Complete works of a e w.., p.342
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 342
“Indeed? And which is that?”
“Why, sir, the black horse which the lady I shall marry will ride into my city of dreams.” And so he rode off upon his way. The morning was just beginning to gleam pale in the east. Here was a night passed which he had not thought to live through, and he was still alive to help the chosen woman imprisoned in the hollow of the hills at Innspruck. Wogan had reason to be grateful to that old man who stood straining his eyes after him. There was something pathetical in his discontent with his secluded life which touched Wogan to the heart. Wogan was not sure that in the morning the old man would know that the part he had chosen was, after all, the best. Besides, Wogan had between his knees the most friendly and intelligent beast which he had ridden since that morning when he met Lady Featherstone on the road to Bologna. But he had soon other matters to distract his thoughts. However easily Flavia cantered or trotted she could not but sharply remind him of his wounds. He had forty miles to travel before he could reach Schlestadt; and in the villages on the road there was gossip that day of a man with a tormented face who rode rocking in his saddle as though the furies were at his back.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LITTLE TOWN of Schlestadt went to bed betimes. By ten o’clock its burghers were in their night-caps. A belated visitor going home at that hour found his footsteps ring upon the pavement with surprising echoes, and traversed dark street after dark street, seeing in each window, perhaps, a mimic moon, but no other light unless his path chanced to lie through Herzogstrasse. In that street a couple of windows on the first floor showed bright and unabashed, and the curious passer-by could detect upon the blind the shadows of men growing to monstrous giants and dwindling to pigmies according as they approached or retired from the lamp in the room.
There were three men in that room booted as for a journey. Their dress might have misled one into the belief that they were merchants, but their manner of wearing it proclaimed them soldiers. Of the three, one, a short, spare man, sat at the table with his head bent over a slip of paper. His peruke was pushed back from his forehead and showed that the hair about his temples was grey. He had a square face of some strength, and thoughtful eyes.
The second of the three stood by the window. He was, perhaps, a few years younger, thirty-six an observer might have guessed to the other’s forty, and his face revealed a character quite different. His features were sharp, his eyes quick; if prudence was the predominating quality of the first, resource took its place in the second. While the first man sat patiently at the table, this one stood impatiently at the window. Now he lifted the blind, now he dropped it again.
The third sat in front of the fire with his face upturned to the ceiling. He was a tall, big man with mighty legs which sprawled one on each side of the hearth. He was the youngest of the three by five years, but his forehead at this moment was so creased, his mouth so pursed up, his cheeks so wrinkled, he had the look of sixty years. He puffed and breathed very heavily; once or twice he sighed, and at each sigh his chair creaked under him. Major O’Toole of Dillon’s regiment was thinking.
“Gaydon,” said he, suddenly.
The man at the table looked up quickly.
“Misset.”
The man at the window turned impatiently.
“I have an idea.”
Misset shrugged his shoulders.
Gaydon said, “Let us hear it.”
O’Toole drew himself up; his chair no longer creaked, it groaned and cracked.
“It is a lottery,” said he, “and we have made our fortunes. We three are the winners, and so our names are not crossed out.”
“But I have put no money in a lottery,” objected Gaydon.
“Nor I,” said Misset.
“And where should I find money either?” said O’Toole. “But Charles Wogan has borrowed it for us and paid it in, and so we’re all rich men. What’ll I buy with it?”
Misset paced the room.
“The paper came four days ago?” he said.
“Yes, in the morning.”
“Five days, then,” and he stood listening. Then he ran to the window and opened it. Gaydon followed him and drew up the blind. Both men listened and were puzzled.
“That’s the sound of horseshoes,” said Gaydon.
“But there’s another sound keeping pace with the horseshoes,” said Misset.
O’Toole leaned on their shoulders, crushing them both down upon the sill of the window.
“It is very like the sound a gentleman makes when he reels home from a tavern.”
Gaydon and Misset raised themselves with a common effort springing from a common thought and shot O’Toole back into the room.
“What if it is?” began Misset.
“He was never drunk in his life,” said Gaydon.
“It’s possible that he has reformed,” said O’Toole; and the three men precipitated themselves down the stairs.
The drunkard was Wogan; he was drunk with fatigue and sleeplessness and pain, but he had retained just enough of his sober nature to spare a tired mare who had that day served him well.
The first intimation he received that his friends were on the watch was O’Toole’s voice bawling down the street to him.
“Is it a lottery? Tell me we’re all rich men,” and he felt himself grasped in O’Toole’s arms.
“I’ll tell you more wonderful things than that,” stammered Wogan, “when you have shown me the way to a stable.”
“There’s one at the back of the house,” said Gaydon. “I’ll take the horse.”
“No,” said Wogan, stubbornly, and would not yield the bridle to Gaydon.
O’Toole nodded approval.
“There are two things,” said he, “a man never trusts to his friends. One’s his horse; t’ other’s his wife.”
Wogan suddenly stopped and looked at O’Toole. O’Toole answered the look loftily.
“It is a little maxim of philosophy. I have others. They come to me in the night.”
Misset laughed. Wogan walked on to the stable. It was a long building, and a light was still burning. Moreover, a groom was awake, for the door was opened before they had come near enough to knock. There were twelve stalls, of which nine were occupied, and three of the nine horses stood ready saddled and bridled.
Wogan sat down upon a corn-bin and waited while his mare was groomed and fed. The mare looked round once or twice in the midst of her meal, twisting her neck as far as her halter allowed.
“I am not gone yet, my lady,” said he, “take your time.”
Wogan made a ghostly figure in the dim shadowy light. His face was of an extraordinary pallor; his teeth chattered; his eyes burned. Gaydon looked at him with concern and said to the groom, “You can take the saddles off. We shall need no horses to-night.”
The four men returned to the house. Wogan went upstairs first. Gaydon held back the other two at the foot of the stairs.
“Not a word, not a question, till he has eaten, or we shall have him in bed for a twelvemonth. Misset, do you run for a doctor. O’Toole, see what you can find in the larder.”
Wogan sat before the fire without a word while O’Toole spread the table and set a couple of cold partridges upon it and a bottle of red wine. Wogan ate mechanically for a little and afterwards with some enjoyment. He picked the partridges till the bones were clean, and he finished the bottle of wine. Then he rose to his feet with a sigh of something very like to contentment and felt along the mantel-shelf with his hands. O’Toole, however, had foreseen his wants and handed him a pipe newly filled. While Wogan was lighting the tobacco, Misset came back into the room with word that the doctor was out upon his last rounds, but would come as soon as he had returned home. The four men sat down about the fire, and Wogan reached out his hand and felt O’Toole’s arm.
“It is you,” he said. “There you are, the three of you, my good friends, and this is Schlestadt. But it is strange,” and he laughed a little to himself and looked about the room, assuring himself that this indeed was Gaydon’s lodging.
“You received a slip of paper?” said he.
“Four days back,” said Gaydon.
“And understood?”
“That we were to be ready.”
“Good.”
“Then it’s not a lottery,” murmured O’Toole, “and we’ve drawn no prizes.”
“Ah, but we are going to,” cried Wogan. “We are safe here. No one can hear us; no one can burst in. But I am sure of that. Misset knows the trick that will make us safe from interruption, eh?”
Misset looked blankly at Wogan.
“Why, one can turn the key,” said he.
“To be sure,” said Wogan, with a laugh of admiration for that device of which he had bethought himself, and which he ascribed to Misset, “if there’s a key; but if there’s no key, why, a chair tilted against the door to catch the handle, eh?”
Misset locked the door, not at all comprehending that device, and returned to his seat.
“We are to draw the greatest prize that ever was drawn,” resumed Wogan, and he broke off.
“But is there a cupboard in the room? No matter; I forgot that this is Gaydon’s lodging, and Gaydon’s not the man to overlook a cupboard.”
Gaydon jumped up from his chair.
“But upon my word there is a cupboard,” he cried, and crossing to a corner of the room he opened a door and looked in. Wogan laughed again as though Gaydon’s examination of the cupboard was a very good joke.
“There will be nobody in it,” he cried. “Gaydon will never feel a hand gripping the life out of his throat because he forgot to search a cupboard.”
The cupboard was empty, as it happened. But Gaydon had left the door of the street open when he went out to meet Wogan; there had been time and to spare for any man to creep upstairs and hide himself had there been a man in Schlestadt that night minded to hear. Gaydon returned to his chair.
“We are to draw the biggest prize in all Europe,” said Wogan.
“There!” cried O’Toole. “Will you be pleased to remember when next I have an idea that I was right?”
“But not for ourselves,” added Wogan.
O’Toole’s face fell.
“Oh, we are to hand it on to a third party,” said he.
“Yes.”
“Well, after all, that’s quite of a piece with our luck.”
“Who is the third party?” asked Misset.
“The King.”
Misset started up from his chair and leaned forward, his hands upon the arms.
“The King,” said O’Toole; “to be sure, that makes a difference.”
Gaydon asked quietly, “And what is the prize?”
“The Princess Clementina,” said Wogan. “We are to rescue her from her prison in Innspruck.”
Even Gaydon was startled.
“We four!” he exclaimed.
“We four!” repeated Misset, staring at Wogan. His mouth was open; his eyes started from his head; he stammered in his speech. “We four against a nation, against half Europe!”
O’Toole simply crossed to a corner of the room, picked up his sword and buckled it to his waist.
“I am ready,” said he.
Wogan turned round in his chair and smiled.
“I know that,” said he. “So are we all — all ready; is not that so, my friends? We four are ready.” And he looked to Misset and to Gaydon. “Here’s an exploit, if we but carry it through, which even antiquity will be at pains to match! It’s more than an exploit, for it has the sanctity of a crusade. On the one side there’s tyranny, oppression, injustice, the one woman who most deserves a crown robbed of it. And on the other—”
“There’s the King,” said Gaydon; and the three brief words seemed somehow to quench and sober Wogan.
“Yes,” said he; “there’s the King, and we four to serve him in his need. We are few, but in that lies our one hope. They will never look for four men, but for many. Four men travelling to the shrine of Loretto with the Pope’s passport may well stay at Innspruck and escape a close attention.”
“I am ready,” O’Toole repeated.
“But we shall not start to-night. There’s the passport to be got, a plan to be arranged.”
“Oh, there’s a plan,” said O’Toole. “To be sure, there’s always a plan.” And he sat down again heavily, as though he put no faith in plans.
Misset and Gaydon drew their chairs closer to Wogan’s and instinctively lowered their voices to the tone of a whisper.
“Is her Highness warned of the attempt?” asked Gaydon.
“As soon as I obtained the King’s permission,” replied Wogan, “I hurried to Innspruck. There I saw Chateaudoux, the chamberlain of the Princess’s mother. Here is a letter he dropped in the cathedral for me to pick up.”
He drew the letter from his fob and handed it to Gaydon. Gaydon read it and handed it to Misset. Misset nodded and handed it to O’Toole, who read it four times and handed it back to Gaydon with a flourish of the hand as though the matter was now quite plain to him.
“Chateaudoux has a sweetheart,” said he, sententiously. “Very good; I do not think the worse of him.”
Gaydon glanced a second time through the letter.
“The Princess says that you must have the Prince Sobieski’s written consent.”
“I went from Innspruck to Ohlau,” said Wogan. “I had some trouble, and the reason of my coming leaked out. The Countess de Berg suspected it from the first. She had a friend, an Englishwoman, Lady Featherstone, who was at Ohlau to outwit me.”
“Lady Featherstone!” said Misset. “Who can she be?”
Wogan told them of his first meeting with Lady Featherstone on the Florence road, but he knew no more about her, and not one of the three knew anything at all.
“So the secret’s out,” said Gaydon. “But you outstripped it.”
“Barely,” said Wogan. “Forty miles away I had last night to fight for my life.”
“But you have the Prince’s written consent?” said Misset.
“I had last night, but I made a spill of it to light my pipe. There were six men against me. Had that been found on my dead body, why, there was proof positive of our attempt, and the attempt foiled by sure safeguards. As it is, if we lie still a little while, their fears will cease and the rumour become discredited.”
Misset leaned across Gaydon’s arm and scanned the letter.
“But her Highness writes most clearly she will not move without that sure token of her father’s consent.”
Wogan drew from his breast pocket a snuff-box made from a single turquoise.
“Here’s a token no less sure. It was Prince Sobieski’s New Year’s gift to me, — a jewel unique and in an unique setting. This must persuade her. His father, great King John of Poland, took it from the Grand Vizier’s tent when the Turks were routed at Vienna.”
O’Toole reached out his hand and engulfed the jewel.
“Sure,” said he, “it is a pretty sort of toy. It would persuade any woman to anything so long as she was promised it to hang about her neck. You must promise it to the Princess, but not give it to her — no, lest when she has got it she should be content to remain in Innspruck. I know. You must promise it.”
Wogan bowed to O’Toole’s wisdom and took back the snuff-box. “I will not forget to promise it,” said he.
“But here’s another point,” said Gaydon. “Her Highness, the Princess’s mother, insists that a woman shall attend upon her daughter, and where shall we find a woman with the courage and the strength?”
“I have thought of that,” said Wogan. “Misset has a wife. By the luckiest stroke in the world Misset took a wife this last spring.”
There was at once a complete silence. Gaydon stared into the fire, O’Toole looked with intense interest at the ceiling, Misset buried his face in his hands. Wogan was filled with consternation. Was Misset’s wife dead? he asked himself. He had spoken lightly, laughingly, and he went hot and cold as he recollected the raillery of his words. He sat in his chair shocked at the pain which he had caused his friend. Moreover, he had counted surely upon Mrs. Misset.
Then Misset raised his head from his hands and in a trembling voice he said slowly, “My boy would only live to serve his King. Why should he not serve his King before he lives? My wife will say the like.”
There was a depth of quiet feeling in his words which Wogan would never have expected from Misset; and the words themselves were words which he felt no man, no king, however much beloved, however generous to his servants, had any right to expect. They took Wogan’s breath away, and not Wogan’s only, but Gaydon’s and O’Toole’s, too. A longer silence than before followed upon them. The very simplicity with which they had been uttered was startling, and made those three men doubt at the first whether they had heard aright.
O’Toole was the first to break the silence.
“It is a strange thing that there never was a father since Adam who was not absolutely sure in his heart that his first-born must be a boy. When you come to think philosophically about it, you’ll see that if fathers had their way the world would be peopled with sons with never a bit of a lass in any corner to marry them.”
O’Toole’s reflection, if not a reason for laughter, made a pretext for it, at which all — even Misset, who was a trifle ashamed of his display of feeling — eagerly caught. Wogan held his hand out and clasped Misset’s.
“That was a great saying,” said he, “but so much sacrifice is not to be accepted.”
Misset, however, was firm. His wife, he said, though naturally timid, could show a fine spirit on occasion, and would never forgive one of them if she was left behind. He argued until a compromise was reached. Misset should lay the matter openly before his wife, and the four crusaders, to use Wogan’s term, would be bound by her decision.
“So you may take it that matter’s settled,” said Misset. “There will be five of us.”
“Six,” said Wogan.
“There’s another man to join us, then,” said Gaydon. “I have it. Your servant, Marnier.”
