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.