KEEGAN.The Church let me be its priest as long as it thought me fit for its work.When it took away my papers it meant you to know that I was only a poor madman,unfit and unworthy to take charge of the souls of the people.
PATSY.But wasn't it only because you knew more Latn than Father Dempsey that he was jealous of you?
KEEGAN [scolding him to keep himself from smiling].How dar you,Patsy Farrell,put your own wicked little spites and foolishnesses into the heart of your priest?For two pins I'd tell him what you just said.
PATSY [coaxing]Sure you wouldn't--
KEEGAN.Wouldn't I?God forgive you!You're little better than a heathen.
PATSY.Deedn I am,Fadher:it's me bruddher the tinsmith in Dublin you're thinkin of.Sure he had to be a freethinker when he larnt a thrade and went to live in the town.
KEEGAN.Well,he'll get to Heaven before you if you're not careful,Patsy.And now you listen to me,once and for all.
You'll talk to me and pray for me by the name of Pether Keegan,so you will.And when you're angry and tempted to lift your hand agen the donkey or stamp your foot on the little grasshopper,remember that the donkey's Pether Keegan's brother,and the grasshopper Pether Keegan's friend.And when you're tempted to throw a stone at a sinner or a curse at a beggar,remember that Pether Keegan is a worse sinner and a worse beggar,and keep the stone and the curse for him the next time you meet him.Now say God bless you,Pether,to me before I go,just to practise you a bit.
PATSY.Sure it wouldn't be right,Fadher.I can't--KEEGAN.Yes you can.Now out with it;or I'll put this stick into your hand an make you hit me with it.
PATSY [throwing himself on his knees in an ecstasy of adoration].
Sure it's your blessin I want,Fadher Keegan.I'll have no luck widhout it.
KEEGAN [shocked].Get up out o that,man.Don't kneel to me:I'm not a saint.
PATSY [with intense conviction].Oh in throth yar,sir.[The grasshopper chirps.Patsy,terrified,clutches at Keegan's hands]
Don't set it on me,Fadher:I'll do anythin you bid me.
KEEGAN [pulling him up].You bosthoon,you!Don't you see that it only whistled to tell me Miss Reilly's comin?There!Look at her and pull yourself together for shame.Off widja to the road:
you'll be late for the car if you don't make haste [bustling him down the hill].I can see the dust of it in the gap already.
PATSY.The Lord save us![He goes down the hill towards the road like a haunted man].
Nora Reilly comes down the hill.A slight weak woman in a pretty muslin print gown [her best],she is a figure commonplace enough to Irish eyes;but on the inhabitants of fatter-fed,crowded,hustling and bustling modern countries she makes a very different impression.The absence of any symptoms of coarseness or hardness or appetite in her,her comparative delicacy of manner and sensibility of apprehension,her thin hands and slender figure,her travel accent,with the caressing plaintive Irish melody of her speech,give her a charm which is all the more effective because,being untravelled,she is unconscious of it,and never dreams of deliberately dramatizing and exploiting it,as the Irishwoman in England does.For Tom Broadbent therefore,an attractive woman,whom he would even call ethereal.
To Larry Doyle,an everyday woman fit only for the eighteenth century,helpless,useless,almost sexless,an invalid without the excuse of disease,an incarnation of everything in Ireland that drove him out of it.These judgments have little value and no finality;but they are the judgments on which her fate hangs just at present.Keegan touches his hat to her:he does not take it off.
NORA.Mr Keegan:I want to speak to you a minute if you don't mind.
KEEGAN [dropping the broad Irish vernacular of his speech to Patsy].An hour if you like,Miss Reilly:you're always welcome.
Shall we sit down?
NORA.Thank you.[They sit on the heather.She is shy and anxious;but she comes to the point promptly because she can think of nothing else].They say you did a gradle o travelling at one time.
KEEGAN.Well you see I'm not a Mnooth man [he means that he was not a student at Maynooth College].When I was young I admired the older generation of priests that had been educated in Salamanca.So when I felt sure of my vocation I went to Salamanca.Then I walked from Salamanca to Rome,an sted in a monastery there for a year.My pilgrimage to Rome taught me that walking is a better way of travelling than the train;so I walked from Rome to the Sorbonne in Paris;and I wish I could have walked from Paris to Oxford;for I was very sick on the sea.
After a year of Oxford I had to walk to Jerusalem to walk the Oxford feeling off me.From Jerusalem I came back to Patmos,and spent six months at the monastery of Mount Athos.From that Icame to Ireland and settled down as a parish priest until I went mad.
NORA [startled].Oh dons say that.
KEEGAN.Why not?Don't you know the story?how I confessed a black man and gave him absolution;and how he put a spell on me and drove me mad.
NORA.How can you talk such nonsense about yourself?For shame!
KEEGAN.It's not nonsense at all:it's true--in a way.But never mind the black man.Now that you know what a travelled man I am,what can I do for you?[She hesitates and plucks nervously at the heather.He stays her hand gently].Dear Miss Nora:don't pluck the little flower.If it was a pretty baby you wouldn't want to pull its head off and stick it in a vawse o water to look at.
[The grasshopper chirps:Keegan turns his head and addresses it in the vernacular].Be aisy,me son:she won't spoil the swing-swong in your little three.[To Nora,resuming his urbane style]You see I'm quite cracked;but never mind:I'm harmless.
Now what is it?
NORA [embarrassed].Oh,only idle curiosity.I wanted to know whether you found Ireland--I mean the country part of Ireland,of course--very small and backwardlike when you came back to it from Rome and Oxford and all the great cities.
