They were now upon the loneliest piece of the whole island. Far and near
not a human creature or sign of humanity, save themselves, was to be
seen. The few villages of Inishmaan were upon the other side, the few
spots of verdure which might here and there have been discerned by long
search were all but completely lost in the prevailing stoniness, and to
eyes less accustomed than theirs nothing could have been more deplorable
than the waste of desolation spread out here step above step, stony
level above stony level, till it ended, appropriately enough, in the
huge ruinous fort of Dun Connor, grey even amongst that greyness, grim
even by comparison with what surrounded it, and upon which it looked
austerely down.
It was one of those days, too, when the islands, susceptible enough at
times of beauty, stand out nakedly, almost revoltingly, ugly. The low
sky; the slate-coloured waste of water; the black hanks of driftweed
flung hither and thither upon the rocks; the rocks themselves,
shapeless, colourless, half-dissolved by the rains that eternally beat
on them; the white pools staring upwards like so many dead eyes; the
melancholy, roofless church; the great, grey fort overhead, sloughing
away atom by atom like some decaying madrepore; the few pitiful attempts
at cultivation--the whole thing, above, below, everywhere, seeming to
press upon the senses with an impression of ugliness, an ugliness enough
to sicken not the eyes or the heart alone, but the very stomach.
As Grania and Murdough pursued their way side by side over the rocks
little Phelim gradually lagged behind, and at last drifted away
altogether, stopping dreamily first at one patch of sand, then at
another, and becoming more and more merged in the general hue of the
rocks, till he finally disappeared from sight in the direction of his
mother’s cabin.
The other two kept on upon the same level till they had got back to
Grania’s potato-patch. Here she picked up her spade, and at once resumed
her work of clearing out stone-encumbered ridges, Murdough Blake
perching himself meanwhile comfortably upon a boulder, where he sat
swinging his pampootie-shod feet over the edge and complacently
surveying her labours.
The girl drove her spade vehemently into the ground with a sort of
fierce impatience, due partly to a sense of having wasted time, but
more to a vague feeling of irritation and disappointment which, like the
former feeling, had a fashion of recurring whenever these two had been
some time together. The sods sprang from before her spade; the light
sandy soil flew wildly hither and thither; some of the dust of it even
reached Murdough as he lounged upon his boulder: but he only sat still
and watched her complacently, utterly unaware that he had anything
himself to say to this really unnecessary display of energy.
The theory that love would be less felt if it was less talked about
certainly finds some justification in Ireland, and amongst such
well-developed specimens of youthful manhood as Murdough Blake. It _is_
seldom talked of there, and apparently in consequence seldom felt.
Marriages being largely matters of barter, irregular connections all but
unknown, it follows that the topic loses that predominance which it
possesses in nearly every other community in the world. Politics, sport,
religion, a dozen others push it from the field. Physiologically--you
would have said to look at him--he was of the very material out of which
an emotional animal is made, and yet--explain the matter how you
like--he was not in the least an emotional animal, or rather his
emotional activity was used up in quite other directions than the
particular form called love-making. Of his conversational entertainment,
for instance, to do him justice, he was rarely lacking.
‘Begorrah, tis the wonderful girl you are for the work, Grania
O’Malley!’ he observed, when the silence between them had lasted about
three minutes. ‘Is it never tired you do be getting of it; never at all,
summer or winter, say, Grania?’
She shook her head. ‘And what else would I be doing upon Inishmaan if I
did get tired of it itself, Murdough Blake?’ she asked pertinently.
There being no very easy answer to this question, Murdough was silent
again for another minute and a half.
‘It is myself that gets tired of it then, so it is,’ he replied
candidly. ‘I would give a great deal if I had it, I would, Grania
O’Malley, to be out of Inishmaan, so I would, God knows!’ he continued,
looking away towards the line of coast, low to the south, but rising
towards the north in a succession of pallid peaks, peering one behind
the other till they melted into the distance. ‘It is a very poor place,
Inishmaan, for a young man and a man of spirit to be living in, always,
week-days and Sundays, fine days, rain days, always the same. How is he
to show what is in him, at all, at all, and he always in the same place?
It is, yes, my faith and word, very hard on him. He might as well be
one of these prickly things down there that do take a year to crawl from
one stone to another, so he might, every bit as well, my faith and
word!’
‘You do go to Galway most weeks in Peter O’Donovan’s turf boat,’ the
girl rejoined, stooping to pick up a stone and tossing it impatiently
away from the drill.
‘And if I do, Grania O’Malley, what then? It is not a very great affair
Peter O’Donovan’s turf boat. And it is not much time either--not more
than three or four hours at the most--that I get in the town, for there
is the fastening of the boat to be done, and helping to get the turf on
board, and many another thing too. And Peter O’Donovan he is a very hard
man, so he is; yes, indeed, God knows, _very_. And when I am in the town
itself, and walking about in the streets of it, why, you see, Grania
deelish, I’ve got so little of the English---- Bad luck to my father and
to my mother too for not sending me to be learnt it when I was a
bouchaleen! A man feels a born gomoral, so he does, just a gomoral, no
better--when he hasn’t got the good English. And there are a great many
of the quality too in the town of Galway, and it is not one word of the
Irish that they will speak--no, nor understand it either--so they will
not, Grania, not one word.’
‘I’ve got no English either, and I don’t want any of it,’ she answered
proudly; ‘I had sooner have only the Irish.’
‘Arrah, Grania, but you are an ignorant colleen to go say such a thing!
’Tis yourself that knows nothing about it, or you would not talk so.
Language is grand, grand! I wish that I knew all the languages that ever
were upon this earth since the days of King Noah, who made the Flood.
Yes, I do, and more too, than ever there were on it! Then I could talk
to all the people, and hold up my head high with the best in the land.
My word, yes, if I knew all the languages that ever were, I promise you
I could speak fine--my word, yes!’
It was quite a new idea to Grania that there were more languages in the
world than English and Irish, and she meditated silently upon the
information for several minutes.
‘There’s what Father Tom speaks in the chapel, when he comes over from
Aranmore to say Mass,’ she observed reflectively. “Ave Maria” and “Pater
Noster.” Honor learned me that, and it is not the Irish, I know, and it
would not be the English, I suppose, either?’
The remark was put in the form of an interrogation, but Murdough’s
thoughts had travelled elsewhere.
‘Young Mr. Mullarky of Ballyhure was in Galway last day I was there, so
he was. Och! but it is the quality that have the grand times, Grania
O’Malley, and it is myself would have had the grand times too if I had
been born one of them, that I would, the grandest times of them all. He
was riding upon a big black horse, the blackest horse ever you saw in
your life. Och! but the noise it made as it came down the street,
scattering the people and clattering upon the stones. _Wurrah! wurrah!_
but it did make the noise, I tell you, Grania, and the people all
turning round to look at him, and he pretending not to see one of them.
My God! but a horse is a wonderful beast! I would sooner have a horse of
my own, of my very own, that I could ride all over the world upon the
back of, than I would have a ship or anything! Yes, I would, my faith
and word, yes.’
‘A ship would take you a deal further,’ Grania replied scornfully. ‘When
my father had the hooker he would put up the sails of her here in
Inishmaan, and it would not be four hours--no, nor nearly four
hours--before we would be sailing into the harbour at Ballyvaughan, and
what horse in the world would do that for you?’
‘A horse wouldn’t take you over the sea, of course, but a horse could
take you anywhere you wanted on the dry land--anywhere over the whole
earth, just for the trouble of skelping it. Arrah my word! just think
how you’d feel sitting on the back of it, and it galloping along the
road, and everyone turning round to look at you. That’s how the quality
feel, and that’s how I’d feel if I had been born one of them, as I might
have been and as I ought to have been; for why not? Why should they have
everything and we nothing? Is that fair? God who is up there in heaven,
He knows right well that it is not fair, so it is not. There was a man
last year at the Galway horse fair, and he had a little horse, a
yellow-coloured one it was, Grania O’Malley, only the mane and tail of
it were black, and I went up to him as bold as bold, and says I--“_Cay
vadh é luach an coppul shin?_”[5] For I wanted to know the cost of it.
“_Coog poonthe daig_,[6] and that’s more than you’ve got about you this
minute, I’m thinking, my poor gosthoon,” said he, with a laugh. “Gorra,
that’s true,” thought I to myself, and I went away very troubled like,
for my heart seemed tied with strings to that little yellow horse. And I
watched it all day from a distance, and everyone that went up to look at
it; ’twas just like something of my own that I was afraid of having
stolen, just the very same, and I could have leaped out and knocked them
down, I was so mad to think that another would have it and I not. And
about four o’clock in the afternoon there came a young fellow from
Gort--a little dotteen he was, not up to my shoulder--and he too asked
the price of it, only it was in the English he asked it, and the man
told him seventeen pounds, for I understood that much. “Can it leap?”
says the young fellow. “Is it leap?” says the other. “Yarra, it would
leap the moon as ready as look at it, so it would, and higher too if you
could find it anything to stand on!” says he, joking like. “Auch, don’t
be trying to put your comethers upon me,” says the young fellow who was
wanting to buy it. “Do you think it was yesterday I was born?” says he.
‘Well, with that they went away to a place about a quarter of a mile
from there, and I crept after them, hiding behind the walls, and every
now and then I would peep over the top of a wall, and the heart inside
me it would go hop, hopping, up and down, till I thought it would burst.
And every time that little yellow horse lifted its legs or twitched its
ear I’d leap as if I was doing it myself. And when the man that was
selling it gave it now and then a skelp with a bit of a kippeen that he
held in his hand I felt like murdering him--“How dare you be touching
another gentleman’s horse, you spalpeen?” I’d cry out, only it was in
the inside of me, you understand, under my breath, I’d say it, for there
were the two of them, and the one that was wanting to sell the horse was
a big fellow, twice as big as myself and bigger, with a great brown
beard on the chin of him. And ever since that day I’ve been thinking and
thinking of all I’d do if I had a horse, a real live horse of my own.
And at night I do be dreaming that I’m galloping down the hill over
beyond Gort-na-Copple, and the four legs of the horse under me going so
fast that you would hardly tell one of them from the other, and the
children running out on to the road, and their mothers screeching and
bawling to them at the tops of their voices to come out of that, or
maybe the gentleman would kill them. Oh! but it is a grand beast, I tell
you, Grania O’Malley, a horse is! There is no other beast in the whole
world so grand as a horse--not one anywhere--no, not anywhere at all.’
Grania listened to all this in perfect silence. These aspirations of
Murdough found her very much colder than his more juvenile ones used to
find her. They did not stimulate her imagination, somehow now, on the
contrary they merely made her feel vaguely uncomfortable and cross. All
this talk about money and fine horses, and the quality, and what he
would have done if he himself had been one of the quality was a mere
fairy tale, and moreover a very tiresome fairy tale to her. There was
nothing about it that she could attach any idea to; nothing which seemed
to have any connection with themselves, or their own life present or
future. She went on steadily cleaning out her drills, scraping the small
stones in front of her and laying them in heaps at the side. Murdough
meanwhile, having finished everything he had to say upon the subject of
horsemanship, had travelled away to another topic, explaining,
expounding, elaborating, pouring forth a flood of illustrations such as
his native tongue is rich in. It was a torrent to which there was
apparently no limit, and which, once started, could flow as readily and
continue as long in one direction as in another.
Grania was hardly listening. She wanted--she hardly herself knew _what_
she wanted--but certainly it was not words. Why would Murdough always
go on talk, talk, talking? she thought irritably. She admired his
interminable flow of words of course--she would not have been Irish had
she not done so--at the same time she was conscious of a vague grudge
against them. They seemed always to be coming between them. They were
her rivals after a fashion, and she was not of a temper to put up
patiently with rivals, even invisible ones.
‘Man above! but it is late ’tis getting!’ she suddenly exclaimed. ‘And
I, that ought to have gone home before this!--yes indeed,’ she added,
looking up at the sky, in which the light had shifted considerably
towards the west since they had been there together. ‘Honor will wonder
not to see me. It is half an hour ago I should have gone, so it is.’
‘Is it worse than common she is to-day?’ Murdough inquired carelessly,
getting up from his rock and stretching himself with an air of
immeasurable fatigue.
‘It is not better any way,’ the girl answered curtly.
A great heap of seaweed which she had brought up from the shore was
lying close under the low lacework wall of the little enclosure. Taking
up her fork she stuck it into the whole mass, twisting it about so as to
make it adhere; then with a sudden lift she raised the fork with all its
dangling burden and laid it against her shoulder, and so burdened
prepared to mount the hill.
Murdough watched her proceedings with an air of impartial approval.
‘_Monnum a Dhea!_ but it is yourself that is the powerful strong girl,
Grania O’Malley. There is not many of the boys, I tell you, on Inishmaan
that is stronger than you--no, nor as strong either, so there is not,’
he observed appreciatively.
Grania smiled proudly. She knew that she was strong, and took an immense
pride in her own strength; moreover, speeches like these were about the
nearest approaches to compliments that Murdough ever paid her, and she
treasured them accordingly.
They walked on together over the rocky platform till they had reached
its edge, where a low cliff or single gigantic stair rose
perpendicularly, leading to the one beyond. Here Murdough, who was a
little in front, clambered leisurely up, catching at the overhanging lip
of the step with his hand, and pulling himself easily upwards with its
aid till he stood upon the higher level. Then he waited for Grania.
With her dangling burden of seaweed depending from her shoulder it was
not quite so easy for her to do the same. To have handed the whole
thing, fork and all, to Murdough until she had in her turn climbed to
where he stood would have been the simplest course, but then it was not
a course that would have occurred to either of them. Murdough was
supposed by Honor and the rest of the world to help Grania at her work,
not having any work in particular of his own to do, but in reality their
mutual share of that work was always exactly what it had been that
afternoon. Habits grow as rapidly as ragweeds, especially where life is
of the simplest, and where two people are practically agreed as to how
that life is to be carried on; and that Murdough should trouble himself
about anything that it was possible for her to do single-handed had long
seemed to both of them a sheer absurdity. They might and did have
differences about other matters, but so far they were absolutely at
one.
Now, therefore, as usual, the rule held. Grania lowered the fork on her
shoulder, so as to reduce its weight, bringing it down until its burden
of seaweed covered her back and head. Then, exerting her muscles to the
utmost, she scrambled up, half blinded by the sticky black stuff which
dangled over her eyes, helping herself as best she could with her left
hand and wedging her knees into the small clefts as they rose one above
the other, till at last, her face red and bathed in perspiration though
the day was cold, she stood upon the ridge above.
This time Murdough did not compliment her in words upon her strength,
but his glance seemed to say the same thing, and she was content.
From this point they had no more steps to climb, though they had to make
a slight circuit to avoid a second and steeper one which lay just below
the gully. Following the course of a small valley, grass-grown and
boulder-dotted, they presently found themselves in the street, if street
it could be called, of a tiny hamlet, consisting of some five or six
stone cabins upon one side and three or four upon the other, minute
cabins, built of materials so disproportionately big that two or three
of the stone slabs sufficed for the length of a wall, which walls were
grey as the still living rocks around them, and, like them, might have
been seen on inspection to be covered with a close-fitting suit of
lichens, sedums, and such small crops, with here and there something
taller sprouting where a chink gave it foothold, or a piece of earth,
fallen from the decaying thatch above, offered a temporary home.
This was Ballinlisheen, second or third largest of the towns of
Inishmaan. A good many of its citizens--most of them apparently very old
women--were sitting upon their heels at the doorsteps as the two young
people came up the track, Murdough sauntering leisurely along with his
hands in his pockets, Grania with her black load of seaweed dangling
half-way down her back. The latter did not stop to speak to anyone. She
was in a hurry to get back to Honor, being conscious of having already
delayed too long. Murdough, though a young man generally open to all
social advances, was beginning to get hungry, so he, too, kept on
steadily beside her, giving only an occasional nod or word of greeting
as first one and then another head craned forward into the narrow space
between the opposing doorways.
Conversation, which had lagged a little in Ballinlisheen before their
coming, began to stir and grow brisk again after they had passed on and
were moving along the top of the nearest ridge.
‘She _is_ the big girl, Grania O’Malley! the powerful big girl, my
conscience, yes,’ said old Stacia Casey, Mick Halliday’s wife,
stretching out a neck long and scraggy as a turkey’s and looking after
them with an air of contemplation.
‘Murdough Blake tops her by the head,’ replied her neighbour Deb Cassidy
from the opposite side of the street, in a tone of contradiction.
‘He does not, then, nor by the half of it,’ retorted the other in the
same spirit. ‘Is it marrying him she’ll be, I wonder?’ she added after a
minute’s pause.
‘Is it eating her dinner she’ll be?’ exclaimed her friend with a laugh.
‘_Wurrah! wurrah!_ but ’tis the real born fool you must be, woman, to be
asking such a question.’
‘Ugh! ugh! but ’tis the real born fool _she_ will be if she _does_ marry
him!’ grunted an enormously big old woman, much older than any of the
other speakers, Peggy Dowd by name, the professional story teller, and
at that time the oldest inhabitant of Inishmaan. She was supposed to
live with a widowed daughter, herself a woman of nearly sixty, but was
to be found anywhere else in preference, her great age and standing
reputation making her everywhere acceptable, or at all events accepted.
‘Murdough Blake, wisha!’ she went on, emptying the small black pipe she
was smoking with a sharp rap upon the stones. ‘Trath, ’tis the poor lot
those Blakes of Alleenageeragh are, and always have been, so they have!
There was this one’s grandfather--myself remembers him when he was no
older than this one--no, nor so old by a year--a fine bouchaleen you’d
say to look at him--broad and bulky, and a clean skin, and a toss to his
head as if all the rest in the place were but dirt and he picking his
steps about amongst them. Well, what was he? He was just nothing, that
is what he was, and so I tell you, women, not worth a thraneen, no, nor
the half of a thraneen. Ugh! ugh! ugh! don’t talk to me of the Blakes
of Alleenageerah, for I tell you I know them--I know them, those Blakes
of Alleenageeragh. St. Macdara! I _do_ know them, and have reason to
know them! There was another--Malachy Blake his name was--a great man,
full of gosther and brag; you’d think it was the world he must have for
himself, the whole world, no less, from Liscanor Head to Renvyle Point
out yonder, and farther still. Well, I will tell you now about Malachy
Blake. The heart of him was no better than the heart of a pullet--of a
sick pullet, when the eyes of it begin to turn up, and it squeaks when
you take it in your hand and turns over and dies on the floor. That was
what Malachy Blake’s heart was like--no better! I have heard him one day
so you’d think the wind flying over the top of the island or the stars
shining up in the sky would stoop down to listen to him, and the very
next minute I have seen a little pinkeen of a man not up to his shoulder
give him the go-by and abuse him before the girls, and he never showing
no spirit nor a thing, no more than if he was dead. _Phoo! phoo! phoo!_
I know them, those Blakes of Alleenageeragh. There is a story that I
could tell you about that same Malachy Blake would make the very eyes of
you start out of your head, so it would. But there--’tis a poor case,
God knows, to be telling stories to them that knows nothing; a poor
case, a very poor case! A fine man he was anyway to look at, I’ll say
that for him, Malachy Blake, finer than this one, or six of him! and
there was a many a girl in the place liked him well enough, though ’tis
flat and low in his grave he is now, and has been these thirty years.
_Phoo! phoo!_ flat and low in his grave he is. Yes, indeed, flat and low
for all his boasting! But I shall be sorry for Grania O’Malley and for
that good woman her sister if she marries young Murdough Blake, so I
shall; very sorry! very sorry!’
‘It is not long Honor O’Malley will be in this world, marrying or no
marrying,’ said another old woman, many years younger than the last
speaker, Molly Muldoon by name, a brisk, apple-faced little spinster of
fifty-seven or thereabouts. ‘It was only yesterday I was with her at
their own house yonder, and it was the death-streak I saw plainly under
her left eye, the death-streak that no one can live two months once it
comes out on them. Oh, a good woman Honor O’Malley is, as you say, Mrs.
Dowd, ma’am, none better in this world, nor beyond it either--a real
saint, and a credit to Inishmaan and all belonging to her. It is myself
has promised to be with her at the last, and at her laying out and at
everything, so I have. “Keep Grania away,” says she to me only
yesterday. “’Tis broke the child’s heart will be any way, and what good
is it to be tearing the life out of her and I past knowing anything
about it? Send for Murdough Blake,” says she, “the minute the breath is
out of my body, and bid him take her with my blessing and comfort her.”
Those were the very words she said. Oh, yes, a good woman, and a kind
woman, and a tender woman is Honor O’Malley, a real saint. It is the
loss she will be to Inishmaan, the great loss entirely.’
Mrs. Dowd grunted. She was not much of a devotee of saints, certainly
not of contemporary ones.
‘And if it isn’t the real out-and-out right wake and funeral she gets it
will be the shame of the place, no better,’ Molly Muldoon went on in a
tone of enthusiasm. ‘Candles--the best wax ones--with tobacco and
spirits for the men, and a plate of white salt to lay on her breast, and
the priest, or may be two priests, over from Aranmore. That is the
least she should have, so it is, for none ever deserved it better than
Honor O’Malley, so they did not.’
‘They’re rich too, the O’Malleys,’ remarked Deb Cassidy from her side of
the path--‘money laid by, and warm people always from first to last, no
warmer anywhere. Oh, a real rich girl is Grania O’Malley--my God! yes,
rich. There are not three girls on Inishmaan as rich as she is--no, not
two, nor any other at all, I am thinking.’
‘Trath, and it is none too rich she’ll find herself when she is married
to Murdough Blake!’ old Peggy Dowd said bitterly. ‘’Tis down from the
sky or up from the sea those Blakes of Alleenageeragh do expect the
money to be coming to them. A gosthering, spending, _having_ brood they
are and always have been. Rich is it? Gorra! ’tis eight days in the week
she’ll find herself working for all her money if she means to keep a
roof over her head and Murdough Blake under it--yes, and going a
shaughraun most like at the tail of it all, so she will. Mark my words,
women, so she will, so she will!’
No one ventured to contradict this prophecy, Peggy O’Dowd’s age and
reputation making the course perilous. There was a few minutes’ silence,
after which Molly Muldoon was the first to break up the conclave. She
was the chief rearer of chickens on Inishmaan, and now got up briskly to
see after the various broods to which every corner of her cabin was
dedicated. One by one, most of the other women, too, got up and moved
indoors on various domestic duties, till at last only old Peggy herself
remained behind. She had no household duties to see to. She was a mere
visitor, a sitter beside other people’s hearths and a sharer of other
people’s victuals. She remained, therefore, squatting in the same place
upon the doorstep, her big blue patched cloak hitched about her
shoulders, her knees nearly on a level with her big projecting chin, her
broad face, once immensely fat, now fallen into deep furrows and
hollows, growing gradually impassive as the momentary excitement of
recalling her old grudge against the Blakes faded away or got merged in
other and probably equally long-remembered grudges. Sitting there
hunched in her big cloak, she might at a little distance have been taken
for some sort of queer vegetable growth--a fungus, say, or toadstool,
which had slowly drawn to itself all the qualities--by preference the
less benignant ones--of the soil from which it had sprung. In places
like Inishmaan, where change has hardly any existence, the loves, hates,
feuds, animosities of fifty or sixty years ago may often be found on
examination to be just as green and just as unforgotten as those of
yesterday.