CHAPTER V
Wogan, however, was not immediately benefited by his discovery. He knewthat if a single whisper of it reached the Prince's ear there would beat once an end to his small chances. The old man would take alarm; hemight punish the offender, but he would none the less surely refuse hisconsent to Wogan's project. Wogan must keep his lips quite closed andlet his antagonists do boldly what they would.
And that they were active he found a way to discover. The Countess fromthis time plied him with kindness. He must play cards with her andPrince Constantine in the evening; he must take his coffee in herprivate apartments in the morning. So upon one of these occasions hespoke of his departure from Ohlau.
"I shall go by way of Prague;" and he stopped in confusion and correctedhimself quickly. "At least, I am not sure. There are other ways intoItaly."
The Countess showed no more concern than she had shown over herharp-string. She talked indifferently of other matters as though she hadbarely heard his remark; but she fell into the trap. Wogan was awarethat the Governor of Prague was her kinsman; and that afternoon he leftthe castle alone, and taking the road to Vienna, turned as soon as hewas out of sight and hurried round the town until he came out upon theroad to Prague. He hid himself behind a hedge a mile from Ohlau, and hadnot waited half an hour before a man came riding by in hot haste. Theman wore the Countess's livery of green and scarlet; Wogan decided notto travel by way of Prague, and returned to the castle content with hisafternoon's work. He had indeed more reason to be content with it thanhe knew, for he happened to have remarked the servant's face as well ashis livery, and so at a later time was able to recognise it again. Hehad no longer any doubt that a servant in the same livery was well uponhis way to Vienna. The roads were bad, it was true, and the journeylong; but Wogan had not the Prince's consent, and could not tell when hewould obtain it. The servant might return with the Emperor's order forhis arrest before he had obtained it. Wogan was powerless. He sent hislist of names to Gaydon in Schlestadt, but that was the only precautionhe could take. The days passed; Wogan spent them in unavailingpersuasions, and New Year's Day came and found him still at Ohlau and ina great agitation and distress.
Upon that morning, however, while he was dressing, there came a rap uponhis door, and when he opened it he saw the Prince's treasurer, a foppishgentleman, very dainty in his words.
"Mr. Warner," said the treasurer, "his Highness has hinted to me hisdesires; he has moulded them into the shape of a prayer or a request."
"In a word, he has bidden you," said Wogan.
"Fie, sir! There's a barbarous and improper word, an ill-sounding word;upon my honour, a word without dignity or merit and banishable frompolite speech. His Highness did most prettily entreat me with a finegentleness of condescension befitting a Sunday or a New Year's Day tobring and present and communicate from hand to hand a gift,--a mostincomparable proper gift, the mirror and image of his most incomparableproper friendship."
Wogan bowed, and requested the treasurer to enter and be seated thewhile he recovered his breath.
"Nay, Mr. Warner, I must be concise, puritanical, and unadorned in mylanguage as any raw-head or bloody-bones. The cruel, irrevocable momentspass. I could consume an hour, sir, before I touched as I may say thehem of the reason of my coming."
"Sir, I do not doubt it," said Wogan.
"But I will not hinder you from forthwith immediately and at onceincorporating with your most particular and inestimable treasures thisjewel, this turquoise of heaven's own charming blue, encased anddecorated with gold."
The treasurer drew the turquoise from his pocket. It was of the size ofan egg. He placed it in Wogan's hand, who gently returned it.
"I cannot take it," said he.
"Gemini!" cried the treasurer. "But it is more than a turquoise, Mr.Warner. Jewellers have delved in it. It has become subservient to man'snecessities. It is a snuff-box."
"I cannot take it."
"King John of Poland, he whom the vulgar call Glorious John, did rescueand enlarge it from its slavery to the Grand Vizier of Turkey at thegreat battle of Vienna. There is no other in the world--"
Wogan cut the treasurer short.
"You will take it again to his Highness. You will express to him mygratitude for his kindness, and you will say furthermore these words:'Mr. Warner cannot carry back into Italy a present for himself and arefusal for his Prince.'"
Wogan spoke with so much dignity that the treasurer had no words toanswer him. He stood utterly bewildered; he stared at the jewel.
"Here is a quandary!" he exclaimed. "I do declare every circumstance ofme trembles," and shaking his head he went away. But in a little he cameagain.
"His Highness distinguishes you, Mr. Warner, with imperishable honours.His Highness solicits your company to a solitary dinner. You shall dinewith him alone. His presence and unfettered conversation shall seasonyour soup and be the condiments of your meat."
Wogan's heart jumped. There could be only one reason for so unusual aninvitation on such a day, and he was not mistaken; for as soon as thePrince was served in a little room, he dismissed the lackeys andpresented again the turquoise snuff-box with his own hands.
"See, Mr. Wogan, your persuasions and your conduct have gained me over,"said he. "Your refusal of this bagatelle assures me of your honour. Itrust myself entirely to your discretion; I confide my beloved daughterto your care. Take from my hands the gift you refused this morning, andbe assured that no prince ever gave to any man such full powers as Iwill give to you to-night."
Wogan's gratitude wellnigh overcame him. The thing that he had workedfor and almost despaired of had come to pass. For a while he could notspeak; he flung himself upon his knees and kissed the Prince's hand.That very night he received the letter giving him full powers, and thenext morning he drove off in a carriage of his Highness drawn by sixPolish horses towards the town of Strahlen on the road to Prague. AtStrahlen he stayed a day, feigning a malady, and sent the carriage back.The following day, however, he took horse, and riding along by-roads andlanes avoided Prague and hurried towards Schlestadt.
He rode watchfully, avoiding towns, and with an eye alert for everypasser-by. That he was ahead of any courier from the Emperor at Viennahe did not doubt, but, on the other hand, the Countess of Berg and LadyFeatherstone had the advantage of him by some four days. There would beno lack of money to hinder him; there would be no scruple as to themeans. Wogan remembered the moment in his bedroom when he had seen thedagger bright in the moon's rays. If he could not be arrested, therewere other ways to stop him. Accidents may happen to any man.
However, he rode unhindered with the Prince's commission safe againsthis breast. He felt the paper a hundred times a day to make sure that itwas not stolen nor lost, nor reduced to powder by a miracle. Day by dayhis fears diminished, since day by day he drew a day's journey nearer toSchlestadt. The paper became a talisman in his thoughts,--a thingendowed with magic properties to make him invisible like the cloak orcap of the fairy tales. Those few lines in writing not a week back hadseemed an unattainable prize, yet he had them; and so now they promisedhim that other unattainable thing, the enlargement of the Princess. Itwas in his nature, too, to grow buoyant in proportion to thedifficulties of his task. He rode forward, therefore, with a good heart,and one sombre evening of rain came to a village some miles beyondAugsburg.
The village was a straggling half-mile of low cottages, lost as it wereon the level of a wide plain. Across this plain, bare but for a fewlines of poplars and stunted willow-trees, Wogan had ridden all theafternoon; and so little did the thatched cottages break the monotony ofthe plain's appearance, that though he had had the village within hisvision all that while, he came upon it unawares. The dusk was gathering,and already through the tiny windows the meagre lights gleamed upon theroad and gave to the falling raindrops the look of steel beads. Fourdays would now bring Wogan to Schlestadt. The road was bad and full ofholes. He determined to go no farther that night if he could find alodging in the vil
lage, and coming upon a man who stood in his path hestopped his horse.
"Is there an inn where a traveller may sleep?" he asked.
"Assuredly," replied the man, "and find forage for his horse. The lasthouse--but I will myself show your Honour the way."
"There is no need, my friend, that you should take a colic," said Wogan.
"I shall earn enough drink to correct the colic," said the man. He had asack over his head and shoulders to protect him from the rain, andstepped out in front of Wogan's horse. They came to the end of thestreet and passed on into the open darkness. About twenty yards farthera house stood by itself at the roadside, but there were only lights inone or two of the upper windows, and it held out no promise ofhospitality. In front of it, however, the man stopped; he opened thedoor and halloaed into the passage. Wogan stopped too, and above hishead something creaked and groaned like a gibbet in the wind. He lookedup and saw a sign-board glimmering in the dusk with a new coat of whitepaint. He had undoubtedly come to the inn, and he dismounted.
The landlord advanced at that moment to the door.
"My man," said he, "will take your horse to the stable;" and the fellowwho had guided Wogan led the horse off.
"Oh, is he your man?" said Wogan. "Ah!" And he followed the landlordinto the house.
It was not only the sign-board which had been newly painted, for in thenarrow passage the landlord stopped Wogan.
"Have a care, sir," said he; "the walls are wet. It will be best if youstand still while I go forward and bring a light."
He went forward in the dark and opened a door at the end of the passage.A glow of ruddy light came through the doorway, and Wogan caught aglimpse of a brick-floored kitchen and a great open chimney and one ortwo men on a bench before the fire. Then the door was again closed. Theclosing of the door seemed to Wogan a churlish act.
"The hospitality," said he to himself, "which plants a man in the roadso that a traveller on a rainy night may not miss his bed should atleast leave the kitchen door open. Why should I stay here in the dark?"
Wogan went forward, and from the careful way in which he walked,--a wayso careful and stealthy indeed that his footsteps made no sound,--itmight have been inferred that he believed the floor to be newly paintedtoo. He had, at all events, no such scruples about the kitchen door, forhe seized the handle and flung it open quickly. He was met at once by acold draught of wind. A door opposite and giving onto a yard at the backhad been opened at precisely the same moment; and as Wogan steppedquickly in at his door a man stepped quickly out by the door oppositeand was lost in the darkness.
"What! Are you going?" the landlord cried after him as he turned fromthe fire at which he was lighting a candle.
"Wilhelm has a wife and needs must," at once said a woman who wasreaching down some plates from a dresser.
The landlord turned towards the passage and saw Wogan in the doorway.
"You found your way, sir," said he, looking at Wogan anxiously.
"Nor are your walls any poorer of paint on that account," said Wogan ashe took his wet cloak and flung it over a chair.
The landlord blew out his candle and busied himself about laying thetable. A great iron pot swung over the fire by a chain, and the liddanced on the top and allowed a savoury odour to escape. Wogan sathimself down before the fire and his clothes began to steam.
"You laugh at my paint, sir," said the landlord. He was a fat,good-humoured-looking man, communicative in his manner as a Bonifaceshould be, and his wife was his very complement. "You laugh at mypaint, but it is, after all, a very important thing. What is a greatlady without her rouge-pot, when you come to think of it? It is the samewith an inn. It must wear paint if it is to attract attention and make aprofit."
"There is philosophy in the comparison," said Wogan.
"Sir, an innkeeper cannot fail of philosophy if he has his eyes and aspark of intelligence. The man who took refuge in a tub because thefollies of his fellows so angered him was the greatest fool of them all.He should have kept an inn on the road to Athens, for then the follieswould have put money into his pocket and made him laugh instead ofgrowl."
His wife came over to the fireplace and lifted the lid of the pot.
"The supper is ready," said she.
"And perhaps, sir, while you are eating it you can think of a name formy inn."
"Why, it has a sign-board already," said Wogan, "and a name, too, Isuppose."
"It has a sign-board, but without a device," said the landlord, andwhile Wogan drew a chair to the table he explained his predicament.
"There is another inn five miles along the road, and travellers preferto make their halt there. They will not stop here. My father, sir, setit all down to paint. It was his dream, sir, to paint the house fromfloor to ceiling; his last words bade me pinch and save until I couldpaint. Well, here is the house painted, and I am anxious for a newdevice and name which shall obliterate the memory of the other. 'TheBlack Eagle' is its old name. Ask any traveller familiar with the roadbetween Augsburg and Schlestadt, and he will counsel you to avoid 'TheBlack Eagle.' You are travelling to Schlestadt, perhaps."
Wogan had started ever so slightly.
"To Strasbourg," he said, and thereafter ate his supper in silence,taking count with himself. "My friend," so his thoughts ran, "the sooneryou reach Schlestadt the better. Here are you bleating like a sheep at amere chance mention of your destination. You have lived too close withthis fine scheme of yours. You need your friends."
Wogan began to be conscious of an unfamiliar sense of loneliness. Itgrew upon him that evening while he sat at the table; it accompanied himup the stairs to bed. Other men of his age were now seated comfortablyby their own hearths, while he was hurrying about Europe, a vagabondadventurer, risking his life for--and at once the reason why he wasrisking his life rose up to convict him a grumbler.
The landlord led him into a room in the front of the house which held agreat canopied bed and little other furniture. There was not even acurtain to the window. Wogan raised his candle and surveyed the dingywalls.
"You have not spent much of your new paint on your guest-room, myfriend."
"Sir, you have not marked the door," said his host, reproachfully.
"True," said Wogan, with a yawn; "the door is admirably white."
"The frame of the door does not suffer in a comparison." The landlordraised and lowered his candle that Wogan might see.
"I do not wish to be unjust to the frame of the door," said Wogan, andhe drew off his boots. The landlord bade his guest good-night anddescended the stairs.
Wogan, being a campaigner, was methodical even though lost inreflection. He was reflecting now why in the world he should lately havebecome sensible of loneliness; but at the same time he put the Prince'sletter beneath his pillow and a sheathed hunting-knife beside theletter. He had always been lonely, and the fact had never troubled him;he placed a chair on the left of the bed and his candle on the chair.Besides, he was not really lonely, having a host of friends whom he hadmerely to seek out; he took the charges from his pistol lest they shouldbe damp, and renewed them and placed the pistols by the candle. He hadeven begun to pity himself for his loneliness, and pity of that sort, herecognised, was a discreditable quality; the matter was altogether verydisquieting. He propped his sword against the chair and undressed. Wogancast back in his memories for the first sensations of loneliness. Theywere recent, since he had left Ohlau, indeed. He opened the window; therain splashed in on the sill, pattered in the street puddles below, andfell across the country with a continuous roar as though the level plainwas a stretched drum. No; he had only felt lonely since he had come nearto Schlestadt, since, in a word, he had deemed himself to haveoutstripped pursuit. He got into his bed and blew out the candle.
For a moment the room was black as pitch, then on his left side thedarkness thinned at one point and a barred square of grey becamevisible; the square of grey was the window. Wogan understood that hisloneliness came upon him with the respite from his diffic
ulties, andconcluded that, after all, it was as well that he had not a comfortablefireside whereby to sun himself. He turned over on his right side andsaw the white door and its white frame. The rain made a dreary soundoutside the window, but in three days he would be at Schlestadt. Besideshe fell asleep.
And in a little he dreamed. He dreamed that he was swinging on a gibbetbefore the whole populace of Innspruck, that he died to his bewildermentwithout any pain whatever, but that pain came to him after he was quitedead,--not bodily pain at all, but an anguish of mind because the chainsby which he was hanged would groan and creak, and the populace,mistaking that groaning for his cries, scoffed at him and ridiculed hisKing for sending to rescue the Princess Clementina a marrowless thingthat could not die like a man. Wogan stirred in his sleep and waked up.The rain had ceased, and a light wind blew across the country. Outsidethe sign-board creaked and groaned upon its stanchion. Once he becameaware of that sound he could no longer sleep for listening to it; and atlast he sprang out of bed, and leaning out of the window lifted thesign-board off the stanchion and into his bedroom.
It was a plain white board without any device on it. "True," thoughtWogan, "the man wants a new name for his inn." He propped the boardagainst the left side of his bed, since that was nearest to the window,got between the sheets, and began to think over names. He turned on hisright side and fell asleep again.
He was not to sleep restfully that night. He waked again, but veryslowly, and without any movement of his body. He lay with his facetowards the door, dreamily considering that the landlord, for all hispride in his new paint, had employed a bad workman who had left a blackstrip of the door unpainted,--a fairly wide strip, too, which his hostshould never have overlooked.
Wogan was lazily determining to speak to the landlord about it when hishalf-awakened mind was diverted by a curious phenomenon, a delusion ofthe eyes such as he had known to have befallen him before when he hadstared for a long while on any particular object: the strip of blackwidened and widened. Wogan waited for it to contract, as it would besure to do. But it did not contract, and--so Wogan waked up completely.
He waked up with a shock of the heart, with all his senses startled andstrained. But he had been gradually waking before, and so by neithermovement nor cry did he betray that he was awake. He had not locked thedoor of his room; that widening strip of black ran vertically down fromthe lintel to the ground and between the white door and the white doorframe. The door was being cautiously pushed open; the strip of black wasthe darkness of the passage coming through.
Wogan slid his hand beneath his pillow, and drew the knife from itssheath as silently as the door opened. The strip of black ceased towiden, there was a slight scuffling sound upon the floor which Wogan wasat no loss to understand. It was the sound of a man crawling into theroom upon his hands and knees.
Wogan lay on his side and felt grateful to his host,--an admirableman,--for he had painted his door white, and now he crawled through iton his hands and knees. No doubt he would crawl to the side of the bed;he did. To feel, no doubt, for Mr. Wogan's coat and breeches and anylittle letter which might be hiding in the pockets. But here Wogan waswrong. For he saw a dark thing suddenly on the counterpane at the edgeof the bed. The dark thing travelled upwards very softly; it had fourfingers and a thumb. It was, no doubt, travelling towards the pillow,and as soon as it got there--but Wogan watching that hand beneath hisdosed eyelids had again to admit that he was wrong. It did not traveltowards the pillow; to his astonishment it stole across towards him, ittouched his chest very gently, and then he understood. The hand wascreeping upwards towards his throat.
Meanwhile Wogan had seen no face, though the face must be just below thelevel of the bed. He only saw the hand and the arm behind it. He movedas if in his sleep, and the hand disappeared. As if in his sleep, heflung out his left arm and felt for the sign-board standing beside hisbed. The bed was soft. Wogan wanted something hard, and it had occurredto him that the sign-board would very well serve his turn. An idea, too,which seemed to him diverting, had presented itself to his mind.
With a loud sigh and a noisy movement such as a man halfway betweenwakefulness and sleep may make he flung himself over onto his left side.At the same moment he lifted the white sign-board onto the bed. Itseemed that he could not rest on his left side, for he flung over againto his right and pulled the bedclothes over as he turned. The sign-boardnow lay flat upon the bed, but on the right side between himself and theman upon the floor. His mouth uttered a little murmur of contentment, hedrew down the hand beneath the pillow, and in a second was breathingregularly and peacefully.
"WITH HIS RIGHT ARM HE DROVE HIS HUNTING KNIFE DOWN INTOTHE BACK OF THE HAND."--_Page 69_.]
The hand crept onto the bed again and upwards, and suddenly lay spreadout upon the board and quite still. Just for a second the owner of thathand had been surprised and paralysed by the unexpected. It was onlythat second which Wogan needed. He sat up, and with his right arm hedrove his hunting knife down into the back of the hand and pinned itfast to the board; with his left he felt for, found, and gripped a mouthalready open to cry out. He dropped his hunting knife, caught theintruder round the waist, lifted him onto the bed, and setting a kneeupon his chest gagged him with an end of the sheet. The man foughtwildly with his free hand, beating the air. Wogan knelt upon that armwith his other knee.
Wogan needed a rope, but since he had none he used the sheets and boundhis prisoner to the bed. Then he got up and went to the door. The housewas quite silent, quite dark. Wogan shut the door gently--there was nokey in the lock--and bending over the bed looked into the face of hisassailant. The face was twisted with pain, the whites of the eyes glaredhorribly, but Wogan could see that the man was his landlord.
He stood up and thought. There was another man who had met him in thevillage and had guided him to the inn; there was still a third who hadgone out of the kitchen as Wogan had entered it; there was the wife,too, who might be awake.
Wogan crossed to the window and looked out. The window was perhapstwenty feet from the ground, but the stanchion was three feet below thewindow. He quickly put on his clothes, slipped the letter from under hispillow into a pocket, strapped his saddle-bag and lowered it from thewindow by a blanket. He had already one leg on the sill when aconvulsive movement of the man on the bed made him stop. He climbed backinto the room, drew the knife out of the board and out of the handpinned to the board, and making a bandage wrapped the wound up.
"You must lie there till morning, my friend," Wogan whispered in hisear, "but here's a thing to console you. I have found a name for yourinn; I have painted the device upon your sign-board. The 'Inn of theFive Red Fingers.' There's never a passer-by but will stop to inquirethe reason of so conspicuous a sign;" and Wogan climbed out of thewindow, lowered himself till he hung at the full length of his arms fromthe stanchion, and dropped on the ground. He picked up his saddle-bagand crept round the house to the stable. The door needed only a push toopen it. In the hay-loft above he heard a man snoring. Mr. Wogan did notthink it worth while to disturb him. He saddled his horse, walked it outinto the yard, mounted, and rode quietly away.
He had escaped, but without much credit to himself.
"There was no key in the door," he thought. "I should have noticed it.Misset, the man of resources, would have tilted a chair backwardsagainst that door with its top bar wedged beneath the door handle."Certainly Wogan needed Misset if he was to succeed in his endeavour. Hewas sunk in humiliation; his very promise to rescue the Princess shrankfrom its grandeur and became a mere piece of impertinence. But he stillhad his letter in his pocket, and in time that served to enhearten him.Only two more days, he thought. On the third night he would sleep inSchlestadt.