Chapter 20 The Gates of Doom by Rafael Sabatini
MR TEMPLETON IN RETIREMENT
Sir Richard Tollemache Templeton, in his distant lonely seat in Devonshire, received from his cousin, the Second Secretary, a letter which produced in him the greatest consternation.
MY DEAR TOLLEMACHE [wrote the Second Secretary],—De profundis—out of the very depths of despondency I write to you, smitten down by a malignancy of fortune which I find it difficult even now to credit should have encompassed me. It has demanded of me the resignation of that high office which I held under the Crown, and today I am a man who hides his head in shame from the gloating stare of the vulgar, whose envy is ever gladdened by the spectacle of one fallen from high estate. It is a full week since the untoward event befell which has been the occasion of this overwhelming disaster, yet it is only today that I am able sufficiently to take heart and summon the courage necessary to indite to you this miserable epistle, giving you, as is your due as the head of our honourable house, news of my condition. It solaces me almost, my dear Tollemache, that in such an hour, with the burden of ridicule and disgrace upon my shoulders, I am able to reflect that some of the blame for this attaches to yourself as well. You are not to suppose by this that I presume to censure you. We have both been the sport of malign Fate and of a villain who has already expiated on the gallows the perversity of his existence. But that you should have been cozened with me, that my cozening should in part have been a natural sequel to your own, rather than an independent error of mine, is a helpful reflection to me in this dark hour. But for this merciful circumstance I should never be able to show you my face again, I should not, indeed, have the courage to indite these lines to you. The villain to whom I am referring, my dear Tollemache, is one who imposed himself upon you and abused the confidence with which, a little indiscriminatingly, I fear (though it is an error to which all men are liable), you honoured him. I speak of Henry Gaynor—or the man who called himself by that name. Strong in my faith in his loyalty, a faith rooted in your own absolute assurance of it, I defended him to the utmost of my strength when imputations were cast upon that loyalty, when it was first whispered that he was none other than the elusive Jacobite agent who has been known by the name—for want of knowledge of his real one—of Captain Jenkyn. So positive, you will remember, were these assurances of yours that I stood between that man and arrest, pledging my credit and my very honour for his loyalty. But, as I have said, we have both been most grossly abused. There came a moment when it was impossible to defend him any longer. His arrest was ordered and effected and regarding himself as lost he took the course so common with desperate men who are cornered: he weakly confessed his treason and meekly submitted to his fate. He was hanged a week ago, as he more richly deserved than any man I have known of. Need I add more? Need I tell you how this honour of mine which I had pledged was all but lost to me by my rashness, how nothing remained me but to resign my office and retire before the storm of contempt and ridicule which my lord Carteret directed upon my luckless head? I am a broken man, my dear Tollemache, and never was there one in greater need of sympathy and pity, never one more lonely Though I hide me from the world, here among my books, I cannot hide me from Emily, whose tongue these days is as a sword of sharpness to my flesh. I can write no more. But if you will take pity on my loneliness, and permit me to come to you in Devonshire for a season, until this matter shall be forgotten and I can again show my face among men, I shall be your deeply grateful as I am your affectionate and unfortunate cousin, EDWARD TEMPLETON.
To Sir Richard this news had been altogether incredible. That Lord Carteret, persisting in the absurd mistake, or urged on by mistaken advisers, should, in spite of all, have gone the length of arresting Harry Gaynor as Captain Jenkyn was not perhaps surprising. But that Harry Gaynor—the Harry Gaynor he knew, of whose career he conceived that he was acquainted with every phase, whose every year, indeed, was accounted for by his credentials—that this man should have admitted himself to be the Jacobite agent in question was impossible to believe.
Sir Richard scouted the notion. His cousin was mad, or else some monstrous error lay at the bottom of the affair.
He did not trouble to answer the letter. So overwhelmed was he by its contents that two days after its receipt—so soon as he could set in order certain affairs on his estate that demanded his immediate attention—he set out for London. He arrived there two days later, having travelled post-haste all the way, and the very Thursday that saw Captain Gaynor leave the house of Professor Blizzard saw Sir Richard's dusty chaise drawn up before his cousin's door in Old Palace Yard.
He found the Second Secretary in his library. Edward Templeton was in deshabille, although it was already past noon. He wore a bed-gown of wine-coloured satin, and his cropped head was hidden in a nightcap of the same hue. His long countenance seemed to have grown longer, sallower and hollower in these last few days. His chaps hung dolefully. He looked uncommonly like a bloodhound that has been whipped, and his deep-set eyes were singularly dolorous. To look at him was to perceive that here was a fellow who pitied himself damnably.
He was standing to receive his cousin, and he went to meet him with both hands held out.
"My dear Tollemache," (his deep voice boomed like the note of an organ and was laden with a profound melancholy), "it is kind in you to respond so readily to my appeal; to seek me here in my—ah—tribulation."
"I could not wait for you to come to me," was the answer. "Your news was so wild and utterly beyond belief that I must come in person for its explanation ere I carry you back to Devonshire with me."
"Wild and utterly beyond belief it may be, but it is true none the less."
Sir Richard, still in his travelling clothes, flung himself into a chair.
"Tell me of it," he said impatiently.
"What remains to tell? My letter—"
"Yes, yes, but your letter gave me no more than the broad fact. I want the details ere I can believe."
"The details?" Mr Templeton paced the room with bowed head. He came at last to stand by the writing table where he could face his cousin. He looked through the window behind his cousin, and observed the grey sky and drizzle of rain under which the shrubs in his garden were drooping.
He told the tale with all that wealth of rhetoric that he used, thus rendering his cousin's impatience almost frantic.
"Is that all?" quoth Sir Richard, when the tale was done.
"Is't not enough?" demanded the sometime Second Secretary. "It has been enough to procure my ruin, Tollemache."
"And yet, weighed against my own knowledge of the man, it is not enough to carry conviction."
"Oh, he was deep—infernally, subtly deep," boomed Mr Templeton. "He completely bubbled you."
Sir Richard rose, and in his turn began to pace the chamber, whilst his cousin now let himself sink into a chair, and sat, knees on elbows and chin cupped in his palms.
"He was averse to coming to England," Sir Richard reasoned, "and it was naught but my own insistence fetched him hither. Even when I had prepared the letter for you, he must still idle there at Naples, and I'll swear he would be idling there yet but for the insistence which I employed."
"Ay—he was deep," was all that Mr Templeton could find to answer.
"But his credentials!" Sir Richard insisted. "His credentials! They were an almost complete record of his career, and not a year of it since he was nineteen but was employed in some service between here and the Far East."
"Forgeries!" growled his cousin.
"Forgeries? Not so. Did not yourself test two of them at the proper embassies here in London?"
"Two—ay. But what of the others?"
"Ab uno disce omnes."
Mr Templeton crashed fist into palm. "The very argument I used to my Lord Carteret—the very words I uttered! 'Sdeath, how he has laughed at me since! Oh, blister me! you do not know what a butt for mockery I am become."
"You say that he confessed?" Sir Richard's voice was laden with ineffable incredulity.
"Abjectly."
"Y'amaze me! How did he bear himself at the trial?"
"Well, I am told. He was one of your cool, calm villains."
"Were ye not present?"
"Present?" cried Mr Templeton. "Do you not understand, man, that from the hour of his arrest I durst not show my face i' the town? Do you think I would go to Court to be pointed at by every jackanapes as the man who was bubbled, the statesman who was this traitor's sponsor? I may count myself fortunate that I was not, myself, impeached."
And then Fate, that ironical stage manager, displayed its interest in this comedy.
There was a tap at the door, and a footman entered.
"Captain Gaynor is below, sir, and begs leave to wait upon you," he announced.
The two men stared at him, as if they were both stricken into stone.
At length, in a croak, came Mr Templeton's voice: "What the devil did ye say?"
The footman stolidly repeated his announcement.
"Captain Gaynor?" echoed Mr Templeton, with an accent on every syllable. "Cap-tain Gay-nor!" he repeated. "Are ye mad or drunk?"
"Neither, sir," replied the footman, his manner as near pert as any underling's manner dare be with the overawing Mr Templeton.
Mr Templeton screwed his face as he shot out the next question: "D'ye know Captain Gaynor? I mean—have ye ever seen him before?"
"Why, yes, sir; several times."
"And d'ye say this is he?"
"Yes, sir. Leastways, I think so, sir."
Sir Richard interposed. He was visibly as agitated as his cousin.
"Best desire him to step up, Ned," he suggested. Mr Templeton gave the order, and the intrigued footman vanished.
"What can it mean, Tollemache? What can it mean?"
"It seems to mean that I am right and that you and your Government are wrong. For if this is really Captain Gaynor, then, obviously, he is not Captain Jenkyn."
"You mean that Lord Carteret is mistaken!" cried the other, a dazzling vista of reinstatement with the last and the best laugh on his side opening suddenly before him. He heaved himself, excited, from his chair, to collapse into it again an instant later. "But it is absurd!" he said, and sneered. "Impossible."
On the word the door reopened and Captain Gaynor was ushered in. He wore his close-fitting military blue coat buttoned to the chin, canon boots and steel-hilted sword, and under his arm he carried his looped and feathered hat.
Undoubtedly this was the man himself. Yet, as the cousins stared at him, Edward Templeton disbelieved the evidence of his own eyes.
The soldier advanced easily into the room, then bowed formally, his heels together. "I trust, Mr Templeton, that I do not intrude. Why, 'tis you, Dick!" he cried, perceiving who it was that stood there. "I am indeed fortunate. I was considering a jaunt into Devonshire, unless by now your cousin's efforts on my behalf have borne the fruit we hope for. But what's amiss?" he cried on a sudden, different note, looking from one amazed face to the other.
"Will you tell me who the devil you are?" asked Mr Templeton.
The Captain stiffened slightly; perplexity crept into his face.
"Who the devil I am?" said he. "Why, who the devil should I be but Captain Harry Gaynor, your obedient servant. I trust," he added, as if he suddenly suspected a possibility, "I trust, sir, that I have not unwittingly had the misfortune to offend you."
Mr Templeton looked at his cousin. "By God!" said he. "'Tis the man himself."
"So it is," said Sir Richard, and on that he exploded into laughter.
Captain Gaynor looked from one to the other. His expression of perplexity changed to one of annoyance.
"Gentlemen," said he, very distant, "you'll forgive me if I say that I find you vastly odd. And you, Dick—"
Sir Richard sprang to him and wrung his hand. "Oh, my dear Harry," he cried, "although my manner seem odd, I swear I never was more pleased to see you—or any man."
"Nor I—oddslife!—no," roared Mr Templeton, who savoured already in imagination the triumph that was in store for him, his complete vindication and the turning of those malicious shafts of satire upon the fatuous Lord Carteret—their proper butt. "But can ye explain it?" he demanded.
"Explain what, sir?" asked the apparently bewildered soldier.
Mr Templeton changed his tone. "Where the devil have ye been this fortnight past?"
"Where? Why, did I not announce to you my departure for Scotland when last I came to take my leave of you? I should have tarried longer in the north, but that I was unable to find any of the friends I went to visit. So, as the north of itself has little attraction for one who's accustomed to softer climates, I came south again forthwith." He lied glibly and smoothly, and with little hurt to his conscience. Again he observed that his audacity had conquered completely here. Would it conquer as completely elsewhere? He had little doubt of it now.
"And you have had no news of London in your absence?"
"Who should send me news' I have so few friends in England nowadays."
"Then ye'll not have heard that Captain Jenkyn was taken and hanged?"
"Captain Jenkyn'" echoed the soldier, after the manner of one who searches his memory "D'ye mean the Jacobite agent. Faith, then, the world's well rid of a meddlesome fool. But—" He paused to stare at them, bewildered. "You tell me this, I see, with some purpose."
It was Richard who interposed to tell him the story—suddenly become so monstrously comical—that upon Captain Jenkyn, whose real identity was unknown, had been thrust the identity of Captain Gaynor.
The Captain laughed a little at first. Then he checked himself, and grew very sober.
"But, 'tis a monstrous thing you tell me!" quoth he. "I cannot lie under so absurd an error. It must be corrected forthwith. I shall look to you, Mr Templeton, to do me justice."
"To me?" said Templeton. "Ye've further to learn that, as a consequence of my jeopardising myself by denying the possibility of your being Captain Jenkyn, I am no longer a member of the Government. I have resigned my office. But there are reprisals in store—egad! Reprisals!"
"Then I must see Lord Carteret at once," cried the Captain.
"So you shall—and I'll come with you." Mr Templeton was recovering his habitual breadth of manner. "If ye'll but stay for me till I am dressed, we will go together. And you had best come with us, Tollemache."
"Faith! I ask no better entertainment," laughed Sir Richard.
But Captain Gaynor had yet a question to ask ere he would allow Mr Templeton to withdraw. "But how came this mistake about, sir? Was the fellow—Did he resemble me?"
"'Tis more than I can say, and less than matters now. I think my Lord Carteret took too much upon assumption. It is all the work of that fellow Pauncefort."
"Pauncefort!" cried the Captain, and alarm flashed into his face. "Pauncefort! By heaven, then, I suspect some villainy here! Gad! 'Twas no mistake this; 'twas deliberate! I'll post to Priory Close and see Sir John Kynaston the moment I leave my Lord Carteret's. Heaven send I am not too late. I curse the hour I ever thought of Scotland."
"Sir John Kynaston!" exclaimed Mr Templeton very solemnly. "Why, what do you fear for him?"
"For him—nothing. 'Tis not himself I'm thinking of."
"Then d'ye not know—But of course you do not. Sir John was arrested two days ago."
Consternation spread on the face of that comedian. "Arrested? Sir John? Upon what charge?"
"Why, upon the charge of having harboured a traitor and spy—upon the charge of having harboured Captain Gaynor."
The Captain smote his brow with his clenched hand. "I see it all, then!" he cried. "Let us waste no time, sir. Sir John must instantly be restored to liberty."
"All things considered," said Sir Richard dryly, "I think my Lord Carteret will be very pleased to see you."
"He'll be the laughing-stock o' the town," said Mr Templeton, and he went out, chuckling, to make ready for that momentous visit.