Writing years afterwards of this event--in the rather tedious volume
of reminiscences which he has left us--Major Carruthers ventures the
opinion that the court should never have been deceived; that it should
have perceived at once that Miss Armytage was lying. He argues
this opinion upon psychological grounds, contending that the lady’s
deportment in that moment of self-accusation was the very last that
in the circumstances she alleged would have been natural to such a
character as her own.
“Had she indeed,” he writes, “been Tremayne’s mistress, as she
represented herself, it was not in her nature to have announced it after
the manner in which she did so. She bore herself before us with all the
effrontery of a harlot; and it was well known to most of us that a
more pure, chaste, and modest lady did not live. There was here a
contradiction so flagrant that it should have rendered her falsehood
immediately apparent.”
Major Carruthers, of course, is writing in the light of later knowledge,
and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his
psychological deduction. Just as a shy man will so overreach himself
in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive
arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage
pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear
herself with a boldness which was no more than a mask upon the shame and
anguish of her mind.
And this, I think, was the view that was taken by those present. The
court it was--being composed of honest gentlemen--that felt the shame
which she dissembled. There were the eyes that fell away before the
spurious effrontery of her own glance. They were disconcerted one and
all by this turn of events, without precedent in the experience of
any, and none more disconcerted--though not in the same sense--than Sir
Terence. To him this was checkmate--fool’s mate indeed. An unexpected
yet ridiculously simple move had utterly routed him at the very outset
of the deadly game that he was playing. He had sat there determined to
have either Tremayne’s life or the truth, publicly avowed, of Tremayne’s
dastardly betrayal. He could not have told you which he preferred. But
one or the other he was fiercely determined to have, and now the springs
of the snare in which he had so cunningly taken Tremayne had been forced
apart by utterly unexpected hands.
“It’s a lie!” he bellowed angrily. But he bellowed, it seemed, upon deaf
ears. The court just sat and stared, utterly and hopelessly at a loss
how to proceed. And then the dry voice of Wellington followed Sir
Terence, cutting sharply upon the dismayed silence.
“How can you know that?” he asked the adjutant. “The matter is one
upon which few would be qualified to contradict Miss Armytage. You will
observe, Sir Harry, that even Captain Tremayne has not thought it worth
his while to do so.”
Those words pulled the captain from the spell of sheer horrified
amazement in which he had stood, stricken dumb, ever since Miss Armytage
had spoken.
“I--I--am so overwhelmed by the amazing falsehood with which Miss
Armytage has attempted to save me from the predicament in which I stand.
For it is that, gentlemen. On my oath as a soldier and a gentleman,
there is not a word of truth in what Miss Armytage has said.”
“But if there were,” said Lord Wellington, who seemed the only person
present to retain a cool command of his wits, “your honour as a soldier
and a gentleman--and this lady’s honour--must still demand of you the
perjury.”
“But, my lord, I protest--”
“You are interrupting me, I think,” Lord Wellington rebuked him coldly,
and under the habit of obedience and the magnetic eye of his lordship
the captain lapsed into anguished silence.
“I am of opinion, gentlemen,” his lordship addressed the court, “that
this affair has gone quite far enough. Miss Armytage’s testimony has
saved a deal of trouble. It has shed light upon much that was obscure,
and it has provided Captain Tremayne with an unanswerable alibi. In
my view--and without wishing unduly to influence the court in its
decision--it but remains to pronounce Captain Tremayne’s acquittal,
thereby enabling him to fulfil towards this lady a duty which the
circumstances would seem to have rendered somewhat urgent.”
They were words that lifted an intolerable burden from Sir Harry’s
shoulders.
In immense relief, eager now to make an end, he looked to right and
left. Everywhere he met nodding heads and murmurs of “Yes, Yes.”
Everywhere with one exception. Sir Terence, white to the lips, gave
no sign of assent, and yet dared give none of dissent. The eye of Lord
Wellington was upon him, compelling him by its eagle glance.
“We are clearly agreed,” the president began, but Captain Tremayne
interrupted him.
“But you are wrongly agreed.”
“Sir, sir!”
“You shall listen. It is infamous that I should owe my acquittal to the
sacrifice of this lady’s good name.”
“Damme! That is a matter that any parson can put right,” said his
lordship.
“Your lordship is mistaken,” Captain Tremayne insisted, greatly daring.
“The honour of this lady is more dear to me than my life.”
“So we perceive,” was the dry rejoinder. “These outbursts do you a
certain credit, Captain Tremayne. But they waste the time of the court.”
And then the president made his announcement
“Captain Tremayne, you are acquitted of the charge of killing Count
Samoval, and you are at liberty to depart and to resume your usual
duties. The court congratulates you and congratulates itself upon
having reached this conclusion in the case of an officer so estimable as
yourself.”
“Ah, but, gentlemen, hear me yet a moment. You, my lord--”
“The court has pronounced. The matter is at an end,” said Wellington,
with a shrug, and immediately upon the words he rose, and the court
rose with him. Immediately, with rattle of sabres and sabretaches, the
officers who had composed the board fell into groups and broke into
conversation out of a spirit of consideration for Tremayne, and
definitely to mark the conclusion of the proceedings.
Tremayne, white and trembling, turned in time to see Miss Armytage
leaving the hall and assisting Colonel Grant to support Lady O’Moy, who
was in a half-swooning condition.
He stood irresolute, prey to a torturing agony of mind, cursing himself
now for his silence, for not having spoken the truth and taken the
consequences together with Dick Butler. What was Dick Butler to him,
what was his own life to him--if they should demand it for
the grave breach of duty he had committed by his readiness to assist
a proscribed offender to escape--compared with the honour of Sylvia
Armytage? And she, why had she done this for him? Could it be possible
that she cared, that she was concerned so much for his life as to
immolate her honour to deliver him from peril? The event would seem to
prove it. Yet the overmastering joy that at any other time, and in
any other circumstances, such a revelation must have procured him, was
stifled now by his agonised concern for the injustice to which she had
submitted herself.
And then, as he stood there, a suffering, bewildered man, came
Carruthers to grasp his hand and in terms of warm friendship to express
satisfaction at his acquittal.
“Sooner than have such a price as that paid--” he said bitterly, and
with a shrug left his sentence unfinished.
O’Moy came stalking past him, pale-faced, with eyes that looked neither
to right nor left.
“O’Moy!” he cried.
Sir Terence checked, and stood stiffly as if to attention, his handsome
blue eyes blazing into the captain’s own. Thus a moment. Then:
“We will talk of this again, you and I,” he said grimly, and passed
on and out with clanking step, leaving Tremayne to reflect that the
appearances certainly justified Sir Terence’s resentment.
“My God, Carruthers! What must he think of me?” he ejaculated.
“If you ask me, I think that he has suspected this from the very
beginning. Only that could account for the hostility of his attitude
towards you, for the persistence with which he has sought either to
convict or wring the truth from you.”
Tremayne looked askance at the major. In such a tangle as this it was
impossible to keep the attention fixed upon any single thread.
“His mind must be disabused at once,” he answered. “I must go to him.”
O’Moy had already vanished.
There were one or two others would have checked the adjutant’s
departure, but he had heeded none. In the quadrangle he nodded curtly to
Colonel Grant, who would have detained him. But he passed on and went to
shut himself up in his study with his mental anguish that was compounded
of so many and so diverse emotions. He needed above all things to be
alone and to think, if thought were possible to a mind so distraught
as his own. There were now so many things to be faced, considered, and
dealt with. First and foremost--and this was perhaps the product of
inevitable reaction--was the consideration of his own duplicity, his
villainous betrayal of trust undertaken deliberately, but with an aim
very different from that which would appear. He perceived how men must
assume now, when the truth of Samoval’s death became known as become
known it must--that he had deliberately fastened upon another his own
crime. The fine edifice of vengeance he had been so skilfully erecting
had toppled about his ears in obscene ruin, and he was a man not only
broken, but dishonoured. Let him proclaim the truth now and none would
believe it. Sylvia Armytage’s mad and inexplicable self-accusation was a
final bar to that. Men of honour would scorn him, his friends would
turn from him in disgust, and Wellington, that great soldier whom he
worshipped, and whose esteem he valued above all possessions, would be
the first to cast him out. He would appear as a vulgar murderer who,
having failed by falsehood to fasten the guilt upon an innocent man,
sought now by falsehood still more damnable, at the cost of his wife’s
honour, to offer some mitigation of his unspeakable offence.
Conceive this terrible position in which his justifiable jealousy--his
naturally vindictive rage--had so irretrievably ensnared him. He had
been so intent upon the administration of poetic justice, so intent
upon condignly punishing the false friend who had dishonoured him, upon
finding a balm for his lacerated soul in the spectacle of Tremayne’s own
ignominy, that he had never paused to see whither all this might lead
him.
He had been a fool to have adopted these subtle, tortuous ways; a fool
not to have obeyed the earlier and honest impulse which had led him to
take that case of pistols from the drawer. And he was served as a fool
deserves to be served. His folly had recoiled upon him to destroy him.
Fool’s mate had checked his perfidious vengeance at a blow.
Why had Sylvia Armytage discarded her honour to make of it a cloak
for the protection of Tremayne? Did she love Tremayne and take that
desperate way to save a life she accounted lost, or was it that she knew
the truth, and out of affection for Una had chosen to immolate herself?
Sir Terence was no psychologist. But he found it difficult to believe in
so much of self-sacrifice from a woman for a woman’s sake, however
dear. Therefore he held to the first alternative. To confirm it came the
memory of Sylvia’s words to him on the night of Tremayne’s arrest. And
it was to such a man that she gave the priceless treasure of her love;
for such a man, and in such a sordid cause, that she sacrificed the
inestimable jewel of her honour? He laughed through clenched teeth at
a situation so bitterly ironical. Presently he would talk to her. She
should realise what she had done, and he would wish her joy of it.
First, however, there was something else to do. He flung himself wearily
into the chair at his writing-table, took up a pen and began to write.