Parson Kelly/Chapter 7

ROM Worcester Nicholas Wogan made his way to Bristol, and, taking passage there on a brigantine bound for Havre-de-Grace with a cargo of linen, got safely over into France. He travelled forthwith to Paris that he might put himself at the disposition of General Dillon, and, being commanded to supper some few days after his arrival by the Duke of Mar, saw a familiar swarthy face nodding cheerily at him across the table. The lady was embrowned with the Eastern sun, and, having lost her eye-lashes by that disease which she fought so manfully to conquer, her eyes were fierce and martial. It was indeed the face of the redoubtable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, sister to the Duchess of Mar, who chanced to be passing through Paris on her travels from Constantinople. Wogan remembered that Mr. Kelly's rustic friend at Brampton Bryan had spoken of Lady Mary with considerable spleen. And since he began to harbour doubts of her rusticity, he determined to seek some certain information from Lady Mary.

Lady Mary was for a wonder in a most amiable mood, and had more than one question to put concerning 'Kelly as the Bishop that was to be when your King came to his own.'

'Why, madam, he has a new friend,' said Wogan.

Lady Mary maybe caught a suspicion of uneasiness in Wogan's tone. She cocked her head whimsically.

'A woman?'

'Yes.'

'Who?'

'My Lady Oxford.'

Lady Mary made a round O of her lips, drew in a breath, and blew it out again.

'There go the lawn-sleeves.'

Wogan took a seat by her side.

'Why?'

Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders.

'In what esteem is she held?' continued Wogan, 'of what character is she?'

'I could never hear,' returned Lady Mary carelessly. 'For her friends always stopped abruptly when they chanced upon her character, and the rest was merely pursed lips and screwed-up eyes, which it would be the unfairest thing in the world to translate in her disfavour. Her character, Mr. Wogan, is a tender and delicate plant. It will not grow under glass, but in a dark room, where I believe it flourishes most invisibly.'

Lady Mary seemed ill-disposed to pursue the topic, and began to talk of her journey and the great things she had seen at Constantinople. Wogan waited until she came to a pause, and then stepped in with another question.

'Is Lady Oxford political?'

'Lady Oxford! Lady Oxford!' she repeated almost pettishly. 'Upon my word, the woman has infected you. You can speak of nothing else. Political?' and she laughed maliciously. 'That she is, and on both sides. She changes her party more often than an ambitious statesman. For politics to my Lady Oxford are just pawns in the great game of Love.'

'Oh, Love,' exclaimed Wogan, with a recollection of Mr. Scrope. 'Is Love her quarry?'

'She will play cat to any man's mouse,' returned Lady Mary indifferently.

'And there are many mice?'

Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. However, Wogan's appetite for information was only whetted, and to provoke Lady Mary to speak more freely he made an inventory of Lady Oxford's charms. He dwelt on her attractions. Lady Mary played with her fan, pulled savagely at the feathers, opened it, shut it up, while Wogan discoursed serenely on item—a dark eye, big, with a glint of light in it like sunshine through a thundercloud. Lady Mary laughed scornfully. Wogan went on to item—a profusion of blackish-brown hair, very silky, with a gloss, and here and there a gold thread in the brown; item—a Barbary shape; item—an admirable instep and a most engaging ankle.

'It would look very pretty in the stocks,' Lady Mary snapped out.

Wogan shook his head with a knowing air.

'’Twould slip out.'

'Not if I had the locking of it in,' she exclaimed with a vicious stamp of the foot, and rose, as though to cross the room.

'I have omitted the lady's most adorable merit,' said Wogan thoughtfully. Lady Mary was altogether human, and did not cross the room.

'She has the greatest affection for your ladyship. She spoke of your ladyship indeed in quite unmeasured terms, and while praising your ladyship's wit would not have it that one single spark was due to the cleverness of your ladyship's friends. Upon that point she was most strenuous.'

Lady Mary sat down again. The stroke had evidently told.

'I am most grateful to her,' she said, 'and when did Lady Oxford show such a sweet condescension towards me?'

'But a few weeks ago at Brampton Bryan, where she was nursing her husband with an assiduous devotion.'

'I have known her show the like devotion before, when her losses at cards have driven her from London.'

'So she gambles?' inquired Wogan. 'Altogether, then, a dangerous friend for George.'

Lady Mary nodded.

'Particularly for George,' said she with a smile. 'For observe, she is compact of wiles, and so is most dangerous to an honest man. She is at once insatiable in her desires, and implacable if they are not fulfilled. She is always in love, and knows nothing of what the word means. She is tender at times, but only through caprice; she is never faithful except for profit or lack of occasion to be anything else. Coquetry is the abiding principle of her nature, and her virtue merely a habit of hiding her coquetry. Her mind is larded with affectations as is her face with paint, and once or twice she has been known to weep—when tears were likely to deceive a man. There, Mr. Wogan, you have her likeness, and I trust you are satisfied.'

It was not a character very much to Wogan's liking (Lady Mary, he learned later, was quoting from a manuscript 'portrait' of her own designing), though he drew a spice of comfort from the thought that Lady Mary might have coloured the effigy with her unmistakable enmity. But events proved that she had not over-coloured it, and even at that time Lady Oxford had no better reputation than Lady Mary Wortley attributed to her. The ballad-makers called her gallant, and they did her no wrong—the ballad-makers of the ruelles, be it understood, not they of the streets, but such poets as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu herself and his Grace Sophia of Wharton. The street-singers knew not Lady Oxford, who, indeed, was on the top of the fashion, and could hold her own in the war of written verses. It was in truth to her ability to give as good as she took in the matter of ballads that she owed Lady Mary's hostility, who had no taste for the counter-stroke. There were many such daring Penthesileas of the pen who never gave each other quarter; but neither Wogan nor the Parson were at this time in their secrets, although subsequently a ballad, not from Lady Mary's pen, was to have an astonishing effect upon their fortunes.

'Your ladyship can help me to make the best of it, at all events,' said Wogan. 'Since you have told me so much, will you tell me this one thing more? Have you ever heard of Mr. Scrope?'

'Scrope? Scrope?' said she casting about in her recollections. Wogan told her the story of Mr. Scrope's appearance at Brampton Bryan, and the explanation which Lady Oxford had given to account for it. Lady Mary laughed heartily.

'Secretary to Mr. Walpole?' she said. 'And how, then, did he come to hear that mad sermon of Mr. Kelly's at Dublin?'

'Sure I have been puzzled to account for that myself,' says Wogan. 'But who is he? Where does he come from? What brought him to Brampton Bryan? What took him away in such a mighty hurry? For upon my word I find it difficult to believe the man's a coward.'

'And you are in the right,' replied her ladyship. 'I know something of Mr. Scrope, and I will wager it was no cowardice made him run. I doubt you have not seen the last of Mr. Scrope. It is a passionate, determined sort of creature. He came to London a year or so agone. It was understood that he was a country gentleman with a comfortable estate in Leicestershire. He had laid his estate at Lady Oxford's feet, before she was as yet her ladyship. Lady Oxford would have it, and then would have none of it, and married the Earl. Well, he had been her valet for a season, and, I have no doubt, thought the service worth any price. She gave him her fan to hold, her gloves to caress, and what more can a man want? He spent much of his money, and some whisper that he turned informer afterwards.'

'Oh, did he?' asked Wogan, who was now yet more concerned that he had let the informer slip through his fingers.

'Yes. An informer for conscience' sake—a gentleman spy. His father died for Monmouth's affair. He has ever hated the Pretender and his cause. He is a Protestant and a fanatic.'

Then she looked at Wogan and began to laugh.

'I would have given much to have seen you bouncing down the road after Mr. Scrope's chaise,' and she added seriously, 'But I doubt you have not heard the last of Mr. Scrope.'

That also was Wogan's thought. For Lady Mary's story, though vague enough, was sufficiently clear to deepen his disquietude. Well, Mr. Wogan would get no comfort by the mere addling his brains with thinking of the matter, and he thrust it forth of his mind and went upon his way, that led him clean out of the path of this story for a while. He was despatched to Cadiz to take charge of a ship, and, in company with Captain Galloway of the Resolution, who was afterwards seized at Genoa, and Morgan, of the Lady Mary, he spent much fruitless time in cruising on and off the coasts of France, Spain, and Sweden. It was given out that they carried snuff, or were engaged in the Madagascar trade. But they took no cargoes aboard but barrels of powder and stands of arms, and waited on the Rising, which never came. There were weeks idled away at Morlaix, at Roscoff in Brittany, at Lisbon in Portugal, at Alicant Bay in Spain, until Wogan's heart grew sick with impatience. At rare times, when the venture wore a face of promise, the little fleet would run the hazard of the Channel and creep along the English coast, from Dartmouth, across the West Bay to Portland, from Portland on to the Isle of Wight. Mr. Wogan would pace the deck of his little ketch, Fortune, of a night, and as he looked at the quiet fields lying dark beneath the sky, would wonder how the world wagged for his friend the Parson, and whether my Lady Oxford was shaping it or no, until a longing would seize on him to drop a boat into the water and himself into the boat, and row ashore and see. But it was not for more than a full twelve months that his longing was fulfilled, and during those twelve months the harm was done.