In the room above, Monmouth had sunk wearily into his chair upon hearing of the design there had been against his life. A deep, bitter melancholy enwrapped his spirit. Lord Grey’s first thoughts flew to the man he most disliked—the one man missing from those who had been bidden to accompany His Majesty, whose absence had already formed the subject of comment. Grey remembered this bearing before the council that same evening, and his undisguised resentment of the reproaches levelled against him.
“Where is Mr. Wilding?” he asked suddenly, his voice dominating the din of talk that filled the room. “Do we hold the explanation of his absence?”
Monmouth looked up quickly, his beautiful eyes ineffably sad, his weak mouth drooping at the corners. Wade turned to confront Grey.
“Your lordship does not suggest that Mr. Wilding can have a hand in this?”
“Appearances would seem to point in that direction,” answered Grey, and in his wicked heart he almost hoped it might be so.
“Then appearances speak truth for once,” came a bitter, ringing voice. They turned, and there on the threshold stood Mr. Wilding. Unheard he had come upon them. He was bareheaded and carried his drawn sword. There was blood upon it, and there was blood on the lace that half concealed the hand that held it; otherwise—and saving that his shoes and stockings were sodden with the dew from the long grass in the orchard—he was as spotless as when he had left Ruth in Trenchard’s lodging; his face, too, was calm, save for the mocking smile with which he eyed Lord Grey.
Monmouth rose on his appearance, and put his hand to his sword in alarm. Grey whipped his own from the scabbard, and placed himself slightly in front of his master as if to preserve him.
“You mistake, sirs,” said Wilding quietly. “The hand I have had in this affair has been to save Your Majesty from your enemies. At the moment I should have joined you, word was brought me of the plot that was laid, of the trap that was set for you. I hastened to the Castle and obtained a score of musketeers of Slape’s company. With those I surprised the murderers lurking in the garden there, and made an end of them. I greatly feared I should not come in time; but it is plain that Heaven preserves Your Majesty for better days.”
In the revulsion of feeling, Monmouth’s eyes shone moist. Grey sheathed his sword with an awkward laugh, and a still more awkward word of apology to Wilding. The Duke, moved by a sudden impulse to make amends for his unworthy suspicions, for his perhaps unworthy reception of Wilding earlier that evening in the council-room, drew the sword on which his hand still rested. He advanced a step.
“Kneel, Mr. Wilding,” he said in a voice stirred by emotion. But Wilding’s stern spirit scorned this all too sudden friendliness of Monmouth’s as much as he scorned the accolade at Monmouth’s hands.
“There are more pressing matters to demand Your Majesty’s attention,” said Mr. Wilding coldly, advancing to the table as he spoke, and taking up a napkin to wipe his blade, “than the reward of an unworthy servant.”
Monmouth felt his sudden enthusiasm chilled by that tone and manner.
“Mr. Newlington,” said Mr. Wilding, after the briefest of pauses, and the fat, sinful merchant started forward in alarm. It was like a summons of doom. “His Majesty came hither, I am informed, to receive at your hands a sum of money—twenty thousand pounds—towards the expenses of the campaign. Have you the money at hand?” And his eye, glittering between cruelty and mockery, fixed itself upon the merchant’s ashen face.
“It…it shall be forthcoming by morning,” stammered Newlington.
“By morning?” cried Grey, who, with the others, watched Mr. Newlington what time they all wondered at Mr. Wilding’s question and the manner of it.
“You knew that I march tonight,” Monmouth reproached the merchant.
“And it was to receive the money that you invited His Majesty to do you the honours of supping with you here,” put in Wade, frowning darkly.
The merchant’s wife and daughter stood beside him watching him, and plainly uneasy. Before he could make any reply, Mr. Wilding spoke again.
“The circumstance that he has not the money by him is a little odd—or would be were it not for what has happened. I would submit, Your Majesty, that you receive from Mr. Newlington not twenty thousand pounds as he had promised you, but thirty thousand, and that you receive it not as a loan as was proposed, but as a fine imposed upon him in consequence of…his lack of care in the matter of his orchard.”
Monmouth looked at the merchant very sternly. “You have heard Mr. Wilding’s suggestion,” said he. “You may thank the god of traitors it was made, else we might have thought of a harsher course. You shall pay the money by ten o’clock tomorrow to Mr. Wilding, whom I shall leave behind for the sole purpose of collecting it.” He turned from Newlington in plain disgust. “I think, sirs, that here is no more to be done. Are the streets safe, Mr. Wilding?”
“Not only safe, Your Majesty, but the twenty men of Slape’s and your own life-guards are waiting to escort you.
“Then in God’s name let us be going,” said Monmouth, sheathing his sword and moving towards the door. Not a second time did he offer to confer the honour of knighthood upon his saviour.
Mr. Wilding turned and went out to marshal his men. The Duke and his officers followed more leisurely. As they reached the door, a woman’s cry broke the silence behind them. Monmouth turned. Mr. Newlington, purple of face and his eyes protruding horridly, was beating the air with his hands. Suddenly he collapsed, and crashed forward with arms flung out amid the glass and silver of the table all spread with the traitor’s banquet to which he had bidden his unsuspecting victim.
His wife and daughter ran to him and called him by name, Monmouth pausing a moment to watch them from the doorway with eyes unmoved. But Mr. Newlington answered, not their call, for he was dead.
CHAPTER XX
THE RECKONING
Ruth had sped home through the streets unattended, as she had come, heedless of the rude jostlings and ruder greetings she met with from those she passed; heedless, too, of the smarting of her injured hand, for the agony of her soul was such that it whelmed all minor sufferings of the flesh.
In the dining-room at Lupton House she came upon Diana and Lady Horton at supper, and her appearance—her white and distraught face and blood-smeared gown—brought both women to their feet in alarmed inquiry, no less than it brought Jasper, the butler, to her side with ready solicitude. Ruth answered him that there was no cause for fear, that she was quite well—had scratched her hand, no more; and with that dismissed him. When she was alone with her aunt and cousin, she sank into a chair and told them what had passed ’twixt her husband and herself and most of what she said was Greek to Lady Horton.
“Mr. Wilding has gone to warn the Duke,” she ended, and the despair of her tone was tragical. “I sought to detain him until it should be too late—I thought I had done so, but…but… Oh, I am afraid, Diana!”
“Afraid of what?” asked Diana. “Afraid of what?”
And she came to Ruth and set an arm in comfort about her shoulders.
“Afraid that Mr. Wilding might reach the Duke in time to be destroyed with him,” her cousin answered. “Such a warning could but hasten on the blow.”
Lady Horton begged to be enlightened, and was filled with horror when—from Diana—enlightenment was hers. Her sympathies were all with the handsome Monmouth, for he was beautiful and should therefore be triumphant; poor Lady Horton never got beyond externals. That her nephew and Sir Rowland, whom she had esteemed, should be leagued in this dastardly undertaking against that lovely person horrified her beyond words. She withdrew soon afterwards, having warmly praised Ruth’s action in warning Mr. Wilding—unable to understand that it should be no part of Ruth’s design to save the Duke—and went to her room to pray for the preservation of the late King’s handsome son.
Left