BY
ST. JOHN G. ERVINE
New York
1920
TO MY MOTHER
who asked me to write a story without any "Bad words" in it;
and
TO MRS. J. O. HANNAY
who asked me to write a story without any "Sex" in it.
Why, 'tis an office of discovery, love!
The Merchant of Venice.
Love unpaid does soon disband.
ANDREW MARVELL
I
If you were to say to an Ulster man, "Who are the proudest people inIreland?" he would first of all stare at you as if he had difficulty inbelieving that any intelligent person could ask a question with soobvious an answer, and then he would reply, "Why, the Ulster people, ofcourse!" And if you were to say to a Ballyards man, "Who are theproudest people in Ulster?" he would reply ... if he deigned to replyat all ... "A child would know that! The Ballyards people, of course!"
It is difficult for anyone who is not a native of the town, tounderstand why the inhabitants of Ballyards should possess so great apride in their birthplace. It is not a large town ... it is not eventhe largest town in the county ... nor has it any notable features todistinguish it from a dozen other towns of similar size in that part ofIreland. Millreagh, although it is now a poor, scattered sort of place,was once of great importance: for the mail-boats sailed from itsharbour to Port Michael until the steamship owners agreed that PortMichael was too much exposed to the severities of rough weather, andchose another harbour elsewhere. Millreagh mourns over its lost glory,attributable in no way to the fault of Millreagh, but entirely to theinscrutable design of Providence which arranged that Port Michael, andnot Kirkmull, should lie on the opposite side of the Irish Sea; andevery Sunday morning, after church, and sometimes on Sunday afternoon,the people walk along the breakwater to the lighthouse and remind eachother of the days when their town was of consequence. "We spent ahundred and fifty thousand pounds on our harbour," they say to eachother, "and then the Scotch went and did the like of that!"—the likeof that being their stupidity in living in an exposed situation.Millreagh does not admit that it has suffered any more than a temporarydiminishment of its greatness, and it makes optimistic and boastfulprophecies of the fortune and repute that will come to it when theengineers make a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland. Sometimes anarticle on the Channel Tunnel will appear in the Newsletter orthe Whig, and for weeks afterwards Millreagh lives in a fever ofexpectancy; for whatever else may be said about the Tunnel, this iscertain to be said of it, that it will start, in Ireland, fromMillreagh. On that brilliant hope, Millreagh, tightening its belt,lives in a fair degree of happiness, eking out its present poverty byfishing and by letting lodgings in the summer.
Pickie, too, has much reputation, more, perhaps, than Millreagh, for itis a popular holiday town and was once described in the EveningTelegraph as "the Blackpool of Ireland." This description, althoughit was apt enough, offended the more pretentious people in Pickie whowere only mollified when the innocent reporter, in a later article,altered the description to, "the Brighton of Ireland." With consummateunderstanding of human character, he added, remembering the Yacht Club,that perhaps the most accurate description of Pickie would be "theCowes of Ireland." In this way, the reporter, who subsequently became am