Liam O'Flaherty - Land

He turned towards her and gripped her arm. She could feel his hand trembling.

“That was when I got the feeling of being liberated,” he added. “When I saw the glorious light of the soldier’s faith in the eyes of those men that surrounded me as I took the oath, I felt that I had been raised up from among the damned.”

Lettice threw herself against his bosom and cried in rapture:

“Oh! Michael, we now belong completely to one another and to the people. After I have been received into the Church, we can be married by Father Costigan. There won’t be anything to mar our happiness.”

“I have no right to marry you,” Michael said.

“Why do you say that?” she said.

“Because I know that I’m very near the end of my road,” he said solemnly.

“Please don’t torture me, Michael,” she said.

“I’m in dead earnest,” he said. “I’m certain that it’s going to be very soon.”

“How could you possibly know that?” she cried indignantly. “It’s not right to say such things.”

“I’m as certain of it,” he said, “as that I’m standing here beside you.”

“Oh! Michael!” she cried, with a sob in her throat.

She threw herself against his chest and shuddered. After a little while she looked up into his face and smiled sadly.

“It’s too late to allow a foreboding of evil to interfere with our life together,” she said. “We love one another. Our lives have become one. Neither of us can escape from the other’s sorrow. We must share everything together.”

“There is one thing that cannot be shared,” Michael said.

“I’m not afraid of death,” she said. “I’m only afraid of not belonging to you.”

“You are brave the way a man is brave,” he said.

“Then you will marry me, Michael,” she said.

“You are so brave and so gentle,” he said.

“Beloved!” she said.

The dawn breeze now whistled softly among the reeds. The sky had lightened in the east. The church bell tolled, calling on the people to awake and defend High Valley.

The tide was full. The sound of the waves, beating gently against the pebbled shore, was barely audible on the terrace. It was like a deep sigh, repeated at short intervals.

Raoul closed the book he had been reading, stretched out his legs and yawned.

“I can’t read,” he said. “I can’t think. Here I am, yawning at eleven o’clock in the morning, like a village idiot who only wants to sleep in the sun. Six months ago, I’d have been mortally insulted if told this could happen to me.”

He stretched his arms above his head and yawned once more. Then he closed his eyes, dropped his chin on his chest and laced his fingers across his stomach.

“I detest the sound of the sea,” he said. “It’s like the ticking of a clock, reminding me that I’m getting old, that I’ll soon lose consciousness and dissolve into unrelated particles of matter.”

“I can’t understand how you can be so heartless,” Elizabeth said in a complaining tone as she dropped her knitting on to her lap. “Lettice has been gone two days now. We’ve had no news of her beyond rumours of wild happenings in High Valley. Yet you are able to yawn and talk drivel.”

“You are being ridiculous,” Raoul said with his eyes closed. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. That’s why I’m yawning.”

“Then why don’t you admit that you are worried, instead of pretending that you are a heartless monster?” Elizabeth said.

“It’s a peculiar form of vanity,” Raoul said.

He opened his eyes, sat up and looked at his sister with interest.

“I’ve been waiting for you to scold me,” he said, “for having allowed Lettice to go there. Yet you haven’t said a word. What does it mean?”

Elizabeth picked up her knitting once more and shrugged her shoulders.

“Can it be that your ideas have changed?” Raoul continued. “Upon my word! I do believe that you approve of her leading the peasant women against the police.”

“Who am I to approve or disapprove of God’s will?” Elizabeth said.

“Rubbish,” said Raoul. “It was my will that sent her.” “It’s God’s will,” Elizabeth said gently.

“I planned the whole thing down to the most minute detail,” Raoul said, “and I don’t believe in God. So it could not possibly have been God’s will.”

“It was God’s will,” Elizabeth said. “He often uses unbelievers to serve His divine purpose.”

“Ugh! Reason is futile against such rubbish,” Raoul said.

At that moment they heard a commotion within the house. A door was thrown open with violence. They both jumped to their feet excitedly.

“That must be Lettice,” Elizabeth said.

They hurried into the living-room. As they entered by the window, Annie Fitzpatrick came through the door leading from the hall. She was dragging Tim Ahearn rudely by the arm.

“If I could lay hands on the ruffians that did it,” she cried as she led him across the floor, “all they’d ever need in this world would be Extreme Unction.”

She halted at a short distance from Raoul and Elizabeth, shook Ahearn and added:

“Speak up now, Tim. Tell them who did it.”

Ahearn looked at Raoul in a shamefaced manner on being released by Annie. His right cheek and his left ear were heavily bandaged. There were many lumps and bruises on other parts of his face.

“She is making big out of little,” he said. “The doctor told me they were of no account at all. They’re only scratches.”

“Begging your honour’s pardon,” Annie said, “sure, it’s not the wounds I meant at all. It’s the insult that’s big, not the wounds.”

Ahearn stepped nimbly aside as Elizabeth approached to examine him.

“It’s nothing at all, miss,” he said. “Annie is making big out of little.”

“It’s the insult that’s big,” Annie shouted. “I’m not talking of the wounds.”

“Silence, woman,” Raoul said. “Let’s hear about it, Tim.”

Ahearn squared his fists like a boxer and said:

“A whole crowd of them set on me after I came out of the shop.”

“Begin at the beginning, for mercy’s sake,” Raoul said.

“It was McNamara’s shop,” Annie intervened. “I sent him down for a sack of flour.”

“That’s right,” Ahearn said. “It was Julia McNamara started it, while I was getting the flour at the counter. She began casting on your honour about the death of Michael Bodkin and the kidnapping of the men that were summoned to court and the eviction of Father Kelly from the tavern.”

“What’s that?” cried Raoul, becoming very agitated. “Who made these remarks?”

“The shopkeeper’s daughter, your honour,” Annie said. “She has a slate off, as they say.”

“She kept casting and casting,” Ahearn continued, raising his voice, “until I finally lost my temper with her and I carrying the flour out to the cart. I gave her a short answer then. One word led to another. A crowd gathered. Somebody threw a small stone. That fairly riled me. I threw my hat on the ground, spat on my fists and challenged them all. They gathered round me, led by old Pat Rice, and they shouted that your honour was Antichrist himself, sent all the way from Paris by the Devil. They said you read a Black Mass in Bodkin’s tavern before the unfortunate man hanged himself, that you drove away Father Kelly for fear God’s grace might save Bodkin’s soul at the last minute and that you are planning to burn the parish church.”

He turned to Elizabeth, bent his massive thighs in crude obeisance and added in a lower tone:

“Saving your presence, Miss Elizabeth, they said the girls that went to High Valley with Miss Lettice are now whoring with the Fenians.”