Jack Smith: I’ll break the head of any man that will find my dead body!

Magistrate: I’ll call more help from the barracks. (Blows Policeman’s whistle.)

Bartley: It is what I am thinking, if myself and Jack Smith are put together in the one cell for the night, the handcuffs will be taken off him, and his hands will be free, and murder will be done that time surely!

Magistrate: Come on! (They turn to the right.)

HYACINTH HALVEY

Persons
Hyacinth Halvey.
James Quirke, a butcher.
Fardy Farrell, a telegraph boy.
Sergeant Carden.
Mrs. Delane, Postmistress at Cloon.
Miss Joyce, the Priest’s House-keeper.

HYACINTH HALVEY

Scene: Outside the Post Office at the little town of Cloon. Mrs. Delane at Post Office door. Mr. Quirke sitting on a chair at butcher’s door. A dead sheep hanging beside it, and a thrush in a cage above. Fardy Farrell playing on a mouth organ. Train whistle heard.

Mrs. Delane: There is the four o’clock train, Mr. Quirke.

Mr. Quirke: Is it now, Mrs. Delane, and I not long after rising? It makes a man drowsy to be doing the half of his work in the night time. Going about the country, looking for little stags of sheep, striving to knock a few shillings together. That contract for the soldiers gives me a great deal to attend to.

Mrs. Delane: I suppose so. It’s hard enough on myself to be down ready for the mail car in the morning, sorting letters in the half dark. It’s often I haven’t time to look who are the letters from—or the cards.

Mr. Quirke: It would be a pity you not to know any little news might be knocking about. If you did not have information of what is going on who should have it? Was it you, ma’am, was telling me that the new Sub-Sanitary Inspector would be arriving to-day?

Mrs. Delane: To-day it is he is coming, and it’s likely he was in that train. There was a card about him to Sergeant Carden this morning.

Mr. Quirke: A young chap from Carrow they were saying he was.

Mrs. Delane: So he is, one Hyacinth Halvey; and indeed if all that is said of him is true, or if a quarter of it is true, he will be a credit to this town.

Mr. Quirke: Is that so?

Mrs. Delane: Testimonials he has by the score. To Father Gregan they were sent. Registered they were coming and going. Would you believe me telling you that they weighed up to three pounds?

Mr. Quirke: There must be great bulk in them indeed.

Mrs. Delane: It is no wonder he to get the job. He must have a great character so many persons to write for him as what there did.

Fardy: It would be a great thing to have a character like that.

Mrs. Delane: Indeed I am thinking it will be long before you will get the like of it, Fardy Farrell.

Fardy: If I had the like of that of a character it is not here carrying messages I would be. It’s in Noonan’s Hotel I would be, driving cars.

Mr. Quirke: Here is the priest’s housekeeper coming.

Mrs. Delane: So she is; and there is the Sergeant a little while after her.

(Enter Miss Joyce.)

Mrs. Delane: Good-evening to you, Miss Joyce. What way is his Reverence to-day? Did he get any ease from the cough?

Miss Joyce: He did not indeed, Mrs. Delane. He has it sticking to him yet. Smothering he is in the night time. The most thing he comes short in is the voice.

Mrs. Delane: I am sorry, now, to hear that. He should mind himself well.

Miss Joyce: It’s easy to say let him mind himself. What do you say to him going to the meeting to-night? (Sergeant comes in.) It’s for his Reverence’s Freeman I am come, Mrs. Delane.

Mrs. Delane: Here it is ready. I was just throwing an eye on it to see was there any news. Good-evening, Sergeant.

Sergeant: (Holding up a placard.) I brought this notice, Mrs. Delane, the announcement of the meeting to be held to-night in the Courthouse. You might put it up here convenient to the window. I hope you are coming to it yourself?

Mrs. Delane: I will come, and welcome. I would do more than that for you, Sergeant.

Sergeant: And you, Mr. Quirke.

Mr. Quirke: I’ll come, to be sure. I forget what’s this the meeting is about.

Sergeant: The Department of Agriculture is sending round a lecturer in furtherance of the moral development of the rural classes. (Reads.) “A lecture will be given this evening in Cloon Courthouse, illustrated by magic lantern slides—” Those will not be in it; I am informed they were all broken in the first journey, the railway company taking them to be eggs. The subject of the lecture is “The Building of Character.”

Mrs. Delane: Very nice, indeed. I knew a girl lost her character, and she washed her feet in a blessed well after, and it dried up on the minute.

Sergeant: The arrangements have all been left to me, the Archdeacon being away. He knows I have a good intellect for things of the sort. But the loss of those slides puts a man out. The thing people will not see it is not likely it is the thing they will believe. I saw what they call tableaux—standing pictures, you know—one time in Dundrum——

Mrs. Delane: Miss Joyce was saying Father Gregan is supporting you.

Sergeant: I am accepting his assistance. No bigotry about me when there is a question of the welfare of any fellow-creatures. Orange and green will stand together to-night. I myself and the station-master on the one side; your parish priest in the chair.

Miss Joyce: If his Reverence would mind me he would not quit the house to-night. He is no more fit to go speak at a meeting than (pointing to the one hanging outside Quirke’s door) that sheep.

Sergeant: I am willing to take the responsibility. He will have no speaking to do at all, unless it might be to bid them give the lecturer a hearing. The loss of those slides now is a great annoyance to me—and no time for anything. The lecturer will be coming by the next train.

Miss Joyce: Who is this coming up the street, Mrs. Delane?

Mrs. Delane: I wouldn’t doubt it to be the new Sub-Sanitary Inspector. Was I telling you of the weight of the testimonials he got, Miss Joyce?

Miss Joyce: Sure I heard the curate reading them to his Reverence. He must be a wonder for principles.

Mrs. Delane: Indeed it is what I was saying to myself, he must be a very saintly young man.

(Enter Hyacinth Halvey. He carries a small bag and a large brown paper parcel. He stops and nods bashfully.)

Hyacinth: Good-evening to you. I was bid to come to the post office——

Sergeant: I suppose you are Hyacinth Halvey? I had a letter about you from the Resident Magistrate.

Hyacinth: I heard he was writing. It was my mother got a friend he deals with to ask him.

Sergeant: He gives you a very high character.

Hyacinth: It is very kind of him indeed, and he not knowing me at all. But indeed all the neighbours were very friendly.