The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays Part 6

THOMAS. It is those French wines that did it.

MARTIN. I have been beyond the earth, in paradise, in that happy townland. I have seen the s.h.i.+ning people. They were all doing one thing or another, but not one of them was at work. All that they did was but the overflowing of their idleness, and their days were a dance bred of the secret frenzy of their hearts, or a battle where the sword made a sound that was like laughter.

THOMAS. You went away sober from out of my hands; they had a right to have minded you better.

MARTIN. No man can be alive, and what is paradise but fulness of life, if whatever he sets his hand to in the daylight cannot carry him from exaltation to exaltation, and if he does not rise into the frenzy of contemplation in the night silence. Events that are not begotten in joy are misbegotten and darken the world, and nothing is begotten in joy if the joy of a thousand years has not been crushed into a moment.

THOMAS. And I offered to let you go to Dublin in the coach! [ANDREW _and the beggars have returned cautiously._]

MARTIN [_giving banner to_ PAUDEEN]. Give me the lamp. The lamp has not yet been lighted, and the world is to be consumed! [_Goes into inner room._]

THOMAS [_seeing_ ANDREW]. Is it here you are, Andrew? What are the beggars doing? Was this door thrown open, too?... Why did you not keep order? I will go for the constables to help us!

ANDREW. You will not find them to help you. They were scattering themselves through the drinking houses of the town; and why wouldn't they?

THOMAS. Are you drunk, too? You are worse than Martin. You are a disgrace.

ANDREW. Disgrace yourself! Coming here to be making an attack on me and badgering me and disparaging me. And what about yourself that turned me to be a hypocrite?

THOMAS. What are you saying?

ANDREW. You did, I tell you. Weren't you always at me to be regular and to be working and to be going through the day and the night without company and to be thinking of nothing but the trade? What did I want with a trade? I got a sight of the fairy gold one time in the mountains. I would have found it again and brought riches from it but for you keeping me so close to the work.

THOMAS. Oh, of all the ungrateful creatures! You know well that I cherished you, leading you to live a decent, respectable life.

ANDREW. You never had respect for the ancient ways. It is after the mother you take it, that was too soft and too lumpish, having too much of the English in her blood. Martin is a Hearne like myself. It is he has the generous heart! It is not Martin would make a hypocrite of me and force me to do night walking secretly, watching to be back by the setting of the seven stars! [_He begins to play his flute._]

THOMAS. I will turn you out of this, yourself and this filthy troop! I will have them lodged in gaol.

JOHNNY B. Filthy troop, is it? Mind yourself! The change is coming! The pikes will be up and the traders will go down!

[_All seize him and sing._]

When the Lion shall lose his strength, And the braket thistle begin to pine,-- The harp shall sound sweet, sweet at length Between the eight and the nine!

THOMAS. Let me out of this, you villains!

NANNY. We'll make a sieve of holes of you, you old bag of treachery!

BIDDY. How well you threatened us with gaol! You skim of a weasel's milk!

JOHNNY B. You heap of sicknesses! You blinking hangman! That you may never die till you'll get a blue hag for a wife!

[MARTIN _comes back with lighted lamp._]

MARTIN. Let him go. [_They let_ THOMAS _go and fall back._] Spread out the banner. The moment has come to begin the war.

JOHNNY B. Up with the Unicorn and destroy the Lion! Success to Johnny Gibbons and all good men!

MARTIN. Heap all those things together there. Heap those pieces of the coach one upon another. Put that straw under them. It is with this flame I will begin the work of destruction. All nature destroys and laughs.

THOMAS. Destroy your own golden coach!

MARTIN [_kneeling_]. I am sorry to go a way that you do not like, and to do a thing that will vex you. I have been a great trouble to you since I was a child in the house, and I am a great trouble to you yet.

It is not my fault. I have been chosen for what I have to do. [_Stands up._] I have to free myself first and those that are near me. The love of G.o.d is a very terrible thing!

[THOMAS _tries to stop him, but is prevented by tinkers_.

MARTIN _takes a wisp of straw and lights it._]

We will destroy all that can peris.h.!.+ It is only the soul that can suffer no injury. The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!

[_He throws his wisp into the heap. It blazes up._]

ACT III

SCENE: _Before dawn a few hours later. A wild, rocky place._ NANNY _and_ BIDDY LALLY _squatting by fire. Rich stuffs, etc., strewn about._ PAUDEEN _sitting, watching by_ MARTIN, _who is lying, as if dead, a sack over him._

NANNY [_to_ PAUDEEN]. Well, you are great heroes and great warriors and great lads altogether to have put down the Browns the way you did, yourselves and the Whiteboys of the quarry. To have ransacked the house and have plundered it! Look at the silks and the satins and the grandeurs I brought away! Look at that now! [_Holds up a velvet cloak._] It's a good little jacket for myself will come out of it. It's the singers will be stopping their songs and the jobbers turning from their cattle in the fairs to be taking a view of the laces of it and the b.u.t.tons! It's my far-off cousins will be drawing from far and near!

BIDDY. There was not so much gold in it all as what they were saying there was. Or maybe that fleet of Whiteboys had the place ransacked before we ourselves came in. Bad cess to them that put it in my mind to go gather up the full of my bag of horseshoes out of the forge. Silver they were saying they were, pure white silver; and what are they in the end but only hardened iron! A bad end to them! [_Flings away horseshoes._] The time I will go robbing big houses again it will not be in the light of the full moon I will go doing it, that does be causing every common thing to s.h.i.+ne out as if for a deceit and a mockery. It's not s.h.i.+ning at all they are at this time, but duck yellow and dark.

NANNY. To leave the big house blazing after us, it was that crowned all! Two houses to be burned to ashes in the one night. It is likely the servant-girls were rising from the feathers, and the c.o.c.ks crowing from the rafters for seven miles around, taking the flames to be the whitening of the dawn.

BIDDY. It is the lad is stretched beyond you have to be thankful to for that. There was never seen a leader was his equal for spirit and for daring! Making a great scatter of the guards the way he did! Running up roofs and ladders, the fire in his hand, till you'd think he would be apt to strike his head against the stars.

NANNY. I partly guessed death was near him, and the queer s.h.i.+ning look he had in his two eyes, and he throwing sparks east and west through the beams. I wonder now was it some inward wound he got, or did some hardy lad of the Browns give him a tip on the skull unknownst in the fight? It was I myself found him, and the troop of the Whiteboys gone, and he lying by the side of a wall as weak as if he had knocked a mountain. I failed to waken him, trying him with the sharpness of my nails, and his head fell back when I moved it, and I knew him to be spent and gone.

BIDDY. It's a pity you not to have left him where he was lying, and said no word at all to Paudeen or to that son you have, that kept us back from following on, bringing him here to this shelter on sacks and upon poles.

NANNY. What way could I help letting a screech out of myself and the life but just gone out of him in the darkness, and not a living Christian by his side but myself and the great G.o.d?

BIDDY. It's on ourselves the vengeance of the red soldiers will fall, they to find us sitting here the same as hares in a tuft. It would be best for us follow after the rest of the army of the Whiteboys.

NANNY. Whist, I tell you! The lads are cracked about him. To get but the wind of the word of leaving him, it's little but they'd knock the head off the two of us. Whist!

[_Enter_ JOHNNY B. _with candles._]

JOHNNY B. [_standing over_ MARTIN]. Wouldn't you say now there was some malice or some venom in the air, that is striking down one after the other the whole of the heroes of the Gael?

PAUDEEN. It makes a person be thinking of the four last ends, death and judgment, heaven and h.e.l.l. Indeed and indeed my heart lies with him. It is well I knew what man he was under his by-name and his disguise.

[_Sings._]

Oh, Johnny Gibbons, it's you were the prop to us!

You to have left us we are put astray!

JOHNNY B. It is lost we are now and broken to the end of our days.