“Everything turned out bad. It was a most unfortunate family; father and children alike—all were unfortunate.”
* * * * * * *
Here ended the housekeeper’s book of extracts and comments. There was appended a letter. It was headed, “Mary’s letter, September, 2d, 1855:”
“Dear Lucy,
“I have not been able to answer your letter before—believe me. There are times when the heart must be alone with the heart. I have been alone with my sorrowful heart—oh, my sorrowful heart!—for a month since it happened.
“I can now tell you something—not all—that has fallen upon us, upon my innocent babes and myself. You heard that Langley took his own life with his own hand four weeks ago. You ask now why he did it. He was doing well—no one was more promising, no one had brighter prospects; friends assured me that in proper time I might confidently expect to see him in the Cabinet; his powers and his influence and his name were improving daily; he was acquiring daily greater knowledge of affairs. At home I may say truthfully that he was happy with his wife, who would have laid down her life cheerfully to make him happy, and with his tender children. As for anything outside his home, such as some young men permit themselves, he would have no such thought, and could not have as a man who considered his duty to wife and family or as a Christian. Yet he killed himself—oh, my dear, he killed himself!—and I am left. Why did he do it?
“There was one thing which always weighed heavily upon his mind—the condition of his father. He frequently talked of it. Why, he asked, should a misfortune such as that which had befallen him—the tragic death of a friend and the sudden death of his wife—so completely destroy a strong man, young, healthy, capable of rising above the greatest possible disasters? Why should this misfortune change him permanently, so that he should neglect everything that he had formerly loved, and should become a miserable, silent solitary, brooding over the past, living the useless life of a hermit? Of course, he felt also the neglect in which he and his brother and sister had been left, and the lack of sympathy with which his father had always regarded them. For, remember, his father is not insane; he is able to transact business perfectly. It is only that he refuses to speak or to converse, and lives alone.
“Now, dear Lucy, I am not going to make any suggestion. I want only to tell you exactly what happened. You sent him a book of extracts and cuttings, with supplementary notes. These cuttings were the contemporary account of the murder of Mr. Langley Holme, the inquest, the trial of a man who was acquitted, and the strange effect which the whole produced upon Mr. Campaigne, then quite a young man.
“He received the book, and took it into his study. This was in the morning. At midnight I looked in. He turned his face. My dear, it was haggard. I asked him what was the matter that he looked so ill. He replied, rambling, that the fathers had eaten sour grapes. I begged him to leave off, and to come upstairs. He said something in reply, but I did not catch it, and so I left him.
“He never came upstairs. At five in the morning I woke up, and finding that he was not in bed, I hurried down the stairs full of sad presentiments. Alas! he was dead. Do not ask me how—he was dead!