Mistress Wilding (2 page)

"I think, Anthony," said he, "that we have had words enough. Shall you be disposing of Mr. Westmacott tomorrow, or must I be doing it for you?"

With a gasp of dismay young Richard twisted in his chair to confront this fresh and unsuspected antagonist. What danger was this that he had overlooked? Then, even as he turned, Wilding's voice
fell on his ear, and each word of the few he spoke was like a drop of icy water on Westmacott's overheated brain.

"I protest you are vastly kind, Nick. But I intend, myself, to have the pleasure of killing Mr. Westmacott." And his smile fell now in mockery upon the disillusioned lad.

Crushed by that bolt from the blue, Richard sat as if stunned, the flush receding from his face until his very lips were livid. The shock had sobered him, and, sobered, he realized in terror
what he had done. And yet even sober he was amazed to find that the staff upon which with such security he had leaned should have proved rotten. True he had put much strain upon it; but then he had
counted that it would stand much strain.

He would have spoken, but he lacked words, so stricken was he. And even had he done so it is odds none would have heard him, for the late calm was of a sudden turned to garboil. Every man of
that company — with the sole exception of Richard himself — was on his feet, and all were speaking at once, in clamouring, excited chorus.

Wilding alone — the butt of their expostulations — stood quietly smiling, and wiped his face at last with a kerchief of finest lawn. Dominating the others in the Babel rose the voice
of Sir Rowland Blake — impecunious Blake; Blake lately of the Guards, who had sold his commission as the only thing remaining him upon which he could raise money; Blake, that other suitor for
Miss Westmacott's hand, the suitor favoured by her brother.

"You shall not do it, Mr. Wilding," he shouted, his face crimson. "No, by God! You were shamed forever. He is but a lad, and drunk."

Trenchard eyed the short, powerfully built man beside him, and laughed unpleasantly. "You should get yourself bled one of these days, Sir Rowland," he advised. "There may be no great danger yet;
but a man can't be too careful when he wears a narrow neckcloth."

Blake — a short, powerfully built man — took no heed of him, but looked straight at Mr. Wilding, who, smiling ever, calmly returned the gaze of those prominent blue eyes.

"You will suffer me, Sir Rowland," said he sweetly, "to be the judge of whom I will and whom I will not meet."

Sir Rowland flushed under that mocking glance and caustic tone. "But he is drunk," he repeated feebly.

"I think," said Trenchard, "that he is hearing something that will make him sober."

Lord Gervase took the lad by the shoulder, and shook him impatiently. "Well?" quoth he. "Have you nothing to say? You did a deal of prating just now. I make no doubt but that even at this late
hour if you were to make apology . . ."

"It would be idle," came Wilding's icy voice to quench the gleam of hope kindling anew in Richard's breast. The lad saw that he was lost, and he is a poor thing, indeed, who cannot face the
worst once that worst is shown to be irrevocable. He rose with some semblance of dignity.

"It is as I would wish," said he, but his livid face and staring eyes belied the valour of his words. He cleared his huskiness from his throat. "Sir Rowland," said he, "will you act for me?"

"Not I!" cried Blake with an oath. "I'll be no party to the butchery of a boy unfledged."

"Unfledged?" echoed Trenchard. "Body o' me! 'Tis a matter Wilding will amend tomorrow. He'll fledge him, never fear. He'll wing him on his flight to heaven."

Of set purpose did Trenchard add this fuel to the blazing fire. It was no part of his views that this encounter should be avoided. If Richard Westmacott were allowed to live after what had
passed, there were too many tall fellows might go in peril of their lives.

Richard, meanwhile, had turned to the man on his left — young Vallancey, a notorious partisan of the Duke of Monmouth's, a hair-brained gentleman who was his own worst enemy.

"May I count on you, Ned?" he asked.

"Aye — to the death," said Vallancey magniloquently.

"Mr. Vallancey," said Trenchard with a wry twist of his sharp features, "you grow prophetic."

CHAPTER II

SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE

FROM Scoresby Hall, near Weston Zoyland, young Westmacott rode home that Saturday night to his sister's house in Bridgwater, a sobered man and an
anguished. He had committed a folly which was like to cost him his life tomorrow. Other follies had he committed in his twenty-five years — for he was not quite the babe that Blake had
represented him, although he certainly looked nothing like his age. But tonight he had contrived to set the crown to all. He had good cause to blame himself and to curse the miscalculation that had
emboldened him to launch himself upon a course of insult against this Wilding, whom he hated with all the currish and resentful hatred of the worthless for the man of parts.

But there was more than hate in the affront that he had offered; there was calculation — to an even greater extent than we have seen. It happened that through his own fault young Richard
was all but penniless. The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton — the wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations — had been so stirred to anger by Richard's
vicious and besotted ways that he had left every guinea that was his, every perch of land, and every brick of edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad for the
worthless boy. Ruth worshipped him. He was a sacred charge to her from their dead father, who, knowing the stoutness of her soul and the feebleness of Richard's, had in dying imposed on her the
care and guidance of her graceless brother. But Ruth, in all things strong, was weak with Richard out of her very fondness for him. To what she had he might help himself, and thus it was that
things were not so bad with him at present. But when Richard's calculating mind came to give thought to the future he found that this occasioned him some care. Rich ladies, even when they do not
happen to be equipped in addition with Ruth's winsome beauty and endearing nature, are not wont to go unmarried. It would have pleased Richard best to have had her remain a spinster. But he well
knew that this was a matter in which she might have a voice of her own, and it behoved him betimes to take wise measures where possible husbands were concerned.

The first that came in a suitor's obvious panoply was Anthony Wilding, of Zoyland Chase, and Richard watched his advent with foreboding. Wilding's was a personality to dazzle any woman, despite
— perhaps even because of — the reputation for wildness that clung to him. That he was known as Wild Wilding to the countryside is true; but it were unfair — as Richard knew
— to attach to this too much importance; for the adoption of so obvious an alliteration the rude country minds needed but a slight encouragement.

From the first it looked as if Ruth might favour him, and Richard's fears assumed more definite shape. If Wilding married her — and he was a bold, masterful fellow who usually accomplished
what he aimed at — her fortune and estate must cease to be a pleasant pasture land for bovine Richard. The boy thought at first of making terms with Wilding; the idea was old; it had come to
him when first he had counted the chances of his sister's marrying. But he found himself hesitating to lay his proposal before Mr. Wilding. And whilst he hesitated Mr. Wilding made obvious headway.
Still Richard dared not do it. There was a something in Wilding's eye that cried him danger. Thus, in the end, since he could not attempt a compromise with this fine fellow, the only course
remaining was that of direct antagonism — that is to say, direct as Richard understood directness. Slander was the weapon he used in that secret duel; the countryside was well stocked with
stories of Mr. Wilding's many indiscretions. I do not wish to suggest that these were unfounded. Still, the countryside, cajoled by its primitive sense of humour into that alliteration I have
mentioned, found that having given this dog its bad name, it was under the obligation of keeping up his reputation. So it exaggerated. Richard, exaggerating those exaggerations in his turn, had
some details, as interesting and unsavoury as they were in the main untrue, to lay before his sister.

Now established love, it is well known, thrives wondrously on slander. The robust growth of a maid's feelings for her accepted suitor is but further strengthened by malign representations of his
character. She seizes with joy the chance of affording proof of her great loyalty, and defies the world and its evil to convince her that the man to whom she has given her trust is not most worthy
of it. Not so, however, with the first timid bud of incipient interest. Slander nips it like a frost; in deadliness it is second only to ridicule.

Ruth Westmacott lent an ear to her brother's stories, incredulous only until she remembered vague hints she had caught from this person and from that, whose meaning was now made clear by what
Richard told her, which, incidentally, they served to corroborate. Corroboration, too, did the tale of infamy receive from the friendship that prevailed between Mr. Wilding and Nick Trenchard, the
old ne'er-do-well, who in his time — as everybody knew — had come so low, despite his gentle birth, as to have been one of a company of strolling players. Had Mr. Wilding been other
than she now learnt he was, he would surely not cherish an attachment for a person so utterly unworthy. Clearly, they were birds of a plumage.

And so, her maiden purity outraged at the thought that she had been in danger of lending a willing ear to the wooing of such a man, she had crushed this love which she blushed to think was on
the point of throwing out roots to fasten on her soul, and was sedulous thereafter in manifesting the aversion which she accounted it her duty to foster for Mr. Wilding.

Richard had watched and smiled in secret, taking pride in the cunning way he had wrought this change — that cunning which so often is given to the stupid by way of compensation for the
intelligence that has been withheld them.

And now what time discountenanced, Wilding fumed and fretted all in vain, Sir Rowland Blake, fresh from London and in full flight from his creditors, flashed like a comet into the Bridgwater
heavens. He dazzled the eyes and might have had for the asking the heart and hand of Diana Horton — Ruth's cousin. Her heart, indeed, he had without the asking, for Diana fell straightway in
love with him and showed it, just as he showed that he was not without response to her affection. There were some tender passages between them; but Blake, for all his fine exterior, was a beggar,
and Diana far from rich, and so he rode his feelings with a hard grip upon the reins. And then, in an evil hour for poor Diana, young Westmacott had taken him to Lupton House, and Sir Rowland had
his first glimpse of Ruth, his first knowledge of her fortune. He went down before Ruth's eyes like a man of heart; he went down more lowly still before her possessions like a man of greed; and
poor Diana might console herself with whom she could.

Her brother watched him, appraised him, and thought that in this broken gamester he had a man after his own heart; a man who would be ready enough for such a bargain as Richard had in mind;
ready enough to sell what rags might be left him of his honour so that he came by the wherewithal to mend his broken fortunes.

The twain made terms. They haggled like any pair of traders out of Jewry, but in the end it was settled — by a bond duly engrossed and sealed — that on the day that Sir Rowland
married Ruth he should make over to her brother certain values that amounted to perhaps a quarter of her possessions. There was no cause to think that Ruth would be greatly opposed to this —
not that that consideration would have weighed with Richard.

But now that all essentials were so satisfactorily determined a vexation was offered Westmacott by the circumstance that his sister seemed nowise taken with Sir Rowland. She suffered him because
he was her brother's friend; on that account she even honoured him with some measure of her own friendship; but to no greater intimacy did her manner promise to admit him. And meanwhile, Mr.
Wilding persisted in the face of all rebuffs. Under his smiling mask he hid the smart of the wounds she dealt him, until it almost seemed to him that from loving her he had come to hate her.

It had been well for Richard had he left things as they were and waited. Whether Blake prospered or not, leastways it was clear that Wilding would not prosper, and that, for the season, was all
that need have mattered to young Richard.

But in his cups that night he had thought in some dim way to precipitate matters by affronting Mr. Wilding, secure, as I have shown, in his belief that Wilding would perish sooner than raise a
finger against Ruth's brother. And his drunken astuteness, it seemed, had been to his mind as a piece of bottle glass to the sight, distorting the image viewed through it.

With some such bitter reflection rode he home to his sleepless couch. Some part of those dark hours he spent in bitter reviling of Wilding, of himself, and even of his sister, whom he blamed for
this awful situation into which he had tumbled; at other times he wept from self-pity and sheer fright.

Once, indeed, he imagined that he saw light, that he saw a way out of the peril that hemmed him in. His mind turned for a moment in the direction that Trenchard had feared it might. He bethought
him of his association with the Monmouth Cause — into which he had been beguiled by the sordid hope of gain — and of Wilding's important share in that same business. He was even moved
to rise and ride that very night for Exeter to betray to Albemarle the Cause itself, so that he might have Wilding laid by the heels. But if Trenchard had been right in having little faith in
Richard's loyalty, he had, it seems, in fearing treachery made the mistake of giving Richard credit for more courage than was his endowment. For when, sitting up in bed, fired by his inspiration,
young Westmacott came to consider the questions the Lord-Lieutenant of Devon would be likely to ask him, he reflected that the answers he must return would so incriminate himself that he would be
risking his own neck in the betrayal. He flung himself down again with a curse and a groan, and thought no more of the salvation that might lie for him that way.