The Foolish Lovers

by St. John G. Ervine

"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 Saturday 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 passed 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 assembled 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 passing 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 Saturday 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-passengers 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?"

For here, indeed, was entertainment for any man or woman or child. In this ancient market for the sale of discarded things, a lonely person could pass away the dull hours very agreeably. The auctioneers, wheedling and joking and bullying, could be trusted to amuse any reasonable man for a while, and when their entertainment was exhausted there were the stalls to visit and explore. He stood to listen to a loud-voiced man who was selling secondhand clothes, and then, turning away, found himself standing before a bookstall. Piles of books, of all sizes and shapes and colours, lay on a long shutter that rested on trestles; and in the shop, behind the trestles, were great stacks of books reaching to the ceiling. He fingered the books with the affection with which he had seen his Uncle Matthew finger those in the attic at home. Some of them had the dreary, dull look observable in books that have long passed out of favour and have lain disregarded in some dark and dusty corner; and some, though they were old, looked bright and pleasant as if they were confident that the affection which had been theirs for years would be continued to them by new owners. He picked up old volumes and spent much time in contemplating the inscriptions inside them ... fading inscriptions in a thin, genteel handwriting that had the careful look of writing done by people who were anxious that the record should not offend a schoolmaster's eye ... and as he read these inscriptions, a queer dejection settled on him. These books, dusty and disregarded, he told himself, represented love and thought that had perished. Doubt and damp pessimism clutched hold of him. At the end of every brave adventure was Smithfield Market. He put down a book which contained an inscription to "Charles Dunwoody from his affectionate Mother," and looked about him. Everywhere, secondhand, rejected things were for sale: clothes, furniture, books, pictures ... The market was a mortuary of ambition and hope, the burial ground of little enterprises, confidently begun and miserably ended. Here were the signs of disruption and dispersal, of things attempted but not achieved, of misfortune and failure, of things used and abandoned for more coveted things. John had imagined himself performing great feats to win the love and favour of some beautiful woman ... but now he saw his adventure in love ending in a loud-voiced auctioneer mouthing jokes over a ruined home. Behind these piles of books and pictures and clothes and furniture, one might see young couples bravely setting out on their little ships of love to seek their fortunes, light-heartedly facing perils and dangers because of the high hope in their hearts ... and coming to wreck on a rough coast where their small cargoes were seized by creditors and brought to this place for sale, and they were left bare and hurt and discouraged...

"Oh, well!" said John, shrugging his shoulders and picking up a newer book.