[pg 336]
"You don't understand, Charles, the difficulty of my position. You have Latin at your finger-ends. Sure, I have often admired you for your extraordinary comprehension of Latin, but never more than I do now. It will be no trouble in the world for you to trip off a neat little speech, thanking the Senators kindly for the great honour they are doing themselves in electing us into their noble body. But it will not be easy for me," said O'Toole, with a sigh. "How can I get enough Latin through my skull by June not to disgrace myself?" He looked so utterly miserable and distressed that Wogan never felt less inclined to laugh. "I sit up at nights with a lamp, but the most unaccountable thing happens. I may come in here as lively as any cricket, but the moment I take this book in my hands I am overpowered with sleep—"
"Oh, listen to me," cried Wogan. "I have only a fortnight—"
"And I have only till June," sighed O'Toole. "But there! I am listening. I have no doubt, my friend, your business is more important than mine," he said with the simplicity of which not one of his friends could resist the appeal. Wogan could not now.
"My business," he said, "is only more important because you have no need of your Latin grammar at all. There's a special deputy, a learned professor, appointed on these occasions to make a speech for us, and all we have to do is to sit still and nod our heads wisely when he looks towards us."
[pg 337]
"Is that all?" cried O'Toole, jumping up. "Swear it!"
"I do," said Wogan; and "Here's to the devil with the Latin grammar!" exclaimed O'Toole. He flung open his window and hurled the book out across the street with the full force of his prodigious arm. There followed a crash and then the tinkle of falling glass. O'Toole beamed contentedly and shut the window.
"Now what will I do for you in return for this?" he asked.
"Keep a watch on the little house and the garden. I will tell you why when I return. Observe who goes in to visit the Princess, but hinder no one. Only remember who they are and let me know." And Wogan got back to his lodging and mounted his black horse. He could trust O'Toole to play watchdog in his absence. If the mysterious visitor who had bestowed upon Clementina with so liberal a hand so much innuendo and such an artful combination of truth and falsity, were to come again to the little house to confirm the slanders, Wogan in the end would not fail to discover the visitor's identity.
He dismissed the matter from his mind and rode out from Bologna. Four days afterwards he presented himself at the door of the Caprara Palace.
[pg 338]
Maria Vittoria received the name of her visitor with a profound astonishment. Then she stamped her foot and said violently, "Send him away! I hate him." But curiosity got the better of her hate. She felt a strong desire to see the meddlesome man who had thrust himself between her and her lover; and before her woman had got so far as the door, she said, "Let him up to me!" She was again surprised when Wogan was admitted, for she expected a stout and burly soldier, stupid and confident, of the type which blunders into success through sheer ignorance of the probabilities of defeat. Mr. Wogan, for his part, saw the glowing original of the picture at Bologna, but armed at all points with hostility.
"Your business," said she, curtly. Wogan no less curtly replied that he had a wish to escort Mlle. de Caprara to Bologna. He spoke as though he was suggesting a walk on the Campagna.
"And why should I travel to Bologna?" she asked. Wogan explained. The explanation required delicacy, but he put it in as few words as might be. There were slanderers at work. Her Highness the Princess Clementina was in great distress; a word from Mlle. de Caprara would make all clear.
[pg 339]
"Why should I trouble because the Princess Clementina has a crumpled rose-leaf in her bed? I will not go," said Mlle. de Caprara.
"Yet her Highness may justly ask why the King lingers in Spain." Wogan saw a look, a smile of triumph, brighten for an instant on the angry face.
"It is no doubt a humiliation to the Princess Clementina," said Maria Vittoria, with a great deal of satisfaction. "But she must learn to bear humiliation like other women."
"But she will reject the marriage," urged Wogan.
"The fool!" cried Maria Vittoria, and she laughed almost gaily. "I will not budge an inch to persuade her to it. Let her fancy what she will and weep over it! I hate her; therefore she is out of my thought."
Wogan was not blind to the inspiriting effect of his argument upon Maria Vittoria. He had, however, foreseen it, and he continued imperturbably,—
"No doubt you think me something of a fool, too, to advance so unlikely a plea. But if her Highness rejects the marriage, who suffers? Her Highness's name is already widely praised for her endurance, her constancy. If, after all, at the last moment she scornfully rejects that for which she has so stoutly ventured, whose name, whose cause, will suffer most? It will be one more misfortune, one more disaster, to add to the crushing weight under which the King labours. There will be ignominy; who will be dwarfed by it? There will be laughter; whom will it souse? There will be[pg 340]scandal; who will be splashed by it? The Princess or the King?"
Maria Vittoria stood with her brows drawn together in a frown. "I will not go," she said after a pause. "Never was there so presumptuous a request. No, I will not."
Wogan made his bow and retired. But he was at the Caprara Palace again in the morning, and again he was admitted. He noticed without regret that Maria Vittoria bore the traces of a restless night.
"What should I say if I went with you?" she asked.
"You would say why the King lingers in Spain."
Maria Vittoria gave a startled look at Wogan.
"Do you know why?"
"You told me yesterday."
"Not in words."
"There are other ways of speech."
That one smile of triumph had assured Wogan that the King's delay was her doing and a condition of their parting.
"How will my story, though I told it, help?" asked Mlle. de Caprara. Wogan had no doubts upon that score. The story of the Chevalier and Maria Vittoria had a strong parallel in Clementina's own history. Circumstance and duty held them apart, as it held apart Clementina and Wogan himself. In hearing Maria Vittoria's story, Clementina would hear her own; she must be moved to sympathy with it; she would regard with her own[pg 341]generous eyes those who played unhappy parts in its development; she could have no word of censure, no opportunity for scorn.
"Tell the story," said Wogan. "I will warrant the result."
"No, I will not go," said she; and again Wogan left the house. And again he came the next morning.
"Why should I go?" said Maria Vittoria, rebelliously. "Say what you have said to me to her! Speak to her of the ignominy which will befall the King! Tell her how his cause will totter! Why talk of this to me? If she loves the King, your words will persuade her. For on my life they have nearly persuaded me."
"If she loves the King!" said Wogan, quietly, and Maria Vittoria stared at him. There was something she had not conjectured before.
"Oh, she does not love him!" she said in wonderment. Her wonderment swiftly changed to contempt. "The fool! Let her go on her knees and pray for a modest heart. There's my message to her. Who is she that she should not love him?" But it nevertheless altered a trifle pleasurably Maria Vittoria's view of the position. It was pain to her to contemplate the Chevalier's marriage, a deep, gnawing, rancorous pain, but the pain was less, once she could believe he was to marry a woman who did not love him. She despised the woman for her stupidity; none the less, that was the wife she would choose, if she must needs choose another than herself. "I have a mind to see this fool-woman of[pg 342]yours," she said doubtfully. "Why does she not love the King?"
Wogan could have answered that she had never seen him. He thought silence, however, was the more expressive. The silence led Maria Vittoria to conjecture.
"Is there another picture at her heart?" she asked, and again Wogan was silent. "Whose, then? You will not tell me."
It might have been something in Wogan's attitude or face which revealed the truth to her; it might have been her recollection of what the King had said concerning Wogan's enthusiasm; it might have been merely her woman's instinct. But she started and took a step towards Wogan. Her eyes certainly softened. "I will go with you to Bologna," she said; and that afternoon with the smallest equipment she started from Rome. Wogan had ridden alone from Bologna to Rome in four days; he had spent three days in Rome; he now took six days to return in company with Mlle. de Caprara and her few servants. He thus arrived in Bologna on the eve of that day when he was to act as the King's proxy in the marriage.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when the tiny cavalcade clattered through the Porta Castiglione. Wogan led the way to the Pilgrim Inn, where he left Maria Vittoria, saying that he would return at nightfall. He then went on foot to O'Toole's lodging. O'Toole, however, had no news for him.
[pg 343]
"There has been no mysterious visitor," said he.
"There will be one to-night," answered Wogan. "I shall need you."
"I am ready," said O'Toole.
The two friends walked back to the Pilgrim Inn. They were joined by Maria Vittoria, and they then proceeded to the little house among the trees. Outside the door in the garden wall Wogan posted O'Toole.
"Let no one pass," said he, "till we return."
He knocked on the door, and after a little delay—for the night had fallen, and there was no longer a porter at the gate—a little hatch was opened, and a servant inquired his business.
"I come with a message of the utmost importance," said Wogan. "I beg you to inform her Highness that the Chevalier Wogan prays for two words with her."
The hatch was closed, and the servant's footsteps were heard to retreat. Wogan's anxieties had been increasing with every mile of that homeward journey. On his ride to Rome he had been sensible of but one obstacle,—the difficulty of persuading the real Vittoria to return with him. But once that had been removed, others sprang to view, and each hour enlarged them. There was but this one night, this one interview! Upon the upshot of it depended whether a woman, destined by nature for a queen, should set her foot upon the throne-steps, whether a cause should suffer its worst of many eclipses, whether Europe should laugh or applaud. These[pg 344]five minutes while he waited outside the door threw him into a fever. "You will be friendly," he implored Mlle. de Caprara. "Oh, you cannot but be! She must marry the King. I plead for him, not the least bit in the world for her. For his sake she must complete the work she has begun. She is not obstinate; she has her pride as a woman should. You will tell her just the truth,—of the King's loyalty and yours. Hearts cannot be commanded. Alas, mademoiselle, it is a hard world at the end of it. It is mortised with the blood of broken hearts. But duty, mademoiselle, duty, a consciousness of rectitude,—these are very noble qualities. It will be a high consolation, mademoiselle, one of these days, when the King sits upon his throne in England, to think that your self-sacrifice had set him there." And Mr. Wogan hopped like a bear on hot bricks, twittering irreproachable sentiments until the garden door was opened.
Beyond the door stretched a level space of grass intersected by a gravel path. Along this path the servant led Wogan and his companion into the house. There were lights in the windows on the upper floor, and a small lamp illuminated the hall. But the lower rooms were dark. The servant mounted the stairs, and opening the door of a little library, announced the Chevalier Wogan. Wogan led his companion in by the hand.
"Your Highness," said he, "I have the honour to present to you the Princess Maria Vittoria Caprara." He left the two women standing opposite[pg 345]to and measuring each other silently; he closed the door and went down stairs into the hall. A door in the hall opened on to a small parlour, with windows giving on to the garden. There once before Lady Featherstone and Harry Whittington had spoken of Wogan's love for the Princess Clementina and speculated upon its consequences. Now Wogan sat there alone in the dark, listening to the women's voices overhead. He had come to the end of his efforts and could only wait. At all events, the women were talking, that was something; if he could only hear them weeping! The sound of tears would have been very comforting to Wogan at that moment, but he only heard the low voices talking, talking. He assured himself over and over again that this meeting could not fail of its due result. That Maria Vittoria had exacted some promise which held his King in Spain he was now aware. She would say what that promise was, the condition of their parting. She had come prepared to say it—and the thread of Wogan's reasonings was abruptly cut. It seemed to him that he heard something more than the night breeze through the trees,—a sound of feet upon the gravel path, a whispering of voices.
The windows were closed, but not shuttered. Wogan pressed his eyes to the pane and looked out. The night was dark, and the sky overclouded. But he had been sitting for some minutes in the darkness, and his eyes were able to prove that his ears had not deceived him. For he saw the dim figures[pg 346]of two men standing on the lawn before the window. They appeared to be looking at the lighted windows on the upper floor, then one of them waved to his companion to stand still, and himself walked towards the door. Wogan noticed that he made no attempt at secrecy; he walked with a firm tread, careless whether he set his foot on gravel or on grass. As this man approached the door, Wogan slipped into the hall and opened it. But he blocked the doorway, wondering whether these men had climbed the wall or whether O'Toole had deserted his post.
O'Toole had not deserted his post, but he had none the less admitted these two men. For Wogan and Maria Vittoria had barely been ten minutes within the house when O'Toole heard the sound of horses' hoofs in the entrance of the alley. They stopped just within the entrance. O'Toole distinguished three horses, he saw the three riders dismount; and while one of the three held the horses, the other two walked on foot towards the postern-door.
O'Toole eased his sword in its scabbard.
"The little fellows thought to catch Charles Wogan napping," he said to himself with a smile, and he let them come quite close to him. He was standing motionless in the embrasure of the door, nor did he move when the two men stopped and whispered together, nor when they advanced again, one behind the other. But he remarked that they held their cloaks to their faces. At last they came to a halt just in front of O'Toole. The leader produced a key.
[pg 347]
"You stand in my way, my friend," said he, pleasantly, and he pushed by O'Toole to the lock of the door. O'Toole put out a hand, caught him by the shoulder, and sent him spinning into the road. The man came back, however, and though out of breath, spoke no less pleasantly than before.
"I wish to enter," said he. "I have important business."
O'Toole bowed with the utmost dignity.
"Romanus civis sum," said he. "Sumsenator too.Dic Latinam linguam, amicus meus."
O'Toole drew a breath; he could not but feel that he had acquitted himself with credit. He half began to regret that there was to be a learned professor to act as proxy on that famous day at the Capitol. His antagonist drew back a little and spoke no longer pleasantly.
"Here's tomfoolery that would be as seasonable at a funeral," said he, and he advanced again, still hiding his face. "Sir, you are blocking my way. I have authority to pass through that door in the wall."
"Murus?" asked O'Toole. He shook his head in refusal.
"And by what right do you refuse me?"
O'Toole had an inspiration. He swept his arm proudly round and gave the reason of his refusal.
"Balbus aedificabat murum," said he; and a voice that made O'Toole start cried, "Enough of this! Stand aside, whoever you may be."
It was the second of the two men who spoke, and[pg 348]he dropped the cloak from his face. "The King!" exclaimed O'Toole, and he stood aside. The two men passed into the garden, and Wogan saw them from the window.
Just as O'Toole had blocked the King's entrance into the garden, so did Wogan bar his way into the house.
"Who, in Heaven's name, are you?" cried the Chevalier.
"Nay, there's a question for me to ask," said Wogan.
"Wogan!" cried the Chevalier, and "The King!" cried Wogan in one breath.
Wogan fell back; the Chevalier pushed into the hall and turned.
"So it is true. I could not, did not, believe it. I came from Spain to prove it false. I find it true," he said in a low voice. "You whom I so trusted! God help me, where shall I look for honour?"
"Here, your Majesty," answered Wogan, without an instant's hesitation,—"here, in this hall. There, in the rooms above."
He had seized the truth in the same second when he recognised his King, and the King's first words had left him in no doubt. He knew now why he had never found Harry Whittington in any corner of Bologna. Harry Whittington had been riding to Spain.
The Chevalier laughed harshly.
"Sir, I suspect honour which needs such barriers to protect it. You are here, in this house, at this[pg 349]hour, with a sentinel to forbid intrusion at the garden door. Explain me this honourably."
"I had the honour to escort a visitor to her Highness, and I wait until the visit is at an end."
"What? Can you not better that excuse?" said the Chevalier. "A visitor! We will make acquaintance, Mr. Wogan, with your visitor, unless you have another sentinel to bar my way;" and he put his foot upon the step of the stairs.
"I beg your Majesty to pause," said Wogan, firmly. "Your thoughts wrong me, and not only me."
"Prove me that!"
"I say boldly, 'Here is a servant who loves his Queen!' What then?"
"This! That you should say, 'Here is a man who loves a woman,—loves her so well he gives his friends the slip, and with the woman comes alone to Peri.'"
"Ah. To Peri! So I thought," began Wogan, and the Chevalier whispered,—
"Silence! You raise your voice too high. You no doubt are anxious in your great respect that there should be some intimation of my coming. But I dispense with ceremony. I will meet this fine visitor of yours at once;" and he ran lightly up the stairs.
Then Wogan did a bold thing. He followed, he sprang past the King, he turned at the stair-top and barred the way.
"Sir, I beg you to listen to me," he said quietly.
[pg 350]
"Beg!" said the Chevalier, leaning back against the wall with his dark eyes blazing from a white face; "you insist."
"Your Majesty will yet thank me for my insistence." He drew a pocket-book out of his coat. "At Peri in Italy we were attacked by five soldiers sent over the border by the Governor of Trent. Who guided those five soldiers? Your Majesty's confidant and friend, who is now, I thank God, waiting in the garden. Here is the written confession of the leader of the five. I pray your Majesty to read it."
Wogan held out the paper. The Chevalier hesitated and took it. Then he read it once and glanced at it again. He passed his hand over his forehead.
"Whom shall I trust?" said he, in a voice of weariness.
"What honest errand was taking Whittington to Peri?" asked Wogan, and again the Chevalier read a piece here and there of the confession. Wogan pressed his advantage. "Whittington is not the only one of Walpole's men who has hoodwinked us the while he filled his pockets. There are others, one, at all events, who did not need to travel to Spain for an ear to poison;" and he leaned forward towards the Chevalier.
"What do you mean?" asked the Chevalier, in a startled voice.
"Why, sir, that the same sort of venomous story breathed to you in Spain has been spoken here in Bologna, only with altered names. I told your Majesty I brought a visitor to this house to-night.[pg 351]I did; there was no need I should, since the marriage is fixed for to-morrow. I brought her all the way from Rome."
"From Rome?" exclaimed the Chevalier.
"Yes;" and Wogan flung open the door of the library, and drawing himself up announced in his loudest voice, "The King!"
A loud cry came through the opening. It was not Clementina's voice which uttered it. The Chevalier recognised the cry. He stood for a moment or two looking at Wogan. Then he stepped over the threshold, and Wogan closed the door behind him. But as he closed it he heard Maria Vittoria speak. She said,—
"Your Majesty, a long while ago, when you bade me farewell, I demanded of you a promise, which I have but this moment explained to the Princess, who now deigns to call me friend. Your Majesty has broken the promise. I had no right to demand it. I am very glad."
Wogan went downstairs. He could leave the three of them shut up in that room to come by a fitting understanding. Besides, there was other work for him below,—work of a simple kind, to which he had now for some weeks looked forward. He crept down the stairs very stealthily. The hall door was still open. He could see dimly the figure of a man standing on the grass.
When the Chevalier came down into the garden an hour afterwards, a man was still standing on the[pg 352]grass. The man advanced to him. "Who is it?" asked the Chevalier, drawing back. The voice which answered him was Wogan's.
"And Whittington?"
"He has gone," replied Wogan.
"You have sent him away?"
"I took so much upon myself."
The Chevalier held out his hand to Wogan. "I have good reason to thank you," said he, and before he could say another word, a door shut above, and Maria Vittoria came down the stairs towards them. O'Toole was still standing sentry at the postern-door, and the three men escorted the Princess Caprara to the Pilgrim Inn. She had spoken no word during the walk, but as she turned in the doorway of the inn, the light struck upon her face and showed that her eyes glistened. To the Chevalier she said, "I wish you, my lord, all happiness, and the boon of a great love. With all my heart I wish it;" and as he bowed over her hand, she looked across his shoulder to Wogan.
"I will bid you farewell to-morrow," she said with a smile, and the Chevalier explained her saying afterwards as they accompanied him to his lodging.
"Mlle. de Caprara will honour us with her presence to-morrow. You will still act as my proxy, Wogan. I am not yet returned from Spain. I wish no questions or talk about this evening's doings. Your friend will remember that?"
"My friend, sir," said Wogan, "who was with[pg 353]me at Innspruck, is Captain Lucius O'Toole of Dillon's regiment."
"Etsenator too," said the Chevalier, with a laugh; and he added a friendly word or two which sent O'Toole back to his lodging in a high pleasure. Wogan walked thither with him and held out his hand at the door.
"But you will come up with me," said O'Toole. "We will drink a glass together, for God knows when we speak together again. I go back to Schlestadt to-morrow."
"Ah, you go back," said Wogan; and he came in at the door and mounted the stairs. At the first landing he stopped.
"Let me rouse Gaydon."
"Gaydon went three days ago."
"Ah! And Misset is with his wife. Here are we all once more scattered, and, as you say, God knows when we shall speak together again;" and he went on to the upper storey.
O'Toole remarked that he dragged in his walk and that his voice had a strange, sad note of melancholy.
"My friend," said he, "you have the black fit upon you; you are plainly discouraged. Yet to-night sees the labour of many months brought to its due close;" and as he lit the candles on his chimney, he was quite amazed by the white, tired face which the light showed to him. Wogan, indeed, harassed by misgivings, and worn with many vigils, presented a sufficiently woe-begone picture. The[pg 354]effect was heightened by the disorder of his clothes, which were all daubed with clay in a manner quite surprising to O'Toole, who knew the ground to be dry underfoot.
"True," answered Wogan, "the work ends to-night. Months ago I rode down this street in the early morning, and with what high hopes! The work ends to-night, and may God forgive me for a meddlesome fellow. Cup and ball's a fine game, but it is ill playing it with women's hearts;" and he broke off suddenly. "I'll give you a toast, Lucius! Here's to the Princess Clementina!" and draining his glass he stood for a while, lost in the recollecting of that flight from Innspruck; he was far away from Bologna thundering down the Brenner through the night, with the sparks striking from the wheels of the berlin, and all about him a glimmering, shapeless waste of snow.
"To the Princess—no, to the Queen she was born to be," cried O'Toole, and Wogan sprang at him.
"You saw that," he exclaimed, his eyes lighting, his face transfigured in the intensity of this moment's relief. "Aye,—to love a nation,—that is her high destiny. For others, a husband, a man; for her, a nation. And you saw it! It is evident, to be sure. Yet this or that thing she did, this or that word she spoke, assured you, eh? Tell me what proved to you here was no mere woman, but a queen!"
The morning had dawned before Wogan had had his fill. O'Toole was very well content to see his friend's face once more quivering like a boy's with[pg 355]pleasure, to hear him laugh, to watch the despondency vanish from his aspect. "There's another piece of good news," he said at the end, "which I had almost forgotten to tell you. Jenny and the Princess's mother are happily set free. It seems Jenny swore from daybreak to daybreak, and the Pope used his kindliest offices, and for those two reasons the Emperor was glad to let them go. But there's a question I would like to ask you. One little matter puzzles me."
"Ask your question," said Wogan.
"To-night through that door in the garden wall which I guarded, there went in yourself and a lady,—the King and a companion he had with him,—four people. Out of that door there came yourself, the lady, and the King,—three people."
"Ah," said Wogan, as he stood up with a strange smile upon his lips, "I have a deal of clay upon my clothes."
O'Toole nodded his head wisely once or twice. "I am answered," he said. "Is it indeed so?" He understood, however, nothing except that the room had suddenly grown cold.
[pg 356]
An account remains of the marriage ceremony, which took place the next morning in Cardinal Origo's house. It was of the simplest kind and was witnessed by few. Murray, Misset and his wife, and Maria Vittoria de Caprara made the public part of the company; Wogan stood for the King; and the Marquis of Monti Boulorois for James Sobieski, the bride's father. Bride and bridegroom played their parts bravely and well, one must believe, for the chronicler speaks of their grace and modesty of bearing. Clementina rose at five in the morning, dressed in a robe of white, tied a white ribbon about her hair, and for her only ornament fixed a white collar of pearls about her neck. In this garb she went at once to the church of San Domenico, where she made her confession, and from the church to the Cardinal's Palace. There the Cardinal, with one Maas, an English priest from Rome, at his elbow, was already waiting for her. Mr. Wogan thereupon read the procuration, for which he had ridden to Rome in haste so many months before, and pronounced the consent of the King his master to its terms. Origo asked the Princess whether she likewise consented, and the manner in which she spoke her one word, "Yes," seems to have stirred the historian to pæans. It[pg 357]seems that all the virtues launched that one little word, and were clearly expressed in it. The graces, too, for once in a way went hand in hand with the virtues. Never was a "Yes" so sweetly spoken since the earth rose out of the sea. In a word, there was no ruffle of the great passion which these two, man and woman, had trodden beneath their feet. She did not hint of Iphigenia; he borrowed no plumes from Don Quixote. Nor need one fancy that their contentment was all counterfeit. They were neither of them grumblers, and "fate" and "destiny" were words seldom upon their lips.
One incident, indeed, is related which the chronicler thought to be curious, though he did not comprehend it. The Princess Clementina brought from her confessional box a wisp of straw which clung to her dress at the knee. Until Wogan had placed the King's ring upon her finger, she did not apparently remark it; but no sooner had that office been performed than she stooped, and with a friendly smile at her makeshift bridegroom, she plucked it from her skirt and let it fall beneath her foot.
And that was all. No words passed between them after the ceremony, for her Royal Highness went straight back to the little house in the garden, and that same forenoon set out for Rome.
She was not the only witness of the ceremony to take that road that day. For some three hours later, to be precise, at half-past two, Maria Vittoria stepped into her coach before the Pilgrim Inn. Wogan held the carriage door open for her. He was[pg 358]still in the bravery of his wedding clothes, and Maria Vittoria looked him over whimsically from the top of his peruke to his shoe-buckles.
"I came to see a fool-woman," said she, "and I saw a fool-man. Well, well!" and she suddenly lowered her voice to a passionate whisper. "Why, oh, why did you not take your fortunes in your hands at Peri?"
Wogan leaned forward to her. "Do you know so much?"
She answered him quickly. "I will never forgive you. Yes, I know." She forced her lips into a smile. "I suppose you are content. You have your black horse."
"You know of the horse, too," said Wogan, colouring to the edge of his peruke. "You know I have no further use for it."
"Say that again, and I will beg it of you."
"Nay, it is yours, then. I will send him after you to Rome."
"Will you?" said Maria Vittoria. "Why, then, I accept. There's my hand;" and she thrust it through the window to him. "If ever you come to Rome, the Caprara Palace stands where it did at your last visit. I do not say you will be welcome. No, I do not forgive you, but you may come. Having your horse, I could hardly bar the door against you. So you may come."
Wogan raised her hand to his lips.
"Aye," said she, with a touch of bitterness, "kiss my hand. You have had your way. Here are two[pg 359]people crossmated, and two others not mated at all. You have made four people entirely unhappy, and a kiss on the glove sets all right."
"Nay, not four," protested Wogan.
"Your manners," she continued remorselessly, ticking off the names upon her fingers, "will hinder you from telling me to my face the King is happy. And the Princess?"
"She was born to be a queen," replied Wogan, stubbornly. "Happiness, mademoiselle! It does not come by the striving after it. That's the royal road to miss it. You may build up your house of happiness with all your care through years, and you will find you have only built it up to draw down the blinds and hang out the hatchment above the door, for the tenant to inhabit it is dead."
Maria Vittoria listened very seriously till he came to the end. Then she made a pouting grimace. "That is very fine, moral, and poetical. Your Princess was born to be a queen. But what if her throne is set up only in your city of dreams? Well, it is some consolation to know that you are one of the four."
"Nay, I will make a shift not to plague myself upon the way the world treats you."
"Ah, but because it treats you well," cried she. "There will be work for you, hurryings to and fro, the opportunities of excelling, nights in the saddle, and perhaps again the quick red life of battlefields. It is well with you, but what of me, Mr. Wogan? What of me?" and she leaned back in her carriage[pg 360]and drove away. Wogan had no answer to that despairing question. He stood with his head bared till the carriage passed round a corner and disappeared, but the voice rang for a long while in his ears. And for a long while the dark eyes abrim with tears, and the tortured face, kept him company at nights. He walked slowly back to his lodging, and mounting a horse rode out of Bologna, and towards the Apennines.
On one of the lower slopes he came upon a villa just beyond a curve of the road, and reined in his horse. The villa nestled on the hillside below him in a terraced garden of oleander and magnolias, very pretty to the eye. Cypress hedges enclosed it; the spring had made it a bower of rose blossoms, and depths of shade out of whose green darkness glowed here and there a red statue like a tutelary god. Wogan dismounted and led his horse down the path to the door. He inquired for Lady Featherstone, and was shown into a room from the windows of which he looked down on Bologna, that city of colonnades. Lady Featherstone, however, had heard the tramp of his horse; she came running up from the garden, and without waiting to hear any particulars of her visitor, burst eagerly into the room.
"Well?" she said, and stopped and swayed upon the threshold. Wogan turned from the window towards her.
"Your Ladyship was wise, I think, to leave Bologna. The little house in the trees there had no such wide prospect as this."
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He spoke rather to give her time than out of any sarcasm. She set a hand against the jamb of the door, and even so barely sustained her trifling weight. Her knees shook, her childlike face grew white as paper, a great terror glittered in her eyes.
"I am not the visitor whom you expect," continued Wogan, "nor do I bring the news which you would wish to hear;" and at that she raised a trembling hand. "I beg you—a moment's silence. Then I will hear you, Mr. Warner." She made a sort of stumbling run and reached a couch. Wogan shut the door and waited. He was glad that she had used the name of Warner. It recalled to him that evening at Ohlau when she had stood behind the curtain with a stiletto in her hand, and the three last days of his perilous ride to Schlestadt. He needed his most vivid recollections to steel his heart against her; for he was beginning to think it was his weary lot to go up and down the world causing pain to women. After a while she said, "Now your news;" and she held her hand lightly to her heart to await the blow.
"The King married this morning the Princess Clementina," said Wogan. Lady Featherstone did not move her hand; she still waited. It was just to hinder this marriage that she had come to Italy, but her failure was at this moment of no account. She heard of it with indifference; it had no meaning to her. She waited. Wogan's mere presence at the villa told her there was more to come. He continued:—
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"Last night Mr. Whittington came with the King to Bologna—you understand, no doubt, why;" and she nodded without moving her eyes from his face. She made no pretence as to the part she had played in the affair. All the world might know it. That was a matter at this moment of complete indifference. She waited.
"The King and Mr. Whittington came at nine of the night to the little house which you once occupied. I was there, but I was not there alone. Can your Ladyship conjecture whom I brought there? Your Ladyship, as I learned last night from Mr. Whittington's own lips, had paid a visit secretly, using a key which you had retained to the house on an excuse that you had left behind jewels of some value. You saw her Highness the Princess. You told her a story of the King and Mlle. de Caprara. I rode to Rome, and when the King came last night Mlle. de Caprara was with the Princess. I had evidence against Mr. Whittington, a confession of one of the soldiers of the Governor of Trent, the leader of a party of five who attacked me at Peri. No doubt you know of that little matter too;" and again Lady Featherstone nodded.
"Thus your double plot—to set the King against the Princess, and the Princess against the King—doubly failed."
"Go on," said Lady Featherstone, moistening her dry lips. Wogan told her how from the little sitting-room on the ground-floor he had seen the King and Whittington cross the lawn; he described[pg 363]his interview with the King, and how he had come quietly down the stairs.
"I went into the garden," he went on, "and touched Whittington on the elbow. I told him just what I have explained to you. I said, 'You are a coward, a liar, a slanderer of women,' and I beat him on the mouth."
Lady Featherstone uttered a cry and drew herself into an extraordinary crouching attitude, with her eyes blazing steadily at him. He thought she meant to spring at him; he looked at that hand upon her heart to see whether it held a weapon hidden in the fold of her bosom.
"Go on," she said; "and he?"
"He answered me in the strangest quiet way imaginable. 'You insulted Lady Featherstone at Ohlau, Mr. Wogan,' said he, 'one evening when she hid behind your curtain. It was a very delicate piece of drollery, no doubt. But I shall be glad to show you another, view of it.' It is strange how that had rankled in his thoughts. I liked him for it,—upon my soul, I did,—though it was the only thing I liked in him."
"Go on," said Lady Featherstone. Mr. Wogan's likes or dislikes were of no more interest to her than the failure of her effort to hinder the marriage.
"We went to the bottom of the garden where there is a little square of lawn hedged in with myrtle-trees. The night was very dark, so we stripped to our shirts. From the waist upwards[pg 364]we were visible to each other as a vague glimmer of white, and thus we fought, foot to foot, among the myrtle-trees. We could not see so much as our swords unless they clashed more than usually hard, and a spark struck from them. We fought by guesswork and feel, and in the end luck served me. I drove my sword through his chest until the hilt rang upon his breast-bone."
Then just a movement from Lady Featherstone as though she drew up her feet beneath her.
"He lived for perhaps five minutes. He was in great distress lest harm should come to you; and since there was no one but his enemy to whom he could speak, why, he spoke to his enemy. I promised him, madam, that with his death the story should be closed, if you left Italy within the week."
"And he?" she interrupted,—"he died there. Well?"
"You know the laurel hedge by the sun-dial? There is an out-house where the gardener keeps his tools. I found a spade there, and beneath that laurel hedge I buried him."
Lady Featherstone rose to her feet. She spoke no word; she uttered no cry; her face was white and terrible. She stood rigid like one paralysed; then she swayed round and fell in a swoon upon the floor. And as she fell, something bright slipped from her hand and dropped at Wogan's feet. He picked it up. It was a stiletto. He stood looking down at the childish figure with a queer compassionate[pg 365]smile upon his face. "She could love," said he; "yes, she could love."
He walked out of the house, led his horse back onto the road and mounted it. The night was gathering; there were purple shadows upon the Apennines. Wogan rode away alone.