Fishing!
In the fulfilling of a promise, I called the following evening on Miss
Grant.
It was the first of a number of such visits, for I found that the old
feeling of antagonism between us had entirely disappeared and,
consequently, I enjoyed the sociability refreshingly.
Our meetings, while not by any means of the 'friendly admiration' kind,
were of a nature beneficial to both of us.
She learned that I was an Englishman of good family. I gathered, her
mother had been a Virginian and her father an Englishman; that she
loved the American Continent and always considered the United States
her country as her mother had done before her. But further than this
we did not get, for we were both diffident in talking of our lives
prior to our coming to Golden Crescent. Still, we had many
never-failing topics of conversation, many subjects to discuss in
literature, music, philosophy and economics.
We travelled along in our acquaintance easily,--leisurely,--as if time
were eternal and the world were standing still awaiting our good
pleasure.
Late one afternoon, when I was sitting out on the rocks, near the oil
barns at the end of the wharf, enjoying the cooling breezes after the
trying heat of that midsummer's day, I saw Miss Grant come down the
path with her fishing lines in her hand and her sweater-coat over her
arm. She went to her boat and started to pull it toward the water.
I scrambled over and down the rocks, to lend a hand.
"Any room for me, Miss Grant?" I asked boldly.
"Why, yes!" she smiled eagerly, "if only you would come. You promised
once, you know, but, somehow, that promise is still unfulfilled."
I handed her into the boat, pushed off and leaped in beside her. She
took the oars and, with the swift easy strokes, full of power and
artistic grace, which I had noticed the first time I saw her on the
water, she pulled out to the west of Rita's Isle.
Her hair was hanging negligently, in loose, wavy curls, over her
shoulders. Her dimpled arms and her neck were bared to the sunshine.
Her mouth was parted slightly and her teeth shone ivory-like, as she
plied her oars.
"Let me take a turn now," I asked, "and run out your line."
She did so, and I took her slowly round the Island without her feeling
so much as a tiny nibble.
"How stupid!" I exclaimed. "What's the good of me coming out here, if
I do not try to discover the cause of your continual non-success as a
fisher? Pull in your line and let me have a look at the spoon."
I examined the sinker and found it of the proper weight and properly
adjusted, fixed at the correct length from the bait. Next, I took the
spoon in my hand. It was a small nickel spinner,--the right thing for
catching sea-trout round Rita's Isle. I was puzzled for a little,
until I laid the spoon and the hook flat on the palm of my hand, then I
knew where the trouble was.
The barb of the hook hung fully an inch and a half too far from the
spoon.
I adjusted it and handed it back to my lady-companion.
"Try that," I said with a smile.
In dropped the line and out it ran to its full length.
Miss Grant held it taut. Suddenly she gave it a jerk. She stopped in
breathless excitement. Then she jerked again.
"Oh, dear me!" she cried anxiously, "there's something on."
"Pull it in," I shouted, "steady,--not too quickly."
Immediately thereafter, a fine, two-pound trout lay flopping in the
bottom of the boat.
"Just think of that," cried my fair troller, "my first fish! And all
by moving up a foolish little hook an inch or so."
Her eyes were agleam. She chatted on and on almost without ceasing,
almost without thinking, so excited and absorbed did she become in the
sport.
Back went the line, and in it came again with another wriggling,
shining trout.
For an hour I rowed round the Island, and, in that hour, Mary Grant had
equalled Rita's best that I knew of, for between thirty and forty fish
fell a prey to the deadly bait and hook.
"How would you like to try for a salmon?" I asked at last. "They are
running better now than they have done all the year so far."
"All right!" she agreed, with a sigh of pent-up excitement, pulling in
her trout line and running out a thicker one with a large salmon spoon
and a fairly heavy sinker.
I rowed out to the mouth of the Bay, keeping inside the Ghoul Rock;
then I started crossways over to the far point.
We were half-way across, when Mary Grant screamed. The line she was
holding ran with tremendous rapidity through her fingers. I jammed my
foot on the wooden frame lying in the bottom of the boat and to which
the line was attached. I was just in time to save it from following
the rest of the line overboard.
I pulled in my oars and caught up the line.
Away, thirty yards off, a great salmon sprang out of the water high
into the air, performing a half-circle and flopping back with a splash
from its lashing tail.
"She is yours," I cried. "Come! play her for all you can."
But, as I turned, I saw that Miss Grant's fingers were bleeding from
the sudden running-out of the line when the salmon had struck; so I
settled down to fight the fish myself.
All at once, the line slacked. I hauled it in, feeling almost certain
that I had lost my prize. But no! Off she went again like a fury,
rising out of the water in her wild endeavours to free herself.
For a long time I played her. My companion took the oars quietly and
was now doing all she could to assist me.
Next, the salmon sank sheer down and sulked far under the water.
Gradually, gradually I drew her in and not a struggle did she make.
She simply lay, a dead thing at the end of my line.
"She's played out, Miss Grant. She's ours," I cried gleefully, as I
got a glint of her under the water as she came up at the end of my line.
But, alas! for the luck of a fisherman. When the salmon was fifteen
feet from the boat, she jerked and somersaulted most unexpectedly, with
all the despair of a gambler making his last throw. She shot sheer out
of the water and splashed in again almost under the boat. My line,
minus the spoon and the hook, ran through my fingers.
"Damn!" I exclaimed, in the keenest disappointment.
"And--that's--just--what--I--say--too," came my fair oars-woman's
voice. "If that isn't the hardest kind of luck!"
Away out, we could see our salmon jump, and jump, and jump again, out
of the water ten feet in the air, darting and plunging in wide circles,
like the mad thing she probably was.
"It serves me rightly, Miss Grant. I professed to be able to fix your
tackle and yet I did not examine that spoon before putting it into use.
It has probably been lying in a rusty condition for a year or so.
"Well,--we cannot try again to-night, unless we row in for a fresh
spoon-hook."
"Oh!--let us stop now. We have more fish already than we really
require."
"Shall I row you in?" I asked.
"Do you wish to go in?"
"Oh, dear, no! I could remain here forever,--at least until I get
hungry and sleepy," I laughed.
"All right!" she cried, "let us row up into the Bay and watch the sun
go down."
I pulled along leisurely, facing my fair companion, who was now
reclining in the stern, with the sinking sun shining in all its golden
glory upon the golden glory of her.
Moment by moment, the changing colours in the sky were altering the
colours on the smooth waters to harmonise: a lake of bright yellow
gold, then the gold turned to red, a sea of blood; from red to purple,
from purple to the palest shade of heliotrope; and, as the sun at last
dipped in the far west, the distant mountains threw back that same
attractive shade of colour.
It was an evening for kind thoughts.
We glided up the Bay, past Jake Meaghan's little home; still further
up, then into the lagoon, where not a ripple disturbed that placid
sheet of water: where the trees and rocks smiled down upon their own
mirrored reflections.
We grew silent as the nature around us, awed by the splendours of the
hushing universe upon which we had been gazing.
"It is beautiful! oh, so beautiful!" said my companion at last, awaking
from her dreaming. "Let us stay here awhile. I cannot think to go
home yet."
She threw her sweater-coat round her shoulders, for, even in the height
of summer, the air grows chilly on the west coast as the sun goes down.
"You may smoke, Mr. Bremner. I know you are aching to do so."
I thanked her, pulled in my oars and lighted my pipe.
Mary Grant sat there, watching me in friendly interest, smiling in
amusement in the charming way only she could smile.
"Do you know, I sometimes wonder," she said reflectively, "why it is
that a man of your education, your prospective attainments, your
ability, your physical strength and mental powers should keep to the
bypaths of life, such as we find up here, when your fellows, with less
intellect than you have, are in the cities, in the mining fields and on
the prairies, battling with the world for power and fortune and
getting, some of them, what they are battling for.
"I am not trying to probe into your privacy, but what I have put into
words has often recurred to me regarding you. Somehow, you seem to
have all the qualities that go to the making of a really successful
business man."
"Do you really wonder why?" I smiled. "--And yet you profess to know
me--a little."
It was an evening for closer friendships.
"If you promise for the future to call me George and permit me the
privilege, when we are alone, of calling you Mary, I shall answer your
query."
"All right,--George,--it's a bargain," she said. "Go ahead."
"Well! in the first place, I know what money is; what it can bring and
what it can cause. I never cared for money any more than what could
provide the plain necessities of life. As for ambition to make and
accumulate money;--God forbid that I should ever have it. I leave such
ambitions to the grubs and leeches."
Mary listened in undisguised interest.
"Oh! I have had opportunities galore, but I always preferred the
simpler way,--the open air, the sea and the quiet, the adventure of the
day and the rest after a day well spent.
"No man can eat more than three square meals a day and be happy; no man
can lie upon more than one bed at a time;--so, what right have I, or
any other man for the matter of that, to steal some other fellow's food
and bedding?"
"But some day you may wish to marry," she put in.
"Some day,--yes! maybe. And the lady I marry must also love the open
air, away from the city turmoil; she must hanker after the glories of a
place such as this; otherwise, we should not agree for long.
"And,--Mary,--" I continued, "the man you would marry,--what would you
demand of him?"
"The man I would marry may be a Merchant Prince or a humble tiller of
the soil. A few things only I would demand of him, and these
are:--that he love me with all his great loving heart; that he be
honourable in all things and that his right arm be strong to protect
his own and ever ready to assist his weaker brother.
"Marriages may be made in heaven, George, but they have to be lived on
earth, and the one essential thing in every marriage is love."
She sat for a while in thought, then she threw out her hands as if to
ward off a danger.
"Of what use me talking in this way," she cried. "Marriage, for me,
with my foolish ideas, is impossible. I am destined to remain as I am."
My pulse quickened as she spoke.
"And why?" I asked;--for this evening of evenings was one for open
hearts and tender feelings.
"It was arranged for me that by this time I should be the wife of a
man; and,--God knows,--though I did not love him, I meant to be a true
and dutiful wife to him, even when I knew my eternal soul would be
bruised in the effort.
"This man was taller than you are, George. Sometimes, in your
devil-may-care moods, I seem to see him again in you. I am glad to
say, though, the similarity ends there.
"For all his protestations of love for me, for all his boasted ideals,
his anxiety for the preservation of his honour as a gentleman, he
proved himself not even faithful in that which every woman has a right
to demand of the man she is about to marry, as he demands it of her.
"I would not marry him then. I could not. I would sooner have died.
"That was my reward for trying to do my duty."
Her voice broke. "Sometimes, I wonder if any man is really true and
honourable."
She covered her face with her hands; she, who had always been so
self-possessed.
"The shame of it! The shame of it!" she sobbed.
In my heart, I cursed the dishonour of men. Would the dreadful
procession of it never cease? Deceit and dishonour! Dishonour and
deceit! Here, there, everywhere,--and always the woman suffering while
the man goes free!
I moved over beside her in the stern of the boat. I laid my hand upon
her shoulder. In my rough, untutored way, without breaking into the
agony of her thoughts, I tried to comfort her with the knowledge of my
sympathetic presence.
For long we sat thus; but at last she turned to me and her hair brushed
my cheek. She looked into my eyes and I know she read what was in my
heart, for it was brimming over with a love for her that I had never
known before, a love that overwhelmed me and left me dumb.
"George!" she whispered softly, laying her hand upon mine, "you must
not, you must not."
Then she became imperious and haughty once more.
"Back to your oars, sailorman," she cried, with an astonishing effort
at gaiety. "The dark is closing in and Mrs. Malmsbury will be thinking
all kinds of things she would not dare say, even if she were able."
Late that night, I heard the second verse of Mary's little song. It
was hardly sung; it was whispered, as if she feared that even the
fairies and sprites might be eavesdropping; but, had she lilted it in
her heart only, still, I think, I should have heard it.
A maid there was in the North Countree;
A gay little, blythe little maid was she.
Her dream of a gallant knight came true.
He wooed her long and so tenderlee.
And, day by day, as their fond love grew,
Her spinning wheel stood with its threads askew;
It stood.--It stood.--It stood with its threads askew.