CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH I BEGIN TO EARN MY LIVING
Take a town for all in all, in its sadness and pleasure, the shows thatpass through it, the proclamations of kings, the tolling of the greatbell, marshallings of men-at-arms and sermons of clerks; whatever it bedistracts or engages it, I say you will find, take all in all, full theten twelfths of a town's business to lie in the mere getting of wealth.
And in the exercise of this its proper office, I think that government,whether good or bad, interfereth less than is supposed; for at thebest, that is, when the merchants and retailers be let alone (as wouldto Heaven some great Councillors I could name did understand the matterso), 'tis then that the interchange of goods and money is most readilyand happily effected; but at the worst, that is, when some untowardimposition or restriction is laid upon the trade of a city, it resultsnot that men labour any the less at their buying and selling, but thattheir lawful and expected profits be diverted, in part, into othermen's pockets. Which for all it is wrong enough, yet it makes not, Iam bold to say, one single vessel to go lacking her cargo, nor onemerchant to break upon Change. So a fig for Westminster! this way orthat, trade holds; and men bend their thoughts thereto, howe'er thewind blow.
Now, I am no philosopher (my father having exhausted the philosophy ofour family), yet no man may live in London (as I had now done, forabove three months) but certain considerations must needs thrustthemselves upon him, and though he be no great thinker I suppose thateverybody knows when he is hungry; and being so, goes the best way hecan to remedy that daily disease.
And so it came to pass that, greatly as I detested to confine myself tothe weary commerce of trade, I nevertheless did so, and for the plainreason that I could not help myself, having no money left, and notbeing willing to remain any longer with the good folk on the Bridge, attheir charges. How I was received by Mr. Edward Osborne into hiscounting-house I will tell later, but received I was, and there stroveto acquit myself honestly, so that within about a month (I think) Icould cast up the moneys of his great Day Book with but a two-threeerrors to each sum total; the which, considering my inexperience, Iheld to be not amiss.
It was while I was thus employed in the narrow wainscoted business roomwhere Mr. Osborne did the most of his business, in Chequer Lane offDowgate, it was then, I say, that I came to perceive the magnitude andstaggering quality of the City's negotiation and traffick; so that Icame near to rehearsing the Bridge warden's eulogy upon the Londonmerchants, as also his expressed contempt for all such dignities as didnot issue from the fount of trade. Nay, I went further, for neglectingthe current rumours and plain news even, that all stood not well withthe State, I applied myself to my accompts and disbursements, deridingMr. Secretary Cecil and the Queen's Council for a parcel of busybodies,and reducing the policy of England to the compass of a balance sheet.
And yet, had I had the wit to know it, we were at that season come intoa crisis where bills of lading availed little, and the petty laws ofinvection and navigation seemed like to be rudely set aside for thesterner laws of conquest and foreign tyranny. Already, even, andbefore I had left the Combe, there had been that business of thesigning of the National Bond and the imprisoning of many that favouredthe overthrow of Her Majesty; the which had been followed and confirmedby such other acts and precautions as imported no easy continuance inour old way, but rather the sure entering into that narrow passage andrace of fortune, whence the outlet is to so infinite and clouded a sea,as a people's help therein lieth solely in God and their own clearcourage. Queen Mary of Scotland was yet alive, poor scheming desperatewoman! and lay a guarded danger in the land. The Dutch States,moreover, that ought to have been our firm ally, we had done our bestto alienate and set at variance against us, who should have helped themat all adventures; we being of one Faith together, and hating alike theencroaching cruelties of Spain. To these considerations there wasadded the fear of treason in our midst, and the increasing evidence ofthe Jesuits' part therein, which the Queen's advisers sought upon alloccasions to discover and trample out; as indeed I had myself beenwitness to, in that unhappy self-murder of Jacques de Courcy in thesecret dark mansion of Petty Wales.
It had been a little subsequent upon that dreadful affair, and when thesoldiers had left us, that I said to Idonia--
"In Heaven's name, mistress, what is this house used for then?" For Iwas all wan and trembling with that sight of sudden death, else Ishould not have spoken so harshly to the girl, who was in like casewith myself, and clung to me piteously for comfort. But at my wordsshe seemed to recover herself, and loosing her arms from my neck, shecried--
"And what have I to do with other men's takings, that you question methus? If aught displease you, so! I cannot better it. And ... and... oh, Mr. Denis, what a face of pity did he show!"--she covered hereyes as she spoke--"and when he fell ... Oh, these things are notrightly done; they stifle me. They wrench my faith. They leave outGod."
I did what I could, but it was with her own strength she must fightdown the terror, I knew, and so after awhile desisted. When she hadher full reason again she thanked me that I had not confused her withmany words.
"For I know not to what excess I should have run otherwise," she said."You have a quiet spirit, and are no talker, Master Denis. But therebe some things I cannot bear to see, and one is the sight of a singleman, even a malefactor, so overcome and brought to his death.... Butnow," assuming a resolute cheerfulness she added, "now we must converseawhile upon your own affairs, before you go. For look you, sir, I havenamed you already of Mr. Osborne's service, and must make it good.Else that stark-limbed Captain may hear of it, and discovering we lied,make us smart for it."
"But how shall I prevail with Mr. Osborne to take me into his service,"said I, "who know not an invoice from a State paper?"
"Everything hath a beginning," replied Idonia, "and if Rome was notbuilded in a day, it is not likely we shall make an accountant of youpresently."
"No, nor in less time than it took to build Rome in, I doubt," quoth I,pretty rueful. "But tell me how came yourself to be so proficient inthat study of cyphering?" For indeed the thought had puzzled me not alittle.
"By the good offices of one I purpose shall now assist you," saidIdonia; and told me that it was a certain scrivener named Enos Procterthat had lived a great while in Genoa, where they greatly affect theputting of their negotiations into ledger-books and have well-nighperfected that invention.
"This Procter returning home after many years," she proceeded,"suffered shipwreck, and was cast away upon the coast of Spain, whencehe was fortunate to escape half dead, and with the loss of all hisgoods, saving only that monstrous ledger-book, which he would by nomeans relinquish. He then coming to land here, at the Galley Quay,besought us to harbour him and give him food and dry clothing, forwhich he offered to pay us out of his wages when he was able. This wedid, and he, being a man of his word, repaid all that he owed, andmore, for he taught me something of his reckoning in cypher, and of thedistributing of every item of receipt or payment, this side and that ofan accompt, according to the practice of the great merchants of Genoa."
And thus it came about that the day following Idonia did as she hadpromised, and wrought so with Mr. Enos Procter that I was immediatelytaken into his employment upon my faithful promise to serve the lawfuloccasions of the Governor and Merchants of the Turkey Company, and(implicitly) those of Mr. Enos Procter, their principal clerk andaccountant.
With this worthy gentleman I spent, as was natural, the greatest partof my time, and under his dark sidelong eye I managed my untrainedquill. He was a spare small man of an indomitable quick-silver nature,that by long sojourning in the South, had become half Italian. When heworked (which was always) he had a habit of warping his face into themost diabolical grin, while he rolled upon his stool, back and forward,with the motion of one rowing in a boat, muttering of a thousandforeign curses with which was oddly mingled the recital of theparticular matter he had in hand. Thus, "C
orpo di Baccho," would hecry, "these bills mature not until the fifteenth day of June, and thereis scarce ... a million devils! Master Cleeve, had I formed my sevensthat gait in Genoa I had been sent to the galleys for a felon.... OfCartagena, say you? There be none but knaves there, and none but foolsto trust them. 'Tis an overdue reckoning, with thirty-five, forty,forty-five thousand ducats, eh! forty-six thousand, Signor, DonCherubin of Cartagena, whom the Devil disport!"
But whatever the frailties of Mr. Procter, he was a kind and forbearingtutor, and even succeeded in imparting to me also some portion of hisown extravagant affection for his great leather-bound books of account;for he loved them so, as no man ever perceived more delicate beautiesin his mistress than this fever-hot scrivener did in the niceadjustment of Debit to Credit; with all the entries, cross entries,postings and balancings (to use his own crabbed language) that went toit. He was, in sooth, a very Clerk-Errant, that ran up and down apaper world, detecting errors, righting wrongs, spitting some miscreantdiscount on his lance of goose-quill, or tearing the cloak from somedubious monster of exchange. I could not but admire him, and the wayin which he regarded all things as mere matter for bookkeeping.
"They talk of their philosophies," he would say, "but what do they cometo more than this, and what ethick goes beyond this: that every righthath a duty corresponding, and every fault its due reward? Ay, is itso? and what do we poor scribes, but set down each accident of ourtrading first on the left side and after on the right side, the one tocountervail the other, and all at the end to appear justly suspended inthe balance? We have no preferences, we accountants, we neitherapplaud nor condemn, but evenly, and with a cold impartiality, set downour good and bad, our profits and losses, our receipts anddisbursements, first as they affect ourselves and our honourableCompany, and after as they affect our neighbour. For consider," hewould proceed, leaping about on his stool, with the excitement that adefence of his art always engendered, "consider this very item of thesilk bales, upon which my pen chances at this moment to rest--you haveit here to the credit of Mr. Andrea of Naples, seventy-nine pounds inhis tale of goods sold to this house. But is the matter so disposedof? I trow not. For turn me to the accompt of goods purchased duringthis year of our Redemption, and what have you? Seventy-nine poundsupon the debtor. Philosophy, boy! There is nought beyond that, I say,nor, for conciseness of statement, aught to equal it. Mr. Andrea'srights become, transposed, our duties; and for the silk bales you wotof, they be a load of debt to us, to account for to our masters, andlikewise a strengthening of the credit of this honest Neapolitan as anyman may read.
"Notwithstanding, there be some," said he in conclusion, with a sigh,"and they divines of the Church, that call in question the avarice andhard-dealing of us that live by barter and the negotiation ofmerchandize! Yet where will you find (to ask but this one question,Mr. Denis), where do you find written more clearly than in theseledger-books of ours, that oft-disguised truth that what we own we doalso and necessarily owe?"
In such mingling of high discourse and plain work, then, I continuedwith Mr. Procter a great while, in the dusty and ill-lightedcounting-house in Chequer Lane; earning my small wages, and upon thewhole not ill content with the changed life I now led, for all 'twas sofar removed from the course I had planned, now many months past, buthad already half forgotten. Sometimes my duties would take me to thewharves where a great barque or brigantine would be lying, about toleave upon our Company's business for Turkey or Barbary; or else someother vessel would be returning thence to London Pool, whither Irepaired to the captain and supercargo to receive their schedules andsealed papers. It was this last employment I especially delighted in,and indeed I can scarce conceive any pleasure greater than I foundgoing very early in the morning to one of the quays upon the River oras far as to Wapping Stairs, where I would watch the great ship slowlycoming up upon the tide, between the misted grey banks and dim roofs ofLimehouse and Rotherhithe; and could hear the rattle of the chains, andthe joyful cries of the mariners that were now, after their perilousand long voyage, safely arrived at home. Then would I take boat androw out into the stream, hailing the master in the Company's name, whopresently would let down a ladder by which I climbed aloft upon thedeck, where the crew would gather round to hear news and to tell it;which telling of theirs I chiefly delighted in: the thousand adventuresthey had had, and the accounts of strange lands and mysterious richcities beyond the seas. Thereafter, when the ship was berthed and ourbusiness settled, I would bear off the master and the other officers toMr. Osborne, to be made welcome, when all was told o'er again, thoughwith more observance paid to such matters as affected profit and lossthan formerly I had heard the tale. The black little accountant washad in too, at such times, into Mr. Osborne's privy room, where we allsat round a great table, with Mr. Osborne at one end of it, veryhandsome and stately in his starched ruff and suit of guarded velvet;and the other principal persons of the Company about him on eitherside, to listen to what the shipmen related, as I have said.
Then, if the adventure had been profitably concluded (as sometimes ithad not, though generally there was a fair sum cleared), oftentimeswould the Governor invite us to supper with him, and me with the rest,I know not wherefore, save it were that Master Procter had praised meto him for my diligence in his service. And so we passed many a merryevening.
Yet this so brief summary of that time doth not cover all, nor perhapsthe greater part, since it leaves out my thoughts and hopes, which, allsaid, is more of a man's life than all the other; and by so much themore is noteworthy. And these thoughts of mine, particularly when Ilay quiet in bed in my little chamber on the Bridge, were concernedabout an infinite number of matters I had no opportunity to consider inthe hurry and press of the day. So, I would think of my father, hisevil estate, and the increasing pain he suffered, for I had latelyreceived news of him by the hand of Simon Powell, who, honest lad, hadbound himself to a smith of Tolland in order to be near his old masterand comfort him. Of Idonia, too, you will guess I thought much, andthe more that my business hindered our often meeting, though sometimesI saw her when I went early in the morning to meet my ships; for laterin the day she begged me not to come to the house, and greatly thoughthis condition misliked me, I accepted it to please her. But, to beopen, it was this consideration of all I dwelt upon which most held mein suspense, so that many a night I have slept scarce a wink, admiringwhat the secret were that compassed Idonia about, and the strangenessthat clouded all her affairs.
"What is it goes on in that great still house?" I cried an hundredtimes, and would con over with myself the half hints I had alreadyreceived; as of that swaggering Malpas, his attempted entrance; of theconcealed Jesuit; of the way of communication between the part of thehouse Idonia lived in and the den of thieves where I had encounteredwith Andrew Plat. Then I would fall into a muse, only to be awakenedon the sudden by the recollection of Guido Malpas, with his lean andcrafty face pressed close against the window of the room I had sat inwith Nelson and the Queen's yeoman, or by that older memory of my uncleBotolph who, I was assured, was also Skene the attorney. Why, by howgreat a rout of shadows was I compassed! and what a deal of infamy layready to be discovered upon the lightest hazard or unconsidered word!
Nay, had not my love for Mistress Avenon so wholly possessed me, Idoubt I should have found in any the least strict review of herbehaviour something covert, and diffident; as indeed she had alreadyimparted from time to time much that a man more suspicious than I mighthave seized upon to her disadvantage. But such motes as those troubledme not, or rather troubled not the passion of love I cherished for her;though, for the rest, I infinitely desired her removal fromcircumstances that I could not but fear to be every way perilous.
Now it befell one day, in the early summer, that all London wasawakened with the news that the _Primrose_, Captain Foster, was comingup the Thames with the Governor of Biscay aboard, a prisoner. Soadmirable tidings had not often of late been ours to receive, and topother one's head w
ith business upon such a day was not to be thoughton, at least not by the younger men; and thus I was soon running downto the Port to learn the whole history of that memorable adventure,wherein the _Primrose_, of all our shipping that lay upon the SpanishCoast, and that were suddenly seized upon by those Papist dogs withoutwarning or possibility of escape--the _Primrose_, I say, not only gotoff free, but in a most bloody fight destroyed the soldiers that hadprivily got aboard her, and took prisoner their great Viceregent, or(as they call him) Corregidor.
A host of men and women pressed upon Master Foster about the hithe,applauding his so notable courage and triumph, and deriding the poorCorregidor, who nevertheless remained steadfast, nor seemed not toregard their taunts and menaces, but stood very quiet, and, I vow, wasas gallant a gentleman to see as any man could be. Now, all thistaking place about the Tower steps, whither for convenience theprisoner had been brought, it followed I was but a stone's cast fromIdonia's dwelling, which no sooner had I remembered than I utterlyforgot her admonition not to see her except early, whereas it was nowhigh noon; but leaving the throng of idle cheering folk, I crept awayat once to the desolate house in Thames Street, where I made sure offinding her.
As I went along, the bells were ringing from every steeple, which sofilled the air with victory, as I was intoxicated with the sound ofthem, and on the sudden resolved that, come what would, I would tellIdonia I tired of this sleek clerk's life I led, and would be done withit straightway. Alas! for all such schemes of youth and stirrings ofliberty! and yet not altogether alas! perhaps, since 'tis the adverseevent of the most of such schemes that prepares and hardens us forbitterer battles to come, when the ranks are thinning and the drums aresilent, and the powder is wasted to the last keg....
To my satisfaction I perceived the gate to be open, and as I came up Isaw a flutter of white in the dark of the hall, and a moment later themist of gold which was Idonia's hair.
"Good-morrow!" I bade her laughingly, as I entered and closed the doorbehind me, "you did not look to have me visit you now, I warrant, whenthe bells be all pealing without, and a right success of our arms toacclaim!"
Idonia stood, one foot set upon the lowest stair, quite still. Not oneword of greeting did she give me, nor was any light of welcome in hereyes, which were wide open and her lips parted as if to speak, thoughno word said she.
I hung back astonished, not knowing what to think, when I heard arustle among the stuff beside me, and a man's voice that said veryquiet: "How now, master, methinks that is overmuch familiarity to usewith one that is under my ward."
I faced about instantly, laying my hand upon my sword, for thisuntoward interference startled me not a little. Even in the half darkI knew him; for 'twas none other than the attorney, John Skene.
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