Honor suddenly reddened, and a curious look of embarrassment came into her face.
‘Well, then, honey sweet, of course you can,’ she said, but in a tone of such evident reluctance that Grania could not fail to observe it.
‘What is it ails you about Murdough?’ she asked curiously. ‘It is not the first time, not the first by many, that you did not want him to come here. Is it that you think anyway ill of him? Is it, Honor? Say, is it?’ she persisted anxiously.
‘Auch! child, no. Ill? Why would I think ill of him? Tis just—auch, ’tis just—’tis nothing in life but my own foolishness—nothing in life but that. Heart of my soul! what wouldn’t I do if you asked me? and of course he can come. But, ’tis just—— Auch, ’tis laughing at me you’ll be, Grania—but you know when the fit takes me I must cough, and then the phlegm—and—and—well, ’tis shamed I am, dear, shamed outright to be sitting and spitting, you know, and a young man looking at me. That’s just it, and nothing else in life, only that!’
Grania stared at her for a second open-eyed, then she, too, reddened slightly. Such a reason would certainly never have dawned upon her mind. Modest she was—no girl more so—but she took far too sturdy and out-of-doors a view of life for any such fantastic notions of delicacy as this to trouble her—notions which could only, perhaps, lurk and grow up in such a nature as Honor’s, conventual by instinct, and now trebly, artificially sensitive from ill health. Honor’s wishes were to be respected, however, even when they were mysterious.
‘Well, indeed, sister, I never gave thought to that,’ she replied, humbly enough.
‘Auch! and why would you give thought to it? Sure, why would a young colleen like you, that’s niver known ache or sickness, think of such things, no more than the young flowers out there coming up through the rocks?’ the other answered with eager, loving tenderness. ‘And my prayer to God and the Holy Virgin is that you never may have to think of them, Grania dheelish, alannah, acushla oge machree,’ she went on coaxingly, heaping up one term of endearment upon another. She was afraid that her reason, although a perfectly true and, to her mind, a perfectly reasonable one, might somehow have offended Grania. With this idea she presently went on, having first waited long enough to regain her breath.
‘Think ill of Murdough Blake? Wisha! of Murdough Blake is it? a right brine-oge of a boy and a credit to all that owns him! A likely story that, when it is a joy to me to think of the two, him and yourself, coming and living here in the old house and I dead and gone—yes, indeed, and your little children growing up round you—my blessing and the blessing of Heaven be upon them, night and day, be they many or be they few! And if it was not the next thing to a sin, ’tis fretted and vexed I’d be to be stopping on in the way I am. What for? Only to be hindering two young creatures that’s wanting and wishing to settle down, as is only natural, and they not able to do it, and all because of me! Sure, sister dear, ’tis begging your pardon I do be often inclined to do—yes, indeed, many’s the time; only there—’tis God sends it, you know, and it can’t be different, whether or no.’
Grania’s face had run through several variations while Honor was speaking. By the time she had finished, however, her eyes were gentle and misty.
‘A right brine-oge of a boy,’ the other continued complacently, smoothing down her blanket. ‘And love is a jewel that’s well known all the world over’—this observation cannot be said to have been uttered with any very fervent conviction, merely in the tone of one who utters an adage, sanctioned by usage, and therefore respectable—‘’tisn’t every colleen, either, gets the one she likes best, so it isn’t, and no trouble; nothing to do but to settle down, and all ready, no questions, nor money wanted, nor a thing. ’Tis hard for a girl to have to marry a man and he nothing to her, or worse perhaps—a black stranger out of nowhere—and all for no reason but because of his wanting so many cows, or her father setting his mind on it, or the like of that. I mind me when I was a slip of a child—thirteen years old maybe, or less—there was a little girl—Mary O’Reilly her name was—barely seventeen years, no more: a soft-faced, yellow-haired little girsha, as slight and tender to look at as one of those fairy-ferns out there, when they come up first through the cracks. And there was a man belonging to Inisheer, whom they called Michael Donnellan—well, he wasn’t, to say rightly, old, but he was a big, set-looking man, with a red hairy face on him, and a nasty look, somehow. Well, he and Mat Reilly—that’s Mary O’Reilly’s father—settled it up between them one night, over at the “Cruskeen Beg,” and the number of cows fixed, and not a word, good or bad, only the wedding-day settled, and the priest told and all. As for Mary, all the notice she got was four days’, not one more! And sure enough when the day came they all went over to Aranmore chapel, and married they were—a grand wedding—and back they came in the boats, and up to the house, and the height of eating and drinking going on, and the neighbours all asked in, and every thing! I was looking in at the back window, by the same token, and half the other girshas in the place with me, and sorry I was, too, for I was fond of poor Mary O’Reilly, though I didn’t rightly understand what it all meant, being only a child at the time myself. Well, they were just setting out from the cabin, and the neighbours had all gathered round to bid them “God speed!” when all at once poor Mary, that was standing there quiet and decent as a lamb, gave a sudden screech, and she ran and she twisted her arms round the top of the doorway, that had a little space, mind you, between it and the head of the door, so she could get her arm in. And when they went to unloose her she struck out at them and fought and kicked and bit—the innocent, peaceable creature that never lifted her hand to man or mouse before in her life!—and she cried out to them that she wouldn’t leave her mammy, no, she would not, and that they might tear her into little pieces but she’d never loose hold of the door. Just think of it! the shame and the disgrace before the whole country! Her mother tried to unloose her, though she was crying fit to burst all the time herself. And the man that was her husband since the morning went up to her, and spoke rough to her—the beast!—and told her she must come with him at once. And she cried out that she would not go with him, no, not unless he took her away in little pieces, for that she hated the sight of him and his red face, and that she would kill herself, and him too, rather than go a foot with him! Och, vo, vo! that was a day—my God! that was a day! However, take her away with him he did, somehow or other, and ugly and sulky he looked in his new clothes, and his face redder than ever, being made such a baulgore[7] before them all—and she crying and screaming to her mammy to keep her, and the old man holding back his wife that was fighting to get to her—and away with the two of them in a curragh to Inisheer, where he lived!’