MISTRESS WILDING
By Rafael Sabatini
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I -- POT-VALIANCE
CHAPTER II -- SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE
CHAPTER III -- DIANA SCHEMES
CHAPTER IV -- TERMS OF SURRENDER
CHAPTER V -- THE ENCOUNTER
CHAPTER VI -- THE CHAMPION
CHAPTER VII -- THE NUPTIALS OF RUTH WESTMACOTT
CHAPTER VIII -- BRIDE AND GROOM
CHAPTER IX -- MR. TRENCHARD'S COUNTERSTROKE
CHAPTER X -- THEIR OWN PETARD
CHAPTER XI -- THE MARPLOT
CHAPTER XII -- AT THE FORD
CHAPTER XIII -- “PRO RELIGIONE ET LIBERTATE”
CHAPTER XIV -- HIS GRACE' IN COUNSEL
CHAPTER XV -- LYME OF THE KING
CHAPTER XVI -- PLOTS AND PLOTTERS
CHAPTER XVII -- MR. WILDING'S RETURN
CHAPTER XVIII -- BETRAYAL
CHAPTER XIX -- THE BANQUET
CHAPTER XX -- THE RECKONING
CHAPTER XXI -- THE SENTENCE
CHAPTER XXII -- THE EXECUTION
CHAPTER XXIII -- MR. WILDING'S BOOTS
CHAPTER XXIV -- JUSTICE
CHAPTER I. POT-VALIANCE
Then drink it thus, cried the rash young fool, and splashed the contents
of his cup full into the face of Mr. Wilding even as that gentleman, on
his feet, was proposing to drink to the eyes of the young fool's sister.
The moments that followed were full of interest. A stillness, a
brooding, expectant stillness, fell upon the company--and it numbered
a round dozen--about Lord Gervase's richly appointed board. In the soft
candlelight the oval table shone like a deep brown pool, in which were
reflected the gleaming silver and sparkling crystal that seemed to float
upon it.
Blake sucked in his nether-lip, his florid face a thought less florid
than its wont, his prominent blue eyes a thought more prominent. Under
its golden periwig old Nick Trenchard's wizened countenance was darkened
by a scowl, and his fingers, long, swarthy, and gnarled, drummed
fretfully upon the table. Portly Lord Gervase Scoresby--their host, a
benign and placid man of peace, detesting turbulence--turned crimson now
in wordless rage. The others gaped and stared--some at young Westmacott,
some at the man he had so grossly affronted--whilst in the shadows of
the hall a couple of lacqueys looked on amazed, all teeth and eyes.
Mr. Wilding stood, very still and outwardly impassive, the wine
trickling from his long face, which, if pale, was no paler than its
habit, a vestige of the smile with which he had proposed the toast still
lingering on his thin lips, though departed from his eyes. An elegant
gentleman was Mr. Wilding, tall, and seeming even taller by virtue of
his exceeding slenderness. He had the courage to wear his own hair,
which was of a dark brown and very luxuriant; dark brown too were his
sombre eyes, low-lidded and set at a downward slant. From those odd eyes
of his, his countenance gathered an air of superciliousness tempered by
a gentle melancholy. For the rest, it was scored by lines that stamped
it with the appearance of an age in excess of his thirty years.
Thirty guineas' worth of Mechlin at his throat was drenched, empurpled
and ruined beyond redemption, and on the breast of his blue satin coat a
dark patch was spreading like a stain of blood.
Richard Westmacott, short, sturdy, and fair-complexioned to the point
of insipidity, watched him sullenly out of pale eyes, and waited. It
was Lord Gervase who broke at last the silence--broke it with an oath, a
thing unusual in one whose nature was almost woman-mild.
“As God's my life!” he spluttered wrathfully, glowering at Richard. “To
have this happen in my house! The young fool shall make apology!”
“With his dying breath,” sneered Trenchard, and the old rake's words,
his tone, and the malevolent look he bent upon the boy increased the
company's malaise.
“I think,” said Mr. Wilding, with a most singular and excessive
sweetness, “that what Mr. Westmacott has done he has done because he
apprehended me amiss.”
“No doubt he'll say so,” opined Trenchard with a shrug, and had caution
dug into his ribs by Blake's elbow, whilst Richard made haste to prove
him wrong by saying the contrary.
“I apprehended you exactly, sir,” he answered, defiance in his voice and
wine-flushed face.
“Ha!” clucked Trenchard, irrepressible. “He's bent on self-destruction.
Let him have his way, in God's name.”
But Wilding seemed intent upon showing how long-suffering he could
be. He gently shook his head. “Nay, now,” said he. “You thought, Mr.
Westmacott, that in mentioning your sister, I did so lightly. Is it not
so?”
“You mentioned her, and that is all that matters,” cried Westmacott.
“I'll not have her name on your lips at any time or in any place--no,
nor in any manner.” His speech was thick from too much wine.
“You are drunk,” cried indignant Lord Gervase with finality.
“Pot-valiant,” Trenchard elaborated.
Mr. Wilding set down at last the glass which he had continued to
hold until that moment. He rested his hands upon the table, knuckles
downward, and leaning forward he spoke impressively, his face very
grave; and those present--knowing him as they did--were one and all lost
in wonder at his unusual patience.
“Mr. Westmacott,” said he, “I do think you are wrong to persist in
affronting me. You have done a thing that is beyond forgiveness, and
yet, when I offer you this opportunity of honourably retrieving...” He
shrugged his shoulders, leaving the sentence incomplete.
The company might have spared its deep surprise at so much mildness.
There was but the semblance of it. Wilding proceeded thus of purpose
set, and under the calm mask of his long white face his mind worked
wickedly and deliberately. The temerity of Westmacott, whose nature was
notoriously timid, had surprised him for a moment. But anon, reading the
boy's mind as readily as though it had been a scroll unfolded for his
instruction, he saw that Westmacott, on the strength of his position
as his sister's brother, conceived himself immune. Mr. Wilding's avowed
courtship of the lady, the hopes he still entertained of winning her,
despite the aversion she was at pains to show him, gave Westmacott
assurance that Mr. Wilding would never elect to shatter his all too
slender chances by embroiling himself in a quarrel with her brother.
And--reading him, thus, aright--Mr. Wilding put on that mask of
patience, luring the boy into greater conviction of the security of
his position. And Richard, conceiving himself safe in his entrenchment
behind the bulwarks of his brothership to Ruth Westmacott, and heartened
further by the excess of wine he had consumed, persisted in insults he
would never otherwise have dared to offer.
“Who seeks to retrieve?” he crowed offensively, boldly looking up into
the other's face. “It seems you are yourself reluctant.” And he laughed
a trifle stridently, and looked about him for applause, but found none.
“You are overrash,” Lord Gervase disapproved him harshly.
“Not the first coward I've seen grow valiant at a table,” put in
Trenchard by way of explanation, and might have come to words with Blake
on that same score, but that in that moment Wilding spoke again.
“Reluctant to do what?” he questioned amiably, looking Westmacott
so straightly between the eyes that the boy shifted uneasily on his
high-backed chair.
Nevertheless, still full of confidence in the unassailability of his
position, the mad youth answered, “To cleanse yourself of what I threw
at you.”
“Fan me, ye winds!” gasped Nick Trenchard, and looked with expectancy at
his friend Wilding.
Now there was one factor with which, in basing with such craven
shrewdness his calculations upon Mr. Wilding's feelings for his sister,
young Richard had not reckoned. He was not to know that Wilding,
bruised and wounded by Miss Westmacott's scorn of him, had reached that
borderland where love and hate are so merged that they are scarce to be
distinguished. Embittered by the slights she had put upon him--slights
which his sensitive, lover's fancy had magnified a hundredfold--Anthony
Wilding's frame of mind was grown peculiar. Of his love she would have
none; his kindness she seemingly despised. So be it; she should taste
his cruelty. If she scorned his wooing and forbade him to pursue it, at
least it was not hers to deny him the power to hurt; and in hurting
her that would not be loved by him some measure of fierce and bitter
consolation seemed to await him.
He realized, perhaps, not quite all this--and to the unworthiness of it
all he gave no thought. But he realized enough as he toyed, as cat with
mouse, with Richard Westmacott, to know that in striking at her through
the worthless person of this brother whom she cherished--and who
persisted in affording him this opportunity--a wicked vengeance would be
his.
Peace-loving Lord Gervase had heaved himself suddenly to his feet at
Westmacott's last words, still intent upon saving the situation.
“In Heaven's name...” he began, when Mr. Wilding, ever calm and smiling,
though now a trifle sinister, waved him gently into silence. But that
persisting calm of Mr. Wilding's was too much for old Nick Trenchard. He
rose abruptly, drawing all eyes upon himself. It was time, he thought,
he took a hand in this.
In addition to his affection for Wilding and his contempt for
Westmacott, he was filled with a fear that the latter might become
dangerous if not crushed at once. Gifted with a shrewd knowledge of
men, acquired during a chequered life of much sour experience, old
Nick instinctively mistrusted Richard. He had known him for a fool,
a weakling, a babbler, and a bibber of wine. Out of such elements a
villain is soon compounded, and Trenchard had cause to fear the form
of villainy that lay ready to Richard's hand. For it chanced that Mr.
Trenchard was second cousin to that famous John Trenchard, so lately
tried for treason and acquitted to the great joy of the sectaries of the
West, and still more lately--but yesterday, in fact--fled the country to
escape the rearrest ordered in consequence of that excessive joy. Like
his more famous cousin, Nick Trenchard was one of the Duke of Monmouth's
most active agents; and Westmacott, like Wilding, Vallancey, and one
or two others at that board, stood, too, committed to the cause of the
Protestant Champion.
Out of his knowledge of the boy Trenchard was led to fear that if he
were leniently dealt with now, tomorrow, when, sober, he came to realize
the grossness of the thing he had done and the unlikelihood of its being
forgiven him, there was no saying but that to protect himself he might
betray Wilding's share in the plot that was being hatched. That in
itself would be bad enough; but there might be worse, for he could
scarcely betray Wilding without betraying others and--what mattered
most--the Cause itself. He must be dealt with out of hand, Trenchard
opined, and dealt with ruthlessly.
“I think, Anthony,” said he, “that we have had words enough. Shall you
be disposing of Mr. Westmacott to-morrow, or must I be doing it for
you?”
With a gasp of dismay young Richard twisted in his chair to confront
this fresh and unsuspected antagonist. What danger was this that he had
overlooked? Then, even as he turned, Wilding's voice fell on his ear,
and each word of the few he spoke was like a drop of icy water on
Westmacott's overheated brain.
“I protest you are vastly kind, Nick. But I intend, myself, to have the
pleasure of killing Mr. Westmacott.” And his smile fell now in mockery
upon the disillusioned lad.
Crushed by that bolt from the blue, Richard sat as if stunned, the flush
receding from his face until his very lips were livid. The shock had
sobered him, and, sobered, he realized in terror what he had done. And
yet even sober he was amazed to find that the staff upon which with such
security he had leaned should have proved rotten. True he had put much
strain upon it; but then he had counted that it would stand much strain.
He would have spoken, but he lacked words, so stricken was he. And even
had he done so it is odds none would have heard him, for the late calm
was of a sudden turned to garboil. Every man of that company--with
the sole exception of Richard himself--was on his feet, and all were
speaking at once, in clamouring, excited chorus.
Wilding alone--the butt of their expostulations--stood quietly smiling,
and wiped his face at last with a kerchief of finest lawn. Dominating
the others in the Babel rose the voice of Sir Rowland Blake--impecunious
Blake; Blake lately of the Guards, who had sold his commission as the
only thing remaining him upon which he could raise money; Blake, that
other suitor for Miss Westmacott's hand, the suitor favoured by her
brother.
“You shall not do it, Mr. Wilding,” he shouted, his face crimson. “No,
by God! You were shamed forever. He is but a lad, and drunk.”
Trenchard eyed the short, powerfully built man beside him, and laughed
unpleasantly. “You should get yourself bled one of these days, Sir
Rowland,” he advised. “There may be no great danger yet; but a man can't
be too careful when he wears a narrow neckcloth.”
Blake--a short, powerfully built man--took no heed of him, but looked
straight at Mr. Wilding, who, smiling ever, calmly returned the gaze of
those prominent blue eyes.
“You will suffer me, Sir Rowland,” said he sweetly, “to be the judge of
whom I will and whom I will not meet.”
Sir Rowland flushed under that mocking glance and caustic tone. “But he
is drunk,” he repeated feebly.
“I think,” said Trenchard, “that he is hearing something that will make
him sober.”
Lord Gervase took the lad by the shoulder, and shook him impatiently.
“Well?” quoth he. “Have you nothing to say? You did a deal of prating
just now. I make no doubt but that even at this late hour if you were to
make apology...”
“It would be idle,” came Wilding's icy voice to quench the gleam of hope
kindling anew in Richard's breast. The lad saw that he was lost, and he
is a poor thing, indeed, who cannot face the worst once that worst is
shown to be irrevocable. He rose with some semblance of dignity.
“It is as I would wish,” said he, but his livid face and staring eyes
belied the valour of his words. He cleared his huskiness from his
throat. “Sir Rowland,” said he, “will you act for me?”
“Not I!” cried Blake with an oath. “I'll be no party to the butchery of
a boy unfledged.”
“Unfledged?” echoed Trenchard. “Body o' me! 'Tis a matter Wilding will
amend to-morrow. He'll fledge him, never fear. He'll wing him on his
flight to heaven.”
Of set purpose did Trenchard add this fuel to the blazing fire. It was
no part of his views that this encounter should be avoided. If Richard
Westmacott were allowed to live after what had passed, there were too
many tall fellows might go in peril of their lives.
Richard, meanwhile, had turned to the man on his left--young Vallancey,
a notorious partisan of the Duke of Monmouth's, a hair-brained gentleman
who was his own worst enemy.
“May I count on you, Ned?” he asked.
“Aye--to the death,” said Vallancey magniloquently.
“Mr. Vallancey,” said Trenchard with a wry twist of his sharp features,
“you grow prophetic.”