“Where will I find Captain O’Toole?” asked Wogan.
“You will find his Excellency,” said the servant, with a reproachful emphasis upon the title, “at the little bookseller’s in the Piazza.”
Wogan sprang down the stairs and hurried to the Piazza, wondering what in the world O’Toole was doing at a bookseller’s. O’Toole was bending over the counter, which was spread with open books, and Wogan hailed him from the doorway. O’Toole turned and blushed a deep crimson. He came to the door as if to prevent Wogan’s entrance into the shop. Wogan, however, had but one thought in his head.
“Where shall I find Gaydon?” he asked.
“He went towards the Via San Vitale,” replied O’Toole.
Wogan set off again, and in an hour came upon Gaydon. He had lost an hour of his fortnight; with the half-hour during which he had sauntered in the garden, an hour and a half.
“You went to Rome in the spring,” said he. “There you saw the King. Did you see anyone else by any chance whilst you were in Rome?”
“Edgar,” replied Gaydon, with a glance from the tail of his eye which Wogan did not fail to remark.
“Aha!” said he. “Edgar, to be sure, since you saw the King. But besides Edgar, did you see anyone else?”
“Whittington,” said Gaydon.
“Oho!” said Wogan, thoughtfully. “So you saw my friend Harry Whittington at Rome. Did you see him with the King?”
Gaydon was becoming manifestly uncomfortable.
“He was waiting for the King,” he replied.
“Indeed. And whereabouts was he waiting for the King?”
“Oh, outside a house in Rome,” said Gaydon, as though he barely remembered the incident. “It was no business of mine, that I could see.”
“None whatever, to be sure,” answered Wogan, cordially. “But why in the world should Whittington be waiting for the King outside a house in Rome?”
“It was night-time. He carried a lantern.”
“Of course, if it was night-time,” exclaimed Wogan, in his most unsuspicious accent, “and the King wished to pay a visit to a house in Rome, he would take an attendant with a lantern. A servant, though, one would have thought, unless, of course, it was a private sort of visit—”
“It was no business of mine,” Gaydon interrupted; “and so I made no inquiries of Whittington.”
“But Whittington did not wait for inquiries, eh?” said Wogan, shrewdly. “You are hiding something from me, my friend,—something which that good honest simpleton of a Whittington blurted out to you without the least thought of making any disclosure. Oh, I know my Whittington. And I know you, too, Dick. I do not blame you. For when the King goes a-visiting the Princess Caprara privately at night-time while the girl to whom he is betrothed suffers in prison for her courageous loyalty to him, and his best friends are risking their heads to set her free, why, there’s knowledge a man would be glad to keep even out of his own hearing. So you see I know more than you credit me with. So tell me the rest! Don’t fob me off. Don’t plead it is none of your business, for, upon my soul, it is.” Gaydon suddenly changed his manner. He spoke with no less earnestness than Wogan,—
“You are in the right. It is my business, and why? Because it touches you, Charles Wogan, and you are my friend.”
“Therefore you will tell me,” cried Wogan.
“Therefore I will not tell you,” answered Gaydon. He had a very keen recollection of certain pages of poetry he had seen on the table at Schlestadt, of certain conversations in the berlin when he had feigned to sleep.
Wogan caught him by the arm.
“I must know. Here have I lost two hours out of one poor fortnight. I must know.”
“Why?”
Gaydon stood quite unmoved, and with a remarkable sternness of expression. Wogan understood that only the truth would unlock his lips, and he cried,—
“Because unless I do, in a fortnight her Highness will refuse to marry the King.” And he recounted to him the walk he had taken and the conversation he had held with Clementina that morning. Gaydon listened with an unfeigned surprise. The story put Wogan in quite a different light, and moreover it was told with so much sincerity of voice and so clear a simplicity of language, Gaydon could not doubt one syllable.
“I am afraid, my friend,” said he, “my thoughts have done you some wrong—”
“Leave me out of them,” cried Wogan, impatiently. He had no notion and no desire to hear what Gaydon meant. “Tell me from first to last what you saw in Rome.”
Gaydon told him thereupon of that secret passage from the Chevalier’s house into the back street, and of that promenade to the Princess’s house which he had spied upon. Wogan listened without any remark, and yet without any attempt to quicken his informant. But as soon as he had the story, he set off at a run towards the Cardinal’s palace. “So the Princess,” he thought, “had more than a rumour to go upon, though how she came by her knowledge the devil only knows.” At the palace he was told that the Cardinal was gone to the Archiginnasio.
“I will wait,” said Wogan; and he waited in the library for an hour,—another priceless hour of that swiftly passing fortnight, and he was not a whit nearer to his end! He made it his business, however, to show a composed face to his Eminence, and since his Eminence’s dinner was ready, to make a pretence of sharing the meal. The Cardinal was in a mood of great contentment.
“It is your presence, Mr. Wogan, puts me in a good humour,” he was pleased to say.
“Or a certain letter your Eminence received from Spain to-day?” asked Wogan.
“True, the letter was one to cause all the King’s friends satisfaction.”
“And some few of them, perhaps, relief,” said Wogan.
The Cardinal glanced at Wogan, but with a quite impassive countenance. He took a pinch of snuff and inhaled it delicately. Then he glanced at Wogan again.
“I have a hope, Mr. Wogan,” said he, with a great cordiality. “You shall tell me if it is to fall. I see much of you of late, and I have a hope that you are thinking of the priesthood. We should welcome you very gladly, you may be sure. Who knows but what there is a Cardinal’s hat hung up in the anteroom of the future for you to take down from its peg?”
The suggestion was sufficiently startling to Wogan, who had thought of nothing less than of entering into orders. But he was not to be diverted by this piece of ingenuity.
“Your Eminence,” said he, “although I hold myself unworthy of priestly vows, I am here in truth in the character of a catechist.”
“Catechise, then, my friend,” said the Cardinal, with a smile.
“First, then, I would ask your Eminence how many of the King’s followers have had the honour of being presented to the Princess Clementina?”
“Very few.”
“Might I know the names?”
“To be sure.”
Cardinal Origo repeated three or four names. They were the names of men known to Wogan for irreproachable loyalty. Not one of them would have gone about the Princess with slanders upon his master; he would have gone bail for them all, —at least, a month ago he would, he reflected, though now indeed he hardly knew where to put his trust.
“Her Highness lives, as you know, a very suitable, secluded life,” continued Origo.
“But might not others have had access to her at the Pilgrim Inn?”
“Nay, she was there but the one night, —the night of her arrival. I do not think it likely. For if you remember, I myself went to her early the next morning, and by a stroke of good luck I had already come upon the little house in the garden which was offered to me by a friend of yours for her Highness’s service.”
“On the evening of our arrival? A friend of mine offered you the house,” said Wogan, puzzling over who that friend could be.
“Yes. Harry Whittington.”
Wogan started to his feet. So, after all, Whittington was at the bottom of the trouble. Wogan wondered whether he had done wisely not to publish the fellow’s treachery. But he could not,—no, he had to make his account with the man alone. There were reasons.
“It was Harry Whittington who offered the house for her Highness’s use?” Wogan exclaimed.
“It was an offer most apt and kind.”
“And made on the evening of our arrival?”
“Not an hour after you left me. But you are surprised?”
Wogan was reflecting that on the evening of his arrival, and indeed just before Whittington made his offer to Origo, he had seen Whittington’s face by the torchlight in the square. That face lived very plainly in Wogan’s thoughts. It was certainly not for Clementina’s service that Whittington had offered the house. Wogan resumed his seat, saying carelessly,—
“I was surprised, for I had a notion that Whittington lodged opposite the Torre Garisenda, and not at the house.”
“Nor did he. He hired it for a friend who has now left Bologna.”
“Man or woman?” asked Wogan, remembering that visitor who had drawn back into the alley one early morning of last autumn. The man might very likely have been Whittington.
“I did not trouble to inquire,” said the Cardinal. “But, Mr. Wogan, why do you ask me these questions?”
“I have not come yet to the end of them,” answered Wogan. “There is one more.”
“Ask it!” said his Eminence, crossing his legs.
“Will your Eminence oblige me with a history of the affection of Maria Vittoria, Mlle. de Caprara, for the King?”
The Cardinal uncrossed his legs and bounced in his chair.
“Here is a question indeed!” he stuttered.
“And a history of the King’s response to it,” continued Wogan, implacably, “with a particular account of why the King lingers in Spain after the Cadiz expedition has put out to sea.”
Origo was now quite still. His face was pale, and he had lost in an instant that air of affectation which so contrasted with his broad features.
“This is very dangerous talk,” said he, solemnly.
“Not so dangerous as silence.”
“Some foolish slanderer has been busy at your ears.”
“Not at my ears,” returned Wogan.
The Cardinal took his meaning. “Is it so, indeed?” said he, thoughtfully, once or twice. Then he reached out his hand towards an escritoire. “But here’s the King’s letter come this morning.”
“It is not enough,” said Wogan, “for the King lingers in Spain, and the portrait of Maria Vittoria glows on the walls of the Caprara Palace, whither I was bidden to escort her Highness this morning.”
The Cardinal walked thoughtfully to and fro about the room, but made up his mind in the end.
“I will tell you the truth of the matter, Mr. Wogan. The King saw Mlle. de Caprara for the first time while you were searching Europe for a wife for him. He saw her here one morning at Mass in the Church of the Crucifixion, and came away most silent. Of their acquaintance I need not speak. The King just for one month became an ardent youth. He appealed to the Pope for his consent to marry Mlle. de Caprara, and the Pope consented. The King was just sending off a message to bid you cease your search when you came back with the news that her Highness the Princess Clementina had accepted the King’s hand and would shortly set out for Bologna. Sir, the King was in despair, though he showed to you a smiling, grateful face. Mlle. de Caprara went to Rome; the King stayed here awaiting his betrothed. There came the news of her imprisonment. The King, after all, is a man. If his heart leaped a little at the news, who shall blame him? Do you remember how you came privately one night to the King’s cabinet and found me there in the King’s company?”
“But,” stammered Wogan, “I do remember that evening. I remember that the King was pale, discouraged—”
“And why?” said Origo. “Because her Highness’s journey had been interrupted, because the marriage now seemed impossible? No, but because Mr. Charles Wogan was back in Bologna, because Mr. Charles Wogan had sought for a private interview, because the King had no more doubt than I as to what Mr. Charles Wogan intended to propose, and because the King knew that what Mr. Wogan set his hand to was as good as done. You remember I threw such hindrances as I could in your way, and made much of the risks you must run, and the impossibility of your task. Now you know why.”
Never was a man more confused than Wogan at this story of the Cardinal’s. “It makes me out a mere meddlesome fool,” he cried, and sat stunned.
“It is an unprofitable question at this time of day,” said the Cardinal, with a smile. “Matters have gone so far that they can no longer be remedied. This marriage must take place.”
“True,” said Wogan.
“The King, indeed, is firmly inclined to it.”
“Yet he lingers in Spain.”
“That I cannot explain to you, but he has been most loyal. That you must take my word for, so must your Princess.”
“Yet this winter when I was at Schlestadt preparing the expedition to Innspruck,” Wogan said with a certain timidity, for he no longer felt that it was within his right to make reproaches, “the King was in Rome visiting Mlle. de Caprara.”
The Cardinal flushed with some anger at Wogan’s persistence.
“Come, sir,” said he, “what has soured you with suspicions? Upon my word, here is a man sitting with me who bears your name, but few of those good qualities the name is linked with in my memories. Your King saw Mlle. de Caprara once in Rome, once only. Major Gaydon had come at your request to Rome to fetch a letter in the King’s hand, bidding her Highness entrust herself to you. Up to that moment the issue of your exploit was in the balance. But your request was to the King a very certain sign that you would indeed succeed. So the night before he wrote the letter he went to the Caprara Palace and took his farewell of the woman he loved. So much may be pardoned to any man, even by you, who, it seems, stand pinnacled above these earthly affections.”
The blood rushed into Wogan’s face at the sneer, but he bowed his head to it, being much humbled by Origo’s disclosures.
“This story I have told you,” continued the Cardinal, “I will make bold to tell to-morrow to her Highness.”
“But you must also explain why the King lingers in Spain,” Wogan objected. “I am very certain of it. The Princess has her pride; she will not marry a reluctant man.”
“Well, that I cannot do,” cried the Cardinal, now fairly exasperated. “Pride! She has her pride! Is it to ruin a cause, this pride of hers? Is it to wreck a policy?”
“No,” cried Wogan, starting up. “I have a fortnight. I beg your Eminence not to speak one word to her Highness until this fortnight is gone, until the eve of the marriage in Bologna. Give me till then. I have a hope there will be no need for us to speak at all.”
The Cardinal shrugged his shoulders.
“You must do more than hope. Will you pledge your word to it?”
Here it seemed to Wogan was an occasion when a man must dare.
“Yes,” he said, and so went out of the house. He had spoken under a sudden inspiration; the Cardinal’s words had shown him a way which with careful treading might lead to his desired result. He went first to his lodging, and ordered his servant Marnier to saddle his black horse. Then he hurried again to O’Toole’s lodging, and found his friend back from the bookseller’s indeed, but breathing very hard of a book which he slid behind his back.
“I am to go on a journey,” said Wogan, “and there’s a delicate sort of work I would trust to you.”
O’Toole looked distantly at Wogan.
“Opus,” said he, in a far-away voice.
“I want you to keep an eye on the little house in the garden—”
O’Toole nodded. “Hortus, hortus, hortum,” said he, “horti—hortus,” and he fingered the book at his back, “no, horti, horto, horto. Do you know, my friend, that the difference between the second and fourth declensions was solely invented by the grammarians for their own profit. It is of no manner of use, and the most plaguy business that ever I heard of.”
“O’Toole,” cried Wogan, with a bang of his fist, “you are no more listening to me than this table.”
At once O’Toole’s face brightened, and with a shout of pride he reeled out, “Mensa, mensa, mensam, mensae, mensae, mensa.” Wogan sprang up in a rage.
“Don’t mensa, mensam me when I am talking most seriously to you! What is it you are after? What’s that book you are hiding? Let me look at it!” O’Toole blushed on every visible inch of him and handed the book to Wogan.
“It’s a Latin grammar, my friend,” said he, meekly.
“And what in the world do you want to be addling your brains with a Latin grammar for, when there’s other need for your eyes?”
“Aren’t we to be enrolled at the Capitol in June as Roman Senators with all the ancient honours, cum titubis—it is so—cum titubis, which are psalters or pshawms?”
“Well, what then?”
“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.”
“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.