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

sir, you'll put us all to shame when I bring her Royal Highness out of Innspruck."

"Oh, that!" said the Chevalier, as though for the moment he had forgotten. "It is impossible," and the phrase was spoken now in an accent of hesitation. Moreover, he sat down at a table, and drawing a sheet of paper written over with memoranda, he began to read aloud with a glance towards Wogan at the end of each sentence.

"The house stands in the faubourgs of Innspruck. There is an avenue of trees in front of the house; on the opposite side of the avenue there is a tavern with the sign of 'The White Chamois.'"

Wogan committed the words to memory.

"The Princess and her mother," continued the Chevalier, "are imprisoned in the east side of the house."

[pg 24]

"And how guarded, sir?" asked Wogan.

The Chevalier read again from his paper.

"A sentry at each door, a third beneath the prisoners' windows. They keep watch night and day. Besides, twice a day the magistrate visits the house."

"At what hours?"

"At ten in the morning. The same hour at night."

"And on each visit the magistrate sees the Princess?"

"Yes, though she lies abed."

Wogan stroked his chin. The Cardinal regarded him quizzically.

"I trust, Mr. Wogan, that we shall hear Farini. There is talk of his coming to Bologna."

Wogan did not answer. He was silent; he saw the three sentinels standing watchfully about the house; he heard them calling "All's well" each to the other. Then he asked, "Has the Princess her own servants to attend her?"

"Only M. Chateaudoux, her chamberlain."

"Ah!"

Wogan leaned forward with a question on his tongue he hardly dared to ask. So much hung upon the answer.

"And M. Chateaudoux is allowed to come and go?"

"In the daylight."

Wogan turned to the Cardinal. "The box will be the best box in the house," Wogan suggested.

[pg 25]

"Oh, sir," replied the Cardinal, "on the first tier, to be sure."

Wogan turned back to the Chevalier.

"All that I need now is a letter from your Majesty to the King of Poland and a few rascally guineas. I can leave Bologna before a soul's astir in the morning. No one but Whittington saw me to-day, and a word will keep him silent. There will be secrecy—" but the Chevalier suddenly cut him short.

"No," said he, bringing the palm of his hand down upon the table. "Here's a blow that we must bend to! It's a dream, this plan of yours."

"But a dream I'll dream so hard, sir, that I'll dream it true," cried Wogan, in despair.

"No, no," said the Chevalier. "We'll talk no more of it. There's God's will evident in this arrest, and we must bend to it;" and at once Wogan remembered his one crowning argument. It was so familiar to his thoughts, it had lain so close at his heart, that he had left it unspoken, taking it as it were for granted that others were as familiar with it as he.

"Sir," said he, eagerly, "I have never told you, but the Princess Clementina when a child amongst her playmates had a favourite game. They called it kings and queens. And in that game the Princess was always chosen Queen of England."

The Chevalier started.

"Is that so?" and he gazed into Wogan's eyes, making sure that he spoke the truth.

[pg 26]

"In very truth it is," and the two men stood looking each at the other and quite silent.

It was the truth, a mere coincidence if you will, but to both these men omens and auguries were the gravest matters.

"There indeed is God's finger pointing," cried Wogan. "Sir, give me leave to follow it."

The Chevalier still stood looking at him in silence. Then he said suddenly, "Go, then, and God speed you! You are a gallant gentleman."

He sat down thereupon and wrote a letter to the King of Poland, asking him to entrust the rescue of his daughter into Wogan's hands. This letter Wogan took and money for his journey.

"You will have preparations to make," said the Chevalier. "I will not keep you. You have horses?"

Mr. Wogan had two in a stable at Bologna. "But," he added, "there is a horse I left this morning six miles this side of Fiesole, a black horse, and I would not lose it."

"Nor shall you," said the Chevalier.

Wogan crept back to his lodging as cautiously as he had left it. There was no light in any window but in his own, where his servant, Marnier, awaited him. Wogan opened the door softly and found the porter asleep in his chair. He stole upstairs and made his preparations. These, however, were of the simplest kind, and consisted of half-a-dozen orders to Marnier and the getting into bed. In the morning he woke before daybreak [pg 27] and found Marnier already up. They went silently out of the house as the dawn was breaking. Marnier had the key to the stables, and they saddled the two horses and rode through the blind and silent streets with their faces muffled in their cloaks.

They met no one, however, until they were come to the outskirts of the town. But then as they passed the mouth of an alley a man came suddenly out and as suddenly drew back. The morning was chill, and the man was closely wrapped.

Wogan could not distinguish his face or person, and looking down the alley he saw at the end of it only a garden wall, and over the top of the wall a thicket of trees and the chimney-tops of a low house embosomed amongst them. He rode on, secure in the secrecy of his desperate adventure. But that same morning Mr. Whittington paid a visit to Wogan's lodging and asked to be admitted. He was told that Mr. Wogan had not yet returned to Bologna.

"So, indeed, I thought," said he; and he sauntered carelessly along, not to his own house, but to one smaller, situated at the bottom of a cul-de-sac and secluded amongst trees. At the door he asked whether her Ladyship was yet visible, and was at once shown into a room with long windows which stood open to the garden. Her Ladyship lay upon a sofa sipping her coffee and teasing a spaniel with the toe of her slipper.

"You are early," she said with some surprise.

[pg 28]

"And yet no earlier than your Ladyship," said Whittington.

"I have to make my obeisance to my King," said she, stifling a yawn. "Could one, I ask you, sleep on so important a day?"

Mr. Whittington laughed genially. Then he opened the door and glanced along the passage. When he turned back into the room her Ladyship had kicked the spaniel from the sofa and was sitting bolt upright with all her languor gone.

"Well?" she asked quickly.

Whittington took a seat on the sofa by her side.

"Charles Wogan left Bologna at daybreak. Moreover, I have had a message from the Chevalier bidding me not to mention that I saw him in Bologna yesterday. One could hazard a guess at the goal of so secret a journey."

"Ohlau!" exclaimed the lady, in a whisper. Then she nestled back upon the sofa and bit the fragment of lace she called her handkerchief.

"So there's an end of Mr. Wogan," she said pleasantly.

Whittington made no answer.

"For there's no chance that he'll succeed," she continued with a touch of anxiety in her voice.

Whittington neither agreed nor contradicted. He asked a question instead.

"What is the sharpest spur a man can know? What is it that gives a man audacity to attempt and wit to accomplish the impossible?"

The lady smiled.

[pg 29]

"The poets tell us love," said she, demurely.

Whittington nodded his head.

"Wogan speaks very warmly of the Princess Clementina."

Her Ladyship's red lips lost their curve. Her eyes became thoughtful, apprehensive.

"I wonder," she said slowly.

"Yes, I too wonder," said Whittington.

Outside the branches of the trees rustled in the wind and flung shadows, swift as ripples, across the sunlit grass. But within the little room there was a long silence.

[pg 30] CHAPTER IV

M. Chateaudoux, the chamberlain, was a little portly person with a round, red face like a cherub's. He was a creature of the house, one that walked with delicate steps, a conductor of ceremonies, an expert in the subtleties of etiquette; and once he held his wand of office in his hand, there was nowhere to be found a being so precise and consequential. But out of doors he had the timidity of a cat. He lived, however, by rule and rote, and since it had always been his habit to take the air between three and four of the afternoon, he was to be seen between those hours at Innspruck on any fine day mincing along the avenue of trees before the villa in which his mistress was held prisoner.

On one afternoon during the month of October he passed a hawker, who, tired with