The Foolish Lovers Part 38

Cream. I want you to understand that I'm not that sort. I come from Ballyards, and we don't do things like that there. Forby, I'm not in love with you. I'm in love with somebody else ... a nice girl, not a married woman ... and I've no time to think of anybody else but her.

I'm very busy the day, Mrs. Cream!..."

"Is she an Irish girl?"

"I don't know what nationality she is. I've not managed to get speaking to her yet. It'll be an advantage if she is Irish, but I'll overlook it if she isn't. I'm terrible busy, Mrs. Cream!"

She stood before him in an indecisive att.i.tude.... "You're really a fool," she said, turning away. "I thought you were clever, but you're simply thick-headed!..."

"Because I won't start making love to you, I suppose?"

"Oh, no, Mr. MacDermott. You're thick apart from that. You're so thick that you'll never know how thick you are. I can't think why I wasted a minute's thought on you!..."

John sat down at his desk again. "_Sticks an' stones'll break my bones, but names'll never hurt me_," he quoted at her. "_When you're dead and in your grave, you'll suffer for what you called me!_"

She came behind him and put her arms tightly round his neck and forced his head back so that she could conveniently kiss him.

"There!" she exclaimed, hurrying from the room, "I've kissed you anyhow!"

He leaped up and ran to the top of the stairs and leant over the banisters.

"If you do that again," he shouted at her, "I'll give you in charge!"

"Bogie-bogie!" she mocked.

Soon after that time, the Creams had gone on tour again, and John, with a vague promise to Mr. Cream that he would try and do a play for him, let Mrs. Cream slip out of his mind altogether. She had not attempted to make love to him again, and her att.i.tude towards him became more natural, almost, he thought, more friendly. She appeared to bear him no malice, and her friendliness caused him to shed some of his antagonism to her. When they bade goodbye to Hinde and John, she turned to her husband as they were leaving, and said, "I kissed him one morning, and do you know what he did?"

"No," her husband answered.

"He said he'd give me in charge if I tried to do it again," she exclaimed, laughing as she spoke.

"Goo' Lor'!" said Cream. "That's the first time that's ever been said to you, Dolly!" He turned to John. "You're a funny sort of a chap, you are! Fancy not letting Dolly kiss you. Goo' Lor'!"

II

He had tried hard to see Eleanor Moore again, but without success.

Every day for a fortnight he went to lunch in the tea-shop where he had first seen her, and in the evening he would hang about the entrance to the offices where she was employed; but he did not see her either there or in the tea-shop, and when a fortnight of disappointment had gone by, he concluded that he would never see her again. He imagined that she was ill, that she had left London, that she had obtained work elsewhere, that he had frightened her ... for he remembered her startled look when she hurried from him into the Tube lift ... and finally and crus.h.i.+ngly that she had married someone else. In the mood of bitterness that followed this devastating thought, he planned a tragedy, and in the evenings, when Hinde was engaged for his paper, he worked at it. But the bitterness which he put into it failed to relieve him of any of the bitterness that was in his own mind. He felt doubly betrayed by Eleanor Moore because he had had so little encouragement from her. It hurt him to think that he had only succeeded in alarming her. Maggie Carmichael had responded instantly when he spoke to her and had accepted his embraces and his kisses as amiably as she had accepted his chocolates he had bought for her; but this girl with the tender blue eyes that changed their expression so frequently, had made no response to his offer of affection, had run away from it. If only she had listened to him! He was certain that he could have persuaded her to "go out" with him. He had only to tell her that he loved her, and she would realise that a man who could fall in love with her so immediately as he had done must be acceptable!... The affair with Maggie Carmichael had considerably dashed his belief in romantic love, but he told himself now that it would be ridiculous to condemn his Uncle Matthew's ideals because one girl had fallen short of them. If Maggie Carmichael had behaved badly, that was not a sign that Eleanor Moore would also behave badly. Besides, Eleanor was different from Maggie. There was no comparison between the two girls. After all, he had not really cared for Maggie: he had only fancied that he cared for her. But there was no fancying or imagination about his love for Eleanor, and if he had the good fortune to meet her again, he would not let anything prevent him from telling her plump and plain that he wanted to marry her. Whenever he left the house, he looked about, no matter where he went, in the hope that he might see her.

III

Hinde urged him to do journalism and advised him to make a study of the London newspapers so that he might discover which of them he could most happily work for. "You could do a few articles, perhaps, and then it wouldn't matter whether you agreed with the paper or not, but I'd advise you to try and get a job on one paper for a while. You'll learn a lot from journalism if you don't stay at it too long. It'll be a good while yet before you can make a living at writing books, and you'll want something to keep you going until you can. Journalism's as good as anything, and in some ways, it's a lot better than most things, and let me tell you, Mac, anybody can make a decent living out of newspapers if he only takes the trouble to earn it. Half the fellows in Fleet Street treat journalism as if it were a religious vocation, and they lie about in pubs all day waiting for the Holy Ghost to come down and inspire them with a scoop!"

John studied the London newspapers, as Hinde advised him, but he did not feel drawn towards them. He considered that the morning papers were very inferior to the _Northern Whig_, and he was certain that the _North Down Herald_ was far more interesting than the _Times_. The London evening papers, he said to Hinde, gave less value for a half-penny than the _Belfast Evening Telegraph_, and he complained that there was nothing to read in them.

"You'll have to start a paper yourself, Mac," said Hinde. "All the best papers were started by men who couldn't find anything to read in other papers. It would be a grand notion now to set up a paper for Ulstermen who can't find anything in London that's fit to read. By the Hokey O, that would be a grand notion. We could call the paper _To h.e.l.l With the Pope or No Surrender!_..."

"Ah, quit your codding," John interrupted. "You know rightly what's wrong with these London papers. They're not telling the truth!"

"And do you think the _Whig_ and the _Telegraph_ are?" Hinde demanded.

"Well, it's what _we_ call the truth anyway," John stoutly retorted.

Hinde slapped him on the back. "That's right," he said. "Ulster against the whole civilised world!"

"If I was to take a job on one of these papers," John continued, "I'd insist on telling the truth to the people!"

"You would, would you? And do you know what 'ud happen to you? The people 'ud cut your head off at the end of a fortnight."

"I wouldn't let them."

Hinde sat in silence for a few minutes. Then he leant forward and tapped John on the shoulder, "The editor of the _Daily Sensation_ is a Tyrone man," he said. "He comes from Cookstown!..."

"I never was in it," John murmured.

"Mebbe not, but it exists all the same. Go up the morrow evening to his office and tell him you want a job on his paper so's you can start telling everybody the truth. And see what happens to you."

John answered angrily. "You think you're having me on," he said, "but you're queerly mistaken. I will go, and we'll see what happens!"

"That's what I'm bidding you do," Hinde continued. "And listen! There's a couple I know, called Haverstock, living out at Hampstead. They have discussions every month at their house on some subject or other, and there's to be one next Wednesday. Will you come with me if I go to it?"

John nodded his head.

"Good! The Haverstocks'll be glad to welcome you as you're a friend of mine, but it's not them I'm wanting you to see. It's the crowd they get round them. All the cranks and oddities and solemn mugs of London seem to go to that house one time or another, and I'd just like you to have a look at some of them. The minute they find out you're Irish, they'll plaster you with praise. They'll expect you to talk like a clown, one minute, and weep bitter tears over England's tyranny the next. They're all English, most of them, and they'll tell you that England is the worst country in the world, and that Ireland would be the greatest if it weren't for the fact that some piffling Balkan State is greater. And they'll ram Truth down your throat till you're sick of it. You've only to bleat about Ireland's woes to them, and call yourself a member of a subject race, and they'll be all over you before you know where you are. There's only one other man has a better chance of s.h.i.+ning in their society than an Irishman, and that's an Armenian."

"Well, that's great credit to them," John, replied. "I must say it makes me think well of the Englis.h.!.+..."

"Don't do that. Never acknowledge to an Englishman that you think well of him. He'll think little of you if you do. Tell him he's a fool, that he's muddle-headed, that he's a tyrant, that he's a materialist and a compromiser and a hypocrite, and he'll pay you well for saying it. But if you tell the truth and say he's the decent fellow he is, he'll land you in the workhouse!..."

IV

It had not been easy to interview the editor of the _Daily Sensation_. A deprecating commissionaire, eyeing him suspiciously, had cross-examined him in the entrance hall of the newspaper office, and then had compelled him to fill in a form with particulars of himself ... his name and his address ... and of his business. "I suppose," John said sarcastically to the commissionaire, "you don't want me to swear an affidavit about it?"

The commissionaire regarded him contemptuously, but did not reply to the sarcasm.

After a lengthy wait and much whistling and talking through rubber speaking-tubes, John was conducted to a lift, given into the charge of a small boy in uniform who treated him as a nuisance, and taken to the office of the editor. Here he had to wait in the society of the editor's secretary for another lengthy period. He had almost resolved to come away from the office without seeing the editor, when a bell rang and the secretary rising from her desk, bade him to follow her. He was led into an inner room where he saw a man seated at a large desk.

The editor glared at him for a moment or two as if he were accusing him of an attempt to commit a fraud. Then he said "Sit down" and began to speak on the telephone. John glanced interestedly about him. There was a portrait of Napoleon ... _The Last Phase_ ... on one wall, and, on the wall opposite to it, a portrait of the proprietor of the _Daily Sensation_ in what might fairly be described as the first phase. On the editor's desk was a framed card bearing the legend: SAY IT QUICK....

The telephonic conversation ended, and Mr. Clotworthy ... the editor ... put down the receiver and turned to John, frowning heavily at him. "Well?" he said so shortly that the word was almost unintelligible.

"I can give you two minutes," he added, pulling out his watch and placing it on the desk.

"That'll be enough," John, replied. "I want a job on this paper!"

"Everybody wants a job on this paper. The people who are most anxious to get on our staff are the people who are never tired of running us down!..."