'I'm afraid not,' he said, rather apathetically. 'You see, my people believe Gideon killed Hobart, and are determined to press the matter. One can't blame them, you know, if they really think that. My mother feels perfectly sure of it, from various bits of evidence she's got hold of, and won't be happy till the thing is thoroughly sifted. Of course, if Gideon's innocent, it's best for him, too, to have the thing out, now it's got so far. Don't you agree?'
'I don't. Why should a man have to waste his time appearing in a criminal court to answer to a charge of manslaughter or murder which he never committed? Gideon happens to have other things to do than to make a nine days' wonder for the press and public.'
I suppose that annoyed Potter rather. He said sharply, 'It's up to the chap to prove his innocence. Till he does, a great many people will believe him guilty, I'm afraid.'
'Including yourself, obviously.'
He shrugged his shoulders.
'I've no prejudices either way,' he returned, his emphasis on the personal pronoun indicating that I, in his opinion, had.
But there he was wrong. I hadn't. I was quite prepared to believe that Gideon had knocked Hobart downstairs, or that he hadn't. You can't be a parson, or, indeed, anything else, for long, without learning that decent men and women will do, at times, quite indecent things, and that the devil is quite strong enough to make a mess of any human being's life. You hear of a man that he was in love with another man's wife and hated her husband and at last killed him in a quarrel—and you think 'A bad lot.' But he may not be a bad lot at all; he may be a decent chap, full of ideals and generosity and fine thinking. Sometimes I'm inclined to agree with the author of that gushing and hysterical book In Darkest Christendom and a Way Out, that the only unforgiveable sin is exploitation. Exploitation of human needs and human weaknesses and human tragedies, for one's own profit…. And, as we very nearly all do it, in one way or another, let us hope that even that isn't quite unforgiveable. Yes, we nearly all do it. The press exploits for its benefit human silliness and ignorance and vulgarity and sensationalism, and, in exploiting it, feeds it. The war profiteers exploited the war…. We all exploit other people—use their affection, their dependence on us, their needs and their sins, for our own ends.
And that is deliberate. To knock a fellow human being downstairs in a quarrel, so that he dies—that may be impulse and accident, and is not so vile. Even to say nothing afterwards—even that is not so vile.
Still, I would rather, much rather, think that Gideon hadn't done it.
It was odd that, as I was thinking these things, walking up Surrey Street from the Temple Embankment, I overtook Gideon, who was slouching along in his usual abstracted way.