CONSULTATION
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:
“DEAR SIR,
“I found the enclosed paper only yesterday, though it was written
ten years ago, and my grandfather, by whom it was written, died
very shortly after it was written. I will not trouble you with the
causes which led to our overlooking it for so many years, but
hasten to send it on to you in accordance with the writer’s wishes.
“The circumstances to which he refers happened seventy years ago.
No doubt everyone who can remember the events has long since
departed. I do not suppose that you even know the fact--to my
grandfather of vital importance--that his acquittal was secured by
the kind offices of your ancestor, who was then the owner of
Campaigne Park, and I do not suppose that you have ever heard of
the great kindness, the sympathy, the desire for justice, which
prompted those good offices, nor of the further generosity which
sent my grandfather out to Australia. He began life as an
agricultural labourer in England; he would have remained in that
humble position all his days but for the calamity which turned out
so great a blessing--his trial for murder: he came out here: he
died one of the richest men in the colony, for everything that he
touched turned to gold.
“The paper which I enclose is a proof that gratitude is not wholly
dead in the world. I gather, from the published notes on the
Members of Parliament and their origin, that you are now the head
of the House. Seeing that you were distinguished in the University
of Oxford, and are a member of several clubs, as well as in the
House, I do not suppose that there is anything we can do to carry
out the wishes of my grandfather as regards yourself personally. It
may happen, however, that members of your family might come out to
this country, and might not be so fortunate as yourself. In that
case, will you please to inform those members that our worldly
wealth is great, that the origin of all our property was the
generosity of your ancestor, that my grandfather’s wishes are
commands, and that there is nothing which we can do for any member
of your family, if the opportunity should occur, which we will not
do cheerfully and readily.
“I remain, dear sir,
“Very faithfully yours,
“CHARLES DUNNING.”
“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.”