Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel. Lever Charles James
was in it, you mightn’t like to give it.’
Kelly paused for a few seconds, and then, as if having formed his resolution, said:
‘If that be the case, Luke, it is better that I should not see it. There’s no knowing when my favour here may come to an end. There’s not a morning breaks, nor an evening closes, that I don’t expect to hear I’m discarded, thrown off, abandoned. Maybe it would bring me luck if I was to do one, just one, good action, by way of a change, before I go.’
‘I hope you’ve done many such afore now,’ said Luke piously.
Kelly did not reply, but a sudden change in his features told how acutely the words sank into his heart.
‘Wait for me here a minute,’ said he; and motioning to Luke to be seated, he passed noiselessly into the chamber of the Prince.
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!’
‘Isn’t it something that posterity will ever hear of me at all?’ said Kelly. ‘Is it not fame, at any rate? If there should be any records of our life together, who knows but a clever commentator will find out that but for me and my influence the Prince of Wales would have been a downright beast? – “that Kelly humanised your Royal Highness, kept you from all the contamination of cardinals and scheming Monsignori, rallied your low spirits, comforted your dark hours, and enjoyed your bright ones.”’
‘For what – for what? what was his price?’ cried Charles eagerly.
‘Because he felt in his heart that, sooner or later, you ‘d be back, King of England and Ireland, and George Kelly wouldn’t be forgotten. No, faith; Archbishop of Westminster; and devil a less I’d be – that’s the price, if you wish to hear it!’
The Prince laughed heartily, as he ever did when the friar gave way to his impertinent humour, and then, sitting up in his bed, told Kelly to order coffee. To his last hour, coffee seemed to exercise the most powerful effect on him, clearing his faculties after hours of debauch, and enabling him to apply himself to business when he appeared to be utterly exhausted. Kelly, who well knew how to adapt himself to each passing shade of temperament, followed the Prince into a small dressing-room in silence, and remained standing at a short distance behind his chair.
‘Tell Conway,’ said he, pointing to a mass of papers on the table, ‘that these must wait. I ‘ll go down to Albano tomorrow or next day for a change of air. I ‘ll not hear of anything till I return. Cardinal Altieri knows better than I do what Sir Horace Mann writes home to England. This court is in perfect understanding with St. James’s. As to the Countess, Kelly, let it not be spoken of again; you hear me? What paper is that in your hand?’
‘A petition, I believe, sire; at least, the quarter it comes from would so bespeak it.’
‘Throw it on the fire, then. Is it not enough to live thus, but that I must be reminded thirty, forty times a day of my poverty and incapacity? Am I to be flouted with my fallen fortune? On the fire with it, at once!’
‘Poor Luke’s prayers were offered at an untimely moment,’ said Kelly, untying the scroll, as if preparing to obey. ‘Maybe, after all, he is asking for a new rosary, or a pair of sandals. Shall I read it, sire?’
The Prince made no reply, and Kelly, who thoroughly understood his humour, made no further effort to obtain a hearing for his friend; but, tearing the long scroll in two, he muttered the first line that caught his eye:
‘"Petition of Mary Fitzgerald.”’
‘What – of – whom? Fitzgerald! what Fitzgerald?’ cried Charles, catching the other’s wrist with a sudden grasp.
‘"Sister of Grace Géraldine.”’
The words were not well uttered when Charles snatched the paper from Kelly’s hand, and drew near to the lamp.
‘Leave me; wait in the room without, Kelly!’ said he; and the tone of his voice implied a command not to be gainsaid. The Prince now flattened out the crumpled document before him, holding the fragments close together; but, although he bent over them attentively for several minutes, he made little progress in their contents, for drop by drop the hot tears rose to his eyes, and fell heavily on the paper. Gradually, too, his head declined, till at last it fell forward on the table, where he lay, sobbing deeply. It was a long time before he arose from this attitude; and then his furrowed cheeks and glazed eyes told of intense sorrow. ‘What ruin have I brought everywhere!’ was the exclamation that broke from him, in a voice tremulous with agony. ‘Kinloch said truly: “We must have sinned heavily, to be so heavily cursed!”’ Again and again did he bend over the paper, and, few as were the lines, it was long before he could read them through, such was the gush of emotion they excited. ‘Was there ever a cause so hallowed by misfortune?’ cried he, in an accent of anguish. ‘Oh! Grace, had you been spared to me, I might have been other than this. But, if it were to be – if it were indeed fated that I should become the thing I am, thank God you have not lived to see it! George,’ cried he suddenly,