“Oh! too bad! That’s hard luck!”
“Not a bit. I like to watch you do it.”
And so indeed I did. Once having realized that I was temporarily laid by, Jonathan put his whole mind on the pool, while I, being honorably released from all responsibility, [pg 134] except that of keeping my line taut, could put my whole mind on his performance. There is a little the same sort of pleasure in watching the skillful handling of a rod that there is in watching the bow-action of a violinist. Both things demand the utmost nicety of adjustment: body, arm, wrist, fingers uniting in an interplay of efficiency exactly adapted to the intricately shifting needs of each moment.
Thus I watched, through the typical stages of the sport: the delicate flip of the bait into the current at just the right spot; its swift descent, imperceptibly guided by the rod’s quivering tip; its slower drift toward deep water; its sudden vanishing, and the whir of the reel as the line goes out; then the pause, the critical moments of “feeling for him”; at last the strike … and then, a flopping in the grass behind me, and Jonathan crawling back to kill and unhook him.
“Don’t get up. There’s probably another one,” he said; and soon, by the same reptilian methods, was back for another try. There was another one, and yet another, and then a little fellow, barely hooked. “That’s all,” [pg 135] said Jonathan, as he rose to put him back into the pool, and we watched the pretty spotted creature fling himself upstream with a wild flourish of his gleaming body.
“Now I’ll get you clear,” said Jonathan, wading out into the water, and, with sleeves rolled high, feeling deep, deep down under the opposite bank. “He had you all right—it’s wound round a root and then jabbed deep into it … hard luck! I wanted you to get those fellows!” And to this day I am sure he remembers those trout with a tinge of regret.
I had intended leaving him to fish the rest of the brook, while I went back to that upper path to look up two or three special arbutus clumps that I knew, but seeing his depression over the snag incident, I could not suggest this. Instead I followed the stream with him, accepting his urgent offer of all the best pools, while he, taking what was left, drew out perfectly good trout from the most unhopeful-looking bits of water. And at the end, there was time to return along the upper path and visit my old friends, so both of us were satisfied.
On such days, however, there is always one person who is not satisfied, and that is, Kit the horse. Kit has borne with our vagaries for many years, but she has never come to understand them. She never fails to greet our return, as our voices come within the range of her pricked-up ears, by a prolonged and reproachful whinny, which says as plainly as is necessary, “Back? Well—I should think it was time! I should think it was TIME!” Now and then we have thought it would be pleasant to have a little motor-car that could be tucked away at any roadside, without reference to a good hitching-place, but if we had it, I am sure we should miss that ungracious welcoming whinny. We should miss, too, the exasperated violence of Kit’s pace on the first bit of the home road—a violence expressing in the most ostentatious manner her opinion of folks who keep a respectable horse hitched by the roadside, far from the delights of the dim, sweet stable and the dusty, sneezy, munchy hay.
But leaving out this little matter of Kit’s preference, and also the other little matter of the trout’s preference, I feel sure that an arbutus-trouting [pg 137] is peculiarly satisfying. It meets every human need—the need of food and beauty, the need of feeling strong and skillful, the need of becoming deeply aware of nature as living and kind. Moreover, it is very satisfying afterwards. As we sat that evening, over a late supper, with a shallow dish of arbutus beside us, I remarked, “The advantage of getting arbutus is, that you bring the whole day home with you and have it at your elbow.”
“The advantage of getting trout,” remarked Jonathan dreamily, as if to himself, “is, that you bring your whole day home with you, and have it for breakfast.”