'I am told,' he wrote, 'that a man so dangerously circumstanced must be selfish in the extreme to marry a woman who, in a short while, may, at the worst, be widowed; and at the best must be separated from her husband in his gaol. I do not fear that you will have so mean an opinion of my inclinations, but I would not have you think me careless upon this point neither. Dr. Townley is old, and his health breaks. He will leave his daughter, when he dies, but little money, and that moment cannot be very far off. It is true that Rose has beauty, and no doubt she might make a rich marriage if she had only beauty. But she has frankness, truth, and constancy as well, qualities which are not marketable wares, since those who possess them will not bring them into the market. Now, if I suffer death for the Cause, Rose will be no poorer than she was before; if, on the other hand, I live, there are the booksellers, and from the silence of my prison I can make shift to earn for her a decent livelihood.'
As all the world knows, Mr. Kelly lived, and even gained much credit by his speech at his trial. He made it plain, to all but prejudiced Whigs, that there was no Plot, nor he concerned in any, if there were. But what is Whig justice? He was sentenced to prison for life. The papers in his strong box were enough to help a foolish fellow, Counsellor Layer, on his way to Tyburn, enough to send Lord Orrery to the Tower, and Lord North and Grey into exile. The Plot was ruined for that time; the Bishop of Rochester was banished, for Mar's traitorous mention of the dog Harlequin fixed the guilt on that holy man. Mr. Kelly came off with loss of fourteen years of his life, which years he passed in the Tower.
It was not, after all, so silent a prison as he imagined it would be. For though during the first months his confinement was severe, and he never drew air except from between the bars, afterwards this rigour was relaxed. He was placed in a room of which one window took the morning sun, and the other commanded the river, and the ships going up and down with the tide; he was allowed the use of his books, and to receive what visitors he would. His visitors were not few, and amongst them Colonel Montague was the most frequent. His gaolers, the officers who were stationed in the Tower, and their wives, became his familiar friends, and it is said that when, after fourteen years, he escaped, not a woman in the precincts could make up her mind whether to clap her hands for joy, or weep at the loss of his society. Moreover, Rose came and went at her pleasure.
The first years of his imprisonment were thus not wholly unhappy years. He sat amongst his books translating Cicero, and if at times his limbs ached for the stress and activity of his youth, and he began to dream of hours in the saddle and starry nights at sea, it was not perhaps for very long. He had friends enough to divert his leisure moments, and Rose to keep him busy at his work. For what he had foreseen came to pass. Two years after Mr. Kelly came to the Tower, Dr. Townley died, and left Rose but poorly circumstanced. She came to lodge close by the Tower Gates, and the Parson set his pen to his paper and wrote essays and translations till the whole Tower of London buzzed with his learning, and no doubt a friendly Jacobite here and there bought one of his books. Mr. Wogan, indeed, bought them all. He has them ranged upon a bookshelf in his lodging at Paris, all bound in leather and most dignified; the very print has a sonorous look. 'Mr. Kelly's Opera' he calls them, and always speaks of the books as 'tomes' with prodigious respect and perhaps a sigh. For--
'He lacks one quality,' Mr. Wogan was heard to say, 'to set him on the pinnacle of fame. He cannot write poetry. It is a trick, no doubt, a poor sort of trick; but George had it not, and so when there was poetry to be written, he had to come to his friends.'
Thus ten years passed, and then came the black day, when Rose fell sick of a fever and must keep her bed. She sent word to George daily that he should expect her on the morrow, until a delirium took her, and the doctor, who had been charged by Rose to make light of her suffering, was now forced to tell Mr. Kelly the truth. She lay at death's door, calling on her husband, who could not come to her, and talking ever of that little garden at Avignon above the Rhone, in which she fancied that he and she now walked.
Mr. Kelly took the news in silence as a dog takes pain, and never slept and barely moved while the fever ran its course. Rose was at the Tower Gates, George was in his prison; a few yards only were between them, but those few yards were built upon with stones. In the daytime messages were brought to him often enough, but at night, when the mists rose from the river and the gates were closed, and the Parson had the dark loitering hours wherein to picture the sick room with its dim light and the tired figure tossing from this side to that of the bed, then indeed Smilinda had her revenge.
CHAPTER XXVII
[HOW, BY KEEPING PAROLE, MR. KELLY BROKE PRISON]
Every morning Mr. Kelly looked for the doctor to come to him with word that in the little house without the Tower Gate the blinds were drawn. But that message was not brought to him, and Colonel Montague, making a visit to the prison, three weeks after Rose fell ill, found the Parson sitting very quiet in his chair with a face strangely illumined.