The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎103r] (210/244)

1892
NOTICEABLE
695
On this remote island in the Atlantic assemble the
joersonce of Miss Lawless's short, simple, and pathetic story. The
scene opens with the childhood of Grrania O'Malley—a child who had
grown up ' as the seamews grow,' educated, so far as she was educated
at all, only by ' the immemorial criss-cross of wishes, hindrances, and
circumstances,' strong in her hates as she is intense in her loves, full
of the wayward moods and indescribable terrors of childhood. By
the side of the twelve-year-old Grania is Murdough Blake, two years
older than herself, her playfellow and companion, and later on her
affianced husband. Round them turns the plot, if plot it can be
called, of the story. But the interest chiefly centres on Grrania and
her elder sister Honor, one of those women on whose plain and homely
faces religion had set the seal of its beatitude—in character a self-
doubting, otherwise all-believing, saint, in appearance as reposeful,
serene, and chastened as though she had fulfilled her cherished aspi
ration, and lived as a nun within the shelter of a convent.
Six years later Grrania had grown into a tall broad-chested maiden,
inheriting from her mother a dash of Spanish blood and Spanish
beauty, strong, honest, courageous. She and her sister are now
orphans, and the death of Honor, who has sunk into a hopeless
decline, is fast approaching. Murdough Blake, to whom Grania is
engaged, has developed into an Irish Micawber, always waiting for
something to turn up, and meanwhile bent on enjoying as much ot
the good things of life, including whisky, as Grania or others would
provide for him, vain, weak, irresolute, and always building stately
castles in the air of which he was the lord and master. Eomance he
has none : he scarcely understands what love is : his future marriage
is a matter of business. How the course of Grania's love failed to run
smoothly, how she tries to conquer it only to find how it has absorbed
her nature, how Murdough failed Grania in her supreme hour of trial,
how even in her disappointment she clings to him, and how she
herself comes to a tragic end—these are Miss Lawless s secrets. But a
love story has been rarely told with more perfect delicacy, and a death-
struggle seldom described with more pathetic and restrained effect.
Grania, Murdough, and Honor are the central figures of the simple
drama. For the length of the story it is possible that there are too
many subsidiary figures, just as there are scenes which may be deemed
superfluous, descriptive passages that, in spite of their remarkable
beauty, may appear excessive, and a gloomy atmosphere which may
seem too persistently melancholy. has faults—what book has
not to the eye of the critic ?—but its defects are far outweighed by
its merits. It is a charming story, full of natural life, fresh in style
and thought, pure in tone and refined in feeling.
E. E. P rothero.