The Snare. Rafael Sabatini
seven hills—to the lines of embarkation that were building about the fort of St. Julian on his left. Then he turned, facing again the spacious, handsome room with its heavy, semi-ecclesiastical furniture, and Sir Terence, who, hunched in his chair at the ponderously carved black writing-table, scowled fiercely at nothing.
“What are you going to do, sir?” he inquired.
Sir Terence shrugged impatiently and heaved himself up in his chair.
“Nothing,” he growled.
“Nothing?”
The interrogation, which seemed almost to cover a reproach, irritated the adjutant.
“And what the devil can I do?” he rapped.
“You’ve pulled Dick out of scrapes before now.”
“I have. That seems to have been my principal occupation ever since I married his sister. But this time he’s gone too far. What can I do?”
“Lord Wellington is fond of you,” suggested Captain Tremayne. He was your imperturbable young man, and he remained as calm now as O’Moy was excited. Although by some twenty years the adjutant’s junior, there was between O’Moy and himself, as well as between Tremayne and the Butler family, with which he was remotely connected, a strong friendship, which was largely responsible for the captain’s present appointment as Sir Terence’s military secretary.
O’Moy looked at him, and looked away. “Yes,” he agreed. “But he’s still fonder of law and order and military discipline, and I should only be imperilling our friendship by pleading with him for this young blackguard.”
“The young blackguard is your brother-in-law,” Tremayne reminded him.
“Bad luck to you, Tremayne, don’t I know it? Besides, what is there I can do?” he asked again, and ended testily: “Faith, man, I don’t know what you’re thinking of.”
“I’m thinking of Una,” said Captain Tremayne in that composed way of his, and the words fell like cold water upon the hot iron of O’Moy’s anger.
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. But when O’Moy, putting his fortunes to the test, had declared himself and been accepted by Una Butler, there had been an end to the jealousy, and the old relations of cordial friendship between the men had been resumed.
O’Moy had conceived that jealousy of his to have been slain. But there had been times when from its faint, uneasy stirrings he should have taken warning that it did no more than slumber. 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.
He had crushed down such thoughts as disloyal to his young wife, as ungrateful and unworthy; and at such times he would fall into self-contempt for having entertained them. Then Una herself had revived those doubts three months ago, when she had suggested that Ned Tremayne, who was then at Torres Vedras with Colonel Fletcher, was the very man to fill the vacant place of military secretary to the adjutant, if he would accept it. In the reaction of self-contempt, and in a curious surge of pride almost as perverse as his humility, O’Moy had adopted her suggestion, and thereafter—in the past-three months, that is to say—the unreasonable devil of O’Moy’s jealousy had slept, almost forgotten. Now, by a chance remark whose indiscretion Tremayne could not realise, since he did not so much as suspect the existence of that devil, he had suddenly prodded him into wakefulness. That Tremayne should show himself tender of Lady O’Moy’s feelings in a matter in which O’Moy himself must seem neglectful of them was gall and wormwood to the adjutant. He dissembled it, however, out of a natural disinclination to appear in the ridiculous role of the jealous husband.
“That,” he said, “is a matter that you may safely leave to me,” and his lips closed tightly upon the words when they were uttered.
“Oh, quite so,” said Tremayne, no whit abashed. He persisted nevertheless. “You know Una’s feelings for Dick.”
“When I married Una,” the adjutant cut in sharply, “I did not marry the entire Butler family.” It hardened him unreasonably against Dick to have the family cause pleaded in this way. “It’s sick to death I am of Master Richard and his escapades. He can get himself out of this mess, or he can stay in it.”
“You mean that you’ll not lift a hand to help him.”
“Devil a finger,” said O’Moy.
And Tremayne, looking straight into the adjutant’s faintly smouldering blue eyes, beheld there a fierce and rancorous determination which he was at a loss to understand, but which he attributed to something outside his own knowledge that must lie between O’Moy and his brother-in-law.
“I am sorry,” he said gravely. “Since that is how you feel, it is to be hoped that Dick Butler may not survive to be taken. The alternative would weigh so cruelly upon Una that I do not care to contemplate it.”
“And who the devil asks you to contemplate it?” snapped O’Moy. “I am not aware that it is any concern of yours at all.”
“My dear O’Moy!” It was an exclamation of protest, something between pain and indignation, under the stress of which Tremayne stepped entirely outside of the official relations that prevailed between himself and the adjutant. And the exclamation was accompanied by such a look of dismay and wounded sensibilities that O’Moy, meeting this, and noting the honest manliness of Tremayne’s bearing and countenance; was there and then the victim of reaction. His warm-hearted and impulsive nature made him at once profoundly ashamed of himself. He stood up, a tall, martial figure, and his ruggedly handsome, shaven countenance reddened under its tan. He held out a hand to Tremayne.
“My dear boy, I beg your pardon. It’s so utterly annoyed I am that the savage in me will be breaking out. Sure, it isn’t as if it were only this affair of Dick’s. That is almost the least part of the unpleasantness contained in this dispatch. Here! In God’s name, read it for yourself, and judge for yourself whether it’s in human nature to be patient under so much.”
With a shrug and a smile to show that he was entirely mollified, Captain Tremayne took the papers to his desk and sat down to con them. As he did so his face grew more and more grave. Before he had reached the end there was a tap at the door. An orderly entered with the announcement that Dom Miguel Forjas had just driven up to Monsanto to wait upon the adjutant-general.
“Ha!” said O’Moy shortly, and exchanged a glance with his secretary. “Show the gentleman up.”
As the orderly withdrew, Tremayne came over and placed the dispatch on the adjutant’s desk. “He arrives very opportunely,” he said.
“So opportunely as to be suspicious, bedad!” said O’Moy. He had brightened suddenly, his Irish blood quickening at the immediate prospect of strife which this visit boded. “May the devil admire me, but there’s a warm morning in store for Mr. Forjas, Ned.”
“Shall I leave you?”
“By no means.”
The door opened, and the orderly admitted Miguel Forjas, the Portuguese Secretary of State. He was a slight, dapper gentleman, all in black, from his silk stockings and steel-buckled shoes to his satin stock. His keen aquiline face was swarthy, and the razor had left his chin and cheeks blue-black.