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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ