CHAPTER XVIII. AN UNLOOKED-FOR DEVELOPMENT.
That Robert Melray was infinitely distressed by the revelations of his kinsman's delinquencies we have had his own word for. He had been so much away from England that for a number of years he had seen scarcely anything of Dyson, but he knew that his brother had always had a high opinion of the young man's industry and business capacity, and that from the time of the elder Dyson's death he had stood in a sort of paternal relation to him. To James Melray, as Robert admitted, far more than to himself, must the discovery, thrust upon him by Dunning, have come as a shock--one, indeed, in his case from which he would never have wholly recovered had his life been prolonged for years.
Richard Dyson's wrongdoing was of a character so extreme that not to have taken some kind of notice of it would have seemed to Robert Melray not merely weak, but criminal. What if he were to carry out the programme as laid down by his brother to Dunning? What if he were to advance Dyson the three thousand pounds which would accrue to him presently under James Melray's will and dismiss him with ignominy? Nothing less than that did it seem possible for him to do. On the other hand, he could not afford to overlook the love borne by his mother for her dead niece's son--a love till now undarkened by the faintest shadow of a cloud. Mrs. Melray senior was seventy-six years old. The murder of her eldest son had been a blow which nothing but her indomitable spirit had enabled her to recover from. Should his be the hand, Robert Melray asked himself, to strike her another blow, which, to such a woman as she--one to whom the probity of every member of the house of Melray was as dear as her own virtue--would be only less terrible than the first? The more he thought of it the more he shrank from taking upon himself the onus of such a deed.
One other course was open to him. He had good hope of being able to dispose of the business of Melray Brothers before he was many weeks older. What if he were to go on till then and make no sign? With the turning over of the business to other hands his relations with Dyson, so far as the firm was concerned, would cease, and there would be no need ever to set eyes on him again were he minded not to do so. What if he were to keep his dark secret undivulged, unless it were to the criminal himself at their hour of parting, and allow his mother to live on for the rest of her days in happy ignorance of what, were it brought to her knowledge, might, perchance, prove well-nigh fatal to her? Yet it galled Robert Melray's strong sense of right and justice to think that a crime so flagrant should go wholly unpunished, even although the criminal were of his own flesh and blood. Willingly, then, did he accede to Dyson's written request for a ten-days' holiday on the plea of ill-health, which he found on his desk one morning shortly after his and Philip Winslade's interview with Mr. Dunning. For the time being he felt absolved from coming to a decision of any kind, and he breathed more freely in consequence.