From Worcester Nicholas Wogan made his way to Bristol, and, taking passage there on a brigantine bound for Havre-de-Grace with a cargo of linen, got safely over into France. He travelled forthwith to Paris that he might put himself at the disposition of General Dillon, and, being commanded to supper some few days after his arrival by the Duke of Mar, saw a familiar swarthy face nodding cheerily at him across the table. The lady was embrowned with the Eastern sun, and, having lost her eye-lashes by that disease which she fought so manfully to conquer, her eyes were fierce and martial. It was indeed the face of the redoubtable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, sister to the Duchess of Mar, who chanced to be passing through Paris on her travels from Constantinople. Wogan remembered that Mr. Kelly's rustic friend at Brampton Bryan had spoken of Lady Mary with considerable spleen. And since he began to harbour doubts of her rusticity, he determined to seek some certain information from Lady Mary.
Lady Mary was for a wonder in a most amiable mood, and had more than one question to put concerning 'Kelly as the Bishop that was to be when your King came to his own.'
'Why, madam, he has a new friend,' said Wogan.
Lady Mary maybe caught a suspicion of uneasiness in Wogan's tone. She cocked her head whimsically.
'A woman?'
'Yes.'
'Who?'
'My Lady Oxford.'
Lady Mary made a round O of her lips, drew in a breath, and blew it out again.
'There go the lawn-sleeves.'
Wogan took a seat by her side.
'Why?'
Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders.
'In what esteem is she held?' continued Wogan, 'of what character is she?'
'I could never hear,' returned Lady Mary carelessly. 'For her friends always stopped abruptly when they chanced upon her character, and the rest was merely pursed lips and screwed-up eyes, which it would be the unfairest thing in the world to translate in her disfavour. Her character, Mr. Wogan, is a tender and delicate plant. It will not grow under glass, but in a dark room, where I believe it flourishes most invisibly.'
Lady Mary seemed ill-disposed to pursue the topic, and began to talk of her journey and the great things she had seen at Constantinople. Wogan waited until she came to a pause, and then stepped in with another question.
'Is Lady Oxford political?'
'Lady Oxford! Lady Oxford!' she repeated almost pettishly. 'Upon my word, the woman has infected you. You can speak of nothing else. Political?' and she laughed maliciously. 'That she is, and on both sides. She changes her party more often than an ambitious statesman. For politics to my Lady Oxford are just pawns in the great game of Love.'
'Oh, Love,' exclaimed Wogan, with a recollection of Mr. Scrope. 'Is Love her quarry?'
'She will play cat to any man's mouse,' returned Lady Mary indifferently.
'And there are many mice?'
Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. However, Wogan's appetite for information was only whetted, and to provoke Lady Mary to speak more freely he made an inventory of Lady Oxford's charms. He dwelt on her attractions. Lady Mary played with her fan, pulled savagely at the feathers, opened it, shut it up, while Wogan discoursed serenely on item--a dark eye, big, with a glint of light in it like sunshine through a thundercloud. Lady Mary laughed scornfully. Wogan went on to item--a profusion of blackish-brown hair, very silky, with a gloss, and here and there a gold thread in the brown; item--a Barbary shape; item--an admirable instep and a most engaging ankle.
'It would look very pretty in the stocks,' Lady Mary snapped out.
Wogan shook his head with a knowing air.
''Twould slip out.'
'Not if I had the locking of it in,' she exclaimed with a vicious stamp of the foot, and rose, as though to cross the room.
'I have omitted the lady's most adorable merit,' said Wogan thoughtfully. Lady Mary was altogether human, and did not cross the room.
'She has the greatest affection for your ladyship. She spoke of your ladyship indeed in quite unmeasured terms, and while praising your ladyship's wit would not have it that one single spark was due to the cleverness of your ladyship's friends. Upon that point she was most strenuous.'
Lady Mary sat down again. The stroke had evidently told.
'I am most grateful to her,' she said, 'and when did Lady Oxford show such a sweet condescension towards me?'
'But a few weeks ago at Brampton Bryan, where she was nursing her husband with an assiduous devotion.'
'I have known her show the like devotion before, when her losses at cards have driven her from London.'
'So she gambles?' inquired Wogan. 'Altogether, then, a dangerous friend for George.'
Lady Mary nodded.
'Particularly for George,' said she with a smile. 'For observe, she is compact of wiles, and so is most dangerous to an honest man. She is at once insatiable in her desires, and implacable if they are not fulfilled. She is always in love, and knows nothing of what the word means. She is tender at times, but only through caprice; she is never faithful except for profit or lack of occasion to be anything else. Coquetry is the abiding principle of her nature, and her virtue merely a habit of hiding her coquetry. Her mind is larded with affectations as is her face with paint, and once or twice she has been known to weep--when tears were likely to deceive a man. There, Mr. Wogan, you have her likeness, and I trust you are satisfied.'
It was not a character very much to Wogan's liking (Lady Mary, he learned later, was quoting from a manuscript 'portrait' of her own designing), though he drew a spice of comfort from the thought that Lady Mary might have coloured the effigy with her unmistakable enmity. But events proved that she had not over-coloured it, and even at that time Lady Oxford had no better reputation than Lady Mary Wortley attributed to her. The ballad-makers called her gallant, and they did her no wrong--the ballad-makers of theruelles, be it understood, not they of the streets, but such poets as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu herself and his Grace Sophia of Wharton.[1]The street-singers knew not Lady Oxford, who, indeed, was on the top of the fashion, and could hold her own in the war of written verses. It was in truth to her ability to give as good as she took in the matter of ballads that she owed Lady Mary's hostility, who had no taste for the counter-stroke. There were many such daring Penthesileas of the pen who never gave each other quarter; but neither Wogan nor the Parson were at this time in their secrets, although subsequently a ballad, not from Lady Mary's pen, was to have an astonishing effect upon their fortunes.
'Your ladyship can help me to make the best of it, at all events,' said Wogan. 'Since you have told me so much, will you tell me this one thing more? Have you ever heard of Mr. Scrope?'
'Scrope? Scrope?' said she casting about in her recollections. Wogan told her the story of Mr. Scrope's appearance at Brampton Bryan, and the explanation which Lady Oxford had given to account for it. Lady Mary laughed heartily.
'Secretary to Mr. Walpole?' she said. 'And how, then, did he come to hear that mad sermon of Mr. Kelly's at Dublin?'
'Sure I have been puzzled to account for that myself,' says Wogan. 'But who is he? Where does he come from? What brought him to Brampton Bryan? What took him away in such a mighty hurry? For upon my word I find it difficult to believe the man's a coward.'
'And you are in the right,' replied her ladyship. 'I know something of Mr. Scrope, and I will wager it was no cowardice made him run. I doubt you have not seen the last of Mr. Scrope. It is a passionate, determined sort of creature. He came to London a year or so agone. It was understood that he was a country gentleman with a comfortable estate in Leicestershire. He had laid his estate at Lady Oxford's feet, before she was as yet her ladyship. Lady Oxford would have it, and then would have none of it, and married the Earl. Well, he had been her valet for a season, and, I have no doubt, thought the service worth any price. She gave him her fan to hold, her gloves to caress, and what more can a man want? He spent much of his money, and some whisper that he turned informer afterwards.'
'Oh, did he?' asked Wogan, who was now yet more concerned that he had let the informer slip through his fingers.
'Yes. An informer for conscience' sake--a gentleman spy. His father died for Monmouth's affair. He has ever hated the Pretender and his cause. He is a Protestant and a fanatic.'
Then she looked at Wogan and began to laugh.
'I would have given much to have seen you bouncing down the road after Mr. Scrope's chaise,' and she added seriously, 'But I doubt you have not heard the last of Mr. Scrope.'
That also was Wogan's thought. For Lady Mary's story, though vague enough, was sufficiently clear to deepen his disquietude. Well, Mr. Wogan would get no comfort by the mere addling his brains with thinking of the matter, and he thrust it forth of his mind and went upon his way, that led him clean out of the path of this story for a while. He was despatched to Cadiz to take charge of a ship, and, in company with Captain Galloway of theResolution, who was afterwards seized at Genoa, and Morgan, of theLady Mary, he spent much fruitless time in cruising on and off the coasts of France, Spain, and Sweden. It was given out that they carried snuff, or were engaged in the Madagascar trade. But they took no cargoes aboard but barrels of powder and stands of arms, and waited on the Rising, which never came. There were weeks idled away at Morlaix, at Roscoff in Brittany, at Lisbon in Portugal, at Alicant Bay in Spain, until Wogan's heart grew sick with impatience. At rare times, when the venture wore a face of promise, the little fleet would run the hazard of the Channel and creep along the English coast, from Dartmouth, across the West Bay to Portland, from Portland on to the Isle of Wight. Mr. Wogan would pace the deck of his little ketch,Fortune, of a night, and as he looked at the quiet fields lying dark beneath the sky, would wonder how the world wagged for his friend the Parson, and whether my Lady Oxford was shaping it or no, until a longing would seize on him to drop a boat into the water and himself into the boat, and row ashore and see. But it was not for more than a full twelve months that his longing was fulfilled, and during those twelve months the harm was done.
For the greater part of that year Mr. Kelly simply went about his business. He travelled backwards and forwards from General Dillon, Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of Mar, in Paris, to the Bishop of Rochester, in London, and from the Bishop to the others of the five who mismanaged the Chevalier's affairs in England, Lord Arran, Lord Strafford, Lord North and Grey, Lord Orrery, and last, though not least, the Earl of Oxford. Thus business brought him more than once knocking again at the doors of Brampton Bryan Manor, though he did not always find her ladyship at home to welcome him. On such occasions he found the great house very desolate for the want of her footstep and her voice, and so would pull out his watch and fall to wondering what at that precise moment she was engaged upon in town.
Thus things dallied, then, until a warm wet night of summer in the year 1720. Mr. Kelly was in London and betook himself to His Majesty's Theatre in Drury Lane, where he witnessed a farce which was very much to his taste. It was entitled 'South-Sea; or the Biter Bit,' and was happy not merely in its quips, but in the moment of its performance. For the King, or, as the honest party called him, the Elector, and his lords had sold out, and were off to Germany with their plunder, and the stocks were falling by hundreds every week. Mr. Kelly might well laugh at the sallies on the stage and the wry faces with which the pit and boxes received them. For he had recently sold out his actions in the Mississippi scheme at a profit of 1,200 per cent., and had his money safe locked up at Mr. Child's, the goldsmith. Kelly's, however, was not a mere wanton pleasure. For the floating of the bubble out of reach meant a very solid change in the Jacobite prospects. So long as the South-Sea scheme prospered and all the town grew wealthy, there would be no talk of changing kings and no chance for Mr. Kelly's friends. That great and patriotic bishop whom he served, my Lord of Rochester, had said to him this many a month past, 'Let 'em forget their politics, let 'em all run mad in Change Alley, and the madder the better. For the funds will fall and be the ruin of thousands, and when England is sunk into a salutary wretchedness and discontent, then our opportunity will come.'
It was altogether, then, in a very good humour that Mr. Kelly left the theatre. The night was young, and he disinclined for his lodgings. He strolled across to the Groom Porters, in White Hall, where his spirits were mightily increased. For taking a hand there at Bassette, in three deals he won nine rich septlevas, and, for once, did not need the money, and when he left the Groom Porters his pockets were heavy with gold, and his head swimming with the fumes of punch.
It is not to be wondered at that those same fumes of punch floated Lady Oxford into Mr. Kelly's mind. He swaggered up St. James's Street with her ladyship consequently riding atop of his bemused fancies. It was a gay hour in St. James's, being then about half past one of the morning. Music rippled out of windows open on the night. Kelly heard the dice rattle within and the gold clink on the green cloth; lovers were whispering on the balconies; the world seemed to be going very well for those who had not their money in the Bubble, and for no one better than for Mr. Kelly. He looked about him, if by chance he might catch a glimpse of his divinity among the ladies of fashion as he watched them getting into their chairs, pushing their hoops sidelong before them, and the flambeaux flaring on their perfections. He imagined himself a Paladin rescuing her from innumerable foes. She was an angel, a sprite, a Hamadryad, in fact everything tender and immaterial.
He was roused from these dreams by an illumination of more than ordinary brilliancy, and looking up saw that he had wandered to the theatre in the Haymarket. A ragged crowd of pickpockets and the like was gathered about the portico. Carriages and chairs set down in quick succession, ladies in dominoes, gentlemen in masks. Mr. Kelly remembered that it was a night of the masquerades; all the world would be gathered in the theatre, and why not Lady Oxford, who was herself the better half of it? Kelly had a ticket in his pocket, pushed through the loiterers, and stood on the inner rim of the crowd watching the masqueraders arrive. Every carriage that drew up surely concealed her ladyship, every domino that passed up the steps hid her incomparable figure. Mr. Kelly had staked his soul with unruffled confidence upon her identity with each of the first twelve women who thus descended before he realised that he was not the only one who waited. From the spot where he stood he could see into the lobby of the theatre. Heidegger, M. le surintendant des plaisirs du Roi de l'Angleterre,
'With a hundred deep wrinkles impressed on his front,Like a map with a great many rivers upon 't,'
'With a hundred deep wrinkles impressed on his front,Like a map with a great many rivers upon 't,'
was receiving the more important of his guests. The guests filed past him into the parterre, Heidegger remained. But another man loitered ever in the lobby too. He was evidently expecting someone, and that with impatience. For as each coach or chaise drew up he peered eagerly forward; as it delivered its occupants he turned discontentedly away. It is perhaps doubtful whether Mr. Kelly would have paid him any great attention but for his dress, which arrested all eyes and caused the more tender of the ladies who passed him to draw their cloaks closer about them with a gesture of disgust. For he was attired to represent a headsman, being from head to foot in black, with a crape mask upon his face and a headsman's axe in his hand. He had carried his intention out with such thoroughness, moreover, that he had daubed his doublet and hose with red.
Mr. Kelly was in a mood to be charmed by everything strange and eccentric, and the presence of this bloodsmeared executioner at a masquerade seemed to him a piece of the most delicate drollery. Moreover, the executioner was waiting like Mr. Kelly, and with a like anxiety. Mr. Kelly had a fellow-feeling for him in his impatience which prompted him suddenly to run up the steps and accost him.
'Like me, you are doubtless waiting for your aunt,' said the Parson courteously.
The impulse, the movement, the words had all been the matter of a second; but the executioner was more than naturally startled, as Mr. Kelly might have perceived had he possessed his five wits. For the man leaped rather than stepped back; he gave a gasp; his hand gripped tight about the handle of his axe. Then he stepped close to Kelly.
'You know me?' he said. The voice was muffled, the accent one of menace. Kelly noticed neither the voice nor the menace. He bowed with ceremony.
'Without a doubt. You are M. de Strasbourg.'
The headsman laughed abruptly like a man relieved.
'You and I,' he returned, mimicking Kelly's politeness of manner, 'will be better acquainted in the future.'
Kelly was overjoyed with the rejoinder. 'Here's a devil of a fellow for you,' he cried, and with his elbow nudged Heidegger in the ribs. Heidegger was at that moment bent to the ground before the Duchess of Wharton, and nearly stumbled over her Grace's train. He turned in a passion as soon as the Duchess had passed.
'Vas you do dat for dam?' he said all in a breath. Kelly however was engaged in contemplating the executioner. He ran his thumb along the edge of the axe.
'It is cruelly blunt,' said he.
'You need not fear,' returned the other. 'For your worship is only entitled to a cord.'
'Oh, so you know me,' says Kelly, stepping close to the executioner.
'Without a doubt,' replied the latter, stepping back, 'Monsieur le Marchand de dentelles.'
It was Kelly's turn to be startled, and that he was effectually; he was shocked into a complete recovery of his senses and an accurate estimation of his folly. He walked to the entrance and stood upon the steps. The executioner knew him, knew something of his trade. Who, then, was M. de Strasbourg? Kelly recalled the tones of his voice, conned them over in his mind, and was not a penny the wiser. He glanced backwards furtively across his shoulder and looked the man over from head to foot.
At that moment a carriage drove up to the entrance. Mr. Kelly was standing on the top of the steps and the face of the coachman on the box was just on a level with his own. He stared, in a word, right at it, and so took unconsciously an impression of it upon his mind, while pondering how he should act with regard to M. de Strasbourg. Consequently he did not notice that a woman stepped out of the carriage and, without looking to the right or left, quickly mounted the steps. His eyes, in fact, were still fixed upon the coachman's face; and it needed the brushing of her cloak against his legs to rouse him from his reflections.
He turned about just as she disappeared at the far end of the lobby. He caught a glimpse of a white velvet cloak and an inch of blue satin petticoat under a muffling domino. He also saw that M. de Strasbourg was drawn close behind a pillar, as though he wished to avoid the lady. As soon, however, as she had vanished he came boldly out of his concealment and followed her into the theatre. Mr. Kelly began instantly to wonder whether a closer view of the domino would help him discover who M. de Strasbourg really was, and entering the theatre he went up into the boxes.
At first his eyes were bedazzled by the glitter of lights and jewels and the motley throng which paraded the floor. There was the usual medley of Chinese, Turks, and friars; here was a gentleman above six feet high dressed like a child in a white frock and leading strings and attended by another of very low stature, who fed him from time to time with a papspoon; there was a soldier prancing a minuet upon a hobby horse to the infinite discomfort of his neighbours; and as for the women--it seemed to Mr. Kelly that all the goddesses of the heathen mythology had come down from Olympia in their customary négligé.
Among them moved M. de Strasbourg like a black shadow, very distinguishable. Kelly kept his eyes in the man's neighbourhood, and in a little perceived a masked lady with her hair dressed in the Greek fashion. What character she was intended to represent he could not for the life of him determine. He learnt subsequently that she went as Iphigeneia--Iphigeneia, if you please, in a blue satin petticoat. To be sure her bosom was bared for the sacrifice, but then all the ladies in that assembly were in the like case. She had joined a party of friends, of whom M. de Strasbourg was not one. For though he kept her ever within his sight, following her hither and thither, it was always at a distance; and, so far as Kelly could see, and he did not take his eyes from the pair, he never spoke to her so much as a single word. On the contrary he seemed rather to lurk behind and avoid her notice. Kelly's curiosity was the more provoked by this stealthy pursuit. He lost his sense of uneasiness in a wonder what the man designed against the woman. He determined to wait the upshot of the affair.
The night wore away, the masqueraders thinned. The inch of blue satin petticoat took her departure from the parterre. M. de Strasbourg followed her; Mr. Kelly followed M. de Strasbourg.
The lobby was crowded. Kelly threaded his way through the crowd and came out upon the steps. He saw the lady, close wrapped again in her velvet cloak, descend to her carriage. The coachman gathered up his reins and took his whip from its rest. The movement chanced to attract Kelly's eyes. He looked at the coachman, at the first glance indifferently, at the second with all his attention. For this was not the same man who had driven the carriage to the masquerade. And then the coachman turned his full face towards Kelly and nodded. He nodded straight towards him. But was the nod meant for him? No! Well, then, for someone just behind his shoulder.
Kelly did not turn, but stepped quietly aside and saw M. de Strasbourg slip past him down the steps. So the nod was meant for him. M. de Strasbourg was still masked, but he had thrown a cloak about his shoulders which in some measure disguised his dress. The mystery seemed clear to Kelly; the lady was to be forcibly abducted unless someone, say Mr. James Johnson, had a word to say upon the matter. The carriage turned and drove slowly through the press of chairs and shouting link-boys; M. de Strasbourg on the side-walk kept pace with the carriage. Kelly immediately crossed the road, and, concealed by the carriage, kept pace with M. de Strasbourg. Thus they went as far as the corner of the Haymarket, and then turned into Pall Mall.
At this point Kelly, to be the more ready should the lady need his assistance, stepped off the pavement and walked in the mud hard by the hind wheels of the carriage. It was now close upon four of the morning, but, fortunately, very dark, and only a sullen sort of twilight about the south-eastern fringes of the sky.
In Pall Mall the carriages were fewer, but the coachman did not quicken his pace, doubtless out of regard for M. de Strasbourg, and at the corner of Pall Mall, where the road was quite empty, he jerked the horses to a standstill. Instantly M. de Strasbourg ran across the road to the carriage, the coachman bent over on that side to watch, and Mr. Kelly, on the other side, ran forward to the box. M. de Strasbourg wrenched open the door and jumped into the carriage. Mr. Kelly heard a woman's scream and sprang on to the box. The coachman turned with a start. Before he could shout, before he could speak, Kelly showed him a pistol (for he went armed) under the man's nose.
'One word,' said Kelly, 'and I will break your ugly face in with the stock of that, my friend.'
The woman screamed again; M. de Strasbourg thrust his head out of the window.
'Go on,' he shouted with an oath, 'you know where. At a gallop! Kill the horses, they are not mine! Flog 'em to death so you go but fast enough.'
'To the right,' said Kelly, quietly.
The man whipped up the horses. They started at a gallop up St. James's Street.
'To the right,' again whispered Kelly.
The carriage turned into Ryder Street, rocking on its wheels. M. de Strasbourg's head was again thrust from the window.
'That's not the way. Are you drunk, man?--are you drunk?' he cried.
'To the left,' says Kelly, imperturbably, and fingered the lock of the pistol a little.
The carriage swung into Bury Street.
'Stop,' said Kelly.
The coachman reined in his horses; the carriage stopped with a jerk.
'Where in the devil's name have you taken us?' cried M. de Strasbourg, opening the door.
Kelly sprang to the ground, ran round the carriage to the open door.
'To the Marchand de dentelles, M. de Strasbourg,' said he with a bow. 'I have some most elegant pieces ofpoint d'Alençonfor the lady's inspection.'
M. de Strasbourg was utterly dumbfounded. He staggered back against the panels of the carriage; his mouth opened and shut; it seemed there was no language sufficiently chaotic to express his discomposure. At last:
'You are a damned impudent fellow,' he gasped out in a weak sort of quaver.
'Am I?' asked Kelly. 'Shall we ask the lady?'
He peeped through the door. The lady was huddled up in a corner--an odd heap of laces, silks, and furbelows, but with never a voice in all the confusion. It seemed she had fainted.
Meanwhile M. de Strasbourg turned on the unfortunate coachman.
'Get down, you rascal,' he cried; 'you have been bribed, you're in the fellow's pay. Get down! Not a farthing will you get from me, but only a thrashing that will make your bones ache this month to come.'
'Your honour,' replied the coachman piteously, 'it was not my fault. He offered to kill me unless I drove you here.'
M. de Strasbourg in a rage flung back to Kelly. He clapped a hand on his shoulder and plucked him from the carriage door.
'So you offered to kill him, did you?' he said. 'Perhaps you will make a like offer to me. But I'll not wait for the offer.'
He unclasped his cloak, drew his sword (happily not his axe) and delivered his thrust with that rapidity it seemed all one motion. Mr. Kelly jumped on one side, and the sword just gleamed against his sleeve. M. de Strasbourg overbalanced himself and stumbled a foot or two forwards. Kelly had whipped out his sword by the time that M. de Strasbourg had recovered, and a battle began which was whimsical enough. A quiet narrow street, misty with the grey morning, the carriage lamps throwing here a doubtful shadow, a masked headsman leaping, swearing, thrusting in an extreme passion, and, to crown the business, the coachman lamenting on the box that whichever honourable gentleman was killed he would most surely go wanting his hire, he that had a woeful starving family! Mr. Kelly, indeed, felt the strongest inclination to laugh, but dared not, so hotly was he pressed. The attack, however, he did not return, but contented himself with parrying the thrusts. His design, indeed, reached at no more than the mere disarming of M. de Strasbourg. M. de Strasbourg, however, lost even his last remnants of patience.
'Rascal!' he cried. 'Scullion! Grasshopper!'
Then he threw his hat at Kelly and missed, and at last flung his periwig full in Kelly's face, accompanying the present with a thrust home which his opponent barely parried.
It was this particular action which brought the contest to a grotesque conclusion quite in keeping with its beginnings. For the periwig tumbled in the mud, and the coachman, assured that he would get no stiver of his hire, scrambled down from his box, rushed at a prize of so many pounds in value, picked it up and took to his heels.
M. de Strasbourg uttered a cry and leaped backwards out of reach.
'Stop!' he bawled to the coachman. The coachman only ran the quicker. M. de Strasbourg passed his hand over his shaven crown and looked at the carriage. It was quite impossible to abduct a lady without a periwig to his head. He swore, he stamped, he shouted 'Stop!' once more, and then dashed at full speed past Kelly in pursuit.
Kelly made no effort to prevent him, but gave way to his inclination and laughed. The coachman threw a startled glance over his shoulder and, seeing that M. de Strasbourg pressed after him, quickened his pace; behind him rushed a baldheaded executioner hurling imprecations. The pair fled, one after the other, to the top of Bury Street, turned the corner and disappeared. Kelly laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and leaned against the carriage.
The touch of the panels recalled him to the lady's presence. The street was now fairly roused by the clamour. Night-capped heads peeped from the windows; an indignant burgher in a dressing-gown even threatened Mr. Kelly with a blunderbuss; and, as he turned to the door of the carriage, he saw Mrs. Barnes at a window on the second floor looking at him with an air of the gravest discontent.
'Take me into shelter, good sir, at once, at once,' cried the lady from out the confusion of her laces, in a feigned tone of the masquerade.
'With all my heart, madam,' said Kelly. 'This is my door, and my lodging is at your disposal. Only the street is fairly awake, and should you prefer, I will most readily drive you to your own house.'
The lady looked out of the window. She was still masked so that Kelly could see nothing of her face, and she hesitated for a little, as if in doubt what answer she should make.
'You may make yourself at ease, madam,' said Kelly, believing that she was not yet relieved of fear; 'you are in perfect safety. Our worthy friend had to choose between your ladyship and his periwig, of which he has gone in chase. And, indeed, while I deplore his taste, I cannot but commend his discretion.'
'Very well,' she replied faintly. 'I owe you great thanks already, Mr.--' she paused.
'Johnson,' said Kelly.
'Mr. Johnson,' she replied; 'and I shall owe you yet more if you will drive me to my home.'
She gave him the address of a house in Queen's Square, Westminster. Kelly mounted on the box, took up the reins, and drove off. He looked up, as he turned the carriage in the narrow street, towards the second floor of his lodging. Mrs. Barnes shook her head at him in a terrible concern.
'I shall write and tell Mr. Wogan,' she bawled out.
'Hush, Mrs. Barnes, have you no sense?' cried Kelly, and he thought that from within the carriage he heard a stifled peal of laughter. 'Poor woman,' thought he, ''tis the hysterics,' and he drove to Queen's Square, Westminster, at a gallop.
Mr. Kelly did not drive very straight perhaps, but to be sure he had the streets entirely to himself, and he certainly hit upon Queen's Square. The house was unknown to him, and he drove through the square before he found it.
It made an angle at the south corner, and was conspicuous for a solid family air, and a fine new statue of Queen Anne. Level windows of a distinguished respectability looked you over with indifference and said, 'Here's a house you'll take off your hat to, if you please.' 'Faith, but those windows must have shuddered in their sashes when they saw the Parson driving Madam home at five o'clock of the morning from a masquerade ball. A sleepy footman opened the door; a no less sleepy maid yawned in the hall. However, they both waked up to some purpose when Mr. Kelly jumped down from the box, bade the footman take the carriage round to the stables, called the maid to attend upon Madam, and himself opened the carriage door. He opened it quickly with a thought that Madam might very likely have removed her mask, for he was not so tipsy but that he was curious to know who it was that he had befriended. Madam, however, had done nothing of the kind.
'Is my lady ill?' asked the maid, hurrying forward. So Madam was a woman of title.
'A trifle discomposed, no doubt,' answered Kelly.
My lady said nothing whatever. It seemed she was unwilling to speak in the feigned voice before her maid, and in the natural voice before Mr. Kelly. She took his arm, and, leaning on it somewhat heavily, yet walked with a firm enough step into the hall, as Mr. Kelly could not but remark.
The maid threw open a door on the right. It gave into a little cheery room with a wainscot of polished oak, and a fire blazing on the hearth. My lady did not release Mr. Kelly's arm, and they both stood in front of the fire, and no doubt found the warmth comfortable enough after the chill of the morning. Her ladyship, indeed, went so far as to untie the strings of her domino, and make as though she would turn it back upon her shoulders. But with a glance at Mr. Kelly, she changed her mind, and hugged it somewhat closer over her dress than before.
'Were you at the masquerade, Mr. Johnson?' she asked in a low voice.
Mr. Kelly took the movement and the words together, and set them down as mere coquetry. Now, coquetry to Kelly at that time was a challenge, and it was contrary to his principles of honour to remain under such a provocation from man or woman. So he answered:
'Indeed, your ladyship, I was, to my eternal happiness. I shall dream of blue satin for a month to come.'
Her ladyship hitched her domino a little tighter still about her neck, and quickly tied the strings again, but made no other reply to his sally. The action, while it inflamed his curiosity, put him into something of a quandary. Was it but another piece of coquetry, he asked himself, or did she indeed wish to hinder him from discovering who she was? He could answer neither question, but he felt constrained, at all events, to offer to take her concealment as a hint that he should depart. It seemed a pity, for the adventure promised well.
'Your ladyship,' he said, and at that she gave a start and glanced at him, 'for so I understand from your maid I may address you,' he added, 'it grows late, the world is getting on to its legs, and your ladyship has had an eventful night.'
He took a step backwards and bowed.
'No,' said she, in a sharp quick voice, and put out a hand to detain him. Then she stopped as quickly, and drew in her hand again.
Mr. Kelly had borne himself very prettily in the little affair with M. de Strasbourg. Madam, in fact, was in the typical attitude of woman. She knew it was inconvenient to keep him, but for the life of her she could not let him go, wherefore she found a woman's way out of the trouble. For she staggered on her legs, and fainted to all appearance clean away, leaving matters to take their own course and shift for themselves. She fainted, of course, towards Mr. Kelly, who caught her in his arms and set her in an arm-chair. The maid, who all this while had been standing in the doorway, smiled. 'I will run to her ladyship's dressing-room for the salts,' she said, and so went out of the room, carefully closing the door behind her. Kelly kneeled by the lady's side, and taking up her fan, sought to waft her that way back into the world. She did not stir so much as a muscle, but lay all huddled up in her domino and mask. Mr. Kelly leaned over her, and so became aware of a penetrating perfume which breathed out from her dress. The perfume was bergamot.
Kelly dropped the fan and sat back on his heel. The maid had called her 'my lady,' and bergamot was Lady Oxford's favourite perfume. What if it was Lady Oxford he had unwittingly rescued! The possibility caught his breath away. If that were only true, he thought, why, he had done her some slight service, and straightway a great rush of tenderness came upon him, which went some way to sober him. In a minute, however, he dropped into despondency; for Lord Oxford's house was in the northern part of the town, as he knew, though he had never as yet been there, and neither the footman nor the maid were of her ladyship's household. Yet, if by some miracle the lady might be Smilinda! She was of the right height. Mr. Kelly looked at her, seeking vainly to trace out the form hidden under the folds of the domino. But if it were Smilinda, then Smilinda had swooned.
Mr. Kelly woke to this conclusion with a start of alarm. He clapped his hand into his pocket, pulled out his snuff-box, opened it quickly, and held it close beneath her ladyship's nose. The effect of the snuff was purely magical, for before she could have inhaled one grain of it--before, indeed, Mr. Kelly's box was within a foot of her face, up went her hands to the tie-strings of her mask.
So the swoon was counterfeit.
'Madam,' said Kelly, 'you interpret my desires to a nicety. It is your face I would see, but I did not dream of removing your mask. I did but offer to revive you with a pinch of snuff.'
She took the box from his hand, but not to inhale the macawba.
'It is for your own sake, Mr. Johnson, that I do not unmask. 'Tis like that I am a fright, and did you see my face you would take me for a pale ghost.'
'Madam,' said Kelly, 'I am not afraid of ghosts, nor apt to take your ladyship for one of those same airy appearances. A ghost! No,' he cried, surveying her. 'An angel! It is only the angels in Heaven that wear blue satin petticoats.'
The lady laughed, and checked the laugh, aware that a laugh betrays where a voice does not.
'Ghost or angel,' she said,' a being of my sex would fain see herself before she is seen. 'Tis a mirror I seek.' She was still holding Mr. Kelly's snuff-box. It was open and within the lid a little looking-glass was set; and as she spoke she turned away and bent over it with a motion as if she was about to lift her mask.
'Nay,' said Kelly abruptly; he stretched out his hand towards the snuff-box. 'The glass will be unfaithful, for the snuff has tarnished it. Madam, I beseech you, unloose that mask and turn your face to me and consult a truer mirror, your servant's eyes.' He spoke, perhaps, with a trifle more of agitation than the occasion seemed to warrant. Madam did indeed turn her face to Mr. Kelly, but it was in surprise at his agitation, and the mask still hid her face. Mr. Kelly could see no more than a pair of eyes blazing bright and black through the eyelet holes.
'You are gallant, I find, as well as brave,' she said, 'unless some other cause prompted the words.'
'What cause, madam? You wrong me.'
'Why,' said she, 'you still hold out your hand.' Mr. Kelly drew it away quickly. 'Ah,' she continued, 'I am right. There was a reason. You would not have me examine your snuff-box too closely.'
In that she was right, for the snuff-box was at once the dearest and the most dangerous of Mr. Kelly's possessions. It was a pretty toy in gold and tortoiseshell, with brilliants on the hinges, and had been given to Mr. Kelly on a certain occasion when he had been presented to his king at Avignon. For that reason, and for another, he was mightily loth to let it out of his possession. What that other reason was Madam very soon discovered.
'It is a dangerous toy,' she said. 'It has perhaps a secret to tell?'
'Madam, has not your mask?' returned Kelly.
'There is a mystery behind the mirror.'
'Well, then, it's mystery for mystery.'
For all that he spoke lightly he was in some uneasiness. For the lady might not be Smilinda, and her fingers played deftly about the setting of the mirror, touching a stone here and there. To be sure she wore gloves, and was the less likely therefore to touch the spring. But give her time enough--however, at that moment Kelly heard the maid's footsteps in the hall. He stepped to the door at once and opened it.
'You have the salts?' he asked. 'You have been the deuce of a time finding them.'
The maid stared at him.
'But her ladyship fainted,' she argued.
'Well,' said he, 'wasn't that why you went for the salts?'
'To be sure,' says she. ''Twas an order to go for the salts.'
She pushed open the door. My lady was still fingering the box. The maid paid no attention to the box, but she looked at my lady's mask; from the mask she looked towards Kelly with a shrug of the shoulders, which said 'Zany' as plain as writing.
Kelly had no thoughts to spare for the maid.
'Madam,' he said, 'here is your maid, to whose attentions I may leave you.'
He advanced, made a bow, took up his hat, held out his hand for his snuff-box.
'But I cannot let you go,' she answered, 'without I thank you'--all the time she was running her fingers here and there for the spring. Kelly noticed, too, with some anxiety, that while he had gone to the door she had made use of the occasion to strip off her glove--'and thank you fitly, as I should have done ere this. But the trouble I was in has made me backward.'
'Nay, madam,' said Kelly impatiently, and taking a step nearer, 'there is no need for thanks. No man could have done less.'
Her ladyship's fingers travelled faster in their vain attempt.
'But you risked your life!' said she in admiration.
'It is worth very little,' said he with a touch of disdain; 'and, madam, I keep you from your bed.'
The maid turned her eyes up to the ceiling, and then Madam by chance pressed on a diamond which loosed a hidden spring; the glass in the snuff-box flew down and showed a painting of the Chevalier in miniature.
'Oh!' cried my lady with a start in which, perhaps, there was a trace of affectation. Then she turned to the maid and bade her bring some wine and glasses. She spoke quickly, now forgetting for the moment to disguise her voice. Mr. Kelly recognized it with absolute certainty. The voice was Smilinda's.
The maid went out of the door. Kelly looked at the lady, and seeing that she was seemingly engrossed in the contemplation of the little picture, stole after the maid.
'Betty!' he called in a whisper.
'Sir? 'she asked, coming to a stop.
He took a crown from his pocket, spun it in the air, and caught it.
'The Margout,' said he, 'will doubtless be more difficult to discover than the salts,' he suggested.
'It might indeed be necessary to go down to the cellar,' she replied readily.
'And that would take time,' said Kelly, handing her the crown.
'It would take an entire crown's worth,' said the maid, pocketing the coin.
Kelly slipped back into the room.
The lady seemed not to have noticed Mr. Kelly's absence, so fondly did she study the portrait; but none the less, no sooner had he closed the door than she cried out, not by any means to him but in a sort of ecstasy, 'Le Roi!' Then she hid the snuff-box suddenly and glanced with a shudder round the room. The panic was altogether misplaced, since there could be no other person in the room except the owner of the box, who, if her ladyship was guilty for admiring, was ten thousand times more so for possessing it.
She caught with her hand at her heart when she perceived Mr. Kelly, then her eyes smiled from out of her mask, as though in the extremity of her alarm she had forgotten who he was, and so fell back in her chair with an air of languor, breathing deep and quick.
'Upon my word, I fear, Mr. Johnson,' she said, 'that if I have escaped one danger by your help I have fallen into another. You seem to me to be a man of dangerous company.'
'Indeed I find it so when I am with you, madam, since you discover my secrets and show me nothing of your own,' replied Kelly.
The maid it appears, had no less perversity than her mistress, for precisely at this moment she rapped on the door, and without waiting for any answer sharply entered the room, bearing the wine and glasses on a salver. There was a distance of three yards between Kelly and her ladyship. The maid measured the distance with her eyes, and her face showed some disappointment. Her ladyship dismissed her, filled both the glasses and took one in her hand. Mr. Kelly drained the other, and the bumper carried off the remnant of his brains.
'You run no danger from my knowing your secret, Mr. Johnson,' said she, 'for--'
Breaking off her sentence, she turned her head aside, swiftly pushed up her mask and kissed the portrait in the box, stooping her fragrant hair over it. Mr. Kelly, speeded by the wine, was this time too quick for her ladyship. Before she could raise her face he had paid the same compliment to her lips as she to his Majesty. She lifted her head with a bewitching air of anger.
'Lady Oxford!' he cried out as if in amazement, since he had bottomed the mystery for now some time. 'Forgive me, madam, if my hasty loyalty to my Sovereign prevented me from recognising his latest adherent. The Cause must now infallibly triumph.'
'Sir,' she began, looking up at him with her eyes melting from anger to reproach, 'your apology is something graceless. For though my colour be gone'--it was only the worse or artificial part of her matchless complexion which the mask had rubbed off--'you yet had time to know and respect a face you--'and then she came suddenly to a stop, as she untied the strings of her domino and threw it back from her shoulders. 'You blame me,' she said pitifully. Her ladyship was a ready woman, and even went more than half-way to meet an attack. At Brampton Bryan the talk had been of duty and the charms of a rustic life; but here the dutiful country wife, violently disarrayed in the extreme of fashion, had been alone to a masquerade ball and Mr. Kelly might conceive himself tricked. And so 'You blame me,' she said, 'you blame me even as you blamed me at Brampton Bryan, and with no more justice.'
'At Brampton Bryan!' exclaimed Kelly suddenly.
'M. de Strasbourg! M. de Strasbourg was Scrope.'
Her ladyship nodded.
'And 'twas he attackedyou--would have carried you off.'
Her ladyship shivered.
'And I let him go. Curse me! I let him go even as Nick did. But the third time! Oh, only let the third time come.'
Her ladyship shook her head with the most weariful resignation.
'It will come too late, that third time,' she said; 'too late for me. I have no husband who can protect me, and no friend so kind as to serve me in his place.'
'Nay, madam,' cried Kelly, instantly softened by the lonely picture which her words called up in his mind. She was transfigured all at once into Una, Andromeda, Ariadne, or any other young woman of great beauty and virtue who has ever been left desolate to face a wintry world. 'Believe me, you have one friend whose only aspiration is to serve you with his life-blood. 'Faith, madam, had you but shown me your face when first I came to the door of your carriage, I would never have let M. de Strasbourg run away until I had offered you his smoking heart on the point of my sword.'
Her ladyship gave the Parson to understand that she had gone to the ball on the King's service. Had his brain been of its customary sobriety the adventure would doubtless have surprised him more than it did. He might have questioned the nature of the service which took her ladyship to the masquerade. But she had sufficient art to tell him nothing and persuade him that she told all. Moreover, he had other matters to engage him.
There is no need to extend more particularly the old story of a young man's folly with a woman of Lady Oxford's kind. She had sought to hide who she was, she said, because she dared not trust herself; and the fact that she was not living in her own house, which was being repaired, but in one that she had borrowed, with the servants, from a friend who had gone to the Bath, seemed to make her intention possible. But Heaven had been against her. Mr. Kelly was readily beguiled into the sincere opinion that she had fought against her passion, but that her weakness and his transcendent bravery, of which she would by no means allow him to make light, had proved her ruin. It was all in a word set down to gratitude, which was a great virtue, she suggested. Love, indeed, was just the charge of powder which would have never flashed--no never--had not gratitude served as a flint and thrown off the spark.
Well, Mr. Kelly walked home in the dawning of a new day and painted his thoughts with the colours of the sky. For weeks thereafter he seemed in his folly to tread on air; and no doubt he had more than ordinary warrant for his folly. He had a fortune safely lodged with Mr. Child, the goldsmith; his mistress was no less fair than she showed fond; and so fond she was that she could not bring herself to chide the coachman who was discovered the next morning drunk with drugged wine at a tavern near the Haymarket, whither one of Scrope's hirelings had lured him. Mr. Kelly was prosperous in the three great games of life, love, and politics. For he was wholly trusted by the Bishop, by Lord Oxford and the rest; he took his place in the world and went and came from France with hanging matter in his valise. The valise weighed all the lighter for the thought that he was now serving Lady Oxford as well as the King. She was at this time always in his dreams. His passion indeed was in these days extreme, a devouring fire in brain and marrow. He believed her a most loyal conspirator, and, of course, all that he knew came to her ladyship's ears. But his bliss in the affection of Lady Oxford quite blinded him to danger, and he seemed to himself to walk invisible, as though he had the secret of fernseed.
For a season, then, Mr. Kelly was the happy fool, and if the season was short--why, is it ever long? Mr. Wogan is not indeed sure that the Parson has got altogether out of her ladyship's debt, in spite of what happened afterwards. For when the real morning broke and the true love came to him, troubles followed apace upon its coming. It is something to have been a happy fool, if only for a season and though the happiness ended with the folly.