The Lake | Page 5

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