CHAPTER XI

It was one of those victories, nevertheless, that cost more to the

winner than the loser. The first rapture, the first keen tingling

satisfaction of her explosion over, Grania was more miserable than ever.

What had she done? she asked herself, aghast. Done? She had done the

very thing, the mere thought, the momentary dread, of which had all but

scared her out of her senses a few nights before. Broken with Murdough!

Of her own accord, actually of her own free will she had broken with

him; refused to marry him, refused to see him, refused to speak or have

anything more to do with him. _Broken with Murdough!_ Refused to marry

Murdough! It was like breaking with life, it was like refusing to

breathe the air, refusing to eat or to drink, refusing to move a limb!

How could she do it? What! live on, on, and on; thirty, forty, fifty

years, perhaps, and in all that time, in all these years, the

interminable years that stretched ahead of her, no Murdough! _No

Murdough?_ Murdough wiped out of her life?--it was the sun and the

stars, it was life itself wiped out! Nothing could make such a vision

endurable--nothing could make it even conceivable!

She went about her work, therefore, like a dazed creature; saw to the

house, cared for Honor, fed the beasts; but it was as a body with no

soul inside it--a mere shell. Was she herself, she sometimes wondered

dully, or was she someone else? She really hardly knew.

Oddly enough, Honor seemed scarcely to notice that anything was

specially amiss with her. This came partly from sheer physical weakness,

and partly from that absorption in her own drama which all souls, even

the tenderest, seem to feel at the coming on of death. Grania, besides,

had always been a bit ‘queer’; given to extremes--now elated, now

depressed--and it did not seem to her that she was very much more so

than usual. As to her being specially unhappy about Murdough Blake, that

was a trouble quite out of Honor’s ken, and not one of the things she

would have dreamed of worrying herself over. That Murdough was lazy and

wasteful, was given occasionally to getting drunk, was rather good for

nothing and worthless generally, these were facts which, even if anyone

had called her attention to them, she would probably have accepted

placidly enough. No doubt he was most of these things. Why not? Wasn’t

it only to be expected that he would be, seeing that he was a man and a

young one? Why wouldn’t he be? Didn’t God Almighty, for some mysterious

reason of His own, make them mostly so?

A view so general, and at the same time so tolerant in its pessimism,

was not likely to be disturbed by any particular illustration of it. If

anyone had, further, proceeded to point out that Grania was not likely

to be happy, married to such a man, Honor, for all her sisterly

devotion, would probably have replied, equally placidly, that no doubt

she would not be happy. Why, again, should she be? People as a rule were

not happy, nor meant apparently to be happy, and the married state

especially stood before her mind as a state of natural and inevitable

discomfort--one in which there was always a more or less troublesome and

unmanageable male to be fed, looked after, and put up with generally.

That it possessed any counter-balancing advantages; that it could, even

at the start, be, for a woman, a state of especial happiness, she simply

did not, for a moment, believe. She would have been too polite to

contradict anyone who had chosen to put forward such an assertion, but

in her own mind she scouted it utterly. ‘Arrah, holy Bridget! what could

there be in it to make any woman in this earthly world _happy_?’ she

would have said to herself. Her own private opinion was that all that

was an invention got up by the men. _They_ persuaded the women to

believe there was something pleasant in it, and the silly creatures were

fools enough to believe them. That was all. The whole thing was really

exceedingly simple!

This being her standpoint it followed that the pangs of unrequited love

were the last that would have been successfully laid bare before her.

Of Grania’s future she did, indeed, think incessantly, but it was a

future that skipped over the next forty, fifty, or sixty years, and

fixed itself only upon what lay beyond that trifling interregnum. Day

and night her thoughts fixed themselves more and more in this direction;

hoping, interceding, imploring for the one that had to be left--left in

a cold, ugly world--pleading that she might be brought in; that her

heart might turn; that, sooner or later, they two might stand together

safe--safe, as she put it to herself, in Glory--a place which, if it had

no name, no inhabitants, no conceivable whereabouts, was still at least

as real and as definite to her as those rocks, as yonder sea that she

habitually looked at. It was the one thing that still troubled her; the

one thing that kept her from her peace; perturbed her poor soul, and

brought the tears into her patient eyes.

So they went on together, as others beside them have gone on, and will

go on, till all things end, till all the books are written, and every

story finished; loving one another, that is to say, with a love which,

on one side, at least, had gathered to itself all that, under other

circumstances, might have spread over a considerable field,

understanding one another as much--well, about as much as most of us

contrive to understand one another--as much, in other words, as if they

had never met, never grown up in the same nest, never eaten off the same

loaf, never touched hands, or exchanged a syllable in their lives.

Poor Honor’s sisterly petitions were not, it must be owned, prospering,

for Grania in these weeks was certainly not improving. A new

recklessness had got hold of her. It was in her blood--for she came,

upon both sides, of a wild, untameable stock--but it had never risen so

near to the surface before. Circumstances had tamed her, as they tame

most people; a certain sense of responsibility had tamed her; doubts and

self-perplexities had tamed her; of late, too, that keen, hungry clutch

at the heart had tamed her. Now she no longer cared, or thought that she

no longer cared. The barriers were completely broken down; the floods

were out and away; there was no knowing yet how far, or how furiously,

they might travel.

One afternoon, about a week after her last interview with Murdough

Blake, she had been up to Allyhaloo, the village at the extreme south

end of the island, to get some straw for Moonyeen, and was coming down

the path with a great load of it on her back. The wind swept round and

round her head with a sort of fickle, clamorous insistence, now rising

to a wailing climax, then suddenly sinking, then as suddenly wailing out

again. The sea was of a uniform grey, a few darker lines being drawn

here and there across it as if by somebody’s fingers. The Cashla coast,

Spiddal, the whole line of the Connemara hills were lost and muffled in

swathing, formless bands of mist.

Grania fixed her eyes steadily upon the path, which was all she could

see, bent down as she was under her bundle. Her mind, except now and

then under strong emotion, still worked only as a child’s mind

works--vaguely, that is to say, with a sort of dim diffuseness--stirred

by what came to her through her senses, but lapsing into vagueness again

as soon as that direct impression had worn off. In this respect she was

just what she had always been. The events that had recently happened had

been events belonging to and affecting quite another region. Her mind

stood aloof, uninfected, unenlarged, untouched by them.

A real event, by the way, had happened that afternoon. A party of

people--English people, it was reported--had come over from Galway in a

pleasure yacht, and had made the tour of the islands, visiting not

Aranmore only, but the other two islands as well--a rare event at the

present day, twenty-five years ago an almost unprecedented one.

As she came down, picking her way carefully over the stones, her

mountain of straw towering behind her, Grania suddenly perceived that

this party were coming right towards her up the path. It was the direct

way to Dun Connor, the chief, if not the only, lion of the island, which

the strangers, no doubt, were then on their way to visit. A ragged

tangle of children followed them, shouting and clamouring for

half-pence.

A vehement feeling of annoyance made Grania long to rush away, to hide

herself behind a boulder, to do anything rather than have to encounter

these strangers--gentry, the sort of people that Murdough was always

talking about and envying--people who lived in big white houses with

staring windows like those she had seen in Galway. Pride, however, and a

sort of stubbornness hindered her from running away. She went on

accordingly down the path, and, when the contact became imminent, merely

stepped a little aside, on to a piece of flat rock beside a stunted

thorn-bush, and stood there--her cumbersome burden rising behind

her--waiting till the visitors should have passed.

There were three of them--two ladies, and a young man escorting them.

They came up laughing, evidently amused, and enjoying the sense of

discovery--for Inishmaan was all but untrodden ground--a flutter of

skirts and parasols, of hat-ribands and waterproof cloaks filling up the

pathway.

Grania stood doggedly waiting--her head a little thrown back; something

of the stir and stress that filled her visible in her whole look and

bearing; a wild, untamed vision of strength and savage beauty standing

beside that crooked and stunted thorn-bush.

The visitors to the island were a little taken by surprise by it. One of

the two ladies put up an eyeglass to look at her, at the same time

touching her friend’s arm so as to call her attention.

With an angry sense that she was being stared at, Grania on her side

turned and gazed fiercely at them, her great slumberous eyes, so

Southern in their darkness, filled with a curious lowering light.

The visitors passed hastily on up the track.

‘Did you notice that girl standing above the pathway?’ one of the ladies

said to the other. ‘How she stared! Did you observe? Not quite

pleasant, was it?’

‘Yes,’ the other answered, clutching rather feverishly at her skirts.

‘Don’t go so quickly, dear. What stones! Yes, I noticed her. A fine,

handsome creature, I thought--picturesque, too, in her red

petticoat--but, as you say, not exactly pleasant-looking. Generally they

have such good manners, poor creatures--quite decent, you know!’

They hurried on, for a storm was clearly coming up, and the yacht was

not built for heavy weather. Quick, hot gusts of wind kept following one

another over the grey, treeless surface of the island. The sea, too,

sent up an occasional growl--a hint as to what might be coming. The

visit to Dun Connor had accordingly to be cut short, and, with a hasty

glance at the wilderness of stone around them, the visitors turned down

the path again, and betook themselves to the shore.

From her usual post beside the cabin Grania watched them stumbling over

the stones in their haste and rapidly embarking, with a feeling of

satisfaction in her own fierce sea and sky which had scared away these

fine people so suddenly.

A dull wrath, like that of the coming storm itself, was in the girl’s

veins. She had passed Murdough early the same day--one of the

O’Flaherties and Phil Garry were with him at the time--and he had

ostentatiously gone on talking and laughing, without paying the smallest

attention to her presence. She, on her side, had passed him without a

glance, but it had seemed to her as if every drop of blood in her veins

had turned in that instant to boiling lead, and she could have killed

all three of them then and there, without ruth or hesitation, had her

means been only equal to her wishes. It was still burning dangerously

in her, that dull wrath, made up of anger, inarticulate despair, of love

turned for the time being into a sort of sombre hatred. The necessity,

too, of concealing it from Honor made it all the worse and all the more

perilously pent up within her.

As it happened, a mode of expending it came that very night, and the

long mystery of the stolen turf was at the same time cleared up.

The promised storm came on to blow unmistakably about six o’clock, and

by nine or ten o’clock it had grown to a regular tempest. North and

south, east and west, it seemed to come from all directions at once.

Warm scuds of rain fell as if from a bucket. Then the Atlantic joined

the concert, its hollow, bull-voiced roar, full of suggestions of

shipwreck, terror, and death, coming up unceasingly to them from below.

Poor Honor was rather frightened. The suddenness of the storm disturbed

and distressed her. It seemed unnatural, this combination of heat and of

rushing wind. It was a new thing to her experience, and seemed to

forebode evil. From time to time the sound of her prayers could be heard

coming from her own dusky corner, the words caught and carried off, as

it were, before they were half uttered by the rushing wind, which tore

down the chimney and seemed to be bent, this time, upon dislodging the

sturdy, much-enduring little house from its deeply-set foundations upon

the rocks.

Grania remained huddled beside the hearth, without approaching the bed.

She was conscious that she was not good company for Honor that evening,

so kept away from her as far as possible. Suddenly, as they sat there,

with the width of the cabin dividing them, a loud, piercing scream

seemed to break between them. It was so close that both believed for a

moment that it was inside the house. It was only the scream of a passing

gull or gannet, scared, like the rest of the world, by the suddenness

and peculiarity of the storm, but it had an oddly human, oddly

articulate sound. It had hardly ceased, too, before, with a thump and

creak of its hinges, the door swung suddenly open, with that peculiarly

eerie effect characteristic of doors which open of themselves.

Honor uttered a low wail of dismay, and, clasping her hands together,

began nervously to pray aloud--a queer mixture, half of Irish, half of

Latin, escaping her lips. Grania got up and went to the door, picking up

the iron poker from the hearth as she did so, and taking it with her,

probably from a recollection of the well-known superstition that iron

is a safe thing to have at hand if there is anything uncanny in the air.

She was turning back and was about to shut the door, when she noticed,

to her surprise, a man’s figure, rather the shadow of a man’s figure,

passing behind the low wall which divided the little yard from the

unenclosed waste of rock without. Suddenly a thought shot through her, a

vivid thought, a thought which grew like lightning into a certainty.

Could it be? was it?--yes, it was--_Murdough!_ Murdough repenting;

Murdough come to see after them in the storm! It was--it must be! A

flood of hope, bounding, tumultuous, almost painful; a sudden confused

rush, first of vehement love, then of equally vehement anger, then of

love again, broke across her brain, making her reel and stagger as she

stood upon the threshold.

Telling Honor that she was only going to see that the beasts were all

right, and would be back in a minute, she hurried outside, closing the

door softly behind her.

Sure enough a figure was there, for she could still see it moving, the

dim silhouette of a man’s figure thrown against the rock. Grania watched

and waited. Her heart was beating now so that it was an agony. The

expectation of Murdough’s approach, the thought of his coming, the touch

of his hands, the nearness of his presence was so strong, so convincing,

that it had already become a reality. A reality, alas and alas! it

certainly was not. Another moment showed that no one was coming, no one

at least to the door or anywhere near the door. In the dim light she

could still distinguish the figure of a man, but it was a small man,

consequently it was not Murdough; moreover, this man, whoever he was,

was creeping stealthily behind the low wall that enclosed the cabin, and

getting round to the back of it--to that part where the turf-stack

stood piled.

Grania remained standing where she was, the poker clutched in her

hand--all her hopes dashed; all the thoughts of a moment ago turned

forcibly back into a different channel. Her face, could it have been

seen in the darkness, would have been a curious study. Passion was

written on it, and passionate anger; hungry, baffled love was there, and

a not less hungry or less baffled desire for revenge. They were all

there; all working and struggling together. Suddenly she made a bound

forwards; she had crossed the yard; she had seized the trespasser--had

clutched him by the back of his neck--and was holding him as a mastiff

holds a burglar. It was like Vengeance descended miraculously from the

sky itself, so unexpected was it, so startling in the hurly-burly of

that hot, wild night. An involuntary yell of terror broke from the

turf-stealer, and he turned, wriggling like a worm, and struggling

vainly to escape from her clutch, a clutch which was for the moment like

iron. It was, as the reader will hardly need to be told, Shan Daly! An

old basket was beside him, already half full of turf, and there was a

lump of it in each hand. Never was criminal caught more feloniously

red-handed.

Grania’s pent-up wrath had now found its channel. The barriers were all

up. The current was at the full. The wild blood of the O’Malleys, the

wild blood of the Joyces--neither of them names which, for those who

know the West, carry any mild or merciful associations with them--was

hot in her veins like fire. Desperate rage, that rage for which killing

seems the only alleviation, for the time being possessed her wholly. Her

head swam, her teeth were clenched together, her right arm rose; the

storm itself was not more reckless of consequences for the moment than

she. A little more, another five minutes, and blood would have flowed

over the rocks: for that iron poker in Grania’s hands was no plaything.

A mere chance hindered it. A plaintive cry broke suddenly from the

cabin. It was Honor’s voice calling to her sister to come in, to come

back, not to leave her. What was she doing? It was frightened she was of

being alone by herself in the wild night. Grania! where was Grania? What

was Grania doing at all?

The cry, so pitiful in its weakness, reached the other’s ear even in all

the height of her fury. What was she to do? she asked herself in the

rapidly concentrated thought of the moment. Could she kill Shan Daly

without disturbing Honor? That, probably, was the form in which the

question practically presented itself to her mind. To kill him, or at

least to beat him then and there within an inch of his worthless life,

was clearly the thing to do, but to disturb Honor, to frighten Honor,

that, under all circumstances, was to be avoided. The result was that in

the indecision of the moment her grip probably relaxed, for, with a

sudden tug and the wriggle of an escaping conger eel, Shan Daly

contrived to shake it off, writhed himself a few inches away over the

stones, dragged himself beyond her clutch, half fell over the big

boulder in his panic, then, picking himself up, fled down the hill,

terror in all his limbs, but an intense sense of escape, of deliverance,

tingling through every inch of his frame. For a moment he had seen the

figure of Death standing over him with a poker in its hand, and the

sight had scared him. If ever that dusky soul of his sent out a genuine

ejaculation of thankfulness heavenwards, it was probably at that

moment!

PART IV

_SEPTEMBER AGAIN_

CHAPTER I

The month of September had begun, but the breach between Grania and

Murdough was still unhealed. He, on his side, was feeling less at ease

than his jaunty air or undisturbed manner might have led anyone to

suppose. This unlooked-for decision upon Grania’s part was, he could not

but own, startling. So far he had kept the fact to himself, not choosing

it to be known, and knowing that she was extremely unlikely to speak of

it. It might have entailed unpleasant consequences had it leaked out. In

Inishmaan, as in more imposing places, there are inconveniences likely

enough to fall upon a brilliant young man when a marriage which is to

set him upon his legs is known to be broken off.

What ailed her? he asked himself again and again. What an

extraordinarily queer girl she had grown of late! he next reflected,

thinking over the scene of their quarrel. What queer eyes she

had!--‘’Tis as if the devil himself was sitting at the bottom of them,

and staring at you--the devil himself, no better--enough to scare a man,

so they are! quite enough to scare a man!’ he repeated several times to

himself, as he recalled the look of concentrated rage with which she had

sprung upon him and swept him, as it were, out of her path in her fury.

‘’Twasn’t safe she looked, so she didn’t then--not safe at all. And what

did I do to make her so mad? Only laughed at her about Teige

O’Shaughnessy! My God, and who wouldn’t laugh at her about Teige

O’Shaughnessy? _Teige O’Shaughnessy_, wisha!’

That Grania would seriously dream of marrying Teige he did not for a

moment believe, but that, even in anger, she should throw such a rival

in his teeth was an insult very difficult to stomach. Murdough had never

asked himself for a moment whether he cared for Grania or not, the

question would probably have seemed to him utterly superfluous. Of

_course_ he cared for her. Had she not always been there; always, in a

fashion, belonged to him? Why in the world _wouldn’t_ he care for her?

That he had liked her better in the old days when she was still the

little Grania of the hooker, before she had shot up into this rather

formidable woman she had so suddenly become, there is no denying. The

little Grania had admired him without criticism; the little Grania had

no sombre moods; the little Grania never gazed at him with those big,

menacing eyes--eyes such as a lioness might turn upon someone whom she

loves, but who displeases her--the little Grania was natural, was

comprehensible, was just like any other little _girsha_ in the place,

not at all like this new Grania, who was quite out of his range and ken;

an unaccountable product, one that made him feel vaguely uneasy; who

seemed to belong to a region in which he had never travelled; who was

‘queer,’ in short; the last word summing up concisely the worst and most

damning thing that could be said of anyone in Inishmaan.

He brooded over all this a good deal, sitting and swinging his legs upon

the steps of the old villa, which, since his grandmother’s death, he had

taken pretty constantly to inhabit, it being preferable, in his mind,

despite its bareness, to the overcrowded family cabin up at

Alleenageeragh. That there was a sense of relief in being free from

Grania and her ‘queerness’ he was aware, but, on the other hand, there

was a yet greater sense of failure and of defeat. His vanity was badly

hurt by it, likewise his pocket, and the two together acted as a

powerful counter-poise. He was ‘used,’ moreover, to Grania. His future

had always held her as a matter of course, just as hers had always held

him, and use, more than all the other ingredients of existence,

possesses a tremendous leverage upon beings of Murdough’s type. The end

of his brooding was that one evening, about a fortnight after their

quarrel, and a couple of days after the scene between Grania and Shan

Daly, he waylaid her as she was coming back from the kelp fire, hiding

for that purpose in an old clump of hawthorn bushes till she should pass

by.

This clump stood upon the flattest bit of land in the whole island, so

that from it, as from a post of vantage, he could see a long way, miles

it seemed, over the dim, still faintly-gleaming surface. Where he had

hidden himself was the only spot that broke this flatness, a flatness

sloping imperceptibly till it merged into the sea at high-water mark. It

was a fine warm evening, though there had been heavy rain in the

daytime. A quantity of small brown moths flew round his head, other and

much larger white ones kept emerging one after the other from the

nettles and brambles that covered the fallen stones, for, like almost

every clump on the islands, this too held a well and a scrap of old

ruined church hidden somewhere away at the bottom of it.

After waiting half an hour, he saw Grania coming towards him, the only

living thing far as the eye could reach, everything else being either

stone, or else vegetation hardly less grey and arid. As she came near an

unexpected qualm seized Murdough, a sudden alarm as to what she might

be going to say or to do; how she would behave when she saw him there.

It was quite a new idea for him to dream of being afraid of Grania, or

to doubt his own unquestionable superiority over her; but since their

quarrel she had assumed rather a different aspect in his eyes, and this

evening she looked, he thought, bigger and more imposing, somehow, than

usual, as she came walking slowly towards him, solitary and

empty-handed, her eyes staring straight in front of her as if she were

seeking something that was not there. The impression was so strong that

it even occurred to him for a moment that he would let her pass, as he

easily could do, and stay hidden away in his lair until she had gone by.

‘Arrah, great King of Glory, ’tis the mortal queer-looking girl she has

grown to be, sure and certain!’ he muttered uneasily. ‘My soul from the

devil, what ails her these times, at all at all? She that used to be

the nice, easy, little _girsha_.’

Whether he would have called to her or have let her pass unchallenged,

it is impossible to say, but it happened that as she drew near to the

clump she slackened her already slow pace, and looked directly towards

him; her eyes, as it seemed to him, piercing right down to where he

stood hidden in the centre of the thorny thicket. Concluding, therefore,

that he was discovered, he got up and in rather a quavering voice,

called to her, and asked her to stop.

She started violently, and stopped dead short, then looked again, not

directly towards him, but a little farther on, as if doubtful whether

she had really heard a voice, or only imagined that she had done so.

Murdough’s head and shoulders rising out of the clump was a piece of

evidence not to be mistaken. Still she stood rooted to the same spot,

staring at him, not speaking; staring as if he had been his own ghost.

What were they going to say to one another? What, after their stormy

parting, after that fortnight of silence and alienation, was the footing

upon which they were to meet? Neither of them knew, and it was probably

accident that decided that point. Murdough’s inspiration was at any rate

a happier one than his last had been.

‘Then it was waiting to walk back to the house with you I was--yes,

indeed--just waiting to walk back with you, that was all, Grania

O’Malley,’ he said, with a decided quaver in his voice, and an air of

mild deprecation.

The tone and look, more even than the words, disarmed the girl utterly;

further than this, they filled her with a sudden, a delicious sense of

happiness. She said nothing, but when he had stepped over the mass of

branches, and through an outer circumvallation of nettles, and had come

up to her, she was trembling violently, and it was silently and still

tremblingly that she turned and walked back beside him through the dusk,

as they had so often walked before.

It was the only explanation between them, but it seemed to suffice. The

first awkwardness of the meeting over, Murdough’s tongue soon regained

its nimbleness, and he began telling her a long tale about a curragh

which he had bought or proposed to buy, if so be, God willing, he could

find the money. It was Malachy O’Flaherty’s own curragh, and the best in

the islands, barring one, and that was Phil Garry’s father’s big curragh

which had gone to the bottom in the great storm on the twenty-eighth of

January last. Poor old Mick Garry’s heart would have broken to lose it,

so it would, honest man, only, thank God, he hadn’t long to fret about

it, for he was drowned himself at the same time, and only that Phil

Garry and his brother Teddy had stayed at home and hidden themselves,

they would have been drowned too, as the little bouchaleen Pat was, who

had been the only one of the family the old man could get hold of when

he went out in such a hurry to save the nets. But Malachy O’Flaherty’s

curragh was a picture, fit for a king, and had been the first in of

seven that had started at the Ballyvaughan races last March; at least

seven would have started only that two never got off, for one of them

broke her rudder the day before, and the other had a big hole stove in

her side, through Thaddeus Doonan, that owned her, leaping into her in a

hurry, the fool, with his boots on. She was the handsomest boat on the

whole bay, and had been newly caulked and canvassed by Malachy himself

only that very year. There was no curragh like her in Galway or out of

it, and it was raging mad the Claddagh men were about it, for whoever

owned her would be sure to win the big race that was coming on next

month, with twenty boats starting and three shillings down to every

boat. Twenty times three shillings would be sixty shillings, that was

three pounds, and if he had to sell the coat off his back, and the shirt

too, he’d do it rather than not have her to race in, for it was a sin

and a shame letting her go to those who didn’t know how to row no more

than black crabs down at the bottom of the sea. That was what Malachy

O’Flaherty had said, and he had said, too, that he would give it to him

dirt cheap, because he’d like to see her coming in first at the big

race, and not let everything good go to strangers. What was the good,

Malachy had said, of stinting and saving for ever? Was it when a man was

old that he wanted the money most? No, it was not, it was when he was

young, for how did he know he would ever live to be old at all, at all?

Could you take the money into the grave with you? No, you could not, for

money was of no use there, nor anything else either, when you would be

dead and buried! That was what Malachy O’Flaherty had said, and it was

quite true, so it was, quite true. It is not in the grave, nor in heaven

either, with all the grandeur and glory you’d find _there_, you would be

wanting money, whether it was much or whether it was little.

To all this Grania listened silently, as usual, turning her eyes upon

him from time to time with a curiously lingering expression. There was a

look of inquiry in her glance, a look of entreaty and expectation, a

look of impatience, too, only it was impatience curbed and restrained by

something stronger than itself. So they walked on side by side until

they had reached the cabin. Here Murdough, whose tale was finished, was

turning away, but she made a quick sign to him to stop; went in with

resolute steps, came out again and thrust something hurriedly into his

hands. It was a bank-note, and all the money that she had at that moment

in the world with the exception of a few shillings, and what must be

kept absolutely sacred for the expenses of Honor’s funeral.

Murdough’s astonishment and delight burst out then and there like a

fountain; burst into a torrent of words--vague, iridescent, incoherent.

Projects of every sort--races to be won, victories over rivals, money,

much money, to be earned in the future--they all poured forth; flew and

hurtled through the air; one golden scheme jostling against another in

its hurry to express itself. Grania listened, but her eyes never lost

that oddly intent, wistful expression. She stood perfectly still while

he capered about the rocks, waving his hands and snapping his fingers

as he descanted first on one project then on another. Suddenly she

turned, and, leaving him to finish his flights by himself, went in,

closing the door behind her; not this time, however, with a bang, but

slowly, with a gradual and, as it seemed, a reluctant pressure from

within.

It was with a more conscious strut than usual that, after waiting a

minute to see if she would return, Murdough marched off towards the old

villa, the note she had given him making sweet music against his pocket

as he did so. Money! Not a few paltry shillings, but a whole large sum

at once. He was a king! There were no possibilities that were not open

to him, no dream that might not be fulfilled, no hopes that might not

suddenly bloom into life. Where was Teige O’Shaughnessy _now_? he asked

himself with derision. How long would it be before anyone gave _him_

money like that?--the poor, mean, scraping, saving little _boccach_.

Through all this satisfaction there returned, however, from time to time

the same vague uneasiness about Grania. She had only done what she

ought; had given him the money right off in a lump, without any

lecturings or bargains; that was all quite natural and proper, but, upon

the other hand, what sort of wife would she be, this Grania, for a

quiet, easy-going boy, who only wanted to live in peace and quietness?

Wasn’t she queer? Mother of Moses! she _was_ queer! the queerest girl in

the whole world! That was the burden, refrain, summing-up of all his

meditations about her.

Once in the course of these meditations he chanced to look up and catch

Shan Daly’s ferrety eyes peering at him from their red-rimmed sockets as

if he were trying to make out what he was thinking of, for Shan, too,

had got into the habit of creeping into the old villa, preferring its

shelter to the mud-banks and sides of walls which of late had been his

habitual resting-places. The relative standing of these two had become

exactly reversed since Murdough had grown to be a man, and a strong one.

Formerly, Shan, we know, had bullied him unmercifully whenever he got

the chance; now, Shan was his henchman, his jackal, the patient partaker

of all his moods. It spoke a good deal for Murdough’s good temper and

inherently unresentful way of looking at things, that he never showed

the slightest inclination to avenge himself upon Shan, or to pay back

his old wrongs as he easily might have done. On the contrary, though he

despised him, as everyone did, he seemed rather to enjoy his society

than otherwise. He was ‘used’ to him, you see, and that counted for so

much. Have we not seen that he was also ‘used’ to Grania O’Malley?

Between a man with no scruples whatever, no character to lose, no qualms

of any sort save fear for his own skin, and a mere convivial young

gentleman who has never done anything worse than get drunk and run into

debt, the sense, too, of superiority is perhaps never wholly upon one

side. Murdough knew nothing of Shan’s latest adventure, but he had long

had cause to suspect that Shan, for some reason, hated Grania. Several

times he had been aware that it was Shan who had prevented him from

going to see her, or who had egged him on to doing things she disliked.

This, and a slight feeling of embarrassment upon the subject, kept him

from telling him of her recent donation. All the same he was genuinely

grateful for it, and in the first flush of his gratitude laid out a

variety of schemes which he would, could, or might carry out in the

course of the next few weeks to gratify her. ‘Queer’ she undoubtedly

was, mysteriously, unaccountably queer, but at least her queerness had,

this time, taken a right instead of a wrong direction!

CHAPTER II

As it turned out, there was no opportunity for any of these amiable

schemes to be carried into effect, for the very next day Honor was taken

suddenly worse about nine o’clock in the evening, and to all who saw her

it seemed clear that the end had at last really come. There was great

dismay amongst those who were drawn to the cabin by the news, not so

much on account of the fact itself, as on account of the difficulty, the

perennial difficulty at Inishmaan, of getting a priest across from the

larger island in time. Grania had wanted to send Teige O’Shaughnessy for

Father Tom that very morning, but Honor had forbidden her to do so,

wishing to delay a little longer, so that the last rites might be

received as near the end as possible. Now that end had plainly come, but

to get a priest across the sound before the next morning was clearly out

of the question.

It was a thick night, with showers of rain at intervals, but upon the

first intimation of the change old Molly Muldoon had travelled

faithfully across the rocks from Ballinlisheen, according to her

promise, and after the other women had gone she remained to share in the

task of nursing, and to aid Grania in what both believed to be the last

night of Honor’s life. Towards three o’clock, every moment, it was

thought, must see the end, but the chilly, fatal hours passed by, and

Honor still lived. About five o’clock Molly had to go to see after her

chickens, which ‘would be mad,’ she explained, ‘the creatures, with

hunger,’ but promised shortly to return. Grania merely nodded. She was

sitting, as she had sat all night, close beside the bed, gazing upon

her sister with eyes from which even the desire for sleep seemed to be

permanently banished.

About seven o’clock Honor herself sank into a doze of exhaustion, and

Grania thereupon stole out of the cabin to go and look for little Phelim

Daly, and send him for Murdough Blake, or in default of Murdough, for

Teige O’Shaughnessy, so as to get one or other of them to go at once to

Aranmore, and implore Father Tom for the love of Heaven to come to

Inishmaan without delay.

She had hitherto been too absorbed to notice or think about the weather,

but now, as she stepped outside the cabin and down the gully, she found

that a sudden fog had come on, a dense waving curtain of mist, under

which everything in front of her was already submerged. It was a fog

that seemed to be coming to them from the Connemara side of the bay,

and had evidently only recently reached the island, for the sea to the

south of it was quite clear. In the direction in which she was going

vast cloud armies, still more or less detached one from another, were

marching steadily onward to the assault. Height over height, fold upon

fold, on they came; clinging to the rocks, following the little

indentations of the shore, smothering every object the instant they

touched it in a thick, cloying, inextricable embrace. It was curious to

see how partial was still this invasion. Here, to the left, the sea was

clear, the pale rays of sun lighting up the wash of the waves as they

broke over the outlying rocks and skerries; there, to the right, the

bays and cooses were already choked to the very brim. Overhead at one

moment she could see a sky, clear, seemingly, to the zenith; another

minute and the thick woolly masses had swept over her, lower and lower

still, pouring on and on from their inexhaustible fog cauldrons away to

the north and the north-west.

She hastened down the track, and along the lower ridge to the Dalys’

cabin; found the boy and despatched him on his errand, with strict

orders not to rest or come back until he had found either Murdough or

Teige O’Shaughnessy. Then she returned, to take up her place again

beside Honor’s bed.

So the day wore on. Molly Muldoon did not return for a long, long time,

and she remained therefore quite alone in the cabin. There was hardly

any change. Honor continued to doze, and Grania, absorbed in watching

her, had almost ceased to notice the passage of time. Suddenly, about

three in the afternoon, she was startled by an extraordinarily rapid

accession of darkness, almost like the coming on of night, a darkness so

great as to make it all but impossible to see across the cabin.

Going to the door and opening it, she found herself facing a

solid-looking wall of vapour in which every detail of landscape seemed

to be lost. To the south indeed the sea was still visible, but even here

the whole surface was covered with a shroud of mist, dense in some

places as wool, and curdling momentarily thicker and thicker, as

battalion joined battalion, the more scattered ones stretching fleecy

arms to one another across the still visible spaces of water. Evidently

this was no morning mist, likely to disperse, but a dense sea fog such

as now and then in autumn and early spring, rarely at this season,

enclosed the islands in its folds, rendering all communication from one

to the other well-nigh impossible for days at a time.

Startled, she turned to look towards the larger island, by this time

utterly lost to sight. What was to be done? she thought anxiously. How

was Father Tom to be brought, and would he ever be persuaded to venture

across the sound in such a fog? What too could have delayed Murdough or

Teige? Had Phelim failed to find either of them? Surely, if one happened

to be away the other would have been at home? Here was another day

passing, and that Honor could survive this night also was hardly to be

expected.

That the nearness of the end was troubling the sick woman herself was

clear, for when Grania got back to the bed Honor’s eyes were open and

fixed themselves instantly upon her with a longing expression. Seeing

that she wished to speak, Grania stooped and leaned over her. Honor’s

white lips parted with a great effort.

‘Is he coming? allanah?’ she muttered breathlessly. ‘Auch, Grania dear,

don’t be delaying! ’Tisn’t long I’ll be in it now, and you wouldn’t let

me go without the good words at the last?’

‘No, no, Honor; don’t think of it. Don’t be afraid. He’ll come, sure

enough. Be easy, dear; he’ll come.’

Honor’s eyes closed again patiently with a satisfied expression, but

Grania’s mind was a prey to desperate anxiety. What was to be done?

Where could Phelim be? Was no one coming to them? She hurried back to

the entrance and stood there, straining her eyes into the fog, her heart

wrung with passionate anxiety.

Presently a movement made itself seen in it, and a figure was visible

dimly struggling up the track towards her. Her whole soul went out in a

prayer that it might be Murdough; surely it must be Murdough? But no,

another moment showed that it was not a coat but a petticoat that was

moving through the fog. It was only, in fact, the faithful Molly Muldoon

come back to take her turn at the nursing. Grania beckoned to her

eagerly, and, having explained the situation in a few words, picked up

her own petticoat and ran off through the fog in the direction of the

old villa. If Murdough Blake was to be found anywhere, it would be

there, she knew.

CHAPTER III

She was out of the cabin and the fog had closed around her almost before

the words were uttered. It was like a pall, only a white pall instead of

a black one, a pall that seems to get through and through and round and

round you, to swathe the limbs, to enfold you to the very skin. Down

from the sky in white masses it came, and up from the sea--a new sky, a

new sea--the very air appeared to be half solid, air that seemed to

choke, yet which was light enough and cool enough as you swallowed it.

Grania, as she sped along the familiar track, seemed hardly to know

where she was, so rolled round and isolated from everything and

everyone was she by this strange enveloping fleecy stuff. As she went on

something, too, seemed to happen to her. It was as if the fog had got

between her and everything she had come out to do. She hardly thought

now of Father Tom. The sick bed, with the white drawn face and the

anxious eyes so near death, watching, always watching the door; the hot

race between death and the priest--all this, that had so filled her mind

the whole day and the previous night, seemed to melt now and to

disappear. A new set of images had arisen. It was a new goal towards

which she seemed to be hurrying, for which she was fighting the fog, to

which she was struggling on and on through this blinding whiteness.

More and more as she warmed with the struggle her old self emerged, as a

rock emerges which has been temporarily hidden by the waves. The thought

of Murdough rose with it. It was Murdough whom she had so often gone

along this path to meet; it was Murdough whom she was going to meet now.

The old love, the old dumb, unquenchable desire rose in her, as it had

so often risen before. The remembrance of that evening in the boat--the

one evening of evenings in her life--stood out before her like a vision.

With it rose the remembrance of two evenings ago when she had looked up

suddenly and seen him standing in the middle of the big thorn clump. In

the isolation created by the fog, in the glow of her battling with it,

in the stress of her own feelings, he seemed to be already with her, to

be beside her, to be touching her; not the every-day indifferent

Murdough either; the unsatisfactory, conversational Murdough, the

Murdough who got tipsy and mocked at her, the Murdough who was always

wanting money, but the real Murdough, the Murdough she had never ceased

to believe in; who looked up at her suddenly, and then stretched out his

arms to her; who caught her in them and held her; the Murdough who loved

her, even as she loved him.

If this Murdough had melted a hundred times when confronted with the

real one, he had at least grown again a hundred times when the other

Murdough had removed himself. To Grania’s mind--to her inmost

feelings--he _was_ the real Murdough, ten thousand proofs to the

contrary notwithstanding. She had known him, seen him, recognised him

twice; once for ten minutes in the boat, again for half a minute the

other evening when he called to her upon the rocks, and as for the rest

of their time together it was nothing--_gustho_--not to be accounted.

That she was going to see this real Murdough became more and more of a

conviction with every step she advanced. The emergency seemed to call

him into existence. It was now or never! He must and would be found

equal to it, it was impossible to believe otherwise. Her faith grew

stronger minute by minute, cried aloud in her ears, and pushed itself

more and more strenuously upon her with every yard she advanced.

By the time she reached the villa it had become a certainty. As she came

round the last corner and dropped into the little hollow--now a

smoke-filled cauldron from which all detail had vanished--she could hear

a sound of voices coming up from the invisible depths below. The house

itself was completely lost to sight until she all but touched it, when

it suddenly emerged, its massive three-cornered front rising white out

of the dimness. She went hurriedly up to the door, which stood wide

open. To the left lay the sea, half covering the rocks, invisible but

audible, a dull grinding noise rising from time to time, then ceasing

altogether. On the other side of the house there were a couple of

windows, broken, and patched with dirty bits of paper, but upon this

side there were none, and never had been any, only three wide low steps

which led up to the door, and which were of granite like the house

itself, solid granite steps, the homes of flourishing sea spurreys and

saxifrages, springing thickly from a dozen clefts and gaping fissures.

Something of the dignity of the type to which it belonged, and which had

survived all vicissitudes, seemed to be stamped upon it to-day. Grania

had always felt this dignity vaguely, and even now in her hurry a dim

sensation of respect began to creep over her as she came within sight of

those solidly-cut granite steps, that low, solidly-carved doorway. It

was a tribute to a different order of things, to a different way of life

from her own, a feeling increased, no doubt, by old Durane’s tales of

the bygone glory and grandeur of its owner, but also inherent, born in

her race, and not, therefore, easily dissevered from it.

A sudden lull in the tumult of voices showed that her coming had been

observed, and the next minute her heart gave a great bound and then

seemed to stand still, for Murdough himself came out of the house and

stood upon the top of the steps looking down at her.

For the last half-hour her thoughts had been rushing to meet him; she

had been mentally throwing her arms round him; merging all their late

differences, appealing to their old love, their old childish affection;

telling him all that she had not been able to find words to say the

other evening; telling him that she knew he would help her now in her

great trouble, that he would come with her to Aranmore; forcing him, in

fact, by her urgency to do so. Instead, however, of doing anything of

the kind, a sudden feeling of diffidence came over her--a feeling of

being there a suppliant, a beggar--of being at a disadvantage, she could

not tell how or why. Probably it was something in their mutual attitude

which suggested it. She had never in her own person known the feeling of

being a suppliant, for in her time there had never been any gentry on

Inishmaan, and she and Honor stood quite on the summit of such social

altitudes as she was acquainted with. All the same, she did know it

instinctively, and it arose without any bidding now. This fine young man

standing at ease upon the top of the steps--at his own hall door, as it

were--the girl--herself--with her petticoat over her head, appealing

from below. Where had she seen those two figures that they seemed so

familiar? She did not know, but it had the effect of changing all her

previous thoughts, and bringing quite a new element of confusion into

her mind.

Possibly Murdough was similarly affected by the accidental

juxtaposition; in any case, all situations of personal importance came

naturally to him, and it was with none of the diffidence he had shown

the other evening, on the contrary, with an air quite in accordance with

this imaginary picture, that he asked her, in a tone of astonishment,

what upon earth was the matter, and what had brought her out in such

weather? It was not a fit day for decent people to be out of their

houses at all; couldn’t she see that for herself?

Grania put her hand suddenly up to her head. A momentary vertigo seemed

to assail her: a feeling of confusion, as if everything, herself and

Murdough included, had got wrong, and were out of place. What had

happened to them both? she wondered.

‘Arrah, Murdougheen, don’t you know? Didn’t the child tell you? Didn’t

you get the word from Phelim?’ she stammered at length.

Murdough looked slightly embarrassed.

‘Is it little Phelim Daly you mean?’ he asked, in a tone of some

hesitation. ‘Well, yes, Grania; the child did come to me three hours

ago, or maybe something better, I will not deny it. But it was not much

I could understand of what he said, not much at all. It is no better

than a natural he is, you know, and getting worse, I think, the

creature, every day, God help him! His father was here at the time, and

he said that it was all _gustho_ he was talking, so he did--something

about going to the big island to look for a priest. Arrah, my God! as if

any man in his senses, or out of them, would think of going to the big

island in such weather, no matter if it was for a priest, or for

anything else! It was just waiting I was for the fog to clear a bit, and

then it was up to your house, Grania, I was going, to see if there was

anything I could do for you. Yes, indeed, up to your very own house I

was going, so you may believe me. But it would be walking over the

cliffs, or into a hole in the rocks, I would be, if I was to try and go

there now, so I just waited till it should clear. That was how it was,

and no lie at all--ask the boys inside, and they will tell you. Arrah,

how in God’s name did you get here yourself at all, at all? It was the

mad woman you were to come out in such weather. Is it your legs you want

to break, or your neck, maybe? There has not been such a fog on

Inishmaan not for this seven years back--Moriarty O’Flanaghan was just

saying so--not for this seven years back and more.’

Grania pushed her hair feverishly off her face, and let the petticoat

she wore as a cloak drop from her shoulders. She felt hot and stifled.

Murdough’s words seemed to be coming to her out of a dream; his very

personality, as he stood there, big, solid, and self-satisfied, seemed

unreal. In this confusion her thoughts had come back to the one fixed

and absolute reality--her errand! That, let what would happen, must be

carried out.

‘It is dying Honor is, that is what she is doing,’ she said, simply.

‘And it is a priest she must have before she can die--yes, a priest now,

this very minute, Murdough! And if you cannot go with me, it is someone

else I must get, for it is not till the fog clears she can wait, for the

fog may not clear, God knows, all the long night through, and it is not

till the morning she will last, and she cannot die till she gets the

priest, so she cannot. And that is why I have come to you, Murdough,

because I do not think you would let my sister Honor die and no priest

near her, you would not have the heart. And it is myself will go in the

curragh with you to Aranmore, only you must come too, you or someone,

for I could not row it all by myself. And as for our not going out in

the fog, sure, my God! if we were to be drowned itself, the two of us,

isn’t that better any day of the week than for her to die and no priest

near her--she that is such a real saint, and has always set her heart

upon having one at the last? Arrah, ’tis only joking you are, I know;

you wouldn’t refuse me, Murdough, you couldn’t! Haven’t we two been

always together since the time when we were a pair of little prechauns,

no higher than a kish--always together, you and me, always? Sure, I

wouldn’t ask you, God knows, if there wasn’t the need--the burning,

burning need. Isn’t your life dearer to me a hundred times than anyone

else’s, let alone my own? Arrah! come, then, Murdough, dear, come! Don’t

let us be wasting any more time. ’Tis _dying_, I tell you, she

is--dying fast. My God! who knows but ’tis in the death-grips she is

this minute up on the rocks yonder, and not a creature nigh her, only

Molly Muldoon, and we two not even started yet!’

Murdough Blake was really to be pitied! He was put in a most unpleasant

position, one for which great allowance must be made. To begin with, he

was excessively good-natured, a fact which even his most casual

acquaintances knew well, and knew that nothing in the world was easier

than to tease or coax him into doing anything that was required--so long

as it did not entail too troublesome an effort upon his part. For

Grania, too, if she had filled him several times of late with a sense of

discomfort, if her claims and her ‘queerness’ had made her irksome and

incomprehensible, he had at least a very old feeling of comradeship, one

which went back to the very roots of life and was as strong probably as

any feeling he was capable of; which had been strengthened and warmed,

too, into fresh energy by her unexpected generosity the day before. To

refuse her, therefore, now, when she was so extremely urgent, was a real

discomfort to him, a real worry and disturbance. Her will, moreover, was

much the stronger of the two, and he experienced, therefore, a distinct

physical inclination to yield to it and obey without further question.

On the other hand, there was something about this particular task to

which she was urging him that was peculiarly daunting and disquieting to

his mind, the very thought of which sent cold shivers of discomfort

through and through him. Had it been a question of taking out a boat in

the middle of a storm, no matter how violent, his manhood would probably

have risen to the occasion and he would have gone. He was no coward,

certainly no commonplace coward, and it was not, therefore, any prosaic

fear of death in itself that held him back. It was something else;

something in the look, in the very touch and thought of this dank,

close, unnatural whiteness that deterred, and as it were sickened, him

by anticipation. He had a sense of its having come there for no good; of

its being the abode and hiding-place of who could tell what ugly,

malignant spirits. A whole hoard of ancestral terrors, unexplained but

unmistakable, awoke and stirred in his mind as he looked abroad from the

steps, and thought of himself out there, adrift and helpless in a boat;

lost and smothered up in this horrible white blanket of a fog; a prey to

Heaven alone knew who or what! A cold shiver ran through him from head

to heels. No, he _could_ not, he really _could_ not go. Grania must be

reasonable. To-morrow, or any time, even in the night, as soon as the

fog cleared, he was ready to start. Meanwhile Honor must abstain, for

this one evening, from dying, or, if she would be so unreasonable as to

die just now, well, die she must for once without a priest, for no

priest could he, or any man, in his opinion, bring her in such weather.

He set himself to put all this clearly before his petitioner. He was

really exceedingly vexed to have to refuse her, but plainly there was no

help for it.

‘Then, indeed and indeed, Grania, ’tis mortal sorry I am to go against

you, so I am,’ he said, scratching his head with a vigorous gesture,

less dignified, but probably a good deal more natural, than his previous

airs of superiority. ‘And if it was any way possible--any way possible

at all--to get to the big island, it is myself would go with you this

minute, yes, indeed, and gladly, rather than disappoint you. Why not? it

would be only a pleasure. But sure, my God! how can I, or any man in

this mortal world, go out in such weather? It is not in reason to ask

such a thing. Merciful powers! only look at it over there!--thicker and

thicker, and queerer and queerer, and more wicked-looking every minute

it’s getting, curling and gathering itself up into great heaps as if it

was a mountain made of smoke--real Hell smoke, it is--yes, indeed, my

faith and word--real Hell smoke, no other! God knows that I am not

afraid, so you need not think _that_. God who is up there in glory knows

whether I am afraid or not--right well He knows it, no one upon this

earth better, or as well. But there are some things that it is not right

for any man to attempt to do, no, nor be asked to do, either, so there

are. Arrah! my faith and word, I wonder you can’t see it for yourself?

Sure, even if I were to get out the boat to oblige you, how in the name

of reason could I find the way to Aranmore in such weather as this? Is

it by smelling at it with my nose I would find it? There is no seeing

it, no, nor seeing anything else in such unnatural weather, so there is

not, no more than if you were looking about you in the middle of a cave

in the black inside heart of a mountain. And, if you did get there

itself, no priest would come out with you, not one foot of it, so he

would not! No, but he would tell you that you had no business to come

out at all on such a day, that he would, for there is no knowing what

may happen to people if they will do what they are not meant to do. It

is straight up out of the boat in the middle of the bay a man would

maybe find himself taken, and carried away God knows where, so he might,

for there are things about on a day like this that it doesn’t do to

speak of, no, nor to think of either, as everyone that is sensible knows

right well. And as for Honor dying, sure, what would ail her to die

to-night? Isn’t it months upon months she has been at it, and why would

she choose such weather as this to die in? ’Twouldn’t be decent of her,

so it wouldn’t, and ’tis the decent woman she has always been! Arrah!

then, be a good girl, Grania agra, and just go home and stay quietly in

the house till to-morrow, and begorrah! by the first streak of day, or

sooner, so long as it’s anyway decent weather, I’ll come to you, and

we’ll go off for the priest, sure enough, and bring him back with us in

the curragh. Won’t that content you, Grania, dheelish?--say it will, and

go home quickly, there’s a good girl, for, indeed, ’tis wickeder and

wickeder looking it’s getting every minute.’

But Grania’s face was set like a flint. She had picked up the petticoat

and gathered it about her shoulders again, her whole air showing a

determination utterly defiant of all blandishments.

‘It is to look for Teige O’Shaughnessy I am going now,’ she said

briefly. ‘And if I do not find him, then I am going to Aranmore by

myself, for I will not let my sister Honor die and never a priest near

her, so I will not, God help me!’

Murdough felt the natural displeasure of a man who has taken great pains

to explain a matter in the clearest possible manner and who finds that

all his explanations have been simply thrown away. He was annoyed, too,

by the mention of Teige’s name.

‘Then it is not Teige O’Shaughnessy you will find, for it was over to

Allinera he went this morning with his pack, and it is not back he will

be able to get home through this fog, the poor _boccach_, I am

thinking,’ he said contemptuously. ‘And as for your going alone to

Aranmore in a curragh this night you will not do _that_ either, I am

thinking, so you will not. If you do, ’tis the mad woman you are--the

mad woman out and out!’ And he turned upon his heel to go back into the

house.

‘Then it is the mad woman I am, sure and certain,’ she answered, ‘for it

_is_ going I am, and so good-night to you, Murdough Blake.’

There was a mutual pause. Both had now said all that they had got to

say. Both had reached a platform from which there was no receding.

Murdough was absolutely determined that, let what would happen, nothing

should tempt him to stir abroad upon such an evening. Grania was still

more absolutely determined that, come what would, a priest for Honor she

must and would get. If Murdough would not help her, then Teige should.

If Teige proved to be really from home, then she would go by herself,

and find her way across the sound as best she could. If every man in

Inishmaan was afraid of the fog, _she_ was not afraid. Honor should not

die without a priest. That fact, amongst much that was dim and confused,

stood out absolutely fixed and certain.

She turned round resolutely, therefore, to go, and then--and then--she

turned back again! She was torn in two. Was this the end? the very, very

end? Were they parting like this? That it was no everyday parting, not

even any everyday quarrel, of that she felt absolutely certain. Was it,

_could_ it be the end of all things? No, it couldn’t be! she told

herself. It was not possible! Again her faith in Murdough--the real, the

invisible Murdough, rose--rose, too, in the very teeth of evidence. It

was _not_ possible, she decided; he was joking, she felt sure of it. She

turned therefore; hesitated; went a few steps onward; then again

stopped, and again hesitated.

Suddenly she turned resolutely back with a bound, rushed up the three

broad steps of the villa, and stood beside him in the porch on the top

of them. It was a tolerably deep porch, and the fog, besides, was now so

dense that as they stood there they were to all intents and purposes as

isolated as if no other human beings existed in the world. Although

there were three men within a very few yards of them, the sense of

solitude was for the moment as complete as though they had stood alone

together in the centre of the great Sahara. They were encompassed hand

and foot by the whiteness; two ghostly figures, cut off and hidden away

in a world of their own--hidden, to a great degree, even from one

another. For Grania, certainly, there existed no other creatures at the

time save only herself and Murdough. Only herself and Murdough, and they

were parting; parting, yet for the moment together, for the moment still

within reach, touch, and grasp of one another.

The result was that, almost before he had realised that she had returned

and that she was standing beside him, Murdough felt two arms about his

neck, clinging tighter, tighter still, pressing about it in a

convulsive, panic-stricken embrace, close and clinging as that of the

very fog without, only warm, very warm, and very human; desperation in

every touch of it, anger, too, but above all love--a love that could

kill its object, but that would never fail it; could never entirely

cease to believe in it.

‘Och, Murdough! Murdough! Murdough!’ she whispered, and her breath

fanned his cheek fiercely. ‘Och, Murdough, look at me! Murdougheen,

speak to me! Is there never one bit of love for me in all that big

strong body of yours? Never one bit of love for your poor Grania, that’s

loved you, and none but you, all her life long, ever since she was a

little bit of a girsha? Sure, heart of my heart, wouldn’t I die any day

in the week gladly just to please you, or any night of it for that

matter either, if you asked me? and is there nothing you’d do for me in

return--nothing? nothing? Arrah! say you’ll come with me to

Aranmore--only say the word--say you’ll not refuse me. Sure you

couldn’t, Murdough, you _couldn’t_, let me go out alone into the strange

wild night without you? Arrah, say you couldn’t, dear; say it! ‘Deed and

you needn’t say it, for I wouldn’t believe it of you, not if anyone

swore it, so I wouldn’t. Och, _ma slanach! ma slanach_! who have I in

the wide world to look to but you? My God! ’tis mad, out and out, I

think I am going, for my heart feels bursting in the inside of me.’

Murdough was shocked, more than shocked, he was startled, positively

scared and terrified by such an unlooked-for demonstration, such utterly

unheard-of vehemence. If Grania had gone mad, he certainly had not done

so, and one proof of his sanity was that he was intensely conscious of

the presence of those two other men gathered round the cracked

punch-bowl not far off, as well as of the presence of Shan Daly, who was

probably hidden away in some obscure corner of the building. He could

not see any of them certainly, and therefore presumably they could not

see him. Still, they might _hear_; a thought which filled him with acute

discomfort. Had Grania really gone mad, he asked himself; it seemed to

be the only possible explanation. Lapses into drunkenness were trifles,

a few other obvious slips from the path of absolute rectitude were

customary, and therefore forgivable, but such conduct as this was

unheard-of, was absolutely unprecedented and inconceivable! His sense of

decorum was stirred to its very depths.

Rapidly disengaging himself from her, he drew her hastily out of the

porch, down the steps, and round the nearest corner of the building,

where there was a sort of weedy ditch or hollow which ran between the

wall of the villa and the bank, ending in a kind of kitchen-midden, made

up of all the loose rubbish which had accumulated there from time to

time, and beyond which a small, disused back-door opened. Here they

again confronted one another.

Either his look of dismay had aroused Grania to a sense of the enormity

of her conduct, or the mere break in the chain of her ideas had brought

her back to everyday life, in any case, she was now blushing hotly. The

fiery fit was past. She felt beaten down and subdued by her own

vehemence. All she wanted now was to get away--to get away quickly, and

to be alone.

‘Then, indeed and indeed, I don’t know what ails me this evening, so I

do not, Murdough,’ she said in a tone of confused apology. ‘’Tis the

weather, maybe! God knows it is the queerest, most unnatural sort ever

was, and seems to be driving one out of one’s senses.’ She paused; then

went on: ‘Maybe ’tis right you are about not going out in it, dear, and

I’ll just step back to the house, as you bid me, and, please God, I’ll

find Honor something easier, and she’ll hold out till the morning, and

if not, why, I must just go look for Teige. Anyway, God won’t desert

her, come what will, I’m sure. He couldn’t, could He? He never would

have the heart to do such a thing, and she such a real saint!’

She paused again, and looked at him beseechingly, then added timidly,

‘’Tisn’t out and out angry you are with me, dear, are you? Arrah!

Murdough, it wasn’t me did it at all, at all, you know, only the

weather--just the weather and the fear I was in of Honor dying without

the good words at the last.’

For the third time she paused, and stood looking at him, trying hard to

see his face in the fog. But his face was a mere blur, and he himself

remained absolutely silent. This silence was so extraordinary, so

unprecedented upon his part, that it filled her with a sense of awe,

both of awe and of self-dismay. After waiting a minute, therefore, she

added, still more humbly, ‘Good-bye, dear. God knows ’tis sorry I am for

vexing you. It won’t happen again, Murdough--never again, dear; never!’

and she turned to go.

For the first time that evening an unaccountable wave of irresolution

swept over Murdough. He was very angry with her, excessively angry;

ashamed too, and embarrassed to the last degree; nay, he was inclined,

as has been said, to think that she really must have gone mad, since no

one who was not mad would behave in such a way. All the same, something

new seemed to be stirring within him. He, too, felt ‘queer.’ Could it

really be the weather, or, if not, what was it? The effect in any case

was that he felt suddenly disinclined to let her go. A sudden wish came

over him to stop her, to hear again what she had to say; to quarrel with

her, perhaps, but not to part with her so suddenly. He made a step

forward. She was still within easy reach; had only gone, in fact, a yard

or two up the bank. It was upon the tip of his tongue to call after her,

to ask her to stop: to say that, perhaps, after all, he _would_ go with

her, since she had so set her heart upon it--piece of folly as it

was!--that in any case he would go back with her as far as the cabin,

and see for himself how Honor was getting on, whether matters were

realty so desperate as she asserted or not. He had made a couple of

steps forward, had opened his lips, his hand was actually

out-stretched, when out of the dark doorway in the wall behind him

another hand suddenly emerged, a lean hand with hairy, clutching

fingers, the arm belonging to it clad in a sleeve so ragged that it

literally fell away from it in filthy, sooty-coloured ribbons. This

other hand caught Murdough’s and held it fast for a minute. Only for a

minute, but when it had again released its hold Grania was already out

of reach, half-way up the side of the bank, and nothing was to be seen

far or near but the white all-encompassing shroud of the fog.

CHAPTER IV

That shroud was whiter and more encompassing than ever as she made her

way back to the cabin. Its effect upon her was not, however, now to

excite, but to deaden and subdue. The long struggle with Murdough; the

failure of her appeal to him; her own, even to herself, unexpected and

unaccountable behaviour at the end of their meeting; the dismay with

which he had received that behaviour; all these had combined to produce

a reaction. She felt thoroughly beaten down now, thoroughly sobered and

ashamed. No one on Inishmaan, no girl, possibly anywhere, had ever

behaved in such a manner before, no one certainly within the range of

her experience had ever been so lost to all propriety and decency. A

sense of being a sort of pariah was strong upon her as she crept back

with difficulty over the fog-filled fissures, and stole noiselessly into

the cabin, wishing only to hide herself there from all eyes. Her new

self-mistrust even went so far as to include a belief that her

impression about Honor’s danger had probably been quite wrong, that she

would prove to be no worse than usual, and that it would therefore do

perfectly well to think about getting the priest for her in the morning

when the fog should have dispersed. That, as Murdough said, was the

decent thing to do, and no doubt Honor would do whatever was most decent

and most proper.

Unfortunately, so valuable a lesson as to the advantages of being always

perfectly decent and reasonable was not destined to be enforced that

evening. On the contrary, Grania had no sooner opened the cabin door,

and cast her eyes upon the bed, than she saw that a great change for the

worse had taken place during her absence. Honor was sitting upright,

propped by every movable thing in the house--propped, too, by Molly

Muldoon’s willing arms--but panting, white, and exhausted, apparently

all but gone, so nearly gone, indeed, that it seemed to Grania, as she

stood there upon the threshold, that each of these hardly-won breaths

must be the last, that the end had positively come. She caught her own

breath and sank instinctively upon her knees with a feeling of the

imminence of that end.

But Honor had seen her. For a moment a gleam of intense hope lit up her

face. She looked behind her eagerly towards the door, expecting

evidently to see a black figure following her, that figure for whose

coming her whole soul had for hours back been going out in an agony of

petition, for whose coming she was struggling so desperately to keep

alive. There was no black figure following, however, and after a minute

a new look, first of intense disappointment, then of an agonised effort

at submission, came into her face, and she beckoned her sister over to

her, speaking in a low gasping whisper.

‘Arrah, Grania child, don’t be destroying yourself ... breaking the

heart in your body with trying to do what you ... can’t do. Sure ’tis

killing yourself I see you are! The fog ... yes, I know ... Molly

Muldoon told me! Arrah, can’t I see with my own eyes how the house is

filled with it ... in at all the cracks and down the chimney! Saints in

glory, ’tis terrible wicked-looking weather, and how could Father Tom

come out such an evening if you did get to ... Aranmore itself?’ She

paused, breathless and panting. ‘The Holy Mother will stand between me

and ... and all harm,’ she then whispered painfully. ‘She’ll know it

wasn’t my ... fault. She’ll know ’twas the fog ... and the men afeard

... as ... who could blame them? She’ll speak the word for me ... I know

she will ... she’ll ... speak ... the ... word for me.’

Again she paused. Suddenly her eyes turned upon Grania.

‘Arrah, my bird, don’t be fretting yourself,’ she murmured tenderly.

‘Don’t I know you would have got him for me if you could?’ Then, with

another great effort, ‘Take heart, my bird, take heart; ’tisn’t long

I’ll be in it, you know, to be disappointed, and whether or not--sure I

can bear it, honey sweet; I can bear it, I tell you; bear it ... easy.’

But a fresh impulse had now seized hold of Grania. Her momentary apathy

was gone. A new determination was setting her eyes ablaze.

‘You _shall_ have him, Honor, and he _shall_ come to you, if I have to

bring him swimming through the water after me, so he shall,’ she

exclaimed fiercely. ‘Don’t be afraid, dear; keep up your poor heart a

little, a very little longer, sister darling, and he’ll be with you.’

She kissed her hastily, and dashed out of the door again, turning this

time in the direction of the O’Shaughnessys’ cabin. Maybe Teige would be

back, after all. Most probably, almost certainly, he would be back by

this time. Anyhow, with Teige or without Teige, to Aranmore and to

Father Tom that night somehow or other she would get.

CHAPTER V

She hurried desperately on over the flagging, heedless of the cracks,

but keeping always upon the same level which must in time, she knew,

bring her to the shore exactly opposite the O’Shaughnessys’ cabin. The

fog was too thick now to dream of keeping to any path, but the levels on

Inishmaan are always the same, so that by following any one of them you

are sure to reach a given point sooner or later. From time to time she

came to some unusually wide fissure, and had to scramble across as best

she could, the edges feeling like ice under her feet, or like some sort

of half-melted substance, such as wax or spermaceti. The short thick

thorn bushes growing out of the rocks brushed her ankles, and now and

then she found herself suddenly out upon the cliff-like edge of the

step, and had to work her way back to where the terrace broadened, and

the walking was comparatively safe.

At last she knew by the general look and touch of the rocks that she

must be getting close to the narrow tongue of land which led to the

smaller islet. This was the most dangerous part of the way, and she

stood still a moment, therefore, to make sure of her bearings, before

clambering down to the shore and thence on to the tongue of land.

The fog was absolutely impervious now. It was impossible to see more

than a few inches ahead. Every now and then a puff of wind would come

and partially clear it for a moment, when the whirling vapour would give

her the sense of being surrounded by smoke, so wildly did it fly around

her. Then all would close up again, and a sense of suffocation encompass

her, through which colder breaths blew fitfully, coming from where rain

pools lay amongst the rocks, or where some draught, caught from the sea

and entangled in the surf, rose to the upper levels.

Making her way cautiously to the edge of the step, she let herself drop

on to the next below. She was now upon the second of the eight steps or

platforms of which Inishmaan consists, and there was therefore only one

more between her and high-water mark. This one, however, was much more

broken and littered with fallen blocks than the upper ones, so that it

took her a long time to cross it and longer still to make sure of where

she was. At last she got to the edge, and having scrambled down, not

without several slips, from not knowing where to set her feet, she

reached the bottom, and was thus upon the actual shore at last.

The tide, she calculated, was by this time half-way in, so that it was

necessary to make haste in order to secure Teige, and bring him back to

where the curragh was kept. The tongue of rock, at all times narrow and

slippery, was to-day all but impassable. Twice she fell, and found

herself clinging by her hands to the weed-covered top, her feet and

nearly her whole body dangling over the edge, where there was no

foothold whatever, and where she could just discern the hungry greenish

swell rising noiselessly up, up, up, rising stealthily, as if determined

to catch her unawares.

Almost upon hands and knees she succeeded in reaching the other side,

and clambered up the final bit of track which led to the cabin. It was

so squat and so low that had the island been much larger it would have

been easy to miss it altogether. As she came near, it looked more like

some shaggy old beast crouched there in the hollow than a house. No

light showed upon the side facing her, but when she reached the door she

could see a pale pink splinter, evidently of firelight, stealing out

from below. She knocked twice loudly, her heart beating; hoping, praying

that Teige himself would come to the door and open to her. No one came

near the door, however, although she could hear someone moving to and

fro inside, someone who was evidently quite unaware of that clamorous

appeal so close at hand. Grania’s heart sank, for it was clear now that

Teige was still from home, and only deaf-and-dumb Biddy left in charge,

who would not only be utterly useless herself, but would probably not

even be able to tell her where Teige was likely to be found.

She lifted the latch of the door. It opened easily, and she went in. The

old woman had her back turned, and did not therefore at first perceive

her entrance. It was fairly clear inside, showing that the door had not

been opened since the fog had grown so thick. Grania stood for a moment

upon the threshold, blinking at the firelight, which seemed painfully

hot and red after that unnatural white world she had left outside.

Biddy, dressed as usual from head to heels in red flannel, and still

utterly unconscious of anyone’s entrance, seemed to be engaged in

chasing something or somebody round the cabin, uttering queer,

inarticulate cries under her breath as she did so. Now she would make a

dart at some object, seated apparently on a beam above the hearth, next,

seizing the corner of her petticoat, she would turn and flap vigorously

behind her, as if she were being followed and pulled by someone at once

very small and very persistent, giving utterance as she did so to

scolding or remonstrating sounds, such as a nurse might use to some

unusually troublesome child.

So odd was the old creature’s behaviour, so utterly unexplained by

anything in sight--for not even a cat or a chicken was in the

cabin--that Grania, for all her haste, stood still a moment, staring at

her as she hopped from side to side of the narrow space. She had seen

Biddy behave queerly before, but never quite so queerly as this.

Suddenly her reputed powers of seeing and holding communication with the

_sidh_ came into her mind, and a chill sensation shot over her. Was

there _really_ something in the cabin that she could not see? And if so,

whereabouts was it, and what was it like? Biddy, meanwhile, in one of

her turnings, had caught sight of her visitor standing ghost-like by

the door, and uttered a sudden scream, the odd, discordant,

hardly-human scream of the deaf and dumb. Grania thereupon stepped

forward to explain her errand, the old woman, after a moment’s stare of

unrecognition, beginning to nod and duck as she perceived who her

visitor was. The girl looked hastily round for something of Teige’s, so

as to explain whom she was in search of. She could see nothing but a

battered high hat hanging to a hook in the wall which had formerly

belonged to dumb Denny, but which his nephew sometimes wore when he went

to Aranmore to chapel. This hat she took down, and held towards the old

woman with an interrogative gesture, pointing at the same time towards

the door.

Whether she was understood or not it was not easy to tell. In any case,

Biddy’s information was not of any very detailed or available character.

Dropping down upon the stool which stood beside the hearth, and

throwing her withered arms over her head, she uttered a wild cry,

something between a croak and a scream, which was intended to mean

‘Gone! Gone!’ an ejaculation she had often made use of since her brother

died, and which apparently conveyed to her mind all that sense of

departure, of loneliness, and of desertion which we articulate people

employ so many, and often such inadequate, words to convey.

Evidently it was useless to hope for further information, so Grania

turned to go. Upon opening the door a solid, white wall of fog rose in

front of her, one in which every detail was lost, and which it needed

some little resolution to penetrate, so opaque and impervious looking

was it. Turning for an instant before the fog again swallowed her up,

she saw that old Biddy had already forgotten her visit. With eyes fixed

upon a spot a little way above her head, she had risen from her stool

and was stealthily approaching that spot, evidently with the intention

of pouncing upon whoever was seated there before he or she could hope to

perceive her approach and make off. Against the dim background of the

cabin the single red fantastic figure lit by the firelight made a

curiously vivid dot of colour, which seemed to hang for several minutes

before Grania’s eyes as she pursued her way across the fog-filled

fissures.

CHAPTER VI

The disappointment had no effect whatever upon her determination of

somehow or other getting to Father Tom that night. There was no one else

upon Inishmaan whom she could appeal to with any hope of success, and

therefore she did not think of appealing to anyone else. She would go by

herself, and she would go at once. Her course was now at least a simple

one.

She had to return in the first instance to their own cabin to get out a

pair of old oars which hung in the cow-house, but she did not intend to

see Honor again, certainly not to let Honor see her. The bare thought

of, for a second time that evening, meeting the look of mute dismay

which had met her after her first unsuccessful quest went through her

like a knife. Anything would be better, she felt, than to see that

again; anything, anything.

She stole accordingly to the cow-house like a thief, and, having got

down the oars, started again for the landing-place. Moonyeen turned her

spotted head and lowed reproachfully, which brought her back at once to

see if there was enough for her to eat, and she hastily shook down a

couple of armfuls of weedy grass, cut a few days before in the clefts,

and left it near her. That would do till the morning. It was all the cut

grass she had by her. To-morrow she must not forget to go and cut some

more, she reflected as she did so.

For the second time she had got as far as the old boulder, and for the

second time she paused and looked back. Though only a few yards away

the cabin was already invisible; the fog making it a mere blur, like

some phantom cabin seen in a dream. A sudden intense yearning came over

Grania to see the inside of it once again, and a yet greater yearning

for one, only one more sight of Honor’s face. She _must_ see that, she

felt; she could not and would not go out into that big hungry sea--to

disappear, perhaps, and be lost for ever by herself in the fog--without

at least once again peeping at Honor as she slept.

She stole back accordingly and looked in. Molly Muldoon, crouched up

into a shapeless blue heap by the bed, was already nodding drowsily, a

few inches of puckered forehead, the top of a religiously white cap, the

only portions of her distinguishable. Whether Honor slept or not it was

impossible to say. Her eyelids were down, and the white face below them

might have been a dead woman’s face. There was a slight heaving under

the sheet, that was all.

Grania stood there and gazed. Her eyes seemed rooted to that narrow

square of brown wall and that white face in the dimmest corner of it.

Both belonged to her as nothing else in this whole wide world belonged

or ever could belong. She must not delay, however, she knew. Time was

slipping on; what little light was left was rapidly going. She stole out

noiselessly, and the cabin door shut remorselessly behind her. Reaching

the big boulder, she again picked up the oars which she had left there,

laid them across her shoulders, and turned hurriedly down the track.

It was easy enough to find the way as long as she was in the gully, for

there was no turning there to the right or to the left. Beyond it,

however, everything--track, rocks, and fog-filled air--looked exactly

alike. The oars too prevented her feeling her way as before with her

hands, and it was not for a long time and until after many stumbles that

she at last reached the small semicircular sweep of sand upon which the

curragh was kept.

Just as she did so something bounced suddenly against her foot, making

her start violently and spring backwards. She had once or twice heard an

odd pattering noise behind her on her way downhill, but everything

seemed odd and unaccountable that evening, so that she had given no

particular heed to it. Now she looked down panic-stricken, a prey to

terror, all the fears awakened by Biddy O’Shaughnessy’s proceedings

astir again, and leaping within her. It was not until she had dropped

one of the oars, and that a violent mew of pain had come up from the

ground at her feet, that she discovered that the object was nothing more

terrifying than their own yellow cat. What had induced the creature,

which never by any chance left the cabin, which had never followed her

in its life, or shown her the smallest sign of affection, which was

notoriously a mere mass of greed and self-indulgence, to select that

particular evening for following her all this way, coming down to the

shore, which, like most of its race, it detested, is not easy to

explain. Grania, at all events, made no attempt to explain it. She

stooped hastily to pick up the oar, and as she did so stroked the

creature’s back, a vague feeling of comfort coming to her from its

presence. Her solitude did not seem to be quite so solitary now that

something belonging to them was with her, even if it was only their own

ill-tempered yellow cat. There was no response to her caress beyond that

the cat did not, as usual, show any inclination to scratch in return,

merely sidled noiselessly past her, and then ran a few paces ahead, its

brilliant tail lifted high in air as if to show the way.

As the event proved, Grania was destined to have another, if not a much

more efficient, auxiliary. When she had found the curragh, a matter

which, small as the space was, took her some time, she began at once to

push it towards the sea. A ridge of sand or up-sticking point of rock

just in front caught it and delayed her, and she went forward to try and

clear it away. She was bending down upon her hands and knees, trying to

find out its exact position and size, when as she raised her face she

suddenly found herself confronted with another face nearly upon the same

level as her own--a ghostly face, with great, widely-staring

eyes--gazing straight at her through a foot or two of fog.

Again her fears sprang up, and again they were allayed, this time as the

familiar small features and big pale blue eyes of little Phelim Daly

gradually became defined, the boy sidling silently up to her as if for

protection, and then, like the cat, trotting silently on a step or two

in advance, and turning round as though to watch whether she were

following.

She asked him what had happened? Where he had been all day? Why, when

Murdough wouldn’t come, he hadn’t tried to find Teige? What his father

had done to him? Whether he had beaten him; and how in the end he had

managed to escape and to find her out? He made no answer, however, to

any of these questions, beyond turning and again fixing his strange blue

eyes upon her with a wistful, far-away look; a look full of doubt; one

which seemed to ask her in his turn what was the matter; what they were

both doing down there upon such a night; why they were out at all; what

it all meant? It was an even less responsible, and more far-away look

than his usually were, and seemed to suggest that something had

happened in the course of the day yet further to disturb and unsettle

his always more or less distraught wits.

There was no time to press the matter, and she turned, therefore, to

renew her efforts to get the boat to sea, going behind it and pushing as

hard as she could. Suddenly the impediment, whatever it was, gave way;

the curragh slid rapidly forward; its black bow splashed into the

invisible water. Another push from behind, and it was afloat.

While she was still pushing it, before it was yet wholly afloat, and

before she had even made up her mind whether she was going to take

Phelim with her or not, the yellow cat had run on ahead, and had sprung

into the boat with an air of decision. This seemed to settle the matter,

and they all got in together; an odd boatload surely! At the very last

moment one of the crew, however, changed its mind. Perhaps it was

Phelim’s presence, for whom it had always shown a particular aversion;

perhaps it was the rocking of the boat as Grania pushed her oar against

the sand. Anyhow, with a sudden demoniac mew of fury, the yellow cat

sprang up again; darted frantically, like a thing possessed, from side

to side, up and down the thwarts, one after the other; then up the

stern, availing itself of Phelim, who sat there, as a bridge, and,

scratching his bare legs viciously as it did so, sprang to the shore

again and raced frantically away up the spit of sand, its yellow tail

flaring for a second like a small meteor before it vanished into the

darkness.

Phelim uttered a cry of dismay, and sprang up as if he also were about

to escape. Grania, however, called to him to stay still; then, as the

only use she could put him to, desired him to go to the other end of the

boat and look out carefully, and if he saw anything ahead of them, no

matter what, except water and fog, to call to her at once.

Apparently he understood, for he nodded twice, going over and squatting

down in his usual frog-like fashion at the bow, holding on there to the

two sides, as he peered into the foot or so of air and water, which was

all that was visible ahead of them. She meanwhile had settled steadily

down to the task of rowing. It was exactly like trying to row blindfold,

but she knew so well every inch of the way, every rock, shoal, and

sandbank, and had so often gone along it in the dark, as well as the

light, that it seemed hardly possible to her that she could go far

wrong.

The first notice from her watcher at the bow came, however, before they

had even got clear of their own island. She thought she was upon the

usual track, quite away from the dangerous rocks of Portacurra, the

furthermost point to westward--that she was even allowing more space

than was usual or necessary--when all at once a cry from Phelim startled

her, and she stopped rowing.

Looking behind she at first saw nothing but the black beak-like bow of

the boat, and the boy’s figure huddled beside it, everything else being

a mere blur, but as far as she could make out clear. She thought that he

had simply made a mistake, but with another long-drawn cry he turned and

pointed downwards towards the water. Leaning forward and looking closer,

she then saw, to her surprise, that it was quite true. Greenish points

were rising dimly in every direction, some of them within an inch or two

of the surface, and beyond these again were other and larger masses,

formless as the very fog itself, but which could be nothing but rocks,

the barnacle-coated knife-edged rocks of Portacurra, a touch from one

of which would tear a hole in the curragh’s canvas sides and sink it

like a stone.

Backing cautiously, she managed to escape without any contact. Only just

in time, however; another stroke of the oars, two seconds’ more delay,

and Phelim’s warning would have come too late.

They were now out in Gregory’s Sound, and the only serious danger

therefore was of missing the great island altogether, and rowing

straight away into the Atlantic.

After so bad a start Grania had lost confidence in her own powers of

finding the way. There was nothing to be done, however, but to row

steadily on, and, above all, to avoid turning the boat round. She shut

her eyes accordingly, as the safest way of avoiding this, and rowed her

hardest, every muscle in her body bound and strung to the task. If she

missed the right way past Illaunalee, over the bar and so into Killeany

Bay, she was resolved to run ashore anywhere, no matter where, and,

leaving the curragh to its fate, push on with Phelim to Father Tom’s

house, and trust to getting the loan of another curragh to bring them

back to Inishmaan.

Half an hour passed thus, and then an hour. Overhead, the white curtain

was thicker than ever; yet it seemed to her that it was a little lighter

now than it had been when they were starting, showing that it was less

the time of day than the sheer density of the fog that had made it so

impossible to see upon their own island. On and on she rowed; still on

and on, always on and on. Already it appeared to her that she had been

rowing quite long enough to have crossed Gregory’s Sound, here little

more than a mile wide, and she hoped, therefore, that she had got upon

the right track, and would soon be passing the straggling line of

sandbanks which surround Illaunalee. Odd-looking vortexes and currents

were visible now in the dimness overhead; mysterious maelstroms, gazing

up, instead of down, into which, the careering fragments might be seen

circling round and round; breaking capriciously off, joining together

again, gathering into interlaced patterns, sweeping up and down,

expanding, converging; all this movement going on along the edge of a

sort of pit, scooped as it were out of the very air itself. Suddenly,

while she was looking at it, the whole thing would close up, and a new

vortex or funnel break out in an altogether different place.

Grania was beginning to get drowsy over her task, what with the weight

of the air and with the pressure of her own troubled thoughts. Her

drowsiness did not perceptibly slacken the activity of her muscles, but

she rowed more and more mechanically, the rhythm of her own movements

seeming to produce a dream-like effect upon her brain. Thoughts, or

rather dreams, of Honor visited her from time to time, thoughts, too, or

dreams, of Murdough, both equally broken, confused, fragmentary. As far

as her own sensations went, she might have been rowing there the whole

live-long night, so benumbing and sleep-like was that torpor. How long

she really had been rowing she could not in the least have told, but her

thoughts or her dreams were suddenly cut short--cut into as it were--by

another wild cry from Phelim. This time it was much more than a cry, it

was an actual scream; a shrill, discordant screech, such as some animals

give when they are in the intensest throes of terror. Grania on her side

started violently, and turned round. The boy, she found, had leaped up

from his seat, and was standing at his full height, waving his thin arms

frantically in the air, calling to her, and pointing directly above his

head, with gesticulations violent enough to all but swamp the frail

craft they were in. Another moment and it seemed as if he would leap

clean overboard from sheer panic.

Looking up she, too, saw what he had seen, and was almost equally

startled. Apparently immediately above them, in reality a little way

ahead, one of those same aërial funnels had just opened, and within the

comparatively clear space of its air-filled hollow could be seen, not

merely the careering particles of fog circling round and round, but

something else, something that did not circle or move at all, a few

inches of wind-tattered grass, a few inches more of bare splintered

rock. There they hung, apparently in mid-air, their beginnings and

endings alike invisible, but this much clearly discernible, a startling

vision in itself, and a plain proof, moreover, that they were not

approaching Illaunalee, or anywhere even remotely near it.

Where were they? Grania asked herself in dismay. Were they moving along

the base of the south side of Aranmore, where the cliffs rise constantly

higher till they are crowned at last by Dun Aengus, or had she passed

the mouth of Killeany Bay altogether, and were they edging therefore

along the lower and more broken cliffs upon the north side of the

island? She did not know; she could not even remotely guess!

In any case the only thing to be done was to get away once more into

open water, and with a rapid movement of the oars she accordingly backed

the curragh, forgetting for the moment little Phelim, who, staggering

helplessly, fell violently forward, only just saving himself by

clutching with both hands at the side of the boat, where he hung for a

while, head downwards, doubled in two, his shoulders and the front part

of his body all but touching the water.

It seemed to be the last straw needed to overset his already shattered

nerves and panic-stricken wits! From that moment he evidently gave

himself up for lost. Gathering himself back by degrees to his former

place he began to whimper and cry aloud, rubbing his hands up and down

his poor starved legs, moaning over their bruises and talking rapidly

and incoherently, now to himself, now to the sea, or to the planks in

front of him. Once in the middle of these moanings and mutterings he

suddenly looked up and uttered another prolonged screech of terror,

whereupon Grania stopped abruptly in her rowing and looked round. This

time, however, he had screamed at nothing. He was incapable, in fact, of

serving any longer as watcher. Reality and unreality had become one to

him. Like some utterly fear-maddened animal he continued to moan and

whimper helplessly, gazing out into the fog-filled space in front of

him, but not seeing anything, even if there happened to be anything

there to see; his big, prominent blue eyes staring blankly, and as blind

eyes stare, over the edge of the curragh as it floated on and on, under

the invisible but always near presence of the great cliffs; on and on;

yes, but where to? to what goal? towards what sort of a landing-place?

Neither of them knew; she very little more than he.

CHAPTER VII

For Grania had by this time utterly lost count of her bearings. To

hinder the curragh from turning round, to hinder it from running upon

the rocks, and so getting immediately swamped, was all that she could

attempt to do. She paddled along slowly, therefore, trying from time to

time to make out where she was, but always, as she knew, failing

utterly; failing to the point of not even knowing whether she was at

that moment facing the mouth of Killeany Bay or turning her back upon

it.

That last point soon decided itself, for the cliffs were evidently

getting steeper. Despite, too, the dead calm, unruffled by even so much

as a breath, despite the leaden shroud which pressed down everywhere

upon the water, low thuds made themselves audible from time to time, as

the slow, sulky swell rolled in to the shore, impeded, apparently, by

the thick, lifeless air, yet reaching it in the end, and sinking down in

a succession of slow, monotonous washes. From the general look of the

water around, it began to be clear to Grania that they must by this time

have got amongst some of the outlying reefs, for there were rocks now to

right of them, as well as to left. The tide, too, was running swiftly,

and kept drawing them insensibly shorewards. Twice she caught a glimpse

of a pale green monster only just in time to avoid running full upon it.

Ought she to go on, or ought she to stop? Ought she to try to turn

round? or what ought she to do? she asked herself.

The question was soon settled. Suddenly, without the slightest warning

from Phelim, without a hint of any kind from without, there came a

startling crash. Another and another followed. Then came a worse sound,

the sickening sound of ripping and tearing; the sharp ripping of tarred

canvas. This time they were full upon a rock, which had pierced them

through and through, as a pin might pierce a child’s balloon. In another

moment, it is true, they were afloat again, but it was too late. Water

was now pouring in wildly through a hole in the side. Already the bottom

of the boat was half full. In the first impulse of the moment Grania had

snatched up her flannel petticoat and stuffed it into the hole, holding

it there with both hands as she felt the pressure growing greater and

greater. It was like trying, however, to stop the course of a

river--hopeless to absurdity. To get out somewhere, no matter where; to

reach the shore if possible; if not, to reach some rock; to get the boy,

at any rate, out, was the only thing to be attempted.

She looked wildly round, straining her eyes distractedly through the

impenetrable, blinding whiteness. Presently another pale green monster

loomed slowly up--part of the same rock, possibly, they had already

struck upon, possibly of another. In any case it was flat on the top,

and fairly easy, apparently, to scramble on to; rose, too, as far as she

could make out, above the high-water line; nay, might even be joined by

other rocks to the base of the cliffs. It was a hopeless-looking chance

of escape, still it was the only one that offered itself, and

accordingly she drove the boat full against the side of the rock,

calling out loudly as she did so to Phelim to jump out and climb up it.

Roused by her tone of command the boy obeyed, apparently without knowing

why, clambered over the side of the boat, caught at the rock, clutching

hold of the seaweed which fringed it, and hanging there for a minute or

two as a small sloth might hang to the bough of a tree. At the same

moment the other end of the curragh, already half full of water, was

jerked lower still by the movement, and the displacement, slight as it

was, of his weight, and sank deeply in the sea, and in so doing was

pushed several feet farther from the rock.

Seeing the boy clear, and knowing that in another few minutes the boat

must in any case fill, Grania took her hands away from the hole, through

which the water instantly spurted upwards in a solid gush. Summoning all

her strength, she, too, made a great effort to try and attain the rock,

upon the side of which Phelim was now crouched, but the already nearly

submerged curragh gave her a poor foothold to spring from, and she

missed it by a foot or more, and sank immediately into deep water.

The tide was running fast; there was no other landing-place of any kind;

nothing to climb upon; nothing to catch hold of. There were rocks in

plenty around her, but they were most of them inches deep in water, a

stray, glimmering, point appearing from time to time, like a ghost, and

then vanishing again. She was caught, too, like a straw in the grip of

that slow, seemingly gentle swell, which swept her hither and thither,

now a little nearer to the rock, now impossibly, hopelessly, far away

from it again. Clearly unless help came, the end would not be very long

delayed.

Roused by the splash and by the sharp ringing cry she had uttered as she

fell, Phelim half turned round, then climbed a little higher up, helping

himself by the seaweeds, until he reached the top, which was quite grey

and dry. Here, getting upon his hands and knees, he stared down into the

waste of water below him, and at the struggle going on within it. He was

evidently incapable of anything further, however. Mind and body were

alike paralysed--alike unable to respond to any call from without. He

scarcely seemed to know what was occurring, retaining only by sheer

unreasoning instinct his grip upon the foothold he had secured. What dim

ideas travelled through his brain as he lay crouching there it is

impossible to say, but as far as help went, any of the gulls swooping

overhead, any of the seaweed-covered spider-legged crabs scuttling in

and out of the crannies below him, were of as much avail as he.

Either Grania knew this or she may have even forgotten his presence, for

she made no effort to induce him to come to her aid. She was too young,

however, and too vigorous, to surrender the contest without at least a

struggle for her life. Twice she neared the rock, striking out bravely

through the water, though she was unable to swim, and twice the current

pulled her back again, sweeping her farther and farther towards the open

sea, but so lightly, so buoyantly, as it were playfully, toying

capriciously with her as a child or a young animal plays with something

that it has taken a fancy to. It was an unequal game though. Her

strength was going fast, the water was very cold, although the night was

warm. Five minutes more, nay three, nay two, and the struggle would be

at an end.

Huddled like a frog, his knees and chin almost touching each other,

Phelim Daly lay upon the rock and watched her dully, sick, despairing

apathy written upon every line of his small white face, his big, always

unnaturally prominent, eyes staring down with hardly a trace of

comprehension or intelligence in them. Again Grania struggled forward,

and again the capricious water washed her a trifle nearer to the rock,

and to comparative safety--washed her once almost within touch of it.

Her face, with its clinging masses of black hair, had grown very white

now, nearly as white as that of the boy gazing vacantly down at her from

only a few feet above her head. With a sudden effort, a sudden

concentration of despair and of hopelessness, she again uttered a cry

for help; a wild, ringing cry which rang out far and wide through the

silence, away out into the big, lonely Atlantic, flinging her hands at

the same time over her head, her straining eyes gazing round and round

with the agonising, longing stare of desperation. Was no one coming to

her help, then? No one? _no one?_

‘Murdough!’ she cried. Then, after a pause, ‘Murdough ... ’tis drowning

I am! For God’s sake, come to me! Murdough! Murdough!’

But there was no Murdough. There was no response of any sort, no help or

hint or suggestion of help. There was only the swaying water; only the

dimly-seen foam-streaked surface; only the white, closely-enveloping

shroud of fog; only Phelim’s small face peering helplessly over the

rock; so few feet away in reality, such miles and miles for any

practical purpose.

The tide was running out now, and it took her along with it, but so

slowly, so insensibly, that it was the faintest, most barely perceptible

movement. The silence everywhere was extraordinary. The sea under its

close-fitting shroud seemed as absolutely unruffled as the basin of some

indoors fountain. Not a ripple anywhere; only that same slow internal

movement, a movement hardly to be perceived upon the surface; only the

gradual undertow of the tide drawing everything stealthily in one

direction. Sea, sky, land, water, everything seemed alike to be lapped

in the drowsiest, the most complete and immovable repose. Sleep seemed

everywhere to be the order of the hour, to have taken possession of all

things. The very atoms of seaweed as they floated along appeared to

partake and be half conscious of that placidity.

Grania had ceased now to struggle. She was sinking slowly, but she still

kept her head partially above the surface. Had there been the slightest

movement in the water all would have been over before this, but, as it

was, death, too, seemed to linger, to share in the general suspension of

all things, to delay and hover. Suddenly a quantity of brown seaweed,

stirred by the changing tide, swept round the corner of the big rock and

floated down towards her. It was a mass of enormously long laminaria,

grown, not within tide-marks, but out in the deeper, more abysmal

region, as leathery in texture, as solid, and seemingly as sustaining,

as the branch of a forest tree, the thick strands welded together by

years of growth in deep water. It floated up to her, then under her,

half lifting her upon itself as upon a raft, her hands clutching in the

thick oily strands, her whole body sustained and for the moment uplifted

by it.

With this feeling of support from below a new look came into her face;

her eyes opened widely, and she suddenly stretched out her hands.

‘Augh, Murdough! Murdough!’ she murmured deliriously. ‘Didn’t I know

you’d come? Didn’t I know you’d never leave your poor Grania to drown by

herself in the cruel salt sea? Arrah, take me up, then, darling, take me

up! Be quick, dear, and gather me up out of this cold, creeping water!

Augh, but ’tis the strong arms you have, though you would always have it

’twas me was the strongest, you rogue! Hold me closer to you, Murdough

dear; hold me closer, I say; closer! closer still! Augh, Murdough!...

_Murdougheen!_’

And with a movement as if Murdough Blake had indeed come at last to the

rescue, and was lifting her in his arms, she let her head fall back upon

the seaweed, her cheek resting upon it as if upon his shoulder, her eyes

at the same time closing with a long-drawn sigh of satisfaction, and so

resting and so sighing she sank slowly, insensibly, and without a

struggle into the great folds of the laminaria, which, after supporting

her in that position for perhaps a minute, began gently to loosen its

long sashlike strands, floating presently away by degrees over the

hardly undulating surface, returning again and again, and sweeping

back, though in a less compact mass, now under, now over, now round her,

the great brown ribbons swaying in easy serpentine curves about the

floating form, the two getting to be hardly distinguishable in the

all-pervading dreaminess, a dreaminess of which the very fog itself

seemed to be but a part; a dream too deep and apparently too

satisfactory to be ever again disturbed or broken in upon by anything

from without.

* * * * *

Six or seven hours later the first fishermen astir upon Aranmore,

chancing to go out upon the cliff, saw little Phelim Daly still crouched

upon the same rock; still staring down with the same terrified,

widely-opened eyes into the waste of waters below him. He was promptly

rescued, and carried to the nearest cabin, where, when his wits had

partially thawed, his errand was either extracted from him, or possibly

was guessed without being extracted; in any case, Father Tom was shortly

afterwards summoned, and within an hour was on his way to Inishmaan,

through the still thick, but by this time penetrable fog, to visit the

dying woman.

He was in time. Honor was still alive and perfectly conscious of his

coming. Her sunken eyes lit with delight, and her hands clasped one

another rapturously as the black figure entered the cabin door. She

looked eagerly behind it for Grania, having been told by old Molly that

she had gone herself to Aranmore to fetch him, but when it was explained

to her that Grania had stopped to rest at Kilronan she was satisfied,

and asked no more. Once again she looked round the cabin questioningly,

evidently perplexed and disappointed, when the preparations had all been

made, and everything was ready for the last rites, and still there was

no Grania to share them with her. That the sister who had never left

her, never once in all those weary days and nights, should have left her

now; should have deserted her in this extremity; left her to pass alone

through the last dark gate, without her hand to hold by, her face to

look to, her shoulder to lean on, must have seemed very strange to

her--very strange, no doubt, and very unaccountable. She did not utter

any complaints about it, however. She had been too patient all her life

to be impatient now. If it was mysterious, why, everything else for that

matter was mysterious too. The Familiar was receding, the Unfamiliar

approaching fast, coming nearer and nearer every moment. After her long

probation, after her tedious waiting, she was at last upon the verge of

that looked-for, that intensely-desired country; a country which, if to

most of us it seems but a dream within a dream, a floating mirage, a

phantom made up of love and faith, of hope and of yearning

desire--unthinkable, untenable, all but impossible--was to Honor, and is

to such as Honor, no phantom, no mirage, but the soberest and solidest

of solid realities; the thing for which they live, the hope for which

they die. Real or unreal, fact or fancy, it was coming rapidly towards

her now. She was floating towards it as fast as ever she could float;

hurrying breathlessly, as a stream hurries when it nears the sea. Long

before the fog had completely melted away, long before ordinary

matter-of-fact daylight had returned to Inishmaan, her journey thither

was accomplished. Already, even while the priest stood beside her, while

the prayers she had so longed for, those prayers which Grania had died

to obtain for her, were being uttered, she was drifting across its

borderland; already its sounds rather than his voice, rather than any

earthly voices, were in her ears; already her foot was upon its

threshold. And upon that threshold, perhaps--who knows?--who can

tell?--they met.

THE END.

PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE

LONDON