Part 25 (2/2)

Wogan was taken by surprise.

”I should never have slept at all,” stammered he. ”I promised myself that. Not a wink of sleep betwixt Innspruck and Italy; and here was I fast as a log this side of Trent. I think our postillion sleeps too;” and letting down the window he quietly called Misset.

”We have fresh relays,” said he, ”and we travel at a snail's-pace.”

”The relays are only fresh to us,” returned Misset. ”We can go no faster. There is someone ahead with three stages' start of us,-someone of importance, it would seem, and who travels with a retinue, for he takes all the horses at each stage.”

Wogan thrust his head out of the window. There was no doubt of it; the horses lagged. In this hurried flight the most trifling hindrance was a monumental danger, and this was no trifling hindrance. For the hue and cry was most certainly raised behind them; the pursuit from Innspruck had begun twelve hours since, on the most favourable reckoning. At any moment they might hear the jingle of a horse's harness on the road behind. And now here was a man with a great retinue blocking their way in front.

”We can do no more, but make a fight of it in the end,” said he. ”They may be few who follow us. But who is he ahead?”

Misset did not know.

”I can tell you,” said Clementina, with a slight hesitation. ”It is the Prince of Baden, and he travels to Italy.”

Wogan remembered a certain letter which his King had written to him from Rome; and the hesitation in the girl's voice told him the rest of the story. Wogan would have given much to have had his fingers about the scruff of that pompous gentleman's neck with the precipice handy at his feet. It was intolerable that the fellow should pester the Princess in prison and hinder her flight when she had escaped from it.

”Well, we can do no more,” said he, and he drew up the window. Neither Gaydon nor Mrs. Misset were awakened; Clementina and Wogan were alone in the darkness.

She leaned forward to him and said in a low voice,-

”Tell me of the King. I shall make mistakes in this new world. Will he have patience with me while I learn?”

She had spoken upon the same strain in the darkness of the staircase only the night before. Wogan gently laughed her fears aside.

”I will tell you the truest thing about the King. He needs you at his side. For all his friends, he is at heart a lonely man, throned upon sorrows. I dare to tell you that, knowing you. He needs not a mere wife, but a mate, a helpmate, to strive with him, her hand in his. Every man needs the helpmate, as I read the world. For it cannot but be that a man falls below himself when he comes home always to an empty room.”

The Princess was silent. Wogan hoped that he had rea.s.sured her. But her thoughts were now turned from herself. She leaned yet further forward with her elbows upon her knees, and in a yet lower voice she asked a question which fairly startled him.

”Does she not love you?”

Wogan, indeed, had spoken unconsciously, with a deep note of sadness in his voice, which had sounded all the more strange and sad to her from its contrast with the quick, cheerful, vigorous tones she had come to think the mark of him. He had spoken as though he looked forward with a poignant regret through a weary span of days, and saw himself always in youth and middle years and age coming home always to an empty room. Therefore she put her question, and Wogan was taken off his guard.

”There is no one,” he said in a flurry.

Clementina shook her head.

”I wish that I may hear the King speak so, and in that voice; I shall be very sure he loves me,” she said in a musing voice, and so changing almost to a note of raillery. ”Tell me her name!” she pleaded. ”What is amiss with her that she is not thankful for a true man's love like yours? Is she haughty? I'll bring her on her knees to you. Does she think her birth sets her too high in the world? I'll show her so much contempt, you so much courtesy, that she shall fall from her arrogance and dote upon your steps. Perhaps she is too sure of your devotion? Why, then, I'll make her jealous!”

Wogan interrupted her, and the agitation of his voice put an end to her raillery. Somehow she had wounded him who had done so much for her.

”Madam, I beg you to believe me, there is no one;” and casting about for a sure argument to dispel her conjectures, he said on an impulse, ”Listen; I will make your Highness a confidence.” He stopped, to make sure that Gaydon and Mrs. Misset were still asleep. Then he laughed uneasily like a man that is half-ashamed and resumed,-”I am lord and king of a city of dreams. Here's the opening of a fairy tale, you will say. But when I am asleep my city's very real; and even now that I am awake I could draw you a map of it, though I could not name its streets. That's my town's one blemish. Its streets are nameless. It has taken a long while in the building, ever since my boyhood; and indeed the work's not finished yet, nor do I think it ever will be finished till I die, since my brain's its architect. When I was asleep but now, I discovered a new villa, and an avenue of trees, and a tavern with red blinds which I had never remarked before. At the first there was nothing but a queer white house of which the original has fallen to ruins at Rathcoffey in Ireland. This house stood alone in a wide flat emerald plain that stretched like an untravelled sea to a circle of curving sky. There was room to build, you see, and when I left Rathcoffey and became a wanderer, the building went on apace. There are dark lanes there from Avignon between great frowning houses, narrow climbing streets from Meran, arcades from Verona, and a park of many thickets and tall poplar-trees with a long silver stretch of water. One day you will see that park from the windows of St. James. It has a wall too, my city,-a round wall enclosing it within a perfect circle; and from whatever quarter of the plain you come towards it, you only see this wall, there's not so much as a chimney visible above it. Once you have crowded with the caravans and traders through the gates,-for my town is busy,-you are at once in the ringing streets. I think my architect in that took Aigues Mortes for his model. Outside you have the flat, silent plain, across which the merchants creep in long trailing lines, within the noise of markets, the tramp of horses' hoofs, the talk of men and women, and, if you listen hard, the whispers, too, of lovers. Oh, my city's populous! There are quiet alleys with windows opening onto them, where on summer nights you may see a young girl's face with the moonlight on it like a glory, and in the shadow of the wall beneath, the cloaked figure of a youth. Well, I have a notion-” and then he broke off abruptly. ”There's a black horse I own, my favourite horse.”

”You rode it the first time you came to Ohlau,” said the Princess.

”Do you indeed remember that?” cried Wogan, with so much pleasure that Gaydon stirred in his corner, and Clementina said, ”Hus.h.!.+”

<script>