"I am not beautiful, I know; I never boasted that I was; but I have a
figure and limbs that a painter would die to paint. And what do you make
of me? A maggot, a thing all body like a nasty bear. Oh, curse the day
that I set out with such tyrants! A pretty figure of fun I should make
before your beautiful German, covered with mud to the knees. No, you
shall hang me first! Why couldn't O'Toole do his own work, the ninny, I
hate him! He's tall enough, the great donkey; but no, I must do it,
who am shorter, and even then not short enough for him and you, but you
must drag me through the dirt without heels!"
Wogan let her run on; he was at his wits' end what to do. All this
turmoil, these tears, these oaths and blows, came from nothing more
serious than this, that Jenny, to make her height less remarkable, must
wear no heels. It was ludicrous, it was absurd, but none the less the
whole expedition, carried to the very point of completion, must fail,
utterly and irretrievably fail, because Jenny would not for one day go
without her heels. The Princess must remain in her prison at Innspruck;
the Chevalier must lose his wife; the exertions of Wogan and his
friends, their risks, their ingenuity, must bear no fruit because Jenny
would not show herself three inches short of her ordinary height.
O'Toole had warned him there would be a difficulty; but that the
difficulty should become an absolute hindrance, should spoil a scheme of
so much consequence, that was inconceivable.
Yet there was Jenny sobbing her heart out on the steps not half a mile
from the villa; the minutes were passing; the inconceivable thing was
true. Wogan could have torn his hair in the rage of his despair. He
could have laughed out loudly and passionately until even on that stormy
night he brought the guard. He thought of the perils he had run, the
difficulties he had surmounted. He had outwitted the Countess de Berg
and Lady Featherstone, he had persuaded the reluctant Prince Sobieski,
he had foiled his enemies on the road to Schlestadt, he had made his
plans, he had gathered his friends, he had crept out with them from
Strasbourg, yet in the end they had come to Innspruck to be foiled
because Jenny would not go without her heels. Wogan could have wept like
Jenny.
But he did not. On the contrary, he sat down by her side on the steps
and took her hand, gentle as a sheep.