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GRANIA
VOL. II.
_By the same Author_
HURRISH: a Study
IRELAND (Story of the Nations Series)
MAJOR LAWRENCE, F.L.S.
PLAIN FRANCES MOWBRAY, &c.
WITH ESSEX IN IRELAND
GRANIA
THE STORY OF AN ISLAND
BY THE
HON. EMILY LAWLESS
AUTHOR OF ‘HURRISH, A STUDY’
ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1892
[_All rights reserved_]
PART III
_MAY TO AUGUST_
CHAPTER I
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 aërial 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.