Parson Kelly/Chapter 24

HE 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 coffee-house 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 the Flying Post of 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 the incognito of 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 a Flying 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 betrayed me, 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.