"Then bear in mind, you are a great traveller. Your gentleman that hath not been abroad is counted a poor thing among gallants. Now these four silken gulls have never been out of England, and they look sheepish whene'er a travelled man talks of France or Italy in their company. They would give much to pass for travelled gallants; to talk of French fashions and Italian vices without exposing their inexperience. You shall instruct 'em, so they may fool others as you fool them. I'll broach the matter softly, and in such a way that they shall see the value of it. Thus, while you fill 'em up with tales of the foreign cities you have seen, we shall eat and drink at their cost. And so we shall hold 'em when they be tired of the swaggering lessons I mean to give 'em."
"Well, I will do my best. What I don't know, I will e'en supply by invention. My stomach will inspire me, I trust."
They took lodgings at the top of a house in St. Lawrence Lane, not far from its Cheapside end; and passed the time in walking about the streets till near noon, when they went to dinner at an ordinary where long tables were crowded with men of different degrees, who dined abundantly and cheaply. The two companions finally repaired to the Windmill tavern, where they had to wait an hour before their young gentlemen appeared.
The four were now sober, and showed hardly as much relish in meeting the captain as he might have wished. They cast somewhat rueful glances at the clothes they had given away in their vinous generosity, and which they had now replaced with other articles suitable to their quality. They manifested no eagerness for lessons in swaggering, and seemed at first to have forgotten any understanding they may have formed with the captain in regard thereto.
But Ravenshaw was prepared for this apathy. He took the risk of inviting the gentlemen to drink, and with the air of an accustomed host he bowed them into the room to which a tapster directed him. He trusted they would be of different mood when the time to pay the score should come.
A little drinking, and a few of the captain's tales, warmed them up to some enthusiasm for his society; and in an hour he had them urging him to proceed straightway to their further education in the art of roaring. After some reluctance and some unwillingness to believe that their proposal of the previous night had been serious, he was persuaded to consent. With the faintest grimace of triumph, for the eyes of Master Holyday alone, who smoked a pipe temperately by the fire, he rose and began by illustrating how your true bully should "take the wall" of any man about to pass him in the street.
The arras-hung partition of the room served as a street wall. The captain started at one end, Master Dauncey at the other. When the two met at the middle, the instructor enacted an elaborate scene of disputing the right to pass next the wall and so avoid the mud of the mid-street. He showed how to plant the feet, how to look fierce, how to finger the sword-hilt, what gestures to make; then what speeches to use, first of ironical courtesy, then of picturesque abuse, finally of daunting threat. Master Holyday, looking on from the fireplace, was amazed to see how much art could be displayed in what had ever seemed to him quite a simple matter. The captain went through every possible stage short of sword-thrusts; but there he stopped, saying that roaring ended where real fighting began.
"If your man has not given way by this time," said he, "and you think he may be your better with the weapons, the next thing is to come gracefully out of the quarrel, by some jest or other shift. This is what many swaggering boys do, out of fear. When I do it myself, 'tis because I would avoid bloodshed, or out of mercy to my antagonist. But 'tis, in any case, a most important thing in the art of swaggering; I shall give examples of it in my next lesson."
He then caused the gallants, in pairs, to go through such a scene as he had enacted. They made a foolish, perfunctory business of it at first, though he schooled them at every moment in attitude, gesture, or look, and supplied them with terms of revilement that made the scholar stare in admiration, and sanguinary threats before which a timid man might well tremble in his shoes.