Free Testimonies: A Novel by Patrick O'Brian Page B

ordinary small things of every day, I was with my passion. If you have a sudden painful illness or a broken bone there is hardly a moment when you are not aware of it: it is the same with a heart astray. I was not of a romantic temperament, rather cold, lifeless and indifferent before, not inclined to sentiment at all: indeed, I had sometimes reproached myself for my lack of affection for others. It is a repulsive trait, and it usually goes with deep selfishness; but my life had not accustomed me to affection—I had no near relations, and in the common round of my adult life I had rarely met anyone who raised in me a feeling higher than tepid esteem. My boyhood friends had nearly all been killed in the war, and those who remained were scattered: Maturin was a parson in the north, buried in a huge family (his wife disliked me), Annwyl had a chair of philosophy thirteen thousand miles away, and Milsom was a rubber-planter.
    But now, night and day, there was this tumult going on inside me. Everything that I thought or read was in relation to her. The only difference was that at some times it was nearer my consciousness than others: but it was with me, always. It was so improbable—inconceivable, almost—that I asked myself whether I was not exaggerating, deluding myself and nourishing the deception: but I was not. The strength was from outside, beyond my control—a strong hand holding a dangling cloth puppet.
    So what consolations I had, I took. I read and I fished—writing was out of the question, and I packed away the dreary, unprofitable sheets. These two things made life tolerable on good days. No: it is excessive to speak like that—I passed delightful hours up there, and there was in fact a more vivid pleasure even in that pain (when it was not bitter and surmounting) than in any of the pleasures I had experienced before.
    I say “up there” meaning the high lake above Llyn Lliwiog, a remote barren tarn that was my best retreat. To reach this high lake it was necessary to climb to the Diffwys, to go the length of that dark valley and to climb again the height of the rim at its far end: from there it was a gentle walk down to the lake. There was another way around the back of the Saeth, but there were some shaly slopes that I found almost impassable with a rod to take care of, so in spite of my uneasiness in Cwm Erchyll, I threaded it whenever I went up there.
    There is no doubt, I suppose, that lake fishing from the shore is a dull thing compared with the delight of a good stream; but this lake had its advantages. To begin with there was its position of unearthly beauty in a dark crater that spilled the overflowing stream down a precipice five hundred feet to Llyn Lliwiog; below that there was a broad, changing valley with a third lake, much larger, a silver river, farms, woods, the winding ribbon of a main road with tiny objects passing on it. And beyond the silent, tall and solemn peaks of Carnedd and y Brenin, and sometimes single clouds swimming between me and them. Oh, it was intensely moving sometimes, and never two days the same, never predictable.
    Then there were fish in the lake, big trout and plenty of them. I never caught any, but I saw them often in the evening: sometimes the air would fall motionless about sunset, and there would be no ripples on the water; every rise showed and upon my word I have more than once seen the whole surface pocked with them like a puddle with rain falling into it. On those evenings I have heard fish rising there so large that it startled the silence. It was a great encouragement to go on fishing, and I would cast away with my arm almost dropping off, vainly lashing the water until long after the end of the rise.
    I never was, from my boyhood, one of those to whom skill comes easily. The throwing of a stone at a mark was a conscious effort of coordination rather than an instinctive unthinking fling. It was the same with fishing; every cast was the result of drill and