OF THE ROSE AND THE ROSE-GARDEN IN AVIGNON.
Life is not wholly the lopsided business that some would have you
esteem it. Here was the Parson paying, with a sword-thrust of the
first quality, for a love-affair that was dead already; over and
ended. That was bad, but, to balance his accounts, the Parson waked up
from his swoon in Dr. Townley's house, with the Doctor's beautiful
daughter, Rose, to be his nurse-tender. Lady Oxford had caused his
duel with Scrope, to be sure, but she had thereby, as it were, cast
him straight into the girl's arms, and in that very condition which
was likely to make her most tender to him. Carry the conceit a little
farther, and you'll see that here was Mr. Kelly, through her
ladyship's behaviours, imprisoned in the hands of one of those very
creatures which she was ever persuading him to avoid: namely, that
terrible monster a girl, and she very young, frank, and beautiful.
When the Parson came to his senses, he called Dr. Townley to his side,
and telling him who he was, and how that, being a friend of Mr.
Wogan's, he knew the doctor from hearing his daughter call the dog
Harlequin, he continued:
'You were at Preston with my friend, and I therefore have the less
reluctance in asking a service of you beyond those you have already
done me;' and he began to tell the Doctor of the expected messenger
from Spain whom he was to meet on the boulevard.
But the Doctor interrupted him.
'Mr. Wogan is indeed my friend, though I have seen nothing of him
these past six years; and his name is a passport into our friendship,
as my daughter will assure you. So, Mr. Kelly, such kindness and
hospitality as we can show you you may count upon; but--well, I had my
surfeit of politics at Preston. I have no longer any faith in your
cause, in your King. I do not think that he will come before the
coming of the Coquecigrues. I am, indeed, leaving Avignon in a few
months, and hope for nothing better than a peaceful life in some
village of my own country under the King who now sits on the throne.
This he said very kindly, but with a certain solemnity which quite
closed Mr. Kelly's lips; and so, giving him a sleeping potion, the
Doctor left the room. In spite of the potion, however, the Parson
made but a restless night of it, and more than once from under his
half-closed lids he saw the doctor come to his bedside; but towards
morning he fell into something of a sleep and woke up in the broad
daylight with a start, as a man will who has something on his mind. In
a minute or two Mr. Kelly remembered what that something was. He got
out of his bed, and, holding the door open, listened. There was no
sound audible at all except the ticking of a clock in the parlour
below. Mr. Kelly drew on his clothes carefully, so as not to disarrange
the bandages of his wound, and, taking his shoes in his hand, crept
down the stairs. It was a slow, painful business, and more than once he
had to sit down on the steps and rest. He glanced into the parlour as
he passed, and saw, to his great relief, that it was only half past
eight in the morning. What with fomentations and bandages Mr. Kelly
had kept the tiny household out of bed to a late hour, and so no one
was astir. He drew back the bolt and slipped out of the house.
Half an hour later, Dr. Townley came into the bedroom and found it
empty. He scratched his head to ease his perplexity, and then wisely
took counsel with his daughter.
'There was a man he expected to come for him,' he said. 'He was very
urgent last night that I should see to it. But I cut him short, and so
do not know where they were to meet with each other.'
At that moment the clock in the parlour struck nine.
'I know!' cried Rose on a sudden, and dragged her father off to the
boulevard outside the Porte du Rhone, where they discovered Mr. Kelly
sitting bolt upright on his bench, with a flushed red face and
extraordinarily bright eyes, chattering to himself like a monkey.
The Parson lay for a week after that at death's door, and it needed
all Dr. Townley's skill and Rose's nursing to keep him out of the
grave. Meanwhile the Duke of Ormond's messenger arrived from Corunna,
and kicked his heels on the boulevard until Mr. Kelly recovered his
senses and summoned Mr. Philabe to his aid. Mr. Philabe the next
morning took Kelly's place on the bench, and that day the money
changed hands and the messenger started back post-haste to Corunna. At
Corunna he told the story of the Parson's misfortune in more than one
cafe, and so it came shortly to Wogan's ears, who put in with his ship
at that port in order to give up his command.
The reason for this change in Wogan's condition was simple enough.
Sufficient arms and ammunition had now been collected at Bilboa, and
it was become urgent that the plans for the rising of the soldiers in
England, and the capture of the Tower of London, should be taken
earnestly in hand. The Duke of Ormond, who was to land in the West,
was supposed a great favourite with the English troops, but it was
none the less necessary that their favour should be properly directed.
To that end Mr. Talbot, Tyrell, and Nicholas Wogan, amongst others,
were deputed to travel into England, ready for the moment of striking.
Nick was to have the rank of a colonel, and was bidden to repair to
Paris by a certain date, where he was to take his instructions from
General Dillon and the Earl of Mar. Now that date gave him half a week
or so of leisure, and he knew of no better use to which he could put
it than in stopping at Avignon, which lay directly in his path to
Paris.
But before he reached the olives of Provence Mr. Kelly was
convalescent and much had happened. How it had happened Mr. Wogan only
discovered by hints which the Parson let slip unconsciously. For
George had a complete distaste for the sensibilities, and, after all,
a true man, even in the company of his closest friend, never does more
than touch lightly upon the fringe of what he holds most sacred. He
said that he was recovered of two fevers at one and the same time, and
by the same ministering hands, and so was come forth into a sweet,
cool life and a quiet air. His affairs, whether of stocks in the
Mississippi scheme or of the Great Business, went clean out of his
mind. His heart was swept and garnished like the man's in the Parable,
and almost unawares a woman opened the door and stepped in, bringing
with her train seven virtues, as of modesty, innocence, faith,
cheerfulness, youth, courage, and love--qualities no better nor no
fairer than herself.
How did it begin? Why, at the first there would be a smiling face at
the doorway to wish him a good morning, or if he had slept ill a sweet
look of anxious fear which would make up for a dozen sleepless nights.
When he could get up from his bed and come into the parlour, the dog
Harlequin, and Rose, and he became children and playfellows together,
for the brute had been taught a hundred pretty tricks that would make
a dying man laugh; until at length the girl grew familiar, and was
seated at the very hearth and centre of his affections, where her
memory remains enshrined.
Mr. Kelly spoke frankly of the matter only once in Mr. Wogan's
hearing, and that was many years afterwards, and then he was not
speaking of the matter at all. It was Lady Mary Wortley who set him on
to it one night.
For she quoted a saying of some sage or another. 'In a man,' said she,
'desire begets love, and in a woman love begets desire.'
'And that is true,' said Kelly. 'I do think the steadfast and
honourable passions between our sex and women are apt to have their
beginnings on the woman's side, and then, being perceived and most
gratefully welcomed, light up as pure a flame in the heart of a man.
For otherwise, if a man sees a woman that she is fair, as King David
saw Bathsheba, and so covets her, his appetite may in the end turn to
love or may not. But if his eyes are first opened to an innocent
woman's love, he being at best a sinful creature, he is then stirred
with a wonderful amazement of grateful tenderness which never can pass
away, but must endure, as I hold, even after death.' Which was all
very modish and philosophical, and meant--well, just what anyone who
had visited Avignon in February of the year '22 might have seen with
half an eye. Rose was in love with the Parson and the Parson knew it,
and so fell in love with Rose.
Mr. Wogan reached Avignon in the afternoon. The Doctor's house stood a
stone's throw from the Palace of the Emperor Constantine, with a
little garden at the back which ran down to the city wall. The top of
the wall was laid out as a walk with a chair or two, and there Wogan
found the Parson and Rose Townley. It was five years and more since
Wogan had seen Rose Townley, and she was grown from a child to a
woman. He paid her a foolish compliment, and then the three of them
fell into an awkward silence. Mr. Wogan asked Kelly for a history of
his wound, and then:
'So 'twas Scrope. Lady Mary was right when she warned me we had not
seen the last of him. 'Faith, George, it was my fault. For, d'ye see,
if I had not been so fond of my poetry I should have made my account
with the gentleman at the gates of Brampton Bryan Manor, and you would
never have been troubled with him at all.'
"Brampton Bryan?" asked Rose. "Where is that?"
Mr. Kelly made no answer, and perhaps Wogan's remark was not the
discreetest in the world. Miss Rose would not forget that name,
Brampton Bryan. At all events, the three of them fell to silence once
more, and Mr. Wogan knew that he was trespassing and that he would
have done better to have journeyed straight to Paris. Rose, however,
came to the rescue and made him tell over again, as he had told her
often before, his stories of the march to Preston. But, whereas before
she had listened to them with a great enthusiasm and an eagerness for
more, now her colour came and went as though they frightened her, and
she would glance with a quick apprehension towards the Parson.
'And the battles are to be fought all over again,' she said, clasping
her hands on her knees, and then plied Wogan for more details. She
shivered at the thought of wounds and cannon-balls and swords, yet she
must know to the very last word all that was to be described of them.
So, until the sun sank behind the low green hills of the Cevennes, and
the Rhone at their feet, in that land of olives, took on a pure olive
tint. Then she rose and went into the house to prepare the supper,
leaving the two friends together; and it presently appeared that Rose
Townley was not the only one who was frightened.
The Parson watched her as she went down the garden, brushing the pink
blossoms from the boughs of a peach tree or two that grew on the lawn.
There was an old moss-grown stone sundial close to the house; she
paused for a moment beside it to pick up a scarf which was laid on the
top and so passed through the window, whence in a moment or two a
lamp-light shone. The Parson seemed sunk in a reverie.
'I am afraid, Nick,' he said slowly. 'I am afraid.'
'What! You too?' exclaimed Wogan. 'Afraid of the wars?'
'The wars--no, no,' replied Kelly scornfully dismissing the
interpretation of his fears, and then following out his own train of
thoughts, 'you have known her a long time, Nick?'
'Six years.'
'I would that I too had known her six years ago,' said the Parson with
a remorseful sigh.
'She has changed in those six years.'
'How?'
'Why, she has grown a foot, and grown a trifle shy.'
'Ah, but that's only since--' began the Parson with a nod, and came to
a sudden stop. Rose's shyness was the outcome of her pride. She was
shy just because she knew that she loved a man who had breathed no
word of love to her. Mr. Kelly sat for a little longer in silence.
Then,
'But I am afraid, Nick,' he repeated, and so went down into the house
leaving Nick in some doubt as to what he was afraid of.
The Parson repeated his remark the next morning after breakfast. Mr.
Wogan was smoking a pipe upon the wall; the Parson was walking
restlessly about as he spoke.
'I am afraid,' said he, and looks towards the house. As soon as he
looked, he started. So Wogan looked too. Rose Townley had just come
from the window and was walking across the lawn more or less towards
them with an infinite interest and attention for everything except the
two figures on the city wall.
'She comes slowly,' said Kelly in a great trepidation, as though he
had screwed up his courage till it snapped like a fiddle-string. 'She
is lost in thought. No doubt she would not be disturbed,' and he
glanced around him for means of escape. There was, however, only one
flight of narrow steps from the wall down to the garden; and if he
descended that he would be going to meet her.
Wogan laughed. 'She comes very slowly,' said he. 'No doubt she saw you
from the window.'
'It is plain she did not,' replied the Parson, 'for, as you say, she
comes very slowly.'
'The vanity of the creature!' cried Wogan. 'D'ye think if she saw you
she would run at you and butt you in the chest with her head?'
'No,' says Kelly quickly. 'I do not. But--well, if she saw us here she
would at the least look this way.'
'Would she?' asked Wogan. ''Faith, my friend, you'll have to go to
school again. Your ignorance of the ways of women is purely
miraculous. She does not look this way, therefore she does not know
you are here! She looks to every other quarter; observe, she stops and
gazes at nothing with the keenest absorption, but she will not look
this way. Oh, indeed, indeed, my simple logician, she does not know
you are here. Again she comes on--in this direction, you'll observe,
but how carelessly, as though her pretty feet knew nothing of the path
they take. See, she stops at the dial. Mark how earnestly she bends
over it. There's a great deal to observe in a dial. One might think it
was a clock and, like herself, had stopped. There's a peach tree she's
coming to. A peach tree in blossom. I'll wager you she'll find
something very strange in those blossoms to delay her. There, she
lifts them, smells them--there's a fine perfume in peach blossoms--she
peers into them, holds them away, holds them near. One might fancy
they are the first peach blossoms that ever blossomed in the world.
Now she comes on again just as carelessly, but perhaps the
carelessness is a thought too careful, eh? However, she does not look
this way. Watch for her surprise, my friend, when she can't but see
you. She will be startled, positively startled. Oh, she does not know
you are here.'
The girl walked to the steps, mounted them, her face rose above the
level of the wall.
'Oh,' she cried, 'Mr. Kelly!' in an extremity of astonishment. Wogan
burst out into a laugh.
'What is it?' asked Rose.
'Sure, Mr. Kelly will tell you,' said Wogan, and he strolled to the
end of the walk, turned, walked down the steps and so left them
together.
'What was it amused Mr. Wogan?' asked Rose of Kelly as soon as Wogan
had vanished. The Parson left the question unanswered. He balanced
himself on one foot for a bit then on the other, and he began at the
end, as many a man has done before.
'I can bring you nothing but myself,' said he, 'and to be sure myself
has battered about the world until it's not worth sweeping out of your
window.'
'Then I won't,' said she with a laugh. The laugh trembled a little,
and she looked out over the river and the fields of Provence with eyes
which matched the morning.
'You won't!' he repeated, and then blundered on in a voice of intense
commiseration. 'My dear, I know you love me.'
It was not precisely what Rose expected to hear, and she turned
towards the Parson with a look of pride. 'And of course I love you
too,' he said lamely.
'You might almost have begun with that,' said she with a smile.
'Was there need?' he asked. 'Since I thought every blade of grass in
your garden was aware of it.' Then he stood for a second silent.
'Rose,' said he, savouring the name, and again 'Rose,' with a happy
sort of laugh. But he moved no nearer to her.
Rose began to smile.
'I am glad,' said she demurely, 'that you find the name to your
liking.'
'It is the prettiest name in the world,' cried he with enthusiasm.
'I am much beholden to my parents,' said she.
'But, my dear,' he continued, 'you put it to shame.'
The girl uttered a sigh which meant 'At last!' but Mr. Kelly was in
that perturbation that he altogether misunderstood it.
'But you mustn't believe, my dear, it's for your looks I love you,' he
said earnestly. 'No, it's for your self; it's for the shining
perfections of your nature. Sure I have seen good-looking women before
to-day.'
'I have no doubt of that,' she said, tapping with her foot on the
pavement.
'Yes, I have,' said he. 'But when I looked at them 'twas to note the
colour of their eyes or some such triviality, whereas when I look at
your eyes, it's as though a smiling heart leaned out of them as from a
window and said, "How d'ye do?" Sure, my dear, I should love you no
less if you had another guess nose, and green eyes.' (He reflectively
deformed her features.) 'It's your shining perfections that I am on my
knees to.'
'Are you?' she interrupted with a touch of plaintiveness. He was
standing like a wooden post and there was at the least a couple of
yards between them.
'Just your shining perfections. 'Faith, you have the most
extraordinary charm without any perversity whatever, which is a pure
miracle. I am not denying,' he continued thoughtfully, 'that there's
something taking in perversity when it is altogether natural, but, to
be sure, most women practise it as though it were one of the fine
arts, and then it's nothing short of damnable--I beg your pardon,' he
exclaimed waking up of a sudden. 'Indeed, but I don't know what I am
saying at all. Rose,' and he stepped over to her, 'I have no prospects
whatever in the world, but will you take them?'
Well, she did. Mr. Kelly had come to his meaning in a roundabout
fashion enough, as he acknowledged that same day to Nicholas Wogan.
'Upon my conscience, but I made a blundering ass of myself,' said he.
'You would,' said Wogan. 'My dear man, why didn't you tell me of your
intention and I would have written you out a fine sort of speech that
you could have got by heart?'
'Sure I should have stammered over the first sentence and forgot the
rest,' said Kelly with a shake of the head. 'To tell the truth, the
little girl has sunk me to such a depth of humility and diffidence
that I find it wonderful I said anything at all.' Then he grew silent
for a minute or so. 'Nick,' said he secretly, drawing his chair a
trifle closer. 'There's a question troubles me. D'ye think I should
tell her of My Lady Oxford?'
'It would be entirely superfluous,' replied Wogan with decision,
'since the thing's done with.'
'But is it?' asked Kelly. 'Is it, Nick? Look you here. We thought it
was done with a year ago, and up springs Mr. Scrope at Avignon. Mr.
Scrope does his work and there's not the end of it. For I am carried
here and so my very betrothal is another consequence. It is as though
her ladyship had presented me to Rose. Well, how are we to know it's
done with now? If it ends here it is very well. But, d'ye see, Nick,
it was after all not the most honourable business in the world, and am
I to make this great profit out of it? Well, perhaps my fears confuse
my judgment. I am all fears to-day, Nick,' and he stopped for a moment
and clapped his hand into his pocket.
'I'll confess to you a very childish thing,' said he. 'Look!' and out
of his pocket he drew a pistol.
'What's that for?' asked Nick.
'It's loaded,' replied Kelly. 'I went up to my room, after the little
girl had taken me, and loaded it and slipped it into my pocket,' and
he began to laugh, perhaps something awkwardly. 'For, you see, since
she prizes me, why I am grown altogether valuable.' He put back the
pistol in his pocket. 'But don't misunderstand me, Nick. The new fears
are quite overbalanced by a new confidence. Sure, it's not the future
I am afraid of.'
'I understand,' said Wogan gravely. 'It's what's to come.'
'Yes, that's it,' said Kelly.
Being afraid, and being a man of honour, Kelly did nothing, said
nothing on the head of his old love affair, and trembled with
apprehension of he knew not very well what. A path of flowers
stretched before him, but a shadow walked on it, a tall, handsome
shadow, yet unfriendly. It is Mr. Wogan's firm belief, based on
experience, that a woman always finds everything out. The only
questions are, when, and how will she take it? Sometimes it is a
letter in the pocket of an old coat which the dear charitable creature
is giving to a poor devil of a chairman. Sometimes it is a glance at a
rout, which she shoots flying. Now it is a trinket, or a dead flower
in a book, or a line marked in a poem, but there is always a trail of
the past, and woman never misses it.
George's wooing seemed as flowery as the meadows about Avignon, white
with fragrant narcissus, or as the gardens purple with Judas trees in
spring. Rose was all _parfait amour_, and, in her eyes, Mr. Kelly was
a hero, a clerical Montrose, or a Dundee of singular piety. Wogan has
known women more zealous for the Cause, such as her Grace of
Buckingham, or Madame de Mezieres, who had ever a private plot of her
own running through the legs of our schemes, like a little dog at a
rout, and tripping us up. To Miss Townley George was the Cause, and
the Cause was George, so that, in truth, she was less of a Jacobite
than a Georgite.
There never had been such a George as hers for dragons. Why did he
fight Mr. Scrope? She was certain it was all for the Cause! Indeed,
that _casus belli_, as the lawyers say, proved a puzzle. Why, in fact,
did the Parson come to be lying on the flags, in receipt of a
sword-thrust of the first quality? George was the last man to brag of
his services, but he was merely obliged to put the sword-thrust down
to his credit with the Cause. His enemy had been a Whig, a dangerous
spy, which was true, but not exactly all the truth, about as much of
it as a man finds good for a woman.
Rose clasped her hands, raised her eyes to Heaven, and wondered that
it did not better protect the Right. What other deeds of arms had her
warrior done? She hung on George imploring him to speak of deadly
'scapes, and of everything that it terrified her to hear. Mr. Kelly,
in fact, had never drawn sword in anger before; he was, by profession,
a man of peace and of the pen. If ever he indulged a personal
ambition, it would have been for a snug Irish deanery, and he
communicated to Miss Townley a part of his favourite scheme, for
leisure, a rose-hung parsonage, and Tully, his Roman friend.
But the girl put this down to his inveterate modesty, remarked by all
Europe in his countrymen.
'Nay, I _know_ you have done more,' she said one day alone with him in
a bower of the garden. 'You have done something very brave and very
great, beyond others. You helped to free the Queen from the Emperor's
prison at Innspruck!'
'I!' exclaimed Mr. Kelly in amazement. 'What put that notion into the
prettiest head in the world? Why, it was Nicholas's brother Charles,
with other Irish gentlemen, Gaydon, Misset, and O'Toole, who did that
feat; the world rings of it. I was in Paris at that time.'
'Then you did something greater and braver yet, that is a secret for
State reasons, or else, why does the King give you such rich
presents?'
Mr. Kelly blushed as red as the flower after which his lady was named.
'Now,' he thought, 'how, in the name of the devil, did she hear of the
box the King gave me, and I gave to Lady Oxford?'
That trinket was lying on Lady Oxford's table, but the face behind the
mirror was now that of a handsomer man than either his Majesty, or Mr.
Kelly, or Colonel Montague. Kelly knew nothing about that, but he
blushed beautifully when Miss Townley spoke of a rich royal present.
'You blush,' cried the girl, before he could find an answer. 'I know
you are hiding something, now.' (And here she added to his pleasure
without taking anything from his confusion), 'Tell me why you blush to
find it fame?'
'Troth, isn't my face a mirror, and reflects your rosy one, my Rose?'
answered Mr. Kelly, putting on a great deal of the brogue, to make her
laugh. For, if a woman laughs, she is apt to lose sight of her idea.
'I must be told; I cannot trust you to show me how brave you are.'
Mr. Kelly was upon dangerous ground. If he was expected to talk about
the box given by the King, and if Rose wished to see, or to know what
had become of it, Kelly had not a fable ready, and the truth he could
not tell. He made a lame explanation:
'Well, then, I blushed, if I did, for shame that the King has to
borrow money to help better men than me.'
'I don't care if he borrowed the money or not, for he could not have
borrowed for a better purpose than to give you--what I have seen.'
Mr. Kelly was pale enough now. What in the wide world had she seen?
Certainly not the snuffbox.
'Seen in a dream, my dear; sure the King never gave me anything but my
little pension.'
'Then you know other kings, for who else give diamonds? Ah, you are
caught! You have the Queen's portrait set with diamonds.'
'The Queen's portrait?' cried Kelly in perplexity. He was comforted as
well as perplexed. 'Twas plain that Rose knew nothing of the royal
snuffbox, now the spoil of Lady Oxford's spear and bow.
'Yes,' cried Rose. 'Whose portrait but the Queen's should it be that
lies on your table? So beautiful a lady and such diamonds!'
Mr. Kelly groaned in spirit. The snuff-box was not near so dangerous
as this new trail that Rose had hit. She had seen, in his possession,
the miniature of Smilinda, and had guessed that it was a royal gift;
the likeness of the Princess Clementina Sobieska, who had but lately
married the King.
'I saw it lying on your table the day we brought you home from the
seat on the boulevard, when we thought'(here Miss Rose hid her face on
her lover's shoulder, and her voice broke) 'that--you--would--die.'
Now was this rose wet with a shower, and when Kelly, like the glorious
sun in heaven, had dried these pretty petals, what (Mr. Wogan puts it
to the casuists) was the dear man to say? What he thought was to curse
Nick for holding his hand when he was about throwing Smilinda's
picture into the sea.
What he said was that, under Heaven, but without great personal
danger, he had been the blessed means of detecting and defeating a
wicked Hanoverian plot to kidnap and carry off from Rome the dear
little Prince of Wales, and Mrs. Hughes, his Welsh nurse. This
prodigious fable George based on one of the many flying stories of the
time. It satisfied Miss Townley's curiosity (as, indeed, it was very
apt to do) and George gave her the strictest orders never to breathe a
word of the circumstance, which must be reckoned a sacred mystery of
the royal family. He also remarked that the portrait flattered her
Majesty (as painters will do), and that, though extremely pretty and
gay, she had not that air of dignity and command, nor was so dark a
beauty. 'In fact, my dear,' said George, 'you might wear that portrait
at the Elector's Birth Night rout (if you could fall so low) and few
people would be much the wiser. These Roman painters are satisfied
with making a sitter pretty enough to please her, or him.'
George was driven to this flagrant incorrectness because, though Miss
Townley had not yet seen the Queen's portrait (her father having
changed sides) she might see one any day, and find Mr. Kelly out.
The girl was satisfied, and the thing went by, for the time. But, on
later occasions, his conscience gnawing him, the good George very
unwisely dropped out general hints of the unworthiness of his sex, and
of himself in particular, as many an honest fellow has done. In Mr.
Wogan's opinion, bygones ought to be bygones, but it takes two to that
bargain. Meanwhile Miss Rose might make as much or as little of her
lover's penitences as she chose, and, indeed, being a lass of gold,
with a sense of honour not universal in her sex, and perfectly sure of
him, she made nothing whatever, nor thought at all of the matter.
But there was another dragon in the course that never yet ran smooth.
The excellent surgeon, who had not recovered the fright of Preston,
was obdurate. He had no dislike for Mr. Kelly, but a very great
distaste for Mr. Kelly's Cause. Rose might coax, the Parson might
argue, Wogan might use all his blandishments--the good man was iron.
In brief, Kelly must cease to serve the King, or cease to hope for
Rose. This was a hard choice, for indeed Mr. Kelly could not in honour
leave hold of the threads of the plot which were then in his hands.
So much Dr. Townley was at last brought to acknowledge, and thereupon
a compromise was come to. Mr. Kelly was to go over to England once
again, on the last chance. The blow was to be struck in this spring of
the year 1722. If it failed, or could not be struck, Mr. Kelly was to
withdraw from the King's affairs and earn his living by writing for
the booksellers, and instructing youth.
The Parson was the more ready to agree to this delay, because of a
circumstance with which he was now acquainted. The Doctor and his
daughter were themselves on the point of returning to England. Mr.
Kelly and Rose had no great difficulty in persuading the surgeon that
he would find it more convenient to live in London than in the
country, of the miseries of which they drew a very pathetic and
convincing picture; and so, being assured that the delay would not
mean a complete separation, they accepted the plan and fell to mapping
out their lives.
They chose the sort of house they would live in and where, whether in
Paris or in England: they furnished it from roof to cellar.
'There must be a room for Nick,' said the Parson, 'so that he can come
in and out as if to his own house.'
Mr. Wogan had borne his part in persuading Dr. Townley, without a
thought of the great change which the Parson's marriage meant for him.
But these words, and the girl's assent, and above all a certain
unconscious patronage in their voices, struck the truth into him with
something of a shock.
Mr. Wogan escaped from the room, and walked about in the garden. These
two men, you are to understand, had been boys together, George being
by some years the older, and had quarrelled and fought and made
friends again twenty times in a day. Mr. Kelly bore, and would bear
till his dying day, a little scar on his cheek close to his ear, where
he was hit by a mallet which Wogan heaved at him one day that he was
vexed. Wogan never noticed that scar but a certain pleasurable
tenderness came over him. His friendship with the Parson had been, as
it were, the heart of his boyhood. And in after years it had waxed
rather than diminished. The pair of them could sit one on each side of
a fire in perfect silence for an hour together, and yet converse
intelligibly to each other all the while. Well, here was Mr. Wogan
alone in the darkness of the little garden at Avignon now. The Rhone
looked very cold beneath the stars, and the fields entirely desolate
and cheerless. Yet he gazed that way persistently, for if he turned
his head toward the house he saw a bright window across which the
curtains were not drawn, and a girl's fair hair shining gold against a
man's black periwig. Mr. Wogan had enough sense to strangle his
jealousy that night, and was heartily ashamed of it the next morning
when he bade the couple good-bye and set out for Paris.
Mr. Kelly took his leave a few days later, being now sufficiently
recovered to travel. The precise date was the eighth of April. To part
from Rose you may well believe was a totally different matter from his
adieus to Smilinda. Nothing would serve the poor girl, who had no
miniature and diamonds to give, but to sacrifice what she prized most
in the world after her father and her lover.
'You cannot take me,' she said with a tearful little laugh, 'but you
shall take Harlequin, who made us acquainted. That way you will not be
altogether alone.'
Harlequin wagged his tail, and sat up on his hind legs as though he
thoroughly approved of the proposal, and Mr. Kelly, to whom the poodle
could not but be an inconvenience, had not the heart to refuse the
gift.
George had to give as well as to take, and felt even less blessed in
giving than in receiving. For Miss Rose must have a souvenir of him,
too, and what should it be but that inestimable testimony to her
lover's loyalty and courage, the Portrait of the Queen! There was no
way of escape, and thus, as a memorial of Mr. Kelly's singular
attachment to the best of Causes and of Queens, Miss Townley was
treasuring the likeness of the incomparable Smilinda. The ladies, in
the nature of things, could never meet, George reckoned, for the
daughter of the exiled country physician would not appear among the
London fashionables.
In Paris, on his road to London, Mr. Kelly visited the Duke of Mar,
who most unfortunately took notice of the dog, and asked him what he
purposed to do with it.
'My Lord,' replied Kelly, 'when I am on my jaunts Harlequin will find
a home with the Bishop of Rochester, whose wife has a great liking for
dogs. The poor lady is ill, and, alas, near to her death; the Bishop
is fretting under the gout, and his wife's sickness, and the
jealousies among the King's friends. Moreover, he is much occupied
with building his tomb in the Abbey, so that, altogether, their house
is of the gloomiest, and Harlequin may do something to lighten it.'
For the poodle had more accomplishments than any dog that ever the
Parson had met with, and this he demonstrated to the Duke of Mar by
putting him through his tricks. The Duke laughed heartily, and
commended the Parson's kindliness towards his patron. But in truth the
Parson never did a worse day's work in the whole of his life.