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 Melibœus and Mœris, 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. The
n 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.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 265