She raised a startled face. “Com... compromise myself?” she echoed. “Oh!” It was a cry of indignation.
“What else?” quoth he, and turned abruptly to confront her.
“Mistress Horton was... was with me,” she panted, her voice quivering as on the brink of tears.
“’Tis unfortunate you should have separated,” he condoled.
“But... but, Mr. Wilding, I... I trusted to your honour. I accounted you a gentleman. Surely... surely, sir, you will not let it be known that... I came to you? You will keep my secret?”
“Secret!” said he, his eyebrows raised. “’Tis already the talk of the servants’ hall. By to-morrow ‘twill be the gossip of Bridgwater.”
Air failed her. Her blue eyes fixed him in horror out of her stricken face. Not a word had she wherewith to answer him.
The sight of her, thus, affected him oddly. His passion for her surged up, aroused by pity for her plight, and awakened in him a sense of his brutality. A faint flush stirred in his cheeks. He stepped quickly to her, and caught her hand. She let it lie, cold and inert, within his nervous grasp.
“Ruth, Ruth!” he cried, and his voice was for once unsteady. “Give it no thought! I love you, Ruth. If you’ll but heed that, no breath of scandal can hurt you.”
She swallowed hard. “As how?” she asked mechanically.
He bowed low over her hand — so low that his face was hidden from her.
“If you will do me the honour to become my wife...” he began, but got no further, for she snatched away her hand, her cheeks crimsoning, her eyes aflame with indignation. He stepped back, crimsoning too. She had dashed the gentleness from his mood. He was angered now and tigerish.
“Oh!” she panted. “It is to affront me! Is this the time or place...”
He cropped her flow of indignant speech ere it was well begun. He caught her in his arms, and held her tight, and so sudden was the act, so firm his grip that she had not the thought or force to struggle.
“All time is love’s time, all places are love’s place,” he told her, his face close to her own. “And of all time and places the present ever preferable to the wise — for life is uncertain and short at best. I bring you worship, and you answer me with scorn. But I shall prevail, and you shall come to love me in very spite of your own self.”
She threw back her head, away from his as far as the bonds he had cast about her would allow. “Air! Air!” she panted feebly.
“Oh, you shall have air enough anon,” he answered with a half-strangled laugh, his passion mounting ever. “Hark you, now — hark you, for Richard’s sake, since you’ll not listen for my own nor yours. There is another course by which I can save both Richard’s life and honour. You know it, and you counted upon my generosity to suggest it. But you overlooked the thing on which you should have counted. You overlooked my love. Count upon that, my Ruth, and Richard shall have naught to fear. Count upon that, and when we meet this evening, Richard and I, it is I who will tender the apology, I who will admit that I was wrong to introduce your name into that company last night, and that what Richard did was a just and well-deserved punishment upon me. This will I do if you’ll but count upon my love.”
She looked up at him fearfully, yet with flutterings of hope. “What is’t you mean?” she asked him faintly.
“That if you’ll promise to be my wife...”
“Your wife!” she interrupted him. She struggled to free herself, released one arm and struck him in the face. “Let me go, you coward!”
He was answered. His arms melted from her. He fell back a pace, very white and even trembling, the fire all gone from his eye, which was now turned dull and deadly.
“So be it,” he said, and strode to the bell-rope. “I’ll not offend again. I had not offended now” — he continued, in the voice of one offering an explanation cold and formal— “but that when first I came into your life you seemed to bid me welcome.” His fingers closed upon the crimson bell-cord. She guessed his purpose.
“Wait!” she gasped, and put forth her hand. He paused, the rope in his, his eye kindling anew. “You... you mean to kill Richard now?” she asked him.
A swift lifting of his brows was his only answer. He tugged the cord. From the distance the peal of the bell reached them faintly.
“Oh, wait, wait!” she begged, her hands pressed against her cheeks. He stood impassible — hatefully impassible. “....... if I were to consent to... this... how... how soon...?” He understood the unfinished question. Interest warmed his face again. He took a step towards her, but by a gesture she seemed to beg him come no nearer.
“If you will promise to marry me within the week, Richard shall have no cause to fear either for his life or his honour at my hands.”
She seemed now to be recovering her calm. “Very well,” she said, her voice singularly steady. “Let that be a bargain between us. Spare Richard’s life and honour — both, remember! — and on Sunday next...” For all her courage her voice quavered and faltered. She dared add no more, lest it should break altogether.
Mr. Wilding drew a deep breath. Again he would have advanced. “Ruth!” he cried, and some repentance smote him, some shame shook him in his purpose. At that moment it was in his mind to capitulate unconditionally; to tell her that Richard should have naught to fear from him, and yet that she should go free as the winds. Her gesture checked him. It was so eloquent of aversion. He paused in his advance, stifled his better feelings, and turned once more, relentless. The door opened and old Walters stood awaiting his commands.
“Mistress Westmacott is leaving,” he informed his servant, and bowed low and formally in farewell before her. She passed out without another word, the old butler following, and presently through the door that remained open came Trenchard, in quest of Mr. Wilding who stood bemused.
Nick sauntered in, his left eye almost hidden by the rakish cock of his hat, one hand tucked away under the skirts of his plum-coloured coat, the other supporting the stem of a long clay pipe, at which he was pulling thoughtfully. The pipe and he were all but inseparable; indeed, the year before in London he had given appalling scandal by appearing with it in the Mall, and had there remained him any character to lose, he must assuredly have lost it then.
He observed his friend through narrowing eyes — he had small eyes, very blue and very bright, in which there usually abode a roguish gleam.
“My sight, Anthony,” said he, “reminds me that I am growing old. I wonder did it mislead me on the score of your visitor?”
“The lady who left,” said Wilding with a touch of severity, “will be Mistress Wilding by this day se’night.”
Trenchard took the pipe from his lips, audibly blew out a cloud of smoke and stared at his friend. “Body o’ me!” quoth he. “Is this a time for marrying? — with these rumours of Monmouth’s coming over.”
Wilding made an impatient gesture. “I thought to have convinced you they are idle,” said he, and flung himself into a chair at his writing-table.
Nick came over and perched himself upon the table’s edge, one leg swinging in the air. “And what of this matter of the intercepted letter from London to our Taunton friends?”
“I can’t tell you. But of this I am sure, His Grace is incapable of anything so rash. Certain is it that he’ll not stir until Battiscomb returns to Holland, and Battiscomb is still in Cheshire sounding the Duke’s friends.”
“Yet were I you, I should not marry just at present.”
Wilding smiled. “If you were me, you’d never marry at all.”
“Faith, no!” said Trenchard. “I’d as soon play at ‘hot-cockles,’ or ‘Parson-has-lost-his-cloak.’ ’Tis a mort more amusing and the sooner done with.”
CHAPTER V. THE ENCOUNTER
Ruth Wesmacott rode back like one in a dream, with vague and hazy notions of what she saw or did. So overwrought was she by the interview from which she came, her mind so obsessed by it, that never a thought had she for Diana and her indisposition until she a
rrived home to find her cousin there before her. Diana was in tears, called up by the reproaches of her mother, Lady Horton — the relict of that fine soldier Sir Cholmondeley Horton, of Taunton.
The girl had arrived at Lupton House a half-hour ahead of Miss Westmacott, and upon her arrival she had expressed surprise, either feigned or real, at finding Ruth still absent. Detecting the alarm that Diana was careful to throw into her voice and manner, her mother questioned her, and elicited the story of her faintness and of Ruth’s having ridden on alone to Mr. Wilding’s. So outraged was Lady Horton that for once in a way this woman, usually so meek and ease-loving, was roused to an energy and anger with her daughter and her niece that threatened to remove Diana at once from the pernicious atmosphere of Lupton House and carry her home to Taunton. Ruth found her still at her remonstrances, arrived, indeed, in time for her share of them.
“I have been sore mistaken in you, Ruth!” the dame reproached her. “I can scarce believe it of you. I have held you up as an example to Diana, for the discretion and wisdom of your conduct, and you do this! You go alone to Mr. Wilding’s house — to Mr. Wilding’s, of all men!”
“It was no time for ordinary measures,” said Ruth, but she spoke without any of the heat of one who defends her conduct. She was, the slyly watchful Diana observed, very white and tired. “It was no time to think of nice conduct. There was Richard to be saved.”
“And was it worth ruining yourself to do that?” quoth Lady Horton, her colour high.
“Ruining myself?” echoed Ruth, and she smiled never so weary a smile. “I have, indeed, done that, though not in the way you mean.”
Mother and daughter eyed her, mystified. “Your good name is blasted,” said her aunt, “unless so be that Mr. Wilding is proposing to make you his wife.” It was a sneer the good woman could not, in her indignation, repress.
“That is what Mr. Wilding has done me the honour to propose,” Ruth answered bitterly, and left them gaping. “We are to be married this day se’night.”
A dead silence followed the calm announcement. Then Diana rose. At the misery, the anguish that could impress so strange and white a look on Ruth’s winsome face, she was smitten with remorse, her incipient satisfaction dashed. This was her work; the fruit of her scheming. But it had gone further than she had foreseen; and for all that no result could better harmonize with her own ambitions and desires, for the moment — under the first shock of that announcement — she felt guilty and grew afraid.
“Ruth!” she cried, her voice a whisper of stupefaction. “Oh, I wish I had come with you!”
“But you couldn’t; you were faint.” And then — recalling what had passed — her mind was filled with sudden concern for Diana, even amid her own sore troubles. “Are you quite yourself again, Diana?” she inquired.
Diana answered almost fiercely, “I am quite well.” And then, with a change to wistfulness, she added, “Oh, I would I had come with you!”
“Matters had been no different,” Ruth assured her. “It was a bargain Mr. Wilding drove. It was the price I had to pay for Richard’s life and honour.” She swallowed hard, and let her hands fall limply to her sides. “Where is Richard?” she inquired.
It was her aunt who answered her. “He went forth half an hour agone with Mr. Vallancey and Sir Rowland.”
“Sir Rowland had returned, then?” She looked up quickly.
“Yes,” answered Diana. “But he had achieved nothing by his visit to Lord Gervase. His lordship would not intervene; he swore he hoped the cub would be flayed alive by Wilding. Those were his lordship’s words, as Sir Rowland repeated them. Sir Rowland is in sore distress for Richard. He has gone with them to the meeting.”
“At least, he has no longer cause for his distress,” said Miss Westmacott with her bitter smile, and sank as one exhausted to a chair. Lady Horton moved to comfort her, her motherliness all aroused for this motherless girl, usually so wise and strong, and seemingly wiser and stronger than ever in this thing that Lady Horton had deemed a weakness and a folly.
Meanwhile, Richard and his two friends were on their way to the moors across the river to the encounter with Mr. Wilding. But before they had got him to ride forth, Vallancey had had occasion to regret that he stood committed to a share in this quarrel, for he came to know Richard as he really was. He had found him in an abject state, white and trembling, his coward’s fancy anticipating a hundred times a minute the death he was anon to die.
Vallancey had hailed him cheerily.
“The day is yours, Dick,” he had cried, when Richard entered the library where he awaited him. “Wild Wilding has ridden to Taunton this morning and is to be back by noon. Odsbud, Dick! — twenty miles and more in the saddle before coming on the ground. Heard you ever of the like madness? He’ll be stiff as a broom-handle — an easy victim.”
Richard listened, stared, and, finding Vallancey’s eyes fixed steadily upon him, attempted a smile and achieved a horrible grimace.
“What ails you, man?” cried his second, and caught him by the wrist. He felt the quiver of the other’s limb. “Stab me!” quoth he, “you are in no case to fight. What the plague ails you?”
“I am none so well this morning,” answered Richard feebly. “Lord Gervase’s claret,” he added, passing a hand across his brow.
“Lord Gervase’s claret?” echoed Vallancey in horror, as at some outrageous blasphemy. “Frontignac at ten shillings the bottle!” he exclaimed.
“Still, claret never does lie easy on my stomach,” Richard explained, intent upon blaming Lord Gervase s wine — since he could think of nothing else — for his condition.
Vallancey looked at him shrewdly. “My cock,” said he, “if you’re to fight we’ll have to mend your temper.” He took it upon himself to ring the bell, and to order up two bottles of Canary and one of brandy. If he was to get his man to the ground at all — and young Vallancey had a due sense of his responsibilities in that connection — it would be well to supply Richard with something to replace the courage that had oozed out overnight. Young Richard, never loath to fortify himself, proved amenable enough to the stiffly laced Canary that his friend set before him. Then, to divert his mind, Vallancey, with that rash freedom that had made the whole of Somerset know him for a rebel, set himself to talk of the Protestant Duke and his right to the crown of England.
He was still at his talk, Richard listening moodily what time he was slowly but surely befuddling himself, when Sir Rowland — returning from Scoresby Hall — came to bring the news of his lack of success. Richard hailed him noisily, and bade him ring for another glass, adding, with a burst of oaths, some appalling threats of how anon he should serve Anthony Wilding. His wits drowned in the stiff liquor Vallancey had pressed upon him, he seemed of a sudden to have grown as fierce and bloodthirsty as any scourer that ever terrorized the watch.
Blake listened to him and grunted. “Body o’ me!” swore the town gallant. “If that’s the humour you’re going out to fight in, I’ll trouble you for the eight guineas I won from you at Primero yesterday before you start.”
Richard reared himself, by the help of the table, and stood a thought unsteadily, his glance laboriously striving to engage Blake’s.
“Damn me!” quoth he. “Your want of faith dishgraces me — and ‘t ‘shgraces you. Shalt ha’ the guineas when we’re back — and not before.”
“Hum!” quoth Blake, to whom eight guineas were a consideration in these bankrupt days. “And if you don’t come back at all upon whom am I to draw?”
The suggestion sank through Dick’s half-fuddled senses, and the scare it gave him was reflected on his face.
“Damn you, Blake!” swore Vallancey between his teeth. “Is that a decent way to talk to a man who is going out? Never heed him, Dick! Let him wait for his dirty guineas till we return.”
“Thirty guineas?” hiccoughed Richard. “It was only eight. Anyhow — wait’ll I’ve sli’ the gullet of’s Mr. Wilding.” He checked on a thought that suddenly occurred t
o him. He turned to Vallancey with a ludicrous solemnity. “‘Sbud!” he swore. “‘S a scurvy trick I’m playing the Duke. ‘S treason to him — treason no less.” And he smote the table with his open hand.
“What’s that?” quoth Blake so sharply, his eyes so suddenly alert that Vallancey made haste to cover up his fellow rebel’s indiscretion.
“It’s the brandy-and-Canary makes him dream,” said he with a laugh, and rising as he spoke he announced that it was high time they should set out. Thus he brought about a bustle that drove the Duke’s business from Richard’s mind, and left Blake without a pretext to pursue his quest for information. But the mischief was done, and Blake’s suspicions were awake. He bethought him now of dark hints that Richard had let fall to Vallancey in the past few days, and of hints less dark with which Vallancey — who was a careless fellow at ordinary times — had answered. And now this mention of the Duke and of treason to him — to what Duke could it refer but Monmouth?
Blake was well aware of the wild tales that were going round, and he began to wonder now was aught really afoot, and was his good friend Westmacott in it?
If there was, he bethought him that the knowledge might be of value, and it might help to float once more his shipwrecked fortunes. The haste with which Vallancey had proffered a frivolous explanation of Richard’s words, the bustle with which upon the instant he swept Richard and Sir Rowland from the house to get to horse and ride out to Bridgwater were in themselves circumstances that went to heighten those suspicions of Sir Rowland’s. But lacking all opportunity for investigation at the moment, he deemed it wisest to say no more just then lest he should betray his watchfulness.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 164
