The Fourth Generation

“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 the wood 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 presents the 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.”

CHAPTER XV

“BARLOW BROTHERS”

“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, with whom 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 a nasty, 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, I have 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 you get 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.

CHAPTER XVI

AND ANOTHER CAME

ALMOST immediately 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. Before him, 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 only five 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 understood without 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 remember it. 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?”