Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘My husband is not extravagant. He has known poverty, and can live on very little. Besides, he has talents, and will earn money. He is not going to fold his hands, and bewail his loss of fortune.’

  ‘My dearest Laura, I shudder at the thought of your facing life upon a pittance, you who have never known the want of money.’

  ‘Dear Mr. Clare, you must think me very weak — cowardly even — if you suppose that I can fear to face a little poverty with the husband I love. I can bear anything except his disgrace.’

  ‘My poor child, God grant you may be spared that bitter trial. If your husband is innocent of all part in his first wife’s death, as you and I believe, let us hope that the world will never know him as the man who has been suspected of such an awful crime.’

  ‘Your son knows,’ said Laura.

  ‘My son knows. Yes, Laura; but you cannot for a moment suppose that Edward would make any use of his knowledge against your interest. It was his regard for you that prompted him to the course he took last Sunday night.

  ‘Is it regard for me that makes him hate my husband? Forgive me for speaking plainly, dear Mr. Clare. You have been all goodness to me — always — ever since I can remember. My heart is full of affection for you and your kind wife: but I know that your son is my husband’s enemy, and I tremble at the thought of his power to do us harm.’

  The Vicar heard her with some apprehension. He, too, had perceived the malignity of Edward’s feelings towards John Treverton. He ascribed the young man’s malice to the jealousy of a rejected suitor; and he knew that from jealousy to hatred was but a step. But he could not believe that his son — his own flesh and blood — could be capable of doing a great wrong to a man who had never consciously injured him. That Edward should make any evil use of his knowledge of John Treverton’s identity with the suspected Chicot was to the Vicar’s mind incredible, nay, impossible.

  ‘You have nothing to fear from Edward, my dear,’ he said, gently patting the young wife’s hand as it lay despondingly in his, ‘make your mind easy on that score.’

  ‘There is Mr. Gerard. He, too, knows my husband’s secret.’

  ‘He, too, will respect it. No one can look in John Treverton’s face and believe him a murderer.’

  ‘No,’ cried Laura, naïvely; ‘those cruel people who wrote in the newspapers had never seen him.’

  ‘My dear Laura, you must not distress yourself about newspaper people. They are obliged to write about something. They could put themselves in a passion about the man in the moon if there were nobody else for them to abuse.’

  Laura told the Vicar about the telegram received from Auray, with its promise of good news.

  ‘What can be better than that, my dear,’ he cried, delightedly. ‘And now I want you to come to the Vicarage with me. Celia is most anxious to have you there, as she says you won’t have her here.’

  ‘Does Celia know?’ Laura began to ask falteringly.

  ‘Not a syllable. Neither Celia nor her mother has any idea of what has happened. They know that Treverton is away, on business. That is all.’

  ‘Do you think Edward has said nothing?’

  ‘I am perfectly sure that Edward has been as silent as the Sphinx. My wife would not have held her tongue about this sad business for live minutes, if she had had an inkling of it, or Celia either. They would have been exploding in notes of admiration, and would have pestered me to death with questions. No, my dear Laura, you may feel quite comfortable in coming to the Vicarage. Your husband’s secret is only known to Edward and me.’

  ‘You are very good,’ said Laura gently, ‘I know how kindly your invitation is meant. But I cannot leave home.

  John may come back at any hour. I am continually expecting him.’

  ‘My poor child, is that reasonable? Think how far it is from here to Auray.’

  ‘Think how fast he will travel, when once he is free to return.’

  ‘Very well, Laura, you must have your own way. I’ll send Celia to keep you company.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Laura quickly. ‘You know how fond I have always been of Celia — but just now I had rather be quite alone. She is so gay and light-hearted. I could hardly bear it. Don’t think me ungrateful, dear Mr. Clare; but I would rather face my trouble alone.’

  ‘I shall never think you anything but the most admirable of women,’ answered the Vicar, ‘and now put on your hat and walk as far as the gate with me. You are looking wretchedly pale.’

  Laura obeyed, and walked through the grounds with her old friend. She had not been outside the house since her husband’s departure, and the keen wintry air revived her jaded spirits. It was along this chestnut avenue that she and John Treverton had walked on that summer evening when he for the first time avowed his love. There was the good old tree beneath whose shading branches they had sealed the bond of an undying affection. How much of uncertainty, how much of sorrow, she had suffered since that thrilling moment, which had seemed the assurance of enduring happiness! She walked by the Vicar’s side in silence, thinking of that curious leavetaking with her lover, a year and a half ago.

  ‘If he had only trusted me,’ she thought, with the deepest regret. ‘If he had only been frank and straightforward, how much misery might have been saved to both of us. But he was tempted. Can I blame him if he yielded too weakly to the temptation?’

  She could not find it in her heart to blame him — though her nobler nature was full of scorn for falsehood — for it had been his love for her that made him weak, his desire to secure to her the possession of the house she loved that had made him false.

  Half-way between the house and the road they met a stranger — a middle-aged man, of respectable appearance — a man who might be a clerk, or a builder’s foreman, a railway official in plain clothes, anything practical and business-like. He looked scrutinisingly at Laura as he approached, and then stopped short and addressed her, touching his hat:

  ‘I beg your pardon, madam, but may I ask if Mr. Treverton is at home?’

  No; he is away from home.’

  ‘I’m sorry for that, as I’ve particular business with him. Will he be long away, do you think, madam?

  ‘I expect him home daily,’ answered Laura. ‘Are you one of his tenants? I don’t remember to have seen you before.’

  ‘No, madam. But I am a tenant for all that. Mr. Treverton is ground landlord of a block of houses I own in Beechampton, and there is a question about drainage, and I can’t move a step without reference to him. I shall be very glad to have a few words with him as soon as possible. Drainage is a business that won’t wait, you see, sir,’ the man added, turning to the Vicar.

  He was a man of peculiarly polite address, with something of old-fashioned ceremoniousness which rather pleased Mr. Clare.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till the end of the week,’ said the Vicar. ‘Mr. Treverton has left home upon important business, and I don’t think he can be back sooner than that.’

  The stranger was too polite to press the matter further.

  ‘I thank you very much, sir,’ he said; ‘I must make it convenient to call again.’

  ‘You had better leave your name,’ said Laura, ‘and I will tell my husband of your visit directly he comes home.’

  ‘I thank you, madam, there is no occasion to trouble you with any message. I am Staying with a friend in the village, and shall call directly I hear Mr. Treverton has returned.’

  ‘A very superior man,’ remarked the Vicar, when the stranger had raised his hat and walked on briskly enough to be speedily out of earshot. ‘The owner of some of those smart new shops in Beechampton High-street, no doubt. Odd that I should never have seen him before. I thought I knew every one in the town.’

  It was a small thing, proving the nervous state into which Laura had been thrown by the troubles of the last few days. Even the appearance of this courteous stranger discomposed her and seemed a presage of evil.

  CHAPTER VIII. CELIA’S LOVERS.


  THE day after Mr. Clare’s visit brought Laura the expected letter from her husband, a long letter, telling her his adventures at Auray.

  ‘So you see, dearest,’ he wrote, after he had related all that Father le Mescam had told him, ‘come what may, our position as regards my cousin Jasper’s estate is secure. Malice cannot touch us there. From the hour I knelt beside you before the altar in Hazlehurst Church, I have been your husband. That unhappy Frenchwoman was never legally my wife. Whether she wilfully deceived me, or whether she had reasons of her own for supposing Jean Kergariou to be dead, I know not. It is quite possible that she honestly believed herself to be a widow. She might have heard that Kergariou had been lost at sea. Shipwreck and death are too common among those Breton sailors who go to the North Seas. The little seaports in Brittany are populated with widows and orphans. I am quite willing to believe that poor Zaïre thought herself free to marry. This would account for her terrible agitation when she recognised her husband’s body in the Morgue. And now, dear love, I shall but stay in Paris long enough to procure all documents necessary to prove Jean Kergariou’s death; and then I shall hasten home to comfort my sweet. wife, and to face any new trouble that; may arise from Edward Clare’s enmity. I feel that it is he only whom we have to fear in the future; and it will go hard if I am not equal to the struggle with so despicable a foe. The omnibus is waiting to take us to the station. God bless you, love, and reward you for your generous devotion to your unworthy husband. — JOHN TREVERTON.’

  This letter brought unspeakable comfort to Laura’s mind. The knowledge that her first marriage was valid was much. It was still more to know that her husband was exempted from the charge of having possessed himself of his cousin’s estate by treachery and fraud. The moral in his conduct was not lessened; but he had no longer to fear the disgrace which must have attached to his resignation of the estate.

  ‘Dear old house, dear old home, thank God we shall never be driven from you!’ said Laura, looking round the study in which so many eventful scenes of her life had been passed, the room where she and John Treverton had first met.

  While Laura was sitting by the fire with her husband’s letter in her hand, musing upon its contents, the door was suddenly flung open, and Celia rushed into the room and dropped on her knees by her friend’s chair.

  ‘Laura, what has come between us?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why do you shut me out of your heart? I know there is something wrong. I can see it in papa’s manner. Have I been so false a friend that you are afraid to trust me?’

  The brightly earnest face was so full of warm and truthful feeling that Laura had not the heart to resent this impetuous intrusion. She had told Trimmer that she would see no one, but Celia had set Trimmer at defiance, and had insisted on coming unannounced to the study.

  ‘You are not false, Celia,’ Laura answered gravely, ‘but I have good reason to know that your brother is my husband’s enemy.’

  ‘Poor Edward,’ sighed Celia. ‘It’s very cruel of you to say such a thing, Laura. You know how devotedly he loved you, and what a blow your marriage was to him.’

  ‘Was it really, Celia? He did not take much trouble to avert the blow.’

  ‘You mean that he never proposed,’ said Celia, ‘My dear Laura, what would have been the use of his asking you to marry him when he was without the means of keeping a wife. It is quite as much as he can do to clothe himself decently by the uttermost exertion of his genius, though he is really second only to Swinburne, as you know. He has too much of the poetic temperament to face the horrors of poverty,’ concluded Celia, quoting her brother’s own account of himself.

  ‘I think a few poets — and some of the first quality — have faced those horrors, Celia.’

  ‘Because they were obliged, dear. They were in the quagmire, and couldn’t get out; like Chatterton and Burns, and ever so many poor dears. But surely those were not of the highest order. Great poets are like Byron and Shelley. They require yachts and Italian villas, and thoroughbred horses, and Newfound laud dogs, and things,’ said Celia, with conviction.

  ‘Well, dearest, I bear Edward no ill-will for not having proposed to me, because if he had I could have only refused him; but don’t you think there is an extremity of folly and weakness in his affecting to feel injured by my marrying someone else?’

  ‘It isn’t affectation,’ protested Celia. ‘It’s reality. He does feel deeply, cruelly injured by your’ marriage with Mr. Treverton. You can’t be angry with him, Laura, for a prejudice that results from his affection for you.’

  ‘I am very angry with him for his unjust and unreasonable hatred of my husband. I believe, Celia, if you knew the extent of his enmity, you too, would feel indignant at such injustice.’

  ‘I don’t know anything, Laura, except that poor Edward is very unhappy. He mopes in his den all day, pretending to be hard at work; but I believe he sits brooding over the fire half the time — and he smokes like —— . I really can’t find a comparison. Locomotives are nothing to him.’

  ‘I am glad he is not without a conscience,’ said Laura, gloomily.

  ‘That means you are glad he is unhappy,’ retorted Celia, “for it seems to me that the chief function of conscience is to make people miserable, Conscience never stops us when we are going to do anything wrong. It only torments us afterwards. But now don’t let’s talk any more about disagreeable things. Mother told me I was to do all I could to cheer and enliven you, She is quite anxious about you, thinking you will get low-spirited while your husband is away.’

  ‘Life is not very bright for me without him, Celia; but I have had a cheering letter this morning, and I expect him home very soon, so I will hopeful as you like. Take off your hat and jacket, dear, and make up your mind to stay with me. I have been very bearish and ungrateful in shutting the door against my faithful little friend. I shall write your mother a few lines to say I am going to keep you till Saturday.’

  ‘You may, if you like,’ said Celia. ‘It won’t break my heart to be away from home for a day or two; though of course I fully concur with that drowsy old song about pleasures and palaces, and little dickey-birds and all that kind of thing.’

  Celia threw off her hat, and slipped herself out of her sealskin jacket as gracefully as Lamia, the serpent woman, escaped from her scaly covering. Laura rang the bell for afternoon tea. The sky was darkening outside the window, the rooks were sailing westwards with a mighty clamour, and the shadows were gathering in the corners of the room. It was that hour in a winter afternoon when the firelight is pleasantest, the hearth cosiest, and when one thinks half regretfully that the days are lengthening, and that this friendly fireside season is passing away.

  The tea table was drawn up to the hearth, and Celia poured out the tea. Laura had eaten nothing with any appetite since that fatal Sunday, but her heart was lighter this evening, and she sat back in her chair, restful and placid, sipping her tea, and enjoying the delicate home-made bread and butter. Celia was unusually quiet during the next ten minutes.

  ‘You say your mother gave you particular instructions about being cheerful, Celia,’ said Laura, presently; ‘you are certainly not obeying her. I don’t think I ever knew you hold your tongue for ten consecutive minutes before this evening.’

  ‘Let’s talk,’ exclaimed Celia, jerking herself out of a reverie. ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘What shall we talk about?’

  ‘Well, if you wouldn’t object, I think I should like to talk about a young man.”

  ‘Celia!’

  ‘It sounds rather dreadful, doesn’t it?’ asked Celia, naively, ‘but, to tell you the truth, there’s nothing else that particularly interests me just now. I’ve had a young man on my mind for the last three days.’

  Laura’s face grew graver. She sat looking at the fire for a minute or so in gloomy silence.

  ‘Mr. Gerard, I suppose?’ she said at last.

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Very easily. There are only two eligible young men in Hazlehu
rst, and you have told me a hundred times that you don’t care about either of them. Mr. Gerard is the only stranger who has appeared at the Vicarage. You might easily arrange that as a syllogism.’

  ‘Laura, do you think I am the kind of girl to marry a poor man?’ asked Celia, with sudden intensity.

  ‘I think it is a thing you are very likely to do; because you have always protested most vehemently that nothing could induce you to do it,’ answered Laura, smiling at her friend’s earnestness.

  ‘Nothing could induce me,’ said Celia.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Except being desperately in love with a pauper.’

  ‘What, Celia, has it gone so far already?’

  ‘It has gone very far, as far as my heart. Oh, Laura, if you only knew how good he is, how bravely he has struggled, his cleverness and enthusiasm, his ardent love of his profession, you could not help admiring him. Upon my word, I think there is more genius in such a career as his than in all Edward’s poetic efforts. I feel quite sure that he will be a great man by-and-by, and that he will live in a beautiful house at the West end, and keep a carnage and pair.’

  ‘Are you going to marry him on the strength of that conviction?’

  ‘He has not even asked me yet; though I must say he was on the brink of a declaration ever so many times when we were on the moor. We had a long walk on the moor, you know, on Monday afternoon. Edward was supposed to be with us, but somehow we were alone most of the time. He is so modest, poor fellow, and he feels his poverty so keenly. He lives in a dingy street, in a dingy part of London. He is earning about a hundred and fifty pounds a year. His lodgings cost him thirty. Quite too dreadful to contemplate, isn’t it, Laura, for a girl who is as particular as I am about collars and cuffs?’

  ‘Very dreadful, my pet, if one considers elegance in dress and luxurious living as the chief good in life,’ answered Laura.

  ‘I don’t consider them the chief good, dear, but I think the want of them must be a great evil. And yet, I assure you, when that poor young fellow and I were rambling on the moor, I felt as if money were hardly worth consideration, and that I could endure the sharpest poverty with him. I felt lifted above the pettiness of life. I suppose it was the altitude we were at, and the purity of the air. But of course that was only a moment of enthusiasm.’