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The Snare

by Rafael Sabatini · English · Gutenberg #2687 · 484,921 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Snare

Author: Rafael Sabatini


        
Release date: June 1, 2001 [eBook #2687]
                Most recently updated: October 13, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2687

Credits: Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer, and David Widger


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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 answe

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