by Howard Pyle
“But this insolence of thine, real or false, seems not to have made thy fortune.”
“Nay, but it has made my poverty the less contemptible. Lay not my undoing to it. When the war lasted, I fared well enough, as long as I kept the captainship my friend had got me ere the woman played me false. A score of things have happened to bring me to this pass. My braggadocio, ofttimes enforced with deeds, hath neither helped nor hindered my downfall; it hath stood me in good stead in fair times and foul. Pish, man, but for my reputation, and the fear of my enmity or violence, could I have run up such scores at taverns as I have done, being penniless? How often have I roared dicing fools, and card-playing asses, out of the stakes when they had fairly won ’em? Could any but a man who has made himself feared do such things, and keep out of Newgate or at least the Counter i’ the Poultry here?”
“Why, is not that rank robbery, sir?”
“Yes, sir, and rank filling of my empty stomach. Tut, scholar, you have been hungry yourself; roofless, too. Be so as oft as I have been, and with as small chance of mending matters, and I’ll give a cracked three farthings for what virtue is left in you. Boy, boy, hast thou yet to learn what a troublesome comrade thy belly is, in time of poverty? What a leader into temptation? Am I, who was once a gentleman, a rascal as well as a brawler? Yes, I am a rascal. So be it; and the more beholden I to my rascality when it find me a dinner, or a warm place to sleep o’ nights. Would it might serve us now. Who are these a-coming?”
Some dark figures were approaching from up the Old Jewry, attended by two fellows bearing links, for the moonlight was not to be relied upon. The figures came arm in arm, at a blithe but unsteady gait, swaying and plunging. Presently the captain recognised the gentlemen who had been his afternoon companions at the sign of the Windmill. But Master Vallance was not with them, having doubtless taken lodging at one of the inns near the tavern. The sparks, jubilant with their wine, no sooner made out the captain’s form than they hailed him heartily.
“What, old war boy!” cried Master Maylands, a spruce and bold young exquisite. “Well met, well met! Hey, gentles, we’ll make a night on’t. Captain, you shall captain us, captain!”
“Ay, you shall captain us about the town,” put in Master Hawes, who spoke shrilly, and with a lisp, for which he would have been admired had it been affected, but for which he was often ridiculed because it was natural. “You shall teach us to roar as loud as you do. What say you, gallants? Shall we go to school to him to learn roaring? He is the master swaggerer of all that ever swaggered.”
The proposal was received with noisy approval, the roysterers gathering around the captain where he sat, and grasping him by the sleeves to draw him along with them.
“Softly, gentlemen, softly,” said the captain. “Ye seem of a mind here. But do you consider? There is much I might impart, in the practice of swaggering. Would you in good sooth have me for a tutor?”
There was a chorus of affirmative protestation.
The captain thought it politic to urge a scruple.
“But bethink ye,” quoth he, “to be a true swaggerer is no child’s play. And you are of delicate rearing, all; meant to play lutes in ladies’ chambers; court buds, gallants.”
“Why, then,” said Maylands, “we shall be gallants and swaggerers, too; an you make swaggerers of us, we will make a gallant of you, will we not, boys?”
“Nay,” replied Ravenshaw, “I have been a gallant in my time, and need but the clothes to be one again; and so does my friend here, who is a gentleman and a scholar, though out of favour with fortune. Now there be many tricks in the swaggering trade; the choice of oaths is alone a subtle study, and that is but one branch of many. I’ll not be any man’s schoolmaster for nothing.”
“Faith, man, who asks it?” cried Master Maylands. “We’ll pay you. For an earnest, take my cloak; my doublet is thick.” He flung the rich broadcloth garment over the captain’s uncloaked shoulders. “You need but the clothes to be a gallant again? ‘Fore God, I believe it! Tom Hawes, I’ve cloaked him; you doublet him. Barter your doublet for his jerkin; your cloak will hide it for the night; you’ve a score of doublets at home.”
Master Maylands, in his zeal, fell upon the unobjecting Hawes, and in a trice had helped to effect the transfer, the captain feigning a helpless compliance in the hands of his insistent benefactors. It occurred to another of the youths, Master Clarington, to exchange his jewelled German cap of velvet for Ravenshaw’s ragged felt hat; whereupon Master Dauncey, not to be outdone, would have had his breeches untrussed by his link-boy, to bestow upon the captain, but that the captain himself interposed on the score of the cold weather.
“But I’ll take it as kindly of you,” said Ravenshaw, “if you should have a cloak for my scholar friend. How say you, Master Holyday? Thou’lt be one of us? Thou’lt be a swaggering gallant, too?”
Master Holyday, inwardly thanking his stars for the benevolent impulse which had made him share the fowl, and so elicit this gratitude, would have agreed to anything under the moon (except to woo a woman) for the sake of warmer clothes.
“Yes, sir,” said he, with his wonted studious gravity of manner; “if these gentlemen will be so gracious.”
The gentlemen were readily so gracious. After a few rapid exchanges, which they treated as a great piece of mirth, they beheld the scholar also cloaked and richly doubleted and hatted. He wore his fine garments with a greater sense of their comfort than of his improved appearance, yet with a somewhat pleasant scholastic grace.
The captain strutted a little way down the street, to enjoy the effect of his new cloak; but, as he stepped into Cheapside, the moon was clouded, and he could no longer see the garment tailing out finely over his sword behind. A distant sound of plodding feet made him look westward in Cheapside, and he saw a few dim lanterns approaching from afar.
“Lads, the watch is coming,” said he. “Shall we tarry here, and be challenged for night-walkers?”
“Marry,” quoth Master Maylands, leaping forward to the captain’s side, “we shall take our first lesson in swaggering now; we shall beat the watch.”
“As good a piece of swaggering gallantry as any,” said the captain. “Come, my hearts!”
And he led the way along Cheapside toward the approaching watchmen.
CHAPTER II.
DISTURBERS OF THE NIGHT.
“I will have the wench.”
“If you can get her.” — The Coxcomb.
The captain gave instructions, as he and his pupils strode forward. The two boys with the lights were left behind to take shelter in a porch, so that the peace-breakers might advance in the greater darkness. It was enough for their purpose that they had the lanterns of the watch to guide them.
The watchmen came trudging on in ranks of two. Presently there could be heard, from somewhere among them, a voice of lamentation, protest, and pleading, with a sound of one stumbling against sundry ill-set paving-stones of the street.
“They have a prisoner,” said the captain to his followers. “We’ll make a rescue of this. Remember, lads, no swords to be used on these dotards; but do as I’ve told ye.”
In another moment, and just when the watchmen seemed about to halt for consideration, but before their leader had made up his mind to cry, “Stand!” the captain shouted, “Now, boys, now; a rescue! a rescue!” and the roysterers rushed forward with a chorus of whoops.
The watch, composed for the most part of old men, had scarce time to huddle into a compact form when the gallants were upon them. The assailants, keeping up their shouting, made to seize the watchmen’s bills, with which to belabour them about their heads and shoulders. One or two were successful in this; but others found their intended victims too quick, and were themselves the recipients of blows. These unfortunate ones, bearing in mind the captain’s directions, essayed to snatch away lanterns, and to retaliate upon the watchmen’s skulls; and whoever failed in this, rushed to close quarters, grasped an opponent’s beard, and hung on with all weight a
nd strength.
The captain’s operations were directed against the pair who had immediate charge of the prisoner. Possessing himself of the bill of one, whom, by the same act, he caused to lose balance and topple over, he obtained the other’s voluntary retreat by a gentle poke in the paunch. The prisoner himself proved to be a man of years, and of port; he had a fat, innocent face, and he showed, by his dress and every other sign that became visible when the captain held up a lantern before him, to be a gentleman. What such a guileless, well-fed old person could have done to fall afoul of the night-watch, Captain Ravenshaw could not imagine. For the time, the old person’s astonishment and relief at being set free were too great to permit his speaking.
Meanwhile, Master Holyday, having been the last to come up, found the melée so suddenly precipitated, and so complete without his intrusion, that he stood back looking for a convenient place and time for him to plunge into it. But it seemed impossible for him to penetrate the edge of the scuffle, or to connect himself with it in any effective way. So he hung upon the skirts; until at last two of the watchmen, being simultaneously minded for flight, bore down upon him from out of the hurly-burly. He instinctively threw out his arms to stay their going; whereupon he found himself grappled with on either side, and from that instant he had so much to do himself that he lost all observation of the main conflict. Nor had the other fighters any knowledge of this side matter. But their own sport was over ere their wind was out; the watchmen, being mainly of shorter breath and greater prudence than their antagonists, soon followed the example of flight; and the gallants, soberer by sundry aches, smarts, and bruises, were left masters of the field. None of the watch was too much battered to be able to scamper off toward the Poultry.
“A piece of good luck, sir,” began Captain Ravenshaw, to the released prisoner, around whom the gallants assembled while they compared knocks and trophies. “You had been scurvily lodged this night, else.”
“Sirs, I thank ye,” replied the old gentleman, finding at last his voice, though it was the mildest of voices at best. He was still shaky from having been so recently in great fright; but he gathered force as his gratitude grew with his clearer sense of escape.
“God wot, I am much beholden to ye. You know not what you have saved me from.”
“To say truth, a lousy hole behind an iron grating were no pleasant place for one of your quality,” said Ravenshaw.
“Oh, ’tis not that so much, though ‘twere bad enough,” said the gentleman, with a shudder. “’Tis the lifetime of blame that would have followed when my wife had heard of it. You must know, sirs, I am a country gentleman, and I am not known to be in London; my detention would be noised about, and when it reached my wife’s ears— ‘sfoot, sirs, I am for ever your debtor in thankfulness!” And he looked his meaning most fervently.
“Why did the watch take you up?” inquired the captain.
“Why, for nothing but being abroad in the streets. The plaguey rascals said I was a night-walker, and that I behaved suspiciously. I did nothing but stand and wait at the Standard yonder, for one I had agreed to meet; but when I saw the watch coming I stepped back, to be out of their lantern-light. This stepping back, they said, proved I was a rogue; and so they clapped hands on me, and fetched me along. But now I bethink me, sirs: the person I was to meet — what will she do an she find me not at the place?” The old gentleman showed a reawakened distress, and, turning toward the direction whence the watch had brought him, looked wistfully and yet reluctantly into the darkness.
“Oho! She!” quoth the captain. “No wonder your wife—”
“Nay, think no harm, I beg. Nay, nay, good sirs! Sure, ’tis an evil-thinking world. Well, I must e’en bid ye good night, and leave ye my best thanks. Would I might some day repay you this courtesy. My name, sirs — but no, an ye’ll pardon me, I durst not; the very stones might hear it, and report I was in London. But if I might know—”
“Surely. We have no wives in the country, that we must keep our doings from, have we, boys? And we are free of the streets of London, aren’t we, boys? My name, sir, is Ravenshaw — Captain Ravenshaw; and this gentleman—”
He was about to introduce his companions by the names of great persons of the court, when, casting his eyes over the group for the first time since the link-boys had come up with their torches, he was suddenly otherwise concerned.
“Why, where’s Master Holyday? Where the devil’s our scholar?”
The gallants looked from one to another, and then peered into the surrounding darkness, but saw no one; nor came any answer to the captain’s shout, “What ho, Holyday! Hollo, hollo!”
“An’t please you,” spoke up one of the link-boys, “while we waited yonder, the watchmen ran past us; and methought two of them dragged a man along between them; but ’twas so dark, and they went so fast—”
“Marry, that’s how the wind lies,” cried the captain. “Gallants, here’s more business of a roaring nature. A rescue! Come, the hunt is up! To the cage, boys! We may catch ’em on the way.”
Without more ado, Ravenshaw led his followers, link-boys and all, on a run toward the Poultry, leaving the grateful old gentleman in the darkness and to his own devices.
They hastened to the night-watch prison, but overtook no one on the way; it was clear that the watchmen had made themselves and their prisoner safe behind doors. An attack on the prison would have been a more serious business than the captain could see any profit in. So, abandoning the luckless scholar to the course of the law, the night-disturbers made their way back to Cheapside, wondering what riotous business they might be about next.
“What asses are these!” thought the captain. “They have warm beds to go to, yet they rather wear out their soles upon the streets in search of trouble. Well, it helps me pass the night, and I am every way the gainer by it; so if puppies must needs learn to play the lion, may they have no worse teacher.”
When they came to the Standard, that ancient stone structure rising in the middle of the street, they walked around it to see if the old gentleman was there; but the place was deserted.
“Here were a matter to wager upon, now,” observed the captain: “Whether he met his mistress after all and bore her away, or whether he found her not and went wisely to bed.”
A few steps farther brought the strollers opposite the mouth of Bread Street. The sound of men’s voices came from within this narrow thoroughfare.
“Marry, here be other fellows abroad,” quoth the captain. “How if we should ‘light upon occasion for a brawl? Then we should see if we could put them down with big words. Come, lads.”
They turned into the narrow street and proceeded toward a group whose four or five dark figures were indistinctly marked in the flickering glare of a single torch. This group appeared to be circled about a closed doorway opposite All-hallows Church, at the farther corner of Watling Street, in which doorway stood the object of its attention.
“Some drunken drab o’ the streets, belike,” said the captain, in a low voice, to his followers. “We’ll feign to know her, and we’ll call ourselves her friends; that will put us on brawling terms with those gentlemen. They are gallants, sure, by their cloaks and feathers.”
The gentlemen were, it seemed, too disdainful of harm to interrupt their mirth by looking to see who came toward them. The heartless amusement on their faces, the tormenting tone of the jesting words they spoke, gave an impression somewhat like that of a pack of dogs surrounding a helpless animal which they dare not attack, but which they entertain themselves by teasing.
The captain stepped unchallenged into the little circle, and looked at the person shrinking in the doorway, who was quite visible in the torchlight.
“‘Slight!” quoth the captain. “This is no trull; ’tis a young gentlewoman.”
His surprise was so great as to make him for the moment forget the plan he had formed of precipitating a quarrel. The young gentlewoman looked very young indeed, and very gentle, being of a slight figure, and h
aving a delicate face. She leaned close against the door, at which she had, as it seemed, put herself at bay. Her face, still wet with tears, retained something of the distortion of weeping, but was nevertheless charming. Her eyes, yet moist, were like violets on which rain had fallen. Her lips had not ceased to quiver with the emotion which had started her tears. Her hair, which was of a light brown, was in some disorder, partly from the wind; for the hood of the brown cloak she wore had been pulled back. It might easily be guessed who had pulled it, for the gentleman who stood nearest her, clad in velvet, and by whose behaviour the others seemed to be guided, held in his hand a little black mask, which he must have plucked from the girl’s face.
This gentleman was tall, nobly formed, and of a magnificent appearance. His features were ruddy, bold, and cut in straight lines. He wore silken black moustaches, and a small black beard trimmed to two points.
At the captain’s words, this gentleman looked around, took full note of the speaker in a brief glance, and scarce dropping his smile, — a smile careless and serene, of heartless humour, — said, calmly: