An Angler at Large/Chapter 25
Here follows the story of Bran-Newcome, with whom, in a certain year of rain and wind, I had to do. Read and you shall learn of our little private war, how it began in the early days of May, and how articles of peace were signed on the twenty-eighth of June under the willows on the bank that lies between the Running Ditch and the Slow Water by the road to Great Ottley.
This was in the good old days when I used to catch fishes out of Clere, the bad old days when the angling had no competition, and I used to come rushing down here by a leaden-footed express train each Friday night and go away on Monday morning and fish perpetually in between, the bad old days when there was no harp in the valley—only the fishes and me.
You are to know that the Slow Water is not all mine to fish. From half-way along it down to the island the main stream is forbidden to me. At the top of this alien territory is a strong fence some eight feet high, which projects not less than three feet into the stream. Along its top an incalculable number of sharp hooks have been driven. Among these hooks and around this wood, wherever possible, barbed wire has been wound with a lavish hand. No expense has been spared to make this fence impregnable. A notice-board, moreover, threatens with penalties those who shall violate the rights of piscary of Sir Abinger Bran-Newcome. But no mere process of law could have any terrors for the resolute soul which could even contemplate an assault upon a position of such obvious strength. I have never seen a fishing boundary which it was more impossible to ignore. Such a fortification is an insult. The man who raises it and maintains it shows that he classes his neighbours with the housebreaker and the horse-thief and the burner of ricks. To catch his fishes—if lawfully it may be done—becomes a meritorious act.
When, therefore, I reached this spot on my first visit for that long-ago year and saw a trout rise under the far bank just opposite the fence, I did not inquire too closely into his precise position in relation to the boundary, but cast over him eagerly and put him down without much trouble. From subsequent observation, I am able to state that a line drawn at right angles to the course of the stream from the point of the fence to the opposite bank would have passed through that trout, just behind the gills. So my mind is quite easy. His head was in my water. Let the other fellow have his tail. Having put this trout down, I passed on; and so much for our preliminary skirmish.
I thought no more about him till the next day when, approaching the place, I remembered the rise of the day before and came warily to the bank. A short description of the theatre of war may not be superfluous.
I was confined here to one side of the river, which at this point is about twenty yards broad. No one can wade in the Slow Water and live. The bank is three feet high. A line of tall willows fringes it thickly. One of them is missing, the one next the fence. This alone makes it possible to cast across the stream. Crouching close to the fence and working the point perpendicularly, it can be done, for I learned to do it. On one's immediate right the entanglements of Sir Bran menace rod and tackle. On one's immediate left is a spreading willow. Oh, it was a happy little corner for a bungling fool to fish away in it some of the best hours of his life.
The position, then, demands a perfectly straight cut across the water. Now on every day on which I fished during that May and most of that June, the river was very high and the wind was from the right, strong and down stream. So, unless the line was thrown very loosely on to the water the heavy current caught it instantly, the fly was dragged out into the middle with a wake like a motor-boat and the fish was put down.
The position from my point of view was deplorable. For who was I—who am I, just Heaven!—to spare line when I am throwing to a fish twenty yards away?
Nevertheless, stimulated by the sight of the fence, I waded through the Running Ditch and wallowed through the wet grass, as yet not very high (though very wet), till I was able to look at the water. My fish was hard at work. Nothing that came his way went past him. I could see him plainly—a good trout about 2 lb. weight lying just under the bank in a little bay. I made my dispositions—my ridiculous, presumptuous dispositions. I tied on some silly fly or other—unless I had one on already, which vital point in my narrative I confess I forget. I got out my absurd line; I made my asinine allowance for the wind, and I cast. When the wind and the current had done their worst with my lure, the fish had gone away.
Now, because in those days I still had some troublesome ideas about those things which it is proper for a dry-fly angler to do, I waited there among the great man-eating nettles for ten long minutes, and was just about to release myself when the trout came back and began to gulp duns as if he was mad. On that occasion I put him down four times.
It was on the Sabbath that I named him Bran-Newcome. On this day I drove him off almost at once because my fly, at the first delicate cast, became involved among the hooks and wire of my neighbour's landmark, and I had to stand up and make an exhibition of myself. I went back to London next day, but I was burdened with a great oath to bring Bran-Newcome to grass before the season should be out. One undertakes these obligations lightly, not realising what they mean. Had I been in my senses I should have agreed with myself to consider Bran-Newcome a small, ill-conditioned trout, or I should have remembered that my title to fish for him was dubious. I should have left him to my neighbour behind his rampart. But in truth I was possessed by the fish.
All through May, whenever I was in Willows, I was always going up to that fence to see if he was feeding. My sport higher up and lower down stream was ruined by the thought that he might be feeding. I could not enjoy my own food because he might be enjoying his. I saw him at it as I fell asleep at night. I woke muttering his name. He got between me and my work in London, though I did not mind this at all. The moment I reached Willows I was off to the fence. I was no better than a purist.
I skip five woeful weeks.
I would have you suppose the nettles growing higher and fiercer, the burdocks waxing ranker, the hemlocks stronger through which I wormed my way daily, amongst which I swore and sweltered, as I laid for the life of Bran-Newcome; the meadow-sweet growing more luxuriant, the willow-branches more spreading, the barbed wire ever more tough in which I caught and lost my flies. But on the twenty-eighth of June—ah! on the twenty-eighth of June—I caught him.
Who cares about the pattern of fly, or the state of the weather? Who cares how he fought? These are petty matters. Believe me, I caught him. I say, I caught him. He lay at my feet. The day was mine. He would flout me no more. I could angle for other fishes.
I took up the landing-net.
And then—I knew that I could not kill him. I had come to endow this fish with a personality, to regard him as an enemy to my peace of mind, to picture him to myself as an incarnation of all the vices, to feel that to rid the river of his accursed presence was a sacred duty—I had conceived a positive hatred of him. Yet, as I poised the net handle above his skull I caught his eye, and it unmanned me as the eye of C. Marius unmanned the Gaul whom they sent to dispatch him. Bran-Newcome's eye was an honest eye, the eye of a decent, peaceable, hardworking stay-at-home. In it I read none of that extreme malevolence towards myself with which I had credited him. There was not even resentment in it. It was only the silly frightened eye of a fish out of water. He did not know who or what I was. Did he so much as connect me with his present inability to breathe? My estimate of Bran-Newcome's character changed as suddenly as it had been formed gradually. No; our relations had grown too personal, too intimate. I was taken with a kind of shame to think that I could meditate the assassination of this companion of so many good hours by the water. Even as the Gaul threw away his sword, so I threw away my net, and I cried aloud: "I cannot slay Bran-Newcome!" I laid him in the stream; he swam slowly away; and I have never seen him again.
I used to do silly things like that—in those days, when I used to catch many fishes out of the Clere.
Can it be that Generosity is the Child of Affluence? Can it? Can it?