Chapter 21 The Gates of Doom by Rafael Sabatini
LORD CARTERET UNDERSTANDS
The arrest of Sir John Kynaston had been brought about, of course—like all the others—by the agency of the renegade Pauncefort. It was the last desperate throw he made in the game of mending his fortunes, a game which had reduced him to the treacherous infamy which he had perpetrated. But he intended that it should be no more than the means to his end. It was no part of his purpose that Sir John should ultimately suffer. That is to say, it was no part of his present purpose.
He had pointed out to the Secretary of State the grounds upon which Sir John should be arrested, and he had further informed against him out of his own knowledge of Sir John's association—however slight—with the Jacobite intriguers. But once the arrest was effected, he had come again to my Lord Carteret with the request that Sir John's fate should be placed in his own (Lord Pauncefort's) hands. He claimed this as part of the recompense due to him from the Government for the signal services he had rendered.
Lord Carteret had listened to his request with that frank contempt which the Secretary of State never failed to use towards this man who had turned informer. This contempt was rendered the more bitter on this occasion by the regard in which his lordship had ever held Sir John Kynaston, against whom, indeed, he had performed his duty most reluctantly—a feeling this which Lord Pauncefort had omitted from his calculations.
The statesman pursed his thin lips and considered the viscount in silence with that cold glance of his, which my Lord Pauncefort found it so difficult to endure with equanimity.
"I find your request more than extraordinary, sir," said he.
Lord Pauncefort laughed. "If your lordship had my own unfortunate acquaintance with the requests of creditors, you'ld find little extraordinary in mine."
"By which," said the minister quietly, "you remind me, of course, that you are my creditor; or, rather, that I am your debtor for services rendered to the State. Ah!"
"I think, my lord, that I deserve some recompense beyond the small sums of money which the Treasury has paid me."
Lord Carteret leaned back in his arm-chair, his finger-tips resting upon the edge of the writing-table before him. "These small sums, my lord, amount to close upon twelve thousand pounds. And in addition you are kept out of a debtor's gaol by my warranty to your creditors that your debts will be liquidated on your marriage. I confess, sir, that you appear to me to have been more than well paid already for the services that you have rendered. Some, indeed," continued the statesman, with the faintest note of scorn in his quiet voice, "would account that you have been paid far above the value of those services, although I am not of those. I recognise the position which you occupy, the estate to which you were born, and the fact, hence, that you require to be bribed upon a higher scale than does the ordinary—informer."
The viscount swallowed that last insult as best he could. He had swallowed so many of Lord Carteret's already, in the course of these very turbid transactions, that one more or less was of little account. He kept his head high, and preserved a smiling front.
"I will admit, my lord, that the payment has been generous, provided that it is completed. I mean, provided that I am enabled to redeem the warranty your lordship has given my creditors."
"I am not sure," said the minister slowly, "that 'warranty' is, after all, the proper word. But your creditors understand me, and so, I think, do you."
"Perfectly, my lord. You have honoured me by giving your word as bail for me to Israel Suarez and the others."
"And," Lord Carteret added, "it is entirely as a result of this that you continue to elude imprisonment for debt."
"And," Lord Pauncefort added on his own side, "it is precisely that your lordship may be relieved of your pledge for me that I prefer my present request touching Sir John Kynaston."
"You do not forget, I trust, that I retain the right of withdrawing my pledge at any moment, should it appear to me that you may no longer continue in the assurance of being ultimately able to satisfy your debts. But that is by the way. The thing you now propose is exceedingly distasteful to me. Indeed, I am not sure that I can honourably accede to such a request. I could do so only if I were satisfied that—" He broke off, and sat forward. "But we talk in the dark," he said more briskly "Let me understand what ends you seek to serve by such a thing."
"Reasonable ends, my lord," replied Pauncefort easily "I have already had the honour of informing your lordship of the terms of the late Mr Hollinstone's will, under which it is in Sir John Kynaston's power to withhold his sanction to his ward's marriage until she is of full age—"
"Yes, yes," the statesman cut in. "You have already told me all that. Moreover," he added, with another of his quietly incisive manifestations of mistrust, "I have obtained independent confirmation of the fact. Pray, continue."
"I have also had the honour of informing your lordship that my betrothal to Miss Hollinstone does not receive Sir John's sanction."
"Knowing and respecting Sir John as I do, I am not surprised," was the withering comment. "Well, what then?"
"Sir John, my lord, is under arrest."
"By your contriving—yes," said his lordship. "It is a matter, let me tell you, concerning which your true motives have never intrigued me. I was aware that your betrothal to the lady was not sanctioned by her guardian" (his lordship was not, it seems, aware that the betrothal had been cancelled), "and I perceived clearly enough that his conviction as a rebel would disqualify him from exercising his rights under the will. What I do not perceive is the reason of your present intervention. I hope you are attempting no double dealings with me, sir."
"Double dealings? I, my lord?"
"You don't know what they are, I suppose? Pshaw, sir! These virtuous airs are unnecessary here. Who has betrayed once will betray again. But I have no desire to recriminate, my lord. All I desire is to warn you to be frank with me. What is your aim?—briefly now, and clearly."
The viscount was forced to swallow this peremptoriness with the rest. He was a knave unmasked, dealing with a man of honour.
"My lord," he answered, "I should have thought my aim would have been clear. I have no ill-will against Sir John. If I am to wed his niece I would not be the one to compass his ruin. I hope, sir, to be able to induce him to change his mind on the subject of my marriage with his niece either before or after the marriage has taken place. I conceive, sir, that if I can visit him in prison and offer to use my influence to procure his release and pardon, natural gratitude should inspire Sir John no longer to—"
"Fiddlesticks!" the statesman interrupted. "Natural gratitude, faith! Why can you not be frank and tell me it is your intent to drive a bargain with Sir John."
Pauncefort permitted himself a wry smile. "It amounts to that, of course," he confessed. "And if I had the pardon in my pocket it would perhaps strengthen my hand."
The statesman sat back again, toying thoughtfully with a quill, and from that hesitation Lord Pauncefort gathered hope. He knew, as we know, that if there was one thing more detestable to Lord Carteret than these persistent Jacobite intrigues that simmered under the peaceful surface of the realm it was their disclosure. His policy was to stifle them; to strike alarm into the plotters and to disband them, effecting this with as little publicity as possible.
Now it was far from the Secretary of State's desire to procure Sir John's conviction, since that must mean an increased publicity for the Jacobite Cause. Ample for the Government's purpose was his arrest. He might now be liberated, sufficiently shaken, no doubt, to leave plotting alone in future. And if there were plausible grounds for his enlargement, so much the better would the Government be served. Now Lord Pauncefort's proposal afforded just those plausible grounds; through his agency Sir John might be left under the impression that his release had been the result of a personal intervention. Nothing, then, but the statesman's mistrust of Pauncefort caused him now to hesitate, whilst in his mind he cast about him for any other possible end which the informer might seek to serve. Presently a thought occurred to him.
"You do not by any chance require this pardon as an instrument with which to compel the lady?" he inquired in his cold, level voice.
Pauncefort was aghast at the minister's shrewdness, for Lord Carteret had dropped plump upon his real aims. That, indeed, was the last card that he proposed to play, confident that it was strong enough to win the game for him. But if his face showed anything it showed indignation of such a suggestion. That seeming indignation kept him silent for a moment. Then he smiled slowly, as it were in contempt of Lord Carteret's mistake.
"With the lady, sir, no compulsion is necessary, seeing that we are betrothed already, and have been these six months, as all the world knows."
It was a convincing answer, and yet it did not convince the statesman; for none knew better than Lord Carteret the crookedness of the man with whom he dealt. Slowly he shook his head, though for a moment he said nothing. At last: "When is this marriage to take place?" he asked.
"Tomorrow evening at my place in Surrey," replied his lordship promptly—and, indeed, subject to his production of the pardon in question, such was the agreement he had that very morning wrung from Damaris. His lordship fingered his quill a moment, then threw it down like one who has taken his resolve.
"Come to me again when you are married, then," he said, "and we will return to the subject. Very possibly I may do as you desire."
Almost Lord Pauncefort committed the imprudence of protesting, and thus betraying himself completely to one so shrewd as the Secretary of State. He caught himself betimes. There was no more to be said, and the more readily he professed his entire acquiescence the better must it serve him.
He was checked for the moment. A fresh difficulty confronted him. Nevertheless, he smiled as he rose to take his leave.
"Be it so, then, my lord," said he. "I shall have the honour of waiting upon you again betimes on Friday."
Lord Carteret nodded. "Give you good-day," he said coldly, and Lord Pauncefort withdrew, a smile on his lips and rage in his heart, to think out the situation and discover a means to surmount this obstacle which had presented itself where he had expected none. That means he was not slow in discovering, for a half-hour later he penned and despatched from his house in St James's Street the following epistle to Miss Hollinstone:—
MY DEAREST DAMARIS,—I have but left my Lord Carteret, and I take pen at once to send you these to dispel the anxiety in which I know you to be lying. The Secretary of State has lent an ear to my insistence, and is preparing Sir John's pardon. It will receive his Majesty's signature tomorrow, and it shall be my wedding gift to you when you come to Woodlands tomorrow evening.
This was followed by protestations of undying passion and delirious anticipation with which we are not concerned, but in which Lord Pauncefort must be done the justice of being acknowledged sincere. He did with most delirious anticipation look forward to his emancipation from Israel Suarez and this nightmare of a debtor's gaol that was with him day and night, and had made a villain of him.
Now all this happened on the Wednesday of that very momentous week.
On the Thursday his lordship departed for his seat in Surrey, to complete the preparations for the reception of the bride, and he took with him, to serve his needs, a poor hedge parson of the name of Pugh.
At about the same hour that his chaise rolled up St James's Street and turned into Piccadilly, another carriage drew up at Lord Carteret's door and deposited there Mr Templeton, Sir Richard and Captain Gaynor, who thus descended upon the Secretary of State.
Mr Templeton came to explain—a sort of chorus to this comedy, and something more; Captain Gaynor came to seek explanation; and Sir Richard came as an important witness to certain matters, should it be found that they required investigation.
They did not. The mountainous fact that Captain Gaynor stood there in the flesh entirely crushed the absurd allegation that a fellow convicted of being Captain Jenkyn, the Jacobite spy, and hanged at Tyburn a fortnight since, had been this same Harry Gaynor.
Obviously a most colossal blunder had occurred. Lord Carteret's consternation flamed quickly to anger under the deft fanning of Mr Templeton.
"Had your lordship but honoured me with attention, this—ah—deplorable mistake had not occurred; had not occurred." His voice rolled and boomed. "I strove with all my power, but your lordship would not be guided. Even when I produced unimpeachable evidence your lordship still—ah—preferred to give heed to other counsellors. If you should now incur the—ah—ridicule of the malevolent and of your political enemies, your lordship will perhaps feel some sympathy for me in what I have undergone most undeservedly."
"You are within your rights," answered his lordship bitterly, his little eyes like gimlets upon Mr Templeton, "to point out to me the error against which you warned me, and into which I fell, that warning notwithstanding. But I will beg you, sir, not to turn the sword in the wound."
"Oh, my lord! I should be the last to be guilty of such an—ah—inhumanity. If I have said so much it has been to justify the insistence of my warning."
"With Captain Gaynor before us it requires no justifying," said his lordship.
"I pledged my honour," Mr Templeton continued, "and I accounted my honour forfeit. I resigned my office under that assumption, and under that assumption your lordship accepted my resignation. I have been the butt of every scandalous tongue in town—of every scandalous—"
"It is possible," cut in his lordship, who felt it necessary to bribe Mr Templeton into silence not only here but hereafter, "that your successor in office might be—induced to resign to the end that justice be done and yourself reinstated."
"In that," said Mr Templeton, bowing, "I recognise your lordship's high sense of justice."
"To you, sir," continued his lordship, turning to Captain Gaynor, who stood stiffly at attention, "I shall see that proper reparation is made by publishing the error there has been—an error which even now, I confess, is entirely baffling."
Upon audacity Captain Gaynor now piled audacity.
"It is possible," said he, "that I may be able to elucidate the matter."
"Do you suggest one of those freaks of nature by which two men are given such identical features that one is not to be told from the other?"
"No such matter is in my mind. Though I am unable to speak as to a likeness between myself and this Captain Jenkyn, for I have never consciously stood face to face with him. I think, my lord, that the matter goes deeper. From what Mr Templeton has told me I understand that Sir John Kynaston has been arrested for having harboured me—always upon the assumption that I was the man who was hanged a fortnight ago."
His lordship grimaced. "Ay!" he said irritably.
"That will be another error to correct," put in Mr Templeton quietly. There can be no doubt that Mr Templeton was enjoying himself.
"And I gather further that this, as well as the confusion of the late Captain Jenkyn with myself, is the work of my Lord Pauncefort."
"Yes," said his lordship, and he confirmed the affirmative by an oath.
"I find this the more extraordinary in that I am perfectly well known to his lordship—at least, on that score I should find it the more extraordinary did I not believe that I hold the explanation of his most singular behaviour."
"What d'ye tell me?" demanded Lord Carteret sharply. "D'ye say that Lord Pauncefort knew you?"
"He knows me, my lord, as well as he knows Dick Templeton there, who is one of my oldest friends."
"Then—what the devil!—" His lordship paused. His friendship for Sir John Kynaston, combining with his mistrust of Pauncefort, spurred him suddenly to incredible conclusions. "D'ye suggest he did this thing—that he made a tool of me—to serve ends of his own?"
"I will suggest nothing," said Captain Gaynor. "I will state the facts."
He played boldly now. He saw that he held Pauncefort in the hollow of his hand, and he would have played as boldly and unwincingly had Pauncefort, himself, been present—for not all that nobleman's protestations and oaths could annihilate the overwhelming fact that the man whom he had alleged to be Captain Gaynor had been hanged a fortnight ago at Tyburn, whilst Captain Gaynor, himself, was alive.
"I shall need to trouble your lordship with some purely personal details," he said. "When, upon the instances of Dick Templeton here, I came to England a month ago with letters to his cousin, the Second Secretary, and in the hope of finding employment for my sword in the service of my own country, I sought the hospitality of one who had been my father's dearest friend. I am speaking of Sir John Kynaston. Whilst there, my lord, being in Sir John's confidence, I learnt that a betrothal which had existed between his ward and my Lord Pauncefort had lately been determined in consequence of the discovery of—of certain unworthy motives in his lordship's suit."
"Determined?" cried the minister. "Determined, did ye say?" And swiftly his suspicions grew to certainty. "But I beg you to proceed," he added, almost grimly. "You promise to be very interesting."
Some vague fraction of what was passing in his lordship's mind was perceived by Captain Gaynor. It served to encourage him.
"It happened, sir," he resumed, "that I met the lady, and—and, in short, that his lordship had reason to behold in me a rival whom, under the circumstances of his own disfavour, he had cause to fear. Shortly thereafter, and in my absence from town, my name, I find, is given to a notorious rebel, the report of my execution set abroad, and my friend Sir John arrested for having harboured me."
Upon the faces of his listeners he saw clearly stamped the impression he had made and the conclusion to which all three had instantly jumped.
"Do you imply, sir, that it was to serve such ends as these that the villain so abused my confidence?" said the statesman in a voice that was like a knife's edge.
Captain Gaynor shook his head, his face inscrutable.
"Far be it from me to imply anything, my lord," he answered. "Naturally I must draw my own inferences; but those inferences you will permit me to keep to myself. It would be unfair in me to utter them, since I am an interested party, and—like all interested parties—subject to the sway of interest. Therefore I state the facts—no more. Your lordship must draw the inferences for yourself. You have acted in this matter upon certain information. You will hold, no doubt, that my presence here today, alive, is a sufficient proof of the falseness of such information. When in conjunction with that you consider what else I have now told you, you will be able to judge clearly for yourself the truth of this matter."
In his anger at seeing his every suspicion confirmed—at discovering, as he believed, that he had been so unscrupulously used—the Secretary of State came suddenly to his feet.
"Oh!" he cried, like a man who stifles, "it—it is incredible—as incredible as it is undeniable."
"Not so incredible, perhaps, when your lordship knows what else is behind," said the Captain. "Sir John's consent to Pauncefort's marriage with Miss Hollinstone is necessary, as otherwise—"
"I know, I know," the minister interrupted. "Sir, you can add nothing that I do not know already; nothing that I cannot now perceive for myself."
It was the Captain's turn to be astonished. But he was careful to show nothing of it.
"Oddslife!" swore Lord Carteret. "I suspected yesterday that he required Sir John's pardon for purposes of coercion with the lady. I did not know that the betrothal stood annulled. But you have made all clear to me. My Lord Pauncefort shall be taught a lesson that will last him all his life. As for you, sir, it remains for you to see to't that the lady's credulity is not abused as mine has been. I could desire no better agent than yourself. That rascal Pauncefort is to marry her this evening."
The Captain's self-possession all deserted him on the instant. He changed colour; his eyes dilated.
"This—this evening!" he faltered.
"Do not be alarmed," his lordship smiled. "You will be in time to prevent it." He resumed his seat. Under an exterior now of habitual iciness, anger still raged fiercely in Lord Carteret's bosom at the thought that he should have been no more than a tool—as he was forced to infer—in the hands of that spy whom he despised. Thus Lord Pauncefort was overwhelmed by the peril that ever threatens a traitor. The very hand that hires such men to their work is the very first to turn against them at the suggestion that they betray their present as they betrayed a former trust.
"Even were I too late to prevent, I should not be too late to amend it," said the Captain through his teeth. But the statesman held up a hand in warning.
"Do not misapprehend me, Captain Gaynor. Do not assume that I am sanctioning any such step as you have in mind. All that I desire is that you intervene in time to save a lady from marrying a blackguard. The rest you can very safely leave to others." He paused, then added: "If this wedding does not take place tonight, the world will be little troubled by my Lord Pauncefort hereafter." Then, taking up a pen, and speaking in a brisk voice: "I will issue an order for Sir John Kynaston's instant release," he announced, "and yourself, sir, shall be the bearer of it. Possibly Sir John may see fit to accompany you to Woodlands. Possibly, also, he may show a proper gratitude for the very timely service you have rendered him in returning so opportunely from your wanderings."
He wrote rapidly, almost whilst speaking; then, having sanded the document, he rose, and handed it to Captain Gaynor.
"There is the order," he said. He turned to Mr Templeton and desired him to stay for a word in private, and then he escorted the other two as far as the hall.
"You were seeking an appointment in the Colonies sir, I understand," he said to the Captain at parting, "but no doubt you will be changing your mind on that score if you think of marrying. If not, pray command me."
Captain Gaynor thanked him, and took his leave. But as he went down the steps of the mansion, arm in arm with Sir Richard:
"Whatever betide me," said he, "I'll never abide in England. Ye did me an ill turn in sending me hither, Dick. 'Tis too unsettled a country; too full of plottings and schemings and intrigues to suit my simple nature."
"I think you're right," said Sir Richard. "You men of action are no match for schemers."
"Ay, ay!" said the Captain sadly, and he shook his head. Presently he sighed. "Heigho!" And Sir Richard was not to guess that this was regret for dissimulation and intrigue of a singularly subtle sort—a regret occasioned by the reflection that for his very life's sake—and for the sake of others—he dare not tell the truth to this good fellow and best of friends, who was so uplifted to know him alive and well.
"I am coming to Woodlands with you tonight," said Sir Richard presently, "to see the end of this affair."