Clementina written by A.E.W. Mason

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"You would load my pistols!" he repeated, his whole face alight. "To be
sure, you would do that. But I ask you, I think, for a higher courage. I
ask you to climb down that ladder, to run alone, taking shelter when
there's need, back to that narrow gorge we saw where the path leads
upwards to the bluff. There was a hut; two hours would take you to it,
and there you should be safe. I will keep the enemy back till you are
gone. If I can, when all is over here I'll follow you. If I do not come,
why, you must--"

"Ah, but you will come," said she, with a smile. "I have no fears but
that you will come;" and she added, "Else would you never persuade me
to go."

"Well, then, I will come. At all events, Captain Misset and his wife
will surely come down the road to-morrow. If I rap twice upon your door,
you will take that for my signal. But it is very likely I shall not rap
at all."

Wogan shivered as he spoke. It was not for the first time during that
conversation, and a little later, as they stood together in the passage
by the stair-head, Clementina twice remarked that he shivered again.
There was an oil lamp burning against the passage wall, and by its light
she could see that on that warm night of spring his face was pinched
with cold. He was in truth chilled to the bone through lack of sleep;
his eyes had the strained look of a man strung to the breaking point,
and at the sight of him the mother in her was touched.

"What if I watched to-night?" she said. "What if you slept?"

Wogan laughed the suggestion aside.

"I shall sleep very well," said he, "upon that top stair. I can count
upon waking, though only the lowest step tremble beneath a foot." This
he said, meaning not to sleep at all, as Clementina very well
understood. She leaned over the balustrade by Wogan's side and looked
upwards to the sky. The night was about them like a perfume of flowers.
A stream bubbled and sang over stones behind the inn. The courtyard
below was very silent. She laid a hand upon his sleeve and said again
in a pleading voice,--

"Let me watch to-night. There is no danger. You are racked by
sleeplessness, and phantoms born of it wear the face of truth to you. We
are safe; we are in Italy. The stars tell me so. Let me watch to-night."
And at once she was startled. He withdrew his arm so roughly that it
seemed he flung off his hand; he spoke in a voice so hoarse and rough
she did not know it for his. And indeed it was a different man who now
confronted her,--a man different from the dutiful servant who had
rescued her, different even from the man who had held her so tenderly in
his arms on the road to Ala.

"Go to your room," said he. "You must not stay here."

She stepped back in her surprise and faced him.

"Every minute," he cried in a sort of exasperation, "I bid myself
remember the great gulf between you and me; every minute you forget it.
I make a curtain of your rank, your title, and--let us be frank--your
destiny; I hang the curtain up between us, and with a gentle hand you
tear it down. At the end of it all I am flesh and blood. Why did I sit
the whole long dreary day out on the bank by the roadside there? To
watch? I could not describe to you one traveller out of them all who
passed. Why, then? Ask yourself! It was not that I might stand by your
side afterwards in the glamour of an Italian night with the stars
pulsing overhead like a smile upon your lips, and all the world
whispering! You must not stay here!"

His eyes burnt upon her; his hands shook; from head to foot he was hot
and fierce with passion, and in spite of herself she kindled to it. That
he loved she knew before, but his description of his city of dreams had
given to him in her thoughts a touch of fancifulness, had led her to
conceive of his love as something dreamlike, had somehow spiritualised
him to the hindrance of her grasp of him as flesh and blood. Thus, she
understood, she might well have seemed to be trifling with him, though
nothing was further from her thoughts. But now he was dangerous; love
had made him dangerous, and to her. She knew it, and in spite of herself
she gloried in the knowledge. Her heart leaped into her eyes and shone
there responsive, unafraid. The next moment she lowered her head. But he
had seen the unmistakable look in her eyes. Even as she stood with her
bowed head, he could not but feel that every fibre in her body thrilled;
he could not but know the transfigured expression of her face.

"I had no thought to hurt you," she said, and her voice trembled, and it
was not with fear or any pain. Wogan took a step towards her and checked
himself. He spoke sharply between clenched teeth.

"Lock your door," said he.

The curtain between them was down. Wogan had patched and patched it
before; but it was torn down now, and they had seen each other without
so much as that patched semblance of a screen to veil their eyes.
Clementina did not answer him or raise her head. She went quietly into
her room. Wogan did not move until she had locked the door.

Then he disposed himself for the night. He sat down across the top step
of the stairs with his back propped against the passage wall. Facing him
was the door of Clementina's room, on his left hand the passage with the
oil lamp burning on a bracket, stretched to the house-wall; on his right
the stairs descended straight for some steps, then turned to the left
and ran down still within view to a point where again they turned
outwards into the courtyard. Wogan saw to the priming of his pistols and
laid them beside him. He looked out to his right over the low-roofed
buildings opposite, and saw the black mountains with their glimmering
crests, and just above one spur a star which flashed with a particular
brightness. He was very tired and very cold; he drew his cloak about
him; he leaned back against the wall and watched that star. So long as
he saw that, he was awake, and therefore he watched it. At what time
sleep overtook him he could never discover. It seemed to him always that
he did not even for a second lose sight of that star. Only it dilated,
it grew brighter, it dropped towards earth, and he was not in any way
surprised. He was merely pleased with it for behaving in so attractive
and natural a way. Then, however, the strange thing happened. When the
star was hung in the air between earth and sky and nearer to the earth,
it opened like a flower and disclosed in its bright heart the face of a
girl, which was yet brighter. And that girl's face, with the broad low
brows and the dark eyes and the smile which held all earth and much of
heaven, stooped and stooped out of fire through the cool dark towards
him until her lips touched his. It was then that he woke, quietly as was
his wont, without any start, without opening his eyes, and at once he
was aware of someone breathing.

He raised his eyelids imperceptibly and peered through his eyelashes. He
saw close beside him the lower part of a woman's frock, and it was the
frock which Clementina wore. One wild question set his heart leaping
within his breast. "Was there truth in the dream?" he asked himself; and
while he was yet formulating the question, Clementina's breathing was
suddenly arrested. It seemed to him, too, from the little that he saw
between his closed eyes, that she stiffened from head to foot. She stood
in that rigid attitude, very still. Something new had plainly occurred,
something that brought with it a shock of surprise. Wogan, without
moving his head or opening his eyes a fraction wider, looked down the
staircase and saw just above the edge of one of the steep stairs a face
watching them,--a face with bright, birdlike eyes and an indescribable
expression of cunning.

Wogan had need of all his self-control. He felt that his eyelids were
fluttering on his cheeks, that his breath had stopped even as
Clementina's had. For the face which he saw was one quite familiar to
him, though never familiar with that expression. It was the face of an
easy-going gentleman who made up for the lack of his wit by the
heartiness of his laugh, and to whom Wogan had been drawn because of his
simplicity. There was no simplicity in Henry Whittington's face now. It
remained above the edge of the step staring at them with a look of
crafty triumph, a very image of intrigue. Then it disappeared silently.

Wogan remembered the voice of the man who had spurred past the doorway
of the inn at Ala. He knew now why he had thought to recognise it. The
exclamation had been one of anger,--because he had seen Clementina and
himself in Italy? He had spurred onwards--towards Trent? There were
those six horses in the stables. Whittington's face had disappeared very
silently. "An honest man," thought Wogan, "does not take off his boots
before he mounts the stairs."

Clementina was still standing at his side. Without changing his attitude
he rapped with his knuckles gently twice upon the boards of the stair.
She turned towards him with a gasp of the breath. He rapped again twice,
fearful lest she should speak to him. She understood that he had given
her the signal to go. She turned on her heel and slipped back into her
room.

CHAPTER XIX

Wogan did not move. In a few minutes he heard voices whispering in the
courtyard below. By that time the Princess should have escaped into the
thicket. The stairs creaked, and again he saw a face over the edge of a
step. It was the flabby face of a stranger, who turned and whispered in
German to others behind him. The face rose; a pair of shoulders, a
portly body, and a pair of unbooted legs became visible. The man carried
a drawn sword; between his closed eyelashes Wogan saw that four others
with the like arms followed. There should have been six; but the sixth
was Harry Whittington, who, to be sure, was not likely to show himself
to Wogan awake. The five men passed the first turn of the stairs without
noise. Wogan was very well pleased with their noiselessness. Men without
boots to their feet were at a very great disadvantage when it came to a
fight. He allowed them to come up to the second turn, he allowed the
leader to ascend the last straight flight until he was almost within
sword-reach, and then he quietly rose to his feet.

"Gentlemen," said he, "I grieve to disappoint you; but I have hired this
lodging for the night."

The leader stopped, discountenanced, and leaned back against his
followers. "You are awake?" he stammered.

"It is a habit of mine."

The leader puffed out his cheeks and assumed an appearance of dignity.

"Then we are saved some loss of time. For we were coming to awake you."

"It was on that account, no doubt," said Wogan, folding his arms, "that
you have all taken off your boots. But, pardon me, your four friends
behind appear in spite of what I have said to be thrusting you forward.
I beg you to remain on the step on which you stand. For if you mount one
more, you will put me to the inconvenience of drawing my sword."

Wogan leaned back idly against the wall. The Princess should now be on
the road and past the inn--unless perhaps Whittington was at watch
beneath the windows. That did not seem likely, however. Whittington
would work in the dark and not risk detection. The leader of the four
had stepped back at Wogan's words, but he said very bravely,--

"I warn you to use no violence to officers in discharge of their duty.
We hold a warrant for your arrest."

"Indeed?" said Wogan, with a great show of surprise. "I cannot bring
myself to believe it. On what counts?"

"Firstly, in that you stole away her Highness the Princess Clementina
from the Emperor's guardianship on the night of the 27th of April at
Innspruck."

"Did I indeed do that?" said Wogan, carelessly. "Upon my word, this
cloak of mine is frayed. I had not noticed it;" and he picked at the
fringe of his cloak with some annoyance.

"In the second place, you did kill and put to death, at a wayside inn
outside Stuttgart, one Anton Gans, servant to the Countess of Berg."

Wogan smiled amicably.

"I should be given a medal for that with a most beautiful ribbon of
salmon colour, I fancy, salmon or aquamarine. Which would look best, do
you think, on a coat of black velvet? I wear black velvet, as your
relations will too, my friend, if you forget which step your foot is on.
Shall we say salmon colour for the ribbon? The servant was a noxious
fellow. We will."

The leader of the four, who had set his foot on the forbidden step,
withdrew it quickly. Wogan continued in the same quiet voice,--

"You say you have a warrant?" And a voice very different from his
leader's--a voice loud and decisive, which came from the last of the
four--answered him,--

"We have. The Emperor's warrant."

"And how comes it," asked Wogan, "that the Emperor's warrant runs in
Venice?"

"Because the Emperor's arm strikes in Venice," cried the hindermost
again, and he pushed past the man in front of him.

"That we have yet to see," cried Wogan, and his sword flashed naked in
his hand. At the same moment the man who had spoken drew a pistol and
fired. He fired in a hurry; the bullet cut a groove in the rail of the
stair and flattened itself against the passage wall.

"The Emperor's arm shakes, it seems," said Wogan, with a laugh. The
leader of the party, thrust forward by those behind him, was lifted to
the forbidden step.

"I warned you," cried Wogan, and his sword darted out. But whether from
design or accident, the man uttered a cry and stumbled forward on his
face. Wogan's sword flashed over his shoulder, and its point sank into
the throat of the soldier behind him. That second soldier fell back,
with the blood spurting from his wound, upon the man with the smoking
pistol, who thrust him aside with an oath.

"Make room," he cried, and lunged over the fallen leader.

"Here's a fellow in the most desperate hurry," said Wogan, and parrying
the thrust he disengaged, circled, disengaged again, and lunging felt
the soldier's leather coat yield to his point. "The Emperor's arm is
weak, too, one might believe," he laughed, and he drove his sword home.
The man fell upon the stairs; but as Wogan spoke the leader crouched on
the step plucked violently at his cloak below his knees. Wogan had not
recovered from his lunge; the jerk at the cloak threw him off his
balance, his legs slipped forward under him, in another moment he would
have come crashing down the stairs upon his back, and at the bottom of
the flight there stood one man absolutely unharmed supporting his
comrade who had been wounded in the throat. Wogan felt the jerk,
understood the danger, and saw its remedy at the same instant. He did
not resist the impetus, he threw his body into it, he sprang from the
stairs forwards, tearing his cloak from the leader's hands, he sprang
across the leader, across the soldier who had fired at him, and he
dropped with all his weight into the arms of the third man with the
pierced throat. The blood poured out from the wound over Wogan's face
and breast in a blinding jet. The fellow uttered one choking cry and
reeling back carried the comrade who supported him against the
balustrade at the turn of the stairs. Wogan did not give that fourth man
time to disengage himself, but dropping his sword caught him by the
throat as the third wounded man slipped between them to the ground.
Wogan bent his new opponent backwards over the balustrade, and felt the
muscles of his back resist and then slacken. Wogan bent him further and
further over until it seemed his back must break. But it was the
balustrade which broke. Wogan heard it crack. He had just time to loose
his hands and step back, and the railing and the man poised on the rail
fell outwards into the courtyard. Wogan stepped forward and peered
downwards. The soldier had not broken his neck, for Wogan saw him
writhe upon the ground. He bent his head to see the better; he heard a
report behind him, and a bullet passed through the crown of his hat. He
swung round and saw the leader of the four with one of his own pistols
smoking in his hand.

"You!" cried Wogan. "Sure, here's a rabbit attacking a terrier dog;" and
he sprang up the stairs. The man threw away the pistol, fell on his
knees, and held up his hands for mercy.

"Now what will I do to you?" said Wogan. "Did you not fire at my back?
That's reprehensible cowardice. And with my own pistol, too, which is
sheer impertinence. What will I do with you?" The man's expression was
so pitiable, his heavy cheeks hung in such despairing folds, that Wogan
was stirred to laughter. "Well, you have put me to a deal of
inconvenience," said he; "but I will be merciful, being strong, being
most extraordinary strong. I'll send you back to your master the Emperor
with a message from me that four men are no manner of use at all. Come
in here for a bit."

Wogan took the unfortunate man and led him into the parlour. Then he lit
a lamp, and making his captive sit where he could see any movement that
he made, he wrote a very polite note to his Most Catholic Majesty the
Emperor wherein he pointed out that it was a cruel thing to send four
poor men who had never done harm to capture Charles Wogan; that no King
or Emperor before who had wanted to capture Charles Wogan, of whom there
were already many, and by God's grace he hoped there would be more, had
ever despatched less than a regiment of horse upon so hazardous an
expedition; and that when Captain O'Toole might be expected to be
standing side by side with Wogan, it was usually thought necessary to
add seven batteries of artillery and a field marshal. Wogan thereupon
went on to point out that Peri was in Venetian territory, which his Most
Catholic Majesty had violated, and that Charles Wogan would accordingly
feel it his bounden duty not to sleep night or day until he had made a
confederation of Italian states to declare war and captivity upon his
Most Catholic Majesty. Wogan concluded with the assurances of his
profoundest respects and was much pleased by his letter, which he sealed
and compelled his prisoner upon his knees to promise to deliver into the
Emperor's own hands.

"Now where is that pretty warrant?" said Wogan, as soon as this
important function was accomplished.

"It is signed by the Governor of Trent," said the man.

"Who in those regions is the Emperor's deputy. Hand it over."

The man handed it over reluctantly.

"Now," continued Wogan, "here is paper and ink and a chair. Sit down and
write a full confession of your audacious incursion into a friendly
country, and just write, if you please, how much you paid the landlady
to hear nothing of what was doing."

"You will not force me to that," cried the fellow.

"By no means. The confession must be voluntary and written of your own
free will. So write it, my friend, without any compulsion whatever, or
I'll throw you out of the window."

Then followed a deal of sighing and muttering. But the confession was
written and handed to Wogan, who glanced over it.

"But there's an omission," said he. "You make mention of only five men."

"There were only five men on the staircase."

"But there are six horses in the stables. Will you be good enough to
write down at what hour on what day Mr. Harry Whittington knocked at the
Governor's door in Trent and told the poor gout-ridden man that the
Princess and Mr. Wogan had put up at the Cervo Inn at Ala."

The soldier turned a startled face on Wogan.

"So you knew!" he cried.

"Oh, I knew," answered Wogan, suddenly. "Look at me! Did you ever see
eyes so heavy with want of sleep, a face so worn by it, a body so jerked
upon strings like a showman's puppet? Write, I tell you! We who serve
the King are trained to wakefulness. Write! I am in haste!"

"Yet your King does not reign!" said the man, wonderingly, and he wrote.
He wrote the truth about Harry Whittington; for Wogan was looking over
his shoulder.

"Did he pay you to keep silence as to his share in the business?" asked
Wogan, as the man scattered some sand over the paper. "There is no word
of it in your handwriting."

The man added a sentence and a figure.

"That will do," said Wogan. "I may need it for a particular purpose;"
and he put the letter carefully away in the pocket of his coat. "For a
very particular purpose," he added. "It will be well for you to convey
your party back with all haste to Trent. You are on the wrong side of
the border."

CHAPTER XX

Wogan went from the parlour and climbed out of the house by the
rope-ladder. He left it hanging at the window and walked up the
glimmering road, a ribbon of ghostly white between dim hills. It was
then about half-past twelve of the night, and not a feather of cloud
stained the perfection of the sky. It curved above his head spangled
like a fair lady's fan, and unfathomably blue like Clementina's eyes
when her heart stirred in their depths. He reached the little footway
and turned into the upward cleft of the hills. He walked now into the
thick night of a close-grown clump of dwarf-oaks, which weaved so dense
a thatch above his head that he knocked against the boles. The trees
thinned, he crossed here and there a dimpled lawn in the pure starshine,
he traversed a sparse grove of larches in the dreamy twilight, he came
out again upon the grassy lip of a mountain torrent which henceforth
kept him company, and which, speaking with many voices, seemed a friend
trying to catch his mood. For here it leaped over an edge of rock, and
here in a tiny waterfall, and splashed into a pellucid pool, and the
reverberating noise filled the dell with a majestic din; there it ran
smoothly kissing its banks with a murmur of contentment, embosoming the
stars; beyond, it chafed hoarsely between narrow walls; and again half a
mile higher up it sang on shallows and evaded the stones with a tinkling
laugh. But Wogan was deaf to the voices; he mounted higher, the trees
ceased, he came into a desolate country of boulders; and the higher he
ascended, the more heavily he walked. He stopped and washed his face and
hands clean of blood-stains in the stream. Above him and not very far
away was the lonely hut.

He came upon it quite suddenly. For the path climbed steeply at the
back, and slipping from the mouth of a narrow gully he stood upon the
edge of a small plateau in the centre of which stood the cabin, a little
house of pinewood built with some decoration and elegance. One unglazed
window was now unshuttered, and the light from a lantern streamed out of
it in a yellow fan, marking the segment of a circle upon the rough rocky
ground and giving to the dusk of the starshine a sparkle of gold.
Through the window Wogan could see into the room. It was furnished
simply, but with an eye to comfort. He saw too the girl he had dared to
bear off from the thick of a hostile town. She was lying upon a couch,
her head resting upon her folded arms. She was asleep, and in a place
most solitary. Behind the cabin rose a black forest of pines, pricking
the sky with their black spires, and in front of it the ground fell
sharply to the valley, in which no light gleamed; beyond the valley rose
the dim hills again. Nor was there any sound except the torrent. The
air at this height was keen and fresh with a smell of primeval earth.
Wogan hitched his cloak about his throat, and his boots rang upon the
rock. The Princess raised her head; Wogan walked to the door and stood
for a little with his hand upon the latch. He lifted it and entered.
Clementina looked at him for a moment, and curiously. She had no
questions as to how his struggle with the Governor of Trent's emissaries
had fared. Wogan could understand by some unspoken sympathy that that
matter had no place in her thoughts. She stood up in an attitude of
expectation.

"It grows towards morning?" said she.

"In two hours we shall have the dawn," he replied; and there was a
silence between them.

"You found this cabin open?" said Wogan.

"The door was latched. I loosed a shutter. The night is very still."

"One might fancy there were no others alive but you and me across all
the width of the world."

"One could wish it," she said beneath her breath, and crossed to the
window where she stayed, breathing the fresh night. The sigh, however,
had reached to Wogan's ears. He took his pistols from his belt, and to
engage his thoughts, loaded the one which had been fired at him. After a
little he looked up and saw that Clementina's eyes dwelt upon him with
that dark steady look, which held always so much of mystery and told
always one thing plainly, her lack of fear. And she said suddenly,--

"There was trouble at Peri. I climbed from the window. I had almost
forgotten. As I ran down the road past the open court, I saw a little
group of men gathered about the foot of the staircase! I was in two
minds whether to come back and load your pistols or to obey you. I
obeyed, but I was in much fear for you. I had almost forgotten, it seems
so long ago. Tell me! You conquered; it is no new thing. Tell me how!"

She did not move from the window, she kept her eyes fixed upon Wogan
while he told his story, but it was quite clear to him that she did not
hear one half of it. And when he had done she said,--

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