THErôle of coincidence in the history of the Individual is much more important than any writer of fiction has ever dared to represent. Not the coincidence which is dear to the old-fashioned dramatist, when at the very nick and opposite point of time the long-lost Earl returns; the coincidence of real life does not occur in this way. A man’s mind is much occupied, and even absorbed, by one subject: he goes about thinking upon that subject and upon little else. Then all kinds of things happen to him which illustrate this subject. That is what coincidence means.
For instance, I was once endeavouring to reconstruct for a novel a certain scene among the overgrown byways and the secluded and forgotten lanes of history. I had nothing at first to help me: worse still, I could find nothing, not even in the British Museum. The most profound knowledge of the books and pamphlets in that collection, in the person of the greatest scholar, could not help me. I was reluctantly making up my mind to abandon the project (which would have inflicted irreparable damageon my novel) when a sheaf of second-hand catalogues came to me. It was by the last evening post. I turned over two or three, without much curiosity, until among the items I lit upon one which caught my eye. It was only the title of a pamphlet, but it promised to contain the exact information which I wanted. The promise was kept. I was too late to buy the pamphlet, but I had the title, and it was found for me in the British Museum, and it became my “crib.” Now that, if you please, was a coincidence; and this kind of coincidence happens continually to every man who thinks about anything.
It is said of a most distinguished numismatist that he cannot cross a ploughed field without picking up a rose noble. That is because his thoughts are always turned to rose nobles and other delightful coins. If one is studying the eighteenth century, there is not a museum, a picture-gallery, a second-hand catalogue, which does not provide the student with new information. Every man absorbed in a subject becomes like a magnet which attracts to itself all kinds of proofs, illustrations, and light.
These things are mentioned only to show that the apparently miraculous manner in which external events conspired together to keep up the interest in this case was really neither remarkable nor exceptional. For the interest itself, the grip with which the story of the newspaper cuttings caught and held both these readers, was a true miracle. In every group of situations there is the central event. Inthis case, the mystery of the wood was the central event.
“It is my murder, Leonard,” Constance repeated, “as much as yours. It was my great-grandfather who was murdered, if it was your great-grandmother who was also killed by that crime. Let me sit with you while you work it out.”
“You too, Constance?” Leonard saw in her eyes something that reminded him of his own overpowering interest in the thing. “You too?”
“Take back the book, Leonard.”
“You have read it?”
“I read it over and over again—I have been reading it all the livelong night.”
“And you—you also—feel—with me—the same——” He did not finish the sentence.
“I feel—like you—constrained to go on—why—I cannot tell you. It is not pity, for one cannot feel pity for a man of whom one knows nothing except that he was young and handsome and unfortunate, and that he was an ancestor. It is not desire for revenge—how can one take revenge for a crime when everybody concerned is dead and gone?”
“Except the man who suffered most.”
“Except that old, old man. Well, I cannot understand it. But the fact is so. Like you, I am drawn by ropes to the subject.”
“As for me I can think of nothing else. I am wholly possessed by the story and by the mystery. We will work at it together—if any work is possible.”
They sat down together and they read the book aloud, both making notes. They read parts of it over again. They compared notes. They went to the club together and dined together: they went home and they spent the evening together: they separated with the assurance that everything had been done which could be done, and that they must reluctantly abandon any further investigation.
In the morning they met again.
“I was thinking last night,” said Constance, “about the Inquest. There are two or three points——”
“I was thinking about the Trial,” said Leonard. “There are a few doubts in my mind——”
“Let us have out the book again.”
Once more it was produced. Once more it lay on the table: once more they sat on opposite sides and read and considered and took counsel together—with no result: once more they locked up the book, and agreed that further investigation was impossible.
“To-morrow,” said Leonard, “I shall go on with my work again. This is like the following of Jack-a-Lantern.”
“To-morrow,” said Constance, with a sigh. “Strange that we should have been led to consider the subject at all. Let the dead bury their dead. It is an old story, and nothing more remains to be found out. Why have we been so foolish?”
Despite this agreement, they continued at their hopeless task. They sat together day after day; during this time they talked and thought of nothingelse. Again and again they agreed there was nothing more to be found. Again and again they made a show of putting the book away and locking it up. Again and again they took it out again and read it till they knew it all by heart. Together they went once more to Campaigne Park; they visited the fatal wood, they wandered about the deserted rooms of the house, haunted by the dreadful memory. How could they expect to find anything now after all these years?
“We have,” said Leonard, repeating the words a hundred times, “all the evidence that can now be discovered—the evidence of the wood and the place, the evidence of one survivor, the evidence of the trial. If the truth cannot be discovered, why should we go on? Moreover, after all these years nothing more can be discovered.”
“Nothing more, except the hand that did it.”
Why should they go on? Because they could not choose but go on. They were compelled to go on. If they spoke of other things, their thoughts and their talk wandered back to this same subject. As may always happen when two persons are engaged on the subject and absorbed in it, their faces assumed the same expression—that of one who searches and finds not. With such a face the alchemist was accustomed every day to enter his laboratory, hoping against hope, beaten back every evening, returning in the morning. But with a difference—for the alchemist knew what he wanted to find out,and these two were in search of they knew not what.
They went together, in the vain hope of finding or hearing something more, to call upon the lady of the Commercial Road. She was most gratified to be recognised as a cousin of this young lady; she desired nothing better than to talk of the family and its misfortunes. But she threw no more light upon the story, knowing, in fact, less than they themselves knew. They left her; they agreed once more that it was absurd to continue a quest so hopeless; they agreed once more to lock up the book. Next day they took it out and laid their heads together again.
“How long is this going to last?” Constance asked.
“I don’t know,” Leonard replied wearily. “Are we possessed? Are we bewitched?”
“Are we two persons who do not believe in possession or in witchcraft, yet are really possessed—I don’t know by whom, or why, or anything at all about it—but if there is not possession, then the old stories mean nothing.”
“We might make a wax image, and call it by the name of the witch, and stick pins in it——”
“If we knew the name of the witch. Why, it seems as if we could speak and think of nothing else. If one were superstitious——”
“If,” echoed the other doubtfully, “one were superstitious——”
“It might seem like part of the hereditary misfortunes; yet why should I share in your sorrows?”Here she blushed because she remembered how, before the misfortunes were even heard of, she had been invited to share in the good fortune. But Leonard observed nothing. The quest left no room for any thoughts of love.
“No,” he replied gravely, “you must not share in our troubles. Constance, I, too, ask myself every day how long this will last. Why cannot I throw off the sense of being driven on against my own will in a search which must be hopeless?”
“Yes, I, too, am driven, but it is to follow you. What does it mean? Is it imagination of a morbid kind?” She paused. Leonard made no reply. “After all,” she continued, “there is nothing to do but to accept the situation, and to go on and see what happens.”
Leonard groaned. “Suppose,” he said, with a wintry smile, “that we are doomed to go on day after day till the end of things, just as that old man has walked up and down his terrace day after day for seventy years. What a fearful tramp! What a monotony! What a life!”
“A dreary prospect. Yet, to go over the same story day after day, every day, seems little better than that walk up and down the terrace, does it?”
“Leave it, Constance. Give it up and go back to your own work.”
He took up the fatal book and threw it to the other end of the room.
“Frankly, I would leave it if I could. The thingweighs upon me. I understand what possession means. I am possessed. I must follow you.”
“Constance, we are growing ridiculous. We are two persons of culture, and we talk of possession and of an unseen force that drags us.”
“But since we are dragged——”
“Yes, since we are dragged”—he crossed over the room, picked up the book, and brought it back—“and we are dragged—let us obey.”
It was then three weeks since this inquiry had begun. It was now the sole object of their lives. They hunted in the British Museum among old papers, they went to the Hall and turned out desks and drawers and cupboards of letters, documents, papers, and accounts. They found enough to reconstruct the daily life of the old man before the tragedy, and the history of his predecessors. They were the simple annals of peaceful country life, with no events but those that one expects—births of children, buying of lands, festivities.
You know that when Sisyphus had rolled his ball—or was it a wheel?—to the top of the hill, the thing incontinently rolled all the way down again. Then, with a sigh, the prisoner walked after it, as slowly as was consistent with a show of obedience, and began again. So Leonard, with a sigh, began again, when one theory after the other broke down.
At this point the coincidences commenced. They were talking together one morning.
“If,” said Leonard, “we could only hear the manDunning on the subject! He would be more interesting, even, than the ancient boy who scared the birds.”
“He must be dead long ago. Yet, if he could be found——”
At this moment—no coincidence, I have explained, can be considered remarkable—Leonard’s servant opened the door and brought him a bulky letter. It had an Australian postage stamp upon it. He looked carelessly at the address, and tossed it on the table to wait his convenience. As it lay on its back Constance read, printed across the securing fold, the words “John Dunning’s Sons.”
“John Dunning’s Sons,” she said. “This is strange.” She took up the letter and pointed out the name. “Just as we were talking of John Dunning. Open the letter, Leonard, and read it. Oh, this is wonderful! Open it at once.”
Leonard tore open the envelope. Within there was a letter and an enclosure. He read both rapidly.
“Good Heaven!” he cried. “It is actually the voice of the man himself, Constance; it is the voice we were asking for. It is his voice speaking from the grave.”
He read aloud both the letter and the enclosure. The following was the letter:
“Dear Sir,“I found the enclosed paper only yesterday,though it was written ten years ago, and my grandfather, by whom it was written, died very shortly after it was written. I will not trouble you with the causes which led to our overlooking it for so many years, but hasten to send it on to you in accordance with the writer’s wishes.“The circumstances to which he refers happened seventy years ago. No doubt everyone who can remember the events has long since departed. I do not suppose that you even know the fact—to my grandfather of vital importance—that his acquittal was secured by the kind offices of your ancestor, who was then the owner of Campaigne Park, and I do not suppose that you have ever heard of the great kindness, the sympathy, the desire for justice, which prompted those good offices, nor of the further generosity which sent my grandfather out to Australia. He began life as an agricultural labourer in England; he would have remained in that humble position all his days but for the calamity which turned out so great a blessing—his trial for murder: he came out here: he died one of the richest men in the colony, for everything that he touched turned to gold.“The paper which I enclose is a proof that gratitude is not wholly dead in the world. I gather, from the published notes on the Members of Parliament and their origin, that you are now the head of the House. Seeing that you were distinguished in the University of Oxford, and are a member of several clubs, as well as in the House, I do not suppose thatthere is anything we can do to carry out the wishes of my grandfather as regards yourself personally. It may happen, however, that members of your family might come out to this country, and might not be so fortunate as yourself. In that case, will you please to inform those members that our worldly wealth is great, that the origin of all our property was the generosity of your ancestor, that my grandfather’s wishes are commands, and that there is nothing which we can do for any member of your family, if the opportunity should occur, which we will not do cheerfully and readily.“I remain, dear sir,“Very faithfully yours,“Charles Dunning.”
“Dear Sir,
“I found the enclosed paper only yesterday,though it was written ten years ago, and my grandfather, by whom it was written, died very shortly after it was written. I will not trouble you with the causes which led to our overlooking it for so many years, but hasten to send it on to you in accordance with the writer’s wishes.
“The circumstances to which he refers happened seventy years ago. No doubt everyone who can remember the events has long since departed. I do not suppose that you even know the fact—to my grandfather of vital importance—that his acquittal was secured by the kind offices of your ancestor, who was then the owner of Campaigne Park, and I do not suppose that you have ever heard of the great kindness, the sympathy, the desire for justice, which prompted those good offices, nor of the further generosity which sent my grandfather out to Australia. He began life as an agricultural labourer in England; he would have remained in that humble position all his days but for the calamity which turned out so great a blessing—his trial for murder: he came out here: he died one of the richest men in the colony, for everything that he touched turned to gold.
“The paper which I enclose is a proof that gratitude is not wholly dead in the world. I gather, from the published notes on the Members of Parliament and their origin, that you are now the head of the House. Seeing that you were distinguished in the University of Oxford, and are a member of several clubs, as well as in the House, I do not suppose thatthere is anything we can do to carry out the wishes of my grandfather as regards yourself personally. It may happen, however, that members of your family might come out to this country, and might not be so fortunate as yourself. In that case, will you please to inform those members that our worldly wealth is great, that the origin of all our property was the generosity of your ancestor, that my grandfather’s wishes are commands, and that there is nothing which we can do for any member of your family, if the opportunity should occur, which we will not do cheerfully and readily.
“I remain, dear sir,“Very faithfully yours,“Charles Dunning.”
“I should very much like to make the acquaintance of Mr. Charles Dunning,” said Constance. “Now for what the grandfather says.”
Leonard opened the other paper and read:
“Being now in my eighty-sixth year, and therefore soon to be called away, I desire to place in writing, in order that it may be sent after my death to the present head of the Campaigne family, first my thanks and heartfelt gratitude for what was done for me by the late Squire in and after my trial for murder. I have enjoined upon my children and my grandchildren that they are to part with their last farthing, if the occasion arises, for the benefit of any descendants of that good man. I suppose that heis dead and beyond the reach of my prayers. I can only hope that he speedily recovered from the loss of his dear lady, and that he enjoyed a long and happy life.
“It is a dreadful thing to be accused of murder. All my life I have remembered the charge and the trial. After the case was over, the people of the village were cruel hard. The charge was thrown in my teeth every day: no one would work with me, and no one would sit with me. So I had to come away. If there is anyone living who remembers the case and me, I would ask him to read and to consider two points that I found out after the trial.”
“This is indeed the Voice of the Dead,” said Constance, speaking low.
“The first point is that I had witnesses, but I was too much stunned to think of them, who could prove that I was at work all the morning until just before noon in another place.
“The second point may be more important. The path through the wood leads to a stile opening on the lane to the village of Highbeech. There is a cottage in the lane opposite the stile. On the morning of the murder the woman of the cottage was washing outside the door. She told me after the trial that not a soul had gone into the wood from her end of it all the morning; she could not see the other end, but she saw me coming down the hill on my way to the wood, and I had not been in thewood half a minute before she saw me running back again and up the hill to the farm-yard on the top. I hope that if there is any doubt left in the mind of anyone as to my innocence, this new evidence will make it clear.”
The paper was signed “John Dunning.”
“There is no doubt left,” said Constance. “Still, what bearing has the evidence of the cottage woman on the case? What do you think? Has the Voice contributed anything?”
“We will consider presently. Meantime, all he wanted was to clear himself. I think that was effectually done at the trial. Still, he would naturally catch at anything like corroboration. It proves that no one went into the wood from the other end. As for anything else, why, it would seem, with the boy’s evidence, to mean that nobody went into the wood at all that morning except those two gentlemen.”
“Then we come back to the old theory: the lurking in the wood of poacher, madman, or private enemy.”
“We asked for a Voice from the Grave, and it came,” said Leonard. “And now it seems to have told us nothing.”
He placed the paper in the book, leaving the letter on the table.
They looked at each other blankly. Then Leonard rose and walked about the room. Finally he took up a position before the fireplace, and began to speak slowly, as if feeling his way.
“I suppose that it is natural that I should connect this crime with that great question about the inheritance of punishment or consequences.”
“It is quite natural,” said Constance. “And yet——”
“My mother and my grandmother, as I now understand, believed that the misfortunes which they so carefully concealed from me were the inheritance of the forefathers’ sins. And since these misfortunes began with this crime, it was natural that they should attribute the cause to the ancestor who died before the crime. Now, all I can learn about that ancestor is, that he was a country gentleman and Justice of the Peace, a Member of Parliament, and that he left behind him no record or memory of anything uncommon. Now, to produce this enormous list of misfortunes, one must be a Gilles de Retz at least.”
“I am not acquainted with that example.”
“He was a great master in every kind of villainy. About these misfortunes, however. My great-grandfather, as you know—— My grandfather died by his own hand: his brother was drowned at sea: his sister has been unfortunate throughout her life: his son, my father, died young: my uncle Frederick went abroad under a dread of disgrace, which we may forget now he has come home again. The list of misfortunes is long enough. But we cannot learn any cause—which may, even to the superstitious, account for it—under anything of inheritance.”
“Why should we try to account for the misfortunes? They are not caused by you.”
“I try because they are part of the whole business. I cannot escape or forget the chain of misfortune.”
“If you only could, Leonard! And it is so long ago, and no misfortune has fallen upon you. Oh, what did I say once—in this very room?”
“The misfortune that has fallen upon me is the knowledge of all these misfortunes—these ruined lives. The old selfish contentment is gone. I lived for myself. That is henceforth impossible. Well”—he shook himself as a dog after a swim—“I am now what you wanted me to be—like other people.” He relapsed into silence. “I cannot choose,” he said presently, “but connect these misfortunes with that first and greatest. The point of doubt is whether to speak of consequence or punishment.”
“Must it be one or the other?”
“The child must suffer for the father’s sin. That is most certain. If the father throws away his property, the son becomes a pauper. If the father loses his social position, the children sink down with him. If the father contracts disease, the children may inherit. All this is obvious and cannot be disputed.”
“But that is not punishment for generations of innocent children.”
“It is consequence, not punishment. We must not confuse the two. Take the case of crime. Body and mind and soul are all connected together, so that the face proclaims the mind and the mind presentsthe soul. The criminal is a diseased man. Body and mind and soul are all connected together. He lives in an evil atmosphere. Thought, action, impulse, are all evil. He is wrapped in a miasma, like a low-lying meadow on an autumn morning. The children may inherit the disease of crime just as they may inherit consumption or gout. That is to say, they are born with a tendency to crime, as they may be born with a tendency to consumption or gout. It is not punishment, I repeat. It is consequence. In such children there is an open door to evil of some kind or other.”
“Since all men have weaknesses or faults, there must be always such an open door to all children.”
“I suppose so. But the son of a man reputed blameless, whose weaknesses or faults are presumably light or venial, is less drawn towards the open door than the son of the habitual criminal. The son of the criminal naturally makes for the open door, which is the easy way. It is the consequence. As for our own troubles, perhaps, if we knew, they, too, may be the consequence—not the punishment. But we do not know—we cannot find the crime, or the criminal.”
“The theory of consequence”—Leonard was arranging his thoughts on paper for better clearness—“while it answers most of the difficulties connected with hereditary trouble, breaks down, it must be confessed, in some cases. Given, for instance, a case in which a boy is carefully educated, has no bad examples before him, shows no signs of vice, and is ignorant of the family misfortunes. If that boy becomes a spendthrift and a prodigal, or worse, when there has never before been such a thing in the family, how can we connect the case with the faults or vices of a grandfather altogether unlike his own, and unknown to him? I should be inclined rather to ascribe the case to some influences of the past, not to be discovered, due to some maternal ancestry. A man, for instance, may be so completely unlike any other member of the family that we must search for the cause of his early life in the line of his mother or his grandmother.”
He was just then thinking of his uncle—the returned Colonial, in whom, except for his commanding stature and his still handsome face, there was nothing to remind the world of the paternal side. Whenever he thought of this cheerful person, withwhom life seemed a pleasant play, certain doubts crossed his mind, and ran like cold water down his back. He had come home rich—that was something. He might have come home as poor as when he started. Rich or poor, he would have been the same—as buoyant, as loud, as unpresentable.
In fact, at this very moment, when these reflections were forming a part of Leonard’s great essay on the after-effects of evil—an essay which created only last month so great a stir that people talked of little else for a whole evening—the rich Australian was on his way to confess the fact that things were not exactly as he had chosen to present them.
He did confess the truth, or as much of the truth as he could afford to express, but in an easy and irresponsible manner, as if nothing mattered much. He was a philosopher, to whom nothing did matter. He came in, he shook hands and laughed buoyantly; he chose a cigar from Leonard’s box, he rang the bell for whisky and a few bottles of soda; when the whisky and the soda had arrived and were within reach, he took a chair, and laughed again.
“My boy,” he said, “I’m in a tight place again.”
“In what way?”
“Why, for want of money. That’s the only possible tight place at my age. At yours there are many. It is only a temporary tightness, of course.” He opened the soda-water and drank off the full tumbler at a gulp. “Temporary. Till the supplies arrive.”
“The supplies?” Leonard put the question in anasty, cold, suspicious manner, which would have changed smiles into blankness in a more sensitive person. But uncle Fred was by no means sensitive or thin-skinned. He was also so much accustomed to temporary tightness that the incongruity of tightness with his pretensions of prosperity had not occurred to him.
“Supplies?” he replied. “Supplies from Australia, of course.”
“I thought that you were a partner in a large and prosperous concern.”
“Quite true—quite true. Barlow Brothers is both large and prosperous.”
“In that case it is easy for you to draw upon your bankers or the agents for your bank or some friends in the City. You go into the City every day, I believe. Your position must be well known. In other words, I mistrust this temporary tightness.”
“Mistrust? And from you? Really, Leonard——”
“I put things together. I find in you none of the habits of a responsible merchant. I know that everywhere character is essential for commercial success——”
“Character? What should I be without character?”
“You come home as the successful merchant: you drink: you talk as if you were a debauched youngster about town: your anecdotes are scandalous: your tastes are low. Those are the outward signs.”
“I am on a holiday. Out there—it’s very different.As for drink, of course in a thirsty climate like that of New South Wales—and this place—one must drink a little. For my own part, I am surprised at my own moderation.”
“Very well. I will not go on with the subject, only—to repeat—if you are in a tight place, those who know your solvency will be very willing to relieve you. I hope you are not here to borrow of me, because——”
The man laughed again. “Not I. Nobody is likely to borrow of you, Leonard. That is quite certain—not even the stoniest broke. Make your mind quite easy. As for my friends in the City, I know very well what to do about them. No; I am here because I want to throw myself upon the family.”
“The family consists of your brother, who may be able to help you——”
“I’ve asked him. He won’t—Christopher was always a selfish beast. Good fellow to knock about with and all that—ready for anything—but selfish—damned selfish.”
“And your aunt Lucy——”
“I don’t know her. Who is she?”
“She is not able to assist you. And of myself.”
“You forget the Head of the Family—my old grandfather. I am going to him.”
“You will get nothing out of him—not even a word of recognition.”
“I know. I have been down there to look at him. I have been to see his solicitors.”
“You will get nothing from them without their client’s authority.”
“Well, you know the family affairs, of course. I suppose that a word from you authorising or advising the transfer of a few thousands—or hundreds—out of that enormous pile——”
“I have no right to authorise or advise. I know nothing about my great-grandfather’s affairs.”
“Tell me, dear boy, what about those accumulations? We mentioned them the other day.”
“I know nothing about them.”
“Of course, of course. I’m not going to put questions. The bulk of everything will be yours, naturally. I have no objection. I am not going to interfere with you. Only, don’t you think you could go to the people, the agents or solicitors, and put it to them, that, as a son of the House, I should like an advance of—say a thousand pounds?”
“I am quite certain beforehand they will do nothing for you.”
“You’re a better man of the world than I thought, my boy. I respect you for it. Nobody is to have a finger in the pie but yourself. And you look so damned solemn over it, too.”
“I tell you that I know nothing.”
“Just so—just so. Well, you know nothing. I’ve made a rough calculation—but never mind. Let the accumulations be. Very good, then, I shall not interfere. Meantime, I want some money. Get me from those lawyers a thousand.”
“I cannot get you anything. As for myself, Ihave not got a thousand pounds in the world. You forget that all I have is my mother’s small fortune of a few hundreds a year. It is not in my power to lend you anything.”
He laughed again in his enjoyment of the situation. “Delicious!” he said. “And I said that I wasn’t going to borrow anything. This it is to be a British swell. Well, I don’t mind. I will draw upon you at six months. Come. Long before that time I shall be in funds again.”
“No. You shall not even draw upon me at six months,” Leonard replied, with some vague knowledge of what was implied. “You told me you were rich.”
“Every man is rich who is a partner in a going concern.”
“Then, again, why are you in this tight place?”
“My partner, you see, has been playing the fool. Barlow Brothers, General Stores, Colonial Produce, will be smashed if I can’t raise a few hundreds.”
“Your going concern, as you call it, is going to grief. And what will you do?”
“You shall just see what I wanted. Barlows’ is a General Store in a rising town. There are great capabilities in Barlow Brothers. I came over here to convert Barlow Brothers into a Limited Liability Company, capital £150,000. Branches everywhere. Our own sugar estates, our own tea and coffee plantations. That was my idea!”
“It was a bold idea, at any rate.”
“It was. As for Barlows’ General Store, I confess,between ourselves, and considering that you don’t belong to the City, I don’t mind owning up to you that it is little better than a shanty, where I sold sardines and tea-leaves and bacon. But the capabilities, my dear boy—the capabilities!”
“And you brought this project to London! Well, there have been greater robberies.”
Uncle Fred took another glass of whisky-and-soda. He laughed no more. He even sighed.
“I thought London was an enterprising city. It appears not. No promoter will so much as look at the Company. I was willing to let my interest in it go for £40,000. If you’ll believe me, Leonard, they won’t even look at it. A few hundreds would save it, a few thousands would make it a Colossal Success. For want of it we must go to the wall.”
“You were hoping to sell a bankrupt business as a flourishing business.”
“That is so. But it hasn’t come off.”
“Well, what shall you do?”
“I shall have to begin again at the bottom. That’s all.”
“Oh!” Leonard looked at him doubtfully, for he seemed in no way cast down. “You will go back to Australia, then.” There was some consolation in the thought.
“I shall go back. I don’t know my way about in London. I will go back and begin again, just as before, at the bottom rung. I shall have to do odd jobs, I dare say. I may possibly have to become a shepherd, or a night-watchman, or a sandwich-man.What does it matter? I shall only be down among the boys who can’t get any lower. There’s a fine feeling of brotherhood down there, which you swells would never understand.”
“Have you no money left at all?”
“None. Not more than I carry about with me. A few pounds.”
“Then the fine show of prosperity was all a sham?”
“All a sham. And it wouldn’t work. Nobody in the City will look at my Company.”
“Would it not be better to try for some definite kind of work? You can surely do something. You might write for the papers, with all your experience.”
“Write for the papers? I would rather go on tramp, which is much more amusing. Do something? What am I to do? Man, there isn’t on the face of the earth a more helpless person than a bankrupt trader at forty-five. He knows too much to be employed in his own trade. He’s got to go down below and to stay there. Never mind. I can turn my hand to anything. If I stayed at home I should have to be a sandwich-man. How would you like that? Even my old grandfather would come back to the present life, if it were only to burst with rage, if he met his grandson walking down Regent Street between a pair of boards. You wouldn’t like it yourself, would you? Come out to Sydney next year, and very likely you’ll see that, or something like it.”
“Then you go out to certain misery.”
“Misery? Certain misery?” The Colonist laughed cheerfully. “My nephew, you are a very narrow-minded person, though you are a scholar and a Member of Parliament. You think that it is misery to take off a frock-coat and a tall hat, and to put on a workingman’s jacket and bowler. Bless you, my boy! that’s not misery. The real misery is being hungry and cold. In Australia no one is ever cold, and very few are ever hungry. In my worst times I’ve always had plenty to eat, and though I’ve been many times without a shilling, I’ve never in all my life been miserable or ashamed.”
“But there is the companionship.”
“The companions? They are the best fellows in the world. Misery? There isn’t any with the fellows down below, especially the young fellows. And, mind you, it is exciting work, the hand-to-mouth life. Now, by the time I get out, the business will be sold up, and my partner, who is a young man, will be off on another lay; they always put out the old man as soon as they can. What shall I do? I shall go hawking and peddling. I shall become Autolycus.”
“And afterwards?”
“There is no afterwards, till you come to the hospital, which is a really pleasant place, and the black box. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.” He mixed another soda-and-whisky and drank it off. “It’s thirsty work along the roads under the sun—a red-hot burning sun, not like your red frying-pan skulking behind a cloud. Wherever you stop youget a drink. Then you bring out your wares. I’ve got a tongue that runs like an engine newly oiled. And where you put up for the night there are the boys on the road, and there are songs and stories. Respectability go hang!”
He laughed again. He put on his hat and swung out of the room, laughing as at the very finest joke in the world—to come home as a gentleman, and to go back as a tramp.
ALMOSTimmediately after the colonial merchant—the wholesale trader in sardines and tea-leaves from a shanty—had departed, there came another. They might almost have passed each other on the stairs.
It was none other than the Counsel learned in the Law, the pride and prop of his family, the successful barrister, Mr. Christopher Campaigne.
“Good heavens!” cried Leonard, “what is the matter with this man?” For his uncle dropped speechless, limp, broken up, into a chair, and there lay, his hands dangling, his face filled with terror and care. “My dear Uncle Christopher,” he said, “what has happened?”
“The worst,” groaned the lawyer—“the very worst. The impossible has happened. The one thing that I guarded against. The thing which I feared. Oh, Leonard! how shall I tell you?”
Come with me to the chambers where the Professor of Oratory was preparing, as in a laboratory, his great effects of laughter and of tears. It was morning—high noon. He was engaged upon what is perhaps the most fascinating branch of a most delightful profession—a speech of presentation. Beforehim, in imagination, stood the mug; beside him the recipient; and in front of him a vast hall filled with sympathetic donors. Such a speech is the enunciation and the magnifying of achievements. It must be illustrated by poetical quotations; the better known and the more familiar they are, the more effective they will prove. The speaker should tell one funny story at least; he must also contrive, but not obtrusively—with modesty—to suggest his own personal importance as, if anything, superior to that of the recipient; he must not grovel before greatness.
All these points the professional manufacturer of oratory understood and had at his fingers’ ends. He was quite absorbed in his work, insomuch that he paid no kind of attention to footsteps outside, nor even, at first, to an angry voice in the outer office, which, as we have seen, was only protected by the boy, who had nothing else to do, unless the reading of Jack Harkaway’s adventures be considered a duty.
“Stand out of my way!” cried the voice, apparently infuriated. “Let me get at him!”
The professional man looked up wonderingly. Apparently a row on the stairs. But his own door burst open, and a young man, quite a little man, with hot cheeks and eyes aflame, rushed in brandishing a stick. The orator sprang to his feet, seizing the office ruler. He leaned over his table, six feet three in height, with this formidable weapon in his hand, and he faced the intruder with calm, cold face.
We must not blame the assailant; doubtless he was of tried and proved courage, but he was onlyfive feet five. Before that calm face of inquiry, on which there was no line of terror or of repentance, his eyes fell. The fire and fury went out of him quite suddenly. Perhaps he had not developed his æsthetic frame by rude exercise. He dropped his stick, and stood irresolute.
“Oh,” said his enemy quietly, “you think better about the stick, do you? The horse-whipping is to stand over, is it? Now, sir”—he rapped the table horribly with the ruler, so that the little man trembled all over; the adventure unexpectedly promised pain as well as humiliation—“what do you mean? What do you come here for, making this infernal racket? What——”
Here he stopped short, because to his unspeakable dismay he saw standing in the doorway none other than his own son, Algernon, and Algernon’s face was not good to look at, being filled with shame, amazement, and bewilderment—with shame because he understood, all in a moment, that his father’s life had been one long lie, and that by this way, and none other, the family income had been earned. Had not his friend on the way told him that the man Crediton was known in certain circles as the provider of good after-dinner speeches for those who could afford to pay for them?—how it was whispered that the rare and occasional evenings on which the speeches were crisp and fiery and witty and moving all through were those for which Crediton had supplied the whole?—and how for his own speech, about which he had been most shamefully treated, he had paid twenty guineas? So that he understoodwithout more words, and looked on open-mouthed, having for the moment no power of speech or utterance.
The father first recovered. He went on as if his son was not present.
“Who are you, sir, I say, who come to my quiet office with this blackguard noise? If you don’t tell me on the spot, I will take you by the scruff of your miserable little neck and drop you over the banisters.”
“I—I—I wrote to you for a speech.”
“What speech? What name? What for?”
His client, whose eyes at first were blinded by excess of wrath, now perceived to his amazement that Mr. Crediton was none other than his friend’s father, whom, indeed, he had met at the family mansion in Pembridge Crescent.
“Good Lord!” he cried, “it’s—it’s Mr. Campaigne!”—he glanced from father to son, and back again—“Mr. Campaigne!”
“And why not, sir—why not? Answer me that.”
Again the ruler descended with a sickening resonance.
“Oh, I don’t know why not. How should I know?” the intruder stammered. “It’s no concern of mine, I’m sure.”
“Then come to the point. What speech? What name? What for?”
“The Company of Cartmakers. The speech that you sent me—it arrived by post.”
“A very good speech, too. I did send it. Much too good for you or for the fee you paid. I rememberit. What is the matter with it? How dare you complain of it!”
“The matter, sir—the matter,” he stammered, feeling much inclined to sit down and cry, “is that you sent the same speech to the proposer. Mine was the reply. The same speech—do you hear?—the same speech to the proposer as to me, who had to reply. Now, sir, do you realise—— Oh, I am not afraid of your ruler, I say;” but his looks belied his words. “Do you understand the enormity of your conduct?”
“Impossible! How could I do such a thing—I who have never made a mistake before in all my professional career?” He looked hard at his son, and repeated the words “professional career.” “Are you sure of what you say?” He laid down his ruler with a very serious air. “Are you quite sure?”
“Certain. The same speech, word for word. Everything—every single thing—was taken out of my mouth; I hadn’t a word to say.”
“How did that happen, I wonder? Stay, I have type-written copies of both speeches—the toast and the reply. Yes, yes, I always keep one copy. I am afraid I do understand how I may have blundered.” He opened a drawer, and turned over some papers. “Ah, yes, yes. Dear me! I sent out the second copy of your speech to the other man instead of his own. Here is his own duplicate—the two copies—which fully explains it. Dear, dear! Tut, tut, tut! I fear you were unable to rise to the occasion and make up a little speech for yourself?”
“I could not; I was too much astonished, and I may add disgusted, to do—er—justice to myself.”
“No doubt—no doubt. My clients never can do justice to their own genius without my help. Now sit down, sir, and let us talk this over for a moment.”
He himself sat down. His son meanwhile stood at the open door, still as one petrified.
“Now, sir, I confess that you have reason to complain. It was a most unfortunate accident. The other man must have observed something wrong about the opening words. However, most unfortunate.” He opened a safe standing beside him, and took out a small bundle of cheques. “Your cheque arrived yesterday morning. Fortunately, it is not yet paid in. I return it, sir—twenty guineas. That is all I can do for you except to express my regret that this accident should have occurred. I feel for you, young gentleman. I forgive your murderous intentions, and I assure you, if you will come to me again, I will make you the finest after-dinner orator in the town. And now, sir, I have other clients.”
He rose. The young man put the cheque in his pocket.
“It will be,” he said grandly, “my duty to expose you—everywhere.” He turned to his companion. “To expose you both.”
“And yourself, dear sir—and yourself at the same time.”
The Agent rattled the keys in his pocket, and repeated the words, “Yourself at the same time.”
“I don’t care—so long as I expose you.”
“You will care when you come to think about it.You will have to tell everybody that you came to me to buy a speech which you were about to palm off as your own. There are one or two transactions of the same nature standing over, so to speak. Remember, young gentleman, there are two persons to be exposed: myself, whom the exposure will only advertise, and you yourself, who will be ruined as an orator—or anything else.”
But the young man was implacable. He had his cheque back. This made him stiffer and sterner.
“I care nothing. I could never pretend again to be an orator after last night’s breakdown. I was dumfoundered. I could say nothing: they laughed at me, the whole Hall full of people—three hundred of them—laughed at me—and all through you—through you. I’ll be revenged—I’ll make you sorry for last night’s business—sick and sorry you shall be. As for you——” He turned upon Algernon.
“Shut up, and get out,” said his friend. “Get out, I say, or——”
Algernon made room for him, and the aggrieved client marched out with as much dignity as he could command.
Left together, father and son glared at each other icily. They were both of the same height, tall and thin, and closely resembling each other, with the strong type of the Campaigne face; and both wore pince-nez. The only difference was that the elder of the two was a little thin about the temples.
The consciousness of being in the wrong destroyed the natural superiority of the father. He replied with a weak simulacrum of a laugh.
“Surely the situation explains itself,” he said feebly, opening the door for explanation.
“Am I to understand that for money you write—write—write speeches for people who pretend—actually pretend—that they are their own?”
“Undoubtedly. Did not your friend confess to you why he was coming here?”
“Well—of course he did.”
“And did you remonstrate with him on account of his dishonesty?”
Mr. Algernon Campaigne shirked the question, and replied by another. “And do you regard this mode of money-making—I cannot call it a profession—this mode—honourable—a thing to be proud of?”
“Why not? Certain persons with no oratorical gifts are called upon to speak after dinner or on other occasions. They write to me for assistance. I send them speeches. I coach them. In fact, I am an oratorical coach. They learn what they have to say, and they say it. It is a perfectly honourable, laudable, and estimable way of making money. Moreover, my son, it makes money.”
“Then, why not conduct this—this trade—openly under your own name?”
“Because, in the nature of things, it is a secret business. My clients’ names are secret. So also is the nature of our transactions.”
“But this place is not Lincoln’s Inn. How do you spare the time from your law work?”
“My dear boy, there has been a little deception, pardonable under the circumstances. In point of fact, I never go to Lincoln’s Inn. There is no practice.I’ve got a garret which I never go near. There never has been any practice.”
“No practice?” The young man sank helplessly into a chair. “No practice? But we have been so proud all along of your distinguished career.”
“There has never been any legal practice at all. I adopted this line in the hope of making a little money at a time when the family was pretty hard up, and it succeeded beyond my expectations.”
Algernon sat down and groaned aloud.
“We are done for. That—that little beast is the most spiteful creature in the world, and the most envious. He is mad to be thought clever. He has published some things—I believe he bought them. He goes about; he poses. There isn’t a man in London more dangerous. He will tell everybody. How shall we face the storm?”
“People, my son, will still continue to want their after-dinner speeches.”
“I am thinking of my sister, myself, and our position. What will my mother say? What will our friends say? Good Lord! we are all ruined and shamed. We can never hold up our heads again. What on earth can we say? How can we get out of it? Who will call upon us?”
The parent was touched.
“My dear boy,” he said humbly, “I must think the matter over. There will be trouble, perhaps. Leave me for the present, and—still for the present—hold your tongue.”
His son obeyed. Then Mr. Crediton resumed his work, but the interruption was fatal. He was fain toabandon the speech of presentation, and to consider the prospect of exposure. Not that any kind of exposure would destroy his profession, for that had now become a necessity for the convenience of the social life—think what we should suffer if all the speeches were home-made!—but there was the position of his wife and family: the reproaches of his wife and family: the lowering of his wife and family in the social world. It would be fatal for them if he were known as a secret purveyor of eloquence; secrecy can never be considered honourable or ennobling: dress it up as you will, the cloven foot of fraud cannot be disguised.
He went out because he was too much agitated to keep still or to do any work, and he wandered through the streets feeling pretty small. How would the exposure come? This young fellow had been brought to the house; he called at the house; he came to their evenings and posed as poet, story-teller, orator, epigrammatist; he knew a whole lot of people in their set: he could certainly make things very disagreeable. And he was in such a rage of disappointment and humiliation—for he had broken down utterly and shamefully—that he certainly intended to be nasty.
After a tempestuous youth in company with his brother, this man had settled down into the most domestic creature in the world. Twenty-five years of domestic joys had been his portion; they were made possible by his secret profession. His wife adored and believed in him; his children, while they despised his æsthetics, respected his law. In a word,he occupied the enviable position of a successful barrister, a gentleman of good family, and the owner of a good income. This position was naturally more than precious: it was his very life. At home he was, in his own belief, a great lawyer; in his office he was Mr. Crediton the universal orator. They were separate beings; and now they were to be brought together. Crediton would be known to the world as Campaigne, Campaigne as Crediton. He was a forlorn and miserable object indeed.
As he passed along the street he discovered suddenly that he was passing one of the entrances to Bendor Mansions. A thought struck him.
“I must ask someone’s advice,” he murmured. “I cannot bear the trouble all alone and unsupported. I will tell Leonard everything.”
Leonard sprang to his feet, astonished at this extraordinary exhibition of despair.
“My dear uncle Christopher!” he exclaimed, “what does this mean? What has happened?”
The unhappy man, anxious to take counsel, yet shrinking from confession, groaned in reply.
“Has anything happened at home? My aunt? My cousins?”
“Worse—worse. It has happened to me.”
“Well.... But what has happened? Man, don’t sit groaning there. Lift up your head and tell me what has happened.”
“Ruin,” he replied—“social ruin and disgrace. That is all. That is all.”
“Then, you are the second member of our trulyfortunate family who has been ruined this very day. Perhaps,” Leonard added coldly, “it might be as well if you could let me know what form your ruin has taken.”
“Social ruin and disgrace. That is all. I shall never be able to look anyone in the face any more.”
“What have you done, then?”
“I have done only what I have been doing blamelessly, because no one ever suspected it, for five-and-twenty years. Now it has been found out.”
“You have been doing something disgraceful for five-and-twenty years, and now you have been found out. Well, why have you come to me? Is it to get my sympathy for disgracing your name?”
“You don’t understand, Leonard.”
He lost his temper.
“How the devil am I to understand if you won’t explain? You say that you are disgraced——”
“Let me tell you all—everything—from the beginning. It came from knocking about London with my brother Fred. He was a devil: he didn’t care what he did. So we ran through our money—it wasn’t much—and Fred went away.”
“I have heard why. A most shameful business.”
“Truly, yes. I always told him so. Since he came home, however, we have agreed not to mention it.”
“Go on. You were left with no money.”
“I had just been called. I was engaged. I wanted to get married.”
“You rapidly acquired an extensive practice——”
“No—no. That is where the deception steppedin. My dear nephew, I never had any practice at all. If any cases had been sent to me I could not have taken them, because, you see, I never opened a law-book in my whole life.”
“You—never—opened—a law-book? Then—how——”
“I loathed the sight of a law-book. But I was engaged—I wanted to be married—I wanted to live, too, without falling back on your mother.”
“Pray go on.”
“I knew a man who wanted to get a reputation for an after-dinner speaker. He heard me make one or two burlesque speeches, and he came to me. After a little conversation, we talked business. I wrote him a speech. It succeeded. I wrote him another. That succeeded. He leaped into fame—leaped, so to speak, over my back—oratorical leap-frog—by those two speeches. Then my price ran up. And then I conceived the idea of opening out a new profession. For five-and-twenty years I have pretended to go to chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, and I have gone to an office in Chancery Lane, where, under another name, I have carried on the business of providing speeches for all occasions.”
“Good Heavens!” cried Leonard. “And this is the man of whom we were proud!” His face had been darkening from the beginning, and it was now very hard and dark. “I understand, I suppose. The beginning of the story I had heard already. You got through your fortune in company with your brother—in riotous living.”
“Quite so—quite so.”
“Was there not something about a cheque?”
“Fred’s affair—not mine.”
“Your brother says it was your affair. Don’t think I want to inquire into the horrid story. I have found quite enough shame and degradation among my family without wanting to know more.”
“If Fred says that, it is simply disgraceful. Why, everybody knew—but, as you say, why rake up old scandals?—at the time when it happened. But why, as you say——”
“Why, indeed? Except to make quite sure that there is no longer a shred of family pride possible for us. I now learn, on your own confession, that you entered upon a general course of imposition, and deception, by which you have managed to live ever since, and to maintain your family with credit because you have escaped detection.”
“Excuse me. I don’t call it deception. Nobody is deceived, except pleasantly. Is it wrong to present a fellow-creature in an agreeable and quite unexpected character before the world? Can you blame me for raising the standard of after-dinner oratory? Can you blame me for creating reputations by the dozen?”
“I make no doubt that you persuaded yourself that it was laudable and honourable. Nevertheless——”
“You must consider how it grew. I told you I was myself a good after-dinner speaker. I was hard up. Then this man—old friend, now a Colonial Judge—came to me for help. I wrote him a speech, and he bought it—that is to say, he lent me tenpounds for it—really he bought my secrecy. That’s how it began. Money was necessary. There was an unexpected way of making money. So it spread.”
“I have no doubt that the practice of imposition was duly paid for.”
“You must consider—really. There is nothing envied so much as the reputation of good after-dinner speaking. I supply that reputation. People go where they are likely to hear good speeches. I supply those speeches.”
“I do not deny the position. But you are, nevertheless, helping a man, for money, to deceive the world.”
“To deceive the world? Not at all. To delight the world. Why, I am a public benefactor. I open the purses at charity dinners, I send the people home in good temper. Do you think the people care two pins who is speaking if they can be amused?”
“Then, why this secrecy?”
“Why not?” He walked about the room, swinging his arms, and turning from time to time on Leonard as he made his points and pronounced his apology. “Why not? I ask. You talk as if some fraud was carried on. Nobody is defrauded; I earn my fees as much as any barrister. Look you, Leonard: my position is unique, and—and—yes, honourable, if you look at it rightly.”
“Honourable! Oh!”
“Yes; I am the Universal After-Dinner Speaker. I supply the speeches for every occasion. I keep up the reputation of the City for eloquence. Why, we were rapidly sinking; we were already acknowledgedto be far below the American level. Then I came. I raised the standard. Our after-dinner speeches—mine—are becoming part of our national greatness. Why? Because I, sir—I, Christopher Campaigne—took them in hand.”
“Yet, in secrecy.”
“I carry on this business alone—I myself—hitherto without recognition. The time may come when the national distinctions will be offered to the—in fact, the After-Dinner Demosthenes.”
“You look so far forward?”
“I confess that the work is light, easy—to me, at least—and pleasant. It is also well paid. People are willing to give a great deal for such a reputation as I can make for them. Nobody ever wants to see me. Nobody knows who I am. Nobody wants to know. That is natural, come to think of it. The whole business is done by correspondence. I work for none but persons of wealth and position. Confidence is respected on both sides. Sometimes the whole of a dinner, so to speak, passes through my hands. I have even known occasions on which I have sat unrecognised at a dinner-table, and listened to my speeches being delivered well or ill through the whole evening. Imagine, if you can, the glow and glory of such an evening.”
“I can imagine a ruddy hue—of shame. After five-and-twenty years of deception, however, there is not much shame left. What has happened now? You have been found out, I suppose?”
“Yes; I have been found out. There was a little mistake. I sent a man the wrong speech—the responseinstead of the proposer’s speech. To the proposer I sent the same speech in duplicate. I cannot imagine how the mistake was possible, but it happened. And you may imagine the feelings of the poor young man who heard his own brilliant speech which was in his pocket actually delivered, a few words only changed, by the man whom he was about to answer. When his turn came he rose; he was overcome; he blurted out three or four words, and sat down.”
“Oh! And then?”
“In the morning he came to beard me in my own den. He had never seen me before, but he knew my address. He came with a big stick, being a little man. Ho, ho! and he marched in flourishing his stick. You should have seen him when I stood over him with the office ruler.” He laughed again, but at the sight of Leonard’s dark face he checked his sense of humour. “Well, the misfortune was that I know the fellow at home, and he comes to our place, and knows me, and, worse than that, my own son, Algernon, was with him to see fair——”
“Oh, Algernon was with him. Then, Algernon knows?”
“Yes, he knows. I packed off the fellow, and had it out with Algernon. It was a tough business. I’m sorry for Algernon. Perhaps, he won’t put on quite so much side, though. Yes,” he repeated thoughtfully, “I had it out with that young man. He knows now what the real profession is.”
“Well, what next?”
“I don’t know what next.”
“Shall you continue your trade of deception and falsehood?”
“Shall I go into the workhouse?”
“Upon my word, it would be better.”
His uncle rose and took up his hat.
“Well, Leonard, if you have nothing but reproaches, I may as well go. I did think that you would consider my position—my very difficult position. I have at least supported my family, and I have confided the whole to you. If you have nothing to say except to harp upon deception—as if that mattered—I may as well go.”
“Stop! let’s consider the thing. Is there no other way of livelihood?”
“None. The only question is whether I am to conduct the business henceforth under my own name or not.”
“I don’t know that I can advise or help in any way. Why did you come to me?”
“I came for advice—if you have any to give. I came because this misfortune has fallen upon me, and you are reputed to be wise beyond your years.”
“The fact of your occupation is misfortune enough.”
“Well? You have nothing more to say? Then I must go.”
He looked so miserable that Leonard forgot his indignation, and inclined his heart to pity.
“You are afraid of exposure,” he said, “on account of your wife and children.”
“On their account alone. For my own part, I have done no wrong, and I fear no exposure.”
They were brave words, but he was as the donkey in the lion’s skin. He spoke valiantly, but his knees trembled.
“I should think,” Leonard replied, “that this young man, for his own sake, would be careful not to spread abroad his experience, because he would expose himself as well as you. He proposed deliberately to impose upon the audience, as his own, an oration prepared by another man and bought by himself. That is a position, if it were known and published, even less dignified than your own. I think that Algernon should put this side of the case to him strongly and plainly.”
“He may leave himself out and whisper rumours abroad.”
“Algernon should warn him against such things. If, however, the man persists in his unholy ambition to obtain a false reputation, he will probably have to come to you again, since there is no other practitioner.”
Mr. Crediton jumped in his chair.
“That’s the point. You’ve hit it. That’s the real point. I’m glad I came here. He’s not only got his ambition still, but he’s got his failure to get over. He must come to me. There is no other practitioner. He must come. I never thought of that.” He rubbed his hands joyously.
“He may not be clever enough to see this point. Therefore Algernon had better put it to him. If Algernon fails, you must make a clean breast to your wife and daughter, and send it round openly among your personal friends that you are willing to supplyspeeches confidentially. That seems the only way out of it.”
“The only way—the only way, Leonard. There will be no clean breast at all, and that venomous beast will have to come to me again. I am so glad that I came here. You have got more sense than all the rest of us put together.”