Mistress Wilding

CHAPTER XXIII. MR. WILDING'S BOOTS

In the filth of the ditch, Mr. Wilding rolled over and lay prone. He threw out his left arm, and rested his brow upon it to keep his face above the mud. He strove to hold his breath, not that he might dissemble death, but that he might avoid being poisoned by the foul gases that, disturbed by his weight, bubbled up to choke him. His body half sank and settled in the mud, and seen from above, as he was presently seen by Wentworth—who ran forward with the sergeant's lanthorn to assure himself that the work had been well done—he had all the air of being not only dead but already half buried.

And now, for a second, Mr. Wilding was in his greatest danger, and this from the very humaneness of the sergeant. The fellow advanced to the captain's side, a pistol in his hand. Wentworth held the light aloft and peered down into that six feet of blackness at the jacent figure.

"Shall I give him an ounce of lead to make sure, Captain?" quoth the sergeant. But Wentworth, in his great haste, had already turned about, and the light of his lanthorn no longer revealed the form of Mr. Wilding.

"There is not the need. The ditch will do what may remain to be done, if anything does. Come on, man. We are wanted yonder."

The light passed, steps retreated, the sergeant muttering, and then Wentworth's voice was heard by Wilding some little distance off.

"Bring up your muskets!"

"Shoulder!"

"By the right—turn! March!" And the tramp, tramp of feet receded rapidly.

Wilding was already sitting up, endeavouring to get a breath of purer air. He rose to his feet, sinking almost to the top of his boots in the oozy slime. Foul gases were belched up to envelop him. He seized at irregularities in the bank, and got his head above the level of the ground. He thrust forward his chin and took great greedy breaths in a very gluttony of air—and never came Muscadine sweeter to a drunkard's lips. He laughed softly to himself. He was alone and safe. Wentworth and his men had disappeared. Away in the direction of Penzoy Pound the sounds of battle swelled ever to a greater volume. Cannons were booming now, and all was uproar—flame and shouting, cheering and shrieking, the thunder of hastening multitudes, the clash of steel, the pounding of horses, all blent to make up the horrid din of carnage.

Mr. Wilding listened, and considered what to do. His first impulse was to join the fray. But, bethinking him that there could be little place for him in the confusion that must prevail by now, he reconsidered the matter, and his thoughts returning to Ruth—the wife for whom he had been at such pains to preserve himself on the very brink of death—he resolved to endanger himself no further for that night.

He dropped back into the ditch, and waded, ankle deep in slime, to the other side. There he crawled out, and gaining the moor lay down awhile to breathe his lungs. But not for long. The dawn was creeping pale and ghostly across the solid earth, and a faint fresh breeze was stirring and driving the mist in wispy shrouds before it. If he lingered there he might yet be found by some party of Royalist soldiers, and that would be to undo all that he had done. He rose, and struck out across the peaty ground. None knew the moors better than did he, and had he been with Grey's horse that night, it is possible things had fared differently, for he had proved a surer guide than did Godfrey, the spy.

At first he thought of making for Bridgwater and Lupton House. By now Richard would be on his way thither with Ruth, and Wilding was in haste that she should be reassured that he had not fallen to the muskets of Wentworth's firing-party. But Bridgwater was far, and he began to realize, now that all excitement was past, that he was utterly exhausted. Next he thought of Scoresby Hall and his cousin Lord Gervase. But he was by no means sure that he might count upon a welcome. Gervase had shown no sympathy for Monmouth or his partisans, and whilst he would hardly go so far as to refuse Mr. Wilding shelter, still Wilding felt an aversion to seeking what might be grudged him. At last he bethought him of home. Zoyland Chase was near at hand; but he had not been there since his wedding-day, and in the mean time he knew that it had been used as a barrack for the militia, and had no doubt that it had been wrecked and plundered. Still, it must have walls and a roof, and that, for the time, was all he craved, that he might rest awhile and recuperate his wasted forces.

A half-hour later he dragged himself wearily up the avenue between the elms—looking white as snow in the pale July dawn—to the clearing in front of his house.

Desertion was stamped upon the face of it. Shattered windows and hanging shutters everywhere. How wantonly they had wrecked it! It might have been a church, and the militia a regiment of Cromwell's iconoclastic Puritans. The door was locked, but going round he found a window—one of the door—windows of his library hanging loose upon its hinges. He pushed it wide, and entered with a heavy heart. Instantly something stirred in a corner; a fierce growl was followed by a furious bark, and a lithe brown body leapt from the greater into the lesser shadows to attack the intruder. But at one word of his the hound checked suddenly, crouched an instant, then with a queer, throaty sound bounded forward in a wild delight that robbed it on the instant of its voice. It found it anon and leapt about him, barking furious joy in spite of all his vain endeavours to calm it. He grew afraid lest the dog should draw attention. He knew not who—if any—might be in possession of his house. The library, as he looked round, showed a scene of wreckage that excellently matched the exterior. Not a picture on the walls, not an arras, but had been rent to shreds. The great lustre that had hung from the centre of the ceiling was gone. Disorder reigned along the bookshelves, and yet there and elsewhere there was a certain orderliness, suggesting an attempt to straighten up the place after the ravagers had departed. It was these signs made him afraid the house might be tenanted by such as might prove his enemies.

"Down, Jack," he said to the dog for the twentieth time, patting its sleek head. "Down, down!"

But still the dog bounded about him, barking wildly.

"Sh!" he hissed suddenly. Steps sounded in the hall. It was as he feared. The door was suddenly thrown open, and the grey morning light gleamed upon the long barrel of a musket. After it, bearing it, entered a white-haired old man.

He paused on the threshold, measuring the tall disordered stranger who stood there, his figure a black silhouette against the window by which he had entered.

"What seek you here, sir, in this house of desolation?" asked the voice of Mr. Wilding's old servant.

He answered but one word. "Walters!"

The musket dropped with a clatter from the old man's hands. He sank back against the doorpost and leaned there an instant; then, whimpering and laughing, he came tottering forward—his old legs failing him in this excess of unexpected joy—and sank on his knees to kiss his master's hand.

Wilding patted the old head, as he had patted the dog's a little while ago. He was oddly moved; there was a knot in his throat. No home-coming could well have been more desolate. And yet, what home-coming could have brought him such a torturing joy as was now his? Oh, it is good to be loved, if it be by no more than a dog and an old servant!

In a moment Walters was himself again. He was on his feet, scrutinizing Wilding's haggard face and disordered, filthy clothes. He broke into exclamations between dismay and reproach, but these Wilding interrupted to ask the old man how it happened that he had remained.

"My son John was a sergeant in the troop that quartered itself here, sir," Walters explained, "and so they left me alone. But even had it not been for that, I scarcely think they would have harmed an old man. They were brave fellows for all the mischief they did here, and they seemed to have little heart in the service of the Popish King. It was the officers drove them on to all this damage, and once they'd started—well, there were rogues amongst them saw a chance of plunder, and they took it. I have sought to put the place to rights; but they did some woeful, wanton mischief."

Wilding sighed. "It's little matter, perhaps, as the place is no longer mine.

"No... no longer yours, sir?"

"I'm an attainted outlaw, Walters," he explained. "They'll bestow it on some Popish time-server, unless King Monmouth can follow up by greater victories to-night's. Have you aught a man may eat or drink?"

Meat and wine, fresh linen and fresh garments did old Walters find him; and when he had washed, eaten, and drunk, Mr. Wilding wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and laid himself down to sleep on a settle in the library, his servant and his dog on guard.

Not above an hour, however, was he destined to enjoy his hard-earned rest. The light had grown, meanwhile, and from grey it had turned golden, the heralds of the sun being already in the east. In the distance the firing had died down to a mere occasional boom.

Suddenly old Walters raised his head to listen. The beat of hoofs was drawing rapidly near, so near that presently he rose in alarm, for a horseman was pounding up the avenue, had drawn rein at the main entrance.

Walters knit his brows in perplexity, and glanced at his master who slept on utterly worn out. A silent pause followed, lasting some minutes. Then it was the dog that rose with a growl, his coat bristling, and an instant later there came a sharp rapping at the hall door.

"Sh! Down, Jack!" whispered Walters, afraid of rousing Mr. Wilding. He tiptoed softly across the room, picked up his musket, and, calling the dog, went out, a great fear in his heart, but not for himself.

The rapping continued, growing every instant more urgent, so urgent that Walters was almost reassured. Here was no enemy, but surely some one in need. Walters opened at last, and Mr. Trenchard, grimy of face and hands, his hat shorn of its plumes, his clothes torn, staggered with an oath across the threshold.

"Walters!" he cried. "Thank God! I thought you'd be here, but I wasn't certain. Down, Jack!"

The hound was barking madly again, having recognized an old friend.

"Plague on the dog!" growled Walters. "He'll wake Mr. Wilding."

"Mr. Wilding?" said Trenchard, and checked midway across the hall. "Mr. Wilding?"

"He arrived here a couple of hours ago, sir..."

"Wilding here? Oddsheart! I was more than well advised to come. Where is he, man?"

"Sh, sir! He's asleep in the library. You'll wake him, you'll wake him!"

But Trenchard never paused. He crossed the hall at a bound, and flung wide the library door. "Anthony!" he shouted. "Anthony!" And in the background Walters cursed him for a fool. Wilding leapt to his feet, awake and startled.

"Wha... Nick!"

"Oons!" roared Nick. "You're choicely found. I came to send to Bridgwater for you. We must away at once, man."

"How—away? I thought you were in the fight, Nick."

"And don't I look as if I had been?"

"But then..

"The fight is fought and lost; there's an end to the garboil. Monmouth is in full flight with what's left him of his horse. When I quitted the field, he was riding hard for Polden Hill." He dropped into a chair, his accents grim and despairing, his eyes haggard.

"Lost?" gasped Wilding, and his conscience pricked him for a moment, remembering how much it had been his fault—however indirectly—that Feversham had been forewarned. "But how lost?" he cried a moment later.

"Ask Grey," snapped Trenchard. "Ask his craven, numskulled lordship. He had as good a hand in losing it as any. Oh, it was all most infernally mishandled, as has been everything in this ill-starred rising. Grey sent back Godfrey, the guide, and attempted in the dark to find his own way across the rhine. He missed the ford. What else could the fool have hoped? And when he was discovered and Dunbarton's guns began to play on us—hell and fire! we ran as if Sedgemoor had been a race-course.

"The rest was but the natural sequel. The foot, seeing our confusion, broke. They were rallied again; broke again; and again were rallied; but all too late. The enemy was up, and with that damned ditch between us there was no getting to close quarters with them. Had Grey ridden round, and sought to turn their flank, things might have been—O God!—they would have been entirely different. I did suggest it. But for my pains Grey threatened to pistol me if I presumed to instruct him in his duty. I would to Heaven I had pistolled him where he stood."

Walters, at gaze in the doorway, listened to the bitter tirade. Wilding, on the settle, sat silent a moment, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, his eyes set and grim as Trenchard's own. Then he mastered himself, and waved a hand towards the table where stood food and wine.

"Eat and drink, Nick," he said, "and we'll discuss what's to be done."

"It'll need little discussing," was Nick's savage answer as he rose and went to pour himself a cup of wine. "There's but one course open to us —instant flight. I am for Minehead to join Hewling's horse, which went there yesterday for guns. We might seize a ship somewhere on the coast, and thus get out of this infernal country of mine."

They discussed the matter in spite of Trenchard's having said that there was nothing to discuss, and in the end Wilding agreed to go with him. What choice had he? But first he must go to Bridgwater to reassure his wife.

"To Bridgwater?" blazed Trenchard, in a passion at the folly of the suggestion. "You're clearly mad! All the King's forces will be there in an hour or two."

"No matter," said Wilding, "I must go. I am dead already, as it happens." And he related his singular adventure in Feversham's camp last night.

Trenchard heard him in amazement. If any suspicion crossed his mind that his friend's love affairs had had anything to do with rousing Feversham prematurely, he showed no sign of it. But he shook his head at Wilding's insistence that he must first go to Lupton House.

"Shalt send a message, Anthony. Walters will find some one to bear it. But you must not go yourself."

In the end Mr. Trenchard prevailed upon him to adopt this course, however reluctant he might be. Thereafter they proceeded to make their preparations. There were still a couple of nags in the stables, in spite of the visitation of the militia, and Walters was able to find fresh clothes for Mr. Trenchard above-stairs.

A half-hour later they were ready to set out on this forlorn hope of escape; the horses were at the door, and Mr. Wilding was in the act of drawing on the fresh pair of boots which Walters had fetched him. Suddenly he paused, his foot in the leg of his right boot, and sat bemused a moment.

Trenchard, watching him, waxed impatient. "What ails you now?" he croaked.

Without answering him, Wilding turned to Walters. "Where are the boots I wore last night?" he asked, and his voice was sharp—oddly sharp, considering how trivial the matter of his speech.

"In the kitchen," answered Walters.

"Fetch me them." And he kicked off again the boot he had half drawn on.

"But they are all befouled with mud, sir."

"Clean them, Walters; clean them and let me have them."

Still Walters hesitated, pointing out that the boots he had brought his master were newer and sounder. Wilding interrupted him impatiently. "Do as I bid you, Walters." And the old man, understanding nothing, went off on the errand.

"A pox on your boots!" swore Trenchard. "What does this mean?"

Wilding seemed suddenly to have undergone a transformation. His gloom had fallen from him. He looked up at his old friend and, smiling, answered him. "It means, Nick, that whilst these excellent boots that Walters would have me wear might be well enough for a ride to the coast such as you propose, they are not at all suited to the journey I intend to make."

"Maybe," said Nick with a sniff, "you're intending to journey to Tower Hill?"

"In that direction," answered Mr. Wilding suavely.

"I am for London, Nick. And you shall come with me."

"God save us! Do you keep a fool's egg under that nest of hair?"

Wilding explained, and by the time Walters returned with the boots Trenchard was walking up and down the room in an odd agitation. "Odds my life, Tony!" he cried at last. "I believe it is the best thing."

"The only thing, Nick."

"And since all is lost, why..." Trenchard blew out his cheeks and smacked fist into palm. "I am with you," said he.