Clementina Part 40

"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 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.

"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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed 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. 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 gra.s.s.

When the Chevalier came down into the garden an hour afterwards, a man was still standing on the gra.s.s. 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 me at Innspruck, is Captain Lucius O'Toole of Dillon's regiment."

"Et senator 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 gla.s.s together, for G.o.d 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, G.o.d 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, hara.s.sed by misgivings, and worn with many vigils, presented a sufficiently woe-begone picture. The 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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.s 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, a.s.sured 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 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."