Short Plays

many Germans; and you tell me you don’t know why you did it! O’Flaherty Asking your pardon, Sir Pearce, I tell you no such thing. I know quite well why I kilt them. I kilt them because I was afeard that, if I didn’t, they’d kill me. Sir Pearce Giving it up, and sitting down again. Yes, yes, of course; but have you no knowledge of the causes of the war? of the interests at stake? of the importance⁠—I may almost say⁠—in fact I will say⁠—the sacred right for which we are fighting? Don’t you read the papers? O’Flaherty I do when I can get them. There’s not many newsboys crying the evening paper in the trenches. They do say, Sir Pearce, that we shall never beat the Boshes until we make Horatio Bottomley Lord Leftnant of England. Do you think that’s true, sir? Sir Pearce Rubbish, man! there’s no Lord Lieutenant in England: the king is Lord Lieutenant. It’s a simple question of patriotism. Does patriotism mean nothing to you? O’Flaherty It means different to me than what it would to you, sir. It means England and England’s king to you. To me and the like of me, it means talking about the English just the way the English papers talk about the Boshes. And what good has it ever done here in Ireland? It’s kept me ignorant because it filled up my mother’s mind, and she thought it ought to fill up mine too. It’s kept Ireland poor, because instead of trying to better ourselves we thought we was the fine fellows of patriots when we were speaking evil of Englishmen that was as poor as ourselves and maybe as good as ourselves. The Boshes I kilt was more knowledgable men than me; and what better am I now that I’ve kilt them? What better is anybody? Sir Pearce Huffed, turning a cold shoulder to him. I am sorry the terrible experience of this war⁠—the greatest war ever fought⁠—has taught you no better, O’Flaherty. O’Flaherty Preserving his dignity. I don’t know about it’s being a great war, sir. It’s a big war; but that’s not the same thing. Father Quinlan’s new church is a big church: you might take the little old chapel out of the middle of it and not miss it. But my mother says there was more true religion in the old chapel. And the war has taught me that maybe she was right. Sir Pearce Grunts sulkily. !! O’Flaherty Respectfully but doggedly. And there’s another thing it’s taught me too, sir, that concerns you and me, if I may make bold to tell it to you. Sir Pearce Still sulky. I hope it’s nothing you oughtn’t to say to me, O’Flaherty. O’Flaherty It’s this, sir: that I’m able to sit here now and talk to you without humbugging you; and that’s what not one of your tenants or your tenants’ childer ever did to you before in all your long life. It’s a true respect I’m showing you at last, sir. Maybe you’d rather have me humbug you and tell you lies as I used, just as the boys here, God help them, would rather have me tell them how I fought the Kaiser, that all the world knows I never saw in my life, than tell them the truth. But I can’t take advantage of you the way I used, not even if I seem to be wanting in respect to you and cocked up by winning the Cross. Sir Pearce Touched. Not at all, O’Flaherty. Not at all. O’Flaherty Sure what’s the Cross to me, barring the little pension it carries? Do you think I don’t know that there’s hundreds of men as brave as me that never had the luck to get anything for their bravery but a curse from the sergeant, and the blame for the faults of them that ought to have been their betters? I’ve learnt more than you’d think, sir; for how would a gentleman like you know what a poor ignorant conceited creature I was when I went from here into the wide world as a soldier? What use is all the lying, and pretending, and humbugging, and letting on, when the day comes to you that your comrade is killed in the trench beside you, and you don’t as much as look round at him until you trip over his poor body, and then all you say is to ask why the hell the stretcher-bearers don’t take it out of the way. Why should I read the papers to be humbugged and lied to by them that had the cunning to stay at home and send me to fight for them? Don’t talk to me or to any soldier of the war being right. No war is right; and all the holy water that Father Quinlan ever blessed couldn’t make one right. There, sir! Now you know what O’Flaherty V.C. thinks; and you’re wiser so than the others that only knows what he done. Sir Pearce Making the best of it, and turning good-humoredly to him again. Well, what you did was brave and manly, anyhow. O’Flaherty God knows whether it was or not, better than you nor me, General. I hope He won’t be too hard on me for it, anyhow. Sir Pearce Sympathetically. Oh yes: we all have to think seriously sometimes, especially when we’re a little run down. I’m afraid we’ve been overworking you a bit over these recruiting meetings. However, we can knock off for the rest of the day; and tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ve had about as much as I can stand myself. He looks at his watch. It’s teatime. I wonder what’s keeping your mother. O’Flaherty It’s nicely cocked up the old woman will be, having tea at the same table as you, sir, instead of in the kitchen. She’ll be after dressing in the heighth of grandeur; and stop she will at every house on the way to show herself off and tell them where