Clementina Page 10

  CHAPTER X

  In an hour, however, he returned out of breath and with a face whitefrom despair. Wogan was still writing at his table, but at his firstglance towards Gaydon he started quickly to his feet, and altogetherforgot to cover over his sheet of paper. He carefully shut the door.

  "You have bad news," said he.

  "There was never worse," answered Gaydon. He had run so fast, he was sodiscomposed, that he could with difficulty speak. But he gasped his badnews out in the end.

  "I went to my brother major to report my return. He was entertaining hisfriends. He had a letter this morning from Strasbourg and he read italoud. The letter said a rumour was running through the town that theChevalier Wogan had already rescued the Princess and was being hotlypursued on the road to Trent."

  If Wogan felt any disquietude he was careful to hide it. He satcomfortably down upon the sofa.

  "I expected rumour would be busy with us," said he, "but never that itwould take so favourable a shape."

  "Favourable!" exclaimed Gaydon.

  "To be sure, for its falsity will be established to-morrow, andridicule cast upon those who spread and believed it. False alarms arethe proper strategy to conceal the real assault. The rumour does us aservice. Our secret is very well kept, for here am I in Schlestadt, andpeople living in Schlestadt believe me on the road to Trent. I will goback with you to the major's and have a laugh at his correspondent.Courage, my friend. We will give our enemies a month. Let them cry wolfas often as they will during that month, we'll get into the fold all themore easily in the end."

  Wogan took his hat to accompany Gaydon, but at that moment he heardanother man stumbling in a great haste up the stairs. Misset broke intothe room with a face as discomposed as Gaydon's had been.

  "Here's another who has heard the same rumour," said Wogan.

  "It is more than a rumour," said Misset. "It is an order, and mostperemptory, from the Court of France, forbidding any officer of Dillon'sregiment to be absent for more than twenty-four hours from his duties onpain of being broke. Our secret's out. That's the plain truth of thematter."

  He stood by the table drumming with his fingers in a great agitation.Then his fingers stopped. He had been drumming upon Wogan's sheet ofpaper, and the writing on the sheet had suddenly attracted his notice.It was writing in unusually regular lines. Gaydon, arrested by Misset'schange from restlessness to fixity, looked that way for a second, too,but he turned his head aside very quickly. Wogan's handwriting was noneof his business.

  "We will give them a month," said Wogan, who was conjecturing at themotive of this order from the Court of France. "No doubt we aresuspected. I never had a hope that we should not be. The Court ofFrance, you see, can do no less than forbid us, but I should not besurprised if it winks at us on the sly. We will give them a month.Colonel Lally is a friend of mine and a friend of the King. We will getan abatement of that order, so that not one of you shall be cashiered."

  "I don't flinch at that," said Misset, "but the secret's out."

  "Then we must use the more precautions," said Wogan. He had no doubtwhatever that somehow he would bring the Princess safely out of herprison to Bologna. It could not be that she was born to be wasted.Misset, however, was not so confident upon the matter.

  "A strange, imperturbable man is Charles Wogan," said he to Gaydon andO'Toole the same evening. "Did you happen by any chance to cast your eyeover the paper I had my hand on?"

  "I did not," said Gaydon, in a great hurry. "It was a private letter, nodoubt."

  "It was poetry. There's no need for you to hurry, my friend. It was morethan mere poetry, it was in Latin. I read the first line on the page,and it ran, '_Te, dum spernit, arat novus accola; max ubi cultam_--'"

  Gaydon tore his arm away from Misset. "I'll hear no more of it," hecried. "Poetry is none of my business."

  "There, Dick, you are wrong," said O'Toole, sententiously. Both Missetand Gaydon came to a dead stop and stared. Never had poetry so strangean advocate. O'Toole set his great legs apart and his arms akimbo. Herocked himself backwards and forwards on his heels and toes, while abenevolent smile of superiority wrinkled across his broad face from earto ear. "Yes, I've done it," said he; "I've written poetry. It is athing a polite gentleman should be able to do. So I did it. It wasn't inLatin, because the young lady it was written to didn't understand Latin.Her name was Lucy, and I rhymed her to 'juicy,' and the pleasure of itmade her purple in the face. There were to have been four lines, butthere were never more than three and a half because I could not think ofa suitable rhyme to O'Toole. Lucy said she knew one, but she would nevertell it me."

  Wogan's poetry, however, was of quite a different kind, and had Gaydonlooked at it a trifle more closely, he would have experienced somerelief. It was all about the sorrows and miseries of his unfortunaterace and the cruel oppression of England. England owed all its great mento Ireland and was currish enough never to acknowledge the debt. Woganalways grew melancholy and grave-faced on that subject when he had theleisure to be idle. He thought bitterly of the many Irish officers sentinto exile and killed in the service of alien countries; his sense ofinjustice grew into a passionate sort of despair, and the despairtumbled out of him in sonorous Latin verse written in the Virgilianmeasure. He wrote a deal of it during this month of waiting, and a longwhile afterwards sent an extract to Dr. Swift and received the greatman's compliments upon its felicity, as anyone may see for himself inthe doctor's correspondence.

  How the month passed for James Stuart in Rome may be partly guessed froma letter which was brought to Wogan by Michael Vezozzi, the Chevalier'sbody-servant.

  The letter announced that King George of England had offered thePrincess Clementina a dowry of L100,000 if she would marry the Prince ofBaden, and that the Prince of Baden with a numerous following wasalready at Innspruck to prosecute his suit.

  "I do not know but what her Highness," he wrote, "will receive the bestconsolation for her sufferings on my account if she accepts sofavourable a proposal, rather than run so many hazards as she must needsdo as my wife. For myself, I have been summoned most urgently into Spainand am travelling thither on the instant."

  Wogan could make neither head nor tail of the letter. Why should theKing go to Spain at the time when the Princess Clementina might beexpected at Bologna? It was plain that he did not expect Wogan wouldsucceed. He was disheartened. Wogan came to the conclusion that therewas the whole meaning of the letter. He was, however, for other reasonsglad to receive it.

  "It is very well I have this letter," said he, "for until it came I hadno scrap of writing whatever to show either to her Highness or, what Itake to be more important, to her Highness's mother," and he went backto his poetry.

  Misset and his wife, on the other hand, drove forward to the town ofColmar, where they bought a travelling carriage and the necessaries forthe journey. Misset left his wife at Colmar, but returned everytwenty-four hours himself. They made the excuse that Misset had won adeal of money at play and was minded to lay it out in presents to hiswife. The stratagem had a wonderful success at Schlestadt, especiallyamongst the ladies, who could do nothing day and night but praise intheir husbands' hearing so excellent a mode of disposing of one'swinnings.

  O'Toole spent his month in polishing his pistols and sharpening hissword. It is true that he had to persuade Jenny to bear them company,but that was the work of an afternoon. He told her the story of the richAustrian heiress, promised her a hundred guineas and a damask gown, gaveher a kiss, and the matter was settled.

  Jenny passed her month in a delicious excitement. She was a daughter ofthe camp, and had no fears whatever. She was a conspirator; she wastrusted with a tremendous secret; she was to help the beautiful andenormous O'Toole to a rich and beautiful wife; she was to outwit an oldcurmudgeon of an uncle; she was to succour a maiden heart-broken andimprisoned. Jenny was quite uplifted. Never had a maid-servant been bornto so high a destiny. Her only difficulty was to keep silence, and whenthe silence became no longer endurable she w
ould run on some excuse oranother to Wogan and divert him with the properest sentiments.

  "To me," she would cry, "there's nothing sinful in changing clotheswith the beautiful mistress of O'Toole. Christian charity says we are tomake others happy. I am a Christian, and as to the uncle he can go tothe devil! He can do nothing to me but talk, and I don't understand hisstupid language."

  Jenny was the one person really happy during this month. It was Wogan'seffort to keep her so, for she was the very pivot of his plan.

  There remains yet one other who had most reason of all to repine at thedelay, the Princess Clementina. Her mother wearied her with perpetualcomplaints, the Prince of Baden, who was allowed admittance to thevilla, persecuted her with his attentions; she knew nothing of what wasplanned for her escape, and the rigorous confinement was not relaxed. Itwas not a happy time for Clementina. Yet she was not entirely unhappy. Athought had come to her and stayed with her which called the colour toher cheeks and a smile to her lips. It accounted to her for the delay;her pride was restored by it; because of it she became yet more patientwith her mother, more gentle with the Prince of Baden, moregood-humoured to her gaolers. It sang at her heart like a bird; itlightened in her grey eyes. It had come to her one sleepless night, andthe morning had not revealed it as a mere phantasy born of the night.The more she pondered it, the more certain was she of its truth. HerKing was coming himself at the hazard of his life to rescue her.