Tom Tufton's Travels. Everett-Green Evelyn
and there an oil lamp shed a sickly glow for a short distance; but, for the most part, the streets were very dim and dark. Lights gleamed in a good many upper windows still; but below-where the shutters were all up-darkness and silence reigned.
"Sweating," answered Cale, "is a favourite pastime with the bullies of London streets. A dozen or more with drawn swords surround a hapless and unarmed passer by. They will close upon him in a circle, the points of their swords towards him, and then one will prick him in the rear, causing him to turn quickly round, whereupon another will give him a dig in the same region, and again he will jump and face about; and so they will keep the poor fellow spinning round and round, like a cockchafer on a pin, until the sweat pours off him, and they themselves are weary of the sport. But, hist! I hear a band of them coming. Slip we into this archway, and let them pass by. I would not have my wig box snatched away; and there is no limit to the audacity of those bully beaux when they have drunk enough to give them Dutch courage. Discretion is sometimes better than valour."
So saying, he pulled Tom into a dark recess, and in a few minutes more there swaggered past about six or eight young roisterers-singing, swearing, joking, threatening-more or less intoxicated every one of them, and boasting themselves loudly of the valiant deeds they could and would do.
They did not see the two figures in the archway. Indeed, the greatest safety of the belated citizen was that these bullies were generally too drunk to be very observant, and that a person in hiding could generally escape notice. After they had passed by, Cale continued his way quietly enough, following the noisy party at a safe distance, as they too seemed bound towards Snowe Hill.
They were approaching the top of the hill when a sudden sound of shrieking met their ears, mixed with the loud laughter and half-drunken shouts of the roisterers. Tom caught his companion's arm and pulled him along.
"That is a woman's voice!" he cried quickly. "She is crying for help. Come!"
"Beshrew me if I ever again walk abroad with a peruke at night!" grumbled Cale, as he let himself be hurried along by the eager Tom. "I am not a watchman. Why should I risk my goods for every silly wench who should know better than to be abroad of a night alone? Come, come, my young friend, my legs are not as long as yours; I shall have no wind for fighting if you drag me along at this pace!"
It was the urgency of the cries that spurred Tom to the top of his speed. The laughter was loud and ceaseless, but the shrieks were becoming faint and stifled. Tom's blood was boiling. He pictured to himself a foul murder done. A few seconds before they reached the spot a new sound greeted their ears-a sort of rattling, bounding noise-which provoked another peal of uncontrollable laughter.
Then a voice was heard shouting:
"The watch! the watch! or some fellows with swords!"
Immediately the whole band broke up and rushed helter-skelter in all directions. Not that the bullies feared the watch one whit. The watchmen were mostly poor, old, worn-out men, who could do little or nothing to impose order upon these young braggarts. Indeed, they were so often maltreated themselves, that they just as often as not kept carefully away when cries were raised for help. But, having had their fun, the roisterers were ready to disperse themselves; for some of the citizens would rise in a white heat of rage, and take law into their own hands, in which case it happened that the disturbers of the peace came off second best. One of them had seen Tom's tall figure and the sword in his hand as he ran beneath a lamp, and had fancied that some more determined rescue than that afforded by the watch was to be given. So the band dispersed shouting and hooting; and Tom and Cale found them scattered ere they came up to them.
"But where is the woman?" asked Tom, looking round; "they have not surely carried her off?"
"Oh no-only sent her rolling down the hill in a barrel!" panted Cale; "it is a favourite pastime with the youths of London town. One party will put a barrel ready in yon doorway on purpose, and if it be not removed, it will like enough be used ere morning. We had best go in search of the poor creature; for ofttimes they are sore put to it to get free from the cask-if they be stout in person at least."
And, indeed, as they neared the foot of the hill, they heard a groaning and stifled crying for help; and, sure enough, they found a buxom woman, the wife of a respectable citizen, tightly wedged into the cask, and much shaken and bruised by her rapid transit down the hill, although, when released with some difficulty, she was able to walk home, escorted by her rescuers, and bitterly inveighing against the wickedness of the world in general and London's young bullies in particular.
"The best thing, good dame, is not to be abroad at such an hour alone," advised Cale.
"Yes, truly; and yet it was but the matter of a few streets; and it seems hard a woman may not sit beside a sick neighbour for a while without being served so on her way back. My husband was to have come for me; but must have been detained. Pray heaven he has not fallen in with a band of Mohocks, and had the nose of him split open-to say nothing of worse!"
"Are men really served so bad as that?" asked Tom, as the two turned back from the citizen's house whither they had escorted their grateful protegee.
"Worse sometimes," answered Cale, with a shake of the head. "Those Mohocks should be wiped out without mercy by the arm of the law; for mercy they show none. They have read of the horrid cruelties practised by the Indians whose name they bear, and they seek to do the like to the hapless victims whom ill-fortune casts in their way. There be men whose eyes they have gouged out, and whose noses have been cut off, whose brains have been turned by the terror and agony they have been through. And yet these men go free; and law-abiding citizens are allowed to quake in their beds at the sound of their voices in the street, or the sight of their badges even in broad daylight. I call it a sin and a shame that such things can be. Well, well, well, let us hope that, when the great Duke comes home, he may be able to put a stop to these things. Even in warfare, men say, he is merciful, and will permit no extortion and no cruelty. We citizens of London will give him a right royal welcome; perchance we may be able to crave a boon of him in return. He-or, rather, his wife-is all-powerful with our good Queen Anne; and she would not wish a hair of a man's head hurt could she but have her way."
"By the Duke you mean the great Duke of Marlborough, who has done such great things in the war? But what is the war about? Can you tell me that, for I have never rightly understood?"
Cale was a great politician in his own eyes, and was well versed in the politics of the day. He strove hard to make Tom understand the intricacies of the Spanish succession, the danger of allowing Spain to be ruled by one of the Bourbons, and the fear of the all-powerful French king, who seemed like to rule Europe, if the allied powers could not make head against him. Tom did his best to understand, and got a rather clearer view of the situation than he had before; but what interested him most was the information that the Duke would come over to England shortly, and that a magnificent reception was to be given to him.
Whigs and Tories had alike grown proud of the victorious general, and the war had become popular from success, though the drain on the country was great. The Queen was personally liked, although she was but a small power in the kingdom; and for the time being Jacobite plots were in abeyance. So long as she lived, nobody was likely seriously to desire the return of the banished Stuarts; but, of course, there was the future to think for. Anne had no child to succeed her; and the thought of the Hanoverian succession was by no means universally approved. Still for the moment the Jacobite agitation was in abeyance, and all England rejoiced in the humiliation of so dangerous a foe as the great monarch of France.
Cale was full of stories of court gossip respecting the Queen and the Duchess of Marlborough, whose affection for one another was a byword throughout the realm. The Duke and Duchess were also most tenderly attached; and the private lives of Anne and her Prince George, and of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, presented a bright contrast to the general laxity of morals prevailing at the time. The rather austere rule of William and Mary had not really purged the court of vicious habits, though such had been steadily discouraged. Anne had not the force of character to impose her will upon her subjects; and extravagance, frivolity, and foppery flourished amazingly.
Tom felt his head in a perfect whirl as Cale chatted on of this thing and that, passing from politics to court life, and then to the doings of the wealthy classes,