The Snare | Page 7

without what he call a stirrup-cup to keep you from the
ills that lurk in the wind of the Serra. A glass - but one - of that Port
you tasted yesterday. I say but a glass, yet I hope you will do honour to
the bottle. But a glass at least, at least!" He implored it almost with
tears. Mr. Butler had reached that state of delicious torpor in which to
take the road is the last agony; but duty was duty, and Sir Robert
Craufurd had the fiend's own temper. Torn thus between consciousness
of duty and the weakness of the flesh, he looked at O'Rourke. O'Rourke,
a cherubic fellow, who had for his years a very pretty taste in wine,
returned the glance with a moist eye, and licked his lips.
"In your place I should let myself be tempted," says he. "It's an elegant
wine, and ten minutes more or less is no great matter."
The lieutenant discovered a middle way which permitted him to take a
prompt decision creditable to his military instincts, but revealing a
disgraceful though quite characteristic selfishness.
"Very well," he said. "Leave Sergeant Flanagan and ten men to wait for
me, O'Rourke, and do you set out at once with the rest of the troop.
And take the cattle with you. I shall overtake you before you have gone
very far."
O'Rourke's crestfallen air stirred the sympathetic Souza's pity.
"But, Captain," he besought, "will you not allow the lieutenant - "
Mr. Butler cut him short. "Duty," said he sententiously, "is duty. Be off,
O'Rourke."
And O'Rourke, clicking his heels viciously, saluted and departed.
Came presently the bottles in a basket - not one, as Souza had said, but
three; and when the first was done Butler reflected that since O'Rourke
and the cattle were already well upon the road there need no longer be
any hurry about his own departure. A herd of bullocks does not travel
very quickly, and even with a few hours' start in a forty-mile journey is

easily over-taken by a troop of horse travelling without encumbrance.
You understand, then, how easily our lieutenant yielded himself to the
luxurious circumstances, and disposed himself to savour the second
bottle of that nectar distilled from the very sunshine of the Douro -- the
phrase is his own. The steward produced a box of very choice cigars,
and although the lieutenant was not an habitual smoker, he permitted
himself on this exceptional occasion to be further tempted. Stretched in
a deep chair beside the roaring fire of pine logs, he sipped and smoked
and drowsed away the greater par of that wintry afternoon. Soon the
third bottle had gone the way of the second, and Mr. Bearsley's steward
being a man of extremely temperate habit, it follow: that most of the
wine had found its way down the lieutenant's thirsty gullet.
It was perhaps a more potent vintage than he had at first suspected, and
as the torpor produced by the dinner and the earlier, fuller wine was
wearing off, it was succeeded by an exhilaration that played havoc with
the few wits that Mr. Butler could call his own.
The steward was deeply learned in wines and wine growing and in very
little besides; consequently the talk was almost confined to that subject
in its many branches, and he could be interesting enough, like all
enthusiasts. To a fresh burst of praise from Butler of the ruby vintage to
which he had been introduced, the steward presently responded with a
sigh:
"Indeed, as you say, Captain, a great wine. But we had a greater."
"Impossible, by God," swore Butler, with a hiccup.
"You may say so; but it is the truth. 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 steward clasped
his hands and raised rather prominent eyes to the ceiling, protesting to
his Maker against his master's folly. "He say we have plenty, and now"

- he spread fat hands in a gesture of despair - "and now we have none.
Some sons of dogs of French who came with Marshal Soult happen this
way on a forage they discover the wine and they guzzle it like pigs." He
swore, and his benignity was eclipsed by wrathful memory. He heaved
himself up in a passion.
"Think of that so priceless vintage drink like hogwash, as Mr. Bearsley
say, by those