Mistress Wilding

CHAPTER XIV. HIS GRACE' IN COUNSEL

Mr. Christopher Battiscomb, that mild-mannered Dorchester gentleman, who, like Wade, was by vocation a lawyer, was ushered into the Duke's presence. He was dressed in black, and, like Ferguson, was almost smothered in a great periwig, which he may have adopted for purposes of disguise rather than adornment. Certainly he had none of that air of the soldier of fortune which distinguished his brother of the robe. He advanced, hat in hand, towards the table, greeting the company about it, and Wilding observed that he wore silk stockings and shoes, upon which there rested not a speck of dust. Mr. Battiscomb was plainly a man who loved his ease, since on such a day he had travelled to Lyme in a coach. The lawyer bent low to kiss the Duke's hand, and scarce was that formal homage paid than questions poured upon him from Grey, from Fletcher, and from Ferguson.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," the Duke entreated them, smiling; and remembering their manners they fell silent.

As Wilding afterwards told Trenchard, they reminded him of a parcel of saucy lacqueys who take liberties with an upstart master for whom they are wanting in respect.

"I am glad to see you, Battiscomb," said Monmouth, when quiet was restored, "and I trust I behold in you a bearer of good tidings."

The lawyer's full face was usually pale; to-night it was, in addition, solemn, and the smile that haunted his lips was a courtesy smile that expressed neither mirth nor satisfaction. He cleared his throat, as if nervous. He avoided the Duke's question as to the quality of the news he brought by answering that he had made all haste to come to Lyme upon hearing of His Grace's landing. He was surprised, he said; as well he might be, for the arrangement was that having done his work he was to return to Holland and report to Monmouth upon the feeling of the gentry.

"But your news, Battiscomb," the Duke insisted. "Aye," put in Grey; "in Heaven's name, let us hear that."

Again there was the little nervous cough from Battiscomb. "I have scarce had time to complete my round of visits," he temporized. "Your Grace has taken us so by surprise. I... I was with Sir Walter Young at Colyton when the news of your landing came some few hours ago." His voice faltered and seemed to die away.

"Well?" cried the Duke. His brows were drawn together. Already he realized that Battiscomb's tidings were not good, else would he be hesitating less in uttering them. "Is Sir Walter with you, at least?"

"I grieve to say that he is not."

"Not?" It was Grey who spoke, and he followed the ejaculation by an oath. "Why not?"

"He is following, no doubt?" suggested Fletcher.

"We may hope, sirs," answered Battiscomb, "that in a few days—when he shall have seen the zeal of the countryside—he will be cured of his present luke-warmness." Thus, discreetly, did the man of law break the bad news he bore.

Monmouth sank back into his chair like one who has lost some of his strength. "Lukewarmness?" he repeated dully. "Sir Walter Young lukewarm!"

"Even so, Your Grace—alas!" and Battiscomb sighed audibly.

Ferguson's voice boomed forth again to startle them. "The ox knoweth his owner," he cried, "the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."

Grey pushed the bottle contemptuously across the table to the parson. "Drink, man, and get sense, said he, and turned aside to question Battiscomb touching others of the neighbourhood upon whom they had depended.

"What of Sir Francis Rolles?" he inquired.

Battiscomb answered the question, addressing himself to the Duke.

"Alas! Sir Francis, no doubt, would have been faithful to Your Grace, but, unfortunately, Sir Francis is in prison already."

Deeper grew Monmouth's frown; his fingers drummed the table absently. Fletcher poured himself wine, his face inscrutable. Grey threw one leg over the other and in a voice that was carefully careless he inquired, "And what of Sidney Clifford?"

"He is considering," said Battiscomb. "I was to have seen him again at the end of the month; meanwhile, he would take no resolve."

"Lord Gervase Scoresby?" questioned Grey, less carelessly.

Battiscomb half turned to him, then faced the Duke again as he made answer, "Mr. Wilding there, can tell you more concerning Lord Gervase."

All eyes swept round to Wilding who sat in silence, listening; Monmouth's were laden with inquiry and some anxiety. Wilding shook his head slowly, sadly. "You must not depend upon him," he answered; "Lord Gervase was not yet ripe. A little longer and I think I must have won him for Your Grace."

"Heaven help us!" exclaimed the Duke in petulant vexation. "Is no one coming in?"

Ferguson swung a hand towards the still open window, drawing attention to the sounds without.

"Does Your Grace not hear, that ye can ask?" he cried, almost reproachfully; but they scarce heeded him, for Grey was inquiring if Mr. Strode might be depended upon to join, and that was a matter that claimed the greater attention.

"I think," said Battiscomb, "that he might have been depended upon."

"Might have been?" questioned Fletcher, speaking now for the first time since Battiscomb's arrival.

"Like Sir Francis Rolles, he is in prison," the lawyer explained.

Monmouth leaned forward, and his young face looked Careworn now; he thrust a slender hand under the brown curls upon his brow. "Will you tell us, Mr. Battiscomb, upon what friends you think that we may count?" he said.

Battiscomb pursed his lips a second, pondering. "I think," said he, "that you may count upon Mr. Legge and Mr. Hooper, and possibly upon Colonel Churchill, though I cannot say what following they will bring, if any. Mr. Trenchard, upon whom we counted for fifteen hundred men of Taunton, has been obliged to fly the country to escape arrest."

"We have heard that from Mr. Trenchard's cousin," answered the Duke. "What of Prideaux, of Ford? Is he lukewarm?"

"I was unable to elicit a definite promise from him. But he was favourably disposed to Your Grace."

His Grace made a gesture that seemed to dismiss Prideaux from their calculations. "And Mr. Hucker, of Taunton?"

Battiscomb's manner grew yet more ill at ease. "Mr. Hucker himself, I am sure, would place his sword at your disposal. But his brother is a red-hot Tory."

"Well, well," sighed the Duke, "I take it we must not make certain of Mr. Hucker. Are there any others besides Legge and Hooper upon whom you think that we may reckon?"

"Lord Wiltshire, perhaps," said Battiscomb, but with a lack of assurance.

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

Battiscomb 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. Battiscomb?" he exclaimed.

"Indeed," said Battiscomb, "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 nobility 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.

Battiscomb 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, passed 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 God'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 coarse, 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 sturdily 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 sturdy 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 emancipation from the thraldom of popery, oppression, and superstition. Let this dispel such doubts as yet may linger in our minds."

His words had a brave sound, but, when analysed, 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-hell, 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?"

"There are certain rumours current touching His Grace and Lady Grey. A man like Grey might well resort to some such scheme of vengeance."

"Get to sleep, Nick," said Wilding, yawning; "you are dreaming already. Such a plan would be over elaborate for his lordship's mind. It would ask a villainy parallel with your own."

Trenchard climbed into bed, and settled himself under the coverlet.

"Maybe," said he, "and maybe not; but I think that were it not for that cursed business of the letter Richard Westmacott stole from us, I should be going my ways to-morrow and leaving His Grace of Monmouth to go his."

"Aye, and I'd go with you," answered Wilding. "I've little taste for suicide; but we are in it now."

"'Twas a sad pity you meddled this morning in that affair at Taunton," mused Trenchard wistfully. "A sadder pity you were bitten with a taste for matrimony," he added thoughtfully, and blew out the rushlight.