or even to wink? Had the Czar been approached? Indeed he had, by Wogan's brother Charles. And what office would my Lord Oxford hold when James III. was crowned? Each day saw these questions reiterated and no conclusion come to. Lady Oxford was never present at these discussions; the face of her conduct was a sedulous discretion. It is true that after a little she dropped the pretence of laces, and, when the servants were not present, styled the Parson 'Mr. Kelly.' But that was all. 'These are not women's matters,' she would say with a pretty humility, and then rise like a queen and sail out of the room. Mr. Wogan might have noticed upon such occasions that the Parson hesitated for a little after she had gone, and spoke at random, as though she had carried off some part of his mind from affairs with the waft of her hoop. But he waited on the lady's dispositions and set down what he saw of his friend's conduct at the time as merely the consequence of an endeavour to enlist her secrecy and good-will.
These councils with Lord Oxford took place, as a rule, in the afternoon, his lordship being a late riser, and even when risen capable only of sitting in a chair, with a leg swathed in a mountain of flannel. So that, altogether, Mr. Kelly had a deal of time upon his hands, and doubtless would have found it hang as heavy as Nick Wogan did, but for the sudden interest he took in Lady Oxford's new orchard. He would spend hours over the 'Observations on Modern Gardening,' and then,
'Nick,' he would cry,' there's no life but a country life. One wakes in the morning, and the eye travels with delight over the green expanse of fields. One makes friends with the inanimate things of nature. Nick, here one might re-create the Golden Age.'
'To my mind,' says Nick, 'but for the dogs and horses it would be purely insupportable. With all the goodwill in the world I cannot make friends with a gatepost, and I'm not denying I shall be mightily glad when the wambling old sufferer upstairs brings his mind at last to an anchor.'
But the Parson was already lost in speculation, and would presently wake to ask Wogan's opinion as to whether a Huff-cap pear was preferable to a Bar-land. To which he got no answer, and so, snatching up his Virgil, would go in search of Lady Oxford. He acquired, indeed, a most intimate knowledge of apples and pears, and would discourse with her ladyship upon the methods of planting and grafting as though he had been Adam, and she Flora, or, rather, our mother Eve, before the apple was shared between them. For apples the store, the hayloe-crab, the brandy-apple, the red-streak, the moyle, the foxwhelp, the dymock-red; for pears the squash pear, the Oldfield, the sack-pear, never a meal passed but one of these names cropped up at the table and was bandied about between Kelly and her ladyship like a tennis-ball. Now all this, though dull, was none the less reassuring to Wogan, who saw very clearly that Lady Oxford was altogether devoted to country pursuits, and wisely inferred that while there might result confusion in the quality of the pears, there would be the less disorder in the affairs of the Chevalier.
Moreover, her ladyship's inclination towards Mr. Kelly plainly increased. He translated the whole of the second book of the Georgics to her, five hundred and forty-two mortal lines of immortal poetry, and she never winced. Nor did she cry halt at the end of them, but, thereafter, listened to the Eclogues; and, all at once, their conversation was sprinkled with Melibœus and Mœris, and Lycidas and Mopsus, and Heaven knows what other names. Mr. Wogan remembers very well coming upon them one wet afternoon in the hall when it was growing dark. The lamps had not been lit, and Kelly had just finished reading one of the pastorals by the firelight. Lady Oxford sat with her hands clasped upon her knees, and, as he closed the book,
'Oh for those days,' she cried, 'when a youth and a maid could roam barefoot over the grass in simple woollen garments! But now we must go furbelowed and bedecked till there's no more comfort than simplicity,' and she smoothed her hand over her petticoat with a great contempt for its finery. Lady Mary Wortley, to whom Wogan related this saying afterwards, explained that doubtless her ladyship had laced her stays too tight that morning; but the two men put no such construction on her words, nor, indeed, did they notice a certain contradiction between them and Lady Oxford's anxiety for London gossip—the Parson, because he had ceased to do anything but admire; Wogan, because a little design had suddenly occurred to him.
It was Lady Oxford's patience under the verses which put it into Wogan's head. For since she endured to listen to poetry about trees and shepherds, poetry about herself must be a sheer delight to her. So, at all events, he reasoned, not knowing that Lady Oxford had already enjoyed occasion to listen to poetry about herself from Lady Mary's pen, which was anything but a delight. Accordingly he hinted to his friend that a little ode might set a firm seal upon her friendliness.
'Make her a Dryad in one of the trees of her own orchard, d'ye see?' he suggested; 'something pretty and artful, with sufficient allusions to her beauty. Who knows but what she may be so flattered as to carry the verses against her heart; and so, when some fine day she brings her husband's secrets to Mr. Walpole, she may hear the paper crackling against her bodice, and turn back on the very doorstep.'
'She will carry no secrets,' replied Kelly with a huff. 'She is too conscious of her duties. Besides, she knows none. Have you not seen her leave the room the moment politics are so much as hinted of?'
'True,' said Wogan. 'But what's her husband for except to provide her with secrets when they are alone to which she cannot listen without impertinence in company?'
Kelly moved impatiently away. He stood with a foot upon the fender, turning over the pages of his Virgil.
'You allow her no merit whatsoever,' he said slowly with a great gentleness.
'Indeed, but I do,' replied Wogan. 'I allow that she will be charmed by your poetry, and that's a rare merit. She will find it as soothing as a soldier does a pipe of tobacco after a hard day's fighting.'
'I would not practise on her for the world,' says Kelly with just the same gentleness, and goes softly out by the door.
Wogan, however, was troubled by no such delicate scruples. An ode must be written, even if he had to write it himself. He slapped his forehead as the notion occurred to him. The ode might be dropped as though by accident at some spot where her ladyship's eyes could not fail to light on it. Wogan heaved a deep breath, took a turn across the room, and resolved on the heroical feat. He would turn poet to help his friend. For two nights he fortified himself with the perusal of Sir John Suckling's poems, and the next morning took pencil and paper into the garden. He walked along the terrace, and seated himself on the bench beneath the yew-tree. Wogan sucked strenuously at his pencil.
'Strephon to his Smilinda, running barefoot over the grass in a gale of wind,' he wrote at the top, and was very well pleased with the title. By noonday he had produced a verse, and was very well pleased with that, except, perhaps, that the last line halted. The verse ran as follows:—
Nay, sweet Smilinda, do not chide
The wind that wantons with thy hair;
The grass will all his prickles hide
Nor harm thy snowy feet and bare.
And, listen, the enamoured air
Makes lutestrings of thy locks so fair.
At night the stars are mirrors which reflect
Thine eyes: at least that is what I expect.
Mr. Wogan spent an hour and three pipes of tobacco over his unwonted exercise, which brought him into a great heat.
Having finished the verse he blew out his cheeks and took a rest from his labours. It was a fine spring morning, and the sun bright as a midsummer day. To his right the creepers were beginning to stretch their green tendrils over the red bricks of the garden wall. To his left half-a-dozen steps led up to a raised avenue of trees. Wogan looked down the avenue, noted the border of spring flowers, and a flash of a big window at the extreme end; and in all the branches the birds sang. The world seemed all together very good, and his poem quite apiece with the world. Wogan stretched his arms and kicked out his feet. His feet struck against something hard in a tuft of grass. He stooped down and picked it up. It was Kelly's Virgil. The book was open, and the pages all blotted and smeared with the dew. It had evidently lain open on the grass by the bench all night. Wogan wiped the covers dry, and, using it as a desk, settled himself to the composition of his second verse. He had not, however, thought of