Grania

“ Grania for all answer thrust her foot again amongst the turf, making it flare and sputter like a Catherine wheel.
‘Then I don’t believe it—nor want to believe it—nor to hear it, what’s more—not though every priest in Ireland or the world were to say it!’ she suddenly burst out angrily. ‘And it is all very well for you, Honor, a saint born, wanting nothing and caring for nothing, only just the bit to keep you alive and the spot to pray on. But all women are not made like that. ”

“ It seemed to Grania like a voice outside herself, a voice roaring confirmations of her own thoughts, and, with an impulse of disburdening herself of some at least of these, she went on:
‘Isn’t it queer, Honor, to think of all the trouble there is, far and near, over the whole, big world? Sure when one looks out over the sea and the land yonder, and beyond that again, and thinks of it all, there seems to be nothing but trouble and trouble and trouble, and more trouble upon the top of trouble. ”

“ Grania looked up. A new idea, a sudden curiosity, was stirring in her mind.
‘But did you never care for e’er a one, Honor?’ she asked, reddening and speaking quickly: ‘never for e’er a one at all—not when you were young? Sure, Honor, you must! Think a bit, sister, and tell me. Arrah! why wouldn’t you tell me? Isn’t it all past and done now?’
‘“Care”? Is it I, child? “Care”! God keep you, no! What would ail me to care?’ the elder sister asked in tones of genuine astonishment. ‘Auch! men is a terrible trouble, Grania, first and last. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lame as he was, Teige, being nearer to the door, contrived to scramble after her, and caught her up just as she reached the other side.
‘Auch, Grania! Grania O’Malley!—’tisn’t angry you’d be with one who hasn’t the sense of life in her at all, at all?’ he cried deprecatingly—‘a creature that can’t speak with her tongue, nor hear with her ears, nor understand, nor a thing! What is she but a poor old lost one out and out, old Biddy, God help her! Sure, Grania O’Malley, ’tisn’t yourself would turn upon such a one as that? ”

“ And then, Grania dear—well, ’tis like this—there’s a feeling, I can’t tell it to you, for I haven’t the words, nor couldn’t if I had them itself. ’Tis for all the world as if someone was saying, “There, there! Whist with you; whist, I tell you! I know how you feel, you poor creature! I know it! I know it! There, there! Be easy a bit longer; it’s coming to you; it’s coming! I’m sending it—the peace, and the joy, and the rest of it.” And then, Grania, I look out towards the Old Sea there, and I say to{132} myself, “It’s coming! It’s coming! ”

“ Grania, a born aristocrat—all children are born aristocrats—shared this feeling in the strongest degree, and was well aware that Teige was in some way or other immensely inferior to herself, and therefore a person only to be tolerated when no more attractive company was to be had. She sat for some time longer with her feet dangling over the top of the fort, a quaint little red-petticoated figure, the solitary spot of colour in all that desolate greyness. ”

“ Whether he would have cared to do so or no, Grania certainly would not, and they were shortly to be married. To her Inishmaan was much more than home, much more than a place she lived in, it was practically the world, and she wished for no bigger, hardly for any more prosperous, one. It was not merely her own little holding and cabin, but every inch of it that was in this peculiar sense hers. It belonged to her as the rock on which it has been born belongs to the young seamew. She had grown to it, and it had grown to her. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Oh! but it is a grand beast, I tell you, Grania O’Malley, a horse is! There is no other beast in the whole world so grand as a horse—not one anywhere—no, not anywhere at all.’
Grania listened to all this in perfect silence. These aspirations of Murdough found her very much colder than his more juvenile ones used to find her. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A flare of wild moonlight was gleaming upon the stunted thorn-bushes; the platform of rock on which she stood stretched away, grey and level, but living creature of any sort or kind there was none. Overhead the clouds swept to and fro in bewildering masses; the wind blew coldly; the moon, which for a moment had shone so vividly, disappearing suddenly between rolling clouds, so that the whole platform became indistinguishable.
Grania waited a while, peering eagerly round into all the fissures, hoping for another gleam of moonlight which might enable her to discover the delinquent. ”

“ CHAPTER IV The stirabout ready, the two sisters ate their meal together. Honor’s was that of a blackbird. In vain Grania coaxed her with the best-mixed corner of the pot; in vain added milk, breaking in little bits of carefully-treasured white bread, brought from the mainland. The sick woman pretended to eat, but in reality barely moistened her lips with the milk and touched a corner of the bread. When she could persuade her to take no more Grania settled down to her own share, and with the aid of her yellow auxiliary speedily cleared the pot. ”

“ Honor for answer sighed and lay back against the wooden settle as if some habitual{v.1-165} source of trouble was weighing upon her mind.
‘Grania, it is a bad thing for you that there is no priest on Inishmaan, a very bad thing,’ she said, earnestly, an ever-present source of anxiety coming to the front, as it often did when she and Grania were alone. ‘How is a young girsha to learn true things if there is no one in it to teach her? ”

“ Grania O’Malley had{v.1-111} reaped hers, or rather it had come to her without any sowing or reaping, which is the best and most natural way. She had a special faculty, too, for such living—one which all cannot hope either to have or to acquire. She could dig, she could chop, she could carry, she could use her muscles in every sort of outdoor labour as a man uses his, and, moreover, could find a joy in it all. For words, unlike Murdough, she had no talent. ”

“ Her left hand, which she held mechanically towards the now rising blaze, was so thin that the wedding-ring seemed to be dropping off; her hair was still black, and hung about her emaciated face in draggled-looking coils and wisps like seaweed. Staring at her in the dusk of that miserable hearth Grania seemed to see herself a dozen years later: broken down in spirit; broken down in health; grown prematurely old; her capacity for work diminished; with{v.2-121} a brood of squalid, ill-fed children clamouring for what she had not to give them; with no help; with Honor long dead ”

“ As for the scenery,{v.2-107} certainly a stranger would have seen little variation, save in point of size, between its stoniness and the stoniness of Inishmaan. To Grania, however, as to all whose eyes are not spoiled by too varied and too early an acquaintanceship with many landscapes, small differences made great ones, and there was enough variety in that morning tramp through those stone-encumbered pastures to cause an exhilarated sense of travel and enlarged acquaintanceship with a world as yet imperfectly known and visited. ”

“ They are chased all over Ireland, and the dolmens in that country are popularly associated [pg 300] with them, being called in the traditions of the peasantry “Beds of Dermot and Grania.”
Grania's character is drawn throughout with great consistency. She is not an heroic woman—hers are not the simple, ardent impulses and unwavering devotion of a Deirdre. The latter is far more primitive. Grania is a curiously modern and what would be called “neurotic” type—wilful, restless, passionate, but full of feminine fascination. ”

“ And do you know this, Grania," he said, "the night Finn is in Teamhair it is he himself is the keeper of its gates. And as that is so, we cannot leave the town." "There is a side door of escape at my sunny house," said Grania, "and we will go out by it." "It is a thing I will never do," said Diarmuid, "to go out by any side door of escape at all." "That may be so," said Grania, "but I heard it said that every fighting man has leave to pass over the walls of any dun and of any strong place at all by the shafts of his spears. ”

“ A vehement feeling of annoyance made Grania long to rush away, to hide herself behind a boulder, to do anything rather than have to{175} 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. ”

“ Murdough watched her proceedings with an air of impartial approval. ‘Monnum a Dhea! but it is yourself that is the powerful strong girl, Grania O’Malley. There is not many of the boys, I tell you, on Inishmaan that is stronger than you—no, nor as strong{142} either, so there is not,’ he observed appreciatively.
Grania smiled proudly. She knew that she was strong, and took an immense pride in her own strength; moreover, speeches like these were about the nearest approaches to compliments that Murdough ever paid her, and she treasured them accordingly. ”

“ Upon that particular morning, as upon nearly every other morning throughout the year, Grania had left the cabin early, after settling Honor in her usual corner for the day, and had taken down the cow to pasture it upon the bent-grass growing upon the seashore at the foot of the hill, not far from where the two sisters owned a small strip of potato-ground. ”

“ The wind is bad to the little{120} stones. The stones cry, cry, cry. There is one little stone here that cries most of all; there is no other stone on Inishmaan that cries so loud.’
Grania stooped and looked at the pebbles as if to discover something more than common in them.
‘Do all the things speak to you, Phelim?’ she asked inquisitively.
‘Then they do not; no, Grania O’Malley. Once Phelim heard nothing. ”

“ Grania must be reasonable. To-morrow, or any time, even in the night, as soon as the fog cleared, he was ready to{235} 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. ”

“ She wanted her playfellow, and poor Honor by no means filled the blank. An old hen, sitting upon a clutch of eggs in a hole in the wall a little to the left of the fire, put its head out, and uttered a friendly interrogative cluck, by way of suggestion that it was there and would not object to a handful of oatmeal if it came in its way. Grania, however, took no notice, but sat, with her small brows{v.1-74} drawn close together, staring at the ash-covered heap of turf, below which a dull red glow still smouldered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our probes are too short, and we simply miss the point we aim at. We know them each in our own turn, recognise them more or less silently, more or less unwillingly, and there is an end of the matter. Grania, at any rate, did so. She recognised, silently and unwillingly, that she had been a fool; recognised it grimly and with bitterness. Bitterly too and silently she repeated to herself that Honor’s way of looking at the matter had been the true one. ”

“ Grania, however, never uttered word or syllable. She hardly looked at him, could not have told afterwards what he had been talking about, or what had passed them by. They took to their oars again after half an hour, and rowed slowly homeward,{v.2-100} past the western extremity of the smaller island, foreshortened here to a low conical hill; across the Foul Sound, where the swell was breaking in puffs of spray across the skerries; on and on till once more their own island stood before them, its big rath making it seem from this point lower even than usual. It was very dark indeed now. ”