Meanwhile within the room the Princess-mother clung to Clementina. The
terror which her sharp cry had expressed was visible in her strained and
startled face. Her eyes, bright with terror, stared at the drawn
curtain; she could not avert them; she still must gaze, fascinated by
her fears; and her dry, whispering lips were tremulous.
"Heaven have mercy!" she whispered; "shut the window! Shut it fast!" and
as Clementina moved in surprise, she clung the closer to her daughter.
"No, do not leave me! Come away! Jesu! here are we alone,--two women!"
"Mother," said Clementina, soothing her and gently stroking her hair, as
though she in truth was the mother and the mother her daughter, "there's
no cause for fear."
"No cause for fear! I saw him--the sentry--he is climbing up. Ah!" and
again her voice rose to a cry as Wogan's foot grated on the
window-ledge.
"Hush, mother! A cry will ruin us. It's not the sentinel," said
Clementina.
Clementina was laughing, and by her laughter the Princess-mother was in
some measure reassured.
"Who is it, then?" she asked.
"Can you not guess?" said Clementina, incredulously. "It is so evident.
Yet I would not have you guess. It is my secret, my discovery. I'll tell
you." She heard a man behind the curtain spring lightly from the window
to the floor. She raised her voice that he might know she had divined
him. "Your sentinel is the one man who has the right to rescue me. Your
sentinel's the King."
At that moment Wogan pushed aside the curtain.
"No, your Highness," said he, "but the King's servant."
The Princess-mother dropped into a chair and looked at her visitor with
despair. It was not the sentinel, to be sure, but, on the other hand, it
was Mr. Wogan, whom she knew for a very insistent man with a great
liking for his own way. She drew little comfort from Mr. Wogan's coming.
It seemed, too, that he was not very welcome to Clementina; for she drew
back a step and in a voice which dropped and had a tremble of
disappointment, "Mr. Wogan," she said, "the King is well served;" and
she stood there without so much as offering him her hand. Wogan had not
counted on so cold a greeting, but he understood the reason, and was not
sure but what he approved of it. After all, she had encountered perils
on the King's account; she had some sort of a justification to believe
the King would do the like for her. It had not occurred to him or
indeed to anyone before; but now that he saw the chosen woman so plainly
wounded, he felt a trifle hot against his King for having disappointed
her. He set his wits to work to dispel the disappointment.
"Your Highness, the truth is there are great matters brewing in Spain.
His Majesty was needed there most urgently. He had to decide between
Innspruck and Cadiz, and it seemed that he would honour your great
confidence in him and at the same time serve you best--"
Clementina would not allow him to complete the sentence. Her cheek
flushed, and she said quickly,--
"You are right, Mr. Wogan. The King is right. Mine was a girl's thought.
I am ashamed of it;" and she frankly gave him her hand. Wogan was fairly
well pleased with his apology for his King. It was not quite the truth,
no doubt, but it had spared Clementina a trifle of humiliation, and had
re-established the King in her thoughts. He bent over her hand and would
have kissed it, but she stopped him.
"No," said she, "an honest handclasp, if you please; for no woman can
have ever lived who had a truer friend," and Wogan, looking into her
frank eyes, was not, after all, nearly so well pleased with the untruth
he had told her. She was an uncomfortable woman to go about with shifts
and contrivances. Her open face, with its broad forehead and the clear,
steady eyes of darkest blue, claimed truth as a prerogative. The blush
which had faded from her cheeks appeared on his, and he began to babble
some foolish word about his unworthiness when the Princess-mother
interrupted him in a grudging voice,--
"Mr. Wogan, you were to bring a written authority from the Prince my
husband."
Wogan drew himself up straight.
"Your Highness," said he, with a bow of the utmost respect, "I was given
such an authority."
The Princess-mother held out her hand. "Will you give it me?"
"I said that I was given such an authority. But I have it no longer. I
was attacked on my way from Ohlau. There were five men against me, all
of whom desired that letter. The room was small; I could not run away;
neither had I much space wherein to resist five men. I knew that were I
killed and that letter found on me, your Highness would thereafter be
too surely guarded to make escape possible, and his Highness Prince
Sobieski would himself incur the Emperor's hostility. So when I had made
sure that those five men were joined against me, I twisted that letter
into a taper and before their faces lit my pipe with it."
Clementina's eyes were fixed steadily and intently upon Wogan's face.
When he ended she drew a deep breath, but otherwise she did not move.
The Princess-mother, however, was unmistakably relieved. She spoke with
a kindliness she had never shown before to Wogan; she even smiled at
him in a friendly way.
"We do not doubt you, Mr. Wogan, but that written letter, giving my
daughter leave to go, I needs must have before I let her go. A father's
authority! I cannot take that upon myself."
Clementina took a quick step across to her mother's side.
"You did not hear," she said.
"I heard indeed that Mr. Wogan had burnt the letter."
"But under what stress, and to spare my father and to leave me still a
grain of hope. Mother, this gentleman has run great risks for me,--how
great I did not know; even now in this one instance we can only guess
and still fall short of the mark."
The Princess-mother visibly stiffened with maternal authority.
"My child, without some sure sign the Prince consents, you must not go."
Clementina looked towards Wogan for assistance. Wogan put his hand into
his pocket.
"That sure sign I have," said he. "It is a surer sign than any written
letter; for handwriting may always be counterfeit. This could never be,"
and he held out on the palm of his hand the turquoise snuff-box which
the Prince had given him on New Year's day. "It is a jewel unique in all
the world, and the Prince gave it me. It is a jewel he treasured not
only for its value, but its history. Yet he gave it me. It was won by
the great King John of Poland, and remains as a memorial of the most
glorious day in all that warrior's glorious life; yet his son gave it
me. With his own hands he put it into mine to prove to me with what
confidence he trusted your Highness's daughter to my care. That
confidence was written large in the letter I burnt, but I am thinking it
is engraved for ever upon this stone."
The Princess-mother took the snuff-box reluctantly and turned it over
and over. She was silent. Clementina answered for her.
"I am ready," she said, and she pointed to a tiny bundle on a chair in
which a few clothes were wrapped. "My jewels are packed in the bundle,
but I can leave them behind me if needs be."
Wogan lifted up the bundle and laughed.
"Your Highness teaches a lesson to soldiers; for there is never a
knapsack but can hold this and still have half its space to spare. The
front door is unlatched?"
"M. Chateaudoux is watching in the hall."
"And the hall's unlighted?"
"Yes."
"Jenny should be here in a minute, and before she comes I must tell you
she does not know the importance of our undertaking. She is the servant
to Mrs. Misset, who attends your Highness into Italy. We did not let her
into the secret. We made up a comedy in which you have your parts to
play. Your Highness," and he turned to Clementina, "is a rich Austrian
heiress, deeply enamoured of Captain Lucius O'Toole."
"Captain Lucius O'Toole!" exclaimed the mother, in horror. "My daughter
enamoured of a Captain Lucius O'Toole!"
"He is one of my three companions," said Wogan, imperturbably.
"Moreover, he is six foot four, the most creditable lover in the world."
"Well," said Clementina, with a laugh, "I am deeply enamoured of the
engaging Captain Lucius O'Toole. Go on, sir."
"Your parents are of a most unexampled cruelty. They will not smile upon
the fascinating O'Toole, but have locked you up on bread and water until
you shall agree to marry a wealthy but decrepit gentleman of
eighty-three."
"I will not," cried Clementina; "I will starve myself to death first. I
will marry my six feet four or no other man in Christendom."
"Clementina!" cried her mother, deprecatingly.
"But at this moment," continued Wogan, "there very properly appears the
fairy godmother in the person of a romantical maiden aunt."
"Oh!" said Clementina, "I have a romantical maiden aunt."
"Yes," said Wogan, and turning with a bow to the Princess-mother; "your
Highness."
"I?" she exclaimed, starting up in her chair.
"Your Highness has written an encouraging letter to Captain O'Toole,"
resumed Wogan. The Princess-mother gasped, "A letter to Captain
O'Toole," and she flung up her hands and fell back in her chair.
"On the receipt of the letter Captain O'Toole gathers his friends,
borrows a horse here, a carriage there, and a hundred guineas from
Heaven knows whom, comes to the rescue like a knight-errant, and retells
the old story of how love laughs at locksmiths."
As Wogan ended, the mother rose from her chair. It may have been that
she revolted at the part she was to play; it may have been because a
fiercer gust shook the curtain and bellied it inwards. At all events she
flung the curtain aside; the snow drifted through the open window onto
the floor; outside the open window it was falling like a cascade, and
the air was icy.
"Mr. Wogan," she said, stubbornly working herself into a heat to make
more sure of her resolution, "my daughter cannot go to-night. To-morrow,
if the sky clears, yes, but to-night, no. You do not know, sir, being a
man. But my daughter has fasted through this Lent, and that leaves a
woman weak. I do forbid her going, as her father would. The very dogs
running the streets for food keep kennel on such a night. She must not
go."
Wogan did not give way, though he felt a qualm of despair, knowing all
the stubbornness of which the weak are capable, knowing how impervious
to facts or arguments.
"Your Highness," he said quickly, "we are not birds of passage to rule
our flight by seasons. We must take the moment when it comes, and it
comes now. To-night your daughter can escape; for here's a night made
for an escape."
"And for my part," cried Clementina, "I would the snow fell faster." She
crossed to the open window and held out her hands to catch the flakes.
"Would they did not melt! I believe Heaven sends the snow to shelter me.
It's the white canopy spread above my head, that I may go in state to
meet my King." She stood eager and exultant, her eyes shining, her cheek
on fire, her voice thrilling with pride. She seemed not to feel the
cold. She welcomed the hardships of wind and falling snow as her
opportunity. She desired not only for escape, but also to endure.
Wogan looked her over from head to foot, filled with pride and
admiration. He had made no mistake; he had plucked this rose of the
world to give to his King. His eyes said it; and the girl, reading them,
drew a breath and rippled out a laugh of gladness that his trusted
servant was so well content with her. But the Princess-mother stood
unmoved.
"My daughter cannot go to-night," she repeated resentfully. "I do forbid
it."
Wogan had his one argument. This one argument was his last resource. He
had chosen it carefully with an eye to the woman whom it was to
persuade. It was not couched as an inducement; it did not claim the
discharge of an obligation; it was not a reply to any definite
objection. Such arguments would only have confirmed her in her
stubbornness. He made accordingly an appeal to sentiment.
"Your Highness's daughter," said he, "spoke a minute since of the
hazards my friends and I have run to compass her escape. As regards four
of us, the words reached beyond our deserts. For we are men. Such
hazards are our portion; they are seldom lightened by so high an aim.
But the fifth! The words, however kind, were still below that fifth
one's merits; for the fifth is a woman."
"I know. With all my heart I thank her. With all my heart I pity her."
"But there is one thing your Highness does not know. She runs our
risks,--the risk of capture, the risk of the night, the storm, the snow,
she a woman by nature timid and frail,--yet with never in all her life
so great a reason for timidity, or so much frailty of health as now. We
venture our lives, but she ventures more."
The mother bowed her head; Clementina looked fixedly at Wogan.
"Speak plainly, my friend," she said. "There are no children here."
"Madam, I need but quote to you the words her husband used. For my part,
I think that nobler words were never spoken, and with her whole heart
she repeats them. They are these: 'The boy would only live to serve his
King; why should he not serve his King before he lives?'"
The mother was still silent, but Wogan could see that the tears
overbrimmed her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Clementina was silent
for a while too, and stood with her eyes fixed thoughtfully on Wogan.
Then she said gently,--
"Her name."
Wogan told her it, and she said no more; but it was plain that she would
never forget it, that she had written it upon her heart.
Wogan waited, looking to the Princess, who drying her tears rose from
her chair and said with great and unexpected dignity,--
"How comes it, sir, that with such servants your King still does not sit
upon his throne? My daughter shall not fall below the great example set
to her. My fears are shamed by it. My daughter goes with you to-night."
It was time that she consented, for even as Wogan flung himself upon his
knee and raised her hand, M. Chateaudoux appeared at the door with a
finger on his lips, and behind him one could hear a voice grumbling and
cursing on the stairs.
"Jenny," said Wogan, and Jenny stumbled into the room. "Quiet," said he;
"you will wake the house."
"Well, if you had to walk upstairs in the dark in these horrible
shoes--"
"Oh, Jenny, your cloak, quick!"
"Take the thing! A good riddance to it; it's dripping wet, and weighs a
ton."
"Dripping wet!" moaned the mother.
"I shall not wear it long," said Clementina, advancing from the
embrasure of the window. Jenny turned and looked her over critically
from head to foot. Then she turned away without a word and let the cloak
fall to the ground. It fell about her feet; she kicked it viciously
away, and at the same time she kicked off one of those shoes of which
she so much complained. Jenny was never the woman to mince her language,
and to-night she was in her surliest mood. So she swore simply and
heartily, to the mother's utter astonishment and indignation.
"Damn!" she said, hobbling across the room to the corner, whither her
shoe had fallen. "There, there, old lady; don't hold your hands to your
ears as though a clean oath would poison them!"
The Princess-mother fell back in her chair.
"Does she speak to me?" she asked helplessly.
"Yes," said Wogan; and turning to Jenny, "This is the kind-hearted
aunt."
Jenny turned to Clementina, who was picking the cloak from the floor.
"And you are the beautiful heiress," she said sourly. "Well, if you are
going to put that wet cloak on your shoulders, I wish you joy of the
first kiss O'Toole gives you when you jump into his arms."
The Princess-mother screamed; Wogan hastened to interfere.
"Jenny, there's the bedroom; to bed with you!" and he took out his
watch. At once he uttered an exclamation of affright. Wogan had
miscalculated the time which he would require. It had taken longer than
he had anticipated to reach the villa against the storm; his conflict
with Jenny in the portico had consumed valuable minutes; he had been at
some pains to over-persuade the Princess-mother; Jenny herself amongst
the trees in the darkness had waited more than the quarter of an hour
demanded of her; Wogan himself, absorbed each moment in that moment's
particular business,--now bending all his wits to vanquish Jenny, now to
vanquish the Princess-mother,--even Wogan had neglected how the time
sped. He looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes to ten, and at
ten the magistrate would be knocking at the door.
"I am ready," said Clementina, drawing the wet cloak about her shoulders
and its hood over her head. She barely shivered under its wet heaviness.
"There's one more thing to be done before you go," said Wogan; but
before he could say what that one thing was, Jenny, who had now
recovered her shoe, ran across the room and took the beautiful heiress
by both hands. Jenny was impulsive by nature. The Princess-mother's
distress and Clementina's fearlessness made her suddenly ashamed that
she had spoken so sourly.
"There, there, old lady," she said soothingly; "don't you fret. They are
very good friends your niece is going with." Then she drew Clementina
close to her. "I don't wonder they are all mad about you, for I can't
but say you are very handsome and richly worth the pains you have
occasioned us." She kissed Clementina plump upon the cheek and
whispered in her ear, "O'Toole won't mind the wet cloak, my dear, when
he sees you."
Clementina laughed happily and returned her kiss with no less sincerity,
if with less noise.
"Quick, Jenny," said Wogan, "to bed with you!"
He pointed to the door which led to the Princess's bedroom.
"Now you must write a letter," he added to Clementina, in a low voice,
as soon as the door was shut upon Jenny. "A letter to your mother,
relieving her of all complicity in your escape. Her Highness will find
it to-morrow night slipped under the cover of her toilette."
Clementina ran to a table, and taking up a pen, "You think of
everything," she said. "Perhaps you have written the letter."
Wogan pulled a sheet of paper from his fob.
"I scribbled down a few dutiful sentiments," said he, "as we drove down
from Nazareth, thinking it might save time."
"Mother," exclaimed Clementina, "not content with contriving my escape,
he will write my letters to you. Well, sir, let us hear what you have
made of it."
Wogan dictated a most beautiful letter, in which a mother's claims for
obedience were strongly set out--as a justification, one must suppose,
for a daughter's disobedience. But Clementina was betrothed to his
Majesty King James, and that engagement must be ever the highest
consideration with her, on pain of forfeiting her honour. It was
altogether a noble and stately letter, written in formal, irreproachable
phrases which no daughter in the world would ever have written to a
mother. Clementina laughed over it, but said that it would serve. Wogan
looked at his watch again. It was then a quarter to ten.
"Quick!" said he. "Your Highness will wait for me under the fourth tree
of the avenue, counting from the end."
He left the mother and daughter alone, that his presence might not check
the tenderness of their farewell, and went down the stairs into the dark
hall. M. Chateaudoux was waiting there, with his teeth chattering in the
extremity of his alarm. Wogan unlatched the door very carefully and saw
through the chink the sentry standing by the steps. The snow still fell;
he was glad to note the only light was a white glimmering from the waste
of snow upon the ground.
"You must go out with her," Wogan whispered to Chateaudoux, "and speak a
word to the sentry."
"At any moment the magistrate may come," said Chateaudoux, though he
trembled so that he could hardly speak.
"All the more reason for the sentinel to let your sweetheart run home at
her quickest step," said Wogan, and above him he heard Clementina come
out upon the landing. He crept up the stairs to her.
"Here is my hand," said he, in a low voice. She laid her own in his,
and bending towards him in the darkness she whispered,--
"Promise me it shall always be at my service. I shall need friends. I am
young, and I have no knowledge. Promise me!"
She was young indeed. The freshness of her voice, its little tremble of
modesty, the earnestness of its appeal, carried her youth quite home to
Mr. Wogan's heart. She was sweet with youth. Wogan felt it more clearly
as they stood together in the darkness than when he had seen her plainly
in the lighted room, with youth mantling her cheeks and visible in the
buoyancy of her walk. Then she had been always the chosen woman. Wogan
could just see her eyes, steady and mysteriously dark, shining at him
out of the gloom, and a pang of remorse suddenly struck through him.
That one step she was to take was across the threshold of a prison, it
was true, but a prison familiar and warm, and into a night of storm and
darkness and ice. The road lay before her into Italy, but it was a road
of unknown perils, through mountains deep in snow. And this escape of
to-night from the villa, this thunderous flight, with its hardships and
its dangers, which followed the escape, was only the symbol of her life.
She stepped from the shelter of her girlhood, as she stepped across the
threshold of the villa, into a womanhood dark with many trials,
storm-swept and wandering. She might reach the queendom which was her
due, as the berlin in which she was to travel might--nay, surely
would--rush one day from the gorges into the plains and the sunlight of
Italy; but had Wogan travelled to Rome in Gaydon's place and talked with
Whittington outside the Caprara Palace, it is very likely that she would
never have been allowed by him to start. Up till now he had thought only
of her splendid courage, of the humiliation of her capture, of her
wounded pride; she was the chosen woman. Now he thought of the girl, and
wondered of her destiny, and was stricken with remorse.
"Promise me," she repeated, and her hand tightened upon his and clung to
it. Wogan had no fine sentiments wherewith to answer her; but his voice
took a depth of sincerity and tenderness quite strange to her. Her
fingers ceased to tremble.
They went down into the hall. Chateaudoux, who had been waiting in an
agony of impatience, opened the door and slipped out; Clementina
followed him.
The door was left ajar behind them, and Wogan in the hall saw
Chateaudoux speak with the sentinel, saw the sentinel run hurriedly to
Clementina, saw Clementina disappear into the snow. Chateaudoux ran back
into the hall.
"And you!" he asked, as he barred and locked the door. "The magistrate
is coming. I saw the lights of the guard across the avenue."
Clementina was outside in the storm; Wogan was within the house, and the
lights of the guard were already near.
"I go by the way I came," said he; "I have time;" and he ran quickly up
the stairs. In the room he found the Princess-mother weeping silently,
and again, as he saw this weak elderly woman left alone to her fears and
forebodings, remorse took hold on him.
"Courage, madam," said he, as he crossed the room; "she goes to wed a
king."
"Sir, I am her mother," replied the Princess, gaining at this moment a
suitable dignity from her tears. "I was wondering not of the King, but
of the man the King conceals."
"You need not, madam," said Wogan, who had no time for eulogies upon his
master. "Take his servant's loyalty as the measure of his merits."
He looked out of the window and suddenly drew back. He stood for a
moment with a look of great fear upon his face. For the sentinel was
back at his post; Wogan dared not at this moment risk a struggle, and
perhaps an outcry. Clementina was waiting under the avenue of trees;
Wogan was within the house, and the lights of the guard were already
flaring in the roadway. Even as Wogan stood in the embrasure of the
window, he heard a heavy knocking on the door.