We examined the Visitors’ Book. No trace of the party was in it, unless it was indirectly hinted at by a cyclist, who, with that happy vein of humour and inventiveness of spelling with which Visitors’ Books are so replete, dilated on the “gossopping gardens” of the hotel. Many things were strange about the Griffith Arms. It was full of unseen presences, of suggestions of an inner life not subordinate to hotel routine, and we roamed solitary in their midst. The big, panelled bath-room, where before dinner I simmered off the fatigues of the ride, had the stale discouraged air of a room that has been left severely to itself. Its breath was heavy with suggestions of the wearing apparel that lined its shelves and hung in decaying grandeur on pegs on the door, and in the bath itself lay a pair of baby’s boots, thick, knitted ones, evidently forgotten there since winter. Miss O’Flannigan’s wardrobe contained an interesting selection of walking-sticks, fishing-tackle, razors, ties of the class known as “Jemima,” and finally, in a separate compartment, innumerable pairs of socks. They belonged to Mr Willy Griffith, the chambermaid explained, with the manner of one who disarms all objections in advance. He stayed at the hotel very often for fishing. She made the same reply when I commented, not unkindly, on the presence of several dozen pairs of socks and six well-greased fishing-boots in my chest of drawers. We did not venture to argue the matter, though it compelled us to distribute the contents of the hold-alls upon the floor.
Early next morning the house rang with the shrieks that accompanied the toilet of many children; and though the coffee-room was at breakfast-time as desolate as ever, the garden presently became filled to a state of crèche-like repletion, and Miss O’Flannigan and I wandered forth in search of a resting-place less fraught with domesticity. We made for the pine-clothed flanks of Moel Dinas, but the heat was terrific—the pine-trees were too young to keep it out, though they were old enough to hide the view; the flies were beyond belief, and the hot perfume from the trees became at last intolerable. We crept back to the hotel and lay about in the shadeless coffee-room, and it was afternoon before we discovered coolness by going down to the river and sitting on damp rocks in a draught under an arch of the new bridge, with the old one picturesquely visible in the background, while the children, the mothers, and the chambermaid
“A youth of shop-walker beauty, in the guise of a fisherman.”
“We caught a glimpse of a grey beard and a Tyrolean hat.”
held high carnival in the garden above. It was here, probably, that Mr Willy Griffith cast his flies when in residence at the Griffith Arms; and Miss O’Flannigan absently added the figure of a youth of shop-walker beauty, in the guise of a fisherman, to the series of enervated scribbles which marked her sketch-book’s progress through that long hot Sunday. She was descending to the addition of an eyeglass and a cigarette, when a pebble dropped into the water beside us. As we looked up to the parapet of the bridge, another pebble was dropped, and there was an eldritch falsetto laugh. We caught one difficult glimpse of a grey beard and a Tyrolean hat, a running footstep resounded above, and then silence. It seemed time for evening church, and we retired.