THE SIGNS OF CHANGE
Leonard was left alone. He threw himself into a chair and tried to
think. He could not. The power of concentration had left him. The
tension of the last three weeks, followed by the wholly unexpected
nature of the discovery, was too much for a brain even so young and
strong as his. The horror of the discovery was not even felt: he tried
to realise it: he knew that it ought to be there: but it was not: all he
felt was an overwhelming sense of relief. He fell asleep in the chair
before the fire. It was then about noon on Sunday. From time to time his
man looked in, made up the fire, for the spring day was still chilly,
but would not awaken his master. It was past seven in the evening when
he woke up. Twilight was lying about the room. He remembered that
Constance had laid the papers in a drawer. He opened the drawer. He took
out the papers and the book. He held them in his hand. For the first
time since his possession of those documents he felt no loathing of the
book and its accursed pages: nor did he feel the least desire to open it
or to read any more about the abominable case. He returned the packet to
the drawer. Then he perceived that he was again down-laden with the
oppression of sleep. He went into his bedroom and threw himself dressed
as he was upon the bed, when he instantly fell sound asleep.
He was neither hungry nor thirsty: he wanted no food: he wanted nothing
but sleep: he slept the clock round, and more. It was ten on Monday
morning when he woke up refreshed by his long and dreamless sleep, and
in a normal condition of hunger.
More than this, although the discovery--the tragic discovery--was fresh
in his mind, he found himself once more free to think of anything he
pleased.
He dressed, expecting the customary summons to the Book and the Case.
None came. He took breakfast and opened the paper. For three weeks he
had been unable to read the paper at all. Now, to his surprise, he
approached it with all his customary interest. Nothing was suggested to
his mind as to the book. He went into the study, he again opened the
drawer; he was not afraid, though no compulsion obliged him, to take out
the book: since he was not constrained, as before, to open it, he put it
back again. He remarked that the loathing with which he had regarded it
only the day before was gone. In fact, he heeded the book no longer: it
was like the dead body of a demon which could do no more harm.
He turned to the papers on his writing-table; there were the unfinished
sheets of his article lying piled up with notes and papers in neglect.
He took them up with a new-born delight and the anticipation of the
pleasure of finishing the thing; he wondered how he had been able to
suspend his work for so long. There was a pile letters, the unopened,
unanswered letters of the last three weeks; he hurriedly tore them open:
some of them, at least, must be answered without delay.
All this time he was not forgetful of the Discovery. That was now made:
it was complete. Strange! It did not look so horrible after
four-and-twenty hours. It seemed as if the discovery was the long-looked
for answer to the mystery which explained everything.
He sat down, his mind clear once more, and tried to make out the steps
by which the truth had been recovered. To give his thoughts words, “We
started with two assumptions, both of which were false; and both made it
impossible to find the truth. The first of these was the assumption that
the two were fast and firm friends, whereas they were for the moment at
variance on some serious affair--so much at variance that on one
occasion at least before the last, one of them had become like a madman
in his rage. The second was the assumption that the Squire had turned
and gone home at the entrance of the wood. Both at the inquest and the
trial that had been taken for granted. Now, the boy had simply said that
they went into the wood together, and that one had come out alone.
“In consequence of these two assumptions, we were bound to find some one
in the wood who must have done the deed. The boy declared that no one
was in the wood at half-past five in the morning, and that he saw no one
but these two go in till John Dunning went in at noon. The cottage
woman said that no one at all had used that path that day. The coppice
was so light that the two who went in must have seen anybody who was
lurking there. If we remove the two assumptions--if we suppose that they
entered the wood quarrelling--if we remember that the evening before one
of them had become like a madman for rage--if we give them ten minutes
or a quarter of an hour together--if we remember the superior height of
one, which alone enabled the blow to fall on the top of the other’s
head--if we add to all this the subsequent behavior of the survivor,
there can no longer be the least room for doubt. The murderer was
Algernon Campaigne, Justice of the Peace, Master of Campaigne Park.”
All this he reasoned out coldly and clearly. That he could once more
reason on any subject at all gave him so much relief that the blow and
shame of the discovery were greatly lessened. He remembered, besides,
that the event happened seventy years before; that there could be no
further inquiry; that the secret belonged to himself and to Constance;
and that there was no need to speak of it to any other members of his
family.
By this time, what was left of the family honour? He laughed bitterly as
he reflected on the blots upon that once fair white scutcheon.
Suicide--bankruptcy--the mud and mire of dire poverty--forgery--shame
and pretence, and at last the culminating crime beyond which one can
hardly go--the last crime which was also the first--the slaying of a man
by his brother--MURDER!
A knock at the door roused him. Was it more trouble? He sat up
instinctively to meet it. But he was quite calm. He did not expect
trouble. When it comes, one generally feels it beforehand. Now he felt
no kind of anticipation. It was, in fact, only a note from Constance:
“I write to tell you that the misfortunes of your House are over.
There will be no more. I am certain of what I say. Do not ask me
how I learned this, because you would not believe. We have been
led--and this you will not believe--by the hand of the man who was
killed, and none other--to the Discovery which ends it all.
“CONSTANCE.”
“The Discovery,” he thought, “which is worse than all the rest put
together. No more misfortunes? No more consequences, then. What does she
mean? Consequences must go on.”
You remember how, one day, there came to a certain Patriarch one who
told of trouble, and almost before he had finished speaking there came
also another with more trouble, and yet a third with more. You remember
also how to this man there came, one after the other, messengers who
brought confession of fraud and disgrace.
This afternoon the opposite happened. There came three; but there were
not messengers of trouble, but of peace, and even joy.
The first was his cousin Mary Anne.
“I’ve come,” she said, “with a message from my brother. Sam is very
sorry that he carried on here as he says he did. I don’t know how he
carried on, but Sam is very nasty sometimes, when his temper and his
troubles get the better of him.”
“Pray do not let him be troubled. I have quite forgotten what he said.”
“It seems that he brought his precious bill against granny, and showed
it to you. He says that he’s put it in the fire, and that he didn’t mean
it, except in the hope that you’d lend him a little money.”
“I see. Well, my cousin, is that all?”
“Oh, he begs your pardon humbly. And he says that the builder has got
the Bank to back him after all: and he’ll be contented to wait now for
his share of the accumulations.”
“I am sorry that he still entertains hopes in that direction.”
“Oh! he thinks about nothing else. He has got the whole amount worked
out: he knows how much there will be. If it is left to you or to anybody
else he will dispute the will. He’ll carry it up to the Lords, he says.”
“Very good. We may wait until the will is produced. Meantime, Mary Anne,
there is a little point which he seems to forget. It his grandmother and
not himself who could have a right to dispute the will. Can he be so
poor in law as not to know that?”
“He makes granny sign papers. I don’t know how many she has signed. He
is always thinking about some other danger to be met, and then he draws
up a paper and makes her sign it with me as witness. Granny never asks
what the paper means.”
“Signing documents is dangerous. You must not allow it, my cousin. If
there is anything coming to your branch of the family from Campaigne
Park, you are as much concerned as Sam.”
She laughed. “You don’t know Sam. He means to have it all. He says that
he’s arranged to have it all.”
“Let us talk about something else. Is your grandmother content to go on
living as she does now?”
“No. But she has always been so unhappy that a few years more of Sam’s
bad temper and selfishness don’t seem to matter. I came here this
morning partly to tell you that I’ve arranged it at last. I had it out
with Sam yesterday. I told him that he could go on living with mother,
and I would take granny--she’s so vexed, you can’t think--that Sam
should have gone and made out a bill for her keep and presented to
you--that I was able to persuade her. Granny will live with me--I can
afford it--and mother will go on with Sam. And I do hope, Mr. Campaigne,
that you will come and see her sometimes. She says, have you read the
book?”
“Yes. I will go to see her sometimes. Tell her so. And as for the book,
I have read it all through.”
“And did it do you good to read the book? To me it always makes that old
gentleman so grand and good--finding lawyers for the poor innocent man
and all.”
“Tell her the book has produced all the effect she desired and more.”
While she was still speaking, Uncle Fred burst in. Mary Anne retired,
making way for the visitor, who, she perceived, from the family
likeness, was a large and very magnificent specimen of the Campaigne
family.
He burst in. He came in like an earthquake, making the furniture crack,
and the glasses rattle, and the picture-frames shake. He showed the most
jovial, happy, benevolent air possible. No one could look happier, more
benevolent, and more contented with himself.
“Congratulate me, my dear boy!” he cried, offering the most friendly
hand in the world. There was a fine and large forgiveness in that
extended hand. The last conversation was forgotten and dismissed from
memory. “Barlow Brothers is saved!”
“Oh! how have you saved it?”
“I will tell you how. It has been a most wonderful stroke of luck for
Australian enterprise. Nothing short of a national disaster has been
averted.”
“Indeed! I gathered from your last communication that the business
was--well, not worth saving.”
“Not worth saving? My dear Leonard! it is colossal--colossal!”
Leonard is still mystified, whenever he thinks of it, by this abrupt
change of front. What did he mean?
“I am immediately going back to Australia to put things on a right
footing.”
“Oh! You have made a Company in the City after all!”
“No,” he replied with decision. “The City has had its chance and has
refused its opportunity. I leave the City to lament its own
short-sighted refusal. I am sorry for the City. I now return to
Australia. The firm of Barlow Brothers may rise conspicuous and
colossal, or it may continue to be a purveyor of sardines and blacking,
or it may go smash.”
At this point his eye fell upon a letter. It was one of the documents in
the Case; in fact, it was the letter from Australia which came with John
Dunning’s memorandum. By accident it had not been put away with the
rest. He read the superscription on the seal: “John Dunning’s Sons.”
“John Dunning’s Sons?” he asked. “John Dunning’s Sons?”
“It’s an old story. Your grandfather helped John Dunning in early life.”
Leonard took out the letter. “His family write to express the
gratitude--a post-mortem gratitude--of the late John Dunning to the
family generally. Would you like to read it?”
Uncle Fred read it. His jovial face became grave--even austere in
thoughtfulness. He folded the letter and put it in his pocket.
“By your leave,” he said. “My dear boy, the Dunnings are the richest
people in the colony. I am a made man. Their gratitude simply warms my
heart. It inspires once more the old youthful belief in human nature.
With this letter--with this introduction--Barlow Brothers vanish. Damn
the sardine boxes! Fred Campaigne returns to Australia, and Fortune
smiles. My boy, farewell. With this letter in my pocket, I start
to-morrow.”
“Stop, stop!” cried Leonard. “How about the colossal business? How
about the saving of that important shanty where you dispensed sardines?”
Uncle Fred looked at his watch.
“But you say that you have saved it--how?”
“I have just time”--again he looked at his watch--“to keep--ah! a most
important appointment. I shall go out to Australia next week. On the way
out I will amuse myself by writing you an account of the Barlow
Brothers--in several chapters--The Conception, The First Box of
Sardines, The Shanty, the Realisation, the Millionaire. Novels would not
be more thrilling.”
“But you abandon this Colossal undertaking?”
“I give it up. Why? Because an easier way lies open. I should be more
than human if I did not take the easier way.”
“You are going out to Mr. Dunning with that letter in your pocket?”
“I am, going, sir, to throw myself into the arms of gratitude. Human
Nature! Human Nature! How lovely a thing is Human Nature when it is
grateful!”
Leonard grunted.
“I am not sure,” he said, “that I did right in giving you that letter.”
“You can have it back again. I know the contents. And now, my dear
nephew, there is but one small duty to perform--I allude to the Hotel
Bill. My brother has found the passage-money--Christopher was always a
selfish beast, but his language at parting with that money was
inexcusable. He refuses the Hotel Bill.”
“And so you come to me. Why should I pay your Hotel Bill?”
“There is no reason that I know of except the fact that I have referred
the Hotel Clerk to you as a Member of Parliament and a gentleman.”
“You come home boasting of your wealth, being next door to penniless.”
“You forget--the Accumulations----”
“And you end with the confession that you were lying.”
“You mean putting the best foot forward--presenting myself in the
enviable light of the successful uncle--the modern Nabob.”
“And you levy money on your people?”
“I borrow on my reversionary interests--in the Accumulations.”
“I will pay your bill on the understanding that you take yourself off.
How much is it?”
Uncle Fred named the amount. It was a staggerer.
“Good Heavens! Man, you must have bathed in champagne.”
“There has been champagne,” Fred replied with dignity. “I had to support
my position. City men lunched with me and dined with me. We discussed
the Fourth Act in the Comedy of Barlow Brothers--the Realisation. As for
the Bill, I borrow the amount.”
Leonard sat down and wrote a cheque. Uncle Fred took it, read it, folded
it, and sighed with a tear of regret that he had not named double the
amount.
“Thanks,” he said. “The act was ungraciously performed. But the main
thing is to get the cheque. That I have always felt, even when I got it
out of old Sixty per Cent. Well, I go back to a land which has been
hitherto inhospitable. Farewell, my nephew. I shall bask: I shall
batten, whatever that means: I shall fatten: I shall swell out with
fatness in the sunshine--the Sydney sunshine is very fattening--of
gratitude, and the generosity of a Sydney millionaire.”
He buttoned his coat, and went away with loud and resounding footsteps,
as he had come, the furniture cracking, the picture-frames rattling. So
far, Leonard has not received the promised explanation of the Mystery of
Barlow Brothers; nor has that check been returned. There remained one
more credit to the Family. It was Christopher, the eminent and learned
counsel.
He, too, called half an hour after the departure of his brother.
“I came,” he said, “first of all to warn you against giving or lending
any more money to that fraud--my brother Fred.”
“You are too late, then. I have paid his hotel bill. You have paid his
passage out----”
“No, I paid his hotel bill; you paid his passage out.”
“Oh, well! so long as he goes----”
“I paid his hotel bill because he threatened to go into the City and
expose my real name.”
“Go into the City? What could he do in the City? Whom does he know in
the City? Your brother is just a mass of lies and impostures. What does
it matter if he is really going?”
“He must go. Nobody except you and me will lend or give him any money.
He goes as he came--the wealthy Australian. He has promised my people to
make them rich by his will: he hinted at an incurable disorder: and he
bade farewell for ever--with my cheque in his pocket!”
“Let him go. You had something else to say?”
“Yes. It was about my own affairs. They know all, Leonard.”
“They know all? Who told them?”
“I’ve had a terrible time with the wife and daughter. But they know all.
That vindictive little Beast called at the house, went upstairs, and
told them everything. Then he went away grinning. There was a terrible
scene.”
“So I should suppose.”
“Yes. It’s all right, though, at last. I persuaded them, with a good
deal of trouble, that the profession was rather more holy than the
Church. I set forth the facts--the honour and glory--the secret
diffusion and cultivation of a better taste--higher standards--a
Mission--nobler æsthetics--and the income--especially the income.”
“That would be a serious factor in the case.”
“Yes. And I pointed out the educational side--the advance of oratory. So
they came round, little by little. And I clinched the thing by offering
to go back to the Bar; in which case, I told them, we should have to
live at Shepherd’s Bush, in a £40 a year semi-detached, while Algernon
went into the City as a clerk at fifteen shillings a week, which is more
than his true value.”
“Well, since it did well I congratulate you. The profession will be
continued, of course?”
“Of course. But I confess I was surprised at the common-sense of
Algernon. He will immediately enter at the Bar: he will join me; there
will henceforth be two successful lawyers in the family instead of one.”
“And what about the threatened exposure?”
“Algernon has gone to see the BEAST. He is to promise him that if a word
or a hint is dropped, everybody shall know where he--the BEAST--buys his
stories, and his poems, and his epigrams, as well as his after-dinner
speeches. Algernon has fished it all out. Why, sir, the man is a
Fraud--a common Fraud! He buys everything!”
So with this tribute to truth and honesty the weaver of speeches for
other people went away. Only the day before Leonard would have received
this communication with disgust as another humiliation. The way of
deception--the life of pretence--was kept open. It would have been a
tearing down of more family pride. Now it was nothing. The pretence of
it, the ready way in which his cousin Algernon had dropped into it,
belonged to someone else--not to himself. The family honour--such as he
had always regarded it and believed in it--was gone--smashed and broken
up into fragments. The House of the Campaignes, like every other family,
had its decaying branches; its dead branches; its off-shoots and humble
branches; its branches of dishonour.
There is no such thing existing as a family where men have been always
Bayards and its women always beyond reproach. Upon him had fallen the
blow of finding out the things concealed: the blot on the scutcheon, the
ugly stories of the past: the poor relations and the unworthy relations.
The discovery humiliated him at the outset: it became rapidly a thing
apart from himself and outside himself. Uncle Fred might be an impostor
and fraud. Very good. It mattered nothing to him. Uncle Christopher was
a pretender and a humbug--what did it matter? The East-End solicitor was
a person with no pretence at honour and honesty--what did it matter?
They belonged to him by blood relationship; yet he was still--himself.
Only one thing remained. And now even the horror of that was more
tolerable than the humiliation of the first revelations. It was the
terrible story of the crime and the seventy years of expiation in which
there had been no expiation, because nothing can ever atone for a crime
or make it as if it had not been.
Men pray for forgiveness--“neither reward us after our iniquities.”
There should be another and a less selfish prayer that all shall be in
the world as if the iniquity had never been committed: that the
consequences of the iniquity shall be stayed, miraculously
stayed--because, but for a miracle, they must take their course
according to the great law of Nature, that nothing can happen save under
conditions imposed by the record of the past. The dream of the sinner is
that he shall be forgiven and shall go straight to the land of white
clothing and hearts at peace for ever, while down below the children and
the grandchildren are in the misery of the consequences--the inevitable
consequences of his follies and his crimes. So every soul stands or
falls by itself, yet in its standing or in its falling it supports or it
drags down the children and the grandchildren.
These thoughts, and other thoughts like unto these, crowded into the
brain of the young man when he sat alone--the _dossier_ of the crime
locked up in the drawer--the disgraces of his cousins pushed aside--and
the crime which caused so much little more than a memory and an abiding
pity. Everything had come to Leonard which Constance, not knowing what
the words might mean, desired for him. How great the change it made in
him, as yet he hardly suspected.