The Playboy of the Western World | Page 9

the door.) That lad would wear
the spirits from the saints of peace. (Bustles about, then takes off her
apron and pins it up in the window as a blind. Christy watching her
timidly. Then she comes to him and speaks with bland good-humour.)
Let you stretch out now by the fire, young fellow. You should be
destroyed travelling.
CHRISTY -- [shyly again, drawing off his boots.) I'm tired, surely,
walking wild eleven days, and waking fearful in the night. [He holds up
one of his feet, feeling his blisters, and looking at them with
compassion.]
PEGEEN -- [standing beside him, watching him with delight.] -- You
should have had great people in your family, I'm thinking, with the
little, small feet you have, and you with a kind of a quality name, the
like of what you'd find on the great powers and potentates of France
and Spain.
CHRISTY -- [with pride.] -- We were great surely, with wide and
windy acres of rich Munster land.
PEGEEN. Wasn't I telling you, and you a fine, handsome young fellow
with a noble brow?
CHRISTY -- [with a flash of delighted surprise.] Is it me?
PEGEEN. Aye. Did you never hear that from the young girls where
you come from in the west or south?
CHRISTY -- [with venom.] -- I did not then. Oh, they're bloody liars in
the naked parish where I grew a man.
PEGEEN. If they are itself, you've heard it these days, I'm thinking, and
you walking the world telling out your story to young girls or old.
CHRISTY. I've told my story no place till this night, Pegeen Mike, and
it's foolish I was here, maybe, to be talking free, but you're decent
people, I'm thinking, and yourself a kindly woman, the way I wasn't

fearing you at all.
PEGEEN -- [filling a sack with straw.] -- You've said the like of that,
maybe, in every cot and cabin where you've met a young girl on your
way.
CHRISTY -- [going over to her, gradually raising his voice.] -- I've said
it nowhere till this night, I'm telling you, for I've seen none the like of
you the eleven long days I am walking the world, looking over a low
ditch or a high ditch on my north or my south, into stony scattered
fields, or scribes of bog, where you'd see young, limber girls, and fine
prancing women making laughter with the men.
PEGEEN. If you weren't destroyed travelling, you'd have as much talk
and streeleen, I'm thinking, as Owen Roe O'Sullivan or the poets of the
Dingle Bay, and I've heard all times it's the poets are your like, fine
fiery fellows with great rages when their temper's roused.
CHRISTY -- [drawing a little nearer to her.] -- You've a power of rings,
God bless you, and would there be any offence if I was asking are you
single now?
PEGEEN. What would I want wedding so young?
CHRISTY -- [with relief.] -- We're alike, so.
PEGEEN -- [she puts sack on settle and beats it up.] -- I never killed
my father. I'd be afeard to do that, except I was the like of yourself with
blind rages tearing me within, for I'm thinking you should have had
great tussling when the end was come.
CHRISTY -- [expanding with delight at the first confidential talk he
has ever had with a woman.] -- We had not then. It was a hard woman
was come over the hill, and if he was always a crusty kind when he'd a
hard woman setting him on, not the divil himself or his four fathers
could put up with him at all.
PEGEEN -- [with curiosity.] -- And isn't it a great wonder that one
wasn't fearing you?
CHRISTY -- [very confidentially.] -- Up to the day I killed my father,
there wasn't a person in Ireland knew the kind I was, and I there
drinking, waking, eating, sleeping, a quiet, simple poor fellow with no
man giving me heed.
PEGEEN -- [getting a quilt out of the cupboard and putting it on the
sack.] -- It was the girls were giving you heed maybe, and I'm thinking
it's most conceit you'd have to be gaming with their like.

CHRISTY -- [shaking his head, with simplicity.] Not the girls itself,
and I won't tell you a lie. There wasn't anyone heeding me in that place
saving only the dumb beasts of the field. [He sits down at fire.]
PEGEEN -- [with disappointment.] -- And I thinking you should have
been living the like of a king of Norway or the Eastern world. [She
comes and sits beside him after placing bread and mug of milk on the
table.]
CHRISTY -- [laughing piteously.] -- The like of a king,