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.
CHAPTER XX. THE RESIGNATION
At once, as he sat there, his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, he found himself surrounded by those three, against each of whom he had sinned under the spell of the jealousy that had blinded him and led him by the nose.
His wife put an arm about his neck in mute comfort of a grief of which she only understood the half — for of the heavier and more desperate part of his guilt she was still in ignorance. Sylvia spoke to him kindly words of encouragement where no encouragement could avail. But what moved him most was the touch of Tremayne’s hand upon his shoulder, and Tremayne’s voice bidding him brace himself to face the situation and count upon them to stand by him to the end.
He looked up at his friend and secretary in an amazement that overcame his shame.
“You can forgive me, Ned?”
Ned looked across at Sylvia Armytage. “You have been the means of bringing me to such happiness as I should never have reached without these happenings,” he said. “What resentment can I bear you, O’Moy? Besides, I understand, and who understands can never do anything but forgive. I realise how sorely you have been tried. No evidence more conclusive that you were being wronged could have been placed before you.”
“But the court-martial,” said O’Moy in horror. He covered his face with his hand. “Oh, my God! I am dishonoured. I — I—” He rose, shaking off the arm of his wife and the hand of the friend he had wronged so terribly. He broke away from them and strode to the window, his face set and white. “I think I was mad,” he said. “I know I was mad. But to have done what I did—” He shuddered in very horror of himself now that he was bereft of the support of t
hat evil jealousy that had fortified him against conscience itself and the very voice of honour. Lady O’Moy turned to them, pleading for explanation.
“What does he mean? What has he done?”
Himself he answered her: “I killed Samoval. It was I who fought that duel. And then believing what I did, I fastened the guilt upon Ned, and went the lengths of perjury in my blind effort to avenge myself. That is what I have done. Tell me, one of you, of your charity, what is there left for me to do?”
“Oh!” It was an outcry of horror and indignation from Una, instantly repressed by the tightening grip of Sylvia’s hand upon her arm. Miss Armytage saw and understood, and sorrowed for Sir Terence. She must restrain his wife from adding to his present anguish. Yet, “How could you, Terence! Oh, how could you!” cried her ladyship, and so gave way to tears, easier than words to express such natures.
“Because I loved you, I suppose,” he answered on a note of bitter self-mockery. “That was the justification I should have given had I been asked; that was the justification I accounted sufficient.”
“But then,” she cried, a new horror breaking on her mind— “if this is discovered — Terence, what will become of you?”
He turned and came slowly back until he stood beside her. Facing now the inevitable, he recovered some of his calm.
“It must be discovered,” he said quietly. “For the sake of everybody concerned it must—”
“Oh, no, no!” She sprang up and clutched his arm in terror. “They may fail to discover the truth.”
“They must not, my dear,” he answered her; stroking the fair head that lay against his breast. “They must not fail. I must see to that.”
“You? You?” Her eyes dilated as she looked at him. She caught her breath on a gasping sob. “Ah no, Terence,” she cried wildly. “You must not; you must not. You must say nothing — for my sake, Terence, if you love me, oh, for my sake, Terence!”
“For honour’s sake, I must,” he answered her. “And for the sake of Sylvia and of Tremayne, whom I have wronged, and—”
“Not for my sake, Terence,” Sylvia interrupted him.
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