MR. KNOWLTON'S FISH.
Doubtless they were ready, those two, for the brook and the afternoon.
The young officer came at half-past three; not in regimentals this
time, but in an easy grey undress and straw hat. He came in a waggon,
and he brought his fishing-rod and carried a basket. Diana had been
ready ever since three. They lost no time; they went out into the
meadow and struck the brook.
Now the brook, during its passage through the valley field, was
remarkable for nothing but a rare infirmity of purpose, which would
never let it keep one course for many rods together. It twisted and
curled about, making many little meadow promontories on one side and
the other; hurrying along with a soft, sweet gurgle that sounded fresh,
even under the heat of the summer sun. It was a hot afternoon, as Mrs.
Starling had said; and the two excursionists were fain to take it
gently and to make as straight a course across the fields as keeping on
one side of the brook left possible. They could not cross it. The
stream was not large, yet quite too broad for a jump; and not deep, yet
deep enough to cover its stony bed and leave no crossing stones. So
sometimes along the border of the brook, where a fringe of long grass
had been left by the mowers' scythes, rank and tangled; sometimes
striking across from bend to bend over the meadow, where no kindly
trees stood to shade them, the two went--on a hunt, as Mr. Knowlton
said, after pretty things.
After a mile or more of this walking, the scenery changed. Mown fields,
hot and fragrant, were left behind; almost suddenly they entered the
hills, where the brook issued from them; and then they began a slower
tracking of its course back among the rocks and woods of a dell which
soon grew close and wild. The sides of the dell became higher; the bed
of the stream more steep and rough; the canopy of trees closed in
overhead, and showed the blue through only in broken patches. The
clothing of the hill-sides was elegant and exquisite; oaks, and firs,
and hemlocks, with slender birches and maples, lining the ravine; and
under them a free growth of ferns, and fresh beds of moss, and lovely
lichens covered the rocks and dressed the ground. The stream rattled
along at the bottom; foaming over the stones and leaping down the
rocks; making the still, deep pools where the fish love to lie; and in
its way executing a succession of cascades and tiny waterfalls that
wanted no picturesque element except magnitude. And a good imagination
can supply that.
And how went the afternoon? How goes it with those who have just
received a new sense, or found a sudden doubling of that which they had
before? Nay, it was a new sense, a new power of perception, able to
discern what had eluded all their previous lives. The brook in the
meadow had been to Diana's vision until now merely running water;
whence had come those delicious amber hues where it rolled over the
stones, and the deep olive shadows where the water was deeper? She had
never seen them before. Now they were pointed out and seen to be rich
and clear, a sort of dilution of sunlight, with a suggestion of
sunlight's other riches of possibility. The rank unmown grass that
fringed the stream, Diana had never seen it but as what the scythe had
missed; now she was made to notice what an elegant fringe it was, and
how the same sunlight glanced upon its curving stems and blades, and
set off the deep brown stream. Diana's own eyes began to be quickened,
and her tongue loosed. The lovely outline of the hills that encircled
the valley had never looked just so rare and lovely as this afternoon
when she pointed them out to her companion, and he scanned them and
nodded in full assent. But when they got into the ravine, it was
Diana's turn. Mosses, and old trees, and sharp turns of the gorge, and
fords, where it was necessary to cross the brook and recross on
stepping stones just lifting them above the water, here black
enough,--Diana knew all these things, and with secret delight unfolded
the knowledge of them to her companion as they went along. And still
the bits of blue sky overhead had never seemed so unearthly blue; the
drapery of oak and hemlock boughs had never been so graceful and
bright; there was a presence in the old gorge that afternoon, which
went with them and cleared their eyes from vapour and their minds from
everything, it seemed, but a susceptibility to beauty and delight in
its influence. Perhaps the young officer would have said that this
presence was embodied in the unconscious eyes and fair calm brow which
went beside him; I think he saw them more distinctly than anything
else. Diana did not know it. Somehow she very rarely looked her
companion in the face; and yet she knew very well how his face looked,
too; so well, perhaps, that she did not need to refresh her memory. So
they wandered on; and the fords were pleasant places, where she had to
be helped over the stones. Not that Diana needed such help; her foot
was fearless and true; she never had had help there before: was that
what made it so pleasant? Certainly it did seem to her that it was a
prettier way of going up the brook than alone and unaided.
"I am not getting much fish at this rate," said young Knowlton at
length with a light laugh.
"No," said Diana. "Why don't you stop and try here? Here looks like a
good place. Right in that still, deep spot, I dare say there are trout.
"What will you do in the meantime, if I stop and fish? It will be very
stupid for you."
"For me? O no. I shall sit here and look on. It will not be stupid. I
will keep still, never fear."
"I don't want you to keep still; that would be very stupid for me."
"You can't talk while you are fishing; it would scare the trout, you
know."
"I don't believe it."
"I have always heard so."
"I don't believe it will pay," said Knowlton as he fitted his rod--"if
I am to purchase trout at the expense of all that."
All what? Diana wondered.
"Suppose we talk very softly--in whispers," he went on, laughing. "Do
you suppose the trout are so observant as to mind it? If you sit
here,--on this mossy stone, close by me, can't I enjoy two things at
once?"
Diana made no objection to this arrangement. She took the place
indicated, full of a breathless kind of pleasure which she did not stop
to analyze; and watched in silence the progress of the fishing. In
silence, for after Mr. Knowlton's arrangement had been carried into
effect, he too subsided into stillness; whether engrossed with the
business of his line, or satisfied, or with thoughts otherwise engaged,
did not appear. But as presently and again a large trout, speckled and
beautiful, was swung up out of the pool below, the two faces were
turned towards each other, and the two pairs of eyes met with a smile
of so much sympathy, that I rather think the temporary absence of words
lost nothing to the growth of the understanding between them.
The place where they sat was lovely. Just there the bank was high,
overhanging the brook. A projecting rock, brown and green and grey,
with lichen and mosses of various kinds, held besides a delicate young
silver birch, the roots of which found their way to nourishment somehow
through fissures in the rock. Here sat Knowlton, with Diana beside him
on a stone, just a little behind; while he sat on the brink to cast, or
rather drop, his line into the little pool below where the trout were
lurking. The opposite side of the stream was but a few yards off, thick
with a lovely growth of young wood, with one great hemlock not far
above towering up towards the sky. The view in that direction went up a
vista of the ravine, so wood-fringed on both sides, with the stream
leaping and tumbling down a steep rocky bed. Overhead the narrow line
of blue sky.
"Four!" whispered Diana, as another spotted trout came up from the pool.
"I wonder how many there are down there?" said Knowlton as he unhooked
the fish. "It makes me hungry."
"Catching the trout?" said Diana softly.
He nodded. "Here comes another. I wish we could make a fire somewhere
hereabouts and cook them."
"Is that a good way?"
"The best in the world," he said, adjusting his fly, and then looking
with a smile at her. "There is no way that fish taste so good. I used
to do that, you see, in the hills round about the Academy; and I know
all about it."
"We could make a fire," said Diana; "but we have no gridiron here."
"I had no gridiron there. Couldn't have carried a gridiron in my pocket
if I had had one. Here's another"--
"You had not a gridiron, of course."
"Nor a pocket either."
"But did you eat the trout all alone? without bread, I mean, or
anything?"
"No; we took bread and salt, and pepper and butter, and a few such
things. There were generally a lot of us; or if only two or three we
could manage that. The butter was the worst thing to accomplish--Here's
another!"
"Such beauties!" said Diana. "Well, Mr. Knowlton, if you get _too_
hungry, we'll cook you one at home, you know."
"Will you?" said he. "I wish we had salt and bread here! I should like
to show you how wood cookery goes, though. But I'll tell you! we'll get
Mrs. Starling to let us have it out in the meadow--that won't be bad."
Diana thought of her mother's utter astonishment and disapprobation at
such a proposal; and there was silence again for a few minutes, while
the line hung motionless over the pool, and Diana's eyes watched it
movelessly, and the liquid sweetness of the water's talk with the
stones was heard,--as one hears things when the senses are strung to
double keenness. Diana heard it, at least, and listened to something in
it she had never perceived before; something not only sweet and liquid
and musical, but in some odd sense admonitory. What did it say? Diana
hardly questioned, but yet she heard,--"My peace never changes. My song
never dies. Listen, or not listen, it is all the same. You may be in
twenty moods in a year. In my depth of content I flow on for ever."
A slight rustling of leaves, a slight crackling of stems or branches,
brought the eyes of both watchers in another direction; and before they
could hear a footfall, they saw, above them on the course of the brook,
a figure of a man coming towards them, and Diana knew it was the
minister. Swiftly and lightly he came swinging himself along, bounding
over obstacles, with a sure foot and a strong hand; till presently he
stood beside them. Just then Mr. Knowlton's line was swung up with
another trout. Diana introduced the gentlemen to each other.
"Fishing?" said the minister.
"We have got all there are in this place, I'm thinking," said Knowlton,
shutting up his rod.
"You _had_ not, two minutes ago," said the other. "What do you judge
from? It doesn't do to be so easily discouraged as that."
"Discouraged?" said Knowlton. "Not exactly. Let us see. Four, five,
six--seven--eight. Eight, out of this little one pool, Mr. Masters. Do
you think there are any more?"
"I always get all I can out of a thing," said the minister. And his
very cheery tone, as well as his very quiet manner, seemed to say he
was in the habit of getting a good deal out of everything.
"I don't know about that," answered the young officer in another tone.
"Doesn't always pay. To stay too long at one pool of a brook, for
instance. The brook has other pools, I suppose."
"I suppose it has," said the minister, with a manner which would have
puzzled any but one that knew him, to tell whether he were in jest or
earnest. "I suppose it has. But you may not find them. Or by the time
you do, you may have lost your bait. Or you may be tired of fishing. Or
it may be time to go home."
"I am never tired," said Knowlton, springing up; "and I have got a
guide that will not let me miss my way."
"You are fortunate," said the other. "And I will not occupy your time.
Good afternoon! I shall hope to see more of you."
With a warm grasp of the young officer's hand, and lifting his hat to
Diana, the minister went on his way. Diana looked after him, wondering
why he had not shaken hands with her too. It was something she was a
little sorry to miss.
"Who is that?" Knowlton asked.
"Mr. Masters? He's our minister."
"What sort of a chap is he? Not like all the rest of them?"
"How are all the rest of them?" Diana asked.
"I declare, I don't know!" said Knowlton. "If I was to tell the truth,
I should say they puzzle all my wits. See 'em in one place--and hear
'em--and you would say they thought all the business of this world was
of no account, nor the pleasure of it either. See 'em anywhere else,
and they are just as much of this world as you are--or as I am, I mean.
They change as fast as a chameleon. In the light that comes through a
church window, now, they'll be blue enough, and make you think blue's
the only wear--or black; but once outside, and they like the colour
that comes through a glass of wine or anything also that's jolly. One
thing or the other they don't mean--that's plain."
"Which do you think they don't mean?" said Diana.
"Well, they're two or three hours in church, and the rest of the week
outside. I believe what they say the rest of the time."
"I don't think Mr. Masters is like that."
"What _is_ he like, then?"
"I think he means exactly what he says."
"Exactly," said the young officer, laughing; "but which part of the
time, you know?"
"All times. I think he means just the same thing always."
"Must see more of him," said Knowlton. "You like him, then, Miss
Starling?"
Diana did like him, and it was quite her way to say what she thought;
yet she did not say it. She had an undefined, shadowy impression that
the hearing would not be grateful to her companion. Her reply was a
very inconclusive remark, that she had not seen much of Mr. Masters;
and an inquiry where Mr. Knowlton meant to fish next.
So the brook had them without interruption the rest of the time. They
crept up the ravine, under the hemlock branches and oak boughs; picking
their way along the rocky banks; catching one or two more trout, and
finding an unending supply of things to talk about; while the air grew
more delicious as the day dipped towards evening, and the light flashed
from the upper tree-tops more clear and sparkling as the rays came more
slant; and the brook's running commentary on what was going on, like so
many other commentaries, was heard and not heeded; until the shadows
deepening in the dell warned them it was time to seek the lower grounds
and open fields again. Which they did, much more swiftly than the
ascent of the brook had been made; in great spirits on both sides,
though with a thought on Diana's part how her mother would receive the
fish and the young officer's proposition. Mrs. Starling was standing at
the back door of the kitchen as they came up to it.
"I should think, Diana, you knew enough to remember that we don't take
visitors in at this end of the house," was her opening remark.
"How about fish?" inquired Mr. Knowlton, bringing forward his basket.
"What are you going to do with 'em?" asked Mrs. Starling, standing in
the door as if she meant he should not come in.
"We are going to eat them--with your leave ma'am, and by your
help;--and first we are going to cook them."
"Who?"
"Miss Starling and myself. I have promised to show her a thing. May I
ask for the loan of a match?"
"A match!" echoed Mrs. Starling.
"Or two," added Mr. Knowlton, with an indescribable twinkle in his eye;
indescribable because there was nothing contrary to good breeding in
it. All the more, Diana felt the sense of fun it expressed, and
hastened to change the scene and put an end to the colloquy. She threw
down her bonnet and went for a handful of sticks. Mr. Knowlton had got
his match by this time. Mrs. Starling stood astonished and scornful.
"Will this be wood enough?" Diana asked.
Mr. Knowlton replied by taking the sticks out of her hand, and led the
way into the meadow. Diana followed, very quiet and flushed. He had not
said a word; yet the manner of that little action had a whole small
volume in it. "Nobody else ever cared whether I had sticks in my hands
or not," thought Diana; and she flushed more and more. She turned her
face away from the bright west, which threw too much illumination on
it; and looked down into the brook. The brook's song sounded now
unheard.
It was on the border of the brook that Lieut. Knowlton made his fire.
He was in a very jubilant sort of mood. The fire was made, and the fish
were washed; and Diana stood by the column of smoke in the meadow and
looked on, as still as a mouse. And Mrs. Starling stood in the door of
the lean-to and looked on too, from a distance; and if she was still,
it was because she had no one near just then to whom it was safe to
open her mind. The beauty of the picture was all lost upon her: the
shorn meadow, the soft column of ascending smoke coloured in dainty
hues from the glowing western sky, the two figures moving about it.
"Now, Miss Diana," said the young officer. "If we had a little salt,
and a dish--I am afraid to go and ask Mrs. Starling for them!"
Perhaps so was she; but Diana went, and got them without asking. She
smiled at the dishing of the trout, it was so cleverly done; then she
was requested to sprinkle salt on them herself; and then with a
satisfied air, which somehow called up a flush in Diana's cheeks again,
Mr. Knowlton marched off to the house with the dish in his hands. Mrs.
Starling had given her farm labourers their supper, and was clearing
away relics from the board. She made no move of welcome or hospitable
invitation; but Diana hastened to remove the traces of disorder, and
set clean plates and cups, and bring fresh butter, and bread, and make
fresh tea. How very pleasant, and how extremely unpleasant, it was
altogether!
"Mother," she said, when all was ready, "won't you come and taste Mr.
Knowlton's fish?"
"I guess I know how fish taste. I haven't eaten the trout of that brook
all my life, without."
"But you don't know my cookery," said Mr. Knowlton; "_that's_ something
new."
"I don't see the sense of doing things in an outlandish way, when you
have no need to. Nor I don't see why men should cook, as long as
there's women about."
"What _is_ outlandish?" inquired Mr. Knowlton.
"What you've been doing, I should say."
"Come and try my cookery, Mrs. Starling; you will never say anything
against men in that capacity again."
"I never say anything against men anyhow; only against men cooking; and
that ain't natural."
"It comes quite natural to me," said the young officer. "Only taste my
trout, Mrs. Starling, and you will be quite reconciled to me again."
"I ain't quarrelling with nobody--fur's I know," said Mrs. Starling;
"but I've had my supper."
"Well, we haven't had ours," said the young man; and he set himself not
only to supply that deficiency in his own case, but to secure that
Diana should enjoy and eat hers in spite of all hindrances. He saw that
she was wofully annoyed by her mother's manner; it brought out his own
more in contrast than perhaps otherwise would have been. He helped her,
he coaxed her, he praised the trout, and the tea, and the bread, and
the butter; he peppered and salted anew, when he thought it necessary,
on her own plate; and he talked and told stories, and laughed and made
her laugh, till even Mrs. Starling, moving about in the pantry, moved
softly and set down the dishes carefully, that she too might hear.
Diana sometimes knew that she did so; at other times was fain to forget
everything but the glamour of the moment. Trout were disposed of at
last, however, and the remainder was cold; bread and butter had done
its duty; and Mr. Knowlton rose from table. His adieux were gay--quite
unaffected by Mrs. Starling's determined holding aloof; and
involuntarily Diana stood by the table where she could look out of the
window, till she had seen him mount into his waggon and go off.
"Have you got through?" said Mrs. Starling.
"Supper?" said Diana, starting. "Yes, mother."
"Then perhaps I can have a chance now. Do you think there is anything
in the world to do? or is it all done up, in the world you have got
into?"
Diana began clearing away the relics of the trout supper, in silence
and with all haste.
"That ain't all," said Mrs. Starling. "The house don't stand still for
nobody, nor the world, nor things generally. The sponge has got to be
set for the bread; and there's the beans, Diana; to-morrow's the day
for the beans; and they ain't looked over yet, nor put in soak. And
you'd better get out some codfish and put that on the stove. I don't
know what to have for breakfast if I don't have that. You'd best go and
get off your dress, first thing; that's my counsel to ye; and save
washing _that_ to-morrow."
Diana went into no reasoning, on that subject or any other; but she
managed to do all that was demanded of her without changing her dress,
and yet without damaging its fresh neatness. In silence, and in an
uncomfortable mute antagonism which each one felt in every movement of
the other. Odd it is, that when words for any reason are restrained,
the feeling supposed to be kept back manifests itself in the turn of
the shoulders and the set of the head, in the putting down of the foot
or the raising of the hand, nay, in the harmless movements of pans and
kettles. The work was done, however, punctually, as always in that
house; though Diana's feeling of mingled resentment and shame grew as
the evening wore on. She was glad when the last pan was lifted for the
last time, the key turned in the lock of the door of the lean-to, and
she and her mother moved into the other part of the house, preparatory
to seeking their several rooms. But Mrs. Starling had not done her work
yet.
"When's that young man comin' again?" she asked abruptly at the foot of
the stairs, stopping to trim the wick of her candle, and looking into
the light without winking.
"I don't know--" Diana faltered. "I don't know that he is ever coming
again."
"Don't expect him either, don't you?"
"I think it would be odd if he didn't," said Diana bravely, after a
moment's hesitation.
"Odd! why?"
Diana hesitated longer this time, and the words did not come for her
waiting.
"Why odd?" repeated Mrs. Starling sharply.
"When people seem to like a place--they are apt to come again," said
Diana, flushing a little.
"_Seem to_," said Mrs. Starling. "Now, Diana, I have just this one
thing to say. Don't you go and give that young fellow no encouragement."
"Encouragement, mother!" repeated Diana.
"Yes, encouragement. Don't you give him any. Mind my words. 'Cause, if
you do, I won't!"
"But, mother!" said Diana, "what is there to encourage? I could not
help going to show the brook to him to-day."
"You couldn't?" said Mrs. Starling, beginning to mount the stairs.
"Well, it is good to practise. Suppose'n he asked you to let him show
you the Mississippi--or the Pacific Ocean; couldn't you help that?"
"Mother, I am ashamed!" said poor Diana. "Just think. He is educated,
and has every advantage, and is an officer in the United States army
now; and what am I?"
"Worth three dozen of him," said Mrs. Starling decidedly.
"He wouldn't think so, mother, nor anybody else but you."
"Well, _I_ think so, mind, and that's enough. I ain't a goin' to give
you to him, not if he was fifty officers in the United States army. So
keep my words, Diana, and mind what I say. I never will give you to
him, nor to any other man that calls himself a soldier and looks down
upon folks that are better than he is. I won't let you marry him; so
don't you go and tell him you will."
"He won't ask me, mother. You make me ashamed!" said Diana, with her
cheeks burning; "but I am sure he does not look down upon me."
"Nobody shall marry you that sets himself up above me," said Mrs.
Starling as she closed her door. "Mind!"
And Diana went into her own room, and shut her door, and sat down to
breathe. "Suppose he should ask you to let him show you the
Mississippi, or the Pacific?" And the hot flush rushed over her and she
hid her face, as if even from herself. "He will not. But what if he
should?" Mrs. Starling had raised the question. Diana, in very maidenly
shame, tried to beat it down and stamp the life out of it. But that was
more than she could do.