SIR PEARCE. Hold your tongue; and go in and attend to your business at
the tea table.
TERESA. But amment I telling your honor that I never said a word to him?
He gave me a beautiful gold chain. Here it is to show your honor that
it's no lie I'm telling you.
SIR PEARCE. What's this, O'Flaherty? You've been looting some
unfortunate officer.
O'FLAHERTY. No, sir: I stole it from him of his own accord.
MRS O'FLAHERTY. Wouldn't your honor tell him that his mother has the
first call on it? What would a slip of a girl like that be doing with a
gold chain round her neck?
TERESA [venomously]. Anyhow, I have a neck to put it round and not a
hank of wrinkles.
At this unfortunate remark, Mrs O'Flaherty bounds from her seat: and
an appalling tempest of wordy wrath breaks out. The remonstrances and
commands of the General, and the protests and menaces of O'Flaherty,
only increase the hubbub. They are soon all speaking at once at the top
of their voices.
MRS O'FLAHERTY [solo]. You impudent young heifer, how dar you say such a
thing to me? [Teresa retorts furiously: the men interfere: and the solo
becomes a quartet, fortissimo.] I've a good mind to clout your ears for
you to teach you manners. Be ashamed of yourself, do; and learn to know
who you're speaking to. That I maytn't sin! but I don't know what the
good God was thinking about when he made the like of you. Let me not see
you casting sheep's eyes at my son again. There never was an O'Flaherty
yet that would demean himself by keeping company with a dirty Driscoll;
and if I see you next or nigh my house I'll put you in the ditch with a
flea in your ear: mind that now.
TERESA. Is it me you offer such a name to, you fou-mouthed,
dirty-minded, lying, sloothering old sow, you? I wouldn't soil my tongue
by calling you in your right name and telling Sir Pearce what's the
common talk of the town about you. You and your O'Flahertys! setting
yourself up agen the Driscolls that would never lower themselves to be
seen in conversation with you at the fair. You can keep your ugly stingy
lump of a son; for what is he but a common soldier? and God help
the girl that gets him, say I! So the back of my hand to you, Mrs
O'Flaherty; and that the cat may tear your ugly old face!
SIR PEARCE. Silence. Tessie, did you hear me ordering you to go into the
house? Mrs O'Flaherty! [Louder.] Mrs O'Flaherty!! Will you just listen
to me one moment? Please. [Furiously.] Do you hear me speaking to you,
woman? Are you human beings or are you wild beasts? Stop that noise
immediately: do you hear? [Yelling.] Are you going to do what I order
you, or are you not? Scandalous! Disgraceful! This comes of being too
familiar with you. O'Flaherty, shove them into the house. Out with the
whole damned pack of you.
O'FLAHERTY [to the women]. Here now: none of that, none of that. Go
easy, I tell you. Hold your whisht, mother, will you, or you'll be sorry
for it after. [To Teresa.] Is that the way for a decent young girl to
speak? [Despairingly.] Oh, for the Lord's sake, shut up, will yous? Have
you no respect for yourselves or your betters? [Peremptorily.] Let me
have no more of it, I tell you. Och! the divil's in the whole crew of
you. In with you into the house this very minute and tear one another's
eyes out in the kitchen if you like. In with you.
The two men seize the two women, and push them, still violently abusing
one another, into the house. Sir Pearce slams the door upon them
savagely. Immediately a heavenly silence falls on the summer afternoon.
The two sit down out of breath: and for a long time nothing is said. Sir
Pearce sits on an iron chair. O'Flaherty sits on the garden seat. The
thrush begins to sing melodiously. O'Flaherty cocks his ears, and looks
up at it. A smile spreads over his troubled features. Sir Pearce, with a
long sigh, takes out his pipe and begins to fill it.
O'FLAHERTY [idyllically]. What a discontented sort of an animal a man
is, sir! Only a month ago, I was in the quiet of the country out at the
front, with not a sound except the birds and the bellow of a cow in the
distance as it might be, and the shrapnel making little clouds in the
heavens, and the shells whistling, and maybe a yell or two when one of
us was hit; and would you believe it, sir, I complained of the noise and
wanted to have a peaceful hour at home. Well: them two has taught me a
lesson. This morning, sir, when I was telling the boys here how I was
longing to be back taking my part for king and country with the others,
I was lying, as you well knew, sir. Now I can go and say it with a clear
conscience. Some likes war's alarums; and some likes home life. I've
tried both, sir; and I'm for war's alarums now. I always was a quiet lad
by natural disposition.
SIR PEARCE. Strictly between ourselves, O'Flaherty, and as one soldier
to another [O'Flaherty salutes, but without stiffening], do you think we
should have got an army without conscription if domestic life had been
as happy as people say it is?
O'FLAHERTY. Well, between you and me and the wall, Sir Pearce, I think
the less we say about that until the war's over, the better.
He winks at the General. The General strikes a match. The thrush sings.
A jay laughs. The conversation drops.