The Foolish Lovers Part 23

"I want to speak to you a minute, John!" he said thickly.

The smell of drink drifted from him.

"What about?" John answered sourly.

"Come over here 'til a quiet place," Willie said, still holding John's arm, and drawing him to a seat at the other end of the station. "Sit here 'til the gates is open," he added, as he sat down.

"Is there anything up?" John demanded.

"Aye," Willie replied in a bewildered voice. "John, man, I'm in terrible trouble!"

"Oh!"

"Sore disgrace, John. I don't know what my da and ma'll say to me at all when they hear about it. Such a thing!..."

"Well, what is it?"

"Do you know a wee girl called Jennie Roak?" John shook his head. "Her aunt lives in Ballyards ... Mrs. Cleeland!..."

"Oh, yes. Is that her aunt?"

"Aye. Well, me an' her has been going out together for a wee while past, and she says now she's goin' to have a child!"

John burst into laughter.

"What the h.e.l.l are you laughing at?" Willie demanded angrily.

"I was thinking it doesn't matter whether it's one girl or a dozen you're after, you'll get into bother just the same!"

"Aye, but what am I to do, John? I'll have to tell the oul' fella, and he'll be raging mad when he hears about it. He's terrible against that sort of thing, and dear knows I'm an awful one for slipping into trouble. I can not keep away from girls, John, and that's the G.o.d's truth of it. And I've been brought up as respectable as anybody.

Jennie's in an awful state about it!"

"I daresay," said John.

"She says I'll have to marry her over the head of it, but sure I don't want to get married at all ... not yet, anyway. I don't know what to do. I'll have to tell the oul' lad and he'll have me scalded with his tongue. I suppose I'll have to marry her. It's a quare thing a fella can't go out with a girl without getting into bother. I wish to my goodness I had as much control over myself as you have!"

"Control!" said John.

"Aye. You'll never get into no bother!"

"Huh!" said John.

The barriers were opened, and Willie and John pa.s.sed through on to the platform, and presently seated themselves in a carriage.

"This'll be a lesson to me," said Willie, lying back against the cushions of the carriage. "Not to be running after so many girls in future!"

John did not make any answer to him. He let his thoughts wander out of the carriage. He had loved Maggie Carmichael deeply, and she had served him badly; and Willie Logan, who treated girls in a light fashion, was complaining now because one girl had loved him too well. And that was your love for you! That was the high romantical thing of which Uncle Matthew had so often spoken and dreamed...

He came out of his thoughts suddenly, for Willie Logan was shaking him.

There was a glint in Willie Logan's eye!...

"I say, John," he said, "come on into the next carriage! There's two quare nice wee girls just got in!"

"No," said John.

"Ah, come on," Willie coaxed.

"No," John almost shouted.

"Well, stay behind then. I'll have the two to myself," Willie exclaimed, climbing out of the carriage as he spoke.

"That lad deserves all he gets," John thought.

V

His mother called to him as he pa.s.sed through the kitchen on his way to the attic where his Uncle Matthew's books were stored.

"Your Uncle William's wanting a talk with you," she said. "Mr.

McGonigal's been here about the will!"

"I'll be down in a wee while," John replied as he climbed the stairs.

He wished to sit in some quiet place until he had composed his mind which was still disturbed. He had hoped to have the railway compartment to himself after Willie Logan had left it, but two drovers had hurriedly entered it as the train was moving out of the station, and their noisy half-drunken talk had prevented him from thinking with composure. Willie Logan's loud laughter, accompanied by giggles and the sound of scuffling, penetrated from the next compartment....

In the attic, there would be quietness.

He entered the room and stood among the disordered piles of books that lay about the floor. A mania for rearrangement had seized hold of him one day, but he had done no more than take the books from their shelves and leave them in confused heaps. He had promised that he would make the attic tidy again, when his mother complained of the room's disarray. His mind would become quiet, perhaps, if he were to spend a little time now in replacing the books on the shelves in the order in which he wished them to be. He sat down on the floor and contemplated them. Most of these volumes, new and old, were concerned with the love of men for women. It seemed impossible to escape from the knowledge of this pa.s.sion in any book that one might read. Love made intrusions even into the history books, and b.l.o.o.d.y wars had been fought and many men had been slain because of a woman's beauty or to gratify her whim. Even in the Bible!...

He remembered that Uncle Matthew had told him that the Song of Solomon was a real love song or series of songs, and not, as the headlines to the chapters insisted, an allegorical description of Christ's love for the Church. There was a Bible lying near to his hand, and he picked it up and turned the pages until he reached the Song of Songs which is called Solomon's, and he hurriedly read through it as if he were searching for sentences.

_I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies. Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners!_

So the woman sang. Then the man, less abstract than the woman, sang in his turn.

_How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O Prince's daughter: the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanted not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two b.r.e.a.s.t.s are like two young roes that are twins!..._

John glanced at the headline to this song. "It's a queer thing to call that 'a further description of the church's graces'," he said to himself, and then his eye searched through the verses of the song until he reached the line,

_How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!_...

"I daresay," he murmured to himself. "I daresay! But there's a terrible lot of misery in it, too!"

He read the whole of the last song.

_Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death: jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it_....

"That's true," he said. "That's very true! I love her just the same, for all she's treated me so bad! _Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it._ Oh, I wish to my G.o.d I could forget things as easy as Willie Logan forgets them!"