So there was nobody left except himself to maintain the family honour.
Certain words which you have already heard came back again. It seemed to him as if Constance was saying them all over again: “You are independent as to fortune; you are of a good house; you have no scandals in your family records; you have got no poor or degraded relations ... you are outside humanity.... If you had some family scandals, some poor relations who would make you feel ashamed, something that made you like other people, vulnerable——” Now he had them all.
The door was opened. His servant brought him a card: “Mr. Samuel Galley-Campaigne.”
“Another!” Leonard groaned and sprang to his feet. “Another!” The sight or the thought of this man, the caricature of his own family, tall and thin, like himself, but with every feature vulgarized, and the meanness of petty gains, petty cares, petty scheming and self-seeking stamped upon his face, irritated Leonard unspeakably. And he was a cousin! He stiffened involuntarily. His attitude, his expression, became that of the “supercilious beast” formed by Mr. Galley on his previous business.
The cousin came in and bowed slightly, not holding out his hand. There was a look in his face which meant resolution held back by fear, the desire to “try on” something, and the doubt as to whether it would be successful. It is an expression which may be remarked on ‘Change and in every market-town on market-day.
It has been wisely, perhaps frequently, remarked that trouble brings out a man’s true character far more certainly than prosperity, which may encourage him to assume virtues not really his own. The lines about the uses of adversity must be referred to the bystander rather than the patient, because the former is then enabled to contemplate and observe the true man for the first time. Mr. Galley, for instance, who was smug in prosperity, was openly and undisguisedly vulgar in adversity. At this moment, for instance, he was struggling with adversity; it made him red in the face, it made him speak thick, it made him perspire inconveniently, and it made his attitude ungraceful.
He came up the stairs; he knocked at the door with an expression of fixed resolution. One might have expected him to bang his fist on the table and to cry out: “There! that’s what I want, and that’s what I mean to have.” He did not quite do that, but he intended to do it when he called, and he would have done, I have no doubt, but for the cold, quiet air with which his cousin received him.
“Mr. Campaigne,” he began, “or cousin, if you like——”
“Mr. Campaigne, perhaps,” said Leonard the supercilious.
“Well, Mr. Campaigne, then, I’ve come to have a few words of explanation—explanation, sir!” he repeated, with some fierceness.