‘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? When I lie at night in bed thinking, thinking, I think of you Grania, and I pray to God and the Holy Mother, and to all the tender saints, that it may not be laid against you. Sure how can the child know, I say, and she never taught? The Holy Mother will know how ’twas, and may be when I get there, Grania, she’ll let me say the word, and show that it was no fault of yours, allanah, for how could you know and none here to teach you, only me that knows nothing and less than nothing myself?’
Grania’s fierce grey eyes filled for a moment. Then with a sudden impulse she flung her head back, lifting the iron spoon she had just tapped the cat’s nose with, and holding it defiantly in front of her.
‘Then I don’t want none of them to be learning me, only you, Honor—so, I do not,’ she said irritably. ‘I couldn’t bear to be driven or bid by any of them—so, I couldn’t!’
‘Is it a priest, Grania? My God! child, you don’t know what you’re saying! A priest! Why, everyone that ever was born into this world, man or woman, must obey a priest. You know that right well yourself, and what would be the end of them if they didn’t, so you do.’
‘I don’t care. I would not be bid, no, not by anyone,’ Grania answered defiantly. ‘And the priests arn’t all so good as you say, Honor, so they are not. I mind me there was a young girl over by Cashla way told me of the priest where she lived—Father Flood his name was—a terrible hard man he was, and carried a big stick, so he did, and beat the children frightful when they were bould—yes indeed. And one day she was going herself to the chapel and hurt her foot on the way, and couldn’t get in till Mass was half over. And Father Flood he saw her coming up, and he frowned at her from the altar to stop by the door, and not dare come nearer. So she waited, trembling all over, and wanting to tell him what happened. But presently he come down the chapel, and when he got close to her he caught her without a word by the side hair—just here, Honor, she told me, above the ear—as he was passing by to the door, and pulled her by it right after him out of the chapel. And when they were outside he shook her up and down and backwards and forwards as hard as he could, yes, indeed, as hard as ever he could, she told me, and she crying all the time, and begging and praying of him to stop, and every time she tried to tell him what hindered her he just shook the harder, till it was time for him to be going in again, when he gave her a great push which laid her flat on the grass, and back with him himself into the chapel again. And she only ten years old and a widow’s child!’
Honor sighed. ‘’Tis hard, God knows, ’tis hard,’ she said. ‘The world is a cruel place, especially for them that’s weak in it. There is no end to the pain and the trouble of it, no end at all,’ she said in a tone of discouragement. ‘But, Grania dear, sure isn’t it what we suffer that does us the good? “Pains make saints!” I heard a good woman I used to know, that’s dead now, say that often. “Pains make saints,” “Pains make saints,”’ she repeated softly over and over to herself.
‘’Tisn’t the hurting I’d care about,’ Grania said scornfully. ‘I’ve hurt myself often and never minded. ’Tis being bid by them that have no call or care to you. If one done to me what was done to that girl at Cashla I’d hit him back, so I would, let him be ten times a priest.’
Honor gave a sudden scream of dismay. ‘Och then, whist! and whist! and whist, child!’ she cried, piteously. ‘What are you saying at all, at all? Saints be above us, Grania, and keep you from being heard this day, I pray, amen! Sure a priest’s not a man! You know that well enough. Wurrah! wurrah! that you would speak so! And I that learned her from the start! Holy Virgin, ’tis my fault, all my fault. The child’s destroyed, and all through me! My God, my God, what will I do? Och, what will I do? Och, what will I do, at all, at all?’
Grania ran remorsefully and put her arms about her sister, whose thin form was shaken as if it would fall to pieces by the sudden violence of her trouble. Honor let herself be soothed back to quietness, but her face still worked painfully, and on her pale brow and moving lips it was easy to read that she was still inwardly offering up petitions calculated to appease the wrath thus rashly evoked.
Grania’s penitence was real enough so far as Honor was concerned, but it did not alter her private opinion as regards the matter in dispute. ‘I’d think him a man if he hit me, let him be what he would!’ she repeated to herself as she ran into the next room to fetch the milk set out of reach of the cat since the morning’s milking.