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 THE THEEE PATHS. 
 
 BY 
 
 HEKBERT GREY, M.A. 
 
 '• It has a plan, but no plot. Life hath none." — Festus. 
 
 " Allem achten Scherz liegt Ernst zu Gninde; auch Farcen und Marion- 
 nettenspiele haben eine tragische Wirkung: eben so das bunteste Lebeii, eben 
 so das Gemeine und Triviale " — Novalis. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, ' 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1859. 
 
 The right of Tranxlation is reserved.
 
 ¥
 
 J 
 
 d 
 
 
 
 4titst fart. 
 
 "I could interpret between you and your love, 
 if I could see the puppets dallying." — Shakspeare 
 — Hamlet. 
 
 " All, all of us are puppets, Van den Bosch." 
 
 Taylor — Philip van Ar'tevelde. 
 
 " Now we will go and see the puppet show 
 of honest Master Peter, which I really believe 
 may be productive of some novelty." 
 
 Cervantes — Don Quixote, 
 
 " Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, 
 Und griin des Lebens goldner Baum ! " 
 
 Goethe — Faust. 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 THE THREE PATHS 
 
 i'xxst |aH. 
 
 The season was winter ; the scene a set 
 of chambers rented of the Honourable 
 Society of the Inner Temple by my 
 old, young friend, Fred Charlton. Outside 
 all was cold, clear, and frosty. Deep, 
 white, fleecy snow lay thick on pavement, 
 roof, and lamp-post. The myriad stars 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 gleamed brightly in a cold, black-blue 
 sky, and seemed to twinkle and shut their 
 eyes as the piercing frost -wind swept 
 bitterly past them through the great 
 vault of night; while the moonlight slept 
 pure and calm on the white brilliance 
 of roof and quadrangle ; and the shadows 
 of the tall houses were thrown in clearly 
 defined outlines on that part of the 
 court on which the vestal lamp of heaven 
 shone not. 
 
 Within, all was warmth and comfort. 
 The red curtains were drawn closely 
 before the windows. The fire-light 
 danced and flickered on the old panelled 
 walls, and on the busts and pictures 
 with which they were decorated. Our 
 easy chairs were drawn up close to the 
 fire on either side the hearth, and on the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 5 
 
 table behind us, amid a litter of books and 
 papers, stood bottles and glasses. We 
 had not been reading, and Fred, conse- 
 quently, in accordance with a fancy of 
 his, had forborne to light the candles. 
 He had further contracted a habit of 
 always shivering and poking the fire 
 when a .fiercer blast than ordinary rushed 
 by the windows — a peculiarity which 
 evinced a deep sympathy with external 
 nature. 
 
 The clear dark ruby of the old port 
 wine flushed and flashed in the waver- 
 ing light of the ruddy blaze, like the 
 blood of a god, asleep, and dreaming 
 of love. After the fashion of bachelors, 
 each of us had drawn up a chair in 
 fi'ont of his easy -chair, to rest his legs 
 on. Pipes were lit, and the smoke-
 
 6 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 wreaths rose dreamily, like musing fancies, 
 and curled upwards towards the ceiling. 
 And so we sat in the cosy, comfortable 
 old chambers, while the snow without 
 sparkled in the moonlight and the 
 frost. , 
 
 "It hath been finely remarked by the 
 ancients," said Fred, slowly, and emit- 
 ting, as he spoke, spiral columns of 
 smoke, " that it is a deucedly cold 
 night — fine, of its sort, but very cold. 
 Fill your glass, and pass me the Lata- 
 kia." 
 
 I assented to his proposition and com- 
 plied with his behest. We filled again, 
 both glasses and pipes, and once more 
 reclined luxuriously in the easy -chairs, 
 watching the glowing coals and leaping 
 flames with indolent satisfaction, and
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 7 
 
 sometimes following with lazily upturned 
 eyes the smoke rising calmly from the 
 gleaming bowls of the pipes, and sug- 
 gesting to us fancies of still twilight 
 summer evenings, with the thin blue 
 smoke soaring straight from the chim- 
 neys of village homesteads, and thrown 
 out into clear relief by the background 
 of dark elm foliage. Ah, the winter 
 fire-glow and the thoughtful pipe are 
 great suggest ers, and many a fair dream- 
 picture is born and fade? in smoke ! 
 No sounds were audible but the crack- 
 ling and shifting of the coals, the soft 
 bulbul gurgle of the pipes, and the 
 whistling of the keen wind without. 
 Both Fred and I possessed the ^'talent 
 of silence," when scene and hour re- 
 quired it, and so we sat and smoked.
 
 8 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 while its influence descended dreamily 
 upon our reverie. 
 
 As I was by no means asleep — in- 
 deed one can dream as well waking as 
 sleeping — I may as well take advantage 
 of this lull in the conversation to make 
 my reader a little more intimately ac- 
 quainted with the puppets whose wires I 
 am about to pull, as I hope, for his amuse- 
 ment. I propose, like Sheridan Knowles, 
 to play in my own piece, to appear 
 both as authpr and actor; and although 
 shrouded in an unpierceable incognito, I 
 shall yet scrupulously observe the touch- 
 ing modesty which belongs, of right, to 
 all writing that is in the least auto- 
 biographical — even though not autono- 
 mous, in its character. This is the 
 more easy, as I have no confessions of 
 
 ^
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 9 
 
 a Eousseau-like nature to make, and have, 
 alas ! no Wahrheit und Dichtung of the 
 noble Goethe type to deliver as a light 
 unto the world. The memories of my 
 faded youth include neither abasement 
 on the one hand, nor glory on the 
 other. My life drifted early into a 
 quiet — all too quiet — shallow, whence I 
 looked in calm sadness on the stronger 
 and more fortunate barks that careered 
 adown the stream of human life. But 
 retrospection is mostly sad ; sad as satire. 
 A truce to it. Away, too, with di- 
 gression. I repress the impulse to di- 
 verge into a discussion on auto-bio- 
 graphy, on what it is, or what it might 
 be, and proceed to my puppets. 
 
 Fred, at the time of which I write, 
 was about three or four and twenty. He
 
 10 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 had completed his academical career, dur- 
 ing which he had been a hybrid between 
 a " rowing " and a reading man, with fair 
 reputation and success ; he had taken a 
 good degree, and he was now more or 
 less engaged in eating his terms and 
 reading for the bar. He had the advan- 
 tage, or misfortune, as the case may be, 
 to possess good connections and expec- 
 tations; and he was, as I used to tell 
 him, like the young swell in a farce, in 
 respect that he was the favoured nephew 
 and declared heir of a rich, but whim- 
 sical and testy, old bachelor uncle. The 
 old gentleman had no children ; Fred had 
 no parents. 
 
 The uncle was decidedly fond and 
 proud of his nephew, and hoped to see 
 him sow his wild oats, make a career
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 11 
 
 in life, and marry well — '^ marry well, 
 sir — sensibly, you know, and that sort 
 of thing ; that's what I want to see the boy 
 do, by Jove ! and he shan't want for any 
 help his old uncle can give him — that is, 
 sir, if he behaves himself well, and — and 
 that sort of thing, sir, by Jove ! Pass the 
 wine, if you please." Sometimes, when 
 irritated by some extravagance or escapade 
 of Fred's, the old gentleman would 
 threaten to marry, and to conspire with 
 his wife to produce an heir. But Fred 
 was pretty safe, and he knew it. His 
 uncle was really kind-hearted and well 
 affected, and although he would storm a 
 little at times, yet his morals, as well as 
 some of his manners, belonged to the 
 " School for Scandal " school, and he 
 looked, in fact, upon the follies, and
 
 12 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 perhaps the vices — that is, the " gentle- 
 manly'' vices — even, of young men, with 
 much the same degree of toleration as Sir 
 Oliver exhibited towards the little fail- 
 ings of Charles Surface. He did not ob- 
 ject to see youth retire at times, like 
 besieged mountaineers, to its fastnesses, 
 and he probably liked Fred none the 
 worse for their occasional quarrels, and 
 the causes of them. He did not se- 
 riously disapprove of any proceeding which 
 he could term a " peccadillo," and his 
 interpretation of this most useful" word 
 was very comfortably latitudinarian. As 
 an observer of society, I may here re- 
 mark that many old gentlemen still exist, 
 who illustrate vividly what may be 
 termed the Sheridan theorem of life ; 
 although, thank God, the tone and ideas
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 13 
 
 which produced these men, and which 
 coloured the times of their youth, are 
 fast disappearing ; to give place, as I 
 firmly believe, to something nobler, purer, 
 and wiser in the history of our English 
 social progress. Comedy, and those novels 
 which resemble comedy as Hogarth re- 
 sembles Moliere, remain still, as comedy 
 alone was in the days and in the hands 
 of Menander, the truest types and pic- 
 tures of manners and of morals — the 
 *^ abstracts and brief chronicles of the 
 time." 
 
 May we not take as types of the 
 departing and of the crescent cycle — 
 type not too flattering to the younger 
 age — the senior and the junior Pen- 
 dennis ? May we not rejoice that, as 
 painters, moralists, and satirists. Fielding
 
 14 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 and Smollett are replaced by Thackeray 
 and Dickens ? Must we not blush that 
 the comedies of Etherege, Wycherly, Con- 
 greve, Farquhar, Yanbrugh, and Aphra 
 Behn should reflect manners which once, 
 and for so long a time, existed in Eng- 
 land ? Dare we believe that, if Charles 
 Surface and Tom Jones represented truly 
 the model youth of our father's and 
 grandfather's day, Alfred Evelyn and 
 George Warrington typify the nobler man 
 of the present ? 
 
 The great defect in Fred was," that 
 he was not earnest. His intellect and 
 feelings, his opinions and objects, were 
 alike " yeasty " and unfixed ; nor had he 
 formed in his own mind any true theo- 
 rem of life, or placed clearly before his 
 own thought the ideals towards which
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 15 
 
 he should strive. This arose partly from 
 nature, partly from circumstances, and 
 partly from prosperous and careless youth. 
 It was one of those doubtful dawns, 
 with the promise of beauty enveloped in 
 mist, which will probably yield a fine 
 day, but may possibly turn out a con- 
 fused and cloudy one. His powers were 
 fine, his attainments were fair, and his 
 nature was really good and noble. He 
 was, above all, no flunkey ; he never 
 thought in plush, or felt in powder ; he 
 he had not the servile soul of a lacquey, 
 but the free, royal spirit of an English 
 gentleman, who might claim Sir Philip 
 Sydney as a compatriot ancestor ; and 
 his mind was not lit with gas, but illu- 
 mined with God's free sun and air. 
 He had a true and fervid love of na-
 
 16 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 ture, and looked with noble scorn on all 
 the worldliness and baseness of Vanity 
 Fair. Hence, the curse of our modern 
 England — social slavishness and snob- 
 bishness — ran off him as water runs off 
 the plumes of a swan ; and I used to 
 hope that when the fever dream of youth's 
 little vanities and affectations — the unreal 
 striving towards a false ideal — should have 
 left him, he would belong to that noble 
 band which, in literature and in life, still 
 fights in the van of truth and progress, 
 and in the struggles of the day still paves 
 the way for the advent of a diviner mor- 
 row. He would, I thought, become one 
 of those rare men whom I term intrin- 
 sicdls — men whose clear insight pierces 
 through all outward shows, and forms, 
 and husks, and shams, direct to the 
 
 ■h
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 17 
 
 God's truth and meaning, lying at the 
 root of every matter. But he was as yet 
 passing through his Lelirjahre, his years 
 of apprenticeship to life, and he still chased 
 the mirage of false pleasure, to find ever 
 . that that which seemed from distance waters 
 fresh and fair, was, when reached, but 
 hot and arid sand. But we must, in this 
 our life, explode error to arrive at truth ; 
 we must long toss at sea before we 
 prize the haven ; we must pass through 
 darkness into light, through pain to plea- 
 sure ; we must suffer disappointment be- 
 fore we taste enjoyment ; we must know 
 labour before we attain to fruition ; we 
 must, as the stern condition of this mys- 
 tery of being, pass from life to death, 
 and through death to life again. Fred 
 wanted a great joy, or a great sorrow, to 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 settle his unsteady faith, and to dignify 
 his wavering life. His nature was, I 
 thought, pure enough to be taught by 
 joy : I hoped it was so sound that sorrow 
 would elevate and not exasperate. And 
 so I watched the young fellow's opening 
 manhood with the kindliest interest and 
 sympathy. 
 
 We were great friends. We kept 
 a joint pair-oar at Searle's. We made 
 little trips, visited, and went to the 
 thea-tre together. Our books, tobacco, 
 and dwellings were held in common. 
 We were, indeed, much at each other's 
 rooms, and discussed there freely religion 
 and philosophy, politics and ethics, lite- 
 rature and love, art and science, the 
 drama and the schools, law and medi- 
 cine, life and death; and, of course, dis-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 19 
 
 coursed much upon those vases in which 
 imaginative young men store up the 
 flowers of their fancy — women. But Fred 
 was sore and bitter upon this point. His 
 ^^ nympholeptic climbings " had, hitherto, 
 been somewhat unfortunate ; the eager 
 fancy had betrayed the heart. He would 
 go to a ball, or to some house, and see 
 there a woman who caught his eye — ^his 
 fancy did the rest. He attributed to 
 her worth, intellect, tenderness, and wit, 
 and would come back to me with 
 the worst symptoms of raving nympho- 
 mania fully developed. I smoked quietly 
 through many of these fits, well know- 
 ing that they were but the spectra or 
 parhelia, which shone in mockery of the 
 true sun. 
 
 Fred was young, handsome, dressed 
 
 C 2
 
 20 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 well, possessed pleasing manners and a 
 good style ; and his impassioned address, 
 or known expectations, often procured 
 recognition and some sort of return from 
 various of these charmers. He became 
 gradually the possessor of sundry locks 
 of hair, gloves (of varying sizes), flowers, 
 little scented notes, and other similar ar- 
 ticles of virtUy which he would often 
 kiss and apostrophise fervently, to my 
 infinite amusement. We used to spar at 
 one period a good deal about these little 
 gages d^ amour. He objected strongly for 
 some time to my lighting pipes with the 
 notes, or twisting the gloves round the 
 necks of bottles to pull the corks out, 
 and he never cordially liked to see the 
 flowers put into beer. But his real idea 
 of womanhood was — as it always is in
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 21 
 
 all truly good and noble men — pure and 
 high ; and these Cynthias of the hour 
 generally did him the kindness to disgust 
 and disenchant him early, by some exhi- 
 bition of low, worldly feeling, of petti- 
 ness of thought, or of coarseness of idea ; 
 and when he had successively deified and 
 destroyed the images of some half-dozen 
 of Seraphinas, Angelicas, Emmelines, Me- 
 doras, Saccharissas, and Belindas, he re- 
 venged upon the whole sex his own want 
 of judgment, appeared with some success 
 in the earlier scenes of Benedick, and be- 
 came, in short, a Misogynist. 
 
 Fred used to call me an old cynic, 
 but he now became himself a tolerable 
 proficient in the cynical philosophy. A 
 tinge of misanthropy showed itself through 
 the web of his thought and the hues
 
 22 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 of his fancy, and like all renegades, he 
 was bitter in his denunciations of his 
 old creed. He experienced, in short, the 
 sharp sorrow of that shock to which 
 high-hearted and noblj-dreaming youth is 
 commonly exposed, when its first ideals 
 are brought into rude contact and col- 
 lision with the coarsely actual. He de- 
 clared himself disillusionne ; vowed that 
 he would never " waste his noon of 
 manhood for a myrtle shade ; " would 
 never more be a fool, " sighing like 
 furnace," and penning sonnets to b mis- 
 tress' eyebrow. For a man whose eyes 
 were simply opened to truth, and whose 
 mind was merely disabused of error, he 
 was perhaps somewhat unphilosophically 
 warm and angry. He was naturally 
 fond of antithesis and paradox, and had
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 23 
 
 a singular talent for a brilliant but bi- 
 zarre species of burlesque wit, which I 
 can but feebly image here. As cham- 
 pagne must be drunk hissing fresh from 
 the bottle, since its creamy foam sub- 
 sides, and its gay bubbles evaporate, if 
 it be allowed to stand, so the species 
 of wit to which I allude, and which 
 sparkles so brilliantly in conversation, 
 must be enjoyed at the moment of pour- 
 ing out, since its gay spirit also evapo- 
 rates when we attempt at a later period 
 to reproduce it in writing. He now em- 
 ployed all the force of his sarcasm and 
 rhetoric in his railings against the sex. 
 He who, but a short time ago, had wor- 
 shipped every woman on trust, as a 
 goddess, now sneered at all women as 
 heartless hypocrites and frivolous impos-
 
 24 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 tors. But, strange thougli unconscious 
 tribute to his former opinions, lie avenged 
 upon himself the destruction of his ideal 
 by the fair iconoclasts, by plunging 
 recklessly and defiantly into a series of 
 unworthy amours ; in which he was 
 liable, according to the strength or 
 weakness of his insight, either to con- 
 firm his present ideas, or to discern 
 more clearly the true, the pure, and , 
 the noble, by contrast with the same 
 qualities sullied by decadence and stamped 
 with the insignia of a second fall. He 
 was, as I before said, serving his ap- 
 prenticeship to life, and was now en- 
 gaged in acquiring the bitter certainty 
 that " the tree of knowledge is not that 
 of life.'' ' But there was hope for him 
 yet. He was suffering from the fever
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 25 
 
 of reaction ; he was learning truth 
 through error ; the revulsion of feeling 
 demanded its expiation, and as I thought 
 of the generous delusion which had 
 plunged him into error, I hoped he 
 might jet live to know that 
 
 " The strongest plume in wisdom's wing 
 Is the memory of past folly." 
 
 Now for myself. Ah, the pen which 
 glided so flowingly over the kindly- 
 remembered struggles of my dear old 
 friends^ early experiences, falters now 
 and hesitates. " It may be silence 
 suiteth best ; " but every man's life con- 
 tains a moral of some sort for men, 
 and I will not therefore shrink from the 
 discharge of my self-imposed task. A 
 man's life may be as a lighthouse to
 
 26 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 illumine for other men the wide ocean 
 of life, though this is only the case 
 when that life is, in a divinely true 
 sense, a success. If that life be a 
 failure, not the less should the tale of 
 it be told, since the sunken wreck, if 
 but a shattered mast rise out of the 
 dark waters, may warn others off hid- 
 den shoal and reef Well, then, my 
 life was a failure ; be that at least 
 confessed. It was " a gray set " life 
 of ^' long mechanic pacings to and 
 fro ; " a life which, early thrown into 
 the dark struggle between nature and 
 destiny, between desire and fate, had 
 failed in strength of will, in firm- 
 ness of faith and ardour of pur- 
 pose, to emancipate the spirit from the 
 thrall of circumstance, and to clear 
 
 .^1
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 27 
 
 away the dark close forest which 
 hemmed in powers that could only de- 
 velop themselves in sunshine and in air. 
 Hence it crawled, slow and spiritless, 
 along the bleak and shady side of life's 
 way. Hence hope had vanished, ambi- 
 tion lay dormant, and aspiration remained 
 only as the vulture remained by Prome- 
 theus. 
 
 I had " nor fame, nor love, nor wealth, 
 nor leisure,'' but dwelt ever amid 
 the ceaseless clangor and grinding of 
 those iron wheels which make the 
 brain so weary, and leave the heart so 
 aching. It is almost needless to add 
 that I was a poor man. My life, 
 "like a star 'twixt night and morn," 
 hovered doubtfully between two worlds. 
 My tendencies, at least, belonged to the
 
 28 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 world of thought and aspiration ; my 
 lot was cast in the world of narrow 
 objects and rough struggles with the 
 grim fiends of poverty and hard bread- 
 winning. But my nature unfitted me 
 for success in the occupations of my 
 doom. I had lived too much and too 
 intensely in the noble realm of lofty 
 thoughts and loftiest thinkers — in the 
 glorious company of glorious books — to 
 be able to descend to trick, or artifice, 
 or "pushing;" and I could not compress 
 my whole spirit into the limits of busi- 
 ness, although a strong sense of duty 
 made me a hard and a zealous worker. 
 Hence I was deeply plunged into our 
 English hell of " not getting on in the 
 world," and was only cheered by the 
 distant hope of perhaps getting on in
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 29 
 
 some other worlds. Wordsworth says 
 that 
 
 " The greatest human effort is to wait ; " 
 
 and there is, perhaps, if our finite sense 
 could but fully realise it, no nobler 
 training than that which leads a man 
 to transfer all hope from the here to 
 the hereafter. Bitter as it is, such 
 bitters indeed are tonics. I was much 
 older than Fred — not in years — but in 
 hours and minutes; in stern experience 
 and saddest knowledge of the realities 
 of life and the depths of passion. I 
 had thought more deeply and felt more 
 earnestly. Shelley said, truly, that he 
 was, at five-and-twenty, an older man 
 than his father ; Goethe was, at about 
 the same age, older almost than German 
 literature. Our clumsy expedient of
 
 30 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 reckoning life, as well as measuring 
 
 time, by years, is alone sufficient to 
 
 prove how finite are our faculties, how 
 
 confused our estimates of subtlest things. 
 
 Ah, no teacher like sorrow, no mentor 
 
 like long wearing years of hope de- 
 ferred ! 
 
 The sight of Fred's gay youth and 
 more brilliant hopes did me good ; 
 he was as ^' a spring-time in the hag- 
 gard winter of my life ;" regarded with 
 no envy and no gloom, but with sin- 
 cerest joy and sympathy. He "had a 
 career before him ; he had " connections 
 and expectations;" high hopes and am- 
 bitious aspirings ; and I knew that when 
 his dalliance with the flowers in youth's 
 Armida-garden of pleasure should have 
 ceased, he would press manfully into the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 31 
 
 struggle for fame, and could scarcely 
 fail to brighten that fame with love. 
 But we gain strength from duty, calm 
 from vanished longings, and I had so 
 far conquered regret for my own lot, 
 and indeed all morbid feeling, that I 
 could take the warmest interest in the 
 happier fate of others. If sad, I was 
 seldom bitter, and I became a quiet 
 student both of books and of men ; I 
 looked deeply into the great mystery of 
 Being, and with lynx-eyed observation 
 watched and studied that great drama 
 of life, of character, and of passion, of 
 which, like Addison, I was a spectator 
 merely, and in which I had so little 
 part. 
 
 The lull in the conversation, which 
 has enabled me to talk so long to
 
 32 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 the reader, was however at length 
 broken. 
 
 " Fred ! " I cried. 
 
 "Well?" and Fred's voice, lulled by 
 the ecstacy of calm smoking, was deep 
 and murmurous, like that of a ventri- 
 loquist talking in his sleep. 
 
 "Why," I asked, "don't you light 
 the candles? You seem to have an 
 ultra -owlish fondness for darkness to- 
 night." 
 
 " I have no objection," responded 
 Fred, "to light in the abstract -^— none 
 whatever ; but I feel, at this moment, 
 as a Spartan Conservative with respect 
 to movement ; besides, I can always 
 think better in the dark. I always 
 postpone the consideration of difficult 
 problems until I go to bed."
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 33 
 
 " Seen Miss Belinda Cunningham 
 lately ? '' I inquired. 
 
 '' No," rejoined Fred; very curtly and 
 decidedly; '^I thought you knew she 
 married in the autumn. Married an old 
 money-bag of seventy — wants to be a 
 widow, but the old boy won't obhge 
 her. He had a strong touch of cholera, 
 but collapse seems to hurt him no more 
 than it does a Gibus hat. Having gone 
 to God's altar, and taken the sacred mar- 
 riage vow solely with the object of 
 wealthy widowhood — wealthy and early 
 — she is naturally much disgusted." 
 
 " Was she Number Three or Number 
 Four of the passions which you treated 
 au grand serieux f " I asked, in an 
 absent way. 
 
 No answer. Fred emitted an indefi- 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 nite sound, a distant relation of a grunt, 
 expressive of discontent. He poured out 
 a glass of wine, drank it off rapidly, 
 and smoked fervently. 
 
 " Seen Angelica Hawker lately ? " I 
 inquired. 
 
 '^ Yes,'' said Fred, putting down his 
 pipe, and getting up in a rather confused 
 way to light the candles ; " saw her at 
 the Howards' ball last night. Fine neck 
 and shoulders, but a very wooden head 
 on them. She was flirting with young 
 Hulks the banker, and with that de- 
 boshed, blackleggy scoundrel, the Hon. 
 Frank Shuffles. Think she'll marry 
 Hulks — will, if she can, I know — hope 
 she may. I think her the vainest, the 
 most conventional, the most heartless, 
 the—"
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 35 
 
 " Got much of her hair still, Fred ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " You go to the devil ! " replied my 
 friend. 
 
 I may here remark, en pare7ithese, 
 that two young fellows, passing an even- 
 ing together in chambers, do not always 
 converse in the way ascribed to them 
 in novels of the Macassar school. 
 
 "What did you want the candles lit 
 for ? " pursued Fred, who was getting 
 rather sulky. 
 
 " Oh ! I wanted to read a poem 
 to you — one that you don't know,'' 
 I replied. " It is the ' Courtship of 
 Lady Geraldine,' by Mrs. Browning — 
 a thing that Tennyson might have 
 written in one of his happiest moods 
 — just listen now. I know you'll like 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 it. It is the story of a noble high- 
 souled woman — " 
 
 "Don't talk to me about high-souled 
 women ! " rejoined Fred, lashing up his 
 wrath. " I don't believe in them ! I 
 hate the whole sex. You remember 
 what that American — the editor of the 
 ^ Skunk's Misery Spittoon ' — whom we 
 met at Paris, said about them. No ? 
 Well, he said that ^ unless you went on 
 the socdolagering ticket, the darned 
 heifers would make you as mad as a 
 short-tailed bull in fly-time.' They've 
 made me mad enough I know ! I'll 
 just give you an instance — " 
 
 Here he was interrupted by a knock 
 at the door. A strange sound, as of a 
 heavy animal ascending the stairs on 
 all-fours, had been audible for some
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 37 
 
 minutes. Fred opened the door, and an 
 explosive hiccough, a strong smell of al- 
 cohol, and an elderly female were pro- 
 jected into the apartment simultaneously. 
 
 "It's Mrs. Flannelgin, the laundress," 
 said Fred, in an explanatory tone; "well, 
 what do you want, ma'am ? " 
 
 The lady thus alluded to had a face 
 which seemed as if a tyro in art had 
 attempted to depict the human coun- 
 tenance by means of a rough dash of 
 coarse red paint, and had further en- 
 deavoured to heighten the effect of the 
 original conception by two smears of 
 cloudy white, to represent wall-eyes. 
 She wore an old black bonnet, some- 
 what larger than those usually adopted 
 by the present devotees of fashion, 
 composed of a shiny black material, and
 
 38 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 garnished with faded bows all round the 
 rim. This article of costume sat loosely 
 on her rusty old "front/' and every 
 time her fair form was rent by the 
 violence of her distressing malady, it 
 flapped and rattled like a loose cowl on 
 a chimney pot. Her favourite vegetable 
 appeared to be the onion ; the fairy-like 
 fragrance of which was soon wafted in 
 soft diffusive gusts through the whole 
 room. Her weapon was the umbrella, 
 antique in its fashion, and wielded with 
 both hands. 
 
 The gentle creature advanced by a 
 devious route to the table, and arriving 
 there at length, placed both hands 
 upon it, after the fashion of a linen- 
 draper's shopman. In her chaste con- 
 fusion and mental blindness, she mis-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 39 
 
 took me for Fred, and after gazing at 
 me obliquely with peculiar benignity 
 for some seconds, she delivered herself 
 of twenty or thirty consecutive hic- 
 coughs, like minute guns, and proceeded 
 to open the business of the meeting. 
 
 ^^Wadt eddy thick bore t'night, sir?" 
 demanded the ministering angel, in a 
 voice thick and husky, which appeared to 
 proceed from the deepest recesses of the 
 stomach, and to borrow music from the 
 nose. 
 
 " Nothing, thank you, madam, '^ re- 
 sponded Fred with extreme suavity ; 
 "it would, I know, be a vain task to 
 endeavour to induce you to contribute 
 further to your country's revenue de- 
 rived from excise. I refrain. May I 
 mention that, since the dawn of morn-
 
 40 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 ing, the cat and the mice conjointly 
 appear to have removed from my cup- 
 board half a bottle of French brandy, 
 some sherry, a loaf, a little tea, and 
 a cold pigeon-pie, together with an un- 
 opened box of sardines? But we will 
 speak of this hereafter. There will be 
 a time for that! Farewell, delight 
 of all circles, and idol of your own! 
 Farewell, woman I " cried Fred, lay- 
 ing immense stress on this last term 
 of indignity. "Farewell, and when we 
 meet again, may it be under happier 
 auspices ! Once more, farewell ! " 
 
 The lady thus apostrophised relaxed 
 her hold upon the table, and set out 
 on her return journey, appearing to 
 " wonder greatly and admire in her 
 mind" my friend's dramatic adieu. She
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 41 
 
 dropped her umbrella, however, and 
 after several indecisive efforts, went on 
 her hands and knees to feel for it, 
 as if it had been a lost sixpence. We 
 had to pick her up, bearing in mind 
 Hood's injunction "to lift her up ten- 
 derly,'^ and so conducted her faltering 
 footsteps to the door. 
 
 "Now, I tell you what it is, Mrs. 
 Flannelgin," said Fred, in a very altered 
 
 tone, "it's a d d shame to come 
 
 here in this disgracefully drunken state, 
 and I won't have it, by Jove ! You 
 steal my spirits and wine during the 
 day, get drunk, and then come here in 
 the evening, quite incapable, to ask me if 
 I want anything more ! — Hullo, hold 
 up, old lady, take care ! " This last 
 pathetic adjuration was elicited by the
 
 42 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 exhibition of a tendency on the part of 
 the lady to phmge downstairs, as if she 
 were going out of a bathing-machine. 
 She descended, however, safely to the 
 landing, and knocked with her umbrella 
 at another man's door, but whether for 
 the purpose of asking him if he wanted 
 anything more, or under an impression 
 that she lived and had to sleep there, 
 I have no means of knowing. The door 
 opened, she fell in, and the vision left us. 
 " Whew ! '' said Fred, sprinkling Eau 
 de Cologne about the room as he spoke, 
 to take off the effluvia resulting from 
 the recent visit ; " glad she's gone — a 
 drunken,' thieving old wretch! Ah, 
 Grey, my boy, she's one of that precious 
 sex that you talk such rhapsodical non- 
 sense about ! " Here Fred, as was his
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 43 
 
 wont when excited, began to pace the 
 room, declaiming as he walked, 
 
 " How little flattering is a woman's love ! 
 Given commonly to whomsoe'er is nearest, 
 And propped with most advantage ; outward grace 
 Nor inward light is needful ; day by day 
 Men wanting both are mated with the best 
 And loftiest of God's feminine creation, 
 Whose love takes no distinction but of gender, 
 And ridicules the very name of choice ! " 
 
 ^^ Ah," exclaimed the reprobate, " what 
 a fine, calm, philosophic thinker that 
 Philip van Artevelde was ! He estimated 
 women rightly ; he knew them well." 
 Here Fred, who had a fine and re- 
 tentive memory, continued to quote with 
 the greatest gusto and most scornful 
 emphasis : — 
 
 " the women's heaven 
 
 Is vanity, and that is over all.
 
 44 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 What's firiest still finds favour in their eyes ; 
 What's noisiest keeps the entrance of their ears. 
 Wit, too, and wisdom — that's admired of all — 
 They can admire — the glory, not the thing. 
 An unreflected light did never yet 
 Dazzle the vision feminine ! " 
 
 '^ There," cried the young cynic ex- 
 ultingly ; '' answer me that, Grey ! 
 You can quote like a player, I know 
 — sometimes you quite overwhelm a 
 fellow with your torrents of quotations ; 
 but find a passage to upset thatj if you 
 can ! '' 
 
 "I shan't quote to answer you, young- 
 ster/' I replied, "though I could if I 
 listed. But you seem to overlook 
 Adriana and Elena altogether. I ap- 
 peal from van Artevelde's theoretical 
 philosophy to the practical philosophy 
 of van Artevelde's life. He loved
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 45 
 
 deeply and well — not altogether wisely, 
 perhaps, in one instance — but well in both. 
 Wretched boy ! you know not what you 
 do, in provoking me to quote on such 
 a question! I could — I could — but I 
 repel the temptation in mercy to your 
 misguided youth. Why, every poet, from 
 Homer to Tennyson, every man who 
 has felt or thought wisely or nobly, 
 and left a record of his thoughts or feel- 
 ings between the widely sundered epochs 
 of the old Greek and the modern Eng- 
 lishman, would furnish me with a 
 passage — ay, and more, with an ex- 
 ample ! Tremble to think what you 
 have rashly dared ! Van Artevelde 
 was far, far too great and noble to be 
 a Misogynist. You're too good for it, 
 Fred, despite your youth's hot folly.
 
 46 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Why, you're a crystal clock to me. 
 I see your works as well as your face. 
 I know more of you than you do of 
 yourself. Heavens ! does the boy for- 
 get that he speaks to an Anthropologist? 
 I know why you hate women ; I see 
 through and through you, behind you 
 and before, and I say that you shall 
 be cured. Resist, if you please; be 
 good enough to oppose me, and to 
 struggle violently — it will lend a pi- 
 quancy and add a zest to the great 
 object to which I here solemnly de- 
 vote myself! I give you twelve months' 
 respite, but, by the expiration of that 
 period, you shall recant and reform. 
 ' By him who sleeps at Philas ! ' I swear 
 it. The oath is registered, and shall be 
 duly kept."
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 47 
 
 "Pooh/* responded Fred, "I defy 
 you ! I laugh at you ! " 
 
 ''Nous verrons,^^ I replied, resuming 
 my wonted calmness of manner. " Pass 
 the tobacco." 
 
 "Well, but let us discuss the matter 
 calmly," continued Fred, who was grow- 
 ing more and more excited; "you're as 
 saturated with your absurd chivalric no- 
 tions about women as an old meerschaum 
 is with tobacco-juice; you — " 
 
 " Thy slave hath eaten much dirt," I 
 replied. "But go on, boy, I long to 
 hear the subject discussed calmly between 
 
 
 
 lis. There, leave the wine alone, and 
 don't go rampaging about the room, but 
 sit down quietly, and begin. You shall 
 have first innings." 
 
 "Well then," said my unhappy friend,
 
 48 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 " to begin ; though that is not so easy, 
 considering the vast nature and extent 
 of the topic. But let us set out with 
 an illustration, like the picture books. 
 Do you see no hidden purpose of Provi- 
 dence, no distinct mission, in that recent 
 visit of Mrs. Flannelgin? Why, man, 
 she was sent here as an illustration ! 
 As such I accept her, and her otherwise 
 unwelcome visit. She is a type, in 
 her sphere — mind, in her sphere, Grey 
 — and I don't push the instance farther, 
 because I am always strictly fair and 
 logical in argument — ^^ 
 
 "As well as always strictly correct 
 in all your conclusions," I interrupted. 
 " We have heard of the French Princess 
 who remarked how singular a thing it 
 appeared to her that she was the only
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 49 
 
 person in the world who was always in 
 the right. Ahem ! " 
 
 "Don't interrupt me/' rejoined Fred; 
 "you said I was to have first innings. I 
 shall have to 'field' presently, I know, 
 for you." 
 
 " Va bene/^ I replied — " go on — let my 
 lord speak, for his slave's ears are open." 
 
 " And, above all," said the eager 
 youth, who was preparing for a power- 
 ful effort of indignant eloquence ; " above 
 all, don't interrupt me to say you won't 
 interrupt. It's a practice sacred to the bar, 
 and not to be tolerated in a layman." 
 
 I bowed gravely, and Fred resumed 
 his wicked argument with great warmth 
 and vivacity. 
 
 "Am I not right in saying that Mrs. 
 F. is, in her sphere, a type of the age 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 of a ' youth of folly and old age of 
 cards ; ' not of cards only, by Jove ! but 
 of scandal, tattle, bigotry, envy, rancour, 
 trivial meannesses, silly gossip, tea — and 
 brandy? Why is the title of ^old 
 woman' a term of reproach, as ^ a 
 sermon,' or ' preaching,' is a byword, 
 expressive of men's contempt for some- 
 thing windy, vapid, profitless, and tole- 
 rable neither to Gods nor men? Why is 
 it, I ask ? Why, because the youth 
 upon which that old age is based, is, in 
 women, only a course of preparation for 
 the contemptible old age which we rightly 
 despise, because we then see clearly the 
 poverty of the nature which is no 
 longer disguised by the fleeting animal 
 charms of youth. We don't laugh at old 
 men. We don't despise Nestor. We sit
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 51 
 
 at Goethe's feet — youVe always tliere, 
 Grey — which trod the world for eighty 
 years, and listen reverently for his words 
 of wisdom and of nobleness. But what are 
 the charms, the arts, the coquetries, the 
 niaiseries, the accomplishments — I should 
 say the veneer of accomplishments — of 
 women in their youth? The charms are 
 but the sensuous ones of sex; the rest 
 are but ribands, toys, and tricks, ex- 
 hibited for the same reason that induces 
 the female glow-worm to light her lamp ; 
 displayed with the same object that leads 
 the female pigeon to coo, and bill, and 
 strut on the barn roof — traps to catch 
 men, sir; baits to procure husbands, es- 
 tablishments, wealth, rank, social position, 
 and the rest of it. That's what it all 
 means, sir ! Resolve the thing into its 
 
 E 2 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
 
 52 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 simple elements, and it's that, and 
 nothing else. The law, sir, that we • 
 should ^increase and multiply,' is a great 
 fact ; even Benedick recognised it ; and 
 I am satisfied that we are permitted to 
 be subject to the influence of a gross 
 delusion of the senses in order that we 
 should marry, sir, marry, and outrage 
 the dearest sympathies of Malthus ! A 
 couple come together under the influence 
 of this illusion — delusion, I mean — who 
 have not sufficient congeniality of tem- 
 pers, tastes, and sympathies to " carry 
 them through a honey-moon, or * money- 
 moon,' as the case may be, without 
 sparring. The marriage is, of course, 
 unhappy. Perhaps they even separate 
 after a few miserable years; but there 
 are children, sir, wretched children, born
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 53 
 
 to repeat the same grim farce in their 
 turn, and the end of the delusion is 
 answered. Oh ! Grey, I was born a 
 couple of thousand years, or so, too 
 late. I should have been an Athenian. 
 Waft me, fancy, back to fair Athena ! 
 Sink, ye dull walls of this prosaic cham- 
 ber 1 And rise, ye stately columns of white 
 polished marble ; gleam, ye fair statues of 
 immortal myths ; and softly whisper, ye 
 sweet zephyrs of a Grecian summer night ! 
 Upon thy snowy breast, that marble warm 
 with life, fair Glycera ! let me rest my 
 burning brow ; drop thou cool kisses on my 
 glowing lips. murmur soft and low, in 
 thine own sweet Ionic, some love-warm 
 Sapphic Ode ! No grim Egyptian skeleton 
 bids us, through fleshless lips, enjoy the 
 rapturous hour; but youth, the godlike,
 
 54 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 pleasure, the divine, whisper soft wisdom 
 and incite to joy ! Mantle, thou purple 
 wine, thrill, ye sweet strains, and murmur, 
 gentle fountains. Fly not, thou vision; 
 linger, dream divine ; not yet the gleam- 
 ing stars have ceased to shine ! fair 
 illusion, float around me still; — thou 
 waldng trance of beauty, where ^nothing 
 is, but all things seem,' and seem so 
 lovely; hover, yet hover o'er my all- 
 enchanted sense; still float around me; 
 enwrap me with thy magic; fill my high 
 beating heart and glowing fantasy 
 
 ' With the splendour of a revel, 
 And the stillness of a dream ! ' " 
 
 The speaker ceased. His voice had 
 risen to rhythm as he spoke, and when 
 he stopped, silence seemed to vibrate 
 softly, as it does when a full strain of
 
 THE THREE PATHS. , 55 
 
 music ceases suddenly. There was some- 
 thing sad in his bitter logic and fierce 
 excitement, and as I' listened to his 
 varying tones, and thought of what was 
 working in his brain, I felt a deep sym- 
 pathy with the young noble heart, whose 
 first ideals lay shattered, like a ruined 
 temple, while flowers and weeds alike 
 were springing amidst broken columns 
 and tangled wreck. 
 
 "Fred," I said, "old fellow, that 
 Greek rhapsody of yours was rather 
 pretty, though perhaps it's fortunate for 
 you that I am not scholar enough to 
 pull it to pieces. Davus sum, non 
 (Edijpus — I'm no Bentley. But you will 
 have to change the Classic for the 
 Gothic yet. You must learn what 
 sublime nobleness Christianity taught to
 
 5Q THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 • 
 
 Art. ^ Men may rise on stepping stones 
 of their dead selves to higher things/ 
 and I don't despair of you. As for the 
 argument out of which sprang your rhap- 
 sody, as a flower springs out of an old 
 dead wall, I'm not sure that I shall 
 answer it categorically now, because in 
 00 few months I mean to teach you the 
 moral of that pretty little fable, Le 
 Cheval DoTTvpteJ^ 
 
 ^^You don't answer it," responded 
 Fred, whose excitement had by no 
 means left him yet, ^^ because you "can't! 
 I'm right. Grey, and you know it. The 
 Hetceroe for me — the ever charming 
 Hetceroe! There's truth in them at least. 
 They don't pretend to be other than 
 they are. You don't waste feeling on 
 them ; they're better than they seem.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 57 
 
 Better far than the cursed, hypocritical, 
 conventional dolls of modern society-, who 
 haven't even the honesty of passion, but 
 angle and manceuvre, without heart or 
 feeling, for gold and land. I'll be their 
 dupe no longer, by Jove ! They're all 
 alike— all ! " 
 
 "0 most lame and impotent con- 
 clusion," I rejoined; "your state, dear 
 old boy, described medically, is simply 
 this : — you exposed yourself, when in a 
 very heated state, to a thorough chill; 
 you took cold, of course, and you have 
 kept that cold on you by a rash indul- 
 gence in pernicious stimulants. As for 
 what you say about women's little arts 
 and coquetries, they learn them often 
 as innocently as a parrot learns blas- 
 phemy ; they are the result of a natural
 
 58 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 and laudable desire to please and charm. 
 You took your young glowing idea of 
 womanhood, carried it to a ball-room or 
 a fete champetre, leaving your judgment 
 at home ; you let your eye choose for 
 your spirit ; you didn't look a moment 
 at the flower before alighting on it ; you 
 expected to find honey in weeds as 
 well as flowers, and of course you 
 were disappointed. That the reaction 
 was bitter, I well know ; I've sailed 
 that sea before you, youngster! But 
 you are blindly unjust and cruelly unwise 
 to revenge your own fault — your own 
 want of judgment, knowledge, experience 
 —upon a whole sex, because you blun- 
 dered at starting, and took bits of glass 
 for diamonds. The diamonds are there, 
 Fred, depend upon it. You've made
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 59 
 
 shipwreck of your first voyage, but start 
 
 again. Don't command the ship your- 
 self; not at least until you can com- 
 mand yourself; but take the Ancient 
 Mariner with you, and you'll have better 
 fortune. Let experience be your teacher; 
 falsify Coleridge's fine saying Hhat ex- 
 perience, like the sternlights of a ship, 
 only illumines that which is past.' To 
 sea again, and * Westward ho ! ' old 
 friend." 
 
 " Grey," said Fred, suddenly, looking 
 full at me, "why dont you find one of 
 those pure, noble, high-souled women that 
 you are always worshipping in idea?" 
 
 I mused a moment before I answered, 
 and I felt a dark flush on my cheek, for 
 the young fellow's random hand had 
 struck a deep though long silent chord.
 
 60 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 "Perhaps, Fred," I replied sadly, "I 
 am not worthy of such happiness. Be- 
 sides, zwei Seelen wohnen, acli ! in meiner 
 Brust ! 'There dwell, alas ! two spirits 
 in my breast.' I am always desiring, 
 yet dreading, to find my ideal. Desiring 
 — ah ! need I tell you why ? Dreading, 
 because, if I found her, dare I ask the 
 woman I love to share such a lot as 
 mine ? You know how poor and how 
 hopeless I am. And so I am resigned 
 to my lonely life. I get strength from 
 somewhere — never mind where — to bear 
 it, and be contented with it. But ' some- 
 thing too much of this,' as Hamlet says. 
 The strain grows too sad. Let us talk 
 of your fairer lot and brighter hopes. 
 You, Fred, have the right to woo and 
 win a wife — to marry whom you love.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 61 
 
 And you will do it yet; you will recant 
 your errors, shake off your faults, *like 
 dew-drops from a lion's mane/ and I shall 
 be happy, Fred, in seeing your happiness. 
 Eem ember," I added more gaily, "it is 
 an Anthropologist that prophesies ! " 
 
 Fred did not seem to care to dwell 
 upon this prophecy. "Which would you 
 prefer to be, a prophet, or an historian ? " 
 he asked laughingly, but resumed his ob- 
 stinate air as he continued ; " but our 
 argument seems to have run into episode 
 — I half suspect that you're glad to 
 drop it. No," he added, warming up 
 his conviction, " no, you can't answer 
 me, and you're glad to change the sub- 
 ject. Confess yourself beaten, Grey ; 
 acknowledge gracefully the triumph of 
 the Misogynist ! "
 
 62 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 ^'Boy/^ I replied, solemnly. "I thank 
 thee for that word — ^it nerves my arm, 
 it steels my sword ! ' — for, as you 
 taunted me with the triumph of a 
 Misogynist — that race which I hate as a 
 Capulet hated a Montague — you stirred 
 the blood of Malcolm, and in that 
 moment 
 
 passed 
 
 Into this withered arm the might of France.' 
 
 When you presume to class all women 
 together, do you forget, thoughtless 
 boy ! that you speak of a sex embracing 
 such strong contrasts and varying diver- 
 sities of character as Imogen — rose and 
 crown of perfect womanhood, fairest, 
 purest, and noblest of all women that 
 live in story or that soar from song!
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 63 
 
 — such contrasts, I say, as Imogen 
 and Messalina — as Desdemona and Mrs. 
 Nickleby — as Rosalind and Mrs. Mac- 
 kenzie — as Clara Douglas and Becky 
 Sharp-^as Agnes Wickham and Miss 
 Knagg — as Schiller's Thekla and Lady 
 Macbeth — as Die Vernon and Goneril 
 — as Lady Jane Grey and Lucrezia 
 Borgia — as Jane Eyre and Mrs. Mala- 
 prop — as Miss Nightingale and Mrs. 
 Manning — as Dante's Beatrice and Mrs. 
 Gamp ! These are but a few illustra- 
 tions, taken at random on the spur of 
 the moment, but I could easily find 
 hundreds more, hundreds — " 
 
 " You talk about my being over 
 fond of antithesis as a figure of 
 rhetoric,'' interrupted Fred, impetuously; 
 "but, by Jove, you're taking the wind
 
 64 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 out of my sails now ! But I forgot 
 — it's your innings — go on." 
 
 " My object," I resumed, " is not 
 merely to confute an opponent, or to 
 obtain a forensic triumph over an ad- 
 vocate more talented and more skilful 
 than myself: no, my object is to assert 
 what I sincerely believe to be truth, 
 and therefore I have no objection to 
 make some admissions. I admit, then, 
 freely — ^though with regret — that there 
 is some truth in your strictures; that 
 there are but too many women who 
 justify your satire. But dare you, 
 blasphemer — scorner of things high 
 and holy ! dare you, I ask, speak the 
 tongue that Shakspeare spake, the faith 
 and morals hold that Milton held, and 
 yet extend a description of the mean
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 65 
 
 and bad into a libel on the good and 
 worthy ? Dare you trumpet forth the 
 fact that you see all women in the 
 light of your own jaundiced eyes? 
 poor confession ! miserable creed ! Why, 
 one truly good woman outweighs heca- 
 tombs of the creatures from whom you 
 misjudge that glorious sex ! Think, 
 think for a moment — think in earnest 
 reverence and solemn awe — what a 
 thing a really good and noble woman 
 is. What purity, what innocence, what 
 delicacy, what faith, what charity, what 
 modesty, what love ! Her nature re- 
 coils from shame and evil, like those 
 Venetian glasses which shivered and 
 sprang asunder at the touch of poison. 
 Strange compounds as we mortals are 
 of matter and of spirit, in her, spirit 
 VOL. I. F
 
 6Q THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 shines supreme, and seems to reflect 
 
 divinity directly and without refraction. 
 
 That old struggle between flesh and 
 
 » 
 spirit which vexed even St. Paul, and 
 
 the thought of which has inspired Ten- 
 nyson to sing of man, that 
 
 'He knows a baseness in his blood, 
 At such strange war with what is good, 
 He may not do the thing he would!' — 
 
 seems to exist not for her. The vic- 
 tory is won without a battle. And of 
 all really beautiful women — what a 
 dower that gift of beauty is ! — believe, 
 Ered, believe, that 
 
 ' There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple ; 
 If the ill spirit have so fair a house, 
 Good things will strive to dwell with it.' 
 
 Think what a thing it is to win the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 67 
 
 whole love, to wed the whole spuit, 
 to become a part of the whole life of 
 such a being ! Think of the ideal divi- 
 nity charmed into the household goddess 
 — of Imogen by the fireside of home ! 
 To a man thus blessed, life has no 
 common-place, and time no weariness. 
 Man is the type of strength and power 
 — woman the symbol of beauty and of 
 purity ; and from a union of the crea- 
 tures who represent such diverse qualities 
 first arises a being who dare aspire to 
 the perfection of mortality. Yes, from 
 such a union springs the ^ Large-brained 
 woman and large-hearted man.' Strength 
 has its ruggedness — beauty its vanity — , 
 intellect its lonely pride — feeling its too 
 tender softness. But blend the two, 
 and how glorious the result ! It has 
 
 r2
 
 68 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 been truly said that all high and noble 
 
 men — all men whose natures contain the 
 
 heroic and the poetical — have much of 
 
 a woman in their gentle and lofty hearts. 
 
 I've tried to talk very calmly, Fred ; 
 
 to avoid all rhapsody and exaggeration; 
 
 but I feel, I know, that I am right in 
 
 what I say, and I am equally certain 
 
 that you will feel and know it one day. 
 
 One may take corn to every house, but 
 
 it is only a mill that will grind it. 
 One may take truth to any man, but 
 
 it is only a true man that will recognise 
 
 it. And for the recognition of this truth 
 
 1 appeal confidently from Philip drunk 
 
 to Philip sober — from the purblind Miso- 
 gynist to the nobler, better self of Fre- 
 derick Charlton !'' 
 
 Fred had been very silent during this
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 69 
 
 somewhat lengthy, though very imperfect, 
 exposition of my creed. As, doubtless, 
 the memory of his own purer and 
 earlier ideal rose through the mist of 
 his later delusions, he had sighed deeply, 
 and had become calmer and more na- 
 tural. The tone of mockery and of 
 bitterness had left him, and the inner 
 thought, fitly represented by his external 
 mien and manner, had become gentler 
 and more loving. I looked upon this 
 as a great triumph, though I was 
 neither vain enough, nor quixotic enough 
 to expect that he would i:ecant opinions 
 — or could alter the whole cuiTent of 
 feeling — in consequence of a conversa- 
 tion. The tide must flow completely 
 out before its reflux commences, and 
 
 his whole heart was deeply embittered
 
 70 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 by irritating events and ignoble expe- 
 riences. It was therefore to happier 
 events and nobler experiences that I 
 looked, in order to effect his final con- 
 version. Truly says the motto which I 
 have borrowed from the world-wise 
 Goethe : — 
 
 " Grey, my friend, grey is all theory, 
 And green alone of Life the golden tree." 
 
 "As to what you say about flesh and 
 spirit," urged Fred, after a pretty long 
 silence, " I don't think there's much in 
 it. Eemember how Eosalind and Celia 
 talk when they are alone. Eemember, 
 too, what your favorite Shakspeare says 
 of woman — that she has ^ frailty as 
 man has."' 
 
 " I am surprised, Fred," I returned,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 71 
 
 "to hear you say that Shakspeare says 
 so ! Understand the dramatic sphit 
 better, young neophyte ! Shakspeare says 
 nothing of the kind. Emilia says so, 
 and very true it is of the Emilias of 
 this world. But remember to whom it 
 is 'said, and how the saying is answered. 
 Read that wonderful third scene of the 
 fourth act of Othello again. I am 
 glad you remind me of it. The 
 dialogue between those two women is, 
 indeed, a fine illustration of my argu- 
 ment." 
 
 "But," pursued my friend, "remember 
 what you have often said — that intel- 
 lectual companionship is almost more 
 necessary to a thoughtful man* than 
 even a great passion. How hard a 
 thing to find a companion in a woman !
 
 7i 
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 You may find a mistress — yes; an en- 
 chantress — good ; but a companion — no ! 
 Think of the triviality, the ignorance, 
 the petty silliness, the mean objects, 
 the poor, shallow thoughts, the blank 
 indifference to all things grand or lofty, 
 the utter want of sympathy in a 
 woman's mind for the best aims and 
 noblest ideas of a man. Sometimes," 
 added Fred, musingly, "they may as- 
 sume a kind of sympathy, and so de- 
 ceive you in the heyday of blind 
 passion — for they are very clever in 
 cunning, in all deceit and assumption. 
 What's that German name for a woman 
 of that sort. Grey ? " 
 
 " An Anemj)Jinderi7in,'' I replied, " and 
 a fine expressive word it is. Goethe 
 coined it, and first used it in WiVielm
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 73 
 
 Meister. But Fred, speaking of intel- 
 lectual sympathy in woman, can you 
 forget the latest ideal of womanhood 
 developed by a noble and gifted woman? 
 I mean Miss Charlotte Bronte.* Her 
 heroines think the thoughts and 
 utter the voice of the best women, 
 
 * Emigravit. Currer Bell, indeed, lives ; but 
 Mrs. Robert Nicol exists no longer in time. Pity 
 that this young, original, fresh, vivid, and most 
 gifted authoress should have passed from among us 
 ere she had given us the matured fruits of her 
 ripened thought ; ere she had developed, through 
 literature, those purposes to which literature itself 
 is a means to an end. Thanks, deep thanks to Mrs. 
 Gaskell, for her noble record of that noble life ! 
 The sympathetic genius of a literary sister 
 has been engaged on a beautiful and worthy 
 task. Who fitter to write the life that gave 
 birth to Jane Eyre, Caroline Helstone, and 
 to Lucy Snowe, than the creator of Mary Barton, 
 of Ruth Hilton, and of Margaret Hale ?
 
 74 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 ripened through long ages of pro- 
 gress, and blossoming into glorious 
 fruit in this, the ripest age of civilisa- 
 tion and world bettering. Depend upon 
 it, there's a divine object in human 
 progress, apart from the life of the iso- 
 lated mortal. We are no beavers, the 
 same to-day as when we first con- 
 structed our huts. A generation of us is 
 not renewed three times in a century, 
 merely that each unit should spin its 
 own cocoon and die. Away with the 
 puling sentimentality about the beauty 
 of dying in infancy ! Look at it more 
 deeply and nobly ; think it out with 
 sterner, finer, clearer thought ; gaze into 
 it with more heaven-lit insight; and how 
 glorious a thing it is to live and de- 
 velop into full and radiant man and
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 75 
 
 womanhood — man, ^Hhe conflux of two 
 eternities ; " man, whose feet indeed 
 touch the earth, while his spirit remains 
 unfettered, even by the illusions of mor- 
 tality — Time and Space ! And see how 
 this modern writer, a myth still to 
 many, hight Currer Bell — see how 
 she exemplifies the long result of time 
 in her ideal of womanhood. That ideal 
 is no cook and breeder; no doll-angel; 
 no enchanting slave; but a woman who, 
 without losing one grace, one tenderness, 
 one charm, without laying aside her 
 wand of love, without foregoing her 
 privilege of beauty — knows aspiration, 
 embraces knowledge, and feels intellect. 
 Fit helpmate she for the worthiest, 
 noblest man ; fit companion for his 
 heart, his mind, his soul ! And yet
 
 76 THE THKEE PATHS. 
 
 through all she remains so wholly woman, 
 so divinely woman ! nothing coarse or 
 unfeminine in the tone and character 
 of an intellect which, noble as it is, 
 is not yet altogether that of man. 
 She soothes us with ^ finer fancies ; ' 
 touches us with ' lighter thought.' No 
 terrible has-hleu is she ; no hideous 
 gelehrte Frau ; but beautiful, loving, 
 good, charming, pure, wise, and noble ; 
 fit to be the wife and mother of the 
 best and wisest of those men who think 
 for mankind ; of those men who leave 
 their noble stamp upon their times, who 
 mould their spirit, who shape their 
 deeds, and who act their history ! " 
 
 I had insensibly grown rather excited 
 while dwelling upon my noble theme and 
 attempting to rise to the height of the
 
 ^ THE THREE PATHS. 77 
 
 great argument, and as I looked round 
 I saw, with pleasure, that Fred had 
 been no inattentive listener. I did not 
 look for any immediate result, but 
 I hoped that he might think over my 
 words when I was gone, and when he 
 was alone with his own thought. 
 
 "There's something in that ideal," 
 he said at length, slowly and thought- 
 fully ; "I admit that, — but, after all, 
 it's a dream, a. phantasm, a fiction ; 
 one of your old tricks of construct- 
 ing fairy palaces with slight materials, 
 and no foundations. Where are such 
 women ? Can you shew me one ? 
 You might as well think now of alter- 
 ing the aspect of the Trojan war by 
 providing Hector with a revolver, as 
 think of changing my convictions — con-
 
 78 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 victions founded on knowledge and 
 experience, remember — by telling me 
 such romances now. The idea is very- 
 good, but comes too late in both 
 cases/' 
 
 " Still,'' added Fred, resuming some- 
 thing of his former obstinacy of tone. 
 "I'm not converted yet. You give me 
 rather a long day, though — twelve 
 months, isn't it? As you must intend 
 to work by means of philters and 
 potions, or some other magic, I won- 
 der you don't act more speedily."- 
 
 " Oh, content ye, sir," I rejoined ; — 
 
 " ' Thou knowest we work by wit, and not by 
 witchcraft, 
 And wit depends on dilatory time — ' 
 
 Talking of dilatory time, Fred, what 
 o'clock is it?"
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 79 
 
 "About half-past one or so/' answered 
 Fred ; " but you're not going yet, old 
 fellow ? it's early." 
 
 " Early for you, young Epicurean, 
 young Sybarite of the law," I returned, 
 "but not for me. If you are tired 
 to-morrow, you can take it out in 
 sleep, like Mr. Mivins ; but I am a 
 working man — rather a worn and jaded 
 one, perhaps — and I must go and bake 
 my bread betimes in the morning. I 
 only sleep hurriedly in the trenches of 
 the great Battle of Life. Shall I see 
 you to-morrow night — will you come 
 to mine ? " 
 
 "Why, no," returned Fred, rather 
 confusedly, " not to-morrow night ; I'm 
 — I'm engaged." 
 
 "0!" I cried, "going to see Madlle.
 
 80 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Desiree de Ste Lorette, I suppose? I 
 only ask, like Miss Dartle, for infor- 
 mation.'^ 
 
 "Never you mind, old hermit- cynic," 
 said Fred ; " you stick to your books 
 and your pipe, and leave us youth 
 alone. I'm studying a new leaf in the 
 Book of Beauty without humbug, and 
 — and, I'll come on Wednesday. I 
 want you to translate that great reli- 
 gion-scene in Faust for me." 
 
 " You are going one part of Fausfs 
 road now, young gentleman," I- said 
 sorrowfully; "but the faster you go, 
 the sooner you'll come to the end. 
 I'll save you yet. I'm a lover of my 
 kind, as well as a student of them." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " and Mr. Frederick 
 laughed bitterly, a fine, rich, devilish
 
 THE THREE PATHS* 81 
 
 0. Smith laugh ; ^^ again I tell you, I 
 defy you! again I tell you I am a 
 Misogynist ! " 
 
 ^^ I am not partial to repetition," I 
 said, ^^ I never liked it at school ; I 
 don't like it in the shape of cold 
 mutton, nor do I admire it, from a 
 literary point of view, in some of your 
 legal documents — be the same more 
 or less. But, thus defied, I repeat 
 solemnly that I am an Anthropolo- 
 gist — the rest follows — Cela va sans 
 dire,'''' 
 
 ^' Well, time tries all ! '' said Fred. 
 ^^ Take a glass of wine before you go, 
 and light a weed to walk home with. 
 It's very cold out. Wednesday I shall 
 be with you — Au vevoir,^^ 
 
 " Auf Wiedersehen ! " I exclaimed, 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 "or in plain old English, good night, 
 old boj, and God bless you, Fred." 
 
 We shook hands and parted. The 
 Misogynist locked himself into his warm, 
 comfortable chambers, and the Anthro- 
 pologist, and his weed, commenced their 
 bleak, frosty journey homewards — 
 watched and accompanied by the light 
 of solemn, silent stars — in whose com- 
 pany there is no loneliness. 
 
 The deepest loneliness is selfishness. 
 Yet we can even think of ourselves, in 
 the way of righteous study and' con- 
 scientious analysis, of retrospection of 
 the past, and of resolve for the future, 
 without debasing our thoughts of our- 
 selves with considerations of "self," or 
 selfish interests. It is productive of 
 mental unhealth to think too much,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 83 
 
 without translating thought into worthy 
 action. When we are too much alone, 
 we become introspective to excess; we 
 injure our own minds by considering 
 them too constantly and too curiously, 
 as an idle valetudinarian deepens his 
 disease to hypochondria by incessantly 
 pondering over it. Our thoughts are 
 like the buildings of a great city. Some 
 are mean and squalid hovels ; some are 
 flaunting shops ; some are fair, though 
 lowly, dwellings ; some are stately 
 palaces and noble public edifices; some, 
 and these are the rarest and the 
 highest, are steeple thoughts that tower 
 above the rest and point to heaven. 
 Amongst our best thoughts are those 
 which are for others' welfare and others' 
 interests. The ties of family ennoble 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 thought and feeling by leading them 
 away from the individual, till he thinks 
 and feels for those dearer to the man 
 than he is to himself. It is good for a 
 bachelor, who lives alone in a great 
 city, without the nearer and closer ties, 
 to have a friend so dear that he can 
 merge himself in thought for that dear 
 friend. Such a friend Fred was to me ; 
 such good he did me. And as I walked 
 home that night, I thought wholly and 
 solely of, and for, him. The time was 
 a crisis in his life, in those feelings which 
 would shape and colour his career. The 
 conversation of that evening had con- 
 firmed my previous convictions as to the 
 phase through which his mind was 
 passing, and had rendered my interest 
 in his inner life, and its probable in-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 85 
 
 fluence on his worth and happiness, more 
 vivid than ever. I wished ardently to 
 serve and help him. I resolved to 
 attempt it, and I fancied that my own 
 sorrowful experience and deeper know- 
 ledge might be useful in his service. 
 Thinking thus, trying to concentrate 
 thought upon the means of assisting 
 him, the mind, which I was trying hard 
 to pin down to one point leading to 
 clear resolve and action, darted away — 
 as, in its strange operations, it often will 
 do — from the plain matter before it for 
 decision — and indulged in images of 
 Fred, and recollections of my whole ac- 
 quaintance with him. I remembered how 
 first attraction ripened to interest and 
 friendliness, how friendliness deepened 
 into friendship, how familiarity begot in-
 
 86 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 timacy. I remembered him as a school- 
 boy, frank and daring, handsome and 
 
 active, generous and winning, talented 
 and idle. His freaks and fights, his 
 
 mischief and scrapes, his high spirits 
 
 and popularity, his laziness throughout 
 
 half the ^^half," and his hard work 
 
 towards the end, in order to take home 
 
 a prize, were all freshly remembered. I 
 
 saw him rushing out of the playground 
 
 at the announcement of a "visitor for 
 
 Master Charlton," and I smiled at the 
 
 recollection of the lordly way in which 
 
 he spent the handsome " tips " of his 
 
 liberal old uncle. He treated his friends 
 
 royally while his money lasted, but it 
 
 never lasted long, for he had too large 
 
 and careless a nature to be careful of 
 
 money; a quality, by the way, that care-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 87 
 
 fulness of money, which is of bad omen 
 in a boy. There, in the corner of the 
 playground, hidden from sight of the 
 Doctor's window of observation, stood the 
 old tree under which Fred had his 
 second memorable and successful fight 
 with Johnson ; the former encounter 
 having been decidedly in favour of his 
 antagonist. 
 
 Shortly before my thirteenth birth- 
 day I had left school, to begin my 
 struggle with life, and to get my future 
 education, such as it might be, by 
 other methods than pedagogic ^^school- 
 ing." Fred, then more than two years 
 younger than I, was also leaving, to 
 be transferred to Eton. While he 
 was there, I saw comparatively little 
 of him, and, as I drudged at my
 
 88 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 distasteful, joyless occupation, I often 
 thought of him — half, perhaps, in envy 
 — and feared he would forget our early 
 friendship amidst new companions. In 
 my pride, too, I was bitter and un- 
 just. I learned the difference between 
 his fortunate position and my lowly 
 estate, and I resolved, much as I 
 longed for it, that it should rest with 
 him to resume our intimacy. He did 
 resume it, and, in my growing youth- 
 ful misanthropy and melancholy, the 
 very fact endeared him greatly to me. 
 He never seemed to be aware of the 
 gulf fixed between our social positions 
 — between my poverty and his wealth. 
 Even as a youth, his nature was too 
 manly and sound to attach the least 
 weight to adventitious inequalities or dis-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 89 
 
 tinctions. He thawed my reserve by his 
 complete unconsciousness of his worldly 
 superiority ; for he never evinced the 
 slightest ^^ delicate consideration " for 
 my comparative poverty. Pity me he 
 did, and genuinely ; but it was for 
 being shut up day after day, month 
 after month, year after year, in that 
 dark, dreary, hopeless counting-house, 
 where the bloodless metallic heartbeats 
 of the loud-ticking clock divided into 
 sharply-defined, slowly-told minutes the 
 chill and " creeping hours of time." 
 I explained to him, with difficulty, the 
 pressure of hard necessity, in reply to his 
 excited entreaty to ^^ come out of that 
 horrid hole, my dear fellow, and have 
 a ride on the pony ; it's such a fine 
 day ! "
 
 90 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 I saw it too — ^that bright, that beau- 
 tiful sunshine — and felt its glory to the 
 full as keenly as he did. Nay, felt it 
 more, for, apart from the question of 
 our respective capacities for appreciating 
 beauty, was not I a weary bondsman, 
 while he, happy fellow ! could walk 
 out of those hateful precincts, sacred, 
 or damned, to ^^ business " — could 
 mount the pony, and ride away to 
 enjoy in freedom ? Ah, how the 
 dusty, cheerless, gloom of the mean, 
 dirty Plutus Temple deepened, as his 
 springy step crossed the threshold, and 
 left me still immured there ! And the 
 incident was a fair type of our re- 
 spective careers. Truly, the youth of 
 each was passed in different schooling. 
 
 The years wore slowly on ; to me,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 91 
 
 most wearily, most slowly. Looking 
 back afterwards on years flown by, we 
 take a bird's eye view of that which 
 lies behind us ; we note only the 
 mountains and the towers ; the things 
 that rise distinctively out of the broad, 
 dreary, level flat. And yet each year 
 was full of months, and weeks, and 
 days, and hours, and minutes ; and 
 through all of these we lived ; through 
 all we thought and felt ; and each and 
 all formed portions of that sacred mys- 
 tery — a human life. But over all this 
 period of my life brooded one dull, 
 heavy sorrow ; over all my hours hung 
 one low and leaden cloud. No life is 
 all unhappy. To every life is granted 
 some gleams of sunshine; the ques- 
 tion is always one of preponde-
 
 92 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 ranee ; but in my ease these rays were 
 fitful, and were few. As workers in 
 Indigo factories acquire a sombre cast 
 of character from the incessant sur- 
 rounding of one cheerless hue, so my 
 
 young life caught from its wretched 
 environment and mean pursuits a tinge 
 of melancholy which will stain its 
 whole course. 
 
 How short are all biographies, even 
 the fullest ! How a paragraph sums up 
 long years ; a chapter epitomises a life ! 
 The record of a life is, indeed, a- thing 
 impossible. The log-book of a voyage 
 reads poor and scant to him who lived 
 through the passage. 
 
 But the Eton boy became the Cam- 
 bridge undergraduate, the freshman 
 ripened into the wrangler. Amid a
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 93 
 
 thousand freshly remembered traits of 
 my friend, and incidents of his career, 
 my memory, during that night-walk, 
 recalled him as I saw him, on a fly- 
 ing visit which I paid to Cambridge, 
 seated in his rooms, and surrounded by 
 some of his chosen associates. I recol- 
 lected his wild youthful opinions, urged 
 with all the vehemence of his ardent 
 nature ; his declamation in defence of 
 republicanism, his invectives against 
 tyranny, his aspirations, as vague as 
 fiery, towards liberty. 
 
 When he left college, and took chambers 
 in London, our intercourse became more 
 constant, our intimacy more close. My 
 chiefest pleasure was found in his society, 
 my best gleams of happiness were enjoyed 
 with him. And yet the relation, as I
 
 94 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 thought it over, was singular, resem- 
 bling that of a plain elder sister, irre- 
 vocably doomed to old-maidism, and 
 hopeless of a husband, towards a young 
 sister of blooming beauty, for whom 
 all pleasure opened, and all hope 
 glowed radiant. 
 
 As I walked along the deserted 
 streets, my fancy summoned up a 
 long series of pictures of my friend, 
 first of his outer life, and then of the 
 inner world of his hopes and feelings, 
 his aspirations and disappointments. 
 
 The night before, I had been reading 
 Carlyle's Essay on History. He says 
 that our very speech is curiously his- 
 torical ; that most men, you may ob- 
 serve, speak only to narrate ; and he adds 
 that the majority of men speak rather
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 95 
 
 to exhibit what they have undergone 
 or seen, than to impart what they have 
 thought. As I walked along, and my 
 current of thought was suddenly changed 
 by turning the corner of a street, I 
 was struck with the extent to which 
 Fred and I falsified this theory. Our 
 conversation was frequently, discussion; 
 narrative occupied but a comparatively 
 small portion of it. 
 
 We liked each other's society so well 
 that it was a pleasure to us to be 
 together, even while we sat silent, and 
 thought or dreamed. But both of us stood 
 very much apart from family ties or 
 near connections. Neither of us had a 
 " home," for Fred lived in chambers, 
 while I inhabited lodgings. Hence many 
 of the usual topics of conversation
 
 96 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 about kith and kin were cut off, and we 
 both loved to discuss abstract theories, 
 and to speak thoughts about men and 
 things. Indeed, my guesses could often 
 anticipate Fred's personal narratives, and 
 he, not unfrequently, would break off 
 a recital of what he had done, or left 
 undone, with a — 'Hhere, it's no use 
 going on ; I needn't tell you. I see 
 you can tell what I was going to say." 
 I knew him, indeed, so well and inti- 
 mately that it was generally easy to read 
 his mind. But he could not read mine 
 so easily. He was more impulsive, more 
 transparent, more unconscious. I was 
 more reserved, and the very gloom of 
 my way of life rendered me taciturn ; for 
 we do not care to speak much of sorrows 
 or troubles to those who are gayer and
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 97 
 
 happier than ourselves. I had known 
 hfe painfully and in woeful earnest. I 
 had loved, too, once; and that alone 
 rendered me immeasurably older than he. 
 The ocean is agitated below its sur- 
 face to a depth corresponding with the 
 height of the waves which the storm 
 raises upon it. The surface of his life 
 was more sunny and serene, and the 
 depths were almost wholly unstirred. 
 
 I thought of him in ball-rooms, amid 
 brilliant lights, soft music, and the light 
 and music of beauty, brighter and sweeter 
 than either. He had occasionally suc- 
 ceeded in dragging me with him into 
 "society,'' for which I had, as far as 
 my own feelings were concerned, but 
 little taste or liking. Yet grave, silent, 
 and observant, remaining for the most 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 part a spectator, I watched him always 
 with the greatest interest, and with an 
 admiration which I could not refuse to 
 his evident fitness for scenes of gaiety 
 and enjoyment. 
 
 And he often did enjoy himself tho- 
 roughly; he was entirely happy in the 
 intoxication of the hour. I pictured him 
 in the dance, with the Saccharissa, or 
 Belinda, or Araminta of the evening; I 
 saw his cheek flush, and his eye brighten, 
 and I remembered how, from my quiet 
 corner of observation, I had often ob- 
 served him, half with a smile, half sadly. 
 How he used to seek me out, after 
 quitting his fair partner, to dilate rap- 
 turously upon her charms, her wit, and 
 her sense ; how he used, as we walked 
 home together with our cigars, to rhap-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 99 
 
 sodise about the belle, whom I saw more 
 clearly in the sad, stern light of truth ! 
 
 And yet, though I always treated such 
 matters jestingly towards him, I was 
 not always without some secret anxiety 
 on his account. His nature was highly 
 impressionable — if not impressible. Youth, 
 happiness, fancy, all impelled him, and 
 urged him on in that quest of love, 
 which is at once the gift and the doom 
 of all ardent and susceptible natures. 
 He was demonstrative, open ; but proud, 
 sensitive, and honourable. I dreaded lest 
 he should entangle himself irrevocably 
 with some fair coquette, a fitting partner 
 for a ball, but an unworthy partner of 
 such a life as his. It is not in all cases 
 a truth that les deux font la j^aire. His 
 flirtations were, in fact, somewhat nu- 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 merous, and yet he was always sincere 
 at the moment in loving that which was 
 nearest. I remembered to have heard 
 him — how falsely ! — accused of incon- 
 stancy, suspected of heartlessness, and 
 charged with fickleness. His feeling for 
 beauty, his sentiment for grace, his thirst 
 for love, all conspired to impel him to 
 tentatives of passion ; his nature, trust- 
 ing, fanciful, spontaneous, unsuspicious, 
 led him to attribute to every pretty girl 
 the qualities which he desired to find in 
 her, and his flirtations were but experi- 
 ments of. discovery — all hitherto futile, 
 because judgment was inactive, and ex- 
 perience wanting. His heart had never 
 been really touched, and hence he 
 changed so often; but his changes were 
 not made for love of change. His
 
 THE THEEE PATHS. 101 
 
 nature was really worthy and capable of 
 love, and contained a noble quality of 
 constancy and honourable faith. Life, I 
 thought, could offer him — and not to him 
 alone — though to him in especial — no 
 higher or fairer gift than a love that 
 should occupy at once his heart, his in- 
 tellect, his soul; 
 
 I laughed outright — ^to the astonish- 
 ment of a sleepy policeman, lounging by 
 a lamppost, and chewing a straw — as I 
 walked along, when I remembered how, 
 in his first case of decided flirtation, he 
 had a seaL engraved with a neat device 
 of the flower of constancy, surrounded 
 by the motto — '' Je ne change qu'en 
 mourant/^m order to impress and stamp 
 fitly his epistles to the charmer ; and I 
 recalled his blushing confusion and em-
 
 102 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 barrassment, when I one day pointed out 
 that he was employing this unchanging 
 sentiment towards his third or fourth 
 fair letter-writer. He had not himself 
 noticed the little circumstance, but when 
 I made him aware of it, he flung 
 the seal behind the fire in a pet, 
 and threw the unfortunate letter after 
 it. 
 
 The flirtation-fit passed. He deserted 
 fancy fairs, fetes champStres, picnics ; he 
 anathematized morning calls, and ball- 
 rooms knew him not. The reaction set 
 in ; the bitterness of disappointment cor- 
 roded his feelings ; and the fever which 
 follows a wound consumed him. Still he 
 might be safely carried through that 
 illness ; an illness, indeed, which might 
 leave his constitution stronger than it
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 103 
 
 was previously. Thank God, he was, 
 at least, not entangled. 
 
 But before he attained convalescence, 
 another disease showed itself. I mean 
 his dangerous passion for the Hetoerce, 
 As an Anthropologist I could scarcely 
 wonder at this, much as I deplored it. 
 No interference was availing while the 
 reaction of his first error was strong 
 upon him. I could but watch and wait. 
 Advice irritated, remonstrance only con- 
 firmed him in his course. With bitter 
 logic and most ingenious casuistry he 
 defended his proceedings, and his wrung 
 heart lent specious arguments to his 
 active brain and fluent tongue. I have 
 forgotten to record that he was eloquent. 
 He had that kind of eloquence, blent 
 with the excitement of elevated feeling.
 
 104 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 which makes the great orator, the great 
 actor. He was an excellent speaker, 
 and a distinguished member of a distin- 
 guished debating society. His power of 
 eloquence was a gift apart from and be- 
 yond the mere gift of fluency, and to 
 his natural powers was added the charm 
 of a voice rarely surpassed for beauty 
 of tone, capability of expression, and 
 modulation. I had often admired the 
 exercise of his happy powers. And how 
 gladly would I have warned him from 
 the perilous path of low amours, the 
 very antithesis to love ! Dangers, too, in 
 an especial degree to such a character as 
 his, were such liaisons. And I had, I 
 shame to say it, the bitter right of ex- 
 perience to warn, for I had myself at 
 one time stooped to the degradation from
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 105 
 
 •which I would so willingly have saved 
 him. In myself, it had been the de- 
 basement arising from desperation, the 
 abandonment springing from despair ; but 
 in him the cause was different, and the 
 cure more difficult. 
 
 And so my walk home that night 
 was accompanied by thoughts of Fred. 
 When I reached my lodgings, and 
 filled the final pipe before slumber, I 
 tried to discard images and forget recol- 
 lections, and I essayed to think strongly 
 upon some active practical means of help 
 and cure. But how ? how ? I could 
 think of but one method, and that was, 
 that he should find a worthy love. Here 
 again came the how ? more distinctly 
 than ever. But I could pursue the 
 matter no farther ; and, in despair, I
 
 106 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 retired to sleep — perchance to dream. 
 Might not some vision give me happy 
 insight ? Alas, I feared not ; for I could 
 say with Goethe that " nothing ever came 
 to me in my sleep."
 
 ettiuA |art. 
 
 -•c*- 
 
 (( 
 
 my mind misgives 
 
 Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, 
 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 
 With this night's revels. 
 
 ******* 
 
 But He, that hath the steerage of my course, 
 Direct my sail ! " 
 
 Shakspeare — Romeo and Juliet 
 
 " The devil 's most devilish when respectable." 
 
 E. B. Brovtning.
 
 109 
 
 uonb ^art* 
 
 Mr. John Caractacus Smythe de Smithe 
 Smith was a thorough man of business, 
 and a man, besides, of the highest 
 respectability. His origin was veiled in 
 the same solemn obscurity and mystery 
 which envelope that of the Nile; but 
 the social and commercial majesty of the 
 full broad stream of his middle age was 
 so satisfactory, that men in general were 
 well content to admire, and to leave re-
 
 110 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 trospective research to idle and feverish 
 curiosity. Some rumours there were, the 
 offspring doubtless of malignant envy and 
 malicious scandal, which pointed to a 
 period when he would have responded if 
 addressed as plain " Jack Smith ; " and 
 when his position in society, as well as 
 his financial circumstances, were, by com- 
 parison, the one paltry, and the other in- 
 sufficient. 
 
 But Mr. J. C. S. de S. Smith 
 took evidently but little pleasure in the 
 pleasures of memory ; and he not only 
 vehemently kicked down his young am- 
 bition's ladder, but employed himself with 
 raven-like care in burying every vestige 
 of the means by which he had mounted 
 to his dazzling eminence, and in sedu- 
 lously ignoring all traces of that humble
 
 THE THREE PATHS. Ill 
 
 past, on which he had raised the splendid 
 present. 
 
 All those who had known him in 
 his earlier and humbler days were stu- 
 diously and sharply " cut ; " and being 
 themselves men mostly in indigent cir- 
 cumstances, and moving in low social cir- 
 cles, were constrained to indulge their 
 reminiscences in the back parlours of 
 small public-houses, and such sequestered 
 haunts, whence their sentimental allusions 
 to having "knowed old Smith, afore he 
 growed such a precious stuck-up nob, 
 mind yer !'^ rose not into the serener 
 regions in which their quondam " pal " 
 now moved; and indeed, rose no higher 
 than the tap-room ceiling, and there 
 evaporated with the smoke of their 
 " screws."
 
 112 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Once, a carter, visiting Mr. Smith's 
 counting-house in the exercise of his pro- 
 fessional duties, had found that gentleman 
 in the outer office, engaged in ^^ swearing 
 in'' an offending clerk, and had indulged 
 in serious pantomime, expressive of friendly 
 recognition and a desire to renew old ac- 
 quaintance. Before, however, this "cap- 
 tive in the Actuals' dungeon" could shape 
 his desire into words, he was hustled into 
 the passage by order of the head of the 
 firm, his business promptly despatched, 
 and his thirst for friendship assuaged with 
 beer, while an intimation was given him 
 "not to let the guv'ner kitch 'im there 
 agin." 
 
 All corpses cannot be sunk into the 
 great sea of life with sufficiently heavy 
 shot attached to their legs, and they will, 
 
 «'\
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 113 
 
 consequently, occasionally float up to the 
 surface when their presence is no way 
 desirable — as for instance, the body of 
 Prince Caraccioli floated up most inoppor- 
 tunely in the Bay of Naples, when Nelson 
 was taking a pleasure trip in the Fou- 
 droyant — and Mr. Sinith was, at times, 
 exposed to some annoyance from this 
 source. But, on the whole, he succeeded 
 in burying his youth rather cleverly, and 
 danced on its grave with complacent 
 hilarity — having murdered it, he sought 
 to hide the poor remains. This was 
 done the more easily, since such men 
 have no youth, properly speaking, but 
 shuffle confusedly through the interme- 
 diate stages, until they bloom suddenly 
 into fully developed mediaevalism. Then 
 even, they are not men, but men of 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 business merely, and young Anthropolo- 
 gists must be cautioned not to confound 
 the genera. 
 
 Mr. Smith was emphatically a man 
 of business and "nothing but it," — 
 except, of course, a man of respecta- 
 bility; the two characters being gene- 
 rally as indissolubly connected as the 
 Siamese twins. His two phases of 
 existence were passed alternately in his 
 dingy counting-house in the city and his 
 "desirable family mansion'' at Camberwell; 
 and between these two he was trans- 
 ported, not always with pleasure, in 
 a sixpenny omnibus ; or later, as his 
 respectability grew more pronounced, 
 in a brougham. In politics he was a 
 Moderate Humbug; in religion a Clap- 
 ham Christian. Socially he was a mas-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 115 
 
 todon flunkey in plush of deepest dye; 
 and never saw a great man, or what 
 he considered a great man, i. e. a man 
 of wealth and position, without ex- 
 periencing a burning desire to fall 
 on his knees, and after grovelling and 
 wallowing before his idol, to implant 
 a fervent kiss upon its feet. Where the 
 trader ended, the snob began; and the 
 two characters melted into each other 
 as imperceptibly, if not altogether so 
 beautifully, as twilight into early night. 
 He worshipped wealth ; poverty he 
 scorned and hated. Talent, except the 
 talent for making money and getting 
 on in the world, he heartily despised. 
 Of genius he knew perhaps rather 
 less than a Bosjesman knows of the 
 nature and attributes of Plato's Logos^ 
 
 I 2
 
 116 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 or of the Differential Calculus ; and 
 understood, on the whole, rather less 
 about it than a cannibal understands 
 of the controversy on " prevenient grace ;" 
 but he had a curious instinctive dislike 
 to the nearest conception he could form 
 of it, and did not fail to impart his 
 opinions to the right sort of men. 
 
 Of the value of the fine arts he spoke 
 doubtfully, owing probably to a con- 
 fused idea of what is meant by the 
 term, since he considered that '^ draw- 
 ing'' included drawing a cheque, and 
 that "painting" was applied to area 
 railings as well as to the subjects of 
 the Italian schools. For sculpture he 
 avowed a kind of sneaking sympathy, 
 in consequence, as I conjecture, of being 
 fully sensible of the importance of the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 117 
 
 chisel in business ; but bis respect for 
 music was limited to the sums of 
 money which a Lind or a Lablache 
 amass by its means. 
 
 Even his eulogists are constrained to 
 admit, when driven into a corner, that 
 his opinions upon literature are of compa- 
 ratively little importance, owing to his 
 stupendous ignorance of the subject. Of 
 English authors, indeed, he can only be 
 said to have known Johnson, with whose 
 '' Dixonary '^ he had established a visit- 
 ing acquaintance on occasions on which, 
 accompanied by that work and the 
 " Complete Letter Writer," he locked 
 himself into his " study ^' at - home, 
 or his private room at the office, 
 in order to compound an epistle. It 
 must be admitted, on the other
 
 118 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 hand, that his knowledge of arithmetic 
 was all that could be wished; more, 
 indeed, than was sometimes wished by 
 those who stood exposed to the shot of 
 his science. His language towards clerks, 
 dependents, or poor men, was simple, 
 nervous, and Saxon ; when he was ex- 
 cited, its copious energy included " every 
 luxury, except the letter H ; " but his 
 language '*in society" excited at first 
 some mirth among the irreverent, in 
 consequence of his occasional grandilo- 
 quent attempts at fine words, his" bom- 
 bastic affectation, and "nice derangement 
 of epitaphs." His wife took great pains 
 to make him presentable in this respect; 
 nor were her efforts wholly without 
 success, since he learned great caution 
 in the first place, and comparative cor-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 119 
 
 rectness in the second. Hence his 
 " table talk " lost in later life much 
 of the jammy lusciousness of his earlier 
 conversation, and some friends and well- 
 wishers experienced in consequence a 
 wicked sort of disappointment. He was 
 rough, brutal, and bullying when it was 
 safe to be so. He was cringing, fawn- 
 ing, and servile when interest or sliob- 
 bishness prompted him. He had a 
 great dislike to, and a strong dread of, 
 witty men — of all men, in short, whose 
 orbits did not move in the con- 
 centric circles of common-place routine : 
 in this he was, however, though uncon- 
 sciously, following the injunctions of 
 science, since Lardner, in his article on 
 Eailroads, warns us against the danger to 
 be apprehended from *^ eccentric buffers."
 
 120 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Of intellect he was wholly destitute; 
 but he posessed a vast amount of low 
 cunning. Of wisdom he had not a spark, 
 but then he was a proficient in what he 
 considered expediency. As the Irish- 
 man lashed himself to the sheet- 
 anchor when the ship was sinking, so 
 his worldliness and selfishness increased 
 with declining years. 
 
 Of honour, courtesy, or delicacy he 
 knew as little as an aboriginal inhabitant 
 of Australia, an Esquimaux, or a sub- 
 ject of "King Boy" knows of the dis- 
 pute concerning the Homoousion and the 
 Homoiousion. 
 
 He grubbed his way through life with 
 a pig's snout, and tested nothing by the 
 touch of the delicate antennce of fine 
 feeling. Wiser in his generation than
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 121 
 
 the children of light, he had two clear 
 objects in life — wealth and social posi- 
 tion ; and these objects are perhaps 
 not difficult of attainment to a nature 
 capable of no other or higher aspira- 
 tion. His manners would have broken 
 the heart of Sir Charles Grandison, and 
 would have excited the delighted but 
 contemptuous mirth of De Lauzun ; 
 but his *^ deportment " was Turvey- • 
 dropsical. 
 
 He was thickly muffled in decorum, 
 which fitted him with the pliant 
 ease of a Dutch wooden sabot, and 
 in which he looked about as graceful, 
 and as much at ease, as a diver does 
 in his professional costume. His attend- 
 ance at church was most regular, as 
 much so indeed as his attendance on
 
 122 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 'Change ; and his general conduct was 
 sweetly exemplary. His reputation 
 for "character" stood as high as his 
 renown for opulence, and he was — 
 almost — universally respected. 
 
 He was, in short, a splendid example 
 of a saying of one of our old English 
 divines — the saying might be Jeremy 
 Taylor's — " That God doth oftentimes 
 manifest his contempt for riches by the 
 hands into which he suffereth them to 
 faU." 
 
 Nature had selected a fitting " case 
 in which to store this jewel ; the 
 body which he inhabited was wonder- 
 fully suited to his peculiar idiosyncracy. 
 He stood about five feet nine in his 
 cloth-fronted boots, or more usual shoes 
 and white gaiters. He wore pimples and
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 123 
 
 a shirt frill, and gleaned his ideas of 
 time from a massive gold watch, adver- 
 tised externally by a large bunch of 
 seals. 
 
 He commonly appeared in a blue 
 coat and brass buttons, a waistcoat of 
 a buff colour, traversed by thin blue 
 lines, and his trunk, like Pennsylvanian 
 credit, was ordinarily based on drab sup- 
 porters. His hat was whitey-brown ; 
 his choker — many wished that it had been 
 one indeed — was of a similar hue, with 
 white predominating. 
 
 Like the tree mentioned by Oliver 
 in "As you like it," he was "high top 
 bald ; '* and the hair he had was of a 
 dirty Scotch snuff colour, mottled with 
 yellowish grey, so that his head, viewed 
 from behind, looked like the butt-end
 
 124 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 of an aged terrier of the celebrated Mustard 
 breed. His sandily reddish whiskers were 
 trained forward on to his cheek bones, 
 and then sharply cut away underneath; 
 and it is almost superfluous to add that 
 such a man was a waxy miracle of close 
 shaving. 
 
 His little stony grey eyes, full of 
 cunning, but — strange to say, con- 
 sidering his tendencies and pursuits — 
 devoid of much ^^speculation," peered 
 from beneath sandy eyebrows, placed, in 
 their' turn, beneath a villainously low 
 forehead. His cheek bones were high, 
 and his nose large, but thin and pom- 
 pous. His complexion was yellowly cada- 
 verous, spotted with dyspepsia, and his 
 thick lower lip projected from his heavy 
 fleshy jaw as if he were signing himself
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 125 
 
 "your obedient servant" to a letter re- 
 fusing a small pecuniary assistance to a 
 poor relation. 
 
 He was married. But no argument 
 is to be deduced from that fact, 
 juvenile Anthropologist ! — you might 
 as well attempt to argue similarity 
 of character between two men be- 
 cause both read the Times, He 
 had cemented the prosperity of his 
 person and dynasty, and materially 
 advanced his worldly interests, by 
 connecting himself connubially with a 
 Miss Lavinia Penelope Beestlie — very 
 old family the Beestlies — who belonged 
 to the '^arristoxy" of Camberwell (the 
 family indeed boasting of having inter- 
 married with collateral branches of the 
 great Ramsbottoms of Peckham), and
 
 126 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 whose father had duly realised the 
 expectations fondly formed of him 
 in life by "cutting up well" at his 
 death. 
 
 She could trace her descent clearly 
 to her grandfather, originally a devout 
 and conservative turncock, whose theo- 
 logical opinions and political principles, 
 duly applied by a shrewd and practical 
 mind to the solution of the great 
 problem of getting on in life, had en- 
 abled him to lay the foundations of a 
 considerable * fortune and a widely- 
 spread "porochial" renown. 
 
 He was the progenitor and eponymus of 
 the great genos of the Camberwell Beest- 
 lies ; a subdivision of one of the various 
 phratrce of a tribe widely diffused over 
 the British dominions. John Carac-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 127 
 
 tacus had found in his Lavinia Pene- 
 lope a helpmate every way suited to 
 the exigencies of his spirit and the 
 necessities of his position. It was not 
 a marriage of passion, of affection, of 
 sentiment; it was not, indeed, a union 
 inspired by any of the feelings or mo- 
 tives which, in a divine sense, should 
 actuate human beings to fuse two 
 bodies and two spirits into one till 
 death do them part ; and being totally 
 devoid of all such high-flown and 
 absurd nonsense, it wore well, and the 
 product was satisfactory. 
 
 The contracting parties were not young, 
 giddy, thoughtless things, but had ar- 
 rived at years of the ripest discretion, 
 and had outlived the time of life in which 
 their youth ought to have been placed.
 
 128 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 It was, in truth, a sum in simple or com- 
 pound interest ; the gentleman saw the 
 clearest advantage to himself in nego- 
 tiating the transaction, and the lady, 
 whose chances of committing matri- 
 mony were otherwise somewhat pro- 
 blematical, did not see that she could 
 do better than conclude the bargain. 
 
 It is said that he owed to his 
 wife the whole of his name bounded 
 on the one side by " John,'' and 
 on the other by " Smith." This 
 Egeria it was too who first ex- 
 plained to her Numa that the word 
 chaise is singular, in respect that it 
 does not necessarily imply '^ two chays ; " * 
 
 * For an erudite and exhaustive essay on 
 this difficult grammatical question, my readers 
 are referred to "the Tuggses at Ramsgate."
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 129 
 
 this Parthenia it was who undertook 
 to polish the carbon-like roughness of 
 her Ingomar into a social diamond ; 
 who formed his chastely charming man- 
 ners, and developed his social ambition 
 — who ruled with such exquisite de- 
 corum his dignified domestic menage] 
 and who, on the ruins of his old classic 
 style, founded the florid renaissance of 
 his career of maturer splendour. Alas! 
 I knew her not in youth, I never 
 saw her until ripened into the autumn 
 beauty of her matronly perfection. In 
 person she was large, stringy, and gaunt, 
 and the blue blood of her glorious race 
 mantled in her capacious nose, which 
 was Eoman, or Punch-like, in shape, and 
 resembled a squeezed indigo bag in hue. 
 Her hair was of a reddish brown or brown- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 ish red, and was rather faded and dusty 
 in colour, like that in a bad old picture, 
 badly cleaned. High on either temple 
 clustered three voluptuous rolls or pats 
 of curl, somewhat resembling those articles 
 which, in pork shop windows, are ticketed 
 as "small Germans,'^ and which — I mean, 
 of course, her curls, and not the diminutive 
 Teutons — are only unsung by Horace 
 because that hasty poet died before he 
 could possibly have the felicity of twining 
 their soft tendrils round his susceptible 
 heart. 
 
 She had been a strong, not to say coarse- 
 minded, female, but to this early force 
 was superadded, in her later years, a kind 
 of occasional mental flatulence ; the briskly 
 sour small beer had become something 
 stale and flat; and there was at times
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 131 
 
 a flabby selfishness and whining knaggery 
 about her, which, although repulsive to 
 the superficial, were not without interest 
 to a contemplative Anthropologist. She 
 was a peculiarly religious woman, and 
 continually thanked God that she was not 
 like the Pharisee. What respectability was 
 to Mr. S., gentility was to Mrs. Ditto, 
 and at the time when I first became 
 acquainted with her, the seeds of a great 
 moral revolution had been implanted in 
 that tender breast. 
 
 Two great ideas disturbed, two mighty 
 longings impelled her. The English ma- 
 tron desired, in the first place, a more 
 aristocratic locality for her worldly sojourn, 
 and ^^ S., my life,'' had been commissioned 
 to reconnoitre the sympathetic neighbour- 
 hoods of Upper Baker Street, Kussell 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE THREE PAtHS. 
 
 Square, &c. Her spiriiueUe nature yearned, 
 too, like those of many of her species, 
 for a more fashionable and pink-bonnety 
 form of creed, and she seriously contem- 
 plated a transfer of faith from Clapham 
 to Knightsbridge, 
 
 I lived to see this great revolution 
 accomplished; accomplished bloodlessly, it 
 is true, but yet not without gall. The 
 devotional feelings of Camberwell were 
 rent by the awful schism; its social 
 emotions were profoundly agitated by the 
 majestic "move." The advantage of the 
 change was gradually made plain to S.'s 
 comprehension, and he fell into her 
 schemes, and adopted her policy, as 
 became the husband of such a wife. 
 
 We read in the Anecdotes of ElHston 
 that the mad wag, waiting below the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 133 
 
 stage while very useful John Cooper 
 was being wound up through the trap- 
 door to discharge the Ghost in Hamlet, 
 allowed the head and shoulders of the 
 buried majesty of Denmark to appear to 
 the audience, and then commenced caning 
 the unhappy actor's subterranean calves 
 with an energetic ferocity which soon 
 robbed that portion of his performance 
 which was visible to "the house" of any 
 supernatural or unearthly attributes. And 
 the Smythe de Smithe Smiths (how I love 
 the euphony of the whole name !), having 
 succeeded by their westward migration in 
 forcing their heads and shoulders through 
 the trap-door which divided them from the 
 polite world, could get no farther in spite 
 of all their struggles, and remained thus 
 painfully fixed, while their calves were
 
 134 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 vigourously caned by the envious Ellistons 
 of that subterranean world of Camberwell, 
 which they sought to leave below them. 
 
 They aifected to disdain the infliction, 
 and endeavoured to present a calm and 
 composed countenance to their new audience; 
 but the nervous twitchings of the features, 
 and the occasional hops of agony, told the 
 story of their sufferings — sufferings, I fear, 
 unpitied by any. They could not shake 
 off their tormentors, but many were bribed 
 to silence, and awed into worship, by an 
 admission to intimacy in their new home. 
 
 Still, the excluded snobs were numerous 
 and vengeful, and never lost an opportu- 
 nity of implanting a luscious whack upon 
 the tender calves of those whom they had 
 formerly loved so sincerely and respected 
 so highly. Whence this Anthropologist
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 135 
 
 concludes that the Snob race are not 
 untinctured with envy and .with malice. 
 
 The couple were intensely vulgar — vulgar 
 with that worst of vulgarity — the constant 
 fear of being vulgar. They dared not 
 trust to their own impulse to guide them 
 in any social matter, but had always to 
 think how Mrs. Bludyer Jones would act 
 under similar circumstances, or to dread 
 what Mrs. Swellington White would say 
 or think of what they had done. 
 
 When I go into a strange house, I am 
 in the habit of assisting my guesses at the 
 characters of the inmates by an inspection 
 of their books. Reprehensible as this pro- 
 ceeding is when applied to persons of great 
 respectability — in whom literature is natu- 
 rally a weak point — I nevertheless, on the 
 occasion of my first visit to Mr. and Mrs.
 
 136 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 J. C. S. de S. S., subjected their library, 
 which was select rather than extensive, 
 to the curious scrutiny of an inquisitive 
 Anthropologist. 
 
 I pass over those show volumes arranged 
 symmetrically on the state table, which 
 are in such houses mere pieces of ornamen- 
 tal furniture in gaudy bindings, and between 
 which and a hook there is often almost the 
 same difference that there is between a 
 Bosjesman and Shakspeare, and saunter to 
 those side tables and shelves on which the 
 works which constitute the real mental 
 pabulum of the family repose. 
 
 The most prominent volume was of 
 course a Peerage ; latest edition, and sacred 
 to all members of the family. Near this 
 lay a well-used Johnson's Dictionary, and a 
 battered but long unopened copy of the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 137 
 
 ^' Whole Duty of Man" — the latter with 
 the end torn out; these two works being, 
 probably, the property of the master of the 
 house. Next followed "Hints on Eti- 
 quette," and some trashy third-rate novel 
 of the Silver Fork school, borrowed from 
 a circulating library; one of those works 
 which base their pretensions to favour upon 
 an attempt to give key-hole glimpses of 
 High Life to the uninitiated — a work pro-, 
 duced by a snob author for snob readers. 
 Near these lay some tracts, and a sermon 
 or two by the Kev. Windy Howler, of 
 Clapham ; and just before the family emi- 
 grated from Camberwell, I observed 
 " Thoughtlings on an Altar-Cloth," by the 
 Rev. Eunuchus Ignatius Mildhead,* ot 
 
 * Author of that charming little High Church 
 poem, " Ye Canticle of a "Wynkyng Virgin."
 
 138 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Knightsbridge. Mesdames Chapone and 
 Hannah More were also represented, the 
 copy of the last-named lady's works 
 having apparently been a school prize ; 
 and I thought that I recognised the 
 lady of the house in this selection of 
 writers. 
 
 The young ladies' tastes were probably 
 exemplified in " Howls of the Heartstrings," 
 by Cora Anastasia Bludgeon; '^Woman's 
 Mission, considered with reference to the 
 Christian Dispensation and the usages of 
 Polite Society," by Mrs. Fairy Badger; 
 "Almacks, a Novel," edited by the Lady 
 Crinolina Tyburnia ; " Beauties of the Aris- 
 tocracy," "Keepsake," &c. Without enu- 
 merating further, this little catalogue rai- 
 sonne will perhaps give the intelligent reader 
 a tolerably clear idea of the literary tastes
 
 THE THREE PATHS. . 139 
 
 and wants of this most genteel and respect- 
 able family. 
 
 This worthy couple cubbed copiously. 
 They established an annual ceremony of 
 adding 1 to the population returns, and 
 this form was gone through during seven 
 or eight consecutive years with almost as 
 much regularity as the revolution of the 
 earth round the sun, or as the bringing 
 forward by Mr. Grote of his motion in i 
 favour of vote by ballot. Their medical 
 attendant estimated the item in his 
 yearly income, and the registrar of the 
 parish looked forward to the event with 
 feverish anticipation. Their charming 
 family — all daughters, my ecstatic 
 bachelor reader! — sloped downwards with 
 the symmetrical regularity of the reeds in 
 a Pan's pipe ; and seven out of the eight
 
 140 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 grew up, botli in mind and body, all that 
 their parents could desire. But one — I 
 think she was No. 5 — or was she No. 6 ? — 
 I am not certain, but it does not matter, 
 formed an exceptional case. 
 
 Exclamations of wonder and surprise 
 are common enough in the world at the 
 strangeness of certain apparently ill-assorted 
 marriages between persons of different ages 
 and positions, of varying tempers, tastes, 
 and pursuits, and of natures which seem 
 diametrically opposed. But this is a 
 worldly and commonplace mystery, to be 
 accounted for generally by interest, oppor- 
 tunity, sensuality, eccentricity, or some 
 merely earthly cause. The greatest mys- 
 tery is that of children. 
 
 Whence come they, these spirit descend- 
 ants from other spheres, whose circle of
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 141 
 
 eternity is, in human birth, intersected by 
 the arc of time — how far are they great, 
 abstract spirits merely passed into life 
 through the unconscious medium of ordinary 
 mortal parents ; or how far are they, in a 
 spiritual as well as a physical sense, the 
 natural offspring of those parents? Ever 
 stiU 
 
 " A solemn thing it is to me 
 To look upon a babe that sleeps." 
 
 Did the poor miner of Eisleben and his 
 wife think, as they hung over the rude 
 cradle in the mean wretched hut, that 
 not unto them only, but unto all God's 
 earth, was born the man whom men call 
 Martin Luther? Did the Alighieri image 
 to themselves as they gazed with proud 
 joy upon the son born to them in Flo- 
 rence, and whom they christened Durante
 
 142 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 or Durando, that the unconscious, calmly- 
 slumbering infant was destined to be- 
 come the man whonj, while yet bound in 
 the limits of mortalit}'*, 
 
 (( 
 
 •from the lowest depths of hell, 
 
 Through every paradise, and through all glory, 
 Love led serene, and vi^ho returned to tell 
 The words of hate and care ; the wondrous story 
 How all things are transfigured except love : — " 
 
 the man, the poet, to whom it should 
 be granted to see that divine comedy, 
 or vision ; and whose lips should be 
 touched with fire to tell the superhuman 
 poem to all mankind ; and be, by them, 
 for ever known as Dante ? And they, 
 
 that other couple, the magister, alderman, 
 landowner, and wool dealer of Stratford- 
 upon-Avon, and his wife, sometime Mary 
 Arden ; did they in their joy — " for that
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 143 
 
 a man was born into the world" — did 
 they guess what a spirit had then clothed 
 itself with mortality, and was entrusted 
 to them to rear to life ; did they fore- 
 tell, as they bent over their child, that 
 the infant should ripen into the greatest 
 thing the world has yet known — the man 
 who stands solitary and apart in the 
 sublime isolation of his genius — the man 
 for whose name of William Shalispeare 
 the earth is but an echo, and all time one 
 monument ? 
 
 Great truths resemble that genie, of 
 whom we read in the Arabian Nights, 
 whose shadowy bulk was so vast that 
 it spread through air and over sea, 
 and could yet be compressed into the 
 little vase which the poor fisherman had 
 caught in his net. And the mysterious
 
 144 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 truth which I have endeavoured to illus- 
 trate by such illustrious examples, may- 
 find a further exemplification in child 
 No. 5 (or 6) of the respectable Edwin 
 and Angelina of Camberwell. Mrs. S. 
 de S. Smith had been ^' finished " at 
 a delightful seminary at Hammersmith, 
 which boasted the daughter of a real 
 Baronet amongst its pupils, and where 
 gentility was taught with every modern 
 improvement. The fair young creatures, 
 whose tender hands were destined to sway 
 the heartstrings of the then rising male 
 generation, were sedulously trained to 
 laborious frivolity, and cultured carefully 
 in conventional snobbishness. 
 
 Among the young fellow-students of 
 Lavinia Penelope Beestlie, was a Miss 
 Helen Weston, a young lady of consider-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 145 
 
 able personal beauty, of a sweet and tender 
 disposition, and of decidedly good county 
 family. The two girls were so very dif- 
 ferent in nature, that no Wahlverwand- 
 schafi, no Elective Affinity, no Helena 
 and Hermia feeling — the feeling, namely, 
 that subsisted between those young per- 
 sons in the innocent '^ double cherry " 
 days before they required lovers — existed, 
 or could exist, between Miss B. and* 
 Miss W. But the sagacious and far- 
 sighted Beestlie comprehended fully the 
 superior social status of her own dearest 
 Helen, and essayed forcibly to cement a 
 friendship which, as the young enthusiast 
 calculated, might be entirely desirable in 
 after life. Thus early, and with the 
 whole ardour of her gushing nature, did 
 this most superior woman bring her 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 little votive offerings of plush, and de- 
 corate therewith the altar of her idol of 
 gentility. 
 
 The " finishing " of young females dif- 
 fers, however, in so far from that of 
 Kasselas, that it lias a conclusion ; and 
 a day came when the respective parents 
 of Helen and of Lavinia considered their 
 daughters sufficiently trained to be en- 
 tered for the Oaks of female ambition. 
 The schoolfellows separated, nor did they 
 meet again for years. 
 
 Miss Weston, the fair, the gentle, and 
 the good, was Miss Weston still. An 
 orphan spinster, she had inherited con- 
 siderable property, and lived upon a 
 charming little estate of her own, in one 
 of the pleasantest of the midland coun- 
 ties. Her friend, on the other hand,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 147 
 
 who was neither fair, nor gentle, nor 
 good, had nevertheless, as we have seen, 
 contracted a highly respectable marriage, 
 and lived in a state of spotless gentility 
 and fecund matronage. About the pe- 
 riod at which she was " expecting " her 
 fifth or sixth blessing, she heard that 
 her quondam schoolfellow was in town, 
 and instantly took measures to renew 
 their former acquaintance. Miss Weston ■ 
 came. Her kindly woman's heart, with 
 all its motherly instincts unsatisfied, took 
 the warmest interest in her friend's pro- 
 ject, and she readily consented to be- 
 come godmother to the being yet to be. 
 At her special request, the little girl 
 acquired the name of Lily ; a name 
 which had belonged to a favourite sister 
 who had died in youth. 
 
 L 2
 
 14.8 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 All the gentle lady's affections twined 
 themselves round the little child; and 
 when, in due time, she timidly offered 
 to adopt it, the proposal, coming from 
 such a quarter, was eagerly accepted by 
 the parents. It must require, I should 
 think, some courage to christen a child 
 Lily, since it is clearly quite impossible 
 to predict with certainty that it will 
 not grow up a practical antithesis to 
 its name ; but, in the present instance, 
 the experiment was triumphantly sue- 
 cessful. Lily justified the choice of 
 name nobly. Her beauty, as she grew 
 to early womanhood, was extreme and 
 rare. It was a fair, and delicate, and 
 sunny beauty, a true index to the 
 beauty of the gentle spirit that inha- 
 bited that exquisite temple. Her silky
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 149 
 
 curling hair was of the lightest and most 
 golden auburn ; her eyes of the darkest, 
 softest, and yet brightest blue. 
 
 English women are the only ones who 
 have complexions, and Lily's teint might 
 have been selected as a perfect represen- 
 tative of that charm peculiar to the 
 land of the rose. She was just about 
 the height of the Medicean Yenus, and her 
 slight, though perfectly rounded, nymph- 
 like figure, would have satisfied a Greek 
 sculptor's sense of symmetry of form : 
 she had, too, a lady's hand and a fairy's 
 foot. But her chiefest beauty lay in 
 expression, in ever varying and ever 
 beautiful expression. Of a class of beauty 
 which, with inane women, has sometimes 
 something doll-like in it, she redeemed 
 and elevated the type to an ideal of
 
 150 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 grace and charm. In her happy, happy 
 youth, that golden time when first the 
 sunlight of her presence shone upon 
 my shadow-darkened path, she seemed 
 to me : — 
 
 (( 
 
 ■a spirit of bloom, 
 
 And joy, and freshness, as if Spring itself 
 Were made a living thing and wore her shape." 
 
 A child-like playfulness still hovered 
 around all her words and actions. The 
 sweetness of a sunny temper, and the 
 glad gaiety of a young and happy heart, 
 lightened and brightened her winning 
 loveliness ; and her pure innocent mirth, 
 like the sparkling surface of a bright 
 leaping sunny sea, made you half forget 
 the depths that it concealed. Ah, she 
 knew as yet : —
 
 (( 
 
 THE THEEE PATHS. 151 
 
 all things by their blooms, 
 
 Not their root^." 
 
 And then, her nature was so tender 
 and so trustful ; her intelligence so bright 
 and quick ; her thought so true, and honest, 
 and fearless ; her feeling so pure and 
 deep ; her modesty so simple and perfect ; 
 her unconscious goodness and intuitive re- 
 finement such worthy gifts derived from 
 nature ; her delicate fluttering between 
 child and woman so touching and charm- 
 ing ; her artless, ingenuous candour and 
 sportive gaiety so graceful and so win- 
 ning ; her kindness of heart, and noble 
 unselfishness and unworldliness, so fresh 
 and glorious, that — Lily, Lily ! — you 
 little knew what dreams of things that 
 might have been, and yet that never 
 should be, sprang up in the heart that
 
 152 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 seemed to you so cold and loveless, as 
 a great silence fell upon it beneath the 
 spell of your dear, dear presence, and 
 the haunting thought of the stern duty 
 of the poor and hopeless man ! For, 
 from that radiant spirit a spark of love 
 fell upon my lonely heart, and flashed 
 up brightly for a moment — to be trod- 
 den out by the worker's iron heel upon 
 the cold ^stones of London. 
 
 Years have passed since then, nor did 
 I ever think my secret would have 
 taken shape or word ; but in this strange 
 confessional of the Scriptorium ; in this 
 hour so far removed from that of my 
 struggle, as I sit alone with memory and 
 with dreams, while through the awful 
 stillness of the solemn night thrill the 
 far voices of the long ago, and glow the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 153 
 
 feelings of the buried past — thy image, 
 fresh, and fair, and vivid, as when first 
 it shone before me, prompts the avowal 
 and extorts the words ! 
 
 As the hunter, when he sees the prairie 
 fire rolling towards him in sheets of 
 flame, ignites the grass and shrubs around 
 him, in order that the fast advancing 
 conflagration may find no fuel where he 
 stands, so I plunged with all my ardour " 
 into business and into study, in order 
 that love might find all his fuel pre- 
 occupied by other fires. Goethe, in his 
 wisdom, adopted the same panacea for 
 grief. When his well-loved son died, 
 he bent his whole mind to the study of 
 a new science, in order that the tasked 
 intellect might relieve the o^erfraught 
 heart.
 
 154 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 And yet 'tis a hard and bitter task, 
 that infanticide of love but newly born. 
 I found it so. For, at the time of which 
 I write, I was still young, and the 
 " mighty hunger of the heart," the 
 great craving of the whole being for 
 love, left me weak, ah, very weak, on 
 the side of the affections. At such an 
 age, too, the education of abnegation 
 and sacrifice is but half completed, nor 
 have we wholly learned to forego with- 
 out a pang. 
 
 As, in that twilight hour in the ar- 
 bour, the full-statured soul of Teufels- 
 drockh leaped up in flame before the 
 image of Blumine, and felt a power in 
 its heaven-born strength to soar to a 
 height whence, looking down, it saw 
 " conventions coiled to ashes," so, ere
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 155 
 
 our youth has learned to bear patiently 
 the yoke of social fictions, we thrill only 
 with the sense of manhood, and feel our- 
 selves the peer of the woman whose spirit 
 we aspire to win, because our own can 
 comprehend its value and reflect its 
 beauty. 
 
 But I sought safety in flight, and, re- 
 moved to distance, endeavoured hastily 
 but resolutely to tread out that spark 
 of love for Lily which might, perchance, 
 otherwise have blazed into an uncon- 
 querable fire. 
 
 In the tide of hard daily life and 
 business, none note the sunless brow or 
 heed the joyless step of a fellow worker; 
 none who look but on the ice upon 
 the surface guess that the living 
 stream of feeling flows quick beneath. I
 
 156 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 conquered my passion, and I kept my 
 secret. 
 
 And what a freak of nature that fair 
 Lily was! How could she be the daugh- 
 ter of Mr. and Mrs. Smythe de Smithe 
 Smith? I always held her to be some 
 fairy changeling, whom Puck, mistaking 
 an order of Oberon, had placed in the 
 wrong cradle. And then, the special 
 Providence of removing her in infancy 
 from the legal guardianship of such 
 parents to the gentle care and nurture 
 of that dear, good Miss Weston ! 
 
 As an Anthropologist I wondered and 
 adored. In her childhood, Lily used to 
 call Miss Weston, '' Mama," but that 
 lady shrank from the title, which was af- 
 terwards transmuted into that of " Aunt." 
 The affection between the two was indeed
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 157 
 
 deep and fervent ; fonder or worthier love 
 existed never between a mother and her 
 child. 
 
 It was at Miss Weston's knee that the 
 little child lisped its first infant prayer ; 
 from Miss Weston came all the care, and 
 watching, and kindness that sheltered 
 Lily's infancy and childhood; it was Miss 
 Weston that cultured and trained her 
 early girlhood ; and it was therefore Miss* 
 Weston whom she regarded with the 
 fond, reverent, trustful love of child for 
 parent, and with the ardent sympathy of 
 a woman for a dear friend and compa- 
 nion, not less loved than honoured. Their 
 tastes were very similar ; their natures 
 much alike, except that Lily had, per- 
 haps, a higher spirit, and, certainly, 
 more decided energy of character ; and
 
 158 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 their temperaments, considering the diffe- 
 rence of age, and of their relative posi- 
 tions, greatly resembled each other. They 
 read much together, such books as pure 
 and tender women love and delight in ; 
 both loved music ; both had the lady's 
 instinctive elegance, and the good, kindly 
 woman's impulsive charity and generosity. 
 Miss Weston, indeed, from her youth 
 upward, ran over with tender pity, as a 
 vase or fountain basin, tremblingly full 
 of heaven's rain, pours its contents upon 
 earth, its flowers and weeds alike, stirred 
 by the rustling of a leaf, or moved by 
 the sigh of a zephyr. 
 
 And so Lily grew up, in our fau^ 
 English land, " fanned by the breezes of 
 
 our oaken glades ; " a lovely figure 
 standing forth from a background of
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 159 
 
 la.wn, and copse, and tree, with flowers 
 blooming and birds singing round her, 
 herself as beautiful, and fresh, and joyous 
 as they. 
 
 Once or twice a year she went on a 
 visit of state to her "home." The little 
 lady looked upon these visits as matters 
 of duty, but, Oh, her heart was all the 
 time at Woodlands ; and, although she 
 strenuously endeavoured to do what she 
 thought was right, and to render her 
 tribute of affection to her kin, it was 
 yet impossible for her to quell the di- 
 viner instinct which told her that her 
 home was Woodlands, and that her true 
 mother bore the name of " Aunt." Her 
 father's hard and stony coarseness ; her 
 mother's gaunt decorum ; her sisters' fri- 
 gid conventionality and sneering envy —
 
 160 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 for they were taught to respect little 
 Lily as an heiress — the whole tone and 
 aspect of that most respectable establish- 
 ment; the society she met, and every- 
 thing she saw or heard there, revolted 
 her pure and noble nature, and- made 
 her very unhappy, since, as she tearfully 
 confessed to her " Aunt," she feared her 
 disposition must be naturally wicked, in- 
 asmuch as she found it impossible to 
 love or respect her family as she thought 
 
 a daughter and a sister should. 
 
 Her sisters hated her as much on ac- 
 count of her great beauty as of her posi- 
 tion and expectations. The contrast be- 
 tween them was most striking. 
 
 No stranger looked upon Lily as their 
 sister, and she was generally thought to 
 be on a visit, while some people who
 
 THE THREE PATHS. IGl 
 
 met her at the house — I know one such 
 person — wondered what on earth could 
 bring such an angel visitant into such a 
 Malebolge, They, the sisters, were all 
 much alike, and resembled father and 
 mother in slightly different degrees, the 
 father predominating m the face or mind 
 of one, and the mother being supreme in 
 the form or temper of another. Their 
 natures took kindlily to the low worldly 
 tone of thought and feeling around 
 them, and their parents saw them de- 
 velope into all that they could wish in 
 children. 
 
 Arrived at a ripe age for the matri- 
 monial market, they were hawked about 
 at balls, parties, watering-places, or exhi- 
 bitions ; and were palmed and pawed, 
 touched and tasted, by all eligible pup- 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 pies and desirable men of business, until 
 they had as much bloom of character or 
 feeling left as a plum which has spent 
 a week in the custody of a costermonger. 
 Still they showed as little probability of 
 '^ going off" as a spiked cannon, while 
 Lily, when on one of her visits at home, 
 committed the unpardonable offence of 
 perverting the affections of the " sample " 
 selected for the husband — if he could be 
 brought to terms — of her eldest sister, 
 and thus procured for herself her first 
 ostensible admirer. 
 
 The gentleman, however, who plays so 
 important a part in the history of my 
 little Lily, deserves a paragraph to him- 
 self — and he shall have it. 
 
 Mr. Grobian Judenbub Yiehkerl was 
 entirely mercantile in his pursuits and
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 163 
 
 aspirations, and devoted himself with 
 great vigour and success to the traffic 
 which subsists between Great Britain and 
 the continent of Europe. 
 
 As Tom Smart's mare was a cross 
 between a butcher's horse and a Two- 
 penny Post-office pony, so Mr. Viehkerl 
 was a cross between a German Jew and 
 a Yankee trader. His hero-worship ap- 
 peared to be engrossed — though no doubt 
 unconsciously, for he had probably ac- 
 quired no literary knowledge of the 
 character — by Sir Giles Overreach ; and 
 he won the respect of Mr. Smythe de 
 Smithe Smith by over-reaching him in a 
 commercial transaction. These two sym- 
 pathetic spirits became great friends — ac- 
 cording to their interpretation of the 
 term — and Mr. Viehkerl being the younger 
 
 M 2
 
 164 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 man of the two, and still single, Mr. 
 Smith was desirous of extending their 
 business connection by negociating with 
 him for a daughter, the eldest, if possi- 
 ble. In spite of a generic similarity, 
 there were yet nuances, shades of dif- 
 ference between their characters, which 
 it would ill beseem an Anthropologist to 
 leave unnoted. 
 
 Mr. Viehkerl was much better edu- 
 cated than Mr. Smith ; but then, on the 
 other hand, he was much less attentive to 
 decorum or careful of appearances. He 
 cared for respectability chiefly on 'Change, 
 and took but little pains to disguise the 
 brutal coarseness of his *' private nature." 
 His cackling, snuffling laugh, nasal, but 
 never hearty, was one of the most re- 
 pulsive sounds I ever listened to, and
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 165 
 
 his personal appearance was a commen- 
 tary upon his laugh. 
 
 Between Mr. Yiehkerl and a gentle- 
 man, or man with any nobler aspirations 
 than greedy of gain or successful specula- 
 tion, there was the natural antipathy 
 that nature has planted between snakes 
 and lions, and Mr. V. knew no more 
 voluptuous enjoyment than to have a 
 poor gentleman his dependant, and to 
 subject him to all insult, indignity, and 
 wrong. He — but I cannot pursue the sick- 
 ening subject — for, woe is me ! I knew 
 the man. With the memory, the bleeding 
 memory, of torture and of degradation, 
 from which I could not at the time escape, 
 fresh upon me, is it some fiend that 
 whispers, through this lone and sQent hour, 
 that I hold within my right hand the
 
 166 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 terrible revenge of the pen ? Yade retro y 
 Satanas I Let me humbly remember that 
 we pray to have our trespasses forgiven, 
 as we forgive them that trespass against 
 us. I draw a curtain over the unfinished 
 sketch, and pass on. 
 
 Mrs. Smith agreed with her bosom's 
 lord in considering this party a desirable 
 husband for their eldest daughter. 
 
 " Penelope Ann," would the fond mo- 
 ther exclaim, " Mr. Yiehkerl is coming 
 here to dinner to-day. Practise your 
 smile, and cram something from your 
 Pa's Price- Current, my love, to please 
 him with. Yes," continued the sententious 
 matron, reflectively, ^^ the prices of raw 
 produce, quoted by the lips of beauty, 
 possess a charm for the truly commer- 
 cial mind, which deepens the delight of
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 167 
 
 the interesting subject, and enhances the 
 appreciation of the dignity of the female 
 character/^ 
 
 The swain, however, unseduced by the 
 poetical quotation from the Price-Current, 
 manifested a very marked admiration for 
 Lily's charms, and it required a most de- 
 cided and indignant repulse from that 
 young lady, to induce him to abstain from 
 certain unpleasant manifestations of his . 
 flattering preference. He withdrew for 
 the moment, like a dog with a rap on 
 the nose, but turned over in his mind a 
 project of trading for her with her father, 
 in which, thanks to heaven ! he was not 
 
 doomed to get the best of the bargain. 
 
 We left the Misogynist and the An- 
 thropologist about to fold themselves to 
 rest, after an evening spent in the cham-
 
 168 THE THREE 'PATHS. 
 
 bers of the former. The reader may 
 presume them well refreshed by sleep 
 since that night, as he meets them 
 again now, it being " long vacation," and 
 some seven months later in the year, at 
 Seanook, a charming little amphibious vil- 
 lage on our English coast. 
 
 Seanook, — for I disguise the real name 
 
 of the place, not wishing to make it popu- 
 lar among my readers, and thus cause 
 an influx of visitors, which might rob it 
 of its character of secluded quiet — Sea- 
 nook, then, was no fashionable watering- 
 place, with its " Marine Parade," or ^^ Es- 
 planade," thronged with crowds of people, 
 dressed in their best, and walking up and 
 down, hour after hour, staring in each 
 other's faces, criticising each other's ap- 
 pearance, and discussing London political
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 169 
 
 news and social scandal.; but was a simple 
 place, half villa, half village, primitive, 
 peaceful, and very lovely, to which but 
 few visitors resorted ; and where, as Fred 
 phrased it, "a fellow might keep on his 
 boating coat and hat all day long, and 
 smoke his cutty anywhere, and at any 
 time.'^ 
 
 The coast was wild and irregular, the 
 cliffs high and bold, the little bay beach 
 smooth and sandy, the country round beau- 
 tiful, boating and bathing good, the people 
 honest and simple ; and there was a capital 
 old lady who understood our ways, and 
 who, having had us with her before, con- 
 ceived a kind of liking for us, and did 
 everything she could to make us com- 
 fortable. 
 
 Mrs. Fieldfare was the widow of a small
 
 170 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 farmer, upon whose death she retired to 
 Seanook, eking out a rather slender income 
 by letting a part of her clean, neat little 
 house, during the season, to persons whom 
 she knew. She was a roomy, commodious 
 woman, with space for a very large heart 
 in her ample bosom ; somewhat flannelly 
 and motherly in her ideas, but with that 
 sort of wild-thyme flavour about her which 
 we often meet with in thoroughly worthy 
 and kindly people who have passed all 
 their lives in rustic seclusion, far from the 
 great haunts and struggles of men. Fred 
 called her ^' a jolly woman," and was, in 
 truth, a great favourite of hers. She 
 always chatted with us at breakfast and 
 dinner, and kept us au fait of all the 
 gossip of the little place. She was also 
 a chronicle, neither abstract nor brief, nor
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 171 
 
 yet a malicious or scandalous one, of all 
 the events which had happened in the 
 neighbourhood for years. 
 
 It is astonishing how long a thing lives, 
 and lives vividly, in the memory of these 
 quiet country people, who do not live so 
 fast as we do in great cities ! She remem- 
 bered freshly and perfectly every detail of 
 the wrecks of the Bellona, frigate, and the 
 Lord Clive^ East Indiaman, on the rocks, 
 a mile below the village, though these 
 events had happened respectively fifteen 
 and eighteen years ago. She told us of 
 the upsetting of the John and Jane plea- 
 sure boat, in which poor young Mr. George 
 Anderson went down, a week before he 
 was to have been married to Miss Alice 
 Wentworth at the Hall — " poor thing, she 
 never recovered the shock, though the
 
 172 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 accident happened seven years ago ; she's 
 living still, sir ; she sometimes drives past 
 here of an afternoon in the pony phaeton, 
 but looks so pale and ill like. She'll 
 never marry now, never," said Mrs. Field- 
 fare, very positively ; ^^ but she's very kind 
 to all the poor about, and everybody in 
 these parts loves her." 
 
 The good old lady told us, too, how 
 young Joe Miles, the farmer's son, shot 
 himself for love of Jane Willow, " who 
 took up with a fine gentleman from 
 London, and jilted him — the base, wicked, 
 thing ! — you can see the tree now where 
 it happened, where his body was found, 
 Mr. Grey ; the great old oak in the first 
 opening in Fern Wood." She pointed out, 
 in a poor old woman who sold fish in the 
 High Street, the widow of a brave fisher-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 173 
 
 man wtio was drowned while attempting to 
 save lives from a wreck drifting, through 
 night and storm, to final destruction on 
 the fatal '^ Black Eocks." The quiet 
 beauty of Seanook concealed its tragedies, 
 it seemed ; and Mrs. Fieldfare soon linked 
 the place, and many of its inhabitants, to 
 human interest and sympathy. 
 
 Fred's stay in the place was deter- 
 minable at his own will and whim. Mine 
 was to be but of a week. Ah, how 
 soothing, to a poor tired worker, is the 
 calm and rest of even a week snatched 
 from drudgery, and spent in a Seanook ! 
 It seems as if God, in his pity, lifted for 
 a time our heavy burden from our weary 
 shoulders, and gave us a brief, bright 
 glimpse of beauty and of joy in the sight 
 of that glorious Nature, with its infinite
 
 174 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 variety, interest, and meaning, that smil- 
 ing landscape, and that majestic ocean, 
 near which we feel that we are nearer 
 to Him. A Sabbath to the soul is such 
 a week, and we go back refreshed and 
 stronger, and more gratefully willing to 
 grapple with our lot. 
 
 In the lives of hard, worldly men, we 
 sometimes see a great sudden illness 
 happen ; we see them snatched from their 
 pursuits of low greed and pitiful ambi- 
 tion, stricken down by fierce disease, and 
 condemned to that lonely couch, haunted 
 by the grey shadow, in whose awful pre- 
 sence men must think ; must listen, if 
 not willingly to the sweet voice of hea- 
 venly love, then perforce unwillingly to 
 
 the hoarse thrilling accents of dread 
 agony and mortal fear.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 175 
 
 And is not such a visitation a bless- 
 ing in disguise — a chance, granted by 
 mercy, to an erring soul ? For, in 
 hours when the hired nurse, and not 
 her patient, sleeps ; when the ^' night- 
 lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and 
 fall ; " when all is hushed and silent, 
 and the restless tossings of fever sub- 
 side before the terror of the still small 
 voice that will plead, and that cannot 
 be shut out — who, however hardened 
 in worldliness, shall put away the spec- 
 tral image of his long forgotten soul ? 
 Who shall silence conscience, as she 
 whispers woe for life misspent through 
 a thick troubled past ? Who shall 
 resist the gleams, the mystic portents, 
 of that unspeakably awful " untravelled 
 world," which looms in misty horror
 
 176 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 beyond the near, near chasm of the 
 blackly yawning grave ? shiner, grasp 
 thy chance ! man, to whom this 
 world Avas once the "be all" and the 
 " end all," hail the high warning, and ac- 
 cept the blessed lesson ! Go back, if 
 life be spared thee, go back into the 
 world again, a wiser, if a sadder, man, 
 and live henceforth for life that outlives 
 time ! 
 
 What such a sickness is to a worldly 
 man, a hurried rest amid the glories 
 and charms of sea, and sky, and field, 
 and wood is to a weary worker. In 
 that sublime " Bath of Nature," we learn 
 a deeper sense of the mercy that 
 watches over earth, and the cold, stern 
 marble form of Duty flushes with the 
 light and warmth of Love.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 177 
 
 We arrived at Seanook rather late at 
 night. Having been expected, Mrs. 
 Fieldfare had given to the pretty, simple 
 little parlour, which was our sitting-room, 
 that air of comfort and preparation which 
 such women have the gift of giving. 
 When the " Eocket " set us down at the 
 Wentworth Arms, and we walked, ac- 
 companied by a " boots," carrying our 
 little portmanteaus, to the well-known 
 old cottage, we found the worthy land- 
 lady standing at the little garden gate — 
 the click of that loose latch used to 
 sound like music to me — ready with a 
 hearty, kindly welcome, which came from 
 the woman, and not the landlady. Shak- 
 ing hands, and talking incessantly, she 
 ushered us, with cordial bustle, into the 
 parlour, with its neat white curtains, 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 swaying gently with the soft, warm airs 
 which stole through the windows, open 
 to the summer night. The scent of flow- 
 ers, blended with just a suspicion of sea 
 air, suggested a charming combination of 
 the rural and the marine. The table was 
 arranged for a simple supper, and on the 
 snowy cloth stood the brown jug, foam- 
 ing with a kind of local ale which Fred 
 much affected, the home-made loaf, the 
 freshly green salad, the country cheese and 
 butter. Everything looked exquisitely 
 clean, homely, comfortable. Mrs. Fieldfare 
 had mounted her best cap, with the red 
 ribbons, and had on, as usual, one of 
 the whitest of aprons. Her honest, rosy, 
 beaming face smiled its cheery welcome, 
 till the whole room shone radiant in the 
 kindly light. 

 
 THE THREE PATHS. 179 
 
 What a delight it is, that first even- 
 ing of arrival at the seaside ! How 
 young one feels, how careless, how full 
 of enjoyment, how ready to enjoy ! 
 Fruition and anticipation mingle, for the 
 time, in unmixed pleasure. How happy 
 one is in the moment — how one looks 
 forward to the next morning ! It is too 
 early to think of the return to town. 
 The horrors one has quitted are not re- 
 membered even ; they only serve, uncon- 
 sciously, to heighten the pleasure of the 
 change. 
 
 A feeling of boyish gaiety, of aban- 
 donment, of being home for the holidays, 
 takes possession of the mind. In my 
 experience, life has yielded few hours to 
 
 compare with those of the rare arrivals 
 at the seaside. 
 
 n2
 
 180 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 The contrast was so much stronger for 
 me than it was for Fred, who had many 
 holidays, and trips, and excursions — indeed 
 his whole existence was a sort of pleasure- 
 trip — that, at such moments, I was exhi- 
 larated to almost his normal pitch of 
 high spirits. 
 
 " So you got our letter all right, 
 Mrs. Fieldfare?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, gentlemen, it came all 
 right ; and I got everything ready as I 
 knew you'd like it. You'll have your 
 old bedroom, I suppose, Mr. Charlton. 
 Mr. Grey, I've had your trunk carried 
 into the room you had before, and which 
 you used to like so much. You'll find 
 everything comfortable, I hope. I've 
 ordered some shrimps for breakfast. How 
 well you look ! You always look well,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 181 
 
 Mr. Charlton, but Mr. Grey is generally 
 very pale till lie has been down here a 
 few days. What a pity he can only stop 
 so short a time ! '^ 
 
 " Don't remind me of that to-night, 
 Mrs. Fieldfare, if you please ! " I 
 cried. 
 
 " Come along. I^m so hungry ! ^' ex- 
 claimed Fred. " Mrs. Fieldfare, we want 
 to hear all the news. How are you? 
 How have you been getting on since last 
 summer? Has Andrew Drury got a new 
 boat ? How does the ^ Alice Wentworth' 
 sail now? What sort of weather did 
 you have last winter ? Any wrecks ? 
 Did the sea come up to the garden 
 again? Sit down, and tell us all about 
 everything. What prime ale this is ! 
 Taste it, Grey. Give me some of the
 
 182 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 cold beef. Thank you, that'll do. How 
 jolly, isn't it?" 
 
 And Mrs. Fieldfare, who was very fond 
 of Fred, and — no discredit to her honest 
 heart — very fond of gossip, did sit down, 
 after a little pressing, and began, wil- 
 lingly enough, to tell us '^ all about 
 everything." 
 
 Andrew Drury had got a new boat, 
 the new " Alice Wentworth." He had 
 told Mrs. Fieldfare that she sailed like 
 a witch. The old " Alice Wentworth " 
 had been sold away from the place. 
 The winter had been very stormy ; very 
 bad weather, at times. Two fishermen's 
 boats, the ^' Lass of Seanook," and the 
 " Buffalo Gal," had been lost in the 
 great gale of January. We had heard 
 of that gale from the papers ? Yes ]
 
 f 
 
 / 
 
 .'•■if 
 
 r 
 
 i 
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 183 V 
 
 she thought we would. Terrible work all 
 round the coast. Sad work for the ship- 
 ping. How she pitied the sailors, poor 
 fellows ! Were any of the fishermen lost ? 
 Yes ; old Downes and his son, and young 
 Eobinson. What their families must have 
 sufiered, poor creatures ! A large ship, 
 the Isabella — Isabella — something. Oh, 
 Isabella Clinton — that was it — was in 
 distress off the Black Eocks ; she sent 
 up rockets, and fired guns. Mrs. Field- 
 fare had seen and heard them. Ship 
 would have been lost but for the boat- 
 men, and now they had some bother 
 about getting their salvage, she heard. 
 Old Mrs. Jones — we remembered her ? — 
 was dead, and her niece, Ann, who was 
 always a pert, dressy, conceited thing, 
 though, for that matter, there were but
 
 184 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 too many like her amongst young girls 
 nowadays, had married young Simkins, 
 the grocer. It would be a good year 
 for fruit, they said ; and Mrs. Wood, of 
 the Manor Farm — not that Wood was 
 lord of the manor- — oh dear, no — every- 
 one knew better than that — had twins 
 last month. She heard there was some 
 talk up in London of a railroad down 
 to those parts ; was it true ? Not that 
 she believed it herself, for, mercy on 
 us ! what did such a place as Seanook 
 want with a railroad, she should like to 
 know ? That family that lodged last 
 year at the white house with the great 
 balcony, down lower, nearer the town — 
 Mrs. Seager's, she meant — Mr. Charlton 
 used to call her "old seascrew;" well, 
 Mr. Charlton would remember them?
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 185 
 
 " Of course lie does," I interrupted. 
 " Fred, you certainly remember them?" 
 
 '' No, by Jove, I don't, though. Ca- 
 pital meat this. Do you get it from 
 the same fat old butcher as last year? 
 Oh, now I recollect whom you mean. 
 Grey; I remember them well enough. 
 Those two dashing girls that were down 
 here with their invalid father, old Colonel 
 something — I forget his name — what a 
 clipper that elder one was ! I used to 
 help her to find shells, down a long way 
 beyond the East Cliffs. I tried ever so 
 long to teach her the names of the 
 mountains in the moon. I used to get 
 them up to the Preventive Station, to 
 look through old David Scott's big tele- 
 scope, after you left for town. Grey." 
 
 These statements were strictly vera-
 
 186 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 cious. Fred might even have adduced 
 further instances to prove the violence 
 of the flirtation he had carried on during 
 the preceding summer. The lady in 
 question was showy, stylish, and not 
 particularly averse to the attentions of 
 such a young fellow as Fred. The 
 thing took its usual course. He saw 
 her once or twice, and was very 
 much struck with her appearance. He 
 managed to meet her continually, and 
 to testify warm but respectful admira- 
 tion in his looks and manner. He con- 
 trived to commence a conversation one 
 afternoon on the sands — he had a pecu- 
 liar tact in such matters — where he was 
 promenading in the hope of meeting her, 
 while I was reading at home. Then he 
 was " caught." She was certainly good-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 187 
 
 looking, though bold and rather fast, 
 both in personal appearance and style of 
 costume. She had no feelings to be in- 
 jured in this process of flirtation, being, 
 in fact, one of those young ladies to 
 whom his general railings against the 
 whole sex were not undeservedly applied. 
 He admired her hugely at first, in spite 
 of the warnings which I gave him. To 
 me, as an Anthropologist, it was easy 
 to read her character sufficiently to know 
 that she was rather a hollyhock than a 
 violet or a rose. Presently his eyes 
 opened, and as soon as the reign of 
 illusion ceased, he became disgusted with 
 her and angry with himself. The flirta- 
 tion exploded. To use an old simile, it 
 had gone up like a rocket, and it came 
 down like the stick.
 
 188 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Mrs. Fieldfare, who was full of femi- 
 nine delight and interest in matchmaking, 
 had witnessed the opening scenes of the 
 little drama of flirtation — which was not 
 much of a secret in such a quiet, idle 
 place as Seanook — with great compla- 
 cency. Both parties were young and 
 handsome. She always thought Fred the 
 handsomest young fellow she had ever 
 seen ; they both seemed well to do, and 
 it would be so nice if a marriage should 
 be brought about from her lodgings. 
 She had no opportunity of judging the 
 lady, except by externals, and was well 
 inclined to be satisfied with whatever 
 pleased Fred. 
 
 " What a precious fool I was about 
 that girl ! " observed Fred, finishing his . 
 beer thoughtfully. " I was caught, hooked.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 189 
 
 like an unfortunate fish that I remem- 
 ber — by the eye. She was a mere worth- 
 less coquette. Confound her ! But I 
 don't do that sort of thing now^ I can 
 assure you, Mrs. Fieldfare. Ask Grey. 
 I'm wiser now." 
 
 "" Dear, dear, and so she was a mere 
 coquette, was she, Mr. Charlton ? " said 
 Mrs. Fieldfare, indignantly. " I've no 
 patience with the hussy ! I never knew 
 rightly how the affair ended, but I see 
 it all now — the creature ! To jilt such 
 a dear, handsome young gentleman, that 
 any girl might be proud of! She de- 
 serves to marry some scamp of a fellow, 
 who'd break her heart — -if she's got one 
 to break ! — she does. I'd just like to 
 tell her a piece of my mind. I'd like 
 to—"
 
 190 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 " No," interrupted Fred, bitterly ; "we 
 must be just to the girl. She only acted 
 like the rest of the sex. I was a d — d 
 fool ; that was all. Grey warned me. 
 But I hadn't the experience then that 
 I have now. I've done with ^ young 
 ladies' for ever." 
 
 Mrs. Fieldfare, remembering her lodger's 
 former tendencies, looked rather astonished 
 at this tirade. She evidently continued 
 to pity Fred, and to consider him ill- 
 used by an artful " creature." 
 
 Fred sat with his hands in his pockets, 
 looking half sorrowful, half scornful. 
 
 "Tell him, Mrs. Fieldfare," I asked, 
 "if there are any pretty girls stopping 
 here just noAv? " 
 
 "Well," she replied, rubbing her hands 
 together actively — the good old lady
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 191 
 
 was always busy about something — 
 "there is one of the very prettiest 
 young ladies here just now that I ever 
 saw here or anywhere." 
 
 "Hallo!'' shouted Fred, who' had 
 betrayed more vivacious interest in this 
 announcement than his principles as a 
 Misogynist exactly warranted, and who 
 now listened attentively, " here's news 
 for you, Grey ! " 
 
 " Where does this paragon reside ? " I 
 inquired ; " you see how anxious Mr. 
 Charlton is for information. Don't tanta- 
 lize him." 
 
 " She lives at Eose Cottage — you know 
 the place, Mr. Grey. She is stopping 
 there with her aunt, such a nice old 
 lady — and yet, not old either," re- 
 sponded our landlady. " I should
 
 192 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 really like you and Mr. Charlton to see 
 her.'' 
 
 "Thank you for your information/' I 
 replied; "if this charmer be visible to- 
 morrow, you may rely upon it that Mr. 
 Charlton will certainly see her, after 
 such a description. But it's not certain 
 that he'll take me with him." 
 
 Here Mrs. Fieldfare began bustling away 
 with the remains of the supper, talking 
 all the while, and looking closely after 
 the handmaiden, Jane, to prevent the 
 "forward thing" from lingering behind, 
 "to chatter with the gentlemen." After 
 a kindly good-night, we found our- 
 selves alone — Mr. Charlton reclined full 
 length upon the sofa. 
 
 " We have supped," he observed, with a 
 very satisfied, sententious air. " And now
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 198 
 
 I think, G-rey, a leetle pipe — eh ? Where's 
 the birdseye? Ah, I knew you would 
 know where that was. After you. Grey, 
 old boy, how jolly this is! Fm so 
 glad to have you here, old fellow, alone 
 with me,'' and away from that weary, 
 dreary, . old counting-house ! How glad 
 you must be to get away from it ! A 
 month of such a life would kill me, I know 
 that." 
 
 ^^ Fred,'* I answered, ^^ I'm an old 
 kettle that never boils over, but Fm 
 capable of a quiet state of intense inter- 
 nal ebullition, nevertheless. I am glad 
 — you can't tell how glad — to be away 
 from ^ business,' and here with you. When 
 Dante came back from hell to earth 
 again, he knew, depend upon it, better 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 than anyone else, the horror of the 
 domain he had quitted.'' 
 
 "He didn't have to go back again, 
 though/' remarked Fred ; " you will, poor 
 fellow ! " 
 
 "Never mind that, to-night, Fred; let 
 me live in the hour — one of my rare happy 
 ones. Let me be young to-night, my 
 dear old friend. Let us stroll out, and 
 finish our smoke by the sad sea 
 waves." 
 
 " Agreed ! " cried he ; " but first, to be 
 methodical — I like method above all" things 
 — let us arrange what we will do to- 
 morrow. Up early — sands at sunrise, and 
 a bath, of course — breakfast cum shrimps — 
 pipe after ditto, reclining on the cliffs or the 
 beach — a sail, till dinner time, in the new 
 * Alice Wentworth ' — dinner — pipe after
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 195 
 
 same, reclining on sofa — then get the dog- 
 cart from the Wentworth Arms — wonder if 
 they've got that fast little bay mare that 
 shies still — and I'll tool you over to Old- 
 tower Castle — ^back for tea — tea — walk 
 after tea through Fern Wood — back 
 through the corn-fields, and by the Black 
 Rocks, to beach — supper — more pipe — 
 beach, preventive station, and general 
 stroll — ^intervals filled up with reading, 
 chatting, and smoking. How like you my 
 plan — and my method? " 
 
 '^Well; — but there's a little too much 
 madness in your method. It is tinc- 
 tured with the fever of youth. Don't 
 let us work at enjoyment. Let us be 
 passive and enjoy. You work too liard 
 at pleasure. Let us be a little idle. 
 It requires great energy, and a most 
 
 2
 
 196 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 active mind, to be thoroughly idle. 
 Consider the arrangement, up to the 
 pipe after breakfast, settled. Let foi'tune, 
 and the impulse of the hour — the 
 singer's inspiration — decide the rest. Do 
 not let us dispose too certainly of the 
 far future. Who knows what Fate may 
 have in store for us ? " 
 
 "I look upon you, Grey, as a lazy 
 fellow, and a croaker to boot. But, I 
 suppose you must have your way as 
 usual. ^Have thou the ordering of this 
 day, good cousin.'" 
 
 *^As to being lazy, Fred, are you 
 ready to stir out? I must see the 
 sea before I sleep." 
 
 "Oh yes," retorted he, "it's all very 
 well for you to be ready to go out. 
 You're only sitting on a chair. I'm
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 197 
 
 reclining on the only sofa. Besides, ^let 
 us be passive and enjoy/ — eh ? Now, just 
 give me five minutes to finish my 
 first pipe, and FU go out with you." 
 
 He fixed himself on the sofa in a 
 determined way, and smoked resolutely. 
 I knew that I must wait. 
 
 I occupied the five minutes in glancing 
 round the little old parlour. The 
 cottage was, perhaps, two hundred 
 years old, and the ceiling of the room 
 was rather low. The sashes of the 
 casemented windows were thick and 
 heavy, and round the window, outside, 
 roses grew and twined, while flower-pots 
 — some one or two of which Fred was 
 sure to project out of window during 
 his stay — occupied the sill. The mantel- 
 piece was massive, and above it stood
 
 198 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 an old-fasMoned, quaintly-framed oval 
 mirror. Sundry little ornaments, and two 
 peacock-feathers, decorated the chimney- 
 piece ; one of which " ornaments," a 
 little shepherdess, in white shiny china, 
 looked rather lonely and forlorn. Last 
 summer, a gentle shepherd, with large, 
 round, black dots of eyes, piping 
 his amorous bucolic lay, had been her 
 companion, and had balanced the com- 
 position symmetrically. Irritated by the 
 expression of this swain's countenance, 
 which, indeed, had long worried him, 
 Fred had destroyed the shepherd one 
 morning during our previous visit, on 
 the occasion of my suggesting some 
 psychological and physiological resem- 
 blance between the faithful animal and 
 himself. The usual large shells flanked
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 199 
 
 the ledge, and a card, with seaweed 
 gummed on it, adorned the centre. 
 There was, too, a cat in black velvet, 
 with practicable eyes, and a sampler 
 worked by the old lady in her youth. 
 The furniture was old-fashioned, and so 
 were the pictures on the walls. One 
 of these represented the Thunder frigate 
 in full sail. A series of prints pour- 
 trayed his Majesty King George III., 
 with a painful expression of canine 
 idiocy on his face, and his heavy-jawed,' 
 low-browed, fleshy-faced offspring. 
 
 Above the mantel-piece stood two 
 little portraits, in common black frames, 
 wretched productions enough as regards 
 art-merit, but which had, nevertheless, 
 a kind of interest for me. The one 
 represented, or indicated, an honest.
 
 200 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 burly, rosy-faced farmer ; the other, a 
 little fair-haired child, some three or 
 four years old, with loving, plaintive 
 eyes. Mrs. Fieldfare was a childless 
 widow. I have often watched her, in 
 the early mornings, stop to gaze at 
 the child-picture. She always lingered 
 long before it, and dusted it carefully 
 and tenderly. I never asked her if the 
 two pictures were portraits of dead 
 husband and dead child. 
 
 At length I thought it time to dis- 
 turb Mr. Charlton's reverie. 
 
 "You're always in such a confounded 
 hurry," he said, with a pettishness 
 which was half real, half assumed. 
 "Before we start, tell me what books 
 you have brought down." 
 
 "I've brought Tennyson — '^
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 201 
 
 " Good ; that's capital ! What else ? 
 that's not all, I know." 
 
 "I've got Coleridge's poems here, 
 too." 
 
 " Good again. The Ancient Manner 
 will read splendidly down here, by the 
 * ribbed sea-sand.' What else ? " 
 
 ^^ Sartor Eesartus, Faust ^ the Tempest J' 
 
 " First rate books. Grey, but fitter for 
 dry land and the fire-side than for this 
 amphibious place. They require too much 
 thought — at least, the first two — for 
 seaside-reading. Now Vve brought down 
 — if I haven't left them behind — a better 
 sort of book for the purpose. Books of 
 romance, of adventure, of life. Not too 
 high, nor too good, for human nature's 
 daily food — at the sea-side." 
 
 "What are they?''
 
 202 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 " Well, Monte Christo, and — and these ; 
 mind, you only care for shrimps at a 
 watering-place." 
 
 Here he produced two or three small 
 French tomes of the novels of Paul de 
 Kock, and others, perhaps worse speci- 
 mens, of the same school of dirty rub- 
 bish. I did not know he was possessed 
 of these Hetseraean volumes. He had a 
 guilty look as he flung them down with 
 a reckless laugh. 
 
 " You didn't knaw I had these ? Oh, 
 IVe been getting up my French a good 
 deal lately. The literature is a Lorette, 
 isn't it ? I haven't had these long. 
 You can guess where they came from. 
 I see from your eyes that you can tell. 
 Yes, these are the remnants left out 
 of the wreck of my passion. Oh,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 203 
 
 Desiree, hien aimee ! these are the only 
 souvenirs I possess of your truth and 
 tenderness ! Mignonne ! She was pretty 
 though — wasn't she, Grey ? But a woman, 
 sir, a very French woman. Don't look 
 so grave. She's done me good — she's 
 strengthened my principles and con- 
 firmed my theories. Ha ! ha ! I am a 
 Misogynist, and I shall remain one. 
 Come along, my dear fellow ; come out 
 of this, and let us get a breath of sea 
 air!" 
 
 He started up impatiently, and made 
 for the door. I followed. I knew the 
 cause of his eagerness to leave town ; 
 it was the same that now impelled him 
 from the house. His figure melted into 
 the darkness, as he crossed the road and 
 ran down to the beach with rapid steps.
 
 204 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 I heard him ahead, his footsteps crash- 
 ing through the shingle. Passing between 
 the fishing-boats, drawn up high on to 
 the beach, and avoiding nets, and anchors, 
 and buoys, I followed him on to • the 
 firm, hard sands, and came up with him 
 as he stood where the foam, gleaming 
 white through the gloom, rolled to his 
 feet. 
 
 The salt air came in gentle puffs. The 
 night was black and moonless. We stood 
 a few moments, side-by-side, and then 
 began to saunter along the dark shore, 
 stepping aside, ever and anon, to avoid 
 a breaking wave. There was a feeling 
 of great calm in the place and time. 
 I felt the blessed influence deeply. The 
 excitement of arrival, the joy of release 
 from care and toil, sobered down into a
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 205 
 
 deep, quiet sense of peace and bliss. I 
 walked silently along, in the stillness of 
 my happiness. 
 
 Fred, however, was seldom long silent. 
 His nature was much more restless, 
 ardent, and excitable. He soon began 
 to talk. 
 
 " Grey — V\\ race you to that big boat 
 down there. No ? Well, to-morrow will 
 do as well for that. Bet you I win. 
 How dark it is over the sea ! How 
 far do you think we can see out to 
 seaward ? " 
 
 " Not very far, Fred. About as far 
 as we can see forward into the human 
 future. Sanguine fellow ! how glibly you 
 were mapping out our future plans for a 
 whole to-morrow ! " 
 
 Borne in upon my mind, on the breath
 
 206 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 of the night wind, was a curious sense 
 of dim uncertainty, of insecurity. Was 
 it presentiment ? I shrank instinctively 
 from projected plans framed even for the 
 morrow. 
 
 No such feeling weighed upon Fredas 
 more mercurial nature. He only laughed, 
 and repeated his intentions. 
 
 Are such feelings as those I had dim 
 warnings ? or are they only the weak- 
 ness of depressed nerves ? I thought 
 over the point, without arriving at a 
 conclusion. I have never yet settled the 
 question in my own mind. 
 
 We left the darksome, lonely shore, 
 heavy with the great mystery of night 
 and ocean, and strolled slowly homeward. 
 The light in our little parlour windows 
 gleamed cheerily, and threw its friendly
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 207 
 
 rays down the garden and across the 
 road. The thoughts dwarfed to kindly 
 human lowliness, as we quitted the vast 
 vault of darkling sea and sky. After a 
 little friendly chat, came Fred's usual 
 warm " good night " and hearty hand- 
 shake; And, with ^' ocean sounding, and 
 star and system rolling past," we lay 
 down to rest on our first night at dear 
 old Seanook. It is, at times, a happy 
 relief to be restrained to some petty 
 human consideration, and to avoid the 
 thoughts beyond the reaches of our 
 souls. I looked delightedly round the 
 pretty little chamber, and while the feel- 
 ing of thankful pleasure became re- 
 ligion, I anticipated gleefully the fresh, 
 bright summer morning ; I pictured 
 its light on the golden sands and
 
 208 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 shining waves ; and as I sank to sleep, 
 I thanked God that I felt that night so 
 calmly happy, so full of pleasurable an- 
 ticipation for the morrow that He might 
 send. 
 
 The morning came, beautiful and bright, 
 and ere I rose, I thought again of my 
 dear old friend, his position, and his 
 prospects. 
 
 Fred was, in truth, but little altered 
 since my readers visited him in cham- 
 bers. He was still a woman-hater, though 
 he had, happily, acquired some doubts 
 respecting the superiority of the Hetcerce, 
 in consequence of the extreme falsity of 
 Mademoiselle de Ste Lorette. Into the 
 details of this lady's colossal perfidy I 
 shall not enter ; enough that the pair 
 had quarrelled and parted.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 209 
 
 I had as yet done nothing towards 
 the fulfilment of my oath, but, as time 
 ran on, and Fred became more open to 
 other impressions, owing to the rupture 
 of his liaisorij I had begun to cast 
 about me for the means of his redemp- 
 tion. I was most sincerely anxious for 
 his happiness, and while pondering on 
 the best method of promoting it, events 
 — before which we were both like straws 
 upon the bosom of a stream — occurred, 
 and proved the truth of van Artevelde's 
 saying, that " all, all of us are pup- 
 pets." I did well not to dispose of a 
 far future. 
 
 The history of these events must, 
 however, be postponed for another Part. 
 In the meantime, let my reader picture 
 to himself his old friends, the two 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 young friends, escaped from London, 
 from law and toil, and revelling in the 
 joy of their first morning on the beach 
 at Seanook. The sands at sunrise, the 
 breakfast, and the bath have been duly 
 enjoyed. Bright shines the summer sea ; 
 fresh, but soft, blow the sweet winds that 
 come — whence ? — across the wide bosom 
 of the wave. Glorious is the glad 
 sun4ight, and happy, gay, and 
 brilliant the whole lovely scene. Boats 
 are launching from the busy beach ; 
 ships are gliding across the wide far- 
 stretched expanse of mighty waters ; 
 and the long trails of smoke mark where 
 the distant steamer ploughs her way. 
 Clouds throw their shadows on the sea, 
 not in gloom, but in beauty, and the 
 waves dash in foam, and break in
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 211 
 
 music, on the echoing shore. In 
 such a time and place, our inner 
 natures reflect external nature ; and 
 happy as the hour, joyous as the scene, 
 are the two friends, while freed for a 
 time from cares and work, they recline 
 upon the sunny cliff and light the matin 
 pipe of ecstacy. 
 
 P 2
 
 SHIitrd §nri. 
 
 *^ 
 
 " Could we but think with the intensity 
 We love with, one might do great things I think." 
 
 Festus. 
 
 "I could not love thee half so well, 
 Loved I not honour more ! " 
 
 Lovelace. 
 
 '* Je trouve que c'est une folie de vouloir etudier le 
 monde en simple spectateur." — Rousseau. 
 
 " Then a mighty gush of passion 
 Through my inmost being ran ; 
 Then my older life was ended. 
 And a dearer course began." 
 
 Attoun. 
 
 "'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone 
 
 which fades so fast, 
 
 But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth 
 
 itself be past." 
 
 Byron.
 
 215 
 
 €\u)s I art. 
 
 Many a true word is spoken in jest. 
 Many a deed of no small importance 
 in our own lives, or in those of others, 
 owes its origin to a pledge rashly un- 
 dertaken in a moment of excitement, 
 or in the heat of discussion ; and many 
 a man has awoke in the morning with 
 the rueful recollection of a promise
 
 216 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 hastily made, a vow thoughtlessly 
 registered, on the preceding night. My 
 vow, as regards Fred, looked at coolly 
 in the clear morning light of after- 
 reflection, seemed certainly a little 
 rash and arrogant, since I had taken 
 upon myself no lighter task than that 
 of effecting his conversion from Mis- 
 ogynism and securing his happiness in 
 love, while these objects could only be 
 attained by means of a woman worthy 
 to be his wife. I had, as yet, done 
 nothing, though, like the celebrated 
 parrot which had failed in acquiring the 
 faculty of speech, I had thought a 
 good deal. In the meantime I could 
 only exclaim with the Italian proverb, 
 io niente faccio ed il cervel mi hecco ; 
 but, though I shuddered at the difii-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 217 
 
 culties in the way of the accomplish- 
 ment of my design, I was yet so satis- 
 fied of the importance of my success 
 to Fred's future welfare and true 
 development, that out of trembling 
 doubt sprang earnest resolution, and 
 I determined to leave no means un- 
 tried to fulfil the vow registered in the 
 solemn name of the once mighty 
 and mystic Osiris. But who was 
 I, to arrogate to myself the power of 
 discovering ideal women, and then 
 of conferring upon others " Helen's 
 cheek, but not her heart '' — of swaying 
 the aifections of such a being in favour 
 of another ? Had I such priceless 
 gifts at my bestowal ? I might rub 
 my old moderateur lamp for ever, and 
 it was pretty certain that no genie
 
 218 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 would appear to help me ; and even 
 allowing that I might have been more 
 successful with a ring, there was yet 
 another difficulty in the way — I had 
 not one to rub. I had never trod 
 Mount Ida as a shepherd, and, con- 
 sequently, had never had the oppor- 
 tunity of obliging a goddess with an 
 apple, and obtaining in return the 
 choice, amongst other choice things, of 
 the most beautiful woman in the world 
 as a wife either for myself or for a 
 friend. 
 
 Discarding then as untenable the idea 
 of obtaining any assistance from mytho- 
 logical personages, from fairy-land, or 
 from any supernatural source, I asked 
 myself soberly how many women I had 
 ever known who even approached the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 219 
 
 standard of idealism, or who realised 
 even faintly the creations of the dream- 
 ing poet heart? The answer stood up 
 like a dead blank wall before the 
 window from which I gazed. True, 
 I believed most firmly in the existence 
 of such women — as I believed in the 
 existence of Calcutta, not because I had 
 ever seen it, but because the evidence 
 . was so good — and there was, besides, 
 an inner voice which assured me that 
 such beings were. The strong belief in 
 the immortality of the soul is alone a 
 strong proof that it is immortal. Then 
 I contracted the circles of my thought; 
 I narrowed the issue ; I asked myself 
 no longer how many such women I had 
 known, but whether I had ever known 
 one?
 
 220 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 As I dived painfully, and for some 
 moments vainly, into the hoarded records 
 of recollection, suddenly, cold and pure 
 as fair Sabrina from the "glassy, cool, 
 translucent wave," uprose before me the 
 sweet image of one woman I had 
 known, who had seemed once, " in the 
 old time long ago,'^ to be all a heart 
 could dream, and who still remained 
 an ideal to the mind. That one was 
 Lily. Thackeray says finely, speaking of 
 Stella and Vanessa, that the "pages of 
 Swift's Life open naturally at those 
 withered flowers," and if our hearts 
 be the grave of a buried flower of 
 love, vainly would we seek to exorcise 
 the phantom from our memory; in vain 
 the grass grows long and green above 
 the grave — the ghost will rise, the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 221 
 
 spirit burst the tomb. As we turn 
 over the pages of our life's book back- 
 wards, the leaf which contains the in- 
 scription of love opens widely, and we 
 pause before the record which reminds 
 that " such things were, and were most 
 dear to us." 
 
 Passion may have burnt itself to 
 ashes ; hope may be drowned beneath the 
 thick ice of resolve ; time and absence 
 may have scarred over the wound ; but 
 yet, so indestructible a thing is holy 
 love, that no spark of it, once lit, can 
 ever wholly die. And yet, 
 
 " 'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
 Than not have loved at all — " 
 
 and never, if we once have truly loved, 
 never can we be the same as we should
 
 222 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 have been, but for that tender, noble 
 strain of deepest, purest feeling. Many 
 a man, whose life has held one hopeless 
 passion, lives to old age, and dies a 
 dreaming idealist. Fondly and tearfully 
 did the loved of youth — separated from 
 the life by the barrier, impassable to 
 honour, of union with another — even 
 though that union was the lifelong misery 
 of a loathed and loveless marriage — watch 
 in age, watch in speechless sorrow, and 
 tend with pitying offices the couch on 
 which Colonel Thomas Newcome" said his 
 last adsum. Schiller again tells of two 
 brothers'* who both loved one woman. 
 The younger won and wedded her. She 
 died, and he wooed another bride. 
 
 * Eine grossmiithige Handlung aus der neuesten 
 Geschicbte. 
 
 \
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 223 
 
 But he, the elder brother, whose deep 
 hearted love knew no fruition, he 
 married never, and died with that 
 early image buried in his heart ; the 
 long romance of a lonely life ending 
 but with life itself. Can it be that 
 possession degrades the ideal to the 
 earthly? Must we deem that our 
 spiritual essence alone can reflect un- 
 sullied love's pure image ; that we 
 must wait until death shall have de- 
 stroyed the mortal before we can 
 worthily comprehend and enjoy the 
 divinest and most immortal of all pas- 
 sions? Spite of the lapse of busy time 
 since last I looked on Lily — spite too 
 of the great effort I had made to 
 conquer a hopeless nascent passion unre- 
 vealed — as I thought of her again, "my
 
 224 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 frozen heart began to beat, remember- 
 ing its ancient heat ; " and it was with 
 a deep sigh and a sharp pang that 
 I recalled her image while meditating 
 on the means of finding a woman to 
 bless another heart than mine with 
 love. But, as is always the case, 
 while I was rough - hewing my ends, 
 Providence was shaping them, and I 
 was not destined to play the part of 
 Rudolph of Gerolstein, but was doomed 
 to enact that of Gisippus. 
 
 On the first day spent at a sea-side 
 place, we seldom take long walks, but 
 after a rapturous survey of near beau-- 
 ties, settle down into the calm beati- 
 tude of the dolce far niente. Thus, 
 after we had strolled about the beach 
 and environs of Seanook, and had
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 225 
 
 bathed — for we were in this sense 
 companions of the bath — Fred and I 
 settled down on the cliff to enjoy the 
 fresh healthy breeze and the glorious 
 sea view. Kecumbent on the short 
 dry turf, it became obviously necessary 
 to hallow enjoyment with a second 
 pipe; and as pipes, like war-songs, are 
 nothing without fire, we cast about us 
 for some means of effecting a com- 
 bination of combustibles with oxygen. 
 Having, in a material sense, no lights, 
 we tried to recollect what Eobinson 
 Crusoe and other sojourners in far 
 wilds and desert islands did to create 
 fire. Still, no device adopted by any 
 of these chemists of necessity, however 
 ingenious in itself, appeared practi- 
 cable under the circumstances in which 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 we found ourselves placed, and our 
 thought, therefore, wandered back from 
 its fruitless journey to the wilder- 
 ness. We then called upon Prome- 
 theus for aid, and he assisted us by 
 suggesting through causation, or ideas 
 of relation, the image of Lucifer; not 
 in his aspect as the morning star, but 
 as vended in small wooden boxes, at 
 prices placing the fallen angel within 
 the compass of the humblest means. 
 We remembered that we were " the 
 ripest born of time," standing in the 
 front of the ages, and concluded at 
 length to avail ourselves of the advan- 
 tages ' of modern civilisation, and to 
 go into the High Street to purchase 
 lights. Here a new difficulty arose; 
 neither was willing to become an itine-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 227 
 
 rant Flamen, though both desired 
 ardently the result of the theocratic 
 sacrifice. 
 
 The Eoman soldiery, we are told, were 
 wont to decide similar difficulties by 
 drawing lots in a helmet. We did not 
 possess this once indispensable article 
 of costume ; but a boating hat enabled 
 us to reproduce the antique custom in 
 a modern form, and the result of 
 the solemn rite was, that it became 
 my lot — I was always unfortunate — 
 to go in quest of the Promethean 
 spark. 
 
 One of the great blessings conferred 
 by philosophy on man is, the practical 
 wisdom sich in das Unvermeidliche zu 
 schicken, to suit one's self to the inevit- 
 able; and it being clear that I had 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 better set out, I went at once. Having 
 discovered an emporium, I put in 
 practice the great principle of com- 
 merce, by exchanging a standard of 
 value in which the seller had confi- 
 dence, for a commodity which I desired 
 to acquire ; and having transferred a 
 penny to a deaf old woman, I con- 
 cluded a simple contract by receiving 
 in exchange a row of fusees. Flushed 
 with success, I was proceeding to 
 enjoy in tranquillity the fruit of enter- 
 prise, when I almost ran against two 
 ladies, and looking up as I muttered 
 a hasty apology, I saw before me — 
 Miss Weston and Lily! Half stoic as 
 I was, whole cynic as I was said to 
 be, I experienced a strange thrill and 
 shock at the unexpected meeting.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 229 
 
 Embarrassment and pain were mingled 
 with delighted surprise as I felt my- 
 self again in the presence — for I dared 
 not look at Lily — of the woman who, 
 unseen for two long years, had once 
 so deeply stirred the springs of fancy 
 and the founts of feeling. I became 
 alternately cold and hot, red and 
 white; my heart beat wildly, and my 
 pulses thrilled as I felt the light soft 
 clasp of the little hand which I would 
 once have given worlds to clasp in 
 mine for ever. 
 
 But life teaches us the Eed 
 Indian's proud art of hiding pain and 
 repressing all outward sign of the sor- 
 row that we bear within ; and the 
 unconscious ladies thought probably 
 that my confusion was but that of a
 
 230 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 shy and awkward man. Kind and 
 gentle Miss Weston, with whom I had 
 always, I believe, been a sort of fa- 
 vourite, spoke first of former times, 
 and told me that, having been an in- 
 valid, she had been ordered by her 
 doctor to the sea-side, and had chosen 
 pretty, quiet little Seanook for her trip 
 in search of health, having induced her 
 brother to escort them. And then Lily 
 spoke ; ah ! 
 
 ■her voice again, 
 
 ■■■-.■ «/■■■■ i^ ^*'jn*' 
 
 How the old time came o'er me ! " 
 
 I listened in a sort of trance to the 
 sweet silver accents that had for me 
 so deep a music in their well remem- 
 bered tones. I tried hard to keep my 
 own voice full tuned as I answered,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 231 
 
 but I felt as if the mighty struggle of 
 the past had been all in vain, and the 
 old love, which I had fondly deemed 
 extinct, seemed to well up through all 
 my being, and through the slumbering 
 ashes glowed the ancient fire. . Miss 
 Weston asked me to call upon them 
 in the evening. Wisdom — hard, cold, 
 stern wisdom — counselled a refusal ; 
 but the magic of a charm was upon 
 me, before which, alas ! the will was 
 weak and powerless. I found myself 
 accepting, when, as doubt descended on 
 my troubled thought, I pleaded the 
 society of a friend — a dear old friend 
 — and the necessity of remaining with 
 him. 
 
 As I said this, I glanced round 
 furtively to the adjacent cliff, where
 
 232 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 the friend was plainly visible to the 
 naked eye. He was lying on his face, 
 with his head resting on his arms, and 
 reading Shakspeare's sonnets. He was 
 in the extreme of morning bachelor, 
 sea-sicje deshabille, and I half feared 
 that his appearance might prepossess the 
 ladies unfavourably. But I was wrong. 
 Fred was one of those men who 
 look unmistakably gentlemen through any 
 negligence of costume ; and the ladies 
 had besides, though I was ignorant of 
 it at the time, seen us together before 
 I met them, and had been greatly pleased 
 with his appearance. Happy fellow ! — 
 born to win the friendship of man and 
 the love of woman — his looks were a 
 letter of introduction, which made all 
 desirous of an excuse for knowing him
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 233 
 
 better. His bright frank brow and grace 
 of youthful manhood, his open ingenuous 
 gaiety and look of honest kindness, 
 rendered all women, gentle and simple 
 alike, only too ready to extend a wel- 
 come to one gifted with all the external 
 symbols which represent to women what 
 they seek from man in youth. 
 
 My objection was overruled by Miss 
 Weston ; and my friend was included in 
 the invitation. I promised to bring 
 him with me in the evening, and we 
 parted. 
 
 Often in after years, when re-visiting 
 dear old Seanook, have I stopped my 
 steps to look again upon the spot on which 
 that, to me, eventful meeting took place. 
 Indissolubly connected with the' scene is 
 the memory of events which so deeply
 
 234 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 coloured my whole after life, that they 
 can never be forgotten while '^ memory 
 holds her seat." I live again a great 
 sorrow and a great sacrifice ; and as 
 year follows year, and still I haunt the 
 place, when fancy conjures up the phan- 
 tom figures of the three who met there 
 on that morning, I seem unto myself — 
 remembering what then I was, and 
 feeling what now I have become^ — 
 the most shadowy and unreal of the 
 spectres, 
 
 I returned to Fred, who was impa- 
 tiently waiting my return. I had for- 
 gotten the object of my journey, but he 
 had not, and eagerly demanded the means 
 of lighting his pipe. The delight in his 
 book — enhanced by the sympathetic ac- 
 companiment of tobacco, he resumed his
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 235 
 
 reading, and left me to my own thoughts. 
 These were wild and troubled ; a dim 
 whirl of chaotic pain and fear, through 
 which a trembling sense of joy struggled 
 fitfully, like sun rays through dark hur- 
 rying clouds. For, in the few minutes 
 which had elapsed since I left his side, 
 how great a change had overcome me ; 
 how mighty a revolution had been effected 
 in my whole being ! I went sauntering 
 carelessly to accomplish a commonplace 
 errand ; I returned from one of those 
 interviews which form the crisis of a 
 destiny and affect the current of a life. 
 Often do we meet our fate at the street 
 corner, and then, in our loose human 
 phrase, we attribute to chance the work- 
 ings of destiny, and ascribe to fortune the 
 decrees of God.
 
 236 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Fred and I had perhaps never spoken 
 so little to each other, during the same 
 space of time, as we did on that day 
 between our morning rest upon the cliffs 
 and the pleasant sunset hour when the 
 last slanting rays darted their rich glory 
 over the level earth and sea. I had 
 never revealed, even to Fred, the secret 
 of my early hopeless passion ; I had 
 never cared to speak even to him of 
 Lily. We cherish such pure and high 
 ideals in the adytum of our secret souls, 
 and a modesty of feeling, a reticence of 
 cherished emotion, forbid us to profane 
 the portals of the secret chamber by a 
 stranger footstep. I had, however, to 
 convey to him Miss Weston's invita- 
 tion, and yet, somehow, I shrank from 
 doing it, and postponed irresolutely
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 237 
 
 the communication which must be 
 made. 
 
 After Mrs. Fieldfare had given us our 
 dinner — some capital fish, followed by 
 a leg, late the personal property of a 
 lamb, deceased, and the etceteras, Fred, 
 who had a talent for assuming picturesque 
 poses, having first taken off his coat, 
 threw himself upon the sofa, and with 
 his legs a good deal higher than his 
 head, began reading Monte Christo, and 
 enjoying the post-prandial weed. 
 
 ^^ Fred,'' I said, " stop reading for a 
 moment. I have an — an invitation for 
 you." 
 
 " Confound all invitations," responded 
 Fred, simply, without taking his eyes off 
 his book ; ^^ I didn't come to Seanook to 
 accept invitations. Besides, if it's women,
 
 238 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 IVe got no togs to go in. I don^t 
 carry a large trunk about with me, like 
 an elephant ; and there are better things 
 to do at the sea-side than to bury 
 oneself in a booth of Vanity Fair. Still, 
 I wish we had met that pretty girl that 
 Mrs. F. spoke of yesterday.^' 
 
 Having ejaculated thus much, he turned 
 over the leaf, and again plunged into 
 Dumas' exciting story. The truth flashed 
 upon me. It was of Miss Weston and 
 Lily that Mrs. Fieldfare had spoken. 
 
 However, I had much the stronger 
 will of the two, when once sufficiently 
 interested in anything to arouse its exer- 
 cise, and being resolved that he should 
 go, he went. In due time, therefore, we 
 sallied forth, and took our wav towards 
 the pretty cottage in which the ladies
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 239 
 
 had taken up their temporary abode. 
 Fred grumbled a good deal, as we walked 
 along, at having to give up the quiet 
 evening stroll through hop-grounds and 
 corn-fields, through Fern-wood, and back 
 along the cliffs, which we had planned 
 together in the early morning — ^before I 
 went into the High-street to purchase 
 fusees — and represented himself patheti- 
 cally as a victim dressed out for the 
 sacrifice ; being further very curious to 
 know to whom I was going to introduce 
 him. I was mild with him, but very 
 firm, and refused all explanation. As we 
 neared the house, I fell into a silent 
 abstracted mood, which checked his loqua- 
 city ; and when we stood upon the steps 
 of Rose Cottage, I was too deeply ab- 
 sorbed to heed whether he spoke or not.
 
 240 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 We entered the room in which the 
 ladies were waiting to receive us. The 
 brother of Miss Weston, a staid man, 
 without individuality, or distinctive char- 
 acter — a human dummy — was, physically 
 speaking, also present. I knew him of 
 old. After the ceremony of introduction 
 had been duly performed, and the usual 
 stiff, formal, constrained observations, with 
 which conversation commences, had been 
 gone through, I began my survey of the 
 bower and its goddesses. My habits as 
 an Anthropologist have become So settled 
 in the course of years, that even strong 
 excitement fails wholly to repress my 
 tendency to observation, although the 
 habit is sometimes indulged almost me- 
 chanically. Everything in the little room 
 evidenced the refined taste of pure and
 
 THE THREE PATHS* 241 
 
 elegant women. The flowers, not alone 
 by their presence, but more by their 
 choice and arrangement ; the music and 
 the books ; a thousand little things, diffi- 
 cult to enumerate, but easy to detect, 
 showed that the place was inhabited by 
 women of that class whose lararium is 
 ever portable, and who carry with them, 
 wherever they go, the sweet influences of 
 a beautiful and happy home. 
 
 I sometimes — for who is always master 
 of content ? — after such a visit, gaze dis- 
 consolately around my own poor little 
 untidy lodging, littered with books and 
 strewn with pipes and papers, and wish 
 that some such hallowing and softening 
 influence reigned there. But, courage ! — 
 that mean chamber receives noble guests, 
 ajjd the spirits, at least, defecated from 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 242 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 fleshly stain, of the best and wisest of 
 earth, visit it in love. God has not shut 
 out poverty from the divine realms of 
 literature ; and thoughts, in which we 
 often entertain angels unawares, can live 
 in an atmosphere redolent with no earthly 
 splendours. In that room I can '^ un- 
 sphere the spirit of Plato ; " there I 
 can commune with Shakspeare, with 
 Milton, with Dante, with Goethe ; there 
 I can enjoy the companionship of all the 
 poets, philosophers, or thinkers who have 
 gladdened earth with beauty and with 
 love, ennobled it with heroism, or en- 
 lightened it with truth. Would I have 
 company around me ? where shall I find 
 chivalry purer than that of Sidney or of 
 Bayard? Where shall I light upon com- 
 rades more entertaining, more witty, or
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 243 
 
 more worthy than those who start forth 
 from the magic page? Do I seek food 
 for the fancy, exercise for the intellect, 
 knowledge for the mind, pathos for the 
 passions, wisdom for the life, flights for 
 the imagination, inspiration for the soul — 
 am I not surrounded by the genii who 
 can please, instruct, melt, thrill, and 
 exalt ? — and with so much granted, why, 
 restless and unthankful heart, why 
 pine for the human love withheld — 
 withheld too, doubtless, in wisdom and 
 in love ? 
 
 Two years had wrought some change 
 in Lily. Something of the pretty wilful- 
 ness, of the arch merriment of former 
 times I missed. She had evidently grown 
 more thoughtful, although thought as yet 
 passed but in light, rosy cloudlets across 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 the bright and sunny nature. But, even 
 for the gayest and the happiest, life is 
 an awful and a solemn thing, and a time 
 comes in the lives of all, of woman as 
 of man, when careless, joyous childhood 
 recedes, and we feel that it is an earnest 
 thing to be; to exist in a universe which 
 is one daily and hourly miracle, to be- 
 long to a scheme of being so mighty 
 and so glorious that we can but dimly 
 apprehend our affinity to divine mystery. 
 Women usually are more fanciful than 
 men ; men more imaginative than women. 
 Women grow pensive as the virgin fancy 
 wakes to love, and the shadow of time 
 melts above them in a golden haze, 
 through which they see the strongest 
 purpose of their being piercing direct to 
 the great light of Heaven. Men become
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 245 
 
 thoughtful as they recognize the terrible 
 duality of a nature which must fuse the 
 widely sundered rays both of the intel- 
 lect and the heart into the one beam 
 of light up which the soul ascends to 
 God. Their darkness is deeper, as their 
 struggle is sterner. They must grasp 
 power as well as reflect beauty. More 
 talents are committed to their charge, 
 and, Antseus like, they must gain strength 
 from contact with earth, while woman 
 need descend no nearer earth than to 
 its flowers. In woman the organization 
 is more delicate ; in man at once 
 stronger and more complex. Woman 
 has but a single vessel to command, 
 while man must learn to rule a mighty 
 fleet. In women the sorrows springing 
 from affection and feeling are, perhaps,
 
 246 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 the deeper ; but man again has the 
 stern struggles of the mind to sway, as 
 well as the pangs of the heart to over- 
 come — happy for him that the mental 
 powers, wisely used, can assist the emo- 
 tional feelings to triumph over woe and 
 pain ! 
 
 Women and children, says great 
 Goethe, have perhaps the truest phi- 
 losophy of life — because they live in the 
 hour only. But man, in his dark wis- 
 dom, " looks before and after," and ever 
 " sighs for what is not." Lightly do 
 we bear the weight of Time when but 
 the point of the moment rests upon us, 
 but heavy indeed is the burden when 
 we ever feel the pressure of the eter- 
 nity which our life splits and sunders — 
 when we drag after us the eternity of
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 247 
 
 our past, and yet grasp feebly the vast 
 
 eternity still to come. 
 
 But let us descend from air and alight 
 in the pretty cottage. Will my reader 
 
 regret a return to Lily? She seemed 
 to me — perhaps I saw all things 
 in that cottage couleur de rose — 
 but she seemed to me, I say, to have 
 developed into that rare union of intel- 
 lect and tenderness, of nobleness and 
 sweetness, which form such a woman as 
 we meet but once in a life. She had 
 evidently been reading a high class of 
 literature since last I saw her — dared I 
 hope that I had fostered such a taste 
 and directed her mind to such studies? 
 — and she had certainly thought honestly 
 and independently, if perhaps sometimes 
 crudely and hastily, upon what she had
 
 248 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 read. But her mind wanted the com- 
 panionship of a man's intellect — and was 
 worthy of the companionship of that of 
 a gifted and a noble man — to clear its 
 doubts, to direct its enquiries, and to 
 deepen and strengthen its thinkings. 
 Mentally, she was outgrowing the so- 
 ciety of her sweet second mother, 
 although her mind had as yet no totality 
 — ^to borrow Archbishop Whately's ex- 
 pressive definition — and could only see 
 things stilckweise, or piecemeal, without 
 being able to combine the isolated 
 fact, into the harmony of system or of 
 order. And yet never could she outgrow 
 the worth and womanhood of Helen Wes- 
 ton's pure and loving nature. If her mind 
 indulged in flights from that sacred 
 ark, it returned ever with the olive.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 249 
 
 Lily — let me be near no lewd inter- 
 preter — greatly liked the society of men, 
 at least if they were such men as 
 could widen her thought and elevate 
 her aspirations ; and on this occasion, 
 after the hissing urn had been 
 removed, and when thef soft evening 
 star trembled in the blue sky, framed 
 by the open window, while pale violet 
 twihght tinted the white muslin cur- 
 tains, all reserve between us wore off, 
 and thought left its cell, imagination 
 its deep fount, to shine and soar in 
 the clear, pure atmosphere of beauty 
 and delight. Fair Lily ! I can see, 
 her now ; her white slender figure 
 seated by the window, her soft cheek, 
 softer still in " the lingering light ^' 
 of the "rich and balmy eve," glow-
 
 250 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 ing with some pure and happy 
 thought ; her bright yet tender eye 
 flashing or melting as some word 
 stirred her enthusiasm or touched her 
 sympathy ; and I hear — hear again 
 with shut eyes and with a swelling 
 heart — the music of her soft and varied 
 voice. Ever and anon some quiet kindly 
 word dropped from Miss Weston, while 
 Fred would scarcely have been held to be 
 a Misogynist on that happy, happy even- 
 ing. Even my cold reserve was melted, 
 and something of youth^s bright eager 
 enthusiasm, tempered only, and not 
 damped, by the lore of sad experience, 
 thrilled through all my being once 
 again. And Lily sang — still is her sweet 
 voice ringing in my ears as then it 
 echoed in my heart — while she sang,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 251 
 
 among other things, and sang with 
 truest feeling and with simplest taste — 
 that sweetly sad ballad of "Auld Robin 
 Gray," which has for me a quite in- 
 expressible pathos and tender melan- 
 choly; and, sitting in a quiet corner of 
 the darkening room — oh, who would 
 hear music in a glaring light? — I felt, 
 entranced, the deepest charm of song; 
 felt, indeed, that they "feel not music's 
 genuine power'' who seek it in the 
 hot and 
 
 " scented rooms, where, to a gaudy throng, 
 
 Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast 
 In intricacies of laborious song." 
 
 Lights came, and I was asked to 
 read. For in my restless and un- 
 quiet youth — always actively striving, 
 yet never attaining, always endeavouring
 
 252 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 to soar into regions above the "prison 
 of my mean estate/' — I had, like Wilhelm 
 Meisier, tried on the sock and buskin, 
 and had, or was supposed to have, 
 some gift, or to have acquired some 
 power, of giving the rhythm of the 
 voice to the beauty of the rhyme ; and 
 Fred in particular, who was passionately 
 fond of the lyrical and dramatic in 
 art, was very fond of getting me to 
 read to him. On this occasion, he 
 offered no opposition to the reading of 
 Lady Geraldine^s Courtship; Miss Weston 
 and Lily suggested Tennyson's May 
 Queen, while I chose Coleridge's glorious 
 Genevieve. The Roman audience guessed 
 not the source of the actor's pathos while 
 they melted at his art, and knew not 
 that the father's heart was breaking
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 253 
 
 over tlie urn which contained the ashes 
 of his son. And Lily, as she praised 
 my reading, little guessed the source of 
 the expression with which, on that 
 evening, I read the lines, and trembled 
 as I read : — 
 
 " The deep, the low, the pleading tone 
 With which I sang another's love. 
 Interpreted my own ! " 
 
 I shut the book, and we talked of 
 the poems and the poets. Fred had 
 never shown to more advantage than he 
 did that evening. He was scholarly 
 rather than a scholar ; artistic rather 
 than an artist ; the imagination was not 
 his predominant faculty, but he was em- 
 phatically manly — a man in his merits 
 as his errors — and his criticism was
 
 254 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 always healthy, intelligent, and un- 
 hackneyed. Lily had been strongly moved 
 by Lady Geraldine, but would not agree 
 with Fred that the high-born lady had 
 made any sacrifice in wedding poet 
 Bertram. Genevieve is, intrinsically, a 
 subjective rather than an objective poem, 
 and therefore, though she felt its beauty 
 deeply, she found it very difficult to 
 analyse her feelings or to express her 
 grounds of liking clearly. Like some 
 judges, she found it easier to arrive at 
 a right decision than to give lucid 
 reasons for the award. And this is 
 frequently the case with the critical 
 faculty when based simply on instinct; 
 it requires a higher stage of mental 
 development and thought-trainuig to 
 effect the analysis and synthesis of
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 255 
 
 true criticism. Miss Weston, whose 
 feeling was eminently religious, was pro- 
 foundly touched by, and could find but 
 few words to express her deep delight 
 at, the May Queen ; but those few 
 words, broken and interjectional as they 
 were, were sufficiently explicit to an 
 Anthropologist. And so in happy talk 
 flew the swift irrevocable minutes, until 
 the hour for parting came. The evening 
 had been like a happy dream to me ; I 
 have since learned that it is remembered 
 as a pleasant one by all present. But it 
 ended, as all such evenings must, and 
 after a cordial leave and kind "good 
 night," Fred and I found ourselves alone 
 together, and on the homeward road. 
 
 I was very happy, and therefore very 
 silent. Fred was happy too, but his
 
 256 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 pleasure was not linked with so deep a 
 feeling, and he was therefore, perhaps 
 also partly from a differing temperament, 
 very talkative. He smoked, as usual, 
 but I quite forgot to light a weed that 
 evening, and looking up to the stars as I 
 walked along, I too asked — 
 
 " Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow 
 Of your soft splendours that ye look so bright ! " 
 
 Arrived at our lodging, we retired at 
 once to our chambers, for I longed above 
 all things to be alone with my own 
 thought. I opened the window and sat 
 down by it, having first put out the 
 light. The night was dark and heavy, 
 starlight but moonless, and though there 
 was a sense of freshness in the air, 
 there was no breath of wind. One
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 257 
 
 fisherman, returning home late, broke the 
 deep silence of the deserted village ; but 
 his heavy footstep became fainter and 
 fainter in the distance, and all was 
 hushed again. The musical monotone of 
 the melancholy main, as the long waves 
 rolled upon the beach and hissingly 
 retreated, to return again with a full 
 dull sound, seemed but a sort of accom- 
 paniment to silence, and did not jar upon 
 the sense of peace and stillness which 
 breathed through the whole scene and 
 hour. The masts and hulls of a cluster 
 of fishing boats, drawn up upon the 
 beach, rose confusedly through the dark- 
 ness ; and far and wide and dark spread 
 out before me the great awful ocean. 
 The barking of a dog once sounded 
 faintly from some house on the outskirts, 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 and startled silence for an instant ; but 
 after the little clock in the grey old 
 church tower had pealed out midnight 
 with a silvery toll, night sent her sleep 
 down upon earth and air, and left the 
 "sad sea waves'' to their long, desolate, 
 and homeless moanings. 
 
 I leaned my face upon my hand and 
 thought. Did I love Lily? did I love 
 her as a deep true-hearted man can love 
 but once a life? Ere yet the answer 
 came, another question, sterner and more 
 imperative, pressed upon my thought, and 
 checked the rising swell of feeling which 
 perchance had gladly answered affirma- 
 tively. Dared I love Lily? The pas- 
 sionate heart of man here echoed proudly 
 " yes ! " But then over the heart's 
 chords, strung to tension, thrilled an
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 259 
 
 ^olian wail, as conscience swept the 
 strings, with a low, plaintive cry, which, 
 as it died away again, left words be- 
 hind it, as the retreating wave leaves 
 weeds upon the beach. That voice of 
 the night wind told me that I might 
 indeed love, but yet must never dare 
 to breathe a word or hope for a re- 
 turn. And then, summoned by con- 
 science, came my other bride — pale 
 Duty — and stood there a grey- white, 
 misty, ghostly shade ; a shape vague 
 and ill- defined, lighter only than the 
 gloom around, yet gazing fixedly with 
 cold, stony eyes. She spoke, and said 
 in hard relentless tones that I should 
 never leave her side, and yet, remain- 
 ing always there, should never win life's 
 prizes, or attain its sweetest joys. She 
 
 s 2
 
 260 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 told me that I was mis-cast in life; 
 that I had been wanting in the stern 
 strength of will which alone could have 
 changed my destiny, and so shaped it 
 as to bring it into unison with the 
 purpose of my being ; that I had 
 yielded to drear, hopeless apathy when 
 most I should have exerted intensest 
 energy ; that 1 had sold hope into the 
 slavery of despair, and that I should 
 now never realize in time so much of 
 the world's success and sunshine as 
 would warrant me in linking' another 
 and a dearer life to mine. She bade 
 me leave life's flowers to be gathered 
 by other hands than mine ; she warned 
 me — and I thanked her through sharp 
 sorrow for the warning, for it spoke 
 with the voice of honour — to leave un-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 261 
 
 plucked the flower that would only 
 wither in my grasp. And then I asked 
 myself — and tortured in the asking — 
 had I done wrong in yielding to the 
 impulse of the sweet • hour, and in- 
 dulging the intoxicating enjoyment of 
 her presence and her charms? Should 
 I not have resolutely refused to ^^knit 
 anew the bonds of pain," — to endanger 
 honour and imperil duty by placing 
 them within the spell-bound circle of 
 such beauty and such love? It might 
 be wrong, it might be weak, but yet, 
 Grod! how could I help it? One 
 comfort yet remained; the loved, at least, 
 knew nothing of my love. 
 
 I turned round, startled by a noise in 
 the still, dark room, and Fred stood be- 
 side me. He too, it seemed, was wake-
 
 262 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 ftil ; on him too was tlie enchantress' 
 spell and glamour. He sat down and 
 began to speak of Lily. He asked me 
 question upon question about her, scarcely 
 pausing for my replies. He was enthu- 
 siastic in his praises of her beauty and 
 her charms. I felt a strange instinctive 
 jealousy stir within me. When we love, 
 we make the loved image so wholly and 
 solely ours — in the sublime exaggeration 
 of the passion — beyond our reason, pro- 
 bably in consequence of its very divinity 
 — we create an Eidolon so etherially 
 compound of the dreamings and yearn- 
 ings of our very souls, that the praises, 
 even, of another seem profanation, and 
 the homage of another's nature to the 
 idol of our own, shocks and revolts the 
 sublimated, spiritualised egotism and sen-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 263 
 
 sitive delicacy of a feeling which lives 
 enshrined in solitude, and exists in an 
 atmosphere that is not of the earth. To 
 Fred's fervent praise I answered — and 
 God forgive me ! there was, I fear, a 
 sneer within my tones — in his own 
 former words : " The charms are but 
 the sensuous ones of sex ; the rest are 
 but ribands, toys, and tricks, exhibited 
 for the same reason that induces the 
 female glow- worm to light her lamp ; 
 displayed with the same object that 
 leads the female pigeon to coo, and bill, 
 and strut on the barn roof — traps to 
 catch men, sir ; baits to — " 
 
 ^^ Oh, Grey, don't say so of her ! " 
 cried Fred. He had not, happily, 
 noticed the sneer, but he felt the un- 
 generous reply, and I blushed, despite
 
 264 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 the darkness, before the rebuke implied 
 in an exclamation from him which 
 seemed to defend her from an attack of 
 mine. An attack of mine on her ! I 
 was rightly punished, and hastened to 
 atone. 
 
 ^^ Dear Fred/' I said, ^^ pray forgive 
 me. It was very wrong to taunt you 
 with your own words; words, too, used 
 in friendly argument. I am very sorry, 
 and I say again, pray forgive me ! " 
 Fredas manly nature was always ready 
 to forgive. He held out his Hand cor- 
 dially, and the little passing cloud had 
 at least the good effect of making me 
 humble, for I had been wrong, and of 
 removing all my bitterness of feeling. 
 My jealousy even vanished in my con- 
 trition for my unworthy sneer, and I
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 265 
 
 was as anxious to satisfy his curiosity 
 as I^had, but a few minutes before, been 
 disposed to chafe at it. 
 
 In night hours of solemn, holy quiet, 
 there is no levity in true men's thoughts 
 or feelings, and as we sat together by 
 the still open window in the little silent 
 chamber, I told him simply, and with a 
 strong effort at self-command, nearly all 
 that I knew, and much of what I 
 thought, about Lily. As to what I feltj 
 I was wholly silent, for I could not 
 force myself to shape those feelings into 
 words for another's ear. Fred listened 
 attentively, and when I had finished, 
 thanked me and withdrew silently. We 
 parted the be^t friends in the world. 
 
 The next morning was fresh, and fair, 
 and joyous, as if earth were too young
 
 266 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 to have known a sorrow. The day 
 was, as Fred remarked gleefully, when 
 we stood before breakfast on the sands, 
 while the sea breeze thrilled every nerve 
 with healthful vigour, ^^a great success.*' 
 On such a morning one is always more 
 hopeful than in shadowy, mystic night. 
 And I felt that morning the sweet, 
 delicious fever of love. Ah, who that 
 has ever known that dim, blissful, trem- 
 bling joy, but will recall the exquisite 
 delight, mingled with vague, troublous 
 dread — the restless unquiet and the wild 
 yearning thrill — the image ever present, 
 coming between our fancy and the sky ; 
 between the page and the thought — 
 the throbbing pulse, the flushing cheek, 
 and the beating heart — the glorious 
 imaginings, resplendent with one dream-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 267 
 
 like happiness — the fairy visions of a 
 future, tinged to the very span of 
 life's vista with joy — the sweet, sweet 
 picture of a home of happy love — the 
 soft, timid hope, and the "pang, the 
 agony, the douht" of fear, distrust, and 
 jealousy — the fulness of ecstatic being, 
 the deep sense of beauty — the feeling, 
 so proud and yet so humble — the exal- 
 tation of the whole nature — who, I ask, 
 has ever felt the first pure love of 
 youth but will, haply, feel with me on 
 that bright morning ? And who that 
 has ever felt but must remember, and 
 
 live again the passion, 
 
 
 O J. ' 
 
 Smile the hope and weep the woe,' 
 
 remember, as I do now, in far after 
 years, when on all feeling has descended 
 a dead numbness and a frozen chill,
 
 268 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 born of — but let me not anticipate. 
 And what is that strange effluence of 
 fascination that streams mesmerically 
 from the woman that we love ? In 
 what does the mystic and peculiar 
 charm consist that attracts us to her, and 
 to her only ? Not the senses demand, but 
 the idea requires, that a woman should 
 be beautiful ; for beauty is her dis- 
 tinctive attribute, and a woman is but 
 half a woman who cannot satisfy the 
 ideal requirement. But other women 
 may be as beautiful as the one round 
 whom our fondness clings so wildly, 
 and yet for our heart they want some 
 hidden grace, to our fancy they are 
 deficient in some nameless enchantment. 
 In the one we love, the ^^ trick o^ the 
 eye," the bend of the head, the braid
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 269 
 
 or ringlet of the hair, the physiognomy 
 of the whole figure, the hand — ■ 
 
 " that thrills the heart in youth, 
 
 And smooths the couch in age ;" 
 
 the tone of the voice, and the impress 
 of the entire being, seem created to 
 answer to our yearning, and to enslave 
 our imagination. Divine illusion ! we 
 seek to analyse the secret of the charm, 
 and lo ! our thought trenches upon the 
 confines of mystery ! 
 
 Forgetting my inexorable bride. Duty, 
 I thrilled with high happy thoughts in 
 that flush of morn and love. True, I 
 should always be poor — I felt, I knew 
 I should — and yet, was it equally cer- 
 tain that I should always be nameless? 
 Might I not do something almost
 
 270 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 I 
 
 worthy her ? Literature did not ex- 
 clude the ambition of poverty, and had 
 not Beauty often smiled on Song? We 
 dream, in such an hour, of other wealth 
 than gold; we contemplate diviner things 
 than worldly position or success. I 
 felt, or dreamed that I felt, a gleam of 
 inspiration through the glow of romance, 
 and I fancied — " fool ! again the dream, 
 the fancy'' — that I might yet lay at 
 her feet a wreath won in the tourna- 
 ment of intellect and imagination. Were 
 we not monks of the order of Santa 
 Terra, we who accepted a self-imposed 
 vow of barren celibacy from dread of 
 poverty, from submission to those ^' fig- 
 ments of heart-closing," from obeisance 
 to the "sympathies defiled" of social 
 fictions? Were not our fears, cowardice,
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 271 
 
 and our distrust, treason to the bene- 
 ficent power that gives love to man as 
 his divinest blessing? Was it not a fan- 
 tastic and over-strained sense of honour 
 that bid us shrink from seeking to 
 attract love' to the side of drear, chill 
 penury. Was it not from a " craven 
 scruple '^ that thought " too precisely of 
 the event," that we hesitated to obey 
 the natural instinct of the heart, and 
 leave the issue, trustfully, to heaven ? 
 And then again I felt the whole great 
 force of love; felt, too, that love smote 
 the chord of self, that " trembling, 
 passed in music out of sight " — felt 
 that, with the certainty of hopeless 
 poverty before me, it was right to 
 suffer and to bear alone — felt, too^ 
 that the highest sacrifice to love was
 
 272 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 that of love itself! And yet — and yet 
 — No ! — ^let us share happiness, when 
 we have it, with others ; let us pray 
 for the unselfish strength to bear sor- 
 row alone. Let us abstain from risk- 
 ing for another and a fairer life the 
 ills that weigh so heavily upon our 
 own ! 
 
 At the sea-side, it is not necessary to 
 make formal appointments ; you are sure 
 to meet people, especially when you want 
 to do so. After our bath and pipe, 
 Fred and I lingered, by a sort of tacit 
 consent, about the beach, and presently 
 met Miss Weston and Lily, the latter 
 looking — how beautiful ! in the glad 
 glow of the sunny morning. They sat 
 down under the shade of an old disused 
 boat, and began to work and read — or
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 273 
 
 rather not to read, but, with book in 
 hand, to listen and to talk. 
 
 Fred was in high spirits, and soon 
 succeeded in exciting an animated con- 
 versation. The wind blew from the sea, 
 and consequently the fleet of passing 
 ships were all in sight. The homeward- 
 bound were making slow way, while the 
 outward-bound flew before a favouring 
 breeze with " a wet sheet and a flowing 
 sail." We followed their far voy agings 
 with our fancies, and saw the sails now 
 swelling with our fresh northern air, 
 furled, as the far wandering bark dropped 
 her anchor into some coral reef, where 
 the green Indian island shore, crowned 
 with waving palms and with the 
 rich luxuriance of tropical vegetation, 
 rose in bright emerald verdure from 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 the dark blue bosom of the sheeny 
 wave. 
 
 We pictured to ourselves the ship at 
 rest after her long ocean struggle, rock- 
 ing gently where, ^* like a virgin's bosom, 
 panted all the wide reposing deep ; " and 
 we saw the tall tapering masts, and the 
 delicate tracery of spar and rigging, 
 standing out in clear relief against the 
 golden orange of a tropic sunset. We 
 tracked in thought the vessel's trackless 
 path — with nought but sea and sky in 
 sight — through day and night, through 
 sunshine and through storm. We heard 
 around her sides the " weltering of the 
 plangent wave," and grew excited at the 
 hiss and rushing roar of the long sweep- 
 ing billows. We saw the albicore, the 
 bonita, the dolphin, and the flying
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 275 
 
 fish sporting around her black and glis- 
 tening hull, as it plunged deeply into 
 the yielding wave, and rose lightly 
 with the bright copper shining in the 
 sun. 
 
 Gulls wheeled screaming round our 
 track ; gannets and divers floated within 
 gunshot ; and far, far at sea, the stormy 
 petrel flew low above the crest of the 
 mountain wave. We saw the sun rise 
 glorious out of the world of waters, 
 where the first flushings of light had 
 tinted the pearly east, and we watched 
 him sink to rest beneath the western 
 wave, and leave a sky refulgent with 
 the parting splendour. We lay beneath 
 the awning in the hot sleepy blaze and 
 glare of the noontide calm ; and we 
 glode by moonlight through a phos- 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 4 
 
 phorescent sea of silver fire, which 
 seemed as if another buried moon were 
 shining through its depths. Clouds 
 scudded with us, and stars shone above; 
 we exchanged our northern constellations 
 for the Magellan clouds and the great 
 southern cross. We sailed past Gibraltar's 
 giant rock, and up the fairy, island- 
 studded Mediterranean. We heard " the 
 great Pacific's roar" against some wild 
 and lonely strand. We crossed the 
 mighty Atlantic. We saw the Capes of 
 Hope and Horn ; and glowed with ad- 
 miration of those dauntless men who 
 were ^^ the first that ever burst into 
 that silent sea." Nor did our fancied 
 voyaging cease until the cry of ^' land, 
 ho ! " welcomed us to some transatlantic 
 port ; to some clear-walled Italian city
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 277 
 
 by the sea ; to some Greek or West 
 Indian island ; to the Bay of Naples or 
 the Golden Horn ; to the City of Pa- 
 laces on the banks of the Hooghley ; to 
 the new town springing up, " by the 
 long wash of Australasian seas," on the 
 wooded shores of the Yarra-Yarra ; to 
 some junk-surrounded, pagoda-crowned 
 Chinese city ; to white sunlit Valparaiso ; 
 or to the drear Arctic Regions of eternal 
 frost. Oh, had .1 to scheme the educa- 
 tion of a poet — vain as all such human 
 scheming must be — he should go to sea 
 in youth, while the spirit of adventure 
 was fresh, and the romance of early 
 feeling susceptive, and should let the 
 memory of the ever-varying beauty and 
 awful solemnity of the mighty deep 
 linger, tvith the hues of tropic sunset,
 
 278 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 in the imagination of the thoughtful 
 man ! 
 
 I had made a voyage, and could 
 therefore furnish some food for fancy ; 
 while Fred was well read in the en- 
 trancing annals of maritime discovery. 
 He was acquainted with the records left 
 by all the early travellers, from Herodotus 
 to those of the middle ages ; with 
 Marco Polo, Columbus, Yasco di Gam a, 
 Drake, Frobisher, Baffin, Hudson, Sir 
 Hugh Willou^hby, John and Sebastian 
 Cabot, Sir Walter Ealeigh, Chancelor, 
 and all the knightly seamen of the Eli- 
 zabethean era, and could continue the 
 wondrous story through all its line of 
 heroes, past Anson and Cook, down 
 to the enterprise of living men. He 
 quoted to us the fine passage from the
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 279 
 
 Lusiad of Camoens, which describes so 
 magnificently the appearance of the terrible 
 guardian of the " cape of storms " to 
 those brave mariners who startled a soli- 
 tude unbroken since the world began, as, 
 in their little caravels, and with such 
 imperfect knowledge that even courage 
 could not shut out superstition's dread, 
 they first voyaged in then unknown seas, 
 and thrilled with awe while they throbbed 
 with resolution. He could tell the tale 
 of Dutch, Portuguese, and English ad- 
 venture ; and his own love for athletic 
 pursuits, nurtured on the banks of Cam 
 and Thames, his own daring spirit, which, 
 but for the scholar's training, had fitted 
 him for a sailor rather than^ a lawyer, 
 had given him an interest in the 
 theme, which showed itself in his
 
 280 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 graphic and vivid sketches of the old sea 
 heroes. 
 
 In addition to my irrepressible habit 
 of observation, I have acquired, in 
 the slow growth of thoughtful years, 
 a strong tendency to mental and intro- 
 spective analysis. I can rarely abandon 
 myself entirely to sensation, but even 
 when feeling, I am thinking why I 
 feel, and frequently poison enjoyment 
 by considering too curiously why I 
 am enjoying. It is an unhappy faculty, 
 the disease of a lonely and joyless mind 
 allowed to prey upon itself, and ever 
 unable to surrender itself wholly to the 
 passing hour. Listening to Fred, this 
 feeling woke again, and it was by 
 comparison with him that I noticed 
 most strongly this mental warp. He
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 281 
 
 had that fresh, joyous, impulsive spon- 
 taneity which was lacking to my graver, 
 sadder thought. He had lived ever 
 in sunshine, while I had pined in 
 shade. His grasp of life was firm and 
 healthful, and his spirit rose buoyant 
 and eager in the presence of joy or 
 at the prospect of happiness; while 
 mine, cowed by many disappointments 
 and depressed by long sorrow, trembled 
 with doubt before any chance of success, 
 and turned with an incredulous sigh 
 from any promise of bliss. Tossed into 
 life at thirteen years of age ; chained, 
 when too young to shape my own 
 course, to work repugnant to every 
 feeling, unsuited to any powers I 
 possessed — to toil deadening all aspira- 
 tion and crushing every loftier tendency ;
 
 282 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 left to struggle unaided in the rough, 
 coarse career for which every faculty 
 of my nature unfitted me; worn, fretted 
 by long hopeless strife, and years — 
 slow dragging years — of contact with 
 what was to me debasement, I was 
 careworn, dispirited, anxious, timid ; the 
 nerves were all unstrung, and the vital 
 energy was flickering and weak. I 
 think that nothing in Lily charmed 
 me more, when first I saw her, than 
 the freshness, the bloom, and gladness 
 of her bright and happy nature. The 
 Tery sight of her pure joyful youth 
 rolled away the heavy stone that 
 weighed upon my heart ; the very 
 presence of her ardent and hopeful 
 spirit infused new life and vigour into 
 mine. Fred's sorrows had all been on
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 283 
 
 the surface ; he had known so much 
 of success, and tasted so much of 
 pleasure, that he retained the full glory 
 of his undimmed, unclouded youth ; and 
 when he saw happiness, even though it 
 stood on the far mountain top, hope 
 lent his spirit wings to overfly all in- 
 tervening distance and overcome every 
 threatening obstacle. 
 
 Hence, between Fred and Lily existed 
 a strong link of native sympathy; and 
 as we sat upon the beach on that fair 
 summer morning, I detected myself almost 
 envying him those qualities which pos- 
 sessed so natural and evident an attrac- 
 tion for her thought and feeling. 
 
 While they became absorbed in con- 
 versation, I turned and spoke with Miss 
 Weston. I have all Jean Paul's respect
 
 284 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 for old maids ; women often who have 
 kept their virtue in the absence of a 
 love lofty enough to satisfy their ideal, 
 or who live in virgin widowhood of 
 heart, faithful to the memory of the 
 loved and lost. Many a woman, too, 
 gifted with all that might win a lover that 
 would have been to her ^^ all that man 
 should be to woman, ^' lives unmated 
 because of the retiring, delicate, sensi- 
 tive modesty, which withdraws her from 
 the general gaze, and leaves her like a 
 flower hidden by a broad shading leaf. 
 Rousseau said that if the books he had 
 not written could be known, they would 
 far outweigh in passion and pathos 
 those that he had written. And if the 
 stories of those who have loved secretly 
 and vainly could be told, they would
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 285 
 
 perhaps outweigh all the records we 
 possess of successful passion. "Hohen- 
 berg ! Hohenberg ! and never Hohen- 
 berg any more ! ^' cry the heralds, as 
 sword, shield, and helmet are laid upon 
 the coffin of the last of his race ; and 
 their cry sounds plaintive and mournful as 
 that of the bittern in a waste desolate 
 place, over which grey leaden clouds 
 are drifting. Ah, what hopeless passion, 
 unrevealed, may lie buried in that 
 breast so cold and lonely now ! Turn, 
 too, to the genealogies of great proud 
 races. You pause as you read of 
 " Henry, the third son ; died unmarried, 
 cetat. 33." You pass over the names 
 of bi^others who left descendants to 
 transmit the haughty name ; and imagi- 
 nation, excited by that clue, so slight
 
 286 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 and yet so sad, weaves round the dead, 
 who lived in loneliness, the romance of 
 a love, untold perhaps, but surely unre- 
 quited. Life is a mystery; history a 
 guess — biography a secret ! 
 
 Although without matronly shape- 
 lessness, Miss Weston's figure was 
 still full and round. A few lines of 
 grey streaked the smooth brown hair; 
 but time had touched her quiet beauty 
 lightly, and ^ad, perhaps, added a yet 
 softer charm to the sad but kindly 
 eyes. From hints half dropped, from 
 allusions checked by a sigh, I learned 
 that her youth had known love and 
 suffered loss. A strong human link 
 bound her to the skies, and she calmly 
 waited the time when the sea should 
 give up its dead and the earth its
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 287 
 
 living, to meet again in " the fields 
 made visible by death/' Her lover, a 
 naval officer, had been drowned almost 
 within sight of the cliffs of Albion, 
 when returning from a voyage to claim 
 his bride. A gale at sea, a dark win- 
 try night, a wild sweeping wave — and 
 the brief tale is told. One gallant life 
 was ended, and in another life an undy- 
 ing mournful memory began. The deep 
 true woman's heart of Helen Weston 
 became a grave — a grave, faith-lighted 
 by the splendour of Heaven's own ray 
 of hope. 
 
 Yes ; resistance was vain. Circumstance 
 was stronger than my will ; fate was 
 mightier than my resolve. I loved. 
 Loved as I could love but once. That 
 love once given, there was no more to
 
 288 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 add to it ; no other could succeed to 
 it. 
 
 It was my life's one passion. It had 
 gone out from me, and was far, far beyond 
 my power of recall. It was still, however, 
 within my control, as far, at least, as 
 outward manifestation was concerned. 
 And yet, I fancied at times that Lily, 
 with woman's sharp perception, must see 
 that I loved her. 
 
 Blind, blind, blind ! I knew after- 
 wards what spell dimmed her in- 
 sight. My nature, and the - circum- 
 stances which had warped at once and 
 shaped that nature — deepening its flow 
 in certain deeply-worn channels — had 
 rendered me secretive, jealous of the eyes 
 of others upon my most cherished 
 feelings, and careful to conceal the emo- 
 
 t
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 289 
 
 tions which most profoundly stirred me. 
 In ^^ business/' in commerce, such as my 
 experience had found it, it is impera- 
 tively necessary to conceal the exis- 
 tence of every higher tendency, of every 
 nobler aspiration. Apart from the ne- 
 cessity of so doing, there is also the 
 strong instinctive desire so to do, for 
 who would bare to the natural chil- 
 dren of the mart those impulses which 
 connect the mind with nobleness or 
 genius, those thoughts which link the 
 soul with its creator? We have the 
 highest warrant for not casting pearls 
 before those creatures which, in return, 
 will turn and rend us ; and reticence, 
 under such circumstances, is but the 
 unconscious instinct of conscience. 
 
 But a long continuance of this struggle 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 between the inner nature and the forms 
 of life by which it is surrounded, is 
 yet injurious to the inmost life within 
 us. The long suppression of that which 
 is best and purest within us begets a 
 kind of hypocrisy, which, though it 
 does not arise from base motives, is, 
 nevertheless, productive of much warp 
 and evil. Your finger will burn if you 
 put it into the candle, whether you put 
 it there by accident or design. The 
 motive does not always shape the con- 
 sequence. Eestraint is often good, but 
 constraint is nearly always evil. The 
 Indian Fakir, who, during long years, 
 forces his body into some painfully un- 
 natural position, cannot resume his 
 natural carriage and his pliant, upright 
 gait. We place palings round young
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 291 
 
 sapling trees to shield them, and the 
 palings may be protectors while the 
 tree is green and tender, but they 
 must be removed ere the tree develope, 
 or they will stunt, and twist, and deform 
 it. Perhaps the great problem of life 
 is to reconcjje intellect and spiritualism ; 
 and all long weary struggles between the 
 nature and the doom, if they do not 
 stain the soul, at least warp the mind 
 and render the feelings morbid. My lot 
 had had this effect on me. I knew 
 and felt it bitterly, when first love first 
 stirred my being to its depths. I see 
 it still more clearly now, as I stand upon 
 the heights of Time, removed far from, 
 and far above, my early passion and 
 its fate. 
 
 In most other men, at the same age, 
 
 u 2
 
 292 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 such a deep love as then I felt — and I feel 
 even now how deep it was — would have 
 irresistibly burst into expression, and 
 have been forced, from inner impulse, 
 into manifestation and avowal. When 
 the fulness of time is come, the dragon- 
 fly rends "the veil of his old husk; '' and 
 with '^ clear plates of sapphire mail '' flies, 
 "a living flash of light," through croft 
 and pasture, over mere and field. So 
 bursts out young love into brilliant 
 being, from the dark husk of his ante- 
 natal tomb, and so he sweeps on bright 
 and burnished wings, gladly and proudly, 
 over sea and land, over life an4 time. 
 But this is love's development in a 
 nature which has remained natural. In 
 a nature chilled by frost and shadowed 
 by the Upas, that husk is hard to
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 293 
 
 rend, that veil is difficult to un- 
 wind. 
 
 Hence my love for fair, dear Lily — 
 what words have I to say how dear she 
 was ? — ^remained untold and self-contained. 
 Apart, too, from the unhappy accident of 
 my miserable career, there was the feeling 
 of poverty, the timidity of hopelessness ; 
 the fear of revealing such an unblessed 
 passion, the dread of attracting the sweet 
 bird of. Paradise to alight, for its first 
 descent, upon so gloomy a flower. Strong 
 reasons these for concealing love ; but 
 alas! what reasons are strong enough to 
 " quench the spirit," that mighty impulse, 
 which tells us we must love — for weal or 
 woe? 
 
 And so in that fair holiday time, in 
 that sweet scene, bright with the sum-
 
 294 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 mer's golden glory, my love grew deeper, 
 stronger, tenderer, day by day. I was 
 absorbed in my still dream, and life, 
 transfigured in that soft and tender air, 
 swam and floated round me, past me, and 
 I slumbered still unheeding on. 
 
 Fred's admiration was ardent and un- 
 disguised, like his nature. I thought it 
 natural that he should admire her ; I had 
 often seen him admire, apparently, as I 
 
 thought, to the full as warmly ; and I had 
 
 « 
 as often seen that his volatile feelings, 
 
 when they touched the bounds of admi- 
 ration, recoiled upon themselves and turned 
 away to other objects. He did not seem 
 to notice my abstraction, and I had ceased 
 to analyse his feelings or to notice his 
 manner. We were as friendly as we had 
 ever been, and yet we stood, unconsciously.
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 295 
 
 farther asunder than we had ever done. 
 There was less confidence between ns, and 
 yet neither noticed anything unusual in the 
 other. He was not clearer sighted or more 
 observant than I, it seemed. It never 
 even occurred to me to tell him of my feel- 
 ings, to bare, even to him, my shy and 
 silent heart. Blind, blind, blind ! 
 
 Other evenings in Rose Cottage, other 
 mornings on the echoing shore, succeeded 
 to the ones I have described. Companion- 
 ship grew natural to all of us. Proximity, 
 the narrow limits of the secluded little 
 watering-place, and secret attraction threw 
 us all constantly together, without effort, 
 or conscious aim or intention. It became 
 natural to meet, pleasant to be together, 
 'intimacy, as it seemed, easy and unre- 
 strained, ripened quickly. After a short
 
 296 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 time, Lily appeared to half avoid Fred, and 
 I often noticed — that is, noticed the 
 result, for the fine means by which women 
 effect such things are too subtle for our 
 grosser observation — that Lily seemed 
 to prefer sitting near me, or walking by me, 
 and that she rather listened to than talked 
 to Fred. She seemed to grow stiller and 
 
 . shyer, and to be more thoughtful and pre- 
 occupied. Still I did not analyse. The 
 pleasure of her presence, the charm of see- 
 ing her attracted towards me in frank, yet 
 often blushing, kindness, was inexpressibly 
 sweet to me. And yet I had no distinct 
 purpose, no clearly defined plan of action. 
 
 * I did not even resolve to declare my 
 passion, but lived on in the intoxication 
 of my dream of joy, satisfied to be ever 
 near her, to see her constantly, to speak
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 297 
 
 with her, to watch for her, to merge my 
 whole being into an unspoken fondness. 
 I did not hope much, I did not look far 
 forward into the future. I existed in the 
 trance-like hour. I did not think much; 
 I dared not reason. I only felt; and my 
 heart, nay, my very soul, melted into a 
 vague, dreamy ecstasy of tenderness, which 
 veiled all things in the faint, luminous 
 heat mist of love ; which abandoned itself 
 wholly and passively to the soft madness 
 of the moment, and which dreaded only to 
 think, lest thought should destroy the ex- 
 quisite charm of feeling. 
 
 And that feeling glowed through all 
 the happy air, brightened all the lovely 
 scene. Nature grew fairer and dearer 
 to me. I saw the effluence of her 
 image in all things. She was with me
 
 298 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 in the fresh light of morning, in the 
 blaze of noon, in the rich sleepy splen- 
 dour of afternoon, in the tender half light 
 of early evening, in the solemnity of 
 night. Her image tinted with tenderer 
 rose and purer pearl the hues of sun- 
 rise, added a deeper glory to the sun 
 setting into' the broad calm bosom of the 
 heaving sea, lent a brightness to the my- 
 riad stars, and hallowed the clear, soft 
 silver of the summer moon that gemmed the 
 heavens, yet kissed all lovingly the restless 
 spangled wave and calmly sleeping^ earth. 
 
 And yet I scarcely think that I was 
 truly happy. Happiness is, perhaps, 
 scarcely the right word, for happiness, in 
 connection with love, is full of hope ; it 
 looks longingly forward, it relies upon 
 the future, it has a distinct object, and
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 299 
 
 it is full of life, and energy, and im- 
 pulse. I was steeped in the sweet lan- 
 guor of an ecstatic dream, but I was 
 always restless with a vague dread of 
 waking ; I was uneasy with a sense of 
 unreality, a conviction that such bliss 
 could never last for me. I tried, and 
 tried hard, to put these feelings from 
 me, but it was only by constant effort 
 that I succeeded, through perpetual pre- 
 sentiment, in maintaining the full dream- 
 charm of the dear illusion. Underlying 
 all my joy, was a struggling sense that 
 the dream would fly at morn, and a 
 renewed effort to remain in sleep. I did 
 not distinctly hope ; I could not clearly 
 plan. I shunned the anticipation of the 
 future, and strove blindly to rest lapped 
 in the present.
 
 300 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Meanwhile our life at Seanook was 
 passed in seaside fashion and enjoyment. 
 The new *^ Alice Wentworth" did sail 
 well — indeed, to Fred's entire satisfaction — 
 and he was critical upon such points. 
 We shared her rapid white-winged flight 
 over the short, leaping billows, or basked 
 in her as she lay, in windless calm, 
 tossing and weltering on the bright green, 
 dimpling wavelets off the Black Eocks. 
 Although the little bay mare that shied 
 was gone, Fred found a satisfactory sub- 
 stitute in the person of a chestnut horse, 
 which, in connection with a dog-cart, 
 was let out by Withers, the landlord of 
 the Wentworth Arms. In this we drove 
 to Wentworth Hall, to Franklin's Grange, 
 to Oldtower Castle, to Oakmoor Common, 
 to Fern Wood, and to all the neighbour-
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 301 
 
 « 
 
 ing villages. At times we passed into 
 the deep dell of the long country lane, 
 where the damp road was all overhung 
 by the trees growing thickly on both 
 sides, and meeting overhead in a canopy 
 of deep green shade, while through the 
 branches, and between the trembling 
 leaves, golden sun-flecks stole, and 
 danced in flitting specks upon the cool 
 dark road. Then we mounted the long 
 hill, and gained the high, breezy, open 
 common, with its far prospect inland, 
 and its wide gaze upon the wind- 
 swept expanse of sea, over which the 
 great ships were driving. Our sails and 
 drives were delightful. It was during 
 these that we spoke most together ; it 
 was of these that we spoke so gladly 
 when we paid our evening visit to Rose
 
 302 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 Cottage. Many a fair picture entered 
 through the eye, to dwell within the 
 memory. The great cornfields, brilliant in 
 sunshine, with the sea of heads waving and 
 swaying beneath the sweeping wind, while 
 the shadow of a cloud flew across them, 
 and the red poppies, growing near the 
 roots of the corn, contrasted gaudily with 
 the dazzlingly white chalk path ; the little 
 embowered lake, its dark, still waters all 
 the more charming from comparison with 
 the boundless, turbulent sea ; the ceaseless 
 murmur of the crystal rill, which, -with its 
 current hidden among leaves and mosses, 
 poured itself into the tarn; the country 
 roads, with pretty farms and wayside inns ; 
 the fields, the hedgerows, the beach, and 
 the cliffs; the sloping woods, with their 
 mass of rolling foliage in all its varying
 
 THE THREE PATHS. 303 
 
 hues of green, glorious in the sunshine, and 
 beautiful in the moonlight — all these, and 
 a thousand other pictures, photographed 
 by the strong light of love, struck then 
 upon my charmed imagination, and linger 
 now in the enchanted memory. 
 
 I have visited the shades of Vaucluse ; 
 haunted spot to which still pilgrims throng, 
 and which is hallowed by the romance of a 
 heart — that heart a poet's, whose singing 
 robes, now etherialized into the angel vest- 
 ments that we see in dreams, still shine 
 between our fancy and the sky, over the 
 fair spot in which he lived and loved, a life 
 and a love which he, dead, has left death- 
 less. Seanook, Seanook ! Unsung art 
 thou, unhonoured and unknown ; but 
 haunted by a heart's romance, perhaps as 
 deep, as tender, and as sad, and wanting
 
 304 THE THREE PATHS. 
 
 only — wanting only, but how great is 
 that want ! — the gift of song which 
 should render thy English shores as cele- 
 brated as the shades which Petrarch has 
 immortalized in the story of strong yet 
 hopeless love^! 
 
 And so the few days of my stay at Sea- 
 nook glided swiftly away. Morning meet- 
 ings and evening calls, and one image ever 
 present, ever dearer hour by hour ; and 
 yielding weakly to the resistless charm of 
 seeing, hearing her, though silent still, I 
 ceased to struggle against my fat6 ; I re- 
 signed myself to the dream of passion ; that 
 dream from which we awaken in the bowers 
 of Paradise, or at the gates of Hades ! 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 B. BOKN, PRINTER, GLOUCESTER STREET, BEGENT'S PARK.
 
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