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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.


[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 Megaera 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 Neaeras 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 <DW72> 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.




CHAPTER II.


"Jack and I got in our last hayload to-day, without a drop of rain; the
first bit of good luck that has come to us, I don't know when. If we
had any land, I should imagine that we must have a bit of consecrated
ground among it, to account for our ill-fortune; but as we have not
of our own enough to pasture a goose upon, that cannot be it. Such an
odd thing happened to-day--Robert Brandon proposed to me: it is the
first offer I ever had, though I was seventeen last month. If it is
never a more pleasant process than it was to-day, I hope sincerely it
may be the last. I said 'Yes,' too; at least, a species of Yes after
half-a-dozen Noes; I cannot imagine why, for I certainly did not feel
Yes. I suppose I must have been pleased at any one wishing for my
company during the term of his natural life."

The name on the fly-leaf of this journal-book is Esther Craven,
Glan-yr-Afon, and the date July 10, 186-. July is very often a rather
wet month--not so this year; all through its one-and-thirty days the
sky was like brass, as it looked to Elijah (the Seer's) eyes on the top
of Carmel, when, by his faith, he brought up the tarrying rain from the
sea's chambers. London is pouring out her noble army of haberdashers
and greengrocers into Ramsgate and Margate, and Scarborough and
Llandudno. The John Gilpins of to-day are not satisfied with a modest
outing to the "Bell" at Edmonton, "all in a chaise and pair."

Armies of schoolboys are devouring arid sandwiches and prime old buns
in railway refreshment rooms--schoolboys emptied out of every school
and seminary and college all over the country. Highly paid instructors
of youth are stretching their cramped legs up the steep sides of
Helvellyn and Mont Blanc, and surveying the "frozen hurricane" of the
glaciers through their academic spectacles. And young Craven's (of
Glan-yr-Afon) last hayload is safely stacked, as you heard from his
sister's diary. This morning the highest lying of the upland fields was
hilly with haycocks: to-night it is as flat as Salisbury Plain. All
day long the waggons have gone grinding and crunching up and down the
rocky mountain road between field and rick-yard. All day long Evan and
Hugh and Roppert (_sic_) with their waistcoats open and their brown
arms bared, aided and abetted by various Cambrian matrons, with bonnets
standing upright on their heads, and pitchforks in their lily hands,
have been tossing the scented bundles--sweeter in death than in life,
like a good man's fame--into the carts; loading them till of the shaft
horse nought but ears and nose and forelegs appeared, save to the eye
of faith. All day long Esther has been sitting under a haycock, as one
might fancy Solomon's wise woman doing, "looking well to the ways of
her household." The hay moulds itself pliably into a soft arm-chair for
her young, slight figure, and the big hay-spiders walk up her back at
their leisure, and explore the virgin forests of her thick dusk hair.
She has had her luncheon brought out to her there--bread and milk in a
white bowl. It is unsocial, surly work, eating alone; one feels reduced
to the level of a dog, cracking bones, and lapping up gravy out of his
trencher, all by himself, with tail well down, like a pump handle, and
a growl and a snap for any brother dog who may approach to share his
feast.

The haymakers were much cheerier--"couched at ease" under the nutty
hedgerow; bringing slices of unnaturally fat bacon out of blue and
white spotted pocket-handkerchiefs, gabbling to one another in the
Welsh tongue, which, to one who occupies the room of the unlearned, has
always a querulous, quarrelsome, interrogative sound; and digging their
clasp knives into the ground to clean them, when their services were no
longer required. Jack is out for the day, and the place feels stupid
without him. There is not much melody in "I paddle my own canoe," but
one misses it when one is accustomed to hear it echoing gaily over the
crofts and through the farm-yard and orchard. It would be impossible
to talk more dog-Welsh than Jack does to his workmen; but even the
mellifluous tongue of the Cymri, with its three or four consonants
standing together, undissevered by any vowel, is made harmonious,
enunciated by a young, clear voice, that sounds as if it had never been
the vehicle for sorrowful words.

    "The village seems asleep or dead,
     Now Lubin is away,"

and Esther, though she has entered upon her eighteenth year (an age
which a century ago would have been rather overripe--Chloe and Cynthia
and Phyllis being considered in their prime at fifteen, and toasted
accordingly), has as yet no Lubin but her brother. Now and again, Gwen
the cook, and Sarah the housemaid, came panting up the hill in lilac
cotton gowns and trim white aprons, bearing beer in every jug and
mug and tin pipkin that Glan-yr-Afon affords, as Evangeline brought
the nut-brown ale to the reapers of the village of Grand Pre. And
the haymakers drink insatiably, and wipe the thirsty mouth upon the
convenient sleeve as artless Nature bids. By-and-by artless Nature
makes them rather unsteady on their legs. As they lead the heavy-laden
cart to the last remaining haycock, the one on which their mistress
sits enthroned, I am not at all sure that they do not see two haycocks,
two wide-leaved white hats, two Esthers. Perceiving their condition,
though too old an inhabitant of Wales to be in any degree surprised
at what is, after all, the normal condition of the Welsh, Miss Craven
rises precipitately. Driven from her fortress, she picks up her needles
and threads, and Jack's shirt, from which, as usual, the frequent
button is missing, and runs lightly down the mountain path in her
strong country boots, which bid defiance to the sharp stones that crop
out at every step through the limestone soil. At the hall door--a
little arched door like a church's, with a trellised porch and benches,
such as one sees Dutch boors sitting on with their beer and schnapps,
in Teniers' pictures---Sarah meets her. Sarah is an Englishwoman.

"Mr. Brandon is in the parlour,'m."

"Parlour! My good Sarah, how many times shall I adjure you, by all you
hold most sacred, to say drawing-room?"

"He has been there best part of half-an-hour,'m."

"Poor man! how lively for him! why on earth didn't you come and call
me?"

"He said as he wasn't in no partikler hurry, and he'd as lieve as not
wait till you come in. Stop a bit, Miss Esther, you have got some hay
on your frock behind."

"People of seventeen wear gowns, not frocks, Sarah. Oh! there, that
will do. If I had a haystack disposed about my person, he would never
be a bit the wiser."

Half-an-hour passes, and Mr. Brandon is still in the "parlour." It
is seven o'clock, and dinner-time. Would you like to know what it is
that Mr. Brandon takes so long in saying, and whether it is anything
likely to reconcile Miss Craven to the loss of her dinner? A little
room that looks towards the sun-setting; a little room full of evening
sunshine and the smell of tea-roses; a light paper, with small, bright
flower-bunches on the walls; white muslin curtains; a general air of
crisp freshness, as of a room that there are no climbing, crawling,
sticky-fingered children to crumple and rumple. A young woman, rather
red in the face, standing in one corner. She has been driven thither
apparently by a young man, who is standing before her, and who is still
redder. At a rough calculation, you would say that the young man was
seven feet high; but put him with his back against the wall, with his
heels together, and his chin in, and you will find that he is exactly
six feet four; that is, four inches taller than any man who wishes to
do work in the world, and find horses to carry him, ought to be. His
clothes are rather shabby, and