The brook was giving that live, persistent call to a listener that trout
brooks always make; it ran with a free, swift current even here, where
it crossed an apparently level piece of land. I saw two unpromising,
quick barbel chase each other upstream from bank to bank as we solemnly
arranged our hooks and sinkers. I felt that William’s glances changed
from anxiety to relief when he found that I was used to such gear;
perhaps he felt that we must stay together if I could not bait my own
hook, but we parted happily, full of a pleasing sense of companionship.
William had pointed me up the brook, but I chose to go down, which was
only fair because it was his day, though one likes as well to follow and
see where a brook goes as to find one’s way to the places it comes from,
and its tiny springs and headwaters, and in this case trout were not to
be considered. William’s only real anxiety was lest I might suffer from
mosquitoes. His own complexion was still strangely impaired by its
defenses, but I kept forgetting it, and looking to see if we were
treading fresh pennyroyal underfoot, so efficient was Mrs. Todd’s
remedy. I was conscious, after we parted, and I turned to see if he were
already fishing, and saw him wave his hand gallantly as he went away,
that our friendship had made a great gain.
The moment that I began to fish the brook, I had a sense of its
emptiness; when my bait first touched the water and went lightly down
the quick stream, I knew that there was nothing to lie in wait for it.
It is the same certainty that comes when one knocks at the door of an
empty house, a lack of answering consciousness and of possible response;
it is quite different if there is any life within. But it was a lovely
brook, and I went a long way through woods and breezy open pastures, and
found a forsaken house and overgrown farm, and laid up many pleasures
for future joy and remembrance. At the end of the morning I came back to
our meeting-place hungry and without any fish. William was already
waiting, and we did not mention the matter of trout. We ate our
luncheons with good appetites, and William brought our two stone bottles
of spruce beer from the deep place in the brook where he had left them
to cool. Then we sat awhile longer in peace and quietness on the green
banks.
As for William, he looked more boyish than ever, and kept a more remote
and juvenile sort of silence. Once I wondered how he had come to be so
curiously wrinkled, forgetting, absent-mindedly, to recognize the
effects of time. He did not expect any one else to keep up a vain show
of conversation, and so I was silent as well as he. I glanced at him now
and then, but I watched the leaves tossing against the sky and the red
cattle moving in the pasture. “I don’t know’s we need head for home.
It’s early yet,” he said at last, and I was as startled as if one of the
gray firs had spoken.
“I guess I’ll go up-along and ask after Thankful Hight’s folks,” he
continued. “Mother’d like to get word;” and I nodded a pleased assent.