[Illustration: "'SIR,' SAID THE LADY IN ITALIAN, 'I NEED A
POSTILLION.'"--_Page 2_.]
Clementina
By A.E.W. Mason
Author of "The Courtship of Morrice Buckler" "Parson Kelly" etc.
Illustrated by Bernard Partridge
New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Publishers
1901
THIRD EDITION
UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO
ANDREW LANG, ESQ.
AS A TOKEN OF MUCH
FRIENDSHIP
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A CHANCE MEETING
II. BAD NEWS
III. WOGAN MAKES A PROPOSAL
IV. SHOWS THAT THERE ARE BETTER HIDING-PLACES THAN A WINDOW-CURTAIN
V. SHOWS THAT A DISHONEST LANDLORD SHOULD AVOID WHITE PAINT
VI. WOGAN CONTINUES HIS JOURNEY
VII. WOGAN IS MISTAKEN FOR A MORE NOTABLE MAN
VIII. AT SCHLESTADT
IX. GAYDON MINDS HIS OWN BUSINESS
X. A MONTH OF WAITING
XI. THE PRINCE OF BADEN VISITS CLEMENTINA
XII. THE NIGHT OF THE 27TH. IN THE STREETS OF INNSPRUCK
XIII. THE NIGHT OF THE 27TH. IN CLEMENTINA'S APARTMENTS
XIV. THE ESCAPE
XV. THE FLIGHT TO ITALY: WOGAN'S CITY OF DREAMS
XVI. THE FLIGHT TO ITALY: THE POTENT EFFECTS OF A WATER-JUG
XVII. THE FLIGHT TO ITALY: A GROWING CLOUD
XVIII. WOGAN AND CLEMENTINA CONTINUE THEIR JOURNEY ALONE
XIX. THE ATTACK AT PERI
XX. THE GOD OF THE MACHINE DOES NOT APPEAR
XXI. COMPLICATIONS AT BOLOGNA
XXII. CLEMENTINA TAKES MR. WOGAN TO VISIT THE CAPRARA PALACE
XXIII. WOGAN LEARNS THAT HE HAS MEDDLED
XXIV. MARIA VITTORIA REAPPEARS
XXV. THE LAST
THE EPILOGUE
CLEMENTINA
CHAPTER I
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 to-day," 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 to-day. Lean back from the window,
and I will tell you. She has been arrested at Innspruck."
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.