Part 3 (2/2)
”It's not too bad,” said Judy, stroking down the cape with caressing fingers. ”A grand weight there's in it, to be sure. But where at all did you come by it? You're not after gettin' it off of thim thievin'
rapscallions of Smiths, anyway?”
”Thim or the likes of thim--sure not at all,” said Thady, loftily.
”'Twas in a house away down below there at Lisconnel. A young woman bid me step in to ait a pitaty, and, tellin' you the truth, I'd no fancy to be delayin', for I'd a mistrust in me mind that the polis was follyin'.
The notion I had was to ax her had she seen you goin' by, on'y I wasn't wishful to be lettin' on I was anythin' to you, in case they come along.
So I thought she might be chance pa.s.s the remark herself. But out she ran, and the first thing I noticed was this consarn lyin' convanient to me hand in the windy. And wid that I whipped it up and made off. For anythin' I could tell, I might ha' met me fine gintleman full tilt at the door; and begorrah, it's as heavy to carry as a pair of fat geese.
Howane'er, I knew it's distressed you were entirely for the want of such a thing, and bejabers, you've got it now.”
”Troth have I,” said Judy, delightedly groping her way about her new garment. ”Rael dacint it was of you to be bringin' it to me, for perished and lost I did be, and that's no lie. Och but it's the grand one. Look at the hood there is to it. Sure it's as good as a little house of your own. You might be out under buckets of wet in it, and ne'er a tint you'd git whatever.”
”Ay, or, for that matter, takin' a rowl through the river there, and sorra the harm it 'ud do you wid that on,” said Thady, with pride. ”But we'd better be quittin' out o' this,” he added, with a shrug and a s.h.i.+ver, ”for the win's tarrible, and there's a shower comin' up on us yonder as thick as thatch. I was thinkin' you'd maybe had thrampin'
enough for this day. 'Twill be as dark prisintly as the inside of a cow, and we'd see daylight agin before we come to Moynalone. So we might put the night over under th'ould bridge. There's a good dry strip along the one side of it, and the way the rain's dhrivin' we'd git a grand shelter.”
Judy readily agreed, and they descended the little stony footpath which led down to the river. Beneath the arch, where Thady's booted steps reverberated hollowly, they found, as he had said, a broadish strip of dry ground, for the bridge had allowed the stream ample measure in its stride. The little platform was bordered by a scattering of stones and boulders, amongst which the shallow water gurgled. It seemed to Thady and Judy that their quarters would be very tolerable; but they soon made a discovery which promised luxury indeed. This was a dead branch, which lay at one end of the arch, having evidently been floated down the current, and perhaps hauled out of the water by some thrifty body, who, however, had made no further use of it. Long ago that must have been, for it was dried and bleached till it glimmered through the dusk like an intricate white skeleton. Better fuel no one could desire. Thady made for it at once with knife and matchbox, and in a few minutes crackling flames were crunching up the twigs and gnawing at a log. The red light washed flickering over the wet walls, and was caught on the glancing of the water as it fled by, rapid and dark. Blue smoke trailed up lazily against the frame of the arch, blurring gleams of tossed foam as it melted out into the mist.
But a fire naturally suggested food, and Judy said ruefully, after feeling in her empty pocket: ”It's starved wid the hunger you'll be, Thady, and the sorra a taste of anythin' have I in the world. 'Deed now, if I'd on'y known the way it 'ud be, and I pa.s.sin' thim houses below in the boreen a while ago! I seen where there was a big cake of griddle-bread coolin' itself, laned agin the windy-ledge, and man nor mortal near it. I might ha' raiched it down as aisy as puttin' me fut to the ground. But sure I was that knocked about wid one thing and another, I thought I wouldn't be bothered wid it, so I just left it where it was, I did so--may G.o.d forgive me,” she said, with unfeigned contrition.
Thady, however, did not seem to share in her regrets. He was lifting his cl.u.s.ter of cans off his shoulders, and extracting from one of them a bundle tied up in a red handkerchief. ”Is it starved you'd have us?” he said as he untied the first corner. ”Starved! How are you?” And he continued to repeat: ”Is it starvin' she said?” while he was undoing the several knots. When they were all unfastened, the handkerchief was seen to hold a number of eggs and a fair supply of broken bread. Thady might well scout the possibility of famis.h.i.+ng. ”That's somethin' like,” he said, as he saw Judy surveying his stores, ”and I've a s.h.i.+llin'
somewheres besides.”
”Glory be!” said Judy, looking as if she could scarcely realise a world with which they were so much beforehand.
”And we'll be givin' them a boil in a one of the little saucepans,” said Thady. ”Raw eggs do be ugly could brashes, and we've plinty of wather handy--las.h.i.+ns and lavins of dhrink runnin' on tap there, so to spake.”
Supper was accordingly prepared on these simple lines with much success.
They boiled many eggs and ate them, using their sc.r.a.ps of bread for plates--an expedient not unknown at far earlier banquets--and they scooped up water to drink out of the palms of their hands--also in an old-fas.h.i.+oned manner. But when they had finished Thady gave a comparatively modern touch to the entertainment by lighting his pipe. He occupied the nearest place to the fire, in consideration for the scarecrow-like raggedness of his garments, which now began to weigh upon Judy's mind amid the comfort of her magnificent wrap.
”Froze stiff you'll be in thim ould tatters, man alive,” she said despondently. ”Sure, you might as well be slingin' yourself round wid the ould wisps of spiders' webs up over your head for any substance there is in thim. I won'er, now, could I conthrive to reive the top-cape off of this. 'Twould be as good that way as a cloak apiece for the two of us.”
Thady, however, said decidedly: ”Blathers, not _at all_. Is it destroyin' it you'd be after? I'm plinty warm enough.” And he rolled the big red handkerchief which had held the eggs into many folds about his neck, tucking it down under his coat-collar all round. ”There was a surprisin' hate in it,” he said.
By this time the dusk far and near had gloomed into darkness--the black beetle had scared away the grey moth. As Thady and Judy sat with their backs to the curving wall, they caught only fitful glimpses of the opposite one when any long-fronded flickers of the fire-light waved across and touched it. More often they fell short, and made quivering circles s.h.i.+ne where they struck the broken water in the mid-stream.
Without, beyond either arch, nothing was distinguishable except glimmers of white foam shaken and tossing. On the left, looking up the river, it seemed as if many spectral hands, borne nearer and nearer, came waving and beckoning out of the night, to pa.s.s by and away down the river, still beckoning and waving, carried further and further, on into the night again. Every now and then a waft of the wind sighed in on them along with the river, puffing about the flame and smoke, and blowing ice-cold in their faces. When it had pa.s.sed Thady always inquired: ”Is it warm at all, Jude?” and she always answered, drawing ”its” folds together with ostentatious satisfaction: ”Och scaldin'.”
But between whiles there was little conversation to interrupt the monologue of the river, which seemed to find itself many voices under the bridge. The one unceasing rustle of the main stream was frayed along its margin into a myriad finer noises of murmuring and plas.h.i.+ng, as the ma.s.sed foliage on a bough dwindles at its edges into more delicate traceries of distinct sprays and leaves. Round some stones the water whispered mysteriously, coiling in and out of gurgling recesses, and against others it broke with a clear chiming tinkle as if elfin anvils rang; here it droned on with a bee's hum soft and steady, and here it chuckled and chirped, bubbling up in sudden little rapids and cascades.
At Judy's feet was a thin flat stone, which rested loosely on the top of another, and flap-flapped, bobbing up and down as the ripple rose and fell. Sitting idle in the firelight, warmed and fed to unwonted contentment, Judy watched it half drowsily for a while. Presently she said:
”That's the very way the lid of our ould kettle would be goin' at home when it was on the boil, and me poor mother 'ud bid us keep an eye on it--like enough to keep us out of divilmint. Och, but that was a cosy little room of a could night. D'you mind it, Thady?”
”Ay, sure,” said Thady, ”but it's one while ago.”
”It is that. A matter of thirty year and more, anyway, since we owned the little shop. Sure now I remimber the day they shut it up, and put us out of it, as plain as if it was on'y this mornin'. Grand we that was childer thought it, because of somebody givin' us the ind of an ould jar of sweets out of the windy to pacify us. Bedad the fightin' we had over it was fit to ha' raised the town. But I grabbed meself a biggish lump of peppermint twist, and would be slinkin' behind me mother to finish it, and she talkin' at the door to ould Mrs. McClenaghan, and I heard her sayin' her heart was broke. So I got wond'rin' to myself if the raison was maybe that we'd ate it all on her. Och, but it's the quare foolishness people does be remimberin'!”
”Belike the raison of that is because it's as plinty as anythin' else wid thim,” said Thady, cynically, ”or maybe a trifle plintier.”
”Sure we was on'y brats thim times,” said Judy, apologetically. ”For anythin' we could tell we might as well be streelin' about under the width of the sky like a string of wild duck, as stoppin' at home wid a roof over our misfort'nit heads. Ould Mrs. McClenaghan next door had a cloak the same pattern as this,” Judy continued, selecting her memories with better judgment. ”But 'twas all tatters at the bottom, not worth a bawbee to mine.”
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