The Fourth Generation

He smiled. “I am serious, I suppose, from the way in which I was brought up. We lived in Cornwall, right in the country, close to the seashore, with no houses near us, until I went to school. It was a very quiet household: my grandmother and my mother were both in widows’ weeds. There was very little talking, and no laughing or mirth of any kind, within the house, and always, as I now understand, the memory of that misfortune and the dread of new misfortunes were upon these unhappy ladies. They did not tell me anything, but I felt the sadness of the house. I suppose it made me a quiet boy – without much inclination to the light heart that possessed most of my fellows.”

“I am glad you have told me,” she replied. “These things explain a good deal in you. For now I understand you better.”

They mounted their cycles, and resumed the journey in silence for some miles.

“Look!” he cried. “There is our old place.”

He pointed across a park. At the end of it stood a house of red brick, with red tiles and stacks of red chimneys – a house of two stories only. In front was a carriage-drive, but no garden or enclosure at all. The house rose straight out of the park itself.

“You see only the back of the house,” said Leonard. “The gardens are all in the front: but everything is grown over; nothing has been done to the place for seventy years. I wonder it has stood so long.” They turned off the road into the drive. “The old man, when the double shock fell upon him, dropped into a state of apathy from which he has never rallied. We must go round by the servant’s entrance. The front doors are never opened.”

The great hall with the marble floor made echoes rolling and rumbling about the house above as they walked across it. There were arms on the walls and armour, but all rusted and decaying in the damp air. There were two or three pictures on the walls, but the colour had peeled off and the pictures had become ghosts and groups of ghosts in black frames.

“The recluse lives in the library,” said Leonard. “Let us look first at the other rooms.” He opened a door. This was the dining-room. Nothing had been touched. There stood the great dining-hall. Against the walls were arranged a row of leather chairs. There was the sideboard; the mahogany was not affected by the long waiting, except that it had lost its lustre. The leather on the chairs was decaying and falling off. The carpet was moth-eaten and in threads. The paper on the wall, the old-fashioned red velvet paper, was hanging down in folds. The old-fashioned high brass fender was black with neglected age. On the walls the pictures were in better preservation than those in the hall, but they were hopelessly injured by the damp. The curtains were falling away from the rings. “Think of the festive dinners that have been given in this room,” said Leonard. “Think of the talk and the laughter and the happiness! And suddenly, unexpectedly, the whole comes to an end, and there has been silence and emptiness for seventy years.”

He closed the door and opened another. This was in times gone by the drawing-room. It was a noble room – long, high, well proportioned. A harp stood in one corner, its strings either broken or loose. A piano with the music still upon it stood open; it had been open for seventy years. The keys were covered with dust and the wires with rust. The music which had last been played was still in its place. Old-fashioned sofas and couches stood about. The mantel-shelf was ornamented with strange things in china. There were occasional tables in the old fashion of yellow and white and gold. The paper was peeling off like that of the dining-room. The sunshine streamed into the room through windows which had not been cleaned for seventy years. The moths were dancing merrily as if they rejoiced in solitude. On one table, beside the fireplace, were lying, as they had been left, the work-basket with some fancy work in it; the open letter-case, a half-finished letter, an inkstand, with three or four quill pens: on a chair beside the table lay an open volume; it had been open for seventy years.

Constance came in stepping noiselessly, as in a place where silence was sacred. She spoke in whispers; the silence fell upon her soul; it filled her with strange terrors and apprehensions. She looked around her.

“You come here often, Leonard?”

“No. I have opened the door once, and only once. Then I was seized with a strange sense of – I know not what; it made me ashamed. But it seemed as if the room was full of ghosts.”

“I think it is. The whole house is full of ghosts. I felt their breath upon my cheek as soon as we came into the place. They will not mind us, Leonard, nor would they hurt you if they could. Let us walk round the room.” She looked at the music. “It is Gluck’s ‘Orpheo’; the song, ‘Orpheo and Euridice.’ She must have been singing it the day before – the day before – ” Her eyes turned to the work-table. “Here she was sitting at work the day before – the day before – Look at the dainty work – a child’s frock.” She took up the open book; it was Paschal’s “Pensées.” “She was reading this the day before – the day before – ” Her eyes filled with tears. “The music – no common music; the book – a book only for a soul uplifted above the common level; the dainty, beautiful work – Leonard, it seems to reveal the woman and the household. Nothing base or common was in that woman’s heart – or in the management of her house; they are slight indications, but they are sure. It seems as if I knew her already, though I never heard of her until to-day. Oh, what a loss for that man! – what a Tragedy! what a terrible Tragedy it was!” Her eyes fell upon the letter; she took it up. “See!” she said. “The letter was begun, but never finished. Is it not sacrilege to let it fall into other hands? Take it, Leonard.”

“We may read it after all these years,” Leonard said, shaking the dust of seventy years from it. “There can be nothing in it that she would wish not to be written there.” He read it slowly. It was written in pointed and sloping Italian hand – a pretty hand belonging to the time when women were more separated from men in all their ways. Now we all write alike. “ ‘My dearest…’ I cannot make out the name. The rest is easy. ‘Algernon and Langley have gone off to the study to talk business. It is this affair of the Mill which is still unsettled. I am a little anxious about Algernon: he has been strangely distrait for this last two or three days; perhaps he is anxious about me: there need be no anxiety. I am quite well and strong. This morning he got up very early, and I heard him walking about in his study below. This is not his way at all. However, should a wife repine because her Lord is anxious about her? Algernon is very determined about that Mill; but I fear that Langley will not give way. You know how firm he can be behind that pleasant smile of his.’ That is all, Constance. She wrote no more.”

“It was written, then, the day before – the day before – Keep the letter, Leonard. You have no other letter of hers – perhaps nothing at all belonging to the poor lady. I wonder who Langley was? I had a forefather, too, whose Christian name was Langley. It is not a common name.”

“The Christian name of my unfortunate grandfather who committed suicide was also Langley. It is a coincidence. No doubt he was named after the person mentioned in this letter. Not by any means a common name, as you say. As for this letter, I will keep it. There is nothing in my possession that I can connect with this unfortunate ancestress.”

“Where are her jewels and things?”

“Perhaps where she left them, perhaps sent to the bank. I have never heard of anything belonging to her.”

Constance walked about the room looking at everything; the dust lay thick, but it was not the black dust of the town – a light brown dust that could be blown away or swept away easily. She swept the strings of the harp, which responded with the discords of seventy years’ neglect. She touched the keys of the piano, and started at the harsh and grating response. She looked at the chairs and the tables with their curly legs, and the queer things in china that stood upon the mantel shelf.

“Why,” she said, “the place should be kept just as it is, a museum of George the Fourth fashion in furniture. Here is a guitar. Did that lady play the guitar as well as the harp and the piano? The pictures are all water-colours. The glass has partly preserved them, but some damp has got in; they are all injured. I should like to get them all copied for studies of the time and its taste. They are good pictures, too. This one looks like a water-colour copy of a Constable. Was he living then? And this is a portrait.” She started. “Good heavens! what is this?”

“This? It is evidently a portrait,” said Leonard. “Why, Constance – ”

For she was looking into it with every sign of interest and curiosity.

“How in the world did this picture come here?” Leonard looked at it.

“I cannot tell you,” he said; “it is only my second visit to this room. It is a young man. A pleasing and amiable face; the short hair curled by the barber’s art, I suppose. The face is familiar; I don’t know why – ”

“Leonard, it is the face of my own great-grandfather. How did it come here? I have a copy, or the original, in my own possession. How did it come here? Was he a friend of your people?”

“I know nothing at all about it. By the rolled collar and the curly hair and the little whiskers I should say that the original must have been a contemporary of my ancestor the Recluse. Stop! there is a name on the frame. Can you read it?” He brushed away the dust. “ ‘Langley Holme, 1825,’ Langley Holme! What is it, Constance?”

“Oh, Leonard, Langley Holme – Langley Holme – he was my great-grandfather. And he was murdered; I remember to have heard of it – he was murdered. Then, it was here, and he was that old man’s brother-in-law, and – and – your Tragedy is mine as well.”

“Why, Constance, are you not jumping to a conclusion? How do you know that the murder in Campaigne Park was that of Langley Holme?”

“I don’t know it; I am only certain of it. Besides, that letter. Algernon and Langley were in the study. The letter tells us. Oh, I have no doubt – no doubt at all. This is his portrait; he was here the day before – the day before the terrible Tragedy. It must have been none other – it could have been none other. Leonard, this is very strange. You confide your story to me, you bring me out to see the spot where it happened and the house of the Recluse, and I find that your story is mine. Oh, to light upon it here and with you! It is strange, it is wonderful! Your story is mine as well,” she repeated, looking into his face; “we have a common tragedy.”

“We are not certain yet; there may be another explanation.”

“There can be no other. We will hunt up the contemporary papers; we shall find an account of the murder somewhere. A gentleman is not murdered even so far back as 1826 without a report in the papers. But I am quite – quite certain. This is my great-grandfather, Langley Holme, and his death was the first of all your many troubles.”

“This was the first of the hereditary misfortunes.”

“The more important and the most far-reaching. Perhaps we could trace them all to this one calamity.”

Leonard was looking into the portrait.

“I said it was a familiar face, Constance; it is your own. The resemblance is startling. You have his eyes, the same shape of face, the same mouth. It is at least your ancestor. And as for the rest, since it is certain that he met with an early and a violent end, I would rather believe that it was here and in this Park, because it makes my Tragedy, as you say, your own. We have a common history; it needs no further proof. There could not have been two murders of two gentlemen, both friends of this House, in the same year. You are right: this is the man whose death caused all the trouble.”

They looked at the portrait in silence for awhile. The thought of the sudden end of this gallant youth, rejoicing in the strength and hope of early manhood, awed them.

“We may picture the scene,” said Constance – “the news brought suddenly by some country lad breathless and panting; the old man then young, with all his future before him; a smiling future, a happy life; his wife hearing it; the house made terrible by her shriek; the sudden shock; the heavy blow; bereavement of all the man loved best; the death of his wife for whom he was so anxious; the awful death of the man he loved. Oh, Leonard, can you bear to think of it?”

“Yes; but other young men have received blows as terrible, and have yet survived, and at least gone about their work as before. Is it in nature for a man to grieve for seventy years?”

“I do not think that it was grief, or that it was ever grief, that he felt or still feels. His brain received a violent blow, from which it has never recovered.”

“But he can transact business in his own way – by brief written instructions.”

“We are not physicians, to explain the working of a disordered brain. We can, however, understand that such a shock may have produced all the effect of a blow from a hammer or a club. His brain is not destroyed: but it is benumbed. I believe that he felt no sorrow, but only a dead weight of oppression – the sense of suffering without pain – the consciousness of gloom which never lifts. Is not the story capable of such effects?”

“Perhaps. There is, however, one thing which we have forgotten, Constance. It is that we are cousins. This discovery makes us cousins.”

She took his proffered hand under the eyes of her ancestor, who looked kindly upon them from his dusty and faded frame. “We are cousins – not first or second cousins – but still – cousins – which is something. You have found another relation. I hope, sir, that you will not be ashamed of her, or connect her with your family misfortunes. This tragedy belongs to both of us. Come, Leonard, let us leave this room. It is haunted. I hear again the shrieks of the woman, and I see the white face of the man – the young man in his bereavement. Come.”

She drew him from the room, and closed the door softly.

Leonard led the way up the broad oaken staircase, which no neglect could injure, and no flight of time. On the first floor there were doors leading to various rooms. They opened one: it was a room filled with things belonging to children: there were toys and dolls: there were dresses and boots and hats: there was a children’s carriage, the predecessor of the perambulator and the cart: there were nursery-cots: there were slates and pencils and colour-boxes. It looked like a place which had not been deserted: children had lived in it and had grown out of it: all the old playthings were left in when the children left it.

“After the blow,” said Leonard, “life went on somehow in the House. The Recluse lived by himself in his bedroom and the library: the dining-room and the drawing-room were locked up: his wife’s room – the room where she died – was locked up: the boys went away: the girl ran away with her young man, Mr. Galley; then the whole place was deserted.” He shut the door and unlocked another. “It was her room,” he whispered.

Constance looked into the room. It was occupied by a great four-poster bed with steps on either side in order that the occupant might ascend to the feather-bed with the dignity due to her position. One cannot imagine a gentlewoman of 1820, or thereabouts, reduced to the indignity of climbing into a high bed. Therefore the steps were placed in position. We have lost this point of difference which once distinguished the “Quality” from the lower sort: the former walked up these steps with dignity into bed: the latter flopped or climbed: everybody now seeks the nightly repose by the latter methods. The room contained a great amount of mahogany: the doors were open, and showed dresses hanging up as they had waited for seventy years to be taken down and worn: fashions had come and gone: they remained waiting. There was a chest of drawers with cunningly-wrought boxes upon it: silver patch-boxes: snuff-boxes in silver and in silver gilt: a small collection of old-world curiosities, which had belonged to the last occupant’s forefather. There was a dressing-table, where all the toilet tools and instruments were lying as they had been left. Constance went into the room on tiptoe, glancing at the great bed, which stood like a funeral hearse of the fourteenth century, with its plumes and heavy carvings, as if she half expected to find a tenant. Beside the looking-glass stood open, just as it had been left, the lady’s jewel-box. Constance took out the contents, and looked at them with admiring eyes. There were rings and charms, necklaces of pearl, diamond brooches, bracelets, sprays, watches – everything that a rich gentlewoman would like to have. She put them all back, but she did not close the box; she left everything as she found it, and crept away. “These things belonged to Langley’s sister,” she whispered; “and she was one of my people – mine.”

They shut the door and descended the stairs. Again they stood together in the great empty hall, where their footsteps echoed up the broad staircase and in the roof above, and their words were repeated by mocking voices, even when they whispered, from wall to answering wall, and from the ceilings of the upper place.

“Tell me all you know about your ancestor,” said Leonard.

“Indeed, it is very little. He is my ancestor on my mother’s side, and again on her mother’s side. He left one child, a daughter, who was my grandmother: and her daughter married my father. There is but a legend – I know no more – except that the young man – the lively young man whose portrait I have – whose portrait is in that room – was found done to death in a wood. That is all I have heard. I do not know who the murderer was, nor what happened, nor anything. It all seemed so long ago – a thing that belonged to the past. But, then, if we could understand, the past belongs to us. There was another woman who suffered as well as the poor lady of this house. Oh, Leonard, what a tragedy! And only the other day we were talking glibly about family scandals!”

“Yes; a good deal of the sunshine has disappeared. My life, you see, was not, as you thought, to be one long succession of fortune’s gifts.”

“It was seventy years ago, however. The thing must not make us unhappy. We, at least, if not that old man, can look upon an event of so long ago with equanimity.”

“Yes, yes. But I must ferret out the whole story. I feel as if I know so little. I am most strangely interested and moved. How was the man killed? Why? Who did it? Where can I look for the details?”

“When you have found what you want, Leonard, you can tell me. For my own part, I may leave the investigation to you. Besides, it was so long ago. Why should we revive the griefs of seventy years ago?”

“I really do not know, except that I am, as I said, strangely attracted by this story. Come, now, I want you to see the man himself who married your ancestor’s sister. Her portrait is somewhere among those in the drawing-room, but it is too far gone to be recognised. Pity – pity! We have lost all our family portraits. Come, we will step lightly, not to wake him.”

He led her across the hall again, and opened very softly the library door. Asleep in an armchair by the fire was the most splendid old man Constance had ever seen. He was of gigantic stature; his long legs were outstretched, his massive head lay back upon the chair – a noble head with fine and abundant white hair and broad shoulders and deep chest. He was sleeping like a child, breathing as softly and as peacefully. In that restful countenance there was no suggestion of madness or a disordered brain.

Constance stepped lightly into the room and bent over him. His lips parted.

He murmured something in his sleep. He woke with a start. He sat up and opened his eyes, and gazed upon her face with a look of terror and amazement.

She stepped aside. The old man closed his eyes again, and his head fell back. Leonard touched her arm, and they left the room. At the door Constance turned to look at him. He was asleep again.

“He murmured something in his sleep. He was disturbed. He looked terrified.”

“It was your presence, Constance, that in some way suggested the memory of his dead friend. Perhaps your face reminded him of his dead friend. Think, however, what a shock it must have been to disturb the balance of such a strong man as that. Why, he was in the full strength of his early manhood. And he never recovered – all these seventy years. He has never spoken all these years, except once in my hearing – it was in his sleep. What did he say? ‘That will end it.’ Strange words.”

The tears were standing in the girl’s eyes.

“The pity of it, Leonard – the pity of it!”

“Come into the gardens. They were formerly, in the last century – when a certain ancestor was a scientific gardener – show gardens.”

They were now entirely ruined by seventy years of neglect. The lawns were covered with coarse rank grass; the walks were hidden; brambles grew over the flower-beds; the neglect was simply mournful. They passed through into the kitchen-garden, over the strawberry-beds and the asparagus-beds, and everywhere spread the brambles with the thistle and the shepherd’s-purse and all the common weeds; in the orchard most of the trees were dead, and under the dead boughs there flourished a rank undergrowth.

“I have never before,” said Constance, “realized what would happen if we suffered a garden to go wild.”

“This would happen – as you see. I believe no one has so much as walked in the garden except ourselves for seventy years. In the eyes of the village, I know, the whole place is supposed to be haunted day and night. Even the chance of apples would not tempt the village children into the garden. Come, Constance, let us go into the village and see the church.”

It was a pretty village, consisting of one long street, with an inn, a small shop, and post-office, a blacksmith’s, and one or two other trades. In the middle of the street a narrow lane led to the churchyard and the church. The latter, much too big for the village, was an early English cruciform structure, with later additions and improvements.

The church was open, for it was Saturday afternoon. The chancel was full of monuments of dead and gone Campaignes. Among them was a tablet, “To the Memory of Langley Holme, born at Great Missenden, June, 1798, found murdered in a wood in this parish, May 18, 1826. Married February 1, 1824, to Eleanor, daughter of the late Marmaduke Flight, of Little Beauchamp, in this county; left one child, Constance, born January 1, 1825.”

“Yes,” said Constance, “one can realise it: the death of wife and friend at once, and in this dreadful manner.”

In the churchyard an old man was occupied with some work among the graves. He looked up and straightened himself slowly, as one with stiffened joints.

“Mornin’, sir,” he said. “Mornin’, miss. I hope I see you well. Beg your pardon, sir, but you be a Campaigne for sure. All the Campaignes are alike – tall men they are, and good to look upon. But you’re not so tall, nor yet so strong built, as the Squire. Been to see the old gentleman, sir? Ay, he do last on, he do. It’s wonderful. Close on ninety-five he is. Everybody in the village knows his birthday. Why, he’s a show. On Sundays, in summer, after church, they go to the garden wall and look over it, to see him marching up and down the terrace. He never sees them, nor wouldn’t if they were to walk beside him.”

“You all know him, then?”

“I mind him seventy years ago. I was a little chap then. You wouldn’t think I was ever a little chap, would you? Seventy years ago I was eight – I’m seventy-eight now. You wouldn’t think I was seventy-eight, would you?” A very garrulous old man, this.

“I gave evidence, I did, at the inquest after the murder. They couldn’t do nohow without me, though I was but eight years old.”

“You? Why, what had you to do with the murder?”

“I was scaring birds on the hillside above the wood. I see the Squire – he was a fine big figure of a man – and the other gentleman crossing the road and coming over the stile into the field. Then they went as far as the wood together. The Squire he turned back, but the other gentleman he went on. They found him afterwards in the wood with his head smashed. Then I see John Dunning go in – same man as they charged with the murder. And he came running out – scared-like with what he’d seen. Oh! I see it all, and I told them so, kissing the Bible on it.”