The Snare
by Rafael Sabatini
(first published in 1917)
Chapter V
The Fugitive
Although Dick Butler might continue missing in the flesh, in the spirit he and his miserable affair seem to have been ever present
and ubiquitous, and a most fruitful source of trouble.
It would be at about this time that there befell in Lisbon the
deplorable event that nipped in the bud the career of that most
promising young officer, Major Berkeley of the famous Die-Hards,
the 29th Foot.
Coming into Lisbon on leave from his regiment, which was stationed
at Abrantes, and formed part of the division under Sir Rowland Hill,
the major happened into a company that contained at least one
member who was hostile to Lord Wellington's conduct of the campaign,
or rather to the measures which it entailed. As in the case of the
Principal Souza, prejudice drove him to take up any weapon that came
to his hand by means of which he could strike a blow at a system he
deplored.
Since we are concerned only indirectly with the affair, it may be
stated very briefly. The young gentleman in question was a Portuguese
officer and a nephew of the Patriarch of Lisbon, and the particular
criticism to which Major Berkeley took such just exception concerned
the very troublesome Dick Butler. Our patrician ventured to comment
with sneers and innuendoes upon the fact that the lieutenant of
dragoons continued missing, and he went so far as to indulge in a
sarcastic prophecy that he never would be found.
Major Berkeley, stung by the slur thus slyly cast upon British
honour, invited the young gentleman to make himself more explicit.
"I had thought that I was explicit enough," says young impudence,
leering at the stalwart red-coat. "But if you want it more clearly
still, then I mean that the undertaking to punish this ravisher of
nunneries is one that you English have never intended to carry out.
To save your faces you will take good care that Lieutenant Butler
is never found. Indeed I doubt if he was ever really missing."
Major Berkeley was quite uncompromising and downright. I am afraid
he had none of the graces that can exalt one of these affairs.
"Ye're just a very foolish liar, sir, and you deserve a good caning,"
was all he said, but the way in which he took his cane from under
his arm was so suggestive of more to follow there and then that
several of the company laid preventive hands upon him instantly.
The Patriarch's nephew, very white and very fierce to hear himself
addressed in terms which—out of respect for his august and powerful
uncle—had never been used to him before, demanded instant
satisfaction. He got it next morning in the shape of half-an-ounce
of lead through his foolish brain, and a terrible uproar ensued. To
appease it a scapegoat was necessary. As Samoval so truly said, the
mob is a ferocious god to whom sacrifices must be made. In this
instance the sacrifice, of course, was Major Berkeley. He was broken
and sent home to cut his pigtail (the adornment still clung to by the
29th) and retire into private life, whereby the British army was
deprived of an officer of singularly brilliant promise. Thus, you
see, the score against poor Richard Butler—that foolish victim of
wine and circumstance—went on increasing.
But in my haste to usher Major Berkeley out of a narrative which he
touches merely at a tangent, I am guilty of violating the
chronological order of the events. The ship in which Major Berkeley
went home to England and the rural life was the frigate Telemachus,
and the Telemachus had but dropped anchor in the Tagus at the date
with which I am immediately concerned. She came with certain stores
and a heavy load of mails for the troops, and it would be a full
fortnight before she would sail again for home. Her officers would
be ashore during the time, the welcome guests of the officers of the
garrison, bearing their share in the gaieties with which the latter
strove to kill the time of waiting for events, and Marcus Glennie,
the captain of the frigate, an old friend of Tremayne's, was by
virtue of that friendship an almost daily visitor at the adjutant's
quarters.
But there again I am anticipating. The Telemachus came to her
moorings in the Tagus, at which for the present we may leave her,
on the morning of the day that was to close with Count Redondo's
semi-official ball. Lady O'Moy had risen late, taking from one
end of the day what she must relinquish to the other, that thus
fully rested she might look her best that night. The greater part
of the afternoon was devoted to preparation. It was amazing even
to herself what an amount of detail there was to be considered, and
from Sylvia she received but very indifferent assistance. There
were times when she regretfully suspected in Sylvia a lack of
proper womanliness, a taint almost of masculinity. There was to
Lady O'Moy's mind something very wrong about a woman who preferred
a canter to a waltz. It was unnatural; it was suspicious; she was
not quite sure that it wasn't vaguely immoral.
At last there had been dinner—to which she came a full half-hour
late, but of so ravishing and angelic an appearance that the sight
of her was sufficient to mollify Sir Terence's impatience and stifle
the withering sarcasms he had been laboriously preparing. After
dinner—which was taken at six o'clock—there was still an hour
to spare before the carriage would come to take them into Lisbon.
Sir Terence pleaded stress of work, occasioned by the arrival of the
Telemachus that morning, and withdrew with Tremayne to the official
quarters, to spend that hour in disposing of some of the many matters
awaiting his attention. Sylvia, who to Lady O'Moy's exasperation
seemed now for the first time to give a thought to what she should
wear that night, went off in haste to gown herself, and so Lady O'Moy
was left to her own resources—which I assure you were few indeed.
The evening being calm and warm, she sauntered out into the open.
She was more or less annoyed with everybody—with Sir Terence and
Tremayne for their assiduity to duty, and with Sylvia for postponing
all thought of dressing until this eleventh hour, when she might
have been better employed in beguiling her ladyship's loneliness.
In this petulant mood, Lady O'Moy crossed the quadrangle, loitered
a moment by the table and chairs placed under the trellis, and
considered sitting there to await the others. Finally, however,
attracted by the glory of the sunset behind the hills towards
Abrantes, she sauntered out on to the terrace, to the intense
thankfulness of a poor wretch who had waited there for the past ten
hours in the almost despairing hope that precisely such a thing
might happen.
She was leaning upon the balustrade when a rustle in the pines below
drew her attention. The rustle worked swiftly upwards and round to
the bushes on her right, and her eyes, faintly startled, followed
its career, what time she stood tense and vaguely frightened.
Then the bushes parted and a limping figure that leaned heavily upon
a stick disclosed itself; a shaggy, red-bearded man in the garb of a
peasant; and marvel of marvels!—this figure spoke her name sharply,
warningly almost, before she had time to think of screaming.
"Una! Una! Don't move!"
The voice was certainly the voice of Mr. Butler. But how came that
voice into the body of this peasant? Terrified, with drumming
pulses, yet obedient to the injunction, she remained without speech
or movement, whilst crouching so as to keep below the level of the
balustrade the man crept forward until he was immediately before and
below her.
She stared into that haggard face, and through the half-mask of
stubbly beard gradually made out the features of her brother.
"Richard!" The name broke from her in a scream.
"'Sh!" He waved his hands in wild alarm to repress her. "For God's
sake, be quiet! It's a ruined man I am they find me here. You'll
have heard what's happened to me?"
She nodded, and uttered a half-strangled "Yes."
"Is there anywhere you can hide me? Can you get me into the house
without being seen? I am almost starving, and my leg is on fire. I
was wounded three days ago to make matters worse than they were
already. I have been lying in the woods there watching for the
chance to find you alone since sunrise this morning, and it's devil
a bite or sup I've had since this time yesterday."
"Poor, poor Richard!" She leaned down towards him in an attitude of
compassionate, ministering grace. "But why? Why did you not come
up to the house and ask for me? No one would have recognised you."
"Terence would if he had seen me."
"But Terence wouldn't have mattered. Terence will help you."
"Terence!" He almost laughed from excess of bitterness, labouring
under an egotistical sense of wrong. "He's the last man I should
wish to meet, as I have good reason to know. If it hadn't been for
that I should have come to you a month ago—immediately after this
trouble of mine. As it is, I kept away until despair left me no
other choice. Una, on no account a word of my presence to Terence."
"But . . . he's my husband!"
"Sure, and he's also adjutant-general, and if I know him at all he's
the very man to place official duty and honour and all the rest of
it above family considerations."
"Oh, Richard, how little you know Terence! How wrong you are to
misjudge him like this!"
"Right or wrong, I'd prefer not to take the risk. It might end in my
being shot one fine morning before long."
"Richard!"
"For God's sake, less of your Richard! It's all the world will be
hearing you. Can you hide me, do you think, for a day or two? If
you can't, I'll be after shifting for myself as best I can. I've
been playing the part of an English overseer from Bearsley's wine
farm, and it has brought me all the way from the Douro in safety.
But the strain of it and the eternal fear of discovery are beginning
to break me. And now there's this infernal wound. I was assaulted
by a footpad near Abrantes, as if I was worth robbing. Anyhow I
gave the fellow more than I took. Unless I have rest I think I
shall go mad and give myself up to the provost-marshal to be shot
and done with."
"Why do you talk of being shot? You have done nothing to deserve
that. Why should you fear it?"
Now Mr. Butler was aware—having gathered the information lately
on his travels—of the undertaking given by the British to the
Council of Regency with regard to himself. But irresponsible
egotist though he might be, yet in common with others he was
actuated by the desire which his sister's fragile loveliness
inspired in every one to spare her unnecessary pain or anxiety.
"It's not myself will take any risks," he said again. "We are at
war, and when men are at war killing becomes a sort of habit, and
one life more or less is neither here nor there." And upon that
he renewed his plea that she should hide him if she could and that
on no account should she tell a single soul—and Sir Terence least
of any—of his presence.
Having driven him to the verge of frenzy by the waste of precious
moments in vain argument, she gave him at last the promise he
required. "Go back to the bushes there," she bade him, "and wait
until I come for you. I will make sure that the coast is clear."
Contiguous to her dressing-room, which overlooked the quadrangle,
there was a small alcove which had been converted into a storeroom
for the array of trunks and dress boxes that Lady O'Moy had brought
from England. A door opening directly from her dressing room
communicated with this alcove, and of that door Bridget, her maid,
was in possession of the key.
As she hurried now indoors she happened to meet Bridget on the
stairs. The maid announced herself on her way to supper in the
servants' quarters, and apologised for her presumption in assuming
that her ladyship would no further require her services that evening.
But since it fell in so admirably with her ladyship's own wishes, she
insisted with quite unusual solicitude, with vehemence almost, that
Bridget should proceed upon her way.
"Just give me the key of the alcove," she said. "There are one or
two things I want to get."
"Can't I get them, your ladyship?"
"Thank you, Bridget. I prefer to get them, myself."
There was no more to be said. Bridget produced a bunch of keys,
which she surrendered to her mistress, having picked out for her the
one required.
Lady O'Moy went up, to come down again the moment that Bridget had
disappeared. The quadrangle was deserted, the household disposed
of, and it wanted yet half-an-hour to the time for which the
carriage was ordered. No moment could have been more propitious.
But in any case no concealment was attempted—since, if detected
it must have provoked suspicions hardly likely to be aroused in any
other way.
When Lady O'Moy returned indoors in the gathering dusk she was
followed at a respectful distance by the limping fugitive, who might,
had he been seen, have been supposed some messenger, or perhaps
some person employed about the house or gardens coming to her
ladyship for instructions. No one saw them, however, and they gained
the dressing-room and thence the alcove in complete safety.
There, whilst Richard, allowing his exhaustion at last to conquer
him, sank heavily down upon one of his sister's many trunks,
recking nothing of the havoc wrought in its priceless contents, her
ladyship all a-tremble collapsed limply upon another.
But there was no rest for her. Richard's wound required attention,
and he was faint for want of meat and drink. So having procured
him the wherewithal to wash and dress his hurt—a nasty knife-slash
which had penetrated to the bone of his thigh, the very sight of
which turned her ladyship sick and faint—she went to forage for
him in a haste increased by the fact that time was growing short.
On the dining-room sideboard, from the remains of dinner, she found
and furtively abstracted what she needed—best part of a roast
chicken, a small loaf and a half-flask of Collares. Mullins, the
butler, would no doubt be exercised presently when he discovered
the abstraction. Let him blame one of the footmen, Sir Terence's
orderly, or the cat. It mattered nothing to Lady O'Moy.
Having devoured the food and consumed the wine, Richard's exhaustion
assumed the form of a lethargic torpor. To sleep was now his
overmastering desire. She fetched him rugs and pillows, and he
made himself a couch upon the floor. She had demurred, of course,
when he himself had suggested this. She could not conceive of any
one sleeping anywhere but in a bed. But Dick made short work of
that illusion.
"Haven't I been in hiding for the last six weeks?" he asked her.
"And haven't I been thankful to sleep in a ditch? And wasn't I
campaigning before that? I tell you I couldn't sleep in a bed.
It's a habit I've lost entirely."
Convinced, she gave way.
"We'll talk to-morrow, Una," he promised her, as he stretched
himself luxuriously upon that hard couch. "But meanwhile, on your
life, not a word to any one. You understand?"
"Of course I understand, my poor Dick."
She stooped to kiss him. But he was fast asleep already.
She went out and locked the door, and when, on the point of setting
out for Count Redondo's, she returned the bunch of keys to Bridget
the key of the alcove was missing.
"I shall require it again in the morning, Bridget," she explained
lightly. And then added kindly, as it seemed: "Don't wait for me,
child. Get to bed. I shall be late in coming home, and I shall
not want you."
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