Mistress Wilding (18 page)

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."

"To what end?" she cried, and he saw in her face a dismay that amounted almost to fear, and he wondered was it for him.

"To place my sword at his service Were I not encompassed by this ruin, I should not have stirred a foot in that direction — so rash, so foredoomed to failure is this invasion. As it is,"
— he shrugged and laughed — "it is the only hope — all forlorn though it may be — for me."

The trammels she had imposed upon her soul fell away at that like bonds of cobweb. She laid her hand upon his wrist, tears stood in her eyes; her lips quivered.

"Anthony, forgive me," she besought him. He trembled under her touch, under the caress of her voice, and at the sound of his name for the first time upon her lips.

"What have I to forgive?" he asked.

"The thing that I did in the matter of that letter."

"You poor child," said he, smiling gently upon her, "you did it in self-defence."

"Yet say that you forgive me — say it before you go!" she begged him.

He considered her gravely a moment. "To what end," he asked, "do you imagine that I have talked so much? To the end that I might show you that however I may have wronged you I have at the last
made some amends; and that for the sake of this, the truest proof of penitence, I may have your forgiveness ere I go."

She was weeping softly. "It was an ill day on which we met," she sighed.

"For you — aye."

"Nay — for you."

"We'll say for both of us, then," he compromised. "See, Ruth, your cousin grows weary, and I have a couple of comrades who are no doubt impatient to be gone. It may not be good for us to tarry
in these parts. Some amends I have made; but there is one crowning wrong which I have done you for which there is but one amend to make." He paused. He steadied himself before continuing. In his
attempt to render his voice cold and commonplace he went near to achieving harshness. "It may be that this crack-brained rebellion of which the torch is already alight will, if it does no other
good in England, at least make a widow of you. When that has come to pass, when I have thus repaired the wrong I did you, I hope you'll bear me as kindly as may be in your thought. Goodbye, my
Ruth! I would you might have loved me. I sought to force it." He smiled ever so wanly. "Perhaps that was my mistake. It is an ill thing to eat one's hay while it is grass." He raised to his lips
the little gloved hand that still rested on his wrist. "God keep you, Ruth!" he murmured.

She sought to answer him, but something choked her; a sob was all she achieved. Had he caught her to him in that moment there is little doubt but that she had yielded. Perhaps he knew it; and
knowing it kept the tighter rein upon desire. She was as metal molten in the crucible, to be moulded by his craftsman's hands into any pattern that he chose. But the crucible was the crucible of
pity, not of love; that, too, he knew, and, knowing it, forbore.

He dropped her hand, doffed his hat, and, wheeling his horse about, touched it with the spur and rode back towards the thicket where his friends awaited him. As he left her, she too wheeled
about, as if to follow him. She strove to command her voice that she might recall him; but at that same moment Trenchard, hearing his returning hoofs, thrust out into the road with Vallancey
following at his heels. The old player's harsh voice reached her where she stood, and it was querulous with impatience.

"What a plague do you mean, dallying here at such a time, Anthony?" he cried, to which Vallancey added: "In God's name, let us push on."

At that sne checked her impulse — it may even be that she mistrusted it. She paused, lingering undecided for an instant; then, turning her horse once more, she ambled up the slope to
rejoin Diana.

CHAPTER XIII

"PRO RELIGIONE ET LIBERTATE"

THE evening was far advanced when Mr. Wilding and his two companions descended to Uplyme Common from the heights whence as they rode they had commanded
a clear view of the fair valley of the Axe, lying now under a thin opalescent veil of evening mist.

They had paused at Ilminster for fresh horses, and there Wilding had paid a visit to one of his agents from whom he had procured a hundred guineas. Thence they had come south at a sharp pace,
and with little said. Wilding was moody and thoughtful, filled with chagrin at this unconscionable rashness of the man upon whom all his hopes were centred. As they cantered briskly across Uplyme
Common in the twilight they passed several bodies of countrymen, all heading for the town, and one group sent up a shout of "God save the Protestant Duke!" as they rode past him.

"Amen to that," muttered Mr. Wilding grimly, "for I am afraid that no man can."

In the narrow lane by Hay Farm a horseman, going in the opposite direction, passed them at the gallop; but they had met several such since leaving Ilminster, for indeed the news was spreading
fast, and the whole countryside was alive with messengers, some on foot and some on horseback, but all hurrying as if their lives depended on their haste.

They made their way to the Market-Place where Monmouth's declaration — that remarkable manifesto from the pen of Ferguson — had been read some hours before. Thence, having
ascertained where His Grace was lodged, they made their way to the George Inn.

In Coombe Street they found the crowd so dense that they could but with difficulty open out a way for their horses through the human press. Not a window but was open, and thronged with
sight-seers — mostly women, indeed, for the men were in the press below. On every hand resounded the cries of "A Monmouth! A Monmouth! The Protestant Religion! Religion and Liberty," which
latter were the words inscribed on the standard Monmouth had set up that evening on the Church Cliffs.

In truth, Wilding was amazed at what he saw, and said as much to Trenchard. So pessimistic had been his outlook that he had almost expected to find the rebellion snuffed out by the time they
reached Lyme-of-the-King. What had the authorities been about that they had permitted Monmouth to come ashore, or had Vallancey's information been wrong in the matter of the numbers that
accompanied the Protestant Champion? Wilding's red coat attracted some attention. In the dusk its colour was almost all that could be discerned of it.

"Here's a militia captain for the Duke!" cried one, and others took up the cry, and if it did nothing else it opened a way for them through that solid human mass and permitted them to win
through to the yard of the George Inn. They found the spacious quadrangle thronged with men, armed and unarmed, and on the steps stood a tall, well-knit, soldierly man, his hat rakishly cocked,
about whom a crowd of townsmen and country fellows were pressing with insistence. At a glance Mr. Wilding recognized Captain Venner — raised to the rank of colonel by Monmouth on the way from
Holland.

Trenchard dismounted, and taking a distracted stable-boy by the arm, bade him see to their horses. The fellow endeavoured to swing himself free of the other's tenacious grasp.

"Let me go," he cried. "I am for the Duke!"

"And so are we, my fine rebel," answered Trenchard, holding fast.

"Let me go," the lout insisted. "I am going to enlist."

"And so you shall when you have stabled our nags. See to him, Vallancey; he is brainsick with the fumes of war."

The fellow protested, but Trenchard's way was brisk and short; and so, protesting still, he led away their cattle in the end, Vallancey going with him to see that he performed this last duty as
a stable-boy ere he too became a champion militant of the Protestant Cause. Trenchard sped after Wilding, who was elbowing his way through the yokels about the steps. The glare of a newly lighted
lamp from the doorway fell full upon his long white face as he advanced, and Venner espied and recognized him.

"Mr. Wilding!" he cried, and there was a glad ring in his voice, for though cobblers, tailors, deserters from the militia, pot-boys, stable-boys, and shuffling yokels had been coming in in
numbers during the past few hours since the Declaration had been read, this was the first gentleman that arrived to welcome Monmouth. The soldier stretched out a hand to grasp the newcomer's. "His
Grace will see you this instant, not a doubt of it." He turned and called down the passage. "Cragg!" A young man in a buff coat came forward, and to him Venner delivered Wilding and Trenchard that
he might announce them to His Grace.

In the room that had been set apart for him above-stairs, Monmouth still sat at table. He had just supped, with but an indifferent appetite, so fevered was he by the events of his landing. He
was excited with hope — inspired by the readiness with which the men of Lyme and its neighbourhood had flocked to his banner — and fretted by anxiety that none of the gentry of the
vicinity should yet have followed the example of the meaner folk, in answer to the messages dispatched at dawn from Seaton. The board at which he sat was still cumbered with some glasses and
platters and vestiges of his repast. Below him on his right sat Ferguson — that prince of plotters — very busy with pen and ink, his keen face almost hidden by his great periwig;
opposite were Lord Grey, of Werke, and Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, whilst, standing at the foot of the table barely within the circle of candlelight from the branch on the polished oak, was
Nathaniel Wade, the lawyer, who had fled to Holland on account of his alleged complicity in the Rye House plot and was now returned a major in the Duke's service. Erect and soldierly of figure,
girt with a great sword and with the butt of a pistol protruding from his belt, he had little the air of a man whose methods of contention were forensic.

"You understand, then, Major Wade," His Grace was saying, his voice pleasant and musical. "It is decided that the guns had best be got ashore forthwith and mounted."

Wade bowed. "I shall set about it at once, Your Grace. I shall not want for help. Have I Your Grace's leave to go?"

Monmouth nodded, and as Wade passed out, Ensign Cragg entered to announce Mr. Wilding and Mr. Trenchard. The Duke rose to his feet, his glance suddenly brightening. Fletcher and Grey rose with
him; Ferguson paid no heed, absorbed in his task, which he industriously continued.

"At last!" exclaimed the Duke. "Admit them, sir."

When they entered, Wilding coming first, his hat under his arm, the Duke sprang to meet him, a tall young figure, lithe and slender as a blade of steel, and of a steely strength for all his
slimness. He was dressed in a suit of purple that became him marvellously well, and on his breast a star of diamonds flashed and smouldered like a thing of fire. He was of an exceeding beauty of
face, wherein he mainly favoured that "bold, handsome woman" that was his mother, without, however, any of his mother's insipidity; fine eyes, a good nose, straight and slender, and a mouth which,
if sensual and indicating a lack of strength, was beautifully shaped. His chin was slightly cleft, the shape of his face a delicate oval, framed now in the waving masses of his brown wig. Some
likeness to his late Majesty was also discernible, in spite of the wart, out of which his uncle James made so much capital.

There was a slight flush on his cheeks, an added lustre in his eye, as he took Wilding's hand and shook it heartily before Wilding had time to kiss His Grace's.

"You are late," he said, but there was no reproach in his voice. "We had looked to find you here when we came ashore. You had my letter?"

"I had not, Your Grace," answered Wilding, very grave. "It was stolen."

"Stolen?" cried the Duke, and behind him Grey pressed forward, whilst even Ferguson paused in his writing to raise his piercing eyes and listen.