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Title: The Snare

Author: Rafael Sabatini

Posting Date: January 2, 2009 [EBook #2687]
Release Date: June, 2001
Last Updated: October 13, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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THE SNARE

By Rafael Sabatini


CONTENTS


    I.  THE AFFAIR AT TAVORA

   II.  THE ULTIMATUM

  III.  LADY O’MOY

   IV.  COUNT SAMOVAL

    V.  THE FUGITIVE

   VI.  MISS ARMYTAGE’S PEARLS

  VII.  THE ALLY

 VIII.  THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER

   IX.  THE GENERAL ORDER

    X.  THE STIFLED QUARREL

   XI.  THE CHALLENGE

  XII.  THE DUEL

 XIII.  POLICHINELLE

  XIV.  THE CHAMPION

   XV.  THE WALLET

  XVI.  THE EVIDENCE

  XVII.  BITTER WATER

 XVIII.  FOOL’S MATE

   XIX.  THE TRUTH

    XX.  THE RESIGNATION

   XXI.  SANCTUARY

   POSTSCRIPTUM





THE SNARE





CHAPTER I. THE AFFAIR AT TAVORA


It is established beyond doubt that Mr. Butler was drunk at the time.
This rests upon the evidence of Sergeant Flanagan and the troopers who
accompanied him, and it rests upon Mr. Butler’s own word, as we shall
see. And let me add here and now that however wild and irresponsible a
rascal he may have been, yet by his own lights he was a man of honour,
incapable of falsehood, even though it were calculated to save his skin.
I do not deny that Sir Thomas Picton has described him as a “thieving
blackguard.” But I am sure that this was merely the downright, rather
extravagant manner, of censure peculiar to that distinguished general,
and that those who have taken the expression at its purely literal value
have been lacking at once in charity and in knowledge of the caustic,
uncompromising terms of speech of General Picton whom Lord Wellington,
you will remember, called a rough, foulmouthed devil.

In further extenuation it may truthfully be urged that the whole hideous
and odious affair was the result of a misapprehension; although I cannot
go so far as one of Lieutenant Butler’s apologists and accept the
view that he was the victim of a deliberate plot on the part of his
too-genial host at Regoa. That is a misconception easily explained. This
host’s name happened to be Souza, and the apologist in question has very
rashly leapt at the conclusion that he was a member of that notoriously
intriguing family, of which the chief members were the Principal Souza,
of the Council of Regency at Lisbon, and the Chevalier Souza, Portuguese
minister to the Court of St. James’s. Unacquainted with Portugal, our
apologist was evidently in ignorance of the fact that the name of Souza
is almost as common in that country as the name of Smith in this. He may
also have been misled by the fact that Principal Souza did not neglect
to make the utmost capital out of the affair, thereby increasing the
difficulties with which Lord Wellington was already contending as a
result of incompetence and deliberate malice on the part both of the
ministry at home and of the administration in Lisbon.

Indeed, but for these factors it is unlikely that the affair could ever
have taken place at all. If there had been more energy on the part of
Mr. Perceval and the members of the Cabinet, if there had been less bad
faith and self-seeking on the part of the Opposition, Lord Wellington’s
campaign would not have been starved as it was; and if there had been
less bad faith and self-seeking of an even more stupid and flagrant
kind on the part of the Portuguese Council of Regency, the British
Expeditionary Force would not have been left without the stipulated
supplies and otherwise hindered at every step.

Lord Wellington might have experienced the mental agony of Sir John
Moore under similar circumstances fifteen months earlier. That he did
suffer, and was to suffer yet more, his correspondence shows. But his
iron will prevented that suffering from disturbing the equanimity of his
mind. The Council of Regency, in its concern to court popularity with
the aristocracy of Portugal, might balk his measures by its deliberate
supineness; echoes might reach him of the voices at St. Stephen’s
that loudly dubbed his dispositions rash, presumptuous and silly;
catch-halfpenny journalists at home and men of the stamp of Lord Grey
might exploit their abysmal military ignorance in reckless criticism and
censure of his operations; he knew what a passionate storm of anger and
denunciation had arisen from the Opposition when he had been raised to
the peerage some months earlier, after the glorious victory of Talavera,
and how, that victory notwithstanding, it had been proclaimed that his
conduct of the campaign was so incompetent as to deserve, not reward,
but punishment; and he was aware of the growing unpopularity of the
war in England, knew that the Government--ignorant of what he was so
laboriously preparing--was chafing at his inactivity of the past few
months, so that a member of the Cabinet wrote to him exasperatedly,
incredibly and fatuously--“for God’s sake do something--anything so that
blood be spilt.”

A heart less stout might have been broken, a genius less mighty stifled
in this evil tangle of stupidity, incompetence and malignity that sprang
up and flourished about him on every hand. A man less single-minded
must have succumbed to exasperation, thrown up his command and taken
ship for home, inviting some of his innumerable critics to take his
place at the head of the troops, and give free rein to the military
genius that inspired their critical dissertations. Wellington, however,
has been rightly termed of iron, and never did he show himself more of
iron than in those trying days of 1810. Stern, but with a passionless
sternness, he pursued his way towards the goal he had set himself,
allowing no criticism, no censure, no invective so much as to give him
pause in his majestic progress.

Unfortunately the lofty calm of the Commander-in-Chief was not shared
by his lieutenants. The Light Division was quartered along the River
Agueda, watching the Spanish frontier, beyond which Marshal Ney
was demonstrating against Ciudad Rodrigo, and for lack of funds its
fiery-tempered commander, Sir Robert Craufurd, found himself at last
unable to feed his troops. Exasperated by these circumstances, Sir
Robert was betrayed into an act of rashness. He seized some church plate
at Pinhel that he might convert it into rations. It was an act which,
considering the general state of public feeling in the country at
the time, might have had the gravest consequences, and Sir Robert was
subsequently forced to do penance and afford redress. That, however,
is another story. I but mention the incident here because the affair of
Tavora with which I am concerned may be taken to have arisen directly
out of it, and Sir Robert’s behaviour may be construed as setting an
example and thus as affording yet another extenuation of Lieutenant
Butler’s offence.

Our lieutenant was sent upon a foraging expedition into the valley of
the Upper Douro, at the head of a half-troop of the 8th Dragoons, two
squadrons of which were attached at the time to the Light Division. To
be more precise, he was to purchase and bring into Pinhel a hundred
head of cattle, intended some for slaughter and some for draught. His
instructions were to proceed as far as Regoa and there report himself
to one Bartholomew Bearsley, a prosperous and influential English
wine-grower, whose father had acquired considerable vineyards in
the Douro. He was reminded of the almost hostile disposition of the
peasantry in certain districts; warned to handle them with tact and to
suffer no straggling on the part of his troopers; and advised to
place himself in the hands of Mr. Bearsley for all that related to the
purchase of the cattle. Let it be admitted at once that had Sir
Robert Craufurd been acquainted with Mr. Butler’s feather-brained,
irresponsible nature, he would have selected any officer rather than our
lieutenant to command that expedition. But the Irish Dragoons had only
lately come to Pinhel, and the general himself was not immediately
concerned.

Lieutenant Butler set out on a blustering day of March at the head of
his troopers, accompanied by Cornet O’Rourke and two sergeants, and at
Pesqueira he was further reinforced by a Portuguese guide. They found
quarters that night at Ervedoza, and early on the morrow they were in
the saddle again, riding along the heights above the Cachao da Valleria,
through which the yellow, swollen river swirled and foamed along its
rocky way. The prospect, formidable even in the full bloom of fruitful
and luxuriant summer, was forbidding and menacing now as some imagined
gorge of the nether regions. The towering granite heights across the
turgid stream were shrouded in mist and sweeping rain, and from the
leaden heavens overhead the downpour was of a sullen and merciless
steadiness, starting at every step a miniature torrent to go swell the
roaring waters in the gorge, and drenching the troop alike in body and
in spirit. Ahead, swathed to the chin in his blue cavalry cloak, the
water streaming from his leather helmet, rode Lieutenant Butler, cursing
the weather, the country; the Light Division, and everything else that
occurred to him as contributing to his present discomfort. Beside
him, astride of a mule, rode the Portuguese guide in a caped cloak of
thatched straw, which made him look for all the world like a bottle of
his native wine in its straw sheath. Conversation between the two was
out of the question, for the guide spoke no English and the lieutenant’s
knowledge of Portuguese was very far from conversational.

Presently the ground sloped, and the troop descended from the heights by
a road flanked with dripping pinewoods, black and melancholy, that for
a while screened them off from the remainder of the sodden world. Thence
they emerged near the head of the bridge that spanned the swollen river
and led them directly into the town of Regoa. Through the mud and clay
of the deserted, narrow, unpaved streets the dragoons squelched their
way, under a super-deluge, for the rain was now reinforced by steady
and overwhelming sheets of water descending on either side from the
gutter-shaped tiles that roofed the houses.

Inquisitive faces showed here and there behind blurred windows; odd
doors were opened that a peasant family might stare in questioning
wonder--and perhaps in some concern--at the sodden pageant that was
passing. But in the streets themselves the troopers met no living thing,
all the world having scurried to shelter from the pitiless downpour.

Beyond the town they were brought by their guide to a walled garden, and
halted at a gateway. Beyond this could be seen a fair white house set
in the foreground of the vineyards that rose in terraces up the hillside
until they were lost from sight in the lowering veils of mist. Carved
on the granite lintel of that gateway, the lieutenant beheld the
inscription, “BARTHOLOMEU BEARSLEY, 1744,” and knew himself at his
destination, at the gates of the son or grandson--he knew not which, nor
cared--of the original tenant of that wine farm.

Mr. Bearsley, however, was from home. The lieutenant was informed
of this by Mr. Bearsley’s steward, a portly, genial, rather priestly
gentleman in smooth black broadcloth, whose name was Souza--a name
which, as I have said, has given rise to some misconceptions. Mr.
Bearsley himself had lately left for England, there to wait until the
disturbed state of Portugal should be happily repaired. He had been a
considerable sufferer from the French invasion under Soult, and none
may blame him for wishing to avoid a repetition of what already he
had undergone, especially now that it was rumoured that the Emperor in
person would lead the army gathering for conquest on the frontiers.

But had Mr. Bearsley been at home the dragoons could have received no
warmer welcome than that which was extended to them by Fernando Souza.
Greeting the lieutenant in intelligible English, he implored him, in the
florid manner of the Peninsula, to count the house and all within it his
own property, and to command whatever he might desire.

The troopers found accommodation in the kitchen and in the spacious
hall, where great fires of pine logs were piled up for their comfort;
and for the remainder of the day they abode there in various states of
nakedness, relieved by blankets and straw capotes, what time the house
was filled with the steam and stench of their drying garments. Rations
had been short of late on the Agueda, and, in addition, their weary
ride through the rain had made the men sharp-set. Abundance of food
was placed before them by the solicitude of Fernando Souza, and they
feasted, as they had not feasted for many months, upon roast kid, boiled
rice and golden maize bread, washed down by a copious supply of a rough
and not too heady wine that the discreet and discriminating steward
judged appropriate to their palates and capable of supporting some
abuse.

Akin to the treatment of the troopers in hall and kitchen, but on a
nobler scale, was the treatment of Lieutenant Butler and Cornet O’Rourke
in the dining-room. For them a well-roasted turkey took the place
of kid, and Souza went down himself to explore the cellars for a
well-sunned, time-ripened Douro table wine which he vowed--and our
dragoons agreed with him--would put the noblest Burgundy to shame; and
then with the dessert there was a Port the like of which Mr. Butler--who
was always of a nice taste in wine, and who was coming into some
knowledge of Port from his residence in the country--had never dreamed
existed.

For four and twenty hours the dragoons abode at Mr. Bearsley’s quinta,
thanking God for the discomforts that had brought them to such comfort,
feasting in this land of plenty as only those can feast who have kept a
rigid Lent. Nor was this all. The benign Souza was determined that
the sojourn there of these representatives of his country’s deliverers
should be a complete rest and holiday. Not for Mr. Butler to journey to
the uplands in this matter of a herd of bullocks. Fernando Souza had at
command a regiment of labourers, who were idle at this time of year, and
whom his good nature would engage on behalf of his English guests.
Let the lieutenant do no more than provide the necessary money for the
cattle, and the rest should happen as by enchantment--and Souza himself
would see to it that the price was fair and proper.

The lieutenant asked no better. He had no great opinion of himself
either as cattle dealer or cattle drover, nor did his ambitions beget in
him any desire to excel as one or the other. So he was well content that
his host should have the bullocks fetched to Regoa for him. The herd was
driven in on the following afternoon, by when the rain had ceased, and
our lieutenant had every reason to be pleased when he beheld the solid
beasts procured. Having disbursed the amount demanded--an amount more
reasonable far than he had been prepared to pay--Mr. Butler would have
set out forthwith to return to Pinhel, knowing how urgent was the need
of the division and with what impatience the choleric General Craufurd
would be awaiting him.

“Why, so you shall, so you shall,” said the priestly, soothing Souza.
“But first you’ll dine. There is good dinner--ah, but what good
dinner!--that I have order. And there is a wine--ah, but you shall give
me news of that wine.”

Lieutenant Butler hesitated. Cornet O’Rourke watched him anxiously,
praying that he might succumb to the temptation, and attempted suasion
in the form of a murmured blessing upon Souza’s hospitality.

“Sir Robert will be impatient,” demurred the lieutenant.

“But half-hour,” protested Souza. “What is half-hour? And in half-hour
you will have dine.”

“True,” ventured the cornet; “and it’s the devil himself knows when we
may dine again.”

“And the dinner is ready. It can be serve this instant. It shall,” said
Souza with finality, and pulled the bell-rope.

Mr. Butler, never dreaming--as indeed how could he?--that Fate was
taking a hand in this business, gave way, and they sat down to dinner.
Henceforth you see him the sport of pitiless circumstance.

They dined within the half-hour, as Souza had promised, and they dined
exceedingly well. If yesterday the steward had been able without warning
of their coming to spread at short notice so excellent a feast, conceive
what had been accomplished now by preparation. Emptying his fourth and
final bumper of rich red Douro, Mr. Butler paid his host the compliment
of a sigh and pushed back his chair.

But Souza detained him, waving a hand that trembled with anxiety, and
with anxiety stamped upon his benignly rotund and shaven countenance.

“An instant yet,” he implored. “Mr. Bearsley would never pardon me did I
let you go without what he call a stirrup-cup to keep you from the ills
that lurk in the wind of the Serra. A glass--but one--of that Port you
tasted yesterday. I say but a glass, yet I hope you will do honour to
the bottle. But a glass at least, at least!” He implored it almost with
tears. Mr. Butler had reached that state of delicious torpor in which
to take the road is the last agony; but duty was duty, and Sir Robert
Craufurd had the fiend’s own temper. Torn thus between consciousness of
duty and the weakness of the flesh, he looked at O’Rourke. O’Rourke,
a cherubic fellow, who had for his years a very pretty taste in wine,
returned the glance with a moist eye, and licked his lips.

“In your place I should let myself be tempted,” says he. “It’s an
elegant wine, and ten minutes more or less is no great matter.”

The lieutenant discovered a middle way which permitted him to take a
prompt decision creditable to his military instincts, but revealing a
disgraceful though quite characteristic selfishness.

“Very well,” he said. “Leave Sergeant Flanagan and ten men to wait for
me, O’Rourke, and do you set out at once with the rest of the troop. And
take the cattle with you. I shall overtake you before you have gone very
far.”

O’Rourke’s crestfallen air stirred the sympathetic Souza’s pity.

“But, Captain,” he besought, “will you not allow the lieutenant--”

Mr. Butler cut him short. “Duty,” said he sententiously, “is duty. Be
off, O’Rourke.”

And O’Rourke, clicking his heels viciously, saluted and departed.

Came presently the bottles in a basket--not one, as Souza had said, but
three; and when the first was done Butler reflected that since O’Rourke
and the cattle were already well upon the road there need no longer be
any hurry about his own departure. A herd of bullocks does not travel
very quickly, and even with a few hours’ start in a forty-mile journey
is easily over-taken by a troop of horse travelling without encumbrance.

You understand, then, how easily our lieutenant yielded himself to
the luxurious circumstances, and disposed himself to savour the second
bottle of that nectar distilled from the very sunshine of the Douro--the
phrase is his own. The steward produced a box of very choice cigars, and
although the lieutenant was not an habitual smoker, he permitted himself
on this exceptional occasion to be further tempted. Stretched in a deep
chair beside the roaring fire of pine logs, he sipped and smoked and
drowsed away the greater par of that wintry afternoon. Soon the third
bottle had gone the way of the second, and Mr. Bearsley’s steward being
a man of extremely temperate habit, it follows that most of the wine had
found its way down the lieutenant’s thirsty gullet.

It was perhaps a more potent vintage than he had at first suspected, and
as the torpor produced by the dinner and the earlier, fuller wine was
wearing off, it was succeeded by an exhilaration that played havoc with
the few wits that Mr. Butler could call his own.

The steward was deeply learned in wines and wine growing and in very
little besides; consequently the talk was almost confined to that
subject in its many branches, and he could be interesting enough, like
all enthusiasts. To a fresh burst of praise from Butler of the ruby
vintage to which he had been introduced, the steward presently responded
with a sigh:

“Indeed, as you say, Captain, a great wine. But we had a greater.”

“Impossible, by God,” swore Butler, with a hiccup.

“You may say so; but it is the truth. We had a greater; a wonderful,
clear vintage it was, of the year 1798--a famous year on the Douro, the
quite most famous year that we have ever known. Mr. Bearsley sell some
pipes to the monks at Tavora, who have bottle it and keep it. I beg him
at the time not to sell, knowing the value it must come to have one day.
But he sell all the same. Ah, meu Deus!” The steward clasped his hands
and raised rather prominent eyes to the ceiling, protesting to his Maker
against his master’s folly. “He say we have plenty, and now”--he spread
fat hands in a gesture of despair--“and now we have none. Some sons of
dogs of French who came with Marshal Soult happen this way on a forage
they discover the wine and they guzzle it like pigs.” He swore, and his
benignity was eclipsed by wrathful memory. He heaved himself up in a
passion.

“Think of that so priceless vintage drink like hogwash, as Mr. Bearsley
say, by those god-dammed French swine, not a drop--not a spoonful
remain. But the monks at Tavora still have much of what they buy, I am
told. They treasure it for they know good wine. All priests know good
wine. Ah yes! Goddam!” He fell into deep reflection.

Lieutenant Butler stirred, and became sympathetic.

“‘San infern’l shame,” said he indignantly. “I’ll no forgerrit when I...
meet the French.” Then he too fell into reflection.

He was a good Catholic, and, moreover, a Catholic who did not take
things for granted. The sloth and self-indulgence of the clergy in
Portugal, being his first glimpse of conventuals in Latin countries,
had deeply shocked him. The vows of a monastic poverty that was kept
carefully beyond the walls of the monastery offended his sense of
propriety. That men who had vowed themselves to pauperism, who wore
coarse garments and went barefoot, should batten upon rich food and
store up wines that gold could not purchase, struck him as a hideous
incongruity.

“And the monks drink this nectar?” he said aloud, and laughed
sneeringly. “I know the breed--the fair found belly wi’ fat capon lined.
Tha’s your poverty stricken Capuchin.”

Souza looked at him in sudden alarm, bethinking himself that all
Englishmen were heretics, and knowing nothing of subtle distinctions
between English and Irish. In silence Butler finished the third and last
bottle, and his thoughts fixed themselves with increasing insistence
upon a wine reputed better than this of which there was great store in
the cellars of the convent of Tavora.

Abruptly he asked: “Where’s Tavora?” He was thinking perhaps of the
comfort that such wine would bring to a company of war-worn soldiers in
the valley of the Agueda.

“Some ten leagues from here,” answered Souza, and pointed to a map that
hung upon the wall.

The lieutenant rose, and rolled a thought unsteadily across the room.
He was a tall, loose-limbed fellow, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned, with
a thatch of fiery red hair excellently suited to his temperament. He
halted before the map, and with legs wide apart, to afford him the
steadying support of a broad basis, he traced with his finger the course
of the Douro, fumbled about the district of Regoa, and finally hit upon
the place he sought.

“Why,” he said, “seems to me ‘sif we should ha’ come that way. I’s
shorrer road to Pesqueira than by the river.”

“As the bird fly,” said Souza. “But the roads be bad--just mule tracks,
while by the river the road is tolerable good.”

“Yet,” said the lieutenant, “I think I shall go back tha’ way.”

The fumes of the wine were mounting steadily to addle his indifferent
brains. Every moment he was seeing things in proportions more and more
false. His resentment against priests who, sworn to self-abnegation,
hoarded good wine, whilst soldiers sent to keep harm from priests’ fat
carcasses were left to suffer cold and even hunger, was increasing with
every moment. He would sample that wine at Tavora; and he would bear
some of it away that his brother officers at Pinhel might sample it. He
would buy it. Oh yes! There should be no plundering, no irregularity, no
disregard of general orders. He would buy the wine and pay for it--but
himself he would fix the price, and see that the monks of Tavora made no
profit out of their defenders.

Thus he thought as he considered the map. Presently, when having taken
leave of Fernando Souza--that prince of hosts--Mr. Butler was riding
down through the town with Sergeant Flanagan and ten troopers at his
heels, his purpose deepened and became more fierce. I think the change
of temperature must have been to blame. It was a chill, bleak evening.
Overhead, across a background of faded blue, scudded ragged banks of
clouds, the lingering flotsam of the shattered rainstorm of yesterday:
and a cavalry cloak afforded but indifferent protection against the wind
that blew hard and sharp from the Atlantic.

Coming from the genial warmth of Mr. Souza’s parlour into this, the
evaporation of the wine within him was quickened, its fumes mounted now
overwhelmingly to his brain, and from comfortably intoxicated that he
had been hitherto, the lieutenant now became furiously drunk; and the
transition was a very rapid one. It was now that he looked upon the
business he had in hand in the light of a crusade; a sort of religious
fanaticism began to actuate him.

The souls of these wretched monks must be saved; the temptation to
self-indulgence, which spelt perdition for them, must be removed from
their midst. It was a Christian duty. He no longer thought of buying the
wine and paying for it. His one aim now was to obtain possession of
it not merely a part of it, but all of it--and carry it off, thereby
accomplishing two equally praiseworthy ends: to rescue a conventful
of monks from damnation, and to regale the much-enduring, half-starved
campaigners of the Agueda.

Thus reasoned Mr. Butler with admirable, if drunken, logic. And
reasoning thus he led the way over the bridge, and kept straight on
when he had crossed it, much to the dismay of Sergeant Flanagan, who,
perceiving the lieutenant’s condition, conceived that he was missing his
way. This the sergeant ventured to point out, reminding his officer that
they had come by the road along the river.

“So we did,” said Butler shortly. “Bu’ we go back by way of Tavora.”

They had no guide. The one who had conducted them to Regoa had returned
with O’Rourke, and although Souza had urged upon the lieutenant at
parting that he should take one of the men from the quinta, Butler, with
wit enough to see that this was not desirable under the circumstances,
had preferred to find his way alone.

His confused mind strove now to revisualise the map which he had
consulted in Souza’s parlour. He discovered, naturally enough, that the
task was altogether beyond his powers. Meanwhile night was descending.
They were, however, upon the mule track, which went up and round the
shoulder of a hill, and by this they came at dark upon a hamlet.

Sergeant Flanagan was a shrewd fellow and perhaps the most sober man in
the troop--for the wine had run very freely in Souza’s kitchen, too,
and the men, whilst awaiting their commander’s pleasure, had taken the
fullest advantage of an opportunity that was all too rare upon that
campaign. Now Sergeant Flanagan began to grow anxious. He knew the
Peninsula from the days of Sir John Moore, and he knew as much of the
ways of the peasantry of Portugal as any man. He knew of the brutal
ferocity of which that peasantry was capable. He had seen evidence
more than once of the unspeakable fate of French stragglers from the
retreating army of Marshal Soult. He knew of crucifixions, mutilations
and hideous abominations practised upon them in these remote hill
districts by the merciless men into whose hands they happened to fall,
and he knew that it was not upon French soldiers alone--that these
abominations had been practised. Some of those fierce peasants had
been unable to discriminate between invader and deliverer; to them
a foreigner was a foreigner and no more. Others, who were capable of
discriminating, were in the position of having come to look upon French
and English with almost equal execration.

It is true that whilst the Emperor’s troops made war on the maxim that
an army must support itself upon the country it traverses, thereby
achieving a greater mobility, since it was thus permitted to travel
comparatively light, the British law was that all things requisitioned
must be paid for. Wellington maintained this law in spite of all
difficulties at all times with an unrelaxing rigidity, and punished with
the utmost vigour those who offended against it. Nevertheless breaches
were continual; men broke out here and there, often, be it said,
under stress of circumstances for which the Portuguese were
themselves responsible; plunder and outrage took place and provoked
indiscriminating rancour with consequences at times as terrible to
stragglers from the British army of deliverance as to those from the
French army of oppressors. Then, too, there was the Portuguese Militia
Act recently enforced by Wellington--acting through the Portuguese
Government--deeply resented by the peasantry upon whom it bore, and
rendering them disposed to avenge it upon such stray British soldiers as
might fall into their hands.

Knowing all this, Sergeant Flanagan did not at all relish this night
excursion into the hill fastnesses, where at any moment, as it seemed to
him, they might miss their way. After all, they were but twelve men all
told, and he accounted it a stupid thing to attempt to take a short cut
across the hills for the purpose of overtaking an encumbered troop that
must of necessity be moving at a very much slower pace. This was the
way not to overtake but to outdistance. Yet since it was not for him to
remonstrate with the lieutenant, he kept his peace and hoped anxiously
for the best.

At the mean wine-shop of that hamlet Mr. Butler inquired his way by
the simple expedient of shouting “Tavora?” with a strong interrogative
inflection. The vintner made it plain by gestures--accompanied by a
rattling musketry of incomprehensible speech that their way lay straight
ahead. And straight ahead they went, following that mule track for
some five or six miles until it began to slope gently towards the plain
again. Below them they presently beheld a cluster of twinkling lights
to advertise a township. They dropped swiftly down, and in the outskirts
overtook a belated bullock-cart, whose ungreased axle was arousing the
hillside echoes with its plangent wail.

Of the vigorous young woman who marched barefoot beside it, shouldering
her goad as if it were a pikestaff, Mr. Butler inquired--by his usual
method--if this were Tavora, to receive an answer which, though voluble,
was unmistakably affirmative.

“Covento Dominicano?” was his next inquiry, made after they had gone some
little way.

The woman pointed with her goad to a massive, dark building, flanked by
a little church, which stood just across the square they were entering.

A moment later the sergeant, by Mr. Butler’s orders, was knocking upon
the iron-studded main door. They waited awhile in vain. None came to
answer the knock; no light showed anywhere upon the dark face of the
convent. The sergeant knocked again, more vigorously than before.
Presently came timid, shuffling steps; a shutter opened in the door, and
the grille thus disclosed was pierced by a shaft of feeble yellow light.
A quavering, aged voice demanded to know who knocked.

“English soldiers,” answered the lieutenant in Portuguese. “Open!”

A faint exclamation suggestive of dismay was the answer, the shutter
closed again with a snap, the shuffling steps retreated and unbroken
silence followed.

“Now wharra devil may this mean?” growled Mr. Butler. Drugged wits, like
stupid ones, are readily suspicious. “Wharra they hatching in here that
they are afraid of lerring Bri’ish soldiers see? Knock again, Flanagan.
Louder, man!”

The sergeant beat the door with the butt of his carbine. The blows gave
out a hollow echo, but evoked no more answer than if they had fallen
upon the door of a mausoleum. Mr. Butler completely lost his temper.
“Seems to me that we’ve stumbled upon a hotbed o’ treason. Hotbed o’
treason!” he repeated, as if pleased with the phrase. “That’s wharrit
is.” And he added peremptorily: “Break down the door.”

“But, sir,” began the sergeant in protest, greatly daring.

“Break down the door,” repeated Mr. Butler. “Lerrus be after seeing
wha’ these monks are afraid of showing us. I’ve a notion they’re hiding
more’n their wine.”

Some of the troopers carried axes precisely against such an emergency as
this. Dismounting, they fell upon the door with a will. But the oak was
stout, fortified by bands of iron and great iron studs; and it resisted
long. The thud of the axes and the crash of rending timbers could be
heard from one end of Tavora to the other, yet from the convent it
evoked no slightest response. But presently, as the door began to yield
to the onslaught, there came another sound to arouse the town. From the
belfry of the little church a bell suddenly gave tongue upon a frantic,
hurried note that spoke unmistakably of alarm. Ding-ding-ding-ding
it went, a tocsin summoning the assistance of all true sons of Mother
Church.

Mr. Butler, however, paid little heed to it. The door was down at last,
and followed by his troopers he rode under the massive gateway into
the spacious close. Dismounting there, and leaving the woefully anxious
sergeant and a couple of men to guard the horses, the lieutenant led the
way along the cloisters, faintly revealed by a new-risen moon, towards a
gaping doorway whence a feeble light was gleaming. He stumbled over the
step into a hall dimly lighted by a lantern swinging from the ceiling.
He found a chair, mounted it, and cut the lantern down, then led the
way again along an endless corridor, stone-flagged and flanked on either
side by rows of cells. Many of the doors stood open, as if in silent
token of the tenants’ hurried flight, showing what a panic had been
spread by the sudden advent of this troop.

Mr. Butler became more and more deeply intrigued, more and more deeply
suspicious that here all was not well. Why should a community of loyal
monks take flight in this fashion from British soldiers?

“Bad luck to them!” he growled, as he stumbled on. “They may hide as
they will, but it’s myself ‘ll run the shavelings to earth.”

They were brought up short at the end of that long, chill gallery by
closed double doors. Beyond these an organ was pealing, and overhead
the clapper of the alarm bell was beating more furiously than ever. All
realised that they stood upon the threshold of the chapel and that the
conventuals had taken refuge there.

Mr. Butler checked upon a sudden suspicion. “Maybe, after all, they’ve
taken us for French,” said he.

A trooper ventured to answer him. “Best let them see we’re not before we
have the whole village about our ears.”

“Damn that bell,” said the lieutenant, and added: “Put your shoulders to
the door.”

Its fastenings were but crazy ones, and it yielded almost instantly to
their pressure--yielded so suddenly that Mr. Butler, who himself had
been foremost in straining against it, shot forward half-a-dozen yards
into the chapel and measured his length upon its cold flags.

Simultaneously from the chancel came a great cry: “Libera nos, Domine!”
 followed by a shuddering murmur of prayer.

The lieutenant picked himself up, recovered the lantern that had rolled
from his grasp, and lurched forward round the angle that hid the chancel
from his view. There, huddled before the main altar like a flock of
scared and stupid sheep, he beheld the conventuals--some two score of
them perhaps and in the dim light of the heavy altar lamp above them he
could make out the black and white habit of the order of St. Dominic.

He came to a halt, raised his lantern aloft, and called to them
peremptorily:

“Ho, there!”

The organ ceased abruptly, but the bell overhead went clattering on.

Mr. Butler addressed them in the best French he could command: “What
do you fear? Why do you flee? We are friends--English soldiers, seeking
quarters for the night.”

A vague alarm was stirring in him. It began to penetrate his obfuscated
mind that perhaps he had been rash, that this forcible rape of a convent
was a serious matter. Therefore he attempted this peaceful explanation.

From that huddled group a figure rose, and advanced with a solemn,
stately grace. There was a faint swish of robes, the faint rattle
of rosary beads. Something about that figure caught the lieutenant’s
attention sharply. He craned forward, half sobered by the sudden fear
that clutched him, his eyes bulging in his face.

“I had thought,” said a gentle, melancholy woman’s voice, “that the
seals of a nunnery were sacred to British soldiers.”

For a moment Mr. Butler seemed to be labouring for breath. Fully sobered
now, understanding of his ghastly error reached him at the gallop.

“My God!” he gasped, and incontinently turned to flee.

But as he fled in horror of his sacrilege, he still kept his head
turned, staring over his shoulder at the stately figure of the abbess,
either in fascination or with some lingering doubt of what he had seen
and heard. Running thus, he crashed headlong into a pillar, and, stunned
by the blow, he reeled and sank unconscious to the ground.

This the troopers had not seen, for they had not lingered. Understanding
on their own part the horrible blunder, they had turned even as their
leader turned, and they had raced madly back the way they had come,
conceiving that he followed. And there was reason for their haste other
than their anxiety to set a term to the sacrilege of their presence.
From the cloistered garden of the convent uproar reached them, and the
metallic voice of Sergeant Flanagan calling loudly for help.

The alarm bell of the convent had done its work. The villagers were
up, enraged by the outrage, and armed with sticks and scythes and
bill-hooks, an army of them was charging to avenge this infamy. The
troopers reached the close no more than in time. Sergeant Flanagan, only
half understanding the reason for so much anger, but understanding that
this anger was very real and very dangerous, was desperately defending
the horses with his two companions against the vanguard of the
assailants. There was a swift rush of the dragoons and in an instant
they were in the saddle, all but the lieutenant, of whose absence they
were suddenly made conscious. Flanagan would have gone back for him, and
he had in fact begun to issue an order with that object when a sudden
surge of the swelling, roaring crowd cut off the dragoons from the door
through which they had emerged. Sitting their horses, the little troop
came together, their sabres drawn, solid as a rock in that angry
human sea that surged about them. The moon riding now clear overhead
irradiated that scene of impending strife.

Flanagan, standing in his stirrups, attempted to harangue the mob. But
he was at a loss what to say that would appease them, nor able to speak
a language they could understand. An angry peasant made a slash at him
with a billhook. He parried the blow on his sabre, and with the flat of
it knocked his assailant senseless.

Then the storm burst, and the mob flung itself upon the dragoons.

“Bad cess to you!” cried Flanagan. “Will ye listen to me, ye murthering
villains.” Then in despair “Char-r-r-ge!” he roared, and headed for the
gateway.

The troopers attempted in vain to reach it. The mob hemmed them about
too closely, and then a horrid hand-to-hand fight began, under the cold
light of the moon, in that garden consecrated to peace and piety. Two
saddles had been emptied, and the exasperated troopers were slashing now
at their assailants with the edge, intent upon cutting a way out of that
murderous press. It is doubtful if a man of them would have survived,
for the odds were fully ten to one against them. To their aid came now
the abbess. She stood on a balcony above, and called upon the people
to desist, and hear her. Thence she harangued them for some moments,
commanding them to allow the soldiers to depart. They obeyed with
obvious reluctance, and at last a lane was opened in that solid,
seething mass of angry clods.

But Flanagan hesitated to pass down this lane and so depart. Three of
his troopers were down by now, and his lieutenant was missing. He was
exercised to resolve where his duty lay. Behind him the mob was solid,
cutting off the dragoons from their fallen comrades. An attempt to go
back might be misunderstood and resisted, leading to a renewal of the
combat, and surely in vain, for he could not doubt but that the fallen
troopers had been finished outright.

Similarly the mob stood as solid between him and the door that led to
the interior of the convent, where Mr. Butler was lingering alive or
dead. A number of peasants had already invaded the actual building, so
that in that connection too the sergeant concluded that there was little
reason to hope that the lieutenant should have escaped the fate his own
rashness had invoked. He had his remaining seven men to think of, and
he concluded that it was his duty under all the circumstances to bring
these off alive, and not procure their massacre by attempting fruitless
quixotries.

So “Forward!” roared the voice of Sergeant Flanagan, and forward went
the seven through the passage that had opened out before them in that
hooting, angry mob.

Beyond the convent walls they found fresh assailants awaiting them,
enemies these, who had not been soothed by the gentle, reassuring voice
of the abbess. But here there was more room to manoeuvre.

“Trot!” the sergeant commanded, and soon that trot became a gallop. A
shower of stones followed them as they thundered out of Tavora, and the
sergeant himself had a lump as large as a duck-egg on the middle of his
head when next day he reported himself at Pesqueira to Cornet O’Rourke,
whom he overtook there.

When eventually Sir Robert Craufurd heard the story of the affair, he
was as angry as only Sir Robert could be. To have lost four dragoons
and to have set a match to a train that might end in a conflagration was
reason and to spare.

“How came such a mistake to be made?” he inquired, a scowl upon his full
red countenance.

Mr. O’Rourke had been investigating and was primed with knowledge.

“It appears, sir, that at Tavora there is a convent of Dominican nuns as
well as a monastery of Dominican friars. Mr. Butler will have used the
word ‘convento,’ which more particularly applies to the nunnery, and so
he was directed to the wrong house.”

“And you say the sergeant has reason to believe that Mr. Butler did not
survive his folly?”

“I am afraid there can be no hope, sir.”

“It’s perhaps just as well,” said Sir Robert. “For Lord Wellington would
certainly have had him shot.”

And there you have the true account of the stupid affair of Tavora,
which was to produce, as we shall see, such far-reaching effects upon
persons nowise concerned in it.




CHAPTER II. THE ULTIMATUM


News of the affair at Tavora reached Sir Terence O’Moy, the
Adjutant-General at Lisbon, about a week later in dispatches from
headquarters. These informed him that in the course of the humble
apology and explanation of the regrettable occurrence offered by the
Colonel of the 8th Dragoons in person to the Mother Abbess, it had
transpired that Lieutenant Butler had left the convent alive, but that
nevertheless he continued absent from his regiment.

Those dispatches contained other unpleasant matters of a totally
different nature, with which Sir Terence must proceed to deal at once;
but their gravity was completely outweighed in the adjutant’s mind by
this deplorable affair of Lieutenant Butler’s. Without wishing to convey
an impression that the blunt and downright O’Moy was gifted with any
undue measure of shrewdness, it must nevertheless be said that he was
quick to perceive what fresh thorns the occurrence was likely to throw
in a path that was already thorny enough in all conscience, what
a semblance of justification it must give to the hostility of the
intriguers on the Council of Regency, what a formidable weapon it must
place in the hands of Principal Souza and his partisans. In itself this
was enough to trouble a man in O’Moy’s position. But there was more.
Lieutenant Butler happened to be his brother-in-law, own brother to
O’Moy’s lovely, frivolous wife. Irresponsibility ran strongly in that
branch of the Butler family.

For the sake of the young wife whom he loved with a passionate and
fearful jealousy such as is not uncommon in a man of O’Moy’s temperament
when at his age--he was approaching his forty-sixth birthday--he marries
a girl of half his years, the adjutant had pulled his brother-in-law out
of many a difficulty; shielded him on many an occasion from the proper
consequences of his incurable rashness.

This affair of the convent, however, transcended anything that had gone
before and proved altogether too much for O’Moy. It angered him as much
as it afflicted him. Yet when he took his head in his hands and groaned,
it was only his sorrow that he was expressing, and it was a sorrow
entirely concerned with his wife.

The groan attracted the attention of his military secretary, Captain
Tremayne, of Fletcher’s Engineers, who sat at work at a littered
writing-table placed in the window recess. He looked up sharply, sudden
concern in the strong young face and the steady grey eyes he bent upon
his chief. The sight of O’Moy’s hunched attitude brought him instantly
to his feet.

“Whatever is the matter, sir?”

“It’s that damned fool Richard,” growled O’Moy. “He’s broken out again.”

The captain looked relieved. “And is that all?”

O’Moy looked at him, white-faced, and in his blue eyes a blaze of that
swift passion that had made his name a byword in the army.

“All?” he roared. “You’ll say it’s enough, by God, when you hear what
the fool’s been at this time. Violation of a nunnery, no less.” And he
brought his massive fist down with a crash upon the document that had
conveyed the information. “With a detachment of dragoons he broke into
the convent of the Dominican nuns at Tavora one night a week ago.
The alarm bell was sounded, and the village turned out to avenge the
outrage. Consequences: three troopers killed, five peasants sabred to
death and seven other casualties, Dick himself missing and reported to
have escaped from the convent, but understood to remain in hiding--so
that he adds desertion to the other crime, as if that in itself were not
enough to hang him. That’s all, as you say, and I hope you consider it
enough even for Dick Butler--bad luck to him.”

“My God!” said Captain Tremayne.

“I’m glad that you agree with me.”

Captain Tremayne stared at his chief, the utmost dismay upon his fine
young face. “But surely, sir, surely--I mean, sir, if this report is
correct some explanation--” He broke down, utterly at fault.

“To be sure, there’s an explanation. You may always depend upon a most
elegant explanation for anything that Dick Butler does. His life is made
up of mistakes and explanations.” He spoke bitterly, “He broke into
the nunnery under a misapprehension, according to the account of the
sergeant who accompanied him,” and Sir Terence read out that part of the
report. “But how is that to help him, and at such a time as this, with
public feeling as it is, and Wellington in his present temper about it?
The provost’s men are beating the country for the blackguard. When they
find him it’s a firing party he’ll have to face.”

Tremayne turned slowly to the window and looked down the fair prospect
of the hillside over a forest of cork oaks alive with fresh green
shoots to the silver sheen of the river a mile away. The storms of the
preceding week had spent their fury--the travail that had attended the
birth of Spring--and the day was as fair as a day of June in England.
Weaned forth by the generous sunshine, the burgeoning of vine and fig,
of olive and cork went on apace, and the skeletons of trees which a
fortnight since had stood gaunt and bare were already fleshed in tender
green.

From the window of this fine conventual house on the heights of
Monsanto, above the suburb of Alcantara, where the Adjutant-General had
taken up his quarters, Captain Tremayne stood a moment considering the
panorama spread to his gaze, from the red-brown roofs of Lisbon on his
left--that city which boasted with Rome that it was built upon a cluster
of seven hills--to the lines of embarkation that were building about
the fort of St. Julian on his left. Then he turned, facing again the
spacious, handsome room with its heavy, semi-ecclesiastical furniture,
and Sir Terence, who, hunched in his chair at the ponderously carved
black writing-table, scowled fiercely at nothing.

“What are you going to do, sir?” he inquired.

Sir Terence shrugged impatiently and heaved himself up in his chair.

“Nothing,” he growled.

“Nothing?”

The interrogation, which seemed almost to cover a reproach, irritated
the adjutant.

“And what the devil can I do?” he rapped.

“You’ve pulled Dick out of scrapes before now.”

“I have. That seems to have been my principal occupation ever since I
married his sister. But this time he’s gone too far. What can I do?”

“Lord Wellington is fond of you,” suggested Captain Tremayne. He was
your imperturbable young man, and he remained as calm now as O’Moy was
excited. Although by some twenty years the adjutant’s junior, there was
between O’Moy and himself, as well as between Tremayne and the Butler
family, with which he was remotely connected, a strong friendship, which
was largely responsible for the captain’s present appointment as Sir
Terence’s military secretary.

O’Moy looked at him, and looked away. “Yes,” he agreed. “But he’s still
fonder of law and order and military discipline, and I should only
be imperilling our friendship by pleading with him for this young
blackguard.”

“The young blackguard is your brother-in-law,” Tremayne reminded him.

“Bad luck to you, Tremayne, don’t I know it? Besides, what is there I
can do?” he asked again, and ended testily: “Faith, man, I don’t know
what you’re thinking of.”

“I’m thinking of Una,” said Captain Tremayne in that composed way of
his, and the words fell like cold water upon the hot iron of O’Moy’s
anger.

The man who can receive with patience a reproach, implicit or explicit,
of being wanting in consideration towards his wife is comparatively
rare, and never a man of O’Moy’s temperament and circumstances.
Tremayne’s reminder stung him sharply, and the more sharply because of
the strong friendship that existed between Tremayne and Lady O’Moy. That
friendship had in the past been a thorn in O’Moy’s flesh. In the days of
his courtship he had known a fierce jealousy of Tremayne, beholding in
him for a time a rival who, with the strong advantage of youth, must in
the end prevail. But when O’Moy, putting his fortunes to the test, had
declared himself and been accepted by Una Butler, there had been an end
to the jealousy, and the old relations of cordial friendship between the
men had been resumed.

O’Moy had conceived that jealousy of his to have been slain. But there
had been times when from its faint, uneasy stirrings he should have
taken warning that it did no more than slumber. Like most warm hearted,
generous, big-natured men, O’Moy was of a singular humility where women
were concerned, and this humility of his would often breathe a doubt
lest in choosing between himself and Tremayne Una might have been guided
by her head rather than her heart, by ambition rather than affection,
and that in taking himself she had taken the man who could give her by
far the more assured and affluent position.

He had crushed down such thoughts as disloyal to his young wife,
as ungrateful and unworthy; and at such times he would fall into
self-contempt for having entertained them. Then Una herself had revived
those doubts three months ago, when she had suggested that Ned Tremayne,
who was then at Torres Vedras with Colonel Fletcher, was the very man to
fill the vacant place of military secretary to the adjutant, if he would
accept it. In the reaction of self-contempt, and in a curious surge
of pride almost as perverse as his humility, O’Moy had adopted her
suggestion, and thereafter--in the past-three months, that is to
say--the unreasonable devil of O’Moy’s jealousy had slept, almost
forgotten. Now, by a chance remark whose indiscretion Tremayne could
not realise, since he did not so much as suspect the existence of that
devil, he had suddenly prodded him into wakefulness. That Tremayne
should show himself tender of Lady O’Moy’s feelings in a matter in which
O’Moy himself must seem neglectful of them was gall and wormwood to the
adjutant. He dissembled it, however, out of a natural disinclination to
appear in the ridiculous role of the jealous husband.

“That,” he said, “is a matter that you may safely leave to me,” and his
lips closed tightly upon the words when they were uttered.

“Oh, quite so,” said Tremayne, no whit abashed. He persisted
nevertheless. “You know Una’s feelings for Dick.”

“When I married Una,” the adjutant cut in sharply, “I did not marry the
entire Butler family.” It hardened him unreasonably against Dick to have
the family cause pleaded in this way. “It’s sick to death I am of Master
Richard and his escapades. He can get himself out of this mess, or he
can stay in it.”

“You mean that you’ll not lift a hand to help him.”

“Devil a finger,” said O’Moy.

And Tremayne, looking straight into the adjutant’s faintly smouldering
blue eyes, beheld there a fierce and rancorous determination which
he was at a loss to understand, but which he attributed to something
outside his own knowledge that must lie between O’Moy and his
brother-in-law.

“I am sorry,” he said gravely. “Since that is how you feel, it is to
be hoped that Dick Butler may not survive to be taken. The alternative
would weigh so cruelly upon Una that I do not care to contemplate it.”

“And who the devil asks you to contemplate it?” snapped O’Moy. “I am not
aware that it is any concern of yours at all.”

“My dear O’Moy!” It was an exclamation of protest, something between
pain and indignation, under the stress of which Tremayne stepped
entirely outside of the official relations that prevailed between
himself and the adjutant. And the exclamation was accompanied by such a
look of dismay and wounded sensibilities that O’Moy, meeting this, and
noting the honest manliness of Tremayne’s bearing and countenance; was
there and then the victim of reaction. His warm-hearted and impulsive
nature made him at once profoundly ashamed of himself. He stood up,
a tall, martial figure, and his ruggedly handsome, shaven countenance
reddened under its tan. He held out a hand to Tremayne.

“My dear boy, I beg your pardon. It’s so utterly annoyed I am that the
savage in me will be breaking out. Sure, it isn’t as if it were
only this affair of Dick’s. That is almost the least part of the
unpleasantness contained in this dispatch. Here! In God’s name, read it
for yourself, and judge for yourself whether it’s in human nature to be
patient under so much.”

With a shrug and a smile to show that he was entirely mollified, Captain
Tremayne took the papers to his desk and sat down to con them. As he
did so his face grew more and more grave. Before he had reached the end
there was a tap at the door. An orderly entered with the announcement
that Dom Miguel Forjas had just driven up to Monsanto to wait upon the
adjutant-general.

“Ha!” said O’Moy shortly, and exchanged a glance with his secretary.
“Show the gentleman up.”

As the orderly withdrew, Tremayne came over and placed the dispatch on
the adjutant’s desk. “He arrives very opportunely,” he said.

“So opportunely as to be suspicious, bedad!” said O’Moy. He had
brightened suddenly, his Irish blood quickening at the immediate
prospect of strife which this visit boded. “May the devil admire me, but
there’s a warm morning in store for Mr. Forjas, Ned.”

“Shall I leave you?”

“By no means.”

The door opened, and the orderly admitted Miguel Forjas, the Portuguese
Secretary of State. He was a slight, dapper gentleman, all in black,
from his silk stockings and steel-buckled shoes to his satin stock.
His keen aquiline face was swarthy, and the razor had left his chin and
cheeks blue-black. His sleek hair was iron-grey. A portentous gravity
invested him this morning as he bowed with profound deference first to
the adjutant and then to the secretary.

“Your Excellencies,” he said--he spoke an English that was smooth and
fluent for all its foreign accent “Your Excellencies, this is a terrible
affair.”

“To what affair will your Excellency be alluding?” wondered O’Moy.

“Have you not received news of what has happened at Tavora? Of the
violation of a convent by a party of British soldiers? Of the fight that
took place between these soldiers and the peasants who went to succour
the nuns?”

“Oh, and is that all?” said O’Moy. “For a moment I imagined your
Excellency referred to other matters. I have news of more terrible
affairs than the convent business with which to entertain you this
morning.”

“That, if you will pardon me, Sir Terence, is quite impossible.”

“You may think so. But you shall judge, bedad. A chair, Dom Miguel.”

The Secretary of State sat down, crossed his knees and placed his hat in
his lap. The other two resumed their seats, O’Moy leaning forward, his
elbows on the writing-table, immediately facing Senhor Forjas.

“First, however,” he said, “to deal with this affair of Tavora. The
Council of Regency will, no doubt, have been informed of all the
circumstances. You will be aware, therefore, that this very deplorable
business was the result of a misapprehension, and that the nuns of
Tavora might very well have avoided all this trouble had they behaved in
a sensible, reasonable manner. If instead of shutting themselves up in
the chapel and ringing the alarm bell the Mother-Abbess or one of the
sisters had gone to the wicket and answered the demand of admittance
from the officer commanding the detachment, he would instantly have
realised his mistake and withdrawn.”

“What does your Excellency suggest was this mistake?” inquired the
Secretary.

“You have had your report, sir, and surely it was complete. You must
know that he conceived himself to be knocking at the gates of the
monastery of the Dominican fathers.”

“Can your Excellency tell me what was this officer’s business at the
monastery of the Dominican fathers?” quoth the Secretary, his manner
frostily hostile.

“I am without information on that point,” O’Moy admitted; “no doubt
because the officer in question is missing, as you will also have been
informed. But I have no reason to doubt that, whatever his business may
have been, it was concerned with the interests which are common alike to
the British and the Portuguese nation.”

“That is a charitable assumption, Sir Terence.”

“Perhaps you will inform me, Dom Miguel, of the uncharitable assumption
which the Principal Souza prefers,” snapped O’Moy, whose temper began to
simmer.

A faint colour kindled in the cheeks of the Portuguese minister, but his
manner remained unruffled.

“I speak, sir, not with the voice of Principal Souza, but with that of
the entire Council of Regency; and the Council has formed the opinion,
which your own words confirm, that his Excellency Lord Wellington is
skilled in finding excuses for the misdemeanours of the troops under his
command.”

“That,” said O’Moy, who would never have kept his temper in control but
for the pleasant consciousness that he held a hand of trumps with which
he would presently overwhelm this representative of the Portuguese
Government, “that is an opinion for which the Council may presently like
to apologise, admitting its entire falsehood.”

Senhor Forjas started as if he had been stung. He uncrossed his black
silk legs and made as if to rise.

“Falsehood, sir?” he cried in a scandalised voice.

“It is as well that we should be plain, so as to be avoiding all
misconceptions,” said O’Moy. “You must know, sir, and your Council must
know, that wherever armies move there must be reason for complaint.
The British army does not claim in this respect to be superior to
others--although I don’t say, mark me, that it might not claim it with
perfect justice. But we do claim for ourselves that our laws against
plunder and outrage are as strict as they well can be, and that where
these things take place punishment inevitably follows. Out of your own
knowledge, sir, you must admit that what I say is true.”

“True, certainly, where the offenders are men from the ranks. But in
this case, where the offender is an officer, it does not transpire that
justice has been administered with the same impartial hand.” “That,
sir,” answered O’Moy sharply, testily, “is because he is missing.”

The Secretary’s thin lips permitted themselves to curve into the
faintest ghost of a smile. “Precisely,” he said.

For answer O’Moy, red in the face, thrust forward the dispatch he had
received relating to the affair.

“Read, sir--read for yourself, that you may report exactly to the
Council of Regency the terms of the report that has just reached me from
headquarters. You will be able to announce that diligent search is being
made for the offender.”

Forjas perused the document carefully, and returned it.

“That is very good,” he said, “and the Council will be glad to hear of
it. It will enable us to appease the popular resentment in some degree.
But it does not say here that when taken this officer will not be
excused upon the grounds which yourself you have urged to me.”

“It does not. But considering that he has since been guilty of
desertion, there can be no doubt--all else apart--that the finding of a
court martial will result in his being shot.”

“Very well,” said Forjas. “I will accept your assurance, and the Council
will be relieved to hear of it.” He rose to take his leave. “I am
desired by the Council to express to Lord Wellington the hope that he
will take measures to preserve better order among his troops and to
avoid the recurrence of such extremely painful incidents.”

“A moment,” said O’Moy, and rising waved his guest back into his chair,
then resumed his own seat. Under a more or less calm exterior he was
a seething cauldron of passion. “The matter is not quite at an end, as
your Excellency supposes. From your last observation, and from a variety
of other evidence, I infer that the Council is far from satisfied with
Lord Wellington’s conduct of the campaign.”

“That is an inference which I cannot venture to contradict. You will
understand, General, that I do not speak for myself, but for the
Council, when I say that many of his measures seem to us not merely
unnecessary, but detrimental. The power having been placed in the hands
of Lord Wellington, the Council hardly feels itself able to interfere
with his dispositions. But it nevertheless deplores the destruction of
the mills and the devastation of the country recommended and insisted
upon by his lordship. It feels that this is not warfare as the Council
understands warfare, and the people share the feelings of the Council.
It is felt that it would be worthier and more commendable if Lord
Wellington were to measure himself in battle with the French, making a
definite attempt to stem the tide of invasion on the frontiers.”

“Quite so,” said O’Moy, his hand clenching and unclenching, and
Tremayne, who watched him, wondered how long it would be before the
storm burst. “Quite so. And because the Council disapproves of the
very measures which at Lord Wellington’s instigation it has publicly
recommended, it does not trouble to see that those measures are carried
out. As you say, it does not feel itself able to interfere with his
dispositions. But it does not scruple to mark its disapproval by
passively hindering him at every turn. Magistrates are left to
neglect these enactments, and because,” he added with bitter sarcasm,
“Portuguese valour is so red-hot and so devilish set on battle the
Militia Acts calling all men to the colours are forgotten as soon as
published. There is no one either to compel the recalcitrant to take
up arms, or to punish the desertions of those who have been driven into
taking them up. Yet you want battles, you want your frontiers defended.
A moment, sir! there is no need for heat, no need for any words. The
matter may be said to be at an end.” He smiled--a thought viciously,
be it confessed--and then played his trump card, hurled his bombshell.
“Since the views of your Council are in such utter opposition to
the views of the Commander-in-Chief, you will no doubt welcome Lord
Wellington’s proposal to withdraw from this country and to advise his
Majesty’s Government to withdraw the assistance which it is affording
you.”

There followed a long spell of silence, O’Moy sitting back in his chair,
his chin in his hand, to observe the result of his words. Nor was he in
the least disappointed. Dom Miguel’s mouth fell open; the colour slowly
ebbed from his cheeks, leaving them an ivory-yellow; his eyes dilated
and protruded. He was consternation incarnate.

“My God!” he contrived to gasp at last, and his shaking hands clutched
at the carved arms of his chair.

“Ye don’t seem as pleased as I expected,” ventured O’Moy.

“But, General, surely... surely his Excellency cannot mean to take so...
so terrible a step?”

“Terrible to whom, sir?” wondered O’Moy.

“Terrible to us all.” Forjas rose in his agitation. He came to lean
upon O’Moy’s writing-table, facing the adjutant. “Surely, sir, our
interests--England’s interests and Portugal’s--are one in this.”

“To be sure. But England’s interests can be defended elsewhere than in
Portugal, and it is Lord Wellington’s view that they shall be. He has
already warned the Council of Regency that, since his Majesty and the
Prince Regent have entrusted him with the command of the British and
Portuguese armies, he will not suffer the Council or any of its members
to interfere with his conduct of the military operations, or suffer any
criticism or suggestion of theirs to alter system formed upon mature
consideration. But when, finding their criticisms fail, the members of
the Council, in their wrongheadedness, in their anxiety to allow private
interest to triumph over public duty, go the length of thwarting the
measures of which they do not approve, the end of Lord Wellington’s
patience has been reached. I am giving your Excellency his own words.
He feels that it is futile to remain in a country whose Government is
determined to undermine his every endeavour to bring this campaign to a
successful issue.

“Yourself, sir, you appear to be distressed. But the Council of Regency
will no doubt take a different view. It will rejoice in the departure
of a man whose military operations it finds so detestable. You will
no doubt discover this when you come to lay Lord Wellington’s decision
before the Council, as I now invite you to do.”

Bewildered and undecided, Forjas stood there for a moment, vainly
seeking words. Finally:

“Is this really Lord Wellington’s last word?” he asked in tones of
profoundest consternation.

“There is one alternative--one only,” said O’Moy slowly.

“And that?” Instantly Forjas was all eagerness.

O’Moy considered him. “Faith, I hesitate to state it.”

“No, no. Please, please.”

“I feel that it is idle.”

“Let the Council judge. I implore you, General, let the Council judge.”

“Very well.” O’Moy shrugged, and took up a sheet of the dispatch which
lay before him. “You will admit, sir, I think, that the beginning of
these troubles coincided with the advent of the Principal Souza upon
the Council of Regency.” He waited in vain for a reply. Forjas, the
diplomat, preserved an uncompromising silence, in which presently O’Moy
proceeded: “From this, and from other evidence, of which indeed there
is no lack, Lord Wellington has come to the conclusion that all the
resistance, passive and active, which he has encountered, results from
the Principal Souza’s influence upon the Council. You will not, I think,
trouble to deny it, sir.”

Forjas spread his hands. “You will remember, General,” he answered, in
tones of conciliatory regret, “that the Principal Souza represents a
class upon whom Lord Wellington’s measures bear in a manner peculiarly
hard.”

“You mean that he represents the Portuguese nobility and landed
gentry, who, putting their own interests above those of the State, have
determined to oppose and resist the devastation of the country which
Lord Wellington recommends.”

“You put it very bluntly,” Forjas admitted.

“You will find Lord Wellington’s own words even more blunt,” said O’Moy,
with a grim smile, and turned to the dispatch he held. “Let me read you
exactly what he writes:

“‘As for Principal Souza, I beg you to tell him from me that as I have
had no satisfaction in transacting the business of this country since he
has become a member of the Government, no power on earth shall induce
me to remain in the Peninsula if he is either to remain a member of the
Government or to continue in Lisbon. Either he must quit the country, or
I will do so, and this immediately after I have obtained his Majesty’s
permission to resign my charge.’”

The adjutant put down the letter and looked expectantly at the Secretary
of State, who returned the look with one of utter dismay. Never in all
his career had the diplomat been so completely dumbfounded as he was
now by the simple directness of the man of action. In himself Dom Miguel
Forjas was both shrewd and honest. He was shrewd enough to apprehend to
the full the military genius of the British Commander-in-Chief, fruits
of which he had already witnessed. He knew that the withdrawal of
Junot’s army from Lisbon two years ago resulted mainly from the
operations of Sir Arthur Wellesley--as he was then--before his
supersession in the supreme command of that first expedition, and he
more than suspected that but for that supersession the defeat of the
first French army of invasion might have been even more signal. He had
witnessed the masterly campaign of 1809, the battle of the Douro and
the relentless operations which had culminated in hurling the shattered
fragments of Soult’s magnificent army over the Portuguese frontier,
thus liberating that country for the second time from the thrall of the
mighty French invader. And he knew that unless this man and the troops
under his command remained in Portugal and enjoyed complete liberty of
action there could be no hope of stemming the third invasion for which
Massena--the ablest of all the Emperor’s marshals was now gathering his
divisions in the north. If Wellington were to execute his threat and
withdraw with his army, Forjas beheld nothing but ruin for his country.
The irresistible French would sweep forward in devastating conquest, and
Portuguese independence would be ground to dust under the heel of the
terrible Emperor.

All this the clear-sighted Dom Miguel Forjas now perceived. To do him
full justice, he had feared for some time that the unreasonable conduct
of his Government might ultimately bring about some such desperate
situation. But it was not for him to voice those fears. He was the
servant of that Government, the “mere instrument and mouthpiece of the
Council of Regency.

“This,” he said at length in a voice that was awed, “is an ultimatum.”

“It is that,” O’Moy admitted readily.

Forjas sighed, shook his dark head and drew himself up like a man who
has chosen his part. Being shrewd, he saw the immediate necessity of
choosing, and, being honest, he chose honestly.

“Perhaps it is as well,” he said.

“That Lord Wellington should go?” cried O’Moy.

“That Lord Wellington should announce intentions of going,” Forjas
explained. And having admitted so much, he now stripped off the official
mask completely. He spoke with his own voice and not with that of the
Council whose mouthpiece he was. “Of course it will never be permitted.
Lord Wellington has been entrusted with the defence of the country by
the Prince Regent; consequently it is the duty of every Portuguese to
ensure that at all costs he shall continue in that office.”

O’Moy was mystified. Only a knowledge of the minister’s inmost thoughts
could have explained this oddly sudden change of manner.

“But your Excellency understands the terms--the only terms upon which
his lordship will so continue?”

“Perfectly. I shall hasten to convey those terms to the Council. It is
also quite clear--is it not?--that I may convey to my Government and
indeed publish your complete assurance that the officer responsible for
the raid on the convent at Tavora will be shot when taken?”

Looking intently into O’Moy’s face, Dom Miguel saw the clear blue eyes
flicker under his gaze, he beheld a grey shadow slowly overspreading
the adjutant’s ruddy cheek. Knowing nothing of the relationship between
O’Moy and the offender, unable to guess the sources of the hesitation
of which he now beheld such unmistakable signs, the minister naturally
misunderstood it.

“There must be no flinching in this, General,” he cried. “Let me
speak to you for a moment quite frankly and in confidence, not as
the Secretary of State of the Council of Regency, but as a Portuguese
patriot who places his country and his country’s welfare above every
other consideration. You have issued your ultimatum. It may be harsh,
it may be arbitrary; with that I have no concern. The interests,
the feelings of Principal Souza or of any other individual, however
high-placed, are without weight when the interests of the nation hang
against them in the balance. Better that an injustice be done to one man
than that the whole country should suffer. Therefore I do not argue with
you upon the rights and wrongs of Lord Wellington’s ultimatum. That is
a matter apart. Lord Wellington demands the removal of Principal
Souza from the Government, or, in the alternative, proposes himself to
withdraw from Portugal. In the national interest the Government can come
to only one decision. I am frank with you, General. Myself I shall stand
ranged on the side of the national interest, and what my influence in
the Council can do it shall do. But if you know Principal Souza at all,
you must know that he will not relinquish his position without a fight.
He has friends and influence--the Patriarch of Lisbon and many of the
nobility will be on his side. I warn you solemnly against leaving any
weapon in his hands.”

He paused impressively. But O’Moy, grey-faced now and haggard, waited in
silence for him to continue.

“From the message I brought you,” Forjas resumed, “you will have
perceived how Principal Souza has fastened upon this business at Tavora
to support his general censure of Lord Wellington’s conduct of the
campaign. That is the weapon to which my warning refers. You must--if we
who place the national interest supreme are to prevail--you must
disarm him by the assurance that I ask for. You will perceive that I am
disloyal to a member of my Council so that I may be loyal to my country.
But I repeat, I speak to you in confidence. This officer has committed
a gross outrage, which must bring the British army into odium with the
people, unless we have your assurance that the British army is the first
to censure and to punish the offender with the utmost rigour. Give me
now, that I may publish everywhere, your official assurance that this
man will be shot, and on my side I assure you that Principal Souza,
thus deprived of his stoutest weapon, must succumb in the struggle that
awaits us.”

“I hope,” said O’Moy slowly, his head bowed, his voice dull and even
unsteady, “I hope that I am not behind you in placing public duty above
private consideration. You may publish my official assurance that the
officer in question will be... shot when taken.”

“General, I thank you. My country thanks you. You may be confident
of this issue.” He bowed gravely to O’Moy and then to Tremayne. “Your
Excellencies, I have the honour to wish you good-day.” He was shown out
by the orderly who had admitted him, and he departed well satisfied
in his patriotic heart that the crisis which he had always known to
be inevitable should have been reached at last. Yet, as he went, he
wondered why the Adjutant-General had looked so downcast, why his voice
had broken when he pledged his word that justice should be done upon
the offending British officer. That, however, was no concern of Dom
Miguel’s, and there was more than enough to engage his thoughts when
he came to consider the ultimatum to his Government with which he was
charged.



CHAPTER III. LADY O’MOY


Across the frontier in the northwest was gathering the third army of
invasion, some sixty thousand strong, commanded by Marshal Massena,
Prince of Esslingen, the most skilful and fortunate of all Napoleon’s
generals, a leader who, because he had never known defeat, had come to
be surnamed by his Emperor “the dear child of Victory.”

Wellington, at the head of a British force of little more than one
third of the French host, watched and waited, maturing his stupendous
strategic plan, which those in whose interests it had been conceived
had done so much to thwart. That plan was inspired by and based upon
the Emperor’s maxim that war should support itself; that an army on the
march must not be hampered and immobilised by its commissariat, but that
it must draw its supplies from the country it is invading; that it must,
in short, live upon that country.

Behind the British army and immediately to the north of Lisbon, in an
arc some thirty miles long, following the inflection of the hills from
the sea at the mouth of the Zizandre to the broad waters of the Tagus
at Alhandra, the lines of Torres Vedras were being constructed under the
direction of Colonel Fletcher and this so secretly and with such careful
measures as to remain unknown to British and Portuguese alike. Even
those employed upon the works knew of nothing save the section upon
which they happened to be engaged, and had no conception of the
stupendous and impregnable whole that was preparing.

To these lines it was the British commander’s plan to effect a slow
retreat before the French flood when it should sweep forward, thus
luring the enemy onward into a country which he had commanded should be
laid relentlessly waste, that there that enemy might fast be starved
and afterwards destroyed. To this end had his proclamations gone forth,
commanding that all the land lying between the rivers Tagus and Mondego,
in short, the whole of the country between Beira and Torres Vedras,
should be stripped naked, converted into a desert as stark and empty
as the Sahara. Not a head of cattle, not a grain of corn, not a skin of
wine, not a flask of oil, not a crumb of anything affording nourishment
should be left behind. The very mills were to be rendered useless,
bridges were to be broken down, the houses emptied of all property,
which the refugees were to carry away with them from the line of
invasion.

Such was his terrible demand upon the country for its own salvation. But
such, as we have seen, was not war as Principal Souza and some of his
adherents understood it. They had not the foresight to perceive the
inevitable result of this strategic plan if effectively and thoroughly
executed. They did not even realise that the devastation had better be
effected by the British in this defensive--and in its results at the
same time overwhelmingly offensive--manner than by the French in the
course of a conquering onslaught. They did not realise these things
partly because they did not enjoy Wellington’s full confidence, and in a
greater measure because they were blinded by self-interest, because, as
O’Moy told Forjas, they placed private considerations above public
duty. The northern nobles whose lands must suffer opposed the measure
violently; they even opposed the withdrawal of labour from those lands
which the Militia Act had rendered necessary. And Antonio de Souza made
himself their champion until he was broken by Wellington’s ultimatum to
the Council. For broken he was. The nation had come to a parting of the
ways. It had been brought to the necessity of choosing, and however much
the Principal, voicing the outcry of his party, might argue that the
British plan was as detestable and ruinous as a French invasion, the
nation preferred to place its confidence in the conqueror of Vimeiro and
the Douro.

Souza quitted the Government and the capital as had been demanded. But
if Wellington hoped that he would quit intriguing, he misjudged his man.
He was a fellow of monstrous vanity, pride and self-sufficiency, of
the sort than which there is none more dangerous to offend. His wounded
pride demanded a salve to be procured at any cost. The wound had been
administered by Wellington, and must be returned with interest. So that
he ruined Wellington it mattered nothing to Antonio de Souza that he
should ruin himself and his own country at the same time. He was like
some blinded, ferocious and unreasoning beast, ready, even eager, to
sacrifice its own life so that in dying it can destroy its enemy and
slake its blood-thirst.

In that mood he passes out of the councils of the Portuguese Government
into a brooding and secretly active retirement, of which the fruits
shall presently be shown. With his departure the Council of Regency,
rudely shaken by the ultimatum which had driven him forth, became
more docile and active, and for a season the measures enjoined by the
Commander-in-Chief were pursued with some show of earnestness.

As a result of all this life at Monsanto became easier, and O’Moy was
able to breathe more freely, and to devote more of his time to matters
concerning the fortifications which Wellington had left largely in his
charge. Then, too, as the weeks passed, the shadow overhanging him with
regard to Richard Butler gradually lifted. No further word had there
been of the missing lieutenant, and by the end of May both O’Moy and
Tremayne had come to the conclusion that he must have fallen into the
hands of some of the ferocious mountaineers to whom a soldier--whether
his uniform were British or French--was a thing to be done to death.

For his wife’s sake O’Moy came thankfully to that conclusion. Under the
circumstances it was the best possible termination to the episode. She
must be told of her brother’s death presently, when evidence of it
was forthcoming; she would mourn him passionately, no doubt, for her
attachment to him was deep--extraordinarily deep for so shallow a
woman--but at least she would be spared the pain and shame she must
inevitably have felt had he been taken and, shot.

Meanwhile, however, the lack of news from him, in another sense, would
have to be explained to Una sooner or later for a fitful correspondence
was maintained between brother and sister--and O’Moy dreaded the moment
when this explanation must be made. Lacking invention, he applied to
Tremayne for assistance, and Tremayne glumly supplied him with the
necessary lie that should meet Lady O’Moy’s inquiries when they came.

In the end, however, he was spared the necessity of falsehood. For the
truth itself reached Lady O’Moy in an unexpected manner. It came about a
month after that day when O’Moy had first received news of the escapade
at Tavora. It was a resplendent morning of early June, and the adjutant
was detained a few moments from breakfast by the arrival of a mail-bag
from headquarters, now established at Vizeu. Leaving Captain Tremayne to
deal with it, Sir Terence went down to breakfast, bearing with him only
a few letters of a personal character which had reached him from friends
on the frontier.

The architecture of the house at Monsanto was of a semiclaustral
character; three sides of it enclosed a sheltered luxuriant garden,
whilst on the fourth side a connecting corridor, completing the
quadrangle, spanned bridgewise the spacious archway through which
admittance was gained directly from the parklands that sloped gently
to Alcantara. This archway, closed at night by enormous wooden doors,
opened wide during the day upon a grassy terrace bounded by a baluster
of white marble that gleamed now in the brilliant sunshine. It was
O’Moy’s practice to breakfast out-of-doors in that genial climate, and
during April, before the sun had reached its present intensity, the
table had been spread out there upon the terrace. Now, however, it was
wiser, even in the early morning, to seek the shade, and breakfast was
served within the quadrangle, under a trellis of vine supported in the
Portuguese manner by rough-hewn granite columns. It was a delicious
spot, cool and fragrant, secluded without being enclosed, since through
the broad archway it commanded a view of the Tagus and the hills of
Alemtejo.

Here O’Moy found himself impatiently awaited that morning by his wife
and her cousin, Sylvia Armytage, more recently arrived from England.

“You are very late,” Lady O’Moy greeted him petulantly. Since she spent
her life in keeping other people waiting, it naturally fretted her to
discover unpunctuality in others.

Her portrait, by Raeburn, which now adorns the National Gallery, had
been painted in the previous year. You will have seen it, or at least
you will have seen one of its numerous replicas, and you will have
remarked its singular, delicate, rose-petal loveliness--the gleaming
golden head, the flawless outline of face and feature, the immaculate
skin, the dark blue eyes with their look of innocence awakening.

Thus was she now in her artfully simple gown of flowered muslin with its
white fichu folded across her neck that was but a shade less white; thus
was she, just as Raeburn had painted her, saving, of course, that her
expression, matching her words, was petulant.

“I was detained by the arrival of a mail-bag from Vizeu,” Sir Terence
excused himself, as he took the chair which Mullins, the elderly,
pontifical butler, drew out for him. “Ned is attending to it, and will
be kept for a few moments yet.”

Lady O’Moy’s expression quickened. “Are there no letters for me?”

“None, my dear, I believe.”

“No word from Dick?” Again there was that note of ever ready petulance.
“It is too provoking. He should know that he must make me anxious by his
silence. Dick is so thoughtless--so careless of other people’s feelings.
I shall write to him severely.”

The adjutant paused in the act of unfolding his napkin. The prepared
explanation trembled on his lips; but its falsehood, repellent to him,
was not uttered.

“I should certainly do so, my dear,” was all he said, and addressed
himself to his breakfast.

“What news from headquarters?” Miss Armytage asked him. “Are things
going well?”

“Much better now that Principal Souza’s influence is at an end. Cotton
reports that the destruction of the mills in the Mondego valley is being
carried out systematically.”

Miss Armytage’s dark, thoughtful eyes became wistful.

“Do you know, Terence,” she said, “that I am not without some sympathy
for the Portuguese resistance to Lord Wellington’s decrees. They must
bear so terribly hard upon the people. To be compelled with their own
hands to destroy their homes and lay waste the lands upon which they
have laboured--what could be more cruel?”

“War can never be anything but cruel,” he answered gravely. “God help
the people over whose lands it sweeps. Devastation is often the least of
the horrors marching in its train.”

“Why must war be?” she asked him, in intelligent rebellion against that
most monstrous and infamous of all human madnesses.

O’Moy proceeded to do his best to explain the unexplainable, and since,
himself a professional soldier, he could not take the sane view of his
sane young questioner, hot argument ensued between them, to the infinite
weariness of Lady O’Moy, who out of self-protection gave herself to the
study of the latest fashion plates from London and the consideration
of a gown for the ball which the Count of Redondo was giving in the
following week.

It was thus in all things, for these cousins represented the two poles
of womanhood. Miss Armytage without any of Lady O’Moy’s insistent and
excessive femininity, was nevertheless feminine to the core. But hers
was the Diana type of womanliness. She was tall and of a clean-limbed,
supple grace, now emphasised by the riding-habit which she was
wearing--for she had been in the saddle during the hour which Lady
O’Moy had consecrated to the rites of toilet and devotions done before
her mirror. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, vivacity and intelligence lent her
countenance an attraction very different from the allurement of her
cousin’s delicate loveliness. And because her countenance was a true
mirror of her mind, she argued shrewdly now, so shrewdly that she drove
O’Moy to entrench himself behind generalisations.

“My dear Sylvia, war is most merciful where it is most merciless,” he
assured her with the Irish gift for paradox. “At home in the Government
itself there are plenty who argue as you argue, and who are
wondering when we shall embark for England. That is because they
are intellectuals, and war is a thing beyond the understanding of
intellectuals. It is not intellect but brute instinct and brute force
that will help humanity in such a crisis as the present. Therefore,
let me tell you, my child, that a government of intellectual men is the
worst possible government for a nation engaged in a war.”

This was far from satisfying Miss Armytage. Lord Wellington himself was
an intellectual, she objected. Nobody could deny it. There was the work
he had done as Irish Secretary, and there was the calculating genius he
had displayed at Vimeiro, at Oporto, at Talavera.

And then, observing her husband to be in distress, Lady O’Moy put down
her fashion plate and brought up her heavy artillery to relieve him.

“Sylvia, dear,” she interpolated, “I wonder that you will for ever be
arguing about things you don’t understand.”

Miss Armytage laughed good-humouredly. She was not easily put out of
countenance. “What woman doesn’t?” she asked.

“I don’t, and I am a woman, surely.”

“Ah, but an exceptional woman,” her cousin rallied her affectionately,
tapping the shapely white arm that protruded from a foam of lace. And
Lady O’Moy, to whom words never had any but a literal meaning, set
herself to purr precisely as one would have expected. Complacently she
discoursed upon the perfection of her own endowments, appealing ever and
anon to her husband for confirmation, and O’Moy, who loved her with all
the passionate reverence which Nature working inscrutably to her ends so
often inspires in just such strong, essentially masculine men for just
such fragile and excessively feminine women, afforded this confirmation
with all the enthusiasm of sincere conviction.

Thus until Mullins broke in upon them with the announcement of a visit
from Count Samoval, an announcement more welcome to Lady O’Moy than to
either of her companions.

The Portuguese nobleman was introduced. He had attained to a degree
of familiarity in the adjutant’s household that permitted of his being
received without ceremony there at that breakfast-table spread in the
open. He was a slender, handsome, swarthy man of thirty, scrupulously
dressed, as graceful and elegant in his movements as a fencing master,
which indeed he might have been; for his skill with the foils was a
matter of pride to himself and notoriety to all the world. Nor was it by
any means the only skill he might have boasted, for Jeronymo de Samoval
was in many things, a very subtle, supple gentleman. His friendship
with the O’Moys, now some three months old, had been considerably
strengthened of late by the fact that he had unexpectedly become one
of the most hostile critics of the Council of Regency as lately
constituted, and one of the most ardent supporters of the Wellingtonian
policy.

He bowed with supremest grace to the ladies, ventured to kiss the fair,
smooth hand of his hostess, undeterred by the frosty stare of O’Moy’s
blue eyes whose approval of all men was in inverse proportion to their
approval of his wife--and finally proffered her the armful of early
roses that he brought.

“These poor roses of Portugal to their sister from England,” said his
softly caressing tenor voice.

“Ye’re a poet,” said O’Moy tartly.

“Having found Castalia here,” said, the Count, “shall I not drink its
limpid waters?”

“Not, I hope, while there’s an agreeable vintage of Port on the table. A
morning whet, Samoval?” O’Moy invited him, taking up the decanter.

“Two fingers, then--no more. It is not my custom in the morning. But
here--to drink your lady’s health, and yours, Miss Armytage.” With
a graceful flourish of his glass he pledged them both and sipped
delicately, then took the chair that O’Moy was proffering.

“Good news, I hear, General. Antonio de Souza’s removal from the
Government is already bearing fruit. The mills in the valley of the
Mondego are being effectively destroyed at last.”

“Ye’re very well informed,” grunted O’Moy, who himself had but received
the news. “As well informed, indeed, as I am myself.” There was a note
almost of suspicion in the words, and he was vexed that matters which
it was desirable be kept screened as much as possible from general
knowledge should so soon be put abroad.

“Naturally, and with reason,” was the answer, delivered with a rueful
smile. “Am I not interested? Is not some of my property in question?”
 Samoval sighed. “But I bow to the necessities of war. At least it cannot
be said of me, as was said of those whose interests Souza represented,
that I put private considerations above public duty--that is the phrase,
I think. The individual must suffer that the nation may triumph. A Roman
maxim, my dear General.”

“And a British one,” said O’Moy, to whom Britain was a second Rome.

“Oh, admitted,” replied the amiable Samoval. “You proved it by your
uncompromising firmness in the affair of Tavora.”

“What was that?” inquired Miss Armytage.

“Have you not heard?” cried Samoval in astonishment.

“Of course not,” snapped O’Moy, who had broken into a cold perspiration.
“Hardly a subject for the ladies, Count.”

Rebuked for his intention, Samoval submitted instantly.

“Perhaps not; perhaps not,” he agreed, as if dismissing it, whereupon
O’Moy recovered from his momentary breathlessness. “But in your own
interests, my dear General, I trust there will be no weakening when this
Lieutenant Butler is caught, and--”

“Who?”

Sharp and stridently came that single word from her ladyship.

Desperately O’Moy sought to defend the breach.

“Nothing to do with Dick, my dear. A fellow named Philip Butler, who--”

But the too-well-informed Samoval corrected him. “Not Philip,
General--Richard Butler. I had the name but yesterday from Forjas.”

In the scared hush that followed the Count perceived that he had
stumbled headlong into a mystery. He saw Lady O’Moy’s face turn whiter
and whiter, saw her sapphire eyes dilating as they regarded him.

“Richard Butler!” she echoed. “What of Richard Butler? Tell me. Tell me
at once.”

Hesitating before such signs of distress, Samoval looked at O’Moy, to
meet a dejected scowl.

Lady O’Moy turned to her husband. “What is it?” she demanded. “You
know something about Dick and you are keeping it from me. Dick is in
trouble?”

“He is,” O’Moy admitted. “In great trouble.”

“What has he done? You spoke of an affair at Evora or Tavora, which is
not to be mentioned before ladies. I demand to know.” Her affection
and anxiety for her brother invested her for a moment with a certain
dignity, lent her a force that was but rarely displayed by her.

Seeing the men stricken speechless, Samoval from bewildered
astonishment, O’Moy from distress, she jumped to the conclusion, after
what had been said, that motives of modesty accounted for their silence.

“Leave us, Sylvia, please,” she said. “Forgive me, dear. But you see
they will not mention these things while you are present.” She made a
piteous little figure as she stood trembling there, her fingers tearing
in agitation at one of Samoval’s roses.

She waited until the obedient and discreet Miss Armytage had passed from
view into the wing that contained the adjutant’s private quarters, then
sinking limp and nerveless to her chair:

“Now,” she bade them, “please tell me.”

And O’Moy, with a sigh of regret for the lie so laboriously concocted
which would never now be uttered, delivered himself huskily of the
hideous truth.




CHAPTER IV. COUNT SAMOVAL


Miss Armytage’s own notions of what might be fit and proper for her
virginal ears were by no means coincident with Lady O’Moy’s. Thus,
although you have seen her pass into the private quarters of the
adjutant’s establishment, and although, in fact, she did withdraw to
her own room, she found it impossible to abide there a prey to doubt and
misgivings as to what Dick Butler might have done--doubt and misgivings,
be it understood, entertained purely on Una’s account and not at all on
Dick’s.

By the corridor spanning the archway on the southern side of the
quadrangle, and serving as a connecting bridge between the adjutant’s
private and official quarters, Miss Armytage took her way to Sir
Terence’s work-room, knowing that she would find Captain Tremayne there,
and assuming that he would be alone.

“May I come in?” she asked him from the doorway.

He sprang to his feet. “Why, certainly, Miss Armytage.” For so
imperturbable a young man he seemed oddly breathless in his eagerness to
welcome her. “Are you looking for O’Moy? He left me nearly half-an-hour
ago to go to breakfast, and I was just about to follow.”

“I scarcely dare detain you, then.”

“On the contrary. I mean... not at all. But... were you wanting me?”

She closed the door, and came forward into the room, moving with that
supple grace peculiarly her own.

“I want you to tell me something, Captain Tremayne, and I want you to be
frank with me.”

“I hope I could never be anything else.”

“I want you to treat me as you would treat a man, a friend of your own
sex.”

Tremayne sighed. He had recovered from the surprise of her coming and
was again his imperturbable self.

“I assure you that is the last way in which I desire to treat you. But
if you insist--”

“I do.” She had frowned slightly at the earlier part of his speech, with
its subtle, half-jesting gallantry, and she spoke sharply now.

“I bow to your will,” said Captain Tremayne.

“What has Dick Butler been doing?”

He looked into her face with sharply questioning eyes.

“What was it that happened at Tavora?”

He continued to look at her. “What have you heard?” he asked at last.

“Only that he has done something at Tavora for which the consequences, I
gather, may be grave. I am anxious for Una’s sake to know what it is.”

“Does Una know?”

“She is being told now. Count Samoval let slip just what I have
outlined. And she has insisted upon being told everything.”

“Then why did you not remain to hear?”

“Because they sent me away on the plea that--oh, on the silly plea of my
youth and innocence, which were not to be offended.”

“But which you expect me to offend?”

“No. Because I can trust you to tell me without offending.”

“Sylvia!” It was a curious exclamation of satisfaction and of gratitude
for the implied confidence. We must admit that it betrayed a selfish
forgetfulness of Dick Butler and his troubles, but it is by no means
clear that it was upon such grounds that it offended her.

She stiffened perceptibly. “Really, Captain Tremayne!”

“I beg your pardon,” said he. “But you seemed to imply--” He checked, at
a loss.

Her colour rose. “Well, sir? What do you suggest that I implied or
seemed to imply?” But as suddenly her manner changed. “I think we are
too concerned with trifles where the matter on which I have sought you
is a serious one.”

“It is of the utmost seriousness,” he admitted gravely.

“Won’t you tell me what it is?”

He told her quite simply the whole story, not forgetting to give
prominence to the circumstances extenuating it in Butler’s favour. She
listened with a deepening frown, rather pale, her head bowed.

“And when he is taken,” she asked, “what--what will happen to him?”

“Let us hope that he will not be taken.”

“But if he is--if he is?” she insisted almost impatiently.

Captain Tremayne turned aside and looked out of the window. “I should
welcome the news that he is dead,” he said softly. “For if he is taken
he will find no mercy at the hands of his own people.”

“You mean that he will be shot?” Horror charged her voice, dilated her
eyes.

“Inevitably.”

A shudder ran through her, and she covered her face with her hands. When
she withdrew then Tremayne beheld the lovely countenance transformed. It
was white and drawn.

“But surely Terence can save him!” she cried piteously.

He shook his head, his lips tight pressed. “‘There is no man less able
to do so.”

“What do you mean? Why do you say that?”

He looked at her, hesitating for a moment, then answered her: “‘O’Moy
has pledged his word to the Portuguese Government that Dick Butler shall
be shot when taken.”

“Terence did that?”

“He was compelled to it. Honour and duty demanded no less of him. I
alone, who was present and witnessed the undertaking, know what it
cost him and what he suffered. But he was forced to sink all private
considerations. It was a sacrifice rendered necessary, inevitable for
the success of this campaign.” And he proceeded to explain to her
all the circumstances that were interwoven with Lieutenant Butler’s
ill-timed offence. “Thus you see that from Terence you can hope for
nothing. His honour will not admit of his wavering in this matter.”

“Honour?” She uttered the word almost with contempt. “And what of Una?”

“I was thinking of Una when I said I should welcome the news of Dick’s
death somewhere in the hills. It is the best that can be hoped for.”

“I thought you were Dick’s friend, Captain Tremayne.”

“Why, so I have been; so I am. Perhaps that is another reason why I
should hope that he is dead.”

“Is it no reason why you should do what you can to save him?”

He looked at her steadily for an instant, calm under the reproach of her
eyes.

“Believe me, Miss Armytage, if I saw a way to save him, to do anything
to help him, I should seize it, both for the sake of my friendship for
himself and because of my affection for Una. Since you yourself are
interested in him, that is an added reason for me. But it is one thing
to admit willingness to help and another thing actually to afford help.
What is there that I can do? I assure you that I have thought of the
matter. Indeed for days I have thought of little else. But I can see no
light. I await events. Perhaps a chance may come.”

Her expression had softened. “I see.” She put out a hand generously to
ask forgiveness. “I was presumptuous, and I had no right to speak as I
did.”

He took the hand. “I should never question your right to speak to me in
any way that seemed good to you,” he assured her.

“I had better go to Una. She will be needing me, poor child. I am
grateful to you, Captain Tremayne, for your confidence and for telling
me.” And thus she left him very thoughtful, as concerned for Una as she
was herself.

Now Una O’Moy was the natural product of such treatment. There had ever
been something so appealing in her lovely helplessness and fragility
that all her life others had been concerned to shelter her from every
wind that blew. Because it was so she was what she was; and because she
was what she was it would continue to be so.

But Lady O’Moy at the moment did not stand in such urgent need of Miss
Armytage as Miss Armytage imagined. She had heard the appalling story of
her brother’s escapade, but she had been unable to perceive in what
it was so terrible as it was declared. He had made a mistake. He had
invaded the convent under a misapprehension, for which it was ridiculous
to blame him. It was a mistake which any man might have made in a
foreign country. Lives had been lost, it is true; but that was owing to
the stupidity of other people--of the nuns who had run for shelter when
no danger threatened save in their own silly imaginations, and of the
peasants who had come blundering to their assistance where no assistance
was required; the latter were the people responsible for the bloodshed,
since they had attacked the dragoons. Could it be expected of the
dragoons that they should tamely suffer themselves to be massacred?

Thus Lady O’Moy upon the affair of Tavora. The whole thing appeared to
her to be rather silly, and she refused seriously to consider that it
could have any grave consequences for Dick. His continued absence made
her anxious. But if he should come to be taken, surely his punishment
would be merely a formal matter; at the worst he might be sent home,
which would be a very good thing, for after all the climate of the
Peninsula had never quite suited him.

In this fashion she nimbly pursued a train of vitiated logic, passing
from inconsequence to inconsequence. And O’Moy, thankful that she should
take such a view as this--mercifully hopeful that the last had been heard
of his peccant and vexatious brother-in-law--content, more than content,
to leave her comforted such illusions.

And then, while she was still discussing the matter in terms of comparative
calm, came an orderly to summon him away, so that he left her in the
company of Samoval.

The Count had been deeply shocked by the discovery that Dick Butler
was Lady O’Moy’s brother, and a little confused that he himself in his
ignorance should have been the means of bringing to her knowledge a
painful matter that touched her so closely and that hitherto had been
so carefully concealed from her by her husband. He was thankful that
she should take so optimistic a view, and quick to perceive O’Moy’s
charitable desire to leave her optimism undispelled. But he was no less
quick to perceive the opportunities which the circumstances afforded him
to further a certain deep intrigue upon which he was engaged.

Therefore he did not take his leave just yet. He sauntered with Lady
O’Moy on the terrace above the wooded slopes that screened the village
of Alcantara, and there discovered her mind to be even more frivolous
and unstable than his perspicuity had hitherto suspected. Under stress
Lady O’Moy could convey the sense that she felt deeply. She could
be almost theatrical in her displays of emotion. But these were as
transient as they were intense. Nothing that was not immediately present
to her senses was ever capable of a deep impression upon her spirit,
and she had the facility characteristic of the self-loving and
self-indulgent of putting aside any matter that was unpleasant. Thus,
easily self-persuaded, as we have seen, that this escapade of Richard’s
was not to be regarded too seriously, and that its consequences were
not likely to be grave, she chattered with gay inconsequence of other
things--of the dinner-party last week at the house of the Marquis
of Minas, that prominent member of the council of Regency, of the
forthcoming ball to be given by the Count of Redondo, of the latest news
from home, the latest fashion and the latest scandal, the amours of the
Duke of York and the shortcomings of Mr. Perceval.

Samoval, however, did not intend that the matter of her brother should
be so entirely forgotten, so lightly treated. Deliberately at last he
revived it.

Considering her as she leant upon the granite balustrade, her pink
sunshade aslant over her shoulder, her flimsy lace shawl festooned
from the crook of either arm and floating behind her, a wisp of cloudy
vapour, Samoval permitted himself a sigh.

She flashed him a sidelong glance, arch and rallying.

“You are melancholy, sir--a poor compliment,” she told him.

But do not misunderstand her. Hers was an almost childish coquetry,
inevitable fruit of her intense femininity, craving ever the worship of
the sterner sex and the incense of its flattery. And Samoval, after all,
young, noble, handsome, with a half-sinister reputation, was something
of a figure of romance, as a good many women had discovered to their
cost.

He fingered his snowy stock, and bent upon her eyes of glowing
adoration. “Dear Lady O’Moy,” his tenor voice was soft and soothing as
a caress, “I sigh to think that one so adorable, so entirely made
for life’s sunshine and gladness, should have cause for a moment’s
uneasiness, perhaps for secret grief, at the thought of the peril of her
brother.”

Her glance clouded under this reminder. Then she pouted and made a
little gesture of impatience. “Dick is not in peril,” she answered. “He
is foolish to remain so long in hiding, and of course he will have to
face unpleasantness when he is found. But to say that he is in peril
is... just nonsense. Terence said nothing of peril. He agreed with me
that Dick will probably be sent home. Surely you don’t think--”

“No, no.” He looked down, studying his hessians for a moment, then his
dark eyes returned to meet her own. “I shall see to it that he is in no
danger. You may depend upon me, who ask but the happy chance to serve
you. Should there be any trouble, let me know at once, and I will see
to it that all is well. Your brother must not suffer, since he is your
brother. He is very blessed and enviable in that.”

She stared at him, her brows knitting. “But I don’t understand.”

“Is it not plain? Whatever happens, you must not suffer, Lady O’Moy. No
man of feeling, and I least of any, could endure it. And since if your
brother were to suffer that must bring suffering to you, you may count
upon me to shield him.”

“You are very good, Count. But shield him from what?”

“From whatever may threaten. The Portuguese Government may demand in
self-protection, to appease the clamour of the people stupidly outraged
by this affair, that an example shall be made of the offender.”

“Oh, but how could they? With what reason?” She displayed a vague alarm,
and a less vague impatience of such hypotheses.

He shrugged. “The people are like that--a fierce, vengeful god to whom
appeasing sacrifices must be offered from time to time. If the people
demand a scapegoat, governments usually provide one. But be comforted.”
 In his eagerness of reassurance he caught her delicate mittened hand in
his own, and her anxiety rendering her heedless, she allowed it to lie
there gently imprisoned. “Be comforted. I shall be here to guard him.
There is much that I can do and you may depend upon me to do it--for
your sake, dear lady. The Government will listen to me. I would not
have you imagine me capable of boasting. I have influence with the
Government, that is all; and I give you my word that so far as the
Portuguese Government is concerned your brother shall take no harm.”

She looked at him for a long moment with moist eyes, moved and flattered
by his earnestness and intensity of homage. “I take this very kindly
in you, sir. I have no thanks that are worthy,” she said, her voice
trembling a little. “I have no means of repaying you. You have made me
very happy, Count.”

He bent low over the frail hand he was holding.

“Your assurance that I have made you happy repays me very fully, since
your happiness is my tenderest concern. Believe me, dear lady, you may
ever count Jeronymo de Samoval your most devoted and obedient slave.”

He bore the hand to his lips and held it to them for a long moment,
whilst with heightened colour and eyes that sparkled, more, be it
confessed, from excitement than from gratitude, she stood passively
considering his bowed dark head.

As he came erect again a movement under the archway caught his eye, and
turning he found himself confronting Sir Terence and Miss Armytage,
who were approaching. If it vexed him to have been caught by a husband
notoriously jealous in an attitude not altogether uncompromising,
Samoval betrayed no sign of it.

With smooth self-possession he hailed O’Moy:

“General, you come in time to enable me to take my leave of you. I was
on the point of going.”

“So I perceived,” said O’Moy tartly. He had almost said: “So I had
hoped.”

His frosty manner would have imposed constraint upon any man less master
of himself than Samoval. But the Count ignored it, and ignoring it
delayed a moment to exchange amiabilities politely with Miss Armytage,
before taking at last an unhurried and unperturbed departure.

But no sooner was he gone than O’Moy expressed himself full frankly to
his wife.

“I think Samoval is becoming too attentive and too assiduous.”

“He is a dear,” said Lady O’Moy.

“That is what I mean,” replied Sir Terence grimly.

“He has undertaken that if there should be any trouble with the
Portuguese Government about Dick’s silly affair he will put it right.”

“Oh!” said O’Moy, “that was it?” And out of his tender consideration for
her said no more.

But Sylvia Armytage, knowing what she knew from Captain Tremayne, was
not content to leave the matter there. She reverted to it presently as
she was going indoors alone with her cousin.

“Una,” she said gently, “I should not place too much faith in Count
Samoval and his promises.”

“What do you mean?” Lady O’Moy was never very tolerant of advice,
especially from an inexperienced young girl.

“I do not altogether trust him. Nor does Terence.”

“Pooh! Terence mistrusts every man who looks at me. My dear, never marry
a jealous man,” she added with her inevitable inconsequence.

“He is the last man--the Count, I mean--to whom, in your place, I should
go for assistance if there is trouble about Dick.” She was thinking of
what Tremayne had told her of the attitude of the Portuguese Government,
and her clear-sighted mind perceived an obvious peril in permitting
Count Samoval to become aware of Dick’s whereabouts should they ever be
discovered.

“What nonsense, Sylvia! You conceive the oddest and most foolish notions
sometimes. But of course you have no experience of the world.” And
beyond that she refused to discuss the matter, nor did the wise Sylvia
insist.




CHAPTER V. THE FUGITIVE


Although Dick Butler might continue missing in the flesh, in the
spirit he and his miserable affair seem to have been ever present and
ubiquitous, and a most fruitful source of trouble.

It would be at about this time that there befell in Lisbon the
deplorable event that nipped in the bud the career of that most
promising young officer, Major Berkeley of the famous Die-Hards, the
29th Foot.

Coming into Lisbon on leave from his regiment, which was stationed at
Abrantes, and formed part of the division under Sir Rowland Hill, the
major happened into a company that contained at least one member who was
hostile to Lord Wellington’s conduct of the campaign, or rather to
the measures which it entailed. As in the case of the Principal Souza,
prejudice drove him to take up any weapon that came to his hand by means
of which he could strike a blow at a system he deplored.

Since we are concerned only indirectly with the affair, it may be stated
very briefly. The young gentleman in question was a Portuguese officer
and a nephew of the Patriarch of Lisbon, and the particular criticism
to which Major Berkeley took such just exception concerned the very
troublesome Dick Butler. Our patrician ventured to comment with sneers
and innuendoes upon the fact that the lieutenant of dragoons continued
missing, and he went so far as to indulge in a sarcastic prophecy that
he never would be found.

Major Berkeley, stung by the slur thus slyly cast upon British honour,
invited the young gentleman to make himself more explicit.

“I had thought that I was explicit enough,” says young impudence,
leering at the stalwart red-coat. “But if you want it more clearly
still, then I mean that the undertaking to punish this ravisher of
nunneries is one that you English have never intended to carry out. To
save your faces you will take good care that Lieutenant Butler is never
found. Indeed I doubt if he was ever really missing.”

Major Berkeley was quite uncompromising and downright. I am afraid he
had none of the graces that can exalt one of these affairs.

“Ye’re just a very foolish liar, sir, and you deserve a good caning,” was
all he said, but the way in which he took his cane from under his arm
was so suggestive of more to follow there and then that several of the
company laid preventive hands upon him instantly.

The Patriarch’s nephew, very white and very fierce to hear himself
addressed in terms which--out of respect for his august and powerful
uncle--had never been used to him before, demanded instant satisfaction.
He got it next morning in the shape of half-an-ounce of lead through his
foolish brain, and a terrible uproar ensued. To appease it a scapegoat
was necessary. As Samoval so truly said, the mob is a ferocious god to
whom sacrifices must be made. In this instance the sacrifice, of course,
was Major Berkeley. He was broken and sent home to cut his pigtail (the
adornment still clung to by the 29th) and retire into private life,
whereby the British army was deprived of an officer of singularly
brilliant promise. Thus, you see, the score against poor Richard
Butler--that foolish victim of wine and circumstance--went on
increasing.

But in my haste to usher Major Berkeley out of a narrative which he
touches merely at a tangent, I am guilty of violating the chronological
order of the events. The ship in which Major Berkeley went home
to England and the rural life was the frigate Telemachus, and the
Telemachus had but dropped anchor in the Tagus at the date with which I
am immediately concerned. She came with certain stores and a heavy load
of mails for the troops, and it would be a full fortnight before she
would sail again for home. Her officers would be ashore during the time,
the welcome guests of the officers of the garrison, bearing their share
in the gaieties with which the latter strove to kill the time of waiting
for events, and Marcus Glennie, the captain of the frigate, an old
friend of Tremayne’s, was by virtue of that friendship an almost daily
visitor at the adjutant’s quarters.

But there again I am anticipating. The Telemachus came to her moorings
in the Tagus, at which for the present we may leave her, on the morning
of the day that was to close with Count Redondo’s semi-official ball.
Lady O’Moy had risen late, taking from one end of the day what she must
relinquish to the other, that thus fully rested she might look her
best that night. The greater part of the afternoon was devoted to
preparation. It was amazing even to herself what an amount of detail
there was to be considered, and from Sylvia she received but very
indifferent assistance. There were times when she regretfully suspected
in Sylvia a lack of proper womanliness, a taint almost of masculinity.
There was to Lady O’Moy’s mind something very wrong about a woman who
preferred a canter to a waltz. It was unnatural; it was suspicious; she
was not quite sure that it wasn’t vaguely immoral.

At last there had been dinner--to which she came a full half-hour late,
but of so ravishing and angelic an appearance that the sight of her was
sufficient to mollify Sir Terence’s impatience and stifle the withering
sarcasms he had been laboriously preparing. After dinner--which was
taken at six o’clock--there was still an hour to spare before the
carriage would come to take them into Lisbon.

Sir Terence pleaded stress of work, occasioned by the arrival of the
Telemachus that morning, and withdrew with Tremayne to the official
quarters, to spend that hour in disposing of some of the many matters
awaiting his attention. Sylvia, who to Lady O’Moy’s exasperation seemed
now for the first time to give a thought to what she should wear that
night, went off in haste to gown herself, and so Lady O’Moy was left to
her own resources--which I assure you were few indeed.

The evening being calm and warm, she sauntered out into the open. She
was more or less annoyed with everybody--with Sir Terence and Tremayne
for their assiduity to duty, and with Sylvia for postponing all thought
of dressing until this eleventh hour, when she might have been better
employed in beguiling her ladyship’s loneliness. In this petulant mood,
Lady O’Moy crossed the quadrangle, loitered a moment by the table and
chairs placed under the trellis, and considered sitting there to await
the others. Finally, however, attracted by the glory of the sunset
behind the hills towards Abrantes, she sauntered out on to the terrace,
to the intense thankfulness of a poor wretch who had waited there for
the past ten hours in the almost despairing hope that precisely such a
thing might happen.

She was leaning upon the balustrade when a rustle in the pines below
drew her attention. The rustle worked swiftly upwards and round to
the bushes on her right, and her eyes, faintly startled, followed its
career, what time she stood tense and vaguely frightened.

Then the bushes parted and a limping figure that leaned heavily upon
a stick disclosed itself; a shaggy, red-bearded man in the garb of a
peasant; and marvel of marvels!--this figure spoke her name sharply,
warningly almost, before she had time to think of screaming.

“Una! Una! Don’t move!”

The voice was certainly the voice of Mr. Butler. But how came that voice
into the body of this peasant? Terrified, with drumming pulses, yet
obedient to the injunction, she remained without speech or movement,
whilst crouching so as to keep below the level of the balustrade the man
crept forward until he was immediately before and below her.

She stared into that haggard face, and through the half-mask of stubbly
beard gradually made out the features of her brother.

“Richard!” The name broke from her in a scream.

“‘Sh!” He waved his hands in wild alarm to repress her. “For God’s sake,
be quiet! It’s a ruined man I am if they find me here. You’ll have heard
what’s happened to me?”

She nodded, and uttered a half-strangled “Yes.”

“Is there anywhere you can hide me? Can you get me into the house
without being seen? I am almost starving, and my leg is on fire. I was
wounded three days ago to make matters worse than they were already. I
have been lying in the woods there watching for the chance to find you
alone since sunrise this morning, and it’s devil a bite or sup I’ve had
since this time yesterday.”

“Poor, poor Richard!” She leaned down towards him in an attitude of
compassionate, ministering grace. “But why? Why did you not come up to
the house and ask for me? No one would have recognised you.”

“Terence would if he had seen me.”

“But Terence wouldn’t have mattered. Terence will help you.”

“Terence!” He almost laughed from excess of bitterness, labouring under
an egotistical sense of wrong. “He’s the last man I should wish to meet,
as I have good reason to know. If it hadn’t been for that I should have
come to you a month ago--immediately after this trouble of mine. As
it is, I kept away until despair left me no other choice. Una, on no
account a word of my presence to Terence.”

“But... he’s my husband!”

“Sure, and he’s also adjutant-general, and if I know him at all he’s the
very man to place official duty and honour and all the rest of it above
family considerations.”

“Oh, Richard, how little you know Terence! How wrong you are to misjudge
him like this!”

“Right or wrong, I’d prefer not to take the risk. It might end in my
being shot one fine morning before long.”

“Richard!”

“For God’s sake, less of your Richard! It’s all the world will be
hearing you. Can you hide me, do you think, for a day or two? If you
can’t, I’ll be after shifting for myself as best I can. I’ve been
playing the part of an English overseer from Bearsley’s wine farm, and
it has brought me all the way from the Douro in safety. But the strain
of it and the eternal fear of discovery are beginning to break me.
And now there’s this infernal wound. I was assaulted by a footpad near
Abrantes, as if I was worth robbing. Anyhow I gave the fellow more than
I took. Unless I have rest I think I shall go mad and give myself up to
the provost-marshal to be shot and done with.”

“Why do you talk of being shot? You have done nothing to deserve that.
Why should you fear it?”

Now Mr. Butler was aware--having gathered the information lately on
his travels--of the undertaking given by the British to the Council
of Regency with regard to himself. But irresponsible egotist though he
might be, yet in common with others he was actuated by the desire which
his sister’s fragile loveliness inspired in every one to spare her
unnecessary pain or anxiety.

“It’s not myself will take any risks,” he said again. “We are at war,
and when men are at war killing becomes a sort of habit, and one life
more or less is neither here nor there.” And upon that he renewed his
plea that she should hide him if she could and that on no account should
she tell a single soul--and Sir Terence least of any--of his presence.

Having driven him to the verge of frenzy by the waste of precious
moments in vain argument, she gave him at last the promise he required.
“Go back to the bushes there,” she bade him, “and wait until I come for
you. I will make sure that the coast is clear.”

Contiguous to her dressing-room, which overlooked the quadrangle, there
was a small alcove which had been converted into a storeroom for
the array of trunks and dress boxes that Lady O’Moy had brought from
England. A door opening directly from her dressing room communicated
with this alcove, and of that door Bridget, her maid, was in possession
of the key.

As she hurried now indoors she happened to meet Bridget on the stairs.
The maid announced herself on her way to supper in the servants’
quarters, and apologised for her presumption in assuming that her
ladyship would no further require her services that evening. But since
it fell in so admirably with her ladyship’s own wishes, she insisted
with quite unusual solicitude, with vehemence almost, that Bridget
should proceed upon her way.

“Just give me the key of the alcove,” she said. “There are one or two
things I want to get.”

“Can’t I get them, your ladyship?”

“Thank you, Bridget. I prefer to get them, myself.”

There was no more to be said. Bridget produced a bunch of keys, which
she surrendered to her mistress, having picked out for her the one
required.

Lady O’Moy went up, to come down again the moment that Bridget had
disappeared. The quadrangle was deserted, the household disposed of,
and it wanted yet half-an-hour to the time for which the carriage was
ordered. No moment could have been more propitious. But in any case
no concealment was attempted--since, if detected it must have provoked
suspicions hardly likely to be aroused in any other way.

When Lady O’Moy returned indoors in the gathering dusk she was followed
at a respectful distance by the limping fugitive, who might, had he been
seen, have been supposed some messenger, or perhaps some person employed
about the house or gardens coming to her ladyship for instructions. No
one saw them, however, and they gained the dressing-room and thence the
alcove in complete safety.

There, whilst Richard, allowing his exhaustion at last to conquer him,
sank heavily down upon one of his sister’s many trunks, recking nothing
of the havoc wrought in its priceless contents, her ladyship all
a-tremble collapsed limply upon another.

But there was no rest for her. Richard’s wound required attention, and
he was faint for want of meat and drink. So having procured him the
wherewithal to wash and dress his hurt--a nasty knife-slash which had
penetrated to the bone of his thigh, the very sight of which turned her
ladyship sick and faint--she went to forage for him in a haste increased
by the fact that time was growing short.

On the dining-room sideboard, from the remains of dinner, she found and
furtively abstracted what she needed--best part of a roast chicken, a
small loaf and a half-flask of Collares. Mullins, the butler, would no
doubt be exercised presently when he discovered the abstraction. Let him
blame one of the footmen, Sir Terence’s orderly, or the cat. It mattered
nothing to Lady O’Moy.

Having devoured the food and consumed the wine, Richard’s exhaustion
assumed the form of a lethargic torpor. To sleep was now his
overmastering desire. She fetched him rugs and pillows, and he made
himself a couch upon the floor. She had demurred, of course, when he
himself had suggested this. She could not conceive of any one sleeping
anywhere but in a bed. But Dick made short work of that illusion.

“Haven’t I been in hiding for the last six weeks?” he asked her. “And
haven’t I been thankful to sleep in a ditch? And wasn’t I campaigning
before that? I tell you I couldn’t sleep in a bed. It’s a habit I’ve
lost entirely.”

Convinced, she gave way.

“We’ll talk to-morrow, Una,” he promised her, as he stretched himself
luxuriously upon that hard couch. “But meanwhile, on your life, not a
word to any one. You understand?”

“Of course I understand, my poor Dick.”

She stooped to kiss him. But he was fast asleep already.

She went out and locked the door, and when, on the point of setting out
for Count Redondo’s, she returned the bunch of keys to Bridget the key
of the alcove was missing.

“I shall require it again in the morning, Bridget,” she explained
lightly. And then added kindly, as it seemed: “Don’t wait for me, child.
Get to bed. I shall be late in coming home, and I shall not want you.”




CHAPTER VI. MISS ARMYTAGE’S PEARLS


Lady O’Moy and Miss Armytage drove alone together into Lisbon. The
adjutant, still occupied, would follow as soon as he possibly could,
whilst Captain Tremayne would go on directly from the lodgings which
he shared in Alcantara with Major Carruthers--also of the adjutant’s
staff--whither he had ridden to dress some twenty minutes earlier.

“Are you ill, Una?” had been Sylvia’s concerned greeting of her cousin
when she came within the range of the carriage lamps. “You are pale as
a ghost.” To this her ladyship had replied mechanically that a slight
headache troubled her.

But now that they sat side by side in the well upholstered carriage Miss
Armytage became aware that her companion was trembling.

“Una, dear, whatever is the matter?”

Had it not been for the dominant fear that the shedding of tears would
render her countenance unsightly, Lady O’Moy would have yielded to her
feelings and wept. Heroically in the cause of her own flawless beauty
she conquered the almost overmastering inclination.

“I--I have been so troubled about Richard,” she faltered. “It is preying
upon my mind.”

“Poor dear!” In sheer motherliness Miss Armytage put an arm about her
cousin and drew her close. “We must hope for the best.”

Now if you have understood anything of the character of Lady O’Moy you
will have understood that the burden of a secret was the last burden
that such a nature was capable of carrying. It was because Dick was
fully aware of this that he had so emphatically and repeatedly impressed
upon her the necessity for saying not a word to any one of his presence.
She realised in her vague way--or rather she believed it since he
had assured her--that there would be grave danger to him if he were
discovered. But discovery was one thing, and the sharing of a confidence
as to his presence another. That confidence must certainly be shared.

Lady O’Moy was in an emotional maelstrom that swept her towards a
cataract. The cataract might inspire her with dread, standing as it did
for death and disaster, but the maelstrom was not to be resisted. She
was helpless in it, unequal to breasting such strong waters, she who in
all her futile, charming life had been borne snugly in safe crafts that
were steered by others.

Remained but to choose her confidant. Nature suggested Terence. But it
was against Terence in particular that she had been warned. Circumstance
now offered Sylvia Armytage. But pride, or vanity if you prefer it,
denied her here. Sylvia was an inexperienced young girl, as she herself
had so often found occasion to remind her cousin. Moreover, she fostered
the fond illusion that Sylvia looked to her for precept, that upon
Sylvia’s life she exercised a precious guiding influence. How, then,
should the supporting lean upon the supported? Yet since she must, there
and then, lean upon something or succumb instantly and completely, she
chose a middle course, a sort of temporary assistance.

“I have been imagining things,” she said. “It may be a premonition, I
don’t know. Do you believe in premonitions, Sylvia?”

“Sometimes,” Sylvia humoured her.

“I have been imagining that if Dick is hiding, a fugitive, he might
naturally come to me for help. I am fanciful, perhaps,” she added
hastily, lest she should have said too much. “But there it is. All day
the notion has clung to me, and I have been asking myself desperately
what I should do in such a case.”

“Time enough to consider it when it happens, Una. After all--”

“I know,” her ladyship interrupted on that ever-ready note of petulance
of hers. “I know, of course. But I think I should be easier in my mind
if I could find an answer to my doubt. If I knew what to do, to whom to
appeal for assistance, for I am afraid that I should be very helpless
myself. There is Terence, of course. But I am a little afraid of
Terence. He has got Dick out of so many scrapes, and he is so impatient
of poor Dick. I am afraid he doesn’t understand him, and so I should be
a little frightened of appealing to Terence again.”

“No,” said Sylvia gravely, “I shouldn’t go to Terence. Indeed he is the
last man to whom I should go.”

“You say that too!” exclaimed her ladyship.

“Why?” quoth Sylvia sharply. “Who else has said it?”

There was a brief pause in which Lady O’Moy shuddered. She had been so
near to betraying herself. How very quick and shrewd Sylvia was! She
made, however, a good recovery.

“Myself, of course. It is what I have thought myself. There is Count
Samoval. He promised that if ever any such thing happened he would help
me. And he assured me I could count upon him. I think it may have been
his offer that made me fanciful.”

“I should go to Sir Terence before I went to Count Samoval. By which
I mean that I should not go to Count Samoval at all under any
circumstances. I do not trust him.”

“You said so once before, dear,” said Lady O’Moy.

“And you assured me that I spoke out of the fullness of my ignorance and
inexperience.”

“Ah, forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive. No doubt you were right. But remember
that instinct is most alive in the ignorant and inexperienced, and that
instinct is often a surer guide than reason. Yet if you want reason, I
can supply that too. Count Samoval is the intimate friend of the Marquis
of Minas, who remains a member of the Government, and who next to the
Principal Souza was, and no doubt is, the most bitter opponent of
the British policy in Portugal. Yet Count Samoval, one of the largest
landowners in the north, and the nobleman who has perhaps suffered
most severely from that policy, represents himself as its most vigorous
supporter.”

Lady O’Moy listened in growing amazement. Also she was a little shocked.
It seemed to her almost indecent that a young girl should know so much
about politics--so much of which she herself, a married woman, and the
wife of the adjutant-general, was completely in ignorance.

“Save us, child!” she ejaculated. “You are so extraordinarily informed.”

“I have talked to Captain Tremayne,” said Sylvia. “He has explained all
this.”

“Extraordinary conversation for a young man to hold with a young girl,”
 pronounced her ladyship. “Terence never talked of such things to me.”

“Terence was too busy making love to you,” said Sylvia, and there was
the least suspicion of regret in her almost boyish voice.

“That may account for it,” her ladyship confessed, and fell for a moment
into consideration of that delicious and rather amusing past, when
O’Moy’s ferocious hesitancy and flaming jealousy had delighted her with
the full perception of her beauty’s power. With a rush, however, the
present forced itself back upon her notice. “But I still don’t see why
Count Samoval should have offered me assistance if he did not intend to
grant it when the time came.”

Sylvia explained that it was from the Portuguese Government that the
demand for justice upon the violator of the nunnery at Tavora emanated,
and that Samoval’s offer might be calculated to obtain him information
of Butler’s whereabouts when they became known, so that he might
surrender him to the Government.

“My dear!” Lady O’Moy was shocked almost beyond expression. “How you
must dislike the man to suggest that he could be such a--such a Judas.”

“I do not suggest that he could be. I warn you never to run the risk of
testing him. He may be as honest in this matter as he pretends. But if
ever Dick were to come to you for help, you must take no risk.”

The phrase was a happier one than Sylvia could suppose. It was almost
the very phrase that Dick himself had used; and its reiteration by
another bore conviction to her ladyship.

“To whom then should I go?” she demanded plaintively. And Sylvia,
speaking with knowledge, remembering the promise that Tremayne had given
her, answered readily: “There is but one man whose assistance you could
safely seek. Indeed I wonder you should not have thought of him in
the first instance, since he is your own, as well as Dick’s lifelong
friend.”

“Ned Tremayne?” Her ladyship fell into thought. “Do you know, I am
a little afraid of Ned. He is so very sober and cold. You do mean
Ned--don’t you?”

“Whom else should I mean?”

“But what could he do?”

“My dear, how should I know? But at least I know--for I think I can be
sure of this--that he will not lack the will to help you; and to have
the will, in a man like Captain Tremayne, is to find a way.”

The confident, almost respectful, tone in which she spoke arrested her
ladyship’s attention. It promptly sent her off at a tangent:

“You like Ned, don’t you, dear?”

“I think everybody likes him.” Sylvia’s voice was now studiously cold.

“Yes; but I don’t mean quite in that way.” And then before the subject
could be further pursued the carriage rolled to a standstill in a flood
of light from gaping portals, scattering a mob of curious sight-seers
intersprinkled with chairmen, footmen, linkmen and all the valetaille
that hovers about the functions of the great world.

The carriage door was flung open and the steps let down. A brace of
footmen, plump as capons, in gorgeous liveries, bowed powdered heads and
proffered scarlet arms to assist the ladies to alight.

Above in the crowded, spacious, colonnaded vestibule at the foot of the
great staircase they were met-by Captain Tremayne, who had just arrived
with Major Carruthers, both resplendent in full dress, and Captain
Marcus Glennie of the Telemachus in blue and gold. Together they
ascended the great staircase, lined with chatting groups, and ablaze
with uniforms, military, naval and diplomatic, British and Portuguese,
to be welcomed above by the Count and Countess of Redondo.

Lady O’Moy’s entrance of the ballroom produced the effect to which
custom had by now inured her. Soon she found herself the centre of
assiduous attentions. Cavalrymen in blue, riflemen in green, scarlet
officers of the line regiments, winged light-infantrymen, rakishly
pelissed, gold-braided hussars and all the smaller fry of court and camp
fluttered insistently about her. It was no novelty to her who had been
the recipient of such homage since her first ball five years ago at
Dublin Castle, and yet the wine of it had gone ever to her head a
little. But to-night she was rather pale and listless, her rose-petal
loveliness emphasised thereby perhaps. An unusual air of indifference
hung about her as she stood there amid this throng of martial jostlers
who craved the honour of a dance and at whom she smiled a thought
mechanically over the top of her slowly moving fan.

The first quadrille impended, and the senior service had carried off
the prize from under the noses of the landsmen. As she was swept away
by Captain Glennie, she came face to face with Tremayne, who was passing
with Sylvia on his arm. She stopped and tapped his arm with her fan.

“You haven’t asked to dance, Ned,” she reproached him.

“With reluctance I abstained.”

“But I don’t intend that you shall. I have something to say to you.” He
met her glance, and found it oddly serious--most oddly serious for her.
Responding to its entreaty, he murmured a promise in courteous terms of
delight at so much honour.

But either he forgot the promise or did not conceive its redemption to
be an urgent matter, for the quadrille being done he sauntered through
one of the crowded ante-rooms with Miss Armytage and brought her to the
cool of a deserted balcony above the garden. Beyond this was the river,
agleam with the lights of the British fleet that rode at anchor on its
placid bosom.

“Una will be waiting for you,” Miss Armytage reminded him. She was
leaning on the sill of the balcony. Standing erect beside her, he
considered the graceful profile sharply outlined against a background
of gloom by the light from the windows behind them. A heavy curl of her
dark hair lay upon a neck as flawlessly white as the rope of pearls
that swung from it, with which her fingers were now idly toying. It
were difficult to say which most engaged his thoughts: the profile; the
lovely line of neck; or the rope of pearls. These latter were of price,
such things as it might seldom--and then only by sacrifice--lie within
the means of Captain Tremayne to offer to the woman whom he took to
wife.

He so lost himself upon that train of thought that she was forced to
repeat her reminder.

“Una will be waiting for you, Captain Tremayne.”

“Scarcely as eagerly,” he answered, “as others will be waiting for you.”

She laughed amusedly, a frank, boyish laugh. “I thank you for not saying
as eagerly as I am waiting for others.”

“Miss Armytage, I have ever cultivated truth.”

“But we are dealing with surmise.”

“Oh, no surmise at all. I speak of what I know.”

“And so do I.” And yet again she repeated: “Una will be waiting for you.”

He sighed, and stiffened slightly. “Of course if you insist,” said he,
and made ready to reconduct her.

She swung round as if to go, but checked, and looked him frankly in the
eyes.

“Why will you for ever be misunderstanding me?” she challenged him.

“Perhaps it is the inevitable result of my overanxiety to understand.”

“Then begin by taking me more literally, and do not read into my words
more meaning than I intend to give them. When I say Una is waiting for
you, I state a simple fact, not a command that you shall go to her.
Indeed I want first to talk to you.”

“If I might take you literally now--”

“Should I have suffered you to bring me here if I did not?”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, contrite, and something shaken out of his
imperturbability. “Sylvia,” he ventured very boldly, and there checked,
so terrified as to be a shame to his brave scarlet, gold-laced uniform.

“Yes?” she said. She was leaning upon the balcony again, and in such a
way now that he could no longer see her profile. But her fingers were
busy at the pearls once more, and this he saw, and seeing, recovered
himself.

“You have something to say to me?” he questioned in his smooth, level
voice.

Had he not looked away as he spoke he might have observed that her
fingers tightened their grip of the pearls almost convulsively, as if to
break the rope. It was a gesture slight and trivial, yet arguing perhaps
vexation. But Tremayne did not see it, and had he seen it, it is odds it
would have conveyed no message to him.

There fell a long pause, which he did not venture to break. At last she
spoke, her voice quiet and level as his own had been.

“It is about Una.”

“I had hoped,” he spoke very softly, “that it was about yourself.”

She flashed round upon him almost angrily. “Why do you utter these set
speeches to me?” she demanded. And then before he could recover from his
astonishment to make any answer she had resumed a normal manner, and was
talking quickly.

She told him of Una’s premonitions about Dick. Told him, in short, what
it was that Una desired to talk to him about.


“You bade her come to me?” he said.

“Of course. After your promise to me.”

He was silent and very thoughtful for a moment. “I wonder that Una
needed to be told that she had in me a friend,” he said slowly.

“I wonder to whom she would have gone on her own impulse?”

“To Count Samoval,” Miss Armytage informed him.

“Samoval!” he rapped the name out sharply. He was clearly angry. “That
man! I can’t understand why O’Moy should suffer him about the house so
much.”

“Terence, like everybody else, will suffer anything that Una wishes.”


“Then Terence is more of a fool than I ever suspected.”

There was a brief pause. “If you were to fail Una in this,” said Miss
Armytage presently, “I mean that unless you yourself give her the
assurance that you are ready to do what you can for Dick, should the
occasion arise, I am afraid that in her present foolish mood she may
still avail herself of Count Samoval. That would be to give Samoval a
hold upon her; and I tremble to think what the consequences might be.
That man is a snake--a horror.”

The frankness with which she spoke was to Tremayne full evidence of her
anxiety. He was prompt to allay it.

“She shall have that assurance this very evening,” he promised.

“I at least have not pledged my word to anything or to any one. Even
so,” he added slowly, “the chances of my services being ever required
grow more slender every day. Una may be full of premonitions about Dick.
But between premonition and event there is something of a gap.”

Again a pause, and then: “I am glad,” said Miss Armytage, “to think that
Una has a friend, a trustworthy friend, upon whom she can depend. She is
so incapable of depending upon herself. All her life there has been some
one at hand to guide her and screen her from unpleasantness until she
has remained just a sweet, dear child to be taken by the hand in every
dark lane of life.”

“But she has you, Miss Armytage.”

“Me?” Miss Armytage spoke deprecatingly. “I don’t think I am a very able
or experienced guide. Besides, even such as I am, she may not have me
very long now. I had letters from home this morning. Father is not very
well, and mother writes that he misses me. I am thinking of returning
soon.”

“But--but you have only just come!”

She brightened and laughed at the dismay in his voice. “Indeed, I have
been here six weeks.” She looked out over the shimmering moonlit waters
of the Tagus and the shadowy, ghostly ships of the British fleet that
rode at anchor there, and her eyes were wistful. Her fingers, with that
little gesture peculiar to her in moments of constraint, were again
entwining themselves in her rope of pearls. “Yes,” she said almost
musingly, “I think I must be going soon.”

He was dismayed. He realised that the moment for action had come. His
heart was sounding the charge within him. And then that cursed rope of
pearls, emblem of the wealth and luxury in which she had been nurtured,
stood like an impassable abattis across his path.

“You--you will be glad to go, of course?” he suggested.

“Hardly that. It has been very pleasant here.” She sighed.

“We shall miss you very much,” he said gloomily. “The house at Monsanto
will not be the same when you are gone. Una will be lost and desolate
without you.”

“It occurs to me sometimes,” she said slowly, “that the people about Una
think too much of Una and too little of themselves.”

It was a cryptic speech. In another it might have signified a
spitefulness unthinkable in Sylvia Armytage; therefore it puzzled him
very deeply. He stood silent, wondering what precisely she might mean,
and thus in silence they continued for a spell. Then slowly she turned
and the blaze of light from the windows fell about her irradiantly.
She was rather pale, and her eyes were of a suspiciously excessive
brightness. And again she made use of the phrase:

“Una will be waiting for you.”

Yet, as before, he stood silent and immovable, considering her,
questioning himself, searching her face and his own soul. All he saw was
that rope of shimmering pearls.

“And after all, as yourself suggested, it is possible that others may be
waiting for me,” she added presently.

Instantly he was crestfallen and contrite. “I sincerely beg your pardon,
Miss Armytage,” and with a pang of which his imperturbable exterior gave
no hint he proffered her his arm.

She took it, barely touching it with her finger-tips, and they
re-entered the ante-room.

“When do you think that you will be leaving?” he asked her gently.

There was a note of harshness in the voice that answered him.

“I don’t know yet. But very soon. The sooner the better, I think.”

And then the sleek and courtly Samoval, detaching from, seeming to
materialise out of, the glittering throng they had entered, was bowing
low before her, claiming her attention. Knowing her feelings, Tremayne
would not have relinquished her, but to his infinite amazement she
herself slipped her fingers from his scarlet sleeve, to place them
upon the black one that Samoval was gracefully proffering, and greeted
Samoval with a gay raillery as oddly in contrast with her grave
demeanour towards the captain as with her recent avowal of detestation
for the Count.

Stricken and half angry, Tremayne stood looking after them as they
receded towards the ballroom. To increase his chagrin came a laugh from
Miss Armytage, sharp and rather strident, floating towards him, and Miss
Armytage’s laugh was wont to be low and restrained. Samoval, no doubt,
had resources to amuse a woman--even a woman who instinctively, disliked
him--resources of which Captain Tremayne himself knew nothing.

And then some one tapped him on the shoulder. A very tall, hawk-faced
man in a scarlet coat and tightly strapped blue trousers stood beside
him. It was Colquhoun Grant, the ablest intelligence officer in
Wellington’s service.

“Why, Colonel!” cried Tremayne, holding out his hand. “I didn’t know you
were in Lisbon.”

“I arrived only this afternoon.” The keen eyes flashed after the
disappearing figures of Sylvia and her cavalier. “Tell me, what is the
name of the irresistible gallant who has so lightly ravished you of your
quite delicious companion?”

“Count Samoval,” said Tremayne shortly.

Grant’s face remained inscrutable. “Really!” he said softly. “So that is
Jeronymo de Samoval, eh? How very interesting. A great supporter of the
British policy; therefore an altruist, since himself he is a sufferer by
it; and I hear that he has become a great friend of O’Moy’s.”

“He is at Monsanto a good deal certainly,” Tremayne admitted.

“Most interesting.” Grant was slowly nodding, and a faint smile curled
his thin, sensitive lips. “But I’m keeping you, Tremayne, and no doubt
you would be dancing. I shall perhaps see you to-morrow. I shall be
coming up to Monsanto.”

And with a wave of the hand he passed on and was gone.




CHAPTER VII. THE ALLY


Tremayne elbowed his way through the gorgeous crowd, exchanging
greetings here and there as he went, and so reached the ballroom during
a pause in the dancing. He looked round for Lady O’Moy, but he could see
her nowhere, and would never have found her had not Carruthers pointed
out a knot of officers and assured him that the lady was in the heart of
it and in imminent peril of being suffocated.

Thither the captain bent his steps, looking neither to right nor left in
his singleness of purpose. Thus it happened that he saw neither O’Moy,
who had just arrived, nor the massive, decorated bulk of Marshal
Beresford, with whom the adjutant stood in conversation on the skirts of
the throng that so assiduously worshipped at her ladyship’s shrine.

Captain Tremayne went through the group with all a sapper’s skill at
piercing obstacles, and so came face to face with the lady of his quest.
Seeing her so radiant now, with sparkling eyes and ready laugh, it was
difficult to conceive her haunted by any such anxieties as Miss Armytage
had mentioned. Yet the moment she perceived him, as if his presence
acted as a reminder to lift her out of the delicious present, something
of her gaiety underwent eclipse.

Child of impulse that she was, she gave no thought to her action and the
construction it might possibly bear in the minds of men chagrined and
slighted.

“Why, Ned,” she cried, “you have kept me waiting.” And with a complete
and charming ignoring of the claims of all who had been before him, and
who were warring there for precedence of one another, she took his arm
in token that she yielded herself to him before even the honour was so
much as solicited.

With nods and smiles to right and left--a queen dismissing her
court--she passed on the captain’s arm through the little crowd that
gave way before her dismayed and intrigued, and so away.

O’Moy, who had been awaiting a favourable moment to present the marshal
by the marshal’s own request, attempted to thrust forward now with
Beresford at his side. But the bowing line of officers whose backs were
towards him effectively barred his progress, and before they had broken
up that formation her ladyship and her cavalier were out of sight, lost
in the moving crowd.

The marshal laughed good-humouredly. “The infallible reward of
patience,” said he. And O’Moy laughed with him. But the next moment he
was scowling at what he overheard.

“On my soul, that was impudence!” an Irish infantryman had protested.

“Have you ever heard,” quoth a heavy dragoon, who was also a heavy
jester, “that in heaven the last shall be first? If you pay court to an
angel you must submit to celestial customs.”

“And bedad,” rejoined the infantryman, “as there’s no marryin’ in heaven
ye’ve got to make the best of it with other men’s wives. Sure it’s a
great success that fellow should be in paradise. Did ye remark the way
she melted to him beauty swooning at the sight of temptation! Bad luck
to him! Who is he at all?”

They dispersed laughing and followed by O’Moy’s scowling eyes. It
annoyed him that his wife’s thoughtless conduct should render her the
butt of such jests as these, and perhaps a subject for lewd gossip. He
would speak to her about it later. Meanwhile the marshal had linked arms
with him.

“Since the privilege must be postponed,” said he, “suppose that we seek
supper. I have always found that a man can best heal in his stomach
the wounds taken by his heart.” His fleshy bulk afforded a certain
prima-facie confirmation of the dictum.

With a roll more suggestive of the quarter-deck than the saddle, the
great man bore off O’Moy in quest of material consolation. Yet as they
went the adjutant’s eyes raked the ballroom in quest of his wife.
That quest, however, was unsuccessful, for his wife was already in the
garden.

“I want to talk to you most urgently, Ned. Take me somewhere where we
can be quite private,” she had begged the captain. “Somewhere where
there is no danger of being overheard.”

Her agitation, now uncontrolled, suggested to Tremayne that the matter
might be far more serious and urgent than Miss Armytage had represented
it. He thought first of the balcony where he had lately been. But then
the balcony opened immediately from the ante-room and was likely at
any moment to be invaded. So, since the night was soft and warm, he
preferred the garden. Her ladyship went to find a wrap, then arm in
arm they passed out, and were lost in the shadows of an avenue of
palm-trees.

“It is about Dick,” she said breathlessly.

“I know--Miss Armytage told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That you had a premonition that he might come to you for assistance.”

“A premonition!” Her ladyship laughed nervously. “It is more than a
premonition, Ned. He has come.”

The captain stopped in his stride, and stood quite still.

“Come?” he echoed. “Dick?”

“Sh!” she warned him, and sank her voice from very instinct. “He came to
me this evening, half an hour before we left home. I have put him in an
alcove adjacent to my dressing-room for the present.”

“You have left him there?” He was alarmed.

“Oh, there’s no fear. No one ever goes there except Bridget. And I have
locked the alcove. He’s fast asleep. He was asleep before I left. The
poor fellow was so worn and weary.” Followed details of his appearance
and a recital of his wanderings so far as he had made them known to her.
“And he was so insistent that no one should know, not even Terence.”

“Terence must not know,” he said gravely.

“You think that too!”

“If Terence knows--well, you will regret it all the days of your life,
Una.”

He was so stern, so impressive, that she begged for explanation. He
afforded it. “You would be doing Terence the utmost cruelty if you told
him. You would be compelling him to choose between his honour and
his concern for you. And since he is the very soul of honour, he must
sacrifice you and himself, your happiness and his own, everything that
makes life good for you both, to his duty.”

She was aghast, for all that she was far from understanding. But he went
on relentlessly to make his meaning clear, for the sake of O’Moy as much
as for her own--for the sake of the future of these two people who were
perhaps his dearest friends. He saw in what danger of shipwreck their
happiness now stood, and he took the determination of clearly pointing
out to her every shoal in the water through which she must steer her
course.

“Since this has happened, Una, you must be told the whole truth; you
must listen, and, above all, be reasonable. I am Dick’s friend, as I am
your own and Terence’s. Your father was my best friend, perhaps, and
my gratitude to him is unbounded, as I hope you know. You and Dick are
almost as brother and sister to me. In spite of this--indeed, because of
this, I have prayed for news that Dick was dead.”

Her grasp interrupted him, and he felt the tightening clutch of her
hands upon his arm in the gloom.

“I have prayed this for Dick’s sake, and more than all for the sake of
your happiness and Terence’s. If Dick is taken the choice before Terence
is a tragic one. You will realise it when I tell you that duty forced
him to pledge his word to the Portuguese Government that Dick should be
shot when found.”

“Oh!” It was a gasp of horror, of incredulity. She loosed his arm and
drew away from him. “It is infamous! I can’t believe it. I can’t.”

“It is true. I swear it to you. I was present, and I heard.”

“And you allowed it?”

“What could I do? How could I interfere? Besides, the minister who
demanded that undertaking knew nothing of the relationship between O’Moy
and this missing officer.”

“But--but he could have been told.”

“That would have made no difference--unless it were to create fresh
difficulties.”

She stood there ghostly white against the gloom. A dry sob broke from
her. “Terence did that! Terence did that!” she moaned. And then in a
surge of anger: “I shall never speak to Terence again. I shall not live
with him another day. It was infamous! Infamous!”

“It was not infamous. It was almost noble, almost heroic,” he amazed
her. “Listen, Una, and try to understand.” He took her arm again and
drew her gently on down that avenue of moonlight-fretted darkness.

“Oh, I understand,” she cried bitterly. “I understand perfectly. He has
always been hard on Dick! He has always made mountains out of molehills
where Dick was concerned. He forgets that Dick is young a mere boy. He
judges Dick from the standpoint of his own sober middle age. Why, he’s
an old man--a wicked old man!”

Thus her rage, hurling at O’Moy what in the insolence of her youth
seemed the last insult.

“You are very unjust, Una. You are even a little stupid,” he said,
deeming the punishment necessary and salutary.

“Stupid! I stupid! I have never been called stupid before.”

“But you have undoubtedly deserved to be,” he assured her with perfect
calm.

It took her aback by its directness, and for a moment left her without
an answer. Then: “I think you had better leave me,” she told him
frostily. “You forget yourself.”

“Perhaps I do,” he admitted. “That is because I am more concerned to
think of Dick and Terence and yourself. Sit down, Una.”

They had reached a little circle by a piece of ornamental water, facing
which a granite-hewn seat had been placed. She sank to it obediently, if
sulkily.

“It may perhaps help you to understand what Terence has done when I tell
you that in his place, loving Dick as I do, I must have pledged myself
precisely as he did or else despised myself for ever. And being pledged,
I must keep my word or go in the same self-contempt.” He elaborated his
argument by explaining the full circumstances under which the pledge had
been exacted. “But be in no doubt about it,” he concluded. “If Terence
knows of Dick’s presence at Monsanto he has no choice. He must deliver
him up to a firing party--or to a court-martial which will inevitably
sentence him to death, no matter what the defence that Dick may urge.
He is a man prejudged, foredoomed by the necessities of war. And Terence
will do this although it will break his heart and ruin all his life.
Understand me, then, that in enjoining you never to allow Terence to
suspect that Dick is present, I am pleading not so much for you or for
Dick, but for Terence himself--for it is upon Terence that the hardest
and most tragic suffering must fall. Now do you understand?”

“I understand that men are very stupid,” was her way of admitting it.

“And you see that you were wrong in judging Terence as you did?”

“I--I suppose so.”

She didn’t understand it all. But since Tremayne was so insistent she
supposed there must be something in his point of view. She had been
brought up in the belief that Ned Tremayne was common sense incarnate;
and although she often doubted it--as you may doubt the dogmas of a
religion in which you have been bred--yet she never openly rebelled
against that inculcated faith. Above all she wanted to cry. She knew
that it would be very good for her. She had often found a singular
relief in tears when vexed by things beyond her understanding. But she
had to think of that flock of gallants in the ballroom waiting to pay
court to her and of her duty towards them of preserving her beauty
unimpaired by the ravages of a vented sorrow.

Tremayne sat down beside her. “So now that we understand each other on
that score, let us consider ways and means to dispose of Dick.”

At once she was uplifted and became all eagerness.

“Yes, Yes. You will help me, Ned?”

“You can depend upon me to do all in human power.”

He thought rapidly, and gave voice to some of his thoughts. “If I could
I would take him to my lodgings at Alcantara. But Carruthers knows him
and would see him there. So that is out of the question. Then again
it is dangerous to move him about. At any moment he might be seen and
recognised.”

“Hardly recognised,” she said. “His beard disguises him, and his
dress--” She shuddered at the very thought of the figure he had cut, he,
the jaunty, dandy Richard Butler.

“That is something, of course,” he agreed. And then asked: “How long do
you think that you could keep him hidden?”

“I don’t know. You see, there’s Bridget. She is the only danger, as she
has charge of my dressing-room.”

“It may be desperate, but--Can you trust her?”

“Oh, I am sure I can. She is devoted to me; she would do anything--”

“She must be bought as well. Devotion and gain when linked together will
form an unbreakable bond. Don’t let us be stingy, Una. Take her into
your confidence boldly, and promise her a hundred guineas for her
silence--payable on the day that Dick leaves the country.”

“But how are we to get him out of the country?”

“I think I know a way. I can depend on Marcus Glennie. I may tell him
the whole truth and the identity of our man, or I may not. I must think
about that. But, whatever I decide, I am sure I can induce Glennie to
take our fugitive home in the Telemachus and land him safely somewhere
in Ireland, where he will have to lose himself for awhile. Perhaps for
Glennie’s sake it will be safer not to disclose Dick’s identity. Then if
there should be trouble later, Glennie, having known nothing of the real
facts, will not be held responsible. I will talk to him to-night.”

“Do you think he will consent?” she asked in strained anxiety--anxiety
to have her anxieties dispelled.

“I am sure he will. I can almost pledge my word on it. Marcus would
do anything to serve me. Oh, set your mind at rest. Consider the thing
done. Keep Dick safely hidden for a week or so until the Telemachus is
ready to sail--he mustn’t go on board until the last moment, for several
reasons--and I will see to the rest.”

Under that confident promise her troubles fell from her, as lightly as
they ever did.

“You are very good to me, Ned. Forgive me what I said just now. And I
think I understand about Terence--poor dear old Terence.”

“Of course you do.” Moved to comfort her as he might have been moved to
comfort a child, he flung his arm along the seat behind her, and patted
her shoulder soothingly. “I knew you would understand. And not a word
to Terence, not a word that could so much as awaken his suspicions.
Remember that.”

“Oh, I shall.”

Fell a step upon the patch behind them crunching the gravel. Captain
Tremayne, his arm still along the back of the seat, and seeming to
envelop her ladyship, looked over her shoulder. A tall figure was
advancing briskly. He recognised it even in the gloom by its height and
gait and swing for O’Moy’s.

“Why, here is Terence,” he said easily--so easily, with such frank and
obvious honesty of welcome, that the anger in which O’Moy came wrapped
fell from him on the instant, to be replaced by shame.

“I have been looking for you everywhere, my dear,” he said to Una.
“Marshal Beresford is anxious to pay you his respects before he leaves,
and you have been so hedged about by gallants all the evening that
it’s devil a chance he’s had of approaching you.” There was a certain
constraint in his voice, for a man may not recover instantly from such
feelings as those which had fetched him hot-foot down that path at sight
of those two figures sitting so close and intimate, the young man’s arm
so proprietorialy about the lady’s shoulders--as it seemed.

Lady O’Moy sprang up at once, with a little silvery laugh that was
singularly care-free; for had not Tremayne lifted the burden entirely
from her shoulders?

“You should have married a dowd,” she mocked him. “Then you’d have found
her more easily accessible.”

“Instead of finding her dallying in the moonlight with my secretary,”
 he rallied back between good and ill humour. And he turned to Tremayne:
“Damned indiscreet of you, Ned,” he added more severely. “Suppose you
had been seen by any of the scandalmongering old wives of the garrison?
A nice thing for Una and a nice thing for me, begad, to be made the
subject of fly-blown talk over the tea-cups.”

Tremayne accepted the rebuke in the friendly spirit in which it appeared
to be conveyed. “Sorry, O’Moy,” he said. “You’re quite right. We should
have thought of it. Everybody isn’t to know what our relations are.” And
again he was so manifestly honest and so completely at his ease that it
was impossible to harbour any thought of evil, and O’Moy felt again the
glow of shame of suspicions so utterly unworthy and dishonouring.




CHAPTER VIII. THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER


In a small room of Count Redondo’s palace, a room that had been set
apart for cards, sat three men about a card-table. They were Count
Samoval, the elderly Marquis of Minas, lean, bald and vulturine of
aspect, with a deep-set eye that glared fiercely through a single
eyeglass rimmed in tortoise-shell, and a gentleman still on the fair
side of middle age, with a clear-cut face and iron-grey hair, who wore
the dark green uniform of a major of Cacadores.

Considering his Portuguese uniform, it is odd that the low-toned,
earnest conversation amongst them should have been conducted in French.

There were cards on the table; but there was no pretence of play. You
might have conceived them a group of players who, wearied of their game,
had relinquished it for conversation. They were the only tenants of
the room, which was small, cedar-panelled and lighted by a girandole of
sparkling crystal. Through the closed door came faintly from the distant
ballroom the strains of the dance music.

With perhaps the single exception of the Principal Souza, the British
policy had no more bitter opponent in Portugal than the Marquis of
Minas. Once a member of the Council of Regency--before Souza had been
elected to that body--he had quitted it in disgust at the British
measures. His chief ground of umbrage had been the appointment of
British officers to the command of the Portuguese regiments which formed
the division under Marshal Beresford. In this he saw a deliberate insult
and slight to his country and his countrymen. He was a man of burning
and blinded patriotism, to whom Portugal was the most glorious nation
in the world. He lived in his country’s splendid past, refusing to
recognise that the days of Henry the Navigator, of Vasco da Gama, of
Manuel the Fortunate--days in which Portugal had been great indeed
among the nations of the Old World were gone and done with. He respected
Britons as great merchants and industrious traders; but, after all,
merchants and traders are not the peers of fighters on land and sea, of
navigators, conquerors and civilisers, such as his countrymen had been,
such as he believed them still to be. That the descendants of Gamas,
Cunhas, Magalhaes and Albuquerques--men whose names were indelibly
written upon the very face of the world--should be passed over, whilst
alien officers lead been brought in to train and command the Portuguese
legions, was an affront to Portugal which Minas could never forgive.

It was thus that he had become a rebel, withdrawing from a government
whose supineness he could not condone. For a while his rebellion had
been passive, until the Principal Souza had heated him in the fire of
his own rage and fashioned him into an intriguing instrument of the
first power. He was listening intently now to the soft, rapid speech of
the gentleman in the major’s uniform.

“Of course, rumours had reached the Prince of this policy of
devastation,” he was saying, “but his Highness has been disposed to
treat these rumours lightly, unable to see, as indeed are we all, what
useful purpose such a policy could finally serve. He does not underrate
the talents of milord Wellington as a commander. He does not imagine
that he would pursue such operations out of pure wantonness; yet if
such operations are indeed being pursued, what can they be but wanton? A
moment, Count,” he stayed Samoval, who was about to interrupt. His
mind and manner were authoritative. “We know most positively from the
Emperor’s London agents that the war is unpopular in England; we know
that public opinion is being prepared for a British retreat, for the
driving of the British into the sea, as must inevitably happen once
Monsieur le Prince decides to launch his bolt. Here in the Tagus the
British fleet lies ready to embark the troops, and the British
Cabinet itself” (he spoke more slowly and emphatically) “expects that
embarkation to take place at latest in September, which is just about
the time that the French offensive should be at its height and the
French troops under the very walls of Lisbon. I admit that by this
policy of devastation if, indeed, it be true--added to a stubborn
contesting of every foot of ground, the French advance may be retarded.
But the process will be costly to Britain in lives and money.”

“And more costly still to Portugal,” croaked the Marquis of Minas.

“And, as you, say, Monsieur le Marquis, more costly still to Portugal.
Let me for a moment show you another side of the picture. The French
administration, so sane, so cherishing, animated purely by ideas of
progress, enforcing wise and beneficial laws, making ever for the
prosperity and well-being of conquered nations, knows how to render
itself popular wherever it is established. This Portugal knows
already--or at least some part of it. There was the administration of
Soult in Oporto, so entirely satisfactory to the people that it was no
inconsiderable party was prepared, subject to the Emperor’s consent, to
offer him the crown and settle down peacefully under his rule. There was
the administration of Junot in Lisbon. I ask you: when was Lisbon better
governed?

“Contrast, for a moment, with these the present British
administration--for it amounts to an administration. Consider the
burning grievances that must be left behind by this policy of laying the
country waste, of pauperising a million people of all degrees, driving
them homeless from the lands on which they were born, after compelling
them to lend a hand in the destruction of all that their labour has
built up through long years. If any policy could better serve the
purposes of France, I know it not. The people from here to Beira should
be ready to receive the French with open arms, and to welcome their
deliverance from this most costly and bitter British protection.

“Do you, Messieurs, detect a flaw in these arguments?”

Both shook their heads.

“Bien!” said the major of Portuguese Cacadores. “Then we reach one
or two only possible conclusions: either these rumours of a policy of
devastation which have reached the Prince of Esslingen are as utterly
false as he believes them to be, or--”

“To my cost I know them to be true, as I have already told you,” Samoval
interrupted bitterly.

“Or,” the major persisted, raising a hand to restrain the Count, “or
there is something further that has not been yet discovered--a mystery
the enucleation of which will shed light upon all the rest. Since you
assure me, Monsieur le Comte, that milord Wellington’s policy is beyond
doubt, as reported to Monsieur, le Marechal, it but remains to
address ourselves to the discovery of the mystery underlying it.
What conclusions have you reached? You, Monsieur de Samoval, have had
exceptional opportunities of observation, I understand.”

“I am afraid my opportunities have been none so exceptional as you
suppose,” replied Samoval, with a dubious shake of his sleek, dark head.
“At one time I founded great hopes in Lady O’Moy. But Lady O’Moy is a
fool, and does not enjoy her husband’s confidence in official matters.
What she knows I know. Unfortunately it does not amount to very much.
One conclusion, however, I have reached: Wellington is preparing in
Portugal a snare for Massena’s army.”

“A snare? Hum!” The major pursed his full lips into a smile of scorn.
“There cannot be a trap with two exits, my friend. Massena enters
Portugal at Almeida and marches to Lisbon and the open sea. He may be
inconvenienced or hampered in his march; but its goal is certain. Where,
then, can lie the snare? Your theory presupposes an impassable
barrier to arrest the French when they are deep in the country and
an overwhelming force to cut off their retreat when that barrier
is reached. The overwhelming force does not exist and cannot be
manufactured; as for the barrier, no barrier that it lies within human
power to construct lies beyond French power to over-stride.”

“I should not make too sure of that,” Samoval warned him. “And you have
overlooked something.”

The major glanced at the Count sharply and without satisfaction. He
accounted himself--trained as he had been under the very eye of the
great Emperor--of some force in strategy and tactics, a player too well
versed in the game to overlook the possible moves of an opponent.

“Ha!” he said, with the ghost of a sneer. “For instance, Monsieur le
Comte?”

“The overwhelming force exists,” said Samoval.

“Where is it then? Whence has it been created? If you refer to the
united British and Portuguese troops, you will be good enough to bear in
mind that they will be retreating before the Prince. They cannot at once
be before and behind him.”

The man’s cool assurance and cooler contempt of Samoval’s views stung
the Count into some sharpness.

“Are you seeking information, sir, or are you bestowing it?” he
inquired.

“Ah! Your pardon, Monsieur le Comte. I inquire of course. I put forward
arguments to anticipate conditions that may possibly be erroneous.”

Samoval waived the point. “There is another force besides the British
and Portuguese troops that you have left out of your calculations.”

“And that?” The major was still faintly incredulous.

“You should remember what Wellington obviously remembers: that a French
army depends for its sustenance upon the country it is invading. That
is why Wellington is stripping the French line of penetration as bare
of sustenance as this card-table. If we assume the existence of the
barrier--an impassable line of fortifications encountered within many
marches of the frontier--we may also assume that starvation will be the
overwhelming force that will cut off the French retreat.”

The other’s keen eyes flickered. For a moment his face lost its
assurance, and it was Samoval’s turn to smile. But the major made a
sharp recovery. He slowly shook his iron-grey head.

“You have no right to assume an impassable barrier. That is an
inadmissible hypothesis. There is no such thing as a line of
fortifications impassable to the French.”

“You will pardon me, Major, but it is yourself have no right to your own
assumptions. Again you overlook something. I will grant that technically
what you say is true. No fortifications can be built that cannot be
destroyed--given adequate power, with which it is yet to prove that
Massena not knowing what may await him, will be equipped.

“But let us for a moment take so much for granted, and now consider
this: fortifications are unquestionably building in the region of Torres
Vedras, and Wellington guards the secret so jealously that not even the
British--either here or in England--are aware of their nature. That is
why the Cabinet in London takes for granted an embarkation in September.
Wellington has not even taken his Government into his confidence. That
is the sort of man he is. Now these fortifications have been building
since last October. Best part of eight months have already gone in their
construction. It may be another two or three months before the French
army reaches them. I do not say that the French cannot pass them, given
time. But how long will it take the French to pull down what it will
have taken ten or eleven months to construct? And if they are unable
to draw sustenance from a desolate, wasted country, what time will they
have at their disposal? It will be with them a matter of life or
death. Having come so far they must reach Lisbon or perish; and if the
fortifications can delay them by a single month, then, granted that all
Lord Wellington’s other dispositions have been duly carried out, perish
they must. It remains, Monsieur le Major, for you to determine whether,
with all their energy, with all their genius and all their valour, the
French can--in an ill-nourished condition--destroy in a few weeks the
considered labour of nearly a year.”

The major was aghast. He had changed colour, and through his eyes, wide
and staring, his stupefaction glared forth at them.

Minas uttered a dry cough under cover of his hand, and screwed up his
eyeglass to regard the major more attentively. “You do not appear to
have considered all that,” he said.

“But, my dear Marquis,” was the half-indignant answer, “why was I
not told all this to begin with? You represented yourself as but
indifferently informed, Monsieur de Samoval. Whereas--”

“So I am, my dear Major, as far as information goes. If I did not use
these arguments before, it was because it seemed to me an impertinence
to offer what, after all, are no more than the conclusions of my own
constructive and deductive reasoning to one so well versed in strategy
as yourself.”

The major was silenced for a moment. “I congratulate you, Count,” he
said. “Monsieur le Marechal shall have your views without delay. Tell
me,” he begged. “You say these fortifications lie in the region of
Torres Vedras. Can you be more precise?”

“I think so. But again I warn you that I can tell you only what I infer.
I judge they will run from the sea, somewhere near the mouth of the
Zizandre, in a semicircle to the Tagus, somewhere to the south of
Santarem. I know that they do not reach as far north as San, because
the roads there are open, whereas all roads to the south, where I am
assuming that the fortifications lie, are closed and closely guarded.”

“Why do you suggest a semicircle?”

“Because that is the formation of the hills, and presumably the line of
heights would be followed.”

“Yes,” the major approved slowly. “And the distance, then, would be some
thirty or forty miles?”

“Fully.”

The major’s face relaxed its gravity. He even smiled. “You will agree,
Count, that in a line of that extent a uniform strength is out of the
question. It must perforce present many weak, many vulnerable, places.”

“Oh, undoubtedly.”

“Plans of these lines must be in existence.”

“Again undoubtedly. Sir Terence O’Moy will have plans in his possession
showing their projected extent. Colonel Fletcher, who is in charge
of the construction, is in constant communication with the adjutant,
himself an engineer; and--as I partly imagine, partly infer from odd
phrases that I have overheard--especially entrusted by Lord Wellington
with the supervision of the works.”

“Two things, then, are necessary,” said the major promptly. “The first
is, that the devastation of the country should be retarded, and as far
as possible hindered altogether.”

“That,” said Minas, “you may safely leave to myself and Souza’s other
friends, the northern noblemen who have no intention of becoming the
victims of British disinclination to pitched battles.”

“The second--and this is more difficult--is that we should obtain by
hook or by crook a plan of the fortifications.” And he looked directly
at Samoval.

The Count nodded slowly, but his face expressed doubt.

“I am quite alive to the necessity. I always have been. But--”

“To a man of your resource and intelligence--an intelligence of which
you have just given such very signal proof--the matter should be
possible.” He paused a moment. Then: “If I understand you correctly,
Monsieur de Samoval, your fortunes have suffered deeply, and you are
almost ruined by this policy of Wellington’s. You are offered the
opportunity of making a magnificent recovery. The Emperor is the most
generous paymaster in the world, and he is beyond measure impatient at
the manner in which the campaign in the Peninsula is dragging on. He has
spoken of it as an ulcer that is draining the Empire of its resources.
For the man who could render him the service of disclosing the weak
spot in this armour, the Achilles heel of the British, there would be a
reward beyond all your possible dreams. Obtain the plans, then, and--”

He checked abruptly. The door had opened, and in a Venetian mirror
facing him upon the wall the major caught the reflection of a British
uniform, the stiff gold collar surmounted by a bronzed hawk face with
which he was acquainted.

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” said the officer in Portuguese, “I was
looking for--”

His voice became indistinct, so that they never knew who it was that
he had been seeking when he intruded upon their privacy. The door had
closed again and the reflection had vanished from the mirror. But there
were beads of perspiration on the major’s brow.

“It is fortunate,” he muttered breathlessly, “that my back was towards
him. I would as soon meet the devil face to face. I didn’t dream he was
in Lisbon.”

“Who is he?” asked Minas.

“Colonel Grant, the British Intelligence officer. Phew! Name of a Name!
What an escape!” The major mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief.
“Beware of him, Monsieur de Samoval.”

He rose. He was obviously shaken by the meeting.

“If one of you will kindly make quite sure that he is not about I think
that I had better go. If we should meet everything might be ruined.”
 Then with a change of manner he stayed Samoval, who was already on his
way to the door. “We understand each other, then?” he questioned them.
“I have my papers, and at dawn I leave Lisbon. I shall report your
conclusions to the Prince, and in anticipation I may already offer you
the expression of his profoundest gratitude. Meanwhile, you know what
is to do. Opposition to the policy, and the plans of the
fortifications--above all the plans.”

He shook hands with them, and having waited until Samoval assured him
that the corridor outside was clear, he took his departure, and was soon
afterwards driving home, congratulating himself upon his most fortunate
escape from the hawk eye of Colquhoun Grant.

But when in the dead of that night he was awakened to find a British
sergeant with a halbert and six redcoats with fixed bayonets surrounding
his bed it occurred to him belatedly that what one man can see in a
mirror is also visible to another, and that Marshal Massena, Prince of
Esslingen, waiting for information beyond Ciudad Rodrigo, would
never enjoy the advantages of a report of Count Samoval’s masterly
constructive and deductive reasoning.



CHAPTER IX. THE GENERAL ORDER


Sir Terence sat alone in his spacious, severely furnished private room
in the official quarters at Monsanto. On the broad carved writing-table
before him there was a mass of documents relating to the clothing and
accoutrement of the forces, to leaves of absence, to staff appointments;
there were returns from the various divisions of the sick and wounded
in hospital, from which a complete list was to be prepared for the
Secretary of State for War at home; there were plans of the lines at
Torres Vedras just received, indicating the progress of the works at
various points; and there were documents and communications of all kinds
concerned with the adjutant-general’s multifarious and arduous duties,
including an urgent letter from Colonel Fletcher suggesting that the
Commander-in-Chief should take an early opportunity of inspecting in
person the inner lines of fortification.

Sir Terence, however, sat back in his chair, his work neglected, his
eyes dreamily gazing through the open window, but seeing nothing of the
sun-drenched landscape beyond, a heavy frown darkening his bronzed and
rugged face. His mind was very far from his official duties and the mass
of reminders before him--this Augean stable of arrears. He was lost in
thought of his wife and Tremayne.

Five days had elapsed since the ball at Count Redondo’s, where Sir
Terence had surprised the pair together in the garden and his suspicions
had been fired by the compromising attitude in which he had discovered
them. Tremayne’s frank, easy bearing, so unassociable with guilt, had,
as we know, gone far, to reassure him, and had even shamed him, so that
he had trampled his suspicions underfoot. But other things had happened
since to revive his bitter doubts. Daily, constantly, had he been coming
upon Tremayne and Lady O’Moy alone together in intimate, confidential
talk which was ever silenced on his approach. The two had taken to
wandering by themselves in the gardens at all hours, a thing that had
never been so before, and O’Moy detected, or imagined that he detected,
a closer intimacy between them, a greater warmth towards the captain on
the part of her ladyship.

Thus matters had reached a pass in which peace of mind was impossible to
him. It was not merely what he saw, it was his knowledge of what was; it
was his ever-present consciousness of his own age and his wife’s youth;
it was the memory of his ante-nuptial jealousy of Tremayne which had
been awakened by the gossip of those days--a gossip that pronounced
Tremayne Una Butler’s poor suitor, too poor either to declare himself or
to be accepted if he did. The old wound which that gossip had dealt him
then was reopened now. He thought of Tremayne’s manifest concern for
Una; he remembered how in that very room some six weeks ago, when
Butler’s escapade had first been heard of, it was from avowed concern
for Una that Tremayne had urged him to befriend and rescue his rascally
brother-in-law. He remembered, too, with increasing bitterness that it
was Una herself had induced him to appoint Tremayne to his staff.

There were moments when the conviction of Tremayne’s honesty, the
thought of Tremayne’s unswerving friendship for himself, would surge up
to combat and abate the fires of his devastating jealousy.

But evidence would kindle those fires anew until they flamed up to
scorch his soul with shame and anger. He had been a fool in that he had
married a woman of half his years; a fool in that he had suffered her
former lover to be thrown into close association with her.

Thus he assured himself. But he would abide by his folly, and so must
she. And he would see to it that whatever fruits that folly yielded,
dishonour should not be one of them. Through all his darkening rage
there beat the light of reason. To avert, he bethought him, was better
than to avenge. Nor were such stains to be wiped out by vengeance. A
cuckold remains a cuckold though he take the life of the man who has
reduced him to that ignominy.

Tremayne must go before the evil transcended reparation. Let him return
to his regiment and do his work of sapping and mining elsewhere than in
O’Moy’s household.

Eased by that resolve he rose, a tall, martial figure, youth and energy
in every line of it for all his six and forty years. Awhile he paced the
room in thought. Then, suddenly, with hands clenched behind his back, he
checked by the window, checked on a horrible question that had flashed
upon his tortured mind. What if already the evil should be irreparable?
What proof had he that it was not so?

The door opened, and Tremayne himself came in quickly.

“Here’s the very devil to pay, sir,” he announced, with that odd mixture
of familiarity towards his friend and deference to his chief.

O’Moy looked at him in silence with smouldering, questioning eyes,
thinking of anything but the trouble which the captain’s air and manner
heralded.

“Captain Stanhope has just arrived from headquarters with messages for
you. A terrible thing has happened, sir. The dispatches from home by the
Thunderbolt which we forwarded from here three weeks ago reached Lord
Wellington only the day before yesterday.”

Sir Terence became instantly alert.

“Garfield, who carried them, came into collision at Penalva with an
officer of Anson’s Brigade. There was a meeting, and Garfield was shot
through the lung. He lay between life and death for a fortnight,
with the result that the dispatches were delayed until he recovered
sufficiently to remember them and to have them forwarded by other hands.
But you had better see Stanhope himself.”

The aide-de-camp came in. He was splashed from head to foot in witness
of the fury with which he had ridden, his hair was caked with dust and
his face haggard. But he carried himself with soldierly uprightness, and
his speech was brisk. He repeated what Tremayne had already stated, with
some few additional details.

“This wretched fellow sent Lord Wellington a letter dictated from his
bed, in which he swore that the duel was forced upon him, and that his
honour allowed him no alternative. I don’t think any feature of the case
has so deeply angered Lord Wellington as this stupid plea. He mentioned
that when Sir John Moore was at Herrerias, in the course of his retreat
upon Corunna, he sent forward instructions for the leading division to
halt at Lugo, where he designed to deliver battle if the enemy would
accept it. That dispatch was carried to Sir David Baird by one of Sir
John’s aides, but Sir David forwarded it by the hand of a trooper who
got drunk and lost it. That, says Lord Wellington, is the only parallel,
so far as he is aware, of the present case, with this difference, that
whilst a common trooper might so far fail to appreciate the importance
of his mission, no such lack of appreciation can excuse Captain
Garfield.”

“I am glad of that,” said Sir Terence, who had been bristling. “For a
moment I imagined that it was to be implied I had been as indiscreet in
my choice of a messenger as Sir David Baird.”

“No, no, Sir Terence. I merely repeated Lord Wellington’s words that
you may realise how deeply angered he is. If Garfield recovers from
his wound he will be tried by court-martial. He is under open arrest
meanwhile, as is his opponent in the duel--a Major Sykes of the 23rd
Dragoons. That they will both be broke is beyond doubt. But that is not
all. This affair, which might have had such grave consequences, coming
so soon upon the heels of Major Berkeley’s business, has driven Lord
Wellington to a step regarding which this letter will instruct you.”

Sir Terence broke the seal. The letter, penned by a secretary, but
bearing Wellington’s own signature, ran as follows:

“The bearer, Captain Stanhope, will inform you of the particulars of
this disgraceful business of Captain Garfield’s. The affair following
so soon upon that of Major Berkeley has determined me to make it clearly
understood to the officers in his Majesty’s service that they have been
sent to the Peninsula to fight the French and not each other or members
of the civilian population. While this campaign continues, and as long
as I am in charge of it, I am determined not to suffer upon any plea
whatever the abominable practice of duelling among those under my
command. I desire you to publish this immediately in general orders,
enjoining upon officers of all ranks without exception the necessity to
postpone the settlement of private quarrels at least until the close
of this campaign. And to add force to this injunction you will make
it known that any infringement of this order will be considered as a
capital offence; that any officer hereafter either sending or accepting
a challenge will, if found guilty by a general court-martial, be
immediately shot.”

Sir Terence nodded slowly.

“Very well,” he said. “The measure is most wise, although I doubt if it
will be popular. But, then, unpopularity is the fate of wise measures.
I am glad the matter has not ended more seriously. The dispatches in
question, so far as I can recollect, were not of great urgency.”

“There is something more,” said Captain Stanhope. “The dispatches bore
signs of having been tampered with.”

“Tampered with?” It was a question from Tremayne, charged with
incredulity. “But who would have tampered with them?”

“There were signs, that is all. Garfield was taken to the house of the
parish priest, where he lay lost until he recovered sufficiently to
realise his position for himself. No doubt you will have a schedule of
the contents of the dispatch, Sir Terence?”

“Certainly. It is in your possession, I think, Tremayne.”

Tremayne turned to his desk, and a brief search in one of its
well-ordered drawers brought to light an oblong strip of paper folded
and endorsed. He unfolded and spread it on Sir Terence’s table, whilst
Captain Stanhope, producing a note with which he came equipped, stooped
to check off the items. Suddenly he stopped, frowned, and finally placed
his finger under one of the lines of Tremayne’s schedule, carefully
studying his own note for a moment.

“Ha!” he said quietly at last. “What’s this?” And he read: “‘Note from
Lord Liverpool of reinforcements to be embarked for Lisbon in June or
July.’” He looked at the adjutant and the adjutant’s secretary. “That
would appear to be the most important document of all--indeed the
only document of any vital importance. And it was not included in the
dispatch as it reached Lord Wellington.”

The three looked gravely at one another in silence.

“Have you a copy of the note, sir?” inquired the aide-de-camp.

“Not a copy--but a summary of its contents, the figures it contained,
are pencilled there on the margin,” Tremayne answered.

“Allow me, sir,” said Stanhope, and taking up a quill from the
adjutant’s table he rapidly copied the figures. “Lord Wellington must
have this memorandum as soon as possible. The rest, Sir Terence, is
of course a matter for yourself. You will know what to do. Meanwhile I
shall report to his lordship what has occurred. I had best set out at
once.”

“If you will rest for an hour, and give my wife the pleasure of your
company at luncheon, I shall have a letter ready for Lord Wellington,”
 replied Sir Terence. “Perhaps you’ll see to it, Tremayne,” he added,
without waiting for Captain Stanhope’s answer to an invitation which
amounted to a command.

Thus Stanhope was led away, and Sir Terence, all other matters forgotten
for the moment, sat down to write his letter.

Later in the day, after Captain Stanhope had taken his departure, the
duty fell to Tremayne of framing the general order and seeing to the
dispatch of a copy to each division.

“I wonder,” he said to Sir Terence, “who will be the first to break it?”

“Why, the fool who’s most anxious to be broke himself,” answered Sir
Terence.

There appeared to be reservations about it in Tremayne’s mind.

“It’s a devilish stringent regulation,” he criticised.

“But very salutary and very necessary.”

“Oh, quite.” Tremayne’s agreement was unhesitating. “But I shouldn’t
care to feel the restraint of it, and I thank heaven I have no enemy
thirsting for my blood.”

Sir Terence’s brow darkened. His face was turned away from his
secretary. “How can a man be confident of that?” he wondered.

“Oh, a clean conscience, I suppose,” laughed Tremayne, and he gave his
attention to his papers.

Frankness, honesty and light-heartedness rang so clear in the words that
they sowed in Sir Terence’s mind fresh doubts of the galling suspicion
he had been harbouring.

“Do you boast a clean conscience, eh, Ned?” he asked, not without a
lurking shame at this deliberate sly searching of the other’s mind. Yet
he strained his ears for the answer.

“Almost clean,” said Tremayne. “Temptation doesn’t stain when it’s
resisted, does it?”

Sir Terence trembled. But he controlled himself.

“Nay, now, that’s a question for the casuists. They right answer you
that it depends upon the temptation.” And he asked point-blank: “What’s
tempting you?”

Tremayne was in a mood for confidences, and Sir Terence was his friend.
But he hesitated. His answer to the question was an irrelevance.

“It’s just hell to be poor, O’Moy,” he said.

The adjutant turned to stare at him. Tremayne was sitting with his head
resting on one hand, the fingers thrusting through the crisp fair hair,
and there was gloom in his clear-cut face, a dullness in the usually
keen grey eyes.

“Is there anything on your mind?” quoth Sir Terence.

“Temptation,” was the answer. “It’s an unpleasant thing to struggle
against.”

“But you spoke of poverty?”

“To be sure. If I weren’t poor I could put my fortunes to the test, and
make an end of the matter one way or the other.”

There was a pause. “Sure I hope I am the last man to force a confidence,
Ned,” said O’Moy. “But you certainly seem as if it would do you good to
confide.”

Tremayne shook himself mentally. “I think we had better deal with the
matter of this dispatch that was tampered with at Penalva.”

“So we will, to be sure. But it can wait a minute.” Sir Terence pushed
back his chair, and rose. He crossed slowly to his secretary’s side.
“What’s on your mind, Ned?” he asked with abrupt solicitude, and Ned
could not suspect that it was the matter on Sir Terence’s own mind that
was urging him--but urging him hopefully.

Captain Tremayne looked up with a rueful smile. “I thought you boasted
that you never forced a confidence.” And then he looked away. “Sylvia
Armytage tells me that she is thinking of returning to England.”

For a moment the words seemed to Sir Terence a fresh irrelevance;
another attempt to change the subject. Then quite suddenly a light broke
upon his mind, shedding a relief so great and joyous that he sought to
check it almost in fear.

“It is more than she has told me,” he answered steadily. “But then, no
doubt, you enjoy her confidence.”

Tremayne flashed him a wry glance and looked away again.

“Alas!” he said, and fetched a sigh.

“And is Sylvia the temptation, Ned?”

Tremayne was silent for a while, little dreaming how Sir Terence hung
upon his answer, how impatiently he awaited it.

“Of course,” he said at last. “Isn’t it obvious to any one?” And he grew
rhapsodical: “How can a man be daily in her company without succumbing
to her loveliness, to her matchless grace of body and of mind, without
perceiving that she is incomparable, peerless, as much above other women
as an angel perhaps might be above herself?”

Before his glum solemnity, and before something else that Tremayne could
not suspect, Sir Terence exploded into laughter. Of the immense and
joyous relief in it his secretary caught no hint; all he heard was its
sheer amusement, and this galled and shamed him. For no man cares to be
laughed at for such feelings as Tremayne had been led into betraying.

“You think it something to laugh at?” he said tartly.

“Laugh, is it?” spluttered Sir Terence. “God grant I don’t burst a
blood-vessel.”

Tremayne reddened. “When you’ve indulged your humour, sir,” he said
stiffly, “perhaps you’ll consider the matter of this dispatch.”

But Sir Terence laughed more uproariously than ever. He came to stand
beside Tremayne, and slapped him heartily on the shoulder.

“Ye’ll kill me, Ned!” he protested. “For God’s sake, not so glum. It’s
that makes ye ridiculous.”

“I am sorry you find me ridiculous.”

“Nay, then, it’s glad ye ought to be. By my soul, if Sylvia tempts you,
man, why the devil don’t ye just succumb and have done with it? She’s
handsome enough and well set up with her air of an Amazon, and she rides
uncommon straight, begad! Indeed it’s a broth of a girl she is in the
hunting-field, the ballroom, or at the breakfast-table, although riper
acquaintance may discover her not to be quite all that you imagine her
at present. Let your temptation lead you then, entirely, and good luck
to you, my boy.”

“Didn’t I tell you, O’Moy,” answered the captain, mollified a little
by the sympathy and good feeling peeping through the adjutant’s
boisterousness, “that poverty is just hell. It’s my poverty that’s in
the way.”

“And is that all? Then it’s thankful you should be that Sylvia Armytage
has got enough for two.”

“That’s just it.”

“Just what?”

“The obstacle. I could marry a poor woman. But Sylvia--”

“Have you spoken to her?”

Tremayne was indignant. “How do you suppose I could?”

“It’ll not have occurred to you that the lady may have feelings which
having aroused you ought to be considering?”

A wry smile and a shake of the head was Tremayne’s only answer; and then
Carruthers came in fresh from Lisbon, where he had been upon business
connected with the commissariat, and to Tremayne’s relief the subject
was perforce abandoned.

Yet he marvelled several times that day that the hilarity he should have
awakened in Sir Terence continued to cling to the adjutant, and that
despite the many vexatious matters claiming attention he should preserve
an irrepressible and almost boyish gaiety.

Meanwhile, however, the coming of Carruthers had brought the adjutant
a moment’s seriousness, and he reverted to the business of Captain
Garfield. When he had mentioned the missing note, Carruthers very
properly became grave. He was a short, stiffly built man with a round,
good-humoured, rather florid face.

“The matter must be probed at once, sir,” he ventured. “We know that we
move in a tangle of intrigues and espionage. But such a thing as this
has never happened before. Have you anything to go upon?”

“Captain Stanhope gave us nothing,” said the adjutant.

“It would be best perhaps to get Grant to look into it,” said Tremayne.

“If he is still in Lisbon,” said Sir Terence.

“I passed him in the street an hour ago,” replied Carruthers.

“Then by all means let a note be sent to him asking him if he will step
up to Monsanto as soon as he conveniently can. You might see to it,
Tremayne.”




CHAPTER X. THE STIFLED QUARREL


It was noon of the next day before Colonel Grant came to the house at
Monsanto from whose balcony floated the British flag, and before whose
portals stood a sentry in the tall bearskin of the grenadiers.

He found the adjutant alone in his room, and apologised for the delay in
responding to his invitation, pleading the urgency of other matters that
he had in hand.

“A wise enactment this of Lord Wellington’s,” was his next comment. “I
mean this prohibition of duelling. It may be resented by some of our
young bloods as an unwarrantable interference with their privileges, but
it will do a deal of good, and no one can deny that there is ample cause
for the measure.”

“It is on the subject of the cause that I’m wanting to consult you,”
 said Sir Terence, offering his visitor a chair. “Have you been informed
of the details? No? Let me give you them.” And he related how the
dispatch bore signs of having been tampered with, and how the only
document of any real importance came to be missing from it.

Colonel Grant, sitting with his sabre across his knees, listened gravely
and thoughtfully. In the end he shrugged his shoulders, the keen hawk
face unmoved.

“The harm is done, and cannot very well be repaired. The information
obtained, no doubt on behalf of Massena, will by now be on its way to
him. Let us be thankful that the matter is not more grave, and thankful,
too, that you were able to supply a copy of Lord Liverpool’s figures.
What do you want me to do?”

“Take steps to discover the spy whose existence is disclosed by this
event.”

Colquhoun Grant smiled. “That is precisely the matter which has brought
me to Lisbon.”

“How?” Sir Terence was amazed. “You knew?”

“Oh, not that this had happened. But that the spy--or rather a network
of espionage--existed. We move here in a web of intrigue wrought by
ill-will, self-interest, vindictiveness and every form of malice. Whilst
the great bulk of the Portuguese people and their leaders are loyally
co-operating with us, there is a strong party opposing us which would
prefer even to see the French prevail. Of course you are aware of this.
The heart and brain of all this is--as I gather the Principal Souza.
Wellington has compelled his retirement from the Government. But if by
doing so he has restricted the man’s power for evil, he has certainly
increased his will for evil and his activities.

“You tell me that Garfield was cared for by the parish priest at
Penalva. There you are. Half the priesthood of the country are on
Souza’s side, since the Patriarch of Lisbon himself is little more than
a tool of Souza’s. What happens? This priest discovers that the British
officer whom he has so charitably put to bed in his house is the bearer
of dispatches. A loyal man would instantly have communicated with
Marshal Beresford at Thomar. This fellow, instead, advises the
intriguers in Lisbon. The captain’s dispatches are examined and the only
document of real value is abstracted. Of course it would be difficult
to establish a case against the priest, and it is always vexatious and
troublesome to have dealings with that class, as it generally means
trouble with the peasantry. But the case is as clear as crystal.”

“But the intriguers here? Can you not deal with them?”

“I have them under observation,” replied the colonel. “I already knew
the leaders, Souza’s lieutenants in Lisbon, and I can put my hand upon
them at any moment. If I have not already done so it is because I find
it more profitable to leave them at large; it is possible, indeed, that
I may never proceed to extremes against them. Conceive that they have
enabled me to seize La Fleche, the most dangerous, insidious and skilful
of all Napoleon’s agents. I found him at Redondo’s ball last week in the
uniform of a Portuguese major, and through him I was able to track down
Souza’s chief instrument--I discovered them closeted with him in one of
the card-rooms.”

“And you didn’t arrest them?”

“Arrest them! I apologised for my intrusion, and withdrew. La Fleche
took his leave of them. He was to have left Lisbon at dawn equipped with
a passport countersigned by yourself, my dear adjutant.”

“What’s that?”

“A passport for Major Vieira of the Portuguese Cacadores. Do you
remember it?”

“Major Vieira!” Sir Terence frowned thoughtfully. Suddenly he
recollected. “But that was countersigned by me at the request of Count
Samoval, who represented himself a personal friend of the major’s.”

“So indeed he is. But the major in question was La Fleche nevertheless.”

“And Samoval knew this?”

Sir Terence was incredulous.

Colonel Grant did not immediately answer the question. He preferred to
continue his narrative. “That night I had the false major arrested very
quietly. I have caused him to disappear for the present. His Lisbon
friends believe him to be on his way to Massena with the information
they no doubt supplied him. Massena awaits his return at Salamanca, and
will continue to wait. Thus when he fails to be seen or heard of there
will be a good deal of mystification on all sides, which is the proper
state of mind in which to place your opponents. Lord Liverpool’s
figures, let me add, were not among the interesting notes found upon
him--possibly because at that date they had not yet been obtained.”

“And you say that Samoval was aware of the man’s real identity?”
 insisted Sir Terence, still incredulous. “Aware of it?” Colonel Grant
laughed shortly. “Samoval is Souza’s principal agent--the most dangerous
man in Lisbon and the most subtle. His sympathies are French through and
through.”

Sir Terence stared at him in frank amazement, in utter unbelief. “Oh,
impossible!” he ejaculated at last.

“I saw Samoval for the first time,” said Colonel Grant by way of answer,
“in Oporto at the time of Soult’s occupation. He did not call himself
Samoval just then, any more than I called myself Colquhoun Grant. He was
very active there in the French interest; I should indeed be more precise
and say in Bonaparte’s interest, for he was the man instrumental in
disclosing to Soult the Bourbon conspiracy which was undermining the
marshal’s army. You do not know, perhaps, that French sympathy runs in
Samoval’s family. You may not be aware that the Portuguese Marquis of
Alorna, who holds a command in the Emperor’s army, and is at present
with Massena at Salamanca, is Samoval’s cousin.”

“But,” faltered Sir Terence, “Count Samoval has been a regular visitor
here for the past three months.”

“So I understand,” said Grant coolly. “If I had known of it before I
should have warned you. But, as you are aware, I have been in Spain on
other business. You realise the danger of having such a man about the
place. Scraps of information--”

“Oh, as to that,” Sir Terence interrupted, “I can assure you that none
have fallen from my official table.”

“Never be too sure, Sir Terence. Matters here must ever be under
discussion. There are your secretaries and the ladies--and Samoval has a
great way with the women. What they know you may wager that he knows.”

“They know nothing.”

“That is a great deal to say. Little odds and ends now; a hint at one
time; a word dropped at another; these things picked up naturally by
feminine curiosity and retailed thoughtlessly under Samoval’s charming
suasion and display of Britannic sympathies. And Samoval has the devil’s
own talent for bringing together the pieces of a puzzle. Take the lines
now: you may have parted with no details. But mention of them will
surely have been made in this household. However,” he broke off
abruptly, “that is all past and done with. I am as sure as you are that
any real indiscretions in this household are unimaginable, and so we may
be confident that no harm has yet been done. But you will gather from
what I have now told you that Samoval’s visits here are not a mere
social waste of time. That he comes, acquires familiarity and makes
himself the friend of the family with a very definite aim in view.”

“He does not come again,” said Sir Terence, rising.

“That is more than I should have ventured to suggest. But it is a very
wise resolve. It will need tact to carry it out, for Samoval is a man to
be handled carefully.”

“I’ll handle him carefully, devil a fear,” said Sir Terence. “You can
depend upon my tact.”

Colonel Grant rose. “In this matter of Penalva, I will consider further.
But I do not think there is anything to be done now. The main thing is
to stop up the outlets through which information reaches the French, and
that is my chief concern. How is the stripping of the country proceeding
now?”

“It was more active immediately after Souza left the Government. But the
last reports announce a slackening again.”

“They are at work in that, too, you see. Souza will not slumber while
there’s vengeance and self-interest to keep him awake.” And he held out
his hand to take his leave.

“You’ll stay to luncheon?” said Sir Terence. “It is about to be served.”

“You are very kind, Sir Terence.”

They descended, to find luncheon served already in the open under the
trellis vine, and the party consisted of Lady O’Moy, Miss Armytage,
Captain Tremayne, Major Carruthers, and Count Samoval, of whose presence
this was the adjutant’s first intimation.

As a matter of fact the Count had been at Monsanto for the past hour,
the first half of which he had spent most agreeably on the terrace
with the ladies. He had spoken so eulogistically of the genius of Lord
Wellington and the valour of the British soldier, and, particularly-of
the Irish soldier, that even Sylvia’s instinctive distrust and dislike
of him had been lulled a little for the moment.

“And they must prevail,” he had exclaimed in a glow of enthusiasm, his
dark eyes flashing. “It is inconceivable that they should ever yield
to the French, although the odds of numbers may lie so heavily against
them.”

“Are the odds of numbers so heavy?” said Lady O’Moy in surprise, opening
wide those almost childish eyes of hers.

“Alas! anything from three to five to one. Ah, but why should we despond
on that account?” And his voice vibrated with renewed confidence. “The
country is a difficult one, easy to defend, and Lord Wellington’s
genius will have made the best of it. There are, for example, the
fortifications at Torres Vedras.”

“Ah yes! I have heard of them. Tell me about them, Count.”

“Tell you about them, dear lady? Shall I carry perfumes to the rose?
What can I tell you that you do not know so much better than myself?”

“Indeed, I know nothing. Sir Terence is ridiculously secretive,” she
assured him, with a little frown of petulance. She realised that her
husband did not treat her as an intelligent being to be consulted upon
these matters. She was his wife, and he had no right to keep secrets
from her. In fact she said so.

“Indeed no,” Samoval agreed. “And I find it hard to credit that it
should be so.”

“Then you forget,” said Sylvia, “that these secrets are not Sir
Terence’s own. They are the secrets of his office.”

“Perhaps so,” said the unabashed Samoval. “But if I were Sir Terence
I should desire above all to allay my wife’s natural anxiety. For I am
sure you must be anxious, dear Lady O’Moy.”’

“Naturally,” she agreed, whose anxieties never transcended the fit of
her gowns or the suitability of a coiffure. “But Terence is like that.”

“Incredible!” the Count protested, and raised his dark eyes to heaven as
if invoking its punishment upon so unnatural a husband. “Do you tell me
that you have never so much as seen the plans of these fortifications?”

“The plans, Count!” She almost laughed.

“Ah!” he said. “I dare swear then that you do not even know of their
existence.” He was jocular now.

“I am sure that she does not,” said Sylvia, who instinctively felt that
the conversation was following an undesirable course.

“Then you are wrong,” she was assured. “I saw them once, a week ago, in
Sir Terence’s room.”

“Why, how would you know them if you saw them?” quoth Sylvia, seeking to
cover what might be an indiscretion.

“Because they bore the name: ‘Lines of Torres Vedras.’ I remember.”

“And this unsympathetic Sir Terence did not explain them to you?”
 laughed Samoval.

“Indeed, he did not.”

“In fact, I could swear that he locked them away from you at once?” the
Count continued on a jocular note.

“Not at once. But he certainly locked them away soon after, and whilst I
was still there.”

“In your place, then,” said Samoval, ever on the same note of banter, “I
should have been tempted to steal the key.”

“Not so easily done,” she assured him. “It never leaves his person. He
wears it on a gold chain round his neck.”

“What, always?”

“Always, I assure you.”

“Too bad,” protested Samoval. “Too bad, indeed. What, then, should you
have done, Miss Armytage?”

It was difficult to imagine that he was drawing information from them,
so bantering and frivolous was his manner; more difficult still to
conceive that he had obtained any. Yet you will observe that he had been
placed in possession of two facts: that the plans of the lines of Torres
Vedras were kept locked up in Sir Terence’s own room--in the strong-box,
no doubt--and that Sir Terence always carried the key on a gold chain
worn round his neck.

Miss Armytage laughed. “Whatever I might do, I should not be guilty of
prying into matters that my husband kept hidden.”

“Then you admit a husband’s right to keep matters hidden from his wife?”

“Why not?”

“Madam,” Samoval bowed to her, “your future husband is to be envied on
yet another count.”

And thus the conversation drifted, Samoval conceiving that he had
obtained all the information of which Lady O’Moy was possessed, and
satisfied that he had obtained all that for the moment he required.
How to proceed now was a more difficult matter, to be very seriously
considered--how to obtain from Sir Terence the key in question, and
reach the plans so essential to Marshal Massena.

He was at table with them, as you know, when Sir Terence and Colonel
Grant arrived. He and the colonel were presented to each other, and
bowed with a gravity quite cordial on the part of Samoval, who was by
far the more subtle dissembler of the two. Each knew the other perfectly
for what he was; yet each was in complete ignorance of the extent of the
other’s knowledge of himself; and certainly neither betrayed anything by
his manner.

At table the conversation was led naturally enough by Tremayne to
Wellington’s general order against duelling. This was inevitable when
you consider that it was a topic of conversation that morning at every
table to which British officers sat down. Tremayne spoke of the measure
in terms of warm commendation, thereby provoking a sharp disagreement
from Samoval. The deep and almost instinctive hostility between these
two men, which had often been revealed in momentary flashes, was such
that it must invariably lead them to take opposing sides in any matter
admitting of contention.

“In my opinion it is a most arbitrary and degrading enactment,” said
Samoval. “I say so without hesitation, notwithstanding my profound
admiration and respect for Lord Wellington and all his measures.”

“Degrading?” echoed Grant, looking across at him. “In what can it be
degrading, Count?”

“In that it reduces a gentleman to the level of the clod,” was the
prompt answer. “A gentleman must have his quarrels, however sweet his
disposition, and a means must be afforded him of settling them.”

“Ye can always thrash an impudent fellow,” opined the adjutant.

“Thrash?” echoed Samoval. His sensitive lip curled in disdain. “To use
your hands upon a man!” He shuddered in sheer disgust. “To one of
my temperament it would be impossible, and men of my temperament are
plentiful, I think.”

“But if you were thrashed yourself?” Tremayne asked him, and the light
in his grey eyes almost hinted at a dark desire to be himself the
executioner.

Samoval’s dark, handsome eyes considered the captain steadily. “To be
thrashed myself?” he questioned. “My dear Captain, the idea of having
hands laid upon me, soiling me, brutalising me, is so nauseating, so
repugnant, that I assure you I should not hesitate to shoot the man who
did it just as I should shoot any other wild beast that attacked me.
Indeed the two instances are exactly parallel, and my country’s courts
would uphold in such a case the justice of my conduct.”

“Then you may thank God,” said O’Moy, “that you are not under British
jurisdiction.”

“I do,” snapped Samoval, to make an instant recovery: “at least so far
as the matter is concerned.” And he elaborated: “I assure you, sirs, it
will be an evil day for the nobility of any country when its Government
enacts against the satisfaction that one gentleman has the right to
demand from another who offends him.”

“Isn’t the conversation rather too bloodthirsty for a luncheon-table?”
 wondered Lady O’Moy. And tactlessly she added, thinking with flattery
to mollify Samoval and cool his obvious heat: “You are yourself such a
famous swordsman, Count.”

And then Tremayne’s dislike of the man betrayed him into his deplorable
phrase.

“At the present time Portugal is in urgent need of her famous swordsmen
to go against the French and not to increase the disorders at home.”

A silence complete and ominous followed the rash words, and Samoval,
white to the lips, pondered the imperturbable captain with a baleful
eye.

“I think,” he said at last, speaking slowly and softly, and picking
his words with care, “I think that is innuendo. I should be relieved,
Captain Tremayne, to hear you say that it is not.”

Tremayne was prompt to give him the assurance. “No innuendo at all. A
plain statement of fact.”

“The innuendo I suggested lay in the application of the phrase. Do you
make it personal to myself?”

“Of course not,” said Sir Terence, cutting in and speaking sharply.
“What an assumption!”

“I am asking Captain Tremayne,” the Count insisted, with grim firmness,
notwithstanding his deferential smile to Sir Terence.

“I spoke quite generally, sir,” Tremayne assured him, partly under the
suasion of Sir Terence’s interposition, partly out of consideration for
the ladies, who were looking scared. “Of course, if you choose to take
it to yourself, sir, that is a matter for your own discretion. I think,”
 he added, also with a smile, “that the ladies find the topic tiresome.”

“Perhaps we may have the pleasure of continuing it when they are no
longer present.”

“Oh, as you please,” was the indifferent answer. “Carruthers, may I
trouble you to pass the salt? Lady O’Callaghan was complaining the other
night of the abuse of salt in Portuguese cookery. It is an abuse I have
never yet detected.”

“I can’t conceive Lady O’Callaghan complaining of too much salt in
anything, begad,” quoth O’Moy, with a laugh. “If you had heard the story
she told me about--”

“Terence, my dear!” his wife checked him, her fine brows raised, her
stare frigid.

“Faith, we go from bad to worse,” said Carruthers. “Will you try to
improve the tone of the conversation, Miss Armytage? It stands in urgent
need of it.”

With a general laugh, breaking the ice of the restraint that was in
danger of settling about the table, a semblance of ease was restored,
and this was maintained until the end of the repast. At last the ladies
rose, and, leaving the men at table, they sauntered off towards the
terrace. But under the archway Sylvia checked her cousin.

“Una,” she said gravely, “you had better call Captain Tremayne and take
him away for the present.”

Una’s eyes opened wide. “Why?” she inquired.

Miss Armytage was almost impatient with her. “Didn’t you see? Resentment
is only slumbering between those men. It will break out again now that
we have left them unless you can get Captain Tremayne away.”

Una continued to look at her cousin, and then, her mind fastening ever
upon the trivial to the exclusion of the important, her glance became
arch. “For whom is your concern? For Count Samoval or Ned?” she
inquired, and added with a laugh: “You needn’t answer me. It is Ned you
are afraid for.”

“I am certainly not afraid for him,” was the reply on a faint note of
indignation. She had reddened slightly. “But I should not like to see
Captain Tremayne or any other British officer embroiled in a duel.
You forget Lord Wellington’s order which they were discussing, and the
consequences of infringing it.”

Lady O’Moy became scared.

“You don’t imagine--”

Sylvia spoke quickly: “I am certain that unless you take Captain
Tremayne away, and at once, there will! be serious trouble.”

And now behold Lady O’Moy thrown into a state of alarm that bordered
upon terror. She had more reason than Sylvia could dream, more reason
she conceived than Sylvia herself, to wish to keep Captain Tremayne out
of trouble just at present. Instantly, agitatedly, she turned and called
to him.

“Ned!” floated her silvery voice across the enclosed garden. And again:
“Ned! I want you at once, please.”

Captain Tremayne rose. Grant was talking briskly at the time, his
intention being to cover Tremayne’s retreat, which he himself desired.
Count Samoval’s smouldering eyes were upon the captain, and full of
menace. But he could not be guilty of the rudeness of interrupting Grant
or of detaining Captain Tremayne when a lady called him.




CHAPTER XI. THE CHALLENGE


Rebuke awaited Captain Tremayne at the hands of Lady O’Moy, and it came
as soon as they were alone together sauntering in the thicket of pine
and cork-oak on the slope of the hill below the terrace.

“How thoughtless of you, Ned, to provoke Count Samoval at such a time as
this!”

“Did I provoke him? I thought it was the Count himself who was
provoking.” Tremayne spoke lightly.

“But suppose anything were to happen to you? You know the man’s dreadful
reputation.”

Tremayne looked at her kindly. This apparent concern for himself touched
him. “My dear Una, I hope I can take care of myself, even against so
formidable a fellow; and after all a man must take his chances a soldier
especially.”

“But what of Dick?” she cried. “Do you forget that he is depending
entirely upon you--that if you should fail him he will be lost?” And
there was something akin to indignation in the protesting eyes she
turned upon him.

For a moment Tremayne was so amazed that he was at a loss for an answer.
Then he smiled. Indeed his inclination was to laugh outright. The
frank admission that her concern which he had fondly imagined to be
for himself was all for Dick betrayed a state of mind that was entirely
typical of Una. Never had she been able to command more than one point
of view of any question, and that point of view invariably of her own
interest. All her life she had been accustomed to sacrifices great and
small made by others on her own behalf, until she had come to look upon
such sacrifices her absolute right.

“I am glad you reminded me,” he said with an irony that never touched
her. “You may depend upon me to be discreetness itself, at least until
after Dick has been safely shipped.”

“Thank you, Ned. You are very good to me.” They sauntered a little way
in silence. Then: “When does Captain Glennie sail?” she asked him. “Is
it decided yet?”

“Yes. I have just heard from him that the Telemachus will put to sea on
Sunday morning at two o’clock.”

“At two o’clock in the morning! What an uncomfortable hour!”

“Tides, as King Canute discovered, are beyond mortal control. The
Telemachus goes out with the ebb. And, after all, for our purposes
surely no hour could be more suitable. If I come for Dick at midnight
tomorrow that will just give us time to get him snugly aboard before she
sails. I have made all arrangements with Glennie. He believes Dick to
be what he has represented himself--one of Bearsley’s overseers named
Jenkinson, who is a friend of mine and who must be got out of the
country quietly. Dick should thank his luck for a good deal. My chief
anxiety was lest his presence here should be discovered by any one.”

“Beyond Bridget not a soul knows that he is here not even Sylvia.”

“You have been the soul of discreetness.”

“Haven’t I?” she purred, delighted to have him discover a virtue so
unusual in her.

Thereafter they discussed details; or, rather, Tremayne discussed them.
He would come up to Monsanto at twelve o’clock to-morrow night in a
curricle in which he would drive Dick down to the river at a point where
a boat would be waiting to take him out to the Telemachus. She must see
that Dick was ready in time. The rest she could safely leave to him. He
would come in through the official wing of the building. The guard would
admit him without question, accustomed to seeing him come and go at
all hours, nor would it be remarked that he was accompanied by a man
in civilian dress when he departed. Dick was to be let down from
her ladyship’s balcony to the quadrangle by a rope ladder with which
Tremayne would come equipped, having procured it for the purpose from
the Telemachus.

She hung upon his arm, overwhelming him now with her gratitude, her
parasol sheltering them both from the rays of the sun as they emerged
from the thicket intro the meadowland in full view of the terrace where
Count Samoval and Sir Terence were at that moment talking earnestly
together.

You will remember that O’Moy had undertaken to provide that Count
Samoval’s visits to Monsanto should be discontinued. About this task
he had gone with all the tact of which he had boasted himself master to
Colquhoun Grant. You shall judge of the tact for yourself. No sooner had
the colonel left for Lisbon, and Carruthers to return to his work, than,
finding himself alone with the Count, Sir Terence considered the moment
a choice one in which to broach the matter.

“I take it ye’re fond of walking, Count,” had been his singular opening
move. They had left the table by now, and were sauntering together on
the terrace.

“Walking?” said Samoval. “I detest it.”

“And is that so? Well, well! Of course it’s not so very far from your
place at Bispo.”

“Not more than half-a-league, I should say.”

“Just so,” said O’Moy. “Half-a-league there, and half-a-league back: a
league. It’s nothing at all, of course; yet for a gentleman who detests
walking it’s a devilish long tramp for nothing.”

“For nothing?” Samoval checked and looked at his host in faint surprise.
Then he smiled very affably. “But you must not say that, Sir Terence. I
assure you that the pleasure of seeing yourself and Lady O’Moy cannot be
spoken of as nothing.”

“You are very good.” Sir Terence was the very quintessence of
courtliness, of concern for the other. “But if there were not that
pleasure?”

“Then, of course, it would be different.” Samoval was beginning to be
slightly intrigued.

“That’s it,” said Sir Terence. “That’s just what I’m meaning.”

“Just what you’re meaning? But, my dear General, you are assuming
circumstances which fortunately do not exist.”

“Not at present, perhaps. But they might.”

Again Samoval stood still and looked at O’Moy. He found something in the
bronzed, rugged face that was unusually sardonic. The blue eyes seemed
to have become hard, and yet there were wrinkles about their corners
suggestive of humour that might be mockery. The Count stiffened; but
beyond that he preserved his outward calm whilst confessing that he did
not understand Sir Terence’s meaning.

“It’s this way,” said Sir Terence. “I’ve noticed that ye’re not looking
so very well lately, Count.”

“Really? You think that?” The words were mechanical. The dark eyes
continued to scrutinise that bronzed face suspiciously.

“I do, and it’s sorry I am to see it. But I know what it is. It’s this
walking backwards and forwards between here and Bispo that’s doing the
mischief. Better give it up, Count. Better not come toiling up here any
more. It’s not good for your health. Why, man, ye’re as white as a ghost
this minute.”

He was indeed, having perceived at last the insult intended. To be
denied the house at such a time was to checkmate his designs, to set a
term upon his crafty and subtle espionage, precisely in the season when
he hoped to reap its harvest. But his chagrin sprang not at all from
that. His cold anger was purely personal. He was a gentleman--of the
fine flower, as he would have described himself--of the nobility of
Portugal; and that a probably upstart Irish soldier--himself, from
Samoval’s point of view, a guest in that country--should deny him his
house, and choose such terms of ill-considered jocularity in which to do
it, was an affront beyond all endurance.

For a moment passion blinded him, and it was only by an effort that he
recovered and kept his self-control. But keep it he did. You may trust
your practised duellist for that when he comes face to face with the
necessity to demand satisfaction. And soon the mist of passion clearing
from his keen wits, he sought swiftly for a means to fasten the quarrel
upon Sir Terence in Sir Terence’s own coin of galling mockery. Instantly
he found it. Indeed it was not very far to seek. O’Moy’s jealousy, which
was almost a byword, as we know, had been apparent more than once to
Samoval. Remembering it now, it discovered to him at once Sir Terence’s
most vulnerable spot, and cunningly Samoval proceeded to gall him there.

A smile spread gradually over his white face--a smile of immeasurable
malice.

“I am having a very interesting and instructive morning in this
atmosphere of Irish boorishness,” said he. “First Captain Tremayne--”

“Now don’t be after blaming old Ireland for Tremayne’s shortcomings.
Tremayne’s just a clumsy mannered Englishman.”

“I am glad to know there is a distinction. Indeed I might have perceived
it for myself. In motives, of course, that distinction is great indeed,
and I hope that I am not slow to discover it, and in your case to excuse
it. I quite understand and even sympathise with your feelings, General.”

“I am glad of that now,” said Sir Terence, who had understood nothing of
all this.

“Naturally,” the Count pursued on a smooth, level note of amiability,
“when a man, himself no longer young, commits the folly of taking a
young and charming wife, he is to be forgiven when a natural anxiety
drives him to lengths which in another might be resented.” He bowed
before the empurpling Sir Terence.

“Ye’re a damned coxcomb, it seems,” was the answering roar.

“Of course you would assume it. It was to be expected. I condone it with
the rest. And because I condone it, because I sympathise with what in a
man of your age and temperament must amount to an affliction, I hasten
to assure you upon my honour that so far as I am concerned there are no
grounds for your anxiety.”

“And who the devil asks for your assurances? It’s stark mad ye are to
suppose that I ever needed them.”

“Of course you must say that,” Samoval insisted, with a confident and
superior smile. He shook his head, his expression one of amused sorrow.
“Sir Terence, you have knocked at the wrong door. You are youthful
at least in your impulsiveness, but you are surely as blind as old
Pantaloon in the comedy or you would see where your industry would be
better employed in shielding your wife’s honour and your own.”

Goaded to fury, his blue eyes aflame now with passion, Sir Terence
considered the sleek and subtle gentleman before him, and it was in
that moment that the Count’s subtlety soared to its finest heights. In a
flash of inspiration he perceived the advantages to be drawn by himself
from conducting this quarrel to extremes.

This is not mere idle speculation. Knowledge of the real motives
actuating him rests upon the evidence of a letter which Samoval was
to write that same evening to La Fleche--afterwards to be
discovered--wherein he related what had passed, how deliberately he had
steered the matter, and what he meant to do. His object was no longer
the punishing of an affront. That would happen as a mere incident, a
thing done, as it were, in passing. His real aim now was to obtain
the keys of the adjutant’s strong-box, which never left Sir Terence’s
person, and so become possessed of the plans of the lines of Torres
Vedras. When you consider in the light of this the manner in which
Samoval proceeded now you will admire with me at once the opportunism
and the subtlety of the man.

“You’ll be after telling me exactly what you mean,” Sir Terence had
said.

It was in that moment that Tremayne and Lady O’Moy came arm in arm
into the open on the hill-side, half-a-mile away--very close and
confidential. They came most opportunely to the Count’s need, and he
flung out a hand to indicate them to Sir Terence, a smile of pity on his
lips.

“You need but to look to take the answer for yourself,” said he.

Sir Terence looked, and laughed. He knew the secret of Ned Tremayne’s
heart and could laugh now with relish at that which hitherto had left
him darkly suspicious.

“And who shall blame Lady O’Moy?” Count Samoval pursued. “A lady
so charming and so courted must seek her consolation for the almost
unnatural union Fate has imposed upon her. Captain Tremayne is of her
own age, convenient to her hand, and for an Englishman not ill-looking.”

He smiled at O’Moy with insolent compassion, and O’Moy, losing all his
self-control, struck him slapped him resoundingly upon the cheek.

“Ye’re a dirty liar, Samoval, a muck-rake,” said he.

Samoval stepped back, breathing hard, one cheek red, the other white.
Yet by a miracle he still preserved his self-control.

“I have proved my courage too often,” he said, “to be under the
necessity of killing you for this blow. Since my honour is safe I will
not take advantage of your overwrought condition.”

“Ye’ll take advantage of it whether ye like it or not,” blazed Sir
Terence at him. “I mean you to take advantage of it. D’ ye think I’ll
suffer any man to cast a slur upon Lady O’Moy? I’ll be sending my
friends to wait on you to-day, Count; and--by God!--Tremayne himself
shall be one of them.”

Thus did the hot-headed fellow deliver himself into the hands of his
enemy. Nor was he warned when he saw the sudden gleam in Samoval’s dark
eyes.

“Ha!” said the Count. It was a little exclamation of wicked
satisfaction. “You are offering me a challenge, then?”

“If I may make so bold. And as I’ve a mind to shoot you dead--”

“Shoot, did you say?” Samoval interrupted gently.

“I said ‘shoot’--and it shall be at ten paces, or across a handkerchief,
or any damned distance you please.”

The Count shook his head. He sneered. “I think not--not shoot.” And he
waved the notion aside with a hand white and slender as a woman’s. “That
is too English, or too Irish. The pistol, I mean--appropriately a fool’s
weapon.” And he explained himself, explained at last his extraordinary
forbearance under a blow. “If you think I have practised the small-sword
every day of my life for ten years to suffer myself to be shot at like
a rabbit in the end--ho, really!” He laughed aloud. “You have challenged
me, I think, Sir Terence. Because I feared the predilection you have
discovered, I was careful to wait until the challenge came from you. The
choice of weapons lies, I think, with me. I shall instruct my friends to
ask for swords.”

“Sorry a difference will it make to me,” said Sir Terence. “Anything
from a horsewhip to a howitzer.” And then recollection descending like a
cold hand upon him chilled his hot rage, struck the fine Irish arrogance
all out of him, and left him suddenly limp. “My God!” he said, and
it was almost a groan. He detained Samoval, who had already turned to
depart. “A moment, Count,” he cried. “I--I had forgotten. There is the
general order--Lord Wellington’s enactment.”

“Awkward, of course,” said Samoval, who had never for a moment been
oblivious of that enactment, and who had been carefully building upon
it. “But you should have considered it before committing yourself so
irrevocably.”

Sir Terence steadied himself. He recovered his truculence. “Irrevocable
or not, it will just have to be revocable. The meeting’s impossible.”

“I do not see the impossibility. I am not surprised you should shelter
yourself behind an enactment; but you will remember this enactment does
not apply to me, who am not a soldier.”

“But it applies to me, who am not only a soldier, but the
Adjutant-General here, the man chiefly responsible for seeing the order
carried out. It would be a fine thing if I were the first to disregard
it.”

“I am afraid it is too late. You have disregarded it already, sir.”

“How so?”

“The letter of the law is against sending or receiving a challenge, I
think.”

O’Moy was distracted. “Samoval,” he said, drawing himself up, “I will
admit that I have been a fool. I will apologise to you for the blow and
for the word that accompanied it.”

“The apology would imply that my statement was a true one and that you
recognised it. If you mean that--”

“I mean nothing of the kind. Damme! I’ve a mind to horsewhip you, and
leave it at that. D’ ye think I want to face a firing party on your
account?”

“I don’t think there is the remotest likelihood of any such
contingency,” replied Samoval.

But O’Moy went headlong on. “And another thing. Where will I be finding
a friend to meet your friends? Who will dare to act for me in view of
that enactment?”

The Count considered. He was grave now. “Of course that is a
difficulty,” he admitted, as if he perceived it now for the first time.
“Under the circumstances, Sir Terence, and entirely to accommodate you,
I might consent to dispense with seconds.”

“Dispense with seconds?” Sir Terence was horrified at the suggestion.
“You know that that is irregular--that a charge of murder would lie
against the survivor.”

“Oh, quite so. But it is for your own convenience that I suggest it,
though I appreciate your considerate concern on the score of what may
happen to me afterwards should it come to be known that I was your
opponent.”

“Afterwards? After what?”

“After I have killed you.”

“And is it like that?” cried O’Moy, his countenance inflaming again, his
mind casting all prudence to the winds.

It followed, of course, that without further thought for anything but
the satisfaction of his rage Sir Terence became as wax in the hands of
Samoval’s desires.

“Where do you suggest that we meet?” he asked.

“There is my place at Bispo. We should be private in the gardens there.
As for time, the sooner the better, though for secrecy’s sake we had
better meet at night. Shall we say at midnight?”

But Sir Terence would agree to none of this.

“To-night is out of the question for me. I have an engagement that will
keep me until late. To-morrow night, if you will, I shall be at your
service.” And because he did not trust Samoval he added, as Samoval
himself had almost reckoned: “But I should prefer not to come to Bispo.
I might be seen going or returning.”

“Since there are no such scruples on my side, I am ready to come to you
here if you prefer it.”

“It would suit me better.”

“Then expect me promptly at midnight to-morrow, provided that you
can arrange to admit me without my being seen. You will perceive my
reasons.”

“Those gates will be closed,” said O’Moy, indicating the now gaping
massive doors that closed the archway at night. “But if you knock I
shall be waiting for you, and I will admit you by the wicket.”

“Excellent,” said Samoval suavely. “Then--until to-morrow night,
General.” He bowed with almost extravagant submission, and turning
walked sharply away, energy and suppleness in every line of his slight
figure, leaving Sir Terence to the unpleasant, almost desperate,
thoughts that reflection must usher in as his anger faded.




CHAPTER XII. THE DUEL


It was a time of stress and even of temptation for Sir Terence. Honour
and pride demanded that he should keep the appointment made with
Samoval; common sense urged him at all costs to avoid it. His frame of
mind, you see, was not at all enviable. At moments he would consider
his position as adjutant-general, the enactment against duelling, the
irregularity of the meeting arranged, and, consequently, the danger in
which he stood on every score; at others he could think of nothing but
the unpardonable affront that had been offered him and the venomously
insulting manner in which it had been offered, and his rage welled up to
blot out every consideration other than that of punishing Samoval.

For two days and a night he was a sort of shuttlecock tossed between
these alternating moods, and he was still the same when he paced the
quadrangle with bowed head and hands clasped behind him awaiting Samoval
at a few minutes before twelve of the following night. The windows that
looked down from the four sides of that enclosed garden were all in
darkness. The members of the household had withdrawn over an hour ago
and were asleep by now. The official quarters were closed. The rising
moon had just mounted above the eastern wing and its white light
fell upon the upper half of the facade of the residential site. The
quadrangle itself remained plunged in gloom.

Sir Terence, pacing there, was considering the only definite conclusion
he had reached. If there were no way even now of avoiding this duel, at
least it must remain secret. Therefore it could not take place here in
the enclosed garden of his own quarters, as he had so rashly consented.
It should be fought upon neutral ground, where the presence of the body
of the slain would not call for explanations by the survivor.

From distant Lisbon on the still air came softly the chimes of
midnight, and immediately there was a sharp rap upon the little door set
in one of the massive gates that closed the archway.

Sir Terence went to open the wicket, and Samoval stepped quickly over
the sill. He was wrapped in a dark cloak, a broad-brimmed hat obscured
his face. Sir Terence closed the door again. The two men bowed to each
other in silence, and as Samoval’s cloak fell open he produced a pair of
duelling-swords swathed together in a skin of leather.

“You are very punctual, sir,” said O’Moy.

“I hope I shall never be so discourteous as to keep an opponent waiting.
It is a thing of which I have never yet been guilty,” replied Samoval,
with deadly smoothness in that reminder of his victorious past. He
stepped forward and looked about the quadrangle. “I am afraid the moon
will occasion us some delay,” he said. “It were perhaps better to
wait some five or ten minutes, by then the light in here should have
improved.”

“We can avoid the delay by stepping out into the open,” said Sir
Terence. “Indeed it is what I had to suggest in any case. There are
inconveniences here which you may have overlooked.”

But Samoval, who had purposes to serve of which this duel was but a
preliminary, was of a very different mind.

“We are quite private here, your household being abed,” he answered,
“whilst outside one can never be sure even at this hour of avoiding
witnesses and interruption. Then, again, the turf is smooth as a table
on that patch of lawn, and the ground well known to both of us; that, I
can assure you, is a very necessary condition in the dark and one not to
be found haphazard in the open.”

“But there is yet another consideration, sir. I prefer that we engage
on neutral ground, so that the survivor shall not be called upon for
explanations that might be demanded if we fought here.”

Even in the gloom Sir Terence caught the flash of Samoval’s white teeth
as he smiled.

“You trouble yourself unnecessarily on my account,” was the smoothly
ironic answer. “No one has seen me come, and no one is likely to see me
depart.”

“You may be sure that no one shall, by God,” snapped O’Moy, stung by the
sly insolence of the other’s assurance.

“Shall we get to work, then?” Samoval invited.

“If you’re set on dying here, I suppose I must be after humouring you,
and make the best of it. As soon as you please, then.” O’Moy was very
fierce.

They stepped to the patch of lawn in the middle of the quadrangle, and
there Samoval threw off altogether his cloak and hat. He was closely
dressed in black, which in that light rendered him almost invisible. Sir
Terence, less practised and less calculating in these matters, wore an
undress uniform, the red coat of which showed greyish. Samoval observed
this rather with contempt than with satisfaction in the advantage
it afforded him. Then he removed the swathing from the swords, and,
crossing them, presented the hilts to Sir Terence. The adjutant took
one and the Count retained the other, which he tested, thrashing the air
with it so that it hummed like a whip. That done, however, he did not
immediately fall on.

“In a few minutes the moon will be more obliging,” he suggested. “If you
would prefer to wait--”

But it occurred to Sir Terence that in the gloom the advantage might
lie slightly with himself, since the other’s superior sword-play would
perhaps be partly neutralised. He cast a last look round at the dark
windows.

“I find it light enough,” he answered.

Samoval’s reply was instantaneous. “On guard, then,” he cried, and on
the words, without giving Sir Terence so much as time to comply with
the invitation, he whirled his point straight and deadly at the greyish
outline of his opponent’s body. But a ray of moonlight caught the
blade and its livid flash gave Sir Terence warning of the thrust so
treacherously delivered. He saved himself by leaping backwards--just
saved himself with not an inch to spare--and threw up his blade to meet
the thrust.

“Ye murderous villain,” he snarled under his breath, as steel ground on
steel, and he flung forward to the attack.

But from the gloom came a little laugh to answer him, and his angry
lunge was foiled by an enveloping movement that ended in a ripost. With
that they settled down to it, Sir Terence in a rage upon which that
assassin stroke had been fresh fuel; the Count cool and unhurried,
delaying until the moonlight should have crept a little farther, so as
to enable him to make quite sure that his stroke when delivered should
be final.

Meanwhile he pressed Sir Terence towards the side where the moonlight
would strike first, until they were fighting close under the windows of
the residential wing, Sir Terence with his back to them, Samoval facing
them. It was Fate that placed them so, the Fate that watched over Sir
Terence even now when he felt his strength failing him, his sword
arm turning to lead under the strain of an unwonted exercise. He knew
himself beaten, realised the dexterous ease, the masterly economy of
vigour and the deadly sureness of his opponent’s play. He knew that he
was at the mercy of Samoval; he was even beginning to wonder why the
Count should delay to make an end of a situation of which he was so
completely master. And then, quite suddenly, even as he was returning
thanks that he had taken the precaution of putting all his affairs in
order, something happened.

A light showed; it flared up suddenly, to be as suddenly extinguished,
and it had its source in the window of Lady O’Moy’s dressing-room, which
Samoval was facing.

That flash drawing off the Count’s eyes for one instant, and leaving
them blinded for another, had revealed him clearly at the same time to
Sir Terence. Sir Terence’s blade darted in, driven by all that was left
of his spent strength, and Samoval, his eyes unseeing, in that moment
had fumbled widely and failed to find the other’s steel until he felt it
sinking through his body, searing him from breast to back.

His arms sank to his sides quite nervelessly. He uttered a faint
exclamation of astonishment, almost instantly interrupted by a cough. He
swayed there a moment, the cough increasing until it choked him. Then,
suddenly limp, he pitched forward upon his face, and lay clawing and
twitching at Sir Terence’s feet.

Sir Terence himself, scarcely realising what had taken place, for the
whole thing had happened within the time of a couple of heart-beats,
stood quite still, amazed and awed, in a half-crouching attitude,
looking down at the body of the fallen man. And then from above, ringing
upon the deathly stillness, he caught a sibilant whisper:

“What was that? ‘Sh!”

He stepped back softly, and flattened himself instinctively against the
wall; thence profoundly intrigued and vaguely alarmed on several scores
he peered up at the windows of his wife’s room whence the sound had
come, whence the sudden light had come which--as he now realised--had
given him the victory in that unequal contest. Looking up at the balcony
in whose shadow he stood concealed, he saw two figures there--his wife’s
and another’s--and at the same time he caught sight of something
black that dangled from the narrow balcony, and peered more closely to
discover a rope ladder.

He felt his skin roughening, bristling like a dog’s; he was conscious
of being cold from head to foot, as if the flow of his blood had been
suddenly arrested; and a sense of sickness overcame him. And then to
turn that horrible doubt of his into still more horrible certainty came
a man’s voice, subdued, yet not so subdued but that he recognised it for
Ned Tremayne’s.

“There’s some one lying there. I can make out the figure.”

“Don’t go down! For pity’s sake, come back. Come back and wait, Ned. If
any one should come and find you we shall be ruined.”

Thus hoarsely whispering, vibrating with terror, the voice of his
wife reached O’Moy, to confirm him the unsuspecting blind cuckold that
Samoval had dubbed him to his face, for which Samoval--warning the
guilty pair with his last breath even as he had earlier so mockingly
warned Sir Terence--had coughed up his soul on the turf of that enclosed
garden.

Crouching there for a moment longer, a man bereft of movement and of
reason, stood O’Moy, conscious only of pain, in an agony of mind and
heart that at one and the same time froze his blood and drew the sweat
from his brow.

Then he was for stepping out into the open, and, giving flow to the
rage and surging violence that followed, calling down the man who had
dishonoured him and slaying him there under the eyes of that trull who
had brought him to this shame. But he controlled the impulse, or else
Satan controlled it for him. That way, whispered the Tempter, was too
straight and simple. He must think. He must have time to readjust his
mind to the horrible circumstances so suddenly revealed.

Very soft and silently, keeping well within the shadow of the wall,
he sidled to the door which he had left ajar. Soundlessly he pushed
it open, passed in and as soundlessly closed it again. For a moment he
stood leaning heavily against its timbers, his breath coming in short
panting sobs. Then he steadied himself and turning, made his way down
the corridor to the little study which had been fitted up for him in the
residential wing, and where sometimes he worked at night. He had been
writing there that evening ever since dinner, and he had quitted the
room only to go to his assignation with Samoval, leaving the lamp
burning on his open desk.

He opened the door, but before passing in he paused a moment, straining
his ears to listen for sounds overhead. His eyes, glancing up and down,
were arrested by a thin blade of light under a door at the end of the
corridor. It was the door of the butler’s pantry, and the line of light
announced that Mullins had not yet gone to bed. At once Sir Terence
understood that, knowing him to be at work, the old servant had himself
remained below in case his master should want anything before retiring.

Continuing to move without noise, Sir Terence entered his study, closed
the door and crossed to his desk. Wearily he dropped into the chair
that stood before it, his face drawn and ghastly, his smouldering eyes
staring vacantly ahead. On the desk before him lay the letters that
he had spent the past hours in writing--one to his wife; another
to Tremayne; another to his brother in Ireland; and several others
connected with his official duties, making provision for their
uninterrupted continuance in the event of his not surviving the
encounter.

Now it happened that amongst the latter there was one that was
destined hereafter to play a considerable part; it was a note for the
Commissary-General upon a matter that demanded immediate attention, and
the only one of all those letters that need now survive. It was marked
“Most Urgent,” and had been left by him for delivery first thing in the
morning. He pulled open a drawer and swept into it all the letters he
had written save that one.

He locked that drawer; then unlocked another, and took thence a case of
pistols. With shaking hands he lifted out one of the weapons to examine
it, and all the while, of course, his thoughts were upon his wife and
Tremayne. He was considering how well-founded had been his every twinge
of jealousy; how wasted, how senseless the reactions of shame that had
followed them; how insensate his trust in Tremayne’s honesty, and, above
all, with what crafty, treacherous subtlety Tremayne had drawn a
red herring across the trail of his suspicions by pretending to an
unutterable passion for Sylvia Armytage. It was perhaps that piece of
duplicity, worthy, he thought, of the Iscariot himself, that galled Sir
Terence now most sorely; that and the memory of his own silly credulity.
He had been such a ready dupe. How those two together must have laughed
at him! Oh, Tremayne had been very subtle! He had been the friend, the
quasi-brother, parading his affection for the Butler family to excuse
the familiarities with Lady O’Moy which he had permitted himself under
Sir Terence’s very eyes. O’Moy thought of them as he had seen them
in the garden on the night of Redondo’s ball, remembered the air of
transparent honesty by which that damned hypocrite when discovered had
deflected his just resentment.

Oh, there was no doubt that the treacherous blackguard had been subtle.
But--by God!--subtlety should be repaid with subtlety! He would deal
with Tremayne as cruelly as Tremayne had dealt with him; and his wanton
wife, too, should be repaid in kind. He beheld the way clear, in a flash
of wicked inspiration. He put back the pistol, slapped down the lid of
the box and replaced it in its drawer.

He rose, took up the letter to the Commissary-general, stepped briskly
to the door and pulled it open.

“Mullins!” he called sharply. “Are you there? Mullins?”

Came the sound of a scraping chair, and instantly that door at the end
of the corridor was thrown open, and Mullins stood silhouetted against
the light behind him. A moment he stood there, then came forward.

“You called, Sir Terence?”

“Yes.” Sir Terence’s voice was miraculously calm. His back was to the
light and his face in shadow, so that its drawn, haggard look was not
perceptible to the butler. “I am going to bed. But first I want you
to step across to the sergeant of the guard with this letter for the
Commissary-General. Tell him that it is of the utmost importance, and
ask him to arrange to have it taken into Lisbon first thing in the
morning.”

Mullins bowed, venerable as an archdeacon in aspect and bearing, as he
received the letter from his master: “Certainly, Sir Terence.”

As he departed Sir Terence turned and slowly paced back to his desk,
leaving the door open. His eyes had narrowed; there was a cruel, an
almost evil smile on his lips. Of the generous, good-humoured nature
imprinted upon his face every sign had vanished. His countenance was a
mask of ferocity restrained by intelligence, cold and calculating.

Oh, he would pay the score that lay between himself and those two who
had betrayed him. They should receive treachery for treachery, mockery
for mockery, and for dishonour death. They had deemed him an old fool!
What was the expression that Samoval had used--Pantaloon in the comedy?
Well, well! He had been Pantaloon in the comedy so far. But now they
should find him Pantaloon in the tragedy--nay, not Pantaloon at all,
but Polichinelle, the sinister jester, the cynical clown, who laughs in
murdering. And in anguished silence should they bear the punishment he
would mete out to them, or else in no less anguished speech themselves
proclaim their own dastardy to the world.

His wife he beheld now in a new light. It was out of vanity and greed
that she had married him, because of the position in the world that he
could give her. Having done so, at least she might have kept faith; she
might have been honest, and abided by the bargain. If she had not done
so, it was because honesty was beyond her shallow nature. He should have
seen before what he now saw so clearly. He should have known her for
a lovely, empty husk; a silly, fluttering butterfly; a toy; a thing of
vanities, emotions, and nothing else.

Thus Sir Terence, cursing the day when he had mated with a fool. Thus
Sir Terence whilst he stood there waiting for the outcry from Mullins
that should proclaim the discovery of the body, and afford him a pretext
for having the house searched for the slayer. Nor had he long to wait.

“Sir Terence! Sir Terence! For God’s sake, Sir Terence!” he heard the
voice of his old servant. Came the loud crash of the door thrust back
until it struck the wall and quick steps along the passage.

Sir Terence stepped out to meet him.

“Why, what the devil--” he was beginning in his bluff, normal tones,
when the servant, showing a white, scared face, cut him short.

“A terrible thing, Sir Terence! Oh, the saints protect us, a dreadful
thing! This way, sir! There’s a man killed--Count Samoval, I think it
is!”

“What? Where?”

“Out yonder, in the quadrangle, sir.”

“But--” Sir Terence checked. “Count Samoval, did ye say? Impossible!”
 and he went out quickly, followed by the butler.

In the quadrangle he checked. In the few minutes that were sped since
he had left the place the moon had overtopped the roof of the opposite
wing, so that full upon the enclosed garden fell now its white light,
illumining and revealing.

There lay the black still form of Samoval supine, his white face staring
up into the heavens, and beside him knelt Tremayne, whilst in the
balcony above leaned her ladyship. The rope ladder, Sir Terence’s swift
glance observed, had disappeared.

He halted in his advance, standing at gaze a moment. He had hardly
expected so much. He had conceived the plan of causing the house to
be searched immediately upon Mullins’s discovery of the body. But
Tremayne’s rashness in adventuring down in this fashion spared him even
that necessity. True, it set up other difficulties. But he was not sure
that the matter would not be infinitely more interesting thus.

He stepped forward, and came to a standstill beside the two--his dead
enemy and his living one.




CHAPTER XIII. POLICHINELLE


“Why, Ned,” he asked gravely, “what has happened?”

“It is Samoval,” was Tremayne’s quiet answer. “He is quite dead.”

He stood up as he spoke, and Sir Terence observed with terrible inward
mirth that his tone had the frank and honest ring, his bearing the
imperturbable ease which more than once before had imposed upon him as
the outward signs of an easy conscience. This secretary of his was a
cool scoundrel.

“Samoval, is it?” said Sir Terence, and went down on one knee beside
the body to make a perfunctory examination. Then he looked up at the
captain.

“And how did this happen?”

“Happen?” echoed Tremayne, realising that the question was being
addressed particularly to himself. “That is what I am wondering. I found
him here in this condition.”

“You found him here? Oh, you found him here in this condition! Curious!”
 Over his shoulder he spoke to the butler: “Mullins, you had better call
the guard.” He picked up the slender weapon that lay beside Samoval.
“A duelling sword!” Then he looked searchingly about him until his eyes
caught the gleam of the other blade near the wall, where himself he had
dropped it. “Ah!” he said, and went to pick it up. “Very odd!” He looked
up at the balcony, over the parapet of which his wife was leaning.
“Did you see anything, my dear?” he asked, and neither Tremayne nor she
detected the faint note of wicked mockery in the question.

There was a moment’s pause before she answered him, faltering:

“N-no. I saw nothing.” Sir Terence’s straining ears caught no faintest
sound of the voice that had prompted her urgently from behind the
curtained windows.

“How long have you been there?” he asked her.

“A--a moment only,” she replied, again after a pause. “I--I thought I
heard a cry, and--and I came to see what had happened.” Her voice shook
with terror; but what she beheld would have been quite enough to account
for that.

The guard filed in through the doors from the official quarters, a
sergeant with a halbert in one hand and a lantern in the other, followed
by four men, and lastly by Mullins. They halted and came to attention
before Sir Terence. And almost at the same moment there was a sharp
rattling knock on the wicket in the great closed gates through which
Samoval had entered. Startled, but without showing any signs of it, Sir
Terence bade Mullins go open, and in a general silence all waited to see
who it was that came.

A tall man, bowing his shoulders to pass under the low lintel of that
narrow door, stepped over the sill and into the courtyard. He wore a
cocked hat, and as his great cavalry cloak fell open the yellow rays of
the sergeant’s lantern gleamed faintly on a British uniform. Presently,
as he advanced into the quadrangle, he disclosed the aquiline features
of Colquhoun Grant.

“Good-evening, General. Good-evening, Tremayne,” he greeted one and the
other. Then his eyes fell upon the body lying between them. “Samoval,
eh? So I am not mistaken in seeking him here. I have had him under very
close observation during the past day or two, and when one of my men
brought me word tonight that he had left his place at Bispo on foot and
alone, going along the upper Alcantara road, If had a notion that he
might be coming to Monsanto and I followed. But I hardly expected to
find this. How has it happened?”

“That is what I was just asking Tremayne,” replied Sir Terence. “Mullins
discovered him here quite by chance with the body.”

“Oh!” said Grant, and turned to the captain. “Was it you then--”

“I?” interrupted Tremayne with sudden violence. He seemed now to become
aware for the first time of the gravity of his position. “Certainly not,
Colonel Grant. I heard a cry, and I came out to see what it was. I found
Samoval here, already dead.”

“I see,” said Grant. “You were with Sir Terence, then, when this--”

“Nay,” Sir Terence interrupted. “I have been alone since dinner,
clearing up some arrears of work. I was in my study there when Mullins
called me to tell me what he had discovered. It looks as if there had
been a duel. Look at these swords.” Then he turned to his secretary. “I
think, Captain Tremayne,” he said gravely, “that you had better report
yourself under arrest to your colonel.”

Tremayne stiffened suddenly. “Report myself under arrest?” he cried. “My
God, Sir Terence, you don’t believe that I--”

Sir Terence interrupted him. The voice in which he spoke was stern,
almost sad; but his eyes gleamed with fiendish mockery the while. It
was Polichinelle that spoke--Polichinelle that mocks what time he
slays. “What were you doing here?” he asked, and it was like moving the
checkmating piece.

Tremayne stood stricken and silent. He cast a desperate upward glance
at the balcony overhead. The answer was so easy, but it would entail
delivering Richard Butler to his death. Colonel Grant, following his
upward glance, beheld Lady O’Moy for the first time. He bowed, swept off
his cocked hat, and “Perhaps her ladyship,” he suggested to Sir Terence,
“may have seen something.”

“I have already asked her,” replied O’Moy.

And then she herself was feverishly assuring Colonel Grant that she had
seen nothing at all, that she had heard a cry and had come out on to the
balcony to see what was happening.

“And was Captain Tremayne here when you came out?” asked O’Moy, the
deadly jester.

“Ye-es,” she faltered. “I was only a moment or two before yourself.”

“You see?” said Sir Terence heavily to Grant, and Grant, with pursed
lips, nodded, his eyes moving from O’Moy to Tremayne.

“But, Sir Terence,” cried Tremayne, “I give you my word--I swear to
you--that I know absolutely nothing of how Samoval met his death.”

“What were you doing here?” O’Moy asked again, and this time the
sinister, menacing note of derision vibrated clearly in the question.

Tremayne for the first time in his honest, upright life found himself
deliberately choosing between truth and falsehood. The truth would
clear him--since with that truth he would produce witnesses to it,
establishing his movements completely. But the truth would send a man
to his death; and so for the sake of that man’s life he was driven into
falsehood.

“I was on my way to see you,” he said.

“At midnight?” cried Sir Terence on a note of grim doubt. “To what
purpose?”

“Really, Sir Terence, if my word is not sufficient, I refuse to submit
to cross-examination.”

Sir Terence turned to the sergeant of the guard, “How long is it since
Captain Tremayne arrived?” he asked.

The sergeant stood to attention. “Captain Tremayne, sir, arrived rather
more than half-an-hour ago. He came in a curricle, which is still
waiting at the gates.”

“Half-an-hour ago, eh?” said Sir Terence, and from Colquhoun Grant
there was a sharp and audible intake of breath, expressive either of
understanding, or surprise, or both. The adjutant looked at Tremayne
again. “As my questions seem only to entangle you further,” he said,
“I think you had better do as I suggest without more protests: report
yourself under arrest to Colonel Fletcher in the morning, sir.”

Still Tremayne hesitated for a moment. Then drawing himself up, he
saluted curtly. “Very well, sir,” he replied.

“But, Terence--” cried her ladyship from above.

“Ah?” said Sir Terence, and he looked up. “You would say--?” he
encouraged her, for she had broken off abruptly, checked again--although
none below could guess it--by the one behind who prompted her.

“Couldn’t you--couldn’t you wait?” she was faltering, compelled to it by
his question.

“Certainly. But for what?” quoth he, grimly sardonic.

“Wait until you have some explanation,” she concluded lamely.

“That will be the business of the court-martial,” he answered. “My duty
is quite clear and simple; I think. You needn’t wait, Captain Tremayne.”

And so, without another word, Tremayne turned and departed. The
soldiers, in compliance with the short command issued by Sir Terence,
took up the body and bore it away to a room in the official quarters;
and in their wake went Colonel Grant, after taking his leave of Sir
Terence. Her ladyship vanished from the balcony and closed her windows,
and finally Sir Terence, followed by Mullins, slowly, with bowed head
and dragging steps, reentered the house. In the quadrangle, flooded
now by the cold, white light of the moon, all was peace once more. Sir
Terence turned into his study, sank into the chair by his desk and sat
there awhile staring into vacancy, a diabolical smile upon his handsome,
mobile mouth. Gradually the smile faded and horror overspread his face.
Finally he flung himself forward and buried his head in his arms.

There were steps in the hall outside, a quick mutter of voices, and then
the door of his study was flung open, and Miss Armytage came sharply to
rouse him.

“Terence! What has happened to Captain Tremayne?”

He sat up stiffly, as she sped across the room to him. She was wrapped
in a blue quilted bed-gown, her dark hair hung in two heavy plaits, and
her bare feet had been hastily thrust into slippers.

Sir Terence looked at her with eyes that were dull and heavy and that
yet seemed to search her white, startled face.

She set a hand on his shoulder, and looked down into his ravaged,
haggard countenance. He seemed suddenly to have been stricken into an
old man.

“Mullins has just told me that Captain Tremayne has been ordered under
arrest for--for killing Count Samoval. Is it true? Is it true?” she
demanded wildly.

“It is true,” he answered her, and there was a heavy, sneering curl on
his upper lip.

“But--” She stopped, and put a hand to her throat; she looked as if she
would stifle. She sank to her knees beside him, and caught his hand in
both her own that were trembling. “Oh, you can’t believe it! Captain
Tremayne is not the man to do a murder.”

“The evidence points to a duel,” he answered dully.

“A duel!” She looked at him, and then, remembering what had passed
that morning between Tremayne and Samoval, remembering, too, Lord
Wellington’s edict, “Oh, God!” she gasped. “Why did you let them take
him?”

“They didn’t take him. I ordered him under arrest. He will report
himself to Colonel Fletcher in the morning.”

“You ordered him? You! You, his friend!” Anger, scorn, reproach and
sorrow all blending in her voice bore him a clear message.

He looked down at her most closely, and gradually compassion crept into
his face. He set his hands on her shoulders, she suffering it passively,
insensibly.

“You care for him, Sylvia?” he said, between inquiry and wonder.
“Well, well! We are both fools together, child. The man is a dastard,
a blackguard, a Judas, to be repaid with betrayal for betrayal. Forget
him, girl. Believe me, he isn’t worth a thought.”

“Terence!” She looked in her turn into that distorted face. “Are you
mad?” she asked him.

“Very nearly,” he answered, with a laugh that was horrible to hear.

She drew back and away from him, bewildered and horrified. Slowly
she rose to her feet. She controlled with difficulty the deep emotion
swaying her. “Tell me,” she said slowly, speaking with obvious effort,
“what will they do to Captain Tremayne?”

“What will they do to him?” He looked at her. He was smiling. “They will
shoot him, of course.”

“And you wish it!” she denounced him in a whisper of horror.

“Above all things,” he answered. “A more poetic justice never overtook a
blackguard.”

“Why do you call him that? What do you mean?”

“I will tell you--afterwards, after they have shot him; unless the truth
comes out before.”

“What truth do you mean? The truth of how Samoval came by his death?”

“Oh, no. That matter is quite clear, the evidence complete. I mean--oh,
I will tell you afterwards what I mean. It may help you to bear your
trouble, thankfully.”

She approached him again. “Won’t you tell me now?” she begged him.

“No,” he answered, rising, and speaking with finality. “Afterwards if
necessary, afterwards. And now get back to bed, child, and forget the
fellow. I swear to you that he isn’t worth a thought. Later I shall hope
to prove it to you.”

“That you never will,” she told him fiercely.

He laughed, and again his laugh was harsh and terrible in its bitter
mockery. “Yet another trusting fool,” he cried. “The world is full of
them--it is made up of them, with just a sprinkling of knaves to batten
on their folly. Go to bed, Sylvia, and pray for understanding of men. It
is a possession beyond riches.”

“I think you are more in need of it than I am,” she told him, standing
by the door.

“Of course you do. You trust, which is why you are a fool. Trust,” he
said, speaking the very language of Polichinelle, “is the livery of
fools.”

She went without answering him and toiled upstairs with dragging feet.
She paused a moment in the corridor above, outside Una’s door. She was
in such need of communion with some one that for a moment she thought of
going in. But she knew beforehand the greeting that would await her;
the empty platitudes, the obvious small change of verbiage which her
ladyship would dole out. The very thought of it restrained her, and so
she passed on to her own room and a sleepless night in which to piece
together the puzzle which the situation offered her, the amazing enigma
of Sir Terence’s seeming access of insanity.

And the only conclusion that she reached was that intertwined with the
death of Samoval there was some other circumstance which had aroused in
the adjutant an unreasoning hatred of his friend, converting him into
Tremayne’s bitterest enemy, intent--as he had confessed--upon seeing him
shot for that night’s work. And because she knew them both for men of
honour above all, the enigma was immeasurably deepened.

Had she but obeyed the transient impulse to seek Lady O’Moy she might
have discovered all the truth at once. For she would have come upon her
ladyship in a frame of mind almost as distraught as her own; and she
might--had she penetrated to the dressing-room where her ladyship
was--have come upon Richard Butler at the same time.

Now, in view of what had happened, her ladyship, ever impulsive, was
all for going there and then to her husband to confess the whole truth,
without pausing to reflect upon the consequences to others than Ned
Tremayne. As you know, it was beyond her to see a thing from two points
of view at one and the same time. It was also beyond her brother--the
failing, as I think I have told you, was a family one--and her brother
saw this matter only from the point of view of his own safety.

“A single word to Terence,” he had told her, putting his back to the
door of the dressing-room to bar her intended egress, “and you realise
that it will be a court-martial and a firing party for me.”

That warning effectively checked her. Yet certain stirrings of
conscience made her think of the man who had imperilled himself for her
sake and her brother’s.

“But, Dick, what is to become of Ned?” she had asked him.

“Oh, Ned will be all right. What is the evidence against him after all?
Men are not shot for things they haven’t done. Justice will out, you
know. Leave Ned to shift for himself for the present. Anyhow his danger
isn’t grave, nor is it immediate, and mine is.”

Helplessly distraught, she sank to an ottoman. The night had been a very
trying one for her ladyship. She gave way to tears.

“It is all your fault, Dick,” she reproached him.

“Naturally you would blame me,” he said with resignation--the complete
martyr.

“If only you had been ready at the time, as he told you to be, there
would have been no delays, and you would have got away before any of
this happened.”

“Was it my fault that I should have reopened my wound--bad luck to
it!--in attempting to get down that damned ladder?” he asked her. “Is it
my fault that I am neither an ape nor an acrobat? Tremayne should have
come up at once to assist me, instead of waiting until he had to come up
to help me bandage my leg again. Then time would not have been lost, and
very likely my life with it.” He came to a gloomy conclusion.

“Your life? What do you mean, Dick?”

“Just that. What are my chances of getting away now?” he asked her. “Was
there ever such infernal luck as mine? The Telemachus will sail without
me, and the only man who could and would have helped me to get out of
this damned country is under arrest. It’s clear I shall have to shift
for myself again, and I can’t even do that for a day or two with my leg
in this state. I shall have to go back into that stuffy store-cupboard
of yours till God knows when.” He lost all self-control at the prospect
and broke into imprecations of his luck.

She attempted to soothe him. But he wasn’t easy to soothe.

“And then,” he grumbled on, “you have so little sense that you want to
run straight off to Terence and explain to him what Tremayne was doing
here. You might at least have the grace to wait until I am off the
premises, and give me the mercy of a start before you set the dogs on my
trail.”

“Oh, Dick, Dick, you are so cruel!” she protested. “How can you say such
things to me, whose only thought is for you, to save you.”

“Then don’t talk any more about telling Terence,” he replied.

“I won’t, Dick. I won’t.” She drew him down beside her on the ottoman
and her fingers smoothed his rather tumbled red hair, just as her words
attempted to smooth the ruffles in his spirit. “You know I didn’t
realise, or I should not have thought of it even. I was so concerned for
Ned for the moment.”

“Don’t I tell you there’s not the need?” he assured her. “Ned will be
safe enough, devil a doubt. It’s for you to keep to what you told
them from the balcony; that you heard a cry, went out to see what was
happening and saw Tremayne there bending over the body. Not a word more,
and not a word less, or it will be all over with me.”




CHAPTER XIV. THE CHAMPION


With the possible exception of her ladyship, I do not think that there
was much sleep that night at Monsanto for any of the four chief actors
in this tragicomedy. Each had his own preoccupations. Sylvia’s we
know. Mr. Butler found his leg troubling him again, and the pain of
the reopened wound must have prevented him from sleeping even had his
anxieties about his immediate future not sufficed to do so. As for Sir
Terence, his was the most deplorable case of all. This man who had lived
a life of simple and downright honesty in great things and in small, a
man who had never stooped to the slightest prevarication, found
himself suddenly launched upon the most horrible and infamous course of
duplicity to encompass the ruin of another. The offence of that other
against himself might be of the most foul and hideous, a piece of
treachery that only treachery could adequately avenge; yet this
consideration was not enough to appease the clamours of Sir Terence’s
self-respect.

In the end, however, the primary desire for vengeance and vengeance of
the bitterest kind proved master of his mind. Captain Tremayne had been
led by his villainy into a coil that should presently crush him, and Sir
Terence promised himself an infinite balm for his outraged honour in the
entertainment which the futile struggles of the victim should provide.
With Captain Tremayne lay the cruel choice of submitting in tortured
silence to his fate, or of turning craven and saving his miserable
life by proclaiming himself a seducer and a betrayer. It should be
interesting to observe how the captain would decide, and his punishment
was certain whatever the decision that he took.

Sir Terence came to breakfast in the open, grey-faced and haggard, but
miraculously composed for a man who had so little studied the art
of concealing his emotions. Voice and glance were calm as he gave a
good-morning to his wife and to Miss Armytage.

“What are you going to do about Ned?” was one of his wife’s first
questions.

It took him aback. He looked askance at her, marvelling at the
steadiness with which she bore his glance, until it occurred to him that
effrontery was an essential part of the equipment of all harlots.

“What am I going to do?” he echoed. “Why, nothing. The matter is out of
my hands. I may be asked to give evidence; I may even be called to sit
upon the court-martial that will try him. My evidence can hardly assist
him. My conclusions will naturally be based upon the evidence that is
laid before the court.”

Her teaspoon rattled in her saucer. “I don’t understand you, Terence.
Ned has always been your best friend.”

“He has certainly shared everything that was mine.”

“And you know,” she went on, “that he did not kill Samoval.”

“Indeed?” His glance quickened a little. “How should I know that?”

“Well... I know it, anyway.”

He seemed moved by that statement. He leaned forward with an odd
eagerness, behind which there was something terrible that went
unperceived by her.

“Why did you not say so before? How do you know? What do you know?”

“I am sure that he did not.”

“Yes, yes. But what makes you so sure? Do you possess some knowledge
that you have not revealed?”

He saw the colour slowly shrinking from her cheeks under his burning
gaze. So she was not quite shameless then, after all. There were limits
to her effrontery.

“What knowledge should I possess?” she filtered.

“That is what I am asking.”

She made a good recovery. “I possess the knowledge that you should
possess yourself,” she told him. “I know Ned for a man incapable of such
a thing. I am ready to swear that he could not have done it.”

“I see: evidence as to character.” He sank back into his chair and
thoughtfully stirred his chocolate. “It may weigh with the court. But I
am not the court, and my mere opinions can do nothing for Ned Tremayne.”

Her ladyship looked at him wildly. “The court?” she cried. “Do you mean
that I shall have to give evidence?”

“Naturally,” he answered. “You will have to say what you saw.”

“But--but I saw nothing.”

“Something, I think.”

“Yes; but nothing that can matter.”

“Still the court will wish to hear it and perhaps to examine you upon
it.”

“Oh no, no!” In her alarm she half rose, then sank again to her chair.
“You must keep me out of this, Terence. I couldn’t--I really couldn’t.”

He laughed with an affectation of indulgence, masking something else.

“Why,” he said, “you would not deprive Tremayne of any of the advantages
to be derived from your testimony? Are you not ready to bear witness as
to his character? To swear that from your knowledge of the man you are
sure he could not have done such a thing? That he is the very soul of
honour, a man incapable of anything base or treacherous or sly?”

And then at last Sylvia, who had been watching them, and seeking to
apply to what she heard the wild expressions that Sir Terence had used
to herself last night, broke into the conversation.

“Why do you apply these words to Captain Tremayne?” she asked.

He turned sharply to meet the opposition he detected in her. “I don’t
apply them. On the contrary, I say that, as Una knows, they are not
applicable.”

“Then you make an unnecessary statement, a statement that has nothing to
do with the case. Captain Tremayne has been arrested for killing Count
Samoval in a duel. A duel may be a violation of the law as recently
enacted by Lord Wellington, but it is not an offence against honour; and
to say that a man cannot have fought a duel because a man is incapable
of anything base or treacherous or sly is just to say a very foolish and
meaningless thing.”

“Oh, quite so,” the adjutant, admitted. “But if Tremayne denies having
fought, if he shelters himself behind a falsehood, and says that he has
not killed Samoval, then I think the statement assumes some meaning.”

“Does Captain Tremayne say that?” she asked him sharply.

“It is what I understood him to say last night when I ordered him under
arrest.”

“Then,” said Sylvia, with full conviction, “Captain Tremayne did not do
it.”

“Perhaps he didn’t,” Sir Terence admitted. “The court will no doubt
discover the truth. The truth, you know, must prevail,” and he looked at
his wife again, marking the fresh signs of agitation she betrayed.

Mullins coming to set fresh covers, the conversation was allowed to
lapse. Nor was it ever resumed, for at that moment, with no other
announcement save such as was afforded by his quick step and the
click-click of his spurs, a short, slight man entered the quadrangle
from the doorway of the official wing.

The adjutant, turning to look, caught his breath suddenly in an
exclamation of astonishment.

“Lord Wellington!” he cried, and was immediately on his feet.

At the exclamation the new-comer checked and turned. He wore a plain
grey undress frock and white stock, buckskin breeches and lacquered
boots, and he carried a riding-crop tucked under his left arm. His
features were bold and sternly handsome; his fine eyes singularly
piercing and keen in their glance; and the sweep of those eyes now took
in not merely the adjutant, but the spread table and the ladies seated
before it. He halted a moment, then advanced quickly, swept his cocked
hat from a brown head that was but very slightly touched with grey, and
bowed with a mixture of stiffness and courtliness to the ladies.

“Since I have intruded so unwittingly, I had best remain to make my
apologies,” he said. “I was on my way to your residential quarters,
O’Moy, not imagining that I should break in upon your privacy in this
fashion.”

O’Moy with a great deference made haste to reassure him on the score of
the intrusion, whilst the ladies themselves rose to greet him. He bore
her ladyship’s hand to his lips with perfunctory courtesy, then insisted
upon her resuming her chair. Then he bowed--ever with that mixture of
stiffness and deference--to Miss Armytage upon her being presented to
him by the adjutant.

“Do not suffer me to disturb you,” he begged them. “Sit down, O’Moy. I
am not pressed, and I shall be monstrous glad of a few moments’ rest.
You are very pleasant here,” and he looked about the luxuriant garden
with approving eyes.

Sir Terence placed the hospitality of his table at his lordship’s
disposal. But the latter declined graciously.

“A glass of wine and water, if you will. No more. I breakfasted at
Torres Vedras with Fletcher.” Then to the look of astonishment on the
faces of the ladies he smiled. “Oh yes,” he assured them, “I was early
astir, for time is very precious just at present, which is why I drop
unannounced upon you from the skies, O’Moy.” He took the glass that
Mullins proffered on a salver, sipped from it, and set it down.
“There is so much vexation, so much hindrance from these pestilential
intriguers here in Lisbon, that I have thought it as well to come in
person and speak plainly to the gentlemen of the Council of Regency.” He
was peeling off his stout riding-gloves as he spoke. “If this campaign
is to go forward at all, it will go forward as I dispose. Then, too, I
wanted to see Fletcher and the works. By gad, O’Moy, he has performed
miracles, and I am very pleased with him--oh, and with you too. He told
me how ably you have seconded him and counselled him where necessary.
You must have worked night and day, O’Moy.” He sighed. “I wish that I
were as well served in every direction.” And then he broke off abruptly.
“But this is monstrous tedious for your ladyship, and for you, Miss
Armytage. Forgive me.”

Her ladyship protested the contrary, professing a deep interest
in military matters, and inviting his lordship to continue. Lord
Wellington, however, ignoring the invitation, turned the conversation
upon life in Lisbon, inquiring hopefully whether they found the place
afforded them adequate entertainment.

“Indeed yes,” Lady O’Moy assured him. “We are very gay at times. There
are private theatricals and dances, occasionally an official ball, and
we are promised picnics and water-parties now that the summer is here.”

“And in the autumn, ma’am, we may find you a little hunting,” his
lordship promised them. “Plenty of foxes; a rough country, though;
but what’s that to an Irishwoman?” He caught the quickening of Miss
Armytage’s eye. “The prospect interests you, I see.”

Miss Armytage admitted it, and thus they made conversation for a while,
what time the great soldier sipped his wine and water to wash the dust
of his morning ride from his throat. When at last he set down an empty
glass Sir Terence took this as the intimation of his readiness to deal
with official matters, and, rising, he announced himself entirely at his
lordship’s service.

Lord Wellington claimed his attention for a full hour with the details
of several matters that are not immediately concerned with this
narrative. Having done, he rose at last from Sir Terence’s desk, at
which he had been sitting, and took up his riding-crop and cocked hat
from the chair where he had placed them.

“And now,” he said, “I think I will ride into Lisbon and endeavour to
come to an understanding with Count Redondo and Don Miguel Forjas.”

Sir Terence advanced to open the door. But Wellington checked him with a
sudden sharp inquiry.

“You published my order against duelling, did you not?”

“Immediately upon receiving it, sir.”

“Ha! It doesn’t seem to have taken long for the order to be infringed,
then.” His manner was severe, his eyes stern. Sir Terence was conscious
of a quickening of his pulses. Nevertheless his answer was calmly
regretful:

“I am afraid not.”

The great man nodded. “Disgraceful! I heard of it from Fletcher this
morning. Captain What’s-his-name had just reported himself under arrest,
I understand, and Fletcher had received a note from you giving the
grounds for this. The deplorable part of these things is that they
always happen in the most troublesome manner conceivable. In Berkeley’s
case the victim was a nephew of the Patriarch’s. Samoval, now, was a
person of even greater consequence, a close friend of several members
of the Council. His death will be deeply resented, and may set up fresh
difficulties. It is monstrous vexatious.” And abruptly he asked “What
did they quarrel about?”

O’Moy trembled, and his glance avoided the other’s gimlet eye. “The only
quarrel that I am aware of between them,” he said, “was concerned with
this very enactment of your lordship’s. Samoval proclaimed it infamous,
and Tremayne resented the term. Hot words passed between them, but
the altercation was allowed to go no further at the time by myself and
others who were present.”

His lordship had raised his brows. “By gad, sir,” he ejaculated, “there
almost appears to be some justification for the captain. He was one of
your military secretaries, was he not?”

“He was.”

“Ha! Pity! Pity!” His lordship was thoughtful for a moment. Then he
dismissed the matter. “But then orders are orders, and soldiers must
learn to obey implicitly. British soldiers of all degrees seem to find
the lesson difficult. We must inculcate it more sternly, that is all.”

O’Moy’s honest soul was in torturing revolt against the falsehoods he
had implied--and to this man of all men, to this man whom he reverenced
above all others, who stood to him for the very fount of military honour
and lofty principle! He was in such a mood that one more question on
the subject from Wellington and the whole ghastly truth must have come
pouring from his lips. But no other question came. Instead his lordship
turned on the threshold and held out his hand.

“Not a step farther, O’Moy. I’ve left you a mass of work, and you are
short of a secretary. So don’t waste any of your time on courtesies. I
shall hope still to find the ladies in the garden so that I may take my
leave without inconveniencing them.”

And he was gone, stepping briskly with clicking spurs, leaving O’Moy
hunched now in his chair, his body the very expression of the dejection
that filled his soul.

In the garden his lordship came upon Miss Armytage alone, still seated
by the table under the trellis, from which the cloth had by now been
removed. She rose at his approach and in spite of gesture to her to
remain seated.

“I was seeking Lady O’Moy,” said he, “to take my leave of her. I may not
have the pleasure of coming to Monsanto again.”

“She is on the terrace, I think,” said Miss Armytage. “I will find her
for your lordship.”

“Let us find her together,” he said amiably, and so turned and went with
her towards the archway. “You said your name is Armytage, I think?” he
commented.

“Sir Terence said so.”

His eyes twinkled. “You possess an exceptional virtue,” said he. “To be
truthful is common; to be accurate rare. Well, then, Sir Terence said
so. Once I had a great friend of the name of Armytage. I have lost sight
of him these many years. We were at school together in Brussels.”

“At Monsieur Goubert’s,” she surprised him by saying. “That would be
John Armytage, my uncle.”

“God bless my soul, ma’am!” he ejaculated. “But I gathered you were
Irish, and Jack Armytage came from Yorkshire.”

“My mother is Irish, and we live in Ireland now. I was born there. But
father, none the less, was John Armytage’s brother.”

He looked at her with increased interest, marking the straight, supple
lines of her, and the handsome, high-bred face. His lordship, remember,
never lacked an appreciative eye for a fine woman. “So you’re Jack
Armytage’s niece. Give me news of him, my dear.”

She did so. Jack Armytage was well and prospering, had made a
rich marriage and retired from the Blues many years ago to live at
Northampton. He listened with interest, and thus out of his boyhood
friendship for her uncle, which of late years he had had no opportunity
to express, sprang there and then a kindness for the niece. Her own
personal charms may have contributed to it, for the great soldier was
intensely responsive to the appeal of beauty.


They reached the terrace. Lady O’Moy was nowhere in sight. But Lord
Wellington was too much engrossed in his discovery to be troubled.

“My dear,” he said, “if I can serve you at any time, both for Jack’s
sake and your own, I hope that you will let me know of it.”

She looked at him a moment, and he saw her colour come and go, arguing a
sudden agitation.

“You tempt me, sir,” she said, with a wistful smile.

“Then yield to the temptation, child,” he urged her kindly, those keen,
penetrating eyes of his perceiving trouble here.

“It isn’t for myself,” she responded. “Yet there is something I would
ask you if I dare--something I had intended to ask you in any case if I
could find the opportunity. To be frank, that is why I was waiting there
in the garden just now. It was to waylay you. I hoped for a word with
you.”

“Well, well,” he encouraged her. “It should be the easier now, since in
a sense we find that we are old friends.”

He was so kind, so gentle, despite that stern, strong face of his, that
she melted at once to his persuasion.

“It is about Lieutenant Richard Butler,” she began.

“Ah,” said he lightly, “I feared as much when you said it was not for
yourself you had a favour to ask.”

But, looking at him, she instantly perceived how he had misunderstood
her.

“Mr. Butler,” she said, “is the officer who was guilty of the affair at
Tavora.”

He knit his brow in thought. “Butler-Tavora?” he muttered questioningly.
Suddenly his memory found what it was seeking. “Oh yes, the violated
nunnery.” His thin lips tightened; the sternness of his ace increased.
“Yes?” he inquired, but the tone was now forbidding.

Nevertheless she was not deterred. “Mr. Butler is Lady O’Moy’s brother,”
 she said.

He stared a moment, taken aback. “Good God! Ye don’t say so, child! Her
brother! O’Moy’s brother-in-law! And O’Moy never said a word to me about
it.

“What should he say? Sir Terence himself pledged his word to the Council
of Regency that Mr. Butler would be shot when taken.”

“Did he, egad!” He was still further surprised out of his sternness.
“Something of a Roman this O’Moy in his conception of duty! Hum! The
Council no doubt demanded this?”

“So I understand, my lord. Lady O’Moy, realising her brother’s grave
danger, is very deeply troubled.”

“Naturally,” he agreed. “But what can I do, Miss Armytage? What were the
actual facts, do you happen to know?”

She recited them, putting the case bravely for the scapegrace Mr.
Butler, dwelling particularly upon the error under which he was
labouring, that he had imagined himself to be knocking at the gates of
a monastery of Dominican friars, that he had broken into the convent
because denied admittance, and because he suspected some treacherous
reason for that denial.

He heard her out, watching her with those keen eyes of his the while.

“Hum! You make out so good a case for him that one might almost believe
you instructed by the gentleman himself. Yet I gather that nothing has
since been heard of him?”

“Nothing, sir, since he vanished from Tavora, nearly, two months ago.
And I have only repeated to your lordship the tale that was told by the
sergeant and the troopers who reported the matter to Sir Robert Craufurd
on their return.”

He was very thoughtful. Leaning on the balustrade, he looked out
across the sunlit valley, turning his boldly chiselled profile to his
companion. At last he spoke slowly, reflectively: “But if this were
really so--a mere blunder--I see no sufficient grounds to threaten him
with capital punishment. His subsequent desertion, if he has deserted--I
mean if nothing has happened to him--is really the graver matter of the
two.”

“I gathered, sir, that he was to be sacrificed to the Council of
Regency--a sort of scapegoat.”

He swung round sharply, and the sudden blaze of his eyes almost
terrified her. Instantly he was cold again and inscrutable. “Ah! You are
oddly well informed throughout. But of course you would be,” he added,
with an appraising look into that intelligent face in which he now
caught a faint likeness of Jack Armytage. “Well, well, my dear, I am
very glad you have told me of this. If Mr. Butler is ever taken and in
danger--there will be a court-martial, of course--send me word of it,
and I will see what I can do, both for your sake and for the sake of
strict justice.”

“Oh, not for my sake,” she protested, reddening slightly at the gentle
imputation. “Mr. Butler is nothing to me--that is to say, he is just my
cousin. It is for Una’s sake that I am asking this.”

“Why, then, for Lady O’Moy’s sake, since you ask it,” he replied
readily. “But,” he warned her, “say nothing of it until Mr. Butler is
found.” It is possible he believed that Butler never would be found.
“And remember, I promise only to give the matter my attention. If it is
as you represent it, I think you may be sure that the worst that will
befall Mr. Butler will be dismissal from the service. He deserves that.
But I hope I should be the last man to permit a British officer to be
used as a scapegoat or a burnt-offering to the mob or to any Council of
Regency. By the way, who told you this about a scapegoat?”

“Captain Tremayne.”

“Captain Tremayne? Oh, the man who killed Samoval?”

“He didn’t,” she cried.

On that almost fierce denial his lordship looked at her, raising his
eyebrows in astonishment.

“But I am told that he did, and he is under arrest for it this
moment--for that, and for breaking my order against duelling.”

“You were not told the truth, my lord. Captain Tremayne says that he
didn’t, and if he says so it is so.”

“Oh, of course, Miss Armytage!” He was a man of unparalleled valour and
boldness, yet so fierce was she in that moment that for the life of him
he dared not have contradicted her.

“Captain Tremayne is the most honourable man I know,” she continued,
“and if he had killed Samoval he would never have denied it; he would
have proclaimed it to all the world.”

“There is no need for all this heat, my dear,” he reassured her. “The
point is not one that can remain in doubt. The seconds of the duel will
be forthcoming; and they will tell us who were the principals.”

“There were no seconds,” she informed him.

“No seconds!” he cried in horror. “D’ ye mean they just fought a rough
and tumble fight?”

“I mean they never fought at all. As for this tale of a duel, I ask
your lordship: Had Captain Tremayne desired a secret meeting with Count
Samoval, would he have chosen this of all places in which to hold it?”

“This?”

“This. The fight--whoever fought it--took place in the quadrangle there
at midnight.”

He was overcome with astonishment, and he showed it.

“Upon my soul,” he said, “I do not appear to have been told any of
the facts. Strange that O’Moy should never have mentioned that,” he
muttered, and then inquired suddenly: “Where was Tremayne arrested?”

“Here,” she informed him.

“Here? He was here, then, at midnight? What was he doing here?”

“I don’t know. But whatever he was doing, can your lordship believe that
he would have come here to fight a secret duel?”

“It certainly puts a monstrous strain upon belief,” said he. “But what
can he have been doing here?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated. She wanted to add a warning of O’Moy. She
was tempted to tell his lordship of the odd words that O’Moy had used to
her last night concerning Tremayne. But she hesitated, and her courage
failed her. Lord Wellington was so great a man, bearing the destinies of
nations on his shoulders, and already he had wasted upon her so much
of the time that belonged to the world and history, that she feared to
trespass further; and whilst she hesitated came Colquhoun Grant clanking
across the quadrangle looking for his lordship. He had come up, he
announced, standing straight and stiff before them, to see O’Moy, but
hearing of Lord Wellington’s presence, had preferred to see his lordship
in the first instance.

“And indeed you arrive very opportunely, Grant,” his lordship confessed.

He turned to take his leave of Jack Armytage’s niece.

“I’ll not forget either Mr. Butler or Captain Tremayne,” he promised
her, and his stern face softened into a gentle, friendly smile. “They
are very fortunate in their champion.”




CHAPTER XV. THE WALLET


“A queer, mysterious business this death of Samoval,” said Colonel
Grant.

“So I was beginning to perceive,” Wellington agreed, his brow dark.

They were alone together in the quadrangle under the trellis, through
which the sun, already high, was dappling the table at which his
lordship sat.

“It would be easier to read if it were not for the duelling swords.
Those and the nature of Samoval’s wound certainly point unanswerably to
a duel. Otherwise there would be considerable evidence that Samoval was
a spy caught in the act and dealt with out of hand as he deserved.”

“How? Count Samoval a spy?”

“In the French interest,” answered the colonel without emotion, “acting
upon the instructions of the Souza faction, whose tool he had become.”
 And Colonel Grant proceeded to relate precisely what he knew of Samoval.

Lord Wellington sat awhile in silence, cogitating. Then he rose, and
his piercing eyes looked up at the colonel, who stood a good head taller
than himself.

“Is this the evidence of which you spoke?”

“By no means,” was the answer. “The evidence I have secured is much more
palpable. I have it here.” He produced a little wallet of red morocco
bearing the initial “S” surmounted by a coronet. Opening it, he selected
from it some papers, speaking the while. “I thought it as well before
I left last night to make an examination of the body. This is what I
found, and it contains, among other lesser documents, these to which I
would draw your lordship’s attention. First this.” And he placed in
Lord Wellington’s hand a holograph note from the Prince of Esslingen
introducing the bearer, M. de la Fleche, his confidential agent, who
would consult with the Count, and thanking the Count for the valuable
information already received from him.

His lordship sat down again to read the letter. “It is a full
confirmation of what you have told me,” he said calmly.

“Then this,” said Colonel Grant, and he placed upon the table a note in
French of the approximate number and disposition of the British troops
in Portugal at the time. “The handwriting is Samoval’s own, as those who
know it will have no difficulty in discerning. And now this, sir.” He
unfolded a small sketch map, bearing the title also in French: Probable
position and extent of the fortifications north of Lisbon.

“The notes at the foot,” he added, “are in cipher, and it is the
ordinary cipher employed by the French, which in itself proves how
deeply Samoval was involved. Here is a translation of it.” And he placed
before his chief a sheet of paper on which Lord Wellington read:

“This is based upon my own personal knowledge of the country, odd scraps
of information received from time to time, and my personal verification
of the roads closed to traffic in that region. It is intended merely
as a guide to the actual locale of the fortifications, an exact plan of
which I hope shortly to obtain.”

His lordship considered it very attentively, but without betraying the
least discomposure.

“For a man working upon such slight data as he himself confesses,” was
the quiet comment, “he is damnably accurate. It is as well, I think,
that this did not reach Marshal Massena.”

“My own assumption is that he put off sending it, intending to replace
it by the actual plan--which he here confesses to the expectation of
obtaining shortly.”

“I think he died at the right moment. Anything else?”

“Indeed,” said Colonel Grant, “I have kept the best for the last.”
 And unfolding yet another document, he placed it in the hands of the
Commander-in-Chief. It was Lord Liverpool’s note of the troops to be
embarked for Lisbon in June and July--the note abstracted from the
dispatch carried by Captain Garfield.

His lordship’s lips tightened as he considered it. “His death was
timely indeed, damned timely; and the man who killed him deserves to be
mentioned in dispatches. Nothing else, I suppose?”

“The rest is of little consequence, sir.”

“Very well.” He rose. “You will leave these with me, and the wallet as
well, if you please. I am on my way to confer with the members of the
Council of Regency, and I am glad to go armed with so stout a weapon
as this. Whatever may be the ultimate finding of the court-martial, the
present assumption must be that Samoval met the death of a spy caught
in the act, as you suggested. That is the only conclusion the Portuguese
Government can draw when I lay these papers before it. They will
effectively silence all protests.”

“Shall I tell O’Moy?” inquired the colonel.

“Oh, certainly,” answered his lordship, instantly to change his mind.
“Stay!” He considered, his chin in his hand, his eyes dreamy. “Better
not, perhaps. Better not tell anybody. Let us keep this to ourselves for
the present. It has no direct bearing on the matter to be tried. By the
way, when does the court-martial sit?”

“I have just heard that Marshal Beresford has ordered it to sit on
Thursday here at Monsanto.”

His lordship considered. “Perhaps I shall be present. I may be at Torres
Vedras until then. It is a very odd affair. What is your own impression
of it, Grant? Have you formed any?”

Grant smiled darkly. “I have been piecing things together. The result
is rather curious, and still very mystifying, still leaving a deal to be
explained, and somehow this wallet doesn’t fit into the scheme at all.”

“You shall tell me about it as we ride into Lisbon. I want you to come
with me. Lady O’Moy must forgive me if I take French leave, since she is
nowhere to be found.”

The truth was, that her ladyship had purposely gone into hiding, after
the fashion of suffering animals that are denied expression of their
pain. She had gone off with her load of sorrow and anxiety into the
thicket on the flank of Monsanto, and there Sylvia found her presently,
dejectedly seated by a spring on a bank that was thick with flowering
violets. Her ladyship was in tears, her mind swollen to bursting-point
by the secret which it sought to contain but felt itself certainly
unable to contain much longer.

“Why, Una dear,” cried Miss Armytage, kneeling beside her and putting a
motherly arm about that full-grown child, “what is this?”

Her ladyship wept copiously, the springs of her grief gushing forth in
response to that sympathetic touch.

“Oh, my dear, I am so distressed. I shall go mad, I think. I am sure I
have never deserved all this trouble. I have always been considerate
of others. You know I wouldn’t give pain to any one. And--and Dick has
always been so thoughtless.”

“Dick?” said Miss Armytage, and there was less sympathy in her voice.
“It is Dick you are thinking about at present?”

“Of course. All this trouble has come through Dick. I mean,” she
recovered, “that all my troubles began with this affair of Dick’s. And
now there is Ned under arrest and to be court-martialled.”

“But what has Captain Tremayne to do with Dick?”

“Nothing, of course,” her ladyship agreed, with more than usual
self-restraint. “But it’s one trouble on another. Oh, it’s more than I
can bear.”

“I know, my dear, I know,” Miss Armytage said soothingly, and her own
voice was not so steady.

“You don’t know! How can you? It isn’t your brother or your friend. It
isn’t as if you cared very much for either of them. If you did, if you
loved Dick or Ned, you might realise what I am suffering.”

Miss Armytage’s eyes looked straight ahead into the thick green foliage,
and there was an odd smile, half wistful, half scornful, on her lips.

“Yet I have done what I could,” she said presently. “I have spoken to
Lord Wellington about them both.”

Lady O’Moy checked her tears to look at her companion, and there was
dread in her eyes.

“You have spoken to Lord Wellington?”

“Yes. The opportunity came, and I took it.”

“And whatever did you tell him?” She was all a-tremble now, as she
clutched Miss Armytage’s hand.

Miss Armytage related what had passed; how she had explained the true
facts of Dick’s case to his lordship; how she had protested her faith
that Tremayne was incapable of lying, and that if he said he had not
killed Samoval it was certain that he had not done so; and, finally, how
his lordship had promised to bear both cases in his mind.

“That doesn’t seem very much,” her ladyship complained.

“But he said that he would never allow a British officer to be made a
scapegoat, and that if things proved to be as I stated them he would
see that the worst that happened to Dick would be his dismissal from the
army. He asked me to let him know immediately if Dick were found.”

More than ever was her ladyship on the very edge of confiding. A chance
word might have broken down the last barrier of her will. But that word
was not spoken, and so she was given the opportunity of first consulting
her brother.

He laughed when he heard the story.

“A trap to take me, that’s all,” he pronounced it. “My dear girl,
that stiff-necked martinet knows nothing of forgiveness for a military
offence. Discipline is the god at whose shrine he worships.” And he
afforded her anecdotes to illustrate and confirm his assertion of Lord
Wellington’s ruthlessness. “I tell you,” he concluded, “it’s nothing
but a trap to catch me. And if you had been fool enough to yield, and to
have blabbed of my presence to Sylvia, you would have had it proved to
you.”

She was terrified and of course convinced, for she was easy of
conviction, believing always the last person to whom she spoke. She sat
down on one of the boxes that furnished that cheerless refuge of Mr.
Butler’s.

“Then what’s to become of Ned?” she cried. “Oh, I had hoped that we had
found a way out at last.”

He raised himself on his elbow on the camp-bed they had fitted up for
him.

“Be easy now,” he bade her impatiently. “They can’t do anything to Ned
until they find him guilty; and how are they going to find him guilty
when he’s innocent?”

“Yes; but the appearances!”

“Fiddlesticks!” he answered her--and the expression chosen was a
mere concession to her sex, and not at all what Mr. Butler intended.
“Appearances can’t establish guilt. Do be sensible, and remember that
they will have to prove that he killed Samoval. And you can’t prove a
thing to be what it isn’t. You can’t!”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain sure,” he replied with emphasis.

“Do you know that I shall have to give evidence before the court?” she
announced resentfully.

It was an announcement that gave him pause. Thoughtfully he stroked his
abominable tuft of red beard. Then he dismissed the matter with a shrug
and a smile.

“Well, and what of it?” he cried. “They are not likely to bully you or
cross-examine you. Just tell them what you saw from the balcony. Indeed
you can’t very well say anything else, or they will see that you are
lying, and then heaven alone knows what may happen to you, as well as to
me.”

She got up in a pet. “You’re callous, Dick--callous!” she told him. “Oh,
I wish you had never come to me for shelter.”

He looked at her and sneered. “That’s a matter you can soon mend,” he
told her. “Call up Terence and the others and have me shot. I promise
I shall make no resistance. You see, I’m not able to resist even if I
would.”

“Oh, how can you think it?” She was indignant.

“Well, what is a poor devil to think? You blow hot and cold all in a
breath. I’m sick and ill and feverish,” he continued with self-pity,
“and now even you find me a trouble. I wish to God they’d shoot me and
make an end. I’m sure it would be best for everybody.”

And now she was on her knees beside him, soothing him; protesting that
he had misunderstood her; that she had meant--oh, she didn’t know what
she had meant, she was so distressed on his account.

“And there’s never the need to be,” he assured her. “Surely you can be
guided by me if you want to help me. As soon as ever my leg gets well
again I’ll be after fending for myself, and trouble you no further. But
if you want to shelter me until then, do it thoroughly, and don’t give
way to fear at every shadow without substance that falls across your
path.”

She promised it, and on that promise left him; and, believing him, she
bore herself more cheerfully for the remainder of the day. But that
evening after they had dined her fears and anxieties drove her at last
to seek her natural and legal protector.

Sir Terence had sauntered off towards the house, gloomy and silent as he
had been throughout the meal. She ran after him now, and came tripping
lightly at his side up the steps. She put her arm through his.

“Terence dear, you are not going back to work again?” she pleaded.

He stopped, and from his fine height looked down upon her with a curious
smile. Slowly he disengaged his arm from the clasp of her own. “I am
afraid I must,” he answered coldly. “I have a great deal to do, and I am
short of a secretary. When this inquiry is over I shall have more time
to myself, perhaps.” There was something so repellent in his voice, in
his manner of uttering those last words, that she stood rebuffed and
watched him vanish into the building.

Then she stamped her foot and her pretty mouth trembled.

“Oaf!” she said aloud.




CHAPTER XVI. THE EVIDENCE


The board of officers convened by Marshal Beresford to form the court
that was to try Captain Tremayne, was presided over by General Sir Harry
Stapleton, who was in command of the British troops quartered in Lisbon.
It included, amongst others, the adjutant-general, Sir Terence O’Moy;
Colonel Fletcher of the Engineers, who had come in haste from Torres
Vedras, having first desired to be included in the board chiefly on
account of his friendship for Tremayne; and Major Carruthers. The
judge-advocate’s task of conducting the case against the prisoner was
deputed to the quartermaster of Tremayne’s own regiment, Major Swan.

The court sat in a long, cheerless hall, once the refectory of the
Franciscans, who had been the first tenants of Monsanto. It was
stone-flagged, the windows set at a height of some ten feet from the
ground, the bare, whitewashed walls hung with very wooden portraits of
long-departed kings and princes of Portugal who had been benefactors of
the order.

The court occupied the abbot’s table, which was set on a shallow dais at
the end of the room--a table of stone with a covering of oak, over which
a green cloth had been spread; the officers--twelve in number, besides
the president--sat with their backs to the wall, immediately under the
inevitable picture of the Last Supper.

The court being sworn, Captain Tremayne was brought in by the
provost-marshal’s guard and given a stool placed immediately before and
a few paces from the table. Perfectly calm and imperturbable, he saluted
the court, and sat down, his guards remaining some paces behind him.

He had declined all offers of a friend to represent him, on the grounds
that the court could not possibly afford him a case to answer.

The president, a florid, rather pompous man, who spoke with a faint
lisp, cleared his throat and read the charge against the prisoner from
the sheet with which he had been supplied--the charge of having violated
the recent enactment against duelling made by the Commander-in-Chief
of his Majesty’s forces in the Peninsula, in so far as he had fought:
a duel with Count Jeronymo de Samoval, and of murder in so far as that
duel, conducted in an irregular manner, and without any witnesses, had
resulted in the death of the said Count Jeronymo de Samoval.

“How say you, then, Captain Tremayne?” the judge-advocate challenged
him. “Are you guilty of these charges or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

The president sat back and observed the prisoner with an eye that was
officially benign. Tremayne’s glance considered the court and met the
concerned and grave regard of his colonel, of his friend Carruthers and
of two other friends of his own regiment, the cold indifference of three
officers of the Fourteenth--then stationed in Lisbon with whom he was
unacquainted, and the utter inscrutability of O’Moy’s rather lowering
glance, which profoundly intrigued him, and, lastly, the official
hostility of Major Swan, who was on his feet setting forth the case
against him. Of the remaining members of the court he took no heed.

From the opening address it did not seem to Captain Tremayne as if this
case--which had been hurriedly prepared by Major Swan, chiefly that
same morning would amount to very much. Briefly the major announced his
intention of establishing to the satisfaction of the court how, on the
night of the 28th of May, the prisoner, in flagrant violation of an
enactment in a general order of the 26th of that same month, had
engaged in a duel with Count Jeronymo de Samoval, a peer of the realm of
Portugal.

Followed a short statement of the case from the point of view of the
prosecution, an anticipation of the evidence to be called, upon which
the major thought--rather sanguinely, opined Captain Tremayne--to
convict the accused. He concluded with an assurance that the evidence of
the prisoner’s guilt was as nearly direct as evidence could be in a case
of murder.

The first witness called was the butler, Mullins. He was introduced by
the sergeant-major stationed by the double doors at the end of the hall
from the ante-room where the witnesses commanded to be present were in
waiting.

Mullins, rather less venerable than usual, as a consequence of agitation
and affliction on behalf of Captain Tremayne, to whom he was attached,
stated nervously the facts within his knowledge. He was occupied with
the silver in his pantry, having remained up in case Sir Terence, who
was working late in his study, should require anything before going to
bed. Sir Terence called him, and--

“At what time did Sir Terence call you?” asked the major.

“It was ten minutes past twelve, sir, by the clock in my pantry.”

“You are sure that the clock was right?”


“Quite sure, sir; I had put it right that same evening.”

“Very well, then. Sir Terence called you at ten minutes past twelve.
Pray continue.”

“He gave me a letter addressed to the Commissary-general. ‘Take that,’
says he, ‘to the sergeant of the guard at once, and tell him to be
sure that it is forwarded to the Commissary-General first thing in the
morning.’ I went out at once, and on the lawn in the quadrangle I saw a
man lying on his back on the grass and another man kneeling beside him.
I ran across to them. It was a bright, moonlight night--bright as day
it was, and you could see quite clear. The gentleman that was kneeling
looks up, at me, and I sees it was Captain Tremayne, sir. ‘What’s this,
Captain dear?’ says I. ‘It’s Count Samoval, and he’s kilt,’ says he,
‘for God’s sake, go and fetch somebody.’ So I ran back to tell Sir
Terence, and Sir Terence he came out with me, and mighty startled he
was at what he found there. ‘What’s happened?’ says he, and the captain
answers him just as he had answered me: ‘It’s Count Samoval, and he’s
kilt. ‘But how did it happen?’ says Sir Terence. ‘Sure and that’s just
what I want to know,’ says the captain; ‘I found him here.’ And then Sir
Terence turns to me, and ‘Mullins,’ says he, ‘just fetch the guard,’ and
of course, I went at once.”

“Was there any one else present?” asked the prosecutor.

“Not in the quadrangle, sir. But Lady O’Moy was on the balcony of her
room all the time.”

“Well, then, you fetched the guard. What happened when you returned?”

“Colonel Grant arrived, sir, and I understood him to say that he had
been following Count Samoval...”

“Which way did Colonel Grant come?” put in the president.

“By the gate from the terrace.”

“Was it open?”

“No, sir. Sir Terence himself went to open the wicket when Colonel Grant
knocked.”

Sir Harry nodded and Major Swan resumed the examination.

“What happened next?”

“Sir Terence ordered the captain under arrest.”

“Did Captain Tremayne submit at once?”

“Well, not quite at once, sir. He naturally made some bother. ‘Good
God!’ he says, ‘ye’ll never be after thinking I kilt him? I tell you I
just found him here like this.’ ‘What were ye doing here, then?’ says
Sir Terence. ‘I was coming to see you,’ says the captain. ‘What about?’
says Sir Terence, and with that the captain got angry, said he refused
to be cross-questioned and went off to report himself under arrest as he
was bid.”

That closed the butler’s evidence, and the judge-advocate looked across
at the prisoner.

“Have you any questions for the witness?” he inquired.

“None,” replied Captain Tremayne. “He has given his evidence very
faithfully and accurately.”

Major Swan invited the court to question the witness in any manner it
considered desirable. The only one to avail himself of the invitation
was Carruthers, who, out of his friendship and concern for Tremayne--and
a conviction of Tremayne’s innocence begotten chiefly by that friendship
desired to bring out anything that might tell in his favour.

“What was Captain Tremayne’s bearing when he spoke to you and to Sir
Terence?”

“Quite as usual, sir.”

“He was quite calm, not at all perturbed?”

“Devil a bit; not until Sir Terence ordered him under arrest, and then
he was a little hot.”

“Thank you, Mullins.”

Dismissed by the court, Mullins would have departed, but that upon being
told by the sergeant-major that he was at liberty to remain if he chose
he found a seat on one of the benches ranged against the wall.

The next witness was Sir Terence, who gave his evidence quietly from his
place at the board immediately on the president’s right. He was pale,
but otherwise composed, and the first part of his evidence was no more
than a confirmation of what Mullins had said, an exact and strictly
truthful statement of the circumstances as he had witnessed them from
the moment when Mullins had summoned him.

“You were present, I believe, Sir Terence,” said Major Swan, “at an
altercation that arose on the previous day between Captain Tremayne and
the deceased?”

“Yes. It happened at lunch here at Monsanto.”

“What was the nature of it?”

“Count Samoval permitted himself to criticise adversely Lord
Wellington’s enactment against duelling, and Captain Tremayne defended
it. They became a little heated, and the fact was mentioned that Samoval
himself was a famous swordsman. Captain Tremayne made the remark that
famous swordsmen were required by Count Samoval’s country to, save it
from invasion. The remark was offensive to the deceased, and although
the subject was abandoned out of regard for the ladies present, it was
abandoned on a threat from Count Samoval to continue it later.”

“Was it so continued?”

“Of that I have no knowledge.”

Invited to cross-examine the witness, Captain Tremayne again declined,
admitting freely that all that Sir Terence had said was strictly true.
Then Carruthers, who appeared to be intent to act as the prisoner’s
friend, took up the examination of his chief.

“It is of course admitted that Captain Tremayne enjoyed free access
to Monsanto practically at all hours in his capacity as your military
secretary, Sir Terence?”

“Admitted,” said Sir Terence.

“And it is therefore possible that he might have come upon the body of
the deceased just as Mullins came upon it?”

“It is possible, certainly. The evidence to come will no doubt determine
whether it is a tenable opinion.”

“Admitting this, then, the attitude in which Captain Tremayne was
discovered would be a perfectly natural one? It would be natural that he
should investigate the identity and hurt of the man he found there?”

“Certainly.”

“But it would hardly be natural that he should linger by the body of
a man he had himself slain, thereby incurring the risk of being
discovered?”

“That is a question for the court rather than for me.”

“Thank you, Sir Terence.” And, as no one else desired to question him,
Sir Terence resumed his seat, and Lady O’Moy was called.

She came in very white and trembling, accompanied by Miss Armytage,
whose admittance was suffered by the court, since she would not be
called upon to give evidence. One of the officers of the Fourteenth
seated on the extreme right of the table made gallant haste to set a
chair for her ladyship, which she accepted gratefully.

The oath administered, she was invited gently by Major Swan to tell the
court what she knew of the case before them.

“But--but I know nothing,” she faltered in evident distress, and Sir
Terence, his elbow leaning on the table, covered his mouth with his hand
that its movements might not betray him. His eyes glowered upon her with
a ferocity that was hardly dissembled.

“If you will take the trouble to tell the court what you saw from your
balcony,” the major insisted, “the court will be grateful.”

Perceiving her agitation, and attributing it to nervousness, moved
also by that delicate loveliness of hers, and by deference to the
adjutant-generates lady, Sir Harry Stapleton intervened.

“Is Lady O’Moy’s evidence really necessary?” he asked. “Does it
contribute any fresh fact regarding the discovery of the body?”

“No, sir,” Major Swan admitted. “It is merely a corroboration of what we
have already heard from Mullins and Sir Terence.”

“Then why unnecessarily distress this lady?”

“Oh, for my own part, sir--” the prosecutor was submitting, when Sir
Terence cut in:

“I think that in the prisoner’s interest perhaps Lady O’Moy will not
mind being distressed a little.” It was at her he looked, and for
her and Tremayne alone that he intended the cutting lash of sarcasm
concealed from the rest of the court by his smooth accent. “Mullins has
said, I think, that her ladyship was on the balcony when he came into
the quadrangle. Her evidence therefore, takes us further back in point
of time than does Mullins’s.” Again the sarcastic double meaning was
only for those two. “Considering that the prisoner is being tried for
his life, I do not think we should miss anything that may, however
slightly, affect our judgment.”

“Sir Terence is right, I think, sir,” the judge-advocate supported.

“Very well, then,” said the president. “Proceed, if you please.”

“Will you be good enough to tell the court, Lady O’Moy, how you came to
be upon the balcony?”

Her pallor had deepened, and her eyes looked more than ordinarily large
and child-like as they turned this way and that to survey the members
of the court. Nervously she dabbed her lips with a handkerchief before
answering mechanically as she had been schooled:

“I heard a cry, and I ran out--”

“You were in bed at the time, of course?” quoth her husband,
interrupting.

“What on earth has that to do with it, Sir Terence?” the president
rebuked him, out of his earnest desire to cut this examination as short
as possible.

“The question, sir, does not seem to me to be without point,” replied
O’Moy. He was judicially smooth and self-contained. “It is intended
to enable us to form an opinion as to the lapse of time between her
ladyship’s hearing the cry and reaching the balcony.”

Grudgingly the president admitted the point, and the question was
repeated.

“Ye-es,” came Lady O’Moy’s tremulous, faltering answer, “I was in bed.”

“But not asleep--or were you asleep?” rapped O’Moy again, and in answer
to the president’s impatient glance again explained himself: “We should
know whether perhaps the cry might not have been repeated several times
before her ladyship heard it. That is of value.”

“It would be more regular,” ventured the judge-advocate, “if Sir Terence
would reserve his examination of the witness until she has given her
evidence.”

“Very well,” grumbled Sir Terence, and he sat back, foiled for the
moment in his deliberate intent to torture her into admissions that must
betray her if made.

“I was not asleep,” she told the court, thus answering her husband’s
last question. “I heard the cry, and ran to the balcony at once.
That--that is all.”

“But what did you see from the balcony?” asked Major Swan.

“It was night, and of course--it--it was dark,” she answered.

“Surely not dark, Lady O’Moy? There was a moon, I think--a full moon?”

“Yes; but--but--there was a good deal of shadow in the garden, and--and
I couldn’t see anything at first.”

“But you did eventually?”

“Oh, eventually! Yes, eventually.” Her fingers were twisting and
untwisting the handkerchief they held, and her distressed loveliness was
very piteous to see. Yet it seems to have occurred to none of them that
this distress and the minor contradictions into which it led her were
the result of her intent to conceal the truth, of her terror lest it
should nevertheless be wrung from her. Only O’Moy, watching her and
reading in her every word and glance and gesture the signs of her
falsehood, knew the hideous thing she strove to hide, even, it seemed,
at the cost of her lover’s life. To his lacerated soul her torture was a
balm. Gloating, he watched her, then, and watched her lover, marvelling
at the blackguard’s complete self-mastery and impassivity even now.

Major Swan was urging her gently.

“Eventually, then, what was it that you saw?”

“I saw a man lying on the ground, and another kneeling over him, and
then--almost at once--Mullins came out, and--”

“I don’t think we need take this any further, Major Swan,” the president
again interposed. “We have heard what happened after Mullins came out.”

“Unless the prisoner wishes--” began the judge-advocate.

“By no means,” said Tremayne composedly. Although outwardly impassive,
he had been watching her intently, and it was his eyes that had
perturbed her more than anything in that court. It was she who must
determine for him how to proceed; how far to defend himself. He had
hoped that by now Dick Butler might have been got away, so that it would
have been safe to tell the whole truth, although he began to doubt how
far that could avail him, how far, indeed, it would be believed in the
absence of Dick Butler. Her evidence told him that such hopes as he may
have entertained had been idle, and that he must depend for his life
simply upon the court’s inability to bring the guilt home to him. In
this he had some confidence, for, knowing himself innocent, it seemed
to him incredible that he could be proven guilty. Failing that, nothing
short of the discovery of the real slayer of Samoval could save him--and
that was a matter wrapped in the profoundest mystery. The only man who
could conceivably have fought Samoval in such a place was Sir Terence
himself. But then it was utterly inconceivable that in that case Sir
Terence, who was the very soul of honour, should not only keep silent
and allow another man to suffer, but actually sit there in judgment
upon that other; and, besides, there was no quarrel, nor ever had been,
between Sir Terence and Samoval.

“There is,” Major Swan was saying, “just one other matter upon which I
should like to question Lady O’Moy.” And thereupon he proceeded to do
so: “Your ladyship will remember that on the day before the event in
which Count Samoval met his death he was one of a small luncheon party
at your house here in Monsanto.”

“Yes,” she replied, wondering fearfully what might be coming now.

“Would your ladyship be good enough to tell the court who were the other
members of that party?”

“It--it was hardly a party, sir,” she answered, with her unconquerable
insistence upon trifles. “We were just Sir Terence and myself, Miss
Armytage, Count Samoval, Colonel Grant, Major Carruthers and Captain
Tremayne.”

“Can your ladyship recall any words that passed between the deceased and
Captain Tremayne on that occasion--words of disagreement, I mean?”

She knew that there had been something, but in her benumbed state of
mind she was incapable of remembering what it was. All that remained in
her memory was Sylvia’s warning after she and her cousin had left the
table, Sylvia’s insistence that she should call Captain Tremayne away to
avoid trouble between himself and the Count. But, search as she would,
the actual subject of disagreement eluded her. Moreover, it occurred to
her suddenly, and sowed fresh terror in her soul, that, whatever it was,
it would tell against Captain Tremayne.

“I--I am afraid I don’t remember,” she faltered at last.

“Try to think, Lady O’Moy.”

“I--I have tried. But I--I can’t.” Her voice had fallen almost to a
whisper.

“Need we insist?” put in the president compassionately. “There are
sufficient witnesses as to what passed on that occasion without further
harassing her ladyship.”

“Quite so, sir,” the major agreed in his dry voice. “It only remains for
the prisoner to question the witness if he so wishes.”

Tremayne shook his head. “It is quite unnecessary, sir,” he assured the
president, and never saw the swift, grim smile that flashed across Sir
Terence’s stern face.

Of the court Sir Terence was the only member who could have desired to
prolong the painful examination of her ladyship. But he perceived from
the president’s attitude that he could not do so without betraying the
vindictiveness actuating him; and so he remained silent for the present.
He would have gone so far as to suggest that her ladyship should be
invited to remain in court against the possibility of further evidence
being presently required from her but that he perceived there was no
necessity to do so. Her deadly anxiety concerning the prisoner must in
itself be sufficient to determine her to remain, as indeed it proved.
Accompanied and half supported by Miss Armytage, who was almost as pale
as herself, but otherwise very steady in her bearing, Lady O’Moy made
her way, with faltering steps to the benches ranged against the side
wall, and sat there to hear the remainder of the proceedings.

After the uninteresting and perfunctory evidence of the sergeant of the
guard who had been present when the prisoner was ordered under arrest,
the next witness called was Colonel Grant. His testimony was strictly in
accordance with the facts which we know him to have witnessed, but when
he was in the middle of his statement an interruption occurred.

At the extreme right of the dais on which the table stood there was a
small oaken door set in the wall and giving access to a small ante-room
that was known, rightly or wrongly, as the abbot’s chamber. That
anteroom communicated directly with what was now the guardroom, which
accounts for the new-comer being ushered in that way by the corporal at
the time.

At the opening of that door the members of the court looked round in
sharp annoyance, suspecting here some impertinent intrusion. The next
moment, however, this was changed to respectful surprise. There was a
scraping of chairs and they were all on their feet in token of respect
for the slight man in the grey undress frock who entered. It was Lord
Wellington.

Saluting the members of the court with two fingers to his cocked hat,
he immediately desired them to sit, peremptorily waving his hand, and
requesting the president not to allow his entrance to interrupt or
interfere with the course of the inquiry.

“A chair here for me, if you please, sergeant,” he called and, when it
was fetched, took his seat at the end of the table, with his back to the
door through which he had come and immediately facing the prosecutor.
He retained his hat, but placed his riding-crop on the table before
him; and the only thing he would accept was an officer’s notes of the
proceedings as far as they had gone, which that officer himself was
prompt to offer. With a repeated injunction to the court to proceed,
Lord Wellington became instantly absorbed in the study of these notes.

Colonel Grant, standing very straight and stiff in the originally red
coat which exposure to many weathers had faded to an autumnal brown,
continued and concluded his statement of what he had seen and heard on
the night of the 28th of May in the garden at Monsanto.

The judge-advocate now invited him to turn his memory back to the
luncheon-party at Sir Terence’s on the 27th, and to tell the court
of the altercation that had passed on that occasion between Captain
Tremayne and Count Samoval.

“The conversation at table,” he replied, “turned, as was perhaps quite
natural, upon the recently published general order prohibiting duelling
and making it a capital offence for officers in his Majesty’s service
in the Peninsula. Count Samoval stigmatised the order as a degrading
and arbitrary one, and spoke in defence of single combat as the only
honourable method of settling differences between gentlemen. Captain
Tremayne dissented rather sharply, and appeared to resent the term
‘degrading’ applied by the Count to the enactment. Words followed, and
then some one--Lady O’Moy, I think, and as I imagine with intent
to soothe the feelings of Count Samoval, which appeared to be
ruffled--appealed to his vanity by mentioning the fact that he was
himself a famous swordsman. To this Captain Tremayne’s observation was
a rather unfortunate one, although I must confess that I was fully in
sympathy with it at the time. He said, as nearly as I remember, that at
the moment Portugal was in urgent need of famous swords to defend her
from invasion and not to increase the disorders at home.”

Lord Wellington looked up from the notes and thoughtfully stroked his
high-bridged nose. His stern, handsome face was coldly impassive, his
fine eyes resting upon the prisoner, but his attention all to what
Colonel Grant was saying.

“It was a remark of which Samoval betrayed the bitterest resentment.
He demanded of Captain Tremayne that he should be more precise, and
Tremayne replied that, whilst he had spoken generally, Samoval was
welcome to the cap if he found it fitted him. To that he added a
suggestion that, as the conversation appeared to be tiresome to the
ladies, it would be better to change its topic. Count Samoval consented,
but with the promise, rather threateningly delivered, that it should be
continued at another time. That, sir, is all, I think.”

“Have you any questions for the witness, Captain Tremayne?” inquired the
judge-advocate.

As before, Captain Tremayne’s answer was in the negative, coupled
with the now usual admission that Colonel Grant’s statement accorded
perfectly with his own recollection of the facts.

The court, however, desired enlightenment on several subjects. Came
first of all Carruthers’s inquiries as to the bearing of the prisoner
when ordered under arrest, eliciting from Colonel Grant a variant of the
usual reply.

“It was not inconsistent with innocence,” he said.

It was an answer which appeared to startle the court, and perhaps
Carruthers would have acted best in Tremayne’s interest had he left the
question there. But having obtained so much he eagerly sought for more.

“Would you say that it was inconsistent with guilt?” he cried.

Colonel Grant smiled slowly, and slowly shook his head. “I fear I could
not go so far, as that,” he answered, thereby plunging poor Carruthers
into despair.

And now Colonel Fletcher voiced a question agitating the minds of
several members of the count.

“Colonel Grant,” he said, “you have told us that on the night in
question you had Count Samoval under observation, and that upon word
being brought to you of his movements by one of your agents you yourself
followed him to Monsanto. Would you be good enough to tell the court why
you were watching the deceased’s movements at the time?”

Colonel Grant glanced at Lord Wellington. He smiled a little
reflectively and shook his head.

“I am afraid that the public interest will not allow me to answer your
question. Since, however, Lord Wellington himself is present, I
would suggest that you ask his lordship whether I am to give you the
information you require.”

“Certainly not,” said his lordship crisply, without awaiting further
question. “Indeed, one of my reasons for being present is to ensure that
nothing on that score shall transpire.”

There followed a moment’s silence. Then the president ventured a
question. “May we ask, sir, at least whether Colonel Grant’s observation
of Count Samoval resulted from any knowledge of, or expectation of, this
duel that was impending?”

“Certainly you may ask that,” Lord Wellington, consented.

“It did not, sir,” said Colonel Grant in answer to the question.

“What grounds had you, Colonel Grant, for assuming that Count Samoval
was going to Monsanto?” the president asked.

“Chiefly the direction taken.”

“And nothing else?”

“I think we are upon forbidden ground again,” said Colonel Grant, and
again he looked at Lord Wellington for direction.

“I do not see the point of the question,” said Lord Wellington, replying
to that glance. “Colonel Grant has quite plainly informed the court that
his observation of Count Samoval had no slightest connection with this
duel, nor was inspired by any knowledge or suspicion on his part that
any such duel was to be fought. With that I think the court should be
content. It has been necessary for Colonel Grant to explain to the court
his own presence at Monsanto at midnight on the 28th. It would have been
better, perhaps, had he simply stated that it was fortuitous, although
I can understand that the court might have hesitated to accept such
a statement. That, however, is really all that concerns the matter.
Colonel Grant happened to be there. That is all that the court need
remember. Let me add the assurance that it would not in the least
assist the court to know more, so far as the case under consideration is
concerned.”

In view of that the president notified that he had nothing further to
ask the witness, and Colonel Grant saluted and withdrew to a seat near
Lady O’Moy.

There followed the evidence of Major Carruthers with regard to the
dispute between Count Samoval and Captain Tremayne, which substantially
bore out what Sir Terence and Colonel Grant had already said,
notwithstanding that it manifested a strong bias in favour of the
prisoner.

“The conversation which Samoval threatened to resume does not appear to
have been resumed,” he added in conclusion.

“How can you say that?” Major Swan asked him.

“I may state my opinion, sir,” flashed Carruthers, his chubby face
reddening.

“Indeed, sir, you may not,” the president assured him. “You are upon
oath to give evidence of facts directly within your own personal
knowledge.”

“It is directly within my own personal knowledge that Captain Tremayne
was called away from the table by Lady O’Moy, and that he did not have
another opportunity of speaking with Count Samoval that day. I saw the
Count leave shortly after, and at the time Captain Tremayne was still
with her ladyship--as her ladyship can testify if necessary. He spent
the remainder of the afternoon with me at work, and we went home
together in the evening. We share the same lodging in Alcantara.”

“There was still all of the next day,” said Sir Harry. “Do you say that
the prisoner was never out of your sight on that day too?”

“I do not; but I can’t believe--”

“I am afraid you are going to state opinions again,” Major Swan
interposed.

“Yet it is evidence of a kind,” insisted Carruthers, with the tenacity
of a bull-dog. He looked as if he would make it a personal matter
between himself and Major Swan if he were not allowed to proceed. “I
can’t believe that Captain Tremayne would have embroiled himself
further with Count Samoval. Captain Tremayne has too high a regard for
discipline and for orders, and he is the least excitable man I have ever
known. Nor do I believe that he would have consented to meet Samoval
without my knowledge.”

“Not perhaps unless Captain Tremayne desired to keep the matter secret,
in view of the general order, which is precisely what it is contended
that he did.”

“Falsely contended, then,” snapped Major Carruthers, to be instantly
rebuked by the president.

He sat down in a huff, and the judge-advocate called Private Bates, who
had been on sentry duty on the night of the 28th, to corroborate the
evidence of the sergeant of the guard as to the hour at which the
prisoner had driven up to Monsanto in his curricle.

Private Bates having been heard, Major Swan announced that he did not
propose to call any further witnesses, and resumed his seat. Thereupon,
to the president’s invitation, Captain Tremayne replied that he had no
witnesses to call at all.

“In that case, Major Swan,” said Sir Harry, “the court will be glad to
hear you further.”

And Major Swan came to his feet again to address the court for the
prosecution.




CHAPTER XVII. BITTER WATER


Major Swan may or may not have been a gifted soldier. History is silent
on the point. But the surviving records of the court-martial with which
we are concerned go to show that he was certainly not a gifted speaker.
His vocabulary was limited, his rhetoric clumsy, and Major Carruthers
denounces his delivery as halting, his very voice dull and monotonous;
also his manner, reflecting his mind on this occasion, appears to have
been perfectly unimpassioned. He had been saddled with a duty and he
must perform it. He would do so conscientiously to the best of his
ability, for he seems to have been a conscientious man; but he could not
be expected to put his heart into the matter, since he was not inflamed
by any zeal born of conviction, nor had he any of the incentives of a
civil advocate to sway his audience by all possible means.

Nevertheless the facts themselves, properly marshalled, made up a
dangerous case against the prisoner. Major Swan began by dwelling upon
the evidence of motive: there had been a quarrel, or the beginnings of
a quarrel, between the deceased and the accused; the deceased had shown
himself affronted, and had been heard quite unequivocally to say that
the matter could not be left at the stage at which it was interrupted
at Sir Terence’s luncheon-table. Major Swan dwelt for a moment upon
the grounds of the quarrel. They were by no means discreditable to the
accused, but it was singularly unfortunate, ironical almost, that he
should have involved himself in a duel as a result of his out-spoken
defence of a wise measure which made duelling in the British army a
capital offence. With that, however, he did not think that the court
was immediately concerned. By the duel itself the accused had offended
against the recent enactment, and, moreover, the irregular manner in
which the encounter had been conducted, without seconds or witnesses,
rendered the accused answerable to a charge of murder, if it could be
proved that he actually did engage and kill the deceased. Major Swan
thought this could be proved.

The irregularity of the meeting must be assigned to the enactment
against which it offended. A matter which, under other circumstances,
considering the good character borne by Captain Tremayne, would
have been quite incomprehensible, was, he thought, under existing
circumstances, perfectly clear. Because Captain Tremayne could not have
found any friend to act for him, he was forced to forgo witnesses to the
encounter, and because of the consequences to himself of the encounter’s
becoming known, he was forced to contrive that it should be held
in secret. They knew, from the evidence of Colonel Grant and Major
Carruthers, that the meeting was desired by Count Samoval, and they were
therefore entitled to assume that, recognising the conditions arising
out of the recent enactment, the deceased had consented that the meeting
should take place in this irregular fashion, since otherwise it could
not have been held at all, and he would have been compelled to forgo the
satisfaction he desired.

He passed to the consideration of the locality chosen, and there he
confessed that he was confronted with a mystery. Yet the mystery
would have been no less in the case of any other opponent than Captain
Tremayne, since it was clear beyond all doubt that a duel had been
fought and Count Samoval killed, and no less clear that it was a
premeditated combat, and that the deceased had gone to Monsanto
expressly to engage in it, since the duelling swords found had been
identified as his property and must have been carried by him to the
encounter.

The mystery, he repeated, would have been no less in the case of any
other opponent than Captain Tremayne; indeed, in the case of some other
opponent it might even have been deeper. It must be remembered, after
all, that the place was one to which the accused had free access at all
hours.

And it was clearly proven that he availed himself of that access on the
night in question. Evidence had been placed before the court showing
that he had come to Monsanto in a curricle at twenty minutes to twelve
at the latest, and there was abundant evidence to show that he was found
kneeling beside the body of the dead man at ten minutes past twelve--the
body being quite warm at the time and the breath hardly out of it,
proving that he had fallen but an instant before the arrival of Mullins
and the other witnesses who had testified.

Unless Captain Tremayne could account to the satisfaction of the court
for the manner in which he had spent that half-hour, Major Swan did not
perceive, when all the facts of motive and circumstance were considered,
what conclusion the court could reach other than that Captain Tremayne
was guilty of the death of Count Jeronymo de Samoval in a single combat
fought under clandestine and irregular conditions, transforming the deed
into technical murder.

Upon that conclusion the major sat down to mop a brow that was
perspiring freely. From Lady O’Moy in the background came faintly, the
sound of a half-suppressed moan. Terrified, she clutched the hand of
Miss Armytage,--and found that hand to lie like a thing of ice in
her own, yet she suspected nothing of the deep agitation under her
companion’s outward appearance of calm.

Captain Tremayne rose slowly to address the court in reply to the
prosecution. As he faced his, judges now he met the smouldering eyes of
Sir Terence considering him with such malevolence that he was shocked
and bewildered. Was he prejudged already, and by his best friend? If
so, what must be the attitude of the others? But the kindly, florid
countenance of the president was friendly and encouraging; there was
eager anxiety for him in the gaze of his friend Caruthers. He glanced at
Lord Wellington sitting at the table’s end sternly inscrutable, a mere
spectator, yet one whose habit of command gave him an air that was
authoritative and judicial.

At length he began to speak. He had considered his defence, and he
had based it mainly upon a falsehood--since the strict truth must have
proved ruinous to Richard Butler.

“My answer, gentlemen,” he said, “will be a very brief one as brief,
indeed, as the prosecution merits--for I entertain the hope that no
member of this court is satisfied that the case made out against me is
by any means complete.” He spoke easily, fluently, and calmly: a man
supremely self-controlled. “It amounts, indeed, to throwing upon me the
onus of proving myself innocent, and that is a burden which no British
laws, civil or miliary, would ever commit the injustice of imposing upon
an accused.

“That certain words of disagreement passed between Count Samoval and
myself on the eve of the affair in which the Count met his death, as
you have heard from various witnesses, I at once and freely admitted.
Thereby I saved the court time and trouble, and some other witnesses who
might have been caused the distress of having to testify against me.
But that the dispute ever had any sequel, that the further subsequent
discussion threatened at the time by Count Samoval ever took place,
I most solemnly deny. From the moment that I left Sir Terence’s
luncheon-table on the Saturday I never set eyes on Count Samoval again
until I discovered him dead or dying in the garden here at Monsanto on
Sunday night. I can call no witnesses to support me in this, because it
is not a matter susceptible to proof by evidence. Nor have I troubled
to call the only witnesses I might have called--witnesses as to my
character and my regard for discipline--who might have testified that
any such encounter as that of which I am accused would be utterly
foreign to my nature. There are officers in plenty in his Majesty’s
service who could bear witness that the practice of duelling is one that
I hold in the utmost abhorrence, since I have frequently avowed it, and
since in all my life I have never fought a single duel. My service in
his Majesty’s army has happily afforded me the means of dispensing with
any such proof of courage as the duel is supposed to give. I say I
might have called witnesses to that fact and I have not done so. This is
because, fortunately, there are several among the members of this court
to whom I have been known for many years, and who can themselves, when
this court comes to consider its finding, support my present assertion.

“Let me ask you, then, gentlemen, whether it is conceivable that,
entertaining such feelings as these towards single combat, I should have
been led to depart from them under circumstances that might very well
have afforded me an ample shield for refusing satisfaction to a too
eager and pressing adversary? It was precisely because I hold the duel
in such contempt that I spoke with such asperity to the deceased when he
pronounced Lord Wellington’s enactment a degrading one to men of birth.
The very sentiments which I then expressed proclaimed my antipathy to
the practice. How, then, should I have committed the inconsistency of
accepting a challenge upon such grounds from Count Samoval? There is
even more irony than Major Swan supposes in a situation which himself
has called ironical.

“So much, then, for the motives that are alleged to have actuated me.
I hope you will conclude that I have answered the prosecution upon that
matter.

“Coming to the question of fact, I cannot find that there is anything to
answer, for nothing has been proved against me. True, it has been proved
that I arrived at Monsanto at half-past eleven or twenty minutes to
twelve on the night of the 28th, and it has been further proved that
half-an-hour later I was discovered kneeling beside the dead body of
Count Samoval. But to say that this proves that I killed him is more, I
think, if I understood him correctly, than Major Swan himself dares to
assert.

“Major Swan is quite satisfied that Samoval came to Monsanto for the
purpose of fighting a duel that had been prearranged; and I admit that
the two swords found, which have been proven the property of Count
Samoval, and which, therefore, he must have brought with him, are a
prima-facie proof of such a contention. But if we assume, gentlemen,
that I had accepted a challenge from the Count, let me ask you, can you
think of any place less likely to have been appointed or agreed to by
me for the encounter than the garden of the adjutant-general’s quarters?
Secrecy is urged as the reason for the irregularity of the meeting. What
secrecy was ensured in such a place, where interruption and discovery
might come at any moment, although the duel was held at midnight? And
what secrecy did I observe in my movements, considering that I drove
openly to Monsanto in a curricle, which I left standing at the gates in
full view of the guard, to await my return? Should I have acted thus
if I had been upon such an errand as is alleged? Common sense, I think,
should straightway acquit me on the grounds of the locality alone, and I
cannot think that it should even be necessary for me, so as to complete
my answer to an accusation entirely without support in fact or in logic,
to account for my presence at Monsanto and my movements during the
half-hour in question.”

He paused. So far his clear reasoning had held and impressed the
court. This he saw plainly written on the faces of all--with one single
exception. Sir Terence alone the one man from whom he might have looked
for the greatest relief--watched him ever malevolently, sardonically,
with curling lip. It gave him pause now that he stood upon the threshold
of falsehood; and because of that inexplicable but obvious hostility,
that attitude of expectancy to ensnare and destroy him, Captain Tremayne
hesitated to step from the solid ground of reason, upon which he had
confidently walked thus far, on to the uncertain bogland of mendacity.

“I cannot think,” he said, “that the court should consider it necessary
for me to advance an alibi, to make a statement in proof of my innocence
where I contend that no proof has been offered of my guilt.”

“I think it will be better, sir, in your own interests, so that you may
be the more completely cleared,” the president replied, and so compelled
him to continue.

“There was,” he resumed, then, “a certain matter connected with the
Commissary-General’s department which was of the greatest urgency, yet
which, under stress of work, had been postponed until the morrow. It was
concerned with some tents for General Picton’s division at Celorico. It
occurred to me that night that it would be better dealt with at once,
so that the documents relating to it could go forward early on Monday
morning to the Commissary-General. Accordingly, I returned to Monsanto,
entered the official quarters, and was engaged upon that task when a
cry from the garden reached my ears. That cry in the dead of night was
sufficiently alarming, and I ran out at once to see what might have
occasioned it. I found Count Samoval either just dead or just dying, and
I had scarcely made the discovery when Mullins, the butler, came out of
the residential wing, as he has testified.

“That, sirs, is all that I know of the death of Count Samoval, and I
will conclude with my solemn affirmation, on my honour as a soldier,
that I am as innocent of having procured it as I am ignorant of how it
came about.

“I leave myself with confidence in your hands, gentlemen,” he ended, and
resumed his seat.

That he had favourably impressed the court was clear. Miss Armytage
whispered it to Lady O’Moy, exultation quivering in her whisper.

“He is safe!” And she added: “He was magnificent.”

Lady O’Moy pressed her hand in return. “Thank God! Oh, thank God!” she
murmured under her breath.

“I do,” said Miss Armytage.

There was silence, broken only by the rustle of the president’s notes
as he briefly looked them over as a preliminary to addressing the court.
And then suddenly, grating harshly upon that silence, came the voice of
O’Moy.

“Might I suggest, Sir Harry, that before we hear you three of the
witnesses be recalled? They are Sergeant Flynn, Private Bates and
Mullins.”

The president looked round in surprise, and Carruthers took advantage of
the pause to interpose an objection.

“Is such a course regular, Sir Harry?” He too had become conscious at
last of Sir Terence’s relentless hostility to the accused. “The court
has been given an opportunity of examining those witnesses, the accused
has declined to call any on his own behalf, and the prosecution has
already closed its case.”

Sir Harry considered a moment. He had never been very clear upon matters
of procedure, which he looked upon as none of a soldier’s real business.
Instinctively in this difficulty he looked at Lord Wellington as if
for guidance; but his lordship’s face told him absolutely nothing, the
Commander-in-Chief remaining an impassive spectator. Then, whilst the
president coughed and pondered, Major Swan came to the rescue.

“The court,” said the judge-advocate, “is entitled at any time before
the finding to call or recall any witnesses, provided that the prisoner
is afforded an opportunity of answering anything further that may be
elicited in re-examination of these witnesses.”

“That is the rule,” said Sir Terence, “and rightly so, for, as in the
present instance, the prisoner’s own statement may make it necessary.”

The president gave way, thereby renewing Miss Armytage’s terrors and
shaking at last even the prisoner’s calm.

Sergeant Flynn was the first of the witnesses recalled at Sir Terence’s
request, and it was Sir Terence who took up his re-examination.

“You said, I think, that you were standing in the guardroom doorway when
Captain Tremayne passed you at twenty minutes to twelve on the night of
the 28th?”

“Yes, sir. I had turned out upon hearing the curricle draw up. I had
come to see who it was.”

“Naturally. Well, now, did you observe which way Captain Tremayne
went?--whether he went along the passage leading to the garden or up the
stairs to the offices?”

The sergeant considered for a moment, and Captain Tremayne became
conscious for the first time that morning that his pulses were
throbbing. At last his dreadful suspense came to an end.

“No, sir. Captain Tremayne turned the corner, and was out of my sight,
seeing that I didn’t go beyond the guardroom doorway.”

Sir Terence’s lips parted with a snap of impatience. “But you must have
heard,” he insisted. “You must have heard his steps--whether they went
upstairs or straight on.”

“I am afraid I didn’t take notice, sir.”

“But even without taking notice it seems impossible that you should not
have heard the direction of his steps. Steps going up stairs sound quite
differently from steps walking along the level. Try to think.”

The sergeant considered again. But the president interposed. The
testiness which Sir Terence had been at no pains to conceal annoyed Sir
Harry, and this insistence offended his sense of fair play.

“The witness has already said that the didn’t take notice. I am afraid
it can serve no good purpose to compel him to strain his memory. The
court could hardly rely upon his answer after what he has said already.”

“Very well,” said Sir Terence curtly. “We will pass on. After the body
of Count Samoval had been removed from the courtyard, did Mullins, my
butler, come to you?”

“Yes, Sir Terence.”

“What was his message? Please tell the court.”

“He brought me a letter with instructions that it was to be forwarded
first thing in the morning to the Commissary-General’s office.”

“Did he make any statement beyond that when he delivered that letter?”

The sergeant pondered a moment. “Only that he had been bringing it when
he found Count Samoval’s body.”

“That is all I wish to ask, Sir Harry,” O’Moy intimated, and looked
round at his fellow-members of that court as if to inquire whether they
had drawn any inference from the sergeant’s statements.

“Have you any questions to ask the witness, Captain Tremayne?” the
president inquired.

“None, sir,” replied the prisoner.

Came Private Bates next, and Sir Terence proceeded to question him..

“You said in your evidence that Captain Tremayne arrived at Monsanto
between half-past eleven and twenty minutes to twelve?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You told us, I think, that you determined this by the fact that you
came on duty at eleven o’clock, and that it would be half-an-hour or a
little more after that when Captain Tremayne arrived?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is quite in agreement with the evidence of your sergeant. Now tell
the court where you were during the half-hour that followed--until you
heard the guard being turned out by the sergeant.”

“Pacing in front of quarters, sir.”

“Did you notice the windows of the building at all during that time?”

“I can’t say that I did, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” echoed the private.

“Yes--why not? Don’t repeat my words. How did it happen that you didn’t
notice the windows?”

“Because they were in darkness, sir.”

O’Moy’s eyes gleamed. “All of them?”

“Certainly, sir, all of them.”

“You are quite certain of that?”

“Oh, quite certain, sir. If a light had shown from one of them I
couldn’t have failed to notice it.”

“That will do.”

“Captain Tremayne--” began the president.

“I have no questions for the witness, sir,” Tremayne announced.

Sir Harry’s face expressed surprise. “After the statement he has just
made?” he exclaimed, and thereupon he again invited the prisoner, in a
voice that was as grave as his countenance, to cross-examine he witness;
he did more than invite--he seemed almost to plead. But Tremayne,
preserving by a miracle his outward calm, for all that inwardly he was
filled with despair and chagrin to see what a pit he had dug for himself
by his falsehood, declined to ask any questions.

Private Bates retired, and Mullins was recalled. A gloom seemed to have
settled now upon the court. A moment ago their way had seemed fairly
clear to its members, and they had been inwardly congratulating
themselves that they were relieved from the grim necessity of passing
sentence upon a brother officer esteemed by all who knew him. But now a
subtle change had crept in. The statement drawn by Sir Terence from the
sentry appeared flatly to contradict Captain Tremayne’s own account of
his movements on the night in question.

“You told the court,” O’Moy addressed the witness Mullins, consulting
his notes as he did so, “that on the night on which Count Samoval met
his death, I sent you at ten minutes past twelve to take a letter to the
sergeant of the guard, an urgent letter which was to be forwarded to its
destination first thing on the following morning. And it was in fact in
the course of going upon this errand that you discovered the prisoner
kneeling beside the body of Count Samoval. This is correct, is it not?”

“It is, sir.”

“Will you now inform the court to whom that letter was addressed?”

“It was addressed to the Commissary-General.”

“You read the superscription?”

“I am not sure whether I did that, but I clearly remember, sir, that you
told me at the time that it was for the Commissary-General.”

Sir Terence signified that he had no more to ask, and again the
president invited the prisoner to question the witness, to receive again
the prisoner’s unvarying refusal.

And now O’Moy rose in his place to announce that he had himself a
further statement to, make to the court, a statement which he had not
conceived necessary until he had heard the prisoner’s account of his
movements during the half-hour he had spent at Monsanto on the night of
the duel.

“You have heard from Sergeant Flynn and my butler Mullins that the
letter carried from me by the latter to the former on the night of the
28th was a letter for the Commissary-General of an urgent character, to
be forwarded first thing in the morning. If the prisoner insists upon
it, the Commissary-General himself may be brought before this court to
confirm my assertion that that communication concerned a complaint from
headquarters on the subject of the tents supplied to the third division
Sir Thomas Picton’s--at Celorico. The documents concerning that
complaint--that is to say, the documents upon which we are to presume
that the prisoner was at work during tine half-hour in question--were at
the time in my possession in my own private study and in another wing of
the building altogether.”

Sir Terence sat down amid a rustling stir that ran through the court,
but was instantly summoned to his feet again by the president.

“A moment, Sir Terence. The prisoner will no doubt desire to question
you on that statement.” And he looked with serious eyes at Captain
Tremayne.

“I have no questions for Sir Terence, sir,” was his answer.

Indeed, what question could he have asked? The falsehoods he had uttered
had woven themselves into a rope about his neck, and he stood before
his brother officers now in an agony of shame, a man discredited, as he
believed.

“But no doubt you will desire the presence of the Commissary-General?”
 This was from Colonel Fletcher his own colonel and a man who esteemed
him--and it was asked in accents that were pleadingly insistent.

“What purpose could it serve, sir? Sir Terence’s words are partly
confirmed by the evidence he has just elicited from Sergeant Flynn and
his butler Mullins. Since he spent the night writing a letter to the
Commissary, it is not to be doubted that the subject would be such as he
states, since from my own knowledge it was the most urgent matter in
our hands. And, naturally, he would not have written without having
the documents at his side. To summon the Commissary-General would be
unnecessarily to waste the time of the court. It follows that I must
have been mistaken, and this I admit.”

“But how could you be mistaken?” broke from the president.

“I realise your difficulty in crediting, it. But there it is. Mistaken
I was.”

“Very well, sir.” Sir Harry paused and then added “The court will be
glad to hear you in answer to the further evidence adduced to refute
your statement in your own defence.”

“I have nothing further to say, sir,” was Tremayne’s answer.

“Nothing further?” The president seemed aghast. “Nothing, sir.”

And now Colonel Fletcher leaned forward to exhort him. “Captain
Tremayne,” he said, “let me beg you to realise the serious position in
which you are placed.”

“I assure you, sir, that I realise it fully.”

“Do you realise that the statements you have made to account for your
movements during the half-hour that you were at Monsanto have been
disproved? You have heard Private Bates’s evidence to the effect that
at the time when you say you were at work in the offices, those offices
remained in darkness. And you have heard Sir Terence’s statement that
the documents upon which you claim to have been at work were at the
time in his own hands. Do you realise what inference the court will be
compelled to draw from this?”

“The court must draw whatever inference it pleases,” answered the
captain without heat.

Sir Terence stirred. “Captain Tremayne,” said he, “I wish to add my own
exhortation to that of your colonel! Your position has become extremely
perilous. If you are concealing anything that may extricate you from
it, let me enjoin you to take the court frankly and fully into your
confidence.”

The words in themselves were kindly, but through them ran a note of
bitterness, of cruel derision, that was faintly perceptible to Tremayne
and to one or two others.

Lord Wellington’s piercing eyes looked a moment at O’Moy, then turned
upon the prisoner. Suddenly he spoke, his voice as calm and level as his
glance.

“Captain Tremayne--if the president will permit me to address you in
the interests of truth and justice--you bear, to my knowledge, the
reputation of an upright, honourable man. You are a man so unaccustomed
to falsehood that when you adventure upon it, as you have obviously just
done, your performance is a clumsy one, its faults easily distinguished.
That you are concealing something the court must have perceived. If you
are not concealing something other than that Count Samoval fell by
your hand, let me enjoin you to speak out. If you are shielding any
one--perhaps the real perpetrator of this deed--let me assure you that
your honour as a soldier demands, in the interests of truth and justice,
that you should not continue silent.”

Tremayne looked into the stern face of the great soldier, and his glance
fell away. He made a little gesture of helplessness, then drew himself
stiffly up.

“I have nothing more to say.”

“Then, Captain Tremayne,” said the president, “the court will pass to
the consideration of its finding. And if you cannot account for the
half-hour that you spent at Monsanto while Count Samoval was meeting his
death, I am afraid that, in view of all the other evidences against you,
your position is likely to be one of extremest gravity.

“For the last time, sir, before I order your removal, let me add my own
to the exhortations already addressed to you, that you should speak. If
still you elect to remain silent, the court, I fear, will be unable to
draw any conclusion but one from your attitude.”

For a long moment Captain Tremayne stood there in tense, expectant
silence. Yet he was not considering; he was waiting. Lady O’Moy he knew
to be in court, behind him. She had heard, even as he had heard, that
his fate hung perhaps upon whether Richard Butler’s presence were to be
betrayed or not. Not for him to break faith with her. Let her decide.
And, awaiting that decision, he stood there, silent, like a man
considering. And then, because no woman’s voice broke the silence to
proclaim at once his innocence, and the alibi that must ensure his
acquittal, he spoke at last.

“I thank you, sir. Indeed, I am very grateful to the court for the
consideration it has shown me. I appreciate it deeply, but I have
nothing more to say.”

And then, when all seemed lost, a woman’s voice rang out at last:

“But I have!”

Its sharp, almost strident note acted like an electric discharge upon
the court; but no member of the assembly was more deeply stricken than
Captain Tremayne. For though the voice was a woman’s, yet it was not the
voice for which he had been waiting.

In his excitement he turned, to see Miss Armytage standing there,
straight and stiff, her white face stamped with purpose; and beside
her, still seated, clutching her arm in an agony of fear, Lady O’Moy,
murmuring for all to hear her:

“No, no, Sylvia. Be silent, for God’s sake!”

But Sylvia had risen to speak, and speak she did, and though the words
she uttered were such as a virgin might wish to whisper with veiled
countenance and averted glance, yet her utterance of them was bold to
the point of defiance.

“I can tell you why Captain Tremayne is silent. I can tell you whom he
shields.”

“Oh God!” gasped Lady O’Moy, wondering through her anguish how Sylvia
could have become possessed of her secret.

“Miss Armytage--I implore you!” cried Tremayne, forgetting where he
stood, his voice shaking at last, his hand flung out to silence her.

And then the heavy voice of O’Moy crashed in:

“Let her speak. Let us have the truth--the truth!” And he smote the
table with his clenched fist.

“And you shall have it,” answered Miss Armytage. “Captain Tremayne keeps
silent to shield a woman--his mistress.”

Sir Terence sucked in his breath with a whistling sound. Lady O’Moy
desisted from her attempts to check the speaker and fell to staring at
her in stony astonishment, whilst Tremayne was too overcome by the
same emotion to think of interrupting. The others preserved a watchful,
unbroken silence.

“Captain Tremayne spent that half-hour at Monsanto in her room. He was
with her when he heard the cry that took him to the window. Thence he
saw the body in the courtyard, and in alarm went down at once--without
considering the consequences to the woman. But because he has considered
them since, he now keeps silent.”

“Sir, sir,” Captain Tremayne turned in wild appeal to the president,
“this is not true.” He conceived at once the terrible mistake that Miss
Armytage had made. She must have seen him climb down from Lady O’Moy’s
balcony, and she had come to the only possible, horrible conclusion.
“This lady is mistaken, I am ready to--”

“A moment, sir. You are interrupting,” the president rebuked.

And then the voice of O’Moy on the note of terrible triumph sounded
again like a trumpet through the long room.

“Ah, but it is the truth at last. We have it now. Her name! Her name!”
 he shouted. “Who was this wanton?”

Miss Armytage’s answer was as a bludgeon-stroke to his ferocious
exultation.

“Myself. Captain Tremayne was with me.”




CHAPTER XVIII FOOL’S MATE


Writing years afterwards of this event--in the rather tedious volume
of reminiscences which he has left us--Major Carruthers ventures the
opinion that the court should never have been deceived; that it should
have perceived at once that Miss Armytage was lying. He argues
this opinion upon psychological grounds, contending that the lady’s
deportment in that moment of self-accusation was the very last that
in the circumstances she alleged would have been natural to such a
character as her own.

“Had she indeed,” he writes, “been Tremayne’s mistress, as she
represented herself, it was not in her nature to have announced it after
the manner in which she did so. She bore herself before us with all the
effrontery of a harlot; and it was well known to most of us that a
more pure, chaste, and modest lady did not live. There was here a
contradiction so flagrant that it should have rendered her falsehood
immediately apparent.”

Major Carruthers, of course, is writing in the light of later knowledge,
and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his
psychological deduction. Just as a shy man will so overreach himself
in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive
arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage
pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear
herself with a boldness which was no more than a mask upon the shame and
anguish of her mind.

And this, I think, was the view that was taken by those present. The
court it was--being composed of honest gentlemen--that felt the shame
which she dissembled. There were the eyes that fell away before the
spurious effrontery of her own glance. They were disconcerted one and
all by this turn of events, without precedent in the experience of
any, and none more disconcerted--though not in the same sense--than Sir
Terence. To him this was checkmate--fool’s mate indeed. An unexpected
yet ridiculously simple move had utterly routed him at the very outset
of the deadly game that he was playing. He had sat there determined to
have either Tremayne’s life or the truth, publicly avowed, of Tremayne’s
dastardly betrayal. He could not have told you which he preferred. But
one or the other he was fiercely determined to have, and now the springs
of the snare in which he had so cunningly taken Tremayne had been forced
apart by utterly unexpected hands.

“It’s a lie!” he bellowed angrily. But he bellowed, it seemed, upon deaf
ears. The court just sat and stared, utterly and hopelessly at a loss
how to proceed. And then the dry voice of Wellington followed Sir
Terence, cutting sharply upon the dismayed silence.

“How can you know that?” he asked the adjutant. “The matter is one
upon which few would be qualified to contradict Miss Armytage. You will
observe, Sir Harry, that even Captain Tremayne has not thought it worth
his while to do so.”

Those words pulled the captain from the spell of sheer horrified
amazement in which he had stood, stricken dumb, ever since Miss Armytage
had spoken.

“I--I--am so overwhelmed by the amazing falsehood with which Miss
Armytage has attempted to save me from the predicament in which I stand.
For it is that, gentlemen. On my oath as a soldier and a gentleman,
there is not a word of truth in what Miss Armytage has said.”

“But if there were,” said Lord Wellington, who seemed the only person
present to retain a cool command of his wits, “your honour as a soldier
and a gentleman--and this lady’s honour--must still demand of you the
perjury.”

“But, my lord, I protest--”

“You are interrupting me, I think,” Lord Wellington rebuked him coldly,
and under the habit of obedience and the magnetic eye of his lordship
the captain lapsed into anguished silence.

“I am of opinion, gentlemen,” his lordship addressed the court, “that
this affair has gone quite far enough. Miss Armytage’s testimony has
saved a deal of trouble. It has shed light upon much that was obscure,
and it has provided Captain Tremayne with an unanswerable alibi. In
my view--and without wishing unduly to influence the court in its
decision--it but remains to pronounce Captain Tremayne’s acquittal,
thereby enabling him to fulfil towards this lady a duty which the
circumstances would seem to have rendered somewhat urgent.”

They were words that lifted an intolerable burden from Sir Harry’s
shoulders.

In immense relief, eager now to make an end, he looked to right and
left. Everywhere he met nodding heads and murmurs of “Yes, Yes.”
 Everywhere with one exception. Sir Terence, white to the lips, gave
no sign of assent, and yet dared give none of dissent. The eye of Lord
Wellington was upon him, compelling him by its eagle glance.

“We are clearly agreed,” the president began, but Captain Tremayne
interrupted him.

“But you are wrongly agreed.”

“Sir, sir!”

“You shall listen. It is infamous that I should owe my acquittal to the
sacrifice of this lady’s good name.”

“Damme! That is a matter that any parson can put right,” said his
lordship.

“Your lordship is mistaken,” Captain Tremayne insisted, greatly daring.
“The honour of this lady is more dear to me than my life.”

“So we perceive,” was the dry rejoinder. “These outbursts do you a
certain credit, Captain Tremayne. But they waste the time of the court.”

And then the president made his announcement

“Captain Tremayne, you are acquitted of the charge of killing Count
Samoval, and you are at liberty to depart and to resume your usual
duties. The court congratulates you and congratulates itself upon
having reached this conclusion in the case of an officer so estimable as
yourself.”

“Ah, but, gentlemen, hear me yet a moment. You, my lord--”

“The court has pronounced. The matter is at an end,” said Wellington,
with a shrug, and immediately upon the words he rose, and the court
rose with him. Immediately, with rattle of sabres and sabretaches, the
officers who had composed the board fell into groups and broke into
conversation out of a spirit of consideration for Tremayne, and
definitely to mark the conclusion of the proceedings.

Tremayne, white and trembling, turned in time to see Miss Armytage
leaving the hall and assisting Colonel Grant to support Lady O’Moy, who
was in a half-swooning condition.

He stood irresolute, prey to a torturing agony of mind, cursing himself
now for his silence, for not having spoken the truth and taken the
consequences together with Dick Butler. What was Dick Butler to him,
what was his own life to him--if they should demand it for
the grave breach of duty he had committed by his readiness to assist
a proscribed offender to escape--compared with the honour of Sylvia
Armytage? And she, why had she done this for him? Could it be possible
that she cared, that she was concerned so much for his life as to
immolate her honour to deliver him from peril? The event would seem to
prove it. Yet the overmastering joy that at any other time, and in
any other circumstances, such a revelation must have procured him, was
stifled now by his agonised concern for the injustice to which she had
submitted herself.

And then, as he stood there, a suffering, bewildered man, came
Carruthers to grasp his hand and in terms of warm friendship to express
satisfaction at his acquittal.

“Sooner than have such a price as that paid--” he said bitterly, and
with a shrug left his sentence unfinished.

O’Moy came stalking past him, pale-faced, with eyes that looked neither
to right nor left.

“O’Moy!” he cried.

Sir Terence checked, and stood stiffly as if to attention, his handsome
blue eyes blazing into the captain’s own. Thus a moment. Then:

“We will talk of this again, you and I,” he said grimly, and passed
on and out with clanking step, leaving Tremayne to reflect that the
appearances certainly justified Sir Terence’s resentment.

“My God, Carruthers! What must he think of me?” he ejaculated.

“If you ask me, I think that he has suspected this from the very
beginning. Only that could account for the hostility of his attitude
towards you, for the persistence with which he has sought either to
convict or wring the truth from you.”

Tremayne looked askance at the major. In such a tangle as this it was
impossible to keep the attention fixed upon any single thread.

“His mind must be disabused at once,” he answered. “I must go to him.”

O’Moy had already vanished.

There were one or two others would have checked the adjutant’s
departure, but he had heeded none. In the quadrangle he nodded curtly to
Colonel Grant, who would have detained him. But he passed on and went to
shut himself up in his study with his mental anguish that was compounded
of so many and so diverse emotions. He needed above all things to be
alone and to think, if thought were possible to a mind so distraught
as his own. There were now so many things to be faced, considered, and
dealt with. First and foremost--and this was perhaps the product of
inevitable reaction--was the consideration of his own duplicity, his
villainous betrayal of trust undertaken deliberately, but with an aim
very different from that which would appear. He perceived how men must
assume now, when the truth of Samoval’s death became known as become
known it must--that he had deliberately fastened upon another his own
crime. The fine edifice of vengeance he had been so skilfully erecting
had toppled about his ears in obscene ruin, and he was a man not only
broken, but dishonoured. Let him proclaim the truth now and none would
believe it. Sylvia Armytage’s mad and inexplicable self-accusation was a
final bar to that. Men of honour would scorn him, his friends would
turn from him in disgust, and Wellington, that great soldier whom he
worshipped, and whose esteem he valued above all possessions, would be
the first to cast him out. He would appear as a vulgar murderer who,
having failed by falsehood to fasten the guilt upon an innocent man,
sought now by falsehood still more damnable, at the cost of his wife’s
honour, to offer some mitigation of his unspeakable offence.

Conceive this terrible position in which his justifiable jealousy--his
naturally vindictive rage--had so irretrievably ensnared him. He had
been so intent upon the administration of poetic justice, so intent
upon condignly punishing the false friend who had dishonoured him, upon
finding a balm for his lacerated soul in the spectacle of Tremayne’s own
ignominy, that he had never paused to see whither all this might lead
him.

He had been a fool to have adopted these subtle, tortuous ways; a fool
not to have obeyed the earlier and honest impulse which had led him to
take that case of pistols from the drawer. And he was served as a fool
deserves to be served. His folly had recoiled upon him to destroy him.
Fool’s mate had checked his perfidious vengeance at a blow.

Why had Sylvia Armytage discarded her honour to make of it a cloak
for the protection of Tremayne? Did she love Tremayne and take that
desperate way to save a life she accounted lost, or was it that she knew
the truth, and out of affection for Una had chosen to immolate herself?

Sir Terence was no psychologist. But he found it difficult to believe in
so much of self-sacrifice from a woman for a woman’s sake, however
dear. Therefore he held to the first alternative. To confirm it came the
memory of Sylvia’s words to him on the night of Tremayne’s arrest. And
it was to such a man that she gave the priceless treasure of her love;
for such a man, and in such a sordid cause, that she sacrificed the
inestimable jewel of her honour? He laughed through clenched teeth at
a situation so bitterly ironical. Presently he would talk to her. She
should realise what she had done, and he would wish her joy of it.
First, however, there was something else to do. He flung himself wearily
into the chair at his writing-table, took up a pen and began to write.




CHAPTER XIX. THE TRUTH


To Captain Tremayne, fretted with impatience in the diningroom, came,
at the end of a long hour of waiting, Sylvia Armytage. She entered
unannounced, at a moment when for the third time he was on the point of
ringing for Mullins, and for a moment they stood considering each
other mutually ill at ease. Then Miss Armytage closed the door and came
forward, moving with that grace peculiar to her, and carrying her head
erect, facing Captain Tremayne now with some lingering signs of the
defiance she had shown the members of the court-martial.

“Mullins tells me that you wish to see me,” she said the merest
conventionality to break the disconcerting, uneasy silence.

“After what has happened that should not surprise you,” said Tremayne.
His agitation was clear to behold, his usual imperturbability all
departed. “Why,” he burst out suddenly, “why did you do it?”

She looked at him with the faintest ghost of a smile on her lips, as if
she found the question amusing. But before she could frame any answer he
was speaking again, quickly and nervously.

“Could you suppose that I should wish to purchase my life at such a
price? Could you suppose that your honour was not more precious to me
than my life? It was infamous that you should have sacrificed yourself
in this manner.”

“Infamous of whom?” she asked him coolly.

The question gave him pause. “I don’t know!” he cried desperately.
“Infamous of the circumstances, I suppose.”

She shrugged. “The circumstances were there, and they had to be met. I
could think of no other way of meeting them.”

Hastily he answered her out of his anger for her sake: “It should not
have been your affair to meet them at all.”

He saw the scarlet flush sweep over her face and leave it deathly white,
and instantly he perceived how horribly he had blundered.

“I’m sorry to have been interfering,” she answered stiffly, “but, after
all, it is not a matter that need trouble you.” And on the words she
turned to depart again. “Good-day, Captain Tremayne.”

“Ah, wait!” He flung himself between her and the door. “We must
understand each other, Miss Armytage.”

“I think we do, Captain Tremayne,” she answered, fire dancing in her
eyes. And she added: “You are detaining me.”

“Intentionally.” He was calm again; and he was masterful for the
first time in all his dealings with her. “We are very far from any
understanding. Indeed, we are overhead in a misunderstanding already.
You misconstrue my words. I am very angry with you. I do not think that
in all my life I have ever been so angry with anybody. But you are not
to mistake the source of my anger. I am angry with you for the great
wrong you have done yourself.”

“That should not be your affair,” she answered him, thus flinging back
the offending phrase.

“But it is. I make it mine,” he insisted.

“Then I do not give you the right. Please let me pass.” She looked him
steadily in the face, and her voice was calm to coldness. Only the heave
of her bosom betrayed the agitation under which she was labouring.

“Whether you give me the right or not, I intend to take it,” he
insisted.

“You are very rude,” she reproved him.

He laughed. “Even at the risk of being rude, then. I must make myself
clear to you. I would suffer anything sooner than leave you under any
misapprehension of the grounds upon which I should have preferred to
face a firing party rather than have been rescued at the sacrifice of
your good name.”

“I hope,” she said, with faint but cutting irony, “you do not intend to
offer me the reparation of marriage.”

It took his breath away for a moment. It was a solution that in his
confused and irate state of mind he had never even paused to consider.
Yet now that it was put to him in this scornfully reproachful manner he
perceived not only that it was the only possible course, but also that
on that very account it might be considered by her impossible.

Her testiness was suddenly plain to him. She feared that he was come to
her with an offer of marriage out of a sense of duty, as an amende,
to correct the false position into which, for his sake, she had placed
herself. And he himself by his blundering phrase had given colour to
that hideous fear of hers.

He considered a moment whilst he stood there meeting her defiant glance.
Never had she been more desirable in his eyes; and hopeless as his
love for her had always seemed, never had it been in such danger of
hopelessness as at this present moment, unless he proceeded here with
the utmost care. And so Ned Tremayne became subtle for the first time in
his honest, straightforward, soldierly life. “No,” he answered boldly,
“I do not intend it.”

“I am glad that you spare me that,” she answered him, yet her pallor
seemed to deepen under his glance.

“And that,” he continued, “is the source of all my anger, against
you, against myself, and against circumstances. If I had deemed myself
remotely worthy of you,” he continued, “I should have asked you weeks
ago to be my wife. Oh, wait, and hear me out. I have more than once been
upon the point of doing so--the last time was that night on the balcony
at Count Redondo’s. I would have spoken then; I would have taken my
courage in my hands, confessed my unworthiness and my love. But I was
restrained because, although I might confess, there was nothing I could
ask. I am a poor man, Sylvia, you are the daughter of a wealthy one; men
speak of you as an heiress. To ask you to marry me--” He broke off.
“You realise that I could not; that I should have been deemed a
fortune-hunter, not only by the world, which matters nothing, but
perhaps by yourself, who matter everything. I--I--” he faltered,
fumbling for words to express thoughts of an overwhelming intricacy. “It
was not perhaps that so much as the thought that, if my suit should
come to prosper, men would say you had thrown yourself away on a
fortune-hunter. To myself I should have accounted the reproach well
earned, but it seemed to me that it must contain something slighting to
you, and to shield you from all slights must be the first concern of my
deep worship for you. That,” he ended fiercely, “is why I am so angry,
so desperate at the slight you have put upon yourself for my sake--for
me, who would have sacrificed life and honour and everything I hold of
any account, to keep you up there, enthroned not only in my own eyes,
but in the eyes of every man.”

He paused, and looked at her and she at him. She was still very white,
and one of her long, slender hands was pressed to her bosom as if to
contain and repress tumult. But her eyes were smiling, and yet it was a
smile he could not read; it was compassionate, wistful, and yet tinged,
it seemed to him, with mockery.

“I suppose,” he said, “it would be expected of me in the circumstances
to seek words in which to thank you for what you have done. But I have
no such words. I am not grateful. How could I be grateful? You have
destroyed the thing that I most valued in this world.”

“What have I destroyed?” she asked him.

“Your own good name; the respect that was your due from all men.”

“Yet if I retain your own?”

“What is that worth?” he asked almost resentfully.

“Perhaps more than all the rest.” She took a step forward and set her
hand upon his arm. There was no mistaking now her smile. It was all
tenderness, and her eyes were shining. “Ned, there is only one thing to
be done.”

He looked down at her who was only a little less tall than himself, and
the colour faded from his own face now.

“You haven’t understood me after all,” he said. “I was afraid you would
not. I have no clear gift of words, and if I had, I am trying to say
something that would overtax any gift.”

“On the contrary, Ned, I understand you perfectly. I don’t think I have
ever understood you until now. Certainly never until now could I be sure
of what I hoped.”

“Of what you hoped?” His voice sank as if in awe. “What?” he asked.

She looked away, and her persisting, yet ever-changing smile grew
slightly arch.

“You do not then intend to ask me to marry you?” she said.

“How could I?” It was an explosion almost of anger. “You yourself
suggested that it would be an insult; and so it would. It is to take
advantage of the position into which your foolish generosity has
betrayed you. Oh!” he clenched his fists and shook them a moment at his
sides.

“Very well,” she said. “In that case I must ask you to marry me.”

“You?” He was thunderstruck.

“What alternative do you leave me? You say that I have destroyed my good
name. You must provide me with a new one. At all costs I must become an
honest woman. Isn’t that the phrase?”

“Don’t!” he cried, and pain quivered in his voice. “Don’t jest upon it.”

“My dear,” she said, and now she held out both hands to him, “why
trouble yourself with things of no account, when the only thing that
matters to us is within our grasp? We love each other, and--”

Her glance fell away, her lip trembled, and her smile at last took
flight. He caught her hands, holding them in a grip that hurt her; he
bent his head, and his eyes sought her own, but sought in vain.

“Have you considered--” he was beginning, when she interrupted him. Her
face flushed upward, surrendering to that questing glance of his, and
its expression was now between tears and laughter.

“You will be for ever considering, Ned. You consider too much, where the
issues are plain and simple. For the last time--will you marry me?”

The subtlety he had employed had been greater than he knew, and it had
achieved something beyond his utmost hopes.

He murmured incoherently and took her to his arms. I really do not see
that he could have done anything else. It was a plain and simple issue,
and she herself had protested that the issue was plain and simple.

And then the door opened abruptly and Sir Terence came in. Nor did he
discreetly withdraw as a man of feeling should have done before the
intimate and touching spectacle that met his eyes. On the contrary, he
remained like the infernal marplot that he intended to be.

“Very proper,” he sneered. “Very fit and proper that he should put right
in the eyes of the world the reputation you have damaged for his sake,
Sylvia. I suppose you’re to be married.”

They moved apart, and each stared at O’Moy--Sylvia in cold anger,
Tremayne in chagrin.

“You see, Sylvia,” the captain cried, at this voicing of the world’s
opinion he feared so much on her behalf.

“Does she?” said Sir Terence, misunderstanding. “I wonder? Unless you’ve
made all plain.”

The captain frowned.

“Made what plain?” he asked. “There is something here I don’t
understand, O’Moy. Your attitude towards me ever since you ordered me
under arrest has been entirely extraordinary. It has troubled me more
than anything else in all this deplorable affair.”

“I believe you,” snorted O’Moy, as with his hands behind his back
he strode forward into the room. He was pale, and there was a set,
malignant sneer upon his lip, a malignant look in the blue eyes that
were habitually so clear and honest.

“There have been moments,” said Tremayne, “when I have almost felt you
to be vindictive.”

“D’ye wonder?” growled O’Moy. “Has no suspicion crossed your mind that I
may know the whole truth?”

Tremayne was taken aback. “That startles you, eh?” cried O’Moy, and
pointed a mocking finger at the captain’s face, whose whole expression
had changed to one of apprehension.

“What is it?” cried Sylvia. Instinctively she felt that under this
troubled surface some evil thing was stirring, that the issues perhaps
were not quite as simple as she had deemed them.

There was a pause. O’Moy, with his back to the window now, his hands
still clasped behind him, looked mockingly at Tremayne and waited.

“Why don’t you answer her?” he said at last. “You were confidential
enough when I came in. Can it be that you are keeping something back,
that you have secrets from the lady who has no doubt promised by now to
become your wife as the shortest way to mending her recent folly?”

Tremayne was bewildered. His answer, apparently an irrelevance, was the
mere enunciation of the thoughts O’Moy’s announcement had provoked.

“Do you mean to say that you have known throughout that I did not kill
Samoval?” he asked.

“Of course. How could I have supposed you killed him when I killed him
myself?”

“You? You killed him!” cried Tremayne, more and more intrigued. And--

“You killed Count Samoval?” exclaimed Miss Armytage.

“To be sure I did,” was the answer, cynically delivered, accompanied by
a short, sharp laugh. “When I have settled other accounts, and put all
my affairs in order, I shall save the provost-marshal the trouble of
further seeking the slayer. And you didn’t know then, Sylvia, when you
lied so glibly to the court, that your future husband was innocent of
that?”

“I was always sure of it,” she answered, and looked at Tremayne for
explanation.

O’Moy laughed again. “But he had not told you so. He preferred that you
should think him guilty of bloodshed, of murder even, rather than tell
you the real truth. Oh, I can understand. He is the very soul of honour,
as you remarked yourself, I think, the other night. He knows how much
to tell and how much to withhold. He is master of the art of discreet
suppression. He will carry it to any lengths. You had an instance of
that before the court this morning. You may come to regret, my dear,
that you did not allow him to have his own obstinate way; that you
should have dragged your own spotless purity in the mud to provide
him with an alibi. But he had an alibi all the time, my child; an
unanswerable alibi which he preferred to withhold. I wonder would you
have been so ready to make a shield of your honour could you have known
what you were really shielding?”

“Ned!” she cried. “Why don’t you speak? Is he to go on in this fashion?
Of what is he accusing you? If you were not with Samoval that night,
where were you?”

“In a lady’s room, as you correctly informed the court,” came O’Moy’s
bitter mockery. “Your only mistake was in the identity of the lady. You
imagined that the lady was yourself. A delusion purely. But you and I
may comfort each other, for we are fellow-sufferers at the hands of this
man of honour. My wife was the lady who entertained this gallant in her
room that night.”

“My God, O’Moy!” It was a strangled cry from Tremayne. At last he saw
light; he understood, and, understanding, there entered his heart a
great compassion for O’Moy, a conception that he must have suffered all
the agonies of the damned in these last few days. “My God, you don’t
believe that I--”

“Do you deny it?”

“The imputation? Utterly.”

“And if I tell you that myself with these eyes I saw you at the window
of her room with her; if I tell you that I saw the rope ladder dangling
from her balcony; if I tell you that crouching there after I had killed
Samoval--killed him, mark me, for saying that you and my wife betrayed
me; killed him for telling me the filthy truth--if I tell you that I
heard her attempting to restrain you from going down to see what had
happened--if I tell you all this, will you still deny it, will you still
lie?”

“I will still say that all that you imply is false as hell and your own
senseless jealousy can make it.

“All that I imply? But what I state--the facts themselves, are they
true?”

“They are true. But--”

“True!” cried Miss Armytage in horror.

“Ah, wait,” O’Moy bade her with his heavy sneer. “You interrupt him.
He is about to construe those facts so that they shall wear an innocent
appearance. He is about to prove himself worthy of the great sacrifice
you made to save his life. Well?” And he looked expectantly at Tremayne.

Miss Armytage looked at him too, with eyes from which the dread
passed almost at once. The captain was smiling, wistfully, tolerantly,
confidently, almost scornfully. Had he been guilty of the thing imputed
he could not have stood so in her presence.

“O’Moy,” he said slowly, “I should tell you that you have played the
knave in this were it not clear to me that you have played the fool.” He
spoke entirely without passion. He saw his way quite clearly. Things had
reached a pass in which for the sake of all concerned, and perhaps for
the sake of Miss Armytage more than any one, the whole truth must be
spoken without regard to its consequences to Richard Butler.

“You dare to take that tone?” began O’Moy in a voice of thunder.

“Yourself shall be the first to justify it presently. I should be angry
with you, O’Moy, for what you have done. But I find my anger vanishing
in regret. I should scorn you for the lie you have acted, for your scant
regard to your oath in the court-martial, for your attempt to combat
an imagined villainy by a real villainy. But I realise what you have
suffered, and in that suffering lies the punishment you fully deserve
for not having taken the straight course, for not having taxed me there
and then with the thing that you suspected.”

“The gentleman is about to lecture me upon morals, Sylvia.” But Tremayne
let pass the interruption.

“It is quite true that I was in Una’s room while you were killing
Samoval. But I was not alone with her, as you have so rashly assumed.
Her brother Richard was there, and it was on his behalf that I was
present. She had been hiding him for a fortnight. She begged me, as
Dick’s friend and her own, to save him; and I undertook to do so. I
climbed to her room to assist him to descend by the rope ladder you saw,
because he was wounded and could not climb without assistance. At the
gates I had the curricle waiting in which I had driven up. In this I
was to have taken him on board a ship that was leaving that night for
England, having made arrangements with her captain. You should have
seen, had you reflected, that--as I told the court--had I been coming
to a clandestine meeting, I should hardly have driven up in so open a
fashion, and left the curricle to wait for me at the gates.

“The death of Samoval and my own arrest thwarted our plans and prevented
Dick’s escape. That is the truth. Now that you have it I hope you like
it, and I hope that you thoroughly relish your own behaviour in the
matter.”

There was a fluttering sigh of relief from Miss Armytage. Then silence
followed, in which O’Moy stared at Tremayne, emotion after emotion
sweeping across his mobile face.

“Dick Butler?” he said at last, and cried out: “I don’t believe a word
of it! Ye’re lying, Tremayne.”

“You have cause enough to hope so.”

The captain was faintly scornful.

“If it were true, Una would not have kept it from me. It was to me she
would have come.”

“The trouble with you, O’Moy, is that jealousy seems to have robbed you
of the power of coherent thought, or else you would remember that you
were the last man to whom Una could confide Dick’s presence here. I
warned her against doing so. I told her of the promise you had been
compelled to give the secretary, Forjas, and I was even at pains to
justify you to her when she was indignant with you for that. It would
perhaps be better,” he concluded, “if you were to send for Una.”

“It’s what I intend,” said Sir Terence in a voice that made a threat
of the statement. He strode stiffly across the room and pulled open the
door. There was no need to go farther. Lady O’Moy, white and tearful,
was discovered on the threshold. Sir Terence stood aside, holding the
door for her, his face very grim.

She came in slowly, looking from one to another with her troubled
glance, and finally accepting the chair that Captain Tremayne made haste
to offer her. She had so much to say to each person present that it was
impossible to know where to begin. It remained for Sir Terence to give
her the lead she needed, and this he did so soon as he had closed the
door again. Planted before it like a sentry, he looked at her between
anger and suspicion.

“How much did you overhear?” he asked her.

“All that you said about Dick,” she answered without hesitation.

“Then you stood listening?”

“Of course. I wanted to know what you were saying.”

“There are other ways of ascertaining that without stooping to
keyholes,” said her husband.

“I didn’t stoop,” she said, taking him literally. “I could hear what
was said without that--especially what you said, Terence. You will raise
your voice so on the slightest provocation.”

“And the provocation in this instance was, of course, of the slightest.
Since you have heard Captain Tremayne’s story of course you’ll have no
difficulty in confirming it.”

“If you still can doubt, O’Moy,” said Tremayne, “it must be because you
wish to doubt; because you are afraid to face the truth now that it has
been placed before you. I think, Una, it will spare a deal of trouble,
and save your husband from a great many expressions that he may
afterwards regret, if you go and fetch Dick. God knows, Terence has
enough to overwhelm him already.”

At the suggestion of producing Dick, O’Moy’s anger, which had begun to
simmer again, was stilled. He looked at his wife almost in alarm, and
she met his look with one of utter blankness.

“I can’t,” she said plaintively. “Dick’s gone.”

“Gone?” cried Tremayne.

“Gone?” said O’Moy, and then he began to laugh. “Are you quite sure that
he was ever here?”

“But--” She was a little bewildered, and a frown puckered her perfect
brow. “Hasn’t Ned told you, then?”

“Oh, Ned has told me. Ned has told!” His face was terrible.

“And don’t you believe him? Don’t you believe me?” She was more
plaintive than ever. It was almost as if she called heaven to witness
what manner of husband she was forced to endure. “Then you had better
call Mullins and ask him. He saw Dick leave.”

“And no doubt,” said Miss Armytage mercilessly, “Sir Terence will
believe his butler where he can believe neither his wife nor his
friend.”

He looked at her in a sort of amazement. “Do you believe them, Sylvia?”
 he cried.

“I hope I am not a fool,” said she impatiently.

“Meaning--” he began, but broke off. “How long do you say it is since
Dick left the house?”

“Ten minutes at most,” replied her ladyship.

He turned and pulled the door open again. “Mullins?” he called.
“Mullins!”

“What a man to live with!” sighed her ladyship, appealing to Miss
Armytage. “What a man!” And she applied a vinaigrette delicately to her
nostrils.

Tremayne smiled, and sauntered to the window. And then at last came
Mullins.

“Has any one left the house within the last ten minutes, Mullins?” asked
Sir Terence.

Mullins looked ill at ease.

“Sure, sir, you’ll not be after--”

“Will you answer my question, man?” roared Sir Terence.

“Sure, then, there’s nobody left the house at all but Mr. Butler, sir.”

“How long had he been here?” asked O’Moy, after a brief pause.

“‘Tis what I can’t tell ye, sir. I never set eyes on him until I saw him
coming downstairs from her ladyship’s room as it might be.”

“You can go, Mullins.”

“I hope, sir--”

“You can go.” And Sir Terence slammed the door upon the amazed servant,
who realised that some unhappy mystery was perturbing the adjutant’s
household.

Sir Terence stood facing them again. He was a changed man. The fire had
all gone out of him. His head was bowed and his face looked haggard and
suddenly old. His lip curled into a sneer.

“Pantaloon in the comedy,” he said, remembering in that moment the
bitter gibe that had cost Samoval his life.

“What did you say?” her ladyship asked him.

“I pronounced my own name,” he answered lugubriously.

“It didn’t sound like it, Terence.”

“It’s the name I ought to bear,” he said. “And I killed that liar for
it--the only truth he spoke.”

He came forward to the table. The full sense of his position suddenly
overwhelmed him, as Tremayne had said it would. A groan broke from him
and he collapsed into a chair, a stricken, broken man.




CHAPTER XX. THE RESIGNATION


At once, as he sat there, his elbows on the table, his head in his
hands, he found himself surrounded by those three, against each of whom
he had sinned under the spell of the jealousy that had blinded him and
led him by the nose.

His wife put an arm about his neck in mute comfort of a grief of which
she only understood the half--for of the heavier and more desperate
part of his guilt she was still in ignorance. Sylvia spoke to him kindly
words of encouragement where no encouragement could avail. But what
moved him most was the touch of Tremayne’s hand upon his shoulder, and
Tremayne’s voice bidding him brace himself to face the situation and
count upon them to stand by him to the end.

He looked up at his friend and secretary in an amazement that overcame
his shame.

“You can forgive me, Ned?”

Ned looked across at Sylvia Armytage. “You have been the means of
bringing me to such happiness as I should never have reached without
these happenings,” he said. “What resentment can I bear you, O’Moy?
Besides, I understand, and who understands can never do anything but
forgive. I realise how sorely you have been tried. No evidence more
conclusive that you were being wronged could have been placed before
you.”

“But the court-martial,” said O’Moy in horror. He covered his face with
his hand. “Oh, my God! I am dishonoured. I--I--” He rose, shaking
off the arm of his wife and the hand of the friend he had wronged so
terribly. He broke away from them and strode to the window, his face set
and white. “I think I was mad,” he said. “I know I was mad. But to have
done what I did--” He shuddered in very horror of himself now that he
was bereft of the support of that evil jealousy that had fortified
him against conscience itself and the very voice of honour. Lady O’Moy
turned to them, pleading for explanation.

“What does he mean? What has he done?”

Himself he answered her: “I killed Samoval. It was I who fought that
duel. And then believing what I did, I fastened the guilt upon Ned, and
went the lengths of perjury in my blind effort to avenge myself. That
is what I have done. Tell me, one of you, of your charity, what is there
left for me to do?”

“Oh!” It was an outcry of horror and indignation from Una, instantly
repressed by the tightening grip of Sylvia’s hand upon her arm. Miss
Armytage saw and understood, and sorrowed for Sir Terence. She must
restrain his wife from adding to his present anguish. Yet, “How could
you, Terence! Oh, how could you!” cried her ladyship, and so gave way to
tears, easier than words to express such natures.

“Because I loved you, I suppose,” he answered on a note of bitter
self-mockery. “That was the justification I should have given had I been
asked; that was the justification I accounted sufficient.”

“But then,” she cried, a new horror breaking on her mind--“if this is
discovered--Terence, what will become of you?”

He turned and came slowly back until he stood beside her. Facing now the
inevitable, he recovered some of his calm.

“It must be discovered,” he said quietly. “For the sake of everybody
concerned it must--”

“Oh, no, no!” She sprang up and clutched his arm in terror. “They may
fail to discover the truth.”

“They must not, my dear,” he answered her; stroking the fair head that
lay against his breast. “They must not fail. I must see to that.”

“You? You?” Her eyes dilated as she looked at him. She caught her breath
on a gasping sob. “Ah no, Terence,” she cried wildly. “You must not; you
must not. You must say nothing--for my sake, Terence, if you love me,
oh, for my sake, Terence!”

“For honour’s sake, I must,” he answered her. “And for the sake of
Sylvia and of Tremayne, whom I have wronged, and--”

“Not for my sake, Terence,” Sylvia interrupted him.

He looked at her, and then at Tremayne.

“And you, Ned--what do you say?” he asked.

“Ned could not wish--” began her ladyship.

“Please let him speak for himself, my dear,” her husband interrupted
her.

“What can I say?” cried Tremayne, with a gesture that was almost of
anger. “How can I advise? I scarcely know. You realise what you must
face if you confess?”

“Fully, and the only part of it I shrink from is the shame and scorn I
have deserved. Yet it is inevitable. You agree, Ned?”

“I am not sure. None who understands as I understand can feel anything
but regret. Oh, I don’t know. The evidence of what you suspected was
overwhelming, and it betrayed you into this mistake. The punishment you
would have to face is surely too heavy, and you have suffered far more
already than you can ever be called upon to suffer again, no matter what
is done to you. Oh, I don’t know! The problem is too deep for me. There
is Una to be considered, too. You owe a duty to her, and if you keep
silent it may be best for all. You can depend upon us to stand by you in
this.”

“Indeed, indeed,” said Sylvia.

He looked at them and smiled very tenderly.

“Never was a man blessed with nobler friends who deserved so little of
them,” he said slowly. “You heap coals of fire upon my head. You shame
me through and through. But have you considered, Ned, that all may not
depend upon my silence? What if the provost-marshal, investigating now,
were to come upon the real facts?”

“It is impossible that sufficient should be discovered to convict you.”

“How can you be sure of that? And if it were possible, if it came to
pass, what then would be my position? You see, Ned! I must accept the
punishment I have incurred lest a worse overtake me--to put it at its
lowest. I must voluntarily go forward and denounce myself before another
denounces me. It is the only way to save some rag of honour.”

There was a tap at the door, and Mullins came to announce that Lord
Wellington was asking to see Sir Terence.

“He is waiting in the study, Sir Terence.”

“Tell his lordship I will be with him at once.”

Mullins departed, and Sir Terence prepared to follow. Gently he
disengaged himself from the arms her ladyship now flung about him.

“Courage, my dear,” he said. “Wellington may show me more mercy than I
deserve.”

“You are going to tell him?” she questioned brokenly.

“Of course, sweetheart. What else can I do? And since you and Tremayne
find it in your hearts to forgive me, nothing else matters very much.”
 He kissed her tenderly and put her from him. He looked at Sylvia
standing beside her and at Tremayne beyond the table. “Comfort her,” he
implored them, and, turning, went out quickly.

Awaiting him in the study he found not only Lord Wellington, but Colonel
Grant, and by the cold gravity of both their faces he had an inspiration
that in some mysterious way the whole hideous truth was already known to
them.

The slight figure of his lordship in its grey frock was stiff and
erect, his booted leg firmly planted, his hands behind him clutching his
riding-crop and cocked hat. His face was set and his voice as he greeted
O’Moy sharp and staccato.

“Ah, O’Moy, there are one or two matters to be discussed before I leave
Lisbon.”

“I had written to you, sir,” replied O’Moy. “Perhaps you will first read
my letter.” And he went to fetch it from the writing-table, where he had
left it when completed an hour earlier.

His lordship took the letter in silence, and after one piercing glance
at O’Moy broke the seal. In the background, near the window, the
tall figure of Colquhoun Grant stood stiffly erect, his hawk face
inscrutable.

“Ah! Your resignation, O’Moy. But you give no reasons.” Again his keen
glance stabbed into the adjutant’s face. “Why this?” he asked sharply.

“Because,” said Sir Terence, “I prefer to tender it before it is asked
of me.” He was very white, yet by an effort those deep blue eyes of his
met the terrible gaze of his chief without flinching.

“Perhaps you’ll explain,” said his lordship coldly.

“In the first place,” said O’Moy, “it was myself killed Samoval, and
since your lordship was a witness of what followed, you will realise
that that was the least part of my offence.”

The great soldier jerked his head sharply backward, tilting forward
his chin. “So!” he said. “Ha! I beg your pardon, Grant, for having
disbelieved you.” Then, turning to O’Moy again: “Well,” he demanded, his
voice hard, “have you nothing to add?”

“Nothing that can matter,” said O’Moy, with a shrug, and they stood
facing each other in silence for a long moment.

At last when Wellington spoke his voice had assumed a gentler note.

“O’Moy,” he said, “I have known you these fifteen years, and we have
been friends. Once you carried your friendship, appreciation, and
understanding of me so far as nearly to ruin yourself on my behalf.
You’ll not have forgotten the affair of Sir Harry Burrard. In all these
years I have known you for a man of shining honour, an honest, upright
gentleman, whom I would have trusted when I should have distrusted every
other living man. Yet you stand there and confess to me the basest,
the most dishonest villainy that I have ever known a British officer to
commit, and you tell me that you have no explanation to offer for your
conduct. Either I have never known you, O’Moy, or I do not know you now.
Which is it?”

O’Moy raised his arms, only to let them fall heavily to his sides again.

“What explanation can there be?” he asked. “How can a man who has
been--as I hope I have--a man of honour in the past explain such an act
of madness? It arose out of your order against duelling,” he went on.
“Samoval offended me mortally. He said such things to me of my wife’s
honour that no man could suffer, and I least of any man. My temper
betrayed me. I consented to a clandestine meeting without seconds. It
took place here, and I killed him. And then I had, as I imagined--quite
wrongly, as I know now--overwhelming evidence that what he had told
me was true, and I went mad.” Briefly he told the story of Tremayne’s
descent from Lady O’Moy’s balcony and the rest.

“I scarcely know,” he resumed, “what it was I hoped to accomplish in the
end. I do not know--for I never stopped to consider--whether I should
have allowed Captain Tremayne to have been shot if it had come to that.
All that I was concerned to do was to submit him to the ordeal which I
conceived he must undergo when he saw himself confronted with the choice
of keeping silence and submitting to his fate, or saving himself by an
avowal that could scarcely be less bitter than death itself.”

“You fool, O’Moy-you damned, infernal fool!” his lordship swore at him.
“Grant overheard more than you imagined that night outside the gates.
His conclusions ran the truth very close indeed. But I could not believe
him, could not believe this of you.”’

“Of course not,” said O’Moy gloomily. “I can’t believe it of myself.”

“When Miss Armytage intervened to afford Tremayne an alibi, I believed
her, in view of what Grant had told me; I concluded that hers was the
window from which Tremayne had climbed down. Because of what I knew I
was there to see that the case did not go to extremes against Tremayne.
If necessary Grant must have given full evidence of all he knew, and
there and then left you to your fate. Miss Armytage saved us from that,
and left me convinced, but still not understanding your own attitude.
And now comes Richard Butler to surrender to me and cast himself upon
my mercy with another tale which completely gives the lie to Miss
Armytage’s, but confirms your own.”

“Richard Butler!” cried O’Moy. “He has surrendered to you?”

“Half-an-hour ago.”

Sir Terence turned aside with a weary shrug. A little laugh that was
more a sob broke from him. “Poor Una!” he muttered.

“The tangle is a shocking one--lies, lies everywhere, and in the places
where they were least to be expected.” Wellington’s anger flashed
out. “Do you realise what awaits you as a result of all this damned
insanity?”

“I do, sir. That is why I place my resignation in your hands. The
disregard of a general order punishable in any officer is beyond pardon
in your adjutant-general.”

“But that is the least of it, you fool.”

“Sure, don’t I know? I assure you that I realise it all.”

“And you are prepared to face it?” Wellington was almost savage in an
anger proceeding from the conflict that went on within him. There was
his duty as commander-in-chief, and there was his friendship for O’Moy
and his memory of the past in which O’Moy’s loyalty had almost been the
ruin of him.

“What choice have I?”

His lordship turned away, and strode the length of the room, his head
bent, his lips twitching. Suddenly he stopped and faced the silent
intelligence officer.

“What is to be done, Grant?”

“That is a matter for your lordship. But if I might venture--”

“Venture and be damned,” snapped Wellington.

“The signal service rendered the cause of the allies by the death
of Samoval might perhaps be permitted to weigh against the offence
committed by O’Moy.”

“How could it?” snapped his lordship. “You don’t know, O’Moy, that upon
Samoval’s body were found certain documents intended for Massena. Had
they reached him, or had Samoval carried out the full intentions that
dictated his quarrel with you, and no doubt sent him here depending
upon his swordsmanship to kill you, all my plans for the undoing of the
French would have been ruined. Ay, you may stare. That is another matter
in which you have lacked discretion. You may be a fine engineer, O’Moy,
but I don’t think I could have found a less judicious adjutant-general
if I had raked the ranks of the army on purpose to find an idiot.
Samoval was a spy--the cleverest spy that we have ever had to deal with.
Only his death revealed how dangerous he was. For killing him when
you did you deserve the thanks of his Majesty’s Government, as Grant
suggests. But before you can receive those you will have to stand a
court-martial for the manner in which you killed him, and you will
probably be shot. I can’t help you. I hope you don’t expect it of me.”

“The thought had not so much as occurred to me. Yet what you tell me,
sir, lifts something of the load from my mind.”

“Does it? Well, it lifts no load from mine,” was the angry retort. He
stood considering. Then with an impatient gesture he seemed to dismiss
his thoughts. “I can do nothing,” he said, “nothing without being false
to my duty and becoming as bad as you have been, O’Moy, and without
any of the sentimental justification that existed in your case. I can’t
allow the matter to be dropped, stifled. I have never been guilty of
such a thing, and I refuse to become guilty of it now. I refuse--do you
understand? O’Moy, you have acted; and you must take the consequences,
and be damned to you.”

“Faith, I’ve never asked you to help me, sir,” Sir Terence protested.

“And you don’t intend to, I suppose?”

“I do not.”

“I am glad of that.” He was in one of those rages which were as terrible
as they were rare with him. “I wouldn’t have you suppose that I make
laws for the sake of rescuing people from the consequences of disobeying
them. Here is this brother-in-law of yours, this fellow Butler, who has
made enough mischief in the country to imperil our relations with
our allies. And I am half pledged to condone his adventure at Tavora.
There’s nothing for it, O’Moy. As your friend, I am infernally angry
with you for placing yourself in this position; as your commanding
officer I can only order you under arrest and convene a court-martial to
deal with you.”

Sir Terence bowed his head. He was a little surprised by all this heat.
“I never expected anything else,” he said. “And it’s altogether at a
loss I am to understand why your lordship should be vexing yourself in
this manner.”

“Because I’ve a friendship for you, O’Moy. Because I remember that
you’ve been a loyal friend to me. And because I must forget all this
and remember only that my duty is absolutely rigid and inflexible. If I
condoned your offence, if I suppressed inquiry, I should be in duty and
honour bound to offer my own resignation to his Majesty’s Government.
And I have to think of other things besides my personal feelings, when
at any moment now the French may be over the Agueda and into Portugal.”

Sir Terence’s face flushed, and his glance brightened.

“From my heart I thank you that you can even think of such things at
such a time and after what I have done.”

“Oh, as to what you have done--I understand that you are a fool, O’Moy.
There’s no more to be said. You are to consider yourself under arrest.
I must do it if you were my own brother, which, thank God, you’re not.
Come, Grant. Good-bye, O’Moy.” And he held out his hand to him.

Sir Terence hesitated, staring.

“It’s the hand of your friend, Arthur Wellesley, I’m offering you, not
the hand of your commanding officer,” said his lordship savagely.

Sir Terence took it, and wrung it in silence, perhaps more deeply moved
than he had yet been by anything that had happened to him that morning.

There was a knock at the door, and Mullins opened it to admit the
adjutant’s orderly, who came stiffly to attention.

“Major Carruthers’s compliments, sir,” he said to O’Moy, “and his
Excellency the Secretary of the Council of Regency wishes to see you
very urgently.”

There was a pause. O’Moy shrugged and spread his hands. This message was
for the adjutant-general and he no longer filled the office.

“Pray tell Major Carruthers that I--” he was beginning, when Lord
Wellington intervened.

“Desire his Excellency to step across here. I will see him myself.”




CHAPTER XXI. SANCTUARY


“I will withdraw, sir,” said Terence.

But Wellington detained him. “Since Dom Miguel asked for you, you had
better remain, perhaps.”

“It is the adjutant-general Dom Miguel desires to see, and I am
adjutant-general no longer.”

“Still, the matter may concern you. I have a notion that it may be
concerned with the death of Count Samoval, since I have acquainted the
Council of Regency with the treason practised by the Count. You had
better remain.”

Gloomy and downcast, Sir Terence remained as he was bidden.

The sleek and supple Secretary of State was ushered in. He came forward
quickly, clicked his heels together and bowed to the three men present.

“Sirs, your obedient servant,” he announced himself, with a courtliness
almost out of fashion, speaking in his extraordinarily fluent English.
His sallow countenance was extremely grave. He seemed even a little ill
at ease.

“I am fortunate to find you here, my lord. The matter upon which I
seek your adjutant-general is of considerable gravity--so much that of
himself he might be unable to resolve it. I feared you might already
have departed for the north.”

“Since you suggest that my presence may be of service to you, I am happy
that circumstances should have delayed my departure,” was his lordship’s
courteous answer. “A chair, Dom Miguel.”

Dom Miguel Forjas accepted the proffered chair, whilst Wellington seated
himself at Sir Terence’s desk. Sir Terence himself remained standing
with his shoulders to the overmantel, whence he faced them both as well
as Grant, who, according to his self-effacing habit, remained in the
background by the window.

“I have sought you,” began Dom Miguel, stroking his square chin, “on a
matter concerned with the late Count Samoval, immediately upon hearing
that the court-martial pronounced the acquittal of Captain Tremayne.”

His lordship frowned, and his eagle glance fastened upon the Secretary’s
face.

“I trust, sir, you have not come to question the finding of the
court-martial.”

“Oh, on the contrary--on the contrary!” Dom Miguel was emphatic. “I
represent not only the Council, but the Samoval family as well. Both
realise that it is perhaps fortunate for all concerned that in arresting
Captain Tremayne the military authorities arrested the wrong man, and
both have reason to dread the arrest of the right one.”

He paused, and the frown deepened between Wellington’s brows.

“I am afraid,” he said slowly, “that I do not quite perceive their
concern in this matter.”

“But is it not clear?” cried Dom Miguel.

“If it were I should perceive it,” said his lordship dryly.

“Ah, but let me explain, then. A further investigation of the manner in
which Count Samoval met his death can hardly fail to bring to light
the deplorable practices in which he was engaged; for no doubt Colonel
Grant, here, would consider it his duty in the interests of justice to
place before the court the documents found upon the Count’s dead body.
If I may permit myself an observation,” he continued, looking round at
Colonel Grant, “it is that I do not quite understand how this has not
already happened.”

There was a pause in which Grant looked at Wellington as if for
direction. But his lordship himself assumed the burden of the answer.

“It was not considered expedient in the public interest to do so at
present,” he said. “And the circumstances did not place us under the
necessity of divulging the matter.”

“There, my lord, if you will allow me to say so, you acted with a
delicacy and wisdom which the circumstances may not again permit. Indeed
any further investigation must almost inevitably bring these matters to
light, and the effect of such revelation would be deplorable.”

“Deplorable to whom?” asked his lordship.

“To the Count’s family and to the Council of Regency.”

“I can sympathise with the Count’s family, but not with the Council.”

“Surely, my lord, the Council as a body deserves your sympathy in that
it is in danger of being utterly discredited by the treason of one or
two of its members.”

Wellington manifested impatience. “The Council has been warned time and
again. I am weary of warning, and even of threatening, the Council with
the consequences of resisting my policy. I think that exposure is not
only what it deserves, but the surest means of providing a healthier
government in the future. I am weary of picking my way through the
web of intrigue with which the Council entangles my movements and
my dispositions. Public sympathy has enabled it to hamper me in this
fashion. That sympathy will be lost to it by the disclosures which you
fear.”

“My lord, I must confess that there is much reason in what you say.” He
was smoothly conciliatory. “I understand your exasperation. But may I
be permitted to assure you that it is not the Council as a body that has
withstood you, but certain self-seeking members, one or two friends of
Principal Souza, in whose interests the unfortunate and misguided Count
Samoval was acting. Your lordship will perceive that the moment is
not one in which to stir up public indignation against the Portuguese
Government. Once the passions of the mob are inflamed, who can say to
what lengths they may not go, who can say what disastrous consequences
may not follow? It is desirable to apply the cautery, but not to burn up
the whole body.”

Lord Wellington considered a moment, fingering an ivory paper-knife. He
was partly convinced.

“When I last suggested the cautery, to use your own very apt figure, the
Council did not keep faith with me.”

“My lord!”

“It did not, sir. It removed Antonio de Souza, but it did not take the
trouble to go further and remove his friends at the same time. They
remained to carry on his subversive treacherous intrigues. What
guarantees have I that the Council will behave better on this occasion?”

“You have our solemn assurances, my lord, that all those members
suspected of complicity in this business or of attachment to the Souza
faction, shall be compelled to resign, and you may depend upon the
reconstituted Council loyally to support your measures.”

“You give me assurances, sir, and I ask for guarantees.”

“Your lordship is in possession of the documents found upon Count
Samoval. The Council knows this, and this knowledge will compel it to
guard against further intrigues on the part of any of its members which
might naturally exasperate you into publishing those documents. Is not
that some guarantee?”

His lordship considered, and nodded slowly. “I admit that it is. Yet
I do not see how this publicity is to be avoided in the course of the
further investigations into the manner in which Count Samoval came by
his death.”

“My lord, that is the pivot of the whole matter. All further
investigation must be suspended.”

Sir Terence trembled, and his eyes turned in eager anxiety upon the
inscrutable, stern face of Lord Wellington.

“Must!” cried his lordship sharply.

“What else, my lord, in all our interests?” exclaimed the Secretary, and
he rose in his agitation.

“And what of British justice, sir?” demanded his lordship in a
forbidding tone.

“British justice has reason to consider itself satisfied. British
justice may assume that Count Samoval met his death in the pursuit
of his treachery. He was a spy caught in the act, and there and then
destroyed--a very proper fate. Had he been taken, British justice would
have demanded no less. It has been anticipated. Cannot British justice,
for the sake of British interests as well as Portuguese interests, be
content to leave the matter there?”

“An argument of expediency, eh?” said Wellington. “Why not, my lord!
Does not expediency govern politicians?”

“I am not a politician.”

“But a wise soldier, my lord, does not lose sight of the political
consequences of his acts.” And he sat down again.

“Your Excellency may be right,” said his lordship. “Let us be quite
clear, then. You suggest, speaking in the name of the Council of
Regency, that I should suppress all further investigations into the
manner in which Count Samoval met his death, so as to save his family
the shame and the Council of Regency the discredit which must overtake
one and the other if the facts are disclosed--as disclosed they would be
that Samoval was a traitor and a spy in the pay of the French. That
is what you ask me to do. In return your Council undertakes that there
shall be no further opposition to my plans for the military defence of
Portugal, and that all my measures however harsh and however heavily
they may weigh upon the landowners, shall be punctually and faithfully
carried out. That is your Excellency’s proposal, is it not?”

“Not so much my proposal, my lord, as my most earnest intercession. We
desire to spare the innocent the consequences of the sins of a man who
is dead, and well dead.” He turned to O’Moy, standing there tense and
anxious. It was not for Dom Miguel to know that it was the adjutant’s
fate that was being decided. “Sir Terence,” he cried, “you have been
here for a year, and all matters connected with the Council have
been treated through you. You cannot fail to see the wisdom of my
recommendation.”

His lordship’s eyes flashed round upon O’Moy. “Ah yes!” he said. “What
is your feeling in this matter, ‘O’Moy?” he inquired, his tone and
manner void of all expression.

Sir Terence faltered; then stiffened. “I--The matter is one that only
your lordship can decide. I have no wish to influence your decision.”

“I see. Ha! And you, Grant? No doubt you agree with Dom Miguel?”

“Most emphatically--upon every count, sir,” replied the intelligence
officer without hesitation. “I think Dom Miguel offers an excellent
bargain. And, as he says, we hold a guarantee of its fulfilment.”

“The bargain might be improved,” said Wellington slowly.

“If your lordship will tell me how, the Council, I am sure, will be
ready to do all that lies in its power to satisfy you.”

Wellington shifted his chair round a little, and crossed his legs. He
brought his finger-tips together, and over the top of them his eyes
considered the Secretary of State.

“Your Excellency has spoken of expediency--political expediency.
Sometimes political expediency can overreach itself and perpetrate the
most grave injustices. Individuals at times are unnecessarily called
upon to suffer in the interests of a cause. Your Excellency will
remember a certain affair at Tavora some two months ago--the invasion of
a convent by a British officer with rather disastrous consequences and
the loss of some lives.”

“I remember it perfectly, my lord. I had the honour of entertaining Sir
Terence upon that subject on the occasion of my last visit here.”

“Quite so,” said his lordship. “And on the grounds of political
expediency you made a bargain then with Sir Terence, I understand, a
bargain which entailed the perpetration of an injustice.”

“I am not aware of it, my lord.”

“Then let me refresh your Excellency’s memory upon the facts. To appease
the Council of Regency, or rather to enable me to have my way with
the Council and remove the Principal Souza, you stipulated for the
assurance--so that you might lay it before your Council--that the
offending officer should be shot when taken.”

“I could not help myself in the matter, and--”

“A moment, sir. That is not the way of British justice, and Sir Terence
was wrong to have permitted himself to consent; though I profoundly
appreciate the loyalty to me, the earnest desire to assist me, which led
him into an act the cost of which to himself your Excellency can hardly
appreciate. But the wrong lay in that by virtue of this bargain a
British officer was prejudged. He was to be made a scapegoat. He was
to be sent to his death when taken, as a peace-offering to the people,
demanded by the Council of Regency.

“Since all this happened I have had the facts of the case placed before
me. I will go so far as to tell you, sir, that the officer in question
has been in my hands for the past hour, that I have closely questioned
him, and that I am satisfied that whilst he has been guilty of conduct
which might compel me to deprive him of his Majesty’s commission and
dismiss him from the army, yet that conduct is not such as to merit
death. He has chiefly sinned in folly and want of judgment. I reprove
it in the sternest terms, and I deplore the consequences it had. But for
those consequences the nuns of Tavora are almost as much to blame as he
is himself. His invasion of their convent was a pure error, committed
in the belief that it was a monastery and as a result of the porter’s
foolish conduct.

“Now, Sir Terence’s word, given in response to your absolute demands,
has committed us to an unjust course, which I have no intention of
following. I will stipulate, sir, that your Council, in addition to the
matters undertaken, shall relieve us of all obligation in this matter,
leaving it to our discretion to punish Mr. Butler in such manner as we
may consider condign. In return, your Excellency, I will undertake that
there shall be no further investigation into the manner in which Count
Samoval came by his death, and consequently, no disclosures of the
shameful trade in which he was engaged. If your Excellency will give
yourself the trouble of taking the sense of your Council upon this, we
may then reach a settlement.”

The grave anxiety of Dom Miguel’s countenance was instantly dispelled.
In his relief he permitted himself a smile.

“My lord, there is not the need to take the sense of the Council.
The Council has given me carte blanche to obtain your consent to a
suppression of the Samoval affair. And without hesitation I accept
the further condition that you make. Sir Terence may consider himself
relieved of his parole in the matter of Lieutenant Butler.”

“Then we may look upon the matter as concluded.”

“As happily concluded, my lord.” Dom Miguel rose to make his valedictory
oration. “It remains for me only to thank your lordship in the name
of the Council for the courtesy and consideration with which you have
received my proposal and granted our petition. Acquainted as I am with
the crystalline course of British justice, knowing as I do how it seeks
ever to act in the full light of day, I am profoundly sensible of the
cost to your lordship of the concession you make to the feelings of the
Samoval family and the Portuguese Government, and I can assure you that
they will be accordingly grateful.”

“That is very gracefully said, Dom Miguel,” replied his lordship, rising
also.

The Secretary placed a hand upon his heart, bowing. “It is but the poor
expression of what I think and feel.” And so he took his leave of them,
escorted by Colonel Grant, who discreetly volunteered for the office.

Left alone with Wellington, Sir Terence heaved a great sigh of supreme
relief.

“In my wife’s name, sir, I should like to thank you. But she shall thank
you herself for what you have done for me.”

“What I have done for you, O’Moy?” Wellington’s slight figure stiffened
perceptibly, his face and glance were cold and haughty. “You mistake,
I think, or else you did not hear. What I have done, I have done solely
upon grounds of political expediency. I had no choice in the matter, and
it was not to favour you, or out of disregard for my duty, as you seem
to imagine, that I acted as I did.”

O’Moy bowed his head, crushed under that rebuff. He clasped and
unclasped his hands a moment in his desperate anguish.

“I understand,” he muttered in a broken voice, “I--I beg your pardon,
sir.”

And then Wellington’s slender, firm fingers took him by the arm.

“But I am glad, O’Moy, that I had no choice,” he added more gently. “As
a man, I suppose I may be glad that my duty as Commander-in-Chief placed
me under the necessity of acting as I have done.”

Sir Terence clutched the hand in both his own and wrung it fiercely,
obeying an overmastering impulse.

“Thank you,” he cried. “Thank you for that!”

“Tush!” said Wellington, and then abruptly: “What are you going to do,
O’Moy?” he asked.

“Do?” said O’Moy, and his blue eyes looked pleadingly down into the
sternly handsome face of his chief, “I am in your hands, sir.”

“Your resignation is, and there it must remain, O’Moy. You understand?”

“Of course, sir. Naturally you could not after this--” He shrugged and
broke off. “But must I go home?” he pleaded.

“What else? And, by God, sir, you should be thankful, I think.”

“Very well,” was the dull answer, and then he flared out. “Faith, it’s
your own fault for giving me a job of this kind. You knew me. You know
that I am just a blunt, simple soldier--that my place is at the head of
a regiment, not at the head of an administration. You should have known
that by putting me out of my proper element I was bound to get into
trouble sooner or later.”

“Perhaps I do,” said Wellington. “But what am I to do with you now?” He
shrugged, and strode towards the window. “You had better go home, O’Moy.
Your health has suffered out here, and you are not equal to the heat of
summer that is now increasing. That is the reason of this resignation.
You understand?”

“I shall be shamed for ever,” said O’Moy. “To go home when the army is
about to take the field!”

But Wellington did not hear him, or did not seem to hear him. He had
reached the window and his eye was caught by something that he saw in
the courtyard.

“What the devil’s this now?” he rapped out. “That is one of Sir Robert
Craufurd’s aides.”

He turned and went quickly to the door. He opened it as rapid steps
approached along the passage, accompanied by the jingle of spurs and
the clatter of sabretache and trailing sabre. Colonel Grant appeared,
followed by a young officer of Light Dragoons who was powdered from
head to foot with dust. The youth--he was little more--lurched forward
wearily, yet at sight of Wellington he braced himself to attention and
saluted.

“You appear to have ridden hard, sir,” the Commander greeted him.

“From Almeida in forty-seven hours, my lord,” was the answer. “With
these from Sir Robert.” And he proffered a sealed letter.

“What is your name?” Wellington inquired, as he took the package.

“Hamilton, my lord,” was the answer; “Hamilton of the Sixteenth,
aide-de-camp to Sir Robert Craufurd.”

Wellington nodded. “That was great horsemanship, Mr. Hamilton,” he
commended him; and a faint tinge in the lad’s haggard cheeks responded
to that rare praise.

“The urgency was great, my lord,” replied Mr. Hamilton.

“The French columns are in movement. Ney and Junot advanced to the
investment of Ciudad Rodrigo on the first of the month.”

“Already!” exclaimed Wellington, and his countenance set.

“The commander, General Herrasti, has sent an urgent appeal to Sir
Robert for assistance.”

“And Sir Robert?” The question came on a sharp note of apprehension,
for his lordship was fully aware that valour was the better part of Sir
Robert Craufurd’s discretion.

“Sir Robert asks for orders in this dispatch, and refuses to stir from
Almeida without instructions from your lordship.”

“Ah!!” It was a sigh of relief. He broke the seal and spread the
dispatch. He read swiftly. “Very well,” was all he said, when he had
reached the end of Sir Robert’s letter. “I shall reply to this in person
and at, once. You will be in need of rest, Mr. Hamilton. You had best
take a day to recuperate, then follow me to Almeida. Sir Terence no
doubt will see to your immediate needs.”

“With pleasure, Mr. Hamilton,” replied Sir Terence mechanically--for
his own concerns weighed upon him at this moment more heavily than the
French advance. He pulled the bell-rope, and into the fatherly hands
of Mullins, who came in response to the summons, the young officer was
delivered.

Lord Wellington took up his hat and riding-crop from Sir Terence’s desk.
“I shall leave for the frontier at once,” he announced. “Sir Robert will
need the encouragement of my presence to keep him within the prudent
bounds I have imposed. And I do not know how long Ciudad Rodrigo may be
able to hold out. At any moment we may have the French upon the
Agueda, and the invasion may begin. As for you, O’Moy, this has changed
everything. The French and the needs of the case have decided. For the
present no change is possible in the administration here in Lisbon. You
hold the threads of your office and the moment is not one in which to
appoint another adjutant to take them over. Such a thing might be fatal
to the success of the British arms. You must withdraw this resignation.”
 And he proffered the document.

Sir Terence recoiled. He went deathly white.

“I cannot,” he stammered. “After what has happened, I--”

Lord Wellington’s face became set and stern. His eyes blazed upon the
adjutant.

“O’Moy,” he said, and the concentrated anger of his voice was
terrifying, “if you suggest that any considerations but those of this
campaign have the least weight with me in what I now do, you insult
me. I yield to no man in my sense of duty, and I allow no private
considerations to override it. You are saved from going home in disgrace
by the urgency of the circumstances, as I have told you. By that and by
nothing else. Be thankful, then; and in loyally remaining at your post
efface what is past. You know what is doing at Torres Vedras. The works
have been under your direction from the commencement. See that they are
vigorously pushed forward and that the lines are ready to receive the
army in a month’s time from now if necessary. I depend upon you--the
army and England’s honour depend upon you. I bow to the inevitable and
so shall you.” Then his sternness relaxed. “So much as your commanding
officer. Now as your friend,” and he held out his hand, “I congratulate
you upon your luck. After this morning’s manifestations of it, it should
pass into a proverb. Goodbye, O’Moy. I trust you, remember.”

“And I shall not fail you,” gulped O’Moy, who, strong man that he was,
found himself almost on the verge of tears. He clutched the extended
hand.

“I shall fix my headquarters for the present at Celorico. Communicate
with me there. And now one other matter: the Council of Regency will
no doubt pester you with representations that I should--if time still
remains--advance to the relief of Ciudad Rodrigo. Understand, that is
no part of my plan of campaign. I do not stir across the frontier of
Portugal. Here let the French come and find me, and I shall be ready to
receive them. Let the Portuguese Government have no illusions on that
point, and stimulate the Council into doing all possible to carry out
the destruction of mills and the laying waste of the country in the
valley of the Mondego and wherever else I have required.

“Oh, and by the way, you will find your brother-in-law, Mr. Butler, in
the guard-room yonder, awaiting my orders. Provide him with a uniform
and bid him rejoin his regiment at once. Recommend him to be more
prudent in future if he wishes me to forget his escapade at Tavora. And
in future, O’Moy, trust your wife. Again, good-bye. Come, Grant!--I have
instructions for you too. But you must take them as we ride.”

And thus Sir Terence O’Moy found sanctuary at the altar of his country’s
need. They left him incredulously to marvel at the luck which had so
enlisted circumstances to save him where all had seemed so surely lost
an hour ago.

He sent a servant to fetch Mr. Butler, the prime cause of all this
pother--for all of it can be traced to Mr. Butler’s invasion of the
Tavora nunnery--and with him went to bear the incredible tidings of
their joint absolution to the three who waited so anxiously in the
dining-room.




POSTSCRIPTUM


The particular story which I have set myself to relate, of how Sir
Terence O’Moy was taken in the snare of his own jealousy, may very
properly be concluded here. But the greater story in which it is
enshrined and with which it is interwoven, the story of that other snare
in which my Lord Viscount Wellington took the French, goes on. This
story is the history of the war in the Peninsula. There you may pursue
it to its very end and realise the iron will and inflexibility of
purpose which caused men ultimately to bestow upon him who guided that
campaign the singularly felicitous and fitting sobriquet of the Iron
Duke.

Ciudad Rodrigo’s Spanish garrison capitulated on the 10th of July of
that year 1810, and a wave of indignation such as must have overwhelmed
any but a man of almost superhuman mettle swept up against Lord
Wellington for having stood inactive within the frontiers of Portugal
and never stirred a hand to aid the Spaniards. It was not only from
Spain that bitter invective was hurled upon him; British journalism
poured scorn and rage upon his incompetence, French journalism held his
pusillanimity up to the ridicule of the world. His own officers took
shame in their general, and expressed it. Parliament demanded to know
how long British honour was to be imperilled by such a man. And finally
the Emperor’s great marshal, Massena, gathering his hosts to overwhelm
the kingdom of Portugal, availed himself of all this to appeal to the
Portuguese nation in terms which the facts would seem to corroborate.

He issued his proclamation denouncing the British for the disturbers
and mischief-makers of Europe, warning the Portuguese that they were
the cat’s-paw of a perfidious nation that was concerned solely with
the serving of its own interests and the gratification of its predatory
ambitions, and finally summoning them to receive the French as their
true friends and saviours.

The nation stirred uneasily. So far no good had come to them of their
alliance with the British. Indeed Wellington’s policy of devastation had
seemed to those upon whom it fell more horrible than any French invasion
could have been.

But Wellington held the reins, and his grip never relaxed or slackened.
And here let it be recorded that he was nobly and stoutly served in
Lisbon by Sir Terence O’Moy. Pressure upon the Council resulted in the
measures demanded being carried out. But much time had been lost through
the intrigues of the Souza faction, with the result that those measures,
although prosecuted now more vigorously, never reached the full extent
which Wellington had desired. Treachery, too, stepped in to shorten the
time still further. Almeida, garrisoned by Portuguese and commanded by
Colonel Cox and a British staff, should have held a month. But no sooner
had the French appeared before it, on the 26th August, than a powder
magazine traitorously fired exploded and breached the wall, rendering
the place untenable.

To Wellington this was perhaps the most vexatious of all things in that
vexatious time. He had hoped to detain Massena before Almeida until the
rains should have set in, when the French would have found themselves
struggling through a sodden, water-logged country, through bridgeless
floods and a land bereft of all that could sustain the troops. Still,
what could be done Wellington did, and did it nobly. Fighting a
rearguard action, he fell back upon the grim and naked ridges of Busaco,
where at the end of September he delivered battle and a murderous
detaining wound upon the advancing hosts of France. That done, he
continued the retreat through Coimbra. And now as he went he saw to it
that the devastation was completed along the line of march. What corn
and provisions could not be carried off were burnt or buried, and
the people forced to quit their dwellings and march with the army--a
pathetic, southward exodus of men and women, old and young, flocks of
sheep, and herds of cattle, creaking bullock-carts laden with provender
and household goods, leaving behind them a country bare as the Sahara,
where hunger before long should grip the French army too far committed
now to pause. In advancing and overtaking must lie Massena’s hope.
Eventually in Lisbon he must bring the British to bay, and, breaking
them, open out at last his way into a land of plenty.

Thus thought Massena, knowing nothing of the lines of Torres Vedras; and
thus, too, thought the British Government at home, itself declaring that
Wellington was ruining the country to no purpose, since in the end the
British must be driven out with terrible loss and infamy that must make
their name an opprobrium in the world.

But Wellington went his relentless way, and at the end of the first
week of October brought his army and the multitude of refugees safely
within the amazing lines. The French, pressing hard upon their heels and
confident that the end was near, were brought up sharply before those
stupendous, unsuspected, impregnable fortifications.

After spending best part of a month in vain reconnoitering, Massena took
up his quarters at Santarem, and thence the country was scoured for
what scraps of victuals had been left to relieve the dire straits of the
famished host of France. How the great marshal contrived to hold out so
long in Santarem against the onslaught of famine and concomitant disease
remains something of a mystery. An appeal to the Emperor for succour
eventually brought Drouet with provisions, but these were no more than
would keep his men alive on a retreat into Spain, and that retreat
he commenced early in the following March, by when no less than ten
thousand of his army had fallen sick.

Instantly Wellington was up and after him. The French retreat became a
flight. They threw away baggage and ammunition that they might travel
the lighter. Thus they fled towards Spain, harassed by the British
cavalry and scarcely less by the resentful peasantry of Portugal, their
line of march defined by an unbroken trail of carcasses, until the
tattered remnants of that once splendid army found shelter across the
Coira. Beyond this Wellington could not continue the pursuit for lack
of means to cross the swollen river and also because provisions were
running short.

But there for the moment he might rest content, his immediate object
achieved and his stern strategy supremely vindicated.

On the heights above the yellow, turgid flood rode Wellington
with a glittering staff that included O’Moy and Murray, the
quartermaster-general. Through his telescope he surveyed with silent
satisfaction the straggling columns of the French that were being
absorbed by the evening mists from the sodden ground.

O’Moy, at his side, looked on without satisfaction. To him the close of
this phase of the campaign which had justified his remaining in office
meant the reopening of that painful matter that had been left in
suspense by circumstances since that June day of last year at Monsanto.
The resignation then refused from motives of expediency must again be
tendered and must now be accepted.

Abruptly upon the general stillness came a sharply humming sound. Within
a yard of the spot where Wellington sat his horse a handful of soil
heaved itself up and fell in a tiny scattered shower. Immediately
elsewhere in a dozen places was the phenomenon repeated. There was
too much glitter about the staff uniforms and vindictive French
sharpshooters were finding them an attractive mark.

“They are firing on us, sir!” cried O’Moy on a note of sharp alarm.

“So I perceive,” Lord Wellington answered calmly, and leisurely he
closed his glass, so leisurely that O’Moy, in impatient fear of his
chief, spurred forward and placed himself as a screen between him and
the line of fire.

Lord Wellington looked at him with a faint smile. He was about to speak
when O’Moy pitched forward and rolled headlong from the saddle.

They picked him up unconscious but alive, and for once Lord Wellington
was seen to blench as he flung down from his horse to inquire the nature
of O’Moy’s hurt. It was not fatal, but, as it afterwards proved, it was
grave enough. He had been shot through the body, the right lung had been
grazed and one of his ribs broken.

Two days later, after the bullet had been extracted, Lord Wellington
went to visit him in the house where he was quartered. Bending over him
and speaking quietly, his lordship said that which brought a moisture to
the eyes of Sir Terence and a smile to his pale lips. What actually were
his lordship’s words may be gathered from the answer he received.

“Ye’re entirely wrong, then, and it’s mighty glad I am. For now I need
no longer hand you my resignation. I can be invalided home.”

So he was; and thus it happens that not until now--when this chronicle
makes the matter public--does the knowledge of Sir Terence’s single but
grievous departure from the path of honour go beyond the few who were
immediately concerned with it. They kept faith with him because they
loved him; and because they had understood all that went to the making
of his sin, they condoned it.

If I have done my duty as a faithful chronicler, you who read,
understanding too, will take satisfaction in that it was so.





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