The Sot-Weed Factor (88 page)

"Indeed. And yet the ring seems certain proof. . ." He allowed the sentence to trail off in vague perplexity. "Hi, here's an end to speculation: yonder stands my cabin."

The path had brought them out of the woods into a sizeable cleared field bounded on the north by a narrow bay. On the near end of the water-front stood a cabin, dimly lit, and several outbuildings. As they stabled the team and approached the house, Ebenezer grew increasingly nervous at the prospect of confronting Joan Toast; the most honorable course, he decided, was simply to present himself, humbly and without excuse, and leave the first reaction to her.

At the doorstep Billy Rumbly stopped and laid a hand on the poet's shoulder. "Let us quite understand each other, my friend: is it your intention to take my -- that is,
your
wife, I suppose -- is it your intention to take her from me for her own good?"

"That is my intention," Ebenezer admitted.

"By force, if need be?"

"I am neither armed nor inclined to violence, sir; my only weapon is persuasion, and 'tis not likely she'll even listen to me. Nor are you obliged to invite me in, under the circumstances; I'll not bring suit."

Billy chuckled. "Thou'rt a noble fellow! Very well, then, since we both love the woman and both feel answerable for her condition, let us both put her improvement above all personal considerations: we will put our separate cases and leave the choice to her. Belike she'll wash her hands of the twain of us!"

Ebenezer agreed, charmed anew by the civilization his host had acquired in so short time, and they entered the cabin. A single candle flickered near the door, and on the hearth the fire had burned to its last few coals; the room was obscure and chill.

"Yehawkangrenepo!"
Billy called, and explained in an undertone, "She obliges me to call her by that name.
Yehawkangrenepo!"

Now came a grunting and stirring from a straight-backed wooden bench before the fire; a woman sat up, her back to the door, and commenced rubbing her eyes and scratching in her wild dark hair. Her shift was ragged, filthy stuff, and she grunted and scratched about her person like a jackanapes picking fleas. Ebenezer felt faint at the wretched spectacle. The creature scratched her head again, rising from the bench as she did so, and the candle glinted briefly from her silver ring. The flash was barely perceptible, but it blinded the poet altogether to his resolve. He ran to throw himself at her feet.

"Joan Toast! Ah Christ, how I have wronged thee!"

At the sound of his voice the girl gasped; at sight of him lunging toward her she screamed and caught at the benchback for support. And then it was Ebenezer's turn to moan and stumble, for despite her changed appearance, the flickering candlelight, and the tears that made his vision swim, he saw when she turned that Billy Rumbly's mistress was neither Joan Toast nor Miss Meg Bromly, but his sister Anna.

Regarding the Conservation of Cultural

Energy, and Demonstrated With the Aid

of Rhetoric and Inadvertence

Whether from desuetude
or access of surprise, after her initial scream Anna's voice quite failed her. Brother and sister embraced in vast, unselfconscious relief at having found each other again, but even as Ebenezer comforted himself with her name and explained to bewildered Billy Rumbly, between sniffs and sobs, that she was his twin sister and not his wife, he felt her stiffen in his arms. At once his memory surrendered to the dreadful things he had learned from Burlingame, as well as the story, now newly appalling, of the Ahatchwhoop prince's courtship. The embrace became awkward; he made no effort to detain her when she pushed free of him and collapsed in tears on the bench.

"She is in sooth your sister?" Billy asked.

The poet nodded. "You must try to understand," he said, speaking with difficulty. "This is a painful moment for both of us. . . I can't explain just yet. . ."

"There will be time," Billy said. "For the present, my company is burdensome to all; I shall bid you
adieu
and return in time for breakfast."

"Nay!" Anna suddenly found her voice. The tears had marked courses through the dirt on her face. "This man is my husband," she declared to Ebenezer.

"Quite so," the poet murmured. " 'Tis I must go."

"I shan't allow it," Billy said firmly. "Whate'er the breach betwixt you, 'tis a family matter and must be put right. In any case I've meant for some time to sleep in the barn: I have cause to believe a thief hath been pilfering from it lately." The pretext was unconvincing, but it went unchallenged. Billy laid his hand affectionately on Anna's head. "Prithee mend the family fences with forgiveness and good will; 'tis a great pity for brother and sister not to love each other. Nay, raise up your eyes! And you, sir: I am in your debt already for arousing this woman to speech, and more than thankful for the chance that hath enabled me to repay your gift of a brother with like coin. I beg you only to remember our agreement: in the morning you must tell me the news from Bloodsworth Island, and we shall see what is to be done on every head."

Anna hung her head and said nothing; Ebenezer too, though embarrassed by his own unwillingness to protest, was so eager for private conversation with his sister that he permitted Billy to make up the fire in the cabin and then leave for the cheerless barn. He scarcely dared look at Anna; the thought of her condition made him weep. For a while they sat on opposite ends of the bench and stared into the fire, occasionally sniffing or wiping their eyes.

"You have been to Malden?" he ventured at last. From the corner of his eye he saw her shake her head negatively.

"I met a Mr. Spurdance at the wharf in Cambridge. . ."

"Then you know my disgrace. And you must have encountered. . . my wife there too, since you have your ring again." His throat ached; the tears ran afresh, and he turned to Anna with great emotion. "I was obliged to marry her or perish of my seasoning, as our mother did; but 'twas not her doing, Anna; you mustn't think ill of her. 'Tis true she is a whore, but she followed me to Maryland out of love --"

Again he faltered, remembering Burlingame's assertion that Anna's motive was the same. " 'Tis on my account she hath the pox and is a slave to opium; she suffered unimaginable indignities to be with me, and nursed me back to health when I was ill, nor made any claim on me whatsoe'er -- not e'en upon my chastity, I swear't! Her one wish, when all was lost, was that we fly together to London and live as brother and sister till her afflictions carried her off. And I, Anna -- I betrayed that saintly woman most despicably! I stole away alone; abandoned her to die uncared for! 'Tis I you must despise, not poor Joan Toast!"

"Despise?" Anna seemed surprised. "How can I despise either of you, Eben? 'Twas through deception you lost Malden, and honor as well as necessity required your marriage. I wish you had not abandoned her -- 'tis a hellish thing to be alone!" She found it necessary to pause for some moments after this observation. Then, speaking carefully and avoiding his eyes, she asked how it happened that he was not in London. Had he known she was in Maryland? Did he understand that she had loved Henry Burlingame for a dozen years and had come to Maryland hoping to marry him? Did he appreciate that it was Bertrand's terrible news, and Mr. Spurdance's, and Joan Toast's, and her despair at ever finding either Henry or her brother, and the shock of being assaulted by a savage who miraculously resembled Burlingame, that had brought her to her present state? She dissolved in tears of shame. Ebenezer took her hand, but made no attempt to answer the questions.

"My story will take hours to repeat," he said gently, "and I've been telling divers parts to divers people these two days till I am weary of't. I'faith, Anna, there is so much to say! You wept once when we were first separated for an evening, and declared we'd ne'er catch up to each other again -- I little dreamt the full import of that remark! Now 'tis no matter of hours or rooms that parts us; 'tis as if we were on twin mountaintops, with what an abyss between! We shall span it ere we leave this cabin, though it take a week of explanation -- how fine a gentleman Billy is to give us some hours to make beginnings! -- but methinks 'twere better to hear first what passed 'twixt you and Joan, and what the state of things at Malden is, now Father's there, for the smallest detail of my story may want an hour's gloss." By way of example he declared that the resemblance of Billy Rumbly and Henry Burlingame was no more miraculous than that of any other pair of brothers. Anna was almost dumb struck; she pleaded for more information, but Ebenezer was adamant.

"Please," he said, "have you not seen Henry at all? I must know these things ere I commence."

"Not at all," Anna sighed, "nor hath anyone in Cambridge or St. Mary's City: the name is foreign to them." And resigning herself to the postponement of her questions, she told of her great loneliness in St. Giles, her growing fear that Burlingame would never succeed in discovering his parentage (which discovery, she declared, he had made prerequisite to their marriage), and her final determination to leave their father to his querulousness, join Ebenezer at Malden, and either persuade Burlingame to abandon his research or else assist him in whatever way she could.

At this point Ebenezer interrupted; turning her face to his he said, "Dearest Anna, don't feel shame in your brother's presence! This bridge of ours must have piers of love and candor; else 'twill fall." What was on his mind was the love which she was alleged to feel for him, and about which he thought it imperative to reach an understanding from the first; however, he suddenly recalled Burlingame's assertion that Anna herself was at most only dimly aware of her strange obsession and possibly altogether oblivious to it. Her look of bewilderment seemed to confirm this assertion. "What I mean," he added lamely, "matters once reached a pass where Henry judged it necessary to take me altogether into his confidence. . . and in sooth, I have learned some things about him that you --" He could not go on; Anna blushed as deeply as he and veiled her eyes with her hand.

"And thou'rt aware that my husband resembles him in every particular," she said. "In short, I am no less virginal than thyself, and no more innocent."

"Let us speak no more of't!" Ebenezer begged.

"One more thing only." She removed her hand and regarded him seriously. Ebenezer felt certain that she was about to confess her unnatural passion -- a prospect the more alarming because of his suspicion, vouched stoutly for by Burlingame, that to some extent he shared it -- but instead she declared that he must not think her naï
ve with regard to Henry Burlingame. Hadn't she seen that he took his deepest pleasure in the two together? Hadn't he revolted her time and again at St. Giles by his amorous disquisitions on everything from asparagus-spears to bird dogs of both sexes? "Methinks 'tis easier to know another than to know thyself," she said. "There is little in Henry's character that is foreign to me." She smiled for the first time and blushed at a sudden recollection. "Dare I tell you something he neglected to? I asked him, ere the twain of you left London, wherefore you made so much of your virginity, when I longed so to have done with mine! And I said farther that were you he, the both of us would put an end to innocence."

Ebenezer shifted uncomfortably.

"His reply," Anna continued, watching Ebenezer's face, "was that you harbored in your breast a grand and secret passion for one woman that the world denied you, and had liefer remain a virgin than take second choice!"

"That is true to some extent," the poet granted. "Howbeit, 'twas not so much the
world
that denied me Joan Toast, as John McEvoy, and --"

"Stay, I did not finish. I shall confess, Eben, Henry's news inspired me with inordinate jealousy, albeit I knew we each would marry soon or late. 'Tis that we had been so close, you know. . . In any case, I demanded the name of this lady who had writ such a patent on your heart, and why you'd ne'er confided in your own dear sister that once knew your every whim and thought. Henry answered that you yourself scarce realized who she was, but that e'en if you did, the force of custom would seal your lips, inasmuch as the object of your passion was -- your sister!"

Ebenezer sat upright. "Henry said that? I'Christ, there is no end to the man's nefariousness! Do you know, Anna, he told me the selfsame thing about you? I had learned of your affair with him, you see -- this was before I knew of his impotence -- and I was aflame with rage and envy --"

He cut his sentence short, but its implication hung clearly between them. The room was filled at once with tension and embarrassment, of a different order from what they had felt before; their positions on the bench were suddenly awkward; on pretext of scratching her leg, Anna slipped her hand from under his and averted her eyes.

"So," she said, and was obliged to clear her throat. "It would seem there was a mustard seed of truth in what he said to us."

For a time they could speak no more. The silence was painful, but Ebenezer could imagine no way to terminate it. Fortunately, Anna came to the rescue: in a mild, deliberate voice, as if no digression had occurred, she resumed the narrative of her journey from St. Giles, employing without comment the proposition that her motive had been to join Henry Burlingame. The poet's heart glowed.

"I had heard naught of his activities since 1687, when you and I abandoned him in London. Then last spring he approached me as he did you later on the Plymouth coach, disguised as Colonel Peter Sayer. When I was finally persuaded of his true identity, he told me the tale of his adventures in the provinces, his discovery of certain references to a namesake in Virginia, and the political intrigues to which he was party."

Ebenezer questioned her closely on this last subject, confessing his doubts about Burlingame's good will towards him and, what was vastly more important, his misgivings about the virtuousness of Lord Baltimore's cause and the viciousness of Coode's. It was then necessary to waive his earlier agenda and tell of Henry's impostures of both Charles Calvert and John Coode, and the transfer of his allegiance from the former to the latter; Bertrand Burton's conviction that Burlingame himself was John Coode; the evidence suggesting that Coode, Lord Baltimore, Burlingame, and Andrew Cooke himself -- or some combination thereof -- were involved in the deplorable traffic in prostitutes and opium of which Anna had learned from Benjamin Spurdance; and finally, Ebenezer's own sweeping suspicion that both Baltimore and Coode either did not exist save in Burlingame's impostures, or else existed as it were abstractly, uninvolved in and perhaps even ignorant of the schemes and causes attributed to them.

Anna listened with interest, but professed no great surprise at Burlingame's behavior. "As to whether Lord Baltimore and John Coode are real or figmentary," she declared, "I cannot say, albeit 'twere hard to believe that so general an assumption hath no truth in't. Neither can I say with confidence whether the two are in sooth opposed or in league, or opposed in some matters and allied in others, or which hath the right on his side. But I have cause to think that insofar as Henry hath any genuine interest in these matters, his sympathies are with neither of those men; nor doth he truly contradict himself by declaring first for one and then for the other. The man he really admires and serves, I do believe, is Governor Nicholson."

"Nicholson!" Ebenezer scoffed. "He is neither this nor that, from what I hear: he is no Papist, yet he fought for James at Hounslow Heath; he was Edmund Andres's lieutenant, and so differed with him that the two despise each other yet; Lord Baltimore chose him to be commissioned Royal Governor, thinking Nicholson shared his sympathies, but albeit Nicholson seems concerned with prosecuting Coode, he governs as if Lord Baltimore did not exist -- which, to be sure, he may not."

Even as he articulated his objection, Ebenezer grew more and more persuaded of the likelihood of Anna's new hypothesis, until arguments began to sound like evidence in its favor. Burlingame had early confided that his purpose was to play off Coode and Andros against Nicholson to Baltimore's benefit -- that is to say, "both ends against the middle." But was not Nicholson truly the man in the middle, and Baltimore the extremist? From all the reports of his impatience with dreamers and radicals, his hardheadedness, daring, irascibility, and efficiency, Nicholson's character seemed much more likely to appeal to Burlingame that Charles Calvert's. Moreover, while not an idealist, Nicholson was (now that Ebenezer reflected on it) perhaps the only person of influence who had actually done anything to further the cause of culture and refinement, for example, in the Plantations: he had established the College of William and Mary during his tenure as lieutenant governor of Virginia, and had avowed his intention to found a similar institution in Anne Arundel Town, at public expense. Even the less creditable aspects of the man -- his bastard origins, for instance, and that obscure erotic streak that alienated him from women and gave rise to rumors of everything from privateering to unnatural practices -- Ebenezer could readily imagine to be attractive in Burlingame's eyes. In short, what began as a refutation ended as a complaint.