IN WHICH MR. KELLY SURPRISES SMILINDA
The devil in all this affair, it was that Wogan could not be in two,
or even three, places at once. While Kelly was shut in with Lady
Oxford earlier, Mr. Wogan, as he has said, was on the wrong side of
the door. There he was again, after the rout, while he conversed with
Colonel Montague in the street. Again, while Wogan was busy with Mr.
Scrope in St. James's Park, Kelly and the Colonel were exchanging
their unknown explanations, of a kind not admired by Mr. Wogan, which
ended in their walking, like a pair of brothers, towards George's
rooms. In all these conjunctures Mr. Wogan's advice, could he have
been present, might have been serviceable, or at least his curiosity
must have been assuaged.
What did pass between Kelly and Lady Oxford when the rout was over,
and what were the considerations which induced George and the Colonel
to resist their natural and mutual desire for an honourable
satisfaction?
These questions (that perplexed Wogan when he awoke, about noon, from
the fatigue of the previous day) were answered later by Kelly, and the
answer must be given before the later adventures and sorrows of George
can be clearly narrated. Sure, no trifle could have turned sword and
gown into friends that night.
When Lady Oxford and Kelly were left alone in the empty rooms, among
the waning candles and scattered cards, Lady Oxford marched, like
indignant royalty, to the end of the inner withdrawing-room, where
they could not be heard or interrupted without warning.
Mr. Kelly followed with a mind made up. It was, after all, Lady Oxford
that had betrayed him, but he had, by an accident of forgetfulness,
kept her letters, and they now gave him the advantage. If those
letters could be saved, the Chevalier's papers could and should be
saved too, and himself rescued from peril and Rose from much
unhappiness. Rose was at the bottom of his thoughts that night; her
face was mirrored there bright, it seemed, with divinity. The
Chevalier was there too, no doubt, but Rose peeped over his shoulder.
Mr. Kelly, then, hardened his heart, and, for love and loyalty, meant
to push his advantage over Lady Oxford to its limits. He approached
her as she stood retired.
'Wretch,' cried Lady Oxford, 'you promised to burn my letters. Of all
traitors you are the most abandoned and perfidious.'
The Parson thought that memory supplied him with a parallel, but he
replied:
'It is a promise all men make and all men break.'
Lady Oxford struck her hand upon a table.
'You swore you had burned them.'
This time George was less ready with his answer, but her ladyship
stood awaiting it.
'My passion must be my excuse, madam; I could not bear to part with
these elegant testimonies of your esteem. It is as I have the honour
to tell your ladyship; the brocades are in my strong box in my
lodgings. To-morrow they shall be restored to your hands.'
'To-morrow!' she said, in a voice of despair. 'To-morrow! I am
undone!'
'It is not so long to wait for the finery, and I do not think the
streets are so purely unsafe as you suppose.'
'I am undone!' she repeated. 'The public will ring of my name. I shall
become a byword, a thing of scorn for every scribbler to aim his wit
at.'
She gnawed her fingers in an agony of fear and perplexity. Mr. Kelly
had learned enough. There was plainly no chance within the lady's
knowledge, as he had hoped, of saving her letters. Neither, then,
could the King's papers be saved. He bowed, and took a step towards
the door.
'Stop!'
Mr. Kelly turned with alacrity at the eager cry, but Lady Oxford had
no words of hope for him.
'You must not leave this house to-night, or must leave it secretly by
the garden.'
Kelly smiled grimly. Her ladyship was suddenly grown most tender of
her reputation now that it was in peril.
'Your ladyship's care for me, and your hospitality overcome me, but I
have, as you perhaps remarked, an assignation of honour with Colonel
Montague which nothing must prevent me from keeping. He is longing for
an instant revenge--at the Hazard Table. A while ago, you may pardon
me for observing, your ladyship was remote from feeling this sudden
and violent anxiety on my hand.'
Mr. Kelly's irony was poured out to deaf ears. Lady Oxford paced to
and fro about the room, wringing her hands in her extremity. Then she
stopped suddenly.
'I might drive to the Minister's.' She reached out a hand towards the
bell. Kelly shook his head.
'That visit would be remarked upon unfavourably by the friends of my
Lord Oxford, who are not in the Minister's interest. Mr. Walpole has
no party to-night, and must have gone to bed--'tis verging on two
o'clock--or else he is in his cups. Moreover, the _Dolliad_, the
ballad on his sister, was credited to your pen. You know that Mr.
Walpole loves a broad jest, and loves revenge. He will not protect you
nor miss so fair an opportunity. Nay, I think I read in to-morrow's
_Flying Post_, "In the papers of the prisoner Kelly, among other
treasonable matter reserved for a later occasion, were found the
following letters of a high curiosity, which we are graciously
permitted to publish; one begins--_Oh, my Delicious Strephon_."
Lady Oxford snapped her fan between her fingers and dashed the
fragments in Kelly's face. He owns that he cannot well complain she
served him ill, but he wanted to repay her in some sort for her
innuendo about his fate at the hangman's hands, and similar favours.
Beholding her passion, which was not unjust, he felt bitterly ashamed
of his words.
'You coward!' she said. Her dark eyes glared at him from a face white
as the ivory of her broken fan, and then, quite suddenly, she burst
into a storm of tears. Kelly's shame was increased a thousandfold.
'I humbly crave your ladyship's pardon,' he said. 'I have spoken in
terms unworthy of a chairman. But some remarks of your ladyship's on a
future event, to me of painful interest, had left an unhappy
impression.'
But Lady Oxford paid no heed to the stammered apology. As Mr. Kelly
moved to her she waived him aside with her hands, and, dropping on to
a sofa, pressed her weeping face into the cushions. Sobs shook her;
she lay abandoned to distress.
Mr. Kelly stood apart and listened to the dolorous sound of her
weeping. That was true which she had said; he had promised to burn
those letters; he had sworn that he had burned them. His fine plan of
using them as a weapon against her began to take quite another
complexion. There were, no doubt, all manner of pious and respectable
arguments to be discovered in favour of the plan, if only he pried
about for them. But a saying of Mr. Scrope's was suddenly scrawled out
in his recollections: 'AEneas was an army chaplain who invoked his
religion when he was tired of the lady, and so sailed away with a
clear conscience.' Kelly murmured 'Rose' to himself, and, again,
'Rose,' seeking to fortify himself with the mention of her name. But
it had the contrary effect. Even as he heard his lips murmuring it,
the struggle was over.
George had a number of pretty finical scruples, of which his conduct
at this crisis of his fortunes was a particular example. He relates
how it seemed to him that at the mention of her name Rose threw out a
hand to him and drew him up out of a slough; how he understood that
his fine plan was unworthy of any man, and entirely despicable in the
man whom she, out of her great condescension, had stooped to love; how
he became aware that he owed it to her, since she was a woman, that no
woman's fame, whether a Smilinda's or no, should be smirched by any
omission of his; how he suddenly felt in his very marrow that it would
dishonour Rose to save her even from great misery by a _lachete_
towards another of her sex. His duty was revealed to him in that
moment, as clear as it was unexpected. He sets his revulsion of
feeling wholly to Rose's account, as a man in love should, but very
likely her ladyship's fan had something to do with it.
He spoke again to Lady Oxford, and very gently.
'Madam, it is true. I promised to burn your letters. I swore that I
had burned them. My honour, I perceive, can only be saved by saving
yours.'
Lady Oxford raised her head from the cushions and stared at him with
wondering eyes.
'Let us play this game _cartes sur table_,' continued Kelly.
Her ladyship rose from her sofa and sat herself in a chair at a table,
still wondering, still suspicious. George took the chair on the other
side of the table, and spoke while Lady Oxford dried the tears upon
her face. To help her at all he must know all that she knew. His first
business was to remove her ladyship's suspicions.
'I understand that your ladyship, by some means of which I am as yet
ignorant, has become aware of a certain Plot, and has carried the
knowledge to Mr. Walpole.'
Lady Oxford neither agreed nor denied. She admitted the truth of Mr.
Kelly's statement in her own way.
'You bragged and blabbed to my worst enemy, to Lady Mary, with her
poisonous pen,' and her fine features writhed with hatred as she spoke
Lady Mary's name.
'There your ladyship was misled,' returned Kelly. 'My lips have been
sealed, as I already had the honour to inform you. My Lady Mary may
not love you, but she is innocent of this offence. If she wrote those
rhymes, she was, indeed, more my enemy than yours; and my enemy, as
your ladyship is aware, she is not.'
Lady Oxford understood the strength of the argument.
'Ah, yes,' she said thoughtfully. 'The apothecary's daughter!'
The contemptuous phrase slipped from Lady Oxford by mistake, and was
not at all uttered in a contemptuous voice. But she had no doubt
fallen into a habit of so terming the girl in her thoughts. None the
less, however, it stung Mr. Kelly, who was at some trouble to keep his
voice gentle. He knew how much Smilinda owed at this moment to the
apothecary's daughter.
'The young lady to whom I conceive you refer, Miss Townley, is of a
family as ancient, loyal, and honourable as your ladyship's own, and
you may have seen on what terms both ladies were this evening.
Moreover, Lady Mary was purely ignorant of Miss Townley's very
existence when that pasquinade was written.'
'Then who wrote it?'
'Mr. Scrope, as I have the honour to repeat.'
'Scrope?' she answered in a quick question, as though for the first
time she understood that George might well be right. He gave the
reasons for his belief as he had given them at the Deanery to Nicholas
Wogan. They were to the last degree convincing. Lady Oxford was
persuaded long before Mr. Kelly had come to an end. A look came into
her face which Kelly could not understand, a look of bitter
humiliation. 'Scrope,' she muttered, as her fingers played with the
cards upon the table. She overturned a card which lay face downwards
on the table, and it chanced to be the knave of hearts.
'Your ladyship now sees that you fell into a natural error,' continued
Kelly, who was anxious to smooth Lady Oxford's path, 'in consequence
of which you took a natural revenge. May I ask how you secured the
means of revenge? How, in a word, you came to know of the hidden Plot
within the Plot?'
Her ladyship's answer fairly startled Mr. Kelly. It was not given at
once. She still played with the cards, and overturned another. It was
the knave of clubs.
'The cards tell you,' she said with a bitter smile.
Mr. Kelly leaned back in his chair open-mouthed. 'Scrope?' he asked.
'Scrope,' replied her ladyship. 'I received a humble letter from him
praying that I would forgive his odious ingratitude, and, by way of
peace-offering, bidding me tell my Lord Oxford--'
'Who had already withdrawn,' said George. 'I think I understand,' Lady
Oxford's look of humiliation had enlightened him, 'and I think your
ladyship understands with me. Mr. Scrope is a sort of a gentleman, and
would prefer to do his dirty work without appearing as a spy. He has
made use of your ladyship. He sends you the Plot and spurs you to
disclose it with his ballad. He would have disclosed it himself, I
doubt not, had not your ladyship served his turn. But Mr. Scrope has
his refinements, and, besides that he spares himself, would take a
particular pleasure in compassing my ruin at the same time that he
outwitted you.'
Little wonder that Lady Oxford broke in upon Mr. Kelly's reasonings.
It must have been sufficiently galling for her to reflect that in
exacting her revenge she had been the mere instrument of a man she had
tossed aside.
'It is both of us that he has ruined, not you alone,' she cried.
Certainly, Mr. Scrope was a person to reckon with, and had killed
quite a covey of birds with one stone.
'Are you sure?' asked Kelly. 'Are you sure of that?'
She bent across the table eagerly, but she did not reply to the
question.
'Will you kill Scrope,' she flashed out, 'and you and I part friends?'
Kelly, even in the midst of this tangle of misfortunes, could not but
smile.
'I fear that I may have been anticipated. Mr. Scrope has been watching
your ladyship's house to-night--and Mr. Wogan observed him, and, I
conceive, has undertaken for him.'
Lady Oxford at that smiled too. 'Then he is a dead man,' she said,
slowly savouring her words like wine.
'But his death, madam, will not save your letters,' said Kelly; and
the fire died out of her face.
'He has betrayed us both,' she moaned. It seemed she had already
forgotten how she herself had seized at the occasion of betraying Mr.
Kelly. Kelly was in no mood to debate these subtleties.
'Are you sure?' he contented himself with asking for a second time.
'There is one thing Mr. Scrope has not done. He has taken no measures
purposely to insure that your letters will be discovered, since he
does not know of them; else, no doubt, he would have done his worst.
We two are still engaged in a common cause--your ladyship's. Your
intentions in my regard I were much less than a man if I did not
forgive, granting (what I now know) your ladyship's erroneous
interpretation of my ground of offence, the babbling to Lady Mary.
Does your ladyship permit me, then, at the eleventh hour, to save you,
if I can find a way, from the odious consequences of Mr. Scrope's
unparalleled behaviour?'
'You?'
Lady Oxford's brows were drawn together in perplexity. The notion that
Mr. Kelly was prepared to do this thing was still new and strange to
her.
'You?' Her eyes searched his for the truth of his purpose, and found
it. 'You?' she said again, but in a voice of gratitude and
comprehension. And then, with a gesture of despair, she thrust her
chair back and stood up. 'You cannot save yourself. I cannot save
you.'
'No,' replied George, 'myself I cannot save; but it may not be too
late to save my honour, which is now wrapped up in that of your
ladyship's. My case is desperate; what can be done for yours? Be plain
with me. How much does your ladyship know?'
Lady Oxford turned away from the table. In the face of Kelly's
generosity no doubt she hesitated to disclose the whole truth of her
treachery.
'I know no more than that you are in peril of arrest,' she said.
'Madam, surely you know more than that. You spoke earlier this evening
of my arrest, and you spoke with the assurance of a more particular
knowledge.'
Lady Oxford took a turn across the room.
'Oh, my God, what can I do?' she cried, lifting her hands to her head.
'I hear Lady Mary's laughter and the horrid things they will say!'
The whimsical inconsequence of Smilinda's appeal to her Maker did not
fail to strike Kelly as ludicrous, but, as his own case was hopeless
and abandoned, any thought of revenge or mockery had ceased to agitate
him. His honour now stood in saving all that was left of hers from
open and intolerable shame, and Rose beckoned him to the task.
'Surely you know more,' he persisted quietly.
Lady Oxford gave in and came back to the table.
'The Messengers should be waiting for you in Ryder Street.'
At last Kelly knew the worst. He would be taken before he reached his
doorstep. There would be no chance of saving the cyphers in his strong
box. Could he save Smilinda's letters?
He bent his forehead upon his hands, thinking. Smilinda watched him;
her lips moved as though she was praying.
'I might be carried to your lodgings and claim what is mine,' she
suggested.
'You would be carried to a trap--a _souriciere_. Ten to one you would
be arrested by the Messengers. At all events your visit would be
remarked upon, and you would not obtain the letters.'
Lady Oxford had no other proposal at hand, and there was silence in
the room. Mr. Kelly remained with his face buried in his hands; he
took the air in long deep breaths. No other sound was audible except
the faint ticking of the clock in the outer withdrawing-room. For
Smilinda was holding her breath lest she should disturb the man whom
she had betrayed, and who was now wholly occupied with the attempt to
save her. Then she remarked that the sound of his breathing ceased.
She bent forwards; he raised his face to hers. He did not seem to see
her; his eyes kindled with hope.
'You have found a way?' she whispered; and he whispered back:
'A desperate chance, but it may serve.' He started to his feet. 'It
must serve.'
A smile brightened over his face.
'It will serve.'
Sure he showed as much pleasure as if he had discovered an issue for
himself.
'Quick!' said Smilinda, with a smile to answer his. 'Tell me!'
'Colonel Montague--'
'What of him? Why speak to me now of him?'
Lady Oxford's face had clouded at the name.
'He is your only salvation.'
'What can he do?'
'Everything we need. His loyalty to the present occupant of the Throne
is entirely beyond a suspicion. He can act as he will without peril to
his reputation. He can even rescue your papers, which are not in the
same strong box as my own. The Colonel, if any man, can assist you if
he will.'
'But he will not,' said her ladyship sullenly.
'He will,' answered Kelly confidently, 'if properly approached. He is
a man of honour, I take it? You will pardon me for saying that your
ladyship's flattering behaviour towards me, in his presence (for the
nature of which you had, doubtless, your own particular reasons) can
have left him in no doubt on certain heads; while it is equally plain
that your ladyship hath no longer any very tender interest in keeping
his esteem and regard. Nevertheless, being a gentleman, he will not
abandon your ladyship's cause.'
Lady Oxford was in no way comforted.
'It may well be as you say,' she returned with a look at Mr. Kelly.
She had already one example of how much a gentleman could forgive a
woman when she stood in need of his help. 'But, Mr. Kelly, you cannot
come at Colonel Montague.'
'Why not?'
'You know very well that he lodges in the same house as yourself. I
sent a lackey with a note to you, yesterday. And your reply was dated
from 13 Ryder Street.'
Mr. Kelly stepped back, he could hardly believe his ears.
'Colonel Montague--lodges--in the same house as myself?' he asked.
'Yes,' Lady Oxford replied in a dispirited fashion. She had lost heart
altogether. Mr. Kelly, on the other hand, was quite lifted up by the
unexpected news.
'This is a mere miracle in nature,' he cried. 'I only went into my
present lodgings two days ago. I have been abroad for the greater part
of the time, and asleep the rest, and have had no knowledge of the
other tenants, even of their names. 'Faith, madam, your letters are as
safe as though the ashes were now cold in your grate.'
'But the Colonel will have gone home, and you are to be taken in Ryder
Street. You will not get speech with him.'
'Nay, madam, he has not gone home. He is waiting for me now.' Lady
Oxford started. 'Ah, your ladyship remembers. He is waiting for me.
Ten yards from your doorstep--ten yards at the farthest,' and Kelly
actually chuckled. Carried away by his plan, he began to pace the room
as he unfolded it. 'I shall see the Colonel, and if I can by any means
do so, I will acquaint him, as far as is necessary, with the
embarrassing posture of your affairs. I shall give him the key of the
box containing the--brocades, and, if the Messengers be not already in
possession of them, the rest must be entrusted to his honour as a
gentleman and a soldier. The unexpected accident of our being
fellow-lodgers gives him, to this end, a great advantage, and can
scarce have occurred without the providence of--some invisible power
or another which watches over your ladyship.'
Kelly thought that Lady Oxford this night had enjoyed what is called
the Devil's own luck.
'Have I your ladyship's leave to try my powers of persuasion with
Colonel Montague?'
Very much to Kelly's surprise she moved towards him, like one walking
in her sleep.
'You are bleeding,' she said, and stanched with her handkerchief some
drops from his brow, where it had been cut by the broken edges of the
ivory fan. Then she went again into a bitter fit of weeping, which
Kelly could never bear to see in a woman. She may have remembered the
snow upon the lawn, years ago, and a moment's vision of white honour.
Then she stinted in her crying as suddenly as she had begun; in a time
incredibly short you could not tell that she had wept.
'You must carry a token. I must write. Oh my shame!' she said, and
sitting down to a scrutoire, wrote rapidly and briefly, sanded the
paper, and offered it open to Kelly.
'I cannot see it; your ladyship must seal it,' he said, which she did
with a head of Cicero.
George took the note, and said: 'Now time presses, madam. I must be
gone. I trust that, if not now, at least later, you may forgive me.'
Her lips moved, but no words came forth. Kelly made his bow, and so
took leave of Smilinda, she gnawing her lips, as she watched him with
her inscrutable eyes, moodily pushing to and fro with her foot the
broken pieces of the fan on the polished floor.
There came into Kelly's fancy his parting view of Rose at Avignon, her
face framed among the vine leaves, in the open window; she leaning
forth, with a forced smile on her dear lips and waving her kerchief in
farewell. A light wind was stirring her soft hair at that time, and
she crying '_Au revoir_! _Au revoir!_ There was a scent of lilacs from
the garden in the air of April, George remembered, and now the candles
were dying in the sconces with a stench.
With these contrasted pictures of two women and two farewells in his
fancy, Kelly was descending the wide empty staircase, not knowing too
well where he went. Something seemed to stir, he lifted his eyes and
before him he saw again the appearance of his King: the King, young
and happy, and as beautiful as the dawn that was stealing into the
room and dimming the lustres on the stairs.
Then the appearance moved aside, and Kelly found himself gazing into a
great empty mirror that hung on the wall, facing the gallery above.
Lord Sidney Beauclerk, in fact, had not left the house with the other
guests, and Kelly, remembering, laughed aloud as he reached the fresh
air without.