John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Dear God!" cried Anna. "And I in London all the while!"

" 'Tis no fault of yours, my dear," said Mrs. Twigg. "He told us not to send for you. Twould do him good to see you, though, I'm certain."

"I shall go too," Ebenezer declared.

"Nay, not just yet," Anna said. "Let me see what state he's in, and how 'twill strike him. 'Twere best to prepare him for it, don't you think?"

Ebenezer agreed, somewhat reluctantly, for he feared his courage would fail him should he postpone the move too long. That same day, however, Andrew's physician paid a call to the estate, and after learning what the situation was and assuring Ebenezer that his father was too weak to make a scene, he took it upon himself to announce to Andrew, as tactfully as possible, that his son had returned.

"He desires to see you at once," the physician reported afterwards to Ebenezer.

"Is he terribly wroth?" Ebenezer asked.

"I think not. Your sister's return raised his spirits, and I recalled to him the story of the prodigal son."

Ebenezer went upstairs and into his father's bedchamber, a room he had entered not more than thrice in his life. He found his father anything but the figure he'd feared: lying wigless and thin in bed, he looked nearer seventy than fifty; his cheeks were hollow, his eyes pale; his hair was turning white, his voice querulous. At the sight of him Ebenezer quite forgot a small speech of apology he'd concocted; tears sprang to his eyes, and he knelt beside the bed.

"Get up, son, get up," Andrew said with a sigh, "and let me look at ye. 'Tis good to see ye again, I swear it."

"Is't possible thou'rt not enraged?" Ebenezer asked, speaking with difficulty. "My conduct warrants it."

"I'faith, I've no longer the heart for't. Thou'rt my son in any case, and my only son, and if I could wish a better, you too might wish a better father. 'Tis no light matter to be a good one."

"I owe you much explanation."

"Mark the debt canceled," Andrew said, "for I've not the strength for that either. 'Tis the bad child's grace to repent, and the bad father's to forgive, and there's an end on't. Stay, now, I've a deal to say to you and small wind to say it in. In yonder table lies a paper I drafted yesterday, when the world looked somewhat darker than it doth today. Fetch it hither, if't please ye."

Ebenezer did as he was instructed.

"Now," said his father, holding the paper away from Ebenezer's view, " 'ere I show ye this, say truly: are ye quite ready to have done with flitting hither and yon, and commence to carry a man's portion like a man? If not, ye may put this back where ye fetched it."

"I shall do whate'er you wish, sir," Ebenezer said soberly.

"Marry, 'tis almost too much to hope! Mrs. Twigg has oft maintained that English babies ne'er should take French tit, and lays as the root o' your prodigality the pull and tug of French milk with English blood. Yet I have e'er hoped, and hope still, that soon or late I'll see ye a man, in sooth an Ebenezer for our house."

"Beg pardon, sir! I must own I lose you in this talk of French milk and Ebenezers. Surely my mother wasn't French?"

"Nay, nay, thou'rt English sired and English foaled, ye may be certain. Damn that doctor, anyway! Fetch me a pipe and sit ye down, boy, and I shall lay your history open to ye once for all, and the matter I'm most concerned with."

"Is't not unwise to tire yourself?" Ebenezer inquired.

"La," Andrew scoffed, "by the same logic 'tis folly to live. Nay, I'll rest soon enough in the grave." He raised himself a bit on the bed, accepted a pipe from Ebenezer, and after sampling it with pleasure, commenced his story:

" 'Twas in the summer of 1665," he said, "when I came to London from Maryland to settle some business with the merchant Peter Paggen down by Baynard's Castle, that I met and married Anne Bowyer of Bassingshawe, your mother. 'Twas a brief wooing, and to escape the great Plague we sailed at once to Maryland on the brig Redoubt, cargoed with dry goods and hardware. We ran into storms from the day we left the Lizard, and headwinds from Flores to the Capes; fourteen weeks we spent a-crossing, and when at last we stepped ashore at St. Mary's City in December, poor Anne was already three months with child! 'Twas an unhappy circumstance, for you must know that every newcomer to the plantations endures a period of seasoning, some weeks of fitting to the clime, and hardier souls than Anne have succumbed to't. She was a little woman, and delicate, fitter for the sewing parlor than the 'tween decks: we'd been not a week at St. Mary's ere a cold she'd got on shipboard turned to a frightful ague. I fetched her o'er the Bay to Malden at once, and the room I'd built for her bridal-chamber became her sick-room — she languished there for the balance of her term, weak and feverish."

Ebenezer listened with considerable emotion, but could think of nothing to say. His father drew again on his pipe.

"My whole house," he continued, "and I as well, looked for Anne to miscarry, or else deliver the child still-born, by reason of her health. Nonetheless I took it upon myself to seek a wet nurse on the chance it might live, for I knew well poor Anne could ne'er give suck. As't happened, one day in February I chanced to be standing on the wharf where Cambridge is now, bargaining with some planters, when I heard a great splash in the Choptank behind me, and turned around in time to see a young lady's head go under the ice."

"Mercy!"

"I was a passing good swimmer in those days, despite my arm, and as no one else seemed inclined to take a cold bath I jumped in after her, periwig and all, and held her up till the others fetched us out. But think ye I got so much as a thankee for my pains? The wench was no sooner herself again than she commenced to bewail her rescue and berate me for not letting her drown. This surprised the lot of us no end, inasmuch as she was a pretty young thing, not above sixteen or seventeen years old.

" 'How is't ye wish to end what you've scarce begun?" I asked her. 'Many's the merry tale hath a bad beginning.'

" 'No matter the cause of't,' she replied. 'In sooth I've little to thank ye for; in saving me from a short death by drowning, you but condemn me to a long one by freezing, or a longer by starving.'

"I was about to press her farther for the cause, but I chanced to observe what I'd not remarked ere then — that though her face and arms were peaked and thin, her belly was a-bloom for fair.

" 'Ah, I see't now,' I said. 'Belike your master had sent ye to feel of the sot-weed, whether 'twas dry enough for casking, and some field-hand rogered ye in the curing-house?'

"This I said by way of a tease, inasmuch as I guessed by her ragged dress and grimy skin she was a servant girl. She made no answer, but shook her head and wept e'en harder.

" 'Welladay, then,' I said to her, 'if not a field-hand, why, the master himself, and if not the curing-house, then the linen closet or the cowshed. Such a belly as thine is not got in church, I swear! And now the planter's not stayed to lay by his harvest, I'll wager.'

"After some farther enquiry the girl owned she had indeed been supping ere the priest said grace, as young folks will; but only once, and this not by force at the hands of a servingman, but rather at the entreaty of a planter's son who'd sworn his love for her. Nor was't a mere silly milkmaid's maidenhead he took, i'faith, for she was Roxanne Edouard, the orphan of the great French gentleman Cecile Edouard of Edouardine, upriver from Cooke's Point. She'd been reared since her parents' death by a wealthy uncle in Church Creek, down-county, who was so concerned for her noble blood that he permitted her no suitors from among the young men of the place. 'Twas her bad luck to fall in love with the eldest son of her uncle's neighbor, another planter, and he in turn was so taken with her that he begged her to marry him. She was a dutiful enough child not to wed a young man against the wishes of her guardian, but not so dutiful that she didn't let him have first go at her anyhow, in the bilge of a piragua out on the river. Afterwards she refused to see him farther, and the young fool was so distressed as to give up his patrimony and go to sea a common sailor, ne'er to be heard from again. Anon she found herself with child, and straightway confessed the whole matter to her uncle, who turned her off the place at once."