And then, without mentioning the names of people or of places, he told the story of Jasper Treverton’s will, and of Laura Malcolm’s marriage. The facts, as he stated them, went far to show John Treverton a scheming scoundrel, capable of committing a crime of the darkest kind to further his own interest.
“The case against him looks black, I admit,” said Gerard, when Clare had finished. “But there is one difficult point in the story. You say that in order to secure the fortune Chicot married the young lady in the January before Madame Chicot’s death. Now if he had made up his mind to get rid of his lawful wife by foul means, why did he not do it before he contracted that marriage instead of afterwards? The crime would have been the same, the danger of detection no greater. The murder committed after the second marriage was an anachronism.”
“Who can fathom his motives? He may have had no design against his wife’s life when he married the lady I know. He may have believed it possible to so arrange his life that no one would ever recognise Jack Chicot in the country Squire. He may have thought that he could buy his freedom from Madame Chicot. Perhaps it was only when he found that her love, or her jealousy, was not to be hoodwinked that he conceived the idea of murder. No man—assuredly, no man of decent antecedents—reaches the lowest depth of iniquity all at once.”
“Well,” sighed Gerard, after a pause, “I will go with you, and see this man. I had a curious interest in that poor creature’s career. I would have done much to save her from the consequence of her own folly, had it been possible. Yes, I will go with you, I should like to know the end of the story.”
It was agreed between the two young men that they were to go to Devonshire together in the first week of the new year, Edward Clare remaining only a week in London. Gerard was to accompany Clare as his friend, and to stay at the Vicarage as his guest.
XXIX
George Gerard
John Treverton was out of the doctor’s hands before Christmas was over, and able to appear on his mare Black Bess, with his wife, mounted on the gentlest of grey Arabs, at the lawn meet which was held at the Manor House on New Year’s Day. It was the first time the hounds had met there since the death of old John Treverton, Jasper’s father, who had been a hunting man. Jasper had never cared for field sports, and had subscribed to the hounds as a duty. But now, John Treverton, the younger, who loved horses and hounds, as it is natural to an Englishman to love them, meant that things should be as they had been in the days of his great uncle, generally known among the elder section of the community as “the old Squire.” He had bought a couple of hunters and a first-rate hack for himself, an Arabian, and a smart cob for his wife; and Laura and he had ridden for many a mile over the moor in the mild afternoons of early autumn, getting into good form for the work they were to do in the winter.
Laura took kindly to the cob, and petted the Arab to a distracting degree. After a month’s experience on the moors, and a good many standing jumps over furze and water, she began to ride really well, and her husband looked forward to the delight of piloting her across the country in pursuit of the red deer, before the hunting season was over. But he meant, if he erred at all, to err on the side of caution, and on this New Year’s Day he had declared that he should only take Laura quietly through the lanes, and let her have a peep at the hounds from a distance. Celia, in the shortest of habits, a mere petticoat, and the most coquettish of hats, was mounted on her father’s steady-going roadster, a stalwart animal of prodigious girth, which contemplated the hounds with unvarying equanimity.
“What has become of your brother?” Laura asked, as she and Celia waited about, side by side, watching the assembling of the field. “I haven’t seen him since my childrens’ party.”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? He is in London making arrangements about a play that he is to write for one of the big theatres. Mother had a letter from him this morning. He is coming home the day after tomorrow, and he is going to bring a London acquaintance to stay two or three days at the Vicarage. A young doctor, good-looking, clever, a bachelor. Now, Laura, don’t you really think the world must be coming to an end very soon?”
“No, dear; but I congratulate you on the bachelor. He will be an acquisition. You must bring him to us.”
“Oh, but Edward says he can only stay two or three days. He has his practice to attend to. He is only coming for a breath of country air.”
“Poor fellow. What is his name?”
“Edward did not tell us that. Something horrid, I daresay. Smith or Jones, or Johnson—a name to dispel all pleasant illusions.”
“Here comes Mr. Sampson.”
“Yes, on the horse he drives in his dogcart. Could you believe, Laura, that a horse could support existence with so much bone and so little flesh?”
This was all Laura heard about the expected guest at the Vicarage, but poor Celia was in a flutter of wondering anticipation for the next two days. She took particular pains to make her brother’s den attractive, yet sighed as she reflected how much of the stranger’s brief visit would be spent within the closed doors of that masculine snuggery.
“I wonder whether he is fond of tea,” she mused, when she had given the last heightening touch to the multifarious frivolities of the poet’s study; “and whether I shall be allowed
