The Trainmasters Read Online Free PDF

Then she lost that one too.
     After several more jobs and several more dismissals, no one would hire her. The women who employed young “Bridgets”—as the
     Irish girls were called because so many of the girls had that name—did not like her. She was contrary and self-willed; she
     was not properly humble and meek. Her beauty and intelligence too often played against her: Many of the husbands of her employers
     made it abundantly clear that they would welcome her sexual favors.
    So when work in service became impossible, Teresa chose what she saw as the only course left to her. What she had to offer
     was her beauty, her wit, her intelligence, and her lively personality. She found men willing to pay for her companionship,
     not just for a night, but for weeks or months at a time.
    This meant, of course, that Teresa often took these men to bed. Yet Teresa did not consider herself a whore. She believed
     she had become a kind of courtesan. And so Teresa O’Rahilly became Teresa Derbyville because the English name, she felt, bestowed
     on her more class, and she was much sought after by the younger gentlemen of Philadelphia.
    While Teresa deluded herself about her chosen profession, her brother did not. Egan interpreted his sister’s behavior with
     utter severity, and he cut her off completely. He despised Teresa; he hoped he would never see her again. Yet he failed to
     see that he suffered from the very same pride that led Teresa to her current position in life. Pride was an O’Rahilly family
     trait.
    The O’Rahillys had left Ireland during the worst horrors of the potato famine. They had never been farmers, nor did their
     livelihood depend on fanning. The O’Rahillys were traveling thespians, part of a troupe of players who put on skits and dramas
     from town to town and village to village. They also sang, juggled, or performed acrobatic routines— anything to entertain
     and earn a few pence or a few potatoes if there was nothing else.
    There had never been much for them as they wandered through the counties of Ireland, for the farmers and townspeople had very
     little left over from their meager crops and earnings; but the Irish did adore a good time, and so there had always been something.
    Until the blight struck in 1845.
    After that there was scarcely a penny available for the O’Rahillys and their band of players. What they had, they got as a
     result of the presence in their band of Malachy Patrick Rafferty, a Jesuit priest who was using the troupe as a disguise for
     the priestly activities that the British occupiers forbade. He also taught the children of the troupe letters and numbers,
     lessons that Egan and Teresa learned especially well. Even as the horrors of the famine grew worse, Rafferty always seemed
     to know how to scrounge a bit of food; he always knew somebody who could spare a little for him and his friends. But after
     the crop of 1846 failed worse than the crop of ‘45, even Rafferty’s resources were expended. He advised the players to emigrate.
    Egan would never forget the scenes he witnessed in Cork and Galway and Kerry and Tipperary. The streets crowded with gaunt,
     hopeless wanderers; the mobs of starved, barely clothed women around the poorhouses, clamoring for soup tickets; the ghastly,
     scarcely living skeletons huddled on filthy straw in the corner of some hovel; the frozen corpses, half gnawed by rats. The
     men were indistinguishable from the women, for all evidence of their sex seemed to have shrunk and withered away. The children
     were like mummies with bloated bellies and terrified eyes.
    But the landlords didn’t starve. By God,
they
kept eating well. And they continued to take profits back to England from the devastated land.
    Egan O’Rahilly hated the English with all the passion and fervor that he loved Deirdre and Peg.
    The cage was down again.
    “All right you bog-eatin’ bastards,” yelled Tom Henneberry, the boss of Egan’s gang, “your