Liam O'Flaherty - Land

“It wasn’t foolishness last winter,” Julia cried, speaking very rapidly. “You lay out on the mountain all day, with hailstones falling, waiting for Captain Butcher to pass. You came back home sadly without seeing him, sick to the marrows of your bones. You got pneumonia. For five days I didn’t close an eye. I was there beside your bed, listening to each breath that came from your labouring throat. When the fear of death was on you, I used to get into bed beside you and take you in my arms and fondle you. You didn’t think it was foolishness then. Mag Jordan is there to prove that I’m telling no lie. For five days and nights you lay there. It was touch and go with you. Oh! No, Michael, it was no foolishness then. You wouldn’t let me go more than a foot away from the side of your bed. Then you got better. That was in January. For a month after that, while you were gathering your strength, you would take my hand and look into my eyes and swear that you would never forget what I had done for you.”

“Be on your way now, Julia,” Michael said in a low voice.

Julia suddenly threw herself against his chest. Hatred of him had given way to an overpowering longing. She clutched at his clothes and rubbed her cheek against his chest, like a dog fondling its owner.

“Oh! God!” she moaned. “Don’t send me from you. I can’t live without you. I put mortal sin on my soul because of you. I’m damned on account of the way I love you. I was pure before I met you. Now I’m tormented night and day. Have pity on me. Speak kindly to me, Michael, like you would to a beggar out of charity. I have no pride left. There isn’t even fear of God left in me. I’ll do anything for you … anything … anything.”

Her voice became inarticulate. Now only her sobbing was distinct. She twisted about a little while longer like a wounded creature. Then she lay still against him. Her luxuriant black hair had broken loose from its coils. It streamed down about her face in disorder. She lay with her right cheek against his chest and her arms hanging limp, one on either side of him. Her face looked white and very beautiful as she lay that way, with her eyes closed and her black hair tumbling down in billowing folds.

Michael’s face showed no emotion. He sat rigidly against the base of the fence, one leg thrust straight out from him, until her outburst had come to an end. Then he took her gently in his arms.

“Listen to me, Julia,” he said.

She raised her head, looked at him arrogantly and began to arrange her hair.

“What did you mean by saying I put mortal sin on your soul?” he said.

“Leave me alone,” Julia said, drawing farther away from him.

“I can’t let you tell a lie of that sort,” Michael said. “I never laid a hand on you. How could I put mortal sin on your soul?”

“You fool!” she cried bitterly. “What would a person like you know about such things?”

“All right, then,” Michael said, “Be on your way.”

Julia got to her feet and walked across the lane. She leaned her arms against the top of the opposite fence and looked out over the sea.

“Did you hear what I said?” Michael said, coming over to her. “I told you to be on your way.”

Julia swung round and faced him, with her hands on her hips and her head thrown back. In this posture she looked very proud and beautiful.

“What you say from now on, Michael O’Dwyer,” she said, “makes no difference to me. No difference at all.”

Michael shrugged his shoulders and walked down the lane towards the fishermen’s hamlet of tiny thatched cabins, that lay huddled together by the pier. She watched him go. The sound of his retreating footsteps on the grass gave her intense pain. Then only the top of his head was visible and his feet no longer made any sound. A few moments later, she had lost sight of him altogether.

“God have mercy on me!” she muttered, putting her arms on the fence and looking out to sea once more. “Ah! God help me!”

A homing cormorant was flying down the silver lane made by the moonlight on the water. The long black wings almost touched the waves, as they strained to bear in flight the fish-laden gullet of the bird. All was still. Even the wind made no sound, as it flowed steadily from the west, bearing the first voluptuous heat of summer on its breath.

She stayed there for a long time, looking out over the sea without thought. She had come to a decision that would make dreamy thought a pain for evermore.

Mag Jordan’s cottage, where Michael lodged, stood on a knoll above the western end of the pier, on the outskirts of the fishermen’s hamlet. It was a slate-roofed building of one story, surrounded by a little stone-walled garden. Its black door and black-framed windows threw the whiteness of its walls into relief against the yellow background of the peninsula’s faded shore grass.

As Michael’s feet crunched on the path of coloured sea-pebbles that ran through the garden to the door, the sound of excited conversation ceased abruptly within the house.

“Get my supper ready,” he said gruffly to Mag Jordan as he entered the kitchen.

There were five men in the kitchen. He nodded casually to them as he crossed the floor to the door of his bedroom.

“I have the tea drawing,” Mag Jordan said. “I have only to put the eggs in the boiling water.”

“Be quick about it, then,” Michael said.

He went into his room and closed the door after him.

“Prut!” Mag Jordan said. “He’s in a temper this evening.”

She was a red-faced little woman of middle age, very stout, wearing a man’s low-necked shirt of white frieze over her blue dress.

“That French girl doesn’t seem to be doing him much good,” she muttered on her way to the hearth.

Michael lit a candle at a small table by the window of his bedroom and read the letter that Julia had given him. It took him a long time to understand it, owing to the many errors in grammar and spelling.

“A man with one eye,” it said in effect, “is waiting for you at Sabina Hart’s eating-house in the town of Clash. That’s me, Liverpool Joe Crimmins. Come as soon as you read this. Bring five sovereigns. Spare yourself the journey unless you have the sovereigns. I have information for you about the man that got your father hanged. The same man is plotting to hang you as well. He is paid by Butcher and the English. He is high up in the Fenians. I have the proof written down. Don’t delay. He’ll strike any minute now. Ask for Liverpool Joe.”

Michael put the letter in his pocket, quenched the candle and stared out of the window at the masts of boats that were moored at the pier down below. The tapering spars seemed to be within arm’s reach.

“Your supper is ready now,” Mag Jordan called to him.

He got to his feet and continued to stare out the window. Girls were singing on the yellow strand below the village. Their song of yearning love came gently over the water.

“Come and eat your supper,” Mag Jordan called out again.

He went into the kitchen and sat down to table. After he had drunk a little tea, he turned to a man that sat on a three-legged stool to the left of the hearth.

“Did you come from Grealish in your pucaun, Pat?” he said.

The man whom he addressed was Patrick Lynch, a blacksmith from the island of Grealish and second to Michael in command of the Fenian organisation of that district. He was thirty years old, of stocky build, with a thick neck, a round face and grey eyes that were set wide apart. He held his head to one side, with one eye closed, like a man taking aim. His right hand was buried to the wrist in the pocket of his frieze jacket.

“Yes,” he said. “She’s tied down at the pier.”