Seven Short Plays Part 32

_Refrain_

Come ride and ride to the garden, &c.

_Child:_ Now another ride.

_Travelling Man:_ This will be the last. It will be a good ride.

(_The mother comes in. She stares for a second, then throws down her basket and s.n.a.t.c.hes up the child._)

_Mother:_ Did ever anyone see the like of that! A common beggar, a travelling man off the roads, to be holding the child! To be leaving his ragged arms about him as if he was of his own sort! Get out of that, whoever you are, and quit this house or I'll call to some that will make you quit it.

_Child:_ Do not send him out! He is not a bad man; he is a good man; he was playing horses with me. He has grand songs.

_Mother:_ Let him get away out of this now, himself and his share of songs. Look at the way he has your bib destroyed that I was after washing in the morning!

_Child:_ He was holding me on the horse. We were riding, I might have fallen. He held me.

_Mother:_ I give you my word you are done now with riding horses. Let him go on his road. I have no time to be cleaning the place after the like of him.

_Child:_ He is tired. Let him stop here till evening.

_Travelling Man:_ Let me rest here for a while, I have been travelling a long way.

_Mother:_ Where did you come from to-day?

_Travelling Man:_ I came over Slieve Echtge from Slieve na n-Or. I had no house to stop in. I walked the long bog road, the wind was going through me, there was no shelter to be got, the red mud of the road was heavy on my feet. I got no welcome in the villages, and so I came on to this place, to the rising of the river at Ballylee.

_Mother:_ It is best for you to go on to the town. It is not far for you to go. We will maybe have company coming in here.

(_She pours out flour into a bowl and begins mixing._)

_Travelling Man:_ Will you give me a bit of that dough to bring with me? I have gone a long time fasting.

_Mother:_ It is not often in the year I make bread like this. There are a few cold potatoes on the dresser, are they not good enough for you? There is many a one would be glad to get them.

_Travelling Man:_ Whatever you will give me, I will take it.

_Mother:_ (_Going to the dresser for the potatoes and looking at the shelves._) What in the earthly world has happened all the delf? Where are the jugs gone and the plates? They were all in it when I went out a while ago.

_Child:_ (_Hanging his head._) We were making a garden with them. We were making that garden there in the corner.

_Mother:_ Is that what you were doing after I bidding you to sit still and to keep yourself quiet? It is to tie you in the chair I will another time! My grand jugs! (_She picks them up and wipes them._) My plates that I bought the first time I ever went marketing into Gort.

The best in the shop they were. (_One slips from her hand and breaks._) Look at that now, look what you are after doing.

(_She gives a slap at the child._)

_Travelling Man:_ Do not blame the child. It was I myself took them down from the dresser.

_Mother:_ (_Turning on him._) It was you took them! What business had you doing that? It's the last time a tramp or a tinker or a rogue of the roads will have a chance of laying his hand on anything in this house. It is jailed you should be! What did you want touching the dresser at all? Is it looking you were for what you could bring away?

_Travelling Man:_ (_Taking the child's hands._) I would not refuse these hands that were held out for them. If it was for the four winds of the world he had asked, I would have put their bridles into these innocent hands.

_Mother:_ (_Taking up the jug and throwing the branch on the floor._) Get out of this! Get out of this I tell you! There is no shelter here for the like of you! Look at that mud on the floor! You are not fit to come into the house of any decent respectable person!

(_The room begins to darken._)

_Travelling Man:_ Indeed, I am more used to the roads than to the shelter of houses. It is often I have spent the night on the bare hills.

_Mother:_ No wonder in that! (_She begins to sweep floor._) Go out of this now to whatever company you are best used to, whatever they are.

The worst of people it is likely they are, thieves and drunkards and shameless women.

_Travelling Man:_ Maybe so. Drunkards and thieves and shameless women, stones that have fallen, that are trodden under foot, bodies that are spoiled with sores, bodies that are worn with fasting, minds that are broken with much sinning, the poor, the mad, the bad....

_Mother:_ Get out with you! Go back to your friends, I say!

_Travelling Man:_ I will go. I will go back to the high road that is walked by the bare feet of the poor, by the innocent bare feet of children. I will go back to the rocks and the wind, to the cries of the trees in the storm! (_He goes out._)

_Child:_ He has forgotten his branch!

(_Takes it and follows him._)

_Mother:_ (_Still sweeping._) My good plates from the dresser, and dirty red mud on the floor, and the sticks all scattered in every place. (_Stoops to pick them up._) Where is the child gone? (_Goes to door._) I don't see him-he couldn't have gone to the river-it is getting dark-the bank is slippy. Come back! Come back! Where are you?

(_Child runs in._)

_Mother:_ O where were you? I was in dread it was to the river you were gone, or into the river.

_Child:_ I went after him. He is gone over the river.

_Mother:_ He couldn't do that. He couldn't go through the flood.

_Child:_ He did go over it. He was as if walking on the water. There was a light before his feet.

_Mother:_ That could not be so. What put that thought in your mind?

_Child:_ I called to him to come back for the branch, and he turned where he was in the river, and he bade me to bring it back, and to show it to yourself.

_Mother:_ (_Taking the branch._) There are fruit and flowers on it. It is a branch that is not of any earthly tree. (_Falls on her knees._) He is gone, he is gone, and I never knew him! He was that stranger that gave me all! He is the King of the World!

THE GAOL GATE

PERSONS

_Mary Cahel_ AN OLD WOMAN _Mary Cushin_ HER DAUGHTER-IN-LAW _The Gatekeeper_