They were now upon the loneliest piece of the whole island. Far and near not a human creature or sign of humanity, save themselves, was to be seen. The few villages of Inishmaan were upon the other side, the few spots of verdure which might here and there have been discerned by long search were all but completely lost in the prevailing stoniness, and to eyes less accustomed than theirs nothing could have been more deplorable than the waste of desolation spread out here step above step, stony level above stony level, till it ended, appropriately enough, in the huge ruinous fort of Dun Connor, grey even amongst that{125} greyness, grim even by comparison with what surrounded it, and upon which it looked austerely down.
It was one of those days, too, when the islands, susceptible enough at times of beauty, stand out nakedly, almost revoltingly, ugly. The low sky; the slate-coloured waste of water; the black hanks of driftweed flung hither and thither upon the rocks; the rocks themselves, shapeless, colourless, half-dissolved by the rains that eternally beat on them; the white pools staring upwards like so many dead eyes; the melancholy, roofless church; the great, grey fort overhead, sloughing away atom by atom like some decaying madrepore; the few pitiful attempts at cultivation—the whole thing, above, below, everywhere, seeming to press upon the senses with an impression of ugliness, an ugliness enough to sicken not the eyes or the heart alone, but the very stomach.{126}
As Grania and Murdough pursued their way side by side over the rocks little Phelim gradually lagged behind, and at last drifted away altogether, stopping dreamily first at one patch of sand, then at another, and becoming more and more merged in the general hue of the rocks, till he finally disappeared from sight in the direction of his mother’s cabin.
The other two kept on upon the same level till they had got back to Grania’s potato-patch. Here she picked up her spade, and at once resumed her work of clearing out stone-encumbered ridges, Murdough Blake perching himself meanwhile comfortably upon a boulder, where he sat swinging his pampootie-shod feet over the edge and complacently surveying her labours.
The girl drove her spade vehemently into the ground with a sort of fierce impatience, due partly to a sense of having{127} wasted time, but more to a vague feeling of irritation and disappointment which, like the former feeling, had a fashion of recurring whenever these two had been some time together. The sods sprang from before her spade; the light sandy soil flew wildly hither and thither; some of the dust of it even reached Murdough as he lounged upon his boulder: but he only sat still and watched her complacently, utterly unaware that he had anything himself to say to this really unnecessary display of energy.
The theory that love would be less felt if it was less talked about certainly finds some justification in Ireland, and amongst such well-developed specimens of youthful manhood as Murdough Blake. It is seldom talked of there, and apparently in consequence seldom felt. Marriages being largely matters of barter, irregular connections all but unknown, it follows that the topic loses{128} that predominance which it possesses in nearly every other community in the world. Politics, sport, religion, a dozen others push it from the field. Physiologically—you would have said to look at him—he was of the very material out of which an emotional animal is made, and yet—explain the matter how you like—he was not in the least an emotional animal, or rather his emotional activity was used up in quite other directions than the particular form called love-making. Of his conversational entertainment, for instance, to do him justice, he was rarely lacking.
‘Begorrah, tis the wonderful girl you are for the work, Grania O’Malley!’ he observed, when the silence between them had lasted about three minutes. ‘Is it never tired you do be getting of it; never at all, summer or winter, say, Grania?’
She shook her head. ‘And what else{129} would I be doing upon Inishmaan if I did get tired of it itself, Murdough Blake?’ she asked pertinently.
There being no very easy answer to this question, Murdough was silent again for another minute and a half.
‘It is myself that gets tired of it then, so it is,’ he replied candidly. ‘I would give a great deal if I had it, I would, Grania O’Malley, to be out of Inishmaan, so I would, God knows!’ he continued, looking away towards the line of coast, low to the south, but rising towards the north in a succession of pallid peaks, peering one behind the other till they melted into the distance. ‘It is a very poor place, Inishmaan, for a young man and a man of spirit to be living in, always, week-days and Sundays, fine days, rain days, always the same. How is he to show what is in him, at all, at all, and he always in the same place? It{130} is, yes, my faith and word, very hard on him. He might as well be one of these prickly things down there that do take a year to crawl from one stone to another, so he might, every bit as well, my faith and word!’
‘You do go to Galway most weeks in Peter O’Donovan’s turf boat,’ the girl rejoined, stooping to pick up a stone and tossing it impatiently away from the drill.
‘And if I do, Grania O’Malley, what then? It is not a very great affair Peter O’Donovan’s turf boat. And it is not much time either—not more than three or four hours at the most—that I get in the town, for there is the fastening of the boat to be done, and helping to get the turf on board, and many another thing too. And Peter O’Donovan he is a very hard man, so he is; yes, indeed, God knows, very. And when I am in the town itself, and walking about in the streets of it, why, you see, Grania{131} deelish, I’ve got so little of the English—— Bad luck to my father and to my mother too for not sending me to be learnt it when I was a bouchaleen! A man feels a born gomoral, so he does, just a gomoral, no better—when he hasn’t got the good English. And there are a great many of the quality too in the town of Galway, and it is not one word of the Irish that they will speak—no, nor understand it either—so they will not, Grania, not one word.’
‘I’ve got no English either, and I don’t want any of it,’ she answered proudly; ‘I had sooner have only the Irish.’
‘Arrah, Grania, but you are an ignorant colleen to go say such a thing! ’Tis yourself that knows nothing about it, or you would not talk so. Language is grand, grand! I wish that I knew all the languages that ever were upon this earth since the days of King Noah, who made the Flood. Yes, I do, and more too, than ever there were on it! Then{132} I could talk to all the people, and hold up my head high with the best in the land. My word, yes, if I knew all the languages that ever were, I promise you I could speak fine—my word, yes!’
It was quite a new idea to Grania that there were more languages in the world than English and Irish, and she meditated silently upon the information for several minutes.
‘There’s what Father Tom speaks in the chapel, when he comes over from Aranmore to say Mass,’ she observed reflectively. “Ave Maria” and “Pater Noster.” Honor learned me that, and it is not the Irish, I know, and it would not be the English, I suppose, either?’
The remark was put in the form of an interrogation, but Murdough’s thoughts had travelled elsewhere.
‘Young Mr. Mullarky of Ballyhure was in Galway last day I was there, so he was.{133} Och! but it is the quality that have the grand times, Grania O’Malley, and it is myself would have had the grand times too if I had been born one of them, that I would, the grandest times of them all. He was riding upon a big black horse, the blackest horse ever you saw in your life. Och! but the noise it made as it came down the street, scattering the people and clattering upon the stones. Wurrah! wurrah! but it did make the noise, I tell you, Grania, and the people all turning round to look at him, and he pretending not to see one of them. My God! but a horse is a wonderful beast! I would sooner have a horse of my own, of my very own, that I could ride all over the world upon the back of, than I would have a ship or anything! Yes, I would, my faith and word, yes.’
‘A ship would take you a deal further,’ Grania replied scornfully. ‘When my father{134} had the hooker he would put up the sails of her here in Inishmaan, and it would not be four hours—no, nor nearly four hours—before we would be sailing into the harbour at Ballyvaughan, and what horse in the world would do that for you?’
‘A horse wouldn’t take you over the sea, of course, but a horse could take you anywhere you wanted on the dry land—anywhere over the whole earth, just for the trouble of skelping it. Arrah my word! just think how you’d feel sitting on the back of it, and it galloping along the road, and everyone turning round to look at you. That’s how the quality feel, and that’s how I’d feel if I had been born one of them, as I might have been and as I ought to have been; for why not? Why should they have everything and we nothing? Is that fair? God who is up there in heaven, He knows right well that it is not fair, so it is not. There was a{135} man last year at the Galway horse fair, and he had a little horse, a yellow-coloured one it was, Grania O’Malley, only the mane and tail of it were black, and I went up to him as bold as bold, and says I—“Cay vadh é luach an coppul shin?”[5] For I wanted to know the cost of it. “Coog poonthe daig,[6] and that’s more than you’ve got about you this minute, I’m thinking, my poor gosthoon,” said he, with a laugh. “Gorra, that’s true,” thought I to myself, and I went away very troubled like, for my heart seemed tied with strings to that little yellow horse. And I watched it all day from a distance, and everyone that went up to look at it; ’twas just like something of my own that I was afraid of having stolen, just the very same, and I could have leaped out and knocked them down, I was so mad to think{136} that another would have it and I not. And about four o’clock in the afternoon there came a young fellow from Gort—a little dotteen he was, not up to my shoulder—and he too asked the price of it, only it was in the English he asked it, and the man told him seventeen pounds, for I understood that much. “Can it leap?” says the young fellow. “Is it leap?” says the other. “Yarra, it would leap the moon as ready as look at it, so it would, and higher too if you could find it anything to stand on!” says he, joking like. “Auch, don’t be trying to put your comethers upon me,” says the young fellow who was wanting to buy it. “Do you think it was yesterday I was born?” says he.
‘Well, with that they went away to a place about a quarter of a mile from there, and I crept after them, hiding behind the walls, and every now and then I would peep{137} over the top of a wall, and the heart inside me it would go hop, hopping, up and down, till I thought it would burst. And every time that little yellow horse lifted its legs or twitched its ear I’d leap as if I was doing it myself. And when the man that was selling it gave it now and then a skelp with a bit of a kippeen that he held in his hand I felt like murdering him—“How dare you be touching another gentleman’s horse, you spalpeen?” I’d cry out, only it was in the inside of me, you understand, under my breath, I’d say it, for there were the two of them, and the one that was wanting to sell the horse was a big fellow, twice as big as myself and bigger, with a great brown beard on the chin of him. And ever since that day I’ve been thinking and thinking of all I’d do if I had a horse, a real live horse of my own. And at night I do be dreaming that I’m galloping down the hill{138} over beyond Gort-na-Copple, and the four legs of the horse under me going so fast that you would hardly tell one of them from the other, and the children running out on to the road, and their mothers screeching and bawling to them at the tops of their voices to come out of that, or maybe the gentleman would kill them. Oh! but it is a grand beast, I tell you, Grania O’Malley, a horse is! There is no other beast in the whole world so grand as a horse—not one anywhere—no, not anywhere at all.’
Grania listened to all this in perfect silence. These aspirations of Murdough found her very much colder than his more juvenile ones used to find her. They did not stimulate her imagination, somehow now, on the contrary they merely made her feel vaguely uncomfortable and cross. All this talk about money and fine horses, and the quality, and what he would have done if he{139} himself had been one of the quality was a mere fairy tale, and moreover a very tiresome fairy tale to her. There was nothing about it that she could attach any idea to; nothing which seemed to have any connection with themselves, or their own life present or future. She went on steadily cleaning out her drills, scraping the small stones in front of her and laying them in heaps at the side. Murdough meanwhile, having finished everything he had to say upon the subject of horsemanship, had travelled away to another topic, explaining, expounding, elaborating, pouring forth a flood of illustrations such as his native tongue is rich in. It was a torrent to which there was apparently no limit, and which, once started, could flow as readily and continue as long in one direction as in another.
Grania was hardly listening. She wanted—she hardly herself knew what she wanted{140}—but certainly it was not words. Why would Murdough always go on talk, talk, talking? she thought irritably. She admired his interminable flow of words of course—she would not have been Irish had she not done so—at the same time she was conscious of a vague grudge against them.............