Luck is a chameleon, and in November of that same year 1720, thought fit to change its complexion. The date, to be precise, was the 17th of the month. Mr. Wogan can determine on the particular day, for the reason that Mrs. Barnes carried out her threat, and sent him a laborious long letter concerning the Parson's moral iniquities. The letter reached Mr. Wogan in October, who was then cleaning his ship at Morlaix in Brittany, and what with his fifteen months of purposeless cruises, felt himself as encrusted with idleness as his ship's bottom with barnacles. It was just this eternal inactivity which no doubt induced him to take the serious view of Mrs. Barnes's epistle. 'It is a most cruel affair,' said he to Mr. Talbot, who was with him, 'and of the last importance that I should hurry to London and set it straight.'
'But you are fixed here,' said the Crow, for so Talbot was commonly called from the blackness of his complexion. 'Can I undertake the business for you?'
'No,' says Nick, shaking his head very solemn; though maybe his eye twinkled. Mr. Wogan forgets what point the plot was at then, for since the black year, 1688, there had been but one plot, though it had changed and shifted shape like the faces you see in the dark before you sleep. But he could not hear that anything immediate was intended; and it would be, therefore, the most convenient occasion to refit his ketchFortune. He gave orders to that effect, travelled to Paris, obtained from General Dillon a month's leave to dispose of his own affairs, and went whistling to London like a schoolboy off on his holidays. For, to tell the truth, he was not greatly concerned at George Kelly's backslidings, but on the contrary was inclined to chuckle over them, and trusted completely to his friend's discretion.
He arrived in London on November 20, and drove boldly to Kelly's lodging in Bury Street. For the Glenshiel affair had completely blown over--there had never been more than a rumour that he was there--and as for the Fifteen, why Mr. Wogan had his pardon like the rest. That he got for his behaviour to Captain Montagu at Preston; moreover, who could know the boy Wogan that ran away from Westminster School, and his task of copying Lord Clarendon's history, in Mr. Hilton, the man of six feet four in his stockings. He found Kelly's lodgings empty.
'A letter came for him three days ago,' explained Mrs. Barnes, 'and he set off almost on the instant in an agitation so great that he did not wait to pack his valise, but had it sent after him.'
'Where to?'
'I do not know,' replied Mrs. Barnes with a sniff of the nose and a toss of the head, 'and no doubt I am a better woman for not knowing.'
'No doubt, replied Wogan gravely. 'But, Mrs. Barnes, who signed the letter? Where did it come from?'
'And how should I know that?' she cried. 'Would I demean myself by reading the letters of a nasty trull? For she's no better for all her birth, and that's not so high neither.'
'Ah,' says Wogan, 'I see you don't know who signed the letter.'
'And that's truth,' said she, 'but I saw the superscription. As for the letter, he hid it in his bosom.'
'Well, that's as good as showing the signature. Who carried his valise after him?'
'Francis Vanlear,' she said, 'the porter who plyed in St. James's Street and Piccadilly and lodged at the Crown ale-house in Germain Street.'
Thither Wogan sent for him, and when he was come asked him whither he had carried the valise.
'To Mr. Gunning's at Mussell Hill,' Vanlear answered, where he had found a horse ready saddled at the door and 'Mr. Johnson' in a great fume to be off.
Wogan gave the porter a crown for his trouble and went forthwith to Mr. Gunning's, whom he had not seen since the occasion of his coming down from Glenshiel. From Mr. Gunning he learned that Kelly had undoubtedly taken the Aberystwith road, since he had left the horse he borrowed at Beaconsfield, and thither had Mr. Gunning sent to fetch it. Kelly's destination was consequently as clear to Wogan as the urgency of his haste, and coming back into London he dropped in at the Cocoa Tree, where he found the story of Lady Oxford and Mr. Kelly a familiar pleasantry.
He heard of it again that night at Will's coffeehouse in Covent Garden, and at Burton's in King Street, where Mr. Kelly was very well known. For, besides being close to Kelly's lodging, it was one of the houses to which his letters were directed under cover. From Burton's Wogan came back to Bury Street, and, while smoking a pipe in the parlour before going to bed, he chanced to notice his strongbox. It stood on the scrutoire by the side of Mr. Kelly's big Bible, where Wogan had left it eighteen months before. It was the brother to Mr. Kelly's strong-box, in every particular but one, and that one a stouter lock. Wogan remembered that when he had placed the box on the scrutoire the key was attached to it by a string. Now, however, he noticed that the key was gone. He was sufficiently curious to cross the room and try the lock. But the box would not open; it was securely locked. There were papers too within it, as he found out by shaking it. Kelly, then, was using the box--but for what purpose? His own box served for his few political papers. Any other papers that needed the shelter of a strong box must be love-letters. Here, then, were amorous, not political epistles. Besides, he was in the habit of burning all those which had done their work, and the rest which he needed he carried about in his own dispatch-box.
'Now, I wonder,' said Wogan, tapping the lid, 'I wonder whether a certain letter, signed--shall we say Smilinda?--and summoning my friend to Brampton Bryan, is locked up inside you.' Wogan's guess hit the truth even to the signature, though he was destined to get little satisfaction from this proof of his sagacity. The letter, he later learned, lay in box with not a few others in the same handwriting, and they all ended in the same manner with a request: 'Burn this.' Mr. Kelly would have been honester had he obeyed it, but, like many a man when passion gets hold of him, he could not part with them. Faint whispers breathed, as it seemed, from Heaven, and caught and written loud in my lady's hand, pure diamonds fetched up from the obscure mines of a woman's heart, sure he treasured them up beyond all jewels, and locked them up in Mr. Wogan's despatch-box to his own undoing.
This letter was, (Wogan learned afterwards) the most laconic of them all, and it was the most momentous. It began, 'My own Strephon,' and then Strephon was crossed out and again written on the top, and it was signed 'Smilinda' in a doubtful hand; as though, at first, Brampton Bryan had recalled to her ladyship the beginning of their affections with so overpowering a compulsion that she must needs use the names which were associated with it, and then the dear woman's modesty timidly crossed them out, and in the end love got the upper hand and wrote them in again. At least that was a small portion of all the great meanings which Kelly read in the hesitation of her ladyship's address. Between the Strephon and the Smilinda there was but one line--'Come; there is a secret. I have great need of you.' But this had been quite enough to send Mr. Kelly spurring out into the November night with such speed that he came to Oxford the next day, where he found the snow lying very deep. The snow troubled him, no doubt, because it delayed him, but he took little account of the cold beyond a sharp pang or two lest Smilinda might have caught a chilblain. For himself--well, Smilinda had need of him--the great lady turned for help to the Irish outlaw. Wasn't it always so? Her Majesty throws her glove to the page, my lord the King Cophetua goes clean daft for a beggar wench, and the obliging Cupid builds a rickety bridge whereby the despairing lovers leap into each other's arms.
Smilinda needed him! There was a tune ravished from Heaven! His whole frame moved to it as the waves to the direction of the moon. It sang in his blood, his heart beat to it, the hooves of his horse drummed it out on the road. Even the boughs of the trees whispered the words with a tender secrecy to the wind, much as the reeds whispered that other saying, ages ago, which the Queen in the fable had entrusted to them. And, 'faith, when you come to think of it, there was little difference in meaning between the two remarks. Smilinda needed Mr. Kelly! It was, after all, as much as to say 'Mr. Kelly has ass's ears.' He made such haste that on the evening of the second day after his departure from London he cantered up the drive of the Manor House.
Lady Oxford met him in the hall, and Mr. Kelly's heart gave a great jump of pride when he saw her stately figure all softened to an attitude of expectation.
'I knew you would come,' she said; and, as Mr. Kelly bent over her hand, she whispered, 'My Strephon,' for all the world as if her emotion choked her. Then she raised her voice for the servants to hear: 'My lord is from home, Mr. Johnson, but he has commissioned me at once to pay you his regrets and to act as his deputy in your business.'
Mr. Kelly was all impatience to broach his business, but her ladyship's solicitude would not allow him to speak until he had supped. She came near to waiting upon him herself, and certainly plied him with her best wine, vowing that it was ill weather for travellers, and that if he kept his glass full beside his elbow it was a sure sign he hated her. This, of course, after the servants had been dismissed. Mr. Kelly chided her for the thought, and, with a shake of the finger, quoted her a text: 'We are bidden not to look upon the wine when it is red,' said he.
'And a very good text, too,' says she; 'so, if you please, shut your eyes and drink it,' and, coming behind him, she laid her cool hand upon his eyes and forehead. So Mr. Kelly drank, and the bumper floated his wits into my lady's haven.
'Now,' says my lady; and, leading the way into her boudoir, she sat herself down before the fire, and, clasping her hands at the back of her head, smiled at Mr. Kelly.
'Strephon,' she murmured on a lilt of her voice, and with all the provocation that witchery could devise. Mr. Kelly was on his knees at her side in a moment. She laid a white hand upon his breast, and, gently holding him off:
'Tell me,' says she, 'why I sent for you.'
'Because my Smilinda needed me,' he answered with a laugh of pride. Her hand caressed his shoulder. She nodded, bit her under lip and smiled very wisely.
'What is the service Strephon can do?' cried Kelly. 'Is it to lift the world? Give me but your love and I'll accomplish that.'
Smilinda clapped her hands with delight, like a child.
'It is nothing so important,' said she. 'It is not in truth any service you can do for me, but rather one that I can do for you.'
Kelly's face lost all its light, and dropped to the glummest disappointment. He had so nursed that aspiration of doing her some great service. Through the night, through the day, it had borne him company. Some great service--that was to be the bridge of Cupid's building whereby they were to stand firm-footed on equal ground. And now it was some service Lady Oxford was to do for him. Lady Oxford noticed the change; it may have been to read the thought which it expressed, and that the thought touched her to unwonted depths. For the smile faded from her lips, her eyes became grave, thoughtful, there was a certain suspense in her attitude.
'Must the woman always owe, the man always pay?' she asked, but in a broken way, and with almost a repugnance for herself. Indeed, she barely finished the question, and then, with an abrupt laugh, crossed to the window, drew aside the curtains, and gazed out upon the darkness and the glimmering snow.
'A strange, cold world,' she said in an absent voice, 'with a strange white carpet.' Mr. Kelly in truth had given her a glimpse into a world yet stranger to her ladyship than that which her eyes beheld--a world that had an odd white carpet too, though the feet of those who paced it as often as not were stained--a world of generous impulses and unselfish devotions. Into this world Lady Oxford was peering with an uneasy curiosity. Perhaps for a moment she compared it with her own; perhaps she was caught by it and admired it; but, if so, it was with a great deal of discomfort. For she dropped the curtain petulantly across the window, and, coming back to the fire--well, what she would have said it is impossible to guess, for a gentle tap on the door was followed by a servant's entrance into the room. He carried a letter on a salver, and, advancing to Lady Oxford, offered it to her.
Now, Mr. Kelly was standing almost at the centre of the mantelpiece, Lady Oxford at one end; and they faced one another. So the man inevitably stopped between them, and, when he lifted up the salver, it was impossible but that the Parson should observe the superscription. He recognised the handwriting of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Lady Oxford recognised it too, for she flushed as she picked the letter up. But she flushed deeper as she read it through, and then crumpled it up and flung it into the fire with an anger which showed very clearly she would have done the like for Lady Mary were the writer instead of her letter within reach of her vindictive fingers.
'A strange, incomprehensible creature is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,' said Lady Oxford with a laugh and a glance at Mr. Kelly. 'The most whimsical contradiction. She offers you a kindness with one hand and slaps you in the face with the other. For instance, this letter here. 'Twas written out of pure kindness. It completes the friendliest service, yet it ends with so rough a jest that but for Strephon's sake I should be much drawn to reject the service.'
'For my sake? 'asked Kelly.
'Why, to be sure. Lady Mary gave me a piece of news a week ago in town. It was that news which made me send for you, and she writes now expressly to confirm it. But, let my Strephon answer me,' and she asked whether he had yet sent his winnings from the Mississippi to be used for the King's service.
Now, Mr. Kelly was, after all, a human being. It was all very well in the first flush of prosperity to propose to scatter his few thousands, but afterwards he had come to see that they would not go so very far. Besides, he had now obvious reasons for desiring to cut as agreeable a figure as he could. At all events the money still remained with Mr. Child, the goldsmith, and so he told her ladyship, with a little remorse.
'Then,' she cried in joy,' that chance has come for which Smilinda has been longing. My presents, Strephon, you have always refused,' which was true enough; indeed, on the other hand, she had Mr. Kelly's royal snuff-box and a few of his jewels. 'But now I can make your fortune, and with yours my own. There's the sweetness of it,' she said, and clasped her hands on her heart. 'Your fortune, too!'
'My fortune you have made already,' said he, with other compliments proper to the occasion. But her ladyship was in a practical mood.
'Listen,' says she. 'I am made acquainted that the tide has turned. I mean, you know, in the Straits of Magellan. The South-Sea stock that has been falling so long will certainly rise in a week; the Elector is buying secretly. Lady Mary has it from Mr. Pope, and he at the first and best hands from Mr. Craggs, the secretary. Mr. Craggs will insert my name in the next list and your money I shall send to the directors with my own. You shall be rich, Strephon, on the level of your merits.'
Mr. Kelly was very well content with his one speculation, but the evident joy with which Lady Oxford anticipated serving him was worth more than his thousands.
'My gold shall be in Smilinda's coffers the morning that I get back to town, 'he said.
'You must go at once,' she exclaimed, 'we must lose no time. Stay. I will travel with you to-morrow morning if you will favour me with your company'; and so a new flow of compliments carried the South Sea out of sight. But a minute or two later Mr. Kelly, chancing to look down at the hearth, said, quite inconsequently:
'We must not forget to thank Lady Mary.'
Smilinda followed the direction of his eyes, and saw that Lady Mary's letter had tumbled out of the fire and now lay, half burnt, but the other half only curled up and scorched. She shivered as though she was cold, and the better to warm herself knelt down on the hearth-rug. Then she took up the letter (which Kelly must not see) and carelessly tossed it into the fire.
'You know Lady Mary,' she said. 'Yes, you told me.'
'I do, indeed,' said Kelly, with a smile.
'I could wish you did not,' said her ladyship with a frown. Smilinda made it plain that she was jealous. Kelly laughed heartily at the assumption, which was in truth ridiculous enough.
'Who am I,' said he, 'that I should attract Lady Mary's fancy,'
'You are--my Strephon,' replied Smilinda, with a sigh of exquisite tenderness.
Kelly argued the matter on other grounds. Smilinda listened to them all.
'I have no doubt you are right,' she said, with a meek resignation. 'But I remember you spoke very warmly of the friendship you had for her, and ever since--' here she broke off shyly. 'A weak woman's empty fears,' she continued,' but they keep her awake at nights. Well, she must even make the best of them.'
Smilinda lying awake at nights out of jealousy! There was a notion to convict Mr. Kelly of slow murder. He was on his knees in a moment, and swore that for the future on earth and in Heaven he would avoid Lady Mary's company as though she was the devil in person. It was a confused sort of oath and deprived Mr. Kelly for a time of a very good friend; but on the other hand it undoubtedly raised a load from Lady Oxford's anxieties.
She left Brampton Bryan the next morning and travelled with Mr. Kelly up to London, where the coach set them down at the King's Head in the Strand. Kelly went straight from the King's Head to the goldsmith and his money was carried to Queen's Square that same afternoon. It would seem, however, that Mr. Pope had been choused, for the market fell from little to nothing. But when the Bubble presently burst into air, Smilinda burst into tears, and Mr. Kelly was smitten to the heart for her distress.
'I have ruined thee, my Strephon,' she sobbed. She had covered her face with her hands and the tears trickled through her fingers.
'Love arms me against such ill-fortunes,' replied Kelly. 'It is only Smilinda's tears that hurt. Each one of them falls upon Strephon's heart like a drop of molten lead.'
'Ah, Strephon,' she cried. 'Thou art ruined and Smilinda's hapless hand hath dealt the blow. The arrow came from her quiver,' she being one of Dian's nymphs, you are to suppose.
Then Mr. Kelly fell to comparing himself to Procris in the fable, who was shot by her lover, and said that it was sweet to perish by her inadvertent shaft. It seems that kind of love-making has now gone out of date. But that was the humour of it when Kelly and Wogan were young. Men and women, let them but fall in love, and they were all swains and nymphs, though they dabbled in the stocks and were as hard-headed as before and afterwards.
'That odious Lady Mary,' exclaimed Smilinda. 'She was born to be my bane and curse. 'Twas her counsel that ruined my Strephon. My Strephon has kept his oath?'
Her Strephon had, but on the other hand, Mr. Wogan had sworn no oath, and would not have kept it if he had done so. He paid a visit to Lady Mary soon after Kelly's return from Brampton Bryan. She asked him his news and gave him a budget of gossip in return.
'And Lady Oxford has sold her diamonds!' she ended.
Wogan asked how that came about, and she answered:
'Lady Oxford was here at the bassette table three weeks since. Her stakes were ever inordinately high, and she lost to me all night. She drew a queen when she should have chose the knave, the knave was Sonica. "There go my diamonds," she said, and vowing she would punt no more, went home in her chair. I could not see her or hear of her for a little. I guessed that she had run away into the country until she could wheedle enough money to pay me out of the dotard husband. So at a venture I wrote a polite letter to her, hoping that the country air would restore her credit. Well, here she is back in London and her losses paid. That means selling her diamonds.'
Wogan laughed over Lady Oxford's straits and came home to the lodging in Bury Street. Wogan's time was getting short and he must return to Morlaix. But, as has been said, he left Brittany in a hurry with very little money in his pocket, and what was left at his journey's end he had since spent in London. So he said to the Parson:
'George, my friend, I must dip into your winnings after all. For here am I with a couple of crowns,' he took them out and laid them on the table. George flushed crimson.
'Nick,' said he, 'you have two crowns more than I have.'
Wogan turned away to the window and looked out into the street, bethinking him of what Lady Mary had told him.
'Sure, Nick, it's the truth,' Kelly pleaded, entirely miscomprehending Wogan's action. 'I drew the money out of the Mississippi and sunk it in the South Sea. It's all gone. I have not two penny pieces to rub together until this day week, when my pension is paid. Nick, you'll believe that. Why, Nick, you would ha' been welcome to all that I had. But you know that. Sure you know it.'
Wogan had no such mean thought as Kelly in his fluster attributed to him. He turned back to the table.
'So you are as poor as an Irish church mouse again, are you?' he said with a smile. 'Well, here's two crowns--one for me, one for you.'
He pocketed one coin and pushed the other over to the Parson. The Parson took it up and turned it over blinking his eyes. For a moment there was an awkward sort of silence. Wogan laughed; the Parson blew his nose.
'I hear,' said Wogan, 'that Lady Oxford has lost her diamonds.'
Kelly looked up in perplexity.
'Lost her diamonds!' said he. 'Why, she wore them last night!'
'I thought the rumour was untrue,' said Wogan.
Mr. Kelly slipped his crown into his pocket. There was no more said about the matter between them, though perhaps they clasped hands at parting with a trifle more than their ordinary heartiness.
Mr. Wogan, however, told Lady Mary of the Parson's loss, and she was at no pains to discover the explanation. Lady Oxford had paid Lady Mary with the Parson's guineas. They had never been in the South Sea Bubble.
'I should like to send the money I won back to Mr. Kelly,' said Lady Mary.
'That's plainly impossible,' returned Wogan, and to this Lady Mary perforce agreed. 'Olet,' the Latin-learned lady said, and Wogan remarked, 'Certainly,' so she put the money aside, thinking that some day she might employ it on Mr. Kelly's behalf. That night Wogan borrowed his travelling money from Mr. Carte, the historian, whom he met at the Cocoa Tree, and so set out the next morning for Brittany.
Mr. Wogan then returned to Morlaix, and, finding his ketch by this time cleaned and refitted, and two others (theRevolution, a big ship of 40 guns, under Morgan, which was afterwards seized by Commodore Scot at Genoa, and theLady Mary, a smaller vessel of 14 guns, commanded by Captain Patrick Campbell) at anchor in the harbour, he set sail for the Downs. There they picked up four thousand small arms and a couple of hundred kintals of cannon powder, for traffic, it was alleged, on the coasts of Brazil and Madagascar. But the arms and ammunition travelled no further than Bilboa, where they were stored in the country house of Mr. Brown, an Irish merchant of that part, against the next expedition to England. At Bilboa the three ships parted, and Mr. Wogan, taking in upon freight such goods as he could get, sailed to Genoa, and lay there behind the Mole.
Nor was the Parson to tarry long behind him in London; for less than a fortnight after Wogan's departure, he was sent to carry to Rome, for the Chevalier's approval, a scheme of a lottery for raising a quarter of a million pounds, which Mr. Christopher Layer (later hanged) most ingeniously imagined. With the scheme he carried some silk stockings as a present for the Chevalier and his spouse. This was none of the Bishop of Rochester's work, who knew nothing of Mr. Layer, and of what was later plotted by bold and impatient spirits. The Parson had sad work parting with Smilinda, but made light of the separation to save the lady from distress, and she had happily broken a bank at pharo that same night, which withheld her from entirely breaking her heart. Still, it was as affecting an affair as one could wish for.
The Parson received certain orders of Atterbury's as to business with General Dillon, the Chevalier's manager in Paris, just before he was to start; and, coming from the Deanery at Westminster where the Bishop resided, he walked at once through Petty France to Queen's Square. Lady Oxford's house was all in a blaze of light with figures moving to and fro upon the blinds of the windows. 'Mr. Johnson' was announced, but for some little while could not get a private word with her ladyship, and so stood of one side, taking his fill of that perfumed world of fans and hoops, of sparkling eyes and patches and false hearts wherein Lady Oxford so fitly moved. Many of the faces which flitted before his eyes were strange to him, but one he remarked in particular--a strong, square sort of face set on the top of an elegant figure that wore the uniform of the King's Guards. Mr. Kelly had seen that face under the oil-lamp of a portico in Ryder Street on the occasion when he and Nicholas Wogan set out on their first journey to Brampton Bryan, and the officer who owned the face was now a certain Colonel Montague.
Kelly remarked him because he was playing at the same table with her ladyship, and losing his money to her with all the grace in the world. At last Lady Oxford rose, and, coming towards him:
'Well?' she murmured, 'my Strephon is pale.'
'I leave for Rome to-morrow morning,' he returned in a whisper. At that her hand went up to her heart, and she caught her breath.
'Wait,' said she, and went back to her cards. As the guests were departing some two hours later, she called to Kelly openly.
'Mr. Johnson leaves for Paris to-morrow morning, and has the great kindness to carry over some of my brocades, which indeed need much better repairing than they can get in London.'
It made an excuse for Mr. Johnson to stay, but none the less provoked a smile here and there; and Colonel Montague, deliberately coming to a stop a few paces from Kelly, took careful stock of him. The Colonel did not say a word, but just looked him over. Mr. Kelly was tickled by the man's impudence, and turned slowly round on his heels to give him an opportunity of admiring his back. Then he faced him again. The Colonel gravely bowed his thanks for Mr. Kelly's politeness, Mr. Kelly as gravely returned the bow, and the Colonel stalked out of the door. It was in this way that Mr. Kelly and the Colonel first met.
But the moment Smilinda and Strephon were left alone!
'Oh,' wailed Smilinda, and her arms went round Strephon's neck. 'Heureuse en jeu, malheureuse en amour. O fatal cards, would that I had lost this dross!' cries she, with her eyes on the glittering heap of guineas and doubloons strewed about the table. 'Oh, Strephon, thou wilt forget me in another's arms. I dread the French syrens.'
And then Mr. Kelly to the same tune:
'Never will I forget Smilinda. If I come back with the King, and he makes me a Bishop, with a pastoral crook, thy Strephon will still be true.'
Whereat the lady laughed, though Kelly was jesting with a heavy heart, and vowed that Lady Mary would write a ballad on 'Strephon, or the Faithful Bishop.' Then she fell into a story of lovely Mrs. Tusher, the Bishop of Ealing's wife, who was certainly more fair than faithful. Next she wept again, and so yawned, and gave him her portrait in miniature.
'You will not part with it--never--never,' she implored.
The portrait was beautifully set with diamonds.
'It shall be buried with me,' said Kelly, and so Lady Oxford let him go, but called him back again when he was through the door to make him promise again that he would not part with her portrait. Mr. Kelly wondered a little at her insistence, but set it down to the strength of her affection. So he departed from the cave of the enchantress with many vows of mutual constancy and went to Rome, and from Rome he came back to Genoa, where he fell in with Nicholas Wogan.
Mr. Wogan remembers very well one night on which the pair of them, after cracking a bottle in Grimble's tavern, came down to the water-gate and were rowed on board of Wogan's ketch. This was in the spring of the year 1721, some four or five months since the Parson had left England, and Wogan thought it altogether a very suitable occasion for what he had to say. He took the Parson down into his cabin, and there, while the lamp flecked the mahogany panels with light and shade, and the water tinkled against the ship's planks as it swung with the tide, he told him all that he had surmised of Lady Oxford's character, and how Lady Mary had corroborated his surmises. At the first Mr. Kelly would hear nothing of his arguments.
'It is pure treason,' said he. 'From any other man but you, Nick, I would not have listened to more than a word, and that word I would have made him eat. But I take it ill even from you. Why do you tell me this now? Why did you not tell it me in London, when I could have given her ladyship a chance of answering the slander?'
'Why,' replied Wogan, 'because I know very well the answer she would have made to you--a few words of no account whatever, and her soft arms about your neck, and you'd have been convinced. But now, when you have not seen her for so long, there's a chance you may come to your senses. Did you never wonder what brought Scrope to Brampton Bryan?'
'No need for wonder since she told me.'
'She told you, did she? Well, I'm telling you now, and do you sit there until I have told you, for Mr. Scrope's history you are going to hear. Bah, leave that bodkin of a sword alone. If you draw it, upon my soul I'll knock you down and kneel on your chest. Mr. Scrope went before you in her ladyship's affections.'
Here Mr. Kelly flinched as though he had been struck, and thereafter sat with a white stern face as though he would not condescend to answer the insinuation. 'Sure he was a gentleman--out of Leicestershire, and of some fortune, which fortune Lady Oxford spent for him. He was besides a sad, pertinacious fellow, and nothing would content him but she must elope with him from her old husband, and make for themselves a Paradise on the Rhine. It appears that he talked all the old nonsense--they were man and wife in the sight of God, and the rest of it. Her ladyship was put to it for shifts and excuses, and at the last, what with his money being almost spent, and his suit more pressing, she fled into the country where we met her. Scrope was no better than a kitten before its eyes are opened, and, getting together what was left of his fortune, followed her with a chaise, meaning to carry her off there and then. However, he found us there, and I take it that opened his eyes. And I would have you beware of Mr. Scrope, George. A kitten becomes a cat, and a cat has claws. It is Lady Mary's thought that you have not heard the last of him, for his conscience hath made him a kind of gentleman spy on the honest party.'
George, who in spite of himself could not but see how exactly Wogan's account fitted in with and explained Scrope's attempt after the masquerade, caught at Lady Mary's name with an eager relief.
'Ah, it was she gave you this flimsy story,' he cried, leaning forward over the table. 'There's more malice in it than truth, Nick. The pair of them have been at loggerheads this long while. Lady Mary never could suffer a woman who can hold her own against her. Why, Nick, you have been gulled,' and he lit his pipe, which he had let go out.
'Oh, and have I? Well, at all events, I have not stripped myself of every penny in order to pay Lady Oxford's losses at cards. Scrope is not the only man whom her ladyship has sucked dry.'
'What do you mean?' cried Kelly, letting his pipe slip out of his fingers and break on the floor. Wogan told him of his visit to Lady Mary, and the story was so circumstantial, the dates of the loss at cards and the payment so fitted with Lady Oxford's message to Kelly and her proposal as to the placing of his fortune, that it could not but give him pause.
'It is not true,' was all he could find to say, and 'I'll not believe it,' and so fell to silence.
'You'll be wanting another pipe,' said Wogan. He fetched one from a cupboard and filled it. The two men smoked for a while in silence. Then Kelly burst out of a sudden:
'Nick, the fool that I was ever to preach that sermon in Dublin,' and stopped. Wogan knew well enough what the Parson meant. His thoughts had gone back to the little parsonage, and the rambling cure of half a dozen parishes, and the quiet library, and evenings by the inn-fire, where he would tell his little trivial stories of the day's doings. It was always that dream he would play with and fondle when the world went wrong with him, though to be sure, could the dream have come true, he would have been the unhappiest man that ever breathed Irish air.
'Shall we go on deck?' Wogan proposed.
It was a fine clear night, but there was no moon. The riding-lights of ships at anchor were dotted about the harbour, the stars blazed in a rich sky; the water rippled black and seemed to flash sparks where the lights struck it; outside the harbour the Mediterranean stretched away smooth as a slab of marble. Kelly stood in the chains while Wogan paced up and down the deck. The Parson was in for his black hour, and silent companionship is the only alleviation for the trouble. After a time he came towards Wogan and caught him by the arm, but so tight that Wogan could feel his friend's finger-nails through the thick sleeves of his coat.
'I'll not believe it,' Kelly argued; but it was against himself he was arguing now, as Wogan perceived, and had the discretion to hold his tongue. ''Faith,' he continued, 'she came into my life like a glint of the sun into a musty dark room,' and then he suddenly put his hand into his bosom and drew out something at which he looked for a moment. He laughed bitterly and swung his arm back. Before, however, he could throw that something into the sea Wogan caught his hand.
'Sure,' said he, 'I saw a sparkle of diamonds.'
Kelly opened his hand and showed a miniature.
'Lady Oxford's diamonds,' he answered bitterly, 'which she did not sell, but gave out of a loving, generous heart.'
'George, you're moon-struck,' said Wogan. 'Diamonds, after all, are always diamonds.'
'True,' said Kelly, 'and I promised never to part with them,' he sneered. He put the miniature back in his pocket, and then dropping his arm to his side said,
'Put me ashore, Nick. I will see you to-morrow. I am very tired.'
But in the morning he was gone, and a few days later Nick, who was not spared certain prickings of conscience for the hand he had taken in bringing about the Parson's misfortunes (he had just now, by hindering him from throwing away the miniature, taken more of a hand than he guessed), sailed out from Genoa.
The rest of that year '21 was a busy time for all engaged in forwarding the Great Affair. England itself seemed ripe for the attempt, and it was finally determined to hazard it in the spring of the next year, when the Elector would be in Hanover. The new plan was that the exiled Duke of Ormond, whom the soldiers were thought to love, should sail from Spain with the Earl Marischal, Morgan, and Halstead, commanding some ragged regiments of Mr. Wogan's countrymen. The Duke was to land in the west, the King was to be at Antwerp ready to come over, and the young Prince Charles of Wales, who would then be not quite two years old, was to be carried to the Highlands. A mob was to be in readiness in town, with arms secretly buried; the soldiers were expected to declare for High Church and Ormond; and in a word the 'honest party' was to secure its interest on its own bottom, without foreign help, which the English people has never loved. The rich lords, but not Bishop Atterbury, knew of the beginning of this scheme, but abandoned it. They did not know, or only Lords North and Grey knew, that the scheme lived on without them.
Mr. Kelly therefore had his hands full, and it was very well for him that it was so. There were things at stake of more moment than his love-affairs, as he was the first to recognise. Yet, even so, he had time enough, in the saddle and on the sea, to plumb the black depths of his chagrin and to toss to and fro that shuttlecock of a question, whether he should accuse her ladyship for her trickeries or himself for misdoubting her. However, he got a complete answer to that question before the year was out. It was his habit now, whenever he was in London, to skulk out of sight and knowledge of Lady Oxford, to avoid theatres, routs, drums, and all places where she might be met, and Mr. Carte the historian took his place when it was necessary to visit Lord Oxford in the country. Mr. Carte had a ready pretence, for Lord Oxford kept a great store of old manuscripts concerning the history of the country, and these beauties, it is to be feared, came somewhat between Mr. Carte and his business, just as her ladyship's eyes had come between Mr. Kelly's and his. Accordingly the Parson saw little of her ladyship and heard less, since his friends avoided all mention of her and he himself asked no questions.
'Saw little,' and the phrase is intended. For often enough of an evening his misery would fetch him out of the coffee houses and lead him like a man blindfold to where her ladyship was accustomed to visit. There he would stand in the darkness of the street until the door opened and Lady Oxford, all smiles and hooped petticoats, would trip gaily out to her chair. But very likely habit--the habit of her conversation and appearance--had as much to do with this particular folly as any despairing passion. How many lovers the wide world over fancy they are bemoaning their broken hearts, when they are only deploring their broken habits! Well, Mr. Kelly, at all events, took the matterau grand sérieux, and so one night saw her ladyship come out from the porch of Drury Lane theatre in company with Colonel Montague.
There is one unprofitable piece of knowledge which a man acquires who has ever had a woman make love to him; he knows when that woman is making love to someone else. Lady Oxford's modest droop of the head when the Colonel spoke, her shy sidelong smile at him, her red lips a trifle parted as though his mere presence held her in a pleased suspense--all these tokens were familiar to Mr. Kelly as his daily bread, and he went home eating his own heart, and nursing a quite unjustifiable resentment against Nicholas Wogan for that he ever saved the Colonel's life. It did not take Kelly long to discover that his suspicions were correct. A few questions to his friends, who for his sake had kept silence, and the truth was out. Lady Oxford's constancy had lasted precisely seven weeks before the Whig colonel had stepped into the Jacobite parson's shoes. Mr. Kelly put his heart beneath his heel and now stamped her image out of it. Then he went upon his way, and the King's business took him to Avignon.
It was early in the year 1722 when Mr. Kelly came tola ville sonnante, and took a lodging at L'Auberge des Papes in the Rue des Trois Faucons. He brought with him a sum of 5,000l. collected in England, and this sum he was to hand over to a messenger from the Duke of Ormond, who was then at Corunna in Spain, and, what with his disbursements in the purchase of arms, and the support of Irish troops, was hard put to it for money.
It was therefore of the last importance that this sum should come safe to Corunna, and so extraordinary precautions were taken to ensure that result. The Parson, since he did not know who the messenger might be, was to wait every morning between the hours of nine and ten on the first bench to the left of the Porte du Rhone in the boulevard outside the city walls, until a man should ask him if he had any comfortable greeting for Aunt Anne, that being the cant name for the Duke. This man was thereafter to prove to Mr. Kelly's satisfaction that he was indeed the messenger expected.
Now, the messenger was delayed in his journey, and so for a week George Kelly, having deposited his money with Mr. Philabe, the banker, sat every morning on his bench with what patience he might. He came in consequence to take particular notice of an oldish man and a rosebud of a girl who walked along the boulevard every morning at the time that he was waiting. They were accompanied by a French poodle dog, and indeed it was the poodle dog which first attracted Mr. Kelly's attention to the couple. It has already been said that Mr. Kelly had a trick of catching a woman's eyes, though this quality implies no great merit. On the other hand he drew dogs and children to him, and that implies a very great merit, as you may observe from this, that there is never a human being betwixt here and Cathay will admit that dogs and children have a dislike for him.
The poodle dog, then, comes to a halt opposite Mr. Kelly's bench on the very first morning that he sat there, cocks his ears, lifts a forefoot from the ground, and, looking after the old man and the young girl, says plain as print, 'Here, wait a bit! There's something on this bench very well worth looking into.' However, his master and mistress were in a close conversation and so the poodle puts his foot on the ground and trots after them. But the next morning he came up to the bench, puts his head of one side to display the fine blue riband round his neck, squats on his haunches, and flops a paw on to the Parson's knee.
'How d'ye do?' says the Parson politely.
'I think I'll stretch myself, thank you,' says the poodle, and promptly proceeds to do so, using Mr. Kelly's knee as a purchase for his paws. He was still engaged upon this exercise when his young mistress missed him. She whistled; the poodle looked at the Parson with the clearest invitation.
'Won't you come too?'
'I have not been presented,' replied the Parson.
Thereupon the girl turned round.
'Harlequin,' she called to the dog, and showed Mr. Kelly as sweet a face as a young man ever deserved to see. It was fresh and clear as the morning dew, with frank eyes and a scarlet bow of a mouth ready for a laugh. 'Harlequin!' said Mr. Kelly to himself with a start, as he looked towards the girl. Harlequin trotted off to his mistress, and got prettily chided for his forwardness, of which chiding he made little or no account, and very properly. It is not every dog that achieves immortality by stretching itself against a stranger's knee. But Harlequin did. For had Harlequin not made Mr. Kelly's acquaintance, he would never have found a niche in Mr. Swift's verses.