Martin Ross

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The hotel seemed to be well stocked with visitors. We had believed ourselves to be before the season, and yet through the shrubs of a garden at the end of the house we saw several ladies in bright-coloured blouses, sitting on garden seats and tending children of all ages, a most edifying and domestic spectacle; and I began to be sorry for Miss O’Flannigan, who had refused to take advice and a walking skirt, and would have to come down to dinner in her habit. ”

“ Turning inland again among the low oak-woods, the country was rich and flowery, and always silent, and we ourselves were hot and speechless under the hot, grey sky. A discovery that one of the girths was rubbing off the skin behind Tom’s foreleg occasioned a delay fraught with gloom, difficulty, and the tongues of buckles. Miss O’Flannigan mounted a rock, and fell to sketching the unsketchable—a habit with her in moments of inglorious crisis, her sole contribution to the difficulty being a stout square of chamois leather which she wore on her chest in memory of a departed cold. ”

“ Upwards in streaming gradients rose the road, along the slanting floor of the valley—if indeed the name of valley is not too tender for that rent in the dark heart of the mountain, with its sides strewn with wreckage{145} of boulders, and its black walls towering implacably, untouched by summer. Upwards also, in exaggerated dolour, crept the Tommies, as well aware as we that the hold-alls, in which were our riding-canes, were following by coach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another wall and wicket-gate were arrived at; our guide looked round at us with an eye of cynical expectancy, and hesitated. It was an intimation that we might rest,—a compassionless concession to the inadequacy whose extent he knew by experience, and not by sympathy. But sympathy was not what we craved for. I sat down on a rock, and Miss O’Flannigan extended herself at full length on some contiguous boulders, and the ‘Arabian Nights’ could not have provided us with any more satiating form of enjoyment.{99}
Half-way Miss O’Flannigan extended herself at full length on some contiguous boulders. ”

“ A shaded stretch of road tempted us at length to urge the Tommies to their own wild trot, and to its vagaries we and the hold-alls rose and fell, bumped and joggled with what grace we might. Roadside heaps of stones, that had till now been merely matter for composed inquiry to the Tommies, became at this pace fraught with all supernatural powers and malign intents, and we cannoned violently and often, as Tom swerved, wild-eyed, from one of these objects of terror, or as Tommy, the ignoble, turned with incredible swiftness and endeavoured to flee home to the chemist. ”

“ Probably the children who sat along the banks of the stream and discussed us in Welsh saw it rise like a mist and melt into the blue: Miss O’Flannigan did not see it, but when painting she sees nothing but values. Ordinary humanity does not see values any more than fairies, but Miss O’Flannigan and other artists do. ”

“ The valley of the Dee jogged past, in accord{182} with the bone-setting canter of the grooms’ carriage—a landscape always pretty, never startling, laden in the bright hot morning with the trance of June, and with the tenderness of its unconscious farewell to us. That one-sided foreknowledge of parting pervaded all things, and indued with romance the two inquiring faces—one bay with a white spot, the other drab with a white blaze—that gazed at us across the empty mangers in unwearied expectancy of oats. ”

“ The porters and ostlers laughed, but it may have been from pure admiration. The Corwen and Ruabon Railway seems to be accustomed to the transportation of menageries. Head-stalls that would have held a buffalo were slipped upon the mildly aggrieved pony faces, cables were attached to their nosebands on either side, and massive partitions were let down between them. The Tommies were obviously a little wounded, but beyond all other emotions they were bored.
There are more luxurious places than the slice that is stingily cut off the end of a horse-box and apportioned to grooms. ”

“ 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.{148}
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we dragged ourselves up at the pace relentlessly demanded by Griffith Roberts, all sense of connection with the world below went from us. It was weeks since we had supped at Rhyddu, years since the tourist shouted his final warnings after us at Mahntooroch. We were in another planet, toiling up through some dim, endless purgatory to ever higher levels in the manner so trimly arranged by the newer Spiritualism—only that instead of the corresponding moral elevation, the one emotion in which we{108} were conscious of any progress was detestation of Griffith Roberts. ”

“ Griffith Roberts must himself be kin to the wild cats if he could go up Snowdon twice in the day at a speed of four miles an hour, and I began to admit to myself that a guide of this description might perhaps be thrown away upon us. Something infirm, with asthma, we would gladly have put up with; we should even have overlooked a club-foot. At about this period the cart-track began to show symptoms of having had enough, and of wanting to turn back. Fadingly it led us to a wall and a wicket-gate, such as occurs in ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and it and its grassy ruts were seen no more. ”

“ Three or four coots beat a silver path across it with their black wings, in alarm that testified to the rarity of the June tourist, and the pine-woods round it still held the purple shadows of morning. Out on the bare hills beyond it the heather was in bloom, and the wind’s freshness was softened by the scent of it. The Tommies crawled along with well-considered sluggishness. They had by this time a complete mastery of our characters. In the mornings they found that we were too light-hearted to resent their laziness, and in the evenings too humane. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the poets had spared it their fine speeches, and their compliments fledged with suave metre, Llangollen could be appraised with a fresher eye and admired to the utmost of its mild deserving without antagonism and without disappointment. Also, if it is seen on the way into Wales instead of on the way out of it, it will occupy with fitting distinction its place in the crescendo of Welsh scenery, undiscounted by the coming fortissimo: to be one of the last notes in a diminuendo is quite a different thing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Outside the shanty, when we stepped into the open air, we found most of Wales, clad in the{119} 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.” ”

“ A sodden twilight, not born of sunset or moonrise, came down about us, and the tormented vapours writhed up to meet it from the voids on either hand as we went delicately along the ridge that leads, like a horse’s crest, from shoulder to summit of the mountain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We were on the great Holyhead and London coach-road, along which previous generations had{147} driven with what cheer they might, after a day or so spent in sailing from Kingstown to Holyhead. Many an Irish member thrilled here with inward rehearsal of the peroration that should shake Westminster; many a grudging rebel eye looked for the first time at the roadside life of a country whose beauty would put Ireland on her mettle to excel, whose careful tending showed national pride in a form which probably had not before presented itself to the rebel mind. ”

“ They can rise above convention; they have an instinctive perception of what the tourist, in his bewildered heart, prefers, but fears to acknowledge; and they are capable of giving advice with a sound disregard for the logic of precedent. Therefore it befell that our bones are not now bleaching on the “Beddgelert ascent” of Snowdon, and that, after a large cold lunch, which included a delicious but embarrassingly stony cherry-pie, we found ourselves riding slowly towards the village of Rhyddu. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The ponies were there—a bay of a little over fourteen hands, a chestnut dun of a hand smaller, both ill-fitted by their big saddles, both possessed of a generous contour that told of long summer days of revelling in the young grass, and summer nights of serious gobbling of it when the flies were asleep. Mr Williams the chemist, and Mr Griffiths the ironmonger, stood at their heads, and began a species of funeral oration upon their virtues, and upon the pangs of parting from them ”

“ There is sole and undisputed possession, and there is the tranquillity of those who look on junctions and are never shaken, when the horse-box moves majestic among the interwoven points to the appointed platform, whither the purple aristocracy of the first class must toil by staircase and bridge. There are also two loopholes opening directly into the mangers of the horse-box, and through these, during the earlier part of the journey, we watched with concern the whites of the Tommies’ eyes glistening in the obscurity as they glared in vast query upon us and all things ”

“ CHAPTER VII. The ascent of Snowdon began as seductively, as gently, as the first step towards a great crime. A grassy cart-track curved idly through pastures that had just a perceptible heavenward tendency, enough to stimulate the traveller and flatter his vigour and prowess. ”