The Lake | Page 3

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