Clementina Part 18

"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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+vered.

"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 G.o.d 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, wis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sert 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 n.o.blest gift that heaven has given a man," said Clementina, fervently.