The Fortunes of Nigel by Walter Scott (good summer reads txt) 📕

Vincent sprung from his seat, and traversed the room with rapid and disorderly steps.

“There, there it is now—you are always ice or gunpowder. You sit in the great leathern armchair, as quiet as a rocket hangs upon the frame in a rejoicing-night till the match be fired, and then, whizz! you are in the third heaven, beyond the reach of the human voice, eye, or brain.—When you have wearied yourself with padding to and fro across the room, will you tell me your determination, for time presses? Will you aid me in this matter, or not?”

“No—no—no—a thousand times no,” replied Jenkin. “Have you not confessed to me, that Margaret loves him?”

“Ay,” answered the dame, “that she thinks she does; but that will not last long.”

“And have I not told you but this instant,” replied Jenkin, “that it was this same Glenvarloch that rooked me, at the ordinary, of every penny I had, and made a knave of me to boot, by gaining more than was my own?—O that cursed gold, which Shortyard, the mercer, paid me that morning on accompt, for mending the clock of Saint Stephen's! If I had not, by ill chance, had that about me, I could but have beggared my purse, without blemishing my honesty; and, after I had been rooked of all the rest amongst them, I must needs risk the last five pieces with that shark among the minnows!”

“Granted,” said Dame Ursula. “All this I know; and I own, that as Lord Glenvarloch was the last you played with, you have a right to charge your ruin on his head. Moreover, I admit, as already said, that Margaret has made him your rival. Yet surely, now he is in danger to lose his hand, it is not a time to remember all this?”

“By my faith, but it is, though,” said the young citizen. “Lose his hand, indeed? They may take his head, for what I care. Head and hand have made me a miserable wretch!”

“Now, were it not better, my prince of flat-caps,” said Dame Ursula, “that matters were squared between you; and that, through means of the same Scottish lord, who has, as you say, deprived you of your money and your mistress, you should in a short time recover both?”

“And how can your wisdom come to that conclusion, dame?” said the apprentice. “My money, indeed, I can conceive—that is, if I comply with your proposal; but—my pretty Marget!—how serving this lord, whom she has set her nonsensical head upon, can do me good with her, is far beyond my conception.”

“That is because, in simple phrase,” said Dame Ursula, “thou knowest no more of a woman's heart than doth a Norfolk gosling. Look you, man. Were I to report to Mistress Margaret that the young lord has miscarried through thy lack of courtesy in refusing to help him, why, then, thou wert odious to her for ever. She will loathe thee as she will loathe the very cook who is to strike off Glenvarloch's hand with his cleaver—and then she will be yet more fixed in her affections towards this lord. London will hear of nothing but him—speak of nothing but him—think of nothing but him, for three weeks at least, and all that outcry will serve to keep him uppermost in her mind; for nothing pleases a girl so much as to bear relation to any one who is the talk of the whole world around her. Then, if he suffer this sentence of the law, it is a chance if she ever forgets him. I saw that handsome, proper young gentleman Babington, suffer in the Queen's time myself, and though I was then but a girl, he was in my head for a year after he was hanged. But, above all, pardoned or punished, Glenvarloch will probably remain in London, and his presence will keep up the silly girl's nonsensical fancy about him. Whereas, if he escapes—”

“Ay, show me how that is to avail me?” said Jenkin. “If he escapes,” said the dame, resuming her argument, “he must resign the Court for years, if not for life; and you know the old saying, 'out of sight, and out of mind.'”

“True—most true,” said Jenkin; “spoken like an oracle, most wise Ursula.”

“Ay, ay, I knew you would hear reason at last,” said the wily dame; “and then, when this same lord is off and away for once and for ever, who, I pray you, is to be pretty pet's confidential person, and who is to fill up the void in her affections?—why, who but thou, thou pearl of 'prentices! And then you will have overcome your own inclinations to comply with hers, and every woman is sensible of that—and you will have run some risk, too, in carrying her desires into effect—and what is it that woman likes better than bravery, and devotion to her will? Then you have her secret, and she must treat you with favour and observance, and repose confidence in you, and hold private intercourse with you, till she weeps with one eye for the absent lover whom she is never to see again, and blinks with the other blithely upon him who is in presence; and then if you know not how to improve the relation in which you stand with her, you are not the brisk lively lad that all the world takes you for—Said I well?”

“You have spoken like an empress, most mighty Ursula,” said Jenkin Vincent; “and your will shall be obeyed.”

“You know Alsatia well?” continued his tutoress.

“Well enough, well enough,” replied he with a nod; “I have heard the dice rattle there in my day, before I must set up for gentleman, and go among the gallants at the Shavaleer Bojo's, as they call him,—the worse rookery of the two, though the feathers are the gayest.”

“And they will have a respect for thee yonder, I warrant?”

“Ay, ay,” replied Vin, “when I am got into my fustian doublet again, with my bit of a trunnion under my arm, I can walk Alsatia at midnight as I could do that there Fleet Street in midday—they will not one of them swagger with the prince of 'prentices, and the king of clubs—they know I could bring every tall boy in the ward down upon them.”

“And you know all the watermen, and so forth?”

“Can converse with every sculler in his own language, from Richmond to Gravesend, and know all the water-cocks, from John Taylor the Poet to little Grigg the Grinner, who never pulls but he shows all his teeth from ear to ear, as if he were grimacing through a horse-collar.”

“And you can take any dress or character upon you well, such as a waterman's, a butcher's, a foot-soldier's,” continued Ursula, “or the like?”

“Not such a mummer as I am within the walls, and thou knowest that well enough, dame,” replied the apprentice. “I can touch the players themselves, at the Ball and at the Fortune, for presenting any thing except a gentleman. Take but this d—d skin of frippery off me, which I think the devil stuck me into, and you shall put me into nothing else that I will not become as if I were born to it.”

“Well, we will talk of your transmutation by and by,” said the dame, “and find you clothes withal, and money besides; for it will take a good deal