Mistress Wilding Part 26

"A plague on perhaps!" exclaimed Monmouth, growing irritable; "I want you to name the men of whom you are certain."

Battis...o...b..stood silent for a moment, pondering. He looked almost foolish, like a schoolboy who hesitates to confess his ignorance of the answer to a question set him.

Fletcher swung round, his grey eyes flashing angrily, his accent more Scottish than ever.

"Is it that ye're certain o' none, Mr. Battis...o...b.." he exclaimed.

"Indeed," said Battis...o...b.. "I think we may be fairly certain of Mr.

Legge and Mr. Hooper."

"And of none besides?" questioned Fletcher again. "Be these the only representatives of the flower of England's n.o.bility that is to flock to the banner of the cause of England's freedom and religion?" Scorn was stamped on every word of his question.

Battis...o...b..spread his hands, raised his brows, and said nothing.

"The Lord knows I do not say it exulting," said Fletcher; "but I told Your Grace yours was hardly the case of Henry the Seventh, as my Lord Grey would have you believe."

"We shall see," snapped Grey, scowling at the Scot. "The people are coming in hundreds--aye, in thousands--the gentry will follow; they must."

"Make not too sure, Your Grace--oh, make not too sure," Wilding besought the Duke. "As I have said, these hinds have nothing to lose but their lives."

"Faith, can a man lose more?" asked Grey contemptuously. He disliked Wilding by instinct, which was but a reciprocation of the feeling with which Wilding was inspired by him.

"I think he can," said Mr. Wilding quietly. "A man may lose honour, he may plunge his family into ruin. These are things of more weight with a gentleman than life."

"Odds death!" blazed Grey, giving a free rein to his dislike of this calm gentleman. "Do you suggest that a man's honour is imperilled in His Grace's service?"

"I suggest nothing," answered Wilding, unmoved. "What I think, I state.

If I thought a man's honour imperilled in this service, you would not see me at this table now. I can make you no more convincing answer."

Grey laughed unpleasantly, and Wilding, a faint tinge on his cheek-bones, measured him with a stern, intrepid look before which his lordship's shifty glance was observed to fall. Wilding's eye, having achieved that much, pa.s.sed from him to the Duke, and its expression softened.

"Your Grace sees," said he, "how well founded were the fears I expressed that your coming has been premature."

"In G.o.d'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, I know, of your loyalty to me."

Grey's coa.r.s.e, 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 st.u.r.dily 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 st.u.r.dy 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 emanc.i.p.ation from the thraldom of popery, oppression, and superst.i.tion.

Let this dispel such doubts as yet may linger in our minds."

His words had a brave sound, but, when a.n.a.lysed, 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-h.e.l.l, 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?"