George Bowring - A Tale of Cader Idris | Page 9

for footmarks, though the light was sadly waning.
For the moment I discovered nothing of footsteps or other traces to
frighten or to comfort me. A little narrow channel (all of rock and stone
and slaty stuff) sloped to the river's brink, which was not more than:
five yards distant In this channel I saw no mark except that some of the
smaller stones 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,