CHAPTER XX
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.