Thither Wogan sent for him, and when he was come asked him whither he had carried the valise.
'To Mr. Gunning's at Mussell Hill,' Vanlear answered, where he had found a horse ready saddled at the door and 'Mr. Johnson' in a great fume to be off.
Wogan gave the porter a crown for his trouble and went forthwith to Mr. Gunning's, whom he had not seen since the occasion of his coming down from Glenshiel. From Mr. Gunning he learned that Kelly had undoubtedly taken the Aberystwith road, since he had left the horse he borrowed at Beaconsfield, and thither had Mr. Gunning sent to fetch it. Kelly's destination was consequently as clear to Wogan as the urgency of his haste, and coming back into London he dropped in at the Cocoa Tree, where he found the story of Lady Oxford and Mr. Kelly a familiar pleasantry.
He heard of it again that night at Will's coffeehouse in Covent Garden, and at Burton's in King Street, where Mr. Kelly was very well known. For, besides being close to Kelly's lodging, it was one of the houses to which his letters were directed under cover. From Burton's Wogan came back to Bury Street, and, while smoking a pipe in the parlour before going to bed, he chanced to notice his strongbox. It stood on the scrutoire by the side of Mr. Kelly's big Bible, where Wogan had left it eighteen months before. It was the brother to Mr. Kelly's strong-box, in every particular but one, and that one a stouter lock. Wogan remembered that when he had placed the box on the scrutoire the key was attached to it by a string. Now, however, he noticed that the key was gone. He was sufficiently curious to cross the room and try the lock. But the box would not open; it was securely locked. There were papers too within it, as he found out by shaking it. Kelly, then, was using the box--but for what purpose? His own box served for his few political papers. Any other papers that needed the shelter of a strong box must be love-letters. Here, then, were amorous, not political epistles. Besides, he was in the habit of burning all those which had done their work, and the rest which he needed he carried about in his own dispatch-box.
'Now, I wonder,' said Wogan, tapping the lid, 'I wonder whether a certain letter, signed--shall we say Smilinda?--and summoning my friend to Brampton Bryan, is locked up inside you.' Wogan's guess hit the truth even to the signature, though he was destined to get little satisfaction from this proof of his sagacity. The letter, he later learned, lay in box with not a few others in the same handwriting, and they all ended in the same manner with a request: 'Burn this.' Mr. Kelly would have been honester had he obeyed it, but, like many a man when passion gets hold of him, he could not part with them. Faint whispers breathed, as it seemed, from Heaven, and caught and written loud in my lady's hand, pure diamonds fetched up from the obscure mines of a woman's heart, sure he treasured them up beyond all jewels, and locked them up in Mr. Wogan's despatch-box to his own undoing.
This letter was, (Wogan learned afterwards) the most laconic of them all, and it was the most momentous. It began, 'My own Strephon,' and then Strephon was crossed out and again written on the top, and it was signed 'Smilinda' in a doubtful hand; as though, at first, Brampton Bryan had recalled to her ladyship the beginning of their affections with so overpowering a compulsion that she must needs use the names which were associated with it, and then the dear woman's modesty timidly crossed them out, and in the end love got the upper hand and wrote them in again. At least that was a small portion of all the great meanings which Kelly read in the hesitation of her ladyship's address. Between the Strephon and the Smilinda there was but one line--'Come; there is a secret. I have great need of you.' But this had been quite enough to send Mr. Kelly spurring out into the November night with such speed that he came to Oxford the next day, where he found the snow lying very deep. The snow troubled him, no doubt, because it delayed him, but he took little account of the cold beyond a sharp pang or two lest Smilinda might have caught a chilblain. For himself--well, Smilinda had need of him--the great lady turned for help to the Irish outlaw. Wasn't it always so? Her Majesty throws her glove to the page, my lord the King Cophetua goes clean daft for a beggar wench, and the obliging Cupid builds a rickety bridge whereby the despairing lovers leap into each other's arms.
Smilinda needed him! There was a tune ravished from Heaven! His whole frame moved to it as the waves to the direction of the moon. It sang in his blood, his heart beat to it, the hooves of his horse drummed it out on the road. Even the boughs of the trees whispered the words with a tender secrecy to the wind, much as the reeds whispered that other saying, ages ago, which the Queen in the fable had entrusted to them. And, 'faith, when you come to think of it, there was little difference in meaning between the two remarks. Smilinda needed Mr. Kelly! It was, after all, as much as to say 'Mr. Kelly has ass's ears.' He made such haste that on the evening of the second day after his departure from London he cantered up the drive of the Manor House.
Lady Oxford met him in the hall, and Mr. Kelly's heart gave a great jump of pride when he saw her stately figure all softened to an attitude of expectation.
'I knew you would come,' she said; and, as Mr. Kelly bent over her hand, she whispered, 'My Strephon,' for all the world as if her emotion choked her. Then she raised her voice for the servants to hear: 'My lord is from home, Mr. Johnson, but he has commissioned me at once to pay you his regrets and to act as his deputy in your business.'
Mr. Kelly was all impatience to broach his business, but her ladyship's solicitude would not allow him to speak until he had supped. She came near to waiting upon him herself, and certainly plied him with her best wine, vowing that it was ill weather for travellers, and that if he kept his glass full beside his elbow it was a sure sign he hated her. This, of course, after the servants had been dismissed. Mr. Kelly chided her for the thought, and, with a shake of the finger, quoted her a text: 'We are bidden not to look upon the wine when it is red,' said he.