'Then your Ladyship is acquainted with Lady Mary?' says Kelly, looking up with some eagerness. For Lady Mary, then a toast among the wits and a wit among the toasts, was glanced at by some tongues as if, being sister to the Duchess of Mar, she was not of the most loyal to the Elector. The Duke of Mar was still Secretary to King James over the water.
'Without doubt,' returned Lady Oxford. 'Lady Mary is my bosom friend. The dear malicious creature! What is her latest quip? Tell me, Mr. Johnson, I die to hear it. Or rather whisper it. It will be too deliciously cruel for loud speaking. Lady Mary's witticisms, I think, should always be spoken in a low voice, with a suggestive nod and a tap of the forefinger on the table, so that one may not mistake where the sting lies. Not that the sayings are in themselves at all clumsy—how could they be, when she has such clever friends? But they gain much from a mysterious telling of them. You agree with me?'
It was evident that Lady Oxford wasted no love on Lady Mary, and Kelly's face fell.
'Your ladyship,' he replied, 'though I have no claims to be considered clever, I have the honour to be ranked amongst her friends.'
'Indeed!' said she with a light laugh at the rebuff. 'No doubt you have brought her some of your laces and brocades from France, Mr.—Johnson.' She paused slyly upon the name.
Kelly glanced quickly at her, their eyes met, and the lady laughed. There could be no doubt that she knew something of Kelly's business. Indeed, she would hardly have asked him for the fashionable gossip at all had she taken him for just what he represented himself to be. Wogan put his foot on his friend's pretty heavily, and, he knows not how, encountered her ladyship's. To his horror, Lady Oxford made a moan of pain. Kelly starts up in a hurry.
'Your ladyship is unwell,' says he, and bids the servant bring a bottle of salts.
'No,' she replied with a smile on her lips and her eyes full of tears, 'but your secretary has dropped a blot on the wrong paper.'
'Your ladyship,' cried Wogan in an extremity of confusion, 'it was the most miserable accident, believe me. A spasm in the leg, madam, the consequence of a sabre cut across the calf,' he explained, making the matter worse.
'Oh, and in what battle was Mr. Johnson's secretary wounded?' she said, taking him up on the instant.
'In a struggle with the Preventive men,' replied Wogan hurriedly, and he too broke off with a wry face, for Mr. Johnson was warning him and with no less vigour. Before he knew what he was doing Wogan had stooped down and begun to rub his leg. Lady Oxford's smile became a laugh.
'To be sure,' said she, 'and I think Mr. Johnson must have been wounded too, in just that same way, and in just that same encounter.'
'Faith, madam,' said Kelly, 'the smuggling trade is a hard one. No man engages in it but sooner or later he gets a knock that leaves its mark.'
Lady Oxford expressed the profoundest sympathy with a great deal of disbelief; and when her ladyship left her guests to their wine, they looked at one another across the table.
'Well,' said Wogan cheerfully, 'if my Lady Oxford is in Mr. Walpole's interest we have not made the best beginning in the world,' and in a little he went off to smoke a pipe in the stables.
Kelly withdrew to the great library, and had not been there many minutes before Lady Oxford came in. It seemed she did not see him at the first, although he sat bent up over the fire and his shadow huge upon the walls. Mr. Kelly certainly did not remark her entrance. For one thing, he was absorbed in his book; for another, the carpet was thick and the lady's step of the lightest. She went first to the bookcase, then she crossed the room and shuffled some papers on a table, then she knocked against a chair, the chair knocked against the table, and at the noise Kelly looked up. He rose to his feet. Lady Oxford turned round, started, and uttered a sharp little cry.
'My lady,' began Mr. Kelly.
'Oh, it is you, Mr. Johnson,' she broke in with a hand to her heart, and dropped into the chair. 'I believe,' she said with a broken laugh, 'I was foolish enough to be frightened. I fancied you had gone with your friend to the stables,' which was as much as to say that she knew he had not. Kelly commenced an apology for so disordering her, but she would not listen to it.
'No,' she said, 'it is I that am to be blamed. Indeed, such stupid fears need chiding. But in a house so lonely and silent they grow on one insensibly. Indeed, I have known the mere creak of the stairs keep me awake in terror half the night.'
She spoke with the air of one gently railing at her own distress, but shivered a little to prove the distress genuine, and Kelly, as he looked at her, felt a sudden pang of pity.
'Your place, my lady, is not here,' he cried, 'but in the Mall, at the Spring Gardens, in the lighted theatres, when even your ladyship's own sex would pay you homage for outrivalling them.'
'Nay,' she replied, with the sweetest smile of reproof, 'you go too fast, Mr. Johnson. My place is here, for here my duty lies.' She looked up to the ceiling with a meek acceptance of the burden laid upon her fair shoulders. 'But I am not come to disturb you,' she continued briskly; 'I came to fetch a book to read aloud to my lord.' At that a sigh half broke from her and was caught back as it were upon her lips. 'Perhaps, Mr. Johnson,' she said in a well-acted flurry, 'you will help me in the selection?'
'With all the heart in the world,' said he, laying down his volume. The choice took perhaps longer than need have been, for over each book there was some discussion. This one was too trivial to satisfy my Lord Oxford's weighty mind; that other was too profound to suit his health. 'And nothing too contentious, I implore you, lest it throw him into a heat,' she prayed, 'for my lord has a great gift of logic, and will argue with you by the hour over the merest trifle.' This with another half-uttered sigh, and so the martyr sought her lord's bedside. It appeared, however, that Lord Oxford was sleepy that night, or had no mind for the music of his lady's voice, for in a very little while she returned to the library and Mr. Kelly, where Wogan presently found them discussing in a great animation the prospects of Mr. Law's ventures.
'You are in for a great stake?' she asked.
'For all I have,' replied Kelly, 'and a little more. It is not a great sum.'
'But may become one,' said she, 'and will if a friend's good wishes can at all avail.' And so she wished her guests good night.
The next morning Lord Oxford sent a message that he was so far recovered as would enable him to receive his visitors that afternoon. Meanwhile Lady Oxford, after breakfast carried off the two gentlemen to visit a new orchard she was having planted. The orchard was open to the south-west, and Kelly took objection to its site, quoting Virgil in favour of a westerly outlook.
'Ah, but the west wind,' she said, 'comes to us across the Welsh mountains, which even in the late spring are at times covered deep in snow. However, I should be pleased to hear the advice of Virgil,' and the Parson goes off to the library and fetches out a copy.
It was a warm day in April, with the sky blue overhead and the buds putting out on the trees, and for the most part of that morning Mr. Kelly translated the Georgics to her ladyship, on a seat under a great yew-tree, in a little square of grass fenced off with a hedge. She listened with an extraordinary complaisance, and now and then a compliment upon the Parson's fluency; so that Mr. Wogan lost all his apprehensions as to her meddling in the King's affairs. For, to his thinking, than listening to Virgil, there was no greater proof of friendship.
Nor was it only upon this occasion that she gave the proof. Lord Oxford was a difficult man from his very timidity, and the Parson's visit was consequently protracted. His lordship needed endless assurances as to the prospects of a rising on behalf of King James, before he would hazard a joint of his little finger to support it. Who would take the place of the Royal Swede? Could the French Regent be persuaded to lend any troops or arms