THE rÔle of coincidence in the history of the Individual is much more important than any writer of fiction has ever dared to represent. Not the coincidence which is dear to the old-fashioned dramatist, when at the very nick and opposite point of time the long-lost Earl returns; the coincidence of real life does not occur in this way. A man’s mind is much occupied, and even absorbed, by one subject: he goes about thinking upon that subject and upon little else. Then all kinds of things happen to him which illustrate this subject. That is what coincidence means.

For instance, I was once endeavouring to reconstruct for a novel a certain scene among the overgrown byways and the secluded and forgotten lanes of history. I had nothing at first to help me: worse still, I could find nothing, not even in the British Museum. The most profound knowledge of the books and pamphlets in that collection, in the person of the greatest scholar, could not help me. I was reluctantly making up my mind to abandon the project (which would have inflicted irreparable damage on my novel) when a sheaf of second-hand catalogues came to me. It was by the last evening post. I turned over two or three, without much curiosity, until among the items I lit upon one which caught my eye. It was only the title of a pamphlet, but it promised to contain the exact information which I wanted. The promise was kept. I was too late to buy the pamphlet, but I had the title, and it was found for me in the British Museum, and it became my “crib.” Now that, if you please, was a coincidence; and this kind of coincidence happens continually to every man who thinks about anything.

It is said of a most distinguished numismatist that he cannot cross a ploughed field without picking up a rose noble. That is because his thoughts are always turned to rose nobles and other delightful coins. If one is studying the eighteenth century, there is not a museum, a picture-gallery, a second-hand catalogue, which does not provide the student with new information. Every man absorbed in a subject becomes like a magnet which attracts to itself all kinds of proofs, illustrations, and light.

These things are mentioned only to show that the apparently miraculous manner in which external events conspired together to keep up the interest in this case was really neither remarkable nor exceptional. For the interest itself, the grip with which the story of the newspaper cuttings caught and held both these readers, was a true miracle. In every group of situations there is the central event. In this case, the mystery of the wood was the central event.

“It is my murder, Leonard,” Constance repeated, “as much as yours. It was my great-grandfather who was murdered, if it was your great-grandmother who was also killed by that crime. Let me sit with you while you work it out.”

“You too, Constance?” Leonard saw in her eyes something that reminded him of his own overpowering interest in the thing. “You too?”

“Take back the book, Leonard.”

“You have read it?”

“I read it over and over again—I have been reading it all the livelong night.”

“And you—you also—feel—with me—the same——” He did not finish the sentence.

“I feel—like you—constrained to go on—why—I cannot tell you. It is not pity, for one cannot feel pity for a man of whom one knows nothing except that he was young and handsome and unfortunate, and that he was an ancestor. It is not desire for revenge—how can one take revenge for a crime when everybody concerned is dead and gone?”

“Except the man who suffered most.”

“Except that old, old man. Well, I cannot understand it. But the fact is so. Like you, I am drawn by ropes to the subject.”

“As for me I can think of nothing else. I am wholly possessed by the story and by the mystery. We will work at it together—if any work is possible.”

They sat down together and they read the book aloud, both making notes. They read parts of it over again. They compared notes. They went to the club together and dined together: they went home and they spent the evening together: they separated with the assurance that everything had been done which could be done, and that they must reluctantly abandon any further investigation.

In the morning they met again.

“I was thinking last night,” said Constance, “about the Inquest. There are two or three points——”

“I was thinking about the Trial,” said Leonard. “There are a few doubts in my mind——”

“Let us have out the book again.”

Once more it was produced. Once more it lay on the table: once more they sat on opposite sides and read and considered and took counsel together—with no result: once more they locked up the book, and agreed that further investigation was impossible.

“To-morrow,” said Leonard, “I shall go on with my work again. This is like the following of Jack-a-Lantern.”

“To-morrow,” said Constance, with a sigh. “Strange that we should have been led to consider the subject at all. Let the dead bury their dead. It is an old story, and nothing more remains to be found out. Why have we been so foolish?”

Despite this agreement, they continued at their hopeless task. They sat together day after day; during this time they talked and thought of nothing else. Again and again they agreed there was nothing more to be found. Again and again they made a show of putting the book away and locking it up. Again and again they took it out again and read it till they knew it all by heart. 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.”

“Nothing more, except the hand that did it.”

Why should they go on? Because they could not choose but go on. They were compelled to go on. If they spoke of other things, their thoughts and their talk wandered back to this same subject. As may always happen when two persons are engaged on the subject and absorbed in it, their faces assumed the same expression—that of one who searches and finds not. With such a face the alchemist was accustomed every day to enter his laboratory, hoping against hope, beaten back every evening, returning in the morning. But with a difference—for the alchemist knew what he wanted to find out, and these two were in search of they knew not what.

They went together, in the vain hope of finding or hearing something more, to call upon the lady of the Commercial Road. She was most gratified to be recognised as a cousin of this young lady; she desired nothing better than to talk of the family and its misfortunes. But she threw no more light upon the story, knowing, in fact, less than they themselves knew. They left her; they agreed once more that it was absurd to continue a quest so hopeless; they agreed once more to lock up the book. Next day they took it out and laid their heads together again.

“How long is this going to last?” Constance asked.

“I don’t know,” Leonard replied wearily. “Are we possessed? Are we bewitched?”

“Are we two persons who do not believe in possession or in witchcraft, yet are really possessed—I don’t know by whom, or why, or anything at all about it—but if there is not possession, then the old stories mean nothing.”

“We might make a wax image, and call it by the name of the witch, and stick pins in it——”

“If we knew the name of the witch. Why, it seems as if we could speak and think of nothing else. If one were superstitious——”

“If,” echoed the other doubtfully, “one were superstitious——”

“It might seem like part of the hereditary misfortunes; yet why should I share in your sorrows?” Here she blushed because she remembered how, before the misfortunes were even heard of, she had been invited to share in the good fortune. But Leonard observed nothing. The quest left no room for any thoughts of love.

“No,” he replied gravely, “you must not share in our troubles. Constance, I, too, ask myself every day how long this will last. Why cannot I throw off the sense of being driven on against my own will in a search which must be hopeless?”

“Yes, I, too, am driven, but it is to follow you. What does it mean? Is it imagination of a morbid kind?” She paused. Leonard made no reply. “After all,” she continued, “there is nothing to do but to accept the situation, and to go on and see what happens.”

Leonard groaned. “Suppose,” he said, with a wintry smile, “that we are doomed to go on day after day till the end of things, just as that old man has walked up and down his terrace day after day for seventy years. What a fearful tramp! What a monotony! What a life!”

“A dreary prospect. Yet, to go over the same story day after day, every day, seems little better than that walk up and down the terrace, does it?”

“Leave it, Constance. Give it up and go back to your own work.”

He took up the fatal book and threw it to the other end of the room.

“Frankly, I would leave it if I could. The thing weighs upon me. I understand what possession means. I am possessed. I must follow you.”

“Constance, we are growing ridiculous. We are two persons of culture, and we talk of possession and of an unseen force that drags us.”

“But since we are dragged——”

“Yes, since we are dragged”—he crossed over the room, picked up the book, and brought it back—“and we are dragged—let us obey.”

It was then three weeks since this inquiry had begun. It was now the sole object of their lives. They hunted in the British Museum among old papers, they went to the Hall and turned out desks and drawers and cupboards of letters, documents, papers, and accounts. They found enough to reconstruct the daily life of the old man before the tragedy, and the history of his predecessors. They were the simple annals of peaceful country life, with no events but those that one expects—births of children, buying of lands, festivities.

You know that when Sisyphus had rolled his ball—or was it a wheel?—to the top of the hill, the thing incontinently rolled all the way down again. Then, with a sigh, the prisoner walked after it, as slowly as was consistent with a show of obedience, and began again. So Leonard, with a sigh, began again, when one theory after the other broke down.

At this point the coincidences commenced. They were talking together one morning.

“If,” said Leonard, “we could only hear the man Dunning on the subject! He would be more interesting, even, than the ancient boy who scared the birds.”

“He must be dead long ago. Yet, if he could be found——”

At this moment—no coincidence, I have explained, can be considered remarkable—Leonard’s servant opened the door and brought him a bulky letter. It had an Australian postage stamp upon it. He looked carelessly at the address, and tossed it on the table to wait his convenience. As it lay on its back Constance read, printed across the securing fold, the words “John Dunning’s Sons.”

“John Dunning’s Sons,” she said. “This is strange.” She took up the letter and pointed out the name. “Just as we were talking of John Dunning. Open the letter, Leonard, and read it. Oh, this is wonderful! Open it at once.”

Leonard tore open the envelope. Within there was a letter and an enclosure. He read both rapidly.

“Good Heaven!” he cried. “It is actually the voice of the man himself, Constance; it is the voice we were asking for. It is his voice speaking from the grave.”

He read aloud both the letter and the enclosure. The following was the letter:

“I should very much like to make the acquaintance of Mr. Charles Dunning,” said Constance. “Now for what the grandfather says.”

Leonard opened the other paper and read:

“Being now in my eighty-sixth year, and therefore soon to be called away, I desire to place in writing, in order that it may be sent after my death to the present head of the Campaigne family, first my thanks and heartfelt gratitude for what was done for me by the late Squire in and after my trial for murder. I have enjoined upon my children and my grandchildren that they are to part with their last farthing, if the occasion arises, for the benefit of any descendants of that good man. I suppose that he is dead and beyond the reach of my prayers. I can only hope that he speedily recovered from the loss of his dear lady, and that he enjoyed a long and happy life.

“It is a dreadful thing to be accused of murder. All my life I have remembered the charge and the trial. After the case was over, the people of the village were cruel hard. The charge was thrown in my teeth every day: no one would work with me, and no one would sit with me. So I had to come away. If there is anyone living who remembers the case and me, I would ask him to read and to consider two points that I found out after the trial.”

“This is indeed the Voice of the Dead,” said Constance, speaking low.

“The first point is that I had witnesses, but I was too much stunned to think of them, who could prove that I was at work all the morning until just before noon in another place.

“The second point may be more important. The path through the wood leads to a stile opening on the lane to the village of Highbeech. There is a cottage in the lane opposite the stile. On the morning of the murder the woman of the cottage was washing outside the door. She told me after the trial that not a soul had gone into the wood from her end of it all the morning; she could not see the other end, but she saw me coming down the hill on my way to the wood, and I had not been in the wood half a minute before she saw me running back again and up the hill to the farm-yard on the top. I hope that if there is any doubt left in the mind of anyone as to my innocence, this new evidence will make it clear.”

The paper was signed “John Dunning.”

“There is no doubt left,” said Constance. “Still, what bearing has the evidence of the cottage woman on the case? What do you think? Has the Voice contributed anything?”

“We will consider presently. Meantime, all he wanted was to clear himself. I think that was effectually done at the trial. Still, he would naturally catch at anything like corroboration. It proves that no one went into the wood from the other end. As for anything else, why, it would seem, with the boy’s evidence, to mean that nobody went into the wood at all that morning except those two gentlemen.”

“Then we come back to the old theory: the lurking in the wood of poacher, madman, or private enemy.”

“We asked for a Voice from the Grave, and it came,” said Leonard. “And now it seems to have told us nothing.”

He placed the paper in the book, leaving the letter on the table.

They looked at each other blankly. Then Leonard rose and walked about the room. Finally he took up a position before the fireplace, and began to speak slowly, as if feeling his way.

“I suppose that it is natural that I should connect this crime with that great question about the inheritance of punishment or consequences.”

“It is quite natural,” said Constance. “And yet——”

“My mother and my grandmother, as I now understand, believed that the misfortunes which they so carefully concealed from me were the inheritance of the forefathers’ sins. And since these misfortunes began with this crime, it was natural that they should attribute the cause to the ancestor who died before the crime. Now, all I can learn about that ancestor is, that he was a country gentleman and Justice of the Peace, a Member of Parliament, and that he left behind him no record or memory of anything uncommon. Now, to produce this enormous list of misfortunes, one must be a Gilles de Retz at least.”

“I am not acquainted with that example.”

“He was a great master in every kind of villainy. About these misfortunes, however. My great-grandfather, as you know—— My grandfather died by his own hand: his brother was drowned at sea: his sister has been unfortunate throughout her life: his son, my father, died young: my uncle Frederick went abroad under a dread of disgrace, which we may forget now he has come home again. The list of misfortunes is long enough. But we cannot learn any cause—which may, even to the superstitious, account for it—under anything of inheritance.”

“Why should we try to account for the misfortunes? They are not caused by you.”

“I try because they are part of the whole business. I cannot escape or forget the chain of misfortune.”

“If you only could, Leonard! And it is so long ago, and no misfortune has fallen upon you. Oh, what did I say once—in this very room?”

“The misfortune that has fallen upon me is the knowledge of all these misfortunes—these ruined lives. The old selfish contentment is gone. I lived for myself. That is henceforth impossible. Well”—he shook himself as a dog after a swim—“I am now what you wanted me to be—like other people.” He relapsed into silence. “I cannot choose,” he said presently, “but connect these misfortunes with that first and greatest. The point of doubt is whether to speak of consequence or punishment.”

“Must it be one or the other?”

“The child must suffer for the father’s sin. That is most certain. If the father throws away his property, the son becomes a pauper. If the father loses his social position, the children sink down with him. If the father contracts disease, the children may inherit. All this is obvious and cannot be disputed.”

“But that is not punishment for generations of innocent children.”

“It is consequence, not punishment. We must not confuse the two. Take the case of crime. Body and mind and soul are all connected together, so that the face proclaims the mind and the mind presents the soul. The criminal is a diseased man. Body and mind and soul are all connected together. He lives in an evil atmosphere. Thought, action, impulse, are all evil. He is wrapped in a miasma, like a low-lying meadow on an autumn morning. The children may inherit the disease of crime just as they may inherit consumption or gout. That is to say, they are born with a tendency to crime, as they may be born with a tendency to consumption or gout. It is not punishment, I repeat. It is consequence. In such children there is an open door to evil of some kind or other.”

“Since all men have weaknesses or faults, there must be always such an open door to all children.”

“I suppose so. But the son of a man reputed blameless, whose weaknesses or faults are presumably light or venial, is less drawn towards the open door than the son of the habitual criminal. The son of the criminal naturally makes for the open door, which is the easy way. It is the consequence. As for our own troubles, perhaps, if we knew, they, too, may be the consequence—not the punishment. But we do not know—we cannot find the crime, or the criminal.”