We drew rein at a shady roadside spring, at whose thin trickle a gipsy woman was filling an earthenware jug. Here should the Tommies drink their fill, while perchance a sketch was made of the tilt of the gipsy waggon, half hidden in trees a little back off the road. But the Tommies had other views. Panic-struck, they recoiled from that innocent trickle of water as from a thing bewitched; they whirled, trembled, snorted, and finally abandoned themselves to a sauve-qui-peut flight in the direction of Dolgelly.
During the last half-hour the road grew more and more civilised; the “Cross Foxes” uplifted its popular sign by the roadside, villas were frequent, the scenery was charming, but we cared for none of these things. All we desired was a cool death—“something lingering,” with icebergs in it. We rode into the grey town of Dolgelly at 10.30 o’clock, having started at six, and accomplished twelve miles. It was one of our record performances. It is possible that some lame beggar-woman may rival it, but we are fairly confident that it will not easily be beaten.
The innkeepers stood at their doors and surveyed us as we passed, more in pity than in contempt; and we moved on through the town, trying to judge by the outward appearance whether the “Lion,” the “Hand,” the “Goat,” or the “Angel” were nearest what we wished. In this investigation we were much aided by the peculiar construction of the town. Every house stood alone, and had a street on every one of its four sides, a plan which takes a little room, but is handy in the long-run. We could see no back-yards, no gardens, as we rode round each grey block: the latter, we afterwards discovered, are kept outside the town; the former, and their ashpits, we can only suppose to occupy some dark and dreadful recess in the heart of the houses themselves.
The landlord of the “Angel” looked at us and the Tommies with a horsey and indulgent smile, as we passed him for the second time. His wife was remarkably like one of Miss O’Flannigan’s aunts. Moved by these considerations, we yielded ourselves to the ostler and staggered into shelter.
CHAPTER V.
“I thravelled a dale when I had th’ influenzy.”
That was how a County Waterford gardener described the delirious wanderings of fever. It also describes our state when the momentary joy of receiving our luggage from the station had passed, when the long process of dressing was over, and we lay, speechless victims of headache, on our beds. To the feverishness of heat and exhaustion was added the gliding panorama of mountain and wood and glaring sky, items of our ignoble twelve miles; they became abhorrent, and yet the brain toiled to fill in any forgotten feature. Such was the result of the Indian method of dealing with hot weather.
It was dealt with that afternoon in a more efficient manner. In the first place, a parasol was bought from the leading draper, a pink silk one, reduced from three-and-nine to two shillings, on account of the places where it had faded yellow. It was certainly a bargain, and an hour afterwards the barometer began to fall, very slightly, but sufficiently to show intelligence. Next morning the heat was still supreme, but this was in order that we might spend another two shillings on puggarees, after which the barometer fell a little more.
The shops of Dolgelly have the great advantage of a street on all four sides of each house, each standing “a tower of strength, four square, to every wind that blew,” so that bread, boots, millinery, vegetables, and patent medicines can command each a window, great or small; and the shopkeeper stands, Argus-eyed, in the centre, and caters for the enigmatic needs of tourists, much as a missionary might prepare glass beads for the Central African. Each shopkeeper knows his customers, to the last farmer’s wife; they are united to him in a bond inferior only to matrimony, as the interloper, of however long standing, finds to his cost.
“If you could get it anywhere else you wouldn’t come ’ere for it,” said a shopkeeper in our hearing, apostrophising the departing figure of a casual purchaser. “I’m ’ere twenty-five years,” he went on, wiping the flies off a perspiring piece of bacon with his pocket-handkerchief, “and they ’ave as little likin’ for me as the first day I took down my shutters, because I’m English. Ah, the Welsh stand together, they do, and they ’ate the English. They’re near, too—terrible near.”