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MISTRESS WILDING
BY RAFAEL SABATINI




CONTENTS

I. POT-VALIANCE

II. SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE

III. DIANA SCHEMES

IV. TERMS OF SURRENDER

V. THE ENCOUNTER

VI. THE CHAMPION

VII. THE NUPTIALS of RUTH WESTMACOTT

VIII. BRIDE AND GROOM

IX. MR. TRENCHARD'S COUNTERSTROKE

X. THEIR OWN PETARD

XI. THE MARPLOT

XII. AT THE FORD

XIII "PRO RELIGIONE ET LIBERTATE"

XIV. HIS GRACE IN COUNSEL

XV. LYME OF THE KING

XVI. PLOTS AND PLOTTERS

XVII. MR. WILDING'S RETURN

XVIII. BETRAYAL

XIX. THE BANQUET

XX. THE RECKONING

XXI. THE SENTENCE

XXII. THE EXECUTION

XXIII. MR. WILDING'S BOOTS

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 impasive, 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."



CHAPTER II
SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE


From Scoresby Hall, near Weston Zoyland, young Westmacott rode home
that Saturday night to his sister's house in Bridgwater, a sobered
man and an anguished. He had committed a folly which was like to
cost him his life to-morrow. Other follies had he committed in his
twenty-five years - for he was not quite the babe that Blake had
represented him, although he certainly looked nothing like his age.
But to-night he had contrived to set the crown to all. He had good
cause to blame himself and to curse the miscalculation that had
emboldened him to launch himself upon a course of insult against this
Wilding, whom he hated with all the currish and resentful hatred of
the worthless for the man of parts.

But there was more than hate in the affront that he had offered; there
was calculation - to an even greater extent than we have seen. It
happened that through his own fault young Richard was all but
penniless. The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton - the
wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations - had been so
stirred to anger by Richard's vicious and besotted ways that he had left
every guinea that was his, every perch of land, and every brick of
edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad
for the worthless boy. Ruth worshipped him. He was a sacred charge
to her from their dead father, who, knowing the stoutness of her soul
and the feebleness of Richard's, had in dying imposed on her the care
and guidance of her graceless brother. But Ruth, in all things strong,
was weak with Richard out of her very fondness for him. To what she
had he might help himself, and thus it was that things were not so bad
with him at present. But when Richard's calculating mind came to give
thought to the future he found that this occasioned him some care.
Rich ladies, even when they do not happen to be equipped in addition
with Ruth's winsome beauty and endearing nature, are not wont to go
unmarried. It would have pleased Richard best to have had her remain
a spinster. But he well knew that this was a matter in which she might
have a voice of her own, and it behoved him betimes to take wise
measures where possible husbands were concerned.

The first that came in a suitor's obvious panoply was Anthony Wilding,
of Zoyland Chase, and Richard watched his advent with foreboding.
Wilding's was a personality to dazzle any woman, despite - perhaps
even because of - the reputation for wildness that clung to him. That
he was known as Wild Wilding to the countryside is true; but it were
unfair - as Richard knew - to attach to this too much importance;
for the adoption of so obvious an alliteration the rude country minds
needed but a slight encouragement.

From the first it looked as if Ruth might favour him, and Richard's
fears assumed more definite shape. If Wilding married her - and he
was a bold, masterful fellow who usually accomplished what he aimed
at - her fortune and estate must cease to be a pleasant pasture land
for bovine Richard. The boy thought at first of making terms with
Wilding; the idea was old; it had come to him when first he had
counted the chances of his sister's marrying. But he found himself
hesitating to lay his proposal before Mr. Wilding. And whilst he
hesitated Mr. Wilding made obvious headway. Still Richard dared not
do it. There was a something in Wilding's eye that cried him
danger. Thus, in the end, since he could not attempt a compromise with
this fine fellow, the only course remaining was that of direct
antagonism - that is to say, direct as Richard understood directness.
Slander was the weapon he used in that secret duel; the countryside
was well stocked with stories of Mr. Wilding's many indiscretions.
I do not wish to suggest that these were unfounded. Still, the
countryside, cajoled by its primitive sense of humour into that
alliteration I have mentioned, found that having given this dog its bad
name, it was under the obligation of keeping up his reputation. So it
exaggerated. Richard, exaggerating those exaggerations in his turn, had
some details, as interesting and unsavoury as they were in the main
untrue, to lay before his sister.

Now established love, it is well known, thrives wondrously on slander.
The robust growth of a maid's feelings for her accepted suitor is but
further strengthened by malign representations of his character. She
seizes with joy the chance of affording proof of her great loyalty,
and defies the world and its evil to convince her that the man to whom
she has given her trust is not most worthy of it. Not so, however, with
the first timid bud of incipient interest. Slander nips it like a frost;
in deadliness it is second only to ridicule.

Ruth Westmacott lent an ear to her brother's stories, incredulous only
until she remembered vague hints she had caught from this person and
from that, whose meaning was now made clear by what Richard told her,
which, incidentally, they served to corroborate. Corroboration, too,
did the tale of infamy receive from the friendship that prevailed
between Mr. Wilding and Nick Trenchard, the old ne'er-dowell, who in his
time - as everybody knew - had come so low, despite his gentle birth,
as to have been one of a company of strolling players. Had Mr. Wilding
been other than she now learnt he was, he would surely not cherish an
attachment for a person so utterly unworthy. Clearly, they were birds
of a plumage.

And so, her maiden purity outraged at the thought that she had been in
danger of lending a willing ear to the wooing of such a man, she had
crushed this love which she blushed to think was on the point of
throwing out roots to fasten on her soul, and was sedulous thereafter
in manifesting the aversion which she accounted it her duty to foster
for Mr. Wilding.

Richard had watched and smiled in secret, taking pride in the cunning
way he had wrought this change - that cunning which so often is given
to the stupid by way of compensation for the intelligence that has been
withheld them.

And now what time discountenanced, Wilding fumed and fretted all in
vain, Sir Rowland Blake, fresh from London and in full flight from
his creditors, flashed like a comet into the Bridgwater heavens. He
dazzled the eyes and might have had for the asking the heart and hand
of Diana Horton - Ruth's cousin. Her heart, indeed, he had without
the asking, for Diana fell straightway in love with him and showed it,
just as he showed that he was not without response to her affection.
There were some tender passages between them; but Blake, for all his
fine exterior, was a beggar, and Diana far from rich, and so he rode
his feelings with a hard grip upon the reins. And then, in an evil
hour for poor Diana, young Westmacott had taken him to Lupton House,
and Sir Rowland had his first glimpse of Ruth, his first knowledge
of her fortune. He went down before Ruth's eyes like a man of heart;
he went down more lowly still before her possessions like a man of
greed; and poor Diana might console herself with whom she could.

Her brother watched him, appraised him, and thought that in this broken
gamester he had a man after his own heart; a man who would be ready
enough for such a bargain as Richard had in mind; ready enough to sell
what rags might be left him of his honour so that he came by the
wherewithal to mend his broken fortunes.

The twain made terms. They haggled like any pair of traders out of
Jewry, but in the end it was settled - by a bond duly engrossed and
sealed - that on the day that Sir Rowland married Ruth he should make
over to her brother certain values that amounted to perhaps a quarter
of her possessions. There was no cause to think that Ruth would be
greatly opposed to this - not that that consideration would have
weighed with Richard.

But now that all essentials were so satisfactorily determined a vexation
was offered Westmacott by the circumstance that his sister seemed nowise
taken with Sir Rowland. She suffered him because he was her brother's
friend; on that account she even honoured him with some measure of her
own friendship; but to no greater intimacy did her manner promise to
admit him. And meanwhile, Mr. Wilding persisted in the face of all
rebuffs. Under his smiling mask he hid the smart of the wounds she
dealt him, until it almost seemed to him that from loving her he had
come to hate her.

It had been well for Richard had he left things as they were and waited.
Whether Blake prospered or not, leastways it was clear that Wilding
would not prosper, and that, for the season, was all that need have
mattered to young Richard.

But in his cups that night he had thought in some dim way to precipitate
matters by affronting Mr. Wilding, secure, as I have shown, in his
belief that Wilding would perish sooner than raise a finger against
Ruth's brother. And his drunken astuteness, it seemed, had been to his
mind as a piece of bottle glass to the sight, distorting the image
viewed through it.

With some such bitter reflection rode he home to his sleepless couch.
Some part of those dark hours he spent in bitter reviling of Wilding,
of himself, and even of his sister, whom he blamed for this awful
situation into which he had tumbled; at other times he wept from
self-pity and sheer fright.

Once, indeed, he imagined that he saw light, that he saw a way out
of the peril that hemmed him in. His mind turned for a moment in
the direction that Trenchard had feared it might. He bethought him of
his association with the Monmouth Cause - into which he had been
beguiled by the sordid hope of gain - and of Wilding's important
share in that same business. He was even moved to rise and ride that
very night for Exeter to betray to Albemarle the Cause itself, so that
he might have Wilding laid by the heels. But if Trenchard had been
right in having little faith in Richard's loyalty, he had, it seems,
in fearing treachery made the mistake of giving Richard credit for
more courage than was his endowment. For when, sitting up in bed,
fired by his inspiration, young Westmacott came to consider the
questions the Lord-Lieutenant of Devon would be likely to ask him, he
reflected that the answers he must return would so incriminate himself
that he would be risking his own neck in the betrayal. He flung
himself down again with a curse and a groan, and thought no more of
the salvation that might lie for him that way.

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