Wogan was guided through the streets to the mouth of a blind alley, at
the bottom of which rose a high garden wall, and over the wall the
smoking chimneys of a house among the tops of many trees freshly green,
which shivered in the breeze and shook the sunlight from their leaves.
This alley, from the first day when the Princess came to lodge in the
house, had worn to Wogan a familiar air; and this morning, as he
pondered dismally whether, after all, those laborious months since he
had ridden hopefully out of Bologna to Ohlau were to bear no fruit, he
chanced to remember why. He had passed that alley at the moment of grey
dawn, when he was starting out upon this adventure, and he had seen a
man muffled in a cloak step from its mouth and suddenly draw back as his
horse's hoofs rang in the silent street, as though to elude recognition.
Wogan wondered for a second who at that time had lived in the house; but
he was admitted through a door in the wall and led into a little room
with French windows opening on a lawn. The garden seen from here was a
wealth of white blossoms and yellow, and amongst them Clementina paced
alone, the richest and the whitest blossom of them all. She was dressed
simply in a white gown of muslin and a little three-cornered hat of
straw; but Wogan knew as he advanced towards her that it was not merely
the hat which threw the dark shadow on her face.
She took a step or two towards him and began at once without any
friendly greeting in a cold, formal voice,--
"You have received a letter this morning from his Majesty?"
"Yes, your Highness."
"Why does the King linger in Spain?"
"The expedition from Cadiz--"
"Which left harbour a week ago. Well, Mr. Wogan," she asked in biting
tones, "how does that expedition now on the high seas detain his Majesty
in Spain?"
Wogan was utterly dumfounded. He stood and gazed at her, a great trouble
in his eyes, and his wits with that expedition all at sea.
"Is your Highness sure?" he babbled.
"Oh, indeed, most sure," she replied with the hardest laugh which he had
ever heard from a woman's lips.
"I did not know," he said in dejection, and she took a step nearer to
him, and her cheeks flamed.
"Is that the truth?" she asked, her voice trembling with anger. "You did
not know?"
And Wogan understood that the real trouble with her at this moment was
not so much the King's delay in Spain as a doubt whether he himself had
played with her and spoken her false. For if he was proved untrue here,
why, he might have been untrue throughout, on the stairway at Innspruck,
on the road to Ala, in the hut on the bluff of the hills. He could see
how harshly the doubt would buffet her pride, how it would wound her to
the soul.
"It is the truth," he answered; "you will believe it. I pledge my soul
upon it. Lay your hand in mine. I will repeat it standing so. Could I
speak false with your hand close in mine?"
He held out his hand; she did not move, nor did her attitude of distrust
relent.
"Could you not?" she asked icily.
Wogan was baffled; he was angered. "Have I ever told you lies?" he asked
passionately, and she answered, "Yes," and steadily looked him in the
face.
The monosyllable quenched him like a pail of cold water. He stood
silent, perplexed, trying to remember.
"When?" he asked.
"In the berlin between Brixen and Wellishmile."
Wogan remembered that he had told her of his city of dreams. But it was
plainly not to that that she referred. He shrugged his shoulders.
"I cannot remember."
"You told me of an attack made upon a Scottish town, what time the King
was there in the year '15. He forced a passage through nine grenadiers
with loaded muskets and escaped over the roof-tops, where he played a
game of hide-and-seek among the chimneys. Ah, you remember the story
now. There was a chain, I remember, which even then as you told of it
puzzled me. He threw the chain over the head of one of those nine
grenadiers, and crossing his arms jerked it tight about the man's neck,
stifling his cry of warning. 'What chain?' I asked, and you
answered,--oh, sir, with a practised readiness,--'The chain he wore
about his neck.' Do you remember that? The chain linked your hand-locks,
Mr. Wogan. It was your own escape of which you told me. Why did you
ascribe your exploits to your King?"
"Your Highness," he said, "we know the King, we who have served him day
in and day out for years. We can say freely to each other, 'The King's
achievements, they are to come.' We were in Scotland with him, and we
know they will not fail to come. But with you it's different. You did
not know him. You asked what he had done, and I told you. You asked for
more. You said, 'Amongst his throng of adventurers, each of whom has
something to his credit, what has he, the chief adventurer?'"
"Well, sir, why not the truth in answer to the question?"
"Because the truth's unfair to him."
"And was the untruth fair to me?"
Mr. Wogan was silent.
"I think I understand," she continued bitterly; "you thought, here's a
foolish girl, aflame for knights and monsters overthrown. She cries for
deeds, not statecraft. Well, out of your many, you would toss her one,
and call it the King's. You could afford the loss, and she, please God,
would be content with it." She spoke with an extraordinary violence in a
low, trembling voice, and she would not listen to Wogan's stammered
interruption.
"Very likely, too, the rest of your words to me was of a piece. I was a
girl, and girls are to have gallant speeches given to them like so many
lollipops. Oh, but you have hurt me beyond words. I would not have
thought I could have suffered so much pain!"
That last cry wrung Wogan's heart. She turned away from him with the
tears brimming in her eyes. It was this conjecture of hers which he had
dreaded, which at all costs he must dispel.
"Do not believe it!" he exclaimed. "Think! Should I have been at so much
pains to refrain from speech, if speech was what I had intended?"
"How should I know but what that concealment was part of the gallantry,
a necessary preface to the pretty speeches?"
"Should I have urged your rescue on the King had I believed you what you
will have it that I did,--a mere witless girl to be pampered with
follies?"
"Then you admit," she cried, "you _urged_ the King."
"Should I have travelled over Europe to search for a wife and lit on
you? Should I have ridden to Ohlau and pestered your father till he
yielded? Should I have ridden across Europe to Strasbourg? Should I have
endangered my friends in the rush to Innspruck? No, no, no! From first
to last you were the chosen woman."
The vehemence and fire of sincerity with which he spoke had its effect
on her. She turned again towards him with a gleam of hopefulness in her
face, but midway in the turn she stopped.
"You spoke to me words which I have not forgotten," she said doubtfully.
"You said the King had need of me. I will be frank, hoping that you will
match my frankness. On that morning when we climbed down the gorge, and
ever since I cheered myself with that one thought. The King had need of
me."
"Never was truer word spoken," said Wogan, stoutly.
"Then why is the King in Spain?"
They had come back to the first question. Wogan had no new answer to it.
He said,--
"I do not know."
For a moment or two Clementina searched his eyes. It seemed in the end
that she was satisfied he spoke the truth. For she said in a voice of
greater gentleness,--
"Then I will acquaint you. Will you walk with me for half a mile?"
Wogan bowed, and followed her out of the garden. He could not think
whither she was leading him, or for what purpose. She walked without a
word to him, he followed without a question, and so pacing with much
dignity they came to the steps of a great house. Then Clementina halted.
"Sir," said she, "can you put a name to the house?"
"Upon my word, your Highness, I cannot."
"It is the Caprara Palace," said she, suddenly, and suddenly she bent
her eyes upon Wogan. The name, however, conveyed no meaning whatever to
him, and his blank face told her so clearly. She nodded in a sort of
approval. "No," she said, relenting, "you did not know."
She mounted the steps, and knocking upon the door was admitted by an old
broken serving-man, who told her that the Princess Caprara was away. It
was permitted him, however, to show the many curiosities and treasures
of the palace to such visitors as desired it. Clementina did desire it.
The old man led her and her companion to the armoury, where he was for
spending much time and breath over the trophies which the distinguished
General Caprara had of old rapt from the infidels. But Clementina
quickly broke in upon his garrulity.
"I have a great wish to see the picture gallery," said she, and the old
man tottered onwards through many shrouded and darkened rooms. In the
picture gallery he drew up the blinds and then took a wand in his hand.
"Will you show me first the portrait of Mlle. de Caprara?" said
Clementina.
It was a full-length portrait painted with remarkable skill. Maria
Vittoria de Caprara was represented in a black dress, and the warm
Italian colouring of her face made a sort of glow in the dark picture.
Her eyes watched you from the canvas with so life-like a glance you had
a thought when you turned that they turned after you. Clementina gazed
at the picture for a long while, and the blood slowly mounted on her
neck and transfused her cheeks.
"There is a face, Mr. Wogan,--a passionate, beautiful face,--which might
well set a seal upon a man's heart. I do not wonder. I can well believe
that though to-day that face gladdens the streets of Rome, a lover in
Spain might see it through all the thick earth of the Pyrenees. There,
sir, I promised to acquaint you why the King lingered in Spain. I have
fulfilled that promise;" and making a present to the custodian, she
walked back through the rooms and down the steps to the street. Wogan
followed her, and pacing with much dignity they walked back to the
little house among the trees, and so came again into the garden of
blossoms.
The anger had now gone from her face, but it was replaced by a great
weariness.
"It is strange, is it not," she said with a faltering smile, "that on a
spring morning, beneath this sky, amongst these flowers, I should think
with envy of the snows of Innspruck and my prison there? But I owe you a
reparation," she added. "You said the King had need of me. For that
saying of yours I find an apt simile. Call it a stone on which you bade
me set my foot and step. I stepped, and found that your stone was
straw."
"No, madam," cried Wogan.
"I had a thought," she continued, "you knew the stone was straw when
you commended it to me as stone. But this morning I have learned my
error. I acquit you, and ask your pardon. You did not know that the King
had no need of me." And she bowed to him as though the conversation was
at an end. Wogan, however, would not let her go. He placed himself in
front of her, engrossed in his one thought, "She must marry the King."
He spoke, however, none the less with sincerity when he cried,--
"Nor do I know now--no, and I shall not know."
"You have walked with me to the Caprara Palace this morning. Or did I
dream we walked?"
"What your Highness has shown me to-day I cannot gainsay. For this is
the first time that ever I heard of Mlle. de Caprara. But I am very sure
that you draw your inference amiss. You sit in judgment on the King, not
knowing him. You push aside the firm trust of us who know him as a thing
of no account. And because once, in a mood of remorse at my own
presumption, I ascribed one trivial exploit--at the best a success of
muscle and not brain--to the King which was not his, you strip him of
all merit on the instant." He saw that her face flushed. Here, at all
events, he had hit the mark, and he cried out with a ringing
confidence,--
"Your stone is stone, not straw."
"Prove it me," said she.
"What do you know of the Princess Caprara at the end of it all? You
have told me this morning all you know. I will go bail if the whole
truth were out the matter would take a very different complexion."
Again she said,--
"Prove that to me!" and then she looked over his shoulder. Wogan turned
and saw that a servant was coming from the house across the lawn with a
letter on a salver. The Princess opened the letter and read it. Then she
turned again to Wogan.
"His Eminence the Cardinal fixes the marriage in Bologna here for to-day
fortnight. You have thus two weeks wherein to make your word good."
Two weeks, and Wogan had not an idea in his head as to how he was to set
about the business. But he bowed imperturbably.
"Within two weeks I will convince your Highness," said he, and for a
good half-hour he sauntered with her about the garden before he took his
leave.