“You haven’t introduced Mr. Gerard,” she whispered.
“Ah, to be sure. Mr. Gerard, Mrs. Treverton, Mr. Treverton.”
“Mr. Gerard and I have met before, under circumstances that made me deeply indebted to him,” said John Treverton, holding out his hand.
Gerard lifted his hat, but appeared not to see the offered hand. This unexpected frankness took him by surprise. He had been prepared for anything rather than for John Treverton’s acknowledgment of their past acquaintance.
It was a bold stroke if the man were guilty; but Gerard’s experience had taught him that guilt is generally bold.
“I should be glad of ten minutes’ talk with you, Mr. Gerard,” said Treverton. “Will you walk my way?”
“We’ll all walk as far as the Manor-House,” said Celia. “We need not be home till two, need we, mother?”
“No, dear, but be sure you are punctual,” answered the good-natured mother. “I shall say goodbye, Laura, my dear.”
While Laura lingered a little to take leave of Mrs. Clare, Treverton and Gerard walked on in front of Celia and her brother, along the frost-bound road, under the leafless elms.
“The world is much smaller than I took it to be,” John Treverton began, after a pause, “or you and I would hardly meet in such an out-of-the-way corner of it as this.”
Gerard said nothing.
“Were you not surprised to see me in so altered a position?” the other asked, after an uncomfortable pause.
“Yes, I was certainly surprised.”
“I am going to appeal to your kind feeling—nay, to your honour. My wife knows nothing of my past life, save that it was wild and foolish. You know too well what degradation there was for me in my first marriage. I am not going to speak ill of the dead—”
“Pray do not,” interposed Gerard, very pale.
“But I must speak plainly. When you knew me I was a most miserable man. I have stood upon one of the bridges many a night, and thought that the best thing I could do with myself was to drop quietly over. Well, Providence cut the knot for me—in a terrible manner—but still the knot was cut. I have profited by my release. Fate has been very kind to me. My wife is the dearest and noblest of women. To pluck the veil from my past history would be to give her infinite pain. I ask you, then, as a gentleman, as a man of honour, to keep my secret and to spare her and me.”
“And you,” said Gerard, bitterly. “Yes, it is doubtless of yourself you think when you ask me to be silent. To spare you? Did you pity or spare the wretched creature who loved you fondly even in her degradation? As for your secret, as you call it, it is no secret. Mr. Clare, the Vicar’s son, knows as well as I do that John Chicot and John Treverton are one and the same.”
“He knows it? Edward Clare?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Positively, since this morning in church. He had his suspicions before. This morning I was able to confirm them.”
“I am sorry for it,” said John Treverton, after they had walked a few paces in silence. “I am sorry for it. I had hoped that part of my life was dead and buried—that no phantom from that hateful past would ever arise to haunt my innocent young wife. It is very hard upon me: it is harder upon her.”
“There are some ghosts not easily laid,” returned Gerard. “I should think the ghost of a murdered wife was one of them.”
“Edward Clare is no friend to me,” pursued Treverton, hardly hearing Gerard’s remark. “He will make the most malicious use of this knowledge that he can. He will tell my wife.”
“Might he not do something worse than that?”
“What?”
“What if he were to tell the police where Chicot, the wife-murderer, is to be found?”
“My God!” cried Treverton, turning upon the speaker with a look of horror. “You do not think me that?”
“Unhappily, I do.”
“On what grounds?”
“First, on the strength of your cowardly conduct that night. Why should you shirk the responsibility of your position if you were not guilty? Your flight was damning evidence against you. Surely you must have known that when you fled?”
“I ought to have known it, perhaps; but I thought of nothing except how best and quickest to escape from the entanglement which had been the bane and blight of my manhood. My wife was dead. Those glassy eyes, with their awful look of horror—that marble hand—told me that life had been gone for hours. What good could I do by remaining? Attend an inquest at which the story of my life would be ripped up for the delight of every gossipmonger in the kingdom; until I, John Treverton, alias Chicot, stood face to face with the world, so tainted and infected that no innocent woman could own me as her husband? What good to me, to that poor dead woman, or to society at large, could have come of my cross-examination at the inquest?”
“This much good, at least: your innocence—if you are innocent—might have been made manifest. As it is, the inferences are all in favour of your guilt.”
“How could I have proved my innocence? I could have offered no stronger proof at the inquest than I offer you now—my own word, the word of a man who at his worst never stooped to dishonour. I tell you face to face, as man to man, that I never lifted my hand against my wife: never, even when words were bitter between us, and of late we had many bitter words. I tried, honestly, to save her from her own weakness. The day had been when I was fond of her, in a reckless way, never looking forward to the future, or thinking what kind of a couple she and I would be when age had sobered us, and life had grown real and serious. No, Mr. Gerard, I am not a cruel man; and though the fetters hung heavily upon me I should never have striven to set
