In Diana, Wilding had – though he was far from guessing it – an entirely exceptional ally. Lady Horton, too, was favourably disposed towards him. A foolish, worldly woman, who never probed beneath life’s surface, nor indeed dreamed that anything existed in life beyond that to which her five senses testified, she was content placidly to contemplate the advantages that must accrue to her niece from this alliance.
And so mother and daughter in Mr. Wilding’s absence pleaded his cause with his refractory bride-elect. But they pleaded it to little real purpose. Something perhaps they achieved in that Ruth grew more or less resigned to the fate that awaited her. By repeating to herself the arguments she had employed to Richard – that she must wed some day, and that Mr. Wilding would prove no doubt as good a husband as another – she came in a measure to believe them.
Richard meanwhile appeared to avoid her. Lacking the courage to adopt the heroic measures which at first he had promised, yet had he grace enough to take shame at his inaction. But if he was idle so far as Mr. Wilding was concerned, there was no lack of work for him in other connections. The clouds of war were gathering in that summer sky, and about to loose the storm gestating in them upon that fair country of the West, and young Westmacott, committed as he stood to the Duke of Monmouth’s party, was forced to take his share in the surreptitious bustle that was toward. He was away two days in that week, having been summoned to a meeting of the leading gentlemen of the party at White Lackington, where he was forced into the unwelcome company of his future brother-in-law, to meet with courteous, deferential treatment from that imperturbable gentleman.
Wilding, indeed, seemed to have forgotten that any quarrel had ever existed between them. For the rest, he came and went, supremely calm, as if he were, and knew himself to be, most welcome at Lupton House. Thrice in the course of that week of waiting he rode over from Zoyland Chase to pay his duty to Mistress Westmacott, and Ruth was persuaded on each occasion by her aunt and cousin to receive him. Indeed, how could she well refuse?
His manner was ever all that could be desired. Gallant, affectionate, deferential. He was in word and look and tone Ruth’s most obedient servant. Had she been less prejudiced she must have admired the admirable restraint with which he kept all exultation from his manner, for, after all, it is difficult to force a victory as he had forced his, and not to triumph.
It is to be feared that during that week he neglected a good deal of his duty to the Duke, leaving Trenchard to supply his place and undertake tasks of a seditious nature that should have been his own.
At heart, however, in spite of the stories current and the militia at Taunton, Wilding remained convinced – as did most of the other leading partisans of the Protestant Cause – that no such madness as this premature landing could be in contemplation by the Duke. Besides, were it so, they must unfailingly have definite word of it; and they had none.
Trenchard was less assured, but Wilding laughed at the old rake’s forebodings, and serenely went about the business of his marriage.
On the eve of the wedding he paid Ruth his last visit in the quality of a lover, and was received by her in the garden. He found her looking paler than her wont, and there was a cloud of sadness on her brow, a haunting sadness in her eyes. It touched him to the soul, and for a moment he wavered in his purpose. He stood beside her – she seated on the old lichened seat – and a silence fell between them, during which Mr. Wilding’s conscience wrestled with his stronger passion. It was his habit to be glib, talking incessantly what time he was in her company, and seeing to it that his talk was shallow and touched at nothing belonging to the deeps of human life. Thus was it, perhaps, that this sudden and enduring silence affected her most oddly; it was as if she had absorbed some notion of what was passing in his mind. She looked up suddenly into his face, so white and so composed. Their eyes met, and he stooped to her suddenly, his long brown ringlets tumbling forward. She feared his kiss, yet never moved, staring up with fixed, dilated eyes as if fascinated by his dark, brooding gaze. He paused, hovering above her upturned face as hovers the hawk above the dove.
“Child,” he said at last, and his voice was soft and winning from very sadness, “child, why do you fear me?”
The truth of it went home to her. She feared him; she feared the strength that lay behind that calm; she feared the masterfulness of his wild but inscrutably hidden nature; she was afraid to surrender to such a man as this, afraid that in the hot crucible of his love her own nature would be dissolved, transmuted, and rendered part of his. Yet, though the truth was now made plain to her, she thrust it from her.
“I do not fear you,” said she, and her voice at least rang fearlessly.
“Do you hate me, then?” he asked. Her glance grew troubled and fell away from his; it sought the calm of the river, gleaming golden in the sunset. There was a pause. Wilding sighed heavily, and straightened himself from his bending posture.
“You should not have sought thus to compel me, she said presently.
“I own it,” he answered a thought bitterly. “I own it. Yet what hope had I but in compulsion?” She returned him no answer. “You see,” he said, with increasing bitterness, “you see, that had I not seized the chance that was mine to win you by compulsion I had not won you at all.”
“It might,” said she, “have been better so for both of us.”
“Better for neither,” he replied. “Ah, think it not! In time, I swear, you shall not think it. For you shall come to love me, Ruth,” he added with a note of such assurance that she turned to meet again his gaze. He answered the wordless question of her eyes. “There is,” said he, “no love of man for woman, so that the man be not wholly unworthy, so that his passion be sincere and strong, that can fail in time to arouse response.” She smiled a little pitiful smile of unbelief. “Were I a boy,” he rejoined, his earnestness vibrating now in a voice that was usually so calm and level, “offering you protestations of a callow worship, you might have cause to doubt me. But I am a man, Ruth – a tried, and haply a sinful man, alas! – a man who needs you, and who will have you at all costs.”
“At all costs?” she echoed, and her lip took on a curl. “And you call this egotism by the name of love! No doubt you are right,” she continued with an irony that stung him, “for love it is – love of yourself.”
“And is not all love of another founded upon the love of self?” he asked her, startling her with a question that revealed to her clear-sighted mind a truth undreamed of. “When some day – please Heaven – I come to find favour in your eyes, and you come to love me, what will it mean but that you have come to find me necessary to yourself and to your happiness? Would you deny me now your love if you felt that you had need of mine? I love you because I love myself, you say. I grant it you. But you’ll confess that if you do not love me yet, it is for the same reason, and that when you do come to love me the reason will be still the same.”
“You are very sure that I shall come to love you, said she, shifting woman-like the ground of argument now that she found insecure the place on which at first she had taken her stand.
“Were I not, think you I should compel you to the church to-morrow?”
She trembled at his calm assurance. It was as if she almost feared that what he said might come to pass.
“Since you bear such faith in your heart,” said she, “were it not nobler, more generous, that you should set yourself to win me first and wed me afterwards?”
“It is the course I should, myself, prefer,” he answered quietly. “But it is a course denied me. I was viewed here with disfavour, almost denied your house. What chance had I whilst I might not come near you, whilst your mind was poisoned against me by the idle, vicious prattle that goes round and round the countryside, increasing ever in bulk from constant repetition?”