Walter Besant

“ Together they went once more to Campaigne Park; they visited the fatal wood, they wandered about the deserted rooms of the house, haunted by the dreadful memory. How could they expect to find anything now after all these years?
“We have,” said Leonard, repeating the words a hundred times, “all the evidence that can now be discovered—the evidence of the wood and the place, the evidence of one survivor, the evidence of the trial. If the truth cannot be discovered, why should we go on? Moreover, after all these years nothing more can be discovered.” ”

“ What could have been more desirable than the position of this young man for a whole quarter of a century? Sufficiently wealthy, connected for generations with gentlefolk, successful, with nothing whatever to hamper him in his career, with the certainty of succeeding to a large property—could mortal man desire more?
And then, suddenly, a Family History of the darkest and most gloomy kind—murder, sudden death, suicide, early death, the shattering of a strong mind, bankruptcy, poverty, cousins whom no kindliness could call presentable—all this fell upon him at one blow. ”

“ The step of a man on dry branches and among dead leaves. The old man on the terrace paid no attention: he made as if he heard nothing: when the figure of a rustic emerged from the orchard and stood under the walnut-trees, the old man of the terrace made as if he saw nothing.
The rustic was also well advanced in age, though far short of the tale of years which belonged to the other. He was dressed as one who goes afield: he walked as one who has spent his life in the ridges and furrows of the ploughed field: he carried a spade over his shoulder. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Don’t give him money. He is better without it. He will speculate in houses and lose it all. Don’t, Leonard.”
“I will not—unless for your sake.”
“No—no—not for my sake. But come again, dear boy, and we will talk over the family history. I dare say there are quantities of misfortunes that I have left out—oh, what a happy day it has been to me!”
He pressed her hand again. “Have faith, dear lady. We cannot be crushed in revenge for any crime by any other person. Do not think of past sorrows. Do not tremble at imaginary dangers. The future is in the hands of Justice, not of Revenge.” ”

“ Leonard remembered nothing about me. My grandfather’s lawyers had never heard of me. And one day there came into my head—it was like a voice speaking to me—it said, ‘Fred, you are a Fool. You’ve been twenty years in this country. You’ve got an old lunatic of a grandfather who must have piles and piles of money. Perhaps he’s dead. And no one but Christopher left to remember you. Get off home as quick as you can. Christopher,’ said this remarkable voice, ‘is quite capable of putting his hands on the lot and forgetting you.’ That is what the voice said, my brother. ”

“ Oh, Leonard! what a happiness that there is always an end of everything—of sorrow, nay, of joy! There must come—at last—the end, even of Punishment or of Consequence.” She looked up and round. “The evening is so peaceful—look at the glories of the west—it is so peaceful that one cannot believe in storm and hail and frost. It seems to mean, for us, relief—and for him—forgiveness.” ”

“ As a young man, quite a young man, he began this life, and he had continued it ever since. The reason, his great-grandson had always understood, was the shock caused by the sudden death of his wife. Further than this he neither knew nor did he inquire. If one grows up in presence of a certain strange line of conduct, it becomes accepted without inquiry. The old man had become a solitary when this young man’s grandfather was a boy: his grandfather, his father, and he himself had always had before them the knowledge, if not the sight, of this eccentricity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Langley Holme was staying a welcome guest with his friend and brother-in-law; he was walking along on a summer morning in a wood not a mile away from the House and Park, and there he was discovered lying dead—murdered!
It may be objected that this attempt to solve the insoluble after seventy years was a waste of time; that dead and gone crimes may as well be left alone. Other people’s crimes may no doubt be left alone. But this was his own crime, so to speak—a crime inflicted in and upon his own family. ”

“ 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? ”

“ And why do you call my great-grandfather mad?”
“He’s as much my great-grandfather as yours. Mad? Well, I’ve seen him over the garden wall half a dozen times, walking up and down his terrace like a Polar bear. I don’t know what you call mad. As for me, I’m a man of business, and if I had a client who never opened or answered a letter, never spoke a word to anybody, neglected his children, let his house go to ruin, never went to church, would have no servants about the place—why, I should have that mis’rable creature locked up, that’s all.”
Leonard put this point aside. ”

“ The Nineteenth Century is the ladder of ambition. It is by means of this magazine, and of one or two like unto it, that the ambitious young man is enabled to put himself forward as a student, if not yet an authority, on any subject—a more rapid way of advance than by means of the House.
Leonard had already written on this subject, and with success, as a student; he was now to write upon it with authority. You will understand from all this that Leonard was a young man whose mind was fully occupied, even absorbed, with work which was at once his greatest delight and the ladder for his ambitions ”

“ My own father died young, but not so young as to leave me a mere infant—that was a misfortune, but not a consequence. In other words, Constance, the sins of that old man have been visited upon the children, but the soul of the son has been as the soul of the father. That is the sum and substance of the whole. The consequences are still with us. That poor lady in the Commercial Road is still in the purgatory of poverty which she brought upon herself. Her son is, and will continue, what he is. Her daughter rises above her surroundings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The pride of the people, because no other village in England entertained a recluse who lived by himself in a great house and allowed everything to fall into decay, was to be taken from them. No more would strangers flock over on Sunday mornings from the nearest town and the villages round, to look over the wall at the tall stalwart figure pacing his terrace in all weathers with the regularity of a pendulum. In the village house of call the men assembled early to hear and tell and whisper what they had heard. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Algernon has fished it all out. Why, sir, the man is a Fraud—a common Fraud! He buys everything!”
So with this tribute to truth and honesty the weaver of speeches for other people went away. Only the day before Leonard would have received this communication with disgust as another humiliation. The way of deception—the life of pretence—was kept open. It would have been a tearing down of more family pride. Now it was nothing. The pretence of it, the ready way in which his cousin Algernon had dropped into it, belonged to someone else—not to himself. ”

“ As with a pear which has half an hour of perfect ripeness, so in love there is a day—an hour—a moment—when the words that mean so much must be spoken. It is a most unfortunate thing if the lover chooses the wrong moment. It is also very unfortunate if the ripeness is on one side only.
Leonard Campaigne made this mistake. Being a self-contained young man, he thought about himself a great deal more than he thought of other people: it is not necessarily a sign of selfishness or of obtuseness—not at all ”

“ There is no such thing existing as a family where men have been always Bayards and its women always beyond reproach. Upon him had fallen the blow of finding out the things concealed: the blot on the scutcheon, the ugly stories of the past: the poor relations and the unworthy relations. The discovery humiliated him at the outset: it became rapidly a thing apart from himself and outside himself. Uncle Fred might be an impostor and fraud. Very good. It mattered nothing to him. Uncle Christopher was a pretender and a humbug—what did it matter? ”

“ Stately, even in decay, were house and gardens; but the spectator shivered, as one shivers at the sight of age and decay and death hovering over what should still be rejoicing in the strength of manhood.
On this morning, when the cold of winter ushered in the deceitful spring, a man was walking to and fro on the brick terrace. He was a man very far advanced in life. ”

“ Leonard returned. “We think that we stand by ourselves, and we are lifted up by the work of our forefathers; we talk as if we lived alone, and we are but links in the chain; we are formed and we form; we are forged and we forge. I have been like unto one who stands in a crowd and is moved here and there, but believes all the time that he is alone on a hill-top.” He was silent for awhile. Presently he went on. “All that has followed the crime,” he said, “has been in the nature of consequence. ”