Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/197

Rh from the bed where he is stretched and drinks whiskey with a tramp who has happened in while Nora is gone to meet her young man. From such a situation it turns to keen pathos, as Nora sits with tramp and lover and the old husband she thinks dead, and listens to the wind and rain sweeping through the high glens about the hut and thinks of "the young growing behind her," and the old passing. Where else will you find cheek by jowl such sardonic humor as this and such poignancy of lament for the passing of youth? Nora speaks as she pours out whiskey for her young man:—

Why would I marry you, Mike Dara? You'll be getting old and I'll be getting old, and in a little while, I'm telling you, you'll be sitting up in your bed—the way himself was sitting—with a shake in your face, and your teeth falling, and the white hair sticking out round you like an old bush where sheep do be leaping a gap.

(Dan Burke sits up noiselessly from under the sheet, with his hand to his face. His white hair is sticking out round his head. Nora goes on slowly without hearing him.)

It's a pitiful thing to be getting old, but it's a queer thing surely. It's a queer thing to see an old man sitting up there in his bed with no teeth in him, and a rough word in his mouth, and his chin the way it would take the bark from the edge of an oak board you'd have building a door.... God forgive me, Michael Dara, we'll all be getting old, but it's a queer thing surely.

Michael. It's too lonesome you are from living a long time with an old man, Nora, and you're talking again like a herd that would be coming down from the thick mist (he puts his arm round her), but it's a fine life you'll have now with a young man—a fine life, surely.

(Dan sneezes violently. Michael tries to get to the door, but before