"Or a sailor. I went down to the Post Office once and got a bill about the Navy!..."

"Well, I would think you were demented mad to go and do the like of that," said Uncle William. "You might as well be a peeler!"

II

His mind turned now very frequently to the consideration of work other than that of teaching. He made a mental catalogue of the things that were immediately possible to him: teaching, the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, the shop ... and ruled them all out of his list.

The thought of soldiering or of going to sea lingered in his mind for a long time ... because he a.s.sociated soldiering and sailoring with travel in strange places ... but he abandoned that thought when he balanced the tradition of his cla.s.s against the Army, and Navy. All the men of his acquaintance who had joined the Army or the Navy had done so, either because they were in disgrace or because they were unhappy at home. It was generally considered that in joining either of the Services, they had brought shame upon their families, less, perhaps in the case of the Navy than in the case of the Army. In any event, his Uncle William's statement that a MacDermott could not endure to be ordered about by any one settled his mind for him on that subject. He would have to get his adventures in other ways. He might emigrate to America. He had a cousin in New York and one in Chicago. He might go to Canada or Australia or South Africa ... digging for gold or diamonds!

There was nothing in Ireland that attracted him ... all the desirable things were in distant places. Farming in Canada or Australia had a romantic attraction that was not to be found in farming in Ireland. He had _seen_ farmers in Ireland ... and he did not wish to be like them!

But, no matter how much he considered the question, he came no nearer to a solution of it.

He would go out to the fields that lay on the sh.o.r.es of the Lough, going one day to this side, and another day to that, and lie down in the sunshine and dream of a brilliant career. He might go into parliament and become a great statesman, like that man, Lord Salisbury, who had come to Belfast once during the Home Rule agitation. Or he might turn Nationalist and divert himself by roaring in the House of Commons against the English! He wished that he could write poetry ...

if he could write poetry, he might become famous. There was an old exercise book at home, full of poems that he had made up when he was much younger, about Ireland and the Pope and Love and Ballyards ... but they were poor things, he knew, although Mr. Cairnduff, to whom he had shown them, had said that, considering the age John was when he wrote them, they might have been a great deal worse. Mr. Cairnduff had given generous praise to a long poem on the election of a Nationalist for the city of Derry, beginning with this wail:

_Oh, Derry, Derry, what have you done?

Sold your freedom to Home Rule's son!_

but neither Uncle William nor Uncle Matthew had had much to say for it.

Uncle William said that his father would not have liked to think of his son writing a poem full of sentiments of that sort, and Uncle Matthew went upstairs to the attic and brought down, a copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ and presented it to him. But Mrs. MacDermott was pleased in a queer way. She hoped he was not going to take up politics, but she was glad that he was not a Home Ruler!

Sometimes, when he had been much younger than he now was ... John always thought of himself as a man of great age ... he had resolved that he would become a writer; but although he began many stories and solemn books ... there was one called, _The Errors of Rome_ in which the Papists were to be finally and conclusively exposed ... none of them were ever finished. Then had come a phase of preaching. His mother read the _Christian Herald_ every week, and John would get a table cloth, and wrap it round himself to represent a surplice ...

for the Church of Ireland was more decorative than the Presbyterian Church ... and deliver the sermons of Dr. Talmage and Mr. Spurgeon in a loud sing-song voice that greatly delighted Mrs. MacDermott. That, too, had pa.s.sed, very swiftly indeed, because of the alarming discovery that he was an atheist! He would never forget the sensation he had created in school when he had suddenly turned to Willie Logan and said, "Willie, I don't believe there's a G.o.d at all. It's all a catch!..."

Willie, partly out of fright, but chiefly because of his incorrigible tendency to "clash," immediately reported him to Miss Gebbie, who had been a teacher even then ... it seemed to him sometimes that Miss Gebbie had always been a teacher and would never cease to be one ...

and she had converted him to a belief in G.o.d's existence at the point of her bamboo....

Then came a time of mere dreaming of a future in which some beautiful girl would capture all his mind and heart and service. He would rescue her from a dire situation ... he would invent some wonderful thing that would bring fame and fortune to him ... and he would offer all his fame and fortune to her. His visions of this girl, constantly recurring, prevented him from falling in love with any girl in Ballyards. When he contrasted the girl of his dream with the girls he saw about him, he could not understand how anyone could possibly love a Ballyards girl.

Aggie Logan!...

He would come away from the fields, pleased with his dreams, but still as far from a solution of his problem as ever.

III

One evening, his Uncle William came into the kitchen where John was reading _John Halifax, Gentleman_ to his mother.

"I ought to go to Belfast the morrow," he said, "but Sat.u.r.day's an awkward day for me. I was wondering whether to send John instead. He's nothing to do on Sat.u.r.days, and it would be a great help to me!"

John closed the book, "Of course, I'll go, Uncle William!" he said.

Mrs. MacDermott coldly regarded them both. "You know rightly," she said, "that I'm as busy on Sat.u.r.day as you are, William. How can he go up to Belfast when I can't go with him?"

"I never said nothing about you going with him," Uncle William retorted. "He's well able to go by himself!" _"Go by himself!"_ Mrs. MacDermott almost shouted the words at her brother-in-law. "A lad that never was out of the town by his lone in his life before!"

"He'll have to go by his lone some day, won't he? And he's a big lump of a lad now, and well able to look after himself!"

"He'll not stir an inch from the door without me," Mrs. MacDermott declared in a determined voice. "Think shame to yourself, William, to be putting such thoughts into a lad's head ... suggesting that he should be sent out in the world by himself at his age!..."

Uncle William shifted uneasily in his seat. "I'm not suggesting that he should be sent out into the world," he said. "I'm only suggesting that he should be sent to Belfast for the day!..."

"And what sort of a place is Belfast on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon with a lot of drunk footballers flying about? He will not go, William. You can send Matthew!..."

Uncle William made a gesture of impatience. "You know rightly, Matthew's no good for a job of this sort!"

"Well, then, you'll have to go yourself. I'll keep an eye to the shop, forby my own work!..."

John got up and put _John Halifax, Gentleman_ on the window-ledge.

"You needn't bother yourself, ma," he said. "I'm going to Belfast the morrow. What is it you want me to do, Uncle William?"

Mrs. MacDermott stared at him for a moment, then she got up and hurried out of the kitchen. They could hear her mounting the stairs, and then they heard the sound of her bedroom door being violently slammed.

"Women are queer, John," said Uncle William, "but the queerest women of all are the women that are mothers. Anybody'd think I was proposing to send you to the bad place, and dear knows, Belfast's not that!"

"What's the job you want me to do?"

"Come into the shop and I'll tell you!"

John followed his Uncle into the shop and they sat down together in the little Counting House.

"There's really nothing that a postcard couldn't do," Uncle William said. "That was the excuse. I've been thinking about you, John, and I thought it was a terrible pity you should never get out and about by yourself a bit ... out of Ballyards, I mean ... to look round you. It's no good to a lad to be always running about with his ma!"

"You're a terrible schemer, Uncle William," said John.

"Ah, g'long with you," his Uncle answered. "Here, pay heed to me now, while I tell you. This is what I want you to do!..."

He showed a business letter to John and invited him to read it. Then he explained the nature of the small commission he wished him to execute.

"It'll not take you long," he said, "and then you can look about yourself in Belfast. You'll want a few coppers in your pocket!" He put a coin into John's hand and then closed the lad's fingers over it.

"It's great value to go down the quays and have a look at the ships,"

he went on, "and mebbe you could get a look over the shipyard! ... And perhaps when you're knocking about Belfast, you'll see something you'd like to do!"

IV

In this way, his Sat.u.r.day trips to Belfast began. He found them much less exhilarating then he had imagined they would be. He inspected the City Hall in the company of a beadle and was informed, with great preciseness, of the cost of the building and of the price paid to each artist for the portraits of the Lord Mayors which were suspended from the walls of the Council Chamber. The beadle seemed to think that the portraits represented a waste of ratepayers' money, and he considered that if the Corporation had given a contract to one artist for all the pictures, a great reduction in price could have been obtained.... The Museum and the Free Library depressed him, precisely in the way in which Museums and Free Libraries always depress people; but he found pleasure in the Botanic Gardens and the Ormeau Park. He devised an excellent scheme of walking, which enabled him to go through the Botanic Gardens, then, by side streets, to the Lagan, where a ferryman rowed him across to the opposite bank and landed him in the Ormeau Park. He would walk briskly through the Park, and then, when he had emerged from it, would cross the Albert Bridge, hurry along the Sand Quay, and stand at the Queen's Bridge to watch the crowds of workmen hurrying home from the shipyards. He never tired of watching the "Islandmen," grimy from their labour, as they pa.s.sed over the bridge in a thick, dusky stream to their homes. Thousands and thousands of men and boys seemed to make an endless procession of shipbuilders, designers and rivetters and heater-boys. But it never occurred to him that there was something romantic in the enterprise and labours of these men, that out of their energies, great ships grew and far lands were brought near to each other. He liked to witness the dispersal of the shipyard's energies, but he did not think of the miracle which their a.s.sembled energies performed every day. By this narrow, shallow river Lagan, a great company of men and boys and women met daily to make the means whereby races reached out to each other; and their ships sailed the seas of the world, carrying merchandise from one land to another, binding the East to the West and the South to the North, and making chains of friendship and kindliness between diverse peoples. It was an adventure to sail in a ship, in John's mind, but he did not know, had never thought or been told, that it is also an adventure to build a ship. The pleasure which he found in watching the "Islandmen"

crossing the Queen's Bridge was not related to their work: it was found in the spectacle of a great crowd. Any crowd pa.s.sing over the Bridge would have pleased John equally well....

But the crowd of "Islandmen" was soon dispersed; and John found that there was very little to do in Belfast. He did not care for football matches, he had no wish to enter the City Hall again, he could not walk through the Botanic Gardens and the Ormeau Park all day long, and he certainly did not wish to visit the Museum or the Free Library again.

He became tired of walking aimlessly about the streets. There was a wet Sat.u.r.day when, as he stood under the shelter of an awning in Royal Avenue, he resolved that he would return to Ballyards by an early train. "It's an awful town, this, on a wet day!" he said to himself, unaware that any town in which a man is a stranger is unpleasant on a wet day ... and sometimes on a fine day. "Somehow," he went on, "there seems to be more to do in Ballyards on a wet day than there is in Belfast on a wet day!" A sense of loneliness descended upon him as he gazed at the grey, dribbling skies and the damp pavements. The trams were full of moist, huddled men and women; the foot-pa.s.sengers hurried homewards, their heads bent against the wind and rain; the bleak-looking newspaper boys, barefooted, pinched, hungry and cold, stood shivering in doorways, with wet, sticky papers under their arms; and wherever he looked, John saw only unfriendliness, haste and discomfort.

There would not be a train to Ballyards until late in the afternoon, and as he stood there, growing less cheerful each moment, he wondered how he could occupy the time of waiting. The wind blew down the street, sending the rain scudding in front of it, and chilling him, and, half unconsciously, he hurried across the road to take shelter in a side street where, it seemed to him, he would be less exposed. He walked along the street, keeping in the shadow of the houses, and presently he found himself before the old market of Smithfield.

"Amn't I the fool," he said to himself, "not to have come here before?"