"What did she tell you?"
"That you had a premonition that he might come to you for a.s.sistance."
"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. "d.i.c.k?"
"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 d.i.c.k"s friend, as I am your own and Terence"s. Your father was my best friend, perhaps, and my grat.i.tude to him is unbounded, as I hope you know. You and d.i.c.k are almost as brother and sister to me. In spite of this--indeed, because of this, I have prayed for news that d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k"s sake, and more than all for the sake of your happiness and Terence"s. If d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 n.o.ble, 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 d.i.c.k! He has always made mountains out of molehills where d.i.c.k was concerned. He forgets that d.i.c.k is young a mere boy. He judges d.i.c.k 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 a.s.sured 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 circ.u.mstances under which the pledge had been exacted. "But be in no doubt about it," he concluded. "If Terence knows of d.i.c.k"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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k is present, I am pleading not so much for you or for d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k."
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 d.i.c.k leaves the country."