She is tender at times, but only through caprice; she is never faithful except for profit or lack of occasion to be anything else. Coquetry is the abiding principle of her nature, and her virtue merely a habit of hiding her coquetry. Her mind is larded with affectations as is her face with paint, and once or twice she has been known to weep--when tears were likely to deceive a man. There, Mr. Wogan, you have her likeness, and I trust you are satisfied.'
It was not a character very much to Wogan's liking (Lady Mary, he learned later, was quoting from a manuscript 'portrait' of her own designing), though he drew a spice of comfort from the thought that Lady Mary might have coloured the effigy with her unmistakable enmity. But events proved that she had not over-coloured it, and even at that time Lady Oxford had no better reputation than Lady Mary Wortley attributed to her. The ballad-makers called her gallant, and they did her no wrong--the ballad-makers of the ruelles, be it understood, not they of the streets, but such poets as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu herself and his Grace Sophia of Wharton.[1] The street-singers knew not Lady Oxford, who, indeed, was on the top of the fashion, and could hold her own in the war of written verses. It was in truth to her ability to give as good as she took in the matter of ballads that she owed Lady Mary's hostility, who had no taste for the counter-stroke. There were many such daring Penthesileas of the pen who never gave each other quarter; but neither Wogan nor the Parson were at this time in their secrets, although subsequently a ballad, not from Lady Mary's pen, was to have an astonishing effect upon their fortunes.
'Your ladyship can help me to make the best of it, at all events,' said Wogan. 'Since you have told me so much, will you tell me this one thing more? Have you ever heard of Mr. Scrope?'
'Scrope? Scrope?' said she casting about in her recollections. Wogan told her the story of Mr. Scrope's appearance at Brampton Bryan, and the explanation which Lady Oxford had given to account for it. Lady Mary laughed heartily.
'Secretary to Mr. Walpole?' she said. 'And how, then, did he come to hear that mad sermon of Mr. Kelly's at Dublin?'
'Sure I have been puzzled to account for that myself,' says Wogan. 'But who is he? Where does he come from? What brought him to Brampton Bryan? What took him away in such a mighty hurry? For upon my word I find it difficult to believe the man's a coward.'
'And you are in the right,' replied her ladyship. 'I know something of Mr. Scrope, and I will wager it was no cowardice made him run. I doubt you have not seen the last of Mr. Scrope. It is a passionate, determined sort of creature. He came to London a year or so agone. It was understood that he was a country gentleman with a comfortable estate in Leicestershire. He had laid his estate at Lady Oxford's feet, before she was as yet her ladyship. Lady Oxford would have it, and then would have none of it, and married the Earl. Well, he had been her valet for a season, and, I have no doubt, thought the service worth any price. She gave him her fan to hold, her gloves to caress, and what more can a man want? He spent much of his money, and some whisper that he turned informer afterwards.'
'Oh, did he?' asked Wogan, who was now yet more concerned that he had let the informer slip through his fingers.
'Yes. An informer for conscience' sake--a gentleman spy. His father died for Monmouth's affair. He has ever hated the Pretender and his cause. He is a Protestant and a fanatic.'
Then she looked at Wogan and began to laugh.
'I would have given much to have seen you bouncing down the road after Mr. Scrope's chaise,' and she added seriously, 'But I doubt you have not heard the last of Mr. Scrope.'
That also was Wogan's thought. For Lady Mary's story, though vague enough, was sufficiently clear to deepen his disquietude. Well, Mr. Wogan would get no comfort by the mere addling his brains with thinking of the matter, and he thrust it forth of his mind and went upon his way, that led him clean out of the path of this story for a while. He was despatched to Cadiz to take charge of a ship, and, in company with Captain Galloway of the Resolution, who was afterwards seized at Genoa, and Morgan, of the Lady Mary, he spent much fruitless time in cruising on and off the coasts of France, Spain, and Sweden. It was given out that they carried snuff, or were engaged in the Madagascar trade. But they took no cargoes aboard but barrels of powder and stands of arms, and waited on the Rising, which never came. There were weeks idled away at Morlaix, at Roscoff in Brittany, at Lisbon in Portugal, at Alicant Bay in Spain, until Wogan's heart grew sick with impatience. At rare times, when the venture wore a face of promise, the little fleet would run the hazard of the Channel and creep along the English coast, from Dartmouth, across the West Bay to Portland, from Portland on to the Isle of Wight. Mr. Wogan would pace the deck of his little ketch, Fortune, of a night, and as he looked at the quiet fields lying dark beneath the sky, would wonder how the world wagged for his friend the Parson, and whether my Lady Oxford was shaping it or no, until a longing would seize on him to drop a boat into the water and himself into the boat, and row ashore and see. But it was not for more than a full twelve months that his longing was fulfilled, and during those twelve months the harm was done.
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