Mistress Wilding
CHAPTER XVI
PLOTS AND PLOTTERS
Mr. Wilding left Monmouth's army at Lyme on Sunday, the 14th of June, and
rejoined it at Bridgwater exactly three weeks later. In the meanwhile a
good deal had happened, yet the happenings on every hand had fallen far
short of the expectations aroused in Mr. Wilding's mind, now by one
circumstance, now by another. In reaching London he had experienced no
difficulty. Men travelling in that direction were not subjected to the
scrutiny that fell to the share of those travelling from it towards the
West, or, rather, to the scrutiny ordained by the Government; for Wilding
had more than one opportunity of observing how very lax and indifferent
were the constables and tything-men—particularly in Somerset and
Wiltshire—in the performance of this duty. Wayfarers were questioned
as a matter of form, but in no case did Wilding hear of any one being
detained upon suspicion. This was calculated to raise his drooping hopes,
pointing as it did to the general favouring of Monmouth that was toward.
He grew less despondent on the score of the Duke's possible ultimate
success, and he came to hope that the efforts he went to exert would not
be fruitless.
But rude were the disappointments that awaited him in town. London, like
the rest of the country, was not ready. There were not wanting men who
favoured Monmouth; but no rising had been organized, and the Duke's
partisans were not disposed to rashness.
Wilding lodged at Covent Garden, in a house recommended to him by Colonel
Danvers, and there—an outlaw himself—he threw himself with a
will into his task. He heard of the burning of Monmouth's Declaration by
the common hangman at the Royal Exchange, and of the bill passed by the
Commons to make it treason for any to assert that Lucy Walters was married
to the late King. He attended meetings at the “Bull's Head,” in
Bishopsgate, where he met Disney and Danvers, Payton and Lock; but though
they talked and argued at prodigious length, they did naught besides.
Danvers, who was their hope in town, definitely refused to have a hand in
anything that was not properly organized, and in common with the others
urged that they should wait until Cheshire had risen, as was reported that
it must.
Meanwhile, troops had gone west under Kirke and Churchill, and the
Parliament had voted nearly half a million for the putting down of the
rebellion. London was flung into a fever of excitement by the news that
was reaching it. The position was not quite as Monmouth's advisers—before
coming over from Holland—had represented that it would be. They had
thought that out of fear of tumults about his own person, King James would
have been compelled to keep near him what troops he had, sparing none to
be sent against Monmouth. This, King James had not done; he had all but
emptied London of soldiery, and, considering the general disaffection, no
moment could have been more favourable than this for a rising in London
itself. The confusion that must have resulted from the recalling of troops
would have given Monmouth not only a mighty grip of the West, but would
have heartened those who—like Sunderland himself—were sitting
on the wall, to declare themselves for the Protestant Champion. This
Wilding saw, and almost frenziedly did he urge it upon Danvers that all
London needed at the moment was a resolute leader. But the Colonel still
held back; indeed, he had neither truth nor valour; he was timid, and used
deceit to mask his timidity; he urged frivolous reasons for inaction, and
when Wilding waxed impatient with him, he suggested that Wilding himself
should head the rising if he were so confident of its success. And Wilding
would have done it but that, being unknown in London, he had no reason to
suppose that men would flock to him if he raised the Duke's banner.
Later, when the excitement grew and rumours ran through town that Monmouth
had now a following of twenty thousand men and that the King's forces were
falling back before him, and discontent was rife at the commissioning of
Catholic lords to levy troops, Wilding again pressed the matter upon
Danvers. Surely no moment could be more propitious. But again he received
the same answer, that Danvers had lacked time to organize matters
sufficiently; that the Duke's coming had taken him by surprise.
Lastly came the news that Monmouth had been crowned at Taunton amid the
wildest enthusiasm, and that there were now in England two men each of
whom called himself King James the Second. This was the excuse that
Danvers needed to be rid of a business he had not the courage to transact
to a finish. He swore that he washed his hands of Monmouth's affairs; that
the latter had broken faith with him and the promise he had made him in
having himself proclaimed King. He protested that Monmouth had done ill,
and prophesied that his act would alienate from him the numerous
republicans who, like Danvers, had hitherto looked to him for the
country's salvation. Wilding himself was appalled at the news for Monmouth
was indeed going further than men had been given to understand.
Nevertheless, for his own sake, in very self-defence now, if out of no
motives of loyalty to the Duke, he must urge forward the fortunes of this
man. He had high words with Danvers, and the two might have quarrelled
before long but for the sudden arrest of Disney, which threw Danvers into
such a panic that he fled incontinently, abandoning in body, as he already
appeared to have abandoned in spirit, the Monmouth Cause.
The arrest of Disney struck a chill into Wilding. From his lodging at
Covent Garden he had communicated cautiously with Sunderland a few days
after his arrival, building upon certain information he had received from
the Duke at parting as to Sunderland's attachment to the Cause. He had
carefully chosen his moment for making this communication, having a
certain innate mistrust of a man who so obviously as Sunderland was
running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. He had sent a letter to
the Secretary of State when London was agog with the Axminster affair, and
the tale—of which Sir Edward Phelips wrote to Colonel Berkeley as
“the shamefullest story that you ever heard”—of how Albemarle's
forces and the Somerset militia had run before Monmouth in spite of their
own overwhelming numbers. This promised ill for James, particularly when
it was perceived as perceived it was—that this running away was not
all cowardice, not all “the shamefullest story” that Phelips accounted it.
It was an expression of good-will towards Monmouth on the part of the
militia of the West, and it was confidently expected that the next news
would be that these men who had decamped before him would presently be
found to have ranged themselves under his banner.
Sunderland had given no sign that he had received Wilding's communication.
And Wilding drew his own contemptuous conclusions of the Secretary of
State's cautious policy. It was a fortnight later—when London was
settling down again from the diversion of excitement created by the news
of Argyle's defeat in Scotland—before Mr. Wilding attempted to
approach Sunderland again. He awaited a favourable opportunity, and this
he had when London was thrown into consternation by the alarming news of
the Duke of Somerset's urgent demand for reinforcements. Unless he had
them, he declared, the whole country was lost, as he could not get the
militia to stand, whilst Lord Stawell's regiment were all fled and mostly
gone over to the rebels at Bridgwater.
This was grave news, but it was followed in a few days by graver. The
affair at Philips Norton was exaggerated by report into a wholesale defeat
of the loyal army, and it was reported—on, apparently, such good
authority that it received credence in quarters that might have waited for
official news—that the Duke of Albemarle had been slain by the
militia which had mutinied and deserted to Monmouth.
It was while this news was going round that Sunderland—in a moment
of panic—at last vouchsafed an answer to Mr. Wilding's letters, and
he vouchsafed it in person, just as Wilding—particularly since
Disney's arrest—was beginning to lose all hope. He came one evening
to Mr. Wilding's lodgings in Covent Garden, unattended and closely
muffled, and he remained closeted with the Duke's ambassador for nigh upon
an hour, at the end of which he entrusted Mr. Wilding with a letter for
the Duke, very brief but entirely to the point, which expressed him
Monmouth's most devoted servant.
“You may well judge, sir,” he had said at parting, “that this is not such
a letter as I should entrust to any man.”
Mr. Wilding had bowed gravely, and gravely he had expressed himself
sensible of the exceptional honour his lordship did him by such a trust.
“And I depend upon you, sir, as you are a man of honour, to take such
measures as will ensure against its falling into any but the hands for
which it is intended.”
“As I am a man of honour, you may depend upon me,” Mr. Wilding solemnly
promised. “Will your lordship give me three lines above your signature
that will save me from molestation; thus you will facilitate the
preservation of this letter.”
“I had already thought of that,” was Sunderland's answer, and he placed
before Mr. Wilding three lines of writing signed and sealed which enjoined
all, straitly, in the King's name to suffer the bearer to pass and repass
and to offer him no hindrance.
On that they shook hands and parted, Sunderland to return to Whitehall and
his obedience to the King James whom he was ready to betray as soon as he
saw profit for himself in the act, Mr. Wilding to return to Somerset to
the King James in whom his faith was scant, indeed, but with whom his
fortunes were irrevocably bound up.
Meanwhile, Monmouth was back in Bridgwater, his second occupation of which
town was not being looked upon with unmixed favour. The inhabitants had
suffered enough already from his first visit; his return there, after the
Philips Norton affair of which such grossly exaggerated reports had
reached London, and which, in point of fact, had been little better than a
drawn battle—had been looked upon with dread by some, with disfavour
by others, and with dismay by not a few who viewed in this an augury of
failure.
Now Sir Rowland Blake, who since his pursuit of Mr. Wilding and Trenchard
on the occasion of their flight from Taunton had—in spite of his
failure on that occasion—been more or less in the service of
Albemarle and the loyal army, saw in this indisposition towards Monmouth
of so many of Bridgwater's inhabitants great possibilities of profit to
himself.
He was at Lupton House, the guest of his friend Richard Westmacott, and
the open suitor of Ruth, entirely ignoring the circumstance that she was
nominally the wife of Mr. Wilding—this to the infinite chagrin of
Miss Horton, who saw all her scheming likely to go for nothing.
In his heart of hearts it was a matter of not the slightest consequence to
Sir Rowland whether James Stuart or James Scott occupied the throne of
England. His own affairs gave him more than enough to think of, and these
disturbances in the West were very welcome to him, since they rendered
difficult any attempt to trace him on the part of his London creditors. It
happens, however, very commonly that enmity to an individual will lead to
enmity to the cause which that individual espouses. Thus may it have been
with Sir Rowland. His hatred of Wilding and his keen desire to see Wilding
destroyed had made him a zealous partisan of the loyal cause. Richard
Westmacott, easily swayed and overborne by the town rake, whose vices made
him seem to Richard the embodiment of all that is splendid and enviable in
man, had become practically the baronet's tool, now that he had abandoned
Monmouth's Cause. Sir Rowland had not considered it beneath the dignity of
his name and station to discharge in Bridgwater certain functions that
made him more or less a spy. And so reliable had been the information he
had sent Feversham and Albemarle during Monmouth's first occupation of the
town, that he had won by now their complete confidence.
The second occupation and its unpopularity with many of those who earlier—if
lukewarm—had been partisans of the Duke, swelled the number of
loyally inclined people in Bridgwater, and suddenly inspired Sir Rowland
with a scheme by which at a blow he might snuff out the rebellion.
This scheme involved the capture of the Duke, and the reward of success
should mean far more to Blake than the five thousand pounds at which the
value of the Duke's head had already been fixed by Parliament. He needed a
tool for this, and he even thought of Westmacott and Lupton House, but
afterwards preferred a Mr. Newlington, who was in better case to assist
him. This Newlington, an exceedingly prosperous merchant and one of the
richest men perhaps in the whole West of England, looked with extreme
disfavour upon Monmouth, whose advent had paralyzed his industries to an
extent that was costing him a fine round sum of money weekly.
He was now in alarm lest the town of Bridgwater should be made to pay
dearly for having harboured the Protestant Duke—he had no faith
whatever in the Protestant Duke's ultimate prevailing—and that he,
as one of the town's most prominent and prosperous citizens, might be
amongst the heaviest sufferers in spite of his neutrality. This neutrality
he observed because it was hardly safe in that disaffected town for a man
to proclaim himself a loyalist.
To him Sir Rowland expounded his audacious plan... He sought out the
merchant in his handsome mansion on the night of that Friday which had
witnessed Monmouth's return, and the merchant, honoured by the visit of
this gallant—ignorant as he was of the gentleman's fame in town—placed
himself entirely and instantly at his disposal, though the hour was late.
Sounding him carefully, and finding the fellow most amenable to any scheme
that should achieve the salvation of his purse and industries, Blake
boldly laid his plan before him. Startled at first, Mr. Newlington upon
considering it became so enthusiastic that he hailed Sir Rowland as his
deliverer, and heartily promised his cooperation. Indeed, it was Mr.
Newlington who was, himself, to take the first step.
Well pleased with his evening's work, Sir Rowland went home to Lupton
House and to bed. In the morning he broached the matter to Richard. He had
all the vanity of the inferior not only to lessen the appearance of his
inferiority, but to clothe himself in a mantle of importance; and it was
this vanity urged him to acquaint Richard with his plans in the very
presence of Ruth.
They had broken their fast, and they still lingered in the dining-room,
the largest and most important room in Lupton House. It was cool and
pleasant here in contrast to the heat of the July sun, which, following
upon the late wet weather, beat fiercely on the lawn, the window-doors
to which stood open. The cloth had been raised, and Diana and her mother
had lately left the room. Ruth, in the window-seat, at a small oval
table, was arranging a cluster of roses in an old bronze bowl. Sir
Rowland, his stiff short figure carefully dressed in a suit of brown
camlet, his fair wig very carefully curled, occupied a tall-backed
armchair near the empty fireplace. Richard, perched on the table's edge,
swung his shapely legs idly backwards and forwards and cogitated upon a
pretext to call for a morning draught of last October's ale.
Ruth completed her task with the roses and turned her eyes upon her
brother.
“You are not looking well, Richard,” she said, which was true enough, for
much hard drinking was beginning to set its stamp on Richard, and young as
he was, his insipidly fair face began to display a bloatedness that was
exceedingly unhealthy.
“Oh, I am well enough,” he answered almost peevishly, for these allusions
to his looks were becoming more frequent than he savoured.
“Gad!” cried Sir Rowland's deep voice, “you'll need to be well. I have
work for you to-morrow, Dick.”
Dick did not appear to share his enthusiasm. “I am sick of the work you
discover for us, Rowland,” he answered ungraciously.
But Blake showed no resentment. “Maybe you'll find the present task more
to your taste. If it's deeds of derring-do you pine for, I am the man to
satisfy you.” He smiled grimly, his bold grey eyes glancing across at
Ruth, who was observing him, listening.
Richard sneered, but offered him no encouragement to proceed.
“I see,” said Blake, “that I shall have to tell you the whole story before
you'll credit me. Shalt have it, then. But...” and he checked on the word,
his face growing serious, his eye wandering to the door, “I would not have
it overheard—not for a king's ransom,” which was more literally true
than he may have intended it to be.
Richard looked over his shoulder carelessly at the door.
“We have no eavesdroppers,” he said, and his voice bespoke his contempt of
the gravity of this news of which Sir Rowland made so much in
anticipation. He was acquainted with Sir Rowland's ways, and the
importance of them. “What are you considering?” he inquired.
“To end the rebellion,” answered Blake, his voice cautiously lowered.
Richard laughed outright. “There are several others considering that—notably
His Majesty King James, the Duke of Albemarle, and the Earl of Feversham.
Yet they don't appear to achieve it.”
“It is in that particular,” said Blake complacently, “that I shall differ
from them.” He turned to Ruth, eager to engage her in the conversation, to
flatter her by including her in the secret. Knowing the loyalist
principles she entertained, he had no reason to fear that his plans could
other than meet her approval. “What do you say, Mistress Ruth?” Presuming
upon his friendship with her brother, he had taken to calling her by that
name in preference to the other which he could not bring himself to give
her. “Is it not an object worthy of a gentleman's endeavour?”
“If you can save so many poor people from encompassing their ruin by
following that rash young man the Duke of Monmouth, you will indeed be
doing a worthy deed.”
Blake rose, and made her a leg. “Madam,” said he, “had aught been wanting
to cement my resolve, your words would supply it to me. My plan is
simplicity itself. I propose to capture Monmouth and his principal agents,
and deliver them over to the King. And that is all.”
“A mere nothing,” croaked Richard.
“Could more be needed?” quoth Blake. “Once the rebel army is deprived of
its leaders it will melt and dissolve of itself. Once the Duke is in the
hands of his enemies there will be nothing left to fight for. Is it not
shrewd?”
“You are telling us the object rather than the plan,” Ruth reminded him.
“If the plan is as good as the object...”
“As good?” he echoed, chuckling. “You shall judge.” And briefly he
sketched for her the springe he was setting with the help of Mr.
Newlington. “Newlington is rich; the Duke is in straits for money.
Newlington goes to-day to offer him twenty thousand pounds; and the Duke
is to do him the honour of supping at his house to-morrow night to fetch
the money. It is a reasonable request for Mr. Newlington to make under the
circumstances, and the Duke cannot—dare not refuse it.”
“But how will that advance your project?” Ruth inquired, for Blake had
paused again, thinking that the rest must be obvious.
“In Mr. Newlington's orchard I propose to post a score or so of men, well
armed. Oh! I shall run no risks of betrayal by engaging Bridgwater folk.
I'll get the fellows I need from General Feversham. We take Monmouth at
supper, as quietly as may be, with what gentlemen happen to have
accompanied him. We bind and gag the Duke, and we convey him with all
speed and quiet out of Bridgwater. Feversham shall send a troop to await
me a mile or so from the town on the road to Weston Zoyland. We shall join
them with our captive, and thus convey him to the Royalist General. Could
aught be simpler or more infallible?”
Richard had slipped from the table. He had changed his mind on the subject
of the importance of the business Blake had in view. Excited by it, he
clapped his friend on the back approvingly.
“A great plan!” he cried. “Is it not, Ruth?”
“It should be the means of saving hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives,”
said she, “and so it deserves to prosper. But what of the officers who may
be with the Duke?” she inquired.
“There are not likely to be many—half a dozen, say. We shall have to
make short work of them, lest they should raise an alarm.” He saw her
glance clouding. “That is the ugly part of the affair,” he was quick to
add, himself assuming a look of sadness. He sighed. “What help is there?”
he asked. “Better that those few should suffer than that, as you yourself
have said, there should be some thousands of lives lost before this
rebellion is put down. Besides,” he continued, “Monmouth's officers are
far-seeing, ambitious men, who have entered into this affair to promote
their own personal fortunes. They are gamesters who have set their lives
upon the board against a great prize, and they know it. But these other
poor misguided people who have gone out to fight for liberty and religion—it
is these whom I am striving to rescue.”
His words sounded fervent, his sentiments almost heroic. Ruth looked at
him, and wondered had she misjudged him in the past. She sighed. Then she
thought of Wilding. He was on the other side, but where was he? Rumour ran
that he was dead; that he and Grey had quarrelled at Lyme, and that
Wilding had been killed as a result. Had it not been for Diana, who
strenuously bade her attach no credit to these reports, she would readily
have believed them. As it was she waited, wondering, thinking of him
always as she had seen him on that day at Walford when he had taken his
leave of her, and more than once, when she pondered the words he had said,
the look that had invested his drooping eyes, she found herself with tears
in her own. They welled up now, and she rose hastily to her feet.
She looked a moment at Blake who was watching her keenly, speculating upon
this emotion of which she betrayed some sign, and wondering might not his
heroism have touched her, for, as we have seen, he had arrayed a deed of
excessive meanness, a deed worthy, almost, of the Iscariot, in the panoply
of heroic achievement.
“I think,” she said, “that you are setting your hand to a very worthy and
glorious enterprise, and I hope, nay, I am sure, that success must attend
your efforts.” He was still bowing his thanks when she passed out through
the open window-doors into the sunshine of the garden.
Sir Rowland swung round upon Richard. “A great enterprise, Dick,” he
cried; “I may count upon you for one?”
“Aye,” said Dick, who had found at last the pretext that he needed, “you
may count on me. Pull the bell, we'll drink to the success of the
venture.”