Where There is Nothing Part 6

_Paul Ruttledge._ 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.

_Jerome._ What has brought you among such people as these?

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

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

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

_Jerome._ What can you learn from them?

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

[_Holds it out to_ FATHER JEROME.

_Jerome._ That is all nonsense.

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

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

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

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ I would wonder at anybody that could be happy in a cell.

_Paul Ruttledge._ 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?

_Jerome._ Listen for what?

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

_Jerome._ What sort of music do you mean?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Not the music we hear with these ears [_touching his ears_], but the music of Paradise.

_Jerome._ Brother Colman once said he heard harps in the night.

_Paul Ruttledge._ 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 clas.h.i.+ng of swords. It comes rejoicing from Paradise.

_Jerome._ These are very wild thoughts.

_Tommy the Song._ 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.

_Jerome._ That was not the music of Paradise.

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

_Jerome._ How can you think you will ever find happiness amongst their devils' mirth?

_Paul Ruttledge._ 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.

_Charlie Ward._ What kind of a wild beast is it you want?

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

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

_Tommy the Song._ 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.

_Paul Ruttledge._ My wild beast is Laughter, the mightiest of the enemies of G.o.d. I will outrun it and make it friendly.

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

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

_Jerome._ That is nonsense; you will soon change your mind.

_Paul Ruttledge._ 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.

_Jerome._ Thank G.o.d, you will have to stop short of that, the Church will never marry you.

_Paul Ruttledge._ 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?

_Charlie Ward._ To lep a budget, sir.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, that is it, the budget is there by the wall.

_Jerome._ 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!

_Paul Ruttledge._ 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.

_Jerome._ 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!

_Charlie Ward._ Stop your chat, ye petticoated preacher.

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

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ I'll send you riding home with your face to the tail of the a.s.s!

_Tommy the Song._ 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----

_Charlie Ward._ That's the chat! Bravo! Let him have it.

_Tinkers._ Be off! be off out of this!

_Molly the Scold._ Now curse him, Tommy.

_Tommy the Song._ A wide hoa.r.s.eness on you--a high hanging to you on a windy day; that s.h.i.+vering 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._