In fact, just about the time when the Prince's horses were being
unharnessed from his carriage on the heights of Mount Brenner, the hired
carriage stopped before a little inn under the town wall of Innspruck
hard by the bridge. And half an hour later, when the Prince was sitting
down to his supper before a blazing fire and thanking his stars that on
so gusty and wild a night he had a stout roof above his head, a man and
a woman came out from the little tavern under the town wall and
disappeared into the darkness. They had the streets to themselves, for
that night the city was a whirlpool of the winds. Each separate chasm in
the encircling hills was a mouth to discharge a separate blast. The
winds swept down into the hollow and charged in a riotous combat about
the squares and lanes; at each corner was an ambuscade, and everywhere
they clashed with artilleries of hail and sleet.
The man and woman staggered hand in hand and floundered in the deep
snow. They were soaked to the skin, frozen by the cold, and whipped by
the stinging hail. Though they bent their heads and bodies, though they
clung hand in hand, though they struggled with all their strength,
there were times when they could not advance a foot and must needs wait
for a lull in the shelter of a porch. At such times the man would
perhaps quote a line of Virgil about the cave of the winds, and the
woman curse like a grenadier. They, however, were not the only people
who were distressed by the storm.
Outside the villa in which the Princess was imprisoned stood the two
sentinels, one beneath the window, the other before the door. There were
icicles upon their beards; they were so shrouded in white they had the
look of snow men built by schoolboys. Their coats of frieze could not
keep out the searching sleet, nor their caps protect their ears from the
intolerable cold. Their hands were so numbed they could not feel the
muskets they held.
The sentinel before the door suffered the most, for whereas his
companion beneath the window had nothing but the house wall before his
eyes, he, on his part, could see on the other side of the alley of trees
the red blinds of "The White Chamois," that inn which the Chevalier de
St. George had mentioned to Charles Wogan. The red blinds shone very
cheery and comfortable upon that stormy night. The sentinel envied the
men gathered in the warmth and light behind them, and cursed his own
miserable lot as heartily as the woman in the porch did hers. The red
blinds made it unendurable. He left his post and joined his companion.
"Rudolf," he said, bawling into his ear, "come with me! Our birds will
not fly away to-night."
The two sentries came to the front of the house and stared at the
red-litten blinds.
"What a night!" cried Rudolf. "Not a citizen would thrust his nose out
of doors."
"Not even the little Chateaudoux's sweetheart," replied the other, with
a grin.
They stared again at the red blinds, and in a lull of the wind a clock
struck nine.
"There is an hour before the magistrate comes," said Rudolf.
"You take that hour," said his companion; "I will have the hour after
the magistrate has gone."
Rudolf ran across to the inn. The sentinel at the door remained behind.
Both men were pleased,--Rudolf because he had his hour immediately, his
fellow-soldier because once the magistrate had come and gone, he would
take as long as he pleased.
Meanwhile the man and woman hand in hand drew nearer to the villa, but
very slowly. For, apart from the weather's hindrances, the woman's anger
had grown. She stopped, she fell down when there was no need to fall,
she wept, she struggled to free her hand, and finally, when they had
taken shelter beneath a portico, she sank down on the stone steps, and
with many oaths and many tears refused to budge a foot. Strangely
enough, it was not so much the inclemency of the night or the danger of
the enterprise which provoked this obstinacy, as some outrage and
dishonour to her figure.
"You may talk all night," she cried between her sobs, "about O'Toole and
his beautiful German. They can go hang for me! I am only a servant, I
know. I am poor, I admit it. But poverty isn't a crime. It gives no one
the right to make a dwarf of me. No, no!"--this as Wogan bent down to
lift her from the ground--"plague on you all! I will sit here and die;
and when I am found frozen and dead perhaps you will be sorry for your
cruelty to a poor girl who wanted nothing better than to serve you."
Here Jenny was so moved by the piteousness of her fate that her tears
broke out again. She wept loudly. Wogan was in an extremity of alarm
lest someone should pass, or the people of the house be aroused. He
tried most tenderly to comfort her. She would have none of the
consolations. He took her in his arms and raised her to her feet. She
swore more loudly than she had wept, she kicked at his legs, she struck
at his head with her fist. In another moment she would surely have cried
murder. Wogan had to let her sink back upon the steps, where she fell to
whimpering.
"I am not beautiful, I know; I never boasted that I was; but I have a
figure and limbs that a painter would die to paint. And what do you make
of me? A maggot, a thing all body like a nasty bear. Oh, curse the day
that I set out with such tyrants! A pretty figure of fun I should make
before your beautiful German, covered with mud to the knees. No, you
shall hang me first! Why couldn't O'Toole do his own work, the ninny, I
hate him! He's tall enough, the great donkey; but no, I must do it,
who am shorter, and even then not short enough for him and you, but you
must drag me through the dirt without heels!"
Wogan let her run on; he was at his wits' end what to do. All this
turmoil, these tears, these oaths and blows, came from nothing more
serious than this, that Jenny, to make her height less remarkable, must
wear no heels. It was ludicrous, it was absurd, but none the less the
whole expedition, carried to the very point of completion, must fail,
utterly and irretrievably fail, because Jenny would not for one day go
without her heels. The Princess must remain in her prison at Innspruck;
the Chevalier must lose his wife; the exertions of Wogan and his
friends, their risks, their ingenuity, must bear no fruit because Jenny
would not show herself three inches short of her ordinary height.
O'Toole had warned him there would be a difficulty; but that the
difficulty should become an absolute hindrance, should spoil a scheme of
so much consequence, that was inconceivable.
Yet there was Jenny sobbing her heart out on the steps not half a mile
from the villa; the minutes were passing; the inconceivable thing was
true. Wogan could have torn his hair in the rage of his despair. He
could have laughed out loudly and passionately until even on that stormy
night he brought the guard. He thought of the perils he had run, the
difficulties he had surmounted. He had outwitted the Countess de Berg
and Lady Featherstone, he had persuaded the reluctant Prince Sobieski,
he had foiled his enemies on the road to Schlestadt, he had made his
plans, he had gathered his friends, he had crept out with them from
Strasbourg, yet in the end they had come to Innspruck to be foiled
because Jenny would not go without her heels. Wogan could have wept like
Jenny.
But he did not. On the contrary, he sat down by her side on the steps
and took her hand, gentle as a sheep.
"You are in the right of it, Jenny," said he, in a most remorseful
voice.
Jenny looked up.
"Yes," he continued. "I was in the wrong. O'Toole is the most selfish
man in the whole world. Cowardly, too! But there never was a selfish man
who was not at heart a bit of a coward. Sure enough, sooner or later the
cowardice comes out. It is a preposterous thing that O'Toole should
think that you and I are going to rescue his heiress for him while he
sits at his ease by the inn fire. No; let us go back to him and tell him
to his face the selfish cowardly man he is."
It seemed, however, that Jenny was not entirely pleased to hear her own
sentiments so frankly uttered by Mr. Wogan. Besides, he seemed to
exaggerate them, for she said with a little reluctance, "I would not say
that he was a coward."
"But I would," exclaimed Wogan, hotly. "Moreover, I do. With all my
heart I say it. A great lubberly monster of a coward. He is envious,
too, Jenny."
Jenny had by this time stopped weeping.
"Why envious?" she asked with an accent of rebellion which was very much
to Wogan's taste.
"It's as plain as the palm of my hand. Why should he make a dwarf of
you, Jenny?--for it's the truth he has done that; he has made a little
dwarf out of the finest girl in the land by robbing her of her heels."
Jenny was on the point of interrupting with some indignation, but Wogan
would not listen to her. "A dwarf," he continued, "it was your own word,
Jenny. I could say nothing to comfort you when you spoke it, for it was
so true and suitable an epithet. A little dwarf he has made of you, all
body and no legs like a bear, a dwarf-bear, of course; and why, if it is
not that he envies you your figure and is jealous of it in a mean and
discreditable way? Sure, he wants to have all the looks and to appear
quite incomparable to the eyes of his beautiful German. So he makes a
dwarf of you, a little bear dwarf--"
Jenny, however, had heard this phrase often enough by now. She
interrupted Wogan hotly, and it seemed her anger was now as much
directed against him as it had been before against O'Toole.
"He is not envious," said she. "A fine friend he has in you, I am
thinking. He has no need to be envious. Captain O'Toole could carry me
to the house in his arms if he wished, which is more than you could do
if you tried till midday to-morrow," and she turned her shoulder to
Wogan, who, in no way abashed by her contempt, cried triumphantly,--
"But he didn't wish. He let you drag through the mud and snow without
so much as a patten to keep you off the ground. Why? Tell me that,
Jenny! Why didn't he wish?"
Jenny was silent.
"You see, if he is not envious, he is at all events a coward," argued
Wogan, "else he would have run his own risks and come in your stead."
"But that would not have served," cried Jenny. It was her turn now to
speak triumphantly. "How could O'Toole have run away with his heiress
and at the same time remained behind in her bed to escape suspicion, as
I am to do?"
"I had forgotten that, to be sure," said Wogan, meekly.
Jenny laughed derisively.
"O'Toole is the man with the head on his shoulders," said she.
"And a pitiful, calculating head it is," exclaimed Wogan. "Think of the
inconvenience of your position when you are discovered to-morrow. Think
of the angry uncle! O'Toole has thought of him and so keeps out of his
way. Here's a nice world, where hulking, shapeless giants like O'Toole
hide themselves from angry uncles behind a dwarf-girl's petticoats. Bah!
We will go back and kick O'Toole."
Wogan rose to his feet. Jenny did not move; she sat and laughed
scornfully.
"_You_ kick O'Toole! You might once, if he happened to be asleep. But he
would take you up by the scruff of the neck and the legs and beat your
face against your knees until you were dead. Besides, what do I care for
an angry uncle! I am well paid to put up with his insults."
"Well paid!" said Wogan, with a sneer. "A hundred guineas and a damask
gown! Three hundred guineas and a gown all lace and gold tags would not
be enough. Besides, I'll wager he has not paid you a farthing. He'll
cheat you, Jenny. He's a rare bite is O'Toole. Between you and me,
Jenny, he is a beggarly fellow!"
"He has already paid me half," cried Jenny. It was no knowledge to
Wogan, who, however, counterfeited a deal of surprise.
"Well," said he, "he has only done it to cheat you the more easily of
the other fifty. We will go straight back and tell him that it costs
three hundred guineas, money down, and the best gown in Paris to turn a
fine figure of a girl into a dwarf-bear."
He leaned down and took Jenny by the arm. She sprang to her feet and
twisted herself free.
"No," she said, "you can go back if you will and show him what a good
friend you are to him. But I go on. The poor captain shall have one
person in the world, though she's only a servant, to help him when he
wants."
Thus Wogan won the victory. But he was most careful to conceal it. He
walked by her side humble as a whipped dog. If he had to point out the
way, he did it with the most penitent air; when he offered his hand to
help her over a snow-heap and she struck it aside, he merely bowed his
head as though her contempt was well deserved. He even whispered in her
ear in a trembling voice, "Jenny, you will not say a word to O'Toole
about the remarks I made of him? He is a strong, hasty man. I know not
what might come of it."
Jenny sneered and shrugged her shoulders. She would not speak to Wogan
any more, and so they came silently into the avenue of trees between
"The White Chamois" and the villa. The windows in the front of the villa
were dark, and through the blinding snow-storm Wogan could not have
distinguished the position of the house at all but for the red blinds of
the tavern opposite which shone out upon the night and gave the snow
falling before them a tinge of pink. Wogan crept nearer to the house and
heard the sentinel stamping in the snow. He came back to Jenny and
pointed the sentinel out to her.
"Give me a quarter of an hour so far as you can judge. Then pass the
sentinel and go up the steps into the house. The sentinel is prepared
for your coming, and if he stops you, you must say 'Chateaudoux' in a
whisper, and he will understand. You will find the door of the house
open and a man waiting for you."
Jenny made no answer, but Wogan was sure of her now. He left her
standing beneath the dripping trees and crept towards the side of the
house. A sentry was posted beneath her Highness's windows, and through
those windows he had to climb. He needed that quarter of an hour to
wait for a suitable moment when the sentry would be at the far end of
his beat. But that sentry was fuddling himself with a vile spirit
distilled from the gentian flower in the kitchen of "The White Chamois."
Wogan, creeping stealthily through the snow-storm, found the side of the
house unguarded. The windows on the ground floor were dark; those on the
first floor which lighted her Highness's apartments were ablaze. He
noticed with a pang of dismay that one of those lighted windows was wide
open to the storm. He wondered whether it meant that the Princess had
been removed to another lodging. He climbed on the sill of the lower
window; by the side of that window a stone pillar ran up the side of the
house to the windows on the first floor. Wogan had taken note of that
pillar months back when he was hawking chattels in Innspruck. He set his
hands about it and got a grip with his foot against the sash of the
lower window. He was just raising himself when he heard a noise above
him. He dropped back to the ground and stood in the fixed attitude of a
sentinel.
A head appeared at the window, a woman's head. The light was behind,
within the room, so that Wogan could not see the face. But the shape of
the head, its gracious poise upon the young shoulders, the curve of the
neck, the bright hair drawn backwards from the brows,--here were marks
Wogan could not mistake. They had been present before his eyes these
many months. The head at the open window was the head of the Princess.
Wogan felt a thrill run through his blood. To a lover the sight of his
mistress is always unexpected, though he foreknows the very moment of
her coming. To Wogan the sight of his Queen had the like effect. He had
not seen her since he had left Ohlau two years before with her promise
to marry the Chevalier. It seemed to him, though for this he had lived
and worked up early and down late for so long, a miraculous thing that
he should see her now.
She leaned forward and peered downwards into the lane. The light
streamed out, bathing her head and shoulders. Wogan could see the snow
fall upon her dark hair and whiten it; it fell, too, upon her neck, but
that it could not whiten. She leaned out into the darkness, and Wogan
set foot again upon the lower window-sill. At the same moment another
head appeared beside Clementina's, and a sharp cry rang out, a cry of
terror. Then both heads disappeared, and a heavy curtain swung across
the window, shutting the light in.
Wogan remained motionless, his heart sinking with alarm. Had that cry
been heard? Had the wind carried it to the sentry at the door? He
waited, but no sound of running footsteps came to his ears; the cry had
been lost in the storm. He was now so near to success that dangers which
a month ago would have seemed of small account showed most menacing and
fatal.
"It was the Princess-mother who cried out," he thought, and was reminded
that the need of persuasions was not ended for the night with the
conquest of Jenny. He had to convince the Princess-mother of his
authority without a line of Prince Sobieski's writing to support him; he
had to overcome her timidity. But he was prepared for the encounter; he
had foreseen it, and had an argument ready for the Princess-mother,
though he would have preferred to wring the old lady's neck. Her cry
might spoil everything. However, it had not been heard, and since it had
not been heard, Wogan was disposed to forgive it.
For the window was still open, and now that the curtain was drawn no ray
of light escaped from the room to betray the man who climbed into it.