THE THIRD CHAPTER

I

John wrote his first story during the following week, and when he had completed it, he made a copy of it on large sheets of foolscap in a shapely hand, and sewed the pages together with green thread. Uncle Matthew had purchased bra.s.s fasteners to bind the pages together, but Uncle William said that a man might easily tear his fingers with "them things" and contract blood-poisoning.

"And that would give him a scunner against your story, mebbe!" he added.

John accepted Uncle William's advice, not so much in the interests of humanity, as because he liked the look of the green thread. He had read the story to his uncles, after the shop was closed. They had drawn their chairs up to the fire, in which sods of turf and coal were burning, and the agreeable odour of the turf soothed their senses while they listened to John's sharp voice. Mrs. MacDermott would not join the circle before the fire. She declared that she had too much work to do to waste her time on trash, and she wondered that her brothers-in-law could find nothing better to do than to encourage a headstrong lad in a foolish business. She went about her work with much bustle and clatter, which, however, diminished considerably as John began to read the story, and ended altogether soon afterwards.

"D'you like it, Uncle William?" John said, when he had read the story to them.

"Aye," said Uncle William.

"I'm glad," John answered. "And you, do you like it, Uncle Matthew?"

"I like it queer and well," Uncle Matthew murmured, "only!..." He hesitated as if he were reluctant to make any adverse comment on the story.

"Only what?" John demanded with some impatience. He had asked for the opinions of his uncles, indeed, but it had not occurred to him that they would not think as highly of the story as he thought of it himself.

"Well ... there's no love in it!" Uncle Matthew went on.

"Love!"

"Aye," Uncle Matthew said. "There's no mention of a woman in it from start to finish. I think there ought to be a woman in it!"

Mrs. MacDermott, who had been silent now for some time, made a noise with a dish on the table. "Och, sure, what does he know about love?"

she exclaimed angrily. "A child that's not long left his mother's arms would know as much. Mebbe, now you've read your oul' story, John, the whole of yous will sit up to the table and take your tea!"

John, disregarding his mother, sat back in his chair and contemplated his Uncle Matthew.

"I wonder now, are you right?" he exclaimed.

"I am," Uncle Matthew replied. "The best stories in the world have women in them, and love-making! I never could take any interest in _Robinson Crusoe_ because he hadn't got a girl on that island with him, and I thought to myself many's a time, it was a queer mistake not to make Friday a woman. He could have fallen in love with her then!"

Uncle William said up sharply. "Aye, and had a wheen of black babies!"

he said. "Man, dear, Matthew, think what you're saying! What sort of romance would there be in the like of that? I never read much, as you know, but I always had a great fancy for _Robinson Crusoe_. The way that man turned to and did things for himself ... I tell you my heart warmed to him. _I_ like your story, John, women or no women.

Sure, love isn't the only thing that men make!..."

"It's the most important," said Uncle Matthew.

"And why shouldn't a story be written about any other thing nor a lot of love?" Uncle William continued, ignoring the interruption. "I daresay you'll get a mint of money for that story, John. I've heard tell that some of these writers gets big pay for their stories. Pounds and pounds!"

John crinkled his ma.n.u.script in his hand and regarded it with a modest look. "I don't suppose I'll get much for the first one," he said. "In fact, if they'll print it, I'll be willing to let them have it for nothing ... just for the satisfaction!"

"That would be a foolish thing to do," Uncle William retorted. "Sure, if it's worth printing, it's worth paying for. That's the way I look at it, anyhow!"

"I daresay I'll make more, when I know the way of it better!" John answered. "What paper will I send it to, do you think?"

"Send it to the best one," said Uncle William.

Mrs. MacDermott took a plate of toast from the fender where it had been put to keep warm. "Send it to the one that pays the most," she suggested.

"I thought you weren't listening, ma!" John exclaimed, laughing at her.

"A body can't help hearing when people are talking at the top of their voices," she said tartly. "Come on, for dear sake, and have your teas, the whole of yous!"

II

It was Uncle William who advised John to send the story to _Blackwood's Magazine_. He said that in his young days, people said _Blackwood's Magazine_ was the best magazine in the world.

Uncle Matthew had demurred to this. "I'm not saying it's not a good one," he said, "but it's terribly bitter against Ireland. The man that writes that magazine must have a bitter, blasting tongue in his head!"

"Never mind what it says about Ireland," Uncle William retorted. "Sure, they're only against the Papishes, anyway!..."

"The Papishes are as good as the Protestants," Uncle Matthew exclaimed.

"I daresay they are," Uncle William admitted, "but I'm only saying that _Blackwood's Magazine_ is against _them:_ it's not against us; and I don't see why John shouldn't send his story to it. He's a Protestant!"

"If I wrote a story," Uncle Matthew went on, "I wouldn't send it to any paper that made little of my country, Protestant or Papish, no matter how good a paper it was nor how much it paid me for my story. Ireland is as good as England any day!..."

"It's better," said Uncle William complacently. "Sure, G.o.d Himself knows the English would be on the dung-heap if it wasn't for us and the Scotchmen. But that's no reason why John shouldn't send his story to _Blackwood's Magazine_. In one way, it's a good reason why he should send it there, for sure, if he does nothing else, he'll improve the tone of the thing. You do what I tell you, John!..."

And so, accepting his Uncle William's advice, John sent the ma.n.u.script of his story to the editor of _Blackwood's Magazine;_ and each morning, after he had done so, he eagerly awaited the advent of the postman. But the postman, more often than not, went past their door.

When he did deliver a letter to them, it was usually a trading letter for Uncle William.

"Them people get a queer lot of stories to read," Uncle William said to console his nephew, disappointed because he had not received a letter of acceptance from the editor by Sat.u.r.day morning, four days after he had posted the ma.n.u.script. "It'll mebbe take them a week or two to reach yours!..."

"They could have sent a postcard to say they'd got it all right," John replied ruefully. "That's the civil thing to do, anyway!"

He remembered that the Benson Shakespearean Company was still in Belfast and that _Romeo and Juliet_ was to be performed in the afternoon, and _Julius Caesar_ in the evening; and he went up to the city by an earlier train than usual so that he might be certain of getting to the theatre in time to secure an end seat near the front of the pit. He had proposed to his Uncle Matthew that he should go to Belfast, too, to see the plays, but Uncle Matthew shook his head and murmured that he was not feeling well. He had been listless lately, they had noticed, and Uncle William, regarding him one afternoon as he stood at the door of the shop, had turned to John and said that he would be glad when the summer weather came in again, so that Uncle Matthew could go down to the sh.o.r.e and lie in the sun.

"He's not a robust man, your Uncle Matthew!" he said. "I don't think he tholes the winter well!"

"Och, he's mebbe only a wee bit out of sorts," John answered. "I wish, he'd come to Belfast with me!..."

"He'll never go next or near that place again," Uncle William replied.

"He's never been there since that affair!..."

"You'd wonder at a man letting a thing of that sort affect his mind the way Uncle Matthew let it affect his," John murmured.

"When a man believes in a thing as deeply as he believed in the oul'

Queen," said Uncle William, "it's a terrible shock to him to find out that other people doesn't believe in it half as much as he does ... or mebbe doesn't believe in it at all!"