Читать книгу Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London - Robert Neilson Stephens - Страница 6

On the February morning when he rose from bed in the coal-house attached to the haunted dwelling in Foster Lane, Captain Ravenshaw waited about the yard for Moll Frith to return from her excursion of the night. When she appeared, he gave her back the key to the gate, and borrowed two angels from her. Armed with these, he bade her repent of her sins, and hastened to Cheapside, turning eastward with the purpose of finding out how and where his new friend, the scholar, fared in the hands of the law.

Cheapside, which was in a double sense the Broadway of Elizabethan London, was already thronged with people going about their business, the shops and booths of the merchants being open, and the shopmen and 'prentices crying out their wares with the customary "What d'ye lack?" At the great conduit, the captain pushed his way through the crowd of jesting and quarrelling water-carriers who were filling their vessels, and washed his hands and face. Looking about for a means of drying himself, while the water dripped from his features, he espied a woman with a pitcher, to whom the uncouth water-carriers would not give place. The captain knocked several of them aside, gallantly took the woman by the hand, led her to the fountain, and enabled her to fill her pitcher. While she was doing this, he, with courteous gestures, took her kerchief from her head and dried himself therewith; after which he returned it with a bow so polite that, between her amazement and her sense of flattery, she could not find it in her to say a word against the proceeding.

Going on his way refreshed, the captain suddenly met Master Holyday, who looked as unconcerned as if he had never been near a prison in his life.

"What, lad, did not the watch take thee, then?"

"Yes, faith, and kept me all night in a cage, where I think I have turned foul inside with the smell of stale tobacco smoke. I am come but now from the justice's hall."

"Man, you've had a quick journey of it. By this light, you must have found money in those new clothes, and tickled the palm of a constable."

"No; the justice might have sent me back to the stinking hole, for all the money I had to give anybody. When he asked me my name, I bethought me to reply, 'Sir Ralph Holyday;' which was no more than my right at Cambridge, when I became a graduate there. But, seeing me in these clothes instead of in black, the justice thought the 'Sir' was of knighthood, not of scholarship. And so he said he could make nothing out of the watchmen's stories, which agreed not. I then addressed him respectfully in Latin; and, lest it might be seen that he did not understand me, he got rid of me forthwith."

"We'll drink his health – but not yet. While I have money to show, we'll bespeak lodgings, and so make sure of sleeping indoors, for a week o' nights, come what may. These clothes will get us curtseys and smiles from any hostess – except them that have already lodged me."

"Ay, we are fine enough above the waist, but our poor legs and feet are sorry company for our upper halves."

"Why, we must see to that when we meet our four asses again. Meanwhile our cloaks will cover us to the knees, and if we carry our heads high enough, nobody will dare look scornful at our feet. Remember, we are gallants while these clothes last; swaggering gallants, that give the wall to no man. And while we go seek lodgings, I'll tell thee how thou shalt earn thy share of these coxcombs' wastings. Hast ever travelled abroad?"

"No," said the scholar, falling into the captain's stride as the pair went westward.

"No matter. Thou hast read books of other countries, and heard travellers tell of foreign cities?"

"Yes; I've read and heard much; and remembered some of it."

"Then bear in mind, you are a great traveller. Your gentleman that hath not been abroad is counted a poor thing among gallants. Now these four silken gulls have never been out of England, and they look sheepish whene'er a travelled man talks of France or Italy in their company. They would give much to pass for travelled gallants; to talk of French fashions and Italian vices without exposing their inexperience. You shall instruct 'em, so they may fool others as you fool them. I'll broach the matter softly, and in such a way that they shall see the value of it. Thus, while you fill 'em up with tales of the foreign cities you have seen, we shall eat and drink at their cost. And so we shall hold 'em when they be tired of the swaggering lessons I mean to give 'em."

"Well, I will do my best. What I don't know, I will e'en supply by invention. My stomach will inspire me, I trust."

They took lodgings at the top of a house in St. Lawrence Lane, not far from its Cheapside end; and passed the time in walking about the streets till near noon, when they went to dinner at an ordinary where long tables were crowded with men of different degrees, who dined abundantly and cheaply. The two companions finally repaired to the Windmill tavern, where they had to wait an hour before their young gentlemen appeared.

The four were now sober, and showed hardly as much relish in meeting the captain as he might have wished. They cast somewhat rueful glances at the clothes they had given away in their vinous generosity, and which they had now replaced with other articles suitable to their quality. They manifested no eagerness for lessons in swaggering, and seemed at first to have forgotten any understanding they may have formed with the captain in regard thereto.

But Ravenshaw was prepared for this apathy. He took the risk of inviting the gentlemen to drink, and with the air of an accustomed host he bowed them into the room to which a tapster directed him. He trusted they would be of different mood when the time to pay the score should come.

A little drinking, and a few of the captain's tales, warmed them up to some enthusiasm for his society; and in an hour he had them urging him to proceed straightway to their further education in the art of roaring. After some reluctance and some unwillingness to believe that their proposal of the previous night had been serious, he was persuaded to consent. With the faintest grimace of triumph, for the eyes of Master Holyday alone, who smoked a pipe temperately by the fire, he rose and began by illustrating how your true bully should "take the wall" of any man about to pass him in the street.

The arras-hung partition of the room served as a street wall. The captain started at one end, Master Dauncey at the other. When the two met at the middle, the instructor enacted an elaborate scene of disputing the right to pass next the wall and so avoid the mud of the mid-street. He showed how to plant the feet, how to look fierce, how to finger the sword-hilt, what gestures to make; then what speeches to use, first of ironical courtesy, then of picturesque abuse, finally of daunting threat. Master Holyday, looking on from the fireplace, was amazed to see how much art could be displayed in what had ever seemed to him quite a simple matter. The captain went through every possible stage short of sword-thrusts; but there he stopped, saying that roaring ended where real fighting began.

"If your man has not given way by this time," said he, "and you think he may be your better with the weapons, the next thing is to come gracefully out of the quarrel, by some jest or other shift. This is what many swaggering boys do, out of fear. When I do it myself, 'tis because I would avoid bloodshed, or out of mercy to my antagonist. But 'tis, in any case, a most important thing in the art of swaggering; I shall give examples of it in my next lesson."

He then caused the gallants, in pairs, to go through such a scene as he had enacted. They made a foolish, perfunctory business of it at first, though he schooled them at every moment in attitude, gesture, or look, and supplied them with terms of revilement that made the scholar stare in admiration, and sanguinary threats before which a timid man might well tremble in his shoes.

It would not do to carry his pupils too far forward at a step; he must keep them dependent upon him as long as possible. Nor was it safe to tire them with repetitions. So he put an end to the lesson in good time; and then, to hold them for the rest of the day, he set forth the possibility of their learning to pass as men that had travelled abroad. Master Holyday, while modestly admitting the extent of his wanderings in foreign countries, showed some disinclination to the task of imparting the observations he had made.

"For, look ye," quoth he, "I once had a gossip whom I was wont to tell of things I had seen abroad. Like yourselves, he had never crossed the narrow seas; but by noting carefully my talk, he was able to make other people think he had travelled as far as I. There was one thing I had told him, which I had chanced to forget afterward. A dispute arose betwixt us one day, before company that knew not either of us well, touching certain customs in Venice. By my not mentioning the thing I had forgot, and by his parading it as a matter well known, which others in the company knew to be the case, I was made a laughing-stock, and he got reputation as a great traveller. And to this day he keeps that reputation, all at my expense."

This ingenious speech brought the desired insistence; and that very afternoon was begun, at Antwerp, an imaginary journey through the chief cities of Europe, in which were seen many things more astonishing than any foreign traveller had ever observed before.

It took several evenings to go through Flanders and France, and would have taken more, but that, after the gallants had satisfied their curiosity regarding Paris, they were in haste to arrive in Italy as soon as might be. Italy was then the great playground of English travellers; the fashions came from there, so did the inspiration to art and literature; the French got their cookery and their vices from Italy; the English imported some of the vices, but not the cookery.

While the scholar led his four charges from city to city by routes often unusual and sometimes impossible, Captain Ravenshaw conducted them stage by stage toward proficiency in swaggering. He showed them how differently to bully their betters, their equals, their inferiors; how to bully before company, how without witnesses, how in the presence of ladies; how to overbear in every situation, from a simple jostle in the street to a dispute about a woman; how to meet a contradiction in argument, how to give and receive every degree of the lie, how to intimidate a winner out of the stakes at a gaming-table; and finally how, when the opponent was not to be talked down, either to slip out of a fight or to carry one through.

The progress of the four would-be bullies in their fireside travels, and their swaggering education, was accompanied by further improvement in the dress of their instructors. At last the soldier and his friend were able to go clad in breeches, stockings, shoes, shirts, ruffs, and gloves, quite worthy of the cloaks, doublets, and hats they had previously received. The four young gentlemen were now eager to try their new accomplishments about the town. The captain postponed the test as long as he could; but finally their impatience was so peremptory that he had to consent.

Now the captain knew that if his four apes should make a failure of their first attempt at swaggering, his favour with them were swiftly ruined; conversely, a success would warrant his demanding a substantial reward in money. Thus far his only payment, and Master Holyday's likewise, had been in the shape of dinners, suppers, tobacco, and clothes. The two had been compelled, from time to time, to put off payment for their lodgings, and to temporise with their laundress; and now their hostess's face wore a more and more inquiring look each morning as they went out. Ravenshaw had, it was true, obtained a little coin in the card-playing and dicing, by means of which he had illustrated to his pupils the uses of roaring in those pastimes. But this amount, small enough, he decided to lay out in ensuring the desired success of his coxcombs in their first bullying exhibition.

He therefore made a sudden and secret excursion to the suburbs beyond Newgate. After searching the lower taverns and ale-houses about Holborn and Smithfield, he found, in a cookshop in Pye Corner, a man with whom he forthwith entered into negotiation. This man was a burly, middle-aged fellow, with a broken nose, a scarred cheek, a sullen attitude, and a husky voice. While he talked, he frequently spat in the rushes that covered the floor; and now and again he would finish a remark with the words, added without the least sense, "And that's the hell of it." He wore a dirty leather jerkin over other clothes, and his attire was little better than Ravenshaw's had been before his change of fortune.

After some talk, Captain Ravenshaw handed over some money to this man, promised a further sum upon the issue of the business, received the bravo's assurance that all should go well, and hastened back alone to meet his companions at the sign of the Windmill.

It was evening when the party sallied forth, the four coxcombs as keen for riot as ever was a colt for kicking up heels in a field. They would have barred the street against the first comers, or sought a brawl in the first tavern, but that Ravenshaw bade them save their mettle for adversaries worthy of their schooling.