CHAPTER XXXVI.
KERGARIOU’S WIFE.
‘Father le Mescam,’ said John Treverton, ‘do you ever remember hearing of a girl who left this town a laundress to become afterwards a celebrity in Paris, as a stage dancer?’
‘I ought to remember her,’ answered the curé, looking somewhat astonished at the question, ‘for I baptized her; I prepared her for her first communion, poor soul; and I married her.’
John Treverton started from his chair, and then sat down again profoundly agitated. Sampson was right. Yes; there had been a previous marriage. Yet it might be too soon for exultation. The first husband might have died before La Chicot came to Paris.
‘Are we talking of the same woman?’ he asked; ‘a girl who was known as Mademoiselle Chicot?’
‘Yes,’ answered Father le Mescam, ‘that was the only woman who ever left Auray to blossom into a stage dancer. Ours is not a soil which freely produces that kind of flower. I have good reason to remember that girl, for I was interested by her singular beauty, and I felt anxious for the safety of her soul amidst the snares and temptations to which such remarkable beauty is subject. I did my best to teach her—to fortify her against all future dangers; but she was as empty within as was lovely without. I hardly know whether one ought to consider such a creature responsible for all her errors. Hers was a case of invincible ignorance. The Church has to deal with many such characters—the heart hard as stone, the intellect a blank.’
‘What’s he jabbering about?’ said Tom Sampson to his client. ‘You look as if you had found out something.’
‘Wait, my dear fellow. I am on the point of making a discovery. You were right in your guess, Sampson; there was a previous husband.’
‘Of course,’ cried Sampson triumphantly. ‘My surprise in the case of a woman of that kind would be to discover only one previous husband; I should sooner expect to hear of six.’
‘Hold your tongue,’ said John Treverton authoritatively, and then he refilled Father le Mescam’s glass before he proceeded with his inquiry. ‘You say you married La Chicot?’
‘She was not La Chicot when I married her, but plain Marie Pomellec, the eldest daughter of a drunken old fisherman down by the quay. Drink was hereditary in her family. Grandfather and great-grandfather, they had all been drunkards from generation to generation. The children had to shift for themselves from the time they could run. I think that may have helped to make them hard and cruel, though some sweet souls educate themselves for heaven in just as hard a life. As Marie grew up to a fine tall slip of a girl her handsome face attracted notice. She got to know that she was the prettiest woman in Auray, and the knowledge soon spoiled whatever good there was in her. I saw all the perils of her position—dissolute parents—utter want of guidance from without—a mind too frivolous to be a guide to itself. In my idea her only chance of salvation lay in an early marriage, and although she was but seventeen when Jean Kergariou asked her to be his wife, I did not hesitate in advising her to marry him.’
‘Who was Kergariou?’
‘A sailor, and as good a fellow as ever went to sea. He and Marie had been playfellows. They had attended the same class for instruction. Jean was intelligent, Marie was dull. Jean was frank and good-humoured, Marie was reserved and self-willed. But the poor fellow was dazzled by the girl’s beauty, and she was endeared to him by old associations. He told me that she was the only woman he ever had cared for, the only woman he ever should care for. He had saved a little money, and could afford to furnish one of the cottages in the street by the quay. He would have to go to sea, of course, and Marie would stop at home and keep house, and perhaps earn a little money by washing linen, having the river so convenient. I would rather have had a home-staying husband for her, but Jean was a thoroughly good fellow, and I thought such a husband must keep her out of harm’s way. He was not the kind of man that any woman could attempt to trifle with.’
‘And he married her?’
‘Yes, they were married in the church yonder, one Easter Monday.’
‘Can you tell me the date?’
‘I can find it for you in the book where such events are registered. I could not say at this moment how many years ago it may have been. I could tell you the year of poor Kergariou’s death.’
‘Oh, he is dead, then?’ asked Treverton, with a dreadful sinking of the heart.
‘Yes, poor fellow. Let me see; it must have been three years ago last summer that Kergariou met with his melancholy death.’
‘His melancholy death,’ repeated Treverton. ‘Why melancholy?’
‘He was killed—run over by a waggon, on the Boulevard St. Denis, in Paris.’
‘Run over by a waggon, three summers ago, on the Boulevard,’ echoed John Treverton. ‘Yes, I recollect.’
‘What—you knew him?’
‘No, but I was in Paris at the time of the accident.’
John Treverton recalled that scene at the Morgue, and his wife’s ghastly face when she entreated him to take her away. Yes, that one page which had stood boldly out from the book of memory, with a lurid light upon it, was indeed a page of momentous meaning.
‘Tell me all about Jean Kergariou and his wife,’ he said to the curé. ‘It is a matter of vital importance for me to know. You are doing me a service which will make me grateful to you for the rest of my life.’
‘Not quite so long, I hope,’ retorted the priest, with a sly smile. ‘A man would be but short-lived if his life were to be measured by the endurance of his gratitude. That is a delightful virtue, but not a lasting one.’
‘Try me,’ exclaimed John Treverton. ‘Give me legal proof that Marie Pomellec and the dancer called Chicot were one, and that the man killed on the Boulevard three summers ago was Marie Pomellec’s husband, and you may put me to the hardest proof you choose, but you shall never find me ungrateful.’
‘There are noble exceptions, doubtless,’ said the priest, shrugging his shoulders, ‘just as there is now and then a baby born with two heads. As for the story of Marie Pomellec and her marriage, it is simple enough, and common enough, and the proof of it is to be found in the registers at the Mairie, while the fact is known to all the inhabitants of the quay, where Jean’s wife lived. That the man killed in Paris was Jean Kergariou is also certain; he was recognised by a fellow-sailor while he was lying in the Morgue, and the account appeared in several of the Paris newspapers under the heading ofFaits divers. The only point open to question might be the identity of the dancer, Mademoiselle Chicot, with Kergariou’s wife, but even that was pretty well known to several people in Auray, who saw the woman dance in Paris, and brought back the news of her success—to say nothing of her photographs, which are unmistakable.’
‘How did Marie Kergariou come to leave Auray?’
‘Who knows? Not I. What man can explain a woman’s caprice? She lived steadily enough for the first year after her marriage. Kergariou was away the greater part of the time, on board a whaler in Greenland. When he came home he and his pretty wife seemed monstrously fond of each other. But in thesecond year things were not so pleasant. Kergariou complained to me of his wife’s temper. Marie avoided the confessional, and grew lax in her attendance at the services of the church. The neighbours told me there were quarrels—neighbours will talk of each other, you see, sir, and a priest must not always shut his ears, for the more he knows of his parishioners the better he can help them. I had some serious talk with Marie, but found her sadly impenetrable. She complained of her hard life. She had to work as hard as the ugliest woman in Auray. I reminded her that the blessed Virgin, who was portrayed in all our churches as the highest type of human loveliness, had led a humble and toilsome life on earth, before she ascended to be the queen of heaven. Was beauty to give exception from toil and hardship? If she had been feeble and deformed, I told her, she might plead her infirmity as an excuse for idleness; but God had given her health and strength, and she ought to be proud to think that her labour could help to keep a decent home for her husband, whose career was one of continual peril. I might as well have talked to a stone. Marie told me she was very sorry she had married a sailor. If she had waited a little she had no doubt she might have had a rich young farmer for her husband—a man who could have stayed at home and kept her company, and given her fine clothes to wear. When that year was half gone I heard that there had been a desperate quarrel between Kergariou and his wife the night before he left home for his Greenland voyage; and before he had been gone a week Marie disappeared. At first there was an idea that she had made away with herself; and some of the good-natured fisher folk, who had known her from childhood, set to work to drag the river. But when the neighbours came to examine her cottage they found that she had taken all her clothes, and the few trinkets that Jean had given her in his courting days, and soon after that a waggoner told how he had met her on the road to Rennes; and then every one knew that Kergariou’s wife had run away because she was tired of her toilsome, honest life at Auray. She had let drop many a hint, it seemed, when she was washing linen among her companions down by the river; and it was pretty clear to them all that she had gone to Paris to make her fortune, and that if she could not make it in a good way she would make it in a bad one. She was only nineteen years of age, but as old in perversity as if she had been fifty.’
‘When did her husband come back?’
‘Not till late in the following year. He had been through all kinds of misfortune in the North Seas, and came back looking like the ghost of the fine, handsome young fellow I had married two years before. When he found out what had happened he wanted to set out for Paris in search of his wife; but he fell ill of fever and ague, and lay for months at a friend’s house, betweenlife and death. As soon as he was able to move about he went to Paris, and spent the remnant of his savings in hunting for his wife without success. She had not yet made herself notorious as a dancer, you must understand, and there were no photographs of her to be seen in the shops. She was only one among many foolish creatures painting their faces, and dancing before the foolish crowd. Kergariou came back to Auray in despair, and then went off to the North Seas again, caring very little whether he ever returned to his native place any more. He did come back, however, after an absence of more than three years. By that time Marie Pomellec had become notorious in Paris, under the name of Zaïre Chicot, and a Parisian photographer travelling through Brittany had left half-a-dozen of her photographs in Auray. They were to be seen at the bookseller’s shop when Jean Kergariou came home from his last voyage, and no sooner did he comprehend what had happened than he started off again for Paris on foot this time, for the poor fellow had spent all his money during his former search for his wife. He left Auray about the middle of June, and in the second week of July I read of his death in theMoniteur Universel, which a friend sends me every week from Orleans. Whether he had found his wife or not, I never knew. No one ever heard any more about his fate than that he had reached Paris, and met his death there.’
‘A melancholy end,’ said John Treverton.
‘Not more melancholy than that of his wife,’ replied Father le Mescam, ‘if there was any truth in a story I read last year, copied from an English newspaper. The poor creature seems to have been murdered by the man with whom she was living—possibly her husband.’
John Treverton’s heart sank. Every one, even this unworldly old priest, looked upon the husband’s guilt as a matter of course. And, if his innocence should ever be put to the proof, how was he to prove it? It was much to have made this discovery about his first wife, and to know that his second marriage had been valid. He stood possessed of Jasper Treverton’s estate without a shadow of fraud. Although guilty in intention, he had been innocent in fact. But beyond this there remained that still darker peril, the possibility that he might have to stand in the dock, charged with La Chicot’s murder.
The two priests helped to discuss a second bottle of Pomard, and then took their departure, after Father le Mescam had promised to introduce Mr. Treverton to a respectable notary, who would procure for him the legal evidence of Marie Pomellec’s marriage. While this was being done at Auray, John Treverton and his companion would travel without loss of time to Paris, and there search out the details of Jean Kergariou’s death and burial.
The appointment with the notary was made for nine o’clock next morning, so eager was John Treverton to push on the business.
‘Well,’ gasped Sampson, when the two priests had gone, ‘if ever a man played patience on a monument for a long winter evening, I think I am that individual. Now they’ve gone, perhaps you’ll tell me what that ridiculous old Jack-in-the-box, Father le Whatshisname, has been saying to you. I never saw an old fellow gesticulate in such a frantic way. If I hadn’t been bursting with curiosity, I should have rather enjoyed the performance, as a piece of dumb show.’
John Treverton told his legal adviser the gist of all he had heard from the priest.
‘Didn’t I say so?’ exclaimed Sampson. ‘Didn’t I say that it was more than likely there was a former husband in the background? It was a desperate guess, of course, and I don’t know that I quite thought it when I made the suggestion. But anything was better than relinquishing the estate, as you would have been fool enough to do, if you hadn’t had a shrewdish young man for your legal adviser. One of those tip-top firms in the City would have gone straight off to take counsel’s opinion; and, before you knew where you were, you’d have been counselled and opinioned out of your property.’
Sampson was in a state of intense exultation at a result which he considered entirely due to his own acumen. He walked up and down the room, chuckling inwardly, in a burst of self-approval. His overstrung feelings at last sought relief in some kind of refreshment. He asked John Treverton to order him a glass of hot gin and water, and he was quite indignant when he was informed that the Pavillon d’en haut could not furnish that truly British luxury.
‘I dare say if I order you “a grog” you will get something in the shape of hot brandy and water,’ said Treverton.
‘Oh, pray don’t do anything of the kind. Ask that black-eyed girl to bring a jug—oh! here she is.’
And thereupon Mr. Sampson turned himself to the pretty waiting maid, gave a loud preliminary ‘hem,’ and thus addressed her:—
‘Mada-moyselle, voulez vous avez le bonty de—bringez—ong joug—ong too petty joug—O boyllong, prenez vous garde que c’est too boyllong, avec une demi pint de O di vi, et ong bassing de sooker, et, pardonnez, aussi ong quiller, n’oubliez pas le quiller.’ Here the girl’s vacant stare arrested him, and he saw that no ray of British light could pierce an intellect of such Gallic density. ‘Here Treverton,’ he cried, impatiently. ‘You tell her. The girl’s a fool.’
John Treverton gave the order, and Mr. Sampson had thepleasure of mixing for himself a strong jorum of thoroughly English brandy and water, and went to bed happy after drinking it.
As soon as the office was open next morning, John Treverton despatched the following telegram to his wife:—
‘Good news for you. All particulars to follow in to-day’s letter.’
At eleven, railroad time, Mr. Treverton and his lawyer were on their way to Rennes,en routefor Paris.