No More Learning

FATHER HART.

Thus do the spirits of evil snatch their prey
Almost out of the very hand of God;
And day by day their power is more and more,
And men and women leave old paths, for pride
Comes knocking with thin knuckles on the heart.

A VOICE [_singing outside_].

_The wind blows out of the gates of the day,
The wind blows over the lonely of heart,
And the lonely of heart is withered away
While the faeries dance in a place apart,
Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring,
Tossing their milk-white arms in the air;
For they hear the wind laugh, and murmur and sing
Of a land where even the old are fair,
And even the wise are merry of tongue;
But I heard a reed of Coolaney say,
'When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung,
The lonely of heart is withered away. '_

[_The song is taken up by many voices, who sing loudly,
as if in triumph. Some of the voices seem to come from
within the house. _]




THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS




_PERSONS IN THE PLAY_


FATHER JOHN
THOMAS HEARNE, _a coachbuilder_
ANDREW HEARNE, _his brother_
MARTIN HEARNE, _his nephew_
JOHNNY BACACH }
PAUDEEN } _beggars_
BIDDY LALLY }
NANNY }




THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS




ACT I.


_Interior of a coachbuilder's workshop. Parts of a
gilded coach, among them an ornament representing a
lion and unicorn. THOMAS working at a wheel. FATHER
JOHN coming from door of inner room. _

FATHER JOHN.

I have prayed over Martin. I have prayed a long time, but there is no
move in him yet.

THOMAS.

You are giving yourself too much trouble, Father. It's as good for you
to leave him alone till the doctor's bottle will come. If there is any
cure at all for what is on him, it is likely the doctor will have it.

FATHER JOHN.

I think it is not doctor's medicine will help him in this case.

THOMAS.

It will, it will. The doctor has his business learned well. If Andrew
had gone to him the time I bade him and had not turned again to bring
yourself to the house, it is likely Martin would be walking at this
time. I am loth to trouble you, Father, when the business is not of
your own sort. Any doctor at all should be able and well able to cure
the falling sickness.

FATHER JOHN.

It is not any common sickness that is on him now.

THOMAS.

I thought at the first it was gone to sleep he was. But when shaking
him and roaring at him failed to rouse him, I knew well it was the
falling sickness. Believe me, the doctor will reach it with his drugs.

FATHER JOHN.

Nothing but prayer can reach a soul that is so far beyond the world as
his soul is at this moment.

THOMAS.

You are not saying that the life is gone out of him!

FATHER JOHN.

No, no, his life is in no danger. But where he himself, the spirit, the
soul, is gone, I cannot say. It has gone beyond our imaginings. He is
fallen into a trance.

THOMAS.

He used to be queer as a child, going asleep in the fields, and coming
back with talk of white horses he saw, and bright people like angels or
whatever they were. But I mended that. I taught him to recognise stones
beyond angels with a few strokes of a rod. I would never give in to
visions or to trances.

FATHER JOHN.

We who hold the faith have no right to speak against trance or vision.
Saint Elizabeth had them, Saint Benedict, Saint Anthony, Saint
Columcille. Saint Catherine of Siena often lay a long time as if dead.

THOMAS.

That might be so in the olden time, but those things are gone out
of the world now. Those that do their work fair and honest have no
occasion to let the mind go rambling. What would send my nephew, Martin
Hearne, into a trance, supposing trances to be in it, and he rubbing
the gold on the lion and unicorn that he had taken in hand to make a
good job of for the top of the coach?

FATHER JOHN [_taking up ornament_].

It is likely it was that sent him off. The flashing of light upon
it would be enough to throw one that had a disposition to it into a
trance. There was a very saintly man, though he was not of our church;
he wrote a great book called _Mysterium Magnum_ was seven days in
a trance. Truth, or whatever truth he found, fell upon him like a
bursting shower, and he a poor tradesman at his work. It was a ray of
sunlight on a pewter vessel that was the beginning of all. [_Goes to
the door and looks in. _] There is no stir in him yet. It is either the
best thing or the worst thing can happen to anyone, that is happening
to him now.

THOMAS.

And what in the living world can happen to a man that is asleep on his
bed?

FATHER JOHN.

There are some would answer you that it is to those who are awake that
nothing happens, and it is they that know nothing. He is gone where all
have gone for supreme truth.

THOMAS.

[_Sitting down again and taking up tools. _]

Well, maybe so. But work must go on and coachbuilding must go on,
and they will not go on the time there is too much attention given
to dreams. A dream is a sort of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone
at all. A coach, now, is a real thing and a thing that will last for
generations and be made use of to the last, and maybe turn to be a
hen-roost at its latter end.

FATHER JOHN.

I think Andrew told me it was a dream of Martin's that led to the
making of that coach.

THOMAS.

Well, I believe he saw gold in some dream, and it led him to want to
make some golden thing, and coaches being the handiest, nothing would
do him till he put the most of his fortune into the making of this
golden coach. It turned out better than I thought, for some of the
lawyers came looking at it at Assize time, and through them it was
heard of at Dublin Castle . . . and who now has it ordered but the Lord
Lieutenant! [_FATHER JOHN nods. _] Ready it must be and sent off it must
be by the end of the month. It is likely King George will be visiting
Dublin, and it is he himself will be sitting in it yet.

FATHER JOHN.

Martin has been working hard at it, I know.

THOMAS.

You never saw a man work the way he did, day and night, near ever since
the time six months ago he first came home from France.

FATHER JOHN.

I never thought he would be so good at a trade. I thought his mind was
only set on books.

THOMAS.

He should be thankful to myself for that. Any person I will take in
hand, I make a clean job of them the same as I would make of any other
thing in my yard--coach, half-coach, hackney-coach, ass-car, common-car,
post-chaise, calash, chariot on two wheels, on four wheels. Each one
has the shape Thomas Hearne put on it, and it in his hands; and what I
can do with wood and iron, why would I not be able to do it with flesh
and blood, and it in a way my own?

FATHER JOHN.

Indeed, I know you did your best for Martin.

THOMAS.

Every best. Checked him, taught him the trade, sent him to the
monastery in France for to learn the language and to see the wide
world; but who should know that if you did not know it, Father John,
and I doing it according to your own advice?

FATHER JOHN.

I thought his nature needed spiritual guidance and teaching, the best
that could be found.

THOMAS.

I thought myself it was best for him to be away for a while. There are
too many wild lads about this place. He to have stopped here, he might
have taken some fancies, and got into some trouble, going against the
Government maybe the same as Johnny Gibbons that is at this time an
outlaw, having a price upon his head.

FATHER JOHN.

That is so. That imagination of his might have taken fire here at home.
It was better putting him with the Brothers, to turn it to imaginings
of heaven.

THOMAS.

Well, I will soon have a good hardy tradesman made of him now that will
live quiet and rear a family, and be maybe appointed coachbuilder to
the Royal Family at the last.

FATHER JOHN [_at window_].

I see your brother Andrew coming back from the doctor; he is stopping
to talk with a troop of beggars that are sitting by the side of the
road.

THOMAS.

There, now, is another that I have shaped. Andrew used to be a bit wild
in his talk and in his ways, wanting to go rambling, not content to
settle in the place where he was reared. But I kept a guard over him;
I watched the time poverty gave him a nip, and then I settled him into
the business. He never was so good a worker as Martin, he is too fond
of wasting his time talking vanities. But he is middling handy, and
he is always steady and civil to customers. I have no complaint worth
while to be making this last twenty years against Andrew.

[_ANDREW comes in. _]

ANDREW.

Beggars there outside going the road to the Kinvara fair. They were
saying there is news that Johnny Gibbons is coming back from France on
the quiet; the king's soldiers are watching the ports for him.

THOMAS.

Let you keep now, Andrew, to the business you have in hand. Will the
doctor be coming himself or did he send a bottle that will cure Martin?

ANDREW.

The doctor can't come, for he's down with the lumbago in the back. He
questioned me as to what ailed Martin, and he got a book to go looking
for a cure, and he began telling me things out of it, but I said I
could not be carrying things of that sort in my head. He gave me the
book then, and he has marks put in it for the places where the cures
are . . . wait now. . . . [_Reads_] 'Compound medicines are usually taken
inwardly, or outwardly applied; inwardly taken, they should be either
liquid or solid; outwardly, they should be fomentations or sponges wet
in some decoctions. '

THOMAS.

He had a right to have written it out himself upon a paper. Where is
the use of all that?

ANDREW.

I think I moved the mark maybe . . . here, now, is the part he was
reading to me himself. . . . 'The remedies for diseases belonging to the
skins next the brain, headache, vertigo, cramp, convulsions, palsy,
incubus, apoplexy, falling sickness. '

THOMAS.

It is what I bid you to tell him that it was the falling sickness.

ANDREW [_dropping book_].

O, my dear, look at all the marks gone out of it! Wait, now, I partly
remember what he said . . . a blister he spoke of . . . or to be smelling
hartshorn . . . or the sneezing powder . . . or if all fails, to try
letting the blood.

FATHER JOHN.

All this has nothing to do with the real case. It is all waste of time.

ANDREW.

That is what I was thinking myself, Father. Sure it was I was the first
to call out to you when I saw you coming down from the hill-side, and
to bring you in to see what could you do. I would have more trust in
your means than in any doctor's learning. And in case you might fail
to cure him, I have a cure myself I heard from my grandmother--God rest
her soul! --and she told me she never knew it to fail. A person to have
the falling sickness, to cut the top of his nails and a small share of
the hair of his head, and to put it down on the floor, and to take a
harry-pin and drive it down with that into the floor and to leave it
there. 'That is the cure will never fail,' she said, 'to rise up any
person at all having the falling sickness. '

FATHER JOHN [_hand on ear_].

I will go back to the hill-side, I will go back to the hill-side; but
no, no, I must do what I can. I will go again, I will wrestle, I will
strive my best to call him back with prayer.

[_Goes in and shuts door. _

ANDREW.

It is queer Father John is sometimes, and very queer. There are times
when you would say that he believes in nothing at all.

THOMAS.

If you wanted a priest, why did you not get our own parish priest that
is a sensible man, and a man that you would know what his thoughts are?
You know well the bishop should have something against Father John to
have left him through the years in that poor mountainy place, minding
the few unfortunate people that were left out of the last famine. A man
of his learning to be going in rags the way he is, there must be some
good cause for that.

ANDREW.

I had all that in mind and I bringing him. But I thought he would have
done more for Martin than what he is doing. To read a Mass over him
I thought he would, and to be convulsed in the reading it, and some
strange thing to have gone out with a great noise through the doorway.

THOMAS.

It would give no good name to the place such a thing to be happening in
it. It is well enough for labouring-men and for half-acre men. It would
be no credit at all such a thing to be heard of in this house, that is
for coachbuilding the capital of the county.

ANDREW.
If it is from the devil this sickness comes, it would be best to put it
out whatever way it would be put out. But there might no bad thing be
on the lad at all. It is likely he was with wild companions abroad, and
that knocking about might have shaken his health. I was that way myself
one time.

THOMAS.

Father John said that it was some sort of a vision or a trance, but I
would give no heed to what he would say. It is his trade to see more
than other people would see, the same as I myself might be seeing a
split in a leather car hood that no other person would find out at all.

ANDREW.

If it is the falling sickness is on him, I have no objection to
that--a plain, straight sickness that was cast as a punishment on the
unbelieving Jews. It is a thing that might attack one of a family, and
one of another family, and not to come upon their kindred at all. A
person to have it, all you have to do is not to go between him and the
wind, or fire, or water. But I am in dread trance is a thing might run
through the house the same as the cholera morbus.

THOMAS.

In my belief there is no such thing as a trance. Letting on people do
be to make the world wonder the time they think well to rise up. To
keep them to their work is best, and not to pay much attention to them
at all.

ANDREW.

I would not like trances to be coming on myself. I leave it in my will
if I die without cause, a holly-stake to be run through my heart the
way I will lie easy after burial, and not turn my face downwards in my
coffin. I tell you I leave it on you in my will.

THOMAS.

Leave thinking of your own comforts, Andrew, and give your mind to the
business. Did the smith put the irons yet on to the shafts of this
coach?

ANDREW.

I will go see did he.

THOMAS.

Do so, and see did he make a good job of it. Let the shafts be sound
and solid if they are to be studded with gold.

ANDREW.

They are, and the steps along with them--glass sides for the people to
be looking in at the grandeur of the satin within--the lion and the
unicorn crowning all. It was a great thought Martin had the time he
thought of making this coach!

THOMAS.

It is best for me to go see the smith myself and leave it to no other
one. You can be attending to that ass-car out in the yard wants a new
tyre in the wheel--out in the rear of the yard it is. [_They go to
door. _] To pay attention to every small thing, and to fill up every
minute of time shaping whatever you have to do, that is the way to
build up a business.

[_They go out. _

FATHER JOHN [_bringing in MARTIN_].

They are gone out now--the air is fresher here in the workshop--you can
sit here for a while. You are now fully awake, you have been in some
sort of a trance or a sleep.

MARTIN.

Who was it that pulled at me? Who brought me back?

FATHER JOHN.

It is I, Father John, did it. I prayed a long time over you and brought
you back.

MARTIN.

You, Father John, to be so unkind! O leave me, leave me alone!

FATHER JOHN.

You are in your dream still.

MARTIN.

It was no dream, it was real. Do you not smell the broken fruit--the
grapes? the room is full of the smell.

FATHER JOHN.

Tell me what you have seen, where you have been?

MARTIN.

There were horses--white horses rushing by, with white shining
riders--there was a horse without a rider, and someone caught me up and
put me upon him and we rode away, with the wind, like the wind--

FATHER JOHN.

That is a common imagining. I know many poor persons have seen that.

MARTIN.

We went on, on, on. We came to a sweet-smelling garden with a gate
to it, and there were wheatfields in full ear around, and there were
vineyards like I saw in France, and the grapes in bunches. I thought
it to be one of the townlands of heaven. Then I saw the horses we were
on had changed to unicorns, and they began trampling the grapes and
breaking them. I tried to stop them but I could not.

FATHER JOHN.

That is strange, that is strange. What is it that brings to mind? I
heard it in some place, _monoceros de astris_, the unicorn from the
stars.

MARTIN.

They tore down the wheat and trampled it on stones, and then they tore
down what were left of grapes and crushed and bruised and trampled
them. I smelt the wine, it was flowing on every side--then everything
grew vague. I cannot remember clearly, everything was silent; the
trampling now stopped, we were all waiting for some command. Oh! was it
given! I was trying to hear it; there was someone dragging, dragging me
away from that. I am sure there was a command given, and there was a
great burst of laughter. What was it? What was the command? Everything
seemed to tremble round me.

FATHER JOHN.

Did you awake then?

MARTIN.

I do not think I did, it all changed--it was terrible, wonderful! I saw
the unicorns trampling, trampling, but not in the wine troughs. Oh, I
forget! Why did you waken me?

FATHER JOHN.

I did not touch you. Who knows what hands pulled you away? I prayed,
that was all I did. I prayed very hard that you might awake. If I had
not, you might have died. I wonder what it all meant? The unicorns--what
did the French monk tell me? --strength they meant, virginal strength, a
rushing, lasting, tireless strength.

MARTIN.

They were strong. Oh, they made a great noise with their trampling.

FATHER JOHN.

And the grapes, what did they mean? It puts me in mind of the psalm,
_Et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est_. It was a strange vision,
a very strange vision, a very strange vision.

MARTIN.

How can I get back to that place?

FATHER JOHN.

You must not go back, you must not think of doing that. That life of
vision, of contemplation, is a terrible life, for it has far more of
temptation in it than the common life. Perhaps it would have been best
for you to stay under rules in the monastery.

MARTIN.

I could not see anything so clearly there. It is back here in my own
place the visions come, in the place where shining people used to laugh
around me, and I a little lad in a bib.

FATHER JOHN.

You cannot know but it was from the Prince of this world the vision
came. How can one ever know unless one follows the discipline of the
Church? Some spiritual director, some wise learned man, that is what
you want. I do not know enough. What am I but a poor banished priest,
with my learning forgotten, my books never handled and spotted with the
damp!

MARTIN.

I will go out into the fields where you cannot come to me to awake me.
I will see that townland again; I will hear that command. I cannot
wait, I must know what happened, I must bring that command to mind
again.

FATHER JOHN.

[_Putting himself between MARTIN and the door. _]

You must have patience as the saints had it. You are taking your own
way. If there is a command from God for you, you must wait His good
time to receive it.

MARTIN.

Must I live here forty years, fifty years . . . to grow as old as my
uncles, seeing nothing but common things, doing work . . . some foolish
work?

FATHER JOHN.

Here they are coming; it is time for me to go. I must think and I must
pray. My mind is troubled about you. [_To THOMAS as he and ANDREW come
in. _] Here he is; be very kind to him for he has still the weakness of
a little child. [_Goes out. _

THOMAS.

Are you well of the fit, lad?

MARTIN.

It was no fit. I was away--for awhile--no, you will not believe me if I
tell you.

ANDREW.

I would believe it, Martin. I used to have very long sleeps myself and
very queer dreams.

THOMAS.

You had, till I cured you, taking you in hand and binding you to the
hours of the clock. The cure that will cure yourself, Martin, and will
waken you, is to put the whole of your mind on to your golden coach; to
take it in hand and to finish it out of face.

MARTIN.

Not just now. I want to think--to try and remember what I saw, something
that I heard, that I was told to do.

THOMAS.

No, but put it out of your mind. There is no man doing business that
can keep two things in his head. A Sunday or a holy-day, now, you might
go see a good hurling or a thing of the kind, but to be spreading out
your mind on anything outside of the workshop on common days, all
coachbuilding would come to an end.

MARTIN.

I don't think it is building I want to do. I don't think that is what
was in the command.

THOMAS.

It is too late to be saying that, the time you have put the most of
your fortune in the business. Set yourself now to finish your job, and
when it is ended maybe I won't begrudge you going with the coach as far
as Dublin.

ANDREW.

That is it, that will satisfy him. I had a great desire myself, and
I young, to go travelling the roads as far as Dublin. The roads are
the great things, they never come to an end. They are the same as the
serpent having his tail swallowed in his own mouth.

MARTIN.

It was not wandering I was called to. What was it? what was it?

THOMAS.

What you are called to, and what everyone having no great estate is
called to, is to work. Sure the world itself could not go on without
work.

MARTIN.

I wonder if that is the great thing, to make the world go on? No, I
don't think that is the great thing--what does the Munster poet call
it? --'this crowded slippery coach-loving world. ' I don't think I was
told to work for that.

ANDREW.

I often thought that myself. It is a pity the stock of the Hearnes to
be asked to do any work at all.

THOMAS.

Rouse yourself, Martin, and don't be talking the way a fool talks. You
started making that golden coach, and you were set upon it, and you had
me tormented about it. You have yourself wore out working at it, and
planning it, and thinking of it, and at the end of the race, when you
have the winning-post in sight, and horses hired for to bring it to
Dublin Castle, you go falling into sleeps and blathering about dreams,
and we run to a great danger of letting the profit and the sale go by.
Sit down on the bench now, and lay your hands to the work.

MARTIN [_sitting down_].

I will try. I wonder why I ever wanted to make it; it was no good dream
set me doing that. [_He takes up wheel. _] What is there in a wooden
wheel to take pleasure in it? Gilding it outside makes it no different.

THOMAS.

That is right, now.