Rafael Sabatini

“ Sir Terence was no psychologist. But he found it difficult to believe in so much of self-sacrifice from a woman for a woman’s sake, however dear. Therefore he held to the first alternative. To confirm it came the memory of Sylvia’s words to him on the night of Tremayne’s arrest. And it was to such a man that she gave the priceless treasure of her love; for such a man, and in such a sordid cause, that she sacrificed the inestimable jewel of her honour? ”

“ For a moment Tremayne was so amazed that he was at a loss for an answer. Then he smiled. Indeed his inclination was to laugh outright. The frank admission that her concern which he had fondly imagined to be for himself was all for Dick betrayed a state of mind that was entirely typical of Una. Never had she been able to command more than one point of view of any question, and that point of view invariably of her own interest. All her life she had been accustomed to sacrifices great and small made by others on her own behalf, until she had come to look upon such sacrifices her absolute right. ”

“ Sir Terence went to open the wicket, and Samoval stepped quickly over the sill. He was wrapped in a dark cloak, a broad-brimmed hat obscured his face. Sir Terence closed the door again. The two men bowed to each other in silence, and as Samoval’s cloak fell open he produced a pair of duelling-swords swathed together in a skin of leather.
“You are very punctual, sir,” said O’Moy.
“I hope I shall never be so discourteous as to keep an opponent waiting. It is a thing of which I have never yet been guilty,” replied Samoval, with deadly smoothness in that reminder of his victorious past. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ He looked at her, and then at Tremayne.
“And you, Ned—what do you say?” he asked.
“Ned could not wish—” began her ladyship.
“Please let him speak for himself, my dear,” her husband interrupted her.
“What can I say?” cried Tremayne, with a gesture that was almost of anger. “How can I advise? I scarcely know. You realise what you must face if you confess?”
“Fully, and the only part of it I shrink from is the shame and scorn I have deserved. Yet it is inevitable. You agree, Ned?”
“I am not sure. None who understands as I understand can feel anything but regret. Oh, I don’t know. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sylvia Armytage’s mad and inexplicable self-accusation was a final bar to that. Men of honour would scorn him, his friends would turn from him in disgust, and Wellington, that great soldier whom he worshipped, and whose esteem he valued above all possessions, would be the first to cast him out. He would appear as a vulgar murderer who, having failed by falsehood to fasten the guilt upon an innocent man, sought now by falsehood still more damnable, at the cost of his wife’s honour, to offer some mitigation of his unspeakable offence. ”

“ At last when Wellington spoke his voice had assumed a gentler note.
“O’Moy,” he said, “I have known you these fifteen years, and we have been friends. Once you carried your friendship, appreciation, and understanding of me so far as nearly to ruin yourself on my behalf. You’ll not have forgotten the affair of Sir Harry Burrard. In all these years I have known you for a man of shining honour, an honest, upright gentleman, whom I would have trusted when I should have distrusted every other living man. ”

“ Startled, but without showing any signs of it, Sir Terence bade Mullins go open, and in a general silence all waited to see who it was that came.
A tall man, bowing his shoulders to pass under the low lintel of that narrow door, stepped over the sill and into the courtyard. He wore a cocked hat, and as his great cavalry cloak fell open the yellow rays of the sergeant’s lantern gleamed faintly on a British uniform. Presently, as he advanced into the quadrangle, he disclosed the aquiline features of Colquhoun Grant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They should receive treachery for treachery, mockery for mockery, and for dishonour death. They had deemed him an old fool! What was the expression that Samoval had used—Pantaloon in the comedy? Well, well! He had been Pantaloon in the comedy so far. But now they should find him Pantaloon in the tragedy—nay, not Pantaloon at all, but Polichinelle, the sinister jester, the cynical clown, who laughs in murdering. And in anguished silence should they bear the punishment he would mete out to them, or else in no less anguished speech themselves proclaim their own dastardy to the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was considering how well-founded had been his every twinge of jealousy; how wasted, how senseless the reactions of shame that had followed them; how insensate his trust in Tremayne’s honesty, and, above all, with what crafty, treacherous subtlety Tremayne had drawn a red herring across the trail of his suspicions by pretending to an unutterable passion for Sylvia Armytage. It was perhaps that piece of duplicity, worthy, he thought, of the Iscariot himself, that galled Sir Terence now most sorely ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this he had some confidence, for, knowing himself innocent, it seemed to him incredible that he could be proven guilty. Failing that, nothing short of the discovery of the real slayer of Samoval could save him—and that was a matter wrapped in the profoundest mystery. The only man who could conceivably have fought Samoval in such a place was Sir Terence himself. But then it was utterly inconceivable that in that case Sir Terence, who was the very soul of honour, should not only keep silent and allow another man to suffer, but actually sit there in judgment upon that other ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may trust your practised duellist for that when he comes face to face with the necessity to demand satisfaction. And soon the mist of passion clearing from his keen wits, he sought swiftly for a means to fasten the quarrel upon Sir Terence in Sir Terence’s own coin of galling mockery. Instantly he found it. Indeed it was not very far to seek. O’Moy’s jealousy, which was almost a byword, as we know, had been apparent more than once to Samoval. Remembering it now, it discovered to him at once Sir Terence’s most vulnerable spot, and cunningly Samoval proceeded to gall him there. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may be a fine engineer, O’Moy, but I don’t think I could have found a less judicious adjutant-general if I had raked the ranks of the army on purpose to find an idiot. Samoval was a spy—the cleverest spy that we have ever had to deal with. Only his death revealed how dangerous he was. For killing him when you did you deserve the thanks of his Majesty’s Government, as Grant suggests. But before you can receive those you will have to stand a court-martial for the manner in which you killed him, and you will probably be shot. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But may I be permitted to assure you that it is not the Council as a body that has withstood you, but certain self-seeking members, one or two friends of Principal Souza, in whose interests the unfortunate and misguided Count Samoval was acting. Your lordship will perceive that the moment is not one in which to stir up public indignation against the Portuguese Government. Once the passions of the mob are inflamed, who can say to what lengths they may not go, who can say what disastrous consequences may not follow? It is desirable to apply the cautery, but not to burn up the whole body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Major Carruthers, of course, is writing in the light of later knowledge, and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his psychological deduction. Just as a shy man will so overreach himself in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear herself with a boldness which was no more than a mask upon the shame and anguish of her mind. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”