“A gravestone,� said Crane.
There was a silence, and Hood sat gazing with his owlish face at the dim pool in which the dark woods were mirrored. At last he said:
“Moss isn’t the only thing found on that. Sometimes there is the word Resurgam.�
“Well, I hope you will,� said Crane genially. “But the trumpet will have to be pretty loud to wake you up. It’s my opinion you’ll be too late for the Day of Judgment.�
“Now if this were a true dramatic dialogue,� remarked Hood, “I should answer that it would be better for you if you were. But it hardly seems a Christian sentiment for a parting. Are you really off to-day?�
“Yes, to-night,� replied his friend. “Sure you won’t come with me to the Cannibal Islands?�
“I prefer my own island,� said Mr. Owen Hood.
When his friend had gone he continued to gaze abstractedly at the tranquil topsy-turvydom in the green mirror of the pool, nor did he change his posture and hardly moved his head. This might be partly explained by the still habits of a fisherman; but to tell the truth, it was not easy to discover whether the solitary lawyer really wanted to catch any fish. He often carried a volume of Isaak Walton in his pocket, having a love of the old English literature as of the old English landscape. But if he was an angler, he certainly was not a very complete angler.
But the truth is that Owen Hood had not been quite candid with his friend about the spell that held him to that particular islet in the Upper Thames. If he had said, as he was quite capable of saying, that he expected to catch the miraculous draught of fishes or the whale that swallowed Jonah, or even the great sea-serpent, his expressions would have been merely symbolical. But they would have been the symbol of something as unique and unattainable. For Mr. Owen Hood was really fishing for something that very few fishermen ever catch; and that was a dream of his boyhood, and something that had happened on that lonely spot long ago.
Years before, when he was a very young man, he had sat fishing on that island one evening as the twilight turned to dark, and two or three broad bands of silver were all that was left of the sunset behind the darkening trees. The birds were dropping out of the sky and there was no noise except the soft noises of the river. Suddenly and without a sound, as comes a veritable vision, a girl had come out of the woods opposite. She spoke to him across the stream, asking him he hardly knew what, which he answered he hardly knew how. She was dressed in white and carried a bunch of bluebells loose in her hand; her hair in a straight fringe of gold was low on her forehead; she was pale like ivory, and her pale eyelids had a sort of flutter as of nervous emotion. There came on him a strangling sense of stupidity. But he must have managed to speak civilly, for she lingered; and he must have said something to amuse her, for she laughed. Then followed the incident he could never analyse, though he was an introspective person. Making a gesture towards something, she managed to drop her loose blue flowers into the water. He knew not what sort of whirlwind was in his head, but it seemed to him that prodigious things were happening, as in an epic of the gods, of which all visible things were but the small signs. Before he knew where he was he was standing dripping on the other bank; for he had splashed in somehow and saved the bunch as if it had been a baby drowning. Of all the things she said he could only recall one sentence, that repeated itself perpetually in his mind: “You’ll catch your death of cold.�