Mistress Wilding Part 22

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 fl.u.s.ter 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 grat.i.tude, 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 n.o.bility, 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 pa.s.sed 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's 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 pa.s.sing in her mind; indeed, it was not to be mistaken, no more than what is pa.s.sing 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 rea.s.sure 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 illjudged 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 grat.i.tude for what I did to-day."

"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 hara.s.s 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 to-day 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 t.i.ttle 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. G.o.d 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's 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 to-day." 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 aster of me. But 'neath your disdain it was trans.m.u.ted oddly." He checked the pa.s.sion 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. To-day, when the power was 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 encompa.s.sed 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 wrists, 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."