The Fortunes of Nigel

“I told you,” said Jenkin, “I was going to destruction – I mean to the gaming-house. I am resolved to hazard these two or three pieces, to get as much as will pay for a passage with Captain Sharker, whose ship lies at Gravesend, bound for America – and so Eastward, ho! – I met one devil in the way already, who would have tempted me from my purpose, but I spurned him from me – you may be another for what I know. – What degree of damnation do you propose for me,” he added wildly, “and what is the price of it?”

“I would have you to know,” answered Richie, “that I deal in no such commodities, whether as buyer or seller. But if you will tell me honestly the cause of your distress, I will do what is in my power to help you out of it, – not being, however, prodigal of promises, until I know the case; as a learned physician only gives advice when he has observed the diagnostics.”

“No one has any thing to do with my affairs,” said the poor lad; and folding his arms on the table, he laid his head upon them, with the sullen dejection of the overburdened lama, when it throws itself down to die in desperation.

Richard Moniplies, like most folk who have a good opinion of themselves, was fond of the task of consolation, which at once displayed his superiority, (for the consoler is necessarily, for the time at least, superior to the afflicted person,) and indulged his love of talking. He inflicted on the poor penitenta harangue of pitiless length, stuffed full of the usual topics of the mutability of human affairs – the eminent advantages of patience under affliction – the folly of grieving for what hath no remedy – the necessity of taking more care for the future, and some gentle rebukes on account of the past, which acid he threw in to assist in subduing the patient’s obstinacy, as Hannibal used vinegar in cutting his way through rocks. It was not in human nature to endure this flood of commonplace eloquence in silence; and Jin Vin, whether desirous of stopping the flow of words – crammed thus into his ear, “against the stomach of his sense,” or whether confiding in Richie’s protestations of friendship, which the wretched, says Fielding, are ever so ready to believe, or whether merely to give his sorrows vent in words, raised his head, and turning his red and swollen eyes to Richie —

“Cocksbones, man, only hold thy tongue, and thou shall know all about it, – and then all I ask of thee is to shake hands and part. – This Margaret Ramsay, – you have seen her, man?”

“Once,” said Richie, “once, at Master George Heriot’s in Lombard Street – I was in the room when they dined.”

“Ay, you helped to shift their trenchers, I remember,” said Jin Vin. “Well, that same pretty girl – and I will uphold her the prettiest betwixt Paul’s and the Bar – she is to be wedded to your Lord Glenvarloch, with a pestilence on him!”

“That is impossible,” said Richie; “it is raving nonsense, man – they make April gouks of you cockneys every month in the year – The Lord Glenvarloch marry the daughter of a Lonnon mechanic! I would as soon believe the great Prester John would marry the daughter of a Jew packman.”

“Hark ye, brother,” said Jin Vin, “I will allow no one to speak disregardfully of the city, for all I am in trouble.”

“I crave your pardon, man – I meant no offence,” said Richie; “but as to the marriage, it is a thing simply impossible.”

“It is a thing that will take place, though, for the Duke and the Prince, and all of them, have a finger in it; and especially the old fool of a king, that makes her out to be some great woman in her own country, as all the Scots pretend to be, you know.”

“Master Vincent, but that you are under affliction,” said the consoler, offended on his part, “I would hear no national reflections.”

The afflicted youth apologised in his turns, but asserted, “it was true that the king said Peg-a-Ramsay was some far-off sort of noblewoman; and that he had taken a great interest in the match, and had run about like an old gander, cackling about Peggie ever since he had seen her in hose and doublet – and no wonder,” added poor Vin, with a deep sigh.

“This may be all true,” said Richie, “though it sounds strange in my ears; but, man, you should not speak evil of dignities – Curse not the king, Jenkin; not even in thy bed-chamber – stone walls have ears – no one has a right to know better than I.”

“I do not curse the foolish old man,” said Jenkin; “but I would have them carry things a peg lower. – If they were to see on a plain field thirty thousand such pikes as I have seen in the artillery gardens, it would not be their long-haired courtiers would help them, I trow.” [Footnote: Clarendon remarks, that the importance of the military exercise of the citizens was severely felt by the cavaliers during the civil war, notwithstanding the ridicule that had been showered upon it by the dramatic poets of the day. Nothing less than habitual practice could, at the battle of Newbury and elsewhere, have enabled the Londoners to keep their ranks as pikemen, in spite of the repeated charge of the fiery Prince Rupert and his gallant cavaliers.]

“Hout tout, man,” said Richie, “mind where the Stewarts come frae, and never think they would want spears or claymores either; but leaving sic matters, whilk are perilous to speak on, I say once more, what is your concern in all this matter?”

“What is it?” said Jenkin; “why, have I not fixed on Peg-a-Ramsay to be my true love, from the day I came to her old father’s shop? and have I not carried her pattens and her chopines for three years, and borne her prayer-book to church, and brushed the cushion for her to kneel down upon, and did she ever say me nay?”

“I see no cause she had,” said Richie, “if the like of such small services were all that ye proffered. Ah, man! there are few – very few, either of fools or of wise men, ken how to guide a woman.”

“Why, did I not serve her at the risk of my freedom, and very nigh at the risk of my neck? Did she not – no, it was not her neither, but that accursed beldam whom she caused to work upon me – persuade me like a fool to turn myself into a waterman to help my lord, and a plague to him, down to Scotland? and instead of going peaceably down to the ship at Gravesend, did not he rant and bully, and show his pistols, and make me land him at Greenwich, where he played some swaggering pranks, that helped both him and me into the Tower?”

“Aha!” said Richie, throwing more than his usual wisdom into his looks, “so you were the green-jacketed waterman that rowed Lord Glenvarloch down the river?”

“The more fool I, that did not souse him in the Thames,” said Jenkin; “and I was the lad who would not confess one word of who and what I was, though they threatened to make me hug the Duke of Exeter’s daughter."[Footnote: A particular species of rack, used at the Tower of London, was so called.]

“Wha is she, man?” said Richie; “she must be an ill-fashioned piece, if you’re so much afraid of her, and she come of such high kin.”

“I mean the rack – the rack, man,” said Jenkin. “Where were you bred that never heard of the Duke of Exeter’s daughter? But all the dukes and duchesses in England could have got nothing out of me – so the truth came out some other way, and I was set free. – Home I ran, thinking myself one of the cleverest and happiest fellows in the ward. And she – she – she wanted to pay me with money for all my true service! and she spoke so sweetly and so coldly at the same time, I wished myself in the deepest dungeon of the Tower – I wish they had racked me to death before I heard this Scottishman was to chouse me out of my sweetheart!”

“But are ye sure ye have lost her?” said Richie; “it sounds strange in my ears that my Lord Glenvarloch should marry the daughter of a dealer, – though there are uncouth marriages made in London, I’ll allow that.”

“Why, I tell you this lord was no sooner clear of the Tower, than he and Master George Heriot comes to make proposals for her, with the king’s assent, and what not; and fine fair-day prospects of Court favour for this lord, for he hath not an acre of land.”

“Well, and what said the auld watch-maker?” said Richie; “was he not, as might weel beseem him, ready to loop out of his skin-case for very joy?”

“He multiplied six figures progressively, and reported the product – then gave his consent.”

“And what did you do?”

“I rushed into the streets,” said the poor lad, “with a burning heart and a blood-shot eye – and where did I first find myself, but with that beldam, Mother Suddlechop – and what did she propose to me, but to take the road?”

“Take the road, man? in what sense?” said Richie.

“Even as a clerk to Saint Nicholas – as a highwayman, like Poins and Peto, and the good fellows in the play – and who think you was to be my captain? – for she had the whole out ere I could speak to her – I fancy she took silence for consent, and thought me damned too unutterably to have one thought left that savoured of redemption – who was to be my captain, but the knave that you saw me cudgel at the ordinary when you waited on Lord Glenvarloch, a cowardly, sharking, thievish bully about town here, whom they call Colepepper.”

“Colepepper – umph – I know somewhat of that smaik,” said Richie; “ken ye by ony chance where he may be heard of, Master Jenkin? – ye wad do me a sincere service to tell me.”

“Why, he lives something obscurely,” answered the apprentice, “on account of suspicion of some villainy – I believe that horrid murder in Whitefriars, or some such matter. But I might have heard all about him from Dame Suddlechop, for she spoke of my meeting him at Enfield Chase, with some other good fellows, to do a robbery on one that goes northward with a store of treasure.”

“And you did not agree to this fine project?” said Moniplies.

“I cursed her for a hag, and came away about my business,” answered Jenkin.

“Ay, and what said she to that, man? That would startle her,” said Richie.

“Not a whit. She laughed, and said she was in jest,” answered Jenkin; “but I know the she-devil’s jest from her earnest too well to be taken in that way. But she knows I would never betray her.’

“Betray her! No,” replied Richie; “but are ye in any shape bound to this birkie Peppercull, or Colepepper, or whatever they call him, that ye suld let him do a robbery on the honest gentleman that is travelling to the north, and may be a kindly Scot, for what we know?”

“Ay – going home with a load of English money,” said Jenkin. “But be he who he will, they may rob the whole world an they list, for I am robbed and ruined.”

Richie filled his friend’s cup up to the brim, and insisted that he should drink what he called “clean caup out.” “This love,” he said, “is but a bairnly matter for a brisk young fellow like yourself, Master Jenkin. And if ye must needs have a whimsy, though I think it would be safer to venture on a staid womanly body, why, here be as bonny lasses in London as this Peg-a-Ramsay. You need not sigh sae deeply, for it is very true – there is as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. Now wherefore should you, who are as brisk and trig a young fellow of your inches as the sun needs to shine on – wherefore need you sit moping this way, and not try some bold way to better your fortune?”

“I tell you, Master Moniplies,” said Jenkin, “I am as poor as any Scot among you – I have broke my indenture, and I think of running my country.”

“A-well-a-day!” said Richie; “but that maunna be, man – I ken weel, by sad experience, that poortith takes away pith, and the man sits full still that has a rent in his breeks. [Footnote: This elegant speech was made by the Earl of Douglas, called Tineman after being wounded and made prisoner at the battle of Shrewsbury, where

     “His well labouring sword     Had three times slain the semblance of the king,”]

But courage, man; you have served me heretofore, and I will serve you now. If you will but bring me to speech of this same captain, it will be the best day’s work you ever did.”

“I guess where you are, Master Richard – you would save your countryman’s long purse,” said Jenkin. “I cannot see how that should advantage me, but I reck not if I should bear a hand. I hate that braggart, that bloody-minded, cowardly bully. If you can get me mounted I care not if I show you where the dame told me I should meet him – but you must stand to the risk, for though he is a coward himself, I know he will have more than one stout fellow with him.”

“We’ll have a warrant, man,” said Richie, “and the hue and cry, to boot.”

“We will have no such thing,” said Jenkin, “if I am to go with you. I am not the lad to betray any one to the harmanbeck. You must do it by manhood if I am to go with you. I am sworn to cutter’s law, and will sell no man’s blood.”

“Aweel,” said Richie, “a wilful man must have his way; ye must think that I was born and bred where cracked crowns were plentier than whole ones. Besides, I have two noble friends here, Master Lowestoffe of the Temple, and his cousin Master Ringwood, that will blithely be of so gallant a party.”

“Lowestoffe and Ringwood!” said Jenkin; “they are both brave gallants – they will be sure company. Know you where they are to be found?”

“Ay, marry do I,” replied Richie. “They are fast at the cards and dice, till the sma’ hours, I warrant them.”

“They are gentlemen of trust and honour,” said Jenkin, “and, if they advise it, I will try the adventure. Go, try if you can bring them hither, since you have so much to say with, them. We must not be seen abroad together. – I know not how it is, Master Moniplies,” continued he, as his countenance brightened up, and while, in his turn, he filled the cups, “but I feel my heart something lighter since I have thought of this matter.”

“Thus it is to have counsellors, Master Jenkin,” said Richie; “and truly I hope to hear you say that your heart is as light as a lavrock’s, and that before you are many days aulder. Never smile and shake your head, but mind what I tell you – and bide here in the meanwhile, till I go to seek these gallants. I warrant you, cart-ropes would not hold them back from such a ploy as I shall propose to them.”

CHAPTER XXXVI

  The thieves have bound the true men —  Now, could thou and I rob the thieves, and go   merrily to London.Henry IV., Part I.

The sun was high upon the glades of Enfield Chase, and the deer, with which it then abounded, were seen sporting in picturesque groups among the ancient oaks of the forest, when a cavalier and a lady, on foot, although in riding apparel, sauntered slowly up one of the long alleys which were cut through the park for the convenience of the hunters. Their only attendant was a page, who, riding a Spanish jennet, which seemed to bear a heavy cloak-bag, followed them at a respectful distance. The female, attired in all the fantastic finery of the period, with more than the usual quantity of bugles, flounces, and trimmings, and holding her fan of ostrich feathers in one hand, and her riding-mask of black velvet in the other, seemed anxious, by all the little coquetry practised on such occasions, to secure the notice of her companion, who sometimes heard her prattle without seeming to attend to it, and at other times interrupted his train of graver reflections, to reply to her.

“Nay, but, my lord – my lord, you walk so fast, you will leave me behind you. – Nay, I will have hold of your arm, but how to manage with my mask and my fan? Why would you not let me bring my waiting-gentlewoman to follow us, and hold my things? But see, I will put my fan in my girdle, soh! – and now that I have a hand to hold you with, you shall not run away from me.”

“Come on, then,” answered the gallant, “and let us walk apace, since you would not be persuaded to stay with your gentlewoman, as you call her, and with the rest of the baggage. – You may perhaps see that, though, you will not like to see.”

She took hold of his arm accordingly; but as he continued to walk at the same pace, she shortly let go her hold, exclaiming that he had hurt her hand. The cavalier stopped, and looked at the pretty hand and arm which she showed him, with exclamations against his cruelty. “I dare say,” she said, baring her wrist and a part of her arm, “it is all black and blue to the very elbow.”

“I dare say you are a silly little fool,” said the cavalier, carelessly kissing the aggrieved arm; “it is only a pretty incarnate which sets off the blue veins.”

“Nay, my lord, now it is you are silly,” answered the dame; “but I am glad I can make you speak and laugh on any terms this morning. I am sure, if I did insist on following you into the forest, it was all for the sake of diverting you. I am better company than your page, I trow. – And now, tell me, these pretty things with horns, be they not deer?”

“Even such they be, Nelly,” answered her neglectful attendant.

“And what can the great folk do with so many of them, forsooth?”

“They send them to the city, Nell, where wise men make venison pasties of their flesh, and wear their horns for trophies,” answered Lord Dalgarno, whom our reader has already recognised.

“Nay, now you laugh at me, my lord,” answered his companion; “but I know all about venison, whatever you may think. I always tasted it once a year when we dined with Mr. Deputy,” she continued, sadly, as a sense of her degradation stole across a mind bewildered with vanity and folly, “though he would not speak to me now, if we met together in the narrowest lane in the Ward!”

“I warrant he would not,” said Lord Dalgarno, “because thou, Nell, wouldst dash him with a single look; for I trust thou hast more spirit than to throw away words on such a fellow as he?”

“Who, I!” said Dame Nelly. “Nay, I scorn the proud princox too much for that. Do you know, he made all the folk in the Ward stand cap in hand to him, my poor old John Christie and all?” Here her recollection began to overflow at her eyes.

“A plague on your whimpering,” said Dalgarno, somewhat harshly, – “Nay, never look pale for the matter, Nell. I am not angry with you, you simple fool. But what would you have me think, when you are eternally looking back upon your dungeon yonder by the river, which smelt of pitch and old cheese worse than a Welshman does of onions, and all this when I am taking you down to a castle as fine as is in Fairy Land!”

“Shall we be there to-night, my lord?” said Nelly, drying her tears.

“To-night, Nelly? – no, nor this night fortnight.”

“Now, the Lord be with us, and keep us! – But shall we not go by sea, my lord? – I thought everybody came from Scotland by sea. I am sure Lord Glenvarloch and Richie Moniplies came up by sea.”

“There is a wide difference between coming up and going down, Nelly,” answered Lord Dalgarno.

“And so there is, for certain,” said his simple companion. “But yet I think I heard people speaking of going down to Scotland by sea, as well as coming up. Are you well avised of the way? – Do you think it possible we can go by land, my sweet lord?”

“It is but trying, my sweet lady,” said Lord Dalgarno. “Men say England and Scotland are in the same island, so one would hope there may be some road betwixt them by land.”

“I shall never be able to ride so far,” said the lady.

“We will have your saddle stuffed softer,” said the lord. “I tell you that you shall mew your city slough, and change from the caterpillar of a paltry lane into the butterfly of a prince’s garden. You shall have as many tires as there are hours in the day – as many handmaidens as there are days in the week – as many menials as there are weeks in the year – and you shall ride a hunting and hawking with a lord, instead of waiting upon an old ship-chandler, who could do nothing but hawk and spit.”

“Ay, but will you make me your lady?” said Dame Nelly.

“Ay, surely – what else?” replied the lord – “My lady-love.”

“Ay, but I mean your lady-wife,” said Nelly.

“Truly, Nell, in that I cannot promise to oblige you. A lady-wife,” continued Dalgarno, “is a very different thing from a lady-love.”

“I heard from Mrs. Suddlechop, whom you lodged me with since I left poor old John Christie, that Lord Glenvarloch is to marry David Ramsay the clockmaker’s daughter?”

“There is much betwixt the cup and the lip, Nelly. I wear something about me may break the bans of that hopeful alliance, before the day is much older,” answered Lord Dalgarno.

“Well, but my father was as good a man as old Davy Ramsay, and as well to pass in the world, my lord; and, therefore, why should you not marry me? You have done me harm enough, I trow – wherefore should you not do me this justice?”

“For two good reasons, Nelly. Fate put a husband on you, and the king passed a wife upon me,” answered Lord Dalgarno.

“Ay, my lord,” said Nelly, “but they remain in England, and we go to Scotland.”

“Thy argument is better than thou art aware of,” said Lord Dalgarno. “I have heard Scottish lawyers say the matrimonial tie may be unclasped in our happy country by the gentle hand of the ordinary course of law, whereas in England it can only be burst by an act of Parliament. Well, Nelly, we will look into that matter; and whether we get married again or no, we will at least do our best to get unmarried.”

“Shall we indeed, my honey-sweet lord? and then I will think less about John Christie, for he will marry again, I warrant you, for he is well to pass; and I would be glad to think he had somebody to take care of him, as I used to do, poor loving old man! He was a kind man, though he was a score of years older than I; and I hope and pray he will never let a young lord cross his honest threshold again!”

Here the dame was once more much inclined to give way to a passion of tears; but Lord Dalgarno conjured down the emotion, by saying with some asperity – “I am weary of these April passions, my pretty mistress, and I think you will do well to preserve your tears for some more pressing occasion. Who knows what turn of fortune may in a few minutes call for more of them than you can render?”

“Goodness, my lord! what mean you by such expressions? John Christie (the kind heart!) used to keep no secrets from me, and I hope your lordship will not hide your counsel from me?”

“Sit down beside me on this bank,” said the nobleman; “I am bound to remain here for a short space, and if you can be but silent, I should like to spend a part of it in considering how far I can, on the present occasion, follow the respectable example which you recommend to me.”

The place at which he stopped was at that time little more than a mound, partly surrounded by a ditch, from which it derived the name of Camlet Moat. A few hewn stones there were, which had escaped the fate of many others that had been used in building different lodges in the forest for the royal keepers. These vestiges, just sufficient to show that “herein former times the hand of man had been,” marked the ruins of the abode of a once illustrious but long-forgotten family, the Mandevilles, Earls of Essex, to whom Enfield Chase and the extensive domains adjacent had belonged in elder days. A wild woodland prospect led the eye at various points through broad and seemingly interminable alleys, which, meeting at this point as at a common centre, diverged from each other as they receded, and had, therefore, been selected by Lord Dalgarno as the rendezvous for the combat, which, through the medium of Richie Moniplies, he had offered to his injured friend, Lord Glenvarloch.

“He will surely come?” he said to himself; “cowardice was not wont to be his fault – at least he was bold enough in the Park. – Perhaps yonder churl may not have carried my message? But no – he is a sturdy knave – one of those would prize their master’s honour above their life. – Look to the palfrey, Lutin, and see thou let him not loose, and cast thy falcon glance down every avenue to mark if any one comes. – Buckingham has undergone my challenge, but the proud minion pleads the king’s paltry commands for refusing to answer me. If I can baffle this Glenvarloch, or slay him – If I can spoil him of his honour or his life, I shall go down to Scotland with credit sufficient to gild over past mischances. I know my dear countrymen – they never quarrel with any one who brings them home either gold or martial glory, much more if he has both gold and laurels.”

As he thus reflected, and called to mind the disgrace which he had suffered, as well as the causes he imagined for hating Lord Glenvarloch, his countenance altered under the influence of his contending emotions, to the terror of Nelly, who, sitting unnoticed at his feet, and looking anxiously in his face, beheld the cheek kindle, the mouth become compressed, the eye dilated, and the whole countenance express the desperate and deadly resolution of one who awaits an instant and decisive encounter with a mortal enemy. The loneliness of the place, the scenery so different from that to which alone she had been accustomed, the dark and sombre air which crept so suddenly over the countenance of her seducer, his command imposing silence upon her, and the apparent strangeness of his conduct in idling away so much time without any obvious cause, when a journey of such length lay before them, brought strange thoughts into her weak brain. She had read of women, seduced from their matrimonial duties by sorcerers allied to the hellish powers, nay, by the Father of Evil himself, who, after conveying his victim into some desert remote from human kind, exchanged the pleasing shape in which he gained her affections, for all his natural horrors. She chased this wild idea away as it crowded itself upon her weak and bewildered imagination; yet she might have lived to see it realised allegorically, if not literally, but for the accident which presently followed.