“Tony?”
“Yes. Believe me, there’s nothing that a boy like that cannot do with his happiness and youth. It goes out from him and spreads like a magic wand. If people only knew how much they owed to that kind of influence——”
“Well, perhaps it is Tony,” said Maradick, laughing. “I am fonder of him than I can say; but, whatever the cause, the dreams are there.”
Lester took out a book from under his arm. It was long and thin and bound in grey parchment.
“Here,” he said, “is a book that perhaps you know. It is one of the most beautiful comedies in our language. This man was a dreamer too, and his dreams are amongst the most precious things that we have. I may write to the end of time, but I shall never reach that exquisite beauty.”
Maradick took the book; it was Synge’s “Play-boy of the Western World.” He had never heard of the man or of the play. He turned its pages curiously.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that I’ve never heard of it. It is Irish, I see. I think I do remember vaguely when the Dublin players were in London last year hearing something. The man has died, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, and he didn’t leave very much behind him, but what there is is of the purest gold. See, listen to this, one of the greatest love-scenes in our language. It is a boy and a girl in a lonely inn on an Irish moor.”
He read:—
The Girl.—“What call have you to be that lonesome when there’s poor girls walking Mayo in their thousands now?”