St. John G. Ervine

“ He spoke his mind, and more than his mind, but he was generous and quick to retract and quicker to console. "I'm an Ulsterman," he said once. "Ulster to the marrow, an' begod I'm proud of it!"
"But I'm Irish too," he added, turning to John Marsh as he said it, fearful lest he should have hurt John's feelings. "Begod, it's gran' to be Irish. I pity the poor devils that aren't!..."
He was a great lover of life, exulting in his strength and vigour, shouting sometimes for the joy of hearing himself shout. "And shy, too," Henry murmured to himself, "shy as a wren about intimate things!" ”

“ Haverstock was so grateful to me that she's invited me to her house ever since ... but the people I meet there make me feel murderous. I like her, a sensible, sonsy woman, and I like him too, although his solemn, priggish airs make me tired, but I cannot bear the crowd they get round them: all the cranks and oddities and smug, self-sufficient, interfering people seem to get into their house, and they're all reforming something or uplifting something else or generally bleating against this country. Things done in England are always inferior to things done elsewhere. ”

“ Henry did not speak. He glanced about him at the ruin and wreck of a city which, though it had many times filled him with anger, yet filled him also with love; and for a while he could not see clearly.... Somewhere in this street, John Marsh had been killed. He had died, as he had desired, for Ireland, and a man can do no more than give his life for his country ... but what was the good of his dying? It was not enough that a man should die ... he must also die well and to purpose. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One had only to remember the history of Ireland to realise that many of the differences between the English and the Irish were no more than the differences between the hunter and the hunted, the persecutor and the persecuted. How could the Irish help having a lower standard of life than the English when their lives had been so disrupted and disturbed that it was difficult for them to have a standard of life at all? ”

“ His look, his voice, his gestures, all compelled laughter from the audience without the audience understanding quite why it was amused. He had the pathetic appearance that all great comedians have, the look of appeal that one saw in the face of Dan Leno, in the face of James Welch, and it seemed that he might as easily cry as laugh. The words he had to say were poor, vapid things, but when he said them, he put some of his own life into them and gave them a greater value than they deserved. The turn of his head was comic; a queer little helpless movement of his hands was comic ”

“ Whatever you do, John, don't die an unmarried man like your Uncle William and me. It's better to live with a cross sour-natured woman nor it is to live with no woman at all; for even the worst woman in the world has given a wee while of happiness to her man, and he always has that in his mind to comfort him however bad she turns out after. And if she is bad, sure you can run away from her!"
"Run away from her! You'd never advocate the like of that, Uncle Matthew?" ”

“ There was no beauty of building at all in Belfast, and no one there seemed anxious that there should be: in all that city, so full of energy and purpose and grit and acuteness of mind, there did not appear to be one man of power who cared for the fine shape or the good look of things; but, after all, was that so very much worse than the state of mind of the Dublin people who, knowing what beauty is, carelessly let it decay? He began to feel bitterly about Ireland and her indifference to culture and beauty. He told himself that Ireland was the land of people who do not care.... ”

“ Roger exclaimed.
"Well, I am," Ninian proceeded. "Lust is the motor force of the world...."
"No, it isn't," Gilbert interrupted. "The whole of civilisation depends upon the human stomach. If men would live without eating ... the whole of this society would dissolve. Lust is subordinate to the stomach, Ninian. You've never seen a starving man in a purple passion, have you?"
Ninian leant forward and tapped the table with his knuckles. "I say that lust is the motor force of the world," he said, "and I think you might let me finish my sentences, Gilbert. ”

“ Uncle Matthew had known all the time what was the right life for a man to lead, even although he had never gone out into the world himself. What if Maggie Carmichael had treated him badly? If love be rough with you, be rough with love! Who was Maggie Carmichael anyway? One woman in a world full of women! She was only Maggie Carmichael ... or Maggie whatever the policeman's name was! If love be rough with you, be rough with love! ”

“ It was difficult for him to believe that she could yield so easily to him and love Gilbert deeply, and he soothed his conscience by telling himself that Cecily was one of those women who are in love with love, ready to accept kisses from any ardent youth who offers them to her. He remembered his contribution to the discussion on women and the way in which he had insisted on infinite variety of experiences. Cecily was, as a woman, what he had wished to be as a man. ”

“ At the end of every journey, at the finish of every fight, there was a Woman. Uncle Matthew had spoken wisely, John thought, when he said that you cannot leave women out of your schemes and plans.
John had not thought of leaving women out of his schemes and plans. In all his romantic imaginings, a woman of superb beauty had figured in a dim way; but the woman had been a dream woman only, bearing no resemblance whatever to the visible women about him. He had so much regard for this woman of his imagined adventures ... ”

“ But first we must be free, free from the bondage of history, free from the bondage of romance, free from the bondage of politics, free from the bondage of religion, and free from the bondage of our bellies! ”

“ Sidney Carton and Little Nell and Oliver Twist and Nancy and Dora and Little Dorritt and the Little Marchioness.
"You'd meet the like of them any minute of the day in London," said Uncle Matthew. "You'd mebbe be walking up a street, the Strand, mebbe, or in Hyde Park or Whitechapel, and in next to no time at all, you'd run into the whole jam-boiling of them. London's the queer place for seeing queer people. Never be content, John, when you're a man, to stay on in this place where nothing ever happens to anyone, but quit off out of it and see the world. ”

“ People greeted Lady Cecily as she passed them and muttered, "'loa, Jimphy!" Henry had never been to a fashionable restaurant before, and the barbaric beauty of the scene fascinated him. The women were riotously dressed, and the colours of their garments mingled and merged like the colours of a sunset. There was a constant flow of people [Pg 260] through the room, and the chatter of animated voices and bursts of laughter and the jingling, sentimental music played by the orchestra made Jimphy forget how bored he had been at the theatre. ”

“ Strange behaviour, the reporter named it, when every instinct in John demanded that it should be called noble behaviour. Was a man to be called a fool because his heart compelled him to perform an act of simple loyalty?... Strange behaviour! John seized the cutting and crumpled it in his hand. Then he straightened it out again and tore it in pieces. Were people so poor in faith and devotion that they could not recognise the nobility of what Uncle Matthew had done? And for that act of goodness, Uncle Matthew had gone to his grave under stigma. ”

“ Arthurs, standing aside to watch them, and greeting here one and there another, turned to Marsh and said, "Those are my pals!" Thousands of men, grimy from their work, each of them possessed of some peculiar skill or great strength, thousands of them, "pals" of this one man whose active brain conceived ships of great magnitude and endurance! Mr. Arthurs had passed through the shipyard from apprenticeship to directorship: he had worked in this shop and in that, just as the men worked, and had learned more about shipbuilding than it seemed possible for any man to learn. ”

“ If my mother was dying, I wouldn't let her prevent me from doing my job!... If you can't understand that, John MacDermott, you needn't try to be a journalist. You haven't got it in you. Your paper's your father and your mother and your wife and your children! Oh, go to bed, out of my sight, or I'll forget myself!..."
John walked towards the door.
"I'd rather love a woman any day than a paper," he said.
"Well, go and love her then, and don't try to interfere with a paper again! Don't come down Fleet Street pretending you're a journalist!" ”

“ He would finish a book, he would marry Mary, he would settle his estate as best he could ... and then he would make the end that Gilbert and Ninian had made....
But now, as he put Roger's letter down, he had a swift, compelling desire to dodge his destiny, to elude death, to alter the course of things. Why should he die? Why should he yield himself up, his youth, his work, his love, his hope of happiness and renown and honour ... to this consuming thing! He could look to years of happiness with Mary, years of work on his books, years of enjoyment of things won and earned ... ”

“ John protested.
"I know we do, and perhaps it is natural that we should, but it's a poor, cheap thing at the best, and does very little credit to our intelligence. The English ideal of life is as good an ideal as there is in the world. I think it is far the finest ideal there is, chiefly because it does not make impossible demands on human beings. When everything that can be alleged against the English is alleged and admitted, it remains true that they love freedom far more constantly than other people, and that without them, freedom would have a very thin time in the world. ”

“ But it won't, and when a man of family, like Plunkett, is born with good will for Ireland, he has to go to England to be educated. And he ought to be educated in Ireland, and he would be if Trinity were worth a damn. I wish I were Provost, I'd teach Irishmen to be proud of their birth!"
"Well, when we've made Ireland a nation," said Henry, chaffing him, "we'll make you Provost of Trinity!" and Galway, though he knew that Henry was jesting, smiled with pleasure.
"When Ireland is a nation!" Marsh murmured dreamily. ”

“ He turned to John.
"I don't know what sort of a living you'll make out of selling books," he said, "and I don't care either, but if you do start a shop to sell them, let me tell you this, you'll never prosper in it if it doesn't hurt you sore to part with a book, for books is like nothing else on God's earth. You have to love them ... you have to love them!..."
"You're daft," said Mrs. MacDermott.
"Mebbe I am," Uncle Matthew replied wearily. "But that's the way I feel, and no man can help the way he feels!" ”

“ Henry remembered that his father was more interested in the land than most men—and he resolved to ask for his opinion. What was the good of all this co-operation, this struggle to discover the best way of making the earth yield up the means of life, this effort to increase and multiply, when nothing they could do seemed to make the work attractive to those who did it?... ”

“ This man Shakespeare, so everybody said, was the greatest poet England had produced ... perhaps the greatest poet the world had produced ... and he ought to know something of what women were like. Whatever else Juliet might be, she certainly was not like John's dream-woman. She did not stand at the end of the road waiting for Romeo to come to her. She did not wait until the fight was fought and won. She did not offer a cold hand or cold lips to Romeo. Her behaviour was really more like that of Aggie Logan than that of the dream-woman!... ”

“ Gilbert Farlow, though he was the youngest and the slightest of the four boys, was the leader of them. He had the gift of vivid language. He could cut a man with a name as sharply as if it were a knife. He invented new oaths for the delight of Ninian Graham, who had a taste for strong language but no genius in developing it. It was he who appointed Roger to the office of Purse-Bearer because Roger was careful. ”

“ John suggested, "if you'd left Ballyards and gone to London, you'd have had a whole lot of adventures!"
"Mebbe I would," Uncle Matthew replied. "Though sometimes I think I'm not the sort that has adventures, for there's men in the world would find something romantic wherever they went, and I daresay if Lord Byron were living here in Ballyards, he'd have the women crying their eyes out for him. That was a terrible romantic man, John! Lord Byron! A terrible man for falling in love, God bless him!..." ”

“ Henry answered, "I haven't."
"Well, you will some day. My motto is, Take what you can get in the way you can get it. It's so much easier to live if you act on that principle!"
"Gilbert's an artist, Lady Cecily, and he can't act on that principle. No artist can. He takes what he wants in the way that he wants it or else he will not take it at all!" ”

“ Fleet Street was a dirty, ill-ventilated alley full of scuffling men and harassed women. London itself was a great angry thing, a place of distrust and contention, where no one ever offered a friendly greeting to a stranger. He would go to Charing Cross station and he would stand patiently in front of the bookstall, but Eleanor would not come to meet him. ”

“ They entered the auditorium and stood for a moment looking about the theatre. People were passing quickly into their seats now, and the theatre was full of an eager air, of massed pleasure, and a loud buzz of conversation spread over the stalls from the pit where rows of young women whispered to each other excitedly as this well-known person and that well-known person entered. ”

“ Uncle William proudly replied.
"No, indeed there's not, I tell you, John, son, the MacDermotts are someone in this town, as grand in their way and as proud as Lord Castlederry himself. That's something to live up to, isn't it! The good name of your family! But if you go tramping the world for adventures and romances, the way your Uncle Matthew would have you do, you'll lose it all, and there'll be strangers in the house that your family's lived in all these generations. ”

“ I suppose one loves all animals. One has to be very brutal to hurt an animal; hasn't one?"
Henry laughed. "The Irish are cruel to animals," he said, "but the English aren't!"
Marsh flushed. "I've never been in England," he replied, looking away.
"Never?" Henry exclaimed.
"No, and I shall never go there!"
There was a sudden ferocity in his voice that startled Henry. "But why?" he asked.
"Why?..." Marsh's voice changed its note and became quiet again. "I'm Irish," he said. "That's why! I don't think that any Irishman ought to put his foot in England until Ireland is free!" ”

“ John answered.
"God love you, son, what put that notion into your head?"
"I don't want to be a burden to you, Uncle William!"
"A burden to me!" Uncle William swung round on the high office stool and regarded his nephew intently. "Man, dear, you're no burden to me! Look at the strength of me! Feel them muscles, will you?" He held out his tightened arm as he spoke. "Do you think a wee fellow like you could be a burden to a man with muscles like them, as hard as iron?" ”

“ What he wished to know was whether or not he had the potentialities of a great author in him. He knew that his story was not commonplace stuff, but he was afraid that it might only be middling writing, and he did not wish to be a middling writer. If he could not be a great writer, he did not wish to be a writer at all. There were thousands and thousands of novels in the world which did no more for men than enable them to put their minds to sleep. Henry did not wish to add a book to their number. ”

“ On the platform, a little way in front of him, he saw Willie Logan, flushed and excited, with two girls, one on either side of him. Willie had an arm round each girl's waist.
"That fellow's getting plenty of fun anyway," John said, as he climbed into an empty carriage. He did not wish to join Willie's party. He knew too well what Willie was like: a noisy, demonstrative fellow, indiscriminately amorous. "Nearly every girl's worth kissing," Willie had said to him on one occasion. "If you can't get your bit of fun with one woman, sure you can get it with another!" ”

“ We place the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose Blessing we invoke on our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called. ”

“ It would be a privilege to write a play for people so clever.... Then Mrs. Cream, magnificently dressed, appeared, and as she did so, some of the atmosphere that enveloped the stage and the auditorium and made them one and very intimate, was dispelled. John watched her as she moved about the stage, and wondered why it was that the audience had suddenly become a little fidgetty. His eyes were full of astonishment. He gazed at Mrs. Cream as if he were trying to understand some ineluctable mystery.... He remembered how enthralled he had been by the acting of the girl who had played Juliet. ”

“ In his first year at Trinity, he had been brutally contemptuous of the city and its inhabitants. "They can't even put up the names of the streets so that people can read them," he said to John Marsh soon after he arrived in Dublin. "They're so damned incompetent!" And Marsh had told him to control his Ulster blood. "You're right to be proud of Ulster," he had said, "but you oughtn't to go about talking as if the rest of Ireland were inhabited by fools!"
"I know I oughtn't," Henry replied, "but I can't help it when I see the way these asses are letting Dublin down!" ”

“ She turned on him furiously. "Have you no nature or pride? Where else would Eleanor be so well-tended as at home?..."
"It isn't her home," he objected.
"It is her home. She's a MacDermott now, and anyway the child is. You'd keep her here in this Godforsaken town, surrounded by strangers, and no relation of her own to be near her when her trouble comes!... There's times, John, when I wonder are you a man at all? Your mind is so set on yourself that you're like a lump of stone. ”

“ When he remembered that he had told her of his love for her and had asked her to marry him, and had been told in reply that she wanted a man, not a coward, he felt that he could not bear to return to Ireland again. His mood was mingled misery and gladness. At Boveyhayne, thank heaven, he would be free of Sheila and probably he would never think of her again. Gilbert and Ninian would fill his mind, and of course there would be Mrs. Graham and Mary. Mary! It was strange that he should have let Mary slip out of his thoughts and let Sheila slip into them. ”

“ Crowds and crowds of people with no common, interest save that of speedily reaching a destination. He might stand there for hours, with his back to this wall, and not see the end of that crowd. In Belfast, at twelve o'clock on Saturday morning, the workmen would hurry over the bridge to their homes: a thick, black, unyielding mass of men; but at thirty minutes after twelve, that thick, black, seemingly solid mass would be dissolved into the ordinary groupings of a provincial city and there would be no sign of it. This London crowd would never dissolve. ”