The Fourth Generation

“Thank you,” he said. “It is more friendly sitting down. You’ve got comfortable quarters. No Mrs. C. as yet, is there? The old woman said that you were a bachelor. Now, then. It’s this way: She married my grandfather, Isaac Galley. That was fifty years ago – in 1849. No, 1850. Isaac Galley failed. His failure was remarked upon in the papers on account of the sum – the amount – of his liabilities. The Times wanted to know how he managed to owe so much.”

“Pray go on. I am interested. This part of our family history is new to me.”

Leonard continued standing, looking down upon his visitor. He became aware, presently, of a ridiculous likeness to himself, and he found himself hoping that the vulture played a less prominent part in his own expression. All the Campaigne people were taller – much taller – than the average; their features were strongly marked; they were, as a rule, a handsome family. They carried themselves with a certain dignity. This man was tall, his features were strongly marked; but he was not handsome, and he did not carry himself with dignity. His shoulders were bent, and he stooped. He was one of the race, apparently, but gone to seed; looking “common.” No one could possibly mistake him for a gentleman by birth or by breeding. “Common” was the word to apply to Mr. Galley-Campaigne. “Common” is a word much used by certain ladies belonging to a certain stage of society about their neighbours’ children; it will do to express the appearance of this visitor.

“Pray go on,” Leonard repeated mechanically, while making his observations; “you are my cousin, clearly. I must apologise for not knowing of your existence.”

“We live at the other end of town. I’m a gentleman, of course, being in the Law – lower branch – ”

“Quite so,” said Leonard.

“But the old woman – I mean my grandmother – takes jolly good care that I shall know the difference between you and me. You’ve had Eton and College to back you up. You’ve got the House of Commons and a swagger club. That’s your world. Mine is different. We’ve no swells where I live, down the Commercial Road. I’m a solicitor in what you would call a small way. There are no big men our way.”

“It is a learned profession.”

“Yes. I am not a City clerk, like my father.”

“Tell me more about yourself. Your grandfather, you say, was bankrupt. Is he living?”

“No. He went off about ten years ago, boastful to the end of his great smash. His son – that’s my father – was in the City. He was a clerk all his life to a wine-merchant. He died four or five years ago. He was just able to pay for my articles – a hundred pounds – and the stamp – another eighty – and that pretty well cleared him out, except for a little insurance of a hundred. When he died I was just beginning to get along; and I’ve been able to live, and to keep my mother and my grandmother – it’s a tight fit, though – with what I can screw out of Mary Anne.”

“Who is Mary Anne?”

“My sister, Mary Anne. She’s a Board School teacher. But she shoves all the expenses on to me.”

“Oh! I have a whole family of cousins, then, previously unknown. That is interesting. Are there more?”

He remembered certain words spoken only that morning, and he winced. Here were poor relations, after all. Constance would be pleased.

“No more – only me and Mary Anne. That is to say, no more that you would acknowledge as such. There’s all father’s cousins and their children: and all mother’s cousins and brothers and nephews and nieces: but you can’t rightly call them your cousins.”

“Hardly, perhaps, much as one would like…”

“Now, Mr. Campaigne. The old woman has been at me a long time to call upon you. I didn’t want to call. I don’t want to know you, and you don’t want to know me. But I came to please her and to let you know that she’s alive, and that she would like, above all things, to see you and to talk to you.”

“Indeed! If that is all, I shall be very pleased to call.”

“You see, she’s always been unlucky – born unlucky, so to speak. But she’s proud of her own family. They’ve never done anything for her, whatever they may have to do – have to do, I say.” He became threatening.

“Have to do,” repeated Leonard softly.

“In the future. It may be necessary to prove who we are, and that before many years – or months – or even days – and it might save trouble if you were to understand who she is, and who I am.”

“You wish me to call upon my great-aunt. I will certainly do so.”

“That’s what she wants. That’s why I came here to-night. Look here, sir: for my own part, I would not intrude upon you. I’ve not come to beg or to borrow. But for the old woman’s sake I’ve ventured to call and ask you to remember that she is your great-aunt. She’s seventy-two years of age, and now and then she frets a bit after a sight of her own people. She hasn’t seen any of them since your grandfather committed suicide. And that must have been about the year 1860, before you and I were born.”

Leonard started.

“My grandfather committed suicide? What do you mean? My grandfather died somewhere about 1860. What do you mean by saying that he killed himself?”

“What! Don’t you know? Your grandfather, sir,” said the other firmly, “died of cut-throat fever. Oh yes, whatever they called it, he died of cut-throat fever. Very sudden it was. Of that I am quite certain, because my grandmother remembers the business perfectly well.”

“Is it possible? Killed himself? Then, why did I never learn such a thing?”

“I suppose they didn’t wish to worry you. Your father was but a child, I suppose, at the time. Perhaps they never told him. All the same, it’s perfectly true.”

Committed suicide! He remembered the widow who never smiled – the pale-faced, heavy-eyed widow. He now understood why she went in mourning all the days of her life. He now learned in this unexpected manner, why she had retired to the quiet little Cornish village.

Committed suicide! Why? It seemed a kind of sacrilege to ask this person. He hesitated; he took up a trifling ornament from the mantelshelf, and played with it. It dropped out of his fingers into the fender, and was broken.

“Pray,” he asked, leaving the other question for the moment, “how came your grandmother to be separated from her own people?”

“They went away into the country. And her father went silly. She never knew him when he wasn’t silly. He went silly when his brother-in-law was murdered.”

“Brother-in-law murdered? Murdered! What is this? Good Lord, man! what do you mean with your murder and your suicide?”

“Why, don’t you know? His brother-in-law was murdered on his grounds. And his wife died of the shock the same day. What else was it that drove him off his old chump?”

“I – I – I – know nothing” – the vulgarity of the man passed unnoticed in the face of these revelations – “I assure you, nothing of these tragedies. They are all new to me. I have been told nothing.”

“Never told you? Well, of all the – Why, the old woman over there is never tired of talking about these things. Proud of them she is. And you never to know anything!”

“Nothing. Is there more? And why do you call my great-grandfather mad?”

“He’s as much my great-grandfather as yours. Mad? Well, I’ve seen him over the garden wall half a dozen times, walking up and down his terrace like a Polar bear. I don’t know what you call mad. As for me, I’m a man of business, and if I had a client who never opened or answered a letter, never spoke a word to anybody, neglected his children, let his house go to ruin, never went to church, would have no servants about the place – why, I should have that mis’rable creature locked up, that’s all.”

Leonard put this point aside.

“But you have not told me about his wife’s death. It is strange that I should be asking you these particulars of my own family.”

“Mine as well, if you please,” the East End solicitor objected, with some dignity. “Well, sir, my grandmother is seventy-two years of age. Therefore it is just seventy-two years since her mother died. For her mother died in child-birth, and she died of the shock produced by the news of her own brother’s murder. Her brother’s name was Langley Holme.”

“Langley? My grandfather’s name.”

“Yes, Langley Holme. I think he was found lying dead on a hillside. So our great-grandfather, I say, lost in one day his wife and his brother-in-law, who was the best friend he had in the world. Why, sir, if you ever go down to see him and find him in that state, does it not occur to you to ask how it came about?”

“I confess – he is so old. I thought it eccentricity of age.”

“No!” His cousin shook his head. “Age alone would not make a man go on like that. I take it, sir, that extreme age makes a man care nothing about other people, not even his own children; but it does not cut him off from money matters.”

“You are perhaps right. Yet – well, I know nothing. So the old man’s mind was overthrown by the great shock of a double loss. Strange that they never told me! And his son, my grandfather, committed suicide. And his sister’s husband became a bankrupt.”

“Yes; there are misfortunes enough. The old woman is never tired of harping on the family misfortunes. The second son was drowned. He was a sailor, and was drowned. My father was never anything better than a small clerk. I’ve known myself what it is to want the price of a dinner. If you want to know what misfortune is like, wait till you’re hungry.”

“Indeed!” Leonard replied thoughtfully. “And all these troubles are new to me. Strange that they should be told me on this very day!”

“Then there’s your own father. He died young, too, and the last case that the old woman talks about is your father’s brother. I forget his name; they packed him off to Australia after he had forged your father’s name.”