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

my daughter's face;" and with her own hand she opened the bedroom door and stood aside.

"Madam, I would not press my duty an inch beyond its limits," said the magistrate. "I will stand in the doorway, and do you bid your daughter speak."

The Princess-mother did not move from her position.

"My child," she said.

Jenny in the bedroom groaned and turned from one side to the other.

"You are in pain?"

Jenny groaned again. The magistrate himself closed the door.

"Believe me," said he, "no one could more regret than I the incivilities to which I am compelled."

He crossed the room. Wogan heard him and his men descending the stairs. He heard the door open and shut; he heard Chateaudoux draw the bolts. Then he stepped out from the curtain.

"Your Highness, that was bravely done," said he, and kneeling he kissed her hand. He went back into the embrasure, slipped the bundle over his arm, and opened the window very silently. He saw the snow was still falling, the wind still moaning [pg 200] about the crannies and roaring along the streets. He set his knee upon the window-ledge, climbed out, and drew the window to behind him.

The Princess-mother waited in the room with her hand upon her heart. She waited, it seemed to her, for an eternity. Then she heard the sound of a heavy fall, and the clang of a musket against the wall of the villa. But she heard no cry. She ran to the window and looked out. But strain her eyes as she might, she could distinguish nothing in that blinding storm. She could not see the sentinel; nor was this strange, for the sentinel lay senseless on the snow against the house-wall, and Mr. Wogan was already running down the avenue.

Under the fourth tree he found Clementina; she took his arm, and they set off together, wrestling with the wind, wading through the snow. It seemed to Clementina that her companion was possessed by some new fear. He said no single word to her; he dragged her with a fierce grip upon her wrist; if she stumbled, he jerked her roughly to her feet. She set her teeth and kept pace with him. Only once did she speak. They had come to a depression in the road where the melted snow had made a wide pool. Wogan leaped across it and said,—

"Give me your hand! There's a white stone midway where you can set your foot."

The Princess stepped as he bade her. The stone yielded beneath her tread and she stood ankle-deep in the water. Wogan sprang to her side and lifted her out. She had uttered no cry, and now she only [pg 201] laughed as she stood shivering on the further edge. It was that low musical, good-humoured laugh to which Wogan had never listened without a thrill of gladness, but it waked no response in him now.

"You told me of a white stone on which I might safely set my foot," she said. "Well, sir, your white stone was straw."

They were both to remember these words afterwards and to make of them a parable, but it seemed that Wogan barely heard them now. "Come!" he said, and taking her arm he set off running again.

Clementina understood that something inopportune, something terrible, had happened since she had left the villa. She asked no questions; she trusted herself without reserve to these true friends who had striven at such risks for her, she desired to prove to them that she was what they would have her be,—a girl who did not pester them with inconvenient chatter, but who could keep silence when silence was helpful, and face hardships with a buoyant heart.

They crossed the bridge and stopped before a pair of high folding doors. They were the doors of the tavern. Wogan drew a breath of relief, pulled the bobbin, and pushed the doors open. Clementina slipped through, and in darkness she took a step forward and bruised herself against the wheels of a carriage. Wogan closed the door and ran to her side.

"This way," said he, and held out his hand. He guided Clementina round the carriage to a steep [pg 202] narrow stairway—it was more a ladder than a stair—fixed against the inner wall. At the top of this stairway shone a horizontal line of yellow light. Wogan led the Princess up the stairs. The line of light shone out beneath a door. Wogan opened the door and stood aside. Clementina passed into a small bare room lighted by a single candle, where Mrs. Misset, Gaydon, and O'Toole waited for her coming. Not a word was said; but their eyes spoke their admiration of the woman, their knees expressed their homage to the Queen. There was a fire blazing on the hearth, Mrs. Misset had a dry change of clothes ready and warm. Wogan laid the Princess's bundle on a chair, and with Gaydon and O'Toole went down the stairs.

"The horses?" he asked.

"I have ordered them," said Gaydon, "at the post-house. I will fetch them;" and he hurried off upon his errand.

Wogan turned to O'Toole.

"And the bill?"

"I have paid it."

"There is no one awake in the house?"

"No one but the landlady."

"Good! Can you keep her engaged until we are ready?"

"To be sure I can. She shall never give a thought to any man of you but myself."

O'Toole passed through a door at the bottom of the staircase into the common-room of the inn. Wogan gently opened the big doors and dragged [pg 203] the carriage out into the road. Gaydon with the horses galloped silently up through the snow, and together the two men feverishly harnessed them to the carriage. There were six for the carriage, and a seventh for O'Toole to ride. The expedition which Wogan and Gaydon showed was matched by the Princess. For while they were fastening the last buckles, the door at the top of the stairs opened, and again that night Clementina whispered,—

"I am ready."

"Come!" replied Wogan. She wore a scarlet cloak upon her shoulders, and muffling it about her head she ran down with Mrs. Misset. Wogan opened the lower door of the inn and called for O'Toole. O'Toole came running out before Wogan had ended his words, and sprang into his saddle. Gaydon was already on the box with the reins gathered in his hand. Wogan had the carriage door open before Clementina had reached the foot of the stairs; it was shut upon her and her companion almost before they were aware they were within it; the carriage started almost before the door was shut. Yet when it did start, Wogan was beside Gaydon upon the box. Their movements, indeed, occurred with so exact a rapidity, that though the hostess at once followed O'Toole to bid her guests farewell, when she reached the big doors she saw only the back of the carriage lurching through the ruts of snow.

"Quick!" cried Wogan; "we have lost too much time."

[pg 204]

"A bare twenty minutes," said Gaydon.

"A good twelve hours," said Wogan.

Gaydon lashed the horses into a gallop, the horses strained at their collars, the carriage raced out of the town and up the slopes of the Brenner. The princess Clementina had been rescued from her prison.

"But we must keep her free!" cried Wogan, as he blew through his gloves upon his frozen fingers. "Faster! Faster!"

The incline was steep, the snow clogged the wheels, the horses sank deep in it. Gaydon might ply his whip as he would, the carriage might lurch and leap from side to side; the pace was all too slow for Wogan.

"We have lost twelve hours," he cried. "Oh, would to God we were come to Italy!" And turning backwards he strained his eyes down through the darkness and snow to the hidden roofs of Innspruck, almost fearing to see the windows from one end of the town to the other leap to a blaze of light, and to hear a roar of many voices warn him that the escape was discovered. But the only cry that he heard came from the lips of Mrs. Misset, who put her head from the carriage and bade him stop.

Gaydon brought the horses to a standstill three miles out of Innspruck.

[pg 205] CHAPTER XV

Wogan jumped down from his box and ran to the carriage-door.

"Her Highness is ill?" he cried in suspense.

"Not the least bit in the world," returned Clementina, whose voice for once in a way jarred upon Wogan's ears. Nothing short of a positive sickness could justify the delay.

"What is it, then?" he asked curtly, almost roughly, of Mrs. Misset.

"You carried a packet for her Highness. It is left behind at the tavern."

Wogan stamped impatiently on the ground.

"And for this, for a petticoat or two, you hinder us," he cried in a heat. "There's no petticoat in the world, though it were so stiff with gold that it stood on end of itself, that's worth a single second of the next forty-eight hours."

"But it contains her Highness's jewels."

Wogan's impatience became an exasperation. Were all women at heart, then, no better than Indian squaws? A string of beads outweighed the sacrifices of friends and the chance of