"Unhappy day!" laughed Ebenezer. "I've no skill in any craft or trade whatever. I cannot even play Flow My Tears on the guitar."
"Then 'tis plain you'll be a teacher, like myself."
" 'Sheart! 'Twould be the blind leading the blind!"
"Aye," smiled Burlingame. "Who better grasps the trials of sightlessness than he whose eyes are gone?"
"But what teach? I know something of many things, and enough of naught."
"I'faith, then the field is open, and you may graze where you list."
"Teach a thing I know naught of?" exclaimed Ebenezer.
"And raise thy fee for't," replied Burlingame, "inasmuch as 'tis no chore to teach what you know, but to teach what you know naught of requires a certain application. Choose a thing you'd greatly like to learn, and straightway proclaim yourself professor of't."
Ebenezer shook his head. " 'Tis still impossible; I am curious about the world in general, and ne'er could choose."
"Very well, then: I dub thee Professor of the Nature of the World, and as such shall we advertise you. Whate'er your students wish to learn of't, that will you teach them."
"Thou'rt jesting, Henry!"
"If't be a jest," replied Burlingame, " 'tis a happy one, I swear, for just so have I lined my belly these three years. B'm'faith, the things I've taught! The great thing is always to be teaching something to someone — a fig for what or to whom. 'Tis no trick at all."
No matter what Ebenezer thought of this proposal, he had not the wherewithal to reject it: immediately on arriving in London he moved into Burlingame's chambers by the river and was established as a full partner. A few days after that, Burlingame brought him his first customer — a lout of a tailor from Crutched Friars who happily desired to be taught nothing more intricate than his A B Cs — and for the next few months Ebenezer earned his living as a pedagogue. He worked six or seven hours a day, both in his rooms and at the homes of his students, and spent most of his free time studying desperately for the following day's lessons. What leisure he had he spent in the taverns and coffeehouses with a small circle of Burlingame's acquaintances, mostly idle poets. Impressed by their apparent confidence in their talent, he too endeavored on several occasions to write poems, but abandoned the effort each time for want of anything to write about.
At his insistence a devious correspondence was established with his sister through Miss Bromly, Burlingame's pupil, and after two months Anna contrived to visit them in London, using as excuse the illness of a spinster aunt who lived near Leadenhall. The twins were, as may be imagined, overjoyed to see each other again, for although conversation did not come so readily since Ebenezer's departure from St. Giles three years before, each still bore, abstractly at least, the greatest affection and regard for the other. Burlingame, too, Anna expressed considerable but properly decorous pleasure in seeing again. She had changed somewhat since Ebenezer had seen her last: her brown hair had lost something of its shine, and her face, while still fair, was leaner and less girlish than he remembered it.
"My dear Anna!" he said for the fourth or fifth time. "How good it is to hear your voice! Tell me, how did you leave Father? Is he well?"
Anna shook her head. "Well on the way to Bedlam, I fear, or to driving me there. 'Tis your disappearance, Eben; it angers and frightens him at once. He knows not the cause of't, or whether to comb the realm for you or disown you. A dozen times daily he demands of me whether I know aught of your whereabouts, or else rails at me for keeping things from him. He is grown hugely suspicious of me, and yet sometimes asks of you so plaintively as to move my tears. He has aged much these past weeks, and though he blows and blusters no less than before, his heart is not in it, and it saps his strength."
"Ah, God, it pains me to hear that!"
"And me," said Burlingame, "for though old Andrew hath small love for me, I wish him no ill."
"I do think," Anna said to Ebenezer, "that you should strive to establish yourself in some calling, and communicate with him directly you find a place; for despite the abuse he'll surely heap on you, 'twill ease his soul to learn thou'rt well, and well established."
"And 'twould ease mine to ease his," Ebenezer said.
"Marry, and yet 'tis your own life!" Burlingame cried impatiently. "Filial love be damned, it galls me sore to see the pair of you o'erawed by the pompous rascal!"
"Henry!" Anna chided.
"You must pardon me," Burlingame said; "I mean no harm by't. But lookee, Anna, 'tis not alone Andrew's health that suffers. Thou'rt peaked thyself, and wan, and I mark a sobering of your spirits. You too should flee St. Giles for London, as your aunt's companion or the like."
"Am I wan and solemn?" Anna asked gently. "Haply 'tis mere age, Henry: one-and-twenty is no more a careless child. But prithee ask me not to leave St. Giles; 'tis to ask Father's death."
"Or belike she hath a suitor there," Ebenezer said to Burlingame. "Is't not so, Anna?" he teased. "Some rustic swain, perchance, that hath won your heart? One-and-twenty is no child, but 'twere a passing good wife, were't not? Say, Henry, see the girl blush! Methinks I've hit on't!"
" 'Twere a lucky bumpkin, b'm'faith," Burlingame remarked.
"Nay," said Anna, "twit me no more on't, Brother."
She was so plainly overwrought that Ebenezer at once begged her forgiveness for his tease.
Anna kissed his cheek. "How shall I marry, when the man I love best hath the bad sense to be my brother? What say the books at Cambridge, Eben? Was e'er a maid less lucky?"
"Nay, i'faith!" laughed Ebenezer. "You'll live and die a maiden ere you find my like! Yet I commend my friend here to your attention, who though something gone in years yet sings a creditable tenor, and is the devil's own good fellow!"
As soon as he spoke it Ebenezer realized the tactlessness of his remark in the light of what Burlingame had told him weeks before of Andrew's suspicions; both men blushed at once, but Anna saved the situation by kissing Burlingame lightly on the cheek as she had kissed her brother, and saying easily, " 'Twere no mean catch, if you speak truly. Doth he know his letters?"
"What matter?" Burlingame asked, joining the raillery. "Whate'er I lack, this fellow here can teach me, or so he vaunts."
" 'Swounds, that reminds me," Ebenezer said, jumping up, "I must run to Tower Hill this minute, to give young Farmsley his first recorder lesson!" He fetched an alto recorder from the mantelpiece. "Quickly, Henry, how doth one blow the thing?"
"Nay, not quickly: slowly," Burlingame said. " 'Twere a grievous error to learn an art too fast. On no account must thy Farmsley blow a note ere he's spent an hour fondling the instrument, holding it properly, taking it apart and fitting it together. And never, never should the master show off his own ability, lest the student grow discouraged at the distance he must travel. I'll teach you the left-hand notes tonight, and you can play Les Bouffons for him on the morrow."
"Must you go?" Anna asked.
"Aye, or 'tis stale bread come Sunday, for Henry hath no scholars of his own this week. I shall trust you to his care till I return."
Anna remained a week in London, slipping away from her aunt's bedside as often as possible to visit Ebenezer and Burlingame. At the end of that time, the aunt having recuperated sufficiently to manage for herself, she announced her intention to return to St. Giles, and to Burlingame's considerable surprise and distress, Ebenezer declared that he was going with her — nor could any amount of expostulation change his mind.
" 'Tis no good," he would say, shaking his head. "I am not a teacher."
"Damn me," Burlingame cried, "if thou'rt not fleeing responsibility!"
"Nay. If I flee, I flee to it. 'Twas a coward's act to hide from Father's wrath. I shall ask his pardon and do whate'er he requires of me."