The Sot-Weed Factor

1: The Poet Is Introduced, and Differentiated from His Fellows

In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffeehouses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.

As poet, this Ebenezer was not better nor worse than his fellows, none of whom left behind him anything nobler than his own posterity; but four things marked him off from them. The first was his appearance: pale-haired and pale-eyed, raw-boned and gaunt-cheeked, he stood — nay, angled — nineteen hands high. His clothes were good stuff well tailored, but they hung on his frame like luffed sails on long spars. Heron of a man, lean-limbed and long-billed, he walked and sat with loose-jointed poise; his every stance was angular surprise, his each gesture half flail. Moreover there was a discomposure about his face, as though his features got on ill together: heron's beak, wolf-hound's forehead, pointed chin, lantern jaw, wash-blue eyes, and bony blond brows had minds of their own, went their own ways, and took up odd postures, which often as not had no relation to what one took as his mood of the moment. And these configurations were short-lived, for like restless mallards the features of his face no sooner were settled than ha! they'd be flushed, and hi! how they'd flutter, and no man could say what lay behind them.

The second was his age: whereas most of his accomplices were scarce turned twenty, Ebenezer at the time of this chapter was more nearly thirty, yet not a whit more wise than they, and with six or seven years' less excuse.

The third was his origin: Ebenezer was born American, though he'd not seen his birthplace since earliest childhood. His father, Andrew Cooke 2nd, of the Parish of St. Giles in the Fields, County of Middlesex — a red-faced, white-chopped, stout-winded old lecher with flinty eye and withered arm — had spent his youth in Maryland as agent for an English manufacturer, as had his father before him, and having a sharp eye for goods and a sharper for men, had added to the Cooke estate by the time he was thirty some one thousand acres of good wood and arable land on the Choptank River. The point on which this land lay he called Cooke's Point, and the small manor-house he built there, Malden. He married late in life and conceived twin children, Ebenezer and his sister Anna, whose mother (as if such an inordinate casting had cracked the mold) died bearing them. When the twins were but four Andrew returned to England, leaving Malden in the hands of an overseer, and thenceforth employed himself as a merchant, sending his own factors to the plantations. His affairs prospered, and the children were well provided for.

The fourth thing that distinguished Ebenezer from his coffee-house associates was his manner: though not one of them was blessed with more talent than he needed, all of Ebenezer's friends put on great airs when together, declaiming their verses, denigrating all the well-known poets of their time (and any members of their own circle who happened to be not on hand), boasting of their amorous conquests and their prospects for imminent success, and otherwise behaving in a manner such that, had not every other table in the coffee-house sported a like ring of coxcombs, they'd have made great nuisances of themselves. But Ebenezer himself, though his appearance rendered inconspicuousness out of the question, was bent to taciturnity. He was even chilly. Except for infrequent bursts of garrulity he rarely joined in the talk, but seemed content for the most part simply to watch the other birds preen their feathers. Some took this withdrawal as a sign of his contempt, and so were either intimidated or angered by it, according to the degree of their own self-confidence. Others took it for modesty; others for shyness; others for artistic or philosophical detachment. Had it been in fact symptom of any one of these, there would be no tale to tell; in truth, however, this manner of our poet's grew out of something much more complicated, which warrants recounting his childhood, his adventures, and his ultimate demise.

2: The Remarkable Manner in Which Ebenezer Was Educated, and the No Less Remarkable Results of That Education

Ebenezer and Anna had been raised together. There happening to be no other children on the estate in St. Giles, they grew up with no playmates except each other, and hence became unusually close. They played the same games together and were educated in the same subjects, since Andrew was wealthy enough to provide them with a tutor, but not with separate tutoring. Until the age of ten they even shared the same bedroom — not that space was lacking either in Andrew's London house, on Plumtree Street, or in the later establishment at St. Giles, but because Andrew's old housekeeper, Mrs. Twigg, who was for some years their governess, had in the beginning been so taken with the fact of their twinship that she'd made a point of keeping them together, and then later, when their increased size and presumed awareness began to embarrass her, they had come so to enjoy each other's company that she was for a time unable to resist their combined protests at any mention of separate chambers. When the separation was finally effected, at Andrew's orders, it was merely to adjoining rooms, between which the door was normally left open to allow for conversation.

In the light of all this it is not surprising that even after puberty there was little difference, aside from the physical manifestations of their sex, between the two children. Both were lively, intelligent, and well-behaved. Anna was the less timid of the two, and even when Ebenezer naturally grew to be the taller and physically stronger, Anna was still the quicker and better coordinated, and therefore usually the winner in the games they played: shuttlecock, fives, or paille maille; squalls, Meg Merrilies, jackstraws, or shove ha'penny. Both were great readers, and loved the same books: among the classics, the Odyssey and the Metamorphoses, the Book of Martyrs and the Lives of the Saints; the romances of Valentine and Orson, Bevis of Hampton, and Guy of Warwick; the tales of Robin Good-Fellow, Patient Grisel, and the Foundlings in the Wood; and among the newer books, Janeway's Token for Children, Batchiler's Virgins Pattern, and Fisher's Wise Virgin, as well as Cacoethes Leaden Legacy, The Young Mans Warning-Peece, The Booke of Mery Riddles, and, shortly after their publication, Pilgrim's Progress and Keach's War with the Devil. Perhaps had Andrew been less preoccupied with his merchant-trading, or Mrs. Twigg with her religion, her gout, and her authority over the other servants, Anna would have been kept to her dolls and embroidery-hoops, and Ebenezer set to mastering the arts of hunting and fencing. But they were seldom subjected to direction at all, and hence drew small distinction between activities proper for little girls and those proper for little boys.

Their favorite recreation was play-acting. Indoors or out, hour after hour, they played at pirates, soldiers, clerics, Indians, royalty, giants, martyrs, lords and ladies, or any other creatures that took their fancy, inventing action and dialogue as they played. Sometimes they would maintain the same role for days, sometimes only for minutes. Ebenezer, especially, became ingenious at disguising his assumed identity in the presence of adults, while still revealing it clearly enough to Anna, to her great delight, by some apparently innocent gesture or remark. They might spend an autumn morning playing at Adam and Eve out in the orchard, for example, and when at dinner their father forbade them to return there, on account of the mud, Ebenezer would reply with a knowing nod, "Mud's not the worst of't: I saw a snake as well." And little Anna, when she had got her breath back, would declare, "It didn't frighten me, but Eben's forehead hath been sweating ever since," and pass her brother the bread. At night, both before and after their separation into two rooms, they would either continue to make-believe (necessarily confining themselves to dialogue, which they found it easy to carry on in the dark) or else play word-games; of these they had a great variety, ranging from the simple "How many words do you know beginning with S?" or "How many words rhyme with faster?" to the elaborate codes, reverse pronunciations, and homemade languages of their later childhood.

In 1676, when they were ten, Andrew employed for them a new tutor named Henry Burlingame III — a wiry, brown-eyed, swarthy youth in his early twenties, energetic, intense, and not unhandsome. This Burlingame had for reasons unexplained not completed his baccalaureate; yet for the range and depth of his abilities he was little short of an Aristotle. Andrew had found him in London unemployed and undernourished, and, always a good businessman, was thus for a miserly fee able to provide his children with a tutor who could sing the tenor in a Gesualdo madrigal as easily as he dissected a field-mouse or conjugated elµl. The twins took an immediate liking to him, and he in turn, after only a few weeks, grew so attached to them that he was overjoyed when Andrew permitted him, at no increase in salary, to convert the little summer-pavilion on the grounds of the St. Giles estate into a combination laboratory and living-quarters, and devote his entire attention to his charges.

He found both to be rapid learners, especially apt in natural philosophy, literature, composition, and music; less so in languages, mathematics, and history. He even taught them how to dance, though Ebenezer by age twelve was already too ungainly to do it well. First he would teach Ebenezer to play the melody on the harpsichord; then he would drill Anna in the steps, to Ebenezer's accompaniment, until she mastered them; next he would take Ebenezer's place at the instrument so that Anna could teach her brother the steps; and finally, when the dance was learned, Ebenezer would help Anna master the tune on the harpsichord. Aside from its obvious efficiency, this system was in keeping with the second of Master Burlingame's three principles of pedagogy; to wit, that one learns a thing best by teaching it. The first was that of the three usual motives for learning things — necessity, ambition, and curiosity — simple curiosity was the worthiest of development, it being the "purest" (in that the value of what it drives us to learn is terminal rather than instrumental), the most conducive to exhaustive and continuing rather than cursory or limited study, and the likeliest to render pleasant the labor of learning. The third principle, closely related to the others, was that this sport of teaching and learning should never become associated with certain hours or particular places, lest student and teacher alike (and in Burlingame's system they were much alike) fall into the vulgar habit of turning off their alertness, except at those times and in those places, and thus make by implication a pernicious distinction between learning and other sorts of natural behavior.

The twins' education, then, went on from morning till night. Burlingame joined readily in their play-acting, and had he dared ask leave would have slept with them as well, to guide their word-games. If his system lacked the discipline of Locke's, who would have all students soak their feet in cold water, it was a good deal more fun: Ebenezer and Anna loved their teacher, and the three were great companions. To teach them history he directed their play-acting to historical events; to sustain their interest in geography he produced volumes of exotic pictures and tales of adventure; to sharpen their logical equipment he ran them through Zeno's paradoxes as one would ask riddles, and rehearsed them in Descartes' skepticism as gaily as though the search for truth and value in the universe were a game of Who's Got the Button. He taught them to wonder at a leaf of thyme, a line of Palestrina, the configuration of Cassiopeia, the scales of a pilchard, the sound of indefatigable, the elegance of a sorites.

The result of this education was that the twins grew quite enamored of the world — especially Ebenezer, for Anna, from about her thirteenth birthday, began to grow more demure and less demonstrative. But Ebenezer could be moved to shivers by the swoop of a barn-swallow, to cries of laughter at the lace of a cobweb or the roar of an organ's pedal-notes, and to sudden tears by the wit of Volpone, the tension of a violin-box, or the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem. By age eighteen he had reached his full height and ungainliness; he was a nervous, clumsy youth who, though by this time he far excelled his sister in imaginativeness, was much her inferior in physical beauty, for though as twins they shared nearly identical features, Nature saw fit, by subtle alterations, to turn Anna into a lovely young woman and Ebenezer into a goggling scarecrow, just as a clever author may, by delicate adjustments, parody a beautiful style.

It is a pity that Burlingame could not accompany Ebenezer when, at eighteen, the boy made ready to matriculate at Cambridge, for though a good teacher will teach well regardless of the theory he suffers from, and though Burlingame's might seem to have been an unusually attractive one, yet there is no perfect educational method, and it must be admitted that at least partly because of his tutoring Ebenezer took quite the same sort of pleasure in history as in Greek mythology and epic poetry, and made little or no distinction between, say, the geography of the atlases and that of fairy-stories. In short, because learning had been for him such a pleasant game, he could not regard the facts of zoology or the Norman Conquest, for example, with genuine seriousness, nor could he discipline himself to long labor at tedious tasks. Even his great imagination and enthusiasm for the world were not unalloyed virtues when combined with his gay irresolution, for though they led him to a great sense of the arbitrariness of the particular real world, they did not endow him with a corresponding realization of its finality. He very well knew, for instance, that "France is shaped like a teapot," but he could scarcely accept the fact that there was actually in existence at that instant such a place as France, where people were speaking French and eating snails whether he thought about them or not, and that despite the virtual infinitude of imaginable shapes, this France would have to go on resembling a teapot forever. And again, though the whole business of Greece and Rome was unquestionably delightful, he found the notion preposterous, almost unthinkable, that this was the only way it happened: that made him nervous and irritable, when he thought of it at all.

Perhaps with continued guidance from his tutor he could in time have overcome these failings, but one morning in July of 1684 Andrew simply announced at breakfast, "No need to go to the summer-house today, Ebenezer. Thy lessons are done."

Both children looked up in surprise.

"Do you mean, sir, that Henry will be leaving us?" Ebenezer asked.

"I do indeed," Andrew replied. "In fact, if I be not greatly in error he hath already departed."

"But how is that? With never a fare-thee-well? He spoke not a word of leaving us!"

"Gently, now," said Andrew. "Will ye weep for a mere schoolmaster? 'Twas this week or the next, was't not? Thou'rt done with him."

"Did you know aught of't?" Ebenezer demanded of Anna. She shook her head and fled from the room. "You ordered him off, Father?" he asked incredulously. "Why such suddenness?"

" 'Dslife!" cried Andrew. "At your age I'd sooner have drunk him good riddance than raised such a bother! The fellow's work was done and I sacked him, and there's an end on't! If he saw fit to leave at once 'tis his affair. I must say 'twas a more manly thing than all this hue and cry!"

Ebenezer went at once to the summer-pavilion. Almost everything was there exactly as it had been before: a half-dissected frog lay pinned out upon its beech-board on the work-table; books and papers were spread open on the writing-desk; even the teapot stood half-full on the grate. But Burlingame was indeed gone. While Ebenezer was looking about in disbelief Anna joined him, wiping her eyes.

"Dear Henry!" Ebenezer lamented, his own eyes brimming. " 'Tis like a bolt from Heaven! Whatever shall we do without him?"

Anna made no reply, but ran to her brother and embraced him.

For this reason or another, then, when not long afterwards Ebenezer bade good-bye to his father and Anna and established himself in Magdalene College, at Cambridge, he proved a poor student. He would go to fetch Newton's lectures De Motu Corporum from the library, and would spend four hours reading Esquemeling's History of the Buccaneers instead, or some Latin bestiary. He took part in few pranks or sports, made few friends, and went virtually unnoticed by his professors.

It was during his second year of study that, though he did not realize it at the time, he was sore bit by the muse's gadfly. Certainly he did not at the time think of himself as a poet, but it got so that after hearing his teachers argue subtly and at length against, say, philosophical materialism, he would leave the lecture-hall with no more in his notebook than:

Old Plato saw both Mind and Matter;

Thomas Hobbes, naught but the latter.

Now poor Tom's Soul doth fry in Hell:

Shrugs GOD, " 'Tis immaterial."

or:

Source of Virtue, Truth, and All is

Each Man's Lumen Naturalis.

As might be expected, the more this affliction got hold of him, the more his studies suffered. The sum of history became in his head no more than the stuff of metaphors. Of the philosophers of his era — Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke — he learned little; of its scientists — Kepler, Galileo, Newton — less; of its theologians — Lord Herbert, Cudworth, More, Smith, Glanvill — nothing. But Paradise Lost he knew inside out; Hudibras upside down. At the end of the third year, to his great distress, he failed a number of examinations and had to face the prospect of leaving the University. Yet what to do? He could not bear the thought of returning to St. Giles and telling his formidable father; he would have to absent himself quietly, disappear from sight, and seek his fortune in the world at large. But in what manner?

Here, in his difficulty with this question, the profoundest effects of Burlingame's amiable pedagogy become discernible: Ebenezer's imagination was excited by every person he met either in or out of books who could do with skill and understanding anything whatever; he was moved to ready admiration by expert falconers, scholars, masons, chimneysweeps, prostitutes, admirals, cutpurses, sailmakers, barmaids, apothecaries, and cannoneers alike.

Ah, God, he wrote in a letter to Anna about this time, it were an easy Matter to choose a Calling, had one all Time to live in! I should be fifty Years a Barrister, fifty a Physician, fifty a Clergyman, fifty a Soldier! Aye, and fifty a Thief, and fifty a Judge! All Roads are fine Roads, beloved Sister, none more than another, so that with one Life to spend I am a Man bare-bumm'd at Taylors with Cash for but one pair of Breeches, or a Scholar at Bookstalls with Money for a single Book: to choose ten were no Trouble; to choose one, impossible! All Trades, all Crafts, all Professions are wondrous, but none is finer than the rest together. I cannot choose, sweet Anna: twixt Stools my Breech falleth to the Ground!

He was, that is to say, temperamentally disinclined to no career, and, what is worse (as were this not predicament enough), he seemed consistently no special sort of person: the variety of temperaments and characters that he observed at Cambridge and in literature was as enchanting to him as the variety of life-works, and as hard to choose from among. He admired equally the sanguine, the phlegmatic, the choleric, the melancholic, the splenetic, and the balanced man, the fool and the sage, the enthusiast and the stick-in-the-mud, the talkative and the taciturn, and, most dilemmal of all, the consistent and the inconsistent. Similarly, it seemed to him as fine a thing to be fat as to be lean, to be short as tall, homely as handsome. To complete his quandary — what is probably an effect of the foregoing — Ebenezer could be persuaded, at least notionally, by any philosophy of the world, even by any strongly held opinion, which was either poetically conceived or attractively stated, since he appeared to be emotionally predisposed in favor of none. It was as pretty a notion to him that the world was made of water, as Thales declared, as that it was air, à la Anaximines, or fire, à la Heraclitus, or all three and dirt to boot, as swore Empedocles; that all was matter, as Hobbes maintained, or that all was mind, as some of Locke's followers were avowing, seemed equally likely to our poet, and as for ethics, could he have been all three and not just one he'd have enjoyed dying once a saint, once a frightful sinner, and once lukewarm between the two.

The man (in short), thanks both to Burlingame and to his natural proclivities, was dizzy with the beauty of the possible; dazzled, he threw up his hands at choice, and like ungainly flotsam rode half-content the tide of chance. Though the term was done he stayed on at Cambridge. For a week he simply languished in his rooms, reading distractedly and smoking pipe after pipe of tobacco, to which he'd become addicted. At length reading became impossible; smoking too great a bother: he prowled restlessly about the room. His head always felt about to ache, but never began to.

Finally one day he did not deign even to dress himself or eat, but sat immobile in the window seat in his nightshirt and stared at the activity in the street below, unable to choose a motion at all even when, some hours later, his untutored bladder suggested one.

3: Ebenezer Is Rescued, and Hears a Diverting Tale Involving Isaac Newton and Other Notables

Luckily for him (else he might have mossed over where he sat), Ebenezer was roused from his remarkable trance shortly after dinner-time by a sudden great commotion at his door.

"Eben! Eben! Prithee admit me quickly!"

"Who is it?" called Ebenezer, and jumped up in alarm: he had no friends at the College who might be calling on him.

"Open and see," the visitor laughed. "Only hurry, I beg of thee!"

"Do but wait a minute. I must dress."

"What? Not dressed? 'Swounds, what an idle fellow! No matter, boy; let me in at once!"

Ebenezer recognized the voice, which he'd not heard for three years. "Henry!" he cried, and threw open the door.

" 'Tis no other," laughed Burlingame, giving him a squeeze. "Marry, what a lout thou'rt grown to! A good six feet! And abed at this hour!" He felt the young man's forehead. "Yet you've no fever. What ails thee, lad? Ah well, no matter. One moment — " He ran to the window and peered cautiously below. "Ah, there's the rascal! Hither, Eben!"

Ebenezer hurried to the window. "Whatever is't?"

"Yonder, yonder!" Burlingame pointed up the street. "Coming by the little dram-shop! Know you that gentleman with the hickory-stick?"

Ebenezer saw a long-faced man of middle age, gowned as a don, making his way down the street.

"Nay, 'tis no Magdalene Fellow. The face is strange."

"Shame on thee, then, and mark it well. 'Tis Isaac himself, from Trinity."

"Newton!" Ebenezer looked with sharper interest. "I've not seen him before, but word hath it the Royal Society is bringing out a book of his within the month that will explain the workings of the entire universe! I'faith, I thank you for your haste! But did I hear you call him rascal?"

Burlingame laughed again. "You mistake the reason for my haste, Eben. I pray God my face hath altered these fifteen years, for I'm certain Brother Isaac caught sight of me ere I reached your entryway."

"Is't possible you know him?" asked Ebenezer, much impressed.

"Know him? I was once near raped by him. Stay!" He drew back from the window. "Keep an eye on him, and tell me how I might escape should he turn in at your door."

"No difficulty: the door of this chamber lets onto an open stairway in the rear. What in Heav'n's afoot, Henry?"

"Don't be alarmed," Burlingame said. " 'Tis a pretty story, and I'll tell it all presently. Is he coming?"

"One moment — he's just across from us. There. Nay, wait now — he is saluting another don. Old Bagley, the Latinist. There, now, he's moving on."

Burlingame came to the window, and the two of them watched the great man continue up the street.

"Not another moment, Henry," Ebenezer declared. "Tell me at once what mystery is behind this hide-and-seek, and behind thy cruel haste to leave us three years past, or watch me perish of curiosity!"

"Aye and I shall," Burlingame replied, "directly you dress yourself, lead us to food and drink, and give full account of yourself. 'Tis not I alone who have excuses to find."

"How! Then you know of my failure?"

"Aye, and came to see what's what, and perchance to birch some sense into you."

"But how can that be? I told none but Anna."

"Stay, you'll hear all, I swear't. But not a word till I've a spread of sack and mutton. Let not excitement twist thy values, lad — come on with you!"

"Ah, bless you, thou'rt an Iliad Greek, Henry," Ebenezer said, and commenced dressing.

They went to an inn nearby, where over small beer after dinner Ebenezer explained, as best he could, his failure at the College and subsequent indecisions. "The heart of't seems to be," he concluded, "that in no matter of import can I make up my mind. Marry, Henry, how I've needed thy counsel! What agonies you might have saved me!"

"Nay," Burlingame protested. "You well know I love you, Eben, and feel your afflictions as my own. But advice, I swear't, is the wrong medicine for your malady, for two reasons: first, the logic of the problem is such that at some remove or other you'd have still to choose, inasmuch as should I counsel you to come with me to London, you yet must choose whether to follow my counsel; and should I farther counsel you to follow my first counsel, you must yet choose to follow my second — the regress is infinite and goes nowhere. Second, e'en could you choose to follow my counsel, 'tis no cure at all, but a mere crutch to lean upon. The object is to put you on your feet, not to take you off them. 'Tis a serious affair, Eben; it troubles me. What are your own sentiments about your failure?"

"I must own I have none," Ebenezer said, "though I can fancy many."

"And this indecision: how do you feel about yourself?"

"Marry, I know not! I suppose I'm merely curious."

Burlingame frowned and called for a pipe of tobacco from a winedrawer working near at hand. "You were indeed the picture of apathy when I found you. Doth it not gall or grieve you to lose the baccalaureate, when you'd approached so near it?"

"In a manner, I suppose," Ebenezer smiled. "And yet the man I most respect hath got on without it, hath he not?"

Burlingame laughed. "My dear fellow, I see 'tis time I told you many things. Will it comfort you to learn that I, too, suffer from your disease, and have since childhood?"

"Nay, that cannot be," Ebenezer said. "Ne'er have I seen thee falter, Henry: thou'rt the very antithesis of indecision! 'Tis to you I look in envy, and despair of e'er attaining such assurance."

"Let me be your hope, not your despair, for just as a mild siege of smallpox, though it scar a man's face, leaves him safe forever from dying of that ailment, so inconstancy, fickleness, a periodic shifting of enthusiasms, though a vice, may preserve a man from crippling indecision."

"Fickleness, Henry?" Ebenezer asked in wonderment. "Is't fickleness explains your leaving us?"

"Not in the sense you take it," Burlingame said. He fetched out a shilling and called for two more tankards of beer. "I say, did you know I was an orphan child?"

"Why, yes," Ebenezer said, surprised. "Now you mention it, I believe I did, though I can't recall your ever telling us. Haply we just assumed it. I'faith, Henry, all the years we've known you, and yet in sooth we know naught of you, do we? I've no idea when you were born, or where reared, or by whom."

"Or why I left you so discourteously, or how I learned of your failure, or why I fled the great Mister Newton," Burlingame added. "Very well then, take a draught with me, and I shall uncloak the mystery. There's a good fellow!"

They drank deeply, and Burlingame began his story.

"I've not the faintest notion where I was born, or even when — though it must have been about 1654. Much less do I know what woman bore me, or what man got me on her. I was raised by a Bristol sea-captain and his wife, who were childless, and 'tis my suspicion I was born in either America or the West Indies, for my earliest memories are of an ocean passage when I was no more than three years old. Their name was Salmon — Avery and Melissa Salmon."

"I am astonished!" Ebenezer declared. "I ne'er dreamed aught so extraordinary of your beginnings! How came you to be called Burlingame, then?"

Burlingame sighed. "Ah, Eben, just as till now you've been incurious about my origin, so till too late was I. Burlingame I've been since earliest memory, and, as is the way of children, it ne'er occurred to me to wonder at it, albeit to this day I've met no other of that surname."

"It must be that whomever Captain Salmon received you from was your parent!" Ebenezer said. "Or haply 'twas some kin of yours, that knew your name."

"Dear Eben, think you I've not racked myself upon that chance? Think you I'd not forfeit a hand for five minutes' converse with my poor Captain, or gentle Melissa? But I must put by my curiosity till Judgment Day, for they both are in their graves."

"Unlucky fellow!"

"All through my childhood," Burlingame went on, " 'twas my single aim to go to sea, like Captain Salmon. Boats were my only toys; sailors my only playmates. On my thirteenth birthday I shipped as messboy on the Captain's vessel, a West Indiaman, and so taken was I by the mariner's life that I threw my heart and soul into my apprenticeship. Ere we raised Barbados I was scrambling aloft with the best of 'em, to take in a stuns'l or tar the standing rigging, and was as handy with a fid as any Jack aboard. Eben, Eben, what a life for a lad — e'en now it shivers me to think on't! Brown as a coffeebean I was, and agile as a monkey, and ere my voice had left off changing, ere my parts were fully haired — at an age when most boys have still the smell of the womb on 'em, and dream of traveling to the neighboring shire — I had dived for sheepswool sponges on the Great Bahaman Banks and fought with pirates in the Gulf of Paria. What's more, after guarding my innocence in the fo'c'sle with a fishknife from a lecherous old Manxman who'd offered two pounds for't, I swam a mile through shark-water from our mooring off Curasao to squander it one August night with a mulatto girl upon the beach. She was scarce thirteen, Eben — half Dutch, half Indian, lissome and trembly as an eight-month colt — but on receipt of a little brass spyglass of mine, which she'd taken a great fancy to in the village that morning, she fetched up her skirts with a laugh, and I deflowered her under the sour-orange trees. I was not yet fifteen."

"Gramercy!"

"No man e'er loved his trade more than I," Burlingame continued, "nor slaved at it more diligently; I was the apple of the Captain's eye, and would, I think, have risen fast through the ranks."

"Then out on't, Henry, how is't you claim my failing? For I see naught in thy tale here but a staggering industry and singlemindedness, the half of which I'd lose an ear to equal."

Burlingame smiled and drank off the last of his beer. "Inconstancy, dear fellow, inconstancy. That same singlemindedness that raised me o'er the other lads on the ship was the ruin of my nautical career."

"How can that be?"

"I made five voyages in all," Burlingame said. "On the fifth — the same voyage on which I lost my virginity — we lay becalmed one day in the horse latitudes off the Canary Islands, and quite by chance, looking about for something wherewith to occupy myself, I happened on a copy of Motteux's Don Quixote among a shipmate's effects: I spent the remainder of the day with it, for though Mother Salmon had taught me to read and write, 'twas the first real storybook I'd read. I grew so entranced by the great Manchegan and his faithful squire as to lose all track of time and was rebuked by Captain Salmon for reporting late to the cook.

"From that day on I was no longer a seaman, but a student. I read every book I could find aboard ship and in port — bartered my clothes, mortgaged my pay for books, on any subject whatever, and reread them over and over when no new ones could be found. All else went by the board; what work I could be made to do I did distractedly, and in careless haste. I took to hiding, in the rope-locker or the lazarette, where I could read for an hour undisturbed ere I was found. Finally Captain Salmon could tolerate it no more: he ordered the mate to confiscate every volume aboard, save only the charts, the ship's log, and the navigational tables, and pitched 'em to the sharks off Port-au-Prince; then he gave me such a hiding for my sins that my poor bum tingled a fortnight after, and forbade me e'er to read a printed page aboard his vessel. This so thwarted and aggrieved me, that at the next port (which happened to be Liverpool) I jumped ship and left career and benefactor forever, with not a thank-ye nor a fare-thee-well for the people who'd fed and clothed me since babyhood.

"I had no money at all, and for food only a great piece of hard cheese I'd stolen from the ship's cook: therefore I very soon commenced to starve. I took to standing on street-corners and singing for my supper: I was a pretty lad and knew many a song, and when I would sing What Thing Is Love? to the ladies, or A Pretty Duck There Was to the gentlemen, 'twas not often they'd pass me by without a smile and tuppence. At length a band of wandering gypsies, traveling down from Scotland to London, heard me sing and invited me to join them, and so for the next year I worked and lived with those curious people. They were tinkers, horse-traders, fortune-tellers, basket-makers, dancers, troubadours, and thieves. I dressed in their fashion, ate, drank, and slept with them, and they taught me all their songs and tricks. Dear Eben! Had you seen me then, you'd ne'er have doubted for an instant I was one of them!"

"I am speechless," Ebenezer declared. " 'Tis the grandest adventure I have heard!"

"We worked our way slowly, with many digressions, from Liverpool through Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, and Bedford, sleeping in the wagons when it rained or out under the stars on fine nights. In the troupe of thirty souls I was the only one who read and wrote, and so was of great assistance to them in many ways. Once to their great delight I read them tales out of Boccaccio — they all love to tell and hear stories — and they were so surprised to learn that books contain such marvelous pleasantries, a thing which erst they'd not suspected, that they began to steal every book they could find for me: I seldom lacked reading that year! It happened one day they turned up a primer, and I taught the lot of 'em their letters, for which services they were unimaginably grateful. Despite my being a 'gorgio' (by which name they call non-gypsies) they initiated me into their most privy matters and expressed the greatest desire for me to marry into their group and travel with them forever.

"But late in 1670 we arrived here in Cambridge, having wandered down from Bedford. The students and several of the dons took a great fancy to us, and though they made too free with sundry of our women, they treated us most cordially, even bringing us to their rooms to sing and play for them. Thus were my eyes first opened to the world of learning and scholarship, and I knew on the instant that my interlude with the gypsies was done. I resolved to go no farther: I bid adieu to my companions and remained in Cambridge, determined to starve upon the street-corners rather than leave this magnificent place."

"Marry, Henry!" Ebenezer said. "Thy courage brings me nigh to weeping! What did you then?"

"Why, so soon as my belly commenced to rumble I stopped short where I was (which happened to be over by Christ's College) and broke into Flow My Tears, it being of all the songs I knew the most plaintive. And when I had done with the last verse of it —

Hark! yon Shadows that in Darkness dwell,

Learn to contemn Light.

Happy, happy they that in Hell

Feel not the World's Despite.

— when I had done, I say, there appeared at a nearby window a lean frowning don, who enquired of me, What manner of Cainite was I, that I counted them happy who must fry forever in the fires of Hell? And another, who came to the window beside him, a fat wight, asked me. Did I not know where I was? To which I answered, 'I know no more, good masters, than that I am in Cambridge Town and like to perish of my belly!' Then the first don, who all unbeknownst to me was having a merry time at my expense, told me I was in Christ's College, and that he and all his fellows were powerful divines, and that for lesser blasphemies than mine they had caused men to be broke upon the wheel. I was a mere sixteen then, and not a little alarmed, for though I'd read enough scarce to credit their story, yet I knew not but what they could work me some injury or other, e'en were't something short of the wheel. Therefore I humbly craved their pardon, and pled 'twas but an idle song, the words of which I scarce attended; so that were there aught of blasphemy in't, 'twas not the singer should be racked for't but the author Dowland, who being long since dead, must needs already have had the sin rendered out of him in Satan's try-works, and there's an end on't! At this methinks the merry dons had like to laugh aloud, but they put on sterner faces yet and ordered me into their chamber. There they farther chastised me, maintaining that while my first offense had been grievous enough, in its diminution of the torments of Hell, this last remark of mine had on't the very smell of the stake. 'How is that?' I asked them. 'Why,' the lean one cried, 'to hold as you do that they who perpetuate another's sin, albeit witlessly, are themselves blameless, is to deny the doctrine of Original Sin itself, for who are Eve and Adam but the John Dowlands of us all, whose sinful song all humankind must sing willy-nilly and die for't?' 'What is more,' the fat don declared, 'in denying the mystery of Original Sin you scorn as well the mystery of Vicarious Atonement — for where's the sense of Salvation for them that are not lost?'

" 'Nay, nay!' said I, and commenced to sniffling. 'Marry, masters, 'twas but an idle observation! Prithee take no notice of't!'

" 'An idle observation!' the first replied, and laid hold of my arms. ' 'Swounds, boy! You scoff at the two cardinal mysteries of the Church, which like twin pillars bear the entire edifice of Christendom; you as much as call the Crucifixion a vulgar Mayfair show; and to top all you regard such unspeakable blasphemies as idle observations! 'Tis a more horrendous sin yet! Whence came thee here, anyhow?'

" 'From Bedford,' I replied, frightened near out of my wits, 'with a band of gypsies.' On hearing this the dons feigned consternation, and declared that every year at this time the gypsies passed through Cambridge for the sole purpose, since they are heathen to a man, of working some hurt on the divines. Only the year before, they said, one of my cohorts had sneaked privily into the Trinity brew-house and poisoned a vat of beer, with the result that three Senior Fellows, four Scholars, and a brace of idle Sizars were done to death ere sundown. Then they asked me, What was my design? And when I told them I had hoped to attach myself to one of their number as a serving-boy, the better to improve my mind, they made out I was come to poison the lot of 'em. So saying, they stripped me naked on the spot, despite my protestations of innocence, and on pretext of seeking hidden phials of vitriol they poked and probed every inch of my person, and pinched and tweaked me in alarming places. Nay, I must own they laid lecherous hands upon me, and had soon done me a violence but that their sport was interrupted by another don — an aging, saintlike gentleman, clearly their superior — who bade them stand off and rebuked them for molesting me. I flung myself at his feet, and, raising me up and looking at me from top to toe, he enquired, What was the occasion of my being disrobed? I replied, I had but sung a song to please these gentlemen, the which they had called a blasphemy, and had then so diligently searched me for phials of vitriol, that I looked to be costive the week through.

"The old don then commanded me to sing the song at once, that he might judge of its blasphemy, and so I fetched up my guitar, which the gypsies had taught me the use of, and as best I could (for I was weeping and shivering with fright) I once again sang Flow My Tears. Throughout the piece my savior smiled on me sweetly as an angel, and when I was done he spoke not a word about blasphemy, but kissed me upon the forehead, bade me dress, and after reproving again my tormentors, who were mightily ashamed at being thus surprised in their evil prank, he commanded me to go with him to his quarters. What's more, after interrogating me at length concerning my origin and my plight, and expressing surprise and pleasure at the extent of my reading, he then and there made me a member of his household staff, to serve him personally, and allowed me free use of his admirable library."

"I must know who this saintly fellow was," Ebenezer interrupted. "My curiosity leaps its banks!"

Burlingame smiled and raised a finger. "I shall tell thee, Eben; but not a word of't must you repeat, for reasons you'll see presently. Whate'er his failings, 'twas a noble turn he did me, and I'd not see his name besmirched by any man."

"Never fear," Ebenezer assured him. " 'Twill be like whispering it to thyself."

"Very well, then. I shall tell thee only that he was Platonist to the ears, and hated Tom Hobbes as he hated the Devil, and was withal so fixed on things of the spirit — on essential spissitude and indiscerptibility and metaphysical extension and the like, which were as real to him as rocks and cow-patties — that he scarce lived in this world at all. And should these be still not sufficient clues, know finally that he was at that time much engrossed in a grand treatise against the materialist philosophy, which treatise he printed the following year under the title Enchiridion Metaphysicum."

" 'Sheart!" Ebenezer whispered. "My dear friend, was't Henry More himself you sang for? I should think 'twould be thy boast, not an embarrassment!"

"Stay, till I end my tale. Twas in sooth great More himself I lived with! None knows more than I his noble character, and none is more a debtor to his generosity. I was then per-; haps seventeen: I tried in every way I knew to be a model of intelligence, good manners, and industry, and ere long the old fellow would allow no other servant near him. He took great ' pleasure in conversing with me, at first about my adventures at sea and with the gypsies, but later on matters of philosophy and theology, with which subjects I made special effort to acquaint myself. 'Twas plain he'd conceived a great liking for me."

"Thou'rt a lucky wight, i'faith!" Ebenezer sighed.

"Nay; only hear me out. As time went on he no longer addressed me as 'Dear Henry,' or 'My boy,' but rather 'My son,' and 'My dear'; and after that 'Dearest thing,' and finally 'Thingums,' 'Precious laddikins,' and 'Gypsy mine' in turn. In short, as I soon guessed, his affection for me was Athenian as his philosophy — dare I tell you he more than once caressed I me, and called me his little Alcibiades?"

"I am amazed!" said Ebenezer. "The scoundrel rescued you from the other blackguards, merely to have you for his own unnatural lusts!"

"Oh la, 'twas not at all the same thing, Eben. The others were men in their thirties, full to bursting (as my master himself put it) with the filth and unclean tinctures of corporeity. More, on the other hand, was near sixty, the gentlest of souls, and scarce realized himself, I daresay, the character of his passion: I had no fear of him at all. And here I must confess, Eben, I did a shameful thing: so intent was I on entering the University, that instead of leaving More's service as soon as tact would permit, I lost no opportunity to encourage his shameful doting. I would perch on the arm of his chair like an impudent lass and read over his shoulder, or cover his eyes for a tease, or spring about the room like a monkey, knowing he admired my energy and grace. Most of all I sang and played on my guitar for him: many's the night — I blush to tell it! — when I would let him come upon me, as though by accident; I would laugh and blush, and then as if to make a lark of't, take my guitar and sing Flow My Tears.

"Need I say the poor philosopher was simply ravished? His passion so took governance o'er his other faculties, he grew so entirely enamored of me, that upon my granting him certain trifling favors, which I knew he'd long coveted but scarce hoped for, he spent nearly all his meager savings to outfit me like the son of an earl, and enrolled me in Trinity College."

Here Burlingame lit another pipe, and sighed in remembrance.

"I was, I believe, uncommonly well-read for a boy my age. In the two years with More I'd mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, read all of Plato, Tully, Plotin, and divers other of the ancients, and at least perused most of the standard works of natural philosophy. My benefactor made no secret that he looked for me to become as notable a philosopher as Herbert of Cherbury, John Smith, or himself — and who knows but what I might have been, had things turned out happily? But alas, Eben, that same shamelessness by virtue of which I reached my goal proved my undoing. 'Twas quite poetic."

"What happened, pray?"

"I was not strong in mathematics," Burlingame said, "and for that reason I devoted much of my study to that subject, and spent as much time as I could with mathematicians — especially with the brilliant young man who but two years before, in 1669, had taken Barrow's place as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, and holds the office yet. ."

"Newton!"

"Aye, the wondrous Isaac! He was twenty-nine or thirty then, as I am now, with a face like a pure-bred stallion's. He was thin and strong and marvelous energetic, much given to moods; he had the arrogance that of't goes with great gifts, but was in other ways quite shy, and seldom overbearing. He could be merciless with others' theories, yet was himself inordinately sensitive to criticism. He was so diffident about his talents 'twas with great reluctance he allowed aught of his discoveries to be printed; yet so vain, the slightest suggestion that someone had antedated him would drive him near mad with rage and jealousy. Impossible, splendid fellow!"

"Marry, he frightens me!" Ebenezer said.

"Now you must know that at that time More and Newton had no love whatever for each other, and the cause of their enmity was the French philosopher Renatus Descartes."

"Descartes? How can that be?"

"I know not how well you've heeded your tutors," Burlingame said; "you might know that all these Platonical gentlemen of Christ's and Emmanuel Colleges are wont to sing the praises of Descartes, inasmuch as he makes a great show of pottering about in mathematics and the motions of heavenly bodies, like any Galileo, and yet unlike Tom Hobbes he affirms the real existence of God and the soul, which pleases them no end. The more for that the lot of 'em are Protestants: this much-vaunted rejection of the learning of his time, that Renatus brags of in his Discourse on Method: this searching of his innards for his axioms — is't not the first principle of Protestantism? Thus it is that Descartes' system is taught all over Cambridge, and More, like the rest, praised and swore by him as by a latter-day saint. Tell me, Eben: how is't, d'you think, that the planets are moved in their courses?"

"Why," said Ebenezer, " 'tis that the cosmos is filled with little particles moving in vortices, each of which centers on a star; and 'tis the subtle push and pull of these particles in our solar vortex that slides the planets along their orbs — is't not?"

"So saith Descartes," Burlingame smiled. "And d'you haply recall what is the nature of light?"

"If I have't right," replied Ebenezer, " 'tis an aspect of the vortices — of the press of inward and outward forces in 'em. The celestial fire is sent through space from the vortices by this pressure, which imparts a transitional motion to little light globules — "

"Which Renatus kindly hatched for that occasion," Burlingame interrupted. "And what's more he allows his globules both a rectilinear and a rotatory motion. If only the first occurs when the globules smite our retinae, we see white light; if both, we see color. And as if this were not magical enough — mirabile dictu! — when the rotatory motion surpasseth the rectilinear, we see blue; when the reverse, we see red; and when the twain are equal, we see yellow. What fantastical drivel!"

"You mean 'tis not the truth? I must say, Henry, it sounds reasonable to me. In sooth, there is a seed of poetry in it; it hath an elegance."

"Aye, it hath every virtue and but one small defect, which is, that the universe doth not operate in that wise. Marry, 'tis no crime, methinks, to teach the man's skeptical philosophy or his analytical geometry — both have much of merit in 'em. But his cosmology is purely fanciful, his optics right bizarre; and the first man to prove it is Isaac Newton."

"Hence their enmity?" asked Ebenezer.

Burlingame nodded. "By the time Newton became Lucasian Professor he had already spoilt Cartesian optics with his prism experiments — and well do I recall them from his lectures! — and he was refuting the theory of vortices by mathematics, though he hadn't as yet published his own cosmical hypotheses. But his loathing for Descartes goes deeper yet: it hath its origin in a difference betwixt their temperaments. Descartes, you know, is a clever writer, and hath a sort of genius for illustration that lends force to the wildest hypotheses. He is a great hand for twisting the cosmos to fit his theory. Newton, on the other hand, is a patient and brilliant experimenter, with a sacred regard for the facts of nature. Then again, since the lectures De Motu Corporum and his papers on the nature of light have been available, the man always held up to him by his critics is Descartes.

"So, then, no love was lost 'twixt Newton and More; they had in fact been quietly hostile for some years. And when I became the focus of't, their antagonism boiled over."

"You? But you were a simple student, were you not? Surely two such giants ne'er would stoop to fight their battles with their students."

"Must I draw a picture, Eben?" Burlingame said. "I was out to learn the nature of the universe from Newton, but knowing I was More's protégé, he was cold and incommunicative with me. I employed every strategy I knew to remove this barrier, and, alas, won more than I'd fought for — in plain English, Eben, Newton grew as enamored of me as had More, with this difference only, that there was naught Platonical in his passion."

"I know not what to think!" cried Ebenezer.

"Nor did I," said Burlingame, "albeit one thing I knew well, which was that save for the impersonal respect I bare the twain of 'em, I cared not a fart for either. 'Tis a wise thing, Eben, not to confuse one affection with another. Well, sir, as the months passed, each of my swains came to realize the passions of the other, and both grew as jealous as Cervantes' Celoso Extremeño. They carried on shamefully, and each threatened my ruination in the University should I not give o'er the other. As for me, I paid no more heed than necessary to either, but wallowed in the libraries of the colleges like a dolphin in the surf. 'Twas job enough for me to remember to eat and sleep, much less fulfill the million little obligations they thought I owed 'em. I'faith, a handsome pair!"

"Prithee, what was the end of it?"

Burlingame sighed. "I played the one against the other for above two years, till at last Newton could endure it no longer. The Royal Society had by this time published his experiments with prisms and reflecting telescopes, and he was under fire from Robert Hooke, who had light theories of his own; from the Dutchman Christian Huygens, who was committed to the lens telescope; from the French monk Pardies; and from the Belgian Linus. So disturbed was he by the conjunction of this criticism and his jealousy, that in one and the same day he swore ne'er to publish another of his discoveries, and confronted More in the latter's chambers with the intent of challenging him to settle their rivalry for good and all by means of a duel to the death!"

"Ah, what a loss to the world, whate'er the issue of't," observed Ebenezer.

"As't happened, no blood was let," Burlingame said: "the tale ends happily for them both, if not for the teller. After much discourse Newton discovered that his rival's position was uncertain as his own, and that I seemed equally indifferent to both — which conclusion, insofar as't touches the particular matters they had in mind, is as sound as any in the Principia. In addition More showed to Newton his Enchiridion Metaphysicum, wherein he plainly expressed a growing disaffection for Descartes; and Newton assured More that albeit 'twas universal gravitation, and not angels or vortices, that steered the planets in their orbits, there yet remained employment enough for the Deity as a first cause to set the cosmic wheels a-spin, e'en as old Renatus had declared. In fine, so far from dueling to the death, they so convinced each other that at the end of some hours of colloquy — all which I missed, being then engrossed in the library — they fell to tearful embraces, and decided to cut me off without a penny, arrange my dismissal from the College, and move into the same lodgings, where, so they declared, they would couple the splendors of the physical world to the glories of the ideal, and listen ravished to the music of the spheres! This last they never did in fact, but their connection endures to this day, and from all I hear, More hath washed his hands entirely of old Descartes, while Newton hath caught a foolish infatuation with theology, and seeks to explain the Apocalypse by application of his laws of series and fluxions. As for the first two of their resolves, they fulfilled 'em to the letter — turned me out to starve, and so influenced all and sundry against me that not a shilling could I beg, nor eat one meal on credit. 'Twas off to London I went, with not a year 'twixt me and the baccalaureate. Thus was it, in 1676, your father found me; and playing fickle to the scholar's muse, I turned to you and your dear sister all the zeal I'd erst reserved for my researches. Your instruction became my First Good, my Primary Cause, which lent all else its form and order. And my fickleness is thorough and entire: not for an instant have I regretted the way of my life, or thought wistfully of Cambridge."

"Dear, dear Henry!" Ebenezer cried. "How thy tale moves me, and shames me, that I let slip through idleness what you strove so hard in vain to reach! Would God I had another chance!"

"Nay, Eben, thou'rt no scholar, I fear. You have perchance the schoolman's love of lore, but not the patience, not the address, not I fear that certain nose for relevance, that grasp of the world, which sets apart the thinker from the crank. There is a thing in you, a set of the grain as 'twere, that would keep you ingenuous even if all the books in all the libraries of Europe were distilled in your brain. Nay, let the baccalaureate go; I came here not to exhort you to try again, or to chide you for failing, but to take you with me to London for a time, until you see your way clearly. 'Twas Anna's idea, who loves you more than herself, and I think it wise."

"Precious Anna! How came she to know thy whereabouts?"

"There, now," laughed Burlingame, "that is another tale entirely, and 'twill do for another time. Come with me to London, and I'll tell it thee in the carriage."

Ebenezer hesitated. " 'Tis a great step."

" 'Tis a great world," replied Burlingame.

"I fear me what Father would say, did he hear of't."

"My dear fellow," Burlingame said, "we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careering into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men, Ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!"

"You lend me courage, Henry," Ebenezer said, rising from the table. "Let us begone."

4: Ebenezer's First Sojourn in London, and the Issue of It

Burlingame slept that night in Ebenezer's room, and the next day they left Cambridge for London by carriage.

"I think you've not yet told me," the young man said en route, "how it is you left St. Giles so suddenly, and how Anna came to know your whereabouts."

Burlingame sighed. " 'Tis a simple mystery, if a sad one. The fact is, Eben, your father fancies I have designs upon your sister."

"Nay! Incredible!"

"Ah, now, as for that, 'tis not so incredible; Anna is a sweet and clever girl, and uncommon lovely."

"Yet think of your ages!" Ebenezer said. " 'Tis absurd of Father!"

"Think you 'tis absurd?" Burlingame asked. "Thou'rt a candid fellow."

"Ah, forgive me," Ebenezer laughed; " 'twas a rude remark. Nay, 'tis not absurd at all: thou'rt but thirty-odd, and Anna twenty-one. I daresay 'tis that you were our teacher made me think of you as older."

" 'Twere no absurd suspicion, methinks, that any man might look with love on Anna," Burlingame declared, "and I did indeed love the both of you for years, and love you yet; nor did I ever try to hide the fact. 'Tis not that which distresses me; 'tis Andrew's notion that I had vicious designs on the girl. 'Sheart, if anything be improbable, 'tis that so marvelous a creature as Anna could look with favor on a penniless pedagogue!"

"Nay, Henry, I have oft heard her protest, that by comparison to you, none of her acquaintances was worth the labor of being civil to."

"Anna said that?"

"Aye, in a letter not two months past."

"Ah well, whate'er the case, Andrew took my regard for her as lewd intent, and threatened me one afternoon that should I not begone ere morning he'd shoot me like a dog and horsewhip dear Anna into the bargain. I had no fear for myself, but not to risk bringing injury to her I left at once, albeit it tore my heart to go."

Ebenezer sat amazed at this revelation. "How she wept that morning! and yet neither she nor Father told me aught of't!"

"Nor must you speak of it to either," Burlingame warned, "for 'twould but embarrass Anna, would it not? And anger Andrew afresh, for there's no statute of limitations within a family. Think not you'll reason him out of his notion: he is convinced of it."

"I suppose so," Ebenezer said doubtfully. "Then Anna has been in correspondence with you since?"

"Not so regularly as I could wish. Egad, how I've yearned for news of you! I took lodgings on Thames Street, between Billingsgate and the Customs-House — far cry from the summer-pavilion at St. Giles, you'll see! — and hired myself as tutor whenever I could. For two years and more I was unable to communicate with Anna, for fear your father would hear of't, but some months ago I chanced to be engaged as a tutor in French to a Miss Bromly from Plumtree Street, that remembered you and Anna as playmates ere you removed to St. Giles. Through her I was able to tell Anna where I live, and though I dare not write to her, she hath contrived on two or three occasions to send me letters. 'Twas thus I learned the state of your affairs, and I was but too pleased to act on her suggestion that I fetch you out of Cambridge. She is a dear girl, Eben!"

"I long to see her again!" Ebenezer said.

"And I," said Burlingame, "for I esteem her as highly as thee, and 'tis three years since I've seen her."

"Think you she might visit us in London?"

"Nay, I fear 'tis out of the question. Andrew would have none of it."

"Yet surely I cannot resign myself to never seeing her again! Can you, Henry?"

" 'Tis not my wont to look that far ahead," Burlingame said. "Let us consider rather how you'll occupy yourself in London. You must not sit idle, lest you slip again into languishment and stupor."

"Alas," said Ebenezer, "I have no long-term goals toward which to labor."

"Then follow my example," advised Burlingame, "and set as your long-term goal the successful completion of all your short-term goals."

"Yet neither have I any short-term goal."

"Ah, but you will ere long, when your belly growls for dinner and your money's gone."

"Unhappy day!" laughed Ebenezer. "I've no skill in any craft or trade whatever. I cannot even play Flow My Tears on the guitar."

"Then 'tis plain you'll be a teacher, like myself."

" 'Sheart! 'Twould be the blind leading the blind!"

"Aye," smiled Burlingame. "Who better grasps the trials of sightlessness than he whose eyes are gone?"

"But what teach? I know something of many things, and enough of naught."

"I'faith, then the field is open, and you may graze where you list."

"Teach a thing I know naught of?" exclaimed Ebenezer.

"And raise thy fee for't," replied Burlingame, "inasmuch as 'tis no chore to teach what you know, but to teach what you know naught of requires a certain application. Choose a thing you'd greatly like to learn, and straightway proclaim yourself professor of't."

Ebenezer shook his head. " 'Tis still impossible; I am curious about the world in general, and ne'er could choose."

"Very well, then: I dub thee Professor of the Nature of the World, and as such shall we advertise you. Whate'er your students wish to learn of't, that will you teach them."

"Thou'rt jesting, Henry!"

"If't be a jest," replied Burlingame, " 'tis a happy one, I swear, for just so have I lined my belly these three years. B'm'faith, the things I've taught! The great thing is always to be teaching something to someone — a fig for what or to whom. 'Tis no trick at all."

No matter what Ebenezer thought of this proposal, he had not the wherewithal to reject it: immediately on arriving in London he moved into Burlingame's chambers by the river and was established as a full partner. A few days after that, Burlingame brought him his first customer — a lout of a tailor from Crutched Friars who happily desired to be taught nothing more intricate than his A B Cs — and for the next few months Ebenezer earned his living as a pedagogue. He worked six or seven hours a day, both in his rooms and at the homes of his students, and spent most of his free time studying desperately for the following day's lessons. What leisure he had he spent in the taverns and coffeehouses with a small circle of Burlingame's acquaintances, mostly idle poets. Impressed by their apparent confidence in their talent, he too endeavored on several occasions to write poems, but abandoned the effort each time for want of anything to write about.

At his insistence a devious correspondence was established with his sister through Miss Bromly, Burlingame's pupil, and after two months Anna contrived to visit them in London, using as excuse the illness of a spinster aunt who lived near Leadenhall. The twins were, as may be imagined, overjoyed to see each other again, for although conversation did not come so readily since Ebenezer's departure from St. Giles three years before, each still bore, abstractly at least, the greatest affection and regard for the other. Burlingame, too, Anna expressed considerable but properly decorous pleasure in seeing again. She had changed somewhat since Ebenezer had seen her last: her brown hair had lost something of its shine, and her face, while still fair, was leaner and less girlish than he remembered it.

"My dear Anna!" he said for the fourth or fifth time. "How good it is to hear your voice! Tell me, how did you leave Father? Is he well?"

Anna shook her head. "Well on the way to Bedlam, I fear, or to driving me there. 'Tis your disappearance, Eben; it angers and frightens him at once. He knows not the cause of't, or whether to comb the realm for you or disown you. A dozen times daily he demands of me whether I know aught of your whereabouts, or else rails at me for keeping things from him. He is grown hugely suspicious of me, and yet sometimes asks of you so plaintively as to move my tears. He has aged much these past weeks, and though he blows and blusters no less than before, his heart is not in it, and it saps his strength."

"Ah, God, it pains me to hear that!"

"And me," said Burlingame, "for though old Andrew hath small love for me, I wish him no ill."

"I do think," Anna said to Ebenezer, "that you should strive to establish yourself in some calling, and communicate with him directly you find a place; for despite the abuse he'll surely heap on you, 'twill ease his soul to learn thou'rt well, and well established."

"And 'twould ease mine to ease his," Ebenezer said.

"Marry, and yet 'tis your own life!" Burlingame cried impatiently. "Filial love be damned, it galls me sore to see the pair of you o'erawed by the pompous rascal!"

"Henry!" Anna chided.

"You must pardon me," Burlingame said; "I mean no harm by't. But lookee, Anna, 'tis not alone Andrew's health that suffers. Thou'rt peaked thyself, and wan, and I mark a sobering of your spirits. You too should flee St. Giles for London, as your aunt's companion or the like."

"Am I wan and solemn?" Anna asked gently. "Haply 'tis mere age, Henry: one-and-twenty is no more a careless child. But prithee ask me not to leave St. Giles; 'tis to ask Father's death."

"Or belike she hath a suitor there," Ebenezer said to Burlingame. "Is't not so, Anna?" he teased. "Some rustic swain, perchance, that hath won your heart? One-and-twenty is no child, but 'twere a passing good wife, were't not? Say, Henry, see the girl blush! Methinks I've hit on't!"

" 'Twere a lucky bumpkin, b'm'faith," Burlingame remarked.

"Nay," said Anna, "twit me no more on't, Brother."

She was so plainly overwrought that Ebenezer at once begged her forgiveness for his tease.

Anna kissed his cheek. "How shall I marry, when the man I love best hath the bad sense to be my brother? What say the books at Cambridge, Eben? Was e'er a maid less lucky?"

"Nay, i'faith!" laughed Ebenezer. "You'll live and die a maiden ere you find my like! Yet I commend my friend here to your attention, who though something gone in years yet sings a creditable tenor, and is the devil's own good fellow!"

As soon as he spoke it Ebenezer realized the tactlessness of his remark in the light of what Burlingame had told him weeks before of Andrew's suspicions; both men blushed at once, but Anna saved the situation by kissing Burlingame lightly on the cheek as she had kissed her brother, and saying easily, " 'Twere no mean catch, if you speak truly. Doth he know his letters?"

"What matter?" Burlingame asked, joining the raillery. "Whate'er I lack, this fellow here can teach me, or so he vaunts."

" 'Swounds, that reminds me," Ebenezer said, jumping up, "I must run to Tower Hill this minute, to give young Farmsley his first recorder lesson!" He fetched an alto recorder from the mantelpiece. "Quickly, Henry, how doth one blow the thing?"

"Nay, not quickly: slowly," Burlingame said. " 'Twere a grievous error to learn an art too fast. On no account must thy Farmsley blow a note ere he's spent an hour fondling the instrument, holding it properly, taking it apart and fitting it together. And never, never should the master show off his own ability, lest the student grow discouraged at the distance he must travel. I'll teach you the left-hand notes tonight, and you can play Les Bouffons for him on the morrow."

"Must you go?" Anna asked.

"Aye, or 'tis stale bread come Sunday, for Henry hath no scholars of his own this week. I shall trust you to his care till I return."

Anna remained a week in London, slipping away from her aunt's bedside as often as possible to visit Ebenezer and Burlingame. At the end of that time, the aunt having recuperated sufficiently to manage for herself, she announced her intention to return to St. Giles, and to Burlingame's considerable surprise and distress, Ebenezer declared that he was going with her — nor could any amount of expostulation change his mind.

" 'Tis no good," he would say, shaking his head. "I am not a teacher."

"Damn me," Burlingame cried, "if thou'rt not fleeing responsibility!"

"Nay. If I flee, I flee to it. 'Twas a coward's act to hide from Father's wrath. I shall ask his pardon and do whate'er he requires of me."

"A pox on his anger! 'Tis not responsibility to him I speak of at all, but responsibility to thyself. 'Twere a noble act, on the fact of't, to beg his pardon and take your birching like a man, but 'tis no more than an excuse for dropping the reins of your own life. 'Sheart, 'tis a manlier matter to set your goal and swallow the consequences!"

Ebenezer shook his head. "Put what face you will upon it, Henry, I must go. Can a son stand by and watch his father fret to an early grave?"

"Think no ill of't, Henry," Anna pleaded.

"Surely you don't believe it a wise move also?" Burlingame asked incredulously.

"I cannot judge the wisdom of't," Anna replied, "but certain 'twere not a wrong thing to do."

"Marry, I have done with the twain of you!" Burlingame cried. "Praise Heav'n I know not my own father, if this be how they shackle one!"

"I pray Heav'n rather you may someday find him," Anna said calmly, "or word of him, at least. A man's father is his link with the past: the bond 'twixt him and the world he's born to."

"Then again I thank Heav'n I'm quit of mine," said Burlingame. "It leaves me free and unencumbered."

"It doth in sooth, Henry," Anna said with some emotion, "for better or worse."

When the time came to leave, Ebenezer asked, "When shall we see you again, Henry? I shall miss you painfully."

But Burlingame only shrugged and said, "Stay here now, if't pain you so."

"I shall visit as often as I can."

"Nay, risk not your father's displeasure. Besides, I may be gone."

"Gone?" asked Anna, with mild alarm. "Gone whither, Henry?"

He shrugged again. "There's naught to keep me here. I care not a fig for any of my pupils, save to pass the time till something else absorbs me."

After making their good-byes, which their friend's bitterness rendered awkward, Ebenezer and Anna hired a carriage to fetch them to St. Giles in the Fields. The little journey, though uneventful, they both enjoyed, for despite the fact that Anna was disturbed to the point of occasional tears over Burlingame's attitude, and Ebenezer grew more anxious by the mile at the prospect of confronting his father, the carriage-ride was the twins' first opportunity in some time to converse privately and at length. When finally they arrived at the Cooke estate they found to their alarm that Andrew had taken to his bed three days before, at the direction of his physician, and was being cared for by Mrs. Twigg, the housekeeper, like an invalid.

"Dear God!" cried Anna. "And I in London all the while!"

" 'Tis no fault of yours, my dear," said Mrs. Twigg. "He told us not to send for you. Twould do him good to see you, though, I'm certain."

"I shall go too," Ebenezer declared.

"Nay, not just yet," Anna said. "Let me see what state he's in, and how 'twill strike him. 'Twere best to prepare him for it, don't you think?"

Ebenezer agreed, somewhat reluctantly, for he feared his courage would fail him should he postpone the move too long. That same day, however, Andrew's physician paid a call to the estate, and after learning what the situation was and assuring Ebenezer that his father was too weak to make a scene, he took it upon himself to announce to Andrew, as tactfully as possible, that his son had returned.

"He desires to see you at once," the physician reported afterwards to Ebenezer.

"Is he terribly wroth?" Ebenezer asked.

"I think not. Your sister's return raised his spirits, and I recalled to him the story of the prodigal son."

Ebenezer went upstairs and into his father's bedchamber, a room he had entered not more than thrice in his life. He found his father anything but the figure he'd feared: lying wigless and thin in bed, he looked nearer seventy than fifty; his cheeks were hollow, his eyes pale; his hair was turning white, his voice querulous. At the sight of him Ebenezer quite forgot a small speech of apology he'd concocted; tears sprang to his eyes, and he knelt beside the bed.

"Get up, son, get up," Andrew said with a sigh, "and let me look at ye. 'Tis good to see ye again, I swear it."

"Is't possible thou'rt not enraged?" Ebenezer asked, speaking with difficulty. "My conduct warrants it."

"I'faith, I've no longer the heart for't. Thou'rt my son in any case, and my only son, and if I could wish a better, you too might wish a better father. 'Tis no light matter to be a good one."

"I owe you much explanation."

"Mark the debt canceled," Andrew said, "for I've not the strength for that either. 'Tis the bad child's grace to repent, and the bad father's to forgive, and there's an end on't. Stay, now, I've a deal to say to you and small wind to say it in. In yonder table lies a paper I drafted yesterday, when the world looked somewhat darker than it doth today. Fetch it hither, if't please ye."

Ebenezer did as he was instructed.

"Now," said his father, holding the paper away from Ebenezer's view, " 'ere I show ye this, say truly: are ye quite ready to have done with flitting hither and yon, and commence to carry a man's portion like a man? If not, ye may put this back where ye fetched it."

"I shall do whate'er you wish, sir," Ebenezer said soberly.

"Marry, 'tis almost too much to hope! Mrs. Twigg has oft maintained that English babies ne'er should take French tit, and lays as the root o' your prodigality the pull and tug of French milk with English blood. Yet I have e'er hoped, and hope still, that soon or late I'll see ye a man, in sooth an Ebenezer for our house."

"Beg pardon, sir! I must own I lose you in this talk of French milk and Ebenezers. Surely my mother wasn't French?"

"Nay, nay, thou'rt English sired and English foaled, ye may be certain. Damn that doctor, anyway! Fetch me a pipe and sit ye down, boy, and I shall lay your history open to ye once for all, and the matter I'm most concerned with."

"Is't not unwise to tire yourself?" Ebenezer inquired.

"La," Andrew scoffed, "by the same logic 'tis folly to live. Nay, I'll rest soon enough in the grave." He raised himself a bit on the bed, accepted a pipe from Ebenezer, and after sampling it with pleasure, commenced his story:

" 'Twas in the summer of 1665," he said, "when I came to London from Maryland to settle some business with the merchant Peter Paggen down by Baynard's Castle, that I met and married Anne Bowyer of Bassingshawe, your mother. 'Twas a brief wooing, and to escape the great Plague we sailed at once to Maryland on the brig Redoubt, cargoed with dry goods and hardware. We ran into storms from the day we left the Lizard, and headwinds from Flores to the Capes; fourteen weeks we spent a-crossing, and when at last we stepped ashore at St. Mary's City in December, poor Anne was already three months with child! 'Twas an unhappy circumstance, for you must know that every newcomer to the plantations endures a period of seasoning, some weeks of fitting to the clime, and hardier souls than Anne have succumbed to't. She was a little woman, and delicate, fitter for the sewing parlor than the 'tween decks: we'd been not a week at St. Mary's ere a cold she'd got on shipboard turned to a frightful ague. I fetched her o'er the Bay to Malden at once, and the room I'd built for her bridal-chamber became her sick-room — she languished there for the balance of her term, weak and feverish."

Ebenezer listened with considerable emotion, but could think of nothing to say. His father drew again on his pipe.

"My whole house," he continued, "and I as well, looked for Anne to miscarry, or else deliver the child still-born, by reason of her health. Nonetheless I took it upon myself to seek a wet nurse on the chance it might live, for I knew well poor Anne could ne'er give suck. As't happened, one day in February I chanced to be standing on the wharf where Cambridge is now, bargaining with some planters, when I heard a great splash in the Choptank behind me, and turned around in time to see a young lady's head go under the ice."

"Mercy!"

"I was a passing good swimmer in those days, despite my arm, and as no one else seemed inclined to take a cold bath I jumped in after her, periwig and all, and held her up till the others fetched us out. But think ye I got so much as a thankee for my pains? The wench was no sooner herself again than she commenced to bewail her rescue and berate me for not letting her drown. This surprised the lot of us no end, inasmuch as she was a pretty young thing, not above sixteen or seventeen years old.

" 'How is't ye wish to end what you've scarce begun?" I asked her. 'Many's the merry tale hath a bad beginning.'

" 'No matter the cause of't,' she replied. 'In sooth I've little to thank ye for; in saving me from a short death by drowning, you but condemn me to a long one by freezing, or a longer by starving.'

"I was about to press her farther for the cause, but I chanced to observe what I'd not remarked ere then — that though her face and arms were peaked and thin, her belly was a-bloom for fair.

" 'Ah, I see't now,' I said. 'Belike your master had sent ye to feel of the sot-weed, whether 'twas dry enough for casking, and some field-hand rogered ye in the curing-house?'

"This I said by way of a tease, inasmuch as I guessed by her ragged dress and grimy skin she was a servant girl. She made no answer, but shook her head and wept e'en harder.

" 'Welladay, then,' I said to her, 'if not a field-hand, why, the master himself, and if not the curing-house, then the linen closet or the cowshed. Such a belly as thine is not got in church, I swear! And now the planter's not stayed to lay by his harvest, I'll wager.'

"After some farther enquiry the girl owned she had indeed been supping ere the priest said grace, as young folks will; but only once, and this not by force at the hands of a servingman, but rather at the entreaty of a planter's son who'd sworn his love for her. Nor was't a mere silly milkmaid's maidenhead he took, i'faith, for she was Roxanne Edouard, the orphan of the great French gentleman Cecile Edouard of Edouardine, upriver from Cooke's Point. She'd been reared since her parents' death by a wealthy uncle in Church Creek, down-county, who was so concerned for her noble blood that he permitted her no suitors from among the young men of the place. 'Twas her bad luck to fall in love with the eldest son of her uncle's neighbor, another planter, and he in turn was so taken with her that he begged her to marry him. She was a dutiful enough child not to wed a young man against the wishes of her guardian, but not so dutiful that she didn't let him have first go at her anyhow, in the bilge of a piragua out on the river. Afterwards she refused to see him farther, and the young fool was so distressed as to give up his patrimony and go to sea a common sailor, ne'er to be heard from again. Anon she found herself with child, and straightway confessed the whole matter to her uncle, who turned her off the place at once."

"How!" Ebenezer cried. " 'Tis a nice concern he bore her, indeed! Heav'n protect a child from such solicitude! I cannot fathom it!"

"Nor I," said Andrew, "but thus it happened, or so I heard it. What's more, he threatened violence to any who took her in, and so poor Roxanne was soon brought to direst straits. She tried to indent herself as a domestic, though 'twas little she knew of work; but masters had small inclination for a servant who would herself need service ere many months passed. Everyone knew her and her plight, and many a man who'd been turned from her uncle's door for paying her the merest cordiality before, made her the filthiest proposals now she was down on her luck."

" 'Sheart! Had the wretches no pity for her state?"

"Nay, e'en here her belly undid her, for so far from discouraging, it seemed rather the more to enflame 'em, the plainer it showed. Have ye not yourself observed — " He glanced at his son. "Nay, no matter. In short, she saw naught ahead save harlotry and disgrace on the one hand, or rape and starvation on the other, and being ashamed of the former and afraid of the latter, she chose a third in lieu of either, which was, to leap into the Choptank."

"And, prithee, what did she after you saved her?" Ebenezer asked.

"Why, what else but strive with might and main to leap in again?" Andrew replied. "At last it occurred to me to invite her to join my house, since she looked to lighten but a week ere poor Anne; I agreed to keep her well and provide for her confinement on condition she suckle our babe, if it should live, with her own. She agreed, we drafted the indenture-papers, and I fetched her back to Malden.

"Now your mother, God rest her, grew worse all the time. She was a wondrous Protestant, much giv'n to Bible-reading, and whene'er I showed her pity she was wont to reply, 'Fear not, husband: the Lord will help us.' "

"Bless her!" said Ebenezer.

" 'Twas her conceit," Andrew went on, "to regard her several infirmities as an enemy host, and late and soon she was after me to read her from the Old Testament of God's military intercessions in behalf of the Israelites. Hence when her ague passed off without killing her (albeit it left her pitifully weak), she was proud as any general who sees a flank of the enemy turned, and she declared like the prophet Samuel upon the rout of the Philistines, 'Thus far hath the Lord helped us!' At length her time arrived, and after frightful labor she brought forth Anna, eight pounds and a half. She named her after her own mother, and said again to me, 'Thus far hath the good Lord helped us!' Not a soul then but thought her trials were done, and even I, who was no Catholic saint nor Protestant either, thanked God for her delivery. But not an hour after bearing Anna her travail commenced again, and after much clamor and hollowing she brought you to light, nigh as big as your sister. Seventeen pounds of child she dropped in all, from a — well, from a frame so delicate, simple flatulence gave her pain. 'Twas no wonder she passed into a coma ere your shoulders cleared, and ne'er recovered from it! That same night she died, and the weather being unseasonably hot for May, I fetched her down next day and buried her 'neath a great loblolly pine tree on the Bay side of the point, where she lies yet."

"God help me!" Ebenezer wept. "I am not worthy of't!"

" 'Twould be dishonest not to own," Andrew said, "that such exactly were my sentiments at the time, God forgive me. E'en as the burial service was read I could hear the twain of you a-squalling up in the house, and when I placed a boulder atop the sandy grave, against the time our mason could letter a headstone, it recalled to me those verses in the Book of Samuel where God smites the Philistines and Samuel dedicates the token of His aid — the stone the Hebrews called Ebenezer. 'Twas then, boy, in bitterness and sacrilege, I gave ye that name: I baptized ye myself, ere Roxanne could stay me, with the dregs of a flagon of perry, and declared to the company of Malden, 'Thus far hath the Lord helped us!' "

"Ah, dear Father, berate thyself no more for't," Ebenezer begged — though Andrew had displayed no particular emotion. "I understand and forgive!"

Andrew tapped out his pipe in a spittoon beside the bed and, after resting a moment, resumed his story.

"In any case," he said calmly, "you and your sister ne'er wanted mothering. The girl Roxanne had borne her own child, a daughter, eight days before, but the babe had strangled ere its first cry with the navel-cord round its neck; so that maugre the fact there were two of ye, instead of one, she had no more mouths to feed than breasts to feed 'em with, and there was milk aplenty for all. She was e'er a healthy wench once on her feed again — ruddy-faced, full-breasted, and spirited as a dairymaid for all her fine blood. For the four years of her indenture she raised ye as her own. Mrs. Twigg declared no good could come of mixing French pap and English blood, but ye grew fat and merry as any babes in Dorset.

"In 1670, the last year of Roxanne's service, I resolved to leave Malden for London. I was weary of factoring, for one thing; I saw no chance to improve my tobacco-holdings, for another; and though Cooke's Point is of all places on earth dearest to my heart, and my first and largest property, yet 'twas e'er a heartache to live a widower in the house I'd raised for my bride. Moreover, I must own my position with regard to Roxanne had got somewhat delicate since poor Anne's death. That she thought no ill o' me I took for granted, for she was bound to me by gratitude as well as legal instrument. I in turn was more than a little obliged to her, in that she'd not only suckled twice as many of my children as she was legally bound to, but done it with a mother's love, and had taken on most of Mrs. Twigg's duties as governess as well, out of pure affection for ye. I've said already she was an uncommon pretty piece, and I at that time was a strapping wight of thirty-three, prosperous and it may be not unhandsome, who by reason of poor Anne's affliction and death had perforce slept alone and uncomforted since my arrival in the province. Hence, 'tis not surprising some small-minded busy-bodies should have it Roxanne was filling Anne's place in the bedchamber as well as the nursery — more especially since they themselves had lechered after her. 'Tis e'er the way of men, I've learned, to credit others with the sins themselves want either the courage or the means to commit."

"But marry, what vicious gossip!"

"Aye," Andrew said, "but As well be a sinner as known for one. What a man is in the eyes of God means little to the world of men. All things considered, I thought it well to release her; yet I could by no means send her back to death or harlotry, and so 'twas a pleasant surprise when, one day on that selfsame landing where I'd met her, I was approached by a man who introduced himself as Roxanne's uncle, and asked most solicitously after his niece."

"I pray the fellow had tempered his wrath by then."

"He had," Andrew said, "to the point where the very thought of his former unkindness started him to tears, and when I told him of Roxanne's subsequent straits and of the death of her infant, he near tore his hair in remorse. There was no end to his expressions of gratitude for my having saved and cared for her; he declared himself eager to make amends for his severity, and entreated me to prevail upon Roxanne to return to his house. I reminded him that it was his unreasonableness in the matter of suitors for his niece that had driven her to her former disgrace, and he replied that so far from persisting in that unreasonableness, he had in mind at that very moment an excellent match for her with a wealthy fellow of the neighborhood, who had e'er looked kindly upon her.

"You can imagine Roxanne's surprise when she learned of all this. She was pleased to hear of her uncle's change of heart, and yet 'twas like giving up two of her own to let you and Anna go. She wept and wailed, as women will at any great change in their circumstances, and pleaded with me to take her to London, but it seemed to me 'twould be a disservice to the twain of us to maintain any longer our connection, more especially since her uncle had a substantial match arranged for her. Thus was it that on the same day when I gave Roxanne my half of her indenture-bond, signifying the end of her service, her uncle drove out to Malden in a buckboard and fetched her away, and that was that. Not a fortnight later I too made my last farewells to Malden, and left Maryland forever. Think not 'twas an easy matter to go: 'tis a rarity indeed when Life presents ye with a clean choice, i'faith! 'Tis more her wont to arrange things in such fashion that de'il the course ye choose, 'twill give ye pain. Eheu! I've rambled and digressed till I'm near out of wind! Here now," he said, handing Ebenezer the document he'd been toying and gesturing with throughout his narration. "Read this whilst I catch my breath."

Ebenezer took the paper, curious and uneasy, and read, among other things:

Andrew Cooke of the parish of St. Giles in the Fields in the County of Middlesex, Gentleman doe make this my last will and Testament as followeth. . Imprimus I give to my Son Ebenezer Cooke and Anna Cooke my daughter all my Right and Title of and to. . all my Land called Cookes Poynt lyng at the mouth of great Choptank River lyng in Dorchester County in Maryland. . share and share alike. .

"Dost see't, boy?" Andrew demanded. "Dost grasp it, damn ye? 'Tis Cooke's Point; 'tis my dear sweet Malden, where the twain of ye saw daylight and your mother lies yet! There's this house too, and the place on Plumtree Street, but Cooke's Point's where my heart lies; Malden's my darling, that I raised out o' the wilderness. 'Tis your legacy, Eben, your inheritance; 'tis your personal piece o' the great wide world to husband and to fructify — and a noble legacy 'tis, b'm'faith! 'Share and share alike,' but the job of managing an estate is man's work, not woman's. 'Twas for this I got, reared, and schooled ye, and 'tis for this ye must work and gird yourself, damn ye, to make ye worthy of't, and play no more at shill I, shall I!"

Ebenezer blushed. "I am sensible I have been remiss, and I've naught to say in my defense, save that 'twas not stupidity undid me at Cambridge, but feckless indirection. Would God I'd had dear Henry Burlingame to steer and prod me!"

"Burlingame!" cried Andrew. "Fogh! He came no nearer the baccalaureate than yourself. Nay, 'twas your dear rascal Burlingame ruined ye, methinks, in not teaching ye how to work." He waved the draft of his will. "Think ye your Burlingame will ever have a Malden to bequeath? Fie on that scoundrel! Mention his name no more to me, an't please ye, lest I suffer a stroke!"

"I am sorry," said Ebenezer, who had mentioned Burlingame's name intentionally to observe his father's reaction: he now concluded it would be impolitic to describe in any detail his sojourn in London. "I know no way to show you how your magnanimity shames me for my failure. Send me back to Cambridge, if you will, and I swear on oath I'll not repeat my former errors."

Andrew reddened. "Cambridge my arse! 'Tis Maryland shall be your Cambridge, and a field of sot-weed your library! And for diploma, if ye apply yourself, haply you'll frame a bill of exchange for ten thousandweight of Oronoco!"

"You mean to send me to Maryland, then?" Ebenezer asked uncomfortably.

"Aye, to till the ground that spawned ye, but thou'rt by no means fit for't yet; I fear the University hath so addled and debilitated ye, you've not the head to manage an estate nor the back to till it. 'Twill take some doing to sweat Burlingame and the college out o' ye, but A man must walk ere he runs. What ye want's but an honest apprenticeship: I mean to send ye forthwith to London, to clerk for the merchant Peter Paggen. Study the ins and outs of the plantation trade, as did I and my father before me, and I swear 'twill stand ye in better stead than aught ye heard at Cambridge, when time comes for ye to take your place at Malden!"

Now this course of life was not one that Ebenezer would have chosen for himself — but then neither was any other. Moreover, when he reflected upon it, he was not blind to a certain attractiveness about the planter's life as he envisioned it: he could see himself inspecting the labor of the fields from the back of his favorite riding-horse; smoking the tobacco that made him wealthy; drinking quince or perry from his own distillery with a few refined companions; whiling away the idle evenings on the gallery of his manor-house, remarking the mallards out on the river, and perhaps composing occasional verses of ease and dignity. He was, alas, not blind to the attractiveness of any kind of life. And more immediately, the prospect of returning to London with a clear conscience pleased him.

Therefore he said, halfheartedly but not cheerlessly, "Just as you wish, Father. I shall try to do well."

"Why, thank Heav'n for that!" Andrew declared, and even contrived a thin smile. " 'Thus far hath the Lord helped us!' Leave me now for the nonce, ere I collapse from very weariness."

Andrew settled back in bed, turned his face to the wall, and said no more.

5: Ebenezer Commences His Second Sojourn in London, and Fares Unspectacularly

Because of the great unrest in the nation at this time, occasioned by the conflict between James II and William of Orange, Ebenezer, at his father's advice, did not return to London until the winter of 1688, by which time William and Mary were securely established on the throne of England. The idle year at St. Giles was, although he had no way of realizing it at the time, perhaps Ebenezer's nearest approach to happiness. He had nothing at all to do except read, walk about the countryside or London-without-the-walls, and talk at length with his sister. Although he could not look to his future with enthusiasm, at least he had not to bear the responsibility of having chosen it himself. In the spring and summer, when the weather turned fine, he grew too restless even to read. He felt full to bursting with ill-defined potentialities. Often he would sit a whole morning in the shade of a pear tree behind the house playing airs on the tenor recorder, whose secret he had learned from Burlingame. He cared for no sports; he wished not even to see anyone, except Anna. The air, drenched with sun and clover, made him volatile. On several occasions he was so full of feeling as to fear he'd swoon if he could not empty himself of it. But often as he tried to set down verses, he could not begin: his fancy would not settle on stances and conceits. He spent the warm months in a kind of nervous exaltation which, while more upsetting than pleasurable at the moment, left a sweet taste in his mouth at day's end. In the evenings, often as not, would watch meteors slide down the sky till he grew dizzy.

And though again he could not know it at the time, this idle season afforded him what was to be his last real communion with his sister for many a year. Even so, it was for the most part inarticulate; somewhere they'd lost the knack of talking closely to each other. Of the things doubtless most important to each they spoke not at all — Ebenezer's failure at Cambridge and his impending journey; Anna's uncertain past connection with Burlingame and her present isolation from and lack of interest in suitors of any sort. But they walked together a great deal, and one hot forenoon in August, as they sat under a sycamore near a rocky little steam-branch that ran through the property, Anna clutched his right arm, pressed her forehead to it, and wept for several minutes. Ebenezer comforted her as best he could without inquiring the reason for her tears: he assumed it was some feeling about their maturity that grieved her. At this time, in their twenty-second year of life, Anna looked somewhat older than her brother.

Andrew, once his son's affairs seemed secure, grew gradually stronger, and by autumn was apparently in excellent health again, though for the rest of his life he looked older than his years. In early November he declared the political situation stable enough to warrant the boy's departure; a week later Ebenezer bade the household good-bye and set out for London.

The first thing he did, after finding lodging for himself in a Pudding Lane boardinghouse, was visit Burlingame's address, to see how his old friend fared. But to his surprise he found the premises occupied by new tenants — a draper and his family — and none of the neighbors knew anything of Henry's whereabouts. That evening, therefore, when he'd seen to the arrangement of his belongings, he went to Locket's, hoping to find there, if not Burlingame himself, at least some of their mutual acquaintances who might have news of him.

He found three of the group to which Burlingame had introduced him. One was Ben Oliver, a great fat poet with beady eyes and black curly hair, a very rakehell, who some said was a Jew. Another was Tom Trent, a short sallow boy from Christ's College, also a poet: he'd been sent to prepare for the ministry, but had so loathed the idea that he caught French pox from a doxy he kept in his quarters by way of contempt for his calling, and was finally dismissed upon his spreading the contagion to his tutor and at least two professors who had befriended him. Since then he'd come to take a great interest in religion: he liked no poets save Dante and Milton, maintained a virtual celibacy, and in his cups was wont to shout verses of Scripture at the company in his great bass voice. The third, Dick Merriweather, was despite his surname a pessimist, ever contemplating suicide, who wrote only elegiac verse on the subject of his own demise. Whatever the disparity in their temperaments, however, the three men lived in the same house and were almost always found together.

"I'God, 'tis Eben Cooke the scholar!" cried Ben upon seeing him. "Have a bottle with us, fellow, and teach us the Truth!"

"We thought you dead," said Dick.

Tom Trent said nothing: he was unmoved by greetings and farewells.

Ebenezer returned their greetings, drank a drink with them, and, after explaining his return to London, inquired after Burlingame.

"We've seen none of him for a year," Ben said. "He left us shortly after you did, and I'd have said the twain of you were off together on some lark."

"I recall hearing he'd gone to sea again," Dick Merriweather said. "Belike he's at the bottom of't now, or swimming in the belly of a whale."

"Stay," said Ben. "Now I think on't, didn't I have it from Tom here 'twas Trinity College Henry went back to, to earn his baccalaureate?"

" 'Twas what I had from Joan Toast, that had it from Henry the last night ere he left," Tom said indifferently. "I'll own I pay scant heed to gossip of goings and comings, and 'tis not impossible I misheard her."

"Who is this Joan Toast then, pray, and where might I find her?" asked Ebenezer.

"No need to seek her," Ben laughed; "she's but a merry whore of the place, and you may ask what you will of her anon, when she comes in to find a bedfellow."

Ebenezer waited until the girl arrived, and learned only that Burlingame had spoken of his intention to ransack the libraries of Cambridge for a fortnight — for what purpose she did not know, nor did any amount of inquiry around the winehouse shed more light on his intentions or present whereabouts. During the next week Ebenezer lost no opportunity to ask after his friend, but when it became clear that no clues were to be found, he reluctantly abandoned his efforts, wrote Anna a distressed note informing her of the news, and in the following months and years came almost to forget Henry's existence — though to be sure, he felt the loss acutely whenever the name occurred to him.

Meanwhile, he presented himself at the establishment of the merchant Peter Paggen, and, on producing letters from his father, was set to totting up accounts with the junior apprentices at a little desk among many others in a large room. It was understood that if he applied himself diligently and showed some ability in his work, he would be promoted after a week or so to a post from which he could observe to better advantage the workings of the plantation trade (Mr. Paggen had extensive dealings in Maryland and Virginia). Unfortunately, this promotion was never granted him. For one thing, no matter how hard he tried, Ebenezer could not concentrate his attention on the accounts. He would begin to add a column of totally meaningless figures and realize five minutes later that he'd been staring at a wen on the neck of the boy in front of him, or rehearsing in his mind a real or imaginary conversation between himself and Burlingame, or drawing mazes on a bit of scratch-paper. For the same reason, though he had by no means the troublemaker's temperament, his untamable fancy more than once led him to be charged with irresponsibility: one day, for example, scarcely conscious of what he was about, he involved himself entirely in a game with a small black ant that had wandered across the page. The rule of the game, which he invested with the inexorability of natural law, was that every time the ant trod unwittingly upon a 3 or a 9, Ebenezer would close his eyes and tap the page thrice, smartly and randomly, with the point of his quill. Although his role of Deus civi Natura precluded mercy, his sentiments were unequivocally on the side of the ant: with an effort that brought sweat to his brow he tried by force of thought to steer the hapless creature from dangerous numbers; he opened his eyes after every series of taps, half afraid to look at the paper. The game was profoundly exciting. After some ten or fifteen minutes the ant had the bad luck to be struck by a drop of ink not a half inch from the 9 that had triggered the bombardment: flailing blindly, he inked a tiny trail straight back to the 9 again, and this time, after being bracketed by the first two taps, he was smitten squarely with the third. Ebenezer looked down to find him curled and dying in the loop of the digit. Tears of compassion, tempered with vast understanding and acceptance of the totality of life and the unalterable laws of the universe, welled in his eyes; his genital stiffened. At last the ant expired. Suddenly self-conscious, Ebenezer glanced around to see whether anyone had noticed him, and everyone in the room laughed aloud: they had witnessed the whole performance. From that day on they regarded him as more or less mad instead of simply odd; luckily for Ebenezer, however, they believed him to have some special connection with their employer Mr. Paggen, and so made little of the incident except among themselves.

But it would not be fair to suggest that Ebenezer was entirely responsible for his impasse. There were a few occasions during the first year when he managed to do his work satisfactorily, even intelligently, for several weeks running, and yet no mention was made of transferring him to the promised post. Only once did he muster courage enough to inquire about it: Mr. Paggen made him a vague reply which he accepted eagerly, in order to terminate the interview, and never spoke of it again. Actually, except for infrequent twinges of conscience, Ebenezer was quite content to languish among the junior apprentices: he had learned the job and was frightened at the prospect of learning another. Moreover, he found the city suited to his languor; his free hours he spent with his friends in the coffee-houses, taverns, or theaters. Now and again he devoted a Sunday, without much success, to his writing-desk. And in general he came quite to forget what it was he was supposed to be doing in London.

It was withal a curious time in his life. If not actually satisfying, the routine was at any rate in no way unpleasant, and Ebenezer floated along in it like a fitful sleeper in a warm wash of dreams. Often, chameleonlike, he was but a reflection of his situation: were his companions boasting the tenuousness of their positions he might declare, in a burst of camaraderie, "Should old Andy discover my situation, 'twould be off to Maryland with me, sirs, and no mistake!" As often he went out of his way to differ with them, and half-yearned for the bracing life of the plantations. Still other times he'd sit like a stuffed stork all the afternoon without a word. So, one day cocksure, one day timorous; one day fearless, one craven; now the natty courtier, now the rumpled poet — and devil the hue that momently colored him, he'd look a-fidget at the rest of the spectrum. What's red to a rainbow?

All of which is to say, if you wish, that insofar as to be is to be in essence the Johnny-come-Friday that was John o' Thursday, why, this Ebenezer Cooke was no man at all. As for Andrew, he must have been incurious about his boy's life in London, or else believed that A good post is worth a long wait. The idyl lasted not for one, but for five or six years, or until 1694 — in the March of which, when a disastrous wager brought it to a sudden end, our story begins.

6: The Momentous Wager Between Ebenezer and Ben Oliver, and Its Uncommon Result

Pimp in Ebenezer's circle was one wiry, red-haired, befreckled ex-Dubliner named John McEvoy, twenty-one years old and devoid of school education, as long in energy and resourcefulness as short in money and stature, who spent his days abed, his evenings pimping for his privileged companions, and the greater part of his nights composing airs for the lute and flute, and who from the world of things that men have valued prized none but three: his mistress Joan Toast (who, whore as well, was both his love and his living), his music, and his liberty. No one-crown frisker Joan, but a two-guinea hen well worth the gold to bed her, as knew every man among them but Ebenezer; she loved her John for all he was her pimp, and he her truly too for all she was his whore — for no man was ever just a pimp, nor any woman merely whore. They seemed, in fact, a devoted couple, and jealous.

All spirit, imagination, and brave brown eyes, small-framed, large-breasted, and tight-skinned (though truly somewhat coarse-pored, and stringy in the hair, and with teeth none of the best), this Joan Toast was his for the night who'd two guineas to take her for, and indignify her as he would, she'd give him his gold's worth and more, for she took that pleasure in her work as were she the buyer and he the vendor; but come morning she was cold as a fish and back to her Johnny McEvoy, and should her lover of the night past so much as wink eye at her in the light of day, there was no more Joan Toast for him at any price.

Ebenezer had of course observed her for some years as she and his companions came and went in their harlotry, and from the talk in the coffee-house had got to know about her in great detail at second hand a number of things that his personal disorganization precluded learning at first. When in manly moments he thought of her at all it was merely as a tart whom, should he one day find himself single-minded enough, it might be sweet to hire to initiate him at long last into the mysteries. For it happened that, though near thirty, Ebenezer was yet a virgin, and this for the reason explained in the previous chapters, that he was no person at all: he could picture any kind of man taking a woman — the bold as well as the bashful, the clean green boy and the dottering gray lecher — and work out in his mind the speeches appropriate to each under any of several sorts of circumstances. But because he felt himself no more one of these than another and admired all, when a situation presented itself he could never choose one role to play over all the rest he knew, and so always ended up either turning down the chance or, what was more usually the case, retreating gracelessly and in confusion, if not always embarrassment. Generally, therefore, women did not give him a second glance, not because he was uncomely — he had marked well that some of the greatest seducers have the faces of goats and the manner of lizards — but because, a woman having taken in his ungainly physique, there remained no other thing for her to notice.

Indeed he might have gone virgin to his grave — for there are urgencies that will be heeded if not one way then perforce another, and that same knuckly hand that penned him his couplets took no wooing to make his quick mistress — but on this March night in 1694 he was noticed by Joan Toast, in the following manner: the gallants were sitting in a ring at Locket's, as was their custom, drinking wine, gossiping, and boasting their conquests, both of the muse and of lesser wenches. There were Dick Merriweather, Tom Trent, and Ben Oliver already well wined, Johnny McEvoy and Joan Toast out for a customer, and Ebenezer incommunicado.

"Heigh-ho!" sighed Dick at a lull in their talk. " 'Twere a world one could live in did wealth follow wit, for gold's the best bait to snare sweet conies with, and then we poets were fearsome trappers all!"

"No need gold," replied Ben, "did God but give women half an eye for their interests. What makes your good lover, if not fire and fancy? And for whom if not us poets are fire and fancy the very stock in trade? From which 'tis clear, that of all men the poet is most to be desired as a lover: if his mistress have beauty, his is the eye will most be gladdened by't; if she have it not, his is the imagination that best can mask its lack. If she displease him, and he slough her off shortly, she hath at least had for a time the best that woman can get; if she please him, he will haply fix her beauty for good and all in verse, where neither age nor pox can spoil it. And as poets as a class are to be desired in this respect over other sorts of fellows, so should the best poet prove the best lover; were women wise to their interests they'd make seeking him out their life-work, and finding him would straight lay their favors a-quiver in his lap — nay, upon his very writing-desk — and beg him to look on 'em kindly!"

"Out on't, then!" said Dick to Joan Toast. "Ben speaks truly, and 'tis you shall pay me two guineas this night! Marry, and were't not that I am poor as any church mouse this week and have not long to live, you'd not buy immortality so cheap! My counsel is to snatch the bargain while it lasts, for a poet cannot long abide this world."

To which Joan rejoined without heat, "Fogh! Could any man of ye rhyme as light as talk, or swive grand as swagger, why, your verse'd be on every lip in London and your arse in every bed, I swear! But Talk pays no toll: I look to pacify nor ear nor bum with aught o' ye but my sweet John, who struts not a strut nor brags no brags, but saves words for his melodies and strength for the bed."

"Hi!" applauded Ben. "Well put!"

"If ill timed," John McEvoy added, frowning lightly upon her. "Let no such sentiments come 'twixt thee and two guineas this night, love, or thy sweet John'll have nor strength nor song, but a mere nimbly gut to bed ye with on the morrow."

" 'Sblood!" remarked Tom Trent without emotion. "If Lady Joan reason rightly, there's one among us who far more merits her favor than you, McEvoy, for as you speak one word to our two, so speak you ten to his one: I mean yon Ebenezer, who for lack of words should be chiefest poet and cocksman in this or any winehouse — John Milton and Don Juan Tenorio in a single skin!"

"Indeed he may be," vowed Joan, who, being by chance seated next to Ebenezer, gave him a pat on the hand.

"At any rate," smiled McEvoy, "having heard not a line of his making, I've no evidence he's not a poet."

"Nor I he's not that other," Joan added smartly, "and 'tis more praise on both counts than I can praise the rest o' ye." Then she colored somewhat and added: "I must own I've heard it said, Marry fat but love lean, for as how your fat fellow is most often a jolly and patient husband, but your bony lank is long all over and springy in the bed. Howbeit, I've no proof of the thing."

"Then 'sdeath, you shall have it!" cried Ben Oliver, "for there's more to extension than simple length. When the subject in hand's the tool of love, prithee give weight to the matter of diameter, for diameter's what gives weight to love's tool — whether 'tis in hand or in the subject, for that matter! Nay, lass, I'll stick by my fat, as't hath stuck by me. A plump cock's the very devil of the hen house, so they say: he treads 'em with authority!"

" 'Tis too weighty a question to leave unsettled," declared McEvoy. "What think you, Tom?"

"I take no interest in affairs of the flesh," said Tom, "but I have e'er observed that women, like men, have chiefest relish in things forbidden, and prize no conquest like that of a priest or saint. 'Tis my guess, moreover, that they find their trophy doubly sweet, inasmuch as 'tis hard come by to begin with, and when got 'tis fresh and potent as vintage brandy, for having been so long bottled and corked."

"Dick?"

"I see no sense in it," Merriweather said. " 'Tis not a man's weight, but his circumstances, that make him a lover. The sweetest lover of all, I should think, is the man about to end his life, who would by the act of love bid his adieu to this world, and at the moment of greatest heat pass on the next."

"Well, now," McEvoy said, "ye owe it to England to put an answer to't. What I propose is this, that ye put each your best foot forward, so to speak, this same night, and let Joan take eight guinea from him she names loser. Thus the winner gets glory for him and his kind and a swiving to boot; the losers get still a swiving — ay, a double swiving! — and my good woman and I get chops instead of chitterlings for a day. Done?"

"Not I," said Tom. " 'Tis a sorry sport, is lust, that makes man a slavering animal on embracing his mistress and a dolorous vegetable after."

"Nor I," said Dick, "for had I eight guineas I'd hire three trollops and a bottle of Madeira for one final debauch ere I end my life."

"Mary, 'tis done for all 'o' me," said Ben, "and heartily, too, for your Joan's had none of old Ben these two months past."

"Nor shall I more," swore Joan cheerfully, "for thou'rt a sweatbox and a stinkard, sir. My memory of our last will serve as your performance, when I came away bruised and abused as a spaniel bitch from a boar's pen and had need of a course of liniments to drive out the aches and a course of hot baths to carry off the smell. For the rest of the wager, 'tis Mr. Cooke's to yea or nay."

"So be't," shrugged Ben, "though had I known at the time 'twas that studding I'd be judged by, you'd have found me more bull than boar and haply have a Minotaur to show for't. What say you, Ebenezer?"

Now Ebenezer had followed this raillery intently and would have joined in it, perhaps, but that from his overstocked wardrobe no particular style came readily to hand. Then, when Joan Toast touched him, the hand she touched tingled as if galvanized, and on the instant Ebenezer felt his soul rise up in answer. Had not Boyle shown, and Burlingame taught, that electrical attraction takes place in a vacuum? Well, here was Boyle figured in the empty poet: the pert girl worked some queer attraction in him, called forth a spark from the vacuum of his character, and set him all suddenly a-burn and a-buzz.

But did this prick-up afford the man identity? On the contrary: as he saw the direction the twitting took and heard McEvoy give birth to the wager, he but buzzed and burned the more; his mind ran madly to no end like a rat in a race and could not engage the situation. His sensibility all erected, he could feel the moment coming when the eyes of all would swing to bear on him with some question which he'd be expected to answer. It was the wait for it, together with the tingle of Joan Toast's touch and the rush to find a face to meet the wager with, that made him sick when his ears heard Ben's "What say you, Ebenezer?" and his two eyes saw ten look to him for reply.

What say? What say? His windpipe glotted with a surfeit of alternatives; but did he urge one up like a low-pressured belch, the suck of the rest ungassed it. Eyes grew quizzical; smiles changed character. Ebenezer reddened, not from embarrassment but from internal pressure.

"What ails ye, friend?" McEvoy.

"Speak up, man!" Ben Oliver.

"Swounds! He'll pop!" Dick Merriweather.

One Cooke eyebrow fluttered. A mouth-corner ticked. He closed and unclosed his hands and his mouth, and the strain near retched him, but it was all a dry heave, a false labor: no person issued from it. He gaped and sweated.

"Gah," he said.

" 'Sblood!" Tom Trent. "He's ill! 'Tis the vapors! The fellow wants a clyster!"

"Gah," said Ebenezer again, and then froze tight and said no more, nor moved a single muscle.

By this time his behavior had been noticed by the other patrons of the winehouse, and a number of the curious gathered round him where he sat, now rigid as a statue.

"Hi, there, throw't off!" demanded one fellow, snapping his fingers directly before Ebenezer's face.

" 'Tis the wine has dagged him, belike," a wag suggested, and tweaked the poet's nose, also without effect. "Aye," he affirmed, "the lad's bepickled himself with't. Mark ye, 'tis the fate awaits us all!"

"As you please," declared Ben Oliver with a grin; "I say 'tis a plain case of the staggering fearfuls, and I claim the victory by default, and there's an end on't."

"Aye, but what doth it profit you?" Dick Merriweather asked.

"What else but Joan Toast this night?" laughed Ben, slapping three guineas onto the table. "Upon your honor as judge, John McEvoy, will you refuse me? Test my coins, fellow: they'll ring true as the next man's, and there's three of 'em."

McEvoy shrugged his shoulders and looked inquiringly at his Joan.

"Not in a pig's arse," she sniffed. She flounced from her chair and with a wink at the company flung her arms around Ebenezer's neck and caressed his cheek.

"Ah, me ducky, me dove!" she cooed. "Will ye leave me to the mercies of yon tub o' suet, to lard like any poor partridge? Save me, sir!"

But Ebenezer sat unmoved and unmoving.

" 'Tis no lardoon thou'rt in for," Ben said. " 'Tis the very spit!"

"Ah! Ah!" cried Joan as though terrified and, clambering onto Ebenezer's lap, hid her face in his neck. "I shake and I shiver!"

The company shouted with delight. Joan grasped one of Ebenezer's large ears in each hand and drew his face nose to nose with her own.

"Carry me off!" she implored him.

"To the spit with her!" urged an onlooker. "Baste the hussy!"

"Aye!" said Ben, and crooked his finger at her. "Come along now, sweetmeat."

"As ye be a man and a poet, Eben Cooke." Joan scolded, jumping to her feet and shouting in his ear, "I lay it upon ye to match this rascal's gold with your own and have done with't. If ye will not speak up and act the man, I'm Ben's and be damned t'ye!"

Ebenezer gave a slight start and suddenly stood up, blinking as if just roused from bed. His features twitched, and he alternately blushed and paled as he opened his mouth to speak.

"I had five guineas but this morning by messenger from my father," he said weakly.

"Thou'rt a fool," said Dick Merriweather. "She asks but three, and had you spoke sooner 'twould've cost you but two!"

"Will ye raise him two bob, Ben?" asked John McEvoy, who had been watching the proceedings serenely.

"Indeed he shan't!" snapped Joan. "Is this a horse auction, then, and I a mare to be rid by the high bidder?" She took Ebenezer's arm fondly. "Only match Ben's three guineas, ducky, and speak no more of't. The night's near done, and I am ill o' this lewd raillery."

Ebenezer gawked, swallowed, and shifted his weight.

"I cannot match it here," he said, "for I've but a crown in my purse." He glanced around him wildly. "The money is in my rooms," he added, teetering as if to swoon. "Come with me there, and you shall have't all."

"Hello, the lad's no fool!" said Tom Trent. "He knows a thing or two!"

" 'Sblood, a very Jew!" agreed Dick Merriweather.

"Better a fowl in hand than two flying," Ben Oliver laughed, and jingled his three guineas.

" 'Tis a hoax and fraud, to lure honest women to their ruin! What would your father say, Ebenezer, did he get wind of't? Shame, shame!"

"Pay the great ass no heed," said Joan.

Ebenezer swayed again, and several of the company tittered.

"I swear to you — " he began.

"Shame! Shame!" cried Ben once more, wagging a fat finger at him to the company's delight.

Ebenezer tried again, but could do no more than raise his hand and let it fall.

"Stand off!" someone warned uneasily. "He is starching up again!"

"Shame!" roared Ben.

Ebenezer goggled at Joan Toast for a second and then lurched full speed across the room and out of the winehouse.

7: The Conversation Between Ebenezer and the Whore Joan Toast, Including the Tale of the Great Tom Leech

As a rule Ebenezer would after such a bumble have been in for some hours of motionless reflection in his room. It was his habit (for such rigidities as this at Locket's were not new to him) upon recovering himself to sit at his writing-desk, looking-glass in hand, and stare fish-eyed at his face, which only during such spells was still. But this time, though he did indeed take up his vis-à-vis, the face he regarded was anything but vacant: on the contrary, where typically he'd have seen a countenance blank as an owl's, now he saw a roil as of swallows round a chimney pot; whereas another time he'd have heard in his head but a cosmic rustle, as though his skull were a stranded wentletrap, now he sweated, blushed, and dreamed two score ragged dreams. He studied the ears Joan Toast had touched, as though by study to restore their tingle, and when he could by no means succeed, he recognized with alarm that it was his heart she now had hands on.

"Ah God," he cried aloud, "that I'd risen to the wager!"

The manly sound of his voice arrested him. Moreover, it was the first time he'd ever spoken to himself aloud, and he failed to be embarrassed by it.

"Had I but another chance," he declared to himself, " 'twould be no chore to snatch the moment! Lord, into what ferment have those eyes put me! Into what heat those bosoms!"

He took up the glass again, made himself a face, and inquired, "Who art thou now, queer fellow? Hi, there is a twitch in thy blood, I see — a fidget in thy soul! 'Twere a right manly man Joan Toast would taste, were the wench but here to taste him!"

It occurred to him to return to Locket's to seek her out, on the chance she'd not have succumbed to Ben Oliver's entreaties. But he was reluctant to confront his friends so soon after his flight, in the first place, and in the second —

"Curse me for my innocence!" he railed, pounding his fist upon some blank papers on the writing-desk. "What knowledge have I of such things? Suppose she should come with me? 'Sblood! What then?

"Yet 'tis now or never," he told himself grimly. "This Joan Toast sees in me what no woman hath before, nor I myself: a man like other men. And for aught I know she hath made me one, for when else have I talked to myself? When else felt so potent? To Locket's," he ordered himself, "or go virgin to the grave!"

Nevertheless he did not get up, but lapsed instead into lecherous, complicated reveries of rescue and gratitude; of shipwreck or plague and mutual survivorship; of abduction, flight, and violent assault; and, sweetest of all, of towering fame and casual indulgence. When at length he realized that he was not going to Locket's at all, he was overcome with self-loathing and returned, in despair, once more to the mirror.

He calmed at the sight of the face in it.

"Odd fellow, there! Ooo-ooo! Hey-nonny-nonny! Fa-la!"

He leered and mouthed into the glass until his eyes brimmed with tears, and then, exhausted, buried his face in his long arms. Presently he fell asleep.

There came, an uncertain time later, a knocking at the entrance door below, and before Ebenezer was awake enough to wonder at it, his own door was opened by his servant, Bertrand, who had been sent to him just a few days earlier by his father. This Bertrand was a thin-faced, wide-eyed bachelor in his later forties whom Ebenezer knew scarcely at all, for Andrew had hired him while the young man was still at Cambridge. With him, when he had come from the St. Giles establishment, he had brought the following note from Andrew, in an envelope sealed with wax:

Ebenezer,

The Bearer of this note is Bertrand Burton, my Valet since 1686, and now yours, if you want him. He is a diligent enough fellow, if something presumptuous, and will make you a good man if you hold him to his place. Mrs Twigg and he got on ill together, to the point where I had either to sack him or lose her, without whom I could scarce manage my house. Yet deeming it a hard matter to sack the fellow outright, whose only fault is, that though he never forgets his work, he oft forgets his place, I have promoted him out of my service into yours. I shall pay him his first quarters wage; after that, if you want him, I presume your post with Paggen will afford him.

Though his current wage from Peter Paggen, which was precisely what it had been in 1688, was barely adequate to keep himself, Ebenezer nonetheless had welcomed Bertrand's service, at least for the three months during which it was to cost him nothing. Luckily, the room adjoining his own was unoccupied at the time, and he had arranged with his landlord for Bertrand to lodge there, where he was always within call.

Now the man stepped into the room in nightshirt and cap, all smiles and winks, said, "A lady to see you, sir," and, to Ebenezer's great surprise, ushered Joan Toast herself into the room.

"I shall retire at once," he announced, winking again, and left them before Ebenezer could recover sufficiently to protest. He was extremely embarrassed and not a little alarmed at being alone with her, but Joan, not a whit disturbed, came over to where he still sat at the writing table and bussed him lightly upon the cheek.

"Say not a word," she ordered, taking off her hat. "I know well I'm tardy, and I ask your pardon for't."

Ebenezer sat dumb, too astonished to speak. Joan strode blithely to the windows, closed the curtains, and commenced undressing.

" 'Tis your friend Ben Oliver's to blame, with his three guineas, and his four guineas, and his five guineas, and his great hands both a-clench to lay hold on me! But a shilling o'er your five he couldn't offer, or wouldn't, and since 'twas you first offered it, I'm quit o' the brute with conscience clear."

Ebenezer stared at her, head afire.

"Come along now, sweet," Joan said presently, and turned to him entirely unclothed. "Put thy guineas upon the table and let's to bed. Faith, but there's a nip in the air this night! Brrr! Jump to't, now!" She sprang to the bed and snuggled under the coverlets, drawing them up around her chin.

"Come along!" she said again, a bit more briskly.

"Ah God, I cannot!" Ebenezer said. His face was rapturous, his eyes were wild.

"Ye what?" Joan cried, throwing back the covers and sitting up in alarm.

"I cannot pay thee," Ebenezer declared.

"Not pay me! What prank is this, sir, ye make me butt of, when I have put off Ben Oliver and his five gold guineas? Out with thy money now, Master Cooke, and off with thy breeches, and prank me no pranks!"

" 'Tis no prank, Joan Toast," said Ebenezer. "I cannot pay thee five guineas, or four guineas, or three. I cannot pay thee a shilling. Nay, not so much as a farthing."

"What! Are ye paupered, then?" She gripped his shoulders as if to shake him. "Marry, sir, open wide those great cow's eyes, that I may claw them from out their sockets! Think ye to make a fool o' me?" She swung her legs over the side of the bed.

"Nay, nay, lady!" Ebenezer cried, falling to his knees before her. "Nay, I have the five guineas, and more. But how price the priceless? How buy Heaven with simple gold? Ah, Joan Toast, ask me not to cheapen thee so! Was't for gold that silver-footed Thetis shared the bed of Peleus, Achilles' sire? Think thee Venus and Anchises did their amorous work on consideration of five guineas? Nay, sweet Joan, a man seeks not in the market for the favors of a goddess!"

"Let foreign bawds run their business as't please 'em," Joan declared, somewhat calmer. " 'Tis five guineas the night for this one, and pay ere ye play. Do ye reckon it cheap, then pleasure in thy bargain: 'tis all one to me. What a temper ye put me in with thy not a farthing! I had near leaped ye! Come along, now, and save thy conceits for a love sonnet in the morning."

"Ah, dear God, Joan, wilt thou not see?" said Ebenezer, still down upon his knees. " 'Tis not for common sport I crave thee, as might another: such lechery I leave to mere gluttonous whoremongers like Ben Oliver. What I crave of thee cannot be bought!"

"Aha," smiled Joan, "so 'tis a matter o' strange tastes, is't? I'd not have guessed it by the honest look o' ye, but think not so quickly 'tis out o' the question. Well do I know There's more ways to the woods than one, and if't work no great or lasting hurt, why, 'tis but a matter o' price to me, sir. Name me thy game, and I'll fix thee thy fee."

"Joan, Joan, put by this talk!" cried Ebenezer, shaking his head. "Can you not see it tears my heart? What's past is past; I cannot bear to think on't, how much the less hear it from thy sweet lips! Dear girl, I swear to thee now I am a virgin, and as I come to thee pure and undefiled, so in my mind you come to me; whate'er hath gone before, speak not of it. Nay!" he warned, for Joan's mouth dropped open. "Nay, not a word of't, for 'tis over and done. Joan Toast, I love thee! Ah, that startles thee! Aye, I swear to Heaven I love thee, and 'twas to declare it I wished thee here. Speak no more of your awful trafficking, for I love thy sweet body unspeakably, and that spirit which it so fairly houses, unimaginably!"

"Nay, Mr. Cooke, 'tis an unbecoming jest ye make, to call thyself virgin," Joan said doubtfully.

"As God is my witness," swore Ebenezer, "I have known no woman carnally to this night, nor ever loved at all."

"But how is that?" Joan demanded. "Why, when I was but a slip of a thing, not yet fourteen and innocent of the world's villainy, I recall I once cried out at table how I had commenced a queer letting of blood, and what was I ill of? And send quick for the leeches! And everyone laughed and made strange jests, but none would tell me what was the cause of't. Then my young bachelor uncle Harold approached me privily, and kissed me upon the lips and stroked my hair, and told me 'twas no common leech I wanted, for that I was letting much blood already; but that anon when I had stopped I should come to him in secret, for he kept in his rooms a great torn leech such as I had ne'er yet been bit by, the virtue of which was, that it would restore by sweet infusions what I had lost. I believed without question all that he had told me, for he was a great favorite o' mine, more brother than uncle to me, and therefore I said naught to anyone, but directly the curse left me went straight to his bedchamber, as he had prescribed. 'Where is the great torn leech?' I asked him. 'I have't ready,' said he, 'but it fears the light and will do its work only in darkness. Make thyself ready,' said he, 'and I'll apply the leech where it must go. 'Very well,' said I, 'but ye must tell me how to ready myself, Harold, for I know naught of leeching.' 'Disrobe thyself,' said he, 'and lie down upon the bed.'

"And so I stripped myself all naked, simple soul that I was, right before his eyes, and lay down upon the bed as he directed — a skinny pup I, as yet unbreasted and unfurred — and he blew out the candle. 'Ah, dear Harold!' I cried. 'Come lie beside me on the bed, I pray, for I fear the bite o' thy great torn leech in the dark!' Harold made me no answer, but shortly joined me upon his bed. 'How is this?' I cried, feeling his skin upon me. 'Do you mean to take the leech as well? Did you too lose blood?' 'Nay,' he laughed, ' 'tis but the manner whereby my leech must be applied. I have't ready for ye, dear girl; are ye ready for't?' 'Nay, dear Harold,' I cried, 'I am fearful! Where will it bite me? How will it hurt?' ' Twill bite where it must,' said Harold, 'and 'twill pain ye a mere minute, and then pleasure ye enough.' 'Ah, then,' I sighed, 'let us get by the pain and hasten the pleasure with all speed. But prithee hold my hand, lest I cry out at the creature's bite.' 'Ye shan't cry out,' Harold said then, 'for I shall kiss ye.'

"And straightway he embraced me and kissed my mouth tight shut, and, while we were a-kissing, suddenly I felt the great torn leech his fearful bite, and I was maiden no more! At first I wept, not alone from the pain he'd warned of, but from alarm at what I'd learned o' the leech's nature. But e'en as Harold promised, the pain soon flew, and his great torn leech took bite after bite till near sunup, by which time, though I was by no means weary o' the leeching, my Harold had no more leech to leech with, but only a poor cockroach or simple pismire, not fit for the work, which scurried away at the first light. 'Twas then I learned the queer virtue o' this animal: for just as a fleabite, the more ye scratch it, wants scratching the more, so, once this creature had bit me, I longed for further bites and was forever after poor Harold and his leech, like an opium eater his phial. And though since then I've suffered the bite of every sort and size — none more fearsome or ravenous than my good John's — yet the craving plagues me still, till I shiver at the thought o' the great torn leech!"

"Stop, I beg thee!" Ebenezer pleaded. "I cannot hear more! What, 'Dear Uncle,' you call him, and 'Poor Harold'! Ah, the knave, the scoundrel, to deceive you so, who loved and trusted him! 'Twas no leechery he put thee to, but lechery, and laid thy maiden body forever in the bed of harlotry! I curse him, and his ilk!"

"Ye say't with relish," smiled Joan, "as one who'd do the like with fire in his eye and sweat on his arse, could he find himself a child fond as I. Nay, Ebenezer, rail not at poor dear Harold, who is these several years under the sod from an ague got swiving ardently in cold chambers. Says I, 'tis but the nature o' the leech to bite and of the leeched to want biting, and 'tis a mystery and astonishment to me, since so many crave leeching and the best leech is so lightly surfeited, how yours hath gone starved, as ye declare, these thirty years! What, are ye a mere arrant sluggard, sir? Or are ye haply o' that queer sort who lust for none but their own sex? 'Tis a thing past grasping!"

"Nor the one nor the other," replied Ebenezer. "I am man in spirit as well as body, and my innocence is not wholly my own choosing. I have ere now been ready enough, but to grind love's grain wants mortar as well as pestle; no man dances the morris dance alone, and till this night no woman e'er looked on me with favor."

"Marry!" laughed Joan. "Doth the ewe chase the ram, or the hen the cock? Doth the field come to the plow for furrowing, or the scabbard to the sword for sheathing? 'Tis all arsy-turvy ye look at the world!"

"That I grant," sighed Ebenezer, "but I know naught of the art of seduction, nor have the patience for't."

"Foeh! There's no great labor to the bedding of women! For the most, all a man need do, I swear, is ask plainly and politely, did he but know it."

"How is that?" exclaimed Ebenezer in astonishment. "Are women then so lecherous?"

"Nay." said Joan. "Think not we crave a swiving pure and simple at any time as do men always — 'tis oft a pleasure with us. but rarely a passion. Howbeit, what with men forever panting at us like so many hounds at a salt-bitch, and begging us out by our virtue and give 'em a tumble, and withal despising us for whores and slatterns if we do; or bidding us be faithful to our husbands and yet losing no chance to cuckold their truest friends; or charging us to guard our chastity and yet assaulting it from all quarters in every alleyway, carriage, or sitting room; or being soon bored with us if we show no fire in swiving and yet sermoning us for sinners if we do; inventing morals on the one hand and rape on the other; and in general preaching us to virtue whilst they lure us on to vice — what with the pull and haul of all this, I say, we women are forever at sixes and sevens, all fussed and rattled and torn 'twixt what we ought and what we would, and so entirely confounded, that we never know what we think on the matter or how much license to grant from one minute to the next; so that if a man commence the usual strut, pat, and tweak, we may thrust him from us (if he do not floor us and have at us by main strength); and if he let us quite alone, we are so happy of the respite we dare not make a move; but should e'er a man approach us in all honest friendship, and look upon us as fellow humans and not just a bum and a bosom, from eyes other than a stud-stallion's, and after some courteous talk should propose a cordial swiving as one might a hand of whist (instead of inviting us to whist as lecherously as though to bed) — if, I say, e'er a man should learn to make such a request in such a manner, his bed would break 'neath the weight of grateful women, and he would grow gray ere his time! But in sooth 'twill never happen," Joan concluded, "forasmuch as 'twould mean receiving a partner and not taking a vassal: 'tis not mere sport a man lusts after, 'tis conquest — else philanderers were rare as the plague and not common as the pox. Do but ask, Ebenezer, cordially and courteously, as ye would ask a small favor from a good friend, and what ye ask shall rarely be refused. But ye must ask, else in our great relief at not being hard pressed for't, we shall pass ye by."

"Indeed," admitted Ebenezer, shaking his head, "it had not struck me ere now, what a sad lot is women's. What beasts we are!"

"Ah, well," sighed Joan, " 'tis small concern o' mine, save when I reflect on't now and again: a whore loses little sleep on such nice questions. So long as a man hath my price in his purse and smells somewhat more sweet than a tanyard and leaves me in peace come morning, I shan't say him nay nor send him off ill-pleased with his purchase. And I love a virgin as a child loves a new pup, to make him stand and beg for't, or lie and play dead. Off your knees, then, and to bed with ye, ere ye take a quartan ague from the draught! There's many a trick I'll teach ye!"

So saying she held out her arms to him, and Ebenezer, breaking at once into sweat and goose bumps from the contest between his ardor and the cold March draughts in which for a quarter hour he'd been kneeling, embraced her fervently.

"Dear God, is't true?" he cried. "What astonishment it is, to be granted all suddenly in fact what one hath yearned for time out of mind in dreams! Dear heart, what a bewilderment! No words come! My arms fail me!"

"Let not thy purse fail thee," Joan remarked, "and for the rest, leave't to me."

"But 'fore God I love thee, Joan Toast!" Ebenezer moaned. "Can it be you think yet of the filthy purse?"

"Do but pay me my five guineas ere ye commence," Joan said, "and then love me 'fore God or man, 'tis all one to me."

"You will drive me to Bedlam with your five guineas!" Ebenezer shouted. "I love thee as never man loved woman, I swear't, and rather would I throttle thee, or suffer myself throttled, than turn my love to mere whoremongering with that accursed five guineas! I will be thy vassal; I will fly with thee down the coasts of earth; I will deliver soul and body into thy hands for very love; but I will not take thee for my whore while breath is in me!"

"Ah then, 'tis after all a fraud and deceit!" Joan cried, her eyes flashing. "Ye think to gull me with thee's and thy's and your prattle o' love and chastity! I say pay me my fee, Eben Cooke, or I'll leave ye this minute for ever and all; and 'tis many the hour ye'll curse your miserliness, when word of't reaches my Johnny McEvoy!"

"I cannot," Ebenezer said.

"Then know that I despise ye for a knave and fool!" Joan jumped from the bed and snatched up her garments.

"And know that I love thee for my savior and inspiration!" Ebenezer replied. "For ne'er till you came to me this night have I been a man, but a mere dotting oaf and fop; and ne'er till I embraced thee have I been a poet, but a shallow coxcomb and poetaster! With thee, Joan, what deeds could I not accomplish! What verse not write! Nay, e'en should you scorn me in your error and ne'er look on me more, I will love thee nonetheless, and draw power and purpose from my love. For so strong is't, that e'en unrequited it shall sustain and inspire me; but should God grant thee wit to comprehend and receive it and return it as then you would perforce, why, the world would hear such verses as have ne'er been struck, and our love would stand as model and exemplar to all times! Scorn me, Joan, and I shall be a splendid fool, a Don Quixote tilting for his ignorant Dulcinea; but I here challenge thee — if you've life and fire and wit enough, love me truly as I love thee, and then shall I joust with bona fide giants and bring them low! Love me, and I swear to thee this: I shall be Poet Laureate of England!"

"Methinks thou'rt a Bedlamite already," Joan snapped, hooking up her dress. "As for my ignorance, I had rather be fool than scoundrel, and yet rather scoundrel than madman, and in sooth I believe thou'rt all three in one skin. Mayhap I'm dolt enough not to grasp this grand passion ye make such claim to, but I've mother wit enough to see when I'm hoaxed and cheated. My John shall hear of't."

"Ah Joan, Joan!" Ebenezer pleaded. "Are you then indeed unworthy? For I declare to thee solemnly: no man will e'er offer thee another such love."

"Do but offer me my rightful fee, and I'll say not a word to John: the rest o' your offer ye may put back in your hat."

"So," sighed Ebenezer, still transported, "you are unworthy! So be't, if't must: I love thee no less for't, or for the sufferings I shall welcome in thy name!"

"May ye suffer French pox, ye great ass!" Joan replied, and left the room in a heat.

Ebenezer scarcely noted her departure, so full was he of his love; he strode feverishly about the bedchamber, hands clasped behind his back, pondering the depth and force of his new feeling. "Am I waked to the world from a thirty-year sleep?" he asked himself. "Or is't only now I've begun to dream? Surely none awake e'er felt such dizzy power, nor any man in dreams such bursting life! Hi! A song!"

He ran to his writing-desk, snatched up his quill, and with little ado penned the following song:

Not Priam for the ravag'd Town of Troy,

Andromache for her bouncing Baby Boy,

Ulysses for his chaste Penelope,

Bare the Love, dear Joan, I bear for Thee!

But as cold Semele priz'd Endymion,

And Phaedra sweet Hippolytus her Step-Son,

He being Virgin — so, I pray may Ye

Whom I love, love my stainless Chastity.

For 'tis no niggard Gift, my Innocence,

But one that, giv'n, defieth Recompense;

No common Jewel pluck'd from glist'ring Hoard,

But one that, taken, ne'er can be restor'd.

Preserv'd, my Innocence preserveth Me

From Life, from Time, from Death, from History;

Without it I must breathe Man's mortal Breath:

Commence a Life- and thus commence my Death!

When he was done composing he wrote at the bottom of the page Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., Poet and Laureate of England, just to try the look of it, and, regarding it, was pleased.

" 'Tis now but a question of time," he rejoiced. "Faith, 'tis a rare wise man knows who he is: had I not stood firm with Joan Toast, I might well ne'er have discovered that knowledge! Did I, then, make a choice? Nay, for there was no I to make it! 'Twas the choice made me: a noble choice, to prize my love o'er my lust, and a noble choice bespeaks a noble chooser. What am I? What am I? Virgin, sir! Poet, sir! I am a virgin and a poet; less than mortal and more; not a man, but Mankind! I shall regard my innocence as badge of my strength and proof of my calling: let her who's worthy of't take it from me!"

Just then the servant Bertrand tapped softly on the door and entered, candle in hand, before Ebenezer had a chance to speak.

"Should I retire now, sir?" he asked, and added with an enormous wink, "Or will there be more visitors?"

Ebenezer blushed. "Nay, nay, go to bed."

"Very good, sir. Pleasant dreams."

"How's that?"

But Bertrand, with another great wink, closed the door.

"Really," Ebenezer thought, "the fellow is presumptuous!" He returned to the poem and reread it several times with a frown.

" 'Tis a gem," he admitted, "but there wants some final touch. ."

He scrutinized it line for line; at Bare the Love, dear Joan, I bear for Thee he paused, furrowed his great brow, pursed his lips, squinted his eyes, tapped his foot and scratched his chin with the feather of his quill.

"Hm," he said.

After some thought, he inked his quill and struck out Joan, setting in its place the word Heart. Then he reread the whole poem.

" 'Twas the master touch!" he declared with satisfaction. "The piece is perfect."

8: A Colloquy Between Men of Principle, and What Came of It

When he had done revising his poem Ebenezer laid it on his night table, undressed, went to bed, and presently resumed the sleep that Joan Toast's visit had interrupted, for the day's events had quite fatigued him. But again his sleep was fitful — this time it was excitement and not despair that bothered him — and, as before, it was short-lived: he had been beneath his quilts no more than an hour before he was waked once again by a loud knocking at the door, which he'd forgot to latch after Joan's departure.

"Who is't?" he called. "Bertrand! Someone's knocking!"

Before he could make a light, or even get up from the bed, the door was opened roughly, and John McEvoy, lantern in hand, strode into the room. He stood beside the bed and held the light close to Ebenezer's face. Bertrand, apparently, was asleep, for to Ebenezer's slight distress he failed to appear.

"My five guineas, if ye please," McEvoy demanded calmly, holding out his other hand.

Ebenezer broke at once into a mighty sweat, but he contrived to ask hoarsely, from the bed, "How is't I owe you money? I cannot recall buying aught of you."

"Ye do but prove your ignorance of the world," declared McEvoy, "for the first principle of harlotry is, that what a man buys of a whore is not so much her bum but her will and her time; when ye hire my Joan 'tis neither her affair nor mine what use ye make o' her, so long as ye pay yer fee. As't happens, ye chose to talk in lieu of swiving; 'twas a fool's choice, but 'tis your privilege to play the fool if't please ye. Now, sir, my five guineas!"

"Ah, my friend," said Ebenezer, reminding himself grimly of his identity, " 'tis only fair to tell you, if haply Joan did not: I love her wondrously!"

" 'Tis all one, so ye pay your fee," replied McEvoy.

"That I cannot," Ebenezer said. "Your own reasoning in the matter rules it out. For if 'tis true, as you declare, that 'tis the rental of her will and time that makes a woman whore, then to pay you for what of her time she spent here would make her my whore though I did not touch her carnally. And make her my whore I will not — nay, not were I racked for't! I bear you no ill will, John McEvoy, nor must you think me miserly: I've gold enough, and no fear of parting with it."

"Then pay your fee," said McEvoy.

"My dear man," Ebenezer smiled, "will you not take five! — nay, six guineas from me as an outright gift?"

"Five guineas, as a fee," repeated McEvoy.

"Where's the difference to you, should I call the sum a gift and not a payment? 'Twill fetch no less in the market, I pledge you!"

"If't makes no difference," replied McEvoy, "then call its the fee for Joan Toast's whoring."

"Think not it makes no difference to me," Ebenezer said, "To me 'tis all the difference! No man makes a whore of the woman he loves, and I love Joan Toast as never man loved woman."

"Out on't!" McEvoy scoffed. "Everything ye say proves ye know naught whatever concerning love. Think not ye love Joan Toast, Mr. Cooke: 'tis your love ye love, and that's but to say 'tis yourself and not my Joan. But no matter — love her or swive her, so ye pay your fee. To no man save myself may she be aught but whore; I am a jealous man, sir, and though ye may purchase my Joan's will and time as client, ye mayn't court it as lover."

" 'Sbody, 'tis a passing odd jealousy, I swear't!" Ebenezer exclaimed. "I ne'er have heard its like!"

"Which is to say, ye know naught of love," said McEvoy.

Ebenezer shook his head and declared, "I cannot grasp it. Great heavens, man, this divine creature, this vision of all that's fair in womankind, this Joan Toast — she is your mistress! How is't you can allow men e'en to lay their eyes upon her, much less — "

"Much less much more? How clear it is ye love yourself and not Joan! There's naught o' the divine in Joan, my friend. She's mortal clay and hath her share o' failings like the rest of us. As for this vision ye speak of, 'tis the vision ye love, not the woman. 'Twere impossible it could be otherwise, for none o' ye save I e'en knows the woman."

"And yet you play her pimp!"

McEvoy laughed. "I shall tell ye a thing about yourself, Eben Cooke, and haply ye'll recall it now and again: 'tis not simply love ye know naught of, 'tis the entire great real world! Your senses fail ye; your busy fancy plays ye false and fills your head with foolish pictures. Things are not as ye see 'em, friend — the world's a tangled skein, and all is knottier than ye take it for. You understand naught o' life: I shan't say more." He drew a document from his pocket and gave it to Ebenezer. "Read it with haste and pay your fee."

Ebenezer unfolded the paper and read it with mounting consternation. It was headed To Andrew Cooke, 2nd, Gent., and commenced thus:

My dear Sir,

It is my unhappy duty to bring to your notice certain regrettable matters concerning the behavior of your Son Ebenezer Cooke. .

The note went on to declare that Ebenezer was spending his days and nights in the wine- and coffee-houses and the theaters, drinking, whoring, and writing doggerel, and that he was making no effort whatever to find an instructive post for himself as he had been directed. It concluded:

I bring this lamentable state of affairs to your attention, not alone because it is your right as young Cooke's Father to know them, but also because the young man in question hath added to his other vices, that of luring young women into his bedchamber on promise of generous remuneration, only to default on payment afterwards.

As agent for one such defrauded young lady, I find myself Mr. Cooke's creditor in the amount of five guineas, which debt he refuses to honor despite the most reasonable pleas, I feel certain that, as the Gentleman's father, you will be interested in the settlement of this debt either directly, by forwarding me the young lady's fee, or indirectly, by persuading your son to settle it before the matter receives a more general notoriety. Waiting for communication from you upon the business, I am, sir,

Y^r H^mble& O^btS^vt,

John McEvoy

" 'Sblood, 'tis my ruinl" Ebenezer murmured, when he had read it through.

"Aye, if posted," agreed McEvoy. "Do but pay your fee, and 'tis yours to destroy. Else I mean to post it at once."

Ebenezer closed his eyes and sighed.

"Doth the thing so much matter to ye?" smiled McEvoy.

"Aye. And doth it to you?"

"Aye. It must be whore-money."

Ebenezer caught sight of his poem in the lantern-light. His features commenced their customary dance, and then, calming, he turned to face McEvoy.

"It cannot be," he said. "That is my final word on't. Post thy tattling letter if you will."

"I shall," declared McEvoy, and rose to leave.

"And append this to't, if you've a mind to," Ebenezer added. Tearing off the signature Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., Poet & Laureate of England, he handed McEvoy the poem.

"Such bravery," smiled his visitor, scanning it. "What is this? And Phaedra sweet Hippolytus her Step-Son? Ye rhyme Endymion and Step-Son?"

Ebenezer paid his critic no heed. " 'Twill at least belie your charge that I write doggerel," he said.

"Endymion and Step-Son," McEvoy repeated, making a face. "Belie't, ye say? Marry, sir, 'twill confirm it past question! Were I in your boots I'd pay my whore-money and consign letter, Endymion, Step-Son, and all to the fire." He returned the poem to Ebenezer. "Will ye not reconsider?"

"Nay."

"Ye'll go to Maryland for a whore?"

"I'd not cross the street for a whore," Ebenezer said firmly, "but I shall cross the ocean for a principle! To you, haply, Joan Toast is a whore; to me she is a principle."

"To me she is a woman," replied McEvoy. "To you she's a hallucination."

"What manner of artist are you," scorned Ebenezer, "that cannot see the monstrous love which fires me?"

"What manner of artist you," retorted McEvoy, "that can't see through it? And are ye in sooth a virgin, as Joan Toast swears?"

"And a poet," Ebenezer declared with new serenity. "Now begone, an't please you. Do your worst!"

McEvoy scratched his nose in amusement. "I will," he promised, and went out, leaving his host in total darkness.

Ebenezer had remained in bed throughout the conversation, for at least three reasons: first, he had retired after Joan Toast's departure clothed in no warmer nightshirt than his own fair skin, and, not so much from prudishness as from shyness, he was reluctant to expose himself before another man, even his valet, though not always (as shall be seen) before a woman; second, even had this not been the case, McEvoy had given him little opportunity to get up; and third, it was Ebenezer's ill fortune to be endowed with a nervous system and a rational faculty that operated as independently of each other as two Londoners of wholly various temperament who chance to inhabit the same rooming house, but go blithely each his separate way without thought of his neighbor: no matter how firm his resolve, as regards both Joan Toast and his new-found essences, any strong emotion tended to soak him with sweat, to rob him of muscle if not voice, and to make him sick. Given both the determination and the opportunity, he still could scarcely have accomplished sitting up.

His bedclothes were wet with perspiration; his stomach churned. When McEvoy was gone he sprang out of bed to latch the door against further visitors, but immediately upon standing erect was overcome by nausea and had to run for the commode across the room. As soon as he was able he slipped into his nightshirt and called for Bertrand, who this time appeared almost at once, wigless and gowned. In one hand he held a bare wax candle, in the other its heavy pewter holder.

"The fellow is gone," Ebenezer said. " 'Tis safe to show thyself." Still weak in the knees, he sat at his writing-desk and held his head in his hands.

"Lucky for him he held his temper!" Bertrand said grimly, brandishing his candleholder.

Ebenezer smiled. "Was't thy intent to rap on the wall for silence if he didn't?"

"On his arrogant pate, sir! I stood just without your door the entire while, for fear he'd leap you, and only jumped inside my room when he left, for fear he'd spy me."

"For fear in sooth! Did you not hear my call?"

"I own I did not, sir, and beg your pardon for't. Had he knocked below like any gentleman, he'd ne'er have got by me on that errand, I swear! 'Twas your voices waked me, and when I caught the drift of your talk I dared not intrude for fear of presuming, or leave for fear he'd assault you."

"Marry, Bertrand!" Ebenezer said. "Thou'rt the very model of a servant! You heard all, then?"

" 'Twas farthest from my mind to eavesdrop," Bertrand protested, "but I could scarce avoid the substance of't. What a cheat and blackguard the pimp is, to ask five guinea for a tart you spent not two hours with! For five guinea I could fill thy bed with trollops!"

"Nay, 'tis no cheat; McEvoy is as honest a man as I. 'Twas a collision of principles, not a haggle over price." He went to fetch a robe. "Will you make up the fire, Bertrand, and brew tea for both of us? I've small hope of sleep this night."

Bertrand lit the lamp from his candle, put fresh wood in the fireplace, and blew up the embers in the grate.

"How can the wretch harm you?" he asked. " 'Tis unlikely a pimp could press a law-suit!"

"He hath no need of the courts. 'Tis but a matter of telling my father of the affair, and off I go to Maryland."

"For a simple business with a strumpet, sir? Marry, thou'rt not a child, nor Master Andrew any cleric! I beg your pardon for't, sir, but your homeplace is no popish convent, if I may say so! There's much goes on there that Miss Anna and yourself know naught of, nor old Twigg, either, for all her sniffs and snoops."

Ebenezer frowned. "How's that? What in Heav'n do you mean, fellow?"

"Nay, nay, spare your anger; marry, I yield to none in respect for your father, sir! I meant naught by't at all, save that Master Andrew is a natural man, if you follow me, like thee and me; a lusty fellow despite his age, and — no disrespect intended — he's long a widower. A servant sees things now and again, sir."

"A servant sees little and fancies much," Ebenezer said sharply. "Is't your suggestion my father's a whoremonger?"

" 'Sblood, sir, nothing of the sort! He's a great man and an honest, is Master Andrew, and I pride myself on having his confidence these many years. 'Tis no accident he chose me to come to London with you, sir: I've managed business of some consequence for him ere now that Mrs. Twigg for all her haughty airs knew naught of."

"See here, Bertrand," Ebenezer demanded with interest, "are you saying you've been my father's pimp?"

"I'll speak no more of't, sir, an it please thee, for it seems thou'rt out of sorts and put an ill construction on my words. All I meant to say in the world was that were I in thy place I'd not pay a farthing for all the scoundrel's letters to your father. The man who says he ne'er hath bought a swiving must needs be either fairy or castrate, if he be not a liar, and Master Andrew's none o' the three. Let the rascal say 'tis a vice with thee; I'll swear on oath 'twas the first you've been a-whoring, to my knowledge. No disgrace in that." He gave Ebenezer a cup of tea and stood by the fire to drink his own.

"Perhaps not, even if 'twere true."

"I'm certain of't," Bertrand said, gaining confidence. "You had your tart as any man might, and there's an end on't. Her pimp asked more than her worth, and so you sent him packing. I'd advise thee to pay him not a farthing for all his trumpeting, and Master Andrew would agree with me."

"Belike you misheard me through the door, Bertrand," Ebenezer said. "I did not swive the girl."

Bertrand smiled. "Ah, now, 'twas a clever enough stand to take with the pimp, considering he roused you up ere you'd time to think; but 'twill ne'er fool Master Andrew for a minute."

"Nay, 'tis the simple truth! And e'en had I done so I would not pay him a ha'penny for't. I love the girl and shan't buy her for a harlot."

"Now, that one hath the touch of greatness in it," Bertrand declared. " 'Tis worthy of the cleverest blade in London! But speaking as your adviser — "

"My adviser! Thou'rt my adviser?"

Bertrand shifted uneasily. "Aye, sir, in a manner of speaking, you understand. As I said before, I pride myself that your father trusts me — "

"Did Father send you to me as a governess? Do you report my doings to him?"

"Nay, nay!" Bertrand said soothingly. "I only meant, as I said before, 'tis clearly no accident he named me and no other to attend ye, sir. I pride myself 'tis a sign of his faith in my judgment. I merely meant 'twas clever to tell the pimp thou're in love with his tart and shan't cheapen her; but if ye repeat the tale to Master Andrew 'twere wise to make clear 'twas but a gambit, so as not to alarm him."

"You don't believe it? Nor that I am a virgin?"

"Thou'rt a great tease, sir! I only question whether thy father would understand raillery."

"I see thou'rt not to be convinced," Ebenezer said, shaking his head. "No matter, I suppose. 'Tis not the business of five guineas will undo me anyhow, but the other."

"Another? Marry, what a rascal!"

"Nay, not another wench; another business. Haply 'twill interest you, as my adviser: McEvoy's tattling letter describes my place at Peter Paggen's, that hath not improved these five years."

Bertrand set down his cup. "My dear sir, pay him his rascally guineas."

Ebenezer smiled. "What? Permit the wretch to overcharge me?"

"I've two guinea laid by, sir, in a button box in my chest. 'Tis thine toward the debt. Only let me run to pay him, ere he posts his foul letter."

"Thy charity gladdens me, Bertrand, and thy concern, but the principle is the same. I shan't pay it."

"Marry, sir, then I must off to a Jew for the other three and pay it myself, though he hold liver and lights for collateral. Master Andrew will have my head!"

" 'Twill avail thee naught. 'Tis not five guineas McEvoy wants, but five guineas from my hand as whore-money."

"I'faith, then I'm lost!"

"How so?'

"When Master Andrew learns how ill ye've minded his direction he'll sack me for certain, to punish ye. What comfort hath the adviser? If things go well 'tis the student gets the praise; if ill, 'tis the adviser gets the blame."

" 'Tis in sooth a thankless office," Ebenezer said sympathetically. He yawned and stretched. "Let us sleep out the balance of the night, now. Thy conversation is a marvelous soporific."

Bertrand showed no sign of understanding the remark, but he rose to leave.

"You'll see me sacked, then, ere you pay the debt?"

"I doubt me such a priceless adviser will be sacked," Ebenezer replied. "Belike he'll send thee off with me to Maryland, to advise me."

"Gramercy, sir! Thou'rt jesting!"

"Not at all."

" 'Sheart! To perish at the hands of salvages!"

"Ah, as for that, two of us can fight 'em better than one. Good night, now." So saying, he sent Bertrand terrified to his room and attempted to lull himself to sleep. But his fancy was too much occupied with versions of the imminent confrontation of his father and himself — versions the details of which he altered and perfected with an artist's dispassionate care — to allow him more than a restless somnolence.

As it turned out, there was no confrontation at all, though St. Giles was but an easy carriage ride from where he lived. On the evening of the second day after McEvoy's threat, a messenger came to Ebenezer's room (from which, having abandoned Peter Paggen entirely, he had scarcely ventured in two days) with twelve pounds in cash and a brief letter from Andrew:

My Son: It is truly said, that Children are a certain Care, and but an uncertain Comfort. Suffice it to say, I have learned of your vicious Condition; I shall not sully myself by witnessing it firsthand. You shall on Pain of total and entire Disinheritance and Disownment take Ship for Maryland on the Bark Poseidon, sailing from Plimouth for Piscataway on April 1, there to proceed straightway to Cookes poynt and assume Managership of Malden. It is my intention to make a final Sojourn in the Plantations perhaps a Year hence, and I pray that at that Time I shall find a prosperous Malden and a regenerate Son: an Estate worth bequeathing and an Heir worth the Bequest. It is your final Chance.

Your Father

Ebenezer was more numbed than stunned by the letter, for he'd anticipated some such ultimatum.

"Marry, 'tis but a week hence!" he reflected with alarm. The notion of leaving his companions just when, having determined his essence, he felt prepared to begin enjoying them, distressed him quite; whatever fugitive attraction the colonies had held for him fled before the prospect of actually going there.

He showed the letter to Bertrand.

"Ah, 'tis as I thought: thy principles have undone me. I see no summons here to my old post in St. Giles."

"Haply 'twill come yet, Bertrand, by another messenger."

But the servant appeared unconsoled. "I'faith! Back to old Twigg! I had almost rather brave the salvage Indians."

"I would not see thee suffer on my account," Ebenezer declared. "I shall pay your April's wages, and you may start today to seek another post."

The valet seemed scarcely able to believe such generosity. "Bless ye, sir! Thou'rt every inch a gentleman!"

Ebenezer dismissed him and returned to his own problem. What was he to do? During most of that day he anxiously examined various faces of himself in his looking glass; during most of the next he composed stanzas to Gloom and Melancholy, after the manner of Il Penseroso (though briefer and, he decided, of a different order of impact); the third he spent abed, getting up only to feed and relieve himself. He refused Bertrand's occasional proffered services. A change came over him: his beard went unshaved, his drawers unchanged, his feet unwashed. How take ship for the wild untutored colonies, now he knew himself a poet and was ready to fire London with his art? And yet how make shift unaided in London, penniless, in defiance of his father and at the expense of his inheritance?

"What am I to do?" he asked himself, lying unkempt in his bed on the fourth day. It was a misty March morning, though a warm and sunny one, and the glaring haze from outside caused his head to ache. The bedclothes were no longer clean, nor was his nightshirt. His late fire was ashed and cold. Eight o'clock passed, and nine, but he could not resolve to get up. Once only, as a mere experiment, he held his breath in order to try whether he could make himself die, for he saw no alternative; but after a half minute he drew air frantically and did not try again. His stomach rumbled, and his sphincters signaled their discomfort. He could think of no reason for rising from the bed, nor any for remaining there. Ten o'clock came and went.

Near noon, running his eyes about the room for the hundredth time that morning, he caught sight of something that had previously escaped him: a scrap of paper on the floor beside his writing-desk. Recognizing it, he climbed out of bed without thinking, fetched it up, and squinted at it in the glare.

Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., Poet & Laureate. .

The rest of the epithet was torn off, but despite its loss, or perhaps because of it, Ebenezer was suddenly inspired with such a pleasant resolve that his spirits rose on the instant, driving three days' gloom before them as a March breeze drives away squalls. His spine thrilled; his face flushed. Lighting on a piece of letter paper, he addressed a salutation directly to Charles Calvert, Third Lord Baltimore and Second Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland. Your Excellency, he wrote, with the same sure hand of some nights before:

It is my Intention to take Ship for Maryland upon the Bark Poseidon a few Days hence, for the Purpose of managing my Father's Property, called Cooke's Point, in Dorchester. Y^rL^dshp will do me a great Honour, and Himself no ill Turn it may be, by granting me an Audience before I embark, in order that I might discuss certain Plans of mine, such that I venture will not altogether displease Y^rL^dshp, and in order farther that I might learn, from Him most qualified to say, where in the Province to seek the congenial Company of Men of Breeding and Refinement, with whom to share my leisure Hours in those most civiliz'd Pursuits of Poetry, Music and Conversation, without which Life were a Salvag'ry, and scarce endurable. Respectfully therefore awaiting Y^rL^dshps Reply, I am,

Y^r Most H^mble& O^btS^vt

Ebenezer Cooke

And after but a moment's deliberation he appended boldly to his name the single word Poet, deeming it a pointless modesty to deny or conceal his very essence.

"By Heav'n!" he exclaimed to himself, looking back on his recent doldrums. "I had near slipped once again into the Abyss! Methinks 'tis a peril I am prone to: 'tis my Nemesis, and marks me off from other men as did the Furies poor Orestes! So be't: at least I know my dread Erinyes for what they are and will henceforth mark their approach betimes. What is more — thank Joan Toast! I now know how to shield myself from their assault." He consulted his mirror and after some false starts, reflected this reflection: "Life! I must fling myself into Life, escape to't, as Orestes to the temple of Apollo. Action be my sanctuary; Initiative my shield! I shall smite ere I am smitten; clutch Life by his horns! Patron of poets, thy temple be the Entire Great Real World, whereto I run with arms a-stretch: may't guard me from the Pit, and may my Erinyes sink 'neath the vertigo I flee to be transformed to mild Eumenides!"

He then reread his letter.

"Aye," he said, "read and rejoice, Baltimore! 'Tis not every day your province is blessed with a poet. But faith! 'Tis already the twenty-seventh of the month! I must deliver't in person at once."

Thus resolved, Ebenezer called for Bertrand and, finding him not at home, doffed his malodorous nightshirt and proceeded to dress himself. Not bothering to trouble his skin with water, he slipped on his best linen drawers, short ones without stirrups, heavily perfumed, and a clean white day-shirt of good frieze holland, voluminous and soft, with a narrow neckband, full sleeves caught at the wrists with a black satin ribbon, and small, modestly frilled cuffs. Next he pulled on a pair of untrimmed black velvet knee breeches, close in the thighs and full in the seat, and then his knitted white silk hose, which, following the very latest fashion, he left rolled above the knee in order to display the black ribbon garters that held them up. On then with his shoes, a fortnight old, of softest black Spanish leather, square-toed, high-heeled, and buckled, their cupid-bow tongues turned down to flash a fetching red lining. Respectful of both the warmth and the fashion of the day, he left his waistcoat where it hung and donned next a coat of plum-colored serge lined with silver-gray prunella — the great cuffs turned back to show alternate stripes of plum and silver — collarless, tight-shouldered, and full-skirted, which he left unbuttoned from neck to hem to show off shirt and cravat. This latter was of white muslin, the long pendant ends finished in lace, and Ebenezer tied it loosely, twisted the pendants ropewise, and fetched up the ends to pass through the top left buttonhole of his open coat, Steinkirk fashion. Then came his short-sword in its beribboned scabbard, slung low on his left leg from a well-tooled belt, and after it his long, tight-curled white periwig, which he powdered generously and fitted with care on his pate, in its natural state hairless as an egg. Nothing now remained but to top the periwig with his round-crowned, broad-brimmed, feather-edged black beaver, draw on his gauntlet gloves of fawn leather stitched in gold and silver (the cuffs edged in white lace and lined with yellow silk), fetch up his long cane (looped with plum-and-white ribbons like those on his scabbard), and behold the finished product in his looking glass.

" 'Sbodikins!" he cried for very joy. "What a rascal! En garde, London! Look lively, Life! Have at ye!"

But there was little time to admire the spectacle: Ebenezer hurried out to the street, hired himself the services of barber and bootblack, ate a hearty meal, and took hack at once for the London house of Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore.

9: Ebenezer's Audience With Lord Baltimore, and His Ingenious Proposal to That Gentleman

To his extreme delight and considerable surprise, in a matter of minutes after Ebenezer had presented himself at Lord Baltimore's town house and had sent his message in by a house-servant, word was sent back to him that Charles would receive the visitor in his library, and Ebenezer was ushered not long afterwards into the great man's presence.

Lord Baltimore was seated in an enormous leather chair beside the hearth, and, though he did not rise to greet his visitor, he motioned cordially for Ebenezer to take the chair opposite him. He was an old man, rather small-framed and tight-skinned despite his age, with a prominent nose, a thin white mustache, and large, unusually bright brown eyes; he looked, it occurred to Ebenezer, like an aged and ennobled Henry Burlingame. He was dressed more formally and expensively than Ebenezer, but — as the latter observed at once — not so fashionably: in fact, some ten years behind the times. His wig was a campaigner, full but not extremely long, its tight curls terminating before either shoulder in pendulous corkscrewed dildos; his cravat was of loosely-tied, lace-edged linen; his coat was rose brocade lined with white alamode, looser in the waist and shorter in the skirt than was the current preference, and the unflapped pockets were cut horizontally rather than vertically and set low to the hem. The sleeves reached nearly to the wrists, returned a few inches to show their white linings stitched in silver, and opened at the back with rounded hound's-ear corners. The side vents, cut hip high, were edged with silver buttons and sham buttonholes, and the right shoulder boasted a knot of looped silver ribbons. Beneath the coat were a waistcoat of indigo armozine, which he wore completely buttoned, and silk breeches to match: one saw no more of his shirt than the dainty cuffs of white cobweb lawn. What is more, his garters were hidden under the roll of his hose, and the tongues of his shoes were high and square. He held Ebenezer's letter in his hand and squinted at it in the dim light from the heavily-curtained windows as though re-examining its contents.

"Ebenezer Cooke, is't?" he said by way of commencing the conversation. "Of Cooke's Point, in Dorchester?" His voice, while still in essence forceful, had that uncertain flutter which betrays the onset of senility. Ebenezer bowed slightly in acknowledgment and took the chair indicated by his host.

"Andrew Cooke's son?" asked Charles, peering at his guest.

"The same, sir," Ebenezer replied.

"I knew Andrew Cooke in Maryland," reflected Charles. "If memory serves me rightly, 'twas in 1661, the year my father made me Governor of the Province, that I licensed Andrew Cooke to trade there. But I've not seen him for many years and haply wouldn't know him now, or he me." He sighed. "Life's a battle that scars us all, victor and vanquished alike."

"Aye," Ebenezer agreed readily, "but 'tis the stuff of living to fight it, and take't by storm, and your good soldier wears his scars with pride, win or lose, so he got 'em bravely in honest combat."

"I doubt not," murmured Charles, and retreated to the letter. "How's this now," he remarked: "Ebenezer Cooke, Poet. What might that mean, pray? Can it be you earn your bread by versifying? Or you're a kind of minstrel, belike, that wanders about the countryside a-begging and reciting? 'Tis a trade I know little of, I confess't."

"Poet I am," answered Ebenezer with a blush, "and no mean one it may be; but not a penny have I earned by't, nor will I ever. The muse loves him who courts, her for herself alone, and scorns the man who'd pimp her for his purse's sake."

"I daresay, I daresay," said Charles. "But is't not customary, when a man tack some bunting to his name to wave like a pendant in the public breeze, that he show thereby his calling and advertise it to the world? Now, did I read here Ebenezer Cooke, Tinker, I'd likely hire you to patch my pots; if Ebenezer Cooke, Physician, I'd send you the rounds of my household, to purge and tonic the lot; if Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman, or Esquire, I'd presume you not for hire, and ring in my man to fetch you brandy. But Poet, now: Ebenezer Cooke, Poet. What trade is that? How doth one deal with you? What work doth one put you to?"

" 'Tis that very matter I wish to speak of," said Ebenezer, unruffled by the twitting. "Know, sir, that though 'tis no man's living to woo the muse, 'tis yet some men's calling, and so 'twas not recklessly I tacked on my name the title Poet: 'tis of no moment what I do; poet is what I am."

"As another might sign himself Gentleman?" asked Charles.

"Precisely."

"Then 'tis not for hire you sought me out? You crave no employment?"

"Hire I do not seek," Ebenezer declared. "For as the lover craves of his beloved naught save her favor, which to him is reward sufficient, so craves the poet no more from his muse than happy inspiration; and as the fruit of lover's labor is a bedded bride, and the sign of't a crimsoned sheet, so the poet's prize is a well-turned verse, and the sign thereof a printed page. To be sure, if haply the lass bring with her some dowry, 'twill not be scorned, nor will what pence come poetwards from his publishing. Howbeit, these are mere accidents, happy but unsought."

"Why, then," said Charles, fetching two pipes from a rack over the fireplace, "I believe we may call't established that you are not for hire. Let's have a pipe on't, and then pray state your business."

The two men filled and lit their pipes, and Ebenezer returned to his theme.

"Hire I care naught for," he repeated, "but as for employment, there's another matter quite, and the very sum and substance of my visit. You enquired a moment past, What trade is the poet's, and to what work shall he be put? For answer let me ask you, sir, by'r leave — would the world at large know aught of Agamemnon, or fierce Achilles, or crafty Odysseus, or the cuckold Menelaus, or that entire circus of strutting Greeks and Trojans, had not great Homer rendered 'em to verse? How many battles of greater import are lost in the dust of history, d'you think, for want of a poet to sing 'em to the ages? Full many a Helen blooms one spring and goes to the worm forgot; but let a Homer paint her in the grand cosmetic of his verse, and her beauty boils the blood of twenty centuries! Where lies a Prince's greatness, I ask you? In his feats on the field of battle, or the downy field of love? Why, 'tis but a generation's work to forget 'em for good and all! Nay, I say 'tis not in the deeds his greatness lies, but in their telling. And who's to tell 'em? Not the historian, for be he ne'er so dev'lish accurate, as to how many hoplites had Epaminondas when he whipped the Spartans at Leuctra, or what was the Christian name of Charlemagne's barber, yet nobody reads him but his fellow chroniclers and his students — the one from envy, t'other from necessity. But place deeds and doer in the poet's hands, and what comes of't? Lo, the crook'd nose grows straight, the lean shank fleshes out, French pox becomes a bedsore; shady deeds shed their tarnish, bright grow brighter; and the whole is musicked into tuneful rhyme, arresting conceit, and stirring meter, so's to stick in the head like Greensleeves and move the heart like Scripture!"

" 'Tis clear as day," said Charles with a smile, "that the poet is a useful member of a Prince's train."

"And what's true for a prince is true for a principality," Ebenezer went on, stirred by his own eloquence. "What were Greece without Homer, Rome without Virgil, to sing their glories? Heroes die, statues break, empires crumble; but your Iliad laughs at time, and a verse from Virgil still rings true as the day 'twas struck. Who renders virtue palatable like the poet, and vice abhorrent, seeing he alone provides both precept and example? Who else bends nature to suit his fancy and paints men better or worse to suit his purpose? What sings like lyric, praises like panegyric, mourns like elegiac, wounds like Hudibrastic verse?"

"Naught, that I can name," said Charles, "and you have quite persuaded me that a man's most useful friend and fearsome foe is the poet. Prithee now, fellow, dispense with farther preamble and deliver me your business plainly."

"Very well," said Ebenezer, planting his cane between his knees and gripping its handle firmly. "Would you say, sir, that Maryland boasts a surfeit of poets?"

"A surfeit of poets?" repeated Charles, and drew thoughtfully upon his pipe. "Well, now, since you ask, I think not. Nay, in good faith I must confess, entre nous, there is no surfeit of poets in Maryland. Not a bit of't. Why, I'd wager one might walk the length and breadth of St. Mary's City on a May afternoon and not cross the tracks of a single poet, they're that rare."

"As I reckoned," said Ebenezer. "Would you go so far as to suppose, even, that I might be hard put to't, once I establish myself in Maryland, to find me four or five fellow-planters to match a couplet with, or trade a rhyme?"

" 'Tis not impossible," admitted Charles.

"I guessed as much. And now, sir, if I might: would't be mere gross presumption and vanity for me to suppose, that haply I shall be the absolute first, premier, unprecedented, and genuine original poet to set foot on the soil of Terra Mariae? First to pay court to the Maryland Muse?"

" 'Tis not in me to deny," replied Charles, "that should there breathe such a wench as this Maryland Muse, you may well have her maidenhead."

"Faith!" cried Ebenezer joyously. "Only think on't! A province, an entire people — all unsung! What deeds forgot, what gallant men and women lost to time! 'Sblood, it dizzies me! Trees felled, towns raised, a very nation planted in the wilds! Foundings, stragglings, triumphs! Why, 'tis work for a Virgil! Think, m'lord, only think on't: the noble house of Calvert, the Barons Baltimore — builders of nations, bringers of light, fructifiers of the wilderness! A glorious house and history still unmusicked for the world's delight! Marry, 'tis virgin territory!"

"Many's the fine thing to be said of Maryland," Charles agreed. "But to speak plainly, I fear me that virgins are rare as poets there."

"Prithee do not jest!" begged Ebenezer. " 'Twere an epic such as ne'er was penned! The Marylandiad, b'm'faith!"

"How's that?" For all his teasing manner, Charles had grown thoughtful in the course of Ebenezer's outburst.

"The Marylandiad!" repeated Ebenezer, and declaimed as from a title-page: "An epic to out-epic epics: the history of the princely house of Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland, relating the heroic founding of that province! The courage and perseverance of her settlers in battling barb'rous nature and fearsome salvage to wrest a territory from the wild and transform it to an earthly paradise! The majesty and enlightenment of her proprietors, who like kingly gardeners fostered the tender seeds of civilization in their rude soil, and so husbanded and cultivated them as to bring to fruit a Maryland beauteous beyond description; verdant, fertile, prosperous, and cultured; peopled with brave men and virtuous women, healthy, handsome, and refined: a Maryland, in short, splendid in her past, majestic in her present, and glorious in her future, the brightest jewel in the fair crown of England, owned and ruled to the benefit of both by a family second to none in the recorded history of the universal world — the whole done into heroic couplets, printed on linen, bound in calf, stamped in gold" — here Ebenezer bowed with a flourish of his beaver — "and dedicated to Your Lordship!"

"And signed?" asked Charles.

Ebenezer rose to his feet and beamed upon his host, one hand on his cane and the other on his hip.

"Signed Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman," he replied: "Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland!"

"Ah," said Charles. "Poet and Laureate, now: 'tis a new bit of bunting you'd add to your name."

"Only think how 'twould redound to Your Lordship's credit," urged Ebenezer. "The appointment would prove at a single stroke both the authority and the grace of your rule, for 'twould give the Province the flavor of a realm and the refinement of a court to have a bona fide laureate sing her praises and record in verse her great moments; and as for the Marylandiad itself, 'twould immortalize the Barons Baltimore, and make Aeneases of 'em all! Moreover, 'twould paint the Province as she stands today in such glowing colors as to lure the finest families of England to settle there; 'twould spur the inhabitants to industry and virtue, to keep the picture true as I paint it; in sum, 'twould work to the enhancement of both the quality and the value of the colony, and so proportionately ennoble, empower, and enrich him who owns and rules her! Is't not a formidable string of achievements?"

At this Charles burst into such a fit of laughing that he choked on his pipe smoke, watered at the eyes, and came near to losing his campaigner: it required the spirited back-thumping of two body servants, who stood nearby, to restore his composure.

"Oh dear!" he cried at last, daubing at his eyes with a handkerchief. "An achievement indeed, to ennoble and enrich him who rules Maryland! I'm sorry to say, Master Poet, that that fellow already maintains himself a laureate to sing him! There's no ennobling him beyond his present station, and as for enriching him, I venture I've done my share of that and more! Oh dear! Oh dear!"

"How is that?" asked Ebenezer, all bewildered.

"My good man, is't that you were born yesterday? Know you naught of the true state o' the world?"

"Surely 'tis thy province!" exclaimed Ebenezer.

"Surely 'twas my province," corrected Charles with a wry smile, "and the Barons Baltimore were her True and Absolute Lords Proprietary, more often than not, from the day she was chartered till just three years ago. I get my quit-rents yet, and a miserable bit of port-revenue, but for the rest, 'tis King William's province these days, sir, and Queen Mary's, not mine. Why not take your proposal to the Crown?"

"Marry, I knew naught of't!" said Ebenezer. "Might I ask for what cause your Lordship retired from rule? Was't haply your desire to spend quietly the evening of life? Or belike 'twas sheer devotion to the Crown? Egad, what spaciousness of character!"

"Stay, stay," cried Charles, shaking again with mirth, "else I must summon my man again to pound the lights out of me! Hey! Ha!" He signed deeply and beat his chest with the flat of his hand. When he had regained control of himself he said, "I see you are all innocent of Maryland's history, and will plunge into a place not knowing the whys and wherefores of't, or who stands for what. You came to do me a favor, so you declare, and — by Heav'n! — enrich and ennoble me: very well, then, permit me to do you one in return, which may someday haply save you another such wasted hour: by your leave, Mister Cooke, I shall sketch you shortly the history of this Maryland, which, like the gift of a salvage, was first bestowed and then snatched back. Will you hear it?"

" 'Tis my pleasure and honor," answered Ebenezer. who, however, was too crestfallen to relish greatly a lesson in history.

10: A Brief Relation of the Maryland Palatinate, Its Origins and Struggles for Survival, as Told to Ebenezer by His Host

" 'Tis truly said," Charles began, "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, inasmuch as Envy and Covetousness are ne'er satisfied. Maryland's mine by law and by right, yet her history is the tale of my family's struggle to preserve her, and of the plots of countless knaves to take her from us — chief among them Black Bill Claiborne and a very antichrist named John Coode, who plagues me yet.

"My grandfather, George Calvert, as you may know, was introduced to the court of James I as private secretary to Sir Robert Cecil, and after that great man's death was appointed clerk to the Privy Council and twice Commissioner to Ireland. He was knighted in 1617, and when Sir Thomas Lake was sacked as Secretary of State (owing to the free tongue of his wife), my grandfather was named to replace him, despite the fact that the Duke of Buckingham, James's favorite, wanted the post for his friend Carleton. I have cause to believe that Buckingham took this as an affront and became the first significant enemy to our house.

"What an ill time to be Secretary of State! 'Twas 1619, remember: the Thirty Years' War had just commenced; James had emptied our treasury; we hadn't a single strong ally! 'Twas a choice 'twixt Spain and France, and to choose one was to alienate the other. Buckingham favored Spain, and my grandfather supported him. What could seem wiser, I ask you? Marrying Prince Charles to the Infanta Maria would bind Spain to us forever; Maria's dowry would fill the treasury; and by supporting the King and Buckingham my grandfather would prove his loyalty to the one and shame the resentment of the other! The match was unpopular, to be sure, among the Protestants, and Grandfather was given the odious chore (I think at Buckingham's) of urging defending it to a hostile Parliament. But 'twas the part of wisdom: no man could have guessed the treachery of King Philip and his ambassador Gondomar, who lured us to alienate France, alienate the German Protestant princes, alienate even James's son-in-law Frederick and our own House of Commons, only to break off negotiations at the last minute and leave us virtually helpless!"

"He was a wretch, that Gondomar," Ebenezer agreed politely.

"That, of course, together with his conversion to the Church of Rome, ended Grandfather's public career. Despite the King's entreaties he retired from office, and as reward for his loyalty James named him Baron of Baltimore in the Kingdom of Ireland.

"From then till his death he devoted himself to colonizing America. In 1622 James had patented him the southeastern peninsula of Newfoundland, and my grandfather, deceived by lying reports of the place, put a good part of his fortune into a settlement called Avalon and went to live there himself. But the climate was intolerable. What's more, the French — with whom, thanks to Buckingham's statesmanship, we were at war — were forever snatching our vessels and molesting our fishermen; and as if this were not trouble enough, certain Puritan ministers spread word in the Privy Council that Popish priests were being smuggled into Avalon to undermine the Church of England there. At length my grandfather begged King Charles for a grant farther south, in the dominion of Virginia. The King wrote in reply that Grandfather should abandon his plans and return to England, but ere the letter was received Grandfather had already removed to Jamestown with his family and forty colonists. There he was met by Governor Pott and his Council (including the blackguard William Claiborne), all of 'em hostile as salvages and bent on driving Grandfather away, for fear Charles would grant him the whole of Virginia out from under 'em. They pressed him to swear the oath of supremacy, knowing well that as a good Catholic he would refuse. Not e'en the King had required it of him, but demand it they did, and were like to set bullies and ruffians upon him when he would not swear't."

"Inequity!" said Ebenezer.

"Iniquity!" Charles amended. "So hardly did they use him, he was forced to leave wife and family in Jamestown, and after exploring the coast for a while he returned to England and asked Charles for the Carolina territory. The charter was drawn, but ere 'twas granted who should appear in England but Master Claiborne, who straightway commences to scheme against it. To avoid dispute, Grandfather nobly relinquished Carolina and applied instead for land north of Virginia, on both sides of the Bay of Chesapeake. Charles tried in vain to persuade him to live at ease in England and labor no more with grants and colonies, but Grandfather would have none of such idleness and at last prevailed upon the King to make the grant, which he would name Crescentia, but which the King called Terra Mariae, or Mary-Land, after Henrietta Maria, the Queen."

"Nobly done."

"A charter was writ up then, the like of which for authority and amplitude had ne'er been composed by the Crown of England. It granted to my grandfather all the land from the Potomac River on the south to Latitude Forty on the north, and from the Atlantic west to the meridian of the Potomac's first fountain. To distinguish her above all other regions in the territory, Maryland was named a Province, a county palatine, and over it we Barons Baltimore were made and decreed the true and absolute Lords and Proprietaries. We had the advowsons of churches; we had authority to enact laws and create courts-baron and courts-leet to enforce 'em; we could punish miscreants e'en to the taking of life or member; we could confer dignities and titles — "

"Ah," said Ebenezer.

"— we could fit out armies, make war, levy taxes, patent land, trade abroad, establish towns and ports of entry — "

"Mercy!"

"In short," Charles declared, "for the tribute of two Indian arrows per annum, Maryland was ours in free and common socage, to manage as we please; and what's more 'twas laid down in the charter that peradventure any word, clause, or sentence in't were disputed, it must be read so's most to benefit us!"

"I'faith, it dizzies me!"

"Aye, 'twas a mighty charter. But ere it passed the Great Seal, Grandfather died, worn out at a mere fifty-two years and the charter passed Cecil, my own dear father, who thus in 1632, when he was but twenty-six, became Second Lord Baltimore and First Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland. Straightway he set to fitting out vessels and rounding up colonists, to what a hue and a cry from Bill Claiborne! To what a gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair amongst the members of the old Virginia Company, whose charter had long since been revoked! They would vow in Limehouse that the Ark and the Dove were fitting out to carry nuns to Spain, and swear in Kensington 'twas to ferry Spanish soldiers Father rigged 'em. So numerous and crafty were his enemies, Father must needs stay behind in London to preserve his rights and trust the voyage to my uncles Leonard and George, who set out from Gravesend for Maryland in October, 1633. But no sooner doth the Ark weigh anchor than one of Claiborne's spies, hoping to scuttle us, runs to the Star Chamber and reports we're not cleared through customs, and our crew hath not sworn the oath of allegiance. Secretary Coke sends couriers to Admiral Pennington, in the Straits off Sandwich, and back we're sent to London."

"Connivance!"

"After a month of haranguing, Father cleared away the charges as false and malicious, and off we went again. So's not to give Claiborne farther ammunition, we loaded our Protestants at Gravesend, swore 'em their oath off Tilbury, and then sailed down the Channel to the Isle of Wight to load our Catholics and a brace of Jesuit priests."

"Very clever." Ebenezer said, less certainly.

"Then, by Heav'n, off we sail for Maryland at last, with instructions from Father not to hold our masses in the public view, not to dispute religion with the Protestants, not to anchor under the Virginians' guns at Port Comfort but to lie instead over by Accomac on the Eastern Shore, and not to have aught to do with Captain Claiborne and his people for the first year.

"With the salvages, a nation of Piscataways, we had no quarrel, for they were happy enough to enlist our defense against their enemies and Seneques and Susquehannoughs: 'twas the fiend Claiborne, who caused our trouble! This Claiborne was a factor for Cloberry and Company and Secretary of State for the Dominion by appointment of Charles I, who was easily misled. His main interest was Kent Island, halfway up the Chesapeake, where his trading-post was situated: he'd rather have surrendered an arm than Kent Island, though 'twas clearly within our grant."

"What did he do?" asked Ebenezer.

"Why, says he to himself, Doth not Baltimore's charter grant him the land hactenus inculta — 'hitherto uncultivated?' Then he must give up Kent Island, for my traders beat him to't! Thus he pled to the Lords Commissioners for Plantations. But mark you, this accursed hactenus inculta was meant as mere description of the land; 'tis the common language of charters, and not intended as a condition of the grant. And truth to tell, Claiborne's traders had not tilled the Island: they bartered their ware for corn to live on as well as furs for Cloberry and Company. The Lords Commissioners disallowed his claim, but give up Kent Island he would not. The Marylanders land in March of 1634 — fifty-nine years ago this month — settle at St. Mary's, and inform Claiborne that Kent Island is theirs; he will neither swear allegiance to the Proprietary nor take title to Kent from him, but asks the Virginia Council what to do. You may depend on't he doth not tell 'em of the Lords Commissioners' ruling, and news travels slow from the Privy Council to America; and so they tell him to hold fast, and that he doth, inflaming all whose ears he can catch against my father.

"Uncle Leonard, in St. Mary's, lets Claiborne's year of grace expire and then commands him to acknowledge Father's rights or suffer imprisonment and confiscation of the Island. King Charles orders Governor Harvey of Virginia to protect us from the Indians and allow free trade 'twixt the colonies, and at the same time, being misled by Claiborne's agents to believe Kent Island outside our patent, he orders Father not to molest Claiborne! Now Harvey was a right enough Christian man, willing to live and let live; therefore, our Claiborne had long led a faction aimed at unseating the poor man and driving him from the colony. Thus when Harvey in obeying the King's order declares his readiness to trade with Maryland, the Virginians rise up in a rage against him and declare they'd sooner knock their cattle on the head than sell 'em to us.

"Then 'twas open warfare. Uncle Leonard seizes one of Claiborne's pinnaces in the Patuxent River and arrests her master Thomas Smith for trading with a license from Father. Claiborne arms a shallop and commissions her captain to attack any Maryland vessel he meets. Uncle Leonard sends out two pinnaces to engage him, and after a fight in the Pocomoke River, the shallop surrenders. Two weeks later another Claiborne vessel under command of the same Tom Smith fights it out in Pocomoke Harbor. Poor Governor Harvey by this time is under such fire from his Council that he flies to England for safety.

"Meanwhile Uncle Leonard cuts off the Kent Islanders completely, and the land being altogether inculta, they commence to starve. Father points this out to Cloberry and Company, and so persuades them that they pretend no farther title to Kent but send a new attorney to Maryland, with authority to supersede Claiborne. The devil finally yields, asking only that the new man, George Evelyn, not deliver Kent Island to the Marylanders; but Evelyn refuses to promise, and so Claiborne withdraws to London, where he is sued by Cloberry and charged with mutiny by Governor Harvey. Furthermore, Evelyn proceeds to attach all of Claiborne's property in Virginia in the name of Cloberry and Company."

" 'Twas what he deserved," Ebenezer said.

"He saw we'd got the better of him for the nonce, and so he tried a new tack; he buys him Palmer's Island from his cronies the Susquehannoughs, this being in the head of the Chesapeake where their river joins it, and sets him up a new trading-post there, pretending he's outside our patent. Then he petitions Charles to forbid Father from molesting him and further asks — with a plain face, mind! — for a grant to all the land for twelve leagues either side the Susquehannough River, extending southward down the Bay to the ocean and northward to the Grand Lake of Canada!"

"You don't tell me!" cried Ebenezer in alarm, though he hadn't the faintest picture of geography referred to.

"Aye," nodded Charles. "The man was mad! 'Twould have given him a strip of New England twenty-four leagues in breadth and near three hundred in length, plus the entire Chesapeake and three fourths of Maryland! 'Twas his hope to fool the King once more as he'd done in the past, but the Lords Commissioners threw out his petition. Evelyn then acknowledged Father's title to Kent, and Uncle Leonard named him Commander of the Island. He attempted to persuade the Islanders to apply to Father for title to their land and might have won them over, were't not that the rascally Tom Smith is established there, along with Claiborne's brother-in-law. There was naught for't then but to reduce 'em for good and all. Uncle Leonard himself led two expeditions against the islands, reduced them, jailed Claiborne's kin, and confiscated all his property in the Province."

"I trust that chastened the knave!"

"For a time," Charles replied. "He got him an island in the Bahamas in 1638, and we saw none of him for four or five years. As for his kin, we had 'em jailed, but since the Assembly had never yet convened, we had no jury to indict 'em and no court to try 'em in!"

"How did you manage it?" asked Ebenezer. "Pray don't tell me you turned them free!"

"Why, we convened the Assembly as a grand inquest to bring the indictment, then magicked 'em into a court to try the case and find the prisoners guilty. Uncle Leonard then sentences the prisoners to hang, the court becomes an Assembly again and passes his sentence as a bill (since we'd had no law to try the case under), and Uncle Leonard commutes the sentence to insure that no injustice hath been done."

" 'Twas a brilliant maneuver!" Ebenezer declared.

" 'Twas the commencement of our woes," said Charles. "No sooner was the Assembly convened than they demanded the right to enact laws, albeit the charter plainly reserved that right for the Proprietary, requiring only the assent of the freemen. Father resisted for a time but had shortly to concede, at least for the nonce, in order to avoid a mutiny. From that day forward the Assembly was at odds with us, and played us false, and lost no chance to diminish our power and aggrandize their own."

He sighed.

"And as if this weren't sufficient harassment, 'twas about this time we learned that the Jesuit missionaries, who had been converting Piscataways by the score, had all the while been taking in return large tracts of land in the name of the Church; and one fine day they declare to us their intent to hold this enormous territory independent of the Proprietary! They knew Father was Catholic and so announced that canon law held full sway in the province, and that by the Papal Bull In Coena Domini they and their fraudulent landholdings were exempt from the common law!"

"Ah God!" said Ebenezer.

"What they were ignorant of," Charles continued, "was that Grandfather, ere he turned Catholic, had seen his fill of Jesuitry in Ireland, when James sent him to investigate the discontent there. To nip't in the bud ere the Jesuits snatch the whole Province on the one hand, or the Protestants use the incident as excuse for an anti-Papist insurrection on the other, Father applied to Rome to recall the Jesuits and send him secular priests instead; and after some years of dispute the Propaganda ordered it done.

"Next came Indian trouble. The Susquehannoughs to the north and the Nanticokes on the Eastern Shore had always raided the other tribes now and again, being hunters and not farmers. But after 1640 they took to attacking plantations here and there in the Province, and there was talk of their stirring up our friends the Piscataways to join 'em in a wholesale massacre. Some said 'twas the French behind it all; some alleged 'twas the work of the Jesuits; but I believe 'twas the scheming hand of Bill Claiborne at work."

"Claiborne!" said Ebenezer. "How is that? Did I not mishear you, Claiborne was hid in the Bahamas!"

"So he was. But in 1643, what with the Jesuit trouble, and the Indian trouble, and some dissension in the colony over the civil war 'twixt Charles and the Parliament, Uncle Leonard returned to London to discuss the affairs of the Province with Father, and no sooner did he sail than Claiborne commenced slipping up the Bay in secret, trying to stir up sedition amongst the Kent Islanders. 'Twas about this time one Richard Ingle — a sea-captain, atheist, and traitor — puts into St. Mary's with a merchantman called the Reformation, drinks himself drunk, and declares to all and sundry that the King is no king, and that he'd take off the head of any royalist who durst gainsay him!"

"Treason!" Ebenezer exclaimed.

"So said our man Giles Brent, who was Governor against Uncle Leonard's return; he jailed Ingle and confiscated his ship. But as quick as we clap the blackguard in irons he's set loose by order of our own Councilman, Captain Cornwaleys, restored to his ship, and let go free as a fish."

"I am astonished."

"Now, this Cornwaleys was a soldier and had lately led expeditions to make peace with the Nanticokes and drive back the Susquehannoughs. When we impeached him for freeing Ingle, 'twas said in his defense he'd exacted promise from the scoundrel to supply us a barrel of powder and four hundredweight of shot for the defense of the Province — and sure enough the rascal returns soon after, cursing and assaulting all he meets, and pledges the ammunition as bail against a future trial. But ere we see a ball of't, off he sails again, flaunting clearance and port-dues, and takes his friend Cornwaleys as passenger.

" 'Twas soon clear that Ingle and Claiborne, our two worst enemies, had leagued together to do us in, using the English Civil War as alibi. Claiborne landed at Kent Island, displayed a false parchment, and swore 'twas his commission from the King to command the Island. At the same time, the roundhead Ingle storms St. Mary's with an armed ship and his own false parchment; he reduces the city, drives Uncle Leonard to flee to Virginia, and so with Claiborne's aid claims the whole of Maryland, which for the space of two years suffers total anarchy. He pillages here, plunders there, seizes property, steals the very locks and hinges of every housedoor, and snatches e'en the Great Seal of Maryland itself, it being forty poundsworth of good silver. He does not stick e'en at the house and goods of his savior Cornwaleys but plunders 'em with the rest, and then has Cornwaleys jailed in London as his debtor and traitor to boot! As a final cut he swears to the House of Lords he did it all for conscience's sake, forasmuch as Cornwaleys and the rest of his victims were Papists and malignants!"

"I cannot comprehend it," Ebenezer confessed.

"In 1646 Uncle Leonard mustered a force with the help of Governor Berkeley and recaptured St. Mary's and soon all of Maryland — Kent Island being the last to submit. The Province was ours again, though Uncle Leonard's pains were ill rewarded, for he died a year after."

"Hi!" cried Ebenezer. "What a struggle! I hope with all my heart you were plagued no more by the likes of Claiborne but enjoyed your Province in peace and harmony!"

" 'Twas our due, by Heav'n. But not three years passed ere the pot of faction and sedition boiled again."

"I groan to hear it."

" 'Twas mainly Claiborne, this time in league with Oliver Cromwell and the Protestants, though he'd lately been a swaggering royalist. Some years before, when the Anglicans ran the Puritans out of Virginia, Uncle Leonard had given 'em leave to make a town called Providence on the Severn River, inasmuch as none suffered in Maryland by reason of his faith. But these Protestants despised us Romanists, and would swear no allegiance to Father. When Charles I was beheaded and Charles II driven to exile, Father made no protest but acknowledged Parliament's authority; he e'en saw to't that the Catholic Thomas Greene, Governor after Uncle Leonard died, was replaced by a Protestant and friend of Parliament, William Stone, so's to give the malcontents in Providence no occasion to rebel. His thanks for this wisdom was to have Charles II exiled on the Isle of Jersey, declare him a Roundhead and grant the Maryland government to Sir William Davenant, the poet."

"Davenant!" exclaimed Ebenezer. "Ah, now, 'tis a right noble vision, the poet-king! Yet do I blush for my craft, that the fellow took a prize so unfairly giv'n."

"He got not far with't, for no sooner did he sail for Maryland than a Parliament cruiser waylaid him in the Channel off Lands End, and that scotched him. Now Virginia, don't you know, was royalist to the end, and when she proclaimed Charles II directly his father was axed, Parliament made ready a fleet to reduce her to submission. Just then, in 1650, our Governor Stone hied him to Virginia on business and deputized his predecessor Thomas Greene to govern till his return. 'Twas a fool's decision, inasmuch as this Greene still smarted at having been replaced. Directly he's deputized he declares with Virginia for Charles II, and for all Governor Stone hastens back and turns the fellow out, the damage is done! The dastard Dick Ingle was still a free man in London, and directly word reached him he flew to the committee in charge of reducing Virginia and caused 'em to add Maryland to the commission. But Father caught wind of't, and ere the fleet sailed he petitioned that Greene's proclamation had been made without his authority or knowledge, and caused the name of Maryland to be stricken from the commission. Thinking that guaranty enough, he retired: straightway sly Bill Claiborne appears and, trusting as always that the committee knew naught of American geography, sees to't the commission is rewrit to include all the plantations within the Bay of Chesapeake — which is to say, all of Maryland! What's more, he gets himself appointed as an alternate commissioner of Parliament to sail with the fleet. There were three commissioners — all reasonable gentlemen, if misled — and two alternates: Claiborne and another scoundrel, Richard Bennett, that had taken refuge in our Providence town what time Virginia turned out her Puritans."

"Marry!" cried Ebenezer. "I ne'er have heard of such perfidy!"

"Stay," said Charles. "Not content with being alternates, Claiborne and Bennett see to't two of the commissioners are lost at sea during the passage, and step ashore at Point Comfort with full authority over both Virginia and Maryland!"

"The man's a Machiavel!"

"They reduce Virginia; Bennett appoints himself Governor and Claiborne Secretary of State; then they turn to Maryland, where the rascals in Providence greet 'em with open arms. Good Governor Stone is deposed, Catholics are stripped of their rights wholesale, and all Father's authority is snatched away. As a last stroke, Claiborne and Bennett rouse up the old Virginia Company to petition for wiping Maryland off the map entirely and restoring the ancient boundaries of Virginia! Father pled his case to the Commissioners for Plantations, and while it lay a-cooking he reminded Cromwell that Maryland had stayed loyal to the Commonwealth in the face of her royalist neighbors. Cromwell heard him out, and later, when he dissolved Parliament and named himself Lord Protector, he assured Father of his favor.

"Governor Stone meanwhile had got himself back into office, and Father ordered him to proclaim the Protectorate and declare the commissioners' authority expired. Claiborne and Bennett muster a force of their own and depose Stone again favor of the Puritan William Fuller from Providence. Father appeals to Cromwell, Cromwell sends an order to Bennett and Claiborne to desist, and Father orders Stone to raise a force and march on Fuller in Providence. But Fuller hath more guns, and so he forces Stone's men to surrender on promise of quarter. No sooner doth he have 'em than he murders four of Stone's lieutenants on the spot and throws Stone, grievously wounded, into prison. Fuller's bullies then seize the Great Seal, confiscate and plunder, and drive all Catholic priests out of the Province; Claiborne and his cohorts raise a hue and a cry again to the Commissioners for Plantations; but 'tis all in vain, for at last, in 1658, the Province is restored to Father, and the government delivered to Josias Fendall, whom Father had named to represent him after Stone was jailed."

"Thank Heav'n!" said Ebenezer. "All's well that ends well!"

"And ill as ends ill," replied Charles, "for that same year, Fendall turned traitor."

" 'Tis too much!" cried Ebenezer.

" 'Tis plain truth. Some say he was the tool of Fuller and Claiborne; however 'twas, Cromwell being dead and his son a weakling, Fendall persuaded the Assembly to declare themselves independent of the Proprietary, overthrew the whole constitution of the Province, and usurped every trace of Father's authority. 'Twould've been a sorry time for us, had not Charles II been restored to the throne shortly after. Father, Heav'n knows how, made peace with him, and obtained royal letters commanding all to support his government and directing Berkeley of Virginia to aid him. Uncle Philip Calvert was named governor, and the whole conspiracy collapsed."

"Dare I hope your trials ended there?" asked Ebenezer.

"For a time we suffered no more rebellions," Charles admitted. "I came to St. Mary's as governor in 1661, and in 1675, when Father died, I became third Lord Baltimore. During that time our only real troubles were assaults by the Indians and attempts by the Dutch, the Swedes, and others to snatch our land by the old hactenus inculta gambit. The Dutch had settled illegally on the Delaware River, and Governor D'Hinoyossa of New Amstel stirred up the Jhonadoes, the Cinagoes, and the Mingoes against us. I considered making war on him, but decided against it for fear King Charles (who had already broken sundry of my charter-privileges) might take the opportunity to seize the whole Delaware territory. I lost it anyhow in 1664, to his brother the Duke of York, and could not raise a word of protest.

"The year I became Lord Baltimore the Cinagoes (what the French call Seneques) descended on the Susquehannoughs, and they in turn overran Maryland and Virginia. The outrages that followed were the excuse for Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia and the cause of much unrest in Maryland. Some time before, in order to harness the malcontents in the Assembly, I had restricted suffrage to the better class of citizens, and held the Assembly in long session to avoid the risk of new elections; but even this failed to quiet things. My enemies intrigued against me from all quarters. Even old Claiborne reappears on the scene, albeit he was well past eighty, and, posing as a royalist again, petitions the King against me — to no avail, happily, and 'twas my indescribable pleasure not long after to hear of the scoundrel's death in Virginia."

" 'Tis my pleasure as well to hear of't now," declared Ebenezer, "for I'd come to fear the knave was immortal!"

"I was accused of everything from Popery to defrauding the King's revenues," Charles went on. "When Nat Bacon turned his private army on Governor Berkeley in Virginia, a pair of rascals named Davis and Pate attempted a like rebellion in Calvert County — urged on, I think, by the turncoats Fuller and Fendall, who ranged privily about the Province. I was in London at the time, but when I heard of the thing, I straightway had my deputy hang the both of 'em. Yet not four years later the traitor Fendall conspires with a new villain to incite a new revolt: This was the false priest John Coode I spoke of, that puts e'en Black Bill Claiborne in the shade. I squelched their game in time and banished Fendall forever, though the conniving Assembly let Coode off free a a bird, to cause more trouble later.

"After this the intrigues and tribulations came in a greal rush. In 1681, to settle a private debt, King Charles grants a large area north of Maryland to William Penn — may his Quaker fat be rendered in hell! — and immediately I'm put to't to defend my northern border against his machinations. 'Twas laid out in my charter that Maryland's north boundary is Latitude Forty, and to mark that parallel I had long since caused a blockhouse to be built against the Susquehannoughs, Penn agreed with me that his boundary should run north o the blockhouse, but when his grant appeared no mention at all was made of't. Instead there was a string of nonsense fit to muddle any templar, and to insure his scheme Penn set out a lying surveyor with a crooked sextant to take his observations. The upshot of't was, he declared his southern boundary to be eight miles south of my blockhouse and resorted to every evasion and subterfuge to avoid conferring with me on this outrage. When finally we treed him and proposed a mutual observation, he pled a broken sextant; and when our own instrument showed the line in its true location, he accused me of subverting the King's authority. So concerned was he that the boundary fall where he wished, he proposed a devil's bag of tricks to gain it. Measure north from the Capes, he says, at the short measure of sixty miles to the degree; lower your south border by thirty miles, he says, and snatch land from the Virginians; measure two degrees north from Watkin Point, he says. Then I ask him, 'Why this measuring and land-snatching? Why not take sextant in hand and find the fortieth parallel for good and all?' At last he agrees, but only on condition that should the line fall north of where he want it, I must sell him the difference at a 'gentleman's price.' "

"I cannot fathom it," Ebenezer admitted. "All this talk of sextants and parallels leaves me faint."

"The truth was," Charles said, "Penn had sworn to his Society for Trade that his grant included the headwaters of the Bay, and he was resolved to have't. When all else failed he fell to plotting with his friend the Duke of York next door and when to my distress the Duke took the throne as James II, Penn conjures him up that specter of a hactenus inculia again and gets himself granted the whole Delaware territory the which was neither his to take nor James's to grant, but clearly mine.

"Matters reached such a pass that though I feared to leave the Province to my enemies for e'en a minute, I had no recourse but to sail for London in 1684 to fight Penn's intrigues. Now for some time I had been falsely accused of allowing smugglers to defraud the King's port-revenues and of failing to assist the royal tax collectors, and had even paid a fine for't. No sooner do I weigh anchor for London than my kinsman George Talbot in St. Mary's allows a rascally beast of a tax collector to anger him and stabs the knave dead. 'Twas a fool's act, and my enemies seized on't at once. Against all justice they refuse to try him in the Province, but instead deliver him to Effingham, then governor of Virginia — who, by the way, later plotted with the Privy Council to have the whole of Maryland granted to himself! — and 'twas all I could manage to save his neck. Shortly afterwards another customs officer is murthered, and though 'twas a private quarrel, my enemies put the two together to color me a traitor to the Crown. Penn, meanwhile, commenced a quo warranto suit against my entire charter, and with his friend on the throne I doubt not what would have been the result: as't happened, the folk of England just then pressed their own quo warranto, so to speak, against King James, and Penn's game was spoilt, for the nonce, by the revolution."

"I cannot tell how relieved I am to hear it!" Ebenezer declared.

" 'Twas my loss either way," sighed Charles. "When James was on the throne my enemies called me disloyal to him; when he went in exile, and William landed in England, all they cared to remember was that both James and I were Catholics. 'Twas then, at the worst possible time, my fool of a deputy governor sees fit to declare to the Assembly his belief in the divine right of kings and, folly of follies, makes Maryland proclaim officially the birth of James's Catholic son!"

"I tremble for you," Ebenezer said.

"Naturally, the instant William took the throne I sent word to the Maryland Council to proclaim him. But whether from natural causes or, as I suspect, from the malice of my enemies, the messenger died on shipboard and was buried at sea, and his commission with him, so that Maryland remained silent even after Virginia and New England had proclaimed. I sent a second messenger at once, but the harm was done, and those who were not crying 'Papist!' were crying 'Jacobite!' On the heels of this misfortune, in 1689 my enemies in England caused me to be outlawed in Ireland on charges of committing treason there against William in James's behalf — though in sooth I'd never in my life set foot on Irish soil and was at the very moment in England expressly to fight the efforts of James and Penn to snatch Maryland from me! To top all, in March of the same year they spread a rumor over Maryland that a great conspiracy of nine thousand Catholics and Indians have invaded the Province to murther every Protestant in the land: the men sent to Mattapany, at the mouth of the Potomac, are told of massacres at the river's head and, rushing there to save the day, find the settlers arming against such massacres as they've heard of in Mattapany! For all my friends declare 'tis naught but a sleeveless fear and imagination, the whole Province is up in arms against the Catholics."

"Blind! Blind!"

" 'Twas no worse than the anti-Papism here in London," said Charles. "My only pleasure in this dark hour was to see that lying Quaker Penn himself arrested and jailed as a Jesuit!"

"I'faith, it cheers me, too!"

"Naught now remained but for the conspirators to administer the coupe de grâce. This they did in July, led by the false priest Coode. He marches on St. Mary's with an armed force, promotes himself to the rank of general, and for all he'd used to be a Catholic himself, shouts Papist and Jesuit until the whole city surrenders. The President and Council flee to Mattapany, where Coode besieges 'em in the fort till they give up the government to him. Then, calling themselves the Protestant Associators, they beg King William to snatch the government for himself!"

"Surely King William hanged him!" Ebenezer said. Charles, who had been talking as rapidly and distractedly as though telling a painful rosary, now seemed really to notice his visitor for the first time since commencing the history.

"My dear Poet. ." He smiled thinly. "William is at war with King Louis: in the first place, for aught anyone knows the war might spread to America, and he is most eager to gain control of all the colonies against this possibility. In the second place, war is expensive, and my revenues could help to pay his soldiers. In the third place, he holds the crown by virtue of an anti-Papist revolution, and I am a Papist. In the fourth place, the government of Maryland was imploring him to rescue the Province from the oppression of Catholics and Indians — "

"Enough!" cried Ebenezer. "I fear me he snatched it! But by what legal right — "

"Ah, 'twas wondrous legal," said Charles. "William instructed the Attorney General to proceed against my charter by way of scire facias, but reflecting afterwards on the time such litigation would require, and the treasury's dire need for food, and the possibility of the Court's finding in my favor, he asks Chief Justice Holt to find him a way to snatch my Maryland with less bother. Holt ponders awhile till he recalls that jus est id quod principi placet, and then declares, in all solemnity, that though 'twould be better the charter were forfeited in a proper inquisition, yet since no inquisition hath been held, and since by the King's own word the matter is urgent, he thinks the King might snatch him the government on the instant and do his investigating later."

"Why," said Ebenezer, " 'tis like hanging a man today and trying his crime tomorrow!"

Charles nodded. "In August of 1691 milord Sir Lionel Copley became the first royal governor of the crown colony of Maryland," he concluded. "My rank fell from that of count palatine, with power of life and death over my subjects, to that of common landlord, entitled only to my quit-rents, my port duty of fourteen pence per ton on foreign vessels, and my tobacco duty of one shilling per hogshead. The Commissioners of the Privy Seal, be't said to their credit, disputed Holt's decision, and in fact when the quo warranto was instigated the allegations against me fell to pieces for lack of evidence, and no judgment was found. But of course 'twas precisely because he foresaw this that William had leaped ere he looked: you may depend on't he held fast to Maryland, and clasps her yet like a lover his mistress; for Possession is nine points of the law in any case, and with a king 'tis parliament, statute book, and courtroom all together! 'Tis said in sooth, A king's favor is no inheritance; and A king promiseth all, and observeth what he will."

"And," added Ebenezer, "He who eats the King's goose shall choke on the feathers."

"How?" Charles demanded angrily. "D'you twit me, fellow? Think thee Maryland was e'er King William's goose?"

"Nay, nay!" Ebenezer protested. "You misread the saying! 'Tis meant to signify merely, that A great dowry is a bed full of brambles, don't you know: A great man and a great river are ill neighbors, or A king's bounty is a mixed blessing."

"Enough, I grasp it. So, then, there is your Maryland, fellow. Think you 'tis fit for a Marylandiad?"

"I'faith," replied Ebenezer, " 'twere fitter for a Jeremiad! Ne'er have I encountered such a string of plots, cabals, murthers, and machinations in life or literature as this history you relate me!"

Charles smiled. "And doth it haply inspire your pen?"

"Ah God, what a dolt and boor must Your Lordship think me, to burst upon you with grand notions of couplet and eulogy! I swear to you I am sorry for't: I shall leave at once."

"Stay, stay," said Charles. "I will confess to you, this Marylandiad of yours is not without interest to me."

"Nay," Ebenezer said, "you but chide me for punishment."

"I am an old man," Charles declared, "with small time left on earth — "

"Heav'n forbid!"

"Nay, 'tis clear truth," Charles insisted. "The prime of my life, and more, I've laid on the altar of a prosperous, well-governed Maryland, which was given me in trust by my dear father, and him by his, to husband and improve, and which I dreamed of handing on to my son a richer, worthier estate for my having ruled it."

"Marry, I am in tears!"

"And now in my old age I find this shan't be," Charles continued. "Moreover, I am too aged and infirm to make another ocean passage and so must die here in England without laying eyes again upon that land as dear to my heart as the wife of my body, and whose abducting and rape stings me as e'er did Helen's Menelaus."

"I can bear no more!" wept Ebenezer, blowing his nose delicately into his handkerchief.

"I have no authority," Charles concluded, "and so can no longer confer dignities and titles as before. But I declare to you this, Mr. Cooke: hie you to Maryland; put her history out of mind and look you at her peerless virtues. Study them; mark them well! Then, if you can, turn what you see to verse; tune and music it for the world's ears! Rhyme me such a rhyme, Eben Cooke; make me this Maryland, that neither time nor intrigue can rob me of; that I can pass on to my son and my son's son and all the ages of the world! Sing me this song, sir, and by my faith, in the eyes and heart of Charles Calvert and of every Christian lover of Beauty and Justice, thou'rt in sooth Poet and Laureate of the Province! And should e'er it come to pass — what against all hope and expectation I nightly pray for to Holy Mary and all saints — that one day the entire complexion of things alters, and my sweet province is once again restored to her proprietor, then, by Heav'n, I shall confer you the title in fact, lettered on sheepskin, beribboned in satin, signed by myself, and stamped for the world to gape at with the Great Seal of Maryland!"

Ebenezer's heart was too full for words.

"In the meantime," Charles went on, "I shall, if't please you, at least commission you to write the poem. Nay, better, I'll pen thee a draft of the Laureate's commission, and should God e'er grant me back my Maryland, 'twill retroact to this very day."

" 'Sheart! 'Tis past belief!"

Charles had his man fetch him paper, ink, and quill, and with the air of one accustomed to the language of authority, quickly penned the following commission:

CHARLES ABSOLUTE LORD & PROPRIETARY OF THE PROVINCES OF MARYLAND & AVALON LORD BARON OF BALTIMORE &^t To Our Trusty and Welbeloved Our Dear Ebenezer Cooke Esq^r of Cookes Poynt Dorset County Greeting Whereas it is our Desire that the Sundrie Excellencies of Our Province of Maryland aforesaid be set down in Verse for Generations to Come and Whereas it is Our Conviction that Your talents Well Equip You for that Task &^t We Do Will and Command you upon the Faith which You Owe unto Us that You do compose and construct such an Epical Poem, setting forth the Graciousness of Marylands Inhabitants, Their Good Breeding and Excellent Dwelling-places, the Majesty of her Laws, the Comfort of Her Inns and Ordinaries &^t &^t and to this Purpose We do Name and Entitle You Poet and Laureat of the Province of Maryland Aforesaid. Witness Ourself at the City of London the twenty-eighth Day of March in the eighteenth Year of Our Dominion over Our said Province of Maryland Annoq Dom 1694

"Out on't!" he cried, handing the finished draft to Ebenezer. " 'Tis done, and I wish you fair passage." Ebenezer read the commission, flung himself upon his knees before Lord Baltimore, and pressed that worthy's coat hem to his lips in gratitude. Then, mumbling and stumbling, he pocketed the document, excused himself, and ran from the house into the bustling streets of London.

11: Ebenezer Returns to His Companions, Finds Them Fewer by One, Leaves Them Fewer by Another, and Reflects a Reflection

"Locket's!" cried Ebenezer to his cabman, and sprang into the hackney with a loose flail of limbs like a mismanaged marionette. With what a suddenness had he scaled the reaches of Parnassus, while his companions blundered in the foothills! Snatching out his commission, he read again the sweet word Laureat and the catalogue of Maryland's excellencies.

"Sweet land!" he exclaimed. "Pregnant with song! Thy deliverer approacheth!"

There was a conceit worth saving, he reflected: the word deliverer, for instance, with its twin suggestions of midwife and savior. . He lamented having no pen nor any paper other than Baltimore's commission, which after kissing he tucked away in his coat.

"I must purchase me a notebook," he decided. " 'Twere a pity such wildflowers should die unplucked. No more may I think merely of my own delight, for a laureate belongs to the world."

Soon the hackney cab reached Locket's, and after rewarding the driver Ebenezer hurried to find his colleagues, whom he'd not seen since the night of the wager. Once inside, however, he assumed a slower, more dignified pace, in keeping with his position, and weaved through the crowded tables to where he spied his friends.

Dick Merriweather noticed him first. " 'Sblood!" he shouted. "Look ye yonder, what comes hither! Am I addled with the sack, or is't Lazarus untombed?"

"How now!" Tom Trent joined in. "Hath the spring wind thawed ye, boy? I feared me you was ossified for good and all."

"Thawed?" said Ben Oliver, and winked. "Nay, Tom, for how could such a lover e'er be chilled? 'Tis my guess he's only now regained his strength from his mighty joust the night of our wager and is back to take all comers."

"Lightly, Ben," reproved Tom Trent, and glanced at John McEvoy beside him, who, however, was entirely absorbed in regarding Ebenezer and seemed not to have heard the remark. " 'Tis unbecoming a good fellow, to hold a grudge o'er such a trifle."

"Nay, nay," Ben insisted. "What more pleasant or instructive, I ask you, than to hear of great deeds from the lips of their doers? Hither with thee, Ebenezer. Take a pot with us and tell us all plainly, as a man amongst men: What think you now of this Joan Toast that you did swive? How is she in the bed, I mean, and what fearsome bargain did you drive for your five guineas, that we've seen none of you this entire week, or her since? Marry, what a man!"

"Curb your evil tongue," Ebenezer said crisply, taking a seat. "You know the story as well as I."

"Hi!" cried Ben. "Such bravery! What, will you say naught by way of explanation or defense when a very trollop scorns you?"

Ebenezer shrugged. " 'Tis near as e'er she'll come to greatness."

"Great Heav'n!" Tom Trent exclaimed. "Who is this stranger with the brave replies? I know the face and I know the voice, but b'm'faith, 'tis not the Eben Cooke of old!"

"Nay," agreed Dick Merriweather, " 'tis some swaggering impostor. The Cooke I knew was e'er a shy fellow, something stiff in the joints, and no great hand at raillery. Know you aught of his whereabouts?" he asked Ebenezer.

"Aye" — Ebenezer smiled — "I know him well, for 'twas I alone saw him die and wrote his elegy."

"And prithee, sir, what carried him off?" inquired Ben Oliver with as much of a sneer as could be salvaged from his late confounding. "Belike 'twas the pain of unrequited love?"

"The truth of the matter is, sirs," Ebenezer replied, "he perished in childbirth the night of the wager and never learned that what he'd been suffering was the pains of labor — the more intense, for that he'd carried the fetus since childhood and was brought to bed of't uncommon late. Howbeit, 'twas the world's good luck he had him an able midwife, who delivered full-grown the man you see before you."

"I'faith!" declared Dick Merriweather. "I have fair lost sight o' you in this Hampton Court Hedge of a conceit! Speak literally, an't please you, if only for a sentence, and lay open plainly what is signified by all this talk of death and midwives and the rest of the allegory."

"I shall," smiled Ebenezer, "but I would Joan Toast were present to hear't, inasmuch as 'twas she who played all innocently the midwife's part. Do fetch her, McEvoy, that all the world may know I bear no ill will towards either of you. Albeit you acted from malice, yet, as the proverb hath it, Many a thing groweth in the garden, that was not planted there; or even A man's fortune may be made by his enviers. Certain it is, your mischief bore fruit beyond my grandest dreams! You said of me once that I comprehend naught of life, and perchance 'tis true; but you must allow farther that Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread, and that A castle may be taken by storm, that ne'er would fall to siege. The fact is, I've wondrous news to tell. Will you summon her?"

Ever since Ebenezer's appearance in the winehouse McEvoy had sat quietly, even sullen. Now he got up from his place, growled "Summon her yourself, damn ye!" and left the tavern in a great sulk.

"What ails him?" asked Ebenezer. "The man meant me an injury — doth it chagrin him that it misfired into fortune? 'Twas a civil request; did I know Joan's whereabouts I'd fetch her myself."

"So I doubt not would he," Ben Oliver said.

"What is't you say?"

"Did you not hear it said before," asked Tom Trent, "that nor hide nor hair of your Joan have we seen these three days past?"

"I took it for a twit," said Ebenezer. "She's gone in sooth?"

"Aye," affirmed Dick, "the tart is vanished from sight, and not McEvoy nor any soul else knows aught of't. The last anyone saw of her was the day after the wager. She was in a fearful fret — "

"I'faith," put in Ben, "there was no speaking to the woman!"

"We took it for a pout," Dick went on, "forasmuch as you'd — That is to say — "

"She'd scorned four guineas from a good man," Ben declared in a last effort at contempt, "and got in exchange a penceless preachment from — "

"From Ebenezer Cooke, my friends," Ebenezer finished, unable to hold back the news any longer, "who this very day hath been named by Lord Baltimore to be Poet and Laureate of the entire Province of Maryland! And you've not seen the wench since, you say?"

But none heard the question: they looked at each other and at Ebenezer.

"Egad!"

" 'Sblood!"

"Is't true? Thou'rt Laureate of Maryland?"

"Aye," said Ebenezer, who actually had said only that he'd been named Laureate, but deemed it too late, among other things, to clarify the misunderstanding. "I sail a few days hence for America, to manage the estate where I was born, and by command of Lord Baltimore to do the office of Laureate for the colony."

"Have you commission and all?" Tom Trent marveled.

Ebenezer did not hesitate. "The Laureate's commission is in the writing," he explained, "but already I'm commissioned to turn him a poem." He pretended to search his pockets and came up with the document in his coat, which he passed around the table to great effect.

"By Heav'n 'tis true!" Tom said reverently. "Laureate of Maryland! It staggers me!" said Dick. "I will confess," said Ben, "I'd ne'er have guessed it possible. But out on't! Here's a pot to you, Master Laureate! Hi there, barman, a pint all around! Come, Tom! Ho, Dick! Let's have a health, now! I hope I may call it," he went on, putting his arm about Ebenezer's shoulders, "for 'tis many a night Eben's taken my twitting in good grace, that would have rankled a meaner spirit. 'Twould be as fair an honor to propose this health t'you, friend, as 'twill be for me to pay for't. Prithee grant me that, and 'twere proof of a grace commensurate to thy talent."

"Your praise flatters me the more," Ebenezer said, "for that I know you — how well! — to be no flatterer. Toast away, and a long life to you!"

The waiter had by this time brought the pints, and the four men raised their glasses.

"Hi there, sots and poetasters!" Ben shouted to the house at large, springing up on the table. "Put by your gossip and drink as worthy a health as e'er was drunk under these rafters!"

"Nay, Ben!" Ebenezer protested, tugging Ben's coat.

"Hear!" cried several patrons, for Ben was a favorite among them.

"Drag off yon skinny fop and raise your glasses!" someone cried.

"Scramble up here," Ben ordered, and Ebenezer was lifted willy-nilly to the table top.

"To the long life, good health, and unfailing talent of Ebenezer Cooke," Ben proposed, and everyone in the room raised his glass, "who while we lesser fry spent our energies braying and strutting, sat aloof and husbanded his own, and crowed him not a crow nor, knowing himself an eagle, cared a bean what barnyard fowl thought of him; and who, therefore, while the rest of us cocks must scratch our dunghills in feeble envy, hath spread his wings and taken flight, for who can tell what eyrie! I give thee Ebenezer Cooke, lads, twitted and teased by all — none more than myself — who this day was made Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland!"

A general murmur went round the room, followed by a clamor of polite congratulation that went like wine to Ebenezer's head, for it was the first such experience in his life.

"I thank you," he said thickly to the room. "I can say no more!"

"Hear! Hear!"

"A poem, sir!" someone called.

"Aye, a poem!"

Ebenezer got hold of himself and stayed the clamor with a gesture. "Nay," he said, "the muse is no minstrel, that sings for a pot in the taverns; besides, I've not a line upon me. This is the place for a toast, not for poetry, and 'twill greatly please me do you join my toast to my magnanimous patron Baltimore — "

A few glasses went up, but not many, for anti-Papist feeling was running high in London.

"To the Maryland Muse — " Ebenezer added, perceiving the small response, and got a few more hands for his trouble.

"To Poetry, fairest of the arts" — many additional glasses were raised — "and to every poet and good-fellow in this tavern, which for gay and gifted patrons hath not its like in the hemisphere!"

"Hear!" the crowd saluted, and downed the toast to a man.

It was near midnight when Ebenezer returned at last to his rooms. He called in vain for Bertrand and tipsily commenced undressing, still very full of his success. But whether because of the silence of his room after Locket's, or the unhappy sight of his bed lying still unmade as he'd left it in the morning, the linens all rumpled and soiled from his four days' despair, or some more subtle agency, his gaiety seemed to leave him with his clothes; when at length he had stripped himself of shoes, drawers, shirt, and periwig, and stood shaved, shorn, and mother-naked in the center of his room, his mind was dull, his eyes listless, his stance uncertain. The great success of his first plunge still thrilled him to contemplate, but no longer was it entirely a pleasurable excitement. His stomach felt weak. All that Charles had told him of the history of Maryland came like a bad dream to his memory, and turning out the lamp he hurried to the window for fresh air.

Despite the hour, London bristled in the darkness beneath and all around him, from which came at intervals here a drunkard's shout, there a cabman's curse, the laughter of a streetwalker, the whinny of a horse. A damp spring breeze moved off the Thames and breathed on him: out there on the river, anchors were being weighed and catted, sails unfurled from yards and sheeted home, bearings taken, soundings called, and dark ships run down the tide, out the black Channel, and thence to the boundless ocean, cresting and tossing under the moon. Great restless creatures stirred and glided in the depths; pale gray sea birds wheeled and shrieked down the night wind, or wildly planed against the scud. Could one suppose that somewhere far out under the stars there really lay a Maryland, against whose long sand coasts the black sea foamed? That at that very instant, peradventure, some naked Indian prowled the reedy dunes or stalked his quarry down whispering aisles of the forest?

Ebenezer shuddered, turned from the window, and drew the curtains fast. His stomach was extremely uneasy. He lay down on the bed and tried to sleep, but with no success: the daring of his interview with Charles Calvert, and all that followed on it, kept him tossing and turning long after his muscles had begun to ache and his eyes to burn for sleep. The specters of William Claiborne, Richard Ingle, William Penn, Josias Fendall, and John Coode — their strange and terrible energy, their intrigues and insurrections — chilled and sickened him but refused to be driven from his awareness; and he could not give over remembering and pronouncing his title even after repetition had taken pleasure and sense from the epithet and left it a nightmare string of sounds. His saliva ran freely; he was going to be ill. Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland! There was no turning back. Out under the night, Maryland and his single mortal destiny awaited him.

"Ah, God!" he wept at last, and sprang from the bed in an icy sweat. Running to the chamber pot he flung off the lid and with a retch heaved into it the wine of his triumph. Once delivered of it, he felt somewhat calmer: he returned to the bed, clasped his knees against his chest to quiet the agitation of his stomach, and so contrived, after countless fretful sighs, a sort of sleep.