Yeast: a Problem

‘Repay, my good fellow?  You would have done as much for me.’

‘May be; but you did not think of that when you jumped in; and no more must I in thanking you.  God knows how a poor miner’s son will ever reward you; but the mouse repaid the lion, says the story, and, at all events, I can pray for you.  By the bye, gentlemen, I hope you have brought up some trolling-tackle?’

‘We came up to see you, and not to fish,’ said Lancelot, charmed with the stately courtesy of the man.

‘Many thanks, gentlemen; but old Harry Verney was in here just now, and had seen a great jack strike, at the tail of the lower reeds.  With this fresh wind he will run till noon; and you are sure of him with a dace.  After that, he will not be up again on the shallows till sunset.  He works the works of darkness, and comes not to the light, because his deeds are evil.’

Lancelot laughed.  ‘He does but follow his kind, poor fellow.’

‘No doubt, sir, no doubt; all the Lord’s works are good: but it is a wonder why He should have made wasps, now, and blights, and vermin, and jack, and such evil-featured things, that carry spite and cruelty in their very faces—a great wonder.  Do you think, sir, all those creatures were in the Garden of Eden?’

‘You are getting too deep for me,’ said Lancelot.  ‘But why trouble your head about fishing?’

‘I beg your pardon for preaching to you, sir.  I’m sure I forgot myself.  If you will let me, I’ll get up and get you a couple of bait from the stew.  You’ll do us keepers a kindness, and prevent sin, sir, if you’ll catch him.  The squire will swear sadly—the Lord forgive him—if he hears of a pike in the trout-runs.  I’ll get up, if I may trouble you to go into the next room a minute.’

‘Lie still, for Heaven’s sake.  Why bother your head about pike now?’

‘It is my business, sir, and I am paid for it, and I must do it thoroughly;—and abide in the calling wherein I am called,’ he added, in a sadder tone.

‘You seem to be fond enough of it, and to know enough about it, at all events,’ said the colonel, ‘tying flies here on a sick-bed.’

‘As for being fond of it, sir—those creatures of the water teach a man many lessons; and when I tie flies, I earn books.’

‘How then?’

‘I send my flies all over the country, sir, to Salisbury and Hungerford, and up to Winchester, even; and the money buys me many a wise book—all my delight is in reading; perhaps so much the worse for me.’

‘So much the better, say,’ answered Lancelot warmly.  ‘I’ll give you an order for a couple of pounds’ worth of flies at once.’

‘The Lord reward you, sir,’ answered the giant.

‘And you shall make me the same quantity,’ said the colonel.  ‘You can make salmon-flies?’

‘I made a lot by pattern for an Irish gent, sir.’

‘Well, then, we’ll send you some Norway patterns, and some golden pheasant and parrot feathers.  We’re going to Norway this summer, you know, Lancelot—’

Tregarva looked up with a quaint, solemn hesitation.

‘If you please, gentlemen, you’ll forgive a man’s conscience.’

‘Well?’

‘But I’d not like to be a party to the making of Norway flies.’

‘Here’s a Protectionist, with a vengeance!’ laughed the colonel.  ‘Do you want to keep all us fishermen in England? eh? to fee English keepers?

‘No, sir.  There’s pretty fishing in Norway, I hear, and poor folk that want money more than we keepers.  God knows we get too much—we that hang about great houses and serve great folks’ pleasure—you toss the money down our throats, without our deserving it; and we spend it as we get it—a deal too fast—while hard-working labourers are starving.’

‘And yet you would keep us in England?’

‘Would God I could!’

‘Why then, my good fellow?’ asked Lancelot, who was getting intensely interested with the calm, self-possessed earnestness of the man, and longed to draw him out.

The colonel yawned.

‘Well, I’ll go and get myself a couple of bait.  Don’t you stir, my good parson-keeper.  Down charge, I say!  Odd if I don’t find a bait-net, and a rod for myself, under the verandah.’

‘You will, colonel.  I remember, now, I set it there last morning; but the water washed many things out of my brains, and some things into them—and I forgot it like a goose.’

‘Well, good-bye, and lie still.  I know what a drowning is, and more than one.  A day and a night have I been in the deep, like the man in the good book; and bed is the best of medicine for a ducking;’ and the colonel shook him kindly by the hand and disappeared.

Lancelot sat down by the keeper’s bed.

‘You’ll get those fish-hooks into your trousers, sir; and this is a poor place to sit down in.’

‘I want you to say your say out, friend, fish-hooks or none.’

The keeper looked warily at the door, and when the colonel had passed the window, balancing the trolling-rod on his chin, and whistling merrily, he began,—

‘“A day and a night have I been in the deep!”—and brought back no more from it!  And yet the Psalms say how they that go down to the sea in ships see the works of the Lord!—If the Lord has opened their eyes to see them, that must mean—’

Lancelot waited.

‘What a gallant gentleman that is, and a valiant man of war, I’ll warrant,—and to have seen all the wonders he has, and yet to be wasting his span of life like that!’

Lancelot’s heart smote him.

‘One would think, sir,—You’ll pardon me for speaking out.’  And the noble face worked, as he murmured to himself, ‘When ye are brought before kings and princes for my name’s sake.—I dare not hold my tongue, sir.  I am as one risen from the dead,’—and his face flashed up into sudden enthusiasm—‘and woe to me if I speak not.  Oh, why, why are you gentlemen running off to Norway, and foreign parts, whither God has not called you!  Are there no graves in Egypt, that you must go out to die in the wilderness!’

Lancelot, quite unaccustomed to the language of the Dissenting poor, felt keenly the bad taste of the allusion.

‘What can you mean?’ he asked.

‘Pardon me, sir, if I cannot speak plainly; but are there not temptations enough here in England that you must go to waste all your gifts, your scholarship, and your rank, far away there out of the sound of a church-going bell?  I don’t deny it’s a great temptation.  I have read of Norway wonders in a book of one Miss Martineau, with a strange name.’

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