Chapter Thirteen.
Gentleman Jack.
“He is transformed, And grown a gallant of the last edition.”
Massinger.
Jack’s letters from London were exuberant. He was delighted with his new phase of existence. He had made some most advantageous friendships, and was in hopes of obtaining a monopoly, which would bring him in about a hundred a year. In the meantime, he begged that his father would remember that life at Court was a very costly affair; and perhaps he would be so good as to send him a little more money. Half-a-dozen letters of this description passed, and Jack was liberally supplied with such an amount as his father anticipated that he might reasonably want. But at the end of about two years came a much more urgent epistle. Jack was sorry to say that he had been unavoidably compelled to go into debt. No blame was to be attached to him in the matter. He had not incurred the obligation of a penny for anything beyond the barest necessaries; he hoped his father would not imagine that he had been living extravagantly. But he wished Sir Thomas to understand that he really had not a suspicion of the inevitable expenses of Court life. The sums which he had been so good as to remit were a mere drop in the ocean of Jack’s necessities.
Sir Thomas replied, without any expression of displeasure, that if his son could get leave of absence sufficient to pay a visit to Lancashire, he would be glad to see him at home, and he desired that he would bring all his bills with him.
The answer to this letter was Jack himself, who came home on an autumn evening, most elaborately attired, and brimful of news.
A fresh punishment had been devised for felony—transportation to the colonies among the savages. The Spaniards were finally and completely expelled from the Dutch provinces. A Dutchman had made the extraordinary discovery that by an ingenious arrangement of pieces of glass, of certain shapes, at particular distances, objects far off could be made to seem nearer and larger. The Queen was about to send out a commercial expedition to India—the first—from which great things were expected. There was a new proclamation against Jesuits and “seminary priests.” All these matters naturally enough, with Jack’s personal adventures, occupied the first evening.
The next morning, Sir Thomas asked to see the bills. Jack brought out a tolerably large package of documents, which he presented to his father with a graceful reverence.
“I do ensure you, Sir, that I have involved me for nought beyond the barest necessities of a gentleman.”
His father opened and perused the first bill.
“‘One dozen of shirts at four pound the piece.’ Be those, my lad, among the barest necessities?”
“Of a gentleman, Sir,” said Jack.
“Four pound, Brother! Thou must mean four shillings,” cried Rachel.
“’Tis writ four pound,” calmly returned Sir Thomas.
“Good lack Jack!” said Rachel, turning to her nephew. “Were there angels for buttons all the way down?”
“The broidery, Aunt—the broidery!” returned Jack. “Four pound is a reasonable charge enough. Marry, I do ensure you, my sometime Lord of Leicester was wont to pay ten pound the piece for his shirts.”
“I would I had been his shirt-maker!” said Rachel. “’Twould have built up my fortune.”
“What wist thou touching broidery, Jack?” demanded Lady Enville, with her silvery laugh.
“Go to!” said Sir Thomas, taking up the next bill. “‘Five score of silk stockings, broidered, with golden clocks (Note 1), twenty-six and eight-pence the pair.’—Those be necessaries, belike, Jack?”
“Assuredly, Sir. White, look you—a pair the day, or maybe two.”
“Ha!” said his father. “‘Item, one short coat, guarded with budge (lambskin), and broidered in gold thread, 45 pounds.—Item, one long gown of tawny velvet, furred with pampilion (an unknown species of fur), and guarded with white lace, 66 pounds, 13 shillings, 4 pence.’—Necessaries, Jack?”
“Mercy preserve us!” ejaculated Rachel.
“Good lack, Sir Thomas!—the lad must have gear!” urged his step-mother.
Sir Thomas laid down the bills.
“Be so good, Jack, as to tell me the full figures of these counts?”
“Good sooth, Sir! I have not added them,” replied Jack in a contemptuous tone. “A gentleman is ne’er good at reckoning.”
“He seems to be reasonable good at spending,” said his father. “But how much, Jack, dost guess they may all come to?”
“Really, Sir, I cannot say.”
“Go to—give a guess.”
“Marry—somewhere about five thousand pound, it may be.”
According to the equivalent value of money in the present day, Jack’s debts amounted to about seventy-five thousand pounds. His father’s yearly income was equal to about six thousand.
“How lookest thou to pay this money, Jack?” asked Sir Thomas, in a tone of preternatural calmness which argued rather despair than lack of annoyance.
“Well, Sir, there be two or three fashions of payment,” returned Jack, airily. “If you cannot find the money—”
“I cannot, in very deed, lad.”
“Good,” answered Jack quite complacently. “Then—if I win not the monopoly—”
“The monopoly would not pay thy debts under fifty years, Jack; not if thou gavest every penny thereof thereto, and hadst none fresh to pay. How about that, lad?”
“Of course I must live like a gentleman, Sir,” said Jack loftily. “Then the next way is to win the grant of a wardship.”
This way of acquiring money is so entirely obsolete that it needs explanation. The grant of a wardship meant that some orphan heir of a large inheritance was placed in the care of the grantee, who was obliged to defray out of the heir’s estate the necessary expenses of his sustenance and education, but was free to apply all the surplus to his own use until the heir was of age. When the inheritance was large, therefore, the grant was a considerable boon to the guardian.
“And supposing that fail thee?”
“Well, then—if the worst come to the worst—I can but wed an heir,” remarked Jack with serenity.
“Wed an estate, thou meanest, Jack.”
“Of course, Sir. The woman must come with it, I reckon. That I cannot help.”
“Marry come up!” exclaimed Rachel. “Thou art a very man. Those be right the man’s ways. ‘The woman must come with it,’ forsooth! Jack, my fingers be itching to thrash thee.”
“Such matters be done every day, Aunt,” observed Jack, smiling graciously,—not with reference to the suggested reward of his misdeeds.
“Black sin is done every day, lad. I wis that without thy telling. But that is no cause why thou shouldst be the doer of it.”
“Nay, Aunt Rachel!” retorted Jack, in the same manner. “’Tis no sin to wed an heir.”
“It was a sin, when I was a child, to tell lies. Maybe that is altered now,” said Rachel dryly.
“What lies, Aunt Rachel?” asked Jack laughing.
“Is it no lie, Jack, to lead a woman into believing that thou lovest her, when, if she plucked her purse out of her pocket and gave it thee, thou wert fully content, and shouldst ask no more?”
“You have old-fashioned notions, Aunt Rachel,” said Jack, still laughing.
“Jack! I do trust thou wilt not wed with any but one of good degree. Let her be a knight’s daughter, at the least—a lord’s were all the better,” said his step-mother.
“But touching these debts, Jack,” resumed his father. “Suppose thou shouldst fail to wed thine heir,—how then?”
“Then, Sir, I shall trust to redeem the money at play.”
Every man of substance—not a Puritan—was at that time a gamester.
“And how, if that fail?”
“They can’t all fail, Sir!” said Jack lightly.
“My lad!” replied His father earnestly, “I did an ill deed when I sent thee to London.”
“Dear heart, Sir!” exclaimed Jack, just suppressing a much stronger ejaculation, “I do ensure you, you never did a wiser thing.”
“Then my life hath been one of sore folly,” answered his father.
“I alway told thee thou shouldst come to wrack,” added his aunt.
“Nay, now, what wrack have I come to?” returned Jack with a graceful flourish of his hands. “Call you it wrack to have a good post in the Queen’s Majesty’s house, with hope of a better, maybe, when it please God?—or, to be well (stand well, be on good terms) with many honourable gentlemen, and heirs of good houses, throughout all England?—or, to have the pick of their sisters and cousins, when it liketh me to wed?”
“They shall have a jolly picking that pick out thee!” growled Aunt Rachel.
“Or to have open door of full many honourable houses,—and good credit, that there is not a craftsman in London that should not count it honour to serve me with such goods as I might choose?” pursued Jack.
“A mighty barren honour, Jack, on thine own showing.”
“Jack!” interposed Sir Thomas, who had seemed deep in thought for a minute, “tell me honestly,—of this five thousand pound, if so be, how much was lost at the dice?”
“Why, Sir!—you did not count I should reckon my debts of honour?”
Sir Thomas groaned within himself.
“Debts of honour!” cried Rachel. “What, be there a parcel more?”
“These be trade-debts, Aunt!” said Jack, with an injured air,—“debts that I can defray or leave, as it may stand with conveniency. My debts of honour must be paid, of course!—I looked to your bounty, Sir, for that. They be not much—but a light thousand or twelve hundred pound, I take it.”
That is to say, about 15,000 pounds to 18,000 pounds.
“Jack!” said his father, “dost remember thou hast two sisters yet unwed?”
“One, Sir, under your good pleasure,” replied Jack suavely.
“Two,” gravely repeated Sir Thomas. “I will set no difference betwixt Blanche and Clare. And they be to portion, lad; and we have all to live. I cannot pay thy debts of honour and see to these likewise. And, Jack, the trade-debts, as thou callest them, must come first.”
“Sir!” exclaimed Jack aghast.
“I say, the trade-debts must stand first,” repeated his father firmly.
“A gentleman never puts his trade-debts before his debts of honour, Sir!” cried Jack in a tone of intense disgust mixed with amazement.
“I know not what you gentlemen of the Court may account honour nor honesty, Sir,” replied Sir Thomas, now sternly; “but I am a plain honest man, that knows nought of Court fashions, for the which His good providence I thank God. And if it be honest to heap up debt that thou hast no means of paying to thy certain knowledge, then I know not the signification of honesty.”
“But I must play, Sir!” replied Jack—in the tone with which he might have said, “I must breathe.”
“Then thou must pay,” said Sir Thomas shortly.
“Must play, quotha!” interjected Rachel. “Thou must be a decent lad,—that is all the must I see.”
“Come, be not too hard on the lad!” pleaded Lady Enville, fanning herself elegantly. “Of course he must live as other young men.”
“That is it, Madam!” responded Jack eagerly, turning to his welcome ally. “I cannot affect singularity—’tis not possible.”
“Of course not,” said Lady Enville, who quite agreed with Jack’s sentiments, as women of her type generally do.
“Thou canst affect honesty, trow,” retorted Rachel.
“Sir,” said Jack, earnestly addressing his father, “I do entreat you, look on this matter in a reasonable fashion.”
“That is it which I would fain do, Jack.”
“Well, Sir,—were I to put my trade-debts before my debts of honour, all whom I know should stamp me as no gentleman. They should reckon me some craftsman’s son that had crept in amongst them peradventure.”
“Good lack!” said his step-mother and aunt together,—the former in dismay, the latter in satire.
“I am willing that any should count me no gentleman, if he find me not one,” answered his father; “but one thing will I never do, and that is, give cause to any man to reckon me a knave.”
“But, Sir, these be nought save a parcel of beggarly craftsmen.”
“Which thou shouldst have been, had it so pleased God,” put in Aunt Rachel.
“Aunt,” said Jack loftily, “I was born a gentleman; and under your good leaves, a gentleman I do mean to live and die.”
“Thou hast my full good leave to live and die a gentleman, my lad,” said his father; “and that is, a man of honour, truth, and probity.”
“And ’tis no true man, nor an honourable, that payeth not his just debts,” added Rachel.
“I cry thee mercy, Rachel; a gentleman never troubleth him touching debts,” observed Lady Enville.
“In especial unto such like low companions as these,” echoed Jack.
“Well!—honesty is gone out of fashion, I reckon,” said Rachel.
“Only this will I say, Sir,” resumed Jack with an air of settling matters: “that if you will needs have my trade-debts defrayed before my debts of honour, you must, an’t like you, take them on yourself. I will be no party to such base infringement of the laws of honour.”
“Good lack, lad! Thou talkest as though thy father had run into debt, and was looking unto thee to defray the charges! ’Tis tother way about, Jack. Call thy wits together!” exclaimed his aunt.
“Well, Aunt Rachel, you seem determined to use me hardly,” said Jack, with an air of reluctant martyrdom; “but you will find I harbour no malice for your evil conception of mine intents.”
To see this Jack, who had done all the mischief and made everybody uncomfortable, mount on his pedestal and magnanimously forgive them, was too much for Rachel’s equanimity.
“Of all the born fools that e’er gat me in a passion, Jack, thou art very king and captain! I would give my best gown this minute thou wert six in the stead of six-and-twenty—my word, but I would leather thee! I would whip thee till I was dog-weary, whatever thou shouldst be. The born patch (fool)!—the dolt (dunce)!—the lither loon (idle, good-for-nothing fellow)!—that shall harbour no malice against me because—he is both a fool and a knave! If thou e’er hadst any sense, Jack (the which I doubt), thou forgattest to pack it up when thou earnest from London. Of all the long-eared asses ever I saw—”
Mistress Rachel’s diatribe came to a sudden close, certainly not from the exhaustion of her feelings, but from the want of suitable words wherein to express them.
“Aunt!” said Jack, still in an injured tone, “would you have me to govern myself by rule and measure, like a craftsman?”
“Words be cast away on thee, Jack: I will hold my peace. When thy brains be come home from the journey they be now gone, thou canst give me to wit, an’ it like thee.”
“I marvel,” murmured Sir Thomas absently, “what Master Tremayne should say to all this.”
“He!” returned Jack with sovereign scorn. “He is a Puritan!”
“He is a good man, Jack. And I doubt—so he keep out of ill company—whether Arthur shall give him the like care,” said his father sighing.
“Arthur! A sely milksop, Sir, that cannot look a goose in the face!”
“Good lack! how shall he ever win through this world, that is choke-full of geese?” asked Rachel cuttingly.
“Suffer me to say, Sir, that Puritans be of no account in the Court.”
“Of earth, or Heaven?” dryly inquired Sir Thomas.
“The Court of England, I mean, Sir. They be universally derided and held of low esteem. All these Sectaries—Puritans, Gospellers, Anabaptists, and what not—no gentleman would be seen in their company.”
“Dear heart!” growled the still acetic Rachel. “The angels must be mighty busy a-building chambers for the gentry, that they mix not in Heaven with the poor common saints.”
“’Tis the general thought, Aunt, among men of account.—and doth commend itself for truth,—that ’t will take more ill-doing to damn a gentleman than a common man.” (Note 2.)
“Good lack! I had thought it should be the other way about,” said Rachel satirically.
“No doubt,” echoed Lady Enville—in approbation of Jack’s sentiment, not Rachel’s.
“Why, Aunt!—think you no account is taken of birth and blood in Heaven?”
“Nay, I’ll e’en let it be,” said Rachel, rising and opening the door. “Only look thou, Jack,—there is another place than Heaven; and I don’t reckon there be separate chambers there. Do but think what it were, if it should chance to a gentleman to be shut up yonder along with the poor sinners of the peasantry!”
And leaving this Parthian dart, Rachel went her way.
“I will talk with thee again, Jack: in the mean while, I will, keep these,” said his father, taking up the bills.
“As it like you, Sir,” responded Jack airily. “I care not though I never see them again.”
“What ado is here!” said Lady Enville, as her husband departed. “I am sore afeared thou wilt have some trouble hereabout, Jack. Both thy father and aunt be of such ancient notions.”
Jack bent low, with a courtier’s grace, to kiss his step-mother’s hand.
“Trouble, Madam,” he said—and spoke truly—“trouble bideth no longer on me than water on a duck’s back.”
“And now tell me, Tremayne, what shall I do with this lad?”
“I am afeared, Sir Thomas, you shall find it hard matter to deal with him.”
“Good lack, these lads and lasses!” groaned poor Sir Thomas. “They do wear a man’s purse—ay, and his heart. Marry, but I do trust I gave no such thought and sorrow to my father! Yet in very deed my care for the future passeth it for the past. If Jack go on thus, what shall the end be?”
Mr Tremayne shook his head.
“Can you help me to any argument that shall touch the lad’s heart?”
“Argument ne’er touched a man’s heart yet,” said the Rector. “That is but for the head. There is but one thing that will touch the heart to any lasting purpose; and that is, the quickening grace of God the Holy Ghost.”
“Nay, all they seem to drift further away from Him,” sighed the father sadly.
“My good friend, it may seem so to you, mainly because yourself are coming nearer.”
Sir Thomas shook his head sorrowfully.
“Nay, for I ne’er saw me to be such a sinner as of late I have. You call not that coming nearer God?”
“Ay, but it is!” said Mr Tremayne. “Think you, friend; you were such a sinner all your life long, though it be only now that, thanks to God, you see it. And I do in very deed hope and trust that you have this true sight of yourself because the Lord hath touched your eyes with the ointment of His grace. Maybe you are somewhat like as yet unto him whose eyen Christ touched, that at first he could not tell betwixt men and trees. The Lord is not like to leave His miracle but half wrought. He will perfect that which He hath begun.”
“God grant it!” said Sir Thomas feelingly. “But tell me, what can I do for Jack? I would I had listed you and Rachel, and had not sent him to London. Sir Piers, and Orige, and the lad himself, o’er-persuaded me. I rue it bitterly; but howbeit, what is done is done. The matter is, what to do now?”
“The better way, methinks, should be that you left him to smart for it himself, an’ you so could.”
“Jack will ne’er smart for aught,” said his father. “Were I to stay his allowance, he should but run into further debt, ne’er doubting to pay the same somewhen and somehow. The way and the time he should leave to chance. I see nought but ruin before the lad. He hath learned over ill lessons in the Court,—of honour which is clean contrary to common honesty, and courtesy which standeth not with plain truth.”
“Ay, the Devil can well glose,” (flatter, deceive) said Mr Tremayne sadly.
“The lad hath no conscience!” added Sir Thomas. “With all this, he laugheth and singeth as though nought were on his mind. Good lack! but if I had done as he, I had been miserable thereafter. I conceive not such conditions.”
“I conceive them, for I have seen them aforetime. But I would not have such a conscience for the worth of the Queen’s Mint.”
Indeed, Jack did seem perfectly happy. His appetite, sleep, and spirits, were totally unaffected by his circumstances. Clare, to whom this anomaly seemed preposterous, one day asked him if he were happy.
“Happy?” repeated Jack. “For sure! Wherefore no?”
Clare did not tell him.
One evening in the week of Jack’s return, to the surprise of all, in walked Mr John Feversham. He did not seem to have much to say, except that Uncle Piers and Aunt Lucrece were well. In fact, he never had much to say. Nor did he think it necessary to state what had brought him to Lancashire. He was asked to remain, of course, to which he assented, and slipped into his place with a quiet ponderosity which seemed to belong to him.
“An oaken yule-log had as much sense, and were quicker!” (livelier) said Jack aside to Blanche.
“Nay, he wanteth not for sense, I take it,” returned his sister, “but of a truth he is solid matter.”
“I marvel if he ever gat into debt,” observed Clare quietly from the other side of Jack.
“He!” sneered that young gentleman. “He is the fashion of man that should pay all his trade-debts and ne’er ask for a rebate.”
“Well! methinks that were no very ill deed,” said Clare.
“A deed whereof no gentleman of spirit should be guilty!”
“There be divers sorts of spirits, Jack.”
“There is but one manner of spirit,” returned Jack sharply, “and I ne’er saw a spark thereof in yon bale of woollen goods labelled Jack Feversham.”
“May be thou wilt, some day,” answered Clare.
“That will be when the Ribble runneth up instead of down. He is a coward,—mine head to yon apple thereon.”
“Be not so sure thereof.”
“But I am sure thereof—as sure as a culverin shot.”
Clare dropped the subject.
Rather late on the following evening, with his usual quiet, business-like air, John Feversham asked for a few words with Sir Thomas. Then—to the astonishment of that gentleman—the purport of his visit came out. He wanted Blanche.
Sir Thomas was quite taken by surprise. It had never occurred to him that silent John Feversham had the faintest design upon any one. And what could this calm, undemonstrative man have seen in the butterfly Blanche, which had captivated him, of all people? He promised an answer the next day; and, feeling as if another straw had been added to his burden, he went to consult the ladies.
Lady Enville disapproved of the proposal. So unlike Don Juan!—so totally inferior, in every respect! And would it not be desirable to wait and see whether John were really likely to succeed to his uncle’s inheritance within any reasonable time? she calmly urged. Sir Piers might live twenty years yet, or he might have a family of his own, and then where would John Feversham be? In present circumstances, concluded her Ladyship, enjoying the scent of her pomander, she thought this a most undesirable match for Blanche, who could not do much worse, and might do much better.
Rachel, as might be expected, took the contrary view. Unlike Don Juan!—yes, she hoped so, indeed! This was a sensible young man, who, it might be trusted, would keep Blanche in order, which she was likely enough to need as long as she lived. How should the girl do better? By all means take advantage of the offer.
“Well, should Blanche know? That is, before acceptance.”
“Oh, ay!” said Lady Enville.
“Oh, no!” said Rachel.
In Rachel’s eyes, the new-fangled plan of giving the young lady a voice in the question was fraught with danger. But Lady Enville prevailed. Blanche was summoned, and asked what she thought of John Feversham.
It did not appear that Blanche had thought much about him at all. She was rather inclined to laugh at and despise him.
Well, had she any disposition to marry him?
Blanche’s shrinking—“Oh no, an’ it liked you, Father!”—decided the matter.
To all outward appearance, John Feversham took his rejection very quietly. Sir Thomas couched it in language as kind as possible. John said little in answer, and exhibited no sign of vexation. But Rachel, who was still pursuing her career of amateur detective, thought that he felt more distress than he showed.
Note 1. The embroidery about the heel and ankle, which showed above the low shoes then fashionable.
Note 2. Lest the reader should think this idea too preposterous to have been seriously entertained, I refer him to words actually uttered (and approved by the hearers) on the death of Philippe, Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis the Fourteenth:—“I can assure you, God thinks twice before He damns a person of the Prince’s quality.”—(Mémoires de Dangeau).