Mistress Wilding | Page 4

cleared his huskiness from his throat. "Sir
Rowland," said he, "will you act for me?"
"Not I!" cried Blake with an oath. "I'll be no party to the butchery of a
boy unfledged."
"Unfledged?" echoed Trenchard. "Body o' me! 'Tis a matter Wilding
will amend to-morrow. He'll fledge him, never fear. He'll wing him on
his flight to heaven."
Of set purpose did Trenchard add this fuel to the blazing fire. It was no
part of his views that this encounter should be avoided. If Richard
Westmacott were allowed to live after what had passed, there were too
many tall fellows might go in peril of their lives.
Richard, meanwhile, had turned to the man on his left - young
Vallancey, a notorious partisan of the Duke of Monmouth's, a
hair-brained gentleman who was his own worst enemy.
"May I count on you, Ned?" he asked.
"Aye - to the death," said Vallancey magniloquently.
"Mr. Vallancey," said Trenchard with a wry twist of his sharp features,
"you grow prophetic."
CHAPTER II
SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE

>From Scoresby Hall, near Weston Zoyland, young Westmacott rode
home that Saturday night to his sister's house in Bridgwater, a sobered
man and an anguished. He had committed a folly which was like to cost
him his life to-morrow. Other follies had he committed in his
twenty-five years - for he was not quite the babe that Blake had
represented him, although he certainly looked nothing like his age. But
to-night he had contrived to set the crown to all. He had good cause to
blame himself and to curse the miscalculation that had emboldened him
to launch himself upon a course of insult against this Wilding, whom
he hated with all the currish and resentful hatred of the worthless for
the man of parts.
But there was more than hate in the affront that he had offered; there
was calculation - to an even greater extent than we have seen. It
happened that through his own fault young Richard was all but
penniless. The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton - the
wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations - had been so
stirred to anger by Richard's vicious and besotted ways that he had left
every guinea that was his, every perch of land, and every brick of
edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad
for the worthless boy. Ruth worshipped him. He was a sacred charge to
her from their dead father, who, knowing the stoutness of her soul and
the feebleness of Richard's, had in dying imposed on her the care and
guidance of her graceless brother. But Ruth, in all things strong, was
weak with Richard out of her very fondness for him. To what she had
he might help himself, and thus it was that things were not so bad with
him at present. But when Richard's calculating mind came to give
thought to the future he found that this occasioned him some care. Rich
ladies, even when they do not happen to be equipped in addition with
Ruth's winsome beauty and endearing nature, are not wont to go
unmarried. It would have pleased Richard best to have had her remain a
spinster. But he well knew that this was a matter in which she might
have a voice of her own, and it behoved him betimes to take wise
measures where possible husbands were concerned.
The first that came in a suitor's obvious panoply was Anthony Wilding,
of Zoyland Chase, and Richard watched his advent with foreboding.

Wilding's was a personality to dazzle any woman, despite - perhaps
even because of - the reputation for wildness that clung to him. That he
was known as Wild Wilding to the countryside is true; but it were
unfair - as Richard knew - to attach to this too much importance; for the
adoption of so obvious an alliteration the rude country minds needed
but a slight encouragement.
From the first it looked as if Ruth might favour him, and Richard's fears
assumed more definite shape. If Wilding married her - and he was a
bold, masterful fellow who usually accomplished what he aimed at -
her fortune and estate must cease to be a pleasant pasture land for
bovine Richard. The boy thought at first of making terms with Wilding;
the idea was old; it had come to him when first he had counted the
chances of his sister's marrying. But he found himself hesitating to lay
his proposal before Mr. Wilding. And whilst he hesitated Mr. Wilding
made obvious headway. Still Richard dared not do it. There was a
something in Wilding's eye that cried him danger. Thus, in the end,
since he could not attempt a compromise with this fine fellow,