The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays Part 4

FATHER JOHN. I have dreamed your dream; it was long ago. I had your vision.

MARTIN. And what happened?

FATHER JOHN [_harshly_]. It was stopped. That was an end. I was sent to the lonely parish where I am, where there was no one I could lead astray. They have left me there. We must have patience; the world was destroyed by water, it has yet to be consumed by fire.

MARTIN. Why should we be patient? To live seventy years, and others to come after us and live seventy years it may be, and so from age to age, and all the while the old splendour dying more and more.

[A noise of shouting. ANDREW, who has been standing at the door for a moment, comes in.]

ANDREW. Martin says truth, and he says it well. Planing the side of a cart or a shaft, is that life? It is not. Sitting at a desk writing letters to the man that wants a coach or to the man that won't pay for the one he has got, is that life, I ask you? Thomas arguing at you and putting you down, "Andrew, dear Andrew, did you put the tyre on that wheel yet?" Is that life? No, it is not. I ask you all what do you remember when you are dead? It's the sweet cup in the corner of the widow's drinking house that you remember. Ha, ha, listen to that shouting! That is what the lads in the village will remember to the last day they live!

MARTIN. Why are they shouting? What have you told them?

ANDREW. Never you mind. You left that to me. You bade me to lift their hearts, and I did lift them. There is not one among them but will have his head like a blazing tar barrel before morning. What did your friend, the beggar, say? The juice of the grey barley, he said.

FATHER JOHN. You accursed villain! You have made them drunk!

ANDREW. Not at all, but lifting them to the stars. That is what Martin bade me to do, and there is no one can say I did not do it.

[_A shout at door and beggars push in a barrel. They all cry, "Hi! for the n.o.ble master!" and point at_ ANDREW.]

JOHNNY B. It's not him, it's that one!

[_Points at_ MARTIN.]

FATHER JOHN. Are you bringing this devil's work in at the very door? Go out of this, I say! Get out! Take these others with you!

MARTIN. No, no, I asked them in; they must not be turned out. They are my guests.

FATHER JOHN. Drive them out of your uncle's house!

MARTIN. Come, Father, it is better for you to go. Go back to your own place. I have taken the command. It is better, perhaps, for you that you did not take it. [MARTIN _and_ FATHER JOHN _go out._]

BIDDY. It is well for that old lad he didn't come between ourselves and our luck. It would be right to have flayed him and to have made bags of his skin.

NANNY. What a hurry you are in to get your enough! Look at the grease on your frock yet with the dint of the dabs you put in your pocket!

Doing cures and foretellings, is it? You starved pot picker, you!

BIDDY. That you may be put up to-morrow to take the place of that decent son of yours that had the yard of the gaol wore with walking it till this morning!

NANNY. If he had, he had a mother to come to, and he would know her when he did see her, and that is what no son of your own could do, and he to meet you at the foot of the gallows!

JOHNNY B. If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first beginning of my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you?

What store did you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I get from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joined on to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round about me?

NANNY. Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was more than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or any honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the world and its shame!

JOHNNY B. What would he give you, and you going with him without leave?

Crooked and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the ditch.

NANNY. Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It's better off I was before ever I met with you, to my cost! What was on me at all that I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on you the time you were not hardened as you are!

JOHNNY B. Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All you taught me was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself the scourges will be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks.

PAUDEEN. Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting before Troy!

NANNY. Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the easing of the hunger that is on us and of the pa.s.sion of sleep. Lend me a graineen of tobacco till I'll kindle my pipe--a blast of it will take the weight of the road off my heart.

[ANDREW _gives her some_. NANNY. _grabs at it._]

BIDDY. No, but it's to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a pipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one say, did ever she do that much?

NANNY. That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you to be grabbing my share! [_They snap at tobacco._]

ANDREW. Pup, pup, pup. Don't be snapping and quarrelling now, and you so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne'er a good song to sing, a song that will rise all our hearts?

PAUDEEN. Johnny Bacach is a good singer; it is what he used to be doing in the fairs, if the oak.u.m of the gaol did not give him a hoa.r.s.eness in the throat.

ANDREW. Give it out so, a good song; a song will put courage and spirit into any man at all.

JOHNNY B. [_singing_].

Come, all ye airy bachelors, A warning take by me: A sergeant caught me fowling, And fired his gun so free.

His comrades came to his relief, And I was soon trepanned; And, bound up like a woodc.o.c.k, Had fallen into their hands.

The judge said transportation; The s.h.i.+p was on the strand; They have yoked me to the traces For to plough Van Dieman's land!

ANDREW. That's no good of a song, but a melancholy sort of a song. I'd as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute. [_Goes out for it._]

JOHNNY B. It is what I am thinking there must be a great dearth and a great scarcity of good comrades in this place, a man like that youngster having means in his hand to be bringing ourselves and our rags into the house.

PAUDEEN. You think yourself very wise, Johnny Bacach. Can you tell me now who that man is?

JOHNNY B. Some decent lad, I suppose, with a good way of living and a mind to send up his name upon the roads.

PAUDEEN. You that have been gaoled this eight months know little of this countryside.... It isn't a limping stroller like yourself the boys would let come among them. But I know. I went to the drill a few nights, and I skinning kids for the mountainy men. In a quarry beyond the drill is ... they have their plans made.... It's the square house of the Browns is to be made an attack on and plundered. Do you know now who is the leader they are waiting for?

JOHNNY B. How would I know that?

PAUDEEN [_singing_].

Oh, Johnny Gibbons, my five hundred healths to you.

It is long you are away from us over the sea!

JOHNNY B. [_standing up excitedly_]. Sure that man could not be John Gibbons that is outlawed.

PAUDEEN. I asked news of him from the old lad [_points after_ ANDREW], and I bringing in the drink along with him. "Don't be asking questions," says he; "take the treat he gives you," says he. "If a lad that had a high heart has a mind to rouse the neighbours," says he, "and to stretch out his hand to all that pa.s.s the road, it is in France he learned it," says he, "the place he is but lately come from, and where the wine does be standing open in tubs. Take your treat when you get it," says he, "and make no delay, or all might be discovered and put an end to."