The people of Rhyddu were unanimous on one point. They united with
enthusiasm to assure us that there was a short cut to Llanberis, that
the same was easy, and also that it was advantageous. At this stage of
our investigations, however, a piano-organ with a monkey absorbed the
attention which, till then, had been lavished upon us and the
Tommies--and we left Rhyddu with nothing better to guide us than an
impression of hands waving vaguely towards a spur of Snowdon, and some
sense of the vital importance of a certain lane by a farmhouse.
In the course of two miles we attempted three lanes, and found they all
ended alike at a barking dog and a closed door; finally, we addressed
ourselves to a pair of shears, which, moved by unseen hands at the
inner side of a hedge, was clapping its jaws malevolently among the
topmost privet sprouts. There was a small hotel at the other side of the
road, and neither lane nor farmhouse was in sight; but a voice from
behind the hedge informed us in unusually fluent English that the short
cut to Llanberis started precisely from the yard of the hotel. The yard
was deserted, but some semblance of a track wandered from it, and we
surrendered ourselves to it. It met with an early death at the gateway
of a large, steep field, unpleasantly filled with cattle and young
horses, and we were on the point of turning back to insult the man with
the shears, when a cow in our vicinity lay down to ruminate, and
disclosed a fat, yellow-haired boy who had been standing behind her. To
him the stimulating copper was at once administered, and under his
guidance we pursued an imperceptible path through the cattle up to the
hill, with a confidence not shared by the Tommies, who were, indeed, but
moderate mountaineers.
At the next field the boy paused, seeming to consider that we had had
our pennyworth; further moneys at intervals impelled him upwards to the
highest limits of the pasture-land; but there, unmoved even by the sight
of sixpence, he left us, with the information that when we had gone as
high as we could, we should--if we did not lose our way--find a gate,
and from that gate a good road would take us to Llanberis. The
instructions had a pleasing simplicity, and, if applied to a tree or a
pyramid, would have been easily followed. The Snowdon range, however,
offers a large selection of highest points, and of these we naturally
chose the lowest and nearest. The Tommies crept like beetles athwart the
slant of the hill, and we, our feelings of humanity somewhat blunted by
the exertions of the morning, sat upon their backs, and saw momently a
little more of their persons in front of us, as the saddles receded
towards their tails.
The hill was above us in heather on our left, below us in steep pasture
on the right, and the Tommies were digging their hoofs into a slanting
ledge between the two. We ascended slowly, clinging to the ponies’
manes, I in advance of Miss O’Flannigan, who was in one of her most
conversational moods, and demanded my frequent appreciation of the
landscape with an enthusiasm that seemed to me ill-timed. Each time I so
much as turned my head, the saddle and the hold-all turned
sympathetically with me, and I was in the act of ignoring an appeal to
my æsthetic feelings when Miss O’Flannigan’s voice ceased abruptly. This
was so unusual an occurrence that I took a fresh handful of the mane and
looked round. Miss O’Flannigan was standing on her head on the off-side
of her pony, on whose back nothing was now visible except the girths,
while beneath his body hung the hold-all. What it was that formed the
link between him and Miss O’Flannigan was not apparent, but as he was
eating grass with unshaken calm it was not a matter of vital importance.
Before I had dismounted and reached the scene of the disaster Miss
O’Flannigan was free: she had, in fact, rolled over the edge of the
ledge into a clump of heather, and was emerging from it, hatless, and
in a state of the highest indignation. There is an unconscious,
undesired picturesqueness about a person whose hair has come down, and I
did not altogether refrain from mentioning this to Miss O’Flannigan, but
she had lost her interest in the picturesque. The Tommies, fortunately,
viewed the affair from one aspect only--that of a heaven-bestowed
interval for food; and during the arduous processes of re-saddling and
of binding the hold-alls, like burnt-offerings, to the horns of the
saddles (for we had determined upon walking till we reached the top of
the hill), they did not give us a moment’s anxiety.
No eyes but those of the aghast, black-faced sheep and the coldly
interested carrion-crows witnessed the occurrence, or the subsequent
procession upwards, over slippery grass and through the boundless
quagmires caused by a stream that seemed newly spilled on the face of
the hill, and was still wandering in search of a bed. The hut on the top
of Snowdon was visible--an angular atom, retaining even, as a
silhouette of the eighth of an inch square, its air of _gamin_
self-sufficiency and adequacy for its position of overseer to England
and Wales. With the aid of field-glasses, it and its inmates might have
come to the conclusion that two aproned and gaitered Deans of the Church
of England were leading a pair of heavy-laden sumpter-palfreys over the
pass to Llanberis, or might eventually have made the discovery that the
most simple manner of adapting a riding-habit to mountain walks is not
necessarily the most graceful.
From our private point of view it seemed many times that we had gone as
high as was possible before we found the gate that was to compose all
difficulties. It linked two long strips of grey wall that had striven
towards each other from afar, down mountain flanks and up from boggy
valleys, like two lives fated to meet and overcoming circumstance. Their
juncture was, as the boy had truly said, on the highest point of the
hill; and leaning breathless on the gate, while the
[Illustration: _The ascent of the Deans._]
Tommies tore at the wiry little rushes which grew all about, we looked
down a deep, empty valley to open country with the glint of water and
the smoke of villages. A track of two feet wide sprang from the farther
side of the gate and drew
[Illustration: “_Two or three startled, audacious pony faces peering
round a pile of boulders._”]
a steady line along the naked, green face of the valley, outlining the
buxom curves like a string course with an encouraging downward tendency
in it. Gingerly we trod it, each with an excessively awkward and
all-dubious Tommy in tow--while the slope below, on the right hand,
became a great deal steeper than was pleasant to look at, and that
above, on the left, so pronounced as to preclude the possibility of
walking on it. Emerging from a shallow scoop in the face of the hill,
and paying more heed to my steps than to my surroundings, I felt the
steady drag of the elder Thomas upon the reins become a violent
full-stop, and was suddenly aware of two or three startled, audacious
pony faces peering round a pile of boulders at the turn of the path.
They were gone with a whisk of forelocks and a rattle of loosened
stones; and having in some measure reassured the deeply scandalised
Tommies, we proceeded, not without some inward speculation as to what
would happen to them, and to us, if these sylvan cousins of theirs were
to come avalanching round the corner upon us in an unfortunate burst of
family feeling. A few steps took us round the sharp bend of the hill,
and we came face to face with the foe--a dozen tiny ponies, standing in
dramatic attitudes of expectancy, with heads high in the air, and wide
nostrils spread to the scent of danger. For an instant their wild eyes
devoured us and their brethren of the captivity, and then Miss
O’Flannigan obeyed her Keltic instincts, and stooped to pick up a stone.
At that world-comprehended and world-respected signal they turned all at
once, as if blown by a wind, and floated down the green valley-side,
whose steepness we had scarcely cared to look at, with heads up, manes
and tails streaming, and shoeless hoofs flicking the turf in bounds that
seemed headlong, yet never went beyond control. In the bottom of the
valley they swung to the right with the incredible oneness of a flock of
birds, and halting, looked up to us and neighed defiance. The Tommies
hurried on without comment.
Shortly afterwards the rain began,--diffidently, as if it had forgotten
how, but the low bosom of the grey sky was laid against the hills, and
the undisciplined drops did not long want for reinforcement. The
salmon-coloured Dolgelly parasol made but a dismal _début_ under these
auspices, and glowed with a more and more sullen flush as the rain
soaked through it and dropped in dirty pink tears from its spikes.
Between the tears I saw little except the endless downward progress of
the path and unprepossessing glimpses of landscape blind with rain. We
mounted the Tommies and scrambled by many stony descents and wet fields
to lower levels; a thin cascade glanced over the black lip of a ravine
and dropped delicately with slanting leaps down a hundred feet or more;
wet roofs appeared below us, then a public road, public-houses, public
conveyances, and an intelligent public interest in us and the Dolgelly
parasol. The conclusion that we were a circus, or some part of one, was
immediately and loudly announced by the infant population; and a vivid
representation on a poster of a young lady hovering in pink tights above
the foaming manes of six white horses, explained that the infant mind
had lately been educated in such matters.
That we should have fortuitously selected the Snowdon Valley Hotel from
among the many others of the long street was, in this connection, a
singular instance of hypnotic suggestion. As we turned towards the
coffee-room, the landlady, after a moment obviously spent in comparing
us with the poster, made up her mind to give us the benefit of the
doubt.
“Perhaps you would rather step to the drawing-room,” she said,
hesitatingly; and while she spoke the chorus of “The Man that broke the
Bank at Monte Carlo” broke forth from the hilarious conversation in the
coffee-room, “we have the--a--the circus ladies and gentlemen in
there.”