Gerald Fitzgerald: The Chevalier Part 4

'Throw it on the fire, then. Is it not enough to live thus, but that I must be reminded thirty, forty times a day of my poverty and incapacity?

Am I to be flouted with my fallen fortune? On the fire with it, at once!'

'Poor Luke's prayers were offered at an untimely moment,' said Kelly, untying the scroll, as if preparing to obey. 'Maybe, after all, he is asking for a new rosary, or a pair of sandals. Shall I read it, sire?'

The Prince made no reply, and Kelly, who thoroughly understood his humour, made no further effort to obtain a hearing for his friend; but, tearing the long scroll in two, he muttered the first line that caught his eye:

'"Pet.i.tion of Mary Fitzgerald."'

'What--of--whom? Fitzgerald! what Fitzgerald?' cried Charles, catching the other's wrist with a sudden grasp.

'"Sister of Grace Geraldine."'

The words were not well uttered when Charles s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from Kelly's hand, and drew near to the lamp.

'Leave me; wait in the room without, Kelly!' said he; and the tone of his voice implied a command not to be gainsaid. The Prince now flattened out the crumpled doc.u.ment before him, holding the fragments close together; but, although he bent over them attentively for several minutes, he made little progress in their contents, for drop by drop the hot tears rose to his eyes, and fell heavily on the paper. Gradually, too, his head declined, till at last it fell forward on the table, where he lay, sobbing deeply. It was a long time before he arose from this att.i.tude; and then his furrowed cheeks and glazed eyes told of intense sorrow. 'What ruin have I brought everywhere!' was the exclamation that broke from him, in a voice tremulous with agony. 'Kinloch said truly: "We must have sinned heavily, to be so heavily cursed!"' Again and again did he bend over the paper, and, few as were the lines, it was long before he could read them through, such was the gush of emotion they excited. 'Was there ever a cause so hallowed by misfortune?' cried he, in an accent of anguish. 'Oh! Grace, had you been spared to me, I might have been other than this. But, if it were to be--if it were indeed fated that I should become the thing I am, thank G.o.d you have not lived to see it! George,' cried he suddenly, 'who brought this paper?'

Kelly came at once at his call, and replied that the bearer was a poor friar, by name MacMa.n.u.s.

'Let me see him alone,' said the Prince; and the next moment Fra Luke entered the chamber, and, with a low and deferential gesture, stooped down to kiss his hand. 'You are an Irishman.' said Charles, speaking with a thick but rapid utterance; 'from none of your countrymen have I met with anything but loyalty and affection. Tell me, then, frankly, what you know of this paper--who wrote it?'

'I did, myself, your Royal Highness,' said Luke, trembling all over with fear.

'Its contents are all true--strictly true?'

'As the words of this holy Book.' said Luke, placing his hand on his breviary.

'Why were they not made known to me before--answer me that?' cried Charles angrily.

'I'll tell your Royal Highness why,' replied Luke, who gained courage as he was put upon the defensive. 'She that 's gone--the Heavens be her bed!--made her sister promise, in her last hour, never to ask nor look for favour or benefit from your Royal Highness.'

'I will not believe this,' broke in Charles indignantly; 'you are more than bold, sir, to dare to tell me so.'

''Tis true as Gospel,' replied the friar. 'Her words were: "Let there be one that went down to the grave with the thought that loving him was its best reward! and leave me to think that I live in his memory as I used in his heart."'

The Prince turned away, and drew his hand across his eyes.

'How came she here--since when?' asked he suddenly.

'Four years back; we came together. I bore her company all the way from Ireland, and on foot too, just to put the child into the college here.'

'And she has been in poverty all this while?'

'Poverty! faith, you might call it distress!--keeping a little trattoria in the Viccolo d'Orso, taking sewing, washing--whatever she could; slaving and starving, just to get shoes and the like for the boy.'

'How comes it, then, that she has yielded at last to write me this?'

said Charles, who, in proportion as his self-accusings grew more poignant, sought to turn reproach on any other quarter.

'She didn't, nor wouldn't,' said the Fra; ''twas I did it myself. I told her that she might ease her conscience, by never accepting anything; that I'd write the pet.i.tion and go up with it, and that all I 'd ask was a trifle for the child.'

'She loves him, then,' said Charles tenderly. The friar nodded his head slowly twice, and muttered, 'G.o.d knows she does.'

'And does he repay her affection?'

'How can he? Sure he doesn't know her; he never sees her. When we were on the way here, he always thought it was his nurse she was; and from that hour to this he never set eyes on her.'

'What motive was there for all this?'

'Just to save him the shame among the rest, that they couldn't say his mother's sister was in rags and wretchedness, without a meal to eat.'

'She never sees him, then?'

'Only when he walks out with the cla.s.s, every Friday; they come down the hill from the Capitol, and then she's there, watching to get a look at him.'

'And he--what is he like?'

The friar stepped back, and gazed at the Prince from head to foot in silence, and then at length said: 'He's like a Prince, sorrow less! The black serge gown, the coa.r.s.e shoes, the square cap, ugly as they are, can't disfigure him; and though they cut off his beautiful hair, that curled half-way down his back, they couldn't spoil him. He has the great dark blue eyes of his mother, and the long lashes, almost girlish to look at.'

'He's mild and gentle, then?' said Charles pensively.

'Indeed and I won't tell you a lie,' said Luke, half mournfully, 'but that 's just what I believe he isn't. The sub-rector says there's nothing he couldn't learn, either in the sciences or the humanities.

He can write some of the ancient and three of the modern tongues. His disputations got him the medal; but somehow----'

'Well--go on. Somehow----'

'He's wild--wild,' said the friar, and as if he was glad to have found the exact word he wanted; 'he 'd rather go out on the Campagna there and ride one of the driver's ponies all day, than he 'd walk in full procession with all the cardinals. He 'd like to be fighting the shepherds' dogs, wicked as they are, or goading their mad cattle till they turn on him. Many a day they 've caught him at that sport; and, if I 'm not mistaken, he's in punishment now, though Mrs. Mary doesn't know it, for putting a ram inside the railings of a fountain, so that the neighbours durstn't go near to draw water. 'Tis diversions like these has made him as ragged and tattered as he is.'

'Bad stuff for the cloister,' said Charles, with a faint smile.

'Who knows? Sure Cardinal Guidotti was at every mischief when a boy; and there's Gardoni, the secretary of the Quirinal, wasn't he the terror of the city with his pranks?'

'Can I see this boy--I mean, could he be brought here without his knowing or suspecting to whom he was presented?'

'Sure, if Kelly was to----'

'Ay, ay, I know as well as you do.' broke in the Prince, 'George Kelly has craft and cunning enough for more than that; but supposing, my worthy Fra, that I did not care to intrust Kelly with this office: supposing that, for reasons known to myself, I wished this matter a secret, can you hit upon the means of bringing the lad here, that I might see and speak with him?'

'It should be after dark, your Royal Highness, or he would know the palace again, and then find out who lived in it.'

'Well, be it so.'

'Then there's the rules of the college; without a special leave a student cannot leave the house, and even then he must have a professor with him.'

'A cardinal's order would, of course, be sufficient,' said the Prince.

'To be sure it would, sir,' said the friar, with a gesture that showed how implicitly his confidence was given to such a conjuncture.

'The matter shall be done then, and thus: on Tuesday next Kelly goes to Albano, and will not return till Wednesday or Thursday evening. At seven o'clock on Tuesday evening you will present yourself at the college, and ask for the president: you will only have to say that you are come for the youth Fitzgerald. He will be at once given into your charge; drive then at once to the Corso, where you can leave the carriage, and proceed hither on foot. When you arrive here, you shall be admitted at once.

One only caution I have to give you, friar, and it is this: upon your reserve and discretion it depends whether I ever befriend this boy, or cast him off for ever. Should one syllable of this interview transpire--should I ever discover that, under any pretence or from any accident, you have divulged what has pa.s.sed between us here--and discover it I must, if it be so--from that instant I cease to take interest in him. I know your cloth well; you can be secret if you will: let this be an occasion for the virtue. I need not tell you more; nor will I add one threat to enforce my caution. The boy's own fortune in life is on the issue; that will be enough.'