RED AS A ROSE IS SHE.
A Novel.
BY
RHODA BROUGHTON,
AUTHOR OF "COMETH UP AS A FLOWER," "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
"SECOND THOUGHTS," ETC.
_ELEVENTH EDITION._
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1887.
[Illustration: Frontispiece: ESTHER CRAVEN.
ELISH LA MONTI. PINX. JOSEPH BROWN. SC.]
RED AS A ROSE IS SHE.
CHAPTER I.
Have you ever been to Wales? I do not ask this question of any one in
particular; I merely address it to the universal British public, or,
rather, to such member or members of the same as shall be wise enough
to sit down and read the ensuing true and moving love story--true as
the loves of wicked Abelard and Heloise, moving as those of good Paul
and Virginia. Probably those wise ones will be very few; numerable
by tens, or even units: they will, I may very safely aver, not form
the bulk of the nation. However high may be my estimate of my own
powers of narration, however amply Providence may have gifted me with
self-appreciation, I may be sure of that, seeing that the only books
I know of which enjoy so wide a circulation are the Prayer-book and
Bradshaw. I am not going to instruct any one in religion or trains,
so I may as well make up my mind to a more limited audience, while I
pipe my simple lay (rather squeakily and out of tune, perhaps), and may
think myself very lucky if that same kind, limited audience do not hiss
me down before I have got through half a dozen staves of the dull old
ditty.
Have you ever been to Wales? If you have ever visited the pretty,
dirty, green spot where Pat and his brogue, where potatoes and
absenteeism and head-centres flourish, _alias_ Ireland, you have
no doubt passed through a part of it, rushing by, most likely, in
the Irish mail; but in that case your eyes and nose and ears were
all so very full of dust and cinders--you were so fully employed in
blinking and coughing and enjoying the poetry of motion--as to be
totally incapable of seeing, hearing, or smelling any of the beauties,
agreeable noises, or good smells, which in happier circumstances might
have offered themselves to your notice. Perhaps you are in the habit,
every midsummer, of taking your half-dozen male and female olive
shoots to have the roses restored to their twelve fat cheeks by blowy
scrambles about the great frowning Orme's Head, or by excavations in
the Rhyl Sands. Perhaps you have gone wedding-touring to Llanberis on
the top of a heavy-laden coach, swinging unsafely round sharp corners,
and nearly flinging your Angelina from your side on to the hard Welsh
road below. Perhaps you have wept with Angelina at the spurious grave
of the martyred Gelert, or eaten pink trout voraciously at Capel Curig,
and found out what a startlingly good appetite Angelina had. But have
you ever lived in the land of the Cymri? Have you ever seen how drunk
the masculine Cymri can be on market days, or what grievous old hags
the feminine Cymri become towards their thirtieth year? Have you ever,
by bitter experience, discovered the truth of that couplet--
"Taffy was a Welshman,
Taffy was a thief?"
I _have_ lived in Wales, so I speak with authority; and for my part
I don't think that Taffy is much more given to the breaking of the
eighth commandment than the _canaille_ of any other country. He is not
a bright fellow, is not Taffy; happiest, I think, when rather tipsy,
or when yelling psalms in his conventicle or schism-shop--for Taffy is
addicted to schism; he will tell you plenty of lies, too, and will not
season them with the salt of a racy, devil-me-care wit, as Pat would.
But he is very civil-spoken, and rather harmless; seldomer, I think,
than his cleverer neighbour over the border does he hanker feloniously
after his neighbour's spoons, or hammer his wife's head with the
domestic poker.
But why am I drivelling on, like a sort of Murray and water, on the
manners and character of this, to my thinking, not very interesting
nation? I will waste no more "prave 'ords" upon them, as the few men
and women whom I am going to tell you about, and whom I shall want
you to like a little, or dislike a little, as the case may be, are
not Taffies, only they happen to have stuck up their tent-poles in
Taffy-land when they first make their low bow to you. These men and
women were nothing out of the way for goodness, or beauty, or talent;
they did a hundred thousand naughty things, each one of them. Some
of them did them with impunity, as far as this world goes; some of
them, capricious Megæra and Tisyphone lashed with scorpions for their
derelictions. This is going to be neither a "Life of Saints," nor a
"History of Devils;" these are memoirs neither of a "Hedley Vicars,"
nor of a "Dame aux Camellias;" so, whoso expects and relishes either of
those styles of composition may forthwith close this volume, and pitch
it (if it be his own, and not the battered property of a circulating
library) into the fire. Those who love a violent moral, or violent
judgment for sins and follies--a man struck dead for saying "damn,"
or a woman for going to a ball, as the _Record_ would charitably have
us believe is the way of Providence--equally with those who enjoy the
flavour of violent immorality, will be disappointed if they look this
way for the gratification of their peculiar idiosyncracies. Of my
friends presently to be made known to you, and criticised by you, "the
more part remain unto this present, but some have fallen asleep."
Once upon a time--I like that old, time-honoured opening; it makes
one so nobly free, gives one so much room to stretch one's wings in,
ties one down to no king's reign, no hampering, clogging century--once
upon a time there was a valley in Taffy-land; there is still, unless
some very recent convulsion has upheaved it to the top of a mountain,
or submerged it beneath the big Atlantic waves; a valley lovelier
than that one in "Ida," where "beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris,"
pastured his sheep and his jet-black goats, and inaugurated his rakish
course; a valley where there are no dangerous, good-looking Parises,
only one or two red-headed Welsh squires, who have each married, or
will in the fulness of time each marry, one lawful wife--red-headed,
too, very likely; and have never made, will never make, love to any
Enones or other ill-conducted young shepherdesses. In fact, in that
Arcadia there are no such shepherdesses; the daughters of the Cymri do
not "ply the homely shepherd's trade," nor would they shed much romance
over it if they did; for with sorrow be it spoken, blowsy are they
mostly, hard-featured, toothless; and, moreover, the little nimble,
lean sheep that go scrambling and jumping and skurrying about the
rough crags and steep hill-sides do not need any crook'd and melodious
Dowsabellas or Neæras to look after them and guide them in the way they
should go.
In that valley there are plenty of houses, squires' houses and
peasants' houses, where the propagation of the Cambrian is conducted
with much success; houses big and little, red-faced and white-faced
and dirty-faced, old and new. But we have at present to do with only
one of those houses, and it comes under the head of the littles and
the olds. Halfway up a hill-side it stands, looking across the valley
to other higher hills that swell out softly against the sky, and go
sloping gently down to the sea twenty miles away. They always remind
me--I don't know why--of the distant hills in Martin's picture of the
"Plains of Heaven;" so mistily do they rise in their hazy blueness. It
is a snug, unpretending little house enough, with its black and white
cross-beamed front and unwalled kitchen-garden straggling steeply up
the slope at the back. Many and many a day has it stood there, seeing
generations and fashions come in and go out; has stood there since the
far-away days when men wore curly wigs half-way down their backs, and
sky-blue coats, and fought and died for prerogative and King Charles,
or fought and lived for England and liberty: when most houses were
black and white, like its little elderly self, before plate glass or
stucco, or commodious villa residences, five minutes' walk from a
station, were dreamed of. The name of the little house is Glan-yr-Afon.