As it turned out, there was no confrontation at all, though St. Giles was but an easy carriage ride from where he lived. On the evening of the second day after McEvoy's threat, a messenger came to Ebenezer's room (from which, having abandoned Peter Paggen entirely, he had scarcely ventured in two days) with twelve pounds in cash and a brief letter from Andrew:
My Son: It is truly said, that Children are a certain Care, and but an uncertain Comfort. Suffice it to say, I have learned of your vicious Condition; I shall not sully myself by witnessing it firsthand. You shall on Pain of total and entire Disinheritance and Disownment take Ship for Maryland on the Bark Poseidon, sailing from Plimouth for Piscataway on April 1, there to proceed straightway to Cookes poynt and assume Managership of Malden. It is my intention to make a final Sojourn in the Plantations perhaps a Year hence, and I pray that at that Time I shall find a prosperous Malden and a regenerate Son: an Estate worth bequeathing and an Heir worth the Bequest. It is your final Chance.
Your Father
Ebenezer was more numbed than stunned by the letter, for he'd anticipated some such ultimatum.
"Marry, 'tis but a week hence!" he reflected with alarm. The notion of leaving his companions just when, having determined his essence, he felt prepared to begin enjoying them, distressed him quite; whatever fugitive attraction the colonies had held for him fled before the prospect of actually going there.
He showed the letter to Bertrand.
"Ah, 'tis as I thought: thy principles have undone me. I see no summons here to my old post in St. Giles."
"Haply 'twill come yet, Bertrand, by another messenger."
But the servant appeared unconsoled. "I'faith! Back to old Twigg! I had almost rather brave the salvage Indians."
"I would not see thee suffer on my account," Ebenezer declared. "I shall pay your April's wages, and you may start today to seek another post."
The valet seemed scarcely able to believe such generosity. "Bless ye, sir! Thou'rt every inch a gentleman!"
Ebenezer dismissed him and returned to his own problem. What was he to do? During most of that day he anxiously examined various faces of himself in his looking glass; during most of the next he composed stanzas to Gloom and Melancholy, after the manner of Il Penseroso (though briefer and, he decided, of a different order of impact); the third he spent abed, getting up only to feed and relieve himself. He refused Bertrand's occasional proffered services. A change came over him: his beard went unshaved, his drawers unchanged, his feet unwashed. How take ship for the wild untutored colonies, now he knew himself a poet and was ready to fire London with his art? And yet how make shift unaided in London, penniless, in defiance of his father and at the expense of his inheritance?
"What am I to do?" he asked himself, lying unkempt in his bed on the fourth day. It was a misty March morning, though a warm and sunny one, and the glaring haze from outside caused his head to ache. The bedclothes were no longer clean, nor was his nightshirt. His late fire was ashed and cold. Eight o'clock passed, and nine, but he could not resolve to get up. Once only, as a mere experiment, he held his breath in order to try whether he could make himself die, for he saw no alternative; but after a half minute he drew air frantically and did not try again. His stomach rumbled, and his sphincters signaled their discomfort. He could think of no reason for rising from the bed, nor any for remaining there. Ten o'clock came and went.
Near noon, running his eyes about the room for the hundredth time that morning, he caught sight of something that had previously escaped him: a scrap of paper on the floor beside his writing-desk. Recognizing it, he climbed out of bed without thinking, fetched it up, and squinted at it in the glare.
Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., Poet & Laureate. .
The rest of the epithet was torn off, but despite its loss, or perhaps because of it, Ebenezer was suddenly inspired with such a pleasant resolve that his spirits rose on the instant, driving three days' gloom before them as a March breeze drives away squalls. His spine thrilled; his face flushed. Lighting on a piece of letter paper, he addressed a salutation directly to Charles Calvert, Third Lord Baltimore and Second Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland. Your Excellency, he wrote, with the same sure hand of some nights before:
It is my Intention to take Ship for Maryland upon the Bark Poseidon a few Days hence, for the Purpose of managing my Father's Property, called Cooke's Point, in Dorchester. YrLdshp will do me a great Honour, and Himself no ill Turn it may be, by granting me an Audience before I embark, in order that I might discuss certain Plans of mine, such that I venture will not altogether displease YrLdshp, and in order farther that I might learn, from Him most qualified to say, where in the Province to seek the congenial Company of Men of Breeding and Refinement, with whom to share my leisure Hours in those most civiliz'd Pursuits of Poetry, Music and Conversation, without which Life were a Salvag'ry, and scarce endurable. Respectfully therefore awaiting YrLdshps Reply, I am,
Yr Most Hmble& ObtSvt
Ebenezer Cooke
And after but a moment's deliberation he appended boldly to his name the single word Poet, deeming it a pointless modesty to deny or conceal his very essence.
"By Heav'n!" he exclaimed to himself, looking back on his recent doldrums. "I had near slipped once again into the Abyss! Methinks 'tis a peril I am prone to: 'tis my Nemesis, and marks me off from other men as did the Furies poor Orestes! So be't: at least I know my dread Erinyes for what they are and will henceforth mark their approach betimes. What is more — thank Joan Toast! I now know how to shield myself from their assault." He consulted his mirror and after some false starts, reflected this reflection: "Life! I must fling myself into Life, escape to't, as Orestes to the temple of Apollo. Action be my sanctuary; Initiative my shield! I shall smite ere I am smitten; clutch Life by his horns! Patron of poets, thy temple be the Entire Great Real World, whereto I run with arms a-stretch: may't guard me from the Pit, and may my Erinyes sink 'neath the vertigo I flee to be transformed to mild Eumenides!"
He then reread his letter.
"Aye," he said, "read and rejoice, Baltimore! 'Tis not every day your province is blessed with a poet. But faith! 'Tis already the twenty-seventh of the month! I must deliver't in person at once."
Thus resolved, Ebenezer called for Bertrand and, finding him not at home, doffed his malodorous nightshirt and proceeded to dress himself. Not bothering to trouble his skin with water, he slipped on his best linen drawers, short ones without stirrups, heavily perfumed, and a clean white day-shirt of good frieze holland, voluminous and soft, with a narrow neckband, full sleeves caught at the wrists with a black satin ribbon, and small, modestly frilled cuffs. Next he pulled on a pair of untrimmed black velvet knee breeches, close in the thighs and full in the seat, and then his knitted white silk hose, which, following the very latest fashion, he left rolled above the knee in order to display the black ribbon garters that held them up. On then with his shoes, a fortnight old, of softest black Spanish leather, square-toed, high-heeled, and buckled, their cupid-bow tongues turned down to flash a fetching red lining. Respectful of both the warmth and the fashion of the day, he left his waistcoat where it hung and donned next a coat of plum-colored serge lined with silver-gray prunella — the great cuffs turned back to show alternate stripes of plum and silver — collarless, tight-shouldered, and full-skirted, which he left unbuttoned from neck to hem to show off shirt and cravat. This latter was of white muslin, the long pendant ends finished in lace, and Ebenezer tied it loosely, twisted the pendants ropewise, and fetched up the ends to pass through the top left buttonhole of his open coat, Steinkirk fashion. Then came his short-sword in its beribboned scabbard, slung low on his left leg from a well-tooled belt, and after it his long, tight-curled white periwig, which he powdered generously and fitted with care on his pate, in its natural state hairless as an egg. Nothing now remained but to top the periwig with his round-crowned, broad-brimmed, feather-edged black beaver, draw on his gauntlet gloves of fawn leather stitched in gold and silver (the cuffs edged in white lace and lined with yellow silk), fetch up his long cane (looped with plum-and-white ribbons like those on his scabbard), and behold the finished product in his looking glass.