Part 5

_Sergeant:_ (_Taking him by the shoulder and shoving him before him._) Here, I'll show you the way. Be off with you. What are you stopping for?

_Man:_ (_Who has been keeping his eye on the notice, points to it._) I think I know what you're waiting for, sergeant.

_Sergeant:_ What's that to you?

_Man:_ And I know well the man you're waiting for--I know him well--I'll be going.

(_He shuffles on._)

_Sergeant:_ You know him? Come back here. What sort is he?

_Man:_ Come back is it, sergeant? Do you want to have me killed?

_Sergeant:_ Why do you say that?

_Man:_ Never mind. I'm going. I wouldn't be in your shoes if the reward was ten times as much. (_Goes on off stage to left_). Not if it was ten times as much.

_Sergeant:_ (_Rushing after him._) Come back here, come back. (_Drags him back._) What sort is he? Where did you see him?

_Man:_ I saw him in my own place, in the County Clare. I tell you you wouldn't like to be looking at him. You'd be afraid to be in the one place with him. There isn't a weapon he doesn't know the use of, and as to strength, his muscles are as hard as that board (_slaps barrel_).

_Sergeant:_ Is he as bad as that?

_Man:_ He is then.

_Sergeant:_ Do you tell me so?

_Man:_ There was a poor man in our place, a sergeant from Ballyvaughan.--It was with a lump of stone he did it.

_Sergeant:_ I never heard of that.

_Man:_ And you wouldn't, sergeant. It's not everything that happens gets into the papers. And there was a policeman in plain clothes, too.... It is in Limerick he was.... It was after the time of the attack on the police barrack at Kilmallock.... Moonlight ... just like this ... waterside.... Nothing was known for certain.

_Sergeant:_ Do you say so? It's a terrible county to belong to.

_Man:_ That's so, indeed! You might be standing there, looking out that way, thinking you saw him coming up this side of the quay (_points_), and he might be coming up this other side (_points_), and he'd be on you before you knew where you were.

_Sergeant:_ It's a whole troop of police they ought to put here to stop a man like that.

_Man:_ But if you'd like me to stop with you, I could be looking down this side. I could be sitting up here on this barrel.

_Sergeant:_ And you know him well, too?

_Man:_ I'd know him a mile off, sergeant.

_Sergeant:_ But you wouldn't want to share the reward?

_Man:_ Is it a poor man like me, that has to be going the roads and singing in fairs, to have the name on him that he took a reward? But you don't want me. I'll be safer in the town.

_Sergeant:_ Well, you can stop.

_Man:_ (_Getting up on barrel._) All right, sergeant. I wonder, now, you're not tired out, sergeant, walking up and down the way you are.

_Sergeant:_ If I'm tired I'm used to it.

_Man:_ You might have hard work before you to-night yet. Take it easy while you can. There's plenty of room up here on the barrel, and you see farther when you're higher up.

_Sergeant:_ Maybe so. (_Gets up beside him on barrel, facing right. They sit back to back, looking different ways._) You made me feel a bit queer with the way you talked.

_Man:_ Give me a match, sergeant (_he gives it and man lights pipe_); take a draw yourself? It'll quiet you. Wait now till I give you a light, but you needn't turn round. Don't take your eye off the quay for the life of you.

_Sergeant:_ Never fear, I won't. (_Lights pipe. They both smoke._) Indeed it's a hard thing to be in the force, out at night and no thanks for it, for all the danger we're in. And it's little we get but abuse from the people, and no choice but to obey our orders, and never asked when a man is sent into danger, if you are a married man with a family.

_Man:_ (_Sings_)--

As through the hills I walked to view the hills and shamrock plain, I stood awhile where nature smiles to view the rocks and streams, On a matron fair I fixed my eyes beneath a fertile vale, As she sang her song it was on the wrong of poor old Granuaile.

_Sergeant:_ Stop that; that's no song to be singing in these times.

_Man:_ Ah, sergeant, I was only singing to keep my heart up. It sinks when I think of him. To think of us two sitting here, and he creeping up the quay, maybe, to get to us.

_Sergeant:_ Are you keeping a good lookout?

_Man:_ I am; and for no reward too. Amn't I the foolish man? But when I saw a man in trouble, I never could help trying to get him out of it. What's that? Did something hit me?

(_Rubs his heart._)

_Sergeant:_ (_Patting him on the shoulder._) You will get your reward in heaven.

_Man:_ I know that, I know that, sergeant, but life is precious.

_Sergeant:_ Well, you can sing if it gives you more courage.

_Man:_ (_Sings_)--

Her head was bare, her hands and feet with iron bands were bound, Her pensive strain and plaintive wail mingles with the evening gale, And the song she sang with mournful air, I am old Granuaile. Her lips so sweet that monarchs kissed....

_Sergeant:_ That's not it.... "Her gown she wore was stained with gore." ... That's it--you missed that.

_Man:_ You're right, sergeant, so it is; I missed it. (_Repeats line._) But to think of a man like you knowing a song like that.

_Sergeant:_ There's many a thing a man might know and might not have any wish for.

_Man:_ Now, I daresay, sergeant, in your youth, you used to be sitting up on a wall, the way you are sitting up on this barrel now, and the other lads beside you, and you singing "Granuaile"?...

_Sergeant:_ I did then.

_Man:_ And the "Shan Bhean Bhocht"?...

_Sergeant:_ I did then.

_Man:_ And the "Green on the Cape?"

_Sergeant:_ That was one of them.

_Man:_ And maybe the man you are watching for to-night used to be sitting on the wall, when he was young, and singing those same songs.... It's a queer world....

_Sergeant:_ Whisht!... I think I see something coming.... It's only a dog.

_Man:_ And isn't it a queer world?... Maybe it's one of the boys you used to be singing with that time you will be arresting to-day or to-morrow, and sending into the dock....

_Sergeant:_ That's true indeed.

_Man:_ And maybe one night, after you had been singing, if the other boys had told you some plan they had, some plan to free the country, you might have joined with them ... and maybe it is you might be in trouble now.

_Sergeant:_ Well, who knows but I might? I had a great spirit in those days.

_Man:_ It's a queer world, sergeant, and it's little any mother knows when she sees her child creeping on the floor what might happen to it before it has gone through its life, or who will be who in the end.

_Sergeant:_ That's a queer thought now, and a true thought. Wait now till I think it out.... If it wasn't for the sense I have, and for my wife and family, and for me joining the force the time I did, it might be myself now would be after breaking gaol and hiding in the dark, and it might be him that's hiding in the dark and that got out of gaol would be sitting up where I am on this barrel.... And it might be myself would be creeping up trying to make my escape from himself, and it might be himself would be keeping the law, and myself would be breaking it, and myself would be trying maybe to put a bullet in his head, or to take up a lump of a stone the way you said he did ... no, that myself did.... Oh! (_Gasps. After a pause._) What's that? (_Grasps man's arm._)

_Man:_ (_Jumps off barrel and listens, looking out over water._) It's nothing, sergeant.

_Sergeant:_ I thought it might be a boat. I had a notion there might be friends of his coming about the quays with a boat.

_Man:_ Sergeant, I am thinking it was with the people you were, and not with the law you were, when you were a young man.

_Sergeant:_ Well, if I was foolish then, that time's gone.

_Man:_ Maybe, sergeant, it comes into your head sometimes, in spite of your belt and your tunic, that it might have been as well for you to have followed Granuaile.

_Sergeant:_ It's no business of yours what I think.

_Man:_ Maybe, sergeant, you'll be on the side of the country yet.

_Sergeant:_ (_Gets off barrel._) Don't talk to me like that. I have my duties and I know them. (_Looks round._) That was a boat; I hear the oars.

(_Goes to the steps and looks down._)

_Man:_ (_Sings_)--

O, then, tell me, Shawn O'Farrell, Where the gathering is to be. In the old spot by the river Right well known to you and me!

_Sergeant:_ Stop that! Stop that, I tell you!

_Man:_ (_Sings louder_)--

One word more, for signal token, Whistle up the marching tune, With your pike upon your shoulder, At the Rising of the Moon.

_Sergeant:_ If you don't stop that, I'll arrest you.

(_A whistle from below answers, repeating the air._)

_Sergeant:_ That's a signal. (_Stands between him and steps._) You must not pass this way.... Step farther back.... Who are you? You are no ballad-singer.

_Man:_ You needn't ask who I am; that placard will tell you. (_Points to placard._)

_Sergeant:_ You are the man I am looking for.

_Man:_ (_Takes off hat and wig. Sergeant seizes them._) I am. There's a hundred pounds on my head. There is a friend of mine below in a boat. He knows a safe place to bring me to.

_Sergeant:_ (_Looking still at hat and wig._) It's a pity! It's a pity. You deceived me. You deceived me well.

_Man:_ I am a friend of Granuaile. There is a hundred pounds on my head.

_Sergeant:_ It's a pity, it's a pity!

_Man:_ Will you let me pass, or must I make you let me?

_Sergeant:_ I am in the force. I will not let you pass.

_Man:_ I thought to do it with my tongue. (Puts hand in breast.) What is that?

(_Voice of Policeman X outside:_) Here, this is where we left him.

_Sergeant:_ It's my comrades coming.

_Man:_ You won't betray me ... the friend of Granuaile. (_Slips behind barrel._)

(_Voice of Policeman B:_) That was the last of the placards.

_Policeman X:_ (_As they come in._) If he makes his escape it won't be unknown he'll make it.

(_Sergeant puts hat and wig behind his back._)

_Policeman B:_ Did any one come this way?

_Sergeant:_ (_After a pause._) No one.

_Policeman B:_ No one at all?

_Sergeant:_ No one at all.

_Policeman B:_ We had no orders to go back to the station; we can stop along with you.

_Sergeant:_ I don't want you. There is nothing for you to do here.

_Policeman B:_ You bade us to come back here and keep watch with you.

_Sergeant:_ I'd sooner be alone. Would any man come this way and you making all that talk? It is better the place to be quiet.

_Policeman B:_ Well, we'll leave you the lantern anyhow. (_Hands it to him._)

_Sergeant:_ I don't want it. Bring it with you.

_Policeman B:_ You might want it. There are clouds coming up and you have the darkness of the night before you yet. I'll leave it over here on the barrel. (_Goes to barrel._)

_Sergeant:_ Bring it with you I tell you. No more talk.

_Policeman B:_ Well, I thought it might be a comfort to you. I often think when I have it in my hand and can be flashing it about into every dark corner (_doing so_) that it's the same as being beside the fire at home, and the bits of bogwood blazing up now and again.

(_Flashes it about, now on the barrel, now on Sergeant._)

_Sergeant:_ (_Furious._) Be off the two of you, yourselves and your lantern!

(_They go out. Man comes from behind barrel. He and Sergeant stand looking at one another._)

_Sergeant:_ What are you waiting for?

_Man:_ For my hat, of course, and my wig. You wouldn't wish me to get my death of cold?

(_Sergeant gives them._)

_Man:_ (_Going towards steps._) Well, good-night, comrade, and thank you. You did me a good turn to-night, and I'm obliged to you. Maybe I'll be able to do as much for you when the small rise up and the big fall down ... when we all change places at the Rising (_waves his hand and disappears_) of the Moon.

_Sergeant:_ (_Turning his back to audience and reading placard._) A hundred pounds reward! A hundred pounds! (_Turns towards audience._) I wonder, now, am I as great a fool as I think I am?

_Curtain._

THE JACKDAW

PERSONS

JOSEPH NESTOR _An Army Pensioner._ MICHAEL COONEY _A Farmer._ MRS. BRODERICK _A Small Shopkeeper._ TOMMY NALLY _A Pauper._ SIBBY FAHY _An Orange Seller._ TIMOTHY WARD _A Process Server._

THE JACKDAW

_Scene: Interior of a small general shop at Cloon. Mrs. Broderick sitting down. Tommy Nally sitting eating an orange Sibby has given him. Sibby, with basket on her arm, is looking out of door._

_Sibby:_ The people are gathering to the door of the Court. The Magistrates will be coming there before long. Here is Timothy Ward coming up the street.

_Timothy Ward:_ (_Coming to door._) Did you get that summons I left here for you ere yesterday, Mrs. Broderick?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I believe it's there in under the canister. (_Takes it out._) It had my mind tossed looking at it there before me. I know well what is in it if I made no fist of reading it itself. It's no wonder with all I had to go through if the reading and writing got scattered on me.

_Ward:_ You know it is on this day you have to appear in the Court?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It isn't easy to forget that, though indeed it is hard for me to be keeping anything in my head these times, but maybe remembering to-morrow the thing I was saying to-day.

_Ward:_ Up to one o'clock the magistrates will be able to attend to you, ma'am, before they will go out eating their meal.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Haven't I the mean, begrudging creditors now that would put me into the Court? Sure it's a terrible thing to go in it and to be bound to speak nothing but the truth. When people would meet with you after, they would remember your face in the Court. What way would they be certain was it in or outside of the dock?

_Ward:_ It is not in the dock you will be put this time. And there will be no bodily harm done to you, but to seize your furniture and your goods. It's best for me to be going there myself and not to be wasting my time. (_Goes out._)

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Many a one taking my goods on credit and I seeing their face no more. But nothing would satisfy the people of this district. Sure the great God Himself when He came down couldn't please everybody.

_Sibby:_ I am thinking you were talking of some friend, ma'am, might be apt to be coming to your aid.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Well able he is to do it if the Lord would but put it in his mind. Isn't it a strange thing the goods of this world to shut up the heart of a brother from his own, the same as Esau and Jacob, and he having a good farm of land in the County Limerick. It is what I heard that in that place the grass does be as thick as grease.

_Sibby:_ I suppose, ma'am, you wrote giving him an account of your case?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, Mr. Nestor, the dear man, has his fingers wore away writing for me, and I telling him all he had or had not to say. At Christmas I wrote, and at Little Christmas, and at St. Brigit's Day, and on the Feast of St. Patrick, and after that again such time as I had news of the summons being about to be served. And you may ask Mrs. Delane at the Post Office am I telling any lie saying I got no word or answer at all.... It's long since I saw him, but it is the way he used to be, his eyes on kippeens and some way suspicious in his heart; a dark weighty tempered man.

_Sibby:_ A person to be crabbed and he young, it is not likely he will grow kind at the latter end.

_Tommy Nally:_ That is no less than true now. There are crabbed people and suspicious people to be met with in every place. It is much that I got a pass from the Workhouse this day, the Master making sure when I asked it that I had in my pocket the means of getting drink.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It would maybe be best to go join you in the Workhouse, Tommy Nally, when I am out of this, than to go walking the world from end to end.

_Tommy Nally:_ Ah, don't be saying that, ma'am; sure you couldn't be happy within those walls if you had the whole world. Clean outside, but very hard within. No rank but all mixed together, the good, the middling and the bad, the well reared and the rough.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure I'm not asking to go in it. You could never be as stiff in any place as in any sort of little cabin of your own.

_Tommy Nally:_ The tea boiled in a boiler, you should close your eyes drinking it, and ne'er a bit of sugar hardly in it at all. And our curses on them that boil the eggs too hard! What use is an egg that is hard to any person on earth? And as to the dinner, what way would a tasty person eat it not having a knife or a fork?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That I may live to be in no one's way, but to have some little corner of my own!

_Tommy Nally:_ And to come to your end in it, ma'am! If you were the Lady Mayor herself you'd be brought out to the deadhouse if it was ten o'clock at night, and not a wash unless it was just a Scotch lick, and nobody to wake you at all!

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I will not go in it! I would sooner make any shift and die by the side of the wall. Sure heaven is the best place, heaven and this world we're in now!

_Sibby:_ Don't be giving up now, ma'am. Here is Mr. Nestor coming, and if any one will give you an advice he is the one will do it. Why wouldn't he, he being, as he is, an educated man, and such a great one to be reading books.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So he is too, and keeps it in his mind after. It's a wonder to me a man that does be reading to keep any memory at all.

_Nally:_ It's easy for him to carry things light, and his pension paid regular at springtime and harvest.

(_Nestor comes in reading "Tit-Bits."_)

_Nestor:_ There was a servant girl in Austria cut off her finger slicing cabbage....

_All:_ The poor thing!

_Nestor:_ And her master stuck it on again with glue. That now was a very foolish thing to do. What use would a finger be stuck with glue that might melt off at any time, and she to be stirring the pot?

_Sibby:_ That is true indeed.

_Nestor:_ Now, if I myself had been there, it is what I would have advised....

_Sibby:_ That's what I was saying, Mr. Nestor. It is you are the grand adviser. What now will you say to poor Mrs. Broderick that has a summons out against her this day for up to ten pounds?

_Nestor:_ It is what I am often saying, it is a very foolish thing to be getting into debt.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure what way could I help it? It's a very done-up town to be striving to make a living in.

_Nestor:_ It would be a right thing to be showing a good example.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ They would want that indeed. There are more die with debts on them in this place than die free from debt.

_Nestor:_ Many a poor soul has had to suffer from the weight of the debts on him, finding no rest or peace after death.

_Sibby:_ The Magistrates are gone into the Courthouse, Mrs. Broderick. Why now wouldn't you go up to the bank and ask would the manager advance you a loan?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is likely he would not do it. But maybe it's as good for me go as to be sitting here waiting for the end.

(_Puts on hat and shawl._)

_Nestor:_ I now will take charge of the shop for you, Mrs. Broderick.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It's little call there'll be to it. The time a person is sunk that's the time the custom will go from her. (_She goes out._)

_Nally:_ I'll be taking a ramble into the Court to see what are the lads doing. (_Goes out._)

_Sibby:_ (_Following them._) I might chance some customers there myself.

(_Goes out calling--oranges, good oranges._)

_Nestor:_ (_Taking a paper from his pocket, sitting down, and beginning to read._) "Romantic elopement in high life. A young lady at Aberdeen, Missouri, U.S.A., having been left by her father an immense fortune...."

(_Stops to wipe his spectacles, puts them on again and looks for place, which he has lost. Cooney puts his head in at door and draws it out again._)

_Nestor:_ Come in, come in!

_Cooney:_ (_Coming in cautiously and looking round._) Whose house now might this be?

_Nestor:_ To the Widow Broderick it belongs. She is out in the town presently.

_Cooney:_ I saw her name up over the door.

_Nestor:_ On business of her own she is gone. It is I am minding the place for her.

_Cooney:_ So I see. I suppose now you have good cause to be minding it?

_Nestor:_ It would be a pity any of her goods to go to loss.

_Cooney:_ I suppose so. Is it to auction them you will or to sell them in bulk?

_Nestor:_ Not at all. I can sell you any article you will require.

_Cooney:_ It would be no profit to herself now, I suppose, if you did?

_Nestor:_ What do you mean saying that? Do you think I would defraud her from her due in anything I would sell for her at all?

_Cooney:_ You are not the bailiff so?

_Nestor:_ Not at all. I wonder any person to take me for a bailiff!

_Cooney:_ You are maybe one of the creditors?

_Nestor:_ I am not. I am not a man to have a debt upon me to any person on earth.

_Cooney:_ I wonder what it is you are at so, if you have no claim on the goods. Is it any harm now to ask what's this your name is?