Celia told him, with all due courtesy, that she really did mean to refuse him.
‘You might do worse,’ he said, dolefully.
‘No doubt I might. Some rather vulgar person has compared matrimony to a bag of snakes, in which there is only one eel. Perhaps you are the one eel. But then you see I am not obliged to marry anybody. I can go on like Queen Elizabeth,
‘“In maiden meditation, fancy free.”’
‘That’s not likely,’ said Mr. Sampson, moodily. ‘A young lady of your stamp won’t remain single. You’re too attractive and too lively. No, you’ll marry some scamp for the sake of his good looks: and perhaps the day will come when you’ll remember this evening, and feel sorry that you rejected an honest man’s offer.’
They were at the house by this time, much to Celia’s relief, as she felt that the conversation could hardly be carried on further without unpleasantness.
She stopped in the hall, and offered her hand to her dejected admirer.
‘Shake hands, Mr. Sampson, to show that you bear no malice,’ she said. ‘Be assured I shall always like and respect you as a friend of our family.’
She did not wait for his answer, but tripped lightly upstairs, determined not to make her appearance again that evening.
Tom Sampson was inclined to return to his own house, without waiting to say good-night to his client, but while he stood in the hall making up his mind on this point, John Treverton came out of the dining-room to look for him.
‘Why, Sampson, what are you doing out there?’ he cried. ‘Come in and have some supper. You haven’t eaten much since we left Paris.’
‘Much,’ echoed Sampson, dismally. ‘A segment of hard biscuit on board the boat, and a cup of weak tea at Dover, have been my only sustenance. But, I don’t feel that I care about supper,’ he added, surveying the table with a melancholy eye. ‘I ought to be hungry, but I’m not.’
‘Why, you seem quite low spirited, Mr. Sampson?’ said Laura, kindly.
‘I am feeling a little low to-night, Mrs. Treverton.’
‘ Nonsense, man. Low spirited on such a night as this, after the triumph you achieved at Auray! Wasn’t it wonderful, Laura, that Sampson’s acumen should have hit upon the idea of my first marriage being invalid? It was the only chance we had — the only thing that could have saved the estate.’
‘ Of course it was,’ replied Sampson, ‘ and that was why I thought of it. A lawyer is bound to see every chance, however remote. I don’t know that in my own mind I thought it really likely that your first wife had been encumbered with a living husband when you married her; but I saw that it was just the one loophole for your escape from a most confounded fix.’
Cheered by the idea that he had saved his client’s fortune, and comforted by a tumbler or two of irreproachable champagne, Mr. Sampson managed to eat a very good supper, and he trudged briskly homewards on the stroke of midnight, tolerably content with himself and life in general.
‘Perhaps after all I may be better off as a bachelor than with the most fascinating of wives,’ he reflected. ‘ But I must come to an understanding with Eliza. Cheeseparing is all very well as long as my cheese is not pared. I must let Eliza know that I’m master, and that my tastes are to be consulted in every particular. When I think of the melted butter they gave me last night at Veefoor’s, and the sauce with that sole normong, I shudder at the recollection of the bill-sticker’s paste I’ve been asked to eat at my own table. If Eliza is to go on keeping house for me, there must be a revolution in the cookery.’
John Treverton and his wife spent a Sabbath of exceeding peacefulness. They appeared at church together, morning and evening, much to the discomfiture of Edward Clare, who was surprised to see them looking so happy.
‘Does he think the storm has blown over?’ Edward said to himself. ‘Poor wretch. He will discover his mistake before long.’
The Vicar went to the Manor House after the evening service, and he and John Treverton were closeted together in the library for an hour or more, during which time John told his wife’s trustee all that had happened at Auray, and showed him documents which proved Marie Pomellec’s marriage with Jean Kergariou, and Kergariou’s death two years after her second marriage.
‘Providence has been very good to you, John Treverton,’ said the Vicar, when he had heard everything. ‘ You cannot be too grateful for your escape from disgrace and difficulty. But I hope you will always remember that your own sin is not lessened by this discovery. I hope that you honestly and truly repent that sin.’
‘Can I do otherwise?’ asked John Treverton, sadly. ‘Has it not brought fear and sorrow upon one I love better than myself. The thing was done to benefit her, but I feel now that it was not the less dishonourable.’
‘Well, we will try to forget all about it,’ said the good-natured Vicar, who, in exhorting a sinner to repentance, never wished to make the burden of remorse too heavy. ‘ I only desired that you should see your conduct in a proper light, as a Christian and a gentleman. God knows how grateful I am to Him for His mercy to you and my dear Laura. It would have almost broken my heart to see you turned out of this house.’
‘Like Adam and Eve out of Paradise,’ said Treverton, smiling, ‘and my poor Eve a sinless sufferer.’
After this serious talk the Vicar and his host went back to the drawing-room, where Laura and Celia were sitting by a glorious wood fire reading Robertson’s sermons.
‘What a darling he was,’ cried Celia, with a gush. ‘And how desperately in love with him I should have been if I had lived at Brighton in his time and heard him preach. His are the only sermons I can read without feeling bored. If that dear prosy old father of mine would only take a lesson — —’
Her father’s entrance silenced her, just as she was about to criticise his capabilities as a preacher. The Vicar went straight to Laura, and took both her hands in his hearty grasp.
‘My dear, dear girl,’ he said. ‘Providence has ordered all things well for you. You have no more trouble to fear!’
It was not till the next morning that Laura remembered her husband’s anxious tenant from Beechampton. Husband and wife were breakfasting together tête-à-tête in the book-room, at half-past seven, John Treverton dressed in his hunting gear, ready to start for a six-mile ride to the meet of staghounds among the pasture-clad hills. Celia, who did not consider that her obligations as a guest included early rising, was still luxuriating in morning dreams.
‘ Oh, by-the-by,’ exclaimed Laura, when she and her husband had talked about many things, ‘I quite forgot to tell you about your tenant at Beechampton. He is coming to see you at nine o’clock this morning. It is a rather important matter he wants to see you about, he says. He has been extremely anxious for your return.’
‘My tenant at Beechampton, dear,’ said John Treverton, with a puzzled air. ‘Who can that be? I have no property at Beechampton except ground rents, and Sampson collects those. I have nothing to do with the tenants.’
‘Yes, but this is something about drainage, and your tenant wants to see you. He said you were the ground landlord of some houses which he holds.’
John Treverton shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
‘Rather a bore,’ he said. ‘ But if he is here at nine o’clock I don’t mind seeing him — I shan’t wait for him. I’ve ordered my horse at nine sharp. And I’ve ordered the pony carriage for you and Celia to drive to the meet. It’s a fine morning, and the fresh air will do you good.’
‘Then I’d better send a message to Celia,’ said Laura. ‘ She is given to late hours in wintry weather.’
She rang the bell and told Trimmer to send one of the maids to Miss Clare to say that she was to be ready for a drive at nine o’clock; and then John and his wife dawdled over their talk and breakfast till half-past eight, by which time the January sun was bright enough to invite them into the garden.
‘Run and put on your sealskin, Laura, and come for a turn in the grounds,’ said Mr. Treverton.
&n
bsp; The obedient wife departed, and came back in five minutes, in a brown cloth dress, with jacket, hat, and muff of darkest sealskin.
‘What a delightful study in brown,’ said John.
They went out into the Dutch garden — that garden where John Treverton had walked alone on the morning after his first arrival at Hazlehurst — the garden where he had seen Laura standing under the yew tree arch, in the glad April sunshine. They passed under the arch today, and made the circuit of the orchard, and speculated as to how long it would be before the primroses would brighten the grassy banks, and the wild purple crocuses break through the sod, like imprisoned souls rising from a wintry grave.
Never had they been happier together — perhaps never so happy — for John Treverton’s mind was no longer burdened with the secret of an unhappy past. To-day it seemed to both as if there was not a cloud on their horizon. They strolled about orchard and garden until the church clock struck nine, and then John went straight to the hall door, where his handsome bay stood waiting for him, and where Laura’s ponies were rattling their bits, and shaking their pretty little thoroughbred heads, in a general impatience to be doing something, were it only running away with the light basket carriage to which they were harnessed.
‘Oh, there is your tenant,’ said Laura, as she and her husband came round the gravel drive from the adjacent garden, ‘standing at the hall door waiting for you.’
‘Is that he?’ exclaimed Treverton. ‘He looks uncommonly like a Londoner. Well, my good fellow’ he began, going up to the man, hunting-crop in hand, ready to mount his horse, ‘what is your business with me ? Please make it as short as you can, for I’ve six miles to ride before I begin my day’s work.’
‘I shall be very brief, Mr. Treverton,’ answered the stranger, coming close up to the master of Hazlehurst Manor, and speaking in a low and serious tone, ‘for I want to catch the up-train at 11.30, and I must take you with me. I’m a police officer from Scotland Yard, and I am here to arrest you on suspicion of having murdered your wife, known as Mademoiselle Chicot, at Cibber Street, Leicester Square, on the 19th of February, 187 — .’
John Treverton turned deadly pale; but he faced the man without flinching.
‘ I’ll come with you immediately,’ he said; ‘but you can do me one favour. Don’t let my wife know the nature of the business that takes me to London. I can get it broken to her gently after I am gone.’
‘Don’t you think you’d better tell her yourself?’ suggested the detective, in a friendly tone. ‘ She’ll take it better from you than from any one else. I’ve always found it so. Tell her the truth, and let her come to London with us, if she likes.’ ‘You are right,’ said Treverton, ‘she’ll be happier near me than eating her heart out down here. You’ve got some one with you, I suppose. You didn’t reckon upon taking me single handed?’
‘I didn’t reckon upon your making any resistance. You’re too much a gentleman and a man of the world. I’ve no doubt you can clear yourself when you come before a magistrate, and that the business will go no further. It was your being absent from the inquest, you know, that made things look bad against you.’
‘Yes, that was a mistake,’ answered Treverton.
‘I’ve got a man inside,’ said the detective. ‘ If you’ll step into the parlour, and have it out with your wife, he can wait in the hall. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind ordering a trap of some kind to take us to the station. It might look better for you to go in your own trap.’
‘Yes, I’ll see to it,’ assented John Treverton, absently. ‘ Answer me one question, there’s a good fellow. Who set Scotland Yard on my heels? Who put you up to the fact that I am the man who called himself Chicot?’
‘Never you mind how we got at that, sir,’ replied the detective, sagely. ‘That’s a kind of thing we never tell. We got the straight tip; that’s all you need know. It don’t make no difference to you how we got it, does it now?”
Yes said John Treverton, ‘it makes a great difference. But I daresay I shall know all about it before long.’
CHAPTER IX. ON SUSPICION.
MR. TREVERTON’S hunter was taken back to his loose-box, where he executed an energetic pas seul with his hind legs, in the exuberance of his feelings at being let off his day’s work. Mr. Treverton himself was closeted with his wife in the book-room, but not alone. The man from Scotland Yard was present throughout the interview, while his subordinate, a respectable-looking young man in plain clothes, paced quietly up and down the corridor outside.
Laura bore this last crushing blow as she had borne the first — with a noble heroism. She neither wept nor trembled, but stood by her husband’s side, pale and steadfast, ready to sustain and comfort him, rather than to add to his burden with the weight of her own grief.
‘I am not afraid, John,’ she said. ‘I am almost glad that you should face this hideous charge. Better to be put upon your trial, and prove yourself innocent, as I know you can, than to live all your life under the shadow of a groundless suspicion.’
She spoke boldly, yet her heart sickened at the thought that it might not be easy, perhaps not even possible, for her husband to prove himself guiltless. She remembered what had been said at the time of the murder, and how every circumstance had seemed to point at him as the murderer.
‘ My dearest, I shall be able to confront this charge,’ answered John Treverton. ‘I have no fear of that. I made a miserable mistake in not facing the difficulty at the time. The business may be a little more troublesome now than it would have been then; but I am not afraid. I would not ask you to go to London with me, darling, if I feared the result of my journey.’
‘Do you think I would let you go alone, in any case ?’ asked Laura.
She was thinking that even if this trouble were to end in the scaffold, she would be with him to the last, clinging to him and holding by him as other brave women had held by their loved ones, face to face with death. But no, it would not come to that. She was so convinced, in her own mind, of his innocence, that she could not suppose there would be much difficulty in proving the fact in a court of law.
‘You will take your maid with you, of course ?’ said Treverton.
‘Yes, I should like to take Mary.’
‘Where am I to be during this inquiry?’ asked Treverton, turning to the detective.
‘At the House of Detention, Clerkenwell.’
‘Not the most desirable neighbourhood, but it might be worse,’ said Treverton.
‘They are surely not going to put you in prison, John, before they have proved anything against you ?’ cried his wife, with a look of horror.
‘It’s only a form, dear. “We needn’t call it prison; but I shan’t be exactly at large. I think, perhaps, the best plan would be for you to take quiet lodgings at Islington, say in Colebrook Row, for instance. That’s a decent place. You’d prefer that to an hotel, wouldn’t you?’
‘Infinitely.’
‘Very well. You had better put up at the Midland Hotel to-night, and to-morrow morning you and Mary can drive about in a cab till you find a nice lodging. I shall write a line to Sampson, asking him to follow us as soon as he can. He may be of use to us in London.’
Everything was settled as quietly as if they had been starting on a pleasure trip. The brougham was at the door in time to take them to the Station. Celia, who was ready dressed to drive to the meet, was the only person who appeared excited or bewildered.
‘What does it all mean, Laura?’ she asked ‘Have you and Mr. Treverton gone suddenly mad? At eight o’clock you send up to tell me you are going to take me to the meet; and at nine I find you are starting for London, with two strange men. What can you mean by it ?’
‘It means very serious business, Celia,’ Laura answered, quietly. ‘Do not worry yourself about it. You will know everything, by-and-by.’
‘By-and-by,’ echoed Celia, scornfully. ‘I sup pose you mean when I. go to heaven, and look down upon you with a new pair of eyes ? I want to know now. By-and-by will
not be the least use. I remember when I was a child, if people told me I should have anything by-and-by, I never got it.’
‘Good-bye, Celia, dearest. John will write to your father.’
‘Yes, and my father will keep the letter all to himself. When will you be back ?’
‘Soon, I hope; but I cannot say how soon.’
‘Now, madam,’ said the police-officer, ‘ the time is up.’
Laura embraced her friend, and stepped into the carriage. Her husband followed, then the detective, and lastly, the faithful Mary, who had had hard work to get a couple of portmanteaus packed for her master and mistress, and a few things huddled into a carpet-bag for herself. She had no idea where they were going, or the motive of this sudden journey. A few hasty words had been said to Trimmer, as to the conduct of the household, and that was all.
At the station Mr. Palby, the detective, contrived to secure a compartment for Mr. and Mrs. Treverton and himself. His subordinate was to travel with Mary in a second-class carriage.
‘You needn’t be afraid of his talking,’ said Mr Palby to his prisoner. ‘Grummles is as close as wax.’
‘It can matter very little whether he talks or not,’ answered Treverton, indifferently. ‘Everybody will know everything in a day or two. The newspapers will make my story public’
He thought with supreme bitterness how much easier it would have been for him to face this accusation as Jack Chicot than as John Treverton, alias Chicot; how much less there would have been for the newspapers to say about him, had he stood boldly forward at the inquest and faced his difficulty. About Jack Chicot, the literary Bohemian, the world would have been little curious. much greater was the scandal now that the accuse was a man of fortune, a country squire, the bearer of a good old name.
At five o’clock that winter afternoon the doors of the House of Detention closed upon John Treverton. There was some deference shown to the accused even here, and much consideration for the lovely young wife, who remained quietly with her husband to the last moment, and gave vent to none of the lamentations which were wont to disturb the orderly silence of those stony halls. Laura made herself acquainted with the rules and regulations to which her husband would be subject — the hours at which she would be allowed to see him, and then bade him good-bye without a tear. It was only when she and Mary were alone in the cab, on their way to the Midland Hotel, that her fortitude broke down, and she burst into convulsive sobs.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 623