Rogues and Vagabonds

by George R. Sims

After the first few days on board the Diana, his marvellous escape seemed a trifling incident in his career, and his whole thinking capacity was exercised in the solution of this difficulty—what should he do when he got to England?

The theory that murderers are always haunted by remorse is an absurd one. Murderers are in many instances very ordinary persons. They wash their hands, forget their crime, and tread their path in life with firm footsteps. A murderer may go to the play, entertain his friends at dinner, eat strawberries and cream, and cry when his favourite dog dies. ‘Once a murderer always a murderer,’ is not a proverb in any language. It is most probable that the authors of the undiscovered crimes of recent years are now considered very respectable members of society. For all we know they may pay their debts with regularity, subscribe to school treats, help old ladies over crossings, and live in houses which are distinguished for the whitest window-curtains and cleanest doorsteps. They may sleep soundly, digest their food, and shiver with indignation when a ruffiany labourer is charged with assaulting his wife. Murders are committed, as a rule, under exceptional circumstances, and a murderer may look back upon ‘his little misfortune’ with occasional regret, but it is doubtful if ever he felt the least desire to give himself up or to exchange his liberty for a prison cell.

There is, however, a difference in murders. Some people are so anxious to acquire the title that they voluntarily accuse themselves of crimes of which they are innocent. Others give themselves up with a romantic story about their conscience having compelled them to do so. In most of these instances, if it is a man he has been drinking hard, and if it is a woman she is hysterical. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and, as long as a murderer’s mind is well balanced, he will bury his crime as deep as possible and forget it as soon as he can.

The idea that murderers are haunted for ever by the memory of their guilt is as fallacious as the smug proverb that ‘Murder will out.’ For one murder that comes to light there are ten that remain in eternal darkness.

It is time, however, to leave murderers in general to their peaceful enjoyments, and return to Mr. Gurth Egerton, the rescued passenger of the Bon Espoir, and to say somethin» of his antecedents.

His uncle, Ralph’s father, had been a man who late in life came into enormous wealth—a man who, having led a life of extravagance in his youth, and breathed an atmosphere of debt and difficulty, found himself, when the capacity for enjoyment was gone, the possessor of a vast fortune.

The old man’s whole nature seemed changed with his circumstances. He had squandered when he was poor; he pinched now he was rich. He had been generous when he was paying sixty per cent, for cash; he was mean to a degree now he had thousands invested in good security. He shut himself up in one of his houses, furnishing only three rooms, and cried over the expense of having a doctor to keep him alive. He quarrelled fiercely with his only son, Ralph, grudged him the paltry allowance which in his hard-up days he had cheerfully paid, and admitted only one person to his confidence.

That person was his nephew Gurth, his dead brother’s son, he had been fearful that Gurth would come upon him for assistance, or would expect a gift. Gurth did nothing of the sort, and the old man could have hugged him. But Gurth’s good qualities were positive as well as negative. Gurth was in a fast set of young spendthrifts, and rich heirs and minors, who paid ninety per cent, for money, and he brought the old man their bills, and always brought him the best.

No one knew where Gurth got the money. ‘His friend in the City’ was a mystery to all the set. He didn’t choose to say it was his uncle. Gurth made money out of the transactions, too, and he was useful in advising the old miser when to sue for his money and when to renew, for he was in the confidence of his reckless companions, and they thought him a jolly good fellow to get their paper melted for them.

Old Ralph always promised Gurth to remember him in his will, and he did so after his own fashion.