Gethryn waited near the bank and watched her as she sent the silk hissing thirty feet across the stream. The line swished and whistled, and the whole cast, hand fly, dropper and stretcher settled down lightly on the water. He noticed the easy motion of the wrist, the boyish pose of the slender figure, the serious sweet face, half shaded by the soft woolen Tam.
Swish — h — h! Swish — h — h! She slowly spun out forty feet, glancing back at Gethryn with a little laugh. Suddenly there was a tremendous splash, just beyond the dropper, answered by a turn of the white wrist, and then the reel fairly shrieked as the line melted away like a thread of smoke. Gethryn’s eyes glittered with excitement, and the colonel took his cigar out of his mouth. But they didn’t shout, ``You have him! Go easy on him! Want any help!’’ They kept quiet.
Cautiously, and by degrees, Ruth laced her little gloved fingers over the flying line, and presently a quiver of the rod showed that the fish was checked. She reeled in, slowly and steadily for a moment, and then, whiz — z — z! off he dashed again. At seventy feet the rod trembled and the trout was still. Again and again she urged him toward the shore, meeting his furious dashes with perfect coolness and leading him dexterously away from rocks and roots. When he sulked she gave him the butt, and soon the full pressure sent him flying, only to end in a furious full length leap out of water, and another sulk.
The colonel’s cigar went out.
At last she spoke, very quietly, without looking back.
``Rex, there is no good place to beach him here; will you net him, please?’’ Rex was only waiting for this; he had his landing net already unslung and he waded to her side.
``Now!’’ she whispered. The fiery side of a fish glittered just beneath the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the trout lay quivering on the bank.
Gethryn quickly ended his life and held him up to view.
``Beautiful!’’ cried the colonel. ``Good girl, Daisy! but don’t spoil your frock!’’ And picking up his own rod he relighted his cigar and essayed some conscientious casting on his own account. But he soon wearied of the paths of virtue and presently went in search of a grasshopper, with evil intent.
Meanwhile Ruth was blushing to the tips of her ears at Gethryn’s praises.
``I never saw a prettier sight!’’ he cried. ``You’re — you’re splendid, Ruth! Nerve, judgment, skill — my dear girl, you have everything!’’
Ruth’s eyes shone like stars as she watched him in her turn while he sent his own flies spinning across a pool. And now there was nothing to be heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the water. It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly the colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout of meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex’s brutal remarks, he silently inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in the least disconcerted and strolled off after another grasshopper.
``Papa! are you a bait fisherman!’’ cried his daughter severely.
The colonel dropped his hat guiltily over a lively young cricket, and standing up said ``No!’’ very loud.
It was no use — Ruth had to laugh, and shortly afterward he was seated comfortably on the log again, his line floating with the stream, in his hands a volume with yellow paper covers, the worse for wear, bearing on its back the legend ``Calman Levy, Editeur.’’
Rex soon struck a good trout and Ruth another, but the first one remained the largest, and finally Gethryn called to the colonel, ``If you don’t mind, we’re going on.’’
``All right! take care of Daisy. We will meet and lunch at the first bridge.’’ Then, examining his line and finding the cricket still there, he turned up his coat collar to keep off sunburn, opened his book, and knocked the ashes from his cigar.
``Here,’’ said Gethryn two hours later, ``is the bridge, but no colonel. Are you tired, Ruth? And hungry?’’
``Yes, both, but happier than either!’’
``Well, that was a big trout, the largest we shall take today, I think.’’
They reeled in their dripping lines, and sat down under a tree beside the lunch basket, which a boy from the lodge was guarding.
``I wish papa would come,’’ said Ruth, with an anxious look up the road. ``He ought to be hungry too, by this time.’’
Rex poured her a cup of red Tyroler wine and handed her a sandwich. Then, calling the boy, he gave him such a generous ``Viertel’’ for himself as caused him to retire precipitately and consume it with grins, modified by boiled sausage. Ruth looked after him and smiled in sympathy. ``I wonder how papa got rid of the other one with the green tin water-box.’’
``I know; I was present at the interview,’’ laughed Rex. ``Your father handed him a ten mark piece and said, `Go away, you superfluous Bavarian!’’’
``In English?’’
``Yes, and he must have understood, for he grinned and went.’’
It was good to hear the ring of Ruth’s laugh. She was so happy that she found the smallest joke delightful, and her voice was very sweet. Rex lighted a cigarette and leaned back against a tree, in great comfort. Ruth, perched on a log, watched the smoke drift and curl. Gethryn watched her. They each cared as much for the hours they had spent in the brook, and for their wet clothing, as vigorous, happy, and imprudent youth ever cares about such things.
``So you are happy, Ruth?’’
``Perfectly. And you? — But it takes more to make a spoiled young man happy than—’’
``Than a spoiled young woman? I don’t know about that. Yes, I — am — happy.’’ Was the long puff of smoke ascending slowly responsible for the pauses between his words? A slight shadow was in his eyes for one moment. It passed, and he turned on her his most charming smile, as he repeated, ``Perfectly happy!’’
``Still no colonel!’’ he went on; ``when he comes he will be tired. We don’t want any more trout, do we? We have eighteen, all good ones. Suppose we rest and go back all together by the road?’’ Ruth nodded, smiling to see him fondle the creel full of shining fish, bedded on fragrant leaves.
Rex’s cap lay beside him, his head leaned back against the tree, his face was turned up to the bending branches. Presently he closed his eyes.
It might have been one minute, or ten. Ruth sat and watched him. He had grown very handsome. He had that pleasant air of good breeding which some men retain under any and all circumstances. It has nothing to do with character, and yet it is difficult to think ill of a man who possesses it. When she had seen him last, his nose was too near a snub to inspire much respect, and his mustache was still in the state of colorless scarcity. Now his hair and mustache were thick and tawny, and his features were clear and firm. She noticed the pleasant line of the cheek, the clean curve of the chin, the light on the crisp edges of his close-cut hair — the two freckles on his nose, and she decided that that short, straight nose, with its generous and humorous nostrils, was wholly fascinating. As girls always will, she began to wonder about his life — idly at first, but these speculations lead one sometimes farther than one was prepared to go at the start. How much of his delightful manner to them all was due to affection, and how much to kindliness and good spirits? How much did he care for those other friends, for that other life in Paris? Who were the friends? What was the life? She looked at him, it seemed to her, a long time. Had he ever loved a woman? Was he still in love, perhaps, with someone? Ruth was no child. But she was a lady, and a proud one. There were things she did not choose to think about, although she knew of their existence well enough. She brought herself up at this point with a sharp pull, and just then Gethryn, opening his eyes, smiled at her.
She turned quickly away; to her perfect consternation her cheeks grew hot. Bewildered by her own confusion, she rose as she turned, and saying how lovely the water looked, went and stood on the bridge, leaning over. Rex was on his feet in an instant, so covered with confusion too, that he never saw hers.
``I say, Ruth, I haven’t been such a brute as to fall asleep! Indeed I haven’t! I was thinking of Braith.’’
``And if you had fallen asleep you wouldn’t be a brute, you tired boy! And who is Braith?’’
Ruth turned smiling to meet him, restored to herself and thankful for the diversion.
``Braith,’’ said Rex earnestly. ``Braith is the best man in this wicked world, and my dearest friend. To whom,’’ he added, ``I have not written one word since I left him two ears ago.’’
Ruth’s face fell. ``Is that the way you treat your dearest friends?’’ — and she thought: ``No wonder one is neglected when one is only an old playmate!’’ — but she was instantly ashamed of the little bitterness, and put it aside.
``Ah! you don’t know of what we are capable,’’ said Gethryn; and once more a shadow fell on his face.
A familiar form came jauntily down the road. Ruth hastened to meet it. ``At last, Father! You want your luncheon, poor dear!’’
``I do indeed, Daisy!’’
The colonel came as gallantly up as if he had thirty pounds of trout to show instead of a creel that contained nothing but a novel by the newest and wickedest master of French fiction. He made a mild attempt to perjure himself about a large fish that had somehow got away from him, but desisted and merely added that a caning would be good for Rex.
Tired he certainly was, and when he was seated on the log and Ruth was bringing him his wine, he looked sharply at her and said, ``You too, Daisy; you’ve done enough for the first day. We’ll go home by the road.’’
``It is what I was just proposing to her,’’ said Rex.
``Yes, you are both right,’’ said Ruth. ``I am tired.’’
``And happy?’’ laughed Rex. But perhaps Ruth did not hear, for she spoke at the same time to her father.
``Dear, you haven’t told Rex yet how you got the invitation to shoot.’’
``Oh, yes! It was at an officers’ dinner in Munich. The duke was there and I was introduced to him. He spoke of it as soon as they told him we were stopping here.’’
``He’s a brick,’’ said Rex, rising. ``Shall we start for home, Colonel? Ruth must be tired.’’
When they turned in at the Forester’s door, the colonel ordered Daisy to her room, where Mrs Dene and their maid were waiting to make her luxuriously comfortable with dry things, and rugs, and couches, and cups of tea that were certainly not drawn from the Frau Förster’s stores. Tea in Germany being more awful than tobacco, or tobacco more awful than tea, according as one cares most for tea or tobacco.
The colonel and Rex sat after supper under the big beech tree. Ruth, from her window, could see their cigars alight, and, now and then, hear their voices.
Rex was telling the colonel about Braith, of whom he had not ceased thinking since the afternoon. He went to his room early and wrote a long letter to him.
It began: ``You did not expect to hear from me until I was cured. Well, you are hearing from me now, are you not?’’
And it ended: ``Only a few more weeks, and then I shall return to you and Paris, and the dear old life. This is the middle of July. In September I shall come back.’’
Fourteen
After the colonel’s return, Mr Blumenthal found many difficulties in the way of that social ease which was his ideal. The ladies were never to be met with unaccompanied by the colonel or Gethryn; usually both were in attendance. If he spoke to Mrs Dene, or Ruth, it was always the colonel who answered, and there was a gleam in that trim warrior’s single eyeglass which did not harmonize with the grave politeness of his voice and manner.
Rex had never taken Mr Blumenthal so seriously. He called him ``Our Bowery brother,’’ and ``the Gentleman from West Brighton,’’ and he passed some delightful moments in observing his gruesome familiarity with the maids, his patronage of the grave Jaegers, and his fraternal attitude toward the head of the house. It was great to see him hook a heavy arm in an arm of the tall, military Herr Förster, and to see the latter drop it.
But there came an end to Rex’s patience.
One morning, when they were sitting over their coffee out of doors, Mr Blumenthal walked into their midst. He wore an old flannel shirt, and trousers too tight for him, inadequately held up by a strap. He displayed a tin bait box and a red and green float, and said he had come to inquire of Rex ``vere to dig a leetle vorms,’’ and also to borrow of him ``dot feeshpole mitn seelbern ringes.’’
The request, and the grossness of his appearance before the ladies, were too much for a gentleman and an angler.
Rex felt his gorge rise, and standing up brusquely, he walked away. Ruth thoughtlessly slipped after him and murmured over his shoulder:
``Friend of yours?’’
Gethryn’s fists unclenched and came out of his pockets and he and Ruth went away together, laughing under the trees.
Mr Blumenthal stood where Rex had left him, holding out the bait-box and gazing after them. Then he turned and looked at the colonel and his wife. Perspiration glistened on his pasty, pale face and the rolls of fat that crowded over his flannel collar. His little, dead, white-rimmed, pale gray eyes had the ferocity of a hog’s which has found something to rend and devour. He looked into their shocked faces and made a bow.
``Goot ma — a — rnin, Mister and Missess Dene!’’ he said, and turned his back.
The elderly couple exchanged glances as he disappeared.
``We won’t mention this to the children,’’ said the gentle old lady.
That was the last they saw of him. Nobody knew where he kept himself in the interval, but about a week later he came running down with a valise in his hand and jumped into a carriage from the ``Green Bear’’ at Schicksalsee, which had just brought some people out and was returning empty. He forgot to give the usual ``Trinkgeld’’ to the servants, and a lively search in his room discovered nothing but a broken collar button and a crumpled telegram in French. But Grethi had her compensation that evening, when she led the conversation in the kitchen and Mr Blumenthal was discussed in several South German dialects.
By this time August was well advanced, but there had been as yet no ``Jagd-partie,’’ as Sepp called the hunting excursion planned with such enthusiasm weeks before. After that first day in the trout stream, Ruth not only suffered more from fatigue than she had expected, but the little cough came back, causing her parents to draw the lines of discipline very tight indeed.
Ruth, whose character seemed made of equal parts of good taste and reasonableness, sweet temper and humor, did not offer the least opposition to discipline, and when her mother remarked that, after all, there was a difference between a schoolgirl and a young lady, she did not deny it. The colonel and Rex went off once or twice with the Jaegers, but in a halfhearted way, bringing back more experience than game. Then Rex went on a sketching tour. Then the colonel was suddenly called again to Munich to meet some old army men just arrived from home, and so it was not until about a week after Mr Blumenthal’s departure that, one evening when the Sennerins were calling the cows on the upper Alm, a party of climbers came up the side of the Red Peak and stopped at ``Nani’s Hütterl.’’
Sepp threw down the green sack from his shoulders to the bench before the door and shouted:
``Nani! du! Nani!’’ No answer.
``Mari und Josef!’’ he muttered; then raising his voice, again he called for Nani with all his lungs.
A muffled answer came from somewhere around the other side of the house. ``Ja! komm glei!’’ And then there was nothing to do but sit on the bench and watch the sunset fade from peak to peak while they waited.
Nani did not come ``glei’’ — but she came pretty soon, bringing with her two brimming milk-pails as an excuse for the delay.
She and Sepp engaged at once in a conversation, to which the colonel listened with feelings that finally had to seek expression.
``I believe,’’ he said in a low voice, ``that German is the language of the devil.’’
``
I fancy he’s master of more than one. And besides, this isn’t German, any more than our mountain dialects are English. And really,’’ Ruth went on, ``if it comes to comparing dialects, it seems to me ours can’t stand the test. These are harsh enough. But where in the world is human speech so ugly, so poverty-stricken, so barren of meaning and feeling, and shade and color and suggestiveness, as the awful talk of our rustics? A Bavarian, a Tyroler, often speaks a whole poem in a single word, like—’’
``Do you think one of those poems is being spoken about our supper now, Daisy?’’
``Sybarite!’’ cried Ruth, with that tinkle of fun in her voice which was always sounding between her and her parents; ``I won’t tell you.’’ The truth was she did not dare to tell her hungry companions that, so far as she had been able to understand Sepp and Nani, their conversation had turned entirely on a platform dance — which they called a ``Schuh-plattl’’ — and which they proposed to attend together on the following Sunday.
But Sepp, having had his gossip like a true South German hunter-man, finally did ask the important question:
``Ach! supper! du lieber Himmel!’’ There was little enough of that for the Herrschaften. There was black bread and milk, and there were some Semmel, but those were very old and hard.
``No cheese?’’
``Nein!’’
``No butter?’’
``Nein!’’
``Coffee?’’
``Yes, but no sugar.’’
``Herr Je!’’
When Sepp delivered this news to his party they all laughed and said black bread and milk would do. So Nani invited them into her only room — the rest of the ``Hütterl’’ was kitchen and cow-shed — and brought the feast.
A second Sennerin came with her this time, in a costume which might have startled them, if they had not already seen others like it. It consisted of a pair of high blue cotton trousers drawn over her skirts, the latter bulging all round inside the jeans. She had no teeth and there was a large goiter on her neck.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 13
