Mistress Wilding Part 3

He stood before his sister and his cousin, moving his eyes s.h.i.+ftily from one to the other, rubbing his hands nervously together.

"Your precious friend Sir Rowland has been here," said he, and it was not clear from his manner which of them he addressed. "Not a doubt but he will have brought you the news." He seemed to sneer.

Ruth advanced towards him, her face grave, her sweet eyes full of pitying concern. She placed a hand upon his sleeve. "My poor Richard..."

she began, but he shook off her kindly touch, laughing angrily--a mere cackle of irritability.

"Odso!" he interrupted her. "It is a thought late for this mock kindliness!"

Diana, in the background, arched her brows, then with a shrug turned aside and seated herself on the stone seat by which they had been standing. Ruth shrank back as if her brother had struck her.

"Richard!" she cried, and searched his livid face with her eyes.

"Richard!"

He read a question in the interjection, and he answered it. "Had you known any real care, any true concern for me, you had not given cause for this affair," he chid her peevishly.

"What are you saying?" she cried, and it occurred to her at last that Richard was afraid. He was a coward! She felt as she would faint.

"I am saying," said he, hunching his shoulders, and s.h.i.+vering as he spoke, yet, his glance unable to meet hers, "that it is your fault that I am like to get my throat cut before sunset."

"My fault?" she murmured. The slope of lawn seemed to wave and swim about her. "My fault?"

"The fault of your wanton ways," he accused her harshly. "You have so played fast and loose with this fellow Wilding that he makes free of your name in my very presence, and puts upon me the need to get myself killed by him to save the family honour."

He would have said more in this strain, but something in her glance gave him pause. There fell a silence. From the distance came the melodious pealing of church bells. High overhead a lark was pouring out its song; in the lane at the orchard end rang the beat of trotting hoofs. It was Diana who spoke presently. Just indignation stirred her, and, when stirred, she knew no pity, set no limits to her speech.

"I think, indeed," said she, her voice crisp and merciless, "that the family honour will best be saved if Mr. Wilding kills you. It is in danger while you live. You are a coward, Richard."

"Diana!" he thundered--he could be mighty brave with women--whilst Ruth clutched her arm to restrain her.

But she continued, undeterred: "You are a coward--a pitiful coward," she told him. "Consult your mirror. It will tell you what a palsied thing you are. That you should dare so speak to Ruth..."

"Don't!" Ruth begged her, turning.

"Aye," growled Richard, "she had best be silent."

Diana rose, to battle, her cheeks crimson. "It asks a braver man than you to compel my obedience," she told him. "La!" she fumed, "I'll swear that had Mr. Wilding overheard what you have said to your sister, you would have little to fear from his sword. A cane would be the weapon he'd use on you."

Richard's pale eyes flamed malevolently; a violent rage possessed him and flooded out his fear, for nothing can so goad a man as an offensive truth. Ruth approached him again; again she took him by the arm, seeking to soothe his over-troubled spirit; but again he shook her off. And then to save the situation came a servant from the house. So lost in anger was all Richard's sense of decency that the mere supervention of the man would not have been enough to have silenced him could he have found adequate words in which to answer Mistress Horton. But even as he racked his mind, the footman's voice broke the silence, and the words the fellow uttered did what his presence alone might not have sufficed to do.

"Mr. Vallancey is asking for you, sir," he announced.

Richard started. Vallancey! He had come at last, and his coming was connected with the impending duel. The thought was paralyzing to young Westmacott. The flush of anger faded from his face; its leaden hue returned and he s.h.i.+vered as with cold. At last he mastered himself sufficiently to ask:

"Where is he, Jasper?"

"In the library, sir," replied the servant. "Shall I bring him hither?"

"Yes--no," he answered. "I will come to him." He turned his back upon the ladies, paused a moment, still irresolute. Then, as by an effort, he followed the servant across the lawn and vanished through the ivied porch.

As he went Diana flew to her cousin. Her shallow nature was touched with transient pity. "My poor Ruth..." she murmured soothingly, and set her arm about the other's waist. There was a gleam of tears in the eyes Ruth turned upon her. Together they came to the granite seat and sank to it side by side, fronting the placid river. There Ruth, her elbows on her knees, cradled her chin in her hands, and with a sigh of misery stared straight before her.

"It was untrue!" she said at last. "What Richard said of me was untrue."

"Why, yes," Diana snapped, contemptuous. "The only truth is that Richard is afraid."

Ruth s.h.i.+vered. "Ah, no," she pleaded--she knew how true was the impeachment. "Don't say it, Diana."

"It matters little that I say it," snorted Diana impatiently. "It is a truth proclaimed by the first glance at him."

"He is in poor health, perhaps," said Ruth, seeking miserably to excuse him.

"Aye," said Diana. "He's suffering from an ague--the result of a lack of courage. That he should so have spoken to you! Give me patience, Heaven!"

Ruth crimsoned again at the memory of his words; a wave of indignation swept through her gentle soul, but was gone at once, leaving an ineffable sadness in its room. What was to be done? She turned to Diana for counsel. But Diana was still whipping up her scorn.

"If he goes out to meet Mr. Wilding, he'll shame himself and every man and woman that bears the name of Westmacott," said she, and struck a new fear with that into the heart of Ruth.

"He must not go!" she answered pa.s.sionately. "He must not meet him!"

Diana flashed her a sidelong glance. "And if he doesn't, will things be mended?" she inquired. "Will it save his honour to have Mr. Wilding come and cane him?"

"He'd not do that?" said Ruth.

"Not if you asked him--no," was Diana's sharp retort, and she caught her breath on the last word of it, for just then the Devil dropped the seed of a suggestion into the fertile soil of her lovesick soul.

"Diana!" Ruth exclaimed in reproof, turning to confront her cousin. But Diana's mind started upon its scheming journey was now travelling fast.

Out of that devil's seed there sprang with amazing rapidity a tree-like growth, throwing out branches, putting forth leaves, bearing already--in her fancy--bloom and fruit.

"Why not?" quoth she after a breathing s.p.a.ce, and her voice was gentle, her tone innocent beyond compare. "Why should you not ask him?" Ruth frowned, perplexed and thoughtful, and now Diana turned to her with the lively eye of one into whose mind has leapt a sudden inspiration.

"Ruth!" she exclaimed. "Why, indeed, should you not ask him to forgo this duel?"

"How, how could I?" faltered Ruth.

"He'd not deny you; you know he'd not."

"I do not know it," answered Ruth. "But if I did, how could I ask it?"

"Were I Richard's sister, and had I his life and honour at heart as you have, I'd not ask how. If Richard goes to that encounter he loses both, remember--unless between this and then he undergoes some change. Were I in your place, I'd straight to Wilding."

"To him?" mused Ruth, sitting up. "How could I go to him?"

"Go to him, yes," Diana insisted. "Go to him at once--while there is yet time."

Ruth rose and moved away a step or two towards the water, deep in thought. Diana watched her furtively and slyly, the rapid rise and fall of her maiden breast betraying the agitation that filled her as she waited--like a gamester--for the turn of the card that would show her whether she had won or lost. For she saw clearly how Ruth might be so compromised that there was something more than a chance that Diana would no longer have cause to account her cousin a barrier between herself and Blake.

"I could not go alone," said Ruth, and her tone was that of one still battling with a notion that is repugnant.