Part 5

_Sergeant:_ (_Gets off barrel._) Don't talk to me like that. I have my duties and I know them. (_Looks round._) That was a boat; I hear the oars.

(_Goes to the steps and looks down._)

_Man:_ (_Sings_)--

O, then, tell me, Shawn O'Farrell, Where the gathering is to be. In the old spot by the river Right well known to you and me!

_Sergeant:_ Stop that! Stop that, I tell you!

_Man:_ (_Sings louder_)--

One word more, for signal token, Whistle up the marching tune, With your pike upon your shoulder, At the Rising of the Moon.

_Sergeant:_ If you don't stop that, I'll arrest you.

(_A whistle from below answers, repeating the air._)

_Sergeant:_ That's a signal. (_Stands between him and steps._) You must not pass this way.... Step farther back.... Who are you? You are no ballad-singer.

_Man:_ You needn't ask who I am; that placard will tell you. (_Points to placard._)

_Sergeant:_ You are the man I am looking for.

_Man:_ (_Takes off hat and wig. Sergeant seizes them._) I am. There's a hundred pounds on my head. There is a friend of mine below in a boat. He knows a safe place to bring me to.

_Sergeant:_ (_Looking still at hat and wig._) It's a pity! It's a pity. You deceived me. You deceived me well.

_Man:_ I am a friend of Granuaile. There is a hundred pounds on my head.

_Sergeant:_ It's a pity, it's a pity!

_Man:_ Will you let me pass, or must I make you let me?

_Sergeant:_ I am in the force. I will not let you pass.

_Man:_ I thought to do it with my tongue. (Puts hand in breast.) What is that?

(_Voice of Policeman X outside:_) Here, this is where we left him.

_Sergeant:_ It's my comrades coming.

_Man:_ You won't betray me ... the friend of Granuaile. (_Slips behind barrel._)

(_Voice of Policeman B:_) That was the last of the placards.

_Policeman X:_ (_As they come in._) If he makes his escape it won't be unknown he'll make it.

(_Sergeant puts hat and wig behind his back._)

_Policeman B:_ Did any one come this way?

_Sergeant:_ (_After a pause._) No one.

_Policeman B:_ No one at all?

_Sergeant:_ No one at all.

_Policeman B:_ We had no orders to go back to the station; we can stop along with you.

_Sergeant:_ I don't want you. There is nothing for you to do here.

_Policeman B:_ You bade us to come back here and keep watch with you.

_Sergeant:_ I'd sooner be alone. Would any man come this way and you making all that talk? It is better the place to be quiet.

_Policeman B:_ Well, we'll leave you the lantern anyhow. (_Hands it to him._)

_Sergeant:_ I don't want it. Bring it with you.

_Policeman B:_ You might want it. There are clouds coming up and you have the darkness of the night before you yet. I'll leave it over here on the barrel. (_Goes to barrel._)

_Sergeant:_ Bring it with you I tell you. No more talk.

_Policeman B:_ Well, I thought it might be a comfort to you. I often think when I have it in my hand and can be flashing it about into every dark corner (_doing so_) that it's the same as being beside the fire at home, and the bits of bogwood blazing up now and again.

(_Flashes it about, now on the barrel, now on Sergeant._)

_Sergeant:_ (_Furious._) Be off the two of you, yourselves and your lantern!

(_They go out. Man comes from behind barrel. He and Sergeant stand looking at one another._)

_Sergeant:_ What are you waiting for?

_Man:_ For my hat, of course, and my wig. You wouldn't wish me to get my death of cold?

(_Sergeant gives them._)

_Man:_ (_Going towards steps._) Well, good-night, comrade, and thank you. You did me a good turn to-night, and I'm obliged to you. Maybe I'll be able to do as much for you when the small rise up and the big fall down ... when we all change places at the Rising (_waves his hand and disappears_) of the Moon.

_Sergeant:_ (_Turning his back to audience and reading placard._) A hundred pounds reward! A hundred pounds! (_Turns towards audience._) I wonder, now, am I as great a fool as I think I am?

_Curtain._

THE JACKDAW

PERSONS

JOSEPH NESTOR _An Army Pensioner._ MICHAEL COONEY _A Farmer._ MRS. BRODERICK _A Small Shopkeeper._ TOMMY NALLY _A Pauper._ SIBBY FAHY _An Orange Seller._ TIMOTHY WARD _A Process Server._

THE JACKDAW

_Scene: Interior of a small general shop at Cloon. Mrs. Broderick sitting down. Tommy Nally sitting eating an orange Sibby has given him. Sibby, with basket on her arm, is looking out of door._

_Sibby:_ The people are gathering to the door of the Court. The Magistrates will be coming there before long. Here is Timothy Ward coming up the street.

_Timothy Ward:_ (_Coming to door._) Did you get that summons I left here for you ere yesterday, Mrs. Broderick?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I believe it's there in under the canister. (_Takes it out._) It had my mind tossed looking at it there before me. I know well what is in it if I made no fist of reading it itself. It's no wonder with all I had to go through if the reading and writing got scattered on me.

_Ward:_ You know it is on this day you have to appear in the Court?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It isn't easy to forget that, though indeed it is hard for me to be keeping anything in my head these times, but maybe remembering to-morrow the thing I was saying to-day.

_Ward:_ Up to one o'clock the magistrates will be able to attend to you, ma'am, before they will go out eating their meal.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Haven't I the mean, begrudging creditors now that would put me into the Court? Sure it's a terrible thing to go in it and to be bound to speak nothing but the truth. When people would meet with you after, they would remember your face in the Court. What way would they be certain was it in or outside of the dock?

_Ward:_ It is not in the dock you will be put this time. And there will be no bodily harm done to you, but to seize your furniture and your goods. It's best for me to be going there myself and not to be wasting my time. (_Goes out._)

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Many a one taking my goods on credit and I seeing their face no more. But nothing would satisfy the people of this district. Sure the great God Himself when He came down couldn't please everybody.

_Sibby:_ I am thinking you were talking of some friend, ma'am, might be apt to be coming to your aid.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Well able he is to do it if the Lord would but put it in his mind. Isn't it a strange thing the goods of this world to shut up the heart of a brother from his own, the same as Esau and Jacob, and he having a good farm of land in the County Limerick. It is what I heard that in that place the grass does be as thick as grease.

_Sibby:_ I suppose, ma'am, you wrote giving him an account of your case?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, Mr. Nestor, the dear man, has his fingers wore away writing for me, and I telling him all he had or had not to say. At Christmas I wrote, and at Little Christmas, and at St. Brigit's Day, and on the Feast of St. Patrick, and after that again such time as I had news of the summons being about to be served. And you may ask Mrs. Delane at the Post Office am I telling any lie saying I got no word or answer at all.... It's long since I saw him, but it is the way he used to be, his eyes on kippeens and some way suspicious in his heart; a dark weighty tempered man.

_Sibby:_ A person to be crabbed and he young, it is not likely he will grow kind at the latter end.

_Tommy Nally:_ That is no less than true now. There are crabbed people and suspicious people to be met with in every place. It is much that I got a pass from the Workhouse this day, the Master making sure when I asked it that I had in my pocket the means of getting drink.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It would maybe be best to go join you in the Workhouse, Tommy Nally, when I am out of this, than to go walking the world from end to end.

_Tommy Nally:_ Ah, don't be saying that, ma'am; sure you couldn't be happy within those walls if you had the whole world. Clean outside, but very hard within. No rank but all mixed together, the good, the middling and the bad, the well reared and the rough.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure I'm not asking to go in it. You could never be as stiff in any place as in any sort of little cabin of your own.

_Tommy Nally:_ The tea boiled in a boiler, you should close your eyes drinking it, and ne'er a bit of sugar hardly in it at all. And our curses on them that boil the eggs too hard! What use is an egg that is hard to any person on earth? And as to the dinner, what way would a tasty person eat it not having a knife or a fork?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That I may live to be in no one's way, but to have some little corner of my own!

_Tommy Nally:_ And to come to your end in it, ma'am! If you were the Lady Mayor herself you'd be brought out to the deadhouse if it was ten o'clock at night, and not a wash unless it was just a Scotch lick, and nobody to wake you at all!

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I will not go in it! I would sooner make any shift and die by the side of the wall. Sure heaven is the best place, heaven and this world we're in now!

_Sibby:_ Don't be giving up now, ma'am. Here is Mr. Nestor coming, and if any one will give you an advice he is the one will do it. Why wouldn't he, he being, as he is, an educated man, and such a great one to be reading books.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So he is too, and keeps it in his mind after. It's a wonder to me a man that does be reading to keep any memory at all.

_Nally:_ It's easy for him to carry things light, and his pension paid regular at springtime and harvest.

(_Nestor comes in reading "Tit-Bits."_)

_Nestor:_ There was a servant girl in Austria cut off her finger slicing cabbage....

_All:_ The poor thing!

_Nestor:_ And her master stuck it on again with glue. That now was a very foolish thing to do. What use would a finger be stuck with glue that might melt off at any time, and she to be stirring the pot?

_Sibby:_ That is true indeed.

_Nestor:_ Now, if I myself had been there, it is what I would have advised....

_Sibby:_ That's what I was saying, Mr. Nestor. It is you are the grand adviser. What now will you say to poor Mrs. Broderick that has a summons out against her this day for up to ten pounds?

_Nestor:_ It is what I am often saying, it is a very foolish thing to be getting into debt.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure what way could I help it? It's a very done-up town to be striving to make a living in.

_Nestor:_ It would be a right thing to be showing a good example.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ They would want that indeed. There are more die with debts on them in this place than die free from debt.

_Nestor:_ Many a poor soul has had to suffer from the weight of the debts on him, finding no rest or peace after death.

_Sibby:_ The Magistrates are gone into the Courthouse, Mrs. Broderick. Why now wouldn't you go up to the bank and ask would the manager advance you a loan?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is likely he would not do it. But maybe it's as good for me go as to be sitting here waiting for the end.

(_Puts on hat and shawl._)

_Nestor:_ I now will take charge of the shop for you, Mrs. Broderick.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It's little call there'll be to it. The time a person is sunk that's the time the custom will go from her. (_She goes out._)

_Nally:_ I'll be taking a ramble into the Court to see what are the lads doing. (_Goes out._)

_Sibby:_ (_Following them._) I might chance some customers there myself.

(_Goes out calling--oranges, good oranges._)

_Nestor:_ (_Taking a paper from his pocket, sitting down, and beginning to read._) "Romantic elopement in high life. A young lady at Aberdeen, Missouri, U.S.A., having been left by her father an immense fortune...."

(_Stops to wipe his spectacles, puts them on again and looks for place, which he has lost. Cooney puts his head in at door and draws it out again._)

_Nestor:_ Come in, come in!

_Cooney:_ (_Coming in cautiously and looking round._) Whose house now might this be?

_Nestor:_ To the Widow Broderick it belongs. She is out in the town presently.

_Cooney:_ I saw her name up over the door.

_Nestor:_ On business of her own she is gone. It is I am minding the place for her.

_Cooney:_ So I see. I suppose now you have good cause to be minding it?

_Nestor:_ It would be a pity any of her goods to go to loss.

_Cooney:_ I suppose so. Is it to auction them you will or to sell them in bulk?

_Nestor:_ Not at all. I can sell you any article you will require.

_Cooney:_ It would be no profit to herself now, I suppose, if you did?

_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?

_Cooney:_ You are not the bailiff so?

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

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ (_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.

_Cooney:_ 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 Cooney?

_Cooney:_ 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?

_Cooney:_ 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!

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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 Cooneys trusted nobody 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

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

_Nestor:_ (_Signing._) Joseph Nestor.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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.

_Cooney:_ 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._)

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Here I am back again and no addition to me since I went.

_Nestor:_ You gave me a start coming in so noiseless.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is time for me go to the Court, and I give you my word I'd be better pleased going to my burying at the Seven Churches. A nice slab I have there waiting for me, though the man that put it over me I never saw him at all, and he a far off cousin of my own.

_Nestor:_ Who knows now, Mrs. Broderick, but things might turn out better than you think.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ What way could they turn out better between this and one o'clock?

_Nestor:_ (_Scratching his head._) I suppose now you wouldn't care to play a game of Twenty-five?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I am surprised at you, Mr. Nestor, asking me to go cardplaying on such a day and at such an hour as this.

_Nestor:_ I wonder might some person come in and give an order for ten pounds' worth of the stock?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Much good it would do me. Sure I have the most of it on credit.

_Nestor:_ Well, there is no knowing. Some well-to-do person now passing the street might have seen you and taken a liking to you and be willing to make an advance or a loan.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, who would be taking a liking to me as they might to a young girl in her bloom.

_Nestor:_ Oh, it's a sort of thing might happen. Sure age didn't catch on to you yet; you are clean and fresh and sound. What's this I was reading in "Answers." (_Looks at it._) "Romantic elopement...."

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I know of no one would be thinking of me for a wife ... unless it might be yourself, Mr. Nestor....

_Nestor:_ (_Jumping up and speaking fast and running finger up and down paper._) "Performance of Dick Whittington." ... There now, there is a story that I read in my reading, it was called Whittington and the Cat. It was the cat led to his fortune. There might some person take a fancy to your cat....

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, let you have done now. I have no cat this good while. I banished it on the head of it threatening the jackdaw.

_Nestor:_ The jackdaw?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ (_Fetches cage from inner room._) Sure I reared it since the time it fell down the chimney and I going into my bed. It is often you should have seen it, in or out of its cage. Hero his name is. Come out now, Hero.

(_Opens cage._)

_Nestor:_ (_Slapping his side._) That is it ... that's the very thing. Listen to me now, Mrs. Broderick, there are some might give a good price for that bird. (_Sitting down to the work._) It chances now there is a friend of mine in South Africa. A mine owner he is ... very rich ... but it is down in the mine he has to live by reason of the Kaffirs ... it is hard to keep a watch upon them in the half dark, they being black.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I suppose....

_Nestor:_ He does be lonesome now and again, and he is longing for a bird to put him in mind of old Ireland ... but he is in dread it would die in the darkness ... and it came to his mind that it is a custom with jackdaws to be living in chimneys, and that if any birds would bear the confinement it is they that should do it.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ And is it to buy jackdaws he is going?

_Nestor:_ Isn't that what I am coming to. (_He pulls out notes._) Here now is ten pounds I have to lay out for him. Take them now and good luck go with them, and give me the bird.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Notes is it? Is it waking or dreaming I am and I standing up on the floor?

_Nestor:_ Good notes and ten of them. Look at them! National Bank they are.... Count them now, according to your fingers, and see did I tell any lie.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ (_Counting._) They are in it sure enough ... so long as they are good ones and I not made a hare of before the magistrates.

_Nestor:_ Go out now to the Court and show them to Timothy Ward, and see does he say are they good. Pay them over then, and its likely you will be let off the costs.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ (_Taking shawl._) I will go, I will go. Well, you are a great man and a kind man, Joseph Nestor, and that you may live a thousand years for this good deed.

_Nestor:_ Look here now, ma'am, I wouldn't wish you to be mentioning my name in this business or saying I had any hand in it at all.