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

THE PRINCE STRUTTED TO THE WINDOW; CLEMENTINA SOLEMNLY KEPT PACE WITH HIM."—Page 161.

"Will you give me your hand," said he, "as far as your window?"

"Certainly, sir, and out of it."

Clementina laid her hand in his. The Prince strutted to the window; Clementina solemnly kept pace with him.

"What do you see? A sentinel fixed there guarding you. At the door stands a second sentinel. Answer me as I would be answered, your window and your door are free. Refuse me, and I travel into Italy. My trunks are already packed."

"Neatly packed, I hope," said Clementina. Her cheek was flushed; her lips no longer smiled. But she spoke most politely, and the Prince was at a loss.

"Will you give me your hand," said she, "as far as my table?"

The Prince doubtfully stretched out his hand, and the couple paced in a stately fashion to Clementina's table.

"What do you see upon my table?" said she, with something of the Prince's pomposity.

"A picture," said he, reluctantly.

"Whose?"

"The Pretender's," he answered with a sneer.

"The King's," said she, pleasantly. "His picture is fixed there guarding me. Against my heart there lies a second. I wish your Highness all speed to Italy."

She dropped his hand, bowed to him again in sign that the interview was ended. The Prince had a final argument.

"You refuse a dowry of £100,000. I would have you think of that."

"Sir, you think of it for both of us."

The Prince drew himself up to his full stature.

"I have your answer, then?"

"You have, sir. You had it yesterday, and if I remember right the day before."

"I will stay yet two more days. Madam, you need not fear. I shall not importune you. I give you those two days for reflection. Unless I hear from you I shall leave Innspruck—"

"In two days' time?" suddenly exclaimed Clementina.

"On the evening of the 27th," said the Prince.

Clementina laughed softly in a way which he did not understand. She was altogether in a strange, incomprehensible mood that afternoon, and when he learnt next day that she had taken to her bed he was not surprised. Perhaps he was not altogether grieved. It seemed right that she should be punished for her stubbornness. Punishment might soften her.

But no message came to him during those two days, and on the morning of the 27th he set out for Italy.

At the second posting stage, which he reached about three of the afternoon, he crossed a hired carriage on its way to Innspruck. The carriage left the inn door as the Prince drove up to it. He noticed the great size of the coachman on the box, he saw also that a man and two women were seated [pg 164] within the carriage, and that a servant rode on horseback by the door. The road, however, was a busy one; day and night travellers passed up and down; the Prince gave only a passing scrutiny to that carriage rolling down the hill to Innspruck. Besides, he was acquainted neither with Gaydon, who rode within the carriage, nor with Wogan, the servant at the door, nor with O'Toole, the fat man on the box.

At nightfall the Prince came to Nazareth, a lonely village amongst the mountains with a single tavern, where he thought to sleep the night. There was but one guest-room, however, which was already bespoken by a Flemish lady, the Countess of Cernes, who had travelled that morning to Innspruck to fetch her niece.

The Prince grumbled for a little, since the evening was growing stormy and wild, but there was no remedy. He could not dispute the matter, for he was shown the Countess's berlin waiting ready for her return. A servant of the Count's household also had been left behind at Nazareth to retain the room, and this man, while using all proper civilities, refused to give up possession. The Prince had no acquaintance with the officers of Dillon's Irish regiment, so that he had no single suspicion that Captain Misset was the servant. He drove on for another stage, where he found a lodging.

Meanwhile the hired carriage rolled into Innspruck, and a storm of extraordinary violence burst over the country.

In fact, just about the time when the Prince's horses were being unharnessed from his carriage on the heights of Mount Brenner, the hired carriage stopped before a little inn under the town wall of Innspruck hard by the bridge. And half an hour later, when the Prince was sitting down to his supper before a blazing fire and thanking his stars that on so gusty and wild a night he had a stout roof above his head, a man and a woman came out from the little tavern under the town wall and disappeared into the darkness. They had the streets to themselves, for that night the city was a whirlpool of the winds. Each separate chasm in the encircling hills was a mouth to discharge a separate blast. The winds swept down into the hollow and charged in a riotous combat about the squares and lanes; at each corner was an ambuscade, and everywhere they clashed with artilleries of hail and sleet.

The man and woman staggered hand in hand and floundered in the deep snow. They were soaked to the skin, frozen by the cold, and whipped by the stinging hail. Though they bent their heads and bodies, though they clung hand in hand, though [pg 166] they struggled with all their strength, there were times when they could not advance a foot and must needs wait for a lull in the shelter of a porch. At such times the man would perhaps quote a line of Virgil about the cave of the winds, and the woman curse like a grenadier. They, however, were not the only people who were distressed by the storm.

Outside the villa in which the Princess was imprisoned stood the two sentinels, one beneath the window, the other before the door. There were icicles upon their beards; they were so shrouded in white they had the look of snow men built by schoolboys. Their coats of frieze could not keep out the searching sleet, nor their caps protect their ears from the intolerable cold. Their hands were so numbed they could not feel the muskets they held.

The sentinel before the door suffered the most, for whereas his companion beneath the window had nothing but the house wall before his eyes, he, on his part, could see on the other side of the alley of trees the red blinds of "The White Chamois," that inn which the Chevalier de St. George had mentioned to Charles Wogan. The red blinds shone very cheery and comfortable upon that stormy night. The sentinel envied the men gathered in the warmth and light behind them, and cursed his own miserable lot as heartily as the woman in the porch did hers. The red blinds made it