Tales From the Telling-House

“This is very grand indeed,” said George, as he turned to watch me; for the worst part of our business is to have to give an opinion always upon points of scenery. But I am glad that I was not cross, or even crisp with him that day.

“It is magnificent,” I answered; “and I see a piece of soft sward there, where you can set up your rod, old fellow, while I get my sticks in trim. Let us fill our pipes and watch the shadows; they do not fall quite to suit me yet.”

“How these things make one think,” cried Bowring, as we sat on a stone and smoked, “of the miserable littleness of men like you and me, Bob!”

“Speak for yourself, sir,” I said, laughing at his unaccustomed, but by no means novel, reflection. “I am quite contented with my size, although I am smaller than you, George. Dissatisfied mortal! Nature wants no increase of us, or she would have had it.”

“In another world we shall be much larger,” he said, with his eyes on the tops of the hills. “Last night I dreamed that my wife and children were running to meet me in heaven, Bob.”

“Tush! You go and catch fish,” I replied; for tears were in his large, soft eyes, and I hated the sentimental. “Would they ever let such a little Turk as Bob Bistre into heaven, do you think? My godson would shout all the angels deaf and outdrum all the cherubim.”

“Poor little chap! He is very noisy; but he is not half a bad sort,” said George. “If he only comes like his godfather I shall wish no better luck for him.”

These were kind words, and I shook his hand to let him know that I felt them; and then, as if he were ashamed of having talked rather weakly, he took with his strong legs a dangerous leap of some ten or twelve feet downward, and landed on a narrow ledge that overhung the river. Here he put his rod together, and I heard the click of reel as he drew the loop at the end of the line through the rings, and so on; and I heard him cry “Chut!” as he took his flies from his Scotch cap and found a tangle; and I saw the glistening of his rod, as the sunshine pierced the valley, and then his tall, straight figure pass the corner of a crag that stood as upright as a tombstone; and after that no more of any live and bright George Bowring.

CHAPTER IV

Swift is the flight of Time whenever a man would fain lay hold of him. All created beings, from Behemoth to a butterfly, dread and fly (as best they may) that universal butcher – man. And as nothing is more carefully killed by the upper sort of mankind than Time, how can he help making off for his life when anybody wants to catch him?

Of course, I am not of that upper sort, and make no pretence to be so; but Time, perhaps, may be excused for thinking – having had such a very short turn at my clothes – that I belonged to the aristocracy. At any rate, while I drew, and rubbed, and dubbed, and made hieroglyphics, Time was uneasily shifting and shuffling the lines of the hills, as a fever patient jerks and works the bed-clothes. And, worse than that, he was scurrying westward (frightened, no doubt, by the equinox) at such a pace that I was scared by the huddling together of shadows. Awaking from a long, long dream – through which I had been working hard, and laying the foundations of a thousand pounds hereafter – I felt the invisible damp of evening settling in the valleys. The sun, from over the sea, had still his hand on Cader Idris; but every inferior head and height was gray in the sweep of his mantle.

I threw my hair back – for an artist really should be picturesque; and, having no other beauty, must be firm to long hair, while it lasts – and then I shouted, “George!” until the strata of the mountain (which dip and jag, like veins of oak) began and sluggishly prolonged a slow zigzag of echoes. No counter-echo came to me; no ring of any sonorous voice made crag, and precipice, and mountain vocal with the sound of “Bob!”

“He must have gone back. What a fool I must be never to remember seeing him! He saw that I was full of rubbish, and he would not disturb me. He is gone back to the Cross-Pipes, no doubt. And yet it does not seem like him.”

“To look for a pin in a bundle of hay” would be a job of sense and wisdom rather than to seek a thing so very small as a very big man among the depth, and height, and breadth of river, shingle, stone, and rock, crag, precipice, and mountain. And so I doubled up my things, while the very noise they made in doubling flurried and alarmed me; and I thought it was not like George to leave me to find my way back all alone, among the deep bogs, and the whirlpools, and the trackless tracts of crag.

When I had got my fardel ready, and was about to shoulder it, the sound of brisk, short steps, set sharply upon doubtful footing, struck my ear, through the roar of the banks and stones that shook with waterfall. And before I had time to ask, “Who goes there?” – as in this solitude one might do – a slight, short man, whom I knew by sight as a workman of Aber-Aydyr, named Evan Peters, was close to me, and was swinging a slate-hammer in one hand, and bore in the other a five-foot staff. He seemed to be amazed at sight of me, but touched his hat with his staff, and said: “Good-night, gentleman!” in Welsh; for the natives of this part are very polite. “Good-night, Evan!” I answered, in his own language, of which I had picked up a little; and he looked well pleased, and said in his English: “For why, sir, did you leave your things in that place there? A bad mans come and steal them, it is very likely.”

Then he wished me “Good-night” again, and was gone – for he seemed to be in a dreadful hurry – before I had the sense to ask him what he meant about “my things.” But as his footfall died away a sudden fear came over me.

“The things he meant must be George Bowring’s,” I said to myself; and I dropped my own, and set off, with my blood all tingling, for the place toward which he had jerked his staff. How long it took me to force my way among rugged rocks and stubs of oak I cannot tell, for every moment was an hour to me. But a streak of sunset glanced along the lonesome gorge, and cast my shadow further than my voice would go; and by it I saw something long and slender against a scar of rock, and standing far in front of me. Toward this I ran as fast as ever my trembling legs would carry me, for I knew too well that it must be the fishing-rod of George Bowring.

It was stuck in the ground – not carelessly, nor even in any hurry; but as a sportsman makes all snug, when for a time he leaves off casting. For instance, the end fly was fixed in the lowest ring of the butt, and the slack of the line reeled up so that the collar lay close to the rod itself. Moreover, in such a rocky place, a bed to receive the spike could not have been found without some searching. For a moment I was reassured. Most likely George himself was near – perhaps in quest of blueberries (which abound at the foot of the shingles and are a very delicious fruit), or of some rare fern to send his wife, who was one of the first in England to take much notice of them. And it shows what confidence I had in my friend’s activity and strength, that I never feared the likely chance of his falling from some precipice.

But just as I began, with some impatience – for we were to have dined at the Cross-Pipes about sundown, five good (or very bad) miles away, and a brace of ducks was the order – just as I began to shout, “George! Wherever have you got to?” leaping on a little rock, I saw a thing that stopped me. At the further side of this rock, and below my feet, was a fishing basket, and a half-pint mug nearly full of beer, and a crust of the brown, sweet bread of the hills, and a young white onion, half cut through, and a clasp-knife open, and a screw of salt, and a slice of the cheese, just dashed with goat’s milk, which George was so fond of, but I disliked; and there may have been a hard-boiled egg. At the sight of these things all my blood rushed to my head in such a manner that all my power to think was gone. I sat down on the rock where George must have sat while beginning his frugal luncheon, and I put my heels into the marks of his, and, without knowing why, I began to sob like a child who has lost his mother. What train of reasoning went through my brain – if any passed in the obscurity – let metaphysicians or psychologists, as they call themselves, pretend to know. I only know that I kept on whispering, “George is dead! Unless he had been killed, he never would have left his beer so!”

I must have sat, making a fool of myself, a considerable time in this way, thinking of George’s poor wife and children, and wondering what would become of them, instead of setting to work at once to know what was become of him. I took up a piece of cheese-rind, showing a perfect impression of his fine front teeth, and I put it in my pocketbook, as the last thing he had touched. And then I examined the place all around and knelt to look 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 overhanging 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 shook 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 scornfully. Our quarrymen would not search this pool until the sunlight fell on it, because it was a place of dread with a legend hovering over it. “The Giant’s Tombstone” was the name of the crag that overhung it; and the story was that the giant Idris, when he grew worn out with age, chose this rock out of many others near the top of the mountain, and laid it under his arm and came down here to drink of the Aydyr. He drank the Aydyr dry because he was feverish and flushed with age; and he set down the crag in a hole he had scooped with the palms of his hands for more water; and then he lay down on his back, and Death (who never could reach to his knee when he stood) took advantage of his posture to drive home the javelin. And thus he lay dead, with the crag for his headstone, and the weight of his corpse sank a grave for itself in the channel of the river, and the toes of his boots are still to be seen after less than a mile of the valley.

Under this headstone of Idris lay the body of George Bowring, fair and comely, with the clothes all perfect, and even the light cap still on the head. And as we laid it upon the grass, reverently and carefully, the face, although it could smile no more, still appeared to wear a smile, as if the new world were its home, and death a mere trouble left far behind. Even the eyes were open, and their expression was not of fright or pain, but pleasant and bright, with a look of interest such as a man pays to his food.

“Stand back, all of you!” I said sternly; “none shall examine him but myself. Now all of you note what I find here.”

I searched all his pockets, one after another; and tears came to my eyes again as I counted not less than eleven of them, for I thought of the fuss we used to make with the Shrewsbury tailor about them. There was something in every pocket, but nothing of any importance at present, except his purse and a letter from his wife, for which he had walked to Dolgelly and back on the last entire day of his life.

“It is a hopeless mystery!” I exclaimed aloud, as the Welshmen gazed with superstitious awe and doubt. “He is dead as if struck by lightning, but there was no storm in the valley!”

“No, no, sure enough; no storm was there. But it is plain to see what has killed him!” This was Evan Peters, the quarryman, and I glanced at him very suspiciously. “Iss, sure, plain enough,” said another; and then they all broke into Welsh, with much gesticulation; and “e-ah, e-ah,” and “otty, otty,” and “hanool, hanool,” were the sounds they made – at least to an ignorant English ear.

“What do you mean, you fools?” I asked, being vexed at their offhand way of settling things so far beyond them. “Can you pretend to say what it was?”

“Indeed, then, and indeed, my gentleman, it is no use to talk no more. It was the Caroline Morgan.”

“Which is the nearest house?” I asked, for I saw that some of them were already girding up their loins to fly, at the mere sound of that fearful name; for the cholera morbus had scared the whole country; and if one were to fly, all the rest would follow, as swiftly as mountain sheep go. “Be quick to the nearest house, my friends, and we will send for the doctor.”

This was a lucky hit; for these Cambrians never believed in anyone’s death until he had “taken the doctor.” And so, with much courage and kindness, “to give the poor gentleman the last chance,” they made a rude litter, and, bearing the body upon sturdy shoulders, betook themselves to a track which I had overlooked entirely. Some people have all their wits about them as soon as they are called for, but with me it is mainly otherwise. And this I had shown in two things already; the first of which came to my mind the moment I pulled out my watch to see what the time was. “Good Heavens!” it struck me, “where is George’s watch? It was not in any of his pockets; and I did not feel it in his fob.”

In an instant I made them set down the bier; and, much as it grieved me to do such a thing, I carefully sought for my dear friend’s watch. No watch, no seals, no ribbon, was there! “Go on,” I said; and I fell behind them, having much to think about. In this condition, I took little heed of the distance, or of the ground itself; being even astonished when, at last, we stopped; as if we were bound to go on forever.

CHAPTER VI

We had stopped at the gate of an old farmhouse, built with massive boulder stones, laid dry, and flushed in with mortar. As dreary a place as was ever seen; at the head of a narrow mountain-gorge, with mountains towering over it. There was no sign of life about it, except that a gaunt hog trotted forth, and grunted at us, and showed his tusks, and would perhaps have charged us, if we had not been so many. The house looked just like a low church-tower, and might have been taken for one at a distance if there had been any battlements. It seemed to be four or five hundred years old, and perhaps belonged to some petty chief in the days of Owen Glendower.

“Knock again, Thomas Edwards. Stop, let me knock,” said one of our party impatiently. “There, waddow, waddow, waddow!”

Suiting the action to the word, he thumped with a big stone heavily, till a middle-aged woman, with rough black hair, looked out of a window and screamed in Welsh to ask what this terrible noise was. To this they made answer in the same language, pointing to their sad burden, and asking permission to leave it for the doctor’s inspection and the inquest, if there was to be one. And I told them to add that I would pay well – anything, whatever she might like to ask. But she screamed out something that sounded like a curse, and closed the lattice violently. Knowing that many superstitions lingered in these mountains – as, indeed, they do elsewhere plentifully – I was not surprised at the woman’s stern refusal to admit us, especially at this time of pest; but I thought it strange that her fierce black eyes avoided both me and the poor rude litter on which the body of George lay, covered with some slate-workers’ aprons.

“She is not the mistress!” cried Evan Peters, in great excitement, as I thought. “Ask where is Hopkin – Black Hopkin – where is he?”

At this suggestion a general outcry arose in Welsh for “Black Hopkin”; an outcry so loud and prolonged that the woman opened the window again and screamed – as they told me afterward – “He is not at home, you noisy fools; he is gone to Machynlleth. Not long would you dare to make this noise if Hopkin ap Howel was at home.”

But while she was speaking the wicket-door of the great arched gate was thrown open, and a gun about six feet long and of very large bore was presented at us. The quarrymen drew aside briskly, and I was about to move somewhat hastily, when the great, swarthy man who was holding the gun withdrew it, and lifted his hat to me, proudly and as an equal.