A solitary candle struggled with the obscurity as we stumbled through a
narrow door into the shanty indicated to us. It illuminated principally
the features of a young gentleman in a check ulster and a Tam o’ Shanter
cap, who sat behind it with a note-book and pencil and an indefinite air
of being connected with the Press, and his eye-glasses flashed upon us
with almost awful inquiry as the light caught them beneath the dashing
tilt of his cap. The next most immediate impression was of the cabin of
a fifth-rate coasting steamer: dingy wooden walls, a bare seat running
round them, two tables, three cramped doorways, and a pigmy stove. That
was the sum-total of the surroundings; but the fact that there was a
fire in the stove crowded out all deficiencies for the first ten
minutes.
The cold was clinging, inescapable, unbelieveable, at least for people
who had come sweltering up in light attire from a world where it was
midsummer and behaved as such. The opening of the stove was about as
large as the lens of a Kodak, and might have heated us through if moved
up and down our persons, as a painter burns old paint off with a
brazier. Failing this, we had to reverse the process, and rotate
endlessly before that single, sullen glow, while from the corner the
twin malignity of the double eye-glasses blazed upon us.
“I thought I was goin’ to be all alone up here to-night,” said a voice
from behind the eye-glasses--a voice of that class which, like Scott’s
poetry, “scorns to be obscure,” and proclaims its natal Brixton in
clarion tones. “I’ve bin kicking my ’eels up ’ere since five o’clock,
and I cawn’t say it’s bin lively!” The speaker permitted to himself a
dramatic yawn, followed by a giggle of
[Illustration: “_The speaker permitted to himself a dramatic yawn._”]
incipient boon-companionship, but the conversation was not given time to
expand with the luxuriance of which it was doubtless capable. The door
of the cabin was opened, and Griffith Roberts stood without, waiting for
his lawful five shillings, and, subsequently, the price of a drink
(which, in deference to our possible scruples, was entitled
“ginger-beer”). We bade him good-bye without a pang. He is a good man,
and would be invaluable as hare for a paper-chase; but if we ever ascend
Snowdon again--which Heaven forfend--it will not be under his guidance.
We stood at the door and watched him go down and down through the
lifeless twilight, till the cold bit through and through our summer
coats and linen shirts, and a precept of early youth rose menacingly in
our minds:--
“Whatever brawls disturb the street,
Wear flannel next your skin.”
What if we both developed influenza on the top of Snowdon! Some
preservative was instantly necessary: we hurriedly appealed to the
proprietor of the cabin for hot water, and were supplied with a boiling
jugful on the spot. The Summit Hotel does not go in for style, but it
understands the mystery of boiling water, which is a thing too deep for
many of its betters.
I have often had cause to curse the day on which it was revealed to Miss
O’Flannigan, by a palmist, that she was subject to medical inspirations;
but even the power of speech was denied to me for some minutes after I
had tasted the mixture of Bovril, whisky, and hot water, compounded by
my companion under the influence of her latest inspiration. Our
fellow-tourist, after a period of aghast observation, attacked his
note-book with an ardour that convinces us that the recipe will be made
glorious by his pen in the columns of the ‘Brixton Chanticleer.’ Then he
drew forth a pipe and tobacco-pouch, and looked first at the mists which
were pressing against the little port-hole of a window behind his head,
and then at us. We accepted the hint, and retired to the cabin allotted
to us.
It was about seven feet square, and contained a bedstead that covered
all the room save a strip of two feet, on which stood a doll’s chest of
drawers with a small jug and basin on it. In the face of the fact that
there was but one other bedroom, it was idle to speculate as to how the
forty visitors of the night before had disposed themselves; but a very
cursory investigation of the sheets forced us to the conclusion that
many of them had gone to bed in their boots. Possibly they were right.
Top-boots and an entire suit of oil-skins would alone have brought those
sheets within the sphere of practical politics. We wrapped ourselves in
the blankets, and lay down, fully clad, to wait for the dawn.
Never before that night had I known how much more miserable one may be
made by sleep than by the want of it. The thin doses forced on us by
fatigue had the property of magnifying-glasses, and turned a vague
insufficiency of pillow into a broken neck, the cold and stiffness into
centuries of Arctic hardship. A monotonous wind sighed round the shanty,
and the small uncurtained window held a changeless square of ghostly
light, that, in the intervals of the fevered dreams of this midsummer’s
night, became a giant luminous matchbox hanging on the wall beside us.
Once or twice Miss O’Flannigan broached in gloomy monologue reflections
proper to the occasion, their _leit motif_ being that we, the
newspaper-man, and the two shanty proprietors, were the five highest
people in England. I cannot remember that I contributed to the
conversation anything more appropriate than the remark of a slighted
Dublin aristocrat, in vindication of her rights of precedence, “and me
the rankest lady in the room,”--which, indeed, had only a remote and
dreamlike connection with the subject.
The luminous paint in the window-frame was just perceptibly brighter
when the door of the opposite shanty opened, and we heard a heavy step
outside. By this time we had become reconciled to the blankets, and we
held our breaths with the dread that there might be a sunrise, and that
we should have to go out into the piercing air to look at it. There was
a battering upon the Brixtonian door, and then a voice: “It’s a quarter
past three, sir, and it’s a _very_ thick morning,” and then our heroic
fellow-traveller: “Never mind, I’m comin’ out.”
We lay, silent as stones, listening intently. The footstep paused at our
door, but relenting, passed on without knocking. Presently we heard the
newspaper-man go forth like the dove from the ark, and, after a
similarly brief absence, return, and settle himself down in the saloon,
where, faithful to the interests of the ‘Brixton Chanticleer,’ he no
doubt occupied himself in recording his impressions of the mist. For the
sake of our self-respect we rose and looked out of the window--a
shuddering glance which scarcely revealed to us the foggy outlines of
the other shanty and the cairn of stones.
Beyond these, a thick curtain of mist without a fold in it. In the
bitter cold and the hideous daylight we shawled ourselves again in our
blankets and slept miserably till seven o’clock, when, after such
gruesome toilet as circumstances and a small jug of ice-cold water
permitted, we emerged from our cabin, objects that our nearest relations
would have been justified in cutting. The gentleman from Brixton had
gone, and the sun had arrived too late to arrange a sunrise, but still
anxious to oblige. There was also a kettle of boiling water, a loaf of
bread, and a clear fire in the stove. All these things disposed us to
realise with a new benevolence what an achievement of labour and
perseverance was embodied in the Summit Hotel. The ponies on whose backs
each plank and each lump of coal has been carried up are alone able to
estimate that achievement perfectly, but they are not likely to
expatiate on it, and the fleshless mountain-track repudiates the
hoof-prints that could tell of scramble and struggle.
Outside the shanty, when we stepped into the open air, we found most of
Wales, clad in the chilly, opaline tints of morning, waiting in
complacent silence for the inevitable burst of admiration. On three
sides of it was a hazy shimmer, a misty sparkle, betraying the
environing sea, from the river Dee to the Bay of Cardigan, and close
about us were the grey spines and huge slants of the Snowdon range.
George Herbert, with a fine discrimination, has said--
“Praise the sea, but stay on shore.”
And in respectful adaption of this counsel, we would say to those who
ascend heights for the sake of the view, that a mountain, in shape, in
colour, in sentiment, in every possible aspect, is more praiseworthy
from its base than from its summit. Moreover, as to the view itself, it
seems to us that a beautiful view is not a mere matter of miles seen
from a great height. The world was obviously made to be regarded _en
profile_, and not to be stared at, flat-faced, from above; and the view
from the top of Snowdon impresses the imagination rather than the sense
of beauty. To look across the tiny hedgerow and homestead anatomy of
the nearer counties, away to England in the distant haze, was to taste
suddenly the core of many trite sayings about human effort and
insignificance, and in spite of triteness the great expanse, sown with
silent life, was wonderful beyond the symmetry of mountain-peaks.
Many things were revealed to us on the way down that had been withheld
by the mist and twilight of the ascent. Ravines into whose purple
shadows the sun had not yet looked--green valleys, with little lakes
lurking in them--white paths straggling away to every point of the
compass--and pre-eminent and ubiquitous, the soda-water bottle, the
sandwich-paper, and the orange-peel. It was still October when we
started, but now as we scrambled, slid, and ran with brief,
unintentional abandonment down the path, we were travelling back along
the gamut of the months. By the time we had arrived at the first
halting-place of the night before, our own temperatures had touched a
point that made us independent of climate; but though we were hardly in
a condition to appreciate the balm of mid-June that was coming up from
the pastures, we could not wish it to be chilled.
Striding up the lower fields, with an ardour that we recognised
compassionately as having once been ours, were two tourists, a
middle-aged gentleman and his daughter. They paused as they met us, to
unburden themselves of a kindly platitude or two about the weather; and
it is still on Miss O’Flannigan’s conscience that she gave these
harmless wayfarers careful particulars as to Griffith Roberts’s short
cut, and received their gratitude without compunction.
Shortly after this incident it was that we met the postmaster of Rhyddu
communing alone with nature--a very noble-looking person, in a costume
modelled upon that of the most sumptuous tourist. Considering how far we
were from the ideal female of the species, he treated us with unexpected
affability, even giving himself the trouble of accompanying us back to
the village, favouring us meanwhile with his political opinions, his
low opinion of the Irish race--legitimately founded on a large
experience of intoxicated hay-makers--and other details. He afterwards
sold us letter-cards at a fancy price suggested by ourselves: the
problem of the price of seven, if nine cost tenpence halfpenny, or some
similar sum, being beyond the grasp of the human intellect.
[Illustration: “_A costume modelled on that of the most sumptuous
tourist._”]
It was 10.30 when we reached the Quellyn Arms, and while the sympathetic
Miss Jones prepared cans of hot water and breakfast, we visited the
orphaned Tommies. The Quellyn Arms does not profess to stable horses,
therefore it cannot be regarded as an unkindness if we mention that the
Tommies were housed in what seemed to be a lumber-room. Broken things
that might have been beds, washing-mangles, or turnip-cutters, choked
the entrance. One saddle was perched on a bedpost, like a bonnet on a
stand in a shop-window, the other lay on the ground, and behind the heap
glowered the indignant faces of the Tommies. Both had pulled their heads
out of their halters, and, in default of other food, were tearing the
stuffing out of an ancient palliasse. In the boxes that served as
mangers were a few nettles and stalks of mint, sole remnants of some
strange repast which must have borne about the same relation to hay that
curry does to boiled mutton. The hotel cook strolled into the stable
while we were there; it seemed she had been hay-making during a pause in
the duties of the cuisine--a fact that recurred to us when subsequently
the flavour of the hay-fields was perceptible in that of the tea.
[Illustration: _The cook at Rhyddu._]
She kindly permitted us to fill the mangers of the Tommies from her
private hoard of poultry corn, and it was on this occasion that we
realised their relation to us was that of rather alarmed nephews towards
severe but conscientious aunts. There was good feeling on both sides,
there was even a little affection, but the auntly element was
ineradicable.