Parson Kelly/Chapter 26

R. WOGAN'S title of Hilton was now, thanks to the Flying Post, as familiar as his name; he refused both the one and the other to the servant, and was admitted to Rose Townley without any formalities. Her eyes flashed as they remarked his livery, but she was not in any concern about Mr. Wogan, and asked him no questions. She rose with the utmost coldness, did not give him her hand, and only the bare mockery of a bow, as though her indignation against Mr. Kelly was so complete that it must needs embrace his friend.

'I thought that he would have plucked up enough courage to come himself,' said she, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.

'He is a man of the meanest spirit,' replied Wogan, in a sullen agreement. 'It is a strange thing how easily one may be misled. Here have I been going up and down the world with him for years, and I never knew him until now, never knew the black heart of him, and his abominable perfidies.'

Rose was taken aback by Wogan's speech. No doubt she expected a hotch-potch of excuses and arguments on Mr. Kelly's behalf, which would but have confirmed her in her own opinion; but falling in with her views, he took the words out of her mouth.

'So,' she said doubtfully, 'he has lost your friendship too?'

'To be sure,' cried Wogan in a heat, 'would you have me keep friends with a vile wretch whose thoughts writhe at the bottom of his soul like a poisonous nest of vipers?'

Rose neither answered the question nor expressed any approval of Wogan's elegant figure describing Mr. Kelly's mind.

'Oh,' said she, 'then he did not send you to make his peace with me?'

Wogan answered with all the appearances of reluctance.

'No. In fact the man was coming himself, and with a light heart. He made a great to-do about the infinite fairness and charity of women, which place them equal to the angels, and how you excelled all women in that and other womanly qualities. But I told him, on the contrary, that I knew your spirit, and that you were of too noble a pride to shut your eyes to a slight, and would certainly dismiss him. However, he would not be persuaded, so I slipped away from him and ran here, so that I might warn you against him.'

Rose forgot to thank Mr. Wogan for his zeal on her behalf. Indeed her face, in spite of herself, had lightened for a second; in spite of herself her eyes had sparkled when Wogan spoke of the great faith Mr. Kelly had in her charity.

'It was more than a slight,' she said, 'I could forgive a slight— He would have come himself had not you prevented him.'

'But he is coming. He would have been here already, but that he paid a visit on the way to Colonel Montague to discover whether Lady Oxford's letters had been restored to her.'

'Lady Oxford's letters!' exclaimed Rose, her face flushing again with anger.

'To be sure,' said Wogan, 'you would know nothing of them. It is a fine story—the story of Lady Oxford's love-letters.'

'I have no wish to hear it,' cried Rose sharply, and she turned towards the window. Mr. Wogan took a quick step towards her. If she looked out of the window she could hardly fail to observe the Parson.

'Nor is it a story that you should hear,' said Wogan in a soothing voice, 'though indeed to hear it from Mr. Kelly's lips would surely make you aware of his devilish sophistries. For he declares that, but for you, Lady Oxford's love-letters would never have been restored to her, nor would he have gone to prison and put his neck in the noose.'

Rose shivered at those last words and drew in her breath. She turned quickly back to Wogan.

'But for me?' she asked. 'What have I to do with Lady Oxford's love-letters, or with his danger?' and her voice softened towards the end of the sentence.

'Why, Lady Oxford, who knew very well Mr. Kelly's trade, betrayed him in revenge for a certain ballad wherein your name was mentioned.'

'Yes,' interrupted Rose, 'Lady Mary told me of the ballad.'

'Well, you heard Mr. Kelly perhaps assure Lady Oxford that he had her brocades in his lodging, and perhaps you remarked her ladyship's confusion.'

'Yes. I guessed what the brocades were.'

'Very well. Mr. Kelly remained with her Ladyship, who informed him that he would be taken outside his door, and his rooms searched. There were papers in his rooms of a kind to bring him into great danger. But there were also Lady Oxford's letters. The story he will tell you is this, that he meant to use Lady Oxford's letters as a weapon by which he might save his papers and so himself; but a complete revolution took place in his thoughts. He suddenly understood that he owed it to you that no woman's name should be smirched by his fault, and that thus he was bound, at the peril of his life, to rescue Lady Oxford's letters, as he did. A strange chance put it into his hands to burn his own papers, and leave Lady Oxford's to be seized, in which case he would have been saved, and she lost. But he saved his honour instead, and his love for you helped him to it. He rescued her Ladyship's letters, his own are in the hands of the Minister.'

Mr. Wogan, who had now secured a most attentive listener, disclosed all that Mr. Kelly had told him of what took place in Ryder Street.

'This is the story he will tell you. And to be sure, he adds a pretty touch to the pretence. For he went whistling to prison and he says that he whistled because he felt as if you were walking by his side.'

'But what if it were no pretence at all?'

Mr. Wogan sagely shook his head, though the story had the stamp of truth on it to those who knew the Parson.

'If he had held you in such respect would he have sent you Lady Oxford's miniature to wear at Lady Oxford's rout?'

'But he did not send it to me for that purpose,' she cried, 'he did not even know that I was going to the rout. He gave me the miniature a long time ago, when it would have been very difficult for him to tell me whose it was.'

'But he told you it was Queen Clementina's.'

'No. It was I who guessed at that, and he—did not deny it.'

Here at all events was sophistry, but Mr. Wogan was less indignant at it than his anger with the Parson's subtleties would lead one to expect.

'Well,' said Wogan, 'I have told you what it was my plain duty to disclose to you.'

At this moment Wogan chanced to look towards the window. He beheld Mr. Kelly's face pressed against the glass. The man had grown impatient and so had climbed on to the railings. Mr. Wogan broke off with an exclamation he could not repress.

'What is it?' said Rose, turning about.

'Some most beautiful diamonds,' said Wogan, spreading out his hand to the window. He then dropped on to the floor and began picking up the diamonds which Rose had scattered when she set her foot on the miniature. Rose bit her lips, and flushed, as he held them in his palm. Then he said carelessly:

'That fine miniature had diamonds set about it. D'ye know, Miss Townley, that miniature would have been at the bottom of the sea long before Mr. Kelly came to Avignon, but for the diamonds about it. 'Twas I held his arm when, having done with her Ladyship, he would also have done with her Ladyship's present, and I bade him keep it for the value of the jewels.'

There was a loud knocking at the door, which came not a moment earlier than was necessary to prevent Mr. Wogan revealing himself as still the Parson's friend.

'There's the fellow come to importune you,' said Wogan.

'Then he would have thrown it away but for you,' said Miss Townley thoughtfully. 'He did not keep it out of any—'

But Wogan heard the servant pass down to the door, and thought it would be as well if he had a private word with the Parson.

'You will excuse me,' he said with dignity, 'but I have no heart for the man's company. Besides, I have stayed too long in London as it is. Delays would be dangerous.'

But Rose had no ears for any dangers of Mr. Wogan, as he was indescribably glad to remark. For her eyes looked past him to the door; from head to foot she seemed to listen for the sound of the Parson's voice. Mr. Wogan bowed, and opened the door. Though she followed him to the door, and held it open as he passed out, she did not notice that he was going, she had no word of farewell. She did not even notice that Mr. Wogan put the diamonds in his pocket. For Mr. Wogan had his wits about him. Diamonds were diamonds, and the carpet no place for them. Some day they might be of use to the Parson. The door of the street was opened as Wogan stepped into the passage. But Rose did not shut the door of the parlour and so Wogan, as he met Kelly, could only whisper hurriedly, 'Remember, I am your worst enemy,' and so left him to his own resources.

It appeared, however, that they were sufficient. The Parson made no excuses whatever; he carried the day by the modesty of his omissions. Both with regard to the miniature and to the saving of Smilinda he disclosed to her no more than a bald array of facts. He made no parade of the part which the thought of Rose had played in the revulsion of his feelings, bringing him to see that he was bound in honour to save Smilinda's honour; he did not tell her why he went whistling to prison. But Rose knew from Wogan of these evidences of his love, and no doubt thought of them the more because he would not use them to soften her just resentments.

Mr. Wogan left them together, and, walking out to Dulwich, found the Colonel's horse waiting in the road between the chestnut trees. He came to the coast of Sussex in the morning, where he had friends among the smugglers, and lay all that day in a hut within sound of the waves. It was a black, melancholy day for Nicholas Wogan, who was leaving his friends behind him to face their perils alone, and who felt very solitary; not even the memory of the noble deeds of his illustrious forefathers had any power to cheer him, until he heard the grating noise of the boat's keel as it was dragged down the beach to the sea, and saw the sail like a great wing waft up between him and the stars.

He got safe to Paris, where he heard of the strange use to which the Parson put his few weeks of liberty, for the Parson married Rose Townley three weeks later at St. James's Church in Piccadilly, and wrote to Mr. Wogan a very warm, human sort of letter which had not one single classical allusion to disfigure it. In that letter he gave the reasons which had induced him to the marriage.

'I am told,' he wrote, 'that a man so dangerously circumstanced must be selfish in the extreme to marry a woman who, in a short while, may, at the worst, be widowed; and at the best must be separated from her husband in his gaol. I do not fear that you will have so mean an opinion of my inclinations, but I would not have you think me careless upon this point neither. Dr. Townley is old, and his health breaks. He will leave his daughter, when he dies, but little money, and that moment cannot be very far off. It is true that Rose has beauty, and no doubt she might make a rich marriage if she had only beauty. But she has frankness, truth, and constancy as well, qualities which are not marketable wares, since those who possess them will not bring them into the market. Now, if I suffer death for the Cause, Rose will be no poorer than she was before; if, on the other hand, I live, there are the booksellers, and from the silence of my prison I can make shift to earn for her a decent livelihood.'

As all the world knows, Mr. Kelly lived, and even gained much credit by his speech at his trial. He made it plain, to all but prejudiced Whigs, that there was no Plot, nor he concerned in any, if there were. But what is Whig justice? He was sentenced to prison for life. The papers in his strong box were enough to help a foolish fellow, Counsellor Layer, on his way to Tyburn, enough to send Lord Orrery to the Tower, and Lord North and Grey into exile. The Plot was ruined for that time; the Bishop of Rochester was banished, for Mar's traitorous mention of the dog Harlequin fixed the guilt on that holy man. Mr. Kelly came off with loss of fourteen years of his life, which years he passed in the Tower.

It was not, after all, so silent a prison as he imagined it would be. For though during the first months his confinement was severe, and he never drew air except from between the bars, afterwards this rigour was relaxed. He was placed in a room of which one window took the morning sun, and the other commanded the river, and the ships going up and down with the tide; he was allowed the use of his books, and to receive what visitors he would. His visitors were not few, and amongst them Colonel Montague was the most frequent. His gaolers, the officers who were stationed in the Tower, and their wives, became his familiar friends, and it is said that when, after fourteen years, he escaped, not a woman in the precincts could make up her mind whether to clap her hands for joy, or weep at the loss of his society. Moreover, Rose came and went at her pleasure.

The first years of his imprisonment were thus not wholly unhappy years. He sat amongst his books translating Cicero, and if at times his limbs ached for the stress and activity of his youth, and he began to dream of hours in the saddle and starry nights at sea, it was not perhaps for very long. He had friends enough to divert his leisure moments, and Rose to keep him busy at his work. For what he had foreseen came to pass. Two years after Mr. Kelly came to the Tower, Dr. Townley died, and left Rose but poorly circumstanced. She came to lodge close by the Tower Gates, and the Parson set his pen to his paper and wrote essays and translations till the whole Tower of London buzzed with his learning, and no doubt a friendly Jacobite here and there bought one of his books. Mr. Wogan, indeed, bought them all. He has them ranged upon a bookshelf in his lodging at Paris, all bound in leather and most dignified; the very print has a sonorous look. 'Mr. Kelly's Opera' he calls them, and always speaks of the books as 'tomes' with prodigious respect and perhaps a sigh. For—

'He lacks one quality,' Mr. Wogan was heard to say, 'to set him on the pinnacle of fame. He cannot write poetry. It is a trick, no doubt, a poor sort of trick; but George had it not, and so when there was poetry to be written, he had to come to his friends.'

Thus ten years passed, and then came the black day, when Rose fell sick of a fever and must keep her bed. She sent word to George daily that he should expect her on the morrow, until a delirium took her, and the doctor, who had been charged by Rose to make light of her suffering, was now forced to tell Mr. Kelly the truth. She lay at death's door, calling on her husband, who could not come to her, and talking ever of that little garden at Avignon above the Rhone, in which she fancied that he and she now walked.

Mr. Kelly took the news in silence as a dog takes pain, and never slept and barely moved while the fever ran its course. Rose was at the Tower Gates, George was in his prison; a few yards only were between them, but those few yards were built upon with stones. In the daytime messages were brought to him often enough, but at night, when the mists rose from the river and the gates were closed, and the Parson had the dark loitering hours wherein to picture the sick room with its dim light and the tired figure tossing from this side to that of the bed, then indeed Smilinda had her revenge.