It was noon of the next day before Colonel Grant came to the house at Monsanto from whose balcony floated the British flag, and before whose portals stood a sentry in the tall bearskin of the grenadiers.
He found the adjutant alone in his room, and apologised for the delay in responding to his invitation, pleading the urgency of other matters that he had in hand.
“A wise enactment this of Lord Wellington’s,” was his next comment. “I mean this prohibition of duelling. It may be resented by some of our young bloods as an unwarrantable interference with their privileges, but it will do a deal of good, and no one can deny that there is ample cause for the measure.”
“It is on the subject of the cause that I’m wanting to consult you,” said Sir Terence, offering his visitor a chair. “Have you been informed of the details? No? Let me give you them.” And he related how the dispatch bore signs of having been tampered with, and how the only document of any real importance came to be missing from it.
Colonel Grant, sitting with his sabre across his knees, listened gravely and thoughtfully. In the end he shrugged his shoulders, the keen hawk face unmoved.
“The harm is done, and cannot very well be repaired. The information obtained, no doubt on behalf of Massena, will by now be on its way to him. Let us be thankful that the matter is not more grave, and thankful, too, that you were able to supply a copy of Lord Liverpool’s figures. What do you want me to do?”
“Take steps to discover the spy whose existence is disclosed by this event.”
Colquhoun Grant smiled. “That is precisely the matter which has brought me to Lisbon.”
“How?” Sir Terence was amazed. “You knew?”
“Oh, not that this had happened. But that the spy—or rather a network of espionage—existed. We move here in a web of intrigue wrought by ill-will, self-interest, vindictiveness and every form of malice. Whilst the great bulk of the Portuguese people and their leaders are loyally co-operating with us, there is a strong party opposing us which would prefer even to see the French prevail. Of course you are aware of this. The heart and brain of all this is—as I gather the Principal Souza. Wellington has compelled his retirement from the Government. But if by doing so he has restricted the man’s power for evil, he has certainly increased his will for evil and his activities.
“You tell me that Garfield was cared for by the parish priest at Penalva. There you are. Half the priesthood of the country are on Souza’s side, since the Patriarch of Lisbon himself is little more than a tool of Souza’s. What happens? This priest discovers that the British officer whom he has so charitably put to bed in his house is the bearer of dispatches. A loyal man would instantly have communicated with Marshal Beresford at Thomar. This fellow, instead, advises the intriguers in Lisbon. The captain’s dispatches are examined and the only document of real value is abstracted. Of course it would be difficult to establish a case against the priest, and it is always vexatious and troublesome to have dealings with that class, as it generally means trouble with the peasantry. But the case is as clear as crystal.”
“But the intriguers here? Can you not deal with them?”
“I have them under observation,” replied the colonel. “I already knew the leaders, Souza’s lieutenants in Lisbon, and I can put my hand upon them at any moment. If I have not already done so it is because I find it more profitable to leave them at large; it is possible, indeed, that I may never proceed to extremes against them. Conceive that they have enabled me to seize La Fleche, the most dangerous, insidious and skilful of all Napoleon’s agents. I found him at Redondo’s ball last week in the uniform of a Portuguese major, and through him I was able to track down Souza’s chief instrument—I discovered them closeted with him in one of the card-rooms.”
“And you didn’t arrest them?”
“Arrest them! I apologised for my intrusion, and withdrew. La Fleche took his leave of them. He was to have left Lisbon at dawn equipped with a passport countersigned by yourself, my dear adjutant.”
“What’s that?”
“A passport for Major Vieira of the Portuguese Cacadores. Do you remember it?”
“Major Vieira!” Sir Terence frowned thoughtfully. Suddenly he recollected. “But that was countersigned by me at the request of Count Samoval, who represented himself a personal friend of the major’s.”
“So indeed he is. But the major in question was La Fleche nevertheless.”
“And Samoval knew this?”
Sir Terence was incredulous.
Colonel Grant did not immediately answer the question. He preferred to continue his narrative. “That night I had the false major arrested very quietly. I have caused him to disappear for the present. His Lisbon friends believe him to be on his way to Massena with the information they no doubt supplied him. Massena awaits his return at Salamanca, and will continue to wait. Thus when he fails to be seen or heard of there will be a good deal of mystification on all sides, which is the proper state of mind in which to place your opponents. Lord Liverpool’s figures, let me add, were not among the interesting notes found upon him—possibly because at that date they had not yet been obtained.”
“And you say that Samoval was aware of the man’s real identity?” insisted Sir Terence, still incredulous. “Aware of it?” Colonel Grant laughed shortly. “Samoval is Souza’s principal agent—the most dangerous man in Lisbon and the most subtle. His sympathies are French through and through.”
Sir Terence stared at him in frank amazement, in utter unbelief. “Oh, impossible!” he ejaculated at last.
“I saw Samoval for the first time,” said Colonel Grant by way of answer, “in Oporto at the time of Soult’s occupation. He did not call himself Samoval just then, any more than I called myself Colquhoun Grant. He was very active there in the French interest; I should indeed be more precise and say in Bonaparte’s interest, for he was the man instrumental in disclosing to Soult the Bourbon conspiracy which was undermining the marshal’s army. You do not know, perhaps, that French sympathy runs in Samoval’s family. You may not be aware that the Portuguese Marquis of Alorna, who holds a command in the Emperor’s army, and is at present with Massena at Salamanca, is Samoval’s cousin.”
“But,” faltered Sir Terence, “Count Samoval has been a regular visitor here for the past three months.”
“So I understand,” said Grant coolly. “If I had known of it before I should have warned you. But, as you are aware, I have been in Spain on other business. You realise the danger of having such a man about the place. Scraps of information—”
“Oh, as to that,” Sir Terence interrupted, “I can assure you that none have fallen from my official table.”
“Never be too sure, Sir Terence. Matters here must ever be under discussion. There are your secretaries and the ladies—and Samoval has a great way with the women. What they know you may wager that he knows.”
“They know nothing.”
“That is a great deal to say. Little odds and ends now; a hint at one time; a word dropped at another; these things picked up naturally by feminine curiosity and retailed thoughtlessly under Samoval’s charming suasion and display of Britannic sympathies. And Samoval has the devil’s own talent for bringing together the pieces of a puzzle. Take the lines now: you may have parted with no details. But mention of them will surely have been made in this household. However,” he broke off abruptly, “that is all past and done with. I am as sure as you are that any real indiscretions in this household are unimaginable, and so we may be confident that no harm has yet been done. But you will gather from what I have now told you that Samoval’s visits here are not a mere social waste of time. That he comes, acquires familiarity and makes himself the friend of the family with a very definite aim in view.”
“He does not come again,” said Sir Terence, rising.
“That is more than I should have ventured to suggest. But it is a very wise resolve. It will need tact to carry it out, for Samoval is a man to be handled carefully.”
“I’ll handle him carefully, devil a fear,” said Sir Terence. “You can depend upon my tact.”
Colonel Grant rose. “In this matter of Penalva, I will consider further. But I do not think there is anything to be done now. The main thing is to stop up the outlets through which information reaches the French, and that is my chief concern. How is the stripping of the country proceeding now?”
“It was more active immediately after Souza left the Government. But the last reports announce a slackening again.”
“They are at work in that, too, you see. Souza will not slumber while there’s vengeance and self-interest to keep him awake.” And he held out his hand to take his leave.
“You’ll stay to luncheon?” said Sir Terence. “It is about to be served.”
“You are very kind, Sir Terence.”
They descended, to find luncheon served already in the open under the trellis vine, and the party consisted of Lady O’Moy, Miss Armytage, Captain Tremayne, Major Carruthers, and Count Samoval, of whose presence this was the adjutant’s first intimation.
As a matter of fact the Count had been at Monsanto for the past hour, the first half of which he had spent most agreeably on the terrace with the ladies. He had spoken so eulogistically of the genius of Lord Wellington and the valour of the British soldier, and, particularly-of the Irish soldier, that even Sylvia’s instinctive distrust and dislike of him had been lulled a little for the moment.
“And they must prevail,” he had exclaimed in a glow of enthusiasm, his dark eyes flashing. “It is inconceivable that they should ever yield to the French, although the odds of numbers may lie so heavily against them.”
“Are the odds of numbers so heavy?” said Lady O’Moy in surprise, opening wide those almost childish eyes of hers.
“Alas! anything from three to five to one. Ah, but why should we despond on that account?” And his voice vibrated with renewed confidence. “The country is a difficult one, easy to defend, and Lord Wellington’s genius will have made the best of it. There are, for example, the fortifications at Torres Vedras.”
“Ah yes! I have heard of them. Tell me about them, Count.”
“Tell you about them, dear lady? Shall I carry perfumes to the rose? What can I tell you that you do not know so much better than myself?”
“Indeed, I know nothing. Sir Terence is ridiculously secretive,” she assured him, with a little frown of petulance. She realised that her husband did not treat her as an intelligent being to be consulted upon these matters. She was his wife, and he had no right to keep secrets from her. In fact she said so.
“Indeed no,” Samoval agreed. “And I find it hard to credit that it should be so.”
“Then you forget,” said Sylvia, “that these secrets are not Sir Terence’s own. They are the secrets of his office.”
“Perhaps so,” said the unabashed Samoval. “But if I were Sir Terence I should desire above all to allay my wife’s natural anxiety. For I am sure you must be anxious, dear Lady O’Moy.”’
“Naturally,” she agreed, whose anxieties never transcended the fit of her gowns or the suitability of a coiffure. “But Terence is like that.”
“Incredible!” the Count protested, and raised his dark eyes to heaven as if invoking its punishment upon so unnatural a husband. “Do you tell me that you have never so much as seen the plans of these fortifications?”
“The plans, Count!” She almost laughed.
“Ah!” he said. “I dare swear then that you do not even know of their existence.” He was jocular now.
“I am sure that she does not,” said Sylvia, who instinctively felt that the conversation was following an undesirable course.
“Then you are wrong,” she was assured. “I saw them once, a week ago, in Sir Terence’s room.”
“Why, how would you know them if you saw them?” quoth Sylvia, seeking to cover what might be an indiscretion.
“Because they bore the name: ‘Lines of Torres Vedras.’ I remember.”
“And this unsympathetic Sir Terence did not explain them to you?” laughed Samoval.
“Indeed, he did not.”
“In fact, I could swear that he locked them away from you at once?” the Count continued on a jocular note.
“Not at once. But he certainly locked them away soon after, and whilst I was still there.”
“In your place, then,” said Samoval, ever on the same note of banter, “I should have been tempted to steal the key.”
“Not so easily done,” she assured him. “It never leaves his person. He wears it on a gold chain round his neck.”
“What, always?”
“Always, I assure you.”
“Too bad,” protested Samoval. “Too bad, indeed. What, then, should you have done, Miss Armytage?”
It was difficult to imagine that he was drawing information from them, so bantering and frivolous was his manner; more difficult still to conceive that he had obtained any. Yet you will observe that he had been placed in possession of two facts: that the plans of the lines of Torres Vedras were kept locked up in Sir Terence’s own room—in the strong-box, no doubt—and that Sir Terence always carried the key on a gold chain worn round his neck.
Miss Armytage laughed. “Whatever I might do, I should not be guilty of prying into matters that my husband kept hidden.”
“Then you admit a husband’s right to keep matters hidden from his wife?”
“Why not?”
“Madam,” Samoval bowed to her, “your future husband is to be envied on yet another count.”
And thus the conversation drifted, Samoval conceiving that he had obtained all the information of which Lady O’Moy was possessed, and satisfied that he had obtained all that for the moment he required. How to proceed now was a more difficult matter, to be very seriously considered—how to obtain from Sir Terence the key in question, and reach the plans so essential to Marshal Massena.
He was at table with them, as you know, when Sir Terence and Colonel Grant arrived. He and the colonel were presented to each other, and bowed with a gravity quite cordial on the part of Samoval, who was by far the more subtle dissembler of the two. Each knew the other perfectly for what he was; yet each was in complete ignorance of the extent of the other’s knowledge of himself; and certainly neither betrayed anything by his manner.
At table the conversation was led naturally enough by Tremayne to Wellington’s general order against duelling. This was inevitable when you consider that it was a topic of conversation that morning at every table to which British officers sat down. Tremayne spoke of the measure in terms of warm commendation, thereby provoking a sharp disagreement from Samoval. The deep and almost instinctive hostility between these two men, which had often been revealed in momentary flashes, was such that it must invariably lead them to take opposing sides in any matter admitting of contention.
“In my opinion it is a most arbitrary and degrading enactment,” said Samoval. “I say so without hesitation, notwithstanding my profound admiration and respect for Lord Wellington and all his measures.”
“Degrading?” echoed Grant, looking across at him. “In what can it be degrading, Count?”
“In that it reduces a gentleman to the level of the clod,” was the prompt answer. “A gentleman must have his quarrels, however sweet his disposition, and a means must be afforded him of settling them.”
“Ye can always thrash an impudent fellow,” opined the adjutant.
“Thrash?” echoed Samoval. His sensitive lip curled in disdain. “To use your hands upon a man!” He shuddered in sheer disgust. “To one of my temperament it would be impossible, and men of my temperament are plentiful, I think.”
“But if you were thrashed yourself?” Tremayne asked him, and the light in his grey eyes almost hinted at a dark desire to be himself the executioner.
Samoval’s dark, handsome eyes considered the captain steadily. “To be thrashed myself?” he questioned. “My dear Captain, the idea of having hands laid upon me, soiling me, brutalising me, is so nauseating, so repugnant, that I assure you I should not hesitate to shoot the man who did it just as I should shoot any other wild beast that attacked me. Indeed the two instances are exactly parallel, and my country’s courts would uphold in such a case the justice of my conduct.”
“Then you may thank God,” said O’Moy, “that you are not under British jurisdiction.”
“I do,” snapped Samoval, to make an instant recovery: “at least so far as the matter is concerned.” And he elaborated: “I assure you, sirs, it will be an evil day for the nobility of any country when its Government enacts against the satisfaction that one gentleman has the right to demand from another who offends him.”
“Isn’t the conversation rather too bloodthirsty for a luncheon-table?” wondered Lady O’Moy. And tactlessly she added, thinking with flattery to mollify Samoval and cool his obvious heat: “You are yourself such a famous swordsman, Count.”
And then Tremayne’s dislike of the man betrayed him into his deplorable phrase.
“At the present time Portugal is in urgent need of her famous swordsmen to go against the French and not to increase the disorders at home.”
A silence complete and ominous followed the rash words, and Samoval, white to the lips, pondered the imperturbable captain with a baleful eye.
“I think,” he said at last, speaking slowly and softly, and picking his words with care, “I think that is innuendo. I should be relieved, Captain Tremayne, to hear you say that it is not.”
Tremayne was prompt to give him the assurance. “No innuendo at all. A plain statement of fact.”
“The innuendo I suggested lay in the application of the phrase. Do you make it personal to myself?”
“Of course not,” said Sir Terence, cutting in and speaking sharply. “What an assumption!”
“I am asking Captain Tremayne,” the Count insisted, with grim firmness, notwithstanding his deferential smile to Sir Terence.
“I spoke quite generally, sir,” Tremayne assured him, partly under the suasion of Sir Terence’s interposition, partly out of consideration for the ladies, who were looking scared. “Of course, if you choose to take it to yourself, sir, that is a matter for your own discretion. I think,” he added, also with a smile, “that the ladies find the topic tiresome.”
“Perhaps we may have the pleasure of continuing it when they are no longer present.”
“Oh, as you please,” was the indifferent answer. “Carruthers, may I trouble you to pass the salt? Lady O’Callaghan was complaining the other night of the abuse of salt in Portuguese cookery. It is an abuse I have never yet detected.”
“I can’t conceive Lady O’Callaghan complaining of too much salt in anything, begad,” quoth O’Moy, with a laugh. “If you had heard the story she told me about—”
“Terence, my dear!” his wife checked him, her fine brows raised, her stare frigid.
“Faith, we go from bad to worse,” said Carruthers. “Will you try to improve the tone of the conversation, Miss Armytage? It stands in urgent need of it.”
With a general laugh, breaking the ice of the restraint that was in danger of settling about the table, a semblance of ease was restored, and this was maintained until the end of the repast. At last the ladies rose, and, leaving the men at table, they sauntered off towards the terrace. But under the archway Sylvia checked her cousin.
“Una,” she said gravely, “you had better call Captain Tremayne and take him away for the present.”
Una’s eyes opened wide. “Why?” she inquired.
Miss Armytage was almost impatient with her. “Didn’t you see? Resentment is only slumbering between those men. It will break out again now that we have left them unless you can get Captain Tremayne away.”
Una continued to look at her cousin, and then, her mind fastening ever upon the trivial to the exclusion of the important, her glance became arch. “For whom is your concern? For Count Samoval or Ned?” she inquired, and added with a laugh: “You needn’t answer me. It is Ned you are afraid for.”
“I am certainly not afraid for him,” was the reply on a faint note of indignation. She had reddened slightly. “But I should not like to see Captain Tremayne or any other British officer embroiled in a duel. You forget Lord Wellington’s order which they were discussing, and the consequences of infringing it.”
Lady O’Moy became scared.
“You don’t imagine—”
Sylvia spoke quickly: “I am certain that unless you take Captain Tremayne away, and at once, there will! be serious trouble.”
And now behold Lady O’Moy thrown into a state of alarm that bordered upon terror. She had more reason than Sylvia could dream, more reason she conceived than Sylvia herself, to wish to keep Captain Tremayne out of trouble just at present. Instantly, agitatedly, she turned and called to him.
“Ned!” floated her silvery voice across the enclosed garden. And again: “Ned! I want you at once, please.”
Captain Tremayne rose. Grant was talking briskly at the time, his intention being to cover Tremayne’s retreat, which he himself desired. Count Samoval’s smouldering eyes were upon the captain, and full of menace. But he could not be guilty of the rudeness of interrupting Grant or of detaining Captain Tremayne when a lady called him.
Rebuke awaited Captain Tremayne at the hands of Lady O’Moy, and it came as soon as they were alone together sauntering in the thicket of pine and cork-oak on the slope of the hill below the terrace.
“How thoughtless of you, Ned, to provoke Count Samoval at such a time as this!”
“Did I provoke him? I thought it was the Count himself who was provoking.” Tremayne spoke lightly.
“But suppose anything were to happen to you? You know the man’s dreadful reputation.”
Tremayne looked at her kindly. This apparent concern for himself touched him. “My dear Una, I hope I can take care of myself, even against so formidable a fellow; and after all a man must take his chances a soldier especially.”
“But what of Dick?” she cried. “Do you forget that he is depending entirely upon you—that if you should fail him he will be lost?” And there was something akin to indignation in the protesting eyes she turned upon him.
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.
“I am glad you reminded me,” he said with an irony that never touched her. “You may depend upon me to be discreetness itself, at least until after Dick has been safely shipped.”
“Thank you, Ned. You are very good to me.” They sauntered a little way in silence. Then: “When does Captain Glennie sail?” she asked him. “Is it decided yet?”
“Yes. I have just heard from him that the Telemachus will put to sea on Sunday morning at two o’clock.”
“At two o’clock in the morning! What an uncomfortable hour!”
“Tides, as King Canute discovered, are beyond mortal control. The Telemachus goes out with the ebb. And, after all, for our purposes surely no hour could be more suitable. If I come for Dick at midnight tomorrow that will just give us time to get him snugly aboard before she sails. I have made all arrangements with Glennie. He believes Dick to be what he has represented himself—one of Bearsley’s overseers named Jenkinson, who is a friend of mine and who must be got out of the country quietly. Dick should thank his luck for a good deal. My chief anxiety was lest his presence here should be discovered by any one.”
“Beyond Bridget not a soul knows that he is here not even Sylvia.”
“You have been the soul of discreetness.”
“Haven’t I?” she purred, delighted to have him discover a virtue so unusual in her.
Thereafter they discussed details; or, rather, Tremayne discussed them. He would come up to Monsanto at twelve o’clock to-morrow night in a curricle in which he would drive Dick down to the river at a point where a boat would be waiting to take him out to the Telemachus. She must see that Dick was ready in time. The rest she could safely leave to him. He would come in through the official wing of the building. The guard would admit him without question, accustomed to seeing him come and go at all hours, nor would it be remarked that he was accompanied by a man in civilian dress when he departed. Dick was to be let down from her ladyship’s balcony to the quadrangle by a rope ladder with which Tremayne would come equipped, having procured it for the purpose from the Telemachus.
She hung upon his arm, overwhelming him now with her gratitude, her parasol sheltering them both from the rays of the sun as they emerged from the thicket intro the meadowland in full view of the terrace where Count Samoval and Sir Terence were at that moment talking earnestly together.
You will remember that O’Moy had undertaken to provide that Count Samoval’s visits to Monsanto should be discontinued. About this task he had gone with all the tact of which he had boasted himself master to Colquhoun Grant. You shall judge of the tact for yourself. No sooner had the colonel left for Lisbon, and Carruthers to return to his work, than, finding himself alone with the Count, Sir Terence considered the moment a choice one in which to broach the matter.
“I take it ye’re fond of walking, Count,” had been his singular opening move. They had left the table by now, and were sauntering together on the terrace.
“Walking?” said Samoval. “I detest it.”
“And is that so? Well, well! Of course it’s not so very far from your place at Bispo.”
“Not more than half-a-league, I should say.”
“Just so,” said O’Moy. “Half-a-league there, and half-a-league back: a league. It’s nothing at all, of course; yet for a gentleman who detests walking it’s a devilish long tramp for nothing.”
“For nothing?” Samoval checked and looked at his host in faint surprise. Then he smiled very affably. “But you must not say that, Sir Terence. I assure you that the pleasure of seeing yourself and Lady O’Moy cannot be spoken of as nothing.”
“You are very good.” Sir Terence was the very quintessence of courtliness, of concern for the other. “But if there were not that pleasure?”
“Then, of course, it would be different.” Samoval was beginning to be slightly intrigued.
“That’s it,” said Sir Terence. “That’s just what I’m meaning.”
“Just what you’re meaning? But, my dear General, you are assuming circumstances which fortunately do not exist.”
“Not at present, perhaps. But they might.”
Again Samoval stood still and looked at O’Moy. He found something in the bronzed, rugged face that was unusually sardonic. The blue eyes seemed to have become hard, and yet there were wrinkles about their corners suggestive of humour that might be mockery. The Count stiffened; but beyond that he preserved his outward calm whilst confessing that he did not understand Sir Terence’s meaning.
“It’s this way,” said Sir Terence. “I’ve noticed that ye’re not looking so very well lately, Count.”
“Really? You think that?” The words were mechanical. The dark eyes continued to scrutinise that bronzed face suspiciously.
“I do, and it’s sorry I am to see it. But I know what it is. It’s this walking backwards and forwards between here and Bispo that’s doing the mischief. Better give it up, Count. Better not come toiling up here any more. It’s not good for your health. Why, man, ye’re as white as a ghost this minute.”
He was indeed, having perceived at last the insult intended. To be denied the house at such a time was to checkmate his designs, to set a term upon his crafty and subtle espionage, precisely in the season when he hoped to reap its harvest. But his chagrin sprang not at all from that. His cold anger was purely personal. He was a gentleman—of the fine flower, as he would have described himself—of the nobility of Portugal; and that a probably upstart Irish soldier—himself, from Samoval’s point of view, a guest in that country—should deny him his house, and choose such terms of ill-considered jocularity in which to do it, was an affront beyond all endurance.
For a moment passion blinded him, and it was only by an effort that he recovered and kept his self-control. But keep it he did. 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.
A smile spread gradually over his white face—a smile of immeasurable malice.
“I am having a very interesting and instructive morning in this atmosphere of Irish boorishness,” said he. “First Captain Tremayne—”
“Now don’t be after blaming old Ireland for Tremayne’s shortcomings. Tremayne’s just a clumsy mannered Englishman.”
“I am glad to know there is a distinction. Indeed I might have perceived it for myself. In motives, of course, that distinction is great indeed, and I hope that I am not slow to discover it, and in your case to excuse it. I quite understand and even sympathise with your feelings, General.”
“I am glad of that now,” said Sir Terence, who had understood nothing of all this.
“Naturally,” the Count pursued on a smooth, level note of amiability, “when a man, himself no longer young, commits the folly of taking a young and charming wife, he is to be forgiven when a natural anxiety drives him to lengths which in another might be resented.” He bowed before the empurpling Sir Terence.
“Ye’re a damned coxcomb, it seems,” was the answering roar.
“Of course you would assume it. It was to be expected. I condone it with the rest. And because I condone it, because I sympathise with what in a man of your age and temperament must amount to an affliction, I hasten to assure you upon my honour that so far as I am concerned there are no grounds for your anxiety.”
“And who the devil asks for your assurances? It’s stark mad ye are to suppose that I ever needed them.”
“Of course you must say that,” Samoval insisted, with a confident and superior smile. He shook his head, his expression one of amused sorrow. “Sir Terence, you have knocked at the wrong door. You are youthful at least in your impulsiveness, but you are surely as blind as old Pantaloon in the comedy or you would see where your industry would be better employed in shielding your wife’s honour and your own.”
Goaded to fury, his blue eyes aflame now with passion, Sir Terence considered the sleek and subtle gentleman before him, and it was in that moment that the Count’s subtlety soared to its finest heights. In a flash of inspiration he perceived the advantages to be drawn by himself from conducting this quarrel to extremes.
This is not mere idle speculation. Knowledge of the real motives actuating him rests upon the evidence of a letter which Samoval was to write that same evening to La Fleche—afterwards to be discovered—wherein he related what had passed, how deliberately he had steered the matter, and what he meant to do. His object was no longer the punishing of an affront. That would happen as a mere incident, a thing done, as it were, in passing. His real aim now was to obtain the keys of the adjutant’s strong-box, which never left Sir Terence’s person, and so become possessed of the plans of the lines of Torres Vedras. When you consider in the light of this the manner in which Samoval proceeded now you will admire with me at once the opportunism and the subtlety of the man.
“You’ll be after telling me exactly what you mean,” Sir Terence had said.
It was in that moment that Tremayne and Lady O’Moy came arm in arm into the open on the hill-side, half-a-mile away—very close and confidential. They came most opportunely to the Count’s need, and he flung out a hand to indicate them to Sir Terence, a smile of pity on his lips.
“You need but to look to take the answer for yourself,” said he.
Sir Terence looked, and laughed. He knew the secret of Ned Tremayne’s heart and could laugh now with relish at that which hitherto had left him darkly suspicious.
“And who shall blame Lady O’Moy?” Count Samoval pursued. “A lady so charming and so courted must seek her consolation for the almost unnatural union Fate has imposed upon her. Captain Tremayne is of her own age, convenient to her hand, and for an Englishman not ill-looking.”
He smiled at O’Moy with insolent compassion, and O’Moy, losing all his self-control, struck him slapped him resoundingly upon the cheek.
“Ye’re a dirty liar, Samoval, a muck-rake,” said he.
Samoval stepped back, breathing hard, one cheek red, the other white. Yet by a miracle he still preserved his self-control.
“I have proved my courage too often,” he said, “to be under the necessity of killing you for this blow. Since my honour is safe I will not take advantage of your overwrought condition.”
“Ye’ll take advantage of it whether ye like it or not,” blazed Sir Terence at him. “I mean you to take advantage of it. D’ ye think I’ll suffer any man to cast a slur upon Lady O’Moy? I’ll be sending my friends to wait on you to-day, Count; and—by God!—Tremayne himself shall be one of them.”
Thus did the hot-headed fellow deliver himself into the hands of his enemy. Nor was he warned when he saw the sudden gleam in Samoval’s dark eyes.
“Ha!” said the Count. It was a little exclamation of wicked satisfaction. “You are offering me a challenge, then?”
“If I may make so bold. And as I’ve a mind to shoot you dead—”
“Shoot, did you say?” Samoval interrupted gently.
“I said ‘shoot’—and it shall be at ten paces, or across a handkerchief, or any damned distance you please.”
The Count shook his head. He sneered. “I think not—not shoot.” And he waved the notion aside with a hand white and slender as a woman’s. “That is too English, or too Irish. The pistol, I mean—appropriately a fool’s weapon.” And he explained himself, explained at last his extraordinary forbearance under a blow. “If you think I have practised the small-sword every day of my life for ten years to suffer myself to be shot at like a rabbit in the end—ho, really!” He laughed aloud. “You have challenged me, I think, Sir Terence. Because I feared the predilection you have discovered, I was careful to wait until the challenge came from you. The choice of weapons lies, I think, with me. I shall instruct my friends to ask for swords.”
“Sorry a difference will it make to me,” said Sir Terence. “Anything from a horsewhip to a howitzer.” And then recollection descending like a cold hand upon him chilled his hot rage, struck the fine Irish arrogance all out of him, and left him suddenly limp. “My God!” he said, and it was almost a groan. He detained Samoval, who had already turned to depart. “A moment, Count,” he cried. “I—I had forgotten. There is the general order—Lord Wellington’s enactment.”
“Awkward, of course,” said Samoval, who had never for a moment been oblivious of that enactment, and who had been carefully building upon it. “But you should have considered it before committing yourself so irrevocably.”
Sir Terence steadied himself. He recovered his truculence. “Irrevocable or not, it will just have to be revocable. The meeting’s impossible.”
“I do not see the impossibility. I am not surprised you should shelter yourself behind an enactment; but you will remember this enactment does not apply to me, who am not a soldier.”
“But it applies to me, who am not only a soldier, but the Adjutant-General here, the man chiefly responsible for seeing the order carried out. It would be a fine thing if I were the first to disregard it.”
“I am afraid it is too late. You have disregarded it already, sir.”
“How so?”
“The letter of the law is against sending or receiving a challenge, I think.”
O’Moy was distracted. “Samoval,” he said, drawing himself up, “I will admit that I have been a fool. I will apologise to you for the blow and for the word that accompanied it.”
“The apology would imply that my statement was a true one and that you recognised it. If you mean that—”
“I mean nothing of the kind. Damme! I’ve a mind to horsewhip you, and leave it at that. D’ ye think I want to face a firing party on your account?”
“I don’t think there is the remotest likelihood of any such contingency,” replied Samoval.
But O’Moy went headlong on. “And another thing. Where will I be finding a friend to meet your friends? Who will dare to act for me in view of that enactment?”
The Count considered. He was grave now. “Of course that is a difficulty,” he admitted, as if he perceived it now for the first time. “Under the circumstances, Sir Terence, and entirely to accommodate you, I might consent to dispense with seconds.”
“Dispense with seconds?” Sir Terence was horrified at the suggestion. “You know that that is irregular—that a charge of murder would lie against the survivor.”
“Oh, quite so. But it is for your own convenience that I suggest it, though I appreciate your considerate concern on the score of what may happen to me afterwards should it come to be known that I was your opponent.”
“Afterwards? After what?”
“After I have killed you.”
“And is it like that?” cried O’Moy, his countenance inflaming again, his mind casting all prudence to the winds.
It followed, of course, that without further thought for anything but the satisfaction of his rage Sir Terence became as wax in the hands of Samoval’s desires.
“Where do you suggest that we meet?” he asked.
“There is my place at Bispo. We should be private in the gardens there. As for time, the sooner the better, though for secrecy’s sake we had better meet at night. Shall we say at midnight?”
But Sir Terence would agree to none of this.
“To-night is out of the question for me. I have an engagement that will keep me until late. To-morrow night, if you will, I shall be at your service.” And because he did not trust Samoval he added, as Samoval himself had almost reckoned: “But I should prefer not to come to Bispo. I might be seen going or returning.”
“Since there are no such scruples on my side, I am ready to come to you here if you prefer it.”
“It would suit me better.”
“Then expect me promptly at midnight to-morrow, provided that you can arrange to admit me without my being seen. You will perceive my reasons.”
“Those gates will be closed,” said O’Moy, indicating the now gaping massive doors that closed the archway at night. “But if you knock I shall be waiting for you, and I will admit you by the wicket.”
“Excellent,” said Samoval suavely. “Then—until to-morrow night, General.” He bowed with almost extravagant submission, and turning walked sharply away, energy and suppleness in every line of his slight figure, leaving Sir Terence to the unpleasant, almost desperate, thoughts that reflection must usher in as his anger faded.