_Shawn Early:_ Well, now, hadn’t Bartley Fallon great venom in him?
_Mrs. Tully:_ You may be sure he had some cause. Why would he have
made an end of him if he had not? (_To Mrs. Tarpey, raising her
voice._) What was it rose the dispute at all, Mrs. Tarpey?
_Mrs. Tarpey:_ Not a one of me knows. The last I saw of them, Jack
Smith was standing there, and Bartley Fallon was standing there, quiet
and easy, and he listening to “The Red-haired Man’s Wife.”
_Mrs. Tully:_ Do you hear that, Tim Casey? Do you hear that, Shawn
Early and James Ryan? Bartley Fallon was here this morning listening
to red Jack Smith’s wife, Kitty Keary that was! Listening to her and
whispering with her! It was she started the fight so!
_Shawn Early:_ She must have followed him from her own house. It is
likely some person roused him.
_Tim Casey:_ I never knew, before, Bartley Fallon was great with Jack
Smith’s wife.
_Mrs. Tully:_ How would you know it? Sure it’s not in the streets they
would be calling it. If Mrs. Fallon didn’t know of it, and if I that
have the next house to them didn’t know of it, and if Jack Smith
himself didn’t know of it, it is not likely you would know of it, Tim
Casey.
_Shawn Early:_ Let Bartley Fallon take charge of her from this out so,
and let him provide for her. It is little pity she will get from any
person in this parish.
_Tim Casey:_ How can he take charge of her? Sure he has a wife of his
own. Sure you don’t think he’d turn souper and marry her in a
Protestant church?
_James Ryan:_ It would be easy for him to marry her if he brought her
to America.
_Shawn Early:_ With or without Kitty Keary, believe me it is for
America he’s making at this minute. I saw the new magistrate and Jo
Muldoon of the police going into the post-office as I came up—there
was hurry on them—you may be sure it was to telegraph they went, the
way he’ll be stopped in the docks at Queenstown!
_Mrs. Tully:_ It’s likely Kitty Keary is gone with him, and not
minding a sheet or a wake at all. The poor man, to be deserted by his
own wife, and the breath hardly gone out yet from his body that is
lying bloody in the field!
(_Enter Mrs. Fallon._)
_Mrs. Fallon:_ What is it the whole of the town is talking about? And
what is it you yourselves are talking about? Is it about my man
Bartley Fallon you are talking? Is it lies about him you are telling,
saying that he went killing Jack Smith? My grief that ever he came
into this place at all!
_James Ryan:_ Be easy now, Mrs. Fallon. Sure there is no one at all in
the whole fair but is sorry for you!
_Mrs. Fallon:_ Sorry for me, is it? Why would any one be sorry for me?
Let you be sorry for yourselves, and that there may be shame on you
for ever and at the day of judgment, for the words you are saying and
the lies you are telling to take away the character of my poor man,
and to take the good name off of him, and to drive him to destruction!
That is what you are doing!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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