“I write to tell you that the misfortunes of your House are over. There will be no more. I am certain of what I say. Do not ask me how I learned this, because you would not believe. We have been led—and this you will not believe—by the hand of the man who was killed, and none other—to the Discovery which ends it all.“Constance.”
“I write to tell you that the misfortunes of your House are over. There will be no more. I am certain of what I say. Do not ask me how I learned this, because you would not believe. We have been led—and this you will not believe—by the hand of the man who was killed, and none other—to the Discovery which ends it all.
“Constance.”
“The Discovery,” he thought, “which is worse than all the rest put together. No more misfortunes? No more consequences, then. What does she mean? Consequences must go on.”
You remember how, one day, there came to a certain Patriarch one who told of trouble, and almost before he had finished speaking there came also another with more trouble, and yet a third with more. You remember also how to this man there came, one after the other, messengers who brought confession of fraud and disgrace.
This afternoon the opposite happened. There came three; but there were not messengers of trouble, but of peace, and even joy.
The first was his cousin Mary Anne.
“I’ve come,” she said, “with a message from mybrother. Sam is very sorry that he carried on here as he says he did. I don’t know how he carried on, but Sam is very nasty sometimes, when his temper and his troubles get the better of him.”
“Pray do not let him be troubled. I have quite forgotten what he said.”
“It seems that he brought his precious bill against granny, and showed it to you. He says that he’s put it in the fire, and that he didn’t mean it, except in the hope that you’d lend him a little money.”
“I see. Well, my cousin, is that all?”
“Oh, he begs your pardon humbly. And he says that the builder has got the Bank to back him after all: and he’ll be contented to wait now for his share of the accumulations.”
“I am sorry that he still entertains hopes in that direction.”
“Oh! he thinks about nothing else. He has got the whole amount worked out: he knows how much there will be. If it is left to you or to anybody else he will dispute the will. He’ll carry it up to the Lords, he says.”
“Very good. We may wait until the will is produced. Meantime, Mary Anne, there is a little point which he seems to forget. It his grandmother and not himself who could have a right to dispute the will. Can he be so poor in law as not to know that?”
“He makes granny sign papers. I don’t know how many she has signed. He is always thinking about some other danger to be met, and then he draws up a paper and makes her sign it withme as witness. Granny never asks what the paper means.”
“Signing documents is dangerous. You must not allow it, my cousin. If there is anything coming to your branch of the family from Campaigne Park, you are as much concerned as Sam.”
She laughed. “You don’t know Sam. He means to have it all. He says that he’s arranged to have it all.”
“Let us talk about something else. Is your grandmother content to go on living as she does now?”
“No. But she has always been so unhappy that a few years more of Sam’s bad temper and selfishness don’t seem to matter. I came here this morning partly to tell you that I’ve arranged it at last. I had it out with Sam yesterday. I told him that he could go on living with mother, and I would take granny—she’s so vexed, you can’t think—that Sam should have gone and made out a bill for her keep and presented to you—that I was able to persuade her. Granny will live with me—I can afford it—and mother will go on with Sam. And I do hope, Mr. Campaigne, that you will come and see her sometimes. She says, have you read the book?”
“Yes. I will go to see her sometimes. Tell her so. And as for the book, I have read it all through.”
“And did it do you good to read the book? To me it always makes that old gentleman so grand and good—finding lawyers for the poor innocent man and all.”
“Tell her the book has produced all the effect she desired and more.”
While she was still speaking, Uncle Fred burst in. Mary Anne retired, making way for the visitor, who, she perceived, from the family likeness, was a large and very magnificent specimen of the Campaigne family.
He burst in. He came in like an earthquake, making the furniture crack, and the glasses rattle, and the picture-frames shake. He showed the most jovial, happy, benevolent air possible. No one could look happier, more benevolent, and more contented with himself.
“Congratulate me, my dear boy!” he cried, offering the most friendly hand in the world. There was a fine and large forgiveness in that extended hand. The last conversation was forgotten and dismissed from memory. “Barlow Brothers is saved!”
“Oh! how have you saved it?”
“I will tell you how. It has been a most wonderful stroke of luck for Australian enterprise. Nothing short of a national disaster has been averted.”
“Indeed! I gathered from your last communication that the business was—well, not worth saving.”
“Not worth saving? My dear Leonard! it is colossal—colossal!”
Leonard is still mystified, whenever he thinks of it, by this abrupt change of front. What did he mean?
“I am immediately going back to Australia to put things on a right footing.”
“Oh! You have made a Company in the City after all!”
“No,” he replied with decision. “The City has had its chance and has refused its opportunity. Ileave the City to lament its own short-sighted refusal. I am sorry for the City. I now return to Australia. The firm of Barlow Brothers may rise conspicuous and colossal, or it may continue to be a purveyor of sardines and blacking, or it may go smash.”
At this point his eye fell upon a letter. It was one of the documents in the Case; in fact, it was the letter from Australia which came with John Dunning’s memorandum. By accident it had not been put away with the rest. He read the superscription on the seal: “John Dunning’s Sons.”
“John Dunning’s Sons?” he asked. “John Dunning’s Sons?”
“It’s an old story. Your grandfather helped John Dunning in early life.” Leonard took out the letter. “His family write to express the gratitude—a post-mortem gratitude—of the late John Dunning to the family generally. Would you like to read it?”
Uncle Fred read it. His jovial face became grave—even austere in thoughtfulness. He folded the letter and put it in his pocket.
“By your leave,” he said. “My dear boy, the Dunnings are the richest people in the colony. I am a made man. Their gratitude simply warms my heart. It inspires once more the old youthful belief in human nature. With this letter—with this introduction—Barlow Brothers vanish. Damn the sardine boxes! Fred Campaigne returns to Australia, and Fortune smiles. My boy, farewell. With this letter in my pocket, I start to-morrow.”
“Stop, stop!” cried Leonard. “How about thecolossal business? How about the saving of that important shanty where you dispensed sardines?”
Uncle Fred looked at his watch.
“But you say that you have saved it—how?”
“I have just time”—again he looked at his watch—“to keep—ah! a most important appointment. I shall go out to Australia next week. On the way out I will amuse myself by writing you an account of the Barlow Brothers—in several chapters—The Conception, The First Box of Sardines, The Shanty, the Realisation, the Millionaire. Novels would not be more thrilling.”
“But you abandon this Colossal undertaking?”
“I give it up. Why? Because an easier way lies open. I should be more than human if I did not take the easier way.”
“You are going out to Mr. Dunning with that letter in your pocket?”
“I am, going, sir, to throw myself into the arms of gratitude. Human Nature! Human Nature! How lovely a thing is Human Nature when it is grateful!”
Leonard grunted.
“I am not sure,” he said, “that I did right in giving you that letter.”
“You can have it back again. I know the contents. And now, my dear nephew, there is but one small duty to perform—I allude to the Hotel Bill. My brother has found the passage-money—Christopher was always a selfish beast, but his language at parting with that money was inexcusable. He refuses the Hotel Bill.”
“And so you come to me. Why should I pay your Hotel Bill?”
“There is no reason that I know of except the fact that I have referred the Hotel Clerk to you as a Member of Parliament and a gentleman.”
“You come home boasting of your wealth, being next door to penniless.”
“You forget—the Accumulations——”
“And you end with the confession that you were lying.”
“You mean putting the best foot forward—presenting myself in the enviable light of the successful uncle—the modern Nabob.”
“And you levy money on your people?”
“I borrow on my reversionary interests—in the Accumulations.”
“I will pay your bill on the understanding that you take yourself off. How much is it?”
Uncle Fred named the amount. It was a staggerer.
“Good Heavens! Man, you must have bathed in champagne.”
“There has been champagne,” Fred replied with dignity. “I had to support my position. City men lunched with me and dined with me. We discussed the Fourth Act in the Comedy of Barlow Brothers—the Realisation. As for the Bill, I borrow the amount.”
Leonard sat down and wrote a cheque. Uncle Fred took it, read it, folded it, and sighed with a tear of regret that he had not named double the amount.
“Thanks,” he said. “The act was ungraciouslyperformed. But the main thing is to get the cheque. That I have always felt, even when I got it out of old Sixty per Cent. Well, I go back to a land which has been hitherto inhospitable. Farewell, my nephew. I shall bask: I shall batten, whatever that means: I shall fatten: I shall swell out with fatness in the sunshine—the Sydney sunshine is very fattening—of gratitude, and the generosity of a Sydney millionaire.”
He buttoned his coat, and went away with loud and resounding footsteps, as he had come, the furniture cracking, the picture-frames rattling. So far, Leonard has not received the promised explanation of the Mystery of Barlow Brothers; nor has that check been returned. There remained one more credit to the Family. It was Christopher, the eminent and learned counsel.
He, too, called half an hour after the departure of his brother.
“I came,” he said, “first of all to warn you against giving or lending any more money to that fraud—my brother Fred.”
“You are too late, then. I have paid his hotel bill. You have paid his passage out——”
“No, I paid his hotel bill; you paid his passage out.”
“Oh, well! so long as he goes——”
“I paid his hotel bill because he threatened to go into the City and expose my real name.”
“Go into the City? What could he do in the City? Whom does he know in the City? Your brother is just a mass of lies and impostures. What does it matter if he is really going?”
“He must go. Nobody except you and me will lend or give him any money. He goes as he came—the wealthy Australian. He has promised my people to make them rich by his will: he hinted at an incurable disorder: and he bade farewell for ever—with my cheque in his pocket!”
“Let him go. You had something else to say?”
“Yes. It was about my own affairs. They know all, Leonard.”
“They know all? Who told them?”
“I’ve had a terrible time with the wife and daughter. But they know all. That vindictive little Beast called at the house, went upstairs, and told them everything. Then he went away grinning. There was a terrible scene.”
“So I should suppose.”
“Yes. It’s all right, though, at last. I persuaded them, with a good deal of trouble, that the profession was rather more holy than the Church. I set forth the facts—the honour and glory—the secret diffusion and cultivation of a better taste—higher standards—a Mission—nobler æsthetics—and the income—especially the income.”
“That would be a serious factor in the case.”
“Yes. And I pointed out the educational side—the advance of oratory. So they came round, little by little. And I clinched the thing by offering to go back to the Bar; in which case, I told them, we should have to live at Shepherd’s Bush, in a £40 a year semi-detached, while Algernon went into the City as a clerk at fifteen shillings a week, which is more than his true value.”
“Well, since it did well I congratulate you. The profession will be continued, of course?”
“Of course. But I confess I was surprised at the common-sense of Algernon. He will immediately enter at the Bar: he will join me; there will henceforth be two successful lawyers in the family instead of one.”
“And what about the threatened exposure?”
“Algernon has gone to see theBEAST. He is to promise him that if a word or a hint is dropped, everybody shall know where he—theBEAST—buys his stories, and his poems, and his epigrams, as well as his after-dinner speeches. Algernon has fished it all out. Why, sir, the man is a Fraud—a common Fraud! He buys everything!”
So with this tribute to truth and honesty the weaver of speeches for other people went away. Only the day before Leonard would have received this communication with disgust as another humiliation. The way of deception—the life of pretence—was kept open. It would have been a tearing down of more family pride. Now it was nothing. The pretence of it, the ready way in which his cousin Algernon had dropped into it, belonged to someone else—not to himself. The family honour—such as he had always regarded it and believed in it—was gone—smashed and broken up into fragments. The House of the Campaignes, like every other family, had its decaying branches; its dead branches; its off-shoots and humble branches; its branches of dishonour.
There is no such thing existing as a family wheremen have been always Bayards and its women always beyond reproach. Upon him had fallen the blow of finding out the things concealed: the blot on the scutcheon, the ugly stories of the past: the poor relations and the unworthy relations. The discovery humiliated him at the outset: it became rapidly a thing apart from himself and outside himself. Uncle Fred might be an impostor and fraud. Very good. It mattered nothing to him. Uncle Christopher was a pretender and a humbug—what did it matter? The East-End solicitor was a person with no pretence at honour and honesty—what did it matter? They belonged to him by blood relationship; yet he was still—himself.
Only one thing remained. And now even the horror of that was more tolerable than the humiliation of the first revelations. It was the terrible story of the crime and the seventy years of expiation in which there had been no expiation, because nothing can ever atone for a crime or make it as if it had not been.
Men pray for forgiveness—“neither reward us after our iniquities.”
There should be another and a less selfish prayer that all shall be in the world as if the iniquity had never been committed: that the consequences of the iniquity shall be stayed, miraculously stayed—because, but for a miracle, they must take their course according to the great law of Nature, that nothing can happen save under conditions imposed by the record of the past. The dream of the sinner is that he shall be forgiven and shall go straight tothe land of white clothing and hearts at peace for ever, while down below the children and the grandchildren are in the misery of the consequences—the inevitable consequences of his follies and his crimes. So every soul stands or falls by itself, yet in its standing or in its falling it supports or it drags down the children and the grandchildren.
These thoughts, and other thoughts like unto these, crowded into the brain of the young man when he sat alone—thedossierof the crime locked up in the drawer—the disgraces of his cousins pushed aside—and the crime which caused so much little more than a memory and an abiding pity. Everything had come to Leonard which Constance, not knowing what the words might mean, desired for him. How great the change it made in him, as yet he hardly suspected.
WASit really the last day of Visitation? Punishment or Consequence, would there be no more?
Punishment or Consequence, it matters little which. One thing more happened on this eventful day. It came in a telegram from the ancestral housekeeper.
“Please come down as soon as you can. There is a change.”
A change! When a man is ninety-five what change do his friends expect? Leonard carried the telegram to Constance.
“I think,” he said, “it must be the end.”
“It is assuredly the end. You will go at once—to-day. Let me go with you, Leonard.”
“You? But it would only distress you.”
“It will not distress me if I can take him, before he dies, a simple message.”
“You sent me a message. How did you know that it was a message?”
“I knew it was a message, because I saw it with my mind’s eye written clear and bright, and because I heard it plain and unmistakable. It came to me in the night. I thought it was a dream. Now I think it was a message.”
“You said that all the misfortunes were over. Like your message, it was a dream. Yet now we get this telegram.”
“Why—do you call this a misfortune? What better can we desire for that poor old man but the end?”
They started at once; they caught a train which landed them at the nearest station a little before seven. It was an evening in early spring. The sun was sinking, the cloudless sky was full of peace and light, the air was as soft as it was fragrant; there was no rustle of branches, even the birds were hushed.
“It is the end,” said Constance softly, “and it is peace.”
They had not spoken since they started together for the station. When one knows the mind of his companion, what need for words?
Presently they turned from the road into the park. It was opposite the stile over which, seventy years ago, one man had passed on his way to death, and another, less fortunate, on his way to destruction.
“Let us sit down in this place,” said Leonard. “Before we go on I have something to say—I should like to say it before we are face to face with that most unhappy of men.”
Constance obeyed and sat down upon the stile.
“When we came here before,” he began, with a serious voice and grave eyes, “I was fresh from the shame and the discovery of the family misfortunes. And we talked of the sins of the fathers, and the eating of sour grapes, and the consolation of the Prophet——”
“I remember every word.”
“Very well. I think you will understand me, Constance, when I say that I am rejoiced that I made the discovery of this fatal family history with all that it entailed—the train of evils and shames—yes, even though it has led to these weeks of a kind of obsession or possession, during which I have been unable to think of anything else.”
“What do you think now? Are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, or was the Prophet right?”
“I see, with you, that it is impossible to avoid the consequences of the father’s life and actions. The words ‘Third or Fourth Generation’ must not be taken literally. They mean that from father to son there is a continual chain of events linked together and inseparable, and always moulding and causing the events which follow, and this though we know not the past and cannot see the connecting links that form the chain. In a higher stage humanity will refrain from some things and will be attracted by other things entirely through the consideration of their effect upon those who follow after. It will be a punishment self-imposed by those who fall that they must, in pity and in mercy, have no children to inherit their shame.”
“You put my own thoughts into words. But about the children I am not so sure; their very shames may be made a ladder such as Augustine made his sins.”
“There is nothing so true as the inheritance of consequences, except that one does not inherit theguilt. Even with the guilt there is sometimes the tendency to certain lines of action. ‘Nothing so hereditary as the drink craving,’ says the physician. So I suppose there may be a hereditary tendency in other directions. Some men—I have known some—cannot sit down to steady work; they must lie about in the sun; they must loaf; they have avitium, an incurable disease, as incurable as a humpback, of indolence, mind and body. Some seem unable to remain honest—we all know examples of such men; some cannot possibly tell the truth. What I mean”—Leonard went on, clearing his own mind by putting his wandering thoughts into argumentative array—“is that the liability to temptation—the tendency—is inherited, but the necessity which forces a man to act is not inherited; that is due to himself. What says the Prophet again? ‘As I live, saith the Lord God’—saith the Lord God. It is magnificent; it is terrible in its depth of earnestness. He declares an inspiration; through him the Lord strengthens His own word—veritably strengthens His own word—by an oath, ‘As I live, saith the Lord God.’ Can you imagine anything stronger, more audacious, but for the eternal Verity that follows?”
The speaker’s voice trembled; his cheek, touched by the setting sun, glowed; the light of the western sky filled his eyes. Constance, woman-like, trembled at the sight of the man who stood revealed to her—the new man—transformed by the experience of shames and sorrows.
“As the soul of the father, so also the soul of theson is Mine; but if a man doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, saith the Lord God.”
“ ‘Saith the Lord God!’ ” Leonard repeated. “What must have been the faith of a man who could so attribute his words? How to sound the depths of his faith and his insight?”
“He verily believed that he heard the voice of the Lord.”
“We live for and by each other,” Leonard returned. “We think that we stand by ourselves, and we are lifted up by the work of our forefathers; we talk as if we lived alone, and we are but links in the chain; we are formed and we form; we are forged and we forge. I have been like unto one who stands in a crowd and is moved here and there, but believes all the time that he is alone on a hill-top.” He was silent for awhile. Presently he went on. “All that has followed the crime,” he said, “has been in the nature of consequence. The man who committed the act retired from the world; he deserted the world; he gave up his duties; he resigned his children to others. One of them went to sea; he was drowned; others were drowned with him—that was but a consequence. His daughter, neglected and ill educated, ran away with a vulgar adventurer whom she took for a gallant gentleman—that was a consequence. His son found out the dreadful truth and committed suicide; his boys had no father; two of them fell into evil ways—that was a consequence. My own father died young, but not so young as to leave me a mere infant—that was a misfortune, butnot a consequence. In other words, Constance, the sins of that old man have been visited upon the children, but the soul of the son has been as the soul of the father. That is the sum and substance of the whole. The consequences are still with us. That poor lady in the Commercial Road is still in the purgatory of poverty which she brought upon herself. Her son is, and will continue, what he is. Her daughter rises above her surroundings. ‘She shall surely live, saith the Lord God.’ My two uncles will go on to the end in their own way, and so, I suppose, shall I myself.”
He stopped; the light went out of his eyes. He was once more outwardly his former self.
“That is all, Leonard?”
“That is all. I want you to understand that at the end—if this is the end—I desire to feel towards that old man no thought or feeling of reproach, only of pity for the fatal act of a moment and the long punishment of seventy years—and you, whose ancestor he smote——”
“Only with forgiveness in the name of that ancestor and of pity akin to yours and equal to yours. Come, Leonard: perhaps the end has come already.”
They entered the Park by the broken gate and the ruined Lodge.
“I have been looking for some such call,” said Constance. “This morning I sent you that message. I knew it was a true message, because there fell upon me, quite suddenly, a deep calm. All my anxieties vanished. We have been so torn”—she spoke as if the House was hers as well—“by troublesand forebodings, with such woes and rumours of woes, that when they vanished suddenly and unexpectedly I knew that the time was over.”
“You are a witch, Constance.”
“Many women are when they are interested. Oh, Leonard! what a happiness that there is always an end of everything—of sorrow, nay, of joy! There must come—at last—the end, even of Punishment or of Consequence.” She looked up and round. “The evening is so peaceful—look at the glories of the west—it is so peaceful that one cannot believe in storm and hail and frost. It seems to mean, for us, relief—and for him—forgiveness.”
Everything was, indeed, still—there was no sound even of their own footsteps as they walked across the springy turf of the park, and the house when they came within view of it was bathed in the colours of the west, every window flaming with the joy of life instead of the despair of death. Yet within was a dying man.
“Death is coming,” said Constance, “with pardon upon his wings.”
The news that there was a “change”—word meaning much—at the Hall had reached the village. The pride of the people, because no other village in England entertained a recluse who lived by himself in a great house and allowed everything to fall into decay, was to be taken from them. No more would strangers flock over on Sunday mornings from the nearest town and the villages round, to look over the wall at the tall stalwart figure pacing his terrace in all weathers with the regularity of a pendulum.In the village house of call the men assembled early to hear and tell and whisper what they had heard.
Then the old story was revived—the story which had almost gone out of men’s memories—how the poor gentleman, then young, still under thirty, with a fine high temper of his own—it was odd how the fine high temper had got itself remembered—lost in a single day his wife and his brother-in-law, and never held up his head again, nor went out of the house, nor took notice of man, woman, or child, nor took a gun in his hand, nor called his dogs, nor rode to hounds, nor went to church.
These reminiscences had been told a thousand times in the dingy little room of the village public-house. They reeked, like the room, of beer and tobacco and wet garments. For seventy years they had been told in the same words. They had been, so far, that most interesting form of imaginative work—the story without an end. Now the end had arrived, and there would be no more to tell.
The story was finished. Then the door opened, and the ci-devant scarer of birds appeared. He limped inside, he closed the door carefully; he looked around the room. He supported himself bravely with his two sticks, and he began to speak.
“We’re all friends here? All friends? There’s nobody here as will carry things to that young man? No.”
“Take half a pint, Thomas.”
“By your leave. Presently. I shall lend a hand to-morrow or next day to digging a grave. We must all come to it. Why not, therefore?”
He looked important, and evidently had something more to say, if he could find a way to say it.
“We’re all thinking of the same thing,” he began. “It’s the old Squire who will soon be lyin’ dead, how he never went out of the place for seventy long years—as long as I can remember. Why? Because there was a man murdered and a woman died. Who was the man murdered? The Squire’s brother-in-law. Who murdered him? John Dunning, they said. John Dunning, he was tried and he got off and he went away. Who murdered that man? John Dunning didn’t. Why? Because John Dunning didn’t go to the wood for two hours afterwards. Who murdered that man, I say?”
At this point he accepted the hospitality of the proffered glass of beer.
“I know who done it. I always have known. Nobody knows but me. I’ve known for all these years; and I’ve never told. For why? He would ha’ killed me, too. For certain sure he would ha’ killed me. Who was it, then? I’ll tell you. It was the man that lies a-dyin’ over there. It was the Squire himself—that’s who it was. No one else was in the wood all the morning but the Squire and the other gentleman. I say, the Squire done it; the Squire and nobody else. The Squire done it. The Squire done it.”
The men looked at each other in amazement. Then the blacksmith rose, and he said solemnly:
“Thomas, you’re close on eighty years of age. You’ve gone silly in your old age. You and yourSquire! I remember what my father said, ‘The Squire, he left Mr. Holme at the wood and turned back.’ That was the evidence at the Inquest and the Trial. You and your Squire! Go home, Thomas, and go to bed and get your memory back again.”
Thomas looked round the room again. The faces of all were hard and unsympathetic. He turned and hobbled out. The days that followed were few and evil, for he could speak about nothing else, and no one heeded his garrulous utterances. Assuredly, if there had been a lunatic asylum in the village he would have been enclosed there. A fatal example of the mischief of withholding evidence! Now, had this boy made it clear at the inquest that the two gentlemen were together in the wood for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, one knows not what might have followed.
Thomas did not go home. He turned his steps in the direction of the Hall, and he hobbled along with a purpose in his face. His revelation had been received with scorn and derision. Perhaps in another place it would be received with more respect.
The housekeeper met Leonard and Constance at the open door. It had stood open all day, as if for the admission of the guest whose wings were hovering very near.
“He’s in the library,” said the woman, with the corner of her apron brushing away the tears with which women-servants always meet the approach of Azrael. “I wanted him to go upstairs and to bed,but he takes no notice. He’s been in the library nearly all day.”
“Did he go out this morning after breakfast?”
“He took his breakfast as usual, and he went out afterwards as usual, walking as upright as a post, and looking as strong and as hard as ever. After a bit he stopped and shook all over. Then he turned round and went indoors. He went into the library, and he sat down before the fire.”
“Did he speak?”
“Never a word. I offered him a glass of wine, but he only shook his head. At one o’clock I took him his dinner, but he could eat nothing. Presently he drank a glass of wine. At four o’clock I took him his tea, but he wouldn’t touch it. Only he drank another glass of wine. That’s all he’s had since the morning. And now he is sitting doubled up, with his face working terrible.”
They opened the door of the library softly and went in. He was not sitting ‘doubled up’: he was lying back in his ragged old leather chair, extended—his long legs stretched out, his hands on the arms of the chair, his broad shoulders and his great head lying back—splendid even in decay, like autumn opulent. His eyes were open, staring straight upwards to the ceiling. His face was, as the housekeeper put it ‘working.’ It spoke of some internal struggle. What was it that he was fighting in his weary brain?
“Leonard,” the girl whispered, “it is not despair in his face. It is not defiance. Look! It is doubt. There is something he cannot understand. He hearswhispers. Oh, I think I hear them, too! I know what they are and whose they are.” She drew down her veil to hide her tears.
The sun had now gone down. The shadows of the twilight lay about the corners of the big room, the rows of books looked ghostly; the western light began to fall, and the colours began to fade. A fire burned in the grate, as it always burned all the year round; the flames began to throw flickering lights and shadows about the room; they lit up the face of the old man, and his figure seemed to stand out clear and apart, as if there were nothing in the room but himself; nay, as if there were no room, no furniture, no house, nothing but that one sole figure in the presence—the unspeakable presence—of the Judge.
His face was changing; the housekeeper spoke the truth. The defiance and the stubbornness were going out of it. What was come to take their place? As yet, nothing but doubt and pain and trouble. As for the whispers, there was no proof that there were any whispers, save from the assurance of the girl who heard them with the ear of faith. Leonard stepped forward and bent over him.
“Sir,” he said solemnly, “you know me. I am your great-grandson—the grandson of your eldest son, who killed himself because he discovered a secret—your secret. And he could no longer endure it and live. I am his grandson.”
The words were plain, even brutal. Leonard intended that there should be no mistake about them. But, plain as they were, they produced no effect.There was not even a gleam in the old man’s eye to show that he heard.
“You are ninety-five,” Leonard went on. “It is time to speak. I have brought with me one who will recall a day—if you have ever forgotten it—of tragic memories, the day when you lost at once your wife and your brother-in-law. You have never forgotten that day, have you?”
The old man made no reply. But he closed his eyes, perhaps as a sign that he refused to listen.
“Sir, I have a message for you. It is from the man whom you saved from the gallows—the innocent man whom you saved at a trial for murder. He sent a message from his death-bed—words of gratitude and of prayer. The good deed that you did has grown, and borne fruit a hundredfold—your good deed. Let the grateful words of that man be some comfort to you.”
Again the old man made no sign.
At this point an unexpected interruption took place, for the door was opened, and a man, a villager, came clumping in noisily. Seventy years agone he was the boy who had done the bird-scaring.
“They told me”—he addressed Leonard, but he looked at the figure in the chair—“that you were here, and they said that he was going at last. So I came. I minded what you said. Did never a one suspect? That’s what you said. I don’t care for him now.” He nodded valiantly at the figure of his old master. “He won’t hurt no one—no more.”
He clumped across the room, being rheumatic,and planted himself before the chair, bringing his stick down with a bump on the floor.
“Did never a man suspect?” He looked round and held up his finger.
He suspected. And he knew.
“Old man”—he addressed himself directly to the silent figure—“who done that job? You done it. Nobody else done it. Nobody else couldn’t ha’ done it. Who done it? You done it. There was nobody else in the wood but you before John Dunning came along.”
Leonard took him by the arm, and led him unresisting out of the library. But he went on repeating his story, as if he could not say it often enough to satisfy his conscience.
“I always meant to tell him some day before I died. Now I have told him. I’ve told all the people too—all of them. Why should I go on putting of it away and hiding of it? He ought to ha’ swung long ago, he ought. And he shall too. He shall yet, though he be ninety years and more. Who done it? Who done it? Who done it? He done it. He done it. He done it, I say.”
They heard his voice as Leonard led him to the door; they heard his voice when Leonard shut the door upon him, repeating his refrain in a senile sing-song.
“What matter?” said Leonard. “Let him sing his burden all over the village. The time has gone by when such as he can hurt.”
But the old man still made as if he had heard nothing. He remained perfectly impassible. Noteven the Sphinx could be more obstinately fixed on betraying no emotion. Presently he stirred—perhaps because he was moved; he pulled himself up with difficulty; he sat supported by the arms of the chair, his body bending under the weight of the massive head and broad shoulders, too heavy at last even for that gigantic frame; his head was bent slightly forward; his eyes, deep set, were now fixed upon the red coals of the fire, which burned all the year round to warm him; his face was drawn by hard lines, which stood out like ropes in the firelight. His abundant white hair lay upon his shoulders, and his long white beard fell round him to the waist.
And thus he had been for seventy years, while his early manhood passed slowly into the prime of life, while the first decay touched his locks with tiny streaks of grey, while early age fell upon him, while his face grew furrowed, while his eyes sank and his cheek-bones stood out, while his teeth fell out and his long face was shortened and his ancient comeliness vanished. So he had remained while his neglected children grew up, while Consequences fell unheeded and unknown upon his house, ignorant of what went on in the outer world, though a new world grew up around him with new thoughts, new ideals, new standards, and a new civilisation. The Great Revolution which we call the Nineteenth Century went on around him, and he knew nothing; he lived, as he was born, in the eighteenth century, which was prolonged to the days of King George the Fourth. If he thought at all in his long life, histhoughts were as the thoughts of the time in which he was born.
Did he think at all? Of what could he think when day followed day, and one was like another, and there was no change; when spring succeeded winter unheeded; and cold and heat were alike to one who felt neither; and there was no book or newspaper or voice of friend to bring food for the mind or to break the monotony of the days?
The anchorite of the Church could pray; his only occupations were prayer and his mighty wrestling with the Devil. Since this anchorite of the Country House could not pray, there was left with him, day and night, the latter resource. Surely, after seventy long years, this occupation must have proved wearisome.
Leonard went on: “Speak.”
The old man made no sign.
“Speak, then. Speak, and tell us what we already know.”
There was still no reply.
“You have suffered so long. You have made atonement so terrible: it is time to speak—to speak and end it.”
His face visibly hardened.
“Oh! it is no use,” Leonard cried in despair. “It is like walking into a brick wall. Sir, you hear me—you understand what is said! You cannot tell us one single thing that we do not know already.”
He made a gesture of despair, and stepped back.
Then Constance herself stepped forward. She threw herself at his feet; like a Greek suppliant sheclasped his knees, and she spoke slowly and softly:
“You must hear me. I have a right to be heard. Look at me. I am the great-grand-daughter of Langley Holme.”
She raised her veil.
The old man screamed aloud. He caught the arms of the chair and sat upright. He stared at her face. He trembled and shook all over, insomuch that at the shaking of his large frame the floor also trembled and shook, and the plates on the table and the fender rattled.
“Langley!” he cried, seeing nothing but her face—“Langley! You have come back. At last—at last!”
He could not understand that this was a living woman, not a dead man. He saw only her face, and it was the face of Langley himself.
“Yes,” she said, boldly. “Langley come back. He says that you have suffered long enough. He says that he has forgiven you long ago. His sister has forgiven you. All is forgiven, Langley says. Speak—speak—in the very presence of God, Who knows. It was your hand that murdered Langley. Speak! You struck him with the club in the forehead so that he fell dead. When he was brought home dead, your punishment began with the death of your wife, and has gone on ever since. Speak!”
The old man shook his head mechanically. He tried to speak. It was as if his lips refused to utter the words. He sank back in the chair, still gazing upon the face and trembling. At last he spoke.
“Langley knows—Langley knows,” he said.
“Speak!” Constance commanded.
“Langley knows——”
“Speak!”
“I did it!” said the old man.
Constance knelt down before him and prayed aloud.
“I did it!” he repeated.
Constance took his hand and kissed it.
“I am Langley’s child,” she said. “In his name you are forgiven. Oh, the long punishment is over! Oh, we have all forgiven you! Oh, you have suffered so long—so long! At last—at last—forgive yourself!”
Then a strange thing happened. It happens often with the very old that in the hour of death there falls upon the face a return of youth. The old man’s face became young; the years fell from him; but for his white hair you would have thought him young again. The hard lines vanished with the crow’s-feet and the creases and the furrows; the soft colour of youth reappeared upon his cheek. Oh, the goodly man—the splendid face and figure of a man! He stood up, without apparent difficulty; he held Constance by the hand, but he stood up without support, towering in his six feet six, erect and strong.
“Forgiven?” he asked. “What is there to be forgiven? Forgive myself? Why? What have I done that needs forgiveness? Let us walk into the wood, Langley—let us walk into the wood. My dear, I do not understand. Langley’s child is but a baby in arms.”
His hand dropped. He would have fallen to the ground but that Leonard caught him and laid him gently on the chair.
“It is the end,” said Constance. “He has confessed.”
It was the end. The Recluse was dead.
ONEof the London morning papers devoted a leading article to the subject of the modern Recluse. The following is a passage from that excellent leader:
“The Hermit, or the Recluse, has long disappeared from the roadside, from the bridge-end, from the river bank. His Hermitage sometimes remains, as at Warkworth, but the ancient occupant is gone. He was succeeded by the Eccentric, who flourished mightily in the last century, and took many strange forms; some lived alone, each in a single room; some became misers and crept out at night, to pick up offal for food; some lived in hollow trees; some never washed, and allowed nothing in the house to be washed. There were no absurdities too ridiculous to be practised by the Eccentric of the last century.
“For reasons which the writer of social manners may discover, the Eccentric has mostly followed the Recluse; there are none left. Therefore, the life of the late Algernon Campaigne, of Campaigne Park, Bucks, an Eccentric of the eighteenth-century type, will afford a pleasing exception to the dull and monotonous chronicles of modern private life.
“This worthy, a country gentleman of good family and large estate, was married in quite early manhood, having succeeded to the property at twenty-one or so. His health was excellent; he was a model of humanity to look at, being much over six feet high and large of frame in proportion. He had gone through the usual course of public school and the University, not without distinction; he had been called to the Bar; he was a magistrate; and he was understood to have ambitions of a Parliamentary career. In a word, no young man ever started with fairer prospects or with a better chance of success in whatever line he proposed to take up.
“Unfortunately, a single tragic event blasted these prospects and ruined his life. His brother-in-law, a gentleman of his own rank and station, and his most intimate friend, while on a visit at Campaigne Park, was brutally murdered—by whom it was never discovered. The shock of this event brought the young wife of Mr. Campaigne to premature labour, and killed her as well on the same day.
“This misfortune so weighed upon the unhappy man that he fell into a despondent condition, from which he never rallied. He entered into a voluntary retirement from the world. He lived alone in his great house, with no one but an old woman for a housekeeper, for the whole remainder of his life—seventy years. During the whole of that time he has preserved absolute silence; he has not uttered a word. He has neglected his affairs; when his signature was absolutely necessary, his agent left the document on his table, and next day found it signed.He would have nothing done to the house; the fine furniture and the noble paintings are reported to be ruined with damp and cold; his garden and glass-houses are overgrown and destroyed. He spent his mornings, in all weathers, walking up and down the brick terrace overlooking his ruined lawns; he dined at one o’clock on a beefsteak and a bottle of port; he slept before the fire all the afternoon; he went to bed at nine. He never opened a book or a newspaper or a letter. He was careless what became of his children, and he refused to see his friends. A more melancholy, useless existence can hardly be imagined. And this life he followed without the least change for seventy years. When he died, the day before yesterday, it was on his ninety-fifth birthday.”
More followed, but these were the facts as presented to the readers, with a moral to follow.
They buried the old man with his forefathers “in sure and certain hope.” The words may pass, perhaps, for he had been punished, if punishment can atone for crime. Constance brought him a message of forgiveness, but could he forgive himself? All manner of sins can be forgiven. The murdered man, the dishonoured woman, the wronged orphan, the sweated workwoman, the ruined shareholder, the innocent man done to death or prison by perjury—all may lift up their hands in pity and cry aloud with tears their forgiveness, but will the guilty man forgive himself? Until he can the glorious streets of the New Jerusalem will be dark, the sound of the harp and the voices of praise will be but a confusednoise, and the new life itself will be nothing better than an intolerable prolonging of the old burden.
“Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.”
Then they went away, and when they were all gone the old bird-scarer came hobbling to the grave, and looked into it, and murmured, but not aloud, for fear the man in the grave might arise and kill him too:
“You done it! You done it! You done it!”
The funeral party walked back to the house, where for the first time for seventy years there was a table spread. All were there—the ancient lady, daughter of the dead man, stately with her black silk and laces, with the bearing of a Duchess, leaning on the arm of her grand-nephew; the two grandsons, Fred and Christopher; the wife and children of the latter; Mr. Samuel Galley and Mary Anne his sister; and Constance, great-grandniece of the deceased. With them came the agent, a solicitor from the neighbouring town.
After luncheon the agent produced the Will.
“This Will,” he said, “was drawn up by my great-grandfather in the year 1826, exactly one month after the tragic event which so weighed upon his client’s mind.”
“Was he in his right mind?” asked Sam, turning very red. “I ask the question without prejudice.”
“Sir, he was always in his right mind. He would not speak, but on occasion he would write. He was never, down to the very end, in any sense out of his mind. I have letters and instructions from him year after year for seventy years—my firm hasacted for this family for a hundred years—which will establish his complete sanity should that be questioned.”
“Well, the Will,” said Sam. “Let’s get to the Will.”
“I will read the Will.”
For the will of a rich man, it was comparatively short; there was in it, however, a clause which caused Leonard to glance curiously and inquiringly at Constance.
“I don’t understand,” said Sam. “There’s something left to me——”
“No, sir—to your grandmother. To you, nothing.”
“It’s the same thing. What is hers is mine.”
“No,” said the lady concerned, stiffly. “You will find, my grandson, that you are mistaken.”
“Well,” said Sam, disconcerted, “anyhow, you’ve got a share. What I want to know is the meaning of that clause about somebody’s heirs. What have they got to do with it?”
“Perhaps,” said Leonard, “you might kindly explain the Will.”
“Certainly. The testator had at the time of making his will a certain amount of personal property to bequeath. The property consisted partly of invested moneys, chiefly his mother’s fortune. As he was an only child, the whole of this personal property came to him. Partly it consisted of a town-house in Berkeley Square, also part of his mother’s property not entailed, and his pictures, his library, and his furniture, carriages, horses, etc. Thelatter part he has bequeathed to the heir of the Campaigne estate—to you, Mr. Leonard. The former part, consisting of the invested moneys, he bequeathes to his three children in equal portions. As the second child was drowned and left no heirs, this money will be divided equally between the elder son and the daughter—you, Mrs. Galley; and as the elder son is dead, his heirs will receive the money shared between them.”
“With all the Accumulations!” cried Sam. “Ah!” with a long, long breath of relief.
“No, not the Accumulations; they are especially provided for. The testator expressly states that only the amount actually standing in his name at that date shall be divided, as I have set forth. ‘And,’ he continues, ‘seeing that I may live some years yet, very much against my wish, and that I shall not spend on myself or on my house or in any way, being now and henceforth dead to the world and waiting in silence for my removal whenever it may come, there will be interest on this money, which I desire shall be invested year after year by my solicitors. And on my death I desire that the difference between the money then and the money now, whatever it may be, shall be given in equal shares to the heirs of Langley Holme, my late brother-in-law, who was foully murdered near my house, for a reason which he alone knows,’ ”
“This is very wonderful,” said Frederick. “All the accumulations—seventy years of compound interest! an immense fortune—to be given to strangers or very distant cousins? Are we going to allow thiswill to stand without a protest? You are the chief, Leonard. What do you say?”
“The question is whether the testator was sane at the time of making his will,” said Leonard.
“He was sane, then, I believe,” said the solicitor, “and he was certainly sane at the end. I have here a note written by him three years ago. All our communication was by writing. I ventured to ask him whether he desired to make any change in his testamentary disposition. Here is his reply.”
He took a note out of his pocket-book. It was quite short.