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.
CHAPTER XIX
[STROKE AND COUNTER-STROKE]
Those fifteen minutes had none the less proved a mauvais quart d'heure for Mr. Kelly. As he entered the room, the memories of the grey morning when first he stood there were heavy upon his thoughts. A cheerful fire burnt upon the hearth now as then. There was the settee on which her ladyship had lain in her pretended swoon. The text which he had read in the Deanery recurred to him: 'Her ways are the ways of Death; her feet take hold on Hell.' Through the open door came the sound of music and the words jangled through Kelly's mind to the tune.
Lady Oxford closed the door; as the latch caught, Kelly lifted his head and faced her. On that first occasion her ladyship had worn a mask, and in truth she wore no mask now. A cruel smile played about her lips; a cruel light glittered in her eyes. She looked him over with triumph, as though he were her captive bound hand and foot. The look braced Mr. Kelly. He started from his memories as a man starts up from sleep; he lived alert and complete in the moments as they passed. Rose, the King's papers, his own liberty--this was his new text. Her ladyship could be trusted to give a sufficient exposition of the other.
She seated herself, and with her fan beckoned him to a chair.
'We have much to speak of, sir. I hear that I have to make you my congratulations, and to pay you my thanks. You may conceive with what sincerity.'
Mr. Kelly remained standing by the fireside.