ACT I
Scene: The kitchen in Damer's house. Outer door at back. Door leading to an inner room to right. A dresser, a table, and a couple of chairs. An old coat and hat hanging on the wall. A knocking is heard at door at back. It is unlatched from outside. Delia comes in.
Delia: (Looking round cautiously and going back to door.) You may come in, Staffy and Ralph. There would seem to be no person here.
Staffy: Take care would Damer ask us to cross the threshold at all. I would not ask to go pushing on him, but to wait till he would call to us himself. He is not an easy led man.
Delia: (Crossing and knocking at inner door.) He is not in it. He is likely slipped out unknownst.
Ralph: Herself that thought to find him at the brink of death and nearing his last leap, after what happened him with the jennet. We heard tell of it as far as we were.
Delia: What ailed him to go own a jennet, he that has means to stable a bay horse would set the windows rattling on the public road, and it sparkling over the flintstones after dark?
Staffy: Sure he owns no fourfooted beast only the dog abroad in its box. To make its way into the haggard the jennet did, the time it staggered him with a kick. To forage out some grazing it thought to do, beyond dirt and scutchgrass among the stones. Very cross jennets do be, as it is a cross man it met with.
Delia: A queer sort of a brother he is. To go searching Ireland you wouldn't find queerer. But as soon as I got word what happened I bade Ralph to put the tacklings on the ass. We must have nature about us some way. There was silence between us long enough.
Ralph: She was thinking it might be the cause of him getting his death sooner than God has it promised to him, and that it might turn his mind more friendly like towards us, he knowing us to be at hand for to settle out his burying.
Delia: Why wouldn't it, and we being all the brothers and sisters ever he had, since Jane Niland, God rest her soul, went out last Little Christmas from the troubles and torments of the world.
Staffy: There is nothing left of that marriage now, only one young lad is said to be mostly a fool.
Delia: It is ourselves can bear witness to that, where he came into the house ere yesterday, having no way of living, since death and misfortune scattered him, but as if he was left down out of the skies.
Ralph: He has not, unless the pound piece the mother put into his hand at the last. It is much she had that itself. The time Tom Niland died from her, he didn't leave her hardly the cat.
Staffy: The lad to have any wit around him he would have come travelling hither along with yourselves, to see would he knock any kindness out of Damer.
Ralph: It is what herself was saying, it would be no advantage to him to be coming here at all, he being as he is half light, where there is nothing only will or wit could pick any profit out of Damer. She did not let on to him what side were we facing, and we travelling out from Loughtyshassy.
Staffy: It is likely he will get tidings as good as yourself. It is said, and said largely, Damer has a full gallon jar of gold.
Ralph: There is no one could lift it—God bless it—they were telling me. Filled up it is and brimmed to the very brink.
Staffy: His heart and his soul gone into it. He is death on that gallon of gold.
Delia: He would give leave to the poorhouse to bury him, if he could but put in his will they should leave it down with his bones.
Staffy: A man could live an easy life surely and that much being in the house.
Delia: There is no more grasping man within the four walls of the world. A strange thing he turning to be so ugly and prone to misery, where he was reared along with myself. I have the first covetous person yet to meet I would like! I never would go thrusting after gold, I to get all Lord Clanricarde's estate.
Ralph: She never would, only at a time she might have her own means spent and consumed.
Staffy: The house is very racked beside what it was. The hungriest cabin in the whole ring of Connemara would not show out so empty and so bare.
Delia: (Taking up a jug.) No sign in this vessel of anything that would leave a sign. I'll go bail he takes his tea in a black state, and the milk to be rotting in the churn.
Ralph: (Handling a coat and hat hanging on a nail.) That's a queer cut of a hat. That now should have been a good top-coat in its time.
Delia: For pity's sake! That is the top-coat and the hat he used to be wearing and he riding his long-tailed pony to every racecourse from this to the Curragh of Kildare. A good class of cloth it should be to last out through seventeen years.
Staffy: The time he was young and fundless he had not a bad reaching hand. He never was thrifty but lavish till he came into the ownership of the land. It is as if his luck left him, he growing timid at the time he had means to lose.
Delia: Every horse he would back at that time it would surely win all before it. I saw the people thronging him one time, taking him in their arms for joy, and the winnings coming into his hand. It is likely they ran out through the fingers as swift nearly as they flowed in.
Staffy: He grew to be very dark and crabbed from the time of the father's death. His mind was on his halfpenny ever since.
Delia: (Looking at dresser.) Spiders' webs heaped in ridges the same as windrows in a bleach of hay. What now is that there above on the upper shelf?
Ralph: (Taking it from top shelf.) It is but a pack of cards.
Staffy: They should maybe be the very same that brought him profit in his wild days. He always had a lucky hand.
Delia: (Dusting them.) You would give your seven oaths the dust to have been gathering on them since the time of the Hebrews' Flood. I'll tell you now a thing to do. We being here before him in the house, why wouldn't we ready it and put some sort of face upon it, the way he would be in humour with us coming in.
Ralph: And the way he might incline to put into our hand some good promise or some gift.
Delia: (Dusting.) I would wish no gift from any person at all, but that my mind is set at this time on a fleet of white goats and a guinea-hen are to be canted out from the Spanish woman at Lisatuwna cross by reason of the hanging gale.
Staffy: That was the way with you, Delia, from the time you could look out from the half-door, to be coveting pictures and fooleries, that would shape themselves in your mind.
Delia: There is no sin coveting things are of no great use or profit, but would show out good and have some grandeur around them. Those goats now! Browsing on the blossoms of the bushes they would be, or the herbs that give out a sweet smell. Stir yourself, Staffy, and throw your eye on that turf beyond in the corner. It is that wet you could wring from it splashes and streams. Let you rise the ashes from the sods are on the hearth and redden them with a goosewing, if there is a goosewing to be found. There is no greater beauty to be met with than the leaping of a little yellow flame.
Staffy: In my opinion there will no pay-day come for this work, but only a thank-you job; a County Clare payment, 'God spare you the health!'
Delia: Let you do it, Ralph so. (Takes potatoes from a sieve.) A roasted potato would be a nice thing to put before him, in the place of this old crust of a loaf. Put them in now around the sods, the way they will be crispy before him.
Ralph: (Taking them.) And the way he will see you are a good housekeeper and will mind well anything he might think fit to give.
Delia: (At clock.) I'll set to the right time of day the two hands of the clock are pointing a full hour before the sun. Take, Staffy, that pair of shoes and lessen from them the clay of the land. That much of doing will not break your heart. He will be as proud as the fallen angels seeing the way we have all set out before him.
(A harsh laugh is heard at inner door. They turn and see Damer watching them.)
Ralph: Glory be to God!
Delia: It is Damer was within all the time!
Staffy: What are you talking about, Delia? It is Patrick you were meaning to say.
Damer: Let her go on prattling out Damer to my face, as it is often she called it behind my shoulders. Damer the chandler, the miser got the spoil of the Danes, that was mocked at since the time of the Danes. I know well herself and the world have me christened with that nickname.
Ralph: Ah, it is not to dispraise you they put it on you, but to show you out so wealthy and so rich.
Damer: I am thinking it is not love of my four bones brings you on this day under my thatch?
Staffy: We heard tell you were after being destroyed with a jennet.
Damer: Picking up newses and tidings of me ye do be. It is short the delay was on you coming.
Delia: And I after travelling through the most of the day on the head of you being wounded and hurt, thinking you to be grieving to see one of your own! And I in dread of my life stealing past your wicked dog.
Damer: My joy he is, scaring you with his bark! If it wasn't for him you would have me clogged and tormented, coming in and bothering me every whole minute.
Delia: There is no person in Ireland only yourself but would have as much welcome for me to-day as on the first day ever they saw me!
Damer: What's that you are doing with my broom?
Delia: To do away with the spider's webs I did, where the shelves were looped with them and smothered. Look at all that came off of that pack of cards.
Damer: What call had you to do away with them, and they belonging to myself? Is it to bleed to death I should and I to get a tip of a billhook or a slasher? You and your vagaries to have left me bare, that I would be without means to quench the blood, and it to rise up from my veins and to scatter on every side!
Delia: Is it that you are without e'er a rag, and that ancient coat to be hanging on the wall?
Damer: The place swept to flitters! What is that man of yours doing and he handling my turf?
Ralph: It was herself thought to be serviceable to you, setting out the fuel that was full of dampness where it would get an air of the fire.
Damer: To dry it is it? (Seizes sods and takes them from the hearth.) And what length would it be without being burned and consumed and it not to be wet putting it on? (Pours water over it.) And I after stacking it purposely in the corner where there does be a drip from the thatch.
Ralph: She but thought it would be more answerable to you being dry.
Damer: What way could I bear the expense of a fire on the hearth and it to leave smouldering and to break out into a blaze? A month's cutting maybe to go to ashes within three minutes, and into wisps of smoke. And the price of turf in this year gone wild out of measure, and it packed so roguish you could read the printed speeches on the paper through the sods you do be buying in the creel.
Staffy: I was saying myself not to meddle with it. It is hurry is a worse friend than delay.
Damer: Where did you get those spuds are roasting there upon the hearth?
Ralph: Herself that brought them out from the sieve, thinking to make ready your meal.
Damer: My seed potatoes! Samples I got from the guardians and asked in the shops and in stores till I'd gather enough to set a few ridges in the gardens would serve me through the length of the year!
Delia: Let you be satisfied so with your mouldy bit of loaf. (Breaks a bit from it and hands it to him.)
Damer: Do not be breaking it so wasteful! The mice to have news there was as much as that of crumbs in the house, they would be running the same as chickens around the floor!
Ralph: Thinking to be comfortable to you she was, the way you would make us welcome from this out.
Damer: Which of ye is after meddling with my clock?
Delia: It was a full hour before its time.
Darner: It to be beyond its time, wouldn't that save fire and candles sending me to my bed early in the night? Leave down those boots! (Takes them from Staffy.) Is it that you are wearing out the uppers with scraping at them and scratching! Is it to rob me ye are come into this place?
Delia: I tell you we only came in getting word that you were done and dying.
Damer: Ha! Is it to think I was dying ye did? Well, I am not. I am not so easy quenched. Strength and courage I have, to keep a fast grip of what I own.
Delia: Let you not be talking that way! We are no grabbers and no thieves!
Damer: I have it in my mind that ye are. Very ravenous to run through my money ye are.
Delia: The world knows I am not ravenous! I never gave my heart to silver or to gold but only to the thing it would bring in. But to hold from me the thing my heart is craving after, you might as well blacken the hearth.
Damer: Striving to scare me out of my courage and my wits, the way I'll give in to go making my will.
Ralph: She would not be wishful you to do that the time your mind would be vexed.
Damer: I'll make it, sick or sound, if I have a mind to make it.
Delia: Little thanks you'll get from me if you make it or do not make it. That is the naked truth.
Damer: The whole of ye think yourselves to be very managing and very wise!
Delia: Let you go will it so to an asylum for fools.
Damer: Why wouldn't I? It is in the asylums all the sense is these times. There is only the fools left outside.
Delia: You to bestow it outside of your own kindred for to benefit and comfort your soul, all the world will say it is that you had it gathered together by fraud.
Staffy: Do not be annoying him now.
Delia: I will not. But the time he will be lying under the flagstone, it is holly rods and brambles will spring up from out of his thorny heart.
Damer: A hasty, cranky woman in the house is worse than you to lay your hand upon red coals! I know well your tongue that is as sharp as the sickle of the moon!
Delia: The character you will leave after you will be worse out and out than Herod's!
Damer: The devil upon the winds she is! That one was born into the world having the use of the bow and arrows!
Delia: You not to give fair play to your own, it is a pitiful ghost will appear in your image, questing and craving our prayers!
Damer: I know well what is your aim and your drift!
Delia: I say any man has a right to give thanks to the heavens, and he having decent people to will his means to, in place of people having no call to it.
Damer: Whoever I'll will it to will have call to it!
Delia: Or to part with it to low people and to mean people, and you having it to give.
Damer: Having it to give is it? Do you see that lock on the door?
Delia: I do see it and have eyes to see it.
Damer: Can you make any guess what is inside of it?
Delia: It is likely it is what there is so much talk about, your own full gallon of gold.
(Ralph takes off his hat.)
Damer: Lay now your eye to that lock hole.
Ralph: (Looking through keyhole.) It is all dusky within. It fails me to see any shining thing.
(Staffy and Delia put their eyes to keyhole but draw back disappointed.)
Darner: If you cannot see it, try can you get the smell of it. Take a good draw of it now; lay your head along the hinges of the door. So now ye may quit and scamper out of this, the whole throng of ye, robbers and hangmen and bankbreakers, bargers and bad characters, and you may believe me telling you that is the nearest ye ever will come to my gold!
(He bangs back into room locking door after him.)
Delia: He has no more nature than the brutes of the field, hunting and howling after us.
Staffy: Yourself that rose him out of his wits and his senses. We will sup sorrow for this day's work where he will put curses after us. It is best for us go back to my place. It may be to-morrow that his anger will be cured up.
Ralph: I thought it was to lay him out with candles we were brought here. I declare I came nearer furnishing out a corpse myself with the start I got.
Delia: There is no dread on me. When he gets in humour I will tackle up again to him. It is too far I came to be facing back to Loughtyshassy and I fasting from the price of my goats! Little collars I was thinking to buckle around their neck the same as a lady's lapdog, and maybe so far as a small clear-sounding bell.
(They go out, Damer comes back. He puts on clock, rakes out fire, picks up potatoes and puts them back in sieve, takes bread into his room. There is a knock at the door. Then it is cautiously opened and Simon Niland comes in, and stands near the hearth. Damer comes back and sees him.)
Damer: What are you looking for?
Simon: For what I won't get seemingly, that is a welcome.
Damer: Maybe it's for fists you are looking?
Simon: It is not, before I will get my rest. I couldn't box to-night if I was the Queen of England.
Damer: Have you any traffic with that congregation is after going out?
Simon: I seen no person good or bad, but a dog and it on the chain.
Damer: You to have in you any of the breed of the Kirwans that is my own, I'd rise the tongs and pitch you out from the door!
Simon: I suppose you would not begrudge me to rest myself for a while, (Sits down.)
Damer: I'll give leave to no strolling vagabond to sit in any place at all.
Simon: All right so.
(Tosses a coin he takes from his pocket, tied in a spotted
handkerchief.)
Damer: What's that you're doing?
Simon: Pitching a coin I was to see would it bid me go west or east.
Damer: Go toss outside so.
Simon: (Stooping and groping.) I will after I will find it.
Damer: Hurry on now.
Simon: Wait till I'll kindle a match. (Lights one and picks up coin.)
Damer: What is that in your hand?
Simon: You should know.
Damer: Is it gold it is?
Simon: It is all I have of means in the world. I never handled a coin before it, but my bite to be given me and my bed.
Damer: You'll mind it well if you have sense.
Simon: It is towards the east it bade me go. I'll travel as far as the races of Knockbarron to-morrow.
Damer: You'll be apt to lose it going to races.
Simon: I'll go bet with it, and see what way will it turn out.
Damer: You to set all you own upon a horse that might fail at the leaps! It is a very foolish thing doing that.
Simon: It might not. Some have luck and are born lucky and more have run through their luck. If I lose it, it is lost. It would not keep me long anyway. I to win, I will have more and plenty.
Damer: You will surely lose it.
Simon: If I do I have nothing to get or to fall back on. It is some other one must take my charges.
Damer: A great pity to go lose a gold sovereign to some schemer you never saw before.
Simon: Sure you must take some risk. You cannot put your hands around the world.
Damer: It to be swept by a trick of the loop man!
Simon: It is not with that class I will make free.
Damer: To go lose the whole of it in one second of time!
Simon: I will make four divides of it.
Damer: To go change it into silver and into copper! That would be the most pity in the world.
Simon: I'll chance it all upon the one jock so.
Damer: Gold! Believe me it is a good thing to hold and a very heartbreak the time it is lost. (Takes it in his hand.) Pure gold! There is not a thing to be got with it as worthy as what it is itself! There is no comfort in any place and it not in it. The Queen's image on it and her crown. Solid between the fingers; weighty in the palm of the hand; as beautiful as ever I saw.
Simon: It is likely it is the same nearly as any other one.
Damer: Gold! My darling it is! From the hollows of the world to the heights of the world there is no grander thing to be found. My bone and my marrow! Let me have the full of my arms of it and I'll not ask the flowers of field or fallow or the dancing of the Easter sun!
Simon: I am thinking you should be Damer. I heard said Damer has a full crock of gold.
Damer: He has not! He has not!
Simon: That is what the world says anyway. I heard it as far as the seaside.
Damer: I wish to my God it was true!
Simon: Full and brimming to the brink. That is the way it was told.
Damer: It is not full! It is not! Whisper now. It is many a time I thought it to be full, full at last, full at last!
Simon: And it wasn't after?
Damer: To take it and to shake it I do. It is often I gave myself a promise the time there will be no sound from it, I will give in to nourish myself, I will rise out of misery. But every time I will try it, I will hear a little clatter that tells me there is some space left; some small little hole or gap.
Simon: What signifies that when you have so much in it?
Damer: Weightier it gets and weightier, but there will always be that little sound. I thought to stop it one time, putting in a fistful of hayseed; but I felt in my heart that was not dealing fair and honest with myself, and I rose up and shook it out again, rising up from my bed in the night time. I near got my death with the cold and the draught fell on me doing that.
Simon: It is best for me be going on where I might find my bed,
Damer: Hearken now. I am old and the long road behind me. You are young and in your strength. It is you is rich, it is I myself that is poor. You know well, you to get the offer, you would not change your lot with my own.
Simon: I suppose I might not. I'd as lief keep my countenance and my run.
Darner: Isn't it a great pity there to be that hollow within in my gallon, and the little coin that would likely just fill it up, to be going out of the house?
Simon: Is it that you are asking it of me?
Damer: You might never find so good a way to open Heaven to yourself with a charity. To be bringing peace to an old man that has not long to live in the world! You wouldn't think now how quiet I would sleep, and the good dreams would be going through me, and that gallon jar to be full and to make no sound the time I would roll it on the floor. That would be a great deed for one little pound piece to do!
Simon: I'll toss you for it.
Damer: I would not dare put anything at all upon a chance.
Simon: Leave it alone so. (Turns away.)
Damer: (Seizing him.) It would make such a good appearance in the little gap!
Simon: Head or harp?
Damer: No, I'm in dread I might lose.
Simon: Take your chance or leave it.
Damer: I to lose, you may kill me on the moment! My heart is driven down in the sole of my shoe!
Simon: That is poor courage.
Damer: There is some shiver forewarning me I will lose! I made a strong oath I never would give in again to try any sort of chance.
Simon: You didn't make it but with yourself.
Damer: It was through my luck leaving me I swore against betting and gaming.
Simon: It might turn back fresh and hearty where you gave it so long a rest.
Damer: Well—maybe——
Simon: Here now.
Damer: I dare not.
Simon: (Going to door.) I'll make my bet so according to a dream I had. It is on a red horse I will put it to-morrow.
Damer: No—stop—wait a minute.
Simon: I'll win surely following my dream.
Damer: I might not lose.
Simon: I'm in dread of that. All turns to the man is rich.
Damer: I'll chance it!
Simon: You said no and I'll take no.
Damer: You cannot go back of your word.
Simon: Let me go out from you tempting me.
Damer: (Seizing him.) Heads! I say heads!
Simon: Harps it is. I win.
Damer: My bitter grief! Ochone!
Simon: I'll toss you for another.
Damer: You will not. What's tosses? Look at here what is put in my way! (Holds up pack of cards.)
Simon: Where's the stakes?
Damer: Wait a second. (Goes into room.)
Simon: Hurry on or I won't stop.
Damer: Let you not stir out of that!
(Comes back and throws money on table.)
Simon: Come on so.
(Shuffles cards.)
Darner: Give me the pack. (Cuts.) I didn't feel a card between my fingers this seven and a half-score years!
Simon: Spades are trumps.
Darner: (Lighting candle.) I'll win it back! I won't begrudge spending a penny candle, no, or two penny candles! I'll play you to the brink of day!
Curtain