An Angler at Large/Chapter 29
The afterglow lingered long in the sky, for it was Midsummer Day and settled weather The West was a sea of pale primrose, where a few long purple cloud-islands floated. It was as if one stood on a height above some fairy Benbecula, flat, dove-coloured, and marked its coastline in innumerable inlets (where celestial sea-trout ran) reach out for ever to a horizon that was not. Behind me a peerless spire soared from amidst the dark green of elms, as if it would lose itself in the rose of the upper air. I stood on ancient turf, which had laid its seemly carpet of green velvet between odorous flower beds and tall, trim hedges, straight to the old house, where shone a single red window. Ten inches below my feet flowed the river, primrose out of that primrose sea, broad, silent, swift, to mingle almost instantly with woods, where night already dwelt. Large, oily rings appeared here and there upon the surface of the water, spread, died away, were succeeded by others, larger, oilier. The stillness was broken only by the sound of great fish feeding rapidly, greedily, on sedge flies. I cast and east. The frenzy was upon me that is born of the last moment of daylight, a rise of the big ones, and—an empty creel.
Over the turf, silently, there came towards me a dim figure, which as it approached resolved itself into the likeness of a lively old man, clothed in black, with an apron and gaiters upon his shapely legs, and a low-crowned, broad hat upon his head. His round cheeks were apples, his nose was coloured by nothing but the soundest port, yet his eyes were bright and youthful—a rotund, comfortable elder. Lace ruffles were at his wrists, and a pair of bands depended below his two ample chins. I assumed him to be some dignitary of the cathedral with an old-fashioned taste in dress. A huge creel was slung over his plump shoulders, and in his hand he bore a tremendous fishing-rod. These things placed him among the fraternity.
He said, "Master, well met!" and I understood him to be a facetious old gentleman. Humour was out of harmony with my mood, but I strove to be civil. "Grammercy!" said I, "vastly well met!" He did not smile, and I put him down as one of those humorists whom their own wit alone entertains, and went on fishing. Minutes were precious. I was aware that he remained beside me. Presently: "So ends another merry Midsummer Day," he observed, and I heard a faint sigh follow the words. "It has brought me right good sport whose memory shall sweeten all my long year." Evidently he got a day on the water each season. I tried to be glad that he had done well—I said I was; but my voice was not convincing. He detected its false ring instantly. "And you, good master," he said, "have catched, I doubt not, an honest store of fishes?" I said, not too amiably (or too truthfully—but who can blame me?) that I had risen several big trout, but had grassed nothing all day. This latter statement the condition of my creel made necessary. He was just the sort of complacent old creature who would not be satisfied with verbal evidence. "Tush, tush!" he observed, "what make of angler is this?" I considered whether I might, without all loss of self-respect, take this venomous ancient by his admirable middle and heave him into the river. I decided that at all costs I must keep my hands off him. I owed my fishing to a churchman, and the clergy hang together.
I busied myself with casting above some particularly oily rings. "And yet," he remarked critically to the sunset, "he throweth deftly and far. But why kneeleth he?"
I rose abruptly and went fifty yards up stream. I have seldom done a ruder thing, but I was not myself. And this was nothing to what I could have done had I not been resolved to show him forbearance. I stared miserably at water which nothing broke. The first spectral wreaths of the river mists were lightening the darkness upon the further bank.
"Good master,"—unheard he had rejoined me—"prithee suffer a brother angler to make closer acquaintance with that so-far-throwing wand." I held out my split cane to him dumbly. He did not take it, but he bent over it, peering at it through the small square spectacles he wore. "Aye," he said," a pretty tool and a valiant. But what device is this?" "That," said I, in scorn of him, "is the reel. You perceive, simple sir, that the line, passing through these excellently contrived rings upon the so-valiant wand is retained upon a central drum, and may be drawn off" (I drew some off) "or rolled up at will by the miraculous turning of this deft little pin." I wound up, as ironically as I might.
Again my humour failed to touch him. His eyes were round with amazement and delight. "Is it even so?" he breathed reverently. I perceived that I had to do with a lunatic or a supreme artist, in either of which cases everything must be forgiven him. Humouring him or playing up to him—I cared not which, for the rise was over—I indicated the gut trace. "This," I said, "is the gut, made by extending the entrails of the silkworm. See how strong it is, and how transparent." I tugged at it. "And see here is the fly—a sedge. There are five hundred other patterns (sold at half a crown a dozen), all of which I have in these boxes." I opened my creel, and permitted him to peep within. "This," I went on, "is my bottle of paraffin oil, with which I anoint the fly to make it float more yarely, and so deceive and master these subtle fishes. These are the pincers with which I pick my flies out of their boxes. Here is a tube of dubbin—I smear it on my line, reverend bloke, and this causes it to float most excellently. Thus with but one little twitch I do hook the brutes. Here is a piece of blotting-paper to dry my flies withal if haply they be wetted. Here"
"Good gentleman," he said, interrupting, "no more, I pray you! I am dazed. Tell me but one thing. How cometh it that with so many cunning aids thy skill, which sufficeth surely, as I have seen, hath brought nothing to land in a long day's angling?" I was silent. A question at once more pertinent and more impertinent had never yet been put to me, or one less easy to answer. "Behold," he said, "these my own unworthy weapons; my wand a single limber shoot of ash; my line tied to its tip; three twisted strands from the tail of my good grey mare, and my two great bouncing bumbles fashioned by these fingers from the hackles of my old game-cock that died gloriously in Will Andrews' pit a sennight come Tuesday." As I looked at the dreadful tackle my heart swelled with pity for the man. But he had said something about good sport. Well, there were chub in this part of the river; he might conceivably have caught a brace of chub.
"And yet," he went on, "see what I have taken." As he spoke he unslung his creel, inverted it, and upon the grass there poured a cascade of trout—fat, golden, ponderous. Instinctively I removed my hat. Lunatic or fantastic, here was my master. "These be a dozen and three," he said in a satisfied voice. "The others are above, concealed beneath a bush. These, since seven of the clock." "The others!" I gasped: "how many, in Heaven's name?" "Three score and two," he announced simply. "Look you!"—he moved the heap of fish with his hand, and disclosed a stupendous fish of about 6 lb. weight—"here is a shapely gentleman. A gladsome time he gave me, forcing me to cast all twice to the river. But the floating wand betrayed him. I rode my pony in to him, and now he is mine!"
"You rode your pony?" "Ay, marry! I'm not so young as I was, and old Tom has carried me since noon. He has gone round to stable, for my turf is not for hooves to tread." "Your turf?" "Ay, marry!" said the old gentleman carelessly, as he placed the fish back in the creel. "Hah!" he exclaimed, weighing the thing in his hand, "I have seen a worse evening's fishing. Trust me! There is two stone in there, my master!" As he spoke the strap gave beneath the inordinate weight of chalk-stream trout, and slipped through his fingers. The creel fell to earth. I stooped—for this man was worthy of all reverence—and picked the thing up, bracing myself unconsciously to lift. My body flew upwards with a jerk which caused me severe pain, and when I had recovered from the shock of surprise the creel was in his hands. In the gathering darkness I must have failed to take hold of it.
"Sir," he said, "I thank you. And now I will even wish you a good night's rest, and, an you angle on the morrow, a fair south wind and a dark water." So saying he began to move silently away. "But don't you fish to-morrow?" I cried. It would be an education to see this angler at work.
The river mist was thickening fast, and partly by the faint pallor in the west, which was all that remained of Midsummer Day, partly by the golden glow of the moon, now climbing among the branches of the elms in the close, I could see his vague but comfortable shape ambling softly from me. "Let me see you fish to-morrow," I called. "Nay, nay!" he replied, his voice lessened by distance, "not to-morrow, gentle sir; I must wait my year—my long, long year." Again I heard the gentle sigh, and with it the dark shadow that was my acquaintance became one with the blackness that filled a space between two ageless yews.
This is not true.