Read Ebook: The Rat-Pit by MacGill Patrick

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Ebook has 1048 lines and 93092 words, and 21 pages

The child looked up at the old woman and smiled as a child sometimes will when it fails to understand the purport of words that are spoken. Then her teeth chattered and she looked down at her feet, which were bleeding, and the blood could be seen welling out through the mairteens. She shivered constantly from the cold and her face was a little drawn, a little wistful, and her grey eyes, large and soft, were full of a tender pity. Perhaps the pity was for her mother who was ill at home, maybe for the beansho whom everyone disliked, or maybe for herself, the little girl of twelve, who was by far the youngest member of the party.

"It's time that we were tryin' to face the water in the name of God," said one of the women, who supported herself against a neighbour's shoulder whilst she took off her mairteens. "There is low tide now."

All mairteens were taken off, and raising their petticoats well up and tying them tightly around their waists they entered the water. The old woman leading the party walked into the icy sea placidly; the others faltered a moment, then stepped in recklessly and in a second the water was well up to their thighs. They hurried across shouting carelessly, gesticulating violently and laughing loudly. Yet every one of them, with the possible exception of the woman in front, was on the borderland of tears. If they had spoken not they would have wept.

Norah Ryan, who was the last to enter the water, tucked up her dress and cast a frightened glance at those in front. No one observed her. She lifted the dress higher and entered the icy cold stream which chilled her to the bone. At each successive step the rising water pained her as a knife driven into the flesh might pain her. She raised her eyes and noticed a woman looking back; instantly Norah dropped her clothes and the hem of her petticoat became saturated with water.

"What are ye doin', Norah Ryan?" the woman shouted. "Ye'll be wettin' the dress that's takin' ye to the town."

The child paid no heed. With her clothes trailing in the stream she walked across breast deep to the other side. Her garments were soaked when she landed. The old woman, placid fatalist, was pulling on her mairteens with skinny, warty hands; another was lacing her brogues; a third tied a rag round her foot, which had been cut by a shell at the bottom of the channel.

"Why did ye let yer clothes drop into the dhan?" croaked the old woman. She asked out of mere curiosity; much suffering had driven all feeling from her soul.

"Why d'ye ask that, Maire a Crick ?" enquired the beansho. "It's the modest girl that she is, and that's why she let her clothes down. Poor child! she'll be wet all day now!"

"Her petticoat is full of water," said Maire a Crick, tying the second mairteen. "If many's a one would be always as modest as Norah Ryan they'd have no burden in their shawls this day."

"Ye're a barefaced old heifer, Maire a Crick," said the beansho angrily. "Can ye never hold yer cuttin' tongue quiet? It's good that ye have me to be saying the evil word against. If I wasn't here ye'd be on to some other body."

"I'm hearin' that Norah Ryan is a fine knitter entirely," someone interrupted. "She can make a great penny with her needles. Farley McKeown says that he never gave yarn to a soncier girl."

"True for ye, Biddy Wor," said Maire a Crick grudgingly. "It's funny that a slip of a girsha like her can do so much. I work meself from dawn to dusk, and long before and after, and I cannot make near as much as Norah Ryan."

"Neither can any of us," said several women in one breath.

"She only works about fourteen hours every day, too," said Biddy Wor.

"How much can ye make a day, Norah Ryan?" asked the beansho.

"Three ha'pence a day and nothing less," said the girl, and a glow of pride suffused her face.

"Three ha'pence a day!" the beansho ejaculated, stooping down and pulling out the gritty sand which had collected between her toes. "Just think of that, and her only a wee slip of a girl!"

"That's one pound nineteen shillin's a year," said Maire a Crick reflectively. "She's as good as old Maire a Glan of Greenanore, who didn't miss a stitch in a stockin' and her givin' birth to twins."

The party set off, some singing plaintively, one or two talking and the rest buried in moody silence. It was now day, the sun shot up suddenly and lighted the other side of the bay where the land spread out, bleak, black, dreary and dismal. In front of the party rose a range of hills that threw a dark shadow on the sand, and in this shadow the women walked. Above them on the rising ground could be seen many cabins and blue wreaths of smoke rising from the chimneys into the air. A cock crowed loudly and several others joined in chorus. A dog barked at the heels of a stubborn cow which a ragged, bare-legged boy was driving into a wet pasture field ... the snow which lay light on the knolls was rapidly thawing ... the sea, now dark blue in colour, rose in a long heaving swell, and the wind, blowing in from the horizon, was bitterly cold.

"When will the tide be out again?" asked Judy Farrel, a thin, undersized, consumptive woman who coughed loudly as she walked.

"When the sun's on Dooey Head," came the answer.

An old, wrinkled stump of a woman now joined the party. She carried a bundle of stockings, wrapped in a shawl hung across her shoulders. As she walked she kept telling her beads.

"We were just talkin' of ye, Maire a Glan," said Biddy Wor. "How many stockin's have ye in that bundle?"

"You don't say so!"

"True as death," said Maire a Glan. "And Farley is building a big place, as the old man said. He has well nigh over forty men on the job."

"And what would he be paying them?"

"Seven shillings a week, without bit or sup. It is a hard job too, for my man, himself, leaves here at six of the clock in the morning and he is not back at our own fire till eight of the clock at night."

"Get away!"

"But that isn't all, nor the half of it, as the man said," Maire a Glan went on. "Himself has to do all the work at home before dawn and after dusk, so that he has only four hours to sleep in the turn of the sun."

"Just think of that," said Maire a Crick.

"That's not all, nor half of it, as the old man said," the woman with the bundle continued. "My man gets one bag of yellow meal from Farley every fortnight, for we have eight children and not a pratee, thanks be to God! Farley charges people like yourselves only sixteen shillings a bag, but he charges us every penny of a gold sovereign on the bags that we get. If we do not pay at the end of a month he puts on another sixpence, and at the end of six months he has three extra shillings on the bag of yellow meal."

"God be praised, but he's a sharp one!" said the beansho.

"Is this you?" asked the woman with the bundle, looking at the speaker. "Have you some stockings in your shawl too?"

"Sorrow the one," answered the beansho.

"But what have ye there?" asked Maire a Glan; then, as if recollecting, she exclaimed: "Oh, I know! It is the wean, as the man said.... And is this yourself, Norah Ryan?"

"It's myself," replied the child, and her teeth chattered as she answered.

"The blush is going from your cheek," said Maire a Glan. "And your mother; is she better in health? They're hard times that are in it now," she went on, without waiting for an answer to her question. "There are only ten creels of potatoes in our townland and these have to be used for seed. God's mercy be on us, as the old man said, but it was a bad year for the crops!"

"It couldn't have been worse," said Judy Farrel, clapping her thin hands to keep them warm. "On our side of the water, old Oiney Dinchy had to dig in the pratee field for six hours, and at the end of that time he had only twenty-seven pratees in the basket."

"If the crows lifted a potato in Glenmornan this minute, all the people of the Glen would follow the crow for a whole week until they got the potato back," said old Maire a Crick. "It's as bad now as it was in the year of the famine."

"Do you mind the famine year?" asked Norah Ryan. The water was streaming from the girl's clothes into the roadway, and though she broke into a run at times in her endeavour to keep pace with the elder women, the shivering fits did not leave her for an instant. The wind became more violent and the sleet which had ceased for a while was again falling from the clouds in white wavy lines.

"I mind the bad times as well as I mind yesterday," said Maire a Crick. "My own father, mother, and sister died in one turn of the sun with the wasting sickness and the hunger. I waked them all alone by myself, for most of the neighbours had their own sick and their own dead to look after. But they helped me to carry my people to the grave in the coffin that had the door with hinges on the bottom. When we came to the grave the door was opened and the dead were dropped out; then the coffin was taken back for some other soul."

"At that time there lived a family named Gorlachs at the foot of Slieve a Dorras," said Maire a Glan, taking up the tale; "and they lifted their child out of the grave on the night after it was buried and ate it in their own house. Wasn't that the awful thing, as the old man said?"

"I wouldn't put it past them, for they were a bad set, the same Gorlachs," said Maire a Crick. "But for all that, maybe it is that there wasn't a word of truth in the whole story."

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 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.

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