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.
