Land

by Liam O'Flaherty

  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.”

  Chapter XIII

  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.

  “The events at Irishtown on the nineteenth of last month,” he said, “were an outrage against the Catholic Church. On that day, Michael Davitt and his followers tore off the mask of patriotism. They showed themselves in their true colours as the Communist disciples of Karl Marx. They openly preached the dismal Communist faith, that tried to drown Paris nine years ago in a welter of Christian blood. Naked savages could not have behaved worse than Irish Catholics did towards Canon Geoffrey Bourke, the saintly parish priest of Irishtown, on the nineteenth of April.”

  Again there was a protest. This time it was general and without restraint. Even the most conservative and devout among the parishioners took part in it. Women shook their fists at him. Men stamped on the floor and cursed. Little boys put their fingers between their teeth and whistled.

  It was the mention of Canon Bourke’s name that had caused this most scandalous scene. The priest in question, even though Father Cornelius had referred to him as “saintly,” was a notorious landlord and exploiter of the poor. His tenants, being threatened with eviction for arrears of rent, had appealed for aid to Michael Davitt. A force of six thousand men came in answer to their appeal. Canon Bourke’s house was surrounded. Speeches were delivered. The priest got afraid and capitulated at once to the demands of the tenants. This victory over a cruel landlord was hailed everywhere as a victory by the people. It was only natural, therefore, that Father Costigan’s congregation should have felt mortally insulted on hearing Canon Bourke described as “saintly.” There was, indeed, some measure of excuse for their shameful conduct.

  All but a few score of the people left the church at this juncture. Seeing that it would be ridiculous to cont
inue “making his position clear” to those who remained, Father Cornelius hurriedly read the archbishop’s pastoral letter. It was very short, merely forbidding all Catholics to associate in any way with Michael Davitt or the Fenians, who were branded as dangerous “to faith and morals.”

  In the meantime, the people rushed about the crowded yard, shouting and brandishing their sticks. Here and there an excited man tried to address those nearest to him, only to be carried away after a few moments by a general rush to another part of the yard. Even women tried to find an audience for their oratory, with their shawls thrown back from their heads, which bobbed violently from side to side.

  People shouted O’Dwyer’s name. They asked one another why he was absent and what had happened to him.

  “He promised us to be here,” they cried. “Now where is he?”

  Nobody had any information. Even the young men who were members of the Fenian Society had no information. Then the shrill voice of Bartly McNamara suddenly rose above the tumult.

  “Men and women of Manister,” Bartly cried. “Gather round and listen.”

  He had taken up his position on the flat top of a gate-post. With his high hat clutched before his bosom, he kept bowing in all directions, just like a garrulous duck.

  “Gather round me,” he cried. “I want to talk to you.”

  He received a very hostile reception at first from the people, to whom he was known as the parish priest’s chief crony. He had also been secretary to the local branch of the Tenant League, an organisation that had fallen into disrepute owing to its collaboration with the English garrison. Finally, he was a shopkeeper. The crowd, almost entirely composed of fishermen and farmers and artisans, regarded all shopkeepers as usurers and blood-suckers.

  “Arrah! Look at himself,” said a huge man who mounted the gatepost beside Bartly. “Look who wants to talk, the parish priest’s straw man, the money-grabber, the gombeen man.”

  He took Bartly by the crutch and by the nape of the neck.

  “Take a good look at the scrawny little devil,” he cried, lifting the shopkeeper high into the air, “before I shake the life out of him.”

  Bartly was by no means intimidated.

  “Listen to me, good people,” he shouted as he dangled in the air, swinging his thin legs back and forth like a puppet. “I have an important talk to make.”

  The crowd began to get impressed by the courage of the little fellow.

  “Let the wart have his say,” a woman said.

  Several people shouted in agreement with this woman. The huge man dropped Bartly on to the gate-post.

  “All right,” the big fellow said. “Let him talk, then, but I’m standing here beside him. One word out of him against the Fenians and I’ll split his skull clean down the middle.”

  “Have no fear,” Bartly said. “Sure, I’m the best friend the Fenians have in the parish. Who subscribes more to their funds than I do? They never go away empty-handed when they come to Bartly McNamara for a subscription.”

  “True for you, Bartly,” a young Fenian shouted. “You’re never short of hearing, when we give you the hard word.”

  “What’s more,” Bartly said, “I have handed over my good money for every worthy cause that made a demand on me, good money that is hard earned. That is more important than wild talk.”

  An important section of the crowd applauded this point of view.

  “You have to give the creature his due,” a man said. “You could blow him off your palm with one breath, but he always had courage and generosity.”

  “Usurer and all that he is,” another man cried, “you’d find worse maybe before you’d find any better.”

  “I can’t help being a shopkeeper,” Bartly said. “God made me one. It’s unfair, though, to look upon all shopkeepers as usurers. These days, believe it or not, it’s little profit there is in shopkeeping. The farmer, the artisan, the fisherman and the shopkeeper are all in the one boat. The farmers and the fishermen are ruined, so they can’t buy from the merchants, except on credit. The merchants have given all the credit they can carry. Now they may close their doors and go begging, unless something is done to set the wheels of commerce rolling again. And we all know that the wheels of commerce can’t roll while the landlords are demanding rack-rents and getting them with the help of the government. Then, in God’s name, let us get rid of the landlords. We are all in the one boat, as I said before, so let us stop fighting one another and unite against the common enemy.”

  There was a wild shout of applause. The whole crowd was now on his side.

  “Nearly every other parish in the county has already elected a Committee,” he continued. “Manister is being held back by one man. We all know who he is.”

  “We know who he is,” the people shouted.

  “Are we going to let one man make cowards of us?” said Bartly. “No,” the people shouted.

  At this moment, Father Costigan came running down the green slope from the sacristy.

  “You scoundrel!” he cried, shaking his fist at Bartly. “Get down from that gate-post.”

  He was hurriedly taking off his vestments in the sacristy, when he heard McNamara address the people. He had rushed out while still wearing the alb. He was forced to hold up the skirts of this long white garment as he ran, in order to avoid being tripped by it. Pat Rice, the sacristan, came shuffling along behind.

  “You traitor!” Father Costigan shouted when he reached Bartly.

  The little shopkeeper stood his ground. He made a half turn, put his hat behind his back, thrust his head forward and faced the parish priest boldly.

  “Neither you nor any other man has the right to call me a traitor,” he cried in a firm and respectful tone. “What’s more, it’s not a becoming thing for you to say, considering all I have done for you.”

  “Get down,” said Father Cornelius, “before I lay hands on you.”

  “I’m only doing my duty,” Bartly said. “We are faced with another famine, maybe worse than the last one, unless we organise as Mr. Davitt says we should.”

  “True for you,” shouted the huge man who had previously raised Bartly up by the crutch. “Let him have it now. We are all with you.”

  “Are you going to obey me or not?” Father Cornelius said.

  The sacristan reached the parish priest’s side at that moment.

  “Let me take the vestment, your reverence,” he whispered excitedly, “for fear it might get contaminated.”

  Father Costigan permitted the old man to remove the alb. During this interval, Bartly addressed the people once more.

  “Famine it’s going to be,” the little shopkeeper said, “unless we take action. The crops have been worse than bad for two years running. Prices keep falling, but rents keep going up. We’ll all die in a ditch, like our fathers did, unless we elect a Committee and put up a fight against the landlords.”

  The sacristan folded the vestment reverently and hurried up the slope with it. The people made way for him respectfully. The old man’s fanatic eyes, set in an almost fleshless skull, stared at the white robe that he held out in front of him, to the full reach of his trembling arms.

  Father Cornelius took a stick from the hands of a man that stood near him. He spat on the stick and flexed the muscles of his powerful arms. Even at his advanced age, he was still capable of thrashing the best men in his parish.

  “For the last time,” he said to Bartly, “I invite you to step down from that gate-post.”

  The frail body of the little shopkeeper was no longer able to sustain the unequal struggle. He became hysterical.

  “Too long have I obeyed you like a dog, Father Cornelius,” he cried. “I have fetched and carried for you since you came to this parish. Now you turn on me for speaking the truth. I bow low to you as God’s messenger. As a man, though, I think you are a bully and a bloody fool, God forgive me for saying so.”

  The priest raised the stick, intending to strike. The blow was not allowed to fall. A group of men i
ntervened. They caught the stick and removed it from Father Cornelius.

  “We mean no disrepect to your reverence,” one of them said, “but we have to elect a Committee.”

  “That’s right, Father,” another of them said. “The Committee must be elected, by hook or by crook.”

  There was an awkward silence. The most violent among the people felt awed by the necessity of having had to lay hands on their priest. Even though they were at odds with Father Cornelius at the moment, they all loved him. He had been an excellent parish priest, during his long term of service among them.

  “Any one of us would give a fourth of land,” an old man said with great feeling, “not to have this come between you and ourselves.”

  “You’ll hold no meeting in this yard,” Father Cornelius said, after he had mastered his rage. “I am asking you to leave here quietly, all of you, in God’s name. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to call in the police for protection against my own parishioners.”

  “That’s fair enough, Father,” McNamara said. “We’ll hold our meeting at the Father Matthew Hall in the village. It’s my property. I’ll make a present of it to the people of Manister, as headquarters for the Committee.”

  Father Cornelius turned on his heel and walked up the slope to the sacristy, where Pat Rice had laid breakfast for him on a little table.

  “I can hardly believe it, Pat,” he said, as he tucked a napkin under his chin. “It must have been like this in Paris nine years ago.”

  The aged sacristan made the sign of the Cross on his forehead and looked at Father Cornelius in horror.

  “The Paris Commune!” he gasped. “The pagans came out of the slums and set up idols on the holy altars and murdered priests and threw the Blessed Sacrament in the gutter. The Communists spat in the face of God and set up Antichrist as king.”

  A wild look of suspicion came into his sunken eyes.

  “Lord save us!” he whispered. “Do you think Antichrist has come to Manister, Father Cornelius?”

  “He may have, at that,” Father Cornelius said seriously as he gently broke the top of an egg with his spoon. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that he had arrived in our midst recently.”