|
324
Liam
O'
Flaherty
He nodded towards the tent and jumped down into the pit. The
stranger followed him, stepping carefully down to avoid soiling his
clothes.
When he entered the tent after the tinker and saw the women he
immediately took off his cap and said: 'Good evening.' The two
women took their cigarettes from their mouths, smiled and nodded
their heads.
The stranger looked about him cautiously and then sat down on
a box to the side of the door near the brazier. He put his hands to
the blaze and rubbed them. Almost immediately a slight steam rose
from his clothes. The tinker handed him a cigarette, murmuring:
'Smoke?'
The stranger accepted the cigarette, lit it, and then looked at
them. None of them were looking at him, so he 'sized them up'
carefully, looking at each suspiciously with his sombre dark eyes.
The tinker was sitting on a box opposite him, leaning languidly
backwards from his hips, a slim, tall, graceful man, with a beautiful
head poised gracefully on a brown neck, and great black lashes
falling down over his half-closed eyes, just like a woman. A wom-
anish-looking fellow, with that sensuous grace in the languid pose
of his body which is found only among aristocrats and people who
belong to a very small workless class, cut off from the mass of
society, yet living at their expense. A young fellow with proud, con-
temptuous, closed lips and an arrogant expression in his slightly
expanded nostrils. A silent fellow, blowing out cigarette smoke
through his nostrils and gazing dreamily into the blaze of the wood
fire. The two women were just like him in texture, both of them
slatterns, dirty and unkempt, but with the same proud, arrogant,
contemptuous look in their beautiful brown faces. One was dark-
haired and black-eyed. She had rather a hard expression in her face
and seemed very alert. The other woman was golden-haired, with
a very small head and finely-developed jaw, that stuck out level
with her forehead. She was surpassingly beautiful, in spite of her
ragged clothes and the foul condition of her hair, which was piled
on her tiny skull in knotted heaps, uncombed. The perfect sym-
metry and delicacy of her limbs, her bust and her long throat that
had tiny freckles in the white skin, made the stranger feel afraid of
her, of her beauty and her presence in the tent.
'Tinkers,' he said to himself. 'Awful bloody people.'
Then he turned to the tinker.
The Tent
325
'Got any grub in the place . . . eh . . . mate?' he said brusquely,
his thick lips rapping out every word firmly, like one accustomed to
command inferiors. He hesitated before he added the word 'mate',
obviously disinclined to put himself on a level of human intercourse
with the tinker.
The tinker nodded and turned to the dark-haired woman.
'Might as well have supper now, Kitty,' he said softly.
The dark-haired woman rose immediately, and taking a black-
ened can that was full of water, she put it on the brazier. The
stranger watched her. Then he addressed the tinker again.
'This is a hell of a way to be, eh?' he said. 'Stuck out on a moun-
tain. Thought I'd make Roundwood tonight. How many miles is it
from here?'
'Ten,' said the tinker.
'Good God!' said the stranger.
Then he laughed, and putting his hand in his breast pocket, he
pulled out a half-pint bottle of whiskey.
'This is all I got left,' he said, looking at the bottle.
The tinker immediately opened his eyes wide when he saw the
bottle. The golden-haired woman sat up and looked at the stranger
eagerly, opening her brown eyes wide and rolling her tongue in her
cheek. The dark-haired woman, rummaging in a box, also turned
around to look. The stranger winked an eye and smiled.
'Always welcome,' he said. 'Eh? My curse on it, anyway. Any-
body got a corkscrew?'
The tinker took a knife from his pocket, pulled out a corkscrew
from its side and handed it to the man. The man opened the bottle.
'Here,' he said, handing the bottle to the tinker. 'Pass it round. I
suppose the women'll have a drop.'
The tinker took the bottle and whispered to the dark-haired
woman. She began to pass him mugs from the box.
'Funny thing,' said the stranger, 'when a man is broke and hun-
gry, he can get whiskey but he can't get grub. Met a man this morn-
ing in Dublin and he knew bloody well I was broke, but instead of
asking me to have a meal, or giving me some money, he gave me
that. I had it with me all along the road and I never opened it.'
He threw the end of his cigarette out the entrance.
'Been drinkin' for three weeks, curse it,' he said.
'Are ye belongin' to these parts?' murmured the tinker, pouring
out the whiskey into the tin mugs.
326
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
