as they floated quietly down the river, close to shore, under birch and beech and pine and silky tamarack, the delight of open air, the pleasantness of the shifting pictures, the delicate, changeful odors, even the charm of the motion, were keenly felt by rose. she was falling under the subtle magic of this woodland life, and lazily accepting the unobservant, half-languid joy it brought. at last she said:
“papa, does it take you long to—well, to get away from your work, so that you can fully enjoy all this?”
“three or four days; not more. i like at once the feeling that i have nothing i must do. after awhile the habit of using the mind in some way reasserts its sway. at home i watch men. it is part of my stock in the business of the law. here i readjust my mind, and it is nature i have learned to watch. i was not a born observer; i have made myself one. after a day or two on the water, i begin to notice the life of the woods; the birds, the insects. this grows on me day by day, and, i think, year by year. it is a very mild form of mental industry, but it suffices to fill the intervals of time when salmon will not rise.”
34“it is so pleasant to drift!”
“yes; that is the charm of the life. nobody elbows you here; no rude world jostles your moods. you may entertain the gentle melancholy of penseroso or the entire idleness of adam before the apple tempted him. you may be gay and noisy,—no one is shocked; and then, the noble freedom of a flannel shirt and knickerbockers! why do we ever go back?”
“there is a queer indefiniteness about it all to me,” said rose. “i cannot get into any full—i mean interested—relation with the life and all there is in it. i don’t say just what i mean.”
“i see, rose: from rome to this is a long way,—‘a far cry,’ we say in scotland. let yourself go. drift, as you said.”
“ah,” said rose,
“‘’tis pleasant drifting, drifting,
where the shores are shifting, shifting,
and the dream god has the tiller,
and fancy plies the oar.’
it is not always easy to drift, and i am not yet enough at ease to drift. i find, pardy, that the changes at home are very great. i am getting slowly used to them. the boys seem new creatures. you are just the same. but mama! i am so sorry for her.”
“that will come right, dear. the mother-wounds heal slowly. as for me, i own to no discontent about my boy’s death. most people hold foolish notions as to death. in my third chapter on marcus aurelius, i have given a history of opinion about death. it has 35had strange variations. really, we are very stupid as to the matter. the old heathen is fine about it: ‘thou hast embarked. thou hast made the voyage. thou art come to shore; leave the ship. there is no want of gods even there.’”
“yes, but—i did not embark,” said rose. “i was put on as freight. i—”
“how horribly exact you are for a summer day! i won’t argue with you; you love it. how quiet it is! not a leaf stirs. how completely peaceful! the drowsiness of noon.”
“yes, it is like ‘the peace that is past understanding.’ i never think of that phrase,” she added, after a pause, “without a little puzzle of mind about it. aunt anne says it is so altogether nice after a mournful length of sermon; but aunt anne is terrible at times. i often wonder what people who do not know her well must think of her. what i mean is—well, it is hard to state, pardy. is the peace so great that we have no earthly possibility of apprehending its relief from the unrest of this life?—or that—don’t you dislike to stumble in thinking? i—it does not seem to me as if i wanted peace. is that dreadful?”
“no, dear. but some day you may, and there are many kinds. i sometimes crave relief from mere intellectual turmoil. another yearns after the day when his endless battle with the sensual shall cease. one could go on. perhaps for you, and for all, the indefiniteness of the promise is part of the value of its mystery. that is widely true. you may one day come to love some man, and to entirely believe in his promise of love. yet you will not fully know what 36that means,—you cannot; and yet you trust it, for the inner life after all rests on a system of credits, as business does. do you follow me?”
“yes,” she said, with a little doubt. “yes, i think i do; and yet it is not peace i want, if that means just merely rest.”
“oh, no; surely not finality of action. remember that with that promise of peace is to come increase of knowledge of god, which means all knowledge. we see and hear now the beautiful in nature, and are troubled by its apparent discords. there the true harmonies of it all shall be ours to know. it is like learning the reasons for the music we hear now with only joy and wonder.”
“that may be so. to like or love a person, a friend, is pleasant; but to love and also fully to understand a friend is better. then one is at ease, one has true peace, because we have then knowledge with love.”
“that was nicely put, my child, but one can’t talk out in full such subjects as this. one can only sow seed and trust to the fertilization of time. where did you get your quotation about drifting?”
“i do not know; aunt anne would.”
“oh, that, of course,” said lyndsay; “she told us once that not to know the name of the man you quote is a form of ingratitude: to take the gift and forget the giver.”
“that is so like her: to label want of memory as intellectual ingratitude.”
“when we laughed,” said lyndsay, “she added that quotations were mean admissions of our own incapacity 37of statement. claiborne was dining with us,—you should have heard his comments. you know how perplexingly droll she is at times, and when she is in what the boys call a ‘gale’ of merry mind-play.”
“it sounds familiar. aunt anne is not above repeating her jests. i recall it now. she insisted gaily that it is bad manners to call up the spirit of a man, and accept his contribution to your needs, and then to say, ‘sorry i forgot your name,’ and just show him to the door of your mind. she is great fun, sometimes.”
“yes, sometimes. the fun is not always honeyed, or—if it looks so—of a sudden the bees crawl out of it and sting folks; but who can wonder? if it helps anne to clap an occasional mustard-plaster on me, dear lady, she is welcome.”
“once, pardy, in venice, she was in dreadful pain, and some women got in by mistake. she was perfectly delightful to those people. when they went away, i said, ‘aunty, how much better you are!’ and what do you think she replied? ‘you will never know, dear, whether you have good manners or not until you have pain for one of your visitors,’ and then she fainted. i never knew her to faint, and i was dreadfully scared.”
“she ought to have excused herself,” said lyndsay. “it was heroic foolishness.”
“i suppose it was.”
“you need not suppose,—it was! i hate to think of how she suffers. look at yonder lot of firs and spruce with the gray, green, drooping mosses on them. after a rain that hillside looks like a great cascade. 38you see the moss hangs in arrow-head shapes, like those of falling water. it is so hard to set these simple things in words—you can describe them with half a dozen pencil-marks. i envy you the power. i have to stick to my old habit of word-sketches, about which our friend, the doctor, once wrote, as you know. on sunday we will have a run up-stream, and a big wood-and-water chat.”
as he spoke the canoe slipped around a little headland, and was at once close to the cliff camp.
“that doesn’t look very peaceful,” cried rose. “oh, they will be killed!” and she started up.
“keep still,” said her father; “you will upset us.” what she saw looked grim enough: a tangle of three boys, rolling down some fifteen feet of graveled slope; then the three afoot; two or three savage blows, fierce cries, and a sudden pause, as lyndsay called out:
“hullo there!—quit that, jack! stop, ned!”
their faces were very red, their clothes covered with dirt. there was silence and instant obedience. mrs. lyndsay stood imploring at the top of the cliff, and anne was standing by with a queer smile on her face, and her fingers in a book.
“who began it, boys? what is it all about?”
jack spoke first: “dick hit ned, and he’s too small for him, and so i hit dick.”
“he might have let us alone. i’m as good as dick any time,” said the slightest of the lads, with no show of gratitude.
“he said i was a fool,” explained dick. “ned’s quite a match, but jack can’t keep out of a row.”
39“and so it was two to one, was it? i can’t stand that: no more fishing to-day or to-morrow, master jack.”
“yes, sir.”
“and now, what was this war about?”
“well, ned he said claverhouse was a bloody villain, and i said he was a gallant gentleman, and ned said i was a fool.”
“that was a difference of sentiment which has cost blood before,” laughed anne, from the bluff. ned grinned as he wiped a bloody nose.
“oh, do keep quiet, anne,” said her brother; “this is my affair. how is it, ned, and you, dick? is it settled? if not, there is room back of the house. this fighting before women is not to my taste. but is all this just as dick says, ned?”
“why, father, i—i said it.” and dick’s face flushed.
“you are right, sir; i beg pardon. as you seem indisposed to have it out, shake hands; but an honest shake. it must be peace or war; no sullenness.”
“all right, sir. i’m sorry, dick.”
“i’m not—very,” said dick; but he put his hand on ned’s shoulder, and kindly offered a second handkerchief.
“now, you mad indians, go and make yourselves decent. it is time for luncheon.”
rose went up the cliff to where miss anne still stood. “i think it is dreadful, most dreadful.”
“i used to, my dear, but on the whole it clears the air, and the boys seem none the worse for it. jack is usually the ferment; dick is hot of temper; and 40ned, my dear ned, would die on the rack for a sentiment.”
when the family sat down to the luncheon, a stranger would have detected no evidence of the recent warfare. the mother, once or twice, cast an anxious look at the slight enlargement of ned’s nose, but, to the surprise of rose, what had seemed to her an angry contest made no kind of alteration in the good humor of the lads. ned was as usual silent; but dick and jack were busily discussing the color of the trout they had taken: some were dark, some brighter in tint.
it was the good habit of this old-fashioned household to invite the talk and questions of the children.
“you got the blacker ones at grime’s run, near the mouth,” said mr. lyndsay; “the others in the river below. well, what do you make of it?”
“isn’t the bottom dark in the places where the fish are dark?” said dick.
“put it backward,” replied his father, “and you will have a part of the truth.”
“but how could that act?” said dick.
“it must act somehow,” said jack.
“is it the light?” said ned.
“but light blackens the skin, or heat does,” reasoned dick.
“the true cause is curious. it is an action of light through the eyes, and thence, by the brain pathways, on to the numberless little pigment-cells of the skin, which are able to shrink or enlarge, and thus change the hue of the whole outside of the fish. blind fish do not change their hue.”
41“but that is not the way we get brown,” said rose.
“no, not at all. sun-tan is not caused by the sun’s heat; it is an effect of the chemical rays.”
“a kind of photography, pardy?”
“yes, more complete than you can fancy; the sunlight falls nowhere without leaving a record, only we cannot recover it as we can the photograph of the camera. in fact, it is probable that every reflection from everything and onto everything leaves positive records. it was professor draper, i think, who played with this pretty idea, that, if we had the means of development, we might thus win back pictures of every event since the world was made.”
“i like that,” said anne. “what would one desire to see if we could recover these lost memorials?”
there was a little pause at this.
“come, ned.”
“oh, i’d want to see old cromwell when he was looking at charles, just lying there dead.”
“but he never did see him then,” said jack. “you wouldn’t have wanted to, ned, if you had been that scoundrel.”
“yes, i should,” cried ned; “i’d have known then if i was right.”
anne looked at him aside, with brief curiosity. he often puzzled her.
“cromwell a scoundrel!” he murmured to himself.
“and you, jack?”
“oh, the cemetery hill at gettysburg, just when the rebel line broke; but”—and his face flushed—“just to have been there. that would have been better.”
42“and what would you like to see, anne?” said lyndsay.
“oh, a hundred things!” and her eyes lit up. at last she said, “yes; i think if it were only one thing, i would say, st. paul on mars’ hill.”
“i think i shall rest content with anne’s choice,” said mrs. lyndsay. “but, ah me, there might be many, many things.”
“dick, it is your turn,” said lyndsay.
“i—i—don’t know. yes, yes. the days of the great lizards—and things,” he added, comprehensively; “and that beast with a brain in his head and one in his tail. and, father, may i see the insides of that salmon? he has a lot of what the men call sea-lice on him.”
“certainly. he loses them very soon in fresh water. it is a sign of a clean run fish. yes, of course. do as you like, my boy.”
“mrs. maybrook was here this morning,” said mrs. lyndsay. “i was away. you and anne must see her, rose. she is really a personage. i, at least, have never seen any one like her. she left word that the little boy was sick at joe colkett’s,—the upper clearing, you know, archie; and could we do something to help them? there is no doctor for fifty miles. i thought, rose, you might take some things, and go over after lunch, and see what it is.”
now, rose was salmon-bitten, but it was characteristic that she said at once she would go. a glance at the mother’s face decided her. anne, who understood everybody with strange readiness, nodded to her gently, and rose had her reward. it is pleasant to 43be clearly read by those we love. then the chat went on, gay or grave, but plenty of it, and with ample sauce of folly.
as the girl went out onto the porch, lyndsay said to his sister, “i was sorry for rose. her first day of salmon-fishing. sometimes my good margaret is—well, a little too positive about these confounded duties. she might—”
“no, archie. rose understood her mother. of course, she did not like it, but she was right, and was perfectly sweet about it.”
“i shall take her up myself, and wait for her,” he went on. “if we start early, she will be in time for a late cast. hang the black flies!—get a smudge, tom,” he called. “i suppose margaret is right. even the simulation of goodness is valuable. of course, anne, as marcus aurelius said, ‘affect a virtue—’ no, confound it! he says, ‘if you have not a virtue, make believe to have it, and by and by you will have it.’”
anne smiled. “i think there is a statute of limitations for some of us.”
“come into my room,” he added. “i want to read you my last chapter. it is on the value of habits. you can sew if you like.”
“archie! you never saw me sew in your life. it is margaret’s resource, not mine. i never could comprehend its interest for women. m. a. was a bit of a prig in my opinion; but, as to the commentary, look out,—previous experience should have warned you,—there will be two commentaries,” and she went in after him, laughing.
44as he passed rose, he said, “by the way, and to put your conscience at ease before you fish again, here is a note-book of mine in which you may see that while hunting is forbidden to the clergy, fishing is allowed. the reasons are amusing. ned or dick will help you, but the latin is easy.”
“walton quotes it,” added lyndsay.
“no, only in part,” said anne.
“you are intolerable. your literary conscience is like margaret’s moral exactness. there is no living with either of you.”
“don’t believe him, rose; but keep for me the quotation.”
she devoured books, and digested them also, with the aid of a rather too habitual acidity of criticism; but what was in them she never forgot.
“come, now, archie.”
rose took the note-book and sat down. this was what she read, from the decretals of lyons, 1671: “sed quare prohibetur venari, et non piscari? quia forte piscatio sine clamore, venatio non; vel quia major est delectatio in venatione; dum enim quis et in venatione nihil potest de divinis cogitare.”[1]
1. until within two years, it was lawful to fish on sunday in new york, but unlawful to shoot.
“ambrose speaks of it in like manner in his third homily,—the old humbug!” said miss rose, over whose shoulder dick had been looking.
“i guess they took a sly shot, now and then, at the king’s deer, rosy posy.”
