destroying?
_Bartley Fallon:_ I would indeed, and there to be an enemy upon my
path. Would you say now, Widow Broderick, am I getting anyway flushy
in the face?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Don't leave your eye off him for pity's sake. He
is reddening as red as a rose.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I could as if walk on the wind with lightness.
Something that is rising in my veins the same as froth would be
rising on a pint.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is the doctor I'd best call for--and maybe
the sergeant and the priest.
_Bartley Fallon:_ There are three thoughts going through my
mind--to hang myself or to drown myself, or to cut my neck with a
reaping-hook.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is the doctor will serve him best, where it
is the mad blood that should be bled away. To break up eggs, the
white of them, in a tin can, will put new blood in him, and whiskey,
and to taste no food through twenty-one days.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm thinking so long a fast wouldn't serve me. I
wouldn't wish the lads will bear my body to the grave, to lay down
there was nothing within it but a grasshopper or a wisp of dry grass.
_Shawn Early:_ No, but to cut a piece out of his leg the doctor
will, the way the poison will get no leave to work.
_Peter Tannian:_ Or to burn it with red-hot irons, the way it will
not scatter itself and grow. There does a doctor do that out in
foreign.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It would be more natural to cut the leg off him
in some sort of a Christian way.
_Shawn Early:_ If it was a pig was bit, or a sow or a bonav, it to
show the signs, it would be shot, if it was a whole fleet of them
was in it.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I knew of a man that was butler in a big house
was bit, and they tied him first and smothered him after, and his
master shot the dog. A splendid shot he was; the thing he'd not see
he'd hit it the same as the thing he'd see. I heard that from an
outside neighbour of my own, a woman that told no lies.
_Shawn Early:_ Sure, they did the same thing to a high-up lady
over in England, and she after being bit by her own little spaniel
and it having a ring around its neck.
_Peter Tannian:_ That is the only best thing to do. Whether the
bite is from a dog, or a cat, or whatever it may be, to put the
quilt and the blankets on the person and smother him in the bed. To
smother them out-and-out you should, before the madness will work.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I'd be loth he to be shot or smothered. I'd
sooner to give him a chance in the asylum.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ To keep him there and to try him through three
changes of the moon. It's well for you, Bartley, Mr. Halvey being in
charge of you, that is known to be a tender man.
_Peter Tannian:_ He to have got a bite and to go biting others, he
would put in them the same malice. It is the old people used to tell
that down, and they must have had some reason doing that.
_Shawn Early:_ To get a bite of a dog you must chance your life.
There is no doubt at all about that. It might work till the time of
the new moon or the full moon, and then they must be shot or
smothered.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is a pity there to be no cure found for it
in the world.
_Shawn Early:_ There never came out from the Almighty any cure for
a mad dog.
_(Bartley Fallon has been edging towards door.)_
_Shawn Early:_ Oh! stop him and keep a hold of him, Mr. Halvey!
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Stop where you are.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Isn't it enough to have madness before me, that
you will not let me go fall in my own choice place?
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ The neighbours would think it bad of me to let
a raving man out into their midst.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Is it to shoot me you are going?
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I will call to the doctor to say is the padded
room at the workhouse the most place where you will be safe, till
such time as it will be known did the poison wear away.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I will not go in it! It is likely I might be
forgot in it, or the nurses to be in dread to bring me nourishment,
and they to hear me barking within the door. I'm thinking it was
allotted by nature I never would die an easy death.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I will keep a watch over you myself.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Where's the use of that the time the breath will
be gone out of me, and you maybe playing cards on my coffin, and I
having nothing around or about me but the shroud, and the habit, and
the little board?
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Sure, I cannot leave you the way you are.
_Bartley Fallon:_ It is what I ever and always heard, a dog to
bite you, all you have to do is to take a pinch of its hair and to
lay it into the wound.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ So I heard that myself. A dog to bite any person
he is entitled to be plucked of his hair.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I'll go out; I might chance to see him.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ You will not, without getting advice from the
priest that is coming in the train. Let his Reverence come into this
place, and say is it Bartley or is it Peter Tannian was done
destruction on by the dog.
_Shawn Early:_ There is a surer way than that.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ What way?
_Shawn Early:_ It takes madness to find out madness. Let you call
to the cracked woman that should know.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Come hither, Mary, and tell us is there any one
of your own sort in this shed?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is a good thought. It is only themselves
that recognise one another.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Do not ask her! I will not leave it to her!
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, she cannot say more than what yourself has
said against yourself.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm in dread she might know too much, and be
telling out what is within in my mind.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That's foolishness. These are not the ancient
times, when Ireland was full of haunted people.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Is a man having a wife and three acres of land
to be put under the judgment of a witch?
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I would not give in to any pagan thing, but to
recognise one of her own sort, that is a thing can be understood.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ So it could be too, the same as witnesses in a
court.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I will not give in to going to demons or druids
or freemasons! Wasn't there enough of misfortune set before my path
through every day of my lifetime without it to be linked with me
after my death? Is it that you would force me to lose the comforts
of heaven and to get the poverty of hell? I tell you I will have no
trade with witches! I would sooner go face the featherbeds.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Say out, girl, do you see any craziness here or
anything of the sort?
_Cracked Mary:_ Every day in the year there comes some malice into
the world, and where it comes from is no good place.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is it, a venomous dew, as in the year of
the famine. There is no astronomer can say it is from the earth or
the sky.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is what we are asking you, did any of that
malice get its scope in this place?
_Cracked Mary:_ That was settled in Mayo two thousand years ago.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, there's no head or tail to that one's story.
You 'd be left at the latter end the same as at the commencement.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That dog you were talking of, that is raging
through the district and the town--did it leave any madness after it?
_Cracked Mary:_ It will go in the wind, there is a certain time
for that. It might go off in the wind again. It might go shaping off
and do no harm.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Where is that dog presently, till some person
might go pluck out a few ribs of its hair?
_Cracked Mary:_ Raging ever and always it is, raging wild. Sure,
that is a dog was in it before the foundations of the world.
_Peter Tannian:_ Who is it now that venom fell on, whatever
beast's jaws may have scattered it?
_Cracked Mary:_ It is the full moon knows that. The moon to
slacken it is safe, there is no harm in it. Almighty God will do
that much. He'll slacken it like you 'd slacken lime.
_Shawn Early:_ There is reason in what she is saying. Set open the
door and let the full moon call its own!
_Bartley Fallon:_ Don't let in the rays of it upon us or I'm a
gone man. It to shine on them that are going wrong in the head, it
would raise a great stir in the mind. Sure, it's in the asylum at
that time they do have whips to chastise them.
_(Goes to corner.)_
_Cracked Mary:_ That's it. The moon is terrible. The full moon
cracks them out and out, any one that would have any spleen or any
relics in them.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Do not let in the light of it. I would scruple
to look at it myself.
_Cracked Mary:_ Let you throw open the door, Davideen. It is not
ourselves are in dread that the white man in the sky will be calling
names after us and ridiculing us. Ha! ha! I might be as foolish as
yourselves and as fearful, but for the Almighty that left a little
cleft in my skull, that would let in His candle through the night
time.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Hurry on now, tell us is there any one in this
place is wild and astray like yourself.
_(He opens the door. The light falls on him.)_
_Cracked Mary: (Putting her hand on him.)_ There was great
shouting in the big round house, and you coming into it last night.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What are you saying? I never went frolicking in
the night time since the day I came into Cloon.
_Cracked Mary:_ We were talking of it a while ago. I knew you by
the smile and by the laugh of you. A queen having a yellow dress,
and the hair on her smooth like marble. All the dead of the village
were in it, and of the living myself and yourself.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I thought it was of Carrow she was talking; it
is of the other world she is raving, and of the shadow-shapes of the
forth.
_Cracked Mary:_ You have the door open--the speckled horses are
on the road!--make a leap on the horse as it goes by, the horse that
is without a rider. Can't you hear them puffing and roaring? Their
breath is like a fog upon the air.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What you hear is but the train puffing afar off.
_Cracked Mary:_ Make a snap at the bridle as it passes by the bush
in the western gap. Run out now, run, where you have the bare ridge
of the world before you, and no one to take orders from but yourself,
maybe, and God.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Ah, what way can I run to any place!
_Cracked Mary:_ Stop where you are, so. In my opinion it is little
difference the moon can see between the whole of ye. Come on,
Davideen, come out now, we have the wideness of the night before us.
O golden God! All bad things quieten in the night time, and the ugly
thing itself will put on some sort of a decent face! Come out now to
the night that will give you the song, and will show myself out as
beautiful as Helen of the Greek gods, that hanged herself the day
there first came a wrinkle on her face!
_Davideen: (Coming close, and taking her hand as he sings.)_
Oh! don't you remember
What our comrades called to us
And they footing steps
At the call of the moon?
Come out to the rushes,
Come out to the bushes,
Where the music is called
By the lads of Queen Anne!
_(They look beautiful. They dance and sing in perfect time
as they go out.)_
_Peter Tannian:
(Closing the door, and pointing at Hyacinth, who stands gazing
after them, and when the door is shut sits down thinking deeply.)_
It is on him her judgment fell, and a clear judgment.
_Shawn Early:_ She gave out that award fair enough.
_Peter Tannian:_ Did you take notice, and he coming into the shed,
he had like some sort of a little twist in his walk?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I would be loth to think there would be any
poison lurking in his veins. Where now would it come from, and
Cracked Mary's dog being as good as no dog at all?
_Peter Tannian:_ It might chance, and he a child in the cradle, to
get the bite of a dog. It might be only now, its full time being come,
its power would begin to work.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ So it would too, and he but to see the shadow of
the dog bit him in a body glass, or in the waves, and he himself
looking over a boat, and as if called to throw himself in the tide.
But I would not have thought it of Mr. Halvey. Well, it's as hard to
know what might be spreading abroad in any person's mind, as to put
the body of a horse out through a cambric needle.
_(Hyacinth looks at them.)_
_Shawn Early:_ Be quiet now, he is going to say some word.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There is a thought in my mind. I think it was
coming this good while.
_Shawn Early:_ Whisht now and listen.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I made a great mistake coming into this place.
_Peter Tannian:_ There was some mistake made anyway.
_Hyacinth:_ It is foolishness kept me in it ever since. It is too
big a name was put upon me.
_Peter Tannian:_ It is the power of the moon is forcing the truth
out of him.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Every person in the town giving me out for more
than I am. I got too much of that in the heel.
_Shawn Early:_ He is talking queer now anyway.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Calling to me every little minute--expecting me
to do this thing and that thing--watching me the same as a watchdog,
their eyes as if fixed upon my face.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ To be giving out such strange thoughts, he
hasn't much brains left around him.
_Hyacinth Halvey: I_ looking to be Clerk of the Union, and the
place I had giving me enough to do, and too much to do. Tied on this
side, tied on that side. I to be bothered with business through the
holy livelong day!
_Peter Tannian:_ It is good pay he got with it. Eighty pounds a
year doesn't come on the wind.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ In danger to be linked and wed--I never
ambitioned it--with a woman would want me to be earning through
every day of the year.
_Shawn Early:_ He is a gone man surely.
_Hyacinth Hakey:_ The wide ridge of the world before me, and to
have no one to look to for orders; that would be better than roast
and boiled and all the comforts of the day. I declare to goodness,
and I 'd nearly take my oath, I 'd sooner be among a fleet of tinkers,
than attending meetings of the Board!
_Mrs. Broderick:_ If there are fairies in it, it is in the fairies
he is.
_Peter Tannian:_ Give me a hold of that chain.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ What is it you are about to do?
_Peter Tannian:_ To bind him to the chair I will before he will
burst out wild mad. Come over here, Bartley Fallon, and lend a hand
if you can.
_(Bartley Fallon appears from corner with a_ _chicken crate over
his head.)_
_Mrs. Broderick:_ O Bartley, that is the strangest lightness ever
I saw, to go bind a chicken crate around your skull!
_Bartley Fallon:_ Will you tighten the knots I have tied, Peter
Tannian! I am in dread they might slacken or fail.
_Shawn Early:_ Was there ever seen before this night such power to
be in the moon!
_Bartley Fallon:_ It would seem to be putting very wild unruly
thoughts a-through me, stirring up whatever spleen or whatever
relics was left in me by the nature of the dog.
_Peter Tannian:_ Is it that you think those rods, spaced wide, as
they are, will keep out the moon from entering your brain?
_Bartley Fallon:_ There does great strength come at the time the
wits would be driven out of a person. I never was handled by a
policeman--but once--and never hit a blow on any man. I would not
wish to destroy my neighbour or to have his blood on my hands.
_Shawn Early:_ It is best keep out of his reach.
_Bartley Fallon:_ The way I have this fixed, there is no person
will be the worse for me. I to rush down the street and to meet with
my most enemy in some lonesome craggy place, it would fail me, and I
thrusting for it to scatter any share of poison in his body or to
sink my teeth in his skin. I wouldn't wonder I to have hung for some
of you, and that plan not to have come into my head.
_(Whistle of train heard.)_
_Hyacinth Halvey: (Getting up.)_ I have my mind made up, I am
going out of this on that train.
_Peter Tannian:_ You are not going so easy as what you think.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Let you mind your own business.
_Peter Tannian:_ I am well able to mind it.
_Hyacinth Halvey: (Throwing off top-coat.)_ You cannot keep me here.
_Peter Tannian:_ Give me a hand with the chain.
_(They throw it round Hyacinth and hold him.)_
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Is it out of your senses you are gone?
_Peter Tannian:_ Not at all, but yourself that is gone raving mad
from the fury and the strength of some dog.
_Miss Joyce: (At door.)_ Are you there, Hyacinth Halvey? The train
is in. Come forward now, and give a welcome to his Reverence.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Let me go out of this!
_Miss Joyce:_ You are near late as it is. The train is about to
start.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Let me go, or I'll tear the heart out of ye!
_Shawn Early:_ Oh, he is stark, staring mad!
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Mad, am I? Bit by a dog, am I? You'll see am I
mad! I'll show madness to you! Let go your hold or I'll skin you!
I'll destroy you! I'll bite you! I'm a red enemy to the whole of you!
Leave go your grip! Yes, I'm mad! Bow wow wow, wow wow!
_(They let go and fall back in terror, and he rushes out of the
door.)_
_Miss Joyce:_ What at all has happened? Where is he gone?
_Shawn Early:_ To the train he is gone, and away in it he is gone.
_Miss Joyce:_ He gave some sort of a bark or a howl.
_Shawn Early:_ He is gone clean mad. Great arguing he had, and
leaping and roaring.
_Bartley Fallon:_ _(Taking off crate.)_ He went very near to tear
us all asunder. I declare I amn't worth a match.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ He made a reel in my head, till I don't know am
I right myself.
_Shawn Early:_ Bawling his life out, tearing his clothes, tearing
and eating them. Look at his top-coat he left after him.
_Bartley Fallon:_ He poured all over with pure white foam.
_Peter Tannian:_ There now is an end of your elegant man.
_Shawn Early:_ Bit he was with the mad dog that went tearing, and
lads chasing him a while ago.
_Miss Joyce:_ Sure that was Tannian's own dog, that had a bit of
meat snapped from Quirke's ass-car. He is without this door now.
_(All look out.)_ He has the appearance of having a full meal taken.
_Bartley Fallon:_ And they to be saying I went mad. That is the
way always, and a thing to be tasked to me that was not in it at all.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ _(Laying her hand on Miss Joyce's shoulder.)_
Take comfort now; and if it was the moon done all, and has your
bachelor swept, let you not begrudge it its full share of praise for
the hand it had in banishing a strange bird, might have gone wild
and bawling like eleven, and you after being wed with him, and would
maybe have put a match to the roof. And hadn't you the luck of the
world now, that you did not give notice to the priest!
_Curtain_
COATS
_Hazel_ EDITOR OF "CHAMPION"
_Mineog_ EDITOR OF "TRIBUNE"
_John_ A WAITER
_Scene: Dining room of Royal Hotel Cloonmore_.
_Hazel: (Coming in.)_ Did Mr. Mineog come yet, John?
_John:_ He did not, Mr. Hazel. Ah, he won't be long coming. It's
seldom he does be late.
_Hazel:_ Is the dinner ready?
_John:_ It is, sir. Boiled beef and parsnips, the same as every
Monday for all comers, and an apple pie for yourself and Mr. Mineog.
_Mineog: (Coming in.)_ Mr. Hazel is the first tonight. I'm glad to
see you looking so good.
_(They take off coats and give to waiter.)_
_Mineog:_ Put that on its own peg.
_Hazel:_ And mine on its own peg to the rear.
_John:_ I will, sir.
_(He drops coats in putting them up. Then notices broken pane
in window and picks up the coats hurriedly, putting them on wrong
pegs. Hazel and Mineog have sat down.)_
_Hazel:_ Have you any strange news?
_Mineog:_ I have but the same news I always have, that it is quick
Monday comes around, and that it is hard make provision for to fill
up the four sheets of the _Tribune_, and nothing happening in these
parts worth while. There would seem to be no news on this day beyond
all days of the year.
_Hazel:_ Sure there is the same care and the same burden on myself.
I wish I didn't put a supplement to the _Champion_. The deer knows
what way will I fill it between this and Thursday, or in what place
I can go questing after news!
_Mineog:_ Last week passed without anything doing. It is a very
backward place to give information for two papers. If it was not for
the league is between us, and for us meeting here on every Monday to
make sure we are taking different sides on every question may turn up,
and giving every abuse to one another in print, there is no person
would pay his penny for the two of them, or it may be for the one of
them.
_Hazel:_ That is so. And the worst is, there is no question ever
rises that we do not agree on, or that would have power to make us
fall out in earnest. It was different in my early time. The
questions used to rise up then were worth fighting for.
_Mineog:_ There are some people so cantankerous they will heat
themselves in argument as to which side might be right or wrong in a
war, or if wars should be in it at all, or hangings.
_Hazel:_ Ah, when they are as long on the road as we are, they'll
take things easy. _Mineog:_ Now all the kingdoms of the earth to go
struggling on one wrong side or another, or to bring themselves down
to dust and ashes, it would not break our friendship. In all the
years past there never did a cross word rise between us.
_Hazel:_ There never will. What are the fights of politics and
parties beside living neighbourly with one another, and to go
peaceable to the grave, our selves that are the oldest residents in
the Square.
_Mineog:_ It will be long indeed before you will be followed to
the grave. You didn't live no length yet. You are too fresh to go
out and to forsake your wife and your family.
_Hazel:_ Ah, when the age would be getting up on you, you wouldn't
be getting younger. But it's yourself that is as full of spirit as a
four-year-old. I wish I had a sovereign for every year you will
reign after me in the Square.
_Mineog:_ _(Sneezes.)_ There is a draught of air coming in the
window.
_Hazel:_ _(Rising.)_ Take care might it be open--no, but a pane
that is out. There is a very chilly breeze sweeping in.
_Mineog:_ _(Rising.)_ I will put on my coat so. There is no use
giving provocation to a cold.
_Hazel:_ I'll do the same myself. It is hard to banish a sore
throat.
_(They put on coats. John brings in dinner. They sit down.)_
_Mineog:_ See can you baffle that draught of air, John.
_John:_ I'll go in search of something to stop it, sir. This bit
of a board I brought is too unshapely.
_Mineog:_ Two columns of the _Tribune_ as empty yet as anything
you could see. I had them kept free for the Bishop's speech and he
didn't come after.
_Hazel:_ That's the same cause has left myself with so wide a gap.
_Mineog:_ In the years past there used always to be something
happening such as famines, or the invention of printing. The whole
world has got very slack.
_Hazel:_ You are a better hand than what I am at filling odd
spaces would be left bare. It is often I think the news you put out
comes partly from your own brain, and the prophecies you lay down
about the weather and the crops.
_Mineog:_ Ah, I might stick in a bit of invention sometimes, when
I'm put to the pin of my collar.
_Hazel:_ I might maybe make an attack on the _Tribune_ for that.
_Mineog:_ Ah, what is it but a white sin. Sure it tells every
person the same thing. It doesn't tell many lies, it goes somewhere
a near it.
_Hazel:_ I spent a good while this evening searching through the
shelves of the press I have in the office. I write an article an odd
time, when there is nothing doing, that might come handy in a hurry.
_Mineog:_ So have I a press of the sort, and shelves in it. I am
after going through them to-day.
_Hazel:_ But it's hard find a thing would be suitable, unless you
might dress it up again someway fresh.
_Mineog:_ I made a thought and I searching a while ago. I was
thinking it would be a very nice thing to show respect to yourself,
and friendliness, putting down a short account of you and of all you
have done for your family and for the town.
_Hazel:_ That is a strange thing now! I had it in my mind to do
the very same service to yourself.
_Mineog:_ Is that so?
_Hazel:_ Your worth and your generosity and the way you have
worked the _Tribune_ for your own and for the public good.
_Mineog:_ And another thing. I not only thought to write it but I
am after writing it.
_Hazel: (Suspiciously.)_ You had not much time for that.
_Mineog:_ I never was one to spare myself in anything that could
benefit a friend.
_Hazel:_ Neither would I spare myself. I have my article wrote.
_Mineog:_ I have a mind to read my own one to you, the way you
will know there is nothing in it but what is friendly and is kind.
_Hazel:_ I will do the same thing. There's nothing I have said in
it but what you will like to be hearing.
_Mineog: (Who has rummaged pockets.)_ I thought I put it in the
inside pocket--no matter--here it is.
_Hazel: (Rummaging.)_ Here is my one. I was thinking I had it lost.
_Mineog: (Reading, after he has turned over a couple of sheets rapidly)_
"Born and bred in this Square, he took his chief pride in his native
town."