by J. M. Synge
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 — [peaceably.] 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 to 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.
CURTAIN
ACT II.
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 ne
ck nacked 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?
SARAH — [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 today. 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.
CHRISTY — [coming forward shyly, and holding out his left hand.] — They’re a great and weighty size.
SUSAN. And I run up with a pat of butter, for it’d be a poor thing to have you eating your spuds dry, and you after running a great way since you did destroy your da.
CHRISTY. Thank you kindly.
HONOR. And I brought you a little cut of cake, for you should have a thin stomach on you, and you that length walking the world.
NELLY. And I brought you a little laying pullet — boiled and all she is — was crushed at the fall of night by the curate’s car. Feel the fat of that breast, Mister.
CHRISTY. It’s bursting, surely. [He feels it with the back of his hand, in which he holds the presents.]
SARA. Will you pinch it? Is your right hand too sacred for to use at all? (She slips round behind him.) It’s a glass he has. Well, I never seen to this day a man with a looking-glass held to his back. Them that kills their fathers is a vain lot surely. [Girls giggle.]
CHRISTY — [smiling innocently and piling presents on glass.] — I’m very thankful to you all to-day...
WIDOW QUIN — [coming in quickly, at door.] — Sara Tansey, Susan Brady, Honor Blake! What in glory has you here at this hour of day?
GIRLS — [giggling.] That’s the man killed his father.
WIDOW QUIN — [coming to them.] — I know well it’s the man; and I’m after putting him down in the sports below for racing, leaping, pitching, and the Lord knows what.
SARA — [exuberantly.] That’s right, Widow Quin. I’ll bet my dowry that he’ll lick the world.
WIDOW QUIN. If you will, you’d have a right to have him fresh and nourished in place of nursing a feast. (Taking presents.) Are you fasting or fed, young fellow?
CHRISTY. Fasting, if you please.
WIDOW QUIN — [loudly.] Well, you’re the lot. Stir up now and give him his breakfast. (To Christy.) Come here to me (she puts him on bench beside her while the girls make tea and get his breakfast) and let you tell us your story before Pegeen will come, in place of grinning your ears off like the moon of May.
CHRISTY — [beginning to be pleased.] — It’s a long story; you’d be destroyed listening.
WIDOW QUIN. Don’t be letting on to be shy, a fine, gamey, treacherous lad the like of you. Was it in your house beyond you cracked his skull?
CHRISTY — [shy but flattered.] — It was not. We were digging spuds in his cold, sloping, stony, divil’s patch of a field.
WIDOW QUIN. And you went asking money of him, or making talk of getting a wife would drive him from his farm?
CHRISTY. I did not, then; but there I was, digging and digging, and “You squinting idiot,” says he, “let you walk down now and tell the priest you’ll wed the Widow Casey in a score of days.”
WIDOW QUIN. And what kind was she?
CHRISTY — [with horror.] — A walking terror from beyond the hills, and she two score and five years, and two hundredweights and five pounds in the weighing scales, with a limping leg on her, and a blinded eye, and she a woman of noted misbehaviour with the old and young.
GIRLS — [clustering round him, serving him.] — Glory be.
WIDOW QUIN. And what did he want driving you to wed with her? [She takes a bit of the chicken.]
CHRISTY — [eating with growing satisfaction.] He was letting on I was wanting a protector from the harshness of the world, and he without a thought the whole while but how he’d have her hut to live in and her gold to drink.
WIDOW QUIN. There’s maybe worse than a dry hearth and a widow woman and your glass at night. So you hit him then?
CHRISTY — [getting almost excited.] — I did not. “I won’t wed her,” says I, “when all know she did suckle me for six weeks when I came into the world, and she a hag this day with a tongue on her has the crows and seabirds scattered, the way they wouldn’t cast a shadow on her garden with the dread of her curse.”
WIDOW QUIN — [teasingly.] That one should be right company.
SARA — [eagerly.] Don’t mind her. Did you kill him then?
CHRISTY. “She’s too good for the like of you,” says he, “and go on now or I’ll flatten you out like a crawling beast has passed under a dray.” “You will not if I can help it,” says I. “Go on,” says he, “or I’ll have the divil making garters of your limbs tonight.” “You will not if I can help it,” says I. [He sits up, brandishing his mug.]
SARA. You were right surely.
CHRISTY — [impressively.] With that the sun came out between the cloud and the hill, and it shining green in my face. “God have mercy on your soul,” says he, lifting a scythe; “or on your own,” says I, raising the loy. SUSAN. That’s a grand story.
HONOR. He tells it lovely.
CHRISTY — [flattered and confident, waving bone.] — He gave a drive with the scythe, and I gave a lep to the east. Then I turned around with my back to the north, and I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet. [He raises the chicken bone to his Adam’s apple.]
GIRLS — [togethe
r.] Well, you’re a marvel! Oh, God bless you! You’re the lad surely!
SUSAN. I’m thinking the Lord God sent him this road to make a second husband to the Widow Quin, and she with a great yearning to be wedded, though all dread her here. Lift him on her knee, Sara Tansey.
WIDOW QUIN. Don’t tease him.
SARA — [going over to dresser and counter very quickly, and getting two glasses and porter.] — You’re heroes surely, and let you drink a supeen with your arms linked like the outlandish lovers in the sailor’s song. (She links their arms and gives them the glasses.) There now. Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law. [Brandishing the bottle.]
WIDOW QUIN. That’s a right toast, Sara Tansey. Now Christy. [They drink with their arms linked, he drinking with his left hand, she with her right. As they are drinking, Pegeen Mike comes in with a milk can and stands aghast. They all spring away from Christy. He goes down left. Widow Quin remains seated.]
PEGEEN — [angrily, to Sara.] — What is it you’re wanting?
SARA — [twisting her apron.] — An ounce of tobacco.
PEGEEN. Have you tuppence?
SARA. I’ve forgotten my purse.
PEGEEN. Then you’d best be getting it and not fooling us here. (To the Widow Quin, with more elaborate scorn.) And what is it you’re wanting, Widow Quin?
WIDOW QUIN — [insolently.] A penn’orth of starch.
PEGEEN — [breaking out.] — And you without a white shift or a shirt in your whole family since the drying of the flood. I’ve no starch for the like of you, and let you walk on now to Killamuck.
WIDOW QUIN — [turning to Christy, as she goes out with the girls.] — Well, you’re mighty huffy this day, Pegeen Mike, and, you young fellow, let you not forget the sports and racing when the noon is by. [They go out.]
