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

But the words faltered, the tune wavered, joyless and hollow in that empty morning.

"Drive on," said Clementina, suddenly; and she had a sense that she was being driven into bondage,—she who had just been freed. Wogan drove on towards Peri.

It was the morning of Sunday, the 30th of April; and as the little cart drew near to this hamlet of thirty cottages, the travellers could hear the single bell in the church belfry calling the villagers to Mass. Wogan spoke but once to Clementina, and then only to point out a wooden hut which stood picturesquely on a wooded bluff of Monte Lessini, high up upon the left. A narrow gorge down which a torrent foamed led upwards to the bluff, and the hut of which the windows were shuttered, and which seemed at that distance to have been built with an unusual elegance, was to Wogan's thinking a hunting-box. Clementina looked up at the bluff indifferently and made no answer. She only spoke [pg 258] as Wogan drove past the church-door, and the sound of the priest's voice came droning out to them.

"Will you wait for me?" she asked. "I will not be long."

Wogan stopped the pony.

"You would give thanks?" said he. "I understand."

"I would pray for an honest heart wherewith to give honest thanks," said Clementina, in a low voice; and she added hastily, "There is a life of ceremonies, there is a life of cities before me. I have lived under the skies these last two days."

She went into the church, shrouding her face in her hood, and kneeled down before a rush chair close to the door. A sense of gratitude, however, was not that morning to be got by any prayers, however earnest. It was merely a distaste for ceremonies and observances, she strenuously assured herself, that had grown upon her during these ten days. She sought to get rid of that distaste, as she kneeled, by picturing in her thoughts the Prince to whom she was betrothed. She recalled the exploits, the virtues, which Wogan had ascribed to him; she stamped them upon the picture. "It is the King," she said to herself; and the picture answered her, "It is the King's servant." And, lo! the face of the picture was the face of Charles Wogan. She covered her cheeks with her hands in a burning rush of shame; she struck in her thoughts at the face of that image with her clenched fists, to bruise, [pg 259] to annihilate it. "It is the King! It is the King! It is the King!" she cried in her remorse, but the image persisted. It still wore the likeness of Charles Wogan; it still repeated, "No, it is the King's servant." There was more of the primitive woman in this girl bred in the rugged country-side of Silesia than even Wogan was aware of, and during the halts in their journey she had learned from Mrs. Misset details which Wogan had been at pains to conceal. It was Wogan who had conceived the idea of her rescue—in the King's place. In the King's place, Wogan had come to Innspruck and effected it. In the King's place, he had taken her by the hand and cleft a way for her through her enemies. He was the man, the rescuer; she was the woman, the rescued.

She became conscious of the futility of her attitude of prayer. She raised her head and saw that a man kneeling close to the altar had turned and was staring fixedly towards her. The man was the Prince of Baden. Had he recognised her? She peered between her fingers; she remarked that his gaze was puzzled; he was not then sure, though he suspected. She waited until he turned his head again, and then she silently rose to her feet and slipped out of the church. She found Wogan waiting for her in some anxiety.

"Did he recognise you?" he asked.

"He was not sure," answered Clementina. "How did you know he was at Mass?"

"A native I spoke with told me."

[pg 260]

Clementina climbed up into the cart.

"The Prince is not a generous man," she said hesitatingly.

Wogan understood her. The Prince of Baden must not know that she had come to Peri escorted by a single cavalier. He would talk bitterly, he would make much of his good fortune in that he had not married the Princess Clementina, he would pity the Chevalier de St. George,—there was a fine tale there. Wogan could trace it across the tea-tables of Europe, and hear the malicious inextinguishable laughter which winged it on its way. He drove off quickly from the church door.

"He leaves Peri at nine," said Wogan. "He will have no time to make inquiries. We have but to avoid the inn he stays at. There is a second at the head of the village which we passed."

To this second inn Wogan drove, and was welcomed by a shrewish woman whose sour face was warmed for once in a way into something like enthusiasm.

"A lodging indeed you shall have," cried she, "and a better lodging than the Prince of Baden can look back upon, though he pay never so dearly for it. Poor man, he will have slept wakefully this night! Here, sir, you will find honest board and an honest bed for yourself and your sweet lady, and an honest bill to set you off in a sweet humour in the morning."

"Nay, my good woman," interrupted Wogan, hastily. "This is no sweet lady of mine, nor are [pg 261] we like to stay until the morrow. The truth is, we are a party of four, but our carriage snapped its axle some miles back. The young lady's uncle and aunt are following us, and we wait only for their arrival."

Wogan examined the inn and thought the disposition of it very convenient. It made three sides of a courtyard open to the road. On the right and the bottom were farm-buildings and a stable; the inn was the wing upon the left hand. The guest rooms, of which there were four, were all situated upon the first floor and looked out upon a little thicket of fir-trees at the back of the wing. They were approached by a staircase, which ran up with a couple of turns from the courtyard itself and on the outside of the house-wall. Wogan was very pleased with that staircase; it was narrow. He was pleased, too, because there were no other travellers in the inn. He went back to the landlady.

"It is very likely," said he, "that my friends when they come will, after all, choose to stay here for the night. I will hire all the rooms upon the first floor."

The landlady was no less pleased than Mr. Wogan. She had a thought that they were a runaway couple and served them breakfast in a little parlour up the stairs with many sly and confusing allusions. She became confused, however, when after breakfast Clementina withdrew to bed, and Wogan sauntered out into the high-road, where he sat himself down on a bank to watch for Captain [pg 262] Misset. All day he sat resolutely with his back towards the inn. The landlady inferred that here were lovers quarrelling, and she was yet more convinced of it when she entered the parlour in the afternoon to lay the table for dinner and saw Clementina standing wistfully at the window with her eyes upon that unmoving back. Wogan meanwhile for all his vigilance watched the road but ill. Merchants, pedlars, friars, and gentlemen travelling for their pleasure passed down the road into Italy. Mr. Wogan saw them not, or saw them with unseeing eyes. His eyes were turned inwards, and he gazed at a picture that his heart held of a room in that inn behind him, where after all her dangers and fatigues a woman slept in peace. Towards evening fewer travellers passed by, but there came one party of six well-mounted men whose leader suddenly bowed his head down upon his horse's neck as he rode past. Wogan had preached a sermon on the carelessness which comes with danger's diminutions, but he was very tired. The head was nodding; the blow might fall from nowhere, and he not know.

At nightfall he returned and mounted to the parlour, where Clementina awaited him.

"There is no sign of Captain Misset," said he.

Wogan was puzzled by the way in which Clementina received the news. For a moment he thought that her eyes lightened, and that she was glad; then it seemed to him that her eyes clouded and suddenly as if with pain. Nor was her voice a guide to him, [pg 263] for she spoke her simple question without significance,—

"Must we wait, then, till the morning?"

"There is a chance that they may come before the morning. I will watch on the top stair, and if they come I will make bold to wake your Highness."

Their hostess upon this brought their supper into the room, and Wogan became at once aware of a change in her demeanour. She no longer embarrassed them with her patronage, nor did she continue her sly allusions to the escapades of lovers. On the contrary, she was of an extreme deference. Under the deference, too, Wogan seemed to remark a certain excitement.

"Have you other lodgers to-night?" he asked carelessly.

"No, sir," said she. "Travellers are taken by a big house and a bustle of