The Jonathan Papers

A Placid Runaway

Jonathan and I differ about a great many things; how otherwise are we to avoid the sloughs of bigoted self-satisfaction? But upon one point we agree: we are both convinced that on a beautiful morning in April or May or June there is just one thing that any right-minded person really wants to do. That is to turn a deaf ear to duty and a blind eye to all other pleasures, and-find a trout brook. We are, indeed, able to understand that duty may be too much for him-may be quite indifferent to his deaf ear and shout in the other, or may even seize him by the shoulders and hold him firmly in his place. He may not be able so much as to drop a line in the brown water all through the maddening spring days. But that he should not want to-ache to-this we cannot understand. We do know that it is not a thing to be argued about. It is temperamental, it is in the blood, or it is not. Jonathan and I always want to.

Once it was almost the end of April, and we had been wanting to ever since March had gone out like a lion-for in some parts of New England a jocose legislature has arranged that the trout season shall begin on April Fool's Day. Those who try to catch trout on April first understand the joke.

"Jonathan," I said over our coffee, "have you noticed the weather to-day?"

"Um-m-pleasant day," he murmured abstractedly from behind his newspaper.

"Pleasant! Have you felt the sunshine? Have you smelt the spring mud? I want to roll in it!"

Jonathan really looked up over his paper. "Do!" he said, benevolently.

"Jonathan, let's run away!"

"Can't. There's a man coming at-"

"I know. There's always a man coming. Tell him to come to-morrow. Tell him you are called out of town."

"But you have a lot of things to-day too-book clubs and Japanese clubs and such things. You said last night-"

"I'll tell them I'm called out of town too. I am called-we're both called, you know we are. And we've got to go."

"Really, my dear, you know I want to, but-"

"No use! It's a runaway. Get the time-table and see which is the first train to anywhere-to nowhere-who cares where!"

Jonathan went, protesting. I let him protest. A man should have some privileges.

We took the first train. It was a local, of course, and it trundled jerkily along one of the little rivers we knew. When the conductor came to us, Jonathan showed him our mileage book. "Where to?" he asked mechanically, but stiffened to attention when Jonathan said placidly, "I don't know yet. Where are we going, my dear?"

"I hadn't thought," I said; "let's see the places on the map."

"Well, conductor," said Jonathan, "take off for three stations, and if we don't get off then, you'll find us here when you come around, and then you can take off some more."

The conductor looked us both over. We were evidently not a bridal couple, and we didn't look quite like criminals-he gave us up.

When we saw a bit of country that looked attractive, we got off. That was something I had always wanted to do. All my life I have had to go to definite places, and my memory is full of tantalizing glimpses of the charming spots I have passed on the road and could never stop to explore. This time we really did it. We left the little railway station, sitting plain and useful beside the track, went up the road past a few farmhouses, over a fence and across a soft ploughed field, and down to the little river, willow-bordered, shallow, golden-brown, with here and there a deep pool under an overhanging hemlock or a shelving, fretted, bush-tangled bank.

We sat down in the sun on a willow log and put our rods together. Does anything sound prettier than the whir and click of the reel as one pulls out the line for the first time on an April day? We sat and looked at the world for a little, and let the wind, with just the faint chill of the vanishing snows still in it, blow over us, and the sun, that was making anemones and arbutus every minute, warm us through. It was almost too good to begin, this day that we had stolen. I felt like a child with a toothsome cake- "I'll put it away for a while and have it later."

But, after all, it was already begun. We had not stolen it, it had stolen us, and it held us in its power. Soon we wandered on, at first hastening for the mere joy of motion and the freshness of things; then, as the wind lessened and the sun shone hot in the hollows, loitering more and more, dropping a line here and there where a deep pool looked suggestive. Trout? Yes, we caught some. Jonathan pulled in a good many; I got enough to seem industrious. I seldom catch as many as Jonathan, though he tries to give me all the best holes; because really there are so many other things to attend to. Men seem to go fishing chiefly to catch fish. Jonathan spends half an hour working his rod and line through a network of bushes, briers, and vines, to drop it in a chosen spot in a pool. He swears gently as he works, but he works on, and usually gets his fish. I don't swear, so I know I could never carry through such an undertaking, and I don't try.

I did try once, when I was young and reckless. I headed the tip of my rod, like a lance in rest, for the most open spot I could see. For the fisherman's rule in the woods is not "Follow the flag," but "Follow your tip," and I tried to follow mine. This necessitated reducing myself occasionally to the dimensions of a filament, but I was elastic, and I persisted. The brambles neatly extracted my hat-pins and dropped them in the tangle about my feet; they pulled off my hat, but I pushed painfully forward. They tore at my hair; they caught an end of my tie and drew out the bow. Finally they made a simultaneous and well-planned assault upon my hair, my neck, my left arm, raised to push them back, and my right, extended to hold and guide that quivering, undulating rod. I was helpless, unless I wished to be torn in shreds. At that moment, as I stood poised, hot, baffled, smarting and stinging with bramble scratches, wishing I could swear like a man and have it out, the air was filled with the liquid notes of a wood thrush. I love the wood thrush best of all; but that he should choose this moment! It was the final touch.

I whistled the blue-jay note, which means "Come," and Jonathan came threshing through the brush, having left his rod.

"Where are you?" he called; "I can't see you."

"No, you can't," I responded unamiably. "You probably never will see me again, at least not in any recognizable form. Help me out!" The thrush sang again, one tree farther away. "No! First kill that thrush!" I added between set teeth, as a slight motion of mine set the brambles raking again.

"Why, why, my dear, what's this?" Then, as he caught sight of me, "Well! You are tied up! Wait; I'll get out my knife."

He cut here and there, and one after another, with a farewell stab or scratch, the maddening things reluctantly let go their hold. Meanwhile Jonathan made placid remarks about the proper way to go through brush. "You go too fast, you know. You can't hurry these things, and you can't bully them. I don't see how you manage to get scratched up so. I never do."

"Jonathan, you are as tactless as the thrush."

"Don't kill me yet, though. Wait till I cut this last fellow. There! Now you're free. By George! But you're a wreck!"

That was the last time I ever tried to "work through brush," as Jonathan calls it. If I can catch trout by any method compatible with sanity, I am ready to do it, but as for allowing myself to be drawn into a situation wherein the note of the wood thrush stirs thoughts of murder in my breast-at that point, I opine, sport ceases.

So on that day of our runaway I kept to open waters and preserved a placid mind. The air was full of bird notes-in the big open woods the clear "whick-ya, whick-ya, whick-ya" of the courting yellowhammers, in the meadows bluebirds with their shy, vanishing call that is over almost before you can begin to listen, meadowlarks poignantly sweet, song sparrows with a lift and a lilt and a carol, and in the swamps the red-wings trilling jubilant.

Noon came, and we camped under the sunny lee of a ridge that was all abloom with hepaticas-clumps of lavender and white and rosy-lilac. We found a good spring, and a fallen log, and some dead hemlock tips to start a fire, and soon we had a merry blaze. Then Jonathan dressed some of the trout, while I found a black birch tree and cut forked sticks for broilers. Any one who has not broiled fresh-caught trout outdoors on birch forks-or spice bush will do almost as well-has yet to learn what life holds for him. Chops are good, too, done in that way. We usually carry them along when there is no prospect of fish, or, when we are sure of our country, we take a tin cup and buy eggs at a farmhouse to boil. But the balancing of the can requires a happy combination of stones about the fire that the brief nooning of a day's tramp seldom affords, and baking is still more uncertain. Bacon is good, but broiling the little slices-and how they do shrink!-takes too long, while frying entails a pan. Curiously enough, a pan, in addition to two fish baskets and a landing-net, does not find favor in Jonathan's eyes.

After luncheon and a long, lazy rest on our log we went back to the stream and loitered down its bank. Pussy-willows, their sleek silver paws bursting into fat, caterpillary things, covered us with yellow pollen powder as we brushed past them. Now and then we were arrested by the sharp fragrance of the spice bush, whose little yellow blossoms had escaped our notice. In the damp hollows the ground was carpeted with the rich, mottled green leaves and tawny yellow bells of the adder's-tongue, and the wet mud was sweet with the dainty, short-stemmed white violets. On the dry, barren places were masses of saxifrage, bravely cheerful; on the rocky slopes fragile anemones blew in the wind, and fluffy green clumps of columbine lured us on to a vain search for an early blossom.

As the afternoon waned, and the wind freshened crisply, we guessed that it was milking-time, and wandered up to a farmhouse where we persuaded the farmer's wife to give us bread and cheese and warm new milk. We were urged to "set inside," but preferred to take the great white pitcher of milk out to the steps of the little back porch where we could hear the insistent note of the little ph?be that was building under the eaves of the woodshed. Our hostess stood in the doorway, watching in amused tolerance as we filled and refilled our goblets. They were wonderful goblets, be it said-the best the house afforded. Jonathan's was of fancy green glass, all covered with little knobs; mine was yellow, with a head of Washington stamped on one side, and "God Bless our Country" on the other. Finally the good woman broke the silence- "Guess your mothers ain't never weaned ye." Which we were not in a position to refute.

On our return train we found the same conductor who had taken us out in the morning. As he folded back the green cover of our mileage book he could not forbear remarking, quizzically, "Know how far you're goin' to-night?"

"Jonathan," I said, as we settled to toast and tea before our home fireplace that evening, "I like running away. I don't blame horses."

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