George Bowring - A Tale of Cader Idris | Page 9

appeared to have been turned over; and then I looked into the river itself, and saw a force of water sliding smoothly into a rocky pool.
"If he had fallen in there," I said, "he would have leaped out again in two seconds; or even if the force of the water had carried him down into that deep pool, he can swim like a duck--of course he can. What river could ever drown you, George?"
And then I remembered how at Salop he used to swim the flooded Severn when most of us feared to approach the banks; and I knew that he could not be drowned, unless something first had stunned him. And after that I looked around, and my heart was full of terror.
"It is a murder!" I cried aloud, though my voice among the rocks might well have brought like fate upon me. "As sure as I stand here, and God is looking down upon me, this is a black murder!" In what way I got back that night to Aber-Aydyr I know not. All I remember is that the people would not come out of their houses to me, according to some superstition, which was not explained till morning; and, being unable to go to bed, I took a blanket and lay down beneath a dry arch of the bridge, and the Aydyr, as swiftly as a spectre gliding, hushed me with a melancholy song.
CHAPTER V.
Now, as sure as ever I lay beneath the third arch of Aber-Aydyr Bridge, in a blanket of Welsh serge or flannel, with a double border, so surely did I see, and not dream, what I am going to tell you.
The river ran from east to west; and the moon, being now the harvest moon, was not very high, but large and full, and just gliding over the crest of the hill that overhangs the quarry-pit; so that, if I can put it plainly, the moon was across the river from me, and striking the turbulent water athwart, so that her face, or a glimmer thereof, must have been lying upon the river if any smooth place had been left for it. But of this there was no chance, because the whole of the river was in a rush, according to its habit, and covered with bubbles, and froth, and furrows, even where it did not splash, and spout, and leap, as it loved to do. In the depth of the night, when even the roar of the water seemed drowsy and indolent, and the calm trees stooped with their heavy limbs over-changing the darkness languidly, and only a few rays of the moon, like the fluttering of a silver bird, moved in and out the mesh-work, I leaned upon, my elbow, and I saw the dead George Bowring.
He came from the pit of the river toward me, quietly and without stride or step, gliding over the water like a mist or the vapour of a calm white frost; and he stopped at the ripple where the shore began, and he looked at me very peacefully. And I felt neither fear nor doubt of him, any more than I do of this pen in my hand.
"George," I said, "I have been uneasy all the day about you and I cannot sleep, and I have had no comfort. What has made you treat me so?"
He seemed to be anxious to explain, having always been so straightforward; but an unknown hand or the power of death held him, so that he could only smile. And then it appeared to me as if he pointed to the water first and then to the sky, with such an import that I understood (as plainly as if he had pronounced it) that his body lay under the one and his soul was soaring on high through the other; and, being forbidden to speak, he spread his hands, as if entrusting me with all that had belonged to him; and then he smiled once more, and faded into the whiteness of the froth and foam.
And then I knew that I had been holding converse, face to face, with Death; and icy fear shpok me, and I strove in vain to hide my eyes from everything. And when I awoke in the morning there was a gray trunk of an alder tree, just George Bowring's height and size, on the other side of the water, so that I could have no doubt that himself had been there.
After a search of about three hours we found the body of my dear friend in a deep black pool of the Aydyr--not the first hole below the place in which he sat down to his luncheon, but nearly a hundred yards farther down, where a bold cliff jutted out and bent the water