CHAPTER V. THE FUGITIVE
Although Dick Butler might continue missing in the flesh, in thespirit he and his miserable affair seem to have been ever present andubiquitous, and a most fruitful source of trouble.
It would be at about this time that there befell in Lisbon thedeplorable event that nipped in the bud the career of that mostpromising young officer, Major Berkeley of the famous Die-Hards, the29th Foot.
Coming into Lisbon on leave from his regiment, which was stationed atAbrantes, and formed part of the division under Sir Rowland Hill, themajor happened into a company that contained at least one member who washostile to Lord Wellington's conduct of the campaign, or rather tothe 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 meansof which he could strike a blow at a system he deplored.
Since we are concerned only indirectly with the affair, it may be statedvery briefly. The young gentleman in question was a Portuguese officerand a nephew of the Patriarch of Lisbon, and the particular criticismto which Major Berkeley took such just exception concerned the verytroublesome Dick Butler. Our patrician ventured to comment with sneersand innuendoes upon the fact that the lieutenant of dragoons continuedmissing, and he went so far as to indulge in a sarcastic prophecy thathe 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 clearlystill, then I mean that the undertaking to punish this ravisher ofnunneries is one that you English have never intended to carry out. Tosave your faces you will take good care that Lieutenant Butler is neverfound. Indeed I doubt if he was ever really missing."
Major Berkeley was quite uncompromising and downright. I am afraid hehad 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," wasall he said, but the way in which he took his cane from under his armwas so suggestive of more to follow there and then that several of thecompany laid preventive hands upon him instantly.
The Patriarch's nephew, very white and very fierce to hear himselfaddressed in terms which--out of respect for his august and powerfuluncle--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 hisfoolish brain, and a terrible uproar ensued. To appease it a scapegoatwas necessary. As Samoval so truly said, the mob is a ferocious god towhom sacrifices must be made. In this instance the sacrifice, of course,was Major Berkeley. He was broken and sent home to cut his pigtail (theadornment still clung to by the 29th) and retire into private life,whereby the British army was deprived of an officer of singularlybrilliant promise. Thus, you see, the score against poor RichardButler--that foolish victim of wine and circumstance--went onincreasing.
But in my haste to usher Major Berkeley out of a narrative which hetouches merely at a tangent, I am guilty of violating the chronologicalorder of the events. The ship in which Major Berkeley went hometo England and the rural life was the frigate Telemachus, and theTelemachus had but dropped anchor in the Tagus at the date with which Iam immediately concerned. She came with certain stores and a heavy loadof mails for the troops, and it would be a full fortnight before shewould sail again for home. Her officers would be ashore during the time,the welcome guests of the officers of the garrison, bearing their sharein the gaieties with which the latter strove to kill the time of waitingfor events, and Marcus Glennie, the captain of the frigate, an oldfriend of Tremayne's, was by virtue of that friendship an almost dailyvisitor at the adjutant's quarters.
But there again I am anticipating. The Telemachus came to her mooringsin the Tagus, at which for the present we may leave her, on the morningof 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 mustrelinquish to the other, that thus fully rested she might look herbest that night. The greater part of the afternoon was devoted topreparation. It was amazing even to herself what an amount of detailthere was to be considered, and from Sylvia she received but veryindifferent assistance. There were times when she regretfully suspectedin 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 whopreferred a canter to a waltz. It was unnatural; it was suspicious; shewas 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 wassufficient to mollify Sir Terence's impatience and stifle the witheringsarcasms he had been laboriously preparing. After dinner--which wastaken at six o'clock--there was still an hour to spare before thecarriage would come to take them into Lisbon.
Sir Terence pleaded stress of work, occasioned by the arrival of theTelemachus that morning, and withdrew with Tremayne to the officialquarters, to spend that hour in disposing of some of the many mattersawaiting his attention. Sylvia, who to Lady O'Moy's exasperation seemednow for the first time to give a thought to what she should wear thatnight, went off in haste to gown herself, and so Lady O'Moy was left toher own resources--which I assure you were few indeed.
The evening being calm and warm, she sauntered out into the open. Shewas more or less annoyed with everybody--with Sir Terence and Tremaynefor their assiduity to duty, and with Sylvia for postponing all thoughtof dressing until this eleventh hour, when she might have been betteremployed in beguiling her ladyship's loneliness. In this petulant mood,Lady O'Moy crossed the quadrangle, loitered a moment by the table andchairs placed under the trellis, and considered sitting there to awaitthe others. Finally, however, attracted by the glory of the sunsetbehind the hills towards Abrantes, she sauntered out on to the terrace,to the intense thankfulness of a poor wretch who had waited there forthe past ten hours in the almost despairing hope that precisely such athing might happen.
She was leaning upon the balustrade when a rustle in the pines belowdrew her attention. The rustle worked swiftly upwards and round tothe bushes on her right, and her eyes, faintly startled, followed itscareer, what time she stood tense and vaguely frightened.
Then the bushes parted and a limping figure that leaned heavily upona stick disclosed itself; a shaggy, red-bearded man in the garb of apeasant; 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 voiceinto the body of this peasant? Terrified, with drumming pulses, yetobedient to the injunction, she remained without speech or movement,whilst crouching so as to keep below the level of the balustrade the mancrept forward until he was immediately before and below her.
She stared into that haggard face, and through the half-mask of stubblybeard 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 if they find me here. You'll have heardwhat'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 housewithout being seen? I am almost starving, and my leg is on fire. I waswounded three days ago to make matters worse than they were already. Ihave been lying in the woods there watching for the chance to find youalone since sunrise this morning, and it's devil a bite or sup I've hadsince this time yesterday."
"Poor, poor Richard!" She leaned down towards him in an attitude ofcompassionate, ministering grace. "But why? Why did you not come up tothe 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 underan 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 havecome to you a month ago--immediately after this trouble of mine. Asit is, I kept away until despair left me no other choice. Una, on noaccount 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 thevery man to place official duty and honour and all the rest of it abovefamily considerations."
"Oh, Richard, how little you know Terence! How wrong you are to misjudgehim like this!"
"Right or wrong, I'd prefer not to take the risk. It might end in mybeing shot one fine morning before long."
"Richard!"
"For God's sake, less of your Richard! It's all the world will behearing you. Can you hide me, do you think, for a day or two? If youcan't, I'll be after shifting for myself as best I can. I've beenplaying the part of an English overseer from Bearsley's wine farm, andit has brought me all the way from the Douro in safety. But the strainof 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 nearAbrantes, as if I was worth robbing. Anyhow I gave the fellow more thanI took. Unless I have rest I think I shall go mad and give myself up tothe 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 onhis travels--of the undertaking given by the British to the Councilof Regency with regard to himself. But irresponsible egotist though hemight be, yet in common with others he was actuated by the desire whichhis sister's fragile loveliness inspired in every one to spare herunnecessary 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 lifemore or less is neither here nor there." And upon that he renewed hisplea that she should hide him if she could and that on no account shouldshe 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 preciousmoments 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 foryou. I will make sure that the coast is clear."
Contiguous to her dressing-room, which overlooked the quadrangle, therewas a small alcove which had been converted into a storeroom forthe array of trunks and dress boxes that Lady O'Moy had brought fromEngland. A door opening directly from her dressing room communicatedwith this alcove, and of that door Bridget, her maid, was in possessionof 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 herladyship would no further require her services that evening. But sinceit fell in so admirably with her ladyship's own wishes, she insistedwith quite unusual solicitude, with vehemence almost, that Bridgetshould proceed upon her way.
"Just give me the key of the alcove," she said. "There are one or twothings 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, whichshe surrendered to her mistress, having picked out for her the onerequired.
Lady O'Moy went up, to come down again the moment that Bridget haddisappeared. The quadrangle was deserted, the household disposed of,and it wanted yet half-an-hour to the time for which the carriage wasordered. No moment could have been more propitious. But in any caseno concealment was attempted--since, if detected it must have provokedsuspicions hardly likely to be aroused in any other way.
When Lady O'Moy returned indoors in the gathering dusk she was followedat a respectful distance by the limping fugitive, who might, had he beenseen, have been supposed some messenger, or perhaps some person employedabout the house or gardens coming to her ladyship for instructions. Noone saw them, however, and they gained the dressing-room and thence thealcove 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 nothingof the havoc wrought in its priceless contents, her ladyship alla-tremble collapsed limply upon another.
But there was no rest for her. Richard's wound required attention, andhe was faint for want of meat and drink. So having procured him thewherewithal to wash and dress his hurt--a nasty knife-slash which hadpenetrated to the bone of his thigh, the very sight of which turned herladyship sick and faint--she went to forage for him in a haste increasedby the fact that time was growing short.
On the dining-room sideboard, from the remains of dinner, she found andfurtively abstracted what she needed--best part of a roast chicken, asmall loaf and a half-flask of Collares. Mullins, the butler, would nodoubt be exercised presently when he discovered the abstraction. Let himblame one of the footmen, Sir Terence's orderly, or the cat. It matterednothing to Lady O'Moy.
Having devoured the food and consumed the wine, Richard's exhaustionassumed the form of a lethargic torpor. To sleep was now hisovermastering desire. She fetched him rugs and pillows, and he madehimself a couch upon the floor. She had demurred, of course, when hehimself had suggested this. She could not conceive of any one sleepinganywhere 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. "Andhaven't I been thankful to sleep in a ditch? And wasn't I campaigningbefore that? I tell you I couldn't sleep in a bed. It's a habit I'velost entirely."
Convinced, she gave way.
"We'll talk to-morrow, Una," he promised her, as he stretched himselfluxuriously upon that hard couch. "But meanwhile, on your life, not aword 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 outfor Count Redondo's, she returned the bunch of keys to Bridget the keyof the alcove was missing.
"I shall require it again in the morning, Bridget," she explainedlightly. 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."