He held his finger up impressively.
“It is for the sake of your father that I do this. You ought to be grateful. Twenty-four hours in which to vanish! Of course you must carefully choose the method of vanishing. Under the circumstances I know the way I should take were I in your shoes, but I hesitate to advise you to take it.”
The last sentence was in the man’s mind, not on his tongue; it produced the most effect because the whole gist of his speech was contained in it, and it was the point about which he was (half unconsciously) anxious. A respectable citizen can hardly suggest to a lad fifteen years his junior that he shall take his own life; it would be difficult, though rather easier, to say to a man of equal age, “Under your circumstances I should blow my brains out”—and Campion was so young. It might become known, too, that such advice had been given; then people would question the adviser’s motives, and what would become of that valuable business asset his respectability; he had foolishly risked it a little already, but that was not known to people whose opinion mattered. It would take wing with the soul of the young man, and his income might even suffer in consequence. Besides he would not like to remember he had advised suicide as a course of action; of course it did not matter if he only thought how conveniently it might smooth the state of affairs.
There were reasons why he did not want this young man, the only child of a very poor and respectable widow, to stand in the dock and have all the circumstances which led to his standing there sifted publicly by a painstaking gentleman intent on obtaining for his client if not acquittal at any rate as light a sentence as possible. The young sinner’s immediate superior was not his own master; his employer was uncompromising and old fashioned in his views. He was a man who practised no form of dishonesty or immorality that might not be decently practised by people of honest and moral repute. He would be hard on Ralph Campion on general business principles, but he would be much harder on one whose years and standing should be a guarantee for his good behaviour and influence over others if the conduct of such an one did not stand the test of public scrutiny. And the personal element would come in, for this man was not only the employer of Ralph Campion’s superior but also his father-in-law, and there was his wife’s attitude to be remembered besides that of her father; all this might affect his reputation, his business prospects, and his domestic life very seriously. He felt kindly to Ralph Campion. There was the whole point. The affair began with the kindly impulse of a rather coarse man of the world who had “married well” from his point of view and prospered socially and financially by so doing; prosperous himself, he saw no prosperity of any type other than that which he pursued and had pursued since he was Campion’s age. Therefore he was kindly according to his own lights. His moral code had nothing to do with his inner convictions; he had no convictions as to the nature of righteousness. His morality was to “get on,” and it was a tremendous bulwark against obvious criminality. His twelve-year-old son was “backward and delicate,” to quote the scholastic advertisements; he sent him to Ralph Campion’s father for tuition because the little vicarage stood in a bracing air. He liked and vaguely honoured his boy’s tutor—irrationally indeed, for he had certainly not “got on” from the standpoint of the financier. When the man died he obtained for his son, young Campion, that position of trust which he had betrayed. The boy was then nineteen; it was three years ago. The patron did more; still moved by kindliness he took a great deal of notice of his young subordinate. He liked the lad; he confided in him to some extent, increasingly so when he found him to be rather silent; he liked his refinement, at which he laughed—liking it despite his laughter, as coarse people sometimes do like a quality they do not possess. He gave him worldly precepts whereby he might in the future prosper in business. He chaffed him gaily concerning the young ladies of the neighbourhood, pointing out matrimonial prizes which he might have some chance of winning. He showed him a side of life he would probably have passed by unheeded; in so doing (here was the crux) he showed him a side of his own life that was not generally known. His protégé became in some respects his tool, in some his victim. He found out that betrayal of trust before others did so because he knew which man to suspect, because he knew the circumstances that might cause him to be specially tempted. The story was rather vulgar—sordid—common. From coarse kindliness to selfishness, from selfishness by way of fear to that which was in thought—murder. But yet he liked the boy, and he was sorry for him.
“You mustn’t suppose I think you a blackguard, Ralph,” he said. “In my private capacity, not as your business head, you know, we’re as good friends as ever, my boy. I know how things go, bless your life! I know how one gets let in for what one never meant to do at the start. That’s one pull a man has who isn’t always all that I suppose he ought to be. He knows from his own experience that whatever he may do he has really heaps of good points; and he applies that reasoning to other people when they don’t go quite straight, you know. But if you’re here when Mr. Warrener comes back I shall have you arrested. I must. I don’t know this now, you understand.”
The young man drew lines in the ashes of the hearth with a small brass poker. He did not look in the least the sort of person from whom one would expect a criminal to be made; he had what some people would call a “nice face”—comely to look upon, refined, rather sensitive, grave; by no means weak nor yet unintellectual. He looked as though he could think; he looked as though he could love; and he looked as though he could be ashamed of himself and admit the fact both to himself and to other people. These are good signs. He was as white as a sheet, and for the moment he seemed to be stunned rather than repentant.
“If,” he said slowly, speaking quietly and unemotionally, “if I do not vanish, but stay here and pay the penalty—I’ve behaved very badly, and I’m willing to pay it—will you let bygones be bygones—afterwards?”
“Bless my soul, Ralph Campion, you must be a raving ass! It is the ‘penalty’ as you call it, that counts. It is not the thing in itself so much. I don’t for a moment suppose you to be much worse than most other young fellows. I should think you’re better than most.”
“I hoped when you’d paid a debt you were given a receipt, and there was an end of the matter.”
“My good fellow! You’re old enough and you’ve seen enough to know that things aren’t done that way in this world. I say I don’t think you in the least a worse, or perhaps a more dishonest man than I am myself; not the least! But—excuse my bluntness—it’s the prison that sticks, it’s not the sin.”