"I'll steady his hand," Burlingame said, and virtually wrote the Laureate's signature on the paper.
"What is't ye gave him?" Susan demanded, and with her thumb peeled open one of Ebenezer's eyelids.
" 'Twas but to ensure he gets his proper rest, Mrs. Cooke," Burlingame replied.
At the sound of the name Ebenezer opened his mouth to laugh, and though no sound issued forth, he was delighted at the result.
"Opium!" Susan shrieked.
This news the Laureate found even more amusing than did the company, but he had no opportunity for another of the pleasant laughs: the fact is, his chair rose from the floor, passed through the roof of Malden, and shot into the opalescent sky. As for Maryland, it turned blue and flattened into an immense musical surface, which suavely slid northwestwards under seagulls.
32: A Marylandiad Is Brought to Birth, but Its Deliverer Fares as Badly as in Any Other Chapter
"To Parnassus!" cried the Laureate with a laugh, and the chair sailed over Thessaly to land between twin mountain cones of polished alabaster. The valley wherein he came to rest swarmed with thousands upon thousands of the world's inhabitants, pressing in the foothills.
"I say," he inquired of one nearby who was in the act of tripping up the fellow just ahead, "which is Parnassus?"
"On the right," the man answered over his shoulder.
" 'Tis as I understood it to be," the poet replied. "But what if I'd come up from the other side? Then right would be left, and left right, would it not? I'm only asking hypothetically," he added, for the stranger frowned.
"Right is right and be damned to ye," the man growled, and disappeared into the crowd.
Certainly from where Ebenezer stood, far removed from both, the twin mountains looked alike, their pink peaks lost in clouds. Beginning at a ridge just a little way up their slopes were rows or circles of various obstacles to the climbers. First he saw a ring of ugly men with clubs, who mashed the climbers' fingers and caused them either to give over the ascent entirely or remain where they were; similar rings were stationed at intervals as far as Ebenezer could see up the mountainside, some armed with hatchets or bodkins instead of clubs. Nor were the areas between these circles free of danger. Here and there, for example, were groups of women who invited the climbers from their objective; beds and couches, set beside tables of food and wine, lulled the weary who lay in them to a slumber deep as death; treadmills there were in abundance, and false signposts that promised the summit but led in fact (as could be clearly observed from the valley) to precipices, deserts, jungles, jails, and lunatic asylums. Countless climbers fell to every sort of obstacle. Those who managed to clear the first line of guards — whether by forcing through with main strength, by creating a diversion to distract attention from themselves, or by tickling, fondling, and otherwise pleasing the clubmen — more often than not fell to the women, the beds, the treadmills, or the false signposts, or if they escaped those as well, to the next ring of guards, and so forth. The lucky few who by some one or combination of these techniques passed safely through the farthest obstacles were applauded mightily by the rest, and it sometimes happened that the very noise of this applause sufficed to make the climber lose his grip on the alabaster and plunge feet foremost into the valley again. Others who neared the summit were felled by rocks from the same hands that had earlier applauded, and still others were not stoned but merely forgotten. Of the very, very few who remained fairly secure, some owed their tenure to the heavy pink mists that obscured them as targets; others to the simple bulk of the peak on which they sat, and others to the grapes and China oranges that they flung upon demand to the crowd below.
The most important thing, of course, was to choose the proper mountain in the first place, but since by no amount of inquiry could he gain any certain information, Ebenezer at length chose arbitrarily and began to climb with the rest; doubtless, he reasoned, one learned as one climbed, and in any case, to reach the summit of either would be accomplishment enough.The first thing he discovered, however, was that the obstacles were much more formidable face to face than when viewed from afar as a non-climber: the ring of clubmen, when he reached them, were uglier and more threatening; the women beyond them, and the couches, more alluring; and the signposts quite authentic in appearance. It was, in fact, all he could do to muster courage enough to lunge at the nearest guards; but no sooner was he poised for the attempt than a voice commanded his chair to raise him to the peak, and without having climbed at all he found himself sitting among a group of solitary men on a pinnacle of the mountain.
He singled out one of the oldest and wisest-looking, who was engaged in paring his toenails. "I say, sir, you'll think me ridiculous to ask, but might you tell me which mountain this is?"
"Ye have me there," the ancient replied. "Sometimes I think 'tis one, sometimes the other." He chuckled and added in a stage whisper: "What doth it matter?"
"How did you get here, if I'm not too bold?" Ebenezer asked further.
"That was no chore at all," the old man said. "I was here when the mountain grew, I and my cronies, and we went up with it. They'll never knock us down — but they might raise us so high they can't see us any more."
"They're applauding you down there, you know."
The old man shrugged his shoulders, Burlingame-like. "Ye can't hear 'em so well up here. 'Tis the altitude and the thinness of the air, I've always thought. But I care not a fart one way or the other."
"Well," said Ebenezer. "I surely envy you. What a view you have from here!"
" 'Tis in sooth a pleasant view," the old man admitted. "Ye can see well-nigh the entire picture, and it all looks much alike. Tell ye the truth, I get tired looking. 'Tis more comfortable to sit here than to climb, if comfort's what ye like. Climb if ye feel like climbing, says I, and don't if ye don't. There's really naught in the world up here but clever music; ye'll take pleasure in't if ye've been reared to like that sort of thing."
"Oh, I always did like music!"
"Really?" asked the old man without interest.
Ebenezer leaned down to look at the strugglers far below.
"Sbody, but aren't they silly-looking!" he exclaimed. "And how ill-mannered, pushing and breaking wind on one another!"
"They've little else to do," the old man observed.
"But there's naught here to climb for: you've said that yourself!"
"Aye, nor aught anywhere else, either. They'd as well climb as sit still and die."
"I'm going to jump!" Ebenezer declared suddenly. "I've no wish to see these things a moment more!"
"No reason why ye oughtn't, nor any why ye ought."
The Laureate made no further move to jump, but sat on the edge of the peak and sighed. " 'Tis all most frightfully empty, is't not?"
"Empty indeed," the old man said, "but there's naught o' good or bad in that. Why sigh?"
"Why not?" asked Ebenezer.
"Why not indeed?" the old man sighed, and Ebenezer found himself in a bed and Richard Sowter bending over him.
"St. Wilgefortis's beard, here is our bridegroom at long last! Doc Sowter's oil-o'-mallow ne'er yet let mortal die!"
"Marsh-mallow my arse," said one of the kitchen-women, who appeared beside the bed. " 'Twas St. Susie's thistle-physic brought him back."
Sowter counted Ebenezer's pulse briefly and then popped a spoonful of some syrup into his mouth.
"What room is this, and why am I in't?"
" 'Tis one o' Bill Smith's guest rooms," Sowter said.
"Opium!" the Laureate cried, and sat up angrily. "I recall it now!"
"Aye, by blear-eyed old St. Otilic, 'twas opium Tim Mitchell gave ye, so ye'd have your rest. But ye was that ill to begin with, it came nigh to fetching ye off."