Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  It was one of her off days, and she was going to spend it at the cottage. There were a great many things for her to do. She never had much time, but she would go to the station with him.

  “But you have already walked two miles.”

  “Ah! Eliza has told you?”

  “Yes, that you go to Mass every morning.”

  Owen seemed to regret the fact, and when he broke silence again it was to inquire into the expenses of the orphanage and to deplore the necessity which governed her life of going to London every day, returning home late, and he offered her a subscription which would cover the entire cost. But his offer of money seemed to embarrass her, and he understood that her pleasure was to go to London to work for these children, for only in that way could the home be entirely her own. If she were to accept help from the outside it would drift away from her and from its original intention, just as the convent had done. Nor was it very likely that she would care to give up her work and come to live at Riversdale, as his wife, of course as his wife, and it would pain her to refuse him…. Better leave things as they were.

  “You are right,” he said, “not to live in London; one avoids a great deal of loneliness. One is more lonely in London than anywhere I know. The country is the natural home of man. Man is an arborial animal,” he added, laughing, “and is only happy among trees.”

  “And woman, what is she? A material animal?”

  “I suppose so. You have your children; I have my trees.”

  The words seemed to have a meaning which eluded them, and they pondered while they descended the hillside until the piece of low-lying land came into view and the bridge crossing the sluggish stream, amid whose rushes he had gathered the wild forget-me-not. As he was about to speak of them he remembered her singing classes, and that yester evening had worn away without hearing her sing. “You have lost all interest in music, I fear. You think of it now as a means of making money… for your children,” he added, so that his words might not wound her.

  “And you, Owen, does music still interest you,” — she nearly said, “now that I am out of it?” but stopped, the words on her lips.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think it does,” and there was an eagerness in his voice when he said, “I have been trying my hand at composition again, and I have written a good many songs and some piano pieces, one for piano and violin.”

  “A sonata?”

  “Well, something in that way… not very strict in form perhaps.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “When you come to see me I should like to show you some of my things. You will come to see me when you are in London… when you have a moment?”

  “Evelyn always keeps her promises,” he said to himself, and he did not give up hope that she would come to see him, although nearly two weeks went by without his hearing from her. Then a note came, saying that she had been kept busy and had not been able to find spare time, but yesterday a pupil had written saying she would not come to her lesson, “so now I can come to you.”

  “Miss Innes, Sir Owen.”

  His face lighted up, and laying his book aside he sprang out of his chair, and all consciousness of time ceased in his mind till she began to put on her glove.

  “You have only just arrived, and already you are going.”

  “My dear Owen, I have been here an hour, and the time has passed quickly for you because you have been playing your music over for me and I have been singing… humming, for it is hardly singing now.”

  “I am sorry, Evelyn, the time has seemed so long to you. I didn’t intend to bore you. You said you would like to see some of my music.”

  “So I did, Owen, and some of the best things you have composed are among those you have shown me. Your writing has improved a great deal.”

  “I am so glad you think so. When will you come again?”

  “The first spare hour.”

  “Really? You promise.”

  They saw each other at intervals. Sometimes the intervals were very long, and Owen would write to her complaining, and he would get a note telling that her time was not her own, and that a great deal of money was necessary for her boys. But she would try to come and see him next week, and he would write begging her not to disappoint him, as he was giving a concert and wanted her help to compose the programme.

  A great deal of time was spent in Berkeley Square, more than she could afford, trying pieces over; and she would often say, “My dear Owen, I really must go now or I shall miss my train at Victoria.” He always looked disappointed when she said she was going, and he never could understand why she would not sing at his concerts. It was very difficult even to persuade her to come to one.

  “You see, I cannot sleep here, Owen. I have to go to a hotel.”

  One day she got a letter from him which she feared to open. “It is to ask me to help him to compose another programme, and I haven’t got a minute.”

  She was mistaken. The letter was to tell her that he had been elected president of the new choral society… “a group of young musicians.” The envelope enclosed a programme, and she read: “President, Sir Owen Asher, Bart.” “I’m glad, I’m glad,” she said as she walked up the room. “He has some natural talent for music, and if he hadn’t been born a rich man and spent his life doing other things he might have done something in music. If he had begun younger… if he hadn’t met me… a good many ifs; but there it is, and that is how it has ended.”

  The Lake

  CONTENTS

  ÉPÎTRE DÉDICATOIRE

  PREFACE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  ÉPÎTRE DÉDICATOIRE

  17 AOÛT, 1905.

  MON CHER DUJARDIN,

  Il se trouve que je suis à Paris en train de corriger mes épreuves au moment où vous donnez les dernières retouches au manuscrit de ‘La Source du Fleuve Chrétien,’ un beau titre — si beau que je n’ai pu m’empêcher 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 dédommager de mon larcin, je me propose de vous dédier ‘Le Lac.’ Il y a bien des raisons pour que je désire voir votre nom sur la première page d’un livre de moi; la meilleure est, peut-être, parceque vous êtes mon ami depuis ‘Les Confessions d’un Jeune Anglais’ qui ont paru dans votre jolie Revue Indépendante; et, depuis cette bienheureuse année, nous avons causé littérature et musique, combien de fois! Combien d’heures nous avons passés ensemble, causant, toujours causant, dans votre belle maison de Fontainebleau, si française avec sa terrasse en pierre et son jardin avec ses gazons maigres et ses allées sablonneuses qui serpentent parmi les grands arbres forestiers. C’est dans ce jardin à l’orée de la forêt et dans la forêt même, parmi la mélancolie de lat nature primitive, et à Valvins ou demeurait notre vieil ami Mallarmé, triste et charmant bonhomme, comme le pays du reste (n’est-ce-pas que cette tristesse croit depuis qu’il s’en est allé?) 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 alignés; comme ils sont tristes au printemps, ces peupliers, surtout avant qu’ils ne deviennent verts, quand ils sont rougeâtres, posés 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 parsemé de châteaux vides, hanté par le souvenir des fêtes 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 là bas il ne faut drait pas tout cela. Je l’entends très bien sur une seule flute placée dans une île entourée des eaux d’un lac, le joueur assis sur les vagues ruines d’un réduit gallois ou bien
Normand. Mais, cher ami, vous êtes Normand et peut-être bien que ce sent vos ancêtres qui out pillé mon pays; c’est une raison de plus pour que je vous offre ce roman. Acceptez-le sans le connaître 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 traversé par vous! Et parce que vous allez rester fatalement sur le bord de ‘mon lac’ j’ai un double plaisir à vous le dédier. Lorsqu’on dédie un livre, on prévoit l’heure où l’ami le prend, jette un coup d’œil et dit: ‘Pourquoi m’a-t-il dédié une niaiserie pareille?’ Toutes les choses de l’esprit, sauf les plus grandes, deviennent niaiseries tôt ou tard. Votre ignorance de ma langue m’épargne cette heure fatale. Pour vous, mon livre sera toujours une belle et noble chose. Il ne peut jamais devenir pour vous banal comme une épouse. 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 à des années écoulées, au jardin où les rossignols chantent, a la forêt où rien ne se passe sauf la chute des feuilles, à nos promenades à Valvins pour voir le cher bonhomme; vous penserez à votre jeunesse et peut-être un peu à la mienne. Mais je veux que vous lisiez cette dédicace, et c’est pour cela que je l’ai écrite en français, dans un français qui vous est très familier, le mien. Si je l’écrivais en anglais et le faisais traduire dans le langage à la dernière mode de Paris, vous ne retrouveriez pas les accents barbares de votre vieil ami. Ils sont barbares, je le conçois, mais il y a des chiens qui sont laids et que l’on finit par aimer.

  Une poignée 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; Tourguéniev’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 æstheticism. But a writer’s æstheticism 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.