‘Harlequin!’ he thought, with a pang of hope. He summoned all his strength, all his will; the houses ceased to spin. He let himself down to his full length, with great care drew a scrap from one pocket, a pencil from the other, and laboriously wrote. Then he poked the paper underneath the ribbon round the poodle’s neck. ‘Home!’ he cried, clapping his hands; and fainted.
But ten minutes afterwards Miss Rose Townley unfolded a slip of paper, with here and there the mark of a bloody thumb, and written on it these words, ‘Help Harlequin’s friend’; and at her feet a bright-eyed poodle dog stood, wagging his tail, ready to conduct her to the spot where Harlequin’s friend lay in sore need.
CHAPTER XIII
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 café, 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, hi
s 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, savour
ing 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?’
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 274