Читать книгу England have my Bones - T. H. White - Страница 26

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Second thoughts on Craigenkillie.

The fact was that there had been a lot of water in March, quite an unusual amount, and this brought the fish. The spate which followed in the middle of April finished the good work and there was a much larger number of salmon than there usually is as high as this before May. In fact, we probably ought to have killed more fish.

Perhaps this is pessimistic. We got the fish we deserved. And at any rate I was terribly happy.

I must kill a tunny, get a gun in a syndicate on a grouse moor, fetch a salmon of 40 lbs. from Norway, be desperately busy in all directions in order to make up for Craigenkillie.

Macdonald was a very lovely person. It was even torture to leave the post office, where they had been so kind and made such a sweet offer of their coconuts.

I shall remember a lot of things about Macdonald: how he always said that the water was in good or bad “orrder”: how collectedly he moved his tough body, which in a townsman would have lumbered, over boulders that kept me lagging behind, and up slopes of one in one, carrying rods and game bag with two or three heavy fish in it: how he did not suffer from the bugbear of “getting his feet wet,” but walked in the water as cheerfully as on the land, knowing that an active man cannot catch cold: how philosophically he replied, when I asked him whether the local labourers didn’t hate him for stopping their poaching, “Well, I’m no weel likit.” He was the loyalest, neatest, gentlest person. He was impossible to tire, always good-humoured, and loved his work: the kind of man who is neither weak nor hard. When he was at leisure he enjoyed his shirt sleeves, like a soldier out of uniform: on Sundays he went religiously to chapel: he was a fine man for his food.

God bless him and his place anyhow; and good-bye to Scotland, the loveliest country in the world.