At last the spell which had so long brooded over the islands was broken!
The weather changed. The rain ceased--temporarily at any rate. A glimmer
of sunshine even broke out, and sent dimpling, pinkish reflections one
after the other along the sides of the little cooses, which for months
had known no colours but indian ink and lamp-black. The rock pools
themselves awoke, the oozy things that tenant them seeming to feel the
warm impulsion from above, expanding their snaky tentacles and turning
their ever-gaping, hungry, jelly-like mouths towards the sunlight.
Down at the old church of Cill-Cananach the spring had asserted itself
yet more undeniably. The rocks there were so worn and thinned away as
hardly to be visible at all, and over them the sands had spread in a
succession of humps and hollows. These humps and hollows were full of
shells--sea shells and land shells, tossed together in friendly
companionship. You might have picked out of them a winkle or a limpet,
and the next minute the yellow-banded cast-off house of a common snail.
Bare it was, always must be bare; nevertheless, there was a suggestion
of something warmer, of something less austere and grim than those
wind-infested shores often gave. Tufts of maiden-hair hung confidingly
over the ledges, the rare yellow rock-rose, which, by some odd caprice,
finds its home here and here only, showed at intervals its brilliant
brown-spotted face, while everywhere the thyme, spread about in great
purple masses, gave out its sweet wild smell.
Grania O’Malley, more than most others, rejoiced in this sudden escape
from winter into something like a realisation of summer. She had been
living for some time back in a sort of tomb--an open-air one, but still
a tomb. Now a change had come, and the youth in her rose to it. Murdough
Blake, too, grew suddenly more companionable. He actually came of his
own accord, and proposed to aid her in some of her accustomed tasks, and
they accordingly resumed their nightly occupation of feeding the kelp
fire--she, that is to say, feeding it, he feeding her ears and his own
upon the usual gorgeous, if windy, diet of achievements to be performed
by himself at some remote, as yet undiscovered, date.
One afternoon she started about four o’clock towards an old ‘clochaun,’
or bee-hive cell, the only variation of architecture Inishmaan boasts,
setting aside raths, cabins, ruined churches, and the solitary
Italianised villa upon the east shore. She had hoped Murdough might have
met her there, he having promised to do so. There was no sign of him,
however, so she set to work without loss of time, having brought a
sickle for the purpose, and was soon piling a heap of grass upon the
flattest of the neighbouring slabs.
This ‘clochaun’--last of a once, doubtless, numerous kindred--was still
reasonably intact, though its windows were all but closed, partly from
the slipping of the stones above them, partly from the great bosses of
lichen and strong-growing sea-thrift which choked their openings. With
its roof of over-lapping stones, rounded walls, and floor of earth mixed
with sand and shells, it had far more the aspect of some queerly
constructed bird’s-nest, some erratically disposed beast’s lair, than
anything conceivable as having ever been inhabited by the human biped.
At this date, too, it was even less like a human abode than when some
skin-clad sixth-century monk inhabited it, for from floor below to roof
above it was covered with a dense growth of tall, feathery-looking
grass, which, sprouted in tufts on either side, and waved in a dense
triumphal crop over the small domed summit.
Lying, as it did, within the track over which the O’Malley sisters
reigned, they naturally had the right of grazing there, and it was this
that had brought Grania out that afternoon, sickle in hand, to clear the
walls of their harvest, and carry it home to the calf, whose appetite
was a sort of raging lion, never to be appeased, and who regarded a diet
largely made up of maiden-hair ferns, red-crane’s-foot, campions, white
saxifrages, and such-like flowery provender with natural, if unæsthetic,
contempt.
She waited a while after clearing the ‘clochaun’ of its grass to give
Murdough a chance of appearing. Then, as there were no signs of him, and
the afternoon was still early, it occurred to her, before saddling
herself with her load, that she would go down to the villa, which was no
great distance, and see if he was there--a contingency which, from her
acquaintanceship with his habits, she had reason to regard as far from
improbable.
She did not find him, but there were signs of his having been there not
long before, and of his having had company, too--company that, in her
opinion, he would have been much better without. A still picturesque, if
dilapidated, villa without, it had gradually grown into the likeness of
a mere dirty, disreputable little ‘shebeen-shop’ inside. The floor was
filthy with accumulated mud, brought in on many pairs of pampooties and
never cleared away. Some cracked glasses, a couple of black bottles with
jagged, dangerous-looking necks, and several old tin pannikins stood
heaped together upon a sort of ledge which served as a table. There was
a barrel, too, half hidden behind some cut furze-bushes in a remote
corner. The existence of this barrel was supposed to be a profound
secret, but secrets are ill kept in places like Inishmaan, and Grania,
like everyone else, knew perfectly well that a barrel of illicit whisky
had been put ashore there some three weeks before. How much of that
whisky was there left now? she wondered.
She had made her way in by a back window, the secret of opening which
Murdough had long ago shown her, and now looked round her with a
sensation of intense disgust. Like most Irishwomen of her class--at all
events till age, sympathy, possibly till mere abounding patience and
pity break them in--this was to her the sin of sins; the sin that meant
starvation, clamorous children, misery of all sorts, shame and the
horrors of the workhouse at no very remote future. To-day, too, she was
already vexed and disappointed, and therefore less inclined than usual
to be tolerant.
‘It is the fool he is! My God! it is the fool!’ she muttered fiercely,
as she looked about her. ‘What ails him, then, at all, at all?--soaking!
soaking! soaking! What ails them all, my God? Weary upon that drink, but
it is the curse of the world!’
She went over to the barrel, and shook it viciously, not having anything
else at hand to shake. It was nearly empty, for she could hear what
little liquor was left splashing about at the very bottom. Had it been
full, she would, perhaps, in her wrath, have dragged it out, stove in
the bottom and let the stuff run away into the sea. As it was, it did
not seem worth while. She came out again, a scowl upon her face, an
angry red light shining in her eyes; dropped the window into its place;
climbed the hill with swift, wrathful steps, and returned to the
‘clochaun’ and her heap of grass. Here, having collected together the
latter with a sort of fierce energy, she made it into an enormous stack,
got the rope round it, and, having hoisted it up by main force upon her
back, turned to go homeward.
As she was slowly mounting from the third to the fourth ledge she saw a
figure sitting alone upon a large boulder close to the edge of the
track, and perceived, upon coming nearer, that it was old Durane, who
was sunning himself in the unaccustomed warmth, enjoying a pipe and the
luxury of being free from even the distant sounds of his
daughter-in-law’s tongue.
Everyone upon Inishmaan regarded it as a high privilege to get old
Durane to talk, for he was a stately and reticent old personage, as has
been seen, quite satisfied with being excellent company to himself, and
not tormented, as most of us are, by any burning desire of being
recognised as good company by others as well. Where he was sitting was
within the edge of the O’Malleys’ territory, and as Grania with her
towering load came up the track he looked up and, perhaps, in
recognition of that fact, gave her a civil good-day, with a wave of his
hand, and a _Banaght lath! Banaght lath!_--an old-fashioned mode of
salutation, already almost completely gone out of fashion.
A sudden impulse came over the girl--an unusual one with her, for she
was not gregarious--an impulse to stop a minute and have a chat with the
old fellow, the rather that the cord was cutting her shoulder badly,
and a rest, therefore, would not be unwelcome.
‘It is down at the old house by the sea--the gentlefolks’ house as they
call it--I have been, Mr. Durane, sir,’ she observed in a tone of
suitable respect, as she sat down beside him on the great smooth top of
the boulder. ‘And it is a bad way it is getting into, too--a very bad
way, so it is.’ Then, after a minute--‘Was it ever as it was in the old
time, when the quality was living upon Inishmaan, that you remember it?’
she went on in rather a hesitating tone, her first conversational
venture not having, so far, met with any particular encouragement on the
part of her neighbour.
Old Durane shifted his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other,
looked seaward, spat politely behind him into a fissure, then turned a
bright little puckered eye upon her as if to ask her what she was
driving at, and presently took up his parable.
‘Is it about Mr. Lynch Bodkin you are asking me, my good girl, if I
remember him? Oh, but yes, I do remember him very well; why not? why
not? He was a great man, and a good man, Mr. Lynch Bodkin--a _very_ good
man! He would have ten, yes, and twelve gentlemen over from Galway or
Round’stown at one time to dine with him, and it is the door of the
house he would lock if they wanted to go away early, so he would. “No
man has ever left my table till I choose, and no man ever shall,” he
would say. “Is it to shame me you would be after, and in my own house,
too? There is the red wine, and there is the white wine for you, and, if
that will not do, there is the whisky wine too, and you may take your
choice, gentlemen!” that is what he would say. Oh! a very good man he
was, Mr. Lynch Bodkin, very. There are no such gentlemen left now--no,
none at all.’
Grania listened with profound attention. It all seemed rather odd
somehow. In what, she wondered, did Mr. Lynch Bodkin’s particular
goodness consist?
‘And was it always drunk the gentleman would be, and the other gentlemen
that were with him, too?’ she inquired in a tone of perfect gravity.
‘Drunk? but he was not drunk at all!--never to say drunk!’ old Durane
answered indignantly. ‘And for respect, I would have you to know, my
good girl, that there was not a gentleman in all Galway--no, nor in Mayo
either, nor in the whole of Connaught--that was so much thought of as
Mr. Lynch Bodkin! It was down there by the sea yonder he would hold his
courts, so he would, for it was he that gave all the justice to
Inishmaan--yes, and to the other islands as well. And it would have to
be upon a fine day, because it would be on the outside of his house that
he would hold the court always--yes, indeed, outside of it, down there
on the rocks by the sea that it would be held. And if it was not a very
fine day, he would just go out of the door and look up at the sky, and
say to the people, “Come again to-morrow, boys!” and they would all go
away. Then next day, perhaps, they would come. Oh! but it was a fine
sight, I can tell you, to see his honour sitting there in a great gold
armchair that would be brought out of the house, out from his own
parlour, and put upon the rocks yonder! There would be, perhaps, six or
seven people brought up for him to judge at once, and sometimes his
honour would put the hand-cuffs on them himself, so he would, for it was
in his own house he kept the hand-cuffs always. And if it was anything
very bad, oh! very bad indeed they had done, then it was to the
“Continent” over beyond there he would send them--into Galway to the
jail--because there has never been any jail on Aran.’
‘And would they go into the jail when he sent them?’ Grania inquired
with some surprise.
‘Is it go? Indeed and it is they that _must_ go. My God! yes, and find
the boat to go in, too, so they must, and pay for that boat themselves,
so they must! It was just a small bit of writing his honour would be
good enough to give them, that was all, and they must show it at the
jail-door in Galway when they went in. Go? I do not think there was a
man or a woman on Inishmaan, no, nor on all Aran, nor anywhere near it,
that would not have gone to jail, or anywhere else, if his honour, Mr.
Lynch Bodkin, had sent him! A great man, and a very good man too, Mr.
Lynch Bodkin! There are no such quality now.’
Old Durane paused, lost apparently in pleasurable retrospection.
‘But it is back I must be getting,’ he added presently, rising with
sudden briskness from his seat. ‘And you, too, my fine girl, with your
bundle of grass on your back! Gorra! but it is some young man that
should be carrying it for you, and if I was twenty years younger I would
not see you so loaded--so I would not. And how is that good woman your
sister? No better? _Tchah! tchah!_ that is bad! It is not long you will
be keeping her with you, I am afraid! Well, well, it is in God’s hands,
and it is the best sort He will have for Himself, and small blame to Him
for that, either--no, indeed; small blame to Him! You will tell her that
I was asking after her, for it is the sick people that like to hear and
know everything that goes on. When my wife was such a long time dying,
it was not a cat kittened in all Inishmaan but she must know about it
the first--yes, indeed, always--always the very first! But I will wish
you a good-day now, my fine girl; I will wish you a very good-day.’ And
old Durane, who soon tired of any company, except his own, toddled away
with a wave of his ragged caubeen that would have done honour to an
ambassador.
Grania, too, shouldered her load again after a minute and went
ploddingly on her way home. She felt less angry, somehow, since she had
talked to this old philosopher, though she could not have explained why.
It seemed as if some voice of the past had got between her and her
wrath. Would it have been any different in those old times she wondered,
or was it always the same? Always? always?
She was no sooner out of sight and round the corner of the next rock
than old Durane sat down again, stretching his long thin legs
luxuriously before him, so as to let the warm light which played over
the top of the ridge reach them. He was not really in any hurry to get
home. Rosha and her shrill rasping voice were joys that would keep. He
loved the sunshine beyond everything, though he got it so seldom, and on
fine days, deserting the cabin, deserting even his favourite stony
armchair, would seek out some sheltered cleft of the rocks or hollow
amongst the furze, and sit there hour after hour, turning the pebbles in
front of him about with his stick, and smiling slowly to himself,
sometimes muttering over and over some cabalistic word--a word which,
for the moment, had the effect of recreating for him the past, one
which, even to himself, had grown almost spectrally remote, so dim and
far away was it. A queer old ragged Ulysses this, whose Ithaca was that
solitary islet set in the bleak and inhospitable Atlantic! Far out of
sight, and rarely now to be stirred by anything modern, lay hidden away
in the recesses of that old brain of his a whole phantasmagoria of
recollections, beliefs, prejudices, traditions; bits of a bygone feudal
world, with all its habits and customs; bits of a hardly more remote and
forgotten legendary world; the world of the primitive Celt--a big,
elemental world this, glorious with the light of a still unspoiled
future--fragments of fifty creeds, fragments of a hundred modes of
thought, all dead enough, Heaven knows, yet alive for the moment under
that weather-beaten old caubeen of his. This peculiarly Irish form of
brain-endowment has never yet found expression in art--never, so far as
can be judged by symptoms, is in the least likely to do so--but it has
from time immemorial served as the source of a good deal of odd
discounted entertainment to its possessors, and that, if not the same
thing, is perhaps as good a one--possibly even better.