Mushroom Town

by Oliver Onions

Once more he had slept within a stone's-throw of the hut. There had been light showers during the night, but hardly enough to call a break of the weather; the drops twinkled on fern and grass and spiders'-webs and tiny flowers, but the ground was still as dry as tinder. As he shaved, with the little mirror of his dressing-bag hung on a hazel, he reflected that it was only half-past seven, and that the Llyn ought to be a good colour for fishing. There would be plenty of time for a cast or two before saying good-bye. But his rod was in the locked hut, of which she had the key. No matter. Since he had now come to his decision, it would make no difference did he seek her in the Glyn a little earlier than usual. He would then be able to get away earlier in order to say good-bye to the neglected June.

He was heartily glad it was all over. The only possible course seemed so plain that he wondered now what he had been tormenting himself about all this time. Smiling a little, he even thought of all the awkwardnesses and dissimulations and machinations and deceits he was by one stroke escaping. He would have felt rather a brute had he come upon Dafydd Dafis one day, and asked him how he was getting on, and, casually, what had become of that little niece or cousin of his, whose name he would have had to make a lying pretence of having forgotten. It would have been behaving rather off-handedly to June, to see her for the first two days only of her stay and then to let her go without as much as seeing her off. It would be better that Minetta should not have to write home saying that John Willie was away (fishing) and she alone in the house, but she was quite all right. It would be better to think of the things that would permanently "do"—altogether more comfortable and satisfactory not to have to call himself, in the waking hours of nights in the years ahead, or in the days to come when business claimed him, by a disquieting name. It was not as if there were not plenty of other things to think of. This particular aspect of life was far too much dwelt on. Percy Briggs dwelt on it too much, he himself had dwelt too much on it. He wasn't sure that he hadn't been getting even a little morbid about it. Not every lovely flower is picked because it is lovely and then thrown wilting away again. John Willie had come to his senses. It had taken him some time, but he was all right again now. He wondered how those people at the inn below had been looking after his horse. They'd probably let him get fat and lazy. Well, he would give him a twisting on the way home. Too much inaction is good for neither horse nor man....

He finished shaving, and began to whistle as he packed his tackle and strapped the case. He would leave the case where it was, and pick it up on his way back. He would take the boat, pull straight across, get it over, and then have a swinging walk down to the inn. Despite his moping wanderings, he felt the need of a really good hard walk.

He strode down to the lake, unfastened the boat, dashed the waterdrops from the thwart with his cap, and pushed off.

It was a brilliant, if broken, sky. Up the mountain-side the light mists were quickly evaporating, and a great crag of dazzling white cloud, shaped like the north of Scotland on a map, was perfectly reduplicated in the glassy Llyn. As if the surface of the water had had a tenuity without abating a jot of its crystal clearness, the smooth V from the bows seemed to shear through something that, even when the water settled to rest again, did not return; there fled at each stroke an intact perfection. He altered the boat's course, and the reflection of the edge of Delyn broke into long smooth stripes. He altered it again, and an invisible comb seemed to pass through the towering inverted cloud. His wake was a dancing of broken glittering facets. He stood in towards the shaly spur; a few more strong strokes and he grounded abruptly; and he gathered up his boots and stockings from the bottom of the boat, stepped out, and made fast at the bottom of the Glyn.

The showers had swollen the stream a little, and mossy stones that had been dry the day before were lapped by the water, and pools came farther up his calf. But suddenly at a thought he stopped. In the new circumstances it was a new thought. She did not expect him for some hours yet; it might be better—in case of his coming upon her as she might not wish to be come upon—to give a call. On second thoughts he was sure that he ought to give a call. He opened his mouth——

But it was not necessary. Suddenly he saw her twenty yards ahead. She had probably been up for hours, and had got her bathe over long since.

But even that glimpse of her through the leaves had been as it were two glimpses. In the first of them he had seen that she was there; in the second he had noted that her appearance was not her usual appearance. She was no longer wearing the black dress of Philip Lacey's flower-shop, but that old blouse, unconfined at the waist, and again, as on that day when she had started back from the door of the hut, her legs and feet were bare. Four trout lay on the grass beside her, one of them still fluttering. She was stroking the drops of water from her forearms, and wiping her hands on her old striped petticoat.

He did not call, but all in a moment she looked round as quickly as if he had done so. At first he thought she was going to start to her feet and run, but she remained seated. Then a bough intervened. He put it aside behind him, threw his boots and stockings ashore, and climbed the bank.

"Hallo, Ynys," he said, as he sat down beside her. "I'm a bit early, but I've got to get off soon. They want me down there. There are some people I must see before they go."