In a half-mad enthusiasm to engage men in the cause of his Prince he had begun a sort of recruitment of a legion who were to land in Scotland or Ireland. The means by which he at first operated were somewhat liberally contributed to him by a secret emissary of the family, whom Kelly at length discovered to be the private secretary of Miss Walsingham, the former mistress of Charles Edward. Later on, however, he found out that this lady herself was actually a pensioner of the English government, and in secret correspondence with Mr. Pitt, who, through her instrumentality, was in possession of every plan of the Pretender, and knew of his daily movements. This treacherous intercourse had begun several years before the death of Charles Edward, and lasted for some years after that event.
Stung by the consciousness of being duped, as well as maddened by having been rendered an enemy to the cause he sought to serve, Kelly disbanded his followers, and took to the mountains as a brigand. With years he had grown only more abandoned to excess of every kind. All his experiences of life had shown little beyond baseness and corruption, and he had grown to care for nothing beyond the enjoyment of the passing hour, except when the possibility of a vengeance on those who had betrayed him might momentarily awake his passion, and excite him to some effort of vindictive anger.
In his hours of mad debauchery he would rave about landing in England, and a plan he had conceived for assassinating the king; then it was his scheme to murder Mr. Pitt, and sometimes all these were abandoned for the desire to make Miss Walsingham herself pay the penalty of her base and unwomanly treachery.
‘He came to our convent gate in his garb of a friar to beg,’ said Marietta. ‘I saw him but for an instant, and I knew him at once. He was one of those who, in the “red days” of the Revolution, mocked the order he belonged to by wearing a rosary of playing-dice! and he recognised me as one who had even more shamelessly exposed herself.’ A deep crimson flush covered her face and neck as she spoke, and as quickly fled, to leave her as pale as a corpse. ‘Oh, mio caro,’ cried she, ‘there are intoxications more maddening to the senses than those of drinking; there are wild fevers of the mind, when degradation seems a sort of martyrdom; and in the very depth of our infamy and shame we appear to ourselves to have attained to something superhuman in self-denial. It was my fate to live with one who inspired these sentiments.’ She paused for a few seconds, and then, trembling on every accent, she said: ‘To win his love, to conquer the heart that would not yield to me, I dared more than ever woman, far more than ever man, dared.’
‘Here’s to the king’s buffoon, and a bumper toast it shall be,’ burst in the friar, with a drunken ribaldry; ‘and if there are any will not drink it, let him drink to the Minister’s mistress!’
To the sudden gesture which Gerald’s anger evoked, Marietta quickly interposed her hand, and, in a low, soft voice, besought him to remain quiet.
‘If the cause were up, or the cause were down,
What matter to you or to me;
For though the Prince had played his crown,
Our stake was a bare bawbee!’
sang out Kelly lustily. ‘Who’ll deny it? Who’ll say there wasn’t sound reason and philosophy in that sentiment? None knew it better than Prince Charlie himself.’
‘And was this man the companion of a Prince?’ whispered Gerald in her ear.
‘Even so; fallen fortunes bring degraded followers,’ said Marietta. ‘I have heard it said that many of his father’s associates were of this stamp.’