The sun was warm on the meadow, and although the bushes along its margin
were leafless, the meadow itself had a greenish look, and the feel of
the air was such that Gay, upon whom silence and invisibility had been
enjoined, longed to dance in full sight of the trout and to sing at the
top of her voice: "Oh, that we two were Maying!" Instead, she crouched
humbly and in silence at Pritchard's side, while he studied the dimpling
brook through his powerful field-glasses.
Gay had never seen red Indians except in Buffalo Bill's show, where it
is made worth their while to be very noisy. But she had read her Cooper
and her Ballantyne,
"Ballantyne, the brave,
And Cooper of the wood and wave,"
and she knew of the early Christian patience with which they are
supposed to go about the business of hunting and fishing.
Pritchard, she observed, had a weather-red face and high cheek-bones. He
was smooth-shaved. He wore no hat. But for his miraculously short-cut
hair, his field-glasses, his suit of coarse Scotch wool, whose colors
blended so well with the meadow upon which he crouched, he might have
been an Indian. His head, the field-glasses, the hands which clasped
them, moved--nothing else.
"Is it a bluff?" thought Gay. "Is he just posing, or is there something
in it?"
Half an hour passed--three quarters. Gay was pale and grimly smiling.
Her legs had gone to sleep. But she would not give in. If an Englishman
could fish so patiently, why, so could she. She was fighting her own
private battle of Bunker Hill--of New Orleans.
Pritchard lowered his glasses, handed them to Gay, and pointed up the
brook and across, to where a triangular point of granite peered a few
inches above the surface. Gay looked through the glasses, and Pritchard
began to whisper in her ear:
"Northwest of that point of rock, about two feet--keep looking just
there, and I'll try to tell you what to see."
"There's a fish feeding," she answered; "but he must be a baby, he just
makes a bubble on the surface."
"There are three types of insect floating over him," said Pritchard; "I
don't know your American beasts by name, but there is a black, a brown,
and a grayish spiderlike thing. He's taking the last. If you see one of
the gray ones floating where he made his last bubble, watch it."
Gay presently discerned such an insect so floating, and watched it. It
passed within a few inches of where the feeding trout had last risen and
disappeared, and a tiny ring gently marked the spot where it had been
sucked under. Gay saw a black insect pass over the fatal spot unscathed,
then browns; and then, once more, a gray, very tiny in the body but with
longish legs, approached and was engulfed.
"Now for the tackle box," Pritchard whispered.
They withdrew from the margin of the brook, Gay in that curious ecstasy,
half joy, half sorrow, induced by sleepy legs. She lurched and almost
fell. Pritchard caught her.
"Was the vigil too long?" he asked.
"I liked it," she said. "But my legs went to sleep and are just waking
up. Tell me things. There were fish rising bold--jumping clean
out--making the water boil. But you weren't interested in them."
"It was noticeable," said Pritchard, "and perhaps you noticed that one
fish was feeding alone. He blew his little rings--without fear or
hurry--none of the other fishes dared come anywhere near him. He lives
in the vicinity of that pointed rock. The water there is probably deep
and, in the depths, very cold. Who knows but a spring bubbles into a
brook at the base of that rock? The fish lives there and rules the water
around him for five or six yards. He is selfish, fat, and old. He feeds
quietly because nobody dares dispute his food with him. He is the
biggest fish in this reach of the brook. At least, he is the biggest
that is feeding this morning. Now we know what kind of a fly he is
taking. Probably I have a close imitation of it in my fly box. If not,
we shall have to make one. Then we must try to throw it just above
him--very lightly--float it into his range of vision, and when he sucks
it into his mouth, strike--and if we are lucky we shall then proceed to
take him."
Gay, passionately fond of woodcraft, listened with a kind of awe.
"But," she said, seeing an objection, "how do you know he weighs three
pounds and over?"
"Frankly," said Pritchard, "I don't. I am gambling on _that_." He shot
her a shy look. "Just hoping. I know that he is big. I believe we shall
land him. I hope and pray that he weighs over three pounds."
Gay blushed and said nothing. She was beginning to think that Pritchard
might land a three-pounder as well as not--and she had light-heartedly
agreed, in that event, to become the Countess of Merrivale. Of course,
the bet was mere nonsense. But suppose, by any fleeting chance, that
Pritchard should not so regard it? What _should_ she do? Suppose that
Pritchard had fallen victim to a case of love at first sight? It would
not, she was forced to admit (somewhat demurely), be the first instance
in her own actual experience. There was a young man who had so fallen in
love with her, and who, a week later, not knowing the difference--so
exactly the triplets resembled each other--had proposed to Phyllis.
They drew the guide boat up onto the meadows and Pritchard, armed with a
scoop-net of mesh as fine as mosquito-netting, leaned over the brook and
caught one of the grayish flies that were tickling the appetite of the
big trout.
This fly had a body no bigger than a gnat's.
Pritchard handed Gay a box of japanned tin. It was divided into
compartments, and each compartment was half full of infinitesimal trout
flies. They were so small that you had to use a pair of tweezers in
handling them.
Pritchard spread his handkerchief on the grass, and Gay dumped the flies
out on it and spread them for examination. And then, their heads very
close together, they began to hunt for one which would match the live
one that Pritchard had caught.
"But they're too small," Gay objected. "The hooks would pull right
through a trout's lip."
"Not always," said Pritchard. "How about this one?"
"Too dark," said Gay.
"Here we are then--a match or not?"
The natural fly and the artificial placed side by side were wonderfully
alike.
"They're as like as Lee and me," said Gay.
"Lee?"
"Three of us are triplets," she explained. "We look exactly alike--and
we never forgive people who get us mixed up."
Pritchard abandoned all present thoughts of trout-fishing by scientific
methods. He looked into her face with wonder.
"Do you mean to tell me," said he, "that there are two other
D-D-Darlings exactly like you?"
"Exactly--a nose for a nose; an eye for an eye."
"It isn't true," he proclaimed. "There is nobody in the whole world in
the least like you."
"Some time," said Gay, "you will see the three of us in a row. We shall
look inscrutable and say nothing. You will not be able to tell which of
us went fishing with you and which stayed at home----"
"'This little pig went to market,'" he began, and abruptly became
serious. "Is that a challenge?"
"Yes," said Gay. "I fling down my gauntlet."
"And I," said Pritchard, "step forward and, in the face of all the
world, lift it from the ground--and proclaim for all the world to hear
that there is nobody like my lady--and that I am so prepared to prove at
any place or time--come weal, come woe. Let the heavens fall!"
"If you know me from the others," Gay's eyes gleamed, "you will be the
first strange young man that ever did, and I shall assign and appoint in
the inmost shrines of memory a most special niche for you."
Pritchard bowed very humbly.
"That will not be necessary," he said. "If I land the three-pounder. In
that case, I should be always with you."
"I wish," said Gay, "that you wouldn't refer so earnestly to a piece of
nonsense. Upon repetition, a joke ceases to be a joke."
Pritchard looked troubled.
"I'm sorry," he said simply. "If it is the custom of the country to bet
and then crawl, so be it. In Rome, I hasten to do as the Romans do. But
I thought our bet was honorable and above-board. It seems it was just
an--an Indian bet."
Gay flushed angrily.
"You shall not belittle anything American," she said. "It was a bet. I
meant it. I stand by it. If you catch your big fish I marry you. And if
I have to marry you, I will lead you such a dance----"
"You wouldn't have to," Pritchard put in gently, "you wouldn't have to
lead me, I mean. If you and I were married, I'd just naturally
dance--wouldn't I? When a man sorrows he weeps; when he rejoices he
dances. It's all very simple and natural----"
He turned his face to the serene heavens, and, very gravely:
"Ah, Lord!" he said. "Vouchsafe to me, undeserving but hopeful, this
day, a char--_salmo fontinalis_--to weigh a trifle over three pounds,
for the sake of all that is best and sweetest in this best of all
possible worlds."
If his face or voice had had a suspicion of irreverence, Gay would have
laughed. Instead, she found that she wanted to cry and that her heart
was beating unquietly.
Mr. Pritchard dismissed sentiment from his mind, and with loving hands
began to take a powerful split-bamboo rod from its case.