A Welsh Witch by Allen Raine

Author:Allen Raine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 111-1-11-111111-1
Publisher: Honno Press
Published: 2013-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

GLAISH-Y-DAIL

On the side of a rocky hill, overlooking one of the most romantic valleys in Glamorganshire, stood the residence (for we dare not call it the house) of Mr and Mrs Jones. A snug, old-fashioned farmhouse when it came into the rich coal-owner’s possession, Glaish-y-dail had been added to and improved out of all recognition. The front door had been enlarged, and a massive portico, with pillars of stucco, adorned it. The lawns were trim and soft, the gravel on the drives immaculate, foreign shrubs and trees stood stiffly where they had been planted. No trailing branches, no moss-grown stumps, were permissible in the grounds of Glaish-y-dail. But it mattered not much, for no eye could rest long on the formal and artificial foreground while beyond it stretched a scene of so much natural beauty.

The river Gele wound its silver length through the valley which, twenty years before, had been one of complete rural seclusion. Now, alas! its waters were polluted and utilised by the ‘works’ of copper and iron which stood on its banks, their noxious vapours rising in a brown cloud and hanging like a pall over that portion of the valley. The air was full of throbbing and hammering; the regular thud of the enormous bellows seeming to beat time to the chorus of infernal sounds which had come to invade the once peaceful dale.

Glaish-y-dail, however, was high above the turmoil of the ‘works’; the throbbing and whirring, softened by distance, seemed like the pulse and breathing of some monstrous creature who toiled and moiled in the valley below to coin the gold for the rich owners of the handsome houses built on the sides of the hills above. Before it reached the village of Pontargele, the river still retained much of its sylvan beauty, the brown hills between which it meandered rising one behind another and growing bluer and greyer as they stretched further away from the haunts of men.

Looking out through the large bay window in the drawing room, “Mrs Jones, the Daisy,” watched the turn in the valley where the cloud of brown smoke hung low. Here stood the railway station connecting the ‘works’ with the world beyond, and transmitting to a neighbouring port the rich products of the hills extracted by the toiling miners.

The sun was setting behind the smoky haze, gorgeous clouds of crimson and gold overspread the west, but Mrs Jones was too intent upon the little puff of white steam which she saw in the distance to notice such commonplace things as clouds.

She walked nervously up and down the room, which was furnished with every luxury that money and bad taste could collect. Her black eyes and her mouth had lost their natural kindly expression in their continual endeavour to look dignified and indifferent to her grand surroundings. She stood in awe of her servants, being conscious that village gossip had made them acquainted with her humble origin. She was a woman of rather stately appearance, of much natural

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.