The Sot-Weed Factor (16 page)

"What sort?" repeated Ebenezer. "Are there sorts of notebooks, then? I knew't not. No matter -- any sort will serve, I daresay. 'Tis but to take notes in."

"Long notes, sir, or short ones?"

"How? What a question! How should I know? Both, I suppose!"

"Ah. And will you take these long and short notes at home, sir, or while traveling?"

"I'faith, what difference to you? Both, I should think. A mere silly notebook is all my craving."

"Patience, sir; 'tis only to make certain I sell you naught but fits thy need.
The man who knows what he needs,
they say,
gets what he wants;
but he who knows not his mind is forever at sixes and sevens and blames the blameless world for't."

"Enough wisdom, I beg you," Ebenezer said uncomfortably. "Sell me a notebook fit for long or short notes, both at home and abroad, and have done with't."

"Very well, sir," Bragg said. "Only I must know another wee thing."

"I'faith, 'tis a Cambridge examination! What is't now?"

"Is't thy wont to make these notes always at a desk, whether at home or abroad, or do you jot 'em down as they strike you, whether strolling, riding, or resting? And if the latter, do you yet ne'er pen 'em in the public view, or is't public be damned, ye'll write where't please you? And if the latter, would you have 'em think you a man whose taste is evidenced by all he owns; who is, you might say, in love with the world? A Geoffrey Chaucer? A Will Shakespeare? Or would you rather they took you for a Stoical fellow, that cares not a fig for this vale of imperfections, but hath his eye fixed always on the Everlasting Beauties of the Spirit: a Plato, I mean, or a Don John Donne? 'Tis most necessary I should know."

Ebenezer smote the counter with his fist. "Damn you, fellow, thou'rt pulling my leg for fair! Is't some wager you've made with yonder gentleman, to have me act the fool for him? Marry, 'twas my retching hate of raillers and hypocrites that drove me here, to spend my final London morn sequestered among the implements of my craft, like a soldier in his armory or a mariner in the ship chandler's; but I find no simple sanctuary even here. By Heav'n, I think not even Nero's lions were allowed in the dungeons where the martyrs prayed and fortified themselves, but had to stay their hunger till the wretches were properly in the arena. Will you deny me that small solace ere I take ship for the wilderness?"

"Forbear, sir;
do
forbear," Bragg pleaded, "and think no ill of yonder gentleman, who is a perfect stranger to me."

"Very well. But explain yourself at once and sell me a common notebook such as a poet might find useful who is as much a Stoic as an Epicurean."

"I crave no more than to do just that," Bragg declared. "But I must know whether you'll have the folio size or the quarto. The folio, I might say, is good for poets, inasmuch as an entire poem can of't be set on facing pages, where you can see it whole."

"Quite sound," Ebenezer acknowledged. "Folio it is."

"On the other hand, the quarto is more readily lugged about, particularly when thou'rt walking or on horseback."

"True, true," Ebenezer admitted.

"In the same way, a cardboard binding is cheap and hath a simple forthright air; but leather is hardier for traveling, more pleasing to behold, and more satisfying to own. What's more, I can give ye unruled sheets, such as free the fancy from mundane restraints, accommodate any size of hand, and make a handsome page when writ; or ruled sheets, which save time, aid writing in carriages or aboard ships, and keep a page neat as a pin. Finally, ye may choose a thin book, easy to carry but soon filled, or a fat one, cumbersome to travel with but able to store years of thought 'twixt single covers. Which shall be the Laureate's notebook?"

" 'Sbodikins! I am wholly fuddled! Eight species of common notebook?"

"Sixteen, sir; sixteen, if I may," Bragg said proudly. "Ye may have

A thin plain cardboard folio,

A thin plain cardboard quarto,

A thin plain leather folio,

A thin ruled cardboard folio,

A fat plain cardboard folio,

A thin plain leather quarto,

A thin ruled cardboard quarto,

A fat plain cardboard quarto,

A thin ruled leather folio,

A fat ruled cardboard folio,

A fat plain leather folio,

A thin ruled leather quarto,

A fat ruled cardboard quarto,

A fat plain leather quarto,

A fat ruled leather folio, or

A fat ruled leather quarto."

"Stop!" cried Ebenezer, shaking his head. " 'Tis the Pit!"

"I may say also I'm expecting some lovely half-moroccos within the week, and if need be I can secure finer or cheaper grades of paper than what I stock."

"Have at thee, Sodomite!" Ebenezer shouted, drawing his shortsword. " 'Tis thy life or mine, for another of thy evil options and I am lost!"

"Peace! Peace!" the printer squealed, and ducked under his serving-counter.

"Peace Peace
we'll have do I reach thee," Ebenezer threatened; "nor no mere pair of pieces, either, b'm'faith, but sixteen count!"

"Stay, Master Laureate," urged the short, wigless customer; he came from across the shop, where he'd been listening with interest to the colloquy, and placed his hand on Ebenezer's sword arm. "Calm your wrath, ere't lead ye to blight your office."

"Eh? Ah, to be sure," sighed Ebenezer, and sheathed his sword with some embarrassment. " 'Tis the soldier's task to fight battles, is't not, and the poet's to sing 'em. But marry, who dares call himself a man that will not fight to save his reason?"

"And who dares call himself reasonable," returned the stranger, "that will so be swayed by's passions as to take arms against a feckless shopkeeper? 'Tis thy quandary, do I see't aright, that all these notebooks have their separate virtues, yet none is adequate, inasmuch as your purposes range 'twixt contradictories."

"You have't firmly," Ebenezer admitted.

"Then 'tis by no means this poor knave's fault, d'ye think, that he gives ye options? He's more to be praised than braised for't. Put by your anger, for
Anger begins with folly and ends with repentance;
it makes a rich man hated and a poor man scorned, and so far from solving problems, only multiplies 'em. Follow rather the sweet light of Reason, which like the polestar leads the wise helmsman safe to port through the unruly seas of passion."

"You chasten me, friend," said Ebenezer. "Out with you, Ben Bragg, and never fear: I'm my own man again."

" 'Sheart, thou'rt a spirited fellow for a poet!" Bragg exclaimed, reappearing from under the counter.

"Forgive me."

"There's a good fellow!" said the stranger.
"Anger glances into wise men's breasts, but rests only in the bosoms of fools.
Heed no voice but Reason's."

"Good counsel, I grant thee," Ebenezer said. "But I'll own it passeth my understanding how Solomon himself could reconcile opposites and make a plain book elegant or a fat book thin. Not all the logic of Aquinas could contrive it!"

"Then look past him," said the stranger with a smile, "to Aristotle himself, and where you find opposite extremes, seek always the Golden Mean. Thus Reason dictates: Compromise, Mr. Cooke: compromise.
Adieu
."

With that the fellow left, before Ebenezer could thank him or even secure his name.

"Who was that gentleman?" he asked Bragg.

" 'Twas one Peter Sayer," Bragg replied, "that just commissioned me to print him some broadsides -- more than that I know not."

"No native Londoner, I'll wager. What a wondrous wise fellow!"

"And wears his natural hair!" sighed the printer. "What think ye of his advice?"

" 'Tis worthy a Chief Justice," Ebenezer declared, "and I mean to carry it out at once. Fetch me a notebook neither too thick nor too thin, too tall nor too small, too simple nor too elegant. 'Twill be Aristotle from start to finish!"

"Your pardon, sir," Bragg protested; "I have already named my whole stock over, and there's not a Golden Mean in the lot. Yet I think ye might purchase a book and alter it to suit."

"How, prithee," Ebenezer asked, looking nervously to the door through which Sayer had made his exit, "when I know no more of bookmaking than doth a bookseller of poetry?"

"Peace, peace!" urged Bragg. "Remember the voice of Reason."

"So be't," Ebenezer said.
"Every man to his trade,
as Reason hath it. Here's a pound for book and alterations. Commence at once, nor let your eye drift e'en for an instant from the polestar of Reason."

"Very good, sir," Bragg replied, pocketing the money. "Now, 'tis but reasonable, is't not, that a long board may be sawn short, but a short board may not be stretched? And a fat book, likewise, may be thinned, but ne'er a thin book fattened?"

"No Christian man can say you nay," Ebenezer agreed.

"So, then," said Bragg, taking a handsome, fat unruled leather folio from the shelf, "we take us a great stout fellow, spread him open thusly, and
compromise
him!" Pressing the notebook flat open upon the counter, he ripped out several handfuls of pages.

"Whoa! Stay!" cried Ebenezer.

"Then," Bragg went on, paying him no heed, "since Reason tells us a fine coat may wear shabby, but ne'er a cheap coat fine, we'll just compromise this morocco here and there --" He snatched up a letter opener near at hand and commenced to hack and gouge the leather binding.

"Hold, there! I'faith, my notebook!"

"As for the pages," Bragg continued, exchanging the letter opener for goose quill and inkpot, "ye may rule 'em as't please ye, with Reason as the guide: sidewise" -- he scratched recklessly across a half-dozen pages -- "lengthwise" -- he penned hasty verticals on the same pages -- "or what ye will!" He scribbled at random through the whole notebook.

" 'Sbody! My pound!"

"Which leaves only the matter of size," Bragg concluded: "He must be smaller than a folio, yet taller than a quarto. Hark ye, now: methinks the voice of Reason orders --"

"Compromise!"
Ebenezer shouted, and brought down his sword upon the mutilated notebook with such a mighty chop that, had Bragg not just then stepped back to contemplate his creation he'd surely have contemplated his Creator. The covers parted: the binding let go; pages flew in all directions.
"That
for your damned Golden Mean!"

"Madman!" Bragg cried, and ran out into the street. "Oh, dear, help!"

There was no time to lose: Ebenezer sheathed his sword, snatched up the first notebook he spied -- which happened to be lying near at hand, over the cash drawer -- and fled to the rear of the store, through the print shop (where two apprentices looked up in wonder from their work), and out the back door.

T
hough several hours
yet remained before departure time, Ebenezer went from Bragg's directly to the posthouse, ate an early dinner, and sipped ale restlessly while waiting for Bertrand to appear with his trunk. Never had the prospect of going to Maryland seemed so pleasant: he longed to be off! For one thing, after the adventure in Bragg's establishment he was more than ever disgusted with London; for another, he feared that Bragg, to whom he'd mentioned the Plymouth coach, might send men after him, though he was certain his pound was more than adequate payment for both notebooks. And there was another reason: his heart still beat faster when he recalled his swordplay of an hour before, and his face flushed.

"What a gesture!" he thought admiringly. " '
That
for your damned Golden Mean!' Well said and well done! How it terrified the knave, i'faith! A good beginning!" He laid his notebook on the table: it was quarto size, about an inch thick, with cardboard covers and a leather spine. " 'Tis not what I'd have
chosen,"
he reflected without sorrow, "but 'twas manfully got, and 'twill do, 'twill do. Barman!" he called. "Ink and quill, if you please!" The writing materials fetched, he opened the notebook in order to pen a dedication: to his surprise he found already inscribed on the first page
B. Bragg, Printer & Stationer, Sign of the Raven, Paternoster Row, London, 1694,
and on the second and third and fourth such entries as
Bangle & Son, glaziers, for windowglass, 13/4,
and
Jno. Eastbury, msc printing, 1/3/9.

" 'Sblood! 'Tis Bragg's account book! A common ledger!" Investigating further he found that only the first quarter of the book had been used: the last entry, dated that same day, read
Col. Peter Sayer, broadsides, 2/5/0.
The remaining pages were untouched. "So be't," he smiled, and ripped out the used sheets. "Was't not my aim to keep strict account of my traffic with the muse?" Inking his quill, he wrote across the first page
Ebenezer Cooke, Poet & Laureate of Maryland
and then observed (it being a ledger of the double-entry variety) that his name fell in the
Debit
column and his title in the
Credit.

"Nay, 'twill never do," he decided, "for to call my office an asset to me is but to call me a liability to my office." He tore out the sheet and reversed the inscription. "Yet
Poet and Laureate Eben Cooke
is as untrue as the other," he reflected, "for while I hope to be a credit to my post, yet surely the post is no liability to me. 'Twere fitter the thing were done sidewise down the credit line, to signify the mutual benefit of title and man." But before he tore out the second sheet it occurred to him that "credit" was meaningless except as credit
to
somebody -- and yet anything he entered to receive it became a liability. For a moment he was frantic.

"Stay!" he commanded himself, perspiring. "The fault is not in the nature of the world, but in Bragg's categories. I'll merely paste my commission over the whole title page."

He called for glue, but when he searched his pockets for the commission from Lord Baltimore, he found it not in any of them.

"Agad! 'Tis in the coat I wore last night at Locket's, that Bertrand hath packed away for me!"

He went searching about the posthouse for his man, without success. But in the street outside, where the carriage was being made ready, he was astonished to find no other person than his sister Anna.

"Marry!" he cried, and hurried to embrace her. "People vanish and appear to me of late as in a Drury Lane comedy! How is it thou'rt in London?"

"To see thee off to Plymouth," Anna said. Her voice was no longer girlish, but had a hard, flat tone to it, and one would have put her age closer to thirty-five than twenty-eight years. "Father forbade it but would not come himself, and so I stole away and be damned to him." She stepped back and examined her brother. "Ah faith, thou'rt grown thinner, Eben! I've heard 'twere wise to fatten up for an ocean passage."

"I had but a week to fatten," Ebenezer reminded her. During his sojourn at Paggen's he had seen Anna not more than once a year, and he was greatly moved by the alteration in her appearance.

She lowered her eyes, and he blushed.

"I'm looking for that great cynical servant of mine," he said gaily, turning away. "You've not seen him, I suppose?"

"You mean Bertrand? I sent him off myself not five minutes past, when he'd got all your baggage on the coach."

"Ah, there's a pity. I had promised him a crown for't."

"And I gave it him, from Father's money. He'll be back at St. Giles, I think, for Mrs. Twigg hath a ferment of the blood and is not given long to live."

"Nay! Dear old Twigg! 'Tis a pity to lose her."

They stood about awkwardly. Turning his head to avoid looking her in the eye, Ebenezer caught sight of the wigless fellow of the bookstore, Peter Sayer, standing idly by the corner.

"Did Bertrand tell you aught of my preferment?" he asked cheerfully.

"Aye, he spoke of't. I'm proud." Anna's manner was distracted. "Eben --" She grasped his arm. "Was't true, what that letter said?"

Ebenezer laughed, somewhat nettled at Anna's lack of interest in his laureateship. " 'Twas true I'd got nowhere at Peter Paggen's, in all those years. And 'twas true a woman was in my chamber."

"And did you deceive her?" his sister asked anxiously.

"I did," Ebenezer said. Anna turned away and caught her breath.

"Stay!" he cried. " 'Twas not at all in the way you think. I deceived her inasmuch as she was a whore that came to me to be employed for five guineas; but I took a great love for her and would neither lay nor pay her on those terms."

Anna wiped her eyes and looked at him. "Is't true?"

"Aye," Ebenezer laughed. "Haply you'll judge me not a man for't, Anna, but I swear I am as much a virgin now as the day we were born. What, thou'rt weeping again!"

"But not for sorrow," Anna said, embracing him. "Do you know, Brother, I had come to think since you went to Magdalene College we no longer knew each other -- but it may be I was wrong."

Ebenezer was moved by this statement, but a trifle embarrassed when Anna squeezed him more tightly before releasing him. Passersby, including Peter Sayer on the corner, turned their heads to look at them: doubtless they looked like parting lovers. Yet he was ashamed at being embarrassed. He moved closer to the coach, to prevent too gross a misunderstanding, and took his sister's hand, at least partly to forestall further embraces.

"Do you ever think of the past?" Anna asked.

"Aye."

"What times we had! Do you remember how we used to talk for hours after Mrs. Twigg had turned out the lamp?" Tears sprang again to her eyes. "I'faith, I miss you, Eben!"

Ebenezer patted her hand.

"And I thee," he said, sincerely but uncomfortably. "I remember one day when we were thirteen, you were ill in bed with a fever, and so Henry and I went alone to tour Westminster Abbey. 'Twas my first whole day apart from you, and by dinnertime I missed you so sorely I begged Henry to take me home. But we went instead to St. James's Park, and after supper to Dukes Theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and 'twas far past midnight ere we reached home. I felt ten years older for the day's adventure and could not see for the life of me how I'd e'er be able to tell you the whole of't. I'd had my first meal away from home, been to my first theater, and tasted my first brandy. We talked of nothing else for weeks but that day, and still I'd remember trifles I'd forgot to tell you. 'Twould give me pain to think of them, and at length I came to regret ever having gone and told Henry so, for't seemed to me you'd ne'er catch up after that day."

"I recall it as if 'twere but last week," Anna said. "How many times I've wondered whether
you'd
forgot it." She sighed. "And I never did catch up! Query as I might, there was no getting the whole story. The awful truth of't was,
I'd not been there to see!"

Ebenezer interrupted her with a laugh. "Marry, e'en now I recall something of it I forgot to tell you! After supper at some Pall Mall tavern on that day, I waited a half hour alone at the table while Henry went upstairs for one reason or another --" He stopped and blushed scarlet, suddenly realizing, after fifteen years, what in all probability Henry Burlingame had gone upstairs for. Anna, however, to his relief, showed no sign of understanding.

"The wine had gone to my head, and everyone looked odd to me, none less than myself. 'Twas then I composed my first poem, in my head. A little quatrain. Nay, I must confess 'twas no slip of memory: I kept it secret, Heav'n knows why. I can e'en recite it now:

Figures, so strange, no
GOD
design'd

To be a Part of Humankind:

But wanton Nature. . .

La, I forget the rest. 'Sheart," he said, resolving happily to record the little verse in his notebook as soon as he boarded the carriage, "and since then what years we've spent apart! What crises and adventures we each have had, that the other knows naught of! 'Tis a pity all the same you had a fever that day!"

Anna shook her head. "I had a secret too, Eben, that Mrs. Twigg knew, and Henry guessed, but never you nor Father. 'Twas no fever I was bedded with, but my first monthly troubles! I'd changed from child to woman that morning, and had the cramp of't as many women do."

Ebenezer pressed her hand, uncertain what to say. It was time to board the coach: footmen and driver were attending last-minute details.

" 'Twill be long ere I see you again," he said. "Belike you'll be a stout matron with half-a-dozen children!"

"Not I," Anna said. " 'Twill be Mrs. Twigg's lot for me, when she dies: an old maid housekeeper."

Ebenezer scoffed. "Thou'rt a catch for the best of men! Could I find your equal I'd be neither virgin nor bachelor for long." He kissed her goodbye, forwarded his respects to his father, and made to board the carriage.

"Stay!" Anna said impulsively.

Ebenezer hesitated, uncertain of her meaning. Anna slipped from her finger a silver seal ring, well known to the poet because it was their only memento of their mother, whom they had never seen; Andrew had bought it during his brief courtship and had presented it to Anna some years past. Equally spaced around the seal were the letters
A N N E B,
for Anne Bowyer, his fiancé
e, and in the center, overlapped and joined by a single crossbar, was a brace of beflourished
A
's signifying the connection of Anne and Andrew. The complete seal looked like this:

"Prithee take this ring," Anna entreated, and looked at it musingly. " 'Tis -- 'tis my wont to alter its significance somewhat. . . but no matter. Here, let me put it on you." She caught up his left hand and slipped the ring onto his little finger. "Pledge me. . ." she began, but did not finish.

Ebenezer laughed, and to terminate the uncomfortable situation pledged that inasmuch as her share of Malden was a large part of her dowry, he would make it flourish.

It was time to leave. He kissed her again and boarded the carriage, taking the seat from which he could wave to her. At the last minute the wigless fellow, Peter Sayer, boarded the coach and took the opposite seat. A footman closed the door and sprang up to his post -- apparently there were to be no other passengers. The driver whipped up the horses, Ebenezer waved to the forlorn figure of his twin at the posthouse door, and the carriage pulled away.

" 'Tis no light matter, to leave a woman ye love," Sayer offered. "Is't thy wife, perhaps, or a sweetheart?"

"Neither," sighed Ebenezer. " 'Tis my twin sister, that I shan't see again till Heav'n knows when." He turned to face his companion. "Thou'rt my savior from Ben Bragg's, I believe -- Mr. Sayer?"

Sayer's face showed some alarm. "Ah, ye know me?"

"Only by name, from Ben Bragg." He extended his hand. "I am Ebenezer Cooke, bound for Maryland."

Sayer shook hands warily.

"Is Plymouth your home, Mr. Sayer?"

The man searched Ebenezer's face. "Do ye really not know Colonel Peter Sayer?" he asked.

"Why, no." Ebenezer smiled uncertainly. "I'm honored by your company, sir."

"Of Talbot County in Maryland?"

"Maryland! I'faith, what an odd chance!"

"Not so odd," Sayer said, "since the Smoker's Fleet sails on the first. Anyone bound for Plymouth these days is likely bound for the plantations."

"Well, 'twill be a pleasant journey. Is Talbot County near to Dorchester?"

"Really, sir, thou'rt twitting me!" Sayer cried.

"Nay, I swear't; I know naught of Maryland. 'Tis my first visit since the age of four."

Sayer still looked skeptical. "My dear fellow, you and I are neighbors, with only the Great Choptank between us."

"Marry, what a wondrous small world! You must pay me a call sometime, sir: I'll be managing our place on Cooke's Point."

"And writing a deal of verse, did I hear Mr. Bragg aright."

Ebenezer blushed. "Aye, I mean to turn a line or two if I can."

"Nay, put by your modesty, Master Laureate! Bragg told me of the honor Lord Baltimore did ye."

"Ah well, as for that, 'tis likely he got it wrong. My commission is to write a panegyric on Maryland, but I'll not be laureate in fact till the day Baltimore hath the Province for his own again."

"Which day," Sayer said, "you and your Jacobite friends yearn for, I presume?"

"Stay, now!" Ebenezer said, alarmed. "I am as loyal as you."

Sayer smiled for an instant but said in a serious tone, "Yet ye wish King William to lose his province to a Papist?"

"I am a poet," Ebenezer declared, almost adding
and a virgin
from habit; "I know naught of Jacobites and Papists, and care less."

"Nor knew ye aught of Maryland, it seems," Sayer added. "How well do ye know your patron?"

"Not at all, save that he is a great and generous man. I've conversed with him but once, but the history of his province persuades me he was done a pitiful injustice. I'faith, the scoundrels that have fleeced and slandered him! I am confident King William knows not the whole truth."

"But you do?"

"I don't say that. Still and all, a villain is a villain! This fellow Claiborne, that I heard of, and Ingle, and John Coode, that led the latest insurrection --"

"Did he not strike a great blow for the faith, against the Papists?" Sayer demanded.

Ebenezer began to grow uncomfortable. "I know not where your sympathies lie, Colonel Sayer; belike thou'rt a colonel in Coode's militia and will clap me in prison the day we step ashore in Maryland --"

"Then were't not the part of prudence to watch thy speech? Mind, I don't say I
am
a friend of Coode's, but for all ye know I may be."

"Aye, 'twere indeed the part of prudence," Ebenezer said, a trifle frightened. "You may say 'tis not always prudent to be just, and I 'tis not always just to be prudent. I am no Roman Catholic, sir, nor antipapist either, and I wonder whether 'tis a matter 'twixt Protestants and Papists in Maryland or 'twixt rascals and men of character, whate'er their faith."

"Such a speech could get thee jailed there," Sayer smiled.

"Then 'tis proof of their injustice," Ebenezer declared, not a little anxiously, "for I'm not on either side. Lord Baltimore strikes me as a man of character, and there's an end on't. It might be I'm mistaken."

Sayer laughed. "Nay, thou'rt not mistaken. I was but trying your loyalty."

"To
whom,
prithee? And what is your conclusion?"

"Thou'rt a Baltimore man."

"Do I go to prison for't?"

"That may be," Sayer smiled, "but not at my hands. I am this very moment under arrest in Maryland for seditious speech against Coode and have been since last June."

"Nay!"

"Aye, along with Charles Carroll, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Edward Randolph, and half a dozen other fine fellows that spoke against the blackguard. I am no Papist either, but Charles Calvert is an old and dear friend of mine. May the day I fear to speak up against poltroons be the last of my life!"

Ebenezer hesitated. "How am I to know 'tis not
now
thou'rt trying me, and not before?"

"Ye can never know," Sayer replied, "especially in Maryland, where friends may change their colors like tree frogs. Why, do ye know, the barrister Bob Goldsborough of Talbot, my friend and neighbor for years, deposed against me to Governor Copley? The last man I'd have thought a turncoat!"

Ebenezer shook his head.
"A man will sell his heart to save his neck.
The picture looks drear enough, i'faith!"

"Yet there's this to say for't," Sayer said, "that it makes the choice a clean one: ye must hold your tongue with all save your conscience or else speak your mind and take the consequences -- discretion goes out the window, and so doth compromise."

"Is this the Voice of Reason speaking?" Ebenezer asked.

"Nay, 'tis the Voice of Action. Compromise serves well enough when neither extreme will let ye what ye want: but there are things men must not want. What comfort is a whole skin, pray, when the soul is wounded unto death? 'Twas I wrote Baltimore his first full account of Coode's rebellion, and rather than live under his false Associators I left my house and lands and came to England."

"How is it thou'rt returning? Will you not be clapped in irons?"

"That may be," Sayer said. "Howbeit, I think not. Copley's dead since September, and Baltimore himself had a hand in commissioning Francis Nicholson to replace him. D'ye know Nicholson?"

Ebenezer admitted that he did not.

"Well, he hath his faults -- chiefly a great temper and a passion for authority -- but his ear's been bent the right way, and he'll have small use for Coode's sort. Ere he got this post he was with Edmund Andros in New England, and 'twas Leisler's rebellion in New York that ran him out -- the very model of Coode's rebellion in Maryland. Nay, I fear no harm from Nicholson."

"Nonetheless, 'tis a bold resolve," Ebenezer ventured.

Sayer shrugged. "Life is short; there's time for naught but bold resolves."

Ebenezer started and looked sharply at his companion.

"What is't?"

"Nothing," Ebenezer said. "Only a dear friend of mine was wont to tell me that. I've lost track of him these six or seven years."

"Belike he made some bold resolve himself," Sayer suggested, "though 'tis easier to recommend than do. Did ye heed his counsel?"

Ebenezer nodded, "Hence both my voyage and my laureateship," he said, and since they had a long ride before them he told his traveling-companion the story of his failure at Cambridge, his brief sojourn in London with Burlingame and his long one with Peter Paggen, the wager in the winehouse, and his audience with Lord Baltimore. The motion of the carriage must have loosened his tongue, for he went into considerable detail. When he concluded with his solution to the problem of choosing a notebook and showed him Bragg's ledger, Sayer laughed so hard he had to hold his sides.

"Oh! Ha!" he cried.
"That for your golden mean!
Oh, 'shodikins! Thou'rt a credit to your tutor, I swear!"

" 'Twas my first act as Laureate," Ebenezer smiled. "I saw it as a kind of crisis."

"Marry, and managed it wondrous well! So here ye sit: virgin and poet! Think ye the twain will dwell 'neath the same roof and not quarrel with each other day and night?"

"On the contrary, they live not only in harmony but in mutual inspiration."

"But what on earth hath a virgin to sing of? What have ye in your ledger there?"

"Naught save my name," Ebenezer admitted. "I had minded to paste my commission there, that Baltimore drafted, but it got packed in my trunk. Yet I've two poems to copy in it from memory, when I can. The one I spoke of already, that I wrote the night of the wager: 'tis on the subject of my innocence."

At his companion's request Ebenezer recited the poem.

"Very good," Sayer said when it was done. "Methinks it puts your notion aptly enough, though I'm no critic. Yet 'tis a mystery to me, what ye'll sing of save your innocence. Prithee recite me the other piece."

"Nay, 'tis but a silly quatrain I wrote as a lad -- the first I ever rhymed. And I've but three lines of't in my memory."

"A pity. The Laureate's first song: 'twould fetch a price someday, I'll wager, when thou'rt famous the world o'er. Might ye treat me to the three ye have?"

Ebenezer hesitated. "Thou'rt not baiting me?"

"Nay!" Sayer assured him. " 'Tis a mere natural curiosity, is't not, to wonder how flew the mighty eagle as a fledgling? Do we not admire old Plutarch's tales of young Alcibiades flinging himself before the carter, or Demosthenes shaving half his head, or Caesar taunting the Cilician pirates? And would ye not yourself delight in hearing a childish line of Shakespeare's, or mighty Homer's?"

"I would, right enough," Ebenezer admitted. "But will ye not judge the man by the child? 'Tis the present poem alone, methinks, that matters, not its origins, and it must stand or fall on's own merits, apart from maker and age."

"No doubt, no doubt," Sayer said, waving his hand indifferently, "though this word
merit's
total mystery to me. What I spoke of was
interest,
and whether 'tis good or bad in itself, certain your
Hymn to Innocence
is of greater interest to one who knows the history of its author than to one who knows not a bean of the circumstances that gave it birth."

"Your argument hath its merits," Ebenezer allowed, not a little impressed to hear such nice reasoning from a tobacco-planter.

Sayer laughed. "A fart for thy
merit!
My argument hath its
interest,
peradventure, to one who knows the arguer, and the history of such debates since Plato's time."

"Yet surely the
Hymn
hath some certain degree of merit, and hath nor more nor less whether he that reads it be a Cambridge don or silly footboy -- or for that matter, whether 'tis read or not."

"Belike it doth," Sayer said with a shrug. " 'Tis very like the schoolmen's question, whether a falling tree on a desert isle makes a sound or no, inasmuch as no ear hears it. I've no opinion on't myself, though I'll own the quarrel hath some interest: 'tis an ancient one, with many a mighty implication to't."

"This
interest
is the base of thy vocabulary," Ebenezer remarked, "as
merit
seems to be of mine."

"It at least permits of conversation," Sayer smiled. "Prithee, which gleans more pleasure from thy
Hymn?
The footboy who knows not Priam from Good King Wenceslas, or the don who calls the ancients by their nicknames? The salvage Indian that ne'er heard tell of chastity, or the Christian man who's learned to couple innocence with unpopped maidenheads?"

"Marry!" Ebenezer exclaimed. "Your case hath weight, my friend, but I confess it repels me to own the muse sings clearest to professors! 'Twas not of them I thought when I wrote the piece."

"Nay, ye mistake me," Sayer said. " 'Tis no mere matter of schooling, though none's the worse for a little education. Human experience is what I mean: knowledge of the world, both as stored in books and learnt from the hard text of life. Your poem's a spring of water, Master Laureate -- 'sheart, for that matter everything we meet is a spring, is't not? That the bigger the cup we bring to't, the more we fetch away, and the more springs we drink from, the bigger grows our cup. If I oppose your notion 'tis that such thinking robs the bank of human experience, wherein I have a considerable deposit. I will not drink with any man who'd have me throw away my cup. In short, sir, though I am neither poet nor critic, nor e'en a common
Artium Baccalaureus,
but only a simple sot-weed planter that hath read a book or two in's time and seen a bit o' the wide world, yet I'm confident your poem means more to me than to you."

"What! That are neither virgin nor poet?"

Sayer nodded. "As for the first, I have been one in my time and look on't now from the vantage-point of experience, which ye do not. For the second, 'tis but a
different
view ye get as author. Nor am I the dullest of readers: I quite appreciate the wordplays in your first quatrain, for instance."

"Wordplays? What wordplays?"

"Why,
chaste Penelope,
for one," Sayer said. "What better pun for a wife plagued twenty years by suitors? 'Twas a clever choice!"