The Sot-Weed Factor (53 page)

Who'd ride the Roan, and who the Sorrel."

"E'en wittier!" the poet applauded. " 'Tis better than Tom Trent could pen, with Dick Merriweather to help him! But you've still no Hudibrastic.
Quarrel, snarl; quarrel, sorrel."

"I yield," said Burlingame.

"Consider this, then:

The Man and I commenc'd to quarrel

Anent the Style of our Apparel.

Quarrel, apparel:
That is Hudibrastic."

Burlingame made a wry face. "They clash and jingle!"

"Precisely. The more the clash, the better the couplet."

"Aha, then!" cried the tutor. "What says my Laureate to this?

The Man and I commenc'd to quarrel

Who'd ride the Roan and who the Dapple."

"Quarrel
and
dapple?"
Ebenezer exclaimed.

"Doth it not jangle like the brassy bells of Hades?"

"Nay, 'twill never do!" Ebenezer shook his head firmly. "I had thought you'd caught the essence of't, but the words must needs have
some
proximity if they're to jangle.
Quarrel
and
dapple
are ships in different oceans: they cannot possibly collide, and a collision is what we seek."

"Then try this," Burlingame suggested:

"The Man and I commenc'd to quarrel

Whose turn it was to woo the Barrel."

"Barrel! Barrel,
you say?" Ebenezer's face grew red. "What is this
barrel?
How would you use it?"

" 'Tis a Hudibrastic," replied Burlingame with a smile. "I'd use it to piss in."

"B'm'faith!" He laughed uncomfortably. " 'Tis the pissingest Hudibrastic ever I've heard!"

"Will you hear more?" asked Burlingame. "I am a diligent student of jangling rhyme."

"Piss on't," the poet declared. "Thy lesson's done!"

"Nay, I am just grasping the spirit of't! Haply I'll take up versifying myself someday, for't seems no backbreaking chore."

"But you know the saying, Henry:
A poet is born, not made."

"Out on't!" Burlingame scoffed. "Were you not made Laureate ere you'd penned a proper verse? I'll wager I could rhyme with the cleverest, did I choose to put my nose to't."

"No man knows better than I your various gifts," Ebenezer said in an injured tone. "Yet your true poet may have no other gift than verse."

"Only try me," Burlingame challenged. "Name me some names, and hear me rhyme."

"Very well, but there's more to verse than matching words. You must couple me a line to the line I fling you."

"Fling away thy lines, and see what fish you hook on 'em!"

"Stand fast," warned Ebenezer, "for I'll start you with a hard one:
Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling."

"That is from
Hudibras,"
Burlingame observed, "but I forgot what Butler rhymed with't.
Dwelling, dwelling
-- ah, 'tis no chore at all:

Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,

Which scarce repay'd the Work of Selling."

"Too close," said Ebenezer. "Give us a Hudibrastic."

"Your Hudibrastics will break my jaw! Howbeit, if 'tis a jangle you wish, I shall shudder the ears off you:

Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,

Riding like a demon'd Hellion.

Are you jarred?"

"It fills the gap," Ebenezer admitted. "But the difference 'twixt poet and coxcomb is precisely that the latter stops gaps like a ship fitter caulking seams, merely to keep the boat afloat, while the former doth his work as doth a man with a maid: he fills the gap, but with vigor, finesse, and care; there's beauty and delight as well as utility in his plugging."

" 'Sheart, my friend," Burlingame said, "you go on like the gods themselves! How would a Laureate poet fill this gap, prithee, that yawns like the pit of Hell?"

Ebenezer replied, " 'Twas filled by Sam Butler in this wise -- observe the art, now, the collision:

Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,

And out he rode a Colonelling."

"Ah, stay!" cried Burlingame. "This is too much!
A Co-lo-nelling!
'Tis a fabrication -- aye, a Chimaera!
Co-lo-nelling,
is't! Why did not Mister Butler, if he was so enamored of his unnatural word, call it
ker
nelling, as't should be called, and rhyme from there?"

"Why not indeed? What would you rhyme with
kernelling,
Henry?"

" 'Tis naught of a chore to me," Burlingame scoffed. "To rhyme with
kernelling
-- Well,
kernelling
--" he hesitated.

"You see," smiled Ebenezer. "In his inspiration the poet chose a rhyme for
dwelling
that is at once a rhyme and a Hudibrastic, and so avoided your quandary. Yield, now; there is no rhyme for
kernelling
."

"I yield," Burlingame said with apparent humility. "I can get me the first line --
Then went Sir Knight a kernelling
-- but can't rhyme the infernal thing."

The two travelers exchanged glances.

"Out upon't," Ebenezer muttered, "the lesson's done."

But Burlingame was delighted to see his unintentional
coup de ma
î
tre;
he went on to declaim theatrically from his horse:

"Then went Sir Knight a kernelling,

Pursuing all infernal Things,

Inflam'd by
Hopes
eternal Springs

Through Winterings and Vernallings

(As testify his Journallings

And similar Diurnallings,

Not mentioning Nocturnallings). . ."

"Desist!" Ebenezer commanded. "Spin me no more of this doggerel, Henry, lest I heave my breakfast upon the highway!"

"Forgive me," Burlingame laughed. "I was inspired."

"You were baiting me," the Laureate said indignantly. "Be not puffed up o'er such trifling achievement, the like of which we poets must better fifty times a page! You have a certain knack for rhyming, clear enough; but think not you can rhyme any word in Mother English, for a poet will name you words that have not their like in the language."

"Ha! Oh! Ha!" Burlingame cried with sudden glee. "I have hatched more! I'God, they crowd my fancy like the shoats to Portia's nipples!

Now lend me,
Muse,
supernal Wings

To sing Sir Knights Hibernalings,

His Doublings and his Ternallings,

His Forwardings and Sternallings;

To sing of his Hesternallings,

And also Hodiernallings,

Internal and external Things,

Both brief and diuturnal Things,

And even sempiternal Things,

His dark and his lucernal Things,

Maternal and Paternallings,

Sororal and Fraternal Things,

His blue and red Pimpernellings,

And sundry paraphernal Things
--"

"You do not love me!" Ebenezer said angrily. "I'll hear no more!"

"Nay, I beg you" -- Burlingame laughed -- "fob me not off so!"

"Sinful pride!" the poet chided, when he had recovered something of his composure.

" 'Twas but in jest, Eben; if it vexed you, I am contrite. 'Tis you who are the teacher now, not I, and you may take what steps you will. In truth you've taught me more than erst I knew."

" 'Tis clear your talent wants snaffle and curb in lieu of the crop," said Ebenezer.

"Will you go on, then?"

Ebenezer considered for a moment and then agreed. "So be't, but no more teasing. I shall administer to you the severest test of the rhymer's art: the slipperiest crag on the rocky face of Parnassus!"

"Administer at will," said Burlingame; "if 'tis a point of rhyme I swear there's none can best me, for I have learnt old Mother English to her very privates. But say, let's make a sport of't, would you mind? Else 'twere much the same to win or lose."

"I've naught to wager," Ebenezer said, "nor should you wager if I had, for the word I mean to speak hath not its like." Then he had a happier thought: "Stay, how far yet is that ferry you spoke of?"

"Some five or six miles hence, I'd guess."

"Then let us wager the ride of our mounts, if you've a mind to. If you cannot rhyme the line I give you, you must walk from here to Cambridge ferry; if you can, 'tis I shall walk. Done?"

"Well wagered," Burlingame said merrily, "and I'll add more: who loses must not merely walk, but walk behind the old Roan there, that ever gets the bumbreezes near midmorning. 'Twill add a spice to the winner's victory!"

"Done," agreed the poet. "Let us on with the trial. I shall muse you a line, and you must rhyme it. Not a Hudibrastic, mind, but a perfect match."

"Is't
mosquito?"
asked Burlingame. "I'll say
incognito."

"Nay," the Laureate smiled, "nor is it
literature."

" 'Twould be bitter-that's-sure," his tutor laughed.

"Nor
misbehavior."

"Thank the Savior!"

"Nor
importunacy."

"That were lunacy!"

"Nor
tiddly-winks."

" 'Twould gain thee little, methinks!"

"Nor
galligaskin."

"Was I askin'?"

"Nor
charlatan."

"Thin as tarlatan!"

"Nor
Saracen."

" 'Twould be embarrassin'!"

"Nor even
autoschediastic."

"Then it ought to be fantastic!"

"Nor
catoptromancy."

"That's not so fancy!"

"Nor
procrustean."

"I should bust thee one!"

"Nor is it
Piccadilly bombast."

"You'd be sick-o'-filly-bum-blast!"

"Nor
Grandma's visit."

"Then, man, what is it?"

" 'Tis
month,"
Ebenezer said.

"Month?"
cried Burlingame.

"Month,"
the Laureate repeated. "Rhyme me a word with
month. August is the Year's eighth Month."

"Month!"
Burlingame said again. " 'Tis but a single syllable!"

"Marry, then, 'twill be easy," Ebenezer smiled.
"August is the Year's eighth Month."

"August is the Year's eighth Month."
Burlingame began to show some alarm as he searched his store of language.

"No lisping, now," Ebenezer warned. "Don't say
Whoe'er denieth it ith a Dunth,
or
Athent thee not, then count it oneth.
That will not do."

Burlingame sighed. "And no Hudibrastics, you say?"

"Nay," Ebenezer confirmed. "You mayn't say
August is the Year's eighth Month, And not the tenth or milli-onth.
Ben Oliver tried that once in Locket's and was disqualified on the instant. I want a clear and natural rhyme."

"Is there aught in the language?" Burlingame cried.

"Nay," the poet declared, "as I warned you ere you took the wager."

Burlingame searched his memory so thoroughly that perspiration beaded his forehead, but after twenty minutes he was obliged to yield.

"I surrender, Eben; you have me pat." Most reluctantly, under his proté
g
é
's triumphant smile, he dismounted, and taking his place behind the aged roan, prepared to meet the odious consequences of his gamble.

"In future, Henry," Ebenezer boldly advised, "do not engage with poets in their own preserve. If I may speak with candor, the gift of language is vouchsafed to but a few, and though 'tis no great shame not to have't, 'twere folly to pretend to't when you have it not."

And having delivered himself of this unusual rebuke, Ebenezer began to hum a tune for very satisfaction. At the first slight elevation in the terrain over which they traveled, the roan mare, already wearied, broke wind noisily from the effort of climbing. Burlingame growled a mighty oath and cried out in disgust, "What sort of poor vocabulary is't, that possesses nary noun or verb to match the
onth
in
August is the Year's eighth Month?"

"Do not rail against the language," Ebenezer began, " 'tis really a most admirable tongue. . ."

He halted, as did Buriingame and the roan. The two men regarded each other warily.

"No matter," Ebenezer ventured. "The trial was done."

"Ah nay, Sir Laureate!" Burlingame laughed. "Mine is done, but thine is but begun! Down with you, now!"

"But
onth,"
Ebenezer protested -- nevertheless dismounting. " 'Tis not an English word, is't? What doth it signify?"

"Tut," said Burlingame, remounting his young gelding, "we set no such criterion as significance, that I recall. 'To match the
onth
. . .' is what I said:
onth
is the object of
match;
objects of verbs are substantives; substantives are words. Get thee behind yon roan!"

Ebenezer sighed, Burlingame laughed aloud, the roan mare once again broke wind, and on went the travelers toward Cambridge, Burlingame singing lustily:

"How wondrous a Vocabulary Is't,

that possesseth nary

Noun nor Verb the Rhyme for which'll

Stump the son of
Captain Mitchell!"

The Laureate Asserts That Justice Is Blind,

and Armed With This Principle, Settles a

Litigation

Upon their arrival
at the Choptank River ferry, Burlingame declared Ebenezer's sentence served; he paid out a shilling apiece for their fares and another shilling for the two horses', and the travelers took their places in the sailing scow for the two-mile run to Cambridge.

Burlingame pointed across the channel to a few scattered buildings, scarcely visible on the farther shore. "Yonder stands the seat of Dorset County. When last your father saw it, 'twas but a planter's landing."

Weary from his ordeal, Ebenezer made no effort to conceal his disappointment. "I knew 'twould be no English Cambridge, but I'll own I had not thought 'twas rude as
that.
What is there in't to sing in epical verse?"

"Who knows what manner of sloven huts the real Troy was composed of, or cares to know?" his friend replied. " 'Tis the genius of the poet to transcend his material; and it wants small eloquence to argue that the meaner the subject, the greater must be the transcension."

To this the Laureate clucked his tongue and said, "Methinks the Jesuit hath the better of you, after all: you made a prisoner of his body, and he a convert of your Reason."

Burlingame bristled at the jibe, for it was not the first Ebenezer had directed at him that day. "It ill becomes you to defend the priest," he scolded in a low voice, so that the ferryman could not hear. " 'Tis not the Pope's cause we serve, but Baltimore's: the cause of Justice."

"True enough," the poet agreed. "Yet who's to say which cause is Justice's? Justice is blind."

"But men are not; and as for Justice, her blindness is the blindness of disinterest, not of innocence."

"That I deny," Ebenezer said blithely.

"Thou'rt grown entirely captious!"

"You are near forty, and I but twenty-eight," the Laureate declared, "and in experience thou'rt at least three times my age; but despite my innocence -- nay, just
because
of't -- I deem myself no less an authority than you on matters of Justice, Truth, and Beauty."

"Outrageous!" cried his friend. "Why is't men pick the oldest and most knowledgeable of their number to judge them, if not that worldliness is the first ingredient of Justice?"

But Ebenezer stuck to his guns. " 'Tis but a vulgar error, like many another."

Burlingame showed more irritation by the minute. "What is the difference 'twixt
innocence
and
ignorance,
pray, save that the one is Latin and the other Greek? In substance they are the same: innocence is ignorance."

"By which you mean," Ebenezer retorted at once, "that innocence of the world is ignorance of't: no man can quarrel with that. Yet the surest thing about Justice, Truth, and Beauty is that they live not in the world, but as transcendent entities, noumenal and pure. 'Tis everywhere remarked how children of't perceive the truth at once, where their elders have been led astray by sophistication. What doth this evidence, if not that innocence hath eyes to see what experience cannot?"

"Fogh!" scoffed Burlingame. "That is mere Cambridge claptrap, such as dear old Henry More did e'er espouse. Thank Heav'n such babes are helpless in society -- think how 'twould be to have one for your judge!"

"Haply Justice would live up to her motto for the first time ever," Ebenezer said.

"That she would!" Henry laughed. "She could be pictured holding dice in lieu of scales, for where blind Innocence is judge, the jury is blind Chance! I cannot decide," he added, "whether you maintain your innocence because you hold such notions as this, or hold the notions to justify your innocence."

Ebenezer looked away and frowned as if at the approaching wharf, where considerable activity seemed to be in progress. "Methinks 'twere fitter to ask that of yourself, Henry: a man can cast away his innocence when he list, but not his knowledge."

On this ungenerous note the argument ended, for the ferry had reached its destination. The travelers, mutually disgruntled, stepped up to the wharf, which was built at the juncture of Choptank River and a large creek, and with some difficulty -- for the tide was out -- led their horses up a steep gangplank after them.

Unprepossessing as it had been from afar, the town of Cambridge was even less impressive at close range. There was, in fact, no town at all: a small log structure visible farther inland Burlingame identified as the Dorchester County Courthouse, which had been built only seven years before. Nearer the river was a kind of inn or ordinary of even more recent construction, and at the foot of the wharf itself was what appeared to be a relatively large warehouse and general merchandise store combined -- a building which outdated both town and county as such, and which doubtless had been known to Ebenezer's father as early as 1665. Other than these no buildings could be seen, and there were, apparently, no private houses at all.

Yet at least a score of people were strolling on the wharf and about the warehouse; the sounds of general carouse rang down the roadway from the tavern; and in addition to the numerous small craft moored here and there along the shore, two larger, ocean-going vessels -- a bark and a full-rigged ship -- lay out in the Choptank channel. The activity, so disproportionate to the size and aspect of the town, Ebenezer learned was owing generally to its role as seat of the county and the convenience of its wharf and warehouse to the surroundiing plantations, and specifically to the fall term of the court, currently in session, which provided a rare diversion for the populace.

The roan mare and the gelding they tethered to a sapling near the creek, and after a light dinner at the ordinary the travelers parted company, rather to the Laureate's relief. Burlingame remained at the inn with the object of hiring lodgings for the night, inquiring the whereabouts of William Smith, and refreshing his thirst; and Ebenezer, left to himself, strolled idly up the road toward the courthouse, preoccupied with his thoughts. Since the day was warm, the courthouse small, and litigation such a popular entertainment among the colonials, the court was sitting out of doors, in a little valley just adjacent to the building. Ebenezer found nearly a hundred of the audience present already, though the court had not yet reconvened; they were engaged in eating, drinking heartily, calling and waving to one another across the natural amphitheater formed by the valley, wrestling playfully on the grass, singing rowdy songs, and otherwise amusing themselves in a manner which the poet deemed scarcely befitting the dignity of a courtroom. Notes for tobacco were everywhere being exchanged, and Ebenezer soon realized that virtually all the men were making wagers on the outcome of the trials. The fact astonished him and even stirred vague forebodings in his mind, but he took a seat along the top of the amphitheater nevertheless to witness the session: his interest was aroused by his recent debate with Burlingame, for one thing, and he hoped as well to spawn couplets on the majesty of Maryland's law, as had been suggested by --

" "Sdeath!" he thought, and winced and sighed: he could not manage to remember that it was Burlingame, not Charles Calvert, who had issued his commission -- it was a thought too great and painful to hold fast in his awareness.

After some minutes the crier appeared from the courthouse door and bawled
"Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!"
but advanced no farther than the first hedgerow before a rain of cheerfully-flung twigs and pebbles drove him back. Then entered the judge,
sans
wig and robe of office, whom Ebenezer recognized only because, after pausing to chat with several of the audience and nod his head at their exchanges of tobacco-notes, he took his place upon the open-air bench. Next came the jury (Ebenezer approved, uncertainly, their apparent practice of wagering only among themselves) and finally the attorneys for prosecution and defense, sharing a simple tall flagon with the judge. The only principals not present were the plaintiff and the defendant, and as Ebenezer scanned the crowd, conjecturing as to their identities, his eye fell on Susan Warren herself, sitting near the front row with an elderly man whom the poet had never seen before! She had, it appeared, cleaned herself up to some extent, but where before her face had been dirty and her brown hair matted, now she was rouged and powdered to excess, and her hair was done up like a tart's. She had exchanged her tattered Scotch cloth for sleazy satinesco, gaudily printed and open at the bosom, and her manner was in keeping with her dress: her laugh was loud and easily provoked: her eves roved appraisingly from one man to another the while she talked to her escort; and she emphasized her statements with a hand laid lightly now on her partner's arm, now on his shoulder, now on his knee.

Ebenezer watched her for some time with feelings various and strong: his professions to Burlingame to the contrary notwithstanding, he was piqued as well as grateful that she'd jilted him in Captain Mitchell's barn: he yearned to know what had changed her mind, whether she had rejoined her father (and if so, why she was persisting in this harlotry), and -- perhaps most urgently -- whether she had news of Joan Toast, and why her story had not corresponded quite with Burlingame's. Moreover, despite his disgust at her brazen appearance and his concern for Joan Toast, he felt unmistakable pangs of jealousy at the sight of Susan's escort -- who, however, ignored her coquetries. Ebenezer debated with himself whether to catch her eye and attempt to converse with her -- among other things, he did not wholly trust Burlingame's pledge not to apprehend her -- but at length he decided not to.

"I am well quit of her," he declared to himself. "As my advances to her plague my conscience, may her desertion of me plague hers. The just thing's to meddle farther neither in her flight nor in her capture, and there's an end on't."

So engrossing were these reflections, the Laureate scarcely remarked that the court was now in session and the dispute waxing hot, until the spectators' shouts drew his attention to the bar. In progress was a change-of-venue case from Kent County, and the testimony, evidently, was going hard against the plaintiff, on whose victory a substantial amount of Dorchester's money must have been riding; the audience was shouting down the attorney for the defendants, a married couple of middle age.

"Be't said again," the lawyer was declaiming, "that the accused, my client Mr. Bradnox -- himself a bona fide justice o' the peace, was on the eve in question sitting justly and peaceably at home with Mistress Mary Bradnox his wife, when the plaintiff, Mr. Salter, did appear at his door with rum and playing-cards and did invite the two defendants to make merry. 'Twas then near midnight, and Mrs. Bradnox soon after bade the men good night and retired to her chamber --"

" 'Twas the chamberpot she run to!" bawled the plaintiff from across the yard, and the audience cried assent. The defense counsel held a whispered colloquy with his client.

"I hereby amend my statement on advisement from Mrs. Bradnox that she did in sooth heed nature's call, but went straight from pot to cot, as't were."

"A lie!" the plaintiff cried again. He was a dark, lean fellow in his forties, uncommonly tall and leathery, and had a small jug at his side from which he drank. "When I went upstairs anon to try her, I found her cross-legged in the window seat with a song upon her lips and my good liquor in her bowels, afiring farts at the waning moon."

"As the plaintiff Mr. Salter hath confessed," the defense lawyer went on slyly, "he did later leave the festivities, having got my client fuddled, and did climb the stairs to Mrs. Bradnox's chamber, whereto he did force entry and assault my client in dastard fashion -- the truth of't is, he swived Mistress Mary from arse to Michaelmas and did thereby cuckold her spouse the Justice!"

"Hear!" cried the spectators.

"Having finished which evil work," the defense continued, "this Salter did return to the parlor, where he ill employed his host's beliquorment to cheat him at a game o' lanterloo, to the tune of several hundred pounds of tobacco, plying him the while with yet more rum to hide the fraud. Whenas my pitiful client grew so light with his load o' drams that he tumbled to the floor, by which fall his nose did bleed much, this same John Salter did spit upon him, make water on him, and otherwise offend the laws of hospitality, telling him finally that he was not two hours a horned cuckold. Hearing which, my client did on the instant go wondrous sober and, calling this same Salter blasphemer and turdy scoundrel, did ascend unto his wife's chamber in a fearful choler. Entering therein, he did commence to chastise her for a whore and scurvy peddletwat, with divers other epithets of castigation and admonition, and anon did grab her by the birth and drag her thus from bed to floor in an inhumane manner."

"Shame!" bawled the crowd, and, "To the post with him!" Ebenezer too was shocked, but not nearly so much by this revelation as by the entire preceding narrative of the plaintiff's behavior, the like of which, for brazenness, he had never heard. He wondered, in fact, how it was that Salter was the plaintiff and not the accused in the litigation.

"In the course of which domestic altercation," the defense proceeded, "the plaintiff Mr. Salter entered, and intruding himself betwixt the man and wife my clients, did take the part of Mistress Mary against her wedded spouse, clutching same about the neck and choking him till the Justice's eyes did lose their spark and stared all emptily like pissholes in the snow. . ."

"Hear!"

"Whereupon said Justice Bradnox did leave off his grip upon Mistress Mary's privates and confronted Salter with the latter's peccadilloes, contending that, by virtue of his having swived Mary from pot to pallet, said Sailer did forfeit any and all claim to the Justice's esteem and was in fact no proper guest but a gigolo and shitabed hypocrite. To which description the plaintiff did reply by blacking both the Justice's eyes and raising a duck-egg knot upon his pate, declaring the while that Justice Bradnox was deficient in manly virtue --"

"I told him he was manly as a steer," Salter specified, wiping the mouth of the wine-jug with his sleeve, "and useful as a whore in church."