Part 22 (1/2)
Ruth looked round as Mr. Wilding's voice greeted her.
”Mistress Wilding,” he called to her. ”A moment, if I may detain you.”
”You have eluded them!” she cried, entirely off her guard in her surprise at seeing him, and there echoed through her words a note of genuine gladness that almost disconcerted her husband for a moment. The next instant a crimson flush overspread her pale face, and her eyes were veiled from him, vexation in her heart at having betrayed the lively satisfaction it afforded her to see him safe when she feared him captured already or at least upon the point of capture.
She had admired him almost unconsciously for his daring at the town hall that day, when his strong calm had stood out in such sharp contrast to the fl.u.s.ter and excitement of the men about him; of them all, indeed, it had seemed to her in those stressful moments that he was the only man, and she was--although she did not realize it--in danger of being proud of him. Then again the thing he had done. He had come deliberately to thrust his head into the lion's maw that he might save her brother. It was possible that he had done it in answer to the entreaties which she had earlier feared she had poured into deaf ears; or it was possible that he had done it spurred by his sense of right and justice, which would not permit him to allow another to suffer in his stead--however much that other might be caught in the very toils that he had prepared for Mr. Wilding himself. Her admiration, then, was swelled by grat.i.tude, and it was a compound of these that had urged her to hinder the tything-men from winning past her until he and Trenchard should have got well away.
Afterwards, when with Diana and her groom--on a horse which Sir Edward Phelips insisted upon lending them--she rode homeward from Taunton, there was Diana to keep alive the spark of kindness that glowed at last for Wilding in Ruth's breast. Miss Horton extolled his bravery, his chivalry, his n.o.bility, and ended by expressing her envy of Ruth that she should have won such a man amongst men for her husband, and wondered what it might be that kept Ruth from claiming him for her own as was her right. Ruth had answered little, but she had ridden very thoughtful; there was that in the past she found it hard to forgive Wilding. And yet she would now have welcomed an opportunity of thanking him for what he had done, of expressing to him something of the respect he had won in her eyes by his act of self-denunciation to save her brother. This chance, it seemed, was given her, for there he stood, with head bared before her; and already she thought no longer of seizing the chance, vexed as she was at having been surprised into a betrayal of feelings whose warmth she had until that moment scarce estimated.
In answer to her cry of ”You have eluded them!” he waved a hand towards the rising ground and the road to Bridgwater.
”They pa.s.sed that way but a few moments since,” said he, ”and by the rate at which they were travelling they should be nearing Newton by now.
In their great haste to catch me they could not pause to look for me so close at hand,” he added with a smile, ”and for that I am thankful.”
She sat her horse and answered nothing, which threw her cousin out of all patience with her. ”Come, Jerry,” Diana called to the groom. ”We will walk our horses up the hill.”
”You are very good, madam,” said Mr. Wilding, and he bowed to the withers of his roan.
Ruth said nothing; expressed neither approval nor disapproval of Diana's withdrawal, and the latter, with a word of greeting to Wilding, went ahead followed by Jerry, who had regained control by now of the beast he bestrode. Wilding watched them until they turned the corner, then he walked his mare slowly forward until he was alongside Ruth.
”Before I go,” said he, ”there is something I should like to say.” His dark eyes were sombre, his manner betrayed some hesitation.
The diffidence of his tone proved startling to her by virtue of its unusualness. What might it portend, she wondered, and sought with grave eyes to read his baffling countenance; and then a wild alarm swept into her and shook her spirit in its grip; there was something of which until this moment she had not thought--something connected with the fateful matter of that letter. It had stood as a barrier between them, her buckler, her sole defence against him. It had been to her what its sting is to the bee--a thing which if once used in self-defence is self-destructive. Not, indeed, that she had used it as her sting; it had been forced from her by the machinations of Trenchard; but used it had been, and was done with; she had it no longer that with it she might hold him in defiance, and it did not occur to her that he was no longer in case to invoke the law.
Her face grew stony, a dry glitter came to her blue eyes; she cast a glance over her shoulder at Diana and her servant. Wilding observed it and read what was pa.s.sing in her mind; indeed, it was not to be mistaken, no more than what is pa.s.sing in the mind of the recruit who looks behind him in the act of charging. His lips half smiled.
”Of what are you afraid?” he asked her.
”I am not afraid,” she answered in husky accents that belied her.
Perhaps to rea.s.sure her, perhaps because he thought of his companions lurking in the thicket and cared not to have them for his audience, he suggested they should go a little way in the direction her cousin had taken. She wheeled her horse, and, side by side, they ambled up the dusty road.
”The thing I have to tell you,” said he presently, ”concerns myself.”
”Does it concern me?” she asked him coldly, and her coolness was urged partly by her newborn fears, partly to counterbalance such impression as her illjudged show of gladness at his safety might have made upon his mind. He flashed her a sidelong glance, the long white fingers of his right hand toying thoughtfully with a ringlet of the dark brown hair that fell upon the shoulders of his scarlet coat.
”Surely, madam,” he answered dryly, ”what concerns a man may well concern his wife.”
She bowed her head, her eyes upon the road before her. ”True,” said she, her voice expressionless. ”I had forgot.”
He reined in and turned to look at her; her horse moved on a pace or two, then came to a halt, apparently of its own accord.
”I do protest,” said he, ”you treat me less kindly than I deserve.” He urged his mare forward until he had come up with her again, and then drew rein once more. ”I think that I may lay some claim to--at least--your grat.i.tude for what I did to-day.”
”It is my inclination to be grateful,” said she. She was very wary of him. ”Forgive me, if I am still mistrustful.”
”But of what?” he cried, a thought impatiently.
”Of you. What ends did you seek to serve? Was it to save Richard that you came?”
”Unless you think that it was to save Blake,” he said ironically. ”What other ends do you conceive I could have served?” She made him no answer, and so he resumed after a pause. ”I rode to Taunton to serve you for two reasons; because you asked me, and because I would have no innocent men suffer in my stead--not even though, as these men, they were but caught in their own toils, hoist with the petard they had charged for me.