Part 20

NORA. The young priest says he's known the like of it. "If it's Michael's they are," says he, "you can tell herself he's got a clean burial by the grace of God, and if they're not his, let no one say a word about them, for she'll be getting her death," says he, "with crying and lamenting." [_The door which NORA half closed is blown open by a gust of wind._]

CATHLEEN [_looking out anxiously_]. Did you ask him would he stop Bartley going this day with the horses to the Galway fair?

NORA. "I won't stop him," says he, "but let you not be afraid. Herself does be saying prayers half through the night, and the Almighty God won't leave her destitute," says he, "with no son living."

CATHLEEN. Is the sea bad by the white rocks, Nora?

NORA. Middling bad, God help us. There's a great roaring in the west, and it's worse it'll be getting when the tide's turned to the wind. [_She goes over to the table with the bundle._] Shall I open it now?

CATHLEEN. Maybe she'd wake up on us, and come in before we'd done. [_Coming to the table._] It's a long time we'll be, and the two of us crying.

NORA [_goes to the inner door and listens_]. She's moving about on the bed. She'll be coming in a minute.

CATHLEEN. Give me the ladder, and I'll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won't know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she'll be going down to see would he be floating from the east. [_They put the ladder against the gable of the chimney; CATHLEEN goes up a few steps and hides the bundle in the turf-loft. MAURYA comes from the inner room._]

MAURYA [_looking up at CATHLEEN and speaking querulously._] Isn't it turf enough you have for this day and evening?

CATHLEEN. There's a cake baking at the fire for a short space [_throwing down the turf_] and Bartley will want it when the tide turns if he goes to Connemara. [_NORA picks up the turf and puts it round the pot-oven._]

MAURYA [_sitting down on a stool at the fire_]. He won't go this day with the wind rising from the south and west. He won't go this day, for the young priest will stop him surely.

NORA. He'll not stop him, mother, and I heard Eamon Simon and Stephen Pheety and Colum Shawn saying he would go.

MAURYA. Where is he itself?

NORA. He went down to see would there be another boat sailing in the week, and I'm thinking it won't be long till he's here now, for the tide's turning at the green head, and the hooker's tacking from the east.

CATHLEEN. I hear someone passing the big stones.

NORA [_looking out_]. He's coming now, and he in a hurry.

BARTLEY [_comes in and looks round the room. Speaking sadly and quietly_]. Where is the bit of new rope, Cathleen, was bought in Connemara?

CATHLEEN [_coming down_]. Give it to him, Nora; it's on a nail by the white boards. I hung it up this morning, for the pig with the black feet was eating it.

NORA [_giving him a rope_]. Is that it, Bartley?

MAURYA. You'd do right to leave that rope, Bartley, hanging by the boards. [_BARTLEY takes the rope._] It will be wanting in this place, I'm telling you, if Michael is washed up to-morrow morning, or the next morning, or any morning in the week, for it's a deep grave we'll make him by the grace of God.

BARTLEY [_beginning to work with the rope_]. I've no halter the way I can ride down on the mare, and I must go now quickly. This is the one boat going for two weeks or beyond it, and the fair will be a good fair for horses I heard them saying below.

MAURYA. It's a hard thing they'll be saying below if the body is washed up and there's no man in it to make the coffin, and I after giving a big price for the finest white boards you'd find in Connemara. [_She looks round at the boards._]

BARTLEY. How would it be washed up, and we after looking each day for nine days, and a strong wind blowing a while back from the west and south?

MAURYA. If it wasn't found itself, that wind is raising the sea, and there was a star up against the moon, and it rising in the night. If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had itself, what is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

BARTLEY [_working at the halter, to CATHLEEN_]. Let you go down each day, and see the sheep aren't jumping in on the rye, and if the jobber comes you can sell the pig with the black feet if there is a good price going.

MAURYA. How would the like of her get a good price for a pig?

BARTLEY [_to CATHLEEN_]. If the west wind holds with the last bit of the moon let you and Nora get up weed enough for another cock for the kelp. It's hard set we'll be from this day with no one in it but one man to work.

MAURYA. It's hard set we'll be surely the day you're drownd'd with the rest. What way will I live and the girls with me, and I an old woman looking for the grave? [_BARTLEY lays down the halter, takes off his old coat, and puts on a newer one of the same flannel._]

BARTLEY [_to NORA_]. Is she coming to the pier?

NORA [_looking out_]. She's passing the green head and letting fall her sails.

BARTLEY [_getting his purse and tobacco_]. I'll have half an hour to go down, and you'll see me coming again in two days, or in three days, or maybe in four days if the wind is bad.

MAURYA [_turning round to the fire, and putting her shawl over her head_]. Isn't it a hard and cruel man won't hear a word from an old woman, and she holding him from the sea?

CATHLEEN. It's the life of a young man to be going on the sea, and who would listen to an old woman with one thing and she saying it over?

BARTLEY [_taking the halter_]. I must go now quickly. I'll ride down on the red mare, and the gray pony'll run behind me.... The blessing of God on you. [_He goes out._]

MAURYA [_crying out as he is in the door_]. He's gone now, God spare us, and we'll not see him again. He's gone now, and when the black night is falling I'll have no son left me in the world.

CATHLEEN. Why wouldn't you give him your blessing and he looking round in the door? Isn't it sorrow enough is on everyone in this house without your sending him out with an unlucky word behind him, and a hard word in his ear? [_MAURYA takes up the tongs and begins raking the fire aimlessly without looking round._]

NORA [_turning towards her_]. You're taking away the turf from the cake.

CATHLEEN [_crying out_]. The Son of God forgive us, Nora, we're after forgetting his bit of bread. [_She comes over to the fire._]

NORA. And it's destroyed he'll be going till dark night, and he after eating nothing since the sun went up.

CATHLEEN [_turning the cake out of the oven_]. It's destroyed he'll be, surely. There's no sense left on any person in a house where an old woman will be talking forever. [_MAURYA sways herself on her stool._]

CATHLEEN [_cutting off some of the bread and rolling it in a cloth; to MAURYA_]. Let you go down now to the spring well and give him this and he passing. You'll see him then and the dark word will be broken, and you can say "God speed you," the way he'll be easy in his mind.

MAURYA [_taking the bread_]. Will I be in it as soon as himself?

CATHLEEN. If you go now quickly.

MAURYA [_standing up unsteadily_]. It's hard set I am to walk.

CATHLEEN [_looking at her anxiously_]. Give her the stick, Nora, or maybe she'll slip on the big stones.

NORA. What stick?

CATHLEEN. The stick Michael brought from Connemara.

MAURYA [_taking a stick NORA gives her_]. In the big world the old people do be leaving things after them for their sons and children, but in this place it is the young men do be leaving things behind for them that do be old. [_She goes out slowly. NORA goes over to the ladder._]

CATHLEEN. Wait, Nora, maybe she'd turn back quickly. She's that sorry, God help her, you wouldn't know the thing she'd do.

NORA. Is she gone round by the bush?

CATHLEEN [_looking out_]. She's gone now. Throw it down quickly, for the Lord knows when she'll be out of it again.

NORA [_getting the bundle from the loft_]. The young priest said he'd be passing to-morrow, and we might go down and speak to him below if it's Michael's they are surely.

CATHLEEN [_taking the bundle_]. Did he say what way they were found?

NORA [_coming down_]. "There were two men," says he, "and they rowing round with poteen before the cocks crowed, and the oar of one of them caught the body, and they passing the black cliffs of the north."

CATHLEEN [_trying to open the bundle_]. Give me a knife, Nora, the string's perished with the salt water, and there's a black knot on it you wouldn't loosen in a week.

NORA [_giving her a knife_]. I've heard tell it was a long way to Donegal.

CATHLEEN [_cutting the string_]. It is surely. There was a man in here a while ago--the man sold us that knife--and he said if you set off walking from the rocks beyond, it would be seven days you'd be in Donegal.

NORA. And what time would a man take, and he floating? [_CATHLEEN opens the bundle and takes out a bit of a stocking. They look at them eagerly._]

CATHLEEN [_in a low voice_]. The Lord spare us, Nora! isn't it a queer hard thing to say if it's his they are surely?

NORA. I'll get his shirt off the hook the way we can put the one flannel on the other. [_She looks through some clothes hanging in the corner._] It's not with them, Cathleen, and where will it be?

CATHLEEN. I'm thinking Bartley put it on him in the morning, for his own shirt was heavy with the salt in it. [_Pointing to the corner._] There's a bit of a sleeve was of the same stuff. Give me that and it will do. [_NORA brings it to her and they compare the flannel._]

CATHLEEN. It's the same stuff, Nora; but if it is itself aren't there great rolls of it in the shops of Galway, and isn't it many another man may have a shirt of it as well as Michael himself?

NORA [_who has taken up the stocking and counted the stitches, crying out_]. It's Michael, Cathleen, it's Michael; God spare his soul, and what will herself say when she hears this story, and Bartley on the sea?

CATHLEEN [_taking the stocking_]. It's a plain stocking.

NORA. It's the second one of the third pair I knitted, and I put up three score stitches, and I dropped four of them.

CATHLEEN [_counts the stitches_]. It's that number is in it. [_Crying out._] Ah, Nora, isn't it a bitter thing to think of him floating that way to the far north, and no one to keen him but the black hags that do be flying on the sea?

NORA [_swinging herself round, and throwing out her arms on the clothes_]. And isn't it a pitiful thing when there is nothing left of a man who was a great rower and fisher, but a bit of an old shirt and a plain stocking?

CATHLEEN [_after an instant_]. Tell me is herself coming, Nora? I hear a little sound on the path.

NORA [_looking out_]. She is, Cathleen. She's coming up to the door.

CATHLEEN. Put these things away before she'll come in. Maybe it's easier she'll be after giving her blessing to Bartley, and we won't let on we've heard anything the time he's on the sea.

NORA [_helping CATHLEEN to close the bundle_]. We'll put them here in the corner. [_They put them into a hole in the chimney corner. CATHLEEN goes back to the spinning-wheel._]

NORA. Will she see it was crying I was?

CATHLEEN. Keep your back to the door the way the light'll not be on you. [_NORA sits down at the chimney corner, with her back to the door. MAURYA comes in very slowly, without looking at the girls, and goes over to her stool at the other side of the fire. The cloth with the bread is still in her hand. The girls look at each other, and NORA points to the bundle of bread._]

CATHLEEN [_after spinning for a moment_]. You didn't give him his bit of bread? [_MAURYA begins to keen softly, without turning round._]

CATHLEEN. Did you see him riding down? [_MAURYA goes on keening._]

CATHLEEN [_a little impatiently_]. God forgive you; isn't it a better thing to raise your voice and tell what you seen, than to be making lamentation for a thing that's done? Did you see Bartley, I'm saying to you.

MAURYA [_with a weak voice_]. My heart's broken from this day.

CATHLEEN [_as before_]. Did you see Bartley?

MAURYA. I seen the fearfulest thing.

CATHLEEN [_leaves her wheel and looks out_]. God forgive you; he's riding the mare now over the green head, and the gray pony behind him.

MAURYA [_starts, so that her shawl falls back from her head and shows her white tossed hair. With a frightened voice_]. The gray pony behind him.

CATHLEEN [_coming to the fire_]. What is it ails you, at all?

MAURYA [_speaking very slowly_]. I've seen the fearfulest thing any person has seen, since the day Bride Dara seen the dead man with the child in his arms.

CATHLEEN AND NORA. Uah. [_They crouch down in front of the old woman at the fire._]

NORA. Tell us what it is you seen.

MAURYA. I went down to the spring well, and I stood there saying a prayer to myself. Then Bartley came along, and he riding on the red mare with the gray pony behind him. [_She puts up her hands, as if to hide something from her eyes._] The Son of God spare us, Nora!

CATHLEEN. What is it you seen?

MAURYA. I seen Michael himself.

CATHLEEN [_speaking softly_]. You did not, mother; it wasn't Michael you seen, for his body is after being found in the far north, and he's got a clean burial by the grace of God.

MAURYA [_a little defiantly_]. I'm after seeing him this day, and he riding and galloping. Bartley came first on the red mare; and I tried to say "God speed you," but something choked the words in my throat. He went by quickly; and "The blessing of God on you," says he, and I could say nothing. I looked up then, and I crying, at the gray pony, and there was Michael upon it--with fine clothes on him, and new shoes on his feet.

CATHLEEN [_begins to keen_]. It's destroyed we are from this day. It's destroyed, surely.

NORA. Didn't the young priest say the Almighty God wouldn't leave her destitute with no son living?

MAURYA [_in a low voice, but clearly_]. It's little the like of him knows of the sea.... Bartley will be lost now, and let you call in Eamon and make me a good coffin out of the white boards, for I won't live after them. I've had a husband, and a husband's father, and six sons in this house--six fine men, though it was a hard birth I had with every one of them and they coming to the world--and some of them were found and some of them were not found, but they're gone now the lot of them.... There were Stephen, and Shawn, were lost in the great wind, and found after in the Bay of Gregory of the Golden Mouth, and carried up the two of them on the one plank, and in by that door. [_She pauses for a moment, the girls start as if they heard something through the door that is half open behind them._]

NORA [_in a whisper_]. Did you hear that, Cathleen? Did you hear a noise in the north-east?

CATHLEEN [_in a whisper_]. There's someone after crying out by the seashore.

MAURYA [_continues without hearing anything_]. There was Sheamus and his father, and his own father again, were lost in a dark night, and not a stick or sign was seen of them when the sun went up. There was Patch after was drowned out of a curagh that turned over. I was sitting here with Bartley, and he a baby, lying on my two knees, and I seen two women, and three women, and four women coming in, and they crossing themselves, and not saying a word. I looked out then, and there were men coming after them, and they holding a thing in the half of a red sail, and water dripping out of it--it was a dry day, Nora--and leaving a track to the door. [_She pauses again with her hand stretched out towards the door. It opens softly and old women begin to come in, crossing themselves on the threshold, and kneeling down in front of the stage with red petticoats over their heads._]

MAURYA [_half in a dream, to CATHLEEN_]. Is it Patch, or Michael, or what is it at all?

CATHLEEN. Michael is after being found in the far north, and when he is found there how could he be here in this place?

MAURYA. There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea, and what way would they know if it was Michael they had, or another man like him, for when a man is nine days in the sea, and the wind blowing, it's hard set his own mother would be to say what man was it.

CATHLEEN. It's Michael, God spare him, for they're after sending us a bit of his clothes from the far north. [_She reaches out and hands MAURYA the clothes that belonged to MICHAEL. MAURYA stands up slowly, and takes them in her hands. NORA looks out._]

NORA. They're carrying a thing among them and there's water dripping out of it and leaving a track by the big stones.

CATHLEEN [_in a whisper to the women who have come in_]. Is it Bartley it is?

ONE OF THE WOMEN. It is surely, God rest his soul. [_Two younger women come in and pull out the table. Then men carry in the body of BARTLEY, laid on a plank, with a bit of a sail over it, and lay it on the table._]

CATHLEEN [_to the women, as they are doing so_]. What way was he drowned?

ONE OF THE WOMEN. The gray pony knocked him into the sea, and he was washed out where there is a great surf on the white rocks. [_MAURYA has gone over and knelt down at the head of the table. The women are keening softly and swaying themselves with a slow movement. CATHLEEN and NORA kneel at the other end of the table. The men kneel near the door._]

MAURYA [_raising her head and speaking as if she did not see the people around her_]. They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me.... I'll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the other. I'll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won't care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening. [_To NORA._] Give me the Holy Water, Nora, there's a small sup still on the dresser. [_NORA gives it to her._]

MAURYA [_drops MICHAEL's clothes across BARTLEY's feet, and sprinkles the Holy Water over him_]. It isn't that I haven't prayed for you, Bartley, to the Almighty God. It isn't that I haven't said prayers in the dark night till you wouldn't know what I'ld be saying; but it's a great rest I'll have now, and it's time surely. It's a great rest I'll have now, and great sleeping in the long nights after Samhain, if it's only a bit of wet flour we do have to eat, and maybe a fish that would be stinking. [_She kneels down again, crossing herself, and saying prayers under her breath._]

CATHLEEN [_to an old man_]. Maybe yourself and Eamon would make a coffin when the sun rises. We have fine white boards herself bought, God help her, thinking Michael would be found, and I have a new cake you can eat while you'll be working.

THE OLD MAN [_looking at the boards_]. Are there nails with them?

CATHLEEN. There are not, Colum; we didn't think of the nails.

ANOTHER MAN. It's a great wonder she wouldn't think of the nails, and all the coffins she's seen made already.

CATHLEEN. It's getting old she is, and broken. [_MAURYA stands up again very slowly and spreads out the pieces of MICHAEL's clothes beside the body, sprinkling them with the last of the Holy Water._]

NORA [_in a whisper to CATHLEEN_]. She's quiet now and easy; but the day Michael was drowned you could hear her crying out from this to the spring well. It's fonder she was of Michael, and would anyone have thought that?

CATHLEEN [_slowly and clearly_]. An old woman will be soon tired with anything she will do, and isn't it nine days herself is after crying and keening, and making great sorrow in the house?

MAURYA [_puts the empty cup mouth downwards on the table, and lays her hands together on BARTLEY's feet_]. They're all together this time, and the end is come. May the Almighty God have mercy on Bartley's soul, and on Michael's soul, and on the souls of Sheamus and Patch, and Stephen and Shawn [_bending her head_]; and may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of everyone is left living in the world. [_She pauses, and the keen rises a little more loudly from the women, then sinks away._]

MAURYA [_continuing_]. Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely. What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living forever, and we must be satisfied. [_She kneels down again and the curtain falls slowly._]

A NIGHT AT AN INN[45]

_A PLAY IN ONE ACT_

By LORD DUNSANY

[Footnote 45: Copyright, 1916, by The Sunwise Turn, Inc. All rights reserved. The professional and amateur stage rights on this play are strictly reserved by the author. Applications for permission to produce the Play should be made to The Neighborhood Playhouse, 466 Grand Street, New York.

Any infringement of the author's rights will be punished by the penalties imposed under the United States Revised Statutes, Title 60, Chapter 3.]

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron Dunsany, was born in 1878, a lord of the British Empire, heir to an ancient barony, created by Henry VI in the middle of the fifteenth century. He went from Eton to Sandhurst, the English military college, held a lieutenancy in a famous regiment, the Coldstream Guards, saw active service in the South African War and served in the Great War as an officer in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. He turned aside from his career as a soldier in 1906 to stand for West Wiltshire as the Conservative candidate, but he was defeated. He writes enthusiastically always of his interest in sport; he has gone to the ends of the earth to shoot big game. His first book, _The Gods of Pegana_, was published in 1905. He has since written sketches, fantastic tales, and plays,[46] and latterly introductions to the poems of Francis Ledwidge, the Irish peasant poet, who fell in battle in 1917. Dunsany's early plays were put on at the Abbey Theatre where Yeats produced _The Glittering Gate_ in 1909.

[Footnote 46: For bibliography see E. A. Boyd, _The Contemporary Drama of Ireland_, Boston, 1917.]

The initial American productions were also made in Little Theatres, under the auspices of the Stage Society of Philadelphia and at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where the first performance on any stage of _A Night at an Inn_ was given on April 22, 1916. It was an immediate success and aroused great general interest in Dunsany's other plays. It was remarked at the time that its scene on an English moor was far from "his own Oriental Never Never Land," and that it recalled in its substance _The Moonstone_ by Wilkie Collins and _The Mystery of Cloomber_ by A. Conan Doyle. Dunsany, unlike the other playwrights associated with the Irish National Theatre, has borrowed the glamour of the Orient rather than that of Celtic lore, to heighten his dramatic effects. There is, in fact, much that is Biblical in his mood and in his diction.

When, at a later date, Lord Dunsany saw the production of _A Night at an Inn_ at The Neighborhood Playhouse, the effect of the play "exceeded his own expectations, and he was surprised to note the thrill which it communicated to his audience. 'It's a very simple thing,' he said,--'merely a story of some sailors who have stolen something and know that they are followed. Possibly it is effective because nearly everybody, at some time or other, has done something he was sorry for, has been afraid of retribution, and has felt the hot breath of a pursuing vengeance on the back of his neck.... _A Night at an Inn_ was written between tea and dinner in a single sitting. That was very easy.'"[47]

[Footnote 47: Clayton Hamilton, _Seen on the Stage_, New York, 1920, p. 238; p. 239.]