Parson Kelly/Chapter 27

VERY morning Mr. Kelly looked for the doctor to come to him with word that in the little house without the Tower Gate the blinds were drawn. But that message was not brought to him, and Colonel Montague, making a visit to the prison, three weeks after Rose fell ill, found the Parson sitting very quiet in his chair with a face strangely illumined.

'Last night she slept,' said George, 'and waked only at midday. The fever has left her, and she will live. It is wonderful.'

The Colonel said what was fitting to the occasion, and the Parson replied to him absently, with his eyes upon the river and the boats swinging on the tide; and after a while Father Myles Macdonnell, whom the Colonel had neither seen nor heard of, was ushered into the room.

The Reverend Father was a kinsman of Parson Kelly, and though their acquaintance had been of the slightest, the Parson now turned to him with a great welcome. For his thoughts were now entirely bent upon an escape from his captivity. He dared not survey the possibility that some time Rose might again fall ill, and that again he must sit behind the bars and only hear news of how she fared.

The Reverend Myles, who was of the honest party, but not as yet blown upon by suspicion, seemed to him his only help and instrument. For a long while, when the Colonel had gone, the pair debated the means of escape, but found no issue; and Rose brought her white face back to the Tower, and the Parson's spirits drooped, so that at last his health began to fail. He was therefore allowed to drive out in a coach to any place within ten miles of London in the custody of a warder, and on his parole to return before dark. Of this favour he made frequent use, and no doubt the sight of the busy faces in the streets urged him yet more to make a bid for his freedom.

Now these journeys of the Parson to take the air set Father Myles Macdonnell upon a pretty plan, which he imparted to Rose and to George.

'You drive one afternoon up into Highgate Woods—d'ye follow that? I have half-a-dozen well-disposed persons hiding in a clump of trees who will take care of your warder—d'ye see? There will be a stout horse tethered to a branch close by, and a lugger waiting off the coast of Essex—'but the Parson would hear no more of the scheme.

'I have given my parole to come back to the Tower before dark,' said he, and glanced at Rose, who was looking away, to strengthen him in his objection. 'I cannot break it, can I, Rose? I have given my parole. I am not one of the Butcher Cumberland's officers. We must keep troth.'

Rose made an effort and agreed.

'Yes,' said she, 'he has given his parole, and he cannot break it.'

'Not so long as he's a lost Protestant,' said the Reverend Father. He tapped George on the knee, and continued in a wheedling voice: 'It is a matter of religion, d'ye see? Just let me convert you. I can do it in a twinkling, and so I shall save your body and your soul in one glorious moment.'

'How so? 'asked the Parson with a laugh, for he was by this time well used to his kinsman's efforts to convert him. 'How shall a Catholic creep out of the Tower more easily than a Protestant?'

'Because a Catholic can break his parole. It's a great sin, to be sure, but I can absolve him for it afterwards.'

To Mr. Kelly's thinking (and, indeed, to Mr. Wogan's) this was no sterling theology, and he would not be persuaded. Another device had to be invented, and when at last a satisfactory plan was resolved upon, the plotters must wait for the quick nightfalls of autumn.

It was on Guy Fawkes day, the fifth of November, 1736, that Mr. Kelly made his escape. On the morning of that day he drove out to Epsom in the custody of his warder and upon his parole to return before dark. At four o'clock, when the light was just beginning to fall, Father Myles Macdonnell came into the Tower by the Sally Port Stairs opposite the Mint. He was told that the Parson was taking the air, and replied that he would go to the Parson's room and wait. Thereupon he crossed the precincts of the Tower, and coming over the green and down the steps of the main-guard, he inquired of the porter at Traitor's Gate whether or no Mr. Kelly had returned.

The porter answered 'Not yet.'

'It is a great pity,' said the Reverend Myles, who seemed much flustered. 'I am in a great hurry, and would you tell him, if you please, the moment he comes, to run with all haste to his room?'

Upon that he turned off under the archway of the Bloody Tower, and again mounted the steps of the main-guard.

About half-an-hour afterwards, in the deepening twilight, Mr. Kelly was set down within the Traitor's Gate; he had kept his parole. The porter gave him Father Myles's message; and the warder, since it appeared that he could only proceed as usual to his lodging, took his leave of him.

The Parson accordingly ran up the steps of the main-guard on to the green, which was by this time very obscure. Three minutes afterwards Father Myles Macdonnell hurried past the sentry at the Sally Port Stairs opposite the Mint, grumbling that he would wait no longer, and so came out upon Tower Hill. Just at that time to a moment another Father Myles Macdonnell accosted the porter at Traitor's Gate and requested him to let him out, seeing that he was, as he had already said, in a great hurry. The porter let him out with no more ado.

The second Father Myles was the real Father Myles; the first one who went grumbling out by the Sally Port Stairs was Parson Kelly. He had met Father Myles in the dark corner by Beauchamp Tower, had slipped over his head a cassock which the Father had brought with him, and had run across to the entrance over against the Mint, and so into freedom.

The carriage which had driven him to Epsom, after putting him down again at the Tower, had driven to Tower Hill, where it waited for the Parson close by the Sally Port Stairs. It did not wait long: and the Parson was hurried at a gallop out of London amidst the crackling of fireworks and the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes. It seemed the town was illuminated to celebrate his escape.

At the Tower his evasion was not discovered until half-past seven of the evening, when the two porters, being relieved from their separate stations at the Traitor's Gate and the Sally Port Stairs, each vowed that he had let out Father Myles Macdonnell. This seemed so miraculous an occurrence that the warder ran to Mr. Kelly's chamber. It was empty, and then the clamour began. The Parson had thus three hours' start, and, though a reward of 300l. was offered for his recapture, no more was heard of him for a week.

Then, however, two fishermen coming into an alehouse at Broadstairs saw the reward for Kelly proclaimed in print upon the wall, and fell into a great fury and passion, saying that they had only received five pounds when they might have had three hundred. For a fee of five pounds they had put a man over from Broadstairs to Calais, who, when once he was landed in France, had said to them:

'If anyone inquires for George Kelly, you may say that he is safely landed in France.'

And indeed at the very moment when the fishermen were lamenting their mistake in the alehouse, George Kelly and Rose were taking their dinner in Mr. Wogan's lodging at Paris. Rose had travelled into France the day before the Parson escaped, and so, after fourteen years, they were united. It was a merry sort of a party, and no doubt Wogan made a great deal of unnecessary noise. He drew the Parson aside into a window before the evening was over.

'You are not very rich, I suppose?' said he.

'I want for nothing,' said the Parson with a foolish eye on Rose, like a boy of eighteen.

Wogan fumbled in his fob and brought out a packet which he unfolded.

'Diamonds!' cried Kelly.

'They are yours,' said Wogan. 'I picked them up off the floor of a room in Soho on an occasion which you may remember. A miniature frame had come by a mischance.'

'Smilinda's?' asked Kelly with a frightened glance over his shoulder to Rose, who had the discretion not to meddle in this private conversation.

'Yes,' says Wogan; 'Smilinda's. She gave the stones to you. Very likely they are worth a trifle.'

'We'll slip out and sell them to-morrow,' answered the Parson in a whisper.

They slipped out, but they did not sell them. The diamonds were paste, and Mr. Wogan at last understood why Lady Oxford, when she gave her miniature set with brilliants to the Parson, had been so anxious that he should never part with it.