John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

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."

"A pox on his anger! 'Tis not responsibility to him I speak of at all, but responsibility to thyself. 'Twere a noble act, on the fact of't, to beg his pardon and take your birching like a man, but 'tis no more than an excuse for dropping the reins of your own life. 'Sheart, 'tis a manlier matter to set your goal and swallow the consequences!"

Ebenezer shook his head. "Put what face you will upon it, Henry, I must go. Can a son stand by and watch his father fret to an early grave?"

"Think no ill of't, Henry," Anna pleaded.

"Surely you don't believe it a wise move also?" Burlingame asked incredulously.

"I cannot judge the wisdom of't," Anna replied, "but certain 'twere not a wrong thing to do."

"Marry, I have done with the twain of you!" Burlingame cried. "Praise Heav'n I know not my own father, if this be how they shackle one!"

"I pray Heav'n rather you may someday find him," Anna said calmly, "or word of him, at least. A man's father is his link with the past: the bond 'twixt him and the world he's born to."

"Then again I thank Heav'n I'm quit of mine," said Burlingame. "It leaves me free and unencumbered."

"It doth in sooth, Henry," Anna said with some emotion, "for better or worse."

When the time came to leave, Ebenezer asked, "When shall we see you again, Henry? I shall miss you painfully."

But Burlingame only shrugged and said, "Stay here now, if't pain you so."

"I shall visit as often as I can."

"Nay, risk not your father's displeasure. Besides, I may be gone."

"Gone?" asked Anna, with mild alarm. "Gone whither, Henry?"

He shrugged again. "There's naught to keep me here. I care not a fig for any of my pupils, save to pass the time till something else absorbs me."

After making their good-byes, which their friend's bitterness rendered awkward, Ebenezer and Anna hired a carriage to fetch them to St. Giles in the Fields. The little journey, though uneventful, they both enjoyed, for despite the fact that Anna was disturbed to the point of occasional tears over Burlingame's attitude, and Ebenezer grew more anxious by the mile at the prospect of confronting his father, the carriage-ride was the twins' first opportunity in some time to converse privately and at length. When finally they arrived at the Cooke estate they found to their alarm that Andrew had taken to his bed three days before, at the direction of his physician, and was being cared for by Mrs. Twigg, the housekeeper, like an invalid.