If the night which followed the interview of the Père Massoni with
Carrol was one of deep anxiety, the morning did not bring any relief
to his cares. His first duty was to ask after Fitzgerald. The youth had
slept little, but lay tranquil and uncomplaining, and to all seeming
indifferent either as to the strange place or the strange faces around
him. The keen-eyed servant, Giacomo, himself an humble member of the
order, quickly detected that he was suffering under some mental shock,
and that the case was one where the mere physician could afford but
little benefit.
‘He lies there quiet as a child,’ said he, ‘never speaking nor moving,
his eyelids half drooped over his eyes, and save that now and then, at
long intervals, he breathes a low, faint sigh, you would scarce believe
he was alive.’
‘I will see him,’ said the Père, as he gently opened the door, and stole
noiselessly across the room. A faint streak of light peering between
the drawn window-curtains, fell directly on the youth’s face, showing
it pale and emotionless, as Giacomo described it. As the Père seated
himself by the bedside, he purposely made a slight noise, to attract
the other’s attention, but Gerald did not notice him, not even turning
a look toward him. Massoni laid his finger on the pulse, the action
was weak but regular; nothing to denote fever or excitement, only the
evidence of great exhaustion or debility.
‘I have come to hear how you have rested,’ said the Père, in an accent
he could render soft as a woman’s, ‘and to welcome you to Rome.’
A faint, very faint, smile was all the reply to this speech.
‘I am aware that you have gone through much suffering and peril,’
continued the Père, ‘but with rest and kind care you will soon be well
again. You are among friends, who are devoted to you.’
A gentle movement of the brows, as if in assent, replied.
‘It may be that speaking would distress you; perhaps even my own words
fatigue you. If so I will be satisfied to come and sit silently beside
you, till you are stronger and better.’
‘Si--si,’ muttered Gerald faintly, and at the same time he essayed to
smile as it were in recognition.
A quick convulsive twitch of impatience passed across the Père’s pale
face, but so rapidly that it seemed a spasm, and the features were the
next moment calm as before; and now Massoni sat silently gazing on
the tranquil lineaments before him. Among the various studies of his
laborious life medicine had not been neglected, and now he addressed
himself to examine the condition and study the symptoms of the youth.
The case was not of much bodily ailment, at least save in the exhaustion
which previous illness had left. There was nothing like malady, but
there were signs of a mischief far deeper, more subtle, and less
curable than mere physical ills. The look of vacancy--the half-meaning
smile--the dull languor, not alone in feature but in the way he lay--all
presented matter for grave and weighty fears. The very presence of these
signs, unaccompanied by ailment, gave a gloomier aspect to the case,
and led the Père to reflect whether such traits had any connection
with descent. The strong resemblance which the young man bore to the
Stuarts--and there were few families where the distinctive traits were
more marked--induced Massoni to consider the question with reference to
_them_. They are indeed a race whose wayward impulses and rash resolves
took oftentimes but little guidance of reason; but these were mere signs
of eccentricity and not insanity. But might not the one be precursor
to the other; might not the frail judgment, which sufficed for the
every-day cares of life, utterly give way in seasons of greater trial?
Thus reasoning and communing with himself he sat till the hour struck
which apprised him of his audience with the Cardinal.
It was not yet the season when Rome was filled by its higher classes,
and Massoni could repair to the palace of the Cardinal without any of
the secrecy observable at other periods. Still he deemed it more in
accordance with the humility he affected to seek admission by a small
garden gate, which opened on the Pincian hill. The little portal
admitted him into a garden such as only Italy possesses. The gardens of
England are unrivalled for their peculiar excellence, for the exquisite
flavour of their fruit, and in their perfection of order and neatness
they stand unequalled in the world; the trim quaintness of the Dutch
taste has also its special beauty, and nowhere can be seen such gorgeous
colouring in flower-pots, such splendour of tulip and ranunculus: but
there is in Italy a rich blending of culture and wildness--a mingled
splendour and simplicity, just as in the great halls of the marble
palace on the Neva, where the haughtiest noble in his diamond pelisse,
stands side by side with the simple Boyard in his furs: so in the *
golden land,’ the cactus and the mimosa, the orange and the pear-tree,
the cedar of Lebanon and the stone-pine of the north, are commingled
and interleaved; all signs of a soil which can supply nourishment to the
rarest and most delicate, as well as to the hardiest of plants.
In this lovely wilderness, with many a group in marble, many a
beautifully-carved fountain, many an ornamental shrine, half hidden in
its leafy recesses, the Père now walked, screening his steps as he went,
from that great range of windows which opened on a grand terrace--a
precaution rather the result of habit than called for by the
circumstance of the time. A fish-pond of some extent, with a small
island> occupied the centre of the garden; the island itself being
ornamented by a beautiful little shrine dedicated to our Lady of Rimini,
the birth-place of the Cardinal. To this sacred spot his Eminence was
accustomed to repair for secret worship each morning of his life. As a
measure of respectful reverence for the great man’s devotions, the
place was studiously secluded from all intrusion, and even
strangers--admitted, as at rare intervals they were, to visit the
gardens--were never suffered to invade the sacred precincts of the
island.
A strangely contrived piece of mechanism appended to the little wicket
that formed the entrance always sufficed to show if his Eminence
was engaged in prayer, and consequently removed from all pretext of
interruption. This was an apparatus, by which the face of a beautifully
painted Madonna became suddenly covered by a veil, a signal that none
of the Cardinal’s nearest of blood would have dared to violate. It was,
indeed, to the hours of daily seclusion thus piously passed the Cardinal
owed that character for sanctity which eminently distinguished him in
the Church. A day never went over in which he did not devote at the
least an hour to this sacred duty, and the air of absorption, as he
repaired to the shrine, and the look of intense pre-occupation he
brought away, vouched for the depth of his pious musings.
As Massoni arrived at the narrow causeway which led over to the
island, he perceived that the veil of the Madonna was lowered. He
knew, therefore, at once that the Cardinal was there, and he stopped to
consider what course he should adopt, whether to loiter about the garden
till his Eminence should appear, or repair to the palace and await him.
The Père knew that the Cardinal was to leave Rome by midday, to reach
Albano to dinner, and he mused over the shortness of the time their
interview must last.
‘This is no common emergency,’ thought he at last; ‘here is a case
fraught with the most tremendous consequences. If this scheme be engaged
in, the whole of Europe may soon be in arms--the greatest convulsion
that ever shook the Continent may result; and out of the struggle who is
to foresee what principles may be the victors!
‘I will go to him at once,’ said he resolutely. ‘Events succeed each
other too rapidly nowadays for more delay. The “Terror” in France has
once more turned men’s minds to the peaceful security of a monarchy. Let
us profit by the moment’; and with this he traversed the narrow bridge
and reached the island.
A thick copse of ornamental planting screened the front of the little
shrine. Hastily passing through this, he stood within a few yards of the
building, when his steps were quickly arrested by the sound of a voice
whose accents could not be mistaken for the Cardinal’s. There was
besides something distinctively foreign in the pronunciation that
marked the speaker for a stranger. Curious to ascertain who might be the
intruder in a spot so sacred, Massoni stepped noiselessly through the
brushwood, and gained a little loop-holed aperture beside the altar,
from which the whole interior of the shrine could be seen. Seated on
one of the marble steps below the altar was the Cardinal, a loose
dressing-gown of rich fur wrapped round him, and a cap of the same
material on his head. Directly in front of him, and also seated on
the pedestal of a column, was a man in a Carthusian robe, patched and
discoloured, and showing many signs of age and poverty. The wearer,
however, was rubicund and jovial-looking, though the angles of the mouth
were somewhat dragged, and the wrinkles at the eyes were deep-worn. The
general expression, however, was that of one whose nature accepted the
struggles of life manfully and cheerfully. It was not till after some
minutes of close scrutiny that Massoni could recall the features, but at
length he remembered that it was the well-known Carthusian friar, George
Kelly, the former companion of Prince Charles Edward. If their positions
in life were widely different, Kelly did not suffer the disparity to
influence his manner, but talked with all the ease and familiarity of an
equal.
Whatever interest the scene might have had for Massoni was speedily
increased by the first words which met his ears. It was the Cardinal who
said--
‘I own to you, Kelly, until what you have told me I had put little faith
in the whole story of this youth; and there is then really such?’
‘There is, or at least there was, your Eminence. I remember as well as
if it was yesterday the evening he came to the palace to see the Prince.
A poor countryman of my own, a Carthusian, brought him, and took
him back again to the college. The boy was afterward sent to a villa
somewhere near Orvieto.’
‘Was the youth acknowledged by his Royal Highness as his son?’ asked the
Cardinal.
‘The Prince never spoke of him to me till the day before his death. He
then said, “Can you find out that Carthusian for me, Kelly?--I should
like to speak with him.” I told him that he had long since left Rome
and even Italy. The last tidings of him came from Ireland, where he was
living as a dependant on some reduced family.
‘“There is no time to fetch him from Ireland,” said his Highness; “and
yet, Kelly, I ‘d give a thousand pounds that he were here.” He then
asked me if I remembered a certain boy, dressed like a colleger of
the Jesuits, who came one night long ago to the palace with this same
Carthusian.
‘I said, yes; that though his Royal Highness believed that I was away
from Rome that night, I came back post-haste from Albano; and finding
myself in one of the corridors, I waited till Fra Luke came out from his
interview, with the boy beside him.
‘“True, true, Kelly; I meant you to have known nothing of this visit. So
then you saw the boy? What thought you of him?”
‘“I saw and marked him well, for his fair hair and skin were so
distinctively English, they made a deep impression upon me.”
‘“He had the mouth, too, Kelly--a little pouting and over full-lipped.
Did you mark that?”
‘“No, sire; I did not observe him so closely.”
‘“How poor and ragged the child was! his very shoes were broken. Did you
see his shoes?--and that frail bit of serge was all his covering against
the keen blast. O George,” cried he, as his lip shook with emotion,
“what would you say if that poor boy, all wretched and wayworn as
you saw him, were the true heir of a throne, and that the proudest in
Europe? What a lesson for human greatness that! It was a scurvy trick
you played me that night, sir,” said he, quickly changing, for his
moods were ever thus, and you never could guess how long any theme would
engage him--“a scurvy trick, sir, to pry into what your master desired
you should not know. I had my own good reasons for what I did, and
it ill became you to contravene them; but it was like your cloth--ay,
sirrah, it was the trick of all your kind.”
‘Out of this he fell a-weeping over the fallen fortunes of his house,
asking again and again if history contained anything its equal;
and saying that other dynasties had fallen through their crimes and
cruelties, but that his house had been ruined by trustfulness and
generosity; and so he forgot the boy and all about him.’
‘And think you it was to this youth that his Royal Highness bequeathed
the sum mentioned in his will, together with his George, the Grand Cross
of Malta, and the St. John of Jerusalem, for so the Cardinal York tells
me the bequest runs?’
‘As to that I can say nothing,’ Kelly replied.
‘I have heard,’ said the Cardinal again, ‘that in a sealed letter to
his brother York the Prince acknowledges this boy as his son, born in
wedlock, his mother being of an ancient and noble house.’ Then quickly
changing his tone, he asked, ‘How are we to find him, Kelly? Do you
believe that he still lives?’
‘I have no means of knowing; but if I wished to trace a man, not merely
in Europe, but through the globe itself, I am aware of but one police to
trust to.’
‘And that?’
‘The Jesuits: they are everywhere; and everywhere cautious, painstaking,
and trustworthy; they are well skilled in pursuits like these; and even
when they fail--and they seldom fail--they never compromise those who
employ them.’
‘Well,’ said the Cardinal, ‘they have failed here. They have been on the
track of this young fellow for years back; and when I tell you that the
craftiest of them all, Massoni, has not been able to find a clue to him,
what will you say?’
‘Why, that he must be dead and buried, your Eminence,’ broke in Kelly.
‘To that conclusion have I come myself, Fra Kelly. Had he been alive
he had come long since to claim this costly inheritance. Seven hundred
thousand Roman scudi, the Palazzo Albuquerque, at Albano, with all its
splendid pictures and jewels, worth double the whole----’
‘Egad, I had come out of my grave to assert my right to such a bequest,’
said Kelly, laughing. ‘Has the Cardinal York made search for him, your
Eminence?’ said he, hastily correcting his levity.
‘The Cardinal York is not likely to disturb himself with such cares;
and as the legacy lapses, in default of claimant, to the convent of St.
Lazarus of Medina, he probably deems that it will be as well bestowed.’
‘Lazarus will have fallen upon some savory crumbs this time,’ muttered
Kelly, whose disposition to jest seemed beyond all his self-control.
‘It was this very day Massoni hoped to have brought me some tidings of
the youth, said the Cardinal, rising, ‘and he has not appeared. It must
be as you have said, Kelly; the grave has closed over him. There is now,
therefore, a great danger to guard against: substitution of some other
for him--not by Massoni; he is a man of probity and honour; but he may
be imposed on by others. It is a fraud which would well repay all its
trouble.’
‘There is but one could detect the trick--that Luke M’Manus, the
Carthusian I have mentioned to your Eminence. He knew the boy well, and
was intrusted by the Prince to take charge of him; but he is away in
Ireland.’
‘But could be fetched, if necessary,’ said Caraffa, half musing, as he
moved toward the door.
Massoni did not wait to hear more, but stealthily threading his way
through the copse, he gained the garden, and retracing his steps,
returned to the convent. Ascending to his chamber by a private stair,
he gave his servant orders to say that he was indisposed, and could not
receive any one.
‘So, then, your Eminence,’ said he bitterly, as he sank into a chair,
‘you would underplot me here. Let us see who can play his cards best.’