Mistress Wilding Part 12

"It means, in short," he answered impatiently, "that I hold your salvation in my hands. For the rest, this is not the time or place to tell you more. Bid the fellow put about."

Ruth sat back and looked once more at her companions. But from none did she receive the least helpful suggestion. Lady Horton made great prattle to little purpose; Lord Gervase followed her example, whilst Diana, whose alert if trivial mind was the one that might have offered a.s.sistance, sat silent. Ruth pondered. She bethought her of Trenchard's sudden arrival at Saint Mary's, his dust-stained person and excited manner, and of how he had drawn Mr. Wilding aside with news that seemed of moment. And now her brother spoke of saving her; it was a little late for that, she thought. Outside the coach his voice still urged her, and it grew peevish and angry, as was usual when he was crossed. In the end she consented to do his will. If she were to fathom this mystery that was thickening about her there seemed to be no other course. She turned to Lord Gervase.

"Will you do as Richard says?" she begged him.

His lordship blew out his chubby cheeks in his astonishment; he hesitated a moment, thinking of his cousin Wilding; then, with a shrug, he leaned from the window and gave the order she desired. The carriage turned about, and with Richard following lumbered back across the bridge and through the town to Lupton House. At the door Lord Gervase took his leave of them. He had acted as Ruth had bidden him; but he had no wish to be further involved in this affair, whatever it might portend. Rather was it his duty at once to go acquaint Mr. Wilding--if he could find him--with what was taking place, and leave it to Mr. Wilding to take what measures might seem best to him. He told them so, and having told them, left them.

Richard begged to be alone with his sister, and alone they pa.s.sed together into the library. His manner was restless; he trembled with excitement, and his eyes glittered almost feverishly.

"You may have thought, Ruth, that I was resigned to your marriage with this fellow Wilding," he began; "or that for other reasons I thought it wiser not to interfere. If you thought that you wronged me. I--Blake and I--have been at work for you during these last days, and I rejoice to say our labours have not been idle." His manner grew a.s.sertive, boastful, as he proceeded.

"You know, of course," said she, "that I am married."

He made a gesture of disdain. "No matter," said he exultantly.

"It matters something, I think," she answered. "O Richard, Richard, why did you not come to me sooner if you possessed the means of sparing me this thing?"

He shrugged impatiently; her remonstrance seemed to throw him out of temper. "Oons!" he cried; "I came as soon as was ever possible, and, depend upon it, I am not come too late. Indeed, I think I am come in the very nick of time." He drew a sheet of paper from an inside pocket of his coat and slapped it down upon the table. "There is the wherewithal to hang your fine husband," he announced in triumph.

She recoiled. "To hang him?" she echoed. With all her aversion to Mr.

Wilding it was plain she did not wish him hanged.

"Aye, to hang him," Richard repeated, and drew himself to the full height of his short stature in pride at the thing he had achieved. "Read it."

She took the paper almost mechanically, and for some moments she studied the crabbed signature before realizing whose it was. Then she started.

"From the Duke of Monmouth!" she exclaimed.

He laughed. "Read it," he bade her again, though there was no need for the injunction, for already she was deciphering the crabbed hand and the atrocious spelling--for His Grace of Monmouth's education had been notoriously neglected. The letter, which was dated from The Hague, was addressed "To my good friend W., at Bridgwater." It began, "Sir," spoke of the imminent arrival of His Grace in the West, and gave certain instructions for the collection of arms and the work of preparing men for enlistment in his Cause, ending with protestations of His Grace's friendship and esteem.

Ruth read the epistle twice before its treasonable nature was made clear to her; before she understood the thing that was foreshadowed. Then she raised troubled eyes to her brother's face, and in answer to the question of her glance he made clear to her the shrewd means by which they had become possessed of this weapon that should destroy their enemy Mr. Wilding.

Blake and he, forewarned--he said not how--of the coming of this messenger, had lain in wait for him at the Hare and Hounds, at Taunton.

They had sought at first to become possessed of the letter without violence. But, having failed in this through having aroused the messenger's suspicions, they had been forced to follow and attack him on a lonely stretch of road, where they had robbed him of the contents of his wallet. Richard added that the letter was, no doubt, one of several sent over by Monmouth to some friend at Lyme for distribution among his princ.i.p.al agents in the West. It was regrettable that they should have endeavoured to take gentle measures with the courier, as this had forewarned him, and he had apparently been led to remove the letter's outer wrapper--which, no doubt, bore Wilding's full name and address--against the chance of such an attack as they had made upon him.

Nevertheless, as it was, that letter "to my good friend W.," backed by Richard's and Blake's evidence of the destination intended for it, would be more than enough to lay Mr. Wilding safely by the heels.

"I would to Heaven," he repeated in conclusion, "I could have come in time to save you from becoming his wife. But at least it is in my power to make you very speedily his widow."

"That," said Ruth, still retaining the letter, "is what you propose to do?"

"What else?"

She shook her head. "It must not be, Richard," she said. "I'll not consent to it."

Taken aback, he stared at her; then laughed unpleasantly. "Odds my life!

Are you in love with the man? Have you been fooling us?"

"No," she answered. "But I'll be no party to his murder."

"Murder, quotha! Who talks of murder?" Her shrewd eyes searched his face. "How came you by your knowledge that this courier rode to Mr.

Wilding?" she asked him suddenly, and the swift change that overspread his countenance showed her that she had touched him in a tender spot, a.s.sured her of the thing she had suddenly come to suspect--a suspicion which at the same time started from and explained much that had been mysterious in Richard's ways of late. "You had knowledge of this conspiracy," she pursued, answering her own question before he had time to speak, "because you were one of the conspirators."

"At least I am so no longer," he blurted out.

"I thank Heaven for that, Richard; for your life is very dear to me. But it would ill become you to make such use as this of the knowledge you came by in that manner. It were a Judas's act." He would have interrupted her, but her manner dominated him. "You will leave this letter with me, Richard," she continued.

"d.a.m.n me! no..." he began.

"Ah, yes, Richard," she insisted. "You will give it to me, and I shall thank you for the gift. It shall prove a weapon for my salvation, never fear."

"It shall, indeed," he cried, with an ugly laugh; "when I have ridden to Exeter to lay it before Albemarle."

"Not so," she answered him. "It shall be a weapon of defence--not of offence. It shall stand as a buckler between me and Mr. Wilding. Trust me, I shall know how to use it."

"But there is Blake to consider," he expostulated, growing angry. "I am pledged to him."

"Your first duty is to me..."

"Tut!" he interrupted. "Blake feels that he owes it to his loyalty to lay this letter before the Lord-Lieutenant, and, for that matter, so do I."

"Sir Rowland would not cross my wishes in this," she answered him.

"Folly!" he cried, now thoroughly aroused. "Give me that letter."

"Nay, Richard," she answered, and waved him back.

But he advanced nevertheless.

"Give it me," he bade her, waxing fierce. "Gad! It was folly to have told you of it. I had not done so but that I never thought you such a fool as to oppose yourself to the thing we intend."

"Listen, Richard..." she besought him.

But he was grown insensible to pleadings.

"Give me that letter," he insisted, and caught her wrist. Her other hand, however--the one that held the sheet--was already behind her back.

The door was suddenly thrust open, and Diana appeared. "Ruth," she announced, "Mr. Wilding is here."

At the mention of that name, Richard let her free. "Wilding!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, his fierceness all blown out of him. He had imagined that already Mr. Wilding would be in full flight. Was the fellow mad?

"He is following me," said Diana, and, indeed, a step could be heard in the pa.s.sage.

"The letter!" growled Richard in a frenzy, between fear and anger now.

"Give it me! Give it me, do you hear?"

"Sh! You'll betray yourself," she cried. "He is here."

And at that same moment Mr. Wilding's tall figure, still arrayed in his bridegroom's finery of sky-blue satin, loomed in the doorway. He was serene and calm as ever. Neither the discovery of the plot by the abstraction of the messenger's letter, nor Ruth's strange conduct--of which he had heard from Lord Gervase--had sufficed to ruffle, outwardly at least, the inscrutable serenity of his air and manner. He paused to make his bow, then advanced into the room, with a pa.s.sing glance at Richard still spurred and booted and all dust-stained.