The Snare
by Rafael Sabatini
(first published in 1917)
Chapter XVIII
Fool's Mate
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.
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