Chapter V: The Admiral's 'sock-Dollager'

'Well, Snap, how are you this morning? You look very down in the mouth.'

'Yes, sir, I don't feel very lively,' replied Snap.

The speakers were Admiral Christopher Winthrop and our old friend Harold, or Snap Hales. The mid-summer term had come to an end, and the boys were all at home at Fairbury for the holidays. Frank and Billy Winthrop were somewhere about the home-farm, and the old Admiral was down at the bottom of the lawn, by the famous brook, intent on the capture of a certain 'sock-dollager' who had been fighting a duel with the sailor for the last three weeks. So far the cunning and shyness of the trout had been more than a match for the skill and perseverance of the red-faced, grey-haired old gentleman on the bank, but the Admiral had served a long apprenticeship in all field-sports, and it would go hard with him if that four-pounder did not, sooner or later, lie gasping at his feet.

'Try an alder, sir,' suggested Snap, who, though no fisherman himself, had long since learnt the name of every fly in the Admiral's book.

'No,' replied that worthy disciple of Walton, 'I'll give him just one more turn with the dun,' and, so saying, he proceeded with the greatest care to strain the gut of another of Ogden's beautiful little flies.

'But what is the matter with you, Snap, that you are not, as you say, very lively?' urged the Admiral, speaking with some difficulty, his mouth being at the moment full of dry gut.

'Characters came to-day, Admiral,' replied Snap; 'didn't you get Frank's and Billy's?'

'Yes, and a precious bad one Master Billy's was; the only good part of it was the writing. Mr. Smith writes:--"Hand-writing shows great improvement; is diligent and anxious to improve." Unfortunately Billy's writing speaks for itself, even if, like me, you can't read a word of it.' And the old man chuckled to himself at his own shrewdness.

'Frank's was good enough, I suppose, sir?' asked Snap.

'Yes, Hales, as good as it could be. Frank is one of the right sort. He can work like a--like a Winthrop (and the old boy swelled with pride), and play like a----'

'Vernon,' said a soft, sweet voice behind the Admiral, who, turning, found himself face to face with his sister-in-law, a slight, graceful woman, who was beautiful still, in spite of the grey in her hair and the lines which showed that trouble had not spared even sweet Dolly Vernon, as her friends had called her before she married the dead squire of Fairbury.

'Ah, Chris! Chris!' she cried, shaking her finger at him, 'what a vain old sea-dog you are! So, all my boy's virtues are Winthrop, and all his vices Vernon, are they? For shame, sir!'

The Admiral had been supreme on his own quarterdeck; he was still supposed to be supreme about the home farm and in the coverts. As a matter of fact, he was nothing of the kind, but simply his fair sister's most loyal henchman and most obedient slave. When his brother had died, leaving Mrs. Winthrop with two great boys to bring up and the estate to manage, the Admiral had at first acted as his sister-in-law's agent from a distance. As the years went on, and the boys grew up, the Admiral found that the management of the estate from a distance was more than he could undertake, so that at last he had settled in a little cottage in the park, and practically lived with his sister-in-law at the Hall.

'Yes, sister, yes,' replied the old gentleman apologetically, '"plays like a Vernon," of course that's what I meant; and you know,' he added slyly, 'that Dr. Foulkes said that his cricket was, if anything, better than his classics.'

'And how about his vices?' persisted Mrs. Winthrop.

'Pooh! Frank hasn't got any,' asserted her brother-in-law.

'Hasn't he?' she asked with a little doubtful smile; 'and what do you say to that, Harold? You are his bosom friend.'

Snap reddened up to the eyes.

'No, Mrs. Winthrop, I don't think he has. Dr. Foulkes seems to think they all belong to me. My uncle says that according to my character I have a monopoly of all the qualities undesirable in a boy who has his way to make in the world.'

Although he spoke jestingly, Mrs. Winthrop knew enough of Snap to see that there was a good deal of earnest in his jest. His guardian, Mr. Howell Hales, a solicitor in large practice, had never had time or inclination to do more than his bare duty by his fatherless nephew, so that Fairbury Court had become the boy's real home, and Mrs. Winthrop almost unconsciously had filled the place of mother to him.

'What is it, Snap,' she said now, laying her hand on his strong young arm, and looking up into his face inquiringly, 'have you got a worse character than usual?'

'Yes! worse than usual,' laughed Snap grimly; and then, seeing that his hard tone had hurt his gentle friend, his voice softened, and he added, 'Yes, Mrs. Winthrop, it is very bad this time, so bad that the Head doesn't want me to go back next term.'

'Not to go back next term? why, that's expulsion,' blurted out the Admiral.

'No, sir, not quite as bad as that; it's dismissal,' suggested Snap.

'I don't see any difference. Chopping straws I call that,' said old Winthrop.

'Splitting hairs don't you mean, Chris?' asked Mrs. Winthrop with a half-smile; 'but I see the difference, Snap. There is no disgrace about this, is there?'

'No, I didn't think so,' replied Snap, 'but my uncle says I am a disgrace to my family and always shall be.'

'He always did say that,' muttered the Admiral. 'Never mind what your uncle says; I mean,' added the old gentleman, correcting himself, 'don't take it too much to heart. You see he has very strict ideas of what young lads should be.'

'What is it that you have been doing, Snap? Is it too bad to tell me?' asked Mrs. Winthrop after a while.

For a moment the boy hung his head, thinking, and then raised it with a proud look in his eyes.

'No, dear,' he said, dropping unconsciously into an old habit, 'it isn't, and so it can't be very bad!' And with that he told the whole foolish story of his share in the smoking orgy, of his reprieve, of the mop incident and the bolster fight, and, last of all, of that Fernhall ghost.

At this part of the recital of his wrongdoings the Admiral's face, which had been growing redder and redder all the time, got fairly beyond control, and the old gentleman nearly went into convulsions of laughter. 'Shameful, sir; gross breach of discipline, sir; ha! ha! ha! "Don't like me in the spirit, had better take me in the flesh." Capital--cap--infamous, I mean, infamous. Your uncle never did anything like that, sir, not he,' spluttered the veteran; 'couldn't have done if he had tried,' he added _sotto voce_.

'But,' said Mrs. Winthrop, after a pause, 'what are you going to do, Snap?'

'My uncle wants me to go into the Church or Mr. Mathieson's office,' replied the boy.

'The Church or Mr. Mathieson's office--that is a strange choice, isn't it?' asked his friend. 'Which do you mean to do?'

'Neither,' answered Snap stoutly; 'I'm not fit for one, and I should do no good in the other. I shall do what some other fellows I know have done. I'll emigrate and turn cow-boy. I like hard work and could do it,' and half consciously he held out one of his sinewy brown hands, and looked at it as if it was a witness for him in this matter.

'What does your uncle say to that, Snap?' asked the Admiral.

'Not much, sir, bad or good. He says I am an ungrateful young wretch for refusing to go into Mr. Mathieson's office, and that I shall never come to any good. But, then, I've heard that from him often enough before,' said Snap grimly, 'and I think he will let me go, and that is the main point.'

'And when do you mean to start?' asked the Admiral.

'Oh, as soon as he will let me, sir. You see, my father left me a few hundred pounds, so that I dare say when Mr. Hales sees that my mind is made up he will let me go. You don't think much worse of me, I hope, sir, do you?'

'Worse of you?' said the old sailor stoutly, 'no! You are a young fool, I dare say, but so was I at your time of life. Come up to lunch!' And, planting his rod by the side of the stream, he turned towards the house, Mrs. Winthrop and Snap following him.

At lunch Snap had to tell the whole story again to Billy and Frank, but when he came to the point at which he had decided to 'go west,' instead of eliciting the sympathy of his audience, he only seemed to rouse their envy.

'By Jove,' said Frank, 'if it wasn't for this jolly old place I should wish that I had got your character and your punishment, Snap!'

For a week or more both the Admiral and his sister had been very unlike their old selves, so quiet were they and _distrait_, except when by an effort one or the other seemed to rouse to a mood whose merriness had something false and strained in it, even to the unobservant young eyes of the boys. Why was it that at this speech of Frank's Mrs. Winthrop's sweet eyes filled with sudden tears, and that piece of pickle went the wrong way and almost choked the Admiral? Perhaps, if you follow the story further, you may be able to guess.

After lunch they all wandered down again to the trout-stream, where 'Uncle's Ogden,' as they called the Admiral's rod, stood planted in the ground, like the spear of some knight-err ant of old days. It was a lovely spot, this home of the Winthrops--such a home as exists only in England; beautiful by nature, beautiful by art, mellowed by age, and endeared to the owners by centuries of happy memories. The sunlight loved it and lingered about it in one moss-grown corner or another from the first glimpse of dawn to the last red ray of sunset. The house had been built in a hollow, after the unsanitary fashion of our forefathers; round it closed a rampart of low wooded hills, which sheltered its grey gables from the winter winds; and in front of it a close-cropped lawn ran from the open French windows of the morning-room to the sunlit ripples of the little river Tane as it raced away to the mill on the home-farm.

For five centuries the Winthrops had lived at Fairbury, not brilliantly, perhaps, but happily and honestly, as squires who knew that their tenants' interests and their own were identical; sometimes as soldiers who went away to fight for the land they loved, only to come back to enjoy in it the honours they had won. It was a fair home and a fair name, and so far, in five centuries, none of the race had done anything to bring either into disrepute. No wonder the Winthrops loved Fairbury.

But I am digressing, and must hark back to the Admiral, who has stolen on in front of his followers and is now crouching, like an old tiger, a couple of yards from the bank of the brook. Above him, waving to and fro almost like that tiger's tail, is the graceful, gleaming fly-rod, with its long light line, which looks in the summer air no thicker than gossamer threads. In front of the old gentleman's position, and on the other side of the stream, is a crumbling stone wall, and for a foot or two from it, between it and the Admiral, the water glides by in shadow. Had you watched it very carefully, you might, if you were a fisherman, have detected a still, small rise, so small that it hardly looked like a rise at all. Surely none but the most experienced would have guessed that it was the rise of the largest fish in that stream. But the Admiral was 'very experienced,' and knew almost how many spots there were on the deep, broad sides of the four-pounder whose luncheon of tiny half-drowned duns was disturbing the waters opposite. At last the fly was dry enough to please him, and Admiral Chris let it go. A score of times before, in the last few days, he had had just as good a chance of beguiling his victim, and each time his cast had been light and true, so that the harshest of critics or most jealous of rivals (the same thing, you know) could have found no fault in it. Each time the fly, dry as a bone and light as thistle-down, had lit upon the stream just the right distance above the feeding fish, and had sailed over him with jaunty wings well cocked, so close an imitation of nature that the man who made it could hardly have picked it out from among the dozen live flies which sailed by with it. But a man's eyes are no match for a fish's, and the old 'sock-dollager' had noticed something wrong--a shade of colour, a minute mistake in form, or something too delicate even for Ogden's fingers to set right--and had forthwith declined to be tempted. But this time fate was against the gallant fish. The Admiral had miscalculated his cast, and the little dun hit hard against the crumbling wall and tumbled back from it into the water 'anyhow.'

Though a mistake, it was the most deadly cast the Admiral could have made. A score of flies had fallen in the same helpless fashion from that wall in the last half-hour, and as each fell the great fish had risen and sucked them down. This fell right into his mouth. He saw no gleam of gut in the treacherous shadow, he had seen no upright figure on the bank for an hour and a half; he had no time to scrutinise the fly as it sailed down to him, so he turned like a thought in a quick brain, caught the fly, and knew that he too was caught, almost before the Admiral had had time to realise that he had for once made a bad cast. And then the struggle began; and such is the injustice of man's nature that even gentle Mrs. Winthrop did not feel a touch of compassion for that gallant little trout, battling for his life against a man who weighed fifteen stone to his four pounds, and had had as many years to learn wisdom in, almost, as the fish had lived weeks. No doubt she would have felt sorry for the fish if she had thought of these things, but then you see she didn't think of them.

'By George! I'm into him,' shouted the Admiral.

Anyone only slightly acquainted with our sporting idioms might have taken this speech literally, and wondered how such a very small whale could have held such a very large Jonah. But the Admiral never stopped to pick his words when excited, as poor Billy soon discovered. An evil fate had prompted Billy to snatch up the net as soon as his uncle struck his fish, and now, as the four-pounder darted down stream, the boy made a dab at him with it.

'Ah, you young owl! You lubberly young sea-cook,' roared the infuriated old gentleman. 'What are you doing? Do you think you're going to take a trout like a spoonful of porridge? Get below him, and wait till I steer him into the net.'

Frightened by Towzer's futile 'dab,' the trout had made a desperate dash for the further side of the stream, making the Admiral's reel screech as the line ran out. Skilfully the old man humoured his victim, now giving him line, now just balking him in his efforts to reach a weed-bed or a dangerous-looking root. People talk of salmon which have taken a day to kill; it is a good trout which gives the angler ten minutes' 'play.' The Admiral's trout was tired even in less time than that, and came slowly swimming down past a small island of water weeds, beyond the deep water on the house-side of the stream, submissive now to his captor's guiding hand. Gently the Admiral drew him towards the shallows, and in another moment he would have been in the net, when suddenly, without warning, he gave his head one vicious shake, and, leaping clear out of the water, fell back upon the little island, where he lay high and dry, the red spots on his side gleaming in the sun. It was his last effort for freedom, and now, as he lay gasping within a few inches of the clear stream, of home and safety, the treacherous steel thing dropped out of his mouth, the current caught the belly of the loose line and floated it down stream, and the Admiral stood on the further bank dumb with disgust, the last link broken which bound his fish to him. In a moment more the fish would recover from his fall, and then one kick, however feeble, would be enough to roll him back into the Tane, and so good-bye to all the fruits of several weeks' patience and cunning, and good-bye, too, to all chance of catching 'the best trout, by George, sir, in the brook!' It was hard!

But there was another chance in the Admiral's favour which he had not counted upon. Even as the fish fell back upon the dry weeds Snap slid quietly as an otter into the stream. A few strong, silent strokes, and he was alongside the weeds, and as the fish's gaping gills opened before he made what would have been to the Admiral a fatal effort Snap's fingers were inserted, and the great trout carried off through his own element as unceremoniously as if it really was an otter which had got him.

'I'm not a bad retriever, sir, am I?' asked the hoy as he laid his prize down at old Winthrop's feet. That worthy sportsman was delighted.

'No, my boy,' he replied, 'you are first-rate, though perhaps Mr. Hales would call you a sad dog if he saw you in those dripping garments. Be off and change into some of Frank's toggery.'

'All right, sir; come on, Frank,' replied Snap, and together the three boys raced off to their own domain in one of the wings of Fairbury Court, given over long ago to boys, dogs, and disorder.

Meanwhile the Admiral retired to weigh his fish, which he did most carefully, allowing three ounces for its loss of weight since landing--an altogether unnecessary concession, as it had not been out of the water then more than five minutes. However, he entered it in his fishing journal as 3 lbs. 11 ozs., caught August 2, and retrieved by Snap Hales. As he closed the book he sighed and muttered, 'That is about the last trout I shall take on the Tane.'