Mistress Wilding (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

by Rafael Sabatini

  In a moment Walters was himself again. He was on his feet, scrutinizing Wilding's haggard face and disordered, filthy clothes. He broke into exclamations between dismay and reproach, but these Wilding interrupted to ask the old man how it happened that he had remained.

  "My son John was a sergeant in the troop that quartered itself here, sir," Walters explained, "and so they left me alone. But even had it not been for that, I scarcely think they would have harmed an old man. They were brave fellows for all the mischief they did here, and they seemed to have little heart in the service of the Popish King. It was the officers drove them on to all this damage, and once they'd started — well, there were rogues amongst them saw a chance of plunder, and they took it. I have sought to put the place to rights; but they did some woeful, wanton mischief."

  Wilding sighed. "It's little matter, perhaps, as the place is no longer mine."

  "No . . . no longer yours, sir?"

  "I'm an attainted outlaw, Walters," he explained. "They'll bestow it on some Popish time-server, unless King Monmouth can follow up by greater victories tonight's. Have you aught a man may eat or drink?"

  Meat and wine, fresh linen and fresh garments did old Walters find him; and when he had washed, eaten, and drunk, Mr. Wilding wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and laid himself down to sleep on a settle in the library, his servant and his dog on guard.

  Not above an hour, however, was he destined to enjoy his hard-earned rest. The light had grown, meanwhile, and from grey it had turned golden, the heralds of the sun being already in the east. In the distance the firing had died down to a mere occasional boom.

  Suddenly old Walters raised his head to listen. The beat of hoofs was drawing rapidly near, so near that presently he rose in alarm, for a horseman was pounding up the avenue, had drawn rein at the main entrance.

  Walters knit his brows in perplexity, and glanced at his master who slept on utterly worn out. A silent pause followed, lasting some minutes. Then it was the dog that rose with a growl, his coat bristling, and an instant later there came a sharp rapping at the hall door.

  "Sh! Down, Jack!" whispered Walters, afraid of rousing Mr. Wilding. He tiptoed softly across the room, picked up his musket, and, calling the dog, went out, a great fear in his heart, but not for himself.

  The rapping continued, growing every instant more urgent, so urgent that Walters was almost reassured. Here was no enemy, but surely some one in need. Walters opened at last, and Mr. Trenchard, grimy of face and hands, his hat shorn of its plumes, his clothes torn, staggered with an oath across the threshold.

  "Walters!" he cried. "Thank God! I thought you'd be here, but I wasn't certain. Down, Jack!"

  The hound was barking madly again, having recognized an old friend.

  "Plague on the dog!" growled Walters. "He'll wake Mr. Wilding."

  "Mr. Wilding?" said Trenchard, and checked midway across the hall. "Mr. Wilding?"

  "He arrived here a couple of hours ago, sir . . ."

  "Wilding here? Oddsheart! I was more than well advised to come. Where is he, man?"

  "Sh, sir! He's asleep in the library. You'll wake him, you'll wake him!"

  But Trenchard never paused. He crossed the hall at a bound, and flung wide the library door. "Anthony!" he shouted. "Anthony!" And in the background Walters cursed him for a fool.

  Wilding leapt to his feet, awake and startled. "Wha . . . Nick!"

  "Oons!" roared Nick. "You're choicely found. I came to send to Bridgwater for you. We must away at once, man."

  "How — away? I thought you were in the fight, Nick."

  "And don't I look as if I had been?"

  "But then . . ."

  "The fight is fought and lost; there's an end to the garboil. Monmouth is in full flight with what's left him of his horse. When I quitted the field, he was riding hard for Polden Hill." He dropped into a chair, his accents grim and despairing, his eyes haggard.

  "Lost?" gasped Wilding, and his conscience pricked him for a moment, remembering how much it had been his fault — however indirectly — that Feversham had been forewarned. "But how lost?" he cried a moment later.

  "Ask Grey," snapped Trenchard. "Ask his craven, numskulled lordship. He had as good a hand in losing it as any. Oh, it was all most infernally mishandled, as has been everything in this ill-starred rising. Grey sent back Godfrey, the guide, and attempted in the dark to find his own way across the rhine. He missed the ford. What else could the fool have hoped? And when he was discovered and Dunbarton's guns began to play on us — hell and fire! we ran as if Sedgemoor had been a race-course.

  "The rest was but the natural sequel. The foot, seeing our confusion, broke. They were rallied again; broke again; and again were rallied; but all too late. The enemy was up, and with that damned ditch between us there was no getting to close quarters with them. Had Grey ridden round, and sought to turn their flank, things might have been — O God! — they would have been entirely different. I did suggest it. But for my pains Grey threatened to pistol me if I presumed to instruct him in his duty. I would to Heaven I had pistolled him where he stood."

  Walters, at gaze in the doorway, listened to the bitter tirade. Wilding, on the settle, sat silent a moment, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, his eyes set and grim as Trenchard's own. Then he mastered himself, and waved a hand towards the table where stood food and wine.

  "Eat and drink, Nick," he said, "and we'll discuss what's to be done."

  "It'll need little discussing," was Nick's savage answer as he rose and went to pour himself a cup of wine. "There's but one course open to us — instant flight. I am for Minehead to join Hewling's horse, which went there yesterday for guns. We might seize a ship somewhere on the coast, and thus get out of this infernal country of mine."

  They discussed the matter in spite of Trenchard's having said that there was nothing to discuss, and in the end Wilding agreed to go with him. What choice had he? But first he must go to Bridgwater to reassure his wife.

  "To Bridgwater?" blazed Trenchard, in a passion at the folly of the suggestion. "You're clearly mad! All the King's forces will be there in an hour or two."

  "No matter," said Wilding, "I must go. I am dead already, as it happens." And he related his singular adventure in Feversham's camp last night.

  Trenchard heard him in amazement. If any suspicion crossed his mind that his friend's love affairs had had anything to do with rousing Feversham prematurely, he showed no sign of it. But he shook his head at Wilding's insistence that he must first go to Lupton House.

  "Shalt send a message, Anthony. Walters will find some one to bear it. But you must not go yourself."

  In the end Mr. Trenchard prevailed upon him to adopt this course, however reluctant he might be. Thereafter they proceeded to make their preparations. There were still a couple of nags in the stables, in spite of the visitation of the militia, and Walters was able to find fresh clothes for Mr. Trenchard above-stairs.

  A half-hour later they were ready to set out on this forlorn hope of escape; the horses were at the door, and Mr. Wilding was in the act of drawing on the fresh pair of boots which Walters had fetched him. Suddenly he paused, his foot in the leg of his right boot, and sat bemused a moment.

  Trenchard, watching him, waxed impatient. "What ails you now?" he croaked.

  Without answering him, Wilding turned to Walters. "Where are the boots I wore last night?" he asked, and his voice was sharp — oddly sharp, considering how trivial the matter of his speech.

  "In the kitchen," answered Walters.

  "Fetch me them." And he kicked off again the boot he had half drawn on.

  "But they are all befouled with mud, sir."

  "Clean them, Walters; clean them and let me have them."

  Still Walters hesitated, pointing out that the boots he had brought his master were newer and sounder.

  Wilding interrupted him impatiently. "Do as I bid you, Walters." And the old man, understanding nothing, went off on the errand.

&nb
sp; "A pox on your boots!" swore Trenchard. "What does this mean?"

  Wilding seemed suddenly to have undergone a transformation. His gloom had fallen from him. He looked up at his old friend and, smiling, answered him. "It means, Nick, that whilst these excellent boots that Walters would have me wear might be well enough for a ride to the coast such as you propose, they are not at all suited to the journey I intend to make."

  "Maybe," said Nick with a sniff, "you're intending to journey to Tower Hill?"

  "In that direction," answered Mr. Wilding suavely. "I am for London, Nick. And you shall come with me."

  "God save us! Do you keep a fool's egg under that nest of hair?"

  Wilding explained, and by the time Walters returned with the boots Trenchard was walking up and down the room in an odd agitation.

  "Odds my life, Tony!" he cried at last. "I believe it is the best thing."

  "The only thing, Nick."

  "And since all is lost, why . . ." Trenchard blew out his cheeks and smacked fist into palm. "I am with you," said he.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  JUSTICE

  IT has fallen to my lot in the course of this veridical chronicle of Mr. Anthony Wilding's connection with the Rebellion in the West, and of his wedding and post-nuptial winning of Ruth Westmacott, to relate certain matters of incident and personality that may be accounted strange. But the strangest yet remains to be related. For in spite of all that had passed between Sir Rowland Blake and the Westmacotts on that memorable night of Sunday to Monday, on which the battle of Sedgemoor was lost and won, towards the end of that same month of July we find him not only back at Lupton House, but once again the avowed suitor of Mr. Wilding's widow. For effrontery this is a matter of which it is to be doubted whether history furnishes a parallel. Indeed, until the circumstances are sifted it seems wild and incredible. So let us consider these.

  On the morrow of Sedgemoor, the town of Bridgwater became invested — infested were no whit too strong a word — by the King's forces under Feversham and the odious Kirke, and there began a reign of terror for the town. The prisons were choked with attainted and suspected rebels. From Bridgwater to Weston Zoyland the road was become an avenue of gallows, each bearing its repulsive gemmace-laden burden; for the King's commands were unequivocal, and hanging was the order of the day.

  It is not my desire at this stage to surfeit you with the horrors that were perpetrated during that hideous week of July, when no man's life was safe from the royal butchers. The awful campaign of Jeffreys and his four associates was yet to follow, but it is doubtful if it could compare in ruthlessness with that of Feversham and Kirke. At least, when Jeffreys came, men were given a trial — or what looked like it — and there remained them a chance, however slender, of acquittal, as many lived to prove thereafter. With Feversham there was no such chance. And it was of this circumstance that Sir Rowland Blake took the fullest and the cowardliest advantage.

  There can be no doubt that Sir Rowland was a villain. It might be urged for him that he was a creature of circumstance, and that had circumstances been other it is possible he had been a credit to his name. But he was weak in character, and out of that weakness he had developed a Herculean strength in villainy. Failure had dogged him in everything he undertook. Broken at the gaming-tables, hounded out of town by creditors, he was in desperate straits to repair his fortunes and, as we have seen, he was not nice in his endeavours to achieve that end.

  Ruth Westmacott's fair inheritance had seemed an easy thing to conquer, and to its conquest he had applied himself to suffer defeat as he had suffered it in all things else. But Sir Rowland did not yet acknowledge himself beaten, and the Bridgwater reign of terror dealt him a fresh hand — a hand of trumps. With this he came boldly to renew the game.

  He was as smooth as oil at first, a very penitent, confessing himself mad in what he had done on that Sunday night — mad with despair and rage at having been defeated in the noble task to which he had turned his hands. His penitence might have had little effect upon the Westmacotts had he not known how to insinuate that it might be best for them to lend an ear to it — and a forgiving one.

  "You will tell Mr. Westmacott, Jasper," he had said, when Jasper told him that they could not receive him, "that he would be unwise not to see me, and the same to Mistress Wilding."

  And old Jasper had carried his message, and had told Richard of the wicked smile that had been on Sir Rowland's lips when he had uttered it.

  Now Richard was in many ways a changed man since that night at Weston Zoyland. A transformation seemed to have been wrought in him as odd as it was sudden, and it dated from the moment when with tears in his eyes he had wrung Wildin's hand in farewell. Where precept had failed, Richard found himself converted by example. He contrasted himself in that stressful hour with great-souled Anthony Wilding, and saw himself as he was, a weakling, strong only in vicious ways. Repentance claimed him; repentance and a fine ambition to be worthier, to resemble as nearly as his nature would allow him this Anthony Wilding whom he took for pattern. He changed his ways, abandoned drink and gaming, and gained thereby a healthier countenance. Then in his zeal he overshot his mark. He developed a taste for Scripture-reading, bethought him of prayers, and even took to saying grace to his meat. Indeed — for conversion, when it comes, is a furious thing — the swing of his soul's pendulum threatened now to carry him to extremes of virtue and piety. "O Lord!" he would cry a score of times a day, "Thou hast brought up my soul from the grave; Thou hast kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit!"

  But underlying all this remained unfortunately the inherent weakness of his nature — indeed, it was that very weakness and malleability made this sudden and wholesale conversion possible.

  Upon hearing Sir Rowland's message his heart fainted, despite his good intentions, and he urged that perhaps they had better hear what the baronet might have to say.

  It was three days after Sedgemoor Fight, and poor Ruth was worn and exhausted with her grief — believing Wilding dead, for he had sent no message to inform her of his almost miraculous preservation. The thing he went to do in London was fraught with such peril that he foresaw but the slenderest chance of escaping with his life. Therefore, he had argued, why console her now with news that he lived, when in a few days the headsman might prove that his end had been but postponed? To do so might be to give her cause to mourn him twice. Again he was haunted by the thought that, in spite of all, it may have been pity that had so grievously moved her at their last meeting. Better, then, to wait; better for both their sakes. If he came safely through his ordeal it would be time enough to bear her news of his preservation.

  In deepest mourning, very white, with dark stains beneath her eyes to tell the tale of anguished vigils, she received Sir Rowland in the withdrawing-room, her brother at her side. To his expressions of deep penitence he found them cold; so he passed on to show them what disastrous results might ensue upon a stubborn maintaining of this attitude of theirs towards him.

  "I have come," he said, his eyes downcast, his face long-drawn, for he could play the sorrowful with any hypocrite in England, "to do something more than speak of my grief and regret. I have come to offer proof of it by service."

  "We ask no service of you, sir," said Ruth, her voice a sword of sharpness.

  He sighed, and turned to Richard. "This were folly," he assured his whilom friend. "You know the influence I wield."

  "Do I?" quoth Richard, his tone implying doubt.

  "You think that the bungled matter at Newlington's may have shaken it?" quoth Blake. "With Feversham, perhaps. But Albemarle, remember, trusts me very fully. There are ugly happenings in the town here. Men are being hung like linen on a washing-day. Be not too sure that yourself are free from all danger." Richard paled under the baronet's baleful, half-sneering glance. "Be not in too great haste to cast me aside, for you may find me useful."

  "Do you threaten, sir?" cried Ruth.

  "Threaten?" quoth he. He turned up his eyes and sh
owed the whites of them. "Is it to threaten to promise you my protection; to show you how I can serve you? — than which I ask no sweeter boon of heaven. A word from me, and Richard need fear nothing."

  "He need fear nothing without that word," said Ruth disdainfully. "Such service as he did Lord Feversham the other night . . ."

  "Is soon forgotten," Blake cut in adroitly. "Indeed, 'twill be most convenient to his lordship to forget it. Think you he would care to have it known that 'twas to such a chance he owes the preservation of his army?" He laughed, and added in a voice of much sly meaning, "The times are full of peril. There's Kirke and his lambs. And there's no saying how Kirke might act did he chance to learn what Richard failed to do that night when he was left to guard the rear at Newlington's!"

  "Would you inform him of it?" cried Richard, between anger and alarm.

  Blake thrust out his hands in a gesture of horrified repudiation. "Richard!" he cried in deep reproof and again, "Richard!"

  "What other tongue has he to fear?" asked Ruth.

  "Am I the only one who knows of it?" cried Blake. "Oh, madam, why will you ever do me such injustice? Richard has been my friend — my dearest friend. I wish him so to continue, and I swear that he shall find me his, as you shall find me yours."

  "It is a boon I could dispense with," she assured him, and rose. "This talk can profit little, Sir Rowland," said she. "You seek to bargain."

  "You shall see how unjust you are," he cried with deep sorrow. "It is but fitting, perhaps, after what has passed. It is my punishment. But you shall come to acknowledge that you have done me wrong. You shall see how I shall befriend and protect him."

  That said he took his leave and went, but he left behind him a shrewd seed of fear in Richard's mind, and of the growth that sprang from it Richard almost unconsciously transplanted something in the days that followed into the heart of Ruth. As a result, to make sure that no harm should come to her brother, the last of his name and race, she resolved to receive Sir Rowland, resolved in spite of Diana's outspoken scorn, in spite of Richard's protests — for though afraid, yet he would not have it so — in spite even of her own deep repugnance of the man.