CHAPTER XX
Wogan went from the parlour and climbed out of the house by therope-ladder. He left it hanging at the window and walked up theglimmering road, a ribbon of ghostly white between dim hills. It wasthen about half-past twelve of the night, and not a feather of cloudstained the perfection of the sky. It curved above his head spangledlike a fair lady's fan, and unfathomably blue like Clementina's eyeswhen her heart stirred in their depths. He reached the little footwayand turned into the upward cleft of the hills. He walked now into thethick night of a close-grown clump of dwarf-oaks, which weaved so densea thatch above his head that he knocked against the boles. The treesthinned, he crossed here and there a dimpled lawn in the pure starshine,he traversed a sparse grove of larches in the dreamy twilight, he cameout again upon the grassy lip of a mountain torrent which henceforthkept him company, and which, speaking with many voices, seemed a friendtrying to catch his mood. For here it leaped over an edge of rock, andhere in a tiny waterfall, and splashed into a pellucid pool, and thereverberating noise filled the dell with a majestic din; there it ransmoothly kissing its banks with a murmur of contentment, embosoming thestars; beyond, it chafed hoarsely between narrow walls; and again half amile higher up it sang on shallows and evaded the stones with a tinklinglaugh. But Wogan was deaf to the voices; he mounted higher, the treesceased, he came into a desolate country of boulders; and the higher heascended, the more heavily he walked. He stopped and washed his face andhands clean of blood-stains in the stream. Above him and not very faraway was the lonely hut.
He came upon it quite suddenly. For the path climbed steeply at theback, and slipping from the mouth of a narrow gully he stood upon theedge of a small plateau in the centre of which stood the cabin, a littlehouse of pinewood built with some decoration and elegance. One unglazedwindow was now unshuttered, and the light from a lantern streamed out ofit in a yellow fan, marking the segment of a circle upon the rough rockyground and giving to the dusk of the starshine a sparkle of gold.Through the window Wogan could see into the room. It was furnishedsimply, but with an eye to comfort. He saw too the girl he had dared tobear off from the thick of a hostile town. She was lying upon a couch,her head resting upon her folded arms. She was asleep, and in a placemost solitary. Behind the cabin rose a black forest of pines, prickingthe sky with their black spires, and in front of it the ground fellsharply to the valley, in which no light gleamed; beyond the valley rosethe dim hills again. Nor was there any sound except the torrent. Theair at this height was keen and fresh with a smell of primeval earth.Wogan hitched his cloak about his throat, and his boots rang upon therock. The Princess raised her head; Wogan walked to the door and stoodfor a little with his hand upon the latch. He lifted it and entered.Clementina looked at him for a moment, and curiously. She had noquestions as to how his struggle with the Governor of Trent's emissarieshad fared. Wogan could understand by some unspoken sympathy that thatmatter had no place in her thoughts. She stood up in an attitude ofexpectation.
"It grows towards morning?" said she.
"In two hours we shall have the dawn," he replied; and there was asilence between them.
"You found this cabin open?" said Wogan.
"The door was latched. I loosed a shutter. The night is very still."
"One might fancy there were no others alive but you and me across allthe width of the world."
"One could wish it," she said beneath her breath, and crossed to thewindow where she stayed, breathing the fresh night. The sigh, however,had reached to Wogan's ears. He took his pistols from his belt, and toengage his thoughts, loaded the one which had been fired at him. After alittle he looked up and saw that Clementina's eyes dwelt upon him withthat dark steady look, which held always so much of mystery and toldalways one thing plainly, her lack of fear. And she said suddenly,--
"There was trouble at Peri. I climbed from the window. I had almostforgotten. As I ran down the road past the open court, I saw a littlegroup of men gathered about the foot of the staircase! I was in twominds whether to come back and load your pistols or to obey you. Iobeyed, but I was in much fear for you. I had almost forgotten, it seemsso long ago. Tell me! You conquered; it is no new thing. Tell me how!"
She did not move from the window, she kept her eyes fixed upon Woganwhile he told his story, but it was quite clear to him that she did nothear one half of it. And when he had done she said,--
"How long is it till the morning?"
Wogan had spun his tale out, but half an hour enclosed it, from thebeginning to the end. He became silent again; but he was aware at oncethat silence was more dangerous than speech, for in the silence he couldhear both their hearts speaking. He began hurriedly to talk of theirjourney, and there could be no more insidious topic for him to lightupon. For he spoke of the Road, and he had already been given a warningthat to the romance of the Road her heart turned like a compass-needleto the north. They were both gipsies, for all that they had no Egyptianblood. That southward road from Innspruck was much more than a merehighway of travel between a starting-place and a goal, even to these twoto whom the starting-place meant peril and the goal the firstopportunity of sleep.
"Even in our short journey," said Clementina, "how it climbed hillsidesangle upon angle, how it swept through the high solitudes of ice whereno trees grow, where silence lives; how it dropped down into greenvalleys and the noise of streams! And it still sweeps on, through darkand light, a glimmer at night, a glare in the midday, between lines ofpoplars, hidden amongst vines, through lighted cities, down to Veniceand the sea. If one could travel it, never retracing a step, pitching atent by the roadside when one willed! That were freedom!" She stoppedwith a remarkable abruptness. She turned her eyes out of the window fora little. Then again she asked,--
"How long till morning?"
"But one more hour."
She came back into the room and seated herself at the table.
"You gave me some hint at Innspruck of an adventurous ride from Ohlau,"and she drew her breath sharply at the word, as though the name with allits associations struck her a blow, "into Strasbourg. Tell me itshistory. So will this hour pass."
He told her as he walked about the room, though his heart was not in thetelling, nor hers in the hearing, until he came to relate the story ofhis escape from the inn a mile or so beyond Stuttgart. He described howhe hid in the garden, how he crossed the rich level of lawn to thelighted window, how to his surprise he was admitted without a questionby an old bookish gentleman--and thereupon he ceased so suddenly thatClementina turned her head aside and listened.
"Did you hear a step?" she asked in a low voice.
"No."
And they both listened. No noise came to their ears but the brawling ofthe torrent. That, however, filled the room, drowning all the naturalmurmurs of the night.
"Indeed, one would not hear a company of soldiers," said Clementina. Shecrossed to the window.
"Yet you heard my step, and it waked you," said Wogan, as he followedher.
"I listened for it in my sleep," said she.
For a second time that night they stood side by side looking upondarkness and the spangled sky. Only there was no courtyard with itssigns of habitation. Clementina drew herself away suddenly from thesill. Wogan at once copied her example.
"You saw--?" he began.
"No one," said she, bending her dark eyes full upon him. "Will you closethe shutter?"
Wogan drew back instinctively. He had a sense that this open window,though there was no one to spy through it, was in some way a security.Suppose that he closed it! That mere act of shutting himself and herapart, though it gave not one atom more of privacy, still had asemblance of giving it. He was afraid. He said,--
"There is no need. Who should spy on us? What would it matter if we werespied upon?"
"I ask you to close that shutter."
From the quiet, level voice he could infer nothing of the thought behindthe request; and her unwavering eyes told him nothing.
"Why?"
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sp; "Because I am afraid, as you are," said she, and she shivered. "Youwould not have it shut. I am afraid while it stays open. There is toomuch expectation in the night. Those great black pines stand waiting;the stars are very bright and still, they wait, holding their breath. Itseems to me the whirl of the earth has stopped. Never was there a nightso hushed in expectation;" and these words too she spoke without afalter or a lifting note, breathing easily like a child asleep, and notchanging her direct gaze from Wogan's face. "I am afraid," shecontinued, "of you and me. I am the more afraid;" and Wogan set theshutter in its place and let the bar fall. Clementina with a breath ofrelief came back to her seat at the table.
"How long is it till dawn?" she said.
"We have half an hour," said Wogan.
"Well, that old man--Count von Ahlen, you said--received you, heapedlogs upon his fire, stanched your wounds, and asked no questions. Well?You stopped suddenly. Tell me all!"
Wogan looked doubtfully at her and then quickly seated himself overagainst her.
"All? I will. It will be no new thing to you;" and as Clementina raisedher eyes curiously to his, he met her gaze and so spoke the restlooking at her with her own direct gaze.
"Why did he ask no question, seeing me disordered, wounded, a bandit,for all he knew, with a murder on my hands? Because thirty years beforeCount Philip Christopher von Koenigsmarck had come in just that same wayover the lawn to the window, and had sat by that log-fire and charmedthe old gentleman into an envy by his incomparable elegance and wit."
"Koenigsmarck!" exclaimed the girl. She knew the history of thatbrilliant and baleful adventurer at the Court of Hanover. "He came asyou did, and wounded?"
"The Princess Sophia Dorothea was visiting the Duke of Wuertemberg,"Wogan explained, and Clementina nodded.
"Count Otto von Ahlen, my host," he continued, "had a momentary thoughtthat I was Koenigsmarck mysteriously returned as he had mysteriouslyvanished; and through these thirty years' retention of his youth, CountOtto could never think of Koenigsmarck but as a man young and tossed in afroth of passion. He would have it to the end that I had escaped fromsuch venture as had Koenigsmarck; he would have it my wounds were themere offset to a love well worth them; he _would_ envy me. 'Passion,'said he, 'without passion there can be no great thing.'"
"And the saying lived in your thoughts," cried Clementina. "I do notwonder. 'Without passion there can be no great thing!' Can books teacha man so much?"
"Nay, it was an hour's talk with Koenigsmarck which set the old man'sthoughts that way; and though Koenigsmarck talked never so well, I wouldnot likely infer from his talk an eternal and universal truth. CountOtto left me alone while he fetched me food, and he left me in a panic."
"A panic?" said Clementina, with a little laugh. "You!"
"Yes. That first mistake of me for Koenigsmarck, that insistence that mycase was Koenigsmarck's--"
"There was a shadow of truth in it--even then?" said Clementina,suddenly leaning across the table towards him. Wogan strove not to seethe light of her joy suddenly sparkling in her eyes.
"I sat alone, feeling the ghost of Koenigsmarck in the room with me," heresumed quickly, and his voice dropped, and he looked round the littlecabin. Clementina looked round quickly too. Then their eyes met again."I heard his voice menacing me. 'For love of a queen I lived. For loveof a queen I died most horribly; and it would have gone better with thequeen had she died the same death at the same time--'" And Clementinainterrupted him with a cry which was fierce.
"Ah, who can say that, and know it for the truth--except the Queen? Youmust ask her in her prison at Ahlden, and that you cannot do. She hasher memories maybe. Maybe she has built herself within these thirtyyears a world of thought so real, it makes her gaolers shadows, andthat prison a place of no account, save that it gives her solitude andis so more desirable than a palace. I can imagine it;" and then shestopped, and her voice dropped to the low tone which Wogan had used.
"You looked round you but now and most fearfully. Is Koenigsmarck'sspirit here?"
"No," exclaimed Wogan; "I would to God it were! I would I felt itsmemories chilling me as they chilled me that night! But I cannot. Icannot as much as hear a whisper. All the heavens are dumb," he cried.
"And the earth waits," said Clementina.
She did not move, neither did Wogan. They both sat still as statues.They had come to the great crisis of their destiny. A change of posture,a gesture, an assumed expression which might avert the small, the merelyawkward indiscretions of the tongue, they both knew to be futile. It wasin the mind of each of them that somehow without their participation thetruth would out that night; for the dawn was so long in coming.
"All the way up from Peri," said Wogan, suddenly, "I strove to make realto myself the ignominy, the odium, the scandal."
"But you could not," said Clementina, with a nod of comprehension, asthough that inability was a thing familiar to her.
"When I reached the hut, and saw that fan of light spreading from thewindow, as it spread over the lawn beyond Stuttgart, I remembered Ottovon Ahlen and his talk of Koenigsmarck. I tried to hear the menaces."
"But you could not."
"No. I saw you through the window," he cried, "stretched out upon thatcouch, supple and young and sweet. I saw the lamplight on your hair,searching out the gold in its dark brown. I could only remember howoften I have at nights wakened and reached out my hands in the vaindream that they would meet in its thick coils, that I should feel itssilk curl and nestle about my fingers. There's the truth out, thoughit's a familiar truth to you ever since I held you in my arms beneaththe stars upon the road to Ala."
"It was known to me a day before," said she; "but it was known to you solong ago as that night in the garden."
"Oh, before then," cried Wogan.
"When? Let the whole truth be known, since we know so much."
"Why, on that first day at Ohlau."
"In the great hall. I stood by the fire and raised my head, and our eyesmet. I do remember."
"But I had no thought ever to let you know. I was the King'sman-at-arms, as I am now;" and he burst into a harsh laugh. "Here'smadness! The King's man-at-arms dumps him down in the King's chair! Ihad a thought to live to you, if you understand, as a man writes a poemto his mistress, to make my life the poem, an unsigned poem that youwould never read, and yet unsigned, unread, would make its creator gladand fill his days. And here's the poem!" and at that a great cry ofterror leaped from Clementina's lips and held them both aghast.
Wogan had risen from his seat; with a violent gesture he had thrown backhis cloak, and his coat beneath was stained and dark with blood.Clementina stood opposite to him, all her quiet and her calmness gone.There was no longer any mystery in her eyes. Her bosom rose and fell;she pointed a trembling hand towards his breast.
"You are hurt. Again for love of me you are hurt."
"It is not my wound," he answered. "It is blood I spilt for you;" hetook a step towards her, and in a second she was between his arms,sobbing with all the violence of passion which she had so longrestrained. Wogan was wrung by it. That she should weep at all was athought strange to him; that he should cause the tears was a sorrowwhich tortured him. He touched her hair with his lips, he took her bythe arms and would have set her apart; but she clung to him, hiding herface, and the sobs shook her. Her breast was strained against him, hefelt the beating of her heart, a fever ran through all his blood. And ashe held her close, a queer inconsequential thought came into his mind.It shocked him, and he suddenly held her off.
"The blood upon my coat is wet," he cried. The odium, the scandal of aflight which would make her name a byword from London to Budapest, thathe could envisage; but that this blood upon his coat should stain thedress she wore--no! He saw indeed that the bodice was smeared a darkred.
"See, the blood stains you!" he cried.
"Why, then, I share it," she answered with a ringing voice of pride. "Ishare it with you;" and she smiled through her tears and a glowing blushbrightened
upon her face. She stood before him, erect and beautiful.Through Wogan's mind there tripped a procession of delicate ladies whowould swoon gracefully at the sight of a pricked finger.
"That's John Sobieski speaking," he exclaimed, and with an emphasis ofdespair, "Poland's King! But I was mad! Indeed, I blame myself."
"Blame!" she cried passionately, her whole nature rising in revoltagainst the word. "Are we to blame? We are man and woman. Who shall castthe stone? Are you to blame for that you love me? Who shall blame you?Not I, who thank you from my heart. Am I to blame? What have we heartsfor, then, if not to love? I have a thought--it may be very wrong. I donot know. I do not trouble to think--that I should be much more to blamedid I not love you too. There's the word spoken at the last," and shelowered her head.
Even at that moment her gesture struck upon Wogan as strange. Itoccurred to him that he had never before seen her drop her eyes fromhis. He had an intuitive fancy that she would never do it but as adeliberate token of submission. Nor was he wrong. Her next words toldhim it was her white flag of surrender.
"I believe the spoken truth is best," she said simply in a low voicewhich ever so slightly trembled. "Unspoken and yet known by both of us,I think it would breed thoughts and humours we are best without.Unspoken our eyes would question, each to other, at every meeting; therewould be no health in our thoughts. But here's the truth out, and I amglad--in whichever way you find its consequence."
She stood before him with her head bent. She made no movement save withher hands, which worked together slowly and gently.
"In whichever way--I--?" repeated Wogan.
"Yes," she answered. "There is Bologna. Say that Bologna is our goal. Ishall go with you to Bologna. There is Venice and the sea. Bid me go,then; hoist a poor scrap of a sail in an open boat. I shall adventureover the wide seas with you. What will you do?"
Wogan drew a long breath. The magnitude of the submission paralysed him.The picture which she evoked was one to blind him as with a glory ofsunlight. He remained silent for a while. Then he said timidly,--
"There is Ohlau."
The girl shivered. The name meant her father, her mother, their grief,the disgrace upon her home. But she answered only with her question,--
"What will you do?"
"You would lose a throne," he said, and even while he spoke was awarethat such a plea had not with her now the weight of thistledown.
"You would become the mock of Europe,--you that are its wonder;" and hesaw the corner of her lip curve in a smile of scorn.
"What will you do?" she asked, and he ceased to argue. It was he whomust decide; she willed it so. He turned towards the door of the hut andopened it. As he passed through, he heard her move behind, and lookingover his shoulder, he saw that she leaned down upon the table and kissedthe pistol which he had left loaded there. He stepped out of the cabinand closed the door behind him.
The dark blue of the sky had faded to a pure and pearly colour; acolourless grey light invaded it; the pale stars were drowning; and allabout him the trees shivered to the morning. Wogan walked up and downthat little plateau, torn by indecision. Inside the sheltered cabin satwaiting the girl, whose destiny was in his hands. He had a sentence tospeak, and by it the flow of all her years would be irrevocably ordered.She had given herself over to him,--she, with her pride, her courage,her endurance. Wogan had seen too closely into her heart to bring anyfoolish charge of unmaidenliness against her. No, the very completenessof her submission raised her to a higher pinnacle. If she gave herself,she did so without a condition or a reserve, body and bone, heart andsoul. Wogan knew amongst the women of his time many who made theirbargain with the world, buying a semblance of esteem with a doublepayment of lies. This girl stood apart from them. She loved, thereforeshe entrusted herself simply to the man she loved, and bade him disposeof her. That very simplicity was another sign of her strength. She wasthe more priceless on account of it. He went back into the hut. Throughthe chinks of the shutter the morning stretched a grey finger; the roomwas filled with a vaporous twilight.
"We travel to Bologna," said he. "I will not have you wasted. Otherwomen may slink into kennels and stop their ears--not you. The King istrue to you. You are for the King."
As she had not argued before, she did not argue now. She nodded her headand fastened her cloak about her throat. She followed him out of the hutand down the gorge. In the northeast the sky already flamed, and the sunwas up before they reached the road. They walked silently towards Peri,and Wogan was wondering whether in her heart she despised him when shestopped.
"I am to marry the King," said she.
"Yes," said Wogan.
"But you?" she said with her brows in a frown; "there is no compulsionon you to marry--anyone."
Wogan was relieved of his fears. He broke into a laugh, to which shemade no reply. She still waited frowning for his answer.
"No woman," he said, "will ride on my black horse into my city ofdreams. You may be very sure I will not marry."
"No. I would not have you married."
Wogan laughed again, but Clementina was very serious. That she had noright to make any such claim did not occur to her. She was merelycertain and resolved that Wogan must not marry. She did not again referto the matter, nor could she so have done had she wished. For a littlelater and while they were not yet come to Peri, they were hailed frombehind, and turning about they saw Gaydon and O'Toole riding after them.O'Toole had his story to tell. Gaydon and he had put the courier to bedand taken his clothes and his money, and after the fellow had waked up,they had sat for a day in the bedroom keeping him quiet and telling thelandlord he was very ill. O'Toole finished his story as they came toPeri. They went boldly to the Cervo Inn, where all traces of the night'sconflict had been removed, and neither Wogan nor the landlady thought itprudent to make any mention of the matter; they waited for Misset andhis wife, who came the next day. And thus reunited they passed oneevening into the streets of Bologna and stopped at the Pilgrim Inn.