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238 pages

English

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. 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.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819912231
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE QUEEN OF HEARTS.
CHAPTER I.
OURSELVES.
WE were three quiet, lonely old men, and SHE was alively, handsome young woman, and we were at our wits' end what todo with her.
A word about ourselves, first of all - a necessaryword, to explain the singular situation of our fair youngguest.
We are three brothers; and we live in a barbarous,dismal old house called The Glen Tower. Our place of abode standsin a hilly, lonesome district of South Wales. No such thing as aline of railway runs anywhere near us. No gentleman's seat iswithin an easy drive of us. We are at an unspeakably inconvenientdistance from a town, and the village to which we send for ourletters is three miles off.
My eldest brother, Owen, was brought up to theChurch. All the prime of his life was passed in a populous Londonparish. For more years than I now like to reckon up, he workedunremittingly, in defiance of failing health and adverse fortune,amid the multitudinous misery of the London poor; and he would, inall probability, have sacrificed his life to his duty long beforethe present time if The Glen Tower had not come into his possessionthrough two unexpected deaths in the elder and richer branch of ourfamily. This opening to him of a place of rest and refuge saved hislife. No man ever drew breath who better deserved the gifts offortune; for no man, I sincerely believe, more tender of others,more diffident of himself, more gentle, more generous, and moresimple-hearted than Owen, ever walked this earth.
My second brother, Morgan, started in life as adoctor, and learned all that his profession could teach him at homeand abroad. He realized a moderate independence by his practice,beginning in one of our large northern towns and ending as aphysician in London; but, although he was well known andappreciated among his brethren, he failed to gain that sort ofreputation with the public which elevates a man into the positionof a great doctor. The ladies never liked him. In the first place,he was ugly (Morgan will excuse me for mentioning this); in thesecond place, he was an inveterate smoker, and he smelled oftobacco when he felt languid pulses in elegant bedrooms; in thethird place, he was the most formidably outspoken teller of thetruth as regarded himself, his profession, and his patients, thatever imperiled the social standing of the science of medicine. Forthese reasons, and for others which it is not necessary to mention,he never pushed his way, as a doctor, into the front ranks, and henever cared to do so. About a year after Owen came into possessionof The Glen Tower, Morgan discovered that he had saved as muchmoney for his old age as a sensible man could want; that he wastired of the active pursuit - or, as he termed it, of the dignifiedquackery of his profession; and that it was only common charity togive his invalid brother a companion who could physic him fornothing, and so prevent him from getting rid of his money in theworst of all possible ways, by wasting it on doctors' bills. In aweek after Morgan had arrived at these conclusions, he was settledat The Glen Tower; and from that time, opposite as their characterswere, 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 thethree - christened by the unmelodious name of Griffith - found myway, in my turn, to the dreary old house, and the sheltering quietof the Welsh hills. My career in life had led me away from mybrothers; and even now, when we are all united, I have still tiesand interests to connect me with the outer world which neither Owennor Morgan possess.
I was brought up to the Bar. After my first year'sstudy of the law, I wearied of it, and strayed aside idly into thebrighter and more attractive paths of literature. My occasionaloccupation with my pen was varied by long traveling excursions inall parts of the Continent; year by year my circle of gay friendsand acquaintances increased, and I bade fair to sink into thecondition of a wandering desultory man, without a fixed purpose inlife of any sort, when I was saved by what has saved many anotherin my situation - an attachment to a good and a sensible woman. Bythe time I had reached the age of thirty-five, I had done whatneither of my brothers had done before me - I had married.
As a single man, my own small independence, aided bywhat little additions to it I could pick up with my pen, had beensufficient for my wants; but with marriage and its responsibilitiescame the necessity for serious exertion. I returned to my neglectedstudies, and grappled resolutely, this time, with the intricatedifficulties of the law. I was called to the Bar. My wife's fatheraided me with his interest, and I started into practice withoutdifficulty and without delay.
For the next twenty years my married life was ascene of happiness and prosperity, on which I now look back with agrateful tenderness that no words of mine can express. The memoryof 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 courseof my pen while it traces these simple lines.
Let me pass rapidly over the one unspeakable miseryof my life; let me try to remember now, as I tried to rememberthen, that she lived to see our only child - our son, who was sogood to her, who is still so good to me - grow up to manhood; thather head lay on my bosom when she died; and that the last frailmovement of her hand in this world was the movement that brought itcloser to her boy's lips.
I bore the blow - with God's help I bore it, andbear it still. But it struck me away forever from my hold on sociallife; from the purposes and pursuits, the companions and thepleasures of twenty years, which her presence had sanctioned andmade dear to me. If my son George had desired to follow myprofession, I should still have struggled against myself, and havekept my place in the world until I had seen h im prosperous andsettled. But his choice led him to the army; and before hismother's death he had obtained his commission, and had entered onhis path in life. No other responsibility remained to claim from methe sacrifice of myself; my brothers had made my place ready for meby their fireside; my heart yearned, in its desolation, for thefriends and companions of the old boyish days; my good, brave sonpromised 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 myturn, withdrew from the world, which had once been a bright and ahappy world to me, and retired to end my days, peacefully,contentedly, and gratefully, as my brothers are ending theirs, inthe solitude of The Glen Tower.
How many years have passed since we have all threebeen united it is not necessary to relate. It will be more to thepurpose if I briefly record that we have never been separated sincethe day which first saw us assembled together in our hillsideretreat; that we have never yet wearied of the time, of the place,or of ourselves; and that the influence of solitude on our heartsand minds has not altered them for the worse, for it has notembittered us toward our fellow-creatures, and it has not dried upin us the sources from which harmless occupations and innocentpleasures may flow refreshingly to the last over the waste placesof human life. Thus much for our own story, and for thecircumstances which have withdrawn us from the world for the restof our days.
And now imagine us three lonely old men, tall andlean, and white-headed; dressed, more from past habit than frompresent association, in customary suits of solemn black: BrotherOwen, yielding, gentle, and affectionate in look, voice, andmanner; brother Morgan, with a quaint, surface-sourness of address,and a tone of dry sarcasm in his talk, which single him out, on alloccasions, as a character in our little circle; brother Griffithforming the link between his two elder companions, capable, at onetime, of sympathizing with the quiet, thoughtful tone of Owen'sconversation, and ready, at another, to exchange brisk severitieson life and manners with Morgan - in short, a pliable, double-sidedold lawyer, who stands between the clergyman-brother and thephysician-brother with an ear ready for each, and with a heart opento both, share and share together.
Imagine the strange old building in which we live tobe really what its name implies - a tower standing in a glen; inpast times the fortress of a fighting Welsh chieftain; in presenttimes a dreary land-lighthouse, built up in many stories of tworooms each, with a little modern lean-to of cottage form tacked onquaintly to one of its sides; the great hill, on whose lowest slopeit stands, rising precipitously behind it; a dark, swift-flowingstream in the valley below; hills on hills all round, and no way ofapproach but by one of the loneliest and wildest crossroads in allSouth Wales.
Imagine such a place of abode as this, and suchinhabitants of it as ourselves, and them picture the descent amongus - as of a goddess dropping from the clouds - of a lively,handsome, fashionable young lady - a bright, gay, butterflycreature, used to flutter away its existence in the broad sunshineof perpetual gayety - a child of the new generation, with all themodern ideas whirling together in her pretty head, and all themodern accomplishments at the tips of her delicate fingers. Imaginesuch a light-hearted daughter of Eve as this, the spoiled darlingof society, the charming spendthrift of Nature's choicest treasuresof beauty and youth, suddenly flashing into the dim life of threeweary old men - suddenly dropped into the place, of all others,which is least fit for her - suddenly shut out from the world inthe lonely quiet of the loneliest home in England. Realize, if itbe possible, all that is most whimsical and most anomalous in sucha situation as this, and the startling confession contained