Three Plays: The Fiddler's House, The Land, Thomas Muskerry Part 25

MURTAGH COSGAR Stay where you are. _(Turning round)_ We're two old men, as you say. We should keep each other's company for a bit.

MARTIN DOURAS I should be going home to see Ellen.

MURTAGH COSGAR If she's going, you can't stay her. Let you keep here.

MARTIN DOURAS She'll be wondering what happened to me.

MURTAGH COSGAR Divil a bit it will trouble her. You're going to the fair anyway?

MARTIN DOURAS I have no heart to be going into a fair.

MURTAGH COSGAR It's myself used to have the great heart. Driving in on my own side-car, and looking down on the crowd of them. It's twenty years since I took a sup of drink. Oh, we'll have drinking to-morrow that will soften the oul' skin of you. You'll be singing songs about the Trojans to charm every baste in the fair.

MARTIN DOURAS We're both old men, Murtagh Cosgar.

MURTAGH COSGAR And is there any reason in your scholars.h.i.+p why oul'

men should be dry men? Answer me that!

MARTIN DOURAS I won't answer you at all, Murtagh Cosgar. There's no use in talking to you.

MURTAGH COSGAR Put it down on a piece of paper that oul' men should have light hearts when their care is gone from them. They should be like--

MARTIN DOURAS There's nothing in the world like men with their rearing gone from them, and they old.

_Sally comes to the door. She enters stealthily._

MURTAGH COSGAR Ha, here's one of the clutch home. Well, did you see that brother of yours?

SALLY I did. He'll be home soon, father.

MURTAGH COSGAR What's that you say? Were you talking to him? Did he say he'd be home?

SALLY I heard him say it, father.

MARTIN DOURAS G.o.d bless you for the news, Sally.

MURTAGH COSGAR How could he go and he the last of them? Sure it would be against nature. Where did you see him, Sally?

SALLY At Martin Douras's, father.

MURTAGH COSGAR It's that Ellen Douras that's putting him up to all this. Don't you be said by her, Sally.

SALLY No, father.

MURTAGH COSGAR You're a good girl, and if you haven't wit, you have sense. He'll be home soon, did you say?

SALLY He was coming home. He went round the long way, I'm thinking.

Ellen Douras was vexed with him, father. She isn't going either, Matt says, but I'm thinking that you might as well try to keep a corncrake in the meadow for a whole winter, as to try to keep Ellen Douras in Aughnalee.

MURTAGH COSGAR Make the place tidy for him to come into. He'll have no harsh words from me. _(He goes up to the room)_

SALLY Father's surely getting ould.

MARTIN DOURAS _(sitting down)_ He's gone up to rest himself, G.o.d help him. Sally, _a stor_, I'm that fluttered, I dread going into my own house.

SALLY I'll get ready now, and let you have a good supper before you go to the fair.

MARTIN DOURAS Sit down near me, and let me hear everything, Sally.

Was it Matt that told you, or were you talking to Ellen herself?

SALLY O, indeed, I had a talk with Ellen, but she won't give much of her mind away. It was Matt that was telling me. "Indeed she's not going," said he, "and a smart young fellow like myself thinking of her. Ellen is too full of notions." Here's Matt himself. Father won't have a word to say to him. He's getting mild as he's getting ould, and maybe it's a fortune he'll be leaving to myself.

_Matt comes to the door. He enters_.

MATT Where is he? He's not gone to the fair so early?

SALLY He's in the room.

MATT Were you talking to him at all? Were you telling him you saw myself?

SALLY I was telling him that you were coming back.

MATT How did he take it?

SALLY Very quiet. G.o.d help us all; I think father's losing his spirit.

MATT _(going to Martin)_ Well, you see I've come back, Martin.

MARTIN DOURAS Ay, you're a good lad. I always said you were a good lad.

MATT How did father take it, Martin?

MARTIN DOURAS Quietly, quietly. You saw Ellen?

MATT Ay, I saw Ellen _(gloomily)_. She shouldn't talk the way she talks, Martin. What she said keeps coming into my mind, and I'm troubled. G.o.d knows I've trouble enough on my head.

MARTIN DOURAS _(eagerly)_ What did she say, Matt Cosgar?

MATT It wasn't what she said. She has that school in her mind, I know.

MARTIN DOURAS And is there anything to keep her here, Matt Cosgar?

MATT I don't know that she thinks much of me now. We had a few words, but there's nothing in the world I put above Ellen Douras.

MARTIN DOURAS I should be going to her.

MATT Wait a bit, and I'll be going with you. Wait a bit. Let us talk it over. She wouldn't go from you, and you old.

MARTIN DOURAS G.o.d forgive my age, if it would keep her here. Would I have my Ellen drawing turf, or minding a cow, or feeding pigs?