their heads stuffed with
ideas pinched from Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, and they try to
stampede old Clotworthy. 'By God, I'm a superman!' is their cry, and
they say that night and morning and before and after every meal until
even they get sick of listening to it. Then they say 'Oh, damn!' and go
into the Civil Service, and in three years' time an earthquake wouldn't
rouse them. All you youngsters want to go about telling the truth,
especially when it's disagreeable, but there isn't one in a million of
you is fit to be let loose with the truth, and there isn't one in ten
million of men or women wants to be bothered by the truth. Lord alive,
Mac, can't you young fellows leave us a few decent lies to comfort
ourselves with?..."

"You'll get no lies from me," John replied.

"I can see very well you're going to be a nice cheerful chum to have in
the house," Hinde said. "However, I'll bear it. The Haverstocks' 'At
Home' is to-night. I don't suppose you have a dress suit?"

"No, I haven't!"

"It doesn't matter. Half the people who go to the Haverstocks don't
wear evening dress on principle. That's their way of showing their
contempt for conventionality. I suppose you'll come with me?" John
nodded his head. "Good! We'll start off immediately after we've had our
dinner. You'll get a good dose of Truth to-night, my son. There was a
couple went there once ... the rummest couple I ever saw in my life.
They thought they must do something for Progress and Advanced Thought,
so they pretended they weren't married, but were living in sin!..."

"Like the two downstairs?" said John.

"Aye, only they were legally married all right. You'll observe in time,
Mac, that the people who make changes are never the advanced people who
talk about them, but the ordinary, conventional people who have no
theories about things, but just alter them when they become
inconvenient. Butter wouldn't melt in the mouth of the man who is a
devil of a fellow in print. This couple went to live at a Garden City
and made an enormous impression on the Nut-eaters; and every Sunday
evening crowds went to see them, living in sin. I went myself one
night: it was terribly dull, and I thought if that's the best sin can
do for a man, I'm going to join the Salvation Army. The woman took off
her wedding-ring and hid it in the clock, and the man made a point of
snorting every time he passed a parson. They had a grand time, as I
tell you, until a terrible thing happened. A jealous nut-eater ... and
I can tell you there's nothing on earth so fearful and vindictive as a
jealous vegetarian ... discovered that these two were really married
all the time, and he exposed them to their admirers. He produced a copy
of their marriage-certificate at a public meeting which the man was
addressing on the subject of Intolerable Bonds, and the meeting broke
up in disorder. They had to leave the Garden City after that, and
they're now hiding somewhere in the north of England and leading a life
of shameful matrimony!..."

John giggled. "Are there really people like that?" he asked.

"Lots of them. You'll see some of them, mebbe, at the Haverstocks the
night. I think there's to be some sort of a discussion, but I'm not
sure. Mrs. Haverstock is a great woman for discussions, but I will say
this for her, she doesn't humbug herself over them. She told me once
that it was better to talk about adultery than to commit it!..."

John blushed frightfully. He felt the hot blood running all over his
body. This casual way of speaking of things that were only acknowledged
in the Ten Commandments had a very disturbing effect upon him. He hoped
that Hinde would not observe his confusion, and he put his hand in
front of his eyes so that he might conceal his red cheeks. If Hinde
noticed that John was embarrassed, he did not make any comment about
the matter.

"And I daresay it is," he went on. "As long as you're letting off
steam, there's no danger of the engine bursting. I've often noticed
that there's less misbehaviour in places where people are always
chattering as if they had never conducted themselves with decency in
their lives than there is in places where they never say a word about
it. _You'll_ notice that too, when you've learned to use your eyes
better!..."



VI

The Haverstocks lived in an old creeper-covered and slightly decrepit
house in the Spaniards' Road. It was without a bathroom until the
Haverstocks took possession of it, for it had been built in the days
when the middle-classes had not yet contracted the habit of frequently
washing their bodies. From the front windows of the house one saw
across Hampstead Heath towards London, and from the back windows one
saw across the Heath towards Harrow. The house, in spite of its slight
decrepitude and the clumsiness of its construction--the stairs were
obviously an afterthought of the architect--had that air of comfortable
kindliness which is only to be seen in houses which have been occupied
by several generations of human beings. Mr. Haverstock was vaguely
known as a sociologist. He investigated the affairs of poor people, and
was constantly engaged in inveigling labourers into filling large
_questionnaires_ with particulars of the wages they earned, the
manner in which they spent those wages, the food they ate, the number
of children they procreated, and other intimate and personal matters.
He was anxious to discover exactly how much proteid was necessary to
the maintenance of a labouring man in health and efficiency, and he
conducted the most elaborate experiments with beans and bananas for
that purpose. It was one of the most discouraging features of modern
civilisation, he often said, that the spirit of research and
disinterested enquiry was less prevalent among the labouring classes
than was desirable. He could not induce a labouring man to live
exclusively on beans and bananas for six months in order that he might
compare his physical condition at the end of that period with his
physical condition after a period spent in flesh-eating. He told sad
stories of the reception that had been accorded to some of his
assistants at the time that they were obtaining data from workmen on
the question of the limitation of the family!...

He was a kindly, solemn man, with large, astonished eyes, and he wore a
beard, less as a decoration than as a protest. The beard was really a
serious nuisance to him, for he had dainty manners and he disliked to
think of soup dribbling down it; but someone had convinced him that a
man who wore a beard early in life was definitely bidding defiance to
the conventions of the time, and so he sacrificed his sense of niceness
to his desire to _épater les bourgeois_. He said that a beard was
a sign of Virility!... Mrs. Haverstock and he were childless. Mrs.
Haverstock, a quick-witted and merry-minded American, had married her
husband in the days when she believed that a man who wrote books of
sufficient dullness must be a distinguished and desirable man; and
since she brought a considerable fortune to England with her, she
enabled him to write more dull books than he could otherwise have had
published. Much of her awe of her husband had disappeared in the course
of time, but it had, fortunately, been replaced by deep affection: for
his generosity and kindliness appealed to her increasingly as her
respect for his learning and solemnity declined. She often said of him
that he would do more for his friends than his friends would do for
themselves ... and indeed many of them were willing to allow him to do
anything and everything for them ... but so long as knight-errantry
with an entirely sociological intent made him happy, she did not mind
how he spent her money. He had many moments of dubiety about her
fortune ... he frequently threatened to cross the Atlantic in order to
discover whether the money was justly earned ... but he invariably
comforted himself with the reflection that even if the money were
ill-gained, he could at least put it to better use than anyone else; and
so he refrained from crossing the Atlantic, not without a sensation of
relief, for he was an unhappy sailor.

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