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GRANIA

HURRISH: a Study IRELAND MAJOR LAWRENCE, F.L.S. PLAIN FRANCES MOWBRAY, &c. WITH ESSEX IN IRELAND

GRANIA

THE STORY OF AN ISLAND

BY THE

HON. EMILY LAWLESS

IN TWO VOLUMES

LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1892

Thus the weeks went on, one week after the other, all exactly alike, and no new light came to aid Grania in her investigations about the stolen turf. What was hardly less important, however, the depredations themselves ceased. From the night on which she had pursued the thief through the gully and lost him at the mouth of it, no fresh inroads, so far as she could discover, had been made in the stack, and, this being the case, she was content for the present to let the matter be. She had a kindly feeling towards poor Pete Durane, and if he were the culprit would have been sorry to have been forced to bring the guilt home to him. If, on the other hand, it was Shan Daly--the only other person she could think of as likely to be guilty--though she hated that miscreant as she hated no other person in the world, still, there was his wretched wife to be thought of, and his equally wretched family. As well, too, hope to extract blood from flints as get any satisfaction or compensation out of Shan Daly, and, as for the mere vindictive pleasure of punishment, the ties of kinship and acquaintanceship are far too closely drawn in so limited a community as Inishmaan for that sort of pleasure to be often resorted to. If we were on visiting terms with the families of our pick-pockets and burglars, those artists would be even less interrupted in the exercise of their vocations than they are at present.

Meanwhile the work of the year had to be gone on with. Grania was feeding up a calf, as well as two pigs, to be sold at the Galway spring fair. The freight charges from Inishmaan to Galway were serious--not less than half a crown for every calf and a shilling apiece for the pigs; whereas the freight charges to Ennistimon were much less; but, then, the chances of a good sale at the Galway fair were considerably greater, and, on the whole, therefore, she had decided to send them there.

Her other work was now lighter, for there was nothing to be done to the potatoes till autumn, and she had hardly any oats. In the Aran isles the land is divided into townlands, every townland containing so many 'quarters,' every quarters so many 'croggeries,' every croggery so many acres. Inishmaan possesses but two townlands, containing six quarters each, with sixteen croggeries to every quarter, and sixteen acres to every croggery. Grania and Honor held a little over one croggery, six acres of which was pure stone, leaving some ten or eleven to be reckoned upon. Of these, half were laid down in potatoes, while the remainder served as pasturage, eked out, of course, with a good deal of surreptitious aid from the bent-grass below.

As for the weather, it seemed to be getting daily worse. So wet and miserable a spring had rarely been experienced, even upon Inishmaan. To rain in moderation, nay, something more than moderation, no Aranite, as explained, objects, but, even of the best thing, it is just possible to have too much, and such incessant deluges as followed day after day, and night after night, were this year beyond the recollection of the oldest inhabitant. If the destiny of the islands was sooner or later to be washed away and to vanish from sight in the sea, it seemed as if now was the time that destiny was likely to be fulfilled. The rain came down in literal sheets, and in sheets it swept over the surface. There being no earth for it to dry into, it poured over the level slabs, sweeping from slab to slab almost as the sea swept over the rocks between the tide-marks. Watching it at such moments, it would have seemed to you as if the whole island would shortly become one great waterfall, or scarcely perceptible reef for the Atlantic to roll over, the water, as it descended upon the slabs, falling into the troughs or tunnels laid ready for it, and out of them again until it found rest in the final trough awaiting it at the bottom.

About a fortnight after her visit to the Duranes, Grania was standing one evening at the door of the cabin looking down the track towards the sea. It had been raining heavily all day, and had now come on to blow hard. Across the nearest sound and above the cliffs of Clare the sky wore a greenish look, especially where it showed between dark roving patches of cloud. At the base of the island the cooses and small bays on the west and north-west were astir with the hissing of waves. The rising wind tore and whistled its way noisily through the sparse hawthorn-bushes and ragged growth of brambles and hemlocks. The night, clearly, was going to be a nasty one.

The girl leaned against the shelter of the doorway and looked out towards the 'Old Sea.' It was growing dark, but there was a pale splinter of white light far away, almost lost on the horizon--a sinister light, like a broken war-arrow. Everywhere else the plain was one mass of leaden-coloured waves, solid and unillumined. The sense of a vast crowd, coming steadily onward, struggling together by fits and starts, with many side-battles and cross-currents, but on the whole bearing steadily down upon some devoted foe, pressed upon the mind as you looked out seaward.

Nearer, the prospect was not much more cheerful. The wind howled viciously, tearing off fragments of scaly stone from the rocks and flinging them against the windows and over the roof like so many forest leaves. Little Phelim Daly was in the O'Malleys' cabin. He had come, as he often did, to share their evening meal, and Grania had decided to keep him, finding the night so wild, and had run across in the teeth of the rising gale to tell his mother so. He was not exactly an enlivening guest, and this evening seemed to be even more nerve-ridden than usual. After finishing his share of the potatoes and milk, he sat for some time hunched up, with his knees and his chin together, close to the fire. As the storm rose louder and the gust came faster and faster down the widely-gaping chimney, he grew uneasy, looked furtively round the walls, then up at the narrow slip of sky visible through the small pane of glass, shaking from head to foot as he did so, and seeming to see something out there that he dreaded, something that he was unable to resist staring at, but which scared him with the utterly unreasoning fear of an animal in presence of that which arouses all its latent hereditary terrors.

Glancing round from her post beside the doorway, Grania saw him staring thus, with parted lips and glassy eyes, agonising fear written in every lineament. Suddenly, as she watched him, a great shiver ran through his whole body, his very shadow thrown by the firelight against the opposite wall vibrating violently as a leaf vibrates in a sudden storm.

'Why, then! Why, then!--God look down on the child!--what ails him to-night?' she asked in a tone of astonishment. 'What is it, Phelim--what do you see out there, sonny, at all, at all?' she added, going over and stooping down beside him upon the hearth.

For all answer the boy only shivered the harder, clutching her at the same time, and holding her petticoat tight in his two hands, as if to hinder himself from being forcibly dragged away by someone.

''Tis in his bed he should be at this hour, the creature!' Honor said from her own corner, where her pale face showed extremely like a ghost's, framed as it was on two sides by the smoke-stained chocolate walls. 'It is not a night for anyone to be looking about them, either in or out of the house, so it is not,' she added, crossing herself fervently. 'Shut the door, Grania, and put on another sod of the turf. God save us! but it is the wild weather! There is no end to the bad weather this year, so there is not. Glory be to Him that sent it, wet or fine!'

Grania obeyed, shut the door and heaped on an additional armful of turf; then stood for awhile beside the fireplace, listening to the wind as it roared down the unprotected chimney.

It was indeed a night to set even sober brains afloat with nervous terrors. The little house seemed to be an atom lost in the hungry vortex of the storm and oncoming darkness. A sense of vast, uncurtained space--of tossing, interminable vastness--of an a?rial ocean without bourne or limits, seemed to press upon the mind as you sat and listened. They were as lonely, those three, as though they had been the only occupants of some star or planet set in the hollow void of space. Even the yellow cat, who was rarely or never friendly, seemed to feel the influence of the weather, and came of her own accord close up to Grania, rubbing against her as if glad to increase the sense of home and shelter by touching someone.

As Honor had said, the only thing, clearly, to do with Phelim was to put him to bed. Grania accordingly made him lie down close to the wall, upon the sort of make-shift of a bed which filled the corner where she herself slept, telling him, as she did so, to turn his head well away from the light, and to cover his ears close up with her old flannel petticoat, so as not to hear the storm. This done, she returned to her former place beside the fireplace.

She drew up her own particular creepy stool, and sat down, staring at the tongues of red flame as they were blown in towards her, every now and then, by a fresh gust from above.

Her thoughts and the night seemed to her to match one another. She had seen little or nothing of Murdough Blake for the last fortnight, one reason being that he had been away from Inishmaan at Ballyvaughan, in company with Shan Daly and other kindred spirits, sharing in a sort of rude regatta, got up by the hooker and curragh owners of the neighbourhood. A report had come to her through a friendly neighbour that he had been all this time drinking hard--nay, had been seen by someone lying dead drunk in the Ballyvaughan street. Whether this was the case or not, she knew that he was spending money, for the only time she had seen him had been late one evening, when he had come up to beg for a loan--not for the first or the third time either that year. She had given him the money, it being for a debt, he said, and she having a little that she could spare, and had not even reproached him, beyond telling him that it must positively be for the last time.

Grania suffered as strong people suffer. Not patiently, nor yet with any particular inclination to complain, but with a suffering that was a sort of fire in her veins. She would have liked to have taken the matter, then and there, into her own strong hands; to have beaten Shan Daly--recognised aider and abettor in every misdeed--soundly with her own two fists; to have dragged Murdough by force out of this ditch which his own folly was slowly digging below him. Yet, what could she do? There was only one way of getting any more hold on him, and that was by marrying him. That, however, was at present impossible. Apart from Honor's increasing illness there was no place ready for them, excepting this cabin, and how could he come there? Besides, even if she did marry him, what then? could she be sure of getting any more hold over him? of stopping him from drinking? of inducing him to do anything she wished? Did he even care much about what she wished? Did he care much about her in any way, in fact, except so far as he cared for the cows and the pigs, and the other possessions she owned? Did he--Would he--Had he--?

She thrust her pampootie-shod foot suddenly into the turf, kicking it to right and left, as these thoughts crowded upon her mind, and making it flare away wildly up the chimney in a tangle of scarlet sparks.

She had forgotten Honor for the moment, or thought perhaps that she had fallen asleep. This, however, was clearly not the case, for at that moment her soft guttural voice made itself heard from the corner.

'What ails you then to-night, sister dear?' she asked gently. 'What makes you look so wild? Is it the storm that scares you?'

'Isn't it queer, Honor, to think of all the trouble there is, far and near, over the whole, big world? Sure when one looks out over the sea and the land yonder, and beyond that again, and thinks of it all, there seems to be nothing but trouble and trouble and trouble, and more trouble upon the top of trouble. God help us! what are we brought into it for at all, at all, I sometimes wonder, if there's to be nothing for us but trouble and trouble and trouble? 'Tis bad enough for the men, but it's worse a hundred times for the women! Where's any happiness coming to any of us from at all, at all, I want to know? I can't see much of it, look where I will, Honor, so I can't. Can you?--say, sister allanah--can you?'

Honor opened her mild brown eyes to their widest possible extent, and half raised herself up in bed in wonder at such questionings.

'Sure, child! isn't God everywhere?' she exclaimed simply. 'And happiness! Why, saints above! who ever heard of such talk! Happiness? God love the child! what were any of us, and women specially, sent into the world for, except to save our souls and learn to bear what's given us to bear? Augh, Grania, Grania! don't be looking for happiness, child, for I tell you you won't get it--not married nor single, sick nor well, rich nor poor, young nor old; for 'tisn't in it at all, at all, so how can you expect to find it? 'Tis only in heaven there's any real, right happiness, child, as I'm always telling you, and 'tis not till you get there that any one need think to find it, nor couldn't, not though they were to hunt for it the whole world over, and get under the sea-water, too, looking for it! And for a woman!--why, child, 'tis impossible! To bear and bear, that's all she's got to do, so she has, till God sends her rest--nothing else. Isn't that what she has come into the world for, no other? Oh, but 'tis the priest himself should be telling you all that, and not me that knows so little. If you could only once get your heart to the right way of thinking, child asthore, 'tisn't tormenting yourself with any such follies you'd be this night, nor any night, either! Sure, the priest would tell you that there's no happiness in this world for a man, let alone for a woman; only trouble, and trouble, as you say, on the top of trouble, and will be as long as the grass grows and the rain falls, and the streams run, and the sea goes round Ireland, and that will be till the world itself comes to an end, so it will!'

Grania for all answer thrust her foot again amongst the turf, making it flare and sputter like a Catherine wheel.

Grania's compunction awoke in a minute at the words. They had far more effect on her than a more finished remonstrance would have had. Leaping up from where she was squatting beside the fire, she ran over to the bed, and, leaning over the sick woman, began trying to soothe her back into quietness, heaping abuse upon herself at the same time for having disturbed her.

Honor shut her eyes, more to please Grania and satisfy her entreaties, than because she felt any inclination to sleep. Little by little, however, exhaustion crept over her, and she fell into a doze, which passed by degrees into broken, uneasy slumbers. Even in her sleep, however, it was clear that the same thoughts pursued her, for from time to time she would sigh heavily, her lips uttering now a broken prayer, now some tender self-accusing word, while in her eyes, had there been light to see them, the large tears might have been seen gathering slowly, and stealing one after the other down the hollows of her poor thin cheeks.

About the still more exposed cabin of the Duranes the storm raged yet more furiously, and awoke, one after the other, all its inhabitants, no less than nine of whom were sleeping under its roof that night. It blew the white turf-ashes out from the chimney in such a shower over Pete himself, who was sleeping upon the right-hand side of the fireplace, and whose mouth happened to be wide open at the time, that it became filled with them, in getting rid of which he uttered a succession of sputtering sounds which had the undesirable effect of arousing his wife and exciting her never very distant wrath.

Unfortunately the action brought her elbow into sudden sharp contact with the head of the youngest little girl who had nestled close up to her for warmth, and who immediately responded with a loud howl, which in its turn aroused Juggy Kelly, Pete's niece and the general servant of the establishment, who slept with the chickens in a sort of loft overhead, and who, with a vague idea that something was suddenly being required of her, began, half awake, to hist and hoost vigorously, as if she were driving in geese or turkeys to roost.

'Dada, my foot's sore! There's a big thorn sticking out of the top of it!' suddenly exclaimed the youngest child but two, a small, red-headed, lively creature called Norah, its father's chief favourite, who was sleeping in an obscure corner of the cabin along with a brother of about a year older.

'Arrah, hush, my dotey! Be easy, now, there's a good child, and don't be crossing your mother!' Pete answered apprehensively, creeping out of his own bed and feeling his way over in the darkness to where the child's voice came from. 'There, there; go to sleep quick, acushla agus, and sure dada will look for the ugly devil of a thorn in the morning and pull it out, never fear,' he whispered soothingly, whereupon the child, satisfied by his assurance, put up her little face to be kissed and then settled down again, curling her little legs under her as a small drowsy bird curls itself into its own corner of the nest.

'True to you, father, the same, amen!' dutifully responded his son, as he skipped back across the cabin and into his own lair, pulling the great coat which was his chief covering by night as well as by day close up to his chin.

Thus, despite the blasts which unceasingly shook it, all the inmates of the cabin little by little fell asleep. In other cabins scattered over the face of the island the inhabitants, too, slept, notwithstanding the storm, till, towards daybreak, the wind itself--sweeping over and over, and round and round its unprotected top; playing mad pranks along the steep perpendicular cliffs; rushing vociferously through the narrow fluted channels and fissures, in at one end, out at the other; loosening the thin flakes of limestone and dropping them with a hollow or tinkling clatter upon the next ledge--producing, in short, every variety of sound of which that not very responsive musical instrument was capable--was the only thing left awake and astir upon Inishmaan.

The art of weaving is one that has been practised upon the Aran isles for a longer time than it is easy to reckon. It cannot, however, be said to have, so far, reached any very high point of perfection. At the time at which this story opened there were no fewer than four professional weavers upon Inishmaan. Dumb Denny O'Shaughnessy, however, had always been considered to stand at the top of his profession, especially as the maker of the thick yellowish-white flannel used by the women for their bodices and by the men for their entire suits. Dumb Denny had now been dead some months, but the weaving trade was still carried on by his nephew Teige, though there were not wanting captious housewives ready to cry out that the stuff produced by him was of a very inferior quality to that produced by old Denny. Changes, no matter of what sort or from what cause, are naturally condemned in such places as Inishmaan.

Grania had for some time back been intending to get Honor the materials for a new bedgown, the only garment the poor woman now ever needed. Honor herself had deprecated the expense, declaring that the old one did well enough, though her elbows had long been through the sleeves--a fact not to be concealed whenever her old striped shawl, the only other garment she wore, fell back and left them exposed. Patches might perhaps have been fitted to them, but unfortunately Grania's various accomplishments did not include any very intimate acquaintance with a needle, her hands being much more at home with an oar or a pitch-fork. Honor, for an Aranite, had been a fairly neat worker in her day, but that day was long past. In any case, new flannel Grania was determined to get, and when she had set her mind resolutely upon anything it was not likely to be long delayed.

A few days later, therefore, she set off for the O'Shaughnessy cabin to give the order to Teige, first driving 'Moonyeen' down to enjoy an hour's illicit feeding upon the bent-grass on the seashore. This small act of habitual larceny accomplished, she followed the level platform of rock till she reached the corner of the island, which brought her opposite to the little spit or isthmus by means of which the islet upon which the O'Shaughnessys' cabin stood joined on to its larger neighbour.

The weather was as bad as ever. Though it was now mid-May the day felt like March. An ill-conditioned blast--easterly rather than westerly--seemed to be waiting for the passerby at every corner. As she walked along the prospect was enough to set even native teeth on edge. In every direction spread the eternal grey sheets of rock, broken into fissures, battered by the storms, half melted under dissolving torrents of rain, their few patches of greenery shrunk away into the fissures for warmth and safety. Beyond lay the unvarying sweep of grey sea, or of land almost as cheerless. Overhead the same eternal cloud-processions. No clear sky anywhere. On they went, those clouds; hurrying endlessly; grey, shapeless masses entangled in one another; clutching at one another with bodiless fingers, rolling away into the distance for ever and ever; always going on, and yet never gone.

Especially was the wind cold and boisterous upon the narrow tongue of rock that linked the O'Shaughnessys' territory to the rest of the world. It seemed to be literally sweeping in from all sides at once as Grania made her way across, avoiding as far as possible the oily coils of seaweed strewn over it, and, having reached the other side, clambered up the short steep bit of cliff which intervened between it and the cabin.

The door stood wide open, so that before she reached it she could see right through the cabin and out to the sea upon the other side. There were two windows, one on the same side as the door, looking south towards Inishmaan, the other looking northward. It was through this one that the grey light of the sea lying below came so distinctly, shining upon the floor and walls with something of the cold sheen and glitter of a sea-cave. Between the two windows stretched the loom, a rickety structure of indistinguishable hue, its beams half rotten, and bent and warped with time, the very cords on which the work in progress was stretched being so worn and old that it seemed impossible they could continue to serve their purpose much longer. In place, too, of a metal sustainer a small bar of wood held up the work in progress--in the present case a piece of the usual whitish flannel of the island, the same that Grania had herself come to order.

Teige O'Shaughnessy was sitting bent double over his work, but he suddenly lifted his head, and started erect with a look of sheepish joy when he saw his visitor.

Standing behind his loom, whose beams and pulleys filled nearly the whole interior of the cabin, his poor, ugly face looked up at his visitor from under its red thatch with a peculiarly wistful expression, an expression not often seen on a man's face, very often upon that of some affectionate and rather unusually ill-used dog. Yet Grania had never ill-used Teige O'Shaughnessy. At least, had she? The question is not so easily answered as may at first sight seem. Given a woman with a larger share of plain human affection than she can conveniently dispose of--an impatient woman, hot tempered and vehement--let her have given away that affection where it is, to say the least, indifferently responded to; let her have someone else at hand to whom she is as the sun, moon, and stars shining in their glory--as wonderful and hardly less unapproachable--what sort of treatment is she likely to mete out to that person? The experience of larger places than Inishmaan may be taken to supply the answer!

Grania's own impression, had she been asked, was that she was very good indeed to Teige O'Shaughnessy--now. She allowed him, that is to say, to do a multitude of odd jobs for her that she would never for an instant have dreamt of troubling Murdough with. When Honor had been well enough, for instance, it had been his office to help row the two sisters over to Aranmore to mass upon a Sunday morning, one for which he was well fitted, as he was as expert in the management of a curragh as she was herself, though his lameness made him less serviceable in other tasks, such as digging, or carrying heavy loads up hill.

To anyone entering at that moment, a first glance would have revealed no figure but that of the weaver himself. As Grania advanced into the cabin, however, an odd-looking, little, doubled-up, red object rose from a corner of the hearth where it had been squatting, and came towards her, making queer bobs, ducks, and uncanny grimaces as it did so.

This was deaf and dumb Biddy O'Shaughnessy, twin sister to the man lately dead. Biddy had always been reckoned 'queer' upon Inishmaan, and her infirmity had naturally tended to cut her off from her fellows. She was also said to be malicious, though how a creature so helpless could be supposed to have the means of injuring anyone, it was hard to say. Whatever affection she had to give had certainly all been concentrated upon her twin-brother, and, since his death, she had grown more elf-like and uncanny than ever, as if the one tie that linked her to humanity had now been broken. She was asserted by her neighbours to detest her nephew Teige, though for this assertion also there was probably only the wildest surmise to go upon, and certainly Teige had never shown any signs of being aware of the fact himself.

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