HOW, BY KEEPING PAROLE, MR. KELLY BROKE
PRISON
Every morning Mr. Kelly looked for the doctor to come to him with word
that in the little house without the Tower Gate the blinds were drawn.
But that message was not brought to him, and Colonel Montague, making
a visit to the prison, three weeks after Rose fell ill, found the
Parson sitting very quiet in his chair with a face strangely
illumined.
'Last night she slept,' said George, 'and waked only at midday. The
fever has left her, and she will live. It is wonderful.'
The Colonel said what was fitting to the occasion, and the Parson
replied to him absently, with his eyes upon the river and the boats
swinging on the tide; and after a while Father Myles Macdonnell, whom
the Colonel had neither seen nor heard of, was ushered into the room.
The Reverend Father was a kinsman of Parson Kelly, and though their
acquaintance had been of the slightest, the Parson now turned to him
with a great welcome. For his thoughts were now entirely bent upon an
escape from his captivity. He dared not survey the possibility that
some time Rose might again fall ill, and that again he must sit behind
the bars and only hear news of how she fared.
The Reverend Myles, who was of the honest party, but not as yet blown
upon by suspicion, seemed to him his only help and instrument. For a
long while, when the Colonel had gone, the pair debated the means of
escape, but found no issue; and Rose brought her white face back to
the Tower, and the Parson's spirits drooped, so that at last his
health began to fail. He was therefore allowed to drive out in a coach
to any place within ten miles of London in the custody of a warder,
and on his parole to return before dark. Of this favour he made
frequent use, and no doubt the sight of the busy faces in the streets
urged him yet more to make a bid for his freedom.
Now these journeys of the Parson to take the air set Father Myles
Macdonnell upon a pretty plan, which he imparted to Rose and to
George.
'You drive one afternoon up into Highgate Woods--d'ye follow that? I
have half-a-dozen well-disposed persons hiding in a clump of trees who
will take care of your warder--d'ye see? There will be a stout horse
tethered to a branch close by, and a lugger waiting off the coast of
Essex--'but the Parson would hear no more of the scheme.
'I have given my parole to come back to the Tower before dark,' said
he, and glanced at Rose, who was looking away, to strengthen him in
his objection. 'I cannot break it, can I, Rose? I have given my
parole. I am not one of the Butcher Cumberland's officers. We must
keep troth.'
Rose made an effort and agreed.
'Yes,' said she, 'he has given his parole, and he cannot break it.'
'Not so long as he's a lost Protestant,' said the Reverend Father. He
tapped George on the knee, and continued in a wheedling voice: 'It is
a matter of religion, d'ye see? Just let me convert you. I can do it
in a twinkling, and so I shall save your body and your soul in one
glorious moment.'
'How so? 'asked the Parson with a laugh, for he was by this time well
used to his kinsman's efforts to convert him. 'How shall a Catholic
creep out of the Tower more easily than a Protestant?'
'Because a Catholic can break his parole. It's a great sin, to be
sure, but I can absolve him for it afterwards.'
To Mr. Kelly's thinking (and, indeed, to Mr. Wogan's) this was no
sterling theology, and he would not be persuaded. Another device had
to be invented, and when at last a satisfactory plan was resolved
upon, the plotters must wait for the quick nightfalls of autumn.
It was on Guy Fawkes day, the fifth of November, 1736, that Mr. Kelly
made his escape. On the morning of that day he drove out to Epsom in
the custody of his warder and upon his parole to return before dark.
At four o'clock, when the light was just beginning to fall, Father
Myles Macdonnell came into the Tower by the Sally Port Stairs opposite
the Mint. He was told that the Parson was taking the air, and replied
that he would go to the Parson's room and wait. Thereupon he crossed
the precincts of the Tower, and coming over the green and down the
steps of the main-guard, he inquired of the porter at Traitor's Gate
whether or no Mr. Kelly had returned.
The porter answered 'Not yet.'
'It is a great pity,' said the Reverend Myles, who seemed much
flustered. 'I am in a great hurry, and would you tell him, if you
please, the moment he comes, to run with all haste to his room?'
Upon that he turned off under the archway of the Bloody Tower, and
again mounted the steps of the main-guard.
About half-an-hour afterwards, in the deepening twilight, Mr. Kelly
was set down within the Traitor's Gate; he had kept his parole. The
porter gave him Father Myles's message; and the warder, since it
appeared that he could only proceed as usual to his lodging, took his
leave of him.
The Parson accordingly ran up the steps of the main-guard on to the
green, which was by this time very obscure. Three minutes afterwards
Father Myles Macdonnell hurried past the sentry at the Sally Port
Stairs opposite the Mint, grumbling that he would wait no longer, and
so came out upon Tower Hill. Just at that time to a moment another
Father Myles Macdonnell accosted the porter at Traitor's Gate and
requested him to let him out, seeing that he was, as he had already
said, in a great hurry. The porter let him out with no more ado.
The second Father Myles was the real Father Myles; the first one who
went grumbling out by the Sally Port Stairs was Parson Kelly. He had
met Father Myles in the dark corner by Beauchamp Tower, had slipped
over his head a cassock which the Father had brought with him, and had
run across to the entrance over against the Mint, and so into freedom.
The carriage which had driven him to Epsom, after putting him down
again at the Tower, had driven to Tower Hill, where it waited for the
Parson close by the Sally Port Stairs. It did not wait long: and the
Parson was hurried at a gallop out of London amidst the crackling of
fireworks and the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes. It seemed the
town was illuminated to celebrate his escape.
At the Tower his evasion was not discovered until half-past seven of
the evening, when the two porters, being relieved from their separate
stations at the Traitor's Gate and the Sally Port Stairs, each vowed
that he had let out Father Myles Macdonnell. This seemed so miraculous
an occurrence that the warder ran to Mr. Kelly's chamber. It was
empty, and then the clamour began. The Parson had thus three hours'
start, and, though a reward of 300_l_. was offered for his recapture,
no more was heard of him for a week.
Then, however, two fishermen coming into an alehouse at Broadstairs
saw the reward for Kelly proclaimed in print upon the wall, and fell
into a great fury and passion, saying that they had only received five
pounds when they might have had three hundred. For a fee of five
pounds they had put a man over from Broadstairs to Calais, who, when
once he was landed in France, had said to them:
'If anyone inquires for George Kelly, you may say that he is safely
landed in France.'
And indeed at the very moment when the fishermen were lamenting their
mistake in the alehouse, George Kelly and Rose were taking their
dinner in Mr. Wogan's lodging at Paris. Rose had travelled into France
the day before the Parson escaped, and so, after fourteen years, they
were united. It was a merry sort of a party, and no doubt Wogan made a
great deal of unnecessary noise. He drew the Parson aside into a
window before the evening was over.
'You are not very rich, I suppose?' said he.
'I want for nothing,' said the Parson with a foolish eye on Rose, like
a boy of eighteen.
Wogan fumbled in his fob and brought out a packet which he unfolded.
'Diamonds!' cried Kelly.
'They are yours,' said Wogan. 'I picked them up off the floor of a
room in Soho on an occasion which you may remember. A miniature frame
had come by a mischance.'
'Smilinda's?' asked Kelly with a frightened glance over his shoulder
to Rose, who had the discretion not to meddle in this private
conversation.
'Yes,' says Wogan; 'Smilinda's. She gave the stones to you. Very
likely they are worth a trifle.'
'We'll slip out and sell them to-morrow,' answered the Parson in a
whisper.
They slipped out, but they did not sell them. The diamonds were paste,
and Mr. Wogan at last understood why Lady Oxford, when she gave her
miniature set with brilliants to the Parson, had been so anxious that
he should never part with it.