An Angler at Large/Chapter 42
To-morrow we go away.
In half an hour it will be too dark to fish.
Let us hurry on to the Mill pool. I always hurry on to the Mill pool, for it used to be the best place on the river. Here is broad water and deep, scooping out the bank in a great S all along which the little dimpling rises were wont long ago to tell of great feeding trouts. I always hope to see them again.
Perhaps to-night.
Below the Mill hatch is camp sheathing, thirty yards of it and rough water against it. And you know what that means. Only this summer it doesn't. Below the camp sheathing is a willow. Its roots, in the rough water, always hold a patch of floating weed, and you know what that ought to mean.
Below this willow is a thin rapid which is never without its rises (but they are all little graylings this year). And out on the glide beyond there was formerly always a tidy trout. And in under the alder bush below there may be anything up to five pounds. But there won't be.
Oh! the Mill pool used to be a great institution.
It is a great institution. For I will lash my poor old Hope yet again into activity. To-morrow I shall have no further use for her. For to-morrow we go away.
The Mill pool is a great institution. I declare it. I profess it. It is placed on the top of the water, which is the right situation for a Mill pool. It never fails. I say it never fails. It will not fail me to-night. It is inconceivable that the Mill pool should ever fail.
What though the Lower End lie dead and dull at ten o'clock? What though at midday the long withy-bed yield nothing but broken gut and filled waders? What though, by two, the Island has beaten a man, and the backwater above it by four, and the Slow Water by five, and the Bridge Reach by six, and Crab Hatch by seven, and the Crab backwater by eight, and the Two Meadows by nine. Hurry on to the Mill. A red sedge will do the trick yet. There is half an hour more of light, and the pool is in the very eye of the afterglow.
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Nothing is rising in the Mill pool.
And to-morrow we go away.
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The end of our time here has approached with frightful rapidity. For the last week I have been going about a prey to settled gloom. Every passing second has seemed to bring me a day nearer to exile. I have not fished. I have rested upon my three-and-a-half pounder. No anti-climaxes for me.
What am I doing with this rod and landing net, by the Mill pool?
Oh, my dear sir, I am not a consistent person at all, you know. Besides, I am not really fishing. Only saying good-bye. And it is madness to come near a river without a rod.
Besides, look at the water. Look at it, I say. What chance do you fancy I have of an anti-climax? I said there were to be none for me.
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To-morrow we go away.
The thoughts of that very large fish has done a little—only a little—to check the galloping of the moments.
It is matter for speculation at what moment in a season of bliss the character of time's flight changes. Two months ago I remember the end of every day was celebrated by me with slappings on the back because I had by so much increased the sum of my enjoyment of Willows. I counted the hours I had had.
For a long time, now, I have counted those that remain.
When did I change my attitude towards time's advance? I do not know, but I know that to-day I regard its haste with despair.
Touching that much longer, more varied and even more delightful sojourn upon which I am engaged I have not, I fancy, yet reached the dividing point. Still (more than ever in the past two years), I hug the possession of my days as they are completed; not yet do I regard them as gone. Still I reach out to meet them as they come, welcoming them as good full friends, not frowning upon them as evanescent tricksters who dawn but to close. I hope to be doing the same when (and if) I am a hundred and forty. I can never see why that fellow Death should be permitted to spoil one's time here. Let him be content with his certain win or wins (for he commonly gets in more than one shrewd knock at a man). Physically, I admit him my superior, because I have to. I am not his match at all. I own it. (A lot he cares.) But I decline to have him blundering about in front of me when I am painting, or throwing stones in the water when I am fishing, or sitting third with my wife and me. And I laugh at him. For I know that in whatever I do, I am achieving immortality—even when I write—not the immortality of my miserable name, but the immortality of my doings and words, each least one of which has its influence now and for ever. As the splash of my cocked dun shall be felt in Orion and further and further than that, till Orion ceases to be and afterwards and afterwards, so my lightest good-morning has within it the welfare or misery of men to come. And this is said humbly and not otherwise. Let my good mornings therefore be as good as I can make them and my good nights and all that lies between.
But though I dismiss from my consideration the General Terminator of Pleasant Experiences, I cannot look with equal contempt upon the day of my departure from this place. The first is an uncertain certainty, incalculable, foolishness to brood upon.
But the boxes are packed.
And now it is too dark for any more fishing. Let us reel up for the year—Someone is waiting for me. There, above Ottley Down, is the glow of the coming moon, which is to light my wife and me on our last walk round the village.
And as we must be alone for this, I will wish you good-bye.