ON A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.
After pitching and tossing all night in a manner painfully suggestive
of shipwreck, John Treverton and his faithful solicitor arrived at St.
Malo early in the afternoon, where the comforts and luxuries of that
most comfortable hotel, the ‘Franklin,’ were peculiarly grateful after
their cold and dreary passage.
There was no train to carry them to Auray that afternoon, so they dined
snugly by a glorious wood fire in a private sitting-room, and discussed
the difficulties and dangers of John Treverton’s position over a bottle
of Chambertin with the true violet bouquet.
Throughout this long conversation, Tom Sampson showed himself as shrewd
as he was devoted. He seized the salient points of the case; fully
measured all its difficulties; saw that sooner or later John Treverton
might be arrested on suspicion of his wife’s murder, and would have to
prove himself innocent. Sampson, as well as Treverton, had seen how
much malice there was in Edward Clare’s mind, and both foresaw the
probability of that malice being pushed still further.
‘If we could only prove that your first marriage was invalid, we should
get rid at once of any motive on your part for the murder,’ said
Sampson.
‘You could not prove that I knew my first marriage to be invalid,’
answered Treverton, ‘unless you are going to try to prove a lie.’
‘I don’t know what I might not try to do, if your neck were in danger,’
retorted Sampson. ‘I shouldn’t stick at trifles, you may depend upon
it. The grand thing will be to find out if there was a previous
marriage. After your story about the sailor at the Morgue, I am
inclined to hope for success.’
‘Are you? Poor Sampson! I strongly suspect we are going in search of a
mare’s nest.’
They left St. Malo next morning, and arrived at Auray early in the
afternoon. They were jolted down a long boulevard from the station to
the town in an omnibus, which finally deposited them at the Pavillon
d’en haut, a very comfortable hotel, where they were received by a
smiling landlady, and a pretty chambermaid in a neat black gown,
trimmed with velvet, a cambric cap as quaint as a nun’s headgear, and
apron, collar, and cuffs of the same spotless fabric.
As Tom Sampson’s knowledge of the French language was that of the
average British schoolboy, he naturally found himself unable to
understand the natives of an obscure port in Brittany. He was with his
client in the capacity of adviser; but it behoved his client to do all
the work.
‘Well, my dear fellow,’ said Treverton, when they had deposited
their travelling bags at the hotel, and were standing in the empty
market-place, looking round them somewhat vaguely, ‘here we are, and
what is to be our first move now we are here?’
‘I should think about the best plan would be to go to the churches and
examine the registers,’ suggested Sampson. ‘I suppose you know your
first wife’s real name?’
‘Not unless it was Chicot--I married her under that name.’
‘Chicot,’ repeated Sampson dubiously. ‘It sounds rather barbarous,
but it’s nothing to the names over the shops here. I never saw such
crack-jaw cognomens. Well, we’d better go and look up all the registers
for the name of Chicot.’
‘That would be slow work,’ said Treverton, thinking of the sweet young
wife at home, full of fear and trouble, left to brood upon her sorrows
at that very time when life ought to have been made bright and happy
for her, a time when her mind might be most prone to despondency.
He had written Laura a consoling letter from St. Malo, affecting
hopefulness he did not feel; but he knew how poor a consolation any
letter must be, and he was longing to finish his business and turn his
face homewards.
‘Can you suggest a quicker way?’ asked Sampson.
‘I think it might be a better plan to find out the oldest priest in the
parish, and question him. A priest in such a place as this ought to be
a living chronicle of the lives of its inhabitants.’
‘Not half a bad idea,’ said Sampson approvingly. ‘The sooner you find
your priest the better, say I.’
‘Come along, then,’ said Treverton, and they went up the steps of a
church near at hand, and into the dusky aisle, where a few scattered
old women were kneeling in the winter gloom, and where the sanctuary
lamp shone like a red star in the distance.
‘What would they say at Hazlehurst if they could see me in a Roman
Catholic church?’ thought Sampson. ‘They’d give me over for lost.’
John Treverton walked softly round the church, till he met with a
priest who was just shutting up his confessional, preparatory to
departure. He was a youngish man, with a good-natured countenance, and
acknowledged the stranger’s salutation with a friendly smile. John
Treverton followed him out of the church before he ventured to ask for
the information he wanted, and then he explained himself as briefly as
possible.
‘I have come from England to obtain information about a native of this
town,’ he said. ‘Do you think that among the priests connected with
your church there is any gentleman who can remember the events of
the last twenty years, and who would be obliging enough to answer my
questions?’
‘Most certainly, monsieur, since I apprehend your inquiries are to a
good end.’
‘I can give you my own word for that. This gentleman is my solicitor,
and if he could speak French, or if you could speak English, he would
be able to vouch for my respectability. Unhappily he cannot put
half-a-dozen words together in your charming language. At least I’m
afraid he can’t. Do you think you could tell this gentleman who I am,
Sampson?’ John Treverton asked, turning to his ally.
Mr. Sampson became furiously red in the face, and blew out his cheeks
like a turkey-cock.
‘_Mon ami, monsieur_,’ he began with a desperate plunge. ‘_Er,
mon ami est bien riche homme, bien à faire, le plus fort riche homme
dans notre part de la campagne. Il a un grand état, très grand. Je suis
son lawyer--comprenney, monsieur?--son avocat._’
The priest expressed himself deeply convinced of the honourable
position of both travellers, though he was inwardly at a loss to
understand why a man should go wandering about the country with his
advocate.
He then went on to tell John Treverton that his superior, Father le
Mescam, the curé of the parish, had been attached to that church for
the last thirty years, and could doubtless recall every event of
importance that had happened in the town during that period. He was
likely to know much of the private history of his congregation; and
as he was the most amiable of men, he would doubtless be willing to
communicate anything which a stranger could have the right to know.
‘Sir, you are most obliging,’ said John Treverton. ‘Extend your
courtesy still further, and bring Father le Mescam to dine with me and
my friend at six o’clock this evening, and you will weigh me down with
obligations.’
‘You are very kind, sir,’ murmured the priest. ‘We have vespers at
five--yes, at six we shall be free. I shall feel much pleasure in
persuading Father le Mescam to accept your very gracious invitation.’
‘A thousand thanks. I consider it settled. We are staying at the
Pavillon d’en haut, where I suppose that if a man cannot _dine_,
he can at least eat.’
‘Sir, I take it upon myself to answer for the hotel. As a type of the
provincial cuisine the Pavillon d’en haut will prove itself worthy of
your praise. You shall not be discontented with your dinner. I pledge
myself to that. Till six o’clock, sir.’
The _Vicaire_ lifted his biretta, and left them.
‘It will go hard if I cannot find out something about my wife’s
antecedents from a man who has lived thirty years in Auray,’ said John
Treverton, as he and his companion walked down the narrow stony street
leading to the river. ‘So beautiful a woman must have been remarkable
in a place like this.’
‘Judging from the specimens of female loveliness I have met with so
far, I should say very remarkable,’ retorted Sampson; ‘for, with the
exception of that pretty chambermaid at the Pavillong dong Haw, I
haven’t seen a decent-looking woman since we left St. Mallow.’
They went down to the bridge, Sampson hobbling over the stony pathway,
and vehemently abusing the vestry and local board of Auray, which
settlement he appeared to think was governed exactly after the manner
of our English country towns.
They crossed the bridge and went to look at an old church on the
other side of the river, where the fisher folk had hung models of
three-masters and screw steamers as votary offerings to their guardian
saints; then they re-crossed the bridge and went up to an observatory
on a hill above the little town, and surveyed as much as they could
see of the landscape in the gathering winter gloom; and then Mr.
Sampson, who might possibly have been impressed by Vesuvius in a state
of eruption, but who had not a keen eye for the quaint and picturesque
on a small scale, proposed that they should go back to their hotel and
make themselves comfortable for dinner.
‘I should like a wash if there’s such a thing as a cake of soap in the
place,’ said the lawyer, ‘but from the appearance of the inhabitants I
should rather suspect there wasn’t. Soap would be a mockery for some of
them. Nothing less than scraping would be any real benefit.’
They found their sitting-room at the hotel bright with wax candles
and a wood fire. Mr. Sampson nearly came to grief upon the beeswaxed
floor, and protested against polished floors as a remnant of barbarism.
Otherwise he found things more civilized than he had expected, never
before having trusted himself across the Channel, and being strictly
insular in his conception of foreign manners and customs.
‘I should hope the old gentleman who is to dine with us can speak
English,’ he said; ‘he ought at his time of life.’
‘But if he has lived all his life at Auray?’
‘Well, no doubt this is a sink of ignorance,’ asserted Sampson. ‘I dare
say the stupid old man won’t be able to understand a word I say.’
The two priests were announced as the great clock in the market-place
struck six, town time, while the clock on the mantelpiece followed with
its shriller chime. ‘Father le Mescam, Father Gedain,’ said the pretty
chambermaid in most respectful tones, and thereupon the two gentlemen
entered, neatly dressed, clean shaven, smiling, and having nothing of
that dark and sinister air which Tom Sampson expected to discover in
every Popish priest.
Father le Mescam was a little old man, with a quaint, comical face,
which would have done admirably for the first gravedigger in ‘Hamlet’;
small, twinkling eyes, full of sly humour; a mobile mouth, and a pert
little nose, cocked up in the air, as if in good-humoured contempt at
the folly of human nature in general.
‘I am extremely obliged to you for the kindness of this visit, Father
le Mescam,’ said John Treverton, when the _Vicaire_ had presented
him to his superior.
‘My dear sir, when a pleasant-mannered traveller asks me to dinner,
I am only too glad to accept the invitation,’ answered the priest
heartily. ‘A whiff of air from the outside world gives an agreeable
flavour to life in this quiet little corner of the universe.’
‘Lord have mercy on us, how fast the old chap talks!’ exclaimed Sampson
inwardly. ‘Thank goodness, we Englishmen never gabble like that.’
And then, determined not to be left altogether out of the conversation,
Mr. Sampson pulled himself together for a bold attempt. He gazed
benignantly at Father le Mescam, and shouted at the top of his voice,--
‘_Fraw, Mossoo, horriblemong fraw_.’
The little priest smiled blandly, but shrugged his shoulders with
serio-comic helplessness.
‘_Non moing c’est saisonable temps pour le temp de l’ong_,’
pursued Sampson, waxing bolder, and feeling as if all the French he had
acquired in his school days was pouring in upon him like a flood of
light.
Father le Mescam still looked dubious.
‘Well,’ exclaimed Sampson, turning to John Treverton, ‘I’ve always
heard that Frenchmen were slow at learning foreign languages; but
I could not have believed they’d be so disgustingly stupid as not
to understand their own. Upon my word, Treverton, I don’t see any
reason why you should explode in that fashion,’ he remonstrated, as
Treverton fell back in his chair in a fit of irrepressible laughter.
‘_Allong_,’ cried Sampson. ‘_Voyci le pottage_; and I’m
blessed if they haven’t emptied the bread basket into it!’ he
exclaimed, contemplating with ineffable disgust the contents of the
soup tureen, in which he beheld lumps of bread floating on the surface
of a thin broth. ‘_Venez dong_, Treverton, _si vous avez finni
de faire un sot de voter même, nous pouvons aussi bien commencer_.’
‘_Mais, oui, monsieur_,’ cried the curé, enchanted at
understanding about two words of this last speech, and beaming at the
Englishman in a paroxysm of good nature. ‘_Oui, oui, oui, monsieur,
commençons, commençons. C’est tres-bien dit._’
‘Ah,’ grunted Sampson, ‘the old idiot is inspired when one talks about
his dinner. If that bread-and-waterish broth is a specimen of the
kewsine of this hotel, I don’t think much of it,’ he added.
Poor as the soup was in appearance, Mr. Sampson found it was not
amiss in flavour, and when a savoury preparation of some unknown fish
had followed the soup tureen, and a fricassee of fowl and mushroom
had replaced the fish, he began to feel at peace with the Pavillon
d’en haut. A leg of mutton from the salt marshes completed his
reconciliation to provincial cookery, and a dish of vanilla cream _à
la Chateaubriand_ raised his spirits to enthusiasm. The two priests
enjoyed their dinner thoroughly, and chatted gaily as they ate, but it
was not till the dessert had been handed round by the brisk serving
maid, and a bottle of Pomard had been placed on the table, that John
Treverton approached the serious business of the evening. He waited
till the chambermaid had left the room, and then, wheeling his chair
round to the fire, piled with chestnut logs, invited Father le Mescam
to do the same. Mr. Sampson and Father Gedain followed their example,
and the four made a cosy circle round the hearth, each nursing his
glass of red wine.
‘I am going to ask you a good many questions, Father le Mescam,’ began
John Treverton. ‘I hope you won’t think me troublesome or impertinently
inquisitive. However trivial my inquiries may seem, the result is a
matter of life and death to me.’
‘Ask what you will, sir,’ answered the curé. ‘So long as you ask no
question which a priest ought not to answer, you may command me.’