‘I would not, for your mind’s peace, since you will get nothing. What! appraise another man’s mistress to his face? Not I. She is Joan Medley: it is all summed up in that.’
It was for Brion. He spent a restless time, after the other had gone, waiting for the evening to come. He could settle to no occupation, but dawdled out the slow hours, feeling their length unbearable. He had informed Clerivault that he was for a jaunt with Captain Raleigh that night, but had not explained what there was in the prospect to make him so excited and impatient. His mood puzzled the good fellow; but since there was a sign in it of that imperious temper to which it was occasionally subject, he held his tongue, and obeyed all his directions without comment.
At last evening fell, and the young gentleman with it to a consideration of his toilet. He had never spent so much time and care over that in his life before, but had out all his suits—the gray with lace of silver tissue, the plum-colour slashed with white satin, the black velvet, and the steel blue with miniver—and debated them, deciding, after profound cogitation, upon the last, as the one in which, most fancying himself, he would most honour the occasion. His short hair then received his attention, and not less the short mustachio on his lip. He hung his rapier at his thigh; disposed his black velvet curtmanteau to the best effect on his left shoulder, cocked his black velvet bonnet, with the blue jay’s feather and the blue beryl in it, at a telling angle, and, so arrayed, strode forth to conquer. And indeed he was a pretty figure, and one to mirror itself very alluringly in bright eyes.
He was early at the rendezvous, of course, and had to wait some minutes on the stairs before the barge appeared to take him off. But at length it hove out of the shadows, and received him on board; and the great thrilling adventure was launched. They dropped down with the tide, so cautiously, for the night was cloudy and dark, that his impatience could scarce brook the delay; but, since ‘all overs,’ as the proverb saith, ‘are ill, but over the water,’ the happy end came at last, and at the moment when Brion was abandoning hope of any end at all. Raleigh gave a low order, and the men pulled in silently to a point on the shore he indicated. Here ran a stone slip into the water, descending from the gullet of a narrow lane where a dismal lantern hung and blinked, like a corpse-candle drowzy with watching. The shore was thick with a throng of houses, timbered and gabled, ghosts in the dim-lit darkness—great buildings some, and redolent of civic prosperity. Barges, piled with merchandise, slumbered at anchor in the stream. The roar of the waters under London Bridge droned in their ears, though the monster himself was invisible. It was a crowded, huddled settlement, with veins of the leanest cut through its substance to connect it with the great artery of Thames Street half a furlong away. They grounded on the slip, and, while a fellow leaped out to hold the boat’s nose secure, Raleigh and his young friend disembarked, and climbed the slope to the level stones above.
‘Where are we?’ asked Brion, in a low voice.
‘Dowgate,’ answered the other—‘a rich and prolific quarter. Yonder’s the Steel yard, stronghold of the Hanse League. A murrain on them—German swine, crunching our good English acorns, in each of which might sleep the cradle of a lusty ship! But we’ve ringed their snouts of late, to limit their grubbing in our native soil, and give our own merchant adventurers a chance. Better still were they all packed neck and crop out of the country.’ He kicked at a barrel, an outlying one of many that littered the wharf hard by. ‘We’ve let them rob us,’ he growled, ‘the while our tolerant courtesy hath passed for folly or weakness with these hogs it favoured; like as though some petted guest brazenly repaid his host by bearing off the silver plate he’d fed on, and was honoured for his treachery. God’s truth! we can do our own trading, I hope, and farther, it may chance, than any Hanseatic shark can follow us. When that expedition of ours is launched——’
‘We shall be over with to-night’s business,’ put in Brion. He was near dancing with impatience. What were all the sixty-six Hanse towns and their confederates to this one present corner of his own.
A distant bell struck the three-quarters. Raleigh laughed and exclaimed:—
‘Cry you mercy, poor lover! Do you perish while I prose? Well, we are betimes, but not more than she in her impatience, I’ll warrant. Come, now, and I’ll set thee on thy way.’
He led the young man to the opening of the lane—which appeared as a mere channel furrowed through a field of houses—and, bidding him traverse it some fifty yards, take the first turning to the right, and knock at a door he should see on his dexter hand, where was carved a rebus of a hotchpot, signifying a medley of good things. The password was speedwell, said he; and so giving him his blessing, and urging him to make the best of his opportunity, and not consider his friend, who in such a cause was prepared to linger out the night by the water if need be, he thrust the lantern into his hand, and, wishing him God-speed, went back to the boat.