Red as a Rose is She: A Novel

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  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.

  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 inparticular; I merely address it to the universal British public, or,rather, to such member or members of the same as shall be wise enoughto sit down and read the ensuing true and moving love story--true asthe loves of wicked Abelard and Heloise, moving as those of good Pauland Virginia. Probably those wise ones will be very few; numerableby tens, or even units: they will, I may very safely aver, not formthe bulk of the nation. However high may be my estimate of my ownpowers of narration, however amply Providence may have gifted me withself-appreciation, I may be sure of that, seeing that the only booksI know of which enjoy so wide a circulation are the Prayer-book andBradshaw. 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 Ipipe my simple lay (rather squeakily and out of tune, perhaps), and maythink myself very lucky if that same kind, limited audience do not hissme down before I have got through half a dozen staves of the dull oldditty.

  Have you ever been to Wales? If you have ever visited the pretty,dirty, green spot where Pat and his brogue, where potatoes andabsenteeism and head-centres flourish, _alias_ Ireland, you haveno doubt passed through a part of it, rushing by, most likely, inthe Irish mail; but in that case your eyes and nose and ears wereall so very full of dust and cinders--you were so fully employed inblinking and coughing and enjoying the poetry of motion--as to betotally incapable of seeing, hearing, or smelling any of the beauties,agreeable noises, or good smells, which in happier circumstances mighthave offered themselves to your notice. Perhaps you are in the habit,every midsummer, of taking your half-dozen male and female oliveshoots to have the roses restored to their twelve fat cheeks by blowyscrambles about the great frowning Orme's Head, or by excavations inthe Rhyl Sands. Perhaps you have gone wedding-touring to Llanberis onthe top of a heavy-laden coach, swinging unsafely round sharp corners,and nearly flinging your Angelina from your side on to the hard Welshroad below. Perhaps you have wept with Angelina at the spurious graveof the martyred Gelert, or eaten pink trout voraciously at Capel Curig,and found out what a startlingly good appetite Angelina had. But haveyou ever lived in the land of the Cymri? Have you ever seen how drunkthe masculine Cymri can be on market days, or what grievous old hagsthe 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 partI don't think that Taffy is much more given to the breaking of theeighth commandment than the _canaille_ of any other country. He is nota bright fellow, is not Taffy; happiest, I think, when rather tipsy,or when yelling psalms in his conventicle or schism-shop--for Taffy isaddicted to schism; he will tell you plenty of lies, too, and will notseason 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 feloniouslyafter his neighbour's spoons, or hammer his wife's head with thedomestic poker.

  But why am I drivelling on, like a sort of Murray and water, on themanners and character of this, to my thinking, not very interestingnation? I will waste no more "prave 'ords" upon them, as the few menand women whom I am going to tell you about, and whom I shall wantyou to like a little, or dislike a little, as the case may be, arenot Taffies, only they happen to have stuck up their tent-poles inTaffy-land when they first make their low bow to you. These men andwomen were nothing out of the way for goodness, or beauty, or talent;they did a hundred thousand naughty things, each one of them. Someof them did them with impunity, as far as this world goes; some ofthem, capricious Megaera and Tisyphone lashed with scorpions for theirderelictions. 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 ofthose styles of composition may forthwith close this volume, and pitchit (if it be his own, and not the battered property of a circulatinglibrary) into the fire. Those who love a violent moral, or violentjudgment for sins and follies--a man struck dead for saying "damn,"or a woman for going to a ball, as the _Record_ would charitably haveus believe is the way of Providence--equally with those who enjoy theflavour of violent immorality, will be disappointed if they look thisway for the gratification of their peculiar idiosyncracies. Of myfriends presently to be made known to you, and criticised by you, "themore part remain unto this present, but some have fallen asleep."

  Once upon a time--I like that old, time-honoured opening; it makesone 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--onceupon a time there was a valley in Taffy-land; there is still, unlesssome very recent convulsion has upheaved it to the top of a mountain,or submerged it beneath the big Atlantic waves; a valley lovelierthan that one in "Ida," where "beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris,"pastured his sheep and his jet-black goats, and inaugurated his rakishcourse; a valley where there are no dangerous, good-looking Parises,only one or two red-headed Welsh squires, who have each married, orwill in the fulness of time each marry, one lawful wife--red-headed,too, very likely; and have never made, will never make, love to anyEnones or other ill-conducted young shepherdesses. In fact, in thatArcadia there are no such shepherdesses; the daughters of the Cymri donot "ply the homely shepherd's trade," nor would they shed much romanceover it if they did; for with sorrow be it spoken, blowsy are theymostly, hard-featured, toothless; and, moreover, the little nimble,lean sheep that go scrambling and jumping and skurrying about therough crags and steep hill-sides do not need any crook'd and melodiousDowsabellas or Neaeras to look after them and guide them in the way theyshould go.

  In that valley there are plenty of houses, squires' houses andpeasants' houses, where the propagation of the Cambrian is conductedwith much success; houses big and little, red-faced and white-facedand dirty-faced, old and new. But we have at present to do with onlyone of those houses, and it comes under the head of the littles andthe olds. Halfway up a hill-side it stands, looking across the valleyto other higher hills that swell out softly against the sky, and gosloping gently down to the sea twenty miles away. They always remindme--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. Itis a snug, unpretending little house enough, with its black and whitecross-beamed front and unwalled kitchen-garden straggling steeply upthe slope at the back. Many and many a day has it stood there, seeinggenerations and fashions come in and go out; has stood there since thefar-away days when men wore curly wigs half-way down their backs, andsky-blue coats, and fought and died for prerogative and King Charles,or fought and lived for England and liberty: when most houses wereblack and white, like its little elderly self, before plate glass orstucco, or commodious villa residences, five minutes' walk from astation, were dreamed of. The name of the little house is Glan-yr-Afon.