SHOWS THE EXTREME DANGER OF KNOWING LATIN
An hour later the three sat down to dinner, though, for all the
talking that one of them did, there might have been present only the
two whom Wogan had left chatting in the hall. It was not that Lady
Oxford omitted any proper courtesy towards Mr. Johnson's secretary,
but the secretary himself, sensible that he was something too apt to
say in all companies just what came into his head, was careful to keep
his tongue in a strict leash, lest an inconvenient word should slip
from him. His deficiency, however, was not remarked. Lady Oxford was
young, and for all that my lord lay upstairs in a paroxysm of the
gout, she was in the highest feather; she rattled from course to
course, plying Mr. Kelly with innumerable questions as to the latest
tittle-tattle of the tea-parties, and whether Lady Mary Wortley and
Mr. Pope were still the best of friends.
'Then your Ladyship is acquainted with Lady Mary?' says Kelly, looking
up with some eagerness. For Lady Mary, then a toast among the wits and
a wit among the toasts, was glanced at by some tongues as if, being
sister to the Duchess of Mar, she was not of the most loyal to the
Elector. The Duke of Mar was still Secretary to King James over the
water.
'Without doubt,' returned Lady Oxford. 'Lady Mary is my bosom friend.
The dear malicious creature! What is her latest quip? Tell me, Mr.
Johnson, I die to hear it. Or rather whisper it. It will be too
deliciously cruel for loud speaking. Lady Mary's witticisms, I think,
should always be spoken in a low voice, with a suggestive nod and a
tap of the forefinger on the table, so that one may not mistake where
the sting lies. Not that the sayings are in themselves at all
clumsy--how could they be, when she has such clever friends? But they
gain much from a mysterious telling of them. You agree with me?'
It was evident that Lady Oxford wasted no love on Lady Mary, and
Kelly's face fell.
'Your ladyship,' he replied, 'though I have no claims to be considered
clever, I have the honour to be ranked amongst her friends.'
'Indeed!' said she with a light laugh at the rebuff. 'No doubt you
have brought her some of your laces and brocades from France,
Mr.--Johnson.' She paused slyly upon the name.
Kelly glanced quickly at her, their eyes met, and the lady laughed.
There could be no doubt that she knew something of Kelly's business.
Indeed, she would hardly have asked him for the fashionable gossip at
all had she taken him for just what he represented himself to be.
Wogan put his foot on his friend's pretty heavily, and, he knows not
how, encountered her ladyship's. To his horror, Lady Oxford made a
moan of pain. Kelly starts up in a hurry.
'Your ladyship is unwell,' says he, and bids the servant bring a
bottle of salts.
'No,' she replied with a smile on her lips and her eyes full of tears,
'but your secretary has dropped a blot on the wrong paper.'
'Your ladyship,' cried Wogan in an extremity of confusion, 'it was the
most miserable accident, believe me. A spasm in the leg, madam, the
consequence of a sabre cut across the calf,' he explained, making the
matter worse.
'Oh, and in what battle was Mr. Johnson's secretary wounded?' she
said, taking him up on the instant.
'In a struggle with the Preventive men,' replied Wogan hurriedly, and
he too broke off with a wry face, for Mr. Johnson was warning _him_
and with no less vigour. Before he knew what he was doing Wogan had
stooped down and begun to rub his leg. Lady Oxford's smile became a
laugh.
'To be sure,' said she, 'and I think Mr. Johnson must have been
wounded too, in just that same way, and in just that same encounter.'
'Faith, madam,' said Kelly, 'the smuggling trade is a hard one. No man
engages in it but sooner or later he gets a knock that leaves its
mark.'
Lady Oxford expressed the profoundest sympathy with a great deal of
disbelief; and when her ladyship left her guests to their wine, they
looked at one another across the table.
'Well,' said Wogan cheerfully, 'if my Lady Oxford is in Mr. Walpole's
interest we have not made the best beginning in the world,' and in a
little he went off to smoke a pipe in the stables.
Kelly withdrew to the great library, and had not been there many
minutes before Lady Oxford came in. It seemed she did not see him at
the first, although he sat bent up over the fire and his shadow huge
upon the walls. Mr. Kelly certainly did not remark her entrance. For
one thing, he was absorbed in his book; for another, the carpet was
thick and the lady's step of the lightest. She went first to the
bookcase, then she crossed the room and shuffled some papers on a
table, then she knocked against a chair, the chair knocked against the
table, and at the noise Kelly looked up. He rose to his feet. Lady
Oxford turned round, started, and uttered a sharp little cry.
'My lady,' began Mr. Kelly.
'Oh, it is you, Mr. Johnson,' she broke in with a hand to her heart,
and dropped into the chair. 'I believe,' she said with a broken laugh,
'I was foolish enough to be frightened. I fancied you had gone with
your friend to the stables,' which was as much as to say that she knew
he had not. Kelly commenced an apology for so disordering her, but she
would not listen to it.
'No,' she said, 'it is I that am to be blamed. Indeed, such stupid
fears need chiding. But in a house so lonely and silent they grow on
one insensibly. Indeed, I have known the mere creak of the stairs keep
me awake in terror half the night.'
She spoke with the air of one gently railing at her own distress, but
shivered a little to prove the distress genuine, and Kelly, as he
looked at her, felt a sudden pang of pity.
'Your place, my lady, is not here,' he cried, 'but in the Mall, at the
Spring Gardens, in the lighted theatres, when even your ladyship's own
sex would pay you homage for outrivalling them.'
'Nay,' she replied, with the sweetest smile of reproof, 'you go too
fast, Mr. Johnson. My place is here, for here my duty lies.' She
looked up to the ceiling with a meek acceptance of the burden laid
upon her fair shoulders. 'But I am not come to disturb you,' she
continued briskly; 'I came to fetch a book to read aloud to my lord.'
At that a sigh half broke from her and was caught back as it were upon
her lips. 'Perhaps, Mr. Johnson,' she said in a well-acted flurry,
'you will help me in the selection?'
'With all the heart in the world,' said he, laying down his volume.
The choice took perhaps longer than need have been, for over each book
there was some discussion. This one was too trivial to satisfy my Lord
Oxford's weighty mind; that other was too profound to suit his health.
'And nothing too contentious, I implore you, lest it throw him into a
heat,' she prayed, 'for my lord has a great gift of logic, and will
argue with you by the hour over the merest trifle.' This with another
half-uttered sigh, and so the martyr sought her lord's bedside. It
appeared, however, that Lord Oxford was sleepy that night, or had no
mind for the music of his lady's voice, for in a very little while she
returned to the library and Mr. Kelly, where Wogan presently found
them discussing in a great animation the prospects of Mr. Law's
ventures.
'You are in for a great stake?' she asked.
'For all I have,' replied Kelly, 'and a little more. It is not a great
sum.'
'But may become one,' said she, 'and will if a friend's good wishes
can at all avail.' And so she wished her guests good night.
The next morning Lord Oxford sent a message that he was so far
recovered as would enable him to receive his visitors that afternoon.
Meanwhile Lady Oxford, after breakfast carried off the two gentlemen
to visit a new orchard she was having planted. The orchard was open to
the south-west, and Kelly took objection to its site, quoting Virgil
in favour of a westerly outlook.
'Ah, but the west wind,' she said, 'comes to us across the Welsh
mountains, which even in the late spring are at times covered deep in
snow. However, I should be pleased to hear the advice of Virgil,' and
the Parson goes off to the library and fetches out a copy.
It was a warm day in April, with the sky blue overhead and the buds
putting out on the trees, and for the most part of that morning Mr.
Kelly translated the Georgics to her ladyship, on a seat under a great
yew-tree, in a little square of grass fenced off with a hedge. She
listened with an extraordinary complaisance, and now and then a
compliment upon the Parson's fluency; so that Mr. Wogan lost all his
apprehensions as to her meddling in the King's affairs. For, to his
thinking, than listening to Virgil, there was no greater proof of
friendship.
Nor was it only upon this occasion that she gave the proof. Lord
Oxford was a difficult man from his very timidity, and the Parson's
visit was consequently protracted. His lordship needed endless
assurances as to the prospects of a rising on behalf of King James,
before he would hazard a joint of his little finger to support it. Who
would take the place of the Royal Swede? Could the French Regent be
persuaded to lend any troops or arms or money, or even to wink? Had
the Czar been approached? Indeed he had, by Wogan's brother Charles.
And what office would my Lord Oxford hold when James III. was crowned?
Each day saw these questions reiterated and no conclusion come to.
Lady Oxford was never present at these discussions; the face of her
conduct was a sedulous discretion. It is true that after a little she
dropped the pretence of laces, and, when the servants were not
present, styled the Parson 'Mr. Kelly.' But that was all. 'These are
not women's matters,' she would say with a pretty humility, and then
rise like a queen and sail out of the room. Mr. Wogan might have
noticed upon such occasions that the Parson hesitated for a little
after she had gone, and spoke at random, as though she had carried off
some part of his mind from affairs with the waft of her hoop. But he
waited on the lady's dispositions and set down what he saw of his
friend's conduct at the time as merely the consequence of an endeavour
to enlist her secrecy and good-will.
These councils with Lord Oxford took place, as a rule, in the
afternoon, his lordship being a late riser, and even when risen
capable only of sitting in a chair, with a leg swathed in a mountain
of flannel. So that, altogether, Mr. Kelly had a deal of time upon his
hands, and doubtless would have found it hang as heavy as Nick Wogan
did, but for the sudden interest he took in Lady Oxford's new orchard.
He would spend hours over the 'Observations on Modern Gardening,' and
then,
'Nick,' he would cry,' there's no life but a country life. One wakes
in the morning, and the eye travels with delight over the green
expanse of fields. One makes friends with the inanimate things of
nature. Nick, here one might re-create the Golden Age.'
'To my mind,' says Nick, 'but for the dogs and horses it would be
purely insupportable. With all the goodwill in the world I cannot make
friends with a gatepost, and I'm not denying I shall be mightily glad
when the wambling old sufferer upstairs brings his mind at last to an
anchor.'
But the Parson was already lost in speculation, and would presently
wake to ask Wogan's opinion as to whether a Huff-cap pear was
preferable to a Bar-land. To which he got no answer, and so, snatching
up his Virgil, would go in search of Lady Oxford. He acquired, indeed,
a most intimate knowledge of apples and pears, and would discourse
with her ladyship upon the methods of planting and grafting as
though he had been Adam, and she Flora, or, rather, our mother Eve,
before the apple was shared between them. For apples the store, the
hayloe-crab, the brandy-apple, the red-streak, the moyle, the
foxwhelp, the dymock-red; for pears the squash pear, the Oldfield, the
sack-pear, never a meal passed but one of these names cropped up at
the table and was bandied about between Kelly and her ladyship like a
tennis-ball. Now all this, though dull, was none the less reassuring
to Wogan, who saw very clearly that Lady Oxford was altogether devoted
to country pursuits, and wisely inferred that while there might result
confusion in the quality of the pears, there would be the less
disorder in the affairs of the Chevalier.
Moreover, her ladyship's inclination towards Mr. Kelly plainly
increased. He translated the whole of the second book of the Georgics
to her, five hundred and forty-two mortal lines of immortal poetry,
and she never winced. Nor did she cry halt at the end of them, but,
thereafter, listened to the Eclogues; and, all at once, their
conversation was sprinkled with Melib[oe]us and M[oe]ris, and Lycidas
and Mopsus, and Heaven knows what other names. Mr. Wogan remembers
very well coming upon them one wet afternoon in the hall when it was
growing dark. The lamps had not been lit, and Kelly had just finished
reading one of the pastorals by the firelight. Lady Oxford sat with
her hands clasped upon her knees, and, as he closed the book,
'Oh for those days,' she cried, 'when a youth and a maid could roam
barefoot over the grass in simple woollen garments! But now we must go
furbelowed and bedecked till there's no more comfort than simplicity,'
and she smoothed her hand over her petticoat with a great contempt for
its finery. Lady Mary Wortley, to whom Wogan related this saying
afterwards, explained that doubtless her ladyship had laced her stays
too tight that morning; but the two men put no such construction on
her words, nor, indeed, did they notice a certain contradiction
between them and Lady Oxford's anxiety for London gossip--the Parson,
because he had ceased to do anything but admire; Wogan, because a
little design had suddenly occurred to him.
It was Lady Oxford's patience under the verses which put it into
Wogan's head. For since she endured to listen to poetry about trees
and shepherds, poetry about herself must be a sheer delight to her.
So, at all events, he reasoned, not knowing that Lady Oxford had
already enjoyed occasion to listen to poetry about herself from Lady
Mary's pen, which was anything but a delight. Accordingly he hinted to
his friend that a little ode might set a firm seal upon her
friendliness.
'Make her a Dryad in one of the trees of her own orchard, d'ye see?'
he suggested; 'something pretty and artful, with sufficient allusions
to her beauty. Who knows but what she may be so flattered as to carry
the verses against her heart; and so, when some fine day she brings
her husband's secrets to Mr. Walpole, she may hear the paper crackling
against her bodice, and turn back on the very doorstep.'
'She will carry no secrets,' replied Kelly with a huff. 'She is too
conscious of her duties. Besides, she knows none. Have you not seen
her leave the room the moment politics are so much as hinted of?'
'True,' said Wogan. 'But what's her husband for except to provide her
with secrets when they are alone to which she cannot listen without
impertinence in company?'
Kelly moved impatiently away. He stood with a foot upon the fender,
turning over the pages of his Virgil.
'You allow her no merit whatsoever,' he said slowly with a great
gentleness.
'Indeed, but I do,' replied Wogan. 'I allow that she will be charmed
by your poetry, and that's a rare merit. She will find it as soothing
as a soldier does a pipe of tobacco after a hard day's fighting.'
'I would not practise on her for the world,' says Kelly with just the
same gentleness, and goes softly out by the door.
Wogan, however, was troubled by no such delicate scruples. An ode must
be written, even if he had to write it himself. He slapped his
forehead as the notion occurred to him. The ode might be dropped as
though by accident at some spot where her ladyship's eyes could not
fail to light on it. Wogan heaved a deep breath, took a turn across
the room, and resolved on the heroical feat. He would turn poet to
help his friend. For two nights he fortified himself with the perusal
of Sir John Suckling's poems, and the next morning took pencil and
paper into the garden. He walked along the terrace, and seated himself
on the bench beneath the yew-tree. Wogan sucked strenuously at his
pencil.
'Strephon to his Smilinda, running barefoot over the grass in a gale
of wind,' he wrote at the top, and was very well pleased with the
title. By noonday he had produced a verse, and was very well pleased
with that, except, perhaps, that the last line halted. The verse ran
as follows:--
Nay, sweet Smilinda, do not chide
The wind that wantons with thy hair;
The grass will all his prickles hide
Nor harm thy snowy feet and bare.
And, listen, the enamoured air
Makes lutestrings of thy locks so fair.
At night the stars are mirrors which reflect
Thine eyes: at least that is what I expect.
Mr. Wogan spent an hour and three pipes of tobacco over his unwonted
exercise, which brought him into a great heat.
Having finished the verse he blew out his cheeks and took a rest from
his labours. It was a fine spring morning, and the sun bright as a
midsummer day. To his right the creepers were beginning to stretch
their green tendrils over the red bricks of the garden wall. To his
left half-a-dozen steps led up to a raised avenue of trees. Wogan
looked down the avenue, noted the border of spring flowers, and a
flash of a big window at the extreme end; and in all the branches the
birds sang. The world seemed all together very good, and his poem
quite apiece with the world. Wogan stretched his arms and kicked out
his feet. His feet struck against something hard in a tuft of grass.
He stooped down and picked it up. It was Kelly's Virgil. The book was
open, and the pages all blotted and smeared with the dew. It had
evidently lain open on the grass by the bench all night. Wogan wiped
the covers dry, and, using it as a desk, settled himself to the
composition of his second verse. He had not, however, thought of an
opening for it before a voice hailed him from behind.
He turned round and saw Kelly coming towards him from the direction of
the orchard, and at that moment the opening of his verse occurred to
him; Strephon offered to Smilinda his heart's allegiance. Wogan set
his pencil to the paper, fearful lest he should forget the line.
'Nick,' cries Kelly, waving a bundle of letters, and starts to run.
Wogan slipped his paper between the leaves of the book; just as he did
so, Strephon, in return for his heart's 'allegiance,' asked for
Smilinda's soft 'obedience.'
'Nick,' cries Kelly again, coming up to the bench, 'what d'you think?'
'I think, 'says Wogan, 'that interruption is the true source of
inspiration.'
'What do you mean?' asked Kelly, looking at Wogan's pencil.
'I mean,' says Wogan, looking at the cover of the book, 'that if I
lived by my poetry, I would hire a man to rap at my door all day
long.'
Kelly, however, had no ears for philosophy.
'Nick,' says he, 'will you listen to me, if you please? I have a
letter from Miss Oglethorpe. It explains--'
'Yes,' interposed Wogan thoughtfully. 'It explains why the best poets
are ever those who are most dunned by their creditors.'
Kelly snatched the Virgil out of Wogan's hand, and threw it on to the
grass. The book opened as it fell. It opened at the soiled pages, and
it was behind those pages that Wogan had slipped his poem.
'You are as contrarious as a woman. Here am I, swollen with the
grandest news, and you must babble about poets and creditors. Nick,
there'll be few creditors to dun you and me for a bit. Just listen,
will you?'
He leaned his elbows on the back of the bench, and read from his
letter. It was to the effect that, during April, an edict had been
published in France, transferring to Mr. Law's company of the West the
exclusive rights of trading to the East Indies and the South Seas.
'Think of it, Nick!' he cried. 'The actions have risen from 550 livres
to 1,000, and we are as yet at the budding of May. Why, man, as it is
we are well to do. Just imagine that, if you can, you threadbare
devil! We shall be rich before August.'
'We shall dine off silver plates in September!' cries Nick, leaping up
in the contagion of his friend's good spirits..
'And drink out of diamond cups in November,' adds Kelly, dropping at
once into the Irish accent.
'Bedad!' shouts Wogan, 'I'll write my poetry on beaten gold,' and he
sprang on to the seat.
'You shall,' replies Kelly; 'and your ink shall be distilled out of
black pearls.'
'Sure, George, one does not write on gold with ink, but with a graving
tool.'
'This nonsense, and poetry, are what the lucky heart sings,' said
Kelly.
'To a tune of clinking coins,' said Wogan. He stooped down to his
friend. 'Have it all in solid gold, and tied up in sacks,' said he
earnestly. 'None of their bills of exchange, but crowns, and pieces of
eight, and doubloons, and guinea-pieces; and all tied up in sacks.'
'What will we do with it?' asked Kelly.
'Why, sit on the sacks,' replied Nick, and then grew silent. He looked
at Kelly. Kelly looked away to the garden-wall.
'Ah!' said the Parson, with a great start of surprise. 'There's a
lizard coming out of the bricks to warm himself,' and he made a step
away from the bench. Wogan's hand came quickly down upon his shoulder.
'George,' said he, 'I think we are forgetting something. Not a
farthing of it is mine at all.'
'Now, that's a damned scurvy ungenerous remark,' replied George.
'Haven't I borrowed half of your last sixpence before now?'
Wogan got down from the seat.
'Poverty may take a favour from poverty, George, and 'tis all very
well.'
Kelly sat himself down on the bench, crossed his knees, and swung a
leg to and fro.
'I don't want the money,' said he, with a snort.
'My philosophy calls it altogether an encumbrance,' said Wogan,
sitting down by his side.
Kelly turned his back on Wogan, and stared at the garden-wall. Then he
turned back.
'I know,' said he of a sudden, and smacks his hand down on Wogan's
thigh. 'We'll give it to the King. He can do no more than spend it.'
'He will certainly do no less.' But they did not give it to the King.
Wogan was sitting turned rather towards the house, and as he looked
down the avenue, he saw the great windows at the end open, and Lady
Oxford come out.
'Here's her ladyship come for her Latin lesson,' said Wogan, and he
rose from his seat.
'I'll tell her of our good fortune,' said Kelly, and he walked quickly
to the steps at the end of the avenue. Lady Oxford stopped on the
first step, with a hand resting on the stone balustrade. George Kelly
stood on the grass at the foot of the steps, and told her of his news.
'The shares,' he ended, 'have risen to double value already.'
It seemed to Wogan that her eyes flashed suddenly with a queer,
unpleasant light, and the hand which was resting idly on the
balustrade crooked like the claws of a bird. He had seen such eyes,
and such a hand, at the pharo tables in Paris.
'It is the best news I have heard for many a day,' she said the next
instant, with a gracious smile, and coming down the steps, walked by
Mr. Kelly's side towards the bench.
'And what will you do with it?' she asked. It was her first question,
for she was a practical woman.
'In the first flush,' replied Kelly, hesitating as to how he should
put the answer, 'we had a thought of disposing of it where it is
sorely needed.'
She looked quickly at Kelly; as quickly looked away. She took a step
to the seat with her eyes on the ground.
'Oh,' she observed slowly; 'you would give it away.' There was,
perhaps, a trifle of a pucker upon her forehead, perhaps a shade of
disappointment in her eyes. But it was all gone in a moment. She
clasped her hands fervently together, raised her face to the heavens,
her cheeks afire, her eyes most tender. 'Indeed,' she exclaimed, 'the
noblest, properest disposition of it! Heaven dispense me more such
friends who, in a world so niggardly, retain so ancient a spirit of
generosity,' and she stood for a little, with her lips moving, as if
in prayer. It was plain to Mr. Wogan that her ladyship had guessed the
destination of the money. No such thought, however, troubled George
Kelly, who was wholly engaged in savouring the flattery, and, from his
appearance, found it very much to his taste.
'I would not, however, if a woman might presume to advise,' she
continued, 'be in any great hurry to sell the shares. Though they have
risen high, they will doubtless rise higher. And your gift, if you
will but wait, in a little will grow worthier of the spirit which
prompts it.'
'Madam,' returned Kelly, 'it is very prudent advice. I will be careful
to follow it.'
Was it relief which showed for an instant in Lady Oxford's face? Kelly
did not notice; Wogan could not tell; and a second afterwards an event
occurred which wholly diverted his thoughts.
All three had been standing with their faces towards the garden-seat,
the yew-tree and the orchard beyond, Lady Oxford between, and a little
in advance of Kelly and Wogan, so that each saw her face obliquely
over her shoulders. Now, however, she turned and sat down, giving thus
her whole face to the two men; and both saw it suddenly blanch,
suddenly flush as though all the blood had leaped from her heart into
her cheeks, and then fade again to pallor. Terror widened and fixed
her eyes, her lips parted, she quivered as though she had been struck
a buffet across the face.
'Your ladyship--' began Kelly, and, noticing the direction of her
gaze, he broke off his sentence, and turned him about. As he moved,
Lady Oxford, even in the midst of her terror, stole a quick, conscious
glance at his face.
'Sure, 'tis a predecessor to George,' thought Wogan; and he too turned
about.
Some twenty paces away a man was waiting in an easy attitude. He was
of the middle height, and, judged by his travelling dress and bearing,
a gentleman. His face was thin, hard, and sallow of complexion, the
features rather peaked, the eyes dark, and deepset beneath the brows.
Without any pretension to good looks, the stranger had a certain
sinister distinction--stranger, for that he was to the two men at this
time, whatever he may have been to Lady Oxford. Yet George thought he
had seen the man's eyes before, at Avignon, when the King was there;
and Wogan later remembered his voice, perhaps at Genoa, which he had
used much at one time. He stood just within the opening in the hedge,
and must needs have come through the trees beyond, while Lady Oxford
and her guests were discussing the Parson's good fortune.
As soon as he saw the faces turned towards him, he took off his hat,
made a step forwards, and flourished a bow.
'Your ladyship's most humble and obedient servant.'
He laid a stress upon the word 'obedient,' and uttered it with a
meaning smile. Lady Oxford returned his bow, but instinctively shifted
her position on the bench towards Kelly, and timidly put out a hand as
though she would draw him nearer.
The stranger took another step forwards. There was no change in his
expression, but the step was perhaps more swiftly taken.
'Mr. George Kelly,' he said quietly, and bowed again. 'The Reverend
Mr. George Kelly, I think,' and he bowed a third time, but lower, and
with extreme gravity.
Wogan started as the stranger pronounced the name. Instantly the
stranger turned to him.
'Ah,' said he, 'Captain Nicholas Wogan, I think,' and he took a third
step. His foot struck in a tuft of grass, and he stumbled forward; he
fell plump upon his knees. For a gentleman of so much dignity the
attitude was sufficiently ridiculous. Wogan grinned in no small
satisfaction.
'Sure, my unknown friend,' said he, 'I think something has tripped you
up.'
'Yes,' said the stranger, and, as he stood up, he picked up a book
from the grass.
'It is,' said he, 'a copy of Virgil.'