Maud had happened to come across in a book she was reading on the way up
to Scotland an account of an epidemic of typhoid, in which the
charitable lady (vicar's wife) of the place sat by the bedsides of the
patients, held their hands, and fed them with "cooling fruits." It
occurred to her as possible, though not very likely, that the treatment
of typhoid had undergone alterations even as radical as this indicated,
since she had had the disease herself, and on arrival she had asked the
doctor, quoting this remarkable passage, if she should telegraph for a
supply of cooling fruits. The excellent Dr. Symes, though not given
either to joking or quick in the perception of a joke, had laughed
immoderately.
"Cooling fruits!" he said. "Feed them with cooling fruits, Lady Maud,
and you will soon stop the epidemic, because everybody will be dead."
Then he checked his laughter. "It was good of you to come," he said,
"but you have your work up at the house. Just keep Lord Thurso--because
I know him--from moping and being miserable. I am glad you came with
him. But when he is away, down in the village, do what you please apart
from the cooling fruits. I suggest your being out of doors all you can.
You will have your work in the evening, and the sun and the wind and the
rain, which pray God we get, will fit you best for it."
* * * * *
This advice came into her head the next morning after she had seen
Thurso off to the village, and it was counsel which jumped with her
inclinations, since, according to her view, the world (especially the
world of out-of-doors) was a swarm of delightful and congenial
occupations, and of them all none was so entrancing as catching
sea-trout on a light rod and with light tackle. And since the river,
which should be full of these inimitable fish, ran within some half-mile
of the house, there was no great difficulty in the way of putting the
doctor's recommendation into practice. She knew, of course, nothing of
the fact that Thurso had let the fishing to the American whom he had met
yesterday in the street, and had decided not to ask to dinner.
Thurso was not to come home to lunch that day, and as the house would be
full of workmen busy shifting furniture, and making the rooms ready,
under the superintendence of one of the doctors, for the reception of
the typhoid patients, Maud went off to the river, without a word to
anyone, except an order for a sandwich lunch, with a heart that was high
and exultant in spite of the surrounding calamitous conditions. This
turning of the house into a hospital was entirely characteristic of
Thurso; she rejoiced to think that their comfort, not money alone, was
being sacrificed to sufferers. It was a cheap charity to give money, to
spend merely unless expense pinched one, but it was a far more real
effort of sympathy to turn the house into a feverward. It was that which
brought people into touch, the knowledge that somebody's relief implied
somebody else's trouble. Thurso was rich, the cost of what he did was of
no account, but this was a more active sympathy.
Sandie, poor fellow, her special fishing gillie, was down with typhoid,
and his case, as she knew, was very serious; so she set off alone, with
a sandwich in her creel, and a light rod and a landing-net, feeling
rather heartless, for she so much expected an enchanting day. She had to
a huge degree that sensible gift which enabled her, when she had done
her best in one direction, to enjoy the pleasure that lay before her in
another; and being satisfied that she could not be of the slightest use
during these next hours, either at home or in the village with the
"cooling fruits," she let herself go with regard to the excitement of
the river-side. Her natural _joie de vivre_ gilded all employments for
her, but this angling for sea-trout had no need of gilding, since it was
gold already. Nothing could be more entrancing--for hours one might cast
an unclaimed fly upon the waters, yet never lose the confident
anticipation that at any moment the swirl of submerged strength and
activity would bend the rod to that glorious curve that the fisherman
knows to be the true attack of what he has never seen. Like everything
else that anybody really feels it to be worth while doing (keeping
accounts alone being excepted), mystery and romance illuminated the
pursuit, and as she walked down to the river, all else--Thurso's
trouble, the fever-stricken village and its tragedies--were all sponged
off her mind. Her heart was no less tender and solicitous than it had
been, but her attention was engaged. Instead, mixed with the excitement
of her anticipations, the dreadful things that might be in store for
her by the river were in her mind, for to fish with a big sea-trout fly
might easily attract the notice of the sea-trout's mightier cousins, in
which case good-bye, probably, to the light tackle. But as it was no
sport to catch sea-trout on a salmon-rod, Maud took this chance with a
light heart.
* * * * *
The day was one of those grey days (rare in the North, where a grey day
implies for the most part an east wind, which sucks the colour out of
land and sky), with soft breezes from the south-west, which made heather
and hillside and golden gorse and river more brilliant and full of
colour than even the direct sunbeams, and, preoccupied though Maud was
with the prospects of her fishing, her mind kept paying little flying
visits to the beauty of the morning. Five minutes after she had left the
house she was absolutely alone, and no sight either of human form or
human habitation broke the intense solitude of eye and ear which to
such as her makes so dear and intimate a companionship. For she loved
the pleasant things of the earth--the honey-scented heather and the
sunshine of the gorse, and the close, silent friendship of Nature,
unvexed and undistracted by human presences. To her, as to St. Francis,
the trees were her dear brothers, and the sky and river her dear
sisters, and somehow also the very sea-trout, in the slaughter of which
she hoped to spend a delightful day, were blood relations and beloved by
her. She could not have explained that attitude at all: she would
frankly have admitted that it implied an inconsistency. But there the
fact was.
And here at last was the rushing, jubilant river, which a rainy May had
filled from bank to bank. She struck it at the Bridge Pool, at the head
of which the stream was spanned by a swaying, airy suspension bridge,
from which the pool took its name. Deep water lay on the near side, and
a considerable piece of shallow water on the other; but just beyond the
shallows, could she but cast over it, ran a little channel she knew
well, since it was a favourite place for the sea-trout. So she crossed
the swaying, dancing bridge, debating within herself the choice of a
fly. The river was high, the sky grey, and sea-trout would probably
prefer a rather large fly, but so, unfortunately, would salmon. However,
she must chance that--the big fly was certainly the correct game.
Five minutes was enough for the soaking of a cast and the adjustment of
her rod, and already, with an attack of "fisherman's heart," which makes
that organ apparently shift from its normal position into the throat,
she began casting from just below the bridge. But with the longest line
of which she was capable she could not reach that channel of deep water,
and if she did not do that she might as usefully go a-fishing in a pail,
like Simple Simon. But ... there was nobody within sight, and next
minute she had kilted her skirts till she could wade out over that
barren shoal-water, and stand where, with the cool bright water flowing
nearly up to her knees, yet leaving her skirt unwetted, she could reach
the deeper water beyond. Well she knew what a wet skirt meant to one who
proposed to walk and fish all day; the heavy clinging blanket made all
activity, all lightness of going, out of the question, and as she waded
out she hitched it an inch or two higher. Then for a moment she had to
pause to laugh at the figure she must inevitably be presenting were
there anyone to see her. There was a knitted jersey for her upper half,
a tweed cap for her head, a much kilted skirt and stockings for the
rest. Her beauty and the vigour and grace of her limbs she forgot to
consider, just as a beholder, had there been one, might have paid but
scanty attention to the cap and jersey and skirt. But from where she
stood she could cast over the coveted channel.
Half a dozen times her fly went on its quiet, unerring circuit, then
suddenly a gulp and a fin broke the surface just below it, and with
another gulp her heart jumped upwards from her throat into her very
mouth. The owner of that fin had not touched her fly, but--oh, the
rapture and danger of it!--he was no sea-trout, but a fresh-run salmon.
At that the pure sporting instinct usurped all other feeling. Light
though her rod was and light her tackle, since there was a salmon in the
river that felt an interest in her Jock Scott, she must try to catch
him. He might (probably would) break her: then she would be broken. She
had no gaff; very well, she must do without. He was a heavy fish too;
she had seen enough of him for that. What a desperate and heavenly
adventure!
* * * * *
She waded ashore, being far too wise in the science to cast over him
again at once, preferring to wait a minute or two before she tempted him
again, and as she gained dry land she saw that there was a man half-way
across the bridge just above the pool. He carried a salmon-rod over his
shoulder, and a fishing-bag slung by a strap. He could not, of course,
be fishing here on Thurso's water, and she guessed he must be going over
to Scarsdale, where she knew that some new tenants had taken the lodge.
But she gave him only the slightest and most fleeting attention, being
far more interested that moment in one particular fish than in any
particular man, and took no further notice of him, except that she
unkilted her skirt an inch or two, for it showed really too much of what
was called "leg." Then, without giving a further glance at the figure on
the bridge, who had paused there watching her, she walked back again
through the shallows to a point some ten yards above that where she had
raised the fish, in order to make sure of casting over him again. The
unkilted skirt dragged a little in the water, but she would have waded
neck-deep after that fish. Also--this popped in and out of her
mind--there was a man watching, and she had no objection to a gallery
when she was fishing. She would show him how to--well, probably lose, a
salmon on trout-tackle with a trout-rod.
Yard by yard she moved down to where the dear monster had risen before.
There he was again, but this time no fin broke the surface, only a
submerged boil came at her fly. But this was the true attack--the
suddenly bent rod, the sudden message on the line. At the same moment,
out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the man had moved from his
place on the bridge, and was coming up behind her on the bank.
But that occupied her infinitesimally; all that she really knew was that
she was the possessor of a light trout-rod, fitted with light tackle, at
the far end of which at the present moment there happened to be a
salmon. Her landing-net was somewhere on the bank, but, as far as that
went, it would be just as useful to her if it had been at Jericho
instead. But immediately the fish bolted down-stream, and her reel sang
shrilly. Then, like an express train, he came back, and with the
calmness of despair she reeled in, thinking for the moment he meant to
go up under the bridge, in which case there would be need to soak
another cast and look out another fly. But he changed his mind, and once
more, after two or three rushes, he was opposite to her just where she
had hooked him originally, shaking his head, so it seemed, for the rod
jerked and jumped, yet no line ran out. Maud had moved back across the
shoal-water during these manoeuvres so as to gain the shore again, for
she knew she must get somewhere where she could run, when from close
behind her came a level, pleasant voice.
"He is well hooked," he said; "I saw him take it. But he'll be off
down-stream in a minute, and there are a hundred yards of rapid before
the next pool. I should get to shore quick if I were you, and be ready
to run."
Maud still thought of nothing but her fish, which had already begun to
bore slowly away into the deep water on the far side of the river, and
she knew well what that would lead to. And she replied to the voice as
if it had been only her own thoughts, which were identical, with which
she was communing.
"Yes, I know," she said; "he's making for the deep water now. There!"
She splashed her way through the margin of the shoal-water, nearly
tripping up over a submerged stone, just as the fish felt the full
current of the river, and was off, full-finned, down-stream. Her reel
screamed out, and in a couple of seconds there was a dreadful length of
line between her and the fly. But she gained the smooth turf of the
bank, and was off like an arrow after him, when, just before matters
were desperate, a bend in the rapids brought her nearer to him, and,
still running, she reeled hurriedly in. Then--oh, blessed haven!--he
reached the deep water at the head of the pool below, and, swimming
there in small circles, allowed her to recapture more of her line. Then,
still without taking her eyes off the water (for she felt sure that the
owner of the voice had run down behind her), she spoke to him again.
"The humour of the situation is that I have only the very lightest
tackle," she said; "for I came out after sea-trout. But luckily my fish
doesn't know that. And would you be so kind as to get my landing-net? I
left it on the bank just below the bridge."
"I saw it and brought it," said the voice. "But I don't know what you
want it for. He's a twenty-pounder."
The voice was a very pleasant and friendly one, and Maud probably
noticed that instinctively, for she spoke to this man whom she had never
seen as if he was of her own class, anyhow. And here she laughed
suddenly.
"I wonder what is going to happen next," she said. "That's half the joy
of fishing, isn't it? Oh, look!"
For the first time the fish jumped, showing himself from head to tail,
and splashed soundingly back into the pool again.
"Far side of twenty pounds," remarked the voice. "I told my gillie, I'm
glad to say, to be down here by eleven, and he will bring a gaff. He
should be here every minute. But there'll be no gaffing going on just
yet."
This turned out to be perfectly true, and a dozen times in the next
quarter of an hour Maud knew that she was within an ace of losing her
fish. He behaved like the lusty fresh-run monster that he was, making
disconcerting rushes down to the very tail of the pool, and running out
her line almost to its last yard before she had time to follow him down
the steep stony bank. Then he would seek the very deepest holes, and lie
there sulking or jiggering, and putting the most dangerous snapping
strains on her light tackle. Then with a rush he would come straight
back towards her, so that, do what she would, there were long perilous
moments, though she reeled in with a lightning hand when he was on a
slack line. But at length he began to tire a little, and instead of
hurling himself about the pool, allowed himself to drift every now and
then with the stream. That, too, was dangerous, and she had to treat him
with the utmost gentleness, since both his dead weight and the press of
the water were against her. Then again a spark of his savage pride would
flare up, and he would protest against this mysterious compelling force;
but he was weakening.
"Ah, poor darling!" said Maud once, as his struggles grew less.
And the voice answered her.
"Yes, that's just how I often feel," it said.
A minute or two more passed.
"Isn't your gillie here yet?" she asked.
"Yes, he came ten minutes ago. Shall I gaff him for you, or shall he?"
"Who is he?" asked Maud.
"It's Duncan Fraser, my lady," said another voice.
"Oh, then, Duncan, please," she said. "Is that rude of me? I am so
sorry. But, you see, I know Duncan: he has often gaffed fish for me. Get
further down, Duncan, and lie down--get below him; don't let him see
you."
But there were several agitating moments yet. Each time the fish drifted
with the stream she towed him a little nearer to the bank; but though he
was very weak now and his protests feeble, he was still capable of
momentary violences. But at last he was a mere log, floating with fin
out of the water and broad silvery side shining. With a swift, crafty
movement, Duncan had him on the bank.
Maud laid down her rod and turned away.
"Kill him quick, Duncan," she said. "Is it done?" Then, with fine
inconsistence: "Oh, what a darling!" she cried. "Quite fresh from the
sea, too!"
Then for the first time Maud turned to look at the owner of the voice,
and found a tall, pleasant-looking young man smiling at her.
"I am really extremely obliged to you," she said. "I don't see how I
could have landed him without your gaff. There is nowhere in the pool
where you can tail a fish."
He laughed at this.
"Why, I think that is so," he said. "But I am much more your debtor.
I've never seen a fish so beautifully handled. Look at your tackle, too!
Well, I never!"
"Oh, I know the water," she said, "and that makes so much difference,
though I couldn't explain how."
Then suddenly the conjunction of a total stranger--American, too, so she
could hear--with a rod on her brother's river, in company with one of
her brother's gillies, struck her as odd.
"I am afraid my fish and I have detained you very long," she said. "You
are fishing at Scarsdale, I suppose."
"No, I am fishing here," he said. "At least, I shall walk down a mile or
two, and try the lower pools."
This was more solidly incomprehensible. Yet the man did not look in the
least like a poacher or trespasser. And how did it come about that
Duncan was with him? Maud grew just a shade dignified, though she was
still quite cordial.
"I'm sure you will excuse me," she said; "but, you know, this is my
brother's river, Lord Thurso's."
Again the stranger laughed with sincere and quiet merriment.
"Oh yes, I know," he said. "But, you see, he has been kind enough to let
the fishing to me until the end of July."
Maud stood quite silent a moment. A situation so horrible was dawning on
her that she was unable to speak. What had he said? That Thurso had let
him the fishing? Then, what was she? A poacher, caught red-handed by the
tenant himself.
"What?" she said. "Say it again."
The stranger took off his hat.
"May I introduce myself?" he said. "I am Mr. Bertie Cochrane. Excuse me;
I really can't help laughing. Why, it's just killing!"
Maud, already flushed with excitement and exercise, grew perfectly
crimson.
"Oh, what am I to do?" she said. "It is too awful! How can you laugh? I
can never forgive myself."
She raised her eyes to his again, and saw there such genuine, kindly
amusement that, in spite of her horror, she laughed too.
"Oh, don't make me laugh," she said. "It is too dreadful. Poaching! I
thought it was you who were going to poach, and it's been me!"
"Yes, it's serious," he said; "and it's for me to make conditions."
Maud had one moment's fleeting terror that he was going to make an ass
of himself, as she phrased it: ask to kiss her hand or do something
dreadful. But he did not look that kind of donkey.
"Oh, my conditions are not difficult," he said. "I only insist on your
not cutting short your day's fishing."
"Don't," she said. "I couldn't fish any more. Thank you very much, but I
really think I couldn't."
"I think you should make an effort. You must consider me as insisting.
You won't get in my way, nor I in yours. I meant to go a couple of miles
down--I did indeed."
The situation which five minutes ago was so appalling had quite lost its
horror; it was no longer unfaceable. Had Maud been told that morning
that in the inscrutable decrees of Fate she was going to be caught
poaching before lunch, she would have wished the earth to open and
swallow her sooner than that anything so unspeakable should happen to
her, while even two minutes ago there was nothing in life so impossible
as that she should continue her career of poaching. But her captor was
so unaffectedly friendly, his amusement, also, at her horror and the
cause of it so sincerely kind, that she was no longer horrified.
"Really, Mr. Cochrane, it is too good of you," she said. "But you must
first put me at my ease about one thing. You do know--don't you?--how
dreadfully sorry I am, and that I hadn't the very slightest idea that
Thurso had let the fishing. Oh, by the way, I really _am_ Lady Maud
Raynham."
"Why, yes," he said, and paused. "Then it's all settled."
The whole situation had gone, vanished, before his perfect simplicity
and kindliness, and she smiled back at him.
"Thank you very much," she said. "I shall love to have this day on the
river."
"And Duncan?" he said. "Pray keep him if you wish; otherwise I shall
send him home. His wife is ill of this--this typhoid."
"Oh no; please let him go home, then," said Maud.
Then Cochrane turned to the gillie.
"Get along home with you, Duncan," he said, "and be sure--tell
yourself--that you will find the wife still improving. I think you'll
find she's been getting better all morning. But if you give her any of
that medicine you will be just helping her--helping her, mind--to get
worse again. You understand? If you find when you get home she is worse,
give it her by all means. But you won't find that: you will find she is
better. Yes, gaff, landing-net, lunch--I've got them all, thanks. So off
with you, and let your heart go singing. God's looking after her this
morning, as He always did. She's going to get quite well. Don't lose
sight of that, and don't let her lose sight of it either."
He had apparently quite forgotten about Maud as he spoke, and had turned
a side face to her as he talked to the gillie. And though, during this
little speech, all the kindliness and merriment that had twinkled in his
eyes and twitched in his mouth when "the situation" had been unfolded
between Maud and himself was still there, yet there shone through it now
some vital and intense seriousness. He had laid his hand on the rough
homespun of Duncan's shoulder, and spoke with a quiet and convinced air
of authority. Then he nodded dismissal to him, and turned to Maud again,
while Duncan trudged off down the riverbank.
"I'm so sorry for you and Lord Thurso," he said, "and I think it's
downright good of you to have come up here, right in the middle of the
season, just because your folk were ill. It's real kind of you."
Then suddenly his eye fell on the silver-mailed fish that still lay on
the bank.
"Hi, Duncan!" he called out after the retreating figure, "take her
ladyship's fish up to the house."
Duncan came back, and with difficulty folded the big fish into his bag,
and shouldered it. But he paused a moment before he went again, looking
at Cochrane with doglike eyes that, though they trust, yet beseech.
"But the wife is better, sir?" he asked.
"Ever so much. You are beginning to know that as well as I do. Now, off
with you, for you've got to look after the baby, as she thinks she
can't. Make it happy. Give it a real good time, and let it pull that
great beard of yours."
He watched Duncan tramp away again with his heavy, peasant-footed tread
down the bank.
"Dear blind soul," he said, half to himself. "But it's getting near dawn
with his night."
* * * * *
Maud was already "arrested" with regard to her companion--she paid, that
is to say, a good deal more attention to him than she paid to
nine-tenths of casual strangers with whom she was, as now, accidentally
brought into somewhat intimate contact. He had the arresting quality,
whatever that is, which compels attention. It may be called animal
magnetism, or vitality of a superior kind, but it has nothing to do with
love or hate, like or dislike, though it may coexist, and often does,
with any of these. It had not, for instance, even occurred to her to
wonder whether she liked or disliked him, or was utterly indifferent to
him; she only knew that he had the arresting quality. In manner he was
very quiet, rather boyish, quite well-bred, and rather good-looking,
and in none of these respects was he different from the casual crowd.
But there was, and she knew it, something that distinguished him from
all men and women that she had ever seen, and this pause of a second or
two, as Duncan took up the fish, was sufficient for her to determine in
what the distinction lay. And it was this: he was so happy. Happiness of
a sort she had never yet seen surrounded him like an atmosphere of his
own, which it was given to others to breathe. She herself had breathed
it--it radiated from him. Hundreds of people were happy--thank God, that
is a very common gift--but the happiness that she now encountered was on
a different plane. It was happiness distilled, sublimated. He seemed
normally to dwell on the heights to which others in fine moments can
attain. He seemed happy in the way that some extraordinary good news
makes others happy for a moment or two, or an hour or two. Yet this was
no retrospective happiness, the happiness of vivid memory: it was his
normally; it gushed from him as from some unquenchable spring.
This impression was made, as all strong impressions are made, in a
moment, and there was no pause between his parting speech to Duncan, the
fish-laden, and her taking up again the casual thread of talk. Yet was
the thread a casual one? For his last words to Duncan seemed to come
from the very heart and soul of the man, from the spring of his
happiness.
"Do tell me," she said, "why did you say to Duncan that his wife only
thought she was ill?"
The convinced happiness of his brown eyes looked at her a moment before
he answered.
"Doesn't it come somewhere in Shakespeare?" he said. "'There's nothing
but thinking makes it so?' Or words to the same purpose?"
"Yes, but if we take that literally," said Maud, "we must conclude that
if she could only think she was well, poor soul, she would be. It is
hard to think that when you happen to have typhoid."
The brown eyes grew graver, but their happiness, as well as their
gravity, seemed to deepen.
"Certainly, it is hard," he said. "Indeed, it is impossible, unless you
can think right. But when you can do that, all the rest follows."
* * * * *
Maud suddenly felt slightly antagonistic to him. She remembered the few
words she had had with Thurso last night about people who say they are
always well, because they think they are, and his conclusion that they
must be fools. She had tacitly agreed with him then, and was a little
vexed with Mr. Cochrane because, honestly, he did not seem to be a fool.
"Have you ever had toothache?" she asked briskly.
"Never. And if I had, I shouldn't. Sounds nonsense, doesn't it? But it
just expresses the truth."
Then the name she had been unable to remember last night came back to
her.
"Ah, you are a Christian Scientist!" she said. "You think all pain and
illness is unreal."
He laughed.
"I know it," he said. "Now, I am sure you want to get on with your
fishing. So there's your rod, and please keep this gaff. You are far
more likely to hook another salmon in these upper pools than I am down
below."
He had changed the subject with such undisguised abruptness that she
could not help remarking on it. Yet, sudden as it had been, there was no
hint of ill-breeding or rudeness about it. He merely spoke quite
courteously of something else.
"Do you always change the subject as quickly as that?" she asked,
smiling.
"Always, if I think I may be led into a discussion about Christian
Science with strangers, who---- Pray don't think me rude, Lady Maud, but
one can't talk about the subject which means more to one than the whole
world with people who ask questions about it out of a sort of--well,
derisive curiosity. Also, I don't proselytise. I think there are better
ways of making the truth known."
The words were extremely direct, but again no hint of rudeness or want
of courtesy was ever so faintly suggested, and though Maud still felt
antagonistic, she knew that the most sensitive person in the world could
not have found offence in them, so perfectly friendly and good-natured
was his tone. He made this very plain statement without the least touch
of resentment himself or fear of arousing it. And she, generous and
fair-minded herself, gave in at once.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "You are quite right. There was a touch,
though really not more, of what you so justly call derisive curiosity
in my mind. I had no business either to feel or show it. But may I ask
you a question with that touch left out--honestly left out?"
"Why, of course--a hundred," said he.
"Then, why don't you proselytise?" she asked. "As you are convinced of
the truth of your doctrine, isn't it your duty to spread it?"
Cochrane let his eyes wander from her face over the hillside, fragrant
with heather and murmurous with bees. Then they looked at her again, and
for the first time she saw that they were different from any eyes she
had ever seen in the face of man or woman, for they were unmistakably a
child's eyes, full of a child's disarming frankness, and almost terrible
honesty.
"You can spread a thing in many ways," he said. "But preaching was not
the primary way He chose. 'He went about doing good.'"
* * * * *
Maud felt herself suddenly seized with that shyness which is instinctive
to most Anglo-Saxons when "religion" puts in its appearance in
conversation, and she was suddenly tongue-tied. With many people, no
doubt, reticence on religious subjects is due to the fact that, since
they have no religion, there is nothing for them to talk about. But it
was not so with her. Religion formed a very vital and essential part of
her life, but it was not a thing to be publicly trotted out like this.
So, since the subject had so unexpectedly and profoundly deepened with
this last remark, it was she who rather precipitately changed it now.
"I see," she said. "But please don't leave me the gaff. I should
immensely like, since you are so kind, to try for another sea-trout or
two, but having poached one salmon without your leave, I couldn't
contemplate poaching another, even with it. So if I hook another he
shall break me, and so I shall present your river with a fly and a cast
by way of _amende_."
Maud felt vexed and annoyed with herself. She was not managing well;
she thought she must be giving a quite false impression by chattering
this stupid nonsense in order to get away from the subject of religion.
But then a rather more natural topic suggested itself--namely, the idea
of offering him hospitality, which had occurred to and been rejected by
Thurso.
"And do come and dine with us to-morrow," she said, "and eat some of
your own fish. Thurso and I would be delighted. We are just squatting in
the house, you know, and eat and live in one room, and the caretaker's
wife cooks. Ah, how stupid of me! I forgot. Thurso is turning the rest
of the house into a typhoid hospital, and by evening the place will be
full of patients. So please say 'No' point-blank if you don't like the
thought. I shall quite understand."
Those childlike eyes looked at her in frank, unveiled admiration.
"Why, that's just splendid of you both," he said; "and as for coming to
dinner, I shall be delighted. We Scientists are often told we are
inconsistent, but we are not quite so bad as to mind coming to a house
where a few poor souls think they are ill. So, _au revoir_, Lady Maud,
and many thanks."
* * * * *
Maud was a girl of great singleness of purpose, and generally, when she
was out for a day's fishing, the number of moments in which she thought
about things unconnected in any way with fishing scarcely made any total
at all, while any other subject that was present in her mind was there
only in a very dim and distant fashion. But to-day, during the hour's
fishing which she indulged in between Mr. Cochrane's departure and
lunch, her thoughts persistently strayed from fishing, and when
eventually she made herself a windless seat in the heather, overlooking
the pool which she had just fished, even the brace of silvery sea-trout
she had already caught, and the prospective brace or two that she
promised herself before evening, occupied but a very small part of her
meditations.
Christian Science! She had indeed a "touch of derision" for that
philosophy and its philosophers, though it was not worth while even to
deride it. Nor was her derision founded on ignorance only, for last year
Alice Yardly, a friend of hers, had joined the Church, and that had
seemed to Maud a most suitable thing. For she had always thought that
Alice, though a dear, was a fool, and now she knew it. Certainly,
however, Mrs. Yardly did not in the least resemble Mr. Cochrane either
in the matter of folly, because it was clearly impossible to think of
him as a fool, or in the matter of proselytising, for Mrs. Yardly used
to proselytise (with almost touching ill-success) by the hour, pouring
out a perfect torrent of optimistic gabble about the nonexistence of
pain and sickness, and be prostrated the moment afterwards by one of
those nervous headaches to which she was subject. She would boldly,
trying to nail a smile to her face, label this a "false claim" (though
it was a pedantically accurate imitation of the real thing), and
"demonstrate" over it, which, being interpreted, meant that she assured
herself two or three million times that she could not have a nervous
headache, since there was no nervous headache in Divine Love, and
nothing existed except Divine Love. After that she would go to bed, and
wake up next morning without any headache, and be delighted with the
success of the demonstration that had banished it.
And then, her dreadful delirium of words appalled and confused the
hearer. Texts were torn up from their roots by that inconsequent
hurricane, and sent hurtling at your head, and paragraphs from Mrs.
Eddy's "Key to the Scriptures" squirted at you as from some hydrant, all
to convince Maud, as far as she could see, of what she put rather
differently to herself, when she said that mind had a great influence
over matter, and that Mrs. Eddy had not been the first to discover that.
But this view of the question proved to be an utter mistake, and would
not do for Mrs. Yardly at all, who insisted that there was no such thing
as matter, and never had been, since it existed only in the error of
mortal mind, of which there wasn't any really. Last winter, too, Alice
had had a false claim of influenza, and after a week of demonstrating
over it, and not taking ordinary precautions, it had developed into a
further false claim (though a pretty imitation) of congestion of the
lungs. Three weeks' further demonstration over congestion of the lungs,
combined this time with stopping in bed (though that had really nothing
to do with it, as could easily be explained in another hour or two), had
led to her complete recovery, and the subsequent recital of this
wonderful cure at a Wednesday testimony meeting, to the great
edification of the faithful. But when Maud asked her why, if she was
going to condescend to stop in bed at all (especially since stopping in
bed had, like the flowers of spring, "nothing to do with the case") she
should not have done so when she had the false claim of influenza,
instead of waiting for the further false claim of congestion, this led
only to the kind Christian Science smile, and a voluble explanation,
with torrents of Psalms and Mrs. Eddy, to point out once again from the
very beginning that she did not have influenza at all. No further
progress, in fact, could be made in such discussions, for though Mrs.
Yardly was far from refusing to answer questions, she poured forth in
answer so turbid a flow of pure twaddle, with so stern a determination
never to be brought up to the point at issue, that it was impossible for
the inquirer to proceed. All sickness and illness was inconceivable,
said Mrs. Yardly, because everything was Infinite Mind (mortal mind had
no more real existence than had matter); and whether Maud asked how it
was that the impression of there being such things as headaches and
broken legs had come in, or whether she wanted to know why Mrs. Eddy
said that tobacco was disgusting, if there was no such thing, it
appeared to Alice that to state over and over again in a variety of ways
this fact about Infinite Mind was a satisfactory answer to any question
of whatever kind.
Of course, Alice was silly--she seemed sometimes to have no mind, mortal
or otherwise, though she was a dear, all the same--and Maud, as she sat
here now eating her sandwich in this sheltered nest of heather, with the
wild bees buzzing about her, and all the infinite and beneficent powers
of Nature pursuing their functions heedless of any interpretations that
the meddlesome mind of man might choose to put upon them, felt that she
had done an injustice to the subject about which she inquired when she
derided it just because a woman who was very silly gave absurd answers
to questions which, though quite simple, were of the utmost profundity
in that they concerned the origin of evil and sickness. Mrs. Yardly had
not been a Christian Scientist long, and Maud now told herself that it
was absurd to expect her all at once (for she understood so little
before) to understand everything now. But what nettled her, though,
indeed, she was not easily nettled, was to find that this same dear,
stupid person did profess to be able to explain everything--mind,
matter, and God alike. She claimed to have recaptured the faith of a
child, and at once to be able to argue like a theologian about it. Maud
herself was a professed and believing Christian, but had a brilliant
Atheist subtly questioned her on the doctrine of the Incarnation, she
knew quite well that many of his questions would be completely
unanswerable. But because she was a Christian it did not follow she was
a theologian, and she hoped that she would not try, by turning a
blinding squirt of texts upon her questioner, to make him believe that
she could explain the mystery of the material and spiritual world. She
could not--many things were mysterious. But why not say so? That these
things were mysterious did not prevent her being a Christian. She
believed, too, the root doctrine of Christian Science--namely, that God
was the Author of the world, and was immanent there. But surely it was
wiser and truer to confess that one did not understand the whole working
of the world in all its details; for if one did, one could manage it all
oneself. Alice Yardly, Maud felt sure, would undertake the post with the
greatest pleasure. And a pretty mess she would make of it, thought she.
For Alice could never even contrive that the carriage should call for
anybody at the right time or place, and constantly went out to dinner on
the wrong night, for the confusion of hostesses.
* * * * *
Yet ... the law of gravity, so Maud believed, was in sound working
order; but if one asked some mere child to explain it, and he explained
it imperfectly or incorrectly, that proved nothing against the validity
of the law, but only proved the inability of the exponent. So, too, in
Christian Science, one person surely knew more about it than another,
and Mrs. Yardly, in all probability, less than any; and Maud confessed
to herself that her present derision had been founded on the
explanations (or want of them) given by a Scientist whom she had always
thought silly. No doubt there were others who were not silly, but what a
pity it was that the silly ones were allowed to gabble like this! Alice
had tried to proselytise her, with the effect only that Maud had been
almost fanatically convinced of the absurdity of her faith. But Mr.
Cochrane had pointedly refused to proselytise, and, perversely enough,
she felt she would like to hear what he had to say about it. He, too,
had that childlike faith and those childlike eyes. Alice's eyes were not
childlike: they resembled the shining buttons in railway-carriages.
A great fish jumped clear out of the water in the pool at her feet--a
noble silver-sided salmon, which for the moment made her fisherman's
heart leap in her throat. But it was no use trying for him; a fish that
jumped like that never took the fly. Besides, she had no gaff. Then she
smiled at herself, for she knew that, though that reason was sound
enough, it was not the real cause why she still sat in her sheltered
place. She was interested in something else: she wanted to think about
that.
Mr. Cochrane did not seem silly; in fact, she would have bet on the
verdict of an intelligent and impartial jury with regard to the point.
What if she asked him, when he came to dine to-morrow night, a few of
the questions onto which Alice had turned the squirt of irrelevant
texts? There would be no derision on her side now, for in this half-hour
of self-communing she had convinced herself that she wanted to know.
There was no such thing as illness--he had said that; he had
practically told Duncan that. What, then, if she made an appeal to
him--told him how many of these poor folk had died from typhoid, and
were suffering now, and asked him to stop it all? Yet that was too much
to ask; it seemed profane, as if she asked him to invest himself in the
insignia of Divinity. But might he not--for she could ask him now
without derision, without, so far as she could manage it, unbelief in
the huge power which Christian Scientists (healers, at any rate)
distinctly professed to wield--might he not relieve one sufferer, make
well one of those forty who would be lying sick in the house to-morrow?
But then there occurred to her the parrot-like answer of Alice Yardly
when she had asked her the same question. It was parrot-like, it was
glib and without conviction and sense of the true meaning of the words,
when she said it was wrong to make a "cure" for a sign. Lots of texts
from the Gospels, of course, came up as reinforcements. But how
hopelessly she misunderstood! Maud did not want a sign: she wanted that
suffering should be relieved. It was not human to withhold that power
merely because she would be interested in seeing it manifested. It was
inhuman to withhold it, if the possessor really believed it was his.
Besides, for what, except its exercise, had it been given?
* * * * *
But there was Thurso. It was better that he should not know that she
intended to ask Mr. Cochrane to do this, and, indeed, that he should not
know that she had asked it. There Alice Yardly's contention, again with
texts, seemed to her to be possibly true. It was reasonable, anyhow, to
suppose that unbelief might hamper the power of faith, just as dampness
hindered the functions of frictional electricity. But if Thurso was not
told, there would be none of this impeding counteraction. She herself
did not disbelieve, and honestly she wanted to believe. She derided no
longer: she was at the bar of conscience able to say that she had an
open mind on the subject. She believed in the miraculous cures of
ancient days; there was no known reason why modern days should not
witness them again.
Yet why had her mind changed? Why had the derision vanished? Again she
was truthful with herself, and acknowledged that it was probably owing
to Mr. Cochrane's personality. He seemed wise and gentle and
self-reliant because he relied on an Infinite Power. He himself entirely
trusted in that Power, and it was exactly that which made Maud trust
him.
Yes, that was all. She had gone over the ground she wished to traverse.
Thereafter she was absorbed in watching her fly traverse another
element.