When the sharper anxieties concerning Uncle Matthew had subsided,
John's mind was filled with thoughts of Maggie Carmichael. It seemed to
him to be impossible that any seven days in the history of the world
had been so long in passing as the seven days which separated him from
his next meeting with her. His work at the Ballyards National School
lost any interest it ever had for him: the pupils seemed to be at once
the stupidest and laziest and most aggravating children on earth.
Lizzie Turley completely lost her power to add two and one together and
make three of them. Strive as he might, he could not make her
comprehend or remember that two and one, when added together, did not
amount to five. There was even a dreadful day when she lost her power
to subtract.... Miss Gebbie, the teacher to whom he was most often
monitor, had always had hard, uncouth manners, but they became almost
intolerable before the seven days had passed by ... and it seemed
certain that there must be a crisis in her life and in his before the
clock struck three on Friday afternoon! If she complained again, he
said to himself, about the way in which he marked the children's
exercise books, he would tell her in very plain language what he
thought of her and her big bamboo-cane. When she slapped the children,
the corners of her mouth went down and her large lips tightened and a
cruel glint came into her eyes!...
It was only during the reading half-hour that his mind was at ease in
school that week, for then he could let his thoughts roam from
Ballyards to Belfast, and fill his eyes with visions of Maggie. The
droning voices of the children, reading "Jack has got a cart and can
draw sand and clay in it," were almost soothing, and it was sufficient
for supervision, if now and then, he would call out, "Next!" The child
who was reading would instantly stop, and the child next to her would
instantly begin....
It seemed to him that he had the clearest impressions of Maggie
Carmichael, and yet had also the vaguest impressions of her. He
remembered very distinctly that she had bright, laughing eyes, and that
her hair was fair, and that she had pretty teeth: white and even. He
had often read in books of the beauty of a woman's teeth, but he had
never paid much attention to them. After all, what was the purpose of
teeth? To bite. It was ridiculous, he had told himself, to talk and
write of beauty in teeth when all that mattered was whether they could
bite well or not.... But now, remembering the beauty of Maggie
Carmichael's mouth, he saw that the writers had done well when they
insisted on the beauty of teeth. Any sort of a good tooth would do for
biting and chewing, but there was something more than that to be said
for good, white, even teeth. If teeth were of no value otherwise than
for biting and chewing, false teeth were better than natural teeth!...
And false teeth were so hideous to look at; so smug, so self-conscious.
Aggie Logan had false teeth. So had Teeshie McBratney and Sadie
Cochrane. Things with pale gums!...
He had wanted to kiss Maggie Carmichael's teeth, so beautiful were
they. Just her teeth. It had been splendid to kiss her lips, but then
one always kissed lips. Men, according to the books, even kissed hair
and ears and eyes. He had read recently of a man who kissed a woman on
the neck, just behind the ear; and at the time he had thought that this
was a very queer thing to do. Love, he supposed, was responsible for a
thing like that. He could not account for it in any other way. He
understood _now_, of course. When a man loved a woman, every part
of her was very dear and beautiful to him, and to kiss her neck just
behind the ear was as exquisite as to kiss her lips. No one, in any of
the books he had read, had wished to kiss a woman's teeth. There were
still hidden joys in kissing ... and he had discovered one of them. He
would kiss Maggie's teeth on Saturday. He would kiss her lips, too, of
course, and her hair and her eyes and ears and the part of her neck
that was just behind her ear, but most of all he would kiss her
teeth!...
He thought that it was very strange that he should think so ardently of
kissing Maggie. He could have kissed Aggie Logan dozens of times, but
he had never had the slightest desire to kiss her. He remembered how
foolish he had thought her that night at the soiree when someone
proposed that they should play Postman's Knock. Aggie Logan had called
him out to the lobby. There was a letter for him, she said, with three
stamps on it. Three stamps! Did anyone ever hear the like of that? And
he was to go into the lobby and give her three kisses, one after the
other ... peck, peck, peck ... and then it would be his turn to call
for someone, and Aggie would expect him to call for her! ... Willie
Logan had called for a girl. He had a letter for her with fifty stamps
on it ... A great roar of laughter had gone up from the others when
they heard of the amount of the postage, and Willie was thought to be a
daring, desperate fellow ... until the superintendent of the Sunday
School said that there must be reason in all things and proposed a
limit of three stamps on each letter ... no person to be called for
more than twice in succession. Willie, boisterous and very amorous,
whispered to John that he did not care what limit they made ... no one
could tell how many extra stamps you put on your letter out in the
lobby....
John had not answered Aggie's call. He had contrived to get out of the
school-room without being observed, and Aggie had been obliged to call
for someone else. Kissing!... Kiss her!... Three stamps!... Peck, peck,
_peck_!...
V
Wednesday dragged itself out slowly and very reluctantly; Thursday was
worse than Wednesday; and Friday was only saved from being as bad as
Thursday by its nearness to Saturday. On the morrow, he would see
Maggie again. Many times during the week, he had debated with himself
as to whether he should write to her or not, but the difficulty of
knowing what to say to her, except that he loved her and was longing
for the advent of Saturday, prevented him front doing so. In any case,
it would be difficult to write to her without questions from his
mother, and if Maggie were to reply to him, there would be no end to
the talk from her. After all, a week was only a week. On Monday, a week
had seemed to be an interminable period of time, but on Friday, it had
resumed the normal aspect of a week, a thing with a definite and
reachable end. It was odd to observe how, as the week drew to its
close, the intolerable things became tolerable. Miss Gebbie seemed to
be a little less inhuman on Friday than she had been on Monday, and
Lizzie Turley marvellously recovered her power to add two and one
together and get the correct result. Beyond all doubt, he was in love.
There could not be any other explanation of his behaviour and his
peculiar impatience. That any man should conduct himself as he had done
during the week now ending, for any other reason than that he was in
love, was impossible. Why, he woke up in the morning, thinking of
Maggie, and he went to sleep at night, thinking of Maggie. He thought
of her when he was at school, and he thought of her in the street, in
the shop, in the kitchen, even in his Uncle Matthew's room. When it was
his turn to sit by Uncle Matthew's side, his mind, for more than half
the time, was in Belfast with Maggie. He had read more than a hundred
pages of _Willie Reilly_ to his Uncle, but he had not comprehended
one of them. He had been thinking exclusively of Maggie.
He wondered whether he would always be in this state of absorption.
Other people fell in love, as he knew, but they seemed to be able to
think of other things besides their love. Perhaps they were not so much
in love as he was! He began to see difficulties arising from this great
devotion of his to Maggie. It would be very hard to concentrate his
mind on a story if it were full of thoughts of her. He would probably
spoil any work he attempted to do, because his mind would not be on it,
but away with Maggie. In none of the books he had read, had he seen any
account of the length of time a pair of lovers took in which to get
used to each other and to adjust their affections to the ordinary needs
of life. He would never cease to love Maggie, of course, but he
wondered how long it would be before his mind would become capable of
thinking of Maggie and of something else at the same time ... or even
of thinking of something else without thinking of Maggie at all....