Endicott and I fully realize the discrepancy between our manner of taking a fishing trip, and all the instinctive tendencies of well-ordered couples. We are not artistic about it. We are not even interestingly erratic. We have no startling theories to chase to a satisfactory Q. E. D., nor any quarrel with the habits of other fishermen. We frankly admire the fine art of Henry van Dyke's masterly fishing of "Little Rivers," with his dancing flies and his magic rods; we have also read with chuckling appreciation Bliss Perry's exposition of the crackling-underbrush-and-hip-rubber-boots-delights of "fishing with a worm." We are neither skillful like Van Dyke, nor as fearlessly close to nature as Mr. Perry. We violate, moreover, the cardinal rule of fishermen. It is well known that the unexpected lure of watery spring sunlight, suggestive of pussy willows and red-winged black-birds, or perhaps the chance sound of a bluebird's distant warble in the soft rain of an April morning, should be the proper motive force which should put into the fisher-heart an irresistible craving for the trout run, and should constrain him to drop all engagements to wander through dandelion lanes to cowslip-covered tussocks in some far cranberry bog. In the face of this tradition, settled, middle-aged couple that we are, we arrange our fishing trips beforehand. Judge Endicott Avery plans not more carefully for his Short Calendar nor I more systematically for my best dinner party than we both together settle the details of our day at the farm.
Therefore, when the six o'clock sunlight brightened the dewdrops on the rambler rose outside our dining room window one glorious July morning, we had no adventuresome thrill at the thought of duties to be deserted as we accepted the parting attentions of our children. The family lunch basket, knobby with tin cups and sandwiches, was ready. Our six-quart pail and our frying-pan leaned sociably against the front doorstep. Our eldest son laid near them a pile of crisp kindling-wood - Endicott and I have had experience with impromptu twigs and bark which ought to be inflammable - and our small boy added a large tin box labeled "Medium Screws," chivalrously resisting the temptation to give it more than one small suggestive shake for the benefit of his sisters.
Endicott and I are ponderous. We both dislike to say fat, because there are so many such delightful words to express our figures: for instance, massive or impressive for Endicott, and matronly or stately for me. Frankly, however, I doubt whether these adjectives would have occurred to an unimpassioned observer who had seen us, arrayed for our trip, ascending the all too lofty step of the two-seated carriage which was to take us to the old farm. Not that Endicott and I cannot ride in a one-seated vehicle together. But with our kindling-wood, our lunch basket, our frying-pan and our six-quart pail, our shawls and our hammock, our block of ice, my tackle and the "medium screws," we were more comfortable each with a seat alone.
So we started out, with our cheerfully rattling cargo, leaving our sons and daughters appreciative spectators on the front doorstep. Endicott insisted on driving. He dislikes to drive, and I can never relax my spinal column while he holds the reins. Moreover, I myself delight in driving and he feels happy and secure in my horsemanship. But Endicott has sometimes an ignoble regard for appearances - within city limits. Alone by ourselves we do as we will, contrary as our customs are to all recognized codes of manly chivalry and feminine helplessness. We have tried family fishing parties. But the atmosphere is ruined. Endicott feels that he must play the part of gallant spouse and genial patriarch when the children are by, and the girls expect me to be a gracious out-of-door Ceres, aloof and artistic; and Ceres, forsooth, may not bail out a boat.
We stopped at the fish market on the way, and Endicott tucked a cool, soft package of bluefish carefully against our ice before we started again. This business was performed in impressive silence. I have learned to ignore the bluefish part of our trips. It always seems to me the most flagrant incident of our program, - until lunch time. On our journey we talked a little. Alone with each other! - we almost felt obliged to be entertaining. We spoke of the excellent day; of our parting instructions to household and stenographers; of the children and the town meeting. And Endicott related anecdotes.
But once at the old beaver lake, where the twisted orchard trees had dropped their little green apples into the water where they bobbed up and down in the ripples, - when we found the hammock hooks still in the trees where we had left them, and the old flat-bottomed boat full of the water of many rains, - then Endicott and I became frankly ourselves, irresponsible and unembarrassed.
"Let me bail out the boat for you this time," said Endicott, turning as he stood halfway up the orchard slope with his arms full of hammock and shawls. His attitude expressed genuine readiness to drop every preference together with his burden and rush to the pumps without delay. The best part of an independent feeling is to know that at any moment one may resort to the clinging-vine attitude and find a worthy support at hand whereon to twine. The advantages of the married state are summed up for me in my sensation when Endicott offers to bail out my boat. But no such sentimental element was in my air as I moored my craft beside the nearest clump of blue flags and perched firmly upon the highest seat with my pail and my sponge. The ambition of dipping up the Atlantic with a teacup is rendered somehow small and unworthy by its obvious futility, while in the case of that boat, there seemed to be nearly as much in it to conquer, but it had been emptied before, and there was the joy of the last muddy spongeful to look forward to. So, crouched with skillfully upgathered skirts in the prow of the boat, I dipped and dipped, while the bright splash of the water over the boatside stirred up the twinkling school of minnows in the sun. A shrike-poke flapped over and settled in the cat-tails, and a kingfisher perched watchfully on the shad-bush by the dam. Obviously a poor fishing day, thought the kingfisher and I, with quizzical glances at each other, but he still swung on his silver-green bough, and I whole-heartedly mopped out the last puddles, jointed my rod, unreeled my line, and provided my hook with a well-chosen medium screw.
I could see Endicott twisting in the hammock to watch me row across the pond, and I feathered my strokes as well as the stiff, wooden oar locks would allow, because Endicott - scrape went the bottom of the boat! A settled feeling as the crumbling stump whereon I was moored gave way a little to let the boat's beams sink comfortably into it, a futile lashing of the waves when I tried to push myself off by backing water, or to progress by straight rowing - no use! I must pole. I poled. The dizzy sweep of my boat as I gave the muddy ground a vigorous push with my brandished oar told me I was free, and I sat down to row again. My anchorage was as fast as ever. I must pole on the other side. I poled. I poled until I felt that my merry-go-round must have dizzied all my fishes to docility. Around and around I could go with ease; any tangent to the circle was impossible. There are times when solid foundations beneath one's feet are exasperating instead of reassuring.
I knew that Endicott was watching. He had reached that point of perfect manners when he stands firmly wiht his back against such stone walls as I may wish to climb, forming of himself a disinterested and most convenient post for me to snatch at if I need to, keeping the while a dreamily appreciative gaze on far landscapes. He talks to the horse while I climb into carriages. He did not watch me bail out the boat. But a double time of service would be necessary to make any easeful husband forego the pleasure of seeing his erstwhile blithesome Frau a-swing upon a stump in a pond. I had almost decided to begin to fish, thus giving him the impression that I had been circulating to get my bearings and to locate the best fishing-holes, when I saw Endicott rise from his hammock. Ordinarily I do not watch his exit from hammocks, though it is a notable sight. I think few of the youngest lawyers could stand in awe of Judge Avery's person upon such occasions. Down to the verge he came, a modern Bedivere. Was he planning to swim out to my rescue?
"Ship ahoy!" he called between his hands. His side whiskers, I knew, were a-bristle with enjoyment of the subtle humor of this remark. I responded rather coolly by that feminine salutation which my daughters call a "hoo-hoo."
"Say! Why do you sit on the stump?" he inquired impersonally, in carefully separated syllables.
"Can't move," I shouted, in my most carrying woman's club voice.
"Get into the end of the boat! You're sitting on the stump," he roared.
Almost I decided to remain where I was and fish with dignity, and to move perhaps by degrees my one hundred and eighty pounds of ballast away from the center of gravity of my scow. But the obvious logic of the situation was too beautiful to be so disregarded. I stepped into the stern. With disconcerting suddenness my shallop plunged, swung about, and floated lightly though unevenly upon the waves once more. I balanced back to my rowing-bench and paddled toward my favorite fishing-cove. The white birches flickered in the quiet water while I trailed my hook idly over the edge of the boat. Small, radiant sunfish came in twos and threes and floated, round-eyed, near the bait, which I twitched away from their comical mouths, and waited for a pout or a pickerel.
One might as well long to see the rainy Pleiades in the sunshine as a pout on a pleasant day. When I fish for fish, I go with my son in the drizzling twilight; on a pleasure trip with Endicott it is perhaps as well, after all, to stop at the fish market. For the bluefish, cooked in the intrusive frying-pan, over our kindled-by-kindling-wood fire, eaten from a paper plate, was a part of the perfection of that sunny afternoon; almost as much a part as the singing of the grasshoppers in the daisy-field, and the quivering shadows made by the apple leaves upon the grass. Endicott and I learn again to talk to each other on our fishing trips. Tradition helps us there; we always have talked under that particular tree and it is easier to open the way again, perhaps beginning where we left off the year before when the apple blossoms were falling on the grass and the veery sang where we found the ovenbird's nest years ago. An afternoon under our apple tree, and then another hour in the boat, with Endicott to row, and the sunset fading into star-rise, - I think we were not sorry to leave the trout and the pickerel still in the shallows around the toad-lily roots, when it came time for us to drive home along the old wood road, while the cool mist came out of the forest where the katydids were chirping, and fireflies were dancing in the dark.