SCENE.--_A cottage kitchen. A table poorly set out, with two
cups, a jug of milk, and a cake of bread._ MARTIN _and_
MARY _sitting down to it._
MARTIN. This is a poor wedding dinner I have for you, Mary; and
a poor house I brought you to. I wish it was seven thousand times better
for your sake.
MARY. Only we have to part again, there wouldn't be in the
world a pair happier than myself and yourself; but where's the good of
fretting when there's no help for it?
MARTIN. If I had but a couple of pounds, I could buy a little
ass and earn a share of money bringing turf to the big town; or I could
job at the fairs. But, my grief, we haven't it, or ten shillings.
MARY. And if I could get but a few hens, and what would feed
them, I could be selling the eggs or rearing chickens. But unless God
would work a miracle for us, there's no chance of that itself. (_She
wipes her eyes with her apron._)
MARTIN. Don't be crying, Mary. You belong to me now; am I not
rich so long as you belong to me? Whatever place I will go to I will
know you are thinking of me.
MARY. That is a true word you say, Martin; I will never be poor
so long as I know you to be thinking of me. No riches at all would be so
good as that. There's a line my poor father used to be saying:--
'Cattle and gold, store and goods,
They pass away like the high floods.'
It was Raftery, the blind man, said that. I never saw him; but my father
used to be talking of him.
MARTIN. I don't care what he said. I wish we had goods and
store. He said the exact contrary another time:--
'Brogues in the fashion, a good house,
Are better than the bare sky over us.'
MARY. Poor Raftery! he'd give us all that if he had the chance.
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. God 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God; 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 God. 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 butter, with the help of God.
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 God 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.