Wogan had heard two doors shut that evening, and with very different feelings. One had been latched gently, and the sound had filled him with apprehensions; one had been flung to with an angry violence, and the sound soothed him like the crooning of music. For Kelly, it seemed, after all held the trumps in his hand; he had but to play them aright and the game was his.
'The longer he takes to play them the better,' murmured Wogan, as he stood on the steps of Lady Oxford's house and looked briskly about him. For to his left, standing openly in the moonlight, he saw a tall martial figure wrapped in a cloak, and the end of a scabbard shining beneath the cloak, while across the road his eyes made out a hunched form blotted against the wall. The figure in the cloak was Colonel Montague; the skulker would no less certainly be Mr. Scrope. If the Parson would only take time enough to deploy his arguments like a careful general! Mr. Wogan would have liked to have run back and assured Kelly that there was no need whatever for hurry, since he himself had enough amusements on his hands to make the time pass pleasantly.
He advanced to the Colonel first.
'Sir, it is now to-morrow, the date at which you kindly promised me a few moments of your leisure. You may hear the chimes of the Abbey strike the half hour after one.'
'Mr. Wogan,' replied the Colonel, 'I reckon this yesterday--till after breakfast. At present I have an engagement with another person.'
'Colonel Montague, your reckoning of time is contrary to the almanac, and to a sound metaphysic, of which I am the ardent advocate. You will understand, sir, that such a difference of opinion between gentlemen admits of only one conclusion.'
Colonel Montague smiled, and to Wogan's chagrin and astonishment replied:
'You have grown a foot, or thereby, Mr. Wogan, since last we met, on an occasion which you will permit me to say that I can never forget. All our differences are sunk for ever in that one consideration. I implore you to leave me to the settlement of my pressing business.'
So the Colonel knew of that unfortunate rescue at Preston. Wogan, however, was not so easily put off.
'Grown a foot, sir!' he cried. 'I am not the same man! You speak of a boy, who died long ago; if he made a mistake in saving your life, overlook a pure accident, and oblige me.'
'The accident does not remove my obligation.'
'If you knew the truth, you would be sensible that there was no obligation in the matter. Come, take a stroll in the Park, and I'll tell the truth of the whole matter to whichever of us is alive to hear it.'
'I had the whole truth already, to-night, from the young lady.'
'The young lady?' Wogan had told Rose Townley of how he saved the life of a Colonel Montague, and to-night he had informed her that this Colonel was the man. She had been standing by his elbow when he had picked his quarrel with Montague. Sure she had overheard and had interfered to prevent it. 'The young lady!' he cried. 'All women are spoil-sports. But, Colonel, you must not believe her. I made a great deal of that story when I told it to Miss Townley. But you would find it a very simple affair if you had it from an eye-witness.'
The Colonel shook his head.
'Yet the story was very circumstantial, how you leaped from the barricades--'
'That were but two feet high.'
'And, through a cross fire of bullets, crossed the square to where I lay--'
'The fire was a half charge of duckshot that an old fellow let off by mismanagement from a rusty pistol. Both sides stopped firing the moment I jumped over--the politest thing. I might have been tripping down the Mall with a lady on my arm, for all the danger I ran.'
'But your wounds?'
'I slipped and cut my shin on the sharp cobbles, that's true.'
'Mr. Wogan, it will not do! Had I known your name this evening when Lady Mary made us acquainted, certain expressions properly distasteful to you would not have escaped my lips. But now I can make amends for them to the gallant gentleman who brought a wounded enemy out of a cross-fire. I apologise to you, but I cannot oblige you to the extent you wish, however you may attempt to make light of your courage, and of the obligation on my side.'
'Sure, Colonel, to be done with adornment of the real truth, I only saved such a fine man to have the pleasure of killing him myself.'
Here the Colonel broke into a laugh.
'Mr. Wogan, if I drew my sword and stood up before you without making a parry or a lunge, would you kill me?'
'No, indeed, there would be little diversion in that game,' said Wogan, who was now grown quite melancholic.
'Well, that is the utmost you will get from me, I am much pressed for time, and look to find another.'
'Another!' Wogan's failing hopes revived. 'Praise be to the Saints! I see your mistake, and you shall understand it in a twinkling. The other and myself are just one man for these purposes. George is myalter ego. We are the greatest friends, and have been taken for each other when we are talking. I'll talk all the time we fight, and you can fancy it is George whose ribs you are trying to tickle.'
The Colonel, however, was obdurate, and before Wogan could hit upon a likelier argument both gentlemen heard a cough.
Someone was standing on Lady Oxford's doorstep looking towards them.
The Colonel coughed in reply, and the figure--it was Mr. Kelly's--waved his hand, and marched, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, toward St. James's Park.
The Colonel followed, like Hamlet, and Mr. Wogan followed the Colonel. Would there be a fourth to follow Wogan? The three men marched in the moonlight, their footsteps rang boldly on the road. Was there a fourth behind them stealthily creeping in the shadow of the wall? As they turned a corner out of the square Wogan fell a little further to the rear. He kept his head screwed upon his shoulders, and he saw a shadow slink round the corner. He listened, and heard the stealthy steps. He stopped; the steps ceased. Wogan went on again. He knew that Scrope was dogging them.
The figure in front moved silently on till he reached a sweet spot for an occasion, a littleclairièreamong the trees, the smoothest sward, moonlight on the grass, dark shadow all around. There he stopped, turned, and dropped his cloak. The moon shone silvery on the silver shoulder-knots of Mr. Kelly. The other two gentlemen advanced.
'Nick,' exclaimed Kelly, 'you should be on your road to the coast.'
'At last!' cried Colonel Montague, dropping his cloak.
'A moment, sir,' said Kelly; 'I must dismiss my friend.'
'And would you be so mad? Are you to have nobody to see fair and run for the surgeon while the other gentleman makes his escape? George, I never knew you were so selfish.'
Kelly drew his friend a little way aside.
'Nick, I have that to do which cannot be done before a witness.'
Mr. Wogan merely gaped at this extraordinary speech. He noticed that Kelly looked white and haggard even for a man in the full moonlight.
'When I tell you that my honour hangs on it, that a witness is mere ruin, when I pray you by our old friendship? Nick, youmustgo out of eye-shot and ear-shot.'
'I think you are crazed,' said Wogan.
'I have obeyed you all night. Things have taken the turn that you must obey me. There is no time for an explanation, the hour presses, and, Nick, my honour hangs on it. You must retire to where you can neither see nor hear us, or I am shamed--lost with the Cause.'
Mr. Kelly had been whispering, his voice trembled as the Cause was named. Wogan had only once seen him thus moved. Had he played his trumps amiss after all? It seemed he had not won the game.
'Very well,' said Wogan. 'Good-night. I will take care you are not troubled with witnesses.'
'No,' said Kelly suddenly, and then 'yes; goodnight.'
He stood looking at Wogan a moment and then hurried off to the Colonel, who seemed, to Wogan's judgment, a man apt to give the Parson his bellyful. Wogan twitched his cloak about him, and took his road down a path, bordered by bushes. It was the path by which they had come into the Park. Wogan was determined that the Parson should not be troubled by witnesses.
From his boyhood Mr. Wogan has had a singular passion for bird's-nesting. He idly scanned the bushes as he marched, for he had heard a twig snap, and in a thick bush he saw what at a first glance certainly resembled a very large brown bird's-nest. Looking more narrowly at this curiosity there were shining eyes under the nest, a circumstance rarely found in animated nature.
Mr. Wogan paused and contemplated this novelty. The bush was deep; the novelty was of difficult access because of the tangled boughs. Wogan reckoned it good to show a puzzled and bemused demeanour, as of one who has moored himself by the punch-bowl.
'It's a very fine bird,' he said aloud. 'I wonder what is the exact species this fine fowl may belong to?'
Then he wagged his head in a tipsy manner, and so lurched down the path singing:
'I heard a birdSing in a bush,And on his headWas a bowl of punch,La-la-loodie!'
'I heard a bird
Sing in a bush,
And on his head
Was a bowl of punch,
La-la-loodie!'
But Wogan's eye was cocked back over his shoulder, for he hoped that the fowl, thinking the hunter gone, would save him trouble by breaking cover. The bush did not stir, however; all was deadly still.
Wogan lurched back to the bush, still singing, parted the branches, and peered in. His mind, in fact, was quite fixed as to the nature and name of this nocturnal fowl.
He spied into the bush. 'I have heard, in France, of a bird called "the cuckoo Kelly,"' he said, 'I wonder if this can bele cocuScrope?'
Something glittered in the heart of the bush. Mr. Wogan leaped aside, his hat spun round on his head, he was near blinded by the flame and smoke of a pistol discharged almostà bout portant. A figure had scrambled out of the bush on the further side, and was running at a great pace towards St. James's.
Mr. Wogan gave a view halloo, and set off at the top of his own pace in pursuit. He was swift of foot when young, sound of wind, and long of stride.
At every step he gained on the flying figure, which, he happily remembered, might be armed with another pistol. These commodities usually go in pairs. Reflecting on this, and reckoning his distance to a mathematical nicety, Mr. Wogan applied his toe to that part of the flying gentleman's figure which he judged most accessible and most appropriate to his purpose. The flying gentleman soared softly into a parabola, coming down with a crash, while a pistol fell from his hand. As the priming was spilled, Mr. Wogan let the weapon lie, and courteously assisted the prostrate person to rise.
'I fear I stumbled over you, sir,' he said. 'I hope I was not so unfortunate as to hurt you. Why, 'tis Mr. Scrope, the celebrated critic and amateur of Virgil. Mr. Scrope, the writer of ballads.'
'You are a brutal Irish bully,' said Scrope, whose hands and face were bleeding, for he had the mischance to slip on a gravel path covered with sharp little flints at the top of the Canal.
'Nay, when last we met it was my poetry that you criticised, and now 'tis my manners that do not please you! How could I guess that it was Mr. Scrope who lay in a bush to watch an explanation between gentlemen? This time, sir, of your flight, you have not two horses to carry you off, and I am not barefoot. Suppose we take up our conversation where we left it when last you ran away? You have a sword I see.'
Scrope's sword was already out, and he made a desperate pass at Wogan, who broke ground and drew his own weapon. Scrope was no match for his reach and skill in fence.
'Why, sir, our positions are altered,' said Wogan. 'Now it is you who make errors, and I who play critic and instructor.'
Wogan made a parade incontre de carte.
'Look, sir, your blade was beaten a good half foot out of line. Had I chosen to riposte, my sword-hilt would have rung on your breast-bone. Ah, that was rather better,' he said, stepping a pace back, and offering his breast full like a fencing master with his pupil. 'But you did not really extend yourself. Now, sir,un,deux,doublez,dégagez,vite!' and Mr. Wogan passed his sword through the lappet of Scrope's coat, coming back on guard. 'That is how you ought to lunge. There is another thing that I would have you notice. Coming on rashly as you do, I could stop you at any moment with a time thrust. I have only to extend my long arm, and where are you?'
Scrope broke ground, sweating, and drew breath:
'You cowardlymaître d'armes!' he exclaimed between two pants.
'Cowardly, sir? Am I a spy? Or a nameless, obscene rhymer? Do I carry pistols and try to use them? Fie, Mr. Scrope, you must see that a coward who meant to kill you would have done so long ago, and left you here--with an insult, and without a surgeon. You remember the little square at Avignon. You want another lesson.'
Wogan parried, riposted, and just grazed his opponent on the fore-arm.
'Touché!' he said. 'Now you see I do not mean to kill you: at least, not with the sword. To do so would be to oblige a lady whom I have no desire to please. Would you prefer to lay down your weapon and come frankly to my embrace? You remember our fond hugs at Brampton Bryan? By the way, Mr. Scrope,' asked Wogan, as an idea occurred to him, 'the night is warm and you seem heated, do you swim? The place is convenient for a bathe, and sheltered from coarse observation.'
With this remark Wogan switched Scrope's sword out of his hand by a turn of the wrist inflanconade. The blade flew up and fell flashing in the water of the Canal.
'Now, sir, your life is at my mercy. You have betrayed my Cause; you have nearly murdered my friend; you have insulted two ladies of my acquaintance; you have censured my poetry; and you have spoiled my hat with your pistol bullet. I repeat, do you swim? There are two places here mighty convenient for a ducking.'
Here Mr. Wogan caught his enemy by the collar.
'The Canal is shallow; Rosamond's Pool is deep. You have your choice; safety and prose, or poetry and peril?'
Scrope was squirming in Wogan's grip like a serpent. When Mr. Wogan had calmed him he carried Mr. Scrope like a babe to the edge of the Canal.
'One, two, three!' he said, heaving Mr. Scrope backward and forward, like children setting a swing in motion. 'And away!'
A heavy body flew through the air, flashed into the Canal, and did not at first arise to the surface.
'I hope he has not hit his head or broken his neck,' said Wogan with anxiety. 'It would be very disagreeable to have to wade for him.'
His fears were soon set at rest. Scrope scrambled to his feet, the water reaching nearly to his middle. In his dripping perruque he cut a figure odd enough, and sufficiently pitiable.
'A water god! A Triton!' cried Wogan. 'Have you a Virgil in your pocket? You might study the marine deities whom you resemble. You are sure you have again forgotten to bring the Virgil you desired for Mr. Kelly's use at Avignon.'
'D----n you, I shall see your bowels burned before your eyes for this, you Popish traitor,' cried Scrope, shaking his fist.
'That is as may be. You have done what you can to that end already. You have told all you know; as regards myself it is not very much, and I am not in Newgate yet. Moreover, I know a way out. But stop, I cannot possibly permit you to land, for Scrope was wading to the bank. 'Stay where you are and admire the moonshine! If you set foot on shore I will merely throw you in again! You might be hurt.
Scrope turned and was beginning to wade to the other side of the Canal.
'It really is not safe in the middle if you do not swim,' cried Wogan. 'Moreover, I can easily be at the further bank before you.' Mr. Wogan suited the action to the word. He ran round the bank as Scrope waded across. He met his bedraggled victim at the water's edge. Mr. Wogan uttered a joyful whoop; there was a great splash and again Scrope sank beneath the surface. He regained his feet and rose spluttering. 'I do trust, Mr. Scrope, that you are not hectic, or subject to rheumatism,' said Wogan with sympathy.
Wogan walked to the centre of the path across the top of the Canal. He spread his cloak upon the grass and sat down, contemplating the moonlight on Buckingham House. There was a sweet odour of the budding may in the air.
'A more peaceful scene, Mr. Scrope,' he cried, 'I have rarely witnessed. All the poet whom you tried to crush wakes in my bosom. I shall recite Mr. Pope's celebrated Night piece for your benefit.'
Mr. Wogan then arose from his seat on the grass, and, raising his hand towards the Moon, delivered Mr. Pope's lines in his best manner.
'As when the Moon, refulgent lamp of Night,O'er Heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light.When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,And not a cloud o'erspreads the solemn scene.'
'As when the Moon, refulgent lamp of Night,O'er Heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light.When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,And not a cloud o'erspreads the solemn scene.'
'You are not listening, Mr. Scrope!'
Scrope was listening, but not to Wogan. Wogan ceased from reciting and listened also. He heard steps and voices of men approaching. Presently, to his great amazement, he recognised the tones of Kelly and Montague, whose mere existence had been banished from his mind. He was yet more surprised when they both came in view, walking very friendly together.
Wogan rose as they drew near him.
'What, both of you?' he exclaimed.
'You do not seem to be glad to see us again, sir?' said Colonel Montague.
'And devil a scratch between the pair of you!' cried Mr. Wogan. 'George, what does this mean? Am I to hear,' he asked with honest indignation, 'that one of you has debased himself to an apology?'
He looked from one to the other much perplexed in mind.
'It is too long a tale for the opportunity, Mr. Wogan,' said the Colonel laughing. 'Butwhatdoes that mean?'
He pointed to the Water God in the perruque, whose shadow was reflected in the calm bosom of the lake.
'Colonel Montague,' cried Scrope, 'I appeal to you as a Protestant and an officer of his Majesty's for your protection against an Irish, Popish, Jacobite conspirator.'
'That gentleman,' said Wogan, 'whom I have been entertaining with Mr. Pope's poem, is an English Protestant, Whig, spy, and murderer, and even, I suspect, a writer in the newspapers. He persists in staying out in the water there, where I cannot get at him. He is one of the Maritime Powers. Egad! George, you know Mr. Scrope of Northumberland and Grub Street?'
George bowed to Mr. Scrope.
'The fourth time you see, sir, has been lucky, contrary to the proverb,' he said politely.
'The poor devil's teeth are chattering audibly,' said Colonel Montague. 'May I ask you to explain his situation, Mr. Wogan?'
'Faith, sir, the story, as you say, is too long for the occasion. And I want an explanation myself. After a gentleman has trod on another gentleman's foot, here you both are, well and smiling. I am betrayed,' cried Mr. Wogan, 'in the character of a friend. I could not have thought it of George.'
'What was the pistol shot we heard, Nick?' asked Mr. Kelly.
'That was Mr. Scrope firing at me.'
'And the view halloo that might have wakened the dead?'
'That was me remonstrating with Mr. Scrope. But I crave your pardon for my thoughtlessness. No doubt the noise brought up some ungentlemanly person who interrupted you in your explanation. You will begin it again? Mr. Scrope and I will be delighted to see fair play, but you will see it from the water, Mr. Scrope. You don't come out yet.'
'Our honours, about which you are so kindly concerned, Mr. Wogan, are as intact as our persons,' said the Colonel.
'Then you have been finding out that George saved your life, or you saved George's, some time in the dark ages, all to prevent you killing each other in a friendly way?'
'You are in an ingenious error, Mr. Wogan; but Mr. Johnson and I have important business together in the town, and we must bid you farewell. Pray allow that dripping gentleman to land and go to bed.'
'But I cannot take him with me, and it is purely inconvenient to let him follow me, for the precise reason that he would not follow me at all, but my friend Mr. Johnson. I am like my countryman who caught a Tartar in the Muscovite wars. To be sure, I might tie him to a tree with his garters. Come out, Mr. Scrope, and be tied to a tree!'
'No, no,' said the Colonel; 'your friend will die of a cold.'
'Then what am I to be doing?' asked Wogan. 'He is a very curious gentleman.'
'I must leave that for you and your friend to determine,' said Colonel Montague. He turned to Kelly. 'In ten minutes,' said he, moving off.
'In ten minutes, Corydon,' said Kelly, and Wogan thought he heard the Colonel mutter, 'Oh, damnation!'
It was all Greek to Wogan, and Kelly seemed in no mind to translate the Greek for his baser comprehension.
'Be off, Nick,' said he. 'I have ten minutes to wait here, and for ten minutes Mr. Scrope shall stand in the pond. You have that much law. It is time enough for your long legs.'
'And do you think I am leaving Mr. Scrope to follow you while I go quietly to bed?' asked Wogan, who was in truth hurt by the proposal. 'No. I shall take him with me. It is the best plan after all.'
'It will not matter, I think, whether he follows me or no; and, Nick, as to going to bed, I hope it will not be on this side of the Channel. Truth, I should be blaming you as it is for your delay, but I have no heart to it.' He had dropped into the Irish accent, a thing very rare with him. 'For the world topples about me to-night, and the sight of a friend is very pleasant to me. There! It is all I had to say to you. Good-night. Good-bye.'
He clapped his hand on Wogan's shoulder and then sat himself down on the grass. If Mr. Scrope had had his wits about him, he might have chosen this occasion to creep out of the water, for Wogan was paying little heed to him.
'George,' said he, 'it seems the game has gone against you. But I have the simplest plan imaginable to put matters straight. What if you give me the key to that pretty despatch-box? You see if I go to your lodging and am taken--'
'No!' cried Kelly.
'But yes,' said Wogan, seating himself on the grass beside Kelly. 'If I am taken, why, it's just Nick Wogan that's taken, and no one but Nick Wogan is a penny the worse. But if you go and are taken--well, there's the Doctor's daughter.'
Kelly would not listen to reason. It was not, he said, a mere matter of slipping into the house and burning the cyphers. But a man must pay for his own shortcomings, and the whole aspect of affairs had changed. And then he fell to thanking Wogan, which thanks Wogan cut short; and so they sat in the moonlight like a couple of owls, only they did not talk.
'You are very thoughtful,' said Kelly, with a tired sort of laugh, 'and you have thought most of your ten minutes away.'
'I was thinking,' said Wogan, 'of a word you used to say about a little parsonage in Ireland and your Latin books, and an acre or two of land, and how, like a fool, I laughed at you for speaking so.'
Kelly rose very quickly to his feet.
'Come, Nick,' said he almost sharply. 'My ten minutes are almost up. I cannot watch Scrope after that, and you may just as well save your life as lose it.'
'I mean to take him with me,' said Wogan. 'Come out, my friend. I'll give him the slip, never fear, when I want to.'
'And then you will start for France?'
Mr. Wogan did not mention a couple of obstacles which would at all events delay his departure. In the first place he had a little matter of business with Lord Sidney Beauclerk, and in the second it would be no more than politeness to inquire after Kelly's health before he went abroad. He kept silent upon this subject, and again summoned Scrope, who waded with his teeth chattering from the water. He drove Scrope before him along a bypath, leaving the Parson standing alone in the moonlight. Mr. Wogan had no expectation that he would ever see his friend's face again, and therefore he swore most heartily at Scrope.
'Come, my man,' said he, 'I am to see that you do not catch cold,' and he marched Scrope at a round pace eastwards as far as Temple Bar, and thence northwards to Soho, and from Soho westwards.
Scrope had been enjoined strictly not to open his lips; but, on the other hand, he heard a great deal about his own character, his merits as a poet, and the morals of his family, which was no doubt new to him. Some three hours later, when the moon had long since set, the pair came to the fields behind Holland House, and there Wogan took his leave of Scrope. The man could do no more harm for that night, and he had for the moment lost his taste for spying.
'You will stay here for five minutes,' said Wogan, who in five seconds was lost in the darkness. He knew a shy place in Westminster where he could pass the night undisturbed. As he laid his head on the pillow it seemed to him to be a good year since he had driven off from Sir Harry Goring's house in the morning. And what of the Parson, whom he had last seen, a sombre figure in the moonlight by the water of St. James's Park? Well, the night had only then begun for Kelly, who, to be sure, had lain abed all the day before.
The devil in all this affair, it was that Wogan could not be in two, or even three, places at once. While Kelly was shut in with Lady Oxford earlier, Mr. Wogan, as he has said, was on the wrong side of the door. There he was again, after the rout, while he conversed with Colonel Montague in the street. Again, while Wogan was busy with Mr. Scrope in St. James's Park, Kelly and the Colonel were exchanging their unknown explanations, of a kind not admired by Mr. Wogan, which ended in their walking, like a pair of brothers, towards George's rooms. In all these conjunctures Mr. Wogan's advice, could he have been present, might have been serviceable, or at least his curiosity must have been assuaged.
What did pass between Kelly and Lady Oxford when the rout was over, and what were the considerations which induced George and the Colonel to resist their natural and mutual desire for an honourable satisfaction?
These questions (that perplexed Wogan when he awoke, about noon, from the fatigue of the previous day) were answered later by Kelly, and the answer must be given before the later adventures and sorrows of George can be clearly narrated. Sure, no trifle could have turned sword and gown into friends that night.
When Lady Oxford and Kelly were left alone in the empty rooms, among the waning candles and scattered cards, Lady Oxford marched, like indignant royalty, to the end of the inner withdrawing-room, where they could not be heard or interrupted without warning.
Mr. Kelly followed with a mind made up. It was, after all, Lady Oxford that had betrayed him, but he had, by an accident of forgetfulness, kept her letters, and they now gave him the advantage. If those letters could be saved, the Chevalier's papers could and should be saved too, and himself rescued from peril and Rose from much unhappiness. Rose was at the bottom of his thoughts that night; her face was mirrored there bright, it seemed, with divinity. The Chevalier was there too, no doubt, but Rose peeped over his shoulder. Mr. Kelly, then, hardened his heart, and, for love and loyalty, meant to push his advantage over Lady Oxford to its limits. He approached her as she stood retired.
'Wretch,' cried Lady Oxford, 'you promised to burn my letters. Of all traitors you are the most abandoned and perfidious.'
The Parson thought that memory supplied him with a parallel, but he replied:
'It is a promise all men make and all men break.'
Lady Oxford struck her hand upon a table.
'You swore you had burned them.'
This time George was less ready with his answer, but her ladyship stood awaiting it.
'My passion must be my excuse, madam; I could not bear to part with these elegant testimonies of your esteem. It is as I have the honour to tell your ladyship; the brocades are in my strong box in my lodgings. To-morrow they shall be restored to your hands.'
'To-morrow!' she said, in a voice of despair. 'To-morrow! I am undone!'
'It is not so long to wait for the finery, and I do not think the streets are so purely unsafe as you suppose.'
'I am undone!' she repeated. 'The public will ring of my name. I shall become a byword, a thing of scorn for every scribbler to aim his wit at.'
She gnawed her fingers in an agony of fear and perplexity. Mr. Kelly had learned enough. There was plainly no chance within the lady's knowledge, as he had hoped, of saving her letters. Neither, then, could the King's papers be saved. He bowed, and took a step towards the door.
'Stop!'
Mr. Kelly turned with alacrity at the eager cry, but Lady Oxford had no words of hope for him.
'You must not leave this house to-night, or must leave it secretly by the garden.'
Kelly smiled grimly. Her ladyship was suddenly grown most tender of her reputation now that it was in peril.
'Your ladyship's care for me, and your hospitality overcome me, but I have, as you perhaps remarked, an assignation of honour with Colonel Montague which nothing must prevent me from keeping. He is longing for an instant revenge--at the Hazard Table. A while ago, you may pardon me for observing, your ladyship was remote from feeling this sudden and violent anxiety on my hand.'
Mr. Kelly's irony was poured out to deaf ears. Lady Oxford paced to and fro about the room, wringing her hands in her extremity. Then she stopped suddenly.
'I might drive to the Minister's.' She reached out a hand towards the bell. Kelly shook his head.
'That visit would be remarked upon unfavourably by the friends of my Lord Oxford, who are not in the Minister's interest. Mr. Walpole has no party to-night, and must have gone to bed--'tis verging on two o'clock--or else he is in his cups. Moreover, theDolliad, the ballad on his sister, was credited to your pen. You know that Mr. Walpole loves a broad jest, and loves revenge. He will not protect you nor miss so fair an opportunity. Nay, I think I read in to-morrow'sFlying Post, "In the papers of the prisoner Kelly, among other treasonable matter reserved for a later occasion, were found the following letters of a high curiosity, which we are graciously permitted to publish; one begins--Oh, my Delicious Strephon."
Lady Oxford snapped her fan between her fingers and dashed the fragments in Kelly's face. He owns that he cannot well complain she served him ill, but he wanted to repay her in some sort for her innuendo about his fate at the hangman's hands, and similar favours. Beholding her passion, which was not unjust, he felt bitterly ashamed of his words.
'You coward!' she said. Her dark eyes glared at him from a face white as the ivory of her broken fan, and then, quite suddenly, she burst into a storm of tears. Kelly's shame was increased a thousandfold.
'I humbly crave your ladyship's pardon,' he said. 'I have spoken in terms unworthy of a chairman. But some remarks of your ladyship's on a future event, to me of painful interest, had left an unhappy impression.'
But Lady Oxford paid no heed to the stammered apology. As Mr. Kelly moved to her she waived him aside with her hands, and, dropping on to a sofa, pressed her weeping face into the cushions. Sobs shook her; she lay abandoned to distress.
Mr. Kelly stood apart and listened to the dolorous sound of her weeping. That was true which she had said; he had promised to burn those letters; he had sworn that he had burned them. His fine plan of using them as a weapon against her began to take quite another complexion. There were, no doubt, all manner of pious and respectable arguments to be discovered in favour of the plan, if only he pried about for them. But a saying of Mr. Scrope's was suddenly scrawled out in his recollections: 'Æneas was an army chaplain who invoked his religion when he was tired of the lady, and so sailed away with a clear conscience.' Kelly murmured 'Rose' to himself, and, again, 'Rose,' seeking to fortify himself with the mention of her name. But it had the contrary effect. Even as he heard his lips murmuring it, the struggle was over.
George had a number of pretty finical scruples, of which his conduct at this crisis of his fortunes was a particular example. He relates how it seemed to him that at the mention of her name Rose threw out a hand to him and drew him up out of a slough; how he understood that his fine plan was unworthy of any man, and entirely despicable in the man whom she, out of her great condescension, had stooped to love; how he became aware that he owed it to her, since she was a woman, that no woman's fame, whether a Smilinda's or no, should be smirched by any omission of his; how he suddenly felt in his very marrow that it would dishonour Rose to save her even from great misery by alâchetétowards another of her sex. His duty was revealed to him in that moment, as clear as it was unexpected. He sets his revulsion of feeling wholly to Rose's account, as a man in love should, but very likely her ladyship's fan had something to do with it.
He spoke again to Lady Oxford, and very gently.
'Madam, it is true. I promised to burn your letters. I swore that I had burned them. My honour, I perceive, can only be saved by saving yours.'
Lady Oxford raised her head from the cushions and stared at him with wondering eyes.
'Let us play this gamecartes sur table,' continued Kelly.
Her ladyship rose from her sofa and sat herself in a chair at a table, still wondering, still suspicious. George took the chair on the other side of the table, and spoke while Lady Oxford dried the tears upon her face. To help her at all he must know all that she knew. His first business was to remove her ladyship's suspicions.
'I understand that your ladyship, by some means of which I am as yet ignorant, has become aware of a certain Plot, and has carried the knowledge to Mr. Walpole.'
Lady Oxford neither agreed nor denied. She admitted the truth of Mr. Kelly's statement in her own way.
'You bragged and blabbed to my worst enemy, to Lady Mary, with her poisonous pen,' and her fine features writhed with hatred as she spoke Lady Mary's name.
'There your ladyship was misled,' returned Kelly. 'My lips have been sealed, as I already had the honour to inform you. My Lady Mary may not love you, but she is innocent of this offence. If she wrote those rhymes, she was, indeed, more my enemy than yours; and my enemy, as your ladyship is aware, she is not.'
Lady Oxford understood the strength of the argument.
'Ah, yes,' she said thoughtfully. 'The apothecary's daughter!'
The contemptuous phrase slipped from Lady Oxford by mistake, and was not at all uttered in a contemptuous voice. But she had no doubt fallen into a habit of so terming the girl in her thoughts. None the less, however, it stung Mr. Kelly, who was at some trouble to keep his voice gentle. He knew how much Smilinda owed at this moment to the apothecary's daughter.
'The young lady to whom I conceive you refer, Miss Townley, is of a family as ancient, loyal, and honourable as your ladyship's own, and you may have seen on what terms both ladies were this evening. Moreover, Lady Mary was purely ignorant of Miss Townley's very existence when that pasquinade was written.'
'Then who wrote it?'
'Mr. Scrope, as I have the honour to repeat.'
'Scrope?' she answered in a quick question, as though for the first time she understood that George might well be right. He gave the reasons for his belief as he had given them at the Deanery to Nicholas Wogan. They were to the last degree convincing. Lady Oxford was persuaded long before Mr. Kelly had come to an end. A look came into her face which Kelly could not understand, a look of bitter humiliation. 'Scrope,' she muttered, as her fingers played with the cards upon the table. She overturned a card which lay face downwards on the table, and it chanced to be the knave of hearts.
'Your ladyship now sees that you fell into a natural error,' continued Kelly, who was anxious to smooth Lady Oxford's path, 'in consequence of which you took a natural revenge. May I ask how you secured the means of revenge? How, in a word, you came to know of the hidden Plot within the Plot?'
Her ladyship's answer fairly startled Mr. Kelly. It was not given at once. She still played with the cards, and overturned another. It was the knave of clubs.
'The cards tell you,' she said with a bitter smile.
Mr. Kelly leaned back in his chair open-mouthed. 'Scrope?' he asked.
'Scrope,' replied her ladyship. 'I received a humble letter from him praying that I would forgive his odious ingratitude, and, by way of peace-offering, bidding me tell my Lord Oxford--'
'Who had already withdrawn,' said George. 'I think I understand,' Lady Oxford's look of humiliation had enlightened him, 'and I think your ladyship understands with me. Mr. Scrope is a sort of a gentleman, and would prefer to do his dirty work without appearing as a spy. He has made use of your ladyship. He sends you the Plot and spurs you to disclose it with his ballad. He would have disclosed it himself, I doubt not, had not your ladyship served his turn. But Mr. Scrope has his refinements, and, besides that he spares himself, would take a particular pleasure in compassing my ruin at the same time that he outwitted you.'
Little wonder that Lady Oxford broke in upon Mr. Kelly's reasonings. It must have been sufficiently galling for her to reflect that in exacting her revenge she had been the mere instrument of a man she had tossed aside.
'It is both of us that he has ruined, not you alone,' she cried.
Certainly, Mr. Scrope was a person to reckon with, and had killed quite a covey of birds with one stone.
'Are you sure?' asked Kelly. 'Are you sure of that?'
She bent across the table eagerly, but she did not reply to the question.
'Will you kill Scrope,' she flashed out, 'and you and I part friends?'
Kelly, even in the midst of this tangle of misfortunes, could not but smile.
'I fear that I may have been anticipated. Mr. Scrope has been watching your ladyship's house to-night--and Mr. Wogan observed him, and, I conceive, has undertaken for him.'
Lady Oxford at that smiled too. 'Then he is a dead man,' she said, slowly savouring her words like wine.
'But his death, madam, will not save your letters,' said Kelly; and the fire died out of her face.
'He has betrayed us both,' she moaned. It seemed she had already forgotten how she herself had seized at the occasion of betraying Mr. Kelly. Kelly was in no mood to debate these subtleties.
'Are you sure?' he contented himself with asking for a second time. 'There is one thing Mr. Scrope has not done. He has taken no measures purposely to insure that your letters will be discovered, since he does not know of them; else, no doubt, he would have done his worst. We two are still engaged in a common cause--your ladyship's. Your intentions in my regard I were much less than a man if I did not forgive, granting (what I now know) your ladyship's erroneous interpretation of my ground of offence, the babbling to Lady Mary. Does your ladyship permit me, then, at the eleventh hour, to save you, if I can find a way, from the odious consequences of Mr. Scrope's unparalleled behaviour?'
'You?'
Lady Oxford's brows were drawn together in perplexity. The notion that Mr. Kelly was prepared to do this thing was still new and strange to her.
'You?' Her eyes searched his for the truth of his purpose, and found it. 'You?' she said again, but in a voice of gratitude and comprehension. And then, with a gesture of despair, she thrust her chair back and stood up. 'You cannot save yourself. I cannot save you.'
'No,' replied George, 'myself I cannot save; but it may not be too late to save my honour, which is now wrapped up in that of your ladyship's. My case is desperate; what can be done for yours? Be plain with me. How much does your ladyship know?'
Lady Oxford turned away from the table. In the face of Kelly's generosity no doubt she hesitated to disclose the whole truth of her treachery.
'I know no more than that you are in peril of arrest,' she said.
'Madam, surely you know more than that. You spoke earlier this evening of my arrest, and you spoke with the assurance of a more particular knowledge.'
Lady Oxford took a turn across the room.
'Oh, my God, what can I do?' she cried, lifting her hands to her head. 'I hear Lady Mary's laughter and the horrid things they will say!'
The whimsical inconsequence of Smilinda's appeal to her Maker did not fail to strike Kelly as ludicrous, but, as his own case was hopeless and abandoned, any thought of revenge or mockery had ceased to agitate him. His honour now stood in saving all that was left of hers from open and intolerable shame, and Rose beckoned him to the task.
'Surely you know more,' he persisted quietly.
Lady Oxford gave in and came back to the table.
'The Messengers should be waiting for you in Ryder Street.'
At last Kelly knew the worst. He would be taken before he reached his doorstep. There would be no chance of saving the cyphers in his strong box. Could he save Smilinda's letters?
He bent his forehead upon his hands, thinking. Smilinda watched him; her lips moved as though she was praying.
'I might be carried to your lodgings and claim what is mine,' she suggested.
'You would be carried to a trap--asouricière. Ten to one you would be arrested by the Messengers. At all events your visit would be remarked upon, and you would not obtain the letters.'
Lady Oxford had no other proposal at hand, and there was silence in the room. Mr. Kelly remained with his face buried in his hands; he took the air in long deep breaths. No other sound was audible except the faint ticking of the clock in the outer withdrawing-room. For Smilinda was holding her breath lest she should disturb the man whom she had betrayed, and who was now wholly occupied with the attempt to save her. Then she remarked that the sound of his breathing ceased. She bent forwards; he raised his face to hers. He did not seem to see her; his eyes kindled with hope.
'You have found a way?' she whispered; and he whispered back:
'A desperate chance, but it may serve.' He started to his feet. 'It must serve.'
A smile brightened over his face.
'It will serve.'
Sure he showed as much pleasure as if he had discovered an issue for himself.
'Quick!' said Smilinda, with a smile to answer his. 'Tell me!'
'Colonel Montague--'
'What of him? Why speak to me now of him?'
Lady Oxford's face had clouded at the name.
'He is your only salvation.'
'What can he do?'
'Everything we need. His loyalty to the present occupant of the Throne is entirely beyond a suspicion. He can act as he will without peril to his reputation. He can even rescue your papers, which are not in the same strong box as my own. The Colonel, if any man, can assist you if he will.'
'But he will not,' said her ladyship sullenly.
'He will,' answered Kelly confidently, 'if properly approached. He is a man of honour, I take it? You will pardon me for saying that your ladyship's flattering behaviour towards me, in his presence (for the nature of which you had, doubtless, your own particular reasons) can have left him in no doubt on certain heads; while it is equally plain that your ladyship hath no longer any very tender interest in keeping his esteem and regard. Nevertheless, being a gentleman, he will not abandon your ladyship's cause.'
Lady Oxford was in no way comforted.
'It may well be as you say,' she returned with a look at Mr. Kelly. She had already one example of how much a gentleman could forgive a woman when she stood in need of his help. 'But, Mr. Kelly, you cannot come at Colonel Montague.'
'Why not?'
'You know very well that he lodges in the same house as yourself. I sent a lackey with a note to you, yesterday. And your reply was dated from 13 Ryder Street.'
Mr. Kelly stepped back, he could hardly believe his ears.
'Colonel Montague--lodges--in the same house as myself?' he asked.
'Yes,' Lady Oxford replied in a dispirited fashion. She had lost heart altogether. Mr. Kelly, on the other hand, was quite lifted up by the unexpected news.
'This is a mere miracle in nature,' he cried. 'I only went into my present lodgings two days ago. I have been abroad for the greater part of the time, and asleep the rest, and have had no knowledge of the other tenants, even of their names. 'Faith, madam, your letters are as safe as though the ashes were now cold in your grate.'
'But the Colonel will have gone home, and you are to be taken in Ryder Street. You will not get speech with him.'
'Nay, madam, he has not gone home. He is waiting for me now.' Lady Oxford started. 'Ah, your ladyship remembers. He is waiting for me. Ten yards from your doorstep--ten yards at the farthest,' and Kelly actually chuckled. Carried away by his plan, he began to pace the room as he unfolded it. 'I shall see the Colonel, and if I can by any means do so, I will acquaint him, as far as is necessary, with the embarrassing posture of your affairs. I shall give him the key of the box containing the--brocades, and, if the Messengers be not already in possession of them, the rest must be entrusted to his honour as a gentleman and a soldier. The unexpected accident of our being fellow-lodgers gives him, to this end, a great advantage, and can scarce have occurred without the providence of--some invisible power or another which watches over your ladyship.'
Kelly thought that Lady Oxford this night had enjoyed what is called the Devil's own luck.
'Have I your ladyship's leave to try my powers of persuasion with Colonel Montague?'
Very much to Kelly's surprise she moved towards him, like one walking in her sleep.
'You are bleeding,' she said, and stanched with her handkerchief some drops from his brow, where it had been cut by the broken edges of the ivory fan. Then she went again into a bitter fit of weeping, which Kelly could never bear to see in a woman. She may have remembered the snow upon the lawn, years ago, and a moment's vision of white honour. Then she stinted in her crying as suddenly as she had begun; in a time incredibly short you could not tell that she had wept.
'You must carry a token. I must write. Oh my shame!' she said, and sitting down to a scrutoire, wrote rapidly and briefly, sanded the paper, and offered it open to Kelly.
'I cannot see it; your ladyship must seal it,' he said, which she did with a head of Cicero.
George took the note, and said: 'Now time presses, madam. I must be gone. I trust that, if not now, at least later, you may forgive me.'
Her lips moved, but no words came forth. Kelly made his bow, and so took leave of Smilinda, she gnawing her lips, as she watched him with her inscrutable eyes, moodily pushing to and fro with her foot the broken pieces of the fan on the polished floor.
There came into Kelly's fancy his parting view of Rose at Avignon, her face framed among the vine leaves, in the open window; she leaning forth, with a forced smile on her dear lips and waving her kerchief in farewell. A light wind was stirring her soft hair at that time, and she crying 'Au revoir!Au revoir!There was a scent of lilacs from the garden in the air of April, George remembered, and now the candles were dying in the sconces with a stench.
With these contrasted pictures of two women and two farewells in his fancy, Kelly was descending the wide empty staircase, not knowing too well where he went. Something seemed to stir, he lifted his eyes and before him he saw again the appearance of his King: the King, young and happy, and as beautiful as the dawn that was stealing into the room and dimming the lustres on the stairs.
Then the appearance moved aside, and Kelly found himself gazing into a great empty mirror that hung on the wall, facing the gallery above.
Lord Sidney Beauclerk, in fact, had not left the house with the other guests, and Kelly, remembering, laughed aloud as he reached the fresh air without.