"Hi, there, throw't off!" demanded one fellow, snapping his fingers directly before Ebenezer's face.
" 'Tis the wine has dagged him, belike," a wag suggested, and tweaked the poet's nose, also without effect. "Aye," he affirmed, "the lad's bepickled himself with't. Mark ye, 'tis the fate awaits us all!"
"As you please," declared Ben Oliver with a grin; "I say 'tis a plain case of the staggering fearfuls, and I claim the victory by default, and there's an end on't."
"Aye, but what doth it profit you?" Dick Merriweather asked.
"What else but Joan Toast this night?" laughed Ben, slapping three guineas onto the table. "Upon your honor as judge, John McEvoy, will you refuse me? Test my coins, fellow: they'll ring true as the next man's, and there's three of 'em."
McEvoy shrugged his shoulders and looked inquiringly at his Joan.
"Not in a pig's arse," she sniffed. She flounced from her chair and with a wink at the company flung her arms around Ebenezer's neck and caressed his cheek.
"Ah, me ducky, me dove!" she cooed. "Will ye leave me to the mercies of yon tub o' suet, to lard like any poor partridge? Save me, sir!"
But Ebenezer sat unmoved and unmoving.
" 'Tis no lardoon thou'rt in for," Ben said. " 'Tis the very spit!"
"Ah! Ah!" cried Joan as though terrified and, clambering onto Ebenezer's lap, hid her face in his neck. "I shake and I shiver!"
The company shouted with delight. Joan grasped one of Ebenezer's large ears in each hand and drew his face nose to nose with her own.
"Carry me off!" she implored him.
"To the spit with her!" urged an onlooker. "Baste the hussy!"
"Aye!" said Ben, and crooked his finger at her. "Come along now, sweetmeat."
"As ye be a man and a poet, Eben Cooke." Joan scolded, jumping to her feet and shouting in his ear, "I lay it upon ye to match this rascal's gold with your own and have done with't. If ye will not speak up and act the man, I'm Ben's and be damned t'ye!"
Ebenezer gave a slight start and suddenly stood up, blinking as if just roused from bed. His features twitched, and he alternately blushed and paled as he opened his mouth to speak.
"I had five guineas but this morning by messenger from my father," he said weakly.
"Thou'rt a fool," said Dick Merriweather. "She asks but three, and had you spoke sooner 'twould've cost you but two!"
"Will ye raise him two bob, Ben?" asked John McEvoy, who had been watching the proceedings serenely.
"Indeed he shan't!" snapped Joan. "Is this a horse auction, then, and I a mare to be rid by the high bidder?" She took Ebenezer's arm fondly. "Only match Ben's three guineas, ducky, and speak no more of't. The night's near done, and I am ill o' this lewd raillery."
Ebenezer gawked, swallowed, and shifted his weight.
"I cannot match it here," he said, "for I've but a crown in my purse." He glanced around him wildly. "The money is in my rooms," he added, teetering as if to swoon. "Come with me there, and you shall have't all."
"Hello, the lad's no fool!" said Tom Trent. "He knows a thing or two!"
" 'Sblood, a very Jew!" agreed Dick Merriweather.
"Better a fowl in hand than two flying," Ben Oliver laughed, and jingled his three guineas.
" 'Tis a hoax and fraud, to lure honest women to their ruin! What would your father say, Ebenezer, did he get wind of't? Shame, shame!"
"Pay the great ass no heed," said Joan.
Ebenezer swayed again, and several of the company tittered.
"I swear to you — " he began.
"Shame! Shame!" cried Ben once more, wagging a fat finger at him to the company's delight.
Ebenezer tried again, but could do no more than raise his hand and let it fall.
"Stand off!" someone warned uneasily. "He is starching up again!"
"Shame!" roared Ben.
Ebenezer goggled at Joan Toast for a second and then lurched full speed across the room and out of the winehouse.
7: The Conversation Between Ebenezer and the Whore Joan Toast, Including the Tale of the Great Tom Leech
As a rule Ebenezer would after such a bumble have been in for some hours of motionless reflection in his room. It was his habit (for such rigidities as this at Locket's were not new to him) upon recovering himself to sit at his writing-desk, looking-glass in hand, and stare fish-eyed at his face, which only during such spells was still. But this time, though he did indeed take up his vis-à-vis, the face he regarded was anything but vacant: on the contrary, where typically he'd have seen a countenance blank as an owl's, now he saw a roil as of swallows round a chimney pot; whereas another time he'd have heard in his head but a cosmic rustle, as though his skull were a stranded wentletrap, now he sweated, blushed, and dreamed two score ragged dreams. He studied the ears Joan Toast had touched, as though by study to restore their tingle, and when he could by no means succeed, he recognized with alarm that it was his heart she now had hands on.
"Ah God," he cried aloud, "that I'd risen to the wager!"
The manly sound of his voice arrested him. Moreover, it was the first time he'd ever spoken to himself aloud, and he failed to be embarrassed by it.
"Had I but another chance," he declared to himself, " 'twould be no chore to snatch the moment! Lord, into what ferment have those eyes put me! Into what heat those bosoms!"
He took up the glass again, made himself a face, and inquired, "Who art thou now, queer fellow? Hi, there is a twitch in thy blood, I see — a fidget in thy soul! 'Twere a right manly man Joan Toast would taste, were the wench but here to taste him!"
It occurred to him to return to Locket's to seek her out, on the chance she'd not have succumbed to Ben Oliver's entreaties. But he was reluctant to confront his friends so soon after his flight, in the first place, and in the second —
"Curse me for my innocence!" he railed, pounding his fist upon some blank papers on the writing-desk. "What knowledge have I of such things? Suppose she should come with me? 'Sblood! What then?
"Yet 'tis now or never," he told himself grimly. "This Joan Toast sees in me what no woman hath before, nor I myself: a man like other men. And for aught I know she hath made me one, for when else have I talked to myself? When else felt so potent? To Locket's," he ordered himself, "or go virgin to the grave!"
Nevertheless he did not get up, but lapsed instead into lecherous, complicated reveries of rescue and gratitude; of shipwreck or plague and mutual survivorship; of abduction, flight, and violent assault; and, sweetest of all, of towering fame and casual indulgence. When at length he realized that he was not going to Locket's at all, he was overcome with self-loathing and returned, in despair, once more to the mirror.
He calmed at the sight of the face in it.
"Odd fellow, there! Ooo-ooo! Hey-nonny-nonny! Fa-la!"
He leered and mouthed into the glass until his eyes brimmed with tears, and then, exhausted, buried his face in his long arms. Presently he fell asleep.
There came, an uncertain time later, a knocking at the entrance door below, and before Ebenezer was awake enough to wonder at it, his own door was opened by his servant, Bertrand, who had been sent to him just a few days earlier by his father. This Bertrand was a thin-faced, wide-eyed bachelor in his later forties whom Ebenezer knew scarcely at all, for Andrew had hired him while the young man was still at Cambridge. With him, when he had come from the St. Giles establishment, he had brought the following note from Andrew, in an envelope sealed with wax: