One-Act Plays Part 60

CATHLEEN [_begins to keen_]. It's destroyed we are from this day. It's destroyed, surely.

NORA. Didn't the young priest say the Almighty G.o.d wouldn't leave her dest.i.tute with no son living?

MAURYA [_in a low voice, but clearly_]. It's little the like of him knows of the sea.... Bartley will be lost now, and let you call in Eamon and make me a good coffin out of the white boards, for I won't live after them. I've had a husband, and a husband's father, and six sons in this house--six fine men, though it was a hard birth I had with every one of them and they coming to the world--and some of them were found and some of them were not found, but they're gone now the lot of them.... There were Stephen, and Shawn, were lost in the great wind, and found after in the Bay of Gregory of the Golden Mouth, and carried up the two of them on the one plank, and in by that door.

[_She pauses for a moment, the girls start as if they heard something through the door that is half open behind them._]

NORA [_in a whisper_]. Did you hear that, Cathleen? Did you hear a noise in the north-east?

CATHLEEN [_in a whisper_]. There's someone after crying out by the seash.o.r.e.

MAURYA [_continues without hearing anything_]. There was Sheamus and his father, and his own father again, were lost in a dark night, and not a stick or sign was seen of them when the sun went up. There was Patch after was drowned out of a curagh that turned over. I was sitting here with Bartley, and he a baby, lying on my two knees, and I seen two women, and three women, and four women coming in, and they crossing themselves, and not saying a word. I looked out then, and there were men coming after them, and they holding a thing in the half of a red sail, and water dripping out of it--it was a dry day, Nora--and leaving a track to the door. [_She pauses again with her hand stretched out towards the door. It opens softly and old women begin to come in, crossing themselves on the threshold, and kneeling down in front of the stage with red petticoats over their heads._]

MAURYA [_half in a dream, to CATHLEEN_]. Is it Patch, or Michael, or what is it at all?

CATHLEEN. Michael is after being found in the far north, and when he is found there how could he be here in this place?

MAURYA. There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea, and what way would they know if it was Michael they had, or another man like him, for when a man is nine days in the sea, and the wind blowing, it's hard set his own mother would be to say what man was it.

CATHLEEN. It's Michael, G.o.d spare him, for they're after sending us a bit of his clothes from the far north. [_She reaches out and hands MAURYA the clothes that belonged to MICHAEL. MAURYA stands up slowly, and takes them in her hands. NORA looks out._]

NORA. They're carrying a thing among them and there's water dripping out of it and leaving a track by the big stones.

CATHLEEN [_in a whisper to the women who have come in_]. Is it Bartley it is?

ONE OF THE WOMEN. It is surely, G.o.d rest his soul. [_Two younger women come in and pull out the table. Then men carry in the body of BARTLEY, laid on a plank, with a bit of a sail over it, and lay it on the table._]

CATHLEEN [_to the women, as they are doing so_]. What way was he drowned?

ONE OF THE WOMEN. The gray pony knocked him into the sea, and he was washed out where there is a great surf on the white rocks. [_MAURYA has gone over and knelt down at the head of the table. The women are keening softly and swaying themselves with a slow movement. CATHLEEN and NORA kneel at the other end of the table. The men kneel near the door._]

MAURYA [_raising her head and speaking as if she did not see the people around her_]. They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me.... I'll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the other. I'll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won't care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening. [_To NORA._] Give me the Holy Water, Nora, there's a small sup still on the dresser. [_NORA gives it to her._]

MAURYA [_drops MICHAEL's clothes across BARTLEY's feet, and sprinkles the Holy Water over him_]. It isn't that I haven't prayed for you, Bartley, to the Almighty G.o.d. It isn't that I haven't said prayers in the dark night till you wouldn't know what I'ld be saying; but it's a great rest I'll have now, and it's time surely. It's a great rest I'll have now, and great sleeping in the long nights after Samhain, if it's only a bit of wet flour we do have to eat, and maybe a fish that would be stinking. [_She kneels down again, crossing herself, and saying prayers under her breath._]

CATHLEEN [_to an old man_]. Maybe yourself and Eamon would make a coffin when the sun rises. We have fine white boards herself bought, G.o.d help her, thinking Michael would be found, and I have a new cake you can eat while you'll be working.

THE OLD MAN [_looking at the boards_]. Are there nails with them?

CATHLEEN. There are not, Colum; we didn't think of the nails.

ANOTHER MAN. It's a great wonder she wouldn't think of the nails, and all the coffins she's seen made already.

CATHLEEN. It's getting old she is, and broken. [_MAURYA stands up again very slowly and spreads out the pieces of MICHAEL's clothes beside the body, sprinkling them with the last of the Holy Water._]

NORA [_in a whisper to CATHLEEN_]. She's quiet now and easy; but the day Michael was drowned you could hear her crying out from this to the spring well. It's fonder she was of Michael, and would anyone have thought that?

CATHLEEN [_slowly and clearly_]. An old woman will be soon tired with anything she will do, and isn't it nine days herself is after crying and keening, and making great sorrow in the house?

MAURYA [_puts the empty cup mouth downwards on the table, and lays her hands together on BARTLEY's feet_]. They're all together this time, and the end is come. May the Almighty G.o.d have mercy on Bartley's soul, and on Michael's soul, and on the souls of Sheamus and Patch, and Stephen and Shawn [_bending her head_]; and may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of everyone is left living in the world. [_She pauses, and the keen rises a little more loudly from the women, then sinks away._]

MAURYA [_continuing_]. Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty G.o.d. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely. What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living forever, and we must be satisfied.

[_She kneels down again and the curtain falls slowly._]

A NIGHT AT AN INN[45]

_A PLAY IN ONE ACT_

By LORD DUNSANY

[Footnote 45: Copyright, 1916, by The Sunwise Turn, Inc. All rights reserved. The professional and amateur stage rights on this play are strictly reserved by the author. Applications for permission to produce the Play should be made to The Neighborhood Playhouse, 466 Grand Street, New York.

Any infringement of the author's rights will be punished by the penalties imposed under the United States Revised Statutes, t.i.tle 60, Chapter 3.]

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron Dunsany, was born in 1878, a lord of the British Empire, heir to an ancient barony, created by Henry VI in the middle of the fifteenth century. He went from Eton to Sandhurst, the English military college, held a lieutenancy in a famous regiment, the Coldstream Guards, saw active service in the South African War and served in the Great War as an officer in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. He turned aside from his career as a soldier in 1906 to stand for West Wiltshire as the Conservative candidate, but he was defeated. He writes enthusiastically always of his interest in sport; he has gone to the ends of the earth to shoot big game. His first book, _The G.o.ds of Pegana_, was published in 1905. He has since written sketches, fantastic tales, and plays,[46] and latterly introductions to the poems of Francis Ledwidge, the Irish peasant poet, who fell in battle in 1917.

Dunsany's early plays were put on at the Abbey Theatre where Yeats produced _The Glittering Gate_ in 1909.

[Footnote 46: For bibliography see E. A. Boyd, _The Contemporary Drama of Ireland_, Boston, 1917.]

The initial American productions were also made in Little Theatres, under the auspices of the Stage Society of Philadelphia and at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where the first performance on any stage of _A Night at an Inn_ was given on April 22, 1916. It was an immediate success and aroused great general interest in Dunsany's other plays. It was remarked at the time that its scene on an English moor was far from "his own Oriental Never Never Land," and that it recalled in its substance _The Moonstone_ by Wilkie Collins and _The Mystery of Cloomber_ by A. Conan Doyle. Dunsany, unlike the other playwrights a.s.sociated with the Irish National Theatre, has borrowed the glamour of the Orient rather than that of Celtic lore, to heighten his dramatic effects. There is, in fact, much that is Biblical in his mood and in his diction.

When, at a later date, Lord Dunsany saw the production of _A Night at an Inn_ at The Neighborhood Playhouse, the effect of the play "exceeded his own expectations, and he was surprised to note the thrill which it communicated to his audience. 'It's a very simple thing,' he said,--'merely a story of some sailors who have stolen something and know that they are followed. Possibly it is effective because nearly everybody, at some time or other, has done something he was sorry for, has been afraid of retribution, and has felt the hot breath of a pursuing vengeance on the back of his neck.... _A Night at an Inn_ was written between tea and dinner in a single sitting. That was very easy.'"[47]

[Footnote 47: Clayton Hamilton, _Seen on the Stage_, New York, 1920, p. 238; p. 239.]

_A Night at an Inn_ is one of Dunsany's contributions to the revival of romance in our generation. In an article published ten years ago, called _Romance and the Modern Stage_, he wrote: "Romance is so inseparable from life that all we need, to obtain romantic drama, is for the dramatist to find any age or any country where life is not too thickly veiled and cloaked with puzzles and conventions, in fact to find a people that is not in the agonies of self-consciousness. For myself, I think it is simpler to imagine such a people, as it saves the trouble of reading to find a romantic age, or the trouble of making a journey to lands where there is no press.... The kind of drama that we most need to-day seems to me to be the kind that will build new worlds for the fancy; for the spirit, as much as the body, needs sometimes a change of scene."

A NIGHT AT AN INN

CHARACTERS

A. E. SCOTT-FORTESQUE (The Toff), _a dilapidated gentleman._ WILLIAM JONES (Bill) } ALBERT THOMAS } _merchant sailors._ JACOB SMITH (Sn.i.g.g.e.rs) } First Priest of Klesh.

Second Priest of Klesh.

Third Priest of Klesh.

Klesh.

_The curtain rises on a room in an inn. Sn.i.g.g.e.rS and BILL are talking, THE TOFF is reading a paper. ALBERT sits a little apart._

Sn.i.g.g.e.rS. What's his idea, I wonder?