Mistress Wilding (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

  "Whither now, Anthony?" he asked suddenly.

  "You may ask, indeed!" exclaimed Wilding, and his voice was as bitter as ever Trenchard had heard it. "'S heart! We are in it now! We had best make for Lyme — if only that we may attempt to persuade this crack-brained boy to ship back to Holland again, and ship ourselves with him."

  "There's sense in you at last," grumbled Trenchard. "But I misdoubt me he'll turn back after having come so far. Have you any money?" he asked. He could be very practical at times.

  "A guinea or two. But I can get money at Ilminster."

  "And how do you propose to reach Ilminster with these gentlemen by way of cutting us off?"

  "We'll double back as far as the cross-roads," said Wilding promptly, "and strike south over Swell Hill for Hatch. If we ride hard we can do it easily, and have little fear of being followed. They'll naturally take it we have made for Bridgwater."

  They acted on the suggestion there and then, Vallancey going with them; for his task was now accomplished, and he was all eager to get to Lyme to kiss the hand of the Protestant Duke. They rode hard, as Wilding had said they must, and they reached the junction of the roads before their pursuers hove in sight. Here Wilding suddenly detained them again. The road ahead of them ran straight for almost a mile, so that if they took it now they were almost sure to be seen presently by the messengers. On their right a thickly grown coppice stretched from the road to the stream that babbled in the hollow. He gave it as his advice that they should lie hidden there until those who hunted them should have gone by. Obviously that was the only plan, and his companions instantly adopted it. They found a way through a gate into an adjacent field, and from this they gained the shelter of the trees. Trenchard, neglectful of his finery and oblivious of the ubiquitous brambles, left his horse in Vallancey's care and crept to the edge of the thicket that he might take a peep at the pursuers.

  They came up very soon, six militiamen in lobster coats with yellow facings, and a sergeant, which was what Mr. Trenchard might have expected. There was, however, something else that Mr. Trenchard did not expect; something that afforded him considerable surprise. At the head of the party rode Sir Rowland Blake — obviously leading it — and with him was Richard Westmacott. Amongst them went a man in grey clothes, whom Mr. Trenchard rightly conjectured to be the messenger riding for Whitehall. He thought with a smile of what a handful he and Wilding would have had had they waited to rob that messenger of the incriminating letter that he bore. Then he checked his smile to consider again how Sir Rowland Blake came to head that party. He abandoned the problem, as the little troop swept unhesitatingly round to the left and went pounding along the road that led northwards to Bridgwater, clearly never doubting which way their quarry had sped.

  As for Sir Rowland Blake's connection with this pursuit, the town gallant had by his earnestness not only convinced Colonel Luttrell of his loyalty and devotion to King James, but had actually gone so far as to beg that he might be allowed to prove that same loyalty by leading the soldiers to the capture of those self-confessed traitors, Mr. Wilding and Mr. Trenchard. From his knowledge of their haunts he was confident, he assured Colonel Luttrell, that he could be of service to the King in this matter. The fierce sincerity of his purpose shone through his words; Luttrell caught the accent of hate in Sir Rowland's tense voice, and, being a shrewd man, he saw that if Mr. Wilding was to be taken, an enemy would surely be the best pursuer to accomplish it. So he prevailed, and gave him the trust he sought, in spite of Albemarle's expressed reluctance. And never did bloodhound set out more relentlessly purposeful upon a scent than did Sir Rowland follow now in what he believed to be the track of this man who stood between him and Ruth Westmacott. Until Ruth was widowed, Sir Rowland's hopes of her must lie fallow; and so it was with a zest that he flung himself into the task of widowing her.

  As the party passed out of view round the angle of the white road, Trenchard made his way back to Wilding to tell him what he had seen and to lay before him, for his enucleation, the problem of Blake's being the leader of it. But Wilding thought little of Blake, and cared little of what he might be the leader.

  "We'll stay here," said he, "until they have passed the crest of the hill."

  This, Trenchard told him, was his own purpose; for to leave their concealment earlier would be to reveal themselves to any of the troopers who might happen to glance over his shoulder.

  And so they waited some ten minutes or so, and then walked their horses slowly and carefully forward through the trees towards the road. Wilding was alongside and slightly ahead of Trenchard; Vallancey followed close upon their tails. Suddenly, as Wilding was about to put his mare at the low stone wall, Trenchard leaned forward and caught his bridle.

  "Ss!" he hissed. "Horses!"

  And now that they halted they heard the hoof-beats clear and close at hand; the crackling of undergrowth and the rustle of the leaves through which they had thrust their passage had deafened their ears to other sounds until this moment. They checked and waited where they stood, barely screened by the few boughs that still might intervene between them and the open, not daring to advance, and not daring to retreat lest their movements should draw attention to themselves. They remained absolutely still, scarcely breathing, their only hope being that if these who came should chance to be enemies they might ride on without looking to right or left. It was so slender a hope that Wilding looked to the priming of his pistols, whilst Trenchard, who had none, loosened his sword in its scabbard. Nearer came the riders.

  "There are not more than three," whispered Trenchard, who had been listening intently, and Mr. Wilding nodded, but said nothing.

  Another moment and the little party was abreast of those watchers; a dark brown riding-habit flashed into their line of vision, and a blue one laced with gold. At sight of the first Mr. Wilding's eyelids flickered; he had recognized it for Ruth's, with whom rode Diana, whilst some twenty paces or so behind came Jerry, the groom. They were returning to Bridgwater.

  They came along, looking neither to right nor to left, as the three men had hoped they would, and they were all but past, when suddenly Wilding gave his roan a touch of the spur and bounded forward. Diana's horse swerved so that it nearly threw her. Ruth, slightly ahead, reined in at once; so, too, did the groom in the rear, and so violently in his sudden fear of highwaymen that he brought his horse on to its hind legs and had it prancing and rearing madly about the road, so that he was hard put to it to keep his seat.

  Ruth looked round as Mr. Wilding's voice greeted her.

  "Mistress Wilding," he called to her. "A moment, if I may detain you."

  "You have eluded them!" she cried, entirely off her guard in her surprise at seeing him, and there echoed through her words a note of genuine gladness that almost disconcerted her husband for a moment. The next instant a crimson flush overspread her pale face, and her eyes were veiled from him, vexation in her heart at having betrayed the lively satisfaction it afforded her to see him safe when she feared him captured already or at least upon the point of capture.

  She had admired him almost unconsciously for his daring at the town hall that day, when his strong calm had stood out in such sharp contrast to the fluster and excitement of the men about him; of them all, indeed, it had seemed to her in those stressful moments that he was the only man, and she was — although she did not realize it — in danger of being proud of him. Then again the thing he had done. He had come deliberately to thrust his head into the lion's maw that he might save her brother. It was possible that he had done it in answer to the entreaties which she had earlier feared she had poured into deaf ears; or it was possible that he had done it spurred by his sense of right and justice, which would not permit him to allow another to suffer in his stead — however much that other might be caught in the very toils that he had prepared for Mr. Wilding himself. Her admiration, then, was swelled by gratitude, and it was a compound of these that had urged her to hinder the tything-men from winning past her until he and Tren
chard should have got well away.

  Afterwards, when with Diana and her groom — on a horse which Sir Edward Phelips insisted upon lending them — she rode homeward from Taunton, there was Diana to keep alive the spark of kindness that glowed at last for Wilding in Ruth's breast. Miss Horton extolled his bravery, his chivalry, his nobility, and ended by expressing her envy of Ruth that she should have won such a man amongst men for her husband, and wondered what it might be that kept Ruth from claiming him for her own as was her right. Ruth had answered little, but she had ridden very thoughtful; there was that in the past she found it hard to forgive Wilding. And yet she would now have welcomed an opportunity of thanking him for what he had done, of expressing to him something of the respect he had won in her eyes by his act of self-denunciation to save her brother. This chance, it seemed, was given her, for there he stood, with head bared before her; and already she thought no longer of seizing the chance, vexed as she was at having been surprised into a betrayal of feelings whose warmth she had until that moment scarce estimated.

  In answer to her cry of "You have eluded them!" he waved a hand towards the rising ground and the road to Bridgwater.

  "They passed that way but a few moments since," said he, "and by the rate at which they were travelling they should be nearing Newton by now. In their great haste to catch me they could not pause to look for me so close at hand," he added with a smile, "and for that I am thankful."

  She sat her horse and answered nothing, which threw her cousin out of all patience with her. "Come, Jerry," Diana called to the groom. "We will walk our horses up the hill."

  "You are very good, madam," said Mr. Wilding, and he bowed to the withers of his roan.

  Ruth said nothing; expressed neither approval nor disapproval of Diana' withdrawal, and the latter, with a word of greeting to Wilding, went ahead followed by Jerry, who had regained control by now of the beast he bestrode. Wilding watched them until they turned the corner, then he walked his mare slowly forward until he was alongside Ruth.

  "Before I go," said he, "there is something I should like to say." His dark eyes were sombre, his manner betrayed some hesitation.

  The diffidence of his tone proved startling to her by virtue of its unusualness. What might it portend, she wondered, and sought with grave eyes to read his baffling countenance; and then a wild alarm swept into her and shook her spirit in its grip; there was something of which until this moment she had not thought — something connected with the fateful matter of that letter. It had stood as a barrier between them, her buckler, her sole defence against him. It had been to her what its sting is to the bee — a thing which if once used in self-defence is self-destructive. Not, indeed, that she had used it as her sting; it had been forced from her by the machinations of Trenchard; but used it had been, and was done with; she had it no longer that with it she might hold him in defiance, and it did not occur to her that he was no longer in case to invoke the law.

  Her face grew stony, a dry glitter came to her blue eyes; she cast a glance over her shoulder at Diana and her servant. Wilding observed it and read what was passing in her mind; indeed, it was not to be mistaken, no more than what is passing in the mind of the recruit who looks behind him in the act of charging. His lips half smiled.

  "Of what are you afraid?" he asked her.

  "I am not afraid," she answered in husky accents that belied her.

  Perhaps to reassure her, perhaps because he thought of his companions lurking in the thicket and cared not to have them for his audience, he suggested they should go a little way in the direction her cousin had taken. She wheeled her horse, and, side by side, they ambled up the dusty road.

  "The thing I have to tell you," said he presently, "concerns myself."

  "Does it concern me?" she asked him coldly, and her coolness was urged partly by her newborn fears, partly to counterbalance such impression as her ill-judged show of gladness at his safety might have made upon his mind. He flashed her a sidelong glance, the long white fingers of his right hand toying thoughtfully with a ringlet of the dark brown hair that fell upon the shoulders of his scarlet coat.

  "Surely, madam," he answered dryly, "what concerns a man may well concern his wife."

  She bowed her head, her eyes upon the road before her. "True," said she, her voice expressionless. "I had forgot."

  He reined in and turned to look at her; her horse moved on a pace or two, then came to a halt, apparently of its own accord.

  "I do protest," said he, "you treat me less kindly than I deserve." He urged his mare forward until he had come up with her again, and then drew rein once more. "I think that I may lay some claim to — at least — your gratitude for what I did today."

  "It is my inclination to be grateful," said she. She was very wary of him. "Forgive me, if I am still mistrustful."

  "But of what?" he cried, a thought impatiently.

  "Of you. What ends did you seek to serve? Was it to save Richard that you came?"

  "Unless you think that it was to save Blake," he said ironically. "What other ends do you conceive I could have served?" She made him no answer, and so he resumed after a pause. "I rode to Taunton to serve you for two reasons; because you asked me, and because I would have no innocent men suffer in my stead — not even though, as these men, they were but caught in their own toils, hoist with the petard they had charged for me. Beyond these two motives, I had no other thought in ruining myself."

  "Ruining yourself?" she cried. Yes, it was true; but she had not thought of it until this moment; there had been so much to think of.

  "Is it not ruin to be outlawed, to have a price set upon your head, as will no doubt a price be set on mine when Albemarle's messenger shall have reached Whitehall? Is it not ruin to have my lands and all I own made forfeit to the State, to find myself a beggar, hunted and proscribed? Forgive me that I harass you with this catalogue of my misfortunes. You'll say, no doubt, that I have brought them upon myself by compelling you against your will to marry me."

  "I'll not deny that it is in my mind," said she, and of set purpose stifled pity.

  He sighed and looked at her again, but she would not meet his eye, else its whimsical expression might have intrigued her. "Can you deny my magnanimity, I wonder?" said he, and spoke almost as one amused. "All I had I sacrificed to do your will, to save your brother from the snare of his own contriving against me. I wonder do you yet realize how much I sacrificed today at Taunton! I wonder!" And he paused, looking at her and waiting for some word from her; but she had none for him.

  "Clearly you do not, else I think you would show me if only a pretence of kindness." She was looking at him at last, her eyes less hard. They seemed to ask him to explain. "When you came this morning with the tale of how the tables had been turned upon your brother, of how he was caught in his own springe, and the letter found in his keeping was before the King's folk at Taunton with every appearance of having been addressed to him, and not a tittle of evidence to show that it had been meant for me, do you know what news it was you brought me?" He paused a second, looking at her from narrowing eyes. Then he answered his own question. "You brought me the news that you were mine to take whensoe'er I pleased. Whilst that letter was in your hands it gave you the power to make me your obedient slave. You might blow upon me as you listed whilst you held it, and I was a vane that must turn to your blowing for my honour's sake and for the sake of the cause in which I worked. Through no rashness of mine must that letter come into the hands of the King's friends, else was I dishonoured. It was an effective barrier between us. So long as you possessed that letter you might pipe as you pleased, and I must dance to the tune you set. And then this morning what you came to tell me was that things were changed; that it was mine to call the tune. Had I had the strength to be a villain, you had been mine now, and your brother and Sir Rowland might have hanged on the rope of their own weaving."

  She looked at him in a startled, almost shamefaced manner. This was an aspect of the case she had not consid
ered.

  "You realize it, I see," he said, and smiled wistfully. "Then perhaps you realize why you found me so unwilling to do the thing you craved. Having treated me ungenerously, you came to cast yourself upon my generosity, asking me — though I scarcely think you understood — to beggar myself of life itself with all it held for me. God knows I make no pretence to virtue, and yet I think I had been something more than human had I not refused you and the bargain you offered — a bargain that you would never be called upon to fulfil if I did the thing you asked."

  At last she interrupted him; she could bear it no longer.

  "I had not thought of it!" she cried. It was a piteous wail that broke from her. "I swear I had not thought of that. I was all distraught for poor Richard' sake. Oh, Mr. Wilding," she turned to him, holding out a hand; her eyes shone, filmed with moisture, "I shall have a kindness for you . . . all my days for your . . . generosity today." It was lamentably weak, far from the hot expressions which she forced it to replace.

  "Yes, I was generous," he admitted. "We will move on as far as the cross-roads." Again they ambled gently forward. Up the slope from the ford Diana and Jerry were slowly climbing; not another human being was in sight ahead or behind them. "After you left me," he continued, "your memory and your entreaties lingered with me. I gave the matter of our position thought, and it seemed to me that all was monstrously ill-done. I loved you, Ruth, I needed you, and you disdained me. My love was master of me. But 'neath your disdain it was transmuted oddly." He checked the passion that was vibrating in his voice and resumed after a pause, in the calm, slow tones, soft and musical, that were his own. "There is scarce the need for so much recapitulation. When the power was mine I bent you unfairly to my will; you did as much by me when the power suddenly became yours. It was a strange war between us, and I accepted its conditions. Today, when the power wąs mine again, mine to bring you at last to subjection, behold, I have capitulated at your bidding, and all that I held — including your own self — have I relinquished. It is perhaps fitting. Haply I am punished for having wed you before I had wooed you." Again his tone changed, it grew more cold, more matter-of-fact. "I rode this way a little while ago a hunted man, my only hope to reach home and collect what moneys and valuables I could carry, and make for the coast to find a vessel bound for Holland. I have been engaged, as you know, in stirring up rebellion to check the iniquities and persecutions that are toward in a land I love. I'll not weary you with details. Time was needed for this as for all things, and by next spring, perhaps, had matters gone well, this vineyard that so carefully and secretly I have been tending, would have been, maybe, in condition to bear fruit. Even now, in the hour of my flight, I learn that others have come to force this delicate growth into sudden maturity. There! Soon ripe, soon rotten. The Duke of Monmouth has landed at Lyme this morning. I am riding to him."