The question with which Mr. Wogan lay down to sleep after Lady Oxford's rout, woke him at noon; he sent a boy whom he could trust to Ryder Street to desire Colonel Montague's attendance. Montague came back presently with the boy, and gave Wogan the news that the Parson was taken.
'There was no escape possible,' he said. 'I cannot tell you the innermost truth of the affair, because the secret is not mine to tell; but, Mr. Wogan, you will take my word for it, your friend was in the net.'
'The room was searched?'
'And his papers seized. One or two, I believe, were burned, but the greater part were seized,' and then he broke out with an oath. 'Damn these plots! What in the world made you meddle with such Tory nonsense?'
'Faith,' said Wogan, 'I have been wondering how ever you demeaned yourself to become a Whig.'
Wogan wondered very much more what strange mishap had brought Mr. Kelly to this pass at the moment when he seemed to have success beneath his hand. Something wholly unexpected must have happened during those few minutes when he and Smilinda were left alone. Something had happened, indeed, but it was something very much simpler than Mr. Wogan looked for, who had not the key to the Parson's thoughts. However, he forebore to inquire, and instead:
'Colonel,' said he, 'you professed last night that you were under some trifling obligation to me.'
'I trust to-day to make the profession good.'
'Faith, then you can, Colonel. There's a little matter of a quarrel.'
At this the Colonel broke in with a laugh.
'With whom?'
'With a lad I have taken a great liking for,' and the Colonel laughed again. 'Therefore I would not put a slight on him by missing a certain appointment. It is Lord Sidney Beauclerk.'
Colonel Montague's face clouded as he heard the name.
'And the reason of the quarrel?'
'He took objection to a few words I spoke last night.'
'About a ballad? I heard the words.'
'I told him that he would find a friend of mine waiting at Burton's Coffee-house this morning, and I doubt if many friends of mine will be seen abroad to-day.'
Montague rose from the bed.
'I will not deny,' he said, 'that there are services I should have preferred to render you. But I will go to Burton's, on one condition, Mr. Wogan--that you do not stir from this house until I come back to you. There's an ill wind blowing which might occasion you discomfort if you went abroad.'
This he said with some significance.
'It catches at one's throat, I dare say,' replied Wogan, taking his meaning. 'I have a tender sort of delicate throat in some weathers.'
Colonel Montague walked to Burton's, at the corner of King Street in St. James's. The coffeehouse buzzed with the news of Mr. Kelly's arrest, and Colonel Montague saw many curious faces look up from their news-sheets and whisper together as he entered. In a corner of the room sat Lord Sidney Beauclerk, with a man whom Montague had remarked at Lady Oxford's rout the night before.
Lord Sidney arose as Montague approached and bowed stiffly.
'I come on behalf of a gentleman, whom, perhaps, we need not name,' said Montague.
'Indeed?' said Lord Sidney, with a start of surprise.
'I can understand that your lordship did not expect me, but I am his friend.'
'To be frank, I expected no one.'
'Your lordship, then, hardly knows the gentleman?'
'On the contrary,' said Lord Sidney, and he took up from the table theFlying Postof that morning. He handed the paper to Montague, and pointed to a sentence which came at the end of a description of Mr. Kelly's arrest.
'It is said that Mr. Nicholas Wogan is also in London, hiding under theincognitoof Hilton, and that he will be taken to-day.'
'You see, my lord,' said Montague, 'that there are certain difficulties which threaten to interfere with our arrangements.'
'My friend is aware of them,' said Lord Sidney, and presented his friend.
'Before making any arrangements I should be glad if your lordship would favour me with a hearing in some private place. It is I who ask, not my friend, Mr. Hilton.'
Lord Sidney reluctantly consented, and the two men walked out of the coffee-house.
'There are to be no apologies, I trust,' said Lord Sidney.
Montague laughed.
'Your lordship need have no fears. What I propose is entirely unknown to Mr. Wogan. But it seems to me that the conditions of the duel have changed. If Mr. Wogan shows his face in London he will be taken. If he fights you, it matters not whether you pink him or no, for if he escapes your sword he will be taken by the Messengers. On the other hand, he will not go from London until he has met you; unless--'
'Unless--?'
'Unless your lordship insists upon deferring the meeting until it can take place in France.'
'Yes, I will consent to that,' said Lord Sidney, after a moment's pause. 'It is common fairness.'
'Again I take the liberty to observe that your lordship does not know the gentleman. You must insist.'
Lord Sidney was brought without great difficulty to understand the justice of Colonel Montague's argument.
'Very well; I will insist,' he said; and, coming back to Burton's coffee-house, he wrote a polite letter, which the Colonel put in his pocket.
Montague, however, did not immediately carry it to Mr. Wogan. He stood on the pavement of King Street for a little, biting his thumb in a profundity of thought; then he hurried to the stable where he kept his horses, and gave a strict order to his groom. From the stable he set out for Queen's Square, but on the way he bought aFlying Post, and stopped in St. James's Park to see what sort of account it gave of Mr. Kelly's arrest.
'The Plot concerning which they write from Paris,' it began, 'hath brought the Guards into the Park, and a reverend and gallant non-juror within danger of the Law. The Messengers that were essaying to take Mr. Kelly needed reinforcement by a file of musquets before his reverence's lodgings could be stormed. It is said that a loyal Colonel of the Guards who lodges in the same house in Ryder Street was discovered with Mr. Kelly when the soldiers forced their way in, and that by his interference many valuable papers have been saved, which would otherwise have been destroyed. It appears that Kelly was intent upon burning certain cyphers and letters, and had, indeed, burnt two or three of them before the loyal Colonel interrupted him.'
The loyal Colonel took off his hat to Grub Street for this charitable interpretation of his conduct. Lady Oxford, he reflected, must be in a fine flutter, for assuredly she would have sent for the news-sheet the first thing.
Montague tapped the pocket in which were her ladyship's letters, and smiled. Her anxieties would be very suitable to a certain plan of his own.
He walked straight to Queen's Square and knocked at the door. It seemed to him purely providential that the man who opened the door was the big lackey whom he had seen in Ryder Street the night before. Montague looked him over again and said, 'I think that I saw you last night in Ryder Street.'
He had some further conversation with the lackey, and money passed between them. But the conversation was of the shortest, for her ladyship, in a fever of impatience, and bearing every mark of a sleepless night, ran down the stairs almost before Colonel Montague had finished. She gave her hand to him with a pretty negligence, and the Colonel bent a wooden face over it, but did not touch the fingers with his lips. Then she led the way into the little parlour, and her negligence vanished in a second. She was all on fire to know whether her letters had been seized or no; yet even at that moment it was not in her nature to put a frank question when a devious piece of cajolery might serve.
'Corydon!' she said in a whisper of longing, as though Montague was the one man her heart was set upon, as though she had never brought Mr. Kelly into this very room on a morning of summer two years ago. 'My Corydon!' she said, and sighed.
'Madam,' said Montague, in a most sudden enthusiasm, 'I think there is no poetry in the world like a nursery rhyme.'
Her ladyship could make nothing of the remark.
'A nursery rhyme?' she repeated.
'A nursery rhyme,' repeated the Colonel. '"Will you walk into my parlour, said the spider to the fly."'
Lady Oxford looked at him quite gravely.
'I do not in the least understand,' she said. She had a wonderful knack of burying her head in the sand and believing that no one spied her, as travellers tell of the ostrich. 'But you have a message for me, have you not?'
She put the question frankly now, since coquetry had failed.
'I have a packet to deliver to your ladyship,' replied Montague.
Lady Oxford drew a breath and dropped into a chair. 'Thank you! How shall I thank you?' she cried; and seeing that Montague made no answer whatever, but stood stiff as a ramrod, she became at once all weak woman. 'You are very good to me,' she murmured in a very pathetical voice.
'Your ladyship owes me no thanks,' replied Montague. 'Your ladyship has need of all your gratitude for a gentleman who gave up all that he held dear to save your good name.'
He had it on the tip of his tongue to add, 'which was not worth saving,' and barely refrained from the words.
Lady Oxford was not abashed by the rebuke. She turned upon the Colonel eyes that swam with pity for Mr. Kelly's misfortunes.
'I read that he was taken,' she said sadly. 'Poor gentleman! But he should have burnt my letters long ago. They were letters written, as we women write, with a careless pen and ill-considered words which malice might misconstrue. He should have burnt them, as he swore to do; but he broke his word, and so, alas! pays most dearly for his fault. Indeed, it grieves me to the heart, and all the more because he brought his own sufferings about. So unreasonable we poor women are,' and she shook her head, and smiled with a sort of pity for women's frail readiness to forgive.
'Madam,' said Montague, growing yet colder, 'it is not for me either to construe or to misconstrue the packet which I am to give you, nor am I at all concerned to defend a gentleman whom I am proud to name my friend.'
The indifference of the speech no doubt stung her ladyship.
'Friend!' she said with a sneer. 'This friendship is surely something of the suddenest. I did not even so late as last night notice any great cordiality between you.'
'Very likely not,' said Montague. 'Last night there was a trivial cause for disagreement upon which to-day we are of one mind.'
Lady Oxford flushed and took another tone.
'You are cruel,' she said. She was not so much insulted as hurt. 'You are ungenerous. You are cruel.'
But Colonel Montague was not in a melting mood, and so, 'Give me the packet,' she said sullenly.
Montague pressed his hand over his pocket and smiled.
Lady Oxford rose from her chair with a startled face.
'You mean to keep it? To use it?'
'Not to your ladyship's hurt.'
Lady Oxford looked at him with eyes mournful in their reproach.
'Mr. Kelly bade you give these letters back to me at once,' she said; and then, with a great fervour of admiration, 'Mr. Kelly would have given them back to me at once.' It seemed as though the thought of the noble Mr. Kelly was the one thing which now enabled her to keep her faith in men.
'Very likely,' replied Montague coolly, who was not at all moved by the disparaging comparison of himself with the Parson. 'Mr. Kelly would have given them back to you at once had not your ladyship taken good care that a few locks and bars should hinder him. But I am not Mr. Kelly, and indeed it is well for your ladyship I am not. Had your ladyship betrayedme, why, when that pretty news-sheet was read out last night, I would have stood up before the whole company, and told boldly out how your ladyship came by the knowledge which gave you the power to betray me.'
The words and the stern voice in which they were spoken stung Lady Oxford into a passion. She forgot to deny that she had betrayed Mr. Kelly.
'It would have been an infamy!' she cried.
'A harsh critic might say that it would have matched an infamy.'
Her ladyship saw her mistake.
'There was nothing which Mr. Kelly could have said. Mr. Kelly was my friend, as I have told you frankly; but I did not betray him.'
'Your ladyship's livery is blue and silver, I think--a pretty notable livery even at night, as I had occasion to remark in Ryder Street.'
Lady Oxford was put out of countenance.
'What am I to do to earn the packet which is mine?' she asked bitterly.
'The simplest thing imaginable. Your ladyship, I fear me, has not slept well. What say you to a little country air, with your humble servant for a companion? If your ladyship would order your carriage to be at your door in an hour's time we might take the air for a while together. On our return your ladyship will be refreshed for this evening's diversions, and I shall be the lighter by a packet of letters.'
Lady Oxford did not know what to make of the Colonel's proposal, but she perforce consented to it.
'I obey your orders,' said she bitterly; and Montague went back to Wogan, whom he found sitting on the edge of the bed and disconsolately swinging his legs.
'I have a letter for you from Lord Sidney Beauclerk,' said Montague.
It was a very polite letter, and assured Mr. Wogan that he would on no account fight with him in England; but would cut his throat somewhere in France with the greatest friendliness possible.
'Very well,' said Wogan, 'but I have to reach France first.'
'You will start in an hour's time,' said Montague.
'In broad daylight?' asked Wogan. 'And what of the ill wind and the sore throat that's like to come of it?'
'I have got a fine coat to protect the throat.'
Montague went outside and cried down the stairs to know whether a parcel had been brought into the house. The parcel was carried upstairs into Mr. Wogan's room. The Colonel unwrapped it, and spread out on the bed a blue and silver livery.
'A most distasteful garb,' said Wogan.
'It is indeed not what we would choose for the descendant of kings,' murmured Montague gently as he smoothed out the coat.
'Viceroys, Colonel, viceroys.'
'Viceroys, then, Mr. Wogan; but no doubt they murdered, and robbed, and burned, and ravished, just like kings. Besides, you have an example. For I seem to have heard of another Wogan, who went to Innspruck as a shopkeeper.'
'To be sure,' cried Nick. 'That is the finest story in the world. It was my brother Charles--'
'You shall tell me that story another time,' said Montague, and Wogan stripped off his clothes.
'Will you tell me what I am to do when I am dressed?'
'You will go to a certain house.'
'Yes,' said Wogan, and pulled on the lackey's breeches.
'At the house you will find a carriage.'
'I shall find a carriage.' Wogan drew on a stocking.
'You will mount behind as though you were a footman from the house.'
'A footman from the house,' repeated Wogan, and he pulled on the other stocking.
'I shall get into the carriage with a companion. You won't know me. The carriage will drive off. You won't speak a word for fear your brogue should betray you.'
'I will whisper my opinions to you in English, Colonel,' said Wogan as he fastened his garters.
'I don't think you could,' said Montague, 'and certainly you will not try. We shall drive to the almshouses at Dulwich. When we get there, I will make an excuse to stop the carriage.'
'You won't be alone, then?'
'No. Let me see. It is a fine sunny day. I will say that my watch is stopped, and I will send you to see the time by the sundial in the court.'
Wogan buttoned his waistcoat.
'I will bring you the exact minute.'
'No you won't. You will cross the court to the chapel, by the chapel you will find a path, and the path will lead you out through an arch into another road, bordered with chestnut trees.'
'And when I am in the road?' Wogan tied his cravat.
'You will find my groom with a horse. The horse will be saddled. There will be pistols in the holsters, and then your patron saint or the devil must help you to get out of the country.'
'I have a friend or two on the coast of Sussex who will do as well,' said Wogan, and he drew the coat over his shoulders, 'and I am very grateful to you. But sure, Colonel, what if a constable pulls me off the carriage by the leg before we are out of London? You will be dipped yourself.'
'There's no fear of that if you hold your tongue.'
Wogan took up his hat.
'And who is to be your companion?'
Montague hesitated.
'My companion will be a lady.'
'Oh! And where's the house with the carriage waiting at the door?'
'In Queen's Square, Westminster.
Wogan looked at his clothes.
'I am wearing her damned livery,' he cried. 'No, I will stay and be hanged like a gentleman, but I take no favours at Lady Oxford's hand,' and in a passion he began to tear off the clothes.
'She offers none,' said Montague. 'She knows nothing of what I intend. I would not trust her. If you have to stand behind, I have to drive by her side; and upon my word I would sooner be in your place. Her ladyship's footman for an hour! Man, are you so proud that your life cannot make up for the humiliation? Why, I have been her lapdog for a year.'
Wogan stopped, with one arm out of the sleeve of his coat. The notion that her ladyship was not helping him, but that, on the contrary, he was tricking her, gave the business a quite different complexion.
'D'ye see? The one place in London where the King's Messengers will not look to find you is the footboard of Lady Oxford's carriage,' urged Montague.
There was reason in the argument: it was the same argument which Mr. Wogan had used to persuade Mr. Kelly to go to Queen's Square the evening before, and now he suffered it to persuade himself.
Wogan drew on the coat again, pulled his peruke about his face, and drew his hat forward on his forehead.
'Now follow me. It is a fortunate thing we are close to her ladyship's house.'
Montague walked quickly to Queen's Square. Wogan followed ten yards behind. As they turned into the square they saw Lady Oxford's carriage waiting at the door.
'Does the coachman know?' asked Wogan, lounging up to the Colonel and touching his hat with his forefinger.
'The lackey whose place you took has primed him.'
At the door Mr. Wogan climbed up to the footboard while Montague entered the house. In a minute Lady Oxford came out, and was handed into the carriage by the Colonel. She did not look at her new lackey, but gave an order to the coachman and the carriage drove off. Mr. Wogan began to discover a certain humour in the manner of his escape which tickled him mightily. He noticed more than one of his acquaintances who would have been ready to lay him by the heels, and once Lady Oxford made a little jump in her seat and would have stopped the coachman had not Colonel Montague prevented her. For Lord Sidney Beauclerk stood on the path gazing at her ladyship and the Colonel with a perplexed and glowing countenance. Mr. Wogan winked and shook a friendly foot at him from the back of the carriage, and his lordship was fairly staggered at the impertinence of her ladyship's footman. So they drove out past the houses and between the fields.
Colonel Montague was plainly in a great concern lest Lady Oxford should turn round and discover who rode behind her. He talked with volubility about the beauty of spring and the blue skies and the green fields, and uttered a number of irreproachable sentiments about them. Lady Oxford, however, it seemed, had lost her devotion to a country life, and was wholly occupied with the Colonel's indifference to herself. Her vanity put her to a great many shifts, which kept her restless and Mr. Wogan in a pucker lest she should turn round. Now it was her cloak that, with an ingenious jerk, she slipped off her shoulders, and the Colonel must hoist it on again; now it was her glove that was too small, and the Colonel must deny the imputation and admire her Liliputian hand, which he failed to do; now his advice was asked upon the proper shape of a patch at the corner of the mouth, and a winsome, smiling face was bent to him that he might judge without any prejudice. The Colonel, however, remained cold, and Wogan was sorely persuaded to lean over and whisper in his ear:
'Flatter her, soften your face and adore her, and she will be quiet as a cat purring in front of a fire.'
For it was solely his indifference that pricked her. Had he pretended a little affection, she would have whistled him off without any regret, but she could not endure that he should discard her of his own free will. This, however, Colonel Montague did not know; he had not Mr. Wogan's experience of the sex, and so Lady Oxford restlessly practised her charms upon him until they came to the gates of the almshouses at Dulwich.
Then Colonel Montague cried to the coachman to halt.
'Or would your ladyship go further?' he asked, and pulled his watch out of his fob to see the time. But his watch had unaccountably stopped. 'Nay, there's a sundial in the court there,' he said, and over his shoulder bade the lackey go and look at it. The lackey climbed down from the footboard. At the same moment Colonel Montague bade the coachman turn, and since the lackey kept at the back of the carriage as it turned, Lady Oxford did not catch a glimpse of him. The lackey walked through the gates, crossed the grass to the chapel without troubling his head about the sundial, ran down the passage and under the archway into a quiet road shaded with chestnut trees and laburnums. Colonel Montague's groom was walking a horse up and down the road. Wogan mounted the horse, thrust his feet into the stirrups, and took the air into his chest with incomparable contentment.
The afternoon sunlight shone through the avenue and glistened on the laburnum flowers. But there is another sort of yellow flower that blooms from the mouth of a pistol barrel with which Mr. Wogan was at that moment more concerned, and he unstrapped the holsters and looked to the priming to see whether the buds were ready to burst. Then he drove his heels into his horse's flanks and so rode down between the chestnut trees. 'Your ladyship, we need wait no longer,' said Montague to Lady Oxford. 'Your footman will not come back, and I have the honour to return you your packet of letters.'
With that he drew the letters from his pocket, sealed up in a parcel with Mr. Kelly's ring. Lady Oxford clutched them tight to her bosom, and lay back in the carriage, her eyes closed. The coachman drove back to London.
They had gone almost half the way before Lady Oxford recovered sufficiently from her joy to have a thought for anything but the letters. Then she looked at Montague, and her eyes widened.
'The footman!' she said. 'Ah! I have saved Mr. Kelly after all. I have saved him!'
The Colonel might have pointed out that whatever saving had been done, Lady Oxford had taken but an involuntary hand in it. But he merely shrugged his shoulders; he imagined her anxiety on Mr. Kelly's account to be all counterfeit, although, may be, she was sincere.
'Mr. Kelly,' he said, 'is most likely in the Tower. Your footman was Mr. Nicholas Wogan.'
Lady Oxford was silent for some little time. Then in a low, broken voice she said:
'There was no need you should have so distrusted me.'
Montague glanced at her curiously. Her face had a new look to him. It was thoughtful, but with a certain simplicity in the thoughtfulness; compunction saddened it, and it seemed there was no artifice in the compunction.
'Madam,' he answered gently, 'if I had told you, and the manner of Mr. Wogan's escape became known, you might fall under the imputation of favouring Mr. Wogan's cause.'
Lady Oxford thanked him with a shy look, and they drove back among the streets. Neither of them spoke until they reached Queen's Square, but Colonel Montague was again very gentle as he handed her from the carriage and bade her good-bye. Lady Oxford's discretion was to seek. The Colonel seemed to be in a relenting mood; she could not resist the temptation.
'My Corydon!' she whispered under her breath.
Montague's face hardened in an instant.
'My Phylinda!' he replied. 'No, I should say my Smilissa. Madam, there is, in truth, some family likeness between the names, and perhaps it would be better if I said simply "Lady Oxford."'
So the Colonel got his foot out of the net. Her ladyship made no answer to his sneer, but bowed her head and passed slowly into her house. Montague had struck harder than he had intended, and would gladly have recalled the words. But the door was closed, and the strange woman out of sight and hearing. He walked away to his lodging in Ryder Street, very well content with his day's work, and opening the door of his parlour on the first floor was at once incommoded by a thick fog of tobacco-smoke. But through the fog he saw, comfortably stretched in his best armchair, with his peruke pushed back and his waistcoat unbuttoned, a lackey in Lady Oxford's livery. Montague lifted up his voice and swore.
'I lent you the swiftest horse I have,' said Montague.
'It is just for that reason I am back before you,' replied Wogan.
Colonel Montague at once became punctilious to the last degree. He stood correct in the stiffest attitude of military deportment. A formal politeness froze the humanity out of his face.
'This makes me very ridiculous, Mr. Wogan,' he said in a tone of distaste. 'If you will pardon the remark, I was at some pains and perhaps a little risk to get you safe out of London. You accepted my services, as it seemed, and yet here you are back in London! Indeed this makes me very ridiculous.'
Mr. Wogan had quite forgotten that Colonel Montague was an Englishman, and so hated ridicule worse than the devil. He was briskly reminded of the fact, and having ruffled the gentleman's feelings, must now set to work to soothe them.
'It is very true, Colonel. My behaviour looks uncommonly like a breach of good taste. But it was not for the purpose of playing a trick on you that I came back into danger, when I was safe upon the back of your beautiful horse. Sure, never have I ridden a nobler beast. A mouth of velvet, a leg tapered like a fine lady's finger, a coat--sir, I have seen the wonderful manufactures of Lyons. There never was silk so smooth or of so bright a gloss, as the noble creature's coat. He spurned the earth, at each moment he threatened to float among the clouds. Sure, that horse was the original of Pegasus in a direct descent. A true horse, and more than a horse, a copy of all that is best in England, an example of what is most English and therefore most admired, the true English military gentleman.'
'Mr. Wogan,' interrupted Montague, with a grim sort of smile, 'you are likely to learn a little more particularly about the velvet mouth of the English military gentleman if you continue to praise his horse at the expense of his sense. Will you tell me why you have come back?'
'You have a right to ask that, Colonel, but I have no right to answer you. It is a private affair wherein others are concerned. I should have remembered it before, but I did not. It only came into my mind when I was riding between the chestnut trees, and leaving my friend behind me.'
Colonel Montague was silent for a little.
'In another man, Mr. Wogan, I should suspect an intention to meddle with these plots. But I have no need to remind you that such a proceeding would not be fair to me. And if Mr. Kelly's concerns have brought you back I cannot complain. Meanwhile how are you to lie hidden? I cannot keep you here.'
'There are one or two earths, Colonel, which are not yet stopped, I have no doubt. I did but take the liberty to use your lodging until it grew dark.'
The evening was falling while Wogan and Montague thus talked together. Wogan wrote a letter which he put into his pocket, and holding the ends of his wig in his mouth, without any fear ran the hazard of the streets.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was that evening adorning herself for a masquerade in her house, when word was carried to her that Lady Oxford's big lackey was below and had brought a letter. Lady Mary had no sooner glanced at the superscription than she sent her maid downstairs to bring the lackey immediately to her boudoir. Thither he came without awaking suspicion in the servants, and found Lady Mary sitting in front of her toilette, which was all lighted up with candles, and the rest of the room dark.
Mr. Wogan remained in a dark corner by the door.
'You have a message from Lady Oxford,' said she, carelessly holding out a hand as though to take a letter.
'By word of mouth, your ladyship,' replied Wogan in a disguised voice.
Lady Mary dismissed her maid and spoke in considerable heat:
'Colonel Montague told me you had escaped.'
'I have come back,' replied Wogan coolly, who had no reason to think he had justly incurred Lady Mary's anger, and so made no account of it.
'It is sheer madness,' she exclaimed, 'and yet no more mad than it is for your friends to take precautions for your safety,' and she dabbed a patch on her cheek viciously. 'Why have you come back?'
'Your ladyship has not forgotten how some while ago Lady Oxford paid her losses at cards.'
Lady Mary raised her head from her mirror and looked at Wogan.
'With Mr. Kelly's winnings from the South Sea,' said she.
'Your ladyship was kind enough then to say that you would not count the money yours.'
'I remember.'
'But would keep it, since you could not return it to George, until such time as it could be used on his behalf.'
Lady Mary took a key from a drawer in her toilette and, unlocking a cabinet in a corner of the room, showed Wogan a parcel of bills of exchange lying amongst a heap of guineas.
'The moment for using it has come,' said Wogan.
'Take it, then,' said Lady Mary, who now asked for no explanations.
'No. It is only of use if your ladyship uses it.'
'How?'
Lady Mary went back to her toilette and busied herself with a number of little silver pots and boxes, while Wogan disclosed his plan.
'George was taken last night in his lodging, as your ladyship is no doubt aware. It is a large sum that Lady Oxford lost at cards, and a large sum might perhaps bail George, if a trusted Whig were the surety. He would have some few weeks of liberty, at all events.'
'Some few weeks that are like to cost you your life,' said Lady Mary, who was now grown friendly. 'It was to tell me this you came back. I should have guessed.'
'Madam, I shall never believe my life's in danger until I am dead,' replied Wogan, with a laugh.
'I will see what the money can do to-morrow,' said Lady Mary. 'Where shall I have news of you? Or very likely I am to meet you at Ranelagh?'
Wogan disclaimed any such bravado, and told her ladyship of a house where she might hear of him if she sent by night and if her messenger knocked in a particular way. To that house he now bent his steps, and stayed there that night and the next day. It was already dark when the particular knock sounded on the door, and Mr. Wogan lifted a corner of the blind and peered down into the street. What he saw brought him down the stairs in a single bound; he opened the door cautiously, and who should slip in but the Parson.
'Nick!' said he, in a warm voice. His hand clasped Wogan's in the dark. 'Thanks, thanks!'
It appeared that Lady Mary, after seeing that George was bailed out, had told him that the notion of bailing him was none of hers. Moreover, in order to make sure Smilinda's letters were safe, Kelly had gone as soon as he was released to Colonel Montague, who told him of Wogan's return to London and other matters of no importance, so that he now wasted a great deal of time in superfluous compliments. 'But you shall not lose your life on my account, Nick. Montague's horse, which it seems you have taken a liking to,' he said, with a smile, 'will be waiting for you at twelve o'clock to-night at Dulwich, and in the same road; but, Nick, this time you will have to walk to Dulwich. There is a warrant out for you. You can slip away with a better chance on foot; and, Nick, this time you will not come back. Promise me that.'
Wogan promised readily enough.
'I brought the Colonel into some danger of suspicion by returning before,' he said. 'It is a strange thing, George, that, while our friends have left us in the lurch, we should owe, I my escape, you your few weeks of liberty, to perfectly inveterate Whigs, though how you came to an understanding with the Colonel is quite beyond me to imagine.'
'I will tell you that now, Nick, since you have an hour to spare;' and, going up to Wogan's room, Mr. Kelly related to him the story of his meeting with the Colonel in the Park, of the disturbance with the Messengers in his rooms, and of the saving of Smilinda, and how his love for Rose urged him to it. It was eight o'clock when he had come to an end. Mr. Wogan heard the clocks striking the hour.
'It will take me an hour to get to Dulwich,' he said, 'so I have three hours to spare. George, have you seen Rose?'
'No; but she knows that I am free, for Lady Mary sent the news to her.'
'That's a pity,' said Wogan, pursing his lips.
'On the contrary, it was not the least kind of Lady Mary's many kindnesses,' said George, who was astonished at Mr. Wogan's cruelty, that would have left the girl in her anxieties a moment longer than was necessary. 'Had she not heard the news till it was stale, she would never have forgiven me--she that has forgiven me so much,' said he, with more sentiment than logic.
'Oh,' said Wogan, 'she has forgiven you so much? My young friend, you are very certain upon a very uncertain point. There's that little matter of her ladyship's miniature.'
Mr. Kelly looked anxiously at Wogan.
'True,' said he; 'I told her a lie about it at Avignon, and made out it was the likeness of Queen Clementina.'
'The lie is the smallest part of the difficulty. She wore the miniature, and wore it in Lady Oxford's withdrawing-room. There's the trouble, for there's the humiliation.'
'But, Nick,' said Kelly, 'she forgave it. Didn't I escort her to her chair? Didn't I feel her hand upon the sleeve of my coat?'
'Oh! she carried herself very bravely, never a doubt of that. For one thing, you were in peril; and, to be sure, she will have kept a liking for you at the worst of it. For another, Lady Oxford was there, and Lady Oxford was not to win the day. My little friend Rose is a girl of an uncommon spirit, and would hold her own against any woman, for all her modest ways. But, just because she has spirit, she will not meekly forgive you. If you expect her to droop humbly on to your bosom, you are entirely in the wrong of it. 'Oons! but it must have been a hard blow to her pride when she found she was in Lady Oxford's house, and knew who Lady Oxford was, and had that miniature about her throat. Will she forgive you at all? The best you have to hope is that she will be content with making your head sing. That she will do for a sure thing; and I think--'
'What?' asked the Parson. The danger of life, the Messengers, the angry Colonel, had only raised his blood; the fear of Rose drove it to his heart. He was now plainly scared.
'I think it was the greatest pity imaginable that Lady Mary sent word to her you were free. For, d'ye see, if you had dropped upon Rose suddenly, and she thinking you locked up in a dark prison and your head already loose upon your shoulders, why, you might have surprised her into a forgetfulness of her pride; but now she will be prepared for your coming. I think, George, I will walk along with you as far as Soho, since I have three hours to kick my heels in.'
'Will you, Nick?' cried George eagerly; and then, with his nose in the air, 'But I have no fears whatever. She is a woman in a thousand.' He was, none the less, evidently relieved when Wogan clapped his hat on his head. The night was dark, and Wogan in his livery had no fears of detection.
The two men walked through by-streets until they came to Piccadilly. The Parson was nerving himself for the meeting, but would not allow that he was in the least degree afraid. 'A trivial woman would think of nothing but her humiliation and her slight, but Rose is, as you say, of an uncommon spirit, Nick,' he argued.
Nick, however, preserved a majestic silence, which daunted the Parson, who desired arguments to confute. They were by this time come into Bond Street, and Mr. Kelly, who must be talking, declared with a great fervour, 'There are no limits to a woman's leniencies. Black errors she will pardon; charity is her father and her mother; she has an infinity of forgiveness, wherefore with truth we place her among the angels.' Upon that text he preached most eloquently all the way up Bond Street, past the New Building, until he came to the corner of Frith Street in Soho. In Frith Street, all at once the Parson's assurance was shown to be counterfeit. He caught at his friend's arm.
'Nick,' said he, in a quavering, humble voice, 'it is in Frith Street she lives. What am I to do at all? I am the most ignorant man, and a coward into the bargain. Nick, I have done the unpardonable thing. What am I to do now?'
Thus the Parson twittered in a most deplorable agitation. Mr. Wogan, on the contrary, was very calm. It was just in these little difficulties, which require an intimate knowledge of the sex, that he felt himself most at home. He stroked his chin thoughtfully.
'Nick,' and George shook the arm he held, 'sure you can advise me. You have told me so often of your great comprehension of women. Sure, you know all there is to be known about them, at all.'
'No, not quite all,' said Wogan, with a proper modesty. 'But here I think I can help you. Which is the house?'
Kelly pointed it out. A couple of windows shone very bright upon the dark street, a few feet above their heads. Looking upwards they could see the ceiling of the room and the globe of a lamp reflected on the ceiling, but no more.
'It is in that room she will be sitting,' whispered the Parson.
'And waiting for you,' added Mr. Wogan grimly.
'And waiting for me,' repeated the Parson with a shiver.
They both stared for a little at the ceiling and the shadow of the lamp.
'Now, if the ceiling would only tell us something of her face,' said Kelly.
'It would be as well to have a look at her,' said Wogan. The street was quite deserted. 'Will you give me a back'?
The house was separated from the path by an iron railing a couple of feet from the wall. The Parson set his legs apart and steadied himself by the railing, while Wogan climbed up and knelt on to his shoulders. In that position he was able to lean forward and catch hold of the sill. His forehead was on a level with the sill. By craning his neck he could just look into the room.
'Is she there?' asked the Parson.
'Yes, and alone.'
'How does she look? Not in tears? Nick, don't tell me she's in tears.' The Parson's legs became unsteady at the mere supposition of such a calamity.
'Make yourself easy upon that point,' said Wogan, clinging for dear life to the sill, 'there's never a trace of a tear about her at all. For your sake, George, I could wish that there was. Her eyes are as dry as a campaigner's biscuits. Oh, George, I am in despair for you.'
'Nick, you are the most consoling friend,' groaned the Parson, who now wished for tears more than anything else in the world. 'What is she doing?'
'Nothing at all. She is sitting at the table. George, have you ever noticed her chin? It is a sort of decisive chin, and upon my word, George, it has the ugliest jilting look that ever I saw. She has just the same look in her big grey eyes, which are staring at nothing at all. Keep still, George, or you will throw me.'
For the Parson was become as uneasy as a restive horse.
'But, Nick, is she doing nothing at all? Is she reading?'
'No, she is doing nothing but expect you. But she is expecting you. Steady, for if I tumble off your shoulders the noise will bring her to the windows.'
The menace had its effect. Mr. Kelly's limbs became pillars of marble, and Wogan again looked into the room.
'Wait a moment,' he said, 'I see what she is doing. She is staring at something she holds in her hands.'
'My likeness?' cried the Parson hopefully. 'To be sure it will be that.'
'I will tell you in a moment. Hold on to the railings, George.'
George did as he was bid, and Wogan, still holding to the window-sill very cautiously, stood up on his friend's shoulders. George, however, seemed quite insensible to Mr. Wogan's weight.
'It will be my likeness,' he repeated to himself. 'I had it done for her by Mr. Zincke. I was right, Nick; she has forgiven me altogether.'
Mr. Wogan's head was now well above the window-sill, and he looked downwards upon Rose, who sat at the table.
'Yes, it's a likeness,' said Nick.
'I told you. I told you,' said the Parson. The man began to wriggle with satisfaction. 'You are wrong, Nick. You know nothing at all about women, after all. Come down, you vainglorious boaster.' It seemed he was about to cut capers with Mr. Wogan on his shoulders.
'Wait,' said Nick suddenly, and hitched himself higher.
'Nick, she will see you.'
'No, she's occupied. George!'
'What is it?'
'It's Lady Oxford's miniature she is staring at, and not yours at all.'
The Parson grew quite stiff and rigid.
'Are you sure?' he whispered, in an awe-stricken voice.
'I can see the diamonds flashing. 'Faith my friend, but I had done better to have let you throw them into the sea at Genoa.'
A groan broke from the Parson.
'Why didn't you, Nick? What am I to do now?'
'I can see the face. 'Tis the miniature of her ladyship that you gave out to be Queen Clementina's. Did you ever meet Gaydon, George?' he asked curiously.
'Gaydon?' asked Kelly. 'What in the world has Gaydon to do with Rose?'
'Listen, and I'll inform you. He told my brother Charles a very pretty story of the Princess Clementina. It seems that when she escaped out of her perils and came to Bologna to marry the Chevalier, who had, just at the moment when he expected his bride, unaccountably retired into Spain, she stayed at Bologna, and so, picking up the gossip of the town, expressed a great desire to visit the Caprara Palace. 'Twas there the lady lived who had consoled the Chevalier in his anxieties. No doubt he never expected the Princess to get out of the Emperor's prison. But Charles got her out, and here was she at Bologna. To be sure, the Princess was a most natural woman, eh? And when she came to the Caprara Palace she asked to be shown the portrait of the Princess de la Caprara. That was more natural still. Gaydon describes how she looked at the portrait, and describes very well. For sure Rose is looking at Lady Oxford's in just the same way.'
'That's good news, Nick,' said Kelly, grasping at a straw of comfort. 'For the Princess Clementina forgave.'
'Ah, but there's a difference I did not remark at the first. I remember Gaydon said the Princess turned very red, while your little friend Rose, on the contrary, is white to the edge of her lips. Sure, red forgives, when white will not. George,' and Mr. Wogan ducked his head beneath the window-ledge, 'she is coming to the window! For the love of mercy don't move, or she will hear!'
George pressed himself close to the railings. Wogan hunched himself against the wall in the most precarious attitude. Would she open the window? Would she see them? Both men quaked as they asked themselves the question, though they had come thither for no other purpose but to see her and be seen of her. Wogan threw a glance over his shoulder to where the light of the window fell upon the road. But no shadow obscured it.
'Sure, she's not coming to the window at all,' said Nick.
'Oh, Nick,' whispered the Parson, 'you made my heart jump into my throat.'
Wogan drew his head up level with the window again, and again ducked.
'She is standing looking towards the window with the likeness in her hand,' and he scrambled to the ground, where the pair of them stood looking at one another, and then to the house, and from the house down the street. Wogan was the first to find his tongue.
'It is a monstrous thing,' said he, and he thumped his chest, 'that a mere slip of a girl should frighten two grown men to death.'
Mr. Kelly thumped his chest too, but without any assurance.
'Nick, I must look for myself,' he said.
Footsteps sounded a little distance down the street, and sounded louder the next moment. A man was approaching; they waited until he had passed, and then Mr. Kelly climbed on to Wogan's shoulders, and in his turn looked into the room.
'Nick!' he whispered in a voice of awe.
'What is she doing?'
'She has thrown Smilinda's likeness on the ground. She is stamping on it with her heel. She is grinding it all in pieces.'
'And the beautiful diamonds? Look if she picks them up, George!'
'No; she pays no heed to the stones. It is the likeness she thinks of. It was in pieces a moment ago; it is all powder now,' and he groaned.
'George, it is an ill business. When a woman spurns diamonds you may be sure she is in a mortal fluster. It's a Gorgon you have to meet--a veritable Gorgon.'
Mr. Kelly slid from Wogan's shoulders to the ground.
'What will I do, Nick?'
Nick bit his thumb, then threw his shoulders back.
'I am not afraid of her,' said he. 'No, I am not. I have done nothing to anger or humiliate her. I am not afraid of her at all--not the least in the world. I will go in myself. I will beard her just to show you I am not at all afraid of her.'
'Will you do that? Nick, youarea friend,' cried Kelly, who was most reasonably startled by his friend's heroism.
'To be sure I will,' said Nick, looking up at the window. 'I am not afraid of her. A little slip of a girl! Why should we fear her at all? Haven't we killed men more than once? Do you wait here, George. If I hold my hand up at the window with my fingers open--so, you may come in. But if I hold up a clenched fist, you had best go home as fast as your legs can carry you. You see, the case is different with you. I have no reason whatever to be frightened at her.'
He knocked at the door, and in a little the door was opened. 'Not the least bit in the world!' he stopped to say to Mr. Kelly in the street. Then he stepped into the passage.