Where There is Nothing

Paul Ruttledge. Thank you. I was not believing him at all. I'm quite sure I'll be able to mend any can at the end of a week, but the bottoming of them will take longer. I can see that's not so easy. When will you start to teach me that, Charlie?

Charlie Ward. [As another tinker comes up.] Paddy, here's the gentleman I was telling you about. He's going to join us for good and all. [To Paul Ruttledge.] Wait till we have time and some quiet place, and he'll show you as good a cockfight as ever you saw. [A woman comes up.] This is his wife; Molly the Scold we call her; faith, she is a better fighter than any cock he ever had in a basket; he'd find it hard to shut the lid on her.

Molly the Scold. The gentleman seems foolish. Is he all there?

Paddy Cockfight. Stop your chat, Molly, or I'll hit you a welt.

Charlie Ward. Keep your tongue quiet, Molly. If the gentleman has reasons for keeping out of the way it isn't for us to be questioning him. [To Paul Ruttledge.] Don't mind her, she's cross enough, but maybe your own ladies would be cross as well if they saw their young sons dying by the roadside in a little kennel of straw under the ass-cart the way she did; from first to last.

Paul Ruttledge. I suppose you have your troubles like others. But you seem cheerful enough.

Charlie Ward. It isn't anything to fret about. Some of us go soon, and some travel the roads for their lifetime. What does it matter when we are under the nettles if it was with a short rope or a long one we were hanged?

Paul Ruttledge. Yes, that is the way to take life. What does the length of our rope matter?

Charlie Ward. We haven't time to be thinking of troubles like people that would be shut up in a house. We have the wide world before us to make our living out of. The people of the whole world are begrudging us our living, and we make it out of them for all that. When they will spread currant cakes and feather beds before us, it will be time for us to sit down and fret.

Tommy the Song. It's likely you'll think the life too hard. Would you like to be passing by houses in the night-time, and the fire shining out of them, and you hardly given the loan of a sod to light your pipe, and the rain falling on you?

Paul Ruttledge. Why are the people so much against you?

Tommy the Song. We are not like themselves. It's little we care about them or they about us. If their saint did curse us itself —

Charlie Ward. Stop. I won't have you talking about that story here. Why would they think so much of the curse of one saint, and saints so plenty?

Paddy Cockfight. Where's the good of a gentleman being here? He'll be breaking down on the road. It's on the ass-cart he'll be wanting to sit.

Tommy the Song. Indeed, I don't think he'll stand the hardship.

Paul Ruttledge. Oh, I'll stand it well enough.

Tommy the Song. You're not like us that were reared to it. You were not born like us with wandering in the heart.

Paul Ruttledge. Oh yes, I have wandering in the heart. I got sick of these lighted rooms you were talking of just now.

Charlie Ward. That might be so. It's the dark is welcome to a man sometimes.

Paul Ruttledge. The dark. Yes, I think that is what I want. [Stands up.] The dark, where there is nothing that is anything, and nobody that is anybody; one can be free there, where there is nothing. Well, if you let me stay with you, I don't think you will hear any complaints from me. Charlie Ward, Paddy, and the rest of you, I want you to understand that from this out I am one of yourselves. I'll live as you live and do as you do.

[Johneenand other children come running in.

Johneen. I was on the top of the bank and I seen a priest coming down the cross-road with his ass. It's collecting he is. We're going to set ourselves here to beg something from him.

Another Child. [Breathlessly.] And he has a whole lot of things on the ass. A whole lot of things up behind him.

Another Child. O boys, O boys, we'll have our dealing trick out of them yet. The best way'll be – [He suddenly catches sight of Paul Ruttledge.] Whist, ye divils ye, don't you see the new gentleman?

Paul Ruttledge. Speak out, boys; don't be afraid of me; I'm one of yourselves now.

Child. Oh! but we were going to – But I won't tell you. [To the other children.] Come away here, and we'll not tell him what we'll do.

Paul Ruttledge. [To Charlie Ward.] What are they going to do? They're putting their heads together.

Charlie Ward. They're going to put a bush across the road, and when the friar gets down to pull it out of the way they'll snap what they can off the ass, and away with them.

Paul Ruttledge. And why wouldn't they tell me that? Am I not one of yourselves?

Charlie Ward. Ah! It's likely they'll never trust you.

Paul Ruttledge. But they will soon see that I am one of themselves.

Charlie Ward. No; but that's the very thing, you're not one of ourselves. You were not born on the road, reared on the road, married on the road like us.

Paul Ruttledge. Well, it's too late for me to be reared on the road, but I don't see why I shouldn't marry on the road like you. I certainly would do it if it would make me one of you.

Charlie Ward. It might make you one of us, there's no doubt about that. It's the only thing that would do it.

Paul Ruttledge. Well, find a wife for me.

Charlie Ward. Faith, you haven't far to go to find one. Paddy there will give you over his wife quick enough; he won't make a hard bargain over her.

Paul Ruttledge. But I am in earnest. I want to cut myself off from my old life.

Charlie Ward. Oh! I was forgetting that.

Sabina Silver. [To Molly.] I wonder what was it he did? I wonder had he the misfortune to kill anybody?

Charlie Ward. [Calling Sabinaover.] Here's a girl should make a good wife, Sabina Silver her name is. Her father is just dead; he didn't treat her over well.

Sabina Silver. [Coming over.] What is it?

Charlie Ward. This gentleman wants to speak to you. I think he's looking out for a wife.

Sabina Silver. [Hanging her head.] Don't be humbugging me.

Paul Ruttledge. Indeed he's not, Sabina.

Sabina Silver. You're only joking a poor girl. Sure, what would make you think of me at all?

Paul Ruttledge. Sabina, have you been always on the road with Charlie Ward and the others?

Sabina Silver. I have, indeed.

Paul Ruttledge. And you'd make a good tinker's wife?

Sabina Silver. You're joking me, but I would be a better wife for a tinker than for anyone else.

Paul Ruttledge. Sabina, will you marry me?