A Traveller in Little Things

by W. H. Hudson

XXIX

A WONDERFUL STORY OF A MACKEREL

The angler is a mighty spinner of yarns, but no sooner does he set about the telling than I, knowing him of old, and accounting him not an uncommon but an unconscionable liar, begin (as Bacon hath it) "to droop and languish." Nor does the languishing end with the story if I am compelled to sit it out, for in that state I continue for some hours after. But oh! the difference when someone who is not an angler relates a fishing adventure! A plain truthful man who never dined at an anglers' club, nor knows that he who catches, or tries to catch a fish, must tell you something to astonish and fill you with envy and admiration. To a person of this description I am all attention, and however prosaic and even dull the narrative may be, it fills me with delight, and sends me happy to bed and (still chuckling) to a refreshing sleep.

Accordingly, when one of the "commercials" in the coffee-room of the Plymouth Hotel began to tell a wonderful story of a mackerel he once caught a very long time back, I immediately put down my pen so as to listen with all my ears. For he was about the last person one would have thought of associating with fish-catching—an exceedingly towny-looking person indeed, one who from his conversation appeared to know nothing outside of his business. He was past middle age—oldish-looking for a traveller—his iron-grey hair brushed well up to hide the baldness on top, disclosing a pair of large ears which stood out like handles; a hatchet face with parchment skin, antique side whiskers, and gold-rimmed glasses on his large beaky nose. He wore the whitest linen and blackest, glossiest broadcloth, a big black cravat, diamond stud in his shirt-front in the old fashion, and a heavy gold chain with a spade guinea attached. His get-up and general appearance, though ancient, or at all events mid-Victorian, proclaimed him a person of considerable importance in his vocation.

He had, he told us at starting, a very good customer at Bristol, perhaps the best he ever had, at any rate the one who had stuck longest to him, since what he was telling us happened about the year 1870. He went to Bristol expressly to see this man, expecting to get a good order from him, but when he arrived and saw the wife, and asked for her husband, she replied that he was away on his holiday with the two little boys. It was a great disappointment, for, of course, he couldn't get an order from her. Confound the woman! she was always against him; what she would have liked was to have half a dozen travellers dangling about her, so as to pit one against another and distribute the orders among them just as flirty females distribute their smiles, instead of putting trust in one.

Where had her husband gone for his holiday? he asked; she said Weymouth and then was sorry she had let it out. But she refused to give the address. "No, no," she said; "he's gone to enjoy himself, and mustn't be reminded of business till he gets back."

However, he resolved to follow him to Weymouth on the chance of finding him there, and accordingly took the next train to that place. And, he added, it was lucky for him that he did so, for he very soon found him with his boys on the front, and, in spite of what she said, it was not with this man as it was with so many others who refuse to do business when away from the shop. On the contrary, at Weymouth he secured the best order this man had given him up to that time; and it was because he was away from his wife, who had always contrived to be present at their business meetings, and was very interfering, and made her husband too cautious in buying.

It was early in the day when this business was finished. "And now," said the man from Bristol, who was in a sort of gay holiday mood, "what are you going to do with yourself for the rest of the day?"

He answered that he was going to take the next train back to London. He had finished with Weymouth—there was no other customer there.

Here he digressed to tell us that he was a beginner at that time at the salary of a pound a week and fifteen shillings a day for travelling expenses. He thought this a great thing at first; when he heard what he was to get he walked about on air all day long, repeating to himself, "Fifteen shillings a day for expenses!" It was incredible; he had been poor, earning about five shillings a week, and now he had suddenly come into this splendid fortune. It wouldn't be much for him now! He began by spending recklessly; and in a short time discovered that the fifteen shillings didn't go far; now he had come to his senses and had to practise a rigid economy. Accordingly, he thought he would save the cost of a night's lodging and go back to town. But the Bristol man was anxious to keep him and said he had hired a man and boat to go fishing with the boys,—why couldn't he just engage a bedroom for the night and spend the afternoon with them?

After some demur he consented, and took his bag to a modest Temperance Hotel, where he secured a room, and then, protesting he had never caught a fish or seen one caught in his life, he got into the boat, and was taken into the bay where he was to have his first and only experience of fishing. Perhaps it was no great thing, but it gave him something to remember all his life. After a while his line began to tremble and move about in an extraordinary way with sudden little tugs which were quite startling, and on pulling it in he found he had a mackerel on his hook. He managed to get it into the boat all right and was delighted at his good luck, and still more at the sight of the fish, shining like silver and showing the most beautiful colours. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life! Later, the same thing happened again with the line and a second mackerel was caught, and altogether he caught three. His friend also caught a few, and after a most pleasant and exciting afternoon they returned to the town well pleased with their sport. His friend wanted him to take a share of the catch, and after a little persuasion he consented to take one, and he selected the one he had caught first, just because it was the first fish he had ever caught in his life, and it had looked more beautiful than any other, so would probably taste better.

Going back to the hotel he called the maid and told her he had brought in a mackerel which he had caught for his tea, and ordered her to have it prepared. He had it boiled and enjoyed it very much, but on the following morning when the bill was brought to him he found that he had been charged two shillings for fish.

"Why, what does this item mean?" he exclaimed. "I've had no fish in this hotel except a mackerel which I caught myself and brought back for my tea, and now I'm asked to pay two shillings for it? Just take the bill back to your mistress and tell her the fish was mine—I caught it myself in the Bay yesterday afternoon."

The girl took it up, and by-and-by returned and said her mistress had consented to take threepence off the bill as he had provided the fish himself.

"No," he said, indignantly, "I'll have nothing off the bill, I'll pay the full amount," and pay it he did in his anger, then went off to say goodbye to his friend, to whom he related the case.

His friend, being in the same hilarious humour as on the previous day, burst out laughing and made a good deal of fun over the matter.

That, he said, was the whole story of how he went fishing and caught a mackerel, and what came of it. But it was not quite all, for he went on to tell us that he still visited Bristol regularly to receive big and ever bigger orders from that same old customer of his, whose business had gone on increasing ever since; and invariably after finishing their business his friend remarks in a casual sort of way: "By the way, old man, do you remember that mackerel you caught at Weymouth which you had for tea, and were charged two shillings for?" "Then he laughs just as heartily as if it had only happened yesterday, and I leave him in a good humour, and say to myself: 'Now, I'll hear no more about that blessed mackerel till I go round to Bristol again in three months' time.'"

"How long ago did you say it was since you caught the mackerel?" I inquired.

"About forty years."

"Then," I said, "it was a very lucky fish for you—worth more perhaps than if a big diamond had been found in its belly. The man had got his joke—the one joke of his life perhaps—and was determined to stick to it, and that kept him faithful to you in spite of his wife's wish to distribute their orders among a lot of travellers."

He replied that I was perhaps right and that it had turned out a lucky fish for him. But his old customer, though his business was big, was not so important to him now when he had big customers in most of the large towns in England, and he thought it rather ridiculous to keep up that joke so many years.