The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays (9 page)

PEGEEN. Providence and Mercy, spare us all!

CHRISTY. It's that you'd say surely if you seen him and he after drinking for weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before it maybe, and going out into the yard as naked as an ash tree in the moon of May, and shying clods against the visage of the stars till he'd put the fear of death into the banbhs and the screeching sows.

PEGEEN. I'd be well-nigh afeard of that lad myself, I'm thinking. And there was no one in it but the two of you alone?

CHRISTY. The divil a one, though he'd sons and daughters walking all great states and territories of the world, and not a one of them, to this day, but would say their seven curses on him, and they rousing up to let a cough or sneeze, maybe, in the deadness of the night.

PEGEEN
(nodding her head).
Well, you should have been a queer lot. I never cursed my father the like of that, though I'm twenty and more years of age.

CHRISTY. Then you'd have cursed mine, I'm telling you, and he a man never gave peace to any, saving when he'd get two months or three, or be locked in the asylums for battering peelers or as saulting men
(with depression)
the way it was a bitter life he led me till I did up a Tuesday and halve his skull.

PEGEEN
(putting her hand on his shoulder).
Well, you'll have peace in this place, Christy Mahon, and none to trouble you, and it's near time a fine lad like you should have your good share of the earth.

CHRISTY. It's time surely, and I a seemly fellow with great strength in me and bravery of ...

 

 

CHRISTY
(clinging to
PEGEEN). Oh, glory! it's late for knocking, and this last while I'm in terror of the peelers, and the walking dead.

 

 

PEGEEN. Who's there?

VOICE
(outside).
Me.

PEGEEN. Who's me?

VOICE. The Widow Quin.

PEGEEN
(jumping up and giving him the bread and milk).
Go on now with your supper, and let on to be sleepy, for if she found you were such a warrant to talk, she'd be stringing gabble till the dawn of day.
(He takes bread and sits shyly with his back to the door.)

PEGEEN
(opening door, with temper).
What ails you, or what is it you're wanting at this hour of the night?

WIDOW QUIN
(coming in a step and peering at
CHRISTY.) I'm after meeting Shawn Keogh and Father Reilly below, who told me of your curiosity man, and they fearing by this time he was maybe roaring, romping on your hands with drink.

PEGEEN
(pointing to
CHRISTY). Look now is he roaring, and he stretched away drowsy with his supper and his mug of milk. Walk down and tell that to Father Reilly and to Shaneen Keogh.

WIDOW QUIN
(coming forward).
I'll not see them again, for I've their word to lead that lad forward for to lodge with me.

PEGEEN
(in blank amazement).
This night, is it?

WIDOW QUIN
(going over).
This night. “It isn't fitting,” says the priesteen, “to have his likeness lodging with an orphaned girl.”
(To
CHRISTY) God save you, mister!

CHRISTY
(shyly).
God save you kindly.

WIDOW QUIN
(looking at him with half-amazed curiosity).
Well, aren't you a little smiling fellow? It should have been great and bitter torments did rouse your spirits to a deed of blood.

CHRISTY
(doubtfully).
It should, maybe.

WIDOW QUIN. It's more than “maybe” I'm saying, and it'd soften my heart to see you sitting so simple with your cup and cake, and you fitter to be saying your catechism than slaying your da.

PEGEEN
(at counter, washing glasses).
There's talking when any'd see he's fit to be holding his head high with the wonders of the world. Walk on from this, for I'll not have him tormented and he destroyed travelling since Tuesday was a week.

WIDOW QUIN
(peacefully).
We'll be walking surely when his supper's done, and you'll find we're great company, young fellow, when it's of the like of you and me you'd hear the penny poets singing in an August Fair.

CHRISTY
(innocently).
Did you kill your father?

PEGEEN
(contemptuously).
She did not. She hit himself with a worn pick, and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way he never overed it, and died after. That was a sneaky kind of murder did win small glory with the boys itself.
(She crosses to
CHRISTY'S
left.)

WIDOW QUIN
(with good-humour).
If it didn‘t, maybe all knows a widow woman has buried her children and destroyed her man is a wiser comrade for a young lad than a girl, the like of you, who'd go helter-skeltering after any man would let you a wink upon the road.

PEGEEN
(breaking out into wild rage).
And you'll say that, Widow Quin, and you gasping with the rage you had racing the hill beyond to look on his face.

WIDOW QUIN
(laughing derisively).
Me, is it? Well, Father Reilly has cuteness to divide you now.
(She pulls
CHRISTY
up.)
There's great temptation in a man did slay his da, and we'd best be going, young fellow; so rise up and come with me.

PEGEEN (seizing his
arm).
He'll not stir. He's pot-boy in this place, and I'll not have him stolen off and kidnabbed while himself's abroad.

WIDOW QUIN. It'd be a crazy pot-boy'd lodge him in the shebeen where he works by day, so you'd have a right to come on, young fellow, till you see my little houseen, a perch off on the rising hill.

PEGEEN. Wait till morning, Christy Mahon. Wait till you lay eyes on her leaky thatch is growing more pasture for her buck goat than her square of fields, and she without a tramp itself to keep in order her place at all.

WIDOW QUIN. When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you'll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn't my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep.

PEGEEN
(with noisy scorn).
It's true the Lord God formed you to contrive indeed. Doesn't the world know you reared a black lamb at your own breast, so that the Lord Bishop of Connaught felt the elements of a Christian, and he eating it after in a kidney stew? Doesn't the world know you've been seen shaving the foxy skipper from France for a threepenny bit and a sop of grass tobacco would wring the liver from a mountain goat you'd meet leaping the hills?

WIDOW QUIN
(with amusement).
Do you hear her now, young fellow? Do you hear the way she'll be rating at your own self when a week is by?

PEGEEN
(to
CHRISTY). Don't heed her. Tell her to go into her pigsty and not plague us here.

WIDOW QUIN. I'm going; but he'll come with me.

PEGEEN
(shaking him).
Are you dumb, young fellow?

CHRISTY
(timidly,
to WIDOW QUIN). God increase you; but I'm pot-boy in this place, and it's here I'd liefer stay.

PEGEEN
(triumphantly).
Now you have heard him, and go on from this.

WIDOW QUIN
(looking round the room).
It's lonesome this hour crossing the hill, and if he won't come along with me, I'd have a right maybe to stop this night with yourselves. Let me stretch out on the settle, Pegeen Mike; and himself can lie by the hearth.

PEGEEN
(short and fiercely).
Faith, I won't. Quit off or I will send you now.

WIDOW QUIN
(gathering her shawl up).
Well, it's a terror to be aged a score.
(To
CHRISTY) God bless you now, young fellow, and let you be wary, or there's right torment will await you here if you go romancing with her like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a sheepskin parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh of Killakeen.

CHRISTY (going to PEGEEN
as she bolts the door).
What's that she's after saying?

PEGEEN. Lies and blather, you've no call to mind. Well, isn't Shawn Keogh an impudent fellow to send up spying on me? Wait till I lay hands on him. Let him wait, I'm saying.

CHRISTY. And you're not wedding him at all?

PEGEEN. I wouldn't wed him if a bishop came walking for to join us here.

CHRISTY. That God in glory may be thanked for that.

PEGEEN. There's your bed now. I've put a quilt upon you I'm after quilting a while since with my own two hands, and you'd best stretch out now for your sleep, and may God give you a good rest till

I call you in the morning when the cocks will crow.

CHRISTY
(as she goes in inner room).
May God and Mary and St. Patrick bless you and reward you, for your kindly talk.
(She shuts the door behind her. He settles his bed slowly, feeling the quilt with immense satisfaction.)
Well, it's a clean bed and soft with it, and it's great luck and company I've won me in the end of time—two fine women fighting for the likes of me—till I'm thinking this night wasn‘t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by.

SCENE,
as before. Brilliant morning light.
CHRISTY,
looking bright and cheerful, is cleaning a girl's boots.

 

CHRISTY
(to himself, counting jugs on dresser).
Half a hundred beyond. Ten there. A score that's above. Eighty jugs. Six cups and a broken one. Two plates. A power of glasses. Bottles, a school-master'd be hard set to count, and enough in them, I'm thinking, to drunken all the wealth and wisdom of the County Clare.
(He puts down the boot carefully.)
There's her boots now, nice and decent for her evening use, and isn't it grand brushes she has?
(He puts them down and goes by degrees to the looking-glass.)
Well, this'd be a fine place to be my whole life talking out with swearing Christians, in place of my old dogs and cat, and I stalking around, smoking my pipe and drinking my fill, and never a day's work but drawing a cork an odd time, or wiping a glass, or rinsing out a shiny tumbler for a decent man.
(He takes the looking-glass from the wall and puts it on the back of a chair; then sits down in front of it and begins washing his face.)
Didn't I know rightly I was handsome, though it was the divil's own mirror we had beyond, would twist a squint across an angel's brow; and I'll be growing fine from this day, the way I'll have a soft lovely skin on me and won't be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung.
(He starts.)
Is she coming again?
(He looks out.)
Stranger girls. God help me, where'll I hide myself away and my long neck naked to the world?
(He looks out.)
I'd best go to the room maybe till I'm dressed again.

 

(He gathers up his coat and the looking-glass, and runs into the inner room. The door is pushed open, and
SUSAN BRADY
looks in, and knocks on door.)

 

SUSAN. There's nobody in it.
(Knocks again.)

NELLY
(pushing her in and following her, with
HONOR BLAKE
and
SARA TANSEY). It'd be early for them both to be out walking the hill.

SUSAN. I'm thinking Shawn Keogh was making game of us and there's no such man in it at all.

HONOR
(pointing to straw and quilt).
Look at that. He's been sleeping there in the night. Well, it'll be a hard case if he's gone off now, the way we'll never set our eyes on a man killed his father, and we after rising early and destroying ourselves running fast on the hill.

NELLY. Are you thinking them's his boots?

SARA
(taking them up).
If they are, there should be his father's track on them. Did you never read in the papers the way murdered men do bleed and drip?

SUSAN. Is that blood there, Sara Tansey?

SARA
(smelling it).
That's bog water, I'm thinking, but it's his own they are surely, for I never seen the like of them for whity mud, and red mud, and turf on them, and the fine sands of the sea. That man's been walking, I'm telling you.
(She goes down right, putting on one of his boots.)

SUSAN
(going to window).
Maybe he's stolen off to Belmullet with the boots of Michael James, and you'd have a right so to follow after him, Sara Tansey, and you the one yoked the ass cart and drove ten miles to set your eyes on the man bit the yellow lady's nostril on the northern shore.
(She looks out.)

SARA
(running to window with one boot on).
Don't be talking, and we fooled to-day.
(Putting on other boot)
There's a pair do fit me well, and I'll be keeping them for walking to the priest, when you'd be ashamed this place, going up winter and summer with nothing worth while to confess at all.

HONOR
(who has been listening at the door).
Whisht! there's someone inside the room.
(She pushes door a chink open.)
It's a man.

(SARA
kicks off boots and puts them where they were. They all stand in a line looking through chink.)

SARA. I'll call him. Mister! Mister!
(He puts in his head.)
Is Pegeen within?

CHRISTY
(coming in as meek as a mouse, with the looking glass held behind his back).
She's above on the cnuceen, seeking the nanny goats, the way she'd have a sup of goat's milk for to colour my tea.

SARA. And asking your pardon, is it you's the man killed his father?

CHRISTY
(sidling toward the nail where the glass was hanging).
I am, God help me!

SARA
(taking eggs she has brought).
Then my thousand welcomes to you, and I've run up with a brace of duck's eggs for your food to-day. Pegeen's ducks is no use, but these are the real rich sort. Hold out your hand and you'll see it's no lie I'm telling you.