The Fourth Generation

“Were we led? You would make me believe, Constance – even me – in supernatural guidance. But it seems natural, somehow, that you should believe that we were, as you say, led.”

“You, who believe nothing but what you see, you will not understand. Oh! it is so plain to me – so very plain. You have been forced – compelled against your will – to investigate the case. Who compelled you? I know not; but since the same force made me follow you, I think it was that murdered man himself. Confess that you were forced; you said so yourself.”

“It is true that I have been absorbed in the case.”

“Who sent your cousin from the East End? Who fired your imagination with half-told tales of trouble? Who sent you the book? How do you explain the absorbing interest of a case so old, so long forgotten?”

“Is it not natural?”

“No, it is not natural that a man of your willpower should become the slave of a research so hopeless – as it seemed. Who was it, after we had mastered every detail and tried every theory and examined every scrap of evidence, and after you had examined the ground and talked to the surviving witness – I say, after the way had been prepared – who was it sent the two voices from the grave – the one which made it quite certain that those two were the only persons in the wood, and the other which showed that they were quarrelling, and that one was ungoverned in his wrath? Can you explain that, Leonard?”

“You believe that we were led by unseen hands, step by step, towards the discovery, for the purpose of those who led.”

“There were two purposes: one for the consolation of that old man, and the other for yourself.”

“How for myself?”

“Look back only a month. Are you the same or are you changed? I told you then that you were outside all other men, because you had everything – wealth sufficient, pride of ancestry, intellectual success, and no contact with the lower world, the vulgar and the common, or the criminal or the disreputable world. You remember? Yes – are you changed?

“If to possess all these undesirable things can change one, I am changed.”

“If to lose the things which separate you from the world, and to receive the things which bring you nearer to the world, do change a man, then you are changed. You will change more and more; because more and more you will feel that you belong to the world of men and women – not of caste and books. When all is gone, there still remains yourself – alone before the world.”

He made no reply.

“Where is now your pride of birth? It is gone. Where is your contempt for things common and unclean? You have had the vision of St. Peter. If there are things common and unclean, they belong to you as well as to the meaner sort – for to that kind you also belong.”

“Something of this I have understood.”

“And there was the other purpose. While with blow after blow it is destroyed, you were led on and on with this mystery; voices from the dead were brought to you, till at last the whole mystery was made plain and stood out confessed – and with it I was moved and compelled to follow you, till at the end I was taken to see the dying man, and to deliver to him the forgiveness of the man he slew. Oh, Leonard, believe me; if it is true that the soul survives the death of the body, if it is possible for the soul still to see what goes on among the living, then have you and I been directed and led.”

Again he made no reply. But he was moved beyond the power of speech.

“Forgiveness came long since. Oh! I am sure of that – long since. That which followed – was it Consequence or Punishment? – lasted for seventy years. Oh, what a life! Oh, what a long, long agony! Always to dwell on one moment; day after day, night after night, with never a change and no end; to whirl the heavy branch upon the head of the brother, to see him fall back dead, to know that he was a murderer. Leonard! Leonard! think of it!”

“I do think of it, Constance. But you must not go on thinking of it.”

“No, no – this is the last time. Forgiveness, yes – he would forgive. God’s sweet souls cannot but forgive. But Justice must prevail, with the condemnation of self-reproach, till Forgiveness overcomes – until, in some mysterious way, the sinner can forgive himself.”

She sat down and buried her face in her hands.

“You say that we have been led – perhaps. I neither deny nor accept. But whatever has been done for that old man whom we buried this morning, whatever has been done for the endowment of myself with cousins and people – well, of the more common sort – one thing more it has accomplished. Between you and me, Constance, there flows a stream of blood.”

She lifted her head; she rose from the chair; she stepped closer to him; she stood before him face to face, her hands clasped, her face pale, the tears yet lying on her cheek, her eyes soft and full of a strange tender light.

“You asked me three or four weeks ago,” she said, “to marry you. I refused. I told you that I did not know the meaning of Love or the necessity for Love. I now understand that it means, above all, the perfect sympathy and the necessity for sympathy. I now understand, besides, that you did not then know, any more than I myself, the necessity of sympathy. You were a lonely man, content to be lonely, and sufficient for yourself. You were a proud man – proud through and through, belonging to a caste separated from the people by a long line of ancestry and a record full of honour. You had no occasion to earn your daily bread; you were already distinguished; there was no man of your age in the whole country more fortunate than you, or more self-centred. I was able to esteem you – but you could not move my heart. Are you following me, Leonard?”

“I am trying to follow you.”

“Many things have happened to you since then. You have joined the vast company of those who suffer from the sins of their own people; you have known shame and humiliation – ”

“And between us flows that stream.”

Even for a strong and resolute woman, who is not afraid of misunderstanding and does not obey conventions, there are some things very hard to say.

“There is one thing, and only one thing, Leonard, that can dry that stream.”

His face changed. He understood what she meant.

“Is there anything? Think, Constance. Langley Holme was your ancestor. He was done to death by mine.”

“Yes. There is one way. Oh, Leonard, in this time of trouble and anxiety I have watched you day by day. I have found the man beneath the scholar. If I had accepted your offer three weeks ago, it would have been out of respect for the scholar. But a woman can only love a man – not a scholar, believe me, nor a student, nor a poet, nor an artist, nor anything except a man.”

“Constance! It is impossible! You are his daughter.”

“It is fortunate that I am, as you say, the daughter of the man who was killed. He suffered less than the other. The suffering was but a pang, but the other’s – oh, it was a lifelong agony! If I marry the son of the man who did the wrong, it is because the message I carried to the dying man was a sign that all was forgiven, even to “ ‘the third and fourth generation.’ ”

“Tell me, Constance, is this pity, or – ”

“Oh, Leonard, I know not what flowers there are which grow out of pity and sympathy, but – ”

She said no more, because there was no need.

THE END