The Playboy of the Western World by J. M. Synge (best novels for students .TXT) 📕

was a bad blow surely, and you should have vexed him fearful to make him strike that gash in his da.

MAHON. Is it me?

WIDOW QUIN — [amusing herself.] — Aye. And isn’t it a great shame when the old and hardened do torment the young?

MAHON — [raging.] Torment him is it? And I after holding out with the patience of a martyred saint till there’s nothing but destruction on, and I’m driven out in my old age with none to aid me.

WIDOW QUIN — [greatly amused.] — It’s a sacred wonder the way that wickedness will spoil a man.

MAHON. My wickedness, is it? Amn’t I after saying it is himself has me destroyed, and he a liar on walls, a talker of folly, a man you’d see stretched the half of the day in the brown ferns with his belly to the sun.

WIDOW QUIN. Not working at all?

MAHON. The divil a work, or if he did itself, you’d see him raising up a haystack like the stalk of a rush, or driving our last cow till he broke her leg at the hip, and when he wasn’t at that he’d be fooling over little birds he had — finches and felts — or making mugs at his own self in the bit of glass we had hung on the wall.

WIDOW QUIN — [looking at Christy.] — What way was he so foolish? It was running wild after the girls may be?

MAHON — [with a shout of derision.] — Running wild, is it? If he seen a red petticoat coming swinging over the hill, he’d be off to hide in the sticks, and you’d see him shooting out his sheep’s eyes between the little twigs and the leaves, and his two ears rising like a hare looking out through a gap. Girls, indeed!

WIDOW QUIN. It was drink maybe?

MAHON. And he a poor fellow would get drunk on the smell of a pint. He’d a queer rotten stomach, I’m telling you, and when I gave him three pulls from my pipe a while since, he was taken with contortions till I had to send him in the ass cart to the females’ nurse.

WIDOW QUIN — [clasping her hands.] — Well, I never till this day heard tell of a man the like of that!

MAHON. I’d take a mighty oath you didn’t surely, and wasn’t he the laughing joke of every female woman where four baronies meet, the way the girls would stop their weeding if they seen him coming the road to let a roar at him, and call him the looney of Mahon’s.

WIDOW QUIN. I’d give the world and all to see the like of him. What kind was he?

MAHON. A small low fellow.

WIDOW QUIN. And dark?

MAHON. Dark and dirty.

WIDOW QUIN — [considering.] I’m thinking I seen him.

MAHON — [eagerly.] An ugly young blackguard.

WIDOW QUIN. A hideous, fearful villain, and the spit of you.

MAHON. What way is he fled?

WIDOW QUIN. Gone over the hills to catch a coasting steamer to the north or south.

MAHON. Could I pull up on him now?

WIDOW QUIN. If you’ll cross the sands below where the tide is out, you’ll be in it as soon as himself, for he had to go round ten miles by the top of the bay. (She points to the door). Strike down by the head beyond and then follow on the roadway to the north and east. [Mahon goes abruptly.]

WIDOW QUIN — [shouting after him.] — Let you give him a good vengeance when you come up with him, but don’t put yourself in the power of the law, for it’d be a poor thing to see a judge in his black cap reading out his sentence on a civil warrior the like of you. [She swings the door to and looks at Christy, who is cowering in terror, for a moment, then she bursts into a laugh.]

WIDOW QUIN. Well, you’re the walking Playboy of the Western World, and that’s the poor man you had divided to his breeches belt.

CHRISTY — [looking out: then, to her.] — What’ll Pegeen say when she hears that story? What’ll she be saying to me now?

WIDOW QUIN. She’ll knock the head of you, I’m thinking, and drive you from the door. God help her to be taking you for a wonder, and you a little schemer making up the story you destroyed your da.

CHRISTY — [turning to the door, nearly speechless with rage, half to himself.] — To be letting on he was dead, and coming back to his life, and following after me like an old weazel tracing a rat, and coming in here laying desolation between my own self and the fine women of Ireland, and he a kind of carcase that you’d fling upon the sea…

WIDOW QUIN — [more soberly.] — There’s talking for a man’s one only son.

CHRISTY — [breaking out.] — His one son, is it? May I meet him with one tooth and it aching, and one eye to be seeing seven and seventy divils in the twists of the road, and one old timber leg on him to limp into the scalding grave. (Looking out.) There he is now crossing the strands, and that the Lord God would send a high wave to wash him from the world.

WIDOW QUIN — [scandalised.] Have you no shame? (putting her hand on his shoulder and turning him round.) What ails you? Near crying, is it?

CHRISTY — [in despair and grief.] — Amn’t I after seeing the love-light of the star of knowledge shining from her brow, and hearing words would put you thinking on the holy Brigid speaking to the infant saints, and now she’ll be turning again, and speaking hard words to me, like an old woman with a spavindy ass she’d have, urging on a hill.

WIDOW QUIN. There’s poetry talk for a girl you’d see itching and scratching, and she with a stale stink of poteen on her from selling in the shop.

CHRISTY — [impatiently.] It’s her like is fitted to be handling merchandise in the heavens above, and what’ll I be doing now, I ask you, and I a kind of wonder was jilted by the heavens when a day was by. [There is a distant noise of girls’ voices. Widow Quin looks from window and comes to him, hurriedly.

WIDOW QUIN. You’ll be doing like myself, I’m thinking, when I did destroy my man, for I’m above many’s the day, odd times in great spirits, abroad in the sunshine, darning a stocking or stitching a shift; and odd times again looking out on the schooners, hookers, trawlers is sailing the sea, and I thinking on the gallant hairy fellows are drifting beyond, and myself long years living alone.

CHRISTY — [interested.] You’re like me, so.

WIDOW QUIN. I am your like, and it’s for that I’m taking a fancy to you, and I with my little houseen above where there’d be myself to tend you, and none to ask were you a murderer or what at all.

CHRISTY. And what would I be doing if I left Pegeen?

WIDOW QUIN. I’ve nice jobs you could be doing, gathering shells to make a whitewash for our hut within, building up a little goose-house, or stretching a new skin on an old curragh I have, and if my hut is far from all sides, it’s there you’ll meet the wisest old men, I tell you, at the corner of my wheel, and it’s there yourself and me will have great times whispering and hugging. .

. .

 

VOICES — [outside, calling far away.] — Christy! Christy Mahon! Christy!

CHRISTY. Is it Pegeen Mike?

WIDOW QUIN. It’s the young girls, I’m thinking, coming to bring you to the sports below, and what is it you’ll have me to tell them now?

CHRISTY. Aid me for to win Pegeen. It’s herself only that I’m seeking now. (Widow Quin gets up and goes to window.) Aid me for to win her, and I’ll be asking God to stretch a hand to you in the hour of death, and lead you short cuts through the Meadows of Ease, and up the floor of Heaven to the Footstool of the Virgin’s Son.

WIDOW QUIN. There’s praying.

VOICES — [nearer.] Christy! Christy Mahon!

CHRISTY — [with agitation.] — They’re coming. Will you swear to aid and save me for the love of Christ?

WIDOW QUIN — [looks at him for a moment.] — If I aid you, will you swear to give me a right of way I want, and a mountainy ram, and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the time that you’ll be master here?

CHRISTY. I will, by the elements and stars of night.

WIDOW QUIN. Then we’ll not say a word of the old fellow, the way Pegeen won’t know your story till the end of time.

CHRISTY. And if he chances to return again?

WIDOW QUIN. We’ll swear he’s a maniac and not your da. I could take an oath I seen him raving on the sands to-day. [Girls run in.]

SUSAN. Come on to the sports below. Pegeen says you’re to come.

SARA TANSEY. The lepping’s beginning, and we’ve a jockey’s suit to fit upon you for the mule race on the sands below.

HONOR. Come on, will you?

CHRISTY. I will then if Pegeen’s beyond.

SARA. She’s in the boreen making game of Shaneen Keogh.

CHRISTY. Then I’ll be going to her now. [He runs out followed by the girls.]

WIDOW QUIN. Well, if the worst comes in the end of all, it’ll be great game to see there’s none to pity him but a widow woman, the like of me, has buried her children and destroyed her man. [She goes out.]

CURTAIN

ACT III.

 

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