Days Off Part 13

said Jones as he followed his guest to the door of the little rectory.

"I take it as a mark of Christian brotherhood; and naturally, as a clergyman, I want to be as close as possible to every one who is working in any way for the good of the place where my parish lies."

"Of course!" answered Hopkins. "That's all right. I guess you won't have any trouble about Christian brotherhood in Samaria. Good-bye till Monday afternoon."

But as he walked across the green, the skirts of his black frock-coat flapping in the September breeze, and his brown Fedora hat set at a reflective angle on the back of his head, he pondered a little over the precise significance of his _confrere's_ last remark, which had not altogether pleased him. Was there a subtle shade of difference between those who were working "in any way" for the good of Samaria, and the "clergyman" who felt bound to be on good terms with them?

On Monday afternoon they had appointed to take a country walk together, and Hopkins, who was a lean, long-legged, wiry fellow, with a deep chest, gray eyes, and a short, crisp brown beard and moustache, led the way at a lively pace over hill and dale around Lake Marapaug and back,--fourteen miles in three hours. Jones was rather red when they returned to the front gate of the rectory about five o'clock, and he wiped his beaded forehead with his handkerchief as he invited his comrade to come in and have a cup of tea.

"No, thank you," said Hopkins, "I'm just ready for a bit of work in my study, now. Nice little stroll, wasn't it? I want you to know the country about here, and the people too. You mustn't feel strange in this Puritan region where my church has been established so long. We'll soon make you feel at home. Good-bye."

An hour later, when Jones had sipped his tea, he looked up from an article in the _Pall Mall Review_ and began to wonder whether Hopkins had meant anything in particular by that last remark.

"He's an awfully good chap, to be sure, but just a bit set in his way.

I fancy he has some odd notions. Well, perhaps I shall be able to put him right, if I am patient and friendly. It is rather plain that I shall have a lot of missionary work to do here among these dissenters."

So he turned to his bookshelves and took down a volume on _The Primitive Diaconate and the Reconstruction of Christendom_. Meantime Hopkins was in his study making notes for a series of sermons on "The Scriptural Polity of the Early New England Churches."

Well, you can see from this how the great Leviathan conflict began. Two men meeting with good intentions, both anxious, even determined, to be the best of friends, yet each unconsciously pressing upon the other the only point of difference between them. Now add to this a pair of consciences aggravated by the sense of official responsibilities, and a number of ladies who were alike in cheris.h.i.+ng for one or the other of these two men a warm admiration, amounting in several cases, shall I say, to a sentimental adoration, and you have a collection of materials not altogether favourable to a peaceful combination.

My business, however, is with Leviathan, and therefore I do not propose to narrate the development of the rivalry between these two excellent men. How Mr. Jones introduced an early morning service, and Mr. Hopkins replied with an afternoon musical vespers: how a vested choir of boys was installed in the brown church, and a cornet and a harp appeared in the gallery of the white church: how candles were lighted in the Episcopalian apse, (whereupon Erastus Whipple resigned from the vestry because he said he knew that he was "goin' to act ugly"), and a stereopticon threw illuminated pictures of Palestine upon the wall behind the Congregational pulpit (which induced Abijah Lemon to refuse to pa.s.s the plate the next Sunday, because he said he "wa'nt goin' to take up no collection for a peep-show in meetin'"): how a sermon beside the graveyard on "the martyrdom of King Charles I," was followed, on the green, by a discourse on "the treachery of Charles II": how Mrs.

Slicer and Mrs. Cutter crossed each other in the transfer of their church relations, because the Slicer boys were not asked to sing in the vested choir, and because Orlando Cutter was displaced as cornetist by a young man from Hitchfield: how the Jonesites learned to speak of themselves as "churchmen" and of their neighbours as "adherents of other religious bodies," while the Hopkinsians politely inquired as to the hours at which "ma.s.s was celebrated" in the brown edifice and were careful to speak of their own services as "Divine wors.h.i.+p": how Mr.

Jones went so far, in his Was.h.i.+ngton's Birthday Speech, as to compliment the architectural effect of "the old meeting-house on the green, that venerable monument of an earnest period of dissent," to which Mr. Hopkins made the retort courteous by giving thanks, in his prayer on the same occasion, for "the gracious memories of fraternal intercourse which still hallowed the little brown chapel beside the cemetery": how all these strokes and counterstrokes were given and exchanged in a decorous and bloodless religious war which enlivened a Samaritan autumn and winter almost to the point of effervescence: and how they were prevented from doing any great harm by the general good feeling and the const.i.tutional sense of humour of the village, it is not my purpose, I say, to relate in detail.

The fact is, the incipient fermentation pa.s.sed away almost as naturally and suddenly as it began. Old Cap'n Elihu Gray, who had made a tidy fortune in his voyages to the East Indies and retired to enjoy it in a snug farmhouse beside the Lirrapaug River, a couple of miles below the village, was reputed to be something of a freethinker, but he used to come up, every month, to one or other of the two churches to sample a sermon. His summary of the controversy which threatened the peace of Samaria, seemed to strike the common-sense of his fellow-townsmen in the place where friendly laughter lies.

"Wa'al," said he, puffing a meditative pipe, "I've seen folks pray to cows and jest despise folks 'at prayed to elephants. 'N I've seen folks whose r'ligion wouldn't 'low 'em to eat pig's meat fight with folks whose r'ligion wouldn't 'low 'em to eat meat 't all. But I never seen reel Christians dispise other reel Christians for prayin' at seven in the mornin' 'stead of at eleven, nor yet fight 'bout the difference 'tween a pa.s.sel o' boys singin' in white nightgowns an' half-a-dozen purty young gals tunin' their voices to a pipe-organ an' a harp o'

sollum saound. I don't 'low there is eny devil, but ef ther' wuz, guess that's the kind o' fight 'd make him grin."

This opinion appeared to reach down to the fundamental saving grace of humour in the Samaritan mind. The vestry persuaded the Reverend Willibert that the time was not yet ripe for candles; and the board of deacons induced the Reverend Cotton Mather to subst.i.tute a course of lectures on the Women of the Bible for the stereopticon exhibitions.

Hostilities gently frothed themselves away and subsided. Decoration Day was celebrated in Samaria, according to the Hitchfield _Gazette_, "by a notable gathering in the Town Hall, at which the Rev. Jones offered an eloquent extemporaneous prayer and the Rev. Hopkins p.r.o.nounced an elegant oration on the Civil War, after which the survivors partook of a banquet at the Hanc.o.c.k Hotel."

But the rivalry between the two leaders, sad to say, did not entirely disappear with the peaceful reconciliation and commingling of their forces. On the contrary, it was as if a general engagement had been abandoned and both the opposing companies had resolved themselves into the happy audience of a single combat. It was altogether a friendly and chivalrous contest, you understand,--nothing bitter or malicious about it,--but none the less it was a _duel a l'outrance_, a struggle for the mastery between two men whom nature had made rivals, and for whom circ.u.mstances had prepared the arena in the double sphere of love and angling.

Hopkins had become known, during the seven years of his residence at Samaria, as the best trout-fisherman of the village, and indeed of all the tributary region. With the black ba.s.s there were other men who were his equals, and perhaps one or two, like Judge Ward, who spent the greater part of his summer vacation sitting under an umbrella in a boat on Lake Marapaug, and Jags Witherbee, the village ne'er-do-weel, who were his superiors. But with the delicate, speckled, evasive trout he was easily first. He knew all the cold, foaming, musical brooks that sang their way down from the hills. He knew the spring-holes in the Lirrapaug River where the schools of fish a.s.sembled in the month of May, waiting to go up the brooks in the warm weather. He knew the secret haunts and lairs of the large fish where they established themselves for the whole season and took toll of the pa.s.sing minnows.

He knew how to let his line run with the current so that it would go in under the bushes without getting entangled, and sink to the bottom of the dark pools, beneath the roots of fallen trees, without the hook catching fast. He knew how to creep up to a stream that had hollowed out a way under the bank of a meadow, without shaking the boggy ground.

He had a trick with a detachable float, made from a quill and a tiny piece of cork, that brought him many a fish from the centre of a mill-pond. He knew the best baits for every season,--worms, white grubs, striped minnows, miller's thumbs, b.u.mble-bees, gra.s.shoppers, young field-mice,--and he knew where to find them.

For it must be confessed that Cotton Mather was a confirmed bait-fisherman. Confession is not the word that he would have used with reference to the fact; he would have called it a declaration of principles, and would have maintained that he was a follower of the best, the most skilful, the most productive, the fairest, the truly Apostolic method of fis.h.i.+ng.

Jones, on the other hand, was not a little shocked when he discovered in the course of conversation that his colleague, who was in many respects such a good sportsman, was addicted to fis.h.i.+ng with bait. For his own angling education had been acquired in a different school,--among the clear streams of England, the open rivers of Scotland, the carefully preserved waters of Long Island. He had been taught that the artificial fly was the proper lure for a true angler to use.

For coa.r.s.e fish like perch and pike, a bait was permissible. For middle-cla.s.s fish, like ba.s.s, which would only rise to the fly during a brief and uncertain season, a trolling-spoon or an artificial minnow might be allowed. But for fish whose blood, though cold, was n.o.ble,--for game fish of undoubted rank like the salmon and the trout, the true angler must use only the lightest possible tackle, the most difficult possible methods, the cleanest and prettiest possible lure,--to wit, the artificial fly. Moreover, he added his opinion that in the long run, taking all sorts of water and weather together, and fis.h.i.+ng through the season, a man can take more trout with the fly than with the bait,--that is, of course, if he understands the art of fly-fis.h.i.+ng.

You perceive at once that here was a very pretty ground for conflict between the two men, after the ecclesiastical battle had been called off. Their community of zeal as anglers only intensified their radical opposition as to the authoritative and orthodox mode of angling. In the close season, when the practice of their art was forbidden, they discussed its theory with vigour; and many were the wit-combats between these two champions, to which the Samaritans listened in the drug-store-and-post-office that served them in place of a Mermaid Tavern. There was something of Shakspere's quickness and elegance in Willibert's methods; but Cotton Mather had the advantage in learning and in weight of argument.

"It is unhistorical," he said, "to claim that there is only one proper way to catch fish. The facts are against you."

"But surely, my dear fellow," replied Willibert, "there is one best way, and that must be the proper way on which all should unite."

"I don't admit that," said the other, "variety counts for something.

Besides, it is up to you to prove that fly-fis.h.i.+ng is the best way."

"Well," answered Willibert, "I fancy that would be easy enough. All the authorities are on my side. Doesn't every standard writer on angling say that fly-fis.h.i.+ng is the perfection of the art?"

"Not at all," Cotton Mather replied, with some exultation, "Izaak Walton's book is all about bait-fis.h.i.+ng, except two or three pages on the artificial fly, which were composed for him by Thomas Barker, a retired confectioner. But suppose all the books were on your side.

There are ten thousand men who love fis.h.i.+ng and know about fis.h.i.+ng, to one who writes about it. The proof of the angler is the full basket."

At this Willibert looked disgusted. "You mistake quant.i.ty for quality.

It's better to take one fish prettily and fairly than to fill your basket in an inferior way. Would you catch trout with a net?"

Cotton Mather admitted that he would not.

"Well, then, why not carry your discrimination a little farther and reject the coa.r.s.e bait-hook, and the stiff rod, and the heavy line?

Fly-tackle appeals to the aesthetic taste,--the slender, pliant rod with which you land a fish twenty times its weight, the silken line, the gossamer leader, the dainty fly of bright feathers concealing the tiny hook!"

"Concealing!" broke in the advocate of the bait, "that is just the spirit of the whole art of fly-fis.h.i.+ng. It's all a deception. The slender rod is made of split cane that will bend double before it breaks; the gossamer leader is of drawn-gut carefully tested to stand a heavier strain than the rod can put upon it. The trout thinks he can smash your tackle, but you know he can't, and you play with him half-an-hour to convince him that you are right. And after all, when you've landed him, he hasn't had even a taste of anything good to eat to console him for being caught,--nothing but a little bunch of feathers which he never would look at if he knew what it was. Don't you think that fly-fis.h.i.+ng is something of a piscatorial immorality?"

"Not in the least," answered Willibert, warming to his work, "it is a legitimate appeal, not to the trout's lower instinct, his mere physical hunger, but to his curiosity, his sense of beauty, his desire for knowledge. He takes the fly, not because it looks like an edible insect, for nine times out of ten it doesn't, but because it's pretty and he wants to know what it is. When he has found out, you give him a fair run for his money and bring him to basket with nothing more than a pin-p.r.i.c.k in his lip. But what does the bait-fisher do? He deceives the trout into thinking that a certain worm or grub or minnow is wholesome, nouris.h.i.+ng, digestible, fit to be swallowed. In that deceptive bait he has hidden a big, heavy hook which sticks deep in the trout's gullet and by means of which the disappointed fish is forcibly and brutally dragged to land. It lacks refinement. It is primitive, violent, barbaric, and so simple that any unskilled village lad can do it as well as you can."

"I think not," said Cotton Mather, now on the defensive, "just let the village-lad try it. Why, the beauty of real bait-fis.h.i.+ng is that it requires more skill than any other kind of angling. To present your bait to the wary old trout without frightening him; to make it move in the water so that it shall seem alive and free"; ("deception," murmured Willibert), "to judge the proper moment after he has taken it when you should strike, and how hard; to draw him safely away from the weeds and roots among which he has been lying; all this takes quite a little practice and some skill,--a good deal more, I reckon, than hooking and playing a trout on the clear surface of the water when you can see every motion."

"Ah, there you are," cried Willibert, "that's the charm of fly-fis.h.i.+ng!

It's all open and above-board. The long, light cast of the fly, 'fine and far off,' the delicate drop of the feathers upon the water, the quick rise of the trout and the sudden gleam of his golden side as he turns, the electric motion of the wrist by which you hook him,--that is the magic of sport."

"Yes," replied the other, "I'll admit there's something in it, but bait-fis.h.i.+ng is superior. You take a long pool, late in the season; water low and clear; fish lying in the middle; you can't get near them.

You go to the head of the pool in the rapids and stir up the bottom so as to discolour the water a little----"

"Deceptive," interrupted Willibert, "and decidedly immoral!"

"Only a little," continued Cotton Mather, "a very little! Then you go down to the bottom of the pool with a hand-line----"

"A hand-line!" murmured the listener, half-shuddering in feigned horror.

"Yes, a hand-line," the speaker went on firmly, "a long, light hand-line, without a sinker, baited with a single, clean angle-worm, and loosely coiled in your left hand. You cast the hook with your right hand, and it falls lightly without a splash, a hundred feet up stream.

Then you pull the line in very gently, just fast enough to keep it from sinking to the bottom. When the trout bites, you strike him and land him by hand, without the help of rod or landing-net or any other mechanical device. Try this once, and you will see whether it is easier than throwing the fly. I reckon this was the way the Apostle Peter fished when he was told to 'go to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up.' It is the only true Apostolic method of fis.h.i.+ng."

"But, my dear fellow," answered the other, "the text doesn't say that it was a bait-hook. It may have been a fly-hook. Indeed the text rather implies that, for it speaks of the fish as 'coming up,' and that means rising to the fly."

"Wa'al," said Cap'n Gray, rising slowly and knocking out the ashes of his pipe on the edge of his chair, "I can't express no jedgment on the merits of this debate, seein' I've never been much of a fisher. But ef I wuz, my fust ch'ice'd be to git the fish, an' enny way that got 'em I'd call good."

The arrival of the Springtime, releasing the streams from their imprisonment of ice, and setting the trout to leaping in every meadow-brook and all along the curving reaches of the swift Lirrapaug, transferred this piscatorial contest from the region of discourse to the region of experiment. The rector proved himself a compet.i.tor worthy of the minister's mettle. Although at first he was at some disadvantage on account of his slight acquaintance with the streams, he soon overcame this by diligent study; and while Hopkins did better work on the brooks that were overhung with trees and bushes, Jones was more effective on the open river and in the meadow-streams just at sundown.

They both made some famous baskets that year, and were running neck and neck in the angling field, equal in success.

But in the field of love, I grieve to say, their equality was of another kind. Both of them were seriously smitten with the beauty of Lena Gray, the old Captain's only daughter, who had just come home from Smith College, with a certificate of graduation, five charming new hats, and a considerable knowledge of the art of amateur dramatics. She was cast for the part of leading lady in Samaria's play that summer, and Mr. Jones and Mr. Hopkins were both secretly ambitious for the post of stage-manager. But it fell to Orlando Cutter, who lived on the farm next to the Grays. The disappointed candidates consoled themselves by the size of the bouquets which they threw to the heroine at the close of the third act. One was of white roses and red carnations; the other was of pink roses and lilies of the valley. The flowers that she carried when she answered the final curtain-call, curiously enough, were damask roses and mignonette. A minute observer would have noticed that there was a fine damask rose-bush growing in the Cutter's back garden.

There was no dispute of methods between Jones and Hopkins in the amatorial realm, like that which divided them in matters piscatorial.

They were singularly alike in att.i.tude and procedure. Both were very much in earnest; both expressed their earnestness by offerings presented to the object of their devotions; both hesitated to put their desires and hopes into words, because they could not do it in any but a serious way, and they feared to invite failure by a premature avowal.

So, as I said, they stood in love upon an equal footing, but not an equality of success; rather one of doubt, delay and dissatisfaction.

Miss Gray received their oblations with an admirable impartiality. She liked their books, their candy, their earnest conversation, their mild clerical jokes, without giving any indication which of them she liked best. As her father's daughter she was free from ecclesiastical entanglements; but of course she wanted to go to church, so she attended the Episcopal service at eleven o'clock and became a member of Mr. Hopkins's Bible Cla.s.s which met at twelve thirty. Orlando Cutter usually drove home with her when the cla.s.s was over.