Clementina

Chapter XI

A.E.W. Mason


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.

“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. It seemed right that she should be punished for her stubbornness. Punishment might soften her.

But no message came to him during those two days, and on the morning of the 27th he set out for Italy.

At the second posting stage, which he reached about three of the afternoon, he crossed a hired carriage on its way to Innspruck. The carriage left the inn door as the Prince drove up to it. He noticed the great size of the coachman on the box, he saw also that a man and two women were seated within the carriage, and that a servant rode on horseback by the door. The road, however, was a busy one; day and night travellers passed up and down; the Prince gave only a passing scrutiny to that carriage rolling down the hill to Innspruck. Besides, he was acquainted neither with Gaydon, who rode within the carriage, nor with Wogan, the servant at the door, nor with O’Toole, the fat man on the box.

At nightfall the Prince came to Nazareth, a lonely village amongst the mountains with a single tavern, where he thought to sleep the night. There was but one guest-room, however, which was already bespoken by a Flemish lady, the Countess of Cernes, who had travelled that morning to Innspruck to fetch her niece.

The Prince grumbled for a little, since the evening was growing stormy and wild, but there was no remedy. He could not dispute the matter, for he was shown the Countess’s berlin waiting ready for her return. A servant of the Count’s household also had been left behind at Nazareth to retain the room, and this man, while using all proper civilities, refused to give up possession. The Prince had no acquaintance with the officers of Dillon’s Irish regiment, so that he had no single suspicion that Captain Misset was the servant. He drove on for another stage, where he found a lodging.

Meanwhile the hired carriage rolled into Innspruck, and a storm of extraordinary violence burst over the country.


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