CHAPTER I

THE GREAT JACK

Our Kate, Joe Braggs, and I all had a hand in the beginning, and as great

results grew in the end out of the small events of that December morning,

I will set them down in order.

It began by my refusing point-blank to take Kate to the vicar's to watch

the soldiers march by. I loved the vicar, the grave, sweet, childless old

man who had been a second father to me since the sad day which made my

mother a widow, and but for the soldiers nothing would have been more

agreeable than to spend the afternoon with the old man and his books. But

my heart would surely have broken had I gone. A caged linnet is a sorry

enough sight in a withdrawing-room, but hang the cage on a tree in a

sunlit garden, with free birds twittering and flitting about it, and you

turn dull pain into shattering agony. The vicar's little study, with the

rows of books he had made me know and love with some small measure of his

own learning and passion, was the perch and seed-bowl of my cage, the

things in it, after my sweet mother and saucy Kate, that made life

possible, but still part of the cage, and it would have maddened me to hop

and twitter there in sight of free men with arms in their hands and

careers in front of them. Jack Dobson would march by, the sweetness of

life for Kate--little dreamed she that I knew it--but for me the

bitterness of death. Jack Dobson! I liked Jack, but not clinquant in

crimson and gold, with spurs and sword clanking on the hard, frost-bitten

road. I laughed at the idea; Jack Dobson, whom I had fought time and time

again at school until I could lick him as easily as I could look at him;

Jack Dobson, a jolly enough lad, who fought cheerily even when he knew a

sound thrashing was in store for him, but all his brains were good for was

to stumble through _Arma virumque cano_, and then whisper, "Noll, you

can fire a gun and shoot a man, but how can you sing 'em?" And because his

thin, shadowy, grasping father was a man of much outward substance and

burgess for the ancient borough, Jack was cornet in my Lord Brocton's

newly raised regiment of dragoons, this day marching with other of the

Duke of Cumberland's troops from Lichfield to Stafford. And for me, the

pride of old Bloggs for Latin and of all the lads for fighting, the most

stirring deed of arms available was shooting rabbits. So, consuming

inwardly with thoughts of my hard fate, I refused to go to the vicar's.

Mother should go. For her it would be a real treat, and Kate would be the

better under her quiet, seeing eyes.

"Well then," said Kate, "grump at home over your beastly Virgil." Mother,

who understood as only mothers can, said nothing, and prepared my

favourite dishes for dinner.

The meal over, and the house-place 'tidied,' which seldom meant more than

the harassing of a few stray specks of dust, Kate in her best fripperies

and mother in her churchgoing gown started for the vicar's. I stood in the

porch and watched them across the cobbled yard and along the road till

they dropped out of sight beyond the bridge.

Then Kate's share of these introductory events became manifest. Search

high, search low, there was no sign of my dear, dumpy Virgil, in yellowing

parchment with red edges. I found Kate's cookery-book, and would have

flung it through the window, but my eye caught the quaint inscription on

the fly-leaf, in her big, pot-hooky handwriting:

"KATHERINE WHEATMAN, her book,

God give her grease to larn to cook.

At the Hanyards.

Jul. 1739."

The simple words stung me like angry hornets. Our red-headed Kate was no

scholar, but at any rate her reading was more useful in our little world

than mine; for this was where she learned the artistry of the dainties and

devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of. And if I did not soon learn to

do something well, even were it only how to farm my five hundred acres to

a profit, Kate's cooking would really require the miraculous aid suggested

in her unintentional and, to me, biting epigram. I put the book down, and

gave over the hunt for my Virgil. It would probably be useless in any

case, since Kate had a cunning all her own, and had surely bestowed it far

beyond any searching of mine. I contented myself with a fair reprisal,

stowing a stray ribbon of hers in my breeches' pocket, and sat down to

smoke. My pipe would not draw, and I smashed it in trying to make it.

The tall oak clock tick-tocked on in the house-place, and Jane sang on at

her churning in the dairy across the yard. I sat gazing at the fire, where

I could see nothing but Jack Dobson in his martial grandeur, and I hated

him for his greatness, and despised myself for my pettiness. All the same

it was unendurable, and it was a relief to see Joe Braggs tiptoeing

carefully across the yard dairywards. The rascal should have been patching

a gap in the hedge of Ten-acres, and here he was, foraging for a jug of

ale. He could wheedle Jane as easily as he could snare a rabbit, but I

would scarify him out of his five senses, the hulk.

The singing stopped, and then the churning, and five minutes later I

crept up to the kitchen door, which was ajar. There was my lord Joe, a jug

of ale in hand, his free arm round Jane's neck. How endurable these two

found life at the Hanyards! I caught a fragment of their gossip.

"Be there such things as rale quanes, Jin?"

"Of course," she replied. "There's pictures of 'em in one of Master

Noll's books. Crowns on their yeds, too."

"There's one on 'em down 'tour house, Jin, but she ain't got no crown.

But bless thee, wench, I'd sooner kiss thee than look at fifty quanes."

Jane yelped as I murdered an incipient kiss by knocking the jug out of

his hand across the kitchen, but in kicking him out of doors I tripped

over a bucket of water, and about half a score fine dace flopped miserably

on the wet floor.

"Dunna carry on a' that'n, Master Noll," said Joe. "I only com' up t'ouse

to bring you them daceys."

"And what the devil do I want with them?" said I angrily.

Joe knew me. He said, "There's a jack as big as a gate-post in that 'ole

between the reeds along th' 'igh bonk."

He saw the cock of my eye, and went on: "I saw 'im this mornin', an'

'eard 'im. 'E made a splosh like a sack o' taters droppin' off the bridge.

So I just copped 'e a few daceys, thinkin' as you'd be sure to go after

'im."

"Put them in some fresh water, Joe, and you, Jane, fill him another jug.

I'll own up to Mistress Kate for smashing the other."

I fetched my rod and tackle, picked up the bucket of dace, and set off

across the fields to the river. The bank nearer the house, and about three

hundred yards from it, stood from two to six feet above the water, being

lowest where a brick bridge carried the road to the village. The opposite

bank was very low, and was fringed in summer with great masses of reeds

and bulrushes, now withered down nearly to nothing, but still showing the

pocket of deep water where the jack had "sploshed like a sack o' taters."

It was opposite the highest part of our bank--the Hanyards was bounded by

the river in this direction--and the bridge was about one hundred yards

down-stream to my left. In a few minutes a fine dace was swimming in the

gap as merrily as the tackle would let him.

For an hour or more I took short turns up and down the bank, just far

enough from the edge to keep my cork in view. If the jack was there, he

made no sign, and at length my sportsman's eagerness began to flag, and my

eye roamed across the meadows to the church spire, under the shadow of

which life as I could never know it was lilting merrily northwards. Here I

was and here I should remain, like a cabbage, till Death pulled me up by

the roots.

Worthy Master Walton says that angling is the contemplative man's

recreation, and, having had in these later years much to con over in my

mind, I know that he is right. But it is no occupation for a fuming man,

and as I marched up and down I forgot all about my cork, till, with a

short laugh that had the tail of a curse in it, I noted that a real gaff

was a silly weapon with which to cut down an imaginary Highlander, and

turned again to my angling.

And at that very moment a thing happened the like of which I had never

seen before, and have not since seen in another ten years of fishing. My

rod was jerked clean off the bank, and careered away down-stream so fast

that I had to run hard to get level with it. Here was work indeed, and at

that joyous moment I would not have changed places with Jack Dobson.

Without ado, I jumped into the river, waded out, recovered the butt of my

rod, and struck.

"As big as a gate-post." Joe was right. As I struck, the jack came to the

surface. The great stretch of yellow belly and the monstrous length of

vicious snout made my heart leap for joy. I would rather land him than

command a regiment. My rod bent to a sickle as I fought him, giving him

line and pulling in, again, again, and again. A dozen times I saw the

black bars on his shimmering back as he came at me, evil in his red-rimmed

eyes and danger in his cruel teeth, but the stout tackle stood it out.

Sweat poured off my forehead though I was up to the waist in ice-cold

water. Inch by inch I fought my way to the bank, and then fought on again

to get close to the bridge, where I could scramble out.

Probably I was half an hour in getting him there, but at last, by giving

him suddenly a dozen yards of loose line to go at, I was able to climb on

to the bank and check him before he got across to the stumps of the reeds.

But here I met with disaster, for in climbing up I jerked the hook of my

gaff out of my collar, where I had put it for safety, and it fell into the

stream.

"Stick to the fish," said some one behind me, "and leave the hook to me."

"Thanks," said I briefly, for I was scant of breath, and continued the

struggle.

A woman knelt on the bank, pulled the gaff in with a riding whip, plunged

down a shapely hand and recovered it. Then she stood behind me, watching

the fight. The jack, big and strong as he was, began to tire, and soon I

had him making short, sharp spurts in the shallow water at our feet.

My new ally stood quietly on the bank, holding the gaff ready for the

right moment. It came: a deft movement, a good pull together, and the

great jack curled and bounced on the bank.

"Over thirty pounds if he's an ounce!" I cried gleefully.

"Well done, fisherman!" she said. "It was a splendid sight. I've watched

you all along. When you jumped into the river, I thought you were going to

drown yourself. You had been walking up and down in a most desperate and

dejected fashion."

The raillery gave me courage to look into her eyes. I wondered if they

were black, but decided that they were not, since her hair was the colour

of wheat when it is ripening for the sickle and the summer sun falls on it

at eve. And I, who am six feet in my socks, had hardly to lower my eyes to

look into hers. Her face was beautiful beyond all imagining of mine. I had

conjured up visions of Dido enthralled of Aeneas, of Cleopatra bending

Antony to her whim. But the conscious art of my day-dreams had wrought no

such marvel as here I saw in very flesh before me. I felt as one who

drinks deep of some rich and rare vintage, and wonders why the gods have

blessed him so. And further, as small things jostle big things in the

mind, I knew that this was the real queen that had dazzled Joe Braggs.

"What do you call it?" she said, looking down at the fish.

"A jack, or pike, madam."

"'The tyrant of the watery plains,' as Mr. Pope calls him. You've heard

of Mr. Pope, the poet?" She spoke as if 'No' was the inevitable answer.

"Strictly speaking, no, madam," said I gravely, "but I have read his

so-called poems." She frowned. "Horace calls the jack," I continued,

"_lupus_, the wolf-fish, as one may say, and a very good name too.

Doubtless madam has heard of Horace."

My quip brought a glint into her eyes and a richer colour to her cheek.

"Yes, heard of him," she said, with a trace of chagrin in her voice. "And

now, O Nimrod of the watery plains, how far is it to the village smithy?"

"Just under a mile, madam."

"And how long does it take to shoe a horse?"

"How many shoes, madam?"

Again the glint in her eyes, and this time I saw some of the blue in

them. "One, sir," she said shortly.

"Ten to fifteen minutes, madam."

"He's a very long time," she said under her breath.

"The smith is probably very busy to-day."

"Busy! Why so?"

"The dragoons may have found him much work," said I, merely my way of

explaining the delay. But the words stabbed her. She laid a hand on my arm

and cried gaspingly, "Dragoons! What do you mean? Quick!"

"The Duke of Cumberland is marching north from Lichfield against the

Stuart, and Lord Brocton's dragoons are in the village."

"Brocton! O God! Brocton! My father is taken! And by Brocton!" She spoke

aloud in her agitation, and I saw that she was cut to the quick. And I

rejoiced, so strange is the human heart, that it was Lord Brocton's name

that came in anguish off her tongue. Oh for one blow at the man whose

father had harried mine into an untimely grave!

In sharp, frosty air sound travels far across the meadows of the

Hanyards. The hills that hem the valley to the west perhaps act as a

sounding board. Anyhow, further inquiry as to her trouble was stopped by

the rattle of distant hoofs. We were standing now less than a dozen paces

from the bridge. A straggling hedge, on a low bank, crossed flush up to

the bridge by a stile, cut the field off from the road. I rushed to the

stile, and cautiously pushed my head through near the ground. Half a mile

of level road stretched to my right towards the village, and along it, and

now less than six hundred yards away, a squad of dragoons was galloping

towards us. The hedge was thin and leafless, and there was not cover

enough for a rabbit. I ran back. "Dragoons," said I.

"After me," she replied carelessly, and I saw that danger for herself

left her cold.

I kicked the great jack motionless, flung him to the foot of the bank

under the hedge, and the rod after him, hurried her up to the stile,

leaped into the water, took her in my arms, and carried her under the

bridge. In less than a minute after I stopped wading, the dragoons

clattered overhead.

Not an hour ago I had been aching for life and adventures, and here I

was, up to the loins in water, with a goddess in my arms. Her right arm

was round my neck, and her cheek so near that I felt her sweet, warm

breath fanning my own. As the sounds died away, I turned and looked at her

face, and I had my reward. Her eyes told me that she thanked and trusted

me.

"Well done, fisherman!" she said for the second time.

"You're heavier than the jack," replied I, hitching her as far from the

water as possible before wading back. A minute later I put her down on the

bank with tumbled, yellow hair and face flaming red. I examined her

critically, and cried triumphantly, "Not a stitch wet!"