“Your Grace sees,” said he, “how well founded were the fears I expressed that your coming has been premature.”
“In God’s name, what would you have me do?” cried the Duke, and petulance made his voice unsteady.
Mr. Wilding rose, moved out of his habitual calm by the earnestness that pervaded him. “It is not for me to say again what I would have Your Grace do. Your Grace has heard my views, and those of these gentlemen. It is for Your Grace to decide.”
“You mean whether I will go forward with this thing? What alternative have I?”
“No alternative,” put in Grey with finality. “Nor is alternative needed. We’ll carry this through in spite of timorous folk and birds of ill-omen that croak to aifright us.”
“Our service is the service of the Lord,” cried Ferguson, returning from the window in the embrasure of which he had been standing; “the Lord cannot but destine it to prevail.”
“Ye said so before,” quoth Fletcher testily. “We need here men, money, and weapons – not divinity.”
“You are plainly infected with Mr. Wilding’s disease,” sneered Grey.
“Ford,” cried the Duke, who saw Wilding’s eyes flash fire; “you go too fast. Mr. Wilding, you will not heed his lordship.”
“I should not be likely to do so, Your Grace,” answered Wilding, who had resumed his seat.
“What shall that mean?” quoth Grey, leaping to his feet.
“Make it quite clear to him, Tony,” whispered Trenchard coaxingly; but Mr. Wilding was not as lost as were these immediate followers of the Duke’s to all sense of the respect due to His Grace.
“I think,” said Wilding quietly, “that you have forgotten something.”
“Forgotten what?” bawled Grey.
“His Grace’s presence.”
His lordship turned crimson, his anger swelled to think that the very terms of the rebuke precluded his allowing his feelings a free rein.
Monmouth leaned forward. “Sit down,” he said to Grey, and Grey, so lately called to the respect he owed His Grace, obeyed him. “You will both promise me that this affair shall go no further. I know you will do it if I ask you, particularly when you remember how few are the followers upon whom I may depend. I am not in case to lose either of you through foolish words uttered in a heat which, in both your hearts, is born, 1 know, of your loyalty to me.
Grey’s coarse, elderly face took on a sulky look, his heavy lips were pouted, his glance sullen. Mr. Wilding, on the contrary, smiled across the table.
“For my part I very gladly give Your Grace the undertaking,” said he, and took care not to observe the sneer that altered the line of Lord Grey’s lips. His lordship, too, was forced to give the same pledge, and he followed it up by inveighing sturdily against the suggestion that they should retreat.
“I do protest,” he exclaimed, “that those who advise Your Grace to do anything but go forward boldly now, are evil counsellors. If you put back to Holland, you may leave every hope behind. There will be no second coming for you. Your influence will have been dissipated. Men will not trust you another time. I do not think that even Mr. Wilding can deny the truth of this.”
“I am by no means sure,” said Wilding, and Fletcher looked at him with eyes that were full of understanding. This sturdy Scot, the only soldier worthy of the name in the Duke’s following, who, ever since the project had first been mooted, had held out against it, counselling delay, was in sympathy with Mr. Wilding.
Monmouth rose, his face anxious, his voice fretful. “There can be no retreat for me, gentlemen. Though many that we depended upon are not here to join us, yet let us remember that Heaven is on our side, and that we are come to fight in the sacred cause of religion and a nation’s emancipation from the thraldom of popery, oppression, and superstition. Let this dispel such doubts as yet may linger in our minds.”
His words had a brave sound, but, when analysed, they but formed a paraphrase of what Grey and Ferguson had said. It was his destiny to be a mere echo of the minds of other men, just as he was now the tool of these two, one of whom plotted, seemingly, because plotting was a disease that had got into his blood; the other for reasons that may have been of ambition or of revenge – no man will ever know for certain.
In the chamber they shared, Trenchard and Mr. Wilding reviewed that night the scene so lately enacted, in which one had taken an active part, the other been little more than a spectator. Trenchard had come from the Duke’s presence entirely out of conceit with Monmouth and his cause, contemptuous of Ferguson, angry with Grey, and indifferent towards Fletcher.
“I am committed, and I’ll not draw back,” said he; but I tell you, Anthony, my heart is not confederate with my hand in this. Bah!” he railed. “We serve a man of straw, a Perkin, a very pope of a fellow.”
Mr. Wilding sighed. “He’s scarce the man for such an undertaking,” said he. “I fear we have been misled.”
Trenchard was drawing off his boots. He paused in the act. “Aye,” said he, “misled by our blindness. What else, after all, should we have expected of him?” he cried contemptuously. “The Cause is good; but its leader – Pshaw! Would you have such a puppet as that on the throne of England?”
“He does not aim so high.”
“Be not so sure. We shall hear more of the black box anon, and of the marriage certificate it contains. `Twould not surprise me if they were to produce forgeries of the one and the other to prove his father’s marriage to Lucy Walters. Anthony, Anthony! To what a business are we wedded?”
Mr. Wilding, already abed, turned impatiently. “Things cried aloud to be redressed; a leader was necessary, and none other offered. That is the whole story. But our chance is slender, and it might have been great.”
“That rake-hell, Ford, Lord Grey has made it so,” grumbled Trenchard, busy with his stockings. “This sudden coming is his work. You heard what Fletcher said – how he opposed it when first it was urged.” He paused, and looked up suddenly. “Blister me!” he cried, “is it his lordship’s purpose, think you, to work the ruin of Monmouth?”
“What are you saying, Nick?”
“There are certain rumours current touching His Grace and Lady Grey. A man like Grey might well resort to some such scheme of vengeance.”
“Get to sleep, Nick,” said Wilding, yawning; “you are dreaming already. Such a plan would be over elaborate for his lordship’s mind. It would ask a villainy parallel with your own.”
Trenchard climbed into bed, and settled himself under the coverlet.
“Maybe,” said he, “and maybe not; but I think that were it not for that cursed business of the letter Richard Westmacott stole from us, I should be going my ways to-morrow and leaving His Grace of Monmouth to go his.”
“Aye, and I’d go with you,” answered Wilding. “I’ve little taste for suicide; but we are in it now.”
“`Twas a sad pity you meddled this morning in that affair at Taunton,” mused Trenchard wistfully. “A sadder pity you were bitten with a taste for matrimony,” he added thoughtfully, and blew out the rushlight.
Chapter XV.
Lyme Of The King
On the next day, which was Friday, the country folk continued to come in, and by evening Monmouth’s forces amounted to a thousand foot and a hundred and fifty horse. The men were armed as fast as they were enrolled, and scarce a field or quiet avenue in the district but resounded to the tramp of feet, the rattle of weapons, and the sharp orders of the officers who, by drilling, were converting this raw material into soldiers. On the Saturday the rally of the Duke’s standard was such that Monmouth threw off at last the gloomy forebodings that had burdened his soul since that meeting on Thursday night. Wade, Holmes, Foulkes, and Fox were able to set about forming the first four regiments – the Duke’s, and the Green, the White, and the Yellow. Monmouth’s spirits continued to rise, for he had been joined by now by Legge and Hooper – the two upon whom Battiscomb had counted – and by Colonel Joshua Churchill, of whom Battiscomb had been less certain. Captain Matthews brought news that Lord Wiltshire and the gentlemen of Hampshire might be expected if they could force their way through Albemarle’s militia, which was already closing round Lyme.
Long before evening willing fellows were being turned away in hundreds for lack of weapons. In spite of Monmouth’s big talk on landing, and of the rumour that had gone out, that he could arm thirty thousand men, his stock of arms was exhausted by a mere fifteen hundred. Trenchard, who now held a Major’s rank in the horse attached to the Duke’s own regiment, was loud in his scorn of this state of things; Mr. Wilding was sad, and his depression again spread to the Duke after a few words had passed between them towards evening. Fletcher was for heroic measures. He looked only ahead now, like the good soldier that he was; and, already, he began to suggest a bold dash for Exeter, for weapons, horses, and possibly the militia as well, for they had ample evidence that the men composing it might easily be induced to desert to the Duke’s side.