Now let me tell you plainly, Sir,Our witness is a real cur,A dog of spirit for his years,Has twice two legs, two hanging ears,His name isHarlequin, I wot,And that's a name in every plot:* * * * *His answers were extremely wittyBefore the secret wise Committee;Confest as plain as he could bark,Then with his fore-foot left his mark:
Now let me tell you plainly, Sir,Our witness is a real cur,A dog of spirit for his years,Has twice two legs, two hanging ears,His name isHarlequin, I wot,And that's a name in every plot:
* * * * *
His answers were extremely wittyBefore the secret wise Committee;Confest as plain as he could bark,Then with his fore-foot left his mark:
wrote the Dean of St. Patrick's concerning this very poodle dog of Miss Rose Townley.
For Rose Townley was the girl's name, as the Parson now knew, and the old gentleman was her father, who had tended Mr. Nicholas Wogan after his wounds in the year '15 at Preston. Mr. Wogan had more than once spoken to Kelly of Dr. Townley and his daughter Rose, who had retired to Avignon, after the Rising, and he had made mention of their poodle Harlequin, of which poodle the present or reigning dog, Harlequin II., was the son and heir. So that, hearing the name called out by Rose, Kelly was aware who the two people were. Dr. Townley had been suspected in the Rising, and therefore had settled at Avignon as physician to the Duke of Ormond, and when the nobleman left the town, remained because he was grown old, and had lost his taste for politics and warrings. He had, moreover, received his pardon for his share in the struggle, and was indeed at this very time preparing to return into England. But of this Kelly was not aware.
The next morning Kelly was again on his bench, and again Dr. Townley and his daughter passed him. Harlequin came forward at once to wish the Parson good-morning. Rose spoke to her father, plainly telling him of Harlequin's new friendship, for the Doctor looked up towards Mr. Kelly and the girl looked away. In consequence there sprang up a queer sort of acquaintance between the Doctor and his daughter on the one hand, and Parson Kelly on the other. Every morning they looked for him on his bench; every morning he had a few words with Harlequin.
Doubtless he would have pursued the acquaintance further, but for Rose. She it was who kept the Parson from approaching Dr. Townley. For he was still sore with Lady Oxford's treacheries, and feminine beauty wasvanitas vanitatumto him. Moreover, though he had snatched her ladyship's image out of his heart, some of her sayings had stuck in his mind, and amongst her sayings not a few were aimed at girls. Smilinda was a woman, and saw a rival in each youthful beauty. 'Girls of our time,' she would say with a sneer, 'were very kind, at all events, whatever one might think of their looks. And to hear them speak of marriage, why one would fancy oneself in the company of rakes dressed up like the other sex for a masquerade.' She would gloat over the misadventures of poor Mistress Dolly Walpole, the Minister's sister, by the hour, she had even written a ballad thereon, 'The Dolliad,' and since Mr. Kelly had never had been much in the society of young unmarried women, he had insensibly imbibed a deal of Smilinda's philosophy upon this head. And so he waited for the messenger in silence.
Now, upon the fourth day Mr. Philabe the banker sent round for the Parson to L'Auberge des Papes, and, when he was come, told him that on that morning a man called at the bank with a letter which he gave to a clerk. The clerk carried the letter to Mr. Philabe, who opened it. It enclosed a second letter superscribed to Mr. George Kelly, and prayed the banker to add to the superscription Mr. Kelly's address. This Mr. Philabe would not do, but sent out word that he would take care the letter came into Kelly's hands. The man, however, who had brought it immediately replied that it was of the last importance the letter should be delivered at once: otherwise there was no use in delivering it at all. If Mr. Philabe would send a messenger at once, well and good; if not, would he kindly return the letter forthwith.
This request roused Mr. Philabe's suspicions. For if he sent a messenger, as he was prayed to do, the man could follow him, and as easily discover the address as if Philabe had written it on the note. He replied consequently that neither could he accede to this request, but that Mr. Kelly should most certainly have the letter that day.
Upon this the man insisted that the letter should be returned to him, but the more strenuously he insisted, the stronger became Mr. Philabe's suspicions, until he determined not to part with the letter at all, and the man finally went away very ill-pleased.
Mr. Philabe, as he told this story, handed the letter to Mr. Kelly, who broke open the seal, and found nothing but a clean sheet of paper.
'Little doubt,' said he, 'why the fellow wanted his letter back. It is a pure trick to know where I lodge. What was he like?'
'He wore a travelling-dress,' said Mr. Philabe, 'and a cocked hat.'
'And very likely a pair of boots,' added Kelly. 'But this tells me very little of his looks.'
Mr. Philabe was a poor hand at a description, and beyond that the man had a nose, two eyes, a mouth, two legs, and a pair of arms, Kelly learned nothing whatever of his appearance.
That very day, however, the mystery was to be made clear. Between daylight and dark Mr. Kelly chanced to walk up the narrow Rue St. Agricole, and had just come abreast of the broad flight of steps which leads upwards to the church, when a man leaped down in front of him.
'I beg your pardon,' said the Parson politely stepping aside.
'That is not enough,' said the other, and, turning on his heel, he faced Kelly and barred the way.
Kelly recognised the voice, recognised the face.
'Ah,' cried he, 'Mr. Scrope.' His first feeling was one almost of exultation. In the face of his enemy he forgot altogether that there was no longer any amorous reason for his enmity. He almost forgot, too, what he had heard from Wogan about Mr. Scrope's supposed quality as a gentleman spy. 'The third time,' he said with a laugh. 'I promised myself the third time.'
Scrope nodded his head.
'We are of one mind, then.' He looked up and down the street. It was empty from end to end. 'There is a little square terrace at the top of these steps, with blank walls upon the two sides, and the church door upon the third. The terrace will be very suitable and quiet.'
He turned as he spoke and set a foot upon the lowest step.
'One moment,' said Kelly. During Scrope's words he had reflected. Scrope and himself, politics apart, were really in the like case. For if he had followed Scrope in her ladyship's caprices, Montague had followed him, 'as Amurath to Amurath succeeds.' His enmity quite died away, and gave place to something very like a fellow-feeling. Moreover, he had to consider the messenger from the Duke of Ormond and the 5,000l. in Mr. Philabe's keeping.
'One moment,' he said. Scrope stopped with a sneer.
'If you can remain a few days at Avignon,' he continued, 'I shall be happy to oblige you in whatever you will. For the moment I have duties.'
'Of course,' interrupted Scrope. 'Duties are wonderful convenient things when one's bones are in danger. The pious Æneas knew that very well, Mr. Kelly; but then the worthy army-chaplain had not a Scrope upon his heels for the best part of a twelvemonth.'
'Oh,' cried Kelly, 'then it is you who have followed me.' More than once he had heard that his steps were dogged.
'Over a wearisome stretch of Europe,' agreed Scrope.
'It was you who came to Philabe this morning?'
'Who else? So, you see, I have been at some pains to come up with you, and those duties must wait.'
'Those duties,' replied Kelly, 'are so urgent that I am in two minds whether to take to my heels.'
To any man who was acquainted with the Parson this statement would have been proof enough that there was all the necessity in the world for delay. But then Scrope knew very little of his opponent, and:
'I am not at all surprised to hear that,' he replied contemptuously.
Mr. Kelly reddened at the sneer, but kept a tight hold upon his patience.
'Understand me,' said he quietly. 'If I ran away now, I should most certainly follow you afterwards, as you have followed me, and when I came up with you I should kill you.'
'And understand me,' broke in Scrope. His cold, sneering face suddenly lighted up with a fierce passion. 'Neither you will follow me, nor I you. We stand face to face, as I have hoped we should until I have dreamed the hope true. You have robbed me of what I held most precious. You have done worse. You have proved to me that what I held most precious was never worth so much as a cracked farthing. That morning I came to Brampton Bryan, I came at Lady Oxford's bidding. We were to have done with pretences for good and all. Oh, she had forgotten, if you will, but if she had forgotten, who made her forget? You, Mr. Kelly, the sneaking cuckoo! I would have worn her proudly, for all the world to see--the star upon my coat, the scarf across my breast. I would have faced my fellows with one arm for her waist, and the other for a naked sword to silence their slanders with. Well, there's no waist, but there's still the naked sword.' As he spoke, with his left hand he jerked his sword out of the scabbard, and caught it by the hilt with his right. 'There's still the naked sword,' he laughed, with a sort of thrill in the laugh, and made the blade whistle through the air. There's still the sword and a vile cuckoo of a parson--'
'That's enough,' cried Kelly, marching to the steps in an anger now not a whit less than Scrope's, for there was a certain sting of truth in Scrope's abuse which put him to shame; 'more than enough.'
'No, not more than enough,' said Scrope quietly, and he followed.
'You want a little more?' said Kelly, who had reflected. 'Very well; your heroics may be candid enough, but it is less Mr. Scrope the lover and rival than Mr. Scrope, the spy, that I regard with a certain misliking.'
'Assez, you die!' said Scrope, with a hiss in his voice.
The space at the top of the steps was a pretty enough spot for their purpose. It was open only on the side towards the street, which was quite deserted, and raised so high above the pathway that a passer-by would see nothing of what was doing. On the other hand, however, the light was failing. Scrope was for bringing the encounter to a speedy end, and drove at the Parson in an impetuous fury. His sword glittered and darted very chill and cold in that grey twilight. He thrust swift as a serpent.
The blood of the Parson was also up. He had at first regarded Scrope's challenge as a pure piece of irony. Why should two men fight for a hilding who had equally jilted and cheated the pair? That had been George's first thought; but now his rapier was drawn for the Cause, and to rid it of a dangerous enemy. Scrope was probably on the track of Ormond and the gold, as well as on that of his rival.
The Parson was as brave as steel, but (though he never knew it) was no true master of the play. The men rushed at each other; their swords were locked, they were breast to breast; George wrenched his blade free, leaped back to get his distance, struck his heel against a cobble, and the next moment he felt Scrope's blade burn into his side. Kelly clasped his hand over the wound, and sank on to the ground. The blood came through between his fingers; he snatched the cravat from his neck, and made a poor shift to bandage it about his body. The one thought in his mind was of the Duke of Ormond's messenger. Perhaps the very next morning he might come to Avignon and find no one on the bench.
'A surgeon,' he whispered to Scrope, saving his breath. Scrope was quietly wiping his sword, and made no reply.
'A surgeon,' repeated Kelly. 'I must live.'
'Or die,' said Scrope carelessly. He pulled on his coat, and came close to Kelly. Then he suddenly felt in his pockets.
'No,' he said, with an air of disappointment. 'I was hoping that I had a copy of Virgil wherewith to soothe your last moments. Shall I take a message to her ladyship?' He picked up his hat. 'Or shall I ask Mr. Nicholas Wogan to write a ballad--"Strephon's Farewell to his Smilinda"? Mr. Wogan would, I think, be extremely amusing with so pathetical a subject for his Muse. Well, it grows late. You will, no doubt, excuse me.'
He made a bow to the Parson, clapped his hat on his head, and walked, whistling to the steps. He stopped when he had descended a couple of them, and, turning, shook his head thoughtfully at Kelly.
'But I am grieved I have no Virgil,' he said, and so disappeared below the level of the terrace.
Kelly listened till the sound of his feet died slowly down the street. Then he began to drag himself painfully upon his knees towards the steps. He did not dare to get to his feet, lest his blood should flow faster from his wound. He did not dare to shout. He crawled forward over the flags for miles, it seemed; then the knot of the bandage got loose, and a great faintness came over him. With fumbling fingers he re-tied the knot; the flags began to heave before his eyes like waves of the sea, the silence roared in his ears. He looked upwards, and a spinning procession of houses and churches turned him giddy. He sank down on his side, and then he was aware of something wet that rasped along his hand. He looked down. There was a joyous little bark, and the something wet rasped along his check.
'Harlequin!' he thought, with a pang of hope. He summoned all his strength, all his will; the houses ceased to spin. He let himself down to his full length, with great care drew a scrap from one pocket, a pencil from the other, and laboriously wrote. Then he poked the paper underneath the ribbon round the poodle's neck. 'Home!' he cried, clapping his hands; and fainted.
But ten minutes afterwards Miss Rose Townley unfolded a slip of paper, with here and there the mark of a bloody thumb, and written on it these words, 'Help Harlequin's friend'; and at her feet a bright-eyed poodle dog stood, wagging his tail, ready to conduct her to the spot where Harlequin's friend lay in sore need.
Life is not wholly the lopsided business that some would have you esteem it. Here was the Parson paying, with a sword-thrust of the first quality, for a love-affair that was dead already; over and ended. That was bad, but, to balance his accounts, the Parson waked up from his swoon in Dr. Townley's house, with the Doctor's beautiful daughter, Rose, to be his nurse-tender. Lady Oxford had caused his duel with Scrope, to be sure, but she had thereby, as it were, cast him straight into the girl's arms, and in that very condition which was likely to make her most tender to him. Carry the conceit a little farther, and you'll see that here was Mr. Kelly, through her ladyship's behaviours, imprisoned in the hands of one of those very creatures which she was ever persuading him to avoid: namely, that terrible monster a girl, and she very young, frank, and beautiful. When the Parson came to his senses, he called Dr. Townley to his side, and telling him who he was, and how that, being a friend of Mr. Wogan's, he knew the doctor from hearing his daughter call the dog Harlequin, he continued:
'You were at Preston with my friend, and I therefore have the less reluctance in asking a service of you beyond those you have already done me;' and he began to tell the Doctor of the expected messenger from Spain whom he was to meet on the boulevard.
But the Doctor interrupted him.
'Mr. Wogan is indeed my friend, though I have seen nothing of him these past six years; and his name is a passport into our friendship, as my daughter will assure you. So, Mr. Kelly, such kindness and hospitality as we can show you you may count upon; but--well, I had my surfeit of politics at Preston. I have no longer any faith in your cause, in your King. I do not think that he will come before the coming of the Coquecigrues. I am, indeed, leaving Avignon in a few months, and hope for nothing better than a peaceful life in some village of my own country under the King who now sits on the throne.
This he said very kindly, but with a certain solemnity which quite closed Mr. Kelly's lips; and so, giving him a sleeping potion, the Doctor left the room. In spite of the potion, however, the Parson made but a restless night of it, and more than once from under his half-closed lids he saw the doctor come to his bedside; but towards morning he fell into something of a sleep and woke up in the broad daylight with a start, as a man will who has something on his mind. In a minute or two Mr. Kelly remembered what that something was. He got out of his bed, and, holding the door open, listened. There was no sound audible at all except the ticking of a clock in the parlour below. Mr. Kelly drew on his clothes carefully, so as not to disarrange the bandages of his wound, and, taking his shoes in his hand, crept down the stairs. It was a slow, painful business, and more than once he had to sit down on the steps and rest. He glanced into the parlour as he passed, and saw, to his great relief, that it was only half past eight in the morning. What with fomentations and bandages Mr. Kelly had kept the tiny household out of bed to a late hour, and so no one was astir. He drew back the bolt and slipped out of the house.
Half an hour later, Dr. Townley came into the bedroom and found it empty. He scratched his head to ease his perplexity, and then wisely took counsel with his daughter.
'There was a man he expected to come for him,' he said. 'He was very urgent last night that I should see to it. But I cut him short, and so do not know where they were to meet with each other.'
At that moment the clock in the parlour struck nine.
'I know!' cried Rose on a sudden, and dragged her father off to the boulevard outside the Porte du Rhone, where they discovered Mr. Kelly sitting bolt upright on his bench, with a flushed red face and extraordinarily bright eyes, chattering to himself like a monkey.
The Parson lay for a week after that at death's door, and it needed all Dr. Townley's skill and Rose's nursing to keep him out of the grave. Meanwhile the Duke of Ormond's messenger arrived from Corunna, and kicked his heels on the boulevard until Mr. Kelly recovered his senses and summoned Mr. Philabe to his aid. Mr. Philabe the next morning took Kelly's place on the bench, and that day the money changed hands and the messenger started back post-haste to Corunna. At Corunna he told the story of the Parson's misfortune in more than one café, and so it came shortly to Wogan's ears, who put in with his ship at that port in order to give up his command.
The reason for this change in Wogan's condition was simple enough. Sufficient arms and ammunition had now been collected at Bilboa, and it was become urgent that the plans for the rising of the soldiers in England, and the capture of the Tower of London, should be taken earnestly in hand. The Duke of Ormond, who was to land in the West, was supposed a great favourite with the English troops, but it was none the less necessary that their favour should be properly directed. To that end Mr. Talbot, Tyrell, and Nicholas Wogan, amongst others, were deputed to travel into England, ready for the moment of striking. Nick was to have the rank of a colonel, and was bidden to repair to Paris by a certain date, where he was to take his instructions from General Dillon and the Earl of Mar. Now that date gave him half a week or so of leisure, and he knew of no better use to which he could put it than in stopping at Avignon, which lay directly in his path to Paris.
But before he reached the olives of Provence Mr. Kelly was convalescent and much had happened. How it had happened Mr. Wogan only discovered by hints which the Parson let slip unconsciously. For George had a complete distaste for the sensibilities, and, after all, a true man, even in the company of his closest friend, never does more than touch lightly upon the fringe of what he holds most sacred. He said that he was recovered of two fevers at one and the same time, and by the same ministering hands, and so was come forth into a sweet, cool life and a quiet air. His affairs, whether of stocks in the Mississippi scheme or of the Great Business, went clean out of his mind. His heart was swept and garnished like the man's in the Parable, and almost unawares a woman opened the door and stepped in, bringing with her train seven virtues, as of modesty, innocence, faith, cheerfulness, youth, courage, and love--qualities no better nor no fairer than herself.
How did it begin? Why, at the first there would be a smiling face at the doorway to wish him a good morning, or if he had slept ill a sweet look of anxious fear which would make up for a dozen sleepless nights. When he could get up from his bed and come into the parlour, the dog Harlequin, and Rose, and he became children and playfellows together, for the brute had been taught a hundred pretty tricks that would make a dying man laugh; until at length the girl grew familiar, and was seated at the very hearth and centre of his affections, where her memory remains enshrined.
Mr. Kelly spoke frankly of the matter only once in Mr. Wogan's hearing, and that was many years afterwards, and then he was not speaking of the matter at all. It was Lady Mary Wortley who set him on to it one night.
For she quoted a saying of some sage or another. 'In a man,' said she, 'desire begets love, and in a woman love begets desire.'
'And that is true,' said Kelly. 'I do think the steadfast and honourable passions between our sex and women are apt to have their beginnings on the woman's side, and then, being perceived and most gratefully welcomed, light up as pure a flame in the heart of a man. For otherwise, if a man sees a woman that she is fair, as King David saw Bathsheba, and so covets her, his appetite may in the end turn to love or may not. But if his eyes are first opened to an innocent woman's love, he being at best a sinful creature, he is then stirred with a wonderful amazement of grateful tenderness which never can pass away, but must endure, as I hold, even after death.' Which was all very modish and philosophical, and meant--well, just what anyone who had visited Avignon in February of the year '22 might have seen with half an eye. Rose was in love with the Parson and the Parson knew it, and so fell in love with Rose.
Mr. Wogan reached Avignon in the afternoon. The Doctor's house stood a stone's throw from the Palace of the Emperor Constantine, with a little garden at the back which ran down to the city wall. The top of the wall was laid out as a walk with a chair or two, and there Wogan found the Parson and Rose Townley. It was five years and more since Wogan had seen Rose Townley, and she was grown from a child to a woman. He paid her a foolish compliment, and then the three of them fell into an awkward silence. Mr. Wogan asked Kelly for a history of his wound, and then:
'So 'twas Scrope. Lady Mary was right when she warned me we had not seen the last of him. 'Faith, George, it was my fault. For, d'ye see, if I had not been so fond of my poetry I should have made my account with the gentleman at the gates of Brampton Bryan Manor, and you would never have been troubled with him at all.'
"Brampton Bryan?" asked Rose. "Where is that?"
Mr. Kelly made no answer, and perhaps Wogan's remark was not the discreetest in the world. Miss Rose would not forget that name, Brampton Bryan. At all events, the three of them fell to silence once more, and Mr. Wogan knew that he was trespassing and that he would have done better to have journeyed straight to Paris. Rose, however, came to the rescue and made him tell over again, as he had told her often before, his stories of the march to Preston. But, whereas before she had listened to them with a great enthusiasm and an eagerness for more, now her colour came and went as though they frightened her, and she would glance with a quick apprehension towards the Parson.
'And the battles are to be fought all over again,' she said, clasping her hands on her knees, and then plied Wogan for more details. She shivered at the thought of wounds and cannon-balls and swords, yet she must know to the very last word all that was to be described of them. So, until the sun sank behind the low green hills of the Cevennes, and the Rhone at their feet, in that land of olives, took on a pure olive tint. Then she rose and went into the house to prepare the supper, leaving the two friends together; and it presently appeared that Rose Townley was not the only one who was frightened.
The Parson watched her as she went down the garden, brushing the pink blossoms from the boughs of a peach tree or two that grew on the lawn. There was an old moss-grown stone sundial close to the house; she paused for a moment beside it to pick up a scarf which was laid on the top and so passed through the window, whence in a moment or two a lamp-light shone. The Parson seemed sunk in a reverie.
'I am afraid, Nick,' he said slowly. 'I am afraid.'
'What! You too?' exclaimed Wogan. 'Afraid of the wars?'
'The wars--no, no,' replied Kelly scornfully dismissing the interpretation of his fears, and then following out his own train of thoughts, 'you have known her a long time, Nick?'
'Six years.'
'I would that I too had known her six years ago,' said the Parson with a remorseful sigh.
'She has changed in those six years.'
'How?'
'Why, she has grown a foot, and grown a trifle shy.'
'Ah, but that's only since--' began the Parson with a nod, and came to a sudden stop. Rose's shyness was the outcome of her pride. She was shy just because she knew that she loved a man who had breathed no word of love to her. Mr. Kelly sat for a little longer in silence. Then,
'But I am afraid, Nick,' he repeated, and so went down into the house leaving Nick in some doubt as to what he was afraid of.
The Parson repeated his remark the next morning after breakfast. Mr. Wogan was smoking a pipe upon the wall; the Parson was walking restlessly about as he spoke.
'I am afraid,' said he, and looks towards the house. As soon as he looked, he started. So Wogan looked too. Rose Townley had just come from the window and was walking across the lawn more or less towards them with an infinite interest and attention for everything except the two figures on the city wall.
'She comes slowly,' said Kelly in a great trepidation, as though he had screwed up his courage till it snapped like a fiddle-string. 'She is lost in thought. No doubt she would not be disturbed,' and he glanced around him for means of escape. There was, however, only one flight of narrow steps from the wall down to the garden; and if he descended that he would be going to meet her.
Wogan laughed. 'She comes very slowly,' said he. 'No doubt she saw you from the window.'
'It is plain she did not,' replied the Parson, 'for, as you say, she comes very slowly.'
'The vanity of the creature!' cried Wogan. 'D'ye think if she saw you she would run at you and butt you in the chest with her head?'
'No,' says Kelly quickly. 'I do not. But--well, if she saw us here she would at the least look this way.'
'Would she?' asked Wogan. ''Faith, my friend, you'll have to go to school again. Your ignorance of the ways of women is purely miraculous. She does not look this way, therefore she does not know you are here! She looks to every other quarter; observe, she stops and gazes at nothing with the keenest absorption, but she will not look this way. Oh, indeed, indeed, my simple logician, she does not know you are here. Again she comes on--in this direction, you'll observe, but how carelessly, as though her pretty feet knew nothing of the path they take. See, she stops at the dial. Mark how earnestly she bends over it. There's a great deal to observe in a dial. One might think it was a clock and, like herself, had stopped. There's a peach tree she's coming to. A peach tree in blossom. I'll wager you she'll find something very strange in those blossoms to delay her. There, she lifts them, smells them--there's a fine perfume in peach blossoms--she peers into them, holds them away, holds them near. One might fancy they are the first peach blossoms that ever blossomed in the world. Now she comes on again just as carelessly, but perhaps the carelessness is a thought too careful, eh? However, she does not look this way. Watch for her surprise, my friend, when she can't but see you. She will be startled, positively startled. Oh, she does not know you are here.'
The girl walked to the steps, mounted them, her face rose above the level of the wall.
'Oh,' she cried, 'Mr. Kelly!' in an extremity of astonishment. Wogan burst out into a laugh.
'What is it?' asked Rose.
'Sure, Mr. Kelly will tell you,' said Wogan, and he strolled to the end of the walk, turned, walked down the steps and so left them together.
'What was it amused Mr. Wogan?' asked Rose of Kelly as soon as Wogan had vanished. The Parson left the question unanswered. He balanced himself on one foot for a bit then on the other, and he began at the end, as many a man has done before.
'I can bring you nothing but myself,' said he, 'and to be sure myself has battered about the world until it's not worth sweeping out of your window.'
'Then I won't,' said she with a laugh. The laugh trembled a little, and she looked out over the river and the fields of Provence with eyes which matched the morning.
'You won't!' he repeated, and then blundered on in a voice of intense commiseration. 'My dear, I know you love me.'
It was not precisely what Rose expected to hear, and she turned towards the Parson with a look of pride. 'And of course I love you too,' he said lamely.
'You might almost have begun with that,' said she with a smile.
'Was there need?' he asked. 'Since I thought every blade of grass in your garden was aware of it.' Then he stood for a second silent. 'Rose,' said he, savouring the name, and again 'Rose,' with a happy sort of laugh. But he moved no nearer to her.
Rose began to smile.
'I am glad,' said she demurely, 'that you find the name to your liking.'
'It is the prettiest name in the world,' cried he with enthusiasm.
'I am much beholden to my parents,' said she.
'But, my dear,' he continued, 'you put it to shame.'
The girl uttered a sigh which meant 'At last!' but Mr. Kelly was in that perturbation that he altogether misunderstood it.
'But you mustn't believe, my dear, it's for your looks I love you,' he said earnestly. 'No, it's for your self; it's for the shining perfections of your nature. Sure I have seen good-looking women before to-day.'
'I have no doubt of that,' she said, tapping with her foot on the pavement.
'Yes, I have,' said he. 'But when I looked at them 'twas to note the colour of their eyes or some such triviality, whereas when I look at your eyes, it's as though a smiling heart leaned out of them as from a window and said, "How d'ye do?" Sure, my dear, I should love you no less if you had another guess nose, and green eyes.' (He reflectively deformed her features.) 'It's your shining perfections that I am on my knees to.'
'Are you?' she interrupted with a touch of plaintiveness. He was standing like a wooden post and there was at the least a couple of yards between them.
'Just your shining perfections. 'Faith, you have the most extraordinary charm without any perversity whatever, which is a pure miracle. I am not denying,' he continued thoughtfully, 'that there's something taking in perversity when it is altogether natural, but, to be sure, most women practise it as though it were one of the fine arts, and then it's nothing short of damnable--I beg your pardon,' he exclaimed waking up of a sudden. 'Indeed, but I don't know what I am saying at all. Rose,' and he stepped over to her, 'I have no prospects whatever in the world, but will you take them?'
Well, she did. Mr. Kelly had come to his meaning in a roundabout fashion enough, as he acknowledged that same day to Nicholas Wogan.
'Upon my conscience, but I made a blundering ass of myself,' said he.
'You would,' said Wogan. 'My dear man, why didn't you tell me of your intention and I would have written you out a fine sort of speech that you could have got by heart?'
'Sure I should have stammered over the first sentence and forgot the rest,' said Kelly with a shake of the head. 'To tell the truth, the little girl has sunk me to such a depth of humility and diffidence that I find it wonderful I said anything at all.' Then he grew silent for a minute or so. 'Nick,' said he secretly, drawing his chair a trifle closer. 'There's a question troubles me. D'ye think I should tell her of My Lady Oxford?'
'It would be entirely superfluous,' replied Wogan with decision, 'since the thing's done with.'
'But is it?' asked Kelly. 'Is it, Nick? Look you here. We thought it was done with a year ago, and up springs Mr. Scrope at Avignon. Mr. Scrope does his work and there's not the end of it. For I am carried here and so my very betrothal is another consequence. It is as though her ladyship had presented me to Rose. Well, how are we to know it's done with now? If it ends here it is very well. But, d'ye see, Nick, it was after all not the most honourable business in the world, and am I to make this great profit out of it? Well, perhaps my fears confuse my judgment. I am all fears to-day, Nick,' and he stopped for a moment and clapped his hand into his pocket.
'I'll confess to you a very childish thing,' said he. 'Look!' and out of his pocket he drew a pistol.
'What's that for?' asked Nick.
'It's loaded,' replied Kelly. 'I went up to my room, after the little girl had taken me, and loaded it and slipped it into my pocket,' and he began to laugh, perhaps something awkwardly. 'For, you see, since she prizes me, why I am grown altogether valuable.' He put back the pistol in his pocket. 'But don't misunderstand me, Nick. The new fears are quite overbalanced by a new confidence. Sure, it's not the future I am afraid of.'
'I understand,' said Wogan gravely. 'It's what's to come.'
'Yes, that's it,' said Kelly.
Being afraid, and being a man of honour, Kelly did nothing, said nothing on the head of his old love affair, and trembled with apprehension of he knew not very well what. A path of flowers stretched before him, but a shadow walked on it, a tall, handsome shadow, yet unfriendly. It is Mr. Wogan's firm belief, based on experience, that a woman always finds everything out. The only questions are, when, and how will she take it? Sometimes it is a letter in the pocket of an old coat which the dear charitable creature is giving to a poor devil of a chairman. Sometimes it is a glance at a rout, which she shoots flying. Now it is a trinket, or a dead flower in a book, or a line marked in a poem, but there is always a trail of the past, and woman never misses it.
George's wooing seemed as flowery as the meadows about Avignon, white with fragrant narcissus, or as the gardens purple with Judas trees in spring. Rose was allparfait amour, and, in her eyes, Mr. Kelly was a hero, a clerical Montrose, or a Dundee of singular piety. Wogan has known women more zealous for the Cause, such as her Grace of Buckingham, or Madame de Mézières, who had ever a private plot of her own running through the legs of our schemes, like a little dog at a rout, and tripping us up. To Miss Townley George was the Cause, and the Cause was George, so that, in truth, she was less of a Jacobite than a Georgite.
There never had been such a George as hers for dragons. Why did he fight Mr. Scrope? She was certain it was all for the Cause! Indeed, thatcasus belli, as the lawyers say, proved a puzzle. Why, in fact, did the Parson come to be lying on the flags, in receipt of a sword-thrust of the first quality? George was the last man to brag of his services, but he was merely obliged to put the sword-thrust down to his credit with the Cause. His enemy had been a Whig, a dangerous spy, which was true, but not exactly all the truth, about as much of it as a man finds good for a woman.
Rose clasped her hands, raised her eyes to Heaven, and wondered that it did not better protect the Right. What other deeds of arms had her warrior done? She hung on George imploring him to speak of deadly 'scapes, and of everything that it terrified her to hear. Mr. Kelly, in fact, had never drawn sword in anger before; he was, by profession, a man of peace and of the pen. If ever he indulged a personal ambition, it would have been for a snug Irish deanery, and he communicated to Miss Townley a part of his favourite scheme, for leisure, a rose-hung parsonage, and Tully, his Roman friend.
But the girl put this down to his inveterate modesty, remarked by all Europe in his countrymen.
'Nay, Iknowyou have done more,' she said one day alone with him in a bower of the garden. 'You have done something very brave and very great, beyond others. You helped to free the Queen from the Emperor's prison at Innspruck!'
'I!' exclaimed Mr. Kelly in amazement. 'What put that notion into the prettiest head in the world? Why, it was Nicholas's brother Charles, with other Irish gentlemen, Gaydon, Misset, and O'Toole, who did that feat; the world rings of it. I was in Paris at that time.'
'Then you did something greater and braver yet, that is a secret for State reasons, or else, why does the King give you such rich presents?'
Mr. Kelly blushed as red as the flower after which his lady was named.
'Now,' he thought, 'how, in the name of the devil, did she hear of the box the King gave me, and I gave to Lady Oxford?'
That trinket was lying on Lady Oxford's table, but the face behind the mirror was now that of a handsomer man than either his Majesty, or Mr. Kelly, or Colonel Montague. Kelly knew nothing about that, but he blushed beautifully when Miss Townley spoke of a rich royal present.
'You blush,' cried the girl, before he could find an answer. 'I know you are hiding something, now.' (And here she added to his pleasure without taking anything from his confusion), 'Tell me why you blush to find it fame?'
'Troth, isn't my face a mirror, and reflects your rosy one, my Rose?' answered Mr. Kelly, putting on a great deal of the brogue, to make her laugh. For, if a woman laughs, she is apt to lose sight of her idea.
'I must be told; I cannot trust you to show me how brave you are.'
Mr. Kelly was upon dangerous ground. If he was expected to talk about the box given by the King, and if Rose wished to see, or to know what had become of it, Kelly had not a fable ready, and the truth he could not tell. He made a lame explanation:
'Well, then, I blushed, if I did, for shame that the King has to borrow money to help better men than me.'
'I don't care if he borrowed the money or not, for he could not have borrowed for a better purpose than to give you--what I have seen.'
Mr. Kelly was pale enough now. What in the wide world had she seen? Certainly not the snuffbox.
'Seen in a dream, my dear; sure the King never gave me anything but my little pension.'
'Then you know other kings, for who else give diamonds? Ah, you are caught! You have the Queen's portrait set with diamonds.'
'The Queen's portrait?' cried Kelly in perplexity. He was comforted as well as perplexed. 'Twas plain that Rose knew nothing of the royal snuffbox, now the spoil of Lady Oxford's spear and bow.
'Yes,' cried Rose. 'Whose portrait but the Queen's should it be that lies on your table? So beautiful a lady and such diamonds!'
Mr. Kelly groaned in spirit. The snuff-box was not near so dangerous as this new trail that Rose had hit. She had seen, in his possession, the miniature of Smilinda, and had guessed that it was a royal gift; the likeness of the Princess Clementina Sobieska, who had but lately married the King.
'I saw it lying on your table the day we brought you home from the seat on the boulevard, when we thought'(here Miss Rose hid her face on her lover's shoulder, and her voice broke) 'that--you--would--die.'
Now was this rose wet with a shower, and when Kelly, like the glorious sun in heaven, had dried these pretty petals, what (Mr. Wogan puts it to the casuists) was the dear man to say? What he thought was to curse Nick for holding his hand when he was about throwing Smilinda's picture into the sea.
What he said was that, under Heaven, but without great personal danger, he had been the blessed means of detecting and defeating a wicked Hanoverian plot to kidnap and carry off from Rome the dear little Prince of Wales, and Mrs. Hughes, his Welsh nurse. This prodigious fable George based on one of the many flying stories of the time. It satisfied Miss Townley's curiosity (as, indeed, it was very apt to do) and George gave her the strictest orders never to breathe a word of the circumstance, which must be reckoned a sacred mystery of the royal family. He also remarked that the portrait flattered her Majesty (as painters will do), and that, though extremely pretty and gay, she had not that air of dignity and command, nor was so dark a beauty. 'In fact, my dear,' said George, 'you might wear that portrait at the Elector's Birth Night rout (if you could fall so low) and few people would be much the wiser. These Roman painters are satisfied with making a sitter pretty enough to please her, or him.'
George was driven to this flagrant incorrectness because, though Miss Townley had not yet seen the Queen's portrait (her father having changed sides) she might see one any day, and find Mr. Kelly out.
The girl was satisfied, and the thing went by, for the time. But, on later occasions, his conscience gnawing him, the good George very unwisely dropped out general hints of the unworthiness of his sex, and of himself in particular, as many an honest fellow has done. In Mr. Wogan's opinion, bygones ought to be bygones, but it takes two to that bargain. Meanwhile Miss Rose might make as much or as little of her lover's penitences as she chose, and, indeed, being a lass of gold, with a sense of honour not universal in her sex, and perfectly sure of him, she made nothing whatever, nor thought at all of the matter.
But there was another dragon in the course that never yet ran smooth. The excellent surgeon, who had not recovered the fright of Preston, was obdurate. He had no dislike for Mr. Kelly, but a very great distaste for Mr. Kelly's Cause. Rose might coax, the Parson might argue, Wogan might use all his blandishments--the good man was iron. In brief, Kelly must cease to serve the King, or cease to hope for Rose. This was a hard choice, for indeed Mr. Kelly could not in honour leave hold of the threads of the plot which were then in his hands.
So much Dr. Townley was at last brought to acknowledge, and thereupon a compromise was come to. Mr. Kelly was to go over to England once again, on the last chance. The blow was to be struck in this spring of the year 1722. If it failed, or could not be struck, Mr. Kelly was to withdraw from the King's affairs and earn his living by writing for the booksellers, and instructing youth.
The Parson was the more ready to agree to this delay, because of a circumstance with which he was now acquainted. The Doctor and his daughter were themselves on the point of returning to England. Mr. Kelly and Rose had no great difficulty in persuading the surgeon that he would find it more convenient to live in London than in the country, of the miseries of which they drew a very pathetic and convincing picture; and so, being assured that the delay would not mean a complete separation, they accepted the plan and fell to mapping out their lives.
They chose the sort of house they would live in and where, whether in Paris or in England: they furnished it from roof to cellar.
'There must be a room for Nick,' said the Parson, 'so that he can come in and out as if to his own house.'
Mr. Wogan had borne his part in persuading Dr. Townley, without a thought of the great change which the Parson's marriage meant for him. But these words, and the girl's assent, and above all a certain unconscious patronage in their voices, struck the truth into him with something of a shock.
Mr. Wogan escaped from the room, and walked about in the garden. These two men, you are to understand, had been boys together, George being by some years the older, and had quarrelled and fought and made friends again twenty times in a day. Mr. Kelly bore, and would bear till his dying day, a little scar on his cheek close to his ear, where he was hit by a mallet which Wogan heaved at him one day that he was vexed. Wogan never noticed that scar but a certain pleasurable tenderness came over him. His friendship with the Parson had been, as it were, the heart of his boyhood. And in after years it had waxed rather than diminished. The pair of them could sit one on each side of a fire in perfect silence for an hour together, and yet converse intelligibly to each other all the while. Well, here was Mr. Wogan alone in the darkness of the little garden at Avignon now. The Rhone looked very cold beneath the stars, and the fields entirely desolate and cheerless. Yet he gazed that way persistently, for if he turned his head toward the house he saw a bright window across which the curtains were not drawn, and a girl's fair hair shining gold against a man's black periwig. Mr. Wogan had enough sense to strangle his jealousy that night, and was heartily ashamed of it the next morning when he bade the couple good-bye and set out for Paris.
Mr. Kelly took his leave a few days later, being now sufficiently recovered to travel. The precise date was the eighth of April. To part from Rose you may well believe was a totally different matter from his adieus to Smilinda. Nothing would serve the poor girl, who had no miniature and diamonds to give, but to sacrifice what she prized most in the world after her father and her lover.
'You cannot take me,' she said with a tearful little laugh, 'but you shall take Harlequin, who made us acquainted. That way you will not be altogether alone.'
Harlequin wagged his tail, and sat up on his hind legs as though he thoroughly approved of the proposal, and Mr. Kelly, to whom the poodle could not but be an inconvenience, had not the heart to refuse the gift.
George had to give as well as to take, and felt even less blessed in giving than in receiving. For Miss Rose must have a souvenir of him, too, and what should it be but that inestimable testimony to her lover's loyalty and courage, the Portrait of the Queen! There was no way of escape, and thus, as a memorial of Mr. Kelly's singular attachment to the best of Causes and of Queens, Miss Townley was treasuring the likeness of the incomparable Smilinda. The ladies, in the nature of things, could never meet, George reckoned, for the daughter of the exiled country physician would not appear among the London fashionables.
In Paris, on his road to London, Mr. Kelly visited the Duke of Mar, who most unfortunately took notice of the dog, and asked him what he purposed to do with it.
'My Lord,' replied Kelly, 'when I am on my jaunts Harlequin will find a home with the Bishop of Rochester, whose wife has a great liking for dogs. The poor lady is ill, and, alas, near to her death; the Bishop is fretting under the gout, and his wife's sickness, and the jealousies among the King's friends. Moreover, he is much occupied with building his tomb in the Abbey, so that, altogether, their house is of the gloomiest, and Harlequin may do something to lighten it.'
For the poodle had more accomplishments than any dog that ever the Parson had met with, and this he demonstrated to the Duke of Mar by putting him through his tricks. The Duke laughed heartily, and commended the Parson's kindliness towards his patron. But in truth the Parson never did a worse day's work in the whole of his life.