Next day I stayed within all the morning. Harry was in London, and
though I had come thither to seek him, I dared not stir abroad for
fear of meeting him. I dined in my lodging, sending Lashmer to the
tavern for a quart of claret.
The food and the wine must have put new heart in me; for after they
were done I sallied forth alone, resolved to prosecute my search.
Still dreading success, I wandered eastward along the Strand. Many
gallants, most splendid with new-fashioned hats and hose, were
loitering along the way I went. I followed the stream, and so,
passing Temple Bar and over the Fleet Bridge, I came through Ludgate
before St. Paul's Church.
I stood a while admiring the grandeur of the front and the lofty
tower. For then, being untravelled, I was unlearned in architecture,
and saw not how rude were its proportions and barbarous its ornament
beside the new style.
Many gallants went by me as I watched, laughing, and passed on into
the church. Harry had often told me how it was a place of great
resort, so I followed, thinking perhaps to find what I looked for and
dreaded to see. The floor of the long and lofty nave was thronged
with gallants and would-be gallants, strolling up and down, and
laughing and talking with one another; while between the piers of
clustered columns which supported the soaring roof-groins and dim
triforium knots of men were gathered, who seemed for the most part to
be merchants. From time to time I could see a bond or account-book
fluttering white amidst their sober robes, but all was done with as
little noise and bustle as could well be.
For it must be known that Paul's was not then the den of thieves it
is now. It was not so long since the Queen's proclamation had been
issued against such as should transact business, or make any fray, or
shoot any hand-gun or dag within the precincts. It was still had in
memory, though little regarded, and the place was not wholly
disorderly.
Yet was it sufficiently out of order to see so gay a company glowing
in their bright clothes of 'popinjay blue,' 'devil-in-the-head,'
'lusty gallant,' and I know not what other outlandish new-fashioned
hues, and to hear their laughter rolling round the gray old walls,
and the clink of their spurs and rapiers on the pavement, and the
rustle of their silks and taffeta as they walked.
Wrapped as I was in myself, and shut off by my shame from all men,
that thoughtless throng only made my sense of loneliness keener. Far
more in sympathy with me than any creature there was the tall temple
itself, which, stripped long since of all its altars and Popish
adornments, seemed to look down in lofty contempt upon the irreverent
crowd which insulted its ancient dignity. Solemn and sad and alone
it seemed to wait in patient confidence for the day when their little
paltry lives would have passed away to oblivion, and its days of
worship would come again.
That there were many there more loyal with their tongues than in
ought else I could see as I went forward and came near Duke
Humphrey's tomb. Here the proclamation seemed wellnigh forgotten.
Round the battered effigy the throng was thicker and full of ruffling
loud-voiced swaggerers, who, from their ruffianly carriage and most
vile Smithfield oaths, made me think their gentility much belied the
bravery of their clothes. It was a thing I then first noted, and
have since much grieved over, that men of low station nowadays take
to wearing garments of gentleman's cut, no matter how common or
ill-made, so long as they be as good as their scrapings, or
stealings, or borrowings will buy.
Not wishing to mingle with this lewd throng I turned aside between
the columns, that I might so pass into the aisle and avoid them. But
before I could carry out my purpose I felt myself hustled roughly
into the aisle by some one who thrust violently by me.
'Body of Bacchus!' said a loud, gruff voice, 'know you not better,
base countryman, than to hustle a gentleman so?'
I turned and saw glaring at me a tall ruffian whom I had noted in the
throng. He was dressed in garish and faded garments very vilely
pinked and guarded, and wore on his head a most desperate hat. As
though to give him a warlike note, his clothes were thrown on in a
slovenly way, and his moustache frounced out so shock and bristling
that it seemed from each hair-end a crackling oath must start with
every word he said. I felt little inclined for a brawl, least of all
in that place, though to quarrel with any man would perhaps have been
a comfort in my present state; so I civilly told him I was sorry to
have stood in his way.
'What, base minion!' said he very fierce, with a whole fusilada of
oaths, 'think you to pass so lightly from a gentleman's wrath?'
'I pray you, sir, be content,' I replied as quietly as I could, for
it seemed very silly to quarrel with such a mountebank. 'If I
wronged your gentility it was unwittingly, and I crave your pardon.'
'Stay, rude rustic,' said he, stepping before me as I turned away,
and clapping his hand to a rapier of extravagant length. 'This shall
not serve you. Craving of pardons shall not serve you, nor your
_pardonnez-mois_ neither. A gentleman must have satisfaction by rule
and circumstance, after the teaching of the inestimable Signor Rocco.'
I found myself by this time hemmed in by a throng of his fellows, as
ruffianly and hectoring as himself, none of whom I dare have sworn
could ever have afforded so much as their noses inside Signor Rocco's
'College,' so I thought best to make an end.
'Come then, sir,' said I, 'to a fitting place, and I will presently
give you your desire.'
'Nay, but first name your friends,' my opponent replied. 'For know,
base scullion, that town-bred gentlemen fight by rule and
circumstance, and not like two rams in field, without supporters.'
'Yes, pretty shepherd,' cried the throng jeeringly, 'name first your
friend, if you want a gentleman to walk with you.'
I now saw my evil case and what a trick was put on me, and knew not
what to do. To draw my rapier, Harry's rapier, on this vermin was
farthest from my thoughts. Yet the throng hustled me closer, and my
bully swaggered and threatened loudly.
'I have no friend here,' said I, 'unless any gentleman among you will
stand by me.'
'Hark to the scurvy rustic,' they cried, in answer to my look around
to them. 'A pox on your familiarity. You will get no friend here.'
'Nay, my dry-livered lubbers, that he will,' cried a clear jolly
voice, and I turned to see Frank Drake and another gentleman break
through the throng to my side. 'What is it, Jasper? Stand back, ye
lubberly porpoises, and give a seaman sea-room.'
'Stand back, I pray you, gentlemen,' cried my bully very
condescending; 'I knew not that I spoke with a friend of Captain
Drake's.'
'Or maybe you would not have spoken so loud, my pot-valiant
Hercules,' said Frank's friend.
'What is all the coil about, Jasper?' said Frank again, while my
bully tried to outstare the gentleman.
''Tis nothing,' said I. 'He wanted two friends for me, to help give
him satisfaction for having been at the pain of jostling me.'
'Give him a tester, sir,' said Frank's friend, 'to buy sack withal.
That is the best satisfaction for his most barrel-bellied worship.'
'No, gentlemen,' said my bully with great pomp, finding he could not
outstare his new adversary, 'it is satisfaction enough to know the
gentleman is a friend of the most valiant Captain Drake. I know of
no quarrel here that a skin of muscadine will not assuage. I pray
you, let me conduct you to a very honest tavern hard by where I am
known, and where I will see you served with the best.'
'Most courtly offered!' said the gentleman. 'And peradventure your
most sweet honesty will see us served also with very honest dice and
very honest cards. 'Tis a pity we are promised elsewhere, but so it
is, and we must perforce pray your valourship to bestow on us instead
a full measure of your most delectable absence.'
'By the soul of Bacchus,' said the bully, swelling with contempt,
'were it not for the proclamation, blood should flow for this;' but
we all laughed at him, and he strode away with his nose in the air,
as proud as Alexander after Granicus. So we were rid of him and his
fellows, who followed on his heels all growling, 'Were it not for the
proclamation,' and swearing like drovers between their teeth.
'A happy meeting, Jasper,' said Frank. 'Yonder go as arrant a lot of
thieves as any in all London. Be better acquainted with my friend,
Mr. John Oxenham. A fellow-adventurer, Oxenham, Mr. Festing, but
not, to my grief, a shipmate.'
'Pity you will not sail with us, Mr. Festing,' said Mr. Oxenham with
a winning courtesy of manner. 'A man who can stand up to a throng of
swaggerers like that should try his hand on Spaniards.'
'Why, so he has,' cried Frank,' and to their cost; but now he will be
doing nothing but ram home most portentous charges of words into
paper ordnance with a quill rammer. Heaven knows what giants they
will bring down when they go off!'
We all laughed together, for I cannot say what it was to me to meet
these two in the midst of my loneliness. I gladly accepted their
invitation to a tavern, where we could talk in peace. For not only
was I overjoyed to be with Frank again, but I was much taken with Mr.
Oxenham.
He was a tall, well-dressed man with a very handsome face, and such
courageous eyes that I did not wonder they had daunted the Paul's
man. 'Tis true I should have liked him better had it not been for an
amorous look he wore over all his manliness. Yet who was I to judge
him for that? His talk was very pleasant, for he had been a rover
from his youth, and spoke of what he had seen freely, without
boasting. We sat drinking a long time, and talked of the glories of
the West and a sailor's life, for which he had conceived a romantic
enthusiasm.
'Ah, Mr. Festing,' burst out Mr. Oxenham at last, 'it is a pity you
will not sail with us to the West, since you are bent on travel. I
envy you your learning in these things, but none who have not seen
can picture their glory. Compared with them, to potter about Europe
from one pestered town to another, from one crowded country to
another, is like the paddling of a duckling in a puddle beside the
everlasting flight of the god-like albatross, that never lights, not
even for love. This old world is gray, and worn, and stifling. Over
there it is all colour and sunlight and freedom; where the golden
land brings forth without labour, and he who will may pass through
and enjoy. Why, when once you come to that Paradise where all is so
wide and fresh and lovely, you lift your hands in wonder, as you look
back to this dull corner far away, that your life can ever have been
so little as to come within the bounds of such a prison; you shall
hardly believe there was ever room here for aught large enough to
cause a moment's grief or joy for your expanded soul. There you can
see Nature and know at last what beauty is. There at last you shall
drink her fragrant breath, feel the richness of her warm embrace,
revel in the azure and rose colour and golden sheen that make up her
divine beauty, and lie in her arms to know at last what it means to
say, "This is delight."'
'And think, lad,' cried Frank, who hardly, I think, can have seen
with Mr. Oxenham's eyes, 'think that it is Spaniards who have
ravished this rich beauty. It is these idolatrous hell-hounds of
Antichrist who have possessed this Shulamite woman whom the Lord had
reserved as a bride for his saints. It will be a glorious smiting of
them. Their lust has made them sleepy and womanish. They are puffed
up into silly security with their Spanish pride. Why, man, they will
leave whole estates in charge of one slave, and send out trains of a
hundred Indians or more laden with gold with but a single negro over
them. I know it all now. I know every way in and out, and every
course and time their ships will sail, and I know harbours, lad,
where none could ever find us, where we can lie in wait and pounce
out like cats on the good things that come by. And then they have
not a walled town on the coast, that I know of. We can swoop down on
the Dons and be away again, made men, or ever they have time to wake
up out of their beds. Why will not men see what there is to be done,
if they will only do? One such stroke as I have in mind will do more
to undo Antichrist than all your thinking. Yet you scholars will not
see it, but will not cease your idle disputing and dreaming till the
angels shall come down and cry to you in voice of thunder, "Ye men of
Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?"'
His words struck me very deep, and I began to see how idle was our
scholars' contempt for men of action. So, with ever-growing
interest, I listened as we talked together till long after supper,
and Frank unfolded every detail of his plan in his honest practical
way. Mr. Oxenham, moreover, ceased not to paint his glowing pictures
not only of what was known of those regions, but also of the
fairyland beyond, where no Christian had yet trod,--the unknown lands
where he set my fancy playing with his till my imagination, on which
I had already heaped so much that was inflammable from my books, was
all on fire.
As for my reason, Frank's sound sense was enough to satisfy that, and
his taunt at my standing still and gazing up into heaven while others
were doing touched my pride nearly. What wonder, then, that when the
time came to bid them good-night, when I saw before me my lonely
lodging, when I pictured the blank morrow and all my life beyond,
empty of hope or joy or fellowship, when they urged me once more most
earnestly to sail with them, that I could not resist!
They were pressing on me the very course in which I could follow Mr.
Follet's strangely-worded advice more fully and nobly than I had ever
dreamed. In place of my faith a sense of destiny seemed to have come
to me, and to be speaking clearly in this chance meeting. If there
was anything in man's harmony with the music of the spheres, sure it
was the wild adventurous war-note of the universal gamut that I heard
far off in the height of heaven sounding low and clear for my soul's
response.
My quest for Harry was forgotten, and with it whatever else tied me
to the old life, which now began to seem but a body of death. For
that strange voice had come over the wide ocean and whispered its
witching summons in my ear also. I could not choose but obey.
So we three joined hands and drank a cup on my resolve, and one more
was added to the throng who day by day were leaving all to taste the
ripe lips of this New Helen in the West.