New Comedies Part 10

_Cracked Mary:_ You have the door open--the speckled horses are on the road!--make a leap on the horse as it goes by, the horse that is without a rider. Can't you hear them puffing and roaring? Their breath is like a fog upon the air.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What you hear is but the train puffing afar off.

_Cracked Mary:_ Make a snap at the bridle as it pa.s.ses by the bush in the western gap. Run out now, run, where you have the bare ridge of the world before you, and no one to take orders from but yourself, maybe, and G.o.d.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Ah, what way can I run to any place!

_Cracked Mary:_ Stop where you are, so. In my opinion it is little difference the moon can see between the whole of ye. Come on, Davideen, come out now, we have the wideness of the night before us.

O golden G.o.d! All bad things quieten in the night time, and the ugly thing itself will put on some sort of a decent face! Come out now to the night that will give you the song, and will show myself out as beautiful as Helen of the Greek G.o.ds, that hanged herself the day there first came a wrinkle on her face!

_Davideen: (Coming close, and taking her hand as he sings.)_

Oh! don't you remember What our comrades called to us And they footing steps At the call of the moon?

Come out to the rushes, Come out to the bushes, Where the music is called By the lads of Queen Anne!

_(They look beautiful. They dance and sing in perfect time as they go out.)_

_Peter Tannian: (Closing the door, and pointing at Hyacinth, who stands gazing after them, and when the door is shut sits down thinking deeply.)_ It is on him her judgment fell, and a clear judgment.

_Shawn Early:_ She gave out that award fair enough.

_Peter Tannian:_ Did you take notice, and he coming into the shed, he had like some sort of a little twist in his walk?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I would be loth to think there would be any poison lurking in his veins. Where now would it come from, and Cracked Mary's dog being as good as no dog at all?

_Peter Tannian:_ It might chance, and he a child in the cradle, to get the bite of a dog. It might be only now, its full time being come, its power would begin to work.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So it would too, and he but to see the shadow of the dog bit him in a body gla.s.s, or in the waves, and he himself looking over a boat, and as if called to throw himself in the tide.

But I would not have thought it of Mr. Halvey. Well, it's as hard to know what might be spreading abroad in any person's mind, as to put the body of a horse out through a cambric needle.

_(Hyacinth looks at them.)_

_Shawn Early:_ Be quiet now, he is going to say some word.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There is a thought in my mind. I think it was coming this good while.

_Shawn Early:_ Whisht now and listen.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I made a great mistake coming into this place.

_Peter Tannian:_ There was some mistake made anyway.

_Hyacinth:_ It is foolishness kept me in it ever since. It is too big a name was put upon me.

_Peter Tannian:_ It is the power of the moon is forcing the truth out of him.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Every person in the town giving me out for more than I am. I got too much of that in the heel.

_Shawn Early:_ He is talking queer now anyway.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Calling to me every little minute--expecting me to do this thing and that thing--watching me the same as a watchdog, their eyes as if fixed upon my face.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ To be giving out such strange thoughts, he hasn't much brains left around him.

_Hyacinth Halvey: I_ looking to be Clerk of the Union, and the place I had giving me enough to do, and too much to do. Tied on this side, tied on that side. I to be bothered with business through the holy livelong day!

_Peter Tannian:_ It is good pay he got with it. Eighty pounds a year doesn't come on the wind.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ In danger to be linked and wed--I never ambitioned it--with a woman would want me to be earning through every day of the year.

_Shawn Early:_ He is a gone man surely.

_Hyacinth Hakey:_ The wide ridge of the world before me, and to have no one to look to for orders; that would be better than roast and boiled and all the comforts of the day. I declare to goodness, and I 'd nearly take my oath, I 'd sooner be among a fleet of tinkers, than attending meetings of the Board!

_Mrs. Broderick:_ If there are fairies in it, it is in the fairies he is.

_Peter Tannian:_ Give me a hold of that chain.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ What is it you are about to do?

_Peter Tannian:_ To bind him to the chair I will before he will burst out wild mad. Come over here, Bartley Fallon, and lend a hand if you can.

_(Bartley Fallon appears from corner with a_ _chicken crate over his head.)_

_Mrs. Broderick:_ O Bartley, that is the strangest lightness ever I saw, to go bind a chicken crate around your skull!

_Bartley Fallon:_ Will you tighten the knots I have tied, Peter Tannian! I am in dread they might slacken or fail.

_Shawn Early:_ Was there ever seen before this night such power to be in the moon!

_Bartley Fallon:_ It would seem to be putting very wild unruly thoughts a-through me, stirring up whatever spleen or whatever relics was left in me by the nature of the dog.

_Peter Tannian:_ Is it that you think those rods, s.p.a.ced wide, as they are, will keep out the moon from entering your brain?

_Bartley Fallon:_ There does great strength come at the time the wits would be driven out of a person. I never was handled by a policeman--but once--and never hit a blow on any man. I would not wish to destroy my neighbour or to have his blood on my hands.

_Shawn Early:_ It is best keep out of his reach.

_Bartley Fallon:_ The way I have this fixed, there is no person will be the worse for me. I to rush down the street and to meet with my most enemy in some lonesome craggy place, it would fail me, and I thrusting for it to scatter any share of poison in his body or to sink my teeth in his skin. I wouldn't wonder I to have hung for some of you, and that plan not to have come into my head.

_(Whistle of train heard.)_

_Hyacinth Halvey: (Getting up.)_ I have my mind made up, I am going out of this on that train.

_Peter Tannian:_ You are not going so easy as what you think.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Let you mind your own business.

_Peter Tannian:_ I am well able to mind it.