Читать книгу The Rat-Pit - Patrick MacGill - Страница 9

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NORAH RYAN, who was now lagging in the rear, got suddenly caught by a heavy gust of wind that blew up from the sea. Her clothes were lifted over her head; she tried to push them down, and the weasel-skin purse which she held in her hand dropped on the roadway. The penny jingled out, the coin which was to procure her bread in Greenanore, and she clutched at it hurriedly. A sudden dizziness overcame her, her brain reeled and she fell prostrate to the wet earth. In an instant the beansho was at her side.

“Norah Ryan, what’s coming over ye?” she cried and knelt down by the girl. The child’s face was deathly pale, the sleet cut her viciously, and her hands, lying palm upwards on the mire, were blue and cold. The beansho tried to raise her but the effort was too much; the child which the woman carried impeded her movements. Maire a Crick now hurried up and the rest of the women approached, though in a more leisurely fashion.

“Mother of God! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” asked the old woman anxiously. “What has come over the child atall, atall? She’s starving,” the old body went on, kneeling on the roadway and pressing her warty hands on the breast of the young girl. “She’s starving, that’s it. In her own home she hardly eats one bite at all so that her people may have the more. So I have heard tell.... Norah Ryan, for God’s sake wake up!”

The girl gave no heed, made no sign. The sleet sang through the air and the women gathered closer, shielding the little one with their bodies.

“What’s to be done?” asked the beansho. Biddy Wor told how people were cured of fargortha (hunger) at the time of the famine, but little heed was paid to her talk. The beansho unloosened her shawl, wrapped her offspring tightly in it and handed the bundle to one of the women, who crossed herself as she caught it.

“Now up on my back with the girsha,” said the beansho authoritatively, stooping on her knees in the roadway and bending her shoulders. “Martin Eveleen has a house across the rise of the brae and I’ll carry her there.”

Three of the party lifted Norah and placed her across the beansho’s shoulders.

“How weighty the girsha is!” one exclaimed; then recollecting said: “It’s the water in her clothes that’s doing it. Poor girsha! and it’ll be the hunger that’s causing her the weakness.”

The beansho with her burden on her shoulders hurried forward, her feet pressing deeply into the mire and the water squirting out between her toes. The rest of the party following discussed the matter and, being most of them old cronies, related stories of the hunger that was in it at the time of the great famine. Again it faired, the sun came out, but the air was still bitterly cold.

A cabin stood on the crest of the hill and towards this the beansho hurried. Strong and lank though she was, the burden began to bear heavily and she panted at every step. At the door of the house she paused for a moment to collect her strength, then lifted the latch and pushed the door inwards. A man, shaggy and barefooted, hurried to meet the woman and stared at her suspiciously.

“What do you want?” he asked in Gaelic.

“It’s Norah Ryan that’s hungry, and she fainted on the road,” explained the beansho.

“In with her then,” said the man, standing aside. “Maybe the heat of the fire will take her to. Indeed there’s little else that she can get here.”

Inside it was warm and a bright fire blazed on the cabin hearth. In a corner near the door some cows could be heard munching hay, and a dog came sniffing round the beansho’s legs. A feeling of homeliness pervaded the place and the smell of the peat was soothing to the nostrils.

“Leave her down here,” said the woman of the house, a pale, sickly little creature, as she pointed to the dingy bed in the corner of the room near the fire. Several children dressed in rags who were seated warming their hands at the blaze rose hurriedly on the entrance of the strangers and hid behind the cattle near the door.

“Is it the hunger and hardships?” asked the man of the house as he helped the beansho to place the inert body of the little girl on the bed.

“The hunger and hardships, that’s it,” said Maire a Crick, who now entered, followed by the rest of the women.

“Then we’ll try her with this,” said the man, and from behind the rafters of the roof he drew out a black bottle which he uncorked with his fingers. “It’s potheen,” he explained, and emptied some of the contents into a wooden bowl. This he held to the lips of the child who now, partly from the effects of the heat and partly from the effects of the shaking she had received on the beansho’s back, awakened and was staring vacantly around her. The smell of the intoxicant brought her sharply to her senses.

“What are ye doin’?” she cried. “That’s not right, and me havin’ the holy pledge against drink!”

The man crossed himself and withdrew the bowl, whereupon the woman of the house brought some milk from the basin that stood on the dresser, and this being handed to Norah Ryan, the child drank greedily. The beansho gave her a piece of bread when the milk was consumed.

“Where is me purse?” asked Norah suddenly. “It’s lyin’ on the road and the brown penny is in the clabber. Where are we atall?”

“In Martin Eveleen’s house, the house of a decent man,” said the beansho. “Eat yer bit of bread, child, for ye’re dyin’ of hunger.”

For a moment the child looked earnestly at the bread, then, as if stifling the impulse to return it, she began to eat almost savagely. Maire a Crick placed the purse and penny which she had lifted from the road by the bedside and withdrew to the door, already sorry perhaps for having wasted so much time on the journey. The beansho found her baby, kissed a crumb into its mouth, tied it up again in her shawl and, when Norah had eaten the bread, both went to the door together.

“God be with ye, decent people,” said the child. “Some day I hope to be able to do a good turn for you.”

“We’re only glad to be of help to a nice girsha,” said the man, taking down a bottle of holy water from the roof-beam. He made the sign of the cross, dipped his fingers in the bottle, and shook the holy water over the visitors.

“God be with yer journey,” he said.

“And God keep guard over your home and everything in it,” Norah and the beansho made answer in one voice.