Walter Besant

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.”

“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.