MAIRE. Eight years you were, no more, the day the priest brought you
into the house.
SIGHLE. How old was MacDara?
MAIRE. He was turned fifteen. Fifteen he was on St. MacDara’s day, the
year your mother died.
SIGHLE. This house was as dear to me nearly as my mother’s house from
that day. You were good to me, Maire ni Fhiannachta, and your two boys
were good to me, but--
MAIRE. Yes, daughter?
SIGHLE. MacDara was like sun and moon to me, like dew and rain to me,
like strength and sweetness to me. I don’t know did he know I was so
fond of him. I think he did, because--
MAIRE. He did know, child.
SIGHLE. How do you know that he knew? Did he tell you? Did _you_ know?
MAIRE. I am his mother. Don’t I know every fibre of his body? Don’t I
know every thought of his mind? He never told me; but well I knew.
SIGHLE. He put me into his songs. That is what made me think he knew. My
name was in many a song that he made. Often when I was at the
_fosaidheacht_ he would come up into the green _mám_ to me, with a
little song that he had made. It was happy for us in the green _mám_
that time.
MAIRE. It was happy for us all when MacDara was here.
SIGHLE. The heart in the breast of me nearly broke when they banished
him from us.
MAIRE. I knew it well.
SIGHLE. I used to lie awake in the night with his songs going through my
brain, and the music of his voice. I used to call his name up in the
green _mám_. At Mass his face used to come between me and the white
Host.
MAIRE. We have both been lonely for him. The house has been lonely for
him.
SIGHLE. Colm never knew I was so fond of MacDara. When MacDara went away
Colm was kinder to me than ever,--but, indeed, he was always kind.
MAIRE. Colm is a kind boy.
SIGHLE. It was not till yesterday he told me he was fond of me; I never
thought it, I liked him well, but I never thought there would be word of
marriage between us. I don’t think he would have spoken if it was not
for the trouble coming. He says it will be soon now.
MAIRE. It will be very soon.
SIGHLE. I shiver when I think of them all going out to fight. They will
go out laughing: I see them with their cheeks flushed and their red lips
apart. And then they will lie very still on the hillside,--so still and
white, with no red in their cheeks, but maybe a red wound in their white
breasts, or on their white foreheads. Colm’s hair will be dabbled with
blood.
MAIRE. Whist, daughter. That is no talk for one that was reared in this
house. I am his mother, and I do not grudge him.
SIGHLE. Forgive me, you have known more sorrow than I, and I think only
of my own sorrow. (_She rises and kisses Maire._) I am proud other times
to think: of so many young men, young men with straight, strong limbs,
and smooth, white flesh, going out into great peril because a voice has
called to them to right the wrong of the people. Oh, I would like to see
the man that has set their hearts on fire with the breath of his voice!
They say that he is very young. They say that he is one of ourselves,--a
mountainy man that speaks our speech, and has known hunger and sorrow.
MAIRE. The strength and the sweetness he has come, maybe, out of his
sorrow.
SIGHLE. I heard Diarmaid of the Bridge say that he was at the fair of
Uachtar Ard yesterday. There were hundreds in the streets striving to
see him.
MAIRE. I wonder would he be coming here into Cois-Fhairrge, or is it
into the Joyce country he would go? I don’t know but it’s his coming I
felt all day yesterday, and all night. I thought, maybe, it might be--
SIGHLE. Who did you think it might be?
MAIRE. I thought it might be my son was coming to me.
SIGHLE. Is it MacDara?
MAIRE. Yes, MacDara.
SIGHLE. Do you think would he come back to be with the boys in the
trouble?
MAIRE. He would.
SIGHLE. Would he be left back now?
MAIRE. Who would let or stay him and he homing like a homing bird? Death
only; God between us and harm!
SIGHLE. Amen.
MAIRE. There is Colm in to us.
SIGHLE (_looking out of the window_). Aye, he’s on the street.
MAIRE. Poor Colm!
_The door opens and Colm comes in. He is a lad of twenty._
COLM. Did you not go to bed, mother?
MAIRE. I did not, Colm. I was too uneasy to sleep. Sighle kept me
company all night.
COLM. It’s a pity of the two of you to be up like this.
MAIRE. We would be more lonesome in bed than here chatting. Had you many
boys at the drill to-night?
COLM. We had, then. There were ten and three score.
MAIRE. When will the trouble be, Colm?
COLM. It will be to-morrow, or after to-morrow; or maybe sooner. There’s
a man expected from Galway with the word.
MAIRE. Is it the mountains you’ll take to, or to march to Uachtar Ard or
to Galway?
COLM. It’s to march we’ll do, I’m thinking. Diarmaid of the Bridge and
Cuimin Eanna and the master will be into us shortly. We have some plans
to make and the master wants to write some orders.
MAIRE. Is it you will be their captain?
COLM. It is, unless a better man comes in my place.
MAIRE. What better man would come?
COLM. There is talk of the Singer coming. He was at the fair of Uachtar
Ard yesterday.
MAIRE. Let you put on the kettle, Sighle, and ready the room. The master
will be asking a cup of tea. Will you lie down for an hour, Colm?
COLM. I will not. They will be in on us now.
MAIRE. Let you make haste, Sighle. Ready the room. Here, give me the
kettle.
_Sighle, who has brought a kettle full of water, gives it to Maire,
who hangs it over the fire; Sighle goes into the room._
COLM (_after a pause_). Was Sighle talking to you, mother?
MAIRE. She was, son.
COLM. What did she say?
MAIRE. She told me what you said to her last night. You must be patient,
Colm. Don’t press her to give you an answer too soon. She has strange
thoughts in her heart, and strange memories.
COLM. What memories has she?
MAIRE. Many a woman has memories.
COLM. Sighle has no memories but of this house and of her mother. What
is she but a child?
MAIRE. And what are you but a child? Can’t you have patience? Children
have memories, but the memories sometimes die. Sighle’s memories have
not died yet.
COLM. This is queer talk. What does she remember?
MAIRE. Whist, there’s someone on the street.
COLM (_looking out of the window_). It’s Cuimin and the master.
MAIRE. Be patient, son. Don’t vex your head. What are you both but
children yet?
_The door opens and Cuimin Eanna and Maoilsheachlainn come in. Cuimin
is middle aged; Maoilsheachlainn past middle age, turning grey, and a
little stooped._
CUIMIN AND MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_entering_). God save all here.
MAIRE. God save you men. Will you sit? The kettle is on the boil. Give
the master the big chair, Colm.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_sitting down near the fire on the chair which Colm
places for him_). You’re early stirring, Maire.
MAIRE. I didn’t lie down at all, master.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Is it to sit up all night you did?
MAIRE. It is, then. Sighle kept me company.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. ’Tis a pity of the women of the world. Too good they
are for us, and too full of care. I’m afraid that there was many a woman
on this mountain that sat up last night. Aye, and many a woman in
Ireland. ’Tis women that keep all the great vigils.
MAIRE (_wetting the tea_). Why wouldn’t we sit up to have a cup of tea
ready for you? Won’t you go west into the room?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. We’d as lief drink it here beside the fire.
MAIRE. Sighle is readying the room. You’ll want the table to write on,
maybe.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. We’ll go west so.
MAIRE. Wait till Sighle has the table laid. The tea will be drawn in a
minute.
COLM (_to Maoilsheachlainn_). Was there any word of the messenger at the
forge, master?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. There was not.
CUIMIN. When we were coming up the boreen I saw a man breasting Cnoc an
Teachta that I thought might be him.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I don’t think it was him. He was walking slowly, and
sure the messenger that brings that great story will come on the wings
of the wind.
COLM. Perhaps it was one of the boys you saw going home from the drill.
CUIMIN. No, it was a stranger. He looked like a mountainy man that would
be coming from a distance. He might be someone that was at the fair of
Uachtar Ard yesterday, and that stayed the evening after selling.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Aye, there did a lot stay, I’m told, talking about the
word that’s expected.
CUIMIN. The Singer was there, I believe. Diarmaid of the Bridge said
that he spoke to them all at the fair, and that there did a lot stay in
the town after the fair thinking he’d speak to them again. They say he
has the talk of an angel.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What sort is he to look at?
CUIMIN. A poor man of the mountains. Young they say he is, and pale like
a man that lived in cities, but with the dress and the speech of a
mountainy man; shy in himself and very silent, till he stands up to talk
to the people. And then he has the voice of a silver trumpet, and words
so beautiful that they make the people cry. And there is terrible anger
in him, for all that he is shrinking and gentle. Diarmaid said that in
the Joyce country they think it is some great hero that has come back
again to lead the people against the Gall, or maybe an angel, or the Son
of Mary Himself that has come down on the earth.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_looking towards the door_). There’s a footstep
abroad.
MAIRE (_who has been sitting very straight in her chair listening
intently_). That is my son’s step.
COLM. Sure, amn’t I here, mother?
MAIRE. That is MacDara’s step.
_All start and look first towards Maire, then towards the door, the
latch of which has been touched._
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I wish it was MacDara, Maire. ’Tis maybe Diarmaid or
the mountainy man we saw on the road.
MAIRE. It is not Diarmaid. It is MacDara.
_The door opens slowly and MacDara, a young man of perhaps
twenty-five, dressed like a man of the mountains, stands on the
threshold._
MACDARA. God save all here.
ALL. And you, likewise.
MAIRE (_who has risen and is stretching out her hands_). I felt you
coming to me, little son!
MACDARA (_springing to her and folding her in his arms_). Little mother!
little mother!
_While they still embrace Sighle re-enters from the room and stands
still on the threshold looking at MacDara._
MAIRE (_raising her head_). Along all the quiet roads and across all the
rough mountains, and through all the crowded towns, I felt you drawing
near to me.
MACDARA. Oh, the long years, the long years!
MAIRE. I am crying for pride at the sight of you. Neighbours,
neighbours, this is MacDara, the first child that I bore to my husband.
MACDARA (_kissing Colm_). My little brother! (_To Cuimin_), Cuimin
Eanna! (_To Maoilsheachlainn_), Master! (_They shake hands._)
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Welcome home.
CUIMIN. Welcome home.
MACDARA (_looking round_). Where is.... (_He sees Sighle in the
doorway._) Sighle! (_He approaches her and takes her hand._) Little,
little Sighle!... I.... Mother, sometimes when I was in the middle of
great crowds, I have seen this fireplace, and you standing with your
hands stretched out to me as you stood a minute ago, and Sighle in the
doorway of the room; and my heart has cried out to you.
MAIRE. I used to hear the crying of your heart. Often and often here by
the fireside or abroad on the street I would stand and say, “MacDara is
crying out to me now. The heart in him is yearning.” And this while back
I felt you draw near, draw near, step by step. Last night I felt you
very near to me. Do you remember me saying, Sighle, that I felt someone
coming, and that I thought maybe it might be MacDara?
SIGHLE. You did.
MAIRE. I knew that something glorious was coming to the mountain with
to-day’s dawn. Red dawns and white dawns I have seen on the hills, but
none like this dawn. Come in, jewel, and sit down awhile in the room.
Sighle has the table laid. The tea is drawn. Bring in the griddle-cakes,
Sighle. Come in, master. Come in, Cuimin.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. No, Maire, we’ll sit here a while. You and the
children will like to be by yourselves. Go in, west, children. Cuimin
and I have plans to make. We’re expecting Diarmaid of the Bridge in.
MAIRE. We don’t grudge you a share in our joy, master. Nor you, Cuimin.
CUIMIN. No, go on in, Maire. We’ll go west after you. We want to talk
here.
MAIRE. Well, come in when you have your talk out. There’s enough tea on
the pot for everybody. In with you, children.
_MacDara, Colm, Sighle and Maire go into the room, Sighle carrying the
griddle-cakes and Maire the tea._
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. This is great news, MacDara to be back.
CUIMIN. Do you think will he be with us?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Is it a boy with that gesture of the head, that proud,
laughing gesture, to be a coward or a stag? You don’t know the heart of
this boy, Cuimin; the love that’s in it, and the strength. You don’t
know the mind he has, so gracious, so full of wisdom. I taught him when
he was only a little ladeen. ’Tis a pity that he had ever to go away
from us. And yet, I think, his exile has made him a better man. His soul
must be full of great remembrances.
CUIMIN. I never knew rightly why he was banished.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Songs he was making that were setting the people’s
hearts on fire.
CUIMIN. Aye, I often heard his songs.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. They were full of terrible love for the people and of
great anger against the Gall. Some said there was irreligion in them and
blasphemy against God. But I never saw it, and I don’t believe it. There
are some would have us believe that God is on the side of the Gall.
Well, word came down from Galway or from Dublin that he would be put in
prison, and maybe excommunicated if he did not go away. He was only a
gossoon of eighteen, or maybe twenty. The priest counselled him to go,
and not to bring sorrow on his mother’s house. He went away one evening
without taking farewell or leave of anyone.
CUIMIN. Where has he been since, I don’t know?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. In great cities, I’d say, and in lonely places. He has
the face of a scholar, or of a priest, or of a clerk, on him. He must
have read a lot, and thought a lot, and made a lot of songs.
CUIMIN. I don’t know is he as strong a boy as Colm.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. He’s not as robust in himself as Colm is, but there
was great strength in the grip of his hand. I’d say that he’d wield a
camán or a pike with any boy on the mountain.
CUIMIN. He’ll be a great backing to us if he is with us. The people love
him on account of the songs he used to make. There’s not a man that
won’t do his bidding.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. That’s so. And his counsel will be useful to us. He’ll
make better plans than you or I, Cuimin.
CUIMIN. I wonder what’s keeping Diarmaid.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Some news that was at the forge or at the priest’s
house, maybe. He went east the road to see if there was sign of a word
from Galway.
CUIMIN. I’ll be uneasy till he comes. (_He gets up and walks to the
window and looks out; Maoilsheachlainn remains deep in thought by the
fire. Cuimin returns from the window and continues._) Is it to march
we’ll do, or to fight here in the hills?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Out Maam Gap we’ll go and meet the boys from the Joyce
country. We’ll leave some to guard the Gap and some at Leenane. We’ll
march the road between the lakes, through Maam and Cornamona and Clonbur
to Cong. Then we’ll have friends on our left at Ballinrobe and on our
right at Tuam. What is there to stop us but the few men the Gall have in
Clifden?
CUIMIN. And if they march against us, we can destroy them from the
mountains.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. We can. It’s into a trap they’ll walk.
_MacDara appears in the doorway of the room with a cup of tea and some
griddle-cake in his hand._
MACDARA. I’ve brought you out a cup of tea, master. I thought it long
you were sitting here.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_taking it_). God bless you, MacDara.
MACDARA. Go west, Cuimin. There’s a place at the table for you now.
CUIMIN (_rising and going in_). I may as well. Give me a call, boy, when
Diarmaid comes.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. This is a great day, MacDara.
MACDARA. It is a great day and a glad day, and yet it is a sorrowful
day.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. How can the day of your home-coming be sorrowful?
MACDARA. Has not every great joy a great sorrow at its core? Does not
the joy of home-coming enclose the pain of departing? I have a strange
feeling, master, I have only finished a long journey, and I feel as if I
were about to take another long journey. I meant this to be a
home-coming, but it seems only like a meeting on the way.... When my
mother stood up to meet me with her arms stretched out to me, I thought
of Mary meeting her Son on the Dolorous Way.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. That was a queer thought. What was it that drew you
home?
MACDARA. Some secret thing that I have no name for. Some feeling that I
must see my mother, and Colm, and Sighle, again. A feeling that I must
face some great adventure with their kisses on my lips. I seemed to see
myself brought to die before a great crowd that stood cold and silent;
and there were some that cursed me in their hearts for having brought
death into their houses. Sad dead faces seemed to reproach me. Oh, the
wise, sad faces of the dead--and the keening of women rang in my ears.
But I felt that the kisses of those three, warm on my mouth, would be as
wine in my blood, strengthening me to bear what men said, and to die
with only love and pity in my heart, and no bitterness.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. It was strange that you should see yourself like that.
MACDARA. It was foolish. One has strange, lonesome thoughts when one is
in the middle of crowds. But I am glad of that thought, for it drove me
home. I felt so lonely away from here.... My mother’s hair is greyer
than it was.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Aye, she has been ageing. She has had great sorrows:
your father dead and you banished. Colm is grown a fine, strapping boy.
MACDARA. He is. There is some shyness between Colm and me. We have not
spoken yet as we used to.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. When boys are brought up together and then parted for
a long time there is often shyness between them when they meet again....
Do you find Sighle changed?
MACDARA. No; and, yet--yes. Master, she is very beautiful. I did not
know a woman could be so beautiful. I thought that all beauty was in the
heart, that beauty was a secret thing that could be seen only with the
eyes of reverie, or in a dream of some unborn splendour. I had schooled
myself to think physical beauty an unholy thing. I tried to keep my
heart virginal; and sometimes in the street of a city when I have
stopped to look at the white limbs of some beautiful child, and have
felt the pain that the sight of great beauty brings, I have wished that
I could blind my eyes so that I might shut out the sight of everything
that tempted me. At times I have rebelled against that, and have cried
aloud that God would not have filled the world with beauty, even to the
making drunk of the sight, if beauty were not of heaven. But, then,
again, I have said, “This is the subtlest form of temptation; this is to
give to one’s own desire the sanction of God’s will.” And I have
hardened my heart and kept myself cold and chaste as the top of a high
mountain. But now I think I was wrong, for beauty like Sighle’s must be
holy.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Surely a good and comely girl is holy. You question
yourself too much, MacDara. You brood too much. Do you remember when you
were a gossoon, how you cried over the wild duck whose wing you broke by
accident with a stone, and made a song about the crane whose nest you
found ravished, and about the red robin you found perished on the
doorstep? And how the priest laughed because you told him in confession
that you had stolen drowned lilies from the river?
MACDARA (_laughing_). Aye, it was at a station in Diarmaid of the
Bridge’s, and when the priest laughed my face got red, and everyone
looked at us, and I got up and ran out of the house.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_laughing_). I remember it well. We thought it was
what you told him you were in love with his house-keeper.
MACDARA. It’s little but I was, too. She used to give me apples out of
the priest’s apple-garden. Little brown russet apples, the sweetest I
ever tasted. I used to think that the apples of the Hesperides that the
Children of Tuireann went to quest must have been like them.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. It’s a wonder but you made a poem about them.
MACDARA. I did. I made a poem in Deibhidhe of twenty quatrains.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Did you make many songs while you were away?
MACDARA. When I went away first my heart was as if dead and dumb and I
could not make any songs. After a little while, when I was going through
the sweet, green country, and I used to come to little towns where I’d
see children playing, my heart seemed to open again like hard ground
that would be watered with rain. The first song that I made was about
the children that I saw playing in the street of Kilconnell. The next
song that I made was about an old dark man that I met on the causeway of
Aughrim. I made a glad, proud song when I saw the broad Shannon flow
under the bridge of Athlone. I made many a song after that before I
reached Dublin.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. How did it fare with you in Dublin?
MACDARA. I went to a bookseller and gave him the book of my songs to
print. He said that he dared not print them; that the Gall would put him
in prison and break up his printing-press. I was hungry and I wandered
through the streets. Then a man who saw me read an Irish poster on the
wall spoke to me and asked me where I came from. I told him my story. In
a few days he came to me and said that he had found work for me to teach
Irish and Latin and Greek in a school. I went to the school and taught
in it for a year. I wrote a few poems and they were printed in a paper.
One day the Brother who was over the school came to me and asked me was
it I that had written those poems. I said it was. He told me then that I
could not teach in the school any longer. So I went away.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What happened to you after that?
MACDARA. I wandered in the streets until I saw a notice that a teacher
was wanted to teach a boy. I went to the house and a lady engaged me to
teach her little son for ten shillings a week. Two years I spent at
that. The boy was a winsome child, and he grew into my heart. I thought
it a wonderful thing to have the moulding of a mind, of a life, in my
hands. Do you ever think that, you who are a schoolmaster?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. It’s not much time I get for thinking.
MACDARA. I have done nothing all my life but think: think and make
poems.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. If the thoughts and the poems are good, that is a good
life’s work.
MACDARA. Aye, they say that to be busy with the things of the spirit is
better than to be busy with the things of the body. But I am not sure,
master. Can the Vision Beautiful alone content a man? I think true man
is divine in this, that, like God, he must needs create, he must needs
do.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Is not a poet a maker?
MACDARA. No, he is only a voice that cries out, a sigh that trembles
into rest. The true teacher must suffer and do. He must break bread to
the people: he must go into Gethsemane and toil up the steep of
Golgotha.... Sometimes I think that to be a woman and to serve and
suffer as women do is to be the highest thing. Perhaps that is why I
felt it proud and wondrous to be a teacher, for a teacher does that. I
gave to the little lad I taught the very flesh and blood and breath that
were my life. I fed him on the milk of my kindness; I breathed into him
my spirit.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Did he repay you for that great service?
MACDARA. Can any child repay its mother? Master, your trade is the most
sorrowful of all trades. You are like a poor mother who spends herself
in nursing children who go away and never come back to her.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Was your little pupil untrue to you?
MACDARA. Nay; he was so true to me that his mother grew jealous of me. A
good mother and a good teacher are always jealous of each other. That is
why a teacher’s trade is the most sorrowful of all trades. If he is a
bad teacher his pupil _wanders_ away from him. If he is a good teacher
his pupil’s folk grow jealous of him. My little pupil’s mother bade him
choose between her and me.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Which did he choose?
MACDARA. He chose his mother. How could I blame him?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What did you do?
MACDARA. I shouldered my bundle and took to the roads.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. How did it fare with you?
MACDARA. It fares ill with one who is so poor that he has no longer even
his dreams. I was the poorest _shuiler_ on the roads of Ireland, for I
had no single illusion left to me. I could neither pray when I came to a
holy well nor drink in a public-house when I had got a little money. One
seemed to me as foolish as the other.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Did you make no songs in those days?
MACDARA. I made one so bitter that when I recited it at a wake they
thought I was some wandering, wicked spirit, and they put me out of the
house.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Did you not pray at all?
MACDARA. Once, as I knelt by the cross of Kilgobbin, it became clear to
me, with an awful clearness, that there was no God. Why pray after that?
I burst into a fit of laughter at the folly of men in thinking that
there is a God. I felt inclined to run through the villages and cry
aloud, “People, it is all a mistake; there is no God.”
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. MacDara, this grieves me.
MACDARA. Then I said, “why take away their illusion? If they find out
that there is no God, their hearts will be as lonely as mine.” So I
walked the roads with my secret.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. MacDara, I am sorry for this. You must pray, you must
pray. You will find God again. He has only hidden His face from you.
MACDARA. No, He has revealed His Face to me. His Face is terrible and
sweet, Maoilsheachlainn. I know It well now.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Then you found Him again?
MACDARA. His Name is suffering. His Name is loneliness. His Name is
abjection.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I do not rightly understand you, and yet I think you
are saying something that is true.
MACDARA. I have lived with the homeless and with the breadless. Oh,
Maoilsheachlainn, the poor, the poor! I have seen such sad childings,
such bare marriage feasts, such candleless wakes! In the pleasant
country places I have seen them, but oftener in the dark, unquiet
streets of the city. My heart has been heavy with the sorrow of mothers,
my eyes have been wet with the tears of children. The people,
Maoilsheachlainn, the dumb, suffering people: reviled and outcast, yet
pure and splendid and faithful. In them I saw, or seemed to see again,
the Face of God. Ah, it is a tear-stained face, blood-stained, defiled
with ordure, but it is the Holy Face!
* * * * *
_There is a page of MS. missing here, which evidently covered the exit
to the room of MacDara and the entrance of Diarmaid._
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What news have you with you?
DIARMAID. The Gall have marched from Clifden.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Is it into the hills?
DIARMAID. By Letterfrack they have come, and the Pass of Kylemore, and
through Glen Inagh.
COLM. And no word from Galway yet?
DIARMAID. No word, nor sign of a word.
COLM. They told us to wait for the word. We’ve waited too long.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. The messenger may have been caught. Perhaps the Gall
are marching from Galway too.
COLM. We’d best strike ourselves, so.
CUIMIN. Is it to strike before the word is given?
COLM. Is it to die like rats you’d have us because the word is not
given?
CUIMIN. Our plans are not finished; our orders are not here.
COLM. Our plans will never be finished. Our orders may never be here.
CUIMIN. We’ve no one to lead us.
COLM. Didn’t you elect me your captain?
CUIMIN. We did: but not to bid us rise out when the whole country is
quiet. We were to get the word from the men that are over the people.
They’ll speak when the time comes.
COLM. They should have spoken before the Gall marched.
CUIMIN. What call have you to say what they should or what they should
not have done? Am I speaking lie or truth, men? Are we to rise out
before the word comes? I say we must wait for the word. What do you say,
Diarmaid, you that was our messenger to Galway?
DIARMAID. I like the way Colm has spoken, and we may live to say that he
spoke wisely as well as bravely; but I’m slow to give my voice to send
out the boys of this mountain--our poor little handful--to stand with
their poor pikes against the big guns of the Gall. If we had news that
they were rising in the other countrysides; but we’ve got no news.
CUIMIN. What do you say, master? You’re wiser than any of us.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I say to Colm that a greater one than he or I may give
us the word before the day is old. Let you have patience, Colm--
COLM. My mother told me to have patience this morning, when MacDara’s
step was on the street. Patience, and I after waiting seven years before
I spoke, and then to speak too late!
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What are you saying at all?
COLM. I am saying this, master, that I’m going out the road to meet the
Gall, if only five men of the mountain follow me.
_Sighle has appeared in the doorway and stands terror-stricken._
CUIMIN. You will not, Colm.
COLM. I will.
DIARMAID. This is throwing away men’s lives.
COLM. Men’s lives get very precious to them when they have bought out
their land.