The Snare Part 14

"But how are we to get him out of the country?"

"I think I know a way. I can depend on Marcus Glennie. I may tell him the whole truth and the ident.i.ty of our man, or I may not. I must think about that. But, whatever I decide, I am sure I can induce Glennie to take our fugitive home in the Telemachus and land him safely somewhere in Ireland, where he will have to lose himself for awhile. Perhaps for Glennie's sake it will be safer not to disclose d.i.c.k's ident.i.ty. Then if there should be trouble later, Glennie, having known nothing of the real facts, will not be held responsible. I will talk to him to-night."

"Do you think he will consent?" she asked in strained anxiety--anxiety to have her anxieties dispelled.

"I am sure he will. I can almost pledge my word on it. Marcus would do anything to serve me. Oh, set your mind at rest. Consider the thing done. Keep d.i.c.k safely hidden for a week or so until the Telemachus is ready to sail--he mustn't go on board until the last moment, for several reasons--and I will see to the rest."

Under that confident promise her troubles fell from her, as lightly as they ever did.

"You are very good to me, Ned. Forgive me what I said just now. And I think I understand about Terence--poor dear old Terence."

"Of course you do." Moved to comfort her as he might have been moved to comfort a child, he flung his arm along the seat behind her, and patted her shoulder soothingly. "I knew you would understand. And not a word to Terence, not a word that could so much as awaken his suspicions.

Remember that."

"Oh, I shall."

Fell a step upon the patch behind them crunching the gravel. Captain Tremayne, his arm still along the back of the seat, and seeming to envelop her ladys.h.i.+p, looked over her shoulder. A tall figure was advancing briskly. He recognised it even in the gloom by its height and gait and swing for O'Moy's.

"Why, here is Terence," he said easily--so easily, with such frank and obvious honesty of welcome, that the anger in which O'Moy came wrapped fell from him on the instant, to be replaced by shame.

"I have been looking for you everywhere, my dear," he said to Una.

"Marshal Beresford is anxious to pay you his respects before he leaves, and you have been so hedged about by gallants all the evening that it's devil a chance he's had of approaching you." There was a certain constraint in his voice, for a man may not recover instantly from such feelings as those which had fetched him hot-foot down that path at sight of those two figures sitting so close and intimate, the young man's arm so proprietorialy about the lady's shoulders--as it seemed.

Lady O'Moy sprang up at once, with a little silvery laugh that was singularly care-free; for had not Tremayne lifted the burden entirely from her shoulders?

"You should have married a dowd," she mocked him. "Then you'd have found her more easily accessible."

"Instead of finding her dallying in the moonlight with my secretary,"

he rallied back between good and ill humour. And he turned to Tremayne: "d.a.m.ned indiscreet of you, Ned," he added more severely. "Suppose you had been seen by any of the scandalmongering old wives of the garrison?

A nice thing for Una and a nice thing for me, begad, to be made the subject of fly-blown talk over the tea-cups."

Tremayne accepted the rebuke in the friendly spirit in which it appeared to be conveyed. "Sorry, O'Moy," he said. "You're quite right. We should have thought of it. Everybody isn't to know what our relations are." And again he was so manifestly honest and so completely at his ease that it was impossible to harbour any thought of evil, and O'Moy felt again the glow of shame of suspicions so utterly unworthy and dishonouring.

CHAPTER VIII. THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER

In a small room of Count Redondo's palace, a room that had been set apart for cards, sat three men about a card-table. They were Count Samoval, the elderly Marquis of Minas, lean, bald and vulturine of aspect, with a deep-set eye that glared fiercely through a single eyegla.s.s rimmed in tortoise-sh.e.l.l, and a gentleman still on the fair side of middle age, with a clear-cut face and iron-grey hair, who wore the dark green uniform of a major of Cacadores.

Considering his Portuguese uniform, it is odd that the low-toned, earnest conversation amongst them should have been conducted in French.

There were cards on the table; but there was no pretence of play. You might have conceived them a group of players who, wearied of their game, had relinquished it for conversation. They were the only tenants of the room, which was small, cedar-panelled and lighted by a girandole of sparkling crystal. Through the closed door came faintly from the distant ballroom the strains of the dance music.

With perhaps the single exception of the Princ.i.p.al Souza, the British policy had no more bitter opponent in Portugal than the Marquis of Minas. Once a member of the Council of Regency--before Souza had been elected to that body--he had quitted it in disgust at the British measures. His chief ground of umbrage had been the appointment of British officers to the command of the Portuguese regiments which formed the division under Marshal Beresford. In this he saw a deliberate insult and slight to his country and his countrymen. He was a man of burning and blinded patriotism, to whom Portugal was the most glorious nation in the world. He lived in his country's splendid past, refusing to recognise that the days of Henry the Navigator, of Vasco da Gama, of Manuel the Fortunate--days in which Portugal had been great indeed among the nations of the Old World were gone and done with. He respected Britons as great merchants and industrious traders; but, after all, merchants and traders are not the peers of fighters on land and sea, of navigators, conquerors and civilisers, such as his countrymen had been, such as he believed them still to be. That the descendants of Gamas, Cunhas, Magalhaes and Albuquerques--men whose names were indelibly written upon the very face of the world--should be pa.s.sed over, whilst alien officers lead been brought in to train and command the Portuguese legions, was an affront to Portugal which Minas could never forgive.

It was thus that he had become a rebel, withdrawing from a government whose supineness he could not condone. For a while his rebellion had been pa.s.sive, until the Princ.i.p.al Souza had heated him in the fire of his own rage and fas.h.i.+oned him into an intriguing instrument of the first power. He was listening intently now to the soft, rapid speech of the gentleman in the major's uniform.

"Of course, rumours had reached the Prince of this policy of devastation," he was saying, "but his Highness has been disposed to treat these rumours lightly, unable to see, as indeed are we all, what useful purpose such a policy could finally serve. He does not underrate the talents of milord Wellington as a commander. He does not imagine that he would pursue such operations out of pure wantonness; yet if such operations are indeed being pursued, what can they be but wanton? A moment, Count," he stayed Samoval, who was about to interrupt. His mind and manner were authoritative. "We know most positively from the Emperor's London agents that the war is unpopular in England; we know that public opinion is being prepared for a British retreat, for the driving of the British into the sea, as must inevitably happen once Monsieur le Prince decides to launch his bolt. Here in the Tagus the British fleet lies ready to embark the troops, and the British Cabinet itself" (he spoke more slowly and emphatically) "expects that embarkation to take place at latest in September, which is just about the time that the French offensive should be at its height and the French troops under the very walls of Lisbon. I admit that by this policy of devastation if, indeed, it be true--added to a stubborn contesting of every foot of ground, the French advance may be r.e.t.a.r.ded.

But the process will be costly to Britain in lives and money."

"And more costly still to Portugal," croaked the Marquis of Minas.

"And, as you, say, Monsieur le Marquis, more costly still to Portugal.

Let me for a moment show you another side of the picture. The French administration, so sane, so cheris.h.i.+ng, animated purely by ideas of progress, enforcing wise and beneficial laws, making ever for the prosperity and well-being of conquered nations, knows how to render itself popular wherever it is established. This Portugal knows already--or at least some part of it. There was the administration of Soult in Oporto, so entirely satisfactory to the people that it was no inconsiderable party was prepared, subject to the Emperor's consent, to offer him the crown and settle down peacefully under his rule. There was the administration of Junot in Lisbon. I ask you: when was Lisbon better governed?

"Contrast, for a moment, with these the present British administration--for it amounts to an administration. Consider the burning grievances that must be left behind by this policy of laying the country waste, of pauperising a million people of all degrees, driving them homeless from the lands on which they were born, after compelling them to lend a hand in the destruction of all that their labour has built up through long years. If any policy could better serve the purposes of France, I know it not. The people from here to Beira should be ready to receive the French with open arms, and to welcome their deliverance from this most costly and bitter British protection.

"Do you, Messieurs, detect a flaw in these arguments?"

Both shook their heads.

"Bien!" said the major of Portuguese Cacadores. "Then we reach one or two only possible conclusions: either these rumours of a policy of devastation which have reached the Prince of Esslingen are as utterly false as he believes them to be, or--"

"To my cost I know them to be true, as I have already told you," Samoval interrupted bitterly.

"Or," the major persisted, raising a hand to restrain the Count, "or there is something further that has not been yet discovered--a mystery the enucleation of which will shed light upon all the rest. Since you a.s.sure me, Monsieur le Comte, that milord Wellington's policy is beyond doubt, as reported to Monsieur, le Marechal, it but remains to address ourselves to the discovery of the mystery underlying it.

What conclusions have you reached? You, Monsieur de Samoval, have had exceptional opportunities of observation, I understand."

"I am afraid my opportunities have been none so exceptional as you suppose," replied Samoval, with a dubious shake of his sleek, dark head.

"At one time I founded great hopes in Lady O'Moy. But Lady O'Moy is a fool, and does not enjoy her husband's confidence in official matters.

What she knows I know. Unfortunately it does not amount to very much.

One conclusion, however, I have reached: Wellington is preparing in Portugal a snare for Ma.s.sena's army."

"A snare? Hum!" The major pursed his full lips into a smile of scorn.

"There cannot be a trap with two exits, my friend. Ma.s.sena enters Portugal at Almeida and marches to Lisbon and the open sea. He may be inconvenienced or hampered in his march; but its goal is certain. Where, then, can lie the snare? Your theory presupposes an impa.s.sable barrier to arrest the French when they are deep in the country and an overwhelming force to cut off their retreat when that barrier is reached. The overwhelming force does not exist and cannot be manufactured; as for the barrier, no barrier that it lies within human power to construct lies beyond French power to over-stride."

"I should not make too sure of that," Samoval warned him. "And you have overlooked something."

The major glanced at the Count sharply and without satisfaction. He accounted himself--trained as he had been under the very eye of the great Emperor--of some force in strategy and tactics, a player too well versed in the game to overlook the possible moves of an opponent.

"Ha!" he said, with the ghost of a sneer. "For instance, Monsieur le Comte?"

"The overwhelming force exists," said Samoval.

"Where is it then? Whence has it been created? If you refer to the united British and Portuguese troops, you will be good enough to bear in mind that they will be retreating before the Prince. They cannot at once be before and behind him."

The man's cool a.s.surance and cooler contempt of Samoval's views stung the Count into some sharpness.

"Are you seeking information, sir, or are you bestowing it?" he inquired.

"Ah! Your pardon, Monsieur le Comte. I inquire of course. I put forward arguments to antic.i.p.ate conditions that may possibly be erroneous."

Samoval waived the point. "There is another force besides the British and Portuguese troops that you have left out of your calculations."

"And that?" The major was still faintly incredulous.

"You should remember what Wellington obviously remembers: that a French army depends for its sustenance upon the country it is invading. That is why Wellington is stripping the French line of penetration as bare of sustenance as this card-table. If we a.s.sume the existence of the barrier--an impa.s.sable line of fortifications encountered within many marches of the frontier--we may also a.s.sume that starvation will be the overwhelming force that will cut off the French retreat."