THE LIGHT THAT BROKE
It was Sunday morning. Leonard sat before the fire doing nothing. He had
done nothing for three weeks. He had no desire to do anything: his work
lay neglected on the table, books and papers piled together. He was
brooding over the general wreck of all he had held precious: over the
family history; the family disgraces and disasters; and the mystery
which it was hopeless to look into but impossible to forget.
The bells were ringing all around: the air was full of the melody, or
the jingle of the bells of many Churches.
Then Constance knocked at his door. “May I come in?” she asked, and came
in without waiting for an answer. “I was proposing to go to the Abbey,”
she said. “But things have got on my nerves. I felt that I could not sit
still for the service. I must come and talk to you.”
“I suppose that we know the very worst now,” said Leonard. “Why do you
worry yourself about my troubles, Constance?”
“Because we are cousins--because we are friends. Isn’t that enough?”
She might have added, as another reason, that the events of the last
three weeks had drawn them more closely together--so closely that it
wanted but a word--if once their minds were free from the obsession of
the mystery--to bind them so that they should never again drift asunder.
Leonard replied, with a wintry smile: “Without you to talk things over,
Constance, I believe I should go mad.”
“And I feel so guilty--so guilty--when I think of what I said so lightly
about scandals and poor relations with all this hanging over your head.”
“Nothing more, I should think”--he looked about the room, as if to make
sure that no telegrams or letters were floating in the air--“can happen
now--except to me. Everybody else is laid low. One cousin has brought me
a bill for the maintenance of his grandmother for fifty years--says he
will take eighteen thousand pounds down. One ought really to be proud of
such a cousin.”
“The solicitor of the Commercial Road, I suppose. But, really, what does
it matter?”
“Nothing. Only at the moment there is a piling up; and every straw helps
to break the camel’s back. The man says he is going to be a bankrupt. My
uncle Frederick--that large-souled, genial, thirsty, wealthy, prosperous
representative of colonial enterprise--now turns out to be an impostor
and a fraud----”
“Oh, Leonard!”
“An impostor and a fraud,” he repeated. “He has a small general store in
an Australian township, and he has come over to represent this as a big
business and to make a Company out of it. The other uncle--the learned
and successful lawyer----”
“Don’t tell me, Leonard.”
“Another time, then: we ought certainly to have heard the worst. Let us
go to the village and bury the Family Honour before the altar in the
Church, and put up a brass in memory of what our ancestors created.”
“No. You will guard it still, Leonard. It could not be in better hands.
You must not--you cannot, bury your own soul.”
Leonard relapsed into silence. Constance stood over him sad and
disheartened. Presently she spoke.
“How long?” she asked.
“How long?” he replied. “Who can say? It came of its own accord--it was
uninvited. Perhaps it will go as it came.”
“You would rather be left alone?” she asked. “Let me stay and talk a
little. My friend, we must have done with it. After all, what does it
matter to us how a crime was committed seventy years ago?”
“It concerns your own ancestor, Constance.”
“Yes. He, poor man, was killed. Leonard, when I say ‘poor man’ the words
exactly measure the amount of sorrow that I feel for him. An ancestor of
four generations past is no more than a shadow. His fate awakens a
little interest, but no sadness.”
“I should say the same thing, I suppose. But my ancestor was not killed.
He was condemned to a living death. Constance, it is no use; whether I
will or no, the case haunts me day and night.” He sprang to his feet,
and threw up his arms as one who would throw off chains. “How long
since I first heard of it through that unfortunate old lady of the
Commercial Road? Three weeks? It seems like fifty years. As for any
purpose that I had before, or any ambition--it is gone--quite gone and
vanished.”
“As for me, I am haunted in the same manner.”
“I am like a man who is hypnotised--I am no longer a free agent. I am
ordered to do this, and I do it. As for this accursed Book of
Extracts”--he laid his hand upon the abomination--“I am forced to go
through it over and over again. Every time I sit down I am prompted by a
kind of assurance that something will be discovered. Every time I rise
up, it is with disgust that nothing has occurred to me.”
“Are we to go on all our lives looking for what we can never find?”
“We know the whole contents by heart. Yet every day there is the feeling
that something will start into light. It is madness, Constance. I am
going mad--like my grandfather, who killed himself. That will end the
family tale of woes, so far as I am concerned.”
“Send the book back to its owner.”
He shook his head. “I know it all. That will be no use.”
“Burn the dreadful thing.”
“No use. I should be made to write it all out again.”
“I dropped an envelope in your letter-box last night. Have you opened
it?”
“I don’t think I have read a single letter for the last three weeks.”
“Then it must be among the pile. What a heap of letters! Oh, Leonard,
you are indeed occupied with this business. I found last night three
letters from Langley Holme to his wife. They were written from Campaigne
Park; but on what occasion I do not know. I thought at first that I
might have found something that would throw a little light upon the
business. But of course, when one considers, how could he throw light
upon his own tragic end?”
He took the packet carelessly. “Do the letters tell us anything?”
“Nothing important, I believe. They show that he was staying at the
Park.”
“We know that already. It is strange how we are continually mocked by
the things we learn. It was the same with the letter from Australia.”
“That was an interesting letter--so are these--even if they tell us
nothing that we do not know already.”
He opened the envelope, and took out the packet of letters. There were
three: they were written on square letter paper: the folds had been worn
away, and the letters were now dropping to pieces. The ink was faded as
becomes ink of the nineteenth century. Leonard laid them on the table to
read because they were in so ragged a condition. “The date,” he said,
“is difficult to make out, but the last letter looks like ‘6’--that
would make it 1826. You say that there is nothing important in them.”
“Nothing, so far as I could make out. But read them. You may find
something.”
The first letter was quite unimportant, containing only a few
instructions and words of affection. The next two letters, however,
spoke of the writer’s brother-in-law:
“My little dispute with Algernon is still unsettled. He makes a personal
matter of it, which is disagreeable. He really is the most obstinate and
tenacious of mortals. I don’t like to seem to be thinking or saying
anything unkind about him. Indeed, he is a splendid fellow all round,
only the most obstinate. But I shall not budge one inch. Last night in
the library he entirely lost command of himself, and became like a
madman for a few minutes. I had heard from others about the ungovernable
side of his temper, but had never seen it before. He really becomes
dangerous at such times. He raged and glared like a bull before a red
rag. Since Philippa is happy, she has certainly never seen it.”
In the third letter he spoke of the same dispute.
“We had another row last night. Row or no row, I am not going to budge
one inch. We are going to discuss the matter again--quietly, he
promises. I will write to you again and tell you what is settled. My
dear child, I am ashamed to see this giant of a man so completely lose
control of himself. However, I suppose he will give way when he sees
that he must.”
“There seems to have been a slight dispute,” said Leonard. “His
brother-in-law lost his temper and stormed a bit. But they made it up
again. Well, Constance, that is all--a little quarrel made up again
undoubtedly.”
He replaced the letters in the envelope and returned them to Constance.
“Keep them,” he said. “They are valuable to you as letters from your
ancestor. Like the letter from Mr. John Dunning, which we received with
amazement as a voice from the grave, they help us to realise the
business--if one wanted any help. But we realised it before--quite
vividly enough--and that,” he sighed, “is all. We are no whit advanced.
There were no more papers?”
“I searched the desk over and over again, but I could find nothing more.
Now, Leonard.” She took a chair and placed it beside his own at the
table. “Leave the fire and take your chair, and we will begin and
finish. This time must be the very last. It is high time that we should
make an end of this. As for me, I came here this morning just to say
that whatever happens I am determined that we must make an end. The
thing is becoming dangerous to your peace of mind.”
“We cannot make an end.”
“Yes--yes--we are now persons bewitched. Let us swear that after this
morning we will put away the book and the papers and cease from any
further trouble about it.”
“If we can,” he replied gloomily.
“Leonard, for the first time in your life you are superstitious.”
“We may swear what we like. We shall come back to the case again
to-morrow.”
“We will not. Let us resolve. Nay, Leonard, you must not continue. To
you it is becoming dangerous.”
Leonard sighed. “It is weary work. Well, then, for the last time.” He
laid the packet of papers upon the table. He opened the dreadful
book--the Book of Fate. “It is always the same thing. Whenever I open
the book there is the same sense of sickness and loathing. Are the pages
poisoned?”
“They are, my friend.”
He began the old round. That is to say, he read the case as they had
drawn it up, while Constance compared it with the evidence.
“‘These are the facts of the inquest, of the trial, of the effects of
the crime, the evidence of place, and the evidence of time:
“‘The two leave the house, they walk together through the Park; they
cross the road, they get over the stile, they enter the wood. Then the
Squire turns back----’”
“After some short time,” Constance corrected. “According to the
recollection of the ancient man who was the bird-scarer, he went into
the wood.”
“‘Then the Squire walked homewards rapidly. If the housekeeper gave the
time correctly, and it took him the same time to get home as to reach
the wood--I have timed the distance--he may have been ten minutes--a
quarter of an hour in the wood.
“‘Two hours or so later, the boy saw a working man, whom he knew well by
sight and name, enter the wood. He was dressed in a smock-frock, and
carried certain tools or instruments over his shoulder. He remained in
the wood a few minutes only, and then came running out, his white smock
spotted with red, as the boy could see plainly from the hillside. He ran
to the farmyard beyond the field, and returned with other men and a
shutter. They entered the wood, and presently came out carrying
“something” covered up. The boy was asked both at the inquest and the
trial whether anyone else had entered the wood or had come out of it. He
was certain that no one had done so, or could have done so without his
knowledge.
“‘The men carried the body to the house. They were met on the terrace by
the housekeeper, who seemed to have shrieked and run into the house,
where she told the women-servants, who all together set up a shrieking
through the house. Someone, after the mistress was thus terrified,
blurted out the dreadful truth. In an hour the Squire had lost his wife
as well as his brother-in-law.
“‘At the inquest, the Squire gave the principal evidence. He said that
he walked with his brother-in-law as far as the wood, when he turned
back.’”
“Not ‘as far as the wood.’ He said that on entering the wood he
remembered an appointment, and turned back. Remembering the evidence of
the boy and your timing of the distance, we must give him some little
time in the wood.”
“Very well--the longer the better, because it would show that there was
nobody lurking there.
“‘Then John Dunning deposed to finding the body. It lay on its back; the
fore-part of the head was shattered in a terrible manner; the
unfortunate gentleman was quite dead. Beside the body lay a heavy branch
broken off. It would seem to have been caught up and used as a cudgel.
Blood was on the thicker end.
“‘A medical man gave evidence as to the fact of death. He reached the
house at about one, and after attending the unfortunate lady, who was
dying or dead, he turned his attention to the body of the victim, who
had then been dead sometime, probably two hours or thereabouts. The
valet deposed, further that the pockets were searched, and that nothing
had been taken from them.
“‘The coroner summed up. The only person who had gone into the wood
after the deceased gentleman was the man John Dunning. Who but John
Dunning could have committed this foul murder? The verdict of the jury
was delivered at once--“Wilful murder against John Dunning.”
“‘We have next the trial of John Dunning. Mr. Campaigne was so fully
persuaded in his own mind of the man’s innocence that he provided him,
at his own expense, with counsel. The counsel employed was clever. He
heard the evidence, the same as that given at the inquest, but instead
of letting it pass, he pulled it to pieces in cross-examination.
“‘Thus, on examining Mr. Campaigne, he elicited the very important fact
that Mr. Holme was six feet high and strong in proportion, while the
prisoner was no more than five feet six, and not remarkably strong; that
it was impossible to suppose that the murdered man would stand still to
receive a blow delivered in full face by so little a man. That was a
very strong point to make.
“‘Then he examined the doctor as to the place in which the blow was
received. It appeared that it was on the top of the head, behind the
forehead, yet delivered face to face. He made the doctor acknowledge
that in order to receive such a blow from a short man like the prisoner
the murdered man must have been sitting or kneeling. Now, the wood was
wet with recent rain, and there was nothing to sit upon. Therefore it
required, said the doctor, a man taller than Mr. Holme himself to
deliver such a blow.’”
Leonard stopped for a brief comment:
“It shows how one may pass over things. I passed over this point
altogether at first, and, indeed, until the other day, perhaps, because
the newspaper cutting is turned over at this place. The murderer,
therefore, was taller than Langley Holme, who was himself six feet high.
The point should have afforded a clue. At all events, it effectively
cleared the prisoner.”
“‘It appears that the crime created the greatest interest in the
neighbourhood. There were kept up for a long time after the acquittal of
John Dunning, discussions and arguments, for and against, as to his
guilt or innocence. No one else was arrested and no one tried, and the
police left off looking after the case. Indeed, there was nothing more
than what I have set down in these notes.
“‘The friends of Mr. Campaigne, however, speedily discovered that he was
entirely changed in consequence of the double shock of the deaths of
brother and sister, brother-in-law and wife, in one day. He ceased to
take interest in anything; he refused to see his friends; he would not
even notice his children; he gradually retreated entirely into himself;
he left his business affairs to an agent; he dismissed his servants. He
sent his children to the care of a distant cousin to get them out of the
way; he never left the house at all except to walk on the terrace; he
kept neither horses nor dogs; he never spoke to anyone; he had never
been known to speak for all these years except once, and then two or
three words to me.”
“The following,” he went on, “is also a part of the case:
“‘We have been a very unfortunate family. Of Mr. Campaigne’s three
children, the eldest committed suicide for no reason discoverable, the
next was drowned at sea, the third married a bankrupt tradesman, and
dropped very low down in the world. Of the next generation, the eldest,
my father, died at an early age and at a time when his prospects were as
bright as those of any young member of the House; his second brother has
just confessed that he has led a life of pretence and deception; and his
younger brother, who was sent abroad for his profligacy, told me
yesterday that he is about to become bankrupt, while another member of
the family is threatened with ruin, and, to judge from his terror, with
worse than ruin.’”
“There are still two or three facts that you have omitted,” said
Constance. “We had better have them all.”
“What are they?”
“You have not mentioned that the boy went into the wood early in the
morning and found no one; that the woman in the cottage--this was the
voice of the grave that we asked for and obtained--said that nobody at
all had been through the wood that day until the gentlemen appeared.”
“We will consider everything. But remember, Constance, we are sworn not
to go through this ceremony again whatever the force that draws us.”
“We have forgotten; there is the half-finished letter that we found upon
the table. Read that again, Leonard.”
It was in one envelope among the papers. Leonard took it out.
“There is nothing in it that we do not know. Langley was staying in the
house.”
“Never mind; read it.”
He read it:
“‘Algernon and Langley have gone into the study to talk business. It is
this affair of the Mill that is still unsettled. I am a little anxious
about Algernon; he has been strangely distrait for the last two or three
days. Perhaps he is anxious about me. There need be no anxiety; I am
quite well and strong. This morning he got up very early, and I heard
him walking about in the study below. This is not his way at all.
However, should a wife repine because her Lord is anxious about her?
Algernon is very determined about that Mill, but I fear that Langley
will not give way. You know how firm he can be behind that pleasant
smile of his.’
“Nothing much in that letter, Constance, is there?”
“I don’t know. It is the voice of the dead. So are these letters of
Langley’s to his wife. They speak of a subject of disagreement: neither
would give way. Mr. Campaigne was at times overcome with anger
uncontrolled. Leonard, it is wonderful how much we have learned since we
first began this inquiry--I mean, this new evidence of the quarrel and
Mr. Campaigne’s ungovernable temper and his strange outburst in the
evening. Oh! it is new evidence”--her face changed: she looked like one
who sees a light suddenly shine in the darkness--a bright and unexpected
light. “It is new evidence,” she repeated with wondering, dazzled eyes.
“It explains, everything”--she stopped and turned white.
“Oh!”
She shrank back as if she felt a sudden pain at her heart: she put up
her hands as if to push back some terrible creature. She sprang to her
feet. She trembled and shook: she clasped her forehead--the gesture was
natural to the face of terror and amazement and sudden understanding.
Leonard caught her in his arms, but she did not fall. She laid her hand
upon his shoulder, and she bowed her head.
“Oh, God, help us!” she murmured.
“What is it? Constance, what is it?”
“Leonard, no one--no one--no one was in the wood but only those two--and
they quarrelled, and the Squire was taller than his brother--and we have
found the truth. Leonard, my poor friend--my cousin--we have found the
truth.”
She drew herself away from him, and sank back into her chair, hiding her
face in her hands.
Leonard dropped the papers.
“Constance!” he cried. For in a moment the truth flashed across his
brain--the truth that explained everything--the despair of the wretched
man, the resolve to save an innocent man, a remorse that left him not by
day or night, so that he could do nothing, think of nothing, for all the
long, long years that followed; a remorse which forbade him to hold
converse with his fellow-man, which robbed him of every pleasure and
every solace, even the solace of his little children. “Constance!” he
cried again, holding out his hands as if for help.
She lifted her head but not her eyes; she took both his hands in hers.
“My friend,” she whispered, “have courage.”
So for a brief space they remained, he standing before her, she sitting,
but holding both his hands, with weeping eyes.
“I said,” he murmured, “that nothing more would happen. There wanted
only the last--the fatal blow.”
“We were constrained to go on until the truth came to us. It has come to
us. After all these years--from the memory of the old man who scared the
birds: from the innocent man who was tried--he spoke from the grave:
from the murdered man himself. Leonard, this thing should be marvellous
in our eyes, for this is not man’s handiwork.”
He drew away his hands.
“No. It is Vengeance for the spilling of blood.” She made no reply, but
she rose, dashed the tears from her eyes, placed the papers in the book,
closed it, tied it up again neatly with tape, and laid the parcel in the
lowest drawer of the table.
“Let it lie there,” she said. “To-morrow, if this Possession is past, as
I think it will be, we will burn it, papers and all.”
He looked on, saying nothing. What could he say?
“What are we to do with our knowledge?” he asked after a few minutes.
“Nothing. It is between you and me. Nothing. Let us nevermore speak of
the thing. It is between you and me.”
The unaccustomed tears blinded her eyes. Her eyes were filled with a
real womanly pity. The student of books was gone, the woman of Nature
stood in her place; and, woman-like, she wept over the shame and horror
of the man.
“Leave me, Constance,” he said. “There is blood between us. My hands and
those of all my house are red with blood--the blood of your own people.”
She obeyed. She turned away; she came back again.
“Leonard,” she said, “the past is past. Courage! We have learned the
truth before that unhappy man dies. It is a sign. The day of Forgiveness
draws nigh.”
Then she left him softly.