"On my soul, that was impudence!" an Irish infantryman had protested.
"Have you ever heard," quoth a heavy dragoon, who was also a heavy jester, "that in heaven the last shall be first? If you pay court to an angel you must submit to celestial customs."
"And bedad," rejoined the infantryman, "as there's no marryin' in heaven ye've got to make the best of it with other men's wives. Sure it's a great success that fellow should be in paradise. Did ye remark the way she melted to him beauty swooning at the sight of temptation! Bad luck to him! Who is he at all?"
They dispersed laughing and followed by O'Moy's scowling eyes. It annoyed him that his wife's thoughtless conduct should render her the butt of such jests as these, and perhaps a subject for lewd gossip. He would speak to her about it later. Meanwhile the marshal had linked arms with him.
"Since the privilege must be postponed," said he, "suppose that we seek supper. I have always found that a man can best heal in his stomach the wounds taken by his heart." His fleshy bulk afforded a certain prima-facie confirmation of the dictum.
With a roll more suggestive of the quarter-deck than the saddle, the great man bore off O'Moy in quest of material consolation. Yet as they went the adjutant's eyes raked the ballroom in quest of his wife. That quest, however, was unsuccessful, for his wife was already in the garden.
"I want to talk to you most urgently, Ned. Take me somewhere where we can be quite private," she had begged the captain. "Somewhere where there is no danger of being overheard."
Her agitation, now uncontrolled, suggested to Tremayne that the matter might be far more serious and urgent than Miss Armytage had represented it. He thought first of the balcony where he had lately been. But then the balcony opened immediately from the ante-room and was likely at any moment to be invaded. So, since the night was soft and warm, he preferred the garden. Her ladyship went to find a wrap, then arm in arm they passed out, and were lost in the shadows of an avenue of palm-trees.
"It is about Dick," she said breathlessly.
"I know—Miss Armytage told me."
"What did she tell you?"
"That you had a premonition that he might come to you for assistance."
"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. "Dick?"
"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 Dick's friend, as I am your own and Terence's. Your father was my best friend, perhaps, and my gratitude to him is unbounded, as I hope you know. You and Dick are almost as brother and sister to me. In spite of this—indeed, because of this, I have prayed for news that Dick 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 Dick's sake, and more than all for the sake of your happiness and Terence's. If Dick 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 Dick 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 noble, 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 Dick! He has always made mountains out of molehills where Dick was concerned. He forgets that Dick is young a mere boy. He judges Dick 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 assured 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 Dick 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 Dick 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 circumstances under which the pledge had been exacted. "But be in no doubt about it," he concluded. "If Terence knows of Dick'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 Dick 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 Dick is present, I am pleading not so much for you or for Dick, but for Terence himself—for it is upon Terence that the hardest and most tragic suffering must fall. Now do you understand?"