Where There is Nothing Part 4

ACT II.

Scene: _By the roadside. A wall of unmortared stone in the background. Tinkers' encampment. Men, women, and children standing round._ PAUL RUTTLEDGE _standing by a fire._

_Paul Ruttledge._ What do you mean by "tinning" the soldering iron?

_Charlie Ward._ If the face of it is not well tinned it won't lift the solder. Show me here.

[_Takes soldering iron from_ PAUL RUTTLEDGE'S _hand._

_Paul Ruttledge._ [_Sitting down and drawing a tin can to him._] Now, let me see how you mend this hole. It seems easy. I'm sure I will be able to learn it as well as any of you.

[_Two tinkers come and stand over him._

_Charlie Ward._ [_Pointing to one of them._] This, sir, is Tommy the Song. He's the best singer we have, but the divil a much good he is only that. He's a great warrant to snare hares.

_Tommy the Song._ Is the gentleman going to join us?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Indeed I am, if you'll let me. There's nothing I'd like better.

_Tommy the Song._ But are you going to learn the trade?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, if you'll teach me. I'm sure I'll make a good tinker. Look at that now, see how I've stopped that hole already.

_Charlie Ward._ [_Taking the can from him and looking at it._] If every can had a little hole in the middle like that, I think you _would_ be able to mend them; but there's the straight hole, and the crooked hole, the round hole, the square hole, the angle hole, the bottom hole, the top hole, the side leak, the open leak, the leak-all-round, but I won't frighten you with the names of them all, only this I will say, that, when you've learned to mend all the leakages in a can--and that should take you a year--you're only in the first day of the tinker's week.

_Tommy the Song._ Don't believe him. He's only humbugging you. It's not the hardness of the work will daunt you.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Thank you. I was not believing him at all. I'm quite sure I'll be able to mend any can at the end of a week, but the bottoming of them will take longer. I can see that's not so easy. When will you start to teach me that, Charlie?

_Charlie Ward._ [_As another tinker comes up._] Paddy, here's the gentleman I was telling you about. He's going to join us for good and all. [_To_ PAUL RUTTLEDGE.] Wait till we have time and some quiet place, and he'll show you as good a c.o.c.kfight as ever you saw. [_A woman comes up._] This is his wife; Molly the Scold we call her; faith, she is a better fighter than any c.o.c.k he ever had in a basket; he'd find it hard to shut the lid on her.

_Molly the Scold._ The gentleman seems foolish. Is he all there?

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ Stop your chat, Molly, or I'll hit you a welt.

_Charlie Ward._ Keep your tongue quiet, Molly. If the gentleman has reasons for keeping out of the way it isn't for us to be questioning him. [_To_ PAUL RUTTLEDGE.] Don't mind her, she's cross enough, but maybe your own ladies would be cross as well if they saw their young sons dying by the roadside in a little kennel of straw under the a.s.s-cart the way she did; from first to last.

_Paul Ruttledge._ I suppose you have your troubles like others. But you seem cheerful enough.

_Charlie Ward._ It isn't anything to fret about. Some of us go soon, and some travel the roads for their lifetime. What does it matter when we are under the nettles if it was with a short rope or a long one we were hanged?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, that is the way to take life. What does the length of our rope matter?

_Charlie Ward._ We haven't time to be thinking of troubles like people that would be shut up in a house. We have the wide world before us to make our living out of. The people of the whole world are begrudging us our living, and we make it out of them for all that. When they will spread currant cakes and feather beds before us, it will be time for us to sit down and fret.

_Tommy the Song._ It's likely you'll think the life too hard. Would you like to be pa.s.sing by houses in the night-time, and the fire shining out of them, and you hardly given the loan of a sod to light your pipe, and the rain falling on you?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Why are the people so much against you?

_Tommy the Song._ We are not like themselves. It's little we care about them or they about us. If their saint did curse us itself----

_Charlie Ward._ Stop. I won't have you talking about that story here.

Why would they think so much of the curse of one saint, and saints so plenty?

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ Where's the good of a gentleman being here? He'll be breaking down on the road. It's on the a.s.s-cart he'll be wanting to sit.

_Tommy the Song._ Indeed, I don't think he'll stand the hardship.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, I'll stand it well enough.

_Tommy the Song._ You're not like us that were reared to it. You were not born like us with wandering in the heart.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh yes, I have wandering in the heart. I got sick of these lighted rooms you were talking of just now.

_Charlie Ward._ That might be so. It's the dark is welcome to a man sometimes.

_Paul Ruttledge._ The dark. Yes, I think that is what I want. [_Stands up._] The dark, where there is nothing that is anything, and n.o.body that is anybody; one can be free there, where there is nothing. Well, if you let me stay with you, I don't think you will hear any complaints from me. Charlie Ward, Paddy, and the rest of you, I want you to understand that from this out I am one of yourselves. I'll live as you live and do as you do.

[JOHNEEN _and other children come running in._

_Johneen._ I was on the top of the bank and I seen a priest coming down the cross-road with his a.s.s. It's collecting he is. We're going to set ourselves here to beg something from him.

_Another Child._ [_Breathlessly._] And he has a whole lot of things on the a.s.s. A whole lot of things up behind him.

_Another Child._ O boys, O boys, we'll have our dealing trick out of them yet. The best way'll be---- [_He suddenly catches sight of_ PAUL RUTTLEDGE.] Whist, ye divils ye, don't you see the new gentleman?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Speak out, boys; don't be afraid of me; I'm one of yourselves now.

_Child._ Oh! but we were going to---- But I won't tell you. [_To the other_ children.] Come away here, and we'll not tell him what we'll do.

_Paul Ruttledge._ [_To_ CHARLIE WARD.] What are they going to do?

They're putting their heads together.

_Charlie Ward._ They're going to put a bush across the road, and when the friar gets down to pull it out of the way they'll snap what they can off the a.s.s, and away with them.

_Paul Ruttledge._ And why wouldn't they tell me that? Am I not one of yourselves?

_Charlie Ward._ Ah! It's likely they'll never trust you.

_Paul Ruttledge._ But they will soon see that I am one of themselves.

_Charlie Ward._ No; but that's the very thing, you're not one of ourselves. You were not born on the road, reared on the road, married on the road like us.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Well, it's too late for me to be reared on the road, but I don't see why I shouldn't marry on the road like you. I certainly would do it if it would make me one of you.

_Charlie Ward._ It might make you one of us, there's no doubt about that. It's the only thing that would do it.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Well, find a wife for me.