Part 6 (1/2)

_Paul Ruttledge._ Why should you find fault with it? I am richer now than I was then. I only lent you that donkey then, now I give him to you.

_Jerome._ What has brought you among such people as these?

_Paul Ruttledge._ I find them on the whole better company than the people I left a little while ago. Let me introduce you to----

_Jerome._ What can you possibly gain by coming here? Are you going to try and teach them?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh! no, I am going to learn from them.

_Jerome._ What can you learn from them?

_Paul Ruttledge._ To pick up my living like the crows, and to solder tin cans. Just give me that one I mended a while ago.

[_Holds it out to_ FATHER JEROME.

_Jerome._ That is all nonsense.

_Paul Ruttledge._ I am happy. Do not your saints put all opponents to the rout by saying they alone of all mankind are happy?

_Jerome._ I suppose you will not compare the happiness of these people with the happiness of saints?

_Paul Ruttledge._ There are all sorts of happiness. Some find their happiness like Thomas a Kempis, with a little book and a little cell.

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ I would wonder at anybody that could be happy in a cell.

_Paul Ruttledge._ These men fight in their way as your saints fought, for their hand is against the world. I want the happiness of men who fight, who are hit and hit back, not the fighting of men in red coats, that formal, soon-finished fighting, but the endless battle, the endless battle. Tell me, Father Jerome, did you ever listen in the middle of the night?

_Jerome._ Listen for what?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Did you ever, when the monastery was silent, and the dogs had stopped barking, listen till you heard music?

_Jerome._ What sort of music do you mean?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Not the music we hear with these ears [_touching his ears_], but the music of Paradise.

_Jerome._ Brother Colman once said he heard harps in the night.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Harps! It was because he was shut in a cell he heard harps, maybe it sounds like harps in a cell. But the music I have heard sometimes is made of the continual clas.h.i.+ng of swords. It comes rejoicing from Paradise.

_Jerome._ These are very wild thoughts.

_Tommy the Song._ I often heard music in the forths. There is many of us hear it when we lie with our heads on the ground at night.

_Jerome._ That was not the music of Paradise.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Why should they not hear that music, although it may not set them praying, but dancing.

_Jerome._ How can you think you will ever find happiness amongst their devils' mirth?

_Paul Ruttledge._ I have taken to the roads because there is a wild beast I would overtake, and these people are good snarers of beasts.