CHAPTER XXXV.
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 recallevery 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 cannotdine, 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.’
TheVicairelifted 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 soapin 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 theVicairehad 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 creamà la Chateaubriandraised 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.’