“Even if I am morally certain?” persisted the Squire, smiling sadly to himself as he remembered how, when they were youths at college together, he had delighted in putting every form of difficult and intricate case of conscience he could think of to the budding priest, who, for his part, had never shirked the challenge.
“Everything is to be ruled upon its own merits. Moral certainty in such a matter as this is nothing, and counts for nothing. We must have clear, authenticated, documentary proof.”
“I have often wondered,” went on Grantley Wagram slowly, “how Everard could really be my son; there was a total absence about him of every sort of seeming relationship or affinity. Well, well, it is too late to dwell upon that now. Yet I gave him every chance, and he threw it from him. Did I not give him every chance?”
“You did indeed; you have nothing to reproach yourself with under that head.”
“Then, as a matter of conscience, I am justified in resisting the claim de haut en bas? And I don’t know who could be a better authority in that department than you, old friend.”
“Absolutely and entirely you are. You can’t as a juror conscientiously hang a man on moral certainty, you must have legal certainty—otherwise clear evidence. It’s the same here. When you consider the enormous stake involved the principle of ‘the benefit of the doubt’ holds good more than ever.”
“Knowing what I knew,” resumed the Squire after a brief pause—“knew, or at any rate was morally certain of—I reckoned it my duty to make a second marriage, to obviate all possibility of Hilversea passing to a distant and apostate branch of the family, which stands in no sort of need of it, by the way, being as well endowed with this world’s goods as I am myself. How disadvantageous that second marriage turned out—well, you, old friend, will remember. And the only result spells—Everard. Why, it might even be better for everything to go to the other branch than to him.”
“So far as we have got it doesn’t follow that it need go to either. You were saying something just now, Grantley, about your first wife being in possession of certificates proving this man’s, Develin Hunt’s, death. Now, did you ever see anything of the sort attesting his marriage to her?”
“No; I never thought of it. No; I never saw any such certificate. The poor thing admitted that it had taken place; and that was enough for me, for it was a painful business, so I made it worth his while to clear out.”
“You committed an error of judgment, Grantley, not only in failing to require such a certificate and establishing its genuineness, but also in omitting to institute a thorough and searching inquiry into the antecedents of this Develin Hunt prior to the alleged marriage.”