The Playboy of the Western World | Page 9

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, is it? And I after toiling, moiling, digging, dodging from the dawn till dusk with never a sight of joy or sport saving only when I'd be abroad in the dark night poaching rabbits on hills, for I was a devil to poach, God forgive me, (very naively) and I near got six months for going with a dung fork and stabbing a fish.
PEGEEN. And it's that you'd call sport, is it, to be abroad in the darkness with yourself alone?
CHRISTY. I did, God help me, and there I'd be as happy as the sunshine of St. Martin's Day, watching the light passing the north or the patches of fog, till I'd hear a rabbit starting to screech and I'd go running in the furze. Then when I'd my full share I'd come walking down where you'd see the ducks and geese stretched sleeping on the highway of the road, and before I'd pass the dunghill, I'd hear himself snoring out, a loud lonesome snore he'd be making all times, the while he was sleeping, and he a man 'd be raging all times, the while he was waking, like a gaudy officer you'd hear cursing and damning and swearing oaths.
PEGEEN. Providence and Mercy, spare us all!
CHRISTY. It's that you'd say surely if you seen him and he after drinking for weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before it maybe, and