‘You have never known what it is to want bread.’
‘I’m not particularly fond of bread,’ said Celia, ‘but I have often had to complain of the disgusting staleness of the loaf they give us at luncheon.’
‘Ah, Miss Clare, when I was a student at Marischal College, Aberdeen, I have seen many a young fellow walking the street in his scarlet gown, gaunt and hungry-eyed, to whom a hunch of your stale loaf would have been a luxury. When a Scotch parson sends his son to the University he is not always able to give him the price of a daily dinner. Well for the lad if he can be sure of a bowl of porridge for his breakfast and supper.’
‘Poor dear creatures,’ cried Celia. ‘I’m afraid Edward spends as much money on gloves and cigars as would keep an economical young man at a Scotch University — but then he is a poet.’
‘Is a poet necessarily a spendthrift?’
‘Upon my word I don’t know, but poets seem generally given that way, don’t they? One can hardly expect them to be very careful about pounds, shillings, and pence. Their heads are in the clouds, and they have no eyes for the small transactions of daily life.’
After this they walked on for a little while ill silence, George Gerard thoughtfully contemplative of the fair young face, with its mignon prettiness and frivolous expression.
‘It would be a misfortune, as well as a folly, for a man of my stamp to admire such a girl as that,’ he told himself; ‘but I may allow myself to be amused by her.’
A minute afterwards Edward Clare came up to him, and took him by the arm.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what passed between you and Treverton?’
‘A good deal, yet it amounts to very little. I am sorry for him.’
‘Then you do not believe that he killed his wife?’
‘I don’t know. It is a profound mystery. I should advise you to let things take their own course. What good will it do for you to make that poor wife of his miserable? If he is guilty, punishment will come sooner or later. If he is innocent, it would be a hard thing for you to persecute him.’
‘What, do you suppose I aim such a milksop as to let hint go on his way unquestioned? I, who have loved Laura, and lost her? Suppose him even innocent of the murder — which is more than I am ready to believe, — he is guilty of a cruel fraud upon his present wife, of an impudent fraud upon the trustees to Jasper Treverton’s estate, of whom my father is one. He has no more right to yonder Manor House than I have. His marriage with Laura Malcolm is no marriage. Am I to hold my peace, knowing all this?’
‘To reveal what you know will be to break Mrs. Treverton’s heart, and to reduce her to beggary. Hardly the act of a friend.’
‘I may give her pain, but I shall not reduce her to beggary. She has a small income of her own.’
‘And the Manor House estate will be devoted to the creation of an hospital.’
‘Those are the conditions of Jasper Treverton’s will.’
‘As a professional man I am bound to rejoice; but as a mere human being I can’t help feeling sorry for Mrs. Treverton. She seems devoted to her husband.’
‘Yes,’ answered Edward, ‘he has contrived to hoodwink her; but perhaps when she knows that John Treverton is Jack Chicot, the ballet-dancer’s husband, she will be disenchanted.’
Gerard made no reply. He began to understand that personal malignity was the mainspring of Edward’s anxiety to let in the light upon John Treverton’s secret. He was almost sorry that he had lent his aid to the discovery; yet he had ardently desired that justice should be done upon La Chicot’s murderer. It was only since his recent conversation with John Treverton that his opinion as to the husband’s guilt had begun to waver.
He was haunted all the rest of the day by uncomfortable thoughts about the master of Hazlehurst Manor and his fair young wife; thoughts so uncomfortable as to prevent his enjoyment of Celia’s lively company, which had all the charm of novelty to a man whose youth had not been brightened by girlish society, and whose way of life had been dull, and hard, and laborious. He was to go back to London next morning by the first train, and although the Vicar pressed him to remain, and even Celia put in a kindly word, he stuck to his intention.
‘My practice is not of a kind that will bear being trifled with,’ he said when he had thanked Mr. Clare for his proffered hospitality. ‘The few remunerative patients I have would be quick to take offence if they fancied I neglected them.’
‘But you give yourself a holiday sometimes, I suppose?’ said Mrs. Clare, whose large maternal heart had a kindly feeling for all young men, simply because her son belonged to that section of society. ‘You go to stay with your relations now and then, don’t you?’
‘No, my dear Mrs. Clare, I do not; and fur the best of all reasons — I have no relations. I am the last twig of a withered tree.’
‘How sad!’ replied the Vicar’s wife.
Celia echoed the sigh, and looked compassionately at the surgeon, and compassion in Celia’s blue eyes was a sentiment no man could afford to despise.
‘If you will let me come again some day, when I have made a little progress in my profession, you will be giving me something pleasant to look forward to,’ said Gerard.
‘My dear fellow, we shall always be glad to see you,’ the Vicar answered, heartily. ‘It strikes me you are the kind of friend my son wants.’
VOLUME III.
CHAPTER I. WHY DON’T YOU TRUST ME?
THAT winter Sabbath was a dreary day for John Treverton. He walked home almost in silence, Laura wondering at his thoughtfulness, and speculating anxiously upon the possible reasons for this sudden change in his mood. Had this friend of the Clares brought him bad news? Yet how could that be? Must it not rather be that this meeting with an old acquaintance had recalled some painful period in that past life of which she knew so little?
‘That is my misfortune,’ she thought. ‘I am only half a wife while I am ignorant of all his old sorrows.’
She did not disturb her husband by questions of any kind, but walked quietly by his side through the wintry shrubberies, where the holly berries were gleaming in the mid-day sun, and the fearless robins fluttered from hawthorn to laurel.
‘I won’t come in to luncheon, dear,’ said John when they came to the hall door. ‘I feel a little dull and headachy, and I think it might do me good to lie down for an hour or two.’
‘ Shall I come and read you to sleep, Jack?’
‘No, dear, I shall be better alone.’ ‘Oh, Jack, why are you not frank with me? exclaimed his wife, piteously. ‘ I know there is something on your mind. Why don’t you trust me?’
‘ Not yet, dear. You will know everything that can be known about me very soon, I dare say. But we need not anticipate the revelation. It will not be too pleasant for either of us.’
‘Do you think that anything I can ever learn about you will change me?’ she asked, with her hand upon his arm, looking up at him intently. ‘Have I not trusted you, and loved you, blindly?’
‘Yes, dearest, blindly. But how can I tell how you may feel when your eyes are opened?’
She looked at him for some moments in silence, trying to read his face; and then, with most pathetic earnestness, she said, —
‘John, if there is anything to be told to your discredit, if there is any act of your past life that you are ashamed to remember — ashamed to acknowledge, — an act known to others, for pity’s sake let me hear it from you, and not from the lips of an enemy. Am I so seven; a judge that you should fear to stand before me? Have I not been weakly fond, blindly trustful? Can you doubt my power to excuse and to pardon, where all the rest of mankind might be inexorable?’
‘ No,’ he answered, quickly, ‘I will not you. No, dear love, it is not because I feared to trust YOU that I have tried to keep my secret. I wished to spare you pain; for I knew that it would pain you to know how low I had sunk before your influence, your love, came to lift me out of the slough into which I had fallen. But it seems the pain must come. Good and pure as y
ou are, there are those who will not spare you that bitter knowledge. Yes, dear. it is best that you should learn the truth first from my lips. Whatever garbled version of this story may be told you afterwards, you shall have the truth from me.’
He put his arm round her, and they went up the broad old staircase side by aide to the room that had been Jasper Treverton’s study, and which Laura had beautified for her husband. Here they were secure from intrusion. John Treverton drew his wife’s favourite chair to the fire, and sat down by her side, as they had sat on the night when Laura told her husband the story of Mr. Desrolles.
They sat for some minutes in silence, John Treverton looking at the fire, meditating how best to begin his confession.
Oh, Laura, I wonder whether you will hate me when you have heard what my past life was like?’ he said at last. ‘ I will not spare myself; but even at this last moment I shrink from uttering the words that may destroy our happiness, and part us for ever. You shall be free to decide our fate. If when you have heard all, you should say to yourself, ‘This man is unworthy of my love,’ and if you should recoil from me — as you may — with disgust and abhorrence, I will bow my head to your decree, and disappear out of your life for ever.’
His wife turned her stricken face to him, pale as death.
‘What crime have you committed, that you can think it possible that I should withdraw my love from you?’ she asked, with tremulous lips.
‘I have committed no crime, Laura, but I have been suspected of the worst of crimes. Do you remember the story of a man whose name was bandied about in the newspapers nearly a year ago; a man whose wife was murdered, and whom tome of the London papers plainly denounced as the murderer; the man called Chicot, whose disap pearance was one of the social mysteries of the year?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, looking at him wonderingly. ‘What can you have to do with that man?’
‘ I am that man!’
‘You? You, John Treverton?’
‘I, John Treverton, alias Chicot.’
‘The husband of a stage dancer?’
‘Yes, Laura, There have been two loves in my life. First, my love for a woman who had nothing but her beauty to make her dear to the hearts of men. Secondly, my love for you, whose beauty if the lightest part in your power to win and keep my affection. My history may be briefly told, I began life in a cavalry regiment, with a small fortune in shares and stocks. These were so handy to get rid of, that before I had been five years in the army I had contrived to make away with my last sixpence. I had not been particularly dissipated or extravagant ; I had not vied with my captain, who was the son of a West-end confectioner, and spent money like water; or with my colonel, who was a man of rank, and £30,000 in debt; but I had kept good horses, and mixed in the best society, and the day I got my company saw me a beggar. There was nothing for it but to sell out, and I sold out; and being of a happy-go-lucky temperament, and tired of the confinement of country quarters, I crossed the Channel, and wandered over the loveliest half of Europe with a knapsack and a sketch-book. When I had spent the price of my commission I found myself in Paris, out at elbows, penniless, with a taste for literature and a facile pencil. I lived in a garret in the Quartier Latin, found friends in a thoroughly Bohemian set, and contrived to earn just enough to keep body and soul together. I began this life with the idea that I might one day win distinction in art. I had the will to work, and a good deal of ambition. But the young men among whom I lived, small journalists and hangers on at the minor theatres, soon taught me a different story. I learned to live as they lived, from hand to mouth. All higher aspirations died out of my mind. I became a hanger on at stage doors, a scribbler of newspaper paragraphs — a collaborateur in Palais Royal farces — happy when I had the price of a dinner in my waistcoat pocket, and a decent coat on my back. It was at this stage of my career that I fell in love with Zaïre Chicot, a popular dancer at the theatre most affected by students in law and medicine. She was the handsomest woman I had ever seen. No one had a word to say against her character. She was not a lady; I knew that, even when I was most in love with her. But the vulgarities and ignorances that would have revolted me in an Englishwoman amused and even pleased me in this daughter of the people. She was fond of me, and I of her. We married without a thought of the future: with very little care even for the present. My wife — the popular dancer at a popular theatre — was so much the more important person of the two, that from the hour of my marriage I was known by her name — first, as La Chicot’s husband; then as Jack Chicot, tout court. We were reasonably happy together, till my wife began to fall into those wretched habits of intemperance which finally blighted both our lives. God knows I did my best to cure her. I tried my uttermost to hold her back from the dreary gulf into which she was descending. But I was powerless. No words of mine could ever tell you the misery — the degradation — of my life. I endured it. Perhaps I hardly knew the full measure of my wretchedness till the day on which I heard my cousin Jasper’s will read, and knew the happiness which might have been mine had I been free from that hateful bondage.’
Laura sat by his side in silence, her face hidden in her hands, her head bowed down upon the cushion of the chair, crushed by the deep shame involved in her husband’s confession.
‘There is little more to tell. When I first saw and loved you I was La Chicot’s husband — a man bound hand and foot. I had no right to come near you, yet I came. I had a vague, wicked hope that Fate would set me free somehow. Yet I tried, honestly, to do my duty to that unhappy woman. When her life was in peril I helped to nurse her. I bore patiently with her violent temper after she recovered. When the year was nearly gone it came into my mind that my cousin’s estate might be secured to you by a marriage which should fulfil the terms of his will without making me your husband save in name. And then, if in some happier day I should be released from my bonds, we could be married again — as we were.’
He paused, but there was no answer from Laura except a half-stifled sob.
‘Laura, can you pity and pardon me? For God’s sake say that I am not utterly despicable in your eyes.’
‘Despicable? no!’ she said, lifting up hex tear-stained face, ashy pale, and drawn with pain, ‘not despicable, John, You could never be that, in my eyes. But wrong, oh, so deeply wrong. See what shame and anguish you have brought upon both of us! What was Jasper Treverton’s fortune worth to either of us that you should be guilty of a fraud in your endeavour to gain it for me?’
‘A fraud?’
‘Yes. Do you not see that our first marriage, being really no marriage, was an imposition and a sham — that neither you nor I have a right to a sixpence of Jasper Treverton’s money, or an acre of his land, All is forfeited to the hospital trusts, We have no right to live in this home, We possess nothing but my income. We can live upon that, Jack. I am not afraid to face poverty with you; but I will not live an hour under the weight of this shameful secret. Mr. Clare and Mr. Sampson must know the truth at once.’
Her husband was kneeling at her feet, looking up at her with a radiant face.
‘My love, my dearest, you have made me too happy. You do not shrink from me — you do not abandon me. Poverty! no, Laura, I am not afraid of that. I have feared only the loss of your love. That has been my ever-present fear. That one great dread has sealed my lips.’
‘You can never lose my love, dear. It was given to you without the power of recall. But if you want to regain my esteem you must act bravely and honourably. You must undo the wrong you have done.’
‘We will hold a council to-night, Laura. We will take Edward Clare’s cards out of his hands.’
‘What? Does Edward know?’
‘He knows that I and Chicot are one.’
‘Ah, then I can understand the look he gave you on the night of our first dinner-party — a look full of malignity. He had just been talking of Chicot.’
She shuddered as she pronounced a name associated with such unspeakable horror. And that name was her hu
sband’s; the man branded with the suspicion of a hideous crime was her husband.
‘I am afraid Edward is your secret enemy,’ she said, after a pause.
‘I am sure he is — and I believe he is on the eve of becoming my open enemy. It will be a triumph in a small way for me to take the initiative, and resign the estate.’
CHAPTER II. ON HIS DEFENCE.
A LETTER was brought to the Vicar just as he was sitting down to his five o’clock dinner that Sunday evening in the bosom of his family. The Vicar dined at five on Sundays, giving himself an hour for his dinner, and fifty minutes for repose after it, before he left home for the seven o’clock service. There were those among his congregation who affirmed that the tone of the Vicar’s evening sermon depended very much upon his satisfaction with his dinner. If he dined well he took a pleasant view of human nature and human frailty, and was milder than Jeremy Taylor. If his dinner had been a failure the bitterest Calvinism was not severe enough for him.
‘From the Manor House, sir,’ said the parlourmaid. ‘An answer waited for.’
‘Why do people bring me letters just as I am sitting down to my dinner?’ ejaculated the Vicar, pettishly. ‘From Treverton, too. What can he have to write about?’
Edward Clare looked up, with an eager face.
‘Wants to see me after church this evening — particular business,’ said the Vicar.’ Tell Mr. Treverton’s man, yes, Susan. My compliments, and I’ll be at the Manor House before nine’
Edward was mystified. Was John Treverton going to throw himself upon the Vicar’s mercy — to win that good easy man over to his cause — and persuade him to wink at the fraud upon the trusts under Jasper’s will? Edward had no opinion of his father’s wisdom, or his father’s strength of mind. The Vicar was so weakly fond of Laura.
‘I hate going out of an evening in such weather,’ said Mr. Clare, ‘but I suppose Treverton has something important to say, or he would hardly ask me to risk a bronchial attack.’
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 615