CHAPTER IX.

Frida, knowing--perhaps more deeply than that violent woman

thought--the mischief thus put into her, stole back to her bedroom,

and, without a word to anyone, tired her hair in the Grecian snood

which her lover used to admire so, and arrayed her soft and delicate

form in all the bridal finery. Perhaps, that day, no bride in

England--certainly none of her youth and beauty--treated her favourite

looking-glass with such contempt and ingratitude. She did not care to

examine herself, through some reluctant sense of havoc, and a bitter

fear that someone might be disappointed in her. Then at the last, when

all was ready, she snatched up her lover’s portrait (which for days had

been cast aside and cold), and, laying it on her bosom, took a snatch

of a glance at her lovely self.

After some wonder she fetched a deep sigh--not from clearly thinking

anything, but as an act of nature--and said, “Good-by!” forever, with

a little smile of irony, to her looking-glass, and all the many pretty

things that knew her.

It was her bad luck, as some people thought thereafter--or her good

luck, as herself beheld it--to get down the stairs and out of the house

without anyone being the wiser. For the widow De Wichehalse, Albert’s

mother, had not been content with sealing the doom of this poor maiden,

but in that highly excited state, which was to be expected, hurried

into the house, to beard the worthy baron in his den. There she found

him; and, although he said and did all sympathy, the strain of parental

feelings could not yield without “hysterics.”

All the servants, and especially Mother Eyebright (whose chief duty

now was to watch Frida), were called by the terrified baron, and with

one unanimous rush replied; so that the daughter of the house left it

without notice, and before any glances was out of sight, in the rough

ground where the deer were feeding, and the umber oak-leaves hung.

It was the dainty time when first the year begins to have a little hope

of meaning kindly--when in the quiet places often, free from any haste

of wind, or hindrances of pattering thaw, small and unimportant flowers

have a little knack of dreaming that the world expects them. Therefore

neither do they wait for leaves to introduce them, nor much weather to

encourage, but in shelfy corners come, in a day, or in a night--no man

knows quite which it is; and there they are, as if by magic, asking,

“Am I welcome?” And if anybody sees them, he is sure to answer “Yes.”

Frida, in the sheltered corners and the sunny nooks of rock, saw a

few of these little things delicately trespassing upon the petulance

of spring. Also, though her troubles wrapped her with an icy mantle,

softer breath of Nature came, and sighed for her to listen to it, and

to make the best of all that is not past the sighing. More than once

she stopped to listen, in the hush of the timid south wind creeping

through the dishevelled wood; and once, but only once, she was glad to

see her first primrose and last, and stooped to pluck, but, on second

thoughts, left it to outblossom her.

So, past many a briered rock, and dingle buff with littered fern, green

holly copse where lurked the woodcock, and arcades of zigzag oak, Frida

kept her bridal robe from spot, or rent, or blemish. Passing all these

little pleadings of the life she had always loved, at last she turned

the craggy corner into the ledge of the windy cliff.

Now below her there was nothing but repose from shallow thought; rest

from all the little troubles she had made so much of; deep, eternal

satisfaction in the arms of something vast. But all the same, she did

not feel quite ready for the great jump yet.

The tide was in, and she must wait at least until it began to turn,

otherwise her white satin velvet would have all its pile set wrong, if

ever anybody found her. There could be no worse luck than that for any

bride on her wedding-day; therefore up the rock-walk Frida kept very

close to the landward side.

All this way she thought of pretty little things said to her in the

early days of love. Many things that made her smile because they had

gone so otherwise, and one or two that would have fetched her tears,

if she had any. Filled with vain remembrance thus, and counting up

the many presents sent to her for this occasion, but remaining safe

at home, Frida came to the little coving bower just inside the Point,

where she could go no further. Here she had received the pledges, and

the plight, and honour; and here her light head led her on to look for

something faithful.

“When the tide turns I shall know it. If he does not come by that time,

there will be no more to do. It will be too late for weddings, for the

tide turns at twelve o’clock. How calm and peaceful is the sea! How

happy are the sea gulls, and how true to one another!”

She stood where, if she had cared for life, it would have been certain

death to stand, so giddy was the height, and the rock beneath her feet

so slippery. The craggy headland, Duty Point, well known to every

navigator of that rock-bound coast, commands the Channel for many a

league, facing eastward the Castle Rock and Countisbury Foreland, and

westward Highveer Point, across the secluded cove of Leymouth. With

one sheer fall of a hundred fathoms the stern cliff meets the baffled

sea--or met it then, but now the level of the tide is lowering. Air

and sea were still and quiet; the murmur of the multitudinous wavelets

could not climb the cliff; but loops and curves of snowy braiding on

the dark gray water showed the set of tide and shift of current in and

out the buried rocks.

Standing in the void of fear, and gazing into the deep of death, Frida

loved the pair of sea gulls hovering halfway between her and the soft

gray sea. These good birds had found a place well suited for their

nesting, and sweetly screamed to one another that it was a contract.

Frida watched how proud they were, and how they kept their strong wings

sailing and their gray backs flat and quivering, while with buoyant

bosom each made circles round the other.

As she watched, she saw the turning of the tide below them. The

streaky bends of curdled water, lately true as fairy-rings, stopped

and wavered, and drew inward on their flowing curves, and outward on

the side toward the ebb. Then the south wind brought the distant toll

of her father’s turret-clock, striking noon with slow deliberation and

dead certainty.

Frida made one little turn toward her bower behind the cliff, where the

many sweet words spoken drew her to this last of hope. All was silent.

There was no one. Now was the time to go home at last.

Suddenly she felt a heavy drag upon her velvet skirt. Ancient Lear

had escaped from the chain she had put on him, and, more trusty than

mankind, was come to keep his faith with her.

“You fine old dog, it is too late! The clock has struck. The tide

has turned. There is no one left to care for me; and I have ruined

everyone. Good-by, you only true one!”

Submissive as he always was, the ancient dog lay down when touched, and

drew his grizzled eyelids meekly over his dim and sunken eyes. Before

he lifted them again Frida was below the sea gulls, and beneath the

waves they fished.

Lear, with a puzzled sniff, arose and shook his head, and peered, with

his old eyes full of wistful wonder, down the fearful precipice. Seeing

something, he made his mind up, gave one long re-echoed howl, then

tossed his mane, like a tawny wave, and followed down the death-leap.

Neither body was ever found; and the whole of this might not have been

known so clearly as it is known, unless it had happened that Mother

Eyebright, growing uneasy, came round the corner just in time to be too

late. She, like a sensible woman, never dreamed of jumping after them,

but ran home so fast that she could not walk to church for three months

afterward; and when her breath came back was enabled to tell tenfold of

all she had seen.

* * * * *

One of the strangest things in life is the way in which we mortals take

the great and fatal blows of life.

For instance, the baron was suddenly told, while waiting for Frida to

sit beside him, at his one o’clock dinner:

“Plaize, my lard, your lardship’s darter hath a been and jumped off

Duty Point.”

“What an undutiful thing to do!” was the first thing Lord de Wichehalse

said; and those who knew no better thought that this was how he took it.

Aubyn Auberley, however, took a different measure of a broken-hearted

father’s strength. For the baron buckled on the armour of a century

ago, which had served his grandsire through hard blows in foreign

battles, and, with a few of his trusty servants, rode to join the

Parliament. It happened so that he could not make redress of his ruined

life until the middle of the summer. Then, at last, his chance came

to him, and he did not waste it. Viscount Auberley, who had so often

slipped away and laughed at him, was brought to bay beneath a tree in

the famous fight of Lansdowne.

The young man offered to hold parley, but the old man had no words. His

snowy hair and rugged forehead, hard-set mouth and lifted arm, were

enough to show his meaning. The gallant, being so skilled of fence,

thought to play with this old man as he had with his daughter; but the

Gueldres ax cleft his curly head, and split what little brain it takes

to fool a trusting maiden.

So, in early life, deceiver and deceived were quit of harm; and may ere

now have both found out whether it is better to inflict the wrong or

suffer it.

GEORGE BOWRING.

A TALE OF CADER IDRIS.

CHAPTER I.

When I was a young man, and full of spirits, some forty years ago or

more, I lost my best and truest friend in a very sad and mysterious

way. The greater part of my life has been darkened by this heavy blow

and loss, and the blame which I poured upon myself for my own share in

the matter.

George Bowring had been seven years with me at the fine old school of

Shrewsbury, and trod on my heels from form to form so closely that,

when I became at last the captain of the school, he was second to

me. I was his elder by half a year, and “sapped” very hard, while he

laboured little; so that it will be plain at a glance, although he

never acknowledged it, that he was the better endowed of the two with

natural ability. At that time we of Salop always expected to carry

everything, so far as pure scholarship was concerned, at both the

universities. But nowadays I am grieved to see that schools of quite a

different stamp (such as Rugby and Harrow, and even Marlborough, and

worse of all peddling Manchester) have been running our boys hard,

and sometimes almost beating them. And how have they done it? Why, by

purchasing masters of our prime rank and special style.

George and myself were at one time likely, and pretty well relied upon,

to keep up the fame of Sabrina’s crown, and hold our own at Oxford. But

suddenly it so fell out that both of us were cut short of classics, and

flung into this unclassic world. In the course of our last half year at

school and when we were both taking final polish to stand for Balliol

scholarships, which we were almost sure to win, as all the examiners

were Shrewsbury men,--not that they would be partial to us, but because

we knew all their questions,--within a week, both George and I were

forced to leave the dear old school, the grand old town, the lovely

Severn, and everything but one another.

He lost his father; I lost my uncle, a gentleman in Derbyshire, who had

well provided my education; but, having a family of his own, could not

be expected to leave me much. And he left me even less than could, from

his own point of view, have been rational. It is true that he had seven

children; but still a man of £15,000 a year might have done, without

injustice--or, I might say, with better justice--something more than

to leave his nephew a sum which, after much pushing about into divers

insecurities, fetched £72 10s. per annum.

Nevertheless, I am truly grateful; though, perhaps, at the time I had

not that knowledge of the world which enlarges the grateful organs. It

cannot matter what my feelings were, and I never was mercenary. All my

sentiments at that period ran in Greek senarii; and perhaps it would

show how good and lofty boys were in that ancient time, though now they

are only rude Solecists, if I were to set these verses down--but, after

much consideration, I find it wiser to keep them in.

George Bowring’s father had some appointment well up in the Treasury.

He seems to have been at some time knighted for finding a manuscript

of great value that went in the end to the paper mills. How he did it,

or what it was, or whether he ever did it at all, were questions for

no one to meddle with. People in those days had larger minds than they

ever seem to exhibit now. The king might tap a man, and say, “Rise, Sir

Joseph,” and all the journals of the age, or, at least, the next day,

would echo “Sir Joseph!” And really he was worthy of it. A knight he

lived, and a knight he died; and his widow found it such a comfort!

And now on his father’s sudden death, George Bowring was left not so

very well off. Sir Joseph had lived, as a knight should do, in a

free-handed, errant, and chivalrous style; and what he left behind

him made it lucky that the title dropped. George, however, was better

placed, as regards the world, than I was; but not so very much as to

make a difference between us. Having always held together, and being

started in life together, we resolved to face the world (as other

people are always called) side by side, and with a friendship that

should make us as good as one.

This, however, did not come out exactly as it should have done. Many

things arose between us--such as diverse occupation, different hours

of work and food, and a little split in the taste of trowsers, which,

of course, should not have been. He liked the selvage down his legs,

while I thought it unartistic, and, going much into the graphic line, I

pressed my objections strongly.

But George, in the handsomest manner--as now, looking back on the case,

I acknowledge--waived my objections, and insisted as little as he could

upon his own. And again we became as tolerant as any two men, at all

alike, can be of one another.

He, by some postern of influence, got into some dry ditch of the

Treasury, and there, as in an old castle-moat, began to be at home, and

move, gently and after his seniors, as the young ducks follow the old

ones. And at every waddle he got more money.

My fortune, however, was not so nice. I had not Sir Joseph, of Treasury

cellars, to light me with his name and memory into a snug cell of my

own. I had nothing to look to but courage, and youth, and education,

and three-quarters of a hundred pounds a year, with some little change

to give out of it. Yet why should I have doubted? Now, I wonder at my

own misgivings; yet all of them still return upon me, if I ever am

persuaded just to try Welsh rabbit. Enough, that I got on at last, to

such an extent that the man at the dairy offered me half a year’s milk

for a sketch of a cow that had never belonged to him.

George, meanwhile, having something better than a brush for a walking

stick and an easel to sit down upon, had taken unto himself a wife--a

lady as sweet and bright as could be--by name Emily Atkinson. In truth,

she was such a charming person that I myself, in a quiet way, had taken

a very great fancy to her before George Bowring saw her; but as soon

as I found what a desperate state the heart of poor George was reduced

to, and came to remember that he was fitted by money to marry, while I

was not, it appeared to me my true duty toward the young lady and him,

and even myself, to withdraw from the field, and have nothing to say if

they set up their horses together.

So George married Emily, and could not imagine why it was that I strove

in vain to appear as his “best man,” at the rails where they do it.

For though I had ordered a blue coat and buttons, and a cashmere

waistcoat (amber-coloured, with a braid of peonies), yet at the last

moment my courage failed me, and I was caught with a shivering in the

knees, which the doctor said was ague. This and that shyness of dining

at his house (which I thought it expedient to adopt during the years

of his married life) created some little reserve between us, though

hardly so bad as our first disagreement concerning the stripe down the

pantaloons.

However, before that dereliction I had made my friend a wedding

present, as was right and proper--a present such as nothing less than a

glorious windfall could have enabled me to buy. For while engaged, some

three years back, upon a grand historical painting of “Cœur de Lion and

Saladin,” now to be seen--but let that pass; posterity will always know

where to find it--I was harassed in mind perpetually concerning the

grain of the fur of a cat. To the dashing young artists of the present

day this may seem a trifle; to them, no doubt, a cat is a cat--or

would be, if they could make it one. Of course, there are cats enough

in London, and sometimes even a few to spare; but I wanted a cat of

peculiar order, and of a Saracenic cast. I walked miles and miles;

till at last I found him residing in a very old-fashioned house in the

Polygon, at Somers Town. Here was a genuine paradise of cats, carefully

ministered to and guarded by a maiden lady of Portuguese birth and of

advanced maturity. Each of these nine cats possessed his own stool--a

mahogany stool, with a velvet cushion, and his name embroidered upon

it in beautiful letters of gold. And every day they sat round the

fire to digest their dinners, all nine of them, each on his proper

stool, some purring, some washing their faces, and some blinking or

nodding drowsily. But I need not have spoken of this, except that one

of them was called “Saladin.” He was the very cat I wanted. I made his

acquaintance in the area, and followed it up on the knife-boy’s board.

And then I had the most happy privilege of saving him from a tail-pipe.

Thus my entrance was secured into this feline Eden; and the lady was

so well pleased that she gave me an order for nine full-length cat

portraits, at the handsome price of ten guineas apiece. And not only

this, but at her demise--which followed, alas! too speedily--she left

me £150, as a proof of her esteem and affection.

This sum I divided into three equal parts--fifty pounds for a present

for George, another fifty for a duty to myself, and the residue to

be put by for any future purposes. I knew that my friend had no gold

watch; neither, of course, did I possess one. In those days a gold

watch was thought a good deal of, and made an impression in society,

as a three-hundred-guinea ring does now. Barwise was then considered

the best watchmaker in London, and perhaps in the world. So I went to

his shop, and chose two gold watches of good size and substance--none

of your trumpery catchpenny things, the size of a gilt pill trodden

upon--at the price of fifty guineas each. As I took the pair, the

foreman let me have them for a hundred pounds, including also in that

figure a handsome gold key for each, of exactly the same pattern, and a

guard for the fob of watered black-silk ribbon.

My reason for choosing these two watches, out of a trayful of similar

quality, was perhaps a little whimsical--viz., that the numbers they

bore happened to be sequents. Each had its number engraved on its white

enamel dial, in small but very clear figures, placed a little above

the central spindle; also upon the extreme verge, at the nadir below

the seconds hand, the name of the maker, “Barwise, London.” They were

not what are called “hunting watches,” but had strong and very clear

lunette glasses fixed in rims of substantial gold. And their respective

numbers were 7777 and 7778.

Carrying these in wash-leather bags, I gave George Bowring his choice

of the two; and he chose the one with four figures of seven, making

some little joke about it, not good enough to repeat, nor even bad

enough to laugh at.

CHAPTER II.

For six years after this all went smoothly with George Bowring and

myself. We met almost daily, although we did not lodge together (as

once we had done) nor spend the evening hours together, because, of

course, he had now his home and family rising around him. By the summer

of 1832 he had three children, and was expecting a fourth at no very

distant time. His eldest son was named after me, “Robert Bistre,” for

such is my name, which I have often thought of changing. Not that

the name is at all a bad one, as among friends and relations, but

that, when I am addressed by strangers, “Mr. Bistre” has a jingling

sound, suggestive of childish levity. “Sir Robert Bistre,” however,

would sound uncommonly well; and (as some people say) less eminent

artists--but perhaps, after all, I am not so very old as to be in a

hurry.

In the summer of 1832--as elderly people will call to mind, and the

younger sort will have heard or read--the cholera broke over London

like a bursting meteor. Such panic had not been known, I believe, since

the time of the plague, in the reign of Charles II., as painted (beyond

any skill of the brush) by the simple and wonderful pen of Defoe.

There had been in the interval many seasons--or at least I am informed

so--of sickness more widely spread, and of death more frequent, if not

so sudden. But now this new plague, attacking so harshly a man’s most

perceptive and valued part, drove rich people out of London faster than

horses (not being attacked) could fly. Well, used as I was to a good

deal of poison in dealing with my colours, I felt no alarm on my own

account, but was anxious about my landlady. This was an excellently

honest woman of fifty-five summers at the utmost, but weakly

confessing to as much as forty. She had made a point of insisting upon

a brisket of beef and a flat-polled cabbage for dinner every Saturday;

and the same, with a “cowcumber,” cold on Sunday; and for supper a

soft-roed herring, ever since her widowhood.

“Mrs. Whitehead,” said I--for that was her name, though she said she

did not deserve it; and her hair confirmed her in that position by

growing darker from year to year--“Madam, allow me to beg you to vary

your diet a little at this sad time.”

“I varies it every day, Mr. Bistre,” she answered somewhat snappishly.

“The days of the week is not so many but what they all come round

again.”

For the moment I did not quite perceive the precision of her argument;

but after her death I was able to do more justice to her intellect.

And, unhappily, she was removed to a better world on the following

Sunday.

To a man in London of quiet habits and regular ways and periods there

scarcely can be a more desperate blow than the loss of his landlady.

It is not only that his conscience pricks him for all his narrow,

plagiaristic, and even irrational suspicions about the low level of his

tea caddy, or a neap tide in his brandy bottle, or any false evidence

of the eyes (which ever go spying to lock up the heart), or the ears,

which are also wicked organs--these memories truly are grievous to

him, and make him yearn now to be robbed again; but what he feels most

sadly is the desolation of having nobody who understands his locks.

One of the best men I ever knew was so plagued with his sideboard

every day for two years, after dinner, that he married a little new

maid-of-all-work--because she was a blacksmith’s daughter.

Nothing of that sort, however, occurred in my case, I am proud to say.

But finding myself in a helpless state, without anyone to be afraid

of, I had only two courses before me: either to go back to my former

landlady (who was almost too much of a Tartar, perhaps), or else to

run away from my rooms till Providence provided a new landlady.

Now, in this dilemma I met George Bowring, who saw my distress, and

most kindly pressed me to stay at his house till some female arose to

manage my affairs for me. This, of course, I declined to do, especially

under present circumstances; and, with mutual pity, we parted. But

the very next day he sought me out, in a quiet nook where a few good

artists were accustomed to meet and think; and there he told me that

really now he saw his way to cut short my troubles as well as his own,

and to earn a piece of enjoyment and profit for both of us. And I

happen to remember his very words.

“You are cramped in your hand, my dear fellow,” said he (for in those

days youths did not call each other “old man”--with sad sense of their

own decrepitude). “Bob, you are losing your freedom of touch. You must

come out of these stony holes, and look at a rocky mountain.”

My heart gave a jump at these words; and yet I had been too much laid

flat by facts--“sat upon,” is the slang of these last twenty years, and

in the present dearth of invention must serve, no doubt, for another

twenty--I say that I had been used as a cushion by so many landladies

and maids-of-all-work (who take not an hour to find out where they need

do no work), that I could not fetch my breath to think of ever going up

a mountain.

“I will leave you to think of it, Bob,” said George, putting his hat on

carefully; “I am bound for time, and you seem to be nervous. Consult

your pillow, my dear fellow; and peep into your old stocking and see

whether you can afford it.”

That last hit settled me. People said, in spite of all my generous

acts--and nobody knows, except myself, the frequency and the extent of

these--without understanding the merits of the case--perfect (or rather

imperfect) strangers said that I was stingy! To prove the contrary, I

resolved to launch into great expenditure, and to pay coach fare all

the way from London toward the nearest mountain.

Half the inhabitants now were rushing helter-skelter out of London, and

very often to seaside towns where the smell of fish destroyed them.

And those who could not get away were shuddering at the blinds drawn

down, and huddling away from the mutes at the doors, and turning pale

at the funeral bells. And some, who had never thought twice before of

their latter end, now began to dwell with so much unction upon it, that

Providence graciously spared them the waste of perpetual preparation.

Among the rest, George Bowring had been scared, far more than he liked

to own, by the sudden death of his butcher, between half a dozen chops

for cutlets and the trimming of a wing-bone. George’s own cook had gone

down with the order, and meant to bring it all back herself, because

she knew what butchers do when left to consider their subject. And Mrs.

Tompkins was so alarmed that she gave only six hours’ notice to leave,

though her husband was far on the salt-sea wave, according to her own

account, and she had none to make her welcome except her father’s

second wife. This broke up the household; and hence it was that George

tempted me so with the mountains.

For he took his wife and children to an old manor-house in Berkshire,

belonging to two maiden aunts of the lady, who promised to see to all

that might happen, but wanted no gentleman in the house at a period of

such delicacy. George Bowring, therefore, agreed to meet me on the 12th

day of September, at the inn in Reading--I forget its name--where the

Regulator coach (belonging to the old company, and leaving White Horse

Cellars at half-past nine in the morning) allowed an hour to dine, from

one o’clock onward, as the roads might be. And here I found him, and

we supped at Oxford, and did very well at the Mitre. On the following

morning we took coach for Shrewsbury, as we had agreed, and, reaching

the town before dark, put up at the Talbot Inn, and sauntered into the

dear old school, to see what the lads had been at since our time; for

their names and their exploits, at Oxford and Cambridge, are scored in

large letters upon the panels, from the year 1806 and onward, so that

soon there will be no place to register any more of them; and we found

that though we ourselves had done nothing, many fine fellows had been

instituted in letters of higher humanity, and were holding up the old

standard, so that we longed to invite them to dinner. But discipline

must be maintained; and that word means, more than anything else, the

difference of men’s ages.

Now, at Shrewsbury, we had resolved to cast off all further heed

of coaches; and knowing the country pretty well, or recalling it

from our childhood, to strike away on foot for some of the mountain

wildernesses. Of these, in those days, nobody knew much more than

that they were high and steep, and slippery and dangerous, and much to

be shunned by all sensible people who liked a nice fire and the right

side of the window. So that when we shouldered staves with knapsacks

flapping heavily, all the wiser sort looked on us as marching off to

Bedlam.

In the morning, as we were starting, we set our watches by the old

school dial, as I have cause to remember well. And we staked half a

crown, in a sporting manner, each on his own watch to be the truer

by sun upon our way back again. And thus we left those ancient walls

and the glancing of the river, and stoutly took the Welshpool road,

dreading nought except starvation.

Although in those days I was not by any means a cripple, George was

far stronger of arm and leg, having always been famous, though we made

no fuss about such things then, for running and jumping, and lifting

weights, and using the boxing-gloves and the foils. A fine, brave

fellow as ever lived, with a short, straight nose and a resolute chin,

he touched the measuring-bar quite fairly at seventy-four inches,

and turned the scales at fourteen stone and a quarter. And so, as my

chattels weighed more than his (by means of a rough old easel and

material for rude sketches), he did me a good turn now and then by

changing packs for a mile or two. And thus we came in four days’ march

to Aber-Aydyr, a village lying under Cader Idris.

CHAPTER III.

If any place ever lay out of the world, and was proud of itself for

doing so, this little village of Aber-Aydyr must have been very near

it. The village was built, as the people expressed it, of thirty

cottages, one public-house, one shop universal, and two chapels.

The torrent of the Aydyr entered with a roar of rapids, and at the

lower end departed in a thunder of cascades. The natives were all so

accustomed to live in the thick of this watery uproar that, whenever

they left their beloved village to see the inferior outer world,

they found themselves as deaf as posts till they came to a weir or a

waterfall. And they told us that in the scorching summer of the year

1826 the river had failed them so that for nearly a month they could

only discourse by signs; and they used to stand on the bridge and

point at the shrunken rapids, and stop their ears to exclude that

horrible emptiness. Till a violent thunderstorm broke up the drought,

and the river came down roaring; and the next day all Aber-Aydyr was

able to gossip again as usual.

Finding these people, who lived altogether upon slate, of a quaint and

original turn, George Bowring and I resolved to halt and rest the soles

of our feet a little, and sketch and fish the neighbourhood. For George

had brought his rod and tackle, and many a time had he wanted to stop

and set up his rod and begin to cast; but I said that I would not be

cheated so: he had promised me a mountain, and would he put me off with

a river? Here, however, we had both delights; the river for him and

the mountain for me. As for the fishing, all that he might have, and I

would grudge him none of it, if he fairly divided whatever he caught.

But he must not expect me to follow him always and watch all his dainty

manœuvring; each was to carry and eat his own dinner, whenever we made

a day of it, so that he might keep to his flies and his water, while I

worked away with my brush at the mountains. And thus we spent a most

pleasant week, though we knew very little of Welsh and the slaters

spoke but little English. But--much as they are maligned because they

will not have strangers to work with them--we found them a thoroughly

civil, obliging, and rather intelligent set of men; most of them also

of a respectable and religious turn of mind; and they scarcely ever

poach, except on Saturdays and Mondays.

On September 25, as we sat at breakfast in the little sanded parlour

of the Cross-Pipes public house, our bedroom being overhead, my dear

friend complained to me that he was tired of fishing so long up and

down one valley, and asked me to come with him further up, into wilder

and rockier districts, where the water ran deeper (as he had been

told) and the trout were less worried by quarrymen, because it was

such a savage place, deserted by all except evil spirits, that even

the Aber-Aydyr slaters could not enjoy the fishing there. I promised

him gladly to come, only keeping the old understanding between us,

that each should attend to his own pursuits and his own opportunities

mainly; so that George might stir most when the trout rose well, and

I when the shadows fell properly. And thus we set forth about nine

o’clock of a bright and cheerful morning, while the sun, like a courtly

perruquier of the reign of George II., was lifting, and shifting, and

setting in order the vapoury curls of the mountains.

We trudged along thus at a merry swing, for the freshness of autumnal

dew was sparkling in the valley, until we came to a rocky pass,

where walking turned to clambering. After an hour of sharpish work

among slaty shelves and threatening crags, we got into one of those

troughlike hollows hung on each side with precipices, which look as if

the earth had sunk for the sake of letting the water through. On our

left hand, cliff towered over cliff to the grand height of Pen y Cader,

the steepest and most formidable aspect of the mountain. Rock piled

on rock, and shingle cast in naked waste disdainfully, and slippery

channels scooped by torrents of tempestuous waters, forbade one to

desire at all to have anything more to do with them--except, of course,

to get them painted at a proper distance, so that they might hang at

last in the dining rooms of London, to give people appetite with sense

of hungry breezes, and to make them comfortable with the sight of

danger.

“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.

“You cannot enter this house,” he said in very good English, and by no

means rudely. “I am sorry for it, but it cannot be. My little daughter

is very ill, the last of seven. You must go elsewhere.”

With these words he bowed again to me, while his sad eyes seemed to

pierce my soul; and then he quietly closed the wicket and fastened it

with a heavy bolt, and I knew that we must indeed go further.

This was no easy thing to do; for our useless walk to “Crug y Dlwlith”

(the Dewless Hills), as this farm was called, had taken us further

at every step from the place we must strive for after all--the good

little Aber-Aydyr. The gallant quarrymen were now growing both weary

and uneasy; and in justice to them I must say that no temptation of

money, nor even any appeal to their sympathies, but only a challenge of

their patriotism held them to the sad duties owing from the living to

the dead. But knowing how proud all Welshmen are of the fame of their

race and country, happily I exclaimed at last, when fear was getting

the mastery, “What will be said of this in England, this low cowardice

of the Cymro?” Upon that they looked at one another and did their best

right gallantly.

Now, I need not go into any further sad details of this most sad time,

except to say that Dr. Jones, who came the next day from Dolgelly, made

a brief examination by order of the coroner. Of course, he had too much

sense to suppose that the case was one of cholera; but to my surprise

he pronounced that death was the result of “asphyxia, caused by too

long immersion in the water.” And knowing nothing of George Bowring’s

activity, vigour, and cultivated power in the water, perhaps he was not

to be blamed for dreaming that a little mountain stream could drown

him. I, on the other hand, felt as sure that my dear friend was foully

murdered as I did that I should meet him in heaven--if I lived well for

the rest of my life, which I resolved at once to do--and there have

the whole thing explained, and perhaps be permitted to glance at the

man who did it, as Lazarus did at Dives.

In spite of the doctor’s evidence and the coroner’s own persuasion, the

jury found that “George Bowring died of the Caroline Morgan”--which

the clerk corrected to cholera morbus--“brought on by wetting his feet

and eating too many fish of his own catching.” And so you may see it

entered now in the records of the court of the coroners of the king for

Merioneth.

And now I was occupied with a trouble, which, after all, was more

urgent than the enquiry how it came to pass. When a man is dead, it

must be taken as a done thing, not to be undone; and, happily, all

near relatives are inclined to see it in that light. They are grieved,

of course, and they put on hatbands and give no dinner parties; and

they even think of their latter ends more than they might have desired

to do. But after a little while all comes round. Such things must be

happening always, and it seems so unchristian to repine; and if any

money has been left them, truly they must attend to it. On the other

hand, if there has been no money, they scarcely see why they should

mourn for nothing; and, as a duty, they begin to allow themselves to be

roused up.

But when a wife becomes a widow, it is wholly different. No money

can ever make up to her the utter loss of the love-time and the

loneliness of the remaining years; the little turns, and thoughts, and

touches--wherever she goes and whatever she does--which at every corner

meet her with a deep, perpetual want. She tries to fetch her spirit up

and to think of her duties to all around--to her children, or to the

guests whom trouble forces upon her for business’ sake, or even the

friends who call to comfort (though the call can fetch her none); but

all the while how deeply aches her sense that all these duties are as

different as a thing can be from her love-work to her husband!

What could I do? I had heard from George, but could not for my life

remember, the name of that old house in Berkshire where poor Mrs.

Bowring was on a visit to two of her aunts, as I said before. I

ventured to open her letter to her husband, found in his left-hand

side breast-pocket, and, having dried it, endeavoured only to make out

whence she wrote; but there was nothing. Ladies scarcely ever date a

letter both with time and place, for they seem to think that everybody

must know it, because they do. So the best I could do was to write

to poor George’s house in London, and beg that the letter might be

forwarded at once. It came, however, too late to hand. For, although

the newspapers of that time were respectably slow and steady, compared

with the rush they all make nowadays, they generally managed to outrun

the post, especially in the nutting season. They told me at Dolgelly,

and they confirmed it at Machynlleth, that nobody must desire to get

his letters at any particular time, in the months of September and

October, when the nuts were ripe. For the postmen never would come

along until they had filled their bags with nuts, for the pleasure of

their families. And I dare say they do the same thing now, but without

being free to declare it so.

CHAPTER VII.

The body of my dear friend was borne round the mountain slopes to

Dolgelly and buried there, with no relative near, nor any mourner

except myself; for his wife, or rather his widow, was taken with sudden

illness (as might be expected), and for weeks it was doubtful whether

she would stay behind to mourn for him. But youth and strength at last

restored her to dreary duties and worldly troubles.

Of the latter, a great part fell on me; and I did my best--though you

might not think so, after the fuss I made of my own--to intercept all

that I could, and quit myself manfully of the trust which George had

returned from the dead to enjoin. And, what with one thing and another,

and a sudden dearth of money which fell on me (when my cat-fund was all

spent, and my gold watch gone up a gargoyle), I had such a job to feed

the living that I never was able to follow up the dead.

The magistrates held some enquiry, of course, and I had to give my

evidence; but nothing came of it, except that the quarryman, Evan

Peters, clearly proved his innocence. Being a very clever fellow, and

dabbling a bit in geology, he had taken his hammer up the mountains, as

his practice was when he could spare the time, to seek for new veins of

slate, or lead, or even gold, which is said to be there. He was able

to show that he had been at Tal y Llyn at the time of day when George

would be having his luncheon; and the people who knew Evan Peters were

much more inclined to suspect me than him. But why should they suspect

anybody, when anyone but a fool could see “how plain it was of the

cholera?”

Twenty years slipped by (like a rope paid out on the seashore, “hand

over hand,” chafing as it goes, but gone as soon as one looks after

it), and my hair was gray, and my fame was growing (slowly, as it

appeared to me, but as all my friends said “rapidly”; as if I could

never have earned it!) when the mystery of George Bowring’s death was

solved without an effort.

I had been so taken up with the three dear children, and working for

them as hard as if they were my own (for the treasury of our British

empire was bankrupt to these little ones--“no provision had been made

for such a case,” and so we had to make it)--I say that these children

had grown to me and I to them in such degree that they all of them

called me “Uncle!”

This is the most endearing word that one human being can use to

another. A fellow is certain to fight with his brothers and sisters,

his father, and perhaps even his mother. Tenfold thus with his wife;

but whoever did fight with his uncle? Of course I mean unless he was

his heir. And the tenderness of this relation has not escaped _vox

populi_, that keen discriminator. Who is the most reliable, cordial,

indispensable of mankind--especially to artists--in every sense of the

word the dearest? A pawnbroker; he is our uncle.

Under my care, these three children grew to be splendid “members of

society.” They used to come and kick over my easel with legs that were

quite Titanic; and I could not scold them when I thought of George.

Bob Bistre, the eldest, was my apprentice, and must become famous in

consequence; and when he was twenty-five years old, and money became no

object to me (through the purchase by a great art critic of the very

worst picture I ever painted; half of it, in fact, was Bob’s!), I gave

the boy choice of our autumn trip to California, or the antipodes.

“I would rather go to North Wales, dear uncle,” he answered, and then

dropped his eyes, as his father used when he had provoked me. That

settled the matter. He must have his way; though as for myself, I must

confess that I have begun, for a long time now, upon principle, to

shun melancholy.

The whole of the district is opened up so by those desperate railways

that we positively dined at the Cross-Pipes Hotel the very day after

we left Euston Square. Our landlady did not remember me, which was

anything but flattering. But she jumped at Bob as if she would have

kissed him; for he was the image of his father, whose handsome face had

charmed her.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Aydyr was making as much noise as ever, for the summer had been a

wet one; and of course all the people of Aber-Aydyr had their ears wide

open. I showed Bob the bridge and the place of my vision, but did not

explain its meaning, lest my love for him should seem fiduciary; and

the next morning, at his most urgent request, we started afoot for that

dark, sad valley. It was a long walk, and I did not find that twenty

years had shortened it.

“Here we are at last,” I said, “and the place looks the same as ever.

There is the grand old Pen y Cader, with the white cloud rolling as

usual; to the left and right are the two other summits, the arms of

the chair of Idris; and over the shoulder of that crag you can catch a

glassy light in the air--that is the reflection of Tal y Llyn.”

“Yes, yes!” he answered impatiently. “I know all that from your

picture, uncle. But show me the place where my father died.”

“It lies immediately under our feet. You see that gray stone down in

the hollow, a few yards from the river brink. There he sat, as I have

often told you, twenty years ago this day. There he was taking his

food, when someone----Well, well! God knows, but we never shall. My

boy, I am stiff in the knees; go on.”

He went on alone, as I wished him to do, with exactly his father’s

step, and glance, figure, face, and stature. Even his dress was of the

silver-gray which his father had been so fond of, and which the kind

young fellow chose to please his widowed mother. I could almost believe

(as a cloudy mantle stole in long folds over the highland, reproducing

the lights, and shades, and gloom of that mysterious day) that the

twenty years were all a dream, and that here was poor George Bowring

going to his murder and his watery grave.

My nerves are good and strong, I trow; and that much must have long

been evident. But I did not know what young Bob’s might be, and

therefore I left him to himself. No man should be watched as he stands

at the grave of his wife or mother: neither should a young fellow who

sits on the spot where his father was murdered. Therefore, as soon as

our Bob had descended into the gray stone-pit, in which his dear father

must have breathed his last, I took good care to be out of sight,

after observing that he sat down exactly as his father must have sat,

except that his attitude, of course, was sad, and his face pale and

reproachful. Then, leaving the poor young fellow to his thoughts, I

also sat down to collect myself.

But before I had time to do more than wonder at the mysterious ways

of the world, or of Providence in guiding it; at the manner in which

great wrong lies hidden, and great woe falls unrecompensed; at the

dark, uncertain laws which cover (like an indiscriminate mountain

cloud) the good and the bad, the kind and the cruel, the murdered and

the murderer--a loud shriek rang through the rocky ravine, and up the

dark folds of the mountain.

I started with terror, and rushed forward, and heard myself called, and

saw young Bowring leap up, and stand erect and firm, although with a

gesture of horror. At his feet lay the body of a man struck dead, flung

on its back, with great hands spread on the eyes, and white hair over

them.

No need to ask what it meant. At last the justice of God was manifest.

The murderer lay, a rigid corpse, before the son of the murdered.

“Did you strike him?” I asked.

“Is it likely,” said the youth, “that I would strike an aged man like

that? I assure you I never had such a fright in my life. This poor old

fellow came on me quite suddenly, from behind a rock, when all my mind

was full of my father; and his eyes met mine, and down he fell, as if I

had shot him through the heart!”

“You have done no less,” I answered; and then I stooped over the corpse

(as I had stooped over the corpse of its victim), and the whole of my

strength was required to draw the great knotted hands from the eyes,

upon which they were cramped with a spasm not yet relaxed.

“It is Hopkin ap Howel!” I cried, as the great eyes, glaring with the

horror of death, stood forth. “Black Hopkin once, white Hopkin now!

Robert Bowring, you have slain the man who slew your father.”

“You know that I never meant to do it,” said Bob. “Surely, uncle, it

was his own fault!”

“How did he come? I see no way. He was not here when I showed you the

place, or else we must have seen him.”

“He came round the corner of that rock, that stands in front of the

furze-bush.”

Now that we had the clue, a little examination showed the track. Behind

the furze-bush, a natural tunnel of rock, not more than a few yards

long, led into a narrow gorge covered with brushwood, and winding into

the valley below the farmhouse of the Dewless Crags. Thither we hurried

to obtain assistance, and there the whole mystery was explained.

Black Hopkin (who stole behind George Bowring and stunned, or, perhaps,

slew him with one vile blow) has this and this only to say at the

Bar--that he did it through love of his daughter.

Gwenthlian, the last of seven, lay dying on the day when my friend and

myself came up the valley of the Aydyr. Her father, a man of enormous

power of will and passion, as well as muscle, rushed forth of the house

like a madman, when the doctor from Dolgelly told him that nothing more

remained except to await the good time of heaven. It was the same

deadly decline which had slain every one of his children at that same

age, and now must extinguish a long descended and slowly impoverished

family.

“If I had but a gold watch I could save her!” he cried in his agony, as

he left the house. “Ever since the old gold watch was sold, they have

died--they have died! They are gone, one after one, the last of all my

children!”

In these lonely valleys lurks a strange old superstition that even

Death must listen to the voice of Time in gold; that, when the scanty

numbered moments of the sick are fleeting, a gold watch laid in the

wasted palm, and pointing the earthly hours, compels the scythe of

Death to pause, the timeless power to bow before the two great gods of

the human race--time and gold.

Poor George in the valley must have shown his watch. The despairing

father must have been struck with crafty madness at the sight. The

watch was placed in his daughter’s palm; but Death had no regard for

it. Thenceforth Black Hopkin was a blasted man, racked with remorse and

heart-disease, sometimes raving, always roving, but finding no place

of repentance. And it must have been a happy stroke--if he had made

his peace above, which none of us can deal with--when the throb of his

long-worn heart stood still at the vision of his victim, and his soul

took flight to realms that have no gold and no chronometer.

CROCKER’S HOLE.

PART I.

The Culm, which rises in Somersetshire, and hastening into a fairer

land (as the border waters wisely do) falls into the Exe near

Killerton, formerly was a lovely trout stream, such as perverts the

Devonshire angler from due respect toward Father Thames and the other

canals round London. In the Devonshire valleys it is sweet to see how

soon a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a

rivulet swells into a brook; and before one has time to say, “What are

you at?”--before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the

first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we have all the airs

and graces, demands and assertions of a full-grown river.

But what is the test of a river? Who shall say? “The power to drown a

man,” replies the river darkly. But rudeness is not argument. Rather

shall we say that the power to work a good undershot wheel, without

being dammed up all night in a pond, and leaving a tidy back-stream to

spare at the bottom of the orchard, is a fair certificate of riverhood.

If so, many Devonshire streams attain that rank within five miles of

their spring; aye, and rapidly add to it. At every turn they gather

aid, from ash-clad dingle and aldered meadow, mossy rock and ferny

wall, hedge-trough roofed with bramble netting, where the baby water

lurks, and lanes that coming down to ford bring suicidal tribute.

Arrogant, all-engrossing river, now it has claimed a great valley of

its own; and whatever falls within the hill scoop, sooner or later

belongs to itself. Even the crystal “shutt” that crosses the farmyard

by the woodrick, and glides down an aqueduct of last year’s bark for

Mary to fill the kettle from; and even the tricklets that have no

organs for telling or knowing their business, but only get into unwary

oozings in and among the water-grass, and there make moss and forget

themselves among it--one and all, they come to the same thing at last,

and that is the river.

The Culm used to be a good river at Culmstock, tormented already by

a factory, but not strangled as yet by a railroad. How it is now the

present writer does not know, and is afraid to ask, having heard of a

vile “Culm Valley Line.” But Culmstock bridge was a very pretty place

to stand and contemplate the ways of trout; which is easier work than

to catch them. When I was just big enough to peep above the rim, or

to lie upon it with one leg inside for fear of tumbling over, what a

mighty river it used to seem, for it takes a treat there and spreads

itself. Above the bridge the factory stream falls in again, having

done its business, and washing its hands in the innocent half that has

strayed down the meadows. Then under the arches they both rejoice and

come to a slide of about two feet, and make a short, wide pool below,

and indulge themselves in perhaps two islands, through which a little

river always magnifies itself, and maintains a mysterious middle. But

after that, all of it used to come together, and make off in one body

for the meadows, intent upon nurturing trout with rapid stickles, and

buttercuppy corners where fat flies may tumble in. And here you may

find in the very first meadow, or at any rate you might have found,

forty years ago, the celebrated “Crocker’s Hole.”

The story of Crocker is unknown to me, and interesting as it doubtless

was, I do not deal with him, but with his Hole. Tradition said that he

was a baker’s boy who, during his basket-rounds, fell in love with a

maiden who received the cottage-loaf, or perhaps good “Households,” for

her master’s use. No doubt she was charming, as a girl should be, but

whether she encouraged the youthful baker and then betrayed him with

false _rôle_, or whether she “consisted” throughout,--as our cousins

across the water express it,--is known to their _manes_ only. Enough

that she would not have the floury lad; and that he, after giving in

his books and money, sought an untimely grave among the trout. And

this was the first pool below the bread-walk deep enough to drown a

five-foot baker boy. Sad it was; but such things must be, and bread

must still be delivered daily.

A truce to such reflections,--as our foremost writers always say, when

they do not see how to go on with them,--but it is a serious thing

to know what Crocker’s Hole was like; because at a time when (if he

had only persevered, and married the maid, and succeeded to the oven,

and reared a large family of short-weight bakers) he might have been

leaning on his crutch beside the pool, and teaching his grandson to

swim by precept (that beautiful proxy for practice)--at such a time,

I say, there lived a remarkably fine trout in that hole. Anglers are

notoriously truthful, especially as to what they catch, or even more

frequently have not caught. Though I may have written fiction, among

many other sins,--as a nice old lady told me once,--now I have to deal

with facts; and foul scorn would I count it ever to make believe that

I caught that fish. My length at that time was not more than the butt

of a four-jointed rod, and all I could catch was a minnow with a pin,

which our cook Lydia would not cook, but used to say, “Oh, what a

shame, Master Richard! they would have been trout in the summer, please

God! if you would only a’ let ’em grow on.” She is living now, and will

bear me out in this.

But upon every great occasion there arises a great man; or to put it

more accurately, in the present instance, a mighty and distinguished

boy. My father, being the parson of the parish, and getting, need it

be said, small pay, took sundry pupils, very pleasant fellows, about

to adorn the universities. Among them was the original “Bude Light,”

as he was satirically called at Cambridge, for he came from Bude,

and there was no light in him. Among them also was John Pike, a born

Zebedee, if ever there was one.

John Pike was a thick-set younker, with a large and bushy head, keen

blue eyes that could see through water, and the proper slouch of

shoulder into which great anglers ripen; but greater still are born

with it; and of these was Master John. It mattered little what the

weather was, and scarcely more as to the time of year, John Pike must

have his fishing every day, and on Sundays he read about it, and made

flies. All the rest of the time he was thinking about it.

My father was coaching him in the fourth book of the Æneid and all

those wonderful speeches of Dido, where passion disdains construction;

but the only line Pike cared for was of horsehair. “I fear, Mr. Pike,

that you are not giving me your entire attention,” my father used to

say in his mild dry way; and once when Pike was more than usually

abroad, his tutor begged to share his meditations. “Well, sir,” said

Pike, who was very truthful, “I can see a green drake by the strawberry

tree, the first of the season, and your derivation of ‘barbarous’ put

me in mind of my barberry dye.” In those days it was a very nice point

to get the right tint for the mallard’s feather.

No sooner was lesson done than Pike, whose rod was ready upon the lawn,

dashed away always for the river, rushing headlong down the hill, and

away to the left through a private yard, where “no thoroughfare” was

put up, and a big dog stationed to enforce it. But Cerberus himself

could not have stopped John Pike; his conscience backed him up in

trespass the most sinful when his heart was inditing of a trout upon

the rise.

All this, however, is preliminary, as the boy said when he put his

father’s coat upon his grandfather’s tenterhooks, with felonious intent

upon his grandmother’s apples; the main point to be understood is this,

that nothing--neither brazen tower, hundred-eyed Argus, nor Cretan

Minotaur--could stop John Pike from getting at a good stickle. But,

even as the world knows nothing of its greatest men, its greatest men

know nothing of the world beneath their very nose, till fortune sneezes

dexter. For two years John Pike must have been whipping the water as

hard as Xerxes, without having ever once dreamed of the glorious trout

that lived in Crocker’s Hole. But why, when he ought to have been at

least on bowing terms with every fish as long as his middle finger, why

had he failed to know this champion? The answer is simple--because of

his short cuts. Flying as he did like an arrow from a bow, Pike used to

hit his beloved river at an elbow, some furlong below Crocker’s Hole,

where a sweet little stickle sailed away down stream, whereas for the

length of a meadow upward the water lay smooth, clear, and shallow;

therefore the youth, with so little time to spare, rushed into the

downward joy.

And here it may be noted that the leading maxim of the present period,

that man can discharge his duty only by going counter to the stream,

was scarcely mooted in those days. My grandfather (who was a wonderful

man, if he was accustomed to fill a cart in two days of fly-fishing on

the Barle) regularly fished down stream; and what more than a cartload

need anyone put into his basket?

And surely it is more genial and pleasant to behold our friend the

river growing and thriving as we go on, strengthening its voice and

enlargening its bosom, and sparkling through each successive meadow

with richer plenitude of silver, than to trace it against its own grain

and good-will toward weakness, and littleness, and immature conceptions.

However, you will say that if John Pike had fished up stream, he would

have found this trout much sooner. And that is true; but still, as it

was, the trout had more time to grow into such a prize. And the way in

which John found him out was this. For some days he had been tormented

with a very painful tooth, which even poisoned all the joys of fishing.

Therefore he resolved to have it out, and sturdily entered the shop of

John Sweetland, the village blacksmith, and there paid his sixpence.

Sweetland extracted the teeth of the village, whenever they required

it, in the simplest and most effectual way. A piece of fine wire was

fastened round the tooth, and the other end round the anvil’s nose,

then the sturdy blacksmith shut the lower half of his shop door, which

was about breast-high, with the patient outside and the anvil within; a

strong push of the foot upset the anvil, and the tooth flew out like a

well-thrown fly.

When John Pike had suffered this very bravely, “Ah, Master Pike,” said

the blacksmith, with a grin, “I reckon you won’t pull out thic there

big vish,”--the smithy commanded a view of the river,--“clever as you

be, quite so peart as thiccy.”

“What big fish?” asked the boy, with deepest interest, though his mouth

was bleeding fearfully.

“Why that girt mortial of a vish as hath his hover in Crocker’s Hole.

Zum on ’em saith as a’ must be a zammon.”

Off went Pike with his handkerchief to his mouth, and after him ran

Alec Bolt, one of his fellow-pupils, who had come to the shop to enjoy

the extraction.

“Oh, my!” was all that Pike could utter, when by craftily posting

himself he had obtained a good view of this grand fish.

“I’ll lay you a crown you don’t catch him!” cried Bolt, an impatient

youth, who scorned angling.

“How long will you give me?” asked the wary Pike, who never made rash

wagers.

“Oh! till the holidays if you like; or, if that won’t do, till

Michaelmas.”

Now the midsummer holidays were six weeks off--boys used not to talk of

“vacations” then, still less of “recesses.”

“I think I’ll bet you,” said Pike, in his slow way, bending forward

carefully, with his keen eyes on this monster; “but it would not be

fair to take till Michaelmas. I’ll bet you a crown that I catch him

before the holidays--at least, unless some other fellow does.”

PART II.

The day of that most momentous interview must have been the 14th of

May. Of the year I will not be so sure; for children take more note

of days than of years, for which the latter have their full revenge

thereafter. It must have been the 14th, because the morrow was our

holiday, given upon the 15th of May, in honour of a birthday.

Now, John Pike was beyond his years wary as well as enterprising,

calm as well as ardent, quite as rich in patience as in promptitude

and vigour. But Alec Bolt was a headlong youth, volatile, hot, and

hasty, fit only to fish the Maëlstrom, or a torrent of new lava. And

the moment he had laid that wager he expected his crown piece; though

time, as the lawyers phrase it, was “expressly of the essence of the

contract.” And now he demanded that Pike should spend the holiday in

trying to catch that trout.

“I shall not go near him,” that lad replied, “until I have got a new

collar.” No piece of personal adornment was it, without which he

would not act, but rather that which now is called the fly-cast, or

the gut-cast, or the trace, or what it may be. “And another thing,”

continued Pike; “the bet is off if you go near him, either now or at

any other time, without asking my leave first, and then only going as I

tell you.”

“What do I want with the great slimy beggar?” the arrogant Bolt made

answer. “A good rat is worth fifty of him. No fear of my going near

him, Pike. You shan’t get out of it that way.”

Pike showed his remarkable qualities that day, by fishing exactly as he

would have fished without having heard of the great Crockerite. He was

up and away upon the mill-stream before breakfast; and the forenoon he

devoted to his favourite course--first down the Craddock stream, a very

pretty confluent of the Culm, and from its junction, down the pleasant

hams, where the river winds toward Uffculme. It was my privilege to

accompany this hero, as his humble Sancho; while Bolt and the faster

race went up the river ratting. We were back in time to have Pike’s

trout (which ranged between two ounces and one-half pound) fried for

the early dinner; and here it may be lawful to remark that the trout

of the Culm are of the very purest excellence, by reason of the flinty

bottom, at any rate in these the upper regions. For the valley is the

western outlet of the Black-down range, with the Beacon hill upon the

north, and Hackpen long ridge to the south; and beyond that again the

Whetstone hill, upon whose western end dark port-holes scarped with

white grit mark the pits. But flint is the staple of the broad Culm

Valley, under good, well-pastured loam; and here are chalcedonies and

agate stones.

At dinner everybody had a brace of trout--large for the larger folk,

little for the little ones, with coughing and some patting on the back

for bones. What of equal purport could the fierce rat-hunter show? Pike

explained many points in the history of each fish, seeming to know

them none the worse, and love them all the better, for being fried. We

banqueted, neither a whit did soul get stinted of banquet impartial.

Then the wielder of the magic rod very modestly sought leave of absence

at the tea time.

“Fishing again, Mr. Pike, I suppose,” my father answered pleasantly; “I

used to be fond of it at your age; but never so entirely wrapped up in

it as you are.”

“No, sir; I am not going fishing again. I want to walk to Wellington,

to get some things at Cherry’s.”

“Books, Mr. Pike? Ah! I am very glad of that. But I fear it can only be

fly-books.”

“I want a little Horace for eighteen-pence--the Cambridge one just

published, to carry in my pocket--and a new hank of gut.”

“Which of the two is more important? Put that into Latin, and answer

it.”

“Utrum pluris facio? Flaccum flocci. Viscera magni.” With this vast

effort Pike turned as red as any trout spot.

“After that who could refuse you?” said my father. “You always tell the

truth, my boy, in Latin or in English.”

Although it was a long walk, some fourteen miles to Wellington and

back, I got permission to go with Pike; and as we crossed the bridge

and saw the tree that overhung Crocker’s Hole, I begged him to show me

that mighty fish.

“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “It would bring the blackguards. If the

blackguards once find him out, it is all over with him.”

“The blackguards are all in factory now, and I am sure they cannot see

us from the windows. They won’t be out till five o’clock.”

With the true liberality of young England, which abides even now as

large and glorious as ever, we always called the free and enlightened

operatives of the period by the courteous name above set down, and it

must be acknowledged that some of them deserved it, although perhaps

they poached with less of science than their sons. But the cowardly

murder of fish by liming the water was already prevalent.

Yielding to my request and perhaps his own desire--manfully kept

in check that morning--Pike very carefully approached that pool,

commanding me to sit down while he reconnoitred from the meadow upon

the right bank of the stream. And the place which had so sadly quenched

the fire of the poor baker’s love filled my childish heart with dread

and deep wonder at the cruelty of women. But as for John Pike, all he

thought of was the fish and the best way to get at him.

Very likely that hole is “holed out” now, as the Yankees well express

it, or at any rate changed out of knowledge. Even in my time a very

heavy flood entirely altered its character; but to the eager eye of

Pike it seemed pretty much as follows, and possibly it may have come to

such a form again:

The river, after passing though a hurdle fence at the head of the

meadow, takes a little turn or two of bright and shallow indifference,

then gathers itself into a good strong slide, as if going down a slope

instead of steps. The right bank is high and beetles over with yellow

loam and grassy fringe; but the other side is of flinty shingle, low

and bare and washed by floods. At the end of this rapid, the stream

turns sharply under an ancient alder tree into a large, deep, calm

repose, cool, unruffled, and sheltered from the sun by branch and

leaf--and that is the hole of poor Crocker.

At the head of the pool (where the hasty current rushes in so

eagerly, with noisy excitement and much ado) the quieter waters from

below, having rested and enlarged themselves, come lapping up round

either curve, with some recollection of their past career, the hoary

experience of foam. And sidling toward the new arrival of the impulsive

column, where they meet it, things go on, which no man can describe

without his mouth being full of water. A “V” is formed, a fancy letter

V, beyond any designer’s tracery, and even beyond his imagination,

a perpetually fluctuating limpid wedge, perpetually crenelled and

rippled into by little ups and downs that try to make an impress, but

can only glide away upon either side or sink in dimples under it. And

here a gray bough of the ancient alder stretches across, like a thirsty

giant’s arm, and makes it a very ticklish place to throw a fly. Yet

this was the very spot our John Pike must put his fly into, or lose his

crown.

Because the great tenant of Crocker’s Hole, who allowed no other fish

to wag a fin there, and from strict monopoly had grown so fat, kept

his victualing yard--if so low an expression can be used concerning

him--within about a square yard of this spot. He had a sweet hover,

both for rest and recreation, under the bank, in a placid antre, where

the water made no noise, but tickled his belly in digestive ease. The

loftier the character is of any being, the slower and more dignified

his movements are. No true psychologist could have believed--as

Sweetland the blacksmith did, and Mr. Pook the tinman--that this trout

could ever be the embodiment of Crocker. For this was the last trout in

the universal world to drown himself for love; if truly any trout has

done so.

“You may come now, and try to look along my back,” John Pike, with

a reverential whisper, said to me. “Now don’t be in a hurry, young

stupid; kneel down. He is not to be disturbed at his dinner, mind. You

keep behind me, and look along my back; I never clapped eyes on such a

whopper.”

I had to kneel down in a tender reminiscence of pasture land, and gaze

carefully; and not having eyes like those of our Zebedee (who offered

his spine for a camera, as he crawled on all fours in front of me), it

took me a long time to descry an object most distinct to all who have

that special gift of piercing with their eyes the water. See what is

said upon this subject in that delicious book, “The Gamekeeper at Home.”

“You are no better than a muff,” said Pike, and it was not in my power

to deny it.

“If the sun would only leave off,” I said. But the sun, who was having

a very pleasant play with the sparkle of the water and the twinkle of

the leaves, had no inclination to leave off yet, but kept the rippling

crystal in a dance of flashing facets, and the quivering verdure in a

steady flush of gold.

But suddenly a May-fly, a luscious gray-drake, richer and more delicate

than canvas-back or woodcock, with a dart and a leap and a merry

zigzag, began to enjoy a little game above the stream. Rising and

falling like a gnat, thrilling her gauzy wings, and arching her elegant

pellucid frame, every now and then she almost dipped her three long

tapering whisks into the dimples of the water.

“He sees her! He’ll have her as sure as a gun!” cried Pike, with a

gulp, as if he himself were “rising.” “Now, can you see him, stupid?”

“Crikey, crokums!” I exclaimed, with classic elegance; “I have seen

that long thing for five minutes; but I took it for a tree.”

“You little”--animal quite early in the alphabet--“now don’t you stir a

peg, or I’ll dig my elbow into you.”

The great trout was stationary almost as a stone, in the middle of the

“V” above described. He was gently fanning with his large clear fins,

but holding his own against the current mainly by the wagging of his

broad-fluked tail. As soon as my slow eyes had once defined him, he

grew upon them mightily, moulding himself in the matrix of the water,

as a thing put into jelly does. And I doubt whether even John Pike saw

him more accurately than I did. His size was such, or seemed to be

such, that I fear to say a word about it; not because language does not

contain the word, but from dread of exaggeration. But his shape and

colour may be reasonably told without wounding the feeling of an age

whose incredulity springs from self-knowledge.

His head was truly small, his shoulders vast; the spring of his back

was like a rainbow when the sun is southing; the generous sweep of his

deep elastic belly, nobly pulped out with rich nurture, showed what

the power of his brain must be, and seemed to undulate, time for time,

with the vibrant vigilance of his large wise eyes. His latter end was

consistent also. An elegant taper run of counter, coming almost to a

cylinder, as a mackered does, boldly developed with a hugeous spread to

a glorious amplitude of swallow-tail. His colour was all that can well

be desired, but ill-described by any poor word-palette. Enough that

he seemed to tone away from olive and umber, with carmine stars, to

glowing gold and soft pure silver, mantled with a subtle flush of rose

and fawn and opal.

Swoop came a swallow, as we gazed, and was gone with a flick, having

missed the May-fly. But the wind of his passage, or the skir of wing,

struck the merry dancer down, so that he fluttered for one instant on

the wave, and that instant was enough. Swift as the swallow, and more

true of aim, the great trout made one dart, and a sound, deeper than a

tinkle, but as silvery as a bell, rang the poor ephemerid’s knell. The

rapid water scarcely showed a break; but a bubble sailed down the pool,

and the dark hollow echoed with the music of a rise.

“He knows how to take a fly,” said Pike; “he has had too many to be

tricked with mine. Have him I must; but how ever shall I do it?”

All the way to Wellington he uttered not a word, but shambled along

with a mind full of care. When I ventured to look up now and then,

to surmise what was going on beneath his hat, deeply-set eyes and

a wrinkled forehead, relieved at long intervals by a solid shake,

proved that there are meditations deeper than those of philosopher or

statesman.

PART III.

Surely no trout could have been misled by the artificial May-fly

of that time, unless he were either a very young fish, quite new

to entomology, or else one afflicted with a combination of myopy

and bulimy. Even now there is room for plenty of improvement in our

counterfeit presentment; but in those days the body was made with

yellow mohair, ribbed with red silk and gold twist, and as thick as a

fertile bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that to offer such a thing to

Crocker’s trout would probably consign him--even if his great stamina

should over-get the horror--to an uneatable death, through just and

natural indignation. On the other hand, while the May-fly lasted, a

trout so cultured, so highly refined, so full of light and sweetness,

would never demean himself to low bait, or any coarse son of a maggot.

Meanwhile Alec Bolt allowed poor Pike no peaceful thought, no calm

absorption of high mind into the world of flies, no placid period of

cobblers’ wax, floss-silk, turned hackles, and dubbing. For in making

of flies John Pike had his special moments of inspiration, times of

clearer insight into the everlasting verities, times of brighter

conception and more subtle execution, tails of more elastic grace

and heads of a neater and nattier expression. As a poet labours at

one immortal line, compressing worlds of wisdom into the music of

ten syllables, so toiled the patient Pike about the fabric of a fly

comprising all the excellence that ever sprang from maggot. Yet Bolt

rejoiced to jerk his elbow at the moment of sublimest art. And a swarm

of flies was blighted thus.

Peaceful, therefore, and long-suffering, and full of resignation as he

was, John Pike came slowly to the sad perception that arts avail not

without arms. The elbow, so often jerked, at last took a voluntary jerk

from the shoulder and Alec Bolt lay prostrate, with his right eye full

of cobbler’s wax. This put a desirable check upon his energies for a

week or more, and by that time Pike had flown his fly.

When the honeymoon of spring and summer (which they are now too

fashionable to celebrate in this country), the hey-day of the whole

year marked by the budding of the wild rose, the start of the wheatear

from its sheath, the feathering of the lesser plantain, and flowering

of the meadow-sweet, and, foremost for the angler’s joy, the caracole

of May-flies--when these things are to be seen and felt (which has not

happened at all this year), then rivers should be mild and bright,

skies blue and white with fleecy cloud, the west wind blowing softly,

and the trout in charming appetite.

On such a day came Pike to the bank of Culm, with a loudly beating

heart. A fly there is, not ignominious, or of cowdab origin, neither

gross and heavy-bodied, from cradlehood of slimy stones, nor yet of

menacing aspect and suggesting deeds of poison, but elegant, bland,

and of sunny nature, and obviously good to eat. Him or her--why quest

we which?--the shepherd of the dale, contemptuous of gender, except in

his own species, has called, and as long as they two coexist will call,

the “Yellow Sally.” A fly that does not waste the day in giddy dances

and the fervid waltz, but undergoes family incidents with decorum and

discretion. He or she, as the case may be,--for the natural history of

the river bank is a book to come hereafter, and of fifty men who make

flies not one knows the name of the fly he is making,--in the early

morning of June, or else in the second quarter of the afternoon, this

Yellow Sally fares abroad, with a nice well-ordered flutter.

Despairing of the May-fly, as it still may be despaired of, Pike came

down to the river with his master-piece of portraiture. The artificial

Yellow Sally is generally always--as they say in Cheshire--a mile or

more too yellow. On the other hand, the “Yellow Dun” conveys no idea

of any Sally. But Pike had made a very decent Sally, not perfect (for

he was young as well as wise), but far above any counterfeit to be had

in fishing-tackle shops. How he made it, he told nobody. But if he

lives now, as I hope he does, any of my readers may ask him through the

G. P. O., and hope to get an answer.

It fluttered beautifully on the breeze, and in such living form, that

a brother or sister Sally came up to see it, and went away sadder and

wiser. Then Pike said: “Get away, you young wretch,” to your humble

servant who tells this tale; yet being better than his words, allowed

that pious follower to lie down upon his digestive organs and with deep

attention watch. There must have been great things to see, but to see

them so was difficult. And if I huddle up what happened, excitement

also shares the blame.

Pike had fashioned well the time and manner of this overture. He knew

that the giant Crockerite was satiate now with May-flies, or began to

find their flavour failing, as happens to us with asparagus, marrow-fat

peas, or strawberries, when we have had a month of them. And he thought

that the first Yellow Sally of the season, inferior though it were,

might have the special charm of novelty. With the skill of a Zulu,

he stole up through the branches over the lower pool till he came to

a spot where a yard-wide opening gave just space for spring of rod.

Then he saw his desirable friend at dinner, wagging his tail, as a

hungry gentleman dining with the Lord Mayor agitates his coat. With one

dexterous whirl, untaught by any of the many books upon the subject,

John Pike laid his Yellow Sally (for he cast with one fly only) as

lightly as gossamer upon the rapid, about a yard in front of the big

trout’s head. A moment’s pause, and then, too quick for words, was the

things that happened.

A heavy plunge was followed by a fearful rush. Forgetful of current the

river was ridged, as if with a plough driven under it; the strong line,

though given out as fast as might be, twanged like a harp-string as it

cut the wave, and then Pike stood up, like a ship dismasted, with the

butt of his rod snapped below the ferrule. He had one of those foolish

things, just invented, a hollow butt of hickory; and the finial ring of

his spare top looked out, to ask what had happened to the rest of it.

“Bad luck!” cried the fisherman; “but never mind, I shall have him next

time, to a certainty.”

When this great issue came to be considered, the cause of it was sadly

obvious. The fish, being hooked, had made off with the rush of a shark

for the bottom of the pool. A thicket of saplings below the alder tree

had stopped the judicious hooker from all possibility of following; and

when he strove to turn him by elastic pliance, his rod broke at the

breach of pliability. “I have learned a sad lesson,” said John Pike,

looking sadly.

How many fellows would have given up this matter, and glorified

themselves for having hooked so grand a fish, while explaining that

they must have caught him, if they could have done it! But Pike only

told me not to say a word about it, and began to make ready for

another tug of war. He made himself a splice-rod, short and handy, of

well-seasoned ash, with a stout top of bamboo, tapered so discreetly,

and so balanced in its spring, that verily it formed an arc, with any

pressure on it, as perfect as a leafy poplar in a stormy summer. “Now

break it if you can,” he said, “by any amount of rushes; I’ll hook you

by your jacket collar; you cut away now, and I’ll land you.”

This was highly skilful, and he did it many times; and whenever I was

landed well, I got a lollypop, so that I was careful not to break his

tackle. Moreover he made him a landing net, with a kidney-bean stick,

a ring of wire, and his own best nightcap of strong cotton net. Then

he got the farmer’s leave, and lopped obnoxious bushes; and now the

chiefest question was: what bait, and when to offer it? In spite of

his sad rebuff, the spirit of John Pike had been equable. The genuine

angling mind is steadfast, large, and self-supported, and to the vapid,

ignominious chaff, tossed by swine upon the idle wind, it pays as

much heed as a big trout does to a dance of midges. People put their

fingers to their noses and said: “Master Pike, have you caught him

yet?” and Pike only answered: “Wait a bit.” If ever this fortitude and

perseverance is to be recovered as the English Brand (the one thing

that has made us what we are, and may yet redeem us from niddering

shame), a degenerate age should encourage the habit of fishing and

never despairing. And the brightest sign yet for our future is the

increasing demand for hooks and gut.

Pike fished in a manlier age, when nobody would dream of cowering from

a savage because he was clever at skulking; and when, if a big fish

broke the rod, a stronger rod was made for him, according to the usage

of Great Britain. And though the young angler had been defeated, he did

not sit down and have a good cry over it.

About the second week in June, when the May-fly had danced its day,

and died,--for the season was an early one,--and Crocker’s trout had

recovered from the wound to his feelings and philanthropy, there came

a night of gentle rain, of pleasant tinkling upon window ledges, and

a soothing patter among young leaves, and the Culm was yellow in the

morning. “I mean to do it this afternoon,” Pike whispered to me, as

he came back panting. “When the water clears there will be a splendid

time.”

The lover of the rose knows well a gay voluptuous beetle, whose

pleasure is to lie embedded in a fount of beauty. Deep among the

incurving petals of the blushing fragrance, he loses himself in his

joys sometimes, till a breezy waft reveals him. And when the sunlight

breaks upon his luscious dissipation, few would have the heart to oust

him, such a gem from such a setting. All his back is emerald sparkles;

all his front red Indian gold, and here and there he grows white spots

to save the eye from aching. Pike put his finger in and fetched him

out, and offered him a little change of joys, by putting a Limerick

hook through his thorax, and bringing it out between his elytra.

_Cetonia aurata_ liked it not, but pawed the air very naturally, and

fluttered with his wings attractively.

“I meant to have tried with a fern-web”, said the angler; “until I

saw one of these beggars this morning. If he works like that upon the

water, he will do. It was hopeless to try artificials again. What a

lovely colour the water is! Only three days now to the holidays. I have

run it very close. You be ready, younker.”

With these words he stepped upon a branch of the alder, for the tone of

the waters allowed approach, being soft and sublustrous, without any

mud. Also Master Pike’s own tone was such as becomes the fisherman,

calm, deliberate, free from nerve, but full of eye and muscle. He

stepped upon the alder bough to get as near as might be to the fish,

for he could not cast this beetle like a fly; it must be dropped gently

and allowed to play. “You may come and look,” he said to me; “when the

water is so, they have no eyes in their tails.”

The rose-beetle trod upon the water prettily, under a lively vibration,

and he looked quite as happy, and considerably more active, than when

he had been cradled in the anthers of the rose. To the eye of a fish he

was a strong individual, fighting courageously with the current, but

sure to be beaten through lack of fins; and mercy suggested, as well as

appetite, that the proper solution was to gulp him.

“Hooked him in the gullet. He can’t get off!” cried John Pike,

labouring to keep his nerves under; “every inch of tackle is as strong

as a bell-pull. Now, if I don’t land him, I will never fish again!”

Providence, which had constructed Pike, foremost of all things, for

lofty angling--disdainful of worm and even minnow--Providence, I say,

at this adjuration, pronounced that Pike must catch that trout. Not

many anglers are heaven-born; and for one to drop off the hook halfway

through his teens would be infinitely worse than to slay the champion

trout. Pike felt the force of this, and rushing through the rushes,

shouted: “I am sure to have him, Dick! Be ready with my nightcap.”

Rod in a bow, like a springle-riser; line on the hum, like the string

of Paganini; winch on the gallop, like a harpoon wheel, Pike, the

head-centre of everything, dashing through thick and thin, and once

taken overhead--for he jumped into the hole, when he must have lost

him else, but the fish too impetuously towed him out, and made off in

passion for another pool, when, if he had only retired to his hover,

the angler might have shared the baker’s fate--all these things (I

tell you, for they all come up again, as if the day were yesterday) so

scared me of my never very steadfast wits, that I could only holloa!

But one thing I did, I kept the nightcap ready.

“He is pretty nearly spent, I do believe,” said Pike; and his voice was

like balm of Gilead, as we came to Farmer Anning’s meadow, a quarter of

a mile below Crocker’s Hole. “Take it coolly, my dear boy, and we shall

be safe to have him.”

Never have I felt, through forty years, such tremendous responsibility.

I had not the faintest notion how to use a landing net; but a mighty

general directed me. “Don’t let him see it; don’t let him see it! Don’t

clap it over him; go under him, you stupid! If he makes another rush,

he will get off, after all. Bring it up his tail. Well done! You have

him!”

The mighty trout lay in the nightcap of Pike, which was half a fathom

long, with a tassel at the end, for his mother had made it in the

winter evenings. “Come and hold the rod, if you can’t lift him,” my

master shouted, and so I did. Then, with both arms straining, and his

mouth wide open, John Pike made a mighty sweep, and we both fell upon

the grass and rolled, with the giant of the deep flapping heavily

between us, and no power left to us, except to cry, “Hurrah!”

THE END.

CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.

TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a

predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not

changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced

quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Page 30: “facundity” was printed that way.

Page 86: “cinamon” was printed that way.

Page 125: “tired her hair in the Grecian snood” was printed that way.

End of Project Gutenberg's Tales From the Telling-House, by R. D. Blackmore