Seven Short Plays Part 21

_Nestor:_ What do you mean saying that? Do you think I would defraud her from her due in anything I would sell for her at all?

_c.o.o.ney:_ You are not the bailiff so?

_Nestor:_ Not at all. I wonder any person to take me for a bailiff!

_c.o.o.ney:_ You are maybe one of the creditors?

_Nestor:_ I am not. I am not a man to have a debt upon me to any person on earth.

_c.o.o.ney:_ I wonder what it is you are at so, if you have no claim on the goods. Is it any harm now to ask what's this your name is?

_Nestor:_ One Joseph Nestor I am, there are few in the district but know me. Indeed they all have a great opinion of me. Travelled I did in the army, and attended school and I young, and slept in the one bed with two boys that were learning Greek.

_c.o.o.ney:_ What way now can I be rightly sure that you are Joseph Nestor?

_Nestor:_ (_Pulling out envelope._) There is my pension docket. You will maybe believe that.

_c.o.o.ney:_ (_Examining it._) I suppose you may be him so. I saw your name often before this.

_Nestor:_ Did you now? I suppose it may have travelled a good distance.

_c.o.o.ney:_ It travelled as far as myself anyway at the bottom of letters that were written asking relief for the owner of this house.

_Nestor:_ I suppose you are her brother so, Michael c.o.o.ney?

_c.o.o.ney:_ If I am, there are some questions that I want to put and to get answers to before my mind will be satisfied. Tell me this now. Is it a fact Mary Broderick to be living at all?

_Nestor:_ What would make you think her not to be living and she sending letters to you through the post?

_c.o.o.ney:_ I was saying to myself with myself, there was maybe some other one personating her and asking me to send relief for their own ends.

_Nestor:_ I am in no want of any relief. That is a queer thing to say and a very queer thing. There are many worse off than myself, the Lord be praised!

_c.o.o.ney:_ Don't be so quick now starting up to take offence. It is hard to believe the half the things you hear or that will be told to you.

_Nestor:_ That may be so indeed; unless it is things that would be printed on the papers. But I would think you might trust one of your own blood.

_c.o.o.ney:_ I might or I might not. I had it in my mind this long time to come hither and to look around for myself. There are seven generations of the c.o.o.neys trusted n.o.body living or dead.

_Nestor:_ Indeed I was reading in some history of one Ulysses that came back from a journey and sent no word before him but slipped in unknown to all but the house dog to see was his wife minding the place, or was she, as she was, scattering his means.

_c.o.o.ney:_ So she would be too. If Mary Broderick is in need of relief I will relieve her, but if she is not, I will bring away what I brought with me to its own place again.

_Nestor:_ Sure here is the summons. You can read that, and if you will look out the door you can see by the stir the Magistrates are sitting in the Court. It is a great welcome she will have before you, and the relief coming at the very nick of time.

_c.o.o.ney:_ It is too good a welcome she will give me I am thinking. It is what I am in dread of now, if she thinks I brought her the money so soft and so easy, she will never be leaving me alone, but dragging all I have out of me by little and little.

_Nestor:_ Maybe you might let her have but the lend of it.

_c.o.o.ney:_ Where's the use of calling it a lend when I may be sure I never will see it again? It might be as well for me to earn the value of a charity.

_Nestor:_ You might do that and not repent of it.

_c.o.o.ney:_ It is likely I'll be annoyed with her to the end of my lifetime if she knows I have as much as that to part with. It might be she would be following me to Limerick.

_Nestor:_ Wait now a minute till I will give you an advice.

_c.o.o.ney:_ It is likely my own advice is the best. Look over your own shoulder and do the thing you think right. How can any other person know the reasons I have in my mind?

_Nestor:_ I will know what is in your mind if you will tell it to me.

_c.o.o.ney:_ It would suit me best, she to get the money and not to know at the present time where did it come from. The next time she will write wanting help from me, I will task her with it and ask her to give me an account.

_Nestor:_ That now would take a great deal of strategy.... Wait now till I think.... I have it in my mind I was reading in a penny novel ... no but on the "Gael" ... about a boy of Kilbecanty that saved his old sweetheart from being evicted.

_c.o.o.ney:_ I never heard my sister had any old sweetheart.

_Nestor:_ It was playing Twenty-five he did it. Played with the husband he did, letting him win up to fifty pounds.

_c.o.o.ney:_ Mary Broderick was no cardplayer. And if she was itself she would know me. And it's not fifty pounds I am going to leave with her, or twenty pounds, or a penny more than is needful to free her from the summons to-day.

_Nestor:_ (_Excited._) I will make up a plan! I am sure I will think of a good one. It is given in to me there is no person so good at making up a plan as myself on this side of the world, not on this side of the world! I will manage all. Leave here what you have for her before she will come in. I will give it to her in some secret way.

_c.o.o.ney:_ I don't know. I will not give it to you before I will get a receipt for it ... and I'll not leave the town till I'll see did she get it straight and fair. Into the Court I'll go to see her paying it.

(_Sits down and writes out receipt._)

_Nestor:_ I was reading on "Home Chat" about a woman put a note for five pounds into her son's prayer book and he going a voyage. And when he came back and was in the church with her it fell out, he never having turned a leaf of the book at all.

_c.o.o.ney:_ Let you sign this and you may put it in the prayer book so long as she will get it safe. (_Nestor signs. c.o.o.ney looks suspiciously at signature and compares it with a letter and then gives notes._)

_Nestor:_ (_Signing._) Joseph Nestor.

_c.o.o.ney:_ Let me see now is it the same handwriting I used to be getting on the letters. It is. I have the notes here.

_Nestor:_ Wait now till I see is there a prayer book.... (_Looks on shelf_). Treacle, castor oil, marmalade.... I see no books at all.

_c.o.o.ney:_ Hurry on now, she will be coming in and finding me.

_Nestor:_ Here is what will do as well.... "Old Moore's Almanac." I will put it here between the leaves. I will ask her the prophecy for the month. You can come back here after she finding it.

_c.o.o.ney:_ Amn't I after telling you I wouldn't wish her to have sight of me here at all? What are you at now, I wonder, saying that. I will take my own way to know does she pay the money. It is not my intention to be made a fool of.

(_Goes out._)

_Nestor:_ You will be satisfied and well satisfied. Let me see now where are the predictions for the month. (_Reads._) "The angry appearance of Scorpio and the position of the pale Venus and Jupiter presage much danger for England. The heretofore obsequious Orangemen will refuse to respond to the tocsin of landlordism. The scales are beginning to fall from their eyes."

(_Mrs. Broderick comes in without his noticing her. She gives a groan. He drops book and stuffs notes into his pocket._)