“Your grandson spoke of a murder and of a suicide among other things.”
“Other things, indeed! Why, there was my husband’s bankruptcy. There was your uncle Fred, my nephew, and what he did, and why he was bundled out of the country. I thought your mother would have fallen ill with the shame of it. And there was my poor father, too; and there was the trial. Did they not tell you about the trial?”
“What trial?”
“The great trial for the murder. It’s a most curious case. I believe the man who was tried really did it, because no one else was seen about the place. But he got off. My father was very good about it. He gave the man Counsel, who got him off. I’ve got all the evidence in the case—cut out of newspapers and pasted in a book. I will lend it to you, if you like.”
“Thank you. It might be interesting,” he said carelessly.
“It is interesting. But don’t you call these things enough misfortunes for a single family?”
“Quite enough, but not enough to make us born to misfortune.”
“Oh, Leonard! If you had seen what I have seen, and suffered what I have suffered! I’ve been the most unfortunate of all. My brothers gone; poor dear Langley by his own hand; Christopher, dear lad, drowned; my father a wreck. Like him, I live on. I live on, and wait for more trouble.” She shook her head, and the tears came into her eyes.
“I was a poor neglected thing with no mother, and as good as no father, to look after me. Galley came along; he was handsome, and I thought, being a silly girl, that he was a gentleman; so I married him. I ran away with him and married him. Then I found out. He thought I had a large fortune, and I had nothing; and father would not answer my letters. Well, he failed, and he used me cruelly—most cruelly, he did. And poverty came on—grinding, horrible poverty. You don’t know, my dear nephew, what that means. I pray that you never may. There is no misfortune so bad as poverty, except it is dishonour. He died at last”—the widow heaved a sigh of relief, which told a tale of woe in itself—“and his son was a clerk, and kept us all. Now he’s dead, and my grandson keeps me. For fifty years I have been slave and housemaid and cook and drudge and nurse to my husband and my son and my grandson. And, oh! I longed to speak once more with one of my own people.”
Leonard took her hand and pressed it. There was nothing to be said.