The spell of that older time hung unbroken on the broad road, with the river soliloquising, deep-throated, in the ravine; the time when wind and limb did the work in a primitive way, and every stage saw the perfected relation of man and horse.
A swish, a whirr, the sharp sting of a bell, and two black-caped cyclists were upon us from the opening of a by-road, like two humpbacked monstrosities flying out of the book of Heraldry. The next thing that I saw with any distinctness was the mud squirming through my fingers as I clutched the surface of the road in an endeavour to get my legs clear of the saddle; and the next, as Tommy and I rose simultaneously to our feet, was Miss O’Flannigan and her Tom retiring to the horizon at the rate of twenty miles an hour. The cyclists were also retiring, in the opposite direction, at about sixty miles an hour. Had Tommy been more practised in the art of pivoting suddenly on his hind-legs while trotting downhill, I should probably have been following in Miss O’Flannigan’s wake: as it was, an hysterical “slip up” had been the result, and a final wallowing in the mire. My further impressions of the noble old Holyhead coach-road may be summed up in the statement that its mud is white and is mixed with size to give it adhesive quality.
“I clutched the surface of the road.”
By the time that I had emptied some of it from my gloves, and rough-dried the saddle and Tommy with a wisp of grass, Miss O’Flannigan had returned, minus the gingham, and with girlishly floating hair. Our subsequent entry into Bettwys was mercifully cloaked by deluge, but it was difficult to bear with dignity the successive eyes of a walking party, trudging in single file away from it—the same walking party on whom we had bestowed a scornful compassion as we met them in the airless heat near Beddgelert. Even on such a day as this the villas and lodging-houses of Bettwys could look nothing else but flawlessly clean and smart, with their clear grey-stone walls and white-frilled window curtains. Between them and the speeding river (whose bridge and island were, even at a glance, familiar as the mainstay of many water-colour exhibitions) we huddled in downpour to the hotel of our choice; not the Royal Oak, with its legion of waiters and its private road to the railway station, but to the more sympathetic Glan Aber, where the windows were innocent of the rain-bound tourist lady, and the hall unhaunted of her husband.
In half an hour a great part of the sopping bulk that had paused, dripping, in the hall while the landlady decided to take a trade risk and admit it as guests, had been transferred to the kitchen in armfuls, to the laundress in yet further armfuls, and what remained (in my case) was in bed, drinking hot tea that was yellow with cream. The remnant of Miss O’Flannigan was draped with gloomy grace in plaid-shawls of Dissenting Chapel odour, lent, to the best of our remembrance, by the chambermaid’s mother.
“Not by appointment do we meet delight and joy, They heed not our expectancy——” And so also not by appointment do we meet the ideal chambermaid—unless, indeed, we are fortunate enough to be her young man—but we met her that afternoon at the Glan Aber Hotel, and hope some day to do it again.
It was late that evening before the hold-alls arrived from Llanberis, and therefore our toilettes for table-d’hôte were, as the fashion articles say, dainty confections, composed of a damp habit-skirt, a mackintosh, shirts hot from the hotel laundry, and the severest of the plaid-shawls. It is scarcely to be wondered at that the sole other occupant of the hotel, a godly young amateur photographer, should have awaited us somewhat nervously as we swept through the long room towards a table laid for three, and should have carved the soup and fish with a trembling hand. With the chicken, however, the photographer had almost ceased to look round for our keeper, and a conversation about Thornton Pickard shutters and time-exposures was beginning to thrive at the hands of Miss O’Flannigan, who affects some acquaintance with these things. The evening finished with all the domesticity imparted by a fire in the drawing-room and a display of negatives, Kodaks, shoulder-straps, and other ingredients of a photographic walking tour. We felt that we were a godsend to this good and lonely youth, and parted from him with every hope that on the morrow he would ask to be permitted the privilege of photographing the Tommies and the expedition generally. It was therefore crushing to find on the morrow that he had unexpectedly fled at daybreak, with all his worldly possessions. He did not know it, but he was obeying the decree that, Claudian-like, we should blight the fortunes of every hotel we stayed at, and reign in malign monopoly of coffee-room and table-d’hôte.