Читать книгу The Rat-Pit - Patrick MacGill - Страница 23

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DARKNESS had fallen before James Ryan returned from Frosses post-office, which was over four miles away. He entered the cabin, breathing heavily, the sweat streaming from his brow and coursing down his blood-threaded cheeks. He had run most of the way back, and in his hand he carried the letter, the first which he had received for two whole years.

“Mercy be on us, but you are out of breath!” said his wife, laying down her knitting irons, a fault of which she was seldom guilty, save when eating or sleeping. “Put one of the rushlights in the fire, Norah, and read the letter from foreign parts. Is it from the boy himself?”

“Maybe it is,” answered the man, seating himself as usual on an upturned creel in the centre of the cabin. “The man at the post-office, Micky McNelis, first cousin he is to Dony McNelis that works with Farley McKeown, says that it is from a far part, anyway. ‘You must put down your own name,’ said Micky to me, in English. ‘I cannot write, for I never had a pen in my hand,’ said I. ‘You have to make your mark then,’ said he. ‘I don’t know how to do that either,’ said I. ‘I’ll write your name and you have to put a line down this way and a line down that way after what I write,’ said he, and, just by way of showing me, he made a crooked cross with his pen on a piece of paper. Then I made my mark and a good mark it was too, for Micky himself said as much, and I got the letter there and then into my own two hands. If it is from the boy there is not one penny piece in it.”

“Why would you be saying that now?”

“I could not feel anything inside of it,” said the man. “If there were gold pieces in it I could easily find them through that piece of paper.”

The rushlight was now ready; the father took it in his hand and stood beside Norah, to whom he gave the letter. The woman leant forward in the bed; her husband held up the light with a shaky hand; dim shadows danced on the roof; the young sturk again entered the house and took up his stand in the corner. Norah having opened the letter proceeded to read:

“Dear Father and Mother and Norah,

“I am writing to say that I am well, hoping to find you all at home in the same state of health. I am far away in the middle of England now, in a place called Liverpool where I have a job as a dock labourer—”

“Micky’s Jim had that kind of job the year before last in Glasgow,” said the mother.

“The work is hard enough, heaven knows, but the pay is good. I came here from Derry and I have been working for the most part of the time ever since. I intended to write home sooner but between one thing and another, time passed by, but now I am sending you home twelve pounds, and you can get gold in Frosses post-office for the slip of paper which I enclose——”

“Under God the day and the night!” exclaimed the woman in the bed.

“A pound of this money is for Norah, and she can buy a new dress for it. See and don’t let her go to Greenanore for yarn any more, or it will be the death of her, sleeping out at night on the rocks of Dooey.

“I hope my mother is well and that her cold is getting better. I spend all my spare time reading books. It is a great, great world once you are away from Donegal, and here, where I am, as many books as one would want to carry can be had for a mere song——”

“Getting things for a song!” said the man. “That is like the ballad singers——”

“It would be nice to hear from you, but as I am going away to America on the day after to-morrow, I have no fixed address, and it would be next to useless for you to write to me. I’ll send a letter soon again, and more money when I can earn it.

“Your loving son

“Fergus.”