Clementina by A. E. W. Mason (rocket ebook reader txt) 📖

his belt he looked about the room.

"I had a pistol," he said carelessly, "a very useful thing is a pistol, more useful at times than a sword."

"I keep one in my bedroom," said the Count, setting the lamp down, "if you can wait the few moments it will take me to fetch it."

Mr. Wogan was quite able to wait. He was indeed sufficiently generous to tell Count Otto that he need not hurry. The Count fetched the pistol and took up the lamp again.

"Will you now follow me?"

Wogan looked straight before him into the air and spoke to no one in particular.

"A pistol is, to be sure, more useful than a sword; but there is just one thing more useful on an occasion than a pistol, and that is a hunting knife."

[pg 107]

Count Otto shook his head.

"There, Chevalier, I doubt if I can serve you."

"But upon my word," said Wogan, picking up a carving-knife from the tray, "here is the very thing."

"It has no sheath."

Wogan was almost indignant at the suggestion that he would go so far as to ask even his dearest friend for a sheath. Besides, he had a sheath, and he fitted the knife into it.

"Now," said he, pleasantly, "all that I need is a sound, swift, thoroughbred horse about six or seven years old."

Count Otto for the fourth time took up his lamp.

"Will you follow me?" he said for the fourth time.

Wogan followed the old man across the lawn and round a corner of the house until he came to a long, low building surmounted by a cupola. The building was the stable, and the Count Otto roused one of his grooms.

"Saddle me Flavia," said he. "Flavia is a mare who, I fancy, fulfils your requirements."

Wogan had no complaint to make of her. She had the manners of a courtier. It seemed, too, that she had no complaint to make of Mr. Wogan. Count Otto laid his hand upon the bridle and led the mare with her rider along a lane through a thicket of trees and to a small gate.

"Here, then, we part, Chevalier," said he. "No doubt to-morrow I shall sit down at my table, knowing [pg 108] that I talked a deal of folly ill befitting an old man. No doubt I shall be aware that my books are the true happiness after all. But to-night—well, to-night I would fain be twenty years of age, that I might fling my books over the hedge and ride out with you, my sword at my side, my courage in my hand, into the world's highway. I will beg you to keep the mare as a token and a memory of our meeting. There is no better beast, I believe, in Christendom."

Wogan was touched by the old gentleman's warmth.

"Count," said Wogan, "I will gladly keep your mare in remembrance of your great goodwill to a stranger. But there is one better beast in Christendom."

"Indeed? And which is that?"

"Why, sir, the black horse which the lady I shall marry will ride into my city of dreams." And so he rode off upon his way. The morning was just beginning to gleam pale in the east. Here was a night passed which he had not thought to live through, and he was still alive to help the chosen woman imprisoned in the hollow of the hills at Innspruck. Wogan had reason to be grateful to that old man who stood straining his eyes after him. There was something pathetical in his discontent with his secluded life which touched Wogan to the heart. Wogan was not sure that in the morning the old man would know that the part he had chosen was, after all, the best. Besides, Wogan had between [pg 109] his knees the most friendly and intelligent beast which he had ridden since that morning when he met Lady Featherstone on the road to Bologna. But he had soon other matters to distract his thoughts. However easily Flavia cantered or trotted she could not but sharply remind him of his wounds. He had forty miles to travel before he could reach Schlestadt; and in the villages on the road there was gossip that day of a man with a tormented face who rode rocking in his saddle as though the furies were at his back.

[pg 110] CHAPTER VIII

The little town of Schlestadt went to bed betimes. By ten o'clock its burghers were in their night-caps. A belated visitor going home at that hour found his footsteps ring upon the pavement with surprising echoes, and traversed dark street after dark street, seeing in each window, perhaps, a mimic moon, but no other light unless his path chanced to lie through Herzogstrasse. In that street a couple of windows on the first floor showed bright and unabashed, and the curious passer-by could detect upon the blind the shadows of men growing to monstrous giants and dwindling to pigmies according as they approached or retired from the lamp in the room.

There were three men in that room booted as for a journey. Their dress might have misled one into the belief that they were merchants, but their manner of wearing it proclaimed them soldiers. Of the three, one, a short, spare man, sat at the table with his head bent over a slip of paper. His peruke was pushed back from his forehead and showed that the hair about his temples was grey. He had a square face of some strength, and thoughtful eyes.

The second of the three stood by the window. He was, perhaps, a few years younger, thirty-six [pg 111] an observer might have guessed to the other's forty, and his face revealed a character quite different. His features were sharp, his eyes quick; if prudence was the predominating quality of the first, resource took its place in the second. While the first man sat patiently at the table, this one stood impatiently at the window. Now he lifted the blind, now he dropped it again.

The third sat in front of the fire with his face upturned to the ceiling. He was a tall, big man with mighty legs which sprawled one on each side of the hearth. He was the youngest of the three by five years, but his forehead at this moment was so creased, his mouth so pursed up, his cheeks so wrinkled, he had the look of sixty years. He puffed and breathed very heavily; once or twice he sighed, and at each sigh his chair creaked under him. Major O'Toole of Dillon's regiment was thinking.

"Gaydon," said he, suddenly.

The man at the table looked up quickly.

"Misset."

The man at the window turned impatiently.

"I have an idea."

Misset shrugged his shoulders.

Gaydon said, "Let us hear it."

O'Toole drew himself up; his chair no longer creaked, it groaned and cracked.

"It is a lottery," said he, "and we have made our fortunes. We three are the winners, and so our names are not crossed out."

[pg 112]

"But I have put no money in a lottery," objected Gaydon.

"Nor I," said Misset.

"And where should I find money either?" said O'Toole. "But Charles Wogan has borrowed it for us and paid it in, and so we're all rich men. What'll I buy with it?"

Misset paced the room.

"The paper came four days ago?" he said.

"Yes, in the morning."

"Five days, then," and he stood listening. Then he ran to the window and opened it. Gaydon followed him and drew up the blind. Both men listened and were puzzled.

"That's the sound of horseshoes," said Gaydon.

"But there's another sound keeping pace with the horseshoes," said Misset.

O'Toole leaned on their shoulders, crushing them both down upon the sill of the window.

"It is very like the sound a gentleman makes when he reels home from a tavern."

Gaydon and Misset raised themselves with a common effort springing from a common thought and shot O'Toole back into the room.

"What if it is?" began Misset.

"He was never drunk in his life," said Gaydon.

"It's possible that he has reformed," said O'Toole; and the three men precipitated themselves down the stairs.

The drunkard was Wogan; he was drunk with fatigue and sleeplessness and pain, but he had retained [pg 113] just enough of his sober nature to spare a tired mare who had that day served him well.

The first intimation he received that his friends were on the watch was O'Toole's voice bawling down the street to him.

"Is it a lottery? Tell me we're all rich men," and he felt himself grasped in O'Toole's arms.

"I'll tell you more wonderful things than that," stammered Wogan, "when you have shown me the way to a stable."

"There's one at the back of the house," said Gaydon. "I'll take the horse."

"No," said Wogan, stubbornly, and would not yield the bridle to Gaydon.

O'Toole nodded approval.

"There are two things," said he, "a man never trusts to his friends. One's his horse; t' other's his wife."

Wogan suddenly stopped and looked at O'Toole. O'Toole answered the look