Jonathan and I differ about a great many things; how otherwise are we to
avoid the sloughs of bigoted self-satisfaction? But upon one point we
agree: we are both convinced that on a beautiful morning in April or May
or June there is just one thing that any right-minded person really
wants to do. That is to turn a deaf ear to duty and a blind eye to all
other pleasures, and--find a trout brook. We are, indeed, able to
understand that duty may be too much for him--may be quite indifferent
to his deaf ear and shout in the other, or may even seize him by the
shoulders and hold him firmly in his place. He may not be able so much
as to drop a line in the brown water all through the maddening spring
days. But that he should not want to--ache to--this we cannot
understand. We do know that it is not a thing to be argued about. It is
temperamental, it is in the blood, or it is not. Jonathan and I always
want to.
Once it was almost the end of April, and we had been wanting to ever
since March had gone out like a lion--for in some parts of New England a
jocose legislature has arranged that the trout season shall begin on
April Fool's Day. Those who try to catch trout on April first understand
the joke.
"Jonathan," I said over our coffee, "have you noticed the weather
to-day?"
"Um-m-pleasant day," he murmured abstractedly from behind his newspaper.
"Pleasant! Have you felt the sunshine? Have you smelt the spring mud? I
want to roll in it!"
Jonathan really looked up over his paper. "Do!" he said, benevolently.
"Jonathan, let's run away!"
"Can't. There's a man coming at--"
"I know. There's always a man coming. Tell him to come to-morrow. Tell
him you are called out of town."
"But you have a lot of things to-day too--book clubs and Japanese clubs
and such things. You said last night--"
"I'll tell them _I'm_ called out of town too. I _am_ called--we're both
called, you know we are. And we've got to go."
"Really, my dear, you know I want to, but--"
"No use! It's a runaway. Get the time-table and see which is the first
train to anywhere--to nowhere--who cares where!"
Jonathan went, protesting. I let him protest. A man should have some
privileges.
We took the first train. It was a local, of course, and it trundled
jerkily along one of the little rivers we knew. When the conductor came
to us, Jonathan showed him our mileage book. "Where to?" he asked
mechanically, but stiffened to attention when Jonathan said placidly, "I
don't know yet. Where _are_ we going, my dear?"
"I hadn't thought," I said; "let's see the places on the map."
"Well, conductor," said Jonathan, "take off for three stations, and if
we don't get off then, you'll find us here when you come around, and
then you can take off some more."
The conductor looked us both over. We were evidently not a bridal
couple, and we didn't look quite like criminals--he gave us up.
When we saw a bit of country that looked attractive, we got off. That
was something I had always wanted to do. All my life I have had to go to
definite places, and my memory is full of tantalizing glimpses of the
charming spots I have passed on the road and could never stop to
explore. This time we really did it. We left the little railway station,
sitting plain and useful beside the track, went up the road past a few
farmhouses, over a fence and across a soft ploughed field, and down to
the little river, willow-bordered, shallow, golden-brown, with here and
there a deep pool under an overhanging hemlock or a shelving, fretted,
bush-tangled bank.
We sat down in the sun on a willow log and put our rods together. Does
anything sound prettier than the whir and click of the reel as one pulls
out the line for the first time on an April day? We sat and looked at
the world for a little, and let the wind, with just the faint chill of
the vanishing snows still in it, blow over us, and the sun, that was
making anemones and arbutus every minute, warm us through. It was almost
too good to begin, this day that we had stolen. I felt like a child with
a toothsome cake-- "I'll put it away for a while and have it later."
But, after all, it was already begun. We had not stolen it, it had
stolen us, and it held us in its power. Soon we wandered on, at first
hastening for the mere joy of motion and the freshness of things; then,
as the wind lessened and the sun shone hot in the hollows, loitering
more and more, dropping a line here and there where a deep pool looked
suggestive. Trout? Yes, we caught some. Jonathan pulled in a good many;
I got enough to seem industrious. I seldom catch as many as Jonathan,
though he tries to give me all the best holes; because really there are
so many other things to attend to. Men seem to go fishing chiefly to
catch fish. Jonathan spends half an hour working his rod and line
through a network of bushes, briers, and vines, to drop it in a chosen
spot in a pool. He swears gently as he works, but he works on, and
usually gets his fish. I don't swear, so I know I could never carry
through such an undertaking, and I don't try.
I did try once, when I was young and reckless. I headed the tip of my
rod, like a lance in rest, for the most open spot I could see. For the
fisherman's rule in the woods is not "Follow the flag," but "Follow your
tip," and I tried to follow mine. This necessitated reducing myself
occasionally to the dimensions of a filament, but I was elastic, and I
persisted. The brambles neatly extracted my hat-pins and dropped them in
the tangle about my feet; they pulled off my hat, but I pushed painfully
forward. They tore at my hair; they caught an end of my tie and drew out
the bow. Finally they made a simultaneous and well-planned assault upon
my hair, my neck, my left arm, raised to push them back, and my right,
extended to hold and guide that quivering, undulating rod. I was
helpless, unless I wished to be torn in shreds. At that moment, as I
stood poised, hot, baffled, smarting and stinging with bramble
scratches, wishing I could swear like a man and have it out, the air was
filled with the liquid notes of a wood thrush. I love the wood thrush
best of all; but that he should choose this moment! It was the final
touch.
I whistled the blue-jay note, which means "Come," and Jonathan came
threshing through the brush, having left his rod.
"Where are you?" he called; "I can't see you."
"No, you can't," I responded unamiably. "You probably never will see me
again, at least not in any recognizable form. Help me out!" The thrush
sang again, one tree farther away. "No! First kill that thrush!" I added
between set teeth, as a slight motion of mine set the brambles raking
again.
"Why, why, my dear, what's this?" Then, as he caught sight of me, "Well!
You are tied up! Wait; I'll get out my knife."
He cut here and there, and one after another, with a farewell stab or
scratch, the maddening things reluctantly let go their hold. Meanwhile
Jonathan made placid remarks about the proper way to go through brush.
"You go too fast, you know. You can't hurry these things, and you can't
bully them. I don't see how you manage to get scratched up so. I never
do."
"Jonathan, you are as tactless as the thrush."
"Don't kill me yet, though. Wait till I cut this last fellow. There! Now
you're free. By George! But you're a wreck!"
That was the last time I ever tried to "work through brush," as Jonathan
calls it. If I can catch trout by any method compatible with sanity, I
am ready to do it, but as for allowing myself to be drawn into a
situation wherein the note of the wood thrush stirs thoughts of murder
in my breast--at that point, I opine, sport ceases.
So on that day of our runaway I kept to open waters and preserved a
placid mind. The air was full of bird notes--in the big open woods the
clear "whick-ya, whick-ya, whick-ya" of the courting yellowhammers, in
the meadows bluebirds with their shy, vanishing call that is over almost
before you can begin to listen, meadowlarks poignantly sweet, song
sparrows with a lift and a lilt and a carol, and in the swamps the
red-wings trilling jubilant.
Noon came, and we camped under the sunny lee of a ridge that was all
abloom with hepaticas--clumps of lavender and white and rosy-lilac. We
found a good spring, and a fallen log, and some dead hemlock tips to
start a fire, and soon we had a merry blaze. Then Jonathan dressed some
of the trout, while I found a black birch tree and cut forked sticks for
broilers. Any one who has not broiled fresh-caught trout outdoors on
birch forks--or spice bush will do almost as well--has yet to learn what
life holds for him. Chops are good, too, done in that way. We usually
carry them along when there is no prospect of fish, or, when we are sure
of our country, we take a tin cup and buy eggs at a farmhouse to boil.
But the balancing of the can requires a happy combination of stones
about the fire that the brief nooning of a day's tramp seldom affords,
and baking is still more uncertain. Bacon is good, but broiling the
little slices--and how they do shrink!--takes too long, while frying
entails a pan. Curiously enough, a pan, in addition to two fish baskets
and a landing-net, does not find favor in Jonathan's eyes.
After luncheon and a long, lazy rest on our log we went back to the
stream and loitered down its bank. Pussy-willows, their sleek silver
paws bursting into fat, caterpillary things, covered us with yellow
pollen powder as we brushed past them. Now and then we were arrested by
the sharp fragrance of the spice bush, whose little yellow blossoms had
escaped our notice. In the damp hollows the ground was carpeted with the
rich, mottled green leaves and tawny yellow bells of the adder's-tongue,
and the wet mud was sweet with the dainty, short-stemmed white violets.
On the dry, barren places were masses of saxifrage, bravely cheerful; on
the rocky slopes fragile anemones blew in the wind, and fluffy green
clumps of columbine lured us on to a vain search for an early blossom.
As the afternoon waned, and the wind freshened crisply, we guessed that
it was milking-time, and wandered up to a farmhouse where we persuaded
the farmer's wife to give us bread and cheese and warm new milk. We were
urged to "set inside," but preferred to take the great white pitcher of
milk out to the steps of the little back porch where we could hear the
insistent note of the little phoebe that was building under the eaves
of the woodshed. Our hostess stood in the doorway, watching in amused
tolerance as we filled and refilled our goblets. They were wonderful
goblets, be it said--the best the house afforded. Jonathan's was of
fancy green glass, all covered with little knobs; mine was yellow, with
a head of Washington stamped on one side, and "God Bless our Country" on
the other. Finally the good woman broke the silence-- "Guess your
mothers ain't never weaned ye." Which we were not in a position to
refute.
On our return train we found the same conductor who had taken us out in
the morning. As he folded back the green cover of our mileage book he
could not forbear remarking, quizzically, "Know how far you're goin'
to-night?"
"Jonathan," I said, as we settled to toast and tea before our home
fireplace that evening, "I like running away. I don't blame horses."