Parson Kelly/Chapter 15

OGAN finished the work of adorning his person, and stepped into the street. The night was serene, with a full moon, the air still, the pavements were clean as the deck of his ketch. He thought that he would walk from his rooms to the Dean's by way of St. James's Park, and consequently he passed through Ryder St. and in front of Mr. Kelly's new lodgings. Just as he came to Mr. Kelly's lodgings, the door opened. A gentleman came forth; the moonlight was full on his face. Mr. Wogan muffled his face in his cloak, and stepped stealthily back.

The gentleman was Colonel Montague. He bade the chairmen carry him to Queen's Square; Mr. Wogan heard the word of command with an inexpressible confusion of dismay. He had hardened his heart to encounter the enemy whose life, in a youthful indiscretion, he had saved at the risk of his own, but what was the Colonel doing in Kelly's lodgings?

By this time the warrior and his chair had turned the corner, and Mr. Wogan abandoned himself to meditation. Up and down Ryder Street he paced, puzzling over the Colonel's visit to Kelly, whom, at all events, he could not have found at home. Was he Was he carrying a cartel to his predecessor in Lady Oxford's heart? In that case it was all the more necessary to meet him and play the part of Dr. Franklin's kite, which had not at that time been flown, but is now making talk enough for the learned. On this point Mr. Wogan's mind was constant. Should he question Mrs. Kilburne, he asked himself? Mr. Wogan crossed the road. But the Colonel was little likely to have told her a word of his business. Mr. Wogan stopped.

There was another point: for whatever reason the Colonel had called at George's lodgings, George must be told of the visit. Here was something which pressed, without question. Mr. Wogan marched towards the Dean's house in Westminster, where the Bishop of Rochester lay. He knew the road very well, being himself an old Westminster boy. It was but seven years since he had run away to join his brother Charles and raise the North for King James. He could not tell, at this moment, whether he had deserted his studies for King James's sake, or to escape his dull task of writing out my Lord Clarendon's weary history in a fair hand.

As he entered the precincts, Wogan felt much like a truant boy, and it was as if Time had stood still while '’he'’ ran. Nothing was changed, except that the new dormitory, which Bishop Atterbury had just built, shone white among the black old stones. There were lights in the windows that suddenly went out: the lads were abed. Wogan looked up at the blank windows, and thought of seven years agone, and of his life since then, an unprofitable contemplation, which his mind gladly deserted. He marched up under the arch, through the darkling cloister, and tapped, gently but firmly, at the Dean's door. He must see Mr. Kelly. As it chanced, and by the merest accident in the world, Wogan timed his taps thus: 1—2, 3, 4, 5, 6—7.

There were stealthy steps within, with a movement of yellow light, and then a voice that Mr. Wogan knew very well came through a judas.

'Is it my father's knock?'

'Is it your granny's knock, Sam?' asked Wogan through the judas. The voice was that of Sam Wesley, a young usher in Wogan's time, one whom he had always liked and tormented.

The steps moved away, and the light.

'Sam!' whispered Mr. Wogan, very loud for a whisper, through the judas. 'Sam, you remember me. Nick Wogan.'

The steps were silent.

'Sam, remember Lord Clarendon! Remember Nick, who kicked the bully for beating your little brother Jack.'

The steps shuffled back to the door.

'You have not the password,' said the voice through the judas.

'Damn the password,' whispered Wogan. 'I want George Kelly. I must see him in the name of the Blackbird. Hawks are abroad.'

'It is clean against all rules,' came the voice from within.

'Open, in the name of the cobbler's wax I once put on your chair, or I'll break the windows. You know me, Sam!'

Mr. Wesley knew Mr. Wogan. He undid the lock, Mr. Wogan smuggled himself within, and nearly choked Mr. Wesley in his embrace.

'It is a giant!' said Mr. Wesley, putting up his candle to Wogan's face. The wind blew on the light that flickered in the absolute darkness, all the house being hung with black for Mrs. Atterbury's death.

'A son of Anak, Sam, who would have battered down your old door in a minute.'

'I verily believe you would, Nick,' said Sam, leading the way up the black stairs to a den of his own, where he was within call of the Bishop. On tiptoe he marched, placing his finger on his lips.

When they were got among Sam's books and papers of the boys' exercises, the usher said, 'It is a very extraordinary thing, purely a Providence.'

'I deserve one; the purity of my life deserves one,' said Mr. Wogan. 'But wherein do you see the marvel?'

'You did not know it, but you gave my father's knock,' said Sam in a voice of awe. 'It is Old Jeffrey's doing—directed, of course—directed.'

'Old Jeffrey? Is it a cant name for an honest man?'

'For a very honest spirit,' said the usher, and explained to Mr. Wogan that the particular knock and the passwords to follow (which Mr. Wogan did not know) were his own invention. His father's house at Epworth, in the year 1716, had been troubled, it seems, by an honest goblin that always thumped and routed with a particular malevolence when the Elector was prayed for as 'the King.' Old Mr. Wesley's pet knock, though, the sprite could not deliver. Mr. Wesley had a conceit that the goblin might be the ghost of some good fellow who died at Preston.

'He keeps his politics in the next world,' said Mr. Wogan.

'Wit might say much on that head, wisdom little,' whispered the usher, wagging his kind head. 'You have special business with Mr. Johnson?' he asked. 'He is with my Lord, hard by. The Bishop's voice was raised when Mr. Johnson entered. I caught angry words, but now for long they have been quiet.'

'Mr. Johnson has a way with him,' said Wogan, who had learned from Goring that the reverend Father in God was of a hasty temper. 'How doth his Lordship?'

'Very badly. I never saw him in a less apostolic humour. I know not what ill news he has had from France, or elsewhere, but he has been much troubled about Mr. Johnson's dog, Harlequin. The poodle has been conveyed out of town as craftily as if he were the Chevalier, I know not why, and is now skulking in the country, I know not where.'

It was, indeed, Mr. Wesley's part to know nothing. He was the Bishop's man, and as honest as the day, but had no more enterprise than another usher.

Wogan, he has said, knew Harlequin, second of that name, and had seen him coddled by Mrs. Barnes. He was cudgelling his brains for Harlequin's part in the Great Affair, when a silver whistle sounded, thin and clear.

Mr. Wesley beckoned to Wogan to be still, crept out of the room, and returned on tiptoe with Kelly. The Parson's elegant dress was a trifle disarranged; his face and hands were somewhat stained and blackened as with smoke, but the careful man had tucked up his Alençon ruffles beneath his sleeves. On seeing Wogan George opened his eyes and his mouth, but spoke never a word. He carried a soft bundle wrapped in a tablecloth, and when the door was shut he handed this to Mr. Wesley.

'You have the key of the Dean's garden?' he whispered.

'Yes; but wherefore?' answered Sam.

'His Lordship bids me ask you to have the kindness to bury the contents of this—'

'I know not what is in the bundle,' said Mr. Wesley, with an air of alarm.

'And you need not be told,' said George. 'But can you let me and my friend Mr. Hilton—'

'Mr. Hilton?' gasped Sam, as Kelly put his hand out to Wogan.

'I must present you to Mr. Hilton,' George said, and Wogan bowed and grinned.

'I was about to entreat you, Mr. Wesley, while you are playing the sexton, to permit me and Mr. Hilton the convenience of a few moments of privacy in your chamber.'

'With all my heart,' said the puzzled Sam, hospitably opening a cupboard in his bookcase, whence he lugged out glasses and a bottle of Florence. Then he put list shoes over his own, and stole forth on his errand like a clerical cat.

All this while Wogan had said not one word to Kelly, nor Kelly to Wogan.

Mr. Wogan had sat down to sample the bottle, and Kelly stared at him.

'How did you make your way in here?' he asked at length.

'Old Jeffrey,' said Wogan airily. 'I drink Old Jeffrey's health, wherever he is.'

'I believe you are the devil himself. That password is known to no mortal but Mr. Wesley and me. The Bishop does not know it. His servants never see me come or go—only Sam. Whence got you the word?'

Mr. Wogan very gently tapped 1—2, 3, 4, 5, 6—7 on the table.

'I know many things,' he said. 'But, George, what do '’you'’ know?'

'I know you should be aboard, Nick, and down to the waterside you step from this house.'

'I am already promised,' said Mr. Wogan with an air of fashion. 'I sup with Lady Oxford.'

'You are mad.'

'Nay, you are mad. I know many things. When you were carried hither in your chair, you knew nothing. George, what did the Bishop tell you? Why was he wroth with you? In brief, George, what do you know?'

'The Bishop angry with me! Nick, you know too much. You are the devil.'

'I want to know a great deal more. Come, unpack, and then it is my turn. But first step into Mr. Wesley's bedchamber and wash these hands, which go very ill with silver shoulder-knots; and pour the blackened water out of window. Any man or messenger could see that you have been burning a mort of papers.'

Mr. Kelly hastily adopted Mr. Wogan's precautions. When he entered the room again the conspirator had vanished, the clerical beau remained.

'Now,' said Wogan, 'you are fit to carry out your worldly design of pleasure, and I shall not be ashamed to sup in your company at Lady Oxford's.'

'I have changed my mind; I shall not go. But, Nick, how did you know my mind? 'Twas the last of minds you expected to take me in.'

'I am the devil. Have you not guessed it yourself?' replied Mr. Wogan, who was enjoying himself hugely. Perhaps it was the Florence, coming a-top of the Burgundy. He was quite easy about the discovery. 'But unpack,' he said. 'What befell you with the Bishop?'

'He received me oddly. The room was as dark as a wolf's mouth, being hung with black bombazine. There was a low fire in a brazier, that shone red on his Lordship's polished poll, for he wore no perruque. His eyes blazed, his teeth grinned white. I was put in mind of a fierce old black panther in the French King's gardens.'

'Remote from the apostolic,' said Mr. Wogan.

'So were his first words,' said Kelly:

'"You Irish dog, come here!" quoth the Bishop.

'I offered a conjecture that, in the mournful light, his Lordship did not precisely see whom he was addressing. On that the little old man sprang out at me, seized me by the collar, and then fell back on his couch with a groan that was a curse. I put a cordial that stood by him to his lips, and was about to call Mr. Wesley, when he forbade me with his eyebrows, and cried:

'"Answer me this question before we part for ever. Did you despatch my letters of April 20 to the King and the others?"

'"My Lord," I said, "my duty to you ended with that episcopal laying on of hands, and with that expression which you were pleased to use when I entered."

'He groaned, and said:

'"I apologise. I am mad with pain" (which was plainly true), "and grief, and treachery. I beg your pardon, Mr. Kelly, as a Christian and a sick old man."

'"My Lord, you honour me. I enclosed the letters, as you directed, in a packet addressed to Mr. Gordon, the banker in Boulogne, and I sent them by the common post, your Lordship not having forbidden the ordinary course."

'"Then, damn it, sir, you have ruined us!" said the sick old Christian. "Did I not bid you write to Dillon that nothing of importance should go by the post?"

'"But your Lordship did not seem to reckon these letters of importance, for you did not discharge me from sending them in the common course."

'The Bishop groaned again more than once, and there was a whole Commination Service in the sounds. You know Harlequin, Wogan?'

Mr. Wogan nodded and wondered.

'’Tis Harlequin has ruined us,' said Kelly; 'Harlequin and the Duke of Mar.'

'I am devilish glad to hear it,' said Mr. Wogan.

'Glad to hear it!' exclaimed Kelly, rising from his chair. 'You are told of the discovery of the Great Affair, and the probable ruin of the Cause, and the danger of your friends and yourself, and you are glad to hear it!'

'Faith, I am,' replied Wogan easily, 'for I knew of the discovery before you told me, but I put it down to a lady of your acquaintance.'

The Parson very slowly sat himself down again on his chair.

'In Heaven's name, why?' he asked, with a certain suspense.

'Tell your tale first, then I'll tell mine. This is very excellent Florence.'

'The tale is too long, but the short of it is this: The Bishop had by him a letter of Mar's, dated May 11, in which Mar, addressing the Bishop as Illington, denounced him as plainly to anyone who read the piece as if he had used the Bishop's own style and title. He condoled on Mrs. Illington's recent death, he referred to Mr. Illington's high place in the Church, and to his gout. The three circumstances combined left no doubt as to who Illington is. There was no need such a letter of pure compliment should be written at all, except for the purpose of being opened in the post, and fixing the Bishop as Illington. Then,' Kelly went on, 'I remembered a letter of Mar to myself, of last week, in which he spoke of the dog Harlequin as Mrs. Illington's. If these letters were opened in the post,—and the Bishop knows for certain that they were opened,—a blind man could see that Rochester and Illington are the same man, and own the same dog. The beast saved my life, but he has lost the Cause,' said Kelly with a sigh. 'Mar has sold us. It is known he holds a pension from the Elector. The Bishop knows it in a roundabout way, through Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and so the Bishop and I have burned his papers in the brazier. Sam is interring their ashes in the garden.'

Mr. Wogan poured out another glass of Florence.

'Was there anything very pressing in these same letters of April 20, George? Was there anything to put fear on the Elector's Ministers? Did they say, for instance, that the Blow was to be dealt, you and I know when?'

'Not a word of that,' replied Kelly, and his face lightened. On the other hand, Wogan's fell, which Kelly no doubt remarked, for he continued eagerly, 'D'ye see, there is a chance still, for the Cause, for us, if the Blow be struck quickly. We must strike quickly. So may we retrieve Mar's treachery. The Bishop in his letter made excuses to the King for the delay of any blow. He is not in favour of anything immediate, and in the letters he made his disposition plain. The letters only compromised his Lordship in general, they did not reveal—the Blow.'

Mr. Wogan, however, only shook his head.

'’Faith, now, I'm sorry to hear that,' said he.

'You are glad and sorry on very strange occasions,' said Kelly, sourly. 'First you are pleased that Mar sold us, and then you are displeased that he did not sell the last secret.'

Mr. Wogan leaned his elbows on the table, and bent across towards his friend.

'I am sorry because the last secret has been sold, and it was not Mar that sold it. Therefore somebody else sold it; therefore I am at the pain of being obliged to suspect a lady who probably knows her late lover's cypher.'

Mr. Kelly blanched.

'And how do you know that the last secret is sold?'

'As any man would know who had not lain abed all the day. George, the Park is full of soldiers. The Tower regiment that we thought Layer had bought is there with the rest under canvas. Ministers would not make an encampment in the Park because they knew that the Bishop had advised the King that nothing was to be done. Therefore Mar is not the only traitor.'

'And why should my Lady Oxford be the Judas?'

'Mainly to punish a certain nonjuring clergyman, for whose sake she is the burden of a ballad, and sung of in coffee-houses.'

'A ballad? Of what sort?'

'Of the sort that makes a good whipping-post for a fine lady. Ridicule is the whip, and, by the Lord, it is laid on unsparingly. Perhaps you would like to hear it,' and Mr. Wogan recited, in a whisper, so much of the poem as he judged proper. It closed thus:—

Mr. Kelly swore an oath and took a turn across the room. He came to a stop in front of Sam's bookcase. 'Rose,' said he, in a voice of tenderness, 'sure they might have left the little girl out of it.'

'The barb was venomed, you see,' said Mr. Wogan. 'It was not enough to make a scoff of the lady. She must be stripped of that last consolation, the belief that the discarded Parson wastes in despair. Now she knows that the Parson is consoled. There was spark to powder. The Parson may be putting on flesh. There's an insult to her beauty. Faith, but she must feel it in her marrow, since she risks her Lord's neck for the pleasure of requiting it.'

'No,' said Kelly, 'she could do what she would, for her Lord's neck is not in this noose. Oxford had withdrawn before.'

This was news to Mr. Wogan, who had been concerned only with the actual plan of attack, and sufficiently concerned to have no mind for other matters.

'Oxford withdrawn,' he cried rising and coming across to the Parson. 'Damn him, 'twas pure folly to trust him. Do you remember what Law said that night in Paris? He would trust him no further than he would trust a Norfolk attorney.'

Kelly was silent for a moment, thoughtfully drawing a finger to and fro across the backs of Sam's books.

'I have good reason to remember that night,' he said very sadly. 'Have you forgotten what I said? "May nothing come between the Cause and me!" Why, it seems the Cause goes down because of me, and with the Cause my friends, and with my friends, Rose.'

Mr. Wogan had no word to say. Whatever excuses rose to his tongue seemed too trivial for utterance.

Kelly's finger stopped on one particular book, travelled away and came back to it. Wogan saw that the book was a Bible. The Parson took it from the shelf and turning over the leaves read a line here and there. Wogan knew very well what was passing through his mind. His thoughts had gone back to the little country parsonage and the quiet life with no weightier matter to disturb it than the trifling squabbles of his parish.

'You warned me, Nick,' he said, 'you warned me. But I was a fool and would not heed. Read that!' and with a bitter sort of laugh he handed the open Bible to Mr. Wogan, pointing to a verse. 'There's a text for the preacher.'

The Bible was open at the Book of Proverbs, and Mr. Wogan read. 'The lips of a strange woman drop as a honey-comb and her mouth is smoother than oil. But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on hell.'

Mr. Wogan read the text aloud.

'The strange woman, Nick,' said Kelly, 'the strange woman,' and then in a fierce outburst, 'If I live the man who wrote that ballad shall rue it.'

'They give it to Lady Mary.'

'She never wrote it. Nick, who wrote the ballad? How did you get hold of it?'

'I found the Crow, quite tipsy, singing it to Tyrell, at Burton's, in the little room upstairs.'

'And where did the Crow get the ballad?'

'That is another uncomfortable circumstance. You know Talbot?'

'An honest man, and a good officer, at Preston or in Spain, but a sponge for drink. A pity he was ever let into the plot!'

'Well, he got the ballad from someone with whom he had been drinking at the Little Fox under the Hill, not a fashionable resort.'

'Did he name his friend?'

'He was drunk enough to begin by calling him Mr. Pope.'

'Mr. Pope, the poet?'

'He took that back; and said the poetry put Mr. Pope into his head. The man's real name, he remembered, was Scrotton. I can't guess who he was, friend or spy, but we may take it that he knows what the Crow knows.'

'Thank God for that!' cried Kelly.

'You rejoice on very singular occasions, and are grateful for very small mercies,' said Mr. Wogan, who found it his turn to be surprised. 'What are you so thankful for?'

'Thankful that a woman need not have done this thing, and that my folly may not be the cause of this disaster. Another knew everything—Pope—Scrotton—the ballad! Who wrote the ballad? Who of our enemies knew a word about Rose? Are you blind? Who was at Avignon, spying on me, when I first met Rose? Who hates Lady Oxford no less than he hates me? Whose name was the unhappy tippler trying to remember? Scrotton? Pope?'

'Scrope!' cried Wogan, cursing his own stupidity. 'Scrope it must have been, and the Crow swore that the man told '’him'’ about the plot, and often talked it over.'

'That means, of course, that Scrope made him talk. The old curse of the Cause, that lost us Edinburgh Castle in the Fifteen, when the Scots stopped at the tavern to powder their hair. Our curse, Nicholas. Wine!'

'And Woman,' Mr. Wogan thought, but George ran on,

'Scrope it was who wrote the ballad, for no enemy but Scrope knew what the writer knew. Lady Mary is a friend. Lady Oxford is innocent, thank God—I say it with a humble heart—and I am not the cause of the ruin.'

George's eyes shone like those of a man reprieved. Wogan shook his friend's hand; his own eyes were opened.

'’Tis you are the devil,' he said. 'Scrope has hit everyone he hates, and blown up the plot.'

'His time will come,' said Kelly; 'but I hear Sam on the stair.'

Mr. Wesley, tapping lightly, entered his room.

'Gentlemen,' he said, 'the outer door is open.'

Mr. Wesley's anxiety was plainly to be read in his face.

The two gentlemen bade him farewell, with many thanks for his hospitality. He accompanied them to the door, and they heard the bolt shot behind them as they stood in the cloister.

'Whither should they go?' both men reflected, silent.

Mr. Wogan has remarked on a certain gaiety and easiness of mind caused on this occasion, he considers, by Mr. Wesley's Florence coming after his own Burgundy at supper. He was also elated by George's elation, for to find innocence in one whom he had suspected elevated Mr. Kelly's disposition. They were betrayed, true, but the bitterness of a betrayal by the woman he had loved left him the lighter when the apprehension of it had passed.

One little point rankled in Mr. Wogan's mind in spite of all. Why had Lady Oxford bidden both of them to her rout?

He came at an answer by a roundabout road.

'I must hurry home and burn my papers,' said Kelly, as soon as they were out in the cloister, with the door of the Dean's house shut behind them.

Mr. Wogan, who had other notions, gripped his arm.

'By the way, did you burn my lady's invitation to her rout to-night? What did she say, George? Why did she invite you? And did you burn the note?'

Mr. Kelly smote his hand on his brow. 'My wits were wool-gathering.'

'On Cupid's hedges,' said Wogan.

'But I locked the note up.'

'With the rest of the lady's letters in my dispatch box?'

'’Faith, Nick, you are the devil. How did you know that?'

'Oh, I have divined your amorous use of my box.'

'But you are wrong. I had the box with the dangerous papers of the plot open on the table when I was reading the letter. Mrs. Kilburne knocked at the door. I did not know who it might be. I slipped the letter in on the top of the papers of the Plot, and locked the box before I opened the door.'

'There it remains then? Well, her Ladyship's note is in the better company. But what did she say? Did she give a reason for your meeting?'

'The chief thing, after the usual compliments, was that she had most important news, that might not be written, to give me about Mr. Farmer's affairs. Probably she may have had an inkling of the discovery and wished to warn me.'

'We must see her,' said Wogan, whose curiosity was on edge from the first about this party of pleasure.

'But my papers—I must burn my papers.'

'George, you are set, or you are not set. If you had been set the messengers would have been at your lodgings before I went thither; in fact, before you were out of bed. Therefore, either you have the whole night safe or, going home now, you go into a mousetrap, as the French say, and your papers are the cheese to lure you there. Now, they cannot know of my lady's invitations, and if they by any accident did know, a Minister would hardly take a man at a lady's house. That were an ill use for the hostess.'

'That's true,' said Mr. Kelly, after reflecting. 'Nicholas, I knew not that you had so much of the syllogism in your composition.'

'Another thing, and an odd thing enough,' added Wogan. 'Perhaps nothing is laid against you at all. Did Scrope lay information when he found us at Brampton Bryan?'

'No!' cried Kelly. 'And at Avignon, when a proper spy would have stopped the Duke's gold, he was content with the sword in his own hand.'

'Precisely,' said Wogan; 'Scrope has blown the plot, that's business; but he deals with you himself, that's pleasure. He tried to meet you at Brampton Bryan—he did not have us laid by the heels. He nearly did for you at Avignon, while he let the Duke's business alone, quite content. Now you are alive and he wants a meeting, 'tis clear he did not inform on you, otherwise the messengers would have been with you when the soldiers began the camp in the morning. 'Faith, you may meet Mr. Scrope tonight in St. James's Park. He is a kind of gentleman, Mr. Scrope! But we must see her ladyship first; sure, nothing's safer.'

'Nicholas, thou reasonest well,' said the Parson.

Mr. Wogan towed off his prize, and the pair moved out of the dark, musty cloister into the moonlight.