OURSELVES

WE were three quiet, lonely old men, and SHE was a lively, handsome young
woman, and we were at our wits' end what to do with her.
A word about ourselves, first of all--a necessary word, to explain the
singular situation of our fair young guest.
We are three brothers; and we live in a barbarous, dismal old house called
The Glen Tower. Our place of abode stands in a hilly, lonesome district of
South Wales. No such thing as a line of railway runs anywhere near us. No
gentleman's seat is within an easy drive of us. We are at an unspeakably
inconvenient distance from a town, and the village to which we send for our
letters is three miles off.
My eldest brother, Owen, was brought up to the Church. All the prime of his
life was passed in a populous London parish. For more years than I now like
to reckon up, he worked unremittingly, in defiance of failing health and
adverse fortune, amid the multitudinous misery of the London poor; and he
would, in all probability, have sacrificed his life to his duty long before the
present time if The Glen Tower had not come into his possession through
two unexpected deaths in the elder and richer branch of our family. This
opening to him of a place of rest and refuge saved his life. No man ever drew
breath who better deserved the gifts of fortune; for no man, I sincerely
believe, more tender of others, more diffident of himself, more gentle, more
generous, and more simple-hearted than Owen, ever walked this earth.
My second brother, Morgan, started in life as a doctor, and learned all that
his profession could teach him at home and abroad. He realized a moderate
independence by his practice, beginning in one of our large northern towns
and ending as a physician in London; but, although he was well known and
appreciated among his brethren, he failed to gain that sort of reputation
with the public which elevates a man into the position of a great doctor. The
ladies never liked him. In the first place, he was ugly (Morgan will excuse me
for mentioning this); in the second place, he was an inveterate smoker, and
he smelled of tobacco when he felt languid pulses in elegant bedrooms; in the third place, he was the most formidably outspoken teller of the truth as
regarded himself, his profession, and his patients, that ever imperiled the
social standing of the science of medicine. For these reasons, and for others
which it is not necessary to mention, he never pushed his way, as a doctor,
into the front ranks, and he never cared to do so. About a year after Owen
came into possession of The Glen Tower, Morgan discovered that he had
saved as much money for his old age as a sensible man could want; that he
was tired of the active pursuit--or, as he termed it, of the dignified quackery
of his profession; and that it was only common charity to give his invalid
brother a companion who could physic him for nothing, and so prevent him
from getting rid of his money in the worst of all possible ways, by wasting it
on doctors' bills. In a week after Morgan had arrived at these conclusions,
he was settled at The Glen Tower; and from that time, opposite as their
characters were, my two elder brothers lived together in their lonely retreat,
thoroughly understanding, and, in their very different ways, heartily loving
one another.
Many years passed before I, the youngest of the three--christened by the
unmelodious name of Griffith--found my way, in my turn, to the dreary old
house, and the sheltering quiet of the Welsh hills. My career in life had led
me away from my brothers; and even now, when we are all united, I have
still ties and interests to connect me with the outer world which neither
Owen nor Morgan possess.
I was brought up to the Bar. After my first year's study of the law, I wearied
of it, and strayed aside idly into the brighter and more attractive paths of
literature. My occasional occupation with my pen was varied by long
traveling excursions in all parts of the Continent; year by year my circle of
gay friends and acquaintances increased, and I bade fair to sink into the
condition of a wandering desultory man, without a fixed purpose in life of
any sort, when I was saved by what has saved many another in my
situation--an attachment to a good and a sensible woman. By the time I had
reached the age of thirty-five, I had done what neither of my brothers had
done before me--I had married.
As a single man, my own small independence, aided by what little additions
to it I could pick up with my pen, had been sufficient for my wants; but with
marriage and its responsibilities came the necessity for serious exertion. I
returned to my neglected studies, and grappled resolutely, this time, with
the intricate difficulties of the law. I was called to the Bar. My wife's father
aided me with his interest, and I started into practice without difficulty and
without delay.
For the next twenty years my married life was a scene of happiness and
prosperity, on which I now look back with a grateful tenderness that no
words of mine can express. The memory of my wife is busy at my heart while
I think of those past times. The forgotten tears rise in my eyes again, and
trouble the course of my pen while it traces these simple lines.
Let me pass rapidly over the one unspeakable misery of my life; let me try to
remember now, as I tried to remember then, that she lived to see our only
child--our son, who was so good to her, who is still so good to me--grow up
to manhood; that her head lay on my bosom when she died; and that the
last frail movement of her hand in this world was the movement that
brought it closer to her boy's lips.
I bore the blow--with God's help I bore it, and bear it still. But it struck me
away forever from my hold on social life; from the purposes and pursuits,
the companions and the pleasures of twenty years, which her presence had
sanctioned and made dear to me. If my son George had desired to follow my
profession, I should still have struggled against myself, and have kept my
place in the world until I had seen h im prosperous and settled. But his
choice led him to the army; and before his mother's death he had obtained
his commission, and had entered on his path in life. No other responsibility
remained to claim from me the sacrifice of myself; my brothers had made my
place ready for me by their fireside; my heart yearned, in its desolation, for
the friends and companions of the old boyish days; my good, brave son
promised that no year should pass, as long as he was in England, without
his coming to cheer me; and so it happened that I, in my turn, withdrew
from the world, which had once been a bright and a happy world to me, and
retired to end my days, peacefully, contentedly, and gratefully, as my
brothers are ending theirs, in the solitude of The Glen Tower.
How many years have passed since we have all three been united it is not
necessary to relate. It will be more to the purpose if I briefly record that we
have never been separated since the day which first saw us assembled
together in our hillside retreat; that we have never yet wearied of the time, of
the place, or of ourselves; and that the influence of solitude on our hearts
and minds has not altered them for the worse, for it has not embittered us
toward our fellow-creatures, and it has not dried up in us the sources from
which harmless occupations and innocent pleasures may flow refreshingly
to the last over the waste places of human life. Thus much for our own
story, and for the circumstances which have withdrawn us from the world
for the rest of our days.
And now imagine us three lonely old men, tall and lean, and white-headed; dressed, more from past habit than from present association, in customary
suits of solemn black: Brother Owen, yielding, gentle, and affectionate in
look, voice, and manner; brother Morgan, with a quaint, surface-sourness of
address, and a tone of dry sarcasm in his talk, which single him out, on all
occasions, as a character in our little circle; brother Griffith forming the link
between his two elder companions, capable, at one time, of sympathizing
with the quiet, thoughtful tone of Owen's conversation, and ready, at
another, to exchange brisk severities on life and manners with Morgan--in
short, a pliable, double-sided old lawyer, who stands between the
clergyman-brother and the physician-brother with an ear ready for each,
and with a heart open to both, share and share together.
Imagine the strange old building in which we live to be really what its name
implies--a tower standing in a glen; in past times the fortress of a fighting
Welsh chieftain; in present times a dreary land-lighthouse, built up in many
stories of two rooms each, with a little modern lean-to of cottage form tacked
on quaintly to one of its sides; the great hill, on whose lowest slope it
stands, rising precipitously behind it; a dark, swift-flowing stream in the
valley below; hills on hills all round, and no way of approach but by one of
the loneliest and wildest crossroads in all South Wales.
Imagine such a place of abode as this, and such inhabitants of it as
ourselves, and them picture the descent among us--as of a goddess
dropping from the clouds--of a lively, handsome, fashionable young lady--a
bright, gay, butterfly creature, used to flutter away its existence in the broad
sunshine of perpetual gayety--a child of the new generation, with all the
modern ideas whirling together in her pretty head, and all the modern
accomplishments at the tips of her delicate fingers. Imagine such a lighthearted
daughter of Eve as this, the spoiled darling of society, the charming
spendthrift of Nature's choicest treasures of beauty and youth, suddenly
flashing into the dim life of three weary old men--suddenly dropped into the
place, of all others, which is least fit for her--suddenly shut out from the
world in the lonely quiet of the loneliest home in England. Realize, if it be
possible, all that is most whimsical and most anomalous in such a situation
as this, and the startling confession contained in the opening sentence of
these pages will no longer excite the faintest emotion of surprise. Who can
wonder now, when our bright young goddess really descended on us, that I
and my brothers were all three at our wits' end what to do with her!dressed, more from past habit than from present association, in customary
suits of solemn black: Brother Owen, yielding, gentle, and affectionate in
look, voice, and manner; brother Morgan, with a quaint, surface-sourness of
address, and a tone of dry sarcasm in his talk, which single him out, on all
occasions, as a character in our little circle; brother Griffith forming the link
between his two elder companions, capable, at one time, of sympathizing
with the quiet, thoughtful tone of Owen's conversation, and ready, at
another, to exchange brisk severities on life and manners with Morgan--in
short, a pliable, double-sided old lawyer, who stands between the
clergyman-brother and the physician-brother with an ear ready for each,
and with a heart open to both, share and share together.
Imagine the strange old building in which we live to be really what its name
implies--a tower standing in a glen; in past times the fortress of a fighting
Welsh chieftain; in present times a dreary land-lighthouse, built up in many
stories of two rooms each, with a little modern lean-to of cottage form tacked
on quaintly to one of its sides; the great hill, on whose lowest slope it
stands, rising precipitously behind it; a dark, swift-flowing stream in the
valley below; hills on hills all round, and no way of approach but by one of
the loneliest and wildest crossroads in all South Wales.
Imagine such a place of abode as this, and such inhabitants of it as
ourselves, and them picture the descent among us--as of a goddess
dropping from the clouds--of a lively, handsome, fashionable young lady--a
bright, gay, butterfly creature, used to flutter away its existence in the broad
sunshine of perpetual gayety--a child of the new generation, with all the
modern ideas whirling together in her pretty head, and all the modern
accomplishments at the tips of her delicate fingers. Imagine such a lighthearted
daughter of Eve as this, the spoiled darling of society, the charming
spendthrift of Nature's choicest treasures of beauty and youth, suddenly
flashing into the dim life of three weary old men--suddenly dropped into the
place, of all others, which is least fit for her--suddenly shut out from the
world in the lonely quiet of the loneliest home in England. Realize, if it be
possible, all that is most whimsical and most anomalous in such a situation
as this, and the startling confession contained in the opening sentence of
these pages will no longer excite the faintest emotion of surprise. Who can
wonder now, when our bright young goddess really descended on us, that I
and my brothers were all three at our wits' end what to do with her!