Wogan

“ Her eyes flashed as they remarked his livery, but she was not in any concern about Mr. Wogan, and asked him no questions. She rose with the utmost coldness, did not give him her hand, and only the bare mockery of a bow, as though her indignation against Mr. Kelly was so complete that it must needs embrace his friend.
'I thought that he would have plucked up enough courage to come himself,' said she, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
'He is a man of the meanest spirit,' replied Wogan, in a sullen agreement. 'It is a strange thing how easily one may be misled. ”

“ Wogan, in spite of himself, began to entertain a certain liking for the man. He had accepted each stroke of ill-fortune—his discomfiture at Lady Oxford's hands, the grapple on the steps, and now this duel—without disputation. Moreover Wogan was wondering whether or no the man had some real grievance against her ladyship and what motive brought him, in what expectation, in his chaise to Brampton Bryan. ”

“ Wogan smacked his lips in contentment.
'Lord Oxford has no better in his cellars.'
'I may agree without boastfulness. It is indeed Florence of a rare vintage, which I was at some pains to procure.' He laughed with a spice of savagery and resumed the consideration of Wogan's verses.
'You seem to me to have missed the opportunity afforded by your gale of wind. A true poet would surely have made great play with the lady's petticoats.'
'Smilinda had none,' again replied Wogan in triumph, and he emptied his glass. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wogan understood that he had a second antagonist.
"I am not a youth, your Eminence," he exclaimed with all the indignation of twenty-seven years. "I am a man."
"But an Irishman, and that spells youth. You write poetry too, I believe, Mr. Wogan. It is a heady practice." ”

“ I do envy men at times who can stand beside them, talk with them without fear, be intimate with them, and understand their intricate thoughts."
"Are there such men?" asked Wogan.
"Men who love, such as Count Königsmarck and yourself."
Wogan held up his hand with a cry.
"Count, such men, we are told, are the blindest of all. Did not Königsmarck prove it? As for myself, not even in that respect can I be ranked with Königsmarck. I am a mere man-at-arms, whose love-making is a clash of steel." ”

“ 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. ”

“ When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'erspreads the solemn scene.'
'You are not listening, Mr. Scrope!'
Scrope was listening, but not to Wogan. Wogan ceased from reciting and listened also. He heard steps and voices of men approaching. Presently, to his great amazement, he recognised the tones of Kelly and Montague, whose mere existence had been banished from his mind. He was yet more surprised when they both came in view, walking very friendly together.
Wogan rose as they drew near him. ”

“ He marched up under the arch, through the darkling cloister, and tapped, gently but firmly, at the Dean's door. He must see Mr. Kelly. As it chanced, and by the merest accident in the world, Wogan timed his taps thus: 1—2, 3, 4, 5, 6—7.
There were stealthy steps within, with a movement of yellow light, and then a voice that Mr. Wogan knew very well came through a judas.
'Is it my father's knock?'
'Is it your granny's knock, Sam?' asked Wogan through the judas. The voice was that of Sam Wesley, a young usher in Wogan's time, one whom he had always liked and tormented. ”

“ A score or so of link-boys yelled and flashed their torches about the portico; carriages and chairs pressed towards the door. Gentlemen with stars upon their velvet coats, and ladies altogether swaddled in lace and hoops thronged up the steps. But of the possible messengers for whom Mr. Wogan looked, not one was to be seen in any corner. Timidity itself might have slept secure. Only a few ragged loiterers stood about in the roadway on the look-out for a lace handkerchief or a convenient pocket. Wogan crossed the road and joined the throng upon the stairs. ”

“ It was written in the Chevalier's own cipher and hand; it asked anxiously for news and gave some. Wogan had had occasion before to learn that cipher by heart. He stood by the window and spelled the meaning. Then he turned to go down; but at the door his foot slipped upon the polished boards, and he stumbled onto his knee. He picked himself up, and thinking no more of the matter rejoined the company in a room where the Countess of Berg was playing upon a harp.
"The King," said Wogan, drawing the Prince apart, "leaves Bologna for Rome." ”

“ What else passed, Wogan did not desire to hear. Lady Mary had faults, they say, as a woman, but she was of a manlike courage, and her's was the friendship of a man. Never did woman need it more than Miss Townley, and never, sure, was counsel and comfort wiser and kinder than that which, Wogan knew later, Lady Mary gave to the angry, frightened, and bewildered girl.
Lady Mary's credentials were Wogan's name; the girl could not suspect them. How had she come hither? Lady Oxford had invited her father, Rose said, as a schoolfellow of my lord's, and had asked, too, for the daughter's company. ”

“ Did you never hear of my forefather, Thomas Wogan, that rode with twenty-eight Cavaliers through the heart of Cromwell's England, and came safe into the Highlands? Sure what that great man could do with twenty-eight companions to make him conspicuous, his degenerate son can do alone.'
Mr. Wogan began his journey by walking over the hill, near to the top of which his friends had been driven off the road to Inverness by the English fire, which was very well nourished. ”

“ He knelt down and picked up the letter; the foot was a woman's. As he rose up again, the curtain ever so slightly stirred. Wogan pretended to have remarked nothing; he stood easily by the window with his eyes upon his letter and his mind busy with guessing what woman his spy might be. And he remained on purpose for some while in this attitude, designing it as a punishment. So long as he stood by the window that unknown woman cheek by jowl with him must hold her breath, must never stir, must silently endure an agony of fear at each movement that he made. ”

“ Wogan's spirits revived. He had not yet come to the end of his luck. He sat down and wrote a short letter and sealed it up.
"Marnier," he called out in a low voice, and his servant came from the adjoining room, "take this to Mr. Edgar, the King's secretary, as soon as it grows dusk. Have a care that no one sees you deliver it. Lock the parlour door when you go, and take the key. I am not yet back from Rome." With that Wogan remembered that he had not slept for forty-eight hours. ”

“ Above the voices laughed, the smooth music murmured of all soft pleasures. Here, in the quiet of the hall, Wogan began to think the door would never open; he had a foolish fancy that he was staring at the lid of a coffin sealed down until the Judgment Day, and indeed the room might prove a coffin. He looked at his watch; only a poor quarter of an hour had passed since the door had closed. Wogan could not believe it; he shook his watch in the belief that it had stopped, and then a hubbub arose in the street. ”

“ But Wogan smiled amiably, knowing when he communicated his thoughts how soon those oaths would turn to cries of admiration.
'It is a very curious thing,' said Wogan, shifting himself a little so that Kelly's shins should not press so sharply, 'how the mere inking of one's fingers produces speculation. Just as great valorous deeds are the consequence of swords,' here he paused to snuff the candle with his fingers, 'so great philosophic thoughts are the consequence of pens. Put a sword in a man's hand! What does he want to do but cut his neighbour right open from the chine to the ribs? ”

“ 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 put the diamonds in his pocket. For Mr. Wogan had his wits about him. Diamonds were diamonds, and the carpet no place for them. Some day they might be of use to the Parson. The door of the street was opened as Wogan stepped into the passage. But Rose did not shut the door of the parlour and so Wogan, as he met Kelly, could only whisper hurriedly, 'Remember, I am your worst enemy,' and so left him to his own resources. ”

“ It chanced that at Preston, where he tarried for a couple of days, Mr. Wogan was billeted on a cobbler, a worthy man, but besotted with a new religion, which then caused many popular tumults. To England it had been brought over from America by two brothers of Wogan's old friend, Sam Wesley, the usher at Westminster School, and familiar of Bishop Atterbury. ”

“ Kelly had drawn up a chair.
Wogan leaned for a moment over the balustrade. It was a very small foot with an admirably arched instep; Mr. Wogan had seen the like in Spain. Well, very likely she only thrust it out to warm it. The firelight coloured her face to a pretty rose hue, sparkled in her dark eyes, and searched out the gold threads in her brown hair. Mr. Wogan was much tempted to whisper a reminder to his friend concerning her ear. ”

“ Gaydon stared at him in wonder, and Wogan recovered himself with a laugh. "Faith," said he, "it is a question to perplex a man. I misdoubt but we both had the thought about the same time. 'Wogan,' said he, 'there's the Princess with a chain on her leg, so to speak,' and I answered him, 'A chain's a galling sort of thing to a lady's ankle.' There was little more said if I remember right." ”

“ Obviously a man built in the heroic mould was necessary to extricate them from the dilemma. They bethought them of Wogan, who had been recalled from his delicate mission on the pretext that it was impolitic to entrust the matter further to an Irish Catholic. Wogan was well adapted for this sort of adventure. ”

“ Wogan,' cried Fanny Oglethorpe, and as Wogan held out his hand she clapped her hot spoon into it. 'M. de Bellegarde, you must know Mr. Wogan. He has the broadest back of any man that ever I was acquainted with. You must do more than know him. You must love him, as I do, for the broadness of his back.'
M. de Bellegarde looked not over-pleased with the civility of her greeting, and bowed to Wogan with an affectation of ceremony. Mr. Law came forward with an affable word. Olive Trant added another, and Madame de Mezières asked eagerly what brought him to Paris. ”

“ He rode watchfully, avoiding towns, and with an eye alert for every passer-by. That he was ahead of any courier from the Emperor at Vienna he did not doubt, but, on the other hand, the Countess of Berg and Lady Featherstone had the advantage of [pg 58] him by some four days. There would be no lack of money to hinder him; there would be no scruple as to the means. Wogan remembered the moment in his bedroom when he had seen the dagger bright in the moon's rays. If he could not be arrested, there were other ways to stop him. Accidents may happen to any man. ”

“ The young [pg 100] man who came upon that other night was Count Philip Christopher von Königsmarck."
Wogan started at the mention of this name. It seemed strange that that fitful and brilliant man, whose brief, passionate, guilty life and mysterious end had made so much noise in the world, had crossed that lawn and stood before that window at just such an hour, and maybe had sat shivering in Wogan's very chair. ”

“ Wogan thought, but George ran on,
'Scrope it was who wrote the ballad, for no enemy but Scrope knew what the writer knew. Lady Mary is a friend. Lady Oxford is innocent, thank God—I say it with a humble heart—and I am not the cause of the ruin.'
George's eyes shone like those of a man reprieved. Wogan shook his friend's hand; his own eyes were opened.
'’Tis you are the devil,' he said. 'Scrope has hit everyone he hates, and blown up the plot.'
'His time will come,' said Kelly; 'but I hear Sam on the stair.'
Mr. Wesley, tapping lightly, entered his room. ”

“ The secretary nodded his head sagaciously.
"Her Highness is a woman," said he, "and that explains all. But it will do her no harm to suffer a little longer for her obstinacy, and, to tell you the truth, the Prince Taxis is so tormented with the gout that—"
"That you are unwilling to approach him a second time," interrupted Wogan. "I have no doubt of it. I have myself seen prelates in a most unprelatical mood. But here is a case where needs must. I have not told you all. There is a devil of a fellow called Charles Wogan." ”