Poets and Dreamers Part 22

He was always a good friend to the poor. I heard them saying the other day he was lying in his sickness at some place near Killeenan, and near his death. The Lord have mercy on him!

MARTIN. The Lord have mercy on him, indeed. Come now, Mary, eat the first bit in your own house. I'll take the eggs off the fire.

(_He gets up and goes to the fire. There is a knock at the half-door, and an old ragged, patched fiddler puts in his head._)

FIDDLER. G.o.d save all here!

MARY (_standing up_). Aurah, the poor man, bring him in.

MARTIN. Let there be sense on you, Mary; we have not anything at all to give him. I will tell him the way to the Brennans' house: there will be plenty to find there.

MARY. Indeed and surely I will not put him from this door. This is the first time I ever had a house of my own; and I will not send anyone at all from my own door this day.

MARTIN. Do as you think well yourself. (MARY _goes to the door and opens it._) Come in, honest man, and sit down, and a hundred welcomes before you. (_The old man comes in, feeling about him as if blind._)

MARY. O Martin, he is blind. May G.o.d preserve him!

OLD MAN. That is so, acushla; I am in my blindness; and it is a tired, vexed, blind man I am. I am going and ever going since morning, and I never found a bit to eat since I rose.

MARY. You did not find a bit to eat since morning! Are you starving?

OLD MAN. Oh, indeed, there was food to be got if I would take it; but the bit that does not come from a willing heart, there would be no taste on it; and that is what I did not get since morning; but people putting a potato or a bit of bread out of the door to me, as if I was a dog, with the hope I would not stop, but would go away.

MARY. Oh, sit down with us now, and eat with us. Bring him to the table, Martin. (MARTIN _gives his hand to the old man, and gives him a chair, and puts him sitting at the table with themselves. He makes two halves of the cake, and gives a half to the blind man, and one of the eggs. The old man eats eagerly._)

OLD MAN. I leave my seven hundred thousand blessings on the people of this house. The blessing of G.o.d and Mary on them.

MARY. That it may be well with you. O Martin, that is the first blessing I got in my own house. That blessing is better to me than gold.

OLD MAN. Aurah, is it not beautiful for people to have a house of their own, and to have eyes to look about with?

MARTIN. May G.o.d preserve you, right man; it is likely it is a poor thing to be without sight.

OLD MAN. You do not understand, nor any person that has his sight, what it is to be blind and dark the way I am. Not to have before you and behind you but the night. Oh, darkness, darkness! No shape or form in anything; not to see the bird you hear singing in the tree over your head; nor the flower you smell on the bush, or the child, and he laughing in his mother's breast. The morning and the evening the day and the night, only the same thing to you Oh, it is a poor thing to be blind! (MARTIN _puts over the other half of the cake and the egg to_ MARY, _and makes a sign to her to eat. She makes a sign to him to take a share of them. The blind man stretches his hand over the table to try for a crumb of bread, for he has eaten his own share; and he gets hold of the other half cake and takes it._)

MARY. Eat that, poor man, it is likely there is hunger on you.

Here is another egg for you. (_She puts the other egg in his hand._)

BLIND MAN. The blessing of the Only Son and of the Holy Mother on the hand that gives it. (MARTIN _puts up his two hands as if dissatisfied; and he is going to say something when_ MARY _takes the words from his mouth, laughing at his gloomy face._)

BLIND MAN. _Maisead_, my blessing on the mouth that laughter came from, and my blessing on the light heart that let it out of the mouth.

MARTIN. A light heart, is it! There is not a light heart with Mary to-night, my grief!

BLIND MAN. Mary is your wife?

MARTIN. She is. I made her my wife three hours ago.

BLIND MAN. Three hours ago?

MARTIN (_bitterly_).--That is so. We were married to-day; and it is at our wedding dinner you are sitting.

BLIND MAN. Your wedding dinner! Do not be mocking me! There is no company here.

MARY. Oh, he is not mocking you; he would not do a thing like that. There is no company here; for we have nothing in the house to give them.

BLIND MAN. But you gave it to me! Is it the truth you are speaking? Am I the only person that was asked to your wedding?

MARY. You are. But that is to the honour of G.o.d; and we would never have told you that, but Martin let slip the word from his mouth.

BLIND MAN. Oh, and I eat your little feast on you, and without knowing it.

MARY. It is not without a welcome you eat it.

MARTIN. I am well pleased you came in; you were more in want of it than ourselves. If we have a bare house now, we might have a full house yet; and a good dinner on the table to share with those in need of it. I'd be better off now; but all the little money I had I laid it out on the house, and the little patch of land. I thought I was wise at the time; but now we have the house, and we haven't what will keep us alive in it. I have the potatoes set in the garden; but I haven't so much as a potato to eat. We are left bare, and I am guilty of it.

MARY. If there is any fault, it is on me it is; coming maybe to be a drag on Martin, where I have no fortune at all. The little money I gained in service, I lost it all on my poor father, when he took sick.

And I went back into service; and the mistress I had was a cross woman; and when Martin saw the way she was treating me, he wouldn't let me stop with her any more, but he made me his wife. And now I will have great courage, when I have to go out to service again.

BLIND MAN. Will you have to be parted again?

MARTIN. We will, indeed; I must go as a _spailpin fanac_, to reap and to dig the harvest in some other place. But Mary and myself have it settled we'll meet again at this house on a certain day, with the blessing of G.o.d. I'll have the key in my pocket; and we'll come in, with a better chance of stopping in it. You'll have your own cows yet, Mary; and your calves and your firkins of b.u.t.ter, with the help of G.o.d.

MARY. I think I hear carts on the road. (_She gets up, and goes to the door._)

MARTIN. It's the people coming back from the fair. Shut the door, Mary; I wouldn't like them to see how bare the house is; and I'll put a smear of ashes on the window, the way they won't see we're here at all.

BLIND MAN (_raising his head suddenly_). Do not do that; but open the door wide, and let the blessing of G.o.d come in on you.

(MARY _opens the door again. He takes up his fiddle, and begins to play on it. A little boy puts in his head at the door; and then another head is seen, and another with that again._)

BLIND MAN. Who is that at the door?

MARY. Little boys that came to listen to you.

BLIND MAN. Come in, boys. (_Three or four come inside._)

BLIND MAN. Boys, I am listening to the carts coming home from the fair. Let you go out, and stop the people; tell them they must come in: there is a wedding-dance here this evening.

BOY. The people are going home. They wouldn't stop for us.

BLIND MAN. Tell them to come in; and there will be as fine a dance as ever they saw. But they must all give a present to the man and woman that are newly married.

ANOTHER BOY. Why would they come in? They can have a dance of their own at any time. There is a piper in the big town.

BLIND MAN. Say to them that _I myself_ tell them to come in; and to bring every one a present to the newly-married woman.

BOY. And who are you yourself?

BLIND MAN. Tell them it is Raftery the poet is here, and that is calling to them.