By Lady Gregory

Irish Folk-History Plays

First Series: The Tragedies

Grania. Kincora. Dervorgilla

Second Series: The Tragic Comedies

The Canavans. The White Cockade. The Deliverer

New Comedies

The Bogie Men. The Full Moon. Coats. Damer’s Gold. McDonough’s Wife

Our Irish Theatre

A Chapter of Autobiography

Seven Short Plays

Spreading the News. Hyacinth Halvey. The Rising of the Moon. The Jackdaw. The Workhouse Ward. The Travelling Man. The Gaol Gate

The Golden Apple

A Kiltartan Play for Children

By
Lady Gregory

G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1916

These plays have been copyrighted and published simultaneously in the United States and Great Britain.

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages.

All acting rights, both professional and amateur, are reserved in the United States, Great Britain, and all countries of the Copyright Union, by the author. Performances forbidden and right of presentation reserved.

Application for the right of performing these plays or reading them in public should be made to Samuel French, 28 West 38th St., New York City, or 26 South Hampton St., Strand, London.

Second Impression

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

[Pg 1]

[Pg 2]

Persons
Bartley Fallon.
Mrs. Fallon.
Jack Smith.
Shawn Early.
Tim Casey.
James Ryan.
Mrs. Tarpey.
Mrs. Tully.
A Policeman (Jo Muldoon).
A Removable Magistrate.

[Pg 3]

SPREADING THE NEWS

Scene: The outskirts of a Fair. An Apple Stall, Mrs. Tarpey sitting at it. Magistrate and Policeman enter.

Magistrate: So that is the Fair Green. Cattle and sheep and mud. No system. What a repulsive sight!

Policeman: That is so, indeed.

Magistrate: I suppose there is a good deal of disorder in this place?

Policeman: There is.

Magistrate: Common assault?

Policeman: It’s common enough.

Magistrate: Agrarian crime, no doubt?

Policeman: That is so.

Magistrate: Boycotting? Maiming of cattle? Firing into houses?

Policeman: There was one time, and there might be again.

Magistrate: That is bad. Does it go any farther than that?

Policeman: Far enough, indeed.[Pg 4]

Magistrate: Homicide, then! This district has been shamefully neglected! I will change all that. When I was in the Andaman Islands, my system never failed. Yes, yes, I will change all that. What has that woman on her stall?

Policeman: Apples mostly—and sweets.

Magistrate: Just see if there are any unlicensed goods underneath—spirits or the like. We had evasions of the salt tax in the Andaman Islands.

Policeman: (Sniffing cautiously and upsetting a heap of apples.) I see no spirits here—or salt.

Magistrate: (To Mrs. Tarpey.) Do you know this town well, my good woman?

Mrs. Tarpey: (Holding out some apples.) A penny the half-dozen, your honour.

Policeman: (Shouting.) The gentleman is asking do you know the town! He’s the new magistrate!

Mrs. Tarpey: (Rising and ducking.) Do I know the town? I do, to be sure.

Magistrate: (Shouting.) What is its chief business?

Mrs. Tarpey: Business, is it? What business would the people here have but to be minding one another’s business?

Magistrate: I mean what trade have they?

Mrs. Tarpey: Not a trade. No trade at all but to be talking.[Pg 5]

Magistrate: I shall learn nothing here.

(James Ryan comes in, pipe in mouth. Seeing Magistrate he retreats quickly, taking pipe from mouth.)

Magistrate: The smoke from that man’s pipe had a greenish look; he may be growing unlicensed tobacco at home. I wish I had brought my telescope to this district. Come to the post-office, I will telegraph for it. I found it very useful in the Andaman Islands.

(Magistrate and Policeman go out left.)

Mrs. Tarpey: Bad luck to Jo Muldoon, knocking my apples this way and that way. (Begins arranging them.) Showing off he was to the new magistrate.

(Enter Bartley Fallon and Mrs. Fallon.)

Bartley: Indeed it’s a poor country and a scarce country to be living in. But I’m thinking if I went to America it’s long ago the day I’d be dead!

Mrs. Fallon: So you might, indeed.

(She puts her basket on a barrel and begins putting parcels in it, taking them from under her cloak.)

Bartley: And it’s a great expense for a poor man to be buried in America.

Mrs. Fallon: Never fear, Bartley Fallon, but I’ll give you a good burying the day you’ll die.

Bartley: Maybe it’s yourself will be buried in[Pg 6] the graveyard of Cloonmara before me, Mary Fallon, and I myself that will be dying unbeknownst some night, and no one a-near me. And the cat itself may be gone straying through the country, and the mice squealing over the quilt.

Mrs. Fallon: Leave off talking of dying. It might be twenty years you’ll be living yet.

Bartley: (With a deep sigh.) I’m thinking if I’ll be living at the end of twenty years, it’s a very old man I’ll be then!

Mrs. Tarpey: (Turns and sees them.) Good morrow, Bartley Fallon; good morrow, Mrs. Fallon. Well, Bartley, you’ll find no cause for complaining to-day; they are all saying it was a good fair.

Bartley: (Raising his voice.) It was not a good fair, Mrs. Tarpey. It was a scattered sort of a fair. If we didn’t expect more, we got less. That’s the way with me always; whatever I have to sell goes down and whatever I have to buy goes up. If there’s ever any misfortune coming to this world, it’s on myself it pitches, like a flock of crows on seed potatoes.

Mrs. Fallon: Leave off talking of misfortunes, and listen to Jack Smith that is coming the way, and he singing.

(Voice of Jack Smith heard singing:)

(Jack Smith comes in; he is a red-haired man, and is carrying a hayfork.)

Mrs. Tarpey: That should be a good song if I had my hearing.

Mrs. Fallon: (Shouting.) It’s “The Red-haired Man’s Wife.”

Mrs. Tarpey: I know it well. That’s the song that has a skin on it!

(She turns her back to them and goes on arranging her apples.)

Mrs. Fallon: Where’s herself, Jack Smith?

Jack Smith: She was delayed with her washing; bleaching the clothes on the hedge she is, and she daren’t leave them, with all the tinkers that do be passing to the fair. It isn’t to the fair I came myself, but up to the Five Acre Meadow I’m going, where I have a contract for the hay. We’ll get a share of it into tramps to-day. (He lays down hayfork and lights his pipe.)

Bartley: You will not get it into tramps to-day. The rain will be down on it by evening, and on myself too. It’s seldom I ever started on a journey but the rain would come down on me before I’d find any place of shelter.

[Pg 8]Jack Smith: If it didn’t itself, Bartley, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, the way you’d not be without some cause of complaining.

(A voice heard, “Go on, now, go on out o’ that. Go on I say.”)

Jack Smith: Look at that young mare of Pat Ryan’s that is backing into Shaughnessy’s bullocks with the dint of the crowd! Don’t be daunted, Pat, I’ll give you a hand with her.

(He goes out, leaving his hayfork.)

Mrs. Fallon: It’s time for ourselves to be going home. I have all I bought put in the basket. Look at there, Jack Smith’s hayfork he left after him! He’ll be wanting it. (Calls.) Jack Smith! Jack Smith!—He’s gone through the crowd—hurry after him, Bartley, he’ll be wanting it.

Bartley: I’ll do that. This is no safe place to be leaving it. (He takes up fork awkwardly and upsets the basket.) Look at that now! If there is any basket in the fair upset, it must be our own basket! (He goes out to right.)

Mrs. Fallon: Get out of that! It is your own fault, it is. Talk of misfortunes and misfortunes will come. Glory be! Look at my new egg-cups rolling in every part—and my two pound of sugar with the paper broke——

Mrs. Tarpey: (Turning from stall.) God help us, Mrs. Fallon, what happened to your basket?[Pg 9]

Mrs. Fallon: It’s himself that knocked it down, bad manners to him. (Putting things up.) My grand sugar that’s destroyed, and he’ll not drink his tea without it. I had best go back to the shop for more, much good may it do him!

(Enter Tim Casey.)

Tim Casey: Where is Bartley Fallon, Mrs. Fallon? I want a word with him before he’ll leave the fair. I was afraid he might have gone home by this, for he’s a temperate man.

Mrs. Fallon: I wish he did go home! It’d be best for me if he went home straight from the fair green, or if he never came with me at all! Where is he, is it? He’s gone up the road (jerks elbow) following Jack Smith with a hayfork.

(She goes out to left.)

Tim Casey: Following Jack Smith with a hayfork! Did ever any one hear the like of that. (Shouts.) Did you hear that news, Mrs. Tarpey?

Mrs. Tarpey: I heard no news at all.

Tim Casey: Some dispute I suppose it was that rose between Jack Smith and Bartley Fallon, and it seems Jack made off, and Bartley is following him with a hayfork!

Mrs. Tarpey: Is he now? Well, that was quick work! It’s not ten minutes since the two of them were here, Bartley going home and Jack going to the Five Acre Meadow; and I had my apples to settle up, that Jo Muldoon of the police had[Pg 10] scattered, and when I looked round again Jack Smith was gone, and Bartley Fallon was gone, and Mrs. Fallon’s basket upset, and all in it strewed upon the ground—the tea here—the two pound of sugar there—the egg-cups there—Look, now, what a great hardship the deafness puts upon me, that I didn’t hear the commencement of the fight! Wait till I tell James Ryan that I see below; he is a neighbour of Bartley’s, it would be a pity if he wouldn’t hear the news!

(She goes out. Enter Shawn Early and Mrs. Tully.)

Tim Casey: Listen, Shawn Early! Listen, Mrs. Tully, to the news! Jack Smith and Bartley Fallon had a falling out, and Jack knocked Mrs. Fallon’s basket into the road, and Bartley made an attack on him with a hayfork, and away with Jack, and Bartley after him. Look at the sugar here yet on the road!

Shawn Early: Do you tell me so? Well, that’s a queer thing, and Bartley Fallon so quiet a man!

Mrs. Tully: I wouldn’t wonder at all. I would never think well of a man that would have that sort of a mouldering look. It’s likely he has overtaken Jack by this.

(Enter James Ryan and Mrs. Tarpey.)

James Ryan: That is great news Mrs. Tarpey was telling me! I suppose that’s what brought[Pg 11] the police and the magistrate up this way. I was wondering to see them in it a while ago.

Shawn Early: The police after them? Bartley Fallon must have injured Jack so. They wouldn’t meddle in a fight that was only for show!

Mrs. Tully: Why wouldn’t he injure him? There was many a man killed with no more of a weapon than a hayfork.

James Ryan: Wait till I run north as far as Kelly’s bar to spread the news! (He goes out.)

Tim Casey: I’ll go tell Jack Smith’s first cousin that is standing there south of the church after selling his lambs. (Goes out.)

Mrs. Tully: I’ll go telling a few of the neighbours I see beyond to the west. (Goes out.)

Shawn Early: I’ll give word of it beyond at the east of the green.

(Is going out when Mrs. Tarpey seizes hold of him.)

Mrs. Tarpey: Stop a minute, Shawn Early, and tell me did you see red Jack Smith’s wife, Kitty Keary, in any place?

Shawn Early: I did. At her own house she was, drying clothes on the hedge as I passed.

Mrs. Tarpey: What did you say she was doing?

Shawn Early: (Breaking away.) Laying out a sheet on the hedge. (He goes.)

Mrs. Tarpey: Laying out a sheet for the dead![Pg 12] The Lord have mercy on us! Jack Smith dead, and his wife laying out a sheet for his burying! (Calls out.) Why didn’t you tell me that before, Shawn Early? Isn’t the deafness the great hardship? Half the world might be dead without me knowing of it or getting word of it at all! (She sits down and rocks herself.) O my poor Jack Smith! To be going to his work so nice and so hearty, and to be left stretched on the ground in the full light of the day!

(Enter Tim Casey.)

Tim Casey: What is it, Mrs. Tarpey? What happened since?

Mrs. Tarpey: O my poor Jack Smith!

Tim Casey: Did Bartley overtake him?

Mrs. Tarpey: O the poor man!

Tim Casey: Is it killed he is?

Mrs. Tarpey: Stretched in the Five Acre Meadow!

Tim Casey: The Lord have mercy on us! Is that a fact?

Mrs. Tarpey: Without the rites of the Church or a ha’porth!

Tim Casey: Who was telling you?

Mrs. Tarpey: And the wife laying out a sheet for his corpse. (Sits up and wipes her eyes.) I suppose they’ll wake him the same as another?

(Enter Mrs. Tully, Shawn Early, and James Ryan.)[Pg 13]

Mrs. Tully: There is great talk about this work in every quarter of the fair.

Mrs. Tarpey: Ochone! cold and dead. And myself maybe the last he was speaking to!

James Ryan: The Lord save us! Is it dead he is?

Tim Casey: Dead surely, and the wife getting provision for the wake.

Shawn Early: Well, now, hadn’t Bartley Fallon great venom in him?

Mrs. Tully: You may be sure he had some cause. Why would he have made an end of him if he had not? (To Mrs. Tarpey, raising her voice.) What was it rose the dispute at all, Mrs. Tarpey?

Mrs. Tarpey: Not a one of me knows. The last I saw of them, Jack Smith was standing there, and Bartley Fallon was standing there, quiet and easy, and he listening to “The Red-haired Man’s Wife.”

Mrs. Tully: Do you hear that, Tim Casey? Do you hear that, Shawn Early and James Ryan? Bartley Fallon was here this morning listening to red Jack Smith’s wife, Kitty Keary that was! Listening to her and whispering with her! It was she started the fight so!

Shawn Early: She must have followed him from her own house. It is likely some person roused him.

Tim Casey: I never knew, before, Bartley Fallon was great with Jack Smith’s wife.

[Pg 14] Mrs. Tully: How would you know it? Sure it’s not in the streets they would be calling it. If Mrs. Fallon didn’t know of it, and if I that have the next house to them didn’t know of it, and if Jack Smith himself didn’t know of it, it is not likely you would know of it, Tim Casey.

Shawn Early: Let Bartley Fallon take charge of her from this out so, and let him provide for her. It is little pity she will get from any person in this parish.

Tim Casey: How can he take charge of her? Sure he has a wife of his own. Sure you don’t think he’d turn souper and marry her in a Protestant church?

James Ryan: It would be easy for him to marry her if he brought her to America.

Shawn Early: With or without Kitty Keary, believe me it is for America he’s making at this minute. I saw the new magistrate and Jo Muldoon of the police going into the post-office as I came up—there was hurry on them—you may be sure it was to telegraph they went, the way he’ll be stopped in the docks at Queenstown!

Mrs. Tully: It’s likely Kitty Keary is gone with him, and not minding a sheet or a wake at all. The poor man, to be deserted by his own wife, and the breath hardly gone out yet from his body that is lying bloody in the field!

(Enter Mrs. Fallon.)

[Pg 15] Mrs. Fallon: What is it the whole of the town is talking about? And what is it you yourselves are talking about? Is it about my man Bartley Fallon you are talking? Is it lies about him you are telling, saying that he went killing Jack Smith? My grief that ever he came into this place at all!

James Ryan: Be easy now, Mrs. Fallon. Sure there is no one at all in the whole fair but is sorry for you!

Mrs. Fallon: Sorry for me, is it? Why would any one be sorry for me? Let you be sorry for yourselves, and that there may be shame on you for ever and at the day of judgment, for the words you are saying and the lies you are telling to take away the character of my poor man, and to take the good name off of him, and to drive him to destruction! That is what you are doing!

Shawn Early: Take comfort now, Mrs. Fallon. The police are not so smart as they think. Sure he might give them the slip yet, the same as Lynchehaun.

Mrs. Tully: If they do get him, and if they do put a rope around his neck, there is no one can say he does not deserve it!

Mrs. Fallon: Is that what you are saying, Bridget Tully, and is that what you think? I tell you it’s too much talk you have, making yourself out to be such a great one, and to be running down every respectable person! A rope, is it?[Pg 16] It isn’t much of a rope was needed to tie up your own furniture the day you came into Martin Tully’s house, and you never bringing as much as a blanket, or a penny, or a suit of clothes with you and I myself bringing seventy pounds and two feather beds. And now you are stiffer than a woman would have a hundred pounds! It is too much talk the whole of you have. A rope is it? I tell you the whole of this town is full of liars and schemers that would hang you up for half a glass of whiskey. (Turning to go.) People they are you wouldn’t believe as much as daylight from without you’d get up to have a look at it yourself. Killing Jack Smith indeed! Where are you at all, Bartley, till I bring you out of this? My nice quiet little man! My decent comrade! He that is as kind and as harmless as an innocent beast of the field! He’ll be doing no harm at all if he’ll shed the blood of some of you after this day’s work! That much would be no harm at all. (Calls out.) Bartley! Bartley Fallon! Where are you? (Going out.) Did any one see Bartley Fallon?

(All turn to look after her.)

James Ryan: It is hard for her to believe any such a thing, God help her!

(Enter Bartley Fallon from right, carrying hayfork.)

Bartley: It is what I often said to myself, if[Pg 17] there is ever any misfortune coming to this world it is on myself it is sure to come!

(All turn round and face him.)

Bartley: To be going about with this fork and to find no one to take it, and no place to leave it down, and I wanting to be gone out of this—Is that you, Shawn Early? (Holds out fork.) It’s well I met you. You have no call to be leaving the fair for a while the way I have, and how can I go till I’m rid of this fork? Will you take it and keep it until such time as Jack Smith——

Shawn Early: (Backing.) I will not take it, Bartley Fallon, I’m very thankful to you!

Bartley: (Turning to apple stall.) Look at it now, Mrs. Tarpey, it was here I got it; let me thrust it in under the stall. It will lie there safe enough, and no one will take notice of it until such time as Jack Smith——

Mrs. Tarpey: Take your fork out of that! Is it to put trouble on me and to destroy me you want? Putting it there for the police to be rooting it out maybe. (Thrusts him back.)

Bartley: That is a very unneighbourly thing for you to do, Mrs. Tarpey. Hadn’t I enough care on me with that fork before this, running up and down with it like the swinging of a clock, and afeard to lay it down in any place! I wish I never touched it or meddled with it at all![Pg 18]

James Ryan: It is a pity, indeed, you ever did.

Bartley: Will you yourself take it, James Ryan? You were always a neighbourly man.

James Ryan: (Backing.) There is many a thing I would do for you, Bartley Fallon, but I won’t do that!

Shawn Early: I tell you there is no man will give you any help or any encouragement for this day’s work. If it was something agrarian now——

Bartley: If no one at all will take it, maybe it’s best to give it up to the police.

Tim Casey: There’d be a welcome for it with them surely! (Laughter.)

Mrs. Tully: And it is to the police Kitty Keary herself will be brought.

Mrs. Tarpey: (Rocking to and fro.) I wonder now who will take the expense of the wake for poor Jack Smith?

Bartley: The wake for Jack Smith!

Tim Casey: Why wouldn’t he get a wake as well as another? Would you begrudge him that much?

Bartley: Red Jack Smith dead! Who was telling you?

Shawn Early: The whole town knows of it by this.

Bartley: Do they say what way did he die?

James Ryan: You don’t know that yourself, I suppose, Bartley Fallon? You don’t know he was followed and that he was laid dead with the stab of a hayfork?[Pg 19]

Bartley: The stab of a hayfork!

Shawn Early: You don’t know, I suppose, that the body was found in the Five Acre Meadow?

Bartley: The Five Acre Meadow!

Tim Casey: It is likely you don’t know that the police are after the man that did it?

Bartley: The man that did it!

Mrs. Tully: You don’t know, maybe, that he was made away with for the sake of Kitty Keary, his wife?

Bartley: Kitty Keary, his wife!

(Sits down bewildered.)

Mrs. Tully: And what have you to say now, Bartley Fallon?

Bartley: (Crossing himself.) I to bring that fork here, and to find that news before me! It is much if I can ever stir from this place at all, or reach as far as the road!

Tim Casey: Look, boys, at the new magistrate, and Jo Muldoon along with him! It’s best for us to quit this.

Shawn Early: That is so. It is best not to be mixed in this business at all.

James Ryan: Bad as he is, I wouldn’t like to be an informer against any man.

(All hurry away except Mrs. Tarpey, who remains behind her stall. Enter magistrate and policeman.)

Magistrate: I knew the district was in a bad[Pg 20] state, but I did not expect to be confronted with a murder at the first fair I came to.

Policeman: I am sure you did not, indeed.

Magistrate: It was well I had not gone home. I caught a few words here and there that roused my suspicions.

Policeman: So they would, too.

Magistrate: You heard the same story from everyone you asked?

Policeman: The same story—or if it was not altogether the same, anyway it was no less than the first story.

Magistrate: What is that man doing? He is sitting alone with a hayfork. He has a guilty look. The murder was done with a hayfork!

Policeman: (In a whisper.) That’s the very man they say did the act; Bartley Fallon himself!

Magistrate: He must have found escape difficult—he is trying to brazen it out. A convict in the Andaman Islands tried the same game, but he could not escape my system! Stand aside—Don’t go far—have the handcuffs ready. (He walks up to Bartley, folds his arms, and stands before him.) Here, my man, do you know anything of John Smith?

Bartley: Of John Smith! Who is he, now?

Policeman: Jack Smith, sir—Red Jack Smith!

Magistrate: (Coming a step nearer and tapping him on the shoulder.) Where is Jack Smith?[Pg 21]

Bartley: (With a deep sigh, and shaking his head slowly.) Where is he, indeed?

Magistrate: What have you to tell?

Bartley: It is where he was this morning, standing in this spot, singing his share of songs—no, but lighting his pipe—scraping a match on the sole of his shoe——

Magistrate: I ask you, for the third time, where is he?

Bartley: I wouldn’t like to say that. It is a great mystery, and it is hard to say of any man, did he earn hatred or love.

Magistrate: Tell me all you know.

Bartley: All that I know—Well, there are the three estates; there is Limbo, and there is Purgatory, and there is——

Magistrate: Nonsense! This is trifling! Get to the point.

Bartley: Maybe you don’t hold with the clergy so? That is the teaching of the clergy. Maybe you hold with the old people. It is what they do be saying, that the shadow goes wandering, and the soul is tired, and the body is taking a rest—The shadow! (Starts up.) I was nearly sure I saw Jack Smith not ten minutes ago at the corner of the forge, and I lost him again—Was it his ghost I saw, do you think?

Magistrate: (To policeman.) Conscience-struck! He will confess all now![Pg 22]

Bartley: His ghost to come before me! It is likely it was on account of the fork! I to have it and he to have no way to defend himself the time he met with his death!

Magistrate: (To policeman.) I must note down his words. (Takes out notebook.) (To Bartley:) I warn you that your words are being noted.

Bartley: If I had ha’ run faster in the beginning, this terror would not be on me at the latter end! Maybe he will cast it up against me at the day of judgment—I wouldn’t wonder at all at that.

Magistrate: (Writing.) At the day of judgment——

Bartley: It was soon for his ghost to appear to me—is it coming after me always by day it will be, and stripping the clothes off in the night time?—I wouldn’t wonder at all at that, being as I am an unfortunate man!

Magistrate: (Sternly.) Tell me this truly. What was the motive of this crime?

Bartley: The motive, is it?

Magistrate: Yes; the motive; the cause.

Bartley: I’d sooner not say that.

Magistrate: You had better tell me truly. Was it money?

Bartley: Not at all! What did poor Jack Smith ever have in his pockets unless it might be his hands that would be in them?

Magistrate: Any dispute about land?[Pg 23]

Bartley: (Indignantly.) Not at all! He never was a grabber or grabbed from any one!

Magistrate: You will find it better for you if you tell me at once.

Bartley: I tell you I wouldn’t for the whole world wish to say what it was—it is a thing I would not like to be talking about.

Magistrate: There is no use in hiding it. It will be discovered in the end.

Bartley: Well, I suppose it will, seeing that mostly everybody knows it before. Whisper here now. I will tell no lie; where would be the use? (Puts his hand to his mouth, and Magistrate stoops.) Don’t be putting the blame on the parish, for such a thing was never done in the parish before—it was done for the sake of Kitty Keary, Jack Smith’s wife.

Magistrate: (To policeman.) Put on the handcuffs. We have been saved some trouble. I knew he would confess if taken in the right way.

(Policeman puts on handcuffs.)

Bartley: Handcuffs now! Glory be! I always said, if there was ever any misfortune coming to this place it was on myself it would fall. I to be in handcuffs! There’s no wonder at all in that.

(Enter Mrs. Fallon, followed by the rest. She is looking back at them as she speaks.)

Mrs. Fallon: Telling lies the whole of the people of this town are; telling lies, telling lies as fast as a dog will trot! Speaking against my poor respectable [Pg 24] man! Saying he made an end of Jack Smith! My decent comrade! There is no better man and no kinder man in the whole of the five parishes! It’s little annoyance he ever gave to any one! (Turns and sees him.) What in the earthly world do I see before me? Bartley Fallon in charge of the police! Handcuffs on him! O Bartley, what did you do at all at all?

Bartley: O Mary, there has a great misfortune come upon me! It is what I always said, that if there is ever any misfortune——

Mrs. Fallon: What did he do at all, or is it bewitched I am?

Magistrate: This man has been arrested on a charge of murder.

Mrs. Fallon: Whose charge is that? Don’t believe them! They are all liars in this place! Give me back my man!

Magistrate. It is natural you should take his part, but you have no cause of complaint against your neighbours. He has been arrested for the murder of John Smith, on his own confession.

Mrs. Fallon: The saints of heaven protect us! And what did he want killing Jack Smith?

Magistrate: It is best you should know all. He did it on account of a love affair with the murdered man’s wife.

Mrs. Fallon: (Sitting down.) With Jack Smith’s wife! With Kitty Keary!—Ochone, the traitor!

[Pg 25]The Crowd: A great shame, indeed. He is a traitor, indeed.

Mrs. Tully: To America he was bringing her, Mrs. Fallon.

Bartley: What are you saying, Mary? I tell you——

Mrs. Fallon: Don’t say a word! I won’t listen to any word you’ll say! (Stops her ears.) O, isn’t he the treacherous villain? Ohone go deo!

Bartley: Be quiet till I speak! Listen to what I say!

Mrs. Fallon: Sitting beside me on the ass car coming to the town, so quiet and so respectable, and treachery like that in his heart!

Bartley: Is it your wits you have lost or is it I myself that have lost my wits?

Mrs. Fallon: And it’s hard I earned you, slaving, slaving—and you grumbling, and sighing, and coughing, and discontented, and the priest wore out anointing you, with all the times you threatened to die!

Bartley: Let you be quiet till I tell you!

Mrs. Fallon: You to bring such a disgrace into the parish. A thing that was never heard of before!

Bartley: Will you shut your mouth and hear me speaking?

Mrs. Fallon: And if it was for any sort of a fine handsome woman, but for a little fistful of a [Pg 26] woman like Kitty Keary, that’s not four feet high hardly, and not three teeth in her head unless she got new ones! May God reward you, Bartley Fallon, for the black treachery in your heart and the wickedness in your mind, and the red blood of poor Jack Smith that is wet upon your hand!

(Voice of Jack Smith heard singing.)

Bartley: It’s Jack Smith’s voice—I never knew a ghost to sing before—. It is after myself and the fork he is coming! (Goes back. Enter Jack Smith.) Let one of you give him the fork and I will be clear of him now and for eternity!

Mrs. Tarpey: The Lord have mercy on us! Red Jack Smith! The man that was going to be waked!

James Ryan: Is it back from the grave you are come?

Shawn Early: Is it alive you are, or is it dead you are?

Tim Casey: Is it yourself at all that’s in it?

Mrs. Tully: Is it letting on you were to be dead?

Mrs. Fallon: Dead or alive, let you stop Kitty [Pg 27] Keary, your wife, from bringing my man away with her to America!

Jack Smith: It is what I think, the wits are gone astray on the whole of you. What would my wife want bringing Bartley Fallon to America?

Mrs. Fallon: To leave yourself, and to get quit of you she wants, Jack Smith, and to bring him away from myself. That’s what the two of them had settled together.

Jack Smith: I’ll break the head of any man that says that! Who is it says it? (To Tim Casey:) Was it you said it? (To Shawn Early:) Was it you?

All together: (Backing and shaking their heads.) It wasn’t I said it!

Jack Smith: Tell me the name of any man that said it!

All together: (Pointing to Bartley.) It was him that said it!

Jack Smith: Let me at him till I break his head!

(Bartley backs in terror. Neighbours hold Jack Smith back.)

Jack Smith: (Trying to free himself.) Let me at him! Isn’t he the pleasant sort of a scarecrow for any woman to be crossing the ocean with! It’s back from the docks of New York he’d be turned (trying to rush at him again), with a lie in his mouth and treachery in his heart, and another [Pg 28] man’s wife by his side, and he passing her off as his own! Let me at him can’t you.

(Makes another rush, but is held back.)

Magistrate: (Pointing to Jack Smith.) Policeman, put the handcuffs on this man. I see it all now. A case of false impersonation, a conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice. There was a case in the Andaman Islands, a murderer of the Mopsa tribe, a religious enthusiast——

Policeman: So he might be, too.

Magistrate: We must take both these men to the scene of the murder. We must confront them with the body of the real Jack Smith.

Jack Smith: I’ll break the head of any man that will find my dead body!

Magistrate: I’ll call more help from the barracks. (Blows Policeman’s whistle.)

Bartley: It is what I am thinking, if myself and Jack Smith are put together in the one cell for the night, the handcuffs will be taken off him, and his hands will be free, and murder will be done that time surely!

Magistrate: Come on! (They turn to the right.)

[Pg 29]

[Pg 30]

Persons
Hyacinth Halvey.
James Quirke, a butcher.
Fardy Farrell, a telegraph boy.
Sergeant Carden.
Mrs. Delane, Postmistress at Cloon.
Miss Joyce, the Priest’s House-keeper.

[Pg 31]

HYACINTH HALVEY

Scene: Outside the Post Office at the little town of Cloon. Mrs. Delane at Post Office door. Mr. Quirke sitting on a chair at butcher’s door. A dead sheep hanging beside it, and a thrush in a cage above. Fardy Farrell playing on a mouth organ. Train whistle heard.

Mrs. Delane: There is the four o’clock train, Mr. Quirke.

Mr. Quirke: Is it now, Mrs. Delane, and I not long after rising? It makes a man drowsy to be doing the half of his work in the night time. Going about the country, looking for little stags of sheep, striving to knock a few shillings together. That contract for the soldiers gives me a great deal to attend to.

Mrs. Delane: I suppose so. It’s hard enough on myself to be down ready for the mail car in the morning, sorting letters in the half dark. It’s often I haven’t time to look who are the letters from—or the cards.

Mr. Quirke: It would be a pity you not to know any little news might be knocking about. If you did not have information of what is going [Pg 32] on who should have it? Was it you, ma’am, was telling me that the new Sub-Sanitary Inspector would be arriving to-day?

Mrs. Delane: To-day it is he is coming, and it’s likely he was in that train. There was a card about him to Sergeant Carden this morning.

Mr. Quirke: A young chap from Carrow they were saying he was.

Mrs. Delane: So he is, one Hyacinth Halvey; and indeed if all that is said of him is true, or if a quarter of it is true, he will be a credit to this town.

Mr. Quirke: Is that so?

Mrs. Delane: Testimonials he has by the score. To Father Gregan they were sent. Registered they were coming and going. Would you believe me telling you that they weighed up to three pounds?

Mr. Quirke: There must be great bulk in them indeed.

Mrs. Delane: It is no wonder he to get the job. He must have a great character so many persons to write for him as what there did.

Fardy: It would be a great thing to have a character like that.

Mrs. Delane: Indeed I am thinking it will be long before you will get the like of it, Fardy Farrell.

Fardy: If I had the like of that of a character it is not here carrying messages I would be. It’s in Noonan’s Hotel I would be, driving cars.

[Pg 33] Mr. Quirke: Here is the priest’s housekeeper coming.

Mrs. Delane: So she is; and there is the Sergeant a little while after her.

(Enter Miss Joyce.)

Mrs. Delane: Good-evening to you, Miss Joyce. What way is his Reverence to-day? Did he get any ease from the cough?

Miss Joyce: He did not indeed, Mrs. Delane. He has it sticking to him yet. Smothering he is in the night time. The most thing he comes short in is the voice.

Mrs. Delane: I am sorry, now, to hear that. He should mind himself well.

Miss Joyce: It’s easy to say let him mind himself. What do you say to him going to the meeting to-night? (Sergeant comes in.) It’s for his Reverence’s Freeman I am come, Mrs. Delane.

Mrs. Delane: Here it is ready. I was just throwing an eye on it to see was there any news. Good-evening, Sergeant.

Sergeant: (Holding up a placard.) I brought this notice, Mrs. Delane, the announcement of the meeting to be held to-night in the Courthouse. You might put it up here convenient to the window. I hope you are coming to it yourself?

Mrs. Delane: I will come, and welcome. I would do more than that for you, Sergeant.

Sergeant: And you, Mr. Quirke.

[Pg 34] Mr. Quirke: I’ll come, to be sure. I forget what’s this the meeting is about.

Sergeant: The Department of Agriculture is sending round a lecturer in furtherance of the moral development of the rural classes. (Reads.) “A lecture will be given this evening in Cloon Courthouse, illustrated by magic lantern slides—” Those will not be in it; I am informed they were all broken in the first journey, the railway company taking them to be eggs. The subject of the lecture is “The Building of Character.”

Mrs. Delane: Very nice, indeed. I knew a girl lost her character, and she washed her feet in a blessed well after, and it dried up on the minute.

Sergeant: The arrangements have all been left to me, the Archdeacon being away. He knows I have a good intellect for things of the sort. But the loss of those slides puts a man out. The thing people will not see it is not likely it is the thing they will believe. I saw what they call tableaux—standing pictures, you know—one time in Dundrum——

Mrs. Delane: Miss Joyce was saying Father Gregan is supporting you.

Sergeant: I am accepting his assistance. No bigotry about me when there is a question of the welfare of any fellow-creatures. Orange and green will stand together to-night. I myself [Pg 35] and the station-master on the one side; your parish priest in the chair.

Miss Joyce: If his Reverence would mind me he would not quit the house to-night. He is no more fit to go speak at a meeting than (pointing to the one hanging outside Quirke’s door) that sheep.

Sergeant: I am willing to take the responsibility. He will have no speaking to do at all, unless it might be to bid them give the lecturer a hearing. The loss of those slides now is a great annoyance to me—and no time for anything. The lecturer will be coming by the next train.

Miss Joyce: Who is this coming up the street, Mrs. Delane?

Mrs. Delane: I wouldn’t doubt it to be the new Sub-Sanitary Inspector. Was I telling you of the weight of the testimonials he got, Miss Joyce?

Miss Joyce: Sure I heard the curate reading them to his Reverence. He must be a wonder for principles.

Mrs. Delane: Indeed it is what I was saying to myself, he must be a very saintly young man.

(Enter Hyacinth Halvey. He carries a small bag and a large brown paper parcel. He stops and nods bashfully.)

Hyacinth: Good-evening to you. I was bid to come to the post office——

Sergeant: I suppose you are Hyacinth Halvey? [Pg 36] I had a letter about you from the Resident Magistrate.

Hyacinth: I heard he was writing. It was my mother got a friend he deals with to ask him.

Sergeant: He gives you a very high character.

Hyacinth: It is very kind of him indeed, and he not knowing me at all. But indeed all the neighbours were very friendly. Anything any one could do to help me they did it.

Mrs. Delane: I’ll engage it is the testimonals you have in your parcel? I know the wrapping paper, but they grew in bulk since I handled them.

Hyacinth: Indeed I was getting them to the last. There was not one refused me. It is what my mother was saying, a good character is no burden.

Fardy: I would believe that indeed.

Sergeant: Let us have a look at the testimonials.

(Hyacinth Halvey opens parcel, and a large number of envelopes fall out.)

Sergeant: (Opening and reading one by one). “He possesses the fire of the Gael, the strength of the Norman, the vigour of the Dane, the stolidity of the Saxon”——

Hyacinth: It was the Chairman of the Poor Law Guardians wrote that.

Sergeant: “A magnificent example to old and young”——

[Pg 37]Hyacinth: That was the Secretary of the DeWet Hurling Club——

Sergeant: “A shining example of the value conferred by an eminently careful and high class education”——

Hyacinth: That was the National Schoolmaster.

Sergeant: “Devoted to the highest ideals of his Mother-land to such an extent as is compatible with a hitherto non-parliamentary career”——

Hyacinth: That was the Member for Carrow.

Sergeant: “A splendid exponent of the purity of the race”——

Hyacinth: The Editor of the Carrow Champion.

Sergeant: “Admirably adapted for the efficient discharge of all possible duties that may in future be laid upon him”——

Hyacinth: The new Station-master.

Sergeant: “A champion of every cause that can legitimately benefit his fellow-creatures”—— Why, look here, my man, you are the very one to come to our assistance to-night.

Hyacinth: I would be glad to do that. What way can I do it?

Sergeant: You are a newcomer—your example would carry weight—you must stand up as a living proof of the beneficial effect of a high character, moral fibre, temperance—there is something [Pg 38] about it here I am sure—(Looks.) I am sure I saw “unparalleled temperance” in some place——

Hyacinth: It was my mother’s cousin wrote that—I am no drinker, but I haven’t the pledge taken——

Sergeant: You might take it for the purpose.

Mr. Quirke: (Eagerly.) Here is an anti-treating button. I was made a present of it by one of my customers—I’ll give it to you (sticks it in Hyacinth’s coat) and welcome.

Sergeant: That is it. You can wear the button on the platform—or a bit of blue ribbon—hundreds will follow your example—I know the boys from the Workhouse will——

Hyacinth: I am in no way wishful to be an example——

Sergeant: I will read extracts from the testimonials. “There he is,” I will say, “an example of one in early life who by his own unaided efforts and his high character has obtained a profitable situation”—(Slaps his side.) I know what I’ll do. I’ll engage a few corner-boys from Noonan’s bar, just as they are, greasy and sodden, to stand in a group—there will be the contrast—The sight will deter others from a similar fate—That’s the way to do a tableau—I knew I could turn out a success.

Hyacinth: I wouldn’t like to be a contrast—-

Sergeant: (Puts testimonials in his pocket.) I [Pg 39] will go now and engage those lads—sixpence each, and well worth it—Nothing like an example for the rural classes.

(Goes off, Hyacinth feebly trying to detain him.)

Mrs. Delane: A very nice man indeed. A little high up in himself, may be. I’m not one that blames the police. Sure they have their own bread to earn like every other one. And indeed it is often they will let a thing pass.

Mr. Quirke: (Gloomily.) Sometimes they will, and more times they will not.

Miss Joyce: And where will you be finding a lodging, Mr. Halvey?

Hyacinth: I was going to ask that myself, ma’am. I don’t know the town.

Miss Joyce: I know of a good lodging, but it is only a very good man would be taken into it.

Mrs. Delane: Sure there could be no objection there to Mr. Halvey. There is no appearance on him but what is good, and the Sergeant after taking him up the way he is doing.

Miss Joyce: You will be near to the Sergeant in the lodging I speak of. The house is convenient to the barracks.

Hyacinth: (Doubtfully.) To the barracks?

Miss Joyce: Alongside of it and the barrack yard behind. And that’s not all. It is opposite to the priest’s house.

[Pg 40] Hyacinth: Opposite, is it?

Miss Joyce: A very respectable place, indeed, and a very clean room you will get. I know it well. The curate can see into it from his window.

Hyacinth: Can he now?

Fardy: There was a good many, I am thinking, went into that lodging and left it after.

Miss Joyce: (Sharply.) It is a lodging you will never be let into or let stop in, Fardy. If they did go they were a good riddance.

Fardy: John Hart, the plumber, left it——

Miss Joyce: If he did it was because he dared not pass the police coming in, as he used, with a rabbit he was after snaring in his hand.

Fardy: The schoolmaster himself left it.

Miss Joyce: He needn’t have left it if he hadn’t taken to card-playing. What way could you say your prayers, and shadows shuffling and dealing before you on the blind?

Hyacinth: I think maybe I’d best look around a bit before I’ll settle in a lodging——

Miss Joyce: Not at all. You won’t be wanting to pull down the blind.

Mrs. Delane: It is not likely you will be snaring rabbits.

Miss Joyce: Or bringing in a bottle and taking an odd glass the way James Kelly did.

Mrs. Delane: Or writing threatening notices, and the police taking a view of you from the rear.

[Pg 41]Miss Joyce: Or going to roadside dances, or running after good-for-nothing young girls——

Hyacinth: I give you my word I’m not so harmless as you think.

Mrs. Delane: Would you be putting a lie on these, Mr. Halvey? (Touching testimonials.) I know well the way you will be spending the evenings, writing letters to your relations——

Miss Joyce: Learning O’Growney’s exercises——

Mrs. Delane: Sticking post cards in an album for the convent bazaar.

Miss Joyce: Reading the Catholic Young Man——

Mrs. Delane: Playing the melodies on a melodeon——

Miss Joyce: Looking at the pictures in the Lives of the Saints. I’ll hurry on and engage the room for you.

Hyacinth: Wait. Wait a minute——

Miss Joyce: No trouble at all. I told you it was just opposite. (Goes.)

Mr. Quirke: I suppose I must go upstairs and ready myself for the meeting. If it wasn’t for the contract I have for the soldiers’ barracks and the Sergeant’s good word, I wouldn’t go anear it. (Goes into shop.)

Mrs. Delane: I should be making myself ready too. I must be in good time to see you being made an example of, Mr. Halvey. It is I myself [Pg 42] was the first to say it; you will be a credit to the town. (Goes.)

Hyacinth: (In a tone of agony.) I wish I had never seen Cloon.

Fardy: What is on you?

Hyacinth: I wish I had never left Carrow. I wish I had been drowned the first day I thought of it, and I’d be better off.

Fardy: What is it ails you?

Hyacinth: I wouldn’t for the best pound ever I had be in this place to-day.

Fardy: I don’t know what you are talking about.

Hyacinth: To have left Carrow, if it was a poor place, where I had my comrades, and an odd spree, and a game of cards—and a coursing match coming on, and I promised a new greyhound from the city of Cork. I’ll die in this place, the way I am. I’ll be too much closed in.

Fardy: Sure it mightn’t be as bad as what you think.

Hyacinth: Will you tell me, I ask you, what way can I undo it?

Fardy: What is it you are wanting to undo?

Hyacinth: Will you tell me what way can I get rid of my character?

Fardy: To get rid of it, is it?

Hyacinth: That is what I said. Aren’t you after hearing the great character they are after putting on me?

[Pg 43]Fardy: That is a good thing to have.

Hyacinth: It is not. It’s the worst in the world. If I hadn’t it, I wouldn’t be like a prize mangold at a show with every person praising me.

Fardy: If I had it, I wouldn’t be like a head in a barrel, with every person making hits at me.

Hyacinth: If I hadn’t it, I wouldn’t be shoved into a room with all the clergy watching me and the police in the back yard.

Fardy: If I had it, I wouldn’t be but a message-carrier now, and a clapper scaring birds in the summer time.

Hyacinth: If I hadn’t it, I wouldn’t be wearing this button and brought up for an example at the meeting.

Fardy: (Whistles.) Maybe you’re not, so, what those papers make you out to be?

Hyacinth: How would I be what they make me out to be? Was there ever any person of that sort since the world was a world, unless it might be Saint Antony of Padua looking down from the chapel wall? If it is like that I was, isn’t it in Mount Melleray I would be, or with the Friars at Esker? Why would I be living in the world at all, or doing the world’s work?

Fardy: (Taking up parcel.) Who would think, now, there would be so much lies in a small place like Carrow?

[Pg 44] Hyacinth: It was my mother’s cousin did it. He said I was not reared for labouring—he gave me a new suit and bid me never to come back again. I daren’t go back to face him—the neighbours knew my mother had a long family—bad luck to them the day they gave me these. (Tears letters and scatters them.) I’m done with testimonials. They won’t be here to bear witness against me.

Fardy: The Sergeant thought them to be great. Sure he has the samples of them in his pocket. There’s not one in the town but will know before morning that you are the next thing to an earthly saint.

Hyacinth: (Stamping.) I’ll stop their mouths. I’ll show them I can be a terror for badness. I’ll do some injury. I’ll commit some crime. The first thing I’ll do I’ll go and get drunk. If I never did it before I’ll do it now. I’ll get drunk—then I’ll make an assault—I tell you I’d think as little of taking a life as of blowing out a candle.

Fardy: If you get drunk you are done for. Sure that will be held up after as an excuse for any breaking of the law.

Hyacinth: I will break the law. Drunk or sober I’ll break it. I’ll do something that will have no excuse. What would you say is the worst crime that any man can do?

Fardy: I don’t know. I heard the Sergeant [Pg 45] saying one time it was to obstruct the police in the discharge of their duty——

Hyacinth: That won’t do. It’s a patriot I would be then, worse than before, with my picture in the weeklies. It’s a red crime I must commit that will make all respectable people quit minding me. What can I do? Search your mind now.

Fardy: It’s what I heard the old people saying there could be no worse crime than to steal a sheep——

Hyacinth: I’ll steal a sheep—or a cow—or a horse—if that will leave me the way I was before.

Fardy: It’s maybe in gaol it will leave you.

Hyacinth: I don’t care—I’ll confess—I’ll tell why I did it—I give you my word I would as soon be picking oakum or breaking stones as to be perched in the daylight the same as that bird, and all the town chirruping to me or bidding me chirrup——

Fardy: There is reason in that, now.

Hyacinth: Help me, will you?

Fardy: Well, if it is to steal a sheep you want, you haven’t far to go.

Hyacinth: (Looking round wildly.) Where is it? I see no sheep.

Fardy: Look around you.

Hyacinth: I see no living thing but that thrush——

Fardy: Did I say it was living? What is that hanging on Quirke’s rack?

[Pg 46] Hyacinth: It’s (fingers it) a sheep, sure enough——

Fardy: Well, what ails you that you can’t bring it away?

Hyacinth: It’s a dead one——

Fardy: What matter if it is?

Hyacinth: If it was living I could drive it before me——

Fardy: You could. Is it to your own lodging you would drive it? Sure everyone would take it to be a pet you brought from Carrow.

Hyacinth: I suppose they might.

Fardy: Miss Joyce sending in for news of it and it bleating behind the bed.

Hyacinth: (Distracted). Stop! stop!

Mrs. Delane: (From upper window.) Fardy! Are you there, Fardy Farrell?

Fardy: I am, ma’am.

Mrs. Delane: (From window.) Look and tell me is that the telegraph I hear ticking?

Fardy: (Looking in at door.) It is, ma’am.

Mrs. Delane: Then botheration to it, and I not dressed or undressed. Wouldn’t you say, now, it’s to annoy me it is calling me down. I’m coming! I’m coming! (Disappears.)

Fardy: Hurry on, now! hurry! She’ll be coming out on you. If you are going to do it, do it, and if you are not, let it alone.

Hyacinth: I’ll do it! I’ll do it!

[Pg 47]Fardy: (Lifting the sheep on his back.) I’ll give you a hand with it.

Hyacinth: (Goes a step or two and turns round.) You told me no place where I could hide it.

Fardy: You needn’t go far. There is the church beyond at the side of the Square. Go round to the ditch behind the wall—there’s nettles in it.

Hyacinth: That’ll do.

Fardy: She’s coming out—run! run!

Hyacinth: (Runs a step or two.) It’s slipping!

Fardy: Hoist it up! I’ll give it a hoist! (Halvey runs out.)

Mrs. Delane: (Calling out.) What are you doing Fardy Farrell? Is it idling you are?

Fardy: Waiting I am, ma’am, for the message——

Mrs. Delane: Never mind the message yet. Who said it was ready? (Going to door.) Go ask for the loan of—no, but ask news of—Here, now go bring that bag of Mr. Halvey’s to the lodging Miss Joyce has taken——

Fardy: I will, ma’am. (Takes bag and goes out.)

Mrs. Delane: (Coming out with a telegram in her hand.) Nobody here? (Looks round and calls cautiously.) Mr. Quirke! Mr. Quirke! James Quirke!

Mr. Quirke: (Looking out of his upper window with soap-suddy face). What is it, Mrs. Delane?

[Pg 48] Mrs. Delane: (Beckoning.) Come down here till I tell you.

Mr. Quirke: I cannot do that. I’m not fully shaved.

Mrs. Delane: You’d come if you knew the news I have.

Mr. Quirke: Tell it to me now. I’m not so supple as I was.

Mrs. Delane: Whisper now, have you an enemy in any place?

Mr. Quirke: It’s likely I may have. A man in business——

Mrs. Delane: I was thinking you had one.

Mr. Quirke: Why would you think that at this time more than any other time?

Mrs. Delane: If you could know what is in this envelope you would know that, James Quirke.

Mr. Quirke: Is that so? And what, now, is there in it?

Mrs. Delane: Who do you think now is it addressed to?

Mr. Quirke: How would I know that, and I not seeing it?

Mrs. Delane: That is true. Well, it is a message from Dublin Castle to the Sergeant of Police!

Mr. Quirke: To Sergeant Carden, is it?

Mrs. Delane: It is. And it concerns yourself.

Mr. Quirke: Myself, is it? What accusation can they be bringing against me? I’m a peaceable man.

[Pg 49] Mrs. Delane: Wait till you hear.

Mr. Quirke: Maybe they think I was in that moonlighting case——

Mrs. Delane: That is not it——

Mr. Quirke: I was not in it—I was but in the neighbouring field—cutting up a dead cow, that those never had a hand in——

Mrs. Delane: You’re out of it——

Mr. Quirke: They had their faces blackened. There is no man can say I recognized them.

Mrs. Delane: That’s not what they’re saying——

Mr. Quirke: I’ll swear I did not hear their voices or know them if I did hear them.

Mrs. Delane: I tell you it has nothing to do with that. It might be better for you if it had.

Mr. Quirke: What is it, so?

Mrs. Delane: It is an order to the Sergeant bidding him immediately to seize all suspicious meat in your house. There is an officer coming down. There are complaints from the Shannon Fort Barracks.

Mr. Quirke: I’ll engage it was that pork.

Mrs. Delane: What ailed it for them to find fault?

Mr. Quirke: People are so hard to please nowadays, and I recommended them to salt it.

Mrs. Delane: They had a right to have minded your advice.

[Pg 50] Mr. Quirke: There was nothing on that pig at all but that it went mad on poor O’Grady that owned it.

Mrs. Delane: So I heard, and went killing all before it.

Mr. Quirke: Sure it’s only in the brain madness can be. I heard the doctor saying that.

Mrs. Delane: He should know.

Mr. Quirke: I give you my word I cut the head off it. I went to the loss of it, throwing it to the eels in the river. If they had salted the meat, as I advised them, what harm would it have done to any person on earth?

Mrs. Delane: I hope no harm will come on poor Mrs. Quirke and the family.

Mr. Quirke: Maybe it wasn’t that but some other thing——

Mrs. Delane: Here is Fardy. I must send the message to the Sergeant. Well, Mr. Quirke, I’m glad I had the time to give you a warning.

Mr. Quirke: I’m obliged to you, indeed. You were always very neighbourly, Mrs. Delane. Don’t be too quick now sending the message. There is just one article I would like to put away out of the house before the Sergeant will come. (Enter Fardy.)

Mrs. Delane: Here now, Fardy—that’s not the way you’re going to the barracks. Anyone would think you were scaring birds yet. Put on your uniform. (Fardy goes into office.) You [Pg 51] have this message to bring to the Sergeant of Police. Get your cap now, it’s under the counter. (Fardy reappears, and she gives him telegram.)

Fardy: I’ll bring it to the station. It’s there he was going.

Mrs. Delane: You will not, but to the barracks. It can wait for him there.

(Fardy goes off. Mr. Quirke has appeared at door.)

Mr. Quirke: It was indeed a very neighbourly act, Mrs. Delane, and I’m obliged to you. There is just one article to put out of the way. The Sergeant may look about him then and welcome. It’s well I cleared the premises on yesterday. A consignment to Birmingham I sent. The Lord be praised isn’t England a terrible country with all it consumes?

Mrs. Delane: Indeed you always treat the neighbours very decent, Mr. Quirke, not asking them to buy from you.

Mr. Quirke: Just one article. (Turns to rack.) That sheep I brought in last night. It was for a charity indeed I bought it from the widow woman at Kiltartan Cross. Where would the poor make a profit out of their dead meat without me? Where now is it? Well, now, I could have swore that that sheep was hanging there on the rack when I went in——

[Pg 52] Mrs. Delane: You must have put it in some other place.

Mr. Quirke: (Going in and searching and coming out.) I did not; there is no other place for me to put it. Is it gone blind I am, or is it not in it, it is?

Mrs. Delane: It’s not there now anyway.

Mr. Quirke: Didn’t you take notice of it there yourself this morning?

Mrs. Delane: I have it in my mind that I did; but it’s not there now.

Mr. Quirke: There was no one here could bring it away?

Mrs. Delane: Is it me myself you suspect of taking it, James Quirke?

Mr. Quirke: Where is it at all? It is certain it was not of itself it walked away. It was dead, and very dead, the time I bought it.

Mrs. Delane: I have a pleasant neighbour indeed that accuses me that I took his sheep. I wonder, indeed, you to say a thing like that! I to steal your sheep or your rack or anything that belongs to you or to your trade! Thank you, James Quirke. I am much obliged to you indeed.

Mr. Quirke: Ah, be quiet, woman; be quiet——

Mrs. Delane: And let me tell you, James Quirke, that I would sooner starve and see everyone belonging to me starve than to eat the size [Pg 53] of a thimble of any joint that ever was on your rack or that ever will be on it, whatever the soldiers may eat that have no other thing to get, or the English that devour all sorts, or the poor ravenous people that’s down by the sea! (She turns to go into shop.)

Mr. Quirke: (Stopping her.) Don’t be talking foolishness, woman. Who said you took my meat? Give heed to me now. There must some other message have come. The Sergeant must have got some other message.

Mrs. Delane: (Sulkily.) If there is any way for a message to come that is quicker than to come by the wires, tell me what it is and I’ll be obliged to you.

Mr. Quirke: The Sergeant was up here making an excuse he was sticking up that notice. What was he doing here, I ask you?

Mrs. Delane: How would I know what brought him?

Mr. Quirke: It is what he did; he made as if to go away—he turned back again and I shaving—he brought away the sheep—he will have it for evidence against me——

Mrs. Delane: (Interested.) That might be so.

Mr. Quirke: I would sooner it to have been any other beast nearly ever I had upon the rack.

Mrs. Delane: Is that so?

Mr. Quirke: I bade the Widow Early to kill [Pg 54] it a fortnight ago—but she would not, she was that covetous!

Mrs. Delane: What was on it?

Mr. Quirke: How would I know what was on it? Whatever was on it, it was the will of God put it upon it—wasted it was, and shivering and refusing its share.

Mrs. Delane: The poor thing.

Mr. Quirke: Gone all to nothing—wore away like a flock of thread. It did not weigh as much as a lamb of two months.

Mrs. Delane: It is likely the Inspector will bring it to Dublin?

Mr. Quirke: The ribs of it streaky with the dint of patent medicines——

Mrs. Delane: I wonder is it to the Petty Sessions you’ll be brought or is it to the Assizes?

Mr. Quirke: I’ll speak up to them. I’ll make my defence. What can the Army expect at fippence a pound?

Mrs. Delane: It is likely there will be no bail allowed?

Mr. Quirke: Would they be wanting me to give them good quality meat out of my own pocket? Is it to encourage them to fight the poor Indians and Africans they would have me? It’s the Anti-Enlisting Societies should pay the fine for me.

Mrs. Delane: It’s not a fine will be put on you, [Pg 55] I’m afraid. It’s five years in gaol you will be apt to be getting. Well, I’ll try and be a good neighbour to poor Mrs. Quirke.

(Mr. Quirke, who has been stamping up and down, sits down and weeps. Halvey comes in and stands on one side.)

Mr. Quirke: Hadn’t I heart-scalding enough before, striving to rear five weak children?

Mrs. Delane: I suppose they will be sent to the Industrial Schools?

Mr. Quirke: My poor wife——

Mrs. Delane: I’m afraid the workhouse——

Mr. Quirke: And she out in an ass-car at this minute helping me to follow my trade.

Mrs. Delane: I hope they will not arrest her along with you.

Mr. Quirke: I’ll give myself up to justice. I’ll plead guilty! I’ll be recommended to mercy!

Mrs. Delane: It might be best for you.

Mr. Quirke: Who would think so great a misfortune could come upon a family through the bringing away of one sheep!

Hyacinth: (Coming forward.) Let you make yourself easy.

Mr. Quirke: Easy! It’s easy to say let you make yourself easy.

Hyacinth: I can tell you where it is.

Mr. Quirke: Where what is?

Hyacinth: The sheep you are fretting after.

[Pg 56] Mr. Quirke: What do you know about it?

Hyacinth: I know everything about it.

Mr. Quirke: I suppose the Sergeant told you?

Hyacinth: He told me nothing.

Mr. Quirke: I suppose the whole town knows it, so?

Hyacinth: No one knows it, as yet.

Mr. Quirke: And the Sergeant didn’t see it?

Hyacinth: No one saw it or brought it away but myself.

Mr. Quirke: Where did you put it at all?

Hyacinth: In the ditch behind the church wall. In among the nettles it is. Look at the way they have me stung. (Holds out hands.)

Mr. Quirke: In the ditch! The best hiding place in the town.

Hyacinth: I never thought it would bring such great trouble upon you. You can’t say anyway I did not tell you.

Mr. Quirke: You yourself that brought it away and that hid it! I suppose it was coming in the train you got information about the message to the police.

Hyacinth: What now do you say to me?

Mr. Quirke: Say! I say I am as glad to hear what you said as if it was the Lord telling me I’d be in heaven this minute.

Hyacinth: What are you going to do to me?

Mr. Quirke: Do, is it? (Grasps his hand.) [Pg 57] Any earthly thing you would wish me to do, I will do it.

Hyacinth: I suppose you will tell——

Mr. Quirke: Tell! It’s I that will tell when all is quiet. It is I will give you the good name through the town!

Hyacinth: I don’t well understand.

Mr. Quirke: (Embracing him.) The man that preserved me!

Hyacinth: That preserved you?

Mr. Quirke: That kept me from ruin!

Hyacinth: From ruin?

Mr. Quirke: That saved me from disgrace!

Hyacinth: (To Mrs. Delane.) What is he saying at all?

Mr. Quirke: From the Inspector!

Hyacinth: What is he talking about?

Mr. Quirke: From the magistrates!

Hyacinth: He is making some mistake.

Mr. Quirke: From the Winter Assizes!

Hyacinth: Is he out of his wits?

Mr. Quirke: Five years in gaol!

Hyacinth: Hasn’t he the queer talk?

Mr. Quirke: The loss of the contract!

Hyacinth: Are my own wits gone astray?

Mr. Quirke: What way can I repay you?

Hyacinth: (Shouting.) I tell you I took the sheep——

Mr. Quirke: You did, God reward you!

[Pg 58] Hyacinth: I stole away with it——

Mr. Quirke: The blessing of the poor on you!

Hyacinth: I put it out of sight——

Mr. Quirke: The blessing of my five children——

Hyacinth: I may as well say nothing——

Mrs. Delane: Let you be quiet now, Quirke. Here’s the Sergeant coming to search the shop——

(Sergeant comes in: Quirke leaves go of Halvey, who arranges his hat, etc.)

Sergeant: The Department to blazes!

Mrs. Delane: What is it putting you out?

Sergeant: To go to the train to meet the lecturer, and there to get a message through the guard that he was unavoidably detained in the South, holding an inquest on the remains of a drake.

Mrs. Delane: The lecturer, is it?

Sergeant: To be sure. What else would I be talking of? The lecturer has failed me, and where am I to go looking for a person that I would think fitting to take his place?

Mrs. Delane: And that’s all? And you didn’t get any message but the one?

Sergeant: Is that all? I am surprised at you, Mrs. Delane. Isn’t it enough to upset a man, within three quarters of an hour of the time of the meeting? Where, I would ask you, am I to find a man that has education enough and wit [Pg 59] enough and character enough to put up speaking on the platform on the minute?

Mr. Quirke: (Jumps up.) It is I myself will tell you that.

Sergeant: You!

Mr. Quirke: (Slapping Halvey on the back.) Look at here, Sergeant. There is not one word was said in all those papers about this young man before you but it is true. And there could be no good thing said of him that would be too good for him.

Sergeant: It might not be a bad idea.

Mr. Quirke: Whatever the paper said about him, Sergeant, I can say more again. It has come to my knowledge—by chance—that since he came to this town that young man has saved a whole family from destruction.

Sergeant: That is much to his credit—helping the rural classes——

Mr. Quirke: A family and a long family, big and little, like sods of turf—and they depending on a—on one that might be on his way to dark trouble at this minute if it was not for his assistance. Believe me, he is the most sensible man, and the wittiest, and the kindest, and the best helper of the poor that ever stood before you in this square. Is not that so, Mrs. Delane?

Mrs. Delane: It is true indeed. Where he gets his wisdom and his wit and his information from [Pg 60] I don’t know, unless it might be that he is gifted from above.

Sergeant: Well, Mrs. Delane, I think we have settled that question. Mr. Halvey, you will be the speaker at the meeting. The lecturer sent these notes—you can lengthen them into a speech. You can call to the people of Cloon to stand out, to begin the building of their character. I saw a lecturer do it one time at Dundrum. “Come up here,” he said, “Dare to be a Daniel,” he said——

Hyacinth: I can’t—I won’t——

Sergeant: (Looking at papers and thrusting them into his hand.) You will find it quite easy. I will conduct you to the platform—these papers before you and a glass of water—That’s settled. (Turns to go.) Follow me on to the Courthouse in half an hour—I must go to the barracks first—I heard there was a telegram—(Calls back as he goes.) Don’t be late, Mrs. Delane. Mind, Quirke, you promised to come.

Mrs. Delane: Well, it’s time for me to make an end of settling myself—and indeed, Mr. Quirke, you’d best do the same.

Mr. Quirke: (Rubbing his cheek.) I suppose so. I had best keep on good terms with him for the present. (Turns.) Well, now, I had a great escape this day.

(Both go in as Fardy reappears whistling.)

[Pg 61] Hyacinth: (Sitting down.) I don’t know in the world what has come upon the world that the half of the people of it should be cracked!

Fardy: Weren’t you found out yet?

Hyacinth: Found out, is it? I don’t know what you mean by being found out.

Fardy: Didn’t he miss the sheep?

Hyacinth: He did, and I told him it was I took it—and what happened I declare to goodness I don’t know—Will you look at these? (Holds out notes.)

Fardy: Papers! Are they more testimonials?

Hyacinth: They are what is worse. (Gives a hoarse laugh.) Will you come and see me on the platform—these in my hand—and I speaking—giving out advice. (Fardy whistles.) Why didn’t you tell me, the time you advised me to steal a sheep, that in this town it would qualify a man to go preaching, and the priest in the chair looking on.

Fardy: The time I took a few apples that had fallen off a stall, they did not ask me to hold a meeting. They welted me well.

Hyacinth: (Looking round.) I would take apples if I could see them. I wish I had broke my neck before I left Carrow and I’d be better off! I wish I had got six months the time I was caught setting snares—I wish I had robbed a church.

Fardy: Would a Protestant church do?

[Pg 62] Hyacinth: I suppose it wouldn’t be so great a sin.

Fardy: It’s likely the Sergeant would think worse of it—Anyway, if you want to rob one, it’s the Protestant church is the handiest.

Hyacinth: (Getting up.) Show me what way to do it?

Fardy: (Pointing.) I was going around it a few minutes ago, to see might there be e’er a dog scenting the sheep, and I noticed the window being out.

Hyacinth: Out, out and out?

Fardy: It was, where they are putting coloured glass in it for the distiller——

Hyacinth: What good does that do me?

Fardy: Every good. You could go in by that window if you had some person to give you a hoist. Whatever riches there is to get in it then, you’ll get them.

Hyacinth: I don’t want riches. I’ll give you all I will find if you will come and hoist me.

Fardy: Here is Miss Joyce coming to bring you to your lodging. Sure I brought your bag to it, the time you were away with the sheep——

Hyacinth: Run! Run!

(They go off. Enter Miss Joyce.)

Miss Joyce: Are you here, Mrs. Delane? Where, can you tell me, is Mr. Halvey?

Mrs. Delane: (Coming out dressed.) It’s likely he [Pg 63] is gone on to the Courthouse. Did you hear he is to be in the chair and to make an address to the meeting?

Miss Joyce: He is getting on fast. His Reverence says he will be a good help in the parish. Who would think, now, there would be such a godly young man in a little place like Carrow!

(Enter Sergeant in a hurry, with telegram.)

Sergeant: What time did this telegram arrive, Mrs. Delane?

Mrs. Delane: I couldn’t be rightly sure, Sergeant. But sure it’s marked on it, unless the clock I have is gone wrong.

Sergeant: It is marked on it. And I have the time I got it marked on my own watch.

Mrs. Delane: Well, now, I wonder none of the police would have followed you with it from the barracks—and they with so little to do——

Sergeant: (Looking in at Quirke’s shop.) Well, I am sorry to do what I have to do, but duty is duty.

(He ransacks shop. Mrs. Delane looks on. Mr. Quirke puts his head out of window.)

Mr. Quirke: What is that going on inside? (No answer.) Is there any one inside, I ask? (No answer.) It must be that dog of Tannian’s—wait till I get at him.

Mrs. Delane: It is Sergeant Carden, Mr. [Pg 64] Quirke. He would seem to be looking for something——

(Mr. Quirke appears in shop. Sergeant comes out, makes another dive, taking up sacks, etc.)

Mr. Quirke: I’m greatly afraid I am just out of meat, Sergeant—and I’m sorry now to disoblige you, and you not being in the habit of dealing with me——

Sergeant: I should think not, indeed.

Mr. Quirke: Looking for a tender little bit of lamb, I suppose you are, for Mrs. Carden and the youngsters?

Sergeant: I am not.

Mr. Quirke: If I had it now, I’d be proud to offer it to you, and make no charge. I’ll be killing a good kid to-morrow. Mrs. Carden might fancy a bit of it——

Sergeant: I have had orders to search your establishment for unwholesome meat, and I am come here to do it.

Mr. Quirke: (Sitting down with a smile.) Is that so? Well, isn’t it a wonder the schemers does be in the world.

Sergeant: It is not the first time there have been complaints.

Mr. Quirke: I suppose not. Well, it is on their own head it will fall at the last!

Sergeant: I have found nothing so far.

[Pg 65] Mr. Quirke: I suppose not, indeed. What is there you could find, and it not in it?

Sergeant: Have you no meat at all upon the premises?

Mr. Quirke: I have, indeed, a nice barrel of bacon.

Sergeant: What way did it die?

Mr. Quirke: It would be hard for me to say that. American it is. How would I know what way they do be killing the pigs out there? Machinery, I suppose, they have—steam hammers——

Sergeant: Is there nothing else here at all?

Mr. Quirke: I give you my word, there is no meat living or dead in this place, but yourself and myself and that bird above in the cage.

Sergeant: Well, I must tell the Inspector I could find nothing. But mind yourself for the future.

Mr. Quirke: Thank you, Sergeant. I will do that. (Enter Fardy. He stops short.)

Sergeant: It was you delayed that message to me, I suppose? You’d best mend your ways or I’ll have something to say to you. (Seizes and shakes him.)

Fardy: That’s the way everyone does be faulting me. (Whimpers.)

(The Sergeant gives him another shake. A half-crown falls out of his pocket.)[Pg 66]

Miss Joyce: (Picking it up.) A half-a-crown! Where, now, did you get that much, Fardy?

Fardy: Where did I get it, is it!

Miss Joyce: I’ll engage it was in no honest way you got it.

Fardy: I picked it up in the street——

Miss Joyce: If you did, why didn’t you bring it to the Sergeant or to his Reverence?

Mrs. Delane: And some poor person, may be, being at the loss of it.

Miss Joyce: I’d best bring it to his Reverence. Come with me, Fardy, till he will question you about it.

Fardy: It was not altogether in the street I found it——

Miss Joyce: There, now! I knew you got it in no good way! Tell me, now.

Fardy: It was playing pitch and toss I won it——

Miss Joyce: And who would play for half-crowns with the like of you, Fardy Farrell? Who was it, now?

Fardy: It was—a stranger——

Miss Joyce: Do you hear that? A stranger! Did you see e’er a stranger in this town, Mrs. Delane, or Sergeant Carden, or Mr. Quirke?

Mr. Quirke: Not a one.

Sergeant: There was no stranger here.

Mrs. Delane: There could not be one here without me knowing it.[Pg 67]

Fardy: I tell you there was.

Miss Joyce: Come on, then, and tell who was he to his Reverence.

Sergeant: (Taking other arm.) Or to the bench.

Fardy: I did get it, I tell you, from a stranger.

Sergeant: Where is he, so?

Fardy: He’s in some place—not far away.

Sergeant: Bring me to him.

Fardy: He’ll be coming here.

Sergeant: Tell me the truth and it will be better for you.

Fardy: (Weeping.) Let me go and I will.

Sergeant: (Letting go.) Now—who did you get it from?

Fardy: From that young chap came to-day, Mr. Halvey.

All: Mr. Halvey!

Mr. Quirke: (Indignantly.) What are you saying, you young ruffian you? Hyacinth Halvey to be playing pitch and toss with the like of you!

Fardy: I didn’t say that.

Miss Joyce: You did say it. You said it now.

Mr. Quirke: Hyacinth Halvey! The best man that ever came into this town!

Miss Joyce: Well, what lies he has!

Mr. Quirke: It’s my belief the half-crown is a bad one. May be it’s to pass it off it was given to him. There were tinkers in the town at the time of the fair. Give it here to me. (Bites it.)[Pg 68] No, indeed, it’s sound enough. Here, Sergeant, it’s best for you take it.

(Gives it to Sergeant, who examines it.)

Sergeant: Can it be? Can it be what I think it to be?

Mr. Quirke: What is it? What do you take it to be?

Sergeant: It is, it is. I know it. I know this half-crown——

Mr. Quirke: That is a queer thing, now.

Sergeant: I know it well. I have been handling it in the church for the last twelvemonth——

Mr. Quirke: Is that so?

Sergeant: It is the nest-egg half-crown we hand round in the collection plate every Sunday morning. I know it by the dint on the Queen’s temples and the crooked scratch under her nose.

Mr. Quirke: (Examining it.) So there is, too.

Sergeant: This is a bad business. It has been stolen from the church.

All: O! O! O!

Sergeant: (Seizing Fardy.) You have robbed the church!

Fardy: (Terrified.) I tell you I never did!

Sergeant: I have the proof of it.

Fardy: Say what you like! I never put a foot in it!

Sergeant: How did you get this, so?

Miss Joyce: I suppose from the stranger?[Pg 69]

Mrs. Delane: I suppose it was Hyacinth Halvey gave it to you, now?

Fardy: It was so.

Sergeant: I suppose it was he robbed the church?

Fardy: (Sobs.) You will not believe me if I say it.

Mr. Quirke: O! the young vagabond! Let me get at him!

Mrs. Delane: Here he is himself now!

(Hyacinth comes in. Fardy releases himself and creeps behind him.)

Mrs. Delane: It is time you to come, Mr. Halvey, and shut the mouth of this young schemer.

Miss Joyce: I would like you to hear what he says of you, Mr. Halvey. Pitch and toss, he says.

Mr. Quirke: Robbery, he says.

Mrs. Delane: Robbery of a church.

Sergeant: He has had a bad name long enough. Let him go to a reformatory now.

Fardy: (Clinging to Hyacinth.) Save me, save me! I’m a poor boy trying to knock out a way of living; I’ll be destroyed if I go to a reformatory. (Kneels and clings to Hyacinth’s knees.)

Hyacinth: I’ll save you easy enough.

Fardy: Don’t let me be gaoled!

Hyacinth: I am going to tell them.

Fardy: I’m a poor orphan—[Pg 70]—

Hyacinth: Will you let me speak?

Fardy: I’ll get no more chance in the world——

Hyacinth: Sure I’m trying to free you——

Fardy: It will be tasked to me always.

Hyacinth: Be quiet, can’t you.

Fardy: Don’t you desert me!

Hyacinth: Will you be silent?

Fardy: Take it on yourself.

Hyacinth: I will if you’ll let me.

Fardy: Tell them you did it.

Hyacinth: I am going to do that.

Fardy: Tell them it was you got in at the window.

Hyacinth: I will! I will!

Fardy: Say it was you robbed the box.

Hyacinth: I’ll say it! I’ll say it!

Fardy: It being open!

Hyacinth: Let me tell, let me tell.

Fardy: Of all that was in it.

Hyacinth: I’ll tell them that.

Fardy: And gave it to me.

Hyacinth: (Putting hand on his mouth and dragging him up.) Will you stop and let me speak?

Sergeant: We can’t be wasting time. Give him here to me.

Hyacinth: I can’t do that. He must be let alone.

Sergeant: (Seizing him.) He’ll be let alone in the lock-up.[Pg 71]

Hyacinth: He must not be brought there.

Sergeant: I’ll let no man get him off.

Hyacinth: I will get him off.

Sergeant: You will not!

Hyacinth: I will.

Sergeant: Do you think to buy him off?

Hyacinth: I will buy him off with my own confession.

Sergeant: And what will that be?

Hyacinth: It was I robbed the church.

Sergeant: That is likely indeed!

Hyacinth: Let him go, and take me. I tell you I did it.

Sergeant: It would take witnesses to prove that.

Hyacinth: (Pointing to Fardy.) He will be witness.

Fardy: O! Mr. Halvey, I would not wish to do that. Get me off and I will say nothing.

Hyacinth: Sure you must. You will be put on oath in the court.

Fardy: I will not! I will not! All the world knows I don’t understand the nature of an oath!

Mr. Quirke: (Coming forward.) Is it blind ye all are?

Mrs. Delane: What are you talking about?

Mr. Quirke: Is it fools ye all are?

Miss Joyce: Speak for yourself.

Mr. Quirke: Is it idiots ye all are?[Pg 72]

Sergeant: Mind who you’re talking to.

Mr. Quirke: (Seizing Hyacinth’s hands.) Can’t you see? Can’t you hear? Where are your wits? Was ever such a thing seen in this town?

Mrs. Delane: Say out what you have to say.

Mr. Quirke: A walking saint he is!

Mrs. Delane: Maybe so.

Mr. Quirke: The preserver of the poor! Talk of the holy martyrs! They are nothing at all to what he is! Will you look at him! To save that poor boy he is going! To take the blame on himself he is going! To say he himself did the robbery he is going! Before the magistrate he is going! To gaol he is going! Taking the blame on his own head! Putting the sin on his own shoulders! Letting on to have done a robbery! Telling a lie—that it may be forgiven him—to his own injury! Doing all that I tell you to save the character of a miserable slack lad, that rose in poverty.

(Murmur of admiration from all.)

Mr. Quirke: Now, what do you say?

Sergeant: (Pressing his hand.) Mr. Halvey, you have given us all a lesson. To please you, I will make no information against the boy. (Shakes him and helps him up.) I will put back the half-crown in the poor-box next Sunday. (To Fardy.) What have you to say to your benefactor?

Fardy: I’m obliged to you, Mr. Halvey. You[Pg 73] behaved very decent to me, very decent indeed. I’ll never let a word be said against you if I live to be a hundred years.

Sergeant: (Wiping eyes with a blue handkerchief.) I will tell it at the meeting. It will be a great encouragement to them to build up their character. I’ll tell it to the priest and he taking the chair——

Hyacinth: O stop, will you——

Mr. Quirke: The chair. It’s in the chair he himself should be. It’s in a chair we will put him now. It’s to chair him through the streets we will. Sure he’ll be an example and a blessing to the whole of the town. (Seizes Halvey and seats him in chair.) Now, Sergeant, give a hand. Here, Fardy.

(They all lift the chair with Halvey in it, wildly protesting.)

Mr. Quirke: Come along now to the Courthouse. Three cheers for Hyacinth Halvey! Hip! hip! hoora!

(Cheers heard in the distance as the curtain drops.)

[Pg 74]

[Pg 75]

[Pg 76]

Persons
Sergeant.
Policeman X.
Policeman B.
A Ragged Man.

[Pg 77]

THE RISING OF THE MOON

Scene: Side of a quay in a seaport town. Some posts and chains. A large barrel. Enter three policemen. Moonlight.

(Sergeant, who is older than the others, crosses the stage to right and looks down steps. The others put down a pastepot and unroll a bundle of placards.)

Policeman B: I think this would be a good place to put up a notice. (He points to barrel.)

Policeman X: Better ask him. (Calls to Sergt.) Will this be a good place for a placard?

(No answer.)

Policeman B: Will we put up a notice here on the barrel? (No answer.)

Sergeant: There’s a flight of steps here that leads to the water. This is a place that should be minded well. If he got down here, his friends might have a boat to meet him; they might send it in here from outside.

Policeman B: Would the barrel be a good place to put a notice up?

Sergeant: It might; you can put it there.

(They paste the notice up.)[Pg 78]

Sergeant: (Reading it.) Dark hair—dark eyes, smooth face, height five feet five—there’s not much to take hold of in that—It’s a pity I had no chance of seeing him before he broke out of gaol. They say he’s a wonder, that it’s he makes all the plans for the whole organization. There isn’t another man in Ireland would have broken gaol the way he did. He must have some friends among the gaolers.

Policeman B: A hundred pounds is little enough for the Government to offer for him. You may be sure any man in the force that takes him will get promotion.

Sergeant: I’ll mind this place myself. I wouldn’t wonder at all if he came this way. He might come slipping along there (points to side of quay), and his friends might be waiting for him there (points down steps), and once he got away it’s little chance we’d have of finding him; it’s maybe under a load of kelp he’d be in a fishing boat, and not one to help a married man that wants it to the reward.

Policeman X: And if we get him itself, nothing but abuse on our heads for it from the people, and maybe from our own relations.

Sergeant: Well, we have to do our duty in the force. Haven’t we the whole country depending on us to keep law and order? It’s those that are down would be up and those that are up would be[Pg 79] down, if it wasn’t for us. Well, hurry on, you have plenty of other places to placard yet, and come back here then to me. You can take the lantern. Don’t be too long now. It’s very lonesome here with nothing but the moon.

Policeman B: It’s a pity we can’t stop with you. The Government should have brought more police into the town, with him in gaol, and at assize time too. Well, good luck to your watch.

(They go out.)

Sergeant: (Walks up and down once or twice and looks at placard.) A hundred pounds and promotion sure. There must be a great deal of spending in a hundred pounds. It’s a pity some honest man not to be the better of that.

(A ragged man appears at left and tries to slip past. Sergeant suddenly turns.)

Sergeant: Where are you going?

Man: I’m a poor ballad-singer, your honour. I thought to sell some of these (holds out bundle of ballads) to the sailors. (He goes on.)

Sergeant: Stop! Didn’t I tell you to stop? You can’t go on there.

Man: Oh, very well. It’s a hard thing to be poor. All the world’s against the poor!

Sergeant: Who are you?

Man: You’d be as wise as myself if I told you, but I don’t mind. I’m one Jimmy Walsh, a ballad-singer.[Pg 80]

Sergeant: Jimmy Walsh? I don’t know that name.

Man: Ah, sure, they know it well enough in Ennis. Were you ever in Ennis, sergeant?

Sergeant: What brought you here?

Man: Sure, it’s to the assizes I came, thinking I might make a few shillings here or there. It’s in the one train with the judges I came.

Sergeant: Well, if you came so far, you may as well go farther, for you’ll walk out of this.

Man: I will, I will; I’ll just go on where I was going. (Goes towards steps.)

Sergeant: Come back from those steps; no one has leave to pass down them to-night.

Man: I’ll just sit on the top of the steps till I see will some sailor buy a ballad off me that would give me my supper. They do be late going back to the ship. It’s often I saw them in Cork carried down the quay in a hand-cart.

Sergeant: Move on, I tell you. I won’t have any one lingering about the quay to-night.

Man: Well, I’ll go. It’s the poor have the hard life! Maybe yourself might like one, sergeant. Here’s a good sheet now. (Turns one over.) “Content and a pipe”—that’s not much. “The Peeler and the goat”—you wouldn’t like that. “Johnny Hart”—that’s a lovely song.

Sergeant: Move on.

Man: Ah, wait till you hear it. (Sings:)[Pg 81]

There was a rich farmer’s daughter lived near the town of Ross;
She courted a Highland soldier, his name was Johnny Hart;
Says the mother to her daughter, “I’ll go distracted mad
If you marry that Highland soldier dressed up in Highland plaid.”

Sergeant: Stop that noise.

(Man wraps up his ballads and shuffles towards the steps)

Sergeant: Where are you going?

Man: Sure you told me to be going, and I am going.

Sergeant: Don’t be a fool. I didn’t tell you to go that way; I told you to go back to the town.

Man: Back to the town, is it?

Sergeant: (Taking him by the shoulder and shoving him before him.) Here, I’ll show you the way. Be off with you. What are you stopping for?

Man: (Who has been keeping his eye on the notice, points to it.) I think I know what you’re waiting for, sergeant.

Sergeant: What’s that to you?

Man: And I know well the man you’re waiting for—I know him well—I’ll be going.

(He shuffles on.)

Sergeant: You know him? Come back here. What sort is he?[Pg 82]

Man: Come back is it, sergeant? Do you want to have me killed?

Sergeant: Why do you say that?

Man: Never mind. I’m going. I wouldn’t be in your shoes if the reward was ten times as much. (Goes on off stage to left). Not if it was ten times as much.

Sergeant: (Rushing after him.) Come back here, come back. (Drags him back.) What sort is he? Where did you see him?

Man: I saw him in my own place, in the County Clare. I tell you you wouldn’t like to be looking at him. You’d be afraid to be in the one place with him. There isn’t a weapon he doesn’t know the use of, and as to strength, his muscles are as hard as that board (slaps barrel).

Sergeant: Is he as bad as that?

Man: He is then.

Sergeant: Do you tell me so?

Man: There was a poor man in our place, a sergeant from Ballyvaughan.—It was with a lump of stone he did it.

Sergeant: I never heard of that.

Man: And you wouldn’t, sergeant. It’s not everything that happens gets into the papers. And there was a policeman in plain clothes, too.... It is in Limerick he was.... It was after the time of the attack on the police barrack at Kilmallock.... Moonlight ... just like[Pg 83] this ... waterside.... Nothing was known for certain.

Sergeant: Do you say so? It’s a terrible county to belong to.

Man: That’s so, indeed! You might be standing there, looking out that way, thinking you saw him coming up this side of the quay (points), and he might be coming up this other side (points), and he’d be on you before you knew where you were.

Sergeant: It’s a whole troop of police they ought to put here to stop a man like that.

Man: But if you’d like me to stop with you, I could be looking down this side. I could be sitting up here on this barrel.

Sergeant: And you know him well, too?

Man: I’d know him a mile off, sergeant.

Sergeant: But you wouldn’t want to share the reward?

Man: Is it a poor man like me, that has to be going the roads and singing in fairs, to have the name on him that he took a reward? But you don’t want me. I’ll be safer in the town.

Sergeant: Well, you can stop.

Man: (Getting up on barrel.) All right, sergeant. I wonder, now, you’re not tired out, sergeant, walking up and down the way you are.

Sergeant: If I’m tired I’m used to it.

Man: You might have hard work before you to-night yet. Take it easy while you can. There’s[Pg 84] plenty of room up here on the barrel, and you see farther when you’re higher up.

Sergeant: Maybe so. (Gets up beside him on barrel, facing right. They sit back to back, looking different ways.) You made me feel a bit queer with the way you talked.

Man: Give me a match, sergeant (he gives it and man lights pipe); take a draw yourself? It’ll quiet you. Wait now till I give you a light, but you needn’t turn round. Don’t take your eye off the quay for the life of you.

Sergeant: Never fear, I won’t. (Lights pipe. They both smoke.) Indeed it’s a hard thing to be in the force, out at night and no thanks for it, for all the danger we’re in. And it’s little we get but abuse from the people, and no choice but to obey our orders, and never asked when a man is sent into danger, if you are a married man with a family.

Man: (Sings)—

As through the hills I walked to view the hills and shamrock plain,
I stood awhile where nature smiles to view the rocks and streams,
On a matron fair I fixed my eyes beneath a fertile vale,
As she sang her song it was on the wrong of poor old Granuaile.

Sergeant: Stop that; that’s no song to be singing in these times.[Pg 85]

Man: Ah, sergeant, I was only singing to keep my heart up. It sinks when I think of him. To think of us two sitting here, and he creeping up the quay, maybe, to get to us.

Sergeant: Are you keeping a good lookout?

Man: I am; and for no reward too. Amn’t I the foolish man? But when I saw a man in trouble, I never could help trying to get him out of it. What’s that? Did something hit me?

(Rubs his heart.)

Sergeant: (Patting him on the shoulder.) You will get your reward in heaven.

Man: I know that, I know that, sergeant, but life is precious.

Sergeant: Well, you can sing if it gives you more courage.

Man: (Sings)—

Her head was bare, her hands and feet with iron bands were bound,
Her pensive strain and plaintive wail mingles with the evening gale,
And the song she sang with mournful air, I am old Granuaile.
Her lips so sweet that monarchs kissed....

Sergeant: That’s not it.... “Her gown she wore was stained with gore.” ... That’s it—you missed that.

Man: You’re right, sergeant, so it is; I missed[Pg 86] it. (Repeats line.) But to think of a man like you knowing a song like that.

Sergeant: There’s many a thing a man might know and might not have any wish for.

Man: Now, I daresay, sergeant, in your youth, you used to be sitting up on a wall, the way you are sitting up on this barrel now, and the other lads beside you, and you singing “Granuaile”?...

Sergeant: I did then.

Man: And the “Shan Bhean Bhocht”?...

Sergeant: I did then.

Man: And the “Green on the Cape?”

Sergeant: That was one of them.

Man: And maybe the man you are watching for to-night used to be sitting on the wall, when he was young, and singing those same songs.... It’s a queer world....

Sergeant: Whisht!... I think I see something coming.... It’s only a dog.

Man: And isn’t it a queer world?... Maybe it’s one of the boys you used to be singing with that time you will be arresting to-day or tomorrow, and sending into the dock....

Sergeant: That’s true indeed.

Man: And maybe one night, after you had been singing, if the other boys had told you some plan they had, some plan to free the country, you might have joined with them ... and maybe it is you might be in trouble now.[Pg 87]

Sergeant: Well, who knows but I might? I had a great spirit in those days.

Man: It’s a queer world, sergeant, and it’s little any mother knows when she sees her child creeping on the floor what might happen to it before it has gone through its life, or who will be who in the end.

Sergeant: That’s a queer thought now, and a true thought. Wait now till I think it out.... If it wasn’t for the sense I have, and for my wife and family, and for me joining the force the time I did, it might be myself now would be after breaking gaol and hiding in the dark, and it might be him that’s hiding in the dark and that got out of gaol would be sitting up where I am on this barrel.... And it might be myself would be creeping up trying to make my escape from himself, and it might be himself would be keeping the law, and myself would be breaking it, and myself would be trying maybe to put a bullet in his head, or to take up a lump of a stone the way you said he did ... no, that myself did.... Oh! (Gasps. After a pause.) What’s that? (Grasps man’s arm.)

Man: (Jumps off barrel and listens, looking out over water.) It’s nothing, sergeant.

Sergeant: I thought it might be a boat. I had a notion there might be friends of his coming about the quays with a boat.

Man: Sergeant, I am thinking it was with the[Pg 88] people you were, and not with the law you were, when you were a young man.

Sergeant: Well, if I was foolish then, that time’s gone.

Man: Maybe, sergeant, it comes into your head sometimes, in spite of your belt and your tunic, that it might have been as well for you to have followed Granuaile.

Sergeant: It’s no business of yours what I think.

Man: Maybe, sergeant, you’ll be on the side of the country yet.

Sergeant: (Gets off barrel.) Don’t talk to me like that. I have my duties and I know them. (Looks round.) That was a boat; I hear the oars.

(Goes to the steps and looks down.)

Man: (Sings)—

Sergeant: Stop that! Stop that, I tell you!

Man: (Sings louder)—

Sergeant: If you don’t stop that, I’ll arrest you.

(A whistle from below answers, repeating the air.)[Pg 89]

Sergeant: That’s a signal. (Stands between him and steps.) You must not pass this way.... Step farther back.... Who are you? You are no ballad-singer.

Man: You needn’t ask who I am; that placard will tell you. (Points to placard.)

Sergeant: You are the man I am looking for.

Man: (Takes off hat and wig. Sergeant seizes them.) I am. There’s a hundred pounds on my head. There is a friend of mine below in a boat. He knows a safe place to bring me to.

Sergeant: (Looking still at hat and wig.) It’s a pity! It’s a pity. You deceived me. You deceived me well.

Man: I am a friend of Granuaile. There is a hundred pounds on my head.

Sergeant: It’s a pity, it’s a pity!

Man: Will you let me pass, or must I make you let me?

Sergeant: I am in the force. I will not let you pass.

Man: I thought to do it with my tongue. (Puts hand in breast.) What is that?

(Voice of Policeman X outside:) Here, this is where we left him.

Sergeant: It’s my comrades coming.

Man: You won’t betray me ... the friend of Granuaile. (Slips behind barrel.)[Pg 90]

(Voice of Policeman B:) That was the last of the placards.

Policeman X: (As they come in.) If he makes his escape it won’t be unknown he’ll make it.

(Sergeant puts hat and wig behind his back.)

Policeman B: Did any one come this way?

Sergeant: (After a pause.) No one.

Policeman B: No one at all?

Sergeant: No one at all.

Policeman B: We had no orders to go back to the station; we can stop along with you.

Sergeant: I don’t want you. There is nothing for you to do here.

Policeman B: You bade us to come back here and keep watch with you.

Sergeant: I’d sooner be alone. Would any man come this way and you making all that talk? It is better the place to be quiet.

Policeman B: Well, we’ll leave you the lantern anyhow. (Hands it to him.)

Sergeant: I don’t want it. Bring it with you.

Policeman B: You might want it. There are clouds coming up and you have the darkness of the night before you yet. I’ll leave it over here on the barrel. (Goes to barrel.)

Sergeant: Bring it with you I tell you. No more talk.

Policeman B: Well, I thought it might be a comfort to you. I often think when I have it in[Pg 91] my hand and can be flashing it about into every dark corner (doing so) that it’s the same as being beside the fire at home, and the bits of bogwood blazing up now and again.

(Flashes it about, now on the barrel, now on Sergeant.)

Sergeant: (Furious.) Be off the two of you, yourselves and your lantern!

(They go out. Man comes from behind barrel. He and Sergeant stand looking at one another.)

Sergeant: What are you waiting for?

Man: For my hat, of course, and my wig. You wouldn’t wish me to get my death of cold?

(Sergeant gives them.)

Man: (Going towards steps.) Well, good-night, comrade, and thank you. You did me a good turn to-night, and I’m obliged to you. Maybe I’ll be able to do as much for you when the small rise up and the big fall down ... when we all change places at the Rising (waves his hand and disappears) of the Moon.

Sergeant: (Turning his back to audience and reading placard.) A hundred pounds reward! A hundred pounds! (Turns towards audience.) I wonder, now, am I as great a fool as I think I am?

Curtain.

[Pg 92]
[Pg 93]

[Pg 94]

[Pg 95]

THE JACKDAW

Scene: Interior of a small general shop at Cloon. Mrs. Broderick sitting down. Tommy Nally sitting eating an orange Sibby has given him. Sibby, with basket on her arm, is looking out of door.

Sibby: The people are gathering to the door of the Court. The Magistrates will be coming there before long. Here is Timothy Ward coming up the street.

Timothy Ward: (Coming to door.) Did you get that summons I left here for you ere yesterday, Mrs. Broderick?

Mrs. Broderick: I believe it’s there in under the canister. (Takes it out.) It had my mind tossed looking at it there before me. I know well what is in it if I made no fist of reading it itself. It’s no wonder with all I had to go through if the reading and writing got scattered on me.

Ward: You know it is on this day you have to appear in the Court?

Mrs. Broderick: It isn’t easy to forget that, though indeed it is hard for me to be keeping anything in my head these times, but maybe[Pg 96] remembering to-morrow the thing I was saying to-day.

Ward: Up to one o’clock the magistrates will be able to attend to you, ma’am, before they will go out eating their meal.

Mrs. Broderick: Haven’t I the mean, begrudging creditors now that would put me into the Court? Sure it’s a terrible thing to go in it and to be bound to speak nothing but the truth. When people would meet with you after, they would remember your face in the Court. What way would they be certain was it in or outside of the dock?

Ward: It is not in the dock you will be put this time. And there will be no bodily harm done to you, but to seize your furniture and your goods. It’s best for me to be going there myself and not to be wasting my time. (Goes out.)

Mrs. Broderick: Many a one taking my goods on credit and I seeing their face no more. But nothing would satisfy the people of this district. Sure the great God Himself when He came down couldn’t please everybody.

Sibby: I am thinking you were talking of some friend, ma’am, might be apt to be coming to your aid.

Mrs. Broderick: Well able he is to do it if the Lord would but put it in his mind. Isn’t it a strange thing the goods of this world to shut up the heart of a brother from his own, the same as[Pg 97] Esau and Jacob, and he having a good farm of land in the County Limerick. It is what I heard that in that place the grass does be as thick as grease.

Sibby: I suppose, ma’am, you wrote giving him an account of your case?

Mrs. Broderick: Sure, Mr. Nestor, the dear man, has his fingers wore away writing for me, and I telling him all he had or had not to say. At Christmas I wrote, and at Little Christmas, and at St. Brigit’s Day, and on the Feast of St. Patrick, and after that again such time as I had news of the summons being about to be served. And you may ask Mrs. Delane at the Post Office am I telling any lie saying I got no word or answer at all.... It’s long since I saw him, but it is the way he used to be, his eyes on kippeens and some way suspicious in his heart; a dark weighty tempered man.

Sibby: A person to be crabbed and he young, it is not likely he will grow kind at the latter end.

Tommy Nally: That is no less than true now. There are crabbed people and suspicious people to be met with in every place. It is much that I got a pass from the Workhouse this day, the Master making sure when I asked it that I had in my pocket the means of getting drink.

Mrs. Broderick: It would maybe be best to go join you in the Workhouse, Tommy Nally, when I am out of this, than to go walking the world from end to end.[Pg 98]

Tommy Nally: Ah, don’t be saying that, ma’am; sure you couldn’t be happy within those walls if you had the whole world. Clean outside, but very hard within. No rank but all mixed together, the good, the middling and the bad, the well reared and the rough.

Mrs. Broderick: Sure I’m not asking to go in it. You could never be as stiff in any place as in any sort of little cabin of your own.

Tommy Nally: The tea boiled in a boiler, you should close your eyes drinking it, and ne’er a bit of sugar hardly in it at all. And our curses on them that boil the eggs too hard! What use is an egg that is hard to any person on earth? And as to the dinner, what way would a tasty person eat it not having a knife or a fork?

Mrs. Broderick: That I may live to be in no one’s way, but to have some little corner of my own!

Tommy Nally: And to come to your end in it, ma’am! If you were the Lady Mayor herself you’d be brought out to the deadhouse if it was ten o’clock at night, and not a wash unless it was just a Scotch lick, and nobody to wake you at all!

Mrs. Broderick: I will not go in it! I would sooner make any shift and die by the side of the wall. Sure heaven is the best place, heaven and this world we’re in now!

Sibby: Don’t be giving up now, ma’am. Here[Pg 99] is Mr. Nestor coming, and if any one will give you an advice he is the one will do it. Why wouldn’t he, he being, as he is, an educated man, and such a great one to be reading books.

Mrs. Broderick: So he is too, and keeps it in his mind after. It’s a wonder to me a man that does be reading to keep any memory at all.

Nally: It’s easy for him to carry things light, and his pension paid regular at springtime and harvest.

(Nestor comes in reading “Tit-Bits.”)

Nestor: There was a servant girl in Austria cut off her finger slicing cabbage....

All: The poor thing!