Chapter X“Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner,” is, I do not doubt, a saying which has its truth. Nevertheless, I have generally noticed, when I have read much about murders or other great crimes, or about the social or political misdeeds which are not called crimes, that every piece of additional knowledge about the manner in which the thing was done, the inducements that led to it, the conduct that followed it, has, for me at least, set the capital act of wrong in a more hideous light. It is not, I think, that the picturesque circumstances, like the guttering candle whose image got on my nerves that night, affect me profoundly. It is, I believe, that, while many men, most if you like, are middling, the distinctly bad are really much worse and the distinctly good are really much better than the world of middling people is at all ready to allow. When I looked at the whole circumstances of the crime, as I now conceived them, a great hatred of Vane-Cartwright possessed my soul. There was a passage in my subsequent course with regard to him, when a reason personal to myself had just been added to the cause of my hate, upon which I look back sometimes with self-disgust, but I cannot think that the desire, which first prompted me to fasten myself upon Vane-Cartwright and try to drag him down, was an impure desire, or that it consorted ill with the inner meaning of those precepts which it was my profession to teach.Whether it was right or wrong, the strength of the feeling which then animated me showed itself in my resolve to think calmly and to act circumspectly. I was conscious that the structure of my theory was held together by no firm rivets of verifiable fact, but by something which must be called feeling. I did not distrust my theory on that account; but I did distrust myself, and I determined, in what lay before me, to take as few impulsive steps and to draw as few impulsive conclusions as I could.Reflecting, next morning, on what could be done immediately to bring my hypothesis to the test of fact, I looked in thePostal Guidefor such information as it gave about the mails to and from Bagdad. I also verified my impression as to the date of that occasion when Vane-Cartwright, staying at the hotel, had spent the evening with Peters. From what I found it seemed to me that a letter to Bagdad, posted that night, might have been expected to bring an answer back by the date on which the first letter from Bryanston came to my hands, or even a few days earlier, but that the delays of steamers might easily bring it about that an answer should not arrive till a week later, that is, when the second letter from Bryanston came to me. So far then there was nothing to make my conclusion impossible. I may add here that the enquiries which I made, as soon as I saw how to do it, confirmed what I gathered from thePostal Guide, and showed that on this occasion such a delay of the mails had actually happened.But, assuming this about the mails, what a frail edifice my theory still remained! Upon most careful reconsideration, I saw, as the reader may see, that it fitted in easily with all the known facts. It was just as well founded as many things which are taught as established truths of science or history. But as for expecting the law to hang Vane-Cartwright upon this, I myself, fantastically no doubt, refrained a little later from black-balling him at a distinguished club, of which, oddly enough, I had in my ambitious youth become a member. In large part the case, so to call it, against him rested on my observations of his demeanour in my house, and especially of his conduct in regard to my business as executor and my letters. This was precise and cogent enough for me, the observer at first hand; but it was too much matter of general impression to be of use to any one but me. Then the attribution of that early murder to Vane-Cartwright seemed to me absolutely requisite to make his murder of Peters conceivable. But it was the work of my imagination. In the region of palpable facts, one thing alone was evidence against Vane-Cartwright and not against any other man. It will be remembered that, when Callaghan first denounced Trethewy, Vane-Cartwright said that Trethewy’s behaviour in his presence to Peters had been friendly and respectful. He knew, I now told myself, a better way than expressing suspicion of Trethewy, and while by his stealthy act he fabricated evidence against him, he contrived by his words to cast on Callaghan alone the risk of thereafter appearing as an innocent man’s traducer. But his cunning had made a slip. It was gratuitous in doing so to have uttered a refutable lie as to Trethewy’s conduct in his presence. He was not the man to have seen the imprudence of this. It would have been to him inconceivable that Trethewy should confess the full extent of his wrong conduct to me. And so, not from any want of coolness, he had provided me with the one scrap of ordinary evidence necessary to give firmness to that belief of mine which might otherwise have seemed a mere bubble.
“Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner,” is, I do not doubt, a saying which has its truth. Nevertheless, I have generally noticed, when I have read much about murders or other great crimes, or about the social or political misdeeds which are not called crimes, that every piece of additional knowledge about the manner in which the thing was done, the inducements that led to it, the conduct that followed it, has, for me at least, set the capital act of wrong in a more hideous light. It is not, I think, that the picturesque circumstances, like the guttering candle whose image got on my nerves that night, affect me profoundly. It is, I believe, that, while many men, most if you like, are middling, the distinctly bad are really much worse and the distinctly good are really much better than the world of middling people is at all ready to allow. When I looked at the whole circumstances of the crime, as I now conceived them, a great hatred of Vane-Cartwright possessed my soul. There was a passage in my subsequent course with regard to him, when a reason personal to myself had just been added to the cause of my hate, upon which I look back sometimes with self-disgust, but I cannot think that the desire, which first prompted me to fasten myself upon Vane-Cartwright and try to drag him down, was an impure desire, or that it consorted ill with the inner meaning of those precepts which it was my profession to teach.
Whether it was right or wrong, the strength of the feeling which then animated me showed itself in my resolve to think calmly and to act circumspectly. I was conscious that the structure of my theory was held together by no firm rivets of verifiable fact, but by something which must be called feeling. I did not distrust my theory on that account; but I did distrust myself, and I determined, in what lay before me, to take as few impulsive steps and to draw as few impulsive conclusions as I could.
Reflecting, next morning, on what could be done immediately to bring my hypothesis to the test of fact, I looked in thePostal Guidefor such information as it gave about the mails to and from Bagdad. I also verified my impression as to the date of that occasion when Vane-Cartwright, staying at the hotel, had spent the evening with Peters. From what I found it seemed to me that a letter to Bagdad, posted that night, might have been expected to bring an answer back by the date on which the first letter from Bryanston came to my hands, or even a few days earlier, but that the delays of steamers might easily bring it about that an answer should not arrive till a week later, that is, when the second letter from Bryanston came to me. So far then there was nothing to make my conclusion impossible. I may add here that the enquiries which I made, as soon as I saw how to do it, confirmed what I gathered from thePostal Guide, and showed that on this occasion such a delay of the mails had actually happened.
But, assuming this about the mails, what a frail edifice my theory still remained! Upon most careful reconsideration, I saw, as the reader may see, that it fitted in easily with all the known facts. It was just as well founded as many things which are taught as established truths of science or history. But as for expecting the law to hang Vane-Cartwright upon this, I myself, fantastically no doubt, refrained a little later from black-balling him at a distinguished club, of which, oddly enough, I had in my ambitious youth become a member. In large part the case, so to call it, against him rested on my observations of his demeanour in my house, and especially of his conduct in regard to my business as executor and my letters. This was precise and cogent enough for me, the observer at first hand; but it was too much matter of general impression to be of use to any one but me. Then the attribution of that early murder to Vane-Cartwright seemed to me absolutely requisite to make his murder of Peters conceivable. But it was the work of my imagination. In the region of palpable facts, one thing alone was evidence against Vane-Cartwright and not against any other man. It will be remembered that, when Callaghan first denounced Trethewy, Vane-Cartwright said that Trethewy’s behaviour in his presence to Peters had been friendly and respectful. He knew, I now told myself, a better way than expressing suspicion of Trethewy, and while by his stealthy act he fabricated evidence against him, he contrived by his words to cast on Callaghan alone the risk of thereafter appearing as an innocent man’s traducer. But his cunning had made a slip. It was gratuitous in doing so to have uttered a refutable lie as to Trethewy’s conduct in his presence. He was not the man to have seen the imprudence of this. It would have been to him inconceivable that Trethewy should confess the full extent of his wrong conduct to me. And so, not from any want of coolness, he had provided me with the one scrap of ordinary evidence necessary to give firmness to that belief of mine which might otherwise have seemed a mere bubble.