A LABORER'S VOICE. Yes, your honor.
THE GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Take this horse to the stables, will you?
A LABORER'S VOICE. Right, your honor. Yup there. Gwan now. Gwan. [The
horse is led away.]
General Sir Pearce Madigan, an elderly baronet in khaki, beaming with
enthusiasm, arrives. O'Flaherty rises and stands at attention.
SIR PEARCE. No, no, O'Flaherty: none of that now. You're off duty.
Remember that though I am a general of forty years service, that little
Cross of yours gives you a higher rank in the roll of glory than I can
pretend to.
O'FLAHERTY [relaxing]. I'm thankful to you, Sir Pearce; but I wouldn't
have anyone think that the baronet of my native place would let a common
soldier like me sit down in his presence without leave.
SIR PEARCE. Well, you're not a common soldier, O'Flaherty: you're a very
uncommon one; and I'm proud to have you for my guest here today.
O'FLAHERTY. Sure I know, sir. You have to put up with a lot from the
like of me for the sake of the recruiting. All the quality shakes hands
with me and says they're proud to know me, just the way the king said
when he pinned the Cross on me. And it's as true as I'm standing here,
sir, the queen said to me: "I hear you were born on the estate of
General Madigan," she says; "and the General himself tells me you
were always a fine young fellow." "Bedad, Mam," I says to her, "if
the General knew all the rabbits I snared on him, and all the salmon
I snatched on him, and all the cows I milked on him, he'd think me the
finest ornament for the county jail he ever sent there for poaching."
SIR PEARCE [Laughing]. You're welcome to them all, my lad. Come [he
makes him sit down again on the garden seat]! sit down and enjoy your
holiday [he sits down on one of the iron chairs; the one at the doorless
side of the porch.]
O'FLAHERTY. Holiday, is it? I'd give five shillings to be back in the
trenches for the sake of a little rest and quiet. I never knew what hard
work was till I took to recruiting. What with the standing on my legs
all day, and the shaking hands, and the making speeches, and--what's
worse--the listening to them and the calling for cheers for king and
country, and the saluting the flag till I'm stiff with it, and the
listening to them playing God Save the King and Tipperary, and the
trying to make my eyes look moist like a man in a picture book, I'm that
bet that I hardly get a wink of sleep. I give you my word, Sir Pearce,
that I never heard the tune of Tipperary in my life till I came back
from Flanders; and already it's drove me to that pitch of tiredness
of it that when a poor little innocent slip of a boy in the street the
other night drew himself up and saluted and began whistling it at me, I
clouted his head for him, God forgive me.
SIR PEARCE [soothingly]. Yes, yes: I know. I know. One does get fed up
with it: I've been dog tired myself on parade many a time. But still,
you know, there's a gratifying side to it, too. After all, he is our
king; and it's our own country, isn't it?
O'FLAHERTY. Well, sir, to you that have an estate in it, it would feel
like your country. But the divil a perch of it ever I owned. And as to
the king: God help him, my mother would have taken the skin off my back
if I'd ever let on to have any other king than Parnell.
SIR PEARCE [rising, painfully shocked]. Your mother! What are you
dreaming about, O'Flaherty? A most loyal woman. Always most loyal.
Whenever there is an illness in the Royal Family, she asks me every
time we meet about the health of the patient as anxiously as if it were
yourself, her only son.
O'FLAHERTY. Well, she's my mother; and I won't utter a word agen her.
But I'm not saying a word of lie when I tell you that that old woman is
the biggest kanatt from here to the cross of Monasterboice. Sure she's
the wildest Fenian and rebel, and always has been, that ever taught a
poor innocent lad like myself to pray night and morning to St Patrick
to clear the English out of Ireland the same as he cleared the snakes.
You'll be surprised at my telling you that now, maybe, Sir Pearce?
SIR PEARCE [unable to keep still, walking away from O'Flaherty].
Surprised! I'm more than surprised, O'Flaherty. I'm overwhelmed.
[Turning and facing him.] Are you--are you joking?
O'FLAHERTY. If you'd been brought up by my mother, sir, you'd know
better than to joke about her. What I'm telling you is the truth; and I
wouldn't tell it to you if I could see my way to get out of the fix I'll
be in when my mother comes here this day to see her boy in his glory,
and she after thinking all the time it was against the English I was
fighting.
SIR PEARCE. Do you mean to say you told her such a monstrous falsehood
as that you were fighting in the German army?
O'FLAHERTY. I never told her one word that wasn't the truth and nothing
but the truth. I told her I was going to fight for the French and for
the Russians; and sure who ever heard of the French or the Russians
doing anything to the English but fighting them? That was how it was,
sir. And sure the poor woman kissed me and went about the house singing
in her old cracky voice that the French was on the sea, and they'd be
here without delay, and the Orange will decay, says the Shan Van Vocht.
SIR PEARCE [sitting down again, exhausted by his feelings]. Well, I
never could have believed this. Never. What do you suppose will happen
when she finds out?
O'FLAHERTY. She mustn't find out. It's not that she'd half kill me, as
big as I am and as brave as I am. It's that I'm fond of her, and can't
bring myself to break the heart in her. You may think it queer that a
man should be fond of his mother, sir, and she having bet him from the
time he could feel to the time she was too slow to ketch him; but I'm
fond of her; and I'm not ashamed of it. Besides, didn't she win the
Cross for me?
SIR PEARCE. Your mother! How?
O'FLAHERTY. By bringing me up to be more afraid of running away than of
fighting. I was timid by nature; and when the other boys hurted me, I'd
want to run away and cry. But she whaled me for disgracing the blood of
the O'Flahertys until I'd have fought the divil himself sooner than face
her after funking a fight. That was how I got to know that fighting was
easier than it looked, and that the others was as much afeard of me as
I was of them, and that if I only held out long enough they'd lose heart
and give rip. That's the way I came to be so courageous. I tell you, Sir
Pearce, if the German army had been brought up by my mother, the Kaiser
would be dining in the banqueting hall at Buckingham Palace this day,
and King George polishing his jack boots for him in the scullery.
SIR PEARCE. But I don't like this, O'Flaherty. You can't go on deceiving
your mother, you know. It's not right.
O'FLAHERTY. Can't go on deceiving her, can't I? It's little you know
what a son's love can do, sir. Did you ever notice what a ready liar I
am?
SIR PEARCE. Well, in recruiting a man gets carried away. I stretch it
a bit occasionally myself. After all, it's for king and country. But if
you won't mind my saying it, O'Flaherty, I think that story about
your fighting the Kaiser and the twelve giants of the Prussian guard
singlehanded would be the better for a little toning down. I don't ask
you to drop it, you know; for it's popular, undoubtedly; but still, the
truth is the truth. Don't you think it would fetch in almost as many
recruits if you reduced the number of guardsmen to six?
O'FLAHERTY. You're not used to telling lies like I am, sir. I got great
practice at home with my mother. What with saving my skin when I was
young and thoughtless, and sparing her feelings when I was old enough to
understand them, I've hardly told my mother the truth twice a year since
I was born; and would you have me turn round on her and tell it now,
when she's looking to have some peace and quiet in her old age?
SIR PEARCE [troubled in his conscience]. Well, it's not my affair, of
course, O'Flaherty. But hadn't you better talk to Father Quinlan about
it?
O'FLAHERTY. Talk to Father Quinlan, is it! Do you know what Father
Quinlan says to me this very morning?
SIR PEARCE. Oh, you've seen him already, have you? What did he say?
O'FLAHERTY. He says "You know, don't you," he says, "that it's your
duty, as a Christian and a good son of the Holy Church, to love your
enemies?" he says. "I know it's my juty as a soldier to kill them," I
says. "That's right, Dinny," he says: "quite right. But," says he, "you
can kill them and do them a good turn afterward to show your love for
them" he says; "and it's your duty to have a mass said for the souls of
the hundreds of Germans you say you killed," says he; "for many and many
of them were Bavarians and good Catholics," he says. "Is it me that must
pay for masses for the souls of the Boshes?" I says. "Let the King of
England pay for them," I says; "for it was his quarrel and not mine."
SIR PEARCE [warmly]. It is the quarrel of every honest man and true
patriot, O'Flaherty. Your mother must see that as clearly as I do.
After all, she is a reasonable, well disposed woman, quite capable of
understanding the right and the wrong of the war. Why can't you explain
to her what the war is about?
O'FLAHERTY. Arra, sir, how the divil do I know what the war is about?
SIR PEARCE [rising again and standing over him]. What! O'Flaherty: do
you know what you are saying? You sit there wearing the Victoria Cross
for having killed God knows how many Germans; and you tell me you don't
know why you did it!
O'FLAHERTY. Asking your pardon, Sir Pearce, I tell you no such thing. I
know quite well why I kilt them, because I was afeard that, if I didn't,
they'd kill me.
SIR PEARCE [giving it up, and sitting down again]. Yes, yes, of course;
but have you no knowledge of the causes of the war? of the interests
at stake? of the importance--I may almost say--in fact I will say--the
sacred right for which we are fighting? Don't you read the papers?
O'FLAHERTY. I do when I can get them. There's not many newsboys crying
the evening paper in the trenches. They do say, Sir Pearce, that
we shall never beat the Boshes until we make Horatio Bottomley Lord
Leftnant of England. Do you think that's true, sir?
SIR PEARCE. Rubbish, man! there's no Lord Lieutenant in England: the
king is Lord Lieutenant. It's a simple question of patriotism. Does
patriotism mean nothing to you?
O'FLAHERTY. It means different to me than what it would to you, sir. It
means England and England's king to you. To me and the like of me, it
means talking about the English just the way the English papers talk
about the Boshes. And what good has it ever done here in Ireland? It's
kept me ignorant because it filled up my mother's mind, and she thought
it ought to fill up mine too. It's kept Ireland poor, because instead
of trying to better ourselves we thought we was the fine fellows of
patriots when we were speaking evil of Englishmen that was as poor as
ourselves and maybe as good as ourselves. The Boshes I kilt was more
knowledgable men than me; and what better am I now that I've kilt them?
What better is anybody?
SIR PEARCE [huffed, turning a cold shoulder to him]. I am sorry the
terrible experience of this war--the greatest war ever fought--has
taught you no better, O'Flaherty.
O'FLAHERTY [preserving his dignity]. I don't know about it's being a
great war, sir. It's a big war; but that's not the same thing. Father
Quinlan's new church is a big church: you might take the little old
chapel out of the middle of it and not miss it. But my mother says there
was more true religion in the old chapel. And the war has taught me that
maybe she was right.
SIR PEARCE [grunts sulkily]!!
O'FLAHERTY [respectfully but doggedly]. And there's another thing it's
taught me too, sir, that concerns you and me, if I may make bold to tell
it to you.
SIR PEARCE [still sulky]. I hope it's nothing you oughtn't to say to me,
O'Flaherty.
O'FLAHERTY. It's this, sir: that I'm able to sit here now and talk to
you without humbugging you; and that's what not one of your tenants or
your tenants' childer ever did to you before in all your long life. It's
a true respect I'm showing you at last, sir. Maybe you'd rather have me
humbug you and tell you lies as I used, just as the boys here, God help
them, would rather have me tell them how I fought the Kaiser, that all
the world knows I never saw in my life, than tell them the truth. But
I can't take advantage of you the way I used, not even if I seem to be
wanting in respect to you and cocked up by winning the Cross.
SIR PEARCE [touched]. Not at all, O'Flaherty. Not at all.
O'FLAHERTY. Sure what's the Cross to me, barring the little pension it
carries? Do you think I don't know that there's hundreds of men as brave
as me that never had the luck to get anything for their bravery but a
curse from the sergeant, and the blame for the faults of them that ought
to have been their betters? I've learnt more than you'd think, sir;
for how would a gentleman like you know what a poor ignorant conceited
creature I was when I went from here into the wide world as a soldier?
What use is all the lying, and pretending, and humbugging, and letting
on, when the day comes to you that your comrade is killed in the trench
beside you, and you don't as much as look round at him until you trip
over his poor body, and then all you say is to ask why the hell the
stretcher-bearers don't take it out of the way. Why should I read the
papers to be humbugged and lied to by them that had the cunning to
stay at home and send me to fight for them? Don't talk to me or to any
soldier of the war being right. No war is right; and all the holy water
that Father Quinlan ever blessed couldn't make one right. There, sir!
Now you know what O'Flaherty V.C. thinks; and you're wiser so than the
others that only knows what he done.
SIR PEARCE [making the best of it, and turning goodhumoredly to him
again]. Well, what you did was brave and manly, anyhow.
O'FLAHERTY. God knows whether it was or not, better than you nor me,
General. I hope He won't be too hard on me for it, anyhow.
SIR PEARCE [sympathetically]. Oh yes: we all have to think seriously
sometimes, especially when we're a little run down. I'm afraid we've
been overworking you a bit over these recruiting meetings. However, we
can knock off for the rest of the day; and tomorrow's Sunday. I've
had about as much as I can stand myself. [He looks at his watch.] It's
teatime. I wonder what's keeping your mother.
O'FLAHERTY. It's nicely cocked up the old woman will be having tea at
the same table as you, sir, instead of in the kitchen. She'll be after
dressing in the heighth of grandeur; and stop she will at every house
on the way to show herself off and tell them where she's going, and fill
the whole parish with spite and envy. But sure, she shouldn't keep you
waiting, sir.
SIR PEARCE. Oh, that's all right: she must be indulged on an occasion
like this. I'm sorry my wife is in London: she'd have been glad to
welcome your mother.
O'FLAHERTY. Sure, I know she would, sir. She was always a kind friend to
the poor. Little her ladyship knew, God help her, the depth of divilment
that was in us: we were like a play to her. You see, sir, she was
English: that was how it was. We was to her what the Pathans and
Senegalese was to me when I first seen them: I couldn't think, somehow,
that they were liars, and thieves, and backbiters, and drunkards, just
like ourselves or any other Christians. Oh, her ladyship never knew all
that was going on behind her back: how would she? When I was a weeshy
child, she gave me the first penny I ever had in my hand; and I wanted
to pray for her conversion that night the same as my mother made me pray
for yours; and--
SIR PEARCE [scandalized]. Do you mean to say that your mother made you
pray for MY conversion?
O'FLAHERTY. Sure and she wouldn't want to see a gentleman like you going
to hell after she nursing your own son and bringing up my sister Annie
on the bottle. That was how it was, sir. She'd rob you; and she'd lie to
you; and she'd call down all the blessings of God on your head when she
was selling you your own three geese that you thought had been ate by
the fox the day after you'd finished fattening them, sir; and all the
time you were like a bit of her own flesh and blood to her. Often has
she said she'd live to see you a good Catholic yet, leading victorious
armies against the English and wearing the collar of gold that Malachi
won from the proud invader. Oh, she's the romantic woman is my mother,
and no mistake.
SIR PEARCE [in great perturbation]. I really can't believe this,
O'Flaherty. I could have sworn your mother was as honest a woman as ever
breathed.
O'FLAHERTY. And so she is, sir. She's as honest as the day.
SIR PEARCE. Do you call it honest to steal my geese?
O'FLAHERTY. She didn't steal them, sir. It was me that stole them.
SIR PEARCE. Oh! And why the devil did you steal them?
O'FLAHERTY. Sure we needed them, sir. Often and often we had to sell our
own geese to pay you the rent to satisfy your needs; and why shouldn't
we sell your geese to satisfy ours?
SIR PEARCE. Well, damn me!
O'FLAHERTY [sweetly]. Sure you had to get what you could out of us; and
we had to get what we could out of you. God forgive us both!
SIR PEARCE. Really, O'Flaherty, the war seems to have upset you a
little.
O'FLAHERTY. It's set me thinking, sir; and I'm not used to it. It's like
the patriotism of the English. They never thought of being patriotic
until the war broke out; and now the patriotism has took them so
sudden and come so strange to them that they run about like frightened
chickens, uttering all manner of nonsense. But please God they'll forget
all about it when the war's over. They're getting tired of it already.
SIR PEARCE. No, no: it has uplifted us all in a wonderful way. The world
will never be the same again, O'Flaherty. Not after a war like this.
O'FLAHERTY. So they all say, sir. I see no great differ myself. It's all
the fright and the excitement; and when that quiets down they'll go
back to their natural divilment and be the same as ever. It's like the
vermin: it'll wash off after a while.
SIR PEARCE [rising and planting himself firmly behind the garden seat].
Well, the long and the short of it is, O'Flaherty, I must decline to be
a party to any attempt to deceive your mother. I thoroughly disapprove
of this feeling against the English, especially at a moment like the
present. Even if your mother's political sympathies are really what you
represent them to be, I should think that her gratitude to Gladstone
ought to cure her of such disloyal prejudices.
O'FLAHERTY [over his shoulder]. She says Gladstone was an Irishman, Sir.
What call would he have to meddle with Ireland as he did if he wasn't?
SIR PEARCE. What nonsense! Does she suppose Mr Asquith is an Irishman?
O'FLAHERTY. She won't give him any credit for Home Rule, Sir. She says
Redmond made him do it. She says you told her so.
SIR PEARCE [convicted out of his own mouth]. Well, I never meant her to
take it up in that ridiculous way. [He moves to the end of the garden
seat on O'Flaherty's left.] I'll give her a good talking to when she
comes. I'm not going to stand any of her nonsense.
O'FLAHERTY. It's not a bit of use, sir. She says all the English
generals is Irish. She says all the English poets and great men was
Irish. She says the English never knew how to read their own books until
we taught them. She says we're the lost tribes of the house of Israel
and the chosen people of God. She says that the goddess Venus, that was
born out of the foam of the sea, came up out of the water in Killiney
Bay off Bray Head. She says that Moses built the seven churches, and
that Lazarus was buried in Glasnevin.
SIR PEARCE. Bosh! How does she know he was? Did you ever ask her?
O'FLAHERTY. I did, sir, often.
SIR PEARCE. And what did she say?
O'FLAHERTY. She asked me how did I know he wasn't, and fetched me a
clout on the side of my head.
SIR PEARCE. But have you never mentioned any famous Englishman to her,
and asked her what she had to say about him?
O'FLAHERTY. The only one I could think of was Shakespeare, sir; and she
says he was born in Cork.
SIR PEARCE [exhausted]. Well, I give it up [he throws himself into the
nearest chair]. The woman is--Oh, well! No matter.
O'FLAHERTY [sympathetically]. Yes, sir: she's pigheaded and obstinate:
there's no doubt about it. She's like the English: they think there's
no one like themselves. It's the same with the Germans, though they're
educated and ought to know better. You'll never have a quiet world till
you knock the patriotism out of the human race.