Clementina — Chapter X, A Month Of Waiting, Chapter XI, The Prince Of Baden Visits Clementina
Gaydon nodded as though his curiosity was now satisfied.
Wogan's alarm was strange, no doubt, strange and unexpected like the Chevalier's visit to the Caprara Palace.
Gaydon had a glimpse of dark and troubled waters, but he turned his face away.
They were none of his business.
CHAPTER X
In an hour, however, he returned out of breath and with a face white from despair.
Wogan was still writing at his table, but at his first glance towards Gaydon he started quickly to his feet, and altogether forgot to cover over his sheet of paper.
He carefully shut the door.
"You have bad news," said he.
"There was never worse," answered Gaydon.
He had run so fast, he was so discomposed, that he could with difficulty speak.
But he gasped his bad news out in the end.
"I went to my brother major to report my return.
He was entertaining his friends.
He had a letter this morning from Strasbourg and he read it aloud.
The letter said a rumour was running through the town that the Chevalier Wogan had already rescued the Princess and was being hotly pursued on the road to Trent."
If Wogan felt any disquietude he was careful to hide it.
He sat comfortably down upon the sofa.
"I expected rumour would be busy with us," said he, "but never that it would take so favourable a shape."
"Favourable!"
exclaimed Gaydon.
"To be sure, for its falsity will be established to-morrow, and ridicule cast upon those who spread and believed it.
False alarms are the proper strategy to conceal the real assault.
The rumour does us a service.
Our secret is very well kept, for here am I in Schlestadt, and people living in Schlestadt believe me on the road to Trent.
I will go back with you to the major's and have a laugh at his correspondent.
Courage, my friend.
We will give our enemies a month.
Let them cry wolf as often as they will during that month, we'll get into the fold all the more easily in the end."
Wogan took his hat to accompany Gaydon, but at that moment he heard another man stumbling in a great haste up the stairs.
Misset broke into the room with a face as discomposed as Gaydon's had been.
"Here's another who has heard the same rumour," said Wogan.
"It is more than a rumour," said Misset.
"It is an order, and most peremptory, from the Court of France, forbidding any officer of Dillon's regiment to be absent for more than twenty-four hours from his duties on pain of being broke.
Our secret's out.
That's the plain truth of the matter."
He stood by the table drumming with his fingers in a great agitation.
Then his fingers stopped.
He had been drumming upon Wogan's sheet of paper, and the writing on the sheet had suddenly attracted his notice.
It was writing in unusually regular lines.
Gaydon, arrested by Misset's change from restlessness to fixity, looked that way for a second, too, but he turned his head aside very quickly.
Wogan's handwriting was none of his business.
"We will give them a month," said Wogan, who was conjecturing at the motive of this order from the Court of France.
"No doubt we are suspected.
I never had a hope that we should not be.
The Court of France, you see, can do no less than forbid us, but I should not be surprised if it winks at us on the sly.
We will give them a month.
Colonel Lally is a friend of mine and a friend of the King.
We will get an abatement of that order, so that not one of you shall be cashiered."
"I don't flinch at that," said Misset, "but the secret's out."
"Then we must use the more precautions," said Wogan.
He had no doubt whatever that somehow he would bring the Princess safely out of her prison to Bologna.
It could not be that she was born to be wasted.
Misset, however, was not so confident upon the matter.
"A strange, imperturbable man is Charles Wogan," said he to Gaydon and O'Toole the same evening.
"Did you happen by any chance to cast your eye over the paper I had my hand on?"
"I did not," said Gaydon, in a great hurry.
"It was a private letter, no doubt."
"It was poetry.
There's no need for you to hurry, my friend.
It was more than mere poetry, it was in Latin.
I read the first line on the page, and it ran, '_Te, dum spernit, arat novus accola; max ubi cultam_--'" Gaydon tore his arm away from Misset.
"I'll hear no more of it," he cried.
"Poetry is none of my business."
"There, Dick, you are wrong," said O'Toole, sententiously.
Both Misset and Gaydon came to a dead stop and stared.
Never had poetry so strange an advocate.
O'Toole set his great legs apart and his arms akimbo.
He rocked himself backwards and forwards on his heels and toes, while a benevolent smile of superiority wrinkled across his broad face from ear to ear.
"Yes, I've done it," said he; "I've written poetry.
It is a thing a polite gentleman should be able to do.
So I did it.
It wasn't in Latin, because the young lady it was written to didn't understand Latin.
Her name was Lucy, and I rhymed her to 'juicy,' and the pleasure of it made her purple in the face.
There were to have been four lines, but there were never more than three and a half because I could not think of a suitable rhyme to O'Toole.
Lucy said she knew one, but she would never tell it me."
Wogan's poetry, however, was of quite a different kind, and had Gaydon looked at it a trifle more closely, he would have experienced some relief.
It was all about the sorrows and miseries of his unfortunate race and the cruel oppression of England.
England owed all its great men to Ireland and was currish enough never to acknowledge the debt.
Wogan always grew melancholy and grave-faced on that subject when he had the leisure to be idle.
He thought bitterly of the many Irish officers sent into exile and killed in the service of alien countries; his sense of injustice grew into a passionate sort of despair, and the despair tumbled out of him in sonorous Latin verse written in the Virgilian measure.
He wrote a deal of it during this month of waiting, and a long while afterwards sent an extract to Dr. Swift and received the great man's compliments upon its felicity, as anyone may see for himself in the doctor's correspondence.
How the month passed for James Stuart in Rome may be partly guessed from a letter which was brought to Wogan by Michael Vezozzi, the Chevalier's body-servant.
The letter announced that King George of England had offered the Princess Clementina a dowry of £100,000 if she would marry the Prince of Baden, and that the Prince of Baden with a numerous following was already at Innspruck to prosecute his suit.
"I do not know but what her Highness," he wrote, "will receive the best consolation for her sufferings on my account if she accepts so favourable a proposal, rather than run so many hazards as she must needs do as my wife.
For myself, I have been summoned most urgently into Spain and am travelling thither on the instant."
Wogan could make neither head nor tail of the letter.
Why should the King go to Spain at the time when the Princess Clementina might be expected at Bologna?
It was plain that he did not expect Wogan would succeed.
He was disheartened.
Wogan came to the conclusion that there was the whole meaning of the letter.
He was, however, for other reasons glad to receive it.
"It is very well I have this letter," said he, "for until it came I had no scrap of writing whatever to show either to her Highness or, what I take to be more important, to her Highness's mother," and he went back to his poetry.
Misset and his wife, on the other hand, drove forward to the town of Colmar, where they bought a travelling carriage and the necessaries for the journey.
Misset left his wife at Colmar, but returned every twenty-four hours himself.
They made the excuse that Misset had won a deal of money at play and was minded to lay it out in presents to his wife.
The stratagem had a wonderful success at Schlestadt, especially amongst the ladies, who could do nothing day and night but praise in their husbands' hearing so excellent a mode of disposing of one's winnings.
O'Toole spent his month in polishing his pistols and sharpening his sword.
It is true that he had to persuade Jenny to bear them company, but that was the work of an afternoon.
He told her the story of the rich Austrian heiress, promised her a hundred guineas and a damask gown, gave her a kiss, and the matter was settled.
Jenny passed her month in a delicious excitement.
She was a daughter of the camp, and had no fears whatever.
She was a conspirator; she was trusted with a tremendous secret; she was to help the beautiful and enormous O'Toole to a rich and beautiful wife; she was to outwit an old curmudgeon of an uncle; she was to succour a maiden heart-broken and imprisoned.
Jenny was quite uplifted.
Never had a maid-servant been born to so high a destiny.
Her only difficulty was to keep silence, and when the silence became no longer endurable she would run on some excuse or another to Wogan and divert him with the properest sentiments.
"To me," she would cry, "there's nothing sinful in changing clothes with the beautiful mistress of O'Toole.
Christian charity says we are to make others happy.
I am a Christian, and as to the uncle he can go to the devil!
He can do nothing to me but talk, and I don't understand his stupid language."
Jenny was the one person really happy during this month.
It was Wogan's effort to keep her so, for she was the very pivot of his plan.
There remains yet one other who had most reason of all to repine at the delay, the Princess Clementina.
Her mother wearied her with perpetual complaints, the Prince of Baden, who was allowed admittance to the villa, persecuted her with his attentions; she knew nothing of what was planned for her escape, and the rigorous confinement was not relaxed.
It was not a happy time for Clementina.
Yet she was not entirely unhappy.
A
thought had come to her and stayed with her which called the colour to her cheeks and a smile to her lips.
It accounted to her for the delay;
her pride was restored by it; because of it she became yet more patient with her mother, more gentle with the Prince of Baden, more good-humoured to her gaolers.
It sang at her heart like a bird; it lightened in her grey eyes.
It had come to her one sleepless night, and the morning had not revealed it as a mere phantasy born of the night.
The more she pondered it, the more certain was she of its truth.
Her King was coming himself at the hazard of his life to rescue her.
CHAPTER XI
Therefore she waited in patience.
It was still winter at Innspruck, though the calendar declared it to be spring.
April was budless and cold, a month of storms; the snow drifted deep along the streets and M. Chateaudoux was much inconvenienced during his promenades in the afternoon.
He would come back with most reproachful eyes for Clementina in that she so stubbornly clung to her vagabond exile and refused so fine a match as the Prince of Baden.
On the afternoon of the 25th, however, Clementina read more than reproach in his eyes, more than discomfort in the agitation of his manner.
The little chamberlain was afraid.
Clementina guessed the reason of his fear.
"He has come!"
she cried.
The exultation of her voice, the deep breath she drew, the rush of blood to her face, and the sudden dancing light in her eyes showed how much constraint she had set upon herself.
She was like an ember blown to a flame.
"You were stopped in your walk.
You have a message for me.
He has come!"
The height of her joy was the depth of Chateaudoux's regret.
"I was stopped in my walk," said he, "but not by the Chevalier Wogan.
Who it was I do not know."
"Can you not guess?"
cried Clementina.
"I would not trust a stranger," said her mother.
"Would you not?"
asked Clementina, with a smile.
"Describe him to me."
"His face was wrinkled," said Chateaudoux.
"It was disguised."
"His figure was slight and not over-tall."
M.
Chateaudoux gave a fairly accurate description of Gaydon.
"I know no one whom the portrait fits," said the mother, and again Clementina cried,-- "Can you not guess?
Then, mother, I will punish you.
For though I know--in very truth, I know--I will not tell you."
She turned back to Chateaudoux.
"Well, his message?
He did fix a time, a day, an hour, for my escape?"
"The 27th is the day, and at eight o'clock of the night."
"I will be ready."
"He will come here to fetch your Highness.
Meanwhile he prays your Highness to fall sick and keep your bed."
"I can choose my malady," said Clementina.
"It will not all be counterfeit, for indeed I shall fall sick of joy.
But why must I fall sick?"
"He brings a woman to take your place, who, lying in bed with the curtains drawn, will the later be discovered."
The Princess's mother saw here a hindrance to success and eagerly she spoke of it.
"How will the woman enter?
How, too, will my daughter leave?"
M.
Chateaudoux coughed and hemmed in a great confusion.
He explained in delicate hints that he himself was to bribe the sentry at the door to let her pass for a few moments into the house.
The Princess broke into a laugh.
"Her name is Friederika, I'll warrant," she cried.
"My poor Chateaudoux, they _will_ give you a sweetheart.
It is most cruel.
Well, Friederika, thanks to the sentry's fellow-feeling for a burning heart, Friederika slips in at the door."
"Which I have taken care should stand unlatched.
She changes clothes with your Highness, and your Highness--" "Slips out in her stead."
"But he is to come for you, he says," exclaimed her mother.
"And how will he do that?
Besides, we do not know his name.
And there must be a fitting companion who will travel with you.
Has he that companion?"
"Your Highness," said Chateaudoux, "upon all those points he bade me say you should be satisfied.
All he asks is that you will be ready at the time."
A gust of hail struck the window and made the room tremble.
Clementina laughed; her mother shivered.
"The Prince of Baden," said she, with a sigh.
Clementina shrugged her shoulders.
"A Prince," said Chateaudoux, persuasively, "with much territory to his princeliness."
"A vain, fat, pudgy man," said Clementina.
"A sober, honest gentleman," said the mother.
"A sober butler to an honest gentleman," said Clementina.
"He has an air," said Chateaudoux.
"He has indeed," replied Clementina, "as though he handed himself upon a plate to you, and said, 'Here is a miracle.
Thank God for it!'
Well, I must take to my bed.
I am very ill.
I have a fever on me, and that's truth."
She moved towards the door, but before she had reached it there came a knocking on the street door below.
Clementina stopped; Chateaudoux looked out of the window.
"It is the Prince's carriage," said he.
"I will not see him," exclaimed Clementina.
"My child, you must," said her mother, "if only for the last time."
"Each time he comes it is for the last time, yet the next day sees him still in Innspruck.
My patience and my courtesy are both outworn.
Besides, to-day, now that I have heard this great news we have waited for--how long?
Oh, mother, oh, mother, I cannot!
I shall betray myself."
The Princess's mother made an effort.
"Clementina, you must receive him.
I will have it so.
I am your mother.
I will be your mother," she said in a tremulous tone, as though the mere utterance of the command frightened her by its audacity.
Clementina was softened on the instant.
She ran across to her mother's chair, and kneeling by it said with a laugh, "So you shall.
I would not barter mothers with any girl in Christendom.
But you understand.
I am pledged in honour to my King.
I will receive the Prince, but indeed I would he had not come," and rising again she kissed her mother on the forehead.
She received the Prince of Baden alone.
He was a stout man of much ceremony and took some while to elaborate a compliment upon Clementina's altered looks.
Before, he had always seen her armed and helmeted with dignity; now she had much ado to keep her lips from twitching into a smile, and the smile in her eyes she could not hide at all.
The Prince took the change to himself.
His persistent wooing had not been after all in vain.
He was not, however, the man to make the least of his sufferings in the pursuit which seemed to end so suitably to-day.
"Madam," he said with his grandest air, "I think to have given you some proof of my devotion.
Even on this inclement day I come to pay my duty though the streets are deep in snow."
"Oh, sir," exclaimed Clementina, "then your feet are wet.
Never run such risks for me.
I would have no man weep on my account though it were only from a cold in the head."
The Prince glanced at Clementina suspiciously.
Was this devotion?
He preferred to think so.
"Madam, have no fears," said he, tenderly, wishing to set the anxious creature at her ease.
"I drove here in my carriage."
"But from the carriage to the door you walked?"
"No, madam, I was carried."
Clementina's lips twitched again.
"I would have given much to have seen you carried," she said demurely.
"I suppose you would not repeat the--No, it would be to ask too much.
Besides, from my windows here in the side of the house I could not see."
And she sighed deeply.
The fatuous gentleman took comfort from the sigh.
"Madam, you have but to say the word and your windows shall look whichever way you will."
Clementina, however, did not say the word.
She merely sighed again.
The Prince thought it a convenient moment to assert his position.
"I have stayed a long while in Innspruck, setting my constancy, which bade me stay, above my dignity, which bade me go.
For three months I have stayed,--a long while, madam."
"I do not think three years could have been longer," said Clementina, with the utmost sympathy.
"So now in the end I have called my pride to help me."
"The noblest gift that heaven has given a man," said Clementina, fervently.
The Prince bowed low; Clementina curtsied majestically.
[Illustration: THE PRINCE STRUTTED TO THE WINDOW; CLEMENTINA SOLEMNLY KEPT PACE WITH HIM."
--_Page 161. _] "Will you give me your hand," said he, "as far as your window?"
"Certainly, sir, and out of it."
Clementina laid her hand in his.
The Prince strutted to the window;
Clementina solemnly kept pace with him.
"What do you see?
A sentinel fixed there guarding you.
At the door stands a second sentinel.
Answer me as I would be answered, your window and your door are free.
Refuse me, and I travel into Italy.
My trunks are already packed."
"Neatly packed, I hope," said Clementina.
Her cheek was flushed; her lips no longer smiled.
But she spoke most politely, and the Prince was at a loss.
"Will you give me your hand," said she, "as far as my table?"
The Prince doubtfully stretched out his hand, and the couple paced in a stately fashion to Clementina's table.
"What do you see upon my table?"
said she, with something of the Prince's pomposity.
"A picture," said he, reluctantly.
"Whose?"
"The Pretender's," he answered with a sneer.
"The King's," said she, pleasantly.
"His picture is fixed there guarding me.
Against my heart there lies a second.
I wish your Highness all speed to Italy."
She dropped his hand, bowed to him again in sign that the interview was ended.
The Prince had a final argument.
"You refuse a dowry of £100,000. I would have you think of that."
"Sir, you think of it for both of us."
The Prince drew himself up to his full stature.
"I have your answer, then?"
"You have, sir.
You had it yesterday, and if I remember right the day before."
"I will stay yet two more days.
Madam, you need not fear.
I shall not importune you.
I give you those two days for reflection.
Unless I hear from you I shall leave Innspruck--" "In two days' time?"
suddenly exclaimed Clementina.
"On the evening of the 27th," said the Prince.
Clementina laughed softly in a way which he did not understand.
She was altogether in a strange, incomprehensible mood that afternoon, and when he learnt next day that she had taken to her bed he was not surprised.
Perhaps he was not altogether grieved.
