“Ah,” sighed Edward, “I dare say when a fellow loses his mother early in life he feels sentimental about her ever afterwards. But when a mother gets to the elderly and twaddly age, one may be fond of her, but one can’t feel poetical about her. I’ll tell you why I want you to go to church with us, Gerard. John Treverton is sure to be there. It will be a capital opportunity for you to take stock of him. Our pew is just opposite the Manor House pew. You’ll have him in full view all through the service.”
“Very good,” assented Gerard. “If this Mr. Treverton and Jack Chicot are the same, I shall know him wherever I see him.”
Celia was in excellent spirits all breakfast-time, and poured out tea and coffee with a vivacity and a grace worthy of French comedy. The presence of a strange young man had a wonderfully brightening influence. Celia felt grateful to her brother for having afforded this unaccustomed variety in the monotonous course of rural life. She took more pains than usual in putting on her bonnet for church, though that was an operation which she always performed carefully; and she happened somehow to be walking by Mr. Gerard’s side for the few hundred yards between the vicarage and the lychgate.
The vicarage party were amongst the first arrivals. There were only the charity children in the gallery, and a few gaffers and goodies in the free seats. The gentry dropped in slowly. Here was Mr. Sampson, the lawyer, looking his sandiest, accompanied by Miss Sampson, in a distinctly new bonnet. Here was Lady Barker, short and fat and puffy, in an ancient velvet mantle, bordered with brown fur, like a common councillor’s cloak on Lord Mayor’s Day, and with a bonnet that reached the climax of dowdiness—but when one is Lady Barker, and has lived in the same house for five-and-thirty years, it matters very little what one wears.
Here came the Pugsleys, the retired ironmonger and his wife, from Beechampton, Mrs. Pugsley, positively gorgeous in velvet and sable, and with a bird of many colours in her bonnet. Next arrived Mrs. Daracott, the rich widow, whose husband was the largest tenant farmer in the district, and who looked as if all Hazlehurst belonged to her; and here, after a sprinkling of nobodies, came John Treverton and his wife.
The vicar gave out a New Year’s hymn two minutes after this last arrival, and the congregation rose.
“The man is marvellously changed,” George Gerard said to himself as he stood face to face with John Treverton, “but he is the man I knew in Cibber Street, and no other.”
Yes, it was Jack Chicot. Happiness had given new life and colour to the face, prosperity had softened the harshness of its outline. The hollow cheeks had filled, the haggard eyes had recovered the glory and gladness of youth. But the man was there—the same man in whose face Gerard had looked a year and a half ago, reading the secret of his loveless marriage.
Did he look like an undetected murderer? Did he look like a man tormented by remorse, weighed down with the burden of it guilty secret? Assuredly not. He had the straight outlook of one whose conscience is clear, whose heart is free from guile. If he were verily guilty, he must be the prince of hypocrites.
His wife was at his side, and George Gerard looked at her with painful interest. What a lovely trustful face, radiant with innocence and contentment. And was this guileless creature to be made wretched by the knowledge of her husband’s deceit? Was her heart to be broken in order that John Treverton should be punished?
Edward Clare had said that it was for her sake he wanted to know the truth about her husband, it was that she might be rescued from a degrading alliance, protected from a man who was at heart a villain.
George Gerard watched the husband and wife at intervals during the service. He could see nothing but placid content, a mind at ease, in the face of John Treverton. The idea of this freedom from care on the part of him who had been La Chicot’s husband embittered Gerard.
“Had that woman been my wife I should have been sorry for her cruel fate, I should have mourned for her honestly, in spite of her degradation. But had she been my wife, she would never have sunk so low. I would have made it the business of my life to have saved her.”
Thus argued the man who had passionately loved the beautiful, soulless woman, and who had never comprehended the emptiness of her mind and heart.
Once in the progress of the service John Treverton looked across the aisle, and saw the stern grey eyes watching him. In that one glance Gerard saw that he was recognised.
“What will he do if we meet presently?” Gerard asked himself. “He’ll cut me dead, no doubt.”
They did meet, for in leaving the church porch Laura stopped to talk to Mrs. Clare and Celia. Edward and his friend were close behind.
“Is it the man?” Edward asked, in a whisper.
“Yes,” answered Gerard.
They went along the churchyard path together, and at the gates there was a pause. Laura wanted the vicarage party to go to luncheon at the Manor House, but Mrs. Clare declined. Of course the children could do what they liked, she said; as if her children had ever done anything else since they had emerged from the helplessness of infancy. Even in their cradles they had had wills of their own.
Celia looked at her brother, and saw by a warning twitch of his eyebrows that she was to say no.
“I think we had better go home to luncheon,” she said, meekly. “Papa likes us to be at home on Sundays.”
Then she gave her brother’s sleeve a little
