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Butler, in the guard-room yonder, awaiting my orders. Provide him with a uniform and bid him rejoin his regiment at once. Recommend him to be more prudent in future if he wishes me to forget his escapade at Tavora. And in future, O'Moy, trust your wife. Again, good-bye. Come, Grant! I have instructions for you too. But you must take them as we ride."
That, however, is another story. I but mention the incident here because the affair of Tavora with which I am concerned may be taken to have arisen directly out of it, and Sir Robert's behaviour may be construed as setting an example and thus as affording yet another extenuation of Lieutenant Butler's offence.
Souza looked at him in sudden alarm, bethinking himself that all Englishmen were heretics, and knowing nothing of subtle distinctions between English and Irish. In silence Butler finished the third and last bottle, and his thoughts fixed themselves with increasing insistence upon a wine reputed better than this of which there was great store in the cellars of the convent of Tavora.
We had a greater; a wonderful, clear vintage it was, of the year 1798 a famous year on the Douro, the quite most famous year that we have ever known. Mr. Bearsley sell some pipes to the monks at Tavora, who have bottle it and keep it. I beg him at the time not to sell, knowing the value it must come to have one day. But he sell all the same. Ah, meu Deus!"
The marchioness of Tavora, being brought upon the scaffold between eight and nine in the morning, was beheaded at one stroke, and then covered with a linen cloth.
Abruptly he asked: "Where's Tavora?" He was thinking perhaps of the comfort that such wine would bring to a company of war-worn soldiers in the valley of the Agueda. "Some ten leagues from here," answered Souza, and pointed to a map that hung upon the wall. The lieutenant rose, and rolled a thought unsteadily across the room.
You make out so good a case for him that one might almost believe you instructed by the gentleman himself. Yet I gather that nothing has since been heard of him?" "Nothing, sir, since he vanished from Tavora, nearly, two months ago. And I have only repeated to your lordship the tale that was told by the sergeant and the troopers who reported the matter to Sir Robert Craufurd on their return."
"Your Excellencies," he said he spoke an English that was smooth and fluent for all its foreign accent "Your Excellencies, this is a terrible affair." "To what affair will your Excellency be alluding?" wondered O'Moy. "Have you not received news of what has happened at Tavora? Of the violation of a convent by a party of British soldiers?
"From the message I brought you," Forjas resumed, "you will have perceived how Principal Souza has fastened upon this business at Tavora to support his general censure of Lord Wellington's conduct of the campaign. That is the weapon to which my warning refers. You must if we who place the national interest supreme are to prevail you must disarm him by the assurance that I ask for.
Hesitating before such signs of distress, Samoval looked at O'Moy, to meet a dejected scowl. Lady O'Moy turned to her husband. "What is it?" she demanded. "You know something about Dick and you are keeping it from me. Dick is in trouble?" "He is," O'Moy admitted. "In great trouble." "What has he done? You spoke of an affair at Evora or Tavora, which is not to be mentioned before ladies.
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