The Deserted Village

“ This village was deserted in the awful famine year of ‘47, some of the inhabitants creeping away in fruitless search of work and food to die farther afield, others simply sinking down on the home sod that could give them nothing but the grave. ”

“ She had been drowned close to the bungalow in a ranging brown torrent which swept over what a few hours earlier had been a mere bed of glittering sand. And from that time the bungalow had been deserted, avoided of all men, a haunted place, the abode of evil spirits.
Yet it still stood in its desolation, rotting year by year. No native would approach the place. No Englishman desired it. For it was well away from the cantonments, nearer than any other European dwelling to the native village, and undeniably in the hottest corner of all the Ghantala Valley. ”

“ THE DESERTED VILLAGE SWEET AUBURN! ”

“ The huts were deserted and the streets of the village crowded in proportion, and all the men, followed by the women and children, hurried at full speed, yelling and leaping, towards a neighbouring plain surrounded by dense thickets. ”

“ It was a pleasing sight, early in the morning, to see a whole village deserted: men, women, and children, hastening with their asses and baskets of provisions to pass the day in their olive grounds; although the year was far advanced, and the weather, especially in elevated situations like Meshmûshy, by no means warm. ”

“ It’s a damned poor game waiting for dead men’s shoes,” he added with a short laugh.
They were galloping now over undulating country where the crests of the gently swelling hillocks were almost as light as day and the tiny intervening valleys lay like pools of dark, still water. As they reached the summit of a rather larger hill than they had yet encountered, Carew slackened speed with a word of warning.
“There is a deserted village in the valley,” he said, pointing down into the darkness, “be careful how you go, it’s a confusing place at night. ”

“ To go home we had to pass a village completely deserted, a village that was once prosperous, where people lived and traded and only wanted to be left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. ”

“ But the relief came too late to avert depopulation. Starving and shelterless crowds crawled despairingly from one deserted village to another in a vain search for food, or a resting-place in which to hide themselves from the rain. ”

“ A few minutes later he left the orchard and stood for a moment at the top of the bluff, looking down into the tight little valley where the buildings of the deserted village lay half hidden among the hemlocks and spruce and maples and oaks. Great-great-grandfather Ezra Rorth’s father had built the village, and had chosen a beautiful location. The brick and stone buildings were nestled comfortably in the deep ravine. A cobbled road ran through the center of the village, and Goose Brook raced along its rock-strewn course down to the St. ”

“ Grandfather grunted, but said nothing.
After supper Ronnie and Phil helped Mrs. Butler with the dishes. “Folks down in town are mighty sad knowing the old deserted village isn’t to be spared,” she said as she wrapped up some of the table scraps to take home to her cats. “Mighty sad. It’s surprising how many folks there have a fond spot in their hearts for the place. Fact is, there’s talk going around to do something about saving it—if there’s a way to get it done.” ”

“ A traveler approaching it expects to find a business center. Many stores and dwellings were of brick, but whole rows were vacant at the time. The soothing melody of the squalling infant was only a memory to the village druggist; the itinerant butcher and milkman had ceased their daily rounds; and all that was left to distinguish the half-deserted village from the desert was an occasional swallow that went down the parched mouth of a chimney. There is another town characteristic of the plains. ”

“ So far from Irish landlords not destroying villages, so far from "any thing like severity" being speedily known and resisted, the inquiries caused by this one flagrant case have shown to the horrified public, that in no country in the world are the rights of the peasantry so totally disregarded; in no country has the outrage of The Deserted Village been so often enacted. ”

“ Phil exclaimed. “Golly, a convict right here in the village, and we never even guessed!”
“But why did he hide out here?” asked Ronnie.
“I figure he had two things in mind,” said Caldwell. “First, since the deserted village has been opened to tourists, nobody would think of looking here for an escaped convict. If he saw anybody coming, there would be plenty of buildings to hide in. Second, Larry was obsessed all his life by that old story about the stolen Rorth glassware and the money and the murder. ”

“ And still as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired;
The dancing pair that simply sought renown
By holding out to tire each other down,
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the place,
The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love,
The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.
These were thy charms, sweet village; sports like these,
With sweet succession, taught even toil to please;
These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,
These were thy charms—But all these charms are fled. ”

“ Ronnie explained what they had in mind. Phil seemed interested. “I’ll sleep on it,” he told Ronnie and went on with his work.
Ronnie moved down the hall and entered his own room. He didn’t turn on the light, but instead went to the window and, brushing back the curtains, stared out into the blackness.
The moon was at the quarter, but there was enough light from it to light up patches of the St. Lawrence River so that it looked like stretches of a concrete highway cutting through the darkness. Below and a little to the left, the night was blackest, and here Ronnie located the deserted village. ”

“ Ronnie heard his father’s voice next. “Father,” said Mr. Rorth, “it doesn’t do a bit of good getting yourself all upset like this. The Seaway Authority has told us that the water level of the lake formed behind the dam will cover the section of land where the deserted village is, and for this reason it will have to be purchased. There isn’t a thing we can do about it. Our lawyer has told us that himself.”
“More hogwash! Sometimes I think that lawyer is working for both sides and against the middle.” ”

“ Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall;
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away thy children leave the land.
⁠Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay ”

“ Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn:
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green:
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain:
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But choaked with sedges, works its weedy way ”

“ Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth;
His seat, where solitary sports are seen,
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green;
Around the world each needful product flies,
For all the luxuries the world supplies.
While thus the land adorned for pleasure all
In barren splendour feebly waits the fall.
As some fair female unadorned and plain,
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign,
Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies,
Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes:
But when those charms are past, for charms are frail,
When time advances, and when lovers fail ”

“ Below, the village lay peaceful and quiet in the early morning light. The red brick of the glassworks caught the sunlight and reflected it, glowing like molten lava.
“I’m proud of you, lad.” Grandfather was talking again. “I’m proud of you for helping to save the village and bringing back honor and respect to the Rorth name. And you know, boy, you took to yourself a little bit of what we Rorths stand for, just from the working and fighting you’ve been doing. Folks become what they believe in and fight for. You understand what I’m trying to say to you, boy?”
Ronnie blushed. ”

“ Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round. ”

“ As the sun sank the distant hills became rose-flushed, and then one by one the flush died off into the paleness of death, and in the gathering blue-grayness, in desolation without sublimity, in ghastliness, impressive but only by force of ghastliness, and in benumbing cold, we rode into this village, and into a yard encumbered with mighty piles of snow, on one side of which I have a wretched room, though the best, with two doors, which do not shut, but when they are closed make it quite dark—a deep, damp, cobwebby, dusty, musty lair like a miserable eastern cowshed. ”

“ Now, as always, the village drew Ronnie like a magnet. He raced down the face of the bluff, whirling his arms about like propeller blades to keep his balance. At the bottom he stopped. Now that he was here, he couldn’t decide just which part of the village he wanted to visit. He could swing on the wild grapevines in front of the gristmill, and maybe take off his trousers and go sailing feet first into the millpond. ”

“ There had been, at one time, several huts of the same kind erected close together, and inhabited by families of the poorest class of day-labourers who found work among the distant farms, and at night returned to dwellings which were rent free, with their little gardens, won from the waste.—But one family after another had dwindled away, and the turf-built huts had all fallen into ruins, except one that had always stood in the centre of this little solitary village, with its summer walls covered with the richest honeysuckles and in the midst of the brightest of all the gardens. ”

“ In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed;
But verging to decline, its splendours rise,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprize;
While scourged by famine from the smiling land,
The mournful peasant leads his humble band;
And while he sinks without one arm to save,
The country blooms—a garden, and a grave.
Where then, ah, where shall poverty reside,
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?
If to some common's fenceless limits strayed,
He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade,
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,
And even the bare-worn common is denied. ”

“ Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene;
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made ”

“ Grandfather did lend his hand that night—and his voice, too! But it was Ronnie’s plea, perhaps, which did the most toward convincing the Seaway official that the village had to be saved. “Mister,” Ronnie told him, sitting on one side of the long conference table, “every building down in the village has got a story to tell about its past. Gramps told me all of them when I was a boy, and I’ve never forgotten a one. Lots of these stories I’ve told to the tourists who have come to see the village. ”

“ Slowly the mystery that it shrouds resolves as the grey light steals over the eastern hills. Like a photograph in the washing, its high lights and shadows come gradually forth. The light splash in the foreground becomes a ruined chateau, the grey street a demolished village. ”

“ They said they’d never been anywhere that helped them so much to understand how people lived and worked back in the last century. And if the village can be saved, you know what we can do? Well, we’ve got enough of the old furnishings left from the general store, for instance, to fit it out just like it was a hundred years ago. And Gramps says that with some fixing up we can do the same thing for the gristmill, the smith shop, and even the main glassworks. Can’t we, Gramps?” Ronnie asked, smiling across at his grandfather. ”

“ The huts look more like the lairs of prairie-dogs than the dwellings of human beings. The little mosque with its one dome and stunted minaret, so small, so far below, looks like a clay toy. Beyond the village, which reaches far and wide, lie barley fields, and cotton patches, and palm-groves, bounded on one side by the river, and on the other by the desert. A broad road, dotted over with moving specks of men and cattle, cleaves its way straight through the cultivated land and out across the sandy plain beyond. We can trace its course for miles where it is only a trodden track in the desert. ”

“ A village appeared at a distance, cheering us with a prospect of rest. It gave us new strength to proceed; but it was a wretched place, and afforded us but little relief. It had been once large and populous, but now the houses were roofless, and the ruins that lay scattered about, the gardens covered with the white dust of the torn cottages, the black burnt beams, and squalid looks of the inhabitants, presented in every direction the melancholy aspect of devastation. ”

“ Phil opened his left eye and squinted up at his brother.3 “All the fighting in the world’s not going to save the village, Ronnie, ’cause when the government wants something, it gets it. Period!”
Ronnie turned away in disgust. What could he expect of Phil? His brother had never gotten excited about anything, and he probably never would. ”