Beyond seeing to it that the alluring picture of his sisters should not appear in any future issues of the magazines, Arthur did not refer to the matter again. The girls, more particularly Lee and Gay, always attributed the instant success of The Camp to the picture; but it is sanely possible that an inn run upon such very extravagant principles was bound to be a success anyway. America is full of people who will pay anything for the comforts of home with the cares and exasperations left out.
A majority of the early applications received at The Camp office, and politely rejected by Maud, were from old friends of the family, who were eagerly willing to give its fallen finances a boost. But the girls were determined that their scheme should stand upon its own meritorious feet or not at all.
When Samuel Langham learned that the ice was going out of New Moon Lake, he wrote that he would arrive at Carrytown at such and suchan hour, and begged that a boat of some sort might be there to meet him. His guests, he explained, would follow in a few days.
"Dear me," said Maud, "it will be very trying to have him alone—just like a real guest. If he'd only bring his friends with him, why, they could entertain him. As it is, we'll have to. Because, even if we are innkeepers now, we belong to the same station in life that he does, and he knows it and we know it. I don't see how we can ever have the face to send in a bill afterward."
"I don't either," said Mary, "but we must."
"I've never pictured him," said Arthur, "as a man who would brave early spring in the Adirondacks for the sake of a few trout."
"I bet you my first dividend," said Lee, "that his coat is lined with sable."
It was.
As theStreak, which had gone to Carrytown to meet him, slid for the dock (his luggage was to follow in theTortoise, a fatter, slower power-boat), there might have been seen standing amidships a tall, stout gentleman of about thirty-six or more, enveloped in a handsome overcoat lined with sable.
He wore thick eye-glasses which the swiftness of theStreak's going had opaqued with icy mist,so that for the moment Mr. Samuel Langham was blind as a mole. Nevertheless, determined to enjoy whatever the experience had in store for him, he beamed from right to left, as if a pair of keen eyes were revealing to him unexpected beauties and delights.
Arthur, loathing the rôle, was on the float to meet him.
On hearing himself addressed by name, Mr. Samuel Langham removed one of his fur-lined gloves and thrust forward a plump, well-groomed hand.
"I believe that I am shaking hands with Mr. Darling," he said in a slow, cultivated voice; "but my glasses are blurred and I cannot see anything. Is my foot going for the float—or the water?"
"Step boldly," said Arthur; and, in a hurried aside, as he perceived the corner of a neatly folded greenback protruding between two of Mr. Langham's still-gloved fingers: "You are not to be subjected to the annoyance of the tipping system. We pay our servants extra to make the loss up to them."
Mr. Langham's mouth, which was rather like a Cupid's bow, tightened. And he handed the greenback to the engineer of theStreak, just as if Arthur'sremonstrance had not been spoken. On the way to the office he explained.
"Whenever I go anywhere," he said, "I find persons in humble situations who smile at me and wish me well. I smile back and wish them well. It is because, at some time or other, I have tipped them. To me the system has never been an annoyance but a delightful opportunity for the exercise of tact and judgment."
He came to a dead halt, planting his feet firmly.
"I shall be allowed to tip whomsoever I like," he said flatly, "or I shan't stay."
"Our ambition," said Arthur stiffly, "is to make our guests comfortable. Our rule against tipping is therefore abolished."
They entered the office. Mr. Langham could now see, having wiped the fog from his glasses. He saw a lovely girl in black, seated at a table facing him. Beyond her was a roaring fire of backlogs. Arthur presented Mr. Langham.
"Are you frozen?" asked Maud. "Too cold to write your name in our brand-new register?"
He took the pen which she offered him and wrote his name in a large, clear hand, worthy of John Hancock.
"It's the first name in the book," he said."It's always been a very lucky name for me. I hope it will be for you."
Arthur had escaped.
"There is one more formality," said Maud: "breakfast."
"I had a little something in my car," said Mr. Langham; "but if it wouldn't be too much trouble—er—just a few little eggs and things."
"How would it be," said Maud, "if I took you straight to the kitchen? My sister Mary presides there, and you shall tell her exactly what you want, and she will see that you get it."
A rosy blush mounted Mr. Langham's good-natured face.
"Oh," he said, with the deepest sincerity, "if I am to have theentréeto the kitchen, I shall be happy. I will tell you a secret. At my club I always breakfast in the kitchen. It's against the rules, but I do it. A friendly chef—beds of glowing charcoal—burnished copper—piping-hot tidbits."
It was up-hill to Smoke House, and Mr. Langham, in his burdensome overcoat, grew warm on the way, and was puffing slightly when he got there.
"Mary," Maud called—"Mr. Langham!"
"The kitchen is the foundation of all domestichappiness," said he. "I have come to yours as fast as I could. I think—Iknow, that I never saw a brighter, happier-looking kitchen."
He knew also that he had never seen so beautiful a presiding deity.
"Your sister," he said, "told me that I could have a little breakfast right here." And he repeated the statement concerning his club kitchen.
"Of course, you can!" said Mary.
"Just a few eggs," he said, "and if there's anything green——"
They called the chef. He was very happy because the season had begun. He assigned Mr. Langham a seat from which to see and at which to be served, then with the wrist-and-finger elegance of a prestidigitator, he began to prepare a few eggs and something green.
"The trout—" Mary began dutifully, as it was for the sake of these that Mr. Langham had ostensibly come so early in the season.
"Trout?" he said.
"The fishing—" She made a new beginning.
"The fishing, Miss Darling," he said, "will be of interest to my friends. For my part, I don't fish. I have, in common with the kind of boat from which fishing is done, nothing but the fact that we are both ticklish. I saw your prospectus.I said: 'I shall be happy there, and well taken care of.' Something told me that I should be allowed to breakfast in the kitchen. The more I thought about it the less I felt that I could wait for the somewhat late opening of your season, so I pretended to be a fisher of trout. And here I am. But, mark you," he added, "a few trout on the table now and then—I like that!"
"You shall have them," said Mary, "and you shall breakfast in the kitchen. I do—always."
"Do you?" he exclaimed. "Why not together, then?"
His eyes shone with pleasure.
"I should be too early for you," she said.
"You don't know me. Is it ever too early to eat? Because I am stout, people think I have all the moribund qualities that go with it. As a matter of fact, I rise whenever, in my judgment, the cook is dressed and down. Is it gross to be fond of food? So many people think so. I differ with them. Not to care what you eat is gross—in my way of thinking. Is there anything, for instance, more fresh in coloring, more adequate in line, than a delicately poached egg on a blue-and-white plate? You call this building Smoke House? I shall always be looking in. Do you mind?"
"Indeed we don't," said Mary. "Do we, chef?"
Chef laid a finger to his lips. It was no time for talk. "Never disturb a sleeping child or a cooking egg," was one of his maxims.
"I knew that I should be happy here," said Mr. Langham. "I am."
Whenever he had a chance he gazed at Mary. It was her face in the row of six that had lured him out of all his habits and made him feel that the camp offered him a genuine chance for happiness. To find that she presided over the kitchen had filled his cup to the brim. But when he remembered that he was fat and fond of good things to eat and drink, his heart sank.
He determined that he would eat but three eggs. They were, however, prepared in a way that was quite new to him, and in the determined effort to discern the ingredients and the method he ate five.
"There is something very keen about your Adirondack air," he explained guiltily.
But Mary had warmed to him. Her heart and her reputation were involved in thecuisine. She knew that the better you feed people the more they love you. She was not revolted by Mr. Langham's appetite. She felt that even a canaryof a man must have fallen before the temptation of those eggs.
They were her own invention. And chef had executed them to the very turn of perfection.
Almost from the moment of his arrival, then, Mr. Samuel Langham began to eat his way into the heart of the eldest Miss Darling.
In culinary matters a genuine intimacy sprang up between them. They exchanged ideas. They consulted. They compared menus. They mastered the contents of the late Mr. Darling's cellars.
Mr. Langham chose Lone House for his habitation. He liked the little balcony that thrust out over the lake between the two pine-trees. And by the time that his guests were due to arrive, he had established himself, almost, in the affections of the entire family.
"He may be greedy," said Arthur, "but he's the most courteous man that ever 'sat at meat among ladies'!"
"He's got the kindest heart," said Mary, "that ever beat."
Mr. Langham's five guests arrived somewhat noisily, smoking five long cigars. Lee and Gay, watching the float from a point of vantage, where they themselves were free from observation, observed that three of the trout fishermen were far older than they had led themselves to expect.
"That leaves only one for us," said Gay.
"Why?"
"Can't you see from here that the fifth is an Englishman?"
"Yes," said Lee. "His clothes don't fit, and yet he feels perfectly comfortable in them."
"It isn't so much the clothes," said Gay, "as the face. The other faces are excited because they have ridden fast in a fast boat, though they've probably often done it before. Now he's probably never been in a fast boat in his life till to-day, and yet he looks thoroughly bored."
The Englishman without changing his expression made some remark to the other five. They roared. The Englishman blushed, and looked vaguely toward a dark-blue mountain that rosewith some grandeur beyond the farther shore of the lake.
"Do you suppose," said Lee, "that what he said was funny or just dumb?"
"I think it was funny," said Gay, "but purely accidental."
"I think I know the other youth," said Lee; "I think I have danced with him. Didn't Mr. Langham say there was a Renier among his guests?"
"H. L.," Gay assented.
"That's the one," Lee remembered. "Harry Larkins Renier. We have danced. If he doesn't remember, he shall be snubbed. I like the old guy with the Mark Twain hair."
"Don't you knowhim? I do. I have seen his picture often. He's the editor of theEvening Star. Won't Arthur be glad!"
"What's his name?"
"Walter Leyden O'Malley. He's the literary descendant of the great Dana. Don't talk to me, child; I know a great deal."
Gay endeavored to assume the look of an encyclopædia and failed.
"Mr. Langham," said Lee, "mentioned three other names, Alston, Pritchard, and Cox. Which do you suppose is which?"
"I think that Pritchard is the very tall one who looks like a Kentucky colonel; Cox is the one with the very large face; of course, the Englishman is Alston."
"I don't."
"We can find out from Maud."
When the new arrivals, escorted by Arthur and Mr. Langham, had left the office, Lee and Gay hurried in to look at their signatures and to consult Maud as to identities.
The Kentucky-colonel-looking man proved to be Alston. Cox had the large face, and the Englishman—John Arthur Merrivale Pritchard, as was to be expected—wrote the best hand. Mr. O'Malley, the famous editor, wrote the worst. His signature looked as if it had been traced by an inky worm writhing in agony.
"Tell us at once," Gay demanded, "what they are like."
Maud regarded her frolicsome sisters with inscrutable eyes, and said:
"At first, you think that Mr. Cox is a heartless old cynic, but when you get to know him really well—I remember an instance that occurred in the early sixties——"
"Oh, dry up!" said Lee. "Are they nice and presentable, like fat old Sam Langham?"
"The three old ones," said Maud, "made me think of three very young boys just loose from school. Messrs. Renier and Pritchard, however, seem more used to holidays. There is, however, a complication. All five wish to go fishing as soon as they can change into fishing clothes, and there aren't enough guides to go around."
"What's the trouble?" asked Gay eagerly.
"Bullard," Maud explained, "has sent word that his wife is having a baby, and Benton has gone up to Crotched Lake West to see if the ice is out of it. That leaves only three guides to go around. Benton oughtn't to have gone. Nobody told him to. But he once read the Declaration of Independence, and every now and then the feeling comes over him that he must act accordingly."
"But," exclaimed Lee, "what's the matter with Gay and me?"
"Nothing, I hope," said Maud; "you look well. I trust you feel well."
"We want to be guides," said Gay; "we want to be useful. Hitherto we've done nothing to help. Mary works like a slave in the kitchen; you here. Eve will never leave the laundry once the wash gets big. Phyllis has her garden, in which things will begin to grow by and by, but we—we have no excuse for existence—none whatever.Now, I could show Mr. Renier where the chances of taking fish are the best."
"No," said Lee firmly; "I ought to guide him. It's only fair. He once guided me—I've always remembered—bang into a couple who outweighed us two to one, and down we went."
"Mary will hardly approve of you youngsters going on long expeditions with strange young men," Maud was quite sure; "and, of course, Arthur won't."
Lee and Gay began to sulk.
At that moment Arthur came into the office.
"Halloo, you two!" he said. "Been looking for you, and even shouting. The fact is, we're short of guides, and Mary and I think——"
Lee and Gay burst into smiles.
"What did we tell you, Maud? Of course, we will. There are no wiser guides in this part of the woods."
"That," said Arthur, "is a fact. The older men looked alarmed when I suggested that two of my sisters—you see, they've always had native-born woodsmen and even Indians——"
"Then," said Lee, "we are to have the guileless youths. I speak for Renier."
"Meanie," said Gay.
"Lee ought to have first choice," said Arthur."It's always been supposed that Lee is your senior by a matter of twenty minutes."
"True or not," said Gay, "she looks it. Then I'm to guide the Englishman."
"If you don't mind." Arthur regarded her, smiling. He couldn't help it. She wassopretty. "And I'd advise you not to be too eager to show off. Mr. Pritchard has hunted and fished more than all of us put together."
"That little pink-faced snip!" exclaimed Gay. "I'll sure see how much he knows."
Half an hour later she was rowing him leisurely in the direction of Placid Brook, and examining his somewhat remarkable outfit with wondering eyes. This was not difficult, since his own eyes, which were clear brown, and very shy, were very much occupied in looking over the contents of the large-tackle box.
"If you care to rig your rod," said Gay presently, "and cast about as we go, you might take something between here and the brook."
"Do you mean," he said, "that you merely throw about you at random, and that it is possible to take fish?"
"Of course," said she—"when they are rising."
"But then the best one could hope for," he drawled, "would be indiscriminate fish."
"Just what do you mean by that?"
"Why!"—and this time he looked up and smiled very shyly—"if you were after elephant and came across a herd, would you pick out a bull with a fine pair of tusks, or would you fire indiscriminately into the thick of them, and perhaps bring down the merest baby?"
"I never heard of picking your fish," said Gay.
"Dear me," he commented, "then you have nearly a whole lifetime of delightful study before you!"
He unslung a pair of field-glasses, focussed them, and began to study the surface of the placid lake, not the far-off surface but the surface within twenty or thirty feet. Then he remarked:
"Your flies aren't greatly different from ours. I think we shall find something nearly right. One can never tell. The proclivities of trout and char differ somewhat. I have never taken char."
"You don't think you are after char now, do you?" exclaimed Gay. "Because, if so—this lake contains bass, trout, lake-trout, sunfish, shiners, and bullheads, but no char."
Pritchard smiled a little sadly and blushed. He hated to put people right.
"Your brook-trout," he said, "yoursalmo fontinalis, isn't a trout at all. He's a char."
Gay put her back into the rowing with some temper. She felt that the Englishman had insulted the greatest of all American institutions. The repartee which sprang to her lips was somewhat feeble.
"If a trout is a char," she said angrily, "then an onion is a fruit."
To her astonishment, Mr. Pritchard began to laugh. He dropped everything and gave his whole attention to it. He laughed till the tears came and the delicate guide boat shook from stem to stern. Presently the germ of his laughing spread, and Gay came down with a sharp attack of it herself. She stopped rowing. Two miles off, a loon, that most exclusive laugher of the North Woods, took fright, dove, and remained under for ten minutes.
The young people in the guide boat looked at each other through smarting tears.
"I am learning fast," said Gay, "that you count your fish before you catch them, that trout are char, and that Englishmen laugh at other people's jokes."
She rowed on.
"Don't forget to tell me when you've chosen your fish," she remarked.
"You shall help me choose," he said; "I insist. I speak for a three-pounder."
"The event of a lifetime!"
"Why, Miss Gay," he said, "it's all the event of a lifetime. The Camp, the ride in the motor-boat, the wonderful, wonderful breakfast, water teeming with fish, the woods, and the mountains—millions of years ago it was decreed that you and I should rock a boat with laughter in the midst of New Moon Lake. And yet you speak of a three-pounder as the event of a lifetime! My answer is a defiance. We shall take onesalmo fontinalis—one wily char. He shall not weigh three pounds; he shall weigh a trifle more. Then we shall put up our tackle and go home to a merry dinner."
"Mr. Pritchard," said Gay, "I'll bet you anything you like that you don't take a trout—or a char, if you like—that will weigh three pounds or over. I'll bet you ten to one."
"Don't do that," he said; "it's an even shot. What will you bet?"
"I'll bet you my prospective dividends for the year," she said, "against——"
"My prospective title?"
He looked rather solemn, but laughter bubbled from Gay.
"It's a good sporting proposition," said Pritchard. "It's a very sound title—old, resonant—andunless you upset us and we drown, tolerably certain to be mine to pay—in case I lose."
"I don't bet blindly," said Gay. "What is the title?"
"I shall be the Earl of Merrivale," said he; "and if I fail this day to take a char weighing three pounds or over, you will be the Countess of Merrivale."
"Dear me!" said Gay, "who ever heard of so much depending on a mere fish? But I don't like my side of the bet. It's all so sudden. I don't know you well enough, and you're sure to lose."
"I'll take either end of the bet you don't like," said Mr. Pritchard gravely. "If I land the three-pounder, you become the countess; if I don't, I pay you the amount of your dividends for the year. Is that better?"
"Much," smiled Gay; "because, with the bet in this form, there is practically no danger that either of us will lose anything. My dividends probably won't amount to a row of pins, and you most certainly will not land so big a fish."
Meanwhile they had entered the mouth of Placid Brook. The surface was dimpling—rings became, spread, merged in one another, and were not. The fish were feeding.
"Let us land in the meadow," said Mr. Pritchard, his brown eyes clear and sparkling, "and spy upon the enemy."
"Are you going to leave your rod and things in the boat?"
"For the present—until we have located our fish."
They landed, and he advanced upon the brook by a detour, stealthily, crouching, his field-glasses at attention. Once he turned and spoke to Gay in an authoritative whisper:
"Try not to show above the bushes."
The sun was warm on the meadow, and although the bushes along its margin were leafless, the meadow itself had a greenish look, and the feel of the air was such that Gay, upon whom silence and invisibility had been enjoined, longed to dance in full sight of the trout and to sing at the top of her voice: "Oh, that we two were Maying!" Instead, she crouched humbly and in silence at Pritchard's side, while he studied the dimpling brook through his powerful field-glasses.
Gay had never seen red Indians except in Buffalo Bill's show, where it is made worth their while to be very noisy. But she had read her Cooper and her Ballantyne,
"Ballantyne, the brave,And Cooper of the wood and wave,"
and she knew of the early Christian patience with which they are supposed to go about the business of hunting and fishing.
Pritchard, she observed, had a weather-red face and high cheek-bones. He was smooth-shaved.He wore no hat. But for his miraculously short-cut hair, his field-glasses, his suit of coarse Scotch wool, whose colors blended so well with the meadow upon which he crouched, he might have been an Indian. His head, the field-glasses, the hands which clasped them, moved—nothing else.
"Is it a bluff?" thought Gay. "Is he just posing, or is there something in it?"
Half an hour passed—three quarters. Gay was pale and grimly smiling. Her legs had gone to sleep. But she would not give in. If an Englishman could fish so patiently, why, so could she. She was fighting her own private battle of Bunker Hill—of New Orleans.
Pritchard lowered his glasses, handed them to Gay, and pointed up the brook and across, to where a triangular point of granite peered a few inches above the surface. Gay looked through the glasses, and Pritchard began to whisper in her ear:
"Northwest of that point of rock, about two feet—keep looking just there, and I'll try to tell you what to see."
"There's a fish feeding," she answered; "but he must be a baby, he just makes a bubble on the surface."
"There are three types of insect floating over him," said Pritchard; "I don't know your American beasts by name, but there is a black, a brown, and a grayish spiderlike thing. He's taking the last. If you see one of the gray ones floating where he made his last bubble, watch it."
Gay presently discerned such an insect so floating, and watched it. It passed within a few inches of where the feeding trout had last risen and disappeared, and a tiny ring gently marked the spot where it had been sucked under. Gay saw a black insect pass over the fatal spot unscathed, then browns; and then, once more, a gray, very tiny in the body but with longish legs, approached and was engulfed.
"Now for the tackle box," Pritchard whispered.
They withdrew from the margin of the brook, Gay in that curious ecstasy, half joy, half sorrow, induced by sleepy legs. She lurched and almost fell. Pritchard caught her.
"Was the vigil too long?" he asked.
"I liked it," she said. "But my legs went to sleep and are just waking up. Tell me things. There were fish rising bold—jumping clean out—making the water boil. But you weren't interested in them."
"It was noticeable," said Pritchard, "and perhapsyou noticed that one fish was feeding alone. He blew his little rings—without fear or hurry—none of the other fishes dared come anywhere near him. He lives in the vicinity of that pointed rock. The water there is probably deep and, in the depths, very cold. Who knows but a spring bubbles into a brook at the base of that rock? The fish lives there and rules the water around him for five or six yards. He is selfish, fat, and old. He feeds quietly because nobody dares dispute his food with him. He is the biggest fish in this reach of the brook. At least, he is the biggest that is feeding this morning. Now we know what kind of a fly he is taking. Probably I have a close imitation of it in my fly box. If not, we shall have to make one. Then we must try to throw it just above him—very lightly—float it into his range of vision, and when he sucks it into his mouth, strike—and if we are lucky we shall then proceed to take him."
Gay, passionately fond of woodcraft, listened with a kind of awe.
"But," she said, seeing an objection, "how do you know he weighs three pounds and over?"
"Frankly," said Pritchard, "I don't. I am gambling onthat." He shot her a shy look. "Just hoping. I know that he is big. I believewe shall land him. I hope and pray that he weighs over three pounds."
Gay blushed and said nothing. She was beginning to think that Pritchard might land a three-pounder as well as not—and she had light-heartedly agreed, in that event, to become the Countess of Merrivale. Of course, the bet was mere nonsense. But suppose, by any fleeting chance, that Pritchard should not so regard it? Whatshouldshe do? Suppose that Pritchard had fallen victim to a case of love at first sight? It would not, she was forced to admit (somewhat demurely), be the first instance in her own actual experience. There was a young man who had so fallen in love with her, and who, a week later, not knowing the difference—so exactly the triplets resembled each other—had proposed to Phyllis.
They drew the guide boat up onto the meadows and Pritchard, armed with a scoop-net of mesh as fine as mosquito-netting, leaned over the brook and caught one of the grayish flies that were tickling the appetite of the big trout.
This fly had a body no bigger than a gnat's.
Pritchard handed Gay a box of japanned tin. It was divided into compartments, and each compartment was half full of infinitesimal trout flies.They were so small that you had to use a pair of tweezers in handling them.
Pritchard spread his handkerchief on the grass, and Gay dumped the flies out on it and spread them for examination. And then, their heads very close together, they began to hunt for one which would match the live one that Pritchard had caught.
"But they're too small," Gay objected. "The hooks would pull right through a trout's lip."
"Not always," said Pritchard. "How about this one?"
"Too dark," said Gay.
"Here we are then—a match or not?"
The natural fly and the artificial placed side by side were wonderfully alike.
"They're as like as Lee and me," said Gay.
"Lee?"
"Three of us are triplets," she explained. "We look exactly alike—and we never forgive people who get us mixed up."
Pritchard abandoned all present thoughts of trout-fishing by scientific methods. He looked into her face with wonder.
"Do you mean to tell me," said he, "that there are two other D-D-Darlings exactly like you?"
"Exactly—a nose for a nose; an eye for an eye."
"It isn't true," he proclaimed. "There is nobody in the whole world in the least like you."
"Some time," said Gay, "you will see the three of us in a row. We shall look inscrutable and say nothing. You will not be able to tell which of us went fishing with you and which stayed at home——"
"'This little pig went to market,'" he began, and abruptly became serious. "Is that a challenge?"
"Yes," said Gay. "I fling down my gauntlet."
"And I," said Pritchard, "step forward and, in the face of all the world, lift it from the ground—and proclaim for all the world to hear that there is nobody like my lady—and that I am so prepared to prove at any place or time—come weal, come woe. Let the heavens fall!"
"If you know me from the others," Gay's eyes gleamed, "you will be the first strange young man that ever did, and I shall assign and appoint in the inmost shrines of memory a most special niche for you."
Pritchard bowed very humbly.
"That will not be necessary," he said. "If I land the three-pounder. In that case, I should be always with you."
"I wish," said Gay, "that you wouldn't referso earnestly to a piece of nonsense. Upon repetition, a joke ceases to be a joke."
Pritchard looked troubled.
"I'm sorry," he said simply. "If it is the custom of the country to bet and then crawl, so be it. In Rome, I hasten to do as the Romans do. But I thought our bet was honorable and above-board. It seems it was just an—an Indian bet."
Gay flushed angrily.
"You shall not belittle anything American," she said. "It was a bet. I meant it. I stand by it. If you catch your big fish I marry you. And if I have to marry you, I will lead you such a dance——"
"You wouldn't have to," Pritchard put in gently, "you wouldn't have to lead me, I mean. If you and I were married, I'd just naturally dance—wouldn't I? When a man sorrows he weeps; when he rejoices he dances. It's all very simple and natural——"
He turned his face to the serene heavens, and, very gravely:
"Ah, Lord!" he said. "Vouchsafe to me, undeserving but hopeful, this day, a char—salmo fontinalis—to weigh a trifle over three pounds, for the sake of all that is best and sweetest in this best of all possible worlds."
If his face or voice had had a suspicion of irreverence, Gay would have laughed. Instead, she found that she wanted to cry and that her heart was beating unquietly.
Mr. Pritchard dismissed sentiment from his mind, and with loving hands began to take a powerful split-bamboo rod from its case.
Gay's notion of scientific fishing might have been thus summed: Know just where to fish and use the lightest rod made. Her own trout-rod weighed two and a half ounces without the reel. Compared to it, Pritchard's was a coarse and heavy instrument. His weighed six ounces.
"You could land a salmon with that," said Gay scornfully.
"I have," said Pritchard. "It's a splendid rod. I doubt if you could break it."
"Doesn't give the fish much of a run for his money."
"But how about this, Miss Gay?"
He showed her a leader of finest water-blue catgut. It was nine feet long and tapered from the thickness of a human hair to that of a thread of spider-spinning. Gay's waning admiration glowed once more.
"That wouldn't hold a minnow," she said.
"We must see about that," he answered; "we must hope that it will hold a very large char."
He reeled off eighty or ninety feet of line, and began to grease it with a white tallow.
"What's that stuff?" Gay asked.
"Red-deer fat."
"What for?"
"To make the line float. We're fishing with a dry-fly, you know."
Gay noticed that the line was tapered from very heavy to very fine.
"Why is that?" she asked.
"It throws better—especially in a wind. The heavy part will carry a fly out into half a gale."
He reeled in the line and made his leader fast to it with a swift, running hitch, and to the line end of the leader he attached the fly which they had chosen. Upon this tiny and exquisite arrangement of fairy hook, gray silk, and feathers, he blew paraffin from a pocket atomizer that it might float and not become water-logged.
"Do we fish from the shore or the boat?" Gay asked.
"From this shore."
"You'll never reach there from this shore."
"Then I've misjudged the distance. Are you going to use the landing-net for me, in case it's necessary?"
Gay caught up the net and once more followed his stealthy advance upon the brook.
Pritchard had one preliminary look through the field-glasses, straightened his bent back, turned to her with a sorrowing face, and spoke aloud.
"He's had enough," he said. "He's stopped feeding."
Gay burst out laughing.
"And our fishing is over for the day? This shall be said of you, Mr. Pritchard, that you are a merciful man. You are not what is called in this country a 'game hog.'"
"Thank you," he said gravely. "But if you think the fishing is over for the day, you don't know a dry-fly fisherman when you see one. We made rather a late start. See, most of the fish have stopped feeding. They won't begin again much before three. The big fellow will be a little later. He has had more than the others; he is older; his digestion is no longer like chain lightning; he will sleep sounder, and dream of the golden days of his youth when a char was a trout."
"That," said Gay, "is distinctly unkind. I have been snubbed enough for one day. Are we to stand here, then, till three or four o'clock, tillhis royal highness wakes up and calls for breakfast?"
"No," said Pritchard; "though I would do so gladly, if it were necessary, in order to take this particular fish——"
"You might kneel before your rod," said Gay, "like a knight watching his arms."
"To rise in the morning and do battle for his lady—I repeat I should do so gladly if it would help my chances in the slightest. But it wouldn't."
He rested his rod very carefully across two bushes.
"The thing for us to do," he went on, "is to have lunch. I've often heard of how comfortable you American guides can make the weary, wayworn wanderer at the very shortest notice."
"Is that a challenge?"
"It is an expression of faith."
Their eyes met, and even lingered.
"In that case," said Gay, "I shall do what I may. There is cold lunch in the boat, but the wayworn one shall bask in front of a fire and look upon his food when it is piping hot. Come!"
Gay rowed him out of the brook and along the shore of the lake for a couple of miles. She was on her mettle. She wished him to know that shewas no lounger in woodcraft. She put her strong young back into the work of rowing, and the fragile guide boat flew. Her cheeks glowed, and her lips were parted in a smile, but secretly she was filled with dread. She knew that she had brought food, raw and cooked; she could see the head of her axe gleaming under the middle seat; she would trust Mary for having seen to it that there was pepper and salt; but whether in the pocket of the Norfolk jacket there were matches, she could not be sure. If she stopped rowing to look, the Englishman would think that she had stopped because she was tired. And if, later, it was found that she had come away without matches, he would laugh at her and her pretenses to being a "perfectly good guide."
She beached the boat upon the sand in a wooded cove, and before Pritchard could move had drawn it high and dry out of the water. Then she laughed aloud, and would not tell him why. She had discovered in the right-hand pocket of her coat two boxes of safety-matches, and in the left pocket three.
"Don't," said Gay, "this is my job."
She lifted the boat easily and carried it into the woods. Pritchard had wished to help. She laid the boat upon soft moss at the side of a narrow,mounting trail, slung the package of lunch upon her shoulders, and caught up her axe.
"Don't I help at all?" asked Pritchard.
"You are weary and wayworn," said Gay, "and I suppose I ought to carry you, too. But I can't. Can you follow? It's not far."
A quarter of a mile up the hillside, between virgin pines which made one think bitterly of what the whole mountains might be if the science of forestry had been imported a little earlier in the century, the steep and stony trail ended in an open space, gravelly and abounding in huge bowlders, upon which the sun shone warm and bright. In the midst of the place was a spring, black and slowly bubbling. At the base of one great rock, a deep rift in whose face made a natural chimney, were traces of former fires.
"Wait here," commanded Gay.
Her axe sounded in a thicket, and she emerged presently staggering under a load of balsam. She spread it in two great, fragrant mats. Then once more she went forth with her axe and returned with fire-wood.
Pritchard, a wistful expression in his eyes, studied her goings and her comings, and listened as to music, to the sharp, true ringing of her axe.
"By Jove," said he to himself, "that isn't perspiration on her forehead—it's honest sweat!"
In spite of the bright sunshine, the heat of the fire was wonderfully welcome, and began to bring out the strong, delicious aroma of the balsam. Gay sat upon her heels before the fire and cooked. There was a sound of boiling and bubbling. The fragrance of coffee mingled with the balsam and floated heavenward. During the swift preparation of lunch they hardly spoke. Twice Pritchard begged to help and was twice refused.
She spread a cloth between the mats of balsam upon one of which Pritchard reclined, and she laid out hot plates and bright silver with demure precision.
"Miss Gay," he said very earnestly, "I came to chuckle; I thought that at least you would burn the chicken and get smoke in your eyes, but I remain to worship the deity of woodcraft. An Indian could not do more swiftly or so well."
Gay swelled a little. She had worked very hard; nothing had gone wrong, so far. She was not in the least ashamed of herself. But her greatest triumph was to come.
Uncas, the chipmunk, had that morning gone for a stroll in the forest. He had the spring fever.He had crossed Placid Brook, by a fallen log; he had climbed trees, hunted for last year's nuts, and fought battles of repartee with other chipmunks. About lunch time, thinking to return to Arthur and recount the tale of his wanderings, he smelled a smell of cooking and heard a sound of voices, one of which was familiar to him. He climbed a bowlder overlooking the clearing, and began to scold. Gay and Pritchard looked up.
"My word!" said Pritchard, "what a bold little beggar."
Now, to Gay, the figure of Uncas, well larded with regular meals, was not to be confounded with the slim little stripes of the spring woods. She knew him at once, and she spoke nonchalantly to Pritchard.
"If you're a great deal in the woods," she said, "you scrape acquaintance with many of the inhabitants. That little pig and I are old friends. You embarrass him a little. He doesn't know you. If you weren't here, he'd come right into my lap and beg."
Pritchard looked at her gravely.
"Truly?" he said.
"I think he will anyway," said Gay, and she made sounds to Uncas which reassured him and brought him presently on a tearing run for herlap. Here, when he had been fed, he yawned, stretched himself, and fell asleep.
"Mowgli's sister!" said Pritchard reverently. "Child, are there the scars of wolves' teeth on your wrists and ankles?"
"No, octogenarian," said Gay; "there aren't any marks of any kind. What time is it?"
"It is half-past two."
"Then you shall smoke a cigarette, while I wash dishes."
She slid the complaining Uncas from her lap to the ground.
"Unfortunately," said Pritchard, "I didn't bring a cigarette."
"And you've been dying for a smoke all this time? Why don't you ask the guide for what you want?"
"Have you such a thing?"
"I have."
"But you—you yourself don't—do you?" He looked troubled.
"No," said Gay. "But my father was always forgetting his, and it made him so miserable I got into the habit of carrying a full case years ago whenever we went on expeditions. He used to be so surprised and delighted. Sometimes I think he used to forget his on purpose, sothat I could have the triumph of producing mine."
Pritchard smoked at ease. Gay "washed up." Uncas, roused once more from slumber by the call of one of his kind, shook himself and trotted off into the forest.
Gay, scouring a pan, was beginning to feel that she had known Pritchard a long time. She had made him comfortable, cared for him in the wild woods, and the knowledge warmed her heart.
Pritchard was saying to himself:
"We like the same sort of things—why not each other?"
"Miss Gay," he said aloud.
"What?"
"In case I land the three-pounder and over, I think I ought to tell you that I'm not very rich, and I know you aren't. Would that matter to you? I've just about enough," he went on tantalizingly, "to take a girl on ripping good trips into central Africa or Australia, but I can't keep any great state in England—Merrivale isn't a show place, you know—just a few grouse and pheasants and things, and pretty good fishin'."
"However much," said Gay, "I may regret mybet, there was nothing Indian about it. I'm sure that you are a clean, upright young man.I'm a decent sort of girl, though I say it that shouldn't. We might do worse. I've heard that love-matches aren't always what they are cracked up to be. And I'm quite sure that I want to go to Africa and hunt big game."
"Thank you," said Pritchard humbly. "And at least there would be love on one side."
"Nonsense," said Gay briskly. "I'm ready, if you are."
Pritchard jumped to his feet and threw away his cigarette.
"Now," he said, "that you've proved everything,won'tyou let me help?"
Gay refused him doubtfully, and then with a burst of generosity:
"Why, yes," she said, "and, by the way, Mr. Pritchard, there was no magic about the chipmunk. He's one my brother trained. He lives at The Camp, and he was just out for a stroll and happened in on us. I don't want you to find out that I'm a fraud from any one—but me."
The big trout was once more feeding. And Pritchard began to cast his diminutive fly up-stream and across. But he cast and got out line by a system that was new to Gay. He did not "whip" the brook; he whipped the air above it. He never allowed his fly to touch the water but drew it back sharply, and, at the same time, reeled out more line with his left hand, when it had fallen to within an inch or two of the surface. His casts, straight as a rifle-shot, lengthened, and reached out toward the bowlder point near which the big trout was feeding, until he was throwing, and with consummate ease, a line longer than Gay had ever seen thrown.
"It's beautiful," she whispered. "Will you teach me?"
"Of course," he answered.
His fly hovered just above the ring which the trout had just made. Pritchard lengthened his line a foot, and cast again and again, with no further change but of an inch or two in direction.
"There's a little current," he explained. "Ifwe dropped the fly into the middle of the ring, it would float just over his tail and he wouldn't see it. He's looking up-stream, whence his blessings flow. The fly must float straight down at him, dragging its leader, and not dragged by it."
All the while he talked, he continued casting with compact, forceful strokes of his right wrist and forearm. At last, his judgment being satisfied by the hovering position attained by fly and leader, he relaxed his grip of the rod; the fly fell upon the water like thistle-down, floated five or six inches, and was sucked under by the big trout.
Pritchard struck hard.
There was a second's pause, while the big trout, pained and surprised, tried to gather his scattered wits. Three quarters of Pritchard's line floated loosely across the brook, but the leader and the fly remained under, and Pritchard knew that he had hooked his fish.
Then, and it was sudden—like an explosion—the whole length of floating line disappeared, and the tip of Pritchard's powerful rod was dragged under after it.
The reel screamed.
"It's a whale!" shouted Gay, forgetting how much depended upon the size of the fish, "a whale!"
The time for stealthy movements and talk in whispers was over. Gay laughed, shouted, exhorted, while Pritchard, his lips parted, his cheeks flushed, gayly fought the great fish.
"Go easy; go easy!" cried Gay. "That hook will never hold him."
But Pritchard knew his implements, and fished with a kind of joyous, strong fury.
"When you hang 'em," he exulted, "land em."
The trout was a great noble potentate of those waters. Years ago he had abandoned the stealthy ways of lesser fish. He came into the middle of the brook where the water is deep and there is freedom from weeds and sunken timber, and then up and down and across and across, with blind, furious rushes he fought his fight.
It was the strong man without science against the strong man who knows how to box. The steady, furious rushes, snubbed and controlled, became jerky and spasmodic; in a roar and swirl of water the king trout showed his gleaming and enormous back; a second later the sunset colors of his side and the white of his belly. Inch by inch, swollen by impotent fury, galvanically struggling and rushing, he followed the drag of the leader toward the beach, where, ankle-deepin the water, Gay crouched with the landing-net.
She trembled from head to foot as a well-bred pointer trembles when he has found a covey of quail and holds them in control, waiting for his master to walk in upon them.
The big trout, still fighting, turning, and raging, came toward the mouth of the half-submerged net.
"How big is he, Miss Gay?"
The voice was cool and steady.
"He's five pounds if he's an ounce," her voice trembled. "He's the biggest trout that ever swam.
"Heisn'ta trout," said Pritchard; "he's a char."
If Gay could have seen Pritchard's face, she would have been struck for the first time by a sort of serene beauty that pervaded some of its expressions. The smile which he turned upon her crouching figure had in it a something almost angelic.
"Bring him a little nearer," she cried, "just a little."
"You're sure he weighs more than three pounds?"
"Sure—sure—don't talk, land him, land him——"
For answer Pritchard heaved strongly upward upon his rod and lifted the mighty fish clear of the water. One titanic convulsion of tortured muscles, and what was to be expected happened. The leader broke a few inches from the trout's lip, and he returned splashing to his native element, swam off slowly, just under the surface, then dove deep, and was seen no more.
"Oh!" cried Gay. "Whydidyou? Whydidyou?"
She had forgotten everything but the fact that the most splendid of all trout had been lost.
"Why did you?" she cried again.
"Because," he said serenely and gently, smiling into her grieved and flushed face, "I wouldn't have you as the payment of a bet. I will have you as a gift or not at all."
They returned to The Camp, Pritchard rowing.
"I owe you your prospective dividends for the year," he said. "If they are large, I shall have to give you my note and pay as I can."
She did not answer.
"I think you are angry with me," he said. "I'd give more than a penny for your thoughts."
"I was thinking," said she, "that you are very good at fishing, but that the art of rowingan Adirondack guide boat has been left out of you."
"Truly," he said, "was that what you were thinking?"
"No," she said; "I was thinking other things. I was thinking that I ought to go down on my knees and thank you for breaking the leader. You see, I'd made up my mind to keep my word. And, well, of course, it's a great escape for me.
"Why? Was the prospect of marrying me so awful?"
"The prospect of marrying a man who would rather lose a five-pound fish than marry me—was awful."
Pritchard stopped rowing, and his laughter went abroad over the quiet lake until presently Gay's forehead smoothed and, after a prelude of dimples, she joined gayly in.
When Pritchard could speak, he said:
"You don't really think that, do you?"
"I don't know what I think," said Gay. "I'm just horrid and cross and spoiled. Don't let's talk about it any more."
"But I said," said he, "I said 'As a bet, no; but as a gift'—oh, with what rapture and delight!"
"Do you mean that?" She looked him in the face with level eyes.
Once more he stopped rowing.
"I love you," he said, "with my whole heart and soul."
"Don't," said Gay, "don't spoil a day that, for all its ups and downs, has been a good day, a day that, on the whole, I've loved—and let's hurry, please, because I stood in the water and it was icy."
After that Pritchard rowed with heroic force and determination; he lacked, however, the knack which overlapping oar handles demand, and at every fifteenth or sixteenth stroke knocked a piece of "bark" from his knuckles.
Smarting with pain, he smiled gently at her from time to time.
"Will you guide me to-morrow?"
"To-morrow," she said, "there will be enough real guides to go around."
"You really are, aren't you?" he said.
"What?"
"Angry with me."
"Oh, no—I think—that what you said—what you said—was a foolish thing to say. If I came to you with my sisters Lee and Phyllis, you wouldn't know which of the three I was, and yet—you said—you said——"
"It isn't a question of words—it's a question of feeling. Do you really think I shouldn't know you from your sisters?"
"I am sure of it," said Gay.
"But if you weren't?"
"Then I should still think that you had tried to be foolish but I shouldn't be angry."
"How," said Pritchard, his eyes twinkling, "shall I convince the girl I love—that I know her by sight?"
Gay laughed. The idea seemed rather comical to her.
"To-night," she said, "when you have dined, walk down to the dock alone. One of us three will come to you and say: 'Too bad we didn't have better luck.' And you won't know if she's Lee or Phyllis or me."
Pritchard smoked upon the dock in the light of an arc-lamp. A vision, smiling and rosy, swept out of the darkness, and said:
"Too bad we didn't have better luck!"
"I beg your pardon," said Pritchard, "you're not Miss Gay, but I haven't had the pleasure of being presented to Miss Lee or Miss Phyllis."
The vision chuckled and beat a swift, gigglingretreat to a dark spot among the pines, where other giggles awaited her.
A second vision came.
"Too bad we didn't have better luck!"
Pritchard smiled gravely into the vision's eyes, and said in so low a voice that only she could hear:
"Bad luck? I have learned to love you with all my heart and soul."
Silence. An answering whisper.
"How did you know me?"
"How? Because my heart says here is the only girl in all the world—see how different, how more beautiful and gentle she is than all other girls."
"But I'm not Gay—I'm Phyllis."
"If you are Phyllis," he whispered, "then you never were Gay."
She laughed softly.
"IamGay."
"Why tell me? I know. Am I forgiven?"
"There is nothing," she said swiftly, "to forgive," and she fled swiftly.
To her sisters waiting among the pines she gave explanation.
"Of course, he knew me."
"How?"
"Why, he said there couldn't be any doubt; he said I was so very much better-looking than any sister of mine could possibly be."
Forthwith Lee pinioned Gay's arms and Phyllis pulled her ears for her.
Mr. Pritchard paced the dock, offering rings of Cuban incense to the stars.
From Play House came the sounds which men make when they play cards and do not care whether they win or lose.
Maud was in her office, adding a column of figures which the grocer had sent in. The triplets, linked arm in arm, joined her. Arthur came, and Eve and Mary.
They agreed that they were very tired and ready for bed.
"It's going to be a success, anyway," said Mary. "That seems certain."
"We must have the plumber up," said Eve; "the laundry boiler has sprung a leak. Who's that in your pocket, Arthur?"
"Uncas. He came in exhausted after a long day in the woods. Something unusual happened to him. I know, because he tried so very hard to tell me all about it just before he went to sleep,and of course he couldn't quite make me understand. I think he was trying to warn me of something—trying to tell me to keep my eyes peeled."
The family laughed. Arthur was always so absurd about his pets. All laughed except Gay. She, in a dark corner, like the rose in the poem, blushed unseen.