Anthony Wilding

by Rafael Sabatini

  Chapter 17

  MR WILDING’S RETURN

  The preparations to be made for the momentous coup Sir Rowland meditated were considerable. Mr Newlington was yet to be concerted with and advised, and, that done, Sir Rowland had to face the difficulty of eluding the Bridgwater guards and make his way to Feversham’s camp at Somerton to enlist the General’s co-operation to the extent that we have seen he looked for. That, done, he was to return and ripen his preparations for the business he had undertaken. Nevertheless, in spite of all that lay before him, he did not find it possible to leave Lupton House without stepping out into the garden in quest of Ruth. Through the window, whilst he and Richard were at their ale, he had watched her between whiles, and had lingered, waiting; for Diana was with her, and it was not his wish to seek her whilst Diana was at hand. Speak with her, ere he went, he must. He was an opportunist, and now, he fondly imagined, was his opportunity. He had made that day, at last, a favourable impression upon Richard’s sister; he had revealed himself in a heroic light, and egregiously misreading the emotion she had shown before withdrawing he was satisfied that, did he strike now, victory must attend him. He sighed his satisfaction and pleasurable anticipation. He had been wary and he had known how to wait; and now, it seemed to him, he was to be rewarded for his patience. Then he frowned as another glance showed him that Diana still lingered with her cousin; he wished Diana at the devil. He had come to hate this fair-haired doll to whom he had once paid court. She was too continually in his way, a constant obstacle in his path, ever ready to remind Ruth of Anthony Wilding when Sir Rowland most desired Anthony Wilding to be forgotten; and in Diana’s feelings towards himself such a change had been gradually wrought that she had come to reciprocate his sentiments – to hate him with all the bitter hatred into which love can be by scorn transmuted. At first her object in keeping Ruth’s thoughts on Mr Wilding, in pleading his cause, and seeking to present him in a favourable light to the lady whom he had constrained to become his wife, had been that he might stand a barrier between Ruth and Sir Rowland to the end that Diana might hope to see revived – faute de mieux, since possible in no other way – the feelings that once Sir Rowland had professed for herself. The situation was rich in humiliations for poor, vain, foolishly crafty Diana, and these humiliations were daily rendered more bitter by Sir Rowland’s unwavering courtship of her cousin in despite of all that she could do.

  In the end the poison of them entered her soul, corroded her sentiments towards him, dissolved the love she had borne him, and transformed it into venom. She would not have him now if he did penitence for his disaffection by going in sackcloth and crawling after her on his knees for a full twelvemonth. But neither should he have Ruth if she could thwart his purpose. On that she was resolved.

  Had she but guessed that he watched them from the windows, waiting for her to take her departure, she had lingered all the morning, and all the afternoon if need be, at Ruth’s side. But, being ignorant of the circumstance – believing that he had already left the house – she presently quitted Ruth to go indoors, and no sooner was she gone than there was Blake replacing her at Ruth’s elbow. Mistress Wilding met him with unsmiling but not ungentle face.

  “Not yet gone, Sir Rowland?” she asked him, and a less sanguine man had been discouraged by the words.

  “It may be forgiven me that I tarry at such a time,” said he, “when we consider that I go, perhaps – to return no more.” It was an inspiration on his part to assume the rôle of the hero going forth to a possible death. It invested him with noble, valiant pathos which could not, he thought, fail in its effect upon a woman’s mind. But he looked in vain for a change of colour, be it never so slight, or a quickening of the breath. He found neither; though, indeed, her deep blue eyes seemed to soften as they observed him.

  “There is danger in this thing that you are undertaking?” said she, between question and assertion.

  “It is not my wish to overstate it; yet I leave you to imagine what the risk may be.”

  “It is a good cause,” said she, thinking of the poor, deluded, humble folk that followed Monmouth’s banner, whom Blake’s fine action was to rescue from impending ruin and annihilation, “and surely Heaven will be on your side.”

  “We must prevail,” cried Blake with kindling eye, and you had thought him a fanatic, not a miserable earner of blood-money. “We must prevail, though some of us may pay dearly for the victory. I have a foreboding…” he paused, sighed, then laughed and flung back his head, as if throwing off some weight that had oppressed him.

  It was admirably played; Nick Trenchard, had he observed it, might have envied the performance; and it took effect with her, this adding of a prospective martyr’s crown to the hero’s raiment he had earlier donned. It was a master-touch worthy of one who was deeply learned – from the school of foul experience – in the secret ways that lead to a woman’s favour. In a pursuit of this kind there was no subterfuge too mean, no treachery too base for Sir Rowland Blake.

  “Will you walk, mistress?” he said, and she, feeling that it were an unkindness not to do his will, assented gravely. They moved down the sloping lawn, side by side, Sir Rowland leaning on his cane, bareheaded, his feathered hat tucked under his arm. Before them the river’s smooth expanse, swollen and yellow with the recent rains, glowed like a sheet of copper, so that it blurred the sight to look upon it long.

  A few steps they took with no word uttered, then Sir Rowland spoke. “With this foreboding that is on me,” said he, “I could not go without seeing you, without saying something that I may never have another chance of saying; something that – who knows? – but for the emprise to which I am now wedded you had never heard from me.”

  He shot her a furtive, sidelong glance from under his heavy, beetling brows, and now, indeed, he observed a change ripple over the composure of her face like a sudden breeze across a sheet of water. The deep lace collar at her throat rose and fell, and her fingers toyed nervously with a ribbon of her grey bodice. She recovered in an instant, and threw up entrenchments against the attack she saw he was about to make.

  “You exaggerate, I trust,” said she. “Your forebodings will be proved groundless. You will return safe and sound from this venture, as indeed I hope you may.”

  That was his cue. “You hope it?” he cried, arresting his step, turning, and imprisoning her left hand in his right. “You hope it? Ah, if you hope for my return, return I will; but unless I know that you will have some welcome for me such as I desire from you, I think…” his voice quivered cleverly, “I think, perhaps, it were well if…if my forebodings were not as groundless as you say they are. Tell me, Ruth…”

  But she interrupted him. It was high time, she thought. Her face he saw was flushed, her eyes had hardened somewhat. Calmly she disengaged her hand.

  “What is’t you mean?” she asked. “Speak, Sir Rowland, speak plainly, that I may give you a plain answer.”

  It was a challenge in which another man had seen how hopeless was his case, and, accepting defeat, had made as orderly a retreat as still was possible. But Sir Rowland, stricken in his vanity, went headlong on to utter rout.

  “Since you ask me in such terms I will be plain indeed,” he answered her. “I mean…” He almost quailed before the look that met him from her intrepid eyes. “Do you not see my meaning, Ruth?”

  “That which I see,” said she, “I do not believe, and as I would not wrong you by any foolish imaginings, I would have you plain with me.”

  Yet the egregious fool went on. “And why should you not believe your senses?” he asked her, between anger and entreaty. “Is it wonderful that I should love you? Is it…?”

  “Stop!” She drew back a pace from him. There was a moment’s silence, during which it seemed she gathered her forces to destroy him, and, in the spirit, he bowed his head before the coming storm. Then, with a sudden relaxing of the stiffness her lissom figure had assumed, “I think you had better leave me, Sir Rowland,” she advised him. She ha
lf turned and moved a step away; he followed with lowering glance, his upper lip lifting and laying bare his powerful teeth. In a stride he was beside her.

  “Do you hate me, Ruth?” he asked her hoarsely.

  “Why should I hate you?” she counter-questioned, sadly. “I do not even dislike you,” she continued in a more friendly tone, adding, as if by way of explaining this phenomenon, “You are my brother’s friend. But I am disappointed in you, Sir Rowland. You had, I know, no intention of offering me disrespect; and yet it is what you have done.”

  “As how?” he asked.

  “Knowing me another’s wife…”

  He broke in tempestuously. “A mock marriage! If it is but that scruple stands between us…”

  “I think there is more,” she answered him. “You compel me to hurt you; I do so as the surgeon does – that I may heal you.”

  “Why, thanks for nothing,” he made answer, unable to repress a sneer. Then, checking himself, and resuming the hero-martyr posture, “I go, mistress,” he told her sadly, “and if I lose my life tonight, or tomorrow, in this affair…”

  “I shall pray for you,” said she; for she had found him out at last, perceived the nature of the bow he sought to draw across her heart-strings, and, having perceived it, contempt awoke in her. He had attempted to move her by unfair, insidious means.

  He fell back, crimson from chin to brow. He stifled the wrath that welled up, threatening to choke him. He was a short-necked man, of the sort – as Trenchard had once reminded him – that falls a prey to apoplexy, and surely he was never nearer it than at that moment. He made her a profound bow, bending himself almost in two before her in a very irony of deference; then, drawing himself up again, he turned and left her.

  The plot which with some pride he had hatched and the reward he looked to cull from it were now to his soul as ashes to his lips. What could it profit him to destroy Monmouth so that Anthony Wilding lived? For whether she loved Wilding or not, she was Wilding’s wife. Wilding, nominally, at least, was master of that which Sir Rowland coveted; not her heart, indeed, but her ample fortune. Wilding had been a stumbling-block to him since he had come to Bridgwater; but for Wilding he might have run a smooth course; he was still fool enough to hug that dear illusion to his soul. Somewhere in England – if not dead already – this Wilding lurked, an outlaw, whom any might shoot down at sight. Sir Rowland swore he would not rest until he knew that Anthony Wilding cumbered the earth no more – leastways, not the surface of it.

  He went forth to seek Newlington. The merchant had sent his message to the rebel King, and had word in answer that His Majesty would be graciously pleased to sup at Mr Newlington’s at nine o’clock on the following evening, attended by a few gentlemen of his immediate following. Sir Rowland received the news with satisfaction, and sighed to think that Mr Wilding – still absent, Heaven knew where – would not be of the party. It was reported that on the Monday Monmouth was to march to Gloucester, hoping there to be joined by his Cheshire friends, so that it seemed Sir Rowland had not matured his plan a day too soon. He got to horse, and, contriving to win out of Bridgwater, rode off to Somerton to concert with Lord Feversham concerning the men he would need for his undertaking.

  That night Richard made free talk of the undertaking to Diana and to Ruth, loving, as does the pusillanimous, to show himself engaged in daring enterprises. Emulating his friend Sir Rowland, he held forth with prolixity upon the great service he was to do the State, and Ruth, listening to him, was proud of his zeal, the sincerity of which it never entered her mind to doubt.

  Diana listened too, but without illusions concerning Master Richard and she kept her conclusions to herself.

  During the afternoon of the morrow, which was Sunday, Sir Rowland returned to Bridgwater, his mission to Feversham entirely successful, and all preparations made. He completed his arrangements, and towards eight o’clock that night the twenty men sent by Feversham – they had slipped singly into the town – began to muster in the orchard at the back of Mr Newlington’s house.

  It was just about that same hour that Mr Wilding, saddle-worn and dust-clogged in every pore, rode into Bridgwater, and made his way to the sign of The Ship in the High Street, overlooking the Cross where Trenchard was lodged. His friend was absent – possibly gone with his men to the sermon Ferguson was preaching to the army in the Castle Fields. Having put up his horse, Mr Wilding, all dusty as he was, repaired straight to the Castle to report himself to Monmouth.

  He was informed that His Majesty was in council. Nevertheless, urging that his news was of importance, he begged to be instantly announced. After a pause, he was ushered into a lofty, roomy chamber where, in the fading daylight, King Monmouth sat in council with Grey and Wade, Matthews, Speke, Ferguson and others. At the foot of the table stood a sturdy country-fellow, unknown to Wilding. It was Godfrey, the spy, who was to act as their guide across Sedgemoor that night; for the matter that was engaging them just then was the completion of their plans for the attack that was to be made that very night upon Feversham’s unprepared camp – a matter which had been resolved during the last few hours as an alternative preferable to the retreat towards Gloucester that had at first been intended.

  Wilding was shocked at the change that had been wrought in Monmouth’s appearance during the few weeks since last he had seen him. His face was thin, pale and haggard, his eyes were more sombre, and beneath them there were heavy, dark stains of sleeplessness and care; his very voice, when presently he spoke, seemed to have lost the musical timbre that had earlier distinguished it; it was grown harsh and rasping. Disappointment after disappointment, set down to ill-luck, but in reality the fruit of incompetence, had served to sour him. The climax had been reached in the serious desertions after the Philips Norton fight, and the flight of Paymaster Goodenough with the funds for the campaign. The company sat about the long oak table, on which a map was spread, and Colonel Wade was speaking when Wilding entered.

  On his appearance Wade ceased, and every eye was turned upon the messenger from London. Ferguson, fresh from his sermon, sat with elbows resting on the table, his long chin supported by his hands, his eyes gleaming sharply under the shadow of his wig, which was pulled down in front to the level of his eyebrows.

  It was the Duke who addressed Mr Wilding, and the latter’s keen ears were quick to catch the bitterness that underlay his words.

  “We are glad to see you, sir; we had not looked to do so again.”

  “Not looked to do so, your Gr… Majesty!” he echoed, plainly not understanding, and it was observed that he stumbled over the Duke’s new title.

  “We had imagined that the pleasures of the town were claiming your entire attention.”

  Wilding looked from one to the other of the men before him, and on the face of all he saw a gravity that amounted to disapproval of him.

  “The pleasures of the town?” said he, frowning, and again – “the pleasures of the town? There is something in this that I fear I do not understand.”

  “Do you bring us news that London has risen?” asked Grey suddenly.

  “I would I could,” said Wilding, smiling wistfully.

  “Is it a laughing matter?” quoth Grey angrily.

  “A smiling matter, my lord,” said Wilding, nettled. “Your lordship will observe that I did but smile.”

  “Mr Wilding,” said Monmouth darkly, “we are not pleased with you.”

  “In that case,” returned Wilding, more and more irritated, “your Majesty expected of me more than was possible to any man.”

  “You have wasted your time in London, sir,” the Duke explained. “We sent you thither counting upon your loyalty and devotion to ourselves. What have you done?”

  “As much as a man could…” Wilding began, when Grey again interrupted him.

  “As little as a man could,” he answered. “Were His Grace not the most foolishly clement prince in Christendom, a halter would be your reward for the fine things you have done in London.”

>   Mr Wilding stiffened visibly, his long white face grew set, and his slanting eyes looked wicked. He was not a man readily moved to anger, but to be greeted in such words as these by one who constituted himself the mouthpiece of him for whom Wilding had incurred ruin was more than he could bear with equanimity; that the risks to which he had exposed himself in London – where, indeed, he had been in almost hourly expectation of arrest and such short shift as poor Disney had – should be acknowledged in such terms as these, was something that turned him almost sick with disgust. To what manner of men had he leagued himself? He looked Grey steadily between the eyes.

  “I mind me of an occasion on which such a charge of foolish clemency might indeed – and with greater justice – have been levelled against His Majesty,” said he, and his calm was almost terrible. His lordship grew pale at the obvious allusion to Monmouth’s mild treatment of him for his cowardice at Bridport, and his eyes were as baleful as Wilding’s own at that moment. But before he could speak Monmouth had already answered Mr Wilding.

  “You are wanting in respect to us, sir,” he admonished him. Mr Wilding bowed to the rebuke in a submission that seemed ironical. The blood mounted slowly to Monmouth’s cheeks.

  “Perhaps,” put in Wade, who was anxious for peace, “Mr Wilding has some explanation to offer us of his failure.”

  His failure! They took too much for granted. Stitched in the lining of his boot was the letter from the Secretary of State. To have achieved that was surely to have achieved something.

  “I thank you, sir, for supposing it,” answered Wilding, his voice hard with self-restraint; “I have indeed an explanation.”

  “We will hear it,” said Monmouth, condescendingly, and Grey sneered, thrusting out his bloated lips.

  “I have to offer the explanation that your Majesty is served in London by cowards; self-sufficient and self-important cowards who have hindered me in my task instead of helping me. I refer particularly to Colonel Danvers.”