John Bull's Other Island/Act II, § ii
FATHER DEMPSEY. Do, Patsy. And mind you don't fall down again.
PATSY. Sure I—
CORNELIUS [bustling him up the hill] Whisht! heres Ant Judy. [Patsy goes grumbling in disgrace, with Father Dempsey's hamper].
Aunt Judy comes down the hill, a woman of 50, in no way remarkable, lively and busy without energy or grip, placid without tranquillity, kindly without concern for others: indeed without much concern for herself: a contented product of a narrow, strainless life. She wears her hair parted in the middle and quite smooth, with a fattened bun at the back. Her dress is a plain brown frock, with a woollen pelerine of black and aniline mauve over her shoulders, all very trim in honor of the occasion. She looks round for Larry; is puzzled; then stares incredulously at Broadbent.
AUNT JUDY. Surely to goodness that's not you, Larry!
CORNELIUS. Arra how could he be Larry, woman alive? Larry's in no hurry home, it seems. I haven't set eyes on him. This is his friend, Mr Broadbent. Mr Broadbent, me sister Judy.
AUNT JUDY [hospitably: going to Broadbent and shaking hands heartily]. Mr. Broadbent! Fancy me takin you for Larry! Sure we haven't seen a sight of him for eighteen years, n he only a lad when he left us.
BROADBENT. It's not Larry's fault: he was to have been here before me. He started in our motor an hour before Mr Doyle arrived, to meet us at Athenmullet, intending to get here long before me.
AUNT JUDY. Lord save us! do you think he's had n axidnt?
BROADBENT. No: he's wired to say he's had a breakdown and will come on as soon as he can. He expects to be here at about ten.
AUNT JUDY. There now! Fancy him trustn himself in a motor and we all expectn him! Just like him! he'd never do anything like anybody else. Well, what can't be cured must be injoored. Come on in, all of you. You must be dyin for your tea, Mr Broadbent.
BROADBENT [with a slight start]. Oh, I'm afraid it's too late for tea [he looks at his watch].
AUNT JUDY. Not a bit: we never have it airlier than this. I hope they gave you a good dinner at Athenmullet.
BROADBENT [trying to conceal his consternation as he realizes that he is not going to get any dinner after his drive] Oh—er—excellent, excellent. By the way, hadn't I better see about a room at the hotel? [They stare at him].
CORNELIUS. The hotel!
FATHER DEMPSEY. Hwat hotel?
AUNT JUDY. Indeedn you'e not goin to a hotel. You'll stay with us. I'd have put you into Larry's room, only the boy's pallyass is too short for you; but we'll make a comfortable bed for you on the sofa in the parlor.
BROADBENT. You're very kind, Miss Doyle; but really I'm ashamed to give you so much trouble unnecessarily. I shan't mind the hotel in the least.
FATHER DEMPSEY. Man alive! There's no hotel in Rosscullen.
BROADBENT. No hotel! Why, the driver told me there was the finest hotel in Ireland here. [They regard him joylessly].
AUNT JUDY. Arra would you mind what the like of him would tell you? Sure he'd say whatever was the least trouble to himself and the pleasantest to you, thinkin you might give him a thruppeny bit for himself or the like.
BROADBENT. Perhaps there's a public house.
FATHER DEMPSEY [grimly.] There's seventeen.
AUNT JUDY. Ah then, how could you stay at a public house? They'd have no place to put you even if it was a right place for you to go. Come! is it the sofa you're afraid of? If it is, you can have me own bed. I can sleep with Nora.
BROADBENT. Not at all, not at all: I should be only too delighted. But to upset your arrangements in this way—
CORNELIUS [anxious to cut short the discussion, which makes him ashamed of his house; for he guesses Broadbent's standard of comfort a little more accurately than his sister does] That's all right: it'll be no trouble at all. Hweres Nora?
AUNT JUDY. Oh, how do I know? She slipped out a little while ago: I thought she was goin to meet the car.
CORNELIUS [dissatisfied] It's a queer thing of her to run out o the way at such a time.
AUNT JUDY. Sure she's a queer girl altogether. Come. Come in, come in.
FATHER DEMPSEY. I'll say good-night, Mr Broadbent. If there's anything I can do for you in this parish, let me know. [He shakes hands with Broadbent].
BROADBENT [effusively cordial]. Thank you, Father Dempsey. Delighted to have met you, sir.
FATHER DEMPSEY [passing on to Aunt Judy]. Good-night, Miss Doyle.
AUNT JUDY. Won't you stay to tea?
FATHER DEMPSEY. Not to-night, thank you kindly: I have business to do at home. [He turns to go, and meets Patsy Farrell returning unloaded]. Have you left that hamper for me?
PATSY. Yis, your reverence.
FATHER DEMPSEY. That's a good lad [going].
PATSY [to Aunt Judy] Fadher Keegan sez—
FATHER DEMPSEY [turning sharply on him]. What's that you say?
PATSY [frightened]. Fadher Keegan—
FATHER DEMPSEY. How often have you heard me bid you call Mister Keegan in his proper name, the same as I do? Father Keegan indeed! Can't you tell the difference between your priest and any ole madman in a black coat?
PATSY. Sure I'm afraid he might put a spell on me.
FATHER DEMPSEY [wrathfully]. You mind what I tell you or I'll put a spell on you that'll make you lep. D'ye mind that now? [He goes home].
- Patsy goes down the hill to retrieve the fish, the bird, and the sack.
AUNT JUDY. Ah, hwy can't you hold your tongue, Patsy, before Father Dempsey?
PATSY. Well, what was I to do? Father Keegan bid me tell you Miss Nora was gone to the Roun Tower.
AUNT JUDY. An hwy couldn't you wait to tell us until Father Dempsey was gone?
PATSY. I was afeerd o forgetn it; and then maybe he'd a sent the grasshopper or the little dark looker into me at night to remind me of it. [The dark looker is the common grey lizard, which is supposed to walk down the throats of incautious sleepers and cause them to perish in a slow decline].
CORNELIUS. Yah, you great gaum, you! Widjer grasshoppers and dark lookers! Here: take up them things and let me hear no more o your foolish lip. [Patsy obeys]. You can take the sammin under your oxther. [He wedges the salmon into Patsy's axilla].
PATSY. I can take the goose too, sir. Put it on me back and gimmethe neck of it in me mouth. [Cornelius is about to comply thoughtlessly].
AUNT JUDY [feeling that Broadbent's presence demands special punctiliousness]. For shame, Patsy! to offer to take the goose in your mouth that we have to eat after you! The master'll bring it in for you. [Patsy, abashed, yet irritated by this ridiculous fastidiousness, takes his load up the hill].
CORNELIUS. What the jeuce does Nora want to go to the Roun Tower for?
AUNT JUDY. Oh, the Lord knows! Romancin, I suppose. Props she thinks Larry would go there to look for her and see her safe home.
BROADBENT. I'm afraid it's all the fault of my motor. Miss Reilly must not be left to wait and walk home alone at night. Shall I go for her?
AUNT JUDY [contemptuously]. Arra hwat ud happen to her? Hurry in now, Corny. Come, Mr Broadbent. I left the tea on the hob to draw; and it'll be black if we don't go in an drink it.
- They go up the hill. It is dark by this time.
Broadbent does not fare so badly after all at Aunt Judy's board. He gets not only tea and bread-and-butter, but more mutton chops than he has ever conceived it possible to eat at one sitting. There is also a most filling substance called potato cake. Hardly have his fears of being starved been replaced by his first misgiving that he is eating too much and will be sorry for it tomorrow, when his appetite is revived by the production of a bottle of illicitly distilled whisky, called pocheen, which he has read and dreamed of [he calls it pottine] and is now at last to taste. His good humor rises almost to excitement before Cornelius shows signs of sleepiness. The contrast between Aunt Judy's table service and that of the south and east coast hotels at which he spends his Fridays-to-Tuesdays when he is in London, seems to him delightfully Irish. The almost total atrophy of any sense of enjoyment in Cornelius, or even any desire for it or toleration of the possibility of life being something better than a round of sordid worries, relieved by tobacco, punch, fine mornings, and petty successes in buying and selling, passes with his guest as the whimsical affectation of a shrewd Irish humorist and incorrigible spendthrift. Aunt Judy seems to him an incarnate joke. The likelihood that the joke will pall after a month or so, and is probably not apparent at any time to born Rossculleners, or that he himself unconsciously entertains Aunt Judy by his fantastic English personality and English mispronunciations, does not occur to him for a moment. In the end he is so charmed, and so loth to go to bed and perhaps dream of prosaic England, that he insists on going out to smoke a cigar and look for Nora Reilly at the Round Tower. Not that any special insistence is needed; for the English inhibitive instinct does not seem to exist in Rosscullen. Just as Nora's liking to miss a meal and stay out at the Round Tower is accepted as a sufficient reason for her doing it, and for the family going to bed and leaving the door open for her, so Broadbent's whim to go out for a late stroll provokes neither hospitable remonstrance nor surprise. Indeed Aunt Judy wants to get rid of him whilst she makes a bed for him on the sofa. So off he goes, full fed, happy and enthusiastic, to explore the valley by moonlight.
The Round Tower stands about half an Irish mile from Rosscullen, some fifty yards south of the road on a knoll with a circle of wild greensward on it. The road once ran over this knoll; but modern engineering has tempered the level to the Beeyankiny car by carrying the road partly round the knoll and partly through a cutting; so that the way from the road to the tower is a footpath up the embankment through furze and brambles.
On the edge of this slope, at the top of the path, Nora is straining her eyes in the moonlight, watching for Larry. At last she gives it up with a sob of impatience, and retreats to the hoary foot of the tower, where she sits down discouraged and cries a little. Then she settles herself resignedly to wait, and hums a song—not an Irish melody, but a hackneyed English drawing-room ballad of the season before last—until some slight noise suggests a footstep, when she springs up eagerly and runs to the edge of the slope again. Some moments of silence and suspense follow, broken by unmistakable footsteps. She gives a little gasp as she sees a man approaching.
NORA. Is that you, Larry? [Frightened a little] Who's that?
[BROADBENT's voice from below on the path]. Don't be alarmed.
NORA. Oh, what an English accent you've got!
BROADBENT [rising into view] I must introduce myself—
NORA [violently startled, retreating]. It's not you! Who are you? What do you want?
BROADBENT [advancing]. I'm really so sorry to have alarmed you, Miss Reilly. My name is Broadbent. Larry's friend, you know.
NORA [chilled]. And has Mr Doyle not come with you?
BROADBENT. No. I've come instead. I hope I am not unwelcome.
NORA [deeply mortified]. I'm sorry Mr Doyle should have given you the trouble, I'm sure.
BROADBENT. You see, as a stranger and an Englishman, I thought it would be interesting to see the Round Tower by moonlight.
NORA. Oh, you came to see the tower. I thought—[confused, trying to recover her manners] Oh, of course. I was so startled—It's a beautiful night, isn't it?
BROADBENT. Lovely. I must explain why Larry has not come himself.
NORA. Why should he come? He's seen the tower often enough: it's no attraction to him. [Genteelly] An what do you think of Ireland, Mr Broadbent? Have you ever been here before?
BROADBENT. Never.
NORA. An how do you like it?
BROADBENT [suddenly betraying a condition of extreme sentimentality]. I can hardly trust myself to say how much I like it. The magic of this Irish scene, and—I really don't want to be personal, Miss Reilly; but the charm of your Irish voice—
NORA [quite accustomed to gallantry, and attaching no seriousness whatever to it]. Oh, get along with you, Mr Broadbent! You're breaking your heart about me already, I daresay, after seeing me for two minutes in the dark.
BROADBENT. The voice is just as beautiful in the dark, you know. Besides, I've heard a great deal about you from Larry.
NORA [with bitter indifference]. Have you now? Well, that's a great honor, I'm sure.
BROADBENT. I have looked forward to meeting you more than to anything else in Ireland.
NORA [ironically]. Dear me! did you now?
BROADBENT. I did really. I wish you had taken half as much interest in me.
NORA. Oh, I was dying to see you, of course. I daresay you can imagine the sensation an Englishman like you would make among us poor Irish people.
BROADBENT. Ah, now you're chaffing me, Miss Reilly: you know you are. You mustn't chaff me. I'm very much in earnest about Ireland and everything Irish. I'm very much in earnest about you and about Larry.
NORA. Larry has nothing to do with me, Mr Broadbent.
BROADBENT. If I really thought that, Miss Reilly, I should—well, I should let myself feel that charm of which I spoke just now more deeply than I—than I—
NORA. Is it making love to me you are?
BROADBENT [scared and much upset]. On my word I believe I am, Miss Reilly. If you say that to me again I shan't answer for myself: all the harps of Ireland are in your voice. [She laughs at him. He suddenly loses his head and seizes her arms, to her great indignation]. Stop laughing: do you hear? I am in earnest—in English earnest. When I say a thing like that to a woman, I mean it. [Releasing her and trying to recover his ordinary manner in spite of his bewildering emotion] I beg your pardon.
NORA. How dare you touch me?
BROADBENT. There are not many things I would not dare for you. That does not sound right perhaps; but I really— [he stops and passes his hand over his forehead, rather lost].
NORA. I think you ought to be ashamed. I think if you were a gentleman, and me alone with you in this place at night, you would die rather than do such a thing.
BROADBENT. You mean that it's an act of treachery to Larry?
NORA. Deed I don't. What has Larry to do with it? It's an act of disrespect and rudeness to me: it shows what you take me for. You can go your way now; and I'll go mine. Goodnight, Mr Broadbent.
BROADBENT. No, please, Miss Reilly. One moment. Listen to me. I'm serious: I'm desperately serious. Tell me that I'm interfering with Larry; and I'll go straight from this spot back to London and never see you again. That's on my honor: I will. Am I interfering with him?
NORA [answering in spite of herself in a sudden spring of bitterness]. I should think you ought to know better than me whether you're interfering with him. You've seen him oftener than I have. You know him better than I do, by this time. You've come to me quicker than he has, haven't you?
BROADBENT. I'm bound to tell you, Miss Reilly, that Larry has not arrived in Rosscullen yet. He meant to get here before me; but his car broke down; and he may not arrive until to-morrow.
NORA [her face lighting up]. Is that the truth?
BROADBENT. Yes: that's the truth. [She gives a sigh of relief]. You're glad of that?
NORA [up in arms at once]. Glad indeed! Why should I be glad? As we've waited eighteen years for him we can afford to wait a day longer, I should think.
BROADBENT. If you really feel like that about him, there may be a chance for another man yet. Eh?
NORA [deeply offended]. I suppose people are different in England, Mr Broadbent; so perhaps you don't mean any harm. In Ireland nobody'd mind what a man'd say in fun, nor take advantage of what a woman might say in answer to it. If a woman couldn't talk to a man for two minutes at their first meeting without being treated the way you're treating me, no decent woman would ever talk to a man at all.
BROADBENT. I don't understand that. I don't admit that. I am sincere; and my intentions are perfectly honorable. I think you will accept the fact that I'm an Englishman as a guarantee that I am not a man to act hastily or romantically, though I confess that your voice had such an extraordinary effect on me just now when you asked me so quaintly whether I was making love to you—
NORA [flushing] I never thought—
BROADHHNT [quickly]. Of course you didn't. I'm not so stupid as that. But I couldn't bear your laughing at the feeling it gave me. You—[again struggling with a surge of emotion] you don't know what I— [he chokes for a moment and then blurts out with unnatural steadiness] Will you be my wife?
NORA [promptly]. Deed I won't. The idea! [Looking at him more carefully] Arra, come home, Mr Broadbent; and get your senses back again. I think you're not accustomed to potcheen punch in the evening after your tea.
BROADBENT [horrified]. Do you mean to say that I—I—I—my God! that I appear drunk to you, Miss Reilly?
NORA [compassionately]. How many tumblers had you?
BROADBENT [helplessly]. Two.
NORA. The flavor of the turf prevented you noticing the strength of it. You'd better come home to bed.
BROADBENT [fearfully agitated]. But this is such a horrible doubt to put into my mind—to—to—For Heaven's sake, Miss Reilly, am I really drunk?
NORA [soothingly]. You'll be able to judge better in the morning. Come on now back with me, an think no more about it. [She takes his arm with motherly solicitude and urges him gently toward the path].
BROADBENT [yielding in despair]. I must be drunk—frightfully drunk; for your voice drove me out of my senses [he stumbles over a stone]. No: on my word, on my most sacred word of honor, Miss Reilly, I tripped over that stone. It was an accident; it was indeed.
NORA. Yes, of course it was. Just take my arm, Mr Broadbent, while we're goin down the path to the road. You'll be all right then.
BROADBENT [submissively taking it]. I can't sufficiently apologize, Miss Reilly, or express my sense of your kindness when I am in such a disgusting state. How could I be such a bea— [he trips again] damn the heather! my foot caught in it.
NORA. Steady now, steady. Come along: come. [He is led down to the road in the character of a convicted drunkard. To him there it something divine in the sympathetic indulgence she substitutes for the angry disgust with which one of his own countrywomen would resent his supposed condition. And he has no suspicion of the fact, or of her ignorance of it, that when an Englishman is sentimental he behaves very much as an Irishman does when he is drunk].