Anthony Wilding

by Rafael Sabatini

  “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 someone 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.

  “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 24

  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 Wilding’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 conversio
n, 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 that 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 showed 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 so 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.

  Days passed and grew to weeks. Bridgwater was settling down to peace again – to peace and mourning; the Royalist scourge had spread to Taunton, and Blake lingered on at Lupton House, an unwelcome but an undeniable guest.

  His presence was as detestable to Richard now as it was to Ruth, for Richard had to submit to the mockery with which the town-rake lashed his godly bearing and altered ways. More than once, in gusts of sudden valour, the boy urged his sister to permit him to drive the baronet from the house and let him do his worst. But Ruth, afraid for Richard, bade him wait until the times were more settled. When the royal vengeance had slaked its lust for blood it might matter little, perhaps, what tales Sir Rowland might elect to carry.

  And so Sir Rowland remained and waited. He assured himself that he knew how to be patient, and congratulated himself upon that circumstance. Wilding dead, a little time must now suffice to blunt the sharp edge of his widow’s grief; let him but await that time, and the rest should be easy, the battle his. With Richard he did not so much as trouble himself to reckon.

  Thus he determined, and thus no doubt he would have acted but for an unforeseen contingency. A miserable, paltry creditor had smoked him out in his Somerset retreat and got a letter to him full of dark hints of a debtor’s gaol. The fellow’s name was Swiney, and Sir Rowland knew him for fierce and pertinacious where a defaulting debtor was concerned. One only course remained him: to force matters with Wilding’s widow. For days he refrained, fearing that precipitancy might lose him all; it was his wish to do the thing without too much coercion; some, he was not coxcomb enough to think – coxcomb though he was – might be dispensed with.

  At last one Sunday evening he decided to be done with dallying, and to bring Ruth between the hammer and the anvil of his will. It was the last Sunday in July, exactly three weeks after Sedgemoor, and the odd coincidence of his having chosen such a day and hour you shall appreciate anon.

  They were on the lawn taking the cool of the evening after an oppressively hot day. By the stone seat, now occupied by Lady Horton and Diana, Richard lay on the sward at their feet in talk with them, and their talk was of Sir Rowland. Diana – gall in her soul to see the baronet by way of gaining yet his ends – chid Richard in strong terms for his weakness in submitting to Blake’s constant presence at Lupton House. And Richard meekly took his chiding and promised that, if Ruth would but sanction it, things should be changed upon the morrow.

  Sir Rowland, all unconscious – reckless, indeed – of this, sauntered with Ruth some little distance from them, having contrived adroitly to draw her aside. He broke a spell of silence with a dolorous sigh.

  “Ruth,” said he pensively, “I mind me of the last evening on which you and I walked here alone.”

  She flashed him a glance of fear and aversion, and stood still. Under his brow he watched the quick heave of her bosom, the sudden flow and abiding ebb of blood in her face – grown now so thin and wistful – and he realised that before him lay no easy task
. He set his teeth for battle.

  “Will you never have a kindness for me, Ruth?” he sighed.

  She turned about, her intent to join the others, a dull anger in her soul. He set a hand upon her arm. “Wait!” said he, and the tone in which he uttered that one word kept her beside him. His manner changed a little. “I am tired of this,” said he.

  “Why, so am I,” she answered bitterly.

  “Since we are agreed so far, let us agree to end it.”

  “It is all I ask.”

  “Yes, but – alas! – in a different way. Listen now.”

  “I will not listen. Let me go.”

  “I were your enemy did I do so, for you would know hereafter a sorrow and repentance for which nothing short of death could offer you escape. Richard is under suspicion.”

  “Do you hark back to that?” The scorn of her voice was deadly. Had it been herself he desired, surely that tone had quenched all passion in him, or else transformed it into hatred. But Blake was playing for a fortune, for shelter from a debtor’s prison.

  “It has become known,” he continued, “that Richard was one of the early plotters who paved the way for Monmouth’s coming. I think that that, in conjunction with his betrayal of his trust that night at Newlington’s, thereby causing the death of some twenty gallant fellows of King James’s, will be enough to hang him.”

  Her hand clutched at her heart. “What is’t you seek?” she cried. It was almost a moan. “What is’t you want of me?”

  “Yourself,” said he. “I love you, Ruth,” he added, and stepped close up to her.

  “Oh God!” she cried aloud. “Had I a man at hand to kill you for that insult!”

  And then – miracle of miracles! – a voice from the shrubs by which they stood bore to her ears the startling words that told her her prayer was answered there and then.

  “Madam, that man is here.”

  She stood frozen. Not more of a statue was Lot’s wife in the moment of looking behind her than she who dared not look behind. That voice! A voice from the dead, a voice she had heard for the last time in the cottage that was Feversham’s lodging at Weston Zoyland. Her wild eyes fell upon Sir Rowland’s face. It showed livid; the nether-lip sucked in and caught in the strong teeth, as if to prevent an outcry; the eyes wild with fright. What did it mean? By an effort she wrenched herself round at last, and a scream broke from her to rouse her aunt, her cousin, and her brother, and bring them hastening towards her across the sweep of lawn.