Chapter V

His mother called to him as he passed 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 passion in any book that one might read. Love made intrusions even into the history books, and bloody 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 breasts 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 God I could forget things as easy as Willie Logan forgets them!"

He closed the Bible and put it down on the floor beside him, and sat with his hands clutching hold of his ankles. He would have to go away from Ballyards. He would not be able to rest contentedly near Belfast where Maggie lived ... with her peeler! He must go away from home, and the further away he went, the better it would be. Then he might forget about her. Perhaps, after all, it was not true that "_many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it_." Poets had a terrible habit of exaggerating things, and perhaps he would forget his love for Maggie in some distant place!...

There was a copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ perched on top of a pile of books. "That was the cause of all my trouble," he said, pushing it so that it fell off the pile on to the floor at his feet. He picked it up and opened it, and as he did so, his eyes rested on Mercutio's speech, _If love be rough with you, be rough with love_.

Comfort instantly came into his mind.

"I will," he said, rising from the floor.