He walked down the stairs and into the street in a state of fury. He
had been treated as if he were a corner-boy.
Willie Logan, who was any girl's boy, could not have been treated so
contemptuously as he, who had never cared for any other girl, had been
treated. She had married a policeman ... _a peeler!_ She might as
well have married a soldier or a militia-man. A MacDermott had been
rejected in favour of a peeler! She had gone straight from his embraces
to the embraces of a policeman ... a common policeman. She had refused
to meet him on a Wednesday, he remembered, because, probably, she had
engaged to meet the peeler on that evening. He would be off duty then!
While she was yielding her lips to John, she was actually engaged to be
married to ... to a policeman! By heaven!...
What a good and fortunate thing it was that he had not spoken of her to
anyone except to Uncle Matthew! If anyone were to know that a
MacDermott had fallen in love with a girl who had preferred to marry a
peeler ... _a peeler_, mind you! ... they would split their sides
laughing. What a humiliation! What an insufferable thing to have
happened to him! That was your love for you! That was your romance for
you! ... Och! Och, och!! This was a lesson for him, indeed. No more
love or romance for him. Willie Logan could run after girls until the
soles dropped off his boots, but John MacDermott would let the girls do
the running after him in future. No girl would ever get the chance
again to throw him over for ... for a _peeler!_ If that was their
love, they could keep their love!...
He walked about the town until, after a while, he found himself at the
Theatre Royal. Still raging against Maggie, he paid for a seat in the
pit. He had forgotten that he was in mourning, and he remembered only
that he was a jilted lover, a MacDermott cast aside for a policeman. He
sat through the first act of the play, without much comprehension of
its theme. Then in the middle of the second act, he heard the heroine
vowing that she loved the hero, and he got up and walked out of the
theatre.
"I could write a better play than that with one hand tied behind my
back," he said to himself. "Her and her love!"
He walked rapidly from the theatre, conscious of hunger, for he had
omitted to get a meal before going into the theatre, but he was
unwilling to forego the pleasure of starving himself as a sign of his
humiliation. He made his way towards Smithfield and stopped in front of
a bookstall. A couple of loutish lads were fingering a red-bound book
as he approached the stall, and he heard them tittering in a sneaky,
furtive fashion as he drew near. The owner of the stall emerged from
the back of his premises, and when they saw him, they hurriedly put the
book down and walked away. John glanced at it and read the title on the
cover: The Art of Love by Ovid.
"Love!" he exclaimed aloud. "Ooo-oo-oo!"
The streets were full of young men and women intent on an evening's
pleasure, and as he hurried away from Smithfield Market towards the
railway station, he received bright glances from girls who were willing
to make friends with him. He scowled heavily at them, and when they
looked away to other men, he filled his mind with sneers and bitter
thoughts. A few hours before, these young girls would have seemed to
him to be very beautiful and innocent, but now they appeared to him to
be deceitful and wicked. Each evening, he told himself, these girls
came out of their houses in search of "boys" whom they lured into
love-making, teasing and tormenting them, until at last they tired of them
and sent them empty away. That was your love for you! Uncle Matthew had
dreamed of romantic love, and John had set out to find it, and behold,
what was it! A girl's frolic, a piece of feminine sport, in which the
girl had the fun and the boy had the humiliation and pain. Maggie could
go from him, her lips still warm with his kisses, to her policeman ...
and take kisses from him! There might be other hoaxed lovers ... if she
had one, why not have two or three or four ... and his kisses might
have meant no more to her than the kisses of half-a-dozen other men.
Well, he had learned his lesson! No more love for him....
He crossed the Queen's Bridge, and when he reached the station, he came
upon Willie Logan, moodily gazing at the barriers which were not yet
open. John, undesirous of society, nodded to him and would have gone
away, but Willie suddenly caught hold of his arm.
"I want to speak to you a minute, John!" he said thickly.
The smell of drink drifted from him.
"What about?" John answered sourly.
"Come over here 'til a quiet place," Willie said, still holding John's
arm, and drawing him to a seat at the other end of the station. "Sit
here 'til the gates is open," he added, as he sat down.
"Is there anything up?" John demanded.
"Aye," Willie replied in a bewildered voice. "John, man, I'm in
terrible trouble!"
"Oh!"
"Sore disgrace, John. I don't know what my da and ma'll say to me at
all when they hear about it. Such a thing!..."
"Well, what is it?"
"Do you know a wee girl called Jennie Roak?" John shook his head. "Her
aunt lives in Ballyards ... Mrs. Cleeland!..."
"Oh, yes. Is that her aunt?"
"Aye. Well, me an' her has been going out together for a wee while
past, and she says now she's goin' to have a child!"
John burst into laughter.
"What the hell are you laughing at?" Willie demanded angrily.
"I was thinking it doesn't matter whether it's one girl or a dozen
you're after, you'll get into bother just the same!"
"Aye, but what am I to do, John? I'll have to tell the oul' fella, and
he'll be raging mad when he hears about it. He's terrible against that
sort of thing, and dear knows I'm an awful one for slipping into
trouble. I can not keep away from girls, John, and that's the God's
truth of it. And I've been brought up as respectable as anybody.
Jennie's in an awful state about it!"
"I daresay," said John.
"She says I'll have to marry her over the head of it, but sure I don't
want to get married at all ... not yet, anyway. I don't know what to
do. I'll have to tell the oul' lad and he'll have me scalded with his
tongue. I suppose I'll have to marry her. It's a quare thing a fella
can't go out with a girl without getting into bother. I wish to my
goodness I had as much control over myself as you have!"
"Control!" said John.
"Aye. You'll never get into no bother!"
"Huh!" said John.
The barriers were opened, and Willie and John passed through on to the
platform, and presently seated themselves in a carriage.
"This'll be a lesson to me," said Willie, lying back against the
cushions of the carriage. "Not to be running after so many girls in
future!"
John did not make any answer to him. He let his thoughts wander out of
the carriage. He had loved Maggie Carmichael deeply, and she had served
him badly; and Willie Logan, who treated girls in a light fashion, was
complaining now because one girl had loved him too well. And that was
your love for you! That was the high romantical thing of which Uncle
Matthew had so often spoken and dreamed...
He came out of his thoughts suddenly, for Willie Logan was shaking him.
There was a glint in Willie Logan's eye!...
"I say, John," he said, "come on into the next carriage! There's two
quare nice wee girls just got in!"
"No," said John.
"Ah, come on," Willie coaxed.
"No," John almost shouted.
"Well, stay behind then. I'll have the two to myself," Willie
exclaimed, climbing out of the carriage as he spoke.
"That lad deserves all he gets," John thought.
V
His mother called to him as he passed through the kitchen on his way to
the attic where his Uncle Matthew's books were stored.
"Your Uncle William's wanting a talk with you," she said. "Mr.
McGonigal's been here about the will!"
"I'll be down in a wee while," John replied as he climbed the stairs.
He wished to sit in some quiet place until he had composed his mind
which was still disturbed. He had hoped to have the railway compartment
to himself after Willie Logan had left it, but two drovers had
hurriedly entered it as the train was moving out of the station, and
their noisy half-drunken talk had prevented him from thinking with
composure. Willie Logan's loud laughter, accompanied by giggles and the
sound of scuffling, penetrated from the next compartment....
In the attic, there would be quietness.
He entered the room and stood among the disordered piles of books that
lay about the floor. A mania for rearrangement had seized hold of him
one day, but he had done no more than take the books from their shelves
and leave them in confused heaps. He had promised that he would make
the attic tidy again, when his mother complained of the room's
disarray. His mind would become quiet, perhaps, if he were to spend a
little time now in replacing the books on the shelves in the order in
which he wished them to be. He sat down on the floor and contemplated
them. Most of these volumes, new and old, were concerned with the love
of men for women. It seemed impossible to escape from the knowledge of
this passion in any book that one might read. Love made intrusions even
into the history books, and bloody wars had been fought and many men
had been slain because of a woman's beauty or to gratify her whim. Even
in the Bible!...
He remembered that Uncle Matthew had told him that the Song of Solomon
was a real love song or series of songs, and not, as the headlines to
the chapters insisted, an allegorical description of Christ's love for
the Church. There was a Bible lying near to his hand, and he picked it
up and turned the pages until he reached the Song of Songs which is
called Solomon's, and he hurriedly read through it as if he were
searching for sentences.
_I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the
lilies. Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem,
terrible as an army with banners!_
So the woman sang. Then the man, less abstract than the woman, sang in
his turn.
_How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O Prince's daughter: the
joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a
cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanted not
liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy
two breasts are like two young roes that are twins!..._
John glanced at the headline to this song. "It's a queer thing to call
that 'a further description of the church's graces'," he said to
himself, and then his eye searched through the verses of the song until
he reached the line,
_How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!_...
"I daresay," he murmured to himself. "I daresay! But there's a terrible
lot of misery in it, too!"
He read the whole of the last song.
_Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for
love is strong as death: jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals
thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many
waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it_....
"That's true," he said. "That's very true! I love her just the same,
for all she's treated me so bad! _Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it._ Oh, I wish to my God I could
forget things as easy as Willie Logan forgets them!"
He closed the Bible and put it down on the floor beside him, and sat
with his hands clutching hold of his ankles. He would have to go away
from Ballyards. He would not be able to rest contentedly near Belfast
where Maggie lived ... with her peeler! He must go away from home, and
the further away he went, the better it would be. Then he might forget
about her. Perhaps, after all, it was not true that "_many waters
cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it_." Poets had a
terrible habit of exaggerating things, and perhaps he would forget his
love for Maggie in some distant place!...
There was a copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ perched on top of a pile of
books. "That was the cause of all my trouble," he said, pushing it so
that it fell off the pile on to the floor at his feet. He picked it up
and opened it, and as he did so, his eyes rested on Mercutio's speech,
_If love be rough with you, be rough with love_.
Comfort instantly came into his mind.
"I will," he said, rising from the floor.