The rest of that year '21 was a busy time for all engaged in forwarding the Great Affair. England itself seemed ripe for the attempt, and it was finally determined to hazard it in the spring of the next year, when the Elector would be in Hanover. The new plan was that the exiled Duke of Ormond, whom the soldiers were thought to love, should sail from Spain with the Earl Marischal, Morgan, and Halstead, commanding some ragged regiments of Mr. Wogan's countrymen. The Duke was to land in the west, the King was to be at Antwerp ready to come over, and the young Prince Charles of Wales, who would then be not quite two years old, was to be carried to the Highlands. A mob was to be in readiness in town, with arms secretly buried; the soldiers were expected to declare for High Church and Ormond; and in a word the 'honest party' was to secure its interest on its own bottom, without foreign help, which the English people has never loved. The rich lords, but not Bishop Atterbury, knew of the beginning of this scheme, but abandoned it. They did not know, or only Lords North and Grey knew, that the scheme lived on without them.
Mr. Kelly therefore had his hands full, and it was very well for him that it was so. There were things at stake of more moment than his love-affairs, as he was the first to recognise. Yet, even so, he had time enough, in the saddle and on the sea, to plumb the black depths of his chagrin and to toss to and fro that shuttlecock of a question, whether he should accuse her ladyship for her trickeries or himself for misdoubting her. However, he got a complete answer to that question before the year was out. It was his habit now, whenever he was in London, to skulk out of sight and knowledge of Lady Oxford, to avoid theatres, routs, drums, and all places where she might be met, and Mr. Carte the historian took his place when it was necessary to visit Lord Oxford in the country. Mr. Carte had a ready pretence, for Lord Oxford kept a great store of old manuscripts concerning the history of the country, and these beauties, it is to be feared, came somewhat between Mr. Carte and his business, just as her ladyship's eyes had come between Mr. Kelly's and his. Accordingly the Parson saw little of her ladyship and heard less, since his friends avoided all mention of her and he himself asked no questions.
'Saw little,' and the phrase is intended. For often enough of an evening his misery would fetch him out of the coffee houses and lead him like a man blindfold to where her ladyship was accustomed to visit. There he would stand in the darkness of the street until the door opened and Lady Oxford, all smiles and hooped petticoats, would trip gaily out to her chair. But very likely habit--the habit of her conversation and appearance--had as much to do with this particular folly as any despairing passion. How many lovers the wide world over fancy they are bemoaning their broken hearts, when they are only deploring their broken habits! Well, Mr. Kelly, at all events, took the matter au grand sérieux, and so one night saw her ladyship come out from the porch of Drury Lane theatre in company with Colonel Montague.
There is one unprofitable piece of knowledge which a man acquires who has ever had a woman make love to him; he knows when that woman is making love to someone else. Lady Oxford's modest droop of the head when the Colonel spoke, her shy sidelong smile at him, her red lips a trifle parted as though his mere presence held her in a pleased suspense--all these tokens were familiar to Mr. Kelly as his daily bread, and he went home eating his own heart, and nursing a quite unjustifiable resentment against Nicholas Wogan for that he ever saved the Colonel's life. It did not take Kelly long to discover that his suspicions were correct. A few questions to his friends, who for his sake had kept silence, and the truth was out. Lady Oxford's constancy had lasted precisely seven weeks before the Whig colonel had stepped into the Jacobite parson's shoes. Mr. Kelly put his heart beneath his heel and now stamped her image out of it. Then he went upon his way, and the King's business took him to Avignon.
CHAPTER XII
[THE PARSON MEETS SCROPE FOR THE THIRD TIME, AND WHAT CAME OF THE MEETING]
It was early in the year 1722 when Mr. Kelly came to la ville sonnante, and took a lodging at L'Auberge des Papes in the Rue des Trois Faucons. He brought with him a sum of 5,000l. collected in England, and this sum he was to hand over to a messenger from the Duke of Ormond, who was then at Corunna in Spain, and, what with his disbursements in the purchase of arms, and the support of Irish troops, was hard put to it for money.
It was therefore of the last importance that this sum should come safe to Corunna, and so extraordinary precautions were taken to ensure that result. The Parson, since he did not know who the messenger might be, was to wait every morning between the hours of nine and ten on the first bench to the left of the Porte du Rhone in the boulevard outside the city walls, until a man should ask him if he had any comfortable greeting for Aunt Anne, that being the cant name for the Duke. This man was thereafter to prove to Mr. Kelly's satisfaction that he was indeed the messenger expected.
Now, the messenger was delayed in his journey, and so for a week George Kelly, having deposited his money with Mr. Philabe, the banker, sat every morning on his bench with what patience he might. He came in consequence to take particular notice of an oldish man and a rosebud of a girl who walked along the boulevard every morning at the time that he was waiting. They were accompanied by a French poodle dog, and indeed it was the poodle dog which first attracted Mr. Kelly's attention to the couple. It has already been said that Mr. Kelly had a trick of catching a woman's eyes, though this quality implies no great merit. On the other hand he drew dogs and children to him, and that implies a very great merit, as you may observe from this, that there is never a human being betwixt here and Cathay will admit that dogs and children have a dislike for him.
The poodle dog, then, comes to a halt opposite Mr. Kelly's bench on the very first morning that he sat there, cocks his ears, lifts a forefoot from the ground, and, looking after the old man and the young girl, says plain as print, 'Here, wait a bit! There's something on this bench very well worth looking into.' However, his master and mistress were in a close conversation and so the poodle puts his foot on the ground and trots after them. But the next morning he came up to the bench, puts his head of one side to display the fine blue riband round his neck, squats on his haunches, and flops a paw on to the Parson's knee.