Act II

What do you mean by “tinning” the soldering iron?

If the face of it is not well tinned it won’t lift the solder. Show me here.

Sitting down and drawing a tin can to him. Now, let me see how you mend this hole. It seems easy. I’m sure I will be able to learn it as well as any of you.

Pointing to one of them. This, sir, is Tommy the Song. He’s the best singer we have, but the divil a much good he is only that. He’s a great warrant to snare hares.

Is the gentleman going to join us?

Indeed I am, if you’ll let me. There’s nothing I’d like better.

But are you going to learn the trade?

Yes, if you’ll teach me. I’m sure I’ll make a good tinker. Look at that now, see how I’ve stopped that hole already.

Taking the can from him and looking at it. If every can had a little hole in the middle like that, I think you would be able to mend them; but there’s the straight hole, and the crooked hole, the round hole, the square hole, the angle hole, the bottom hole, the top hole, the side leak, the open leak, the leak-all-round, but I won’t frighten you with the names of them all, only this I will say, that, when you’ve learned to mend all the leakages in a can—and that should take you a year—you’re only in the first day of the tinker’s week.

Don’t believe him. He’s only humbugging you. It’s not the hardness of the work will daunt you.

Thank you. I was not believing him at all. I’m quite sure I’ll be able to mend any can at the end of a week, but the bottoming of them will take longer. I can see that’s not so easy. When will you start to teach me that, Charlie?

As another tinker comes up. Paddy, here’s the gentleman I was telling you about. He’s going to join us for good and all. To Paul Ruttledge. Wait till we have time and some quiet place, and he’ll show you as good a cockfight as ever you saw. A woman comes up. This is his wife; Molly the Scold we call her; faith, she is a better fighter than any cock he ever had in a basket; he’d find it hard to shut the lid on her.

The gentleman seems foolish. Is he all there?

Stop your chat, Molly, or I’ll hit you a welt.

Keep your tongue quiet, Molly. If the gentleman has reasons for keeping out of the way it isn’t for us to be questioning him. To Paul Ruttledge. Don’t mind her, she’s cross enough, but maybe your own ladies would be cross as well if they saw their young sons dying by the roadside in a little kennel of straw under the ass-cart the way she did; from first to last.

I suppose you have your troubles like others. But you seem cheerful enough.

It isn’t anything to fret about. Some of us go soon, and some travel the roads for their lifetime. What does it matter when we are under the nettles if it was with a short rope or a long one we were hanged?

Yes, that is the way to take life. What does the length of our rope matter?

We haven’t time to be thinking of troubles like people that would be shut up in a house. We have the wide world before us to make our living out of. The people of the whole world are begrudging us our living, and we make it out of them for all that. When they will spread currant cakes and feather beds before us, it will be time for us to sit down and fret.

It’s likely you’ll think the life too hard. Would you like to be passing by houses in the night-time, and the fire shining out of them, and you hardly given the loan of a sod to light your pipe, and the rain falling on you?

Why are the people so much against you?

We are not like themselves. It’s little we care about them or they about us. If their saint did curse us itself——

Stop. I won’t have you talking about that story here. Why would they think so much of the curse of one saint, and saints so plenty?

Where’s the good of a gentleman being here? He’ll be breaking down on the road. It’s on the ass-cart he’ll be wanting to sit.

Indeed, I don’t think he’ll stand the hardship.

Oh, I’ll stand it well enough.

You’re not like us that were reared to it. You were not born like us with wandering in the heart.

Oh yes, I have wandering in the heart. I got sick of these lighted rooms you were talking of just now.

That might be so. It’s the dark is welcome to a man sometimes.

The dark. Yes, I think that is what I want. Stands up. The dark, where there is nothing that is anything, and nobody that is anybody; one can be free there, where there is nothing. Well, if you let me stay with you, I don’t think you will hear any complaints from me. Charlie Ward, Paddy, and the rest of you, I want you to understand that from this out I am one of yourselves. I’ll live as you live and do as you do.

I was on the top of the bank and I seen a priest coming down the cross-road with his ass. It’s collecting he is. We’re going to set ourselves here to beg something from him.

Breathlessly. And he has a whole lot of things on the ass. A whole lot of things up behind him.

O boys, O boys, we’ll have our dealing trick out of them yet. The best way’ll be—— He suddenly catches sight of Paul Ruttledge. Whist, ye divils ye, don’t you see the new gentleman?

Speak out, boys; don’t be afraid of me; I’m one of yourselves now.

Oh! but we were going to—— But I won’t tell you. To the other children. Come away here, and we’ll not tell him what we’ll do.

To Charlie Ward. What are they going to do? They’re putting their heads together.

They’re going to put a bush across the road, and when the friar gets down to pull it out of the way they’ll snap what they can off the ass, and away with them.

And why wouldn’t they tell me that? Am I not one of yourselves?

Ah! It’s likely they’ll never trust you.

But they will soon see that I am one of themselves.

No; but that’s the very thing, you’re not one of ourselves. You were not born on the road, reared on the road, married on the road like us.

Well, it’s too late for me to be reared on the road, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t marry on the road like you. I certainly would do it if it would make me one of you.

It might make you one of us, there’s no doubt about that. It’s the only thing that would do it.

Well, find a wife for me.

Faith, you haven’t far to go to find one. Paddy there will give you over his wife quick enough; he won’t make a hard bargain over her.

But I am in earnest. I want to cut myself off from my old life.

Oh! I was forgetting that.

To Molly. I wonder what was it he did? I wonder had he the misfortune to kill anybody?

Calling Sabina over. Here’s a girl should make a good wife, Sabina Silver her name is. Her father is just dead; he didn’t treat her over well.

Coming over. What is it?

This gentleman wants to speak to you. I think he’s looking out for a wife.

Hanging her head. Don’t be humbugging me.

Indeed he’s not, Sabina.

You’re only joking a poor girl. Sure, what would make you think of me at all?

Sabina, have you been always on the road with Charlie Ward and the others?

I have, indeed.

And you’d make a good tinker’s wife?

You’re joking me, but I would be a better wife for a tinker than for anyone else.

Sabina, will you marry me?

Oh! but I’d be afraid.

Why, Sabina?

I’d be afraid you’d beat me.

You see her father used to beat her. She’s afraid of the look of a man now.

I would not beat you, Sabina. How can you have got such an idea?

Will you promise me that you won’t beat me? Will you swear it to me?

Of course I will.

To Charlie Ward. Will you make him swear it? Haven’t you a little book in your pack? Bring it out and make him swear to me on it, and you’ll be my witness.

I think, Sibby, you need not be afraid.

What’s your name, gentleman?

My name is Paul. Do you like it?

Then I won’t marry you, Mr. Paul, till you swear to me upon the book that you will never beat me with any stick that you could call a stick, and that you will never strike a kick on me from behind.

Charlie, go and bring out that book to satisfy her. Of course I swear that; it is absurd.

I swear, Sabina, that I will never strike you with any stick of any kind, and that I will never kick you. There, will that do? He takes book and kisses it.

I misdoubt you. Kiss the book again. Paul Ruttledge kisses it.

That’s all right.

Crying from a distance. He’s coming now, the priest’s coming!

Then the priest will marry us. That comes in very handy.

Scornfully. A priest marry you, indeed he’ll do nothing of the kind. I hate priests and friars. It’s unlucky to get talking to them at all. You never know what trouble you’re in for.

Coming up. That’s true, indeed. The last time I spoke to a priest it’s what he leathered me with a stick; may the divil fly away with him.

But somebody must marry us.

Of course. You’ll lep over the tinker’s budget the usual way. You’ll just marry her by lepping over the budget the same as the rest of us marry.

That’s all I want to know. Please marry me in whatever is your usual way.

Paul, what are you doing here?

Turning. What do you want?

Oh! I’m mistaken. I thought——

I am here, Father Jerome, but you’re talking to the wrong man.

Good God, Paul, what has happened?

Nothing has happened that need surprise you. Don’t you remember what we talked of to-day? You told me I was too much by myself. After you went away I thought I would make a change.

But a change like this!

Why should you find fault with it? I am richer now than I was then. I only lent you that donkey then, now I give him to you.

What has brought you among such people as these?

I find them on the whole better company than the people I left a little while ago. Let me introduce you to——

What can you possibly gain by coming here? Are you going to try and teach them?

Oh! no, I am going to learn from them.

What can you learn from them?

To pick up my living like the crows, and to solder tin cans. Just give me that one I mended a while ago.

That is all nonsense.

I am happy. Do not your saints put all opponents to the rout by saying they alone of all mankind are happy?

I suppose you will not compare the happiness of these people with the happiness of saints?

There are all sorts of happiness. Some find their happiness like Thomas à Kempis, with a little book and a little cell.

I would wonder at anybody that could be happy in a cell.

These men fight in their way as your saints fought, for their hand is against the world. I want the happiness of men who fight, who are hit and hit back, not the fighting of men in red coats, that formal, soon-finished fighting, but the endless battle, the endless battle. Tell me, Father Jerome, did you ever listen in the middle of the night?

Listen for what?

Did you ever, when the monastery was silent, and the dogs had stopped barking, listen till you heard music?

What sort of music do you mean?

Not the music we hear with these ears touching his ears, but the music of Paradise.

Brother Colman once said he heard harps in the night.

Harps! It was because he was shut in a cell he heard harps, maybe it sounds like harps in a cell. But the music I have heard sometimes is made of the continual clashing of swords. It comes rejoicing from Paradise.

These are very wild thoughts.

I often heard music in the forths. There is many of us hear it when we lie with our heads on the ground at night.

That was not the music of Paradise.

Why should they not hear that music, although it may not set them praying, but dancing.

How can you think you will ever find happiness amongst their devils’ mirth?

I have taken to the roads because there is a wild beast I would overtake, and these people are good snarers of beasts. They can help me.

What kind of a wild beast is it you want?

Oh! it’s a very terrible wild beast, with iron teeth and brazen claws that can root up spires and towers.

It’s best not to try and overtake a beast like that, but to cross running water and leave it after you.

I heard one coming after me one night; very big and shadowy it was, and I could hear it breathing. But when it came up with me I lifted a hazel rod was in my hand, and it was gone on the moment.

My wild beast is Laughter, the mightiest of the enemies of God. I will outrun it and make it friendly.

That is your old wild talk. Do have some sense and go back to your family.

I am never going back to them. I am going to live among these people. I will marry among them.

That is nonsense; you will soon change your mind.

Oh! no, I won’t; I am taking my vows as you made yours when you entered religion. I have chosen my wife; I am going to marry before evening.

Thank God, you will have to stop short of that, the Church will never marry you.

Oh! I am not going to ask the help of the Church. But I am to be married by what may be as old a ceremony as yours. What is it I am to do, Charlie?

To lep a budget, sir.

Yes, that is it, the budget is there by the wall.

I command you, in the name of the Holy Church and of the teaching you have received from the Church, to leave this folly, this degradation, this sin!

You forget, Jerome, that I am on the track of the wild beast, and hunters in all ages have been a bad people to preach to. When I have tamed the beast, perhaps I will bring him to your religious house to be baptized.

I will not listen to this profanity. To Charlie Ward. It is you who have put this madness on him as you have stolen his clothes!

Stop your chat, ye petticoated preacher.

I think, Father Jerome, you had better be getting home. This people never gave in to the preaching of S. Patrick.

I’ll send you riding home with your face to the tail of the ass!

No, stop till we show you that we can make as good curses as yourself. That you may never be warm in winter or cold in summer time——

That’s the chat! Bravo! Let him have it.

Be off! be off out of this!

Now curse him, Tommy.

A wide hoarseness on you—a high hanging to you on a windy day; that shivering fever may stretch you nine times, and that the curses of the poor may be your best music, and you hiding behind the door. Jerome goes out.

And you hiding behind the door, and squeezed between the hinges and the wall.

Squeezed between the hinges and the wall. They follow Jerome.

Crying after them. Don’t harm that gentleman; he is a friend of mine.

It was grand talk, indeed: I didn’t understand a word of it.

The crows are beginning to fly home. There is a flock of them high up under that cloud. I wonder where their nests are.

A long way off, among those big trees about Tillyra Castle.

Yes, I remember. I have seen them coming home there on a windy evening, tossing and whirling like the sea. They may have seen what I am looking for, they fly so far. A sailor told me once that he saw a crow three hundred miles from land, but maybe he was a liar.

Well, they fly far, anyway.

They tell one another what they have seen, too. That is why they make so much noise. Maybe their news goes round the world. He comes towards the others. I think they have seen my wild beast, Laughter. They could tell me if he has a face smoky from the eternal fires, and wings of brass and claws of brass—claws of brass. Holds out his hands and moves them like claws. Sabina, would you like to see a beast with eyes hard and cold and blue, like sapphires? Would you, Sabina? Well, it’s time now for the wedding. So what shall we get for the wedding party? What would you like, Sabina?

I don’t know.

What do you say, Charlie? A wedding cake and champagne. How would you like champagne? Tinkers begin to return.

It might be middling.

What would you say to a——

I knew I could do it. I told you I’d have my dealing trick out of the priest. I took a hold of this, and Johneen made a snap at the onions.

And he didn’t catch you?

He’d want to be a lot smarter than he is to do that.

You are a smart lad, anyway. What do you say we should have for our wedding party?

Are you rich?

More or less.

I seen a whole truck full of cakes and bullseyes in the village below. Could you buy the whole of them?

Stop talking nonsense. What we want is porter.

All right. How many public-houses are there in the village?

Twenty-four.

Is there any place we can have barrels brought to?

There’s a shed near seems to be empty. We might go there.

Then go and order as many barrels as we can make use of to be brought there.

We will; and we’ll stop till we’ve drunk them out.

Taking out money. I have more money than will pay for that. Sabina, we’ll treat the whole neighbourhood in honour of our wedding. I’ll have all the public-houses thrown open, and free drinks going for a week!

Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!

Three cheers more, boys.

Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!

Now here’s the budget.

Taking Sabina Silver’s hand. Now, Sabina, one, two, three!