They obeyed him promptly enough, but when outside Sir Rowland made bold to remind the captain that he was failing in his duty, and that he should make a point of informing the General of this anon. Wentworth bade him go to the devil, and so was rid of him.
Alone, inside that low-ceilinged chamber, stood Ruth and Wilding face to face. He advanced towards her, and with a shuddering sob she flung herself into his arms. Still, he mistrusted the emotion to which she was a prey—dreading lest it should have its root in pity. He patted her shoulder soothingly.
"Nay, nay, little child," he whispered in her ear. "Never weep for me that have not a tear for myself. What better resolution of the difficulties my folly has created?" For only answer she clung closer, her hands locked about his neck, her slender body shaken by her silent weeping. "Don't pity me," he besought her. "I am content it should be so. It is the amend I promised you. Waste no pity on me, Ruth."
She raised her face, her eyes wild and blurred with tears, looked up to his.
"It is not pity!" she cried. "I want you, Anthony! I love you, Anthony, Anthony!"
His face grew ashen. "It is true, then!" he asked her. "And what you said to-night was true! I thought you said it only to detain me."
"Oh, it is true, it is true!" she wailed.
He sighed; he disengaged a hand to stroke her face. "I am happy," he said, and strove to smile. "Had I lived, who knows...?"
"No, no, no," she interrupted him passionately, her arms tightening about his neck. He bent his head. Their lips met and clung. A knock fell upon the door. They started, and Wilding raised his hands gently to disengage her pinioning arms.
"I must go, sweet," he said.
"God help me!" she moaned, and clung to him still. "It is I who am killing you—I and your love for me. For it was to save me you rode hither to-night, never pausing to weigh your own deadly danger. Oh, I am punished for having listened to every voice but the voice of my own heart where you were concerned. Had I loved you earlier—had I owned it earlier..."
"It had still been too late," he said, more to comfort her than because he knew it to be so. "Be brave for my sake, Ruth. You can be brave, I know—so well. Listen, sweet. Your words have made me happy. Mar not this happiness of mine by sending me out in grief at your grief."
Her response to his prayer was brave, indeed. Through her tears came a faint smile to overspread her face so white and pitiful.
"We shall meet soon again," she said.
"Aye—think on that," he bade her, and pressed her to him. "Good-bye, sweet! God keep you till we meet!" he added, his voice infinitely tender.
"Mr. Wilding!" Wentworth's voice called him, and the captain thrust the door open a foot or so. "Mr. Wilding!"
"I am coming," he answered steadily. He kissed her again, and on that kiss of his she sank against him, and he felt her turn all limp. He raised his voice. "Richard!" he shouted wildly. "Richard!"
At the note of alarm in his voice, Wentworth flung wide the door and entered, Richard's ashen face showing over his shoulder. In her brother's care Wilding delivered his mercifully unconscious wife. "See to her, Dick," he said, and turned to go, mistrusting himself now. But he paused as he reached the door, Wentworth waxing more and more impatient at his elbow. He turned again.
"Dick," he said, "we might have been better friends. I would we had been. Let us part so at least," and he held out his hand, smiling.
Before so much gallantry Richard was conquered almost to the point of worship; a weak man himself, there was no virtue he could more admire than strength. He left Ruth in the high-backed chair in which Wilding's tender hands had placed her, and sprang forward, tears in his eyes. He wrung Wilding's hands in wordless passion.
"Be good to her, Dick," said Wilding, and went out with Wentworth.
He was marched down the street in the centre of that small party of musketeers of Dunbarton's regiment, his thoughts all behind him rather than ahead, a smile on his lips. He had conquered at the last. He thought of that other parting of theirs, nearly a month ago, on the road by Walford. Now, as then, circumstance was the fire that had melted her. But the crucible was no longer—as then of pity; it was the crucible of love.
And in that same crucible, too, Anthony Wilding's nature had undergone a transmutation; his love for Ruth had been purified of that base alloy of desire which had driven him into the unworthiness of making her his own at all costs; there was no carnal grossness in his present passion; it was pure as a religion—the love that takes no account of self, the love that makes for joyous and grateful martyrdom. And a joyous and grateful martyr would Anthony Wilding have been could he have thought that his death would bring her happiness or peace. In such a faith as that he had marched—or so he thought blithely to his end, and the smile on his lips had been less wistful than it was. Thinking of the agony in which he had left her, he almost came to wish—so pure was his love grown—that he had not conquered. The joy that at first was his was now all dashed. His death would cause her pain. His death! O God! It is an easy thing to be a martyr; but this was not martyrdom; having done what he had done he had not the right to die. The last vestige of the smile that he had worn faded from his tight-pressed lips tight-pressed as though to endure some physical suffering. His face greyed, and deep lines furrowed his brow. Thus he marched on, mechanically, amid his marching escort, through the murky, fog-laden night, taking no heed of the stir about them, for all Weston Zoyland was aroused by now.
Ahead of them, and over to the east, the firing blazed and crackled, volley upon volley, to tell them that already battle had been joined in earnest. Monmouth's surprise had aborted, and it passed through Wilding's mind that to a great extent he was to blame for this. But it gave him little care.
At least his indiscretion had served the purpose of rescuing Ruth from Lord Feversham's unclean clutches. For the rest, knowing that Monmouth's army by far outnumbered Feversham's, he had no doubt that the advantage must still lie with the Duke, in spite of Feversham's having been warned in the eleventh hour.
Louder grew the sounds of battle. Above the din of firing a swelling chorus rose upon the night, startling and weird in such a time and place. Monmouth's pious infantry went into action singing hymns, and Wentworth, impatient to be at his post, bade his men go faster.
The night was by now growing faintly luminous, and the deathly grey light of approaching dawn hung in the mists upon the moor. Objects grew visible in bulk at least, if not in form and shape, by the time the little company had reached the end of Weston village and come upon the deep mud dyke which had been Wentworth's objective—a ditch that communicated with the great rhine that served the King's forces so well on that night of Sedgemoor.
Within some twenty paces of this Wentworth called a halt, and would have had Wilding's hands pinioned behind him, and his eyes blindfolded, but that Wilding begged him this might not be done. Wentworth was, as we know, impatient; and between impatience and kindliness, perhaps, he acceded to Wilding's prayer.
He even hesitated a moment at the last. It was in his mind to speak some word of comfort to the doomed man. Then a sudden volley, more terrific than any that had preceded it, followed by hoarse cheering away to eastward, quickened his impatience. He bade the sergeant lead Mr. Wilding forward and stand him on the edge of the ditch. His object was that thus the man's body would be disposed of without waste of time. This Wilding realized, his soul rebelling against this fate which had come upon him in the very hour when he most desired to live. Mad thoughts of escape crossed his mind—of a leap across the dyke, and a wild dash through the fog. But the futility of it was too appalling. The musketeers were already blowing their matches. He would suffer the ignominy of being shot in the back, like a coward, if he made any such attempt.