The Snare
by Rafael Sabatini
(first published in 1917)
Chapter XIX
The Truth
To Captain Tremayne, fretted with impatience in the dining-room, came, at the end of a long hour of waiting, Sylvia Armytage.
She entered unannounced, at a moment when for the third time he was on
the point of ringing for Mullins, and for a moment they stood
considering each other mutually ill at ease. Then Miss Armytage
closed the door and came forward, moving with that grace peculiar
to her, and carrying her head erect, facing Captain Tremayne now
with some lingering signs of the defiance she had shown the
members of the court-martial.
"Mullins tells me that you wish to see me," she said the merest
conventionality to break the disconcerting, uneasy silence.
"After what has happened that should not surprise you," said
Tremayne. His agitation was clear to behold, his usual
imperturbability all departed. "Why," he burst out suddenly, "why
did you do it?"
She looked at him with the faintest ghost of a smile on her lips,
as if she found the question amusing. But before she could frame
any answer he was speaking again, quickly and nervously.
"Could you suppose that I should wish to purchase my life at such
a price? Could you suppose that your honour was not more precious
to me than my life? It was infamous that you should have sacrificed
yourself in this manner."
"Infamous of whom?" she asked him coolly.
The question gave him pause. "I don't know!" he cried desperately.
"Infamous of the circumstances, I suppose."
She shrugged. "The circumstances were there, and they had to be met.
I could think of no other way of meeting them."
Hastily he answered her out of his anger for her sake: "It should
not have been your affair to meet them at all."
He saw the scarlet flush sweep over her face and leave it deathly
white, and instantly he perceived how horribly he had blundered.
"I'm sorry to have been interfering," she answered stiffly, "but,
after all, it is not a matter that need trouble you." And on the
words she turned to depart again. "Good-day, Captain Tremayne."
"Ah, wait!" He flung himself between her and the door. "We must
understand each other, Miss Armytage."
"I think we do, Captain Tremayne," she answered, fire dancing in
her eyes. And she added: "You are detaining me."
"Intentionally." He was calm again; and he was masterful for the
first time in all his dealings with her. "We are very far from any
understanding. Indeed, we are overhead in a misunderstanding
already. You misconstrue my words. I am very angry with you. I
do not think that in all my life I have ever been so angry with
anybody. But you are not to mistake the source of my anger. I
am angry with you for the great wrong you have done yourself."
"That should not be your affair," she answered him, thus flinging
back the offending phrase.
"But it is. I make it mine," he insisted.
"Then I do not give you the right. Please let me pass." She
looked him steadily in the face, and her voice was calm to coldness.
Only the heave of her bosom betrayed the agitation under which she
was labouring.
"Whether you give me the right or not, I intend to take it," he
insisted.
"You are very rude," she reproved him.
He laughed. "Even at the risk of being rude, then. I must make
myself clear to you. I would suffer anything sooner than leave
you under any misapprehension of the grounds upon which I should
have preferred to face a firing party rather than have been rescued
at the sacrifice of your good name."
"I hope," she said, with faint but cutting irony, "you do not intend
to offer me the reparation of marriage."
It took his breath away for a moment. It was a solution that in
his confused and irate state of mind he had never even paused to
consider. Yet now that it was put to him in this scornfully
reproachful manner he perceived not only that it was the only
possible course, but also that on that very account it might be
considered by her impossible.
Her testiness was suddenly plain to him. She feared that he was
come to her with an offer of marriage out of a sense of duty, as an
amende, to correct the false position into which, for his sake, she
had placed herself. And he himself by his blundering phrase had
given colour to that hideous fear of hers.
He considered a moment whilst he stood there meeting her defiant
glance. Never had she been more desirable in his eyes; and
hopeless as his love for her had always seemed, never had it been
in such danger of hopelessness as at this present moment, unless he
proceeded here with the utmost care. And so Ned Tremayne became
subtle for the first time in his honest, straightforward, soldierly
life. "No," he answered boldly, "I do not intend it."
"I am glad that you spare me that," she answered him, yet her pallor
seemed to deepen under his glance.
"And that," he continued, "is the source of all my anger, against
you, against myself, and against circumstances. If I had deemed
myself remotely worthy of you," he continued, "I should have asked
you weeks ago to be my wife. Oh, wait, and hear me out. I have
more than once been upon the point of doing so—the last time was
that night on the balcony at Count Redondo's. I would have spoken
then; I would have taken my courage in my hands, confessed my
unworthiness and my love. But I was restrained because, although I
might confess, there was nothing I could ask. I am a poor man,
Sylvia, you are the daughter of a wealthy one; men speak of you as
an heiress. To ask you to marry me—" He broke off. "You realise
that I could not; that I should have been deemed a fortune-hunter,
not only by the world, which matters nothing, but perhaps by
yourself, who matter everything. I—I—" he faltered, fumbling for
words to express thoughts of an overwhelming intricacy. "It was
not perhaps that so much as the thought that, if my suit should come
to prosper, men would say you had thrown yourself away on a
fortune-hunter. To myself I should have accounted the reproach well
earned, but it seemed to me that it must contain something slighting
to you, and to shield you from all slights must be the first concern
of my deep worship for you. That," he ended fiercely, "is why I am
so angry, so desperate at the slight you have put upon yourself for
my sake—for me, who would have sacrificed life and honour and
everything I hold of any account, to keep you up there, enthroned
not only in my own eyes, but in the eyes of every man."
He paused, and looked at her and she at him. She was still very
white, and one of her long, slender hands was pressed to her bosom
as if to contain and repress tumult. But her eyes were smiling,
and yet it was a smile he could not read; it was compassionate,
wistful, and yet tinged, it seemed to him, with mockery.
"I suppose," he said, "it would be expected of me in the
circumstances to seek words in which to thank you for what you have
done. But I have no such words. I am not grateful. How could I be
grateful? You have destroyed the thing that I most valued in this
world."
"What have I destroyed?" she asked him.
"Your own good name; the respect that was your due from all men."
"Yet if I retain your own?"
"What is that worth?" he asked almost resentfully.
"Perhaps more than all the rest." She took a step forward and set
her hand upon his arm. There was no mistaking now her smile. It
was all tenderness, and her eyes were shining. "Ned, there is only
one thing to be done."
He looked down at her who was only a little less tall than himself,
and the colour faded from his own face now.
"You haven't understood me after all," he said. "I was afraid you
would not. I have no clear gift of words, and if I had, I am trying
to say something that would overtax any gift."
"On the contrary, Ned, I understand you perfectly. I don't think
I have ever understood you until now. Certainly never until now
could I be sure of what I hoped."
"Of what you hoped?" His voice sank as if in awe. "What?" he asked.
She looked away, and her persisting, yet ever-changing smile grew
slightly arch.
"You do not then intend to ask me to marry you?" she said.
"How could I?" It was an explosion almost of anger. "You yourself
suggested that it would be an insult; and so it would. It is to
take advantage of the position into which your foolish generosity
has betrayed you. Oh!" he clenched his fists and shook them a moment
at his sides.
"Very well," she said. "In that case I must ask you to marry me."
"You?" He was thunderstruck.
"What alternative do you leave me? You say that I have destroyed
my good name. You must provide me with a new one. At all costs I
must become an honest woman. Isn't that the phrase?"
"Don't!" he cried, and pain quivered in his voice. "Don't jest
upon it."
"My dear," she said, and now she held out both hands to him, "why
trouble yourself with things of no account, when the only thing
that matters to us is within our grasp? We love each other, and—"
Her glance fell away, her lip trembled, and her smile at last took
flight. He caught her hands, holding them in a grip that hurt her;
he bent his head, and his eyes sought her own, but sought in vain.
"Have you considered—" he was beginning, when she interrupted him.
Her face flushed upward, surrendering to that questing glance of
his, and its expression was now between tears and laughter.
"You will be for ever considering, Ned. You consider too much,
where the issues are plain and simple. For the last time—will
you marry me?"
The subtlety he had employed had been greater than he knew, and it
had achieved something beyond his utmost hopes.
He murmured incoherently and took her to his arms. I really do not
see that he could have done anything else. It was a plain and
simple issue, and she herself had protested that the issue was
plain and simple.
And then the door opened abruptly and Sir Terence came in. Nor did
he discreetly withdraw as a man of feeling should have done before
the intimate and touching spectacle that met his eyes. On the
contrary, he remained like the infernal marplot that he intended
to be.
"Very proper," he sneered. "Very fit and proper that he should
put right in the eyes of the world the reputation you have damaged
for his sake, Sylvia. I suppose you're to be married."
They moved apart, and each stared at O'Moy—Sylvia in cold anger,
Tremayne in chagrin.
"You see, Sylvia," the captain cried, at this voicing of the world's
opinion he feared so much on her behalf.
"Does she?" said Sir Terence, misunderstanding. "I wonder? Unless
you've made all plain."
The captain frowned.
"Made what plain?" he asked. "There is something here I don't
understand, O'Moy. Your attitude towards me ever since you ordered
me under arrest has been entirely extraordinary. It has troubled me
more than anything else in all this deplorable affair."
"I believe you," snorted O'Moy, as with his hands behind his back
he strode forward into the room. He was pale, and there was a set,
malignant sneer upon his lip, a malignant look in the blue eyes
that were habitually so clear and honest.
"There have been moments," said Tremayne, "when I have almost felt
you to be vindictive."
"D'ye wonder?" growled O'Moy. "Has no suspicion crossed your mind
that I may know the whole truth?"
Tremayne was taken aback. "That startles you, eh?" cried O'Moy,
and pointed a mocking finger at the captain's face, whose whole
expression had changed to one of apprehension.
"What is it?" cried Sylvia. Instinctively she felt that under this
troubled surface some evil thing was stirring, that the issues
perhaps were not quite as simple as she had deemed them.
There was a pause. O'Moy, with his back to the window now, his
hands still clasped behind him, looked mockingly at Tremayne and
waited.
"Why don't you answer her?" he said at last. "You were confidential
enough when I came in. Can it be that you are keeping something
back, that you have secrets from the lady who has no doubt promised
by now to become your wife as the shortest way to mending her recent
folly?"
Tremayne was bewildered. His answer, apparently an irrelevance,
was the mere enunciation of the thoughts O'Moy's announcement had
provoked.
"Do you mean to say that you have known throughout that I did not
kill Samoval?" he asked.
"Of course. How could I have supposed you killed him when I killed
him myself?"
"You? You killed him!" cried Tremayne, more and more intrigued.
And—
"You killed Count Samoval?" exclaimed Miss Armytage.
"To be sure I did," was the answer, cynically delivered, accompanied
by a short, sharp laugh. "When I have settled other accounts, and
put all my affairs in order, I shall save the provost-marshal the
trouble of further seeking the slayer. And you didn't know then,
Sylvia, when you lied so glibly to the court, that your future
husband was innocent of that?"
"I was always sure of it," she answered, and looked at Tremayne for
explanation.
O'Moy laughed again. "But he had not told you so. He preferred
that you should think him guilty of bloodshed, of murder even, rather
than tell you the real truth. Oh, I can understand. He is the very
soul of honour, as you remarked yourself, I think, the other night.
He knows how much to tell and how much to withhold. He is master of
the art of discreet suppression. He will carry it to any lengths.
You had an instance of that before the court this morning. You may
come to regret, my dear, that you did not allow him to have his own
obstinate way; that you should have dragged your own spotless purity
in the mud to provide him with an alibi. But he had an alibi all
the time, my child; an unanswerable alibi which he preferred to
withhold. I wonder would you have been so ready to make a shield
of your honour could you have known what you were really shielding?"
"Ned!" she cried. "Why don't you speak? Is he to go on in this
fashion? Of what is he accusing you? If you were not with Samoval
that night, where were you?"
"In a lady's room, as you correctly informed the court," came O'Moy's
bitter mockery. "Your only mistake was in the identity of the lady.
You imagined that the lady was yourself. A delusion purely. But
you and I may comfort each other, for we are fellow-sufferers at
the hands of this man of honour. My wife was the lady who
entertained this gallant in her room that night."
"My God, O'Moy!" It was a strangled cry from Tremayne. At last he
saw light; he understood, and, understanding, there entered his
heart a great compassion for O'Moy, a conception that he must have
suffered all the agonies of the damned in these last few days. "My
God, you don't believe that I—"
"Do you deny it?"
"The imputation? Utterly."
"And if I tell you that myself with these eyes I saw you at the
window of her room with her; if I tell you that I saw the rope
ladder dangling from her balcony; if I tell you that crouching there
after I had killed Samoval—killed him, mark me, for saying that
you and my wife betrayed me; killed him for telling me the filthy
truth—if I tell you that I heard her attempting to restrain you
from going down to see what had happened—if I tell you all this,
will you still deny it, will you still lie?"
"I will still say that all that you imply is false as hell
and your own senseless jealousy can make it."
"All that I imply? But what I state—the facts themselves, are
they true?"
"They are true. But—"
"True!" cried Miss Armytage in horror.
"Ah, wait," O'Moy bade her with his heavy sneer. "You interrupt
him. He is about to construe those facts so that they shall wear
an innocent appearance. He is about to prove himself worthy of
the great sacrifice you made to save his life. Well?" And he
looked expectantly at Tremayne.
Miss Armytage looked at him too, with eyes from which the dread
passed almost at once. The captain was smiling, wistfully,
tolerantly, confidently, almost scornfully. Had he been guilty of
the thing imputed he could not have stood so in her presence.
"O'Moy," he said slowly, "I should tell you that you have played
the knave in this were it not clear to me that you have played the
fool." He spoke entirely without passion. He saw his way quite
clearly. Things had reached a pass in which for the sake of all
concerned, and perhaps for the sake of Miss Armytage more than any
one, the whole truth must be spoken without regard to its
consequences to Richard Butler.
"You dare to take that tone?" began O'Moy in a voice of thunder.
"Yourself shall be the first to justify it presently. I should be
angry with you, O'Moy, for what you have done. But I find my anger
vanishing in regret. I should scorn you for the lie you have acted,
for your scant regard to your oath in the court-martial, for your
attempt to combat an imagined villainy by a real villainy. But I
realise what you have suffered, and in that suffering lies the
punishment you fully deserve for not having taken the straight
course, for not having taxed me there and then with the thing that
you suspected."
"The gentleman is about to lecture me upon morals, Sylvia." But
Tremayne let pass the interruption.
"It is quite true that I was in Una's room while you were killing
Samoval. But I was not alone with her, as you have so rashly
assumed. Her brother Richard was there, and it was on his behalf
that I was present. She had been hiding him for a fortnight. She
begged me, as Dick's friend and her own, to save him; and I
undertook to do so. I climbed to her room to assist him to descend
by the rope ladder you saw, because he was wounded and could not
climb without assistance. At the gates I had the curricle waiting
in which I had driven up. In this I was to have taken him on board
a ship that was leaving that night for England, having made
arrangements with her captain. You should have seen, had you
reflected, that—as I told the court—had I been coming to a
clandestine meeting, I should hardly have driven up in so open a
fashion, and left the curricle to wait for me at the gates.
"The death of Samoval and my own arrest thwarted our plans and
prevented Dick's escape. That is the truth. Now that you have it I
hope you like it, and I hope that you thoroughly relish your own
behaviour in the matter."
There was a fluttering sigh of relief from Miss Armytage. Then
silence followed, in which O'Moy stared at Tremayne, emotion after
emotion sweeping across his mobile face.
"Dick Butler?" he said at last, and cried out: "I don't believe a
word of it! Ye're lying, Tremayne."
"You have cause enough to hope so."
The captain was faintly scornful.
"If it were true, Una would not have kept it from me. It was to
me she would have come."
"The trouble with you, O'Moy, is that jealousy seems to have robbed
you of the power of coherent thought, or else you would remember
that you were the last man to whom Una could confide Dick's presence
here. I warned her against doing so. I told her of the promise you
had been compelled to give the secretary, Forjas, and I was even at
pains to justify you to her when she was indignant with you for
that. It would perhaps be better," he concluded, "if you were to
send for Una."
"It's what I intend," said Sir Terence in a voice that made a threat
of the statement. He strode stiffly across the room and pulled open
the door. There was no need to go farther. Lady O'Moy, white and
tearful, was discovered on the threshold. Sir Terence stood aside,
holding the door for her, his face very grim.
She came in slowly, looking from one to another with her troubled
glance, and finally accepting the chair that Captain Tremayne made
haste to offer her. She had so much to say to each person present
that it was impossible to know where to begin. It remained for Sir
Terence to give her the lead she needed, and this he did so soon as
he had closed the door again. Planted before it like a sentry, he
looked at her between anger and suspicion.
"How much did you overhear?" he asked her.
"All that you said about Dick," she answered without hesitation.
"Then you stood listening?"
"Of course. I wanted to know what you were saying."
"There are other ways of ascertaining that without stooping to
keyholes," said her husband.
"I didn't stoop," she said, taking him literally. "I could hear
what was said without that—especially what you said, Terence.
You will raise your voice so on the slightest provocation."
"And the provocation in this instance was, of course, of the
slightest. Since you have heard Captain Tremayne's story of course
you'll have no difficulty in confirming it."
"If you still can doubt, O'Moy," said Tremayne, "it must be because
you wish to doubt; because you are afraid to face the truth now that
it has been placed before you. I think, Una, it will spare a deal
of trouble, and save your husband from a great many expressions
that he may afterwards regret, if you go and fetch Dick. God knows,
Terence has enough to overwhelm him already."
At the suggestion of producing Dick, O'Moy's anger, which had begun
to simmer again, was stilled. He looked at his wife almost in
alarm, and she met his look with one of utter blankness.
"I can't," she said plaintively. "Dick's gone."
"Gone?" cried Tremayne.
"Gone?" said O'Moy, and then he began to laugh. "Are you quite sure
that he was ever here?"
"But—" She was a little bewildered, and a frown puckered her
perfect brow. "Hasn't Ned told you, then?"
"Oh, Ned has told me. Ned has told!" His face was terrible.
"And don't you believe him? Don't you believe me?" She was more
plaintive than ever. It was almost as if she called heaven to
witness what manner of husband she was forced to endure. "Then you
had better call Mullins and ask him. He saw Dick leave."
"And no doubt," said Miss Armytage mercilessly, "Sir Terence will
believe his butler where he can believe neither his wife nor his
friend."
He looked at her in a sort of amazement. "Do you believe them,
Sylvia?" he cried.
"I hope I am not a fool," said she impatiently.
"Meaning—" he began, but broke off. "How long do you say it is
since Dick left the house?"
"Ten minutes at most," replied her ladyship.
He turned and pulled the door open again. "Mullins?" he called.
"Mullins!"
"What a man to live with!" sighed her ladyship, appealing to Miss
Armytage. "What a man!" And she applied a vinaigrette delicately
to her nostrils.
Tremayne smiled, and sauntered to the window. And then at last
came Mullins.
"Has any one left the house within the last ten minutes, Mullins?"
asked Sir Terence.
Mullins looked ill at ease.
"Sure, sir, you'll not be after—"
"Will you answer my question, man?" roared Sir Terence.
"Sure, then, there's nobody left the house at all but Mr. Butler,
sir."
"How long had he been here?" asked O'Moy, after a brief pause.
"'Tis what I can't tell ye, sir. I never set eyes on him until I
saw him coming downstairs from her ladyship's room as it might be."
"You can go, Mullins."
"I hope, sir—"
"You can go." And Sir Terence slammed the door upon the amazed
servant, who realised that some unhappy mystery was perturbing the
adjutant's household.
Sir Terence stood facing them again. He was a changed man. The
fire had all gone out of him. His head was bowed and his face
looked haggard and suddenly old. His lip curled into a sneer.
"Pantaloon in the comedy," he said, remembering in that moment the
bitter gibe that had cost Samoval his life.
"What did you say?" her ladyship asked him.
"I pronounced my own name," he answered lugubriously.
"It didn't sound like it, Terence."
"It's the name I ought to bear," he said. "And I killed that liar
for it—the only truth he spoke."
He came forward to the table. The full sense of his position
suddenly overwhelmed him, as Tremayne had said it would. A groan
broke from him and he collapsed into a chair, a stricken, broken
man.
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