CHAPTER XVIII

The next day, being Saturday, a little note sent in the morning told Carington that Miss Lyndsay and her father would fish his waters in the afternoon. Her father took Rose up in his own canoe, and at the Island Camp they found their new friends. Mr. Ellett went off to take their pool, and Rose was soon seated in Carington’s canoe, facing the stern of the boat.

“No,” he said gaily, “I shall sit between you and Michelle, here in the bottom. I shall be very comfortable, and I shall be able to criticize your casts. No, I don’t mean to fish. It is your day—all yours. We shall beat you, Mr. Lyndsay. Mind, Michelle, we are bent on wholesale business.”

Then they were off, and in a half-hour were at the head of the pool, a full cast from the bank, and in a wilful rush of broken water. Meanwhile Mr. Lyndsay dropped down half a mile below them.

“I am afraid you must cast seated,” said Carington. “The boat rocks too much for it to be safe to stand.”

“That makes it harder.”

“Yes; but you won’t mind my coaching you?”

“Oh, no!”

238“Then, use your arms and wrist in the cast. Don’t try to put too much force in it. There, that is better—so.”

She went on casting, a little troubled by the critical watchfulness of the curly head below her, for Carington had thrown his cap at his feet and sat bare-headed. At last, in the second drop, a fish rose.

“Didn’t you see him?”

“No.”

“He rose. Wait a little. He lies on a line with that cedar. Now, again. They are in rising mood to-day. I rose six here this morning, and then left the pool, so as not to exhaust their curiosity.”

“That was to leave me the chance,” thought Rose.

“There, Miss Lyndsay; he was pretty eager that time.

“A rise to a Rose seems grammatically improbable,” he murmured, laughing outright at his own nonsense, and happy enough to be easily silly.

“What amuses you?” she said.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Then you are very readily amused.”

“I am to-day. Up anchor. He has it. Tip up! So! A grilse.”

“Oh! how he jumps,” she cried, for he was in and out of the water a dozen times.

“That is the fashion of his kind, young and foolish. Hold him hard, and reel him in. He is too small to trifle with. Well done; four minutes, or less.”

“That horrid gaff!” said Rose.

“Wait a moment. I thought you might not like it. I have my big net,” and so in a moment the 239pretty five-pounder was in the boat, and had his coup de grace.

The next half-hour Rose fished hard, but in vain, and began to be weary. Then, at last, there was a huge splash at the utmost limit of her casting distance.

“Two fish was after that fly,” said Michelle. “Guess they run against each other.”

“Let out a little line,” said Carington.

“But I can’t cast that far. Won’t you, please?”

“Certainly.” And, standing, he threw off two or three feet of line. The leader and fly dropped far away, straight from the rod. At last, after many casts, he put on a fly well known to anglers as a “fairy.” The fish rose, missed it, and then, following the retreating line, struck savagely.

“Up anchor!” cried Carington, as he sat down, giving the rod to Rose.

“Big one that, sir,” said Michelle; and, as he spoke, the salmon darted down-stream, the men in wild excitement, and the canoe swiftly urged in his track.

“The salmon seem fond of going to sea, Michelle. It is very rare, Miss Lyndsay.”

“Oh, he will have all my line! What can I do?”

“Tip up! up! He must run, and he will.” And away they flew.

“Quick, Michelle! I have twice seen a salmon run off a reel.” And now, in fact, there was very little line left, when, after nearly half a mile of rush downstream, the fish turned and ran toward the boat.

“Lost? No! Nothing is ever lost—reel! reel!—except by people who ought to lose. No, reel! reel!” 240And poor Rose, at the limit of exhaustion, obeyed till her arm ached, and the perilously long loop of line at last became tense, and the fish showed himself in one great leap not forty feet away.

“He’s beat!” cried Michelle. “Easy, miss, easy. Have to gaff him, sir.”

“All right. What’s the matter with him?”

“Hooked foul, sir. Ah!” And, amidst splash and laughter, and much water over Rose, the prey was hers.

“What does he weigh?”

Carington took the spring-scale. “How is it, Michelle?”

“Thirty-eight pounds, miss, and a beauty. A half-hour we was, I guess.”

“I congratulate you. Are you tired?”

“Tired? No, I am exhausted. I really don’t think I can fish any more. Won’t you?”

“Suppose we pole up a mile or so, to the upper pool. I’ll cast a little, and then we can drop down and meet Mr. Lyndsay.”

“Certainly. I, at least, am satisfied.”

“Up-stream, Michelle.” And the poles were out, and they went away slowly up the watery slope.

“Do you mind talking at the back of a man’s head?” said Carington. “I might have shifted the chair, and my own position—I will, if you like.”

“No; it has its advantages,” and she laughed, remembering another occasion.

“Such as—”

“I leave that to your imagination.”

“I have none.”

“Then to your reason.”

241“Gone! Retired from business.”

“I found it advantageous—once.”

“You mean when I was bowman. I thought I was to be forgiven.”

“I distinctly said you were not, and that I should reserve the matter for future consideration.”

“But the advantage was all on my side.”

“Thank you. I suppose because you could not see my face.”

“That is simply a diabolical explanation. I hope you may lose your next fish.”

“Don’t. I can bear any form of malice but that. I have gone salmon-mad, like the rest of you.”

“I retract,” he said. “Isn’t this hunting and fishing instinct curious? I suppose it got ingrained ages ago, in the days when our forebears were getting their daily diet by the use of the club and spear. If you could shoot, would you like that?”

He did not want her to say yes, and she did say, “No; I set my sporting limits at the salmon.”

“That is to say, pretty well up the scale. I confess that for me salmon-fishing is the noblest of the sports.”

“Why is it? For myself, I like it; I hardly know why. But I want to hear why you speak of it so warmly. You shoot, of course?”

“Yes. All manner of things, when I get the time. As to this fishing, I don’t think I spoke at random. It requires some skill,—not too much, or too intense attention. One is free to mix it with a book, or with deep thinkings, or with the laziest mind-idleness. Then, too, one’s curiosity is kept up by the unguessable riddles of the ways of salmon. We know no 242more about salmon than we know about—well, I leave you to fill the gap.”

“It is easy to guess,” she cried, “what the other term of all difficult comparisons is for men.”

“Woman, I humbly presume you to mean. Indeed, I at least might be excused if I so said. I have no sister, no cousins, indeed; no mother—now,” and he paused. “I am in truth alone in the world since after the war, when I wandered north, a pretty sorry sort of a half-educated orphan.”

“And what did you do then?” She felt agreeably the courteous deference of the young man’s manner, and liked the brief emotion of his pause as he spoke of his mother, nor less the soft Southern accent.

“Oh, I got work on a railroad as a chain-bearer, and worked up until I made a little invention, which I sold, and with the money I went to the Troy scientific school. It was pretty tough, because I had to do double work on account of my want of early training. However, I got through.”

“And then?”

“Oh, then I was employed as an engineer, and, by and by, the firm I am now in took up some of my new notions about bridge-building. I ought to ask pardon for talking about myself. I really think it was your fault.”

“I am not over-penitent. I think, with my father, that the lives of men who succeed are interesting.”

“Have I succeeded? I suppose that fellow Ellett has been indulging you all with my virtues and capacities.”

“Perhaps!” And now a look at the face would 243have been desirable. He said no more for a moment. Then Miss Lyndsay went on:

“You were about to say—”

“No, I was not. Yes, I was. I was about to say that success in life means many things. Material success I have had. There are other successes. I have by no means all I want.”

“And what else do you want? Immaterial success? I hardly know what that is; but one can’t be consistently wise.”

He laughed. “Oh, I am a fellow full of wants.”

“Do you get what you want, as a rule? I sometimes envy men the battles of their lives.”

“Yes, mostly I get what I want. When I want things, I so terribly want them that not to win is—is unpleasant.”

“Oh!” she cried, “did you see that salmon jump? I should like to be a salmon, just an hour, to know why they want the fly. They don’t want it to eat, do they?”

“No. But also we ourselves want many things which we can’t eat.”

She laughed outright, which is at times provoking when the face is invisible.

“It is my turn now,” he said. “What amuses you?”

“Nothing!” This was hardly true. She was mirthfully overcome at the idea of Carington as a salmon, and somebody casting a fly over that curly head. “Oh, nothing.”

“I know better,” he said.

“Indeed? What kind of a fly would you advise as a lure to a human salmon?”

244“That is a pretty serious question. It is to be a male salmon, I presume. What would I rise to? Money, good looks, character, position.”

“I might suggest a killing combination fly,” she returned.

“That reminds me pleasantly of my old guide, Tom Dunham, who used to go with me on Lake Superior. He was an old beaver-trapper. Once I asked him how he baited his traps. He said, ‘Women beavers is easy satisfied with one thing for a bait, but men beavers is best took with two or three kinds, all just sot to one, in a bait.’”

“I don’t see the moral.”

“Oh, that is a matter of choice. The beaver, once in the trap, has leisure to select the moral.”

“Rather. How interesting these guides must be! The lonely life in the woods must result in the making of some singular characters. Or do they all become dull and taciturn?”

“Some do. Tom was a most amusing person. I remember we were lying one night at the Pictured Rocks, on the south shore. I can see now the dim line of cliffs, and the camp-fire, and the loons on the lake, taken by the broad red band of ruddy light flashing far over the waters. Tom was talking beaver. At last I told him a beaver story out of one of Buckland’s books. It doesn’t bore you?”

“Oh, no. I love stories.”

“Well, once on a time, when folks wore beaver hats, an ancient beaver sat on a dam, and discoursed wisdom to a young beaver. Presently came floating down-stream a beaver hat. ‘What is that?’ cried the 245young beaver. Then the old beaver wiped his eyes with his long, hairy tail, and said, ‘My son, that is our grandfather!’”

“Delightful! Do tell the boys that.”

“Tom considered this incident in silence until at last I said, ‘Tom, I don’t suppose you believe that story?’ ‘Well, now,’ says Tom, ‘that just shows you don’t know nothin’ about beavers. In course he knowed his own granddaddy.’”

“That is really charming.”

“Oh, here is the pool.” Their places were now shifted, Carington casting over Miss Lyndsay. For an hour he fished in a distracted way, to Michelle’s disgust, for the fisherman sat for the most part, and paid less attention to the fly than to the back of Miss Lyndsay’s neck, and a pair of delicately modeled ears, and the most distracting lot of hair, which had been disturbed in her casting, and in and out of which two hands were busy with mysteriously guided efforts at readjustment. Also, he wondered how much of a woman’s nature one could learn from these limited opportunities.

After a good deal of talk, with some dangerous intervals of silence, he gave up fishing, saying, “It is no use,” and ordered the anchor up. It was now toward evening, and they were off and away to meet Mr. Lyndsay at the beach.

“Don’t paddle,” said Carington. “Keep her straight; that is all.”

He was more than willing to lengthen the time of their too brief voyage. Both seemed inclined to the lonely satisfaction of silent thought.

246As they neared the Island beach, Rose said, “I have had so delightful an afternoon that I almost forgot mama’s message. I was to ask you to come down to-morrow—no, Monday—night, after dinner, and Mr. Ellett, of course. We will try to show you what silly folk we can be. We are guilty of much folly, I assure you. We will play ‘Situations’—we call it 'Plots.’”

“What is that?”

“Oh, you will learn—and charades, I dare say.”

“It looks formidable.”

“It is—it will be. I have to get even with you about that bowman business.”

“But I am reeking with remorse.”

“I don’t believe it. By the way, in my moistened haste, I gave you my luck-piece, my dear little gold dollar.”

“Well.”

“I want it back.”

“And my pay? I do not work for nothing.”

“You shall have a big silver dollar.”

“No, that is worth only eighty-five cents: pure swindle that!”

“But I want it.”

“I like that.”

“I shall never rest till I get it.”

“I am so sorry.”

“But I really don’t care.”

“That is a relief to my conscience.”

“Oh, Pardy! I have killed a grilse and a thirty-eight-pound salmon.”

“And I nothing. Mr. Carington must have ordered 247all the fish up-stream. Might I ask for some water?”

“Yes. Michelle, get a jug fresh from the spring. Come to the tents. Alas, Mr. Lyndsay, to-morrow is Sunday—no fishing.”

“No, indeed. How good that water is! Rose, you might take that grilse to Mrs. Maybrook to-morrow.”

“I will, unless it is too hot. Good-by, Mr. Carington. How comfortable you look here!” They were now in the dinner-tent. “And books! You are worse than Aunt Anne.” And they went away.

Carington watched them from shore as they hailed Ellett, who went by them with three good fish.

“Now,” said Carington, “if it is cool in the morning, I shall go to see Mrs. Maybrook, to pay for the milk; and if it is warm, I shall go in the afternoon. I hope the thermometer will be definite.”