Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

Clare has a wicked story of how I gave in to father, and came to start without anything but those rough clothes. She says he said--and Jack Buchanan has told me that lawyers put no faith in anything that he says she says, or she says he says, which proves how little truth there is in this--that if Bab took none but her oldest clothes, and fished all day and had no one to run her errands--he meant Jack and the others--she might possibly grow an inch in Norway. As if I wanted to grow an inch! An inch indeed! I am five feet one and a half high, and father, who puts me an inch shorter, is the worst measurer in the world. As for Miss Clare, she would give all her inches for my eyes. So there!

After Clare left it began to be dull and chilly. When I had pictured to myself how nice it would be to dress for dinner again, and chosen the frock I would wear upon the first evening, I grew tired of the snow patches, and started up stream, stumbling and falling into holes, and clambering over rocks, and only careful to save my rod and my face. It was no occasion for the grey plush, but I had made up my mind to reach a pool which lay, I knew, a little above me. I had filched a yellow-bodied fly from Clare's hat with a view to that particular place.

Our river--pleased to be so young, I suppose--did the oddest things hereabouts. It was not a great churning stream of snow water foaming and milky, such as we had seen in some parts, streams which affected to be always in flood, and had the look of forcing the rocks asunder and clearing their paths even while you watched them with your fingers in your ears. Our river was none of these; still it was swifter than English rivers are wont to be, and in parts deeper, and transparent as glass. In one place it would sweep over a ledge and fall wreathed in spray into a spreading lake of black, rock-bound water. Then it would narrow again until, where you could almost jump across, it darted smooth and unbroken down a polished shoot with a swoop like a swallow's. Out of this it would hurry afresh to brawl along a gravelly bed, skipping jauntily over first one and then another ridge of stones that had silted up weir-wise and made as if they would bar the channel. Under the lee of these there were lovely pools.

To be able to throw into mine, I had to walk out along the ridge on which the water was shallow, yet deep enough to cover my boots. But I was well rewarded. The "forellin"--the Norse name for trout, and as pretty as their girls' wavy fair hair--were rising so merrily that I hooked and landed one in five minutes, the fly falling from its mouth as it touched the stones. I hate taking out hooks. I used at one time to leave the fly in the fish's mouth to be removed by father at the weighing house; until Clare pricked her tongue at dinner with an almost new, red tackle, and was so mean as to keep it, though I remembered what I had done with it, and was certain it was mine--which was nothing less than dishonest of her.

I had just got back to my place and made a fine cast, when there came--not the leap, and splash, and tug which announced the half-pounder--but a deep, rich gurgle as the fly was gently sucked under, and then a quiet, growing strain upon the line which began to move away down the pool in a way that made the winch spin again and filled me with mysterious pleasure. I was not conscious of striking or of anything but that I had hooked a really good fish; and I clutched the rod with both hands and set my feet as tightly as I could upon the slippery gravel. The line moved up and down, and this way and that, now steadily and as with a purpose, and then again with an eccentric rush that made the top of the rod spring and bend so that I looked for it to snap each moment. My hands began to grow numb, and the landing-net, hitherto an ornament, fell out of my waist-belt and went I knew not whither. I suppose I must have stepped unwittingly into deeper water, for I felt that my skirts were afloat, and altogether things were going dreadfully against me, when the presence of a reinforcement was announced by a cheery shout from the far side of the river.

"Keep up your point! Keep up your point!" some one cried briskly. "That is better!"

The unexpected sound--it was a man's voice--did something to keep up my heart. But for answer I could only shriek, "I can't! It will break!" as I watched the top of my rod jigging up and down, very much in the fashion of Clare performing what she calls a waltz. She dances as badly as a man.

"No, it will not," he cried bluntly. "Keep it up, and let out a little line with your fingers when he pulls hardest."

We were forced to shout and scream. The wind had risen and was adding to the noise of the water. Soon I heard him wading behind me. "Where's your landing-net?" he asked, with the most provoking coolness.

"Oh, in the pool! Somewhere about. I don't know," I answered, wildly.