MRS. TULLY. There is great talk about this work in every quarter
of the fair.
MRS. TARPEY. Ochone! cold and dead. And myself maybe the last he
was speaking to!
JAMES RYAN. The Lord save us! Is it dead he is?
TIM CASEY. Dead surely, and the wife getting provision for the
wake.
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!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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