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.”