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Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London

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Title: Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London

Author: Robert Neilson Stephens

Illustrator: Howard Pyle


        
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN RAVENSHAW; OR, THE MAID OF CHEAPSIDE. A ROMANCE OF ELIZABETHAN LONDON ***

 CAPTAIN RAVENSHAW




 [Illustration: "THERE WAS EXCHANGE OF THRUST AND PARRY."
      (_See page 333_).]




                           CAPTAIN RAVENSHAW

                                  OR,

                         THE MAID OF CHEAPSIDE

                   _A Romance of Elizabethan London_


                      By Robert Neilson Stephens

  Author of "Philip Winwood," "A Gentleman Player," "An Enemy to the
                           King," etc., etc.

                _Illustrated by_ HOWARD PYLE and others

  "_Hang him, swaggering rascal!... He a captain!... He lives upon mouldy
  stewed prunes and dried cakes._" _--King Henry IV., Part II._

                            [Illustration]

         _Boston_: L. C. PAGE & COMPANY Publishers. _Mdcccci_




       _Copyright, 1901_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED)

                         _All rights reserved_


                           Colonial Press:
           Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
                        Boston, Mass., U. S. A.



PREFACE.


Here is offered mere story, the sort of thing Mr. Howells
cannot tolerate. He will have none of us and our works, poor
"neo-romanticists" that we are. Curiously enough, we neo-romanticists,
or most of us, will always gratefully have him; of his works we cannot
have too many; one of us, I know, has walked miles to get the magazine
containing the latest instalment of his latest serial. This looks as
if we were more liberal than he. He would, for the most part, prohibit
fiction from being else than the record of the passing moment; it
should reflect only ourselves and our own little tediousnesses; he
would hang the chamber with mirrors, and taboo all pictures; or if he
admitted pictures they should depict this hour's actualities alone,
there should be no figures in costume.

But who shall decide in these matters what is to be and what is not
to be? Who shall deny that all kinds of fiction have equal right to
exist? Who shall dictate our choice of theme, or place, or time? Who
shall forbid us in our faltering way to imagine forth the past if we
like? The dead past, say you? As dead as yesterday afternoon, no more.
"Where's he that died o' Wednesday?" As dead as the Queen of Sheba.
But on the pages of Sienkiewicz, for example, certain little matters
of Nero's time seem no more dead than last week's divorce trial in the
columns of those realists, the newspaper reporters. All that is not
immediately before our eyes, whether dead or distant, can be visualised
only by imagination informed by description, and a small transaction
in the reign of Elizabeth can be made as sensible to the mind's eye as
a domestic scene between Mr. and Mrs. Jones in the administration of
McKinley. But how can one describe authentically what one can never
have seen? You may propound that question to the realists; they are
often doing it, or else they see extraordinary things now and then.

But, now that I remember it, Mr. Howells is not really illiberal. He
has, upon occasion, admitted a tolerance--nay, an admiration--for
"genuine romance." But what is genuine romance? Is psychological
romance, for instance, more "genuine" than melodramatic romance? Are
we not all--we "neo-romanticists"--aiming at genuine romance in some
kind? Shall there not be many misses to a hit? many inconsiderable
achievements to a masterpiece? And we suffer under limitations which
the great romancers had not to observe. We must be watchful against
anachronisms, against many liberties in style and matter which the
esteemed Sir Walter, for instance, might take--and did take--without
stint. One's fancy was less restrained, in his day. One cannot, as he
did, bring Shakespeare to Greenwich palace before the festivities at
Kenilworth occurred; or let a shopman recommend a pair of spectacles
to a doctor of divinity with the information that the king, having
tried them on, had pronounced them fit for a bishop; or make the divine
buy them with the cheerful remark that a certain reverend brother's
advancing age gives hopes of an early promotion. Fancy such an exchange
of jocularity between a shop "assistant" in Piccadilly and Doctor
Ingram, while the late Doctor Creighton was Bishop of London! Flow of
fancy is easier upon such terms; or, when one may even, as the great
Dumas did, be so free of care for details as to have the same character
in two places at the same time.

It is not meant to be implied that Mr. Howells is thought to consider
the work of Scott or Dumas genuine romance. If he has anywhere
mentioned an example of what he takes to be true romance, I have missed
that mention. I should like to read his definition (perhaps he has
published one which I have not seen) of genuine romance. But I would
rather he taught us by example than by precept. What a fine romance he
could write if he chose!

But as for us less-gifted ones, the "neo-romanticists," shackled
as Scott and Dumas were not, we must work a while under the new
conditions, the new checks upon our imagination, ere we shall get a
masterpiece. Meanwhile none of us yields to Mr. Howells in admiration
of a true romance, and none of us would be sorry to lay down the pen,
or shut up the typewriter, some fine afternoon and find it achieved.
But until then may we not have indifferent romances, just as we have
indifferent realistic novels? Why not, pray? Again, shall one man, one
group, one school, decide what shall be and what shall not? "Dost thou
think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

Now, of merits which mere story may possess, and usually does
possess in measure greater than the other sort of thing does, one
is--construction. Wherefore, the opponents of this sort of thing
belittle that merit. But it is a prime merit, nevertheless. Is not the
first thing for praise, in a picture, its composition? in a building,
its main design? in a group of statuary, its general effect? So, too,
in a work of fiction. "Real life does not contrive so curiously,"
says Professor Saintsbury. Precisely; if it did, what would be the
good of fiction? Neither does nature contrive well-ordered squares
of turf, with walks, flower-beds, hedge-rows, shrubbery, trees set
with premeditation; shall we, on that account, make no gardens for
ourselves? Who shall ordain that there be no well-constructed plots
in fiction because life, seen in sections as small as a novel usually
represents, is not well constructed? It is time somebody put in a word
for plot. When all is said and done, the main thing in a story _is_ the
story.

Mr. Howells said, long ago, that the stories were all told. It is
doubtful. But even if it were certain, what of it? Because there
was an old tale of a king's wife whose lover lost the ring she gave
him, whereupon the king, finding out, bade her wear it on a certain
soon-coming occasion, and she was put to much concern to get it in
time, was the world to go without the pleasure of D'Artagnan's mission
for Anne of Austria? And what though Dumas himself had used the old
situation of a real king imprisoned, and his "double" filling the
throne in his place, were we to have no "Prisoner of Zenda?" Or even
if the story of the man apparently wooing the handsome sister, while
really loving the plain sister, had already been told, as it had, was
Mr. Howells prohibited from making it twice told, in "Silas Lapham?"

Now, as to this little attempt at romance in a certain kind, I wish
merely to say, for the benefit of those who turn over the first leaves
of a novel in a bookstore or library before deciding whether to take
or leave it, that it differs from the usual adventure-story in being
concerned merely with private life and unimportant people. Though
it has incidents enough, and perils enough, it deals neither with
war nor with state affairs. It contains no royal person; not even a
lord--nor a baronet, indeed, for baronets had not yet been invented
at the period of the tale. The characters are every-day people of the
London of the time, and the scenes in which they move are the street,
the tavern, the citizen's house and garden, the shop, the river, the
public resort,--such places as the ordinary reader would see if a
miracle turned back time and transported him to London in the closing
part of Elizabeth's reign. The atmosphere of that place and time, as
one may find it best in the less known and more realistic comedies
of Shakespeare's contemporaries, in prose narratives and anecdotes,
and in the records left of actual transactions, strikes us of the
twentieth century as a little strange, somewhat of a world which we
can hardly take to be real. If I have succeeded in putting a breath of
this strangeness, this (to us) seeming unreality, into this busy tale,
and yet have kept the tale vital with a human nature the same then as
now, I have done something not altogether bad. Bad or good, I have
been a long time about it, for I have grown to believe that, though
novel-reading properly comes under the head of play, novel-writing
properly comes under the head of work. My work herein has not gone
to attain the preciosity of style which distracts attention from the
story, or the brilliancy of dialogue which--as the author of "John
Inglesant" says--"declares the glory of the author more frequently than
it increases reality of effect." My work has gone, very much, to the
avoidance of anachronisms. This is a virtue really possessed by few
novels which deal with the past, as only the writers of such novels
know. It may be a virtue not worth achieving, but it was a whim of
mine to achieve it. Ill health forbade fast writing, the success of my
last previous book permitted slow writing, and I resolved to utilise
the occasion by achieving one rare merit which, as it required neither
genius nor talent, but merely care, was within my powers. The result
of my care must appear as much in what the story omits as in what it
contains. The reader may be assured at the outset, if it matters a
straw to him, that the author of this romance of Elizabethan London
(and its neighbourhood) is himself at home in Elizabethan London; if
he fails to make the reader also a little at home there in the course
of the story, it is only because he lacks the gift, or skill, of
imparting.

 ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS.

 LONDON, June 1, 1901.




 CONTENTS.

                    *       *       *       *       *

 CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

 I. MEN OF DESPERATE FORTUNES                                          11

 II. DISTURBERS OF THE NIGHT                                           35

 III. MASTER JERNINGHAM'S MADNESS                                      57

 IV. THE ART OF ROARING                                                79

 V. PENNILESS COMPANIONS                                               95

 VI. REVENGE UPON WOMANKIND                                           107

 VII. MISTRESS MILLICENT                                              119

 VIII. SIR PEREGRINE MEDWAY                                           133

 IX. THE PRAISE OF INNOCENCE                                          147

 X. IN THE GOLDSMITH'S GARDEN                                         167

 XI. THE RASCAL EMPLOYS HIS WITS                                      183

 XII. MASTER HOLYDAY IN FEAR AND TREMBLING                            203

 XIII. A RIOT IN CHEAPSIDE                                            213

 XIV. JERNINGHAM SEES THE WAY TO HIS DESIRE                           238

 XV. RAVENSHAW FALLS ASLEEP                                           250

 XVI. THE POET AS A MAN OF ACTION                                     260

 XVII. DIRE THINGS BEFALL IN THE FOREST                               273

 XVIII. RAVENSHAW'S SLEEP IS INTERRUPTED                              285

 XIX. KNAVE AGAINST GENTLEMAN                                         304

 XX. HOLYDAY'S FURTHER ADVENTURES                                     338

 XXI. THE CAPTAIN FORSWEARS SWAGGERING                                352




 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

                                                                      PAGE

 "THERE WAS EXCHANGE OF THRUST AND PARRY"                  _Frontispiece_
   (_see page 333_)

 "'SHE LED ME BUT A SHORT CHASE'"                                      60

 "'SIR, I THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID THAT NIGHT'"                     128

 "BADE HIS VISITOR BE SEATED UPON A STONE BENCH, AND FACED
  HER SULLENLY"                                                       153

 "ONE HAND GESTICULATING, WHILE THE OTHER HELD HIS NEW-WRITTEN
 MANUSCRIPT"                                                          203

 "SUDDENLY THE NARROW WAY BEFORE HIM BECAME BLOCKED WITH HUMAN
 CREATURES"                                                           251

 "THERE ... WAS THE MAID OF CHEAPSIDE, PALE AND BEWILDERED"           303




CAPTAIN RAVENSHAW.


CHAPTER I.

MEN OF DESPERATE FORTUNES.

  "Though my hard fate has thrust me out to servitude, I tumbled into th'
  world a gentleman."--_The Changeling._


It was long past curfew, yet Captain Ravenshaw still tarried in the
front room of the Windmill tavern, in the Old Jewry. With him were
some young gentlemen, at whose cost he had been drinking throughout
the afternoon. For their bounty, he had paid with the satirical
conversation for which he was famed, as well as with richly embellished
anecdotes of his campaigns. Late in the evening, the company had been
joined by a young gallant who had previously sent them, from another
chamber, a quantity of Rhenish wine. This newcomer now ordered supper
for the party, a proceeding at which the captain dissembled his
long-deferred pleasure--for he had not eaten since the day before.
Moreover, besides the prospect of supper, there was this to hold him at
the tavern: he knew not where he should look for a bed, or shelter,
upon leaving it. The uncertainty was a grave consideration upon so
black and windy a night.

Master Vallance, the gentleman who had ordered supper, had listened
to the last of Ravenshaw's brag with a rather scornful silence. But
the other young men had been appreciative; it was their pose, or
affectation, to be as wicked as any man might; hence they looked up to
this celebrated bully as to a person from whom there was much to be
learned, and in whom there was much to be imitated.

The group had been sitting before the wide fireplace. But as soon as
the roast fowls were brought in, there was a movement to the long
table in the middle of the room. The captain was gifted with active,
striding legs and long, slashing arms. So he was first to be seated,
and, as he leaned forward upon his elbows, he seemed to cover more than
his share of the table. He had a broad, solid forehead, an assertive
nose, a narrow but forward chin, gray eyes accustomed to flash with a
devil-may-care defiance, a firm mouth inured to a curve of sardonic
derision. His rebellious hair, down-turning moustaches, and pointed
beard were of a dark brown hue. He was a man of good height; below
the sword-belt, he was lank to the ground; above, he broadened out
well for chest and shoulders. His voice was quick, vigorous, and not
unpleasantly metallic. He was under thirty, but rough experience had
hardened his visage to an older look. His jerkin, shirt, hose, shoes,
and ruff also betokened much and severe usage.

Master Vallance, in spotless velvet doublet and breeches, and perfectly
clean silk stockings, looked at him with contemptuous dislike.

"Take heed you scorch not the capon with your nose, roaring Ravenshaw,"
said the youth, quietly.

It was not Ravenshaw's habit to resent allusions to his character as
a "roaring boy;" indeed he encouraged the popular idea which saddled
him with that title, at that time applied to bullies of the taverns.
But some circumstance of the moment, perhaps something in the young
coxcomb's air of aristocratic ridicule, guided the epithet to a
sensitive spot.

"_Captain_ Ravenshaw, by your leave," he said, instantly, in a loud
tone, with an ironical show of a petitioner's deference.

"Forsooth, yes; a captain of the suburbs," replied the young gentleman,
with a more pronounced sneer.

Now at this time--toward the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth--and
for a long time after, certain of the suburbs of London were inhabited
numerously by people of ill repute. There were, especially, women whom
the law sometimes took in hand and sent to the Bridewell to break
chalk, or treated to a public ride in a cart, as targets for rotten
vegetables, addled eggs, and such projectiles. Many an unemployed
soldier, or bully who called himself soldier, would bestow, or impose,
his protection upon some one of these frail creatures in the time of
her prosperity, exacting from her the means of livelihood. Hence did
Ravenshaw see in the title of "captain of the suburbs" an insult little
less than lay in that of "Apple-John," or "Apple-squire," itself.

When a gentleman calls another by the name of a bad thing, it is not
necessarily implied that he thinks the other is that thing; but it is
certain that he means to be defiantly offensive. Therefore, in this
case, the captain's part was not to deny, but to resent. Not only must
he keep up his reputation with the other gentlemen as a man not to be
affronted, but he really was in a towering rage at being bearded with
easy temerity by such a youngling.

"What!" quoth he. "Thou sprig! Thy wits are strayed away, methinks. Or
has thy nurse been teaching thee to use a pert tongue?"

"Nay, save your own tongue for the tasting of yon capon. I speak only
truth. Your reputation is well known."

"Why, thou saucy boy, I may not spit butterflies on my sword, nor
provoke striplings by giving them the lie; else--"

The captain finished with a shrug of vexation.

"Look ye, gentlemen, he lays it to my youth," continued the persecutor,
"but there's yet a horse of another colour. This captain is free
enough with his bluster and his sword; he has drawn quarts of blood
for a single word that misliked him, upon occasion; but he will bear
a thousand scurvy affronts from any man for the sake of a supper. You
shall see--"

"Supper!" echoed the captain, springing up. "Do you cast your filthy
supper in my teeth? Nay, then, I'll cast it in thine own."

With this, thoroughly enraged, Captain Ravenshaw seized the particular
capon to which the gallant had alluded, and flung it across the table
into the gallant's face. It struck with a thud, and, rebounding, left
the young man a countenance both startled and greasy. Not content,
the offended captain thereupon reached forth to the fowl which had
been served as companion to the capon, and this he hurled in the same
direction. But he aimed a little too high, moreover the fop ducked his
head, and so the juicy missile sped across the room, to lodge plump
against the stomach of a person who had just then come into view in the
open doorway.

This person showed lean in body and shabby in raiment. He made a swift,
instinctive grasp at the thing with which he had come so unexpectedly
in contact, and happened to catch it before it could fall to the
floor. He held it up with both hands to his gaze a moment, and then,
having ascertained beyond doubt its nature, he suddenly turned and
vanished with it. Let us follow him, leaving behind us the scene in the
tavern room, which scene, upon the landlady's rushing in to preserve
order for the good name of the house, was very soon after restored to
a condition of peace by the wrathful departure of Ravenshaw from the
company of an offender too young for him to chastise with the sword.

The ill-clad person who clutched the cooked fowl, which accident had
thus summarily bestowed upon him, made short work of fleeing down the
stairs and out into the black, chill February night. Once outside,
though he could not see his hand before his face, he turned toward
Cheapside and stumbled forward along the miry way, his desire evidently
being to put himself so far from the Windmill tavern that he might not
be overtaken by any one who could lay claim to the fowl.

The air was damp as well as cold. The fugitive, keeping his ungloved
hands warm by spreading them around the fowl, which was fresh from
the spit, had to grope his way through an inky wind. He listened for
possible footfalls behind him, but he heard none, and so he chuckled
inwardly and held his prize close to his breast with a sense of
security. Now and then he raised it to his nostrils, in anticipation
of the feast he should enjoy upon arriving at the resting-place he had
in mind. He would have made a strange spectacle to anybody who might
have been able to see him from one of the rattling casements as he
passed; but so dark it was that downlookers could no more have seen him
than he could see the painted plaster, carved cross-timbers, projecting
windows, and gabled roof-peaks of the tall houses that lined the narrow
street through which he fled.

At one place a lantern hanging over a door threw a faint light upon him
for a moment, and showed a young man's face, with sharp features and a
soft expression; but the face was instantly gone in the darkness, and
there was no other night-walker abroad in the street to have seen it
while it was visible.

"Surely," he meditated, as he went, "the time of miracles has returned.
And even a starved scholar is found worthy of Heaven's interposition.
With the temerity of the famished, I enter a tavern, ascend the stairs,
and steal into a room which I take to be empty because no sound comes
from it, my only hope being to pilfer a little warmth nobody will miss,
perchance to fall heir to a drop of wine at the bottom of a glass, or
a bone upon an uncleared table. And lo, I find myself in the presence
of a gentleman asleep before a pot of mulled canary, which he has
scarce wet his throat withal. In three swallows I make the canary my
own, just in time to set down the pot before in comes a tapster. I
feign I am in search of friends, who must be in t'other chamber. To
make good the deceit, I must needs look in at t'other chamber door;
when, behold, some follower of Mars, who looks as hungry as myself,
pelts me with poultry. It is plainly a gift of the gods, and I am no
such ill-mannered clown as to stay and inquire into the matter. Well,
_gaudeamus igitur_, my sweet bird; here we are at St. Mary Cole Church,
on the steps of which we shall make each other's better acquaintance.
Jove!--or rather Bacchus!--what tumult a pint or so of mulled wine
makes in the head of a poor master of arts, when too suddenly imbibed!"

He went half-way up the steps and sat down, crouching into the smallest
figure possible, as if he might thus offer the least surface to the
cold. Sinking his teeth into the succulent breast of the roast fowl, he
forgot the weather in the joy of eating. But he had scarce taken two
bites when he was fain to suspend his pleasure, for the sound of rapid
footfalls came along the way he had just traversed. He took alarm.

"Sit quiet now, in God's name, Master Holyday!" he mentally adjured
himself. "'Tis mayhap one in search of the fowl. Night, I am beholden
to thee for thy mantle."

The person strode past and into Cheapside without apprehension of the
scholar's presence upon the steps. The scholar could not make out the
man's looks, but could divine from sundry muttered oaths he gave vent
to, and from his incautious haste of movement, that he was angry.

"God 'a' mercy! how he takes to heart the loss of a paltry fowl!" mused
Master Holyday, resuming the consumption of his supper on the church
steps. "For, certes, 'twas from the Windmill he came; from his voice,
and the copiousness of his swearing, I should take him to be that very
soldier whom the gods impelled to provide me with supper. Well, he is
now out of hearing; and a good thing, too, for there comes the moon at
last from the ragged edge of yon black cloud. Blow, wind, and clear the
sky for her. Pish! what is this? Can I not find my mouth? Ha, ha! 'tis
the mulled wine."

The scholar had indeed struck his nose with the fowl, when he had
meant to bring it again between his teeth. He was conscious of the
increased effect of the wine in other ways, too, and chiefly in a
pleasanter perception of everything, a sense of agreeable comicality in
all his surroundings, a warmed regard for all objects within view or
thought. This enhanced the enjoyment of his meal. The moonlight, though
frequently dimmed by rushing scraps of cloud, made visible the streets
near whose junction he sat, so that the house fronts stood strangely
forth in weird shine and shadow. The scholar, shivering upon the steps,
was the only living creature in the scene. Yet there seemed to be a
queer half-life come into inanimate things. The wind could be heard
moaning sometimes in unseen passages. The hanging signs creaked as if
they now and then conversed one with another in brief, monosyllabic
language.

"In the daylight," thought the scholar, "men and women possess the
streets, their customs prevail, and their opinions rule. But now,
forsooth, the house fronts and the signs, the casements and the
weathercocks, have their conference. Are they considering solely of
their own matters, or do they tell one another tales of the foolish
beings that move about on legs, hurrying and chattering, by day?
Faith, is it of me they are talking? See with what a blank look those
houses gaze down at me, like a bench of magistrates at a rogue. But
the house at the end, the tall one with the straight front,--I swear
it is frowning upon me. And the one beside it, with the fat oriel
windows, and whose upper stories belly so far out over the street,--as
I'm a gentleman and a scholar, 'tis laughing at me. Has it come to
this?--to be a thing of mirth to a monster of wood and plaster, a huge
face with eyes of glass? For this did Ralph Holyday take his degrees
at Cambridge University, and was esteemed as able a disputant as ever
came forth of Benet College? Go thy ways, Ralph; better wert thou
some fat citizen snoring behind yon same walls, than Master Holyday,
_magister artium_, lodging houseless on the church steps with all thy
scholarship. Not so, neither; thou wouldst be damned rather! Hark, who
is it walks in Cheapside, and coming this way, too?"

He might have recognised the tread as the same which had some minutes
before moved in the opposite direction; though it was now less rapid,
as if the owner of the feet had walked off some of his wrath. Coming
into view at the end of the Old Jewry, that owner proved to be in truth
the very soldier of whom Holyday had caught a glimpse at the tavern.
The soldier, turning by some impulse, saw the scholar on the steps; but
his warlike gaze had now no terror for Master Holyday, who had put at
least half of the fowl beyond possible recovery, and whose appetite was
no longer keen.

"God save you, sir!" said the scholar, courteously. "Were you seeking a
certain roast fowl?"

"Not I, sirrah," replied Captain Ravenshaw, approaching Holyday. "You
are he that stood in the doorway, perchance? Rest easy; the fowl was
none of mine. I should scorn to swallow a morsel of it."

And yet he eyed it in such a manner that Master Holyday, who was a good
judge of a hungry glance, said, placidly:

"You are welcome to what is left of it here." Which offer the scholar
enforced with a satisfied sigh, indicating fulness of stomach.

The captain made a very brief pretence of silent hesitation, then
accepted the remainder of the feast from the scholar's hands, saying:

"Worshipful sir, it should go hard with me ere I would refuse
true hospitality. Have I not seen you about the town before this
night?" He sat down beside Holyday, and began to devour the already
much-diminished fowl.

"I know not," replied the scholar, who had a mild, untroubled way of
speaking. "'Twas last Michaelmas I came to London. I have kept some
riotous company, but, if I have met you, I remember not."

"'Slight! you know then who I be?"

"Not I, truly."

"Yet you call me riotous."

"That argues no previous knowledge. Though I be a Cambridge man, it
takes none of my scholarship to know a gentleman of brawls at sight, a
roaring boy, a swaggerer of the taverns--"

"Why, boy, why! Do you mean offence in these names?"

"No offence in the world. You see I bear no sword, being but a
poor master of arts. None so bold of speech as the helpless, among
honourable men of the sword."

"Some truth in that. Look ye, young sir, hast ever heard of one
Ravenshaw, a captain, about the town here?"

"Ay, he is the loudest roarer of them all, I have heard; one whose bite
is as bad as his bark, too, which is not the case with all of these
braggadocios; but he is a scurvy rascal, is he not? a ragged hector of
the ale-houses. Is it he you mean?"

"Ha! that is his reputation? Well, to say truth, he may comfort himself
by knowing he deserves it. But the world used him scurvily first--nay,
a plague on them that whine for themselves! I am that Ravenshaw."

"Then I must deal softly; else I am a hare as good as torn to pieces by
the dogs."

"Why, no, scholar, thou needst not be afeard. I like thee, young
night-walker. Thou wert most civil concerning this fowl. 'Od's light!
but for thee, my sudden pride had played my belly a sad trick this
night. Thou art one to be trusted, I see, and when I have finished with
this bird, I will tell thee something curious of my rascal reputation.
But while I eat, prithee, who art thou? and what is it hath sent thee
to be a lodger on the steps of St. Mary Cole Church? Come, scholar;
thou might do worse than make a friend of roaring Ravenshaw."

"Nay, I have no enemies I would wish killed. But I am any man's gossip,
if he have inclination for my discourse, and be not without lining to
his headpiece. My name is Ralph Holyday; I am only son to Mr. Francis
Holyday, a Kentish gentleman of good estate. He is as different a
manner of man from me as this night is from a summer day. He is
stubborn and tempestuous; he will have his way, though the house fall
for it. He has no love of books and learning, neither; but my mother,
seeing that I was of a bookish mind, worked upon him unceasingly to
send me to the university, till at last, for peace' sake, he packed me
off to Cambridge. While I was there, my mother died--rest her soul,
poor lady! After I took my degrees, my father would have it that I
come home, and fit myself to succeed him. Home I went, perforce, but
I had no stomach for the life he would lead me. I rather preferred
to sit among my books, and to royster at the ale-house in company
with a parson, who had as great love for learned disputation as for
beer and venison. Many a pleasant day and night have I sat with good
Sir Nicholas, drinking, and arguing upon the soul's immortality.
This parson had sundry friends, too, good knaves, though less given
to learning than to tossing the pot; they were poachers all, to say
truth, and none better with the crossbow at a likely deer than the
vicar. Thus, when I ought to have been busy in the matter of preserving
my father's deer, I would be abroad in forbidden quest of other men's;
'twas, I know not how, the more sportive and curious occupation. Well,
my father stormed at these ways of mine, but there was no method of
curing them. But one day he became fearful his blood should die out.
He must have descendants, he swore, and to that end I must find a
wife straightway. Here is where we crossed weapons. I am not blind to
the charms of women, but I am cursed with such timidity of them, such
bashfulness when I am near them, that if I tried to court one, or if
one were put upon me as wife, I should fall to pieces for shaking. I
would sooner attempt anew the labours of Hercules than go a-wooing for
a wife."

"'Tis a curious affliction," remarked the captain, pausing in his
feast. "But many men have it; fighting men, too. There was Dick Rokeby,
that was my comrade in France; he that fought with Harry Spence and me,
each one 'gainst t'other two, upon the question of the properest oath
for a soldier to swear by. Harry was one of your Latin fellows, and
held for 'the buckler of Mars.' Dick Rokeby said an Englishman could
do no better than swear by the lance of St. George. And I vowed by the
spurs of Harry Fift' I would put down any man that thought better of
any other oath. We fought it out, three-cornered, in Grey's Inn Fields;
and the spurs of Harry Fift' won the day. As for women, I am their
enemy on other grounds. There was one I trusted, and when I was at the
wars she wronged me with my friend. I have sworn revenge upon the sex,
curse 'em! So you would not marry?"

"That I would not. The only women I can approach without trembling
at the knees, and my face burning, and my tongue sticking fast,
are serving-maids and common drabs, and such as I would not raise
to a place of quality. So the end was that, after he had raged and
threatened for six months, my father cast me forth, swearing I should
never cross his doorsill, or have a penny of him, till I should come
back with a wife on my arm. And so I came last Michaelmas to London."

"And how hast made shift to live since then?"

"Why, first upon some money my friend Sir Nick thrust upon me; then by
the barter of my clothes in Cornhill; and meanwhile I had writ a play,
a tragedy, that Master Henslowe gave me five pounds for."

"I would fain see thy tragedy. How is it named?"

"God knows when it may be played; it has not yet been. It is 'The
Lamentable Tragedy of Queen Nitocris.' The story is in a Greek
history."

"What, you dare not even discourse with a mere gentlewoman, yet write
the intimate histories of queens?"

"Yes, friend; there are many of us poor poets do so. We herd with
trulls, and dream of empresses. (A passable decasyllabic line, that!)
But I have not been able to sell another tragedy, nor yet to have my
sonnets printed, whereby I might get ten pounds for a dedication. And
so you see me as I am."

"Well," said the captain, having by this time pretty well stuffed
himself, "I like thee the better for being a poet. Such as you know me
to be, you will scarce believe it; but I am one--or was once--fitted
by nature to take joy in naught so much as in poetry, and the sweet
pastoral life that poets praise so. But never whisper this; I were a
dead man if the town knew the softness underneath my leathern outside.
But in very truth, as for books, I would give all the Plutarchs in the
world for one canto of 'The Faerie Queene' or ten pages of the gentler
part of Sidney's 'Arcadia.' Had I won my choice, I had passed my days,
not in camps and battles, taverns and brawls, but in green meadows,
sitting and strolling among flowers, reading some book of faery or
shepherds--for I never could make up poetry of my own."

"That picture belies the common report of Captain Ravenshaw."

"Ay, Master Holyday; swaggering Ravenshaw is no shepherd of poesy.
But hearken to what I promised thee: I, too, am a gentleman's son;
the family is an old one in Worcestershire,--observe I call it not
_my_ family. I was early a cast-off scion, and for no fault of mine,
I swear. 'Twas the work of a woman, a she-devil, that bewitched my
father. But God forbid I should afflict any man, or rouse mine own dead
feelings, with the tale of my wrongs! I was no roaring boy then; I was
a tame youth, and a modest. But when I found myself out in the world,
I soon learned that with a mild mien, unless a man have a craftiness I
lacked, he is ever thrust backward, and crushed against the wall, or
trodden upon in the ditch. And so for policy I took the time and pains
to make myself a master of the sword, not that I might brawl, but that
I might go my ways in peace. In good time, I killed two men or so that
were thought invincible; and I supposed the noise of this would save me
from affronts after that."

"And was it not so?"

"Perchance it had been, if my manner had comported with the deed. But
I still went modest in my bearing, and so my prowess was soon forgot;
some may have thought my victories an accident of fortune; besides,
strangers knew not what I had done, and saw no daring in me; and so I
found myself as unconsidered as ever. And at last, when the woman I
loved turned treacherous and robbed me of the friend at court on whom
my fortune hung, and malice was hatched in me, I bethought me of a new
trick. I took on a bold front, an insolent outside; I became a swearer,
a swaggerer, a roaring boy, a braggart; and lo! people soon stepped
aside to let me pass. I found this blustering masquerade a thousand
times more potent to secure immunity than my real swordsmanship had
been. The transformation was but skin-deep at first; but the wars,
and my hard life and my poverty, helped its increase, so that now it
has worked in to the heart of me. There was a time it made me ill to
sink my rapier into a man's soft flesh, but I grew to be of stronger
stomach. And when I first put on the mask of brazen effrontery, I was
often faint within when I seemed most insolent. But now I am indeed
roaring Ravenshaw, all but a little of me, and that little often
sleeps."

"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 and 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
having 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:

"Stand back, knave; she is not for your eyes."

The captain had already thought of the inequality between this fragile
damsel and her persecutors; despite his account against womankind, her
looks and attitude had struck within him a note of compassion; and now
her chief tormentor had called him a knave. He remembered the purpose
with which he had arrived upon the scene.

"Knave in your teeth, thou villain, thou grinning Lucifer,
thou--thou--!" The captain was at a loss for some word of revilement
that might be used against so fine a gentleman without seeming
ridiculously misapplied. "Thou beater of the streets for stray fawns,
thou frighter of delicate wenches!"

"Why, what motley is this?" replied the velvet gallant. "What mummer
that is whole-clad above the girdle, and rags below? what mongrel, what
patch, what filthy beggar in a stolen cloak? Avaunt, thing!"

The gentleman grasped the gilded hilt of his rapier, as if to enforce
his command if need be.

"Ay, draw, and come on!" roared the captain. "You'll find me your
teacher in that."

At the same moment a restraining clutch was put upon the gentleman's
sleeve by one of his companions, who now muttered some quick words of
prudence in his ear. Whether it was due to this, or to the captain's
excellent flourish in unsheathing, he of the double-pointed beard
paused in the very movement of drawing his weapon, and a moment later
slid the steel back into its velvet scabbard. In his desistance from
a violent course, there was evidently some consideration private to
himself and his friend, some secret motive for the avoidance of a brawl.

"Say you so?" quoth the gentleman, blandly, as if no untoward words
had passed. "Well, if you can be my teacher, you must be as good a
rapier-and-dagger man as any in the kingdom, and there's an end on't.
Are you that?"

"Sir, you might have tried me, and found out," said the captain,
considerably mollified at the other's unexpected politeness, and
putting up his sword.

"Why, marry, another time I may have occasion to see your skill--nay, I
mean not a challenge; I should enjoy to see you fight any man."

"But what of this gentlewoman, sir?" said the captain, interrogatively.

"Why, you will not dispute, it is my prize, by right of discovery. You
a swordman, and not know the laws of war? Faith, we men of the sea are
better learned."

"Nay, but is she of the breed to make a prize of? Methinks she looks it
not."

"Pish, man, a pretty thing or so; a citizen's filly, mayhap, that hath
early slipped the halter; she will not tell her name; but what we find
loose in the streets after curfew, we know what it is, whatsoever it
may look."

The girl now spoke for the first time since the captain had seen her.
Her voice, though disturbed by her feelings, was not shrill like a
child's, but had the fulness of blossoming womanhood, and went with the
smoothness common to well-bred voices.

"I was never in the streets at night before," she said, sobbingly.
"There was one I was to meet, who was waiting for me at the Standard in
Cheapside."

"Eh!" quoth the captain, with a suddenly increased interest.

"Some gallant 'prentice, belike," said the gentleman in velvet, with
his singular smile of gaiety and cruelty. "Some brave cavalier of the
flat cap, whom we frighted off."

"'Twas not so!" cried the girl. "He was not frighted off. I was going
to him, and was near the place, but I could not see him yet, 'twas so
dark. And then the watch came, with their lanterns, and I stood still,
so they might not observe me. But I saw them go to the Standard, and
take my--my friend that waited for me. I knew not what to do, and so I
stayed where I was, all dismayed. And then, but not till the watch had
gone away with him, came you cruel gentlemen and found me. So he was
not frighted by you. Alas, if he had but seen me, and come to meet me!"

"But he was soon free of the watch," said the captain, wondering what
such a damsel should have to do in surreptitiously meeting such a
worshipful old married gentleman. "Came he not back to the place? 'Tis
a good while since."

"How know you about him?" queried the girl, with wonder.

"'Tis no matter," said the captain, forgetting for the nonce to brag of
an exploit. "He ought to have come back to the place to seek you; he
was no true man, else."

"Belike he did, then," said the girl, quickly, with hope suddenly
revived.

"Nay, 'tis certain he waits not at the Standard; we came from there but
now. Doubtless his taking up by the watch gave him his fill of waiting
there. He seemed a man with no stomach for night risks."

"Then," said the girl, mournfully, "he must have come back after I had
run from these gentlemen. Then he would think I could not meet him;
'twas past the time we had set. Oh, villains, that I should run from
you, and miss my friend, and yet be caught at last! He would give all
up, and go to his inn, and back to the country at daybreak. All's over
with me! Oh, ye have much to answer for!"

"How prettily it cries!" quoth the handsome gentleman.

"Faith, sir," said the captain, good-humouredly, "let's see an 'twill
laugh as prettily. How if we led this dainty weeper to her friend's
inn, and roused him out? Perchance then we shall have smiles for these
showers. Where does he lie, little mistress?"

"Alas, I know not. 'Twould be near the river, I think."

"Oho, that he might take boat quicker," said the gentleman. "And now
will he fly without thee at daybreak, say'st thou? Never sorrow,
sweetheart; I'll boat thee to Brentford myself to-morrow."

"There be scores of inns near the river," said the captain to the girl.
"But we might make trial at some of them, an we knew by what name to
call for your friend."

"Nay, that I'll never tell! I know not if he would give his true name
at the inn. Alas, what shall I do?"

"Why, come to the tavern and make merry," said Velvet Suit, "as we have
been inviting you this half-hour."

"I'll freeze in the streets sooner!"

"Is there need of that, then?" asked the captain. "Hast no place in
London to go to? Came you not from some place to meet your friend?"

"From my father's house, of course."

"Then why not go back to it? What's to fear? 'Twas late when you came
forth, was it not? I'll wager thy people were abed. Did they know you
meant to play the runaway?"

"'Tis not like they know it yet," she replied, a little relieved from
complete dismay, but still downhearted.

"And sure the way you came by must be open still," went on the captain.

"I locked the door behind me; but I left the key where I can find it,
if you gentlemen will let me go. You will, sirs; I'll thank ye so much!
I am undone every way, else."

"Of course we'll let you go," said the captain, decisively, with
an oblique eye upon the velvet gallant. "We'll be thy body-guard,
forsooth; we'll attend thee to thy door."

"Nay, let me go alone, I beg!"

"Why, would you risk more dangers?"

"I have not far to go. Pray, pray, follow me not! Pray, let me be
unknown to ye, good sirs! Think, if my mishap this night were noised
about, and my name known--think, if my father were to hear it!"

"Ay, true," said the captain. "Go alone, but on condition, if you see
harm ahead, you turn back to us; you must cry for help, too. And so we
give our words of honour not to--"

"Softly, softly, Master Meddler," broke in the handsome gentleman. "Be
not so free with your betters' words of honour. I know not what hath
allowed you to live so long after thrusting in upon this company--"

But again he was checked by the man at his elbow. This was a
broad-breasted man of medium height, who seemed, as well as his
plain dark cloak would show, to be of solid, heavy build; as for his
face, its lower part was so covered by a thick, spade-shaped beard,
and the upper part so concealed by the brim of a great Spanish hat,
purposely pulled down over the eyes, that one could not have obtained
a sufficient glimpse for future recognition. He spoke to his gay
companion in a brief whisper, but his words had instant weight.

"Tush! 'tis not worth bloodshed," said the gay gentleman, having
heard him. "Let the wench go; what is one fawn among so many? But on
condition. I crave more of your acquaintance, Sir Swordman; we may come
to a fight yet, with better reason; so my friends and I will let the
girl go hang, an you and your party come drink with us."

"We are your men there," replied the captain, warming up within, at
such a happy issue; "but the taverns are barricaded at this hour."

"I know where the proper knock will open doors to us. 'Tis agreed,
then. Wench, go your ways; good night!"

He moved aside to let her pass, and the girl, stepping from the
doorway, with a single look of thanks to the captain, ran swiftly
toward Cheapside. She was out of the range of the torchlight in a
moment. As soon as her figure was invisible in the night, the gentleman
in velvet left his companion, and, taking the captain fraternally by
the arm, started toward Knightrider Street.

Ravenshaw, yielding in spite of an inclination to stay and listen for
any distant sign of alarm from the girl, strode mechanically along;
he heard his own followers and the gentleman's friends coming close
behind, and starting up conversations. Lighted by the two link-boys and
the other torch-bearer, the party at length stopped before a tavern
door in Thames Street.

The handsome gallant knocked a certain number of times, and, while he
waited for answer, the party huddled into a close group before the
door. Every face was now in the torchlight, and the captain cast a
glance over the little company. Suddenly a strange look came into his
face.

"What's this?" he said to the gentleman, quickly. "Where's your other
friend--he with the hat pulled over his eyes?"

For answer, the gentleman gave a curious smile, showing white teeth;
and his eyes sparkled mockingly.

"Death and hell! Gods and devils!" cried the captain, roaring in
earnest, and whipping out his sword. "He slunk back and followed
the maid, did he? Ye'd trick me, would ye? Now, by the belly of St.
George--" At this point, though the velvet gallant had swiftly drawn
in turn, the group having opened a clear space at the captain's first
exclamation, Ravenshaw broke off to another thought. "Nay, we'll go
after that hound first; the scent's warm yet; and then we'll look to
you. Come, lads of mine!"

He dashed through the group, and headed for Cheapside; his four pupils
and the two link-boys tarried not from following him. The other
gentlemen looked to their leader for direction; whereupon he, as the
tavern door opened, put up his sword and, laughing quietly, led them
into the house.

"They'll be rare dogs an they catch Jerningham," quoth he. "The fools!
their noise would warn him even if they should chance upon his track."

The captain and his companions found Bread Street and Cheapside black,
silent of human sounds, and, wherever they carried their lights, empty
of human forms. They traversed two or three of the side streets, and
listened at the corners of others, but without result. Where, in this
night-wrapped London, did the two objects of their search now draw
breath?

If the girl had indeed not had far to go, she was probably safe; and if
she were safe the man's doings mattered little. So, and as the gallants
were beginning to show signs of weariness, the inspiriting effect of
their last wine having died out, the captain piloted them back to the
tavern at whose door he had left his quarrel scarce begun.

He found the tavern door barred; and no amount of knocking and
shouting sufficed to open it. The tired gallants were yawning, leaning
against one another (they dared not lean against the tavern, lest
something might be dropped upon them from an upper window), and talking
of bed. Therefore the captain drew off to a safe distance from the
tavern, and thus addressed his following:

"Ye have had but a poor lesson in swaggering to-night, masters.
To be true roaring boys, we should have forced a brawl on those
gallants--rather for the brawl's sake than for the girl's. To help the
helpless hath nought to do with true swaggering, save where it may be
a pretext. But this lambkin looked so tender, I forgot myself, and
behaved discreetly, seeing her cause was best served that way. The
essence of roaring is not in concern for the cause, but in putting down
the enemy. If you be in the wrong, so much the greater your credit as a
bully. And now, if we wait for those cozeners to come forth--"

"Oh, let 'em come forth and be damned," said Master Clarington,
sleepily. "I'm for bed. Light me to my lodging, boy. Who'll keep me
company to Coleman Street?"

As the three other young gentlemen had, at the time, their city
lodgings in that direction, they were quite ready to avail themselves
of Master Clarington's initiative in yielding to the claims of
fatigue. The captain was not such a fool as to risk their favour by
opposing their decision, seeing how their zest for adventure had oozed
out of them. He therefore accompanied them northward through Bow Lane
with outward cheerfulness. On the way, he considered within himself
whether or not to fish for an invitation to a night's lodging, or for
the loan of money to pay for a bed himself. He bethought him that
man was fickle, particularly in the case of would-be daredevils who
soon grew sleepy on their wine; if he would retain the patronage of
these four, he must not go too far upon it at first. He had too much
experience to sacrifice to-morrow's pound for to-night's shilling. So,
when he came to Cheapside, where his companions should turn eastward,
he stopped, and said:

"I must wish ye good night here, gentlemen. You will be at the Windmill
again to-morrow, mayhap?"

"What?" said Master Maylands, carelessly. "Go you no farther our way?
Where lodge you, then?"

"Oh, I lodge out Newgate way," replied the captain, vaguely. "A good
night to ye all! Ye'll find me at the Windmill after dinner. Merry
dreams, lads! Faith, I shall be glad to get under cover; the wind is
higher, methinks."

A chorus of good nights answered him drowsily, and he was left in
darkness, the link-boys going with the four gentlemen, who hung upon
one another's arms as they plodded unsteadily along.

The captain trudged westward in Cheapside, in mechanical obedience to
the suggestion pertaining to his lie.

"I should better have got myself taken up of the watch," he mused, as
he gathered his new cloak about him, and made himself small against
the wind. "Then I should have lain warm in the Counter. That scholar
is a lucky fellow. But that would have lost me the opinion of my four
sparks. Well, it shall go hard but they continue bountiful. Cloak,
doublet, and bonnet already--a good night's booty. 'Tis well I found
'em in the right degree of drink. As for that wench--I was an ass,
I should have let those roysterers have their way of her; 'twould
have served my grudge against the sex. But such a child--! Hey! What
fellow comes here with the lantern and the wide breeches? An it be a
constable, I'll vilify him, and be lodged in the Counter yet. How now,
rascal!--what, Moll, is it thou, up to thy vixen tricks again?"

The newcomer, who now faced Ravenshaw and held up a lantern to see him
the better, wore a man's doublet and hose, and a sword; but a careful
scrutiny of the bold features would have revealed to any one that they
were those of a sturdy young woman, of the lower class. The daughter
of Frith, the shoemaker of Aldersgate, had yet to immortalise herself
as Moll Cutpurse, but she had some time since run away from domestic
service and taken to wearing men's clothes.

"Good even, Bully Ravenshaw," quoth she, in a hoarse, vigorous voice.
"Why do you walk the night, old roaring boy?"

"For want of a lodging, young roaring girl."

"Is it so? Look ye, then; I'm abroad for the night, on matters of mine
own. Here's my key; 'tis to the back yard gate of the empty house in
Foster Lane, where the spirit walks. Dost fear ghosts?"

"Fear ghosts? Girl, I make 'em!"

"Then you'll find in that yard a penthouse, wherein is a feather-bed
upon boards. 'Tis a good bed--I stole it from a brewer's widow."

And so the captain lodged that night in a coal-house, thankfully.




CHAPTER III.

MASTER JERNINGHAM'S MADNESS.

  "I must and will obtain her; I am ashes else."--_The Humourous
  Lieutenant._


Now it happened that while Captain Ravenshaw and his companions were
speeding up Bread Street toward Cheapside, the Spanish-hatted gentleman
of whom they were in quest was plodding down Friday Street toward the
tavern at whose door they had left his friends. When he arrived there,
he gave a knock similar to that which had served to open the house to
the handsome gallant of the double-pointed beard; and presently, after
being inspected through a small grating in the door, he was admitted.

"Is Sir Clement Ermsby above?" he asked the sleepy menial who had let
him in.

"Yes, your worship. An't please you, he and his friends came in but
a little while ago. They're in the Neptune room. A cold night, your
worship."

"How many of his friends?"

"Three, sir. There were e'en five or six more with him outside, at
first; but they went their ways. Methinks there was some quarrel, but I
know not."

The gentleman pushed his hat back from his brow, and looked a trifle
relieved. He stood for a moment with his eye on the servant, as if to
see that the man barred the door properly, and then he went up-stairs
to a room at the rear of the tavern. The tapestry of this chamber
represented the sea, with the ocean god and a multitude of other marine
figures. Around the fire sat the newcomer's friends, smoking pipes;
they greeted him with laughter.

"Ho, ho!" cried the handsome gallant. "She 'scaped you, after all! The
pinnace was too fleet!"

"I gained all I wished," said the broad-breasted gentleman, coolly,
speaking in curt syllables. "I had no mind to close in combat. I did
not even let her know I was giving chase. But I saw what port she made
into; I know where to seek her when the time is propitious."

With a faint smile of triumph over his comrades, the gentleman, who
had thrown off his plain cloak while speaking, stepped close to the
fire, removed his gloves, and began to warm his fingers. He was of
middle stature, thick-bodied, heavily bearded, of a brown complexion;
his expression of face was melancholy, moody, dreamy; as he gazed into
the fire he seemed lost in his own thoughts. His momentary smile had
brought a singularly sweet and noble light into his face; but that
light had vanished with the smile.

"I must thank you, Ermsby, and all of ye," he said, after a short
silence. "You drew the fellow away like the best of cozeners. How got
you rid of him so soon?"

"Faith, by his taking note of your absence, and guessing what was
afoot," replied the handsome gallant. "He's e'en looking for you now. A
murrain on him! his ribs should have felt steel, but for thy fear of a
brawl, Jerningham."

"Thou'rt a fool, Ermsby," answered Jerningham, continuing to gaze with
saturnine countenance into the fire; "and my daring to call thee so
tells how much I fear a fight for its own sake. How often must I put
it to you in plain terms? If I be found concerned in roystering or
rioting, I forfeit the countenance of my pious kinsman, the bishop.
With that I forfeit the further use of his money in our enterprise.
Without his money, how are we to complete the fitting of our ship? No
ship, no voyage. No voyage, no possessing the fertile islands; and so
no fortune, and there's an end. Pish, man, shall we lose all for a
sight of some unknown rascal's filthy blood? Not I. You shall see me
play the very Puritan till the day my ship lifts anchor for the Western
seas."

"You have played the Puritan to-night, sooth," said Ermsby. "To steal
after a wench under cover of night, and find out her house for your
hidden purposes in future,--there's the soul of Puritanism. Where does
she live?"

"I'll still be puritanical, and keep that knowledge to myself," said
Jerningham, with the least touch of a smile.

"Nay, man, the secret is ours, too!" protested Ermsby. "We helped you
to it. Come, you had best tell; that will put us on our honour to leave
her all to you. If you don't, by my conscience, I'll hunt high and low
till I find out for myself, and then I won't acknowledge any right of
yours to her. Tell us, and make us your abettors; or tell us not, and
make us your rivals."

Jerningham was silent for a moment, while he motioned the attending
servant to pour him out some wine; then, evidently knowing his men, he
replied:

"She led me but a short chase; which was well, as I had to go upon my
toes--the sound of her steps was all I had to guide me. When the sound
stopped, in Friday Street, I heard the creaking of a gate; it meant she
had gone into a back yard. I went on softly, feeling the walls with my
hands, till I came to the gate; and there I heard a key turning in a
door. I had naught to do but find out what house the gate belonged to.
'Twas the house at the corner of Cheapside."

"And Friday Street? Which side of Friday Street?"

[Illustration: "'SHE LED ME BUT A SHORT CHASE.'"]

"The east side. 'Tis a goldsmith's shop. Does any one know what
goldsmith dwells there?"

No one remembered. These were all gentlemen who, when they were not
at sea, divided most of their time between the country and the court;
at present they lodged toward the Charing Cross end of the Strand,
in a row of houses opposite the riverside palaces of the great. But
Jerningham himself lived with his kinsman, the bishop, in Winchester
House, across the Thames.

"Time enough to learn that, and win a score of goldsmith's daughters,
and tire of 'em too, ere the ship is fitted," said Ermsby, losing
interest in the subject; whereupon the conversation shifted to the
matter of the ship, then being repaired at Deptford.

From this they fell to dicing,--all but Jerningham, who sat looking
steadily before him, as if he saw visions through the clouds of tobacco
smoke he sent forth. Presently was heard the noise of pounding at the
street door below.

"'Tis that rascal come back, ten to one; he has given over hunting
you," said Ermsby to Jerningham.

"Then be sure you open not, Timothy," said Jerningham, addressing the
tavern drawer who was staying up to wait upon those privileged to use
the house after closing hours.

"No fear," replied Timothy. "They may hammer till they be dead, an
they give not the right knock. I'll e'en go look down from the front
window, and see who 'tis."

Ermsby went with him; and presently returned with him, saying:

"'Tis our man; and Timothy here knows him. It seems he is one
Ravenshaw, a roaring captain. I've heard of the fellow; he talks loud
in taverns, and will fight any man for sixpence; a kind of ranger of
Turnbull Street--"

"Nay," corrected Timothy; "he is no counterfeit, as most of those
rangers be. He roars, and brags, and looks fierce, as they do; but
he was with Sir John Norris in Portugal and France, and he can use
the rapier, or rapier and dagger, with any man that ever came out of
Saviolo's school. I have seen him with the foils, in this very room,
when he made all the company wonder. And 'tis well known what duels he
has fought. One time, in Hogsdon fields--"

"Oh, that is the man, is it?" said Jerningham, cutting off the drawer's
threatened torrent of reminiscence. "Then so much the better he has
grown tired of beating at the door. He has gone away, I trust. As ye
love me, gentlemen, no scandals till the ship is armed, provisioned,
manned, and ready every way for the tide that shall bear us down the
Thames."

"And look that you bring no scandal in your siege of this goldsmith's
daughter," said Ermsby, jocularly.

"Trust me for that," replied Jerningham.

It was several weeks after this night, and the chilling frown of winter
had given place to the smile of May, when, upon a sunny morning, Sir
Clement Ermsby, followed by a young page, stepped from a Thames wherry
at Winchester stairs to confer with Master Jerningham upon the last
preparations for their voyage. They were to sail in three days.

Jerningham was pacing the terrace, frowning upon the ground at his
feet, his look more moody than ever, and with something distraught in
it; now and then he drew in his breath audibly between his lips, or
allowed some restless movement of the hands to belie his customary
self-control.

"What a devil is it afflicts you, man?" was Ermsby's greeting, while
his page stood at a respectful distance, and began playing with two
greyhounds that came bounding up. "This manner is something new. I've
seen it for a week in you. Beshrew me if I don't think an evil spirit
has crept into you. What's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter," said Jerningham, in a growling tone. "'Tis my
humour."

"'Tis a humour there's no excuse for, then, on a day like this, and
with such a prospect before one's eyes." As Sir Clement spoke, he
looked over the balustrade to the Thames and the countless-gabled front
of the spire-studded city.

The Thames and London were fair to see then. The river was wider
than it is now, and was comparatively clean. Swans floated upon its
surface, and it was lively with passenger craft,--sailboats, rowboats,
tilt-boats, and boats with wooden cabins, gaily decorated barges
belonging to royalty and nobility. The Thames, with its numerous
landing-stairs, was the principal highway of London. When the queen
went from Whitehall to Greenwich, it was, of course, by this water
thoroughfare. It was the more convenient way of transit between the
city and Westminster, where the courts were held. It had but one bridge
at London then,--the old London Bridge of the children's song, "London
Bridge is falling down;" the bridge that was a veritable street of
houses, and which stood some distance east of where the present London
Bridge stands. To many people the better way of crossing to Southwark,
when they went to the playhouses or the bear-gardens, was by boat.
Water-men were at every landing-place, soliciting custom. When at work,
they often sang as they plied the oars. The rich, when they would amuse
themselves upon the river in their handsome tilt-boats, took musicians
with them. On a fine May day, in the reign of Elizabeth, when the
little green waves sparkled in the sunshine, the Thames alone was a
sight worth looking at from the terrace of Winchester House, which,
as everybody knows, was on the Southwark side, west of the beautiful
Church of St. Mary Overie (now St. Saviour's), and which thus commanded
a fine view of river and city-front.

Beginning at the far west, where the river came into sight after
passing Westminster and Whitehall, its northern bank presented first
the long row of great houses that came as far as to the Temple,--houses
that were really town castles, with spacious gardens, whose river
walls were broken by gates, whence were steps descending to the water.
Nearer, grew the stately trees of the Temple garden; nearer yet, rose
from the river's edge the frowning walls of the Bridewell, once a
palace, and of Baynard's Castle. And here the eye was drawn up and back
from the water-front, which henceforth abounded with wharves, by the
huge bulk of St. Paul's, which stood amidst a multitude of ordinary
buildings like a giant among pigmies,--the old St. Paul's, Gothic,
with its square tower in the centre, its crosses crowning the ends and
corners, its delicate pinnacles rising from its flying buttresses,
its beautiful doorways and rose windows. Coming still eastward, the
eye swept a great mass of gabled houses ascending in irregular tiers
from the river, the sky-line broken by church towers and steeples
innumerable. Directly opposite Winchester House, the river stairs that
fell from the tall, narrow buildings were mainly for commercial uses.
A little further east, the view was shut in by the close-packed houses
on the bridge, so that one could not see the Tower, or the larger
shipping off the wharves in the lower river.

But this morning the sight was nothing to Master Jerningham, whose
only answer to his friend was to look the more harassed and woebegone.
Ermsby suddenly took alarm.

"How now? Has anything ill befallen at Deptford?" he asked.

"No. All goes forward fast--too fast." And Jerningham sighed.

"How too fast? How can that be? Good God, man, have you lost heart for
the voyage?"

"Never that. You know me better. But we shall soon be sailing, and the
hours go, and yet I am no further with--oh, a plague on secrecy, 'tis
that wench. There is no way under heaven I can even get speech of her."

"What wench?" inquired Ermsby, in whose thoughts there had been more
than one wench since the reader first made his acquaintance.

"What wench! Gods above, is there more than one?--worth a man's lying
awake at night to sigh for, I mean."

"And is there one such, then? Faith, an there be, I have not seen her
of late."

"Yes, you have. Scarce three months ago."

"That's three ages, where women are concerned. Who is this incomparable
she?"

"That goldsmith's daughter--you remember the night we chased her from
Cheapside down Bread Street, and came near a quarrel with Ravenshaw the
bully, and I followed to see where she lived?"

"Faith, I remember. A pretty little thing. And she has held you off all
this time? Man, man, you must have blundered terribly! What plan of
campaign have you employed against her?"

"I have not been able to pass words with her, I tell you. She rarely
goes forth from home at all, and when she does 'tis with both parents,
and a woman, and a stout 'prentice or two. I have stood in wait night
after night, thinking she might try to run away again; but she has not."

"Why, you know not your first letter in the study of how to woo
citizens' womankind. Go to her father's shop while she is there, and
contrive to have her wait upon you. Flattery, vows, and promises sound
all the softer for being whispered over a counter."

"I have watched, and when I have been busy at the ship, my man Gregory
has watched. But she never comes into the shop. She has a devil of
shrewdness for a father; a rock-faced man, of few words, with eyes on
everything. He already suspects me; for now whenever I go near his
shop he comes from his business and stares at me as if he offered
defiance."

"A plague on these citizens. They dare outface gentlemen nowadays.
They are so rich, and the law is on their side, curse 'em! A goldsmith
thinks himself as good as a lord."

"This one has taught his very 'prentices to look big at me as I pass.
And Gregory--he is a sly hound, as you know, and when I put him on his
mettle for the conveyance of a letter to the girl's waiting-woman, he
was ready to sell himself to the devil for the wit to accomplish it.
But he could not; and they have smelt a purpose in his doings, too. The
last time he went near the shop, and stood trying to get the eye of
some serving-maid at a window, two of the goldsmith's 'prentices came
out and, pretending not to see him, ran hard against him and laid him
sprawling in the street."

"And he let them go with whole skins? Had he no dagger?"

"Of what use? They are very stout fellows, all in that shop. And they
would have had only to cry 'Clubs,' and every 'prentice in Cheapside
would have come to cudgel Gregory to death. They have too many
privileges in the city, pox on 'em!"

"You should have begun by making friends with the goldsmith openly, and
so got access to his house. Then you could have cozened him when the
time came."

"But 'tis too late for that now. Besides, these citizens distrust a
man the first moment, when they have wives and daughters. Oh, we have
tried every way, both myself and Gregory. Gregory found a pot-boy, at
the White Horse tavern, that knew one of the maids in the house, and we
tried to pass a letter by means of those two. But the letter got into
the father's hands, and the maid was cast off, and I'm glad I signed a
false name. I know not if Mistress Millicent ever saw the letter."

"Is Millicent her name?"

"Ay. She is the only child. Her father is Thomas Etheridge, the
goldsmith, at the sign of the Golden Acorn, in Cheapside at the corner
of Friday Street. And nothing more do I know of her, but that I am
going mad for her. And now that I have opened all to you, in God's name
tell me what I shall do. Though we sail in three days, I must have her
in my arms for one sweet hour, at least, ere I go. Laugh if you will!
Call it madness. 'Tis the worse, then, and the more needs quenching.
What shall I do?"

"Use a better messenger; one that can get the ear of the maid and yet
'scape the eye of the father; one that can win her to a meeting with
you. Such things are managed daily. Howsoever hedged by husbands, or
fenced by fathers, the fair ones of the city are still to be come at.
Employ a go-between."

"Have I not tried Gregory? Where he has failed, how shall any other
servant fare? Not one of those at my command has a tithe of his wit.
Nor has any of our sea-rogues."

"Why, the look of being a gentleman's serving-man will damn any knave
in the eye of a wary citizen, nowadays. And Gregory hath the face of a
rascal besides. Employ none of that degree. As for our sea-rogues, we
chose 'em witless, for our own advantage."

"Troth, you might serve me in this matter, Ermsby. You have the wit;
and you should find good pastime in it."

"Faith, not I. I know the taste of 'prentice's cudgel. I'll tell you
a tale; 'twill warn you that, when love's path leads into the city,
you'd best see it made sure and smooth ere you tread it yourself. One
day as I was going to the play in Blackfriars, my glance fell upon as
handsome a piece of female citizenship as you'll meet any day 'twixt
Fleet Street and the Tower. She saw me looking, and looked in turn;
and I resolved to let the play go hang, and follow her. She had with
her an old woman and a 'prentice boy, and her look seemed to advise me
not to accost her in their presence. So I walked behind her, smiling
my sweetest each time she turned her head around. She led me into a
grocer's shop in Bucklersbury. I could see by her manner there that she
was at home; there was no husband in sight, the shop being kept by two
'prentices. Here she forthwith sent the woman up-stairs, and turned as
if she would attend upon me herself. Now, thought I, my happiness is
soon to be assured; and I was rejoicing within, for each time I had
seen her face she had looked more lovely. Sooth, the ripeness of those
lips--!"

"Well, well, what happened?"

"I went but to open the matter with a courteous kiss on the cheek; but
the more luscious fruit hung too near, so I stopped me at the lips
instead, and stopped overlong there. She made pretence--I swear 'twas
pretence--to push me away, and to be much angry and abused. But the
zany 'prentices knew not this virtuous resistance was make-believe,
and they ran at me as if I were some thief caught in the act. I met
the first with a clout in the face, but they were stout knaves and
made nothing of laying hands upon me. I shook them off, and then,
being at the back of the shop, drew my sword to ensure my passage to
the street. But that instant they raised the cry, 'Clubs!' and ran and
got their own cudgels, and came menacing me again. While I was making
play with my rapier, thinking to fright them off, all the 'prentices
in Bucklersbury began to pour into the shop, shouting clubs and
brandishing 'em at the same time. I saw there was naught to do but
cut my way through by letting out the blood of any grocer's knave or
'pothecary's boy that should stand before me. But ere I had made two
thrusts in earnest, my rapier was knocked from my hand by a club. A
cloud of other clubs rained on my head, shoulders, and body. And so
I cowered helpless, seeing nothing before me but the chance of being
pounded to a jelly by the crowd."

"And what miracle occurred?"

"The wit of woman intervened. She that I had followed laid hold of some
box or bag, and thrust her fingers in, and began flinging the contents
by handfuls into the air. It was ground pepper. In a moment every man
Jack in the shop was sneezing as if there were a prize for it. Such
a shaking, and bending forward of bodies, and holding of noses, was
never seen elsewhere. Every fellow was taken with a sneezing fit that
lasted minutes, for the woman still threw the pepper about, regardless
of the work it had done. Limp and half-blind as every rascal was, and
busied with each new spasm coming on, they paid no more heed to me; and
so, sneezing like the rest, I pushed through unregarded to the street.
I fled down Walbrook, and came not to an end of sneezing till I had
taken boat at Dowgate wharf. I went home, then, and put my bruises to
bed; and I know not how many days it was till I had done aching. Be
thankful thou hast not fared in the goldsmith's shop e'en worse than
I fared in the grocer's; for there is no pepper kept in goldsmith's
shops."

"I know not then what kind of emissary to send. As you say, a
serving-man is too easily seen through. A gentleman will not risk
the cudgel. I know a lawyer, a beggarly knave eager for any sort of
questionable transaction."

"Nay, he'll make a botch of it, as lawyers do of everything they set
their hands to."

"How if I tried a woman? 'Tis often done, I believe. As thieves are set
to catch thieves, so set a woman--"

"Ay, women have zest for the business; especially the tainted
ones--they joy to infect their sisters whose purity they secretly envy.
They that have spots take comfort in company, as misery doth. Yet they
will serve you ill; for they ever bring entanglement on those they
weave their plots for, as well as on those they weave against. City
husbands and fathers have grown wiser, too; they've learned to look for
love-plots in their women's fellowship with other women. Unless you'd
risk some chance of failure with this maid--"

"By God, that I will not! I must have a sure messenger."

"I would mine own page yonder had the wit, that I might lend him. But
when I choose a servant, 'tis rather for lack of wit in him; else he
might take it into his head to outwit his master. My boy there serves
well enough to carry sonnets to court ladies; but he would never do for
your business. You say this goldsmith is watchful. Therefore, you want
a man the most unlike the common go-betweens in such affairs; a man
that looks the last in the world to be chosen as love's ambassador."

"Some venerable Puritan, perchance," said Jerningham, with the slight
irony of one not quite convinced.

"Ay, if one could be found needy enough to want your money; but that's
hopeless. We must seek a poor devil that hath a good wit and can act a
part. If we had one such in our ship's company--What, Gregory! Have you
been listening, knave?"

Sir Clement's break was caused by his perceiving, upon suddenly turning
around, that Jerningham's man stood near, with a suspicious cock of
the head. This Gregory was just the fellow to steal up without noise;
he had long cultivated the silent footfall. He was a lean man of about
thirty-five years; a little bent, and with a long neck, so that his
head always seemed hastening before his body, which could never catch
up. He had a small, sharp face, of an ashen complexion, and with fishy,
greenish eyes; his expression was that of cunning cloaked in calm
impudence.

"No offence, sirs," said he, glibly, stepping forward with bowed head.
"I couldn't help hearing a little. If I may say so, sirs, my master
needn't yet look abroad for one to do his business. I think I have a
shift or two still, if I may be so bold."

"You may not be so bold, Gregory," said Jerningham. "Disguises are well
enough in Spanish tales and stage plays; but you'd be caught, and all
brought home to me and the bishop's ears. He could stay our ship at the
last hour, an he had a mind to. Go to; and do and speak when you are
bid, not else."

The serving-man stepped back, looking humiliated.

"He's already green with jealousy of the man you shall employ," said
Ermsby, with unkind amusement at the knave's discomfiture.

"Ay, he's touchy that way. A faithful dog--and bound to be so, for I
know a thing or two that would hang him. But to reach this maid, I must
have another Mercury. Where shall I find this witty poor rascal that is
to cozen old Argus, her father, and get me access to her?"

"Why, but for going to Deptford, we might seek him forthwith. The hour
before dinner is the right time. But--"

"Then let us seek. There's no need we go to Deptford to-day. We cannot
haste matters at the ship; all's in good hands there. In God's name,
come find me this fellow."

"Bid Gregory hail a boat, then," said Ermsby; and, after the servant
had been sent ahead to the stairs on that errand, and Ermsby had
motioned his own page to go thither, he continued: "We shall go to
Paul's first, where we got so many of our shipmates; there we shall
have choice of half the penniless companions, starved wits, masterless
men, cast soldiers, skulking debtors, and serviceable rascals in
London. Of a surety, you can buy any service there; there's truth in
what the plays say."

The two gentlemen, attended by Gregory and the page, were soon embarked
in a wherry whose prow the watermen headed against the current, the
destination being some distance up-stream on the opposite bank.

"What of Meg Falkner?" Ermsby said, suddenly, in a tone too low for the
servants to hear. "Are you rid of her yet?"

Jerningham's brow turned darker by a shade.

"That were as great a puzzle as to reach this goldsmith's wench," he
replied. "I would have married her to Gregory; it seemed no mean fate
for a yeoman's daughter that had buried a brat; but she'd have none of
that. I durs'n't turn her out lest she make a noise that might come to
the bishop. I'm lucky she hath kept quiet, as it is."

"She lives still at your country-house?"

"Ay; where else to lodge her? Rotten as it is, it does for that; and
that is the only use it hath done me this many a year. There's a cow or
two for her maintaining, and some hens. And for company, there's old
Jeremy that's half-blind. He can quiet her fears o' nights, when the
timbers creak and she thinks it is a ghost walking."

"And what of the house when you are away on the voyage?"

"Troth, all may out then, I care not! Let 'em sell the estate for the
debts on it; they'll find themselves losers, I trow. And Mistress Meg
will be left in the lurch, poor white-face! As for me, when the ship
sails, I shall be quit of that plague."

"Ay, but you'll be quit of this goldsmith's wench, too. Will your 'one
sweet hour' or so suffice, think you?"

The faintest smile came into Jerningham's face.

"I will not prophesy," said he, softly. "But, as you well know, when we
come to that island, if all goes well, I shall be in some sort a king
there."

"Certainly; but what of that, touching this wench?"

"Why, will not the island have room for a queen as well?"

"Oho!" quoth Ermsby, after a short silence. "So the wind blows that way
in thy dreams!"

Presently they landed at Paul's Wharf, climbed to Thames Street, which
was noisy with carts and drays, and went on up a narrow thoroughfare
toward the great church.




CHAPTER IV.

THE ART OF ROARING.

 "Damn me, I will be a roarer, or't shall cost me a fall."--_Amends for
 Ladies._


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.

"I mean to pit ye 'gainst the first roarers of the suburbs," said he.
"Nothing short of the kings of Turnbull Street shall suffice ye, lads.
What think ye of Cutting Tom himself? I know where he and his comrades
take their supper nowadays. Save your breath for such; an ye roar them
down in their own haunts, it shall be heard of. Waste no wind upon
citizens or spruce gallants. Strike high, win supremacy at the first
trial, and you are made men."

With such counsel he restrained them until he had led them through
Smithfield to Cow Cross, near the town's edge.

Like a bent arm, lying northwestward along the fields toward
Clerkenwell, was the narrow lane of ramshackle houses called Turnbull
Street. Leaving his followers, the captain went into one of these
houses. He soon came back.

"'Tis excellent," said he. "Cutting Tom and his friends are in the
front room at the top o' the stairs. They are feasting it with the
hostess and some of her gossips. You four shall go up and claim the
room by right of superior quality. Master Holyday and I will stay below
in talk with the bar-boy so they sha'n't know I'm with you; but if need
be, call me."

"Nay, we shall want no help," said Master Maylands; but the quaver of
his voice belied his show of confidence.

"'Tis well," replied Ravenshaw. "A rare thing to roar these braggarts
from their own table, before the womankind of their own acquaintance!
Come."

A minute later the four sparks, huddled close together, and with
white faces, thrust themselves into an ill-plastered room where four
villainous-looking fellows and as many painted women sat at table.
These people suddenly ceased their loud talk and coarse laughter, and
one of them,--the broken-nosed rascal with whom Ravenshaw had that day
conversed in the cook-shop--demanded thunderously:

"Death and furies! Who the devil be these?"

"Your betters, bottle-ale rogue!" cried Maylands, somewhat shrilly, and
like an actor in a play.

"Betters!" bellowed the broken-nosed man, rising to his feet. "Plagues,
curses, and damnations! Does the dog live that says 'betters' to me? I
am called Cutting Tom, thou bubble!--Cutting Tom, and that's the hell
of it!"

"An you be called Cutting Tom," replied Maylands, taking a little
courage from the sound of his own voice, "'tis plain you are called so
for the cuts you have received, not given. The wounds in your dirty
face come not from war, but from bottles thrown by hostesses you've
cheated. Out of this room, dog-face!--you and your scurvy crew. 'Twould
take a forest of juniper to sweeten the place while you're in it. You
are not fit for the presence of such handsome ladies."

"A gentleman of spirit," whispered one of the ladies, audibly.

"What, thou froth, thou vapour, thou fume!" roared Cutting Tom.
"Avaunt! ere I stick you with my dagger and hang you up by the
love-lock at a butcher's stall for veal."

"Hence, thou slave," retorted Maylands, "thou pick-purse, thou
horse-stealer, thou contamination, thou conglomeration of all
plagues--!"

"Thou bundle of refuse!" put in Master Hawes.

"Thou heap of mud!" added Master Dauncey.

"Thou filth out of the street-ditch!" cried Master Clarington.

Meanwhile the women had scampered to the fireplace for safety. Cutting
Tom's three comrades had found their feet, and they now joined their
voices to his in a chorus of abuse, defiance, and threat; they beat
the table fearsomely with their sheathed swords. In turn, the young
gentlemen half-drew their blades and then pushed them violently back
again, and trod angrily upon the rushes. Cutting Tom's party had all
got to that side of the table farther from the door. The four intruders
therefore advanced to the table, and with terrible words belaboured
their adversaries across it.

"A step more," cried Cutting Tom, banging his sword handle upon the
table, "and I'll spit ye!"

"And roast ye after at the fire!" said one of his men.

The gallants showed that they could rattle their hilts upon the
innocent board as fiercely.

"Out of the room," shouted Maylands, "ere we pin ye to the wall and set
dogs on ye!"

This was but the beginning of the contest, which soon attained a
scurrility too shocking, not for Elizabethan ears, but for these
pages. Meanwhile, Ravenshaw and Holyday waited below. At last a noise
was heard in the passage above, and the four ill-favoured fellows
came bounding down the stairs. Three of them left the house at once,
but Cutting Tom, seeing that the gallants did not follow, stopped to
whisper with the captain.

"'Twas good as a play," quoth he. "We held our own awhile, as you bade.
Then we let 'em overbear us, and at last we feigned such fear they
said they'd e'en make us tie their shoes. 'They're tied already,' quoth
I. 'Then untie 'em,' said they. We untied 'em; and then they'd have us
depart a-crawling on our hands and knees; and so we left 'em, on all
fours; and that's the hell of it! I thought the women would have burst
a-laughing."

"Here's the rest of the money," said Ravenshaw, parting with his last
coin. "Now vanish, and come not here again this night, or you'll have
me to answer!"

Cutting Tom examined the money by the candle-light, and went his way
with a grunt.

"So far, good," said Ravenshaw, chuckling. "Our young cocks will think
themselves the prime swaggerers of Christendom."

"Until they come upon the truth," said Holyday. "The next men they
meet, they'll be for bullying; and then they're not like to come off as
well."

"But they shall meet no men this night. The ladies above will keep
'em here till they be too sleepy with wine for any desire of roaring.
We'll see 'em safe home, and to-morrow at dinner I'll ply 'em for a fat
remuneration. When that's in our pockets, they may learn the truth and
go hang. We'll hire a page to attend us, and we'll live like gentlemen.
We're lucky to have found 'em constant so long. Come; we'll up to them,
as if we happened in."

"Nay, not I, where there be women."

"Oh, plague, man, you'll not be long bashful afore these trollops!" And
he pulled the unwilling scholar after him by the arm.




CHAPTER V.

PENNILESS COMPANIONS.

  "I walk in great danger of small debts. I owe money to several
  hostesses."--_The Puritan._

The next day, after dinner, finding the four dupes as much puffed up
with imagined valour as he had hoped, Ravenshaw put forward the matter
of a fit reward. That they might more freely consider, he left them for
half an hour, taking Holyday with him.

"Troth," began Master Hawes, when the four were alone, "I think we
have bestowed somewhat already upon these two. If they are pressed for
money, why don't they pawn some of the clothes we've given 'em?"

"They consider they must be well clad to go in our company," said
Clarington.

"If it comes to that," said Maylands, "we can dispense with 'em. We
roared down this Cutting Tom and his Turnbull rangers, why should we be
still beholden to this captain?"

"And we've learned as much of t'other one's travels as we're like to
remember," added Dauncey.

"Let them go hang for any more gifts!" said Maylands.

"Will you tell them so?" queried Hawes.

"Faith, yes! An we can roar down four Turnbull rangers, can we not roar
down this one captain? He has taught us all he knows himself."

"Yet I would not have him think us stingy," said Hawes, who, as he was
stingy, was sensitive as to being thought so.

"Why, look you," replied Maylands. "When they come back, I'll say
we'll satisfy 'em, touching a gift of money, ere the day be done.
Then, presently, we'll find some occasion in their talk for a quarrel.
Thereupon, we'll roar 'em down, and so break with 'em."

The occasion arrived when Master Holyday was in the midst of a
wonderfully imagined tale of travel. He told how he had escaped from
Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean, and swum ashore to the harbour
of--Fez!

"What, man?" broke in Master Clarington. "Fez is not on the seacoast."

"Most certainly it is," said the scholar, imperturbably.

"'Tis not. I had an uncle, a merchant adventurer, was there once. He
had to journey far inland."

"Oh, ay," said Holyday, a little staggered; "the city of Fez is
inland, but the country borders on the sea. 'Twas that I meant."

"Nay, you spoke of the harbour; you must have meant the city."

"Tush, tush!" put in Ravenshaw, anxious to keep up the scholar's
credit. "He meant the country; a fool could see that."

"Ay, truly," said Master Maylands, "a fool; but none else."

"I'll thank you for better manners," said Ravenshaw, sharply.

"Manners, thou braggart!" cried Maylands, seizing his opportunity.
"Thou sponge, thou receptacle of cast clothing! Talk you of manners?"

"What!--what!--what!--what!" was all the answer the amazed captain
could make for the moment.

"Ay, manners, thou base, scurvy knave; thou houseless parasite, thou
resuscitated starveling!--thou and thy hungry scholar!" put in Master
Hawes.

"Oho! 'Tis thus? Ye think to try my swaggering lessons against me?"
said the captain, springing to his feet.

"Pish! You are no better than Cutting Tom," retorted Maylands.

Ravenshaw's wrath knew no bounds. The four rebellious pupils and
providers were on their feet, defiant and impudent.

"You'd raise your weak breath against me, would ye? And you'd finger
your sword-hilts, would ye?" he roared. "By this hand, ye shall draw
them, too! Draw, and fend your numbskulls 'gainst the whacks I'll give
'em! Draw, and save your puny shoulders! I scorn to use good steel
against ye, dunces, lispers, puppies! I'll rout ye with a spit!"

They had drawn swords at his word, thinking he would wield his rapier
against them. But, as it was, they had an ill time enough to defend
themselves against the spit he had seized from the fireplace. Nimbly he
knocked aside their blades, violently he charged among them, swiftly he
laid about him on pates and bodies; so that in small time they fled,
appalled and panic-stricken, not only from the room, but down the
stairs. The captain did not take the trouble to follow them beyond the
doorsill of the room.

"Hang them, bubbles!" quoth he. "They shall come on their knees and
lick my shoes, ere I'll take 'em back to favour again."

But the scholar philosophically shrugged his shoulders.

To make matters worse, as the two were about to leave the tavern, they
were called upon to pay the score. Ravenshaw said the young gentlemen
would pay, as usual.

"Nay," said the hostess, "they went away cursing my tavern, and saying
they would never come near it again. 'Twas you ordered, and I look to
you to pay. 'Tis bad enough an you drive good customers from my house,
and give it a bad name with your swaggering."

"Peace, peace, sweetheart. We have no money to pay; there's not a groat
between us."

"Then you have clothes to pawn. I'll have my money, or I'll enter an
action. So look to't, or, by this light, ye'll find yourselves in
prison, I swear to ye!"

The two unfortunates fled from her tongue, down the Old Jewry. It rains
not but it pours; and when they reached their lodgings in St. Lawrence
Lane they were confronted by the woman of the house, whose distrust had
been brought to a head by their absence the previous night. She must
have her money; let them go less bravely clad, and pay their honest
debts, else they had best beware of sheriff's officers.

When they were alone in their room, Holyday was for selling their fine
clothes.

"Never, never!" said Ravenshaw. "If we cannot make our fortunes in fine
clothes, how shall we do it in rags? Though we go penniless, while we
look gallant we shall be relied upon. Some enterprise will fall our
way."

The next morning they rose before their hostess, and took leave of her
house without troubling her with farewells. They found new quarters in
a shoemaker's house in St. Martin's-le-Grand, and avoided their old
haunts for fear of arrest.

The question of meals now grew difficult. Ravenshaw had become so well
known that possible adversaries at the gaming-tables shunned him.
What little credit he could still compass at ordinaries and taverns
soon prepared the way for new threats of arrest. Sometimes the two
companions contrived to eat once a day, sometimes once in two days.
After a time, the captain agreed that Holyday might barter his clothes.
The scholar speedily appeared in a suit of modest black, as if he were
his gallant companion's secretary; and for awhile the two feasted
daily. But anon they were penniless again, and went hungry. The captain
swore he would not part with his fine raiment; though he should starve,
it would be as a swaggering gallant still.

No Lent was ever better kept than was the latter part of that year's
Lent (though to no profit of the fishmongers) by those two undone men.
Their cheeks became hollow, their bellies sank inward, they could feel
their ribs when they passed their hands over their chests. They went
feverish and gaunt, with parched mouths and griped stomachs. As hunger
gnawed him, and the fear of sheriff's officers beset him at every
corner, and hope grew feeble within him, the captain became subject to
alternations of grim resignation and futile rage. The scholar starved
with serenity, as became a master of the liberal arts, being visited
in his sleep by dreams of glorious banquets, upon which in his waking
hours he made sonnets.

In May the patience of the shoemaker in St. Martin's-le-Grand was
exhausted, and the two penniless men had other lodgings to seek.

They spent much of their time now in St. Paul's Church. Here employment
was like to offer, and here was comparative safety from arrest, certain
parts of the church being held sanctuary for debtors. To St. Paul's,
therefore, they went on the morning that found them again roofless;
keeping a lookout on the way thither for any sheriff's men who might
with warrant be in quest of them. It was fortunate that none waylaid
them, for the captain was in such mood that he would have gone near
slaying any that had. Neither he nor Holyday had eaten for two days.

They took their station against a pillar in the middle aisle of the
great church, and watched with sharp eyes the many-coloured crowd of
men, of every grade from silken gallants to burden-bearing porters,
that passed up and down before them, making a ceaseless noise of
footfalls and voices, and sometimes giving the pair scant room for
their famished bodies.

The St. Paul's of that time was larger than the present cathedral. It
covered three and a half acres, and was proportionately lofty. Thanks
to its great doors and wide aisles, it afforded a short way through
for those foot-goers in whose route it lay,--porters, labourers, and
citizens going about their business. But its wide aisles served better
still as a covered lounging-place for those on whose hands time hung
heavy,--gentlemen of fashion, men who lived by their wits, fellows who
sought service, and the like. These were the true "Paul's walkers."
It was a meeting-place, too, for those who had miscellaneous business
to transact; a great resort for the exchange of news, in a day when
newspapers did not exist. Certain of the huge pillars supporting the
groined arches of the roof were used to post advertising bills upon.
The services, in which a very fine organ and other instruments were
employed, were usually held in the choir only, and the crowd in the
nave and transepts did not much disturb itself on account of them. The
time of most resort was the hour before the midday dinner; and it was
then that Ravenshaw and Holyday took their stand before the pillar on
this May morning.

"There walks a poet that hath found a patron," said the scholar. "Yet
'tis ten to one the verses he is showing are no better than these
sonnets in my breeches pocket here."

"If you had a capon's leg or two in your breeches pocket it were more
to the purpose," replied the captain.

"'Troth, my sonnets are full of capon's legs and all other things good
to eat," sighed Holyday. "I've conceived rare dishes lately; I have
writ of nothing else."

"If we could but eat the dishes out of thy sonnets!" muttered
Ravenshaw. "How can you write sonnets while you are hungry?"

"Why, your born poet finds discomfort a spur. There was the prophet
Jonas writ a sonnet in the whale's belly."

"Faith, I'd rather undertake to write one with a whale in my belly! I
feel room for a whale there. Who the devil comes here?"

It was none other than Master Maylands, and following him were
Clarington, Dauncey, and Hawes, the four being attended by a footman
and a page. These gallants, in coming down the aisle, had espied the
captain before he had seen them. They had stopped and held a brief
colloquy.

"Pish! who's afeard?" Maylands had said. "He won't fight in the church."

"And if he will," said Clarington, "we can 'scape in the crowd."

"Hang him, hedgehog!" said Dauncey. "I think the spirit has gone out of
him, by his looks."

"It makes me boil," said Hawes, "to see the dog dressed out like a
gentleman in clothes of our giving."

The gallants advanced, therefore, looking as supercilious and impudent
as they could.

"God save you, dog of war!" said Maylands.

"God lose you, pup of peace!" replied the captain.

"Faith, I had thought 'twas a warm day," said Maylands, "but for seeing
you wear a heavy cloak. Or is it that you durs'n't leave it home, lest
it be seized in pawn for debt?"

"You are merry," quoth the captain, briefly; for the gallant had
mentioned the true reason.

"It shows your regard for us," put in Hawes, "that you always wear our
clothes, to avoid their being seized."

"A finger-snap for your clothes!" said the captain, his ire engendered
by their daring to make so free of speech with him.

"Nay, you value 'em more than that," said Clarington. "They're all you
have."

"Is it so?" said the captain.

"Ay," said Maylands, "you must needs wear our livery still, whether you
will or no."

"Your livery, curse ye!" cried Ravenshaw, observing that some in
the crowd had halted to see what game of banter was going on. "Why,
monkeys, I've worn these clothes about the town in hope of meeting
ye, that I might give 'em back. Since I did ye the honour to take your
gifts, I've heard things of ye that make it a shame to have known
ye. I've sought ye everywhere; but the fear of a beating has kept ye
indoors. Now that I meet ye, for God's sake take back your gifts,
and clear me of all beholding to such vermin! Your cloak, say you?
Yes, lap-dog, there's for you. I thank God I'm free of it!" Acting on
the impulse which had come with the inspiration for his retort, and
wrought up beyond all thought of expediency, he had flung the cloak in
the astonished gallant's face. "This bonnet will better fit an empty
head," and he tossed his cap to Clarington. "Here's a doublet, too;
I've long ached to be rid of it," he cried, divesting himself of that
garment as fast as he could, to hurl it at the head of Master Hawes.
"This ruff has choked me of late; I pray you, hang yourself with it;
there'll be an ass the less. The shoes are yours, coney; take 'em, and
walk to hell in 'em!" He threw them one after another at their former
owner, and began drawing off his stockings. "I'll be more careful in
accepting gifts hereafter; a gift is a tie, and a man should make no
tie with those he may come to hear foul reports of. Your stockings,
sir! The breeches,--nay, I must take them off at home, and send 'em to
you later; them and the shirt, and sundry linen and such, that are with
the laundress. Take these gloves, though, and this handkerchief; and
you your hanger and scabbard, and the rest. Take 'em, I bid ye, or--And
now, whelps, you've got what's yours. Thank God, the sword and dagger
are my own! My weapons may go naked while my body does. Vanish, with
your gifts! I scorn ye!"

His voice and looks were such that the four gentlemen thought best to
obey. Hastily entrusting the captain's cast raiment to the footman and
page, who closely followed them, they pushed through the grinning crowd
that had witnessed the scene; and the captain was left in his shirt and
breeches, with his sword and dagger in his hands, to the amused gaze of
the assembly, and the somewhat rueful contemplation of Master Holyday.




CHAPTER VI.

REVENGE UPON WOMANKIND.

  "Get me access to th' Lady Belvidere,
  But for a minute."--_Women Pleased._

Among newcomers who at that moment pressed forward to see what was
the matter, were Master Jerningham and Sir Clement Ermsby. Followed
by Gregory and the page, they had but then entered the church upon
the quest we know of. By standing upon their toes, they got a view of
the half-naked man. At the same time they heard the name, "Roaring
Ravenshaw," passed about.

"Ravenshaw?" said Ermsby to his friend. "So 'tis. And your very man."

"What, for such an affair? A swaggering cast soldier?"

"Ay, indeed. The last man in the world to be suspected in your
particular case."

"But can he compass it?"

"Trust these brawlers, these livers by their wits, for a thousand
shifts. They get their bread by tricks."

"But will he undertake it?"

"For pay? Look at him."

"But he was her champion that night."

"A mere show, to cross us. Should they know each other again, 'twill
gain him her confidence the sooner. Go; make use of his present need."

"Shall you come with me?"

"He might remember me as his adversary that night. He saw you not well
enough to recognise you. Better he shouldn't know you are my friend.
I'll be gone, ere he see us together. Meet me at Horn's ordinary when
you have done with him. To him straight."

Beckoning his page, Sir Clement hastened from the church, while
Jerningham, with Gregory at his heels, elbowed imperiously forward till
he was face to face with the captain. Ravenshaw had, in the meantime,
been bandying jests with the crowd, though inwardly wondering what he
should do next.

"When a soldier of your ability comes to this plight," said Jerningham,
in a courteous, kindly tone, "'tis plain the fault's not so much his
own as it is the world's."

Ravenshaw gazed at the speaker; manifestly without recognition.

"Sir," said the captain, "whatever faults the world hath done me, I
dare yet put my dagger to the world's throat, and cry 'Deliver!'"

"Still the swaggerer," quoth Jerningham, with his soft smile.

"Ever the swaggerer," replied Ravenshaw. "'Tis my policy. This craven
world will give nothing out of love or pity; 'twill give only out of
fear; and so I bully out of it a living."

Jerningham went close to him, and spoke in tones not to be heard by
the crowd, which presently, seeing that no more amusement was to be
afforded, began to melt into the usual stream of saunterers.

"I take it," said Jerningham, "you are as good at cozening as at
bullying."

"I am not such a coward as to deny it. There be some so tame, the fiend
couldn't find it in his heart to bully them; at the same time, their
lack of wit must needs tempt me to cozen them."

"You have a persuasive speech at will, too, I see."

"Seest thou?"

"Look you: I could mend your fortunes if you could persuade, or cozen,
or bully, to a certain end for me."

"Prove you'll mend my fortunes, and I'm your man," said the captain,
jumping at the hope.

Jerningham regarded him for a moment thoughtfully, then said:

"Perhaps I'd best prove it first, ere I tell you what service I
require."

"I care not what the service is. Anything that a man can do, I can do."

"And will do?"

"And will do--if it be not too black. I'll not murder."

"Oh, the business has no murder in it. Here's proof I'll mend your
fortune--all such proof that is in my purse, as you see. Meet me here
after dinner, dressed so as not to draw everybody's eyes upon us as we
talk. You shall hear then what the service is. And there shall be more
pay when it is done."

The captain took the money with unconcealed avidity, betraying his
feelings by the readiness with which he promised good faith and
promptitude. Seizing Holyday's arm, he then hastened off to Smithfield,
reckless alike of the appearance he made in the streets, and of the
risk of meeting sergeants. In the second-hand shops of Long Lane he
remedied his nakedness at a price which left sufficient for his dinner
and the scholar's at Mother Walker's three-halfpenny ordinary. When he
reappeared in St. Paul's, which was now comparatively empty between
hours of resort, he wore a suit of faded maroon with orange-tawny
stockings and a brown felt hat.

Meanwhile, Jerningham, glad to have committed the swaggerer to the
business before the latter knew its nature, had told the news to Sir
Clement at dinner, and was already back in the church. The faithful
Gregory still attended him, more disgruntled than ever, for he
considered that he might have had some of the money his master had
bestowed, and would yet bestow, upon this swaggering captain. Gregory
regarded the captain blackly; he viewed this new engagement as a thing
most unnecessary, most injurious to himself; and he found his wrath
increase each time he looked upon the interloper. Jerningham bade him
wait out of hearing, and beckoned the captain into a darkish corner of
the church, whither Master Holyday did not follow.

"Well," said Ravenshaw, with after-dinner joviality, "what's the
business? What is it you would have me bully, or cozen, or persuade for
you?"

"In plain words, a certain wench's consent to a meeting," was the reply.

"What the devil!" cried the captain, aflame. "Do you take me for a
ring-carrier?"

Jerningham was silent a moment; then said:

"I take you for no better--and no worse--than any disbanded soldier
that lives upon his wits about the town here."

"What others do, is not for me to be judged by. I am Ravenshaw."

"I never heard any reason why Ravenshaw should be thought more tender
of women than his comrades are."

"Tender of women! A plague on 'em! I owe them nothing but injuries.
'Tis not that."

"What is it, then, offends you?"

"'Tis that you should think me a scurvy fellow that you dare affront
with the offer of such an errand."

"Why, 'tis no scurvy errand. I only ask you to persuade her to meet me.
I would approach her myself, but I am suspected and cannot come at her
without her connivance. I need one whom her people have not marked,
to speak to her for me. I take it you have the wit to reach her ear.
I would have you carry her my praises, and vows, and solicitations
for a meeting; and describe me to her as you see me, as a liberal,
well-inclined gentleman."

"Ay, in short, you ask me to play the go-between."

"Oh, pshaw, man! stumble not at mere names."

"The names for such business are none too sweet, in troth!"

"They are but names. And sweet names may be coined for it. Love's
ambassador, Cupid's orator, heart's emissary,--call yourself so, and
the business becomes honourable."

"Faith, I have long known things are odious or honourable in accordance
with the names they're called by. But I am not for your business."

"Why, you have no choice. You are bound to it by the clothes you wear,
bought with my money--"

"I can e'en doff these clothes, as I have doffed others," said the
captain, though somewhat disconsolately.

"By the very dinner you have eaten," went on Jerningham.

"I can scratch up the money to pay you for that."

"And by the further service I intend for you. Beshrew me, man, you may
find yourself nested for life if you keep my favour. No more nakedness
and starvation." Jerningham, on the eve of his long voyage, could
afford any promise; besides, 'twas not impossible this redoubtable
fellow might really be useful to him indefinitely, one way or another.

Ravenshaw glared at him with the tortured look of a man sorely tempted.

"Moreover," added Jerningham, "what profit can you have in any kind of
virtue, when your reputation is so villainous?"

"Hang my reputation! I'll not be taken for a love-messenger. I'll help
no man to any woman."

"You are an ass, then. For aught you know, my love may be honest
enough."

"If it were, you would go about it otherwise."

"You know not the world, to say so. Does honest love always work
openly? Hath not every case its peculiar circumstances? Because you
fear, without known grounds, that you may be a means of harm to a
wench, will you go hungry to-morrow? You are fed now, but will you be
fed then? Troth, I ne'er knew a craving stomach to have nice scruples."

"Oh, faith, I know that want is an evil counsellor."

"Evil or not, it speaks so loud as to silence all others. Is it not so?
Come, captain, be not a fool. If I mean no harm to the girl, 'tis no
harm in your bringing us together."

"But if you do mean harm?"

"Can I do her harm against her will? She shall name the place and
time of meeting. Is it for grown men to be qualmish merely because a
petticoat is concerned?"

"Petticoats to the devil! I owe no kindness to women, I say. 'Twas a
woman's wiles upon my father robbed me of my patrimony. 'Twas a woman's
treason to my love poisoned my heart, deprived me of my friend, changed
the course of my fortunes, and made me what I am. Calamities fall upon
the whole she-tribe, say I!"

"Why, then, if at the worst chance I should be the cause of harm to
this one, 'twould be so much amends to you on the part of the sex."

A sudden baleful light gleamed in Ravenshaw's eyes.

"By God, that were some revenge!" he muttered. "Who is the woman?"

"A goldsmith's daughter, in Cheapside."

"A goldsmith's daughter--some vain minx, no doubt; deserving no better
fate, and desiring no better. As for the goldsmith--they are cheaters
all, these citizens that keep shops; overchargers, falsifiers of
accounts; they rob by ways that are most despicable because least
dangerous. And they call _me_ knave! And their women, that flaunt
in silks and jewels bought with their cheatings--'twas such a woman
cozened me! 'Twas such that made a rogue of me; if I were e'en to pay
back my roguery upon such!--I'll do it! By my faith, I'll do it! I'll
be your knave in this, your rascal; I take it, a knave is better than a
starveling, a rascal is choicer company than a famished man. And 'tis
time I settled scores with the race of wenches! Let's hear the full
business."

Jerningham set forth exactly the situation. He laid stress on his
requirement that the meeting should occur within the next two days.
But he said nothing of the projected voyage; nor did he mention the
circumstances in which he had first seen the girl. When he told her
name and abode, he looked for any possible sign of recognition on the
captain's part. But none came; Ravenshaw had never learned who was the
heroine of that February night's incident.

When Jerningham took his departure, the captain strode over to where
Holyday awaited him.

"Rogue's work," said Ravenshaw; "but a rogue am I, and there's an end.
I must get access to a rich man's house, and to the private ear of a
wench; and move her to meet secretly a gentleman she knows not; and all
within two days. How is it to be done?"

"Is the rich man a gentleman--of the true gentry, I mean--or is he a
citizen here, a man of trade?" queried Holyday. "If a man of trade, the
way to his house, or his anything, is to make him think there's money
to be got out of you."

"He is a goldsmith in Cheapside."

"Why, then, let me see. There is a goldsmith lives there, somewhere,
knows my father. They were friends together in their youth, in Kent.
I haven't met him since I was a small lad; but I might go to him as
straight from my father; and then introduce you as a country gentleman;
and so he might be got to commend you to the goldsmith you seek."

"There's no time for roundabout ways. Yet your father's friend may
serve us one way or another. What's his name?"

"Thomas Etheridge. As I remember, my father--"

"What? Why, death of my life! 'tis my very goldsmith; the one whose
daughter I must have speech with. Faith, here's a miracle to help us--
of the devil's working, no doubt. This Etheridge knows not you are at
odds with your father?"

"'Tis hardly possible he should. I have never sought him since I came
to town. He never would go back to Kent, and so he could not see my
father. He has an elder brother lives near my father; but 'twixt that
brother and the goldsmith there was an old quarrel, which kept the
goldsmith from coming to visit our part of the country; 'twould keep
the brothers from communicating, as well."

"Have you means of assuring him you are your father's son? Can he
doubt?"

"He would believe me for my likeness to my mother. He knew her."

"Then you shall carry him your father's good words this hour; and you
shall commend me to him as--but I must change my looks first. I'll to
the barber's, and cast my beard, all but a small wit-tuft under the
lip; and have my moustaches pointed toward the sky. This goldsmith may
have seen Roaring Ravenshaw in his time; I'll be another man then."

"But the daughter--it must be managed so I shall not have to meet
her--or any women o' the family."

"Oh, the devil, man! if you be not introduced to the ladies, how shall
your mere friend be? But stay; at best, will the friend be? These
citizens are wary with their hospitality. The son of your father might
be invited to the table, the son's friend bowed out with a cool 'God be
wi' ye, sir!' 'Tis all too roundabout still. Body o' Jupiter, I have
it! He hath not seen you since you were a lad, say you?"

"Not since a day my water-spaniel bit him in the calf o' the leg, the
last time he came to see my father. I was twelve years old or so."

"Good. I shall remember the water-spaniel; and as we go to the
barber's, you shall tell me other things I may recall to his mind;
things none but you and your father could have known."

"Certainly; but how shall these serve you?"

"Why, I have neither letters nor likeness, to bear out my word.
But the barber shall make me look the right age; and these old
remembrances, with some further knowledge of matters at your home, and
my assurance,--all these shall make me pass with Master Etheridge as
Ralph Holyday, son of his old friend; and you need take no hand in the
business--that is, if you'll allow this."

"With all my heart," said Holyday, glad to escape the risk of meeting
women.




CHAPTER VII.

MISTRESS MILLICENT.

  "'Tis a pretty wench, a very pretty wench,--nay, a very, very, very
  pretty wench."--_The Wise-woman of Hogsdon._


The house of Thomas Etheridge, goldsmith, was near facing the great
gilt cross in Cheapside, the images around whose base--especially that
of the Virgin--were chronically in a state of more or less defacement.
A few doors east of Master Etheridge's, and directly opposite the
cross, was the western end of Goldsmith's Row, described by Stow as
"the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops that be within the
walls of London, or elsewhere in England." It consisted of "ten fair
dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly built
four stories high, beautified toward the street with the Goldsmiths'
arms and the likeness of woodmen, ... riding on monstrous beasts, all
... cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt."

Master Etheridge's house, thrusting out an iron arm from which hung
a blue-painted square board with a great gilt acorn, was quite as
tall and "fair" as any of the ten in the neighbouring "frame." Its
upper stories were bright with the many small panes of wide projecting
windows. The shop, whose front was usually open to the street by day,
occupied the full width, and a good part of the depth, of the ground
floor. Behind the shop was a "gallery" or passage, with a private
entrance from the side street, and with a stairway; beyond this passage
was the kitchen; and over that, the dining-room, which looked down upon
a back yard that was really a small garden.

Upon the low plastered ceiling of the dining-room was moulded a curious
design of golden acorns. The walls were hung with tapestry representing
a chase of deer. The floor was covered with rushes, which crackled
under the feet of the boys that waited upon the family at supper.

Captain Ravenshaw, with face clean-shaven all but for the skilfully
up-turned moustaches and the tiny lip-tuft, leaned back in his carven
chair after a comforting draught of his host's canary, drew his foot
away from the dog that was pretending to mistake it for a bone under
the table, and thought how lucky were those who supped every day at the
board of Thomas Etheridge.

"Yes," said Master Etheridge, who was a man square-faced,
square-bodied, hard-eyed, hard-voiced, looking and sounding as if he
should deal rather in iron than in the softer, sunnier metal, a man
with a shrewd mouth and a keen glance; but just now, for once, a little
mellowed by the recollections of youth which his visitor had stirred;
"your father was ever a man to have his will or raise a storm else. He
led your poor mother many a mad dance. Be thankful all husbands are not
as obstinate as Frank Holyday, Jane."

Jane, the goldsmith's wife, looked as if she could tell a tale or two
of husband's obstinacy, that would match any to be told of the elder
Holyday; but she sweetly refrained. She was a plump, handsome woman,
who filled her velvet bodice and white stomacher to the utmost on the
safe side of bursting; she was the complete housewife, precise about
the proper starching of the ruffs and collars, nice in her dress, of
an even temper, choosing serenity rather than supremacy. So she merely
beamed the more placidly upon the visitor, and said:

"I warrant this young gentleman will not copy his father in that.
His looks show the making of a kind husband. I wish you joy, Master
Holyday."

For the pretended Holyday had told the goldsmith in the shop that he
was about to marry a young lady of Kent, wherefore he wished presently
to buy plate and jewelry. This news had turned the cool reception of an
uninvited caller into the cordial welcome of a possible customer. And,
as it was a guarantee against his wooing the daughter of the house,
for whom a man of the Holydays' moderate estate was no acceptable
suitor, it had removed the paternal objection to his presence in
the family circle. Hence the goldsmith had honoured the claims of
hospitality, and invited his old friend's supposed son to supper.

On being introduced to the ladies, Ravenshaw had promptly recognised
the maid of that February night. On her part, his voice had seemed to
touch her memory distinctly, but the transformation wrought by the
razor had puzzled her as to his face. At supper, sitting opposite him
in silence, she had listened alertly while he had continued deluding
her father with anecdotes of the elder Holyday; and she had shyly
scrutinised his face. He had covertly noticed this. No doubt she was
racking her brain in efforts to identify him. Why not enlighten her?
The knowledge that he was in the secret of her attempted flight would
give him a power over her. So he had said, to her father:

"Oh, pardon my forgetting, sir. I was wrong when I told you I had not
been in London except in passing to Cambridge and back. I was here over
night last February." At this he had brought his eyes to bear full on
Mistress Millicent. "I was in this neighbourhood, too. But the hour was
so late, I durs'n't intrude on you. Indeed, no one was abroad in the
streets but roysterers, and brawlers, and runaways, and such."

The girl's face had turned of a colour with her lips, her eyes had
flashed complete recognition, had met his for an instant in a startled
plea for silence, then had hid themselves under their long lashes.
Ravenshaw, feeling as if he had struck a blow at something helpless,
had glanced quickly at her parents. They had been busy with their
knives and spoons, fingers and napkins, and had observed nothing.

Curiosity and fear, the captain had thought, would now make her grant,
if not seek, a word with him alone. After that, he had not rested his
look upon her again during the supper. He had met her father's eyes
readily enough, and her mother's, and those of the ladies' woman, the
head shopman, and the other dependents at the lower part of the table,
but not hers.

For, of a truth, she was not the vain and affected hussy, or the stiff
and supercilious minx, or the bold and impudent hoyden, he had expected
to find as the only daughter of a purse-proud citizen. Every movement
of her slim young figure, encased in a close blue taffeta gown, seemed
to express innocence and gentleness; her oval face, rich in the colour
of blushes, lips, and blue eyes, had a most ineffable softness; even
her hair, brown and fine, parting across her brow without too many
waves, gave an impression of grace and tenderness; and over her
countenance, whose natural habit was one of kindly cheerfulness, there
now lay something plaintive. Ravenshaw found it not easy to face her,
knowing for what purpose he had lied himself into her presence.

And now, the trenchers being nearly bare, and mouths having more
leisure to talk than the voracious custom of that day allowed them
during meals, Master Etheridge was minded for further reminiscence of
his old friend.

"Ay, ay, many's the quart of wine we've drunk together after supper,
in my rash days. Your father would have all drink that were about him.
Even his dogs he would make drunk. A great man for dogs. I mind me of a
prick-eared cur he had, would drink sack with the best of us, and sit
on a stool at table with us, and howl with us when we sang our ballads.
And there was a terrier, too; I have my reason not to forget him."

"Yes," quoth Ravenshaw; "he bit you in the calf o' the leg the last
time you were at our house."

"Nay, that was a water-spaniel did that," said the goldsmith.

Ravenshaw remembered now that Holyday had said a water-spaniel; but
he thought it would appear the more natural if he should seem to be
in this point tricked by memory, as, in some detail or other, people
often are.

"Nay," said he, "I am sure it was the terrier; I remember it as well--"

"Oh, no, never, never the terrier; 'twas the water-spaniel, on my
word. Why, I never see the spaniels diving for ducks in the ponds at
Islington but I think of it."

But Ravenshaw feigned to be unconvinced, and when, after some further
talk, he yielded the point, it was as if merely out of courtesy. When
the supper party rose from the table, the captain was for a pipe of
tobacco, which he forthwith produced. But Master Etheridge said he
was no tobacconist, and that the smoke made his lady ill. Ravenshaw
replied that, by their leave, he would then take a turn or two, and a
whiff or two, in the garden, whose beauty, observed by him from the
window, invited closer acquaintance. Etheridge liked to hear his garden
commended before his wife, as its implied sufficiency saved him the
expense of a garden with a summer-house in the suburbs, which many a
citizeness compelled her husband to possess. So he went cheerfully
ahead to show the way.

"When you return, you shall find us in the withdrawing room, across the
passage," said Mistress Etheridge.

Ravenshaw bowed to the ladies; in doing which, he met Mistress
Millicent's eyes with a look that said as plainly as spoken words:
"I have something for your ears." This intimation, in view of the
circumstances of their former meeting, could not fail to engage her
interest.

The goldsmith led him down-stairs to the ground floor passage, whence a
door opened to a narrow way running past the rear of the house to the
little garden. This comprised a square of green turf, in the centre of
which was an apple-tree, now in blossom; a walk led to and around this
tree, and another walk enclosed the whole square. This latter walk was
flanked on the outer side by rosemary and various shrubbery, banks of
pinks and other flowers; which screened the garden walls except where a
gate gave entrance from Friday Street. The farther side of the garden
was sheltered by a small arbour of vines; beneath this was a bench, and
another bench stood out upon the turf, so that one might sit either in
sun or in shade.

It was still daylight; the regular household supper was taken early
in those times, and English days are long in May. Yet an early star
or two showed themselves in the clear sky. The scent of the pinks and
apple-blossoms was in the air.

"A sweet night toward," said the goldsmith, manifesting an inclination
to remain with his guest in the garden. But this was what Ravenshaw
did not desire. The captain, therefore, as soon as he had lighted his
pipe, took Master Etheridge's arm so as to have the greater pretext
for walking close to him, and blew such volumes of smoke in the poor
man's direction that, for the sake of his eyes and nostrils, being no
"tobacconist," he was soon glad to make excuse for returning into the
house, and to hasten back, coughing and blinking.

"If she is a woman," mused the captain, left alone, "she will come to
hear what I may tell her. She has been on pins and needles. By this
light, what a piece of chance!--that this maid should be that one! What
shall I say to her? I must open upon the matter of that night. Tut, has
she not yet observed I am alone here now? Or has she not the freedom of
the house? or the wit to devise means of coming hither? Well, I will
give her the time of this pipeful. What a sweet evening!"

But the sweetness of the evening made him only sigh uneasily, and feel
more out of sorts with himself. Several minutes passed, and he was
thinking he might have to resort to some keen stroke of wit to get
private speech with her, after all; when suddenly she appeared, with
ghostlike swiftness, at the corner where the passage along the kitchen
wing gave into the garden. He was, at the moment, scarce ten feet from
that spot.

She was blushing and perturbed. She cast a look up at the dining-room
window, then glanced at him, and, instantly dropping her eyes, sped
over the turf to the farther side of the apple-tree. He quickly
followed her; and when, thereupon, they stood together, the tree
screened them from the house.

Without looking at him, and tremblingly plucking the apple-blossoms to
hide her confusion, she said, quickly:

"Sir, I thank you for what you did that night. You will not tell them,
will you?"

He thought that, by promising unconditionally, he should lose a
possible means of controlling her actions; so he must, for the moment,
evade.

"Then they know not?" he queried.

"Nay; I got in, and to my chamber, without waking any one."

"And had you no further molestation in the streets? One of those men
tricked me, and followed you. I learned it after."

She looked at him with a little surprise. "Nay, I saw him not, nor
heard him. I had no trouble. But you will not tell?"

Her wide-open eyes, round and large and of the deepest blue, were
turned straight upon his face, as if they meant to leave him not till
they should have a direct answer.

[Illustration: "'SIR, I THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID THAT NIGHT.'"]

"Why--mistress," he blundered, and then dropped his own gaze to
where he was beginning to scrape the gravel awkwardly with his shoe,
"why need you ask? Did I not protect your secret that night?"

"Then why do you hesitate now?" she demanded, with a sudden unconcealed
mistrust. "Oh, Master Holyday, what is in your mind? Why have you drawn
me hither to speak with you alone? Why do you make a doubt of promising
not to betray me? Come, sir, I have little time; they will soon be
wondering where I am; either promise me, or I myself will tell them,
and then, by St. Anne, I care not--"

There was a threat of weeping in her voice and face, and Ravenshaw
impulsively threw up his hand, and said:

"Nay, fear not. I will not tell. I give my word."

Trouble fled from her face, and a smile of gratitude made her appear
doubly charming.

Ravenshaw cleared his throat, without reason, and tried to meet her
glance without seeing her, if that had been possible.

"You are a happy maid," quoth he, settling down to a disagreeable
business. "'Tis proven that you may play the runaway for an hour or
two, when you wish, and none be the wiser. There's many a maid would
give her best gown thrice over, for that assurance."

"Troth, it serves me nothing," she said, with a forlornness he could
not understand. "An I were to play the runaway again, whither should I
run?"

He thought for an instant of going into the mystery of her former
desire to run away; but he decided that, as time pressed, it were
better to hold to the present design.

"Whither, indeed?" quoth he. "Faith, London has no lack of pleasant
bowers, where beauty may hear itself praised by the lips of love. Sure,
you look as if I talked Greek to you. Certainly you are wont to hear
yourself admired?"

"Oh!" she murmured, at a loss, with a smile, and a blush of confusion.

"Troth, now," said he; "confess you enjoy to be admired."

"Oh, pray," she faltered, "talk not of such things. I know not how to
answer."

"Yet you take pleasure in hearing them? Come, the truth, mistress.
Faith, 'tis but a simple question."

"Oh--why--I do--and I do not."

"I warrant," quoth he, softly, "there would be no 'I do not,' if the
right gentleman spoke them." The captain's tone seemed lightly gay and
bantering; but, though she knew it not, his throat was dry, and he was
trembling from head to foot like a shivering terrier.

"I am sure I know not," she answered, embarrassedly, but still smiling.

"Put it to the test," he whispered, huskily. "Give him the occasion to
speak--one that adores you--hear him utter your praises--hear him vow
his devotion--give him the occasion."

"Methinks--you take the occasion now," said she, in a voice scarce
above the rustle of the air among the leaves.

"Nay--heaven's light!--I mean not myself!" he said, dismayed.

"Why, wha--? What then? What mean you?"

Her smile had fled in a breath, and in its place was a look of suddenly
awakened horror that smote him like a whip's blow across the eyes.

"Oh, nothing," he stammered. "I mean--'tis not myself that's worthy to
praise you. I know not--I am out of my wits--forget--"

Just then a woman's voice was heard calling from the house, "Mistress
Millicent, where art thou?"

"'Tis Lettice, my mother's woman," whispered the girl, quickly. "I must
in. I have come out for this bunch of apple-blossoms. Some other time
we'll talk--perhaps."

Without another word she ran from the garden.

The captain snapped his pipe in two, and flung the pieces to the
ground; then turned toward the evening sky, in which a numerous
company of stars now twinkled, a face bitter with self-loathing.

"I am a beast," he hissed; "a slave, a scavenger, a raker of rags, fit
company for the dead curs in Houndsditch. Foh! but, by God's light and
by this hand, I swear--"

He raised his hand toward the stars, and finished his oath, whatever
it was, in thought, not in speech. Then, suddenly resuming his former
mien, he turned and walked rapidly into the house.




CHAPTER VIII.

SIR PEREGRINE MEDWAY.

                            "How the roses,
  That kept continual spring within her cheeks,
  Are withered with the old man's dull embraces!"
    --_The Night-Walker._


As the captain entered, he heard some little bustle, as of an arrival.
In the lower passage, at the door leading to the kitchen, was a strange
serving-man, already on terms of banter with the cook and maids. He
was provided with a torch, as yet unlighted; evidently the guest he
attended would stay till after dark. Ravenshaw climbed the narrow
stairs to the withdrawing-room, of which the door was open.

This was a fine large room, with an oaken ceiling and oaken panelling;
with veiled pictures and veiled statues in niches; with solid chairs,
carved chests and coffers, tables covered with rich Eastern "carpets;"
with a wide window bulging out over Cheapside, and with a great,
handsome chimneypiece. The floor was strewn with clean rushes. Some
boughs burning in the fireplace gave forth a pleasant odour. A boy was
lighting the candles in the sconces.

Ravenshaw's glance took in these details at the same moment in which
it embraced the group of people in the room. The goldsmith and his
wife stood beaming, and the woman Lettice looked on at a respectful
distance, while in the centre of the room was Mistress Millicent in
the grasp of a tall, lean old gentleman in gorgeous raiment, who very
gallantly kissed both her cheeks and then both her hands.

"Sweet, sweet," this ancient gallant lisped to her, "I can see how
thou hast pined. But all is well now; I am with thee again; my leg
is mended. Thou wert not fated to lose thy Sir Peregrine for all the
ramping horses in England. So cheerily, cheerily now. Smooth thy face;
I see how thou'st grieved, and I love thee the better for it."

Mistress Millicent certainly looked far from happy; but her dejection
at that moment seemed to proceed less from any past apprehension for
the visitor's safety than from a present antipathy to his embraces. She
was pale and red by turns, and she drew back from him with much relief
the instant he released her. Her eyes met those of Ravenshaw, and she
blushed exceedingly, and looked as if she would sink out of observation.

"Come in, Master Holyday," said the goldsmith seeing the captain in
the doorway. "Come in and be known to Sir Peregrine Medway. Master
Holyday's father is an old friend of mine, that was my neighbour in
Kent."

"Holyday, Holyday," repeated Sir Peregrine, with indifferent
thoughtfulness, looking at the captain carelessly. "My first wife had
a cousin that was a Holyday, or some such name, but not of Kent. Sir,
I crave your better acquaintance," to which polite expression the old
knight gave the lie by turning from the captain as if he dismissed him
for ever from his consciousness, and offering his hand to Mistress
Etheridge to lead her to a chair.

"What withered reed of courtesy, what stockfish of gallantry, may
this be?" mused Ravenshaw, striding to a corner where he might sit
unregarded.

"You should have come hither straightway, bag and baggage," said Master
Etheridge to the old fop. "What need was there to go to the inn first?"

"Need? Oh, for shame, sir! Would you have me seen in the clothes I
travelled in? Good lack, I trow not! Thinkst thou we that live in
Berkshire know not good manners?" The knight spoke in pleasantry; it
was clear he accounted himself the mirror of politeness. "What sayst
thou, mother?"

"Oh, what you do is ever right, Sir Peregrine," replied Mistress
Etheridge, placidly. But Ravenshaw, in his corner, was almost
startled into mirth at hearing the wrinkled old visitor address the
youthful-looking matron as mother. What did it mean?

Sir Peregrine bowed, with his hand on his heart; in which motion his
eye fell upon a speck of something black upon the lower part of his
stocking. Stooping further to remove it, and striving not to bend
his knees in the action, he narrowly escaped overbalancing; and came
up red-faced and panting. Ravenshaw thought he detected in Mistress
Millicent's face a flash of malicious pleasure at the old fellow's
discomfiture. She had taken a seat by the chimneypiece, where she
seemed to be nursing a kind of suppressed fury.

The knight, after his moment of peril, dropped into a chair in rather
a tottering fashion, and sat complacently regarding his own figure and
attire.

The figure was shrugged up, and as spare as that of Don Quixote--a
person, at that time, not yet known to the world. It was dressed in a
suit of peach-colour satin, with slashes and openings over cloth of
silver; with wings, ribbons, and garters. His shoes were adorned with
great rosettes; a ribbon was tied in the love-lock hanging by his ear;
and a huge ruff compelled him to hold high a head naturally designed
to sink low between his sharp shoulders. His face, a triangle with the
forehead as base, was pallid and dried-up; the eyes were small and
streaky, the nose long and thin, the chin tipped with a little pointed
beard, which, like the up-turned moustaches and the hair of the head,
was dyed a reddish brown. On this countenance reposed a look of the
utmost sufficiency, that of a person who takes himself seriously, and
who never dreams that any one can doubt his greatness or his charms.

From the subsequent talk, it became known to Ravenshaw that Sir
Peregrine had, a few months before, been thrown by a horse on his
estate in Berkshire, and had but now recovered fully from the effects.
The knight described the accident with infinite detail, and with
supreme concern for himself, repeating the same circumstances over and
over again. He was equally particular and reiterative in his account
of his slow recovery. His auditors, making show of great attention
and solicitude, punctuated his narrative with many yawns and frequent
noddings; but on and on he lisped and cackled.

"Good lack," said he, "there was such coming and going of neighbours
for news of how I did! I never knew so much ado made in Berkshire;
faith, I lamented that I should be the cause on't, such disturbance of
the public peace, and I a justice. And what with the ladies coming in
dozens to nurse me!--troth, that they all might have a share on't, and
none be offended, I must needs be watched of three at a time--What,
sweet?" He was casting a roguish look at Mistress Millicent. "Art
vexed? Art cast down? Good lack! see how jealous it is! Fie, fie,
sweetheart! Am I to blame if the ladies would flock around me? Comfort
thyself; I am all thine."

Mistress Millicent, despite her vexation, of which the cause was other
than he assumed, could not help laughing outright. The captain began to
see how matters stood. But old Sir Peregrine was untouched by her brief
outburst of mirth, and continued to shake a finger of raillery at her.

"Sweet, sweet, ye're all alike, all womankind. My first wife was so,
and my second wife was so; and now my third that is to be."

The girl's face blazed like a poppy with fury, and her blue eyes
flashed with rebellion. She looked all the more young, and fresh, and
warm with life, for that; and when Ravenshaw glanced from her to the
colourless, shrivelled old knight--from the humid rose in its first
bloom, to the withered rush--he felt for an instant a choking sickness
of disgust. But the girl's parents remained serenely callous, and the
old coxcomb, with equal insensibility, prattled on, putting it to the
blame of nature that he should be, without intent, so much the desire
of ladies and the jealousy of his wives past and to come.

Meanwhile Mistress Etheridge, having silently left the room with the
woman Lettice, returned alone, and begged Sir Peregrine to come and
partake of a little supper. From the knight's alacrity in accepting,
it was plain he had honoured the family doubly,--first by tarrying
to change his clothes for his call, and then by not tarrying to eat
before coming to them, an additional honour that Mistress Etheridge had
divined. With courtly bows and flourishes, he followed her toward the
dining-chamber; whither he was followed in turn, for politeness' sake,
by the goldsmith, who apologised to Ravenshaw for leaving him.

Whatever were the captain's feelings, Mistress Millicent seemed glad,
or at least relieved, to be alone with him.

"I wish you joy of your coming marriage," said Ravenshaw, tentatively.

"You would as well wish me joy of my death," she replied, with a
mixture of anger and forlornness.

He rose and walked over to the fireplace, near her.

"Why, 'tis true," quoth he; "when the bride is young, the arms of an
old husband are a grave."

"Worse! When one is dead in one's grave, one knows nothing; but to be
alive in those arms--foh!"

"Your good parents will have you take this husband, I trow, whether you
will or no?"

"Yes; and I shall love them the less for it," she replied, sadly.

"Has a contract passed between you?"

"Not on my part, I can swear to that! Before Sir Peregrine went back
to Berkshire the last time, they tried to have a betrothal before
witnesses; but I let fall both the ring he wished to force upon me and
the ring I was to give him; I would not open my lips either to speak,
or to return his kiss; I held my hand back, closed tight, and he had to
take it of his own accord. And all this the witnesses noted, for they
laughed and spoke of it among themselves."

"Is the wedding-day set?"

"It may be any day, now that Sir Peregrine is well and in London. No
doubt they will get a license, to save thrice asking the banns. I hope
I may die in my sleep ere the time comes!"

"'Twere pity if that hope came true," said Ravenshaw, smiling.

"I dare not hope for a better escape. I'm not like to be favoured
again as I was the other time Sir Peregrine was coming to town for the
marriage. Then his horse threw him, and gave me a respite--but for only
three months. Now he is well again, and safe and sound in London."

"What, were you in this peril three months ago?"

"Yes. 'Twas that which made me try to run away, the night you first saw
me. The next day, instead of him, came news of his accident."

"Whither would you have run?"

"To my Uncle Bartlemy's, in Kent. You know him of course; he lives near
your father."

"Oh, yes, yes, certainly," replied the supposed Holyday.

"And you saw him that night; at least, you told me the watch had let
him go."

"What, was that your Uncle Bartlemy?--the old gentleman you were to
have met--the man my friends and I rescued from the watch!"

"I knew not 'twas you had rescued him; but 'twas he I went to meet at
the Standard. Nay, then, if 'twas Uncle Bartlemy you rescued, you would
have known him!"

"Oh, as for that," blundered Ravenshaw, realising how nearly he had
betrayed himself, "no doubt 'twas your Uncle Bartlemy, now I think
on't; but I recognised him not that night. For, look you, he took pains
to keep unknown; and all was darkness and haste; and though we are
neighbours, I see but little of him; and he is the last man I should
expect to meet in London abroad in the streets after curfew."

"That is true enough," she said, with a smile; "and I hope you will not
play the telltale upon him. If his wife knew he had been to London,
there would be an end of all peace. Sure, you must promise me not to
tell; for 'twas my pleading brought him to London."

"Oh, trust me. I give my word. So he came to help you run away from
being married to this old knight?"

"Yes. You know there's no love lost betwixt Uncle Bartlemy and my
father. But mine uncle hath doted upon me from the first, the more,
perchance, because he hath no child of his own. And I think he loves me
doubly, for the quarrel he has with my father."

"And so he had not the heart to refuse when you begged him to come and
carry you away to his house," conjectured Ravenshaw.

"'Tis so. 'Twas the only way I could devise to escape the marriage. I
thought, if all could be done by night, I might be concealed in mine
uncle's house; and even if my father should think of going there to
seek me, he could be put off with denials."

"But what would your uncle's wife have said to this?"

"Oh, Aunt Margaret is bitter against my father; she would delight to
hoodwink him. The only doubt was how mine uncle might come and take me,
without her knowing of his visit to London. For, of a truth, she would
never consent to his setting foot inside London town; and there was
no one else I dared trust to conduct me. And so we had it that Uncle
Bartlemy should feign to go to Rochester, and then, on his way home,
to have happened upon me in my flight."

"And so your aunt be none the wiser? Well, such folly deserves to be
cozened--the folly of forbidding her husband coming to London."

"Oh," replied Mistress Millicent, blushing a little as she smiled,
"my dear aunt is, in truth, as jealous as Sir Peregrine would have us
believe his wives were. There is a lady in London that Uncle Bartlemy
played servant to before he was married, and Aunt Margaret made him
promise never to come within sight of the town."

"I marvel how you laid your plans with him, without discovery of your
people or his."

"There was a carrier's man that goes betwixt London and Rochester, who
used to come courting one of our maids. We passed letters privately by
means of him, till he fell out with the maid, and now comes hither no
more. The last word I had of my uncle was after that night. He told me
of his mishap with the watch, and of his getting free--though he said
not how. And he vowed he must leave me to my fate, for he would never
venture for me again as he had done. So I was left without hope. When I
recognised you to-day as my preserver that night, and remembered that
the Holydays were my uncle's neighbours, I thought--mayhap--you might
have some message from him; but, alas--!"

"And that is why you followed me to the garden?" said the captain,
carelessly, though inwardly he winced.

"Ay. Your look seemed to promise--but woe's me! And yet you spoke of my
running away again?"

"Oh, I talked wildly. I know not what possessed me. Some things I said
must have been very strange."

"Why, forsooth," said she, smiling again, and colouring most sweetly,
"they seemed not so strange at the time, for I had forgot you are to be
married; but now that I remember that--Belike you imagined for a moment
you were speaking to the lady you are to marry?"

"Belike that is so. But touching this marriage: what is to hinder your
running away to your uncle's now, with a trusty person to conduct you?"

"My uncle, in his letter, said he washed his hands of my affairs. He
counselled me to make the best of Sir Peregrine's estate; he gave me
warning he would not harbour me if I came to him."

"A most loving uncle, truly!"

"Nay, his love had not altered. But what befell him in London that
night gave him such a fright of meddling in the matter."

"Perchance his warning was only to keep you from some rash flight. And,
mayhap, now that his fears have passed away, he would receive you."

"I know not. If I might try!--hush, they are coming back!"

Ravenshaw could hear Sir Peregrine's cracked voice in the passage; but
he ventured, quickly:

"I'd fain talk more of this--alone with you. When?"

"When you will," she replied, hurriedly. "I know not your plans."

"In your garden, then," he said at a hazard; "to-morrow at nightfall.
Let the side gate be unlocked."

"I'll try. But do not you fail."

"Trust me; and meanwhile, if they turn sudden in the matter, and
resolve to have the marriage forthwith, find shift to put it off,
though you must e'en fall ill to hinder it."

"I'll vex myself into a fever, if need be!"

Ravenshaw was on his feet when the elder people came in; he advanced
toward them as if he had waited impatiently that he might take his
leave. As for Mistress Millicent, at sight of Sir Peregrine her face
took on at once the petulant, rebellious look it had worn at his
departure; no one would have supposed she had conversed during his
absence.

When the captain had dismissed himself, he looked back for a
moment from the threshold. The limping old coxcomb, more than ever
self-satisfied after his supper, was bestowing a loverlike caress
upon Mistress Millicent, who shrank from him as if she were a flower
whose beauty might wither at his touch. With this vision before him,
Ravenshaw was let out, by the side door, into Friday Street, and made
his way eastward along Cheapside to meet the scholar by appointment
among the evening idlers in the Pawn of the Exchange. He thought
industriously, as he went.




CHAPTER IX.

THE PRAISE OF INNOCENCE.

 "He keeps his promise best that breaks with hell."--_The Widow._


The Royal Exchange, or Gresham's Bourse, formed an open quadrangle,
where the merchants congregated by day, which was surrounded by a
colonnade; the roofed galleries over the colonnade made up the Pawn,
where ladies and gentlemen walked and lounged in the evening, among
bazaars and stalls. Naturally the uses of such a resort were not lost
upon Captain Ravenshaw and Master Holyday, who had reasons for knowing
all places where a houseless man might keep warm or dry in bad weather
without cost. When Ravenshaw entered, on this particular May evening,
he found the Pawn crowded, and lighted in a manner brilliant for those
days. The scholar was leaning, pensive, against a post.

"God save you, man, why look you so disconsolate? Is it the sight of so
many ladies?"

"No. I heed 'em not, when I am not asked to speak to 'em," replied
Holyday, listlessly. "How fared you?"

"Oh,--so so. The trick served. Faith, I e'en began to think myself I
was Master Holyday. But what's the matter?"

It was evident the captain did not wish to talk of his own affair. The
scholar was not the man to poke his nose into other people's matters.
But neither was he one to make any secret of his own concerns when
questioned.

"Oh, 'tis not much. I have been commissioned to write a play."

"What?" cried the captain, eagerly. "For which playhouse?--the
Globe?--the Blackfriars?--the Fortune?"

"Nay," said the scholar, sedately; "for Wat Stiles's puppet-show."

"Oh!--well, is not that good news? Is there not money in it? Why should
it make you down i' the mouth?"

"Oh, 'tis not the writing of the play--but I have no money to buy paper
and ink, and no place to write in."

"What, did the rascal showman give you no earnest money?"

"Yes; but I forgot, and spent it for supper. I knew you would make
shift to sup at the goldsmith's."

"Ay, marry, 'twould have gone hard else. Well, I am glad thou hast
eaten. It saves our shifting for thy supper. Troth, we shall come by
ink and paper. The thing is now to find beds for the night. Would I had
appointed to meet my gentleman this evening." But suddenly, at this,
the captain's face lengthened.

"When are you to meet him?"

"At ten to-morrow, in the Temple church," said the captain, dubiously.
After a moment's silence, he added, "And to think that the fat of the
land awaits you in Kent whenever you choose to take a wife to your
father's house there! Well, well, it must come to your getting the
better of that mad bashfulness--it must come to that in time."

"Why," quoth Holyday, surprised, "have you not assured me that women
are vipers?"

"Ay, most of them, indeed--but not all; not all." The captain spoke
thoughtfully.

"Well," said Holyday, after a pause, "I think I shall lodge in Cold
Harbour first, ere I take one home to my father." Cold Harbour was a
house in which vagabonds and debtors had sanctuary; but the two friends
had so far steered clear of it, the captain not liking the company or
the management thereof.

Leaving the Exchange, they found the streets alive with people; not
only had the fine weather brought out the citizens, but the town was
full of countryfolk up for the Trinity law term.

"'Odslid," a rustic esquire was overheard by the captain to say to
another, "I looked to lie at the Bell to-night, but not a bed's to be
had there. 'Twill go hard if all the inns--"

"Excellent," whispered Ravenshaw to the scholar. "We shall sleep dry of
the dews to-night--else I'm a simple parish ass. Come."

They went at once to the sign of the Bell, where the captain applied,
with an important air, for a chamber. On hearing that the house
was full, he made a great ado, saying he and his friend wished to
leave early in the morning in Hobson's wagon starting from that inn;
being late risers by habit, they durst not trust themselves to sleep
elsewhere, lest they miss the wagon. Finally, going into the inn yard,
the captain stated his case to one of Hobson's men, and suggested that
he and his companion might lie overnight in the tilt-wagon itself, so
as to make sure of not being left behind in the morning. The carrier,
glad to get two fares for the downward journey at a season when all
the travel was up to town, thought the idea a good one. And so the two
slept roomily that night on straw, well above ground, sheltered by the
canvas cover of the huge wagon. In the morning, pretending they went
for a bottle of wine, they did not return; and the carrier, whipping up
his horses at the end of a vain wait of fifteen minutes, was provided
with a subject of thought which lasted all the way to Edmonton.

Meanwhile, the captain and the scholar, postponing their breakfast,
whiled away the time till ten o'clock. At that hour, having left
his friend to loiter round Temple Bar, Ravenshaw stepped across the
venerable threshold of the church of the Temple.

This church, too, was a midday gathering-place, as was also Westminster
Abbey. But ten o'clock was too early for the crowd, and the captain
found himself almost alone among the recumbent figures, in dark marble,
of bygone knights of the Temple in full armour. Not even the lawyers,
in any considerable number, had yet taken their places by the clustered
Norman pillars at which they received clients. The gentleman whom
Ravenshaw had come to meet, to report the outcome of his attempt with
the goldsmith's daughter, was not there.

Master Jerningham, indeed, had cause to be late. He had cause also for
his mind to be, if not upset, at least tumbled about. In the first
place, though he did not try to resist it, he cursed his unreasonable
passion for this girl, which took so much time and thought from his
final preparations for the voyage on which he had set so heavy a
stake. He had been compelled to leave many things to his companion
gentlemen-adventurers, which he ought to have overseen himself. And
even as matters were, he was not clear as to what he would be about,
concerning the girl. Suppose he won her to a meeting, could such a
passion as his be cooled in the few hours during which he might be
with her before sailing? Or should he indeed, as he had hinted to Sir
Clement, set himself to carry her off on his voyage by persuasion
or force? He knew not; events must decide; only two things were
certain--he must behold her a yielding conquest in his arms; and he
must sail at the time set or as soon after as weather might permit.

Upon leaving Ravenshaw in St. Paul's, the day before, he had gone to
see a cunning man by whom his nativity had been cast with relation to
the voyage. The astrologer had foretold an obstacle to be encountered
at the last moment, and to be avoided only by great prudence. This had
darkened Master Jerningham's thoughts for awhile, but he had forgotten
it in the busy cares of the afternoon at Deptford, whither he had
hastened to see the bestowal of stores upon the ship. He had already
got his men down from London and Wapping, all taking part in the work,
some living aboard, some at the inns; so as to risk no desertions. He
had returned late to Winchester House, passed a restless night, slept
a little after daylight, and set forth in good time before ten for his
appointment.

Just as he was going down the water-stairs, a small craft shot in
ahead of the boat his man Gregory had hailed; a woman sprang up
from the stern and, gaining the stairs with a fearless leap, stood
facing him. She was a tall, finely made, ruddy-faced creature, in
her twenties, attired in the shabby remains of a country gentlewoman's
gown, and wearing a high-crowned, narrow-brimmed hat.

[Illustration: "BADE HIS VISITOR BE SEATED UPON A STONE BENCH, AND
FACED HER SULLENLY."]

"Name of the fiend!" muttered Master Jerningham, starting back in anger
and confusion. "What the devil do you here?"

"Peace," said the woman, in a low voice. "Have no fear. If your
virtuous kinsman sees me, say I'm old Jeremy's niece come to tell you
what men he'll need for the farm work." Her voice befitted her tall
and goodly figure, being rich and full; the look upon her handsome
countenance was one of mingled humiliation and scorn.

"I am in haste," said Jerningham, in great vexation.

"You must hear me first," she replied, resolutely.

Jerningham, stifling his annoyance, motioned Gregory to keep the
waterman waiting; then led the way up the stairs to the terrace, bade
his visitor be seated upon a stone bench, and faced her sullenly.

"Is this how you keep your promise?" he said, rebukingly.

"Oh, marry, I put you in no danger. I might have walked boldly to the
doors and asked for you. But I lay off yonder in the boat till you came
forth; it put me to the more cost, but you are shielded."

"Well, why in God's name have you come?"

"Because you would not come to the Grange, and I must needs have speech
with you. You forbade messages."

"Then have speech with me, and make an end. But look you, Meg, I have
no money. I have kept my word with you; I have given you a home at the
Grange; 'twas all I promised."

"'Tis all I ask. But the place must be a home, not a hell. 'Tis well
enough by day, and I mind not the loneness--troth, I'm glad to hide
my shame. But by night 'tis fearful, with none but old Jeremy for
protection, and he so feeble and such a coward. You must send a man
there, you must!--a man that is able to use a sword and pistol, and not
afraid."

"Why, who would go so far from the highroad to rob such a rotten husk
of a house?"

"'Tis not robbers," she said, sinking her voice to a terrified whisper.
"'Tis ghosts, and witches."

Jerningham laughed in derision of the idea.

"I tell you it's true. I know what I say," she went on. "Spirits walk
there every night; there are such sounds--!"

"Poh!" he interrupted. "The creaking of the timbers; the moving of
the casements in the wind; the flapping of the arras; the gnawing and
running of rats and mice."

"'Tis more than that. There be things I see; forms that pass swiftly;
they appear for a moment, then melt away."

"'Tis in your dreams you see them."

"I know when I am awake; besides, often I see them when I am not abed."

"They are the tricks of moonlight, then; or of rays that steal in at
cracks and crevices; or they are the moving of arras and such in a
faint breeze."

"I know better. Think not to put me off so. I'll not stay there alone
with old Jeremy. I cannot bear it--such fright! Good God, what nights
I've passed!"

Jerningham quieted her with a gesture of caution, as he looked
fearfully around to see if her excited manner was observed.

"Then there are witches," she went on, more calmly. "They slink about
the house and the garden in the shape of cats. Terrible noises they
make at night."

"Why, they _are_ cats, like enough; they seek the rats and mice. Troth,
for horrible noises--"

"Nay, but I know better. T'other evening Jeremy was late fetching home
the cow from the field, and so when I had done milking 'twas near
nightfall. As I was crossing the yard with the milk, what did I see
but an old woman leaning on her stick, by the corner of the house. She
was chewing and mumbling, and looking straight at me. I saw 'twas old
Goody Banks, whom the whole countryside knows to be a witch."

"Foh! a poor crazy beldame, no doubt come to beg or steal a crust or a
cup of milk."

"I thought so too, at first, after I had got over the fright of seeing
her--for 'tis rare we ever see any one at the Grange. But as I was
going to speak to her, she looked at me so evilly I remembered what the
countryfolk say of her, and such a fright came over me again, I cried
out, 'Avaunt in the name of Jesus!' and flung the pail of milk at her.
I heard a kind of whisk,--for I had closed my eyes as I threw,--and
when I opened them, there, instead of the old woman, stood a great cat,
staring at me with the very same evil eyes! So I knew she must be a
witch--turning into a cat before my very eyes!"

"But your eyes were closed, you say."

"Ay, she had bewitched me to close 'em, no doubt, so I might not see
how she transformed herself."

"Why, 'tis all clear. The whisk you heard was of the old woman's
running away from the milk-pail. The cat had been there all the while,
belike, but you had not seen it for the old woman."

"I tell you I know what I saw," she replied, growing vehement again.
"You need not think to fool me, and turn me off. Sith you have no other
place for me to live, I am content to live at the Grange; but you must
send a man there to guard the place against ghosts and witches. You
must do it,--a stout, strong man afraid of nothing; no shivering old
dotard like Jeremy, who durs'n't stick his nose out of his bedclothes
between dusk and daybreak. You promised to give me a home, and I to
keep silent and unseen; but a house of spirits and witches is no fit
home, and so what becomes of our agreement? So best send a man."

"Why, if it be not possible?"

"Then I shall hold myself freed of my promise, and if you cannot make
one place a home for me, you shall make another. I shall tell the
bishop all that is between us--oh, I shall get word to him, doubt it
not!--and I know what so good a man will do. He will make you marry me,
that is what he will! My birth--"

"Oh, peace! I was jesting. I will send a man. Is that all?"

"Ay, and little enough. There's much a man can do there, for the good
of the place itself. Will you send him to-day?"

"Why, faith, if I can find him--a man fit for the place, I mean. I have
much to do to-day."

"But I cannot endure another night there, with none but Jeremy in the
house. You must send him to-day; else I swear I will come--"

"Nay, give me a little time," pleaded Jerningham, thinking that if he
could but hold her off with promises for two days, her disclosure
would matter little, as by that time he would be afloat--unless weather
should hinder the sailing. At this "unless," he frowned, and remembered
the fortune-teller's prediction. Without doubt, what Mistress Meg might
do was the obstacle in the case. He entertained a morbid fear of an
impediment arising at the last moment. The woman was capable of keeping
her threat; and the bishop was capable of staying him at the very
lifting of the anchor, capable even of having him pursued and brought
back as long as he was in home waters. Meg knew nothing of his voyage.
He must keep that from her, as well as satisfy her in the matter of
her request. The wise man had said that "prudence" might avoid the
obstacle; Jerningham must deal prudently with her. "I will send a man
next week," quoth he.

"I will give you till to-morrow to find a fit man," she replied,
resolutely. "To-night I can sit up with candles lit. But if your man be
not there to-morrow at four o'clock in the afternoon, I shall start for
London; if I come a-horseback I can be here by eight."

Jerningham fetched a heavy sigh. He knew this woman, and when she
meant what she said, and how impossible it was to move her on those
occasions. He thought what a close player his adverse fiend was, to
set the time of her possible revelation upon the very eve of his
departure. Durst he hazard some very probable hitch of her causing? No;
that would not be "prudence." He must not only promise her; he must
also send the man. After all, that was no difficult matter; once the
master was safe away on the seas, destined to come back rich enough
to defy bishop and all, or come back never at all, let the man look
where he might for his wage. It was but palming off upon her the first
ruffian to be hired, who might behave decently for a week or so.

Jerningham's face lightened, therefore; he gave his word, slipped the
woman a coin to pay her boatman, saw her to the boat by which she had
come, and then took his seat in the one awaiting him, and bade the
waterman make haste to the Temple stairs.

As he and Gregory walked into the Temple church, he did not immediately
know the man who hastened up to meet him; for the up-turned moustaches,
and the bareness of chin, except for the little tuft beneath the
lip, gave the captain a somewhat spruce and gallant appearance,
notwithstanding his plain attire.

"God save you, sir. I thought you had changed your mind."

"By my soul, sir--oh, 'tis Ravenshaw! 'Faith, 'tis you have changed
your face. I was detained, against my will. Let's go behind that
farthest pillar. Troth, this transformation--" He broke off and eyed
the captain narrowly, with a sudden suspicion.

"A man's face is his own," said Ravenshaw, bluffly.

"One would think you had set yourself to charm the ladies."

"Fear not. I have no designs upon the lady you wot of. And now let me
speak plain words. When I undertook your business yesterday, 'twas left
in doubt between us whether your desire of this maid meant honestly."

"'Slight, it shall remain in doubt, as far as your knowledge is
concerned," replied Jerningham, quickly, nettled at the other's tone.

"It was left in doubt, as far as speech went," continued Ravenshaw.
"But there was little doubt in my mind. And yet I bound myself to
the service because I was at war with womankind. I thought all women
bad--nay, in my true heart I knew better, but I lost sight of that
knowledge, and chose to think them so."

"Wherein does your opinion of the sex concern me?"

"But I was wrong," pursued the captain. "I have met one who proves they
are not all bad. I were a fool, then, to hold myself at feud with the
sex; and the greater fool to pay back my grudge, if I must pay it, upon
one that is innocent."

"Why, thou recreant knave! Do you mean you have failed in the business
and would lay it to your virtue?"

"Softly, good sir! I will tell you this: I can win the maid to meet
you, if I will."

"Then what the devil--? How much money--? Come to an end, that I may
know whether to use you or--"

"I will win the maid to meet you--if you will pledge yourself--"

"Go on; what price?"

"If you will pledge yourself to make her your wife at the meeting, and
acknowledge her openly as such."

Jerningham stared for a moment in amazement. Then he gave a harsh laugh.

"A rare jest, i' faith! The roaring captain, desiring a city maid for
his mistress, offers to get her a gentleman husband! A shrewd captain!
Belike, a shrewd maid, rather!"

"By this hand, I ought to send you to hell! But for her sake, I will
rather explain. She seeks no husband. But I conceived you might be a
fit man for such a maid. You are young and well-favoured,--a fitter man
than some that might be forced upon her. I thought a marriage with such
a mate might save-- But to the point: if you love her, why not honestly?
And if honestly, why not in marriage? You will behold few maids as
beautiful, none more innocent. As to her portion, the marriage must
needs be against her father's knowledge, by license and bond; but when
he finds his son is so likely a gentleman, I warrant--"

"Come, come, an end of this; I am not to be coney-catched. Shall I meet
the wench through your mediation, or shall I not?"

"You shall not. And I tell you this: she is not to be won to such a
meeting as you are minded for; not by the forms of gods, the treasures
of kings, or the tongues of poets!"

Jerningham shrugged his shoulders.

"It is the truth," said the captain. "Virtue beats in her heart,
modesty courses with her blood, purity shines in her eyes, she is the
mirror of innocence. Should you find means to try her, I swear to
you the attempt would but mar her peace, and serve you nothing. Nay,
even if that were not so,--if there were a chance of your enticing
her,--black curses would fall upon the man by whose deed that stainless
flower were smirched. Innocence robed in beauty--there's too little of
it walks the world, that gentlemen should take a hand in spoiling it!"

"Man, you waste my time prating," said Jerningham, who had been
thin

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