Parson Kelly

by A. E. W. Mason; Andrew Lang

Mrs. Kilburne grinned in a sceptical sort.

'But,' Wogan added suddenly, 'it is very like I shall fall in with Mr. Johnson before then.' He took some half-a-dozen of the letters again into his hand and looked them over. They were inscribed to such cant names as Illington, Hatfield, Johnson, Andrews, and were evidently dangerous merchandise. Mr. Wogan thought they would be safer in his pocket than on Mr. Kelly's table. He picked up the rest, but as he put them back into his pocket, one fell on to the floor. Wogan caught sight of the handwriting as it fell. Then it stared up at him from the floor. The letter was written in a woman's hand, which Mr. Wogan was well enough acquainted with, although it was neither Lady Oxford's nor the hand of Rose. It was in the handwriting of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Wogan stooped down and picked it up. For a letter, it was extraordinary light. Wogan weighed it in his hand for a second, wondering what it might be. However, there was no answer to be got that way, and Mr. Wogan had weightier matter to engage his thoughts. He put it into his pocket and marched to his own lodgings, which were hard by in the same street.

Several problems, a swarm of skirmishing doubts, trooped through his mind.

'What did my Lady Oxford mean by writing to Kelly?'

To this Wogan answered that she meant the same thing by Kelly as by himself, and for some reason had bidden him to her rout. As to her motive for that act of unexpected hospitality, Wogan had his own thoughts, which he afterwards confided to his friend. 'But who,' he pondered, 'can answer for a woman's motives when the devil of perversity sits at her elbow?'

Next, why had Kelly made himself such a beau? It could not be merely to do honour to a mourning prelate who would never glance at his secretary's satin and point d'Alençon.

Mr. Wogan inferred that his first guess was right, that Lady Oxford had bidden Kelly to her rout, and that, by the token of his raiment, Mr. Kelly meant to accept the invitation.

Kelly knew nothing of the camp, and the discovery which it seemed to speak of, when he left the lodgings where he had slept all day. Of the ballad, too, it was like that Kelly knew nothing, and, in Wogan's opinion, the ballad was the cause of the military stir. Lady Oxford, inflamed with anger, blaming Lady Mary for the ballad, and blaming Kelly for blabbing her fault to her enemy, Lady Mary; had doubtless visited Mr. Walpole. The innocent Kelly, innocent of all these things, would be going to Lady Oxford's to fathom the causes of her renewed friendship.

Mr. Wogan puzzled his brains over these matters while he supped in solitude at his lodgings. His friends have hinted that his mental furnishing is not in a concatenation with his bodily stature. He has answered that, if it were so, he would be Shakespeare and the Duke of Marlborough rolled into one. Though refreshed with Burgundy, his head felt weary enough when he turned to the question, 'What was he, Wogan, to do next?' In his opinion, the boldest plan is ever the best; moreover, he had a notion that there was no safer place in London for him, that night, and perhaps for Mr. Kelly, than Queen's Square in Westminster which Lady Oxford had taken for a permanence. For if Lady Oxford had blabbed, the last place in London where the Messengers would be like to look for the Parson was her ladyship's withdrawing-room. Unless of course she was laying a trap, which did not seem likely. In the face of this new ballad, Lady Oxford would not dare to have the Parson arrested within, or even near her house. It would provoke too great a scandal. He decided, therefore, first to go to the Dean's house, at Westminster, where the Bishop of Rochester stayed, see Mr. Kelly, if he could, and unfold his parcel of black news. Next, he would take Kelly to Lady Oxford's, if Kelly would come, for Wogan not only deemed this step the safest of his dangers, but expected to enjoy a certain novelty of the emotions, in which he was not disappointed. He therefore, imitating the clerical example, began to decorate himself in his most seductive shoulder knots to do honour to Lady Oxford.

It may be that Wogan's mind, already crowded by a number of occurrences and dubitations, had exhausted its logical powers, for there was one idea which should have occurred to him earliest, and which only visited him while he was shaving. Who was the first person he was likely to encounter at Lady Oxford's? Why, the very last person whom at this juncture it was convenient for him to meet--namely, Colonel Montague. Wogan heartily wished he had left the Colonel between two fires at Preston barricade. But now there was no help for it, go he must. The Colonel, like other people, might not remember the boy in the man and under a new name, or, if he did--and then a fresh idea occurred to Wogan which made him smile.