Liam O'Flaherty - Land

Fenton stared at her in silence for a long time after she had finished speaking. Barbara returned his stare. Although the smile of triumph still played about the corners of her mouth, there were now vertical lines in her forehead and her eyes had narrowed as if in anger.

She touched the sofa beside her with her palm.

“Sit down, Jim,” she said softly.

Fenton sighed and walked slowly across the floor towards the cupboard that stood in the corner between the window and the door. He dropped the boots casually to the floor on the way across. He opened the cupboard and took out his whisky bottle.

“What are you doing, Jim?” Barbara said, getting to her feet.

Fenton uncorked the bottle and said:

“I should have known.”

“What should you have known?” Barbara said in an anxious tone.

Fenton took a tumbler from the cupboard and poured whisky into it. When the tumbler was more than half full, he put the bottle down slowly.

“This is my first drink since that day,” he said.

He put the tumbler to his lips and drank until it was empty. Then he poured more whisky from the bottle.

“What should you have known?” Barbara repeated as she undid the remaining buttons of her tunic. “I insist on your telling me.”

Fenton took his glass and came towards her. He halted when he was halfway. He clicked his heels and tried to stand erect. The whisky had apparently gone to his head at once. He swayed back and forth.

“I should have known,” he said slowly, “that a man does not become ennobled by dishonour.”

Barbara took off her tunic hurriedly and threw it on the sofa. She began to undo her blouse.

“Quite the contrary is true,” Fenton said, raising his voice. “Dishonour leaves a stain that can never be washed out. After the first step in the wrong direction, it is impossible to regain lost honour. It seems that there is no turning back, once that first step has been taken. One must go on from one infamy to another. One makes excuses and one tries to justify oneself, but it is an illusion and a sham. That day I was full of illusions. I walked among the stars. Now reality comes to uncover the falsehood of my pretenses. I used to think that it was in your husband’s room I took the first step, when he proposed to make me his accomplice in a murder that he planned. The truth is that I had taken the first step a long time before that. I took it when I first surrendered in thought to my love for you.”

He threw back his head and cried out in an agonised voice:

“What do you want me to do? Did you come here because you want my help to steal that money, just as Neville needed the documents I had?”

“That is not true,” Barbara said as she took off her blouse. “I came here because I want to give proof of my love. I’m going to give you proof, Jim, full proof.”

“You lie,” Fenton said. “I know now why the groom became a drunkard and why he returned. You ruined him, too. Perhaps even Neville …”

He interrupted himself as she threw the blouse to the floor and stretched out of her arms towards him. A flimsy silk chemise, frilled with black lace, was all that now screened the tawny beauty of her virgin breasts. He threw away his glass and rushed to her.

“My love! My darling love!” he muttered hoarsely.

“It is you I want, Jim,” Barbara cried exultantly as they sank to the sofa in one another’s arms. “You and you only. I’ll give you proof of my love.”

Made faint by the intensity of his passion, he laid his cheek against her bosom and closed his eyes.

“I’ll make you forget all of this unhappiness,” she said tenderly as she stroked his hair. “Be calm and don’t worry any more. Later, you will realise how paltry these things are. A happy man has no conscience, Jim, and I’m going to make you very happy. I promise you that. I have everything planned. You have nothing to do but ride with me to Galway when I give the signal. We are going to Texas on an American ship. Then we’ll take horses and ride out on to the plains, as free as birds. Our life is going to be wild and free and beautiful. It’s going to be a dance of love.”

Even though Fenton still knew that he was doomed, he listened in rapture to her wanton whispering.

Elizabeth was in bed, recovering from a heavy cold she had caught while collecting used clothes in the village for the Relief Committee. Wearing a thick woollen jacket and with a knitted scarf wound several times around her throat, she sat propped up against pillows. Her little thin face, framed by a tasselled white night-bonnet; looked excited in spite of her depressing ailment. The collected clothes, all washed and ironed by now, lay neatly piled on a table by the side of the bed. She was mending the last of the garments.

Lettice came into the room just as the big clock in the hall downstairs began to strike the hour. She was closely followed by Tim Ahearn, who carried a large wicker basket.

“Good heavens! Lettice,” Elizabeth cried in surprise, “it’s noon already. I had no idea it was that late.”

“Put it down here, Tim,” Lettice said.

Ahearn laid the basket on the floor beside the table. Then he looked at Elizabeth reproachfully.

“I’ve had the horse harnessed for the last half-hour,” he said, “waiting to take those old rags to Clash for you.”

“What impertinence!” cried Elizabeth indignantly. “Old rags, indeed! It’s outrageous. You’ve become insufferable since my brother went to jail.”

“I never thought I’d live to see the day, Miss Elizabeth,” Ahearn said mournfully, “when you’d be gathering old clothes in the village like any poor wandering rag-man.”

“You idiot!” cried Elizabeth. “You utterly stupid man! Don’t you understand that these clothes are for needy victims of the struggle against the landlords? Now that winter has come, the people on the Relief Committee are clamouring for supplies, to be distributed at once.”

“Don’t excite yourself,” Lettice said to her aunt.

She turned to Ahearn and added:

“I’ll call you when the hamper is ready, Tim.”

Ahearn halted as he was going out the door and looked back over his shoulder at Elizabeth.

“It’s little thanks you’ll get,” he said to her, “from these people that are pretending to be needy. They’ll just laugh at you up their sleeves. More than likely, they’ll pawn whatever is given to them and drink the price.”

“Oh! That frightful man!” cried Elizabeth after the door had closed behind Ahearn. “He’s furious at being kept waiting. He’s in a hurry to get drunk at Clash. Since Raoul went away, he has reverted to all his bad habits.”

“Poor Tim!” Lettice said as she began to pack the clothes into the basket. “My father has been too hard on him.”

“Next thing you know,” Elizabeth added, “he’ll move back into the settle-bed from the attic. He keeps complaining about having to sleep in a clean bed.”

“One must understand,” Lettice said, “that his periodic tipples are the only exciting moments in his life. He’s really not a drunkard. One small measure of rum intoxicates him. He told me that he drinks when his loneliness becomes too much for him to bear. ‘The loneliness of the great world,’ he called it. He has a beautiful soul. It would be very difficult to find a man with a finer conception of loyalty.”

Elizabeth was shamefaced as she continued her mending.

“Forgive me,” she said in a contrite tone. “I’m far too intolerant of other people’s faults. Even though I’ve learned from you how to love the people in general, I’m still too selfish to love them individually.”

“You are being very unjust to yourself, dear Aunt,” Lettice said with feeling. “The truth is that you have spent your whole life working devotedly for others, without reward of any sort.”