The Playboy of the Western World | Page 6

have mercy on me now! [Shawn turns round, sees door clear, and makes a rush for it.]
MICHAEL -- [catching him by the coattail.] -- You'd be going, is it?
SHAWN -- [screaming.] Leave me go, Michael James, leave me go, you old Pagan, leave me go, or I'll get the curse of the priests on you, and of the scarlet-coated bishops of the courts of Rome. [With a sudden movement he pulls himself out of his coat, and disappears out of the door, leaving his coat in Michael's hands.]
MICHAEL -- [turning round, and holding up coat.] -- Well, there's the coat of a Christian man. Oh, there's sainted glory this day in the lonesome west; and by the will of God I've got you a decent man, Pegeen, you'll have no call to be spying after if you've a score of young girls, maybe, weeding in your fields.
PEGEEN [taking up the defence of her property.] -- What right have you to be making game of a poor fellow for minding the priest, when it's your own the fault is, not paying a penny pot-boy to stand along with me and give me courage in the doing of my work? [She snaps the coat away from him, and goes behind counter with it.]
MICHAEL -- [taken aback.] -- Where would I get a pot-boy? Would you have me send the bell-man screaming in the streets of Castlebar?
SHAWN -- [opening the door a chink and putting in his head, in a small voice.] -- Michael James!
MICHAEL -- [imitating him.] -- What ails you?
SHAWN. The queer dying fellow's beyond looking over the ditch. He's come up, I'm thinking, stealing your hens. (Looks over his shoulder.) God help me, he's following me now (he runs into room), and if he's heard what I said, he'll be having my life, and I going home lonesome in the darkness of the night. [For a perceptible moment they watch the door with curiosity. Some one coughs outside. Then Christy Mahon, a slight young man, comes in very tired and frightened and dirty.]
CHRISTY -- [in a small voice.] -- God save all here!
MEN. God save you kindly.
CHRISTY -- [going to the counter.] -- I'd trouble you for a glass of porter, woman of the house. [He puts down coin.]
PEGEEN -- [serving him.] -- You're one of the tinkers, young fellow, is beyond camped in the glen?
CHRISTY. I am not; but I'm destroyed walking.
MICHAEL -- [patronizingly.] Let you come up then to the fire. You're looking famished with the cold.
CHRISTY. God reward you. (He takes up his glass and goes a little way across to the left, then stops and looks about him.) Is it often the police do be coming into this place, master of the house?
MICHAEL. If you'd come in better hours, you'd have seen "Licensed for the sale of Beer and Spirits, to be consumed on the premises," written in white letters above the door, and what would the polis want spying on me, and not a decent house within four miles, the way every living Christian is a bona fide, saving one widow alone?
CHRISTY -- [with relief.] -- It's a safe house, so. [He goes over to the fire, sighing and moaning. Then he sits down, putting his glass beside him and begins gnawing a turnip, too miserable to feel the others staring at him with curiosity.]
MICHAEL -- [going after him.] -- Is it yourself fearing the polis? You're wanting, maybe?
CHRISTY. There's many wanting.
MICHAEL. Many surely, with the broken harvest and the ended wars. (He picks up some stockings, etc., that are near the fire, and carries them away furtively.) It should be larceny, I'm thinking?
CHRISTY -- [dolefully.] I had it in my mind it was a different word and a bigger.
PEGEEN. There's a queer lad. Were you never slapped in school, young fellow, that you don't know the name of your deed?
CHRISTY -- [bashfully.] I'm slow at learning, a middling scholar only.
MICHAEL. If you're a dunce itself, you'd have a right to know that larceny's robbing and stealing. Is it for the like of that you're wanting?
CHRISTY -- [with a flash of family pride.] -- And I the son of a strong farmer (with a sudden qualm), God rest his soul, could have bought up the whole of your old house a while since, from the butt of his tailpocket, and not have missed the weight of it gone.
MICHAEL -- [impressed.] If it's not stealing, it's maybe something big.
CHRISTY -- [flattered.] Aye; it's maybe something big.
JIMMY. He's a wicked-looking young fellow. Maybe he followed after a young woman on a lonesome night.
CHRISTY -- [shocked.] Oh, the saints forbid, mister; I was all times a decent lad.
PHILLY -- [turning on Jimmy.] -- You're a silly man, Jimmy Farrell. He said his father was a farmer a while