Complete works of a e w.., p.288
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 288
‘My sword,’ said the Parson in a quick whisper. Montague held it out to him without a word: he had no right to refuse it to a free man. Kelly snatched the hilt; the blade rattled out of the scabbard; he stood on guard with his naked blade.
Meanwhile Hutchins and the maid were quarrelling in the passage over the door key, as Kelly could distinguish from their voices.
He made a quick step towards the window, threw open the scrutoire, and returned to his station at the door. But he had not so much as glanced at the scrutoire; he had kept his eyes fixed upon the door. Still keeping his eyes so fixed, he pointed towards the strong boxes.
‘Be quick,’ he whispered. ‘In the strong box! Take the candle and have done. You know the hand, and you have the key.’
Montague pulled the key from his pocket, and fumbled at the lock.
‘It will not fit,’ he said under his breath and swore.
‘Be quick,’ repeated Kelly.
The key rattled in the lock as the Colonel turned it this way and that. Mr. Kelly was about to throw a glance over his shoulder when he saw the handle of the door turn. It was turned cautiously without any noise. The next moment the door flew open. Fortunately it opened upwards towards the window and the scrutoire. Kelly stopped it with his foot when it was but half open, so that Montague was entirely hidden behind the panels from the eyes of any one on the threshold or in the passage. Hutchins was on the threshold peering into the room. But he did not peer long, for at the same moment that Kelly stopped the door with his foot he made at Hutchins, with his sword, a pass so vigorous that the hulking fellow leaped back a good yard, crying out to Montague:
‘Will your honour let a poor man be killed in his duty?’
The Colonel made no answer to the pathetic question. He was occupied with business of another complexion. Mr. Kelly heard a crack.
‘What is the matter?’ he asked, in a low voice.
‘The key is filled with dust, or the lock is jammed,’ Montague whispered back. ‘I have broken open the box with the guard of my sword.’
‘Be quick,’ said Kelly. ‘Make sure you have Smilinda’s letters.’
All this while he had not looked towards the scrutoire. The most that he saw was the shadow of the Colonel thrown on the wall of the room by the single candle, a shadow monstrous big that held the shadow of a paper to its eyes. It is to be said in Mr. Kelly’s defence that he dared not look about him. The door of the room was half open; the Messenger who had retreated into the passage was plainly hardening his heart for a rush. Mr. Kelly’s attention was entirely distracted from Colonel Montague’s proceedings at this important moment.
‘Yes,’ whispered Montague. ‘This is her hand, this is the blue-edged paper she affects of late. “My own Strephon,” and dated two days back. It bids you to her rout.’
The words passed in and out of Mr. Kelly’s ears. His eyes were occupied with Hutchins, and with his eyes his mind. He did not remember that he had thrust this letter of her ladyship’s, as he had told to Wogan, into the wrong box, the box holding the papers of the Bishop and the King. Then a little flame shot up and illumined the room, which was at once filled with a smell of burning paper. Montague had burned Smilinda’s letter, inviting Kelly to her rout.
It seemed that Hutchins had after all no stomach for Mr. Kelly’s sword, which to be sure must have glittered ominously in the dismal light of the solitary candle. He ran back again down the passage and pulled open the street door.
‘Chandler,’ he shouted, calling his fellow to assist him. A yell of laughter answered him, and a voice from the street cried out that Chandler was gone for a file of soldiers. Kelly could hear Hutchins swearing and cursing, though it was himself that had sent Chandler on the errand.
A second flame spirted up and died away. Montague had burned a second letter.
‘Lyng! Randall!’ cried Hutchins at the street-door, but again he was answered with jeers, and again the voice called to him mockingly that they were gone to Bury Street, where they were told they would be sure to snare the right man.
Montague, who heard everything clearly, blessed Mrs. Kilburne aloud, and burned a third paper. Kelly kicked the door to.
‘We are safe, then, it seems,’ he said. ‘Smilinda’s safe.’
He took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face, leaning his back against the panels of the door. He could hear Hutchins bawling up the street for his partners, and his voice sounded as though he had moved from the door in search of them. So for the first time Kelly looked at Montague and the scrutoire.
Colonel Montague had turned the strong-box upside down and emptied the papers on the scrutoire, so that they lay face downwards. By a scruple of delicacy, having read the topmost letter to make sure it was Lady Oxford’s hand, he looked at them no more. He took them up one by one, face downwards, and so burned them separately, knowing no doubt that, lighted in a single heap, only those on the outside and the edges of the letters in the middle, would catch fire. One by one he burnt them face downwards at the candle, the secret letters of the Cause. He had burned three, and he now held the fourth in his hand. He approached it to the candle; he did not so much as look at it. But had he merely glanced once at Mr. Kelly leaning there against the panels of the door, that glance would have surely told him what papers he was burning.
Kelly did not speak a word, or stir a muscle. He had wiped the sweat from his face a second ago, but his forehead was wet now: his eyes stared greedily at the papers: a slow smile, of a knavish kind, that went very ill with his face, curved his lips. An extreme temptation chained him; the Devil whispered in his ear, ‘Be silent,’ and the Parson held his peace.
The blue-edged letter bidding him to the rout he had slipped on the top of the Chevalier’s papers, as he had told Mr. Wogan. Colonel Montague was merrily burning the papers of the Plot. Kelly had but to hold his tongue, and in a few minutes he was safe. The Cause was saved so far as the papers went, and Lady Oxford, her letters unburned, was lost. No wonder the key did not fit; it was the wrong key! Kelly could see the corner of Wogan’s strong-box peeping out from beneath a thatch of papers in the corner of the scrutoire.
All this the Parson saw and understood in the one short moment during which Montague approached the paper to the candle. His mind was tossed up and down in a tempest; the winds of temptation blew hard against the tides of his nature. On one side was safety and the King’s interest, and Rose, who to be sure need never know of the treachery by which the Parson had won her; on the other, a broken pledge that he had given to the Colonel, and the ruin of Smilinda, who had betrayed him.
Montague lit the sheet of paper and held it up. Kelly saw the blue flame creep down from the edge, the writing turn brown, the paper curl over black and tattered, with a multitude of red sparks; and still he kept his peace.
Montague dropped the ashes on the scrutoire, and took a fifth paper from the pile. The Parson turned away, and laid his ear to the panel, making a pretence that he heard Hutchins stirring in the passage.
‘Be quick!’ he said first, and then, moistening his dry lips with his tongue: ‘Make quite sure you have Smilinda’s letters.’
‘Smilinda?’ asked Montague.
Kelly forced a laugh.
‘No doubt she called herself something equally pretty to you.’
‘Phylissa,’ growled Montague.
‘She has a pretty conceit in names. Make sure those are her letters,’ and again he spoke with an effort.
‘Not I. I have had my fill of the lady’s handwriting.’
Montague was already holding the paper to the flame, when Kelly’s good angel got the upper hand with him. He is happy now to think that no chance accident, such as the return of Hutchins or the coming of the soldiers, hurried him into the better choice with a mind half made up. Here was the very occasion of which he had dreamed when he stayed behind in Lady Oxford’s withdrawing room. He could use the weapon which her letters put into his hand to save the Chevalier’s papers and himself and Rose. But he put the weapon aside. He turned about from the door: Montague was holding the paper to the flame, and a corner of it had taken fire. Kelly sprang to the scrutoire, snatched the paper out of Montague’s hand, and crushed the fire out in the palm of his hand.
‘I gave you the right key, ‘he whispered. ‘You chose the wrong box.’
Montague snatched up the pile of papers and turned them over.
‘Good God! Cyphers!’ he exclaimed, and dropped them as though they were, in truth, burning.
‘The other box; the other box,’ said Kelly, pointing to it. He fancied that he heard Hutchins moving cautiously just outside the door, and was now in a fever lest the delay brought about by his incertitude might balk his intentions. At any moment the Messenger might come back from Bury Street, or the file of the musquets march tramping up the stairs.
All this indeed takes a long time to tell, and seemed no less long to Mr. Kelly in the happening; but the whole of the occurrences, the movements of the Messengers, the tidings cried to him from the street, the burning of the papers, with Kelly’s own thoughts and doubts and unlooked-for temptations, passed with momentary speed.
Montague found Wogan’s strong box, the box of the love-letters, unlocked it, tore out all the contents, and glanced at a few at the top, middle and bottom.
‘Smilinda — Smilinda — Smilinda,’ he said, reading the signatures. ‘And it’s for this woman,’ he cried, striking the letters with his fist, ‘Smilinda, Phylissa, and the Lord knows what else to the Lord knows what other men, that — —’
But the Parson was in no mood to listen to Montague’s reflections.
‘Put the other papers back into that box, the box with the unbroken lock, lock it and give me the key,’ he said. Montague crammed her ladyship’s letters into the inner pocket of his coat. But before he could move the door opened with a crash, and Hutchins flew in, Kelly made a furious pass, and Hutchins, leaping back, ‘parried the thrust with the door,’ as he truly said in his evidence before the Lords’ Committee. Had he not used that novel parade Kelly would infallibly have run him through, and, as it was, George could scarcely drag his point out of the wood of the door, which Hutchins in leaping back had shut. Being now sufficiently terrified, for indeed no man ever had a narrower escape of his life, Hutchins contented himself with a plaintive expostulation from the safety of the passage.
‘Sure, I would serve Lord Townshend himself in the same way,’ Kelly shouted back, ‘if he tried to enter my room against my will without a warrant,’ and lowering his voice so that only Montague might hear, ‘Lock the box, and throw me the key.’ If only for Montague’s sake the papers of the Plot must not be found lying open upon Kelly’s scrutoire, and the box which held them broken among a litter of ashes. Mr. Kelly could not but remember with what care, earlier in the evening, he had burned and buried the ashes of his Grace of Rochester’s letters, and reflect with some sadness what little good had come of it. Montague locked up the papers of the Plot in the box which had held Smilinda’s letters, and tossed the key to Kelly, who caught it.
‘There is no more to do?’ said Montague.
‘Nothing,’ and Kelly handed him back his sword and sat him down on a sofa. He seized the occasion to make Montague acquainted with the accident through which Smilinda’s last letter had been laid on the top of those in the box that contained very different wares, adding apologies for his brief delay to inform him. The Colonel then sat down over against Kelly and laid the flat of Kelly’s sword across his knees. He looked at the sword for a little. Then,
‘You had a chance to let me destroy your own papers,’ he said.
‘Yes, and to be a liar to a loyal gentleman, and a traitor to a more sacred cause than even my King’s.’
‘Smilinda’s?’ Montague looked up in perplexity.
‘No,’ said Kelly, and he stared for a little at the floor, then he said very slowly, ‘A long while ago I made a prayer that nothing might ever come between the Cause and me except it be death. Even while I made the prayer I was summoned to visit Lady Oxford, who was then unknown to me. Well, something has come between the Cause and me — honour. A more sacred Cause than even my King’s. Himself would say it.’
Colonel Montague fancied that he heard a distant regular tramp of feet like soldiers. But Mr. Kelly was clean lost in his thoughts.
‘I could meet the King with a clear face and this story on my lips,’ he continued, ‘even though it were over there in Rome, and in his old lodging. The very approach to him was secret, his antechamber a cellar underground. You went by night, you crossed the cellar in the dark, you climbed a little winding stair, and above, in a mean crazy chamber which overhangs the Tiber, there was my King looking towards England. A man like me, with a man’s longings and a man’s despair, but, unlike me, robbed of a nation. Day by day delay shadowed his eyes and wrote upon his face until the face became an open book of sorrows. Yet himself would say, “Perish the Cause, perish all but honour,”’ and, suddenly throwing up his arms, Mr. Kelly cried out in a voice of great passion and longing, ‘The King! The King!’
Colonel Montague very likely had his own opinions as to how the King would take it, but he was careful to keep them to himself, and in the silence which followed upon Kelly’s outburst the tread of soldiers was heard very distinct, and Hutchins’s voice at the door bidding them hurry.
Mr. Kelly raised his head. He too had heard the sound, and, drawing a ring from his finger,
‘Take my seal ring, when you are alone seal up the brocades in a packet. You know the person whom they concern.’
Montague took the ring and slipped it on his finger.
‘Mr. Johnson, or Kelly, or whoever you are,’ he said cordially, ‘we must needs be public enemies, but I wish my King had many as loving servants as your King has in you.’
The rattle of the butts of musquets could now be heard in the passage.
‘And, damme,’ said Montague, bending forward suddenly; he had all this while maintained in word and carriage the reserve of the Englishman, but now he showed a decent warmth of blood, ‘had you been in my place and I in yours, Smilinda or no Smilinda, I should have let you burn the cyphers.’
On those words he was pleased to say, which Mr. Kelly merely counted a politeness, the door was driven open by the butts of several fusils, a sergeant with a file of musqueteers entered; behind them came Chandler with the warrant, Lyng with a broken head, Hutchins with a white, scared face, and Randall whose coat was in tatters.
They were surprised enough, you may be sure, to see the Colonel on one side of the fireplace and their redoubtable prisoner as quiet upon the other.
‘Oh,’ said Mr. Kelly, with an admirable air of astonishment, ‘it seems you have a warrant after all.’
Hutchins then read the warrant through, and Mr. Kelly surrendered. But the Messenger had not done; he picked up presently the impudence to question the Colonel.
‘Your worship let the prisoner take his sword?’
The dignified Montague stared at Hutchins with a strong amazement until the fellow was quite abashed.
‘What’s the world coming to?’ he said. ‘Here is your prisoner’s sword, if he is your prisoner.’ and, lifting Mr. Kelly’s sword from his knees, he handed it to Hutchins. Hutchins then made haste to secure Mr. Kelly’s effects. He went over to the scrutoire, and the first things he clapped his eyes upon were a pile of black ashes and a great many splotches of hot grease from the candle.
Hutchins looked at the Colonel with a question upon his lips; the Colonel looked stonily at Hutchins. Hutchins raised his nose and sniffed the air.
‘Will your worship tell me whether the prisoner meddled with any papers?’ he asked, but with less impertinence than before.
‘Yes, sir, the gentleman did.’
‘What was done with them?’
‘Sir, they were burned, as you may perceive.’
‘And how came you, sir, to let them be burned?’
‘I am not to answer to you, sir, for my conduct, of which I can give a sufficient account to persons who have the right to question me. I have, for your satisfaction, no knowledge of this gentleman’s name, nor as to whether he is correctly described in a warrant which was not in the house while we were together. It appears to me that you are all very likely to lose your scutcheons for your doltish stupidity, whether you have hold of the right or the wrong gentleman. I wish you a good night, sir,’ he said, bowing to Kelly, ‘and speedy deliverance, if you deserve it, from your present company.’
He put his hat on his head and walked out of the room without another word. Hutchins thereupon searched Mr. Kelly’s scrutoire; he found one box broken open and empty, another box, its own fellow, locked. Mr. Kelly delivered the key to it, with a great show of reluctance. It held the papers of the Bishop’s Plot and a key to the Bishop’s cypher, which was used to convict him at his trial. As for the burned papers, it came out at George’s trial that he had destroyed letters in the presence of a King’s officer. But the Duke of Wharton, in his famous speech, argued that a man of Mr. Kelly’s figure might very well have letters to burn which were not political.
That night the Parson was taken to the house of John Gardiner, living in Westminster Market, there to be kept in safe custody. He walked between the soldiers, and whistled a lively tune as he walked.
This was related in more than one inn-parlour the next day by the sergeant, who was mightily surprised that a man should bear so heavy a charge so easily, and so the story got about.
But Mr. Kelly was sensibly lightened by having saved Smilinda in the end after so many mischances, and when he thought of her letters safe in the Colonel’s inner pocket, felt a private glow of pleasure which put all conjectures of his fate and doom clean out of his head. Moreover, he says that Rose was never nearer to him than on that night and during that walk. He speaks as though she walked by his side amongst his captors, and walked with a face that smiled.
CHAPTER XXIV
MR. WOGAN WEARS LADY OXFORD’S LIVERY, BUT DOES NOT REMAIN IN HER SERVICE.
