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

"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.