The Fourth Generation

He had learned also that his grandfather almost at the outset of a promising career had committed suicide for no reason that could be discovered; that his father had died young, also at the outset of a promising career, was a misfortune, but not a blot.

Two persons were left of his father’s generation. He had welcomed one as the prodigal, who had gone forth to the husks and returned bearing sheaves of golden grain. At least there was the pretence of the golden grain. The other he had regarded all his life with respect as one in successful practice in a most honourable profession. Where were they now? One was a bankrupt grocer or general store-keeper, the owner of a shanty in an Australian township, a miserable little general shop selling sardines and tea and oil and blacking, which he wanted to turn into a company as a great business; one who made no pretence at truth or honesty; the companion of tramps; devoid of honour or even the respect or care for honour. He had been driven out by his family as a spendthrift, a profligate, and a forger. He had come home unchanged and unrepentant and ready to swindle and to cheat if he could do so without the customary penalties.

As for the other man, the pretended barrister, he stood revealed as one who was living under false pretences. He had an equal right to stand in pillory beside his brother. Once a prodigal and a spendthrift like him: now living a daily lie which he had carried on for five-and-twenty years. Good heavens! Christopher Campaigne, Barrister-at-Law of Lincoln’s Inn, the successful Lawyer, on whom his family reposed a confidence so profound and a pride so unbounded – who does not take pride in a successful lawyer? – was nothing more than a common pretender and an impostor. He wrote speeches and sold them to humbugs who wished to be thought clever speakers. Honourable occupation! Delightful work! A proud and distinguished career!

So there was nobody left except himself to maintain the family honour.

Certain words which you have already heard came back again. It seemed to him as if Constance was saying them all over again: “You are independent as to fortune; you are of a good house; you have no scandals in your family records; you have got no poor or degraded relations … you are outside humanity… If you had some family scandals, some poor relations who would make you feel ashamed, something that made you like other people, vulnerable – ” Now he had them all.

The door was opened. His servant brought him a card: “Mr. Samuel Galley-Campaigne.”

“Another!” Leonard groaned and sprang to his feet. “Another!” The sight or the thought of this man, the caricature of his own family, tall and thin, like himself, but with every feature vulgarized, and the meanness of petty gains, petty cares, petty scheming and self-seeking stamped upon his face, irritated Leonard unspeakably. And he was a cousin! He stiffened involuntarily. His attitude, his expression, became that of the “supercilious beast” formed by Mr. Galley on his previous business.

The cousin came in and bowed slightly, not holding out his hand. There was a look in his face which meant resolution held back by fear, the desire to “try on” something, and the doubt as to whether it would be successful. It is an expression which may be remarked on ‘Change and in every market-town on market-day.

It has been wisely, perhaps frequently, remarked that trouble brings out a man’s true character far more certainly than prosperity, which may encourage him to assume virtues not really his own. The lines about the uses of adversity must be referred to the bystander rather than the patient, because the former is then enabled to contemplate and observe the true man for the first time. Mr. Galley, for instance, who was smug in prosperity, was openly and undisguisedly vulgar in adversity. At this moment, for instance, he was struggling with adversity; it made him red in the face, it made him speak thick, it made him perspire inconveniently, and it made his attitude ungraceful.

He came up the stairs; he knocked at the door with an expression of fixed resolution. One might have expected him to bang his fist on the table and to cry out: “There! that’s what I want, and that’s what I mean to have.” He did not quite do that, but he intended to do it when he called, and he would have done, I have no doubt, but for the cold, quiet air with which his cousin received him.

“Mr. Campaigne,” he began, “or cousin, if you like – ”

“Mr. Campaigne, perhaps,” said Leonard the supercilious.

“Well, Mr. Campaigne, then, I’ve come to have a few words of explanation – explanation, sir!” he repeated, with some fierceness.

“By all means. Pray take a chair.”

He took a chair, and was then seized by the doubt of which we have spoken. Perhaps the cause was the commanding position of his cousin, standing over him six foot three in height, and with a face like that of a Judge not personally interested in the case before him.

“The point is this: I’ve got a bill against your family, and I want to know whether I am to present it to you or to my great-grandfather?”

“A bill? Of what nature?”

“A bill for maintenance. We have maintained my grandmother for fifty years. She has been kept partly by my grandfather, partly by my family, and partly by myself, and it’s time that your family should do their duty.”

“That is a very remarkable claim.”

“Putting it at £50 a year, which is cheap for the lavish way she’s been kept, that makes £2,500. At compound interest it mounts up to £18,000 and odd. I shall be contented to square the claim for £18,000.”

“You propose to send in a bill – a bill for keeping your own grandmother?”

“That is just what I am going to do.”

“You must surely be aware that such a claim would not be entertained for a moment. No Court of Law would so much as look at it.”

“I am aware of the fact. But this is not a claim of an ordinary kind; it is a claim that rests on equity – on equity, not on Law.”

“What is the equitable side of the claim?”

“Well, it’s this way: My grandfather, who failed for an enormous amount – which showed the position he occupied in the City – married my grandmother in the reasonable expectation that she would bring him a fortune. It is true that the old man was then not more than fifty or so, but he did not count so much on a will as on a settlement.”

“I understand that the marriage was undertaken without consultation with my great-grandfather, or, under the circumstances, with his solicitors.”

“That was, no doubt, the case; but when one marries into so wealthy a family, and when the head of it is not in a position to be consulted, the least that can be expected is a settlement – a settlement of some kind. My grandfather said that he expected nothing less than twenty thousand – twenty thousand. He dated his subsequent misfortunes to the failure of this expectation, because he got nothing. Perhaps, Mr. Campaigne, as you were not born then, you can hardly believe that he got nothing.”

“I am in ignorance of the whole business.”

“Quite so – quite so. I think, therefore, that I am quite justified in asking your people to pay me just the bare sum – out-of-pocket expenses – which we have expended upon my grandmother.”

“Oh!”

The tone was not encouraging, but the other man was not versed in these external signs, and went on, unabashed:

“You saw yourself the other day the style in which we live, I believe, Mr. Campaigne; you will acknowledge that it was a noble Tea.”

Leonard bowed solemnly.

“An account rendered, under any circumstances, for the maintenance of a grandmother, a mother, and a wife I should myself tear up and throw into the fire. But it is no concern of mine. You can send your claim to my great-grandfather – ”

“My great-grandfather as much as yours.”

“To his solicitors, whose name and address you probably know; if not, I will furnish you with them. If that is all you have to say – ”

He moved towards the door.

“No, no. I mean this. We had a right to expect a fortune, and there has been none.”

“You said that before. Again, Mr. Galley, I cannot discuss this matter with you. Take your claim to the right quarter.”

“I’m not obliged to keep the old woman,” he replied sulkily.

“I decline to discuss your views of duty.”

“I want to wake up the old man to a sense of justice. I will, too. If he’s mad we will find out. If he isn’t, I will make him pay – even if I have to expose him.”

Leonard stepped to the door and threw it open. Mr. Galley rose. His face betrayed many emotions. In fact, the conversation had not proceeded quite on the lines he hoped.

“Don’t be in a hurry,” he said. “Give me a little time.”

Leonard closed the door and returned to the hearth-rug.

“Take time, Mr. Galley.”

“I don’t want,” he said, “to behave ungentlemanly, but I’m in desperate trouble. If you think it’s no good sending in a claim, I withdraw it. The fact is, Mr. Campaigne, I want money. I want money desperately.”

Leonard made no reply. This was discouraging.

“I’ve been speculating – in house property – backing a builder; and the man is going. That is what has happened to me. If I can’t raise a thousand pounds in the course of a day or two I must go too.”

“You will not raise anything by sending in a bill for the maintenance of your grandmother. Put that out of your head, Mr. Galley.”

He groaned.

“Then, will you lend me a thousand pounds, Mr. Campaigne? You were very friendly when you came to see us the other day. The security is first-class – the shells of three unfinished houses – and I will give you eight per cent. for the accommodation. Good security and good interest. There you are. Come, Mr. Campaigne: you are not a business man, and I don’t think you can make, as a rule, more than three per cent. at the outside.”

“I have no money either to lend or to advance.”

“I have been to the bank, but they won’t look at the business. It’s a mean, creeping, miserable bank. I shall change it.”

“Well, Mr. Galley, I am sorry to hear that you are in trouble, but I cannot help you.”

“If I do go bankrupt,” he said savagely, “the old woman will go into the workhouse. That’s one consolation. And she’s your great-aunt.”

“You forget your sister, Mr. Galley. From what I know of Board Schools, I should say that she is quite able to maintain her grandmother. If not, there may be other assistance.”

“There’s another thing, then,” he persisted. “When I spoke to you first, I mentioned the word ‘accumulations.’ ”

“No one mentions any other word just now, I think,” Leonard replied, with a touch of temper.

“They must be enormous. I’ve been working it out. Enormous! And that old man can’t live much longer. He can’t. He’s ninety-five.”

“Mr. Galley, I put it to you as a lawyer, or, at least, as a solicitor: Do you think that your great-grandfather has lived all these years without making a will?”

“He can’t make a will. He is a madman.”

“Ask his solicitors for an opinion on that subject. The old man will not speak, but he receives communications and gives instructions.”

“I shall dispute the will if I’m not named in it. I shall expect a full share. I shall show that he’s a madman.”

“As you please. Meanwhile, it is doubtful whether the testator ever heard your name.”

“He knows his daughter’s name. And what’s hers is mine.”

“I must open the door again, Mr. Galley, if you talk nonsense. I hear, by the way, that you have made that lady sign certain papers. As a solicitor, you must know that such documents would be regarded by the Court with extreme suspicion.”

“If I have to go bankrupt I shall let the whole world know that you wouldn’t lift a finger to save your own cousin.”

“As you please.”

“And if there’s a will that turns out me, I’ll drag the whole thing into Court and expose you. I will expose you, by – ”

Leonard opened the door again.

“This time, Mr. Galley, you will go.”

He obeyed. He dropped his hat on his head, he marched out, and he bawled on the stairs as he went down:

“I’ll expose you – I’ll expose you – I’ll expose you!”

These terrifying and minatory words rang up and down the stairs of that respectable mansion like the voice of an Accusing Angel, so that everybody who heard them jumped and turned pale, and murmured:

“Oh, good Lord! What’s come out now?”

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LIGHT THAT BROKE

IT was Sunday morning. Leonard sat before the fire doing nothing. He had done nothing for three weeks. He had no desire to do anything: his work lay neglected on the table, books and papers piled together. He was brooding over the general wreck of all he had held precious: over the family history; the family disgraces and disasters; and the mystery which it was hopeless to look into but impossible to forget.

The bells were ringing all around: the air was full of the melody, or the jingle of the bells of many Churches.

Then Constance knocked at his door. “May I come in?” she asked, and came in without waiting for an answer. “I was proposing to go to the Abbey,” she said. “But things have got on my nerves. I felt that I could not sit still for the service. I must come and talk to you.”

“I suppose that we know the very worst now,” said Leonard. “Why do you worry yourself about my troubles, Constance?”

“Because we are cousins – because we are friends. Isn’t that enough?”

She might have added, as another reason, that the events of the last three weeks had drawn them more closely together – so closely that it wanted but a word – if once their minds were free from the obsession of the mystery – to bind them so that they should never again drift asunder.

Leonard replied, with a wintry smile: “Without you to talk things over, Constance, I believe I should go mad.”

“And I feel so guilty – so guilty – when I think of what I said so lightly about scandals and poor relations with all this hanging over your head.”

“Nothing more, I should think” – he looked about the room, as if to make sure that no telegrams or letters were floating in the air – “can happen now – except to me. Everybody else is laid low. One cousin has brought me a bill for the maintenance of his grandmother for fifty years – says he will take eighteen thousand pounds down. One ought really to be proud of such a cousin.”

“The solicitor of the Commercial Road, I suppose. But, really, what does it matter?”

“Nothing. Only at the moment there is a piling up; and every straw helps to break the camel’s back. The man says he is going to be a bankrupt. My uncle Frederick – that large-souled, genial, thirsty, wealthy, prosperous representative of colonial enterprise – now turns out to be an impostor and a fraud – ”

“Oh, Leonard!”

“An impostor and a fraud,” he repeated. “He has a small general store in an Australian township, and he has come over to represent this as a big business and to make a Company out of it. The other uncle – the learned and successful lawyer – ”

“Don’t tell me, Leonard.”

“Another time, then: we ought certainly to have heard the worst. Let us go to the village and bury the Family Honour before the altar in the Church, and put up a brass in memory of what our ancestors created.”

“No. You will guard it still, Leonard. It could not be in better hands. You must not – you cannot, bury your own soul.”

Leonard relapsed into silence. Constance stood over him sad and disheartened. Presently she spoke.

“How long?” she asked.

“How long?” he replied. “Who can say? It came of its own accord – it was uninvited. Perhaps it will go as it came.”

“You would rather be left alone?” she asked. “Let me stay and talk a little. My friend, we must have done with it. After all, what does it matter to us how a crime was committed seventy years ago?”

“It concerns your own ancestor, Constance.”

“Yes. He, poor man, was killed. Leonard, when I say ‘poor man’ the words exactly measure the amount of sorrow that I feel for him. An ancestor of four generations past is no more than a shadow. His fate awakens a little interest, but no sadness.”

“I should say the same thing, I suppose. But my ancestor was not killed. He was condemned to a living death. Constance, it is no use; whether I will or no, the case haunts me day and night.” He sprang to his feet, and threw up his arms as one who would throw off chains. “How long since I first heard of it through that unfortunate old lady of the Commercial Road? Three weeks? It seems like fifty years. As for any purpose that I had before, or any ambition – it is gone – quite gone and vanished.”

“As for me, I am haunted in the same manner.”

“I am like a man who is hypnotised – I am no longer a free agent. I am ordered to do this, and I do it. As for this accursed Book of Extracts” – he laid his hand upon the abomination – “I am forced to go through it over and over again. Every time I sit down I am prompted by a kind of assurance that something will be discovered. Every time I rise up, it is with disgust that nothing has occurred to me.”

“Are we to go on all our lives looking for what we can never find?”

“We know the whole contents by heart. Yet every day there is the feeling that something will start into light. It is madness, Constance. I am going mad – like my grandfather, who killed himself. That will end the family tale of woes, so far as I am concerned.”

“Send the book back to its owner.”

He shook his head. “I know it all. That will be no use.”

“Burn the dreadful thing.”

“No use. I should be made to write it all out again.”

“I dropped an envelope in your letter-box last night. Have you opened it?”

“I don’t think I have read a single letter for the last three weeks.”

“Then it must be among the pile. What a heap of letters! Oh, Leonard, you are indeed occupied with this business. I found last night three letters from Langley Holme to his wife. They were written from Campaigne Park; but on what occasion I do not know. I thought at first that I might have found something that would throw a little light upon the business. But of course, when one considers, how could he throw light upon his own tragic end?”

He took the packet carelessly. “Do the letters tell us anything?”

“Nothing important, I believe. They show that he was staying at the Park.”

“We know that already. It is strange how we are continually mocked by the things we learn. It was the same with the letter from Australia.”

“That was an interesting letter – so are these – even if they tell us nothing that we do not know already.”

He opened the envelope, and took out the packet of letters. There were three: they were written on square letter paper: the folds had been worn away, and the letters were now dropping to pieces. The ink was faded as becomes ink of the nineteenth century. Leonard laid them on the table to read because they were in so ragged a condition. “The date,” he said, “is difficult to make out, but the last letter looks like ‘6’ – that would make it 1826. You say that there is nothing important in them.”

“Nothing, so far as I could make out. But read them. You may find something.”

The first letter was quite unimportant, containing only a few instructions and words of affection. The next two letters, however, spoke of the writer’s brother-in-law:

“My little dispute with Algernon is still unsettled. He makes a personal matter of it, which is disagreeable. He really is the most obstinate and tenacious of mortals. I don’t like to seem to be thinking or saying anything unkind about him. Indeed, he is a splendid fellow all round, only the most obstinate. But I shall not budge one inch. Last night in the library he entirely lost command of himself, and became like a madman for a few minutes. I had heard from others about the ungovernable side of his temper, but had never seen it before. He really becomes dangerous at such times. He raged and glared like a bull before a red rag. Since Philippa is happy, she has certainly never seen it.”

In the third letter he spoke of the same dispute.

“We had another row last night. Row or no row, I am not going to budge one inch. We are going to discuss the matter again – quietly, he promises. I will write to you again and tell you what is settled. My dear child, I am ashamed to see this giant of a man so completely lose control of himself. However, I suppose he will give way when he sees that he must.”

“There seems to have been a slight dispute,” said Leonard. “His brother-in-law lost his temper and stormed a bit. But they made it up again. Well, Constance, that is all – a little quarrel made up again undoubtedly.”

He replaced the letters in the envelope and returned them to Constance.

“Keep them,” he said. “They are valuable to you as letters from your ancestor. Like the letter from Mr. John Dunning, which we received with amazement as a voice from the grave, they help us to realise the business – if one wanted any help. But we realised it before – quite vividly enough – and that,” he sighed, “is all. We are no whit advanced. There were no more papers?”

“I searched the desk over and over again, but I could find nothing more. Now, Leonard.” She took a chair and placed it beside his own at the table. “Leave the fire and take your chair, and we will begin and finish. This time must be the very last. It is high time that we should make an end of this. As for me, I came here this morning just to say that whatever happens I am determined that we must make an end. The thing is becoming dangerous to your peace of mind.”

“We cannot make an end.”

“Yes – yes – we are now persons bewitched. Let us swear that after this morning we will put away the book and the papers and cease from any further trouble about it.”

“If we can,” he replied gloomily.

“Leonard, for the first time in your life you are superstitious.”

“We may swear what we like. We shall come back to the case again to-morrow.”

“We will not. Let us resolve. Nay, Leonard, you must not continue. To you it is becoming dangerous.”

Leonard sighed. “It is weary work. Well, then, for the last time.” He laid the packet of papers upon the table. He opened the dreadful book – the Book of Fate. “It is always the same thing. Whenever I open the book there is the same sense of sickness and loathing. Are the pages poisoned?”

“They are, my friend.”

He began the old round. That is to say, he read the case as they had drawn it up, while Constance compared it with the evidence.

“ ‘These are the facts of the inquest, of the trial, of the effects of the crime, the evidence of place, and the evidence of time:

“ ‘The two leave the house, they walk together through the Park; they cross the road, they get over the stile, they enter the wood. Then the Squire turns back – ’ ”

“After some short time,” Constance corrected. “According to the recollection of the ancient man who was the bird-scarer, he went into the wood.”

“ ‘Then the Squire walked homewards rapidly. If the housekeeper gave the time correctly, and it took him the same time to get home as to reach the wood – I have timed the distance – he may have been ten minutes – a quarter of an hour in the wood.

“ ‘Two hours or so later, the boy saw a working man, whom he knew well by sight and name, enter the wood. He was dressed in a smock-frock, and carried certain tools or instruments over his shoulder. He remained in the wood a few minutes only, and then came running out, his white smock spotted with red, as the boy could see plainly from the hillside. He ran to the farmyard beyond the field, and returned with other men and a shutter. They entered the wood, and presently came out carrying “something” covered up. The boy was asked both at the inquest and the trial whether anyone else had entered the wood or had come out of it. He was certain that no one had done so, or could have done so without his knowledge.

“ ‘The men carried the body to the house. They were met on the terrace by the housekeeper, who seemed to have shrieked and run into the house, where she told the women-servants, who all together set up a shrieking through the house. Someone, after the mistress was thus terrified, blurted out the dreadful truth. In an hour the Squire had lost his wife as well as his brother-in-law.

“ ‘At the inquest, the Squire gave the principal evidence. He said that he walked with his brother-in-law as far as the wood, when he turned back.’ ”