The Lake by George Moore
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16 THE LAKE
BY GEORGE MOORE
1921
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
EPITRE DEDICATOIRE
_17 Aout, 1905._
MON CHER DUJARDIN,
Il se trouve que je suis a Paris en train de corriger mes epreuves au
moment ou vous donnez les dernieres retouches au manuscrit de 'La Source
du Fleuve Chretien,' un beau titre--si beau que je n'ai pu m'empecher de
le 'chipper' pour le livre de Ralph Elles, un personnage de mon roman
qui ne parait pas, mais dont on entend beaucoup parler. Pour vous
dedommager de mon larcin, je me propose de vous dedier 'Le Lac.' Il y a
bien des raisons pour que je desire voir votre nom sur la premiere page
d'un livre de moi; la meilleure est, peut-etre, parceque vous etes mon
ami depuis 'Les Confessions d'un Jeune Anglais' qui ont paru dans votre
jolie _Revue Independante;_ et, depuis cette bienheureuse annee, nous
avons cause litterature et musique, combien de fois! Combien d'heures
nous avons passes ensemble, causant, toujours causant, dans votre belle
maison de Fontainebleau, si francaise avec sa terrasse en pierre et son
jardin avec ses gazons maigres et ses allees sablonneuses qui serpentent
parmi les grands arbres forestiers. C'est dans ce jardin a l'oree de la
foret et dans la foret meme, parmi la melancolie de lat nature
primitive, et a Valvins ou demeurait notre vieil ami Mallarme, triste et
charmant bonhomme, comme le pays du reste (n'est-ce-pas que cette
tristesse croit depuis qu'il s'en est alle?) que vous m'avez entendu
raconter 'Le Lac.'
A Valvins, la Seine coule silencieusement tout le long des berges plates
et graciles, avec des peupliers alignes; comme ils sont tristes au
printemps, ces peupliers, surtout avant qu'ils ne deviennent verts,
quand ils sont rougeatres, poses contre un ciel gris, des ombres
immobiles et ternes dans les eaux, dix fois tristes quand les
hirondelles volent bas! Pour expliquer la tristesse de ce beau pays
parseme de chateaux vides, hante par le souvenir des fetes d'autrefois,
il faudrait tout un orchestre. Je l'entends d'abord sur les violons;
plus tard on ajouterait d'autres instruments, des cors sans doute; mais
pour rendre la tristesse de mon pauvre pays la bas il ne faut drait pas
tout cela. Je l'entends tres bien sur une seule flute placee dans une
ile entouree des eaux d'un lac, le joueur assis sur les vagues ruines
d'un reduit gallois ou bien Normand. Mais, cher ami, vous etes Normand
et peut-etre bien que ce sent vos ancetres qui out pille mon pays; c'est
une raison de plus pour que je vous offre ce roman. Acceptez-le sans le
connaitre davantage et n'essayez pas de le lire; ne vous donnez pas la
peine d'apprendre l'anglais pour lire 'Le Lac'; que le lac ne soit
jamais traverse par vous! Et parce que vous allez rester fatalement sur
le bord de 'mon lac' j'ai un double plaisir a vous le dedier. Lorsqu'on
dedie un livre, on prevoit l'heure ou l'ami le prend, jette un coup
d'oeil et dit: 'Pourquoi m'a-t-il dedie une niaiserie pareille?' Toutes
les choses de l'esprit, sauf les plus grandes, deviennent niaiseries tot
ou tard. Votre ignorance de ma langue m'epargne cette heure fatale. Pour
vous, mon livre sera toujours une belle et noble chose. Il ne peut
jamais devenir pour vous banal comme une epouse. II sera pour vous une
vierge, mieux qu'une vierge, il sera pour vous une demi-vierge. Chaque
fois que vous l'ouvrirez, vous penserez a des annees ecoulees, au
jardin ou les rossignols chantent, a la foret ou rien ne se passe sauf
la chute des feuilles, a nos promenades a Valvins pour voir le cher
bonhomme; vous penserez a votre jeunesse et peut-etre un peu a la
mienne. Mais je veux que vous lisiez cette dedicace, et c'est pour cela
que je l'ai ecrite en francais, dans un francais qui vous est tres
familier, le mien. Si je l'ecrivais en anglais et le faisais traduire
dans le langage a la derniere mode de Paris, vous ne retrouveriez pas
les accents barbares de votre vieil ami. Ils sont barbares, je le
concois, mais il y a des chiens qui sont laids et que l'on finit par
aimer.
Une poignee de mains,
GEORGES MOORE.
PREFACE
The concern of this preface is with the mistake that was made when 'The
Lake' was excluded from the volume entitled 'The Untilled Field,'
reducing it to too slight dimensions, for bulk counts; and 'The Lake,'
too, in being published in a separate volume lost a great deal in range
and power, and criticism was baffled by the division of stories written
at the same time and coming out of the same happy inspiration, one that
could hardly fail to beget stories in the mind of anybody prone to
narrative--the return of a man to his native land, to its people, to
memories hidden for years, forgotten, but which rose suddenly out of the
darkness, like water out of the earth when a spring is tapped.
Some chance words passing between John Eglinton and me as we returned
home one evening from Professor Dowden's were enough. He spoke, or I
spoke, of a volume of Irish stories; Tourgueniev's name was mentioned,
and next morning--if not the next morning, certainly not later than a
few mornings after--I was writing 'Homesickness,' while the story of
'The Exile' was taking shape in my mind. 'The Exile' was followed by a
series of four stories, a sort of village odyssey. 'A Letter to Rome' is
as good as these and as typical of my country. 'So on He Fares' is the
one that, perhaps, out of the whole volume I like the best, always
excepting 'The Lake,' which, alas, was not included, but which belongs
so strictly to the aforesaid stories that my memory includes it in the
volume.
In expressing preferences I am transgressing an established rule of
literary conduct, which ordains that an author must always speak of his
own work with downcast eyes, excusing its existence on the ground of his
own incapacity. All the same an author's preferences interest his
readers, and having transgressed by telling that these Irish stories lie
very near to my heart, I will proceed a little further into literary
sin, confessing that my reason for liking 'The Lake' is related to the
very great difficulty of the telling, for the one vital event in the
priest's life befell him before the story opens, and to keep the story
in the key in which it was conceived, it was necessary to recount the
priest's life during the course of his walk by the shores of a lake,
weaving his memories continually, without losing sight, however, of the
long, winding, mere-like lake, wooded to its shores, with hills
appearing and disappearing into mist and distance. The difficulty
overcome is a joy to the artist, for in his conquest over the material
he draws nigh to his idea, and in this book mine was the essential
rather than the daily life of the priest, and as I read for this edition
I seemed to hear it. The drama passes within the priest's soul; it is
tied and untied by the flux and reflux of sentiments, inherent in and
proper to his nature, and the weaving of a story out of the soul
substance without ever seeking the aid of external circumstance seems to
me a little triumph. It may be that I heard what none other will hear,
not through his own fault but through mine, and it may be that all ears
are not tuned, or are too indifferent or indolent to listen; it is
easier to hear 'Esther Waters' and to watch her struggles for her
child's life than to hear the mysterious warble, soft as lake water,
that abides in the heart. But I think there will always be a few who
will agree with me that there is as much life in 'The Lake,' as there is
in 'Esther Waters'--a different kind of life, not so wide a life,
perhaps, but what counts in art is not width but depth.
Artists, it is said, are not good judges of their own works, and for
that reason, and other reasons, maybe, it is considered to be unbecoming
for a writer to praise himself. So to make atonement for the sins I have
committed in this preface, I will confess to very little admiration for
'Evelyn Innes' and 'Sister Teresa.' The writing of 'Evelyn Innes' and
'Sister Teresa' was useful to me inasmuch that if I had not written them
I could not have written 'The Lake' or 'The Brook Kerith.' It seems
ungrateful, therefore, to refuse to allow two of my most successful
books into the canon merely because they do not correspond with my
aestheticism. But a writer's aestheticism is his all; he cannot surrender
it, for his art is dependent upon it, and the single concession he can
make is that if an overwhelming demand should arise for these books
when he is among the gone--a storm before which the reed must bend--the
publisher shall be permitted to print 'Evelyn Innes' and 'Sister Teresa'
from the original editions, it being, however, clearly understood that
they are offered to the public only as apocrypha. But this permission
must not be understood to extend to certain books on which my name
appears--viz., 'Mike Fletcher,' 'Vain Fortune,' Parnell and His Island';
to some plays, 'Martin Luther,' 'The Strike at Arlingford,' 'The Bending
of the Boughs'; to a couple of volumes of verse entitled 'Pagan Poems'
and 'Flowers of Passion'--all these books, if they are ever reprinted
again, should be issued as the work of a disciple--Amico Moorini I put
forward as a suggestion.
G.M.
I
It was one of those enticing days at the beginning of May when white
clouds are drawn about the earth like curtains. The lake lay like a
mirror that somebody had breathed upon, the brown islands showing
through the mist faintly, with gray shadows falling into the water,
blurred at the edges. The ducks were talking in the reeds, the reeds
themselves were talking, and the water lapping softly about the smooth
limestone shingle. But there was an impulse in the gentle day, and,
turning from the sandy spit, Father Oliver walked to and fro along the
disused cart-track about the edge of the wood, asking himself if he were
going home, knowing very well that he could not bring himself to
interview his parishioners that morning.
On a sudden resolve to escape from anyone that might be seeking him, he
went into the wood and lay down on the warm grass, and admired the
thickly-tasselled branches of the tall larches swinging above him. At a
little distance among the juniper-bushes, between the lake and the wood,
a bird uttered a cry like two stones clinked sharply together, and
getting up he followed the bird, trying to catch sight of it, but always
failing to do so; it seemed to range in a circle about certain trees,
and he hadn't gone very far when he heard it behind him. A stonechat he
was sure it must be, and he wandered on till he came to a great silver
fir, and thought that he spied a pigeon's nest among the multitudinous
branches. The nest, if it were one, was about sixty feet from the
ground, perhaps more than that; and, remembering that the great fir had
grown out of a single seed, it seemed to him not at all wonderful that
people had once worshipped trees, so mysterious is their life, so remote
from ours. And he stood a long time looking up, hardly able to resist
the temptation to climb the tree--not to rob the nest like a boy, but to
admire the two gray eggs which he would find lying on some bare twigs.
At the edge of the wood there were some chestnuts and sycamores. He
noticed that the large-patterned leaf of the sycamores, hanging out from
a longer stem, was darker than the chestnut leaf. There were some elms
close by, and their half-opened leaves, dainty and frail, reminded him
of clouds of butterflies. He could think of nothing else. White,
cotton-like clouds unfolded above the blossoming trees; patches of blue
appeared and disappeared; and he wandered on again, beguiled this time
by many errant scents and wilful little breezes.
Very soon he came upon some fields, and as he walked through the ferns
the young rabbits ran from under his feet, and he thought of the
delicious meals that the fox would snap up. He had to pick his way, for
thorn-bushes and hazels were springing up everywhere. Derrinrush, the
great headland stretching nearly a mile into the lake, said to be one of
the original forests, was extending inland. He remembered it as a deep,
religious wood, with its own particular smell of reeds and rushes. It
went further back than the island castles, further back than the Druids;
and was among Father Oliver's earliest recollections. Himself and his
brother James used to go there when they were boys to cut hazel stems,
to make fishing-rods; and one had only to turn over the dead leaves to
discover the chips scattered circlewise in the open spaces where the
coopers sat in the days gone by making hoops for barrels. But iron hoops
were now used instead of hazel, and the coopers worked there no more. In
the old days he and his brother James used to follow the wood-ranger,
asking him questions about the wild creatures of the wood--badgers,
marten cats, and otters. And one day they took home a nest of young
hawks. He did not neglect to feed them, but they had eaten each other,
nevertheless. He forgot what became of the last one.
A thick yellow smell hung on the still air. 'A fox,' he said, and he
trailed the animal through the hazel-bushes till he came to a rough
shore, covered with juniper-bushes and tussocked grass, the extreme
point of the headland, whence he could see the mountains--the pale
southern mountains mingling with the white sky, and the western
mountains, much nearer, showing in bold relief. The beautiful motion and
variety of the hills delighted him, and there was as much various colour
as there were many dips and curves, for the hills were not far enough
away to dwindle to one blue tint; they were blue, but the pink heather
showed through the blue, and the clouds continued to fold and unfold, so
that neither the colour nor the lines were ever the same. The retreating
and advancing of the great masses and the delicate illumination of the
crests could be watched without weariness. It was like listening to
music. Slieve Cairn showing straight as a bull's back against the white
sky, a cloud filling the gap between Slieve Cairn and Slieve Louan, a
quaint little hill like a hunchback going down a road. Slieve Louan was
followed by a great boulder-like hill turned sideways, the top indented
like a crater, and the priest likened the long, low profile of the next
hill to a reptile raising itself on its forepaws.
He stood at gaze, bewitched by the play of light and shadow among the
slopes; and when he turned towards the lake again, he was surprised to
see a yacht by Castle Island. A random breeze just sprung up had borne
her so far, and now she lay becalmed, carrying, without doubt, a
pleasure-party, inspired by some vague interest in ruins, and a very
real interest in lunch; or the yacht's destination might be Kilronan
Abbey, and the priest wondered if there were water enough in the strait
to let her through in this season of the year. The sails flapped in the
puffing breeze, and he began to calculate her tonnage, certain that if
he had such a boat he would not be sailing her on a lake, but on the
bright sea, out of sight of land, in the middle of a great circle of
water. As if stung by a sudden sense of the sea, of its perfume and its
freedom, he imagined the filling of the sails and the rattle of the
ropes, and how a fair wind would carry him as far as the cove of Cork
before morning. The run from Cork to Liverpool would be slower, but the
wind might veer a little, and in four-and-twenty hours the Welsh
mountains would begin to show above the horizon. But he would not land
anywhere on the Welsh coast. There was nothing to see in Wales but
castles, and he was weary of castles, and longed to see the cathedrals
of York and Salisbury; for he had often seen them in pictures, and had
more than once thought of a walking tour through England. Better still
if the yacht were to land him somewhere on the French coast. England
was, after all, only an island like Ireland--- a little larger, but
still an island--and he thought he would like a continent to roam in.
The French cathedrals were more beautiful than the English, and it would
be pleasant to wander in the French country in happy-go-lucky fashion,
resting when he was tired, walking when it pleased him, taking an
interest in whatever might strike his fancy.
It seemed to him that his desire was to be freed for a while from
everything he had ever seen, and from everything he had ever heard. He
merely wanted to wander, admiring everything there was to admire as he
went. He didn't want to learn anything, only to admire. He was weary of
argument, religious and political. It wasn't that he was indifferent to
his country's welfare, but every mind requires rest, and he wished
himself away in a foreign country, distracted every moment by new
things, learning the language out of a volume of songs, and hearing
music, any music, French or German--any music but Irish music. He
sighed, and wondered why he sighed. Was it because he feared that if he
once went away he might never come back?
This lake was beautiful, but he was tired of its low gray shores; he was
tired of those mountains, melancholy as Irish melodies, and as
beautiful. He felt suddenly that he didn't want to see a lake or a
mountain for two months at least, and that his longing for a change was
legitimate and most natural. It pleased him to remember that everyone
likes to get out of his native country for a while, and he had only been
out of sight of this lake in the years he spent in Maynooth. On leaving
he had pleaded that he might be sent to live among the mountains by
Kilronan Abbey, at the north end of the lake, but when Father Conway
died he was moved round to the western shore; and every day since he
walked by the lake, for there was nowhere else to walk, unless up and
down the lawn under the sycamores, imitating Father Peter, whose wont it
was to walk there, reading his breviary, stopping from time to time to
speak to a parishioner in the road below; he too used to read his
breviary under the sycamores; but for one reason or another he walked
there no longer, and every afternoon now found him standing at the end
of this sandy spit, looking across the lake towards Tinnick, where he
was born, and where his sisters lived.
He couldn't see the walls of the convent to-day, there was too much mist
about; and he liked to see them; for whenever he saw them he began to
think of his sister Eliza, and he liked to think of her--she was his
favourite sister. They were nearly the same age, and had played
together; and his eyes dwelt in memory on the dark corner under the
stairs where they used to play. He could even see their toys through the
years, and the tall clock which used to tell them that it was time to
put them aside. Eliza was only eighteen months older than he; they were
the red-haired ones, and though they were as different in mind as it was
possible to be, he seemed nearer Eliza than anyone else. In what this
affinity consisted he couldn't say, but he had always felt himself of
the same flesh and blood. Neither his father nor mother had inspired
this sense of affinity; and his sister Mary and his brothers seemed to
him merely people whom he had known always--not more than that; whereas
Eliza was quite different, and perhaps it was this very mutuality, which
he could not define, that had decided their vocations.
No doubt there is a moment in every man's life when something happens to
turn him into the road which he is destined to follow; for all that it
would be superficial to think that the fate of one's life is dependent
upon accident. The accident that turns one into the road is only the
means which Providence takes to procure the working out of certain ends.
Accidents are many: life is as full of accidents as a fire is full of
sparks, and any spark is enough to set fire to the train. The train
escapes a thousand, but at last a spark lights it, and this spark always
seems to us the only one that could have done it. We cannot imagine how
the same result could have been obtained otherwise. But other ways would
have been found; for Nature is full of resource, and if Eliza had not
been by to fire the idea hidden in him, something else would. She was
the means, but only the means, for no man escapes his vocation, and the
priesthood was his. A vocation always finds a way out. But was he sure
if it hadn't been for Eliza that he wouldn't have married Annie McGrath?
He didn't think he would have married Annie, but he might have married
another. All the same, Annie was a good, comfortable girl, a girl that
everybody was sure would make a good wife for any man, and at that time
many people were thinking that he should marry Annie. On looking back he
couldn't honestly say that a stray thought of Annie hadn't found its way
into his mind; but not into his heart--there is a difference.
At that time he was what is known as a growing lad; he was seventeen.
His father was then dead two years, and his mother looked to him, he
being the eldest, to take charge of the shop, for at that time it was
almost settled that James was to go to America. They had two or three
nice grass farms just beyond the town: Patsy was going to have them; and
his sisters' fortunes were in the bank, and very good fortunes they
were. They had a hundred pounds apiece and should have married well.
Eliza could have married whomever she pleased. Mary could have married,
too, and to this day he couldn't tell why she hadn't married.
The chances his sister Mary had missed rose up in his mind--why, he did
not know; and a little bored by these memories, he suddenly became
absorbed in the little bleat of a blackcap perched on a bush, the only
one amid a bed of flags and rushes; 'an alder-bush,' he said. 'His mate
is sitting on her eggs, and there are some wood-gatherers about; that's
what's worrying the little fellow.' The bird continued to utter its
troubled bleat, and the priest walked on, thinking how different was its
evensong. He meditated an excursion to hear it, and then, without his
being aware of any transition, his thoughts returned to his sister Mary,
and to the time when he had once indulged in hopes that the mills along
the river-side might be rebuilt and Tinnick restored to its former
commercial prosperity. He was not certain if he had ever really believed
that he might set these mills going, or if he had, he encouraged an
illusion, knowing it to be one. He was only certain of this, that when
he was a boy and saw no life ahead of him except that of a Tinnick
shopman, he used to feel that if he remained at home he must have the
excitement of adventure. The beautiful river, with its lime-trees,
appealed to his imagination; the rebuilding of the mills and the
reorganization of trade, if he succeeded in reorganizing trade, would
mean spending his mornings on the wharves by the river-side, and in
those days his one desire was to escape from the shop. He looked upon
the shop as a prison. In those days he liked dreaming, and it was
pleasant to dream of giving back to Tinnick its trade of former days;
but when his mother asked him what steps he intended to take to get the
necessary capital, he lost his temper with her. He must have known that
he could never make enough money in the shop to set the mills working!
He must have known that he would never take his father's place at the
desk by the dusty window! But if he shrank from an avowal it was because
he had no other proposal to make. His mother understood him, though the
others didn't, and seeing his inability to say what kind of work he
would put his hand to, she had spoken of Annie McGrath. She didn't say
he should marry Annie--she was a clever woman in her way--she merely
said that Annie's relations in America could afford to supply sufficient
capital to start one of the mills. But he never wanted to marry Annie,
and couldn't do else but snap when the subject was mentioned, and many's
the time he told his mother that if the mills were to pay it would be
necessary to start business on a large scale. He was an impracticable
lad and even now he couldn't help smiling when he thought of the
abruptness with which he would go down to the river-side to seek a new
argument wherewith to confute his mother, to return happy when he had
found one, and sit watching for an opportunity to raise the question
again.
No, it wasn't because Annie's relations weren't rich enough that he
hadn't wanted to marry her. And to account for his prejudice against
marriage, he must suppose that some notion of the priesthood was
stirring in him at the time, for one day, as he sat looking at Annie
across the tea-table, he couldn't help thinking that it would be hard to
live alongside of her year in and year out. Although a good and a
pleasant girl, Annie was a bit tiresome to listen to, and she wasn't one
of those who improve with age. As he sat looking at her, he seemed to
understand, as he had never understood before, that if he married her
all that had happened in the years back would happen again--more
children scrambling about the counter, with a shopman (himself) by the
dusty window putting his pen behind his ear, just as his father did when
he came forward to serve some country woman with half a pound of tea or
a hank of onions.
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