New Comedies Part 8

_Shawn Early:_ Any fear of any person here being violent, Mr.

Halvey will get him put under restraint.

_Peter Tannian:_ Is it myself you are thinking to put under restraint? Would a man would be pushing and kicking and tearing his clothes, be able to do arithmetic on a board? Look now at that.

_(Chalks figures on door.)_ Three and three makes six!--and three--

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I'm no hand at figuring, but I can say out a blessed hymn, what any person with the mind gone contrary in them could not do. Hearken now till you'll know is there confusion in my mind. _(Sings.)_

Mary Broderick is my name; Fiddane was my station; Cloon is my dwelling-place; And (I hope) heaven is my destination.

Mary Broderick is my name, Cloon was my--

_Cracked Mary:_ _(With a cackle of delight.)_ Give heed to them now, Davideen! That's the way the crazed people used to be going on in the place where I was, every one thinking the other to be cracked.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ _(To Tannian.)_ Look now at your great figuring!

Argus with his hundred eyes wouldn't know is that a nought or is it a nine without a tail.

_Peter Tannian:_ Leave that blame on a little ridge that is in the nature of the chalk. Look now at Mary Broderick, that it has failed to word out her verse.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, what signifies? I'd never get light greatly.

It wouldn't be worth while I to go mad.

_(Bartley Fallon gives a deep groan.)_

_Shawn Early:_ What is on you, Bartley?

_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm in dread it is I myself has got the venom into my blood.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What makes you think that?

_Bartley Fallon:_ It's a sort of a thing would be apt to happen me, and any malice to fall within the town at all.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Give heed to him, Hyacinth Halvey; you are the most man we have to baffle any wrong thing coming in our midst!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Is it that you are feeling any pain as of a wound or a sore?

_Bartley Fallon:_ Some sort of a little catch I'm thinking there is in under my knee. I would feel no pain unless I would turn it contrary.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What cla.s.s of feeling would you say you are feeling?

_Bartley Fallon:_ I am feeling as if the five fingers of my hand to be lessening from me, the same as five farthing dips the heat of the sun would be sweating the tallow from.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That is a strange account.

_Bartley Fallon:_ And a sort of a megrim in my head, the same as a sheep would get a fit of staggers in a field.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That is what I would look for. Is there some sort of a roaring in your ear?

_Bartley Fallon:_ There is, there is, as if I would hear voices would be talking.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Would you feel any wish to go tearing and destroying?

_Bartley Fallon:_ I would indeed, and there to be an enemy upon my path. Would you say now, Widow Broderick, am I getting anyway flushy in the face?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Don't leave your eye off him for pity's sake. He is reddening as red as a rose.

_Bartley Fallon:_ I could as if walk on the wind with lightness.

Something that is rising in my veins the same as froth would be rising on a pint.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is the doctor I'd best call for--and maybe the sergeant and the priest.

_Bartley Fallon:_ There are three thoughts going through my mind--to hang myself or to drown myself, or to cut my neck with a reaping-hook.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is the doctor will serve him best, where it is the mad blood that should be bled away. To break up eggs, the white of them, in a tin can, will put new blood in him, and whiskey, and to taste no food through twenty-one days.

_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm thinking so long a fast wouldn't serve me. I wouldn't wish the lads will bear my body to the grave, to lay down there was nothing within it but a gra.s.shopper or a wisp of dry gra.s.s.

_Shawn Early:_ No, but to cut a piece out of his leg the doctor will, the way the poison will get no leave to work.

_Peter Tannian:_ Or to burn it with red-hot irons, the way it will not scatter itself and grow. There does a doctor do that out in foreign.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It would be more natural to cut the leg off him in some sort of a Christian way.

_Shawn Early:_ If it was a pig was bit, or a sow or a bonav, it to show the signs, it would be shot, if it was a whole fleet of them was in it.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I knew of a man that was butler in a big house was bit, and they tied him first and smothered him after, and his master shot the dog. A splendid shot he was; the thing he'd not see he'd hit it the same as the thing he'd see. I heard that from an outside neighbour of my own, a woman that told no lies.

_Shawn Early:_ Sure, they did the same thing to a high-up lady over in England, and she after being bit by her own little spaniel and it having a ring around its neck.

_Peter Tannian:_ That is the only best thing to do. Whether the bite is from a dog, or a cat, or whatever it may be, to put the quilt and the blankets on the person and smother him in the bed. To smother them out-and-out you should, before the madness will work.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I'd be loth he to be shot or smothered. I'd sooner to give him a chance in the asylum.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ To keep him there and to try him through three changes of the moon. It's well for you, Bartley, Mr. Halvey being in charge of you, that is known to be a tender man.

_Peter Tannian:_ He to have got a bite and to go biting others, he would put in them the same malice. It is the old people used to tell that down, and they must have had some reason doing that.

_Shawn Early:_ To get a bite of a dog you must chance your life.

There is no doubt at all about that. It might work till the time of the new moon or the full moon, and then they must be shot or smothered.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is a pity there to be no cure found for it in the world.

_Shawn Early:_ There never came out from the Almighty any cure for a mad dog.

_(Bartley Fallon has been edging towards door.)_

_Shawn Early:_ Oh! stop him and keep a hold of him, Mr. Halvey!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Stop where you are.