“You shall be enlightened if you will do as I request,” Wilding insisted, and Vallancey, with a lift of the brows, a snort, and a shrug, turned away to comply.
“Do you mean,” quoth Trenchard, bursting with indignation, “that you will let live a man who has struck you?”
Wilding took his friend affectionately by the arm. “It is a whim of mine,” said he. “Do you think, Nick, that it is more than I can afford to indulge?”
“I say not so,” was the ready answer; “but…”
“I thought you’d not,” said Mr. Wilding, interrupting. “And if any does—why, I shall be glad to prove it upon him that he lies.” He laughed, and Trenchard, vexed though he was, was forced to laugh with him. Then Nick set himself to urge the thing that last night had plagued his mind: that this Richard might prove a danger to the Cause; that in the Duke’s interest, if not to safeguard his own person from some vindictive betrayal, Wilding would be better advised in imposing a reliable silence upon him.
“But why vindictive?” Mr. Wilding remonstrated. “Rather must he have cause for gratitude.”
Mr. Trenchard laughed short and contemptuously. “There is,” said he, “no rancour more bitter than that of the mean man who has offended you and whom you have spared. I beg you’ll ponder it.” He lowered his voice as he ended his admonition, for Vallancey and Westmacott were coming up, followed by Sir Rowland Blake.
Richard, although his courage had been sinking lower and lower in a measure as he had grown more and more sober with the approach of the moment for engaging, came forward now with a firm step and an arrogant mien; for Vallancey had given him more than a hint of what was toward. His heart had leapt, not only at the deliverance that was promised him, but out of satisfaction at the reflection of how accurately last night he had gauged what Mr. Wilding would endure. It had dismayed him then, as we have seen, that this man who, he thought, must stomach any affront from him out of consideration for his sister, should have ended by calling him to account. He concluded now that upon reflection Wilding had seen his error, and was prepared to make amends that he might extricate himself from an impossible situation, and Richard blamed himself for having overlooked this inevitable solution and given way to idle panic.
Vallancey and Blake watching him, and the sudden metamorphosis that was wrought in him, despised him heartily, and yet were glad—for the sake of their association with him—that things were as they were.
“Mr. Westmacott,” said Wilding quietly, his eyes steadily set upon Richard’s own arrogant gaze, his lips smiling a little, “I am here not to fight, but to apologize.”
Richard’s sneer was audible to all. Oh, he was gathering courage fast now that there no longer was the need for it. It urged him to lengths of daring possible only to a fool.
“If you can take a blow, Mr. Wilding,” said he offensively, “that is your own affair.”
And his friends gasped at his temerity and trembled for him, not knowing what grounds he had for counting himself unassailable.
“Just so,” said Mr. Wilding, as meek and humble as a nun, and Trenchard, who had expected something very different from him, swore aloud and with some circumstance of oaths. “The fact is,” continued Mr. Wilding, “that what I did last night, I did in the heat of wine, and I am sorry for it. I recognize that this quarrel is of my provoking; that it was unwarrantable in me to introduce the name of Mistress Westmacott, no matter how respectfully; and that in doing so I gave Mr. Westmacott ample grounds for offence. For that I beg his pardon, and I venture to hope that this matter need go no further.”
Vallancey and Blake were speechless in astonishment; Trenchard livid with fury. Westmacott moved a step or two forward, a swagger unmistakable in his gait, his nether-lip thrust out in a sneer.
“Why,” said he, his voice mighty disdainful, “if Mr. Wilding apologizes, the matter hardly can go further.” He conveyed such a suggestion of regret at this that Trenchard bounded forward, stung to speech.
“But if Mr. Westmacott’s disappointment threatens to overwhelm him,” he snapped, very tartly, “I am his humble servant, and he may call upon me to see that he’s not robbed of the exercise he came to take.”
Mr. Wilding set a restraining hand upon Trenchard’s arm.
Westmacott turned to him, the sneer, however, gone from his face.
“I have no quarrel with you, sir,” said he, with an uneasy assumption of dignity.
“It’s a want that may be soon supplied,” answered Trenchard briskly, and, as he afterwards confessed, had not Wilding checked him at that moment, he had thrown his hat in Richard’s face.
It was Vallancey who saved the situation, cursing in his heart the bearing of his principal.
“Mr. Wilding,” said he, “this is very handsome in you. You are of the happy few who may tender such an apology without reflection upon your courage.”
Mr. Wilding made him a leg very elegantly. “You are vastly kind, sir,” said he.
“You have given Mr. Westmacott the fullest satisfaction, and it is with an increased respect for you—if that were possible—that I acknowledge it on my friend’s behalf.”
“You are, sir, a very mirror of the elegancies,” said Mr. Wilding, and Vallancey wondered was he being laughed at. Whether he was or not, he conceived that he had done the only seemly thing. He had made handsome acknowledgment of a handsome apology, stung to it by the currishness of Richard.
And there the matter ended, despite Trenchard’s burning eagerness to carry it himself to a different consummation. Wilding prevailed upon him, and withdrew him from the field. But as they rode back to Zoyland Chase the old rake was bitter in his inveighings against Wilding’s folly and weakness.
“I pray Heaven,” he kept repeating, “that it may not come to cost you dear.”
“Have done,” said Mr. Wilding, a trifle out of patience. “Could I wed the sister having slain the brother?”
And Trenchard, understanding at last, accounted himself a numskull that he had not understood before. But he none the less deemed it a pity Richard had been spared.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHAMPION
As vainglorious was Richard Westmacott’s retreat from the field of unstricken battle as his advance upon it had been inglorious. He spoke with confidence now of the narrow escape that Wilding had had at his hands, of the things he would have done to Wilding had not that gentleman grown wise in time. Sir Rowland, who had seen little of Richard’s earlier stricken condition, was in a measure imposed upon by his blustering tone and manner; not so Vallancey, who remembered the steps he had been forced to take to bolster up the young man’s courage sufficiently to admit of his being brought to the encounter. Richard so disgusted him that he felt if he did not quit his company soon, he would be quarrelling with him himself. So, congratulating him, in a caustic manner that Richard did not relish, upon the happy termination of the affair, Vallancey took his leave of him and Blake at the cross-roads, pleading business with Lord Gervase, and left them to proceed without him to Bridgwater.
Blake, whose suspicions of some secret matter to which Vallancey and Richard were wedded, had been earlier excited by Westmacott’s indiscretions, was full of sly questions now touching the business which might be taking Vallancey to Scoresby. But Richard was too full of the subject of the fear he had instilled into Wilding to afford his companion much satisfaction on any other score. Thus they came to Lupton House, and as Richard swaggered down the lawn into the presence of the ladies—Ruth and her aunt were occupying the stone bench, Diana the circular seat about the great oak in the centre of the lawn—he was a very different person from the pale, limp creature they had beheld there some few hours earlier. Loud and offensive was he now in self-laudation, and so indifferent to all else that he left unobserved the little smile, half wistful, half