From Marietta Gerald heard how, with that strange fatality of
inconsistency which ever seemed to accompany the fortunes of the
Stuarts, none proved faithful followers save those whose lives of excess
or debauchery rendered them valueless; and thus the drunken Fra, whose
wild snatches of song and ribaldry now broke in upon the colloquy, was
no other than the Carmelite, Kelly, the once associate and corrupter of
his father.
In a half-mad enthusiasm to engage men in the cause of his Prince he had
begun a sort of recruitment of a legion who were to land in Scotland or
Ireland. The means by which he at first operated were somewhat liberally
contributed to him by a secret emissary of the family, whom Kelly at
length discovered to be the private secretary of Miss Walsingham, the
former mistress of Charles Edward. Later on, however, he found out that
this lady herself was actually a pensioner of the English government,
and in secret correspondence with Mr. Pitt, who, through her
instrumentality, was in possession of every plan of the Pretender, and
knew of his daily movements. This treacherous intercourse had begun
several years before the death of Charles Edward, and lasted for some
years after that event.
Stung by the consciousness of being duped, as well as maddened by having
been rendered an enemy to the cause he sought to serve, Kelly disbanded
his followers, and took to the mountains as a brigand. With years he had
grown only more abandoned to excess of every kind. All his experiences
of life had shown little beyond baseness and corruption, and he had
grown to care for nothing beyond the enjoyment of the passing hour,
except when the possibility of a vengeance on those who had betrayed him
might momentarily awake his passion, and excite him to some effort of
vindictive anger.
In his hours of mad debauchery he would rave about landing in England,
and a plan he had conceived for assassinating the king; then it was his
scheme to murder Mr. Pitt, and sometimes all these were abandoned for
the desire to make Miss Walsingham herself pay the penalty of her base
and unwomanly treachery.
‘He came to our convent gate in his garb of a friar to beg,’ said
Marietta. ‘I saw him but for an instant, and I knew him at once. He was
one of those who, in the “red days” of the Revolution, mocked the order
he belonged to by wearing a rosary of playing-dice! and he recognised
me as one who had even more shamelessly exposed herself.’ A deep crimson
flush covered her face and neck as she spoke, and as quickly fled, to
leave her as pale as a corpse. ‘Oh, _mio caro_,’ cried she, ‘there are
intoxications more maddening to the senses than those of drinking; there
are wild fevers of the mind, when degradation seems a sort of martyrdom;
and in the very depth of our infamy and shame we appear to ourselves to
have attained to something superhuman in self-denial. It was my fate
to live with one who inspired these sentiments.’ She paused for a few
seconds, and then, trembling on every accent, she said: ‘To win his
love, to conquer the heart that would not yield to me, I dared more than
ever woman, far more than ever man, dared.’
‘Here’s to the king’s buffoon, and a bumper toast it shall be,’ burst
in the friar, with a drunken ribaldry; ‘and if there are any will not
drink it, let him drink to the Minister’s mistress!’
To the sudden gesture which Gerald’s anger evoked, Marietta quickly
interposed her hand, and, in a low, soft voice, besought him to remain
quiet.
‘If the cause were up, or the cause were down,
What matter to you or to me;
For though the Prince had played his crown,
_Our_ stake was a bare bawbee!’
sang out Kelly lustily. ‘Who’ll deny it? Who’ll say there wasn’t sound
reason and philosophy in that sentiment? None knew it better than Prince
Charlie himself.’
‘And was this man the companion of a Prince?’ whispered Gerald in her
ear.
‘Even so; fallen fortunes bring degraded followers,’ said Marietta. ‘I
have heard it said that many of his father’s associates were of this
stamp.’
‘And how could men hope to restore a cause thus contaminated and
stained?’ cried he, somewhat louder.
‘That’s what Kinloch said,’ burst in Kelly; ‘you remember the song--
‘The Prince he swore, on his broad claymore,
That he ‘d sit in his father’s chair,
But there wasn’t a man, outside his clan,
That wanted to see him there, boys,
That wanted to see him there.’
‘A black falsehood, as black as ever a traitor uttered!’ cried Gerald,
whose passion burst all bounds.
‘Here’s to the traitors--hip, hip! To the traitors, for it was--
‘The traitors all in St. Cannes’s hall,
They feasted merrily there,
While the wearied men sought the bleak, wild glen,
And tasted but sorry fare, boys,
Tasted but sorry fare.
‘Oh, if I ‘d a voice, and could have my choice,
I know with whom I ‘d be,
Not the hungry lads, with their threadbare plaids,
But the lords of high degree, boys,
The lords of high degree.’
‘And so thought the Prince too, cried he out fiercely, and in a tone
meant for an insolent taunt. ‘He liked the easy life and the soft couch
of St. Germains far better than the long march and the heather-bed in
the Highlands.’
‘How long must I endure this fellow’s insolence?’ whispered Gerald to
Marietta, in a voice trembling with passion.
‘For my sake, Gherardi,’ she began; but the Fra overheard the words, and
with a drunken laugh broke in--
‘If you have a drop of Stuart blood in you, you ‘ll yield to the woman,
whatever it is she asks.’
Stung beyond control of reason, Gerald sprang to his feet; but before
he could even approach Kelly, the stout friar had grasped his short
blunderbuss and cocked it.
‘Another step--one step more, and if you were the anointed King himself,
instead of his bastard, I ‘ll send you to your reckoning!’
With a spring like the bound of a tiger, Gerald dashed at him; but the
Fra was prepared, and, raising the weapon to his side, he fired. A wild,
mad cry, blended with the loud report echoed in many a mountain gorge,
and the youth fell dead on the sward.
Marietta threw herself down upon the corpse, kissing the lifeless lips,
and clasping her arms around the motionless body. With every endearing
word she tried to call him back to life, even for a momentary
consciousness of her devotion. The love she had so long denied him, she
now offered; she would be his and his only. With the wild eloquence of a
mind on fire, she pictured forth a future, now brightened with all that
successful ambition could confer, now blessed with the tranquil joys
of some secluded existence. Alas! he was beyond the reach of either
fortune. The last of the Stuarts lay still and stark on the cold earth,
his blue eyes staring without a blink at the strong sun.
When some peasants passed on the following day they found Marietta
seated beside the dead body, the cold hand clasped within both her own,
and her eyes riveted upon the features; her mind was gone, and, save a
few broken, indistinct mutterings, she never spoke again.
As for Kelly, none ever could trace him. Some allege that he dashed over
the precipice and was killed; others aver that he sailed that same
night from St. Stephano for America, where he was afterwards seen and
recognised by many.
The little cypress tree in the mountains which once marked the grave of
the last of the Stuarts has long since withered.
THE END
APPENDIX
NOTE I
There is a fragment of a letter from Sir Conway Seymour to Horace
Walpole, written from Rome, where the writer had gone for reasons of
health, and in which the passing news and gossip of the day are narrated
in all the careless freedom of friendly confidence. Much, by far the
greater part, of the epistle is filled up by artistic discussion about
pictures and statues, with little histories of the frauds and rogueries
to which connoisseurship was exposed; there is also a sprinkling of
scandal, a light and flippant sketch of Roman moralities, which really
might have been written in our own day; some passing allusions to
political events there are also; and lastly, there comes the part which
more peculiarly concerns my story. After a little flourish of trumpets
about his own social success, and the cordial intimacy with which he was
admitted into the best houses of Rome, he says, ‘Atterbury’s letters of
course opened many a door that would have been closed against me as
an Englishman, and gave me facilities rarely extended to one of our
country. To this happy circumstance am I indebted for a scene which I
can never cease to remember, as one of the strangest of my life. You are
aware that though at the great levées of the cardinals large crowds are
assembled, many presenting themselves who have no personal acquaintance
with the host, at the smaller receptions an exclusiveness prevails
unknown in any other land. To such an excess has this been carried, that
to certain houses, such as the Abbezi and the Piombino, few out of the
rank of royalty are ever invited. To the former of these great families
it was my fortune to be invited last Wednesday, and although my gout
entered a bold protest against dress shoes and buckles, I determined to
go.
‘It was not without surprise I found that, although there were scarcely
above a dozen carriages in waiting, the great Abbezi Palace was lighted
throughout its whole extent, the whole _cour_ being illuminated with the
blaze. I was aware that etiquette debarred his Holiness from ever being
present at these occasions. And yet there was an amount of preparation
and splendour now displayed that might well have indicated such an event
The servants’ coats were, I am told, white; but they were so
plastered with gold that the original colour was concealed. As for the
magnificence of the Palace itself, I will spare you all description, the
more as I know your heart still yearns after that beautiful Guercino of
the “two angels,” and the small Salvator of “St. John,” for which the
Duke of Strozzi gave his castle at San Marcello; neither will I torment
your curious soul by any allusion to those great vases of Sèvres, with
landscapes painted by both. With more equanimity will you hear of the
beautiful Marquesa d’Arco, in her diamond stomacher, and the Duchessa
de Forti, with a coronet of brilliants that might buy a province, not
to tell of the Colonna herself, whose heavy train, all studded over with
jewels, turned many an eye from her noble countenance to gaze upon the
floor. There were not above forty guests assembled when I arrived, nor
at any time were there more than sixty present, but all apparelled with
a magnificence that shamed the undecorated plainness of my humble court
suit. After paying my homage to his Eminence, I turned to seek out those
of my most intimate acquaintance present; but I soon discovered
that, from some mysterious cause, none were disposed to engage in
conversation--nay, they did but converse in whispers, and with an
abruptness that bespoke expectancy of something to come.
‘To while away the time pleasantly, I strolled through the rooms, all
filled as they were with objects to win attention, and having made the
tour of the quadrangle was returning to the great gallery, when, passing
the ante-chamber, I perceived that Cardinal York’s servants were all
ranged there, dressed in their fine scarlet liveries, a sight quite new
to see. Nor was this the less remarkable, from the fact that his Royal
Highness is distinguished for the utter absence of all that denotes
ostentation or display. I entered the great gallery, therefore, with
something of curiosity, to know what this might betoken. The company was
all ranged in a great circle, at one part of which a little group was
gathered, in which I had no difficulty in detecting the thin, sickly
face of the Cardinal York, looking fully twenty years beyond his
age, his frail figure bent nearly double. I could mark, besides, that
presentations were being made, as different persons came up, made their
reverence and were detained, some more, some less time in conversation,
who then retired, backing out as from a royal presence. While I stood
thus in wonderment, Don Cæsare, the brother of the Cardinal Abbezi, came
up, and taking me by the arm, led me forward, saying--
‘“Caro Natzio,” so he now calls me, “you must not be the last to make
your homage here.”
‘“And to whom am I to offer it?” asked I eagerly.
‘“To whom but to him it is best due. To the Prince who ought to be
King.”
‘“I am but a sorry expounder of riddles, Don Caesare,” said I, somewhat
hurt,’ as you can well imagine, by a speech so offensive to my loyalty.
‘“There is less question here,” replied he, “of partisanship than of the
courteous deference which every gentleman ungrudgingly accords to those
of royal birth. This is the Prince of Wales, at least till he be called
the King. He is the son of Charles Edward, and the last of the Stuarts.”
‘Ere I had rallied from the astonishment of this strange announcement,
the crowd separated in front of me, and I found myself in the presence
of a tall and sickly-looking youth, whose marvellous resemblance to the
Pretender actually overcame me. Nor was any artifice of costume omitted
that could help out the likeness, for he wore a sash of Stuart tartan
over his suit of maroon velvet, and a curiously elaborate claymore hung
by his side. Mistaking me for the Prince D’Arco, he said, in the low,
soft voice of his race--
‘“How have you left the Princess; or is she at Rome?”
‘“This is the Chevalier de Seymour, may it please your Royal Highness,”
whispered the Cardinal Gualterio, “a gentleman of good and honourable
name, though allied with a cause that is not ours.”
‘“Methinks all Englishmen might be friends of mine,” said the Prince,
smiling sadly; “at all events they need not be my enemies.” He held out
his hand as he spoke: and so much of dignity was there in his air, so
much of regal condescension in his look, that I knelt and kissed it.
‘Amid a low, murmuring comment on his princely presence, yet not so low
but that he himself could hear it, I moved forward to give place to the
next presentation. And so did the tide flow on for above an hour. Well
knowing what a gloss men would put upon all this, I hastened home, and
wrote it all to Sir Horace Mann at Florence, assuring him that my loyal
attachment to the house of Hanover was unbroken, and that his Majesty
had no more faithful subject or adherent than myself. His reply is now
before me as I write.
‘“We know all about this youth,” says he. “Lord Chatham has had his
portrait taken; and if he come to England we shall take measures in his
behalf. As to yourself, you are no greater fool than were the Duke of
Beaufort and Lord Westmoreland with the lad’s father.”
‘Strange and significant words, and in no way denying the youth’s birth
and parentage.
‘At all events, the circumstance is curious; and all Rome talks of it
and nothing else, since the Walkinshaw, who always took her airings in
the Cardinal York’s carriage, and was treated as of royal rank, is now
no more seen; and “the Prince,” as he is styled, has taken her place,
and even sits in the post of honour, with the Cardinal on his left hand.
Are they enough minded of these things at home; or do they laugh at
danger so for off as Italy? For my own part, I say it, he is one to give
trouble, and make of a bad cause a serious case of disaffection, in so
much the more, that men say he is a fatalist, and believes it will be
his destiny to sit as king in England.’
I would fain make a longer extract from this letter, were I not afraid
that I have already trespassed too far upon my reader’s indulgence. It
is said that in the unpublished correspondence of Sir Horace Mann--a
most important contribution to the history of the time, if only given
to the world in its entirety--would be found frequent allusion to the
Chevalier de Fitzgerald, and the views entertained in his behalf. With
all the professional craft of diplomacy, the acute envoy detected
the various degrees of credence that were accorded to the youth’s
legitimacy; and saw how many there were who were satisfied to take all
the benefit of his great name for the purpose of intrigue, without ever
sincerely interesting themselves in his cause.
NOTE II
In the correspondence to which I have already alluded there is a letter
to the British Envoy at Florence, in which a reference is thus made
to an incident in my story. Shall I own that without this historic
allusion, I would scarcely have detained my reader by what is, after
all, a mere episodical passage in the tale? Seymour writes--‘So far as
I can learn, the woman arrested under this charge of sorcery is not
a British subject at all, as I at first informed you, although great
reason exists to believe her to be a spy in the Jacobite cause. All
my efforts to obtain a sight of her have also failed; nor can I even
ascertain where it is they have confined her. The common story goes,
that she has bewitched the young Chevalier of whom they want to make a
Prince of the House of Stewart, and thus entirely spoiled the game
the Jesuits were plotting. Vulgar rumour adds the enormous rewards
she demands for disenchanting him and so forth; but more trustworthy
accounts suggest that all her especial subtlety will be needed to effect
her own escape. That she possesses boundless wealth, and is of peerless
beauty, a miracle of learning and accomplishment, you are, of course,
prepared to hear. Would that I were enabled to add my own humble
testimony on any of these points. Neither Alberoni nor Casali have seen
her, so that you may easily imagine how hopeless are my chances.
‘It is very hard to believe these things in our age; but so they are,
and this morning I was told that the “Prince,” pardon me the title, has
been so much advantaged by her visit, that he has thrown off all his old
melancholy, and goes about gay and happy. Of this I cannot pronounce,
for his Royal Highness has gone down to Caraffa’s villa at Orvieto, by
way of recovering his health completely, and lives there in the very
strictest seclusion.
‘The affair has so many aspects, that in some one or other of them it
has occupied all Rome during the last five or six weeks, and we go about
asking each other will the Prince marry Guglia Ridolfi, Caraffa’s niece?
Will he ever be King of England? When will they crown _him_? When will
they burn the witch? Of the latter event, if it show signs of occurring,
I am to give due tidings beforehand to our friend Horatio, who, gout
permitting, would come out from England to see the ceremony.
‘It is my belief that Mr. Pitt would put this female to more profitable
use than by making a fagot of her, if she had but half what the world
alleges in craft and acuteness. Priests, however, tolerate no rivals,
and permit no legerdemain but their own. Poor creature! is it not just
possible that she may be more enthusiast than cheat?
‘About the Chevalier himself I have nothing to add. I saw him on
Thursday a-horseback, and I must own he sat his beast gracefully and
well; he is of right manly presence, and recalls the features of his
family, if they be his family, most pleasingly. He dismounted near
Trajan’s column to receive the benediction of the Holy Father, who was
there blessing oxen, it being the festival of St. Martin, who protects
these animals; and as he knelt down and rose up again, and then saluted
the noble guard, who presented arms, there was a dignity and elegance
in his deportment which struck all observers; nor did I marvel as
Atterbury’s nephew whispered into my ear--the “Dutchman could never have
done it like that.”’
C. L.
End of Project Gutenberg’s Gerald Fitzgerald, by Charles James Lever