An Angler at Large/Chapter 23
This night a red sedge and I were in the meadow below Crab Hatch from 9.0 to 10.0, and later. I saw nothing move, caught nothing, cared nothing. The evening was a benediction, dry, warm, still; not a hint of mist anywhere, not a flaw on the mirror of the stream. The sky was a field of cloud picked out in smoky violet with fish scales of darkest brown, but there flared above the valley's elbow one broad band of white light. As I crept along the bank it glinted ghostly among the mysterious fields. And always, dying, it moved steadily into the North. Under the banks lurked endless gloom, and at my feet the thinnest rippling shallow, at this unrevealing hour, seemed motionless, as if the stillness of the night had gripped the very river.
The Valley, by day so bright, so filled with colour and life and feature—the spread carpet of tinted grasses, the swelling golden green walls of turf, the arched canopy of flecked blue, the sombre beech woods, the grey tremulous willows, the brown thatch, the little wreaths of opal smoke, the superb elms that dominate all—the valley was now but a valley of shadows, formless, unguessable. Only the black hedges might be traced against the pallor of field and hill, and the elms, indefinite but unconquered, surged violet-edged over the sky-line. The pollards, too, seemed soft round clouds that had come to rest by the water. On Ottley Down the clump lay like a couched lion, rather terrible of aspect. It was as if some great beast of the night had come early to the hill's edge, and now waited for utter darkness before it descended upon the village.
On the rail of the wooden bridge I leaned and stared after the sun, and thanked God that I am not as other men are, such men as, at that same moment, might be clearing their way remorselessly, with a fair thing upon their arm, towards a buffet. On the bridge one had no company but oneself. One had elbow-room, at any rate. Had a certain fair thing been with me, I had been well content, but she was gone to bed like a sensible woman.
And I listened to the sounds of the night.
There are more of these by the stream than elsewhere, on the road, or in the fields. There stealthy, dry little noises come out of the hedges where the field people go about their business. A goat-sucker may purr, a horse snort, a cow low, a cock give tongue. But these may all be heard by the river, and the river adds to them a number of sounds all its own. Against the piles of the bridge the water runs with a barely perceptible chuckle. A coot clucks far off. A water-rat, coasting in the blackness, plunges as one moves. The big trout flop over after the fat sedge flies. And now and then loud sucking sounds break out under the banks. I have been taught to believe the frogs to be responsible for these vulgar noises.
All is peace.
But to-night, somewhere up stream, there was a heavy, lunging splash, followed by a thin pitiful squeaking; then silence. Another heavier splash, three faint feeble cries, and again silence.
And again silence. It was over, whatever it was. The incident was closed. But the night did not seem so sweet as heretofore, and I came indoors.