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

from Rome; and the hesitation in the girl's voice told him the rest of the story. Wogan would have given much to have had his fingers about the scruff of that pompous gentleman's neck with the precipice handy at his feet. It was intolerable that the fellow should pester the Princess in prison and hinder her flight when she had escaped from it.

"Well, we can do no more," said he, and he drew up the window. Neither Gaydon nor Mrs. Misset were awakened; Clementina and Wogan were alone in the darkness.

She leaned forward to him and said in a low voice,—

"Tell me of the King. I shall make mistakes in this new world. Will he have patience with me while I learn?"

She had spoken upon the same strain in the darkness of the staircase only the night before. Wogan gently laughed her fears aside.

"I will tell you the truest thing about the King. He needs you at his side. For all his friends, he is at heart a lonely man, throned upon sorrows. I dare [pg 219] to tell you that, knowing you. He needs not a mere wife, but a mate, a helpmate, to strive with him, her hand in his. Every man needs the helpmate, as I read the world. For it cannot but be that a man falls below himself when he comes home always to an empty room."

The Princess was silent. Wogan hoped that he had reassured her. But her thoughts were now turned from herself. She leaned yet further forward with her elbows upon her knees, and in a yet lower voice she asked a question which fairly startled him.

"Does she not love you?"

Wogan, indeed, had spoken unconsciously, with a deep note of sadness in his voice, which had sounded all the more strange and sad to her from its contrast with the quick, cheerful, vigorous tones she had come to think the mark of him. He had spoken as though he looked forward with a poignant regret through a weary span of days, and saw himself always in youth and middle years and age coming home always to an empty room. Therefore she put her question, and Wogan was taken off his guard.

"There is no one," he said in a flurry.

Clementina shook her head.

"I wish that I may hear the King speak so, and in that voice; I shall be very sure he loves me," she said in a musing voice, and so changing almost to a note of raillery. "Tell me her name!" she pleaded. "What is amiss with her that she is not thankful for a true man's love like yours? Is she haughty? I'll [pg 220] bring her on her knees to you. Does she think her birth sets her too high in the world? I'll show her so much contempt, you so much courtesy, that she shall fall from her arrogance and dote upon your steps. Perhaps she is too sure of your devotion? Why, then, I'll make her jealous!"

Wogan interrupted her, and the agitation of his voice put an end to her raillery. Somehow she had wounded him who had done so much for her.

"Madam, I beg you to believe me, there is no one;" and casting about for a sure argument to dispel her conjectures, he said on an impulse, "Listen; I will make your Highness a confidence." He stopped, to make sure that Gaydon and Mrs. Misset were still asleep. Then he laughed uneasily like a man that is half-ashamed and resumed,—"I am lord and king of a city of dreams. Here's the opening of a fairy tale, you will say. But when I am asleep my city's very real; and even now that I am awake I could draw you a map of it, though I could not name its streets. That's my town's one blemish. Its streets are nameless. It has taken a long while in the building, ever since my boyhood; and indeed the work's not finished yet, nor do I think it ever will be finished till I die, since my brain's its architect. When I was asleep but now, I discovered a new villa, and an avenue of trees, and a tavern with red blinds which I had never remarked before. At the first there was nothing but a queer white house of which the original has fallen to ruins at Rathcoffey in Ireland. This house [pg 221] stood alone in a wide flat emerald plain that stretched like an untravelled sea to a circle of curving sky. There was room to build, you see, and when I left Rathcoffey and became a wanderer, the building went on apace. There are dark lanes there from Avignon between great frowning houses, narrow climbing streets from Meran, arcades from Verona, and a park of many thickets and tall poplar-trees with a long silver stretch of water. One day you will see that park from the windows of St. James. It has a wall too, my city,—a round wall enclosing it within a perfect circle; and from whatever quarter of the plain you come towards it, you only see this wall, there's not so much as a chimney visible above it. Once you have crowded with the caravans and traders through the gates,—for my town is busy,—you are at once in the ringing streets. I think my architect in that took Aigues Mortes for his model. Outside you have the flat, silent plain, across which the merchants creep in long trailing lines, within the noise of markets, the tramp of horses' hoofs, the talk of men and women, and, if you listen hard, the whispers, too, of lovers. Oh, my city's populous! There are quiet alleys with windows opening onto them, where on summer nights you may see a young girl's face with the moonlight on it like a glory, and in the shadow of the wall beneath, the cloaked figure of a youth. Well, I have a notion—" and then he broke off abruptly. "There's a black horse I own, my favourite horse."

[pg 222]

"You rode it the first time you came to Ohlau," said the Princess.

"Do you indeed remember that?" cried Wogan, with so much pleasure that Gaydon stirred in his corner, and Clementina said, "Hush!"

Wogan waited in a suspense lest Gaydon should wake up, which, to be sure, would be the most inconsiderate thing in the world. Gaydon, however, settled himself more comfortably, and in a little his regular breathing might be heard again.

"Well," resumed Wogan, "I have a notion that the lady I shall marry will come riding some sunrise on my black horse across the plain and into my city of dreams. And she has not."

"Ah," said Clementina, "here's a subterfuge, my friend. The lady you shall marry, you say. But tell me this! Has the lady you love ridden on your black horse into your city of dreams?"

"No," said Wogan; "for there is no lady whom I love." There Wogan should have ended, but he added rather sadly, "Nor is there like to be."

"Then I am sure," said Clementina.

"Sure that I speak truth?"

"No, sure that you mislead me. It is not kind; for here perhaps I might give you some small token of my gratitude, would you but let me. Oh, it is no matter. I shall find out who the lady is. You need not doubt it. I shall set my wits and eyes to work. There shall be marriages when I am Queen. I will find out!"

[pg 223]

Wogan's face was not visible in the darkness; but he spoke quickly and in a startled voice,—

"That you must never do. Promise that you never will! Promise me that you will never try;" and again Gaydon stirred in his corner.

Clementina made no answer to the passionate words. She did not promise, but she drew a breath, and then from head to foot she shivered. Wogan dared not repeat his plea for a promise, but he felt that though she had not given it, none the less she would keep it. They sat for awhile silent. Then Clementina came back to her first question.

"Tell me of the King," she said very softly. And as the carriage rolled down the mountain valley through the night and its wheels struck flashes of fire from the stones, Wogan drew a picture for her of the man she was to marry. It was a relief to him to escape from the dangerous talk of the last hour, and he spoke fervently. The poet in him had always been sensitive to the glamour of that wandering Prince; he had his countrymen's instinctive devotion for a failing cause. This was no suitable moment for dwelling upon the defects and weaknesses. Wogan told her the story of the campaign in Scotland, of the year's residence in Avignon. He spoke most burningly. A girl would no doubt like to hear of her love's achievements; and if James Stuart had not so many to his name as a man could wish, that was merely because chance had served him ill. So a fair tale was told, not to be [pg 224] found in any history book, of a night attack in Scotland and how the Chevalier de St. George, surprised and already to all purposes a prisoner, forced a way alone through nine grenadiers with loaded muskets and escaped over the roof-tops. It was a good breathless story as he told it, and he had just come to an end of it when the carriage drove through the village of