Mistress Wilding (17 page)

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 Trenchard 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 considered.

"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."