People began to say their good-byes. Dr. Townley crossed the room to his daughter, who rose at once with a word of thanks to Lady Mary. Mr. Kelly remarked her movement, and with an imploring look bade her wait until Lady Oxford released him.
‘Mr. Johnson,’ said her ladyship, dividing the winnings, ‘short accounts make long friends. I think when you reckon up the night you will find that all my great debt to you is fully paid.’
Mr. Kelly bowed, and took the money, his eyes on her flushed face and glittering serpent’s eyes. Lady Oxford turned to Colonel Montague.
‘Your revenge is waiting for you, Colonel, whenever you are pleased to claim it. To-morrow if you will.’
‘Madam, I may claim my revenge to-night,’ said the Colonel, and stepped back with his full weight upon Kelly’s foot. There was no mistaking the deliberate movement. Lady Oxford made as though she had not seen it, but as she turned away her face had a look of pleasure, which Mr. Kelly remarked.
‘Nay, Colonel,’ said Wogan, ‘you and I have a game to play, you remember. Le Queux’s is still open and I claim the first call on your leisure at Hazard.’
Colonel Montague answered Mr. Wogan with a good-nature which the latter did not comprehend.
‘I have indeed some words to say to you, sir.’
‘But, Colonel,’ said the Parson, ‘you trod upon my foot. I shall be happy to consult you on the bruise to-morrow.’
‘To-morrow?’ said Montague, his face hardening instantly. ‘I may inquire after it before then,’ and so making his bow he got him from the room.
Lady Oxford gave her hand to Wogan and dismissed him with a friendly word. She was so occupied with the pleasure of her revenge that she had altogether forgotten his jest about the ballad. Wogan on his side made his leave-taking as short as could be, for out of the corner of his eye he saw Kelly offering his arm to Miss Townley, and Kelly must not leave the house without Wogan at his side. For, in the first place, Colonel Montague was for a sure thing standing sentinel within ten paces of the door, and after he had run the gauntlet of the Colonel, there was Scrope for him to make his account with, should Scrope attempt to follow in his tracks. Mr. Wogan had a mind to insist upon his first claim to Colonel Montague’s attentions, and, once they were rid of him, it would not be difficult to come to a suitable understanding with Scrope should he attempt to follow them to Ryder Street.
Mr. Wogan was indeed already relishing in anticipation the half-hour that was to come, and hurried after the Parson, who was by this time close to the door with Rose upon his arm and Dr. Townley at his heels.
‘Good night, Mr. Johnson,’ said her ladyship in a lazy voice. ‘Take care of yourself, for they tell me the streets are not too safe.’
Kelly dropped Rose Townley’s arm and turned back towards Lady Oxford.
‘But surely,’ said he with some anxiety, ‘tonight the streets are safe. Your ladyship assured me of their safety to-night.’
Lady Oxford made no reply for a few seconds, she stood watching Kelly with an indolent smile. A word of Lady Mary’s came back to Wogan’s mind — a word spoken two years since in Paris, ‘She will play cat to any man’s mouse.’
‘To-night?’ said Lady Oxford, lifting her eyebrows, and she glanced towards the clock. It was five minutes to one. Kelly stared at the clock, his mouth open and his eyes fixed. Then he drew his hand across his forehead, and, walking slowly to the mantelpiece, leaned his hands on it in a broken attitude and so stared at the clock again. Lady Oxford had struck her last blow, and the last was the heaviest. Kelly had the night free, but the night was gone — and the streets were not safe. Nothing could be saved now — not even the King’s papers. Then Wogan saw a change come over his face. The despair died out of it and left it blank as a shuttered window. But very slowly the shutter opened. He was thinking; the thought became a hope, the hope a resolve. First his knees straightened, then the rounded shoulders rose stiff and strong. In his turn Kelly struck.
‘Your ladyship,’ he said, ‘was kind enough some time ago to entrust me with your own brocades. Those brocades are in the strong box in my lodgings.’
Wogan understood. Brocades was the name for letters in the jargon of the Plot. Lady Oxford’s love-letters were in that box which he had handled that very afternoon. If Kelly was seized in the street his rooms would be searched, the King’s papers found, and, with the King’s papers, Lady Oxford’s love-letters. Lady Oxford understood too. Her ingenious stratagems of the evening to discredit the ballad and save her fair fame would be of little avail if the world once got wind of those pretty outpourings of Smilinda’s heart. Her face grew very white. She dropped her fan and stooped to recover it. It was noticeable, though unnoticed, that no one of those who were still present stepped forward to pick up the fan. Curiosity held them in chains, not for the first time that evening. It was as though they stood in a room and knew that behind locked doors two people were engaged in a duel. Now and then a clink of steel would assure them that a thrust was made; but how the duel went they could not tell.
When Lady Oxford rose her colour had returned.
‘My brocades?’ she said. ‘Indeed, I had purely forgotten them. You have had them repaired in Paris?’
‘Yes, madam,’ answered Kelly deliberately. ‘I do not think the streets are so unsafe as your ladyship supposes; but I should be sorry for them to fall into any hands but your own if by any chance footpads end my days to-night.’
He bowed and walked towards Rose Townley and her father, who stood in the doorway at a loss what to make of the scene. He had crossed half the distance before Lady Oxford moved. Then, it seemed with one swift step, she stood at Kelly’s side.
‘Mr. Johnson, you are my prisoner!’ she exclaimed. ‘My dear brocades! Mr. Johnson, you are surely the most attentive of men. You must tell me how they have been repaired; I shall not close my eyes unless you take pity on my impatience.’
Had Kelly been the man to care for triumphs wrested from a woman, he would have found his occasion now. A minute before, Lady Oxford’s eyes glittered with menaces, her face was masterful; now, her eyes besought pity, her face was humbled.
‘If your ladyship will permit me,’ said Kelly, ‘I will return when I have seen Miss Townley to her chair.’
It was a difficult moment for Miss Townley. For to those who looked on it seemed that by some means here was Mr. Johnson brought back into bondage before the very eyes of his betrothed. But Rose was patient of Lady Mary’s lesson. ‘Tomorrow give him his congé if you will; to-night be staunch! It is for life and honour!’ She knew no more, but she was loyal. Wogan had seen men go, for the Cause, to a shameful death by torture. But he never saw courage so unfaltering, or loyalty so true, as this girl’s. She was not herself in that hour; she had taken up a part as an actress does, and she played it clean, and played it through. To-morrow she might be a woman again, a woman wronged, deceived, insulted; to-night, with the astonishing valour and duplicity of her sex, she was all in her part, to see nothing, to know nothing, to be staunch.
To the smiles, the simpered sarcasms, the quizzing glances, she paid no heed. She said, with a simple dignity, to Lady Oxford:
‘I will not keep Mr. Johnson long. It is but a few steps to your ladyship’s door, where my chair waits for me,’ and she held out her hand to Kelly. She had her reward. Kelly’s face put on a look of pride which no one in the room could mistake. He took her hand with a laugh, and threw back his chest.
‘I will return, your ladyship,’ he said gaily, and with Rose passed out of the door. The whispers were stilled; the couple went down the stairs in a great silence. Rose bore herself bravely until she had stepped into her chair; showed a brave face then at the window.
‘I shall hear of you from France,’ she whispered. ‘Good-night.’
The chair was carried off; Dr. Townley followed. The Parson returned slowly up the stairs. His heart was full; in Rose’s eyes he had seen the tears gathering; no doubt in the darkness of her chair they were flowing n
ow. She would hear of him from France! Well, he had his one weapon — Lady Oxford’s letters. If he used that weapon aright, why should she not hear of him from France? By the time he reached the top of the stairs, he was already putting together the words of the letter he should write.
When he re-entered the withdrawing-room, the last few guests, of whom Wogan was one, were taking their departure. Wogan saw Kelly move towards the little card-table which had stood empty. Kelly sat down, and with the fingers of one hand he played with the cards, cutting them unwittingly as though for a deal. It was, after all, he and not Wogan who had to play the hand with the shrouded figure. Wogan had already made his adieux. As he passed out of the door Lady Oxford was standing in the middle of the room plucking at her fan. As he went down the stairs, the door was flung to with a bang. Lady Oxford and Kelly were left alone.
CHAPTER XX
MR. SCROPE BATHES BY MOONLIGHT AND IN HIS PERUKE
WOGAN HAD HEARD two doors shut that evening, and with very different feelings. One had been latched gently, and the sound had filled him with apprehensions; one had been flung to with an angry violence, and the sound soothed him like the crooning of music. For Kelly, it seemed, after all held the trumps in his hand; he had but to play them aright and the game was his.
‘The longer he takes to play them the better,’ murmured Wogan, as he stood on the steps of Lady Oxford’s house and looked briskly about him. For to his left, standing openly in the moonlight, he saw a tall martial figure wrapped in a cloak, and the end of a scabbard shining beneath the cloak, while across the road his eyes made out a hunched form blotted against the wall. The figure in the cloak was Colonel Montague; the skulker would no less certainly be Mr. Scrope. If the Parson would only take time enough to deploy his arguments like a careful general! Mr. Wogan would have liked to have run back and assured Kelly that there was no need whatever for hurry, since he himself had enough amusements on his hands to make the time pass pleasantly.
He advanced to the Colonel first.
‘Sir, it is now to-morrow, the date at which you kindly promised me a few moments of your leisure. You may hear the chimes of the Abbey strike the half hour after one.’
‘Mr. Wogan,’ replied the Colonel, ‘I reckon this yesterday — till after breakfast. At present I have an engagement with another person.’
‘Colonel Montague, your reckoning of time is contrary to the almanac, and to a sound metaphysic, of which I am the ardent advocate. You will understand, sir, that such a difference of opinion between gentlemen admits of only one conclusion.’
Colonel Montague smiled, and to Wogan’s chagrin and astonishment replied:
‘You have grown a foot, or thereby, Mr. Wogan, since last we met, on an occasion which you will permit me to say that I can never forget. All our differences are sunk for ever in that one consideration. I implore you to leave me to the settlement of my pressing business.’
So the Colonel knew of that unfortunate rescue at Preston. Wogan, however, was not so easily put off.
‘Grown a foot, sir!’ he cried. ‘I am not the same man! You speak of a boy, who died long ago; if he made a mistake in saving your life, overlook a pure accident, and oblige me.’
‘The accident does not remove my obligation.’
‘If you knew the truth, you would be sensible that there was no obligation in the matter. Come, take a stroll in the Park, and I’ll tell the truth of the whole matter to whichever of us is alive to hear it.’
‘I had the whole truth already, to-night, from the young lady.’
‘The young lady?’ Wogan had told Rose Townley of how he saved the life of a Colonel Montague, and to-night he had informed her that this Colonel was the man. She had been standing by his elbow when he had picked his quarrel with Montague. Sure she had overheard and had interfered to prevent it. ‘The young lady!’ he cried. ‘All women are spoil-sports. But, Colonel, you must not believe her. I made a great deal of that story when I told it to Miss Townley. But you would find it a very simple affair if you had it from an eye-witness.’
The Colonel shook his head.
‘Yet the story was very circumstantial, how you leaped from the barricades—’
‘That were but two feet high.’
‘And, through a cross fire of bullets, crossed the square to where I lay—’
‘The fire was a half charge of duckshot that an old fellow let off by mismanagement from a rusty pistol. Both sides stopped firing the moment I jumped over — the politest thing. I might have been tripping down the Mall with a lady on my arm, for all the danger I ran.’
‘But your wounds?’
‘I slipped and cut my shin on the sharp cobbles, that’s true.’
‘Mr. Wogan, it will not do! Had I known your name this evening when Lady Mary made us acquainted, certain expressions properly distasteful to you would not have escaped my lips. But now I can make amends for them to the gallant gentleman who brought a wounded enemy out of a cross-fire. I apologise to you, but I cannot oblige you to the extent you wish, however you may attempt to make light of your courage, and of the obligation on my side.’
‘Sure, Colonel, to be done with adornment of the real truth, I only saved such a fine man to have the pleasure of killing him myself.’
Here the Colonel broke into a laugh.
‘Mr. Wogan, if I drew my sword and stood up before you without making a parry or a lunge, would you kill me?’
‘No, indeed, there would be little diversion in that game,’ said Wogan, who was now grown quite melancholic.
‘Well, that is the utmost you will get from me, I am much pressed for time, and look to find another.’
‘Another!’ Wogan’s failing hopes revived. ‘Praise be to the Saints! I see your mistake, and you shall understand it in a twinkling. The other and myself are just one man for these purposes. George is my alter ego. We are the greatest friends, and have been taken for each other when we are talking. I’ll talk all the time we fight, and you can fancy it is George whose ribs you are trying to tickle.’
The Colonel, however, was obdurate, and before Wogan could hit upon a likelier argument both gentlemen heard a cough.
Someone was standing on Lady Oxford’s doorstep looking towards them.
The Colonel coughed in reply, and the figure — it was Mr. Kelly’s — waved his hand, and marched, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, toward St. James’s Park.
The Colonel followed, like Hamlet, and Mr. Wogan followed the Colonel. Would there be a fourth to follow Wogan? The three men marched in the moonlight, their footsteps rang boldly on the road. Was there a fourth behind them stealthily creeping in the shadow of the wall? As they turned a corner out of the square Wogan fell a little further to the rear. He kept his head screwed upon his shoulders, and he saw a shadow slink round the corner. He listened, and heard the stealthy steps. He stopped; the steps ceased. Wogan went on again. He knew that Scrope was dogging them.
The figure in front moved silently on till he reached a sweet spot for an occasion, a little clairière among the trees, the smoothest sward, moonlight on the grass, dark shadow all around. There he stopped, turned, and dropped his cloak. The moon shone silvery on the silver shoulder-knots of Mr. Kelly. The other two gentlemen advanced.
‘Nick,’ exclaimed Kelly, ‘you should be on your road to the coast.’
‘At last!’ cried Colonel Montague, dropping his cloak.
‘A moment, sir,’ said Kelly; ‘I must dismiss my friend.’
‘And would you be so mad? Are you to have nobody to see fair and run for the surgeon while the other gentleman makes his escape? George, I never knew you were so selfish.’
Kelly drew his friend a little way aside.
‘Nick, I have that to do which cannot be done before a witness.’
Mr. Wogan merely gaped at this extraordinary speech. He noticed that Kelly looked white and haggard even for a man in the full moonlight.
‘When I tell you that my honour hangs on it, that a witness is
mere ruin, when I pray you by our old friendship? Nick, you must go out of eye-shot and ear-shot.’
‘I think you are crazed,’ said Wogan.
‘I have obeyed you all night. Things have taken the turn that you must obey me. There is no time for an explanation, the hour presses, and, Nick, my honour hangs on it. You must retire to where you can neither see nor hear us, or I am shamed — lost with the Cause.’
Mr. Kelly had been whispering, his voice trembled as the Cause was named. Wogan had only once seen him thus moved. Had he played his trumps amiss after all? It seemed he had not won the game.
‘Very well,’ said Wogan. ‘Good-night. I will take care you are not troubled with witnesses.’
‘No,’ said Kelly suddenly, and then ‘yes; goodnight.’
He stood looking at Wogan a moment and then hurried off to the Colonel, who seemed, to Wogan’s judgment, a man apt to give the Parson his bellyful. Wogan twitched his cloak about him, and took his road down a path, bordered by bushes. It was the path by which they had come into the Park. Wogan was determined that the Parson should not be troubled by witnesses.
From his boyhood Mr. Wogan has had a singular passion for bird’s-nesting. He idly scanned the bushes as he marched, for he had heard a twig snap, and in a thick bush he saw what at a first glance certainly resembled a very large brown bird’s-nest. Looking more narrowly at this curiosity there were shining eyes under the nest, a circumstance rarely found in animated nature.
Mr. Wogan paused and contemplated this novelty. The bush was deep; the novelty was of difficult access because of the tangled boughs. Wogan reckoned it good to show a puzzled and bemused demeanour, as of one who has moored himself by the punch-bowl.
‘It’s a very fine bird,’ he said aloud. ‘I wonder what is the exact species this fine fowl may belong to?’
Then he wagged his head in a tipsy manner, and so lurched down the path singing:
‘I heard a bird
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 283