But it would not be fair to suggest that Ebenezer was entirely responsible for his impasse. There were a few occasions during the first year when he managed to do his work satisfactorily, even intelligently, for several weeks running, and yet no mention was made of transferring him to the promised post. Only once did he muster courage enough to inquire about it: Mr. Paggen made him a vague reply which he accepted eagerly, in order to terminate the interview, and never spoke of it again. Actually, except for infrequent twinges of conscience, Ebenezer was quite content to languish among the junior apprentices: he had learned the job and was frightened at the prospect of learning another. Moreover, he found the city suited to his languor; his free hours he spent with his friends in the coffee-houses, taverns, or theaters. Now and again he devoted a Sunday, without much success, to his writing-desk. And in general he came quite to forget what it was he was supposed to be doing in London.
It was withal a curious time in his life. If not actually satisfying, the routine was at any rate in no way unpleasant, and Ebenezer floated along in it like a fitful sleeper in a warm wash of dreams. Often, chameleonlike, he was but a reflection of his situation: were his companions boasting the tenuousness of their positions he might declare, in a burst of camaraderie, "Should old Andy discover my situation, 'twould be off to Maryland with me, sirs, and no mistake!" As often he went out of his way to differ with them, and half-yearned for the bracing life of the plantations. Still other times he'd sit like a stuffed stork all the afternoon without a word. So, one day cocksure, one day timorous; one day fearless, one craven; now the natty courtier, now the rumpled poet — and devil the hue that momently colored him, he'd look a-fidget at the rest of the spectrum. What's red to a rainbow?
All of which is to say, if you wish, that insofar as to be is to be in essence the Johnny-come-Friday that was John o' Thursday, why, this Ebenezer Cooke was no man at all. As for Andrew, he must have been incurious about his boy's life in London, or else believed that A good post is worth a long wait. The idyl lasted not for one, but for five or six years, or until 1694 — in the March of which, when a disastrous wager brought it to a sudden end, our story begins.
6: The Momentous Wager Between Ebenezer and Ben Oliver, and Its Uncommon Result
Pimp in Ebenezer's circle was one wiry, red-haired, befreckled ex-Dubliner named John McEvoy, twenty-one years old and devoid of school education, as long in energy and resourcefulness as short in money and stature, who spent his days abed, his evenings pimping for his privileged companions, and the greater part of his nights composing airs for the lute and flute, and who from the world of things that men have valued prized none but three: his mistress Joan Toast (who, whore as well, was both his love and his living), his music, and his liberty. No one-crown frisker Joan, but a two-guinea hen well worth the gold to bed her, as knew every man among them but Ebenezer; she loved her John for all he was her pimp, and he her truly too for all she was his whore — for no man was ever just a pimp, nor any woman merely whore. They seemed, in fact, a devoted couple, and jealous.
All spirit, imagination, and brave brown eyes, small-framed, large-breasted, and tight-skinned (though truly somewhat coarse-pored, and stringy in the hair, and with teeth none of the best), this Joan Toast was his for the night who'd two guineas to take her for, and indignify her as he would, she'd give him his gold's worth and more, for she took that pleasure in her work as were she the buyer and he the vendor; but come morning she was cold as a fish and back to her Johnny McEvoy, and should her lover of the night past so much as wink eye at her in the light of day, there was no more Joan Toast for him at any price.
Ebenezer had of course observed her for some years as she and his companions came and went in their harlotry, and from the talk in the coffee-house had got to know about her in great detail at second hand a number of things that his personal disorganization precluded learning at first. When in manly moments he thought of her at all it was merely as a tart whom, should he one day find himself single-minded enough, it might be sweet to hire to initiate him at long last into the mysteries. For it happened that, though near thirty, Ebenezer was yet a virgin, and this for the reason explained in the previous chapters, that he was no person at alclass="underline" he could picture any kind of man taking a woman — the bold as well as the bashful, the clean green boy and the dottering gray lecher — and work out in his mind the speeches appropriate to each under any of several sorts of circumstances. But because he felt himself no more one of these than another and admired all, when a situation presented itself he could never choose one role to play over all the rest he knew, and so always ended up either turning down the chance or, what was more usually the case, retreating gracelessly and in confusion, if not always embarrassment. Generally, therefore, women did not give him a second glance, not because he was uncomely — he had marked well that some of the greatest seducers have the faces of goats and the manner of lizards — but because, a woman having taken in his ungainly physique, there remained no other thing for her to notice.
Indeed he might have gone virgin to his grave — for there are urgencies that will be heeded if not one way then perforce another, and that same knuckly hand that penned him his couplets took no wooing to make his quick mistress — but on this March night in 1694 he was noticed by Joan Toast, in the following manner: the gallants were sitting in a ring at Locket's, as was their custom, drinking wine, gossiping, and boasting their conquests, both of the muse and of lesser wenches. There were Dick Merriweather, Tom Trent, and Ben Oliver already well wined, Johnny McEvoy and Joan Toast out for a customer, and Ebenezer incommunicado.
"Heigh-ho!" sighed Dick at a lull in their talk. " 'Twere a world one could live in did wealth follow wit, for gold's the best bait to snare sweet conies with, and then we poets were fearsome trappers all!"