The Sot-Weed Factor (45 page)

" 'Fore God I am till now," he said, "and if you call this deed deceit, then grant at least 'tis done for noble cause!"

She turned away in tears, but when, summoning every particle of his courage, Ebenezer embraced her from behind, she offered no more protest than to cry, "What shall I think?"

"That thou'rt yet a comely piece!" Astonished at his own temerity, he caressed her. When even then she did not resist, her passivity fired him with encouragement.

"Ho, here," he cried, "to the bed with you!" Dizzy with success, he gave his tongue free rein. "I shall cleave thee with the rhymer's blade, cure thee with the smoke of love, stuff thee with the lardoon of Parnassus, baste and infuse thee with the muse's nectar, and devour thee while thou'rt yet aquiver!"

"Nay, prithee," Susan said, "ye've proved your point!"

"And now shall press and ply it like St. Thomas," Ebenezer said, "till my virgin quill hath writ a very
Summa!"

" 'Twere cruel to feign such passion out of gratitude, and wicked to cheat Joan Toast!" She offered resistance now, but Ebenezer would not release her.

"Then call me cruel and wicked when thou'rt swived!" He pushed her onto the bed.

" 'Twill be common rape!" she squealed.

"So be't!"

"Not here, then! 'Sheart, not here!"

"Why not, pray?" asked the poet; he paused with his innocence at the ready.

"Some women take a man without a sound," the swine-girl said, averting her eyes, "but I cannot; whether 'tis a wooing or what have ye, I must hollow like a rutting cat, and flail about."

"So much the better," Ebenezer said.

" 'Twill bring the household running --
Stop,
I warn ye!"

"They are no canting Puritans, methinks -- hold still, there!"

"Then swive me, damn your eyes!" Susan cried, and gave up struggling altogether. "Break your vow, cheat Joan Toast, let Captain Mitchell come a-running when I scream! He'll laugh to see't, and beat me later for't, and tell the tale all up and down the Province!"

This possibility gave the Laureate pause. He released his grip on the woman's arms, and she took the opportunity to move aside and sit up.

"I'll throttle you if I must," he said, but the threat was more surly than sincere.

"Ye needn't," Susan grumbled. "Slack off, now, ere ye take a lover's pain, and meet me in the barn anon."

"Get on with't. I'm not so gullible. We'll go together."

But Susan explained that they were sure to be seen leaving the house, and the scandal would be the same.

"I'll go there now," she said, "and you come half an hour behind. Then ye may play the two-backed beast to your heart's content, with none save my swine to hear me."

And on this ambiguous pledge she left, before the poet could catch her.

The Laureate Yet Further Attends the Swine-Maiden

A
very few minutes
after Susan Warren's departure Bertrand entered the Laureate's chamber and found his master pacing furiously about, sighing and smacking his fist into his hand.

" 'Sbody, how these scoundrels eat!" the valet said. His voice was thick and his stance unsteady. " 'Tis coarse, I'll grant, but copious."

"Methinks you more than quenched your thirst as well," Ebenezer observed uncordially. "What is't you want?"

"Why, nothing that I know of, sir. What I mean, they said I was to sleep here."

"Sleep, then, and be damned to you. There's the bed."

"Ah, sir 'tis thine, not mine. Only let me have that quilt; I'll want no more."

Ebenezer shrugged and went to the window; unfortunately he could not see the barn from there. His valet spread the quilt on the floor, flopped heavily upon it, and sighed a mighty sigh. " 'Tis not the same as being god in a golden town," he declared, patting his stomach, "but 'twill do for the nonce, i'faith! I wonder how our Drakepecker fares?" When he saw no answer was forthcoming he sighed once more, turned on his side, and in a trice fell fast asleep.

His master, less tranquil, cracked his knuckles and clucked his tongue, debating what to do. At Susan Warren's first distraction his mad impulse had faltered, and upon her departure from the room it had foundered altogether. He was at sixes and sevens. Twice now he had come within an ace of fornication -- worse, of meaningless rape -- and his integrity had been preserved by chance, through outside agencies. The girl in the
Cyprian's
rigging had been assaulted and was helpless; the Warren woman had been assaulted and was coarse and ugly in the face; both were objects not for passion but for pity, and what resemblance they bore to Joan Toast, so far from serving as an excuse for his inexcusable behavior, was further indictment of it. All this he saw clearly, and remembered, as well the relief and shame he had felt a fortnight since, after fate had fetched him from the mizzen ratlines. To go now to the barn would be to cheat the girl who, incredibly, had come half around the world for love of a man never smiled on thitherto by any woman save his sister, and to sacrifice besides a good moiety of his essence to a ruined tart between him and whom no love was lost, and who would contemn the deed as much as he. Yet he also saw, and could not fathom, that in his heart the question still lay open.

" 'Tis too absurd!" he thought, and flung himself angrily upon the bed where they had grappled. "I shall think of it no more." He regarded Bertrand with envy, but sleep, for him, was out of the question: his fancy burned with images of the swine-maiden suffering his punishments and molestations, confessing with averted eyes how noisily she wooed, and waiting for him at that moment in the barn. On the scales of Prudence one pan lay empty, while Reason's entire weight tipped down the other; what dark force, then, on the scales of Choice, effected counterbalance?

While thus he lay debating, his valet, though asleep, was by no means at rest. His innards commenced to growl and snarl like beagles at a grounded fox; the hominy and cider in him foamed and effervesced; anon there came salutes to the rising moon, and the bedchamber filled with the perfume of ferment. The author of these snored roundly, but his master was not so fortunate; indeed, he had at length to flee the room, ears ringing, head a-spin, and the smart of bumbolts in his eyes. The guests were still carousing in the parlor; Ebenezer gathered from what he could hear that the host's son Timothy had returned and was regaling them with indelicate verses. He slipped out to the front porch unobserved to breathe the cool air moving off the river, and from the way-station soon enough strolled barnwards, deaf to the judgment of his conscience.

The moon shed light to walk by in the yard, but the inside of the barn was black as Chaos. He thought of calling Susan, but decided not to.

"I shall approach in silence, and clip her like a brigand in the dark!"

This was a thrilling fancy: he pricked up at every rustle in the barn, and the cramps of love like hatching chicks bid fair to burst their prisons. What's more, six stealthy paces in the dark were enough to stir his bladder past ignoring; he was obliged to relieve himself then and there before going farther.

"God aideth those that aid themselves,"
he reflected.

But unlike Onan, who hit no noisier target than the ground, the hapless Laureate chanced to strike a cat, a half-grown tom not three feet distant that had looked like a gray rock in the dark. And like the finger-flick of Descartes' God, which Burlingame once spoke of, this small shot in the dark set an entire universe in motion! The mouser woke with a hiss and flew with splayed claws at the nearest animal -- fortunately not Ebenezer but one of Susan's shoats. The young pig squealed, and soon the barn was bleating with the cries of frightened animals. Ebenezer himself was terrified, at first by the animals, whose number and variety he had not suspected, and then lest the din, now amplified by barking dogs outside, arouse the household. When he jumped back, holding up his breeches in one hand, he happened upon a stick leaning against the wall -- possibly Susan's staff. He snatched it up, at the same time crying "Susan! Susan!" and laid about him vigorously until the combatants ran off -- the shoat into the cow stalls and the cat into a corner whence had come some sound of poultry. A moment later the respite ended: the barn was filled with quacks and squawks; ducks, geese, and chickens beat the air wildly in their effort to flee the cat, and Ebenezer suffered pecks about the head and legs as bird after bird encountered him. This new commotion was too much for the dogs, a pair of raucous spaniels: they bounded in from the yard in pursuit of what they took to be a fox or weasel preying on the poultry, and for all the Laureate thrashed around him with his stick, they ran him from the barn and treed him in a poplar near the closest tobacco-shed. There they held him at bay for some fifteen minutes before trotting off to sleep, their native lack of enthusiasm overcoming their brief ambition.

As yet the poet had seen no sign of Susan Warren, and he began to fear she had deceived him after all. He resolved to descend and try the barn once more, both to verify his suspicions and to take cover from the mosquitoes, which were raising welts all over his face and ankles; but as he was climbing down he heard a noise like a buzz or rattle in the grass. Was it only a common cricket, or was it one of those snakes Mr. Keech had described during supper? The notion of descent lost all its charm, and though he heard the sound no more, and the mosquitoes were no less hungry, he remained a good while longer in the tree, too frightened even to compose an indignant Hudibrastic.

He might, in fact, have still been there at sunup -- for on the heels of Fear, like a tart behind her pimp, came the shame he knew would embrace him soon or late, and Shame brought her gaunt-eyed sister-whore Despair -- but at length he heard some man at the back of the house say "No more, now, Susan; good night and get ye gone!" Then the house door closed, and a cloaked form crossed the distant yard and entered the barn.

"That scoundrel Mitchell had her in the parlor!" Ebenezer thought, and recalled the coarse familiarity with which the planter had saluted her. "She was accosted as she left and put to some lewd entertainment, and only now hath managed to escape!"

This conjecture, so far from filling him with pity, revived his ardor at once, as had the plight of the
Cyprian
women; quietly and cautiously he slid down from the poplar and stalked through the tall grass to the barn, expecting at any moment to feel the fangs of the viper in his heel. Arriving safely at the doorway, he entered without a sound and saw inside only the faintest of gleams from a shaded lantern.

"Hssst!"
he whispered, and
"Hssst!"
came the reply. Ebenezer heard a labored respiration, unmistakably human, just down the wall from where he stood, and so resolved to call no more, but execute his original plan of surprise assault. Very carefully he crept toward his prey, whose location in the pigpen he fixed easily by her heavy breathing and the rustle of restless swine in her vicinity. Only when he judged himself virtually upon her did he croon "Susie, Susie, me doxy, me dove!" at the same time clutching amorously at her form.

Bare legs he felt, and hams, but --

"Heav'n upon earth, what's this?"

"What is't, indeed?" a man's voice cried, and after a short struggle the poet found himself pinned face down in the sour straw of the pen. His would-be victim sat upon his back and held his arms; sows, hogs, and shoats snuffled nervously together at the far end of the enclosure. "Ye thought me your doxy, your dove, now, did ye? What knave are ye, sir?"

"Prithee, let me but explain!" Ebenezer pleaded. "I am Captain Mitchell's guest!"

"Our guest! What way is this to return our hospitality? Ye drink our cider and eat our hominy and then ye think to swive my Portia!"

"Portia? Who is Portia?"

"The same my father calls Susie. I'll wager he put ye up to this!"

The Laureate's heart sank. "Your father! Then thou'rt Tim Mitchell?"

"The same. And which ungrateful wretch are you?"

"I am Ebenezer Cooke, sir, Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland --"

"Nay!" said Mitchell, clearly impressed, and to Ebenezer's great surprise he released his hold at once. "Sit up, sir, please, and forgive my rude behavior; 'twas but concern for my Portia's chastity."

"I -- I quite forgive you," the poet said. He sat up hastily, wondering at the fellow's words. Tim Mitchell, to judge by his voice, was a man of Ebenezer's age at least; how could he speak of Susan's chastity? "I believe thou'rt having a jest at my expense, Mr. Mitchell, are you not?"

"Or you at mine," the other man sighed. "Ah well, ye've caught us fair, and Portia's life is in your hands."

"Her life! She's here, then, in this pen?"

"Of course, sir; over yonder with the rest. I beg ye not to speak a word to Father!"

"Marry!" the poet cried. "What madness is this, Mister Mitchell? Explain yourself, I beg you!"

The other man sighed. " 'Tis just as well I did, for if ye mean to ruin us, ye will, and if thou'rt a gentleman, perchance ye'll leave us in peace."

"Thou'rt in love with Susan?" Ebenezer asked incredulously.

"Aye and I am," Tim Mitchell replied, "and have been since the day I saw her. Her name is really Portia, Mister Cooke; 'tis Father calls her Susie, after a whore of a mistress he once had. He regards her as his property, sir, and treats her like a beast! Should he learn the truth of our love there would be no end to his wrath!"

Ebenezer's brain spun dizzily. "Dear Mister Mitchell --"

"The blackguard!" Timothy went on, his voice unsteady. "Till he hath got that new wench in his power, he comes out eveningly to poor sweet Portia, whose maidenhead he claimed when she was yet a shoat too young to fend him off."

Ebenezer could not but admire the metaphor of the shoat, and yet there were obvious discrepancies between the accounts of Susan's past. "I do declare," he protested, "this is not --"

"There is no limit to the man's poltroonery," Timothy hissed. "Albeit he is my father, sir, I loathe him like the Devil! Say naught of this, I beg ye, for in his wickedness, did he know aught of our love, he would give her to the lecherous boar in yonder pen, that e'er hath looked on her with lewd intent, and let him take his slavering will o' her."

Ebenezer gasped. "You do not mean to say --"

But even as the truth dawned on him, young Mitchell called "Portia! Hither, Portia!
Soo-ie!"
and an animal shuffled over from the far wall in the dark.

"Lookee there, how gentle!" Tim said proudly.

"Out on't!"
the Laureate whispered.

"Think o' her as your own dear sister, sir: would ye consign her to be ravished by a filthy beast?"

"I would not," Ebenezer exclaimed, "and I am affronted by the analogy! In sooth I cannot tell who's beastlier, the buggerman or the boar; 'tis the viciousest vice I e'er encountered!"

Timothy Mitchell's voice reflected more disappointment than intimidation at the outburst. "Ah, sir, no amorous practice is itself a vice -- can ye be in sooth a poet and not see that? Adultery, rape, deceit, unfair seduction -- 'tis
these
are vicious, not the coupling of parts: the sin is not in the act, but in the circumstances."

Ebenezer wished he could see this curious moralist's face. "What you say may well be true, but you speak of men and women --"

"Shame on a poet that barkens so lightly!" Timothy chided. " 'Twas male and female I spoke of, not men and women."

"But such a foul, unnatural jointure!"

Timothy laughed. "Methinks Dame Nature's not so nice as thee, sir. I grant ye that a rabbit-hound in heat seeks out a bitch to mate with, but doth he care a fig be she turnspit or mastiff? Nay, more, by Heav'n, he'll have at any partner, be't his bitch, his brother, or his master's boot! His urge is natural, and hath all nature for its target -- with a hound-bitch at the bulls-eye, so to speak. I have seen yonder spaniels humping sheep. . ."

Ebenezer sighed. "The face of buggery hath yet a sinful leer, for all the paint and powder of your rhetoric. These poor dumb creatures are betrayed by accident, but man hath light enough to see Dame Nature's plan."

"And sense enough to see it hath no object, save to carry on the species," Timothy added. "And wit enough to do for sport what the beasts do willy-nilly. I have no quarrel with women, Master Poet: 'tis many a maid I've loved ere now and doubtless shall again. But just as Scripture tells us that death is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, so Boredom, methinks, is the fruit of Wit and Fancy. A new mistress lies upon her back at night in a proper chamber, and her lover is content. But anon this simple pleasure palls, and they set about to refine their sport: from Aretine they learn the joy of sundry stoops and stances; from Boccaccio and the rest they learn to woo by the light o' day, in fields and wine butts and chimney corners; from Catullus and the naughty Greeks they learn
There are more ways to the woods than one,
and more woods than one to be explored by every way. If they have wit and daring there is no end to their discovery, and if they read as well, they have the amorous researches of the race at their disposal: the pleasures of Cathay, of Moors and Turks and Africans, and the cleverest folk of Europe. Is this not the way of't, sir? When men like us become enamored of a woman, we fall in love with every part and aspect; we cannot rest till we know with all our senses every plain and secret part of our beloved, and then we gnash our teeth that we cannot go beneath her skin! I am no great poet like you, sir, but 'twas just this craving I once turned into verse, in this manner: