"I could not," said Mr. Wilding, "deny an answer to a question set so courteously." He looked up into Blake's flushed and scowling face with the sweetest and most innocent of smiles. "You'll no doubt disagree with me," said he, "but I love to meet a man halfway. Your hat, sir, is as white as virgin snow.
Blake's slow wits were disconcerted for a moment. Then he smiled viciously. "You mistake, Mr. Wilding," said he. "My hat is black."Mr. Wilding looked more attentively at the object in dispute. He was in a trifling mood, and the stupidity of this runagate debtor afforded him opportunities to indulge it. "Why, true," said he, "now that Icome to look, I perceive that it is indeed black."And again was Sir Rowland disconcerted. Still he pursued the lesson he had taught himself.
"You are mistaken again," said he, "that hat is green.""Indeed?" quoth Mr. Wilding, like one surprised and he turned to Trenchard, who was enjoying himself. "What is your own opinion of it, Nick?"Thus appealed to, Trenchard's reply was prompt. "Why, since you ask me," said he, "my opinion is that it's a noisome thing not meet for a gentleman's table." And he took it up, and threw it through the window.
Sir Rowland was entirely put out of countenance. Here was a deliberate shifting of the quarrel he had come to pick, which left him all at sea.
It was his duty to himself to take offence at Mr. Trenchard's action.
But that was not the business on which he had come. He became angry.
"Blister me!" he cried. "Must I sweep the cloth from the table before you'll understand me?""If you were to do anything so unmannerly I should have you flung out of the house," said Mr. Wilding, "and it would distress me so to treat a person of your station and quality. The hat shall serve your purpose, although Mr. Trenchard's concern for my table has removed it. Our memories will supply its absence. What colour did you say it was?""I said it was green," answered Blake, quite ready to keep to the point.
"Nay, I am sure you were wrong," said Wilding with a grave air.
"Although I admit that since it is your own hat, you should be the best judge of its colour, I am, nevertheless, of opinion that it is black.""And if I were to say that it is white?" asked Blake, feeling mighty ridiculous.
"Why, in that case you would be confirming my first impression of it,"answered Wilding, and Trenchard let fly a burst of laughter at sight of the baronet"s furious and bewildered countenance. "And since we are agreed on that," continued Mr. Wilding, imperturbable, "I hope you'll join us at supper.""I'll be damned," roared Blake, "if ever I sit at table of yours, sir.""Ah!" said Mr. Wilding regretfully. "Now you become offensive.""I mean to be," said Blake.
"You astonish me!"
"You lie! I don't," Sir Rowland answered him in triumph. He had got it out at last.
Mr. Wilding sat back in his chair, and looked at him, his face inexpressibly shocked.
"Will you of your own accord deprive us of your company, Sir Rowland,"he wondered, "or shall Mr. Trenchard throw you after your hat?""Do you mean.. ." gasped the other, "that you'll ask no satisfaction of me?""Not so. Mr. Trenchard shall wait upon your friends to-morrow, and Ihope you'll afford us then as felicitous entertainment as you do now."Sir Rowland snorted, and, turning on his heel, made for the door.
"Give you a good night, Sir Rowland," Mr. Wilding called after him.
"Walters, you rascal, light Sir Rowland to the door."Poor Blake went home deeply vexed; but it was no more than the beginning of his humiliation at Mr. Wilding's hands - for what can be more humiliating to a quarrel - seeking man than to have his enemy refuse to treat him seriously? He and Mr. Wilding met next morning, and before noon the tale of it had run through Bridgwater that Wild Wilding was at his tricks again. It made a pretty story how twice he had disarmed and each time spared the London beau, who still insisted - each time more furiously -upon renewing the encounter, till Mr. Wilding had been forced to run him through the sword-arm and thus put him out of all case of continuing. It was a story that heaped ridicule upon Sir Rowland and did credit to Mr. Wilding.
Richard heard it, and trembled, enraged and impotent. Ruth heard it, and was stirred despite herself to a feeling of gratitude towards Wilding for the patience and toleration he had displayed.
There for a while the matter rested, and the days passed slowly. But Sir Rowland's nature - mean at bottom - was spurred to find him some other way of wiping out the score that lay `twixt him and Mr. Wilding, a score mightily increased by the shame that Mr. Wilding had put upon him in that encounter from which - whatever the issue - he had looked to cull great credit in Ruth's eyes.
He had been thinking constantly of the incautious words that Richard had let fall, thinking of them in conjunction with the startling rumours that were now the talk of the whole countryside. He laid two and two together, and the four he found them make afforded him some hope. Then he realized - as he might have realized before had he been shrewder -that Richard's mood was one that made him ripe for any villainy. He thought that he was much in error if a treachery existed so black that Richard would quail before it, if it but afforded him the means of ridding himself and the world of Mr. Wilding. He was considering how best to approach the subject, when it happened that one night when Richard sat at play with him in his own lodging, the boy grew talkative through excess of wine. It happened naturally enough that Richard sought an ally in Blake, just as Blake sought an ally in Richard.
Indeed, their fortunes - so far as Ruth was concerned - were bound up together. The baronet saw that Richard, half-fuddled, was ripe for any confidences that might aim at the destruction of his enemy. He questioned him adroitly, and drew from him the story of the rising that was being planned, and of the share that Mr. Wilding - one of the Duke of Monmouth's chief movement-men - bore in the business that was toward.
When, towards midnight, Richard Westmacott went home, he left in Sir Rowland's hands an instrument which the latter accounted potential not only for the destruction of Anthony Wilding, but perhaps also for laying the foundations to the building of his own fortunes anew.
