“Five days ago I was in prison at Innspruck, perpetually harassed and with no hope of release but in you. Now I am in Bologna, and free. I could not believe that any girl could find such friends except in fairyland. You make the world very sweet and clean to me. I should thank you. See my tears fall! Will you take them for my thanks? I have no words which can tell as much of my thoughts towards you. My little woman I keep with me, but to you gentlemen I would gladly give a token each, so that you may know I will never forget, and so that you too may keep for me a home within your memories.” To Major Gaydon she gave a ring from off her finger, to Captain Misset a chain which she wore about her neck, to O’Toole, “her six feet four,” as she said between laughter and tears, her watch. Each with a word of homage took his leave. Clementina spoke to Wogan last of all, and when the room was empty but for these two.
“To you, my friend,” said she, “I give nothing. There is no need. But I ask for something. I would be in debt to you still deeper than I am. I ask for a handkerchief which I dropped from my shoulders one evening under the stars upon the road to Ala.”
Wogan bowed to her without a word. He drew the handkerchief from his breast slowly.
“It is true,” said he; “I have no right to it;” and he gave it back. But his voice showed that he was hurt.
“You do not understand,” said she, with a great gentleness. “You have every right which the truest loyalty can confer. I ask you for this handkerchief, because I think at times to wear it in memory of a white stone on which I could safely set my foot, for the stone was not straw.”
Wogan could not trust his voice to answer her. He took her hand to lift it to his lips.
“No,” said she; “as at Innspruck, an honest handclasp, if you please.”
Wogan joined his three companions in the road, and they stood together for a little, recounting to one another the incidents of the flight.
“Here’s a great work ended,” said Gaydon at last.
“We shall be historical,” said O’Toole. “It is my one ambition. I want to figure in the history-books and be a great plague and nuisance to children at school. I would sooner be cursed daily by schoolboys than have any number of golden statues in galleries. It means the more solid reputation;” and then he became silent. Gaydon had, besides his joy at the rescue of Clementina, a private satisfaction that matters which were none of his business had had no uncomfortable issue. Misset, too, was thankful for that his wife had come safely to the journey’s end. O’Toole alone had a weight upon his mind; and when Gaydon said, “Well, we may go to bed and sleep without alarms till sundown to-morrow,” he remarked,—
“There’s Jenny. It was on my account she ventured with us.”
“That’s true,” said Wogan; “but we shall put an end to her captivity, now we are safe at Bologna. I have friends here who can serve me so far, I have no doubt.”
O’Toole was willing to leave the matter in Wogan’s hands. If Wogan once pledged himself to Jenny’s release, why, Jenny was released; and he went to bed now with a quite equable mind. Wogan hurried off to the palace of the Cardinal Origo, whom he found sitting at his supper. The Cardinal welcomed Wogan back very warmly.
“I trust, your Eminence,” said Wogan, “that Farini is now at Bologna.”
“You come in the nick of time,” replied the Cardinal. “This is his last week. There is a great demand for the seats; but you will see to it, Mr. Wogan, that the box is in the first tier.”
“There was to be a dinner, too, if I recollect aright. I have not dined for days. Your Eminence, I shall be extraordinarily hungry.”
“You will order what you will, Mr. Wogan. I am a man of a small appetite and have no preferences.”
“Your Eminence’s cook will be the better judge of what is seasonable. Your Eminence will be the more likely to secure the box in the first tier. Shall we fix a day? To-morrow, if it please you. To-morrow I shall have the honour, then, to be your Eminence’s guest.”
The Cardinal started up from the table and stared at his visitor.
“You are jesting,” said he.
“So little,” replied Wogan, “that her Highness, the Princess Clementina, is now at the Pilgrim Inn at Bologna.”
“In Bologna!” cried the Cardinal; and he stood frowning in a great perturbation of spirit. “This is great news,” he said, but in a doubtful voice which Wogan did not understand. “This is great news, to be sure;” and he took a turn or two across the room.
“Not wholly pleasant news, one might almost think,” said Wogan, in some perplexity.
“Never was better news,” exclaimed the Cardinal, hastily,—a trifle too hastily, it seemed to Wogan. “But it surprises one. Even the King did not expect this most desirable issue. For the King’s in Spain. It is that which troubles me. Her Highness comes to Bologna, and the King’s in Spain.”
“Yes,” said Wogan, with a wary eye upon his Eminence. “Why is the King in Spain?”
“There is pressing business in Spain,—an expedition from Cadiz. The King’s presence there was urged most earnestly. He had no hope you would succeed. I myself have some share in the blame. I did not hide from you my thought, Mr. Wogan.”
Wogan was not all reassured. He could not but remember that the excuse for the King’s absence which the Cardinal now made to him was precisely that which he himself had invented to appease Clementina at Innspruck. It was the simple, natural excuse which came first of all to the tongue’s tip, but—but it did not satisfy. There was, besides, too much flurry and agitation in the Cardinal’s manner. Even now that he was taking snuff, he spilled the most of it from the trembling of his fingers. Moreover, he must give reason upon reason for his perturbation the while he let his supper get cold.
“Her Highness I cannot but feel will have reason to think slightly of our welcome. A young girl, she will expect, and rightly, something more of ceremony as her due.”
“Your Eminence does not know her,” interrupted Wogan, with some sharpness. His Eminence was adroit enough to seize the occasion of ending a conversation which was growing with every minute more embarrassing.
“I shall make haste to repair my defect,” said he. “I beg you to present my duty to her Highness and to request her to receive me to-morrow at ten. By that, I will hope to have discovered a lodging more suitable to her dignity.”
Wogan made his prayer for the Pope’s intervention on Jenny’s behalf and then returned to the Pilgrim Inn, dashed and fallen in spirit. He had thought that their troubles were at an end, but here was a new difficulty at which in truth he rather feared to guess. The Chevalier’s departure to Spain had been a puzzle to him before; he remembered now that the Chevalier had agreed with reluctance to his enterprise, and had never been more than lukewarm in its support. That reluctance, that lukewarmness, he had attributed to a natural habit of discouragement; but the evasiveness of Cardinal Origo seemed to propose a different explanation. Wogan would not guess at it.
“The King is to marry the Princess,” said he, fiercely. “I brought her out of Innspruck to Bologna. The King must marry the Princess;” and, quite unawares, he set off running towards the inn. As he drew near to it, he heard a confused noise of shouting. He quickened his pace, and rushing out of the mouth of a side street into the square where the inn stood, came suddenly to a stop. The square was filled with a great mob of people, and in face of the inn the crowd was so thick Wogan could have walked upon the shoulders. Many of the people carried blazing torches, which they waved in the air, dropping the burning resin upon their companions; others threw their hats skywards; here were boys beating drums, and grown men blowing upon toy trumpets; and all were shouting and cheering with a deafening enthusiasm. The news of the Princess’s arrival had spread like wildfire through the town. Wogan’s spirits rose at a bound. Here was a welcome very different from the Cardinal’s. Wogan rejoiced in the good sense of the citizens of Bologna who could appreciate the great qualities of his chosen woman. Their enthusiasm did them credit; he could have embraced them one by one.
He strove to push his way towards the door, but he would hardly have pierced through that throng had not a man by the light of a torch recognised him and bawled out his name. He was lifted shoulder high in a second; he was passed from hand to hand over the heads of the people; he was set tenderly down in the very doorway of the Pilgrim Inn, and he found Clementina at the window of an unlighted room gazing unperceived at the throng.
“Here’s a true welcome, madam,” said he, cordially, with his thoughts away upon that bluff of hillside where the acclamations had seemed so distant and unreal. It is possible that they seemed of small account to Clementina now, for though they rang in ears and were visible to her eyes, she sat quite unmoved by them.
“This is one tiny square in a little town,” he continued. “But its shouts will ring across Europe;” and she turned her head to him and said quietly,—
“The King is still in Spain, is he not?”
Wogan’s enthusiasm was quenched in alarm. Her voice had rung, for all its quietude, with pride. What if she guessed what he for one would not let his wildest fancy dwell upon? Wogan repeated to himself the resolve which he had made, though with an alteration. “The King must marry the Princess,” he had said; now he said, “The Princess must marry the King.”
He began hurriedly to assure her that the King had doubted his capacity to bring the enterprise to a favourable issue, but that now he would without doubt return. Cardinal Origo would tell her more upon that head if she would be good enough to receive him at ten in the morning; and while Wogan was yet speaking, a torch waved, and amongst that close-pressed throng of faces below him in the street, one sprang to his view with a remarkable distinctness, a face most menacing and vindictive. It was the face of Harry Whittington. Just for a second it shone out, angles and lines so clearly revealed that it was as though the crowd had vanished, and that one contorted face glared alone at the windows in a flare of hell-fire.
Clementina saw the face too, for she drew back instinctively within the curtains of the window.
“The man at Peri,” said she, in a whisper.
“Your Highness will pardon me,” exclaimed Wogan, and he made a movement towards the door. Then he stopped, hesitated for a second, and came back. He had a question to put, as difficult perhaps as ever lips had to frame.
“At Peri,” he said in a stumbling voice, “I waked from a dream and saw that man, bird-like and cunning, watching over the rim of the stairs. I was dreaming that a star out of heaven stooped towards me, that a woman’s face shone out of the star’s bright heart, that her lips deigned to bend downwards to my earth. And I wonder, I wonder whether those cunning eyes had cunning enough to interpret my dream.”
And Clementina answered him simply,—
“I think it very likely that they had so much skill;” and Wogan ran down the stairs into the street. He forced his way through the crowd to the point where Whittington’s face had shown, but his hesitation, his question, had consumed time. Whittington had vanished. Nor did he appear again for some while in Bologna. Wogan searched for him high and low. Here was another difficulty added to the reluctance of his King, the pride of his Queen. Whittington had a piece of dangerous knowledge, and could not be found. Wogan said nothing openly of the man’s treachery, though he kept very safely the paper in which that treachery was confessed. But he did not cease from his search. He was still engaged upon it when he received the summons from Cardinal Origo. He hurried to the palace, wondering what new thing had befallen, and was at once admitted to the Cardinal. It was no bad thing, at all events, as Wogan could judge from the Cardinal’s smiling face.
“Mr. Wogan,” said he, “our Holy Father the Pope wishes to testify his approbation of your remarkable enterprise on behalf of a princess who is his god-daughter. He bids me hand you, therefore, your patent of Roman Senator, and request you to present yourself at the Capitol in Rome on June 15, when you will be installed with all the ancient ceremonies.”
Wogan thanked his Eminence dutifully, but laid the patent on the table.
“You hardly know what you refuse,” said his Eminence. “The Holy Father has no greater honour to bestow, and, believe me, he bestows it charily.”
“Nay, your Eminence,” said Wogan, “I do not undervalue so high a distinction. But I had three friends with me who shared every danger. I cannot accept an honour which they do not share; for indeed they risked more than I did. For they hold service under the King of France.”
The Cardinal was pleased to compliment Wogan upon his loyalty to his friends.
“They shall not be the losers,” said he. “I think I may promise indeed that each will have a step in rank, and I do not doubt that when the Holy Father hears what you have said to me, I shall have three other patents like to this;” and he locked Wogan’s away in a drawer.
“And what of the King in Spain?” asked Wogan.
“I sent a messenger thither on the night of your coming,” said the Cardinal; “but it is a long journey into Spain. We must wait.”
To Wogan it seemed the waiting would never end. The Cardinal had found a little house set apart from the street with a great garden of lawns and cedar-trees and laurels; and in that garden now fresh with spring flowers and made private by high walls, the Princess passed her days. Wogan saw her but seldom during this time, but each occasion sent him back to his lodging in a fever of anxiety. She had grown silent, and her silence alarmed him. She had lost the sparkling buoyancy of her spirits. Mrs. Misset, who attended her, told him that she would sit for long whiles with a red spot burning in each cheek. Wogan feared that her pride was chafing her gentleness, that she guessed there was reluctance in the King’s delay. “But she must marry the King,” he still persevered in declaring. Her hardships, her imprisonment, her perilous escape, the snows of Innspruck, —these were known now; and if at the last the end for which they had been endured—Wogan broke off from his reflections to hear the world laughing. The world would not think; it would laugh. “For her own sake she must marry,” he cried, as he paced about his rooms. “For ours, too, for a country’s sake;” and he looked northwards towards England. But “for her own sake” was the reason uppermost in his thoughts.
But the days passed. The three promised patents came from Rome, and Cardinal Origo unlocked the drawer and joined Wogan’s to them. He presented all four at the same time.
“The patents carry the titles of ‘Excellency,’” said he.
O’Toole beamed with delight.
“Sure,” said he, “I will have a toga with the arms of the O’Tooles embroidered on the back, to appear in at the Capitol. It is on June 15, your Eminence. Upon my soul, I have not much time;” and he grew thoughtful.
“A toga will hardly take a month, even with the embroidery, which I do not greatly recommend,” said the Cardinal, drily.
“I was not at the moment thinking of the toga,” said O’Toole, gloomily.
“And what of the King in Spain?” asked Wogan.
“We must wait, my friend,” said the Cardinal.
In a week there was brought to Wogan one morning a letter in the King’s hand. He fingered it for a little, not daring to break the seal. When he did break it, he read a great many compliments upon his success, and after the compliments a statement that the marriage should take place at Montefiascone as soon as the King could depart from Spain, and after that statement, a declaration that since her Highness’s position was not meanwhile one that suited either her dignity or the love the King had for her, a marriage by proxy should take place at Bologna. The Chevalier added that he had written to Cardinal Origo to make the necessary arrangements for the ceremony, and he appointed herewith Mr. Charles Wogan to act as his proxy, in recognition of his great services.
Wogan felt a natural distaste for the part he was to take in the ceremony. To stand up before the Cardinal and take Clementina’s hand in his, and speak another’s marriage vows and receive hers as another’s deputy,—there was a certain mockery in the situation for which he had no liking. The memory of the cabin on the mountain-side was something too near. But, at all events, the King was to marry the Princess, and Wogan’s distaste was swallowed up in a great relief. There would be no laughter rippling over Europe like the wind over a field of corn. He stood by his window in the spring sunshine with a great contentment of spirit, and then there came a loud rapping on his door.
He caught his breath; he grew white with a sudden fear; you would have thought it was his heart that was knocked upon. For there was another side to the business. The King would marry the Princess; but how would the Princess take this marriage by proxy and the King’s continued absence? She had her pride, as he knew well. The knocking was repeated. Wogan in a voice of suspense bade his visitor enter. The visitor was one of her Highness’s new servants. “Without a doubt,” thought Wogan, “she has received a letter by the same messenger who brought me mine.”
The servant handed him a note from the Princess, begging him to attend on her at once. “She must marry the King,” said Wogan to himself. He took his hat and cane, and followed the servant into the street.