Where There is Nothing Part 15

_Aloysius._ That's just it. If he did cure her, they say the two best of her husband's bullocks died of the blackwater the next day, and he was no way thankful to us after that.

_Colman._ Did you try the houses along the bog road?

_Aloysius._ I did, and the children coming back from school called out after me and asked who was it did away with the widow Cloran's cow.

_Colman._ The widow Cloran's cow?

_Aloysius._ That was the cow that died after grazing in the ruins here.

_Colman._ If it did, it was because of an old boot it picked up and ate, and that never belonged to us.

_Aloysius._ I wish we had something ourselves to eat. They should be sitting down to their dinner in the monastery now. They will be having a good dinner to-day to carry them over the fast to-morrow.

_Colman._ I am thinking sometimes, Brother Paul should give more thought to us than he does. It is all very well for him, he is so taken up with his thoughts and his visions he doesn't know if he is full or fasting.

_Aloysius._ He has such holy thoughts and visions no one would like to trouble him. He ought not to be in the world at all, or to do the world's work.

_Colman._ So long as he is in the world, he must give some thought to it. There must be something wrong in the way he is doing things now. I thought he would have had half Ireland with him by this time with his great preaching, but someway when he preaches to the people, they don't seem to mind him much.

_Aloysius._ He is too far above them; they have not education to understand him.

_Colman._ They understand me well enough when I give my mind to it. But it is harder to preach now than it was in the monastery. We had something to offer then; absolution here, and heaven after.

_Aloysius._ Isn't it enough for them to hear that the kingdom of heaven is within them, and that if they do the right meditations----

_Colman._ What can poor people that have their own troubles on them get from a few words like that they hear at a cross road or a market, and the wind maybe blowing them away? If we could gather them together now.... Look, Aloysius, at these sally rods; I have a plan in my mind about them.

[_He has stuck some of the rods in the ground, and begins weaving others through them._

_Aloysius._ Are you going to make baskets like you did in the monastery schools?

_Colman._ We must make something if we are to live. But it is more than that I was thinking of; we might coax some of the youngsters to come and learn the basket making; it would make them take to us better if we could put them in the way of earning a few pence.

_Aloysius._ [_Taking up some of the osiers and beginning to twist them._] That might be a good way to come at them; they could work through the day, and at evening we could tell them how to repeat the words till the light comes inside their heads. But would Paul think well of it? He is more for pulling down than building up.

_Colman._ When I explain it to him I am sure he will think well of it; he can't go on for ever without anyone to listen to him.

_Aloysius._ I suppose not, and with no way of living. But I don't know, I'm afraid he won't like it.

_Colman._ Hus.h.!.+ Here he is coming.

_Aloysius._ If one had a plan now for doing some destruction----

_Colman._ Hus.h.!.+ don't you see there is somebody with him.

PAUL RUTTLEDGE _comes in with_ CHARLIE WARD.

_Paul Ruttledge._ This is Charlie Ward, my old friend.

_Aloysius._ The Charlie Ward you lived on the roads with?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, when I went looking for the favour of my hard mother, Earth, he helped me. He is her good child and she loves him.

_Colman._ He is welcome. How did he find you out?

_Paul Ruttledge._ I don't know. How did you find me out, Charlie?

_Charlie Ward._ Oh, I didn't lose sight of you so much as you thought. I had to stop away from Gortmore a good while after we left you at the gate, but I sent Paddy c.o.c.kfight one time to get news, and he mended cans for the laundry of the monastery, and they told him you were well again, and a monk as good as the rest. But a while ago I got word there was a monk had gone near to break up the whole monastery with his talk and his piety, and I said to myself, "That's Paul!" And then I heard there was a monk had been driven out for not keeping the rules, and I said to myself, "That's Paul!" And the other day when what's left of us came to Athlone, I heard talk of some disfrocked monks that were upsetting the whole neighbourhood, and I said, "That's Paul." To Sabina Silver I said that. "That merry chap Paul," I said.

_Paul Ruttledge._ I'm afraid you have a very bad opinion of me, Charlie.

Well, maybe I earned it.

_Aloysius._ You cannot know much of him if you have a bad opinion of him. He will be made a saint some day.

_Charlie Ward._ He will, if there's such a thing as a saint of mischief.

_Paul Ruttledge._ A saint of mischief? Well, why not that as well as another? He would upset all the beehives, he would throw them into the market-place. Sit down now, Charlie, and eat a bit with us.

_Colman._ You are welcome, indeed, to all we can give you, but we have not a bit of food that is worth offering you. Aloysius got nothing at all in the villages to-day, Brother Paul. The people are getting cross.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Well, sit down, anyway. The country people liked me well enough once, there was no man they liked so much as myself when I gave them drink for nothing. Didn't they, Charlie?

_Charlie Ward._ Oh, that was a great time. They were lying thick about the roads. I'll be thinking of it to my dying day.

_Paul Ruttledge._ I have given them another kind of drink now.

_Charlie Ward._ What sort of a drink is that?

_Paul Ruttledge._ We have rolled a great barrel out of a cellar that is under the earth. We have rolled it right into the midst of them. [_He moves his hand about as if he were moving a barrel._] It's heavy, and when they have drunk what is in it, I would like to see the man that would be their master.

_Charlie Ward._ That would be a great drink, but I wouldn't be sure that you're in earnest.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Colman and Aloysius will tell you all about it. It was made in a good still, the barley was grown in a field that's down under the earth.

_Charlie Ward._ That's likely enough. I often heard of places like that.

_Paul Ruttledge._ And when they have drunk from my barrel, they will break open the door, they will put law and number under their two feet; and they will have a hot palm and a cold palm, for they will put down the moon and the sun with their two hands.

_Charlie Ward._ There's no mistake but you're the same Paul still; nice and plain and simple, only for your hard talk. And what about the rheumatism? It's hardly you got through that fit you had, and you don't look as if much hards.h.i.+p would agree with you now.

_Aloysius._ He does not, indeed, and if he doesn't kill himself one way he will another. Wait now till I tell you the way he is living. I don't think he tasted bit or sup to-day, and all he had last night was a couple of dry potatoes.

_Charlie Ward._ Is that so? [_Takes_ PAUL RUTTLEDGE'S _arm_.] You haven't much more flesh on you than a crane in moonlight. They don't seem to have much notion of minding you here, you that were reared soft. It would be better for you to come back to us; bad as our lodging is, there'd be a bit in the pot for you and Sabina to care you. It's she would give you a good welcome.

_Colman._ [_Starting up._] We can mind him well enough here. I have a plan. We haven't been getting on the way we ought with the people. It's no way to be getting on with people to be asking things of them always, they have no opinion at all of us seeing us the way we are. They have no notion of the respect they should show to Brother Paul, and the way all the Brothers used to be listening to his preaching, and the townspeople as well. And I, myself, the time I preached in Dublin----

_Aloysius._ Yes, indeed, Paul, think of the great crowds used to come when you preached in the Abbey church, and all the money that was gathered that time of the Mission.