Lady Mary’s credentials were Wogan’s name; the girl could not suspect them. How had she come hither? Lady Oxford had invited her father, Rose said, as a schoolfellow of my lord’s, and had asked, too, for the daughter’s company. Then the young lady was lured, her new friend said, by a wicked woman for a cruel purpose. That purpose, whatever it was, and neither Wogan nor Kelly nor Lady Mary could do more than guess, must be defeated at any cost — at all costs. Lady Mary glanced at the guilt and guilelessness of our sex. Kelly, too, had been entrapped, before he knew Rose, but that was ended. Lady Mary certainly knew it was ended, however things appeared. According to men’s notions, he was compelled to lie to Rose about the miniature. Now Miss Townley might, if she chose, give Kelly his congé to-morrow. To-night she must know nothing, see nothing, bear no grudge, be staunch; she owed it to her honour, to the honour of her sex, to Kelly’s very life, and to her revenge, if she craved for one, on the false enchantress. That was Lady Mary’s sermon. And the lesson was needed. She reported it later to Wogan who, at this moment, was following the Parson with all his eyes.
Lady Oxford at the card-table was greeting Kelly with a conspicuous kindness. Her smile was one wide welcome.
‘My dear Mr. Johnson,’ she said, ‘you are grateful as flowers worked on the very finest Alençon. Sure you bring me those laces for which I gave you a commission in Paris, and the lutestring from my Lady Mar.’
Mr. Kelly murmured a word that the laces were below, and he hoped her ladyship would be satisfied. But his eyes searched the room all the time for Rose, whom he could not see.
‘You shall show me them!’ cried Lady Oxford; ‘but first you must bring me luck. Mr. Johnson and I were always lucky before he went abroad.’ She spoke with a provoking smile at Colonel Montague, and then shot a quick glance at Lord Sidney Beauclerk, who was now risen from the table, and stood in a window watching her.
The glance said plain as writing, ‘You understand. I have to face out the ballad. I can trust you.’ Wogan’s blood boiled as he noticed and read the look, for it was just that tender appeal to her lover’s faith which always brought about the lover’s undoing. Lord Sidney’s young face flushed with pride at the trust she reposed in him, and she continued to Kelly:
‘Look over my hand, Mr. Johnson; you must not leave me. What card shall I choose? You, Colonel Montague, I discard you. I appoint you to the Commissariat, run and see that Lady Rich does not starve. She is leaving her party with the air of a loser, and needs the comforts of chicken and champagne. But first let me make you better acquainted with the gentleman who supersedes you. Mr. Johnson, the right-hand man of my dear Bishop of Rochester.’ There she stopped short in a pretty confusion, as though the words had slipped from her lips against her will.
‘Who should be thrown to the lions,’ growled the Colonel to himself, and added gruffly, ‘Mr. Johnson and I have met before.’
The Colonel turned his broad scarlet back with the ghost of a bow, and went reluctantly to Lady Rich, a mature matron, dressed to kill, in virginal white. Wogan watched them out of the door, and was again turning back to the card-table, when again Lord Sidney Beauclerk’s hand was laid on his sleeve.
‘A word with you, Mr. Hilton,’ said he in a hard voice.
‘When the half-hour is past, my lord,’ said Wogan, looking at his watch. ‘There are still eight minutes and a few seconds.’
‘I will set my watch by yours,’ said the lad with great dignity; which he did, and went back to his corner.
Mr. Johnson’s welcome, meanwhile, was as that of the prodigal swain. He made more than one effort to slip from her side and go in search of Rose, but Lady Oxford would not let him go. She had eyes only for him, eyes to caress. Many curious people watched the scene as at a play. All the town knew the ballad, and here was Lady Oxford’s reply. Mr. Johnson and Lady Oxford were to all seeming the best of friends, and no more than friends, for was not Miss Townley in the room to testify the limits of their friendship?
A shifting of the groups gave Wogan suddenly a view of Rose Townley. She was still talking with Lady Mary, or rather she was still listening to her, and threw in now and again a short reply. But she spoke with an occupied air, and her eyes were drawn ever towards the card-table at which Lady Oxford was practising her blandishments on the Parson. Then to Wogan’s relief a few ladies and gentlemen stepped between, and the living screen hid him from her view.
At this moment Lady Oxford lost heavily.
‘An ace? Sonica! I am bankrupt!’ she cried, and rising from the table she addressed the Parson. ‘Mr. Johnson, you bring me no better luck than did the Colonel. I must console myself with private talk, and news of lace and lutestring. What have you brought me? Come, I positively die to see,’ and so, with her sweetest smile, she carried off the Parson.
It was thus she had wrought on that first night when Kelly met the Colonel, but there was a mighty difference in Kelly’s demeanour. Then he had given her his arm with the proudest gallantry. Now her ladyship went out of her way to lead him past Rose, where she sat with Lady Mary. He threw an imploring glance at the girl, and followed in Lady Oxford’s wake, the very figure of discomfort.
Fine smiles rippled silently round the company as the pair made their way to the door. Rose watched them, her face grown very hard and white, but she said no word until they had gone. She stood motionless, except that her bosom rose and fell quickly. Then she turned to Lady Mary.
‘I must bid your ladyship good-night,’ she said; ‘I have stayed too long.’
Pride kept her voice clear, her words steady, but it could not mask the pain of her face.
‘What ails you, child? You must smile. Smile!’ whispered Lady Mary. But Rose was struck too hard. She lowered her eyes and fixed them on the floor to hide the humiliation they expressed, but she could not smile. She tried, but no more came of it than a quiver at the corners of her lips, and then she set her mouth firmly, as though she could not trust herself.
‘I thought I had persuaded you,’ whispered Lady Mary. ‘It is for honour, it is for life, his life. Appearances are nothing. You must stay.’
‘I thank your ladyship, who is most kind. I will stay,’ said the girl. Her face flushed purely with a delicate, proud anger.
Lady Mary presented her to some of her friends, with whom Rose bore herself bravely. Wogan saw that she had taken her part, and blessed Lady Mary.
He had followed Lady Oxford and the Parson out of the room, and leaned over the balusters while they descended the stairs. It was an ominous business, this summons of Lady Oxford. Why must she carry him off alone with her? What blow had she to strike? Mr. Wogan was not surprised that Kelly had turned pale, and though he held his head erect, had none the less the air of one led to the sacrifice. To make the matter yet more ominous, Lady Oxford herself seemed in a flutter of excitement; her colour was heightened; she sparkled with even more than her usual beauty; her tongue rattled with even more than its usual liveliness.
Half-way down the stairs she met Lady Rich and Colonel Montague mounting. Lady Oxford stopped and spoke to the Colonel. Mr. Wogan caught a word or two, such as ‘Miss Townley — the poor girl knows no one.’ Kelly started a little; the Colonel sullenly bowed. Lady Oxford, leaning upon Mr. Kelly’s arm in order to provoke the Colonel, must needs in pity bid the Colonel wait upon Rose in order to provoke Mr. Kelly. There Wogan recognised her ladyship’s refinements.
The pair passed down to the foot of the stairs. To the right of the staircase a door gave on to that little room into which Kelly had led Lady Oxford on the night of the Masquerade. Lady Oxford left his arm and went towards it.
Kelly remained standing by the stairs, very still. It was in this room that Lady Oxford had discovered the Chevalier’s likeness in the lid of the snuff-box, and had deceived George into the belief that she was, heart and soul, as deep in the Cause as he. It was that room which had witnessed the beginnings of the history. Now it seemed it was like to see the end.
Kelly looked up the stairs and saw Wogan�
��s face. He smiled, in a quiet, hopeless way, and then Lady Oxford threw open the door. She turned back to Kelly, a languorous smile upon her lips, a tender light in her eyes. Neither the smile nor the look had power to beguile the two men any longer. Kelly stepped forwards to her like a man that is tired. Wogan had again the queer sense of incongruity. Behind him voices laughed and chattered, in some room to his left music sounded; and here at the foot of the stairs was a woman all smiles and graces playing with Life and Death as a child with toys.
The pair passed into the room. The door shut behind them. The click of the latch is one of the things Wogan never will forget.
CHAPTER XVIII
WHEREIN A NEW FLY DISCOURSES ON THE INNOCENCE OF THE SPIDER’S WEB
WOGAN WAS STILL leaning on the rail of the balustrade when a watch was held beneath his nose.
‘The half-hour is gone, Mr. Hilton,’ said Lord Sidney Beauclerk.
‘True,’ said Wogan, ‘it is now a quarter past eleven.’ His eyes moved from the watch to the closed door. ‘Half an hour, my lord,’ he mused, ‘a small trifle of minutes. You may measure it by grains of sand, but, if you will, for each grain of sand you may count a life.’
‘You hit my sentiments to a nicety.’
Lord Sidney spoke with a grave significance which roused Wogan from his reflections. The lad’s face was hard; his eyes gloomy and fierce. Wogan remembered that, when Lord Sidney had spoken before, he had not seemed in the best of good humour.
‘My lord,’ he said, ‘we can hardly talk with comfort here in the doorway.’ He led the way back into the inner withdrawing-room and across the room to the recess of a window.
‘Here we shall be private,’ he said.
‘Mr. Hilton, you spoke a little while ago of a ballad, wherein, to use your words, the arm of flesh was preferred to a spiritual Blade. That may have been wit, of which I do not profess to be the judge. But you aimed an insult at a woman, and any man may claim to be the judge of that.’
‘My lord,’ answered Wogan gently, ‘you do not know the woman. I could wish you never will.’
Lord Sidney laughed with a sharp scorn which brought the blood into Wogan’s face. It was plain the remark was counted an evasion.
‘At all events I know an insult when I hear it. Let us keep to the insult, Mr. Hilton. It reaped its reward, for here and there a coward smirked his applause.’ Lord Sidney’s voice began to tremble with passion. ‘But it has yet to be paid for. You must pay for it to me,’ and, since Wogan kept silence, his passion of a sudden got the upper hand, and in a low quick voice — there was as much pain as anger in it— ‘It hurts me,’ he said, clenching his hands, ‘it positively hurts me. Here is a woman’ — he stopped in full flight, and blushed with a youthful sort of shame at his eloquence— ‘a woman, sir, in a word, and you must torture her with your brave sneers and she must wear a smiling face while her heart bleeds! Mr. Hilton, are you a man? Why, then, so am I, and it humiliates me that we should both be men. The humiliation will not pass even after,’ and he drew a breath in through his shut teeth, ‘after I have killed you.’
Mr. Wogan had listened to the outburst with all the respect he thought due to a boy’s frank faith. A boy — Wogan’s years were not many more than his, but he had seen mankind, and marvelled how they will trust a woman who, they know, has fooled one man, if but a husband. But, at Lord Sidney’s talk of killing him, Wogan sank the philosopher and could not repress a grin.
‘Kill me, my young friend; ne fait ce tour qui veut,’ he said; ‘but sure you may try if you will. You will not be the first who has tried.’
‘I have no doubt of that,’ said Lord Sidney gravely, ‘and you will oblige me by using another word. I may be young, Mr. Hilton, but I thank God I am not your friend.’
There was a dignity, a sincerity in his manner which to Mr. Wogan’s ears robbed the speech of all impertinence. Wogan simply bowed and said:
‘If you will send your friend to Burton’s Coffee House in the morning — —’
‘To Burton’s Coffee House.’
Lord Sidney turned away. Mr. Wogan drew aside the curtain of the window and stared out into the night with an unusual discontent. Across the road Mr. Scrope was still lurking in the shadow — a hired spy. Very like, he had once been just such another honest lad, with just the same chivalry, before my lady cast her covetous eyes on him. Downstairs in the little room the Parson was fighting, for the Cause, for his sweetheart, for his liberty, and maybe for his life, with little prospect of a safe issue. It seemed a pity that Lord Sidney Beauclerk should be wasted too.
‘My lord,’ said Wogan, calling after Lord Sidney. And Lord Sidney came back. Wogan was still holding the curtain aside; he had some vague thought of relating Scrope’s history, but his first glance at Lord Sidney’s face showed to him it would not avail. Lord Sidney would disbelieve it utterly. Wogan dropped the curtain.
‘How old is your lordship?’ he asked.
Lord Sidney looked surprised, as well he might, and then blushed for his youth.
‘I am twenty,’ he said, ‘and some months,’ with considerable emphasis on the months as though they made a world of difference.
‘Ah,’ replied Wogan, ‘I am of the century’s age, twenty-two and some more months. You are astonished, my lord. But when I was fifteen I fought in battles.’
‘Was it to tell me this you called me back?’
‘No,’ said Wogan solemnly, ‘but you meet me tomorrow. I am not sure that I could do you better service than by taking care that you meet no one afterwards. It was that I had to tell you,’ and he added with a smile, ‘but I do not think I shall bring myself to do you that service.’
Lord Sidney’s face changed a little from its formal politeness. He eyed Mr. Wogan as though for a moment he doubted whether he had not mistaken his man. Then he said:
‘In a duel, Mr. Hilton, there are two who fight.’
‘Not always, my lord. Sometimes there is one who only defends,’ and with that they parted. Clamorous dames took Lord Sidney captive. Wogan looked at his watch. Five minutes had passed since that latch had clicked. He strolled out of the room to the stairs. The door was still shut. He came back into the room and stood by Lady Mary, who was describing to Rose the characters of those who passed by. She looked anxiously at Wogan, who had no comforting news and shook his head, but she did not cease from her rattle.
‘And here comes Colonel Montague with a yellow bundle of bones tied up in parchment, ‘she cried. Lady Rich was the bundle of bones in parchment. ‘Colonel Montague — well, my dear, he is a gallant officer in the King’s guards who fought at Preston, and he owes his life to a noisy Irish boy who has since grown out of all recognition.’
Here Rose suddenly looked up at Wogan.
‘It was this Colonel Montague you saved!’ said she.
‘Hush,’ whispered Wogan, who had his own reasons for wishing the Colonel should discover nothing upon that head. ‘Remember, if you please, that my name is Hilton.’
Colonel Montague led Lady Rich to the sofa.
‘Colonel, has fortune deserted you that you look so glum?’ asked Lady Mary.
‘I am on the losing hand indeed, your ladyship, to-night,’ said Montague bitterly.
‘Well, malheureux en jeu,’ said her ladyship maliciously, ‘you may take comfort from the rest of the proverb.’
Lady Rich shook her rose-coloured ribbons, a girlish simpleton of forty summers.
‘I am vastly ashamed of being so prodigiously ignorant,’ said she. ‘I daresay I ask a mighty silly question, but what is the rest?’
‘French, my dear, and it means that fifteen years is the properest age for a woman to continue at, but why need one be five?’
Colonel Montague smiled grimly. Mr. Wogan stifled a laugh. Lady Rich looked somewhat disconcerted.
‘Oh, is that a proverb?’ said she with a minauderie. ‘I shall dote on proverbs,’ and so she simpered out of range.
Lady Mary lifted up her hands.
‘Your ladyship is cruel,’ said Rose in remonstrance.
‘Nay, my dear, it is the only way to keep her quiet. My Lady Rich is like a top that hums senselessly. You must whip it hard enough and then it goes to sleep and makes no noise. Mr. Hilton, are you struck dumb?’
Mr. Hilton’s ears were on the stretch to catch the sound of a door, and making an excuse he moved away. Suspense kept him restless; it seemed every muscle in his body clamoured to be doing. He walked again to the window. Scrope was still fixed at his post. Wogan sauntered out of the room to the stairs, and down the stairs to the hall. The hall was empty. The door of the little room where Kelly and Lady Oxford were closeted was shut, and no sound came through it, either of word or movement. Wogan wished he had been born a housemaid, that he might lean his ear against the keyhole without any shame at the eavesdropping. He stood at the stair-foot gazing at the door as though his eyes would melt the oak by the ardour of their look. Above the voices laughed, the smooth music murmured of all soft pleasures. Here, in the quiet of the hall, Wogan began to think the door would never open; he had a foolish fancy that he was staring at the lid of a coffin sealed down until the Judgment Day, and indeed the room might prove a coffin. He looked at his watch; only a poor quarter of an hour had passed since the door had closed. Wogan could not believe it; he shook his watch in the belief that it had stopped, and then a hubbub arose in the street. The noise drew nearer and nearer, and Wogan could distinguish the shouts of newsboys crying their papers. What they cried as yet he could not hear. In the great room at the head of the stairs the voices of a sudden ceased; here and there a window was thrown open. The ominous din rang through the open windows and floated down the stairs, first the vague cries, then the sound of running feet, and last of all the words, clear as a knell:
‘Bloody Popish Plot! A Plot discovered!’
So Lady Oxford had played her cards. The plot was out; Scrope was in the street; the Parson was trapped. Wogan determined to open that door. He took his hand from the balustrade, but before he had advanced a step, the door was opened from within. Her ladyship sailed forth upon Mr. Kelly’s arm, radiant with smiles; and, to Wogan’s astonishment, Kelly in the matter of good humour seemed in no wise behind her.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 281