Grania, The Story of an Island; vol. 2/2

by Emily Lawless

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!