"No need gold," replied Ben, "did God but give women half an eye for their interests. What makes your good lover, if not fire and fancy? And for whom if not us poets are fire and fancy the very stock in trade? From which 'tis clear, that of all men the poet is most to be desired as a lover: if his mistress have beauty, his is the eye will most be gladdened by't; if she have it not, his is the imagination that best can mask its lack. If she displease him, and he slough her off shortly, she hath at least had for a time the best that woman can get; if she please him, he will haply fix her beauty for good and all in verse, where neither age nor pox can spoil it. And as poets as a class are to be desired in this respect over other sorts of fellows, so should the best poet prove the best lover; were women wise to their interests they'd make seeking him out their life-work, and finding him would straight lay their favors a-quiver in his lap — nay, upon his very writing-desk — and beg him to look on 'em kindly!"
"Out on't, then!" said Dick to Joan Toast. "Ben speaks truly, and 'tis you shall pay me two guineas this night! Marry, and were't not that I am poor as any church mouse this week and have not long to live, you'd not buy immortality so cheap! My counsel is to snatch the bargain while it lasts, for a poet cannot long abide this world."
To which Joan rejoined without heat, "Fogh! Could any man of ye rhyme as light as talk, or swive grand as swagger, why, your verse'd be on every lip in London and your arse in every bed, I swear! But Talk pays no tolclass="underline" I look to pacify nor ear nor bum with aught o' ye but my sweet John, who struts not a strut nor brags no brags, but saves words for his melodies and strength for the bed."
"Hi!" applauded Ben. "Well put!"
"If ill timed," John McEvoy added, frowning lightly upon her. "Let no such sentiments come 'twixt thee and two guineas this night, love, or thy sweet John'll have nor strength nor song, but a mere nimbly gut to bed ye with on the morrow."
" 'Sblood!" remarked Tom Trent without emotion. "If Lady Joan reason rightly, there's one among us who far more merits her favor than you, McEvoy, for as you speak one word to our two, so speak you ten to his one: I mean yon Ebenezer, who for lack of words should be chiefest poet and cocksman in this or any winehouse — John Milton and Don Juan Tenorio in a single skin!"
"Indeed he may be," vowed Joan, who, being by chance seated next to Ebenezer, gave him a pat on the hand.
"At any rate," smiled McEvoy, "having heard not a line of his making, I've no evidence he's not a poet."
"Nor I he's not that other," Joan added smartly, "and 'tis more praise on both counts than I can praise the rest o' ye." Then she colored somewhat and added: "I must own I've heard it said, Marry fat but love lean, for as how your fat fellow is most often a jolly and patient husband, but your bony lank is long all over and springy in the bed. Howbeit, I've no proof of the thing."
"Then 'sdeath, you shall have it!" cried Ben Oliver, "for there's more to extension than simple length. When the subject in hand's the tool of love, prithee give weight to the matter of diameter, for diameter's what gives weight to love's tool — whether 'tis in hand or in the subject, for that matter! Nay, lass, I'll stick by my fat, as't hath stuck by me. A plump cock's the very devil of the hen house, so they say: he treads 'em with authority!"
" 'Tis too weighty a question to leave unsettled," declared McEvoy. "What think you, Tom?"
"I take no interest in affairs of the flesh," said Tom, "but I have e'er observed that women, like men, have chiefest relish in things forbidden, and prize no conquest like that of a priest or saint. 'Tis my guess, moreover, that they find their trophy doubly sweet, inasmuch as 'tis hard come by to begin with, and when got 'tis fresh and potent as vintage brandy, for having been so long bottled and corked."
"Dick?"
"I see no sense in it," Merriweather said. " 'Tis not a man's weight, but his circumstances, that make him a lover. The sweetest lover of all, I should think, is the man about to end his life, who would by the act of love bid his adieu to this world, and at the moment of greatest heat pass on the next."
"Well, now," McEvoy said, "ye owe it to England to put an answer to't. What I propose is this, that ye put each your best foot forward, so to speak, this same night, and let Joan take eight guinea from him she names loser. Thus the winner gets glory for him and his kind and a swiving to boot; the losers get still a swiving — ay, a double swiving! — and my good woman and I get chops instead of chitterlings for a day. Done?"
"Not I," said Tom. " 'Tis a sorry sport, is lust, that makes man a slavering animal on embracing his mistress and a dolorous vegetable after."
"Nor I," said Dick, "for had I eight guineas I'd hire three trollops and a bottle of Madeira for one final debauch ere I end my life."
"Mary, 'tis done for all 'o' me," said Ben, "and heartily, too, for your Joan's had none of old Ben these two months past."
"Nor shall I more," swore Joan cheerfully, "for thou'rt a sweatbox and a stinkard, sir. My memory of our last will serve as your performance, when I came away bruised and abused as a spaniel bitch from a boar's pen and had need of a course of liniments to drive out the aches and a course of hot baths to carry off the smell. For the rest of the wager, 'tis Mr. Cooke's to yea or nay."
"So be't," shrugged Ben, "though had I known at the time 'twas that studding I'd be judged by, you'd have found me more bull than boar and haply have a Minotaur to show for't. What say you, Ebenezer?"
Now Ebenezer had followed this raillery intently and would have joined in it, perhaps, but that from his overstocked wardrobe no particular style came readily to hand. Then, when Joan Toast touched him, the hand she touched tingled as if galvanized, and on the instant Ebenezer felt his soul rise up in answer. Had not Boyle shown, and Burlingame taught, that electrical attraction takes place in a vacuum? Well, here was Boyle figured in the empty poet: the pert girl worked some queer attraction in him, called forth a spark from the vacuum of his character, and set him all suddenly a-burn and a-buzz.
But did this prick-up afford the man identity? On the contrary: as he saw the direction the twitting took and heard McEvoy give birth to the wager, he but buzzed and burned the more; his mind ran madly to no end like a rat in a race and could not engage the situation. His sensibility all erected, he could feel the moment coming when the eyes of all would swing to bear on him with some question which he'd be expected to answer. It was the wait for it, together with the tingle of Joan Toast's touch and the rush to find a face to meet the wager with, that made him sick when his ears heard Ben's "What say you, Ebenezer?" and his two eyes saw ten look to him for reply.
What say? What say? His windpipe glotted with a surfeit of alternatives; but did he urge one up like a low-pressured belch, the suck of the rest ungassed it. Eyes grew quizzical; smiles changed character. Ebenezer reddened, not from embarrassment but from internal pressure.
"What ails ye, friend?" McEvoy.
"Speak up, man!" Ben Oliver.
"Swounds! He'll pop!" Dick Merriweather.
One Cooke eyebrow fluttered. A mouth-corner ticked. He closed and unclosed his hands and his mouth, and the strain near retched him, but it was all a dry heave, a false labor: no person issued from it. He gaped and sweated.
"Gah," he said.
" 'Sblood!" Tom Trent. "He's ill! 'Tis the vapors! The fellow wants a clyster!"
"Gah," said Ebenezer again, and then froze tight and said no more, nor moved a single muscle.
By this time his behavior had been noticed by the other patrons of the winehouse, and a number of the curious gathered round him where he sat, now rigid as a statue.