Clementina E-Book

A. E. W. Mason

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

A fictionalized story of the rescue of Maria Clementina Sobieska from imprisonment so that she could wed James Francis Edward Stuart, also known as Prince James, Prince of Wales (also known as The Old Pretender or The Old Chevalier).

Leseprobe

A. E. W. Mason

CLEMENTINA

Copyright

First published in 1901

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

The landlord, the lady, and Mr. Charles Wogan were all three, it seemed, in luck’s way that September morning of the year 1719. Wogan was not surprised, his luck for the moment was altogether in, so that even when his horse stumbled and went lame at a desolate part of the road from Florence to Bologna, he had no doubt but that somehow fortune would serve him. His horse stepped gingerly on for a few yards, stopped, and looked round at his master. Wogan and his horse were on the best of terms. “Is it so bad as that?” said he, and dismounting he gently felt the strained leg. Then he took the bridle in his hand and walked forward, whistling as he walked.

Yet the place and the hour were most unlikely to give him succour. It was early morning, and he walked across an empty basin of the hills. The sun was not visible, though the upper air was golden and the green peaks of the hills rosy. The basin itself was filled with a broad uncoloured light and lay naked to it and extraordinarily still. There were as yet no shadows; the road rose and dipped across low ridges of turf, a ribbon of dead and unillumined white; and the grass at any distance from the road had the darkness of peat. He led his horse forward for perhaps a mile, and then turning a corner by a knot of trees came unexpectedly upon a wayside inn. In front of the inn stood a travelling carriage with its team of horses. The backs of the horses smoked, and the candles of the lamps were still burning in the broad daylight. Mr. Wogan quickened his pace. He would beg a seat on the box to the next posting stage. Fortune had served him. As he came near he heard from the interior of the inn a woman’s voice, not unmusical so much as shrill with impatience, which perpetually ordered and protested. As he came nearer he heard a man’s voice obsequiously answering the protests, and as the sound of his footsteps rang in front of the inn both voices immediately stopped. The door was flung hastily open, and the landlord and the lady ran out onto the road.

“Sir,” said the lady in Italian, “I need a postillion.”

To Wogan’s thinking she needed much more than a postillion. She needed certainly a retinue of servants. He was not quite sure that she did not need a nurse, for she was a creature of an exquisite fragility, with the pouting face of a child, and the childishness was exaggerated by a great muslin bow she wore at her throat. Her pale hair, where it showed beneath her hood, was fine as silk and as glossy; her eyes had the colour of an Italian sky at noon, and her cheeks the delicate tinge of a carnation. The many laces and ribbons, knotted about her dress in a manner most mysterious to Wogan, added to her gossamer appearance; and, in a word, she seemed to him something too flowerlike for the world’s rough usage.

“I must have a postillion,” she continued.

“Presently, madam,” said the landlord, smiling with all a Tuscan peasant’s desire to please. “In a minute. In less than a minute.”

He looked complacently about him as though at any moment now a crop of postillions might be expected to flower by the roadside. The lady turned from him with a stamp of the foot and saw that Wogan was curiously regarding her carriage. A boy stood at the horses’ heads, but his dress and sleepy face showed that he had not been half an hour out of bed, and there was no one else. Wogan was wondering how in the world she had travelled as far as this inn. The lady explained.

“The postillion who drove me from Florence was drunk—oh, but drunk! He rolled off his horse just here, opposite the door. See, I beat him,” and she raised the beribboned handle of a toy-like cane. “But it was no use. I broke my cane over his back, but he would not get up. He crawled into the passage where he lies.”

Wogan had some ado not to smile. Neither the cane nor the hand which wielded it would be likely to interfere even with a sober man’s slumbers.

“And I must reach Bologna today,” she cried in an extreme agitation. “It is of the last importance.”

“Fortune is kind to us both, madam,” said Wogan, with a bow. “My horse is lamed, as you see. I will be your charioteer, for I too am in a desperate hurry to reach Bologna.”

Immediately the lady drew back.

“Oh!” she said with a start, looking at Wogan.

Wogan looked at her.

“Ah!” said he, thoughtfully.

They eyed each other for a moment, each silently speculating what the other was doing alone at this hour and in such a haste to reach Bologna.

“You are English?” she said with a great deal of unconcern, and she asked in English. That she was English, Wogan already knew from her accent. His Italian, however, was more than passable, and he was a wary man by nature as well as by some ten years’ training in a service where wariness was the first need, though it was seldom acquired. He could have answered “No” quite truthfully, being Irish. He preferred to answer her in Italian as though he had not understood.

“I beg your pardon. Yes, I will drive you to Bologna if the landlord will swear to look after my horse.” And he was very precise in his directions.

The landlord swore very readily. His anxiety to be rid of his vociferous guest and to get back to bed was extreme. Wogan climbed into the postillion’s saddle, describing the while such remedies as he desired to be applied to the sprained leg.

“The horse is a favourite?” asked the lady.

“Madam,” said Wogan, with a laugh, “I would not lose that horse for all the world, for the woman I shall marry will ride on it into my city of dreams.”

The lady stared, as she well might. She hesitated with her foot upon the step.

“Is he sober?” she asked of the landlord.

“Madam,” said the landlord, unabashed, “in this district he is nicknamed the water drinker.”

“You know him, then? He is Italian?”

“He is more. He is of Tuscany.”

The landlord had never seen Wogan in his life before, but the lady seemed to wish some assurance on the point, so he gave it. He shut the carriage door, and Wogan cracked his whip.

The postillion’s desires were of a piece with the lady’s. They raced across the valley, and as they climbed the slope beyond, the sun came over the crests. One moment the dew upon the grass was like raindrops, the next it shone like polished jewels. The postillion shouted a welcome to the sun, and the lady proceeded to breakfast in her carriage. Wogan had to snatch a meal as best he could while the horses were changed at the posting stage. The lady would not wait, and Wogan for his part was used to a light fare. He drove into Bologna that afternoon.

The lady put her head from the window and called out the name of a street. Her postillion, however, paid no heed: he seemed suddenly to have grown deaf; he whipped up his horses, shouted encouragements to them and warnings to the pedestrians on the roads. The carriage rocked round corners and bounced over the uneven stones. Wogan had clean forgotten the fragility of the traveller within. He saw men going busily about, talking in groups and standing alone, and all with consternation upon their faces. The quiet streets were alive with them. Something had happened that day in Bologna—some catastrophe. Or news had come that day—bad news. Wogan did not stop to inquire. He drove at a gallop straight to a long white house which fronted the street. The green latticed shutters were closed against the sun, but there were servants about the doorway, and in their aspect, too, there was something of disorder. Wogan called to one of them, jumped down from his saddle, and ran through the open doorway into a great hall with frescoed walls all ruined by neglect. At the back of the hall a marble staircase, guarded by a pair of marble lions, ran up to a landing and divided. Wogan set foot on the staircase and heard an exclamation of surprise. He looked up. A burly, good-humoured man in the gay embroideries of a courtier was descending towards him.

“You?” cried the courtier. “Already?” and then laughed. He was the only man whom Wogan had seen laugh since he drove into Bologna, and he drew a great breath of hope.

“Then nothing has happened, Whittington? There is no bad news?”

“There is news so bad, my friend, that you might have jogged here on a mule and still have lost no time. Your hurry is clean wasted,” answered Whittington.

Wogan ran past him up the stairs, and so left the hall and the open doorway clear. Whittington looked now straight through the doorway and saw the carriage and the lady on the point of stepping down onto the kerb. His face assumed a look of extreme surprise. Then he glanced up the staircase after Wogan and laughed as though the conjunction of the lady and Mr. Wogan was a rare piece of amusement. Mr. Wogan did not hear the laugh, but the lady did. She raised her head, and at the same moment the courtier came across the hall to meet her. As soon as he had come close, “Harry,” said she, and gave him her hand.

He bent over it and kissed it, and there was more than courtesy in the warmth of the kiss.

“But I’m glad you’ve come. I did not look for you for another week,” he said in a low voice. He did not, however, offer to help her to alight.

“This is your lodging?” she asked.

“No,” said he, “the King’s,” and the woman shrank suddenly back amongst her cushions. In a moment, however, her face was again at the door.

“Then who was he—my postillion?”

“Your postillion?” asked Whittington, glancing at the servant who held the horses.

“Yes, the tall man who looked as if he should have been a scholar and had twisted himself all awry into a soldier. You must have passed him in the hall.”

Whittington stared at her. Then he burst again into a laugh.

“Your postillion, was he? That’s the oddest thing,” and he lowered his voice. “Your postillion was Mr. Charles Wogan, who comes from Rome post-haste with the Pope’s procuration for the marriage. You have helped him on his way, it seems. Here’s a good beginning, to be sure.”

The lady uttered a little cry of anger, and her face hardened out of all its softness. She clenched her fists viciously, and her blue eyes grew cold and dangerous as steel. At this moment she hardly looked the delicate flower she had appeared to Wogan’s fancy.

“But you need not blame yourself,” said Whittington, and he lowered his head to a level with hers. “All the procurations in Christendom will not marry James Stuart to Clementina Sobieski.”

“She has not come, then?”

“No, nor will she come. There is news today. Lean back from the window, and I will tell you. She has been arrested at Innsbruck.”

The lady could not repress a crow of delight.

“Hush,” said Whittington. Then he withdrew his head and resumed in his ordinary voice, “I have hired a house for your Ladyship, which I trust will be found convenient. My servant will drive you thither.”

He summoned his servant from the group of footmen about the entrance, gave him his orders, bowed to the ground, and twisting his cane sauntered idly down the street.

Chapter 2

Wogan mounted the stairs, not daring to speculate upon the nature of the bad news. But his face was pale beneath its sunburn, and his hand trembled on the balustrade; for he knew—in his heart he knew. There could be only one piece of news which would make his haste or tardiness matters of no account.

Both branches of the stairs ran up to a common landing, and in the wall facing him, midway between the two stair heads, was a great door of tulip wood. An usher stood by the door, and at Wogan’s approach opened it. Wogan, however, signed to him to be silent. He wished to hear, not to speak, and so he slipped into the room unannounced. The door was closed silently behind him, and at once he was surprised by the remarkable silence, almost a cessation of life it seemed, in a room which was quite full. Wherever the broad bars of sunshine fell, as they slanted dusty with motes through the open lattices of the shutters, they striped a woman’s dress or a man’s velvet coat. Yet if anyone shuffled a foot or allowed a petticoat to rustle, that person glanced on each side guiltily. A group of people were gathered in front of the doorway. Their backs were towards Wogan, and they were looking towards the centre of the room. Wogan raised himself on his toes and looked that way too. Having looked he sank down again, aware at once that he had travelled of late a long way in a little time, and that he was intolerably tired. For that one glance was enough to deprive him of his last possibility of doubt. He had seen the Chevalier de St. George, his King, sitting apart in a little open space, and over against him a short squarish man, dusty as Wogan himself, who stood and sullenly waited. It was Sir John Hay, the man who had been sent to fetch the Princess Clementina privately to Bologna, and here he now was back at Bologna and alone.

Wogan had counted much upon this marriage, more indeed than any of his comrades. It was to be the first step of the pedestal in the building up of a throne. It was to establish in Europe a party for James Stuart as strong as the party of Hanover. But so much was known to everyone in that room; to Wogan the marriage meant more. For even while he found himself muttering over and over with dry lips, as white and exhausted he leaned against the door, Clementina’s qualifications— “Daughter of the King of Poland, cousin to the Emperor and to the King of Portugal, niece to the Electors of Treves, Bavaria, and Palatine,” the image of the girl herself rose up before his eyes and struck her titles from his thoughts. She was the chosen woman, chosen by him out of all Europe—and lost by John Hay!

He remembered very clearly at that moment his first meeting with her. He had travelled from court to court in search of the fitting wife and had come at last to the palace at Ohlau in Silesia. It was in the dusk of the evening, and as he was ushered into the great stone hall, hung about and carpeted with barbaric skins, he had seen standing by the blazing wood fire in the huge chimney a girl in a riding dress. She raised her head, and the firelight struck upwards on her face, adding a warmth to its bright colours and a dancing light to the depths of her dark eyes. Her hair was drawn backwards from her forehead, and the frank, sweet face revealed to him from the broad forehead to the rounded chin told him that here was one who joined to a royal dignity the simple nature of a peasant girl who works in the fields and knows more of animals than of mankind. Wogan was back again in that stone hall when the voice of the Chevalier with its strong French accent broke in upon his vision.

“Well, we will hear the story. Well, you left Ohlau with the Princess and her mother and a mile-long train of servants in spite of my commands of secrecy.”

There was more anger and less despondency than was often heard in his voice. Wogan raised himself again on tiptoes and noticed that the Chevalier’s face was flushed and his eyes bright with wrath.

“Sir,” pleaded Hay, “the Princess’s mother would not abate a man.”

“Well, you reached Ratisbon. And there?”

“There the English minister came forward from the town to flout us with an address of welcome in which he used not our incognitos but our true names.”

“From Ratisbon then no doubt you hurried? Since you were discovered, you shed your retinue and hurried?”

“Sir, we hurried—to Augsburg,” faltered Hay. He stopped, and then in a burst of desperation he said, “At Augsburg we stayed eight days.”

“Eight days?”

There was a stir throughout the room; a murmur began and ceased. Wogan wiped his forehead and crushed his handkerchief into a hard ball in his palm. It seemed to him that here in this room he could see the Princess Clementina’s face flushed with the humiliation of that loitering.

“And why eight days in Augsburg?”

“The Princess’s mother would have her jewels reset. Augsburg is famous for its jewellers,” stammered Hay.

The murmur rose again; it became almost a cry of stupefaction. The Chevalier sprang from his chair. “Her jewels reset!” he said. He repeated the words in bewilderment. “Her jewels reset!” Then he dropped again into his seat.

“I lose a wife, gentlemen, and very likely a kingdom too, so that a lady may have her jewels reset at Augsburg, where, to be sure, there are famous jewellers.”

His glance, wandering in a dazed way about the room, settled again on Hay. He stamped his foot on the ground in a feverish irritation.

“And those eight days gave just the time for a courier from the Emperor at Vienna to pass you on the road and not press his horse. One should be glad of that. It would have been a pity had the courier killed his horse. Oh, I can fashion the rest of the story for myself. You trailed on to Innsbruck, where the Governor marched out with a troop and herded you in. They let you go, however. No doubt they bade you hurry back to me.”

“Sir, I did hurry,” said Hay, who was now in a pitiable confusion. “I travelled hither without rest.”

The anger waned in the Chevalier’s eyes as he heard the plea, and a great dejection crept over his face.

“Yes, you would do that,” said he. “That would be the time for you to hurry with a pigeon’s swiftness so that your King might taste his bitter news not a minute later than need be. And what said she upon her arrest?”

“The Princess’s mother?” asked Hay, barely aware of what he said.

“No. Her Highness, the Princess Clementina. What said she?”

“Sir, she covered her face with her hands for perhaps the space of a minute. Then she leaned forward to the Governor, who stood by her carriage, and cried, ‘Shut four walls about me quick! I could sink into the earth for shame.’”

Wogan in those words heard her voice as clearly as he saw her face and the dry lips between which the voice passed. He had it in his heart to cry aloud, to send the words ringing through that hushed room, “She would have tramped here barefoot had she had one guide with a spirit to match hers.” For a moment he almost fancied that he had spoken them, and that he heard the echo of his voice vibrating down to silence. But he had not, and as he realised that he had not, a new thought occurred to him. No one had remarked his entrance into the room. The group in front still stood with their backs towards him. Since his entrance no one had remarked his presence. At once he turned and opened the door so gently that there was not so much as a click of the latch. He opened it just wide enough for himself to slip through, and he closed it behind him with the same caution. On the landing there was only the usher. Wogan looked over the balustrade; there was no one in the hall below.

“You can keep a silent tongue,” he said to the usher. “There’s profit in it,” and Wogan put his hand into his pocket. “You have not seen me if any ask.”

“Sir,” said the man, “any bright object disturbs my vision.”

“You can see a crown, though,” said Wogan.

“Through a breeches pocket. But if I held it in my hand—”

“It would dazzle you.”

“So much that I should be blind to the giver.”

The crown was offered and taken.

Wogan went quietly down the stairs into the hall. There were a few lackeys at the door, but they would not concern themselves at all because Mr. Wogan had returned to Bologna. He looked carefully out into the street, chose a moment when it was empty, and hurried across it. He dived into the first dark alley that he came to and following the wynds and byways of the town made his way quickly to his lodging. He had the key to his door in his pocket, and he now kept it ready in his hand. From the shelter of a corner he watched again till the road was clear; he even examined the windows of the neighbouring houses lest somewhere a pair of eyes might happen to be alert. Then he made a run for his door, opened it without noise, and crept secretly as a thief up the stairs to his rooms, where he had the good fortune to find his servant. Wogan had no need to sign to him to be silent. The man was a veteran corporal of French Guards who after many seasons of campaigning in Spain and the Low Countries had now for five years served Mr. Wogan. He looked at his master and without a word went off to make his bed.

Wogan sat down and went carefully over in his mind every minute of the time since he had entered Bologna. No one had noticed him when he rode in as the lady’s postillion—no one. He was sure of that. The lady herself did not know him from Adam and fancied him an Italian into the bargain—of that, too, he had no doubt. The handful of lackeys at the door of the King’s house need not be taken into account. They might gossip among themselves, but Wogan’s appearances and disappearances were so ordinary a matter, even that was unlikely. The usher’s silence he had already secured. There was only one acquaintance who had met and spoken with him, and that by the best of good fortune was Harry Whittington—the idler who took his banishment and his King’s misfortunes with an equally light heart and gave never a thought at all to anything weightier than a gamecock.

Wogan’s spirits revived. He had not yet come to the end of his luck. He sat down and wrote a short letter and sealed it up.

“Marnier,” he called out in a low voice, and his servant came from the adjoining room, “take this to Mr. Edgar, the King’s secretary, as soon as it grows dusk. Have a care that no one sees you deliver it. Lock the parlour door when you go and take the key. I am not yet back from Rome.” With that Wogan remembered that he had not slept for forty-eight hours. Within two minutes he was between the sheets; within five he was asleep.

Chapter 3

Wogan waked up in the dark and was seized with a fear that he had slept too long. He jumped out of bed and pushed open the door of his parlour. There was a lighted lamp in the room, and Marnier was quietly laying his master’s supper.

“At what hour?” asked Wogan.

“Ten o’clock, monsieur, at the little postern in the garden wall.”

“And the time now?”

“Nine.”

Wogan dressed with some ceremony, supped, and at eight minutes to ten slipped down the stairs and out of doors. He had crushed his hat down upon his forehead and he carried his handkerchief at his face. But the streets were dark, and few people were abroad. At a little distance to his left he saw above the housetops a glow of light in the air which marked the Opera-House. Wogan avoided it; he kept again to the alleys and emerged before the Chevalier’s lodging. This he passed, but a hundred yards farther on he turned down a side street and doubled back upon his steps along a little byway between small houses. The line of houses, however, at one point was broken by a garden wall. Under this wall Wogan waited until a clock struck ten, and while the clock was still striking he heard on the other side of the wall the brushing of footsteps amongst leaves and grass. Wogan tapped gently on a little door in the wall. It was opened no less gently, and Edgar the secretary admitted him, led him across the garden and up a narrow flight of stairs into a small lighted cabinet. Two men were waiting in that room. One of them wore the scarlet robe, an old man with white hair and a broad bucolic face, whom Wogan knew for the Pope’s Legate, Cardinal Origo. The slender figure of the other, clad all in black but for the blue ribbon of the Garter across his breast, brought Wogan to his knee.

Wogan held out the Pope’s procuration to the Chevalier, who took it and devoutly kissed the signature. Then he gave his hand to Wogan with a smile of friendliness.

“You have outspend your time by two days, Mr. Wogan. That is unwise, since it may lead us to expect again the impossible of you. But here, alas, your speed for once brings us no profit. You have heard, no doubt. Her Highness the Princess Clementina is held at Innsbruck in prison.”

Wogan rose to his feet.

“Prisons, sir,” he said quietly, “have been broken before today. I myself was once put to that necessity.” The words took the Chevalier completely by surprise. He leaned back in his chair and stared at Wogan.

“An army could not rescue her,” he said.

“No, but one man might.”

“You?” he exclaimed. He pressed down the shade of the lamp to throw the light fully upon Wogan’s face. “It is impossible!”

“Then I beg your Majesty to expect the impossible again.”

The Chevalier drew his hand across his eyes and stared afresh at Wogan. The audacity of the exploit and the imperturbable manner of its proposal caught his breath away. He rose from his chair and took a turn or two across the room.

Wogan watched his every gesture. It would be difficult he knew to wring the permission he needed from his dejected master, and his unruffled demeanour was a calculated means of persuasion. An air of confidence was the first requisite. In reality, however, Wogan was not troubled at this moment by any thought of failure. It was not that he had any plan in his head; but he was fired with a conviction that somehow this chosen woman was not to be wasted, that someday, released by some means in spite of all the pressure English Ministers could bring upon the Emperor, she would come riding into Bologna.

The Chevalier paused in his walk and looked towards the Cardinal.

“What does your Eminence say?”

“That to the old the impulsiveness of youth is eternally charming,” said the Cardinal, with a foppish delicacy of speaking in an odd contrast to his person.

Mr. Wogan understood that he had a second antagonist.

“I am not a youth, your Eminence,” he exclaimed with all the indignation of twenty-seven years. “I am a man.”

“But an Irishman, and that spells youth. You write poetry too, I believe, Mr. Wogan. It is a heady practice.”

Wogan made no answer, though the words stung. An argument with the Cardinal would be sure to ruin his chance of obtaining the Chevalier’s consent. He merely bowed to the Cardinal and waited for the Chevalier to speak.

“Look you, Mr. Wogan; while the Emperor’s at war with Spain, while England’s fleet could strip him of Sicily, he’s England’s henchman. He dare not let the Princess go. We know it. General Heister, the Governor of Innsbruck, is under pain of death to hold her safe.”

“But, sir, would the world stop if General Heister died?”

“A German scaffold if you fail.”

“In the matter of scaffolds I have no leaning towards any one nationality.”

The Cardinal smiled. He liked a man of spirit, though he might think him absurd. The Chevalier resumed his restless pacing to and fro.

“It is impossible.”

But he seemed to utter the phrase with less decision this second time. Wogan pressed his advantage at the expense of his modesty.

“Sir, will you allow me to tell you a story—a story of an impossible escape from Newgate in the heart of London by a man in fetters? There were nine grenadiers with loaded muskets standing over him. There were two courtyards to cross, two walls to climb, and beyond the walls the unfriendly streets. The man hoodwinked his sentries, climbed his two walls, crossed the unfriendly streets, and took refuge in a cellar, where he was discovered. From the cellar in broad daylight he fought his way to the roofs, and on the roofs he played such a game of hide-and-seek among the chimney-tops—” Wogan broke off from his story with a clear thrill of laughter; it was a laugh of enjoyment at a pleasing recollection. Then he suddenly flung himself down on his knee at the feet of his sovereign. “Give me leave, your Majesty,” he cried passionately. “Let me go upon this errand. If I fail, if the scaffold’s dressed for me, why where’s the harm? Your Majesty loses one servant out of his many. Whereas, if I win—” and he drew a long breath. “Aye, and I shall win! There’s the Princess, too, a prisoner. Sir, she has ventured much. I beg you give me leave.”

The Chevalier laid his hand gently upon Wogan’s shoulder, but he did not assent. He looked again doubtfully to the Cardinal, who said with his pleasant smile, “I will wager Mr. Wogan a box at the Opera on the first night that he returns, that he will return empty-handed.”

Wogan rose to his feet and replied good-humouredly, “It’s a wager I take the more readily in that your Eminence cannot win, though you may lose. For if I return empty-handed, upon my honour I’ll not return at all.”

The Cardinal condescended to laugh. Mr. Wogan laughed too. He had good reason, for here was his Eminence in a kindly temper and the Chevalier warming out of his melancholy. And, indeed, while he was still laughing the Chevalier caught him by the arm as a friend might do, and in an outburst of confidence, very rare with him, he said, “I would that I could laugh so. You and Whittington, I do envy you. An honest laugh, there’s the purge for melancholy. But I cannot compass it,” and he turned away.

“Sure, sir, you’ll put us all to shame when I bring her Royal Highness out of Innsbruck.”

“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 Innsbruck. 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.”

“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 Monsieur 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 Monsieur 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.

“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 today, 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.

“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 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.

“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.

“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.

Chapter 4

Monsieur 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 Innsbruck 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 his day’s tramp, was resting on a bench in the avenue, and who carried upon his arm a half-empty basket of cheap wares. The man was ragged; his toes were thrusting through his shoes; it was evident that he wore no linen, and a week’s growth of beard dirtily stubbled his chin—in a word, he was a man from whom Monsieur Chateaudoux’s prim soul positively shrank. Monsieur Chateaudoux went quickly by, fearing to be pestered for alms. The hawker, however, remained seated upon the bench, drawing idle patterns upon the gravel with a hazel stick stolen from a hedgerow.

The next afternoon the hawker was in the avenue again, only this time on a bench at the opposite end; and again he paid no heed to Monsieur Chateaudoux but sat moodily scraping the gravel with his stick.

On the third afternoon Monsieur Chateaudoux found the hawker seated in the middle of the avenue and over against the door of the guarded villa. Monsieur Chateaudoux, when his timidity slept, was capable of good nature. There was a soldier with a loaded musket in full view. The hawker, besides, had not pestered him. He determined to buy some small thing—a mirror, perhaps, which was always useful—and he approached the hawker, who for his part wearily flicked the gravel with his stick and drew a curve here and a line there until, as Monsieur Chateaudoux stopped before the bench, there lay sketched at his feet the rude semblance of a crown. The stick swept over it the next instant and left the gravel smooth.

But Monsieur Chateaudoux had seen, and his heart fluttered and sank. For here were plots, possibly dangers, most certainly trepidations. He turned his back as though he had seen nothing and constraining himself to a slow pace walked towards the door of the villa. But the hawker was now at his side, whining in execrable German and a strong French accent the remarkable value of his wares. There were samplers most exquisitely worked, jewels for the most noble gentleman’s honoured sweetheart, and purses which emperors would give a deal to buy. Chateaudoux was urged to take notice that emperors would give sums to lay a hand on the hawker’s purses.

Monsieur Chateaudoux pretended not to hear.

“I want nothing,” he said, “nothing in the world,” and he repeated the statement in order to drown the other’s voice.

“A purse, good gentleman,” persisted the hawker, and he dangled one before Chateaudoux’s eyes. Not for anything would Chateaudoux take that purse.

“Go away,” he cried, “I have a sufficiency of purses, and I will not be plagued by you.”

They were now at the steps of the villa, and the sentry, lifting the butt of his musket, roughly thrust the hawker back.

“What have you there? Bring your basket here,” said he; and to Chateaudoux’s consternation the hawker immediately offered the purse to the sentinel.

“It is only the poor who have kind hearts,” he said, “here’s the proper purse for a soldier. It is so hard to get the money out that a man is saved an ocean of drink.”

The hawker’s readiness destroyed any suspicions the sentinel may have felt.

“Go away,” he said, “quick!”

“You will buy the purse?”

The sentinel raised his musket again.

“Then the kind gentleman will,” said the hawker, and he thrust the purse into Monsieur Chateaudoux’s reluctant hand. Chateaudoux could feel within the purse a folded paper. He was committed now without a doubt, and in an extreme alarm he flung a coin into the roadway and got him into the house. The sentinel carelessly dropped the butt of his musket on the coin.

“Go,” said he, and with a sudden kick he lifted the hawker half across the road. The hawker happened to be Charles Wogan, who took a little matter like that with the necessary philosophy. He picked himself up and limped off.