The Foolish Lovers

by St. John G. Ervine

IV

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....