Clementina

"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 reassured 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."