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.
CHAPTER XXIV
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.
“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 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 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 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.
“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 serv
ant 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 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.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 358