Читать книгу The Road to Nowhere - Maurice Walsh - Страница 16

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A clink of shod hooves on quartz gravel, and the two ponies came back round the buttress of the hill. The young woman led as before, straight-backed as ever, and, behind, her slim husband still slouched lazily in his big saddle.

Rogan Stuart never hesitated. He bent his knee to the slope and halted at the side of the track; Alistair and Paddy Joe glanced at each other and followed him. They stood side by side; three strong men waiting for a slip of a girl, and not one of them at all confident. Their glasses, two-thirds full, were gripped in their right hands as in some ridiculous ritual; but they were men enough not to mind.

Level with them the leading pony came to its quick, sliding halt; the girl swayed forward from the hips, supple as a wand, her firm young breasts outlined against the thin silk.

Rogan spoke the moment her eyes reached his—and to him her eyes came first.

‘I am sorry, madam, that I gave you a wrong impression. I was entirely to blame. This is not my camp. These gentlemen were kind to me—a stranger passing through.’

‘A stranger passing through’—on the road to nowhere. That is all he was. That is all he would ever be. His deep-set eyes smiled at her, and for a single moment a grey light of intuition revealed to her what was at this man’s core.

She looked closely at him for a moment longer, and then her eyes moved on to Alistair.

‘Madam,’ said he coldly, ‘we hold a permit to camp in this place signed by Sir Jerome Trant. Do you question his authority?’

Perhaps it was the coldness of voice and eye that made her frown, but he gave her back frown for frown under level brow. ‘You and I are Americans,’ he told her. ‘It is a pity that we sometimes make ourselves ridiculous in foreign lands.’

Elspeth Trant had her temper well in hand now; her frown grew no deeper; no retort came from her. Her eyes moved on to Paddy Joe, and Paddy Joe smiled his old, melancholic friendly smile.

‘Don’t be minding him, my lady.’ His voice took on a quaint gentleness. ‘The thing you did you were impelled to do. Don’t I know! And it wasn’t badly done. You are a Conroy, I’m told, and the Conroys were the same always. Where I came from they had houses and lands and once were kings—and now they have nothing but their spirit. Hold you that! Let not your spirit break, and life will not break either.’

And to Paddy Joe she smiled, but it was a smile that, somehow, made the heart stound. Suddenly then her knee twitched inwards, and, at once, her pony started off in its quick walk-amble. Not a word had she spoken.

The three men stood looking after her and, like her, completely ignored her husband.

‘By the jumping Moses!’ cried Paddy Joe warmly, ‘the first time in history that a woman achieved distinction by silence. She up and licked the three of us.’