Clare Avery Part 42

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 pa.s.sed, and Jack was liberally supplied with such an amount as his father antic.i.p.ated 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 gla.s.s, 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 doc.u.ments, 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 b.u.t.tons 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?"

"a.s.suredly, 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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.