The Fourth Generation

“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. Not even 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, his thoughts 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 she clasped 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.

CHAPTER XXI

THE WILL

ONE of 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 confused noise, 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 has acted 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. The latter 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 this will 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.

“Nothing has happened to cause any alteration in my will. The reasons which made me set apart all moneys saved and accumulated for the heirs of Langley Holme still exist. I do not know who the heirs are. – A. C.”

“Is that the letter of a person of unsound mind?”

“I for one shall dispute the will,” said Sam, standing up and thrusting his hands in his pockets.

“Pardon me, sir, you have no locus standi.”

“I don’t care. It is an iniquitous will.”

“As you please, sir – as you please.”

“Will you tell us the amount of the money which will come to us?” said Fred.

“There was a sum of £90,000 invested in the Three per Cents. The half of that sum, or £45,000, will be divided among you three gentlemen as the grandson and the sons of Mr. Campaigne’s eldest son. The other half will be given to you, Mrs. Galley.”

“Humph!” said Sam. “But when I get the will set aside – ”

“As for the accumulations, they amount at the present moment to a very large sum indeed, an immense sum – more than a million of money. The late Langley Holme left one daughter, whose only descendant is the young lady here present, Miss Constance Ambry.”

Constance rose.

“We will talk about this business at another time,” she said.

Leonard followed her out of the damp and grave-like house into the ruined garden. And they sat down together in silence.

“Fifteen thousand pounds!” said Fred. “It is no more at present rates of interest than £400 a year. But it’s a pleasant little nest-egg to take out to Australia – with the Dunnings to place if – ”

“Fifteen thousand pounds,” said Christopher to his son. “It’s a nice little addition. But, my boy, the Bureau is worth ten times as much.”

They walked away. They rambled about the house of Ruin and Decay. Presently they walked to the station: the dream of huge wealth was shattered. But still, there was a solatium.

Mrs. Galley turned to the lawyer.

“Sir,” she said, “when will that money be my very own?”

“Immediately. It has only to be transferred. If you wish for an advance – ”

“I wish for protection against my grandson.”

“Quite right.” It was Mary Anne, who had not hitherto said a word.

“He claims everything as his own.”

“Madame,” said the lawyer, “we have acted, father and son, for four generations for your family. Let me assure you that if you allow us your confidence, you shall be amply protected.”

Sam looked from one to the other. Then he put on his hat and walked away gloomily.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Galley, laying her hand on her grand-daughter’s shoulder, “I am again a gentlewoman. We will live, you and I, in a country house, with a garden and flowers and servants and a pony carriage. No, my dear, I will never go back to the Commercial Road. He is welcome to everything there. Let us stay here in the village and among the people where I was born – you and I together. Oh, my dear – my dear! It is happiness too great. The hand of the Lord is lifted: His wrath is stayed.”

Leonard and Constance returned to town together.

In the carriage the girl sat beside Leonard in silence, her hands folded, her eyes dropped.

“You are a great heiress, Constance,” he said. “I learn that the accumulations now amount to an immense sum. What will you do with all this money?”

“I do not know. I shall pretend to myself that I haven’t got any. Perhaps in time someone may help me to use it. I have enough already. I do not want to buy anything that costs large sums. I do not want to dress more expensively. I have as good society as I can desire, and I cannot, I believe, eat any more than I have always done.”

“Yet, how happy would some people be at such a windfall!”

“The difficulty of doing something with it will be very terrible. Let us never talk about it. Besides, that cousin of yours is going to set the will aside, if he can.”

She relapsed into silence. It was not of her newly-acquired fortune that she was thinking.

They drove from the station to the “Mansions.” They mounted the stairs to the first-floor.

“Let me come in with you, Leonard,” she said. “I want to say something. It had better be said to-day and at once, else it will become impossible.”

He observed that she was embarrassed in her manner, that she spoke with some constraint, and that she was blushing. A presentiment seized him. Presentiment is as certain as coincidence. He, too, changed colour. But he waited. They remained standing face to face.

“Tell me first,” she said, “is the Possession of your mind wholly gone? Are you quite free from the dreadful thing?”

“Happily, yes. I am quite free. My mind is completely clear again. There is plenty to think about – one is not likely to forget the last few weeks – but I can think as I please. My will is my own once more.”

“I also am quite free. The first thing that I want to say is this: What are we to do with our knowledge?”

“You are the person to decide. If you wish, it shall be proclaimed abroad.”

“I cannot possibly wish that.”

“Or, if you wish, a history of the case shall be written out and shown to every member of the family, and placed with the other documents of our people, so that those who follow shall be able to read and understand the history.”

“No. I want the story absolutely closed, so that it can never again be reopened. In a few years the memory of the event itself will have vanished from the village; your cousins of the Commercial Road will certainly not keep the story alive; besides, they know nothing. There remains only the Book of Extracts. Let us first burn the Book of Extracts.”

Leonard produced the volume. Constance tore out the leaves one by one, rolled them up, laid them neatly in the grate, put the cover on the top, and set light to the whole. In one minute the dreadful story was destroyed; there was no more any evidence, except in the piles of old newspapers which are slowly mouldering in the vaults of the British Museum.

“Never again!” she said. “Never again will we speak of it. Nobody shall know what we discovered. It is our secret – yours and mine. Whose secret should it be but yours and mine?”

“If it were a burden to you, I would it were all mine.”

“It is no burden henceforth. Why should that be a burden which has been forgiven? It is our secret, too, that the suffering was laid upon us, so that we might be led to the discovery of the truth.”