30
Upon the day appointed, pursuant to the Chancery Decision, the Commissioners of both Provinces, with Remembrancers and Correspondents, attended by a Thronglet of Children out of School, Sailors, Irishmen, and other Citizens exempt from or disobedient to the humorless rule of Clock-Time here, all go trooping down to Cedar Street and the House in Question, to establish its north Wall officially as the southernmost Point of Philadelphia. Fifteen Miles South of this, to the width of a Red Pubick Hair or R.P.H., will the West Line run.
The neighbors gather and mutter. "Well ye would think they'd wait a bit." "Eighty years, that isn't enough?" "Way this Town's growing, that South Point'll be across the street and down the Block before the Week's out." "Aye, moving even as we speak, hard to detain as a greas'd Pig." The Sector is borne in a padded Waggon, like some mechanickal Odalisque. Children jump, flapping their Arms in unconscious memory of when they had wings, to see inside. "Why not use the south Wall?" inquire several of them, far too 'pert for their sizes and ages. "The south Wall lies within private property," replies the Mayor's Assistant, "- - so, as the southernmost Publick Surface, the Parties have agreed upon this north Wall here, facing the Street."
Mr. Benjamin Loxley and his Crew have been busily erecting an Observatory in a vacant Piece, nearby, mid the mix'd rhythms of Hammers, each Framer at his own slightly different Tempo, and blurted phrases of songs. "Done many of these, Ben?”
"First one,— but don't tell anybody. Pretty straightforward, regular Joists and Scantlings, nothing too exotick, beyond this Cone Roof, trying to accommodate the tall one, spacing the Collar-beams so he won't thump his Head when he stands up,— tho' they'll be spending most of their time either sitting, or 'pon their Backs,—
"Hmm."
"Oh now, Clovis, your Bride is safe,— 'tis the only way for them to look straight up at the Stars that pass high overhead, these being the Best for the Latitude, as they say."
"Aye? and that great Telescope Tube thing ever pointing straight up? Heh, heh. Why's it got to be that big?"
"Don't break your rhythm, Hobab, I was quite enjoying it. The Gents wish to measure this quite closely,— find and keep the Latitude of their Line, to fractions of a second of Arc,— the Tube being the Radius of the Limb, see, a longer Tube will swing you a bigger Arc, longer Limb, longer Divisions, more room between the Markings, easier reading, nicer reading."
Mr. Chew appears to be making a Speech. "Shall we stop hammering till he's done?" Hobab inquires.
"Other Questions arise," Mr. Loxley gazing into the Distance. "Your notion of Futurity. Shall we continue to need Contracts with these people? How soon do you expect our Savior's Return may render them void? Considerations like that."
"I say whenever you can, give 'm all a Twenty-one-Hammer Salute," growls Clovis.
"I say take their Money, we don't have to love 'm," says Hobab.
"Or even marry 'm," adds young Elijah, the Swamper.
"Here are the Astronomers," Mr. Loxley notes, "perhaps you'd like to share some of your Analysis with them,— God grant ye clear Skies, Gentlemen," shouting over the newly percussive Activity of his Crew.
Dixon, removing his hat, tries out the Door-way, goes in, and lies supine upon the fresh-sawn Planking. Looking up, he sees Clovis, spread still as a Spider among the radial Rafters, watching him.
"Ask you something, Sir?...What thought have you given to getting that great Tube in the Door?”
"Oh, Mr. Bird calculated the whole thing, years ago, over in England.
All on Paper."
"Before there was ever a Scantling cut?"
"Before there was ever a Screw cut for the Instrument."
"I'll study on it. Thank ye, Sir." He tips a nonexistent Hat and
descends.
Mason looks in. "Will we get it in the Door, Dixon?"
Dixon stands up, carefully. "This is the very same Whimwham we had
at the Cape...?"
"No Trouble, Gents, we'll make ye a Door it shall go in," promises the
cheery Hobab.
"And out, too!" adds Elijah, from beneath a Load of Weatherboarding.
Dixon, as a Needle man anxious to obtain the latest Magnetick Intelligence of the Region that awaits them, Rumors reaching him of a Coffee-House frequented by those with an interest in the Magnetick, however it be manifested, shows up one night at The Flower-de-Luce, in Locust-Street. There, over the Evening, he will find, among the Clientele, German Enthusiasts, Quack Physicians, Land-Surveyors, Iron-Prospectors, and Watch-Thieves who know how to draw a Half-Hunter from one Pocket into another with the swiftness of a Lodestone clapping a Needle to its Influence. Strangers greet him as they might a Friend of ancient standing, whilst others, obviously seeking to shun his Company, glare whenever the Fumes of Tobacco allow them mutual Visibility. He has no idea what any of it is about. Gently tacking among the crowd, he arrives at the Bar. "Evening, Sir, what'll it be?"
"Half and Half please, Mount Kenya Double-A, with Java Highland,— perhaps a slug o' boil'd Milk as well...?"
"Planning on some elevated Discourse tonight?" jests the Coffee-Draper, swiftly and with little misdirection assembling Dixon's order. His Wig shines with a Nimbus in the strange secondary light from the Mirror behind him.
"This may seem an odd question, Sir,— but...have I been in here before?”
"Goodness no, yet how many times a day do I get ask'd that very thing.
Diff'rent Visitors with diff'rent Expectations. You strike me as the
English Tavern sort, and so you'll be noticing there's less Reserve 'round
here than you may be us'd to,— tho' any who seek a Quarrel may read
ily find it, yea unto Dirks and Pistols, if that truly be your Preference
Howbeit,— make yourself at home, and good Luck in America."
Dixon beamingly adverts to the early Crowd, here, immediately noticing Dr. Franklin's friend Dolly, tho' she's certainly not as eye-catchingly rigg'd out tonight as he's seen her before,— nor can he immediately 'spy any of her Companions. Soberly consulting a large Map upon a Mahogany Desk-top, she holds a pair of Silver Dividers, multiply-jointed, tending to White Gold in the Candle-light,— and refers repeatedly to a Book of Numerickal Tables, now and then gracefully walking the Instrument up, down, and 'cross its paper Stage. When she looks up at last, he guesses from her eyes that she knows he's been there, all the time. "Why Mr. Dixon. Well met." Holding out her hand, and before Dixon can begin to incline to kiss it, shaking his, as men do. "These Data arriv'd but this Instant, by the German Packet,— the latest Declination Figures. Our easterly movement, in Pennsylvania, as it's been doing in latter Years, decelerates yet,— here, 'tis four point five minutes east," as Dixon attentively gazes over her shoulder, "when in the year 'sixty, 'twas four point six. If you head South, 'twill be three point nine at Baltimore."
"Were these measur'd Heights," he murmurs, "a very Precipice."
"What could be causing it, do you imagine?"
"Something underground, moving Westward...?"
"Hush." Her Eyes rapidly sweep the Vicinity. "No one ever speaks of that aloud here,— what sort of incautious Lad are you, exactly?"
"Why, the usual sort, I guess."
"Well." She pulls him into an alcove. "Rather took you for an All-Nations Lad, myself."
"Been there." The serving-girls at The All-Nations Coffee-House are costumed in whimsical versions of the native dress of each of the coffee-producing countries,— an Arabian girl, a Mexican girl, a Javanese girl, and according to Dolly, a Sumatran girl as well,— a constantly shifting Pageant of allegorical Coffees of the World, to some ways of thinking, in
fact, quite educational, tho' attracting a core Clientele louder, beefier, and altogether less earnest than Dixon by now expects to find in Philadelphia.
"Mm-Hmm...? Sumatran, tha say...?"
"You seem about to swoon, Sir."
He takes a delighted breath. "Ah don't know how much of my story tha may already have heard," bringing his Chair closer, "- - or, to be fair to Mason, our story."
She shifts her own Chair away. "You and Mr. Mason are.. .quite close, I collect."
"Huz? We get along. This is our second Job together...? The Trick is all in stayin' out of each other's way, really."
"There are Arrangements in the World," she explains, "too sadly familiar to Women, wherein, as we say among us, with the one, you get the other as well,—
"Lass, Lass...? Eeh, what a Suggestion. We'd make thah' one only to
our Commissioners, I vouch Unless, that is, tha're indicating some
interest in Mason?"
"Or asking 'pon Molly's behalf," her Eye-Lashes indulging in an extra Bat. "This gets very complicated, doesn't it?"
"Mason does need to be out more, for fair. Ah'm but thinkin' o' meself, here...? Ever been coop'd up with a Melancholick, for days on end?"
Dolly shrugs. "Oh, aye, Molly Sour-Apple. She's lucky I don't get like that. Two of us? Forget it."
"I find it hard work to be cheery all the time," says Dixon, "— as cheery as it seems I must."
"Really,— tell me all. The Way your Face begins to ache."
" 'Here's the Optimist,' wagging their Thumbs. Mr. Franklin must get thah' all the time...?"
"Mr. Franklin does not confide in me, nor would I encourage him to. He is too charming, too mysterious, entirely the wrong sort for a great Philosopher."
Dixon touches the end of his Nose. "Ow!" shaking his finger back and forth. "Needs some filing down. Do excuse me."
"My Tale is simple. I held my first Mariner's Compass when I was nine, an age when Girls develop unforeseen yet passionate Interests. I
believ'd there was a Ghost in the Room. I walk'd with it, then, ev'ry-where. The first thing I understood was that it did not always point North...and it was the Dips and Deflexions I grew most curious about."
"In my Circumferentor Box, I learn'd to read what Shapes lay beneath the Earth, all in the Needle's Dance...? Upon the Fell, as if there were not enough already out there to bring me anxiety, I discover'd my Instrument acting as a Cryptoscope, into Powers hidden and waiting the Needles of Intruders, set up as a picket to warn Something within of any unannounc'd wishes to enter. No Creatures of the Fell I'd ever heard of enjoy'd that much Protection,— being shabby, solitary, notable more for the irrational fierceness of their Desires, than for any elegance or Justice in the enactment of them."
"You have impress'd them in Maryland," she informs him. "Cecilius Calvert, or, as he is styl'd by some, for his unreflective effusions, 'The Silliest' Calvert,— tho' not by me, for I consider him subtle,— believes you a Wizard, a Dowser of Iron."
"Close attention to the Instrument, a lot of Back-sighting, repetition, and frustration,— why disenchant them? If it's Weird Geordie Powers they wish, why W.G.P.'s they shall have, and plenty of them too...? Mr. Calvert offer'd me Port, in a Silver Cup...? Seem'd quite merry...?"
"In most places it is term'd, 'Giggling.' They are Geese, down there. They imagine, that you and your Instrument will make of them Nabobs, like Lord Lepton, to whose ill-reputed Plantation you must be drawn, upon your way West, resistlessly as the Needle. Then, Sailor among the Iron Isles,— Circumferentor Swab,— Beware.”
One morning in late December, they wake to a smell of Sea-Weed and Brine. The Wind is sensibly colder,— before it swiftly run gray small clouds, more and less dark. Light, when it arrives, comes ever crosswise. "Something wrong with the Town this morning," Dixon mutters.
"And what's that G-dawful twittering sound?"
"Styl'd'Birds,'I'm told...?"
"How's it possible we've never heard any here before,— Dixon! Hold,— the Hammers! the Rip-Saws! the Meat-Waggons! the Screaming uninterrupted! what's happen'd?"
"Eeh.. .it's been Christmas, hasn't it...?"
"One of us," Mason declares, "must put on his Shoes and Coat, and go down into that Street, there, and discover the reason for this unsettling Silence."
"Eeh, so let's have Junior's Arse in the Roasting-Pan once again, shall we,— thah's bonny!" protests Dixon.
"Be practical,— if they kill you, and I remain safe, the loss to British Astronomy, if any, will go largely unnotic'd."
"Well,— put thah' way, of course,— where's m' Hat, then...?, not that one, thankee, Sir...?, no, I'll need the Broad-Brim today,—
"You're going out as a Quaker?"
"Eeh! He has Costume-Advice for me now as well! He, who all too plainly exhibits his Need, when in Publick, ever to deflect Attention,— - Inexpensive Salvo," Mason notes.
"Geordie Intuition, then," Dixon tapping his Head with the side of his Thumb, before pulling on a classick Philadelphia Quaker's Hat, differing in little but Size from thousands of others here in Town. "Trust mine. In London they may sift you by your Shoes,— but in this Place, 'tis Hat and Wig by which a man, aye and Woman too, may infallibly be known."
"They've been looking at, at my Wig, all this time? My Hat? Dixon,— you're sure?"
"Aye, and forming Opinions bas'd upon what they saw, as well...?"
"...Oh. Ehm, what, f'r example?"
"Eeh, what matter,— 'tis much too late...? they've all made up their minds about thee by now."
"Then I'll wear something else."
"So then they'll be on about thah',— 'Aye there he is, old Look Before Ye Leap,— he, bold enough to clap on anything as stylish as the Adonis? eeh no, 'tis but the tried and true for old Heavens What'll They Think o' Me.' "
"What,— my Wig, it isn't...adventurous enough, you're saying."
"Attend me, man, Molly and Dolly, remember them? discuss little but thy Appearance, and ways to modify it, at least in my hearing,— ruining, alas, and more than once, the promise of a Sparkish Evening,— thy Wig in particular provoking one of the greatest,— forgive me,— of all my Failures of Attention."
"It's a Ramillies, of the middling sort.. .bought some years since of a fugitive Irish Wig-Maker at Bermondsey...styl'd himself 'Mister Larry, Whilst Ye Tarry'...nothing remarkable at all about it. You say you've been spending time with— "
"Time and Coin and little else, aye but thah's another Tale, 's it not...? withal, my Reconnaissance mission awaits, and Damme, I'm Off!" And he is, Mason following so closely as nearly to have his Nose caught in the Jamb.
"Wait,— I was going out wi' ye!" Hopping down the stairs into his Shoes, attempting to button his Jacket, "How are you fitting that in, among all the Obs and Social Visits?"
"Fitting whah' in...?" Dixon staring in comick Dismay down toward his Penis, as he has seen Market-place Drolls do. The Snow this morn-
ing is ankle-deep, crepitous, with more on the way. The Street before the Inn seems deserted. "Odd for Wednesday Market...?"
' Tis another damn'd Preacher," Mason opines, "who's magnetiz'd the whole Population away to a Tent someplace. You know how they are, here. Flock to anything won't they, worldly Philadelphians."
The nearest Coffee-House, The Restless Bee, lies but a block and a half distant. There, if anyplace, should be News, up-to-the-Minute. On the way over, they begin at last to hear Ships' Bells and Boatswains' Pipes from the Docks, Children out coasting, dogs barking, a Teamster with a laden Waggon in a Snow-Drift, and presently indeed the crescent Drone and Susurrus of Assembly. Directly in front of The Restless Bee, they come upon a Circle of Citizens, observing, and in some cases wagering upon, a furious Struggle between two Men, one to appearance a City Quaker, whose Hat has been knock'd off,— the other, an apparent Presbyterian from the Back-Country, dress'd in Animal Hides from Head to Foot,— each having already taken a number of solid Blows from the other, neither showing any lapse of Pugnacity.
"Excuse me, Sir," Mason inquires of a Gentleman in full Wig, Velvet Coat, and Breeches, and carrying a Lawyer's Bag, "— what is the Matter here?"
The Attorney, after staring at them for a bit, introduces himself as Mr. Chantry. "Ye're from well out of Town if ye've not heard the news."
"Eeh," Dixon's Eyes seeking the Zenith.
"At Lancaster,— day before yesterday,— the Indians that were taking refuge in the Gaol there, were massacr'd ev'ry one, by local Irregulars,— the same Band that slew the other Indians at Conestoga, but week before last."
"So finishing what they'd begun," contributes an Apron'd Mechanick nearby. "Now the entire Tribe is gone, the lot."
"Were there no Soldiers to prevent it?" Dixon asks.
"Colonel Robertson and his Regiment of Highlanders refus'd to stir, toasting their Noses whilst that brave Paxton Vermin murder'd old people, small children, and defenseless Drunkards."
"Not being men enough to face Warriors, in a real Fight."
"Mind yeer Speech, Friend, or 'tis your Hat'll be on the Ground as well, and your Head in it.”
"And here's to Matt Smith, and Revd. Stewart!"
"Here's Death to 'em, the cowardly Dogs!" Further Insults, then Snow-Balls, Fists, and Brickbats, begin to fly.
"This way, Gentlemen," Mr. Chantry helpfully steering the Surveyors to the Alley and thro' a back Entry into the Coffee-House, where they find Tumult easily out-roaring what prevails outside. With its own fuliginous Weather, at once public and private, created of smoke billowing from Pipes, Hearths, and Stoves, the Room would provide an extraordinary sight, were any able to see, in this Combination, peculiar and precise, of unceasing Talk and low Visibility, that makes Riot's indoor Sister, Conspiracy, not only possible, but resultful as well. One may be inches from a neighbor, yet both blurr'd past recognizing,— thus may Advice grow reckless and Prophecy extreme, given the astonishing volume of words moving about in here, not only aloud but upon Paper as well, Paper being waved in the air, poked at repeatedly for emphasis, held up as Shielding against uncongenial remarks. Here and there in the Nebulosity, lone Lamps may be made out, at undefin'd Distances, snugly Halo'd,— Servant-Boys moving to and fro, House-Cats in warm currents of flesh running invisibly before them, each Boy vigorously working his small Bellows to clear a Path thro' the Smoke, meantime calling out Names true and taken.
"Boy, didn't they tell you that Name is never to be spoken aloud in this Room?"
"Ha!" from somewhere in the Murk, "so ye've sneak'd in again, where yer face can't be seen!"
"I have ev'ry right, Sir,—
"Boy, clear me a pathway to that infamous Voice, and we shall see,—
"Gentlemen, Gentlemen!"
"There'll be Pistol-Play soon enough, by the looks of this new Express here, just arriv'd from over Susquehanna, for there's no doubt about it now,— the Paxton Boys are on the Move."
"Hurrah!"
"Shame!"
"How many, Jephthah?"
' 'Tis Micah. An hundred, and picking up Numbers by the Hour. So says it here." Smokers pause in mid-puff. The communal Vapors
presently beginning to thin, human forms emerge in outline, some standing upon Chairs and even Tables, others seeking, in literal Consternation, refuge beneath the Furniture.
"The Boys say they're coming for the Moravian Indians this time."
"Indians, in Philadelphia?" Dixon curiously.
Mr. Chantry explains. Converted by the Moravian Brethren years before the last French war, caught between the warring sides, distrusted by ev'ryone, wishing only to live a Christian Life, these Indians were peacefully settl'd up near the Lehigh when the Rangers there came after them, but a few Weeks before the Conestoga murders, suspecting them of being in League with Pontiac, whose depredations were then at their full Flood. Tho' some of these People were slain, yet most escaped, arriving at Philadelphia in November,— "About the time you boys did, in fact,— 'spite of the Mob at Germantown, who nearly did for 'em,— and now an hundred forty Souls, from Wyalusing and Wecquetank and Nazareth, they're down at Province Island, below the City, where the Moravians and Quakers tend them,— the Army, given its showing at Lancaster, being no longer trusted."
"The Paxtons'll kill us all!" someone blubbers.
"Fuck 'em, they shan't have anyone here. Enough is enough."
"Our Line had better be set no nearer than Schuylkill, and the Ferries there brought back, first thing."
"How many Cannon have we in Town?"
Mason and Dixon look at each other bleakly. "Well. If I'd known 'twould be like this in America..."
In fact, when word arriv'd of the first Conestoga Massacre, neither Astronomer quite register'd its full Solemnity. The Cedar-Street Observatory was up at last,— Mr. Loxley and his Lads were done shimming and cozening square Members to Circular Purposes,— and after two days of Rain and Snow, Mason and Dixon were taking their first Obs from it. Mason did note as peculiar, that the first mortal acts of Savagery in America after their Arrival should have been committed by Whites
against Indians. Dixon mutter'd, "Why, 'tis the d——'d Butter-Bags all
over again."
They saw white Brutality enough, at the Cape of Good Hope. They can no better understand it now, than then. Something is eluding them.
Whites in both places are become the very Savages of their own worst Dreams, far out of Measure to any Provocation. Mason and Dixon have consult'd with all it seems to them they safely may. "Recall that there are two kinds of electricity," Dr. Franklin remark'd, "positive and negative. Cape Town's curse is its Weather,— the Electrick Charge during the Stormy season being ev'rywhere Positive, whilst in the Dry Season, all is Negative."
"Are you certain," Dixon mischievously, " 'tis not the other way 'round? That the rainy weather—
"Yes, yes," somewhat brusquely, "whichever Direction it goes, the relevant Quantity here, is the size of the Swing between the two,— that vertiginous re-polarizing of the Air, and perhaps the Æther too, which may be affecting the very Mentality of the People there."
"Then what's America's excuse?" Dixon inquir'd, mild as Country Tea.
"Unfortunately, young people," recalls the Revd, "the word Liberty, so unreflectively sacred to us today, was taken in those Times to encompass even the darkest of Men's rights,— to injure whomever we might wish,— unto extermination, were it possible,— Free of Royal advice or Proclamation Lines and such. This being, indeed and alas, one of the Liberties our late War was fought to secure."
Brae, on her way out of the Room for a moment, turns in the Door-way, shock'd. "What a horrid thing to say!" She does not remain to press the Point.
"At the Time of Bushy Run," confides Ives LeSpark, "— and I have seen the very Document,— General Bouquet and General Gage both sign'd off on expenditures to replace Hospital Blankets us'd 'to convey the Small-pox to the Indians,' as they perhaps too clearly stipulated. To my knowledge," marvels Ives, "this had never been attempted, on the part of any modern Army, till then."
"Yes, Wicks?" Mr. LeSpark beaming at the Revd, "You wish'd to add something? You may ever speak freely here,— killing Indians having long ago ceas'd to figure as a sensitive Topick in this House."
"Since you put it that way," the Revd, in will'd Cheeriness, "firstly,— ev'ryone knew about the British infection of the Indians, and no one spoke out. The Paxton Boys were but implementing this same Wicked Policy of extermination, using Rifles instead,— altho',— Secondly, unlike our own more virtuous Day, no one back then, was free from Sin. Quakers, as handsomely as Traders of less pacific Faiths, profited from the sale of Weapons to the Indians, including counterfeit Brown Besses that blew up in the faces of their Purchasers, as often as fell'd any White Settlers. Thirdly,—
"How many more are there likely to be?" inquires his Brother-in-Law. "Apparently I must reconsider my offer."
"Ev'ryone got along," declares Uncle Wicks. "Ye can't go looking for Sinners, not in an Occupied City,— for ev'ryone at one time or another here was some kind of Rogue, the Preacher as the Printer's Devil, the Mantua-Maker as the Milk-Maid,— even little Peggy Shippen, God bless her, outrageous Flirt even at four or five, skipping in and out, handing each of us Flowers whilst her Father frown'd one by one over our Disbursements. 'Papa's Work is making him sad,' the Miniature Temptress explain'd to us. 'My work never makes me sad.' 'What is your work, little Girl?' asks your innocent Uncle. 'To marry a General,' she replies, sweeping back her Hair, 'and die rich.' During the Occupation, having reach'd an even more dangerous Age, she had her Sights actually train'd upon poor young André, till he had his Hurricane, and march'd away, whereupon she sulk'd, tho' not without Company, till Arnold march'd in,— the little Schuylkill-side Cleopatra."
"Am I about to be shock'd?" inquires Tenebrae, re-entering.
"Hope not," DePugh blurts quietly.
"Well, DePugh."
"You've made an impression," mutters Ethelmer.
"Didn't mean to, I'm sure."
Tenebra? surveys the Pair. Unpromising. She sits, and bends to a Patch of Chevron-Stitch'd Filling.
Meanwhile, Mason and Dixon, a-jangle thro' Veins and Reins with Caf-feous Humors, impatient themselves to speak, are launch'd upon the choppy Day, attending, with what Civility they may summon, the often reckless Monologues of others.
"The true War here is between the City and the back Inhabitants,— the true dying, done by Irish, Scots, Indians, Catholics, far from Philadelphia, as from any Ear that might have understood their final words. Yet is the City selling rifles to anyone with the Price, most egre-giously the Indians who desire our Dissolution,—
"The rivalry is withal useful to the British, our common Enemy, who thus gain the pretext for keeping troops forever upon our Land."
"Whilst their damn'd Proclamation Line, forbids to venture there those same back Inhabitants who took Ohio, at great suffering, from the French. These damn'd British, with their list of Offenses growing daily, have much to answer for."
"Oh, I tremble that Britain should ever have to reckon with the base cowards who left Braddock to die,— who will turn and flee at the stir of a feather, be it but upon some dead Turkey-cock. Oh,— let us by no means offer Offense to the scum of Hibernia, nor to the Jacobite refuse of Scotland, nor to any one of this mongrel multiplicity of mud-dwellers, less civiliz'd, indeed less human, than the Savages 'pon whom they intrude."
"Is he in here again? Someone, pray, kill him."
"Reason, Reason,— the Irish, Sir are school'd long and arduously in Insurrection, knowing how to take a Magazine, or raid a Convoy. Britain, tho' evoke she the tenderest feelings, has made it so."
Thus does the Lunch-Hour speed by. Soon there's a distinct feeling in the Rooms, of Afternoon. Maps have been brought and spread, Pigeons bearing Messages dispatch'd from under Roof-peaks by expert Belgians, resident here, to as far away as Lancaster County. Boys old enough to handle a Rifle are drilling out in Back. Younger brothers are active at the next Order of Minitude, with long Sticks, whilst down at the next, the Dogs run obsessively to and fro, all 'round the Edges, faces a-twist with Efforts to understand. Down the Street 'round the Corner, into the City at large, the Sailors grumble in their candle-less Ale-Hovels, the devout Man of Business looks ahead to an hour dedicated again to the Daily Question, the Child trembles at the turn in the Day when the ghosts shift about behind the Doors, and out in the Gust-beaten wilderness come the Paxton Boys...
Steadily on they ride, relax'd, in Poise, Rifles a-thwart,— the dreaded Paxton Boys. With Hunters' Eyes, and ancient Wrongs a-ranklin' They soon come vis-a-vis with Mr. Franklin, Whose Gaze behind empurpl'd Lenses hidden, Cannot be seen, and so may not be bidden.
- Tox, "The Siege of Philadelphia, or, Attila Turn'd Anew"
'Tis too cloudy for Obs tonight. Mason frets at the delay. As soon as they shall have taken Measurements enough to yield trustworthy Mean Values of the Zenith Distances of Algol, Marfak, Capella, and their other Latitude-Stars,— allowing them at last to compute the exact Latitude of the southernmost point of Philadelphia,— they can pack up and go looking for the next Observatory Site, someplace in that same Latitude, to the west of here.
"Can't be too soon for me," Mason mutters. They are returning to their rooms, from the Observatory. Tavern music and hoofbeats racket upon the brick, often for blocks.
"I was hoping we'd yet be in Town when those 'Boys' ride in," Dixon all but sighs.
"Why? The worst sort of Celtick Degenerates? Their Ancestors ate human flesh,— as their Relatives continue to, no doubt. They've tasted Blood, they'll shoot at anything, especially, ehm, Targets of bright Color which fail to blend enough, with the Environment. No, the best thing for this Party to do, is not dawdle, but simply get on with our Work,— basically, get out of this place, and if possible, lose the red Coat."
"Mason, reflect,— as we must go West, into the Forks of Brandy-wine,— and as these Barbarians of thine are advancing to the East, we are likely to meet them well before anyone in Philadelphia does...?"
Mason frowns. "Yet,— suppose we kept ever fifteen miles to the south,— any roads we'd have to cross leading up from the South, not down from Harris's Ferry,— the main body then ought to pass by to the north of us."
"Unless they've Rangers out, maybe even looking for huz...?" wistfully.
"Then you'd have your Adventure, after all. Tho' why should they bother?”
"Dunno...? Happen we're par-ticularly the Intruders they can't abide...? What must we look like? A sizable Band of Arm'd Pioneers, working for the Proprietors...? mystical Machinery they've never seen...? Up far too late at night, gazin' at the Heavens...? Why, what would thee think, were it revers'd?"
"Mightn't someone explain to them,—
"We'd have to to draw within earshot, first,— if Tales I hear of their Rifles be true, why those German Gun-Smiths out there know how to send a Ball thro' a Pretzel, any Loop tha fancy, from a Mile away."
"You seem curiously merry at the Prospect."
"Merrily curious, rather, as to who commands them? Shall they really come against their Mother-City? Is this what America's going to be like? How, as a Quaker born, can I feel toward them any Sentiments, but those of grievous Offense,— yet how, as a child of the 'Forty-five, can my Heart fail to break, for the Lives they've been oblig'd to live? And such Inquiries along that Line."
They are just passing the Door of The Restless Bee Coffee-House, one of those remaining active all night, and, as little able to resist the sounds of Company, as to pass Nose-numb before the Perfumes of Celebes, they enter the Mid-watch Disputancy.
"Now then," Mason's Phiz presently wreathed in Delphic Vapors, "that's if ye'll excuse me,— counter-marching a bit, 'the 'Forty-five'? What would you possibly know, let alone remember, pray, of that fateful Year? You were a Child,— out there in a Pit-Cabin, wi' nowt but Spoil-Heaps to look at,— missin' it all, was the Tale ye told me, Lad!— Arrh! Arrh! The blithe piping of Youth, ever claiming a parrt in History,— I love it!" Somehow another fervent Cup is in his Hand, from which he sips at length, before singing,
"When Night was Day
And Day was Night
Who, then, was the Jacobite?
"Eh? Of course you were far, far too young to appreciate those Grand Days of 'forty-five and -six, all too electrickal with Passion,— "Thee, Mason,— a Jacobite?”
"Anyone who was seventeen that summer, young Dixon, was a Jacobite."
Dixon does recall a band of Riders, cloak'd and mask'd, who clamor'd into Raby in the middle of the night. "I was watching from a Pantry window, down at Fetlock-level— Boots, the Hems of Cloaks,— Tartan Patterns flashing ev'rywhere, tho' the Colors in that light were uncertain. Even now I believe that it was he...I could feel...something of such Moment...such high Purpose...! knelt, transfix'd. I would have done whatever he bade me. 'Twas the only time in my life I have felt that Surrender to Power, upon which, as I have learn'd after, to my Sorrow, all Government is founded. Never again. No more a Maiden as to than', and thankee all the same."
"How so? He and his Forces came, and went, upon quite the other side of England,— the Irish side, most convenient to French Transport."
"And yet, could our Wishes have brought him..."
"Well. Our Wishes. However little I have to expect from my own, yet am I not grown quite so melancholick, as to in any way question those of others."
"Thoughtful of thee, Mason...?"
' 'Twas ever Sun-rise, Dixon, in those times,— I recall less well the Nights,— each morning bringing us in fresh news,— sightings of him ev'rywhere. We chose to loiter near the Houses with Pine Trees by 'em, such being a Coded Welcome to any Jacobite on the Run, as a sign of food and Shelter within."
"In Durham, sometimes when the Wind was fair, we could hear the Bag-Pipes, far away...we had never heard Music like it before...some Lads, aye and Lasses, would travel Miles to hear it— Ah didn't much fancy it, sad to say, much too predatory, less accountable for how it sounded,— less human, the ever-inflated Bag allowing the Player to decouple Song from Breath. It never pans'd for Breath. Can you imagine how unsettling that may've been? Not as a Wild Creature in the night, for ev'ry Beast must roar, yet draw Breath,— whilst this...comes swelling, invisible, resistless. Something that has pass'd beyond the need for Breath."
"I remember,— 'twas how Wolfe's Men came to Stroud. Without Bag-Pipes at the Van, playing that Musick forbidden to all other Scots to play
since 1745, and thereby doubly damn'd,— a-chaunting and a-keening all their loss, failure, hatred, may I say, of England,— frightening village after Village into Submission,— the Brits would never have prevail'd in India.. .in their Spoliation of Scotland they had learn'd the Power of that Cry that never Breathes, the direct Appeal to Animal Terror, and converted it to their Uses, leaving Loin-cloths besmear'd all up and down the Tropickal World. And here were they, as those for whom they march'd, doing the same to the Vale of my Birth and Blood.
"The Clothiers had made of children my Age Red Indians, spying upon them from the Woodlands they thought were theirs. We call'd them 'the White People,' and the House they liv'd in, 'the Big House.' Splendid boyhood, you might say, but you'd be wrong,— what I had imagin'd a Paradise proving instead but the brightly illustrated front of the Arras, behind which all manner of fools lay bleeding, and real rats swarm'd, their tails undulating, waiting their moment. I discover'd the Rulers who do not live in Castles but in housing less distinct, often unable to remain past Earshot of the Engines they own and draw their Power from. Imagine you're out late on a Spring night, riding along, with your Sweetheart, an Evening trembling with Promise, all the night an Eden,—
"Should we be discussing this?"
"Yes,— because all at once one has blunder'd sheep-eyed upon yet one more bloody Mill,— a river turn'd to a Race, the Works lit up in the dark like a great hostelry full of ill-humor'd Elves. Any chances for a few sentimental hours nipp'd, as ever in Glo'rshire, as soon as they may arise. You, simple Geordie, inhabit a part of England where ancient creatures may yet move in the Dusk, and the animals fly, and the dead pop in now and then for coffee and a chat. Upon my home soil, the Ground for growing any such Wonders has been cruelly poison'd, with the coming of the hydraulick Looms and the appearance of new sorts of wealthy individual, the late-come rulers upon whom as a younger person I spied, silent, whilst holding savage feelings within. I was expell'd from Paradise by Wolfe and his Regiment. One Penetration, and no Withdrawal could ever have Meaning. My home's no more."
Does Dixon catch an incompletely suppress'd Lilt of Insincerity? Something's askew. "Thoo are in Exile, then...?”
"With London but the first Station. Then came the Cape. Then St. Helena. Now,— these Provinces. You were there, and are here. You must have seen it,— each time, another step further—"
"Away...? Away from...?"
"Perhaps not away, Dixon. No. Perhaps toward. Hum. Hadn't considered that, hey, Optimism? Exercise yer boobyish Casuistry 'pon that, why don't ye? Toward what?"
"I the Booby...? I...? When indeed,— " but how much further up-field can he bring that, before a Brush from one of Rebekah's potent Wings? "Toward what, then...?" yet in the tone of a Fop to a Bedlamite, concealing the demand, "Amuse me.”
32
"And they proceeded to trade Blows," cries Pitt.
"Hurrah!" adds Pliny, "— they roll'd over and over, knock'd down the Tent, Mason got a Black Eye,—
"— and Dixon a bloody nose!"
"And the axmen came running, their Coins a-jingle, the pass-bank Bully hastily recording their wagers upon narrow scraps of Elephant,—
"Lomax,— " chides Euphie.
"Boys!" their Parents call. "Bed-Time."
"Us. To bed?" queries Pitt.
"Who should be listening to a Tale of Geminity," explains Pliny, "if not Twins?"
"Your Surveyors were Twins,— - were they not, Uncle?"
"Up to a point, my barking Fire-Dogs,"— the Revd having thought it over,— "as it seem'd to me, that Mason and Dixon had been converging, to all but a Semblance,— till something...something occurr'd between them, in 'sixty-seven or 'sixty-eight, that divided their Destinies irremediably...."
"Separated them?" cry the Twins.
"Perhaps this would be a good moment for us to abandon the Narrative," says Pitt.
"Best to remember them just this way," agrees Pliny, "before an inch of that Line was ever drawn.”
"Bed-time for Bookends," calls their Sister. The Express Packet Goose-down is whistling all non-Children ashore, back to their storm-wreck'd Jetty, back to their gray unpromising Port-Town. There to bide far into the Night, exiles from the land their Children journey to, and through, so effortlessly.
"What about Indians?" asks Pitt, adhering to the Door-Jamb.
"You did mention Indians," mutters Pliny, around his Brother's Shoulder.
"Do the Surveyors get to fight anyone, at least?"
"Anyone kill'd?"
"A Frigate-Battle isn't enough for you Parlor-Apes?" the Revd smiting himself upon the Cheeks in dismay.
"Pontiac's Conspiracy?" Pitt hopefully.
"Broken, alas, whilst the Surveyors were in Delaware, running the infamous Tangent Line, with its Consort of correctional Segments."
"The Paxton Boys?"
"No likelier. Whilst they rode whooping and shooting upon Philadelphia, the Surveyors were out in the Forks of Brandywine, well south of the Invasion Route, with a new observatory up, and the Stars nimbly hopping the Wires for them, as they gaz'd from someplace here upon Earth's Surface, yet in their Thoughts how unmappable—"
"May we have Indians tomorrow, Uncle?"
"Of course, Pitt."
"Pliny, Sir."
"The Younger." Off they go.
Tenebra?, now the youngest of the company, brings in fresh candles and fills the Tea-kettle and puts it upon the Hearth. DePugh and 'Thelmer observe her covertly as she moves seemingly unaware of the effect her flex'd Nape, her naked Ear swiftly re-conceal'd by a shaken Tress, her Hands in the Firelight, are having upon them.
If Mason's elaborate Tales are a way for him to be true to the sorrows of his own history (the Revd Cherrycoke presently resumes), a way of keeping them safe, and never betraying them, in particular those belonging to
Rebekah,— then Dixon's Tales, the Emersoniana, the ghosts of Raby, seem to arise from simple practical matiness. Who, if not Mason, at any given moment, needs cheering? A cheerful Party-Chief means a cheerful Party.
"Directly before the Falmouth Packet sail'd," he begins, one night as they wait for a Star, "William Emerson presented me with a small mysterious Package...."
' 'Twill not be an easy journey,— " quoth he, "there'll be days when the Compasses run quaquaversally wild, boxing themselves, and you, into Perplexity,— or happen the Stars be absented for fortnights at a time, with your own Pulse, as ever, a suite of changing Tempi. Then will a reliable Ticker come in handy. This one, as you see, is too tarnish'd and wounded, for any British or French thief to consider worth an effort,— yet, Americans being less sophisticated, I'm oblig'd, Jeremiah, to enjoin ye,— be vigilant, to the point of Folly, if Folly it takes, in your care of this Watch, for within it lies a secret mechanism, that will revolutionize the world of Horology."
"Eeh! Calculates when she's over-charging, and by how much, something like thah'?"
"What it does do, Plutonian," Emerson told him, patiently, "is never stop."
"Why aye. And upon the hour it sings 'Yankee Doodle'...?"
"You'll see. 'Tis all in the design of the Remontoire."
"The first thing an Emerson pupil learns, is that there is no Perpetual-Motion," said Dixon, "which I am in fact all these years later still upset about, Sir,— perhaps in some strange way holding thee responsible."
"What're we to do...? 'Tis a Law of the Universe,— Prandium gratis non est. Nonetheless, if we accept the Theorem 'Hand and Key are to Main-spring, as Clock-train is to Remontoire,' then the Solution ever depends upon removing time-rates from questions of storing Power. With the proper deployment of Spring Constants and Magnetickal Gating, Power may be borrow'd, as needed, against repayment dates deferrable indefinitely."
"Sir,— why would thee entrust to me anything so valuable, in so unruly a Country? If it got into the wrong Pocket,— "If anyone tries to dis-assemble it to see how it works, upon the loosening of a certain unavoidable Screw, the entire Contraption will fly apart into a million pieces, and the Secret is preserv'd."
"But the Watch,— "
"Oah, another's easily built,— the Trick's uncommonly simple, once ye've the hang of it."
"Then why aren't these ev'rywhere? If we are arriv'd in the Age of Newton transcended...? Perpetual-Motion commonplace... ? why's it yet a Secret?"
"Interest," chuckl'd Emerson, cryptickally. "In fact, Compound Interest! Eeh, eeh, eeh!"
Now what seems odd to Dixon, is that ten years ago, in Mechanics, or, The Doctrine of Motion, Emerson express'd himself clearly and pessi-mistickally as to any Hopes for building a Watch that might ever keep time at Sea, whose "ten thousand irregular motions" would defeat the regularity of any Time-Piece, whether Spring- or Pendulum-Driven. Whyever then this dubious loan of a time-keeper even less hopeful? Their history in Durham together has been one of many such Messages, not necessarily clear or even verbal, which Dixon keeps failing to understand. He knows, to the Eye-Blink, how implausible Emerson is, as the source of the Watch. Meaning he is an intermediary. For whom? Who in the World possesses the advanc'd Arts, and enjoys the liberal Funding, requir'd for the building of such an Instrument? Eeh,— who indeed?
On the Falmouth Packet coming over, alone with the Enigma at last, he inspects it at length, but is unable to find any provision for winding it,— yet one must be hidden someplace— "Damme," he mutters into the Wind down from Black Head, " 'tis Popish Plots again, thick as Mushrooms 'round the Grave of Merriment." Here they are, these Jezzies, being expell'd from one Kingdom after another,— whence any spare Time to devote to expensive Toys like this? He is a Newtonian. He wants all Loans of Energy paid back, and ev'ry Equation in Balance. Perpetual Motion is a direct Affront. If this Watch be a message, why, it does not seem a kind one.
At last, red-eyed and by now as anxiously seeking, as seeking to avoid, any proof, he delivers the Watch to Captain Falconer, for safekeeping inside the Ship's strong-box, till the end of the Voyage,— find- ing the Time-Piece, upon arrival in Philadelphia, ticking away briskly as ever,— and the counter-rhythms of the Remontoire falling precisely as the Steps of a Spanish dancer. He hopes it might be confiding to him, that its Effect of perfect Fidelity, like that of a clever Woman, is an elaborate and careful Illusion, and no more,— to be believ'd in at his Peril.
"Like to listen?" Dixon offers, one day when he and Mason are out upon the Tangent Line.
"It's all right, I believe you." Mason's eyebrows bouncing up and down politely.
"Mason, it's true! I never have to wind it! Do you ever see me winding it?"
Mason shrugs. "You might be winding it while I'm asleep, or when screen'd, as we so often are one from the other, by Trees,— you might be engaging one of these Rusticks, keeping well out of my sight, to wind it regularly.—Do I have to go on?"
"Friend. Would I quiz with you 'pon something this serious? All our assumptions about the Conservation of Energy, the Principia, eeh...? our very Faith, as modern Men, suddenly in question like thah'...?"
"Had I tuppence for ev'ry approach made to Bradley upon the Topick of Perpetual-Motion, I should be elsewhere than this,— recumbent I imagine upon some sand beach of the Friendly Isles, strumming my Eukalely, and attended by local Maidens, whom I may even sometimes allow to strum it for me."
"Eeh, you are fair suspicious...? Listen to it, at least...?"
Watch to his ear, frown growing playful, Mason after a bit begins to
sing,
"Ay, Senorit-ta, it Can't, be sweet-ter, what Shall-we, do?
What a Fies-ta, not Much Sies-ta, do you Think-so, too?
Look ye, the, Moon-is ascend-ding, You no comprehend ing-Glés, it's just as well,—
For, I'm-in-your-Spell, what's That-can't-you-tell? Ay, Seen-Yo-ree-tah!
"Yes amusing little rhythm device,— not loud enough for ensemble work of course,—
"Forgive me, Friend, I've again presum'd our Minds running before the same Wind. My deep Error."
Mason in reply begins to wag his Head, as at some unfortunate event in the Street, whilst Dixon grows further annoy'd. "Do tha fancy I've an easy time of it? With the evidence before me, gathering each day I doahn't wind the blasted Watch,— even so, I can't believe in it...? I know thah' old man's idea of Merriment! I am thrown into a Vor-tex of Doubts."
The Watch ticks complexly on,— to Dixon, sworn not to let it out of his sight, a Burden whose weight increases with each nontorsionary day. At last, at some Station ankle-deep in a classically awful Lower Counties Bog, he is able to face the possibility he's been curs'd,— Emerson, long adept at curses, having found himself, he once confess'd to Dixon, using the gift, as he grows older, in the service less of blunt and hot-headed revenge, than of elaborate and mirthful Sport,— directed at any he imagines have wrong'd him. Has Dixon finally made this List? Did he one day cross some Line, perhaps during a conversation he's forgotten but Emerson has ever since been brooding upon, perhaps in detail? Eeh! ev'ry-one's nightmare in these times,— an unremember'd Slight, aveng'd with no warning. "What did I do?" confronting his teacher at last in a Dream, "to merit such harsh reprisal? Had I been that wicked to thee, I'd surely remember...?"
"You violated your Contract," Emerson producing a sheaf of legal
Paper, each Page emboss'd with some intricate Seal, which if not read
properly will bring consequences Dixon cannot voice, but whose Terror
he knows "Where would you like to begin, Plutonian?"
'Tis now Dixon recalls the advice given Mason at the Cape, by the Negrito Toko,— ever vigorously to engage an Enemy who appears in a dream. He knows that to be drawn into Emerson's propos'd Exercise, is to fight at a fatal disadvantage upon his Enemy's ground. His only course
is to destroy the Document at once,— by Fire, preferably,— tho' the
nearest Hearth is in the next room, too far to seize the papers and run with them— Emerson is reading his Thoughts. "Lo, a Fire-Sign who cannot make Fire." The contempt is overwhelming. Dixon feels Defeat rise up around him. It seems the Watch wishes to speak, but it only struggles, with the paralyz'd voice of the troubl'd Dreamer. Nonetheless, Dixon's Salvation lies in understanding the Message. Whereupon, he awakes, feeling cross.
Tho' sworn to guarantee the Watch's safety, he soon finds his only Thoughts are of ways to rid himself of it. In its day-lit Ticking, the Voice so clogg'd and cryptick in his Dream has begun to grow clearer. Drinking will not send it away. "When you accept me into your life," whispering as it assumes a Shape that slowly grows indisputably Vegetable,— as it lies within its open'd traveling-case of counterfeit Shagreen, glimmering, yes a sinister Vegetable he cannot name, nor perhaps even great Linnaeus,— its Surface meanwhile passing thro' a number of pleasing colors, as its implied Commands are deliver'd percussively, fatally, - you will accept me.. .into your Stomach."
"Eeeeh...," a-tremble, and Phiz far from ruddy, he shows up at the Tent of the camp naturalist, Prof. Voam,— who advises that, "as the Fate of Vegetables is to be eaten,— as success and Reputation in the Vegetable Realm must hence be measured by how many are eaten,— it behooves each kind of Vegetable to look as appetizing as possible, doesn't it, or risk dying where it grew, not to mention having then to lie there, listening to the obloquy and complaint of its neighbors. But, dear me,— as to objects of Artifice,— Watches and so forth..."
"Tell me, with all Honesty, Sir, regarding this Watch,— does it not seek to project an Appearance, not only appetizing, but also,— eeh!.. .Ah can't say it...?"
"Vegetables don't tick," the Professor gently reminds Dixon.
"Why aye, those that be only Vegetables don't. We speak now of a higher form of life,— a Vegetable with a Pulse-beat!"
"Beyond me. Try asking R.C., he enjoys puzzles."
Beyond R.C.,— a local land-surveyor employ'd upon the Tangent Enigma,— as well,— tho' he's not about to say so. From the Instant he sees the Watch, the Mens Rea is upon him. He covets it.—He dreams of it,— never calling it "the Watch" but "the Chronometer,"— in his mind conflating it with the marvelous Timepiece of Mr. Harrison, thus flexibly has the Story reach'd America of the Rivalry between the Harrisons and Maskelyne, to secure the Longitude,— and as much prize money as may be had from Longitude's Board.
"If a man had a Chronometer such as this," R.C. asks Dixon, "mightn't it be worth something to those Gentlemen?"
"A tight-fisted Bunch, according to Mason,— tha must open their Grip upon it with a Prying-Bar...?"
"Must be why they call it 'Prize' money," says R.C., "• - I'll bet you find it temptin', tho', don't ye?"
"I'm not sure whose this is," Dixon replies carefully. "I'm keeping it for someone."
"A Gratuitous Bailment,— of course." R.C. trying his best not to look mean. As a Transit-Fellow, Dixon recognizes R.C.'s Complaint but too well,— the many years pass'd among combatants unremitting, unable by one's Honor to take sides however much over the Brim Emotions might run, assaulted soon or late by all Parties, falling at last into a moral Stu-porousness as to the claims of Law,— in fact, perilously close oneself to being mistaken for a Lawyer, a bonny gone-on.
"Mmm-mm! Did ye see that, boys? Good enough to eat." Axmanly Wit at the Watch's expense, causes R.C. to glower and approach, often to fractions of an inch away.
"What're you in my Phiz for now, R.C.?"
"You don't want to be offending the wrong Folks," R.C. advises. No one knows what this means, but his point,— that he is too insane for ev'ryone else's good,— is made.
One midnight there is an uproar. Dogs bark. Axmen request Silence. The Surveyors are out of their Tents, up the Track somewhere taking Zenith observations. There is a crowd in front of Dixon's Tent. R.C. is caught in the light of Nathe McClean's Tallow-Dip, just as the last bit of Gold Chain, suck'd between his Lips like a Chinese Noodle, disappears.
"R.C., may be you're gittin' too mean to think straight any more?"
"I thought I heard someone coming."
"That was us. Shouldn't you've set it down someplace, 'stead of swal-lerin' it?"
"There wasn't Time.”
"Now ye've more than ye know what to do with," quips Moses Barnes, to the Glee of his Companions.
"Don't you know what it is you swallow'd, R.C.?" Arch McClean slowly reciprocating his Head in wonder. "That's sixty Years of Longitude down there, all the Work 'at's come and gone, upon that one Problem, since Sir Cloudsley Shovell lost his Fleet and his Life 'pon the cruel Rocks of Scilly."
"What were my Choices?" R.C. nearly breathless. The thing was either bewitch'd, by Country Women in the middle of the night,— Fire, monthly Blood, Names of Power,— or perfected, as might any Watch be, over years, small bit by bit, to its present mechanickal State, by Men, in work-Shops, and in the Daytime. That was the sexual Choice the Moment presented,— between those two sorts of Magic. "I had less than one of the Creature's Ticks to decide. So I took it, and I gobbl'd it right down." His pink fists swing truculently, and he has begun to pout. "Any of you have a Problem with this?"
"As the Arm of Discipline here, I certainly do," declares Mr. Barnes, the Overseer of the Axmen, "for in an expedition into the Country, as upon a ship at sea, nothing destroys morale like Theft. Which, legally speaking, is what this is."
"Yet anyone may put an ear to his Stomach. The Watch is sensibly there, nor's he making a Secret of it.... We might more accurately say, an Act of Sequestration, its owner being denied the use of—
"Aye, yet absent a Conversion to personal Use,—
"0 Philadelphia!" thunders Mr. Barnes, "have thy Barristers poison'd Discourse e'en unto the Rude who dwell in this Desert? What ever shall we do?" The Utterance being Mr. Barnes's cryptic way of requesting it, stone Silence falls over the Company. "Has anyone consider'd where we are?" All know that he means, "where just at the Tangent Point, strange lights appear at Night, figures not quite human emerge from and disappear into it, and in the Daytime, Farm animals who stray too close, vanish and do not re-emerge,— and why should anyone find it strange, that one Man has swallow'd the Watch of another?" Some style this place "the Delaware Triangle," but Surveyors know it as "The Wedge."
To be born and rear'd in the Wedge is to occupy a singular location in an emerging moral Geometry. Indeed, the oddness of Demarcation here, the inscriptions made upon the body of the Earth, primitive as Designs prick'd by an Iroquois, with a Thorn and a supply of Soot, upon his human body,— a compulsion, withal, supported by the most advanc'd scientifick instruments of their Day,— present to Lawyers enough Litigation upon matters of Property within the Wedge, to becoach-and-six a small Pack of them, one generation upon another, yea unto the year 1900, and beyond.
By early Youth, R.C. had become the kind of mean, ornery cuss his neighbors associated with years of Maturity. "Here comes old R.C., and don't he look sour'd today." 'Twas his Profession did it to him. As a young Surveyor, from the rude shocks attending his first boundary-dispute, he understood that he must exercise his Art among the most litigious people on Earth,— Pennsylvanians of all faiths, but most intensely the Presbyterians, hauling each other before Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs, Church Courts, Village Quidnuncs, anyone who'd listen, even pretend to, at an unbelievable clip, seeking recompense for ill treatment grand and petty. If he wish'd to pursue this line of Work, he would have to recognize the country-wide jostle of Polygons as a form of madness, by which, if he kept to a Fiduciary Edge of Right Procedure, he might profit, whilst retaining his Sanity. He infuriated the more bookish surveyors with his Approach, which includ'd avoiding Paper-work, walking the Terrain, and making noninstrumental guesses. "Looks about eighty-eight-thirty to me. Here,— " Eyes shut, Arms straight out to his sides, then swept together till the fingertips touch'd, Eyes open,— "That's it."
"How so?"
"By Eye," he twinkl'd sourly. "Most of these out here 'round the Wedge, ye can do by Eye," pronouncing it "Bah-ahy." By the time he turn'd his hand to the Problem of the Tangent Line, it seem'd but an accustom'd Madness, in a different form,— the geometrick Whimsicality of Kings, this time, and Kings-to-be.
In the months, and then the years, after he swallows the Watch, as the days of ceaseless pulsation pass one by one, R.C. learns that a small volume within him is, and shall be, immortal. His wife moves to another Bed, and soon into another room altogether, after persuading him first to build it onto the House. "Snoring's one thing, R.C., I can always do something about that," brandishing her Elbow, "— but that Ticking...”
"Kept me awake, too, at first, Phoebe,— but now, it rocks me to sleep."
"Best Wishes, R.C."
"Oh, suit yourself." R.C. can act as sentimental as the next young Husband, but his public Rôles require him to be distant and disagreeable. Besides, since he swallow'd the Watch, she's been noticeably less merry with him, as if cautious in its presence.
"Do you imagine it cares what we're doing out here, in the world outside? Say, Phoeb, do be a Peach and come—
"But R.C., it might be— "
"What?" his voice beginning to pitch higher. "Listening?"
"Taking it all down, somehow."
"You're the girl I married, damme 'f you're not." He knows she never quite sees what this means, and being none too sure himself, he never offers to explain it.
' Tis a national Treasure," declares Mr. Shippen,— "and whoever may first remove it from its present location, shall enter most briskly upon the Stage of World Business, there, will-he nill-he, to play his part.—All at the price of your own Life, R.C., of course, Chirurgickal Extraction and all, but,— that's Business, as they say in Philadelphia."
"I'll chuck it up, why don't I do that?" putting his finger down his Throat.
"Oh, may we watch?" cry the Children.
"Never say 'Watch' to your Father," advises Mrs. R.C.
"Ahhrrhh!" the Finger comes out bleeding. "Something bit me!"
"Likely trying to protect its Territory," his eldest Son assures him.
"How could it bite me? 'tis in my Stomach. 'Tis a Watch."
"Alter its shape, maybe? Who knows what's happening to it in there?"
"Where all is a-drip, disgusting and mushy with chew'd-up food,—
"And acid and bile and it smells ever of Vomit,—
"Eeeooo!"
"Enjoy yourselves, children, even at the expense of your poor suf-f'ring old Father if you're that desperate for merriment, no matter, go, mock, too soon will equal Inconvenience befall ye, ev'ry one, 'tis Life."
"We'll not go swallowing Watches, thankee."
"Not if you want to sneak up on an Indian someday, you won't.”
"Hadn't plann'd on it, Pa."
"Figures he'll cash in on Longitude, instead he eats the Chronometer, some zany Dreamer I married." Of course Dixon has to tell Emerson. For weeks after the Express has curvetted away, he mopes about, as gloomy as anyone's ever seen him. "I was suppos'd to look after it...?"
"You wish'd release from your Promise," Mason reminds him. "Think of R.C. as Force Majeure."
The Letter, in reply, proves to be from Mrs. Emerson. "When he receiv'd your News, Mr. Emerson was quite transform'd, and whooping with high amusement, attempted whilst in his Workroom to dance a sort of Jig, by error stepping upon a wheel'd Apparatus that was there, the result being that he has taken to his Bed, where, inches from my Quill, he nevertheless wishes me to say, 'Felicitations, Fool, for it hath work'd to Perfection.'
"I trust that in a subsequent Letter, my Husband will explain what this means."
There is a Post-Script in Emerson's self-school'd hand, exclamatory, ending upon a long Quill-crunching Stop. "Time is the Space that may not be seen.—
(Ton which the Revd cannot refrain from commenting, "He means, that out of Mercy, we are blind as to Time,— for we could not bear to contemplate what lies at its heart.")
33
"Hope to have your Company at the Bridge...," writes Benjamin Chew, to the Surveyors. He means Mary Janvier's, at Christiana Bridge,— where the Line Commissioners find merry Pretext to gather, gossip, swap quids and quos, play Whist, drink Madeira, sing Catches, sleep late, or else stay up till the north-bound Mail-coach wheels in at seven A.M., and the Passengers all come piling out for Breakfast at The Indian Queen. Never know whom you'll run into. An hour's pause in the journey, wherein early Risers may practise, each day, upon a diff 'rent set of Travelers. Flirting? Cards? Coffee and Chatter? the Hope is for a productive, when not amusing, Hour.
At this pleasant waterside Resort, gulls sit as if permanently upon Posts, Ducks enjoy respite from the Attentions of Fowlers, the mild haze thins and thickens, Sandwiches and Ale arrive in a relax'd and contingent way, official business is taken care of quickly, to make available more time for Drink, Smoak, and Jollification. Yet whilst the Maryland-ers, attun'd to Leisure, take the time as it comes, the Gentlemen from Philadelphia, their Watches either striking together with eerie Precision ev'ry Quarter-hour or, when silent, forever being consulted and re-pocketed, must examine for Productivity each of their waking Moments, as closely as some do their Consciences, unable quite to leave behind them the Species of Time peculiar to that City, best express'd in the Almanackal Sayings of Dr. Franklin.
In the Summer, toward Evening, Thunder-Gusts come slashing down off the Allegheny Front, all the way riding close above the trees flaring either side in wet and bright Waves upon each arrival of the Lightning, over Juniata then Susquehanna, tapping at the Windows of Harris's Ferry, skidding across the shake roofs of Lancaster and soaking the Town,— and on to Chesapeake and a thousand Tributaries each in its humid, stippl'd Turmoil, and the Inn, and the Gentlemen indoors at their Merriment, whilst Ducks of all sorts, lounging in the Weather as if 'twere sun-shine, fly into a Frenzy at each blast of Lightning and Thunder, then, immediately forgetting, settle back into their pluvial Comforts.
Tho' all are welcome here, Janvier's, like certain counterparts in Philadelphia, has ever provided a venue for the exercise of Proprietar-ian politics, by a curious assortment of City Anglicans and Presbyterians, with renegade Germans or Quakers appearing from time to time. Especially upon nights before and after Voting, the Rooms contain a great Ridotto of hopeful Cupidity. Strangers are view'd suspiciously. Mr. Franklin's confusion is toasted more than once. Rumors circulate that the Anti-Proprietarians have a Jesuit Device for seeing and hearing thro' Walls.
The Bar seems to vanish in the Distance. Hewn from some gigantick Tropical Tree, of a vivid deep brown wood all thro', further carv'd and wax'd to an arm-pleasing Smoothness, comfortable as a Bed,— no one has yet counted how many it can accommodate, tho' some have sworn to over an hundred. Environ'd by immoderately colored Colonial wallpaper, tropickal Blooms with Vermilion Petals and long, writhing Stamens and Pistils of Indigo, against a Field of Duck-Green, not to mention reliable Magenta, the Pulse of the Province ever reciprocates, a quid for a quo, a round for a Round, and ever another chance to win back the bundle one has wager'd away. And somewhere sure, the raising of Voices in debate politickal.
"Observe no further than the walls of London,— 'A harsh winter,— a cold spring,— a dry summer,— and no King.' Not Boston, Sir, but London. Your precious Teutonical dispensation,— Damme!— means even
less upon these shores, Sir! I would say, the D——l take it, were he not
already quite in possession.”
"Treason, Sir!"
Mr. Dixon, cordially, "Now then, Sir!"
"Peace, Astrologer,—
"Astronomer, if it please you," corrects Mr. Mason, without quite considering.
"At least I am about my business in the honest light of God's day,— what is to be said, of men who so regularly find themselves abroad at midnight?" The pious gentleman has worked himself into a state of heedless anger. Is it the innocent roasted Berry, that has put them all in such surly humor? No one else in the room is paying much notice, being each preoccupied by his own no less compelling drama. Smoke from their bright pale pipes hangs like indoor fog, through which, a-glimmering, the heavy crockery and silverware claps and rings. Servant lads in constant motion carry up from the cellar coffee sacks upon their shoulders, or crank the handles of gigantic coffee grinders, as the Assembly clamors for cup after cup of the invigorating Liquid. By the end of each day, finely divided coffee-dust will have found its way by the poundful up the nostrils and into the brains of these by then alert youths, lending a feverish edge to all they speak and do.
Conversing about politics, under such a stimulus, would have prov'd animated enough, without reckoning in as well the effects of drink, tobacco,— whose smoke one inhales here willy-nilly with every breath,— and sugar, to be found at every hand in lucent brown cones great and little, Ic'd Cupcakes by the platter-ful, all manner of punches and flips, pies of the locality, crullers, muffins, and custards,— no table that does not hold some sweet memento, for those it matters to, of the cane thickets, the chains, the cruel Sugar-Islands.
"A sweetness of immorality and corruption," pronounces a Quaker gentleman of Philadelphia, "bought as it is with the lives of African slaves, untallied black lives broken upon the greedy engines of the Barbadoes."
"Sir, we wish no one ill,— we are middling folk, our toil is as great as anyone's, and some days it helps to have a lick of molasses to look forward to, at the end of it."
"If we may refuse to write upon stamped paper, and for the tea of the East India Company find a tolerable Succedaneum in New-Jersey red root, might Philosophy not as well discover some Patriotic alternative to these vile crystals that eat into our souls as horribly as our teeth?"
Every day the room, for hours together, sways at the verge of riot. May unchecked consumption of all these modern substances at the same time, a habit without historical precedent, upon these shores be creating a new sort of European? less respectful of the forms that have previously held Society together, more apt to speak his mind, or hers, upon any topic he chooses, and to defend his position as violently as need be? Two youths of the Macaronic profession are indeed greatly preoccupied upon the boards of the floor, in seeking to kick and pummel, each into the other, some Enlightenment regarding the Topick of Virtual Representation. An individual in expensive attire, impersonating a gentleman, stands upon a table freely urging sodomitical offenses against the body of the Sovereign, being cheered on by a circle of Mechanics, who are not reluctant with their own suggestions. Wenches emerge from scullery dimnesses to seat themselves at the tables of disputants, and in brogues thick as oatmeal recite their own lists of British sins.
The attempt to relieve Fort Pitt continues, as do reverberations from the massacres at Conestoga and Lancaster. All to the West is a-surge and aflame. Waggons from over Susquehanna appear at all hours of Day and Night, Pots and Kettles, sacks of Corn, the Babies and the Pig riding inside. 'Tis the year '55 all over, and the Panick'd Era just after Brad-dock's Defeat. The Smell of a burn'd Cabin grows familiar again, the smell of things that are not suppos'd to be burn'd. Women's things. House things. Detecting it, if one's approach happens to be from downwind, is ever the first order of business.
The Star-Gazers are well away from Events. On the eighth of January, thirty-one miles more or less due West of the southernmost point of Philadelphia, they begin setting up their observatory at John Harland's farm.
"Ye'll not wreck my Vegetable Patch," Mrs. Harland informs them.
"We are forbidden, good Woman, as a term of our Contract and Commission, to harm Gardens and Orchards. We'll set up in a safe place,— pay ye fair rent, of course.”
"Welcome one and all," cries Mr. Harland. "Ye fancy the Vegetable Patch, why ye shall have it too! We'll buy our Vegetables!"
Playfully swinging at her Husband with the Spade she holds, "Why here, Sirs?"
"Because your farm lies exactly as far south from the Pole as the southernmost point in Philadelphia," Mason informs them.
" Tis the same Latitude, 's what you mean. Then so's a great Line of farms, east and west,— why choose mine? Why not my neighbor Tumbling's, who has more land than he knows what to do with anyway?"
"Exactly fifteen miles due south of here," Dixon gently, "we'll want to set up another Post. 'Twill mark the Zero Point, or Beginning, of the West Line. The Point here in your Field, will tell what its Longitude is, as well as the Latitude of the south Edge of Philadelphia. It ties those two Facts together, you see."
"That wasn't my question."
"Mr. Tumbling fir'd his Rifle at us," says Dixon.
"And what made you think I wouldn't?"
"We gambl'd," suppose Mason and Dixon.
"I'll just fetch down the Rifle," offers Mrs. Harland.
Harland is frowning. "Wait. Why didn't you Lads measure south from Philadelphia first, and then come West?"
"Going south first, we should have had to cross the Delaware, into New-Jersey," Mason explains, "and when 'twas time to turn West, fifteen miles down, the same River by then become much enlarg'd, to cross back over it, would have presented a Task too perilous for the Instruments, if not to the lives of this Party,— all avoided by keeping to dry land. Hence, first West, and then South."
"And at the end of your last Chain," says Mrs. Harland, "here we are." She goes off waving her hands in the air, and her Husband will be getting an Ear-load soon.
Overnight, in John Harland's Field, appears an organiz'd Company of men, performing unfamiliar Rituals with Machinery that may as well have been brought from some other inhabited World. ("Aye," Dixon agrees, "the Planet London. And its principal Moon," nodding at Mason, "Greenwich.") The farmer can hear them at midnight, when a whisper will cany a mile, as in the Day-time, conversing like ship-captains
through Speaking-Trumpets. Numbers. Words that sound like English but make no sense. Of course he starts finding reasons to go back there and look about. He comes upon the Astronomers scribbling by beeswax light, before a tent pitch'd beneath a wavelike slope in the Earth, a good sledding hill, part field, part woods, this being a region of such mariform grades. They have been bringing the Instrument into the Meridian. "Because of the way Earth spins," Mason explains, "the Stars travel in Arcs upon the Sky. When each arrives at the highest point of its Arc, so are you, observing it in the Instant, looking perfectly Northward along your Meridian."
"So the Trick would be knowing when it gets to that highest Point."
"And for that we have the equal-Altitude Method.... We are waiting just at the Moment upon Capella. Have a look?"
Harland slouches down beneath the Eye-piece. "Thought this was meant to bring 'em nearer?"
"The Moon," says Dixon, "Planets...? Not the Stars...?"
"Of a Star," Mason adds, "we wish to know but where it is, and when it passes some Reference."
"That's it?"
"Well, of course, one must manipulate the various Screw-Settings precisely, read the Nonius, and an hundred details besides I'd but bore you with,— "
"Seems fairly straightforward. This moves it up and down..."
"Bring Capella to the Horizontal Wire," suggests Dixon.
"Hey!" Mason in a tone not as vex'd as it might be, "who's the certified Astronomer, here?"
"Child's Play," murmurs Mr. Harland, handling the Adjusting Screws and Levers with a Respect both Mason and Dixon immediately note.
"Tha take the Time it crosses the Wire rising, and then the Time it crosses, when setting. The Time exactly half-way between, is the Time it cross'd the Meridian."
"This one's not rising,— 'deed, 'tis gone below the Line,—
" Tis the Lens. Ev'rything in the image we see is inverted."
"The Sky, turn'd upside down? Wondrous! You are allow'd to do this?"
"We're paid to do this," declares Dixon.
"Kings pay us to do this," adds Mason.
" Tis like a Job where you work standing upon your Head," marvels John Harland. He steps back, gazing upward, comparing the Creation as seen by the Naked Eye, with its Telescopick Counter-part. "I am unsteady with this."
"Knowing the time of Culmination, allowing for how fast or slow the Clock's going, we may compute the Time of the next such Culmination, be out There the next Night, and upon the Tick, turn the Instrument down to the Horizon, direct an Assistant bearing a Lanthorn till the Flame be bisected by the Vertical Wire, have him drop a Bob-Line there, and Mark the Place. And that's North."
"That's what you were roaring about, thro' those horns all night?"
"Why, what else...?"
"Are you looking into Futurity?"
"Is it what your Neighbors believe?"
"What they hope, aye."
"Would that we were."
Yet this is when he grows shy of regarding them directly,— as if it might be dangerous to risk more than sidelong Glances.
By February they have learn'd their Latitude closely enough to know that the Sector is set up 356.8 yards south of the Parallel that passes thro' the southernmost point of Philadelphia, putting them about ten and a half seconds of Arc off.
"Ye'll be moving the Observatory, I collect?" says Mr. Harland.
"No need to,— we'll merely remember to reckon in the Off-sett."
In March a Company of Axmen, using Polaris to keep their Meridian, clear a Visto from John Harland's farm fifteen Miles true south, to Alexander Bryant's farm. How can Harland not go along? The Wife is less enchanted,— "John, are you crazy? All this Moon-beaming about, and it's past time to be planting,— over at Tumbling's they've got it till'd already."
"You plant it, Bets," Harland replies, "and rent out what you don't. This means five shillings ev'ry day I work,— silver,— British, real as
any Spade. You do it. You know how, you do fine, I've seen you, just don't put in too many 'them damn' flowers, is all." He will come north again to find she's taken a neat square Acre and planted it to Sun-flowers, soon spread without shame upon the hill-slope, a disreputable yellow that people will see for miles. In its re-reflected glow in the corner of the Field in back, a newly-set chunk of Rose Quartz is shining strangely. At certain times of the day, the sun will catch the pink grain just right and ah! you might be transported beneath the Sea, under the Northern Ice.... Here is Harland, among the Sunflowers, having Romantic thoughts for the first time. Bets notices it. He is chang'd,— he has been out running Lines, into the distance, when once Brandywine was far enough,— and now he wants the West. The meaning of Home is therefore chang'd for them as well. As if their own Fields had begun, with tremendous smooth indifference, to move, in a swell of Possibility.
In April Mason and Dixon, using fir Rods and Spirit Levels, measure exactly the fifteen miles southward, allowing for the ten and a half Seconds off at the north end. In May they find their new Latitude in Mr. Alexander Bryant's field, then remeasure the Line northward again,— "Think of it," Dixon suggests, "as a Chainman's version of turning the Sector." By June, having found at last the Latitude of their East-West Line,— 39°43'17.4",— they are instructed to proceed to the Middle Point of the Peninsula between Chesapeake and the Ocean, to begin work upon the Tangent Line. By the end of the Month, they have chain'd north from the Middle Point to the Banks of the Nanticoke.
One reason given for bringing Mason and Dixon into the Boundary Dispute was that nobody in America seem'd to've had any luck with this fiendish Problem of the Tangent Line, which had absorb'd the energies of the best Geometers in the Colonies, for more Years than would remain to some, their lives to the Great Cypress Swamp a Forfeit claim'd. Field parties had gone out in '50, '60, and '61, ending up east and west of previous Tangent Points by as much as four tenths of a mile. 'Twas infuriating. 'Twas like tickling a Fly under its wing-pit, with a long and wobbly Object such as a fishing-pole.
The idea was to start from the exact middle of the Delaware Peninsula,— defin'd, quite early in the Dispute, as the "Middle Point,"— and
run a line north till it just touch'd the arc of a circle of twelve miles' radius, centered upon the Spire of the Court House in New Castle, swung from the shore of Delaware, around counter-clockwise, westward, till it met its Tangent Line. That's presuming there was a Tangent Line there to meet it, and so far there wasn't. The problem seem'd intractable. From the Middle Point, you wanted to somehow project a Line about eighty miles northward, through swamp and swamp inhabitants, that would at the far end just kiss, at a single Tangent Point, the Twelve-mile Arc,— making a ninety-degree Angle with the radius, drawn from the Court House Spire, out to that point. Somebody must have imagin'd the Tangent as some perfect north-south line, some piece of Meridian, that would pass through the Middle Point and be exactly twelve miles from New Castle at the same time. But it couldn't do that and run true North, too,— 'twas more Royal Geometry, fanciful as ever. Any Line from the Middle Point one wish'd to end up tangent to the Twelve-Mile Arc, would have to be aimed about three and a half degrees west of true North. Not only did this Arc pass too far West, but it also fail'd to reach far enough North to touch 40° latitude,— which was the northern boundary of the Baltimores' grant from Charles II,— thus making of the Lower Counties an exclave of Pennsylvania, inside Maryland. Yet how could either King have foretold that the younger William Penn might wish the Lower Counties one day contiguous with upper Pennsylvania?
So was it drawn. Then ev'ryone waited for the Astronomers from London to come and verify the rude Colonials' work.
For ev'ry surveyor who forsook his hearthside in the Weeks of Chill when the crops were in, and the leaves were flown and sights were longer, to go out into the Brush and actually set up, out of pure Speculation, where there might be a few square inches of dry land, and try to turn the angles and obtain the star shots, getting in addition snake-bit, trapp'd in sucking Mud, lost in Fog, frozen to the Marrow, harass'd by farmers, and visited by Sheriffs,— for ev'ry such Field-Man there were dozens of enthusiastic amateurs, many of them members of the clergy, who from the comfort of their Fires sent the Commissioners an unceasing autumn-wind full of solutions,— which came in upon foolscap and Elephant and privately water-mark'd stock, fluttering in the doors, drift-
ing into corners,— you'd have thought it was Fermat's Last Theorem, instead of a County Line that look'd like a Finial upon something of Mr. Chippendale's.
"Yes well of course that's a Question of taste, but,— look at the way it leans, just enough to be obvious,— honestly Cedric, it's so predictably Colonial, as if,— 'Oh they don't even know how to find North over there, well we must send our Royal Astronomers to tidy things up mustn't we,— ' sort of thing when in fact it's once more the dead Hand of the second James, who went about granting all this Geometrickally impossible territory,— as unreal, in a Surveying way, as some of the other Fictions that govern'd that unhappy Monarch's Life."
Or, "Once upon a time," as the Revd re-tells it for Brae, "there was a magical land call'd 'Pennsylvania.' In settlement of a Debt, it was con-vey'd to William Penn by the Duke of York, who later became James the Second. And James had been granted the land by his brother Charles, who at the time was King.
"To understand their Thinking, however, would require access to whatever corner of the Vatican Library houses the Heretick Section, and therein the concept, spoken of in hush'd tones, when at all, of Stupiditas Regia, or the Stupidity of Kings. And Queens, of course, 0 alarmed Tenebrae, not to mention Princesses,— yes Stupidity even afflicts those, you would think perfect, Creatures as well."
"How so?" Tenebrse coolly carrying on with her acufloral Meditations. "There have I'm sure been non-stupid Princesses, indeed a good many, Uncle. Whereas Kings and Princes are so stupid, they pretend maps that can't be drawn, and style them 'Pennsylvania.' " Picking up a Fescue, she leans toward the Map upon the Wall, recourse to which over the years has settl'd no one knows how many such Disputes, "King Charles begins at a Meridian Line Somewhere out in the untravel'd Forests,— here, five degrees of Longitude West of Delaware Bay. Then this not very learned Brother finds the point where his desolate Meridian crosses the Fortieth Parallel of North Latitude. 'Tis of course in a huge blank space on the Map. Here. At the south-western and least accessible corner of the Grant,— where, at this remote intersection of Parallel and Meridian, is to be anchor'd the entire Scheme. Running eastward from there, the
royal Brothers expect the Forty-Degree Line somewhere to encounter James's Twelve-Mile Arc about New Castle,—
"Oh, twelve miles ought to do it. We don't want to say thirteen, because that's so unlucky."
"Fourteen would engross for you Head of Elk," Charles observes, "but 'twould push too far West, this vertical Line, here,—
"The Tangent Line, Sir."
"I knew that."
"Charles and James," the Revd sighing, "and their tangle of geomet-rick hopes,— that somehow the Arc, the Tangent, the Meridian, and the West Line should all come together at the same perfect Point,— where, in fact, all is Failure. The Arc fails to meet the Forty-Degree North Parallel. The Tangent fails to be part of any Meridian. The West Line fails to begin from the Tangent Point, being five miles north of it."
Indeed, a spirit of whimsy pervades the entire history of these Delaware Boundaries, as if in playful refusal to admit that America, in any way, may be serious. The Calvert agents keep coming up with one fanciful demand after another, either trying to delay and obstruct as long as possible the placing of the Markers, or else,— someone must suggest,— giddy with what they imagine Escape, into a Geometry more permissive than Euclid, here in this new World. During the negotiations, Marylanders suggest locating the exact center of New Castle by taking a sheet of paper showing a map of the Town, trimming 'round the edges till only the Town remains, and then shifting this about upon the point of a Pin, till it balances, and at that center of gravity pricking it through, as being the true center of the Town.
Yet, if the Twelve-Mile Arc be taken as the geometrical expression of the Duke of York's wish to preserve from encroachment his seat of Government, then must there project a literal Sphere of power from the Spire atop the State-House, whose intersection with the Earth is the Arc,— unalterably Circular, not to be adjusted by so much as a Link to agree with any Tangent Line.
Oblig'd, for meetings with the Commissioners, to sleep in New Castle a Night or two, the Surveyors discover the Will of the second James at close hand. South, tho' not far enough, lie the Bay, and the open
Sea. Before subsiding to perhaps but a single deep hour of stillness
broken by no more than the Voices of frogs and the stirring of the salt
fens, the sounds dominating the fallen night are the Cries of Sailors
behind the doors of Taverns, and the jingling and Drone of the Musick
that pleases them. The hypnagogic Citizenry lie wond'ring if these
sailors, some of whose Ships carry guns, would defend the Town,
should some Catholick war-ship, or more than one, advance upon
them, torches flaming black and greasy, Ejaculations in Languages
unfathomable
"Spanish privateers, and Frenchmen, too," their Hosts are pleas'd to relate, "were us'd to come up the River, bold as Crows, to attack the little villages and Plantations. We never felt as secure at night as you in Philadelphia. Any seaborne assault upon that City would mean first the Reduction of New Castle, for 'tis the Key to the River. Now it is difficult to remember, but fifteen years ago in the era of Don Vicente Lopez, there was an apprehensive Edge in this Town as soon as the Sun went down, that did not grow dull till dawn. Tho' by day the busy Capital of the de facto Province of Delaware, with night-fall we became a huddl'd cluster of lights trembling into the coming Hours, from lanthorns, candles, and hearths, each an easy target upon the humid Shore. Many of us adopted forms of nocturnal Behavior more typical of New-York, staying up the Night thro', less out of the Desire to transgress than the Fear of sleeping anytime other than in the Day-light hours."
The great Scepter atop the Court House continues in the dark to radiate its mysterious force. The stock are gone to sleep. The fish and the Wine were excellent. Rooms fill with tobacco Smoke,— insomnia and headaches abound. Cards emerge from Cherry-wood Recesses. Occupants of the Houses along the River stir among the lumps in their Mattresses, ready at any Alarm to wake. Their dreams are of Spanish Visitors who turn out to be unexpectedly jolly, with courtly ways, rolling eyes, passionate guitars, not a homicidal thought in the Boat-load of 'em. Ev'ryone ends up at an all-night Ridotto, with piles of mysterious delectable Mediterranean food, "Sandwiches" made of entire Loaves stuff'd with fried Sausages and green Peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, cheese melted ev'rywhere, fresh Melons mysteriously preserv'd thro' the Voy-
age, wines whose grapes are descended from those that supplied Bacchus himself. New Castle dreams, drooling into and soaking Pillows, helpless before the rapacious, festive fleet.
How swiftly might the Popish scourge descend,— Another Don Vicente, Havoc's Friend, Another vile and ringletted Señor, Another Insult to our sov'reign Shore.
— Timothy Tox, Pennsylvaniad
Through July they continue North, thro' swamps, snakes, godawful humidity, thunder-gusts at night, trees so thick that even with thirty axmen, each chain's length seems won with Labor incommensurate,— waking each glaucous Dawn into sweat and stillness, to struggle another Day, with no confidence that at the correct Distance, they will pass anywhere near the Tangent Point, much less touch it exactly.
On paper, the Tangent Line's inclination reminds Dixon of the road
between Catterick and Binchester,— in fact, on up to Lanchester,
though one had to look for it,— part of the Romans' Great North Road.
To amuse himself in his less mindful moments, he would travel out to the
old Roman ruins above the Wear and sight southward down the middle
of the road, for it ran straight ahead as a shot. Nothing so clear or easy as
that in Delaware, however. Dixon mutters to himself all shift long. "If
we set up over there, then this great bloody Tree's in the way,— yet if we
wish to be clear of the Tree for any sight longer than arm's length, we
must stand in Glaur of uncertain Depth,— looking withal from Light into
Shadow "
"I appreciate it," says Mason, "when you share your innermost thought-processes with me in this way,— almost as if, strangely, you did trust me."
"After these Months? Who would?"
In August they finally go chaining past the eighty-one-mile mark, which they figure puts them a little beyond the Tangent Point, wherever it is, back there. They take September, October, and November to find it, as nicely as Art may achieve, computing Offsets and measuring them, improving the Tangent Line by small Tweaks and Smoothings, until they
can report at last that the ninety-degree Angle requir'd, between the Tangent Line and the twelve-Mile Radius from the Court House to the Tangent Point, is as perfect as they can get it,— which means, as it will prove, off by two feet and two inches, more or less.
In December they discharge the Hands and pause for the Winter, at Harlands', at Brandywine. "To a good year's work." Dixon raising a pewter Can of new Ale. "And pray for another."
"To Repetition and Routine, from here to the End of it," Mason gesturing reluctantly with his Claret-Glass.. .even so, more festive than he's been for a while.
"Routine! Not likely! Not upon the West Line! Who knows what'll be out there? Each day impossible to predict,— Eeh! pure Adventure...?"
"Thankee, Dixon, a Comfort as ever, yes the total Blindness in which we must enter that Desert, might easily have slipp'd my mind, allowing me a few pitiable seconds' respite from Thoughts of it how welcome,— alas, 'twas not to be, was it, at least, nowhere in range of your Voice."
"Ehw deah...imagin'd I'd been taking rather the jolliest of Tones actually, my how awkward for you...?"
Another Holiday flare-up, of many preceding, which at first had sent Harlands of all ages cringing against the walls or scrambling up the Ladder, yet soon subsided to but one more sound of untam'd Nature to be grown us'd to out here, like Thunder, or certain Animal Mimickries at night, from across a Creek. Each time, the Surveyors apologize for their behavior,— then, presently, are screaming again. Apologize, scream, apologize, scream,— daily life in the Harland house grows jagged. After a Christmastide truce, with the rest of the winter waiting them, perhaps more of it than any can imagine themselves surviving without at least one serious lapse in behavior, the Surveyors decide to travel to Lancaster, perhaps in hopes that the imps of discord will fail to pursue them 'cross Susquehanna.
34
Lancaster Town lies thirty-five miles' Journey to the West. "What brought me here," Mason wrote in the Field-Record, "was my curiosity to see the place where was perpetrated last Winter the Horrid and inhuman murder of 26 Indians, Men, Women and Children, leaving none alive to tell."
" 'Me,' notes Uncle Ives, " 'my,'— sounds like Mason went by himself."
The Revd nods. "Dixon told me, that Mason had meant to go alone,— but that at the last moment, mindful of the dangers attending Solitude in a Town notorious for Atrocity, he offer'd to add Muscular Emphasis, tho' Mason seem'd unsure of whether he wanted him there or not."
They— presume "they,"— reach Lancaster 10 January 1765, putting up at The Cross Keys. The Public Rooms are crowded with Lawyers, Town Officials, Justices, Merchants, and Mill-owners,— the middling to better sort, not a murderously drooling backwoodsman in sight,— unless they include their Guide, pick'd up about a minute and a half inside the Town Limits, who may once or twice have undergone a loss of salivary control,— Mason soon enough on about how quaint, how American, Dixon rather suspecting him of being in the pay of the Paxton Boys, to keep an eye upon two Hirelings of their Landlord and Enemy, Mr. Penn.
"Here for a look at the Massacre Site, are you, Gentlemen? I can always tell. Some bring Sketching-Books, some Easels, others their Specimen- Bags, but all converge thro' the same queer Magnetism. I quite understand, tho' others about may not,— 'twould do to mind one's belongings,— yet I must not bite the Backs that ignore me— The first stop upon any Tour is acknowledg'd to be The Dutch Rifle, whither the Boys, hush'd be the Name ever spoken, having left their Horses at Mr. Slough's, repair'd just before the Doing of the Deed. Step this way, pray yese."
When they see what is upon the Tavern Sign, Mason and Dixon exchange a Look,— the Weapon depicted, Black upon White, is notable for the Device upon its Stock, a Silver Star of five Points, revers'd so that two point up and one down,— a sure sign of evil at work, universally rec-
ogniz'd as the Horns of the D——l. No-one would adorn a Firearm with
it, who was not wittingly in the service of that Prince. This is not the first Time the Surveyors have seen it,— at the Cape, usually right-side-up, it is known as the Sterloop,— a sort of good-luck charm, out in the Bush. But ev'ry now and then, mostly on days of treacherous Wind or Ill-Spirits, one or both had spied upon a Rifle an inverted Star, much like what they observe now, against the Sky, plumb in the windless Forenoon.
"I told ye the last time, that last time was the last time, Jabez," comes a Voice from a high Angle,— Mason and Dixon, peering upward, observe the Landlord, whose Pate appears to brush the beams above him, in a vex'd Temper.
"Ever a merry Quip," cries Jabez, nimbly stepping behind the Surveyors and propelling them in ahead.
They are examin'd skeptickally. "Not from the Press, are you?"
" 'Pon my Word," cry both Surveyors at once.
"Drummers of some kind's my guess," puts in a Countryman, his Rifle at his Side, "am I right, Gents?"
"What'll we say?" mutters Mason urgently to Dixon.
"Oh, do allow me," says Dixon to Mason. Adverting to the Room, "Why aye, Right as a Right Angle, we're out here to ruffle up some business with any who may be in need of Surveying, London-Style,— Astro-nomickally precise, optickally up-to-the-Minute, surprisingly cheap. The Behavior of the Stars is the most perfect Motion there is, and we know how to read it all, just as you'd read a Clock-Face. We have Lenses that never lie, and Micrometers fine enough to subtend the Width of a Hair upon a Martian's Eye-ball. This looks like a bustling Town, plenty
of activity in the Land-Trades, where think yese'd be a good place to start?" with an amiability that Mason recognizes as peculiarly Quaker,— Friendly Business.
"Then why are yese askin' Jabez 'bout th' Massacree?" inquires a toothless old Coot with an empty Can, which Dixon makes sure is promptly fill'd.
"Aye! How do we know ye're not just two more Philadelphia Fops, out skipping thro' the Brush-wood?"
"He approach'd us," Mason protests.
"We're men of Science," Dixon explains, " - this being a neoclas-sickal Instance of the Catastrophick Resolution of Inter-Populational Cross-Purposes, of course we're curious to see where it all happen'd.—
"You can't just come minuetting in from London and expect to understand what's going on here," advises Mr, Slough.
"This is about Family, sure as the History of England. Inside any one Tribe of Indians, they're all related, see? Kill you one Delaware, you affront the Family at large. Out here, if it's Blood of mine, of course I must go out and seek redress,— tho' I'll have far less company."
"Each alone lacking the Numbers, our sole Recourse is to band together."
"These were said to be harmless, helpless people," Dixon points out in some miraculous way that does not draw challenge or insult in return. Apprehensive among these Folk, Mason, who would have perhaps us'd one Adjective fewer, regards his Geordie Partner with a strange Gaze, bordering upon Respect.
"They were blood relations of men who slew blood relations of ours," Jabez explains.
"Then if You know who did it, for the Lord's sake why did You not go after them?"
"This hurt them more," smiles a certain Oily Leon, fingering his Frizzen and Flint.
"Aye, they go on living, but without dear old Grandam,— puts a big Hole in the Blanket, don't it?"
"You must hate them exceedingly," Mason pretending to a philosoph-ickal interest actually far more faint than his interest in getting out of here alive.
"No," looking about as if puzzl'd, "not any more. That Debt is paid. I'll live in peace with them,— happy to."
"Mayn't they now feel oblig'd to come after you?" asks Jere Disingenuous. He notices Mason just visibly creeping toward the Door.
"Not this side of the River, nor this side of York and Baltimore Road. 'Tis all ours now. They answer to us here."
"What's the complaint?" demands Oily Leon. "We're out here as a Picket for Philadelphia,— we've clear'd them a fine safe patch, from Delaware to Susquehanna. Now may they prance about foolish as they may."
"Aye, Penns, handing us and our children about like Chattel,—
"Damme,— like Field Slaves!"
- dared they ever leave England and come here, they should find harsher welcome than any King."
"Here's a Riddle,— if a cat may look at a King, may a Pennsylvanian take aim at a King's enforcer?"
"Sir!" The murmuring is about equally divided, as to whether this is going too far, or not far enough.
"Their Cities allow them Folly," a German of Mystickal Toilette advises the Astronomers, "that daily Living upon the Frontier will not forgive. They feed one another's Pretenses, live upon borrow'd Money as borrow'd Time, their lives as their deaths put, with all appearance of Willingness, under the control of others mortal as they, rather than subject, as must Country People's lives and deaths be, to the One Eternal Ruler. That is why we speak plainly, whilst Cits learn to be roundabout as Snakes. Our Time is much more precious to us."
"What. Our Time not precious!" guffaws a traveling sales Representative. "Why, you're welcome, Cousin, to try and get thro' twenty-four Hours of Philadelphia Time, which if it don't kill you, will cure you, at least, of your Illusions about us."
"Excuse me," says Dixon, "I meant to ask...? Whah's thah' smoahkin' Object in thy Mouth, thah' tha keep puffin' on?"
"Not much Tobacco where you Boys are from? Down Chesapeake, why they've nothing but.—Endless Acres, Glasgow shipping fender-to-fender in the Bays, why Tob'o, Hell, they use it for money! Smoke your Week's Pay! This form of it, Sir, 's what we call a 'Cigar.' They come in all
sorts, this particular one being from Conestoga, the Waggon-Bullies there style it a 'Stogie.' The Secret's in the Twist they put into the handful of Leaves whilst they're squeezin' it into Shape. Sort of like putting rifling inside a Barrel, only different? Gives the Smoke a Spin, as ye'd say? Watch this." He sets his Lips as for a conventional, or Toroidal, Smoke-Ring, but out instead comes a Ring like a Length of Ribbon clos'd in a Circle, with a single Twist in it, possessing thereby but one Side and one Edge....
("Uncle?"
"Hum? Pray ye,— 'tis true, I was not there. Yet, such was the pure original Stogie in its Day....")
Tho' nothing much has been said, the Surveyors are surpriz'd to discover that ev'ryone's been saying it for several Hours. The only thing that has grown clearer is Jabez's motive in offering to be their Guide. Soon Lamps are lit, and the Supper-Crowd has come in, and Mason and Dixon, no closer to having seen the site of the Massacre, Heads a-reel with smoke, return to their Rooms.
Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?— in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,— serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,— Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, mea-sur'd and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,— winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.
"Yet must the Sensorium be nourish'd," Mason, insomniack, addresses himself in a sort of Gastrick Speech he has devis'd for Hours like these, "...as the Body, with its own transcendent Desires, the foremost being Eternal Youth,— for which, alas, one seeks in vain thro' the Enthusiasts' Fair, that defines the Philadelphia Sabbath,— the best
Offer heard, being of Bodily Resurrection, which unhappily yet requires
Death as a pre-condition "
He finds himself pretending Rebekah is there, somewhere, and listening. She has not "visited" since St. Helena. Mason cycles back to the Island, a Memory-Pilgrim with a well-mark'd Itinerary Map, to recapitulate Exchanges in the Ebony Clearing, the empty Wall'd Patch, the Lines at Dawn before the Atlantick Horizon....
The next Day, he creeps out before Dixon is awake, and goes to the Site of last Year's Massacre by himself. He is not as a rule sensitive to the metaphysickal Remnants of Evil,— none but the grosser, that is, the Gothickal, are apt to claim his Attention,— yet here in the soil'd and strewn Courtyard where it happen'd, roofless to His Surveillance,— and to His Judgment, prays Mason,— he feels "like a Nun before a Shrine," as he later relates it to Dixon, who has in fact slept till well past noon, as Shifts and Back-shifts of Bugs pass to and fro, inspecting his Mortal Envelope. "Almost a smell," Mason quizzickally, his face, it seems to Dixon, unusually white, " - not the Drains, nor the Night's Residency,— I cannot explain,— it quite Torpedo'd me."
"Eeh! Sounds worth a Visit...?"
"Acts have consequences, Dixon, they must. These Louts believe all's right now,— that they are free to get on with Lives that to them are no doubt important,— with no Glimmer at all of the Debt they have taken on. That is what I smell'd,— Lethe-Water. One of the things the newly-born forget, is how terrible its Taste, and Smell. In Time, these People are able to forget ev'rything. Be willing but to wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish,— even unto their own Dissolution. In America, as I apprehend, Time is the true River that runs 'round Hell."
"They can't all be like thah'...?"
"Go and see,— and d——'d if I'll share any more Moments like that
with you."
"Eeh! As it suits thee. 'Tis how to suit myself, that's the Puzzle. Quaker Garb will send them into a war-like Frenzy, whilst the Red Coat will strike them sullen and creeping, unable to be trusted at any Scale...?"
"You might go as Harlequin," Mason replies, unsooth'd, "or Punch.”
Dixon has a fair idea of how little Mason cares for this Continent. He himself has been trying to keep an open Mind. Having been a Quaker all his Life, his Conscience early brought awake and not yet entirely fallen back to sleep, he now rides over to the Jail as to his Duty-Station, wearing a Hat and Coat borrow'd of Mason. He is going as Mason.
He sees where blows with Rifle-Butts miss'd their Marks, and chipp'd the Walls. He sees blood in Corners never cleans'd. Thankful he is no longer a Child, else might he curse and weep, scattering his Anger to no Effect, Dixon now must be his own stern Uncle, and smack himelf upon the Pate at any sign of unfocusing. What in the Holy Names are these people about? Not even the Dutchmen at the Cape behav'd this way. Is it something in this Wilderness, something ancient, that waited for them, and infected their Souls when they came?
Nothing he had brought to it of his nearest comparison, Raby with its thatch'd and benevolent romance of serfdom, had at all prepar'd him for the iron Criminality of the Cape,— the publick Executions and Whippings, the open'd flesh, the welling blood, the beefy contented faces of
those whites Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels
now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen'd here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried,— that at the end no one understood what they said as they died. "I don't pray enough," Dixon subvocalizes, "and I can't get upon my Knees just now because too many are watching,— yet could I kneel, and would I pray, 'twould be to ask, respectfully, that this be made right, that the Murderers meet appropriate Fates, that I be spar'd the awkwardness of seeking them out myself and slaying as many as I may, before they overwhelm me. Much better if that be handl'd some other way, by someone a bit more credible...." He feels no better for this Out-pouring.
Returning to their Rooms, he finds Mason reclin'd and smoking, looking up guiltily from a ragged Installment of The Ghastly Fop.
"When were tha thinking of leaving this miserable Place?"
"My Saddle-Bags are pack'd, I merely take the time waiting you to satisfy myself that the shockingly underag'd Protasia Wofte has not yet succumb'd, before the wicked Chymickal Assaults of the Ghastly F."
"Whom are we working for, Mason?"
"I rather thought, one day, you would be the one to tell me.”
"My Bags are never unpack'd. May we do this without Haste, avoiding all appearance of Anxiety?"
"I am cool," Mason replies.
In the Instant, both feel strongly drawn by the Forks of Brandywine, Mrs. Harland's Bean Pies and Rhubarb Tarts, the Goose-Down Bedding, the friendliness of the Milk-maids, the clement Routine of Observation. Gently they disengage from Lancaster. Each Milestone passes like another Rung of a Ladder ascended. Behind,— below,— diminishing, they hear, and presently lose, a Voicing disconsolate, of Regret at their Flight.
35
"Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,— Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin— Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,— nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,— her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,— that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,— not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,— rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common."
- The Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, Christ and History
"Why," Uncle Ives insists, "you look at the evidence. The testimony. The whole Truth."
"On the contrary! It may be the Historian's duty to seek the Truth, yet must he do ev'rything he can, not to tell it."
"Oh, pish!"
"Tush as well."
' 'Twasn't Mr. Gibbon's sort of History, in ev'ry way excellent, that I meant,— rather, Jack Mandeville, Captain John Smith, even to Baron Munchausen of our own day,— Herodotus being the God-Father of all, in his refusal to utter the name of a certain Egyptian Deity,—
"Don't say it!"
"What,— seek the Truth and not tell it! Shameful."
"Extraordinary. Things that may not be told? Hadn't we enough of that from the old George?"
"Just so. Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,— who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government. As Æsop was oblig'd to tell Fables,
'So Jacobites must speak in children's rhymes, As Preachers do in Parables, sometimes.'
Tox, Pennsylvaniad, Book Ten of course...."
"Hogwash, Sir," Uncle Ives about to become peevish with his Son, "Facts are Facts, and to believe otherwise is not only to behave perversely, but also to step in imminent peril of being grounded, young Pup."
"Sir, no offense meant. I was but pointing out that a single Version, in proceeding from a single Authority,—
"Ethelmer." Ives raises a monitory Eye-brow. "Time on Earth is too precious. No one has time, for more than one Version of the Truth."
"Then, let us have only Jolly Theatrickals about the Past, and be done with it,— 'twould certainly lighten my School-work." Mr. LeSpark's Phiz grows laden with Menace.
"Or read Novels," adds Aunt Euphrenia, her tone of dismissal owing more to her obligations as a Guest than her real Sentiments, engag'd more often than she might admit, with examples of the Fabulist's Art.
As if having just detected a threat to the moral safety of the company, Ives announces, "I cannot, damme I cannot I say, energetically
enough insist upon the danger of reading these storybooks,— in particular those known as 'Novel.' Let she who hears, heed. Britain's Bedlam even as the French Salpetriere being populated by an alarming number of young persons, most of them female, seduced across the sill of madness by these irresponsible narratives, that will not distinguish between fact and fancy. How are those frail Minds to judge? Alas, every reader of 'Novel' must be reckoned a soul in peril,— for she hath
made a D——l's bargain, squandering her most precious time, for
nothing in return but the meanest and shabbiest kinds of mental excitement. 'Romance,' pernicious enough in its day, seems in Comparison wholesome."
"Dr. Johnson says that all History unsupported by contemporary Evidence is Romance," notes Mr. LeSpark.
"Whilst Walpole, lying sick, refus'd to have any history at all read to him, believing it must be false," declares Lomax, gesturing with his Brandy-wine Glass.
"As if, at the end, he wish'd only Truth? Walpole?" Euphie plays an E-flat minor Scale, whilst rolling her eyes about.
"What of Shakespeare?" Tenebras still learning to be disingenuous, "Those Henry plays, or the others, the Richard ones? are they only make-believe History? theatrickal rubbish?" as if finding much enjoyment in speaking men's names that are not "Ethelmer."
"Aye, and Hamlet?" suggests the Revd, staring carefully at the youngsters in turn.
Her eyes a lash's width too wide, perhaps, "Oh, but Hamlet wasn't real, was he?" not wishing to seem to await an answer from her Cousin, yet allowing him now an opening to show off.
Which Ethelmer obligingly saunters into. Of course he has the Data. "All in all, a figure with an interesting Life of his own,— alas, this hopping, quizzing, murderously irresolute Figment of Shakespeare's, has quite eclips'd for us the man who had to live through the contradictions of his earthly Life, without having it all re-figur'd for him."
"Then, did he 'really' have a distant cousin named Ophelia," Tenebrse inquires, a shade too softly to be heard by any but Ethelmer, "and did he, historically, break her Heart?”
"More likely she was out to break his,— being his foster-sister actually, working on behalf of his enemies, tho' with no success. A minor figure, who may have charm'd Shakespeare into giving her more lines than she merits, but who does not charm the disinterested Seeker."
"Did he love anyone, then? besides himself, I mean...."
"He ended up marrying the daughter of the English King, 's a matter of fact, and later, in addition, the quite intimidating Hermuthruda, Queen of Scotland."
"What about that Stage strewn with Corpses?" wonders Uncle Lomax.
"Two wives!"
"Barbary Pirates take as many as they wish," twinkles Euphie.
"0 Euphrenia, Aunt of Lies," Tenebrae shaking her Finger in pretended sternness.
"Mercy, Brae,— I was nearly one myself. Hadn't been for the old Delusse, here, you'd be calling me 'Ayeesha' now. Had to run the Invisible Snake Trick that time, none too reliable in the best o' Circs...." She plays a sinuous Air full of exotick sharps and flats. The Company redeploy themselves in the direction of Comfort, as the moistly-dispos'd Uncle Lomax steers again for the Cabinet in the corner, presently returning with a bottle of Peach Brandy.
Upon his first Sip, the Revd reels in his Chair. "Why bless us, 'tis from Octarara."
"Amazingly cognizant, Wicks."
"I once surviv'd a Fortnight, Snow-bound," replies the Revd, "upon
little else. Twas at Mr. Knockwood's, by Octarara Creek, in the terrible
winter of 'sixty-four—'sixty-five, when, after four years, the Surveyors and
I once more cross'd Tracks "
Twas a more tranquil time, before the War, when people moved more slowly,— even, marvelous to say, here in Philadelphia, where the bustling might yet be distinguish'd from the hectic. There were no Sedan Chairs. Many went about on foot. Even Saint Nicholas was able to deliver all his Gifts, and yet find time for a brisk Pint at The Indian Queen.
I was back in America once more, finding, despite all, that I could not stay away from it, this object of hope that Miracles might yet occur, that God might yet return to Human affairs, that all the wistful Fictions necessary to the childhood of a species might yet come true,.. .a third Testament— I had been tarrying over Susquehanna, upon a Ministry that had taken me out among the wilder sort of Presbyterians, a distinct change from the mesopotamian Mysticks of Kutztown or Bethlehem. A bug-ridden, wearying, acidic Journey. Among these folk,— good folk, despite litigious and whiskey-loving ways,— I was not welcome. In my presence dogs howled, milk turn'd, bread failed to rise. Moreover, a spirit of rebellion was then flickering across the countryside, undeniable as the Northern Lights, directed at Britain and all things British, including, ineluctably, your miserable Servant. What we now style "The Stamp Act Crisis" was in full flower. The African Slaves call'd it "the Tamp." Unusual numbers of Riders were out ev'ry Night. The Province seem'd preparing for open warfare. Whiteboys and Black Boys, Paxton Boys and Sailor Boys,— a threat of Mobility ever present.
Thro' this rambunctious Countryside, a Coach-ful of assorted Travelers make their way Philadelphiaward, each upon his Mission. The purposefully jovial Gamer Mr. Edgewise, in whose purse already lie more of my Chits than he really likes to have out at any given time, has won from me a sum we both must view, less as any real Amount, than as a Complication to be resolv'd at some unnam'd date. I lose yet again,— "Why, damme Rev just write me another note, what's it matter the color of the paper, who has any cash anyway?" Business then, in this Province, Wagering included, was conducted overwhelmingly by way of Credit,— the Flow of Cash was not as important as Character, Duty, a complex structure of Debt in which Favors, Forgiveness, Ignominy were much more likely than any repayment in Specie. Mr. Edgewise is traveling with his Wife, who, when she must, regards him with a Phiz that speaks of the great amounts of her time given over, in a philosophickal way, to classifying the numerous forms of human idiot, beyond the common or Blithering sort, with which all are familiar,— the Bloody-Minded I., for example, recognized by the dangerous sea of white all around the irises of the eye-balls, or the twittering
Variety, by the infallible utterance "Frightfully." Then one has Mr. Edgewise—
We have passed, tho' without comment, out of the zone of influence of the western mountains, and into that of Chesapeake,— as there exists no "Maryland" beyond an Abstraction, a Frame of right lines drawn to enclose and square off the great Bay in its unimagin'd Fecundity, its shoreline tending to Infinite Length, ultimately unmappable,— no more, to be fair, than there exists any "Pennsylvania" but a chronicle of Frauds committed serially against the Indians dwelling there, check'd only by the Ambitions of other Colonies to north and east.
Our Coach is a late invention of the Jesuits, being, to speak bluntly, a Conveyance, wherein the inside is quite noticeably larger than the outside, though the fact cannot be appreciated until one is inside. For your Benefit, DePugh, the Mathematickal and Philosophickal Principles upon which the Design depends are known to most Students of the appropriate Arts,— so that I hesitate to burden the Company with information easily obtain'd elsewhere. That my Authorial Authority be made more secure, however, it may be reveal'd without danger that at the basis of the Design lies a logarithmic idea of the three dimensions of Space, realiz'd in an intricate Connexion of precise Analytickal curves, some bearing loads, others merely decorative, still others serving as Cam-Surfaces guiding the motions of other Parts.—
("We believe you, Wicks. We do. Pray go on.")
Bound through the nocturnal fields, the land asleep, the sky pressing close, losing at an ever-unadjourned game of All-Fours, dyspeptic from the fare at the last inn, restlessly now and then scanning the dark outside for any Light, however distant, I was bounced out of a disgruntled reverie by the Machine's abrupt slowing and eventual halt, out in the middle of a Night already grown heavy with imminent snow. Waiting at the Roadside were two Women, who prov'd to be mother and daughter, dresses flowing as homespun was never suppos'd to, and Faces that were to drive me, later that night, unable to sleep, beneath the Beam of my writing-lanthorn, to diaristic excess.—Yet, how speak of "Luminosity" in that pre-snowlight, or say "flawless," or, in particular, "otherworldly," when in fact in Cisalleghenic America, apparitions
continue,— Life not yet having grown so Christian and safe that a late traveler may not, even in this Deistically stained age, encounter a Woman of just such unearthly fairness, who will promise him ev'ry-thing and end by doing him mischief. Indeed, already in the course of this journey we had encountered what may well have been a Victim, fix'd and raving in the batter'd road, of some such Night-Interception. As the pair of Creatures boarded the Machine, I mutely ask'd,— not "pray'd," for all my Prayers in those Days must be Questions,— Are these now come for me, to be my own guides across the borderlands and into Madness?
But to my surprise and perhaps disappointment, their eyes will meet no one else's. As the Machine again gathers speed, it becomes clear that the young women intend to sit in companionable but perfect silence, for the entire journey. One by one, around the traveling Interior, small private lanthorns begin to glow, whilst I, long accustomed to finding beauty only among the soiled and fallen,— having thereby supposed a moral invariance as to beauty and innocence in women,— grow distracted at the very Conjunction,— undeniable, overwhelming, each with her hair tucked away 'neath a simple cap of white Lawn, tied under the chin, so that her face is the only part of her body exposed,— Faces innocent of all paint, patches, or pincering, naked as Eve's own.
Mr. Edgewise leans forward to introduce himself in a mucilaginous voice he would have described rather as cordial. "And how far would you ladies be traveling this fine evening?"
Because of the net outflow of light from her face, the daughter is seen instantly to blush, whilst the mother, with a level gaze but without smiling, replies, "To Philadelphia, Sir."
"Why, 'tis Sodom-upon-Schuylkill, Ma'am!" the blunt but kindly Traveler rolling his eyes about expressively. "What possible business could be taking a Godly young woman down into that unheavenly place?"
"My story must be only for the ears of the Lawyer I go to hire, Sir," she answers quietly, in the same determin'd voice.
All of us stare, each in his own form of astonishment. "You intend,"-it happens that I am first to speak,— "to engage the services,— forgive
me,— of...a Philadelphia Lawyer? Good lady, surely there is some recourse less...extreme? Your family, your congregation, the officials of your Church,—
She is gazing at my clerical collar, within which I must appear shackl'd secure as any Turk's slave. "Are you one of these? The English Church, net?"
How might I speak of my true "Church," of the planet-wide Syncretism, among the Deistick, the Oriental, Kabbalist, and the Savage, that is to be,— the Promise of Man, the redemptive Point, ever at our God-horizon, toward which all Faiths, true and delusional, must alike converge! Instead, I can only mumble and blurt, before the radiance of these young Pietists, something about being between preferments at the moment, so askew in my thoughts that I've forgotten my new Commission, and indeed the Purpose of my Journey,— even using "inter-prebendary" again, after promising a Certain Deity that I would refrain. But her innocent attention has reach'd unto the dead Vacuum ever at the bottom of my soul,— humiliation absolute.
Mr. Edgewise, a devotee of machinery, the newer the better, produces a Flask of curious shape and surface, devised in Italy by a renowned Jesuit artificer, out of which, to the wonder of the company, the Gambler now begins to pour steaming-hot coffee into a traveler's cup he has by him, and hands it to the young woman, who introduces herself as Frau Luise Redzinger, of Coniwingo. As she continues to sip more and more eagerly at the refreshing liquid,— which Mr. Edgewise is content to keep providing ever more of, out of the strange and apparently inexhaustible Flask,— before long she finds herself talking quite readily.
"Philadelphia, Sirs, can hold little to surprise me. My sister lives in the most licentious Babylon of America, though they are pleased to call themselves "Bethlehem,' so. Liesele happened to marry a Moravian, now a baker of that town,— the two having met upon the ship that carried us all here. Her destiny was to be fancy, as it was mine to be plain, I who do not know one grape wine from another,— whilst Liesele, already, between her first and second letters to me, had slid steeply into a gaudy Christianity aroar with Putzing and gay distrac-
tion, little to be distinguish'd from that of Rome,— having, indeed, its own Carnival, its gluttony and lustfulness, and the Trombone Choir, imagine, a wonder their minister is not addressed as Pope, so." At this the daughter gives a small gasp. But Frau Redzinger has grown flushed and cheerful, as if this address to a coach-ful of strangers were perhaps more speech than she has allow'd herself, save among her own sex, in who knows how long.
"Child, child, 'twould be far more sensible to forgive your sister," murmurs Mistress Edgewise, taking the young woman's hand. "You must both pass beyond it, dear." Her husband huffs forward, intending a similar Courtesy toward the young Woman's knee, but is deflected by a wifely stare, that contrives to look amused, tho' indisposed to bantering.
Frau Redzinger gestures expansively with her coffee cup, which is luckily, for the moment, empty. "Oh, yes, I am a bad sister, a bad wife and Christian, I am the one who must be forgiven, somehow, but,— she regards us each for a moment, her chin atremble, "of whom here would I ask it? Of course I resent Liesele, I envy her life. She has her husband."
At which looseness of tongue the daughter, at last, protests. But too late, for her Mother has rush'd on, as we now go rushing along down the Communication, above us our Jehu son of Nimshi taking chances he would never have taken in the Daylight.
' 'Twas not the same as being struck by lightning,— we've lightning over Schuylkill that's every bit the equal of Mr. Franklin's famous city-lightning, folk who've been hit by ours, speak of being 'prison'd in a thunderous glory'...but Peter was only bringing hops in to the cooling-pit, the most ordinary of tasks,— slipped in the dust, fell in the Pit, with the dried hops nearly twenty feet deep, hot from the Kiln, you can squeeze them together almost forever, drowning in them is easy, last year it was a church person over at Kutztown, even the odor of the pollen is deadly, the man's wife said, that it took him into a poison'd sleep,— but neither of us was with her husband when it happened, it is not a place women go, I was in the fields, with the other women and the last of the harvest, the way it is, we work only with the living Plants, so we tend the
Bines all summer,— soon as the Cones are picked, and dead, it is then the Men take over, net?
"I don't know what I might have done— The hops buoy'd him up, but not so much,— when help arrived, they said they could see only his hand above the cones, releasing their dust and terrible fumes as his struggling broke them,— by the time Jürgen could anchor himself, there was only my husband's one finger, reaching back into this world, his poor finger. The force it took to pull him out...no physician anywhere could have put it back to what it was. Peter would call it his sacramental finger, his outward and bodily sign of the Other thing that had happened to him down in that miserable suffocation. He bore it without shame, rather.. .with bewilderment."
Certain herbal essences in massive influxion, as I feel it my duty to assure her, have long been known and commented upon, as occasions of God-revealing. She nods emphatically.—As weeks passed, she tells us, Peter Redzinger's account chang'd, from a simple tale of witness, to one of rapture by beings from somewhere else, "long, long from Pennsylvania," as he expressed it,— and always at the center of the Relation, unwise to approach, an unbearable Luminosity.
As God has receded, as Deism has crept in to make the best of this progressive Absence, more and more do we witness extreme varieties of human character emergent,— Cagliostro, the Comte de St.-Germain, Adam Weishaupt,— Magicians with Munchausen tales and ever more extravagant effects,— Illuminati, Freemasons, Elect Cohens, many of whom, to my great curiosity, have found their way into Pennsylvania. They wander the town streets, they haunt the desert places, they are usually Germans. Woe betide the credulous countryman who falls under their influence,— or, as in the case of Peter Redzinger, is transform'd into one of them.
Another American Illumination, another sworn moment,— and where in England are any Epiphanies, bright as these? Bring anything like one,— any least Sail upon the Horizon of our Exile,— to the attention of an Established Clergyman, and 'twill elicit nought but gentle Reproofs and guarded Suggestions, which must sooner or later include the word "Physician.”
These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one. Royal Society members and French Encyclopaedists are in the Chariot, availing themselves whilst they may-of any occasion to preach the Gospels of Reason, denouncing all that once was Magic, though too often in smirking tropes upon the Church of Rome,— visitations, bleeding statues, medical impossibilities,— no, no, far too foreign. One may be allowed an occasional Cock Lane Ghost,— otherwise, for any more in that Article, one must turn to Gothick Fictions, folded acceptably between the covers of Books.
"They say Peter is seen now over Susquehanna, aus dem Kipp, wandering from one cabin to another, anywhere two or more Germans may be gathered together, with his Tales of the Pit. He calls it preaching,— so, to no one's surprize, do others. Some even follow him, Redzingerites, for whom his enlightenment by way of nearly drowning is the central event. Their view of Baptism does not, need I say, stop at Total Immersion. I imagine him by now a creature of the Forest. Perhaps I have mistaken my own destiny for his, and his Elevation," sighing, "has prov'd my Enearthment."
She speaks, it unfolds, of the Redzinger Farm, an hundred-acre Parcel close to, if not actually in, Maryland,— no one will know until the English Surveyors come through. The Proprietors of both Provinces have been offering lower Land prices, sometimes even exemption from the Quit-rent, to any who'll settle near Boundaries in dispute. Peter Redzinger has always known good land, he can look at it and tell you, if you ask, what it will bear in Abundance, what it will not tolerate. This place, as he recogniz'd from frequent visits to it in Dreams since he was young, would give him back anything he wished. "When he walk'd it, he discover'd he was dowsing it with his feet, and for more than Water, too, and had to keep his Shoes on, because upon his bare soles he could not withstand Die Krafte, the Forces? It whispers to him. He can almost make out the words."
Sometimes he tried to talk to Luise about this, but with such difficulty that she always ended up thinking about her sister in Bethlehem, and the Dancing she might be missing, after all. "...And it comes from the wind moving through the underbrush.. .it is inside of the Wind, and they are real
words, and if you listen..." She must have known quite early, that the Hop-pit, or something as decisive, was waiting for them. Meanwhile, maize and morning glories, tomatoes and cherry trees, every flower and Esculent known to Linna;us, thriv'd. The seasons swept through, Mitzi, and then the Boys, were born, Luise and Peter built a Bakery, Smokehouse, Stables, Milk-barn, Hen-coop, Hop-kiln, and Cooling-pit. His brothers, and their families, live nearby. Like many in Lancaster County, they all have Fields planted to Hops and Hemp. Each Crop, for its own reasons of Peace and War, is in rapidly growing demand, and fetching good prices.
Grodt, one of the farmers whose land adjoins the Redzingers', has long coveted their farm, and furthermore believes that both farms are located in Maryland. Under Maryland law, he knows he may get a warrant to resurvey his land, and in the process include any vacant land it happens to adjoin,— the property Line will be allow'd to stretch about and engross it,— by virtue of the Resurvey, it will become his. (Many were the elephantine tracts swallowed at one nibble, in those times, by the country Mice thereabouts.) Land defined as vacant includes land once settled but now "in escheat," meaning gone back to the Proprietor, usually for nonpayment of taxes,— Luise has been paying the Quit-rents to Pennsylvania, but Grodt, contending that she dwells in Maryland and owes more back taxes there than she can ever pay, believes the land is escheatable.
"I am no attorney," I try to console her, "but his case sounds doubtful."
"If he goes ahead," warns Mr. Edgewise, "obtains a warrant, pays the caution money, has title, then it's his, if no one can prove the land isn't escheatable." All now fall to arguing about Land-Jobbery, the discussion growing at times spirited and personal. Everyone in the Coach, it seems, has suddenly become a Philadelphia Lawyer.
"Why," Mrs. Edgewise demands to know, "must this subject rouse quite so much Passion?"
The Purveyor of Delusion confers upon his wife a certain expression or twist of Phiz I daresay as old as Holy Scripture,— a lengthy range of Sentiment, all comprest into a single melancholick swing of the eyes. From some personal stowage he produces another Flask, containing, not the Spruce Beer ubiquitous in these parts, but that favor'd stupefacient of the jump'd-up tradesman, French claret,— and without offering it to anyone else, including his Wife, begins to drink. "It goes back," he
might have begun, "to the second Day of Creation, when 'G-d made the Firmament, and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament, from the Waters which were above the Firmament,'— thus the first Boundary Line. All else after that, in all History, is but Sub-Division."
"What Machine is it," young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, "that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day,— another Year,— as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight.. .we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,— we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop...gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver,...no Horses,...only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity....”
36
The driver, having observed through the gusting low clouds, candle-lit Windows in the Distance, now notifies those of us below, that we are approaching an Inn. The Ladies begin to stir and pat, lean together and discuss. Men re-light their Pipes and consult their watches,— and, more discreetly, their Pocket-books. The rush of the Weather past the smooth outer Shell, a surface lacquered as secretly as the finest Cremona Violin, smoothly abates, silences, to be replaced by the crisp shouts of Hostlers and Stable-boys. We observe Link-men waiting in a double line, as if at some ceremony of German Mysticks, their torches sparking intensely yellow at the edges as they illuminate the falling Snow-Flakes.
In the partial light, the immense log Structure seems to tower toward the clouds until no more can be seen,— tho' the clouds at the moment are low,— whilst horizontally sprawling away, into an Arrangement of courtyards and passageways, till likewise lost to the eye, such complexity recalling Holy Land Bazaars and Zouks, even in the wintry setting,— save that in this Quarter nothing is ancient, the logs are still beaded with clear drops of resin, with none of the walls inside attached directly to them, the building having not yet had even a season to settle. The pots in the kitchen are all still bright, the Edges yet upon the Cutlery, bed-linens folded away that haven't yet been romp'd, or even slept, among.
This new Inn is an overnight stop for everybody with business upon the Communication, quite near a rope ferry across Bloomery Creek, one of the thousand rivers and branches flowing into Chesapeake. Waggoners are as welcome as Coach parties, and both sorts of Traveler, for the time being, find this acceptable. There's a long front porch, and two entrances, one into the Bar-room, the other into the family Parlor, with Passage between them only after a complicated search within, among Doors and Stair-cases more and less evident.
Meanwhile, the Astronomers, returning from Lancaster, are attending the Day's cloudy Sky as closely as they might a starry one at Night. "Can't say I'm too easy with this weather," Mason remarks.
"Do tha mean those white flake-like objects blowing out of the northeast...?"
"Actually, I lost sight of the Trees about fifteen minutes ago."
"Another bonny gahn-on tha've got us into...? Are we even upon the Road?"
"Hold,— is that a Light?"
"Don't try to get out of it thah' way."
"I am making it snow? Is this what you mean to assert, here?— how on earth could I do that, Dixon, pray regard yourself, Sir!"
"Tha pre-dicted a fair passage back to the Tents, indeed we have wager'd a Pistole,—
"You would, of course, mention it."
Bickering energetickally, they make their way toward the lights and at length enter the very Inn where your Narrator, lately arriv'd, is already down a Pipe and a Pint,— only to be brought to dumbfounded silence at the Sight of one whom they've not seen since the Cape of Good Hope.
"Are we never to be rid of him, then...?" cries Dixon.
"An Hallucination," Mason assures him, "brought on by the Snow, the vanishing of detail, the Brain's Anxiety to fill the Vacuum at any Cost—"
"Well met, Sirs," I reply. "And it gets worse." I reach in my Pockets and find and unscroll my Commission, which, all but knocking Pates, they read hastily.
"Party Chaplain...?"
"Who ask'd for a Chaplain?"
"Certainly not I...?"
"You don't mean I,— "
' 'Twas part of a side-Letter to the Consent Decree in Chancery," I explain helpfully, "that there be a Chaplain."
"Most of 'm'll be Presbyterians, Rev...? When they're not German Sectarians, or Irish Catholics...?"
"The Royal Society, however, is solidly Anglican."
"Chaplain," says Mason.
"Eeh," says Dixon.
As torch- or taper-light takes over from the light of the sunset, what are those Faces, gather'd before some Window, raising Toasts, preparing for the Evening ahead, if not assur'd of life forever? as travelers come in by ones and twos, to smells of Tobacco and Chops, as Fiddle Players tune their strings and starv'd horses eat from the trough in the Courtyard, as young women flee to and fro dumb with fatigue, and small boys down in strata of their own go swarming upon ceaseless errands, skidding upon the Straw, as smoke begins to fill the smoking-room...how may Death come here?
Mr. Knockwood, the landlord, a sort of trans-Elemental Uncle Toby, spends hours every day not with Earth Fortifications, but studying rather the passage of Water across his land, and constructing elaborate works to divert its flow, not to mention his guests. "You don't smoak how it is," he argues, " - all that has to happen is some Beaver, miles upstream from here, moves a single Pebble,— suddenly, down here, everything's changed! The creek's a mile away, running through the Horse Barn! Acres of Forest no longer exist! And that Beaver don't even know what he's done!" and he stands glaring, as if this hypothetickal animal were the fault of the patient Listener.
The weather continues to worsen. Taproom Regulars come in to voice openly Comparisons to the Winter of '63 and '64, the freezing and Floods. New casks of peach Brandy are open'd daily. The Knockwoods begin to raise their voices. "But I was saving that one."
"For what? The Book of Revelations? These are cash customers.”
The Assembly Room is not Bath. Here congregate all the Agentry of the Province, Land-jobbers and Labor Crimps, Tool-Mongers and Gypsy Brick-Layers, as well as the curious Well-to-do from further East, including all the Way back across the Ocean. The Waggoners keep together, seeking or creating their own Snugs, and the Men of Affairs arrange for Separate Rooms. Those that remain, tend to run to the quarrelsome.
"Where may one breathe?" demands one Continental Macaroni, in a yellow waistcoat, "— in New-York, Taverns have rooms where Smoke is prohibited."
"Tho' clearly," replies the itinerant Stove-Salesman Mr. Whitpot, drawing vigorously at his Pipe, "what's needed is a No-Idiots Area."
The youth at this makes a motion, less threatening than vex'd, toward the Hanger he wears habitually at his side,— tho' upon which he happens, at the moment, to be sitting. "Well, and you're a Swine, who cares what a Swine thinks?"
"Peevish Mr. Dimdown," coos Mrs. Edgewise, reaching behind the youth's ear and underneath his Wig to produce a silver pistole she has no intention, however, of offering to him, "do re-sheathe your weapon, there's a good young gentleman." Mistress of a diverting repertoire of conjuring tricks with Playing-Cards, Dice, Coins, Herbs, Liquids in Flasks, Gentlemen's Watches, Handkerchiefs, Weapons, Beetles and Bugs and short Excursions up the Chain of Being therefrom,— to Pigeons upon occasion, and Squirrels,— she has brought, to the mud courtyards of trans-Susquehannian inns, Countryfolk from miles about to gather into a crepuscular Murmur, no fabl'd Telegraph so swift as this Diffusion among them of word that a Magician is in the Neighborhood. In this Autumn cold, out in the Rain, beneath the generally unseen rising of the Pleiades, has she been trouping on, cheerfully rendering subjunctive, or contrary to fact, familiar laws of nature and of common sense.
Despite her Skills in Legerdemain, her Husband seldom, if ever, will allow her to accompany him upon his gaming Ventures. Ever subject to Evaporations of Reserve, she will now and then inquire why not, receiving the dyspeptic equivalent of a Gallant Smile. "Madam, to visit yea
even gaze upon such Doings would I fear my honey'd Apiary prove no easy burden to Sensibilities as finely rigged out as your own, therefore must I advise against it, with regret yet vehemence as well, my tuzzy-muzzy."
"I know your 'vehemence.' It is of little account with me."
"Among my acquaintance," remarks Mr. Dimdown, fondling his Hanger, "no woman would dare address her Husband in that way, without incurring a prolonged chastisement."
"As the phrase, scientifickally, describes Life with Mr. Edgewise, your Acquaintance need not, on this Occasion at least, suffer disappointment."
In a distant corner, Luise and Mitzi are engag'd in a Discussion as to Hair. "I want it all different lengths," fiercely, "I don't want to fasten it close to my head. I don't want to cover it. I want people to see it. I want Boys to see it."
" 'Tis a brumal Night, for behold, it sweepeth by," announces Squire Haligast from the shadows, resuming his silence as everyone falls silent to attend thereupon,— for the gnomic Squire, on the rare occasions he speaks, does so with an intensity suggesting, to more than one of the Guests, either useful Prophecy or Bedlamite Entertainment.
This is the Room Mason and Dixon descend into, where all is yet too new for the scent of hops and malt to've quite worked in,— rather, fugitive odors of gums and resins, of smoke from pipes and fires, of horses upon the garments of the company, come and go, unmix'd. The winter light creeps in and becomes confus'd among the glassware, a wrinkl'd bright stain.
"You're the Astronomers," Mr. Knockwood greets them. "The Revd has been speaking of you." When they come to explain about the two Transits of Venus, and the American Work filling the Years between, "By Heaven, a 'Sandwich,' " cries Mr. Edgewise. "Take good care, Sirs, that something don't come along and eat it!"
His pleasure at being able to utter a recently minted word, is at once much curtailed by the volatile Chef de Cuisine Armand Allègre, who rushes from the Kitchen screaming. "Sond-weech-uh! Sond-weech-uh!," gesticulating as well, "To the Sacrament of the Eating, it is ever the grand Insult!”
Cries of "Anti-Britannic!" and "Shame, Mounseer!"
Mitzi clutches herself. "No Mercy! Oh, he's so 'cute!"
Young Dimdown may be seen working himself up to a level of indignation that will allow him at least to pull out his naked Hanger again, and wave it about a bit. "Where I come from," he offers, "Lord Sandwich is as much respected for his nobility as admired for his Ingenuity, in creating the great modern Advance in Diet which bears his name, and I would suggest,— without of course wishing to offend,— that it ill behooves some bloody little toad-eating foreigner to speak his name in any but a respectful manner."
"Had I my batterie des couteaux" replies the Frenchman, with more gallantry than sense, "before that ridiculous little blade is out of his sheath, I can bone you,— like the Veal!"
"Stop it," admonishes the Revd, "both of you,— not all the Sensibilities here are grown as coarsen'd as your own. The Eponym in dispute," he continues to point out to the Macaroni, "better known these Days as Jemmy Twitcher, withal, is a vile-mouthed drunkard, a foolish gambler, and a Sodomitical rake, who betrayed his dear friend for the sake of,— let us say, a certain Caress, from the feeble hand of Georgie, Jack Bute's pathetic Creature."
"By Heaven, a Wilkesite!" cries Mr. Edgewise, "right here among us, imagine it, my Crown of Thorns!"
"The Lord's long Night of gaming draws to a close," pronounces Squire Haligast, "— the Object in its Journey, comes nigh, among the excursions of Chance, the sins of ministers, the inscriptions upon walls and Gate-posts,— the birth of the 'Sandwich,' at this exact moment in Christianity,— one of the Noble and Fallen for its Angel! Disks of secular Bread,— enclosing whilst concealing slices of real Flesh, yet a-sop with Blood, under the earthly guise of British Beef, all,— but for the Species of course,— Consubstantiate, thus... the Sandwich, Eucharist of this our Age." Thereupon retracting his head into the recklessly-toss'd folds of his neck-cloth, and saying no more.
"Precisely so," blares Mr. Edgewise, striking his wife smartly upon the Leg,— "oh, beg pardon, m' dear, thought it was meself I was thumping upon, well well a long night of gaming for us all isn't it? even if it is
usually in the daytime, day after quo-not-to-mention-quid-tidian day now ain't that correct, my cheery Daw!"
At table next morning, instead of the gusts of grease-smoke she expected venting from the kitchen, Luise Redzinger is agreeably surpriz'd to find Fragrances already familiar from her own cooking, and withal strange deviations,— what she later will identify as Garlick, for one, and a shameless over-usage of Butter in place of Lard, for another. "Do you not consider it a sin, even in the English church?" she accosts Revd Cherry-coke. "You could not find this even in Bethlehem at Christmastide." The object is a Croissant,— "a sort of ev'ryday Roll among the French, who put Butter in all they cook, Madam," the worldly Mr. Edgewise instructs her,— half a dozen more of which her Daughter, less scandalized, has already accounted for,— though no fingers in the room go altogether ungreased by these palatable pastries, which keep arriving from some distant oven, one great steaming platter-ful after another. "More likely the Devil's work," sniffs the beauteous Sectarian, "than any Frenchman, so." But with a strange,— what indeed is later thought to be hopeful,— Lift, at the end of it.
"Well then," bustles their host, "how'd you like to meet him in person?"
She gasps. Whenever she tells the story after that, she will put in, "My heart stopped, almost,— for I thought he meant the Devil." But he means his newly-hired Chef, the diminutive and athletic Monsieur Armand Allegre, whose white Toque, "half again as tall as he," she has noticed once or twice flashing in the kitchen doorway, even thro' pipe-murk and this dark Daybreak,— more brightly, in fact, than there is light to account for. "Here, Frenchy! Venayzeesee! One of our Guests wishes to present her compliments!" He winks at the eaters at nearby tables, Lord Affability.
"Gentle Sir," Frau Redzinger fixing him with a gaze whose calmness is precarious at best, "he may cook whatever he pleases,— I will not preach him a sermon."
"Oh, he's a good sort, you needn't worry, he's not all that French! Here then,— “
Introduced by their jocund host, the Frenchman sweeps off his Toque, causing a trio of Candles nearby to gutter for a moment, and stands before her exposed in his true altitude, hardly taking breaths, as she, meantime, 'tis clear to one or two of the Company, sits likewise trans-fix'd, the croissant in her posed hand shedding flakes, as a late flower its petals. By the unabated noise in the room, it would seem the moment has passed unremark'd. She, as if becoming aware of the (as it now turns out) already half-eaten Article she holds, shakes it slowly at him in reluctant tribute. "How...did you do this?"
"Madame,— I am even now about to begin a new batch of the Croissant Dough.. .I would be honored, if you would care to observe our little Kitchen at work—" From somewhere producing a simple turned hickory cylinder, some twenty inches long and perhaps two across,— "My Rolling-pin,"— urging her to take it in her hesitant hands, appreciate the weight, the smoothness, and give it a sample roll or two upon the table.
Frowning, curious, she complies. Presently, her voice lower, "It pays well, this Job, net?" He shrugs, his thoughts elsewhere. "Were it Thousands," sighing as if they were the only two in the room, and forcefully grasping his own face by the cheeks, "yet would you behold...the face of Melancholy. Alas. Once the most celebrated chef in France,— now alone, among foreign Peasants and skin-wearing Primitives, with no chance of escaping. And even if I could, where would I go? when all civilized,— I mean, of course, French,— soil is forbidden to my foot, even in the Illinois, even in the far mountains of Louisiana, It would seek me out, and remain, with motives too alien for any human ever to know."
" 'It'! How dreadful. Who dislikes you so much?"
' 'Who,' alas.. .a human pursuer, I perhaps could elude."
Fascinated herself, she has miss'd completely his effect upon Mitzi, who is sitting there flush'd and daz'd, with as clear an incipient case of the Green Pip as Mrs. Edgewise has met with since her own Girlhood. She leans from an adjoining Table. "Do you wish to faint, child?" Courteously the girl's eyelids and lashes swing downward, at least for as long as she can bear it, till presently in a weightless Languor sweeping up
again for another quick glance at Armand. The older Woman straightens again, shaking her head with a smile in which ordinary Mirth, though present, is far from the only Element,— as meanwhile M. Allègre proceeds, before a room-ful of what, to his mind, must seem unfeeling barbarians, to recite his Iliad of Inconvenience.
37
"I was the youngest of four brothers. Each of us, one by one, was well placed in life, until my turn came,— when, our Father's Fortunes' having experienc'd an unforeseen reversal, there remain'd only money enough to send me to Paris and apprentice me to the greatest chef in France,— which is to say, in the World.—
This is greeted with cries of, "Really, Mounseer!" "The world of Amphibia, perhaps," and "Here Frenchy,— try a nice British Sausage Roll!" "Oh dear," murmurs Mr. Knockwood, awaiting the ominous scrape of chair-legs along his new floor-planking.
For years (the Frenchman goes on), I grunted 'neath Loads of water and firewood, Sacks of Flour, Tubs of Butter. Everything the Maître considered below standard I got to eat, thus learning in the most direct way, the rights and wrongs of the Food. 'Twas another year before I was permitted to hold a Whisk. No one offer'd to teach me anything. Learning was to be all my responsibility. Year by year, sleepless and too often smileless, I acquir'd the arts of la Cuisine,— until, one day, at last, I had become a Chef. And presently, as these things unfold, Paris was at my feet.
I'll say it for you,— poor Paris! Here were great Houses getting into
violent feuds over my pates, the Queen commenting upon my Blanquette
de Veau. I quickly grew too self-important to understand that it was my
Novelty they were after, not my cooking,— a realization I delay'd for
longer than prov'd wise I was visited one day by a certain well-known Gentleman-Detective of the Time,— let us call him Hervé du T.,— whilst in the most critical Passage of a very demanding Sauce. The man had no idea of what he had put in jeopardy. In the Kitchen, one of the most useful Skills, is knowing when best, and when not, to deploy un Accès de Cuisinier, which properly executed has been known to freeze entire arm'd Units in their Tracks. The Obsession lighting the Eyes of my Visitor, however, far outshone anything I knew how to summon,— I was intrigued,— God help me, Madame, I listened.—
At this point Armand catches sight of Mason and Dixon, who are attempting to bring their Breakfast to an undisturb'd corner of the Saloon. "Ah! how curious that this Instant, Gentlemen, I was about to advert to your Brother in Science, whom perhaps you have even met, the immortal Jacques de Vaucanson."
Mason squints thoughtfully, Dixon shifts his Hat about till presently nodding, "Why aye, thah's it,— the Lad with the mechanickal Duck... ?"
"Too true, alas. A Mechanician of blinding and world-rattling Genius, Gentlemen, yet posterity will know him because of the Duck alone,— they are already coupl'd as inextricably as...Mason and Dixon? Haw-hawhawnnh. The Man Voltaire call'd a Prometheus,— to be remember'd only for having trespass'd so ingeniously outside the borders of Taste, as to have provided his Automaton a Digestionary Process, whose end result could not be distinguish'd from that found in Nature."
"A mechanickal Duck that shits? To whom can it matter," Mr. Whitpot, having remov'd his Wig, is irritably kneading it like a small Loaf, "- - who besides a farmer would even recognize Duck Waste, however compulsively accurate? And when might any country person get to see this Marvel to begin with, if its only engagements were in Parisian Hotels?"
"Some," the Frenchman bristles, "might point rather to a Commitment of Ingenuity unprecedented, toward making All authentic,— perhaps, it could be argued by minds more scientifick, 'twas this very Attention to Detail, whose Fineness, passing some Critickal Value, enabl'd in the Duck that strange Metamorphosis, which has sent it out the Gates of the Inanimate, and off upon its present Journey into the given World.”
What I was told then (Armand continues), remains even today high treason to reveal,— this was bigger than the Man in the Iron Mask,— Kingdoms, Empires indeed, had begun to sway, since the fateful moment when one of Vaucanson's Servants enter'd the Atelier, to find the Duck hovering a few feet above a Table-top, flapping its Wings. There was no need to scream, tho' both of them did, anyway. The Secret was out. Within an hour, the Duck was well flown.
' 'Twas not of M. Vaucanson's Device, then?"
"Ha, ha ha, what a droll remark, I must tell Madame la Marquise de
Pompadour, next time we 'faisons le Déjeuner,' she will be so amus'd
No, ingenuous one,— the 'Design' was of quite a different order, an entirely new Bodily Function in fact, and no one, including the great Engineer himself, knows what happen'd...."
Vaucanson's vainglorious Intent had been to repeat for Sex and Reproduction, the Miracles he'd already achiev'd for Digestion and Excretion. "Who knows? that final superaddition of erotick Machinery may have somehow nudg'd the Duck across some Threshold of self-Intricacy, setting off this Explosion of Change, from Inertia toward Independence, and Power. Isn't it like an old Tale? Has an Automatick Duck, like the Sleeping Beauty, been brought to life by the kiss of...l'Amour?
"Oo-la-la," comes a voice from the corner, "and toot ma flute."
"Frenchies,— marvelous i'n't it," comments another, "ever at it, night and day."
"Savages," hisses the Gallic miniature.
"Pray, Monsieur, go on," Frau Redzinger with a glance of reproach at the room in general.
"For you, Madame." He gestures broadly with his giant Toque, and continues.—
My visitor had grown quite agitated by now. " 'Twas his own Hubris,— the old mad Philosopher story, we all know, meddl'd where he shouldn't have, till laws of the Unforeseen engag'd,— now the Duck is a Fugitive, flying where it wishes,— often indeed visiting the Academy of Sciences, where they have learn'd that the greater its speed, the less visible it grows, until at around a Thousand Toises per Minute, it vanishes entirely,— but one of many newly-acquir'd Powers, bringing added
Urgency to finding it as quickly as possible, before this 'Morphosis carries it beyond our Control. Which is precisely where you may do us a Service, Sir."
"But my gifts...scarcely lie in this direction."
"Recollect, cher Maître, as I do with senses even today a-tremble, your Canard au Pamplemousse Flambé. It is unique in Civilization. Not to mention the sublime Canard avec Aubergines en Casserole...mmhhnnhh! I embrace them! The immortal Fantaisie des Canettes...,"— and much more, including Dishes I'd all but forgotten. I should have stood unmov'd, but I'd gone a-blush. "Oh, those old Canards," I murmur'd.
"You see, when one looks in the files of the Ministries, and of other Detectives, for that matter, invariably, under the Heading, 'Duck,' the two Humans whose Names most often appear, are Vaucanson, and yourself. Again and again. Can there be a Connection?— the Automaton apparently believes so, having somehow, quite recently, become aware of you. Since then, its Resentment on behalf of all Ducks,— and not only those you personally may have cook'd,— has grown alarmingly. Without doubt, it is forming a Plan, whose details you may not wish to know."
"But this is dangerous! What if its Brain be affected by now? And if it be blaming me for Wrongs I never knew I was committing?"
"Ah! it might seek you out, mightn't it,— and, in the Monomania of its Assault, grow careless enough to allow my Agents at last to apprehend it. That would be the Plan, anyhow. Agreed, you must consider how best to defend yourself,— wear clothing it cannot bite through, leather, or what's even more secure, chain-mail,— its Beak being of the finest Swedish Steel, did I mention that, yes quite able, when the Duck, in its homicidal Frenzy, is flying at high speed, to penetrate all known Fortification, solid walls being as paper to this Juggernaut— One may cower within, but one cannot avoid,— le Bec de la Mort, the...'Beak of Death.' "
"Wait, wait," trying not to upset him further, "reprising this,— you wish me to act as a sort of.. .Decoy? to attract the personal Vengeance of a powerful and murderous Automaton...Bon.... For this, I might require a small Fee, in advance?”
"Of course. Here is your small Fee,— you see this Pistol? I will not fire it into your head, eh?"
"Only a thought.—"
I was sav'd, if that is the word, by a loud terrifying Hum outside. The Detective, with a frighten'd cry, ran swiftly and irrevocably from the Room, leaving me in great Anxiety, as reluctant to follow, and continue in his arm'd company, as to stay, and face an Arrival perhaps even more perilous. I stepp'd out to the Terrace, to look. The Noise was circling overhead, as if its Source,— surely the Duck,— were contemplating a course of action,—
And there! there it was, my future Nemesis! Ah! As I watch'd, it began its long glissade, directly toward me,— the Stoop of an unreasonably small and slow Predator. With plenty of time to escape, quite unlike ordinary Prey myself, I remain'd staring, whilst in defiance of Newton the metallick Marvel floated gently down...till it alit near me, upon one of the Railings of the Terrace, with barely a sound. It faced me...its ominous Beak crank'd open...it quack'd, its eye holding a certain gleam, and began to speak, in a curious Accent, inflected heavily with linguo-beccal Fricatives, issuing in a fine Mist of some digestive Liquid, upon pure Faith in whose harmlessness I was obliged to proceed.
"So," spray'd the Duck,— "the terrible Bluebeard of the Kitchen, whose Celebrity is purchas'd with the lives of my Race. Not so brave now, eh?"
"Thousands in France slay, cook, and eat Ducks ev'ry day. Why single me out?"
"What more natural Enemy for the most celebrated Duck in France, than the most celebrated Chef?"
Hadn't M. du T. made nearly the same remark about the two Dossiers? Had the Duck gain'd access to these? How? "I am not your Enemy," I protested. "I may even be your Friend."
"At least until you contrive to make a dish of me, eh? Be advis'd, I am provided with extensive Alarms, that not a feather be molested, but 'twill trigger Consequences disagreeable. Would you like to try it? eh? go ahead, the Breeze from your moving hand will be enough.”
"Be assur'd of the total Safety, when I am present, of ev'ry excellent Feather," surpriz'd to hear a strange Flirtatiousness in my voice, "yours, may I say, being most uncommonly—
"Attend, Flatteur,— there may be one way for you to deflect my Wrath,— an inconsequential Task you may wish to do for me. I've a request to make of Vaucanson, and the Clock-work is ticking."
"Why not just fly over there and ask him?"
"Sir, he does not wish me well,— I cannot say why,— I hear, that he
has hired an Attorney,— an infallible sign of Hatred, if you ask me "
"Then, perhaps, you must hire one yourself."
"You wish me," the Duck spreading its wings as if to invite inspection, "to walk in, hand him my Card, 'How d'ye do, spot of bother with the Human who design'd me'?— I think not. Withal, my Case would be weak,— he would no doubt present me as some poor Wretch ever connected, by way of this celebrated inner Apparatus, to Earth, but to nothing as transcendent as,"— a wing-shrug,— "l'Amour— Whilst presenting himself as doing me a great Favor,— failing to consider that I might not miss what I never possess'd."
("Hear, hear," Mason tapping the side of his Coffee-Mug with the Jam-Spoon.
Dixon looks over. "Eeh,— are you crazy yet, Mason?"
The French cook moves his Eyebrows about. "That was what it said, Messieurs. And by then, Curiosity overcoming my good sense...")
"So," I ask'd the Duck, "— is this why you're suddenly able to fly, and whatever else by now... ?"
"That's certainly what it feels like...tho' as for this 'Love,'— I still don't even know what it's suppos'd to be."
"Indeed,— then, do you meet no other Ducks, in your,— um that is,—
"Exactly," ruffling all its Feathers excitedly, "- - aside from the clock-tower Cocks of Strasbourg and Lyon, how many other mechanickal Fowl have I, exactly, to choose from?— excepting, bien entendu, the Fatal Other...."
"Pardon— who?"
"My Duplicate,— that other Duck, which Vaucanson has kept ever on hand, ready to waddle into the Lights to become the 'Vaucanson's Duck' the World would come to know, should this experiment upon me've fail'd. In the Atelier we have often cross'd Paths. In fact our Thoughts have not remain'd so philosophique as to avoid the growth of a certain. . .Fascination.
"So it is that I now commission you, to go to my Creator, and pray upon my behalf his Permission, to take this very Duck out for the evening,— I have tickets to the Opera,— 'tis Galuppi's Margherita e Don Aldo. We could stop for a bite at L'Appeau, they have my table there, you must know of Jean-Luc's Insectes d'Etang à l'Etouffée,—
"Wait, wait, this other Duck,— it's male? female? For that matter, which are you?"
"Moi? Female, as it happens. The other, being yet sexually unmodified, is neither,— or, if you like, both. Any Problem?"
"The arrangement you wish me to make for you.. .'twould fall, I regret, in a Realm of the Erotick, where, alas, I've no experience,—
"For a Frenchman, this is refreshing. Unhappily, my 'Morphosis ever proceeding, I enjoy as little choice of a Broker, as of a Partner."
"Why should Vaucanson agree? If he is your enemy, he may also demand a price, such as your return to his Atelier."
"Details for you to work out. In Italian opera, the young Soprano's Guardian may always be deceiv'd." The Duck flapp'd its Wings, rose in the Air, and with a Hum, singing a few bars of "Calmati, Mio Don Aldo irascibile," crank'd up to speed and vanish'd.
"But this is French Tragedy!" I call'd after. Had the shock of acquiring an erotick Self driven the Creature insane? Was that it? I was a Chef, not a Match-maker for Automatick Ducks. Merde!
Nonetheless, in nearly total ignorance of the path I was choosing, nor knowing even how to reach Vaucanson, I set out to see what favors I might convert,— so entering the little-known world of the Automatophile Community, learning swiftly that the Duck's curious 'Morphosis was a common topick of Gossip at Court, with Mme. la Marquise de Pompadour, as Hervé du T. had hinted, vitally interested. Spies were ev'rywhere, some working for this redoubtable Lady, with her Jansenists and Philosopher, others for Parties whose Fortunes would have intermesh'd more and less naturally with those of any Flying Automaton,— the Jesuits, of course, the British, the Prussian Military,— along with Detectives upon missions Bourbon and Orleanist, Corsican Adventurers, Martinist Illuminati, a Grand Melange of Motive— As no one was what he,— and, for the most part delightfully, she,— claim'd, no one told or expected the truth. Long were the nights, as a-riot with Hepatomachy and Pursuit, as the days a-tangle with Rumor and Faithlessness,— not to mention wayward Barouches, opiated Chablis at Pick-nicks unforeseen, Ear-rings lost and found, invisible Street-Singers echoing 'round the Corners, the Melancholy of the City at sunset,— a descent, like passing into sleep, uneasy and full of terror till we be establish'd once more within the Evening, as within the Evening's first Dream—
My efforts to reach Vaucanson were not without Repercussion. Engagements disappear'd. People cross'd streets to avoid me. Unfamiliar men loung'd against the walls of my neighborhood, as if waiting for instructions. I spent much of my time at the Soupçon de Trop, a local Repaire for Kitchen-Workers of all Ranks, finding in their numbers Safety for a while, at least from human Enemies,.. .but soon enough, the Duck got wind of my Whereabouts,— having learn'd in the meantime that vibrating back and forth very quickly, whilst standing still, would produce the same effect of Invisibility as linear movement,— and, at first to the Amusement, and later to the Annoyance, of my Colleagues, began paying regular visits, emerging to deliver me one reproof upon another, announced only by that distressing Hum.
Only in that Phase of Night when Drunkenness prevail'd and less and less imported, did I even dare reply. "Why do you obsess me? go seek out Vaucanson yourself. I know he's dangerous, but, my God, you're invisible, faster than anything known, you penetrate walls,— you're more than a match for him." I knew as I cozen'd thus the Duck, how carelessly provoking it all must sound, yet such was the Desperation I liv'd in, redefining Shame with each sunrise, that what might once have matter'd to my Pride, now quite often fail'd even to claim my Attention. Whenever I began to list for her the Obstacles, the Daily Intrigues, the Assaults and Deceptions that ever delay'd my Mission upon her behalf, she would proclaim, thro' candle-lit iridescences of vocal Spray, "Duress? Duress is not an Issue,— for Life is Duress."
I once would have inquir'd coolly, what an Automaton might know of Life, but now I only sat silent, unconsciously having assum'd what I later learn'd was that Hindoo asana, or Posture, known as "the Lotus." At what moment the Duck may have taken her leave, who but the Time-Keeper knoweth? Time, however, had acquir'd additional Properties.
Mysteriously, from about that date, I found myself beneath a Protection unseen, yet potent. Thugs who approach'd me in the Street were suddenly struck in mid-Body vigorously enough to throw them for Toises along the Cobbles, where they lay a-cowering, trying to remember their Prayers. A Wine-cask, falling spontaneously out of an upper Window directly at my Head, was invisibly deflected, to smash open harmlessly, in spatter'd red radii, upon the Pavement. In the path of a runaway coach-and-six, I was suddenly lifted by the back of my collar, into the Air, above the Hats and Faces of the rapidly gathering Crowd, and con-vey'd to Safety. I could attribute such a degree of Protection (in which I fail'd, till too late, to see the component of Love) to nothing but the Duck,— which soon enough declar'd her Sentiments, leaving me a plain opening,— but to my shame, I could say nothing. How could anyone? I took refuge in wild theorizing,— if Angels be the next higher being from Man, perhaps the Duck had 'morphos'd into some Anatine Equivalent,
acting as my Guardian,— purely, as an Angel might Or, perhaps, as
Ducklings, when their Mother is not available, will follow any creature that happens along, so might not an Automaton, but newly aware of its Destiny as a Duck, easily fasten upon the first human, say, willing to remain and chat, rather than go running off in terror,— and come to define this attachment as Love?...Or, was it something she'd glean'd from some Italian Opera,— that an Intermediary in the Employ of a Soprano Character might soon find himself in her Embrace as well? These and other speculations swiftly carried me close to a dangerous Ecstacy, in which Vaucanson's "erotic Apparatus" never occurr'd to me as a possible Cause. My colleagues of course saw ev'rything. "Armand, Armand, you have ruined a notable career, made enemies in the highest places,—
- can no longer work in this town even as a sub-scullion,—
"Voilà, and yet he sits, laps'd in this strange Supernaturalism. Paris is no longer for you, my Friend, you belong somewhere else,— in China! in Pennsylvania!"
Everyone at least knows of China,— but imagine, till then I had never heard of Pennsylvania. They meant, as it turn'd out, a place in America,
where Religious Eccentricity of all kinds was not only tolerated, but publickly indulg'd,— where
Schwenkfelders might past Unitarians brush, And Wesleyites scarce from Quakers raise a blush,
as great Tox has it. The Miraculous lay upon ev'ry hand,— in the days that follow'd, I was much entertain'd with tales of fertile lands, savage Women, giant Vegetables, forests without end, Marshlands seething with shell-fish, Buffalo-Herds the size of Paris. Increasingly I wondered if somewhere in that American Wilderness there might be a Path, not yet discover'd, to lead me out of my Perplexity, and into a place of Safety from what was by now a long list of Persecutors, unhappily including the Duck, whose Affection had grown multiplex with daily Difficulties. At a time when I needed any work I could get, she resented even the few Hours that might take me elsewhere to create some Vulgarian's Luncheon, in which the cost of any mistake would be fatally high,— she grew jealous, imagining that I was seeking the company of some other Duck...."We mate for life. Alas, my poor Armand."
"As you yourself have pointed out, there's but one other in the World,- "
"Aha! My Virgin Double,— somewhere upon a Shelf, in one of Vau-canson's many clandestine workshops, oh yes and by the way, what progress have you made, upon that simple Errand, wait, let me guess,— another barrier arisen? another note gone astray? or is it something more sinister, such as your desire to have the other for yourself? Eh? Look, he sweats, he trembles. Admit it, Betrayer."
My social life had fallen to pieces. I could no longer show my face down at the Soupçon. The Duck was my Shadow night and day. She started waking me up to criticize some item of my attire from days before, my choice of Company, and at last, unacceptably, my Cooking. Three in the morning and we sat bickering about my Beet Quiche.. .beneath it her Iron Confidence in the power conferr'd by her Inedibility...being artificial and deathless, as I was meat, and of the Earth...my only hope was that her 'Morphosis would somehow carry her quite beyond me, and
soon. Meanwhile, Paris having grown impossible, I resolv'd secretly to leave for America.
Feeling like a young man in a Fable, who has us'd up all but one Wish, I sent out my last note, held my breath, and was lucky,— upon the basis of a Chill'd Brain Mousse, invented to celebrate the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, I was able to secure passage to Martinique, and thence, through months of trans-shipment, in ev'rything from Pirogue to Pirate Ship, at last to New Castle upon Delaware, where I stepp'd ashore in the moonless Dark,— as it was said, that the people there did not interfere with these nocturnal Landings, being ever in dread of the French and Spanish Privateers—
"Here then, you wretched little Frog!" The Company groans. It is Mr. Dimdown, Hanger in hand. The Frenchman picks up his Hachoir, and raises one eyebrow.
38
Tie determin'd afterward, that Mr. Dimdown, heretofore unacquainted with any confinement longer than hiding in the Root-Cellar till the Sheriff took his leave, had been drinking steadily whatever Spirits came to hand, for the three days previous, attempting, as he explains, "to get the Time to pass differently, that's all."
Mr. Knockwood comes from around the Bar whilst Mrs. Knockwood, sorting her Keys, heads for the Musketoon in the China-Cabinet.
"And furthermore," Mr. Dimdown in a fury, "how dare you you fabu-lating little swine pretend to any knowledge of America, having sneak'd onto our Shores 'pon your miserable Belly,"— and so on.
"There, there, now, Gentlemen," the Landlord slowing his Address as much as he can afford to, whilst keeping an eye upon his Wife's progress with the Powder Horns, Funnel, and Shot, "Mr. Dimdown, mind my Chef now, I can't afford to lose him. And you, Frenchie,—
"Filthy frog! Deet adyoo!" Mr. Dimdown makes a murderous Lunge with his Blade, straight at the Chef's unprotected Heart. Immediately, Inches short of its target, the Weapon, from no cause visible to anyone, leaves Dimdown's Grasp and sails across the Room in a slow, some might say insolent Arc, directly in among the blazing Logs of the Hearth, where none may reach.
''Twas...Magnetism or something," protests Mr. Dimdown, "and withal I stumbl'd,— or was deliberately tripp'd up. Look ye,— how am I to retrieve my Bleeder now? The heat will ruin the Steel. Damn you, Mon-soor."
"Thus," intones the Frenchman, with a twirl of his Toque, "the very Duck, in action. You have seen for yourselves. You have borne Witness. Her capacity for Flight having increased to ever longer Distances, in the years between then and now, till one day, not even the vast Ocean might deter her,— Voilà!— I wake to find her perch'd at the end of the Bed, quacking merrily as a Milk-maid. Yes, she has follow'd me even to the New World, whether in affection or hatred, who can say,— that 'tis Passion, none may dispute,— and once again, I am besieged, as she continues upon her strange Orbit of Escape from the known World, whilst growing more powerful within it."
To Luise, this is beginning to sound like Peter Redzinger all over again. Upon an Impulse, nevertheless, she places a somewhat larger than Parisian Hand,— a callus'd working Hand, cut and healed in a thousand places, sun-brown, hair-tucking, needle-nimble,— upon his arm. A close observer, did one attend, might see him begin to flicker 'round the edges. "Oh, Monsieur. An Angel, so?"
"Perhaps, Madame, it is merely the price I must pay for having left France,— yet, to be honest, coming from a place where people starve to death every night, if I must suffer the Duck's inscrutable attendance, in Exchange for this Miracle of Plenty,— then, 'tis a Bargain. On market days in New Castle or Philadelphia, my Heart yet soars as ever it has done,.. .like a dream— Have you ever wanted to cook everything,— the tomatoes, terrapins, peaches, rockfish, crabs, Indian Corn, Venison! Bear! Beaver! To create the Beaver Bourguignon,— who knows, perhaps even the.. .the Beaver soufflé, non?" He is gesturing excitedly.
"Sure, the Indians know how to cook Beaver," she tells him, "there's some Glands you have to take out, and much Fat to trim, but when 'tis done right? Ach,.. .as good as anything from a German kitchen, plain or fancy."
"You have actually,"— he gazes at her,— "that is.. .eaten..."
In the days they are to remain snow-bound, a triangle will develop among the incorruptible Pietist, the exil'd Chef, and the infatuated
Duck. Strangely, given her great powers for Mischief, the Duck does nothing to harm Luise, indeed extends to her the same invisible Protection,— as if sensing a chance to observe "Love" at first hand, invisibly. Thus do Armand and Luise, never knowing when she may be there watching, find one more Obstacle in the way of bodily Desires,— "She's being quite sympathetic about all this, don't you think?"
"I don't know, Armand. Are you sure you've told me ev'rything?"
"My Dearest! How could you even..."
"She seems to know you...so well."
It does not, however, in fact take long for the Duck to grow far less certain than before, that she even wishes an erotick Life. Meanwhile, in their Niveal Confinement, the behavior of the Company grows ever less predictable. "And over my head," relates Squire Haligast, "it form'd an E-clipse, an emptiness in the Sky, with a Cloud-shap'd Line drawn all about it, wherein words might appear, and it read,— 'No King...''
"Thank you for sharing that with us, Sir," snarls the dependably viperous Mr. Whitpot, the first upon whom the Squire's oracular charm has begun to lose its grasp. As days of snow and snow-clouds in dark unpromising shades of Blue pass one into another, the readiness of immoderate Sentiment to burst forth upon any or no occasion is felt by all to be heightening dangerously. Even young Cherrycoke struggles with it, rosy Phiz a-glimmer, seated at a Table of local Dutch Manufacture, writing in his Memorandum-Book, as the snow lapses in wet silence 'cross the rhombic Panes before him, whilst from his Pen, in bright, increasingly bloody Tropes, speculation upon the Eucharistic Sacrament and the practice of Cannibalism comes a-spurting. It had begun in Scholarly Innocence, as a Commentary upon an earlier Essay by Brook Taylor (the Series and Theorem Eponym), "On the Lawfulness of Eating Blood."
Mr. Knockwood observes from an upstairs Window a depth of Snow nearly level with its Sill, and worrying about the supply of Air in the Rooms below, rushes to find, and ask, the Astronomers. And what has happen'd to the Light? are there Snow-Eclipses? Down in the Pantry, Armand and Luise are embracing, outdoing the Sparkishness of even Philadelphia!! Youth (yet again, perhaps that is only what people bring out upon days when gossip is scarce, honoring the rest of the time their manifest Innocence),— whilst Mitzi, out in this taupe daylight, is hanging about the stable-hands and Scullery Boys, swinging her Hair, flashing her eyes, getting into conversations that she then tries to prolong to some point she can't clearly enough define to herself. She's grown up with murderous Indians in the Woods all 'round, painted bare skins and sharpen'd Blades, she has a different sense of Danger than do these mild estuarial Souls, with their diet of fish, like a race of house-cats, so. Yet what she really wishes to prolong, may be the state of never knowing exactly how safe she may be among the English Fisher-Boys, as at first, at each new fall of Snow, she has thrill'd, knowing it means at least one more day of isolation with the Inn's resident Adonises,— or, as Armand, feeling increasingly Paterfamilial, prefers, Slack-jaw'd Louts. Lately, however, the Winter has begun to oppress more than encourage her hopes. She actually starts looking about for Chores to do, offering Armand her help in the Kitchen, still a-blush ev'ry time they speak,— Luise, as he is joyous to learn, having taught her at least the Fundamentals. Soon he is allowing her to prepare salads, and confiding minor Arcana of French Haute Cuisine,— its historical beginnings among the arts of the Poisoner,— its need to be carried on in an Attitude of unwavering Contempt for any who would actually chew, swallow, and attempt to digest it, and come back for more,— the first Thousand Pot-lid settings, from Le Gastreau's fam'd article in the Encyclopédie,— the Pot-Lid being indeed a particular Hobby-Horse of Armand's, upon its proper Arrangement often hanging the difference between success and failure. "Off, on, all the way on, partly off, crescents of varying shape, each with its appropriate use,— you must learn to think of the Pot, as you look down upon it, as a sort of Moon, with Phases...tho' keeping in mind Voltaire's remark about Gas- and As-tronomers."
The Revd looks on with interest. The Frenchman fascinates him. With his recent animadversions upon the Lord's Supper, he is attending more to Food, and its preparation. "I thought I had put behind me," he writes, "the questions of whether the Body and Blood of Christ are consubstan-tiate with, or transubstantiated from, the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist,— preferring at last to believe, with Doctors such as Haimo of Halberstadt, that the outward Forms are given to bread and wine as an act of God's Mercy, for otherwise we should be repell'd by the sight of
real human Flesh and Blood, not to mention the prospect of eating it. Thus to God's attributes must be added the skills of a master Chef, in so disguising a terrible reality. The question I cannot resolve is whether real Flesh and real Blood are themselves, in turn, further symbolick,— either of some mystickal Body of Christ, in which participants in the Lord's Supper all somehow,— mystickally, to be sure,— become One,— or of a terrible Opposite... some ultimate Carnality, some way of finally belonging to the doom'd World that cannot be undone,— a condition, I now confess, I once roam'd the Earth believing myself to be seeking, all but asphyxiated in a darkling innocence which later Generations may no longer fully imagine.
"But since those days of young hopes, illusory daybreaks, and the uncanny sureness of Nerve, I have been down into other quarters of the City of Earth, seen and smell'd at village Markets, hung amid the flies and street-dust with the other animal meat, Human Flesh, offer'd for sale.... In America some Indians believe that eating the flesh, and particularly drinking the blood, of those one has defeated in battle, will transfer the 'Virtues,' as theologians might call 'em, from one's late opponent, to oneself,— a mystickal Union between the Antagonists, which no one I have consulted is quite able to explain to me. It raises the possibility that Savages who appear to be Enemies are in fact connected somehow, profoundly, as in a Covenant of Blood, with War for them being thus a species of Sacrament. This being so, as a practical matter out here, the Warriors-Paths must be deem'd holy, and transgression of them serious, to a degree difficult to imagine in the common British Foot-path dispute. We must either change our notions of the Sacred, or come to terms with these Nations,— and sooner rather than later."
Late in the day after his assault upon Armand, Mr. Dimdown answers a Knock at the door of his Room, to find Mitzi Redzinger, holding out his Hanger cautiously by its Strap. "I clean'd it up as best I could," she murmurs, gazing at anything but him. "'A bit of Soot, nothing worse. And I sharpen'd it for you." "You what?”
"Armand has taught me how." She has stepp'd into the room and shut the door behind her, and now stands observing him, surpriz'd at how tat-ter'd seems his Foppery in the Day-time.
"No one sharpens this but me, this is genuine Damascus Steel, for Heaven's sake,— here, then, let us see the Damage." Taking what seems far too long, he peers up and down the newly glitt'ring Edge, and is soon making ornamental Lunges and Passes in the Air, presenting each Leg a number of times for her Consideration, adjusting his Cuffs and Stock unceasingly. "Hmm. Appears that you may understand something about Blades—" A complicated assault upon a Candle-stick. "Feels a little slow. Us'd to be faster. Is there a fruitful lawsuit here? yes perhaps I shall take Knockwood to court, if Spring ever comes,— say, Frowline, your Cap,.. .what d'you think you're doing?"
The Goose. She is untying her Cap, then taking it slowly off, unbinding and shaking out her Hair. She is making it ripple for him. She is getting it to catch the winter Light thro' the Window. She is so flabber-gasting this Macaroni with it that he seems to fall into a contemplative Daze before the deep Undulations, a Dreamer at the Edge of the Sea. Outdoors, the Snow is upon the Glide yet again, and soon 'twill be Night. She remembers all the Leagues of Snow-cover'd Terrain between here and the Redzinger Farm, all going dark, the City she cannot quite believe in that lies ahead, her Father's Resurrection and Departure, her Mother's visible Change, and lastly her own, which she can as little command as explain,— Breasts, Hips, Fluxes, odd Swoons, a sharpening Eye for lapses of Character in young Men. "The Lord provides," her Mother has told her. "Wisdom comes to us, even as it appears to leave Men. You won't need to go all the way to Philadelphia. Nor much further than the Town, upon Market Day, so."
He has begun apologizing for his Assault upon the Frenchman. " 'Twas vile of me. I know you are his Friend,— I wish there were some way... ?"
"Simply tell him. Isn't it done among you?"
"Go into that Kitchen? You've seen his Battery,— the Knives, the Cleavers? Mrs. Dimdown rais'd no Idiots, Frowline."
"Oh, if you knew Armand." She laughs merrily.
"I am become a Target for his Instruments edg'd and pointed. There, our Relation appears at a Stand-still.”
"But recall, that no one here has ever seen Armand cut anything. That's why he's teaching me how to,— so that I can do what he can no longer bear. Perhaps it is my Mother's doing,— he has forsworn Violence in the Kitchen,— not only toward Meat, but the Vegetables as well, for as little now can he bring himself to chop an Onion, as to slice a Turnip, or even scrub a Mushroom."
"Perhaps you oughtn't to be telling me. A man needs his Reputation."
"But as a veteran Bladesman, you would never take advantage of him, I'm sure?"
His face grows pink and swollen, a sign she knows,— she has been blurted at by young men. Feeling behind her for the Door-knob, she is surpriz'd to find herself several steps from it, well within the Room. "Mr. Dimdown, I trust you are well?"
"Philip," he mumbles, "actually," putting his Hanger back in its Scabbard. "As you have confided in me, so may I admit to you, that I have never, well that is not yet, been obliged to, uh in fact,..."
"Oh, I can see you've never been in a Duel." She pushes aside some hair that may be screening the full effect of the Sparkle in her eyes.
"Ruin!— Ah! You must despise me."
She shrugs, abruptly enough to allow him to read it, if he wishes, as a sympathetick Shiver. "We have had enough of fighting, out where we live,— it is not to me the Novel Thrill, that some Philadelphia Girl might think it." Taking up hair that has fallen forward over her right Shoulder, she shifts the Locks back, and slowly leftward, tossing her head from time to time.
Ignoring this opening, all a-fidget, "Are you the only one that can see it, or does ev'ryone know that I've never been out? as if, engrav'd upon my Head, or something?"
"Calm...Philip. I'll tell no one."
In lurches the Landlord. "Your mother's looking for you, Miss." Flourishing his Eyebrows at them both.
"Trouble," mutters young Dimdown.
"He wishes to apologize to Monsieur Allègre," Mitzi quickly sings out, "isn't that it, Sir?"
"Uhm, that is,— "
"Excellent, I can arrange that," and Mr. Knockwood dashes off again.
"I'm putting my life in your hands, here," says Philip Dimdown. "No one else is what they seem,— why should you be?"
'Tis only now that Mitzi, at last, finds herself a-blush, this being her very first Compliment, and a roguish one at that. He seems at once considerably wiser, if no older.
And presently, in the afternoon Lull between meals, the peace is made, the two men shaking hands at the kitchen door, and commencing to chatter away like two Daws upon a Roof-top. Luise comes by with a Tray-ful of Dutch Kisses, provoking witty requests, most of which, though not all, she avoids gracefully.
"Damme for a Bun-brain, Mounseer,— as if I'd actually impale the greatest Cook in the Colonies,—
"But your movement with the Blade,— so elegant, so professionel."
"Not exactly the great Figg, I regret to say,— indeed, never closer to the real thing, than private Lessons, at an establishment in New-York, from a Professor Tisonnier.—
"But I knew him! in France!— Oui, he once commented upon my brais'd Pork Liver with Aubergines,— offer'd to teach me the St. George Parry if I'd give him the Receipt."
"He was esteem'd for that, indeed, and for his Hanging Guard,— I'd show you it, but I wouldn't want to nick up the old Spadroon."
"Damascus steel, 's it not? Fascinating. How is that Moire effect done?"
"By twisting together two different sorts of Steel, or so I am told,— then welding the Whole."
"A time-honor'd Technique in Pastry as well. The Armorers of the Japanese Islands are said to have a way of working carbon-dust into the steel of their Swords, not much different from how one must work the Butter into the Croissant Dough. Spread, fold, beat flat, spread, again and again, eh? till one has created hundreds of these prodigiously thin layers."
"Gold-beating as well, now you come to it," puts in Mr. Knockwood,
- 'tis flatten and fold, isn't it, and flatten again, among the thicknesses of Hide, till presently you've these very thin Sheets of Gold-Leaf."
"Lamination," Mason observes.
"Lo, Lamination abounding," contributes Squire Haligast, momentarily visible, "its purposes how dark, yet have we ever sought to produce
these thin Sheets innumerable, to spread a given Volume as close to pure Surface as possible, whilst on route discovering various new forms, the Leyden Pile, decks of Playing-Cards, Contrivances which, like the Lever or Pulley, quite multiply the apparent forces, often unto disproportionate results...."
"The printed Book," suggests the Revd, "— thin layers of pattern'd Ink, alternating with other thin layers of compress'd Paper, stack'd often by the Hundreds."
"Or an unbound Heap of Broadsides," adds Mr. Dimdown, "dispers'd one by one, and multiplying their effect as they go."
The Macaroni is of course not what he seems, as which of us is?— the truth comes out weeks later, when he is discover'd running a clandestine printing Press, in a Cellar in Elkton. He looks up from the fragrant Sheets, so new that one might yet smell the Apprentices' Urine in which the Ink-Swabs were left to soften, bearing, to sensitiz'd Nasalia, sub-Messages of youth and Longing,— all about him the word repeated in large Type, LIBERTY.
One Civilian leads in a small band of Soldiers. "Last time you'll be seeing that word."
"Don't bet your Wife's Reputation on it," the Quarrelsome Fop might have replied. Philip Dimdown, return'd to himself, keeps his Silence.
"If we choose to take the Romantic approach,—
"We must," appeals Tenebras. "Of course he was thinking about her. How did they part?"
"Honorably. He kept up the Fop Disguise till the end."
"Impossible, Uncle. He must have let her see.. .somehow,. .at the last moment, so that then she might ciy, bid him farewell, and the rest."
"The rest?" Ives alarm'd.
"After she meets someone else."
"Aaahhgghh!" groans Ethelmer.
"Never ends!" adds Cousin DePugh.
39
"All right then, if tha really want to know what I think,—
"Of course."
The Surveyors have been at this since Noon. Squire Haligast predicts an end to the general Incarceration by tomorrow. Ev'ryone not yet reel'd away into Madness prays that it be so, for no one here can bear much more Company.
"Without meaning offense, then...? 'tis against Nature."
"What! to mourn my Wife?"
"Not to be seeking another...?"
For a moment Mason inspects his Co-Adjutor's Shins,— then his eyes shift away, and grow unfocus'd. "Were we in Gloucester, I should expect, naturally, to hear such useful advice as this. 'Tis the expected thing. Simple country Procedure. Alas, I may have stopt in London for too long, breathing its mephitic airs, abiding too close to its Evil unsleeping. I know I have been corrupted,— but perhaps it has un-mann'd me as well."
"You're just not getting out enough... ?"
"Out! Out where?" Gesturing at the Window, "White Mineral Desolation, unvarying and chill,—
"Out of your Melancholy."
Try as he may, Mason can detect in this nought but kind Intent. "I only hope you're not suggesting anyone in our immediate Company,— I mean, you haven't been,— that is, what am I saying, of course you've...," his eyes happening to fall upon Dixon's Stomach, whose size and curvature seem different to him, somehow (the Figure of it indeed changing, one day to the next, the rest of us watching in some alarm its Transition from a Spheroid vertically dispos'd, to one more wide than high). "Ah. "Pis someone in the Kitchen. Am I right?"
"Either that or I'm pregnant,'" holding his Corporation and gazing down at it. "If so, 'twould be by Maureen, for I've been true to no other,— she being the one you'll recall who bakes—
"— the Pies," Mason is joyous to enumerate, "the Tarts, the, the Jam-stuff'd Dough-nuts, the lengthy Menu of French Cremes and Mousses, the Fruit-Cakes soak'd in Brandy be it Feast-day or no,—
"Stop...?" cries Dixon, "tha're making me hungry."
"Ahrrh...," warns Mason.
"Sure you wouldn't like to just pop back to the Bake-house, take a chance that she's in, find one or two of those iced Waffles, aye she or her friend Pegeen, happen you've seen her, the Red-head with the Curls...? Wears green all the time...?"
"There it is. Damme! you persist.—Whenever I begin to imagine we're past this.—One or two malicious Jokes, that's fine, I'm a good Sport,— but pray you, grant me a Respite, no Pegeens."
"Perhaps I'm only trying to get thee to eat something. This self-denying has its limits,— tha're down to skin and bones with it, 'tis an Affliction Sentimental, in which Melancholy hath depress'd thy Appetite for any Pleasure."
"Hold,— you're sitting there like Henry the Eighth, advising me upon Dietary matters? Regard yourself, Sir,— how are we to do accurate work in the Field, with you subtending so many Degrees of it, even at the Horizon?— What is this Spheroid you bear," tapping Dixon's Belly, "or rather lug about, like some Atlas who doesn't plan to bring the Globe all that far?"
" 'Tis prolate, still," with a long dejected Geordie 0. "Isn't it... ?"
"I'm an Astronomer,— trust me, 'tis gone well to oblate. Thanks for your concern at the altitude of my spirits,— but what you're really seeking, is an Accomplice in the pursuit of your own various fitful Vices.”
So, by the time the Snow abates enough to allow them to rejoin the Har-lands, the Surveyors, having decided thereafter to Journey separately, one north and one south, to see the country, return to the Harlands the use of their Honeymoon Quilt, and kindly allow John Harland to toss one of his new silver Shilling Pieces, which lands Heads, sending Mason North and Dixon South. Next time, they agree to reverse the Directions.
"Happen I'll find someplace warm at last," Dixon a bit too cheerfully.
"See here, I hope we'll go ahead with it,— I mean, it's been like a Booth-load of Puppets swinging Clubs all about, hasn't it."
"Ah know, Ah'm as unquiet as thee,— why aye, we must spread out, the one thing we knoaah of this Place, is, that Dimension Abounds...?"
("Dixon was first to leave," the Revd relates, "and with no indication in the Field-Book of where he went or stopp'd, let us assume that he went first to Annapolis,—
"How 'assume'?" objects Ives. "There are no Documents, Wicks? Perhaps he stay'd on at Harland's and drove all of them south, with his drunken intriguing after ev'ry eligible,— meaning ev'ry,— Milkmaid in the Forks of Brandy-wine."
"Or let us postulate two Dixons, then, one in an unmoving Stupor throughout,— the other, for Simplicity, assum'd to've ridden,— as Mason would the next year,— out to Nelson's Ferry over Susquehanna, and after crossing, perhaps,— tho' not necessarily,— on to York,— taking then the Baltimore Road south, instead of the one to Frederick, as Mason would,— south, to Baltimore, and thro' it, ever southing, toward Annapolis, and Virginia beyond. Tho' with suspicions as to his Calvert Connections already high, Dixon might have avoided Maryland altogether, instead of tempting Fate.")
He comes into Annapolis by way of the Rolling-roads, intended less for the Publick than for the Hogsheads of Tobacco being roll'd in to Market from distant Plantations, night and day, with two or three men to each Hogshead,— African Slaves, Irish Transportees, German Redemption-ers and such, who understand well enough that others might also prefer to travel this way. In Town, Dixon roams unfocus'd from Waggoners' Tav-
erns to harbor-front Sailors' Dens,— "Only looking for that Card-game," he replies if ask'd, and if they say, "What Card-game?" he beams ever-so-sorry and retreats from the Area, feigning confusion about ev'rything save the way out, for one Tavern is as likely as another to provide opportunities for Mischief.
He has certainly, and more than once, too, dreamt himself upon a dark Mission whose details he can never quite remember, feeling in the grip of Forces no one will tell him of, serving Interests invisible. He wakes more indignant than afraid. Hasn't he been doing what he contracted to do,— nothing more? Yet, happen this is exactly what they wanted,— and his Sin is not to've refus'd the Work from the outset.—
When they later re-convene at Harlands', Mason gets around to inquiring of Dixon, what was his Purpose, in entering Maryland.
"Bait. Make myself available. Like Friend Franklin, out in the Thunder-Gusts... ?"
"You wish'd to be...stricken? assaulted?"
"I'm content with 'Approach'd'...? Yet no French Agents, nor Jesuits in Disguise, have announc'd themselves,...nor have Freemasons cryptickally sign'd to me— Yet I suppose my own Surveillor might be secreted anywhere in our Party, among our Axmen, Cooks, or Followers, noting ev'rything."
In Williamsburg at last, Dixon feels he has come to the Heart of the Storm. There can be no more profit in going any further South,— this will have to do for whatever he may learn.
The Tobacco Plantations lie inert, all last season's crop being well transported to Glasgow by now, and the Seeds of the next not yet in Flats— Whilst the Young, who seem to be at ev'ry hand, take their Joy of Assemblies and River-Parties, Balls and Weddings,— others, longer in the Curing-Shed, rather hasten to explore at last the seasonless Vales of Sleep, with trusted,— how else?— African Slaves to stand in Cordons all 'round, and keep each Dreamer safe. Dixon rides into Town, a Maze-like Disposition of split-rail Fences, a Dockyard's worth of Ship-lap Siding, a quiet Profligacy of Flemish Bond to be found upon vertical Surfaces from Pig-Ark to Palace. The last Seed-Pods hang, black and unbreach'd, from the Catalpa Trees. Swains by Garden Walls rehearse the Arts of Misunderstanding. Some nights, the Wind, at a good Canter,
will as easily freeze tears to uncreas'd Faces, as Finger-tips to waistcoat Buttons. There is an Edge to Young Romance, this year, that none of those testing its Sharpness may recognize, quite yet.
The Stamp Act has re-assign'd the roles of the Comedy, and the Audience are in an Uproar. Suddenly Fathers of desirable Girls are no longer minor Inconveniences, some indeed proving to be active Foes, capable of great Mischief. Lads who imagin'd themselves inflexible Rivals for life, find themselves now all but Comrades in Arms. The languorous Pleasantries of Love, are more and more interrupted by the brisk Requisitions of Honor. Over the winter-solid Roads, goes a great seething,— of mounted younger Gentlemen riding together by the dozens upon rented horses, Express Messengers in love with pure Velocity, Disgruntl'd Suitors with Pistols stuff'd in their Spatterdashes, seal'd Waggons not even a western Black-Boy would think of detaining. The May Session of the Burgesses, the eloquent defiance of Mr. Patrick Henry, and the Virginia Resolutions,— that Dividing Ridge beyond which all the Streams of American Time must fall unmappable,— lie but weeks ahead. At the College, Dixon may hear wise Prophecy,— at the State House, interested Oratory,— but there proves no-place quite as congenial to the unmedi-ated newness of History a-transpiring, as Raleigh's Tavern. Virginians young and old are standing to toast the King's Confoundment. When it's his own turn to, Dixon chooses rather to honor what has ever imported to him,— raising his ale-can, "To the pursuit of Happiness."
"Hey, Sir,— that is excellent!" exclaims a tall red-headed youth at the next table. "And ain't it oh so true.... You don't mind if I use the Phrase sometime?"
"Pray thee, Sir."
"Has someone a Pencil?" The youth finds a scrap of paper, and Dixon lends him his Lead "Vine," that he uses for sketching in the Field. "Surveyor? Say," it occurs to him, scribbling, "are you Mason, or Dixon?"
"Tom takes a Relative interest in West Lines," quips the Landlord, "his father having help'd run the one that forms our own southern border."
"Upon the Topick of West Lines," Dixon assures him, "any Advice would be more than welcome,— anything."
' 'Twas Colonel Byrd that began it,— Pa, with Professor Fry, con-tinu'd it. My guess is, the Professor did most of the Mathematickal
Work,— for I know Pa was ever impatient with that. He would wear out books of Tables, so vehemently did he consult them.
"Colonel Byrd's segment is the oldest, run long before my time. He recorded each Day in a Field-book,— not only the Miles and Poles tra-vers'd, but more usefully all the Human Stuff,— the petty Resentments, the insults offer'd and taken, the illnesses, the cures, the Food they ate, the Spirits they drank, the Ladies of all Hues, who captur'd their various eyes, now and again— "
"Is it printed, and sold?"
"Not yet. When it shall be, I hope that ev'ry Surveyor will read it as a term of his Apprenticeship,— my father styl'd it one of the great Cautionary Tales of the Vocation."
"As to...?"
"Joint Ventures. Particularly when half the Commissioners live north of the other half. In Colonel Byrd's history, the Carolinians in the Party were envious, gluttonous, slothful Degenerates all,— somehow owing to the difference in Latitude. 'Twould not surprise me if Pennsylvanians were to entertain similar opinions of their own Neighbors to the South, including Virginia. This land of Sensual Beasts."
Three young Ladies are peeping 'round the Door-Way, like shore-birds at the edge of the Water, stepping nicely in and out of that Aura of Tobacco-Smoke that Men for centuries have understood keeps women away as well as were they Bugs. "I'm going in," declares the boldest of the Girls, actually then proceeding two or three steps inside, before crying, "Eehyeww!" and skipping in Retreat. Then another would try,— and "Eeyooh!" and out again, and so forth, amid an unbroken stream of close Discussion,— their desire for Romantick Mischief thus struggling with their feminine abhorrence of Tobacco.
Dixon beams and waves at them. "Are all Virginian Ladies as merrily dispos'd?"
"Ev'rywhere but at Norfolk, where talk of Passion far outweighs its Enactment,— indeed, the Sailors' Paronomasia for that wretched Place, is 'No-Fuck.' "
"They'll be wishing to Dance. I think," judges young Tom. "We've been hearing that Musick for a while, now.”
"But watch your Form, Sir, if Dueling be not your preferr'd Pastime, for one wrong Dance-step, Leg before Wicket, as you might say, and no shortage of Virginia Blades about to defend a Lady's Honor,— 'twill be out at Dawn wi' you."
Sure enough, no more than twenty steps into the Assembly Room, and eight Measures into a lively Jig with a certain "Urania," Dixon is aware of a perfum'd flickering upon one Cheek, which proves to be the Glove of her Fiancé, Fabian.
"Did they tell You I was a Quaker, Sir, and would not fight?—
"They did,— which is why I suggest we settle this at Quoits, Sir,— Megs at forty Feet, Ringers only."
"Eeh, most agreeable," says Dixon, instead of, as he will insist he meant to say, "• - if so, they are quizzing with you, Sir,— in fact I am a Transported Felon of the most Desperate Stripe, to whom, in the great Feast of Sin, Murder is but an Hors d'Oeuvre...?"
"We have found Quoiting," Fabian is explaining, "similar enough to Pistols to satisfy us, with the same long and narrow Field, the Rencontre, if one wishes, at Dawn, the two Megs driv'n in the ground at a Distance negotiable, the Metal hurtling thro' the Air, even, if you listen closely enough, a certain Hum,—
"Thah' was negotiable? I might have said thirty feet? Eeh! too focus'd, I imagine, upon the part where ev'ryone gets to stay alive...?"
At Dawn they go trooping out, the lot of them, to a Quoiting-Ground near the Water. When there's just light enough to see the other Meg by, the Contest begins. After each Disputant wins a game, and they agree not to play the third, receiving each a Kiss of equal Vivacity from the fair Pretext herself, all repair to Breakfast amid smoky and sodden good Companionship.
Returning north,— mud Tracks, black wet Branching of Trees overhead, as Revelations of Earth out thro' the Snow,— Dixon, inhabiting Silence, waits, Clop after Clop, Mile after Mile, for some kind of sense to be made of what has otherwise been a pointless Trip. Somewhere between Joppa and Head of Elk, lightless within and without, he begins to Whistle, and presently to sing.
Polecat in the Parlor, Hound-Dog up the Tree, Continental Ladies Are Riddle enough for me...
In all Virginia, tho' Slaves pass'd before his Sight, he saw none. That was what had not occurr'd. It was all about something else, not Calverts, Jesuits, Penns, nor Chinese.
40
Having mark'd the sixth Anniversary of Rebekah's Passing, Mason leaves the Forks of Brandywine and proceeds north, arriving in New-York by way of the Staten Island Ferry,— the approaching Sky-line negligible but for a great Steeple, far to port, belonging to the Trinity Church, at the head of Wall-Street, where he will attend services on Sunday. But then there is Monday Night.
"The Battery's the spot to be," he is inform'd by all he meets who know the Town. It proves to be a testimonial to Desire, for upon a Cold Night of Wind that tears the Flames from the Torches, and sends waves against the Sea-Wall, yet along that Lee Shore, amorous Gaits more cautious for the wet Footing, go well into the Midnight a Parade of needful Citizens, Faces ever bent from the assault of Wind smooth as Light, toward the empty Path, the unapproachable Shadow, Acts never specified. Mason, seeing no point, joins them for a while nonetheless. It all proceeds wordless as a Skating-Party. Presently he has fallen in with a certain Amelia, a Milk-Maid of Brooklyn, somehow alone in New-York without funds. "Here then. You've not eaten." He is correct. At a Tavern in Pearl-Street, she scoffs down several Chops, a Platter of Roasted Potatoes, her bowl of Fish Chowder and his, before Mason has butter'd his Bread. A Clock strikes the Hour. "Oh, no!" They must run to catch the last Ferry back to her farm upon Long-Island. A bittersweet passage, Ferries ev'rywhere upon that cold and cloud-torn Styx, Bells dolefully a-bang in the Murk, strange little gaff-rigg'd coasters and lighters veering all over the Water, stack'd high abovedecks with Cargo,— a prosperous Hell.
Amy is dress'd from Boots to Bonnet all in different Articles of black, a curious choice of color for a milkmaid, it seems to Mason, tho', as he has been instructed ever to remind himself, this is New-York, where other Customs prevail. "Oh, aye, at home they're on at me about it without Mercy," she tells him, "I'm, as, 'But I like Black,'— yet my Uncle, he's, as, 'Strangers will take you for I don't know what,' hey,— I don't know what, either. Do you?"
"How should I— "
"You're a stranger, aren't you? Well? What would you take me for?"
Days later, riding back to Brandywine through the Jerseys, he will rehearse endlessly whether she said "would you take me," or "do you take me," and ways he might have improv'd upon "Um...," his actual Reply. She does glance back with an Expression he's noted often in his life from Women, tho' never sure what it means.
The "Uncle" seems young for one of that Designation, his Hair
a-shine with some scented Pomade, side-whiskers shav'd to quite acute
Angles, his hand ever straying to consult the over-siz'd and far from
ornamental Dirk he wears in a Scabbard upon his Belt. With Mason he
is genial but guarded,— toward Amy, however, even Mason detects
insinuations of reprisal to come. "All her Funds? even the Pennies little
Ezekiel gave her, to buy him Sweets? Oh, Amelia. Dear oh dear. Was she
careless, was that it? Did she look in the Window of some English Shop
and see a Frock she fancied? Did one of those awful big-city Dips fly by
and lift her whole Bundle, perhaps as an Exercise? Is that what hap-
pen'd, 'Amelia'?"— pronouncing the name with such Vexation, that
Mason faces the inconvenient Dilemma of stepping in as a Gentleman
must,— yet on behalf of someone he has cross'd a River with under, it
now appears, an assum'd Name. Where is his Loyalty presum'd to lie? It
isn't as if they've been at all, as you'd say, intimate, is it?.. .Fortunately,
by this point in his Deliberations, Amelia, in a suggestive Tone, is mur
muring, "I know I've been ever so wicked, Uncle,...but the Gentleman
has been very kind “
Causing a redirection of the avuncular Gaze upon Mason, for reasons he will grasp only later, when Dixon explains it to him back in Camp, with Gestures, some of them impatient. "We all appreciate a kind Gentleman 'round here," the young man offers, as into the Parlor behind him now slide an assortment of Rogues weirder than any Mason has yet seen, be it at Portsmouth, or the Cape, or even Lancaster Town.
"Look what Pussy's brought in," leers a Half-Breed with a braided Queue.
"Brit, by the look of him," cries a short, freckl'd seaman in whom Stature and Pugnacity enjoy an inverse relation. "— long way from home ain't you old Gloak?"
"Who does your Wigs, Coz?"
"There there, my Lads, think of the Impression we must be making, when we ought to be showing our Guest that here in Brooklyn, we can be just as warm and friendly as they are over in New-York. We're not Country-folk, after all. We've seen 'em all, all manner of Traveler, saints and sinners, green and season'd, some who could teach Eels to wriggle and some who were pure fiduciary Edge, and I'll tell you, this one...I don't know. What do you think, Patsy? He's not so easy to read. You've done the Ferry-boat Lurk, you know all the Kiddies, what say you?"
Someone who in different Costume might easily be taken for a Pirate of the Century past, gives Mason the up-and-down. "New one on me, Cap'n. The diff'rently-siz'd Eye-balls suggest a life spent peering into small Op'nings. Yet he's not a Bum-bailiff, nor a bum's assistant,— lacks that, what you would call, cool disinterest."
"Amen to that," cries the lewd Half-Breed.
"Where would his Interests lie, do you think?" inquires Uncle. Ev'ry-one looks at Amelia.
" 'Xcuse me? I'm suppos'd to know? I'm sure I was, as, 'Ahoy, Sailor,' and Stuff?" she exclaims at last.
"What's he been peeping into, then?" the truculent Sailor yells. General again is the Merriment.
"I observe the Heavens," Mason seeking thro' the force of his upward gaze some self-Elevation, "I am a Cadastral Surveyor, upon a Contractual Assignment," in a tone inviting a respectful hush.
Instead of which, Amelia, squealing in alarm,— "Cad! Ass?— Eeeoo!"-- jumps backward, into the not entirely unwelcoming embrace of her "Uncle," whilst a number of Dogs begin to wail, as it seems, disappointedly, and a thick-set Irishman, announcing in a pleasant voice, "I'll kill him, if you lot would rather not," begins to load his Pistol.
"There there, Black-Powder, now put it away,— Sir, the lad's con-fus'd, hates the English King and all his subjects as well,— best to tell him you're French, use an Accent if you can manage it,— no, killing him is out of the question, Blackie, for you see, he's the renown'd Astronomer, M'syeer Maysong."
"Nor am I 'ere to gathair the Intellizhonce"— as Blackie's Eyes narrow thoughtfully,— "on be'alf of anyone, for pity's sake. Were it not for your Niece,—
"Ah.—"
"Pray ye Captain,— I am well into my thirty-seventh Year,—
"My point exactly. You see how she is. A Dew-Drop, trembling upon the morn of Womanly awakening, not yet assaulted by that Day you and I well know,— let alone savag'd, us'd up, and thrown aside."
"Quotha. She strikes me rather as a resourceful young woman, independent in her ways."
"Others would say willful. One day soon, someone will have to ask her to stop wearing black Cloth, as it all comes here from England,— yet who among us is eager for the task? they'll hear her across the River."
"No black Cloth? Rum little gesture to insist upon."
"It goes to the Heart of this," snarls the Half-Breed, Drogo. "All the Brits want us for, is to buy their Goods. The only use we can be to them, is as a Herd of animals much like the Cow, from whose Udders, as from our Purses, the contents may be periodickally remov'd,— well,— if all we have to withhold from them, be a few pitiable Coins, then so let us do,— hoping others may add to the Sum."
Hum.. ."may add".. .Mason, squinting into a neutral corner, considers this. Upon the one hand, he has heard Highwaymen address Travelers they wish to rob in tones less direct,— upon the other, if they are willing to call it a Bribe, Mason is certainly willing to discuss the size of it—
"As it happens, Sir, yours may be just the helping hand we need. Be you familiar with any Aspect of Telescopick Repair?”
"Enough not to cause too much Damage."
In the Silence following, ev'ryone but Mason exchanges Looks. "Oh, he's all right," decides "Amy" 's "Uncle," whose Sobriquet (for few here use Christian Names) is "Captain Volcanoe." "If he reads the Papers, he knows what we are—Sir,— when there is light enough,— would you mind having a look?"
The Telescope stands in its own Window'd Observatory at the Top of the House, before it the Edge of the River, behind it a green Plain strewn with Groves and Homesteads, and stems of Smoke in wand'ring Ascent, their Yearnings how like our own— The Instrument seems to be pointing down toward the Ship-Yards across the River,— commanding a View, in fact, of all the Docking along Water-Street, and, more obliquely, of the River-front, down to the White-Hall Slip at the South end of the Island, unto Governor's Island beyond, and the Buttermilk Channel. A Field-Marshal's Dream.
"Here," mutters Mason.—" 'Tis design'd to be aim'd upward, y'see, not down, for one thing. All the relevant screw-adjustments on this Model end, effectively, at the Horizon. For, as with our Thoughts, to aim downward is to risk,— ahrrh," squinting into the Eye-piece. "Something has knock'd these Lenses quite out of Line. You need to re-collimate."
"How long will that take to fix?"
"You really need a Frenchman for a job like this,— that is,—
"Hey! You're a Frenchman, you said."
"Oui, I meant, of course, I am your Man! What Tools are there?" Not many. The subtle and ingenious M. Maysong must unscrew the fastening-Rings with Blacksmith's Tongs, padded with the remains of a Hat which has met with some violent Misadventure almost certainly including Fire. Sheep and Poultry wander in and out of his Atelier. Black-Powder looks in frequently, brandishing a different Weapon each time. "Do I make ye twitchy, Sir? Capital!"
Feeling not quite a Prisoner, Mason works thro' the Day. From across the River come the sounds of Mauls upon Pegs, Ship-fitters' Ejaculations, the squeal of lines in Sheaves, Thuds and far-carrying Cries, Ships' Bells, Chandlers' Dogs hungry all day, Bumboats crying their Merchandise. Members of the Collectivity climb the Ladder, to appearance but curious in a friendly way, and soon the room is full of young Men and Women in avid Disputation. Someone brings up "Sandwiches," and someone else a Bottle, and as night comes down over New-York like a farmer's Mulch, sprouting seeds of Light, some reflected in the River, the Company, Mason working on in its midst, becomes much exercis'd upon the Topick of Representation.
"No taxation— "
- without it, yesyes but Drogo, lad, can you not see, even thro' the Republican fogs which ever hang about these parts, that 'tis all a moot issue, as America has long been perfectly and entirely represented in the House of Commons, thro' the principle of Virtual Representation?"
Cries of, "Aagghh!" and, "That again?"
"If this be part of Britain here, then so must be Bengal! For we have ta'en both from the French. We purchas'd India many times over with the Night of the Black Hole alone,— as we have purchas'd North America with the lives of our own."
"Are even village Idiots taken in any more by that empty cant?" mutters the tiny Topman McNoise, "no more virtual than virtuous, and no more virtuous than the vilest of that narrow room-ful of shoving, beef-faced Louts, to which you refer,— their honor bought and sold so many times o'er that no one bothers more to keep count.—Suggest you, Sir, even in Play, that this giggling Rout of poxy half-wits, embody us? Embody us? America but some fairy Emanation, without substance, that hath pass'd, by Miracle, into them?— Damme, I think not,— Hell were a better Destiny."
"Why," exclaims the Captain, " 'tis the Doctrine of Transsubstantia-tion, which bears to the Principle you speak of, a curious likeness,— that's of course considering members of Parliament, like the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, to contain, in place of the Spirit of Christ, the will of the People."
"Then those who gather in Parliaments and Congresses are no better than Ghosts?— "
"Or no worse," Mason cannot resist putting in, "if we proceed, that is, to Consubstantiation,— or the Bread and Wine remaining Bread and Wine, whilst the spiritual Presence is reveal'd in Parallel Fashion, so to speak,— closer to the Parliament we are familiar with here on Earth, as whatever they may represent, yet do they remain, dismayingly, Humans as well.”
Ev'ryone stops eating and drinking to stare at him. "Parley Voo?" inquires Blackie. "Hey?"
"All respect, Sir, 'tis not near as fussy as that. We'd rest content with someone in Parliament along the Lines of Mr. Franklin recently, in London, someone that side of the Herring, looking out for the interests of the Province,— walking in to that Board of Trade,— 'Right, then, here I am in person,'— turning on that damn'd Charm,—
"Aye, an agent for Parliamentary business,— working for us, not some Symbol of the People who won't care a rat's whisker about his Borough, who will indeed sell out his Voters for a chance to grovel his way to even a penny's-worth more Advantage in the World of Global Meddling he imagines as reality."
"Yet Representation must extend beyond simple Agentry," protests Patsy, ' - unto at least Mr. Garrick, who in 'representing' a role, becomes the character, as by some transfer of Soul,—
"You want someone to go to London and pretend to be an American who hates stamp'd Paper, something like that? Send over Actor-Envoys? Stroller-Plenipotentiaries? Appalling."
"Not that bad a Thought,— and consider Preachers, as well. Mr. Gar-rick's said to envy Whitefield's knack for bringing a Congregation to Tears, simply by pronouncing 'Mesopotamia.'''
"If we'd but had someone there, why there might be no miserable Stamp Tax now,— and till we have someone, that can prevent the next such, why, the Stamp Act is simple Tyranny, and our duty's to resist it."
Mason expects shock'd murmurs at this,— that there are none shocks him even more gravely, allowing him a brief, careening glimpse at how far and fast all this may be moving,— something styling itself "America," coming into being, ripening, like a Tree-ful of Cherries in a good summer, almost as one stands and watches,— something no one in London, however plac'd in the Web of Privilege, however up-to-the-minute, seems to know much about. What is happening?
"...Even Playing-Cards,— they want to take a Shilling the Pack. If your Parliament go ahead with this, we'll have a Summer like the World has never seen."
"Not my Parliament," Mason alertly.
"Do I take it, then, that you own no Property, wherever 'tis you're from, Sir?"
"What Rooms in my Adult Life have not been rented to me," Mason reckons, "have been included among the terms of my employment."
"Then you're a Serf. As they call it here, a Slave."
"Sir, I work under Contract."
"Someone owns you, Sir. He pays for your Meals and Lodging. He lends you out to others. What is that call'd, where you come from?"
"Why, and if you are free of such Arrangements," Mason shrugs, "hurrah thrice over and perhaps one day you may instruct all the rest of us in how, exactly."
"So we shall." The tone balanc'd upon a Blade's Edge, between Pity and Contempt.
Mason, not wishing to look into his eyes, carefully scrapes the Blacking from around a Set-Screw, then with the worn Tip of a Hunting Knife removes it, a Quarter-turn at a time. "I have had this Promise in Philadelphia, as well,— from Coffee-House Cabals and such."
"We are in Correspondence," says the Captain, "as are all the Provinces one with another. You may wish to pass that on to London. This is Continental, what's happening."
Amelia, attach'd to an avuncular Sleeve, is gazing at Mason with new interest. "Didn't know you were famous," she murmurs, "working directly for the King, the Cap'n says,— well, I'm, as, 'maz'd."
"Alas, no longer. Out in the Woods these days, running lines for a
couple of Lords in a squabble "
"An exercise in futility! I can't believe you Cuffins! In a few seasons hence, all your Work must be left to grow over, never to be redrawn, for in the world that is to come, all boundaries shall be eras'd."
"You believe Christ's return to be imminent," Mason feigning Heartiness, "— that is surely wonderful news, brother! In my own Faith, we believe the same,— except possibly for the 'imminent' part."
"Is this worth explaining to him?" Drogo asks the Captain.
"Degrees of Slavery, Sir. Where in England are you from?"
A Mask-dropping Sigh.
"Stroud, G-d help me."
"Then you have known it.”
"I have encounter'd Slavery both at the Cape of Good Hope, and in America, and 'tis shallow Sophistry, to compare it with the condition of a British Weaver."
"You've had the pleasure of Dragoons in your neighborhood? They prefer rifle-butts to whips,— the two hurt differently,— what otherwise is the difference in the two forms of Regulation? Masters presume themselves better than any who, at their bidding, must contend with the real forces and distances of the World,— no matter how good the pay. When Weavers try to remedy the inequality by forming Associations, the Clothiers bring in Infantry, to kill, disable, or deliver up to Transportation any who be troublesome,— these being then easily replaced, and even more cheaply, by others quite happy to labor in Silence."
"Yet Slaves are not paid,— whereas Weavers,—
"Being from Stroud, Sir, I think you know how Weavers are paid,— tho' Wolfe preferr'd to settle the Pay-list with lead and steel, keeping his hand in between Glorious Victories, thinking he'd use weavers for target practice, nasty little man, hated Americans, by the way,— 'Contemptible cowardly dogs who fall down dead in their own Shit,' I believe was the way he phras'd it—"
Mason recalls well enough that autumn of '56, when the celebrated future Martyr of Quebec, with six companies of Infantry, occupied that unhappy Town after wages were all cut in half, and the master weavers began to fiddle the Chain on the Bar, and a weaver was lucky to earn tuppence for eight hours' work. Mason in those same Weeks was preparing to leave the Golden Valley, to begin his job as Bradley's assistant, even as Soldiers were beating citizens and slaughtering sheep for their pleasure, fouling and making sick Streams once holy,— his father mean-times cursing his Son for a Coward, as Loaves by the Dozens were taken, with no payment but a Sergeant's Smirk. Mason, seeing the Choices, had chosen Bradley, and Bradley's world, when he should instead have stood by his father, and their small doom'd Paradise.
"Who are they," inquires the Revd in his Day-Book, "that will send violent young troops against their own people? Their mouths ever keeping up the same weary Rattle about Freedom, Toleration, and the rest, whilst their own Land is as Occupied as ever it was by Rome. These forces look like Englishmen, they were born in England, they speak the
language of the People flawlessly, they cheerfully eat jellied Eels, joints of Mutton, Treacle-Tarts, all that vile unwholesome Diet which maketh the involuntary American more than once bless his Exile,— yet their intercourse with the Mass of the People is as cold with suspicion and contempt, as that of any foreign invader."
"We shall all of us learn, who they are," Capt. V. with a melancholy Phiz, "and all too soon."
Wednesday Morning, Mason waves good-bye at the Dock, where they've all come down to the Ferry, and Patsy boards with him, to see him across, and past the Inconveniences of New-York. Arriv'd at last in the Jerseys, Patsy claps him on the Shoulder. "We could be at War, in another Year. What a Thought, hey?"
"I do not enjoy regular Luncheon Engagements with these people, but I am close enough to tell you this,— they will not admit to Error. They rely upon colorful Madmen and hir'd Bullies to get them thro' the perilous places, and they blunder on. Beware them."
"Thank you, Sir. It must have cost you at least a few Years of believing otherwise, and I appreciate it. We all do."
Coming back down thro' the Jerseys, Mason and his Horse abruptly disjoin. "Met some boys," says the Field-Book Entry for Sunday the twenty-fourth, "just come out of a Quaker Meeting House as if the De——l had
been with them. I could by no means get my Horse by them. I gave the Horse a light blow on the head with my Whip which brought him to the ground as if shot dead. I over his head, my Hat one way wig another, fine
sport for the Boys." In the Foul Copy, he writes, "for ye D——l and the
Boys," but this does not appear in the Fair Copies the Proprietors will see. All thro' the Monday he lies in bed, his Hip a Torment, no Position any less painful than another. What had happen'd? What unforeseen Station, what Duty neglected? What had his Horse boggl'd at? it being well known that Horses may detect Spirits invisible to human Sensoria. "Mason's Strike-over here is of the Essence," opines Uncle Ives. "He knows that the Boys, releas'd from the Silence of the Meeting into that
Exuberance which to soberer spirits is ever a sign of the Infernal, yet did not cause his Animal's behavior. What was there, too much for the Horse to remain in the Road, that his own Sensorium was too coarse or ill-coded, to detect?"
"The D— "
"Not in this House, 'Thelmer," warns his Uncle Wade.
"Pigs are known to smell the Wind," remarks Aunt Euphrenia, busy at the Valves and Cocks of the Coffee-Urn.
"Saul who is also Paul, upon his way to Damascus," adds the Revd, "smit by the Glory and Voice of the risen Christ, is Christ's in the instant. Many of us long to be taken in the same way,— many are."
Recovering from his Fall, Mason in fact spends his waking time reading I Corinthians, in particular Chapter 15, in which Paul's case for Resurrection proceeds from Human bodies to Animal Bodies, and thence to Bodies Celestial and Terrestrial, and the Glories proper to Each, to Verse 42,— "So also is the Resurrection of the Dead."
"Excuse me?" Mason aloud. " 'So also'? I don't see the Connection. I never did."
"Of course not, dear Mopery,— it comes of thinking too much, for there is a Point beyond which Thought is of little Service." It is not Rebekah, not exactly, tho' it may have been one of those clear little Dreams that lead us into the crooked Passage-ways of Sleep,— tho' he would insist, as ever to Dixon, that he was not sleeping at the time of the Visit.
If he does not yet treasure, neither does he cast away, these Lesser Revelations, saving them one by mean, insufficient one,— some unbidden, some sought and earn'd, all gathering in a small pile inside the Casket of his Hopes, against an unknown Sum, intended to purchase his Salvation.
41
"Ran into them once at a Ridotto, actually," acknowledges Mr. LeSpark. "Must've been that first year or two."
"John!"
"Ages before we met, my Treasure."
"But my Nonpareil, you know how I resent and begrudge even the least allusion to any Life of yours, before we met." At this the Revd blinks, and may be seen slightly to cringe, for he knows his Sister.
"Thus depriving me," LeSpark at least game, "of all but, what's it been now...ten years? twenty?"
"Fifteen, my stout Chestnut. As before me you had no Life, fifteen is your true Age, putting you yet in the Bloom of Youth—"
"Um, Zab," the Revd can't keep from inquiring, "you...regard your Husband, as some sort of...Sprout?"
She pretends to think about this for a while. "Zabby!" Mr. LeSpark in a hurt tone.
"Would this Ridotto, Sir, have been at Lepton Castle, by Chance?"
"The very Oasis, Wicks. We'd done some Business out that way, I and his Lordship,— I'd a standing Invitation from them to pop in whenever I wish'd."
"Didn't know I'd married Quality, did you?" Elizabeth chirps.
" 'Twas a part of the Expedition I miss'd, Zab, and, as the Surveyors were on about it for weeks after, was often to be reminded of,— the infamous Lepton Ridotto.”
In those days, out past the reach of civic Lanthorns, as of Nail-hung Lamps in Sheds, and Tallow Dips, and the last feeble Rush-Light,— beyond, in the Forest, where the supernatural was less a matter of Publick-Room trickery or Amusement, Mr. LeSpark, as he tells it, was us'd to visit with potential customers, as well as tour his sources of supply,— Gunsmithies, Forges, Bloomeries, and Barrel Mills,— passing as in a glide, thro' the Country, safe inside a belief as unquestioning as in any form of Pietism you could find out there that he, yes little JWL, goeth likewise under the protection of a superior Power,— not, in this case, God, but rather, Business. What turn of earthly history, however perverse, would dare interfere with the workings of the Invisible Hand? Even the savages were its creatures,— a merchant's Pipe-Reverie, and, if consider'd as a class of Purchasers-at-retail,— well,— more admirable even than Dutch housewives, in the single-minded joy with
which they brows'd and chose....
In his first Trips out, he engag'd local Guides, who kept to the shadows and did not speak, to show him the way to the well-guarded, and in the estimate of some, iniquitous, Iron-Plantation of Lord and Lady Lep-ton. Each time, 'twas like stepping across out of the difficult world and into that timeless Encyclopedia-Light, where Apprentices kept a monastic silence, entirely dedicated to the tasks at hand, did not fall asleep in mid-afternoon, nor moon about in states of Erection for hours at a time. All noxious smokes and gases were being vented someplace distant, invisible. The dogs loaf'd, well fed, in the alleyways. Iron in an hundred shapes was being produced, exactly to plan. The women chatted as they work'd in a small studio of their own, casting from small Crucibles specially formulated Batches of Steel. Sunlight flooded thro' open'd windows, the faces of the workers remaining attentive, uninflected, eyes only upon the Work. This, LeSpark must remind himself, each time he rounded one particular unfolding of the Trail,— Hazel branches parting, river noise suddenly in the air, Dogs on route and at the Gallop,— this was how the world might be. To see with nothing but this Simplicity, to take only these unpolluted Breaths, to leave the shop after the last of the light, with a face as willingly free of Affliction as that presented at Dawn,— 'twas a moment, hard come by out here, of viewing things whole, and he grew with each Visit more and more to depend upon it.
It is something he cannot explain to many people,— he knows that few distinguish between the Metal itself, and the Forms it happens to end up in, the uses it is widely known for being put to, against living Bodies,— cutting, chaining, penetrating sort of Activities,— a considerable Sector of the iron market, indeed, directed to offenses against Human, and of course Animal, flesh.... "All too true," he can imagine himself saying, "yet, once you have felt the invisible Grasp of the Magnetic, or gazed, unto transport, as the Gangue falls away before the veined and billowing molten light, oh the blinding purity—"
"Oh, Mr. LeSpark," being the likely reply.
"What is not visible in his rendering," journalizes the Revd to himself, later, "is the Negro Slavery, that goes on making such no doubt exquisite moments possible,— the inhuman ill-usage, the careless abundance of pain inflicted, the unpric'd Coercion necessary to yearly Profits beyond the projectings even of proud Satan. In the shadows where the Forge's glow does not reach, or out uncomforted beneath the vaporous daylight of Chesapeake, bent to the day's loads of Fuel from the vanishing Hardwood Groves nearby, or breathing in the mephitic Vapors of the bloomeries,— wordlessly and, as some may believe, patiently, they bide everywhere, these undeclared secular terms in the Equations of Proprietary Happiness."
Mason and Dixon, happening to be lost at nightfall (as they will later tell it), in the last possible light come upon a cabin, hardly more than a shed, of weathered fragrant old wood, beneath a sagging roof, showing no lights, to Apparition, abandoned for years,— yet, its ancient doorsill once traversed, the Surveyors find more room inside than could possibly be contained in the sorrowing ruin they believ'd they were entering.
To their alarm, Light shines ev'rywhere,— Chandelier Light, silver Sconce and Sperm-Taper Light,— striking them both to an all-but-sympathetick Squint. The Plafond,— as their slowly unclenching eyes ascend in wonder,— runs to a full spectrum of colors, depicting not the wing'd beings of Heaven, but rather the Denizens of Hell, and quite busy at their Pleasures, too— "Yes yes very interesting indeed," Dixon hastily, "yet if it's all the same to thee, I think, having grasped the point, I, for one, am now arriv'd at the moment of D. Ahh. Oah,— and thee...?"
"There's no Moon," Mason reminds him. "Going out there now would be as dangerous as jumping into the open sea. We must shelter here, we've no choice." 'Tis only then that they hear the Music, though once acknowledg'd, it seems to've been playing all the time. Indeed it now emerges, that they have entered something long in Progress, existing without them, not for their Benefit, nor even their Attention. Some twenty or thirty musicians, by the sound of it,— new music, advanced music, as far from the Oboick Reveries of the Besozzis, as the Imperial Melismata of Quantz,— its modalities rather suggesting some part of the Globe distant from Britain, a dangerous jangling that nonetheless acts as an hypnotic Draught upon the Surveyors.
Cautiously, drawn, following a Gradient of loudness as best they can, they pass through doorways, cross anterooms filled with expensive surfaces and knick-knack intricacies they are moving among too briskly to examine, beginning to pick up the murmur of a Gathering, peaks of falsetto insincerity,— suddenly a grand Archway, above which, carv'd in glowing pink Marble, naked Men, Women, and Animals writhe together in a single knotted Curve of Lustfulness. The Surveyors have been gazing at it for somewhat longer than is considered sophisticated, when a Voice, from someplace they cannot see, announces them,— "Mr. Mason, and Mr. Dixon, Astronomers of London."
Mason snorts. "Congratulations."
Dixon pretends to look about for the Voice. "Really, I'm oahnly a county Surveyor... ? He's the Astronomer... ?"
"Overdoing the Rusticisms," Mason mutters. "And do try not to fling your head about so?"
Thus do they come stumbling into what, in London, is term'd an "Hurricanoe,"— a thick humidity of Intrigue and Masks realiz'd in locally obtain'd Fur and Plumage, clamorous with Chatter and what seems now more to resemble Dancing-Music,— dominated from one wall by a gigantic rococo Mirror, British Chippendale to the innocent eye, engrossing easily the hundredth part of an acre,— Dixon trying to stand his ground even as his partner has begun to walk away rapidly
backward, for an Eye-blink there having pass'd over his Face a look of Alarm that has not possess'd it since the Seahorse, during the worst of that encounter.
"I cannot explain," as Dixon overtakes him, " 'tis a sort of Moral Panick."
"Manners first,— we must go in, as we can't offend our Hostess,— there's sure to be a Hostess...?" Dixon frantically resorting to what he knows of Climbers' Discourse. "If we offend her, she will at best behave inconveniently to her Husband,— at but slightly worse, she will advise him to have us expell'd from the Province. Are you there? Sheriffs will be instructed to make our lives even more difficult,— Children will play rude hoaxes upon us,— Water-Men will contrive to put us in the Water...."
"My Wig," Mason grasping and shifting it frantically about, "it doesn't feel quite...symmetrick,— no, and the Coat,— the moment we arose, I said it, remember? 'Shouldn't I wear the blue brocade?' But, in that case, I should have had to change the Breeches,—
"Sir,— " a calm Voice at his elbow suggests, "take hold of yourself, lest another be obliged to."
"Aye? Another what?" Irascible Mason, known up and down the Churs of Stroud, on occasions like this, as a lightning Shin-Kicker, has actually begun shuffling to seek some purchase upon the gleaming floor, when he belatedly recognizes the notorious Calvert agent Captain Dasp, to smoak whose Dangerousness even those of an Idiocy far more advanc'd than Mason's require but an anxious few seconds.
"Gentlemen," advises this ominous Shadow, "— you have fallen, willy-nilly, among a race who not only devour Astronomers as a matter of habitual Diet, but may also make of them vile miniature 'Sandwiches,' and lay them upon a mahogany Sideboard whose Price they never knew, and then forget to eat them. Your only hope, in this room, is to impersonate so perfectly what they assume you to be, that instincts of Predation will be overcome by those of Boredom."
"I was just about to tell him thah'... ?" nods Dixon.
Lady Lepton has appeared,— the Hostess there is sure to be one of. "Captain, how pleasant." With a gaze, met calmly by that of the agent, that invitee at least Conjecture.
Dixon, ignoring the Captain's sensible advice, is giving her the onceover. "Eeh! Why, Lady, I've seen thee...?— years ago at Raby Castle, where tha came to visit. We were both about the same age... ? still children, it was nearly winter,— Thee in a riding-habit, a sort of Brunswick style? scarlet and blue, and gold buttons,"— which is about where the Captain throws up his hands and walks off, shaking his head,— "a full skirt, a petticoat, and beautiful small boots of wine-colored Cordovan, with French Court heels.. .aye and a cocked hat with green Parrot feathers, all against a Winter Sky, and thine Hair, left loose, falling nearly to the saddle—"
Ordinarily their Hostess would have been expected to rejoin, "And you were the muddy boy at the side of the ditch with his hand upon his Willie," and everyone would have laughed gaily, except, of course, Dixon. Instead, she peers directly in his eyes, and whispers slowly, "Aye, you. At first I thought you were one of the Castle's Ghosts. Following me,— keeping just out of the Light. Even when I didn't see you, I felt you. They told me you were wild, poor, a Dissenter, an Outlaw, to pay you no attention. But I must have disobeyed, if, after all these years, I still remember you." Whereupon a golden Edge of Pleasure proceeds to bisect him upwardly all the way from his Ballocks to his Heart, which these days is a lengthy journey.
Tonight's Slave Orchestra includes the best musicians the Colonies, British and otherwise, have to offer,— for the melody-maddened Iron-Nabob has searched them out, a Harpsichord Virtuoso from New Orleans, a New-York Viol-Master, Pipers direct from the Forests of Africa,— and bought up their Contracts, as others might buy objects of art. The string instruments are from workshops in Cremona, the winds from France, and the music they are playing here for the guests at Castle Lepton, tho' at the moment little more than a suite of airs of the Street and Day, is nonetheless able somehow, perhaps in the unashamed prevalence of British modality,— that is, Phrygioid, if not Phrygian,— to lend weight to (where it does not in fact ennoble) even the most brainless conversation upon the great Floor,— which can usually be heard in His Lordship's vicinity, though nowhere at the moment near Dixon, who is finding all this, to his delight, dangerously interesting.
When they were still that young, he'd thought her bold as a Boy, and proud, with what he had already remarked, at a distance, as the proud-
ess of Women. He'd stayed out, away from others, on a Lurk among the Towers and Gate-ways,— and in the shadows of Autumn, late-colored even in the mornings, had grown enjoyably obsessed. His Great-Uncle George, believing her a Witch, cast at young Jeremiah looks of sorrow and reproach. But the boy had watched her out on the Fell, riding so fast that her amazing hair blew straight back behind her, the same Wind pressing her Eyelids shut and her Lashes into a Fan, and forcing her
Lips apart Long on a personal basis with the horses the Earl had
given her to ride, Dixon sought their company now in the stables at night, stroking, feeding, talking it over gently with them. Indoors one day of early sleet, lurking in the damp and rodent smell of the mural passages, he looked out through the pierc'd paint Eyes of Nevilles and Vanes, costumed as shepherds, before a Castle glorified with an afternoon light that never was, to see her kissing one of the Chamber-Maids, who stood as under a spell, whilst ice sought entry, lashing at the tall Windows. At nightfall he heard her in the corridors far away singing something in Italian, "Bellezza, che chiama...," the sweet notes picking up from the stone Passages a barking Echo—
Somehow this fearlessly independent Girl had then gone on to marry the ill-famed, the drooling and sneering, multiply-bepoxed Lord Lepton, an insatiate Gamester who failed to pay his losses, forever a-twittering, even as he tumbled to ruin in one of the period's more extravagant Stock-Bubbles, summarily ejected from Clubs high and low, advised by friend and enemy that his only decent course would be to step off the Edge of the World.—Thinking they meant, "go to America," resolutely chirpy, he donn'd his sturdiest coat and breeches, took a false name and a public conveyance to the Docks, there indentured himself to a North Riding iron-master, and in good time sailed away (being kept with the other Slaves for the duration of the crossing, well below the ship's water-line) to far and fever-clouded Chesapeake, where he was brought up-country, to dig and blast in the earth, fetch and stoke in the service of the perpetual Fires, smell unriddably of Sulfur, drive the African slaves as basely as a creature of his Sort might be expected to do, be one day trusted with blasting-Powder,— an event that, given the state of his soul, counted as a major leap of Redemption,— and after three of these trans-Stygian Years, become Journeyman, and in two more, by then his own Master,
make his next Fortune, returning to England but once more, not to the Mansions that had spurned him but to dark-skied Durham, to carry back to America the Woman who, mysteriously having allowed it to happen, stands here now, Chatelaine of Lepton Castle, almost as Dixon might remember her upon one of the old battered towers of Raby, pretending yet, surveying below the intricate Deployment not of fancied men and horses of long ago, but of present-tense Brussels Lace and Mignonette, of Brocades and flower'd Gauzes and unkempt rainbows of Satin across her own Ladyship's Parquetiy, as the music complains inconsolably of loves at worst Hard-Labor, at best, impossible.
"...raving Lunatick of course," his Lordship fixing the Astronomers with a gleaming stare, "whatwhat?"
"Oh, aye," Dixon enthusiastically nodding whilst trying to kick Mason under cover of her Ladyship's Gown, whose elaborate Hem has somehow crept closer to his Person than he imagin'd etiquette to allow.
"Imbecile," Mason, he thinks amiably, suggests.
Lord Lepton reacts as though knifed. "Exactly the word he used,— or was it 'Idiot'? You, Dasp,— you were there, which was it?"
"If memory serves, My Lord, 'twas My Lord, that called him both of those." He pronounces each word separately, in a way that strikes the listener as unarguably foreign, tho' what strange Tongue may lie back of his English must remain a Mystery. He is gazing at Mason, and Dixon, too, so as to leave no doubt that this will be the last uncompensated Favor,— henceforth the Astronomers, unless the price be agreeable, are on their own.
"Tho', I say, look here," Lord Lepton has meantime been rattling, "everyone on about it, 'Great Chain of Being this, Great Chain of Being that,'— well frankly I'm first to say jolly good,— but,— now you see you have this rather lengthy Chain, don't you, and,— well damme, what's it for? Eh? What's it do? Is there something for example hanging?— dangling from its bottom end? Well! what happens if that something fails to hold on? Obviously it falls, but where, don't you know, and,— and how far?"
"Perhaps," Captain Dasp sibilantly entering the Game, "it is not a straight vertical line at all. Perhaps it is a Helixxx," gesturing in the air for Lord L.'s benefit, "and wound about something,— keeping it, let US
say...chain'd in? Something not part of the Great Chain itself, but fully as enormous, something that must be kept in restraint. Which we pray may be only sleeping when, throughout the Chain's vast length, it is felt now and then.. .to stir."
"Yes!" cries his Lordship with a strange shiver, "flexing, writhing, perhaps beginning to snarl a bit, as one might suppose, deep within its Breast...."
"Well, 'tis a horizontal Chain for me," Dixon beamingly raising his Punch-cup in Lord L.'s direction, drawing from his Partner a quick turn of the head,— Why do you assist in this idiot's Folly?— "such as Surveyors use. Which shall go before, I wonder, and which follow,— aye and which direction shall it point in?" A newcomer might have imagined he was talking about the Line, and that the answer was West. But the Nabob was feeling personally assaulted.
"You sound like one of these Leveler chaps," he mutters.
Dixon has about decided to reply, "Circumferentor, actually," when
Lady Lepton interposes, sighing, "Ah, yet do recollect that Chain, more
imprisoning than the Captain's, more relentlessly fiduciary than Mr.
Dixon's." Her gaze fixing each, as she speaks his name,— then, mean
ingfully, Lord Lepton, but to no avail,— the object of her insinuation
only continuing to nitter-natter.. .with a strange pointedness toward
Dixon. "There's Coal out where you're going, you see. Already a brisk
trade by way of the Indians, though they can't bring it in in volume, poor
chaps. Pretty, magickal black Stone, for all they know of it. Yet we're not
all Charcoal Hearths here, we've Coke as well. Produce our own,— Chambers and all here upon the Plantation "
Life for her in these forests has never prov'd altogether exhilarating, her Face, even with its Complexion still pale as a summer Moon just risen above the Staithes, having with the years form'd itself into an aspect of permanent disappointment. Thus, altho' like her husband she may laugh at anything, yet is the pitch of her voice as low, and its every inflection as bitterly preconsidered, as those of Milord are high and carelessly unrestrained. Sounding together, the two make a curious sort of Duetto.
'Twas alleged by wits of the day that she'd married him for his Membership in that infamous Medmenham Circle known as the Hellfire Club, resting thereby assured at least of a lively Bed-chamber. But as
evidence that Milord's Tastes run to nothing much out of the ordinary, the Eye alert to the stirrings of a Gown, and adept at translating these into the true movements beneath the expensive surface and intervening Petticoats, may detect a Rhythm, a Damask Pulse, that speaks of Desires to cross into the forbidden.
It is difficult, in these days of closer-fitting Attire, to imagine the enormous volumes of unoccupied Space that once lay between a Skirt's outer Envelope, and the woman's body far within. "Why, there may be anything!" Capt. Dasp as if genuinely alarmed, "stash'd in there,— contraband Tea, the fruits of Espionage, the coded fates of Nations, a moderate-sized Lover, a Bomb."
"Yet the present-day bodice," remarks Lady Lepton, "can conceal secrets only with difficulty. A single key, perhaps, or the briefest of love-notes. Indeed, 'tis but an ephemeral Surface, rising out of the Spaces that billow ambiguously below the waist, till above melting...here, into bare décolletage, producing an effect, do you mark, of someone trying to ascend into her natural undrap'd State, out of a Chrysalis spun of the same invisible Silk as the Social Web, kept from emerging into her true wing'd Self,— perhaps then to fly away,— by the gravity of her gown."
"Oh, pishtush," comments her Husband, "Pshaw. Bodices are for ripping, and there is an end upon it."
The servants in the hall tonight are whitely-wigged black slaves in livery of a certain grade of satin and refinement of lace,— black Major-domos and black Soubrettes. One of the latter now passes by with a tray of drinks. "Milord's own punch receipt," advises the pretty Bondmaiden, gazing at Dixon intently. "Knock you on your white ass."
"Why, Ah would have brought me blahck one, but no one told me... ?" She seems to know him. For a frightening moment, he seems to know her.
"Yes lovely isn't she, purchas'd her my last time thro' Quebec, of the Widows of Christ, a Convent quite well known in certain Circles, devoted altogether to the World,— helping its Novices descend, into ever more exact forms of carnal Mortality, through training as,— how to call them?— not ordinary Whores, though as Whores they must be quite gifted, but as eager practitioners of all Sins. Lust is but one of their Sacraments. So are Murder and Gluttony. Indeed, these two are combin'd most loathsomely in their Ritual of Holy Communion."
"Rest tha content with the way he's talking...?" Dixon whispers loudly into Mason's ear, and moistly as well.
"An Otick Catarrh was not in my day's Plan, Dixon?"
"Oh. Why, bonny. See if I confide anything to thee, anymore."
"Pray continue, Sir,— 'tis but his Idiocy again, recurs like an Ague, harmless, really.... And," Mason believes he must ask, "do they get...fat?"
"Fat? Ah," Captain Dasp assures him, "violent, greedy, treacherous. Needless to say, Men without number fall in love with them, pay them repeatedly enormous sums, becoming ruin'd in the process, whilst Las Viudas de Cristo continue to bloom and prosper."
In the instant, Mason later avow'd, he knew that the Captain was a French spy. The Peace of Paris has left a number of these adrift, the reduction of Canada having forced many of them South and West, to the Illinois and beyond. There be sightings of Pépé d'Escaubitte, and 2-A Lagoo, Iron-Mask Marthioly and the Boys from Presque Isle, too. Few but the foolhardy,— however admirably so,— have stay'd in Pennsylvania, and those ever within galloping distance of Maryland, with its Web of Catholic houses of Asylum,— not that anyone there looks forward to being ask'd.—"What, that bloody Frog again?"
"Chauncey, not in front of the C-H-I-L-D!"
"Oh Mamma, is that funny-talking man coming to visit again?"
"Yes but not a word or God will nail you where you stand, and probably with your Mouth open just like that."
"We promise! and shall he cook for us?" Upon such frail expectations, fugitive as the smell of a Roast through an open window, do the lives of these Renegadoes often depend.
Somewhere beyond the curve of a great staircase. Gongs, each tun'd to a different Pitch, are being bash'd. "At last," mumble several of the Guests as they make speed toward yet another Wing of Castle Lepton, converging at the entrance to a great dom'd room, the Roof being a single stupendously siz'd Hemisphere of Glass, taken from a Bubble, blown first to the size of a Barn by an ingenious air-pump of Jesuit invention, then carefully let cool, and saw'd in half. The sister Hemisphere is somewhere out in America, tho' where exactly, neither Lord nor Lady is eager
to say. As no one at the moment has anything but Gaming of one sort or another in mind, the Topick is soon let go of.
Here is a Paradise of Chance,— an E-0 Wheel big as a Roundabout, Lottery Balls in Cages ever a-spin, Billiards and Baccarat, Bezique and Games whose Knaves and Queens live,— over Flemish Carpets, among perfect imported Chippendale Gaming-Tables, beneath Chandeliers secretly, cunningly faceted so as to amplify the candle-light within, they might be Children playing in miniature at Men of Enterprise, whose Table is the wide World, lands and seas, and the Sums they wager too often, when the Gaming has halted at last, to be reckon'd in tears....
42
"Many Christians," comments the Revd, "believe Gaming to be a sin. Among Scholars, serious questions arise as to Predestination and the Will of God,— Who notes each detail of each life in a sort of divine Ledger, allotting Fortune bad and good, to each individually, even as He raiseth the storm at sea, lendeth the Weather-gage to the dark Dromonds of Piracy, provoketh the Mohawk against the Trader's Post. For He is Lord of All Danger. Yet others safe at home wager upon His Will, as express'd thro' the doings of these Enterprisers, exactly as upon a fall of Cards, or a Roll of Dice."
"Why, Wicks. You see us as no more than common 'Spielers'? Parasites upon the Fortunes of those willing to Risk all? Pray you, setting aside whose Hearth you are ever welcome at, tell me all."
"What alarms me most, Wade," proceeds Revd Cherrycoke, "is the possibility of acquiring such vast sums so quickly. If a sailor may kill a Bully over a sixpence, then what disproportionate mischief, including Global War, may not attend the safekeeping of Fortunes of millions of pounds Sterling?"
"You're asking the wrong Merchant. I'm lucky if I clear'd a Thousand, this Year."
"Happen they all reach a point where they can't trust their Luck any more...? So they cheat.”
"Bold as you please." Later, in their Rooms, too late the Gamer's Remorse, Mason working himself up, "He mark'd the cards. The Dice were of cunningly lacquer'd Iron, the playing-surface magnetickally fid-dl'd,— Damme, he owes us twenty pounds,— more! what are we sup-pos'd to do, live upon Roots? 'twas the Royal Society's, belay that, the King's own money,— hey? right out of G. Rex's Purse it came, and don't it make a true Englishman boil!" Tis an Insult to Mason that cannot pass unanswer'd,— this runny-nos'd, titl'd Savage, tossing their Expeditionary Funds as airy Gratuities to the Slaves who stood all night with Coals kept ever a-glow, and with Bellows clear'd the immediate Air of smoke, that a player might see what Cards he held.
Insupportable. "We must take something worth twenty pounds, then...? Let the Rascal pursue huz...?" Dixon adjusts the Angle of his Hat. "Let's have a look. Here upon the wall, this Etching,— what's it suppos'd to be? Turkish Scene or something— Wait,— Mason, it's people fucking...? Eeh! And look at thah'...?...Well,— we can't sell that in Philadelphia. What's this? Chamber-pot? Perhaps not. How about the Bed?"
"Might as well be taking that Tub over there," indicating a giant Bathing-tub with Feet, Bear Feet in fact, cast at the Lepton Foundry from local Iron.
"Why aye, that's it! The Tub!"
"Dixon, it's half a Ton if it's a Dram, we're not going to move it...? Even if we could, where would we move it to? And once there,—
Dixon, a-mumble, is over examining the Tub. "Laws of Leverage... William Emerson taught things no one else in England knows. Secret techniques of mechanickal Art, rescued from the Library at Alexandria, circa 390 A.D., before rampaging Christians could quite destroy it all, jealously guarded thereafter, solemnly handed down the Centuries from Master to Pupil."
Mason's squint appears. "You shouldn't be showing these 'Secrets' to me, then, should you? No more than that Watch."
"Oh, thou would have to swear the somewhat ominous 'Oath of Silence,' of course, but we can do thah' later,— here, look thee." Dixon seems scarcely to touch the pond'rous Fixture,— yet suddenly, as if by Levitation, one end has rotated upward, and the great Tub now stands precariously balanced upon a sort of lip or Flange at its other end.
"That's amazing!" cries Mason.
"Simple matters of balance,— Centers of Gravity true and virtual,— Moments of Inertia,— "
"Have 'em all the time,—
"— estimated Mass,—
- the Priest having enjoy'd a merry night before?" tho' yet a-squint. "What's this,— shan't I hear 'Magnetism,' as well? some deliberate omission?"
Dixon doesn't answer immediately, nor, as it will prove, at all, focus'd as he has become upon gently but fluently tweaking the giant iron Concavity across the room and toward the door,— through which it is not immediately clear how the Tub is going to, actually, fit. So sure is his touch that the floorboards barely creak. "Ah very nice, very nice indeed...? now I'll just have a look out at the stairs. And if thoo don't mind,—
"Um,— ?" inquires Mason.
"This,— " indicating the looming Mass above them, "needs to be held at exactly the Angle it's at,— not just the Angle off the floor, do tha see, but also this exact Angle of Rotation about the long Axis? Try not to think of this as two separate Angles, but as One? Thou're following this?"
"I,— you want me to,— wait,— no, why not just lean it against the Wall, here?"
"Thah' Wall? eeh! eeh! it'll go through than' Wall! No,— all I ask, is thah' thoo hold the Tub up, but for a minute, whilst I go reconnoitre."
"That's one minute,— you promise."
"Two minutes. At most. It's perfectly stable, so long as tha don't shift
it about too much Good fellow, just slip in here, yes and thy hands
go...there,— a unique resting-place for everything, Friend,— behold the Tub, perfectly quiescent, 's it not...? in maximum self-alignment, and quietly gathering Power. 'Twill see us free of this place,— eeh. Ideal. Now,— don't move. I'll be right back."
He vanishes, leaving Mason 'neath the Tub. Soon Mason detects the smell of Pipe-Tobacco,— Dixon's blend, indisputably. He's out there having a leisurely Smoke whilst Mason, squinting upward nervously, struggles to keep the Tub upon its Axes. After a while, as if to himself,
lightly vocalizing, "It's gone two minutes and thirty-one seconds." The words gong loudly back and forth, painfully seeming to enter one ear, pass through his head, and depart out the other ear. In the after-hum he fancies he can hear Dixon's voice, and then another,— Lady Lepton's if he is not mistaken, tho' Words soon lapse, whilst Sounds continue. An overturn'd chair. Sighs. Fabric tearing. A merry Squeal. All at once, in chiming two-part Harmony and unnaturally accelerating Tempo, unmistakably, "0 Ruddier than the Cherry." Tis the infamous Musickal Bodice, devis'd by an instrument-maker of London, wherein Quills sewn into its fastening, when this is pull'd apart, will set a-vibrating, one after another, a row of bell-metal Reeds, each tun'd to a specifick Note,— the more force applied, the louder the notes. ''Ripping Tune!" Mason calls out. He has no idea how to disengage from Dixon's blasted Tub, tho' now would hardly seem the best time to do so, unless,— now that he's listening,— there no longer seems to be.. .hmm, quite as much sound from out there...
If, in fact, any. "Well,— fucking insane, wouldn't you agree!"
In the unpromising silence that slowly, gongingly, falls, Mason becomes aware of a measur'd Tapping upon the outside of the Tub, directly over the back of his Head. It progresses 'round the rim of the Tub until into sight comes the flush'd Phiz of an individual in an outdated Wig of foreign Manufacture, waving about a fantastickal Compass of Brass and Mahogany, rigg'd out with Micrometer Screws, dial-faces, enigmatickally wreath'd coils of Copper Wire. "Good day to you," he greets Mason. "Are you the one responsible for this quite astonishing Magnet?"
"What, this? 'tis a Tub, Sir." Hoping the Echo may give him an Edge.
' 'Tis damn' nearly Earth's third Pole," mutters the dishevel'd Philosopher. "Observe." He steps across the room, holds up a Building-Nail, and lets it go. It flies through the Air, in a curious, as it seems directed, Arc, hits the Tub with a solid bong, flattening its Point by an eighth of an inch, and fails to drop to the floor,— "Not unlike Hungarian Vampirism," snatching it loose and proceeding to dangle one by one a gigantick Loop of other Nails from it, "the Ability may be transfus'd from one Mass of Iron to another,— Excuse me. I am Professor Voam, Philosophical Operator, just at present scampering from the King's Authori-
ties, for electrocuting at Philadelphia one of these American Macaronis who cannot heed even the simplest Caution, such as, 'Don't touch the Torpedo.' Ease of Compliance written all over it, not so? yet such is the Juvenility abounding upon these Shores, that the damn'd Fop must go feel for himself. Poh. Notwithstanding 'twas he who fell'd himself, a number of arm'd Citizens thought it better I depart.... Here,— shall you be much longer under there? Perhaps we could find some Coffee."
"I'm not sure how he got me under here," Mason a bit plaintive, "and even less sure about how to get out. Your mention of Coffee, withal, intensifies my Unhappiness."
"Someone put you beneath this Ferric Prodigy?"
"My Co-adjutor, Mr. Dixon."
"Of course! The Astronomers! Dixon and Mason!"
"Actually," Mason says, "That's— "
"Say, I hope you Boys ain't had a falling-out."
"He was demonstrating a Principle of Staticks, and became distracted. Apparently this Tub is resting upon some Axis invisible to all but Dixon."
The Professor has a Look-See, waving his Apparatus in mystickal tho' regular Curves at the Tub. "Fascinating. The Axis it's on is Mag-netick. Good thing he didn't try to balance this mechanickally. Whoo! you'd be flatter'n a Griddle-Cake." He is carefully adjusting his Grip upon the Rim.
"Excuse me,— to what End? Gazing at it, as it fries? saying, Oh, you're so Circular...your Airr-Bubbles, they're so intrriguing,—
"Than, than,— good, that's got it. Just help me lower it,— Q.E.D. and Amen. Say, pleasant Tub. This could be just the Article to keep Felipe in, now that I look at it."
"That's your...?"
"Torpedo. Lodging him in the Arabian-Gardens Pool for the moment, but 'twill soon be time to move on, and then...?"
Mason stretches and twists his Neck and Head about. "Grateful, Sir. Now perhaps may I direct you to Safety,— any number of Refugees having become attach'd to our Party,— all traveling under the joint guarantee of the Proprietors, and their Provincial Governments as well. To my knowledge, tho' there be Tailors, Oracles, Pastrymen, Musicians, Gaming-
Pitches, Opera-Girls, Exhibitors of Panoramic Models, bless us all, there is not yet an Electric Eel."
"You are kind,— yet the publick rooms of Philadelphia offering Insult a-plenty,— I am not sure the Practice would subside as we mov'd West."
"Yet, supposing Progress Westward were a Journey, returning unto Innocence,— approaching, as a Limit, the innocence of the Animals with whom those Eolk must inter-act upon a daily basis,— why, Sir, your Torpedo may hold for them greater appeal than you may guess."
"Rural Electrification," the Professor sighs, "Seed-Bed of the unforeseen. Where is our choice? Come, and you shall meet Felfpe."
After they are join'd by Dixon, emerging coprophagously a-grin from some false Panel in a Wall, exeunt the Premises, bringing along the Tub. One corridor's branching away from the Arabian Gardens, the Slave who spoke to Dixon earlier stands now abruptly in Mason's Path, obliging him to pause, quite close, Face to Face with her.
"Leaving me again, Charles?"
"It isn't you."
"I was abducted by Malays. Love-Jobbers. Walk thro' the Market with little Fly-Whisks, inspecting the Girls and Boys, striking this one, that one,— sooner or later, each is come for. When I felt the tiny Lashes, 'twas to be destin'd for Jesuit Masters, in payment of a Debt forever unexplain'd to me,— only then to be remanded, soon as we gain'd Quebec, to the Sisterhood of the Widows of Christ. Whence, after my Novitiate, kind Captain D. and I came to our Rapprochement."
"Your French has improv'd," whispers Mason. "I know who you are, and well before next Midnight, too. Ah, and as for 'kind,' why the man is at least a Flagellant, you Wanton."
She smiles not at all enigmatickally, turns and steps away, shaking those Globes,— too bad, Flagellants in the Region, she's here only on short-term Lease, in a Fortnight she'll be shaking them someplace else, and a glamorous International Life it's proving to be for her too, so far at least. Who says Slavery's so terrible, hey?
"Good-bye, Charles," beginning to blur, receding 'round the long curve of the Wall. Mason, Dixon and the Professor go poking in and out of one secret Panel after the next, but she is no-where to be found— Instead, the Lads now encounter a Dutch Rifle with a Five-pointed Star
upon its Cheek-Piece, inverted, in Silver highly polish'd, shining thro' the Grain upon the Wrist and Comb that billows there in stormy Intricacy, set casually above some subsidiary Hearth in a lightly-frequented Room.—A Polaris of Evil..
"As it happen'd," relates Mr. LeSpark, "I was reclining right there, upon a Couch, seeking a moment's Ease from the remorseless Frolick,—
"Alone, of course," his Wife twinkling dangerously.
"As Night after dismal night, my green Daffodil, thro' the bleakness of that pre-marital Vacuum, Claims of the Trade preempting all,— not least the Society of your estimable Sex." In which pitiable state, he dozes off and awakens into the Surveyor's Bickering as to the Rifle's Provenance,— Mason insisting 'tis a Cape Rifle, Dixon an American one.
' Tis no Elephant Gun,— haven't we seen enough of these here by now, Dear knoaws? Barrel's shorter, Stock's another Wood altogether."
"Your Faith being famous, of course, for its close Appreciation of Weaponry."
"Ev'ry Farmer here has a Rifle by him, 'tis a primary Tool, much as an Ax or a Plow... ? tha can't have feail'd to noatice... ?
"Surrounded upon all sides, Night and Day, by the American Mob, ev'ry blessed one of them packing Firrearrms,— why, why yes, I may've made some note of that,—
Wade LeSpark slowly arises, to peer at them over the back of the Couch,— "Good evening, Gentlemen. I was just lying here, having a Gaze at this m'self. Handsome Unit's it not? You can usually tell where one was made, from its Patch-Box," reaching for the Rifle, turning the right side of the Butt toward the Lanthorn, " - the Finials being each peculiar to its Gunsmith, a kind of personal signature...look ye, here it is again, your inverted Star, work'd into the Piercings, as a Cryptogram...withal, this Brass is unusual,— pale, as you'd say,— high Zinc content, despite the British embargo, and sand-cast rather than cut from sheet—
"Lord Lepton hath an Eye,— Damme." He cannot release his Grasp upon the thing. The octagonal Barrel is Fire-blu'd rather than Acid-brown'd, the Lock left bright, despite its Length pois'd nicely when slung
from its Trigger-Guard, all brought narrow, focus'd, the Twist upon the Rifling inside a bit faster than one in forty-eight, suggesting in its tighter Vortex a smaller charge, a shorter range.. .a Forest Weapon, match'd to a
single Prey, heavier than a Squirrel, not quite heavy as a Deer.... In the
Purity as you'd say of its Intent, 'tis as Mr. Dixon surmises, American, yet not the Work of any Gunsmith known to Mr. LeSpark.
"Might ye be aware, Sir," inquires Mason, "of another such inverted Star,— in Lancaster Town, upon the sign of the Dutch Rifle?"
"Aye, and clearly meant, Sir, to depict a local Piece,— its own Finial, 's I recall, being in the form of a Daisy, which the Gunsmiths 'round Lancaster favor. . .tho' there remains a standing Quarrel, as to what Rifle may have serv'd as the Model,— that is, if any at all did,— too much, out here, failing to mark the Boundaries between Reality and Representation. The Tavern's Sign was commission'd of an unknown traveling Artisan, who left Town in the general troubles in 'fifty-five, as mysteriously as he'd come,— perhaps remov'd south, perhaps perish'd. One Story has it, that, lacking a Brush, he went out and shot a Squirrel, with whose Tail, he then painted the Portrait of the very Rifle us'd to obtain it,— that Star may've been put on later, out of simple Whim,— nor perhaps did he ever make a Distinction, between two points up, and two down."
"Again, Sirr,— perrhaps these Occurrences,— " Mason glowering, "as others, are invisibly connected.—Can you so lightly, Sirr, dismiss the very Insignia of the Devil,— Representations or no, allow'd to appear only by his Agents among us?"
"Many will believe all Firearms to be his Work, no matter how decorated," LeSpark replies, with enough Dignity in his voice to suggest to them an intimacy with the Trade, "whilst others with equal warmth declare these Pennsylvania Beauties to be about the Work of God,— therefore, a stand-off,— what matter?"
"But that small Devices," interjects Professor Voam, "may command out-siz'd Effects. This Pentacle, if valu'd for no more than the silent acts of Recognition it provokes, has more than earn'd back its Expense."
"As over-ponderous Tubs, Sir," replies Mr. LeSpark, " - may never recoup the Cost of conveying them anywhere. How far were you thinking of taking this one, for Instance?”
"Had we seen this Rifle first...?" Dixon, to appearance forthrightly, "we might be off with it instead,— that is of course unless our Host, the Sharper, be a partickular Friend of thine... ?"
Mason, his Eyes protruding in alarm, tugs upon Dixon's Sleeve, hissing, "Don't you see, there's a Curse upon it, for Heaven's Sake, Dixon,— ?"
In an Exchange of Glances with Mr. Dixon, that Mr. LeSpark will remember even years later, however, each has soon reveal'd so far uncon-fess'd Depths of Admiration for the Rifle,— despite all the ill-fortune that might descend, from no more than touching it,— for its brutal remoteness nearly Classickal, as for the sacramental Fidelity with which it bodies the Grace peculiar to the Slayer,— no Object that fails so to carry Death just inside its Earthly Contours, can elicit Desire quite so steeply or immediately—
Mr. LeSpark has bargain'd with many a Quaker,— he knows the wordless Idiom Dixon speaks. The key point is that taking the Rifle will be far more dangerous, than taking the Tub, "— and as for the Tub," grins Mr. LeSpark, at length, "why, what Tub, don't ye know?"
"To accommodate Strangers so, 's it not risky?" Dixon puzzles. "Suppose we were desperate Outlaws...?"
"You don't know what I see back in this Country. Bribes, Impersonations, Land Fraud, Scalp-stealing, Ginseng Diversion. Each Day brings Spectacle ever more disheartening. You three are but Boys out upon a Frolick."
"Most kind, Sir, ever so kind—" Mason needlessly groveling.
"Then again," chuckles Wade LeSpark, "Lepton is an important Customer— Maybe I should run right to him, with word of this Tub's Alienation. Maybe he'll send Dasp out with some Riders after you. Maybe this Rifle here'll belong to one of 'em."
"In that case we'd best be moving along."
"Proceed cheerily, Boys." And Mr. LeSpark, as he will come to tell the Tale, declines back into the Couch, seeking once again the comforts of celibate Slumber.
The last Door out opens to them. They make for the Arabian Gardens, Dixon coaxing the Tub slickly along over the Tile-work,— soothe the Harem Girls, collect the Torpedo,— who bears an impatient Expression, as if it's been waiting for them,— along with some pool water, and continue on to a convenient Ramp-way, where they transfer Tub and Torpedo to a Conestoga Waggon but lately unloaded, with fresh Horses hitch'd up,— "Yee-hah!" the Professor grabbing the Reins,— and Damme, they're off.
Clutching his Hat, swaying violently in his Seat, Mason shouts thro' the Wind of Passage, "Say, Dixon,— Did it seem like Austra to you?"
"If it was, she's chang'd...?"
"Striking Woman. Fancied me, as you must have seen. Not at all like
the old Austra, who couldn't abide me Naahhrr,— can't be she, a Man
can tell, for Woman's Distaste is incontrovertible, her clearest Emotion."
They reach the Wood-line without Incident, soon falling in with the Road to the Ferry, listening for Hoof-beats behind them. "A matter of time," mopes Mason.
"Why would they want huz? They've got the twenty pounds... ?"
"Oh, not 'us,' Dixon. No, no. You.—I was under the Tub, remember?"
"A proper Show," cackles Professor Voam.
"Bearing up, Professor?"
"Ev'ry Time, this is how it turns out." He has been traveling Inn to Inn with this Giant Specimen of Guyana Torpedo, giving Lectures upon, and Demonstrations of, the Electrical Creature's mysterious and often life-altering abilities. " 'Tis styl'd the Torpedo,' tho' Scientifically speaking, the true Torpedo is a kind of Ray or Skate,"— men wearing Hats made of dead Raccoons wait him out, watching the Torpedo in its Tank,— " 'tis also known as the Electric Eel, yet Mr. Linnaeus hath decided 'tis no Eel, neither, but a Gymnotus. Skate, Eel, or Gymnotus, 'tis ever 'the Torpedo' to me. 'Remember to feed the Torpedo today...wonder if that Torpedo's charg'd up yet'?— never is, o' course,— learn'd how to tell just by looking in its Eyes, how the Level is. Sí, sí, Cariño," as he reaches now into the great Tub and begins gently to sweep his hands close to the Creature's body, tail to head. The Torpedo remains calm, and presently grows appreciative, with a faint smile, much observ'd by Torpedo-Fanciers, about the V-shap'd Dimples at the Corners of its Mouth,— as if, in its grim and semi-possess'd life, it has found a moment to relax and let a Nonelec-trickal provide the Thrills for a change.
Sold to the Professor under the Name, "El Peligroso," or, "The Dangerous One," Felipe is quite large for a Surinam Eel, Five feet and two inches, and still growing. As he gets larger, the Dimensions of his Elec- trickal Organs change accordingly,— of particular interest being those of the Disks which are Stack'd lengthwise along most of his over-all length, each Disk being a kind of Electrickal Plate, whose summ'd Effect is to charge his Head in a Positive, as his Tail in a Negative, Sense. 'Tis necessary then, but to touch the Animal at both ends, to complete the circuit, and allow the Electrickal Fluid to discharge, its Fate thereafter largely contriv'd by the Operator, to provide onlookers with a variety of Spectacles Pyrotechnick.
"The Torpedo you see here,— fully charg'd, giddy, indeed as if drugg'd by the presence of the Electrickal, saturating ev'ry Corpuscle of its Being,— this is the classic El Peligroso," here the giant Eel smoothly assumes a new Attitude, as if posing for its Portrait, "the Torpedo the World sees, a strolling Actor, who nightly discharges into his Performance all the Day's dire Accumulation,— tho' the Mysteries of the Electrickal Flux within him continue to defy the keenest minds of the Philosophickal World, including a Task-Force of Italian Jesuits dedicated to Torpedic Study.
"You and I might consider it a repetitive life, routine beyond belief, yet El P. is nothing if not a Cyclickal Creature. Si," to the apparently attentive Gymnotus, "una Criatura Cíclica, así eres— Departure and return have been design'd into his life. If he had to live the way we do, worrying about Coach schedules and miss'd appointments and Sheriff Thickley,"— cheers at the local Reference,— "believe me, he'd be one unhappy Torpedo. How do I know? I counted.—As a condition of Life, Felipe needs Rhythm.
"And so I believe do we. Did I see my Banjo somewhere?— ah, there 'tis." Striking up an Accompaniment curiously syncopated, he sings,
Lads and Lasses, pass on down,
'Tis the world-renown'd Torpe-do,—
Quite the Toast of London Town,
Admir'd in far-off E-do,—
Na-bobs, Kings and Potentates too, all
Gawkin' at the shockin' sort of things he'll do, for
A tuppenny, step up 'n' he will do, you, too,—
The Torpedo, Voo-
-Ly Voo!
Ev'ry Fop clear back to Philadelphia must be in Attendance this Evening, sporting bright glaucous Waistcoats, Suits of staggeringly tasteless Brocade, outlandishly dress'd Wigs, Shoes with heels higher than the stems of Wine-glasses, Stockings unmatch'd in Colors incompatible, such as purple and green, strange opaque Spectacles in both these shades and many others. They flourish Snuff-boxes and pocket-flasks about, and giggle without surcease. As to the Hats,— far better not even to open the subject. Tis as if to cross Schuylkill were to transgress as well some Rubicon of style, to fall from Quaker simplicity into the Perplexity, uncounted times broken and re-broken, of the World after Eden. "I can see it'll take a lot to shock a crowd like this!" cries the Professor.
All are pleas'd to hold the same Opinion, and cheer. At a gesture from his Exhibitor, Felipe stands straight up in his Tank and bows right and left. The Professor takes out an Antillean Cigar, bites the end off, produces two Wires, and with a supply of Gum attaches them precisely upon the Animal's body. Felipe allows it, though like any train'd beast he will make a half-hearted Lunge now and then toward the busy pair of hands, his Jaws stretching wide enough to allow Spectators to marvel and shiver at the Ranks of Dirk-sharp Teeth. The Professor moves the free ends of the wires slowly together,— suddenly between them leaps a giant Spark, blindingly white, into which the intrepid Operator thrusts one end of his Cigar, whilst sucking furiously upon the other, bringing it away at last well a-glow.
Mason stares, bedazzl'd. He is slow to respond to Dixon's hand upon his shoulder, shaking him. "Not a good idea to be staring directly into that Spark...?— Charles...?"
"Dixon," a passionately inflected Hiss, directed to something just behind his eyelids, "I saw,— '
"It's all right. It's all right."
"I saw,— "
"The Spark was too bright, Mason. All look'd away, but you."
In the hidden Journal that he gets to so seldom it should be styl'd a "Monthly," Mason writes, "I saw at the heart of the Electrick Fire, beyond color, beyond even Shape, an Aperture into another Dispensation of Space, yea and Time, than what Astronomers and Surveyors are us'd to working with. It bade me enter, or rather it welcom'd my Spirit,— yet my Body was very shy of coming any nearer,— indeed wish'd the
Vision gone. Throughout, the Creature in the Tank regarded me with a
personal stare, as of a Stranger claiming to know me from some distant,
no longer accessible Shore,— a mild and nostalgic look, masking, as I
fear'd, Blood or Jungle, with the luminous Deep of his great Spark all the
while beckoning
"I can no more account for it than for the other Episodes. I do not choose these moments, nor would I know how. They come upon me with no premonition. Shall I speak with Dixon? Is it an hallucinatory symptom of a Melancholia further advanced than I knew? Should I seek the counsel, God help me, of the cherubick Pest, Cherrycoke? He will take down ev'ry Word he can remember. (Might it prove of use, in any future Claims for Compensation, to be recorded, at what's sure to be impressive Length, as having sought Spiritual Assistance?)
"How can I explain the continuing Fascination of the Torpedo? Were I it, I know I should have grown restless with the same set of Tricks night after night, and perhaps even disposed to Annoyance. But the Eel's facial expression is strangely benevolent and wise,— we spend a few minutes each morning sitting together whilst I take Coffee,— the Creature gazing in silence, relax'd, Fins a-ripple, enjoying these Quiescent hours of his Electrical Day for as long as he may...."
"For too soon the Charge," as the Professor declaims each night, "growing irresistibly, will be felt along the line of his Spine, to be fol-low'd closely by the emergence, from the great Shade outside the sens'd World, of the Other,— El Peligroso, whose advent the mild-manner'd Felipe you see here is quite helpless to prevent."
Meals consist so far mostly of locally caught fish, though Felipe is far from particular, having lately for example acquir'd a liking for Salt Beef. "Return to his native Hemisphere,— ' the Professor mumbling, "strange variations in Salinity as in Diet, yet perhaps 'tis magnetickal, for as is lately discover'd, the Needle's Deflexion followeth, like Felipe, a Diurnal Cycle...." Yet behind the patter lurks the unspoken possibility that outside, perhaps even just outside, the widening sphere of Felipe's food interests, waits human Flesh.
Abandoning the Tub, the Professor builds a larger circular Tank, and mounts it upon wheels, so that daily it may be situated directly upon the Line. Felipe then slowly rotates until his head is pointing north.
Presently he has become the camp Compass, as often consulted as the Thermometer or the Clock.
" 'Cordin' to this Torpedo, north's over that way."
"Best keep an eye out tomorrow, next day, see if ol' Felipe changes his heading, we might be able to triangulate us in on to some big iron lode, quit this slavin', make our Fortunes quicker than loggin', quicker than Hemp-fields,—
"Aye," comments Squire Haligast, who has join'd the Party, "for without Iron, Armies are but identically costum'd men holding Bows, and Navies but comely gatherings of wrought Vegetation."
"Cap'n, when we're rich, you can write all our business Letters."
"Put you in a sort of Booth, right out in front of the Mine, with a big sign overhead saying QUERIES."
"Shall I have a Pistol?" the Squire in a playful Tone.
"Why, a Cannon if you'd like. Just run you one up straight from the Comp'ny Forge."
"Boys, Boys," rumbles the imminent Overseer Barnes, "We aren't quizzing with the Squire again are we, we know the consequences of that well enough don't we by now?"
"They are Lads," says the Squire. "Having a dream together. No harm.”
43
When at the end of February they arrive at Newark, the Surveyors find secure behind the Bar a pile of Correspondence forwarded to them by Mr. Chew, wherein lies news both cheery and crushing. There is the Possibility of further Engagement in America, measuring a Degree of Latitude for the Royal Society. There is also a letter from John Bird, with news of Maskelyne's elevation to H.M. Astronomer. "You were expecting me to scream, weren't you?" "No,— no, Mason, tha being a grown Man and all,— "Actually, I'm quite reliev'd. Didn't need that on my Mind, did I? Arh, arh! Let us be blithe about it, for goodness' sake! What a wonderful Omen under which to begin the West Line," Mason raising his Tankard with an abruptness advisable only in Rooms where one's Face is known. "At the very moment he was elevated, I lay flat upon a Back that for all I knew was broken, in a desert place in New Jersey."
"We're curs'd, you knew thah'...?" Dixon tries to bear down and attend closely. "And none could have foreseen,—
"Oh, Maskelyne knew that Bradley was ill,"— Mason attempting to be chirpy is less easy to bear than Mason in blackest Melancholy,— "ev'ryone knew it, as ev'ryone knew that Bliss would come on only as Caretaker, for he as well was old, and ailing, yet there should be time enough left him, for each Aspirant to make his interest as he might—" "Why aye, and yet you always knew he cultivated— " 'Cultivated,'— poh. Maskelyne caress'd, and slither'd, insinuating himself into an old man's esteem,— for having done nothing, really, one more lad from Cambridge, clever with Numbers, tho' none beyond that damn'd Tripos Riddling, who but happens to be Clive of fucking India's, fucking, Brother-in-law! Ahhr, Dixon! this seventh Wrangler, this bilious, windy Hypnotick in the Herbal of human character, this mean-spirited intriguer,— his usage of poor Mr. Harrison, and his Chronometer, how contemptible. Few are his ideas, Lunarian is his one Faith, to plod is his entire Project. He will never make any discovery on the order of Aberration, nor Nutation,— he is unworthy, damn him! to succeed James Bradley." His face is wet, more with Spittle than Tears.
"Eeh, Mason." Dixon by now has learn'd to stay at a respectful distance, and not to rely too heavily upon Touch as a way of communicating. "You believ'd... Really...?"
"Oh well, 'really,'— it's like a Woman, isn't it, you look at each other, you think Of course not, she thinks Of course not,— yet the Alternatives hang about, don't they, like Wraiths."
"Eehh, City Matters, would I knoah anything about thah'?"
"I was up there four years, I lost two women I lov'd, God help me. I lost Bradley, dear to me as well. Were Tears Sixpences, I'd have more invested in that miserable hilltop than Maskelyne could borrow, be the co-signer Clive himself. Well, let him never sleep. Let him pace those rooms, one after another, in the idled silence of the afternoons, till he hears the voices telling him he has no right there, and to go away. Let him stand at last in the Octagon Room, and shiver in the height of Summer. Let him fear to stay up for stars that culminate too late,— Aahhrrhh!"
"Mason,— aren't Maskelyne and Morton both Cambridge men? Wasn't it Morton who put his name forward? They must have wanted one of their own...?"
"The last three A.R.'s were all Oxford men."
"There's a difference?"
Mason stares, then says slowly, "Yes, Dixon, there is a difference.... And he went in as a bloody Sizar, I could have done that,— don't you
think I was 'one of their own'? What, then, the Bastard Son? The faithful old Drudge in the Background? Haven't I any standing in this? Is that what this fucking exile in America's about then, Morton and his fucking Royal Society,— to get me out of the way so that Maskelyne can go prancing up to Greenwich freed of opposition,—
"So, Ah'm dragg'd along in the wake of your ill fortune, eeh, another bonny mess...?"
"Might teach you to take care whom your name gets attach'd to. Ahrrhh! Ruin!" He pulls his Hat over his Eyes, and begins to pound his Head slowly upon the Table.
"According to this," Dixon soothingly, as if 'twere a Fan, waving a Page, enclos'd with the letter, clipp'd from the Gentlemen's Magazine of the December previous, "there were, it seems, ten, competing for the job,— Betts, Bevis, Short...so on. Any of those names light a Match?" Though reaching the outskirts of Forbearance, can he really continue? Yes, he ought to. Either Mason cannot admit there's a Class problem here, or, even this deeply compromised, he may yet somehow keep Faith that in the Service of the Heavens, dramatic Elevations of Earthly Position are to be expected of these Times, this Reign of Reason, by any reasonable man. Very well, "Mason, you are a Miller's Son. That can never satisfy them."
"What of it?" Mason snaps back, "Flamsteed was a Maltster's Son. Halley was a Soap-boiler's Son. Astronomers Royal are suppos'd to be social upstarts, for Mercy's sake. And I'd friends in the Company," inflecting this, however, with a Snort and a sidewise Tilt of the Head, assuming Dixon knows roughly how Sam Peach and Clive of India might sort out upon the Company's own Chain of Being.
"Did you and Maskelyne talk about any of this when you were together at St. Helena?"
"Are you insane?"
"Oh, off and on...? And thee?"
"Bradley's Name may have come up."
"And Maskelyne,— may I speculate?— said, 'Has he given Thought to a Successor?' '
"Why, that's amazing. You might have been there. What is it about you people, some mystickal Gift, I imagine.”
"Ahnd,— he didn't say, 'Mason, though clearly I would welcome your support, I'm going to have this A.R. job with or without it,' anything like thah'?"
"Why are you trying to get me to re-live this? It was unpleasant enough the first time."
"So as to avoid it m'self, of course."
"I shall get thro' this, Dixon."
"Were I thee, I should make him feel guilty ev'ry chance I got. Perhaps he doubts his own Worthiness. Tha must never make it too obvious, of course, always the dignified Sufferer,— yet there is no predicting what Advantage tha may build, upon his Uncertainty."
"Why bless me, Sir,— you are a Jesuit, after all. Sinister Alfonso, move aside,— sheathe that Stiletto, wicked Giuseppe,— here is the true Italian Art."
"I-o.? Why, I am simple as a pony, Sir... ?— born in a Drift, a Corf for my cradle, and nought but the Back-shift for Schoolmasters there...?”
44
"Now, many is the philosophickal Mind,— including my own,— convinced that rapid motion through the air is possible along and above certain invisible straight Lines, crossing the earthly landscape, particularly in Britain, where they are known as Ley-lines. Any number of devout enthusiasts, annual Stonehenge and Ave-bury Pilgrims, Quacks, Mongers, Bedlamites,— each has his tale of real flights over the countryside, above these Ley-lines. Withal, 'tis possible to transfer from one of them to another, and thus in theory travel to the furthest reaches of the Kingdom, without once touching the Earth. Something is there, that permits it. No one knows what it is, tho' thousands speculate.
"Here went we off upon the most prodigious such Line yet attempted,— in America, where undertakings of its scale are possible,— astronomically precise,— carefully set prisms of Oolite,— the Master-valve of rose Quartz, at the eastern Terminus. Any Argument from Design, here, must include a yearning for Flight, perhaps even higher and faster than is customary along Ley-lines we know. I try not to wonder. I must wonder. Whenever the Surveyors separate, they run into Thickets, Bogs, bad Dreams,— united, they pursue a ride through the air, they are link'd to the stars, to that inhuman Precision, and are deferr'd to because of it, tho' also fear'd and resented—"
- Wicks Cherrycoke, Spiritual Day-Book
March is snowy and frozen, clear nights are rare, and the Surveyors need
ev'ry one they can get for Azimuth observations to find out the exact Direction westward, to strike off in. Ev'rything upon the Ground, by April, as they're about to begin the West Line, must be sighted thro' a haze of green Resurrection.
"There'll be more out there than Stars to gaze at," says Mr. Harland, who's hired on as an Instrument-Bearer at five shillings a day. "Over Susquehanna,— once you've cross'd the York to Baltimore Road,— you'll see."
"I grew up west of that Road," adds Mrs. Harland, "and he ain't just hummin' 'Love in a Cottage,' either. Tis not for ev'rybody,— I know I lit East as soon's I was tall enough to cry in the right Uncle's ale-can, and it's also how I met the Wild Ranger here, who's never been west of Elk Creek. Maybe it's not even for you, Johnny."
"Tho' we do understand your Sentiments, Ma'am," Mason advises, "we are legally restrain'd from intervening in anyone's family business."
"Ah well, too bad, tried my best, fate is fate, Lord'll provide," she carols, bustling back into the House.
"Took it awfully well, I thought," says Mason.
"Maybe not," John Harland shaking his head as he follows her in. "Better go see."
"She never actually said she wanted him off the Crew," Dixon notes.
"It's what she meant. You have to understand them, Dixon, they've this silent language, that only men of experience speak at all fluently."
"Then why is it I've lost count of how many of my evenings tha've ruin'd, with thy talk of Cannibalism, or Suicide, or Bickering among the Whigs... ? anything, but what 'they' wish to hear?"
"Unannounc'd blow."
Robert Boggs comes running by with fifty-weight of Harness hanging from each Shoulder. "Some Stranger over there by the Monument, acting peculiar." Off he runs again.
They go to see,— and there he is, up in the corner of Harland's field, curiously prostrated before the chunk of Rose Quartz where cross the Latitude of the south Edge of Philadelphia, and the Longitude of the Post Mark'd West,— the single Point to which all work upon the West Line (and its eastward Protraction to the Delaware Shore) will finally refer. All about, in the Noontide, go Waggoners and Instrument-Bearers in Commotion, preparing for the Translation south to Mr. Bryant's Field, and the
Post Mark'd West. Swifts come out in raiding-parties, but avoid the luminous Stone,— Dogs wait at what they've learn'd is a safe distance from it.
"Quite powerful," when they have coax'd him back at last to their own regime of Light, " - where'd you boys find this one? Whoo-ee!" He has been trying to find what in his Calling is known as the "Ghost," another Crystal inside the ostensible one, more or less clearly form'd. ' 'Tis there the Pictures appear.. .tho' it varies from one Operator to the next,— some need a perfect deep Blank, and cannot scry in Ghost-Quartz. Others, before too much Clarity, become blind to the other World...my own Crystal,"— he searches his Pockets and produces a Hand-siz'd Specimen with a faint Violet tinge,— "the Symmetries are not always easy to see...here, these twin Heptagons...centering your Vision upon their Common side, gaze straight in,—
"Aahhrrhh!" Mason recoiling and nearly casting away the crystal.
"Huge, dark Eyes?" the Scryer wishes to know.
"Aye.—Who is it?" Mason knows.
"The Face I see is a bit more friendly,— but then 'twould have to be, wouldn't it, or I'd be in some other line of Work."
His name is Jonas Everybeet, and in the time he travels with the Party, he will locate, here and there across the Land, Islands in Earth's Magnetic Field,— Anomalies with no explanation for being where they are,— other than conscious intervention by whoever or whatever was here before the Indians. "Anyone's Guess what they're for. And then your own very long Row of Oolite Shafts. Perfectly lin'd up with the Spin of the Earth. Suggestive, anyhow."
"Of what?"
"Think of Mr. Franklin's Armonica. Rather than a Finger circling upon the stationary Rim of a Glass, the Finger keeps still, whilst the Rim rotates. As long as there is movement between the two, a note is produc'd. Similarly, this Oolite Array, at this Latitude, is being spun along at more than seven hundred miles per hour,— spun thro' the light of the Sun, and whatever Medium bears it to us. What arises from this? What Music?"
Ev'ryone has a Point of View they wish to persuade the Surveyors to. "Sometimes you're the Slate," Mason observes, "sometimes you're the Chalk.”
"Eeehh!" Dixon frowns. "And here again is that bothersome Crimp, O'Rooty." The Body-jobber offering them his Services, can arrange, he declares, for "any Work-force, at any level of skill, anywhere you want, when you want them. For instance I imagine you'll be needing some axmen. Hey? Do I know this Business? First thing to decide is how much you want to spend,— local Lads at three and six per Diem, or, for what prices out to but a few farthings more,"— picks up a couple of Powder-Horns, places them either side of his head,— "Scandinavians! yes, the famous Swedish Loggers, each the equal of any ten Axmen these Colonies may produce. Finest double-bit Axes, part of the Package, lifetime Warranty on the Heads, seventy-two-hour replacement Policy, cus-tomiz'd Handle for each Axman, for 'Bjorn may not swing like Stig, nor Stig like Sven,' as the famous Timothy Tox might say,— Swedish Steel here, secret Processes guarded for years, death to reveal them, take you down a perfect swathe of Forest, trimm'd and cleared, fast as you're likely to chain the distance.—Parts of a single great Machine,— human muscle and stamina become but adjunct to the deeper realities of Steel that never needs Sharpening, never rusts,—
"Oh, come, Sir!" the Surveyors exclaim together.
"So then take but one, take Stig here, on a trial basis only, pay what you think he's worth, if you don't like him, send him back.—
Next in line behind O'Rooty comes a "Developer," or Projector of Land-Schemes.
"Kill him," advises Dixon, before anyone can get in a word. Mason risks a quick lateral Squint, but can neither see nor smell any sign of Intoxication. "And do it sooner rather than later, as it only gets more difficult with time."
Since early in their acquaintance, the two have learn'd to mutter together so as to remain unheard beyond a Pipe-stem's Length. The Projector, devotedly binocular and far too brisk, moves in an industrious Hop from one foot to the other, back and forth. "This is someone you know?" Mason not yet all that alarm'd.
"In general only. But work'd for enough of them, didn't I. Not proud of m'self for it. Needed the money." So abridg'd is this reply that Mason surmises some long and probably tangled Iliad of Woe back among the
Friths and Fells, which did not work out in Favor of Dixon, who continues, "Well, then...? Whah's thy preference?"
"Ehm,— what?"
"As to which of us will do the Deed."
"Deed...?"
"You know,— " cocking a rigid Finger toward their Visitor, who at last grows aware of being under Discussion.
"Um, Dixon,— come back to the Tent for a moment, would you... yes...yes there's a good chap,— just a word,— excuse us, please, small technical Question, quite trivial really,— come along, good, there we go." Mason, having visited Bedlam as well as Tyburn, in a profound Mime of calm and Patience, Dixon playing his part with equal vigor, using as his models any number of Lunaticks to be found in Bishop, any market day.
The first day of the West Line, April 5th, falls upon a Friday,— the least auspicious day of the week to begin any enterprise, such as sailing from Spithead, for example.
To stand at the Post Mark'd West, and turn to face West, can be a trial for those sentimentally inclin'd, as well as for ev'ryone nearby. It is possible to feel the combin'd force, in perfect Enfilade, of ev'ry future second unelaps'd, ev'ry Chain yet to be stretch'd, every unknown Event to be undergone,— the unmodified Terror of keeping one's Latitude.
They have been held up by the Weather,— first Snow, which by the fourth day, even undrifted, has reached a depth of two feet and nine inches,— then clouded Skies, which prolong the impossibility of Zenith observations. Thursday night the fourth, the Sky is finally clear enough for them to determine their Latitude exactly. The next day, the weather holding, they decide not to waste the Friday, but to seize it, bad luck and all.
A few wrinkles to be smooth'd. Messrs. Darby and Cope have left till the last Minute, the Question of who's to go before, and who behind, upon the Chain. The phrases "Good enough" and "More or less" must be discouraged from the outset. Rules of precedence for Dixon's Circumferen-tor have to be work'd out, principally that, in case of Conflict, it must ever defer to the Sector,— Astronomy before Magnetism.
At last, Mr. Cope pulls up his Bob, and gathers and stows his Plumb-line, thus removing his end of the Chain from the Post Mark'd West,— proceeding then in that Direction, across the snowy Field, to Mr. Darby's former Station. Detachment. The beginning of the West.
So they set off, the Chain a-jingle, Waggons a-rumble, farm Geese a-blare, heading into Farmland with a quiet Roll to it, watch'd by deer and kine, under the usual injunctions against trampling Garden patches or molesting Orchards, the Instruments, with a Tent of their own, stranger than anything the Party expects to see between here and Little Christiana,— which isn't much anyway, owing to the Trees, for which eleven more Axmen hire on, the second week.
"You'd think these Instruments were alive," Matthew Marine grumbles, "riding in Waggons upon feather Mattresses, whilst we slodge along behind, don't we?"
"May be they are alive, Matty."
"Aye and from someplace very far away 's well, Matty."
"Accounts for why they look all Brass and Glass and all...?"
"Boys now don't be telling me such things,— do you swear?"
Nodding solemnly, "Far, far away, Matt."
"Distant and strange."
"New-Jersey?"
"They do need tender Handling, boys," young Nathanael McClean tries sternly to advise the five-shilling Hands.
"Like your Mother's Pussy," is the reply.
"My Mother?" counters the young Swamper equably, "Say,—
Just saw your Mother, going out, to shoot, Somebody stepp'd on her Infantry Boots,—
"Aye? Well,—
I saw your Mother, and I Quiz you not,— Drinking penny-Gin from a Chamber-Pot."
"Ladies, please, there are Gentlemen present," announces Overseer of the Axmen Moses Barnes ("Is ev'ry body 'round here nam'd Moses?"),
seven and six per week, approaching with a heaviness of Step often felt minutes before his actual appearance. "Hark, is it Poetry? dear me Cedric, where've I put my Quill?" Those anxious to be his friends greet this with prolong'd Mirth. Barnes is a large Enforcer of Rules, with beefy undeluded eyes and a Reluctance to be far from the Cook Tent. Having long intimidated Commissaries into serving him gigantic piles of food, he has achiev'd a Mass 'twould shame a Military Waggon. Implicit in most of his dealings with the Axmen is the threat that should they fail to comply closely enough with his Wishes, this enormous yet mobile Weight may in some way unspoken,— and, 'tis further implied, unspeakable,— be directed against them.
Takes them less than a week to run the Line thro' somebody's House. About a mile and a half west of the Twelve-Mile Arc, twenty-four Chains beyond Little Christiana Creek, on Wednesday, April roth, the Field-Book reports, "At 3 Miles 49 Chains, went through Mr. Price's House."
"Just took a wild guess," Mrs. Price quite amiable, "where we'd build it,— not as if my Husband's a Surveyor or anything. Which side's to be Pennsylvania, by the way?" A mischievous glint in her eyes that Barnes, Farlow, Moses McClean and others will later all recall. Mr. Price is in Town, in search of Partners for a Land Venture. "Would you Gentlemen mind coming in the House and showing me just where your Line does Run?" Mason and Dixon, already feeling awkward about it, oblige, Dixon up on the Roof with a long Plumb-line, Mason a-squint at the Snout of the Instrument. Mrs. Price meantime fills her Table with plates of sour-cherry fritters, Neat's-Tongue Pies, a gigantick Indian Pudding, pitchers a-slosh with home-made Cider,— then producing some new-hackl'd Streaks of Hemp, and laying them down in a Right Line according to the Surveyors' advice,— fixing them here and there with Tacks, across the room, up the stairs, straight down the middle of the Bed, of course,.. .which is about when Mr. Rhys Price happens to return from his Business in town, to find merry Axmen lounging beneath his Sassafras tree, Strange Stock mingling with his own and watering out of his Branch, his house invaded by Surveyors, and his wife giving away the Larder and waving her Tankard about, crying, "Husband, what Province were we married in? Ha! see him gape, for he cannot remember. 'Twas in Pennsylvania, my Tortoise. But never in Maryland. Hey? So from now on,
when I am upon this side of the House, I am in Maryland, legally not your wife, and no longer subject to your Authority,— isn't that right, Gents?"
"Ask the Rev," they reply together, perhaps having noticed that Mr. Price is carrying a long Pennsylvania Rifle, two horns full of Powder, and a good supply of Balls.
"Eh?" the Revd, by all signs unaware of the trouble the Gentlemen are putting him to, not to mention in, beams at the so far but perplex'd back-Inhabitant. "I know but how to perform the Ceremony,— perhaps you need to consult an attorney-at-Law?"
"Separating Neighbors is one thing," Rhys Price declares, "— but separating Husband and Wife,— no wonder you people get shot at all
the time. No wonder those Chains are call'd the D——l's Guts." He must
struggle to work himself up into a Rage,— owing to an insufficient exposure, so far, to Evil and Sorrow, remaining a Youth who trusts all he may meet, to be as kindly dispos'd as he.
"What'll happen is," Alex McClean advises, "is you'll get hammer'd paying double taxes, visits all the time from Sheriffs of both provinces looking for their quitrents, tax collectors from Philadelphia and Annapolis, and sooner or later you'll have to decide just to get it up on some Logs, and roll it, one way or the other. Depends how your Property runs, I'd guess."
".. .as North is pretty much up-hill," Mr. Price is reckoning, " 'twould certainly not be as easy, to roll her up into Pennsylvania, as down into Maryland."
"Where I am no longer your Wife," she reminds him.
"Aye, and there's another reason," he nods soberly. "Well then, let's fetch the Boys and get to it,— 'tis Maryland, ho!”
45
Back Inhabitants all up and down the Line soon begin taking the Frenchman's Duck to their Bosoms, for being exactly what they wish to visit their lives at this Moment,— something possess'd of extra-natural Powers,— Invisibility, inexhaustible Strength, an upper Velocity Range that makes her the match, in Momentum, of much larger opponents,— Americans desiring generally, that ev'ry fight be fair. Soon Tales of Duck Exploits are everywhere the Line may pass. The Duck routs a great army of Indians. The Duck levels a Mountain west of here. In a single afternoon the Duck, with her Beak, has plow'd ev'ry Field in the County, at the same time harrowing with her Tail. That Duck!
As to the Duck's actual Presence, Opinions among the Party continue to vary. Axmen, for whom tales of disaster, stupidity, and blind luck figure repeatably as occasions for merriment, take to shouting at their Companions, "There she goes!" or, "Nearly fetch'd ye one!" whilst those more susceptible to the shifts of Breeze between the Worlds, notably at Twilight, claim to've seen the actual Duck, shimmering into Visibility, for a few moments, then out again.
"I might've tried to draw a bead onto it,...but it knew I was there. It came walking over and look'd me thump in the eye. I was down flat, we were at the same level, see. 'Where am I?' it wants to know. 'Pennsylvania or Maryland, take your pick,' says I. It had this kind of Expression onto its Face, and seem'd jumpy. I tried to calm it down. It gave that Hum, and grew vaporous, and disappear'd.”
Mason and Dixon attempt to ignore as much of this as they may, both assuming 'tis only another episode of group Folly, to which this Project seems particularly given, and that 'twill pass all too soon, to be replaced by another, and so on, till perhaps, one day, by something truly dangerous.
"They'll believe what they like," groans Mason, "in this Age, with its Faith in a Mechanickal Ingenuity, whose ways will be forever dark to them. God help this Mobility. They have to take all Projectors upon Trust,— half of whom have nothing to sell, who know nonetheless of this irrational need to believe in automatons, believe that they can sing and dance and play Chess,— even at the end of the Turn, when the latch is press'd and the Midget reveal'd, and the indomitable Hands fall still. Even as Monsieur Vaucanson furls back the last Silk Vestment,— no matter. The Axmen have a need for artificial Life as perverse as any among the Parisian Haute Monde, and this French toy, conveniently invisible, seems to—
"Look out!" Dixon cries. Mason's Hat leaves his head and ascends straight up to the Tree-tops, where it pauses, catching the rays of the Sun, just gone behind tomorrow's Ridge-top. Faint Quacking is heard above.
"Very well," Mason calls, " 'Toy' may've been insensitive. I apologize. 'Device'?"
Armand comes running out. " Tis being playful, nothing more. Ah, Chér-i-e," he sings into the Sky. "I'll guarantee their Behavior,— only please return the Gentleman's Hat, Merci..." as the Hat comes down Leaf-wise, zigging one way, zagging another, whilst Mason runs back and forth anxiously beneath.
"You'll guarantee what?" Dixon wants to know.
"Whilst advanc'd in some areas, such as Flight and Invisibility," Armand explains, "yet in others does the Duck remain primitive, foremost in her readiness to take offense. You must have notic'd,— she has no shame, any pretext at all will do. As her Metaphysickal Powers increase, so do her worldly Resentments, real and imagin'd, the shape of her Destiny pull'd Earthward and rising Heavenward at the same time,— meanwhile gaining an order of Magnitude, in passing from the personal to the Continental. If not the Planetary." Perhaps fortunately, no one present has any idea what he is talking about.
"I should have puzzl'd more," Mason now admits, "that Dr. Vaucan-son was listed among those sent copies of Monsieur Delisle's Mappe-monde for the Transit of Venus, showing us the preferr'd locations for observing the Event,— arriv'd at the Royal Society in the care of Father Boscovich, years late, owing to the state of the Rivalry,— I assum'd as ev'ryone did, that the great Automateur, having an interest in the Celestial Escapement above, and the date of the Event being sure as Clockwork, had early announc'd his intention to observe the impending Alignment,— or even more simply, that he enjoy'd Esteem at the Academic. But between the Invention of the Duck, and the observation of the Transit, there lies yet a logickal Chasm, as a temporal one, thirty years or more in Width, with no Bridge of Syllogism for Reason to cross, condemn'd rather to roam upstream and down, in search of a way, her Journey delay'd indefinitely upon the nearer side,—
"The side of the Duck," Armand reminds him.
"Very well,— could it be, that in the Years since the Duck vanish'd, and despite the constant presence of the Duplicate the World knows, Monsieur Vaucanson, in his perusals of the Sky, has come to seek there wonders more than merely Astronomickal? For, having no idea of where or how far his Creature's 'Morphosis may've taken it, where look for Word of its Condition with more hope of success than among the incorruptibly divided Rings of Heaven?"
"Hold, hold," Dixon with exaggerated gentleness, "Mason, he... believes his Duck to've become a Planet, 's what tha're saying?"
"Why are you all edging away from me like that?" Mason's voice pitch'd distraughtly. "For a few moments among the Centuries, we are allow'd to observe her own 'Morphosis, from Luminary to Solid Spheroid...! don't know about you, but if I had a Duck disappear from me that way, I should certainly be attending closely the Categories of rapid Change, such as the Transit afforded, for evidence of the Creature's Passage." Even without the face full of discomfort Mason displays, Dixon would have understood this as yet another gowkish expression of grieving for his Wife.
"Someone's wrecking the Squash, I think," Armand backing into the Cook-tent, colliding with young Hickman emerging with a stack of Pots and Pans headed for the Scullery, which all promptly go scattering in ev'ry direction, more than once passing but inches from people's Heads.
"Nothing personal," both, nearly in unison, assure Mason.
Such is the Duck's Influence in the Camp, that several Axmen approach the Revd upon the Topick of Angels in general. "For instance," carols young Nathe McClean, lately dazy for a Milkmaid of the Vicinity, "tho' we know the Duck has been transform'd by Love, what of the Angels,— that is, may they.. .um..."
"Aye, they do that, Lad, and they drink and smoke, and dance and gamble withal. Thought ev'ryone knew that. Some might even define an Angel as a Being who's powerful enough not to be destroy'd by Desire in all its true and terrible Dimensions. Why,— a drop of their Porter? 'twould kill the hardiest drinker among ye,— they smoke Substances whose most distant Scent would asphyxiate us,— their Dancing-floors extend for Leagues, their Wagering, upon even a single trivial matter, would beggar Clive of India. And who's to say that Human sin, down here, may not arise from this very inadequacy of ours, this failure of Scale, before the sovereign commands of Desire,—
"Sin as practis'd is not deep enough for you, Sir?" inquires Dixon.
"Why is it that we honor the Great Thieves of Whitehall, for Acts that in Whitechapel would merit hanging? Why admire the one sort of Thief, and despise the other? I suggest, 'tis because of the Scale of the Crime.— What we of the Mobility love to watch, is any of the Great Motrices, Greed, Lust, Revenge, taken out of all measure, brought quite past the scale of the ev'ryday world, approaching what we always knew were the true Dimensions of Desire. Let Antony lose the world for Cleopatra, to be sure,— not Dick his Day's Wages, at the Tavern."
46
When they may, they drink. So does ev'ryone else. Presently as they come more and more under the jurisdiction of the Night Sky, they drink less after Dark, finding it impossible to look out into That, however narrow'd the Field, with Vision in any way a-wobble, and be expected to work the micrometer, take readings, note the Time, and perform an hundred other tasks, most of them unforgivingly in need of Accuracy. Cloudy nights, of course, being exceptions to this Rule, are welcom'd by all.
Each ten Minutes of Great Circle, about ev'ry twelve miles, their Intention is to pause, set up the Sector and determine their Latitude, then figure the offsets to the true Line over the distance they've just come,— the true Line that has run along with them, at their left hands, an invisible Companion, but Yards away, in the Brush, outside the Fire-light.
Twelve miles from the Post Mark'd West, the Party crosses the Road from Octarara to Christiana Bridge, with a Farm-House close by, upon the Pennsylvania side. Here they set up camp, and begin their Latitude Work. Axmen set off in search of Food. The fragrant noontide so quiet you may hear the shuffling of Playing-cards.... Tis a Saturday, in that lull when all the Sellers have pass'd early into Town, and most of the Buyers, and families who dwell within a few hours by Waggon have not yet begun to head back home. Now and then, horsemen dismount at the Tavern a few Chains up the Road, as others come wobbling back from it, sometimes deciding to sleep overnight here in Camp.
After half a dozen such have dropp'd into midday Slumber, "Do we encourage this?" Mason asks himself aloud, in Dixon's hearing. "Suppose but one of them is a French Agent, pretending to be drunk, perhaps even bent upon our Dissolution,—
"As Christians, have we any choice but to allow all who wish, to enter freely?" offers Dixon.
"Ahrrh, well, as you put it that way—"
The Crew, now up to thirty Hands, having, in their first ten minutes of Arc, cross'd three Creeks and a River, and gone thro' one House, are dis-pos'd to a merry week-end, tho' mornings, when the demands of Recompense fall heaviest, are not to be altogether restful, so near is Octarara Road. Waggons-ful of Iron Products,— Bar and Rod Stock, Nails, Hatchets and Knives,— drawn by teams of Oxen, pass slowly, a-clank and a-creak, each step a Drama, left to right, right to left, across the Visto, all the Day. When Night falls, the Drivers unhitch and out-span their Teams, and make fires, and stay up drinking well past the Culminations of the later Stars, for Mason and Dixon, attending the Clock, the Plumb-line, the eternal Heavens, can hear them in dispute, often upon some point of religion. "Unco' Quantity of Iron upon the Road," comments Dixon. " 'Tis running me old Needle amok."
"Aye, as if the Prussian Army's about someplace," Mason none too pleas'd with any of it.
First thing Monday morning, they all come staggering from Bedrolls and Latrines to stand in loose Ranks and be tallied in. Overseer Barnes reads the Plan of the Day, the Revd comes by to say a short Prayer, then Special Requests are submitted, a few in writing, but most aloud and expected to be dealt with upon the Spot. Some mornings the Petitioning grows agitated indeed, with only the clanging of the Breakfast Alarm able to interrupt it.
"He's telling them Parrot Jokes again."
"Who is?"
"You know,...him."
"Ehud? is this true, what he's saying?”
"Mr. Barnes, Cap'n, Sir, all I said was, 'Sailor walks into a Tavern with a Parrot on his Shoulder, young Lass says,—
"There! he's doing it again!"
" ' "What'll it be?" and the Parrot says,— ' "
"Two hours' extra Duty, Ehud. Yes, Mr. Spinney."
' 'Tis the Porridge again, Cap'n. As previously sworn, I can't abide an Oat mill'd that way, and they all know it in the Commissary, yet each morning, looking up at me from the Bowl,— faugh,— one more deliberate Insult. The cooks all snickering— How long before I must begin to vomi', I'd like to know?"
"Then you must grind your own, Lad,— as the Indians do, between Stones. There's boiling water in the Cook-tent, ask politely and they may let you have some of that."
"Thankee Cap'n as ever, yet there abides the question of the Salt?"
"I'll have a word with 'em, Spinney. Now, is it...too much? or too little, Salt, exactly?"
"On second thought never mind, Cap'n."
"You're sure, now, 'tis no trouble.... Wonderful. And now whom do I see, but aye, Mr. Sweet, back again are we, how repetitious. Let me divine what your Request may be."
"My mate,— he was a Philadelphia Lawyer once, but gave it all up for the freedom of the Forest,— he says that, as an Expedition over land is like a ship at sea, Mr. Mason may, like a ship's Captain, exercise certain prerogatives,—
"Ah," Mr. Barnes raising a huge hand, "and a lovelier lass was never seen this side of the previous cow-shed I'm sure, yet, how long can this go on, boy? Were you a woman, I'd say you were but flighty, and there'd be an end. But in a Lad, you know, it makes me apprehensive. Suppose you do marry one of them,— what happens when you meet the next?"
"Um...wait let me ask my Mate—"
"Chat with ye tomorrow, Sir? Lovely, and remember me to your Betroth'd. And your Mate, of course. Next? Mr. McNutley,— it's been near a year, man,— not another one in the works? All the best, and ye're such a scraggy Ancient, too.”
"My thinking, Cap'n,— tho' some say hop to it just after the Harvest, so they'll give birth and be up again in time for next Harvest,— but I say just before Planting's better, so they can help wi' that, yet not be so far along by Harvest, that they can't help considerable wi' that, too. How-beit, my Gwen, she's due in a month or two, I think, and I ought to be with her, pretty soon,—
"Grow Titts," Mr. Barnes advises, "and learn to talk for an Hour without taking a Breath, and maybe as she grows more daz'd with her Pregnancy, she'll mistake ye for another Woman, taking from it what comfort she may. Otherwise, 'tis the Company of Women she needs, not the Author of it all, thumping about."
On they come, still too ill-assorted, too newly hir'd, to know what they may profitably expect, and what will ever remain hopeless,— tho' some will develop a taste for the exquisite discomforts of Rejection. Here is a protest, not the first, about Mrs. Eggslap's troublesome habit of extorting a higher fee once her Services are in Progress. This time 'tis Stig, the Swedish Axman. He speaks no English, Mr. Barnes no Swedish,— yet all have heard the dismal story before. At least once in every Sentence, Stig cries, "Yingle-Yangle! Yingle-Yangle!" denoting...Something of importance to him.
"Here is young Mr. McClean, he's just the one you ought to see, Stig,— yah yah, yoost the vun?"
Nathanael, the youngest of the McCleans, is here working during his summer "Vacation" from College in Williamsburg. At first, the Crew accorded him the Drone of intimate Insult, which is ever the Tender-Foot's Lot,— up to a point, at least, for his Father and Brothers are here, well in control of all aspects of the Expedition, from turning Angles to peeling Potatoes. Soon,— how, none can say,— the Axmen have assign'd to Nathanael a Character, closer to Macheath than to the diligent Factotum he knows himself to be, tho' he's tried to explain what in this Party he is and isn't,— yet do they expect him to take Bribes, to wink at Gambling, to keep local Justices of the Peace and Sheriffs satisfied,— above all, they continue to regard him as the Bully who protects Mrs. Eggslap and all her fair Colleagues, who some days have number'd in the Dozens. Hence Mr. Barnes's patent relief at Nathe's appearance now.
"He only looks like a kid,— but he's dangerous,— too dangerous for me." This from Moses Barnes, generally adjudg'd too dangerous for ev'rybody else. "Hello, Mr. McClean, quite another scorcher today, isn't it? Hope ev'rything's to your satisfaction?"
"Oh, come on, then," Nathe says, "I'm on my way to see Mo anyhow." They proceed to the Mess Tent, where Moses McClean is sitting in front of and frowning at a Pile of Accompts.
"As he is employ'd here but upon trial," Moses supposes, "his expenses may legitimately be withheld from the Books,"— and thus are they able to pacify Stig with a Sum whose Immediacy out-dazzles its Modesty. Yet Nathe is not quite free of the Matter, for Mrs. Eggslap accosts him in the muddy shade behind the cook-tent. "I do wish you wouldn't keep saying 'Extortion,' " she pleads more than once. Nathe makes the mistake of asking her, then, what does she think it is? "I knew we'd reach an understanding," grasping his hand and placing it upon her Hip, as if they were about to Dance.
"That Stig," Nathe blurts, "— you know he don't even speak English, Mizziz E. You took unfair advantage."
"Nathanael, my hasty Puddin', he brings that Ax to bed. He talks to it, and wants me to do the same. 'Oh,— oh how d'ye do, there,' says I to it, as so would you, were it being wiggl'd at you by some piece o' logging machinery with an Erection. Then he starts in with the 'Yingle-Yangle!' Right? 'Yingle-Yangle!' " I know that accent well, 'tis from the Neighborhood of Bedlam. Is that blushing, Nathe, or but the Sun in that innocent Face? Have ye never heard of Bonus Pay for hazardous Duty? that's what I was adding on."
"Fifty percent?" he's heedless enough to remind her.
"For you, my turtle-dove, I'd cap it at, oh let's say half o' that,— twenty-five?"
"It's still ext— well, exorbitant."
"Hmm. Five of it to you, of course."
"Five percent!"
"Oh, all right, ten, I never could resist a sweet Face." She swiftly kisses him, pressing into his hand some sort of Bank-note, and is off in a Wake of Jasmine Absolute.
As if waiting upon an invisible Queue, up next pops the Pass-Bank Bully Guy Spit, with another offer of a share in the Pass Bank proceeds. He is now offering 15 percent, up from 12. He believes Nathe to be a hard bargainer, holding out for more, when in fact the Youth is but trying to avoid an entire new mountain-range of worry in the Terrain already giv'n him to toil up and down in. But it throws all Mr. Spit's calculations out,— indeed, he assures Nathe, 'twould "threaten the very Arrangement," were he to refuse some share.
For all the Warnings Nathe has receiv'd as to avoiding Temptation, he'd not seen the true Article at first hand till this Swamper's Post fell to him, by virtue of his Family's favor with Mason and Dixon. " 'Twill be his salvation," Archibald McClean assur'd the Astronomers. "He is wasting too damn'd much time reading Books. He lives in some world all of us 'd be lucky to inhabit, but do not."
"And so, neither must he?" Mr. Dixon pretending astonishment. "Why, Heavens,— Books aren't going to hurt him...? Once he's found out about them, 'tis too late in any case. One way or another, he'll read whah' he needs to...?"
Mr. McClean, stung, cocks his head. "How many Sons have you, Sir?"
"Eeh, Friend, Ah have but been one...?"
"Howbeit, then," Mr. McClean shrugs, and seeks Dixon's Gaze. "Mostly that we'll need the extra Hand?"
Thus, soon, to his Father's unconcern, Nathe is as wildly a-spin, in unsuspected Engagement with Establish'd Greed, as any Nabobescent young Writer out in Bengal. Book-reading is no match, tho' he tries, being loan'd the choicest of limp, creas'd, and spatter'd books of erotick Pictures and Text, staying up to finish an extra chapter in The Ghastly Fop, to see how it comes out,— having, at last, no time to read, nor even look at Etchings. By the time he remembers how to unbutton his Breeches, he has fallen asleep. He is now falling asleep, usually face-first, with no warning, into not only his own bowl of Soup, but great Kettles of it as well,— and not only Soup, but Porridge, too. He also falls out of trees, off stools, and into card-games, scattering the hands and coins and usually getting thump'd for it. For days on end, press'd by continual demands, he may eat nothing but a fugitive Crust, sauc'd with the lees of
some ale-jack and the Pipe-ash therein,— yet suddenly, as in a Spring flood, will he find himself devouring without pause, through the workday, anything that comes to hand, or even too close. Mr. Barnes says he has seen Nathe eating in his Sleep, though this may be but more of the Overseer's great Wit.
"Ahoy Murray,— " Nathe writes to his School-friend back in Tidewater Virginia, "was there a Sermon about Greed? did I sleep through it? Nothing has prepar'd me for its Power how unabating, its Fertility how wild, Occasion for it being presented with ev'ry tally-mark, bottle astray, honest Favor, Milkmaid's Douceur, Diversion of Tobacco, exchange of Specie,— ev'ry Numeral utter'd, be it upon paper, or spoken low and allow'd to pass with the next breath into the Forgotten—
"They will forever do me favors I do not need, strings of iridescent Trout, July Cherries by the Bushel, with the Stones already out, land-transaction Advice that would put me in a Mansion upon Rappahannock with hundreds of Slaves and no worries forever,— i.e., rewarded as Pan-derers are, in every Form but Cash, a scarce enough commodity at the Coast,— becoming, further West, at last only another fabl'd American Substance.
"What's happening to me, Murray! This sordid haggling out in the open air, Axmen sidling by with knowing Grins, Girls peering apprehensively 'round corners, popping up from bushes to blow me Kisses of encouragement, even Mr. Mason with his Eyebrows up into his Hat, and Mr. Dixon whistling Airs from The Beggar's Opera. I am not the sinister Pimp they take me for.—Oh for someone understanding, out here in this endless Forest! We could ride our wing'd Pigs side by side through the Æther, and chat about it all.
'' 'Sweet face'! Of course. That's it, without a doubt. They talk to me in high, sing-song Voices. Either I look younger than I am, or people assume I am some kind of Idiot. Is this what books call 'Wheedling'? I have heard my first Wheedling,— like discovering a new species of Bird. 'Tis this curse of being a grown Youth, well clapp'd to Life's Harness, yet looking as I did at three. Men don't trust it, more Women than I ever imagin'd find it desirable. I am oblig'd to behave as unnaturally
Male toward the one Sex, as Cherubickally Neutral toward the other. How is it I nonetheless covet ev'ry fair creature who happens, day by day, to appear in the Path of this Line? As it speeds its way like a Coach upon the Coaching-Road of Desire, where we create continually before us the Road we must journey upon, the Axmen as diligent and unobtrusive as the Tailor of Gloucester's Mice...
47
The Instrument Carriers wait till Monday to go back to Mr. Bryant's and pick up the Sector. "Not so bad so far, d'ye think?" Robert Farlow, who is driving the empty Waggon, remarks to Thomas Hickman, beside him.
"Not bad for Fields we've all work'd in forever." Hickman, who is receiving a shilling more than Farlow this week, bears a worried look. The other six-shilling man, Matt Marine, took himself off up the Bridge Road sometime in the Dark, and hasn't been seen since,— leaving it upon Hickman's shoulders to make sure no harm comes to the Sector. Behind them, back in the dust and wood-smoke, the ringing of ax-bits diminishes with distance. John Harland, and John Hannings, and Kit Myers recline in the Waggon-bed among the Cushions for the Sector, the ragged breeze of their Progress bringing them the pleasing Scents of the Spring-tide, as they roll along the New-Castle Road, two to three miles south of the Line, and roughly parallel to it. Overhead, Birds carry twigs to secret destinations. Beside the Road, Children come running to stare, caps askew, Forks and Churns left to lie. Farmers in Waggons coming the other way wave or sometimes, knowing who they are, glare.
Each time, they set out slightly to the North of West, upon a Bearing that will describe Ten Minutes of Great Circle before intersecting again the true West Line. The Gentlemen know from calculation that the Angle to be turn'd off must be 0°08'18" to the Northward of perfect West. For a while they take Sky Observations to confirm this, Dixon as if in deference to Mason as Astronomer,— but presently they are turning the Angle directly from the Plate of the Instrument,— a Surveyor's habit, that Dixon may feel more comfortable with, which they drift wordlessly into, beginning to learn, each at his own rate, that the choice not to dispute oftentimes sets free minutes, indeed hours, otherwise wasted in issueless Quarreling. Neither appreciates this at the time.
When they reach the end of each twelve-mile-or-so segment, they stop, and set up the Sector, to find the distances, in Degrees, of several Stars, at their highest points in the Night, from the Zenith. Bradley's Star Catalogue gives the Declination, or Celestial Latitude, for each Star. This value, plus the Zenith Distance, equals the Earthly Latitude of the Observing Point.
Owing to the error in taking Bearings, that ever accompanies the running of a real Arc upon the not quite perfectly spherickal Earth, the Sector will never be set up exactly in the Latitude of the true Line. So Off-sets are figur'd at each Mile, ranging from zero at the eastern end, to whatever the difference in Latitude might prove to be, at the other. These offsets must then be added to the purely geometrical differences, at each Mile, between the ten minutes of Great Circle actually run, and its Chord,— the Line itself,— each time increasing from zero to about twenty-one feet at the halfway point, then decreasing again to zero.
As Fortune had put their first Ten Minutes of Arc close beside Octarara Road, so does their next Stage west allow them to set up the Sector but twenty-six Chains short of the east bank of Susquehanna, a mile and a half of Taverns strung near and nearer along the way up to the Peach Bottom Ferry. On Sunday the twelfth of May, they begin their Zenith Obs again, continuing them till the twenty-ninth. It will be a brisk and pleasant Fortnight beside the broad River, which dashes and rolls 'round two small Islands directly in the line of the Visto. On days of cloud, they endeavor to project the Line across the River, whose breadth they take the occasion to compute,— tho' the task falls mostly to Dixon, being, as Mason informs ev'ryone, more Surveyor's Work, really.
Dixon and Mr. McClean, along with Darby and Cope, go trudging down to the River to have a look. Common practice would be to measure out a Base Line upon the further Bank, set up there, turn off ninety degrees, put a mark on the near side, come back across, set up at the mark there, and find the angle between the two ends of the Base Line,—
then, with the aid of a book full of logarithms, including those of "Trig" functions, 'twould take but a minute and a half of adding and checking, to find the distance across the River.
"That's how we learn'd in Durham," Dixon recalls, "to measure across places we'd rather not go. Not so much Rivers, of course, as unexpected patches,— sudden entire ranges of Spoil-heaps, or a Grove out in an empty Fell,— certainly nowhere near this d——'d many Trees."
"I've found little Joy in these Situations," offers Mr. McClean, whilst Darby and Cope nod at one another, silent as understudies in the Wings, moving their Lips no more than necessary. Sweating and muttering, all go tramping up and down the Bank, kicking up clouds of Gnats, crushing wild Herbs in Blossom, seeking a line of sight that will allow them to use a Right Angle,— a Fool's Errand, as it proves. At length, "Eeh, we'll have to use what Angles we can, then, that bonny with ev'ryone?"
And more than soon enough for the Chain-men, tho' Mr. McClean is shaking his head. "I never get the Figures right."
"Then let huz pre-vail somehow upon Mr. Mason, to review our computing,— Angles being the same,— so I surmise,— down here as Out There." Mr. McClean takes over the eighteen-inch Hadley's, and Dixon repeats his Sights with the Circumferentor, obtaining at last an ungainly Oblique Triangle, from which they calculate Susquehanna to be about seven-eighths of a mile across.
To Mason meanwhile has fallen the Task of projecting the Line across the River and setting upon its Western bank a point they might take up again from. Upon their last Saturday at Susquehanna, he writes, ".. .about sun set I was returning from the other Side of the River, and at the distance of about 1.5 Mile the Lightning fell in perpendicular streaks, (about a foot in breadth to appearance) from the cloud to the ground. This was the first lightning I ever saw in streaks continued without the least break through the whole, all the way from the Cloud to the Horizon."
Less formally, he comes running screaming into Dixon's Tent, just as Dixon is lighting his Evening Pipe. "Did you see that?"
"Bright as Day...?" Dixon nods.
"Lord, into what Sub-urbs Satanick hast Thou introduc'd me this time?— Thy Procedures not to be question'd, of course.”
The Wind has begun to shake the Tents. The Surveyors hear the stumbling of Rain-drops against the taut Duck. Their Candle-flames are being torn to shining waxen wild-flowers. "I am assuming that I may be confident of my Safety here," Dixon puffing, "the entire issue of Lightning in America having been resolv'd by your Friend Dr. Franklin, who draws it off at will, easy as drawing Ale from a Cask— Ah have got that correct, haven't Ah...? 'Tis certainly the right place for Lightning, eeh! Nothing like this in Staindrop! Lud Oafery did claim to've been hit once over by Low Dinsdale, but there were no other witnesses,—
"Dixon, our, um, Lives? are in Danger?"
"Hardly enough to interrupt a perfectly good— " Here he is silenc'd by an immense Thunder-Bolt from directly overhead, as their frail Prism is bleach'd in unholy Light. " - Saturday Night for, is it I ask you...?" his Head emerging at last from beneath a Blanket, "Mason? Say, Mason,— are thee...?"
Mason, now outside, pushes aside the Tent-flap with his head, but does not enter. "Dixon. I will now seek Shelter beneath that Waggon out there, d'ye see it? If you wish to join me, there's room."
"Bit too much Iron there for me, thanks all the same."
"Interesting. Up to you of course,— " Another great blinding Peal. When Dixon can see again, Mason has withdrawn. Each Lightning-stroke another step across the landscape, the miles-high Electrickal Insect, whose footfalls are Thunder-Claps, proceeds at some broken, incomprehensible Pace, passing on toward Philadelphia and the Sea, and the Sky is restor'd to its pitiless Clarity, in time to obtain a good Zenith Distance for Capella.
Their latest orders, gallop'd in by Express, are to return to the Tangent Point, and run the three and a half Miles of Meridian, or North Line, needed to close the Boundaries of the Lower Counties. A Line must now be drawn Northward, from the Tangent Point, till striking the West Line at right angles, thus defining the northeast corner of Maryland. To obtain this last five miles of Boundary, the Parties have agreed, as if repenting close to the end of a long life of Error, to draw the Line at last due North and South.
Esteem'd Murray,—
Whatever else happens upon this Expedition. I am getting to meet an uncommon lot of Milk-maids. Every morning and evening they line up among the Tents, in the canvas alley-ways, clanking pails and kettles and whispering among themselves. And laughing. Ah! Laughter at the Outset of the Day. Some are lovely beyond the pen of this wretched apprentice. Some,— but even a 'Prentice must refrain from comparison. Gladly would I welcome attention from any of them,— alas, what am I to do?
Whilst, for their own part, the Lasses, often quite brazen about it, go on thinning the Milk with well-water, putting in Snails to make it froth, keeping it warm who knows how,— "Coy Milk-Maids" being a Game courtly as any back in the Metropolis, and like Dancing, exercis'd with ease and enjoyment, upon both sides.
'Tis Cream-Pot Love in the Morning Dew,
Again at the Close of Day,
One creeps about, like a Spider who
Might covet some Curds and Whey...
For...'tis...
Dairy!— oh gimme that
Dairy! the lengths that I'd
Go to for its sake are extr'ordin-ary,—
"The step, you see, like this? And,—
I see a
Cow 'n' just drool,
Act like a fool,
Any time a Cheese, roll by,—
Butter and Milk,
Foods of that Ilk,
Make me shake my head, goin'
Me-oh my!
Polly's in the Penthouse,
Molly's in the Mood,
Ev'rybody lookin' for that
Lactick Food,
Oh Dairy,
Though Seasons may Vary, I'll ever be very Enchanted, by you!
In the midst of teaching a long Queue of fair Purveyors the Steps of a Reel current at Williamsburg, Young Nathe is abruptly smit.
Miracle! after miserable nights in roadside hovels styl'd "Inns,"— the companionless sunsets turn after Planet's turn,— the days of regarding Daughters and even Wives of settlers with what I once imagin'd a Soulful Gaze (not always distinguishable, by she that receiv'd it, from an Offensive Stare),— unexpectedly to find, in the Day's first Dew, with the Light increasing so swiftly, apt, any instant, to reveal in her that decisive Flaw the Crepuscule had hidden (tho' steadfast beneath the Light, she but grew more Fair),— Her, whom I call, "Galactica,"— for she is one of the Purveyors, to this Expedition, of Dairy Products.—
"Poh!" I can hear you,— "another Tale of Cream-Pot Love,— well aye, of course, as who has not practis'd it, in this Edenick
Dairy-land,— yet Galactica, tho' in that larcenous Sisterhood, not
truly of it.—What I'm in, is a Sailor's predicament,— far too soon
must we extend the Line past any journey she can make in safety,
or indeed find the time for. There is no question of her joining our
Caravan. Her Duty here is as compelling as would be my own, were
she to come, to deflect from her Person the attentions of up to an
hundred men, including the implacable Stig— So must I beseech
Her wait till Winter, when we leave off and return Eastward,— then
until we head West again in the Spring, and so on,— Moments too
few, and the Waiting too heavy a burden, I fear, upon fair Galactica.
For tho' I know next to nothing about the Sex, yet it seems, in my
experience, that their reputation for Patience is gravely over-blown,
and the faithful sailor's Sweetheart of song and Romance as mythi
cal as a Mermaid