THE LADY OR THE SALMON?
The circumstances which attended and
caused the death of the Hon. Houghton Grannom have
not long been known to me, and it is only now that,
by the decease of his father, Lord Whitchurch, and
the extinction of his noble family, I am permitted
to divulge the facts. That the true tale of my unhappy
friend will touch different chords in different
breasts, I am well aware. The sportsman, I think,
will hesitate to approve him; the fair, I hope,
will absolve. Who are we, to scrutinise human motives,
and to award our blame to actions which, perhaps,
might have been our own, had opportunity beset and
temptation beguiled us? There is a certain point
at which the keenest sense of honour, the most chivalrous
affection and devotion, cannot bear the strain,
but break like a salmon line under a masterful stress.
That my friend succumbed, I admit; that he was his
own judge, the severest, and passed and executed
sentence on himself, I have now to show.
I shall never forget the shock with
which I read in the "Scotsman," under
"Angling," the following paragraph:
"Tweed.--Strange Death of an
Angler.--An unfortunate event has cast a gloom over
fishers in this district. As Mr. K-, the keeper
on the B- water, was busy angling yesterday, his
attention was caught by some object floating on
the stream. He cast his flies over it, and landed
a soft felt hat, the ribbon stuck full of salmon-flies.
Mr. K- at once hurried up-stream, filled with the
most lively apprehensions. These were soon justified.
In a shallow, below the narrow, deep and dangerous
rapids called "The Trows," Mr. K- saw
a salmon leaping in a very curious manner. On a
closer examination, he found that the fish was attached
to a line. About seventy yards higher he found,
in shallow water, the body of a man, the hand still
grasping in death the butt of the rod, to which
the salmon was fast, all the line being run out.
Mr. K- at once rushed into the stream, and dragged
out the body, in which he recognised with horror
the Hon. Houghton Grannom, to whom the water was
lately let. Life had been for some minutes extinct,
and though Mr. K- instantly hurried for Dr. -, that
gentleman could only attest the melancholy fact.
The wading in "The Trows" is extremely
dangerous and difficult, and Mr. Grannom, who was
fond of fishing without an attendant, must have
lost his balance, slipped, and been dragged down
by the weight of his waders. The recent breaking
off of the hon. gentleman's contemplated marriage
on the very wedding-day will be fresh in the memory
of our readers."
This was the story which I read in
the newspaper during breakfast one morning in November.
I was deeply grieved, rather than astonished, for
I have often remonstrated with poor Grannom on the
recklessness of his wading. It was with some surprise
that I received, in the course of the day, a letter
from him, in which he spoke only of indifferent
matters, of the fishing which he had taken, and
so forth. The letter was accompanied, however, by
a parcel. Tearing off the outer cover, I found a
sealed document addressed to me, with the superscription,
"Not to be opened until after my father's decease."
This injunction, of course, I have scrupulously
obeyed. The death of Lord Whitchurch, the last of
the Grannoms, now gives me liberty to publish my
friend's Apologia pro morte et vita sua.
"Dear Smith" (the document
begins), "Before you read this--long before,
I hope--I shall have solved the great mystery--if,
indeed, we solve it. If the water runs down to-morrow,
and there is every prospect that it will do so,
I must have the opportunity of making such an end
as even malignity cannot suspect of being voluntary.
There are plenty of fish in the water; if I hook
one in "The Trows," I shall let myself
go whither the current takes me. Life has for weeks
been odious to me; for what is life without honour,
without love, and coupled with shame and remorse?
Repentance I cannot call the emotion which gnaws
me at the heart, for in similar circumstances (unlikely
as these are to occur) I feel that I would do the
same thing again.
"Are we but automata, worked
by springs, moved by the stronger impulse, and unable
to choose for ourselves which impulse that shall
be? Even now, in decreeing my own destruction, do
I exercise free-will, or am I the sport of hereditary
tendencies, of mistaken views of honour, of a seeming
self-sacrifice, which, perhaps, is but selfishness
in disguise? I blight my unfortunate father's old
age; I destroy the last of an ancient house; but
I remove from the path of Olive Dunne the shadow
that must rest upon the sunshine of what will eventually,
I trust, be a happy life, unvexed by memories of
one who loved her passionately. Dear Olive! how
pure, how ardent was my devotion to her none knows
better than you. But Olive had, I will not say a
fault, though I suffer from it, but a quality, or
rather two qualities, which have completed my misery.
Lightly as she floats on the stream of society,
the most casual observer, and even the enamoured
beholder, can see that Olive Dunne has great pride,
and no sense of humour. Her dignity is her idol.
What makes her, even for a moment, the possible
theme of ridicule is in her eyes an unpardonable
sin. This sin, I must with penitence confess, I
did indeed commit. Another woman might have forgiven
me. I know not how that may be; I throw myself on
the mercy of the court. But, if another could pity
and pardon, to Olive this was impossible. I have
never seen her since that fatal moment when, paler
than her orange blossoms, she swept through the
porch of the church, while I, dishevelled, mud-stained,
half- drowned--ah! that memory will torture me if
memory at all remains. And yet, fool, maniac, that
I was, I could not resist the wild, mad impulse
to laugh which shook the rustic spectators, and
which in my case was due, I trust, to hysterical
but NOT unmanly emotion. If any woman, any bride,
could forgive such an apparent but most unintentional
insult, Olive Dunne, I knew, was not that woman.
My abject letters of explanation, my appeals for
mercy, were returned unopened. Her parents pitied
me, perhaps had reasons for being on my side, but
Olive was of marble. It is not only myself that
she cannot pardon, she will never, I know, forgive
herself while my existence reminds her of what she
had to endure. When she receives the intelligence
of my demise, no suspicion will occur to her; she
will not say "He is fitly punished;" but
her peace of mind will gradually return.
It is for this, mainly, that I sacrifice
myself, but also because I cannot endure the dishonour
of a laggard in love and a recreant bridegroom.
So much for my motives: now to my
tale.
The
day before our wedding-day had been the happiest
in my life. Never had I felt so certain of Olive's
affections, never so fortunate in my own. We parted
in the soft moonlight; she, no doubt, to finish
her nuptial preparations; I, to seek my couch in
the little rural inn above the roaring waters of
the Budon. {3}
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset fading slow; From fringes of the
faded eve Oh, happy planet, eastward go,
I murmured, though the atmospheric
conditions were not really those described by the
poet.
"Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly
borne, Dip forward under starry light, And move
me to my marriage morn, And round again to -
"River in grand order, sir,"
said the voice of Robins, the keeper, who recognised
me in the moonlight. "There's a regular monster
in the Ashweil," he added, naming a favourite
cast; "never saw nor heard of such a fish in
the water before."
"Mr. Dick must catch him, Robins,"
I answered; "no fishing for me to-morrow."
"No, sir," said Robins,
affably. "Wish you joy, sir, and Miss Olive,
too. It's a pity, though! Master Dick, he throws
a fine fly, but he gets flurried with a big fish,
being young. And this one is a topper."
With that he gave me good-night, and
I went to bed, but not to sleep. I was fevered with
happiness; the past and future reeled before my
wakeful vision. I heard every clock strike; the
sounds of morning were astir, and still I could
not sleep. The ceremony, for reasons connected with
our long journey to my father's place in Hampshire,
was to be early--half-past ten was the hour. I looked
at my watch; it was seven of the clock, and then
I looked out of the window: it was a fine, soft
grey morning, with a south wind tossing the yellowing
boughs. I got up, dressed in a hasty way, and thought
I would just take a look at the river. It was, indeed,
in glorious order, lapping over the top of the sharp
stone which we regarded as a measure of the due
size of water.
The morning was young, sleep was out
of the question; I could not settle my mind to read.
Why should I not take a farewell cast, alone, of
course? I always disliked the attendance of a gillie.
I took my salmon rod out of its case, rigged it
up, and started for the stream, which flowed within
a couple of hundred yards of my quarters. There
it raced under the ash tree, a pale delicate brown,
perhaps a little thing too coloured. I therefore
put on a large Silver Doctor, and began steadily
fishing down the ash-tree cast. What if I should
wipe Dick's eye, I thought, when, just where the
rough and smooth water meet, there boiled up a head
and shoulders such as I had never seen on any fish.
My heart leaped and stood still, but there came
no sensation from the rod, and I finished the cast,
my knees actually trembling beneath me. Then I gently
lifted the line, and very elaborately tested every
link of the powerful casting-line. Then I gave him
ten minutes by my watch; next, with unspeakable
emotion, I stepped into the stream and repeated
the cast. Just at the same spot he came up again;
the huge rod bent like a switch, and the salmon
rushed straight down the pool, as if he meant to
make for the sea. I staggered on to dry land to
follow him the easier, and dragged at my watch to
time the fish; a quarter to eight. But the slim
chain had broken, and the watch, as I hastily thrust
it back, missed my pocket and fell into the water.
There was no time to stoop for it; the fish started
afresh, tore up the pool as fast as he had gone
down it, and, rushing behind the torrent, into the
eddy at the top, leaped clean out of the water.
He was 70 lbs. if he was an ounce. Here he slackened
a little, dropping back, and I got in some line.
Now he sulked so intensely that I thought he had
got the line round a rock. It might be broken, might
be holding fast to a sunken stone, for aught that
I could tell; and the time was passing, I knew not
how rapidly. I tried all known methods, tugging
at him, tapping the butt, and slackening line on
him. At last the top of the rod was slightly agitated,
and then, back flew the long line in my face. Gone!
I reeled up with a sigh, but the line tightened
again. He had made a sudden rush under my bank,
but there he lay again like a stone. How long? Ah!
I cannot tell how long! I heard the church clock
strike, but missed the number of the strokes. Soon
he started again down-stream into the shallows,
leaping at the end of his rush--the monster. Then
he came slowly up, and "jiggered" savagely
at the line. It seemed impossible that any tackle
could stand these short violent jerks. Soon he showed
signs of weakening. Once his huge silver side appeared
for a moment near the surface, but he retreated
to his old fastness. I was in a tremor of delight
and despair. I should have thrown down my rod, and
flown on the wings of love to Olive and the altar.
But I hoped that there was time still--that it was
not so very late! At length he was failing. I heard
ten o'clock strike. He came up and lumbered on the
surface of the pool. Gradually I drew him, plunging
ponderously, to the gravelled beach, where I meant
to "tail" him. He yielded to the strain,
he was in the shallows, the line was shortened.
I stooped to seize him. The frayed and overworn
gut broke at a knot, and with a loose roll he dropped
back towards the deep. I sprang at him, stumbled,
fell on him, struggled with him, but he slipped
from my arms. In that moment I knew more than the
anguish of Orpheus. Orpheus! Had I, too, lost my
Eurydice? I rushed from the stream, up the steep
bank, along to my rooms. I passed the church door.
Olive, pale as her orange- blossoms, was issuing
from the porch. The clock pointed to 10.45. I was
ruined, I knew it, and I laughed. I laughed like
a lost spirit. She swept past me, and, amidst the
amazement of the gentle and simple, I sped wildly
away. Ask me no more. The rest is silence."
* * *
Thus
ends my hapless friend's narrative. I leave it to
the judgment of women and of men. Ladies, would
you have acted as Olive Dunne acted? Would pride,
or pardon, or mirth have ridden sparkling in your
eyes? Men, my brethren, would ye have deserted the
salmon for the lady, or the lady for the salmon?
I know what I would have done had I been fair Olive
Dunne. What I would have done had I been Houghton
Grannom I may not venture to divulge. For this narrative,
then, as for another, "Let every man read it
as he will, and every woman as the gods have given
her wit." {4}
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