It would not do to carry his pupils too far forward at a step; he must keep them dependent upon him as long as possible. Nor was it safe to tire them with repetitions. So he put an end to the lesson in good time; and then, to hold them for the rest of the day, he set forth the possibility of their learning to pass as men that had travelled abroad. Master Holyday, while modestly admitting the extent of his wanderings in foreign countries, showed some disinclination to the task of imparting the observations he had made.
"For, look ye," quoth he, "I once had a gossip whom I was wont to tell of things I had seen abroad. Like yourselves, he had never crossed the narrow seas; but by noting carefully my talk, he was able to make other people think he had travelled as far as I. There was one thing I had told him, which I had chanced to forget afterward. A dispute arose betwixt us one day, before company that knew not either of us well, touching certain customs in Venice. By my not mentioning the thing I had forgot, and by his parading it as a matter well known, which others in the company knew to be the case, I was made a laughing-stock, and he got reputation as a great traveller. And to this day he keeps that reputation, all at my expense."
This ingenious speech brought the desired insistence; and that very afternoon was begun, at Antwerp, an imaginary journey through the chief cities of Europe, in which were seen many things more astonishing than any foreign traveller had ever observed before.
It took several evenings to go through Flanders and France, and would have taken more, but that, after the gallants had satisfied their curiosity regarding Paris, they were in haste to arrive in Italy as soon as might be. Italy was then the great playground of English travellers; the fashions came from there, so did the inspiration to art and literature; the French got their cookery and their vices from Italy; the English imported some of the vices, but not the cookery.
While the scholar led his four charges from city to city by routes often unusual and sometimes impossible, Captain Ravenshaw conducted them stage by stage toward proficiency in swaggering. He showed them how differently to bully their betters, their equals, their inferiors; how to bully before company, how without witnesses, how in the presence of ladies; how to overbear in every situation, from a simple jostle in the street to a dispute about a woman; how to meet a contradiction in argument, how to give and receive every degree of the lie, how to intimidate a winner out of the stakes at a gaming-table; and finally how, when the opponent was not to be talked down, either to slip out of a fight or to carry one through.
The progress of the four would-be bullies in their fireside travels, and their swaggering education, was accompanied by further improvement in the dress of their instructors. At last the soldier and his friend were able to go clad in breeches, stockings, shoes, shirts, ruffs, and gloves, quite worthy of the cloaks, doublets, and hats they had previously received. The four young gentlemen were now eager to try their new accomplishments about the town. The captain postponed the test as long as he could; but finally their impatience was so peremptory that he had to consent.
Now the captain knew that if his four apes should make a failure of their first attempt at swaggering, his favour with them were swiftly ruined; conversely, a success would warrant his demanding a substantial reward in money. Thus far his only payment, and Master Holyday's likewise, had been in the shape of dinners, suppers, tobacco, and clothes. The two had been compelled, from time to time, to put off payment for their lodgings, and to temporise with their laundress; and now their hostess's face wore a more and more inquiring look each morning as they went out. Ravenshaw had, it was true, obtained a little coin in the card-playing and dicing, by means of which he had illustrated to his pupils the uses of roaring in those pastimes. But this amount, small enough, he decided to lay out in ensuring the desired success of his coxcombs in their first bullying exhibition.
He therefore made a sudden and secret excursion to the suburbs beyond Newgate. After searching the lower taverns and ale-houses about Holborn and Smithfield, he found, in a cookshop in Pye Corner, a man with whom he forthwith entered into negotiation. This man was a burly, middle-aged fellow, with a broken nose, a scarred cheek, a sullen attitude, and a husky voice. While he talked, he frequently spat in the rushes that covered the floor; and now and again he would finish a remark with the words, added without the least sense, "And that's the hell of it." He wore a dirty leather jerkin over other clothes, and his attire was little better than Ravenshaw's had been before his change of fortune.
After some talk, Captain Ravenshaw handed over some money to this man, promised a further sum upon the issue of the business, received the bravo's assurance that all should go well, and hastened back alone to meet his companions at the sign of the Windmill.
It was evening when the party sallied forth, the four coxcombs as keen for riot as ever was a colt for kicking up heels in a field. They would have barred the street against the first comers, or sought a brawl in the first tavern, but that Ravenshaw bade them save their mettle for adversaries worthy of their schooling.