Liam O'Flaherty - Land

He picked up the bread-knife and advanced on his daughter in a threatening fashion.

“Be careful now, Bartly,” his wife said gently. “You might hurt yourself again with that knife.”

Several years previously, he had picked up a similar knife during an argument with his wife. He had hurled it to the floor in order to stress a point. His foot got in the way and he wounded himself quite seriously. Now he felt deeply mortified, on being reminded of this incident by Sarah.

“You always take her part,” he said sulkily, laying the knife gently on the table. “Am I always in the wrong, then? God help me! My only son became a priest on a foreign mission. He is now lost to me forever, out preaching to the bloody negroes of Central Africa, where he’ll most likely die of fever unless he’s trodden under foot by wild elephants. My four daughters are all in America. It’s hardly likely that I’ll clap eyes on any of them, either. Is it too much to ask that my remaining child should do my bidding? And all I’m asking of her is to marry Jim Clancy, a fine young man that has the best people in the parish for relatives, together with three houses in this village, two farms and …”

“Shut up, father,” Julia said rudely as she got to her feet. “Why can’t you ever keep your mouth closed?”

“God forgive you, child,” Bartly said timidly to her.

He was frightened by the strange indifference of her tone and the terrible pallor that had destroyed her beauty.

“You’re the laughing stock of the whole village,” she cried as she went to the door.

She looked back at him over her shoulder from the doorway and added:

“Even the children imitate you, when they are playing shop.”

Bartly threw himself on to his chair when the door had closed after her. He covered his face with his hands and shuddered. His wife came over and put her arm about his thin shoulders.

“Forgive her, Bartly,” his wife said. “You have to make allowances for her. She is in love with Michael O’Dwyer and you have to take pity on her. She’s a good daughter, except when the poor creature gets tormented by whatever it is that ails her.”

Bartly looked at his wife indignantly. She was a big, heavy woman with a double chin and an unseemly stomach. Only her eyes and her luxuriant black hair showed any trace of the beauty which her daughter had inherited from her.

“Pooh!” Bartly said. “You’d think by your talk that I hated her. Sure, I know she gets tormented by something or other. Didn’t I consult the best doctors in the country about her? Didn’t they all tell me the same thing? ‘Get her a husband,’ they said. And isn’t that what I’m trying to get her?”

“Hush now, Bartly,” his wife said.

“Don’t hush me, Sarah,” Bartly said, “Father Costigan, a wise man, told me the same thing. ‘If she had a good man in her bed,’ Father Cornelius said, ‘you wouldn’t hear a giog of complaint out of her.’ Declare to God, he said that and more of the same.”

“Be on your way to Mass now,” his wife said, “or else you’ll be late.”

Bartly jumped to his feet at once and hurried out into the hallway. His wife followed him. She and Julia had gone to an earlier Mass. She dusted the back of his swallow-tailed coat, while he brushed his high hat on his sleeve in front of the mirror.

“Be careful now,” she said, “not to get into any arguments after Mass, if there is a meeting, as they say there will be. Just keep your mouth shut, or else come on home quietly. These are terrible times. You never know where a foolish word might lead you, especially when you are excited in the way you are now. On account of the reputation for foolishness that you have …”

“So I have a reputation for foolishness, have I?” cried Bartly.

He had just finished arranging his hat on his skull to his satisfaction. Now he threw it to the floor with violence. Then he clasped his hands in front of his face and posed before the mirror like an actor.

“Oh! God!” he cried passionately, looking at himself in the mirror. “I was left an orphan at the age of ten. I was apprenticed to a tyrant that beat me nearly every day and gave me only a small skillet of cold gruel for my supper and made me sleep all alone on the floor of a loft, with only a torn sack for a covering and with the rats crawling over me. Yet that was nothing compared to what I’m now suffering under my own roof, at the hands of my own wife and daughter. I’ve put up with a lot of humiliation and insult in my life, but I’m not going to do so any more. Oh! No! Too long have I been a toe-rag, for anybody that saw fit to wipe his feet on me. From now on, I’m going to be a rebel and a menace to humanity.”

His wife picked up his hat, wiped it and offered it to him gently. He grabbed it from her and swung it round his head.

“I’m going to be a rebel,” he shouted at the top of his voice.

He clapped the hat on to his skull and strode to the door. There he looked back at his wife and raised his clenched fist.

“Too long have I been a toe-rag,” he yelled. “From now on I’m a rebel.”

There was tense silence as Father Costigan turned round on the altar to deliver his sermon. The church was crowded. Even the aisle leading to the Communion rails was packed. Everybody stared fixedly at the parish priest. Many of the faces were openly hostile. A number of the men present carried blackthorn sticks.

Through the open door, a still larger crowd could be seen in the yard. Bareheaded men and women, shoulder to shoulder, covered the green slope all the way down to the road.

The priest looked very calm as he began to speak, with his fingers laced across his chest beneath the upper vestment.

“Before I read the pastoral letter from His Grace, the Archbishop,” he said, “I want to make my own position clear, with regard to the struggle against the landlords. Last January, I attended a conference at Clash. Michael Davitt put his views before the conference, pleading for a national organisation to meet the present crisis. There was unanimous agreement with his aims. On my return to this parish, I became actively engaged in exploring all avenues that might lead to the election of a Committee, for the purpose of helping in the struggle. Now, however, I am forced to conclude that Mr. Davitt deliberately misled us at Clash. He and his followers, by the adoption of revolutionary methods, have made themselves anathema to …”

At that moment, a man that stood just within the door brandished a stick and cried:

“Up the Fenians!”

Another man, from a position in the doorway, put his cupped hands around his mouth and shouted:

“Three cheers for Michael Davitt!”

Farther out in the yard, a group of young men shouted in chorus: “O’Dwyer Abu!”

The main body of the congregation took no part in this demonstration. On the contrary, they felt that it bordered on sacrilege. A murmur of indignation passed through the church. Even so, the demonstration continued. At last, there was a stampede into the yard by the group of young men responsible for the shouting. Women screamed as they were crushed against the wall by those hurriedly seeking an exit. Yelling became general in the yard.

Father Costigan’s haughty face remained perfectly composed during this ill-mannered protest against his leadership. He made no attempt to interfere. Being a clever man, he knew that any command issued by him at that moment would be disobeyed and that his prestige would suffer gravely as a consequence. So he looked on calmly with his hands clasped beneath his vestment, as if the disturbance were of no account.

Again there was tense silence within the church. Even so, he was forced to raise his voice considerably on continuing his address, owing to the tumult in the yard.