‘What?’
‘What if he were to tell the police where Chicot, the wife-murderer, is to be found?’
‘My God!’ cried Treverton, turning upon the speaker with a look of horror. ‘You do not think me that?’
‘Unhappily, I do.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘First, on the strength of your cowardly conduct that night. Why should you shirk the responsibility of your position if you were not guilty? Your flight was damning evidence against you. Surely you must have known that when you fled?’
‘I ought to have known it, perhaps; but I thought of nothing except how best and quickest to escape from the entanglement which had been the bane and blight of my manhood. My wife was dead. Those glassy eyes, with their awful look of horror—that marble hand—told me that life had been gone for hours. What good could I do by remaining? Attend an inquest at which the story of my life would be ripped up for the delight of every gossip-monger in the kingdom; until I, John Treverton, alias Chicot, stood face to face with the world, so tainted and infected that no innocent woman could own me as her husband? What good to me, to that poor dead woman, or to society at large, could have come of my cross-examination at the inquest?’
‘This much good, at least: your innocence—if you are innocent—might have been made manifest. As it is, the inferences are all in favour of your guilt.’
‘How could I have proved my innocence? I could have offered no stronger proof at the inquest than I offer you now—my own word, the word of a man who at his worst never stooped to dishonour. I tell you face to face, as man to man, that I never lifted my hand against my wife: never, even when words were bitter between us, and of late we had many bitter words. I tried, honestly, to save her from her own weakness. The day had been when I was fond of her, in a reckless way, never looking forward to the future, or thinking what kind of a couple she and I would be when age had sobered us, and life had grown real and serious. No, Mr. Gerard, I am not a cruel man; and though the fetters hung heavily upon me I should never have striven to set myself free. When I saw those people—Desrolles and the two women—standing round me that night, it flashed upon me all at once that in their eyes I might look like a murderer. And then I foresaw suspicion, difficulties of all kinds, and above all that which I most dreaded, a hideous notoriety. If I stayed all this was inevitable. I might escape everything if I could get away. At that moment I considered only my own interest. I saw as it were a gate standing open leading into a new world. Was I very much to blame if I took advantage of my chance, and left my old life behind me?’
‘No man can leave his past life behind him,’ answered Gerard. ‘If you are innocent I am sorry for you; as I should be sorry for any innocent man who had acted so as to seem guilty. I am still more sorry for your wife.’