Luckily for him (else he might have mossed over where he sat), Ebenezer was roused from his remarkable trance shortly after dinner-time by a sudden great commotion at his door.
"Eben! Eben! Prithee admit me quickly!"
"Who is it?" called Ebenezer, and jumped up in alarm: he had no friends at the College who might be calling on him.
"Open and see," the visitor laughed. "Only hurry, I beg of thee!"
"Do but wait a minute. I must dress."
"What? Not dressed? 'Swounds, what an idle fellow! No matter, boy; let me in at once!"
Ebenezer recognized the voice, which he'd not heard for three years. "Henry!" he cried, and threw open the door.
" 'Tis no other," laughed Burlingame, giving him a squeeze. "Marry, what a lout thou'rt grown to! A good six feet! And abed at this hour!" He felt the young man's forehead. "Yet you've no fever. What ails thee, lad? Ah well, no matter. One moment — " He ran to the window and peered cautiously below. "Ah, there's the rascal! Hither, Eben!"
Ebenezer hurried to the window. "Whatever is't?"
"Yonder, yonder!" Burlingame pointed up the street. "Coming by the little dram-shop! Know you that gentleman with the hickory-stick?"
Ebenezer saw a long-faced man of middle age, gowned as a don, making his way down the street.
"Nay, 'tis no Magdalene Fellow. The face is strange."
"Shame on thee, then, and mark it well. 'Tis Isaac himself, from Trinity."
"Newton!" Ebenezer looked with sharper interest. "I've not seen him before, but word hath it the Royal Society is bringing out a book of his within the month that will explain the workings of the entire universe! I'faith, I thank you for your haste! But did I hear you call him rascal?"
Burlingame laughed again. "You mistake the reason for my haste, Eben. I pray God my face hath altered these fifteen years, for I'm certain Brother Isaac caught sight of me ere I reached your entryway."
"Is't possible you know him?" asked Ebenezer, much impressed.
"Know him? I was once near raped by him. Stay!" He drew back from the window. "Keep an eye on him, and tell me how I might escape should he turn in at your door."
"No difficulty: the door of this chamber lets onto an open stairway in the rear. What in Heav'n's afoot, Henry?"
"Don't be alarmed," Burlingame said. " 'Tis a pretty story, and I'll tell it all presently. Is he coming?"
"One moment — he's just across from us. There. Nay, wait now — he is saluting another don. Old Bagley, the Latinist. There, now, he's moving on."
Burlingame came to the window, and the two of them watched the great man continue up the street.
"Not another moment, Henry," Ebenezer declared. "Tell me at once what mystery is behind this hide-and-seek, and behind thy cruel haste to leave us three years past, or watch me perish of curiosity!"
"Aye and I shall," Burlingame replied, "directly you dress yourself, lead us to food and drink, and give full account of yourself. 'Tis not I alone who have excuses to find."
"How! Then you know of my failure?"
"Aye, and came to see what's what, and perchance to birch some sense into you."
"But how can that be? I told none but Anna."
"Stay, you'll hear all, I swear't. But not a word till I've a spread of sack and mutton. Let not excitement twist thy values, lad — come on with you!"
"Ah, bless you, thou'rt an Iliad Greek, Henry," Ebenezer said, and commenced dressing.
They went to an inn nearby, where over small beer after dinner Ebenezer explained, as best he could, his failure at the College and subsequent indecisions. "The heart of't seems to be," he concluded, "that in no matter of import can I make up my mind. Marry, Henry, how I've needed thy counsel! What agonies you might have saved me!"
"Nay," Burlingame protested. "You well know I love you, Eben, and feel your afflictions as my own. But advice, I swear't, is the wrong medicine for your malady, for two reasons: first, the logic of the problem is such that at some remove or other you'd have still to choose, inasmuch as should I counsel you to come with me to London, you yet must choose whether to follow my counsel; and should I farther counsel you to follow my first counsel, you must yet choose to follow my second — the regress is infinite and goes nowhere. Second, e'en could you choose to follow my counsel, 'tis no cure at all, but a mere crutch to lean upon. The object is to put you on your feet, not to take you off them. 'Tis a serious affair, Eben; it troubles me. What are your own sentiments about your failure?"
"I must own I have none," Ebenezer said, "though I can fancy many."
"And this indecision: how do you feel about yourself?"
"Marry, I know not! I suppose I'm merely curious."
Burlingame frowned and called for a pipe of tobacco from a winedrawer working near at hand. "You were indeed the picture of apathy when I found you. Doth it not gall or grieve you to lose the baccalaureate, when you'd approached so near it?"
"In a manner, I suppose," Ebenezer smiled. "And yet the man I most respect hath got on without it, hath he not?"
Burlingame laughed. "My dear fellow, I see 'tis time I told you many things. Will it comfort you to learn that I, too, suffer from your disease, and have since childhood?"
"Nay, that cannot be," Ebenezer said. "Ne'er have I seen thee falter, Henry: thou'rt the very antithesis of indecision! 'Tis to you I look in envy, and despair of e'er attaining such assurance."
"Let me be your hope, not your despair, for just as a mild siege of smallpox, though it scar a man's face, leaves him safe forever from dying of that ailment, so inconstancy, fickleness, a periodic shifting of enthusiasms, though a vice, may preserve a man from crippling indecision."
"Fickleness, Henry?" Ebenezer asked in wonderment. "Is't fickleness explains your leaving us?"
"Not in the sense you take it," Burlingame said. He fetched out a shilling and called for two more tankards of beer. "I say, did you know I was an orphan child?"
"Why, yes," Ebenezer said, surprised. "Now you mention it, I believe I did, though I can't recall your ever telling us. Haply we just assumed it. I'faith, Henry, all the years we've known you, and yet in sooth we know naught of you, do we? I've no idea when you were born, or where reared, or by whom."
"Or why I left you so discourteously, or how I learned of your failure, or why I fled the great Mister Newton," Burlingame added. "Very well then, take a draught with me, and I shall uncloak the mystery. There's a good fellow!"
They drank deeply, and Burlingame began his story.
"I've not the faintest notion where I was born, or even when — though it must have been about 1654. Much less do I know what woman bore me, or what man got me on her. I was raised by a Bristol sea-captain and his wife, who were childless, and 'tis my suspicion I was born in either America or the West Indies, for my earliest memories are of an ocean passage when I was no more than three years old. Their name was Salmon — Avery and Melissa Salmon."
"I am astonished!" Ebenezer declared. "I ne'er dreamed aught so extraordinary of your beginnings! How came you to be called Burlingame, then?"
Burlingame sighed. "Ah, Eben, just as till now you've been incurious about my origin, so till too late was I. Burlingame I've been since earliest memory, and, as is the way of children, it ne'er occurred to me to wonder at it, albeit to this day I've met no other of that surname."
"It must be that whomever Captain Salmon received you from was your parent!" Ebenezer said. "Or haply 'twas some kin of yours, that knew your name."
"Dear Eben, think you I've not racked myself upon that chance? Think you I'd not forfeit a hand for five minutes' converse with my poor Captain, or gentle Melissa? But I must put by my curiosity till Judgment Day, for they both are in their graves."