Читать книгу The Rat-Pit - Patrick MacGill - Страница 30

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ABOUT six o’clock Norah entered Glenmornan. Here she met three boys and two girls bound for the rabble market of Strabane. One of the boys was whistling a tune, the other two chattered noisily; the girls, who were silent, carried each a pair of hob-nailed boots hung over their shoulders.

“Good luck to your journey,” said Norah Ryan, by way of salutation.

“And to yours,” they answered.

“Are there lots of ones a-goin’ this mornin’?” she asked in English.

“Lots,” answered one of the girls, making the sign of the cross on her brow. “Two gasairs of Oiney Dinchy’s, one of Cormac of the Hill’s ones, seven or more from the townland of Dooran, and more besides.”

“Many goin’ from Glenmornan?”

“Lots,” said the boy who had been whistling.

Norah waited for him to proceed, but finding that he remained silent, she enquired as to who was going.

“Condy Dan, Hudy Neddy, Columb Kennedy, Unah Roarty and”—the boy paused for a moment to scratch his head—“and Dermod Flynn, the gasair that struck Master Diver with the pointer.”

“Well, good luck to yer journey,” said Norah, shaking the hand of each of them in turn. “May God be with ye all till ye come back!”

“And with yerself for ever.”

The crooked road twisted round copse and knoll, now bordering the river, now rising well up on the shoulder of the hill, and along this road Norah hurried, her hands hanging idly by her side and her plaits when caught by an errant breeze fluttering over her shoulders. Half-way along the Glenmornan road she met Dermod Flynn.

“Where are ye for this mornin’, Dermod?” she asked. She knew where he was going, and after speaking felt that she should not have asked him that question.

“Beyond the mountains,” answered the youth with a smile which showed his white teeth. In one hand he carried a bundle, in the other an ash-plant with a heavy knob at the end. The young fellows of Glenmornan had got into a habit of carrying sticks in imitation of the cattle drovers who came once every month to the fair of Greenanore.

“Ye’ll not come back for a long while, will ye?” Norah asked.

“I’m never goin’ to come back again,” Dermod answered. At this Norah laughed, but, strangely enough, she felt ready to cry. All that she intended to say to him was forgotten; she held out her hand, stammered a confused good-bye and hurried away.

“His eyes are on me now,” she said several times to herself as she walked away, and every time she spoke a blush mounted to her cheeks. She wanted to look back, but did not do so until she came to the first bend of the road. There she turned round, but Dermod Flynn had gone from sight and a great loneliness entered the girl’s heart. A steer with wide, curious eyes watched her from a field beside the road, the water sang a song, all its own, as it dropped from the hills, and the Glen River, viewed from the point where Norah stood, looked like a streak of silver on a cloth of green. But the girl saw and heard none of these things, her eyes were fixed on the crooked road which ran on through holt and hollow as far as the village of Greenanore, and miles and miles beyond.

She stood there for a long time lost in reverie. Dermod Flynn was gone now, and he would never come back again. So he had told her. Suddenly she recollected why she had come out on the journey. “To pluck bog-bine it was,” she murmured. “I am after forgetting that!”

She went across the river by the ford and climbed the hill. From the top of the knoll she could see the train steam out from the station of Greenanore. In it were the children bound for the rabble market of Strabane. Norah stared and stared at the train, which crawled like a black caterpillar across the brown moor, leaving a trail of white smoke behind it.

“I’m after forgettin’ that I came out to pluck bog-bine,” she repeated when the train had disappeared from sight, and taking off her boots, she picked her way across the soft and spongy moor.