CHAPTER IV. THE PRINCE’S CHAMBER
Brief as Kelly’s absence had been, it was enough to have obliterated from the Prince’s mind all the reasons for his going. No sooner was he alone than he drank away, muttering to himself, as he filled his glass, snatches of old Jacobite songs—words of hope and encouragement; or at times, with sad and broken utterance, phrases of the very deepest despondency.
It was in this half-dreamy state that Kelly found him as he entered. Scotland—Rome—the court of France—the château at St. Germains—the shelling where he sought refuge in Skye—the deck of the French privateer that landed him at Brest—were, by turns, the scenes of his imagination; and it was easy to mark how, through all the windings of his fancy, an overweening sense of his own adventurous character upheld and sustained him. If he called up at times traits of generous devotion and loyalty—glorious instances wherein his followers rose to the height of heroes—by some artful self-complacency he was ever sure to ascribe these to the great cause they fought for; or, oftener still, to his own commanding influence and the fascination of his presence. In the midst of all, however, would break forth some traits that bespoke a nobler nature. In one of these was it that he alluded to the proposition of Cardinal Tencin, to make the cession of Ireland the price of the French adhesion to his cause. ‘No, no, Monsieur le Cardinal,’ cried he several times energetically; ‘tout ou rien! tout ou rien!... Must not my cause have been a poor one, when he dared to make me such an offer? Ay, Kelly, and I swear to you he did so!’
These last words were the first that showed a consciousness of the other’s presence.
‘The Dutchman was better than that, George, eh?—a partition of the kingdom!—never, never. Ireland, too! The very men who stood truest to me—the very men who never counselled retreat. Think of Lovatt, George. If you had but seen him that day! He could not bide the time I took to eat a morsel of breakfast, so eager was he to be rid of me. I laughed outright at his impatience, and said that he remembered but the worst half of the old Highland adage which tells you “to speed the parting guest.” He never offered me a change of linen, George, and I had worn the same clothes from the day before Culloden. “Wae’s me for Prince Charlie!”’
‘It’s a proud thing for me to hear how you speak of my countrymen, sire,’ said Kelly.
‘Glorious fellows they were, every man of them!’ cried the Prince with enthusiasm. ‘Light-hearted and buoyant, when all others looked sad and downcast; always counselling the bold course, and readier to do than say it! I never met—if I ever heard of—but one Irishman who was not a man of honour. He was enough, perhaps, to leaven a whole nation—a low, mean sycophant, cowardly, false, and foul-tongued; a fellow to belie you and betray you—to track you into evil that others might stare at you there. I never thought ill of mankind till I knew him. Do you know whom I mean—eh, George?’
‘Faith, if the portrait be not intended for myself, I am at a loss to guess,’ said Kelly good-humouredly.
‘So it is, you arch-scoundrel; and, shameless though you be, does it never occur to you how you will go down to posterity? The corrupter of a Prince; the fellow who debauched and degraded him!’