WHY DON’T YOU TRUST ME?
That winter Sabbath was a dreary day for John Treverton. He walked
home almost in silence, Laura wondering at his thoughtfulness, and
speculating anxiously upon the possible reasons for this sudden change
in his mood. Had this friend of the Clares brought him bad news? Yet
how could that be? Must it not rather be that this meeting with an old
acquaintance had recalled some painful period in that past life of
which she knew so little?
‘That is my misfortune,’ she thought. ‘I am only half a wife while I am
ignorant of all his old sorrows.’
She did not disturb her husband by questions of any kind, but walked
quietly by his side through the wintry shrubberies, where the holly
berries were gleaming in the mid-day sun, and the fearless robins
fluttered from hawthorn to laurel.
‘I won’t come in to luncheon, dear,’ said John when they came to the
hall door. ‘I feel a little dull and headachy, and I think it might do
me good to lie down for an hour or two.’
‘Shall I come and read you to sleep, Jack?’
‘No, dear, I shall be better alone.’
‘Oh, Jack, why are you not frank with me?’ exclaimed his wife
piteously. ‘I know there is something on your mind. Why don’t you trust
me?’
‘Not yet, dear. You will know everything that can be known about me
very soon, I dare say. But we need not anticipate the revelation. It
will not be too pleasant for either of us.’
‘Do you think that anything I can ever learn about you will change me?’
she asked, with her hand upon his arm, looking up at him intently.
‘Have I not trusted you, and loved you, blindly?’
‘Yes, dearest, blindly. But how can I tell how you may feel when your
eyes are opened?’
She looked at him for some moments in silence, trying to read his face;
and then, with most pathetic earnestness, she said:--
‘John, if there is anything to be told to your discredit, if there is
any act of your past life that you are ashamed to remember--ashamed to
acknowledge--an act known to others, for pity’s sake let me hear it
from you, and not from the lips of an enemy. Am I so severe a judge
that you should fear to stand before me? Have I not been weakly fond,
blindly trustful? Can you doubt my power to excuse and to pardon, where
all the rest of mankind might be inexorable?’
‘No,’ he answered quickly, ‘I will not doubt you. No, dear love, it is
not because I feared to trust you that I have tried to keep my secret.
I wished to spare you pain; for I knew that it would pain you to know
how low I had sunk before your influence, your love, came to lift me
out of the slough into which I had fallen. But it seems the pain must
come. Good and pure as you are, there are those who will not spare you
that bitter knowledge. Yes, dear, it is best that you should learn the
truth first from my lips. Whatever garbled version of this story may be
told you afterwards, you shall have the truth from me.’
He put his arm round her, and they went up the broad old staircase
side by side to the room that had been Jasper Treverton’s study, and
which Laura had beautified for her husband. Here they were secure from
intrusion. John Treverton drew his wife’s favourite chair to the fire,
and sat down by her side, as they had sat on the night when Laura told
her husband the story of Mr. Desrolles.
They sat for some minutes in silence, John Treverton looking at the
fire, meditating how best to begin his confession.
‘Oh, Laura, I wonder whether you will hate me when you have heard what
my past life was like?’ he said at last. ‘I will not spare myself;
but even at this last moment I shrink from uttering the words that
may destroy our happiness, and part us for ever. You shall be free
to decide our fate. If, when you have heard all, you should say to
yourself, “This man is unworthy of my love,” and if you should recoil
from me--as you may--with disgust and abhorrence, I will bow my head to
your decree, and disappear out of your life for ever.’
His wife turned her stricken face to him, pale as death.
‘What crime have you committed, that you can think it possible that I
should withdraw my love from you?’ she asked, with tremulous lips.
‘I have committed no crime, Laura, but I have been suspected of the
worst of crimes. Do you remember the story of a man whose name was
bandied about in the newspapers nearly a year ago; a man whose wife was
murdered, and whom some of the London papers plainly denounced as the
murderer; the man called Chicot, whose disappearance was one of the
social mysteries of the year?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, looking at him wonderingly. ‘What can you have to
do with that man?’
‘I am that man!’
‘You? You, John Treverton?’
‘I, John Treverton, _alias_ Chicot.’
‘The husband of a stage dancer?’
‘Yes, Laura. There have been two loves in my life. First, my love for
a woman who had nothing but her beauty to make her dear to the hearts
of men. Secondly, my love for you, whose beauty is the lightest part
in your power to win and keep my affection. My history may be briefly
told. I began life in a cavalry regiment, with a small fortune in
shares and stocks. These were so handy to get rid of, that before I had
been five years in the army I had contrived to make away with my last
sixpence. I had not been particularly dissipated or extravagant; I had
not vied with my captain, who was the son of a West-end confectioner,
and spent money like water; or with my colonel, who was a man of
rank, and £30,000 in debt; but I had kept good horses, and mixed in
the best society, and the day I got my company saw me a beggar. There
was nothing for it but to sell out, and I sold out; and being of a
happy-go-lucky temperament, and tired of the confinement of country
quarters, I crossed the Channel, and wandered over the loveliest half
of Europe with a knapsack and a sketch-book. When I had spent the price
of my commission I found myself in Paris, out at elbows, penniless,
with a taste for literature and a facile pencil. I lived in a garret
in the Quartier Latin, found friends in a thoroughly Bohemian set,
and contrived to earn just enough to keep body and soul together. I
began this life with the idea that I might one day win distinction
in art. I had the will to work, and a good deal of ambition. But the
young men among whom I lived, small journalists and hangers-on at the
minor theatres, soon taught me a different story. I learned to live as
they lived, from hand to mouth. All higher aspirations died out of my
mind. I became a hanger-on at stage doors, a scribbler of newspaper
paragraphs--a collaborateur in Palais Royal farces--happy when I had
the price of a dinner in my waistcoat pocket and a decent coat on my
back. It was at this stage of my career that I fell in love with Zaïre
Chicot, a popular dancer at the theatre most affected by students in
law and medicine. She was the handsomest woman I had ever seen. No one
had a word to say against her character. She was not a lady; I knew
that, even when I was most in love with her. But the vulgarities and
ignorances that would have revolted me in an Englishwoman amused and
even pleased me in this daughter of the people. She was fond of me, and
I of her. We married without a thought of the future: with very little
care even for the present. My wife--the popular dancer at a popular
theatre--was so much the more important person of the two, that from
the hour of my marriage I was known by her name--first, as La Chicot’s
husband; then as Jack Chicot, _tout court_. We were reasonably
happy together, till my wife began to fall into those wretched habits
of intemperance which finally blighted both our lives. God knows I
did my best to cure her. I tried my uttermost to hold her back from
the dreary gulf into which she was descending. But I was powerless.
No words of mine could ever tell you the misery--the degradation--of
my life. I endured it. Perhaps I hardly knew the full measure of my
wretchedness till the day on which I heard my cousin Jasper’s will
read, and knew the happiness which might have been mine had I been free
from that hateful bondage.’
Laura sat by his side in silence, her face hidden in her hands, her
head bowed down upon the cushion of the chair, crushed by the deep
shame involved in her husband’s confession.
‘There is little more to tell. When I first saw and loved you I was La
Chicot’s husband--a man bound hand and foot. I had no right to come
near you, yet I came. I had a vague, wicked hope that Fate would set
me free somehow. Yet I tried, honestly, to do my duty to that unhappy
woman. When her life was in peril, I helped to nurse her. I bore
patiently with her violent temper after she recovered. When the year
was nearly gone it came into my mind that my cousin’s estate might
be secured to you by a marriage which should fulfil the terms of his
will without making me your husband save in name. And then, if in some
happier day I should be released from my bonds, we could be married
again--as we were.’
He paused, but there was no answer from Laura except a half-stifled sob.
‘Laura, can you pity and pardon me? For God’s sake say that I am not
utterly despicable in your eyes!’
‘Despicable? no!’ she said, lifting up her tear-stained face, ashy
pale, and drawn with pain, ‘not despicable, John. You could never be
that, in my eyes. But wrong, oh, so deeply wrong! See what shame and
anguish you have brought upon both of us! What was Jasper Treverton’s
fortune worth to either of us, that you should be guilty of a fraud in
your endeavour to gain it for me?’
‘A fraud?’
‘Yes. Do you not see that our first marriage, being really no marriage,
was an imposition and a sham--that neither you nor I have a right to
a sixpence of Jasper Treverton’s money, or an acre of his land. All
is forfeited to the hospital trusts. We have no right to live in this
house. We possess nothing but my income. We can live upon that, Jack.
I am not afraid to face poverty with you; but I will not live an hour
under the weight of this shameful secret. Mr. Clare and Mr. Sampson
must know the truth at once.’
Her husband was kneeling at her feet, looking up at her with a radiant
face.
‘My love, my dearest, you have made me too happy. You do not shrink
from me--you do not abandon me. Poverty! No, Laura, I am not afraid
of that. I have feared only the loss of your love. That has been my
ever-present fear. That one great dread has sealed my lips.’
‘You can never lose my love, dear. It was given to you without the
power of recall. But if you want to regain my esteem, you must act
bravely and honourably. You must undo the wrong you have done.’
‘We will hold a council to-night, Laura. We will take Edward Clare’s
cards out of his hands.’
‘What? Does Edward know?’
‘He knows that I and Chicot are one.’
‘Ah, then I can understand the look he gave you on the night of our
first dinner-party--a look full of malignity. He had just been talking
of Chicot.’
She shuddered as she pronounced a name associated with such unspeakable
horror. And that name was her husband’s; the man branded with the
suspicion of a hideous crime was her husband.
‘I am afraid Edward is your secret enemy,’ she said, after a pause.
‘I am sure he is--and I believe he is on the eve of becoming my
open enemy. It will be a triumph in a small way for me to take the
initiative, and resign the estate.’