第13章 ACT III.(1)
SCENE, [as before. Later in the day. Jimmy comes in, slightly drunk.]
JIMMY -- [calls.] Pegeen! (Crosses to inner door.) Pegeen Mike! (Comes back again into the room.) Pegeen! (Philly comes in in the same state.) (To Philly.) Did you see herself?
PHILLY. I did not; but I sent Shawn Keogh with the ass cart for to bear him home. (Trying cupboards which are locked.) Well, isn't he a nasty man to get into such staggers at a morning wake? and isn't herself the divil's daughter for locking, and she so fussy after that young gaffer, you might take your death with drought and none to heed you?
JIMMY. It's little wonder she'd be fussy, and he after bringing bankrupt ruin on the roulette man, and the trick-o'-the-loop man, and breaking the nose of the cockshot-man, and winning all in the sports below, racing, lepping, dancing, and the Lord knows what! He's right luck, I'm telling you.
PHILLY. If he has, he'll be rightly hobbled yet, and he not able to say ten words without making a brag of the way he killed his father, and the great blow he hit with the loy.
JIMMY. A man can't hang by his own informing, and his father should be rotten by now. [Old Mahon passes window slowly.]
PHILLY. Supposing a man's digging spuds in that field with a long spade, and supposing he flings up the two halves of that skull, what'll be said then in the papers and the courts of law?
JIMMY. They'd say it was an old Dane, maybe, was drowned in the flood. (Old Mahon comes in and sits down near door listening.) Did you never hear tell of the skulls they have in the city of Dublin, ranged out like blue jugs in a cabin of Connaught?
PHILLY. And you believe that?
JIMMY -- [pugnaciously.] Didn't a lad see them and he after coming from harvesting in the Liverpool boat? "They have them there," says he, "making a show of the great people there was one time walking the world. White skulls and black skulls and yellow skulls, and some with full teeth, and some haven't only but one."
PHILLY. It was no lie, maybe, for when I was a young lad there was a graveyard beyond the house with the remnants of a man who had thighs as long as your arm. He was a horrid man, I'm telling you, and there was many a fine Sunday I'd put him together for fun, and he with shiny bones, you wouldn't meet the like of these days in the cities of the world.
MAHON -- [getting up.] -- You wouldn't is it? Lay your eyes on that skull, and tell me where and when there was another the like of it, is splintered only from the blow of a loy.
PHILLY. Glory be to God! And who hit you at all?
MAHON -- [triumphantly.] It was my own son hit me. Would you believe that?
JIMMY. Well, there's wonders hidden in the heart of man!
PHILLY -- [suspiciously.] And what way was it done?
MAHON -- [wandering about the room.] -- I'm after walking hundreds and long scores of miles, winning clean beds and the fill of my belly four times in the day, and I doing nothing but telling stories of that naked truth. (He comes to them a little aggressively.) Give me a supeen and I'll tell you now. [Widow Quin comes in and stands aghast behind him. He is facing Jimmy and Philly, who are on the left.]
JIMMY. Ask herself beyond. She's the stuff hidden in her shawl.
WIDOW QUIN -- [coming to Mahon quickly.] -- you here, is it? You didn't go far at all?
MAHON. I seen the coasting steamer passing, and I got a drought upon me and a cramping leg, so I said, "The divil go along with him," and turned again.
(Looking under her shawl.) And let you give me a supeen, for I'm destroyed travelling since Tuesday was a week.
WIDOW QUIN -- [getting a glass, in a cajoling tone.] -- Sit down then by the fire and take your ease for a space. You've a right to be destroyed indeed, with your walking, and fighting, and facing the sun (giving him poteen from a stone jar she has brought in.) There now is a drink for you, and may it be to your happiness and length of life.
MAHON -- [taking glass greedily and sitting down by fire.] -- God increase you!
WIDOW QUIN -- [taking men to the right stealthily.] -- Do you know what? That man's raving from his wound to-day, for I met him a while since telling a rambling tale of a tinker had him destroyed. Then he heard of Christy's deed, and he up and says it was his son had cracked his skull. O isn't madness a fright, for he'll go killing someone yet, and he thinking it's the man has struck him so?
JIMMY -- [entirely convinced.] It's a fright, surely. I knew a party was kicked in the head by a red mare, and he went killing horses a great while, till he eat the insides of a clock and died after.
PHILLY -- [with suspicion.] -- Did he see Christy?
WIDOW QUIN. He didn't. (With a warning gesture.) Let you not be putting him in mind of him, or you'll be likely summoned if there's murder done. (Looking round at Mahon.) Whisht! He's listening. Wait now till you hear me taking him easy and unravelling all. (She goes to Mahon.) And what way are you feeling, mister? Are you in contentment now?
MAHON -- [slightly emotional from his drink.] -- I'm poorly only, for it's a hard story the way I'm left to-day, when it was I did tend him from his hour of birth, and he a dunce never reached his second book, the way he'd come from school, many's the day, with his legs lamed under him, and he blackened with his beatings like a tinker's ass. It's a hard story, I'm saying, the way some do have their next and nighest raising up a hand of murder on them, and some is lonesome getting their death with lamentation in the dead of night.
WIDOW QUIN -- [not knowing what to say.] -- To hear you talking so quiet, who'd know you were the same fellow we seen pass to-day?
MAHON. I'm the same surely. The wrack and ruin of three score years; and it's a terror to live that length, I tell you, and to have your sons going to the dogs against you, and you wore out scolding them, and skelping them, and God knows what.
PHILLY -- [to Jimmy.] -- He's not raving. (To Widow Quin.) Will you ask him what kind was his son?
WIDOW QUIN -- [to Mahon, with a peculiar look.] -- Was your son that hit you a lad of one year and a score maybe, a great hand at racing and lepping and licking the world?