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Clementina written by A.E.W. Mason

A >> A.E.W. Mason >> Clementina




"There is no salt," said Gaydon.

"Indeed there is," replied Misset, indignant at the aspersion on his
catering. "I have it in my tobacco-box." He took his tobacco-box from
his pocket and passed it into the carriage. Clementina made sandwiches
and passed them out to the horsemen. The chickens turned out to be old
cocks, impervious to the soundest tooth. No one minded except Misset,
who had brought them. The jolts of the carriage became matter for a
jest. They picnicked with the merriment of children, and finally
O'Toole, to show his contempt for the Emperor, fired off both his loaded
pistols in the air.

At that Wogan's anxiety returned. He blazed up into anger. He thrust his
head from the window.

"Is this your respect for her Highness?" he cried. "Is this your
consideration?"

"Nay," interposed Clementina, "you shall not chide my six feet four."

"But he is mad, your Highness. I don't say but what a trifle of madness
is salt to a man; but O'Toole's clean daft to be firing his pistols off
to let the whole world know who we are. Here are we not six stages from
Innspruck, and already we have lost twelve hours."

"When?"

"Last night, before we left Innspruck, between the time when you escaped
from the villa and when I joined you in the avenue. I climbed out of the
window to descend as I had entered, but the sentinel had returned. I
waited on the window-ledge crouched against the wall until he should
show me his back. After five minutes or so he did. He stamped on the
snow and marched up the lane. I let myself down and hung by my hands,
but he turned on his beat before I could drop. He marched back; I clung
to the ledge, thinking that in the darkness he would pass on beneath me
and never notice. He did not notice; but my fingers were frozen and
numbed with the cold. I felt them slipping; I could cling no longer, and
I fell. Luckily I fell just as he passed beneath me; I dropped feet
foremost upon his shoulders, and he went down without a cry. I left him
lying stunned there on the snow; but he will be found, or he will
recover. Either way our escape will be discovered, and no later than
this morning. Nay, it must already have been discovered. Already
Innspruck's bells are ringing the alarm; already the pursuit is
begun--" and he leaned his head from the window and cried, "Faster!
faster!" O'Toole, for his part, shouted, "Trinkgeldt!" It was the only
word of German which he knew. "But," said he, "there was a Saracen lady
I learned about at school who travelled over Europe and found her lover
in an alehouse in London, with no word but his name to help her over the
road. Sure, it would be a strange thing if I couldn't travel all over
Germany with the help of 'Trinkgeldt.'"

The word certainly had its efficacy with the postillion. "Trinkgeldt!"
cried O'Toole, and the berlin rocked and lurched and leaped down the
pass. The snow was now less deep, the drifts fewer. The road wound along
a mountain-side: at one window rose the rock; from the other the
travellers looked down hundreds of feet to the bed of the valley and the
boiling torrent of the Adige. It was a mere narrow ribbon of a road made
by the Romans, without a thought for the convenience of travellers in a
later day; and as the carriage turned a corner, O'Toole, mounted on his
horse, saw ahead a heavy cart crawling up towards them. The carter saw
the berlin thundering down towards him behind its four maddened horses,
and he drew his cart to the inside of the road against the rock. The
postillion tugged at his reins; he had not sufficient interval of space
to check his team; he threw a despairing glance at O'Toole. It seemed
impossible the berlin could pass. There was no use to cry out; O'Toole
fell behind the carriage with his mind made up. He looked down the
precipice; he saw in his imagination the huge carriage with its tangled,
struggling horses falling sheer into the foam of the river. He could not
ride back to Bologna with that story to tell; he and his horse must take
the same quick, steep road.

The postillion drove so close to the cart that he touched it as he
passed. "We are lost!" he shouted in an agony; and O'Toole saw the hind
wheel of the berlin slip off the road and revolve for the fraction of a
second in the air. He was already putting his horse at the precipice as
though it was a ditch to be jumped, when the berlin made, to his
astonished eyes, an effort to recover its balance like a live thing. It
seemed to spring sideways from the brink of the precipice. It not only
seemed, it did spring; and O'Toole, drawing rein, in the great revulsion
of his feelings, saw, as he rocked unsteadily in his saddle, the
carriage tearing safe and unhurt down the very centre of the road.

O'Toole set his spurs to his horse and galloped after it. The postillion
looked back and laughed.

"Trinkgeldt!" he cried.

O'Toole swore loudly, and getting level beat him with his whip. Wogan's
head popped out of the window.

"Silence!" said he in a rage. "Mademoiselle is asleep;" and then seeing
O'Toole's white and disordered face he asked, "What is it?" No one in
the coach had had a suspicion of their danger. But O'Toole still saw
before his eyes that wheel slip over the precipice and revolve in air,
he still felt his horse beneath him quiver and refuse this leap into
air. In broken tones he gasped out his story to Wogan, and as he spoke
the Princess stirred.

"Hush!" said Wogan; "she need not know. Ride behind, O'Toole! Your blue
eyes are green with terror. Your face will tell the story, if once she
sees it."

O'Toole fell back again behind the carriage, and at four that afternoon
they stopped before the post-house at Brixen. They had crossed the
Brenner in a storm of snow and howling winds; they had travelled ten
leagues from Innspruck. Wogan called a halt of half an hour. The
Princess had eaten barely a mouthful since her supper of the night
before. Wogan forced her to alight, forced her to eat a couple of eggs,
and to drink a glass of wine. Before the half-hour had passed, she was
anxious to start again.

From Brixen the road was easier; and either from the smoothness of the
travelling or through some partial relief from his anxieties, Wogan, who
had kept awake so long, suddenly fell fast asleep, and when he woke up
again the night was come. He woke up without a start or even a movement,
as was his habit, and sat silently and bitterly reproaching himself for
that he had yielded to fatigue. It was pitch-dark within the carriage;
he stared through the window and saw dimly the moving mountain-side, and
here and there a clump of trees rush past. The steady breathing of
Gaydon, on his left, and of Mrs. Misset in the corner opposite to
Gaydon, showed that those two guardians slept as well. His reproaches
became more bitter and then suddenly ceased, for over against him in the
darkness a young, fresh voice was singing very sweetly and very low. It
was the Princess Clementina, and she sang to herself, thinking all three
of her companions were asleep. Wogan had not caught the sound at first
above the clatter of the wheels, and even now that he listened it came
intermittently to his ears. He heard enough, however, to know and to
rejoice that there was no melancholy in the music. The song had the
clear bright thrill of the blackbird's note in June. Wogan listened,
entranced. He would have given worlds to have written the song with
which Clementina solaced herself in the darkness, to have composed the
melody on which her voice rose and sank.

The carriage drew up at an inn; the horses were changed; the flight was
resumed. Wogan had not moved during this delay, neither had Misset nor
O'Toole come to the door. But an ostler had flashed a lantern into the
berlin, and for a second the light had fallen upon Wogan's face and
open eyes. Clementina, however, did not cease; she sang on until the
lights had been left behind and the darkness was about them. Then she
stopped and said,--

"How long is it since you woke?"

Wogan was taken by surprise.

"I should never have slept at all," stammered he. "I promised myself
that. Not a wink of sleep betwixt Innspruck and Italy; and here was I
fast as a log this side of Trent. I think our postillion sleeps too;"
and letting down the window he quietly called Misset.

"We have fresh relays," said he, "and we travel at a snail's-pace."

"The relays are only fresh to us," returned Misset. "We can go no
faster. There is someone ahead with three stages' start of us,--someone
of importance, it would seem, and who travels with a retinue, for he
takes all the horses at each stage."

Wogan thrust his head out of the window. There was no doubt of it; the
horses lagged. In this hurried flight the most trifling hindrance was a
monumental danger, and this was no trifling hindrance. For the hue and
cry was most certainly raised behind them; the pursuit from Innspruck
had begun twelve hours since, on the most favourable reckoning. At any
moment they might hear the jingle of a horse's harness on the road
behind. And now here was a man with a great retinue blocking their way
in front.

"We can do no more, but make a fight of it in the end," said he. "They
may be few who follow us. But who is he ahead?"

Misset did not know.

"I can tell you," said Clementina, with a slight hesitation. "It is the
Prince of Baden, and he travels to Italy."

Wogan remembered a certain letter which his King had written to him from
Rome; and the hesitation in the girl's voice told him the rest of the
story. Wogan would have given much to have had his fingers about the
scruff of that pompous gentleman's neck with the precipice handy at his
feet. It was intolerable that the fellow should pester the Princess in
prison and hinder her flight when she had escaped from it.

"Well, we can do no more," said he, and he drew up the window. Neither
Gaydon nor Mrs. Misset were awakened; Clementina and Wogan were alone in
the darkness.

She leaned forward to him and said in a low voice,--

"Tell me of the King. I shall make mistakes in this new world. Will he
have patience with me while I learn?"

She had spoken upon the same strain in the darkness of the staircase
only the night before. Wogan gently laughed her fears aside.

"I will tell you the truest thing about the King. He needs you at his
side. For all his friends, he is at heart a lonely man, throned upon
sorrows. I dare to tell you that, knowing you. He needs not a mere
wife, but a mate, a helpmate, to strive with him, her hand in his. Every
man needs the helpmate, as I read the world. For it cannot but be that a
man falls below himself when he comes home always to an empty room."

The Princess was silent. Wogan hoped that he had reassured her. But her
thoughts were now turned from herself. She leaned yet further forward
with her elbows upon her knees, and in a yet lower voice she asked a
question which fairly startled him.

"Does she not love you?"

Wogan, indeed, had spoken unconsciously, with a deep note of sadness in
his voice, which had sounded all the more strange and sad to her from
its contrast with the quick, cheerful, vigorous tones she had come to
think the mark of him. He had spoken as though he looked forward with a
poignant regret through a weary span of days, and saw himself always in
youth and middle years and age coming home always to an empty room.
Therefore she put her question, and Wogan was taken off his guard.

"There is no one," he said in a flurry.

Clementina shook her head.

"I wish that I may hear the King speak so, and in that voice; I shall be
very sure he loves me," she said in a musing voice, and so changing
almost to a note of raillery. "Tell me her name!" she pleaded. "What is
amiss with her that she is not thankful for a true man's love like
yours? Is she haughty? I'll bring her on her knees to you. Does she
think her birth sets her too high in the world? I'll show her so much
contempt, you so much courtesy, that she shall fall from her arrogance
and dote upon your steps. Perhaps she is too sure of your devotion? Why,
then, I'll make her jealous!"

Wogan interrupted her, and the agitation of his voice put an end to her
raillery. Somehow she had wounded him who had done so much for her.

"Madam, I beg you to believe me, there is no one;" and casting about for
a sure argument to dispel her conjectures, he said on an impulse,
"Listen; I will make your Highness a confidence." He stopped, to make
sure that Gaydon and Mrs. Misset were still asleep. Then he laughed
uneasily like a man that is half-ashamed and resumed,--"I am lord and
king of a city of dreams. Here's the opening of a fairy tale, you will
say. But when I am asleep my city's very real; and even now that I am
awake I could draw you a map of it, though I could not name its streets.
That's my town's one blemish. Its streets are nameless. It has taken a
long while in the building, ever since my boyhood; and indeed the work's
not finished yet, nor do I think it ever will be finished till I die,
since my brain's its architect. When I was asleep but now, I discovered
a new villa, and an avenue of trees, and a tavern with red blinds which
I had never remarked before. At the first there was nothing but a queer
white house of which the original has fallen to ruins at Rathcoffey in
Ireland. This house stood alone in a wide flat emerald plain that
stretched like an untravelled sea to a circle of curving sky. There was
room to build, you see, and when I left Rathcoffey and became a
wanderer, the building went on apace. There are dark lanes there from
Avignon between great frowning houses, narrow climbing streets from
Meran, arcades from Verona, and a park of many thickets and tall
poplar-trees with a long silver stretch of water. One day you will see
that park from the windows of St. James. It has a wall too, my city,--a
round wall enclosing it within a perfect circle; and from whatever
quarter of the plain you come towards it, you only see this wall,
there's not so much as a chimney visible above it. Once you have crowded
with the caravans and traders through the gates,--for my town is
busy,--you are at once in the ringing streets. I think my architect in
that took Aigues Mortes for his model. Outside you have the flat, silent
plain, across which the merchants creep in long trailing lines, within
the noise of markets, the tramp of horses' hoofs, the talk of men and
women, and, if you listen hard, the whispers, too, of lovers. Oh, my
city's populous! There are quiet alleys with windows opening onto them,
where on summer nights you may see a young girl's face with the
moonlight on it like a glory, and in the shadow of the wall beneath, the
cloaked figure of a youth. Well, I have a notion--" and then he broke
off abruptly. "There's a black horse I own, my favourite horse."

"You rode it the first time you came to Ohlau," said the Princess.

"Do you indeed remember that?" cried Wogan, with so much pleasure that
Gaydon stirred in his corner, and Clementina said, "Hush!"

Wogan waited in a suspense lest Gaydon should wake up, which, to be
sure, would be the most inconsiderate thing in the world. Gaydon,
however, settled himself more comfortably, and in a little his regular
breathing might be heard again.

"Well," resumed Wogan, "I have a notion that the lady I shall marry will
come riding some sunrise on my black horse across the plain and into my
city of dreams. And she has not."

"Ah," said Clementina, "here's a subterfuge, my friend. The lady you
shall marry, you say. But tell me this! Has the lady you love ridden on
your black horse into your city of dreams?"

"No," said Wogan; "for there is no lady whom I love." There Wogan should
have ended, but he added rather sadly, "Nor is there like to be."

"Then I am sure," said Clementina.

"Sure that I speak truth?"

"No, sure that you mislead me. It is not kind; for here perhaps I might
give you some small token of my gratitude, would you but let me. Oh, it
is no matter. I shall find out who the lady is. You need not doubt it. I
shall set my wits and eyes to work. There shall be marriages when I am
Queen. I will find out!"

Wogan's face was not visible in the darkness; but he spoke quickly and
in a startled voice,--

"That you must never do. Promise that you never will! Promise me that
you will never try;" and again Gaydon stirred in his corner.

Clementina made no answer to the passionate words. She did not promise,
but she drew a breath, and then from head to foot she shivered. Wogan
dared not repeat his plea for a promise, but he felt that though she had
not given it, none the less she would keep it. They sat for awhile
silent. Then Clementina came back to her first question.

"Tell me of the King," she said very softly. And as the carriage rolled
down the mountain valley through the night and its wheels struck flashes
of fire from the stones, Wogan drew a picture for her of the man she was
to marry. It was a relief to him to escape from the dangerous talk of
the last hour, and he spoke fervently. The poet in him had always been
sensitive to the glamour of that wandering Prince; he had his
countrymen's instinctive devotion for a failing cause. This was no
suitable moment for dwelling upon the defects and weaknesses. Wogan told
her the story of the campaign in Scotland, of the year's residence in
Avignon. He spoke most burningly. A girl would no doubt like to hear of
her love's achievements; and if James Stuart had not so many to his name
as a man could wish, that was merely because chance had served him ill.
So a fair tale was told, not to be found in any history book, of a
night attack in Scotland and how the Chevalier de St. George, surprised
and already to all purposes a prisoner, forced a way alone through nine
grenadiers with loaded muskets and escaped over the roof-tops. It was a
good breathless story as he told it, and he had just come to an end of
it when the carriage drove through the village of Wellishmile and
stopped at the posting-house. Wogan opened the door and shook Gaydon by
the shoulder.

"Let us try if we can get stronger horses here," said he, and he got
out. Gaydon woke up with surprising alacrity.

"I must have fallen asleep," said he. "I beseech your Highness's
forgiveness; I have slept this long while." It was no business of his if
Wogan chose to attribute his own escape from Newgate as an exploit of
the King's. The story was a familiar one at Bologna, whither they were
hurrying; it was sufficiently known that Charles Wogan was its hero. All
this was Wogan's business, not Gaydon's. Nor had Gaydon anything to do
with any city of dreams or with any lady that might ride into it, or
with any black horse that chanced to carry her. Poets no doubt talked
that way. It was their business. Gaydon was not sorry that he had slept
so heartily through those last stages. He got down from the carriage and
met Wogan coming from the inn with a face of dismay.

"We are stopped here. There is no help for it. We have gained on the
Prince of Baden, who is no more than two stages ahead. The relays which
carried him from here to the next stage have only this instant come
back. They are too tired to move. So we must stay until they are
refreshed. And we are still three posts this side of Trent!" he cried.
"I would not mind were Trent behind us. But there's no help for it. I
have hired a room where the Countess and her niece can sleep until such
time as we can start."

Clementina and Mrs. Misset descended and supped in company with Gaydon
and Wogan, while Misset and O'Toole waited upon them as servants. It was
a silent sort of supper, very different from the meal they had made that
morning. For though the fare was better, it lacked the exhilaration.
This delay weighed heavily upon them all. For the country was now for a
sure thing raised behind them, and if they had gained on the Prince of
Baden, their pursuers had no less certainly gained on them.

"Would we were t'other side of Trent!" exclaimed Wogan; and looking up
he saw that Clementina was watching him with a strange intentness. Her
eyes were on him again while they sat at supper; and when he led her to
the door of her room and she gave him her hand, she stood for a little
while looking deep into his eyes. And though she had much need of sleep,
when she had got into the room and the door was closed behind her, she
remained staring at the logs of the fire.

For she knew his secret, and to her eyes he was now another man. Before,
Wogan was the untiring servant, the unflinching friend; now he was the
man who loved her. The risks he had run, his journeyings, his unswerving
confidence in the result, his laborious days and nights of preparation,
and the swift execution,--love as well as service claimed a share in
these. He was changed for ever to her eyes; she knew his secret. There
was the cloud no bigger than a man's hand. For she must needs think over
all that he had said and done by the new light the secret shed. When did
he first begin to care? Why? She recalled his first visit long ago to
Ohlau, when he rode across the park on his black horse charged with his
momentous errand. She had been standing, she remembered, before the
blazing log-fire in the great stone hall, much as she was standing now.
Great changes had come since then. She was James Stuart's chosen
wife--and this man loved her. He had no hope of any reward; he desired
even that she should not know. She should no doubt have been properly
sorry and compassionate, but she was a girl simple and frank. To be
loved by a man who could so endure and strive and ask no guerdon,--that
lifted her. She thought the more worthily of herself because he loved
her. She was raised thereby. She could not be sorry; her blood pulsed,
her heart sang, the starry eyes shone with a brighter light. He loved
her. She knew his secret. A little clock chimed the hour upon the
mantel-shelf, and lifting her eyes she saw that just twenty-four hours
had passed since she had driven out of Innspruck up the Brenner.

As she got into bed a horse galloped up to the inn and stopped. She
remembered that she had not ridden on his black horse out of the sunrise
across the plain. He loved her, and since he loved her, surely--She fell
asleep puzzled and wondering why. She was waked up some two hours
afterwards by a rapping on the door, and she grew hot and she recognised
Wogan's voice cautiously whispering to her to rise with all speed. For
in her dreams from which she had wakened, she had ridden across the flat
green plain into the round city of dreams.




CHAPTER XVI


When the horse galloped up to the door, the Princess turned on her side
and went to sleep. In the common-room below Gaydon and Wogan were
smoking a pipe of tobacco over the fire. Both men rose on the instant;
Wogan stealthily opened the door an inch or so and looked down the
passage. Gaydon raised a corner of the blind and peered through the
window. The two remaining members of the party, Misset and O'Toole, who
as lackeys had served the supper of the Princess, were now eating their
own. When the Princess turned over on her side, and Wogan stepped on
tiptoe to the door and Gaydon peeped through the window, Misset laid
down his knife and fork, and drawing a flask from his pocket emptied its
contents into an earthenware water-jug which stood upon the table.
O'Toole, for his part, simply continued to eat.

"He is getting off his horse," said Gaydon.

"Has he ridden hard, do you think?" asked Misset.

"He looks in a mighty ill-humour."

O'Toole looked up from his plate, and became gradually aware that
something was occurring. Before he could speak, however, Gaydon dropped
the blind.

"He is coming in. It will never do for him to find the four of us
together. He may not be the courier from Innspruck; on the other hand,
he may, and seeing the four of us he will ask questions of the landlord.
Seeing no more than two, he will very likely ask none."

O'Toole began to understand. He understood, at all events, that for him
there was to be no more supper. If two were to make themselves scarce,
he knew that he would be one of the two.

"Very well," said he, heaving a sigh which made the glasses on the table
dance, and laying his napkin down he got up. To his surprise, however,
he was bidden to stay.

"Gaydon and I will go," said Wogan. "Jack will find out the fellow's
business."

Misset nodded his head, took up his knife and fork again. He leaned
across the table to O'Toole as the others stepped out of the room.

"You speak only French, Lucius. You come from Savoy." He had no time to
say more, for the new-comer stamped blustering down the passage and
flung into the room. The man, as Gaydon had remarked, was in a mighty
ill-humour; his clothes and his face were splashed with mud, and he
seemed, moreover, in the last stage of exhaustion. For though he bawled
for the landlord it was in a weak, hoarse voice, which did not reach
beyond the door.

Misset looked at him with sympathy.

"You have no doubt come far," said he; "and the landlord's a laggard.
Here's something that may comfort you till he comes;" and he filled a
glass half full with red Tyrol wine from the bottle at his elbow.