The Rafael Sabatini Megapack. Rafael Sabatini
night—mad with despair and rage at having been defeated in the noble task to which he had turned his hands. His penitence might have had little effect upon the Westmacotts had he not known how to insinuate that it might be best for them to lend an ear to it—and a forgiving one.
“You will tell Mr. Westmacott, Jasper,” he had said, when Jasper told him that they could not receive him, “that he would be unwise not to see me, and the same to Mistress Wilding.”
And old Jasper had carried his message, and had told Richard of the wicked smile that had been on Sir Rowland’s lips when he had uttered it.
Now Richard was in many ways a changed man since that night at Weston Zoyland. A transformation seemed to have been wrought in him as odd as it was sudden, and it dated from the moment when with tears in his eyes he had wrung Wilding’s hand in farewell. Where precept had failed, Richard found himself converted by example. He contrasted himself in that stressful hour with great-souled Anthony Wilding, and saw himself as he was, a weakling, strong only in vicious ways. Repentance claimed him; repentance and a fine ambition to be worthier, to resemble as nearly as his nature would allow him this Anthony Wilding whom he took for pattern. He changed his ways, abandoned drink and gaming, and gained thereby a healthier countenance. Then in his zeal he overshot his mark. He developed a taste for Scripture-reading, bethought him of prayers, and even took to saying grace to his meat. Indeed—for conversion, when it comes, is a furious thing—the swing of his soul’s pendulum threatened now to carry him to extremes of virtue and piety. “O Lord!” he would cry a score of times a day, “Thou hast brought up my soul from the grave; Thou hast kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit!”
But underlying all this remained unfortunately the inherent weakness of his nature—indeed, it was that very weakness and malleability made this sudden and wholesale conversion possible.
Upon hearing Sir Rowland’s message his heart fainted, despite his good intentions, and he urged that perhaps they had better hear what the baronet might have to say.
It was three days after Sedgemoor Fight, and poor Ruth was worn and exhausted with her grief—believing Wilding dead, for he had sent no message to inform her of his almost miraculous preservation. The thing he went to do in London was fraught with such peril that he foresaw but the slenderest chance of escaping with his life. Therefore, he had argued, why console her now with news that he lived, when in a few days the headsman might prove that his end had been but postponed? To do so might be to give her cause to mourn him twice. Again he was haunted by the thought that, in spite of all, it may have been pity that had so grievously moved her at their last meeting. Better, then, to wait; better for both their sakes. If he came safely through his ordeal it would be time enough to bear her news of his preservation.
In deepest mourning, very white, with dark stains beneath her eyes to tell the tale of anguished vigils, she received Sir Rowland in the withdrawing-room, her brother at her side. To his expressions of deep penitence he found them cold; so he passed on to show them what disastrous results might ensue upon a stubborn maintaining of this attitude of theirs towards him.
“I have come,” he said, his eyes downcast, his face long-drawn, for he could play the sorrowful with any hypocrite in England, “to do something more than speak of my grief and regret. I have come to offer proof of it by service.
“We ask no service of you, sir,” said Ruth, her voice a sword of sharpness.
He sighed, and turned to Richard. “This were folly,” he assured his whilom friend. “You know the influence I wield.”
“Do I?” quoth Richard, his tone implying doubt. “You think that the bungled matter at Newlington’s may have shaken it?” quoth Blake. “With Feversham, perhaps. But Albemarle, remember, trusts me very fully. There are ugly happenings in the town here. Men are being hung like linen on a washing-day. Be not too sure that yourself are free from all danger.” Richard paled under the baronet’s baleful, half-sneering glance. “Be not in too great haste to cast me aside, for you may find me useful.”
“Do you threaten, sir?” cried Ruth.
“Threaten?” quoth he. He turned up his eyes and showed the whites of them. “Is it to threaten to promise you my protection; to show you how I can serve you?—than which I ask no sweeter boon of heaven. A word from me, and Richard need fear nothing.”
“He need fear nothing without that word,” said Ruth disdainfully. “Such service as he did Lord Feversham the other night…”
“Is soon forgotten,” Blake cut in adroitly. “Indeed, ’twill be most convenient to his lordship to forget it. Think you he would care to have it known that ’twas to such a chance he owes the preservation of his army?” He laughed, and added in a voice of much sly meaning, “The times are full of peril. There’s Kirke and his lambs. And there’s no saying how Kirke might act did he chance to learn what Richard failed to do that night when he was left to guard the rear at Newlington’s!”
“Would you inform him of it?” cried Richard, between anger and alarm.
Blake thrust out his hands in a gesture of horrified repudiation. “Richard!” he cried in deep reproof and again, “Richard!”
“What other tongue has he to fear?” asked Ruth. “Am I the only one who knows of it?” cried Blake. “Oh, madam, why will you ever do me such injustice? Richard has been my friend—my dearest friend. I wish him so to continue, and I swear that he shall find me his, as you shall find me yours.
“It is a boon I could dispense with,” she assured him, and rose. “This talk can profit little, Sir Rowland,” said she. “You seek to bargain.”
“You shall see how unjust you are,” he cried with deep sorrow. “It is but fitting, perhaps, after what has passed. It is my punishment. But you shall come to acknowledge that you have done me wrong. You shall see how I shall befriend and protect him.”
That said, he took his leave and went, but he left behind him a shrewd seed of fear in Richard’s mind, and of the growth that sprang from it Richard almost unconsciously transplanted something in the days that followed into the heart of Ruth. As a result, to make sure that no harm should come to her brother, the last of his name and race, she resolved to receive Sir Rowland, resolved in spite of Diana’s outspoken scorn, in spite of Richard’s protests—for though afraid, yet he would not have it so—in spite even of her own deep repugnance of the man.
Days passed and grew to weeks. Bridgwater was settling down to peace again—to peace and mourning; the Royalist scourge had spread to Taunton, and Blake lingered on at Lupton House, an unwelcome but an undeniable guest.
His presence was as detestable to Richard now as it was to Ruth, for Richard had to submit to the mockery with which the town rake lashed his godly bearing and altered ways. More than once in gusts of sudden valour the boy urged his sister to permit him to drive the baronet from the house and let him do his worst. But Ruth, afraid for Richard, bade him wait until the times were more settled. When the royal vengeance had slaked its lust for blood it might matter little, perhaps, what tales Sir Rowland might elect to carry.
And so Sir Rowland remained and waited. He assured himself that he knew how to be patient, and congratulated himself upon that circumstance. Wilding dead, a little time must now suffice to blunt the sharp edge of his widow’s grief; let him but await that time, and the rest should be easy, the battle his. With Richard he did not so much as trouble himself to reckon.
Thus he determined, and thus no doubt he would have acted but for an unforeseen contingency. A miserable, paltry creditor had smoked him out in his Somerset retreat, and got a letter to him full of dark hints of a debtor’s gaol. The fellow’s name was Swiney, and Sir Rowland knew him for fierce and pertinacious where a defaulting creditor was concerned. One only course remained him: to force matters with Wilding’s widow. For days he refrained, fearing that precipitancy might lose him all; it was his wish to do the thing without too much coercion; some, he was not coxcomb enough to think—coxcomb though he was—might be dispensed with.
At last one Sunday evening he decided to be done with dallying,