The Foolish Lovers | Page 7

in some way that Matthew should retire from the profession through ill-health or something, with a wee bit of a pension, mebbe, to take the bad look off the thing... well, I for one would not be against it!"
"You've taken the words out of my mouth," said the minister. "I had it in my mind that if something of the kind could be arranged!..."
"It would be the best for all concerned," said Mr. Cairnduff.
But it had not been possible to arrange something of the kind. The member for the Division was not willing to use his influence with the National Board of Education in Uncle Matthew's behalf. He remembered that Uncle Matthew, during an election, had interrupted him in a recital of his services to the Queen, by a reminder that he was only a militia man, and that rough, irreverent lads, who treated an election as an opportunity for skylarking instead of improving their minds, had followed him about his constituency, jeering at him for "a mileeshy man." Uncle Matthew, too, had publicly declared that Parnell was the greatest man that had ever lived in Ireland and was worth more than the whole of the Ulster Unionist members of parliament put together... which was, of course, very queer doctrine to come from a member of an Ulster Unionist and Protestant family. The member for the Division could not agree with Mr. McCaughan and Mr. Cairnduff that the MacDermotts were a bulwark of the Constitution. Matthew MacDermott's brother... the one who was dead... had been a queer sort of a fellow. Lady Castlederry had complained of him more than once!... No, he was sorry that, much as he should like to oblige Mr. McCaughan and Mr. Cairnduff, he could not consent to use his influence to get the Board to pension Matthew MacDermott....
"That man's a blether!" said the minister, as he and the schoolmaster came away from the member's house. "He won't use his influence with the Board because he hasn't got any. We'd have done better, mebbe, to go to a Nationalist M.P. Those fellows have more power in their wee fingers than our men have in their whole bodies. I wonder, now, could we persuade Matthew to send in his resignation. I can't bear to think of the Board dismissing him!"
Uncle William solved their problem for them. "Don't bother your heads about him," he said when they informed him of their trouble. "I'll provide for him right enough. He'll send in his resignation to you the night, Mr. McCaughan. I'm sure, we're all queer and obliged to you for the trouble you have taken in the matter."
"Ah, not at all, not at all," they said together.
"And I'll not forget it to either of you, you can depend on that. I daresay Matthew'll be a help to me in the shop!..."
Thus it was that, unpensioned and in the shadow of disgrace, Uncle Matthew left the service of the National Board of Education.
John admitted to himself, though he would hardly have admitted it to anyone else, that his Uncle Matthew's behaviour had been very unusual. He could not, when invited to do so, imagine either Mr. McCaughan or Mr. Cairnduff breaking the windows of a haberdasher's shop because of an advertisement which showed, in the opinion of some reputable people, both feeling and enterprise. Nevertheless, he did not consider that Uncle Matthew, on that occasion, had proved himself to be lacking in mental balance. He said that it was a pity that people were not more ready than they were to break windows, and he was inclined to think that Uncle Matthew, instead of being forcibly retired from the school, ought to have been promoted to a better position.
"If you go on talking that way," his mother said to him, "people'll think you're demented mad!"
"I wouldn't change my Uncle Matthew for the whole world," John stoutly replied.
"No one's asking you to change him," Mrs. MacDermott retorted. "All we're asking you to do, is not to go about imitating him with his romantic talk!"

IV
John did not wish to imitate his Uncle Matthew ... he did not wish to imitate anyone ... for, although he could not discover that "quareness" in him which other people professed to discover, yet when he saw how inactive Uncle Matthew was, how dependent he was on Uncle William and, to a less extent, on Mrs. MacDermott, and how he seemed to shrink from things in life, which, when he read about them in books, enthralled him, John felt that if he were to model his behaviour on that of anyone else, it must not be on the behaviour of Uncle Matthew. Uncle William had a quick, decided manner ... he knew exactly what he wanted and often contrived to get what he wanted. John remembered that