The House of Defence. Volume 1

MAUD had happened to come across in a book she was reading on the way up to Scotland an account of an epidemic of typhoid, in which the charitable lady (vicar’s wife) of the place sat by the bedsides of the patients, held their hands, and fed them with “cooling fruits.” It occurred to her as possible, though not very likely, that the treatment of typhoid had undergone alterations even as radical as this indicated, since she had had the disease herself, and on arrival she had asked the doctor, quoting this remarkable passage, if she should telegraph for a supply of cooling fruits. The excellent Dr. Symes, though not given either to joking or quick in the perception of a joke, had laughed immoderately.

“Cooling fruits!” he said. “Feed them with cooling fruits, Lady Maud, and you will soon stop the epidemic, because everybody will be dead.” Then he checked his laughter. “It was good of you to come,” he said, “but you have your work up at the house. Just keep Lord Thurso – because I know him – from moping and being miserable. I am glad you came with him. But when he is away, down in the village, do what you please apart from the cooling fruits. I suggest your being out of doors all you can. You will have your work in the evening, and the sun and the wind and the rain, which pray God we get, will fit you best for it.”

This advice came into her head the next morning after she had seen Thurso off to the village, and it was counsel which jumped with her inclinations, since, according to her view, the world (especially the world of out-of-doors) was a swarm of delightful and congenial occupations, and of them all none was so entrancing as catching sea-trout on a light rod and with light tackle. And since the river, which should be full of these inimitable fish, ran within some half-mile of the house, there was no great difficulty in the way of putting the doctor’s recommendation into practice. She knew, of course, nothing of the fact that Thurso had let the fishing to the American whom he had met yesterday in the street, and had decided not to ask to dinner.

Thurso was not to come home to lunch that day, and as the house would be full of workmen busy shifting furniture, and making the rooms ready, under the superintendence of one of the doctors, for the reception of the typhoid patients, Maud went off to the river, without a word to anyone, except an order for a sandwich lunch, with a heart that was high and exultant in spite of the surrounding calamitous conditions. This turning of the house into a hospital was entirely characteristic of Thurso; she rejoiced to think that their comfort, not money alone, was being sacrificed to sufferers. It was a cheap charity to give money, to spend merely unless expense pinched one, but it was a far more real effort of sympathy to turn the house into a feverward. It was that which brought people into touch, the knowledge that somebody’s relief implied somebody else’s trouble. Thurso was rich, the cost of what he did was of no account, but this was a more active sympathy.

Sandie, poor fellow, her special fishing gillie, was down with typhoid, and his case, as she knew, was very serious; so she set off alone, with a sandwich in her creel, and a light rod and a landing-net, feeling rather heartless, for she so much expected an enchanting day. She had to a huge degree that sensible gift which enabled her, when she had done her best in one direction, to enjoy the pleasure that lay before her in another; and being satisfied that she could not be of the slightest use during these next hours, either at home or in the village with the “cooling fruits,” she let herself go with regard to the excitement of the river-side. Her natural joie de vivre gilded all employments for her, but this angling for sea-trout had no need of gilding, since it was gold already. Nothing could be more entrancing – for hours one might cast an unclaimed fly upon the waters, yet never lose the confident anticipation that at any moment the swirl of submerged strength and activity would bend the rod to that glorious curve that the fisherman knows to be the true attack of what he has never seen. Like everything else that anybody really feels it to be worth while doing (keeping accounts alone being excepted), mystery and romance illuminated the pursuit, and as she walked down to the river, all else – Thurso’s trouble, the fever-stricken village and its tragedies – were all sponged off her mind. Her heart was no less tender and solicitous than it had been, but her attention was engaged. Instead, mixed with the excitement of her anticipations, the dreadful things that might be in store for her by the river were in her mind, for to fish with a big sea-trout fly might easily attract the notice of the sea-trout’s mightier cousins, in which case good-bye, probably, to the light tackle. But as it was no sport to catch sea-trout on a salmon-rod, Maud took this chance with a light heart.

The day was one of those grey days (rare in the North, where a grey day implies for the most part an east wind, which sucks the colour out of land and sky), with soft breezes from the south-west, which made heather and hillside and golden gorse and river more brilliant and full of colour than even the direct sunbeams, and, preoccupied though Maud was with the prospects of her fishing, her mind kept paying little flying visits to the beauty of the morning. Five minutes after she had left the house she was absolutely alone, and no sight either of human form or human habitation broke the intense solitude of eye and ear which to such as her makes so dear and intimate a companionship. For she loved the pleasant things of the earth – the honey-scented heather and the sunshine of the gorse, and the close, silent friendship of Nature, unvexed and undistracted by human presences. To her, as to St. Francis, the trees were her dear brothers, and the sky and river her dear sisters, and somehow also the very sea-trout, in the slaughter of which she hoped to spend a delightful day, were blood relations and beloved by her. She could not have explained that attitude at all: she would frankly have admitted that it implied an inconsistency. But there the fact was.

And here at last was the rushing, jubilant river, which a rainy May had filled from bank to bank. She struck it at the Bridge Pool, at the head of which the stream was spanned by a swaying, airy suspension bridge, from which the pool took its name. Deep water lay on the near side, and a considerable piece of shallow water on the other; but just beyond the shallows, could she but cast over it, ran a little channel she knew well, since it was a favourite place for the sea-trout. So she crossed the swaying, dancing bridge, debating within herself the choice of a fly. The river was high, the sky grey, and sea-trout would probably prefer a rather large fly, but so, unfortunately, would salmon. However, she must chance that – the big fly was certainly the correct game.

Five minutes was enough for the soaking of a cast and the adjustment of her rod, and already, with an attack of “fisherman’s heart,” which makes that organ apparently shift from its normal position into the throat, she began casting from just below the bridge. But with the longest line of which she was capable she could not reach that channel of deep water, and if she did not do that she might as usefully go a-fishing in a pail, like Simple Simon. But … there was nobody within sight, and next minute she had kilted her skirts till she could wade out over that barren shoal-water, and stand where, with the cool bright water flowing nearly up to her knees, yet leaving her skirt unwetted, she could reach the deeper water beyond. Well she knew what a wet skirt meant to one who proposed to walk and fish all day; the heavy clinging blanket made all activity, all lightness of going, out of the question, and as she waded out she hitched it an inch or two higher. Then for a moment she had to pause to laugh at the figure she must inevitably be presenting were there anyone to see her. There was a knitted jersey for her upper half, a tweed cap for her head, a much kilted skirt and stockings for the rest. Her beauty and the vigour and grace of her limbs she forgot to consider, just as a beholder, had there been one, might have paid but scanty attention to the cap and jersey and skirt. But from where she stood she could cast over the coveted channel.

Half a dozen times her fly went on its quiet, unerring circuit, then suddenly a gulp and a fin broke the surface just below it, and with another gulp her heart jumped upwards from her throat into her very mouth. The owner of that fin had not touched her fly, but – oh, the rapture and danger of it! – he was no sea-trout, but a fresh-run salmon. At that the pure sporting instinct usurped all other feeling. Light though her rod was and light her tackle, since there was a salmon in the river that felt an interest in her Jock Scott, she must try to catch him. He might (probably would) break her: then she would be broken. She had no gaff; very well, she must do without. He was a heavy fish too; she had seen enough of him for that. What a desperate and heavenly adventure!

She waded ashore, being far too wise in the science to cast over him again at once, preferring to wait a minute or two before she tempted him again, and as she gained dry land she saw that there was a man half-way across the bridge just above the pool. He carried a salmon-rod over his shoulder, and a fishing-bag slung by a strap. He could not, of course, be fishing here on Thurso’s water, and she guessed he must be going over to Scarsdale, where she knew that some new tenants had taken the lodge. But she gave him only the slightest and most fleeting attention, being far more interested that moment in one particular fish than in any particular man, and took no further notice of him, except that she unkilted her skirt an inch or two, for it showed really too much of what was called “leg.” Then, without giving a further glance at the figure on the bridge, who had paused there watching her, she walked back again through the shallows to a point some ten yards above that where she had raised the fish, in order to make sure of casting over him again. The unkilted skirt dragged a little in the water, but she would have waded neck-deep after that fish. Also – this popped in and out of her mind – there was a man watching, and she had no objection to a gallery when she was fishing. She would show him how to – well, probably lose, a salmon on trout-tackle with a trout-rod.

Yard by yard she moved down to where the dear monster had risen before. There he was again, but this time no fin broke the surface, only a submerged boil came at her fly. But this was the true attack – the suddenly bent rod, the sudden message on the line. At the same moment, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the man had moved from his place on the bridge, and was coming up behind her on the bank.

But that occupied her infinitesimally; all that she really knew was that she was the possessor of a light trout-rod, fitted with light tackle, at the far end of which at the present moment there happened to be a salmon. Her landing-net was somewhere on the bank, but, as far as that went, it would be just as useful to her if it had been at Jericho instead. But immediately the fish bolted down-stream, and her reel sang shrilly. Then, like an express train, he came back, and with the calmness of despair she reeled in, thinking for the moment he meant to go up under the bridge, in which case there would be need to soak another cast and look out another fly. But he changed his mind, and once more, after two or three rushes, he was opposite to her just where she had hooked him originally, shaking his head, so it seemed, for the rod jerked and jumped, yet no line ran out. Maud had moved back across the shoal-water during these manœuvres so as to gain the shore again, for she knew she must get somewhere where she could run, when from close behind her came a level, pleasant voice.

“He is well hooked,” he said; “I saw him take it. But he’ll be off down-stream in a minute, and there are a hundred yards of rapid before the next pool. I should get to shore quick if I were you, and be ready to run.”

Maud still thought of nothing but her fish, which had already begun to bore slowly away into the deep water on the far side of the river, and she knew well what that would lead to. And she replied to the voice as if it had been only her own thoughts, which were identical, with which she was communing.

“Yes, I know,” she said; “he’s making for the deep water now. There!”

She splashed her way through the margin of the shoal-water, nearly tripping up over a submerged stone, just as the fish felt the full current of the river, and was off, full-finned, down-stream. Her reel screamed out, and in a couple of seconds there was a dreadful length of line between her and the fly. But she gained the smooth turf of the bank, and was off like an arrow after him, when, just before matters were desperate, a bend in the rapids brought her nearer to him, and, still running, she reeled hurriedly in. Then – oh, blessed haven! – he reached the deep water at the head of the pool below, and, swimming there in small circles, allowed her to recapture more of her line. Then, still without taking her eyes off the water (for she felt sure that the owner of the voice had run down behind her), she spoke to him again.

“The humour of the situation is that I have only the very lightest tackle,” she said; “for I came out after sea-trout. But luckily my fish doesn’t know that. And would you be so kind as to get my landing-net? I left it on the bank just below the bridge.”

“I saw it and brought it,” said the voice. “But I don’t know what you want it for. He’s a twenty-pounder.”

The voice was a very pleasant and friendly one, and Maud probably noticed that instinctively, for she spoke to this man whom she had never seen as if he was of her own class, anyhow. And here she laughed suddenly.

“I wonder what is going to happen next,” she said. “That’s half the joy of fishing, isn’t it? Oh, look!”

For the first time the fish jumped, showing himself from head to tail, and splashed soundingly back into the pool again.

“Far side of twenty pounds,” remarked the voice. “I told my gillie, I’m glad to say, to be down here by eleven, and he will bring a gaff. He should be here every minute. But there’ll be no gaffing going on just yet.”

This turned out to be perfectly true, and a dozen times in the next quarter of an hour Maud knew that she was within an ace of losing her fish. He behaved like the lusty fresh-run monster that he was, making disconcerting rushes down to the very tail of the pool, and running out her line almost to its last yard before she had time to follow him down the steep stony bank. Then he would seek the very deepest holes, and lie there sulking or jiggering, and putting the most dangerous snapping strains on her light tackle. Then with a rush he would come straight back towards her, so that, do what she would, there were long perilous moments, though she reeled in with a lightning hand when he was on a slack line. But at length he began to tire a little, and instead of hurling himself about the pool, allowed himself to drift every now and then with the stream. That, too, was dangerous, and she had to treat him with the utmost gentleness, since both his dead weight and the press of the water were against her. Then again a spark of his savage pride would flare up, and he would protest against this mysterious compelling force; but he was weakening.