MR. WOGAN TRADUCES HIS FRIEND, WITH THE
HAPPIEST CONSEQUENCES
Mr. Wogan's title of Hilton was now, thanks to the _Flying Post_, as
familiar as his name; he refused both the one and the other to the
servant, and was admitted to Rose Townley without any formalities. Her
eyes flashed as they remarked his livery, but she was not in any
concern about Mr. Wogan, and asked him no questions. She rose with the
utmost coldness, did not give him her hand, and only the bare mockery
of a bow, as though her indignation against Mr. Kelly was so complete
that it must needs embrace his friend.
'I thought that he would have plucked up enough courage to come
himself,' said she, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
'He is a man of the meanest spirit,' replied Wogan, in a sullen
agreement. 'It is a strange thing how easily one may be misled. Here
have I been going up and down the world with him for years, and I
never knew him until now, never knew the black heart of him, and his
abominable perfidies.'
Rose was taken aback by Wogan's speech. No doubt she expected a
hotch-potch of excuses and arguments on Mr. Kelly's behalf, which
would but have confirmed her in her own opinion; but falling in with
her views, he took the words out of her mouth.
'So,' she said doubtfully, 'he has lost your friendship too?'
'To be sure,' cried Wogan in a heat, 'would you have me keep friends
with a vile wretch whose thoughts writhe at the bottom of his soul
like a poisonous nest of vipers?'
Rose neither answered the question nor expressed any approval of
Wogan's elegant figure describing Mr. Kelly's mind.
'Oh,' said she, 'then he did not send you to make his peace with me?'
Wogan answered with all the appearances of reluctance.
'No. In fact the man was coming himself, and with a light heart. He
made a great to-do about the infinite fairness and charity of women,
which place them equal to the angels, and how you excelled all women
in that and other womanly qualities. But I told him, on the contrary,
that I knew your spirit, and that you were of too noble a pride to
shut your eyes to a slight, and would certainly dismiss him. However,
he would not be persuaded, so I slipped away from him and ran here, so
that I might warn you against him.'
Rose forgot to thank Mr. Wogan for his zeal on her behalf. Indeed her
face, in spite of herself, had lightened for a second; in spite of
herself her eyes had sparkled when Wogan spoke of the great faith Mr.
Kelly had in her charity.
'It was more than a slight,' she said, 'I could forgive a slight--He
would have come himself had not you prevented him.'
'But he is coming. He would have been here already, but that he paid a
visit on the way to Colonel Montague to discover whether Lady Oxford's
letters had been restored to her.'
'Lady Oxford's letters!' exclaimed Rose, her face flushing again with
anger.
'To be sure,' said Wogan, 'you would know nothing of them. It is a
fine story--the story of Lady Oxford's love-letters.'
'I have no wish to hear it,' cried Rose sharply, and she turned
towards the window. Mr. Wogan took a quick step towards her. If she
looked out of the window she could hardly fail to observe the Parson.
'Nor is it a story that you should hear,' said Wogan in a soothing
voice, 'though indeed to hear it from Mr. Kelly's lips would surely
make you aware of his devilish sophistries. For he declares that, but
for you, Lady Oxford's love-letters would never have been restored to
her, nor would he have gone to prison and put his neck in the noose.'
Rose shivered at those last words and drew in her breath. She turned
quickly back to Wogan.
'But for me?' she asked. 'What have I to do with Lady Oxford's
love-letters, or with his danger?' and her voice softened towards the
end of the sentence.
'Why, Lady Oxford, who knew very well Mr. Kelly's trade, betrayed him
in revenge for a certain ballad wherein your name was mentioned.'
'Yes,' interrupted Rose, 'Lady Mary told me of the ballad.'
'Well, you heard Mr. Kelly perhaps assure Lady Oxford that he had her
brocades in his lodging, and perhaps you remarked her ladyship's
confusion.'
'Yes. I guessed what the brocades were.'
'Very well. Mr. Kelly remained with her Ladyship, who informed him
that he would be taken outside his door, and his rooms searched. There
were papers in his rooms of a kind to bring him into great danger. But
there were also Lady Oxford's letters. The story he will tell you is
this, that he meant to use Lady Oxford's letters as a weapon by which
he might save his papers and so himself; but a complete revolution
took place in his thoughts. He suddenly understood that he owed it to
you that no woman's name should be smirched by his fault, and that
thus he was bound, at the peril of his life, to rescue Lady Oxford's
letters, as he did. A strange chance put it into his hands to burn his
own papers, and leave Lady Oxford's to be seized, in which case he
would have been saved, and she lost. But he saved his honour instead,
and his love for you helped him to it. He rescued her Ladyship's
letters, his own are in the hands of the Minister.'
Mr. Wogan, who had now secured a most attentive listener, disclosed
all that Mr. Kelly had told him of what took place in Ryder Street.
'This is the story he will tell you. And to be sure, he adds a pretty
touch to the pretence. For he went whistling to prison and he says
that he whistled because he felt as if you were walking by his side.'
'But what if it were no pretence at all?'
Mr. Wogan sagely shook his head, though the story had the stamp of
truth on it to those who knew the Parson.
'If he had held you in such respect would he have sent you Lady
Oxford's miniature to wear at Lady Oxford's rout?'
'But he did not send it to me for that purpose,' she cried, 'he did
not even know that I was going to the rout. He gave me the miniature a
long time ago, when it would have been very difficult for him to tell
me whose it was.'
'But he told you it was Queen Clementina's.'
'No. It was I who guessed at that, and he--did not deny it.'
Here at all events was sophistry, but Mr. Wogan was less indignant at
it than his anger with the Parson's subtleties would lead one to
expect.
'Well,' said Wogan, 'I have told you what it was my plain duty to
disclose to you.'
At this moment Wogan chanced to look towards the window. He beheld Mr.
Kelly's face pressed against the glass. The man had grown impatient
and so had climbed on to the railings. Mr. Wogan broke off with an
exclamation he could not repress.
'What is it?' said Rose, turning about.
'Some most beautiful diamonds,' said Wogan, spreading out his hand to
the window. He then dropped on to the floor and began picking up the
diamonds which Rose had scattered when she set her foot on the
miniature. Rose bit her lips, and flushed, as he held them in his
palm. Then he said carelessly:
'That fine miniature had diamonds set about it. D'ye know, Miss
Townley, that miniature would have been at the bottom of the sea long
before Mr. Kelly came to Avignon, but for the diamonds about it. 'Twas
I held his arm when, having done with her Ladyship, he would also have
done with her Ladyship's present, and I bade him keep it for the value
of the jewels.'
There was a loud knocking at the door, which came not a moment earlier
than was necessary to prevent Mr. Wogan revealing himself as still the
Parson's friend.
'There's the fellow come to importune you,' said Wogan.
'Then he would have thrown it away but for you,' said Miss Townley
thoughtfully. 'He did not keep it out of any--'
But Wogan heard the servant pass down to the door, and thought it
would be as well if he had a private word with the Parson.
'You will excuse me,' he said with dignity, 'but I have no heart for
the man's company. Besides, I have stayed too long in London as it is.
Delays would be dangerous.'
But Rose had no ears for any dangers of Mr. Wogan, as he was
indescribably glad to remark. For her eyes looked past him to the
door; from head to foot she seemed to listen for the sound of the
Parson's voice. Mr. Wogan bowed, and opened the door. Though she
followed him to the door, and held it open as he passed out, she did
not notice that he was going, she had no word of farewell. She did not
even notice that Mr. Wogan put the diamonds in his pocket. For Mr.
Wogan had his wits about him. Diamonds were diamonds, and the carpet
no place for them. Some day they might be of use to the Parson. The
door of the street was opened as Wogan stepped into the passage. But
Rose did not shut the door of the parlour and so Wogan, as he met
Kelly, could only whisper hurriedly, 'Remember, I am your worst
enemy,' and so left him to his own resources.
It appeared, however, that they were sufficient. The Parson made no
excuses whatever; he carried the day by the modesty of his omissions.
Both with regard to the miniature and to the saving of Smilinda he
disclosed to her no more than a bald array of facts. He made no parade
of the part which the thought of Rose had played in the revulsion of
his feelings, bringing him to see that he was bound in honour to save
Smilinda's honour; he did not tell her why he went whistling to
prison. But Rose knew from Wogan of these evidences of his love, and
no doubt thought of them the more because he would not use them to
soften her just resentments.
Mr. Wogan left them together, and, walking out to Dulwich, found the
Colonel's horse waiting in the road between the chestnut trees. He
came to the coast of Sussex in the morning, where he had friends among
the smugglers, and lay all that day in a hut within sound of the
waves. It was a black, melancholy day for Nicholas Wogan, who was
leaving his friends behind him to face their perils alone, and who
felt very solitary; not even the memory of the noble deeds of his
illustrious forefathers had any power to cheer him, until he heard the
grating noise of the boat's keel as it was dragged down the beach to
the sea, and saw the sail like a great wing waft up between him and
the stars.
He got safe to Paris, where he heard of the strange use to which the
Parson put his few weeks of liberty, for the Parson married Rose
Townley three weeks later at St. James's Church in Piccadilly, and
wrote to Mr. Wogan a very warm, human sort of letter which had not one
single classical allusion to disfigure it. In that letter he gave the
reasons which had induced him to the marriage.
'I am told,' he wrote, 'that a man so dangerously circumstanced must
be selfish in the extreme to marry a woman who, in a short while, may,
at the worst, be widowed; and at the best must be separated from her
husband in his gaol. I do not fear that you will have so mean an
opinion of my inclinations, but I would not have you think me careless
upon this point neither. Dr. Townley is old, and his health breaks. He
will leave his daughter, when he dies, but little money, and that
moment cannot be very far off. It is true that Rose has beauty, and no
doubt she might make a rich marriage if she had only beauty. But she
has frankness, truth, and constancy as well, qualities which are not
marketable wares, since those who possess them will not bring them
into the market. Now, if I suffer death for the Cause, Rose will be no
poorer than she was before; if, on the other hand, I live, there are
the booksellers, and from the silence of my prison I can make shift to
earn for her a decent livelihood.'
As all the world knows, Mr. Kelly lived, and even gained much credit
by his speech at his trial. He made it plain, to all but prejudiced
Whigs, that there was no Plot, nor he concerned in any, if there were.
But what is Whig justice? He was sentenced to prison for life. The
papers in his strong box were enough to help a foolish fellow,
Counsellor Layer, on his way to Tyburn, enough to send Lord Orrery to
the Tower, and Lord North and Grey into exile. The Plot was ruined for
that time; the Bishop of Rochester was banished, for Mar's traitorous
mention of the dog Harlequin fixed the guilt on that holy man. Mr.
Kelly came off with loss of fourteen years of his life, which years he
passed in the Tower.
It was not, after all, so silent a prison as he imagined it would be.
For though during the first months his confinement was severe, and he
never drew air except from between the bars, afterwards this rigour
was relaxed. He was placed in a room of which one window took the
morning sun, and the other commanded the river, and the ships going up
and down with the tide; he was allowed the use of his books, and to
receive what visitors he would. His visitors were not few, and amongst
them Colonel Montague was the most frequent. His gaolers, the officers
who were stationed in the Tower, and their wives, became his familiar
friends, and it is said that when, after fourteen years, he escaped,
not a woman in the precincts could make up her mind whether to clap
her hands for joy, or weep at the loss of his society. Moreover, Rose
came and went at her pleasure.
The first years of his imprisonment were thus not wholly unhappy
years. He sat amongst his books translating Cicero, and if at times
his limbs ached for the stress and activity of his youth, and he began
to dream of hours in the saddle and starry nights at sea, it was not
perhaps for very long. He had friends enough to divert his leisure
moments, and Rose to keep him busy at his work. For what he had
foreseen came to pass. Two years after Mr. Kelly came to the Tower,
Dr. Townley died, and left Rose but poorly circumstanced. She came to
lodge close by the Tower Gates, and the Parson set his pen to his
paper and wrote essays and translations till the whole Tower of London
buzzed with his learning, and no doubt a friendly Jacobite here and
there bought one of his books. Mr. Wogan, indeed, bought them all. He
has them ranged upon a bookshelf in his lodging at Paris, all bound in
leather and most dignified; the very print has a sonorous look. 'Mr.
Kelly's _Opera_' he calls them, and always speaks of the books as
'tomes' with prodigious respect and perhaps a sigh. For--
'He lacks one quality,' Mr. Wogan was heard to say, 'to set him on the
pinnacle of fame. He cannot write poetry. It is a trick, no doubt, a
poor sort of trick; but George had it not, and so when there was
poetry to be written, he had to come to his friends.'
Thus ten years passed, and then came the black day, when Rose fell
sick of a fever and must keep her bed. She sent word to George daily
that he should expect her on the morrow, until a delirium took her,
and the doctor, who had been charged by Rose to make light of her
suffering, was now forced to tell Mr. Kelly the truth. She lay at
death's door, calling on her husband, who could not come to her, and
talking ever of that little garden at Avignon above the Rhone, in
which she fancied that he and she now walked.
Mr. Kelly took the news in silence as a dog takes pain, and never
slept and barely moved while the fever ran its course. Rose was at the
Tower Gates, George was in his prison; a few yards only were between
them, but those few yards were built upon with stones. In the daytime
messages were brought to him often enough, but at night, when the
mists rose from the river and the gates were closed, and the Parson
had the dark loitering hours wherein to picture the sick room with its
dim light and the tired figure tossing from this side to that of the
bed, then indeed Smilinda had her revenge.