Liam O'Flaherty - Land

The Resident Magistrate, in whose carriage Neville was riding, now arrived from the rear. He looked frightened. He was a tubby little man with small grey eyes that kept blinking the whole time. His lips were curved in a Cupid’s bow, giving the impression that he was on the point of kissing somebody.

“Never seen anything like this in twenty-five years as Resident Magistrate,” he said in an awed tone. “Can’t understand it. The peasants used to be so humble and docile.”

“Peasants, did you say?” Neville barked at him. “Peasants have nothing to do with this. It’s a personal attack on me.”

“Even so,” said the Resident Magistrate, “it’s very disconcerting. I never before saw any sign of organised opposition to the process of law. Everybody was so docile.”

It took the auxiliaries more than an hour to clear the road. Then the column resumed its march, only to be halted a short distance ahead by a trench dug across the roadway. The auxiliaries filled the trench in twenty minutes. A second trench, much wider and deeper than the first, was encountered after a further short advance, round a sharp turn.

Butcher again came running from the rear while the auxiliaries were beginning to fill this second trench. He had a revolver in one hand and a gold watch in the other. He brandished the revolver at Fenton, who was sitting his horse by the edge of the pit.

“Do you know it’s already four o’clock?” he shouted.

“What of it?” Fenton said calmly.

“You are making no effort to do your duty,” Neville shouted. “You sit there on your horse like God Almighty, with an insane smile on your face, just as if you were delighted that I’m being turned into ridicule.”

“What do you want me to do?” Fenton said.

Several shots rang out at that moment. The bullets went whistling over their heads. The auxiliaries jumped headlong into the trench. Fenton’s horse reared up on his hind legs. Neville ran to the side of the road, shouting like a madman. He began to discharge his revolver in the direction of some crags, from on top of which the unseen opponents had fired. A few of the constables also lost their heads and began to discharge their carbines. The tumult excited the others. Soon the whole column was gripped by panic. There was a sustained rattle of gunfire.

“You swine!” Neville roared as he refilled the chambers of his revolver. “Why don’t you come out and fight like men?”

After getting his mount under control, Fenton rode down the line, ordering the men to cease fire. The four deputy inspectors and Head Constable Reilly helped him. It was ten minutes before they could quell the disorder.

“You mustn’t lose your nerve in this way,” Fenton said to the men as he walked his horse along the ranks after firing had ceased. “These people are not shooting at you. They are just trying to frighten you by firing over your heads. You merely play into their hands by returning their fire and by allowing yourselves to get rattled. Carry on, like good fellows. You are in no danger.”

A dozen constables, with bayonets fixed to their carbines, had to be sent down into the trench before the auxiliaries would consent to abandon their hiding-place. After being prodded a little by the cold steel, they jumped out and resumed work. They stood fast a little later, when more shots passed overhead, being constrained by the bayonets that were still pointed at them.

Further obstacles delayed the progress of the column all the way to the summit of the mountain road. It was almost sunset when they finally debouched on to a stretch of flat bogland that sloped gently to a deep ravine. A stone bridge spanned the ravine. High Valley, whose inhabitants were to be evicted, lay beyond. There was a fork in the road at the edge of the bog, one branch going north-west and the other going straight north to the bridge. They marched towards the bridge.

Fenton’s blood rushed to his head as he rode across the bog that swayed, as if on springs, beneath the weight of the marching feet. The air was heavy with the fragrant scent of heather. It made him crave urgently for her promised coming.

“Oh! My love!” he whispered. “My darling love! Let it be soon.”

High Valley looked radiant in the evening light. It was a shallow bowl scooped out from between the mountain peaks. Here all the land was fertile. Flocks of white sheep fed on the rich grass of the upper slopes. The tilled fields had ripened in the hollow. Three hamlets of white-walled houses were spaced evenly along a winding narrow road that ran from the bridge to the lofty crags at the northern end. Thin columns of blue smoke rose from the chimneys. There was a small lake, half covered with golden reeds, at the foot of the crags in the north. A church stood on a green eminence by the lake. The sun glistened on its slate roof. There was a bell tower at its gable top. The drowsy silence was broken only by the rasping chatter of corn-crakes among the fields of rye.

“I have been given the key of Heaven,” Fenton murmured as he drew near to the bridge, “just at the moment when I thought that all was lost.”

Suddenly there was a blinding flash, followed by an explosion. One end of the bridge rose up into the air for a short distance at great speed. Then it broke into fragments, which continued upwards at a slower pace. The other end plunged down into the ravine. The sound echoed and re-echoed through the mountains.

A thick cloud of dust came up to meet the risen fragments as they fell to earth.

Hardly daring to breathe, lest she might disturb his sleep, Lettice raised her head and looked down into Michael’s face. The ghostly light of the moon made his features cruel and relentless. Yet she felt overcome by a melting tenderness as she watched. This face of the man she loved had become the most beautiful thing in all the world for her.

She removed her arm with great care from behind his neck, sat up and put her palms against the ground beside him. Then she leaned forward until her face was close to his lips. She turned her head hither and thither, in order to feel the caress of his breath upon it everywhere. She shuddered in rapture as it touched her cheeks, her eyes, her temples and her throat. It seemed to her that his soul flowed out to embrace her at each breath.

The stillness of the night was suddenly broken by a wild cry of terror. It came from a corner of the lake, directly below the grassy slope on which they lay. Michael awoke, sat up and asked her what had happened.

“It was some poor creature in pain down there,” she said, pointing towards the lake.

A horde of water hens had broken from the reeds on hearing the cry. They were now in headlong flight across the water, upon which both their wings and their trailing feet kept beating as they sped.

“It must have been a rat that caught one of them,” Michael said. “Was I long asleep?”

“Quite a long time,” Lettice said. “It’s nearly dawn now.”

“My God!” he said. “I’m terribly ashamed of myself.”

“It was lovely watching you sleep,” Lettice whispered.

“I fall asleep in the strangest places,” he said. “I once fell asleep floating on the sea. It was shortly after I came back from America. I went for a swim at three o’clock in the morning. I suddenly felt drowsy, turned over on my back and went to sleep. It was broad daylight when I awoke. I had drifted out beyond the mouth of the harbour.”

“You do beautiful things,” she said.

He put his arms around her and they stretched out on the grass side by side. As their lips joined, the water that had been displaced by the flight of the wild birds lapped feverishly against the lake shore in tiny dancing waves. They drew apart, sighed and then lay cheek to cheek.