“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 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 niatter 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 crackbrained 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. Good-bye, 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 she 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.