The Playboy of the Western World Part 9

WIDOW QUIN. I've nice jobs you could be doing, gathering sh.e.l.ls to make a whitewash for our hut within, building up a little goose-house, or stretching a new skin on an old curragh I have, and if my hut is far from all sides, it's there you'll meet the wisest old men, I tell you, at the corner of my wheel, and it's there yourself and me will have great times whispering and hugging.. ..

VOICES -- [outside, calling far away.] -- Christy! Christy Mahon!

Christy!

CHRISTY. Is it Pegeen Mike?

WIDOW QUIN. It's the young girls, I'm thinking, coming to bring you to the sports below, and what is it you'll have me to tell them now?

CHRISTY. Aid me for to win Pegeen. It's herself only that I'm seeking now. (Widow Quin gets up and goes to window.) Aid me for to win her, and I'll be asking G.o.d to stretch a hand to you in the hour of death, and lead you short cuts through the Meadows of Ease, and up the floor of Heaven to the Footstool of the Virgin's Son.

WIDOW QUIN. There's praying.

VOICES -- [nearer.] Christy! Christy Mahon!

CHRISTY -- [with agitation.] -- They're coming. Will you swear to aid and save me for the love of Christ?

WIDOW QUIN -- [looks at him for a moment.] -- If I aid you, will you swear to give me a right of way I want, and a mountainy ram, and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the time that you'll be master here?

CHRISTY. I will, by the elements and stars of night.

WIDOW QUIN. Then we'll not say a word of the old fellow, the way Pegeen won't know your story till the end of time.

CHRISTY. And if he chances to return again?

WIDOW QUIN. We'll swear he's a maniac and not your da. I could take an oath I seen him raving on the sands to-day. [Girls run in.]

SUSAN. Come on to the sports below. Pegeen says you're to come.

SARA TANSEY. The lepping's beginning, and we've a jockey's suit to fit upon you for the mule race on the sands below.

HONOR. Come on, will you?

CHRISTY. I will then if Pegeen's beyond.

SARA. She's in the boreen making game of Shaneen Keogh.

CHRISTY. Then I'll be going to her now. [He runs out followed by the girls.]

WIDOW QUIN. Well, if the worst comes in the end of all, it'll be great game to see there's none to pity him but a widow woman, the like of me, has buried her children and destroyed her man. [She goes out.]

CURTAIN

ACT III.

SCENE, [as before. Later in the day. Jimmy comes in, slightly drunk.]

JIMMY -- [calls.] Pegeen! (Crosses to inner door.) Pegeen Mike! (Comes back again into the room.) Pegeen! (Philly comes in in the same state.) (To Philly.) Did you see herself?

PHILLY. I did not; but I sent Shawn Keogh with the a.s.s cart for to bear him home. (Trying cupboards which are locked.) Well, isn't he a nasty man to get into such staggers at a morning wake? and isn't herself the divil's daughter for locking, and she so fussy after that young gaffer, you might take your death with drought and none to heed you?

JIMMY. It's little wonder she'd be fussy, and he after bringing bankrupt ruin on the roulette man, and the trick-o'-the-loop man, and breaking the nose of the c.o.c.kshot-man, and winning all in the sports below, racing, lepping, dancing, and the Lord knows what! He's right luck, I'm telling you.

PHILLY. If he has, he'll be rightly hobbled yet, and he not able to say ten words without making a brag of the way he killed his father, and the great blow he hit with the loy.

JIMMY. A man can't hang by his own informing, and his father should be rotten by now. [Old Mahon pa.s.ses window slowly.]

PHILLY. Supposing a man's digging spuds in that field with a long spade, and supposing he flings up the two halves of that skull, what'll be said then in the papers and the courts of law?

JIMMY. They'd say it was an old Dane, maybe, was drowned in the flood.

(Old Mahon comes in and sits down near door listening.) Did you never hear tell of the skulls they have in the city of Dublin, ranged out like blue jugs in a cabin of Connaught?

PHILLY. And you believe that?

JIMMY -- [pugnaciously.] Didn't a lad see them and he after coming from harvesting in the Liverpool boat? "They have them there," says he, "making a show of the great people there was one time walking the world.

White skulls and black skulls and yellow skulls, and some with full teeth, and some haven't only but one."

PHILLY. It was no lie, maybe, for when I was a young lad there was a graveyard beyond the house with the remnants of a man who had thighs as long as your arm. He was a horrid man, I'm telling you, and there was many a fine Sunday I'd put him together for fun, and he with shiny bones, you wouldn't meet the like of these days in the cities of the world.

MAHON -- [getting up.] -- You wouldn't is it? Lay your eyes on that skull, and tell me where and when there was another the like of it, is splintered only from the blow of a loy.

PHILLY. Glory be to G.o.d! And who hit you at all?

MAHON -- [triumphantly.] It was my own son hit me. Would you believe that?

JIMMY. Well, there's wonders hidden in the heart of man!

PHILLY -- [suspiciously.] And what way was it done?

MAHON -- [wandering about the room.] -- I'm after walking hundreds and long scores of miles, winning clean beds and the fill of my belly four times in the day, and I doing nothing but telling stories of that naked truth. (He comes to them a little aggressively.) Give me a supeen and I'll tell you now. [Widow Quin comes in and stands aghast behind him. He is facing Jimmy and Philly, who are on the left.]

JIMMY. Ask herself beyond. She's the stuff hidden in her shawl.

WIDOW QUIN -- [coming to Mahon quickly.] -- you here, is it? You didn't go far at all?

MAHON. I seen the coasting steamer pa.s.sing, and I got a drought upon me and a cramping leg, so I said, "The divil go along with him," and turned again. (Looking under her shawl.) And let you give me a supeen, for I'm destroyed travelling since Tuesday was a week.

WIDOW QUIN -- [getting a gla.s.s, in a cajoling tone.] -- Sit down then by the fire and take your ease for a s.p.a.ce. You've a right to be destroyed indeed, with your walking, and fighting, and facing the sun (giving him poteen from a stone jar she has brought in.) There now is a drink for you, and may it be to your happiness and length of life.

MAHON -- [taking gla.s.s greedily and sitting down by fire.] -- G.o.d increase you!

WIDOW QUIN -- [taking men to the right stealthily.] -- Do you know what?

That man's raving from his wound to-day, for I met him a while since telling a rambling tale of a tinker had him destroyed. Then he heard of Christy's deed, and he up and says it was his son had cracked his skull.

O isn't madness a fright, for he'll go killing someone yet, and he thinking it's the man has struck him so?

JIMMY -- [entirely convinced.] It's a fright, surely. I knew a party was kicked in the head by a red mare, and he went killing horses a great while, till he eat the insides of a clock and died after.