St. John G. Ervine

“ 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?" ”

“ 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 ... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you were to say to an Ulster man, "Who are the proudest people in Ireland?" he would first of all stare at you as if he had difficulty in believing that any intelligent person could ask a question with so obvious an answer, and then he would reply, "Why, the Ulster people, of course!" And if you were to say to a Ballyards man, "Who are the proudest people in Ulster?" ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Uncle William continued, "but it's the God's own truth, as sure as I'm sitting here. And whenever I pass 'The Royal,' I always think of Romeo and Juliet, and I see that poor boy and girl stretched dead, and them ought to have been happy together and having fine, strong childher!"
"I wonder how he is now. Do you think I should go up now?" John said.
"Wait 'til the doctor comes down. I have great faith in Dr. Dobbs. He never humbugs you, that man, but tells you plump and plain what's wrong with you!" ”

“ 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!..." ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Some women would make fun of God Almighty, and think no harm of it. You'll soon know whether she's in love with you or not, my son!"
"How will I, Uncle Matthew?"
"When she begins to treat you as if you were her property. That's a sure and certain sign. The minute a woman looks at a man as much as to say, 'That fellow belongs to me,' she's in love with him, as sure as death. Anyway, she's going to marry him! Boys-a-boys, John, but you're the lucky lad with all your youth and health in front of you, and you setting out in the world. ”

“ My dear Mac, if you really want to know what dishonesty in journalism is, worm yourself into the secrets of the highbrow Press and the noble poets. I'm a Yellow Journalist and a failure, but by heaven, I'm an honest Yellow Journalist and an honest failure. I'm not an indifferent journalist pretending to be a poet!..."
"I don't see what all this has got to do with me," John said.
"No," Hinde replied in a quieter tone. "No, I suppose it hasn't anything to do with you. You're quite right. I'm in a bad temper to-night. I'm glad you're engaged to that girl. She looks a sensible sort of woman. ”

“ There's only one person in the world who doesn't realise that Mrs. Cream can't act and never will be able to act ... and that's poor old Cream himself. He's as good a comedian as there is in the world—that little man: the essence of Cockney wit; and he does not know how good he is. He thinks that she is much better than he can ever hope to be, and she thinks so, too; but if it were not for him, MacDermott, she wouldn't get thirty shillings a week in a penny gaff!"
"They've asked me to write a play for them," John said. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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!... ”

“ John said vigorously. "It's a terrible tiring job, teaching children, and some of them are that stupid you feel provoked enough to slap the hands off them! I'm nearly afraid of myself sometimes with the stupid ones, for fear I'd lose my temper with them and hurt them hard. Mr. Cairnduff says no one should be a teacher that has a bad temper, and dear knows, Uncle William, I've a fearful temper! He's a quare wise man, Mr. Cairnduff: he doesn't let any of his monitors use the cane, for he says it's an awful temptation to be cruel, especially if you're young and impatient the way I am!" ”

“ Well, I'm not going back to London, John. I'm simply not going back. You can't expect me to go from this house where I'm happy to that little poky flat in Hampstead and sit there night after night while you are at the office!..."
"Other women do it, don't they?"
"Other women can do what they like. If they're content to live like that, they can, but I'm not content. I don't like that life, and I won't live it. You must make up your mind to that. It isn't necessary for you to go back to the Sensation office—you can stay here and help Uncle William!"
"Become a grocer!..." ”

“ Uncle William asked.
"Aye! For a while anyway," John answered, "I'll go to London!..."
"You'll not go to no London," Mrs. MacDermott retorted, "and your Uncle, Matthew lying on his deathbed!..."
"I'm not proposing to go this minute, ma!..."
"You'll not go at all," she insisted.
"I will!"
"You will not, I tell you. What would a lump of a lad like you do in a place of that sort, where there's temptation and sin at every corner! Doesn't everyone know that the Devil's roaming up and down the streets of London day and night, luring young men to their ruin? ”

“ Remember that, Eleanor! If you don't turn up, it'll be hard for you to sit in comfort and you thinking of me waiting for you. You'll never have the heart to refuse me, will you? We can have our tea together, and then go for a walk or a ride on a 'bus till dinner-time, and then, if you like, after we've had something to eat, we'll go to a theatre. Don't disappoint me, for I'm terribly in love with you. Yours only, John MacDermott. P. S. Don't be any later than you can help. I hate waiting about for people. ”

“ John pleaded.
"Artistically!" Cream exclaimed in mocking tones to Hinde. "I ask you! Artistically! What's Art? Pleasing people. That's what Art is!"
"Oh, no," John protested. "Pleasing yourself, perhaps!..."
"And aren't you most pleased when you feel that people are pleased with you, I ask you! What do you publish books for if you only want to please yourself? Why don't you keep your great thoughts to yourself if you don't want to please anybody else? Yah-r-r, this Art talk makes me feel sick. You'd rather sell two thousand copies of a book than two hundred, wouldn't you? ”

“ Clotworthy want me?"
Hinde told him.
"I'll write to my mother at once," said John, "and tell her he's sent for me. That'll impress her. Shell be greatly taken, with the notion that he sent for me instead of me running after him!..."
"The great fault in an Ulsterman," said Hinde, "is his silly pride that won't let him acknowledge his mistake when he's made one. You'll get into a lot of bother, John MacDermott, if you go about the world letting on you've done right when you've done wrong, and pretending a mistake is not a mistake!" ”

“ One minute you're advising me to go on a paper, and the next minute you're telling me a journalist isn't a man!..."
"When you know more of us," Hinde interrupted, "you'll know that all journalists belittle journalism. It's the one consolation that's left to them. Unless you're prepared to associate only with journalists, Mac, you'd much better keep out of Fleet Street. Newspaper men always feel like fish out of water when they're in the company of other men. They must be near the newspaper atmosphere ... they can't breathe without the stink of ink in their nostrils!..." ”