“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.”
CHAPTER X.
A dull roar vibrated through my dreams at some unknown hour of the next morning, and with such faculties as were not absorbed by the feat of sliding head-first down Snowdon on a telegraph wire, I set it down as being a manifestation of the circus ladies and gentlemen. Later on I realised that the circus ladies and gentlemen did not manifest themselves to any appreciable extent before luncheon-time; and while we sat at a lonely breakfast in the coffee-room, and inhaled through an open window the rainy wind that was preferable to the prisoned aroma suggestive of “a wet night,” the vibrating roar fell at intervals into our moody silence. Between the gables of temperance hotels, and through the cold drifts of rain, the sheer face of a mountain gleamed black as ink, checkered with angular scars, carved and sliced into precipitous terraces, ridden of blaspheming steam-engines that vaunted over its defeat with their white plumes of vapour. Occasionally a darkly glittering avalanche of slate-rubbish shot downwards into the lake below, the mountain groaned as its dead went hurtling to their burial, and the sullen protest shook the air. Llanberis seems indifferent to the fact that the principal feature in its scenery is being transferred in slices to the roofs of other people’s houses, and in helter-skelter tons to the bottom of its lake: perhaps it is helpless, and if so we offer it sympathy.
As has been insinuated, it was a wet day, and for some time I feared that my influence over Miss O’Flannigan was not sufficient to dissuade her from purchasing a species of pall, made of black painted canvas, and worn as a cape by “the common quarrymen,” as she was coldly told by the lady behind the counter. The further information, however, that its price was seven and elevenpence, caused her to lay it longingly down and ask for an umbrella—“A very bad umbrella,” she explained; “the worst kind you have got——”
Economy is a virtue that the Welsh do not encourage in the alien. The shopwoman did not for some time permit herself to believe that what Miss O’Flannigan desired was primarily cheapness, and secondarily extent, and not silver chains, and ouches, and greyhounds’ heads carved in the purest bone. Like many another of her race and calling, she was fated to find us commercial disappointments of the most ignoble kind, and forth, with whatever reluctance, came eventually the lustrous alpaca, the gingham that even in youth looks grey and stout, the massive black handle, the gluey fragrance. A subordinate in goloshes, worn over white stockings, brought them in relays from some remote parts of the house,—some apparently from a period of hibernating in a feather-bed, judging by the fragments of down that adhered both to them and to their bearer. With the largest of the ginghams, at one-and-nine, with two red comforters, such as are worn by virtuous woodmen in coloured almanacs, and with a bag of biscuits (bought at the opposite counter), we retired into the rain through a doorway garnished with alarming sacrifices in flannelettes and elastic-sided boots, and hardened our hearts for the road.