CHAPTER VII

When they entered the cabin, Dick was diligently counting a beetle’s legs,—a process the animal seemed to resent. Ned, at a window, was staring at the falling shadows on the farther hills, and Jack, at the door, was deep in a gruesome book of adventures by sea and land.

The boys rose as Lyndsay entered.

“Gracious!” exclaimed Rose, observing their swollen faces. “You have not gotten off without honorable wounds.” Jack’s face was a testimonial of valor. “You seem to have found it lively.”

“It was galumptious.”

“What?” cried Rose.

“Oh, I wasn’t going to run. Those fellows, they ran. I think they’re—”

“What?” broke in Dick.

“None of that,” said Lyndsay. “I suppose the hornets did not have a very pleasing time.”

“They licked us,” said Ned.

“That’s because—”

“Hush,” said Lyndsay, laughing. “I presume there are enough left for another time?”

“Archie, how could you?” said Mrs. Lyndsay. “I shall be glad to get these boys home alive.”

95“Oh, we are all right,” cried the twins; and they went gaily to supper, and before long to bed.

When Rose got up next day it was raining; the sky gray, and the waters inky black. She was reassured at breakfast by her father, and told to get her waterproof and high boots, and be ready for a salmon after breakfast. Again Miss Anne was on hand, declaring that she had not felt as well for a year, and they fell to planning their day’s amusements. The squirrels tempted Jack and his gun. Dick and Ned were to fish the upper pool, and Anne and the mother, as they desired, were to be left to their own devices.

“But, Rose,” said the latter, “you must see Mrs. Maybrook.”

“If we get any salmon, I might take her one, or one of the men might carry it this afternoon. I am very curious about this paragon. I don’t believe much in perfection, mama.”

“I did not say she was that, Rose. Dorothy Maybrook is my friend.”

“Isn’t that putting it rather strongly, mama? A woman in her class of life can scarcely—”

“Nevertheless, she is my friend.”

“That answers all questions,” said Lyndsay.

“No,” said Anne, “not until one knows your definition of friend. What is a friend?”

“A fellow that will fight for you,” said Jack.

“Then Sullivan or the ‘Tipton Slasher’ would be the best friend,” remarked Ned.

“A fellow you like,” said Dick.

“How is it, Ned?” said Lyndsay. “What is a friend?”

96“I don’t know,” replied Ned, coloring as usual. “I would want a lot of them.”

“There is something in that,” said Anne. “I never found any one human being who, at all times and under all stress of needs, was able to give me everything I want of man or woman.”

“I think with you, Anne,” returned Lyndsay. “I never could quite comprehend those all-satisfying alliances one reads about, those friend-love affairs, such as Shakspere had with Herbert, or whoever it was. Certainly some men, and not always those who have most to give, intellectually, at least, have, as was said of a dead friend of mine, a genius for friendship. Wherever he went, men became attached to him,—they could hardly say why.”

“How do you explain it?” said Rose.

“He was quick of temper, cultivated, but not a profound man,—unselfish. I think it must have been chiefly because he took a large and unfailing interest in other men’s pursuits, and was not troubled if they made no return in kind. He gave interest and affection, being easily pleased, and exacted no return. But it always came.”

“I should have said he had a talent for friendship. Genius is a large word,” said Anne.

“Yes; it was only an unusual capacity,—not genius.”

“But what is genius?” said Rose.

“You are getting out of my depth!” cried Mrs. Lyndsay, laughing. “I shall want a life-preserver pretty soon, Archie.”

“I can only quote Marcus Aurelius,” said Lyndsay.

97“He remarks—what is it he says about genius, Anne?”

“No, no. We want something fresh, Pardy.”

“A fine way to clap an extinguisher on wisdom.”

“But I want—I do want an answer.”

“Shall we say that genius is crude creative power? How will that do?”

“That is better than usual, Aurelius,” cried Anne. “It needs talent to come to anything. It would be easy to illustrate. There is Blake at one end, and—well—Shakspere at the other.”

“May we go?” said Jack, yawning fearfully.

“Yes, of course. What a sight you are!”

“They must have been good shots.”

“Oh, they did well,” said Ned, “and it was worse than bullets. They don’t get inside your pantaloons and skirmish around. I’m very uncomfortable when I sit down.”

“How can one die better, etc.?” cried Dick, and, riotously laughing, they ran out of doors. Margaret looked after them affectionately.

“Do you remember, Archie, how you used to have an unending tale for those boys when they were little, of Tommy Turnip, and how he ran away, and went to Russia, and was made Count Turnipsky?”

“I do, indeed, my dear. It went on for years. Come, Rose, I sha’n’t rest until you have killed a salmon. If it rains hard all day the water will rise, and then good-by salmon until it begins to fall.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. The salmon is a mysterious creature. We know little about him; but we do know that with 98rising water, or rapidly rising warmth of water, he seems to lose curiosity as to flies. Come along.”

“I think my own curiosity collapses in hot weather,” said Anne.

There was now a steady fall of rain, but, well protected, they reached the pool.

“How black the water is!” said Rose. Tom sat quiet without the least cover, and took the ducking as if it were a matter of course. Now he adjusted a rather large Jock Scott. Then Rose began to cast, while Lyndsay sat behind her and smoked.

“Couldn’t I stand?” she said.

“Yes. You will cast better, and take care you don’t catch the handle of the reel in your wraps. Give the back cast a little more time. Count one, two, three quickly. You do very well. You will soon get the trick of it.”

“You riz him!” roared Tom, for there was a mighty swash, and half a salmon came into view.

“Sit down. Wait a little.”

“Will he—do you think he will rise again?”

“If I knew, dear, it would save much needless casting. Will a young man propose twice, thrice? Who can say?”

“I fail, sir, to perceive the analogy.”

“My dear Rose, the too logical mind is destructive of the very foundations of social gaiety. Young man rises to a fly; salmon rises to a fly.”

“But no right-minded woman casts a fly over. Oh, they just—you know.”

“No, I don’t. Both the fish and the man have the right of choice; but there is some responsibility as 99to the attractiveness of a Jock Scott, or a Durham fanger. So, after all, the young man’s anguish may be the fault of the wicked milliner. As a question of morals one likes to know.”

“But will he—will he come back?”

“Really, Rose, that was worthy of Sarah Siddons. It might have been said of the most attractive of my sex.”

“Bother the men, papa; I want my fish. What is a man to a salmon!”

“I recognize that assertion of personal ownership as distinctively feminine.”

“You are too bad. How it pours!”

“Try him again. Cast out to right, and let the fly come down, around the tail of the boat, with not too much movement, just as if you were quite indifferent; an ordinary, every-day promenade, my dear. The application is, you see, of skill acquired in one branch of industry to the cultivation of another.”

Of a sudden the reel ran out a little.

“Poor young man! Sit down. Keep the tip up, so.”

The fly had been tranquilly taken under water, this time with no show of indecision. Rose obeyed the advice, and for a moment sat expectant, the rod well bent. The delay on the part of the salmon was so great that she could not understand it.

“It must be fast on something. It doesn’t move.”

“No, the young man isn’t quite sure as to what is the matter. He is reflecting. Are Cupid’s arrows barbed, my dear? There!”

“Oh!”—for the reel ran out so fast as to make a distinct musical note, and, in a moment, Rose saw 100the salmon flash high in the air near the farther bank.

“That can’t be my young man.”

“Yes. Reel, reel quick.”

Meanwhile it was up anchor and away, the instant the fish struck. The men shared Rose’s excitement, and watched the quick movements of the fish with admirable understanding of when to wait or to follow. The rapid reeling in Rose found hard work.

“I do think you must take the rod,” she said.

“No,” he cried, laughing. “I prefer not to have the responsibility of other folks’ flirtations. He won’t carry on this way very long.”

But again he was off, and this time not so far. Then he leaped twice, with mighty splashings of the water. Meanwhile Tom was carefully getting his canoe out of the heavy current, and Rose found that the salmon was slowly yielding to the steady strain of the rod. They were now near the bank, and in an eddy.

“Look sharp, Rose,” said Mr. Lyndsay. “Give him the butt.”

“What?”

“Yes. Keep the tip back and the butt forward. As the fish yields reel in a little, dropping the tip. That’s right. Now, you can lift him, as it were, by throwing the butt forward again, so. Reel! reel! Well handled.”

“He’s a-comin’,” said Tom. “He are a buster.”

She could but just perceive her fish,—a dark, shadowy thing,—a few feet away. Now he sees the man with his gaff, and is off on a short run; and again is slowly reeled in.

101“Something must break,” said Rose.

“No, you can’t pull more than two pounds, my dear, do as you may. It seems to you a vast strain. There, keep his head up-stream. Well done. Let him drop back a little.”

As he spoke, Tom made a quick movement and gaffed his fish. In a moment it was in the boat, and Rose sank back delighted.

“Here is the scale, Tom.”

Tom held up the fish, with the scale-hook in the gill-cover.

“Thir—ty—two—pounds, miss.”

“Do let me see,” she said, and examined her captive with curiosity.

“A fine young man, by the neb of his lower jaw,” said her father. “You don’t like the gaffing: I saw that. Be assured that lingering hours of slow exhaustion in the nets at the mouth of the river are far worse. You could let the fish go; you could refrain from fishing; you need not eat salmon; several ways are open to the sensitive.”

“I am very foolish, I dare say.”

“There is some folly that is nearer heaven than some wisdom, my child. If this folly is incapable of reasoning defense, it is still not one to be ashamed of. We may over-cultivate our sensibilities so as, at last, to become Brahminical in our abhorrence of any destruction of life. The argument as to need for animal flesh is hardly a help. Men, in fact, nations, live without it; and it is quite possible that we have in time more or less manufactured both the appetite and the need for this diet. Our nearest anatomical kinsmen, 102the monkeys, are all vegetarians, and as for any necessity to kill salmon or deer, there is nowadays none. Both are mere luxuries of the rich. Not a soul on these rivers ever gets a salmon, unless he poaches or we give it to him.”

“Isn’t that hard?”

“Yes and no. Throw it all open, and in five years there would be no salmon. They would go as the buffalo have gone.”

“And still I am sorry for the people who cannot fish; the eating is another matter.”

“Their fishing, dear, would be the mere use of a net. But there is another point of view. We leave more money on these rivers, are of more real use to these boatmen and farmers, than all the salmon they might take could possibly be.”

“How difficult all life seems! There are so many questions.”

“Fish, my dear, in peace of soul. By Thor, you have a grilse!” he cried. For now she was fast to a fish of some six pounds, which was in and out of water every minute, and, being too small to gaff, was beached by a quick run up a sandy shore of the well-drenched fisherwoman. While Tom was weighing the fish, Rose learned that a grilse was a young salmon, and what a parr was, and a smolt, and a kelt, and how a grilse was known by the forked tail and the small scales.

“A good un to smoke,” said Tom. “We split ’em, miss, and salt ’em pretty well, and then hold ’em open like with two sticks, and hangs ’em over a right smoky fire for a matter of four or five days. Some 103makes a wigwam of bark and smokes ’em in that, but it ain’t needed unless you want ’em to keep long. Them they sells is all dried stiff and hard. These here, just dried gentle, why they’re as fine-flavored as—as—angels, or a chicken porkenpine.”

“A smoked angel!” laughed Rose. “I am horribly wet, but I must kill another salmon.” Her hope was realized, and, after an hour of hard casting, a twenty-pound fish was brought to gaff in some twelve minutes.

“Very good time, Rosy. I used to think no man ought to be over a half-hour in killing the strongest salmon. But the charm of the game lies in the amazing individuality of the fish. No one of them ever does just what any other does. Once I was two hours with a salmon, and you may have the like luck.”

“I should perish of fatigue.”

“What would you think of killing ninety-two and six grilse in five days? I once killed forty-two striped bass in twenty-four hours, but these are bonanzas. Run the boat up and empty her,” he added to Tom. As they stood, the rain continued falling more and more heavily through a perfectly still atmosphere.

“Kind of falls,” said Tom.

“Did it ever rain harder?” said Rose.

“Yes, miss; there are a spot up nigh back of Thunder Bay—that’s to north of Lake Superior—and there it do rain in July—solid.”

“Solid?” said Lyndsay.

“I said solid. Folks moves out for a month, otherwise they is drownded standin’.”

104“That is a trapper’s tale, Rose. I have heard it before.”

“It is near enough here to being solid to enable me to believe the rest. How the boughs leap every now and then as they drop their loads of rain, and how slate-blue and opaque the water is!”

“Notice these great drops: each rebounds from the surface in a little column, so as to seem like black spikes in the water. See, too, how the circles they make cross one another without breaking. Smoke rings do that,” and he blew successive circlets of his pipe-smoke, as he spoke, so that they passed across one another, breaking and remaking their rolling rings.

“Why is that?” she said.

“I do not know. I hardly care to ask. I am in the mood of mere acceptance. Oh, there is the sun, Rose! See how between the finger-like needles of the pine the drops are held, and what splendid jewelry the sun is making. It needs a still hour for this. You have seen a thing in its perfection quite rare.”

“Must we go, Pardy? It has done raining.”

“Yes, we must go. I forgot to ask you to listen to the different noises a heavy rain makes according as you stand under pine or spruce, or hear it patter on the flat-lying, deciduous leaves, or hum on the water. Come, you must take the twenty-pounder to Dorothy Maybrook. If it is not too wet, she will perhaps walk up to Colkett’s with you. But don’t go into the cabin. You might take for those poor people two or three cans of corned beef. Meats are scarce luxuries with them. They will need no money 105just at present. Mr. Carington gave them some help.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. The child is to be buried to-morrow, I hear.”

“Is Mr. Carington the young man who shot the seal?”

“I suppose so,—yes. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing. Idlest curiosity. Pure curiosity unstained by the coarseness of a motive.”

“I am answered,” he said, laughing.

They were soon at home.