The Fourth Generation
by Walter Besant · English · Gutenberg #50177 · 497,057 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Fourth Generation
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Fourth Generation
Author: Walter Besant
Release date: October 10, 2015 [eBook #50177]
Most recently updated: October 22, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50177
Credits: Produced by Shaun Pinder, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOURTH GENERATION ***
_The Fourth Generation_
_The FOURTH
GENERATION_
_BY_
_SIR WALTER BESANT_
_Author of_
“ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN,” “THE MASTER
CRAFTSMAN,” “A FOUNTAIN SEALED,” “THE
CITY OF REFUGE,” ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
_FOURTH EDITION_
_NEW YORK_
_Frederick A. Stokes Company_
_Publishers_
COPYRIGHT, 1899, 1900,
BY WALTER BESANT.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A REMOTE ANCESTOR 1
II. WHAT HE WANTED 24
III. SOMETHING TO COME 49
IV. THE COMPLETE SUPPLY 59
V. A LEARNED PROFESSION 74
VI. THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL 90
VII. THE CHILD OF SORROWS 103
VIII. IN THE LAND OF BEECHES 118
IX. MARY ANNE 151
X. A DINNER AT THE CLUB 164
XI. THE BOOK OF EXTRACTS 174
XII. ON THE SITE 202
XIII. A COMPROMISE 224
XIV. CONSULTATION 232
XV. “BARLOW BROTHERS” 248
XVI. AND ANOTHER CAME 258
XVII. YET ANOTHER! 278
XVIII. THE LIGHT THAT BROKE 290
XIX. THE SIGNS OF CHANGE 306
XX. HE SPEAKS AT LAST 322
XXI. THE WILL 341
PREFACE
It is perhaps well to explain that this story first appeared as a serial
early in 1899: that on revision it was found desirable partly to rewrite
certain chapters and to enlarge upon certain points. The structure of
the story, the characters, and the situations remain unaltered.
The question with which the story deals is not fully answered. It is one
of those questions which can never be answered; from time to time every
man must ask himself why the innocent must suffer, and do suffer every
day and in every generation, for the follies and the sins of their
forefathers. Every man must find his own answer, or must acknowledge
sorrowfully that he can find none. I venture to offer in these pages an
answer that satisfies myself. It substitutes consequence for punishment,
and puts effect that follows cause in place of penalties. And, as I hope
is made plain, it seems to me that I have no less an authority for this
view than the greatest of the Prophets of Israel. The consequences of
ancestral and paternal actions may be a blessing and a help: or they may
be a curse and a burden for generations; in either case they are
consequences which can only affect the body, or the mind, or the social
position of the descendants. They may make ambition impossible: they may
make action impossible: they may keep a man down among the rank and
file: but they cannot do more. The Prophet defines and limits their
power. And the consequences, whatever they are, may be made a ladder for
the soul to rise or a weight to drag it down. In the pages which follow
they are shown as to some a ladder, but to others a way of descent.
W. B.
UNITED UNIVERSITY CLUB,
_June, 1900_.
THE FOURTH GENERATION
CHAPTER I
A REMOTE ANCESTOR
It was a morning of early March, when a northeast wind ground together
the dry branches on which as yet there were no signs of coming spring;
the sky was covered by a grey cloud of one even shade, with no gleams of
light or streak of blue, or abatement or mitigation of the sombre hue;
the hedges showed as yet no flowers, not even the celandine; the earth
had as yet assumed no early vernal softening; there were no tender
shoots; dolefully the birds cowered on the branches, or flew up into the
ivy on the wall, where they waited for a milder time, with such patience
as hunger only half appeased would allow. Those who lived upon berries
and buds remembered with anxiety that they had already eaten up all the
haws and stripped the currant bushes of all their buds, and must now go
further afield; those who hunt the helpless chrysalis, and the slug and
the worm and the creeping creatures of the field, reflected that in such
weather it was impossible to turn over the hard earth in search of the
former, or to expect that the latter would leave their winter quarters
on such a day. At such a time, which for all created things is far worse
than any terrors offered by King Frost, the human creatures who go
abroad wrap themselves in their warmest, and hurry about their business
in haste, to finish it and get under shelter again.
The south front of the house looked down upon a broad terrace paved with
red bricks; a balustrade of brick ran along the edge of the terrace; a
short but nobly designed and dignified flight of stairs led into the
garden, which began with a broad lawn. The house itself, of the early
eighteenth century, was stately and spacious; it consisted of two
stories only; it had narrow and very high windows; above the first-floor
windows ran a row of small circular louvres set in the roof, which was
of a high pitch and of red tiles; the chimneys were arranged in artistic
groups or stacks. The house had somewhat of a foreign appearance; it was
one of considerable pretension; it was a house which wanted to be
surrounded by ancient trees, by noble gardens and stately lawns, and to
be always kept deep in the country, far away from town houses and
streets; in the surroundings of a city, apart from gardens, lawns, park
and lordly trees, it would have been out of place and incongruous. The
warm red brick of which it was built had long since mellowed with age;
yellow lichen clung to the walls here and there; over one wing, that of
the west, ivy grew, covering the whole of that end of the house.
The gardens were more stately than the house itself. They began with a
most noble lawn. On one side grew two cedars of Lebanon, sweeping the
bare earth with their drooping branches. On the other side rose three
glorious walnut-trees. The space between was a bowling-green, on which
no flower-beds had ever been permitted. Beyond the bowling-green,
however, were flower-beds in plenty. There were also box-trees cut into
the old-fashioned shapes which one only sees in old-fashioned gardens.
Beyond these was a narrow plantation of shrubs, mostly evergreen. Then
stretched out, in order, the ample kitchen-gardens, the crowded orchard,
and the “glass.” Here, also, were ranged the beehives in a row, for the
owners of the house were bee-masters as well as gardeners.
The whole was stately. One was filled with admiration and respect for so
noble a house, so richly set, only by walking along the road outside the
park and gazing upon the house from a distance. There were, however,
certain bounds imposed upon the admiration and respect of the visitor.
These were called for, in fact, by the gardens, and the lawns, and the
“glass,” as they must have been in the past. As for the garden of the
present, it was difficult even to guess when the hand of man, the spade
of the gardener, had last touched any part of the place. Everything was
overgrown; weeds covered the ground which had once been beds of
asparagus and celery; the strawberry plants fought for existence with
thistles, and maintained it, by the sacrifice of fruit; couch grass and
those thistles, with shepherd’s-purse and all the weeds of the field,
covered and concealed the flower-beds. The lanes and walks were covered
ways, long since rendered impassable by reason of branches that had shot
across them; the artificial shapes of the box-trees, formerly so trim
and precise, showed cloudy and mysterious through the branches which had
grown up outside them; the bowling-green was covered with coarse grass
never mown from year to year. In the glass houses the doors stood open:
the glass was broken; the vines grew wild, pushing their way through the
broken panes. There could be no respect possible for a garden in such a
condition. Yet, the pity of it! the pity of it! So fine a place as it
had been, as it might again become, if gardeners were once more ordered
to restore it to its ancient splendours!
If one turned from the garden and walked towards the house, he would
notice, first, that the stairs of brick leading to the terrace were a
good deal battered and broken; that many bricks had been displaced, that
weeds grew between the bricks, that in the balustrade there were places
where the square brick pillars were broken away; that if he mounted the
stairs, the brick pavement of the terrace showed holes and damaged
places here and there; that if he looked at the house itself he would
discern there, as well as in the garden, a certain air of neglect and
decay. The window-frames wanted painting, the door wanted painting,
there were no curtains or blinds visible anywhere; one or two panes of
glass were broken, and not even patched. Stately, even in decay, were
house and gardens; but the spectator shivered, as one shivers at the
sight of age and decay and death hovering over what should still be
rejoicing in the strength of manhood.
On this morning, when the cold of winter ushered in the deceitful
spring, a man was walking to and fro on the brick terrace. He was a man
very far advanced in life. Cold as he was, he wore no overcoat; he had
no wrapper or handkerchief round his neck; he wore no gloves.
When one looked more closely, he was not only advanced in years: he was
full of years--overfull, running over. His great age was apparent in the
innumerable lines of his face; not in the loss of his hair, for his
abundant white locks fell flowing, uncut and untrimmed, upon his
shoulders, while a full white beard lay over his ample chest. His age
was shown by the heightening of the cheek-bones and the increased
prominence of the nose, in the sunken mouth, and the thin lips, and the
deep-set eyes. But though his face had been roughly handled by time, his
frame seemed to have escaped any touch. Old as he was, he bore himself
upright still; he walked with a firm, if not an elastic, step; he
carried a stick, but did not use it. He was still six feet four, or
even more, in stature; his shoulders were still broad, his back was not
curved, nor was his huge, strong body bowed, nor were his strong legs
bent or weakened. Nothing could be more anomalous than the difference
between the man’s face, chipped and lined and covered with curves and
diagrams, like an Ordnance Survey map, and his figure, still so strong,
so erect, so vigorous.
He walked from one end of the terrace to the other rapidly, and, so to
speak, resolutely. Then he turned and walked back. He look neither to
one side nor to the other; he was absorbed in some kind of meditation,
for his face was set. It was a stern face naturally; the subject of his
thoughts made it, perhaps, still harder and more stern. He wore a kind
of shooting-jacket, a broad-brimmed felt hat, stout boots fit for the
fields, and leggings, as if he were going to take out his gun, and he
carried his stick as if it had been a gun. A masterful man--that was
apparent at the outset; aggressive--that was also apparent at the
moment; defiant--of what? of whom? Evidently a man built originally as a
fighting man, endowed with great courage and enormous strength;
probably, also, with a quick temper; retaining still the courage, though
some of the strength had gone, and the fighting temperament, though his
fighting days were done.
There was no sound about the place--no clatter of servants over their
work, no footsteps in the house or outside it, no trampling of horses
from the stables, or sight of gardeners working quietly among the
forlorn flower-beds: all was silent. And the cold wind whistled, and the
old man, without the common protection from the wintry wind, walked
methodically and rapidly from east to west and from west to east.
So he went on all the morning, hour after hour, untiring over this
meaningless exercise. He began it at nine, and at half-past twelve he
was still marching in this aimless manner, turning neither to the right
nor to the left, and preserving unchanged that fixed expression which
might have meant patience--a very old man has to be patient--or it might
have been, as I have called it, defiance: a man who has known
misfortunes sometimes acquires this expression of defiance, as one who
bids Fortune do her very worst, and, when she can do no more, still
repeats with courage, ‘Come what may.’
In the distance, half a mile or so away, was a clock in a church-tower.
If one listened from the garden, one might hear the striking of the
hours; without waiting for it and expecting it, one would not hear the
clock at all. A melodious clock at a distance falls in with the general
whisper of the atmosphere. We call it silence, but, indeed, there is no
such thing in Nature. Silence would drive us mad. In the country we hear
a gentle whisper, tuneful and soothing, and we say it is the sweet
silence of the country; but it is not--it is the blend of all the
country sounds.
The morning dragged on slowly. The beat of the old man’s footstep on the
terrace was as regular as the ticking of a clock. Neither in his
carriage, nor in his pace, nor in his face was there the least change.
He walked like a machine, and his face was as expressionless as any face
of idol or of an image.
It was about eleven o’clock that another step might have been heard. The
step of a man on dry branches and among dead leaves. The old man on the
terrace paid no attention: he made as if he heard nothing: when the
figure of a rustic emerged from the orchard and stood under the
walnut-trees, the old man of the terrace made as if he saw nothing.
The rustic was also well advanced in age, though far short of the tale
of years which belonged to the other. He was dressed as one who goes
afield: he walked as one who has spent his life in the ridges and
furrows of the ploughed field: he carried a spade over his shoulder.
Standing under the walnut-trees, he lowered his spade and laid his hands
upon the handle as if to support himself. And then he gazed upon the old
man of the terrace. He did not, after the wont of some men, pretend to
be at work and cast a furtive glance of curiosity. On the contrary, he
made no pretence at all: he leaned upon his spade, and he gazed boldly
and without any shame. He marked the steady and firm step of the man:
his own step was not half so firm or half so steady: he marked the
bearing of the man: his own back was bent and his shoulders lowered: he
marked the health and strength that still lay in his face: his own
cheeks were wrinkled and his eyes were dim. Presently he lifted his
spade to his shoulder and he turned away. “If I go first----” he said.
Whether he came or whether he departed, whether he walked in silence
over the coarse grass or snapped the twigs and rustled the dead leaves,
the old man of the terrace took no notice. He neither saw nor heard
anything.
Then the east wind continued dry and cold, and the birds chirped in
discomfort, and the branches in the orchard fell to grinding each other,
and the old man walked on. And the quarters struck from the church-tower
somewhere, not far off.
At the open door of the house, at about half-past twelve, there appeared
a young man dressed warmly, as was due to the weather. He was tall--over
six feet in height; his face resembled that of the old man strikingly;
he was certainly some close relation. He stood at the door looking on
while that walk, as dismal, as monotonous, as purposeless as that of
prisoners in their yard, went on minute after minute, hour after hour.
He stood there, not hour after hour, but for a full half-hour, watching
and wondering.
“Always and every day--and for all these years!”--to give words to his
thoughts. “Why this tramp day by day every morning; always alone, always
silent, seeing and not seeing, dead to outward things, apart from the
world, taking no interest in the world? No recluse in a vault could be
more lonely. No occupation; nothing to do; nothing to think about. Good
heavens! what does he think about? No books, no newspapers to read; no
letters to write. Why?”
The young man was the great-grandson of this ancient person: he was not
only the great-grandson, but the heir to the house and the estates which
belonged to the house: next to this old man he was the head of the
family. He therefore, as a mark of respect and a matter of duty, ran
down from London occasionally to see that his ancestor was properly
cared for and in health. He was also in communication with the
solicitors who managed the property.
It was a very curious case: from childhood the young man had been told
of the strange and eccentric great-grandfather. He lived alone: he had
no other servant than a woman with her daughter: he only saw them when
they brought his meals: he received no visitors: he never went out of
the house except to walk every morning, whatever the weather, for four
hours up and down the terrace: he never spoke even to his housekeeper:
if anyone spoke to him, he made no reply: he never read
anything--neither book nor paper: his affairs were in the hands of a
firm of solicitors in the neighbouring market-town: when they wanted his
signature to a cheque, they drew it and sent it in to him, when he
signed and returned it; when they consulted him concerning business, he
received their statements in writing, and replied with the greatest
brevity: there was no sign of mental derangement: so far as the
solicitors, the only persons who were able to speak on the subject,
understood, the man’s faculties were perfectly sound and his intellect
as clear as ever. Moreover, there was no sign upon him of any
hallucination, any melancholia, any mental trouble: if he maintained
silence, his face betrayed no perturbation. Day after day he presented
to the morning sun a calm and cloudless face: if he smiled not, neither
did he sigh.
Now, the most remarkable thing was that this eccentricity, which might
have been explained on the theory of great age and the loss of all his
friends and contemporaries, had been practised for nearly seventy years.
As a young man, quite a young man, he began this life, and he had
continued it ever since. The reason, his great-grandson had always
understood, was the shock caused by the sudden death of his wife.
Further than this he neither knew nor did he inquire. If one grows up in
presence of a certain strange line of conduct, it becomes accepted
without inquiry. The old man had become a solitary when this young man’s
grandfather was a boy: his grandfather, his father, and he himself had
always had before them the knowledge, if not the sight, of this
eccentricity. There was no curiosity in his mind at all about the
possible cause.
Seventy years! It is the whole life of the average man, and this
strange creature had spent the whole time alone, in silence, in
solitude, and without occupation. It was not the whole span of the man’s
own life, for he was now completing his ninety-fourth year.
From the distant church-tower came presently the striking of the
quarters followed by the stroke of one. At that moment an old woman came
out; she passed in front of the visitor in the doorway, and stood
watching to catch the eye of the master. She said nothing, but waited
there until he noticed her presence. Perhaps he was expecting her. He
stopped; the old woman retired; her master entered the house, taking no
notice whatever of the young man as he passed him; his eyes looked
through him with no gleam of recognition or even of intelligence as to
his presence. Yet this young man, the only one of all his descendants,
paid him a visit once a month or so to see if he was still in health.
He walked straight into the room which was the single sitting-room and
dining-room and living-room. It had been the library--a large room with
a north aspect, lofty, and at all times of the year rather dark and
cold. A good fire burned in the broad old-fashioned grate. Before the
fire was a small table--it had formerly stood in the window for a
reading or writing table; now it served as a table set there for the old
man’s meals. The cloth was, in fact, spread, and the early dinner laid
upon it--a plain dinner of steak, potatoes, and a bottle of port, which
is a beverage proper to old age; it warms and comforts; it pleases and
exhilarates; it imparts a sense of strength, and when the common forms
of food can no longer be taken, this generous drink supplies their
place. The walls were lined with shelves which were filled with books.
Evidently some former member of the family had been a scholar and a
bibliophile. The books were all bound in leather; the gilt of the titles
had mostly disappeared. If you took a volume from the shelf, you found
that it had parted from the binding; if not, it took advantage of the
movement to remove itself from the binding; if you examined the shelves
long enough, you would have found that there was not one book in the
whole library of a date later than 1829. Of all the thousands upon
thousands of books published in the seventy years since that time, not
one was in this library. For instance, the _Quarterly_ and _Edinburgh
Reviews_--they stood here bound; they stopped at 1829. The _Annual
Register_ was here also, bound; it stopped at 1829. And on this great
library table there were lying, as if for daily use, scattered volumes
and magazines which had been placed there for the reading of the house
in 1829. No one had touched the table since some time in that year. A
long low leather chair stood beside the fire--the leather was in rags
and tatters, worn to shreds; at the table was placed a splendid great
wooden chair, which looked like the chair of a hall-porter; the carpet
was in rags and tatters, except the part along the front of the
shelves; there it was whole, but its colour was faded. In front of the
fire was placed a common thick sheepskin.
The young man followed his ancestor into the library. He took a chair,
placed it by the fire, and sat down, his long legs curled, watching and
waiting. He had been in the same place before. The silence of the old
man, the meaningless look in his eyes, terrified him on the first
occasion. He was then unaccustomed to the manner of the man. He had
gradually grown accustomed to the sight; it no longer terrified him, and
he now sat in his place on the other side of the fire, resolved upon
making sure that the old man was properly cared for, properly fed,
properly clad, properly looked after in all respects, that his health
was good and that there was no need of seeking advice. He sat down
therefore, by the fire and looked on while the old man took his dinner.
The visitor, I have said, was the great-grandson of the recluse. He was
also the heir of his house and the future owner of the place and its
possessions. As for what he was by calling you shall hear presently.
Being the heir-presumptive, he assumed the duty of making these
occasional visits, which were received--as has been stated--in silence,
and with not the slightest show of recognition.
Without heeding his presence, then, the old man took his seat at the
table, lifted the cover, and began his dinner. It consisted every day of
the same dish. Perhaps there are not many men at ninety-four who can
devour every day a full-sized steak with potatoes and bread, and can
drink with it a whole bottle of port. Yet this is what the recluse did.
The descendant for his part made it his business that the port should be
of the best and that the steak should be “treated” scientifically, in
order to ensure its tenderness and juiciness.
The recluse took his food fast and eagerly. One could perceive that in
earlier days he must have enjoyed a great and noble power of putting
away beef. He took his steak with fierceness, he devoured an immense
quantity of bread, he drank his wine off in goblets as in the old days
he had tossed off the great glasses of beer. He did not sip the generous
wine, nor did he roll it about in his glass and hold it up to the light;
he drank it, as a child drinks water, unconsciously and yet eagerly,
regardless of the taste and careless of its qualities.
When the bottle was empty and there was nothing more to eat, he left the
wooden chair and cast his great length into the long easy-chair, where
he stretched out his legs towards the fire, and, leaning his head upon
his hand and his elbow on the arm of the chair, he gazed into the fire,
but with eyes which had in them no kind of expression. “Evidently,”
thought the spectator, “the old man has two senses left; he likes strong
meat and drink; he likes the physical comfort that they provide, and he
likes the warmth of a fire.” Then he rose slowly and stood with his
back to the fire, looking down upon his ancestor, and began a
remonstrance, which he repeated with variations on every visit.
“Sir,” he said, “I come to see you from time to time, as you know. I
come to make sure that you are cared for, and that you are well. I come
to see if anything can be done for you. On these occasions you never
fail to pretend that you do not see me. You make believe that I am not
present. You do see me; you know I am here; you know who I am; you know
why I am here. Very well. It is, I suppose, your humour to affect
silence and solitude. Nothing that I can say will, I fear, induce you to
break this silence.”
There was no sign of recognition, no reply, nor any change of movement.
“Why you have imposed upon yourself this lifelong misery I do not know,
nor shall I inquire. Perhaps I shall never know. It seems to me a great
mistake, whatever the cause--a sudden bereavement, I have always
understood. If it was in consequence of another person’s fault, or
another person’s misfortune, the waste and wreck of your own life would
not remove the cause; and if it was any fault of your own, such a wreck
and waste of life would only be an aggravation of the offence. But if it
was bereavement, surely it would be the manlier part to bear it and to
go on with the duties of life. However, as I do not know all the
circumstances, I have no right to speak on this point. It is too late,”
he went on, “to make up for all the years you have thrown away, but is
it too late for a change? Can you not, even now, at this late hour, go
back among your fellow-creatures and become human again, if it is only
for a year or two? I should say it was harder to continue this life of
loneliness and misery than to go back to the life for which you were
born.”
There was no answer.
“I have been over the house this morning,” the young man went on
pitilessly. “You have allowed it to fall into a shameful condition. The
damp has got into pictures and wall-paper; it will need many thousands
to restore the place to a condition proper to a gentleman’s house. Don’t
you think you ought to spend that money and live in it as a gentleman of
your position ought to do?”
There was still no answer. But, then, the heir expected none.
The old man lifted his head from his hand and dropped it back on the
chair. His eyes closed, his hands dropped, his breathing was soft and
regular; he was asleep.
His great-grandson still stood over him. This kind of scene affected him
but little, because it occurred on every visit. He arrived at eleven or
so; he walked across the park; he saw the old man doing his morning
tramp as usual; he spent an hour going over the empty, desolate house;
he watched the old man taking his walk; he followed him into the
library; he watched him taking his food; he stood over him afterwards
and addressed his remonstrances. This was always received, as George the
Third used to receive the remonstrances of the City of London, in
silence discouraging. And always in the midst of the remonstrance the
patriarch fell asleep.
The young man waited awhile, watching his great-grandfather of
ninety-four. There is very little resemblance between a man of that age
and himself at twenty-six. Yet there may be some. And no one could look
upon that old man without becoming conscious that in early manhood he
must have been of singular and wonderful comeliness--full of strength
and vigour, of fine proportions, of noble stature, and of remarkable
face and head. All these things the descendant possessed as well, but in
less marked degree, with more refinement, perhaps the refinement of
scholarship and culture, but with less strength. He had done what he
came to do; he had delivered his message; it was a failure; he expected
nothing less. He might as well go; there was nothing more to do, or to
be obtained, by staying.
But then a very remarkable event happened. He heard for the first time
the voice of his great-grandfather. He was to hear it once more, and
only once more. No one, except himself on this occasion, had heard it
for nearly seventy years.
The patriarch moved in his sleep, his fingers twitched, his legs jerked,
he rolled his head. Then he sat up and clutched the arms of his chair;
his face became twisted and distorted, as if under the possession of
some evil spirit. He half rose to his feet, still holding to the arms of
the chair, and he spoke. His voice was rough and harsh, as if rusted
with long disuse. His eyes remained fixed, yet his attitude was that of
someone whom he saw--with whom he was conversing. What he said was this:
“That will end it.”
Then he sank back. The distortion went out of him. He laid his head upon
the chair; calm and peace, as of a child, returned to his face; he was
again asleep--if he had been awake.
“A dream,” said the looker on. But he remembered the words, which came
back to him, and remained with him--why, he could not tell.
He looked about the room. He thought of the strange, solitary,
meaningless life, the monotonous life, the useless life, that this
patriarch had lived for so many years. Seventy long years! This recluse
during the whole of that time--for seventy long years--had never got
outside the walls of his garden; he had seen none of his old friends;
only his great-grandson might from time to time visit the place to
ascertain if he were still living. He had done no kind of work during
that long time; he had not even put a spade into the ground; he had
never opened a book or seen a newspaper; he knew nothing that had
happened. Why, for him the world was still the world before the Reform
Act. There were no railways, there were no telegraph-wires; none of the
inventions and improvements and new ideas and new customs were known to
him, or suspected by him; he asked for nothing, he cared for nothing, he
took interest in nothing: he never spoke. Oh, the wretchedness of it!
The folly of it! What excuse could there be--what reason--sufficient for
this throwing away of a life in which so much might have been done? What
defence could a man have for thus deserting from the Army of Humanity?
As long as this young man remembered anything, he had heard of this old
man: it was always the same story; there was a kind of family bogie, who
wore always the same clothes, and took the same walk every morning and
slept every afternoon. Sometimes his mother would tell him, when he was
a boy, scraps of history about the Recluse. Long ago, in the reign of
George the Fourth, the gloomy solitary was a handsome, spirited, popular
young man; fond of hunting, fond of shooting and fishing and all
out-door sports, yet not a boor or a barbarian; one who had passed
through the University with credit, and had learning and cultivation. He
had a fine library which he used, he enjoyed conversations with
scholars, he had travelled on the Continent, a thing which then was
rare; he was thinking of entering the House. He had a fine, though not a
large, estate, and a lovely house and stately gardens. No one in the
county had greater reason to be satisfied with his lot, no one had a
clearer right to look forward to the future with confidence, than Mr.
Algernon Campaigne. The boy remembered all this talk.
He now contemplated the sleeping figure with a curious blend or mixture
of emotions. There was pity in the blend, there was contempt in it,
there was something of the respect or reverence due to an ancestor. One
does not often get the chance of paying respect to so remote an ancestor
as a great-grandfather. The ancestor lay back in his chair, his head
turned a little on one side; his face, perfectly calm, had something of
the transparent waxen look that belongs to the newly dead.
The young man went on thinking of what he had heard of this old man, who
was at once the pride and the shame of the family. No one can help being
proud of having a recluse, an anchorite, in the family--it is uncommon,
like an early Shakespeare; moreover, the recluse was the head of the
family, and lived in the place where the family had always lived from
time beyond the memory of man.
He remembered his mother, a sad-faced widow, and his grandmother,
another sad-faced widow. A certain day came back to him--it was a few
weeks after his father’s early death, when he was a child of seven--when
the two women sat together in sorrow, and wept together, and conversed,
in his presence--but the child could not understand--and said things
which he recalled at this moment for the first time.
“My dear,” said the elder lady, “we are a family of misfortune.”
“But why--why--why?” asked the other. “What have we done?”
The elder lady shook her head. “Things are done,” she said, “that are
never suspected. Nobody knows, nobody finds out, but the arm of the Lord
is stretched out and vengeance falls, if not upon the guilty, then upon
his children and his grandchildren unto the third and fourth generation.
It has fallen heavily upon that old man--for the sins of his father,
perhaps--and upon us--and upon the children----”
“The helpless, innocent children? Oh! It is cruel.”
“We have Scripture for it.”
These words--this conversation--came back suddenly and unexpectedly to
the young man. He had never remembered them before.
“Who did what?” he asked. “The guilty person cannot be this venerable
patriarch, because this affliction has fallen upon him and still abides
with him after seventy years. But they spoke of something else. Why do
these old words come back to me? Ancestor, sleep on.”
In the hall he saw the old housekeeper, and stopped to ask her after the
master.
“He spoke just now,” he said.
“Spoke, sir? Spoke? The master spoke?”
“He sat up in his sleep and spoke.”
“What in the name o’ mercy did he say?”
“He said, quite clearly, ‘That will end it.’”
“Say it again.”
He said it again.
“Sir,” she said, “I don’t know what he means. It’s most time to end it.
Master Leonard, something dreadful will happen. It is the first time for
seventy years that he have spoken one single word.”
“It was in his sleep.”
“The first time for seventy years! Something dreadful, for sure, is
going to happen.”
CHAPTER II
WHAT HE WANTED
In the lightest and sunniest rooms of an unpretending flat forming part
of the Bendor Mansions, Westminster, sat a young man of six-and-twenty.
You have already seen him when he called upon his irresponsive ancestor
at the family seat in the shire of Buckingham. He was now in his study
and seated at what used to be called his desk. This simple piece of the
scholar’s furniture has long since given way to a table as big as the
dimensions of the room permit--in this case one of eight feet long and
five broad. It did not seem to be any too large for the object of its
construction, because it was completely covered with books, papers,
Blue-books, French and German journals, as well as Transactions of
English learned and scientific societies. There was no confusion. The
papers were lying in orderly arrangement; the books stood upright along
the back of the table facing the writer. They were all books of
political history, political economy, or of reference. A revolving
bookcase stood ready at hand filled with other books of reference.
These, it might have been observed, were principally concerned with
statistics of trade--histories of trade, books on subjects connected
with trade, Free Trade, Protection, the expansion of trade, and points
connected with manufactures, industries, exports, and imports.
Mr. Leonard Campaigne was already in the House. It would be too much to
say that he had already arrived at a position of authority, but he was
so far advanced that on certain subjects of the more abstruse kind,
which he endeavoured to make his own and to speak upon them with the
manner of a specialist, he was heard with some deference and reported at
some length. More than this is not permitted to six-and-twenty.
These subjects were such as demand a clear head, untiring industry, the
grasp of figures, and the power of making them attractive. They also
required a prodigious memory. All these valuable qualities this young
man possessed. At Cambridge, where he went out in mathematics, he tore
himself reluctantly away from examiners who gave him all they could,
with tears that it could be no more than “Part II., Division I., Class
I.,” and wept that they could not, as all good examiners hope to do
before long, carry their examinations on to Part III., divided into
three parts and each part into three classes, and then to Part IV., also
divided into three divisions and each division into three classes, and
so to go on examining their candidates, always decreasing in number,
once a year for the rest of their natural lives, ending with a
disgraceful pluck at eighty.
“Part II., Division I., Class I.” No one can do better than that. I
believe that only one man in Leonard’s year did as well. Therefore he
went down having a very good record and a solid reputation for ability
to begin with. As to private fortune, he was independent, with an income
derived from his mother of about £800 a year, and with those
expectations which, as you have seen, were certainties. He also had a
Fellowship worth at least five shillings a year, it having gone up
recently in consequence of an unexpected looking-up or recovery in the
agricultural interest. He came up to London, therefore, thus adequately
equipped, entered at the Bar, got called, without any intention of
practising, looked out for a borough, nursed it carefully for a
twelvemonth, and got in, without a contest, at a by-election, on the
Liberal side. So far he had followed the traditions of his family. He
was the third, in sequence of father to son, of University distinction.
His grandfather, son of the dumb recluse whom you have already seen, had
also done well at Cambridge, and had also entered the House, and had
also made a highly successful beginning when he was cut off prematurely
at the early age of thirty-two. His father, who in his turn
distinguished himself at the University, also in his turn entered the
House, and was also in his turn considered a young man of promise, when
he, too, was carried off at about the same age. There were moments when
Leonard asked himself whether this untoward fate was to be his as well.
There were, indeed, special reasons for asking this question, of which
he as yet knew nothing. Meantime, he asked no questions of the future,
nor did he concern himself about the decrees of fate.
The study was pleasantly furnished with two or three easy chairs and the
student’s wooden chair. Books lined the walls; two or three cups stood
on the mantelshelf, showing that the tenant of the room was no pale
student, consumer of the midnight oil; above it there was a drawing of a
country house, the same house which you have already seen. One observed
also, with pleasure, further proofs that the occupant had his hours of
relaxation. Tobacco and that vulgar thing the briar-root were
conspicuously present. That a young man who hoped to rise by the most
severe of all studies should habitually smoke a pipe should be, to any
well-regulated mind, a most promising circumstance. The study opened
into the dining-room, which was a dining-room only, and a formal, even a
funereal place, with a few books and a few pictures--evidently not a
room which was inhabited. The tenant took his breakfast in it, and
sometimes his luncheon, and that was all. There were two bedrooms;
beyond them, the kitchen and the room for the man and wife who “did” for
Mr. Campaigne.
The occupant of the flat presently laid down his pen, and sat up
turning his face to the light. Then he rose and paced the chamber.
He was a young man of somewhat remarkable appearance. In stature, as you
have seen, he was much above the average, being at least six feet two
and of strong build, though not so massive a man as his
great-grandfather, the hermit of Campaigne Park. His features were good
and strongly marked; his forehead was broad rather than high; his eyes,
small rather than large, were keen and bright, the eyebrows were nearly
straight. His appearance at this moment was meditative; but, then, he
was actually meditating; in conversation and in debate his expression
was alert, and even eager. He did not, in fact, belong to that school
which admires nothing, desires nothing, and believes in nothing. He
believed strongly, for instance, that the general standard of happiness
could be raised by wise laws--not necessarily new laws--and by good
education--not necessarily that of the School Boards. And he ardently
desired to play his part in the improvement of that standard. That is a
good solid lump of belief to begin with. For a statesman such a solid
lump of belief is invaluable.
Presently he sat down again and renewed the thread of his
investigations. After an hour or so he threw aside his pen; he had
accomplished what he had proposed to do that morning. If a man is going
to succeed, you will generally find that he knows what he means to do
and the time that he will take over it, and that he sets to work with
directness as well as resolution.
The task was finished, then, and before twelve o’clock Leonard pushed
back his chair and sprang to his feet with a sigh of relief. Much as men
may love work, it is always a satisfaction to get it done. On the table
beside his papers lay a little pile of letters not yet opened. He took
up one and opened it. The letter was from the editor of a leading
magazine, accepting a proposal to contribute a paper on a certain
economic theory. Leonard smiled with satisfaction. The _Nineteenth
Century_ is the ladder of ambition. It is by means of this magazine, and
of one or two like unto it, that the ambitious young man is enabled to
put himself forward as a student, if not yet an authority, on any
subject--a more rapid way of advance than by means of the House.
Leonard had already written on this subject, and with success, as a
student; he was now to write upon it with authority. You will understand
from all this that Leonard was a young man whose mind was fully
occupied, even absorbed, with work which was at once his greatest
delight and the ladder for his ambitions; that he occupied a good
position in society, and that his work, his thoughts, his relaxations
were those of one who lived and moved habitually on a high level, free
from meanness or sordid cares or anxieties of any kind.
On the same staircase and the same floor was a flat exactly
corresponding in every particular to his own except that the windows
looked out towards the opposite pole. This flat, into which we will not
penetrate, was occupied by a young lady, who lived in it, just as
Leonard lived in his, with a man and his wife to look after her. People
may be neighbours in a “Mansion” and yet not know each other. It is not
likely that Leonard would have made the acquaintance of Miss Constance
Ambry but for the fortunate circumstance that he belonged to the same
club as well as the same collection of flats; that he was introduced to
her at the club; that he met her at dinner day after day; that he
speedily discovered the fact that they were neighbours; that they became
friends; that they often dined together at the club, and that they
frequently walked home together.
It will be understood, therefore, that Miss Constance Ambry would have
been called, a few years ago, an emancipated young woman. The word has
already become belated; in a year or two it will be obsolete.
Emancipation has ceased to carry any reproach or to excite any
astonishment. Many girls and unmarried women live alone in flats and
mansions and similar places; they have their latch-key; they marvel that
there could have been formerly a time when the latch-key was withheld
from girls; they go where they like; they see what they wish to see;
they meet people they wish to meet. The emancipated woman twenty years
ago thought it necessary, in order to prove her superiority of
intellect, to become at least an atheist. That was part of the
situation; other prancings and curvettings there were; now she has
settled down, the question of comparative intellect being no longer
discussed, and goes on, in many respects, almost as if she were still in
the ancient House of Bondage. In this case there were strong reasons,
comfortably running into a good many hundreds a year, why Constance
Ambry should dare to go her own way and live at her own will. She began
her independent career by three years at Girton. During her studentship
she distinguished herself especially by writing critical essays, in
which it was remarked that the passion of Love, as depicted and dwelt
upon by poets, was entirely ignored by the critic; not so much, her
friends explained, from maidenly reserve, as from a complete inability
to sympathize even with the woman’s point of view--which, indeed, women
who write poetry and love-songs have always done their utmost to
conceal, or mendaciously to represent in the same terms and under the
same form as the masculine passion. On leaving Girton she accepted a
post as Lecturer on English Literature in a women’s college. It was a
poorly-paid office, and hitherto it had been difficult to find a good
lecturer to keep it. Constance could afford not only to take it, but
also to make it the sole object of her work and thoughts. One is pleased
to add that her ideas of the liberty of women included their liberty to
dress as well as they can afford. She presented to her admiring and
envious class the constant spectacle of a woman dressed as she should
be--not splendidly, but beautifully. The girls regarded their lecturer,
clad, like a summer garden, in varied beauty, with far greater awe than
they had entertained for her predecessor, who was dumpy, wore her hair
short, and appeared habitually in a man’s jacket.
The two were friends close and fast. Leonard was not afraid of
compromising her by taking tea in her drawing-room, nor was Constance
afraid of compromising herself by venturing alone into the opposite flat
if she wanted to talk about anything. It is a dangerous position even
for a young man whose ambitions absorb his thoughts; who has put the
question of marriage into the background--to be taken up at some
convenient moment not yet arrived. It is dangerous also for a girl even
when she is emancipated.
As regards the young man the usual consequences happened. First he
perceived that it gave him a peculiar pleasure to sit beside her at
dinner and to walk home with her: then he became disappointed if he did
not meet her: presently he found himself thinking a great deal about
her: he also detected himself in the act of confiding his ambitions to
her sympathetic ear--this is one of the worst symptoms possible. He had
now arrived at that stage when the image of the girl is always present
in a young man’s mind: when it sometimes interferes with work: when an
explanation becomes absolutely necessary if there is to be any peace or
quiet work. The Victorian lover no longer speaks or writes about flames
and darts, but he is still possessed and held by the dominant presence
in his mind, night and day, of his mistress.
In these matters, there comes a time, the one moment, when words have to
be spoken. As with a pear which has half an hour of perfect ripeness, so
in love there is a day--an hour--a moment--when the words that mean so
much must be spoken. It is a most unfortunate thing if the lover chooses
the wrong moment. It is also very unfortunate if the ripeness is on one
side only.
Leonard Campaigne made this mistake. Being a self-contained young man,
he thought about himself a great deal more than he thought of other
people: it is not necessarily a sign of selfishness or of
obtuseness--not at all; it is a defect with men of strong natures and
ambitious aims to think habitually about themselves and their aims.
Therefore, while he himself was quite ripe for a declaration, he did not
ask himself whether the ripeness was also arrived at by the other person
concerned. Unfortunately, it was not. The other person concerned was
still in the critical stage: she could consider her friend from the
outside: she felt, as yet, no attraction towards the uncritical
condition, the absorption of love.
Leonard did not suspect this arrest, so to speak, of development. He
assumed that the maiden’s heart had advanced _pari passu_ with his. He
wrote a letter, therefore, a method of wooing which is less embarrassing
than that of speech--I believe that girls prefer the latter. Certainly,
it is difficult to be glowing in a letter; nor, if there should be any
doubt, is a letter so persuasive as the voice, aided by the pressure of
the hand and the ardour of the eye.
“MY DEAR FRIEND,
“I am about to imperil a situation the preservation of which is my
greatest happiness. You have allowed me to talk to you freely about
my cherished ambitions. You have even done me the honour of
consulting me about your own. I would not throw away this position
of confidence for any consideration whatever. Let me, however,
venture to put before you a simple question. I ask you to consider
the possibility of a change in this situation. This change--there
is only one which we can consider--would not in any way affect this
confidence, but should draw it more closely. How it would affect me
I will tell you if you allow me.
“Your friend,
“L. C.”
Not a loverlike letter at all, is it? Yet there were possibilities about
it. You see, he held out the hope that more would be told. The young
lady answered by asking a few days for consideration. She was to send or
bring her reply that morning.
Constance knocked at the door. She came in from her rooms without a hat.
She took a chair--Leonard’s own wooden chair--and sat down, beginning to
talk about other things, as if such a matter as a proposal of marriage
was of no importance. But that was only her way, which was always
feminine.
“I was told last night,” she said, “at the club--fancy, at the
club!--that I have been compromising myself by dining night after night
with you and letting you walk home with me. That is their idea of
woman’s liberty. She is not to form friendships. Don’t abuse our
members. Pray remember, Leonard, that I do not in the least mind what
they say.”
At the first glance at her face, one could understand that this girl was
not in the least alarmed as to what women might say of her. It was a
proud face. There are many kinds of pride--she might have been proud of
her family, had she chosen that form; or of her intellect and
attainments; or of her beauty--which was remarkable. She was not proud
in any such way; she had that intense self-respect which is pride of the
highest kind. “She was a woman, therefore, to be wooed,” but the wooer
must meet and equal that intense self-respect. This pride made her seem
cold. Everybody thought her intensely cold. Leonard was perhaps the only
man who knew by a thousand little indications that she was very far from
cold. The pose of her head, the lines of the mouth, the intellectual
look in her eyes, the clear-cut regularity of her features, proclaimed
her pride and seemed to proclaim her coldness.
“I always remember what you say, Constance. And now tell me what you
came to say.”
She rose from the chair and remained standing. She began by looking at
the things over the mantel as if she was greatly interested in tobacco
and cigarettes. Then she turned upon him abruptly, joining her hands.
“What I came to say was this.”
He read the answer in her face, which was frank, hard, and without the
least sign of embarrassment, confusion, or weakening. It is not with
such a look that a girl gives herself to her lover. However, he
pretended not to understand.
“What is it?”
“Well, it is just this. I have thought about it for a whole week, and it
won’t do. That is my answer. It won’t do for either of us. I like you
very much. I like our present relations. We dine together at the club. I
come in here without fuss. You come to my place without fuss. We talk
and walk and go about together. I do not suppose that I shall ever
receive this kind of invitation from any man whom I regard so much. And
yet----”
“‘Yet!’ Why this obstructive participle? I bring you”--but he spoke with
coldness due to the discouragement in the maiden’s face--“the fullest
worship of yourself.”
She shook her head and put up her hand. “Oh no!--no!” she said.
“Worship? I want no worship. What do you mean by worship?”
“I mean the greatest respect--the greatest reverence--the greatest
admiration----”
“For what?”
“For Constance Ambry.”
“Thank you, my friend. Some of the respect I accept with gratitude, not
all of it. Still, I dare say, at this moment, you mean it all. But
consider a little. Do you worship my intellect? Confess, now. You know
that it is distinctly inferior to your own. I know it, I say. If you
came to me pretending to worship an intellect inferior to your own, I
should lose my respect for you, or I should lose my faith in your
truthfulness. It cannot be my intellect. Is it, then, worship of my
genius? But I have no genius. And that you know very well. Is it worship
of my attainments? They are far below most of the scholars of your
University and the Fellows of your college. You cannot possibly pretend
to worship my attainments----”
“Let me worship Constance Ambry herself.”
She laughed lightly.
“It would be very foolish of you to do so. For you could not do so
without lowering your standards and your character, by pretending what
is not the case. For I am no higher than yourself in any of the virtues
possible to us both: not a bit higher: I believe that my standards of
everything--truth, honour, courage--patience--all--all--everything are
like my intellect, distinctly lower than your own. Such is the respect
which I entertain for you. Therefore, my friend, do not, pray, think of
offering me worship.”
“You wrong yourself, Constance. Your nature is far higher than mine.”
She laughed again. “If I were to marry you, in a week you would find out
your mistake--and then you might fall into the opposite mistake.”
“How am I to make you understand?”
“I do understand. There is something that attracts you. Men are so, I
suppose. It is face, or voice, or figure, or manner. No one can tell why
a man is attracted.”
“Constance, is it possible that you are not conscious of your beauty?”
She looked him full in the face, and replied slowly: “I wish I
understood things. I see very well that men are more easily moved to
love than women. They make the most appalling mistakes: I know of
some--mistakes not to be remedied. Do not let us two make a mistake.”
“It would be no mistake, believe me.”
“I don’t know. There is the question of beauty. Women are not fascinated
by the beauty of other women. A man is attracted by a face, and
straightway attributes to the soul behind that face all the virtues
possible. Women can behold a pretty face without believing that it is
the stamp of purity and holiness. Besides--a face! Why, in a dozen
years what will it be like? And in thirty years---- Oh! Terrible to
think of!”
“Never, Constance. You could never be otherwise than wholly beautiful.”
She shook her head again, unconvinced. “I do not wish to be worshipped,”
she repeated. “Other women may like it. To me it would be a humiliation.
I don’t want worship; I want rivalry. Let me work among those who truly
work, and win my own place. As for my own face, and those so-called
feminine attractions, I confess that I am not interested in them. Not in
the least.”
“If you will only let me go on admiring----”
“Oh!” she shook that admirable head impatiently, “as much as you
please.”
Leonard sighed. Persuasion, he knew well, was of no use with this young
lady; she knew her own mind.
“I will ask no more,” he said. “Your heart is capable of every
emotion--except one. You are deficient in the one passion which, if you
had it, would make you divine.”
She laughed scornfully. “Make me divine?” she repeated. “Oh, you talk
like a man--not a scholar and a philosopher, but a mere man.” She left
the personal side of the question, and began to treat it generally. “The
whole of poetry is disfigured with the sham divinity, the counterfeit
divinity, of the woman. I do not want that kind of ascribed divinity.
Therefore I do not regret the absence of this emotion which you so much
desire; I can very well do without it.” She spoke with conviction, and
she looked the part she played--cold, loveless, without a touch of
Venus. “I was lecturing my class the other day on this very subject. I
took Herrick for my text; but, indeed, there are plenty of poets who
would do as well. I spoke of this sham divinity. I said that we wanted
in poetry, as in human life, a certain sanity, which can only exist in a
condition of controlled emotion.”
It was perhaps a proof that neither lover nor maiden really felt the
power of the passion called Love that they could thus, at what to some
persons would be a supreme moment, drop into a cold philosophic
treatment of the subject.
“Perhaps love does not recognise sanity.”
“Then love had better be locked up. I pointed out in my lecture that
these conceits and extravagancies may be very pretty set to the music of
rhythm and rhyme and phrase, but that in the conduct of life they can
have no place except in the brains of men who have now ceased to exist.”
“Ceased to exist?”
“I mean that the ages of ungoverned passion have died out. To dwell
perpetually on a mere episode in life, to magnify its importance, to
deify the poet’s mistress--that, I told my class, is to present a false
view of life and to divert poetry from its proper function.”
“How did your class receive this view?”
“Well--you know--the average girl, I believe, likes to be worshipped. It
is very bad for her, because she knows she isn’t worth it and that it
cannot last. But she seems to like it. My class looked, on the whole, as
if they could not agree with me.”
“You would have no love in poetry?”
“Not extravagant love. These extravagancies are not found in the nobler
poets. They are not in Milton, nor in Pope, nor in Cowper, nor in
Wordsworth, nor in Browning. I have not, as you say, experienced the
desire for love. In any case, it is only an episode. Poetry should be
concerned with the whole life.”
“So should love.”
“Leonard,” she said, the doubt softening her face, “there may be
something deficient in my nature. I sincerely wish that I could
understand what you mean by desiring any change.” No, she understood
nothing of the sacred passion. “But there must be no difference in
consequence. I could not bear to think that my answer even to such a
trifle should make any difference between us.”
“Such a trifle! Constance, you are wonderful.”
“But it seems to me, if the poets are right, that men are always ready
to make love: if one woman fails, there are plenty of others.”
“Would not that make a difference between us?”
“You mean that I should be jealous?”
“I could not possibly use the word ‘jealous’ in connection with you,
Constance.”
She considered the point from an outside position. “I should not be
jealous because you were making love to some unseen person, but I should
not like another woman standing here between us. I don’t think I could
stay here.”
“You give me hope, Constance.”
“No. It is only friendship. Because, you see, the whole pleasure of
having a friend like yourself--a man friend--is unrestrained and open
conversation. I like to feel free with you. And I confess that I could
not do this if another woman were with us.”
She was silent awhile. She became a little embarrassed. “Leonard,” she
said, “I have been thinking about you as well as myself. If I thought
that this thing was necessary for you--or best for you--I might,
perhaps--though I could not give you what you expect--I mean--responsive
worship and the rest of it.”
“Necessary?” he repeated.
There was no sign of Love’s weakness in her face, which had now assumed
the professional manner that is historical, philosophical, and
analytical.
“Let us sit down and talk about yourself quite dispassionately, as if
you were somebody else.”
She resumed the chair--Leonard’s own chair--beside the table; it was a
revolving chair, and she turned it half round so that her elbow rested
on the blotting-pad, while she faced her suitor. Leonard for his part
experienced the old feeling of standing up before the Head for a little
wholesome criticism. He laughed, however, and obeyed, taking the
easy-chair at his side of the fireplace. This gave Constance the slight
superiority of talking down to instead of up to him. A tall man very
often forgets the advantage of his stature.
“I mean, if companionship were necessary for you. It is, I believe, to
weaker and to less fortunate men--to poets, I suppose. Love means, I am
sure, a craving for support and sympathy. Some men--weaker men than
you--require sympathy as much as women. You do not feel that desire--or
need.”
“A terrible charge. But how do you know?”
“I know because I have thought a great deal about you, and because I
have conceived so deep a regard for you that, at first, when I received
your letter I almost--almost--made a great mistake.”
“Well--but tell me something more. To learn how one is estimated may be
very good for one. Self-conceit is an ever-present danger.”
“I think, to begin with, that of all young men that I know you are the
most self-reliant and the most confident.”
“Well, these are virtues, are they not?”
“Of course, you have every right to be self-reliant. You are a good
scholar, and you have been regarded at the University as one of the
coming men. You are actually already one of the men who are looked upon
as arrived. So far you have justified your self-confidence.”
“So far my vanity is not wounded. But there is more.”
“Yes. You are also the most fortunate of young men. You are miles ahead
of your contemporaries, because where they all lack something you lack
nothing. One man wants birth--it takes a very strong man to get over a
humble origin: another man wants manner: another has an unfortunate
face--a harsh voice--a nervous jerkiness: another is deficient in style:
another is ground down by poverty. You alone have not one single defect
to stand in your way.”
“Let me be grateful, then.”
“You have that very, very rare combination of qualities which make the
successful statesman. You are good-looking: you are even handsome: you
look important: you have a good voice and a good manner as well as a
good presence: you are a gentleman by birth and training: you have
enough to live upon now: and you are the heir to a good estate. Really,
Leonard, I do not know what else you could ask of fortune.”
“I have never asked anything of fortune.”
“And you get everything. You are too fortunate, Leonard. There must be
something behind--something to come. Nature makes no man perfectly
happy.”
“Indeed!” He smiled gravely. “I want nothing of that kind.”
“In addition to everything else, you are completely healthy, and I
believe you are a stranger to the dentist; your hair is not getting
prematurely thin. Really, Leonard, I do not think that there can be in
the whole country any other young man so fortunate.”
“Yet you refuse to join your future with mine.”
“Perhaps, if there were any misfortunes or drawbacks one might not
refuse. Family scandals, now---- Many noble houses have whole cupboards
filled with skeletons: your cupboards are only filled with blue china.
One or two scandals might make you more human.”
“Unfortunately, from your point of view, my people have no scandals.”
“Poor relations again! Many people are much pestered with poor
relations. They get into scrapes, and they have to be pulled out at
great cost. I have a cousin, for instance, who turns up occasionally. He
is very expensive and most disreputable. But you? Oh, fortunate young
man!”
“We have had early deaths; but there are no disreputable cousins.”
“That is what I complain of. You are too fortunate. You should throw a
ring into the sea--like the too fortunate king, the only person who
could be compared with you.”
“I dare say gout or something will come along in time.”
“It isn’t good for you,” she went on, half in earnest. “It makes life
too pleasant for you, Leonard. You expect the whole of life to be one
long triumphal march. Why, you are so fortunate that you are altogether
outside humanity. You are out of sympathy with men and women. They have
to fight for everything. You have everything tossed into your lap. You
have nothing in common with the working world--no humiliations--no
disgraces--no shames and no defeats.”
“I hardly understand----” he began, disconcerted at this unexpected
array of charges and crimes.
“I mean that you are placed above the actual world, in which men tumble
about and are knocked down and are picked up--mostly by the women. You
have never been knocked down. You say that I do not understand Love.
Perhaps not. Certainly you do not. Love means support on both sides. You
and I do not want any kind of support. You are clad in mail armour. You
do not--you cannot--even wish to know what Love means.”
He made no reply. This turning of the table was unexpected. She had been
confessing that she felt no need of Love, and now she accused him--the
wooer--of a like defect.
“Leonard, if fortune would only provide you with family scandals, some
poor relations who would make you feel ashamed, something to make you
like other people, vulnerable, you would learn that Love might
mean--and then, in that impossible case--I don’t know--perhaps----” She
left the sentence unfinished and ran out of the room.
Leonard looked after her, his face expressing some pain. “What does she
mean? Humiliation? Degraded relations? Ridiculous!”
Then, for the second time after many years, he heard the voices of his
mother and his grandmother. They spoke of misfortunes falling upon one
and another of their family, beginning with the old man of the country
house and the terrace. Oh! oh! It was absurd. He sprang to his feet. It
was absurd. Humiliations! Disgrace! Family misfortunes! Absurd! Well,
Constance had refused him. Perhaps she would come round. Meanwhile his
eyes fell upon the table and his papers. He sat down: he took up the
pen. Love, who had been looking on sorrowfully from a lofty perch on a
bookshelf, vanished with a sigh of despair. The lover heard neither the
sigh nor the fluttering of Love’s wings. He bent over his papers. A
moment, and he was again absorbed--entirely absorbed in the work before
him.
* * * * *
In her own room the girl sat before her table and took up her pen. But
she threw it down again. “No,” she said, “I could not. He is altogether
absorbed in himself. He knows nothing and understands nothing--and the
world is so full of miseries; and he is all happiness, and men and
women suffer--how they suffer!--for their sins and for other people’s
sins. And he knows nothing. He understands nothing. Oh, if he could be
made human by something--by humiliation, by defeat! If he could be made
human, like the rest, why, then--then----” She threw away her pen,
pushed back the chair, put on her hat and jacket, and went out into the
streets among the men and women.
CHAPTER III
SOMETHING TO COME
If you have the rare power of being able to work at any time, and after
any event to concentrate your thoughts on work, this is certainly a good
way of receiving disappointments and averting chagrin. Two hours passed.
Leonard continued at his table absorbed in his train of argument, and
for the moment wholly forgetful of what had passed. Presently his pen
began to move more slowly; he threw it down: he had advanced his
position by another earthwork. He sat up; he numbered his pages; he put
them together. And he found himself, after the change of mind necessary
for his work, able to consider the late conversation without passion,
though with a certain surprise. Some men--the weaker brethren--are
indignant, humiliated, by such a rejection. That is because their vanity
is built upon the sands. Leonard was not the kind of man to be
humiliated by any answer to any proposal, even that which concerns the
wedding-ring. He had too many excellent and solid foundations for the
good opinion which he entertained of himself. It was impossible for any
woman to refuse him, considering the standards by which women consider
and estimate men. Constance had indeed acknowledged that in all things
fortune had favoured him, yet owing to some feminine caprice or
unexpected perversity he had not been able to touch her heart. Such a
man as Leonard cannot be humiliated by anything that may be said or done
to him: he is humiliated by his own acts, perhaps, and his own blunders
and mistakes, of which most men’s lives are so full.
He was able to put aside, as an incident which would perhaps be
disavowed in the immediate future, the refusal of that thrice fortunate
hand of his. Besides, the refusal was conveyed in words so gracious and
so kindly.
But there was this strange attack upon him. He found himself repeating
in his own mind her words. Nature, Constance said, makes no man
perfectly happy. He himself, she went on, presented the appearance of
the one exception to the rule. He was well born, wealthy enough, strong
and tall, sound of wind and limb, sufficiently well favoured, with
proved abilities, already successful, and without any discoverable
drawback. Was there any other man in the whole world like unto him? It
would be better for him, this disturbing girl--this oracle--had gone on
to prophesy, if something of the common lot--the dash of bitterness--had
been thrown in with all these great and glorious gifts of fortune;
something would certainly happen: something was coming; there would be
disaster: then he would be more human; he would understand the world. As
soon as he had shared the sorrows and sufferings, the shames and the
humiliations, of the world, he would become more in harmony with men and
women. For the note of the common life is suffering.
At this point there came back to him again out of the misty glades of
childhood the memory of those two women who sat together, widows both,
in the garb of mourning, and wept together.
“My dear,” said the elder lady--the words came back to him, and the
scene, as plainly as on that day when he watched the old man sleeping in
his chair--“my dear, we are a family of misfortune.”
“But why--why--why?” asked the other. “What have we done?”
“Things,” said the elder lady, “are done which are never suspected.
Nobody knows; nobody finds out: the arm of the Lord is stretched out,
and vengeance falls, if not upon the guilty, then upon his children
and----”
Leonard drove the memory back--the lawn and the garden: the two women
sitting in the veranda: the child playing on the grass: the words--all
vanished. Leonard returned to the present. “Ghosts!” he said. “Ghosts!
Were these superstitious fears ever anything but ghosts?” He refused to
think of these things: he put aside the oracle of the wise woman, the
admonition that he was too fortunate a youth.
You have seen how he opened the first of a small heap of letters. His
eye fell upon the others: he took up the first and opened it: the
address was that of a fashionable West-End hotel: the writing was not
familiar. Yet it began “My dear nephew.”
“My dear nephew?” he asked; “who calls me his dear nephew?” He turned
over the letter, and read the name at the end, “Your affectionate uncle,
Fred Campaigne.”
Fred Campaigne! Then his memory flew back to another day of childhood,
and he saw his mother--that gentle creature--flushing with anger as she
repeated that name. There were tears in her eyes--not tears of sorrow,
but of wrath--and her cheek was aflame. And that was all he remembered.
The name of Frederick Campaigne was never more mentioned.
“I wonder,” said Leonard. Then he went on reading the letter:
“MY DEAR NEPHEW,
“I arrived here a day or two ago, after many years’ wandering. I
lose no time, after the transaction of certain necessary business,
in communicating with you. At this point, pray turn to my
signature.”
“I have done so already,” said Leonard. He put the letter down, and
tried to remember more. He could not. There arose before his memory once
more the figure of his mother angry for the first and only time that he
could remember. “Why was she angry?” he asked himself. Then he
remembered that his uncle Christopher, the distinguished lawyer, had
never mentioned Frederick’s name. “Seems as if there was a family
scandal, after all,” he thought. He turned to the letter again.
“I am the long-lost wanderer. I do not suppose that you can
possibly remember me, seeing that when I went away you were no more
than four or five years of age. One does not confide family matters
to a child of those tender years. When I left my country I was
under a cloud--a light cloud, it is true--a sort of nebulous haze,
mysteriously glowing in the sunshine. It was no more than the not
uncommon mystery of debt, my nephew. I went off. I was shoved off,
in fact, by the united cold shoulders of all the relations. Not
only were there money debts, but even my modest patrimony was gone.
Thus does fond youth foolishly throw good money after bad. I should
have kept my patrimony to go abroad with, and spent nothing but my
debts. I am now, however, home again. I should have called, but I
have important appointments in the City, where, you may be pleased
to learn, my name and my voice carry weight. Meantime, I hear that
you will be asked to meet me at my brother Christopher’s on
Wednesday. I shall, therefore, hope to see you then. My City
friends claim all my time between this and Wednesday. The magnitude
of certain operations renders it necessary to devote myself, for a
day or two, entirely to matters of _haute finance_. It was, I
believe, customary in former times for the prodigal son to return
in rags. We have changed all that. Nowadays the prodigal son
returns in broadcloth, with a cheque-book in his pocket and credit
at his bank. The family will be glad, I am sure, to hear that I am
prosperous exceedingly.”
Leonard read this letter with a little uneasiness. He remembered those
tears, to begin with. And then there was a certain false ring in the
words, an affectation of light-heartedness which did not sound true.
There was an ostentation of success which seemed designed to cover the
past. “I had forgotten,” he said, “that we had a prodigal son in the
family. Indeed, I never knew the fact. ‘Prosperous exceedingly,’ is he?
‘Important appointments in the City.’ Well, we shall see. I can wait
very well until Wednesday.”
He read the letter once more. Something jarred in it; the image of the
gentle woman for once in her life in wrath real and undisguised did not
agree with the nebulous haze spoken of by the writer. Besides, the touch
of romance, the Nabob who returns with a pocket full of money having
prospered exceedingly, does not begin by making excuses for the manner
of leaving home. Not at all: he comes home exultant, certain to be well
received on account of his money-bags. “After all,” said Leonard,
putting down the letter, “it is an old affair, and my poor mother will
shed no more tears over that or anything else, and it may be forgotten.”
He put down the letter and took up the next. “Humph!” he growled.
“Algernon again! I suppose he wants to borrow again. And Constance said
that I wanted poor relations.”
It is true that his cousin Algernon did occasionally borrow money of
him: but he was hardly a poor relation, being the only son of Mr.
Christopher Campaigne, of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister-at-law, and in the
enjoyment of a large and lucrative practice. It is the blessed privilege
of the Bar that every large practice is lucrative; now, in the lower
branch of the legal profession there are large practices which are not
lucrative, just as in the lower branches of the medical profession there
are sixpenny practitioners with a very large connection, and in the
Church there are vicars with very large parishes.
Algernon, for his part, was studying with a great and ambitious object.
He proposed to become the dramatist of the future. He had not yet
written any dramas; he haunted the theatres, attended all the first
nights, knew a good many actors and a few actresses, belonged to the
Playgoers’ Club, spoke and posed as one who is on the stage, or at least
as one to whom the theatre is his chosen home. Algernon was frequently
stone-broke, was generally unable to obtain more than a certain
allowance from his father, and was accustomed to make appeals to his
cousin, the head of the family.
The letter was, as Leonard expected, an invitation to lend him money:
“DEAR LEONARD,
“I am sorry to worry you, but things have become tight, and the
pater refuses any advances. Why, with his fine practice, he should
grudge my small expenses I cannot understand. He complains that I
am doing no work. This is most unreasonable, as there is no man who
works harder at his art than I myself. I go to a theatre nearly
every evening; is it my fault that the stalls cost half a guinea?
All this means that I want you to lend me a tenner until the
paternal pride breaks or bends.
“Yours,
“ALGERNON.”
Leonard read and snorted.
“The fellow will never do anything,” he said. Nevertheless, he sat down,
opened his cheque-book, and drew the cheque. “Take it, confound you!” he
said.
And yet Constance had told him that for want of poor relations he was
out of harmony with the rest of the world.
There was a third letter--from his aunt:
“DEAR LEONARD,
“Will you look in, if you possibly can, on Wednesday to meet your
uncle Fred? He has come home again. Of course, you cannot remember
him. He was wild, I believe, in the old days, but he says that is
over now. Indeed, it is high time. He seems to be doing well, and
is most cheerful. As the acting head of the family, you will, I am
sure, give him a welcome, and forget and forgive, if there is
anything to forgive. Algernon is, I fear, working too hard. I could
not have believed that the art of play-writing required such close
attention to the theatres. He is making many acquaintances among
actors and actresses, who will be able, he says, to help him
tremendously. I tell his father, who sometimes grumbles, that when
the boy makes up his mind to begin there will be no living
dramatist who has more conscientiously studied his art.
“Affectionately yours,
“DOROTHY CAMPAIGNE.”
Leonard wrote a note accepting this invitation, and then endeavoured,
but without success, to dismiss the subject of the returned prodigal
from his mind. It was a relief to feel that he was at least prosperous
and cheerful. Now, had Leonard been a person of wider experience, he
would have remembered that cheerfulness in a prodigal is a most
suspicious attribute, because cheerfulness is the dominant note of the
prodigal under all circumstances, even the most unpromising. His
cheerfulness is his principal, sometimes his only, virtue. He is
cheerful because it is always more pleasant to be cheerful than to be
miserable; it is more comfortable to laugh than to cry. Only when the
prodigal becomes successful--which is very, very seldom--does he lose
his cheerfulness and assume a responsible and anxious countenance like
the steady and plodding elder brother.
CHAPTER IV
THE COMPLETE SUPPLY
It was eleven o’clock that same evening. Leonard sat before his fire
thinking over the day’s work. It was not a day on which he could
congratulate himself. He had been refused: he had been told plain
truths: he had been called too fortunate: he had been warned that the
gods never make any man completely happy: he had been reminded that his
life was not likely to be one long triumphal march, nor was he going to
be exempt from the anxieties and the cares which beset other people.
Nobody likes to be told that he is too fortunate, and that he wants
defeated ambition, poor relations, and family scandals to make him level
with the rest of mankind. Moreover, he had received, as if in
confirmation of the oracle, the addition to his family of a doubtful
uncle.
The Mansion was quiet: no pianos were at work: those of the people who
were not out were thinking of bed.
Leonard sat over the fire feeling strangely nervous: he had thought of
doing a little work: no time like the quiet night for good work. Yet
somehow he could not command his brain: it was a rebellious brain:
instead of tackling the social question before him, it went off
wandering in the direction of Constance and of her refusal and of her
words--her uncomfortable, ill-boding words.
Unexpectedly, and without any premonitory sound of steps on the stair,
there came a ring at his bell. Now, Leonard was not a nervous man, or a
superstitious man, or one who looked at the present or the future with
apprehension. But this evening he felt a chill shudder: he knew that
something disagreeable was going to happen. He looked at the clock: his
man must have gone to bed: he got up and went out to open the door
himself.
There stood before him a stranger, a man of tall stature, wrapped in a
kind of Inverness cape, with a round felt hat.
“Mr. Leonard Campaigne?” he asked.
“Certainly,” he replied snappishly. “Who are you? What do you want here
at this time of night?”
“I am sorry to be so late. I lost my way. May I have half an hour’s talk
with you? I am a cousin of yours, though you do not know me.”
“A cousin of mine? What cousin? What is your name?”
“Here is my card. If you will let me come in, I will tell you all about
the relationship. A cousin I am, most certainly.”
Leonard looked at the card.
“Mr. Samuel Galley-Campaigne.” In the corner were the words, “Solicitor,
Commercial Road.”
“I know nothing about you,” said Leonard. “Perhaps, however--will you
come in?”
He led the way into the study, and turned on one or two more lights.
Then he looked at his visitor.
The man followed him into the study, threw off his cape and hat, and
stood before him--a tall, thin figure, with a face which instantly
reminded the spectator of a vulture; the nose was long, thin, and
curved; his eyes were bright, set too close together. He was dressed in
a frock-coat which had known better days, and wore a black tie. He
looked hungry, but not with physical pangs.
“Mr. Samuel Galley-Campaigne,” he repeated. “My father’s name was
Galley; my grandmother’s maiden name was Campaigne.”
“Oh, your grandmother’s name was Campaigne. Your own name, then, is
Galley?”
“I added the old woman’s name to my own; it looks better for business
purposes. Also I took her family crest--she’s got a coat of arms--it
looks well for business purposes.”
“You can’t take your grandmother’s family shield.”
“Can’t I? Who’s to prevent me? It’s unusual down our way, and it’s good
for business.”
“Well, as you please--name and coat of arms and everything. Will you
explain the cousinship?”
“In two words. That old man over there”--he indicated something in the
direction of the north--“the old man who lives by himself, is my
grandmother’s father. He’s ninety something, and she’s seventy
something.”
“Oh! she is my great-aunt, then. Strange that I never heard of her.”
“Not at all strange. Only what one would expect. She went down in the
world. You went up--or stayed up--of course they didn’t tell you about
her.”
“Well--do you tell me about her. Will you sit down? May I offer you
anything--a cigarette?”
The visitor looked about the room; there was no indication of whisky. He
sighed and declined the cigarette. But he accepted the chair.
“Thank you,” he said. “It is more friendly sitting down. You’ve got
comfortable quarters. No Mrs. C. as yet, is there? The old woman said
that you were a bachelor. Now, then. It’s this way: She married my
grandfather, Isaac Galley. That was fifty years ago--in 1849. No, 1850.
Isaac Galley failed. His failure was remarked upon in the papers on
account of the sum--the amount--of his liabilities. The _Times_ wanted
to know how he managed to owe so much.”
“Pray go on. I am interested. This part of our family history is new to
me.”
Leonard continued standing, looking down upon his visitor. He became
aware, presently, of a ridiculous likeness to himself, and he found
himself hoping that the vulture played a less prominent part in his own
expression. All the Campaigne people were taller--much taller--than the
average; their features were strongly marked; they were, as a rule, a
handsome family. They carried themselves with a certain dignity. This
man was tall, his features were strongly marked; but he was not
handsome, and he did not carry himself with dignity. His shoulders were
bent, and he stooped. He was one of the race, apparently, but gone to
seed; looking “common.” No one could possibly mistake him for a
gentleman by birth or by breeding. “Common” was the word to apply to Mr.
Galley-Campaigne. “Common” is a word much used by certain ladies
belonging to a certain stage of society about their neighbours’
children; it will do to express the appearance of this visitor.
“Pray go on,” Leonard repeated mechanically, while making his
observations; “you are my cousin, clearly. I must apologise for not
knowing of your existence.”
“We live at the other end of town. I’m a gentleman, of course, being in
the Law--lower branch----”
“Quite so,” said Leonard.
“But the old woman--I mean my grandmother--takes jolly good care that I
shall know the difference between you and me. You’ve had Eton and
College to back you up. You’ve got the House of Commons and a swagger
club. That’s your world. Mine is different. We’ve no swells where I
live, down the Commercial Road. I’m a solicitor in what you would call
a small way. There are no big men our way.”
“It is a learned profession.”
“Yes. I am not a City clerk, like my father.”
“Tell me more about yourself. Your grandfather, you say, was bankrupt.
Is he living?”
“No. He went off about ten years ago, boastful to the end of his great
smash. His son--that’s my father--was in the City. He was a clerk all
his life to a wine-merchant. He died four or five years ago. He was just
able to pay for my articles--a hundred pounds--and the stamp--another
eighty--and that pretty well cleared him out, except for a little
insurance of a hundred. When he died I was just beginning to get along;
and I’ve been able to live, and to keep my mother and my
grandmother--it’s a tight fit, though--with what I can screw out of Mary
Anne.”
“Who is Mary Anne?”
“My sister, Mary Anne. She’s a Board School teacher. But she shoves all
the expenses on to me.”
“Oh! I have a whole family of cousins, then, previously unknown. That is
interesting. Are there more?”
He remembered certain words spoken only that morning, and he winced.
Here were poor relations, after all. Constance would be pleased.
“No more--only me and Mary Anne. That is to say, no more that you would
acknowledge as such. There’s all father’s cousins and their children:
and all mother’s cousins and brothers and nephews and nieces: but you
can’t rightly call them your cousins.”
“Hardly, perhaps, much as one would like....”
“Now, Mr. Campaigne. The old woman has been at me a long time to call
upon you. I didn’t want to call. I don’t want to know you, and you don’t
want to know me. But I came to please her and to let you know that she’s
alive, and that she would like, above all things, to see you and to talk
to you.”
“Indeed! If that is all, I shall be very pleased to call.”
“You see, she’s always been unlucky--born unlucky, so to speak. But
she’s proud of her own family. They’ve never done anything for her,
whatever they may have to do--have to do, I say.” He became threatening.
“Have to do,” repeated Leonard softly.
“In the future. It may be necessary to prove who we are, and that before
many years--or months--or even days--and it might save trouble if you
were to understand who she is, and who I am.”
“You wish me to call upon my great-aunt. I will certainly do so.”
“That’s what she wants. That’s why I came here to-night. Look here, sir:
for my own part, I would not intrude upon you. I’ve not come to beg or
to borrow. But for the old woman’s sake I’ve ventured to call and ask
you to remember that she is your great-aunt. She’s seventy-two years of
age, and now and then she frets a bit after a sight of her own people.
She hasn’t seen any of them since your grandfather committed suicide.
And that must have been about the year 1860, before you and I were
born.”
Leonard started.
“My grandfather committed suicide? What do you mean? My grandfather died
somewhere about 1860. What do you mean by saying that he killed
himself?”
“What! Don’t you know? Your grandfather, sir,” said the other firmly,
“died of cut-throat fever. Oh yes, whatever they called it, he died of
cut-throat fever. Very sudden it was. Of that I am quite certain,
because my grandmother remembers the business perfectly well.”
“Is it possible? Killed himself? Then, why did I never learn such a
thing?”
“I suppose they didn’t wish to worry you. Your father was but a child, I
suppose, at the time. Perhaps they never told him. All the same, it’s
perfectly true.”
Committed suicide! He remembered the widow who never smiled--the
pale-faced, heavy-eyed widow. He now understood why she went in mourning
all the days of her life. He now learned in this unexpected manner, why
she had retired to the quiet little Cornish village.
Committed suicide! Why? It seemed a kind of sacrilege to ask this
person. He hesitated; he took up a trifling ornament from the
mantelshelf, and played with it. It dropped out of his fingers into the
fender, and was broken.
“Pray,” he asked, leaving the other question for the moment, “how came
your grandmother to be separated from her own people?”
“They went away into the country. And her father went silly. She never
knew him when he wasn’t silly. He went silly when his brother-in-law was
murdered.”
“Brother-in-law murdered? Murdered! What is this? Good Lord, man! what
do you mean with your murder and your suicide?”
“Why, don’t you know? His brother-in-law was murdered on his grounds.
And his wife died of the shock the same day. What else was it that drove
him off his old chump?”
“I--I--I--know nothing”--the vulgarity of the man passed unnoticed in
the face of these revelations--“I assure you, nothing of these
tragedies. They are all new to me. I have been told nothing.”
“Never told you? Well, of all the---- Why, the old woman over there is
never tired of talking about these things. Proud of them she is. And you
never to know anything!”
“Nothing. Is there more? And why do you call my great-grandfather mad?”
“He’s as much my great-grandfather as yours. Mad? Well, I’ve seen him
over the garden wall half a dozen times, walking up and down his terrace
like a Polar bear. I don’t know what you call mad. As for me, I’m a man
of business, and if I had a client who never opened or answered a
letter, never spoke a word to anybody, neglected his children, let his
house go to ruin, never went to church, would have no servants about the
place--why, I should have that mis’rable creature locked up, that’s
all.”
Leonard put this point aside.
“But you have not told me about his wife’s death. It is strange that I
should be asking you these particulars of my own family.”
“Mine as well, if you please,” the East End solicitor objected, with
some dignity. “Well, sir, my grandmother is seventy-two years of age.
Therefore it is just seventy-two years since her mother died. For her
mother died in child-birth, and she died of the shock produced by the
news of her own brother’s murder. Her brother’s name was Langley Holme.”
“Langley? My grandfather’s name.”
“Yes, Langley Holme. I think he was found lying dead on a hillside. So
our great-grandfather, I say, lost in one day his wife and his
brother-in-law, who was the best friend he had in the world. Why, sir,
if you ever go down to see him and find him in that state, does it not
occur to you to ask how it came about?”
“I confess--he is so old. I thought it eccentricity of age.”
“No!” His cousin shook his head. “Age alone would not make a man go on
like that. I take it, sir, that extreme age makes a man care nothing
about other people, not even his own children; but it does not cut him
off from money matters.”
“You are perhaps right. Yet--well, I know nothing. So the old man’s mind
was overthrown by the great shock of a double loss. Strange that they
never told me! And his son, my grandfather, committed suicide. And his
sister’s husband became a bankrupt.”
“Yes; there are misfortunes enough. The old woman is never tired of
harping on the family misfortunes. The second son was drowned. He was a
sailor, and was drowned. My father was never anything better than a
small clerk. I’ve known myself what it is to want the price of a dinner.
If you want to know what misfortune is like, wait till you’re hungry.”
“Indeed!” Leonard replied thoughtfully. “And all these troubles are new
to me. Strange that they should be told me on this very day!”
“Then there’s your own father. He died young, too, and the last case
that the old woman talks about is your father’s brother. I forget his
name; they packed him off to Australia after he had forged your father’s
name.”
“What?”
“Forged. That’s a pretty word to use, isn’t it? Yes, sir, there are
misfortunes enough.” He got up. “Well, the point is, will you come and
see the old woman?”
“Yes. I will call upon her. When shall I find her at home?”
“She lies down on the sofa beside the fire every afternoon from two to
four or half-past four, then wakes up refreshed and able to talk. Come
about half-past four. It’s the back-parlour; the front is my office, and
my clerk--I have only one as yet--works in the room over the
kitchen--the gal’s bedroom it is, as a rule. It is a most respectable
house, with my name on a door-plate, so you can’t miss it.”
“I will call, then.”
“There is one thing more, Mr. Campaigne. We have not thrust ourselves
forward, or tried to force ourselves on the family, and we shall not,
sir, we shall not. We live six miles apart, and we have our own friends,
and my friends are not yours. Still, in a business way, there is a
question which I should like to ask. It is a business question.”
The man’s face became suddenly foxy. He leaned forward and dropped his
voice to a whisper. Leonard was on his guard instinctively.
“If it has to do with the Campaigne estates, I have nothing whatever to
say. Would it not be well to go to the lawyers who manage the estate?”
“No. They would not tell me anything. What I want to know is this. He
has, I believe, a large estate?”
“He has, I believe. But he has no power to part with any portion of it.”
“The estate produces rents, I suppose?”
“That is no doubt the case.”
“Well, for seventy years the old man has spent nothing. There must be
accumulations. In case of no will, these accumulations would be divided
equally between your grandfather’s heirs and my grandmother. Do you know
of any will, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
“I know nothing of any will.”
“It is most unlikely that there should be any will. A man who has been
off his head for nearly seventy years can hardly leave a will. If he
did, one could easily set it aside. Mr. Campaigne, it is on the cards
that there may be enormous accumulations.”
“There may be, as you say, accumulations.”
“In that case, it is possible--I say possible--that my sister and I may
become rich, very rich--I hardly dare to put the possibility upon
myself--but there must be--there must be--accumulations, and the
question which I would put to you, sir, is this: Where are those
accumulations invested? And can a man find out what they amount to--what
they are worth--who draws the dividends--how are they applied--and is
there a will? Was it made before or after the old man went off his
chump? And if the money is left out of the family, would you, sir, as
the head of the family, be ready to take steps to set aside that will?
Those are my questions, Mr. Campaigne.” He threw himself back again in
the chair, and stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes.
“These are very important questions,” said Leonard. “As a lawyer, you
must be aware that I cannot give you any answer. As to the
administration of the property, I believe I have no right to ask the
lawyers and agents any questions. We must assume that the owner of the
estate is in his right mind. As for disputing a will, we must wait till
a will is produced.”
“Sir”--the cousin leaned over his knees and whispered hoarsely--“sir,
the accumulations must be a million and a half. I worked it all out
myself with an arithmetic book. I learned the rule on purpose. For I
never got so far in the book as compound interest. It meant hundreds of
sums; I did ’em all, one after the other. I thought I should never get
to the end. Mary Anne helped. Hundreds of sums at compound interest, and
it tots up to a million and a half--a million and a half! Think of that!
A million and a half!”
He got up and put on his overcoat slowly.
“Sir,” he added, with deep emotion and a trembling voice, “this money
must not be suffered to go out of the family. It must not. It would be
sinful--sinful. We look to you to protect the rights of the family.”
Leonard laughed. “I fear I have no power to help you in this respect.
Good-night. I hope to call upon my great-aunt as she wishes.”
He shut the door upon his visitor. He heard his feet going down the
stairs. He returned to his empty room.
It was no longer empty. The man had peopled it with ghosts, all of whom
he had brought with him.
There was the old man--young again--staggering under the weight of a
double bereavement--wife and best friend in the same day. There was his
own grandfather killing himself. Why? The young sailor going out to be
drowned; his own father dying young; the returned colonial--the
prosperous gentleman who, before going out, had forged his brother’s
name. Forged! forged! The word rang in his brain. There was the daughter
of the House--deserted by the House, married into such a family as Mr.
Galley represented. Were not these ghosts enough to bring into a quiet
gentleman’s flat?
Yes, he had been brought up in ignorance of these things. He knew
nothing of the cause of the old man’s seclusion; not the reason of his
grandfather’s early death; not any of those other misfortunes. He had
been kept in ignorance of all. And now these things were roughly
exploded upon his unsuspecting head.
He sat down before the fire; he worked at the “Subject” no more that
night. And in his brain there rang still the strange warnings of
Constance--that he wanted something of misfortune, such as harassed the
rest of the world, in order to bring him down to a level with the men
and women around him.
“I have got that something,” he said. “Poor relations, family scandals,
and humiliations and all. But so far I feel no better.”
CHAPTER V
A LEARNED PROFESSION
In one of the streets lying east of Chancery Lane is a block of
buildings, comparatively new, let out as offices. They generally consist
of three rooms, but sometimes there are four, five, or even six. The
geographical position of the block indicates the character of the
occupants: does not every stone in Chancery Lane and her daughters
belong to the Law? Sometimes, however, there are exceptions. A few
trading companies are established here, for instance; and occasionally
one finds written across the door such an announcement as “Mr. George
Crediton, Agent.” The clerks and people who passed up and down the
stairs every day sometimes asked each other what kind of agency was
undertaken in this office. But the clerks had their own affairs to think
about. Such a mystery as a business conducted in a quiet office to which
no clients ever come is a matter of speculation for a while, but soon
ceases to excite any attention. Some twenty years and more had passed
since that name had first appeared on the door and since the clerks
began to wonder.
“Mr. George Crediton, Agent.” There are many kinds of agents. Land,
houses, property of all kinds, may be managed by an agent; there are
agents for taking out patents--several of these run offices near the
Patent Office; there are literary agents--but Chancery Lane is not
Parnassus; there are agents for the creation and the dissolution of
partnership; there are theatrical agents--but what has law land to do
with sock and buskin? And what kind of Agent was Mr. George Crediton?
Mr. George Crediton, Agent, sat in his inner office. The room was
furnished solidly with a view to work. The large and ponderous table,
covered with papers so dear to the solicitor, was not to be seen here;
in its place was an ordinary study table. This was turned at an angle to
the wall and window. There was a warm and handsome carpet, a sheepskin
under the table, a wooden chair for the Agent, and two others for his
visitors. A typewriter stood on the table. The walls were covered with
books--not law books, but a miscellaneous collection. The Agent was
apparently a man who revelled in light reading; for, in fact, all the
modern humorists were there--those from America as well as those of our
own production. There was also a collection of the English poets, and
some, but not many, of France and Germany. On a table before him stood
half a dozen bound folios with the titles on the back--“Reference A--E,”
and so on. In one corner, stood an open safe, to which apparently
belonged another folio, entitled “Ledger.”
The Agent, engaged upon his work, evidently endeavoured to present an
appearance of the gravest responsibility. His face was decorated by a
pair of small whiskers cut straight over and set back; the chin and lips
were smooth-shaven. The model set before himself was the conventional
face of the barrister. Unfortunately, the attempt was not successful,
for the face was not in the least like that conventional type. It had no
severity, it had no keenness; it was not set or grave or dignified. It
might have been the face of a light comedian. In figure the man was over
six feet high and curiously thin, with a slightly aquiline nose and
mobile, sensitive lips.
He began his morning’s work by opening his letters; there were only two
or three. He referred to his ledger and consulted certain entries; he
made a few pencil notes. Then he took down from one shelf Sam Slick,
Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain, and from another a collection of Burnand’s
works and one or two of Frederick Anstey’s. He turned over the pages,
and began to make brief extracts and more notes. Perhaps, then, a
bystander might have thought he was about to write a paper on the
comparative characteristics of English and American humour.
Outside, his boy--he had a clerk of fourteen at five shillings a
week--sat before the fire reading the heroic jests and achievements of
the illustrious Jack Harkaway. He was a nice boy, full of imagination,
resolved on becoming another Jack Harkaway when the time should arrive,
and for the moment truly grateful to fortune for providing him with a
situation which demanded no work except to post letters and to sit
before the fire reading in a warm and comfortable outer room to which no
callers or visitors ever came except his employer and the postman; and
if you asked that boy what was the character of the agency, he would not
be able to tell you.
When Mr. George Crediton had finished making his extracts, he pinned the
papers together methodically, and laid them on one side. Then he opened
the last letter.
“He’s answered it,” he chuckled. “Fred’s handwriting. I knew it--I knew
it. Called himself Barlow, but I knew it directly. Oh, he’ll come--he’ll
come.” He sat down and laughed silently, shaking the room with his
chuckling. “He’ll come. Won’t he be astonished?”
Presently he heard a step and a voice:
“I want to see Mr. George Crediton.”
“That’s Fred,” said the Agent, chuckling again. “Now for it.”
“There’s nobody with him,” the boy replied, not venturing to commit
himself, and unaccustomed to the arrival of strangers.
The caller was a tall man of about forty-five, well set up, and strongly
built. He was dressed with the appearance of prosperity, therefore he
carried a large gold chain. His face bore the marks which we are
accustomed to associate with certain indulgences, especially in strong
drink. It is needless to dwell upon these evidences of frailty; besides,
one may easily be mistaken. It was a kind of face which might be met
with in a snug bar-parlour with a pipe and a glass of something hot--a
handsome face, but not intellectual or refined. Yet it ought to have
been both. In spite of broadcloth and white linen the appearance of this
gentleman hardly extorted the immediate respect of the beholder.
“Tell Mr. Crediton that Mr. Joseph Barlow is outside.”
“Barlow?” said the boy. “Why don’t you go in, then?” and turned over now
to his book of adventures.
Mr. Barlow obeyed, and passed into the inner office. There he stopped
short, and cried:
“Christopher, by all that’s holy!”
The Agent looked up, sprang to his feet, and held out his hand.
“Fred! Back again, and become a Barlow!”
Fred took the outstretched hand, but doubtfully.
“Come to that, Chris, you’re a Crediton.”
“In the way of business, Crediton.”
“Quite so. In the way of business, Barlow.”
Then they looked at each other and burst into laughter.
“I knew your handwriting, Fred. When I got your letter I knew it was
yours, so I sent you a type-written reply. Typewriting never betrays,
and can’t be found out if you want to be secret.”
“Oh, it’s mighty funny, Chris. But I don’t understand it. What the devil
does it all mean?”
“The very question in my mind, Fred. What does it mean? New rig-out,
gold chain, ring--what does it mean? Why have you never written?”
“The circumstances of my departure--you remember, perhaps.”
The Agent’s face darkened.
“Yes, yes,” he replied hastily; “I remember. The situation was
awkward--very.”
“You were much worse than I was, but I got all the blame.”
“Perhaps--perhaps. But it was a long time ago, and--and--well, we have
both got on. You are now Barlow--Joseph Barlow.”
“And you are now Crediton--George Crediton.”
“Sit down, Fred; let us have a good talk. And how long have you been
back?”
Fred took a chair, and sat down on the opposite side of the table.
“Only a fortnight or so.”
“And why didn’t you look me up before?”
“As I told you, there was some doubt---- However, here I am. Barlow is
the name of my Firm, a large and influential Firm.”
“In Sydney? or Melbourne?”
“No, up-country--over there.” He pointed over his left shoulder. “That’s
why I use the name of Barlow. I am here on the business of the Firm--it
brought me to London. It takes me every day into the City--most
important transactions. Owing to the magnitude of the operation, my
tongue is sealed.”
“Oh!” There was a little doubt implied by the interjection. “You a
business man? You? Why, you never understood the simplest sum in
addition.”
“As regards debts, probably not. As regards assets and property---- But
in those days I had none. Prosperity, Chris--prosperity brings out all a
man’s better qualities. You yourself look respectable.”
“I’ve been respectable for exactly four-and-twenty years. I am married.
I have a son of three-and-twenty, and a daughter of one-and-twenty. I
live in Pembridge Crescent, Bayswater.”
“And you were by way of being a barrister.”
“I was. But, Fred, to be honest, did you ever catch me reading a law
book?”
“I never did. And now you’re an Agent.”
“Say, rather, that I practice in the higher walks of Literature. What
can be higher than oratory?”
“Quite so. You supply the world--which certainly makes a terrible mess
of its speeches--with discourses and after-dinner oratory.”
“Oratory of all kinds, from the pulpit to the inverted tub: from the
Mansion House to the Bar Parlour: from the House of Commons to the
political gathering.”
“What does your wife say?”
“My wife? Bless you, my dear boy, she doesn’t know anything. She
doesn’t suspect. At home I’m the prosperous and successful lawyer: they
wonder why I don’t take silk.”
“What? Don’t they know?”
“Nobody knows. Not the landlord of these rooms. Not the boy outside. Not
any of my clients. Not my wife, nor my son, nor my daughter.”
“Oh! And you are making a good thing out of it?”
“So good that I would not exchange it for a County Court Judgeship.”
“It’s wonderful,” said Fred. “And I always thought you rather a
half-baked lump of dough.”
“Not more wonderful than your own success. What a blessing it is, Fred,
that you have come home without wanting to borrow any money”--he watched
his brother’s face: he saw a cloud as of doubt or anxiety pass over it,
and he smiled. “Not that I could lend you any if you did want it--with
my expensive establishment. Still, it is a blessing and a happiness,
Fred, to be able to think of you as the Head--I believe you said the
Head--of the great and prosperous Firm of Barlow & Co.” Fred’s face
distinctly lengthened. “I suppose I must not ask a business man about
his income?”
“Hardly--hardly. Though, if any man---- But--I have a partner who would
not like these private affairs divulged.”
“Well, Fred, I’m glad to see you back again--I am indeed.”
They shook hands once more, and then, for some unknown reason, they were
seized with laughter, long and not to be controlled.
“Distinguished lawyer,” murmured Fred, when the laugh had subsided with
an intermittent gurgle.
“Influential man of business,” said Christopher. “Oh! Ho, Lord!” cried
he, wiping his eyes, “it brings back the old times when we used to
laugh. What a lot we had to laugh at! The creditors and the duns--you
remember?”
“I do. And the girls--and the suppers! They were good old times, Chris.
You carried on shameful.”
“We did--we did. It’s pleasant to remember, though.”
“Chris, I’m thirsty.”
“You always are.”
His brother remembered this agreeable trait after five-and-twenty years.
He got up, opened a cupboard, and took out a bottle and glasses and some
soda-water. Then they sat opposite each other with the early tumbler and
the morning cigar, beaming with fraternal affection.
“Like old times, old man,” said the barrister.
“It is. We’ll have many more old times,” said Fred, “now that I’m home
again.”
In the words of the poet, “Alas! they had been friends in youth,” as
well as brothers. And it might have been better had they not been
friends in youth. And they had heard the midnight chimes together. And
they had together wasted each his slender patrimony. But now they talked
friendly over the sympathetic drink that survives the possibility of
port and champagne, and even claret.
“Don’t they really suspect--any of them?” asked Brother Fred.
“None of them. They call me a distinguished lawyer and the Pride of the
Family--next to Leonard, who’s in the House.”
“Isn’t there a danger of being found out?”
“Not a bit. The business is conducted by letter. I might as well have no
office at all, except for the look of it. No, there’s no fear. Nobody
ever comes here. How did you find me out?”
“Hotel clerk. He saw my name as a speaker at the dinner to-morrow, and
suggested that I should write to you.”
“Good. He gets a commission. I say, you must come and see us, you know.
Remember, no allusions to the Complete Speech-maker--eh?”
“Not a word. Though, I say, it beats me how you came to think of it.”
“Genius, my boy--pure genius. When you get your speech you will be proud
of me. What’s a practice at the Bar compared with a practice at the
after-dinner table? And now, Fred, why Barlow?”
“Well, you remember what happened?” His brother nodded, and dropped his
eyes. “Absurd fuss they made.”
“Nobody has heard anything about you for five-and-twenty years.”
“I took another name--a fighting name. Barlow, I called myself--Joseph
Barlow. Joe--there’s fight in the very name. No sympathy, no weakening
about Joe.”
“Yes. For my own part, I took the name of Crediton. Respectability
rather than aggressiveness in that name. Confidence was what I wanted.”
“Tell me about the family. Remember that it was in 1874 that I went
away--twenty-five years ago.”
His brother gave him briefly an account of the births and deaths. His
mother was dead; his elder brother was dead, leaving an only son.
“As for Algernon’s death,” said the speech-merchant, “it was a great
blow. He was really going to distinguish himself. And he died--died at
thirty-two. His son is in the House. They say he promises well. He’s a
scholar, I believe; they say he can speak; and he’s more than a bit of a
prig.”
“And about the old man--the ancient one--is he living?”
“Yes. He is nearly ninety-five.”
“Ninety-five. He can’t last much longer. I came home partly to look
after things. Because, although the estate goes to Algernon’s
son--deuced bad luck for me that Algernon did have a son--there’s the
accumulations. I remembered them one evening out there, and the thought
went through me like a knife that he was probably dead, and the
accumulations divided, and my share gone. So I bundled home as fast as I
could.”
“No--so far you are all right. For he’s hearty and strong, and the
accumulations are still rolling up, I suppose. What will become of them
no one knows.”
“I see. Well, I must make the acquaintance of Algernon’s son.”
“And about this great Firm of yours?”
“Well, it’s a--as I said--a great Firm.”
“Quite so. It must be, with Fred Campaigne at the head of it.”
“Never mind the Firm, but tell me about this astonishing profession of
yours.”
The Professor smiled.
“Fortunately,” he said, “I am alone. Were there any competition I might
be ruined. But I don’t know: my reputation by this time stands on too
firm a basis to be shaken.”
“Your reputation? But people cannot talk about you.”
“They cannot. But they may whisper--whisper to each other. Why, just
consider the convenience. Instead of having to rack their brains for
compliments and pretty things and not to find them, instead of hunting
for anecdotes and quotations, they just send to me. They get in return a
speech just as long as they want--from five minutes to an hour--full of
good things! In this way they are able to acquire it at a cheap, that
is, a reasonable rate, for next to nothing, considering the reputation
of wit and epigram and sparkles. Then think of the company at the
dinner. Instead of having to listen to a fumbler and a stammerer and a
clumsy boggler, they have before them a speaker easy in his mind,
because he has learned it all by heart, bright and epigrammatic. He
keeps them all alive, and when he sits down there is a sigh to think
that his speech was so short.”
“You must give me just such a speech.”
“I will--I will. Fred, you shall start with a name that will make you
welcome at every City Company’s dinner. It will help you hugely over
your enormous transactions for the Firm. Rely on me. Because, you see,
when a man has once delivered himself of a good speech, he is asked to
speak again: he must keep it up; so he sends to me again. Look here”--he
laid his hands upon a little pile of letters--“here are yesterday’s and
to-day’s letters.” He took them up and played with them as with a pack
of cards. “This man wants a reply for the Army. This is a return for
Literature. This is a reply for the House of Commons. The Ladies, the
American Republic, Science, the Colonies--see?”
“And the pay?”
“The pay, Fred, corresponds to the privilege conferred. I make orators.
They are grateful. As for yourself, now----”
“Mine is a reply for Australia. The dinner is on Friday at the Hotel
Cecil--Dinner of Colonial Enterprise.”
“Really!” The Agent smiled and rubbed his hands. “This is indeed
gratifying. Because, Fred--of course you are as secret as death--I may
tell you that this request of yours completes the toast-list for the
evening. The speeches will be all--all my own--all provided by the
Agent. But the plums, my brother, the real plums, shall be stuffed in
yours. I will make it the speech of the evening. Mr. Barlow--Barlow--Barlow
of New South Wales.”
Fred rose. “Well,” he said, “I leave you to my speech. Come and dine
with me to-night at the Hôtel Métropole--half-past seven. We might have
a look round afterwards.”
They had that dinner together. It was quite the dinner of a rich man. It
was also the dinner of one who loved to look upon the winecup.
After dinner Fred looked at his watch. “Half-past nine. I say, Chris,
about this time we used to sally forth. You remember?”
“I believe I do remember. I am now so respectable that I cannot allow
myself to remember.”
“There was the Holborn Casino and the Argyll for a little dance: the
Judge and Jury, Evans’s, and the Coalhole for supper and a sing-song:
Caldwell’s to take a shop-girl for a quiet dance: Cremorne----”
“My dear Fred, these are old stories. All these things have gone. The
Holborn and the Argyll are restaurants, Cremorne is built over, Evans’s
is dead and gone: the Judge and Jury business wouldn’t be tolerated
now.”
“What do the boys do now?”
“How should I know? They amuse themselves somehow. But it’s no concern
of mine, or of yours. You are no longer a boy, Fred.”
“Hang it! What am I to do with myself in the evenings? I suppose I can
go and look on if I can’t cut in any more?”
“No; you mustn’t even look on. Leave the boys to themselves. Join a club
and sit by yourself in the smoking-room all the evening. That’s the
amusement for you.”
“I suppose I can go to the theatre--if that’s all?”
“Oh yes! You must put on your evening clothes and go to the stalls. We
used to go to the pit, you know. There are music-halls and variety shows
of sorts--you might go there if you like. But, you know, you’ve got a
character to maintain. Think of your position.”
“Hang my position, man! Get up and take me somewhere. Let us laugh and
look on at something.”
“My dear Fred, consider. I am a respectable barrister with a grown-up
son. Could I be seen in such a place? The head of the firm of Barlow and
Co., allow me to point out, would not improve his chances in the City if
he were seen in certain places.”
“Nobody knows me.”
“Remember, my dear brother, that if you mean to get money out of the
City you must be the serious and responsible capitalist in the evening
as well as in the morning.”
“Then we’ll go and have tobacco in the smoking-room. One is apt to
forget, Chris, the responsibilities of success.”
“Quite so.” Christopher smiled. “Quite so. Well put. The
responsibilities of success. I will introduce the phrase in your speech.
The responsibilities of success.”
CHAPTER VI
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL
Mrs. Christopher Campaigne was at home. The rooms were filled with
people--chiefly young people, friends of her son and daughter. Most of
them were endowed with those literary and artistic leanings which made
them severe critics, even if they had not yet produced immortal works of
their own. The chief attraction of the evening, however, was the
newly-returned Australian, said to be a millionaire, who took up a large
space in the room, being tall and broad; he also took up a large space
in the conversation: he talked loud and laughed loud. He presented
successfully the appearance he desired, namely, that of a highly
prosperous gentleman, accustomed to the deference due to millions.
Leonard came late.
“I am glad to see you here,” said his hostess. “Frederick, you can
hardly remember your other nephew, son of Algernon.”
Frederick held out a manly grasp. “When I left England,” he said, “you
were a child of four or five; I cannot pretend to remember you,
Leonard.”
“Nor can I remember you.” He tried to dismiss from his mind a certain
ugly word. “But you are welcome home once more. This time, I hope, to
stay.”
“I think not. Affairs--affairs are sometimes peremptory, particularly
large affairs. The City may insist upon my staying a few weeks, or the
City may allow me to go back. I am wholly in the hands of the City.”
If you come to think of it, a man must be rich indeed to be in the hands
of the City.
The people gazed upon the speaker with increased interest, and even awe.
They were not in the hands of the City.
“I confess,” he went on, “that I should like to remain. Society, when
one returns to it after many years, is pleasing. Some people say that it
is hollow. Perhaps. The frocks vary”--he looked round critically--“they
are not the same as they were five-and-twenty years ago; but the effect
remains the same. And the effect is everything. We must not look behind
the scenes. The rough old colonist”--yet no one in the room was better
groomed--“looks on from the outside and finds it all delightful.”
“Can things unreal ever be delightful?” murmured a lady in the circle
with a sigh.
“At all events,” Leonard continued, “you will not leave us for a time.”
“There, again, I am uncertain. I have a partner in Australia. I have
connections to look up in the City. But for a few weeks I believe I may
reckon on a holiday and a look round, for Colonials have to show the
City that all the enterprise is not theirs, nor all the wealth--nor all
the wealth. And what,” he asked with condescension, “what are you doing,
Leonard?”
“I am in the House.”
“As your father was--and your grandfather. It is a great career.”
“It may be a great career.”
“True--true. There must be many failures--many failures. Where and when
are you most likely to be found?”
Leonard told him.
“Give me a note of it before we go to-night. I dare say I can get round
some time.”
The ugly word once more unpleasantly returned to Leonard’s mind.
Mr. Frederick Campaigne proceeded with his interrupted discourse, which
proved the necessity of the existence of the poor in order to make the
condition of the rich possible and enviable. He took the millionaire’s
point of view, and dwelt not only on the holiness of wealth, but also on
the duties of the poor towards their superiors.
Leonard slipped away. He felt uncomfortable. He could not forget what
had been told him about this loud and prosperous and self-satisfied
person. Besides, he seemed to be overdoing it--acting a part. Why?
In the inner drawing-room he found his two cousins, Algernon and
Philippa. The former, a young man of three-or four-and-twenty, was
possessed of a tall figure, but rather too small a head. He smiled a
good deal, and talked with an easy confidence common to his circle of
friends. It was a handsome face, but it did not suggest possibilities of
work.
Leonard asked him how he was getting on.
“Always the same,” he replied, with a laugh. “The study of the dramatic
art presents endless difficulties. That is why we are loaded up with
plays.”
“Then it remains for you to show the world what a play should be.”
“That is my mission. I shall continue my studies for a year or so more;
and then--you shall see. My method is to study the art on the stage
itself, not in books. I go to men and women on the stage. I sit in
various parts of the stalls and watch and learn. Presently I shall sit
down to write.”
“Well, I look forward to the result.”
“Look here, Leonard”--he dropped his voice. “I hear that you go to see
the old man sometimes. He is nearly ninety-five. He can’t last much
longer. Of course the estate is yours. But how about the accumulations.”
“I know nothing about the accumulations.”
“With the pater’s large practice and our share of the accumulations,
don’t you think it is too bad of him to keep up this fuss about my
work? Why should I trouble my head about money? There will be--there
must be--plenty of money. My work,” he said proudly, “shall be, at
least, the work of one who is not driven by the ignoble stimulus of
necessity. It will be entirely free from the ignoble stimulus of
necessity. It will be free from the commercial taint--the curse of
art--the blighting incubus of art--the degrading thought of money.”
Leonard left him. In the doorway stood his cousin Philippa.
“You have just been talking to Algernon,” she said. “You see, he is
always stretching out his hands in the direction of dramatic art.”
“So I observe,” he replied dryly. “Some day, perhaps, he will grasp it.
At present, as you say, he is only stretching out arms in that
direction. And you?”
“I have but one dream--always one dream,” she replied, oppressed with
endeavour.
“I hope it will come true, then. By the way, Philippa, I have just found
a whole family of new cousins.”
“New cousins? Who are they?”
“And a great aunt. I have seen one of the cousins; and I am going
to-morrow to see the great-aunt and perhaps the other cousin.”
“Who are they? If they are your cousins, they must be cousins on papa’s
side. I thought that we three were the only cousins on his side.”
“Your uncle Fred may have children. Have you asked him if he is
married?”
“No; he has promised to tell all his adventures. He is a bachelor. Is it
not interesting to get another uncle, and a bachelor, and rolling in
money? Algernon has already----” She stopped, remembering a warning.
“But who are these cousins?”
“Prepare for a shock to the family pride.”
“Why, we have no poor relations, have we? I thought----”
“Listen, my cousin. Your grandfather’s sister Lucy married one Isaac
Galley about the year 1847. It was not a good marriage for her. The
husband became a bankrupt, and as by this time her father had fallen
into his present condition or profession of a silent hermit, there was
no help from him. Then they fell into poverty. Her son became a small
clerk in the City, her grandson is a solicitor in the Commercial
Road--not, I imagine, in the nobler or higher walks of that
profession--and her grand-daughter is a teacher in a Board School.”
“Indeed!” The girl listened coldly; her eyes wandered round the room
filled with well-dressed people. “A teacher in a Board School! And our
cousin! A Board School teacher! How interesting! Shall we tell all these
people about our new cousins?”
“No doubt they have all got their own second cousins. It is, I believe,
the duty of the second cousin to occupy a lower rank.”
“I dare say. At the same time, we have always thought our family a good
deal above the general run. And it’s rather a blow, Leonard, don’t you
think?”
“It is, Philippa. But, after all, it remains a good old family. One
second cousin cannot destroy our record. You may still be proud of it.”
He left the girl, and went in search of his uncle, whom he found, as he
expected, in his study apart from the throng.
“Always over your papers,” he said. “May I interrupt for a moment?”
The barrister shuffled his papers hurriedly into a drawer.
“Always busy,” he said. “We lawyers work harder than any other folk, I
believe, especially those with a confidential practice like my own,
which makes no noise and is never heard of.”
“But not the less valuable, eh?”
The barrister smiled.
“We make both ends meet,” he said meekly--“both ends meet. Yes, yes,
both ends meet.”
“I went to see the old man the other day,” Leonard went on, taking a
chair. “I thought you would like to know. He remains perfectly well, and
there is no change in any respect. What I want to ask you is this. It
may be necessary before long to get the question decided. Is he in a
condition to make a will?”
The lawyer took time to give an opinion. Backed by his long legal
experience and extensive practice, it was an opinion carrying weight.
“My opinion,” he said gravely, and as one weighing the case
judicially--in imagination he had assumed the wig and gown--“my
opinion,” he repeated, “would be, at first and on the statement of the
case, that he is unfit and has been unfit for the last seventy years, to
make a will. He is undoubtedly on some points so eccentric as to appear
of unsound mind. He does nothing; he allows house and gardens and
furniture and pictures to fall into decay; he never speaks; he has no
occupation. This points, I say, to a mind unhinged by the shock of
seventy years ago.”
“A shock of which I only heard the other day.”
“Yes--I know. My sister-in-law--your mother and your
grandfather--thought to screen you from what they thought family
misfortune by never telling you the truth--that is to say, the whole
truth. I have followed the same rule with my children.”
“Family misfortune! I hardly know even now what to understand by it.”
“Well, they are superstitious. Your father died young, your grandfather
died young; like you, they were young men of promise. Your
great-grandfather at the age of six-and-twenty or thereabouts was
afflicted, as you know.”
“And they think----”
“They think that it is the visiting of the unknown sins of the fathers
upon the children. They think that the old man’s father must have done
something terrible.”
“Oh, but this is absurd.”
“Very likely--very likely. Meantime, as to the power of making a will,
we must remember that during all these years the old man has never done
anything foolish. I have seen the solicitors. They tell me that from
father to son, having acted for him all these years, they have found him
perfectly clear-headed about money matters. I could not ask them what he
has done with all his money, nor what he intends to do with it. But
there is the fact--the evidence of the solicitors as to the clearness of
his intellect. My opinion, therefore, is that he will do something
astonishing, unexpected, and disgusting with his money, and that it will
be very difficult, if not impossible, to set aside his will.”
“Oh, that is your opinion, is it? The reason why I ask is that I have
just discovered a family of hitherto unknown cousins. Do you know the
name of Galley?”
“No. It is not a name, I should say, of the highest nobility.”
“Possibly not. It is the name of our cousins, however. One of them is a
solicitor of a somewhat low class, I should say; the man has no
pretensions whatever to be called a gentleman. He practises and lives in
the Commercial Road, which is, I suppose, quite out of the ordinary
quarter where you would find a solicitor of standing.”
“Quite, quite; as a place of residence--deplorable from that point of
view.”
“He has a sister, it appears, who is a Board School teacher.”
“A Board School teacher? It is at least respectable. But who are these
precious cousins of ours?”
“They are the grandchildren of an aunt of yours--Lucy by name.”
“Lucy! Yes. I have heard of her; I thought she was dead long ago.”
“She married a man named Galley. They seem to have gone down in the
world.”
“More family misfortune.” The lawyer shuddered. “I am not
superstitious,” he said, “but really--more misfortunes.”
“Oh, misfortunes! Nonsense! There are always in every family some who go
down--some who go up--some who stay there. You yourself have been borne
steadily upwards to name and fortune.”
“I have,” said the lawyer, with half a groan. “Oh yes--yes--I have.”
“And my uncle Fred, you see, comes home--all his wild oats sowed--with a
great fortune.”
“Truly.” The lawyer’s face lengthened. “A great fortune. He told you so,
didn’t he? Yes; we have both been most fortunate and happy, both Fred
and I. Go on, Leonard. About these cousins----”
“These are the grandchildren of Lucy Campaigne. I am to see the old lady
in a day or two.”
“Do they want anything? Help? Recognition?”
“Nothing, so far as I know. Not even recognition.”
“That is well. I don’t mind how many poor relations we’ve got, provided
they don’t ask for money, or for recognition. If you give them money,
they will infallibly decline to work, and live upon you. If you call
upon them and give them recognition, they will infallibly disgrace you.”
“The solicitor asked for nothing. This cousin of ours has been building
hopes upon what he calls accumulations. He evidently thinks that the old
man is not in a condition to make a will, and that all that is left of
personal property will be divided in two equal shares, one moiety among
your father’s heirs on our side, while the other will go to the old lady
his grandmother on the other side.”
“That is, I am afraid, quite true. But there may have been a Will before
he fell into--eccentricity. It is a great pity, Leonard, that these
people have turned up--a great misfortune--because we may have to share
with them. Still, there must be enormous accumulations. My mother did
not tell us anything about possible cousins; yet they do exist, and they
are very serious and important possibilities. These people will probably
interfere with us to a very serious extent. And now Fred has turned up,
and he will want his share, too. Another misfortune.”
“How came my grandfather to die so young?” Leonard passed on to another
point.
“He fell into a fever. I was only two years old at the time.”
Leonard said nothing about the suicide. Clearly, not himself only, but
his uncles also, had been kept in the dark about the true cause of that
unexpected demise.
He departed, closing the door softly, so as not to shake up and confuse
the delicate tissues of a brain always occupied in arriving at an
opinion.
As soon as he was gone the barrister drew out his papers once more, and
resumed the speech for which he had prepared half a dozen most excellent
stories. In such a case the British public does not ask for all the
stories to be new.
Leonard rejoined the company upstairs.
His uncle Fred walked part of the way home with him.
“I hadn’t expected,” he said, “to find the old man still living. Of
course, it cannot go on much longer. Have you thought about what may
happen--when the end comes?”
“Not much, I confess.”
“One must. I take it that he does not spend the fiftieth part of his
income. I have heard as a boy that the estate was worth £7,000 a year.”
“Very likely, unless there has been depression.”
“Say he spends £150 a year. That leaves £5,850 a year. Take £800 for
expenses and repairs--that leaves £5,000 a year. He has been going on
like this for seventy years. Total accumulations, £420,000. At compound
interest for all these years, it must reach two millions or so. Who is
to have it?”
“His descendants, I suppose.”
“You, my brother Christopher, and myself. Two millions to divide between
us. A very pretty fortune--very pretty indeed. Good-night, my
boy--good-night.”
He walked away cheerfully and with elastic step.
“Accumulations--accumulations!” said Leonard, looking after him. “They
are all for accumulations. Shall I, too, begin to calculate how much has
been accumulated? And how if the accumulations turn out to be
lost--wasted--gone--to somebody else?”
CHAPTER VII
THE CHILD OF SORROWS
On a cold day, with a grey sky and an east wind, Leonard for the first
time walked down the Commercial Road to call upon the newly-found
cousins. It is a broad thoroughfare, but breadth does not always bring
cheerfulness with it; even under a warm summer sun some thoroughfares
cannot be cheerful. Nothing can relieve the unvarying depression of the
Commercial Road. It is felt even by the children, who refuse to play in
it, preferring the narrow streets running out of it; the depression is
felt even by the drivers and the conductors of the tram-cars, persons
who are generally superior to these influences. Here and there is a
chapel, here and there is a model lodging-house or a factory, or a
square or a great shop. One square was formerly picturesque when the
Fair of the Goats was held upon it; now it has become respectable; the
goats are gone, and the sight provokes melancholy. North and south of
the road branch off endless rows of streets, crossed by streets laid out
in a uniform check pattern. All these streets are similar and similarly
situated, like Euclid’s triangles. One wonders how a resident finds his
own house; nevertheless, the houses, though they are all turned out
according to the same pattern, are neat and clean and well kept. The
people in them are prosperous, according to their views on prosperity;
the streets are cheerful, though the road to which they belong is
melancholy. “Alas!” it says, “how can such a road as myself be cheerful?
I lead to the Docks, and Limehouse, and Poplar, and Canning Town, and
the Isle of Dogs.”
Mr. Galley’s house was on the north side, conveniently near to a certain
police-court, in which he practised daily, sometimes coming home with as
much as three or four half-crowns in his pocket, sometimes with
less--for competition among the professional solicitors in the
police-courts is keen, and even fierce. Five shillings is a common fee
for the defence of a prisoner, and rumour whispers that even this humble
sum has to be shared secretly with a certain functionary who must be
nameless.
A brass plate was on the door: “Mr. Samuel Galley-Campaigne, Solicitor.”
It was a narrow three-storied house, quite respectable, and as
depressing as the road in which it stood.
Leonard knocked doubtfully. After a few moments’ delay the door was
opened by a boy who had a pen stuck behind his ear.
“Oh, you want Mrs. Galley!” he said. “There you are--back-parlour!” and
ran up the stairs again, leaving the visitor on the doormat.
He obeyed instructions, however, and opened the door indicated. He
found himself in a small back room--pity that the good old word
“parlour” has gone out!--where there were sitting three ladies
representing three stages of human life--namely, twenty, fifty, and
seventy.
The table was laid for tea; the kettle was on the old-fashioned
hob--pity that the hospitable hob has gone!--and the kettle was singing;
the buttered toast and the muffins were before the fire, within the high
old-fashioned fender; the tea-things and the cake and the
bread-and-butter were on the table, and the ladies were in their Sunday
“things,” waiting for him. It was with some relief that Leonard observed
the absence of Mr. Samuel.
The eldest of the three ladies welcomed him.
“My grand-nephew Leonard,” she said, giving him her hand, “I am very
glad--very glad indeed to make your acquaintance. This”--she introduced
the lady of middle life--“is my daughter-in-law, the widow--alas!--of my
only son. And this”--indicating the girl--“is my grand-daughter.”
The speaker was a gentlewoman. The fact was proclaimed in her speech, in
her voice, in her bearing, in her fine features. She was tall, like the
rest of her family; her abundant white hair was confined by a black lace
cap, the last of the family possessions; her cheek was still soft,
touched with a gentle colour and a tender bloom; her eyes were still
full of light and warmth; her hands were delicate; her figure was still
shapely; there were no bending of the shoulders, no dropping of the
head. She reminded Leonard of the Recluse; but her expression was
different: his was hard and defiant; hers was gentle and sad.
The second lady, who wore a widow’s cap and a great quantity of black
crape, evidently belonged to another class. Some people talk of a lower
middle class. The distinction, I know, is invidious. Why do we say the
lower middle class? We do not say the lower upper class. However, this
lady belonged to the great and numerous class which has to get through
life on slender means, and has to consider, before all things, the
purchasing power of sixpence. This terrible necessity, in its worst
form, takes all the joy and happiness out of life. When every day brings
its own anxieties about this sixpence, there is left no room for the
graces, for culture, for art, for poetry, for anything that is lovely
and delightful. It makes life the continual endurance of fear, as
dreadful as continued pain of body. Even when the terror of the morrow
has vanished, or is partly removed by an increase of prosperity, the
scars and the memory remain, and the habits of mind and of body.
Mrs. Galley the younger belonged to that class in which the terror of
the morrow has been partly removed. But she remembered. In what followed
she sat in silence. But she occupied, as of right, the proud position of
pouring out the tea. She was short of stature, and might have been at
one time pretty.
The third, the girl, who was Mary Anne, the Board School teacher, in
some respects resembled her mother, being short and somewhat
insignificant of aspect. But when she spoke she disclosed capacity. It
is not to girls without capacity and resolution that places in Board
Schools are offered.
“Let me look at you, Leonard.” The old lady still held his hand. “Ah!
what a joy it is to see once more one of my own people! You are very
tall, Leonard, like the rest of us: you have the Campaigne face: and you
are proud. Oh yes!--you are full of pride--like my father and my
brothers. It is fifty years--fifty years and more--since I have seen any
of my own people. We have suffered--we have suffered.” She sighed
heavily. She released his hand. “Sit down, my dear,” she said gently,
“sit down, and for once take a meal with us. Mary Anne, give your cousin
some cake--it is my own making--unless he will begin with
bread-and-butter.”
The tea was conducted with some ceremony; indeed, it was an occasion:
hospitalities were not often proffered in this establishment. Leonard
was good enough to take some cake and two cups of tea. The old lady
talked while the other two ministered.
“I know your name, Leonard,” she said. “I remember your birth,
seven-and-twenty--yes, it was in 1873, about the same time as Samuel was
born. Your mother and your grandmother lived together in Cornwall. I
corresponded with my sister-in-law until she died; since then I have
heard nothing about you. My grandson tells me that you are in the House.
Father to son--father to son. We have always sent members to the House.
Our family belongs to the House. There were Campaignes in the Long
Parliament.” So she went on while the cups went round, the other ladies
preserving silence.
At last the banquet was considered finished. Mary Anne herself carried
out the tea-things, Mrs. Galley the younger followed, and Leonard was
left alone with the old lady, as had been arranged. She wanted to talk
with him about the family.
“Look,” she said, pointing to a framed photograph on the wall, “that is
the portrait of my husband at thirty. Not quite at his best--but--still
handsome, don’t you think? As a young man he was considered very
handsome indeed. His good looks, unfortunately, like his good fortune
and his good temper--poor man!--went off early. But he had heavy trials,
partly redeemed by the magnitude of his failure.”
Leonard reflected that comeliness may go with very different forms of
expression. In this case the expression was of a very inferior City
kind. There also appeared to be a stamp or brand upon it already at
thirty, as of strong drinks.
“That is my son at the side. He was half a Campaigne to look at, but not
a regular Campaigne. No; he had too much of the Galley in him. None of
the real family pride, poor boy!”
The face of the young man, apparently about twenty years of age, was
handsome, but weak and irresolute, and without character.
“He had no pride in himself and no ambition, my poor boy! I could never
understand why. No push and no ambition. That is why he remained only a
clerk in the City all his life. If he had had any pride he would have
risen.”
“I must tell you,” said Leonard, “that I have been kept, no doubt
wisely, in ignorance of my own family history. It was only yesterday
that I heard from your son that there have been troubles and misfortunes
in our records.”
“Troubles and misfortunes? And you have never heard of them! Why, my
children, who haven’t nearly so much right as you to know, have learned
the history of my people better than that of their own mother or their
grandfather’s people. To be sure, with the small folk, like those who
live round here, trouble is not the same thing as with us. Mostly they
live up to the neck in troubles, and they look for nothing but
misfortune, and they don’t mind it very much so long as they get their
dinners. And you haven’t even heard of the family misfortunes? I am
astonished. Why, there never has been any family like ours for trouble.
And you might have been cut off in your prime, or struck off with a
stroke, or been run over with a waggon, and never even known that you
were specially born to misfortune as the sparks fly upwards.”
“Am I born to misfortune? More than other people?”
It was in a kind of dream that Leonard spoke. His brain reeled; the room
went round and round: he caught the arms of a chair. And for a moment he
heard nothing except the voice of Constance, who warned him that Nature
makes no one wholly happy: that he had been too fortunate: that
something would fall upon him to redress the balance: that family
scandals, poor relations, disgraces and shames, were the lot of all
mankind, and if he would be human, if he would understand humanity, he
must learn, like the rest of the world, by experience and by suffering.
Was she, then, a Prophetess? For, behold! a few days only had passed,
and these things had fallen upon him. But as yet he did not know the
full extent of what had happened and what was going to happen.
He recovered. The fit had lasted but a moment; but thought and memory
are swifter than time.
The old lady was talking on. “To think that you’ve lived all these years
and no one ever told you! What did they mean by keeping you in the dark?
And I’ve always thought of you as sitting melancholy, waiting for the
Stroke whenever it should fall.”
“I have been ignorant of any Stroke, possible or actual. Let me tell you
that I have no fear of any Stroke. This is superstition.”
“No--no!” The old lady shook her head, and laid her hand on his. “Dear
boy, you are still under the curse. The Stroke will fall. Perhaps it
will be laid in mercy. On me it fell with wrath. That is our
distinction. That’s what it is to be a Campaigne. The misfortunes,
however, don’t go on for ever. They will leave off after your
generation. It will be when I am dead and gone; but I should like, I
confess, to see happiness coming back once more to the family.”
“Your grandson spoke of a murder and of a suicide among other things.”
“Other things, indeed! Why, there was my husband’s bankruptcy. There was
your uncle Fred, my nephew, and what he did, and why he was bundled out
of the country. I thought your mother would have fallen ill with the
shame of it. And there was my poor father, too; and there was the trial.
Did they not tell you about the trial?”
“What trial?”
“The great trial for the murder. It’s a most curious case. I believe the
man who was tried really did it, because no one else was seen about the
place. But he got off. My father was very good about it. He gave the man
Counsel, who got him off. I’ve got all the evidence in the case--cut out
of newspapers and pasted in a book. I will lend it to you, if you like.”
“Thank you. It might be interesting,” he said carelessly.
“It is interesting. But don’t you call these things enough misfortunes
for a single family?”
“Quite enough, but not enough to make us born to misfortune.”
“Oh, Leonard! If you had seen what I have seen, and suffered what I have
suffered! I’ve been the most unfortunate of all. My brothers gone; poor
dear Langley by his own hand; Christopher, dear lad, drowned; my father
a wreck. Like him, I live on. I live on, and wait for more trouble.” She
shook her head, and the tears came into her eyes.
“I was a poor neglected thing with no mother, and as good as no father,
to look after me. Galley came along; he was handsome, and I thought,
being a silly girl, that he was a gentleman; so I married him. I ran
away with him and married him. Then I found out. He thought I had a
large fortune, and I had nothing; and father would not answer my
letters. Well, he failed, and he used me cruelly--most cruelly, he did.
And poverty came on--grinding, horrible poverty. You don’t know, my dear
nephew, what that means. I pray that you never may. There is no
misfortune so bad as poverty, except it is dishonour. He died at
last”--the widow heaved a sigh of relief, which told a tale of woe in
itself--“and his son was a clerk, and kept us all. Now he’s dead, and my
grandson keeps me. For fifty years I have been slave and housemaid and
cook and drudge and nurse to my husband and my son and my grandson.
And, oh! I longed to speak once more with one of my own people.”
Leonard took her hand and pressed it. There was nothing to be said.
“Tell me more,” she said, “about yourself.”
He told her, briefly, his position and his ambitions.
“You have done well,” she said, “so far--but take care. There is the
Family Luck. It may pass you over, but I don’t know. I doubt. I fear.
There are so many kinds of misfortune. I keep thinking of them all.” She
folded her hands, resigned. “Let trouble come to me,” she said, “not to
you or the younger ones. To me. That is what I pray daily. I am too old
to mind much. Trouble to me means pain and suffering. Rather that than
more trouble to you young people. Leonard, I remember now that your
grandmother spoke in one of her letters of keeping the children from the
knowledge of all this trouble. Yes, I remember.”
She went on talking; she told the whole of the family history. She
narrated every misfortune at length.
To Leonard, listening in that little back room with the gathering
twilight and the red fire to the soft, sad voice of the mournful lady,
there came again the vision of two women, both in widows’ weeds, in the
cottage among the flowers--tree fuchsias, climbing roses, myrtles, and
Passion-flowers. All through his childhood they sat together, seldom
speaking, pale-faced, sorrowful. He understood now. It was not their
husbands for whom they wept; it was for the fate which they imagined to
be hanging over the heads of the children. Once he heard his mother
say--now the words came back to him--“Thank God! I have but one.”
“Leonard,” the old woman was going on, “for fifty years I have been
considering and thinking. It means some great crime. The misfortunes
began with my father; his life has been wrecked and ruined in punishment
for someone else’s crime. His was the first generation; mine was the
second. All our lives have been wrecked in punishment for that crime.
His was the first generation, I say”--she repeated the words as if to
drive them home--“mine was the second; all our lives have been wrecked
in punishment for that crime. Then came the third--your father died
early, and his brother ran away because he was a forger. Oh! to think of
a Campaigne doing such a thing! That was the third generation. You are
the fourth--and the curse will be removed. Unto the third and
fourth--but not the fifth.”
“Yes,” said Leonard. “I believe--I now remember--they thought--at
home--something of this kind. But, my dear lady, consider. If misfortune
falls upon us in consequence of some great crime committed long ago, and
impossible to be repaired or undone, what is there for us but to sit
down quietly and to go on with our work?”
She shook her head.
“It is very well to talk. Wait till the blows begin. If we could find
out the crime--but we never can. If we could atone--but we cannot. We
are so powerless--oh, my God! so powerless, and yet so innocent!”
She rose. Her face was buried in her handkerchief. I think it consoled
her to cry over the recollection of her sorrows almost as much as to
tell them to her grand-nephew.
“I pray daily--day and night--that the hand of wrath may be stayed.
Sitting here, I think all day long. I have forgotten how to read, I
think----”
Leonard glanced at the walls. There were a few books.
“Until Mary Anne began to study, there were no books. We were so poor
that we had to sell everything, books and all. This room is the only one
in the house that is furnished decently. My grand-daughter is my only
comfort; she is a good girl, Leonard. She takes after the Galleys to
look at, but she’s a Campaigne at heart, and she’s proud, though you
wouldn’t think it, because she’s such a short bunch of a figure, not
like us. She’s my only comfort. We talk sometimes of going away and
living together--she and I--it would be happier for us. My grandson is
not--is not--altogether what one would wish. To be sure, he has a
dreadful struggle. It’s poverty, poverty, poverty. Oh, Leonard!”--she
caught his hand--“pray against poverty. It is poverty which brings out
all the bad qualities.”
Leonard interrupted a monologue which seemed likely to go on without
end. Besides, he had now grasped the situation.
“I will come again,” he said, “if I may.”
“Oh, if you may! If you only knew what a joy, what a happiness, it is
only to look into your face! It is my brother’s face--my father’s
face--oh, come again--come again.”
“I will come again, then, and soon. Meantime, remember that I am your
nephew--or grand-nephew, which is the same thing. If in any way I can
bring some increase to your comforts----”
“No, no, my dear boy. Not that way,” she cried hastily. “I have been
poor, but never--in that way. My father, who ought to help me, has done
nothing, and if he will not, nobody shall. I would, if I could, have my
rights; no woman of our family, except me, but was an heiress. And,
besides--_he_”--she pointed to the front of the house, where was the
office of her grandson--“he will take it all himself.”
“Well, then, but if----”
“If I must, I will. Don’t give him money. He is better without it. He
will speculate in houses and lose it all. Don’t, Leonard.”
“I will not--unless for your sake.”
“No--no--not for my sake. But come again, dear boy, and we will talk
over the family history. I dare say there are quantities of misfortunes
that I have left out--oh, what a happy day it has been to me!”
He pressed her hand again. “Have faith, dear lady. We cannot be crushed
in revenge for any crime by any other person. Do not think of past
sorrows. Do not tremble at imaginary dangers. The future is in the hands
of Justice, not of Revenge.”
They were brave words, but in his heart there lurked, say, the
possibilities of apprehension.
In the hall Samuel himself intercepted him, running out of his office.
“I had my tea in here,” he said, “because I wanted her to have a talk
with you alone; and I’m sick of her family, to tell the truth, except
for that chance of the accumulations. Did she mention them?” he
whispered. “I thought she wouldn’t. I can’t get her to feel properly
about the matter. Women have got no imagination--none. Well, a man like
that can’t make a will. He can’t. That’s a comfort. Good-evening, Mr.
Campaigne. We rely entirely upon you to maintain the interests of the
family, if necessary, against madmen’s wills. Those accumulations--ah!
And he’s ninety-five--or is it ninety-six? I call it selfish to live so
long unless a man’s a pauper. He ought to be thinking of his
great-grandchildren.”
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE LAND OF BEECHES
Leonard met Constance a few days later at the club, and they dined at
the same table. As for the decision and the rejection, they were ignored
by tacit consent. The situation remained apparently unaltered. In
reality, everything was changed.
“You look thoughtful,” she said presently, after twice making an
observation which failed to catch his attention. “And you are
absent-minded.”
“I beg your pardon, yes. That is, I do feel thoughtful. You would,
perhaps, if you found your family suddenly enlarged in all directions.”
“Have you received unknown cousins from America?”
“I have received a great-aunt, a lesser aunt, and two second cousins.
They are not from America. They are, on the contrary, from the far East
End of this town--even from Ratcliffe or Shadwell, or perhaps Stepney.”
“Oh!” Constance heard with astonishment, and naturally waited for more,
if more was to follow. Perhaps, however, her friend might not wish to
talk of connections with Shadwell.
“The great aunt is charming,” he continued; “the lesser aunt is not so
charming; the second cousins are--are--well, the man is a solicitor who
seems to practice chiefly in a police-court, defending those who are
drunk and disorderly, with all who are pickpockets, hooligans, and
common frauds.”
“A variegated life, I should say, and full of surprises and
unexpectedness.”
“He is something like my family--tall, with sharp features--more perhaps
of the vulture than the eagle in him. But one may be mistaken. His
sister is like her mother, short and round and plump, and--not to
disguise the truth--common-looking. But I should say that she was
capable. She is a Board School teacher. You were saying the other day,
Constance, that it was a pity that I had never been hampered by poor
relations.”
“I consider that you are really a spoiled child of fortune. I reminded
you that you have your position already made; you have your
distinguished University career; you are getting on in the House; you
have no family scandals or misfortunes, or poor relations, or anything.”
“Well, this loss is now supplied by the accession of poor relations
and--other things. Your mention of things omitted reminded Fortune, I
suppose. So she hastened to turn on a supply of everything. I am now
quite like the rest of the world.”
“Do the poor relations want money?”
“Yes, but not from me. The solicitor thinks that there must be great
sums of money accumulated by the Patriarch of whom I have spoken to you.
Cupidity of a sort, but not the desire to borrow, sent him to me. Partly
he wanted to put in his claim informally, and partly he prepared the way
to make me dispute any will that the old man may have made. He is poor,
and therefore he is grasping, I suppose.”
“I believe we all have poor relations,” said Constance. “Mine, however,
do not trouble me much.”
“There has been a Family enlargement in another direction. A certain
uncle of mine, who formerly enacted with much credit the old tragedy of
the Prodigal Son, has come back from Australia.”
“Has he been living on the same diet as the Prodigal?”
“Shucks and bean-pods! He hardly looks as if that had been his diet. He
is well dressed, big, and important. He repeats constantly, and is most
anxious for everybody to know, that he is prosperous. I doubt,
somehow----”
Leonard paused; the expression of doubt is not always wise.
“The return of a middle-aged Prodigal is interesting and unusual. I fear
I must not congratulate you altogether on this unexpected enlargement.”
“Yet you said I ought to have poor relations. However, there is more
behind. What was it you said about disgraces? Well, they’ve come too.”
“Oh!” Constance changed colour. “Disgraces? But, Leonard, I am very
sorry, and I really never supposed----”
“Of course not; it is the merest coincidence. At the same time, like all
coincidences, it is astonishing just after your remarks, which did
really make me very uncomfortable. But I’ve stepped into quite a
remarkable family history, full of surprising events, and all of them
disasters.”
“But you had already a remarkable family history.”
“So I thought--a long history and a creditable history, ending with the
ancient recluse of whom I have told you. We are rather proud of this
old, old man--this singular being who has been a recluse for seventy
years. I have always known about him. One of the very earliest things I
was told was the miraculous existence of this eccentric ancestor. They
told me so much, I suppose, because I am, as a matter of fact, heir to
the estate whenever that happens to fall in. But I was never told--I
suppose because it is a horrible story--why the old man became a
recluse. That I only learned yesterday from this ancient aunt, who is
the only daughter of the still more ancient recluse.”
“Why was it? That is, don’t let me ask about your private affairs.”
“Not at all. There is nothing that might not be proclaimed from the
house-top; there never is. There are no private affairs if we would only
think so. Well, it seems that one day, seventy years ago, the
brother-in-law of this gentleman, then a hearty young fellow of five-or
six-and-twenty, was staying at the Hall. He went out after breakfast,
and was presently found murdered in a wood, and in consequence of
hearing this dreadful thing suddenly, his sister, my ancestor’s wife,
died on the same day. The ancient aunt was born on the day that the
mother died. The blow, which was certainly very terrible, affected my
ancestor with a grief so great that he became at once, what he is now, a
melancholy recluse, taking no longer the least interest in anything. It
is to me very strange that a young man, strong physically and mentally,
should not have shaken off this obsession.”
“It does seem very strange. I myself had an ancestor murdered
somewhere--father of one of my grandmothers. But your case is
different.”
“The aged aunt told me the story. She had a theory about some great
crime having been committed. She suggests that the parent of the recluse
must have been a great unknown, unsuspected criminal--a kind of Gilles
de Retz. There have been misfortunes scattered about--she related a
whole string of calamities--all, she thinks, in consequence of some
crime committed by this worthy, as mild a Christian, I believe, as ever
followed the hounds or drank a bottle of port.”
“She is thinking, of course, of the visitation upon the third and fourth
generation. To which of them do you belong?”
“I am of the fourth according to that theory. It is tempting; it lends
a new distinction to the family. This lady is immensely proud of her
family, and finds consolation for her own misfortunes in the thought
that they are in part atonement for some past wickedness. Strange, is it
not?”
“Of course, if there is no crime there can be no consequences. Have the
misfortunes been very marked?”
“Yes, very marked and unmistakable misfortunes. They cannot be got over
or denied or explained away. Misfortunes, Dooms--what you please.”
“What does your recluse say about them?”
“He says nothing; he never speaks. Constance, will you ride over with me
and see the man and the place? It is only five-and-twenty miles or so.
The roads are dry; the spring is upon us. Come to-morrow. There is a
pretty village, an old church, an eighteenth-century house falling into
ruins, great gardens all run to bramble and thistle, and a park, besides
the recluse himself.”
“The recluse might not like my visit.”
“He will not notice it. Besides, he sleeps all the afternoon. And when
he is awake he sees nobody. His eyes go straight through one like a
Röntgen ray. I believe he sees the bones and nothing else.”
* * * * *
The least frequented of the great highroads running out of London is
assuredly that which passes through Uxbridge, and so right into the
heart of the shire of Buckingham--the home or clearing or settlement of
the Beeches. Few bicycles attempt this road; the ordinary cyclist knows
or cares nothing for the attractions. Yet there is much to see. In one
place you can visit the cottage where Milton finished “Paradise Lost.”
It is still kept just as when the poet lived in it. There are churches
every two or three miles, churches memorable, and even historical, for
the most part, and beautiful. Almost every church in this county has
some famous man associated with it. On the right is the burial-place of
the Russells, with their ancient manor-house, a joy and solace for the
eyes: also, on the right, is another ancient manor-house. On the left is
the quiet and peaceful burial-place of Penn and Elwood, those two
illustrious members of the Society of Friends. Or, also on the left, you
may turn aside to see the church and the road and the house of England’s
patriot John Hampden. The road goes up and the road goes down over long
low hills and through long low valleys. On this side and on that are
woods and coppices and parks, with trees scattered about and country
houses. No shire in England is more studded with country houses than
this of Bucks. At a distance of every six or eight miles there stands a
town. All the towns in Bucks are small; all are picturesque. All have
open market-places and town-halls and ancient inns and old houses. I
know of one where there is an inn of the fourteenth century. I have had
it sketched by a skilful limner, and I call it the Boar’s Head,
Eastcheap, and I should like to see anybody question the authenticity
of the name. If any were so daring, I would add the portrait of Jack
Falstaff himself, sitting in the great chair by the fire.
On a fine clear day in early spring, two cyclists rode through this
country. They were Leonard and his friend Constance. They went by train
as far as Uxbridge, and then they took the road.
At first it was enough to breathe the pure air of the spring; to fly
along the quiet road, while the rooks cawed in the trees, and over the
fields the larks sang. Then they drew nearer and began to talk.
“Is this what you brought me out to see?” asked Constance. “I am well
content if this is all. What a lovely place it is! And what a lovely
air! It is fragrant; the sun brings out the fragrance from the very
fields as well as the woods.”
“This is the quietest and the most beautiful of all the roads near
London. But I am going to show you more. Not all to-day. We must come
again. I will show you Milton’s cottage and Penn’s burial-ground, John
Hampden’s church and tomb, and the old manor-house of Chenies and
Latimer. To-day I am only going to show you our old family house.”
“We will come when the catkins have given place to the leaves and the
hedge-rose is in blossom.”
“And when the Park is worth looking at. Everything, however, at our
place is in a condition of decay. You shall see the house, and the
church, and the village. Then, if you like, we will go on to the
nearest town and get some kind of dinner, and go home by train.”
“That pleases me well.”
They went on in silence for a while.
Leonard took up the parable again about his family.
“We have been in the same place,” he said, “for an immense time. We have
never produced a great man or a distinguished man. If you consider it,
there are not really enough distinguished men to go round the families.
We have twice recently made a bid for a distinguished man. My own father
and my grandfather were both promising politicians, but they were both
cut off in early manhood.”
“Both? What a strange thing!”
“Yes. Part of what the ancient aunt calls the family luck. We have had,
in fact, an amazing quantity of bad luck. Listen. It is like the history
of a House driven and scourged by the hand of Fate.”
She listened while he went through the terrible list.
“Why,” she said, “your list of disaster does really suggest the terrible
words ‘unto the third and fourth generation.’ I don’t wonder at your
aunt looking about for a criminal. What could your forefathers have done
to bring about such a succession of misfortunes?”
“Let us get down and rest a little.” They sat down on a stile, and
turned the talk into a more serious vein.
“What have my forefathers done? Nothing. Of that I am quite certain.
They have always been most respectable squires, good fox-hunters, with a
touch of scholarship. They have done nothing. Our misfortunes are all
pure bad luck, and nothing else. Those words, however, do force
themselves on one. I am not superstitious, yet since that venerable
dame---- However, this morning I argued with myself. I said, ‘It would
be such a terrible injustice that innocent children should suffer from
their fathers’ misdeeds, that it cannot be so.’”
“I don’t know,” said Constance. “I am not so sure.”
“You, too, among the superstitious? I also, however, was brought up with
that theory----”
“I suppose you went to church?”
“Yes, we went to church. And now I remember that my mother, for the
reason which I have only just learned, believed that we were ourselves
expiating the sins of our forefathers. It is very easy for me to go back
to the language and ideas of my childhood, so much so that this morning
I made a little search after a certain passage which I had well-nigh
forgotten.”
“What was that?”
“It is directed against that very theory. It expresses exactly the
opposite opinion. The passage is in the Prophet Ezekiel. Do you remember
it?”
“No. I have never read that Prophet, and I have never considered the
subject.”
“It is a very fine passage. Ezekiel is one of the finest writers
possible. He ought to be read more and studied more.”
“Tell me the sense of the passage.”
“I can give you the very words. Listen.” He stood up and took off his
hat, and declaimed the words with much force:
“‘What mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel,
saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are
set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not use this
proverb any more. Behold, all souls are Mine: as the soul of the father,
so also the soul of the son is Mine. The soul that sinneth, it shall
die. But if a man be just, he shall surely live.”
“These are very noble words, Constance;” indeed, Leonard spoke them with
much solemnity. “The verbal interpretation of the Prophets no longer
occupies our minds. Still, they are very noble words. I have never
believed myself to be superstitious or to believe in heredity of
misfortune; still, after learning for the first time the long string of
disasters that have fallen upon my people, I became possessed with a
kind of terror, as if the Hand of Fate was pressing upon us all.”
“They are very noble words,” Constance repeated. “It seems as if the
speaker was thinking of a distinction between consequences--certain
consequences--of every man’s life as regards his children and----”
“What consequences--from father to son?”
“Why, you have only to look around you. We live in conditions made for
us by our forefathers. My people behaved well and prospered: they saved
money and bought lands: they lived, in the old phrase, God-fearing
lives. Therefore I am sound in mind and body, and I am tolerably
wealthy.”
“Oh! that, of course. But I was not thinking of consequences like
these.”
“You must think of them. A man loses his fortune and position. Down go
children and grandchildren. The edifice of generations may have to be
built up again from the very foundations. Is it nothing to inherit a
name which has been smirched? If a man commits a bad action, are not his
children disgraced with him?”
“Of course; but only by that act. They are not persecuted by the hand of
Fate.”
“Who can trace the consequences of a single act? Who can follow it up in
all the lines of consequence?”
“Yes; but the third and fourth generation....”
“Who can say when those consequences will cease?”
“‘As I live, saith the Lord.’ It is a solemn assurance--a form of words,
perhaps--only a form of words--yet, if so, the audacity of it! ‘As I
live’--the Lord Himself takes the oath--‘if a man be just, he shall
surely live.’”
“A man may be kept down by poverty and shut out from the world by his
father’s shame. Yet he may still be just. It is the distinction that the
Prophet would draw. What misfortune has fallen upon your House which
affects the soul of a man? Death? Poverty? The wrong-doing of certain
members?”
Leonard shook his head. “Yes, I understand what you mean. I confess that
I had been shaken by the revelations of that old lady. They seemed to
explain so much.”
“Perhaps they explained the whole--yet not as she meant them to
explain.”
“Now I understand so many things that were dark--my mother’s sadness and
the melancholy eyes which rested upon me from childhood. She was looking
for the hand of Fate: she expected disaster: she kept me in ignorance:
yet she was haunted by the thought that for the third and fourth
generation the sins--the unknown sins--of the fathers would be visited
upon the children. When I learned these things”--he repeated himself,
because his mind was so full of the thought--“I felt the same
expectation, the same terror, the same sense of helplessness, as if
wherever I turned, whatever I attempted, the Hand which struck down my
father, my grandfather, and that old man would fall upon me.”
“It was natural.”
“So that these words came to me like a direct message from the old
Hebrew Prophet. Our ancestors went for consolation and instruction to
those pages. They held that every doubt and every difficulty were met
and solved by these writers. Perhaps we shall go back to the ancient
faith. And yet----” He looked round; it was a new world that he saw,
with new ideas. “Not in my time,” he said. “We are a scientific age.
When the reign of Science is ended, we may begin again the reign of
Faith.” He spoke as one in doubt and uncertainty.
“Receive the words, Leonard, as a direct message.”
“At least, I interpreted the words into an order to look at events from
another point of view. And I have taken all the misfortunes in turn.
They have nothing whatever to do with heredity. Your illustration about
a man losing his money, and so bringing poverty upon his children, does
not apply. My great-grandfather has his head turned by a great trouble.
His son commits suicide. Why? Nobody knows. The young sailor is drowned.
Why? Because he is a sailor. The daughter marries beneath her station.
Why? Because she was motherless and fatherless and neglected. My own
father died young. Why? Because fever carried him off.”
“Leonard”--Constance laid her hand upon his arm--“do not argue the case
any more. Leave it. A thing like this may easily become morbid. It may
occupy your thoughts too much.”
“Let me forget it, by all means. At present, I confess, the question is
always with me.”
“It explains something in your manner yesterday and to-day. You are
always serious, but now you are absent-minded. You have begun to think
too much about these troubles.”
He smiled. “I am serious, I suppose, from the way in which I was brought
up. We lived in Cornwall, right in the country, close to the seashore,
with no houses near us, until I went to school. It was a very quiet
household: my grandmother and my mother were both in widows’ weeds.
There was very little talking, and no laughing or mirth of any kind,
within the house, and always, as I now understand, the memory of that
misfortune and the dread of new misfortunes were upon these unhappy
ladies. They did not tell me anything, but I felt the sadness of the
house. I suppose it made me a quiet boy--without much inclination to the
light heart that possessed most of my fellows.”
“I am glad you have told me,” she replied. “These things explain a good
deal in you. For now I understand you better.”
They mounted their cycles, and resumed the journey in silence for some
miles.
“Look!” he cried. “There is our old place.”
He pointed across a park. At the end of it stood a house of red brick,
with red tiles and stacks of red chimneys--a house of two stories only.
In front was a carriage-drive, but no garden or enclosure at all. The
house rose straight out of the park itself.
“You see only the back of the house,” said Leonard. “The gardens are all
in the front: but everything is grown over; nothing has been done to the
place for seventy years. I wonder it has stood so long.” They turned off
the road into the drive. “The old man, when the double shock fell upon
him, dropped into a state of apathy from which he has never rallied. We
must go round by the servant’s entrance. The front doors are never
opened.”
The great hall with the marble floor made echoes rolling and rumbling
about the house above as they walked across it. There were arms on the
walls and armour, but all rusted and decaying in the damp air. There
were two or three pictures on the walls, but the colour had peeled off
and the pictures had become ghosts and groups of ghosts in black frames.
“The recluse lives in the library,” said Leonard. “Let us look first at
the other rooms.” He opened a door. This was the dining-room. Nothing
had been touched. There stood the great dining-hall. Against the walls
were arranged a row of leather chairs. There was the sideboard; the
mahogany was not affected by the long waiting, except that it had lost
its lustre. The leather on the chairs was decaying and falling off. The
carpet was moth-eaten and in threads. The paper on the wall, the
old-fashioned red velvet paper, was hanging down in folds. The
old-fashioned high brass fender was black with neglected age. On the
walls the pictures were in better preservation than those in the hall,
but they were hopelessly injured by the damp. The curtains were falling
away from the rings. “Think of the festive dinners that have been given
in this room,” said Leonard. “Think of the talk and the laughter and the
happiness! And suddenly, unexpectedly, the whole comes to an end, and
there has been silence and emptiness for seventy years.”
He closed the door and opened another. This was in times gone by the
drawing-room. It was a noble room--long, high, well proportioned. A harp
stood in one corner, its strings either broken or loose. A piano with
the music still upon it stood open; it had been open for seventy years.
The keys were covered with dust and the wires with rust. The music which
had last been played was still in its place. Old-fashioned sofas and
couches stood about. The mantel-shelf was ornamented with strange things
in china. There were occasional tables in the old fashion of yellow and
white and gold. The paper was peeling off like that of the dining-room.
The sunshine streamed into the room through windows which had not been
cleaned for seventy years. The moths were dancing merrily as if they
rejoiced in solitude. On one table, beside the fireplace, were lying,
as they had been left, the work-basket with some fancy work in it; the
open letter-case, a half-finished letter, an inkstand, with three or
four quill pens: on a chair beside the table lay an open volume; it had
been open for seventy years.
Constance came in stepping noiselessly, as in a place where silence was
sacred. She spoke in whispers; the silence fell upon her soul; it filled
her with strange terrors and apprehensions. She looked around her.
“You come here often, Leonard?”
“No. I have opened the door once, and only once. Then I was seized with
a strange sense of--I know not what; it made me ashamed. But it seemed
as if the room was full of ghosts.”
“I think it is. The whole house is full of ghosts. I felt their breath
upon my cheek as soon as we came into the place. They will not mind us,
Leonard, nor would they hurt you if they could. Let us walk round the
room.” She looked at the music. “It is Gluck’s ‘Orpheo’; the song,
‘Orpheo and Euridice.’ She must have been singing it the day before--the
day before----” Her eyes turned to the work-table. “Here she was sitting
at work the day before--the day before---- Look at the dainty work--a
child’s frock.” She took up the open book; it was Paschal’s “Pensées.”
“She was reading this the day before--the day before----” Her eyes
filled with tears. “The music--no common music; the book--a book only
for a soul uplifted above the common level; the dainty, beautiful
work--Leonard, it seems to reveal the woman and the household. Nothing
base or common was in that woman’s heart--or in the management of her
house; they are slight indications, but they are sure. It seems as if I
knew her already, though I never heard of her until to-day. Oh, what a
loss for that man!--what a Tragedy! what a terrible Tragedy it was!” Her
eyes fell upon the letter; she took it up. “See!” she said. “The letter
was begun, but never finished. Is it not sacrilege to let it fall into
other hands? Take it, Leonard.”
“We may read it after all these years,” Leonard said, shaking the dust
of seventy years from it. “There can be nothing in it that she would
wish not to be written there.” He read it slowly. It was written in
pointed and sloping Italian hand--a pretty hand belonging to the time
when women were more separated from men in all their ways. Now we all
write alike. “‘My dearest....’ I cannot make out the name. The rest is
easy. ‘Algernon and Langley have gone off to the study to talk business.
It is this affair of the Mill which is still unsettled. I am a little
anxious about Algernon: he has been strangely distrait for this last two
or three days; perhaps he is anxious about me: there need be no anxiety.
I am quite well and strong. This morning he got up very early, and I
heard him walking about in his study below. This is not his way at all.
However, should a wife repine because her Lord is anxious about her?
Algernon is very determined about that Mill; but I fear that Langley
will not give way. You know how firm he can be behind that pleasant
smile of his.’ That is all, Constance. She wrote no more.”
“It was written, then, the day before--the day before---- Keep the
letter, Leonard. You have no other letter of hers--perhaps nothing at
all belonging to the poor lady. I wonder who Langley was? I had a
forefather, too, whose Christian name was Langley. It is not a common
name.”
“The Christian name of my unfortunate grandfather who committed suicide
was also Langley. It is a coincidence. No doubt he was named after the
person mentioned in this letter. Not by any means a common name, as you
say. As for this letter, I will keep it. There is nothing in my
possession that I can connect with this unfortunate ancestress.”
“Where are her jewels and things?”
“Perhaps where she left them, perhaps sent to the bank. I have never
heard of anything belonging to her.”
Constance walked about the room looking at everything; the dust lay
thick, but it was not the black dust of the town--a light brown dust
that could be blown away or swept away easily. She swept the strings of
the harp, which responded with the discords of seventy years’ neglect.
She touched the keys of the piano, and started at the harsh and grating
response. She looked at the chairs and the tables with their curly
legs, and the queer things in china that stood upon the mantel shelf.
“Why,” she said, “the place should be kept just as it is, a museum of
George the Fourth fashion in furniture. Here is a guitar. Did that lady
play the guitar as well as the harp and the piano? The pictures are all
water-colours. The glass has partly preserved them, but some damp has
got in; they are all injured. I should like to get them all copied for
studies of the time and its taste. They are good pictures, too. This one
looks like a water-colour copy of a Constable. Was he living then? And
this is a portrait.” She started. “Good heavens! what is this?”
“This? It is evidently a portrait,” said Leonard. “Why, Constance----”
For she was looking into it with every sign of interest and curiosity.
“How in the world did this picture come here?” Leonard looked at it.
“I cannot tell you,” he said; “it is only my second visit to this room.
It is a young man. A pleasing and amiable face; the short hair curled by
the barber’s art, I suppose. The face is familiar; I don’t know why----”
“Leonard, it is the face of my own great-grandfather. How did it come
here? I have a copy, or the original, in my own possession. How did it
come here? Was he a friend of your people?”
“I know nothing at all about it. By the rolled collar and the curly
hair and the little whiskers I should say that the original must have
been a contemporary of my ancestor the Recluse. Stop! there is a name on
the frame. Can you read it?” He brushed away the dust. “‘Langley Holme,
1825,’ Langley Holme! What is it, Constance?”
“Oh, Leonard, Langley Holme--Langley Holme--he was my great-grandfather.
And he was murdered; I remember to have heard of it--he was murdered.
Then, it was here, and he was that old man’s brother-in-law,
and--and--your Tragedy is mine as well.”
“Why, Constance, are you not jumping to a conclusion? How do you know
that the murder in Campaigne Park was that of Langley Holme?”
“I don’t know it; I am only certain of it. Besides, that letter.
Algernon and Langley were in the study. The letter tells us. Oh, I have
no doubt--no doubt at all. This is his portrait; he was here the day
before--the day before the terrible Tragedy. It must have been none
other--it could have been none other. Leonard, this is very strange. You
confide your story to me, you bring me out to see the spot where it
happened and the house of the Recluse, and I find that your story is
mine. Oh, to light upon it here and with you! It is strange, it is
wonderful! Your story is mine as well,” she repeated, looking into his
face; “we have a common tragedy.”
“We are not certain yet; there may be another explanation.”
“There can be no other. We will hunt up the contemporary papers; we
shall find an account of the murder somewhere. A gentleman is not
murdered even so far back as 1826 without a report in the papers. But I
am quite--quite certain. This is my great-grandfather, Langley Holme,
and his death was the first of all your many troubles.”
“This was the first of the hereditary misfortunes.”
“The more important and the most far-reaching. Perhaps we could trace
them all to this one calamity.”
Leonard was looking into the portrait.
“I said it was a familiar face, Constance; it is your own. The
resemblance is startling. You have his eyes, the same shape of face, the
same mouth. It is at least your ancestor. And as for the rest, since it
is certain that he met with an early and a violent end, I would rather
believe that it was here and in this Park, because it makes my Tragedy,
as you say, your own. We have a common history; it needs no further
proof. There could not have been two murders of two gentlemen, both
friends of this House, in the same year. You are right: this is the man
whose death caused all the trouble.”
They looked at the portrait in silence for awhile. The thought of the
sudden end of this gallant youth, rejoicing in the strength and hope of
early manhood, awed them.
“We may picture the scene,” said Constance--“the news brought suddenly
by some country lad breathless and panting; the old man then young,
with all his future before him; a smiling future, a happy life; his wife
hearing it; the house made terrible by her shriek; the sudden shock; the
heavy blow; bereavement of all the man loved best; the death of his wife
for whom he was so anxious; the awful death of the man he loved. Oh,
Leonard, can you bear to think of it?”
“Yes; but other young men have received blows as terrible, and have yet
survived, and at least gone about their work as before. Is it in nature
for a man to grieve for seventy years?”
“I do not think that it was grief, or that it was ever grief, that he
felt or still feels. His brain received a violent blow, from which it
has never recovered.”
“But he can transact business in his own way--by brief written
instructions.”
“We are not physicians, to explain the working of a disordered brain. We
can, however, understand that such a shock may have produced all the
effect of a blow from a hammer or a club. His brain is not destroyed:
but it is benumbed. I believe that he felt no sorrow, but only a dead
weight of oppression--the sense of suffering without pain--the
consciousness of gloom which never lifts. Is not the story capable of
such effects?”
“Perhaps. There is, however, one thing which we have forgotten,
Constance. It is that we are cousins. This discovery makes us cousins.”
She took his proffered hand under the eyes of her ancestor, who looked
kindly upon them from his dusty and faded frame. “We are cousins--not
first or second cousins--but still--cousins--which is something. You
have found another relation. I hope, sir, that you will not be ashamed
of her, or connect her with your family misfortunes. This tragedy
belongs to both of us. Come, Leonard, let us leave this room. It is
haunted. I hear again the shrieks of the woman, and I see the white face
of the man--the young man in his bereavement. Come.”
She drew him from the room, and closed the door softly.
Leonard led the way up the broad oaken staircase, which no neglect could
injure, and no flight of time. On the first floor there were doors
leading to various rooms. They opened one: it was a room filled with
things belonging to children: there were toys and dolls: there were
dresses and boots and hats: there was a children’s carriage, the
predecessor of the perambulator and the cart: there were nursery-cots:
there were slates and pencils and colour-boxes. It looked like a place
which had not been deserted: children had lived in it and had grown out
of it: all the old playthings were left in when the children left it.
“After the blow,” said Leonard, “life went on somehow in the House. The
Recluse lived by himself in his bedroom and the library: the dining-room
and the drawing-room were locked up: his wife’s room--the room where she
died--was locked up: the boys went away: the girl ran away with her
young man, Mr. Galley; then the whole place was deserted.” He shut the
door and unlocked another. “It was her room,” he whispered.
Constance looked into the room. It was occupied by a great four-poster
bed with steps on either side in order that the occupant might ascend to
the feather-bed with the dignity due to her position. One cannot imagine
a gentlewoman of 1820, or thereabouts, reduced to the indignity of
climbing into a high bed. Therefore the steps were placed in position.
We have lost this point of difference which once distinguished the
“Quality” from the lower sort: the former walked up these steps with
dignity into bed: the latter flopped or climbed: everybody now seeks the
nightly repose by the latter methods. The room contained a great amount
of mahogany: the doors were open, and showed dresses hanging up as they
had waited for seventy years to be taken down and worn: fashions had
come and gone: they remained waiting. There was a chest of drawers with
cunningly-wrought boxes upon it: silver patch-boxes: snuff-boxes in
silver and in silver gilt: a small collection of old-world curiosities,
which had belonged to the last occupant’s forefather. There was a
dressing-table, where all the toilet tools and instruments were lying as
they had been left. Constance went into the room on tiptoe, glancing at
the great bed, which stood like a funeral hearse of the fourteenth
century, with its plumes and heavy carvings, as if she half expected to
find a tenant. Beside the looking-glass stood open, just as it had been
left, the lady’s jewel-box. Constance took out the contents, and looked
at them with admiring eyes. There were rings and charms, necklaces of
pearl, diamond brooches, bracelets, sprays, watches--everything that a
rich gentlewoman would like to have. She put them all back, but she did
not close the box; she left everything as she found it, and crept away.
“These things belonged to Langley’s sister,” she whispered; “and she was
one of my people--mine.”
They shut the door and descended the stairs. Again they stood together
in the great empty hall, where their footsteps echoed up the broad
staircase and in the roof above, and their words were repeated by
mocking voices, even when they whispered, from wall to answering wall,
and from the ceilings of the upper place.
“Tell me all you know about your ancestor,” said Leonard.
“Indeed, it is very little. He is my ancestor on my mother’s side, and
again on her mother’s side. He left one child, a daughter, who was my
grandmother: and her daughter married my father. There is but a
legend--I know no more--except that the young man--the lively young man
whose portrait I have--whose portrait is in that room--was found done to
death in a wood. That is all I have heard. I do not know who the
murderer was, nor what happened, nor anything. It all seemed so long
ago--a thing that belonged to the past. But, then, if we could
understand, the past belongs to us. There was another woman who suffered
as well as the poor lady of this house. Oh, Leonard, what a tragedy! And
only the other day we were talking glibly about family scandals!”
“Yes; a good deal of the sunshine has disappeared. My life, you see, was
not, as you thought, to be one long succession of fortune’s gifts.”
“It was seventy years ago, however. The thing must not make us unhappy.
We, at least, if not that old man, can look upon an event of so long ago
with equanimity.”
“Yes, yes. But I must ferret out the whole story. I feel as if I know so
little. I am most strangely interested and moved. How was the man
killed? Why? Who did it? Where can I look for the details?”
“When you have found what you want, Leonard, you can tell me. For my own
part, I may leave the investigation to you. Besides, it was so long ago.
Why should we revive the griefs of seventy years ago?”
“I really do not know, except that I am, as I said, strangely attracted
by this story. Come, now, I want you to see the man himself who married
your ancestor’s sister. Her portrait is somewhere among those in the
drawing-room, but it is too far gone to be recognised. Pity--pity! We
have lost all our family portraits. Come, we will step lightly, not to
wake him.”
He led her across the hall again, and opened very softly the library
door. Asleep in an armchair by the fire was the most splendid old man
Constance had ever seen. He was of gigantic stature; his long legs were
outstretched, his massive head lay back upon the chair--a noble head
with fine and abundant white hair and broad shoulders and deep chest. He
was sleeping like a child, breathing as softly and as peacefully. In
that restful countenance there was no suggestion of madness or a
disordered brain.
Constance stepped lightly into the room and bent over him. His lips
parted.
He murmured something in his sleep. He woke with a start. He sat up and
opened his eyes, and gazed upon her face with a look of terror and
amazement.
She stepped aside. The old man closed his eyes again, and his head fell
back. Leonard touched her arm, and they left the room. At the door
Constance turned to look at him. He was asleep again.
“He murmured something in his sleep. He was disturbed. He looked
terrified.”
“It was your presence, Constance, that in some way suggested the memory
of his dead friend. Perhaps your face reminded him of his dead friend.
Think, however, what a shock it must have been to disturb the balance of
such a strong man as that. Why, he was in the full strength of his early
manhood. And he never recovered--all these seventy years. He has never
spoken all these years, except once in my hearing--it was in his sleep.
What did he say? ‘That will end it.’ Strange words.”
The tears were standing in the girl’s eyes.
“The pity of it, Leonard--the pity of it!”
“Come into the gardens. They were formerly, in the last century--when a
certain ancestor was a scientific gardener--show gardens.”
They were now entirely ruined by seventy years of neglect. The lawns
were covered with coarse rank grass; the walks were hidden; brambles
grew over the flower-beds; the neglect was simply mournful. They passed
through into the kitchen-garden, over the strawberry-beds and the
asparagus-beds, and everywhere spread the brambles with the thistle and
the shepherd’s-purse and all the common weeds; in the orchard most of
the trees were dead, and under the dead boughs there flourished a rank
undergrowth.
“I have never before,” said Constance, “realized what would happen if we
suffered a garden to go wild.”
“This would happen--as you see. I believe no one has so much as walked
in the garden except ourselves for seventy years. In the eyes of the
village, I know, the whole place is supposed to be haunted day and
night. Even the chance of apples would not tempt the village children
into the garden. Come, Constance, let us go into the village and see the
church.”
It was a pretty village, consisting of one long street, with an inn, a
small shop, and post-office, a blacksmith’s, and one or two other
trades. In the middle of the street a narrow lane led to the churchyard
and the church. The latter, much too big for the village, was an early
English cruciform structure, with later additions and improvements.
The church was open, for it was Saturday afternoon. The chancel was full
of monuments of dead and gone Campaignes. Among them was a tablet, “To
the Memory of Langley Holme, born at Great Missenden, June, 1798, found
murdered in a wood in this parish, May 18, 1826. Married February 1,
1824, to Eleanor, daughter of the late Marmaduke Flight, of Little
Beauchamp, in this county; left one child, Constance, born January 1,
1825.”
“Yes,” said Constance, “one can realise it: the death of wife and friend
at once, and in this dreadful manner.”
In the churchyard an old man was occupied with some work among the
graves. He looked up and straightened himself slowly, as one with
stiffened joints.
“Mornin’, sir,” he said. “Mornin’, miss. I hope I see you well. Beg your
pardon, sir, but you be a Campaigne for sure. All the Campaignes are
alike--tall men they are, and good to look upon. But you’re not so tall,
no
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/50177