Clementina written by A.E.W. Mason

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

"How long is it till the morning?"

Wogan had spun his tale out, but half an hour enclosed it, from the
beginning to the end. He became silent again; but he was aware at once
that silence was more dangerous than speech, for in the silence he could
hear both their hearts speaking. He began hurriedly to talk of their
journey, and there could be no more insidious topic for him to light
upon. For he spoke of the Road, and he had already been given a warning
that to the romance of the Road her heart turned like a compass-needle
to the north. They were both gipsies, for all that they had no Egyptian
blood. That southward road from Innspruck was much more than a mere
highway of travel between a starting-place and a goal, even to these two
to whom the starting-place meant peril and the goal the first
opportunity of sleep.

"Even in our short journey," said Clementina, "how it climbed hillsides
angle upon angle, how it swept through the high solitudes of ice where
no trees grow, where silence lives; how it dropped down into green
valleys and the noise of streams! And it still sweeps on, through dark
and light, a glimmer at night, a glare in the midday, between lines of
poplars, hidden amongst vines, through lighted cities, down to Venice
and the sea. If one could travel it, never retracing a step, pitching a
tent by the roadside when one willed! That were freedom!" She stopped
with a remarkable abruptness. She turned her eyes out of the window for
a little. Then again she asked,--

"How long till morning?"

"But one more hour."

She came back into the room and seated herself at the table.

"You gave me some hint at Innspruck of an adventurous ride from Ohlau,"
and she drew her breath sharply at the word, as though the name with all
its associations struck her a blow, "into Strasbourg. Tell me its
history. So will this hour pass."

He told her as he walked about the room, though his heart was not in the
telling, nor hers in the hearing, until he came to relate the story of
his escape from the inn a mile or so beyond Stuttgart. He described how
he hid in the garden, how he crossed the rich level of lawn to the
lighted window, how to his surprise he was admitted without a question
by an old bookish gentleman--and thereupon he ceased so suddenly that
Clementina turned her head aside and listened.

"Did you hear a step?" she asked in a low voice.

"No."

And they both listened. No noise came to their ears but the brawling of
the torrent. That, however, filled the room, drowning all the natural
murmurs of the night.

"Indeed, one would not hear a company of soldiers," said Clementina. She
crossed to the window.

"Yet you heard my step, and it waked you," said Wogan, as he followed
her.

"I listened for it in my sleep," said she.

For a second time that night they stood side by side looking upon
darkness and the spangled sky. Only there was no courtyard with its
signs of habitation. Clementina drew herself away suddenly from the
sill. Wogan at once copied her example.

"You saw--?" he began.

"No one," said she, bending her dark eyes full upon him. "Will you close
the shutter?"

Wogan drew back instinctively. He had a sense that this open window,
though there was no one to spy through it, was in some way a security.
Suppose that he closed it! That mere act of shutting himself and her
apart, though it gave not one atom more of privacy, still had a
semblance of giving it. He was afraid. He said,--

"There is no need. Who should spy on us? What would it matter if we were
spied upon?"

"I ask you to close that shutter."

From the quiet, level voice he could infer nothing of the thought behind
the request; and her unwavering eyes told him nothing.

"Why?"

"Because I am afraid, as you are," said she, and she shivered. "You
would not have it shut. I am afraid while it stays open. There is too
much expectation in the night. Those great black pines stand waiting;
the stars are very bright and still, they wait, holding their breath. It
seems to me the whirl of the earth has stopped. Never was there a night
so hushed in expectation;" and these words too she spoke without a
falter or a lifting note, breathing easily like a child asleep, and not
changing her direct gaze from Wogan's face. "I am afraid," she
continued, "of you and me. I am the more afraid;" and Wogan set the
shutter in its place and let the bar fall. Clementina with a breath of
relief came back to her seat at the table.

"How long is it till dawn?" she said.

"We have half an hour," said Wogan.

"Well, that old man--Count von Ahlen, you said--received you, heaped
logs upon his fire, stanched your wounds, and asked no questions. Well?
You stopped suddenly. Tell me all!"

Wogan looked doubtfully at her and then quickly seated himself over
against her.

"All? I will. It will be no new thing to you;" and as Clementina raised
her eyes curiously to his, he met her gaze and so spoke the rest
looking at her with her own direct gaze.

"Why did he ask no question, seeing me disordered, wounded, a bandit,
for all he knew, with a murder on my hands? Because thirty years before
Count Philip Christopher von Koenigsmarck had come in just that same way
over the lawn to the window, and had sat by that log-fire and charmed
the old gentleman into an envy by his incomparable elegance and wit."

"Koenigsmarck!" exclaimed the girl. She knew the history of that
brilliant and baleful adventurer at the Court of Hanover. "He came as
you did, and wounded?"

"The Princess Sophia Dorothea was visiting the Duke of Wuertemberg,"
Wogan explained, and Clementina nodded.

"Count Otto von Ahlen, my host," he continued, "had a momentary thought
that I was Koenigsmarck mysteriously returned as he had mysteriously
vanished; and through these thirty years' retention of his youth, Count
Otto could never think of Koenigsmarck but as a man young and tossed in a
froth of passion. He would have it to the end that I had escaped from
such venture as had Koenigsmarck; he would have it my wounds were the
mere offset to a love well worth them; he _would_ envy me. 'Passion,'
said he, 'without passion there can be no great thing.'"

"And the saying lived in your thoughts," cried Clementina. "I do not
wonder. 'Without passion there can be no great thing!' Can books teach
a man so much?"

"Nay, it was an hour's talk with Koenigsmarck which set the old man's
thoughts that way; and though Koenigsmarck talked never so well, I would
not likely infer from his talk an eternal and universal truth. Count
Otto left me alone while he fetched me food, and he left me in a panic."

"A panic?" said Clementina, with a little laugh. "You!"

"Yes. That first mistake of me for Koenigsmarck, that insistence that my
case was Koenigsmarck's--"

"There was a shadow of truth in it--even then?" said Clementina,
suddenly leaning across the table towards him. Wogan strove not to see
the light of her joy suddenly sparkling in her eyes.

"I sat alone, feeling the ghost of Koenigsmarck in the room with me," he
resumed quickly, and his voice dropped, and he looked round the little
cabin. Clementina looked round quickly too. Then their eyes met again.
"I heard his voice menacing me. 'For love of a queen I lived. For love
of a queen I died most horribly; and it would have gone better with the
queen had she died the same death at the same time--'" And Clementina
interrupted him with a cry which was fierce.

"Ah, who can say that, and know it for the truth--except the Queen? You
must ask her in her prison at Ahlden, and that you cannot do. She has
her memories maybe. Maybe she has built herself within these thirty
years a world of thought so real, it makes her gaolers shadows, and
that prison a place of no account, save that it gives her solitude and
is so more desirable than a palace. I can imagine it;" and then she
stopped, and her voice dropped to the low tone which Wogan had used.

"You looked round you but now and most fearfully. Is Koenigsmarck's
spirit here?"

"No," exclaimed Wogan; "I would to God it were! I would I felt its
memories chilling me as they chilled me that night! But I cannot. I
cannot as much as hear a whisper. All the heavens are dumb," he cried.

"And the earth waits," said Clementina.

She did not move, neither did Wogan. They both sat still as statues.
They had come to the great crisis of their destiny. A change of posture,
a gesture, an assumed expression which might avert the small, the merely
awkward indiscretions of the tongue, they both knew to be futile. It was
in the mind of each of them that somehow without their participation the
truth would out that night; for the dawn was so long in coming.

"All the way up from Peri," said Wogan, suddenly, "I strove to make real
to myself the ignominy, the odium, the scandal."

"But you could not," said Clementina, with a nod of comprehension, as
though that inability was a thing familiar to her.

"When I reached the hut, and saw that fan of light spreading from the
window, as it spread over the lawn beyond Stuttgart, I remembered Otto
von Ahlen and his talk of Koenigsmarck. I tried to hear the menaces."

"But you could not."

"No. I saw you through the window," he cried, "stretched out upon that
couch, supple and young and sweet. I saw the lamplight on your hair,
searching out the gold in its dark brown. I could only remember how
often I have at nights wakened and reached out my hands in the vain
dream that they would meet in its thick coils, that I should feel its
silk curl and nestle about my fingers. There's the truth out, though
it's a familiar truth to you ever since I held you in my arms beneath
the stars upon the road to Ala."

"It was known to me a day before," said she; "but it was known to you so
long ago as that night in the garden."

"Oh, before then," cried Wogan.

"When? Let the whole truth be known, since we know so much."

"Why, on that first day at Ohlau."

"In the great hall. I stood by the fire and raised my head, and our eyes
met. I do remember."

"But I had no thought ever to let you know. I was the King's
man-at-arms, as I am now;" and he burst into a harsh laugh. "Here's
madness! The King's man-at-arms dumps him down in the King's chair! I
had a thought to live to you, if you understand, as a man writes a poem
to his mistress, to make my life the poem, an unsigned poem that you
would never read, and yet unsigned, unread, would make its creator glad
and fill his days. And here's the poem!" and at that a great cry of
terror leaped from Clementina's lips and held them both aghast.

Wogan had risen from his seat; with a violent gesture he had thrown back
his cloak, and his coat beneath was stained and dark with blood.
Clementina stood opposite to him, all her quiet and her calmness gone.
There was no longer any mystery in her eyes. Her bosom rose and fell;
she pointed a trembling hand towards his breast.

"You are hurt. Again for love of me you are hurt."

"It is not my wound," he answered. "It is blood I spilt for you;" he
took a step towards her, and in a second she was between his arms,
sobbing with all the violence of passion which she had so long
restrained. Wogan was wrung by it. That she should weep at all was a
thought strange to him; that he should cause the tears was a sorrow
which tortured him. He touched her hair with his lips, he took her by
the arms and would have set her apart; but she clung to him, hiding her
face, and the sobs shook her. Her breast was strained against him, he
felt the beating of her heart, a fever ran through all his blood. And as
he held her close, a queer inconsequential thought came into his mind.
It shocked him, and he suddenly held her off.

"The blood upon my coat is wet," he cried. The odium, the scandal of a
flight which would make her name a byword from London to Budapest, that
he could envisage; but that this blood upon his coat should stain the
dress she wore--no! He saw indeed that the bodice was smeared a dark
red.

"See, the blood stains you!" he cried.

"Why, then, I share it," she answered with a ringing voice of pride. "I
share it with you;" and she smiled through her tears and a glowing blush
brightened upon her face. She stood before him, erect and beautiful.
Through Wogan's mind there tripped a procession of delicate ladies who
would swoon gracefully at the sight of a pricked finger.

"That's John Sobieski speaking," he exclaimed, and with an emphasis of
despair, "Poland's King! But I was mad! Indeed, I blame myself."

"Blame!" she cried passionately, her whole nature rising in revolt
against the word. "Are we to blame? We are man and woman. Who shall cast
the stone? Are you to blame for that you love me? Who shall blame you?
Not I, who thank you from my heart. Am I to blame? What have we hearts
for, then, if not to love? I have a thought--it may be very wrong. I do
not know. I do not trouble to think--that I should be much more to blame
did I not love you too. There's the word spoken at the last," and she
lowered her head.

Even at that moment her gesture struck upon Wogan as strange. It
occurred to him that he had never before seen her drop her eyes from
his. He had an intuitive fancy that she would never do it but as a
deliberate token of submission. Nor was he wrong. Her next words told
him it was her white flag of surrender.

"I believe the spoken truth is best," she said simply in a low voice
which ever so slightly trembled. "Unspoken and yet known by both of us,
I think it would breed thoughts and humours we are best without.
Unspoken our eyes would question, each to other, at every meeting; there
would be no health in our thoughts. But here's the truth out, and I am
glad--in whichever way you find its consequence."

She stood before him with her head bent. She made no movement save with
her hands, which worked together slowly and gently.

"In whichever way--I--?" repeated Wogan.

"Yes," she answered. "There is Bologna. Say that Bologna is our goal. I
shall go with you to Bologna. There is Venice and the sea. Bid me go,
then; hoist a poor scrap of a sail in an open boat. I shall adventure
over the wide seas with you. What will you do?"

Wogan drew a long breath. The magnitude of the submission paralysed him.
The picture which she evoked was one to blind him as with a glory of
sunlight. He remained silent for a while. Then he said timidly,--

"There is Ohlau."

The girl shivered. The name meant her father, her mother, their grief,
the disgrace upon her home. But she answered only with her question,--

"What will you do?"

"You would lose a throne," he said, and even while he spoke was aware
that such a plea had not with her now the weight of thistledown.

"You would become the mock of Europe,--you that are its wonder;" and he
saw the corner of her lip curve in a smile of scorn.

"What will you do?" she asked, and he ceased to argue. It was he who
must decide; she willed it so. He turned towards the door of the hut and
opened it. As he passed through, he heard her move behind, and looking
over his shoulder, he saw that she leaned down upon the table and kissed
the pistol which he had left loaded there. He stepped out of the cabin
and closed the door behind him.

The dark blue of the sky had faded to a pure and pearly colour; a
colourless grey light invaded it; the pale stars were drowning; and all
about him the trees shivered to the morning. Wogan walked up and down
that little plateau, torn by indecision. Inside the sheltered cabin sat
waiting the girl, whose destiny was in his hands. He had a sentence to
speak, and by it the flow of all her years would be irrevocably ordered.
She had given herself over to him,--she, with her pride, her courage,
her endurance. Wogan had seen too closely into her heart to bring any
foolish charge of unmaidenliness against her. No, the very completeness
of her submission raised her to a higher pinnacle. If she gave herself,
she did so without a condition or a reserve, body and bone, heart and
soul. Wogan knew amongst the women of his time many who made their
bargain with the world, buying a semblance of esteem with a double
payment of lies. This girl stood apart from them. She loved, therefore
she entrusted herself simply to the man she loved, and bade him dispose
of her. That very simplicity was another sign of her strength. She was
the more priceless on account of it. He went back into the hut. Through
the chinks of the shutter the morning stretched a grey finger; the room
was filled with a vaporous twilight.

"We travel to Bologna," said he. "I will not have you wasted. Other
women may slink into kennels and stop their ears--not you. The King is
true to you. You are for the King."

As she had not argued before, she did not argue now. She nodded her head
and fastened her cloak about her throat. She followed him out of the hut
and down the gorge. In the northeast the sky already flamed, and the sun
was up before they reached the road. They walked silently towards Peri,
and Wogan was wondering whether in her heart she despised him when she
stopped.

"I am to marry the King," said she.

"Yes," said Wogan.

"But you?" she said with her brows in a frown; "there is no compulsion
on you to marry--anyone."

Wogan was relieved of his fears. He broke into a laugh, to which she
made no reply. She still waited frowning for his answer.

"No woman," he said, "will ride on my black horse into my city of
dreams. You may be very sure I will not marry."

"No. I would not have you married."

Wogan laughed again, but Clementina was very serious. That she had no
right to make any such claim did not occur to her. She was merely
certain and resolved that Wogan must not marry. She did not again refer
to the matter, nor could she so have done had she wished. For a little
later and while they were not yet come to Peri, they were hailed from
behind, and turning about they saw Gaydon and O'Toole riding after them.
O'Toole had his story to tell. Gaydon and he had put the courier to bed
and taken his clothes and his money, and after the fellow had waked up,
they had sat for a day in the bedroom keeping him quiet and telling the
landlord he was very ill. O'Toole finished his story as they came to
Peri. They went boldly to the Cervo Inn, where all traces of the night's
conflict had been removed, and neither Wogan nor the landlady thought it
prudent to make any mention of the matter; they waited for Misset and
his wife, who came the next day. And thus reunited they passed one
evening into the streets of Bologna and stopped at the Pilgrim Inn.

CHAPTER XXI

In the parlour of the Pilgrim Inn the four friends took their leave of
the Princess. She could not part from them lightly; she spoke with a
faltering voice:--

"Five days ago I was in prison at Innspruck, perpetually harassed and
with no hope of release but in you. Now I am in Bologna, and free. I
could not believe that any girl could find such friends except in
fairyland. You make the world very sweet and clean to me. I should thank
you. See my tears fall! Will you take them for my thanks? I have no
words which can tell as much of my thoughts towards you. My little woman
I keep with me, but to you gentlemen I would gladly give a token each,
so that you may know I will never forget, and so that you too may keep
for me a home within your memories." To Major Gaydon she gave a ring
from off her finger, to Captain Misset a chain which she wore about her
neck, to O'Toole, "her six feet four," as she said between laughter and
tears, her watch. Each with a word of homage took his leave. Clementina
spoke to Wogan last of all, and when the room was empty but for these
two.

"To you, my friend," said she, "I give nothing. There is no need. But I
ask for something. I would be in debt to you still deeper than I am. I
ask for a handkerchief which I dropped from my shoulders one evening
under the stars upon the road to Ala."

Wogan bowed to her without a word. He drew the handkerchief from his
breast slowly.

"It is true," said he; "I have no right to it;" and he gave it back. But
his voice showed that he was hurt.

"You do not understand," said she, with a great gentleness. "You have
every right which the truest loyalty can confer. I ask you for this
handkerchief, because I think at times to wear it in memory of a white
stone on which I could safely set my foot, for the stone was not straw."

Wogan could not trust his voice to answer her. He took her hand to lift
it to his lips.

"No," said she; "as at Innspruck, an honest handclasp, if you please."

Wogan joined his three companions in the road, and they stood together
for a little, recounting to one another the incidents of the flight.

"Here's a great work ended," said Gaydon at last.

"We shall be historical," said O'Toole. "It is my one ambition. I want
to figure in the history-books and be a great plague and nuisance to
children at school. I would sooner be cursed daily by schoolboys than
have any number of golden statues in galleries. It means the more solid
reputation;" and then he became silent. Gaydon had, besides his joy at
the rescue of Clementina, a private satisfaction that matters which were
none of his business had had no uncomfortable issue. Misset, too, was
thankful for that his wife had come safely to the journey's end. O'Toole
alone had a weight upon his mind; and when Gaydon said, "Well, we may go
to bed and sleep without alarms till sundown to-morrow," he remarked,--

"There's Jenny. It was on my account she ventured with us."

"That's true," said Wogan; "but we shall put an end to her captivity,
now we are safe at Bologna. I have friends here who can serve me so far,
I have no doubt."

O'Toole was willing to leave the matter in Wogan's hands. If Wogan once
pledged himself to Jenny's release, why, Jenny _was_ released; and he
went to bed now with a quite equable mind. Wogan hurried off to the
palace of the Cardinal Origo, whom he found sitting at his supper. The
Cardinal welcomed Wogan back very warmly.

"I trust, your Eminence," said Wogan, "that Farini is now at Bologna."

"You come in the nick of time," replied the Cardinal. "This is his last
week. There is a great demand for the seats; but you will see to it, Mr.
Wogan, that the box is in the first tier."

"There was to be a dinner, too, if I recollect aright. I have not dined
for days. Your Eminence, I shall be extraordinarily hungry."

"You will order what you will, Mr. Wogan. I am a man of a small
appetite and have no preferences."

"Your Eminence's cook will be the better judge of what is seasonable.
Your Eminence will be the more likely to secure the box in the first
tier. Shall we fix a day? To-morrow, if it please you. To-morrow I shall
have the honour, then, to be your Eminence's guest."

The Cardinal started up from the table and stared at his visitor.

"You are jesting," said he.

"So little," replied Wogan, "that her Highness, the Princess Clementina,
is now at the Pilgrim Inn at Bologna."

"In Bologna!" cried the Cardinal; and he stood frowning in a great
perturbation of spirit. "This is great news," he said, but in a doubtful
voice which Wogan did not understand. "This is great news, to be sure;"
and he took a turn or two across the room.

"Not wholly pleasant news, one might almost think," said Wogan, in some
perplexity.

"Never was better news," exclaimed the Cardinal, hastily,--a trifle too
hastily, it seemed to Wogan. "But it surprises one. Even the King did
not expect this most desirable issue. For the King's in Spain. It is
that which troubles me. Her Highness comes to Bologna, and the King's in
Spain."

"Yes," said Wogan, with a wary eye upon his Eminence. "Why is the King
in Spain?"

"There is pressing business in Spain,--an expedition from Cadiz. The
King's presence there was urged most earnestly. He had no hope you would
succeed. I myself have some share in the blame. I did not hide from you
my thought, Mr. Wogan."

Wogan was not all reassured. He could not but remember that the excuse
for the King's absence which the Cardinal now made to him was precisely
that which he himself had invented to appease Clementina at Innspruck.
It was the simple, natural excuse which came first of all to the
tongue's tip, but--but it did not satisfy. There was, besides, too much
flurry and agitation in the Cardinal's manner. Even now that he was
taking snuff, he spilled the most of it from the trembling of his
fingers. Moreover, he must give reason upon reason for his perturbation
the while he let his supper get cold.

"Her Highness I cannot but feel will have reason to think slightly of
our welcome. A young girl, she will expect, and rightly, something more
of ceremony as her due."

"Your Eminence does not know her," interrupted Wogan, with some
sharpness. His Eminence was adroit enough to seize the occasion of
ending a conversation which was growing with every minute more
embarrassing.

"I shall make haste to repair my defect," said he. "I beg you to present
my duty to her Highness and to request her to receive me to-morrow at
ten. By that, I will hope to have discovered a lodging more suitable to
her dignity."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20