While he ate his supper, he spoke to his mother and his uncles of his
intention to open a bookshop.
"I'm going to start a bookshop," he said. "I made up my mind in Belfast
to-day!"
"A what?" Mrs. MacDermott demanded.
"A bookshop, ma. I'll have every book you can think of in it!..."
"In the name of God," his mother exclaimed, "who do you think buys
books in this place?"
"Plenty of people, ma. Mr. McCaughan!..."
"Mr. McCaughan never buys a book from one year's end to another," she
interrupted. "And if he did, you can't support a shop on one man's
custom. The people of this town doesn't waste their time on reading:
they do their work!"
John turned angrily on her. "It's not a waste of time to read books,
ma. Is it, Uncle Matthew?"
"You may well ask him," she said before Uncle Matthew could answer.
"What do you think, Uncle William?" John went on.
Uncle William thought for a few moments. "I don't know what to think,"
he said. "It's not a trade I know much about, John, but I doubt whether
there's a living in it in Ballyards."
"There's no living in it," Mrs. MacDermott exclaimed passionately, "and
if there was, you shouldn't earn your living by it!"
John gazed at her in astonishment. Her eyes were shining, not with
tears, though tears were not far from them, but with resentment and
anger.
"Why, ma?" he said.
"Because books are the ruin of people's minds," she replied. "Your da
was always reading books, wild books that disturbed him. He was never
done reading _The Rights of Man_. And look at your Uncle Matthew!..."
She stopped suddenly as if she realised that she had said too much.
Uncle Matthew did not speak. He looked at her mournfully, and then he
turned away.
"I don't want to say one word to hurt anyone's feelings," she continued
in a lower tone, "but my life's been made miserable by books, and I
don't want to see my son made miserable, too. And you know well,
Matthew," she added, turning to her brother-in-law, "that all your
reading has done you no good, but a great deal of harm. And what's the
use of books, anyway? Will they help a man to make a better life for
himself?"
Uncle Matthew turned to her quickly. "They will, they will," he said,
and his voice trembled with emotion. "People can take your work from
you and make little of you in the street because you did what your
heart told you to do, but you'll get your comfort in a book, so you
will. I know what you're hinting at, Hannah, but I'm not ashamed of
what I did for the oul' Queen, and I'd do it again, gaol or no gaol, if
I was to be hanged for it the day after!"
He turned to John.
"I don't know what sort of a living you'll make out of selling books,"
he said, "and I don't care either, but if you do start a shop to sell
them, let me tell you this, you'll never prosper in it if it doesn't
hurt you sore to part with a book, for books is like nothing else on
God's earth. You _have_ to love them ... you _have_ to love
them!..."
"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 to _write_ books as try to
sell them in this town!"
"_Write_ books!" 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 do _some_thing!"
"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.