Walter Besant
The Fourth Generation
She went on talking; she told the whole of the family history. She narrated every misfortune at length.
To Leonard, listening in that little back room with the gathering twilight and the red fire to the soft, sad voice of the mournful lady, there came again the vision of two women, both in widows’ weeds, in the cottage among the flowers – tree fuchsias, climbing roses, myrtles, and Passion-flowers. All through his childhood they sat together, seldom speaking, pale-faced, sorrowful. He understood now. It was not their husbands for whom they wept; it was for the fate which they imagined to be hanging over the heads of the children. Once he heard his mother say – now the words came back to him – “Thank God! I have but one.”
“Leonard,” the old woman was going on, “for fifty years I have been considering and thinking. It means some great crime. The misfortunes began with my father; his life has been wrecked and ruined in punishment for someone else’s crime. His was the first generation; mine was the second. All our lives have been wrecked in punishment for that crime. His was the first generation, I say” – she repeated the words as if to drive them home – “mine was the second; all our lives have been wrecked in punishment for that crime. Then came the third – your father died early, and his brother ran away because he was a forger. Oh! to think of a Campaigne doing such a thing! That was the third generation. You are the fourth – and the curse will be removed. Unto the third and fourth – but not the fifth.”
“Yes,” said Leonard. “I believe – I now remember – they thought – at home – something of this kind. But, my dear lady, consider. If misfortune falls upon us in consequence of some great crime committed long ago, and impossible to be repaired or undone, what is there for us but to sit down quietly and to go on with our work?”
She shook her head.
“It is very well to talk. Wait till the blows begin. If we could find out the crime – but we never can. If we could atone – but we cannot. We are so powerless – oh, my God! so powerless, and yet so innocent!”
She rose. Her face was buried in her handkerchief. I think it consoled her to cry over the recollection of her sorrows almost as much as to tell them to her grand-nephew.
“I pray daily – day and night – that the hand of wrath may be stayed. Sitting here, I think all day long. I have forgotten how to read, I think – ”
Leonard glanced at the walls. There were a few books.
“Until Mary Anne began to study, there were no books. We were so poor that we had to sell everything, books and all. This room is the only one in the house that is furnished decently. My grand-daughter is my only comfort; she is a good girl, Leonard. She takes after the Galleys to look at, but she’s a Campaigne at heart, and she’s proud, though you wouldn’t think it, because she’s such a short bunch of a figure, not like us. She’s my only comfort. We talk sometimes of going away and living together – she and I – it would be happier for us. My grandson is not – is not – altogether what one would wish. To be sure, he has a dreadful struggle. It’s poverty, poverty, poverty. Oh, Leonard!” – she caught his hand – “pray against poverty. It is poverty which brings out all the bad qualities.”
Leonard interrupted a monologue which seemed likely to go on without end. Besides, he had now grasped the situation.
“I will come again,” he said, “if I may.”
“Oh, if you may! If you only knew what a joy, what a happiness, it is only to look into your face! It is my brother’s face – my father’s face – oh, come again – come again.”
“I will come again, then, and soon. Meantime, remember that I am your nephew – or grand-nephew, which is the same thing. If in any way I can bring some increase to your comforts – ”
“No, no, my dear boy. Not that way,” she cried hastily. “I have been poor, but never – in that way. My father, who ought to help me, has done nothing, and if he will not, nobody shall. I would, if I could, have my rights; no woman of our family, except me, but was an heiress. And, besides —he” – she pointed to the front of the house, where was the office of her grandson – “he will take it all himself.”
“Well, then, but if – ”
“If I must, I will. 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.”
They were brave words, but in his heart there lurked, say, the possibilities of apprehension.
In the hall Samuel himself intercepted him, running out of his office. “I had my tea in here,” he said, “because I wanted her to have a talk with you alone; and I’m sick of her family, to tell the truth, except for that chance of the accumulations. Did she mention them?” he whispered. “I thought she wouldn’t. I can’t get her to feel properly about the matter. Women have got no imagination – none. Well, a man like that can’t make a will. He can’t. That’s a comfort. Good-evening, Mr. Campaigne. We rely entirely upon you to maintain the interests of the family, if necessary, against madmen’s wills. Those accumulations – ah! And he’s ninety-five – or is it ninety-six? I call it selfish to live so long unless a man’s a pauper. He ought to be thinking of his great-grandchildren.”
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE LAND OF BEECHES
LEONARD met Constance a few days later at the club, and they dined at the same table. As for the decision and the rejection, they were ignored by tacit consent. The situation remained apparently unaltered. In reality, everything was changed.
“You look thoughtful,” she said presently, after twice making an observation which failed to catch his attention. “And you are absent-minded.”
“I beg your pardon, yes. That is, I do feel thoughtful. You would, perhaps, if you found your family suddenly enlarged in all directions.”
“Have you received unknown cousins from America?”
“I have received a great-aunt, a lesser aunt, and two second cousins. They are not from America. They are, on the contrary, from the far East End of this town – even from Ratcliffe or Shadwell, or perhaps Stepney.”
“Oh!” Constance heard with astonishment, and naturally waited for more, if more was to follow. Perhaps, however, her friend might not wish to talk of connections with Shadwell.
“The great aunt is charming,” he continued; “the lesser aunt is not so charming; the second cousins are – are – well, the man is a solicitor who seems to practice chiefly in a police-court, defending those who are drunk and disorderly, with all who are pickpockets, hooligans, and common frauds.”
“A variegated life, I should say, and full of surprises and unexpectedness.”
“He is something like my family – tall, with sharp features – more perhaps of the vulture than the eagle in him. But one may be mistaken. His sister is like her mother, short and round and plump, and – not to disguise the truth – common-looking. But I should say that she was capable. She is a Board School teacher. You were saying the other day, Constance, that it was a pity that I had never been hampered by poor relations.”
“I consider that you are really a spoiled child of fortune. I reminded you that you have your position already made; you have your distinguished University career; you are getting on in the House; you have no family scandals or misfortunes, or poor relations, or anything.”
“Well, this loss is now supplied by the accession of poor relations and – other things. Your mention of things omitted reminded Fortune, I suppose. So she hastened to turn on a supply of everything. I am now quite like the rest of the world.”
“Do the poor relations want money?”
“Yes, but not from me. The solicitor thinks that there must be great sums of money accumulated by the Patriarch of whom I have spoken to you. Cupidity of a sort, but not the desire to borrow, sent him to me. Partly he wanted to put in his claim informally, and partly he prepared the way to make me dispute any will that the old man may have made. He is poor, and therefore he is grasping, I suppose.”
“I believe we all have poor relations,” said Constance. “Mine, however, do not trouble me much.”
“There has been a Family enlargement in another direction. A certain uncle of mine, who formerly enacted with much credit the old tragedy of the Prodigal Son, has come back from Australia.”
“Has he been living on the same diet as the Prodigal?”
“Shucks and bean-pods! He hardly looks as if that had been his diet. He is well dressed, big, and important. He repeats constantly, and is most anxious for everybody to know, that he is prosperous. I doubt, somehow – ”
Leonard paused; the expression of doubt is not always wise.
“The return of a middle-aged Prodigal is interesting and unusual. I fear I must not congratulate you altogether on this unexpected enlargement.”
“Yet you said I ought to have poor relations. However, there is more behind. What was it you said about disgraces? Well, they’ve come too.”
“Oh!” Constance changed colour. “Disgraces? But, Leonard, I am very sorry, and I really never supposed – ”
“Of course not; it is the merest coincidence. At the same time, like all coincidences, it is astonishing just after your remarks, which did really make me very uncomfortable. But I’ve stepped into quite a remarkable family history, full of surprising events, and all of them disasters.”
“But you had already a remarkable family history.”
“So I thought – a long history and a creditable history, ending with the ancient recluse of whom I have told you. We are rather proud of this old, old man – this singular being who has been a recluse for seventy years. I have always known about him. One of the very earliest things I was told was the miraculous existence of this eccentric ancestor. They told me so much, I suppose, because I am, as a matter of fact, heir to the estate whenever that happens to fall in. But I was never told – I suppose because it is a horrible story – why the old man became a recluse. That I only learned yesterday from this ancient aunt, who is the only daughter of the still more ancient recluse.”
“Why was it? That is, don’t let me ask about your private affairs.”
“Not at all. There is nothing that might not be proclaimed from the house-top; there never is. There are no private affairs if we would only think so. Well, it seems that one day, seventy years ago, the brother-in-law of this gentleman, then a hearty young fellow of five-or six-and-twenty, was staying at the Hall. He went out after breakfast, and was presently found murdered in a wood, and in consequence of hearing this dreadful thing suddenly, his sister, my ancestor’s wife, died on the same day. The ancient aunt was born on the day that the mother died. The blow, which was certainly very terrible, affected my ancestor with a grief so great that he became at once, what he is now, a melancholy recluse, taking no longer the least interest in anything. It is to me very strange that a young man, strong physically and mentally, should not have shaken off this obsession.”
“It does seem very strange. I myself had an ancestor murdered somewhere – father of one of my grandmothers. But your case is different.”
“The aged aunt told me the story. She had a theory about some great crime having been committed. She suggests that the parent of the recluse must have been a great unknown, unsuspected criminal – a kind of Gilles de Retz. There have been misfortunes scattered about – she related a whole string of calamities – all, she thinks, in consequence of some crime committed by this worthy, as mild a Christian, I believe, as ever followed the hounds or drank a bottle of port.”
“She is thinking, of course, of the visitation upon the third and fourth generation. To which of them do you belong?”
“I am of the fourth according to that theory. It is tempting; it lends a new distinction to the family. This lady is immensely proud of her family, and finds consolation for her own misfortunes in the thought that they are in part atonement for some past wickedness. Strange, is it not?”
“Of course, if there is no crime there can be no consequences. Have the misfortunes been very marked?”
“Yes, very marked and unmistakable misfortunes. They cannot be got over or denied or explained away. Misfortunes, Dooms – what you please.”
“What does your recluse say about them?”
“He says nothing; he never speaks. Constance, will you ride over with me and see the man and the place? It is only five-and-twenty miles or so. The roads are dry; the spring is upon us. Come to-morrow. There is a pretty village, an old church, an eighteenth-century house falling into ruins, great gardens all run to bramble and thistle, and a park, besides the recluse himself.”
“The recluse might not like my visit.”
“He will not notice it. Besides, he sleeps all the afternoon. And when he is awake he sees nobody. His eyes go straight through one like a Röntgen ray. I believe he sees the bones and nothing else.”
The least frequented of the great highroads running out of London is assuredly that which passes through Uxbridge, and so right into the heart of the shire of Buckingham – the home or clearing or settlement of the Beeches. Few bicycles attempt this road; the ordinary cyclist knows or cares nothing for the attractions. Yet there is much to see. In one place you can visit the cottage where Milton finished “Paradise Lost.” It is still kept just as when the poet lived in it. There are churches every two or three miles, churches memorable, and even historical, for the most part, and beautiful. Almost every church in this county has some famous man associated with it. On the right is the burial-place of the Russells, with their ancient manor-house, a joy and solace for the eyes: also, on the right, is another ancient manor-house. On the left is the quiet and peaceful burial-place of Penn and Elwood, those two illustrious members of the Society of Friends. Or, also on the left, you may turn aside to see the church and the road and the house of England’s patriot John Hampden. The road goes up and the road goes down over long low hills and through long low valleys. On this side and on that are woods and coppices and parks, with trees scattered about and country houses. No shire in England is more studded with country houses than this of Bucks. At a distance of every six or eight miles there stands a town. All the towns in Bucks are small; all are picturesque. All have open market-places and town-halls and ancient inns and old houses. I know of one where there is an inn of the fourteenth century. I have had it sketched by a skilful limner, and I call it the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap, and I should like to see anybody question the authenticity of the name. If any were so daring, I would add the portrait of Jack Falstaff himself, sitting in the great chair by the fire.
On a fine clear day in early spring, two cyclists rode through this country. They were Leonard and his friend Constance. They went by train as far as Uxbridge, and then they took the road.
At first it was enough to breathe the pure air of the spring; to fly along the quiet road, while the rooks cawed in the trees, and over the fields the larks sang. Then they drew nearer and began to talk.
“Is this what you brought me out to see?” asked Constance. “I am well content if this is all. What a lovely place it is! And what a lovely air! It is fragrant; the sun brings out the fragrance from the very fields as well as the woods.”
“This is the quietest and the most beautiful of all the roads near London. But I am going to show you more. Not all to-day. We must come again. I will show you Milton’s cottage and Penn’s burial-ground, John Hampden’s church and tomb, and the old manor-house of Chenies and Latimer. To-day I am only going to show you our old family house.”
“We will come when the catkins have given place to the leaves and the hedge-rose is in blossom.”
“And when the Park is worth looking at. Everything, however, at our place is in a condition of decay. You shall see the house, and the church, and the village. Then, if you like, we will go on to the nearest town and get some kind of dinner, and go home by train.”
“That pleases me well.”
They went on in silence for a while.
Leonard took up the parable again about his family.
“We have been in the same place,” he said, “for an immense time. We have never produced a great man or a distinguished man. If you consider it, there are not really enough distinguished men to go round the families. We have twice recently made a bid for a distinguished man. My own father and my grandfather were both promising politicians, but they were both cut off in early manhood.”
“Both? What a strange thing!”
“Yes. Part of what the ancient aunt calls the family luck. We have had, in fact, an amazing quantity of bad luck. Listen. It is like the history of a House driven and scourged by the hand of Fate.”
She listened while he went through the terrible list.
“Why,” she said, “your list of disaster does really suggest the terrible words ‘unto the third and fourth generation.’ I don’t wonder at your aunt looking about for a criminal. What could your forefathers have done to bring about such a succession of misfortunes?”
“Let us get down and rest a little.” They sat down on a stile, and turned the talk into a more serious vein.
“What have my forefathers done? Nothing. Of that I am quite certain. They have always been most respectable squires, good fox-hunters, with a touch of scholarship. They have done nothing. Our misfortunes are all pure bad luck, and nothing else. Those words, however, do force themselves on one. I am not superstitious, yet since that venerable dame – However, this morning I argued with myself. I said, ‘It would be such a terrible injustice that innocent children should suffer from their fathers’ misdeeds, that it cannot be so.’ ”
“I don’t know,” said Constance. “I am not so sure.”
“You, too, among the superstitious? I also, however, was brought up with that theory – ”
“I suppose you went to church?”
“Yes, we went to church. And now I remember that my mother, for the reason which I have only just learned, believed that we were ourselves expiating the sins of our forefathers. It is very easy for me to go back to the language and ideas of my childhood, so much so that this morning I made a little search after a certain passage which I had well-nigh forgotten.”
“What was that?”
“It is directed against that very theory. It expresses exactly the opposite opinion. The passage is in the Prophet Ezekiel. Do you remember it?”
“No. I have never read that Prophet, and I have never considered the subject.”
“It is a very fine passage. Ezekiel is one of the finest writers possible. He ought to be read more and studied more.”
“Tell me the sense of the passage.”
“I can give you the very words. Listen.” He stood up and took off his hat, and declaimed the words with much force:
“ ‘What mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not use this proverb any more. Behold, all souls are Mine: as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. But if a man be just, he shall surely live.”
“These are very noble words, Constance;” indeed, Leonard spoke them with much solemnity. “The verbal interpretation of the Prophets no longer occupies our minds. Still, they are very noble words. I have never believed myself to be superstitious or to believe in heredity of misfortune; still, after learning for the first time the long string of disasters that have fallen upon my people, I became possessed with a kind of terror, as if the Hand of Fate was pressing upon us all.”
“They are very noble words,” Constance repeated. “It seems as if the speaker was thinking of a distinction between consequences – certain consequences – of every man’s life as regards his children and – ”
“What consequences – from father to son?”
“Why, you have only to look around you. We live in conditions made for us by our forefathers. My people behaved well and prospered: they saved money and bought lands: they lived, in the old phrase, God-fearing lives. Therefore I am sound in mind and body, and I am tolerably wealthy.”
“Oh! that, of course. But I was not thinking of consequences like these.”
“You must think of them. A man loses his fortune and position. Down go children and grandchildren. The edifice of generations may have to be built up again from the very foundations. Is it nothing to inherit a name which has been smirched? If a man commits a bad action, are not his children disgraced with him?”
“Of course; but only by that act. They are not persecuted by the hand of Fate.”
“Who can trace the consequences of a single act? Who can follow it up in all the lines of consequence?”
“Yes; but the third and fourth generation…”
“Who can say when those consequences will cease?”
“ ‘As I live, saith the Lord.’ It is a solemn assurance – a form of words, perhaps – only a form of words – yet, if so, the audacity of it! ‘As I live’ – the Lord Himself takes the oath – ‘if a man be just, he shall surely live.’ ”
“A man may be kept down by poverty and shut out from the world by his father’s shame. Yet he may still be just. It is the distinction that the Prophet would draw. What misfortune has fallen upon your House which affects the soul of a man? Death? Poverty? The wrong-doing of certain members?”
Leonard shook his head. “Yes, I understand what you mean. I confess that I had been shaken by the revelations of that old lady. They seemed to explain so much.”
“Perhaps they explained the whole – yet not as she meant them to explain.”
“Now I understand so many things that were dark – my mother’s sadness and the melancholy eyes which rested upon me from childhood. She was looking for the hand of Fate: she expected disaster: she kept me in ignorance: yet she was haunted by the thought that for the third and fourth generation the sins – the unknown sins – of the fathers would be visited upon the children. When I learned these things” – he repeated himself, because his mind was so full of the thought – “I felt the same expectation, the same terror, the same sense of helplessness, as if wherever I turned, whatever I attempted, the Hand which struck down my father, my grandfather, and that old man would fall upon me.”
“It was natural.”
“So that these words came to me like a direct message from the old Hebrew Prophet. Our ancestors went for consolation and instruction to those pages. They held that every doubt and every difficulty were met and solved by these writers. Perhaps we shall go back to the ancient faith. And yet – ” He looked round; it was a new world that he saw, with new ideas. “Not in my time,” he said. “We are a scientific age. When the reign of Science is ended, we may begin again the reign of Faith.” He spoke as one in doubt and uncertainty.
“Receive the words, Leonard, as a direct message.”
“At least, I interpreted the words into an order to look at events from another point of view. And I have taken all the misfortunes in turn. They have nothing whatever to do with heredity. Your illustration about a man losing his money, and so bringing poverty upon his children, does not apply. My great-grandfather has his head turned by a great trouble. His son commits suicide. Why? Nobody knows. The young sailor is drowned. Why? Because he is a sailor. The daughter marries beneath her station. Why? Because she was motherless and fatherless and neglected. My own father died young. Why? Because fever carried him off.”
“Leonard” – Constance laid her hand upon his arm – “do not argue the case any more. Leave it. A thing like this may easily become morbid. It may occupy your thoughts too much.”
“Let me forget it, by all means. At present, I confess, the question is always with me.”
“It explains something in your manner yesterday and to-day. You are always serious, but now you are absent-minded. You have begun to think too much about these troubles.”
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.”
