Parson Kelly/Chapter 6

HILE Wogan pursued in vain a flying foe, Lady Oxford and Parson Kelly waited in the house for his return, her ladyship in a great discomposure and impatience, and the Parson more silent than ordinary. Whatever he may have thought of Scrope's unexpected visit, his pride forbade him questions.

'The most unfortunate affair,' exclaimed her ladyship distractedly. 'Sure never was a woman so cursed. But indeed I was born under a frowning star, Mr. Kelly, and so my lord's friends cannot visit him, but some untoward accident puts them into peril.'

'You need be troubled by no fears on our account,' replied Kelly, 'for Nick will ensure the fellow's silence before ever he lets him out of his sight.'

'True,' said she, with a fresh pang of anxiety, 'Mr. Wogan is with him and will doubtless seek an explanation.'

Kelly smiled, but without any overwhelming amusement.

'Neither,' said he, 'need your ladyship fear that he will listen to any indiscreet explanation. Words have very little to do with the explanations which Nicholas favours.'

Lady Oxford remarked the distant stateliness in Kelly's tone and was in a hurry to retrieve the slip she had made.

'It is just that I mean,' she cried, coming over to Kelly. 'If Mr. Wogan—kills this man,' and her eyes flashed as though she did in her heart desire that consummation, 'here at the Park Gates—'

'Believe me,' replied Kelly reassuringly, 'he will omit no proper ceremony if he does.'

'No, nor will the county justices either,' retorted Lady Oxford, 'and there are Mr. George Kelly and Mr. Nicholas Wogan to explain their presence at Brampton Bryan Manor, as best they can, to a bench of bumpkins.'

'Again your ladyship is unnecessarily alarmed. For if Mr. Scrope is now no more, Mr. George Kelly and Mr. Nicholas Wogan are still Mr. James Johnson and his secretary Mr. Hilton. No harm threatens Brampton Bryan Manor from their visit.'

This he said no less coldly, and to cut the conversation short, stalked with excessive dignity to the door. Lady Oxford was gazing ruefully down the avenue from the window, when she heard the knob of the door move under his hand. She turned quickly about.

'It was not of Brampton Bryan Manor I was thinking,' she said hurriedly, 'nor of our safety. Why, in what poor esteem do you hold me! Am I then so contemptible a thing?' There was no anger in her reproach. Rather it melted in a most touching sadness. 'Have I no friends whose safety troubles me?' she added. At that out came her handkerchief and fluttered at her eyes. 'Nay, but I thought I had—two of the noblest.' It was a mere scrap of a handkerchief, and the greater part of that a lace edging. It would not have sopped up many tears, but it served her ladyship's turn. For indeed the mere sight of it convinced Kelly of his monstrous cruelty.

'Your ladyship!' he cried, turning back. 'Tears! And I have caused them. Faith, I should be hanged for that. Yet they flow for my friend and me, and I am blessed instead.'

But she would have none of his apologies. She stepped back as he approached.

'No,' said she, and wiped an imaginary tear-drop from the dryest of eyes; 'you have asked me for an explanation of Mr. Scrope's coming and you have a right to ask it.'

'Madam,' expostulated Kelly, 'I was careful, on the contrary, to ask for no explanation whatever. For I have no right to it.'

'Oh, but you have,' returned her ladyship with asperity; and then up went her handkerchief again.

'All men,' she said, in a voice most pathetical, 'have a right to ask any explanation of any woman, at anytime. Women, poor sad creatures, are suspect from their cradles, and to distrust them is the prerogative of manhood.' Here she tore away her handkerchief and lifted her hands in an ardent prayer. 'Oh that some day I might meet with one single man who would believe us worthy of respect!' She walked away to the window and said in a low voice, 'With what friendship would I requite him.'

Thus the unfortunate Mr. Kelly was not merely plunged in remorse, but brought to see that he had missed the one solitary path which would have led him into this great lady's friendship.

'Your ladyship,' he implored, 'mistakes my sentiments altogether.'

'Mr. Kelly,' she replied, proudly, 'we will not, if you please, pursue the matter. You have your explanation and I trust you will allow it to content you,' and so she sailed majestically out of the room, leaving Mr. Kelly in that perturbation that he quite failed to notice he had received no explanation whatever. She dropped her stateliness, however, when the door was closed behind her, and, hurrying across the hall, lay in wait behind a shrubbery for Wogan's return. Wogan, on the other hand, had admirable reasons for avoiding all paths, and so slipped into the back of the house unseen. Consequently it was not until half-an-hour later, when Lady Oxford was fairly distracted, that she discovered him, decently clothed, and urging upon Kelly the necessity of an immediate retreat. He broke off from his advice as Lady Oxford entered.

'You have done him no hurt? 'she asked, looking Wogan over from head to foot in search of a speck of blood, and ready to swoon if she saw one.

'Not the least in the world,' replied Wogan.

'Nor he you?'

'There was never any likelihood of that.' Wogan had to put the best face on the matter possible, and since he could not own to the humiliating truth, why, the necessary lie might just as well redound to his credit. 'I swore him to secrecy upon his bended knees. He took the oath on the hilt of this very sword, 'and Wogan hitched forward his hanger.

A footman at this moment announced that dinner was served.

'Will you give me your hand, Mr. Wogan?' asked Lady Oxford, and detaining him until Kelly had passed out of the room:

'He gave you doubtless a reason for his coming?' she asked.

'Surely he did,' said Wogen, who was not for admitting any omission on his own part.

'And what reason?' asked her ladyship.

Mr. Wogan looked at the ground and got a flash of inspiration.

'Why,' said he as bold as brass, 'precisely the same reason which you gave to my friend George Kelly,' in which answer Wogan hit the literal truth, although her ladyship looked puzzled, as well she might, and then flushed a fine crimson.

However, she made up an ingenious story, and that same day hinted rather than told it with a pretty suggestion of sympathy which quite melted Mr. Kelly's heart, and threw Wogan into some doubt whether to believe her or no. Scrope, it appeared, had been at some indefinite time a secretary to Mr. Walpole, and was entrusted with the keeping of the good man's accounts. Lady Oxford was then simply Mistress Margaret Middleton and intimate with her cousin, Mr. Walpole, although since her marriage, as Mr. Kelly and his friend were requested to note, that intimacy had entirely ceased. Hence it came about that the rash Scrope cast longing eyes upon the humble relation of his patron, and was indeed so carried away by passion that Margaret was forced now and again to chide him for the forwardness of his demeanour. Also, alas! he transgressed in a more serious way. For Mr. Walpole's accounts fell into the saddest disorder; there were sums of money of which no trace could be found until—well, the deplorable affair was hushed up. Mr. Scrope was turned off and set down his dismissal to Margaret, who, gentle soul, would not have hurt a fly. From that time he had not spared her his resentment, and would go miles out of his way if by any chance he might fix a slight upon her. Which conduct she most Christianly forgave, since indeed the poor man's head must needs be turned.

'Yet he had all the appearances of prosperity,' objected Wogan.

'I fancied that I said that there were large sums missing,' replied her ladyship.

'Yes, you did indeed say so,' said Mr. Kelly, 'but you avoided the implication out of your generous pity.'

It is not in truth very difficult to befool a man who does half the fooling himself. Mr. Kelly was altogether appeased by Lady Oxford's explanation, which to his friend seemed to explain nothing, but none the less he readily acknowledged to Wogan the propriety of hurrying his business to a close.

'To tell the truth,' said Wogan, as soon as her ladyship had withdrawn, 'I feel my cravat stiffening prophetically about my neck. My presence does not help you; indeed, it is another danger; and since we are but a few miles from Aberystwith, I am thinking that I could do nothing wiser than start for that port to-night.'

The Parson drew figures with his forefinger on the table for a while; then:

'I would not have you go, he said slowly. 'I will use what despatch I may; but I would not have you go, and leave me here.'

Kelly was true to his word, and used so much despatch that within two days he extorted a promise from Lord Oxford to undertake the muslin trade in England, as the cant phrase went. Possibly he might have won that same promise before had used the same despatch. But Lord Oxford's foible was to hold long discourses, and Mr. Pope truly said that he had an epical habit of beginning everything at the middle. However it may be, the two men left the Manor on the morning of the third day. Wogan drove back with the Parson as far as Worcester, who for the first few miles remained in a melancholy silence, and then burst out of a sudden.

'To think that she should be mewed up in a corner of Herefordshire, with no companions but drunken rustics! Mated to an old pantaloon, too!'

'Sure it was her ladyship's own doing,' murmured Wogan.

'No woman in all London could hold a candle to her. And we distrusted her—we distrusted her, Nick.' He beat a clenched fist into the palm of his other hand to emphasise the enormity of the crime. 'Why, what impertinent fools men are!'

Then he again relapsed into silence and again broke out.

'Damme! but Fortune plays bitter tricks upon the world. 'Tis all very well to strike at a pair of rascals like you and me, Nick, but she strikes at those who offend her least. Faith, but I am bewildered. Here is a woman indisputably born to be a queen and she is a nurse. And no better prospect when my lord dies than a poor jointure and a dull Dower House.'

'Oh, she told you that, did she?' said Wogan. 'Sure it was a queenly complaint.'

'She made no complaint,' said Kelly fiercely. 'She would not—she could not. It is a woman of unexampled patience.'

He grumbled into silence, and his thoughts changed and turned moodily about himself.

'Why did I ever preach that sermon?' he exclaimed. 'But for that I might now have the care of half-a-dozen rambling parishes. Instead of hurrying and scurrying from one end of Europe to the other, at the risk of my neck, I might sit of an evening by the peat fire of an inn kitchen and give the law to my neighbour. I might have a little country parsonage all trailed over with roses, and leisure to ensure preferment by my studies and enjoy the wisdom of my Latin friend Tully. I might have a wife, too,' he added, 'and maybe half a score of children to plague me out of my five wits with their rogueries.'

He fetched up a sigh as he ended which would have done credit to my Lady Oxford; and Wogan, seeing his friend in this unwonted pother, was minded to laugh him out of it.

'And a credit to your cloth you would have been,' says he. 'Why, it's a bottle you would have taken into the pulpit with you, and a mighty big tumbler to measure your discourse by. Indeed there would have been but one point of resemblance between yourself and your worthier brethren, and that's the number of times you turned your glass upside down before you came to an end.'

Kelly, however, was not to be diverted from his melancholy. The picture of the parsonage was too vivid on the canvas of his desires. And since he dreamed of one impossibility, no doubt he went a step further and dreamed of another besides. No doubt his picture of the parsonage showed the figure of the parson's wife, and no doubt the parson's wife was very like to my Lady Oxford.

Wogan, though he had laughed, was, to tell the truth, somewhat disturbed, and began to reckon up how much he was himself to blame for setting Kelly's thoughts towards her ladyship. He had not thought that his friend had taken the woman so much to heart. But whenever the Parson fell a dreaming of a quiet life and the cure of souls, it was a sure sign the world was going very ill with him.

'I would have you remember, George,' said Wogan, 'that not so long ago I saw you stand up before a certain company in Paris and cry out with an honest—ay, an honest passion, "May nothing come between the Cause and me!"

Kelly flushed as his words were recalled to him and turned his head away. Wogan held out his hand.

'George, am I then to understand that something has come between the Cause and you?' And he had to repeat the question before he got an answer. Then Kelly turned back.

'Understand nothing, Nick, but that I am a fool,' he cried heartily, and slapped his hand into Wogan's. 'True, the Cause, the Cause,' he muttered to himself once or twice. After all, Nick,' he said, 'we have got the old man's assurance. My Lord Oxford will lend a hand. We have not failed the Cause.' And they did not speak again until they drove into Worcester. Then Kelly turned to Nick with a sad sort of smile.

'Well, have you nothing to say to me? 'said he.

Mr. Wogan could discover nothing to say until he had stepped out of the chaise at the post-house and was shaking his friend's hand. Then he delivered himself of the soundest piece of philosophy imaginable.

'Woman,' he said, 'is very much like a jelly-fish—very pretty and pink and transparent to look at, but with a devil of a sting if you touch it.'