Anthony Wilding

by Rafael Sabatini

  Mr Wilding looked more attentively at the object in dispute. He was in a trifling mood, and the stupidity of this runagate debtor afforded him opportunities to indulge it. “Why, true,” said he, “now that I come to look, I perceive that it is indeed black.” And again was Sir Rowland disconcerted. Still he pursued the lesson he had taught himself.

  “You are mistaken again,” said he, “that hat is green.”

  “Indeed?” quoth Mr Wilding, like one surprised, and he turned to Trenchard, who was enjoying himself. “What is your opinion of it, Nick?”

  Thus appealed to, Trenchard’s reply was prompt. “Why, since you ask me,” said he, “my opinion is that it’s a noisome thing not meet for a gentleman’s table.” And he took it up, and threw it through the window.

  Sir Rowland was entirely put out of countenance. Here was a deliberate shifting of the quarrel he had come to pick, which left him all at sea. It was his duty to himself to take offence at Mr Trenchard’s action. But that was not the business on which he had come. He became angry.

  “Blister me!” he cried. “Must I sweep the cloth from the table before you’ll understand me?”

  “If you were to do anything so unmannerly I should have you flung out of the house,” said Mr Wilding, “and it would distress me so to treat a person of your station and quality. The hat shall serve your purpose, although Mr Trenchard’s concern for my table has removed it. Our memories will supply its absence. What colour did you say it was?”

  “I said it was green,” answered Blake, quite ready to keep to the point.

  “Nay, I am sure you were wrong,” said Wilding with a grave air. “Although I admit that, since it is your own hat, you should be the best judge of its colour, I am, nevertheless, of opinion that it is black.”

  “And if I were to say that it is white?” asked Blake, feeling mighty ridiculous.

  “Why, in that case you would be confirming my first impression of it,” answered Wilding, and Trenchard let fly a burst of laughter at sight of the baronet’s furious and bewildered countenance. “And since we are agreed on that,” continued Mr Wilding, imperturbable, “I hope you’ll join us at supper.”

  “I’ll be damned,” roared Blake, “if ever I sit at table of yours, sir.”

  “Ah!” said Mr Wilding regretfully. “Now you become offensive.”

  “I mean to be,” said Blake.

  “You astonish me!”

  “You lie! I don’t,” Sir Rowland answered him in triumph. He had got it out at last. Mr Wilding sat back in his chair, and looked at him, his face inexpressibly shocked.

  “Will you of your own accord deprive us of your company, Sir Rowland,” he wondered, “or shall Mr Trenchard throw you after your hat?”

  “Do you mean…” gasped the other, “that you’ll ask no satisfaction of me?”

  “Not so. Mr Trenchard shall wait upon your friends tomorrow, and I hope you’ll afford us then as felicitous entertainment as you do now.”

  Sir Rowland snorted, and, turning on his heel, made for the door.

  “Give you a good night, Sir Rowland,” Mr Wilding called after him. “Walters, you rascal, light Sir Rowland to the door.”

  Poor Blake went home deeply vexed; but it was no more than the beginning of his humiliation at Mr Wilding’s hands – for what can be more humiliating to a quarrel-seeking man than to have his enemy refuse to treat him seriously? He and Mr Wilding met next morning, and before noon the tale of it had run through Bridgwater that Wild Wilding was at his tricks again. It made a pretty story how twice he had disarmed and each time spared the London beau, who still insisted – each time more furiously – upon renewing the encounter, till Mr Wilding had been forced to run him through the sword-arm and thus put him out of all case of continuing. It was a story that heaped ridicule upon Sir Rowland and did credit to Mr Wilding.

  Richard heard it, and trembled, enraged and impotent. Ruth heard it, and was stirred despite herself to a feeling of gratitude towards Wilding for the patience and toleration he had displayed.

  There for a while the matter rested, and the days passed slowly. But Sir Rowland’s nature – mean at bottom – was spurred to find him some other way of wiping out the score that lay ’twixt him and Mr Wilding, a score mightily increased by the shame that Mr Wilding had put upon him in that encounter from which – whatever the issue – he had looked to cull great credit in Ruth’s eyes.

  He had been thinking constantly of the incautious words that Richard had let fall, thinking of them in conjunction with the startling rumours that were now the talk of the whole countryside. He laid two and two together, and the four he found them make, afforded him some hope. Then he realised – as he might have realised before had he been shrewder – that Richard’s mood was one that made him ripe for any villainy. He thought that he was much in error if a treachery existed so black that Richard would quail before it, if it but afforded him the means of ridding himself and the world of Mr Wilding. He was considering how best to approach the subject, when it happened that one night when Richard sat at play with him in his own lodging, the boy grew talkative through excess of wine. It happened naturally enough that Richard sought an ally in Blake, just as Blake sought an ally in Richard. Indeed, their fortunes – so far as Ruth was concerned – were bound up together. The baronet saw that Richard, half fuddled, was ripe for any confidences that might aim at the destruction of his enemy. He questioned him adroitly, and drew from him the story of the rising that was being planned and of the share that Mr Wilding – one of the Duke of Monmouth’s chief movement-men – bore in the business that was toward.

  When, towards midnight, Richard Westmacott went home, he left in Sir Rowland’s hands an instrument which the latter accounted potential not only for the destruction of Anthony Wilding, but perhaps also for laying the foundations to the building of his own fortunes anew.

  Chapter 7

  THE NUPTIALS OF RUTH WESTMACOTT

  Here was Sir Rowland Blake in high fettle at knowing himself armed with a portentous weapon for the destruction of Anthony Wilding. Upon closer inspection of it, however, he came to realise – as Richard had realised earlier – that it was double-edged, and that the wielding of it must be fraught with as much danger for Richard as for their common enemy. For to betray Mr Wilding and the plot would scarce be possible without betraying young Westmacott, and that was unthinkable, since to ruin Richard – a thing he would have done with a light heart so far as Richard was himself concerned – would be to ruin his own hopes of winning Ruth.

  Therefore, during the days that followed, Sir Rowland was forced to fret in idleness what time his wound was healing; but if his arm was invalided, his eyes and ears were sound, and he remained watchful for an opportunity to apply the knowledge he had gained. Richard mentioned the subject no more, so that Blake almost came to wonder whether the boy remembered what in his cups he had betrayed.

  Meanwhile Mr Wilding moved serene and smiling on his way. Daily there were great armfuls of flowers deposited at Lupton House – his lover’s offering to his mistress – and no day went by but that some richer gift accompanied them. Now it was a collar of brilliants, anon a rope of pearls, again a priceless ring that had been Mr Wilding’s mother’s. Ruth received with reluctance these pledges of his undesired affection. It were idle to reject them, considering that she was to marry him; yet it hurt her sorely to retain them. On her side she made no dispositions for the marriage, but went about her daily tasks as though she were to remain a maid at Lupton House for a time as yet indefinite.

  In Diana, Wilding had – though he was far from guessing it – an entirely exceptional ally. Lady Horton too was favourably disposed towards him. A foolish, worldly woman, who never probed beneath life’s surface, nor indeed dreamed that anything existed in life beyond that to which her five senses testified, she was content placidly to contemplate the advantages that must accrue to her niece from this alliance.

  And so mother and daughter pleaded in Mr Wilding’s absenc
e his cause with his refractory bride-elect. But they pleaded it to little real purpose. Something perhaps they achieved in that Ruth grew more or less resigned to the fate that awaited her. By repeating to herself the arguments she had employed to Richard – that she must wed some day, and that Mr Wilding would prove no doubt as good a husband as another – she came in a measure to believe them.

  Richard meanwhile appeared to avoid her. Lacking the courage to adopt the heroic measures which at first he had promised, yet had he grace enough to take shame at his inaction. But if he was idle so far as Mr Wilding was concerned, there was no lack of work for him in other connections. The clouds of war were gathering in that summer sky, and about to loose the storm gestating in them upon that fair country of the West, and young Westmacott, committed as he stood to the Duke of Monmouth’s party, was forced to take his share in the surreptitious bustle that was toward. He was away two days in that week, having been summoned to a meeting of the leading gentlemen of the party at White Lackington, where he was forced into the unwelcome company of his future brother-in-law, to meet with courteous, deferential treatment from that imperturbable gentleman.

  Wilding, indeed, seemed to have forgotten that any quarrel had ever existed between them. For the rest, he came and went, supremely calm, as if he were, and knew himself to be, most welcome at Lupton House. Thrice in the course of that week of waiting he rode over from Zoyland Chase to pay his duty to Mistress Westmacott, and Ruth was persuaded on each occasion by her aunt and cousin to receive him. Indeed, how could she well refuse?

  His manner was ever all that could be desired. Gallant, affectionate, deferential. He was in word and look and tone Ruth’s most obedient servant. Had she been less prejudiced she must have admired the admirable restraint with which he kept all exultation from his manner, for, after all, it is difficult to force a victory as he had forced his, and not to triumph.

  It is to be feared that during that week he neglected a good deal of his duty to the Duke, leaving Trenchard to supply his place, and undertake tasks of a seditious nature that should have been his own.

  At heart, however, in spite of the stories current and the militia at Taunton, Wilding remained convinced – as did most of the other leading partisans of the Protestant Cause – that no such madness as this premature landing could be in contemplation by the Duke. Besides, were it so, they must unfailingly have definite word of it; and they had none.

  Trenchard was less assured, but Wilding laughed at the old rake’s forebodings, and serenely went about the business of his marriage.

  On the eve of the wedding he paid Ruth his last visit in the quality of a lover, and was received by her in the garden. He found her looking paler than her wont, and there was a cloud of sadness on her brow, a haunting sadness in her eyes. It touched him to the soul, and for a moment he wavered in his purpose. He stood beside her – she seated on the old lichened seat – and a silence fell between them, during which Mr Wilding’s conscience wrestled with his stronger passion. It was his habit to be glib, talking incessantly what time he was in her company, and seeing to it that his talk was shallow and touched at nothing belonging to the deeps of human life. Thus was it, perhaps, that this sudden and enduring silence affected her most oddly; it was as if she had absorbed some notion of what was passing in his mind. She looked up suddenly into his face, so white and so composed. Their eyes met, and he stooped to her suddenly, his long brown ringlets tumbling forward. She feared his kiss, yet never moved, staring up with fixed, dilated eyes as if fascinated by his dark, brooding gaze. He paused, hovering above her upturned face as hovers the hawk above the dove.

  “Child,” he said at last, and his voice was soft and winning from very sadness, “child, why do you fear me?”

  The truth of it went home to her. She feared him; she feared the strength that lay behind that calm; she feared the masterfulness of his wild but inscrutably hidden nature; she was afraid to surrender to such a man as this, afraid that in the hot crucible of his love her own nature would be dissolved, transmuted, and rendered part of his. Yet, though the truth was now made plain to her, she thrust it from her.

  “I do not fear you,” said she, and her voice at least rang fearlessly.

  “Do you hate me, then?” he asked. Her glance grew troubled and fell away from his; it sought the calm of the river, gleaming golden in the sunset. There was a pause. Wilding sighed heavily, and straightened himself from his bending posture.

  “You should not have sought thus to compel me,” she said presently.

  “I own it,” he answered a thought bitterly. “I own it. Yet what hope had I but in compulsion?” She returned him no answer. “You see,” he said, with increasing bitterness, “you see, that had I not seized the chance that was mine to win you by compulsion I had not won you at all.”

  “It might,” said she, “have been better so for both of us.”

  “Better for neither,” he replied. “Ah, think it not! In time, I swear, you shall not think it. For you shall come to love me, Ruth,” he added with a note of such assurance that she turned to meet again his gaze. He answered the wordless question of her eyes. “There is,” said he, “no love of man for woman, so that the man be not wholly unworthy, so that his passion be sincere and strong, that can fail in time to arouse response.” She smiled a little pitiful smile of unbelief. “Were I a boy,” he rejoined, his earnestness vibrating now in a voice that was usually so calm and level, “offering you protestations of a callow worship, you might have cause to doubt me. But I am a man, Ruth – a tried, and haply a sinful man, alas! – a man who needs you, and who will have you at all costs.”

  “At all costs?” she echoed, and her lip took on a curl. “And you call this egotism by the name of love! No, doubt you are right,” she continued with an irony that stung him, “for love it is – love of yourself.”

  “And is not all love of another founded upon the love of self?” he asked her, startling her with a question that revealed to her clear-sighted mind a truth undreamed of. “When some day – please Heaven – I come to find favour in your eyes, and you come to love me, what will it mean but that you have come to find me necessary to yourself and to your happiness? Would you deny me now your love if you felt that you had need of mine? I love you because I love myself, you say. I grant it you. But you’ll confess that if you do not love me yet, it is for the same reason, and that when you do come to love me the reason will be still the same.”

  “You are very sure that I shall come to love you,” said she, shifting woman-like the ground of argument now that she found insecure the place on which at first she had taken her stand.

  “Were I not, think you I should compel you to the church tomorrow?”

  She trembled at his calm assurance. It was as if she almost feared that what he said might come to pass.

  “Since you bear such faith in your heart,” said she, “were it not nobler, more generous, that you should set yourself to win me first and wed me afterwards?”

  “It is the course I should, myself, prefer,” he answered quietly. “But it is a course denied me. I was viewed here with disfavour, almost denied your house. What chance had I whilst I might not come near you, whilst your mind was poisoned against me by the idle, vicious prattle that goes round and round the countryside, increasing ever in bulk from constant repetition?”

  “Do you say that these tales are groundless?” she asked, with a sudden lifting of her eyes, a sudden keen eagerness that did not escape him.

  “I would to God I could,” he cried, “since from your manner I see that would improve me in your sight. But there is just sufficient truth in them to forbid me, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, from giving them a full denial. Yet in what am I worse than my fellows? Are you of those who think a husband should come to them as one whose youth has been the youth of cloistered nun? Heaven knows, I am not one to draw parallels ’twixt myself and any other, yet you compel me. Whilst you deny me, you receive this fellow Blake – a London night-scourer,
a broken gamester who has given his creditors leg-bail, and who woos you that with your fortune he may close the door of the debtor’s gaol that’s open to receive him.”

  “This is unworthy in you,” she exclaimed, her tone indignant – so indignant that he experienced his first pang of jealousy.

  “It would be were I his rival,” he answered quietly. “But I am not. I have saved you from becoming the prey of such as he by forcing you to marry me.”

  “That I may become the prey of such as you, instead,” was her retort.

  He looked at her a moment, smiling sadly. Then, with pardonable self-esteem when we think of what manner of man it was with whom he now compared himself, “Surely,” said he, “it is better to become the prey of the lion than the jackal.”

  “To the victim it can matter little,” she answered, and he saw the tears gathering in her eyes.

  Compassion moved him. It rose in arms to batter down his will, and in a weaker man had triumphed. Mr Wilding bent his knee and went down beside her.

  “I swear,” he said impassionedly, “that as my wife you shall never count yourself a victim. You shall be honoured by all men, but by none more deeply than by him who will ever strive to be worthy of the proud title of your husband.” He took her hand and kissed it reverentially. He rose and looked at her. “Tomorrow,” he said, and bowing low before her went his way, leaving her with emotions that found their vent in tears, but defied her maiden mind to understand them.

  The morrow came – her wedding-day – a sunny day of early June, and Ruth – assisted by Diana and Lady Horton – made preparation for her marriage as spirited women have made preparation for the scaffold, determined to show the world a brave, serene exterior. The sacrifice was necessary for Richard’s sake. That was a thing long since determined. Yet it would have been some comfort to her to have had Richard at her side; it would have lent her strength to have had his kiss of thanks for the holocaust which for him she was making of all that woman holds most dear and sacred. But Richard was away – he had been absent since yesterday, and none could tell her where he tarried.