WIDOW QUIN. She'll knock the head of you, I'm thinking, and drive you from the door. God help her to be taking you for a wonder, and you a little schemer making up the story you destroyed your da.
CHRISTY -- [turning to the door, nearly speechless with rage, half to himself.] -- To be letting on he was dead, and coming back to his life, and following after me like an old weazel tracing a rat, and coming in here laying desolation between my own self and the fine women of Ireland, and he a kind of carcase that you'd fling upon the sea. . .
WIDOW QUIN -- [more soberly.] -- There's talking for a man's one only son.
CHRISTY -- [breaking out.] -- His one son, is it? May I meet him with one tooth and it aching, and one eye to be seeing seven and seventy divils in the twists of the road, and one old timber leg on him to limp into the scalding grave. (Looking out.) There he is now crossing the strands, and that the Lord God would send a high wave to wash him from the world.
WIDOW QUIN -- [scandalised.] Have you no shame? (putting her hand on his shoulder and turning him round.) What ails you? Near crying, is it?
CHRISTY -- [in despair and grief.] -- Amn't I after seeing the love-light of the star of knowledge shining from her brow, and hearing words would put you thinking on the holy Brigid speaking to the infant saints, and now she'll be turning again, and speaking hard words to me, like an old woman with a spavindy ass she'd have, urging on a hill.
WIDOW QUIN. There's poetry talk for a girl you'd see itching and scratching, and she with a stale stink of poteen on her from selling in the shop.
CHRISTY -- [impatiently.] It's her like is fitted to be handling merchandise in the heavens above, and what'll I be doing now, I ask you, and I a kind of wonder was jilted by the heavens when a day was by. [There is a distant noise of girls' voices. Widow Quin looks from window and comes to him, hurriedly.
WIDOW QUIN. You'll be doing like myself, I'm thinking, when I did destroy my man, for I'm above many's the day, odd times in great spirits, abroad in the sunshine, darning a stocking or stitching a shift; and odd times again looking out on the schooners, hookers, trawlers is sailing the sea, and I thinking on the gallant hairy fellows are drifting beyond, and myself long years living alone.
CHRISTY -- [interested.] You're like me, so.
WIDOW QUIN. I am your like, and it's for that I'm taking a fancy to you, and I with my little houseen above where there'd be myself to tend you, and none to ask were you a murderer or what at all.
CHRISTY. And what would I be doing if I left Pegeen?
WIDOW QUIN. I've nice jobs you could be doing, gathering shells to make a whitewash for our hut within, building up a little goose-house, or stretching a new skin on an old curragh I have, and if my hut is far from all sides, it's there you'll meet the wisest old men, I tell you, at the corner of my wheel, and it's there yourself and me will have great times whispering and hugging. .
. .
VOICES -- [outside, calling far away.] -- Christy! Christy Mahon! Christy!
CHRISTY. Is it Pegeen Mike?
WIDOW QUIN. It's the young girls, I'm thinking, coming to bring you to the sports below, and what is it you'll have me to tell them now?
CHRISTY. Aid me for to win Pegeen. It's herself only that I'm seeking now.
(Widow Quin gets up and goes to window.) Aid me for to win her, and I'll be asking God to stretch a hand to you in the hour of death, and lead you short cuts through the Meadows of Ease, and up the floor of Heaven to the Footstool of the Virgin's Son.
WIDOW QUIN. There's praying.
VOICES -- [nearer.] Christy! Christy Mahon!
CHRISTY -- [with agitation.] -- They're coming. Will you swear to aid and save me for the love of Christ?
WIDOW QUIN -- [looks at him for a moment.] -- If I aid you, will you swear to give me a right of way I want, and a mountainy ram, and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the time that you'll be master here?
CHRISTY. I will, by the elements and stars of night.
WIDOW QUIN. Then we'll not say a word of the old fellow, the way Pegeen won't know your story till the end of time.
CHRISTY. And if he chances to return again?
WIDOW QUIN. We'll swear he's a maniac and not your da. I could take an oath I seen him raving on the sands to-day. [Girls run in.]
SUSAN. Come on to the sports below. Pegeen says you're to come.
SARA TANSEY. The lepping's beginning, and we've a jockey's suit to fit upon you for the mule race on the sands below.
HONOR. Come on, will you?
CHRISTY. I will then if Pegeen's beyond.
SARA. She's in the boreen making game of Shaneen Keogh.
CHRISTY. Then I'll be going to her now. [He runs out followed by the girls.]
WIDOW QUIN. Well, if the worst comes in the end of all, it'll be great game to see there's none to pity him but a widow woman, the like of me, has buried her children and destroyed her man. [She goes out.]
CURTAIN
