Book: The Foolish Lovers

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




Mr. Cairnduff was in complete agreement with Mr. McCaughan. He, too,
had the greatest respect for the MacDermotts ... no man could help
having respect for them ... and he might add that he had the greatest
possible respect for Matthew MacDermott himself ... a well-read and a
kindly man, though a wee bit, just a _wee_ bit unbalanced
mebbe!...

"Aye, but it's that wee bit that makes all the difference, Mr.
Cairnduff!" said the minister, interrupting the schoolmaster.

"It is," Mr. Cairnduff agreed. "You're right there, Mr. McCaughan. You
are, indeed. All the same, though, I would not like to be a party to
anything that would hurt the feelings of a MacDermott, and if it could
be arranged in some way that Matthew should retire from the profession
through ill-health or something, with a wee bit of a pension, mebbe, to
take the bad look off the thing... well, I for one would not be against
it!"

"You've taken the words out of my mouth," said the minister. "I had it
in my mind that if something of the kind could be arranged!..."

"It would be the best for all concerned," said Mr. Cairnduff.

But it had not been possible to arrange something of the kind. The
member for the Division was not willing to use his influence with the
National Board of Education in Uncle Matthew's behalf. He remembered
that Uncle Matthew, during an election, had interrupted him in a
recital of his services to the Queen, by a reminder that he was only a
militia man, and that rough, irreverent lads, who treated an election
as an opportunity for skylarking instead of improving their minds, had
followed him about his constituency, jeering at him for "a mileeshy
man." Uncle Matthew, too, had publicly declared that Parnell was the
greatest man that had ever lived in Ireland and was worth more than the
whole of the Ulster Unionist members of parliament put together...
which was, of course, very queer doctrine to come from a member of an
Ulster Unionist and Protestant family. The member for the Division
could not agree with Mr. McCaughan and Mr. Cairnduff that the
MacDermotts were a bulwark of the Constitution. Matthew MacDermott's
brother... the one who was dead... had been a queer sort of a fellow.
Lady Castlederry had complained of him more than once!... No, he was
sorry that, much as he should like to oblige Mr. McCaughan and Mr.
Cairnduff, he could not consent to use his influence to get the Board
to pension Matthew MacDermott....

"That man's a blether!" said the minister, as he and the schoolmaster
came away from the member's house. "He won't use his influence with the
Board because he hasn't got any. We'd have done better, mebbe, to go to
a Nationalist M.P. Those fellows have more power in their wee fingers
than our men have in their whole bodies. I wonder, now, could we
persuade Matthew to send in his resignation. I can't bear to think of
the Board dismissing him!"

Uncle William solved their problem for them. "Don't bother your heads
about him," he said when they informed him of their trouble. "I'll
provide for him right enough. He'll send in his resignation to you the
night, Mr. McCaughan. I'm sure, we're all queer and obliged to you for
the trouble you have taken in the matter."

"Ah, not at all, not at all," they said together.

"And I'll not forget it to either of you, you can depend on that. I
daresay Matthew'll be a help to me in the shop!..."

Thus it was that, unpensioned and in the shadow of disgrace, Uncle
Matthew left the service of the National Board of Education.

John admitted to himself, though he would hardly have admitted it to
anyone else, that his Uncle Matthew's behaviour had been very unusual.
He could not, when invited to do so, imagine either Mr. McCaughan or
Mr. Cairnduff breaking the windows of a haberdasher's shop because of
an advertisement which showed, in the opinion of some reputable people,
both feeling and enterprise. Nevertheless, he did not consider that
Uncle Matthew, on that occasion, had proved himself to be lacking in
mental balance. He said that it was a pity that people were not more
ready than they were to break windows, and he was inclined to think
that Uncle Matthew, instead of being forcibly retired from the school,
ought to have been promoted to a better position.

"If you go on talking that way," his mother said to him, "people'll
think you're demented mad!"


"I wouldn't change my Uncle Matthew for the whole world," John stoutly
replied.

"No one's asking you to change him," Mrs. MacDermott retorted. "All
we're asking you to do, is not to go about imitating him with his
romantic talk!"



IV

John did not wish to imitate his Uncle Matthew ... he did not wish to
imitate anyone ... for, although he could not discover that "quareness"
in him which other people professed to discover, yet when he saw how
inactive Uncle Matthew was, how dependent he was on Uncle William and,
to a less extent, on Mrs. MacDermott, and how he seemed to shrink from
things in life, which, when he read about them in books, enthralled
him, John felt that if he were to model his behaviour on that of anyone
else, it must not be on the behaviour of Uncle Matthew. Uncle William
had a quick, decided manner ... he knew exactly what he wanted and
often contrived to get what he wanted. John remembered that his Uncle
William had said to him once, "John, boy, if I want a thing and I can't
get it, I give up wanting it!"

"But you can't help wanting things, Uncle William," John had protested.

"No, boy, you can't" Uncle William had retorted, "but the Almighty
God's given you the sense to understand the difference between wanting
things you can get and wanting things you can't get, and He leaves it
to you to use your sense. Do you never suppose that I want something
strange and wonderful to happen to me the same as your Uncle Matthew
there, that sits dreaming half the day over books? What would become of
you all, your ma and your Uncle Matthew and you, if I was to do the
like of that I? Where would your Uncle Matthew get the money to buy
books to dream over if it wasn't for me giving up my dreams?..."

John's heart had suddenly filled with pity for his Uncle William whom
he saw as a thwarted man, an angel expelled from heaven, reduced from a
proud position in a splendid society to the dull work of one who
maintains others by small, but prolonged, efforts. He felt ashamed of
himself and of Uncle Matthew ... even, for a few moments, of his
mother. Here was Uncle William, working from dawn until dark, denying
himself this pleasure and that, refusing to go to the "shore" with them
in the summer on the assertion that he was a strong man and did not
need holidays ... doing all this in order that he might maintain three
people in comfort and ... yes, idleness! Mrs. MacDermott might be
excluded from the latter charge, for she attended to the house and the
cooking, but how could Uncle Matthew and himself expect to escape from
it? Uncle Matthew had more hope than he had, for Uncle Matthew
sometimes balanced the books for Uncle William, and did odds and ends
about the shop. He would write out the accounts in a very neat hand and
would deliver them, too. But John made no efforts at all. He was the
complete idler, living on his Uncle's bounty, and making no return for
it.

He was now in his second year of monitorship at the school where his
Uncle Matthew had been a teacher, and was in receipt of a few pounds
per annum to indicate that he was more than a pupil; but the few pounds
were insufficient to maintain him ... he knew that ... and even if they
had been sufficient, he was well aware of the fact that his Uncle
William had insisted that the whole of his salary should be placed in
the Post Office Savings Bank for use when he had reached manhood.... He
made a swift resolve, when this consciousness came upon him: he would
quit the school and enter the business, so that he could be of help to
his Uncle William.

"Will you let me leave the school, Uncle?" he said. "I'm tired of the
teaching, and I'd like well to go into the shop with you!"

Uncle William did not answer for a little while. He was adding up a
column of figures in the day-book, and John could hear him counting
quietly to himself. "And six makes fifty-four... six and carry four!"
he said entering the figures in pencil at the foot of the column.

"What's that you say, John, boy?"

"I want to leave school and come into the shop and help you," John
answered.

"God love you, son, what put that notion into your head?"

"I don't want to be a burden to you, Uncle William!"

"A burden to me!" Uncle William swung round on the high office stool
and regarded his nephew intently. "Man, dear, you're no burden to me!
Look at the strength of me! Feel them muscles, will you?" He held out
his tightened arm as he spoke. "Do you think a wee fellow like you
could be a burden to a man with muscles like them, as hard as iron?"

But John was not to be put off by talk of that sort. "You know rightly
what I mean," he said. "You never get no rest at all, and here's me
still at the school!..."

"Ah, wheesht with you, boy!" Uncle William interrupted. "What sort of
talk is this? You will not leave the school, young man! The learning
you're getting will do you a world of benefit, even if you never go on
with the teachering. You're a lucky wee lad, so you are, to be getting
paid to go to school. There was no free learning when I was a child, I
can tell you. Your grandda had to pay heavy for your da and your Uncle
Matthew and me. Every Monday morning, we had to carry our fees to the
master. Aye, and bring money for coal in the winter or else carry a few
sods of turf with us if we hadn't the money for it. That was what
children had to do when I was your age, John. I tell you there's a
queer differs these times between schooling from what there was when I
was a scholar, and you'd be the great gumph if you didn't take
advantage of your good fortune!"

"But I'd like to _help_ you, Uncle William. Do you not understand
me? I want to be doing something for you!" John insisted.

"I understand you well enough, son. You've been moidhering your mind
about me, but sure there's no call for you to do that. No call at all!
Now, not another word out of your head! I've said my say on that
subject, and I'll say no more. Go on with your learning, and when
you've had your fill of it, we'll see what's to be done with you. How
much is twelve and nine?"

"Twenty-one, Uncle William!"

"Twenty-one!" said Uncle William, at his day-book again. "Nine and
carry one!..."

In this way Uncle William settled John's offer to serve in the shop,
and restored learning and literature to his affection and esteem. John
had not given in so easily as the reader may imagine. He had insisted
that his Uncle William worked much too hard, had even hinted that Uncle
Matthew spent more time over books than he spent over "_the_
books," the day-book and the ledger; but his Uncle William had firmly
over-ruled him.

"Books are of more account to your Uncle Matthew than an oul' ledger
any day," he said, "and it'll never be said that I prevented him from
reading them. We all get our happiness in different ways, John, and it
would be a poor thing to prevent a man from getting his happiness in
his way just because it didn't happen to be your way. Books are your
Uncle Matthew's heart's-idol, and I wouldn't stop him from them for the
wide world!"

"But he does nothing, Uncle William," John said, intent on justice,
even when it reflected on his beloved Uncle.

"I know, but sure the heart was taken out of him that time when he was
arrested for breaking the man's window. It was a terrible shock to him,
that, and he never overed it. You must just let things go on as they're
going. I don't believe you'll foe content to be a teacher. Not for one
minute do I believe that. But whatever you turn out to be, it'll be no
harm to have had the extra schooling you're getting, so you'll stay on
a monitor for a while longer. And now quit talking, do, or you'll have
me deafened with your clatter!"

Uncle William always put down attempts to combat his will by
assertions of that sort.

"Are you angry with me, Uncle William?" John anxiously asked.

"Angry with you, son?" He swung round again on the high stool. "Come
here 'til I show you whether I am or not!"

And then Uncle William gathered him up in his arms and crushed the
boy's face into his beard. "God love you, John," he said, "how could I
be angry with you, and you your da's son!"

"I love you queer and well, Uncle," John murmured shyly.

"Do you, son? I'm glad to hear that."

"Aye. And I love my Uncle Matthew, too!..."

"That's right. Always love your Uncle Matthew whatever you do or
whatever happens. He's a man that has more need of love nor most of us.
Your da loved him well, John!"

"Did he?"

"Aye, he did, indeed!" Uncle William put his pen down on the desk, and
leaning against the ledger, rested his head in the cup of his hand.
"Your da was a strange man, John," he said, "a queer, strange man, with
a powerful amount of knowledge in his head. That man could write Latin
and Greek and French and German, and he was the first man in Ballyards
to write the Irish language ... and them was the days when people said
Irish was a Papist language, and would have nothing to do with it. Your
da never paid no heed to anyone... he just did what he wanted to do, no
matter what anyone said or who was against him. Many's the time I've
heard him give the minister his answer, and the high-up people, too.
When Lord Castlederry came bouncing into the town, ordering people to
do this or to do that, just because the Queen's grandson was coming to
the place, your da stood up fornenst him and said, as bold as brass,
'The people of this town are not Englishmen, my lord, to be ordered
about like dogs! They're Ballyards men, and a Ballyards man never bent
the knee to no one!' That was what your da said to him, and Lord
Castlederry never forgot it and never forgave it neither, but he could
do no harm to us, for the MacDermotts owned land and houses in
Ballyards before ever a Castlederry put his foot in the place. He was a
proud man your da, with a terrible quick temper, but as kindly-natured
a man as ever drew breath. Your ma thinks long for him many's a time,
though I think there were whiles he frightened her. Your Uncle Matthew
and me is poor company for her after living with a man like that."

"Am I like my da, Uncle William! My ma says sometimes I am ... when
she's angry with me!"

"Sometimes you're like him and sometimes you're like her. You'll be a
great fellow, John, if you turn out to be like your da. I tell you,
boy, he was a man, and there's few men these times ... only a lot of
oul' Jinny-joes, stroking their beards and looking terrible wise over
ha'penny bargains!"

"And then he died, Uncle William!"

"Aye, son, he died. You were just two years old when he died, a little,
wee child just able to walk and talk. I mind it well. He called me into
the bedroom where he was lying, and he bid the others leave me alone
with him. Your ma didn't want to go, but he wouldn't let her stay, and
so she went, too. 'William,' he said, when the door was shut behind
them, 'I depend on you to look after them all!' Them was his very
words, John, 'I depend on you to look after them all!' I couldn't
answer him, so I just nodded my head. He didn't say anything more for a
wee while, but lay back in the bed and breathed hard, for he was in
pain, and couldn't breathe easy. Then, after a wee while, he looked
round at me, and he said, 'I'm only thirty-one, William, and I'm dying.
And oul' Peter Clancy up the street, that's been away in the head since
he was a child, is over sixty years of age!... I thought he was going
to spring out of the bed when he said that, the temper come over him so
quick and sudden, but I held him down and begged him to control
himself, and he quietened himself. I heard him saying, half under his
breath, 'And God thinks He knows how to rule the world!' He died that
night, rebellious to the end!... He said he depended on me to look
after you all, and I've tried hard, John, as hard as I could!"

His voice quavered, and he turned away from his nephew. "Your da was my
hero," he said. "I'd have shed my heart's blood for him. It was hard
that him that was the best of us should be the first to go!"

John stood by his uncle's side, very moved by his distress, but not
knowing what to do to comfort him.

"My da would be queer and proud of you, Uncle William," he said at
last, "queer and proud if he could see you!"

But Uncle William did not answer nor did he look round.



V

It was understood, after that conversation between John and his Uncle
William, that the boy should remain at school for a year or two longer,
working as a monitor, not in order that he might become a schoolmaster,
but so that he might equip his mind with knowledge. Mrs. MacDermott
wished her son to become a minister. It would be the proudest day of
her life, she said, if she could see John standing in a pulpit,
preaching a sermon. Who knew but that he might be one day be the
minister of the Ballyards First Presbyterian Church itself, the very
church in which his family had worshipped their God for generations.

John, however, had no wish to be a minister.

"You have to be queer and good to be one," he said, "and I'm not as
good as all that!"

"Well, mebbe, you'll get better as you get older," Mrs. MacDermott
insisted.

"I might get worse," he replied. "It would be a fearful thing to be a
minister, and then find out you wanted to commit a sin!"

"Ministers is like ourselves, John," Mrs. MacDermott said, "and I
daresay Mr. McCaughan sometimes wants to do wicked things, for all he's
such a good man, and has to pray to God many's a while for the strength
to resist temptation. That doesn't prove he's not fit to be a minister.
It only shows he understands our nature all the more because he has
temptations himself!"

But John would not be convinced by her arguments. "I don't know, ma!"
he said. "If I wanted to be wicked, I'm afraid I'd be it, so don't ask
me to be a minister for I'd mebbe disgrace you with my carryings-on!"

Mrs. MacDermott had been deeply hurt by his refusal to consider the
ministry.

"Anybody'd think to hear you," she said, "that you'd made up your mind
to lead a sinful life. As if a MacDermott couldn't conquer his sins
better nor anybody else!"

His mother, he often observed, spoke more boastfully of the MacDermotts
than either his Uncle William or his Uncle Matthew.

John's final, overwhelming retort to her was this: "Would my da have
liked me to be a minister?"

"I never knew what your da liked," she retorted; "I only knew what he
did!..."

"Do you think he would have liked me to be a minister?" John persisted.

"Mebbe he wouldn't, but he's not here now!..."

"You wouldn't do behind his back what you'd be afraid to do fornenst
his face, would you?"

"You've no right to talk to me that way. I'm your mother!..."

"You knew rightly he wouldn't have liked it," John continued,
inexorably.

And then Mrs. MacDermott yielded.

"You're your da over again," she complained. "He always had his way in
the end, whatever was against him. What _do_ you want to be, then,
when you grow up?"

"I don't know yet, ma. I only know the things I don't want to be, and
teaching is one of them. And a minister's another! Mebbe I'll know in a
wee while!"

He did not like to tell her that in his heart he wished to go in search
of adventures. His Uncle Matthew's imaginings had filled his mind with
romantic desires, and he longed to leave Ballyards and go somewhere ...
anywhere, so long as it was a difficult and distant place ... where he
would have to contend with dangers. There were times when he felt that
he must instantly pack a bundle of clothes into a red handkerchief ...
he could buy one at Conn's, the draper's ... and run away from home and
stow himself in the hold of a big ship bound for America or Australia
or some place like that ... and was only prevented from doing so by his
fear that his mother and uncles would be deeply grieved by his flight.
"It would look as if they hadn't been kind to me," he said in
remonstrance to himself, "and that wouldn't be fair to them!" But
although he did not run away from home, he still kept the strong desire
in his heart to go out into a dangerous and bewildering world and seek
fortune and adventures. "I want to fight things," he said to himself.
"I want to fight things and, ... and win!"

Mixed up with his desire for adventure was a vision of a beautiful girl
to whom he should offer his love and service. He could not picture her
clearly to himself ... none of the girls in Ballyards bore the
slightest resemblance to her. Sometimes, indeed, he thought that this
beautiful girl was like Lady Castlederry ... only Lady Castlederry,
somehow, although she was so very lovely, had a cold stupid look in her
eyes, and he was very certain that this beautiful girl had bright,
alert eyes.

There had been a passage of love-making between Aggie Logan and him,
conducted entirely by Aggie Logan. She had taken him aside one day, in
the middle of a game of "I spy," and had said to him "Will you court
me, Johnnie?"

"No," he had replied.

"Do you not love me then?" she enquired.

"No," he said again.

"But I want you to court me," she persisted.

"I don't care what you want," he retorted. "I won't court you because I
don't want to court you. I don't like you. You're too much of a girner
for me!"

"I'm not a girner," she protested.

"You are. You start crying the minute anything happens to you or if
people won't do what you want them to do. I wouldn't marry a girner for
the wide world!"

"I won't girn any more if you'll court me," she promised.

"I daresay," he replied skeptically.

She considered for a moment or two. "Well, if you won't court me," she
said, "I'll let Andy Cairnduff court me!"

"He can have you," said John, undismayed by the prospect of the
schoolmaster's son as a rival.

She stood before him for a little while, without speaking. Then she
turned and walked a little distance from him. She stopped, with her
back turned towards him, and he knew by the way her head was bent, that
she was thinking out a way of retaliating on him. The end of her
pinafore was in her mouth!... She turned to him sharply, letting the
pinafore fall from her lips, and pointing at him with her finger, she
began to laugh shrilly.

"Ha, ha, ha!" she said. "I have you quarely gunked!"

"Gunked!" he exclaimed, unable to see how he had been hoaxed.

"Yes," she answered. "I gunked you nicely. You thought I wanted you to
court me, but I was only having you on. Ha, ha, ha!"

He burst out laughing. "I that consoles you," he said; "you're welcome
to it!"

Then she ran away and would not play "I spy" or "Tig" any more.

He had not told his mother of that passage of love with Aggie Logan. It
did not occur to him to tell anything to his mother. His instinct,
indeed, was not to tell things to her, to conceal them from her.



VI

If anyone had said to him that he did not love his mother as much as he
loved his Uncle Matthew and his Uncle William, he would have been very
angry. Not love his mother more than anyone else on earth!... Only a
blow could make a proper answer to such a charge. Nevertheless his
mother was associated in his mind with acts of repression, with
forbidding and restraint. She seemed always to be telling him not to do
things. When he wanted to go to the Lough with Willie Logan to play
Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday or to light a bonfire in Teeshie
McBratney's field with shavings from Galpin's mill in the pretence that
he was a Red Indian preparing for a war-dance, it was his mother who
said that he was not to do it. He might fall into the water and get
drowned, she said, or, he might fall into the fire and get roasted to
death. As if he were not capable of controlling a raft or a bonfire!...

He felt, too, that sometimes she punished him unjustly. When the Logans
and he had played Buffalo Bill and the Red Indians attacking the
defenceless pale-face woman, he had had a fierce argument with Willie
Logan about the part of Buffalo Bill. Willie, being older, had claimed
the part for himself, and, when denied the right to it, had declared
that neither Aggie nor he would play in the game. Then a compromise had
been arranged: Willie was allowed to play the part of Buffalo Bill and
to slay the Red Indian on condition that John, before being slain,
should be allowed to scalp the helpless pale-face woman. He scalped her
so severely, by tugging tightly at her long hair, that she began to
cry, and Willie, more conscious of the fact that he was Aggie's brother
than that he was Buffalo Bill, bore down upon John and gave him his
"cowardy-blow." They fought a fierce and bitter fight, and in the end,
Willie went home with a bleeding nose, and John went home with a black
eye.

Willie had not played the man over that affair. He went to his mother
and complained of John's selfish and brutal behaviour, alleging that he
had suffered terrible punishment in a chivalrous effort to protect his
sister from ruffianly assault; and his mother, a thin, acidulous woman,
whose voice was half snarl and half whine, carried her son's complaint
to Mrs. MacDermott.

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