Yes, that would be all right enough.
The boat was first hauled along the stone quay to the bridge and then out with the stem set straight into the roaring whirlpool. A few quick, well-directed oar-strokes, and they floated calmly in the back eddy from the nearest pier of the bridge with the foaming surge to right and left and the dusky arches of the bridge ringing and singing over their heads. There was a dizziness in the suction between the bridge piers, a sensation of rapid movement and yet of rest.
Lundstrom made fast to a ring and sat down at the crank by means of which he lowered and raised his net.
“Now the job is to sink the net straight down,” he said; “and to do that one must manage so that it is half taken by the current and half by the back eddy. Perhaps the gentleman will give a pull at the oars. There, bring her in a little and it’ll be fine!”
Leonard brought the boat in and the net descended solemnly.
The old man sank into meditation for a while, and this was a good time to study him. He was by no means ill to look at.
Why should the upper classes be condemned to appear correct and banal? Why should fine folk go about as a monstrosity to every practised and sensitive eye? Look at Lundstrom’s jacket here! The sun and rain of all seasons has given it the most delicate shade of green. His hat with its admirable patina might be of bronze. And his trousers!—what a combination of characteristic wrinkles, telling of age, experience and strife well sustained. What a treasure for an artist in wood-cuts! Lundstrom’s custom had grown as one with him. It was no wretched accident. Is there anything more agonizing than a tired, grumpy scarecrow that peers out of a brand new summer suit, glittering with naïve optimism? Or red-cheeked, pious rusticity sewed up in cautiously gray, pessimistic duds from a distant, smoky, rain-dripping, overcrowded factory district? But out of Lundstrom’s worn collar grew a face covered with moss-gray stubble over a network of friendly wrinkles and furrows. And out of the stubble shot up a two-story nose with room for many a pinch of reflective snuff. Large noses may be either volcanic or placid. Lundstrom’s was placid. It separated genially but firmly two small gray, liquidly bright eyes, which never seemed to have fastened on anything that burned too hot, never to have stared at anything helplessly, never to have wavered anxiously about over empty, exhausting horizons.
Lucky man, sighed Leonard. He sits peacefully under the voyaging clouds, in the midst of the Northstream swollen with spring freshets he sits peacefully at his crank. He is on the far side of indefinite expectations and adventure and drifting about in the inane. He has happily left his future behind him.
“But for heaven’s sake it must surely be time for you to haul up.”
“No hurry, no hurry,” opined Lundstrom, who nevertheless began gently to turn the crank. The net came up with a good sediment of silver-white splashing smelts.