Hot and fierce came the recriminations from Richard’s lips when he and his sister were alone, and Ruth weathered the storm bravely until it was stemmed again by fresh fear in Richard. For Blake had suddenly reappeared. He came forward from his window; his manner composed and full of resolution. Young Westmacott recoiled, the heat all frozen out of him. But Blake scarce looked at him, his smouldering glance was all for Ruth, who watched him with incipient fear, despite herself.
“Madam,” he said, “`tis not to be supposed a mind holding so much thought for a husband’s safety could find room for any concern as to another’s. I will ask you, natheless, to consider what tale I am to bear Lord Feversham.”
“What tale?” said she.
“Aye – that will account for what has chanced;for my failure to discharge the task entrusted me, and for the slaughter of an officer of his and twenty men.
“Why ask me this?” she demanded half angrily; then suddenly bethinking her of how she had ruined his enterprise, and of the position in which she had placed him, she softened. Her clear mind held justice very dear. She approached. “Oh, I am sorry – sorry, Sir Rowland,” she cried.
He sneered. He had wiped some of the blood from his face, but still looked terrible enough.
“Sorry!” said he, and laughed unpleasantly. “You’ll come with me to Feversham and tell him what you did,” said he.
“I?” She recoiled in fear.
“At once” he informed her.
“Wha… what’s that?” faltered Richard, calling up his manhood, and coming forward. “What are you saying, Blake?”
Sir Rowland disdained to heed him. “Come, mistress,” he said, and putting forward his hand he caught her wrist and pulled her roughly towards him. She struggled to free herself, but he leered evilly upon her, no whit discomposed by her endeavours. Though short of stature, he was a man of considerable bodily strength, and she, though tall, was slight of frame. He released her wrist, and before she realized what he was about he had stooped, passed an arm behind her knees, another round her waist, and, swinging her from her feet, took her up bodily in his arms. He turned about, and a scream broke from her.
“Hold!” cried Richard. “Hold, you madman!”
“Keep off, or I’ll make an end of you before I go,” roared Blake over his shoulder, for already he had turned about and was making for the window, apparently no more hindered by his burden than had she been a doll.
Richard sprang to the door. “Jasper!” he bawled. “Jasper!” He had no weapons, as we have seen, else it may be that he had made an attempt to use them.
Ruth got a hand free and caught at the windowframe as Blake was leaping through. It checked their progress, but did not sensibly delay it. It was unfortunately her wounded hand with which she had sought to cling, and with an angry, brutal wrench Sir Rowland compelled her to unclose her grasp. He sped down the lawn towards the orchard, where his horse was tethered. And now she knew in a subconscious sort of way why he had earlier withdrawn. He had gone to saddle for this purpose.
She struggled now, thinking that he would be too hampered to compel her to his will. He became angry, and set her down beside his horse, one arm still holding her.
“Look you, mistress,” he told her fiercely, “living or dead, you come with me to Feversham. Choose now.”
His tone was such that she never doubted he would carry out his threat. And so in dull despair she submitted, hoping that Feversham might be a gentleman and would recognize and respect a lady. Half fainting, she allowed him to swing her to the withers of his horse. Thus they threaded their way in the dim starlit night through the trees towards the gate.
It stood open, and they passed out into the lane. There Sir Rowland put his horse to the trot, which he increased to a gallop when he was over the bridge and clear of the town.
Chapter XXI.
The Sentence
Mr. Wilding, as we know, was to remain at Bridgwater for the purpose of collecting from Mr. Newlington the fine which had been imposed upon him. It is by no means clear whether Monmouth realized the fullness of the tragedy at the merchant’s house, and whether he understood that, stricken with apoplexy at the thought of parting with so considerable a portion of his fortune, Mr. Newlington had not merely fainted, but had expired under His Grace’s eyes. If he did realize it he was cynically indifferent, and lest we should be doing him an injustice by assuming this we had better give him the benefit of the doubt, and take it that in the subsequent bustle of departure, his mind filled with the prospect of the night attack to be delivered upon his uncle’s army at-Sedgemoor, he thought no more either of Mr. Newlington or of Mr. Wilding. The latter, as we know, had no place in the rebel army; although a man of his hands, he was not a trained soldier, and notwithstanding that he may fully have intended to draw his sword for Monmouth when the time came, yet circumstances had led to his continuing after Monmouth’s landing the more diplomatic work of movement-man, in which he had been engaged for the months that had preceded it.
So it befell that when Monmouth’s army marched out of Bridgwater at eleven o’clock on that Sunday night, not to make for Gloucester and Cheshire, as was generally believed, but to fall upon the encamped Feversham at Sedgemoor and slaughter the royal army in their beds, Mr. Wilding was left behind. Trenchard was gone, in command of his troop of horse, and Mr. Wilding had for only company his thoughts touching the singular happenings of that busy night.
He went back to the sign of The Ship overlooking the Cross, and, kicking off his sodden shoes, he supped quietly in the room of which shattered door and broken window reminded him of his odd interview with Ruth, and of the comedy of love she had enacted to detain him there. The thought of it embittered him; the part she had played seemed to his retrospective mind almost a wanton’s part – for all that in name she was his wife. And yet, underlying a certain irrepressible nausea, came the reflection that, after all, her purpose had been to save his life. It would have been a sweet thought, sweet enough to have overlaid that other bitterness, had he not insisted upon setting it down entirely to her gratitude and her sense of justice. She intended to repay the debt in which she had stood to him since, at the risk of his own life and fortune, he had rescued her brother from the clutches of the Lord-Lieutenant at Taunton.
He sighed heavily as he thought of the results that had attended his compulsory wedding of her. In the intensity of his passion, in the blindness of his vanity, which made him confident – gloriously confident – that did he make himself her husband, she herself would make of him her lover before long, he had committed an unworthiness of which it seemed he might never cleanse himself in life. There was but one amend, as he had told her. Let him make it, and perhaps she would – out of gratitude, if out of no other feeling – come to think more kindly of him; and that night it seemed to him as he sat alone in that mean chamber,that it were a better and a sweeter thing to earn some measure of her esteem by death than to continue in a life that inspired her hatred and resentment. From which it will be seen how utterly he disbelieved the protestations she had uttered in seeking to detain him. They were – he was assured – a part of a scheme, a trick, to lull him while Monmouth and his officers were being butchered. And she had gone the length of saying she loved him! He regretted that, being as he was convinced of its untruth. What cause had she to love him? She hated him, and because she hated him she did not scruple to lie to him – once with suggestions and this time with actual expression of affection – that she might gain her ends: ends that concerned her brother and Sir Rowland Blake. Sir Rowland Blake! The name was a very goad to his passion and despair.
He rose from the table and took a turn in the room, moving noiselessly in his stockinged feet. He felt the need of air and action; the weariness of his flesh incurred in his long ride from London was cast off or forgotten. He must go forth. He picked up his fine shoes of Spanish leather, but as luck would have it – little though he guessed the extent just then – he found them hardening, though still damp from the dews of Mr. Newlington’s garden. He cast them aside, and, taking a key from his pocket, unlocked an oak cupboard and withdrew the heavy muddy boots in which he had ridden from town. He drew them on and, taking up his hat and sword, went down the creaking stairs and out into the street.