Clementina Part 24

"Good! Can you keep her engaged until we are ready?"

"To be sure I can. She shall never give a thought to any man of you but myself."

O'Toole pa.s.sed through a door at the bottom of the staircase into the common-room of the inn. Wogan gently opened the big doors and dragged the carriage out into the road. Gaydon with the horses galloped silently up through the snow, and together the two men feverishly harnessed them to the carriage. There were six for the carriage, and a seventh for O'Toole to ride. The expedition which Wogan and Gaydon showed was matched by the Princess. For while they were fastening the last buckles, the door at the top of the stairs opened, and again that night Clementina whispered,-

"I am ready."

"Come!" replied Wogan. She wore a scarlet cloak upon her shoulders, and m.u.f.fling it about her head she ran down with Mrs. Misset. Wogan opened the lower door of the inn and called for O'Toole. O'Toole came running out before Wogan had ended his words, and sprang into his saddle. Gaydon was already on the box with the reins gathered in his hand. Wogan had the carriage door open before Clementina had reached the foot of the stairs; it was shut upon her and her companion almost before they were aware they were within it; the carriage started almost before the door was shut. Yet when it did start, Wogan was beside Gaydon upon the box. Their movements, indeed, occurred with so exact a rapidity, that though the hostess at once followed O'Toole to bid her guests farewell, when she reached the big doors she saw only the back of the carriage lurching through the ruts of snow.

"Quick!" cried Wogan; "we have lost too much time."

"A bare twenty minutes," said Gaydon.

"A good twelve hours," said Wogan.

Gaydon lashed the horses into a gallop, the horses strained at their collars, the carriage raced out of the town and up the slopes of the Brenner. The princess Clementina had been rescued from her prison.

"But we must keep her free!" cried Wogan, as he blew through his gloves upon his frozen fingers. "Faster! Faster!"

The incline was steep, the snow clogged the wheels, the horses sank deep in it. Gaydon might ply his whip as he would, the carriage might lurch and leap from side to side; the pace was all too slow for Wogan.

"We have lost twelve hours," he cried. "Oh, would to G.o.d we were come to Italy!" And turning backwards he strained his eyes down through the darkness and snow to the hidden roofs of Innspruck, almost fearing to see the windows from one end of the town to the other leap to a blaze of light, and to hear a roar of many voices warn him that the escape was discovered. But the only cry that he heard came from the lips of Mrs. Misset, who put her head from the carriage and bade him stop.

Gaydon brought the horses to a standstill three miles out of Innspruck.

CHAPTER XV

Wogan jumped down from his box and ran to the carriage-door.

"Her Highness is ill?" he cried in suspense.

"Not the least bit in the world," returned Clementina, whose voice for once in a way jarred upon Wogan's ears. Nothing short of a positive sickness could justify the delay.

"What is it, then?" he asked curtly, almost roughly, of Mrs. Misset.

"You carried a packet for her Highness. It is left behind at the tavern."

Wogan stamped impatiently on the ground.

"And for this, for a petticoat or two, you hinder us," he cried in a heat. "There's no petticoat in the world, though it were so stiff with gold that it stood on end of itself, that's worth a single second of the next forty-eight hours."

"But it contains her Highness's jewels."

Wogan's impatience became an exasperation. Were all women at heart, then, no better than Indian squaws? A string of beads outweighed the sacrifices of friends and the chance of a crown! There was a blemish in his idol, since at all costs she must glitter. Wogan, however, was the master here.

"Her Highness must lose her jewels," he said roughly, and was turning away when her Highness herself spoke.

"You are unjust, my friend," she said. "I would lose them very willingly, were there a chance no one else would discover them. But there's no chance. The woman of the tavern will find the bundle, will open it; very likely she has done so already. We shall have all Innspruck on our heels in half an hour;" and for the first time that night Wogan heard her voice break, and grieved to know that the tears were running down her cheeks. He called to O'Toole,-

"Ride back to the tavern! Bring the packet without fail!"

O'Toole galloped off, and Gaydon drove the carriage to the side of the road. There was nothing to do but to wait, and they waited in silence, counting up the chances. There could be no doubt that the landlady, if once she discovered the jewels hidden away in a common packet of clothing, must suspect the travellers who had left them behind. She would be terrified by their value; she would be afraid to retain them lest harm should come to her; and all Innspruck would be upon the fugitives' heels. They waited for half an hour,-thirty minutes of gloom and despair. Clementina wept over this new danger which her comrades ran; Mrs. Misset wept for that her negligence was to blame; Gaydon sat on the box in the falling snow with his arms crossed upon his breast, and felt his head already loose upon his shoulders. The only one of the party who had any comfort of that half-hour was Wogan. For he had been wrong,-the chosen woman had no wish to glitter at all costs, though, to be sure, she could not help glittering with the refulgence of her great merits. His idol had no blemish. Wogan paced up and down the road, while he listened for O'Toole's return, and that thought cheated the time for him. At last he heard very faintly the sound of galloping hoofs below him on the road. He ran back to Gaydon.

"It might be a courier to arrest us. If I shout, drive fast as you can to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to Italy."

He hurried down the road and was hailed by O'Toole.

"I have it," said he. Wogan turned and ran by O'Toole's stirrup to the carriage.

"The landlady has a good conscience and sleeps well," said O'Toole. "I found the house dark and the doors shut. They were only secured, however, by a wooden beam dropped into a couple of sockets on the inside."

"But how did you open them?" asked Clementina.

"Your Highness, I have, after all, a pair of arms," said O'Toole. "I just pressed on the doors till-"

"Till the sockets gave?"

"No, till the beam broke," said he, and Clementina laughed.

"That's my six foot four!" said she. O'Toole did not understand. But he smiled with great condescension and dignity, and continued his story.

"I groped my way up the stairs into the room and found the bundle untouched in the corner."

He handed it to the Princess; Wogan sprang again onto the box, and Gaydon whipped up the horses. They reached the first posting stage at two, the second at four, the third at six, and at each they wasted no time. All that night their horses strained up the mountain road amid the whirling sleet. At times the wind roaring down a gorge would set the carriage rocking; at times they stuck fast in drifts; and Wogan and Gaydon must leap from the box and plunging waist-deep in the snow, must drag at the horses and push at the wheels. The pace was too slow; Wogan seemed to hear on every gust of wind the sound of a galloping company.

"We have lost twelve hours, more than twelve hours now," he repeated and repeated to Gaydon. All the way to Ala they would still be in the Emperor's territory. It needed only a single courier to gallop past them, and at either Roveredo or Trent they would infallibly be taken. Wogan fingered his pistols, straining his eyes backwards down the road.

At daybreak the snow stopped; the carriage rolled on high among the mountains under a grey sky; and here and there, at a wind of the road, Wogan caught a glimpse of the towers and chimney-tops of Innspruck, or had within his view a stretch of the slope they had climbed. But there was never a black speck visible upon the white of the snow; as yet no courier was overtaking them, as yet Innspruck did not know its captive had escaped. At eight o'clock in the morning they came to Nazareth, and found their own berlin ready harnessed at the post-house door, the postillion already in his saddle, and Misset waiting with an uncovered head.

"Her Highness will breakfast here, no doubt?" said Gaydon.

"Misset will have seen to it," cried Wogan, "that the berlin is furnished. We can breakfast as we go."

They waited no more than ten minutes at Nazareth. The order of travelling was now changed. Wogan and Gaydon now travelled in the berlin with Mrs. Misset and Clementina. Gaydon, being the oldest of the party, figured as the Count of Cernes, Mrs. Misset as his wife, Clementina as his niece, and Wogan as a friend of the family. O'Toole and Misset rode beside the carriage in the guise of servants. Thus they started from Nazareth, and had journeyed perhaps a mile when without so much as a moan Clementina swooned and fell forward into Wogan's arms. Mrs. Misset uttered a cry; Wogan clasped the Princess to his breast. Her head fell back across his arm, pale as death; her eyes were closed; her bosom, strained against his, neither rose nor fell.

"She has fasted all Lent," he said in a broken voice. "She has eaten nothing since we left Innspruck."

Mrs. Misset burst into tears; she caught Clementina's hand and clasped it; she had no eyes but for her. With Gaydon it was different. Wogan was holding the Princess in a clasp too loverlike, though, to be sure, it was none of his business.

"We must stop the carriage," he said.

"No," cried Wogan, desperately; "that we must not do;" and he caught her still closer to him. He had a fear that she was dying. Even so, she should not be recaptured. Though she were dead, he would still carry her dead body into Bologna and lay it white and still before his King. Europe from London to the Bosphorus should know the truth of her and ring with the wonder of her, though she were dead. O'Toole, attracted by the noise of Mrs. Misset's lamentations, bent down over his horse's neck and looked into the carriage.

"Her Highness is dead!" he cried.

"Drive on," replied Wogan, through his clenched teeth.