67
Within the Fortnight, they are join'd by a Delegation of Indians, sent by Sir William Johnson, most of them Mohawk fighters, who will remain with the Party till the end of October, when, reaching a certain Warrior Path, they will inform the Astronomers that their own Commissions from the Six Nations allow them to go no further,— with its implied Corollary, that this Path is as far West as the Party, the Visto, and the Line, may proceed.
This will not come as an unforeseen blow, for Hugh Crawfford, accompanying the Indians, informs the Surveyors of it first thing. "Sort of like Death,— you know it's out there ahead, tho' not when, so you'll ever be hoping for one more Day, at least.
"We'll be crossing Indian trails with some regularity,— these don't trouble the Mohawks in particular. But ahead of us now, there's a Track, running athwart the Visto, north and south, known as the Great Warrior Path. This is not merely an important road for them,— but indeed one of the major High-ways of all inland America. So must it also stand as a boundary line,— for when we come to it, we shall not be allow'd to cross it, and go on."
"It'll take us a quarter of an hour. We'll clean up ev'ry trace of our Passage,— what are they worried about, the running surface? their deerskin shoes? we'll re-surface it for them, we'll give 'em Moccasin Vouchers,—
"Mr. Mason, they treat this Trail as they would a River,— they settle both sides of it, so as to have it secure,— they need the unimpeded Flow. Cutting it with your Visto would be like putting an earthen Dam across a River."
"And how far from Ohio?" with a slight break upon the word.
"Some thirty, forty miles," Crawfford as kindly as he can, having himself a history of disappointments out here, again and again, "yet the Path is over Monongahela," silently adding, "Socko Stoombray," as he's heard the Western Spanish say,— one gets used to it. His is a face, however, difficult for Mason, or for many, to read much Sentiment in, so written upon is it, by so many years of hard Sunrises, Elements outside and in, left to rage as they might. "It's a fine road, I've had to use it now and then, if the wind and moon are right, you can fly along— Sometimes they chas'd me, sometimes it was me after them,— we've chased
these d——'d mountains through and through, canoeing for our lives
down these mean little rivers,— made some respectable Fortunes, lost 'em in the space of a rifle-shot, as many of us taken or destroy'd over the years as got back safe. Ups and downs steeper'n the Alleghenies, Gents,— I've been captur'd, I've escap'd. We've been friends and enemies. They owe me years out of my life, parts of me not working so good,— you'd have to ask them what they think I owe back.—But I know 'em,— not in any deep or magickal way,— rather as you may know those that you've shar'd matters of life and death with,— and although on paper it may look like only a few short steps from the Warpath to the River Ohio, I beg you both, be most careful,— for Distance is not the same here, nor is Time."
"At least they told us beforehand...?" Dixon supposes.
Watching an Indian slip back into the forest is like seeing a bird take wing,— each moves vertiginously into an Element Mason, all dead weight, cannot enter. The first time he saw it, it made him dizzy. The spot in the Brush where the Indian had vanish'd vibrated, as an eddying of no color at all. Contrariwise, watching an Indian emerge, is to see a meaningless Darkness eddy at length into a Face, and a Face, moreover, that Mason remembers.
He grows apprehensive and soon kickish. "I respect them, and their unhappy history. But they put me in a State of Anxiety unnatural," he complains to the Revd, "out of all Measure. Unto the Apparition of Phantoms.”
"How's that?"
"I see and even touch things that cannot possibly be there. Yet there they are."
"Can you give me examples?"
"There may lie a Problem, for I am closely sworn not to."
"Makes advising you difficult, of course."
"Yes, and some of them are Pips, too. Shame, really."
"Whilst you so amiably quiz with me," says the Revd, "Mr. Dixon seems quite content in their company."
"Who, Young Jollification? drinks with priests, roisters with Pygmies,— aye, I've seen that. What cares has he, as long as the Tobacco and Spirits hold out? And withal, throughout, from first Sip to empty Bottle, he is troubl'd by no least Inkling of Sin, nor question of Fear,— he is far too innocent for any of that. No,— 'tis I who am anxious before the advent of these Visitors how Strange, who belong so without separation, to this Country cryptick and perilous,...passing, tho' never close, as shadowy and serene as Deities of Forest or River.... So!" cries Mason, turning desperately to the Visitors, "- - You're Indians!"
"Mason, that may not be quite—
As Hugh Crawfford is translating,— they hope that's what he's doing,— the Mohawk Chiefs Hendricks, Daniel, and Peter, the Onondaga Chiefs Tanadoras, Sachehaandicks, and Tondeghho,— the Warriors Nicholas, Thomas, Abraham, Hanenhereyowagh, John, Sawat-tiss, Jemmy, and John Sturgeon,— the Women Soceena and Hanna,— all are examining Mason and Dixon, and the Instruments,— having earlier observ'd the Sector arriving in its pillow'd Waggon, mindfully borne by the five-shilling Hands, impressive in its assembl'd Size. Learning that 'tis us'd only late at Night, some, presently, are there each time to watch, as the Astronomers lie beneath the Snout, the Brass elongating into the Heavens, the great curv'd Blade, the Sweeps of Stars converging at the Eye, so easily harm'd even at play, hostage, like this, beneath the Instrument pois'd upon it—
The first time they see the Sector brought into the Meridian, the Indians explain, that for as long as anyone can remember, the Iroquois Nations as well, have observ'd Meridian Lines as Boundaries to separate them one from another.
"Not Rivers, nor Crest-Lines?" Capt. Zhang is amaz'd. "What did the Jesuits think of that?"
"We learn'd it of them."
"One Story," Hendricks adds. "Others believe 'twas not the Jesuits, but powerful Strangers, much earlier."
"Who?"
"The same," declares Zhang, "whose Interests we have continu'd to run across Evidence of,...who for the Term of their Absence are represented by Jesuits, Encyclopedists, and the Royal Society, who see to these particular Routings of Sha upon the Surface of the Planet by way of segments of Great or Lesser Circles."
"Shall we resign our Commissions? Is that what you're saying?"
"Then somebody else does the same thing," the Geomancer shrugs.
"Then tha'll go to work on them, for thy Commission is to stop it, not so? All thah' about Zarpazo was Snuff. He than' would hang, after all, his Dog first gives out that he is mad."
"Excuse me," Mason says, "I think that's 'He who would hang his Dog, first gives out that he is mad.''
"Why would anyone hang his Dog? No, 'tis he who wishes to hang, sends his Dog to run 'round acting peculiar, perhaps wearing Signs about its neck, or strangely costum'd, so that whenever its owner does hang, people can say, 'Yese see, 'twas Madness, for the Dog gave out he was mad.' "
"Yes that would all no doubt be true if that were how it goes, but 'tis not how it goes at all. It goes..."
And so on (records the Revd). This actually very interesting Discussion extended till well past Midnight, that Night. If I did lose full Consciousness now and then, 'twas less from their issueless Bickering, than from the Demands of the Day, as part of the Tribute we must pay, merely to inhabit it.
That night I dream'd,— I pray 'twas Dream,— that I flew, some fifty to an hundred feet above the Surface, down the Visto, straight West. First dream I had that ever smell'd of anything,— cut wood, sap, woodsmoke, cook-tent cooking, horses and stock,— I could see below the glow of the coal we cut from outcrops so shining black they must be the outer walls of Hell, almost like writing upon the long unscrolling of the land, useful
about the waggoners' Forge, a curiosity beneath Mr. McClean's Oven, and to Mr. Dixon, who knows his way 'round a bit of Coal, a quotidian delight. His brother George learn'd years ago how to make Coal yield a Vapor that burns with a blue flame,— and with a bit of ingenuity with kettles and reeds, and clay to seal the Joints, why it may even be done in the midst of this wilderness, as Mr. Dixon promptly demonstrated. And that is how I verify 'tis no Dream, but a form of Transport,— that unearthly blue glow in the otherwise lightless Desert night. The Indians come to look, but they never comment. They have seen it before, and they have never seen it before.
The Line makes itself felt,— thro' some Energy unknown, ever are we haunted by that Edge so precise, so near. In the Dark, one never knows. Of course I am seeking the Warrior Path, imagining myself an heroick Scout. We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,— sound, sky, vegetation,— may have announced it. Perhaps 'tis the very deep sub-audible Hum of its Traffic that we feel with an equally undiscover'd part of the Sensorium,— does it lie but over the next Ridge? the one after that? We have Mileage Estimates from Rangers and Runners, yet for as long as its Distance from the Post Mark'd West remains unmeasur'd, nor is yet recorded as Fact, may it remain, a-shimmer, among the few final Pages of its Life as Fiction.
Were the Visto to've cross'd the Warrior Path and simply proceeded West, then upon that Cross cut and beaten into the Wilderness, would have sprung into being not only the metaphysickal Encounter of Ancient Savagery with Modern Science, but withal a civic Entity, four Corners, each with its own distinguishable Aims. Sure as Polaris, the first structure to go up would be a Tavern,— the second, another Tavern. Setting up Businesses upon the approaches, for miles along each great Conduit, there would presently arrive waggon-smiths, stock auctioneers, gun-makers, feed and seed merchants, women who dance in uncommon Attire, Lanthorns that burn all night, pavements of strange metaling brought from afar, along with all the other heavy cargo that now streams in both directions, the Fleets of Conestoga Waggons, ceaseless as the
fabl'd Herds of Buffalo, further west,— sunlit canopies a-billow like choir-sung promises of Flight, their unspar'd Wheels rumbling into the soft dairy night-falls of shadows without edges, tho' black as city soot.
Festive Lanthorns, by contrast, shine thro' the Glass of the swifter passenger conveyances that go streaking by above the Fields, one after another, all hours of the day and night— Aloft, these carry their wheels with them, barely scuff'd by Roadway, to be attached whenever needed. Singing and Gaiety may be heard passing thro' the Airy Gulfs above. Newcomers to the Ley-borne Life are advis'd not to look up, lest, seiz'd by its proper Vertigo, they fall into the Sky.—For' t has happen'd more than once,— drovers and Army officers swear to it,— as if Gravity along the Visto, is become locally less important than Rapture.
One night, yet east of Laurel Hill, Mason asks, "Where is your Spirit Village?" The Indians all gesture, straight out the Line, West. "God dwells there? At the Horizon?" They nod.
"And where is yours?" asks Hendricks. Mason rather uncertainly indicates Up.
Dixon cocks a merry eye. "What's this,— only at the Zenith...? Not something a little more.. .all-encompassing?" waving an arm to illustrate.
Surveyors and Indians have been out looking at the Stars, discussing the possibility of Life upon other Worlds, whether and how much our Awareness of such Life might figure in our Awareness of God, God, then, vis-a-vis Gods, and other Topicks, of such interest to my Profession that I felt oblig'd to listen in.
"What puzzles us about Star-gazing," says Daniel, "is that you are ever attending them, and never they you."
"Have They attended you?" Mason unprepar'd to believe it.
"Many times. Never all at once, usually but one at a time,— yet, they do come to us."
"Sounds like Fishing," supposes Dixon.
The Indians like that. "Sky-fishing," says Hanenhereyowagh.
"Shouldn't someone explain about the Bait?" young Jemmy whispers, loud enough to receive a number of Looks from his Party, ranging from amus'd to annoy'd.
"Eeh," Dixon encourages him. "Tell me and I'll give thee the secrets of my Amazing Bread Lure, famous the length of the Wear and beyond, for bringing them in."
"You spoke of it first," Hendricks reminds the Lad.
" Tis the Safety of your Soul," says Jemmy. He has lately been out upon his Trial of Passage from child to adult, having found his Protector,— a Bear, who walk'd toward him on her back feet, with her Arm extended in the precise Six-Nations Gesture for Peace. Now, however perilous the Trails may grow, She can be summon'd in an Instant. "Yet I had to risk all,— to bring her in, I had to fasten all that I was, upon a Line I could not break,— and wait, sleepless, starving not only with my Body but with—
("Parsonickal interpolation!" shouts Uncle Lomax.
- my Spirit.' - - What, Lomax, may not a Mohawk youth possess a needful Spirit?
" 'Thank thee, Jemmy,' at any rate, Dixon now replied. 'My Bread Lure's a bit safer than thah', and here's how it's done,— ' Whereupon they withdrew out of my hearing, so that regretfully I quite miss'd the Information."
"Oh, Coz, what Stuff."
"I have witness'd this Bait in action, Madam. I saw Dixon bring in fish not even native to the Region, let alone the Creek. Fish never seen before in those parts, Salmon-Trout out of farm-ponds you'd think couldn't hide a Frog, Chesapeake Rock-Fish well over the Allegheny Ridge,— the rarely encounter'd Inland Tuna...?— all with that miraculous Compound of his. I have personally taken with it Sea-Bass of weight unknown, but that it requir'd two of us to carry one back to the Cook-Tent,— withal, Trout innumerable, even as, close by, other Anglers drows'd at their Rods, hoping at best to intercept some unwary Perch. Believe me, if I knew the Secrets, I should be producing this Receipt from a Mill, by the Hogshead, and wallowing in Revenue.")
"See that group of stars over there?" Daniel points to the Big Dipper.
"We call it the Great Bear," Mason instructs them.
"So do we." Betraying no surprise. "And that bent Line of Stars by it?"
"The Bear's Tail."
The Indians are merry for some Moments. "Bears in your country have long Tails.”
"That is a very long-tail'd Bear."
"Are you sure it's not something else?"
"Those Stars you call a 'Tail', are the Hunters who come after the Bear. Where are your Hunters?"
Mason indicates Bootes, and the Hunting Dogs. "So styl'd officially, tho' in practice we call 'em the Hounds."
Mason remembers from his youth a Market-Night, all of them in the bed of the Waggon, lumbering home late from Stroud. The Sun went down, and the Stars came out, and Charlie went on about the Stars. "The school-Master calls it Ursa Major, The Bigger of two Bears, and that's the Little one, there."
"My Father call'd it 'the Baker's Peel,' " his father told him.
"Mine always said 'Charles's Wain,' " recall'd his mother. "Charles was the Name of a great king, over in France."
"Hurrah!" cried Hester, ' - here we all are, riding in Charles's Wain!" and it was one of the few times he could remember his Father laughing too.
Mason look'd up at his Parents' Faces, turn'd aside, under a great seeded Sky without a moon, under the unthinkable leagues of their Isolation. He would remember them all together like that, as if they liv'd at the edge of some great lighted Sky-Structure, with numberless Lanthorns hung and Shadows falling ev'rywhere, and pathways in, upon which once having ventur'd, he might account his life penetrated, and the rest of it claim'd.
He thought he knew ev'ry step he had taken, between then and today, yet can still not see, tho' the dotting of ev'ry last i in it be known, how he has come to the present Moment, alone in a wilderness surrounded by men who may desire him dead, his Kindred the whole Ocean away, with Dixon his only sure Ally. "Are we in danger?" he sees little point in not asking.
"Oh, sure and ask the Mohawk," cries Daniel, "— if the Topick be Danger, he knows all,— and let's not omit Violence, Terror, Weaponry, am I leaving anything out?"
"Sorry...I'm sorry," Mason mumbles.
Daniel sniffs and shakes his head. "Scalp but one White man, ev'ry-one starts assuming things. Yes, of course you are in Danger. Your Heart beats? You live here?" gesturing all 'round. "Danger in ev'ry moment.”
"May I ask about Vegetables, at least? Esculents notable for their Size,— that won't offend anyone?"
"I am not one of your Vegetable-wise Mohawks. You need to talk with Nicholas." All the way back to the Tents, Mason catches Daniel casting him glances, no longer of Curiosity, but of Judgment render'd.
In Camp, they find Nicholas conducting a Discussion upon the very Topick. He is amiable in responding to Mason's Inquiries, even when these carry an anxious under-surge. "Far, far to the North and West," Hugh Crawfford translates, "lies a Valley, not big, not small.. .a place of Magick. Smoke comes out of the Mountains...the Earth rumbles... Springs of Fire run ev'rywhere."
"Volcanickal Activity," Mason helpfully.
"In this Valley, plants,— Vegetables,— grow big,— very big. Big Corn. Each Kernel's more than a Man can lift. Big Turnip. Six-man crew to dig out but one. Big Squash. Big enough for many families to eat their way into, and then live inside all the Winter. Very big, BIG,— Hemp-Plant." The Mohawk is upon his feet, pretending to look in Astonishment at something nearly straight overhead.
Dixon, as if suddenly waking, inquires, "Well how big's that, Nicholas...?
"Late in the Season, to climb to the top of a Female Plant is a Journey of many Days, Red Coat."
They beam mischievously at one another, a Look that Mason in his Excitement does not pick up, babbling, "Because of the Volcanick Soil, obviously. A Marvel! Crawfford, ask him about Carrots."
"Big," the Indian replies directly, smiling and nodding. Mason notices that ev'ryone is nodding.
"Hemp-Plant," Dixon reminds Nicholas.
Many people, he explains, even from far away, make the Journey and Ascent. In earlier times, they climb'd to a Limb wide enough not to roll off of, and camp'd there overnight. But 'twas a fix'd season, and a growing Demand,— soon the great Limbs grew crowded. Some Travelers were not careful with their campfires, starting larger fires soon put out, tho' not before producing lots of Smoak. Big smoak. Depending upon the Winds, often climbers were delay'd for days.
The first long-houses began to appear upon the sturdier Branches, each season's Pilgrims sleeping in them overnight, then traveling on upward, others remaining to wait for them, smoking meanwhile Resin broken from some Bud nearby, and wrapp'd in a piece of Leaf, the whole being twisted into a great Cigar. Soon sheds were added to the Limb-side Inns, serving as Depots for the Jobbers who buy direct from the Bud. Bands of Renega-does arrive to attack and rob the Enterprizers, who accordingly must band together in arm'd Convoy. Yet desperate men will assault even these vertical Caravans. Tis a lively time out there upon the Stalks.
"This Valley,— how far away is it?" Dixon with a dark breathlessness, as if, upon the right answer, he will immediately rush off into the night.
Gesturing toward gentle Alioth, "Too far. You would not go, Red Coat."
"Perhaps I might."
Nicholas is laughing now. " 'Perhaps' no need to." Patiently, he tells the story of the Giant Hemp-Plant again, making his Voice loud on words such as Jobber, and Resin.
Mason gets a Glimmer. "He's trying to sell us something."
Frantic now, the Mohawk is making wild smoking gestures, puffing imaginary Smoak right in their Faces. "Smoak?" says Dixon. "Thee mean, Smoak? 0 sublime Succedaneum!"
"He thinks he's back at the Cape," Mason's eyes cast skyward. "Where he grew so abstracted that I had to keep reminding him of the date of the Transit, aye, even upon the Day itself. How he attended the Clock and Telescope as closely as he did, remains a Mystery."
"Dagga hath many Mysteries," Dixon replies.
One being, that talking about things, while not exactly causing them to happen, does cause something,— which is almost the same, tho' not quite. Unless it is possible to smoke a Potatoe. That is, the first of the Giant Vegetables does not seem all that large,— remarkable at some Fair in the Country perhaps, but hardly the Faith-challenging Specimens that lie yet a Ridge-line or two away, further West, where they are soon to be found ever larger, abandoning the Incremental, bringing into question the very Creation....
"Ah don't see it," Dixon apologetick. "There'll always be a few very large Specimens of anything tha like—”
"This is Acre upon Acre, and cannot be God's Work."
West of Cheat, they discover Indian Corn growing higher than a Weather-cock upon a Barn. What they take for a natural Hill, proves but the Pedestal for a gigantick Squash-Vine thicker than an ancient Tree-trunk, whose Flowers they can jump into in the mornings and bathe in, sometimes never touching the Bottom. Single Tomatoes tower high as Churches and shiny enough to see yourself in, warp'd spherickal, red as Blood, with the whole great sweep of Forest and River and Visto curving away behind. And the Smell, apotheckarial, oestral, musk-heavy,— one must bring along a Bladder fill'd with fresh Air, and now and then inhale from it, if one does not wish to swoon clean away, in these Gardens Titanick.
"Did ye hear someone going Fee Fie Fo Fum?" Mason frowns.
"And yet.. .might these not be the products of Human Art...?"
"Folly. No philosopher, however ingenious, not Mr. Franklin himself,— look at it, for Heaven's sake! You can't see the top! Like some damn'd Palm Oasis here!"
"My guess is it's the top of a Carrot," replies Dixon, "tho' of some Size, of course,— yet let us further imagine, that where there is a vegetable patch, there must be someone,— some thing,— tending it. I suggest we— "
"Too late."
"You're welcome, Sirs, tho' you're not suppos'd to be here." 'Tis a group of Farmers despite whose middling Age and Height, Proximity to any of the Plants in their Care, gives the look of serious Elves. "Rifle's back at the Barn, so I can't kill ye. Yet you're Brits by the look of ye, so we cannot trust yese neither."
"Why keep it a Secret? Why not rather notify the Pennsylvania Gazette?"
"We but look after these, for Others who are absent, pending their Return, in the meantime being allow'd the free use of all we may grow." They are invited to follow.
The Seeds are stor'd in Sheds especially built for them, each able to shelter one, at most two, for the Winter. In the Spring, planting but a few of them is a communal Task, easily comparable to a Barn-Raising. Last Year's Potatoe, lying in the giant Root-cellar dug beneath the nearer Pas-
ture, is assaulted by Adze and Hatchet, and taken by handcarts to the Kitchen to be boil'd, bak'd, or fried in as many ways as there are Wives on hand with personal Receipts. "Nothing!" cries the Head Gardener. "Wait'll yese see the Beet!"
The Beet is of a Circumference requiring more than one Entry-way. All who pass much time going in and out, whether for reasons of Residence, or Investigation, or indeed Nutrition, eventually acquire a deep red-indigo Stain that nothing can wash away.
"Like Geordie Pitmen, tho' more colorful," it seems to Dixon. "And which is less reasonable, all 'round,— ever to place thy Life's Wagers upon a large tho' finite Vegetable upon the Earth, or a like-siz'd Vein of Coal beneath it? The Beet, at least, yese can see...?"
"Yet, does it live," declares their Guide.
"You don't mean,— " Mason markedly less eager to have a look inside now.
"We are as Garden Pests, to It. It suffers us. We being unworthy of Its full Attention."
"It.. .understands what we say?" Mason's eyes fallen into an Alternating Squint, with one right-left-right Cycle taking about a Second.
"There are schools of Thought, as to that. Another Lively Question is, Does it remember the Days, when we were bigger than Beets, yes, by about the same Proportion, 'd you notice, that Beets are now bigger than us? Now that the Tables are turn'd, do, do they harbor Grudges? Do they have a concept of Revenge, perhaps for insults we never intended?"
6.57 68
By this time, they're making a mile or two per day. On the seventh of August, they cross Braddock's Road at 189 miles and 69 Chains. Thirty-two Chains further on, they cross the Road a second Time. The next Day, a Mile and 35 Chains beyond that, they cross it a Third Time.
"I'm not content with this, Dixon, not at all."
Three agents for Philadelphia land-speculating Interests are said to be out here this summer, scouting real estate,— Harris, Wallace, and Friggs. The Metropolitan cabal back there, 'tis said, goes upon the hope of the next Purchase of the Indians, of as much trans-Alleghenian Land as possible. The settlers having been serv'd Eviction Notices last year by Capt. Mackay and the Highland Forty-second, and withal Surveying itself about to be proclaim'd a Crime,— fifty Pounds' fine and three months in Jail,— these Gentlemen suppose they may take over the Rights out here for virtually nothing.
"Three months for Surveying!" Mason marvels. "And if someone's been doing it all his Life? A-and think of the Money! Is that fifty Pounds per Act of surveying? Per Diem, perhaps?"
"Thankee, Friend Mason."
Before crossing the Big Yochio Geni, in the evening after Mess, the Surveyors gather all who've follow'd the Party undaunted this far.
"Now like Prospero must I conjure you all away, for from here to the Warpath, we'll have no time for gentle recreations, but must stand Watch and Watch for as far west as we may.”
"Whah',— no musicians? The Indians love our Musick."
"The Indians will need their Ears for other Tasks."
"We must go back to that Fort, then."
"We'll wait for them at Cumberland."
"A long way, sister. So far we've enjoy'd an Escort of Mohawk fighters, best in the Land. Who'll be protecting us on the way back?"
"Might get lucky and hook up with a band of Axmen headed home?"
"They'll be long gone. Absorb'd like Hail-Stones into the Earth."
"Well I'm not languishing by the Banks of Potowmack, I'm for someplace with Lamps outdoors, and purses full of idle Specie. Anybody for Williamsburg?"
They arrange to keep the Sector at the House of Mr. Spears, where Brad-dock's Road meets the Bank of the Yochio, and go in search of the Ferryman, Mr. Ice. "They expect a Ferryman to be silent," announces he, his eyes a-glimmer. Taking his Coat and draping it over his head so as to hood his face, "Well. Welcome aboard. Smoking Lamp's lit on this Craft." On shore his brother-in-law is letting out the line, allowing them to be taken by the Stream, as his Nephew upon the further side waits to begin hauling them in. Exactly at the middle of the River, for a moment, no one can see either Father or Son. To appearance, the passengers stand upon a raft in a boundless body of water.
"Now here is what they did to me, and mine,"— and the last Ice proceeds to tell ev'ry detail of the Massacre that took his family, in the dread days of Braddock's defeat. Time, whilst he speaks, is abolish'd. The mist from the River halts in its Ascent, the Frogs pause between Croaks, and the peepers in mid-peep. The great black cobbles of the River-bed stir and knock no longer. The Dead are being summon'd. The Ferryman's Grief is immune to Time,— as if in Exchange for a sacrifice of earthly Freedom, to the Flow of this particular Stream.
"You think this is some kind of Penance? Hey, I enjoy this. Such looks on Passengers' Faces, when they hear how the Flesh and Bones of those I lov'd were insulted! They are us'd to tales of Frederick's rank'd Automata, executing perfect manoeuvres upon the unending German Plain,— down here in the American Woods, that same War proceeded
silently, in persistent Shade, one swift animal Death at a time.. .no Treaty can end it, and when all are dead, Ghosts will go on contending. 'Twas the perfect War. No mercy, no restraint, pure joy in killing. It cannot be let go so easily."
The Youghiogheny, cov'd and willow'd and Sycamor'd, has no Fish in it that Mason has been able to learn of. "Yah, you'll hear that," says Ice,— "Yet ev'ryone up and down this River knows of the great School of Ghost-fish that inhabit it, pale green, seldom seen, two sets of Fins each side and a Tail like a Dragon's. They travel unmolested where they will, secure in the belief that no Angler in his right mind would dare attempt to catch any of them. And that, Sir, could be where you come in."
Dixon is trying to nudge Mason alert, but owing to the Darkness, not always connecting. Mason is already simpering like a Milk-maid. "Who, Sir? I am but a Country coarse-fisher, after the odd Chub or Roach, whatever the Mills haven't kill'd or chas'd off, actually, is usually what I settle for, and goodness, why this Fish of yours sounds far too much for my light-rod skills, being so very, as ye might say, big,—
"Mason," Dixon, not often a Mutterer, mutters.
"Up to five, some say six foot long," Ice avows, "big as a man or Woman, pale as a floating Corpse,...yet these do live...tho' few have dar'd, some of us out here have taken Ghosters,— I could show you more than one, stuft and mounted,— no question of eating them, of course...indeed, no question trying to hang one over the Hearth, given the Wives who object to looking at them for long.—Or at all.
"The Yochio as it comes down off the Mountains of Virginia descends very rapidly, very dangerously. You might not want, or even be able, to wade in it. Some think it's the Fall, the very Speed of the Flow, that creates those Ghosters. No one knows. Their entire lives are engulf'd unceasingly in change. They never come to rest. They never know an Instant of Tranquillity. One wonders, what must their idea of Death be," Ice's feign'd Smile nearly unendurable, "how are they going to deal with eternal Rest? unless this World be already their Purgatory, and they no longer classifiable as living Fish."
"And what of those who seek them?"
"Ghosters are accorded a respect comparable to that shewn the Dead.... If we get out upon this River tonight," says Mr. Ice, "perhaps
we'll see a few. They like it just after the rain. In the sun-light, they show up against the black rocks of the River-Bed. In the Dark, they glow some,— for one another, they do. Us,— they pay no mind. In a way, that could prove an advantage...to an Angler bold enough."
"Pray you," Mason's hands upon his Bosom.
Mr. Ice abruptly turning to Dixon, "Forgive me, Sir, if I stare. Yours is the first Red Coat to be seen in these parts since Braddock's great Tragedy,— the only ones out here with Opportunity to wear one, being the Indians who from the Corpses of English soldiers, took them. Even to these Savages, even intoxicated, 'tis too much shame, ever to put a Red Coat on."
"Yet I find it a means, when in the Forest, of not being innocently mistaken for an Elk...?"
"Nor should any mistake me for a tearful fool," advises Immanuel Ice, "merely upon observing how I must battle against a daily Sadness. The Graves of my Family are in back of the Cabin, up that Meadow, near the line of Cedars...! visit ev'ry Day,— yet, Grief too Solitary breeds madness. At my Work I meet a good many of the Publick, who travel in these parts, who will sometimes, like you, let me bend their Ears with my particular Woes. It keeps away the Madness. Hey? You think it's over out here, Redcoat? It's not over. The Fall of Quebec was not the end, nor Bouquet's Success at Bushy Run, nor the relief of Fort Pitt,— for there is ever a drop in the cup left, another Shot to be fir'd, another life to be taken off cruelly, in unmediated Hate, ev'ry day in this Forest Life, somewhere. The last Dead in this have not yet been born. Young Horst will now pass among ye with a Raccoon Hat, the Contribution is sixpence. Thanks to Audiences like you, this place is proving to be an Elves' Treasury."
"But,— this is horrible," protests Mason, " - Mr. Ice, how can you use your private Tragedy for the mere accumulation of sixpences?"
"How sinful is that?" Mr. Ice wishes to know. "Were any of you out here then? Not since Westphalia, such Evil. Without Restitution, what's the Point? Here's my opportunity to redeem some of that terrible time, to convert enemy Rifle-Balls to Gold. How can any Person of Sense object to that? Meanwhile, there all of you are, accosting Strangers in Taverns, spilling forth your Sorrows, Gratis. One day, if it be his Will, God will
seize and shake you like wayward daughters, and you will thenceforward give nothing away for free."
Between Laurel Hill and Cheat, the Account-book shows at least in Hands on the pay-list, not including the Surveyors, various McCleans, and those forever omitted from the official Books. Once over Laurel Hill, they are in the Country of the Old Forts,— all across these hilltops are the Ruins, ancient when the Indians first arrived. Broken Walls, fallen nearly to Plan Views of themselves, act as Flues that the Wind must find its way past, in a long Moan with a Rise at the end of it, as if posing a Question. The Fort at Redstone lies upon the site of one. The Creek below is crowded with Rocks with lines of Glyphs inscrib'd on them. Nobody can read them, but all believe they are Grave Markers.
"The old stories say the Forts were built and later abandon'd by a Nation of Giants, who possess'd a magick more powerful even than that of the English or the French."
"Fortifications?" says Dixon. "Against what?"
The Indians laugh. "Each other, maybe."
"Now and then you'll find these Gigantick Bones," says Hugh Crawf-ford.
"Human?" inquires Mason.
"Sure seem to be. Been there a long time."
Ev'ryone out here knows of the Old Forts. When it becomes very
Dark, and Thunder-Gusts come sailing in over the Ridge-line, fanciful
Uncles tell Nieces and Nephews that the Giant People are back, loud as
ever, seeking to reclaim their Country. Redeem it. Some bite at this,
some do not. Within the broken Perimeters lie Monoliths that once stood
on end,— recumbent, the Indians believe, " - they are dead or sleep
ing,— upright, they live,— likenesses neither of Gods, nor of men,— but of Guardians "
"Guardians,— of...?"
"Helpers. They live. They have Powers."
"In England, you see," Mason feels impell'd to instruct the Indians, "They mark the positions of Sun, Moon, some say Planets, thro' the Year.... They are tall, like Men, for the same reason our Sector is Tall,— in order to mark more closely these movements in the Sky."
"Small Differences mean much to you. There is Power in these?”
"The finer the Scale we work at, the more Power may we dispose. The Lancaster County Rifle is precise at long range, because of microscop-ick refinements in the Finish, the Rifling, the ease with which it may be held and aim'd. They who control the Microscopick, control the World."
"Listen to me, Defecates-with-Pigeons. Long before any of you came here, we dream'd of you. All the people, even Nations far to the South and the West, dreamt you before ever we saw you,— we believ'd that you came from some other World, or the Sky. You had Powers and we respected them. Yet you never dream'd of us, and when at last you saw us, wish'd only to destroy us. Then the killing started,— some of you, some of us,— but not nearly as many as we'd been expecting. You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip'd us away, and for less. Instead, you sold us your Powers,— your Rifles,— as if encouraging us to shoot at you,— and so we did, tho' not hitting as many of you, as you were expecting. Now you begin to believe that we have come from elsewhere, possessing Powers you do not— Those of us who knew how, have fled into Refuge in your Dreams, at last. Tho' we now pursue real lives no different at their Hearts from yours, we are also your Dreams."
As they have come West, the Visto has grown sensibly wider, and the Hands have tended more and more to be in it as little as they may, in the Day-time, as to sleep up and down its Center-Line at Night.
The Axmen begin to depart unannounc'd,— as the Army might say, desert. Cheat is the Rubicon, Monongahela is the Styx. At last there are the Indians, and fifteen Axmen newly hired, and Tom Hynes ("Somebody has to cook..."). And after the first terrible Poker invisible up the Arse, after allowing themselves a moment to see if they wish to begin screaming and flinging themselves about, Mason and Dixon notice the Indians, politely enough, yet unarguably, watching them, to see how they will react.
Hendricks seems fascinated. "What do they believe waits them, on the other side of the River, that sends them away so fast?"
"They said Shawanese, Delawares, Mingoes,— someone said, a tribe whose Name they've never heard."
"A Tribe with no name?" He translates quickly for his Companions, as if trying to finish before being careen'd by the gathering Sea of Mirth.
"We know that Tribe,— we are afraid of them, too, the Tribe with no Name." The Indians sit and smoke, continuing to laugh for what, to Europeans, might seem a length of time far out of proportion to the Jest. The Day passes, the night deepens, the Absence of the Axmen is felt at Ear-drums and Elbow-joints, as in the sleeplessness attending Watch and Watch, as the Days of their Westering, even the most obtuse of the Company can see, are rapidly decremented, as in a game of Darts, to Zero, waiting moment upon moment the last fatal Double.
69
One day, yet east of Cheat, a light Snow descending but scarce begun to stick, several of the Party observe a Girl chasing a Chicken across the Visto, when an odd thing happens,— smack at the very Center, directly upon the Line, the Chicken stops, turns about till its head points West and Tail East, and thenceforward remains perfectly still, seemingly fallen into a Trance. The Girl, after Guarantees from both Surveyors of the Chicken's Safety, moves on to other chores, whilst the day wheels over and down into Dusk, and ev'ryone in the Crew comes by to have a look at the immobile Fowl, for as long as their Obligations may allow.
' 'Tis well known," various ancient Pennsylvanians and Marylanders assure the Surveyors, "that placing a Chicken 'pon a Straight Line'll send it nodding faster than ever a head put under a wing." The Girl, returning to fetch her Hen, agrees briskly. "Chicken on a Line? Thought ev'rybody knew that."
Dixon's idea of Thrift is offended. "Well that's an attractive nuisance, isn't it? what's to keep them all from wandering in at any moment...? ev'ry Clucker clear to Ohio and back to Cheapeake,— lining up, going into a Daze, presently throngin' the Visto? We could have a Chickens' Black Hole of Calcutta, here,— except that, being in America, they'd all have to be remov'd gently, one by one, wasting Days, lest any fowl-keeper whose stock has suffer'd even a Feather's molestation call down, among these Lawyer-craz'd People, a Vengeful Pursuit after Reimbursement, upon a Biblical scale, that may beggar our Mission.”
Mason groans, "Shall wise Doctors one day write History's assessment of the Good resulting from this Line, vis-a-vis the not-so-good? I wonder which List will be longer."
"Hark! Hark! You wonder? That's all?" One of the Enigmata of the Invisible World, is how a Voice unlocaliz'd may yet act powerfully as a moral Center. 'Tis the Duck speaking, naturally,— or, rather, artificially. "What about 'care'? Don't you care?"
"This Visto.. .is a result of what we have chosen, in our Lives, to work at," Dixon bewilder'd that the Topick is even coming up, " - unlike some mechanickal water-fowl, we have to, what on our planet is styl'd, 'work,'...?"
"Running Lines is what surveyors do" explains Mason.
"Thankee, Mason," says Dixon. "And one of the few things Star-gazing's good for, is finding out where you are, exactly, upon the Surface of the Earth. Put huz two together with enough Axmen, you have a sort of Visto-Engine. Two Clients wish'd to have a Visto for one of their Boundaries. Here we are. What other reason should we be together for?"
"Thankee, Dixon," says Mason.
Later that night, and, as he hopes, out of the Duck's Hearing, Mason says, "I've been thinking about that Chicken today."
"Aye, Ah knoah how lonely it gets out here, tho' aren't they said to be moody...?"
"Only a moment, dear Colleague, pray you.—Suppose Right Lines cause Narcolepsy in all Fowl, including,—
"— the Duck," Dixon exclaims. "Why aye! As in the Chinaman's Refrain, there's all thah' Bad Energy, flowing there night and Day,— bad for us, anyhow. But for the Duck? Who knows? Mightn't it, rather, be nourishing her? helping to increase her Powers,— even...uncommonly so?"
"Exactly. 'Twould explain her relentless Presence near it, .. .humm... yes, the trick,— should we wish to play it,— would be to see to her perfect location upon the Line,— symmetrickally bisected."
"Facing East, or West?"
"What matter? she can turn upon a farthing however fast she goes."
"Pond-Larvae," offers Armand, feeling like a Traitor, "- - she still fancies them....”
"A Decoy. We need a painted Wood representation of a Duck."
"Tom Hynes is the very man, Sir, hand him a Pine Log and he'll carve ye a Quacker ye can't tell from real even close enough to scare it away."
"It must look like an Automatick Duck, not a natural one."
Tom does a better job on the Decoy, than he knows. Soon the Duck is spending hours, still'd, companionably close to the expressionless Object. One day, in an Access, she throws herself upon it, going to beak-bite its Neck, and of course the Truth comes out. "Wood." For a moment it seems she will sigh, ascend, accelerate once more, back into her Realm of Velocity and Spleen. Instead, "Well, it's a beginning," she says. "It floats like a Duck,— it fools other Ducks, who are quite sophisticated in these matters, into believing it a Duck. It's a Basis. Complexity of Character might develop, in time—" Quiet, good-looking, ever there to drop in on after a long Tour of Flying,— and where there's one withal, why, there's more of the same.. .Famine to Feast! Who needs bright Conversation?
".. .and that's why, around those foothills, some nights when the Wind is blowing backwards and the Moon's just gone behind the Clouds, you can hear the Hum of her going by, due West, due East, and that forlorn come-back call, and then folks'll say, ' 'Tis the Frenchman's Duck, out cruising the Line.''
"Why doesn't somebody set her free," the children of settlers up and down the Line want to know. "Go in, get her, bring her out?"
"Not so easy. Anybody finds a chance to try it, she disappears. She's like a Ghost who haunts a house, unable to depart."
"A Ghost usually has unfinish'd Business. What, think you, detains the Duck?"
"A simple, immoderate Desire for the Orthogonal," in the Opinion of Professor Voam, "which cannot allow her even the thought of life away from that much Straightness, the Leagues of perfect straightness, perfect alignment with Earth's Spin,— flying back and forth, East and West, forever, the buffeting of the Magnetick currents, the ebb and flow of Nations over the Land-Surface, the Pulse and Breath of the solid Planet, the Dance with the Moon, the entire great Massive Progress 'round and 'round the Sun...."
For a while after becoming a Resident of the Visto, the Duck accosts Travelers for Miles up and down the Line, ever seeking Armand. For a
chance at Revenge, it is worth slowing into Visibility,— besides giving
her an opportunity to chat. "Here,"— producing from some interior
Recess a sheaf of Notices in print, clipp'd from various newspapers and
Street-bills,— "here,— voilà, with the Flauteur, and the Tambourine-
Player? in the Center, 'tis moi, tnoi Listen to what Voltaire wrote
about me, to the Count and Countess d'Argental,— '...sans la voix de la Le More et le Canard de Vaucanson, vous n'auriez rien que fit ressouvenir de la gloire de la France,' all right? Le More, who's that? some Soprano. Fine, I'm a big-hearted sort of Fille, the Glory of France certainly knows how to share a Stage. You think it was easy ev'ry night with those two Musicians? Listening again and again to that Ordure? You'd think now and then a little Besozzi, at least,— any Besozzi would've done. Relief? forget it, not in the Rooms we work'd. Took all my Stage Discipline not to start quacking along with those grand high C's. One admires the man, genius Engineer, but his taste, musickally speaking, runs from None to Doubtful.
"The true humiliation came at the end of each Exhibition, when Vaucanson actually open'd me up, and show'd to anyone who wish'd to stare, any Bas-mondain, the intricate Web within of Wheels, levers, and wires, unto the last tiny piece of Linkage, nay, the very falling Plummet that gave me Life,— nowadays, itself 'morphos'd, so as to fall without end.... They pointed, titter'd, sketch'd exquisitely in the air,— Indignity absolute. He would never allow anyone the least suspicion that I might after all be real. Inside me lay Truth Mechanickal,— outside was but clever impersonation. I was that much his Creature, that he own'd the right to deny my Soul.
"His undoing was in modifying my Design, hoping to produce Venus from a Machine, as you might say. My submission was not yet complete enough. In the years before the late War, as Publick tastes veer'd in quite another Direction and we were left becalm'd, each in the Company of few but the other, his demands grew less and less those of a Man of Science. He wish'd, rather, to hear Sounds of affection and contentment, in his presence. He got nothing more abandon'd than Wing Caresses, perhaps a Beak-Bite.. .a limited Repertoire, but all the same, one felt.. .compro-mis'd. He wish'd to control utterly, not an Automaton, but a creature capable of Love, not only for Drakes and Ducklings, but for himself. The
approach of his middle years, the winds blowing as from an untravel'd North..."
'Tis on their way back East for the last time, that the Duck learns to hold perfectly still in the Air, at any altitude, and remain there whilst the earth Spins beneath her. She understands that she may now shift north or south, to any Latitude she likes, without being restricted any more to the Line and its Visto. But she is curious about where else the Parallel goes. She ascends, one evening after Mess, and as the Party, with their Tents, all go rolling away into the Shadow, they in their Turn watch her, pois'd above the last lit Meridian, recede over the Horizon and vanish. Next morning here she comes roaring in at well over seven hundred miles per hour, coasting to a smooth stop and settling upon the Cook-tent's Peak with not a Feather out of place. "Interesting Planet," is her comment. "I have been o'er the Foot of the Italian Boot, close by Bukhara and Samarkand,— "I can't wait to do the Equator. Ye have tapp'd into but five degrees of three hundred sixty, twenty minutes of a Day it would cause you Astonishment and Distress to learn of your minor tho' morally problematick part in."
"A Global Scheme! Ah knew it!" Dixon beginning to scream, "what'd Ah tell thee?"
"Get a grip on yerrself, man," mutters Mason, "what happen'd to 'We're men of Science'?"
"And Men of Science," cries Dixon, "may be but the simple Tools of others, with no more idea of what they are about, than a Hammer knows of a House."
("Ah," sighs Euphrenia, "all too true. The Life of an Automaton cannot, however conceiv'd, strike anyone as enviable."
"Excuse us, Aunt," ventures DePugh, "but did we understand you to say,- "
"Don't get her started!" Brae hisses.
"Have you, Aunt," Ethelmer fiendishly pretending Interest, "really shar'd the Life of— "
"Shar'd! Why, in my own Student Days, in far-off Paris, France, I was oblig'd to keep Starvation off my Sill, by pretending to be an Automaton Oboe player. My Manager, Signore Drivelli (actually, under the Statutes of the Two Sicilies, we were man and wife), not only charg'd Admission,
but also took bets on the side as to how long I could play between breaths."
"Zabby," pleads Mr. LeSpark, "speak with her about this sometime, could you please, it being your Family?"
"What was your best Time?" asks Ethelmer.
"Never went longer than twenty minutes or so, but I could've easily tootl'd on all night, the secret being to sneak Charges of Air in thro' your Nose, using the cheeks as a Plenum, for Storage, as 'tis in the Bag-Pipes,— The Musick written for Oboe is notoriously lacking in places to breathe. The Notes just keep coming, sixteen or thirty-two of 'em ev'ry time you tap your foot, not to mention the embellishments you're expected to put in yourself, for no extra Fee of course,— the principal Reason so many of us go insane being, not from forcing air into a small mouthpiece, but in all the sneakery and diversion of Attention requir'd to keep blowing,— in India they understand how important the breath is,— being indeed the Soul in different form,— and how dangerous it is to meddle unnaturally with the rhythms proper to it....")
As Dixon becomes possess'd by the Horizon, Hugh Crawfford is seen to walk to and fro shaking his head, presently muttering softly. Mason corners him behind a Waggon. "Out with it, Sir,— things are too precarious here for you to be concealing your opinions from me."
"Not concealing. Withholding, maybe,— " Mason, losing his composure, lunges for and attempts to strangle the Guide. They slip and stagger in the newly fallen Leaves. "Very well,— Mason! off, off, attend me, this is a Mountain Dulcimer, that I put together by Hand once, when there wasn't much else to do,— " and in a wild Note-scape, almost minor, almost Celtick, commences an uncommonly amazing Hammering and Plucking. When Mason appears soothed enough, "Now, I've seen Mr. Dixon's Ailment before,— yes,— with trappers, with traders,
With rangers and strangers, the Frenchies out there call it 'Rap-ture de West,' Brother, Sooner or later, It's go-ing, to take ye,
Away to the sunset, Along with the rest,
So 'tis hey, ye Dirt-Farmers, I'm gone, for the Prairies, And over, the Mountains, and Down to the Sea, if I Get back some Day, tho' the World shine as Morning, yet Ever will sunsets be Beck'ning to me—
But out under the Moon, Chestnut Ridge and Cheat behind them, and Monongahela to cross, into an Overture of meadow to the Horizon, lowlands become to them a dream whilst under a Spell, the way it gives back the Light, the way it withholds its Shadows,— who might not come to believe in an Eternal West? In a Momentum that bears all away? "Men are remov'd by it, and women, from where they were,— as if surrender'd to a great current of Westering. You will hear of gold cities, marble cities, men that fly, women that fight, fantastickal creatures never dream'd in Europe,— something always to take and draw you that way," Mr. Craw-fford puffing meanwhile upon an Indian Pipe, whose Bowl, finely carv'd of soft stone, by a Quebec Frenchman he had dealings with years ago, depicts a female head of Classical beauty, her Locks spilling beyond obsessiveness, all blacken'd with fire and grease, smok'd out of for all those years, having held a thousand Stems, from Reeds stirr'd by the Mists of Niagara, to Cane at the mouth of the Mississippi, "— you recall to me myself, in my first days out here, up all night, going West by way of the Stars. It's said some have a gift for it, like dowsing, and can run true bearings indefinitely under the most obscur'd of Skies. Many of Colonel Byrd's Companions running the Line 'twixt Virginia and Carolina possess'd the gift,— when the Party split, with half going 'round the Great Dismal and half right across, becoming detain'd in that Cypress Purgatory for weeks, 'twas the Westering Certainty that got 'em thro' safe.... I've even managed to keep my Latitude for the odd few seconds, so I take an amateur's Interest, and thus far, by my estimate, you are hardly the width of a pipestem out. As to what draws Mr. Dixon,— I
don't mean to present it lightly. We say the Westering's 'got' him. And I also tell you this so you'll know that when"— here Mason draws a sharp breath,— "something requires an unpremeditated cessation to the Line, well,— Mr. Dixon...may not be inclin'd to stop."
"He wouldn't take a chance with his— " but the Guide has put a hand upon Mason's arm, motioning with his head as Dixon comes into view,— he has been wandering among the tents and Waggons, looking troubled, very tall and out of scale in the uncertain dinner-time light. By the time he's out of earshot again, it has occurr'd to Mason, "You said what? an unpremeditated,—
"Cessation."
"Is there something else I should know?"
There is, nor does it take long in coming. Mortality at last touches the Expedition. William Baker and John Carpenter are kill'd by the Fall of a single Tree, on September 17th, a Thursday. 'Tis possible they'd sign'd up together, and work'd together,— their names are enter'd together in Mr. McClean's records. The next week, Carpenter's is enter'd by mistake, to be follow'd by a trailing Line over to a row of Zeros, for Days work'd in the Week. Mo must have forgot,— so may the Book-keeper's Page be haunted,— a Ghost-Entry, John Carpenter's Soul lingering,— William Baker's, to Appearance, having mov'd on.
"This is a Disaster," Mason curl'd as a dying Leaf, dispos'd to give it all up. "You agree, don't you, Jeremiah, you know it doesn't happen, it never happens, that two are kill'd in the fall of a single Tree?"
"Their People have them,— they'll be safe?" too vex'd in Reassuring himself, to see Mason's Point.
"You were the one looking for a Sign, weren't you, well there's your miserable Sign, why aren't you reading it."
" 'Twas a tall old Chestnut, they set their Wedges wrong, and then it fell where they hadn't guess'd it would. What else, pray?"
"Damn'd right, pray," snaps Mason, " - somebody'd better, around here."
They sit in the Tent, Coffee growing cold, Mason waiting for the Sector to arrive, Dixon waiting for Mason to burst forth with "Well what's the fucking Use, really?" to which Dixon will have to come up with an answer, and not take too much time, either, doing it.
Geminity hath found a fleshless Face,—
No second Chance, 'tis Death that's won the Race
Between the Line in all its Purity,
And what lay, mass'd, within the mortal Tree...
- Timothy Tox, The Line
No question, beyond Cheat they move in a time and space apt, one instant to the next, to stretch or shrink,— as a Chain's length may, upon the clement Page, pass little notic'd, whilst in an Ambuscade, may reckon as, perhaps, all,— or nothing.
When the Sector arrives, they set up upon a Bluff overlooking Monon-gahela, and watch the Culmination of Stars in Lyra and Cygnus, correcting for seconds plus and minus of Aberration, Deviation, Precession, and Refraction, whilst in Cabins nearby the Wives of the new-hir'd Axmen gather, and those Axmen who may, come thro', and out the back, to take White Maize Whiskey out of a Tin Cup.
Soon as the Party have stept West of Monongahela, Indians of Nations other than Iroquois begin showing up to have a look at them. The Delaware Chief Catfish, his Lady, and his Nephew arrive in the first days of October, all dress'd as Europeans might be, and confer apart with the Mohawks, exchanging Strings of Wampom with them. Stranger and Native alike confess ignorance of Catfish's Mission in these parts, far from his Village, and as if Disguis'd, in Coat, Waistcoat, Breeches, and Cock'd Hat. "Looking for Business," is how Hugh Crawfford translates it, adding, "It is usually best in these cases, not to inquire too closely." A few miles further on west, eight Senecas, going south to fight the Cherokees, come and stay over in Camp, obtaining Powder of Mo McClean, along with some Paint. "Materials of War,— I'm not sure we can write these off," Mason cautiously suggests to him. The Commissary glares, as if presented with an opening for some Violence. "Well they're southern Indians," he explains instead. "They are Snakes down there,— poisonous, no human feeling. Whereas, these Seneca, well, they're our Indians,— we live in, as off, the same Forests,— if we can help 'm along, it ever pays to have a friend or two out here, Gents." And at the final Station by Dunkard Creek,— as Mason records in his "Memoranda," for 1767,— the venerable Prisqueetom, Prince of the Delawares and brother to their King, pays them a call, and is presently describing for them the
great unbroken Meadow of the West, whilst Indian Visitors pass by in all directions, staring or amus'd, sometimes in Drink as well, regardless of the hour,— all Figures relating to their daily ration of Spirits having been negotiable since the Party cross'd Monongahela.
"It's like Covent Garden on Saturday Night," Mason grumbles, - what are we become,— a Show they all must see, or lose credibility among...whatever Indians have for Fops? I ought to just go over and inform that old Coot,—
"Mason, he's eighty-six...? And why should Traffick not be Brisk? These People freely travel an Arrangement of High-Roads, connected upon a Scale Continental, that nothing we know of in North Britain can equal...? Making huz little different from the Strollers who work the Inns
along the Coaching Roads of more civiliz'd Lands.... Can't speak for
thee, but I rather welcome all this mix'd Society. Not as...formal, this way, as it might become,— " swinging his head westward. "Heaven help us if we run out of Whiskey. As it is, Mo's got distillers clear back the other side o' Monongahela working back-shifts by the light of the moon, and Waggons that do and don't make it thro', all so that our Guests here'll be taken care of... ?"
"Peace, Merriment,— take joy of thy rude Hurricanoe, give no thought to what may lie beyond thy moment's mean Horizon. Fatum in Denario vertit, but don't let that stop you, allow me rather to assume as well thy own Burden of Worry, being a self-sacrificing gent, in a curious sort of way,—
"Eeh, Mason, mind thy Wig now, for these are all good Lads, they drink but in moderation, no more riotously than in Wapping, I am sure...?"
"Arrhh...now am I entirely sedate, thankee."
"Safest thing's to act insane, of course," Mr. Crawfford advises.
"How's that?"
"We style it, 'Doing a Chapman.' " A trader by that name, captur'd near Fort Detroit, at the time of Pontiack's rising, famously having escap'd execution by feigning to be mad. "These folk respect Madness. To them 'tis a holy state."
"As I told thee, Mason,— nothing for thee to worry about...?"
"I'd notic'd them stepping lightly 'round you.”
Hitherto, as if by Conscious Agreement, Withdrawal into Folly by the one Surveyor would have unfailingly provok'd an Embrace of Sobriety by the other. So, up till now, has the Line been preserv'd, day to day, from frenzied Impulse, as from reason'd Reluctance,— allowing it to proceed on its Way unmolested. Here, as it draws to its last Halt, if anywhere, might both Gentlemen take joy of a brief Holiday from Reason. Yet, "Too busy," Mason insists, and "Far too cheerful for thah'," supposes Dixon.
"As the Stars tell you where it is you must cut your Path, so do the Land and its Rivers tell us where our Tracks must go."
"Yet the Stars, in their Power," Mason's Melancholia so advanc'd that he is not fully aware of sitting wrapp'd in a Blanket arguing Religion with a Mohawk Warrior with whom he is scarcely upon intimate Terms, "that only the Mightiest God may command, deserve at least the one small, respectful Courtesy, of allowing their Line to cross, without a Mark, your Nations' own Great Path...."
"Come," says Daniel.
"Eeh," Dixon looking up from his Pipe.
"Come where?" says Mason.
"Out on the Path. We'll take a Turn down toward Virginia and back again."
"Am I in Condition for this?" inquires Mason, of no one in particular. "And what of all these Catawbas I keep hearing about?"
"Will we be allow'd to smoak?" Dixon wants to know.
The Indian is gazing at them doubtfully. "You must see, what it is you believe you may cross so easily. Follow me, tho' I am not entirely pleas'd with my Back to either of you."
They proceed along Dunkard Creek, abandoning their short-term Destinies to the possibly homicidal Indian. The Forest life ever presenting Mystery to them,— too much going on, night and day, behind ev'ry Trunk, beneath ev'ry Bush,— how many new Pontiacks may even now be raising forces, planning assaults, perhaps in the Market for a couple of English Surveyors to style a casus belli and publickly torture before putting to death,— yaagghh!— yet isn't this man entirely vouch'd for by Sir William Johnson? Or, actually, said to be vouch'd for. Hum. Perhaps
the first item of the neo-Pontiackal uprising, would be to put Johnson to Death? Perhaps this has already occurred? So busy are the Astronomers with these Apprehensions that they nearly miss their Guide's Hand-Signal to slow down and approach with Caution what lies ahead.
The Moon has not yet risen. The Indian steps off the Path, motioning to them, to do the same. "This is troubling. They've been this far up already. See what you nearly stepp'd on." He crouches and fleetly retrieves a long, slender tho' not easily broken, Sliver of something from the Trail. "Swamp Cane. It doesn't grow up here,— they gather and splinter it, catch and kill Serpents, dip the Points into the venom,— set them in the Trail, aim'd toward us." Having gather'd as many of the deadly Points as he can find, he bends close to a small patch of untrav-el'd Ground. "Forgive me, for what I must now beg you to bear at my hands." Carefully he pushes each Point into the Earth, till only bits of the blunt ends remain.
"These Catawbas," Mason falling increasingly short of perfect nonchalance. "How close are they, I wonder?"
"Whoever set these, they weren't more than two, and they were moving fast. The main body could be anywhere south of here."
" 'Twould be useful to know how far south...?" Dixon supposes.
"He means, let us go on, into sure Ambuscado and Death," Mason hastily, "he's a bit, what do you people call it?" Tapping his Nob and twirling his finger beside it. "Pray do not suppose all Englishmen to be quite so free of care."
"By the time we get anywhere to tell anyone, they'll be someplace else. We'd better go back. For now, say nothing more, and try to move quietly."
Mr. Barnes is troubl'd at the Depth of the Silence that reigns. "No longer frets th' intemperate Jay," he mutters, " - withal, the Siskin chirpeth not."
"Cap'n, what the fuck is going on?"
At either end of the Warrior Path, the heat, the agitation, the increasing Tension grow. Never in memory, they are assur'd by their Mohawk Escort, have Iroquois and Catawba each wish'd so passionately the other's Destruction. Any new day may bring the unavoidable Descent.
With Indians all 'round them, the Warpath a-tremble with murd'rous Hopes, its emptiness feeling more and more unnatural as the hours tick on, into the End of Day, as the latent Blades of Warriors press more closely upon the Membrane that divides their Subjunctive World from our number'd and dreamless Indicative, Apprehension rising, Axmen deserting, the ghosts of '55 growing, hourly, more sensible and sovereign,— as unaveng'd Fires foul the Dusk, unanswer'd mortal Cries travel the Forests at the speed of Wind. Ah Christ,— besides West, where else are they heading, those few with the Clarity to remain?
They both dream of going on, unhinder'd, as the Halt dream of running, the Earth-bound of flying. Rays of light appear from behind Clouds, the faces of the Bison upon close Approach grow more human, unbearably so, as if just about to speak, Rivers run swifter, and wider, till at last the Party halts before one that mayn't be cross'd, even by the sturdiest Bat-toe,— that for miles runs deeper than the height of a Conestoga Waggon. Upon that final Bank, an Indian will appear silently, and lead the party past a forested Bend to a great Bridge, fashion'd of Iron, quite out of reach of British or for that matter French Arts, soaring over to the far Shore, its highest part, whenever there are rain-clouds, indeed lost to sight,— constructed long ago by whatever advanced Nation live upon the River's opposite side.
"May we cross?" asks Dixon.
"May we not cross?" asks Mason.
"Alas," replies the Son of the Forest, "not yet,— for to earn Passage, there is more you must do."
"Why show it to huz at all?" wonders Dixon.
"If I did not, your Great Road thro' the Trees would miss it. You move like wood-borers inside a Post in a great House, in the dark, eating and shitting, moving ever into the Wood and away from your shit, with no idea at all what else lies Without."
"In the Forest," comments Mr. Crawfford, "ev'ryone comes 'round in a Circle sooner or later. One day, your foot comes down in your own shit. There, as the Indians say, is the first Step upon the Trail to Wisdom."
They wake.
70
At the moment of the Interdiction, when their Eyes at length meet, what they believe they once found aboard the Seahorse fails, this time, to appear. It is not a faltering on either man's part, or the mistaken impression of one, or any moral lapse,— 'tis a difference of opinion. Mason, stubborn, wishes to go on, believing that with Hugh Crawfford's help, he may negotiate for another ten minutes of Arc.
"But Mason, they don't know what thah' is...?"
"We'll show them. Let them look thro' the Instruments or something. Or they can watch us writing."
"They don't want any of thah'? They want to know how to stop this great invisible Thing that comes crawling Straight on over their Lands, devouring all in its Path."
"Well! of course it's a living creature, 'tis all of us, temporarily collected into an Entity, whose Labors none could do alone."
"A tree-slaughtering Animal, with no purpose but to continue creating forever a perfect Corridor over the Land. Its teeth of Steel,— its Jaws, Axmen,— its Life's Blood, Disbursement. And what of its intentions, beyond killing ev'rything due west of it? do you know? I don't either."
"Then,— just tidying these thoughts up a bit,— you're saying this Line has a Will to proceed Westward,—
"What else are these people suppos'd to believe? Haven't we been saying, with an hundred Blades all the day long,— This is how far into your land we may strike, this is what we claim to westward. As you see
what we may do to Trees, and how little we care,— imagine how little we
care for Indians, and what we are prepar'd to do to you. That Influence
you have felt, along our Line, that Current strong as a River's,— we com
mand it We might make thro' your Nations an Avenue of Ruin, terri
ble as the Path of a Whirl-Wind."
"But those are Threats we do not make."
"But might as well make. As the Indians wish, we must go no further."
"No. We must go on."
For eleven Days, from the ninth thro' the nineteenth of October, they linger beside Dunkard Creek, the Indians keeping their distance, looking to their Weapons, as to their Routes of withdrawal, whilst the White Folk dispute. Some of the Hands are back east of here, cutting the Visto to Breadth, as Autumn closes in and ev'ryone is eager to be away, for there are other Tasks that claim each in the Party, including the Surveyors,— who at some point exchange Positions, with Dixon now for pushing on, razzle-dazzling their way among the Indians at least as far as Ohio. "Cheer's the Ticket. Let them have more than their daily Ration of Spirits. They'll be Sports."
"Wait,— you think you'll be getting through on charm? Indians all the way up into the Six Nations and down to the Cherokee know about that Coat,— many have their Eye upon it, and you are but the minor inconvenience from which 'twill have to be remov'd."
The Indians grow coy and sinister. The Women stare openly, steadily amus'd. Mason and Dixon are allow'd to cross the War-path, and three more Turnings of Dunkard Creek, before they can climb to a Ridge-top high enough to set up the Sector. At last the Dodmen have reach'd their Western Terminus, at 233 Miles, 13 Chains, and 68 Links from the Post Mark'd West. "Damme, we're only a few miles shy."
" 'A few'! Forty miles?"
" 'Tis easy country. We're over the last ridge. We're in the Ohio Country."
Mason has seen it from the top of Laurel Hill, "...the most delightful pleasing View of the Western Plains the Eye can behold,"— the Paradise once denied him by the Mills, now denied him by, he supposes, British American Policy ever devious. They decide to travel light and fast,— not to take the Sector, nor any other Instrument. "Mustn't tie thah' River in, just yet... ?"
"Aye, let them all be free while they may."
Mason is Gothickally depressive, as Dixon is Westeringly manic. Dixon's Head, like a Needle forever ninety degrees out, tho' it wobble some, remains true to perfect West, whilst Mason might as well be riding backwards, so often does he look behind, certain they are about to meet an abbreviation of Braddock's Fate. Mason withal, via the happenstances of God's Whimsy, is riding Creeping Nick, the same crazy animal that threw him on to the Jersey Ice. Departing at Sun-down, keeping their Latitude as best they may by Polaris, growing more fearful with ev'ry Mile, they travel thro' the Night, trans-Terminal America whirling by, smelling of wildflowers and Silt, and immediate Lobes of Honeysuckle-scent apt to ambush the unwary Nose, amid moonlight, owls, smears of nocturnal Color somewhere off-center in the Field of Vision,— they make it to the great River just at Dawn,— the Rush of the Water loud as the Sea,— stunn'd by the beauty of it they forget, they linger, they overstay all practickal Time, and are surpriz'd by a Party of Indians in elaborate Paint-Work.
"Far from your Tents, Red Coat." It is Catfish and his Nephew, and some Friends, who reluctantly lower their Rifles.
"Having a Look at the River, Sir," Dixon replies.
"There are Catawba Parties about. Mingoes, Seneca. Good thing we saw you first. How'd you sneak out past Hendricks? He never sleeps."
Mason sees it first,— then, tipp'd by his frozen silence, Dixon. Catfish is packing a Lancaster Rifle, slung in a Scabbard upon his Saddle, with an inverted Pentacle upon the Stock, unmistakable in the Moon-light. Mason looks over, on the possibility that Dixon has a Plan, and sees Dixon already looking back at him, upon the same deluded Hope.
"Actually," says Dixon, "we only just arriv'd, so it isn't as if we've 'seen' the River, if that poses any sort of problem,—
- and it certainly isn't as if we're planning to settle here,—
Catfish with one huge hand slides the Rifle out and holds it up before him, noticing the Sterloop as if for the first time. He smiles without mirth at the Surveyors. "You think this is my Rifle? No! I took this Rifle! From
a White man I have wish'd to meet for a long time. He was a very bad man. Even White People hated him. Beautiful Piece, isn't it?"
"The Sign on it has evil Powers," Mason warns. "You should take a Knife or something, and pry it out."
"What happen'd to its owner?" Dixon with a look of unsuccessfully feign'd innocence.
The Delaware is delighted to share that information with them, pulling from a Bag he carries a long Lock of fair European Hair so freshly taken, 'tis yet darkly a-drip, at one end, with Blood. "This very day, Milords. Had you been earlier, you might have met."
Either Mason or Dixon might reply, "We've met,"— yet neither does. "It didn't feel complete to me," Mason admits later, "I expected he yet liv'd, screaming about the Woods, driven to revenge at any price, a Monomaniack with a Hole in the top of his Head,—
"— looking for that Rifle back," adds Dixon.
Coming back, setting in the last Marks, crossing Jennings Run, little Allegheny, Wills Creek, Wills Creek Mountain, the Road up to Bedford, Evitts Creek, Evitts Mountain, at all the highest Points in the Visto, they put up Cairns, as the ancient British Ley-builders and Dodsmen before them, as later the Romans, for purposes more Legionary than commercial. The Hands keep leaving, without notice. With those who stay, the Astronomers, transiting from Weightless Obs to earthly back-wrenching Toil the Obs demand by way of Expression, set Posts ev'ry Mile, these being large segments of Tree, roughly squar'd, twelve by twelve inches, and five or sometimes six or seven foot long. First the Crew dig a deep Post-Hole, put in the Post, fill back the Hole, tamping down the Earth scientifickally, one shovel-ful at a time, then bring more Stone and Earth to make a Cone about the Post, leaving perhaps six inches of it visible. That is the Surveyors' estimate of the Mark's Longevity,— tho' of course Angles of Repose vary,— and withal, Mason and Dixon will bicker, by now, over anything.
On November 5th, two things happen at once,— the Visto is completed, and the Indians depart,— as if, as long as a Tree remain'd, so might they. At last the Axmen have clear'd the Visto back to the Post
marking their last Station of the Year previous,— east of which all lies clear, all the way back to Delaware. "There being one continued Visto," Mason writes in the Journal, "opened in the true Parallel from the intersection of the North Line from the Tangent Point with the Parallel to the Ridge we left off at on the 9th of October last.
"Mr. Hugh Crawford with the Indians and all Hands (except 13 kept to Erect Marks in the Line etc.) Left us in order to proceed Home."
The departing Axmen roam about peering at, poking, and buying Blankets, Kettles, Milch Cows, Grindstones, anything Mo McClean thinks he may sell to lighten the load, before the Mountains, no offer too insulting. The Vendue is a protracted Spectacle of sorrowful farewells, Debts settl'd or evaded, Whiskey Jugs a-swing, upon ev'ry Index, and a Squirrel Stuffata from the Commissary Tent without equal this side of the Allegheny Ridge. At length, the last of the Farmers, new-bought pots and pans a-clank, goes riding off into a dusk render'd in copper-plate, gray and black, the Hatching too crowded to allow for any reversal, or return...leaving gather'd by the Waggons, smoking Pipes, gray with fatigue and winter sky-light, Mr. Barnes, Cope, Rob Farlow, the McCleans, Tom Hynes, Boggs Junior, John and Ezekiel Killogh,— and the others of that faithful Core who stay'd across Monongahela, to the Warrior Path, and the westernmost Ridge, and back again.
None of the Hands is feeling that well. Dixon has been giving out opiated Philtres to all who would but gesture toward their Noses,— as Mo McClean is writing at furious speed, Chits upon Philadelphia Money-Boxes as if he'll never see the place again, so what's it matter? Suddenly Expenditures are above £100, then £200, per week. Fiscal insanity has visited the Commissary Tent. Sensing opportunity, Farmers with goods to sell appear from Horizons all swear have been empty for Hours.
The snow drives in relentlessly. From the ninth to the nineteenth of November,— another eleven-day Spin,— there is little in the Field-Book,— suggesting either a passage so difficult that there was no time for nightly entries, or events so blameworthy on all sides that they were omitted from the Account.
In fact, such was the level of Engagement requir'd to answer to the Elements, as to mark the Line, that there was no time for bad behavior. This
is the Gradient of Days in which the Party must work their way up to the Allegheny Crest, hastening as they may, the early Winter having caught them west of the Mountains. Here lie the most difficult Miles of the long Traverse, this ascent out of Ohio and out of the West. Unsettl'd by the abrupt Absence of Mohawks, with whom they have come to feel almost secure, as so seldom in this Continent of Hazard, the Skies, night upon night, too clouded over for Observations, both Surveyors, cast into Perplexity, Drink and play Whist for Sums neither will ever see all in one place at the same time,— the Crew meanwhile deserting Day upon Day, their replacements taking ever more exorbitant Wages,— yet, whilst they bide in this Realm of the Penny-foolish and Pound-idiotick, till the Moment they must pass over the Crest of the Savage Mountain, does there remain to them, contrary to Reason, against the Day, a measurable chance, to turn, to go back out of no more than Stubbornness, and somehow make all come right...for, once over the Summit, they will belong again to the East, to Chesapeake,— to Lords for whom Interests less subjunctive must ever enjoy Priority.
They have lost their Race with the first Snows,— now they pray they may get all the Cairns dug and pil'd before the Ground freezes too hard. The Snow is already a foot deep. Traces break, a Waggon skids back down the Slope on its side, the Canvas bellying, the Animals fearfully trying to fight clear,— Tent-Poles and Spades a-clatter, a Lanthorn against the low-lit Day, falling and smashing upon the Ice, tiny trails of Flame borne instantly away. Here are the last Cadre, out in the uninterrupted Visto,— from a certain Height, oddly verminous upon the pale Riband unfolding,— fairly out in the Hundred-League Current of Sha, where ev'ry Step is purchas'd with a further surrender of Ignorance as to what they have finish'd,— what they have left at their Backs, undone,— what, measuring the Degree of Latitude next Spring, they shall be newly complicit in,— tho' if it takes them much longer to get over the Ridge, even if they escape freezing solid, they may yet have journey'd further into Terrestrial Knowledge, than will allow them to re-emerge without bargaining away too much for merely another Return following another Excursion, in a Cycle belonging to some Engine whose higher Assembly and indeed Purpose, they are never, except from infrequent Glimpses, quite able to make out.
Turn'd in Retreat Eastward again, watch'd from Cover at ev'ry step, with Apprehensions, instead of lessening, rather mounting, Ridge by Ridge, the Party feel the Warrior Path engrossing more of their sentimental Horizon, even as it recedes into the West. Immediately upon the deaths of Baker and Carpenter begin a string of mishaps between Men and
Trees, some nearly lethal, none unconnected Felling-Mates try to
keep as close as they may, often conversing more in a day than they have in all the time since they team'd up. Spending precious Minutes in daily Rituals of Protection, all pay Tolls at the Gate of Sunrise, good but for the one Day that must be got thro'.—
Mason and Dixon look in again at The Rabbi of Prague, inquiring in partickular after Timothy Tox. "He is mad," Countrymen are soon explaining to them. "What he now styles, 'His Golem,' does not exist." Mr. Tox looks on with a tolerant Smile.
"Because he heard it speak the same words as God out of the Burning Bush, Tim nowadays imagines himself Moses,— with a Commission from God, to bring another People out of Captivity."
"Out of the City," declares Timothy Tox, "where Affliction ever reigns, must the Golem deliver them, over Schuylkill, out of that American Egypt."
"You don't want to be going into Philadelphia, Lad," they warn him, "— carrying Folk off and so forth. Nor, particularly, confiding in too many of those Cits about the Goah-lem, now, for to many of them, the Old Knowledge is an Evil they'll be as content to execute ye for, as lock ye away."
"I am quite undeluded," the Forest Dithyrambist replies, "as to the Philadelphians,— before all, the Lawyers,— come, come, does no one recall,
' 'Tis only by the Grace that some call Luck That anyone can quite escape the Muck.— As e'er, 'mongst Wax, and Wigs, and Printer's Ink Seepeth the creeping sly Suborner's Stink.—
"There he goes!"
"So do ye summon it, Tim, we're on to that by now?”
"It will protect me, as it will protect them it sets free." ' 'Twas ne'er your Creature to command, Tim."
"Just so. It is our Guardian."
Mason and Dixon, each revisiting The Rabbi of Prague for his distinct Reasons, attend this Discussion closely. Dixon has already propos'd offering Mr. Tox the Protection of the Party as far as Newark, near the Tangent Point.
"So long as he doesn't bring the Golem," stipulates Mason. "He brings the Golem,— well,— what do they eat, for example? What are their sanitary Requirements? How shall Mo McClean, who's already striking himself daily upon the Pate with his own Ledgers, find the additional Resources?"
"Yet, mightn't we turn the Creature to some useful work,— say upon the Visto? Pulling up the Trees by their Roots,— clearing out all those un-sightly Stumps?"
"The Axmen would never hear of it. Next two-story House we came to, we'd both be taken upstairs and defenestrated. Nay,— I know what you seek,— the Neighborhood of Prodigy,— the Mobility Awe-struck,— Entry to Saloons you have previously been unwelcome in,— " Whilst Mason himself, of course, is angling quite a different Stream. Here is a Creature made of Water and Earth,— Clay, that is, and Minerals,— as if an Indian Mound of the West, struck by Lightning, had risen, stood, and, newly awaken'd, with the Vis Fulgoris surging among all its precisely fashion'd Laminae, begun, purposefully, to walk. An American Wonder, one's own witness of which might even be brought back across the cold Sea, to the true, terminable World again. Mason can think of no way to ask the obvious Question, as he did of the Learned Dog, and has been reluctant to of the Frenchman's Duck. Now withal, Time for this grows short,— just outside, in the Forest, articulate as Drumming, can be heard the rhythmick approach of the Kabbalistick Colossus Mr. Tox has summon'd. Mason and Dixon place their Heads upon the Table, and regard each other solemnly, in joint awareness of how much Effort will be needed, this time, to believe Mr. Tox's Testimony, as to whatever is about to appear....
As 'twill prove, the closer they escort Mr. Tox to the Metropolis, the less Evidence for his Creature's existence will they be given, till at
length they must believe that the Poet has either pass'd, like some Indian Youth at the Onset of Manhood, under the Protection of a potent tho' invisible Spirit,— or gone mad. They leave him upon the New Castle Road, standing among the late purple Loosestrife by the Ditch, glancing upward from time to time, waving his Arm,— then growing still, appearing to listen. Just before he has dwindl'd around the last bend in their own Road, Mason and Dixon see a Conestoga Waggon, with an exceptionally bright Canopy, and drawn by match'd white Horses, stop beside him. Timothy Tox without hesitation goes around to the Tail-Gate, and climbs up under the luminous Canvas, vanishing within, as if confident that the Golem, whose Strides are at least as long as a Team and Waggon, will contrive to stay close to him, wherever he is taken, and whatever may befall him there.
71
Back again, Tavern-crawling near the Wharves upon Delaware, Ale-stuporous, the Surveyors enter The Crook'd Finger Inn,— "We both know what it is, Dixon," Mason is instructing his Partner, "— your hour is come, your Innings, for Retributive Poultrification,— at last, you must prepare, mustn't you, for all that Expression of Jesuit Interest so long-deferr'd,— this next Commission being, after all, the one they were engineering all along, isn't it, yes, another Degree of Latitude to put with the others they've appropriated, this is what it all's been leading to, correct? Wondrous! Now shall you,— at least,— finally learn, perhaps even via the Jesuit Telegraph, why you are here,— a Blessing extended to how few. Anything I can do to help, of course.—
"Eeh, but whah's the use, the fuckin' use?" Dixon resting his head briefly tho' audibly upon the Table. "It's over...? Nought left to us but Paper-work... ?" Their task has shifted, from Direct Traverse upon the Line to Pen-and-Paper Representation of it, in the sober Day-Light of Philadelphia, strain'd thro' twelve-by-twelve Sash-work, as in the spectreless Light of the Candles in their Rooms, suffering but the fretful Shadows of Dixon at the Drafting Table, and Mason, seconding now, reading from Entries in the Field-Book, as Dixon once minded the Clock for him. Finally, one day, Dixon announces, "Well,— won't thee at least have a look... ?"
Mason eagerly rushes to inspect the Map of the Boundaries, almost instantly boggling, for there bold as a Pirate's Flag is an eight-pointed Star, surmounted by a Fleur-de-Lis.
"What's this thing here? pointing North? Wasn't the l'Grand flying one of these? Doth it not signify, England's most inveterately hated Rival? France?"
"All respect, Mason,— among Brother and Sister Needle-folk in ev'ry Land, 'tis known universally, as the 'Flower-de-Luce.' A Magnetickal Term."
' 'Flower of Light'? Light, hey? Sounds Encyclopedistick to me, perhaps even Masonick," says Mason.
A Surveyor's North-Point, Dixon explains, by long Tradition, is his own, which he may draw, and embellish, in any way he pleases, so it point where North be. It becomes his Hall-Mark, personal as a Silver-Smith's, representative of his Honesty and Good Name. Further, as with many Glyphs, 'tis important ever to keep Faith with it,— for an often enormous Investment of Faith, and Will, lies condens'd within, giving it a Potency in the World that the Agents of Reason care little for.
' 'Tis an ancient Shape, said to go back to the earliest Italian Wind-Roses," says Dixon, "— originally, at the North, they put the Letter T, for Tramontane, the Wind that blew down from the Alps...? Over the years, as ever befalls such frail Bric-a-Brack as Letters of the Alphabet, it was beaten into a kind of Spear-head,— tho' the kinder-hearted will aver it a Lily, and clash thy Face, do tha deny it."
"Yet some, finding it upon a new Map, might also take it as a reasser-tion of French claims to Ohio," Mason pretends to remind him.
"Aye, tha've found me out, I confess,— 'tis a secret Message to all who conspire in the Dark! Eeh! The old Jesuit Canard again!"
At which Armand runs in looking anxious. "The Duck is doing something. .. autoerotique, now?" They re-phrase,— unconsol'd, Armand wanders away. Becoming reaccustom'd to this City's Angular Momentum is costing him daily Struggle. He appears to miss the West Line, and the Duck it has captur'd and denied him.
"Perhaps, for this Map alone," it occurs to Mason, "as East and West are of the Essence, North need hardly be indicated at all, need it? Or, suppose you were to sketch in something...less politickal?"
"This has been my North Point," Dixon declares, "since the first Map I ever drew. I cannot very readily forswear it, now, Sir, for some temporary Tradesman's Sign. It does not generally benefit the Surveyor to debase the Value of his North Point, by lending it to ends Politickal. 'Twould be to betray my Allegiance to Earth's Magnetism, Earth Herself if tha like, which my Flower-de-Luce stands faithfully as the Emblem of...?"
Making no more sense of this than he ever may, Mason shrugs. "It may sit less comfortably with the Proprietors, than with me."
"Oh, they're as happy to twit a King, when they may, as the next Lad— "
"Hahr! So that is it!"
"Thy uncritical Worship of Kings, with my inflexible Hatred of 'em,— taken together, we equal one latter-day English Subject."
"Much more likely Twins, ever in Dispute,— as the Indians once told us the Beginning of the World."
"Huz? I'm far too jolly a soul ever to fight with thee for long... ?"
"Because you know how your Shins would suffer...." Mason is able to inspect the long Map, fragrant, elegantly cartouch'd with Indians and Instruments, at last. Ev'ry place they ran it, ev'ry House pass'd by, Road cross'd, the Ridge-lines and Creeks, Forests and Glades, Water ev'ry-where, and the Dragon nearly visible. "So,— so. This is the Line as all shall see it after its Copper-Plate 'Morphosis,— and all History remember? This is what ye expect me to sign off on?"
"Not the worst I've handed in. And had they wish'd to pay for Coloring? Why, tha'd scarcely knaah the Place...?"
"This is beauteous Work. Emerson was right, Jeremiah. You were flying, all the time."
Dixon, his face darken'd by the Years of Weather, may be allowing himself to blush in safety. "Could have us'd a spot of Orpiment, all the same. Some Lapis...?"
"It is possible," here comments the Revd Cherrycoke, "that for some couples, however close, Love is simply not in the cards. So must they pursue other projects, instead,— sometimes together, sometimes apart. I believe now, that their Third Interdiction came when, at the end of the eight-Year Traverse, Mason and Dixon could not cross the perilous Boundaries between themselves.”
Whatever happen'd at the Warrior-Path, the Partners are to remain amicably together, among the cheerless Bogs of Delaware, thro' nearly another Year, busy with the Royal Society's Degree of Latitude, chaining a Meridian over the same ground as the Tangent Line, shivering in the Damp of Morning after Morning, both fending off the Ague with the miraculous willow-bark powder discover'd by the Revd Mr. Edmund Stone, of Chipping Norton,— return'd to the vegetational Horizons, the Sumach whose Touch brings misery, the deadly water-snakes coil'd together like the Rugae of a single great Brain, the gray and even illumination from the Sky.
Their Agreement to un-couple may easily have come, not after all during the crisis of the Year before, at the Warrior-Path, but rather here, somewhere upon this Peninsula, wrapp'd in the lambent Passing of any forgotten day of mild Winds, the Day as ever, little to distinguish it from others before and after but the values enter'd for Miles, Chains, and Links,— and why not here, especially with leisure and opportunity at last to talk of Plans for the second Transit, the possibility of return to America...?
The Story among Dixon's Descendants will be that Uncle Jeremiah wish'd to emigrate and settle here, and that his Partner did not,— tho' in the Field-Book, as late as June 9, Mason is to be found rhapsodizing in writing about Mr. Twiford's seat upon Nanticoke, as he does thro'out the Book as to other Homes, other Rivers, or Towns upon them. To Dixon,— "Aye how pleasing in all ways. Yet address any of it too intently, and like Dreams just at the Crepuscule, 'twill all vanish, unrecoverably."
"Shakespearean, correct?"
"Nay, Transcendence,— 'twas but Masonick."
Dixon gazes at the River, the gentle points and Coves in the mist, the willows and Loblolly Pines, desiring, whilst humiliated at how impossible it is to desire any Terrain in its interminable unfolding, ev'ry last Pebble, dip, and rain-path. For Mason, the Year of Delaware is all passing like a Dream. He can believe in this Degree they are measuring but in the way he believes in Ghosts,— for all its massless Suggestion, Number is yet more sensible to him, than this America that haunts his Progress. "Stay? Here? Christ, no, Dixon.—'Twas an Odyssey,— now must I return to the Destiny ever waiting for me,— faithfully,— her Loom now mine to sit and toil at, to the end of days, whilst she's out, no doubt, with any number of Suitors, roaring and merry."
("Well," suggests Uncle Lomax, "It's Pope and Lady Montague all over again, isn't it? A touchy race, the Brits, unfathomable, apt to take offense at anything, disputes can go on for years."
"Yet 'twas never that cold," declares the Revd.) Each seem'd to be content in postponing a return to England, and thereby to what others there expected. Measuring the Degree, they may have intended to hide somehow, inside the Work-day,— surrendering, as openly as they ever could, into a desire to transcend their differently discomforted lives, through what, at the end of the Day, would be but Ranks and Files of Numerals, ever in the Darkness of Pages unopen'd and unturn'd, Ink already begun to fade, from Type since melted and re-cast numberless times,— all but Oblivion,— The Delaware country their Refuge,— no steep grades,— "as level for 82 Miles," they wrote to the Royal Society, "as if it had been formed by Art," a phrase later to be found in Maskelyne's introduction to their publish'd Observations (1769),— no hostile Indians, fresh food, Cities in easy reach, Obs themselves straight-forward and not even all that many,— to the World's Eye, two veteran Wise-Men, coasting along between Transits of Venus, soon to be off again for more glamorous foreign duty where the See-ing's perfect and the Food never less than exquisite, and Adventures ever ahead and unforeseen, Boscovich and Maire all over again,— a Godly pursuit, and profitable withal, if only in the Value of Commissions to come."
Yet at the same time, silently parallel to the Pleasantries of teamwork, runs their effort to convince themselves that whatever they have left upon the last ridge-top, just above the last stone cairn, as if left burning, as if left exhibited in chains before the contempt of all who pass, will find an end to its torment, and fragment by fragment across the seasons be taken back into the Tales preserv'd in Memory, among Wind-gusts, subterranean Fires, Over-Creatures of the Wild, Floods and Freezes... until one day 'twill all be gone, re-assum'd, only its silence left there to be clamor'd into by something else, something younger, without memory of, or respect for, what was once, across the third Turning of Dunkard Creek, brought to a halt....
But it does not die. It comes out at nightfall and visits, singly obsess'd with a task left undone. Newcomers choose other Ridge-lines to settle in the Shadows of, Indian Priests proclaim it forbidden Ground, even unto the Lead-Mines beneath,— Smugglers of Tobacco, Dye-stuffs, and edg'd Implements flee their Storage-Cabins in the middle of the night, leaving behind Inventories whose odd scavengers prove as little able to withstand the disconsolate spirit prevailing here, as if 'twere the Point upon which was being daily projected, some great linear summing of Human Incompletion,— fail'd Arrivals, Departures too soon, mis-stated Intentions, truncations of Desire. Even the uncommonly stolid Stig feels it, in his Perplexity resorting more and more often to the Handle of his Ax for Re-assurance,— Captain Zhang each night in his Tent, shivering, continues to express concern as to the Sha Situation. "Returning from here will be not much better. In Sha there is no up- nor down-Stream,— rather a Flow at all points sensible, equally harmful, east or west. Our Sorrows shall persist and obsess for as long as we continue upon this ill-omen'd Line."
Too often, back here, they find themselves chaining through wetlands, the water usually a foot and a half to two feet deep,— Daylight somewhere above them, indifferent, the Gloom in here forcing them to shorter sights, more set-ups, closer Quarters. As they stand in the muck of the Cypress Swamp, black and thinly crusted, each Step breaking through to release a Smell of Generations of Deaths, something in it, some principle of untaught Mechanicks, tugging at their ankles, voiceless, importunate,— a moment arrives, when one of them smacks his Pate for something other than a Mosquitoe.
"Ev'rywhere they've sent us,— the Cape, St. Helena, America,— what's the Element common to all?"
"Long Voyages by Sea," replies Mason, blinking in Exhaustion by now chronick. "Was there anything else?"
"Slaves. Ev'ry day at the Cape, we lived with Slavery in our faces,— more of it at St. Helena,— and now here we are again, in another Colony,
this time having drawn them a Line between their Slave-Keepers, and
their Wage-Payers, as if doom'd to re-encounter thro' the World this pub
lic Secret, this shameful Core Pretending it to be ever somewhere
else, with the Turks, the Russians, the Companies, down there, down where it smells like warm Brine and Gunpowder fumes, they're murdering and dispossessing thousands untallied, the innocent of the World,
passing daily into the Hands of Slave-owners and Torturers, but oh, never in Holland, nor in England, that Garden of Fools...? Christ, Mason."
"Christ, what? What did I do?"
"Huz. Didn't we take the King's money, as here we're taking it again? whilst Slaves waited upon us, and we neither one objected, as little as we have here, in certain houses south of the Line,— Where does it end? No matter where in it we go, shall we find all the World Tyrants and Slaves? America was the one place we should not have found them."
"Yet we're not Slaves, after all,— we're Hirelings."
"I don't trust this King, Mason. I don't think anybody else does, either. Tha saw Lord Ferrers take the Drop at Tyburn. They execute their own. What may they be willing to do to huz?”
72
First they have to mark a Meridian Line, then clear a Visto, then measure straight up the middle of it, using "Levels," great wooden Rectangles twenty feet long by four feet high, and an inch thick, mostly of Pine Boards, with iron and Brass securing the reinforcing Bands,— which would have serv'd handsomely in many of these Fens as Duck-Boards or Rafts, but must instead be carried carefully upright, being compar'd most dutifully ev'ry day with how close to eight times a five-foot Brass Standard might be fit in the length of the two Levels set end to end,— and into the Daily corrections needed, the Temperature reckon'd and enter'd as well. Each Plumb-line is protected from the Wind by a three-foot Tube. When tilted until the Plumb-line bisects a certain Point drawn at the bottom, the Level is level. 'Tis then necessary only to set it with its Mate, together in a forty-foot Line easily kept true by sighting down its Length toward the farthest point of the Visto they can see, on the assumption the Visto has been truly made.
"Back in Durham we style this a Squire's Line,— using the Equipment of the Gentleman who hires thee, easy Terrain, careful work, turning the Telescope over and over, bit of fancy artwork upon the Plane-Table Drafts. Careful and slow."
"Slow, 'tis certain." Mason has long dropp'd all pretense at Patience. There are days when the Routine has him livid with boredom. "As Lady Montague said of Bath, the only thing one can do upon this Engagement, that one did not do the Day before— "Bad Luck, don't say it!" shouts Dixon thro' his Speaking-Trumpet, tho' they are close enough not to require any, causing Mason to wince.
"Never mind when,— shall it end? Set a Mark before, set a Mark behind, swing the Instrument, do it again the other Way, 's fucking Body and Blood, Dixon, I am beside myself."
Dixon, approaching a few steps, gazes intently a foot and a half to Mason's right. "Eeh,— why, so yese are. How does thah' feel, I wonder. ..?" Switching his eyes to Mason, then back to the Spot beside Mason, "Well, why don't one of thee go ahead, and the other behind me, makes it much easier to line up the Marks... ?"
"Ahrrh! Like a giant Eye! ever a-stare!" He is referring to the Target, a Board about a Foot Square, with Concentrick Circles drawn on both sides, rigg'd to be slid in two grooves, at the distant gesturing of the man at the Telescope, till it should line up precisely upon the central Wire, previously brought into the Meridian,— whereupon the other Surveyor hammers in his Stake immediately below, drops his Plummet-String along the center-line of the Target, and marks with a Notch exactly where, atop the Stake, the Bob-Point touches. Then the Transit Instrument leap-frogs the Target and goes ahead of it, its operator sets up, and takes a Back-sight at the Eye upon the Board's Reverse. Then they do it all again.
"I find little serious Astronomy in any of this," Mason complains.
It may be the level'd and selfless Pulse of it that enables them, at the end of June, the Measurement done, at last to travel South together, across the West Line, into Peril however differently constru'd, leading to Baltimore and the moment when Dixon will accost the Slave-Driver in the Street, and originate the family story whose material Focus, for years among the bric-a-brac in Hull, will be the Driver's Lash, that Uncle Jeremiah took away from the Scoundrel....
"No proof," declares Ives. "No entries for Days, allow'd,— but yet no proof."
"Alas," beams the Revd, "must we place our unqualified Faith in the Implement, as the Tale accompting for its Presence,— these Family stories have been perfected in the hellish Forge of Domestick Recension, generation 'pon generation, till what survives is the pure truth, anneal'd to Mercilessness, about each Figure, no matter how stretch'd, nor how influenced over the years by all Sentiments from unreflective love to inflexible Dislike."
"Don't leave out Irresponsible Embellishment."
"Rather, part of the common Duty of Remembering,— surely our Sentiments,— how we dream'd of, and were mistaken in, each other,— count for at least as much as our poor cold Chronologies."
The Driver's Whip is an evil thing, an expression of ill feeling worse than any between Master and Slave,— the contempt of the monger of perishable goods for his Merchandise,— in its tatter'd braiding, darken'd to its Lash-Tips with the sweat and blood of Drove after Drove of human targets, the metal Wires work'd in to each Lash, its purpose purely to express hate with, and Hate's Corollary,— to beg for the same denial of Mercy, should, one day, the r6les be revers'd. Gambling that they may not be. Or, that they may.
Dixon has spoken with him already, the night before, in the Publick Room of his Inn. The Slave-Driver is announcing a Vendue at the Dock, twenty Africans, Men and Women, each a flower of the Tribe they had been taken from. Yet he is calling them by names more appropriate to Animals one has come to dislike. Several times Dixon feels the need, strong as thirst, to get up, walk over to the fellow and strike him.
"And so I hope ev'ryone will come down and have a look, dusky children of the Forest, useful in any number o' ways, cook and eat 'em, fuck 'em or throw 'em to the Dogs, as we say in the Trade, imagine Gents, your very own Darky, to order about as you please. You, Sir, in the interesting Hat," beckoning to Dixon, who raises his Brows amiably, at the same time freezing with the certainty that once again he is about to see a face he knows. Someone from the recent past, whose name he cannot remember. "A fine young Mulatto gal'd be just your pint of Ale I'd wager, well tonight you're in luck, damme 'f you're not."
"Not in the Market," replies Dixon, as he imagines, kindly.
"Ho!" drawing back in feign'd Surprize, "what's this, not in the market, how then may I even begin to educate you, Sir, or should I say, Friend, upon this Topick? The news, Friend, being that all are in the Market,— however regrettably,— for ev'ryone wants a slave, at least
one, to call his own "
"Sooner or later," Dixon far too brightly, "— a Slave must kill his Master. It is one of the Laws of Springs." The Herdsman of Humans, who has been staring at Dixon, now looks about for a line of Withdrawal. "Give me Engines, for they have no feelings of injustice,— sometimes they don't exist, either, so I have to invent what I need...," at which point the Enterpriser has edg'd his way as far as the door.
"Remember, tomorrow, midday at the Pier!" and he is off like a shot.
Attention shifts to Dixon, whose insane demeanor has vanish'd with the Dealer's Departure.
"Will you be there, Sir?" inquires a neighboring Drinker, more sociably teasing, than wishing to sting. "Being one of our Sights down here, of interest to a Visitor,— you might find it diverting. Not quite as much as a Horse Auction, o' course."
Dixon vibrated his Eye-balls for a while. "That's it? Slaves and Horses?"
"Why, and Tobacco! Ye've never been to a Tobacco Auction? Say, ye'll never listen to an Italian Tenor the same way again."
In '55, at the grim news of Braddock's Fate, Pennsylvanians had come flying Eastward before the Indians, over Susquehanna, in a panic,— here in the Chesapeake Slave country, rather stretch'd long nights of Apprehension, the counting of Kitchen Knives, Fears conceal'd, Fears detected, Fears betray'd, of poisons in the food, stranglings at midnight, Women violated, Horses and Cash, House and Home, gone,— as their Spoliators into the boundless Continent,— and everywhere the soft Weight of the nocturnal Breath, above that water-riddl'd Country.
In his heart, Mason has grown accustom'd to the impossibility, between Dixon and himself, of Affection beyond a certain Enclosure. They have spent years together inside one drawn Perimeter and another. They also know how it is out in the Forest, over the Coastal ranges, out of metropolitan Control. Only now, far too late, does Mason develop a passion for his co-adjutor, comparable to that occurring between Public-School Students in England.—
"Oh, please Wicks spare us, far too romantick really," mutter several voices at once.
Say then, that Mason at last came to admire Dixon for his Bravery,— a different sort than they'd shown each other years before, on the Seahorse, where they'd had no choice. Nor quite the same as they'd both exhibited by the Warrior Path. Here in Maryland, they had a choice at last, and Dixon chose to act, and Mason not to,— unless he had to,— what each of us wishes he might have the unthinking Grace to do, yet fails to do. To act for all those of us who have so fail'd. For the Sheep. Yet Mason offer'd his Admiration, so long and unreasonably withheld, only to provide Dixon fodder for more Rustick Joakery.
"All...? Pray thee, Mason, shall I have a special U-niform for thah'? Something with a Cloak to it,— Mantua-length would be better, wouldn't it, than all the way down, for I would need access to my Pistol,—
There unavoidable in the Street is the Slave Driver. And he's driving about half his Drove, who thro' some inconvenient behavior, remain unsold. He is screaming, having abandon'd all control, and Striking ev'rywhere with the Whip, mostly encountering the Air, even with the movements of the Africans limited by the Chains, having fail'd to inflict much Injury. "You fuck'd up my Sale, you fuck'd up my day, you fuck'd up my business,— Now I owe money, plus another night's Lodging, plus another night's Victualling,—
"I'll just seek Assistance, then, shall I?" Mason making as if to flee.
"Mason, thou're the only one nearby who knows how to watch my Back,— would tha mind, frightfully?" And before Mason can stir, Dixon is down the Steps, and into the Street.
"That's enough." He stands between the Whip and the Slaves, with his Hat back and his hand out. Later he won't remember how. "I'll have that."
"You'll have it to your Head, Friend, if you don't step out of my Way. These are mine,— I'll do as I damn'd please with my Property." Townsfolk pause to observe.
Dixon, moving directly, seizes the Whip,— the owner comes after it,— Dixon places his Fist in the way of the oncoming Face,— the Driver cries out and stumbles away. Dixon follows, raising the Whip. "Turn around. I'll guess you've never felt this."
"You broke my Tooth!”
"In a short while thah's not going to matter much, because in addition, I'm going to kill you...? Now be a man, face me, and make it easier, or must I rather work upon you from the Back, like a Beast, which will take longer, and certainly mean more discomfort for you."
"No! Please! My little ones! 0 Tiffany! Jason!"
"Any more?"
"— Scott!"
Dixon reaches down and tears, from the man's Belt, a ring of keys. "Who knows where these go?"
"We know them by heart, Sir," replies one tall woman in a brightly strip'd Head-Cloth. With the Driver protesting the usefulness of his Life, the Africans unchain themselves.
"Now then!" cries Dixon merrily.
A not at all friendly crowd by now having form'd,— "And as we're in the middle of Town, here," the Africans advise him, "Sheriff's men'll be here any moment,— don't worry about us,— some will stay, some'll get away,— but you'd better go, right now."
Despite this sound Counsel, Dixon still greatly desires to kill the Driver, cringing there among the Waggon-Ruts. What's a man of Conscience to do? It is frustrating. His Voice breaks. "If I see you again, you are a dead man." He shakes the Whip at him. "And dead you'll be, ere you see again this Instrument of Shame. For it will lie in a Quaker Home, and never more be us'd."
"Don't bet the Meeting-House on that," snarls the Driver, scuttling away.
"Go back to Philadelphia," someone shouts at Dixon.
"Good Withdrawal-Line or two here, yet," reports Mason.
Thrusting the Whip into his red Coat, Dixon steps away, Mason following. At the first brick Prow of a house to block them from View, they take to their Heels, returning by a roundabout and not altogether witting route to the Stable where their Horses wait. "Eeh, Rebel, old gal, Ah'm pleas'd to see your Face...?" Dixon has brought a small apple from a fruitmonger's barrow, but the Horse dives anyway beneath the giant flaps over his Coat Pockets and goes in to inspect, lest something should have been overlook'd. At that moment of Equine curiosity, with Mason occupied in saddling up, Dixon understands what Christopher Maire must have meant long ago by "instrument of God,"— and his Obligation henceforward, to keep Silence upon the Topick.
They are very conscious of leaving Town,— with Luck, for the last time,— observing ev'rything as thro' some marvellous "Specs," that make all come sharp, and near. Sailors sit upon curb-stones outside the front doors of the Taverns that have intoxicated them, vomiting the Surveyors on, with a strange elation. Traffick in the Street brings and takes its own Light, Lanthorns upon carriages projecting, in swooping Shadows upon the crooked Meridians and Parallels of the brick walls, ev'ry leafless Tree, ev'ry desire-driven Pedestrian and Street-wary Dog. In low-ceiling'd Rooms at right angles to the street, Waggon-drivers stand in glum rows, drinking as if out of Duty, protected from the snow that promises at any moment to begin, tho' from little else, least of all the Road, and its Chances. Women pull their shawls in against the Night. Young people singly and pair'd, bound for twilight Assignations, sweep up and down the steps of Row-Houses, and along the curb-sides, from which the Steps rise, in all the traceless Promise of first Lanthorn-Light. Now that the Surveyors must leave, they wish to stay. In an onset of Turning-Evil, Mason imagines the Streets full of Row-Houses multiplying like loaves and fishes, whirling past like Spokes of a Giant Wheel, whose Convergence or Hub, beyond some disputable Prelude to Radiance, he cannot make out.
They are soon enough upon the York Road, the deeply magnetiz'd Fields to either side, in the Dark, tugging at Bits, Buckles, Pen-Nibs, Compass-Needles, and the steel strands of the Driver's Whip. They feel cover'd with small beings crawling and plucking ev'rywhere, neither kindly Remembrancers, nor wicked Spirits. "Do you feel that?" calls Mason in the Dark. "You're the Needle-Master,— what is it?" "Mysteries of the Magnetick... ?" After a bit, "Aye? Instances of those being...?" "Ah don't know, Mason, 'tis why I say 'Mysteries'...?" Lanthorn-Lights ahead. Soon they can hear a night-Congregation singing. Reaching a small wood Moon-color'd Chapel, as if by earlier arrangement, the Surveyors pause to listen.
Oh God in thy Mercy forever uncertain, Upon Whom continue Thy Sheep to Rely... Pray keep us till Dawn, Be the Night e'er so long— All Thy helpless Creation, Who sleep 'neath the Sky...
For the chances of Night are too many to reckon, And the Bridge to the Day-light, is ever too frail... When the Hour of Departure shall strike to the second, Who will tend to the Journey? who will find us the Trail?
As once were we Lambs, in a Spring-tide abiding,
As once were we Children, eternal and free,
So shepherd us through,
Where the Dangers be few,—
From Darkness preserve us, returning to Thee.—
For the chances of Night &c—
Having acknowledg'd at the Warpath the Justice of the Indians' Desires, after the two deaths, Mason and Dixon understand as well that the Line is exactly what Capt. Zhang and a number of others have been styling it all along— a conduit for Evil. So the year in Delaware with the Degree of Latitude is an Atonement, an immersion in "real" Science, a Baptism of the Cypress swamp, and even a Rebirth,— not some hir'd Cadastral Survey by its nature corrupt, of use at Trail's End only to those who would profit from the sale and division and resale of Lands. "Guineas, Mason, Pistoles, and Spanish Dollars, splendorously Vomited from Pluto's own Gut! Without End! All generated from thah' one Line...? Yet has any of it so much as splash'd or dribbl'd in our Direction?
"The one thing we do know how to do, is Vistoes. Let's give 'em something they'll journey from other Provinces, down Rivers and Pikes in Streams ever-wid'ning, to gaze upon,— " as the Visto soon is lin'd with Inns and Shops, Stables, Games of Skill, Theatrickals, Pleasure-Gardens... a Promenade,— nay, Mall,— eighty Miles long. At twilight
you could mount to a Platform, and watch the lamps coming on, watch the Visto tapering, in perfect Projection, to its ever-unreachable Point. Pure Latitude and Longitude.
"I am a student of 'Blind Jack' Metcalf, if it please you," declares one of the Axmen, overhearing them.
"West Riding Lad! Blind Surveyor! he was famous in Staindrop even when I was a Lad."
"Applying the methods I learn'd whilst a member of his Crew, we could build a Modern Road here, straight up this Visto, eighty Miles long, well drain'd its entire length, self-compacting, impervious to all weather, immovable 'neath Laden Wheels be they broad or narrow,— true there's nothing much at the Middle Point, not today as we speak, but with the much improv'd Carriage from the other end, itself convenient to Philadelphia, New Castle, the entire heart of Chesapeake, why a Metropolis could blossom here among the Fens of Nanticoke that might rival any to the North."
"Sha!" warns the Chinaman. "Think about it!"
"Very well,— yet Right Lines, by minimizing Distance, are highly valu'd by some,— Commanding Officers, Merchants, Express-Riders? Must these all be Creatures of Sha?"
"Without Question. Officers kill men in large numbers. Merchants concentrate wealth by beggaring uncounted others. Express-riders distort and injure the very stuff of Time."
"Then why not consider Light itself as equally noxious," inquires Dixon, "for doth it not move ever straight ahead?"
"Ah!" a gleam as likely Madness as Merriment appearing in his Eye. "And if it moves in some other way?"
"Ev'ry Survey would have to be re-run," cries Dixon. "Eeh,— marvellous,— work for all the poor Dodmen till Doomsday!"
"Excuse me, Sir," Mason addresses the Geomancer. "Is this an article of common Faith among the Chinese, which I must remedy my ignorance of,— or but a Crotchet of your own I assume I may safely disregard? no wonder the Jesuits find you Folk inconvenient."
"What's that you're writing? Looks like Verse...?" "My Epitaph. Like to hear it?
7C2 'He wish'd but for a middling Life,
Forever in betwixt
The claims of Lust and Duty,
So intricately mix'd,—
To reach some happy Medium,
Fleet as a golden Beam,
Uncharted as St. Brendan's Isle,
Fugitive as a Dream.
Alas, 'twas not so much the Years
As Day by thieving Day,—
With Debts incurr'd, and Interest Due,
That Dreams were sold to pay,—
Until at last, but one remain'd,
Too modest to have Worth,
That yet he holds within his heart,
As he is held, in Earth.' "
That other Tract, across the Border,— perhaps nearly ev'rything, perhaps nearly nothing,— is denied him. "Is that why I sought so obsessedly Death's Insignia, its gestures and formula;, its quotidian gossip,— all those awful days out at Tyburn,— hours spent nearly immobile, watching stone-carvers labor upon tomb embellishments, Chip by Chip,— was it all but some way to show my worthiness to obtain a Permit to visit her, to cross that grimly patroll'd Line, that very essence of Division? She only wishes me back in the stink of mills, mutton-grease, Hell-Clamor, Lanthorns all night, the People in subjection, the foul'd wells of Painswick, Bisley, Stroud, styling it 'Home,'— Oh, is there no deliverance!"
She accosts him one night walking the Visto. "Seems sad, doesn't it," she chuckles. "Trust me, Mopery, there are regions of Sadness you have not seen. Nonetheless, you must come back to our Vale, 'round to your beginning,— well away from the sea and the sailors, away from the Nets of imaginary Lines. You must leave Mr. Dixon to his Fate, and attend your own."
"You don't care for him, do you?"
"If we are a Triangle, then must I figure as the Unknown side.... Dare you calculate me? Dead-reckon your course into the Wilderness that is now my home, as my Exile? Show, by Projection, Shapes beyond the meager Prism of my Grave? Do you have any idea of my Sentiments? I think not. Mr. Dixon would much prefer you forget me, he is of beaming and cheery temperament, a Boy who would ever be off to play. You were his playmate, now that is over, and you must go back inside the House of your Duty. When you come out again, he will no longer be there, and the Dark will be falling."
On their last visit to New-York, at the very end, waiting for the Halifax Packet, they dash all about the town, looking for any Face familiar from years before. Yet they are berated for their slowness at Corners. Carriages careen thro'Puddlesthesizeof Ponds,spattering them withMire unspeakable, so that they soon resemble Irregulars detach'd from a campaign in some moist Country. The Sons of Liberty have grown even less hospitable, and there is no sign of Philip Dimdown, nor Blackie, nor Captain Volcanoe. "Out of Town," they are told, when they are told anything. "Let's drink up and get out of here, there's no point." "We can find them. That's what we do, isn't it? We're Finders, after all." "The Continent is casting off, one by one, the Lines that fasten'd us to her."
Yet at last, seated among their Impedimenta, Quayage unreckon'd stretching north and south into Wood Lattice-Work, a deep great Thicket of Spars, poised upon the Sky, Hemp and City Smoak, two of a shed-ful of somberly cloak'd travelers waiting the tide, they are aware once more of a feeling part intra-cranial, part Skin-quiver, part fear,— familiar from Inns at Bridges, waiting-places at Ferries, all Lenses of Revenance or Haunting, where have ever converg'd to them Images of those they drank with, saw at the edges of Rooms from the corners of Eyes, shouted to up or down a Visto. This seems to be true now, of ev'ry Face in this Place. Mason turns, his observing Eye protruding in alarm. "Are we at the right Pier?" "I was just about to ask,—
- I didn't actually see any Signs, did you?"
They are approach'd by a Gentleman not quite familiar to them. A Slouch Hat obscures much of his Face. "Well met," he pronounces, yet nothing further.
''Are ye bound for Falmouth?" Mason inquires.
"For Pendennis Point, mean ye, and Carrick Roads?" His tone poises upon a Cusp 'twixt Mockery and Teasing, which recognition might modulate to one or the other,— yet neither can quite identify him. "That Falmouth?"
"There is another, Sir?" Dixon, maniatropick Detectors a-jangle, gets to his feet, as Mason Eye-Balls the Exits.
"There is a Falmouth invisible, as the center of a circle is invisible, yet with Compasses and Straight-Edge may be found," the Stranger replies. At that instant, the company is rous'd by a great Clamor of Bells and Stevedores, as the Packet, Rigging a-throb, prepares to sail. There will be perhaps two minutes to get aboard. "We must continue this Conversation, at Sea,"— and he has vanish'd in the Commotion. Each Day, on the Way over, Mason and Dixon will look for him, at Mess, at Cards, upon ev'ry Deck, yet without Issue.
Mason's last entry, for September nth, 1768, reads, "At 11h 30m A.M. went on board the Halifax Packet Boat for Falmouth. Thus ends my restless progress in America." Follow'd by a Point and long Dash, that thickens and thins again, Chinese-Style.
Dixon has been reading over his Shoulder. "What was mine, then...? Restful?”
73
As all History must converge to Opera in the Italian Style, however, their Tale as Commemorated might have to proceed a bit more hopefully. Suppose that Mason and Dixon and their Line cross Ohio after all, and continue West by the customary ten-minute increments,— each installment of the Story finding the Party advanc'd into yet another set of lives, another Difficulty to be resolv'd before it can move on again. Behind, in pursuit, his arrangements undone, pride wounded, comes Sir William Johnson, play'd as a Lunatick Irishman, riding with a cadre of close Indian Friends,— somehow, as if enacting a discarded draft of Zeno's Paradox, never quite successful in attacking even the rearmost of the Party's stragglers, who remain ever just out of range. Yet at any time, we are led to believe, the Pursuers may catch up, and compel the Surveyors to return behind the Warrior Path.
Longer Sights, easier Grades, wider Night Skies, as the landscape turns inside-out, with Groves upon the Prairie now the reverse of what Glades in the Forest were not so many chains ago. Far less ax-work being requir'd, soon the Axmen are down to Stig alone, who when ask'd to, becomes a one-man assault force on behalf of the Astronomers. The Musick, from some source invisible, is resolutely merry, no matter what it may be accompanying.
One late Autumn, instead of returning to the Coast, the Astronomers will just decide to winter in, however far west it is they've got to...and after that, the ties back in to Philadelphia and Chesapeake will come to mean that much less, as the Pair, detach'd at last, begin consciously to move west. The under-lying Condition of their Lives is quickly estab-lish'd as the Need to keep, as others a permanent address, a perfect Latitude,— no fix'd place, rather a fix'd Motion,— Westering. Whenever they do stop moving, like certain Stars in Chinese Astrology, they lose their Invisibility, and revert to the indignity of being observ'd and available again for earthly purposes.
Were they to be taken together, themselves light and dark Sides of a single Planet, with America the Sun, an Observation Point on high may be chosen, from which they may be seen to pass across a Face serene and benevolent at that Distance, tho' from the Distance of the Planet, often, Winter as Summer, harsh and inimical.
Into the Illinois, where they find renegade French living out a fantasy of the Bourbon Court, teaching the Indians Dress-making, Millinery, Wine-Growing, Haute Cuisine, orchestral Musick, Wig-Dressing, and such other Arts of answering Desire as may sustain this Folly. They believe Mason and Dixon to be Revolutionary Agents.
Descending great bluffs, they cross the Mississippi, the prehistoric Mounds above having guided them exactly here, by an Influence neither can characterize more than vaguely, but whose accuracy is confirm'd by their Star observations, as nicely as the Micrometer and Nonius will permit. They stay at villages of teepees where Mason as usual behaves offensively enough to require their immediate departure, at a quite inconvenient time, too, for Dixon and his Maiden of the day, who've both been looking forward to a few private moments. Instead, the Astronomers spend the rest of their Day running from the angry Villagers, and only by Fool's Luck do they escape. They subsist upon Roots and Fungi. They watch Lightning strike the Prairie again and again, for days, and fires rage like tentacles of a conscious Being, hungry and a-roar. They cower all night before the invisible Thunder of Bison herds, smelling the Animal Dust, keeping ready to make the desperate run for higher ground. They acquire a Sidekick, a French-Shawanese half-breed Renegado nam'd Vongolli, whose only loyalty is to Mason and Dixon, tho' like the Quaker in the Joak, they are not so sure of him. When they happen across an Adventurer from Mexico, and the ancient City he has discov-er'd beneath the Earth, where thousands of Mummies occupy the Streets in attitudes of living Business, embalm'd with Gold divided so finely it flows like Gum, it is Vongolli, with his knowledge of Herbal Formulas, who provides Mason and Dixon with the Velocity to avoid an otherwise certain Dissolution.
Far enough west, and they have outrun the slowly branching Seep of Atlantic settlement, and begun to encounter towns from elsewhere, coming their way, with entirely different Histories,— Cathedrals, Spanish Musick in the Streets, Chinese Acrobats and Russian Mysticks. Soon, the Line's own Vis Inertiae having been brought up to speed, they discover additionally that 'tis it, now transporting them. Right in the way of the Visto some evening at Supper-time will appear the Lights of some complete Village, down the middle of whose main street the Line will clearly run. Laws continuing upon one side,— Slaves, Tobacco, Tax Liabilities,— may cease to exist upon the other, obliging Sheriffs and posses to decide how serious they are about wanting to cross Main Street. "Thanks, Gentlemen! Slaves yesterday, free Men and Women today! You survey'd the Chains right off 'em, with your own!"
One week they encounter a strange tribal sect, bas'd upon the worship of some celestial Appearance none but the Congregation can see. Hungry to know more about the Beloved, ignoring the possibility of a negative result, recklessly do they prevail upon the 'Gazers to search scientifickally, with their Instruments, for this God, and having found its position, to determine its Motion, if any. It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus. The Lads, stunn'd, excited, realize they've found the first new Planet in all the untold centuries since gazing at the Stars began. Here at last is the Career-maker each has dreamt of, at differing moments and degrees of Faith. "All we need do is turn," cries Mason,— "turn, Eastward again, and continue to walk as we ever have done, to claim the Prize. For the first time, we may forget any Obligations to the current Sky,— for praise God (His ways how strange), we need never work again, 'tis t'ta to the Mug's Game and the Fool's Errand, 'tis a Royal Entrance at Life's Ridotto, 'tis a Copley Medal!"
"Eeh!" Dixon amiably waves his Hat. "Which half do thou fancy, obverse or reverse?”
"What?" Mason frowning in thought, "Hum. Well I rather imagin'd we'd...share the same side,— a Half-Circle each, sort of thing—"
Yet by now they can also both see the Western Mountains, ascending from the Horizon like a very close, hitherto unsuspected, second Moon,— the Circumferentor daily tracking the slow rise in vertical angle to the tops of these other-worldly Peaks. They are apt to meet men in skins, and Indians whose Tongue none of the Party can understand, and long strings of Pack-Horses loaded with Peltry, their Flanks wet, their eyes glancing 'round Blinders, inquiring... Survey Sights go on now for incredible Hundreds of Miles, so clear is the Air. Chainmen go chaining away into it, and sometimes never come back. They would be re-discover'd in episodes to come, were the episodes ever to be enacted, did Mason and Dixon choose not to turn, back to certain Fortune and global Acclaim, but rather to continue West, away from the law, into the savage Vacancy ever before them—
"The Copley Medal!" Dixon trying to get into the spirit of things.
"Attend me,— nothing would lie beyond our grasp. We would be the King's Own Astronomers, living in a Palace, servants to obey our desires! Weighty stipends, unlimited Credit! Wenches! Actresses! Observing Suits of gold lame! Any time, day or night, you wanted,— what do you people eat? Haggis! You want a Haggis after Midnight, all you need do is pull upon a bell-cord, and hi-ho!"
"Tha've certainly sold me," nods Dixon, gesturing with his broad hand at the Sun-set, which happens tonight to be wildly spectacular. "Yet all those — "
Mason nods back, impatiently. "They will have to live their lives without any Line amongst 'em, unseparated, daily doing Business together, World's Business and Heart's alike, repriev'd from the Tyranny of residing either North or South of it. Nothing worse than that, whatwhat?"
"How, then. Should we never again come West?"
"Should we ever be permitted to? Either by the King, or by the Americans? Think not, Lensfellow. If we do turn, and go back now, 'twill have to be a Continental D.I.O., forever."
"How Emerson will despise me—"
"As you've already taken money from the Royal Society,— isn't that, in his View, unredeemably corrupted?”
"Thankee, I'd nearly forgotten...?"
"Lethe passes to each and all,— yet vivid in Attention must the Degree of our Day's Sinfulness be ever kept."
"What ever did Sinners do, before there were those to tell them they were sinning?"
"However blissful their Ignorance, why they suffer'd."
"Bollocks. They enjoy'd themselves," Dixon mutters. "I was there. Another expell'd from Paradise, another Lad upon the North Road, seeking his daily Crumbs...."
Countryfolk they meet again are surpris'd to see them, sometimes shock'd, as at some return of the Dead. Mothers drive their small ones like Goslings away to safety. Bar-room habitues reprove them at length,— "You weren't ever suppos'd to be back this way,—
"Ev'ryone said you'd done with all that to-and-fro by 'sixty-eight, left it to the other side of th' Ohio, and 'twould be Westward from there and then on, for you two, or nothing."
"We took yese in among us,— allow'd ye to separate us, name us anew,— only upon the Understanding, that ye were to pass through each of our Lives here, but once."
"We believ'd you exactly that sort of Visitor, not...the other sort. We've enough of those here, the Lord knows, already,— Indian, White, African, aswarm well before the Twilight,— we hardly need more."
"How dare you come back now, among these Consequences you have loos'd like Vermin?"— and so on. Babies take one look at them and burst into tears inconsolable. Boys but recently initiated to the ways of the Rifle take playful shots at them. A recently wed couple assault them, screaming, "Yes you came the proper pair of bloody little Cupids, didn't you, then just went polka-dancing away, leaving us to sort out his mother, the recruiting Sergeant, the Sheriff, the other Girl,—
"— whilst ev'ry low-life you gentlemen caus'd to be suck'd into town in your Wake is ogling the Queen of Sheba, here, who never could keep her eyes to herself, and say what you will, Wife, my dear Mother has ever shewn the born grace and sense of the true lady.”
"D'you hear that then, you miserable cow? once again as I've ever been telling all you Scum, none of you's good enough for my Boy Adol-phus, 'specially not you, fifteen stone of unredeem'd Slut, my gracious just look at you,—
"Bitch!" the wife two-handedly swinging at her mother-in-law's Head a great Skillet, which none of the men present are hasty in rushing to deflect,— the older woman dodges the blow, and from somewhere produces a Dirk. In a moment, someone will have to load and prime a Pistol. All this having resulted from the award-winning "Love Laughs at a Line" episode, which seem'd but light-hearted Frolick that first time through.
In the next Village east, the Creature they thought they had so rationally and with up-to-date methods prov'd to be but a Natural phenomenon has re-emerged, and holds in its sinister emprise the lives of that half of the Populace living upon one side of the Line.. .yet for some reason, it is reluctant to cross and continue its depredations upon the other. The Line is believ'd to present some Barrier, invisible but powerful enough to hold back the Being, to preserve those across it from the Fate of their former Neighbors. Brave townsfolk slip out after dark, dig up and move the Boundary-Stones, as far as they dare, some one way, some another. The Line thro' here soon loses all pretense to Orthogony, becoming a Record in Oolite of Fear,— whose, and how much,— and of how a Village broke in two.
In some Towns they are oblig'd to turn back Westward, often waiting until Dark to creep cautiously eastward again, for the Population will hear of them in no other way but Westering. When it seems there's a Chance that someone may listen, Mason and Dixon both try to explain about the new Planet,— but very few care. It breaks slowly upon the Astronomers, that with no time available for gazing at anything, this people's Indifference to the Night, and the Stars, must work no less decisively than their devotion to the Day, and the Earth for whose sake something far short of the Sky must ever claim them, a stove, a child, a hen-house predator, a deer upwind, the price of Corn, a thrown shoe, an early Freeze.
At last the Post Mark'd West appears. A Joint Delegation from the American and Royal Societies, alerted by Jesuit Telegraph, is there to
greet them. A new and iridescent generation of Philadelphia Beauties in full Susurrus and Chirp line both sides of the Visto. A Consort of Crumhornes is on hand, playing Airs and Marches. 'Tis the Ineluctable Moment of Convergence. Will somebody repent, ere they arrive?
When they reach the Post Mark'd West, one swerves a bit North and the other South of it, and on they go, together, up the East Line, to the shore of Delaware, into a Boat and across, dropping by, that day, to visit the McCleans at Swedesboro.
"Heard some Tales, Gents,— what'll yese do now?"
"Devise a way," Dixon replies, "to inscribe a Visto upon the Allan-tick Sea."
"Archie, Lad, Look ye here," Mason producing a Sheaf of Papers, flapping thro' them,— "A thoughtful enough Arrangement of Anchors and Buoys, Lenses and Lanthorns, forming a perfect Line across the Ocean, all the way from the Delaware Bay to the Spanish Extre-madura,"— with the Solution to the Question of the Longitude thrown in as a sort of Bonus,— as, exactly at ev'ry Degree, might the Sea-Line, as upon a Fiduciary Scale for Navigators, be prominently mark'd, by a taller Beacon, or a differently color'd Lamp. In time, most Ships preferring to sail within sight of these Beacons, the Line shall have widen'd to a Sea-Road of a thousand Leagues, as up and down its Longitude blossom Wharves, Chandleries, Inns, Tobacco-shops, Greengrocers' Stalls, Printers of News, Dens of Vice, Chapels for Repentance, Shops full of Souvenirs and Sweets,— all a Sailor could wish,— indeed, many such will decide to settle here, "Along the Beacons," for good, as a way of coming to rest whilst remaining out at Sea. A good, clean, salt-scour'd old age. Too soon, word will reach the Land-Speculation Industry, and its Bureaus seek Purchase, like some horrible Seaweed, the length of the Beacon Line. Some are estopp'd legally, some are fended directly into the Sea, yet Time being ever upon their Side, they persist, and one Day, in sinister yet pleasing Coral-dy'd cubickal Efflorescence, appears "St. Brendan's Isle," a combination Pleasure-Grounds and Pensioners' Home, with ev'rything an Itinerant come to Rest might ask, Taverns, Music-Hails, Gaming-Rooms, and a Population ever changing of Practitioners of Comfort, to Soul as to Body, uncritickal youngsters from far-off lands where death might almost abide, so ubiquitous is it there, so easily do they tolerate it here.
Tis here Mason and Dixon will retire, being after all Plank-Holders of the very Scheme, having written a number of foresighted Stipulations into their Contract with the Line's Proprietor, the transnoctially charter'd "Atlantick Company." Betwixt themselves, neither feels British enough anymore, nor quite American, for either Side of the Ocean. They are content to reside like Ferrymen or Bridge-keepers, ever in a Ubiquity of Flow, before a ceaseless Spectacle of Transition.
Three
LastTransit 74
Perhaps all was as simple as that,— that Dixon wish'd to remain, and Mason did not,— could not. So Dixon return'd as well, and on 15 December 1768, at a meeting of the Royal Society Council, according to the Minute-Book, there they are, together in the Room. Both have chosen to wear gray and black. "Messrs Mason and Dixon attending with proposals relative to the aforesaid intended observations, were called in; And Mr Dixon acquainted the Council, that he was willing to go to the North Cape or Cherry Island; Mr Mason rather declined going; but added, that if he was wanted, he should be ready to go."
Was their Appearance all pro forma, did Dixon know, did they have it all work'd out beforehand, or was it sprung upon him, and thus less forgivable than the accustom'd Masonickal behavior? The meaner of spirit might translate it into, "Of course I'll go, but not with Dixon,"— a clear Insult, Dixon was often advis'd,— Would he not care to respond? "Ah've grown so us'd to it," Dixon assur'd his Comforters, "that often Ah neglect to take offense...?"
Privately, his Sentiments are of a more hopeful turn. He knows enough of Mason to recognize by now most of the shapes his Pursuit of the Gentlemanly takes on, as well as the true extent of his progress beyond the socially stumbling Philosopher-Fool he began as. That is, 'tis possible that Mason, honestly believing Dixon ready for, as deserving of, his own command, is willing to risk looking ungracious, if it will advance that end. And so this "rather-decline-yet-if-I-am-wanted" Formula is but more of his inept Kindness.
They leave together. Out into another Christmastide, each for his own reason seeking the brightest Lights. Some horrible Boswell pursues them, asking questions. "Known of course as the Reluctant Lensmen of the Cape Expedition to observe the first Transit of Venus in 'sixty-one, and despite the generally excellent quality of your Work, neither of you has been voted to membership in the Royal Society. Mr. Mason, we've heard you're the one here who's unhappy with that, whilst Mr. Dixon takes the more philosophickal View."
"Only the long view, Lad."
How could the elder Charles have forgiven Mason for leaving his children with his Sister, dumping them really, going off to the Indies with another man, another Star-Gazer, coming home only to turn about and sail off to America, with the same man? Dixon sees the pattern, the expectation, the coming Transit of Venus. Mason sees it, too. "If we went off a third time together,... he hates me enough already.... I study the Stars against my Father's Wish,— but do I remain among 'em, only at the Price of my Sons? That is what I face,— some Choice!" So he declines the North Cape, and another posting together, symmetrically as ever, to that end of the world lying opposite their first end of the World. "Someone must break this damn'd Symmetry," Mason mutters.
For years, as he found his way further into the wall'd city of Melancholy, he dream'd,— tho' presently no longer sure if he had been asleep, or awake,— of the North Cape he would never see,— an unexpectedly populous land, where the native people were enslav'd by a small but grimly effective European team, quarter'd and mostly restricted to an area within easy reach of their boats, upon which indeed many of them preferr'd to sleep. The only industry there, was mining the Guano of the sea-birds and shipping it to lower latitudes, to be process'd into Nitre, for Gunpowder, which was in great demand, as it seem'd that far Below, a general European war had broken out, for dynastic, racial, and religious reasons Mason, and Dixon, who was also in the Dreams, realiz'd they were ignorant of, having been out of touch with any kind of periodical news for eight or nine years now. They arriv'd at the North Cape to find the mines working day and night shifts, and the mood turning unpleas- ant as white overseers demanded more and more from workers who were not making enough for it to matter what the warring nations Below did to each other, nor on what Schedule.
The Guano deposits and hence the mining were upon rocks off the Coast, often quite far out to Sea, where the Light was crepuscular and clear. The Guano was carried out to the Ships in Scows of soak'd, black, failing Timbers. Loading these vessels directly from the Rocks was perilous work. Weather often swept in, carrying away ships and Souls. The Natives, who were dark-skinn'd and spoke none but their own tongue, deserted when they could and many times contriv'd their own Deaths when all else had fail'd to deliver them...
At Maskelyne's Behest, Mason agrees to observe the Transit from South Ulster, where he obtains the ingress of Venus upon the Disk of the Sun, but not her departure. "The mists rise up out of the Bog. There she is, full, spherickal.. .the last time I shall see her as a Material Being.. .when next appearing, she will have resum'd her Deity." Maskelyne will edit this out, which is why Mason leaves it in his Field Report.
Shall Ireland be his last journey out, his last defiance of Sapperton,— which is to say, Rebekah? There's no place for him in London. The city has never found his Heart, and 'tis his Heart that keeps a residue of dislike for the place ever guarded. Likewise must he allow himself to let go of Dixon, soon now— He sees nothing but Penance ahead, and Renunciations proceeding like sheep straggling back, gathering to shelter. He sits alone in brand-new Rooms of which he may be the very first Occupant, in the smell of Plaster and Paint and Glue, the Paper upon the Walls an assault of Color,— Indigo, Cochineal Red, Spanish Orange, the rarely-observ'd Magenta and Green...the Day outside unable to emerge from Mourning. Rebekah, whom he expects to visit, does not appear. He waits, trying to see his way ahead, suddenly sixteen again. He tries to think of how, short of suicide, he may put himself in her way. He is furious about ev'rything, he screams at length about transient setbacks however slight. "Misses his Family," the Servants tell it. "No sleep." The House is large, inexpensively Palladian, with beds in ev'ry room, not only the Parlor and the Drawing Room, but the Kitchen and the Music Conservatory as well. Shadows are ev'rywhere unpredictable. Mason tries each room in turn. Other Guests are out upon the same Pilgrimage,— they meet in the Halls and mutter Civilities. In the Musick-Room, he wakes during the Night and mistakes the Clavier for a Coffin, with somebody in it, withal...who may or may not be another Sleeper. Out in the Bogs, Fairy Lights appear. He hears a Note from the Cas'd Instrument, then another. He much prefers the Kitchen, or the Observatory out back. There he is hypnagogickally instructed all night long in the arts of silent food Preparation, the "Sandwich" having found here a particular Admiration, for the virtual Boundlessness of its Assembly.
In a letter dated November 9th, close to Mason's departure from Donegal, Maskelyne as A.R. is wallowing in the pleasure of good Instruments to work with at last. The defective Bob-Suspension is now but a distasteful Pang of Memory, causing him at his Morning Shave to grunt, and avoid his Eyes in the Mirror. The Sector Telescope he finds "charming." "I have also used a ic-foot telescope with a micrometer. Your moral reflections on the subject I approve of, as becoming an astronomer, who ought to make this use of these sublime speculations."
"What was he talking about?"
"In Maskelyne's Letter, which we have, he says he's responding to a letter of Mason's dated October fifteenth, which no one can locate, including me,— indeed, I've not found any of Mason's Letters, tho' there are said to be many about."
"Make something up, then,— Munchausen would."
"Not when there exists, somewhere, a body of letters Mason really did write. I must honor that, mustn't I, Brother Ives?"
Ives snorts and chooses not to contend.
"Why not gamble they'll never be found?" wonders Ethelmer.
"Just because I can't find them doesn't mean they're not out there. The Question may be rather,— Must we wait till they are found, to speculate as to the form 'moral reflections' upon a ten-foot telescope, with a Micrometer, might take?" The Presence of this Device, as well as the Instrument's Length, suggests an accuracy to perhaps two further degrees of Magnitude, than the Instrument it replac'd at Greenwich. "Sublime speculations"? Accuracy and Sublimity? Is the A.R. being ironickal? Whatever Mason had to say, almost certainly included G-d.
Was he off the deep end again? "Make this use..." suggests Mason had advanc'd some Program. Suppose he'd written to Maskelyne,—
"...Tis the Reciprocal of 'as above, so below,'...being only at the finer Scales, that we may find the truth about the Greater Heavens,.. .the exact value of a Solar Parallax of less than ten seconds can give us the size of the Solar system. The Parallax of Sirius, perhaps less than two seconds, can give us the size of Creation. May we not, in the Domain of Zero to One Second of Arc, find ways to measure even That Which we cannot,— may not,— see?"
"Many of us in the parsonical line of work," admits Wicks Cher-rycoke, "find congenial the Mathematics, particularly the science of the fluxions. Few may hope to have named for them, like the Reverend Dr. Taylor, an Infinite Series, yet such steps, large and small, in the advancement of this most useful calculus, have provided us a Rack-ful of Tools for Analysis undreamed-of even a few years ago, tho' some must depend upon Epsilonics and Infinitesimalisms, and other sorts of Defective Zero. Is it the Infinite that tempts us, or the Imp? Or is it merely our Vocational Habit, ancient as Kabbala, of seeking God there, among the Notation of these resonating Chains...."
"Reminds me of America. Strange, some mornings I get up and I think I'm in America." Half Mountain, half Bog, ev'ry other Soul in it nam'd O'Reilly, Oakboys with night Mischief in mind all about, this is frontier Country again, standing betwixt Ulster and the Dublin Pale, whilst of neither,— poor,— at the mercy of Land-owners... such as Lord Penny-comequick, the global-Communications Nabob, who now approaches Mason upon the Lawn, carrying in Coat-Pockets the size of Saddle-Bags four bottles of the Cheap Claret ev'rywhere to be found here, thanks to enterprising Irishmen in Bordeaux. "In my family since the Second Charles," he calls in greeting.
"Isn't a hundred years consider'd old for Wine?" Mason having risen kickish this morning.
"Oh, but I meant the Coat?" Pennycomequick having decided, with Legions before him, that Mason, because he speaks in the hurried and forc'd Rhythms of at least a Tickler of Children, is a professional Wag of
some sort. "Aye, 'tis call'd a Morning Coat, the yellow symbolizing the Sun, I imagine,— several theories about these Aqua bits, here," examining them the way we examine our Waist-coats for spill'd Food, "being of course our famous historically subversive Color Green,— should have been a hanging Offense as long ago as Robin Hood, if you ask me,— yet disguis'd cleverly, you see, by the addition of Blue. Perhaps a touch of Buff as well. Ha! ha ha do not look so concern'd, Sir, being all Whigs here staunch and true, yes well do come along, ye've not seen the Folly yet have ye."
What cannot escape Mason's notice, as they come round the Butt End of the Topiary Elephant, is a sudden Visto of Obelisks, arrang'd in a Double Row too long to count, forming an Avenue leading to the Folly. In this Sunlight they have withdrawn to the innocence of Stone, into being only Here enough, to maintain the Effect of solemn Approach...yet it isn't hard for Mason to imagine them in less certain Light, at a more problematick time of day, taking on more Human shape,— almost Human Shape...somewhat larger than human size...almost able to speak,—
"There 'tis. What do you think?" The Lord has halted, Pockets a-sway, to help Mason admire it, this being a task inadvisable for but one person.
"You can't say it isn't something," is Mason's comment.
"Of course if you've read Mr. Halfpenny's Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste, you'll recognize those bits there at the Roof-corners... our Great Buddha, half-scale regrettably.... Here,— therapeutick Pool, Peat Baths, good morning, Rufus, I trust your good woman has recov-er'd...Excellent! (She ran that Department, Chaos since she left),— Ah! the Electrick Machines, yes a good many of them, all the way down to the end there, can you make it out? On the rare chance you have an appetite when you emerge, lo, a Summer-Kitchen, complete with gesticulating Chef,— Yes yes, Soup du Jour, Armand! clever fellow, claims to know you, 's a matter of fact,—
"Meestair Messon! Meestair Messon!" 'Tis the very Frenchman,— is it not? yet why then is his figure illuminated so much less than ev'rything else about, this time of Day?— why is he moving so smoothly, as a Boat upon still Water, looming ever closer, aiming, it now becomes apparent, a Kiss at Mason's Cheek, his Color at close range aberrating toward Green, as he sweeps in a cold wind, upon and past the shiv'ring Mason, with an echo, like an odor, trailing after. Mason turns,— the Lawn is empty. At some moment he has fail'd to mark, Lord Pennycomequick has left him. He stands by an Oven, with Moss between its Stones, that he wishes upon no Account to look into.
The Rain has rais'd in ev'ryone an insomniack Apprehension, in which all talk of Bog-bursts is avoided,— yet 'tis but a Question of where the black Flood shall break thro'. The longer it rains, the higher too the level of Nerves and Vapors. No-one here, or for miles, will need to be awak-en'd for it. At last, one Midnight,—
"Bog-burst! Out upon McEntaggart's piece,— good evenin' to ye Sir, and regretfully must I now be tellin' ye,— ye've been, as they say in yeer Royal Navy, impress'd, Sir."
"Oh, I am impress'd," Mason agrees, "really,— the efficiency with which you are able to turn all these Wretches to, is nothing short of impressive, indeed."
"Excuse me, Sir,— 'tis me English no doubt,— I meant, that you too must come out and work in the company of these very 'Wretches.''
"Of course,— Man of Science, ever happy to advise. Restoring the Berm, is that how we'll be at it?"
"Someday when all's calm, I'd love to chat over wi' ye the finer points of Bog-Burst Management,— yet now, would I suggest Boots and Gloves, Sir, and smartly too, if ye'd not be mindin'?"
Little McTiernan at the Door is giving out short-handl'd Peat-Cutters styl'd, by the Irish, "Slanes."
"Not sure I know how to cut a Sod," mumbles Mason.
"Quickly's best,— before he can pick up a Weapon...?"
"Let him be, Dermy,— not his fault he's English."
"Bogs," Mason to himself, as they go along, bearing Candles in hol-low'd out Turnips, not certain if he is speaking aloud, "are my Destiny. I imagin'd Delaware, not merely the end, but years past the end, of this sort of Journeyman's Humiliation...even fancied that I had earn'd passage, at last, into a purer region, where Mathesis should rule, with
nothing beyond an occasional Ink-Smudge to recall to me that unhappy American Station of the Cross. Arrh! Stars and Mud, ever conjugate, a Paradox to consider,— one...for the Astronomer-Royal, perhaps?" His current scheme being, to assail Maskelyne's Sanity, by now and then posing him Questions that will not bear too much cogitating upon— most lately, Uber Bernouillis Brachistochronsprobleme, 17 oz, by Baron von Boppdorfer ("Mind like a Spanish Blade. Read it at the Risk of your Self-Esteem.") having almost done the Trick.
Slodging the wet Tracks, dress'd all in the local Frieze, Mason, by Neep-Lantern light, looks like a wet, truculent Sheep. The rain comes down. They cross the River, passing 'round Keadew and Kinnypottle, where more come creeping from sleepless Dwellings to join them. Mason might be traveling with a Herd of Ghosts, felt but invisible, bearing him into Country Unknown. The Sky tonight has nothing to show him. Now and then, very much closer to the Earth, he begins to see Lights, moving, flickering, soon gone. "Who are they?" Mason inquires of his faceless Companions.
"Hush," come a half dozen voices at once. "They are going their Way, as we go ours," whispers someone behind his right Ear. "They are not often out in the Rain, nor particularly helpful in a Slide."
Soon they have reach'd one Shore of the liquefied Peat-Flow, thro' some Mirage blacker than the neighboring Night. "McEntaggart's been after that Tath for a Year, and now 'tis his, for nothing."
"He kept still, and the Premises mov'd!"
"Look out, here comes more of it!"
"What, a Re-Peat!"
In Irish perversity all a-quip, they set to work finding and cutting out Peat Sods not yet saturated by the Rain. Other countrymen appear now and then bearing Rocks, piling them laboriously against the Burst, thro' the drizzling of the Night. Cottagers, daz'd, come wobbling down the Hill. Dawn finds the tops of the Hillsides obscur'd, each Shift-mate a wan Spectre in the Vaporous Bog.
"Mr. Mason!"
"Your servant, sir." " 'Tis the Well of Saint Brendan, if you please,—
"Thought he was a Galway Lad.”
No, he pass'd thro' Cavan once, on his way to the Sea, looking for Crew, and from the spot where he slept, came forth the very water they drank in Eden, so lovely is it to taste,— now, in the general Relocation, has it vanish'd. "Tho' we've Dowsers a-plenty, yet are all in Perplexity, not to mention humility, in begging the Application of your London Arts, in discov'ring and restoring it."
"I've the very thing," Mason replies. Among his Equipment at the Pennycomequick Manor is the Krees from his Dream in Cape Town, which he has kept ever by him. "Have you water from this Spring?" He pours and rubs it over the Blade, returning to the Bog-burst, where immediately he senses a Traction, a warmth, a queer high whine along the Blade, tho' 'tis none of these... "Here, I believe."
He helps them to dig. At no great Depth a Spring is encounter'd, whose Perimeter is quickly shor'd against re-collapse. One by one Countryfolk taste the Water. Some say it is the very Spring of the Saint, others say it isn't. In fact, there is so wide a difference of opinion, that presently what will be the first of many Blows are exchang'd.
In an ordinary Dream, Rebekah appears. "No need to feel pleas'd with yourself. What you found was not their sacred Well, but only a Representation of it." He wakes up into a midnight sadness, trying to say, I have tasted it, yet he has not tasted it. Now he is afraid ever to, lest his Spring be discover'd as soil'd as the Holy Wells of Gloucestershire, and therefore the Krees, and therefore his Dreams.
He prays to see her Face in the new Comet,— each night, this time, in terror of not seeing it. He tries to will it there, yet is amaz'd that for some Minutes now, he cannot even remember her Face. Yet at last arrives a clear night of seeing, so clear in fact that sometime after Midnight, supine in the Star-light, rigid with fear, Mason experiences a curious optical re-adjustment. The Stars no longer spread as upon a Dom'd Surface,— he now beholds them in the Third Dimension as well,— the Eye creating its own Zed-Axis, along which the star-chok'd depths near and far rush both inward and away, and soon, quite soon, billowing out of control. He collects that the Heavenly Dome has been put there as Protection, in an agreement among Observers to report only what it is safe to see. Fifteen years in the Business, and here is his Initiation.
Now, nothing in the Sky looks the same. "As to the Comet,— I cannot account for how,— but there came this night, to this boggy Mias-matick place, an exceptional Clarity of the Air,...a sort of optickal Tension among the Stars, that seem'd ever just about to break radiantly
thro' And there. In Leo, bright-man'd, lo, it came. It came ahead.
And 'twould be but Prelude to the Finger of Corsica,— which now appear'd, pointing down from Heaven. And the place where it pointed was the place I knew I must journey to, for beneath the Sky-borne Index lay, as once beneath a Star, an Infant that must, again, re-make the World,— and this time 'twas a Sign from Earth, not only from Heaven, showing the way."
"Quite so.... Yet I'm not terribly sure this ought to be in your report," says Maskelyne, "-- objections from the Clergy,— readily imagin'd, what-what?— leaving aside the question of, actually, well what does it mean?"
"No Idea. I was in a kind of Daze. Have ye never falPn into one of those Cometary Dazes, with the way the Object grows brighter and brighter each Night? These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe but in Motion,— gone in seconds, and if they return, we do not see them. Once safely part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure, performing whatever in their Work corresponds to shifting jibs and staysails, keeping perfectly upon Station, mimicking any faint, unnam'd Star you please. Do they watch us? Are they visits from the past, from an Age of Faith, when Miracles still literally happen'd? Are they agents of the absented Guardian,— and are these Its last waves, last Reckonings, over the tops of the Night Trees? An Astronomer in such a State of Inquiry's apt to write nearly anything. How about yourself?"
"Of course there are things one wishes to leave in, often yearns to. Then again, there are things one leaves in,—
"Wondrous! Let's strike the Passage, by all means. Now, what about the part 'round July, where I compare the Aurora Borealis to jell'd Blood,— do ye want that out, too?"
"I was just coming to that. They've been frightfully picky of late about that Word. No one knows why."
"What? 'Blood'? Well. Too bloody bad, isn't it?" The Octagonal room echoes with indignation imperfectly mock'd. "Bloody Hell, now ye come to it,— “
Maskelyne looks about nervously. "Pray ye, Mason. There's ever someone listening."
"What of it? You arre the A. Rrr.,— arrre ye not? Tell 'em bugger off."
He receives a long Look from Maskelyne he can't recall ever having seen before. " 'Tis not the same Office, as it was in Bradley's day...and your own. There will nevermore be disputes like this current one over his Obs,— 'tis said it may run on for years."
His Obs. Mason, who perform'd many of these Observations himself, and is consequently in the middle of the Quarrel, snorts, but does not charge.
"Instead of the old Arrangements, we've now a sort of. ..Contract... rather lengthy one, indeed...in return for this,— " gesturing 'round, yet keeping his elbow bent, as if unable to extend his Arm all the way, - they own my work, they own the products of my thinking, perhaps they own my Thoughts unutter'd as well. I am their mechanickal Cuckoo, perch'd up here in this airy Cage to remind them of the first Day of Spring, for they are grown strange, this Cohort, to the very Wheel of Seasons. I am allow'd that much usefulness,— the rest being but Drudging Captivity."
"Hum. Difficult Life. Excuse me, what's this thing where the Astronomer's Couch us'd to be?"
" 'Tis styl'd, by the knowing, a 'Péché Mortel,' One of Mr. Chippendale's. Elegant, don't you think? Clive bought it for me," defiantly, the small eyes tightening for some assault, the lips remaining steady.
"Who? Clive of India?" is all Mason says.
"I meant, 'for the Observatory,' of course," replies Maskelyne.
"What would you do with Mortal Sin? when you wouldn't know it if it came over and bought you a Pint."
"I have learn'd to simulate it, however, by committing a greater than usual number of the Venial ones."
Mason, trying not to stare too openly, has just realized that Maskelyne, direct from the Astronomer's Couch, is wearing his favorite Observing Suit, a garment of his own design that his brother-in-law the famed Clive of India sent him from Bengal, where the Nabob had had it cut and sewn with painstaking fidelity to a thirty-page List of Instructions from Maskelyne. It is a three-piece affair, everything quilted, long jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, which have Feet at the ends of them, all in striped silk, a double stripe of some acidick Rose upon Celadon for the Trousers and Waistcoat, and for the Jacket, whose hem touches the floor when, as now, he is seated, a single stripe of teal-blue upon the same color, which is also that of the Revers....It is usually not wise to discuss matters of costume with people who dress like this,— politics or religion being far safer topicks. The Suit, Mason knows, is but one of a collection of sportive outfits from the Royal-Astronomical Armoire, run up to Maske-lyne's increasingly eccentric specifications by the subcontinental genius Mr. Deep, and his talented crew, and shipped to him express by East Indiaman, "the third-fastest thing on the Planet," as Mun lik'd to say, "behind Light and Sound."
Nevil seems to miss the life, sleeping or drinking in the daytime, starting to come alive around Dusk, quickening with the Evening Shift. He and Mason pace about, the window-lensed afternoon sun heightening the creases beneath their chins, amid motes of wig-powder drifting in the glare of the beams. He exhibits a morally batter'd Air, and is not shy about discussing its origins. Once more the Harrison Watch, like an Hungarian Vampire, despite the best efforts of good Lunarians upon the Board of Longitude to impale it, has risen upon brazen wings, in soft rhythmic percussion, to obsess his Position, his dwindling circle of Time remaining upon Earth, his very Reason.
"It reach'd its Peak in 'sixty-seven. The B. of L. in its Wisdom kept insisting on one trial after another, finally they hung it around my neck,— new in the job, what was I suppos'd to do, say no?— to oversee trials of
the Watch at Greenwich, for G-d's sake, for nearly a d——'d Year."
Maskelyne had been observ'd glaring at the lock'd case, to which he held the key, apostrophizing the miserable watch within that could render moot all his years' Trooping in the service of Lunars, with more of the substance of his Life than he could healthily afford, stak'd upon what might prove the wrong Side. "Were Honor nought but Honor's Honor kept," some thought they heard, "All Sins might wash away in Tears unwept—"
"Couldn't believe it," reported the room-steward Mr. Gonzago, "like watching Hamlet or something, isn't it? Went on like that for weeks,— he wanted to break in, he didn't want to break in, he spent hours with scraps of paper, elaborating ways to damage the Watch that would never be detected,— he liv'd in this Tension, visible to all, between his conscience and his career."
("Bringing it to Greenwich upon an unsprung Cart over the London Lanes might have done the job alone," Mason suggests to Maskelyne, none too gently.)
Retir'd Navigators and Ship's Carpenters crept up the Hill to witness this, feeling like Macaronis who've paid their threepence at Bedlam. "Yesterday, so vouches my Mate, Old Masky, he scream'd and rav'd for quite an Hour."
"Let's hope he's not too tired to give us some kind of Show."
"I'd settle for a London Minute...?"
"Look at my side of it," Maskelyne would blurt at them (too passionately, as he saw right away). "That is," untying his Queue and commencing to scratch his Head furiously and at length, "they've put me in an impossible Position, haven't they, I mean it isn't a Secret of State that I've an interest in Lunars, nor that this blasted Harrison Watch is the sole Obstacle, between your servant, and the Prize he has earn'd fairly, at the cost of his Vision, his sleep, his engagement with Society. Ordinarily I'm the last one that ought to be giv'n any Authority over it, let alone the Key permitting Access. Yet if you ask why, you will hear,— 'We are ensuring his Honesty this way,— he dasn't fiddle with it now.' And, 'If the watch comes thro' despite Maskelyne's Curator-ship, why then has it seen the Fire, and conquer'd it.' How am I sup-pos'd to feel? The Burden upon me is more than anyone should justly be made to bear."
"Like being the Swab who holds the Anchor-Pool."
"Aye! The Purser of Time!"
"He looks a bit furtive to me, what say ye, Boats?"
"Like settin' a Spaniel to guard the Prize Cock."
"Gentlemen," Maskelyne, according to some, scream'd. "Why this unfriendly Attendance? Is it the per Diem, is that it? You wish,— what? sixpence more? A Shilling?"
Sham'd, disappointed in him, the Veterans of Cartagena and Minorca began to move sighing and mutt'ring away.
"I am of Mathematickal Mind,— 'twould be an afternoon's work,— recreation, rather,— to devise a way to destroy the Watch's Chances for-
ever,— and yet there is bound to be some Enquiry,— wherein each of my moments, since I was laden with this impossible Duty, must be accounted for,— yet already too many have pass'd in solitude, unwitness'd by others, such as your good Selves,— a Blank Sheet that invites Fiction and her vulgar Friends, Slander and Vilification, to sport upon it.—
"Dodgy."
"Then why not be hung for a Sheep as a Lamb?" Maskelyne continued. "— I often find myself asking, not of G-d, exactly, but of whatever might be able to answer the Question. If the World already believe me party to a Fiddle, when I'm not, you understand, then why not go in there with a Hammer, heh, heh, so to speak, and really do a Job?"
"Classickal," grumbles Euphrenia.
"Easy to find fault with the Reverend Dr. Maskelyne," her brother agrees, "though with our Eleventh Commandment, I must not speak ill of another Clergyman. His behavior toward Mason was ever consistent with that of a brotherly Rival for the love of, and the succession from, their 'Father,' Bradley. Did he, in posting Mason out of England, employ a Code,— to Cavan in order to put him once again among Ulstermen as he'd been upon the Pennsylvania frontier...to Schiehallion out of some mean desire to remind him of the error Cavendish pointed out, due to the Allegheny Mountains,— or, Cavendish being after all more Enemy than friend, were these rather simple Kindnesses in standing by an old colleague and ally? The long-winded Letters to Mason in the Field, tho' surely meant to assert his personal Authority, may reveal nothing beyond the desire, out of resentments unvoic'd, to bore their Recipients into compliance,— at Cambridge he had been now and then upon the receiving end of a 'Jobation,' or lengthy Reproof, and perhaps this was his way of reasserting in his Life a balance (having been born beneath the Scales) that would otherwise have been set a-lop by an excess of Patience. It also appears that he did what he could to support Mason's claim to Prize money from the Board of Longitude for his Refinements to Mayer's Lunar Tables, whilst seeking none for himself. And he back'd the younger Harrison's admission to the Royal Society, despite the ease with which his opposition might have been understood and excus'd. Nor was his Approach to the Longitude ever the most congenial to've taken,— the method of Lunars being by no means universally lov'd, its tediousness indeed often resented, and not only by Midshipmen trying to learn it,— many wish'd for a faster way, willing to cede to Machinery a form of Human Effort they could've done without."
Maskelyne fancied that, when he became Astronomer Royal, there might be an Investiture, a Passage, a Mystery.. .an Outfit. He began designing, with the utmost restraint and taste of course, ceremonial Robes for himself, bas'd upon the Doctors' Robes at Cambridge, Rose upon Scarlet, a black Velvet Hat, Liripipes, Tippets, Sleeves to the ground,— decorated all over with Zodiackal Glyphs, in a subdued Gold Passementerie. But to whom could he show it? The Royal Society might not approve. The King might be offended. When, at all, might he have occasion to wear it? Perhaps an occasion could be proclaim'd. Star Day. Ev'ryone up all night. No flame allow'd. Food misidentified in the Star-light, Lovers a-tip, and something glamorous, like the Pleiades, upon the Rise.
And the King would place in his hands something preserv'd from the days of the Astrologers,— a Prism, an Astrolabe, a Gift of Power,— he would be sworn to secrecy. Of course he would use it wisely....
Mason has almost presum'd to think of them as old Troopers by now, with the Transits of Venus behind them, Harrison's Watch, battles budgetary and vocal lost and won,— weary veterans of campaigns in which has loomed as well the amiable bean-pole Dixon, secretly afraid of what they were all caught up in doing, as if at the Behest of the Stars, which somehow had begun to take on for him attributes of conscious beings ("Seen it before," quoth Maskelyne, "— Rapture without a doubt,— for some reason Dissenters are particularly susceptible..."), attacked by Vertigo if he continu'd too long at the eye-piece, lost in terror before the Third Dimension, indeed running, when there was a choice, to Earth rather than to Fire, desperate to pretend all was well, face kept as clear as the bottom of a stream in August, nothing visible at the fringes of readability,— who knew him, truly? What might wait, at the margins of the pool, mottled, still, river-silt slowly gathering upon its dorsal side?
At the end of the day, all Mason knows of Maskelyne, is how to needle him. "Maskelyne,— I cannot go,"— yet as if uncertain as to how much Maskelyne intends to make him plead. "That is," he cannot help adding, "if it pleases Your Grace."
The Astronomer Royal is not prepared. "Again you renounce me," he does not exactly intend to blurt, his scowl appearing slowly, like a blush. "Bloody infuriating, Mason."
"I know. Why not have another bowl of café au lait? And,— look ye here, a lovely iced bun."
"Here,— suppose you go to Scotland only as a sort of Scout,— look at likely possibilities, report back to us."
" 'Us'?"
"Pay Mr. Dixon a visit upon your way, for Heaven's sake."
"I've your Permission for that, have I."
"Mason— "
"Half a Guinea a Day."
"Gentlemen usually accept a single Honorarium."
"Plus daily expenses."
"This might be quite in your Line, Mason."
"Try not to say 'Line,' Maskelyne. Ehp,— that is,—
" 'Mask,' then," flirtatiously, "plain old 'Mask.' “
75
"At the request of Maskelyne, I am coming North a Mountain of suitable Gravity to seek, whose presum'd Influence might deflect a Plumb-line clearly enough to be measur'd without Ambiguity.—Tho' given the A.R.'s difficult History with Plumb-lines, I feel Apprehension for the Project.
"Having determin'd after deep study in Mr. C. Dicey's County Atlas that it is impossible to travel from here to Scotland without passing your doorstep, I should be oblig'd for any recommendation of a good Inn for the night, whence I shall beg leave to make You Thee a brief visit.
"I pray that thou suffer no further from the Gout. I am well enough,— in Body. Our Afflictions are many, proceeding from an unilluminated Region deep and distant, which we are us'd to call by Names more reverent. 'Twill be four years, Brother Lens. I hope it is not too long,— nor yet too soon."
To which,— "The Queen's Head is Bishop's best,— yet, my own house being around but a couple of corners, I would have to insist that thou improve the emptiness of one of its chambers. Besides, at The Queen's Head, despite the excellence of its Larder and Kitchen, strict insistence is kept upon appearing on time at the Table, which might prove inconvenient to thee.
"We'll find the Carp shy of human company, the Dace fat and slow, but none so much as
Thy svt, J.”
Mason finds Dixon still gloomy about the death of his Mother back in January. Tho' they had finally found the time to be together, sometimes 'twas too much, and they fell to bickering. "Tha should have gone when tha had the chance...? Jere, tha never were one for Pit work, nor it for thee, and Father, tha know, never was expecting it of thee."
"Bonny time to be tellin' me thah'...?"
"You were the Baby, the Baby can do no wrong, don't you know thah'?"
"So Dad came to an agreement," Jeremiah press'd, "with Mr. Bird."
"Dear knaahs, Jeremiah."
"How could he repay Mr. Bird," Dixon asks of Mason, years later. "Thah's what I can't see."
Of course it matters to him. Mason has his own mysteries in this regard,— what could the Miller of Wherr have done for the Director-to-be of the Honorable E.I.C.? Bread? "Coal?" he speculates.
"A few pence off upon the Chaldron,— 'twould add up. Yet in that Quantity,— "
"Suggests a need for high heat, sustain'd over time. Glass? Iron?"
Mason is content for the moment simply to sit, inside The Jolly Pitman and a Carousing of Geordies, feeling settled, quietly plumb, seeing against the neutral gray of the smoke all the sun-flashes from the Day, the clear slacks, the sand bottoms, the nettles and rose bay willow-herb, the sudden streak of light as the most gigantic Carp he'd ever run across in his life, keeled, what in legend will be recalled as but inches from his foot. It was the notoriously long-lived Canny Bob, said to've been chased by the Romans who once encamped up above Binchester. "But as you froze there, seemingly the object of Torpidinous assault," Dixon tells him, after Bob has made his escape, "I hesitated to approach you, for fear of electrocuting myself. At least I was able for once to observe him at some leisure,— he strangely seem'd to like you, Mason. I've never had that good a chance at him, no one I know has been as close as you. The Romans 'round here used to say, 'Carpe carpum,' that is, 'Seize the Carp'." "All right. I waited too long. But think how embarrassed all your friends would have felt, had a Stranger taken him,— and my first time on the river, too. Just as well, really." There is a fragility about Dixon now,
a softer way of reflecting light, such that Mason must accordingly grow gentle with him. No child has yet summon'd from him such care.
"Tha must attend closely to the Dace up here as well, for they look exactly like Chub, yet are they night and Day when it comes to the fight they'll put up...?"
"Excuse me, one looks at the Fins. 'Tis fairly obvious which is which."
"Not here, I fear. Nor will River Wear Chub have much to do with the Bread-baits you no doubt learn'd to use down in Gloucester."
"What then? Some rare Beetle, I imagine."
"Some rare Beef would better do the Trick... ? They are blood-crazed, and feral."
Despite their best Efforts, talk will ever drift to their separate Tran
sits. "Maskelyne kept me over there," says Mason. "Nothing but
Weather, Day after Day. Couldn't get enough Obs for him. Would have
taken the projected age of the Universe. Brought me back upon a
meat-ship "
In the Hold were hundreds of Lamb carcasses,— once a sure occasion for Resentment prolong'd, now accepted as part of a Day inflicted by Fate, ever darkening,— exil'd to which, he must, in ways unnam'd,— perhaps, this late, unable to include "simply,"— persist. In the heavy weather of late November, the carcasses thump'd against the Bulkheads, keeping exhausted and increasingly irritated Mason from sleep. Deep in the mid-watch, his Mental Bung at last violently ejected by the Gases of Rage, he ran screaming to undog the hatch into the forward cargo space, and was immediately caught, a careless Innocent at some Ball of the Dead, among a sliding, thick meat Battery, the pale corpses only a bit larger than he, cold as the cold of the Sea that lay, he helpfully reminded himself, just the other side of these Timbers curving into candle-less blackness,— oof! as the ship roll'd, some dead Weight, odorous of sheep-fat, went speeding by headed for the Port side, nearly knocking Mason upon his Arse, and obliging him immediately to spin away upon one Foot, whilst the Ship pitch'd heavily, down and up,— fine Business. His intention, a true Phlegmatick's, having been but to locate the offending Carcass,— being unable to allow in his Data more than one,— and secure it, somehow, imagining the Meat-Hold well supplied with any Lines and Hardware he might need.
Fool. Here were the Representatives of ev'ry sheep he had ever spoken ill of,— and now he was at their Mercy. But they are dead, he told himself. Aye, but not only dead. Here was a category beyond Dead, in its pointless Humiliation, its superfluous Defeat,— stripp'd, the naked faces bruis'd and cut by the repeated battering of the others in this, their final Flock, they slither'd lethally 'round him. He had a clear moment in which he saw them moving of their own Will,— nothing to do with the movements of the Ship,— elaborately, the way dancers at Assemblies danc'd.
"Well I certainly wouldn't want to be a Disruption, here!" Mason roar'd at them, waiting, blind as a Corn in a Mill, to be crush'd. The situation held little hope for him,— wherever he stepp'd, he slipp'd, there being no purchase upon the Deck, owing to the untallied Tons of Fat that had long made frictionless ev'ry surface,— Mason instantly recognizing the same proximity to pure Equations of Motion as he had felt observing Stars and Planets in empty Space, with only the beautiful Silence missing now—
"However'd tha get out of thah' one?" Dixon wonders.
"Ahrrhh! the Smell alone might have done for me. Quite snapp'd me back, yes it did, like a Spring, back to that damn'd Cape. I recall being very annoy'd, that my last Earthly Memories should be of that dismal place. Purgatory has to be better, I told myself, maybe even Hell.—Fortunately, just then, a Party of Sailors, who for some reason were neither on Watch nor asleep, seeming indeed almost furtive in Demeanor, res-cu'd me. I noted too a puzzling air of Jollification, some of it directed at me. 'How is it in there?' one of them ask'd, with what, upon Shore, would certainly've been taken as an insinuating Leer. Not 'How was it,'— which is odd enough, no, what this Sailor distinctly said—
"Why aye, Mason, tha see it, don't tha ...? they were Sailors...? 'Tis probably a standard practice, upon those Meat-Voyages...? Something a foremast Swab, in his Day's unrelenting bleakness, might have to look forward to, when the Midnight Hour creeps 'round...?"
"What.—Do you mean,— Oh, Dixon, really."
Dixon shrugs. "If a Lad were wide awake, kept his wits about him, why the pitch of Danger...? eeh, eeh! at thah' speed, thah' lack of Friction.. . ? and one's Mates in there as well,— might be just the Thing,—
"And then at the Dock," Mason continues brusquely, " - at Preston,— for the Captain declared that he 'would not risk Liverpool,'— this
enormous crowd were waiting,— some of them quite fashionable-looking indeed, significant Wigs and so forth, running about, screaming, setting fire to Factors' Sheds, and now and then, to one another. 'Twas the Food Riots,— the same having pitch'd, as I'd thought, to full fury when I sail'd for Ireland, now a year later, far from having abated, reach'd even to Proud Preston. And what of the rest of England? My Father? Had they burn'd down the Mill yet?
"No one was there to meet me. The Sunlight abovedecks was smear'd, the Shadows deeper than Day-time's. The Mob, many of them small and frail from Hunger, yet possess'd by a Titanic Resentment that provided them the Strength, storm'd the Ship, and began removing Lamb carcasses (the Abasement of these not yet complete), and throwing them into the Water,— casting away food they might rather have taken with them, and had to eat. The loud insanity, the pure murderous Thumping. Thou wouldn't've wish'd to go out there at that moment, either. The Captain allow'd me to shelter in his Quarters, till it should be safe to emerge,— proving meantime an engaging conversationalist, particularly upon the Topick of Mutton, as to which he seem'd most well inform'd, and even strangely...affectionate,—
"Of course,— being, as tha'd say, the Sultan of the Arrangement." "Well, it never occurr'd to me. Too late to do anything about it—" "Pity...? Tha might've had a bit of Fun in there, at least...?" "Aahhrr— With its Corollary, that whatever I do imagine as Fun, invariably produces Misery...."
"Not only for thee," adds Dixon, pretending to scrutinize the Fire, "but for ev'ry Unfortunate within thy Ambit, as well."
"Gave thee a rough time, didn't I, Friend." Reaching to rest his hand for a moment upon Dixon's Shoulder, before removing it again.
"Oh," Dixon nodding away at an Angle from any direct view of his Partner's Face, "as rough times go,...the French were worse...? Then five Years of Mosquitoes, of course—" The old Astronomers sit for a while in what might be an Embrace, but that they forbear to touch.
"Quite a Lark, you must have had I returned from the North Cape in
some Con-fusion,— wishing but to put distance between my back and
Hammerfost, a-Southing I went, in a true Panick, all the way to London. Hoping the while, that I had only slamm'd my Nob once too often upon the roof-beams of that Dwarf's Hovel the Navy styl'd an Observatory.... Would have welcomed the chance to see thee, to talk, but Maskelyne was being a Nuisance as ever, and thou were yet in Ulster....
"Bayley went to the North Cape. I was put off about seventy miles down the coast, at Hammerfost, on Hammerfost Island. The Ground was frozen so hard it took a week to dig a hole for a Post to fix the Clock to. Then it snow'd for a week, sometimes with violent Winds, and Hail. The days just before the Transit were hazy, and now and then very hazy indeed. On the morning of the Transit, the first sight I had of the Planet, she was already half immerg'd. Ten minutes later, for one instant, thro' a thin cloud, it seem'd she was upon the Sun. Yet no thread of Light. Six hours on, the same thing. Caught her going off the Disk, internal Contact was already past,— one swift View, and then the Clouds came in again. Got the Eclipse later, next day took the Dip to the Horizon. Here was the World's Other End,— one stood upon a great Bluff and look'd out upon the Arctic Ocean, the Horizon strangely nearer than it ought to've been. 'Twas amid this terminal Geometry, that I was visited." Mason appearing to hear no resonance, "— Taken, then,— yet further North."
"Ah,— " Can Dixon see the Apprehension in his Face? "How far was that?"
"Hours...? Days...? He appear'd with no warning. Very large eyes, what you would call quite large indeed. I had no idea who, or how many, might have been dwelling in this desolate place. 'You must come with me,' quoth he.
" 'I have a ship leaving in a few hours, man,' I mumbl'd, and kept on with my paper-work.
" 'H.M.S. Emerald, Captain Douglas. There will be no wind until we return. Come.' I looked up. He was undeniably there,— I had not been upon the island long enough for Rapture of the North to have set in. For a moment I thought 'twas Stig, a Shadow of Stig, you recollect our mystickal
Axman, with his Nostalgia for the North, so in command of him Yet my
Visitor's eyes were too strange even for Stig,— his aspect, his speech, were nothing I recogniz'd. We descended to the Shore, and went out upon a great Floe of Ice, and so one Floe to another, until all had frozen into a continuous Plain. In his movement he seem'd as much a Visitor as I in this Country. From his Pack he unfolded a small Sledge of Caribou Hide, stretch'd upon an ingeniously hinged framework of Whalebone, and from a curious black Case produced a Device of elaborately coil'd Wires, set upon Gimbals, which he affix'd to the Prow of the vehicle. 'Hurry!' I had barely climb'd aboard when the whole concern spun about, till pointing, as a Needle-man I surmis'd, to the North Magnetick Pole, and began to move, faster and ever faster, with a rising Whine, over the Ice-Prairie. 'Sir,' I would have shouted, had the swiftness of our Travel allowed me breath, 'Sir, not so far!' when I'd really meant to say, 'not so fast.' We sped thus northward in perpetual sunlight. Night would not come to that Latitude. The Sun up there, from mid-May to late July, does not set. The phantoms, the horrors, when they came, would not be those of Night.
"Nor, as things turn'd out, would it be a Journey to the North Pole. The Pole itself, to be nice, hung beyond us in empty space,— for as I was soon to observe, at the top of the World, somewhere between eighty and ninety degrees North, the Earth's Surface, all 'round the Parallel, began to curve sharply inward, leaving a great circum-polar Emptiness," as Mason shifts uncomfortably and looks about for something to smoke or eat, "directly toward which our path was taking us, at first gently, then with some insistence, down-hill, ever downward, and thus, gradually, around the great Curve of its Rim.—And 'twas so that we enter'd, by its great northern Portal, upon the inner Surface of the Earth." A patiently challenging smile.
Mason sits rhythmickally inserting into his Face an assortment of Meg Bland's Cookies, Tarts, and Muffins,.. .pretending to be silent by choice, lest any phrase emerge too farinaceously inflected.
Dixon continues cheerfully.—
"The Ice giving way to Tundra, we proceeded, ever downhill, into a not-quite-total darkness, the pressure of the Air slowly increasing, each sound soon taking on a whispering after-tone, as from a sort of immense composite Echo,— until we were well inside, hundreds of miles below the Outer Surface, having clung to what we now walked upon quite handily all the way, excepting that we arriv'd upside-down as bats in a belfry...."
The Interior had remain'd less studied philosophickally, than endur'd anxiously, by those who might choose to travel Diametrickally across it,—
means of Flight having been develop'd early in the History of the Inner Surface. "Their God, like that of the Iroquois, lives at their Horizon,— here 'tis their North or South Horizon, each a more and less dim Ellipse of Sky-light. The Curve of the Rim is illuminated, depending on the position of the Sun, in greater or lesser Relievo,— chains of mountains, thin strokes of towers, the eternally spilling lives of thousands dwelling in the long Estuarial Towns wrapping from Outside to Inside as the water rushes away in uncommonly long waterfalls, downward for hours, unbrak'd, till at last debouching into an interior Lake of great size, upside-down but perfectly secured to its Lake-bed by Gravity as well as Centrifugal Force, and in which upside-down swimmers glide at perfect ease, hanging over an Abyss thousands of miles deep. From wherever one is, to raise one's Eyes is to see the land and Water rise ahead of one and behind as well, higher and higher till lost in the Thickening of the Atmosphere.... In the larger sense, then, to journey anywhere, in this Terra Concava, is ever to ascend. With its Corollary,— Outside, here upon the Convexity,— to go anywhere is ever to descend."
With great Cordiality and respect upon all sides, Dixon was taken to the local Academy of Sciences, and introduc'd to the Fellows.
"Nothing to do with your actual Appearance," Dixon said, "but all of
thee have such a familiar look,— up above, we hear many Tales of
Gnomes, Elves, smaller folk, who live underground and possess what
are, to huz, magickal Powers? Who've min'd their ways to the borders of
our world, following streams, spying upon us from the Fells when the
light of the Day's tricky enough Is this where they come from, then?"
"They are we." One of the inner-surface Philosophers removing his Hat and sweeping into a Bow, the others, in Echelon, following identic-kally, Hat-Brims all ending up in a single, perfectly imbricated Line.
"Your servant, Sirs."
"You receive Messages from us, by way of your Magnetic Compasses. What you call the 'Secular Change of Declination' is whatever dimm'd and muffl'd remnant may reach you above, of all the lives of us Below,— being less liv'd than waged, at a level of Passion that would seem, to you, quite intense. We have learn'd to use the Tellurick Forces, including that of Magnetism,— which you oddly seem to consider the only one."
"There are others?" Mason perking up.
"That's what he said. All most effective and what we'd style 'miraculous,' down there,— tho' perhaps not as much so, up here.
"Thy trip to Scotland will be closely watch'd, Mason, from below.... 'Once the solar parallax is known,' they told me, 'once the necessary Degrees are measur'd, and the size and weight and shape of the Earth are calculated inescapably at last, all this will vanish. We will have to seek another Space.' No one explain'd what that meant, however...? 'Perhaps some of us will try living upon thy own Surface. I am not sure that everyone can adjust from a concave space to a convex one. Here have we been sheltered, nearly everywhere we look is no Sky, but only more Earth.—How many of us, I wonder, could live the other way, the way you People do, so exposed to the Outer Darkness? Those terrible Lights, great and small? And wherever you may stand, given the Convexity, each of you is slightly pointed away from everybody else, all the time, out into that Void that most of you seldom notice. Here in the Earth Concave, everyone is pointed at everyone else,— ev'rybody's axes converge,— forc'd at least thus to acknowledge one another,— an entirely different set of rules for how to behave.'
"We happen'd to be looking through a Telescope of peculiar design, for hundreds of yards around whose Eye-piece, Specula of silver, precisely beaten and polish'd to a Perfection I was assur'd had cost the sanity of more than one Artisan, were spread like sails for catching ev'ry least flutter of Luminosity, conveying to a central set of Lenses the images they gather'd in. With this Instrument one could view any part of the Hollow Earth, even places directly across the Inner Void, thousands of miles distant. Tho' Light through the Polar Openings north and south varied as the Earth traveled in its orbit, 'twas never more than low and diffuse, hence the enlarged eyes of these inner-surface dwellers, their pale skins, their diet of roots and fungi and what greener Esculents they might go to harvest out in the more arable country 'round the Openings, though the journeys back inside were fraught with peril and inconvenience from arm'd Bands of Vegetable Pirates. Leaves in here were nearly black in color, fruit rare. The Wines," Dixon shaking his head, "are as austere as anyone can imagine."
"You've not become a Grape person, Dixon?"
"The damn'd Gout. Wine's not as bad.”
Mason bleakly exhales. "No Hell, then?"
"Not inside the Earth, anyway."
"Nor any.. .Single Administrator of Evil."
"They did introduce me to some Functionary,— no telling,— We chatted, others came in. They ask'd if I'd take off as much of my Clothing as I'd feel comfortable with,— I stepp'd out of my Shoes, left my Hat on...? They walk'd 'round me in Circles, now and then poking at me...? Nothing too intrusive."
"Nothing you remember, anyway," Mason can't help putting in.
"They peer'd into my Eyes and Ears, they look'd in my Mouth, they put me upon a Balance and weigh'd me. They conferr'd. 'Are you quite sure, now,' the Personage ask'd me at last, 'that you wish to bet ev'ry-thing upon the Body?— this Body?— moreover, to rely helplessly upon the Daily Harvest your Sensorium brings in,— keeping in mind that both will decline, the one in Health as the other in Variety, growing less and less trustworthy till at last they are no more?' Eeh. Well, what would thoo've said?"
"So, did you—
"We left it in abeyance. Arriv'd back at the Observatory, it seem'd but minutes, this time, in Transit, I sought my Bible, which I let fall open, and read, in Job, 26:5 through 7, 'Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof.
' 'Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. ' "He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.''
Upon the doorstep, horses waiting him in the Street, Mason grasps Dixon's
Hand. "If they don't kill and eat me up there, shall we do this again?" "We must count upon becoming old Geezers together," Dixon proposes.
They are looking directly at one another for the first time since either can
remember.
"Let us meet next Summer.... You must come stay in Sapperton." "I may not travel far." Immediately reaching out his hand to Mason's
arm, lest Mason, in his way, take too much offense. "I wish it were not so.”
Mason, as he long has learn'd to for Dixon, refrains from flinching. "No loss, perhaps,— thanks to the damn'd Clothiers, no one can guarantee what, if anything, swims in the Frome anymore," avoiding any pro-long'd talk of Frailty, which he can see is costing Dixon more than his reserve of cheer may afford. "The Mills, curse them all.... Dixon, I shall be happy to see you wherever you wish." He turns to the Straps securing the Transit Instruments, ignoring what is just behind his Eyes and Nose. "Mind thyself, Friend.”
76
"Now, Dr. Johnson, along with Boswell acting as his Squire, happen'd, in August of 'seventy-three, to be crossing into Scotland as well, upon their famous Trip to the Hebrides."
"More likely," snorts Ives, "they didn't pass within a hundred miles of Mason."
Yet (speculates the Revd), did they hesitate, upon the Border, at some rude Inn, just before taking the fatal Step across into the Celtick Unknown?... Sitting at a table, drinking Ale, observing the Mist thro' the Window-Panes, Mason forty-five, the Cham sixty-four. "You seem a serious young man, with Thames-side intonations in your Voice, if I'm not mistaken."
"Sir, I saw you at The Mitre Tavern, once."
"Royal Society, are you."
"As your own Intonation already implies, Sir, not bloody likely, is it? tho' I have contracted with them, and more than once."
"You're the Star-Gazer, what's his name."
"Mason," Boswell informs him.
"Damme 'f that's not it exactly," says Mason. "Thankee, Gents, altho' this time I am come upon an Errand of Gravity." He explains to them his search for a Scottish Mountain, suiting as many as possible of Maske-lyne's Stipulations.
"Hum..." Boswell's gaze bright'ning, "he's Clive of India's Brother-in-law. Do you suppose the Nabob wants to buy a Mountain?”
"Good Lord,— Maskelyne, working in Confidence, as a Land-Agent? I never thought of that."
"Then you are not as corrupted as you believe you are, at least according to the creases of your Phiz, Sir," somewhat brusquely announces Dr. Johnson. "Such relative Innocence may be a sacred Asset, yet a secular Liability. May you ever distinguish the one from the other. Oh, and Mason?"
"Your Servant."
"Be careful."
"Of what, Sir?"
"Of the Attention you'll be getting up there, if your Principal's illustrious Relation becomes widely known," warns Mr. Boswell, himself a Scot.
"Upon the Map I carry," declares Dr. J., "nothing appears, beyond here, but Mountains,— in Practice to examine them all is a task without end,— and ev'ry Scot you meet will be trying to sell you at least one, that he,— and ignore not 'she,'— happens to know of. These people are strong, shrewd. Be not deceiv'd by any level of the Exotick they may present you, Kilts, Bag-Pipes sort of thing. Haggis. You must keep unfailing Vigilance."
Mr. Boswell bows elaborately, whilst keeping his Eye-balls upon the Roll.
Out there in the Fog brimming and sweeping now over Ridge-tops and into the Glens, somewhere it waits, the world across the next Line, in darkness and isolation, barren, unforgiving, a Nation that within Mason's lifetime has risen to seize the Crown, been harrow'd into submission, then been shipp'd in great Lots to America. "I imagine there's yet a bit of.. .resentment about?"
The Doctor snorts. "The word you grope for is Hatred, Sir,— inveterate, inflexible Hatred. The 'Forty-five lives on here, a Ghost from a Gothick Novel, ubiquitous, frightfully shatter'd, exhibiting gallons of a certain crimson Fluid,— typickal of the People, don't you see."
"Aye, he means me," sighs Mr. Boswell. He picks up the Bone remnant of a Chop and gestures with it. "Soon he will commence with the Cannibalism-Joaks, pray you, miss it not, 'tis more hilarious than may at first seem likely. All his lifelong Enmity, emerging at last in this way. No
one knows why, but he intends to go to the Hebrides, to the furthest Isle, to view the Dark Ages upon Display."
"The uncomplicated People, laboring with their primitive Tools," gushes Mason, "— the simplicity of Faith, lo, its Time reborn."
' 'Tis fascinating, this belief among you Men of Science," remarks Dr. J., "that Time is ever more simply transcended, the further one is willing to journey away from London, to observe it."
"Why, Mason here's done the very thing," cries Boswell. "In America. Ask him."
Mason glowers, shaking his head. "I've ascended, descended, even condescended, and the List's not ended,— but haven't yet trans-cended a blessed thing, thankee."
"The Savages of America," intones the Doctor, "— what Powers do they possess, and how do they use them?" As if here, at the Edge of the World, they might confide what no one would ever say aloud in London,— with Boswell a-bustle to get it all scribbl'd down into his Quarto.
The abruptness of the Doctor's Question reminds Mason of himself, addressing the Learned English Dog, a dozen years ago...his mouth creeps upward at the corners, almost achieving an Horizontal. "Would that my co-adjutor Mr. Dixon were here," says Mason (missing Dixon as he speaks), "for the Magickal in all its Occurrences, to others of us how absent, was ever his Subject— Potions, Rain-Making, the undoing of Enemies remote,— that Mandeville of Mohawks would be sure to enlighten you. I can myself testify to little beyond the giant Mounds that the Savages say they guard as Curators, for some more distant Race of Builders. I have fail'd to observe more in them, than their most impressive Size, tho' Mr. Dixon swears to Coded Inscriptions, Purposive Lamination, and Employment, unto the Present Day, by Agents Unknown of Powers Invisible.
"Yet appropriately enough, what compels me out under the Elements once again now, is yet another damn'd Species of Giant Mound,— and after hoping I'd seen my last in America. Woe, it seems I've acquir'd a Speciality,— and the Elevated, the Chosen, go on assigning me to these exercises in large-scale Geometry. This Mountain I'm about to seek must
be regular as a Prism, as if purposely constructed in days of old by Forces more powerful than ours...powerful enough to suggest that God (whatever that may be) has not altogether quit our own desperate Day."
"You're not pleas'd with His Frequency of Appearance," frowns Johnson. "Sir, be wary,— for the next step in such Petulance, is to define Him as some all-pervading Fairy-Dust, and style it Deism."
"D'ye think I wasn't looking, all that long arse-breaking American time? Mounds, Caverns, things that went across the Sky?— had you seen one of those, 'twould've made y' think twice— Even giant Vegetables,— if it had to be,— seeking Salvation in the Oversiz'd, how pitiable,— what of it, I've little Pride, some great Squash upon the Trail-side? I'll take it, won't I."
"I'd've been happy with the Cock Lane Ghost," Johnson mutters.
"Happy," Mason nods. His eyes far too bright. "You were ill-treated, Sir, in that matter."
"Be careful to note, Boswell, how even a Lunatick may yet be civil. Thank you, Sir. Or is it Your Holiness?"
"I?" All but pleading for someone's Judgment of madness, as if desiring to be admitted to that select company, select as the Royal Society, which did not want him, either.
"I had my Boswell, once," Mason tells Boswell, "Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam'd Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev'rything down, just like you, Sir. Have you," twirling his Hand in Ellipses,— "you know, ever...had one yourself? If I'm not prying."
"Had one what?"
"Hum.. .a Boswell, Sir,— I mean, of your own. Well you couldn't very well call him that, being one yourself,— say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev'ry spoken remark,—
"Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion,— think," armsweep south, "as all civiliz'd Britain gathers at this hour, how much shapely Expression, from the titl'd Gambler, the Barmaid's Suitor, the offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the Void of forgetfulness?"
The Mountain he finds for Maskelyne will be too regular to be natural,— like Silbury Hill, it will have the look of ancient Earth-Work about it. And 'twill be Maskelyne who goes to Schiehallion, after Mason refuses the Assignment again, and becomes famous for it, not to mention beloved of the Scots people there, the subject of a Ballad, and presently a Figure of Legend, in a strange Wizard's turnout bas'd upon an actual Observing Suit he will wear whilst in Perthshire. A plaid one, in fact, of Maskelyne's own Design,— "A Tartan never observ'd in the World," he explains, "that no one Clan up there be offended."
"Or ev'ry one," Mun is quick to point out.
Mason will go back to waking day after day in Sapperton, piecing together odd cash jobs for the Royal Society, reductions for Maskelyne's Almanack,— small children everywhere, a neat Observatory out in the Garden, a reputation in the Golden Valley as a Sorcerer, a Sorcerer's Apprentice, who once climb'd that strange eminence at Greenwich, up into another level of Power, sail'd to all parts of the Globe, but came back down among them again,— they will be easy with him, call him Charlie, at last. Another small-town eccentric absorb'd back into the Weavery, keeping a work-space fitted out someplace in the back of some long Cotswold house, down a chain of rooms back from the lane and out into the crooked Looming of those hillside fields.
77
So when they meet again, 'tis in Bishop, and any third Observer might note in an instant the deterioration the Year intervening has brought to each,— Dixon's pronounc'd limp and bile-stain'd Eyeballs, Mason's slow retreat, his steps taken backward, only just stubborn enough to keep facing the light, into Melancholy.
Increasingly ill at ease with change of any kind, be it growing a year older or watching America,— once home to him as the Desert to a Nomad upon it,— in its great Convulsion, Mason has begun to dream of a night-time City,— of creeping among monuments of stone perhaps twice his height, of seeking refuge from some absolute pitiless Upheaval in relations among Men.
'Twas Stonehenge, absent 'Bekah and Moon-Light. The Monuments made no sense at all. They were not Statues,— they bore no inscriptions. They were the Night's Standing-Stones, put there by some Agency remote not in Time but from caring at all what happen'd to the poor fugitives who now scurried among them, seeking their brute impenetrability for cover. Whoever their Makers had been, they were invisible now, with their own Chronicles, their own Intentions,— whatever these were,— and they glided on, without any need for living Witnesses.
Were this but a single Dream, wip'd out as usual by the rattling Quotidian, Mason might even have forgotten it by now. But it keeps coming back,— more accurately, he return'd to it, the same City, the same unlit Anarchy, again and again, each time to be plung'd into the middle of whatever has been going on in his absence. At first he visits fortnightly, but within the year he is journeying there ev'ry night. Even more alarmingly, he is not always asleep... out of doors against his will, a City in Chaos, the lights too few, the differences between friend and enemy not always clear, and Mistakes a penny a Bushel. Reflection upon any Top-ick is an unforgivable Lapse, out here where at any moment Death may come whistling in from the Dark.
"Well Hullo, Death, what's that you're whistling?"
"Oo, little Ditters von Dittersdorf, nothing you'd recognize, hasn't happen'd yet, not even sure you'll live till it's perform'd anywhere,— have to check the 'Folio as to that, get back to you?"
"No hurry,— truly, no hurry."
"You 'cute Rascal," Death reaching out to pinch his Cheek— Sometimes Mason wakes before traversing into the next Episode,— sometimes the bony Thumb and Finger continue their Approach, asymptotickally ever closer, be he waking, or dreaming something else.
"Their visits," wrote the Revd, on unnam'd Authority, "consisted of silence when fishing, fever'd nocturnal Conversation when not. Though even beside the Wear, or in it, are they ever conversing. In their silences, the true Measure of their History."
Mason arrives one day to find Dixon sitting there with giant Heaps of Cherries and Charcoal. "Have some," offering Mason his choice.
"Excuse me. The Gout is eas'd by things that begin with 'Ch'?"
"Why aye. They don't know that down in Gloucestershire?"
"Chicken?"
"In the form of Soup, particularly."
"Chops? Cheese? Chocolate?"
" 'Tis consider'd an entertaining Affliction, by those who have not suf-fer'd it."
"Oh, Dixon, I didn't mean,— " Ev'ry turn now, a chance for someone taking the hump. "Here, your Cushion,— may I,—
"First thing!— is, you mustn't touch...the Foot, thank thee. Bit abrupt, sorry, yet do I know this, by now, like a County Map,— where the valleys of least Pain lie, and where the Peaks to avoid. Ev'ry movement has to be plann'd like a damn'd Expedition.... Meg Bland is the only mortal, nothing personal, who may even breathe too close to it."
"Lucky me," says she, in the door straight as a Swift, a tall ginger-hair'd Beauty disinclin'd to pass her time unproductively. Margaret Bland gave up on marrying Dixon long ago, indeed these Days is reluctant, when the Topick arises, even to respond. "We'll have the Wedding just before we go to America," he said,— and, "We'll go to America as man and wife." For a while she was a good sport, and allow'd herself to be entertain'd with his Accounts of what Adventure and Wealth were there to seize, in that fabl'd place. But there soon grew upon her, as she had observ'd it in her mother, a practical disillusionment before the certainty of Death, that men for their part kept trying to put off as long as possible. She saw Jere doing just that, with his world of Maps, his tenderness and care as he bent over them, as herself, resign'd to tending him,— no different than man and wife, really.
"I love her," he tells Mason. "I say thah'.... Yet to myself I think, She's my last, my.. .how would tha say...?"
"She's a good Woman," Mason says, "thou must see that."
"Bringing me Cherries ev'ry day. For this," pollicating the Toe. Shaking his head, laughing in perplexity, he looks over at Mason, finds Mason looking at him,— "The Girls are mine."
Mason, who rarely these Days smiles, smiles. "Well.—Well, well, in fact." They sit nodding at each other for a while.
"Tha must've seen it in their Faces, in Mary...and Elizabeth, for fair...?"
"So that's what it is,— well, they are beautiful Young Women despite it all."
"Thy Boys,— they must be nearly grown?"
Mason nodding, "Oh, and I got married again. Forgot to mention that. Aye. Then we had Charles Junior, then two weeks after he was born, my Dad got married again. We both married women nam'd Mary. Tha would like them both, I know. Mine in particular."
"She's young...?"
"Amazing. How do these People—
"Strange Geordie Powers, Friend,— and I know thou need as many Children as possible, as a Bridge over a Chasm, to keep thee from falling into the Sky.”
"Charlie the Baby's the very Image of my Dad, that's what's so peculiar. The Boys look like Rebekah, but the Baby,— the resemblance makes me jumpy. I expect him to start shouting at me...sometimes he does. Can't understand any of it of course, but then I can't make out my Dad either."
"Eeh. Then all's fairly as usual...?"
"I come to the Mill ev'ry morning, and he gives me one Loaf. 'Take thee this day, thy daily bread,'— ev'ry time,— 'tis Wit. 'Tis great fun for him. How inveterate a Hatred shall I be able to enjoy, for someone who looks like my baby son?"
"Tha seem disappointed."
"Next worst thing to unrequited Love, isn't it? Insufficient hate."
"And yet it's done thee a world of Good...? the months, often years, of Time tha didn't know tha had...?"
"Ahrr. Years off my age."
"And we've another coming in right about Harvest time.—How do you know that about me? Maybe I hate children."
"Then feel free to ignore my wish of much Joy, Mason. Shouldn't tha be in Sapperton, with thy Mary?"
"Her mother is there, and they are just as content to have me away."
They are dozing together by Dixon's Hearth. Both their Pipes are out. The Fret has gather'd in the waste places, cross'd them, and come to the Edge of the Town. Anything may lie just the other side, having a Peep. There is jollity at The Queen's Head, tho' here in Bondgate, for the moment, the Bricks are silent.
Each is dreaming about the other. Mason dreams them in London, at some enormous gathering,— it is nam'd the Royal Society, but is really something else. Some grand Testimonial, already some Days in progress, upon a Stage, before a Pit in which the Crowds are ever circulating. Bradley is there, living and hale,— Mason keeps trying to find him, so that Dixon and he may meet, but each new Face is a new distraction, and presently he cannot find Dixon, either—
Dixon is dreaming of a Publick performance as well, except it's he and Mason who are up on the Stage, and whoever may be watching are kept invisible by the Lights that separate Stage and Pit. They are both wearing cheap but serviceable suits, and back'd by a chamber orchestra, they are singing, and doing a few simple time-steps,—
It...was...fun,
While it lasted,
And it lasted,
Quite a while,—
For the bleary-eyed lad from the coal pits,
And the 'Gazer with big-city Style,—
We came, we peep'd, we shouted with surprize,
Tho' half the time we couldn't tell the falsehoods from the lies,
I say! is that a— No, it ain't! I do apologize,—
This Astronomer's Life, say,
Pure as a Fife, hey,
Quick as a Knife, in
The Da-a-ark!
Oh, we went,—
Out to Cape Town, Phila-
Del-phia too,
Tho' we didn't quite get to Ohi-o,
There were Marvels a-plenty to view...
Those Trees! Those Hills! Those Vegetables so high!
The Cataracts and Caverns,
And the Spectres in the Sky,
I say, was that— I hope not! Who
The Deuce said that? Not I!
It's a wonderful place, ho,
Nothing but Space, go
Off on a chase in the Dark—"
Dixon wakes briefly. "It had damn'd well better be Bodily Resurrection's all I can say...?"
One final Expedition, Dixon believ'd, a bit more Gold in the Sack, and he'd be free to return to America, look up Washington and Franklin, Capt. Shelby, and the other Lads, find the perfect Seat in the West.
He knows where the Coal is, the Iron and Lead, and if there's Gold he'll witch that out of the Earth, too. The Trick lies less in hollowing out the
Wand, or putting in the tiny Samples of ev'rything you're not looking for, than in holding it then, so as to adjust for the extra Weight— Let George have all Cockfield Fell,— in America is Abundance, impossible to reach the end of in one lifetime,— hence, from the Mortal point of view, infinite.
By the time he might have emigrated at last, Mary Hunter Dixon had grown ill, and in January '73, she pass'd to a better place. Busy with rebellion, America drew back toward the edges of Dixon's Frame, where the shadows gather'd. In the meantime, the demand for Coal in Britain promising to ascend forever, there seem'd to Dixon no reason to abandon too quickly a sure source of Work, in order to cross the Ocean and settle in a wilderness of uncertainty.
American reports that reach'd him mention'd Shelbys fighting in the West, and all the McCleans joining the Virginia Militia,— by then Dixon had survey'd the Park and Demesnes of the Lord Bishop's Castle at Bishop Auckland, and the Year after that all of Lanchester Common,— wilderness enough for him, tho' no longer is he sent quite as much into Panick'd Incompetence at the Alidade, by Moor-land unenclos'd,— as if he has found late protection, or at least toleration, from the Fell-Beasts of his younger days. At the Plane-Table, he erases his sketching mistakes with bits of Bread he then keeps in a Pocket, not wishing to cast them where Birds might eat the Lead and come to harm. Now and then, only half in play, he will take a folding Rule and measure the ever-decreasing distance between the tip of his Nose and the Paper, for among Surveyors, 'tis said, that by the degree of Proximity therebetwixt, may you tell how long a draughtsman has been on the Job,— and that when his Nose at last touches the Paper, 'tis time to retire.
He continu'd to postpone the American Return, whose mere Projection had separated him from Mason, and to recognize more clearly, as the Days went along, that his Life had caught up with him, and that his Death might not be far behind, and that America now would never be more real than his Remembrance, which he must take possession of, in whatever broken incompleteness, or lose forever— "I was sure my Fate lay in America,— nor would I've ever predicted, that like thee I would swallow the Anchor and be claim'd again by the Life I had left, which I had not after all escap'd,— nor can I accurately say 'twas all Meg's doing, and the Girls', for I was never like thee, never one for Duty and so
forth, being much more of a flirtatious Bastard, tha see, yet I couldn't leave them again. Thah' was it, really."
"To leave home, to dare the global waters strange and deep, consort with the highest Men of Science, and at the end return to exactly the same place, us'd,— broken...."
"No-body's dream of a Life, for Fair."
"You always wanted to be a Soldier, Dixon, but didn't you see, that all our way west and back, aye and the Transits too, were Campaigning, geo-metrick as a Prussian Cavalry advance,— tho' in the service of a Flag whose Colors we never saw,— and that your behavior in hostile territory was never less than..."
"Aye?"
".. .Likely to be mention'd in Dispatches."
"I'll take it! Gratefully."
"The only hope, I suppose, is if we haven't come home exactly,— I mean, if it's not the same, not really,— if we might count upon that failure to re-arrive perfectly, to be seen in all the rest of Creation...."
"Eeh,— I hope thah's not the only hope?"
They have been nymphing by Moon-light in the Wear, hoping for Sea-
Trout, tho' finding none,— now, upon the bankside, Mason and Dixon
sit, smoking long white Clay Pipes, whose stems arch like Fishing-Poles,
and bickering about the Species eluding them,— Dixon seeming to
Mason far too eager to lecture, as if having assum'd that Mason has never
seen a Sea-Trout,— which, tho' true in a narrow sense, doesn't rule out
his having felt them, once or twice, at the Bait
"Whilst not as shrewd as the Carp," Dixon declares, "yet are they over-endow'd with Pride, and will have thee know, there are things a Sea-Trout simply will not do, such as waste his time upon an insect that dares the Flow too briskly, there being too much Humiliation for him, should he attempt capture, and fail...?"
"Humiliation before whom, Dixon? Frogs? Grebes? You have...dis-cuss'd this with the Sea-Trout here personally, 've you, perhaps even... more than once?"
"I ken them, Sir...? I see into their Minds...? 'Tis how I know, that tha must leave aside thy own Pride, and learn to feign with thy Bait weakness, uncertainty, fatigue,— " They hear swift footsteps close by,— and in a moment behold, approaching them, sniffing industriously, a Norfolk Terrier, of memorable Appearance.
"Well, God's Periwig," whispers Mason. " 'Tis he!"
"Can't be,— what's it been? fifteen? sixteen years? and this one's scarcely a year old...?"
"Yet, see how he holds his head...old Fang's way to the Arc-Second .. .yes it's all right, lad, come on...?"
The Dog, as if not wishing to intrude, waits, Tail a-thump.
"Why, he's the very Representation...? Might he've been with those Strollers lately at The Queen's Head, that vanish'd in the middle of the Night...? happen they left him behind...?"
"We'll not insist that ye speak for your Supper," offers Mason.
"Not at all. Come back with us, and we'll see about thah', shall we?"
The Dog accompanies them to Dixon's House, dines unselectively tho' not gluttonously, and, having made amiable acquaintance with the Dogs already resident there, stops overnight.
"Quite at home, to appearance," Mason remarks next morning.
"Nay...? clearly, 'tis thee he fancies...?"
"He's a Town Dog, he'd much rather stop with you, than journey all the way to Sapperton."
"Eeh, why cannot tha see he can't wait to be back upon the Road, touring again?"
"A modest wager, perhaps."
"We never settl'd for thah' great race in Chester Town ten years ago 'twixt Selim and Yorick...?"
"Really. Which Horse won? Who'd I bet upon?"
The Dog listens to them for as long as he may, before standing, stretching, and trotting away to explore Bishop, nor reappearing till that night, 'round Suppertime.
"There you are again," Meg Bland stooping to greet him. "I've been making him those fried American corn-meal Ar-ticles of yours, Jere, to have with his Fish...? What'll his name be?"
"Fang," says Mason.
"Learned," says Dixon.
The Dog ignores both, however, as if his true Name is one they must guess. Each day the weather allows, he accompanies Mason and Dixon
to the River, and watches whilst they fish. He does not venture to speak, indeed barking only once, when Lud Oafery,— an otherwise unremarkable person of middling age,— comes down out of the Willows and into the water, pretending to be a Pike in fierce Descent upon the Dace-Shoals, attempting to send all the Fish he may, into a Panick'd Stampedo.
"Sacrilege, where I come from," mutters Mason.
"Eeh, 'tis but Lud's bit of Diversion, whenever he's above ground...? throw him a Chub, and he'll be off...?"
As Mason's departure nears, Dixon can see he's growing more and more anxious upon the Topick of canine Speech. "How then? coerce him? shame him?"
"Think not...?"
"Yet one would expect, wouldn't one," the Dog, as ever, bright-eyed and companionably attending, "that out of professional Obligation, at least,— "
"Eeh, Mason...? really."
"All right, all right,— ever so sorry,—
Close to dawn, dreaming of America, whose Name is something else, and Maps of which do not exist, Mason feels a cold Nose at his ear.
"When ye wake," whispers a youthful, South English voice, "I'll have long been out upon the Darlington Road. I am a British Dog, and belong to no one, if not to the two of you. The next time you are together, so shall I be, with you."
They wake early,— the Dog has gone. Dixon reports the same Nose, the same Message.
"Did we both dream the same thing?"
"I was awake...?"
"As certainly was I,—
"Then must we see him again, next year...?”
78
Now 'tis very late, Dawn is the next event to consider, candles have been allow'd to burn all the way out, no one has uncork'd a Bottle in some while, Tenebras slumbers beneath the Canopy of the Chinese Sofa, whilst her Cousins, sprawl'd in Chairs, are intermittently awake and listening. All seems to them interrupted by Enigmata, blown thro' as by Winds it is generally better not to be out in.
"What I cannot quite see to the end of," confesses Euphrenia, "is Mason's Return to America,— abruptly,— as if, unable to desert his Family again, what choice has he, this time, but to present them with the sudden voyage by sea, and carry them all to Philadelphia. Yet, what could have brought him here again?"
"Or else,— What frighten'd him away from Gloucestershire?"
"Plague? There was ever Plague. The weight of Rebekah's Ghost? How, if she were content to have him in Sapperton? Unless—
"She came at last to wish him gone? Even at the Price of knowing they would never be buried together,— as he must also have known,— yet at the end she could not abide him as he had come to be, and so she turn'd terrible, as she had ever been a shadow's Edge away from doing anyway. The fear,— the Resolve? Poor Mason. He gather'd them all with the force of his Belief,—
"Poh. 'Twas madness."
"You have look'd upon madness, have you, young 'Thelmer?”
"Any Saturday night down at the Hospital, Sir, a Spanish Dollar to the Warder purchases you more entertainment than your Ribs may bear, my Guarantee upon it."
"What! Bedlam in America! Mind yourself, lad."
When the Hook of Night is well set, and when all the Children are at last irretrievably detain'd within their Dreams, slowly into the Room begin to walk the Black servants, the Indian poor, the Irish runaways, the Chinese Sailors, the overflow'd from the mad Hospital, all uncho-sen Philadelphia,— as if something outside, beyond the cold Wind, had driven them to this extreme of seeking refuge. They bring their Scars, their Pox-pitted Cheeks, their Burdens and Losses, their feverish Eyes, their proud fellowship in a Mobility that is to be, whose shape none inside this House may know. Lomax wakes, sweating, from a poi-son'd Dream. Euphrenia has ascended the back Stairs, as the former Zab Cherrycoke those in front, to Slumber. Ethelmer and DePugh, Brae and the Twins, have all vanish'd back into the Innocence of Unconsciousness now. Ives is off at his Midnight Junto,— only Mr. LeSpark and the Revd remain. The Room continues to fill up, the Dawn not to arrive.
And if it all were nought but Madmen's Sleep?
The Years we all believ'd were real and deep
As Lives, as Sorrows, bearing us each one
Blindly along our Line's relentless Run
"Who was that," Lomax LeSpark in a stuporously low-level Panick. "I know that Voice...."
"He's in here!" his brother Wade marvels. Blurry as a bat in this candle-stump flicker, "• - Damme. How's he do it? He's suppos'd to be either in Chains, or out upon the Roads. Not in this House."
"Have a Cup, Tim," the Revd offering his Brother-in-Law's best Ser-cial. "Ever fancied the opening Lines to Book One, m'self—"
"You mean," the Poet nodding in thanks,
At Penn's Ascension of the Delaware, Savages from the banks covertly stare, As at the Advent of some puissant Prince, Before whom, Chaos reign'd, and Order since—"
Proceeding, then, to recite the Pennsylvaniad, sotto Voce as he wanders the Room, among the others, the untold others—
"Will you be leaving before Christmas, Wicks?"
"What do I say? Your Servant, Sir."
"I meant, that I should welcome your Company, as your Mediation, in visiting with Mr. Mason's widow and Children, if they are yet in Town,
tho' I am d——'d if I can see how to do it much before Epiphany, there
being an Alarm Clock even next my Chamber-Pot, these Days."
"Thanks to the American Society, they are here, and car'd for. I have heard that Mrs. Mason will return to England with the younger Children, whilst William and Doctor Isaac will remain."
"Then I should like to meet them, in particular. Perhaps I may find a way to help."
"Brother, you have Moments."
"Aye,— we call 'em Philadelphia Minutes."
On entering Mason's Rooms at The George Tavern, Franklin is greeted by an Odor he knows and would rather not have found. He resists the impulse to take out his Watch, ever Comforter and Scripture to him. He hears Children, gather'd somewhere in their own Rectangle invisible. Mary stands before a window looking upon an Alley-way. "What a desperate Night it's been. I don't know if he really wants to see you, or if it's more of his Illness. He sleeps now, but he's dreaming and talking, so I expect he'll be with us soon."
"I receiv'd his Letter— Having this year been much vex'd...this godawful disintegration of Power...'twas only now,— but forgive me, Mrs. Mason,— I whine."
She sinks with a sidewise contraction of her body onto a Couch design'd more to encourage the Illusions of Youth, than to console the Certainties of Age. Outside rackets the Traffic of Second Street.
"Please excuse me if I do not immediately sit,— at eighty, it requires some advance work,— so, my Sympathies must precede me."
She manages for him a Smile, whose muscular Cost he can feel in his own Face. He leans upon his Cane. "We met in times easily as dark as these,— we transacted honorably some items of Philosophick Business,— I put him up for Fellow in our American Society, tho' his desires were ever fix'd upon the Royal. He wanted them so to want him as a Member. We were but colonials, amusing enough in our way,— and of course he was touch'd,— yet, Philadelphia is not London."
"Upon Rebekah's Tomb-Stone he has put 'F.A.S.' after his own Name. So it means much to him. I expect you are surpriz'd, at,"— gesturing behind her as a wife might at her house, half apologizing, half welcoming,— "yet 'twas over-night." One moment they were at their own Table, in from cotes and stone walls and mud lanes,— the Loaf steaming, the Dishes going 'round,— the next, they were all in some kind of great loud Waggon, bound for Southampton. Money they'd had sav'd...
"But why?"
"I ask'd him why, ev'ry day, till I saw it was making him worse. 'We must go to America,'— that was nearly all he'd say. He has a way of saying 'America,' in his Father's Voice. Rrr. 'We all must go togetherrr.' Is it for leaving William and Doctor Isaac behind, all those years ago? I would gladly have remain'd in England with the Children, but at my age, Sir, it is a terrible choice. To find, and sweep from the last Corners of Sapperton and Stroud,— from Bisley!— some pitiful little heap of Mercy, or to remain with him and his Madness, which grows ever less hopeful, in our utter dependence upon the Board of Longitude. Praise Heaven, a fine Choice."
"Surely the Royal Society,—
"Alas. Tho' he has friends there,— the Reverend Maskelyne has been truly gentle with Charles, has remain'd by him ever,— Charles believes inflexibly that the Society could not forgive him the Letters he wrote them from Plymouth, so long ago now,— that too many resented him for speaking up then, for daring, from his lower Station, to suggest another Plan."
To speak of the final seven years, between Dixon's death and Mason's, is to speculate, to uncertain avail. Obituaries mention a long descent, "suf- fering, for several years, melancholy aberrations of mind." His illness at the end was never stipulated. Yet 'tis possible, after all, down here, to die of Melancholy.
He had return'd to his earthly Father, yet never reconcil'd,— in his Will, Charles forgave Mason the price of the Loaf he'd taken ev'ry Day for his Table, and that was all. Mason had married again, and become the father of five more boys and a girl, yet he never put Rebekah to Earth...tho' she herself, to appearance, might at last sigh, relax, and move on,— one would think,— with Old Mopery come to rest where he'd started out from. It is the way journeymen became masters, and the ingenuous wise,— it is a musickal piece returning to its Tonick Home. Nothing more would be expected of him now, than some quiet Coda.
His efforts at refining the Longitude tables of Mayer avoided any risk of looking into the real Sky,— as if, against his father's wishes having once studied the Stars, now, too late, he were renouncing them,— tho' he got out under the Heavens ev'ry now and then, sometimes alone, usually with children along, for whom he adjusted Oculars and Screws, and peer'd only rarely, gingerly, Star-ward.
As Rebekah withdrew into Silence eventually complete, Mason's Melancholy deepen'd. If she was no longer to be found in Sapperton,— if he insisted that her Silence be Rejection, and not Contentment,— that may have help'd push him away, back to America,— whatever it was, his despair by then was greater than Mary had ever seen, or could account for. "I thought I knew him a little,— Children all over the place, Charlie bent over his logarithms all night, a new Stomach Onset arriving with each Post,—
Doctor Isaac had had his Father back for ten years, yet still he relied upon Willy to help him along, as his older Brother had ever done, coming to accept it as naturally as the Day. "He will never speak of her," Willy said once. "Nor will Aunt Hester, much."
"They ought to, you know? It isn't fair. It's as if they're asham'd of her for something. Grandfather, when he is displeas'd with me, says that I—
"I heard him. He should never have said that."
"And he said I was nam'd after the Doctor who lost her. That Dad hated me that much, he wanted it always on me, like a notch upon a Pig's Ear.”
"Grandfather is a sour and beggarly old fool. You are nam'd for Newton, whom Dad admires greatly."
Neither has ever denied the other his direct gaze. "Who told you 'twas Newton?" Doc keeps on, finely quivering, resolute.
"Aunt Hettie."
"On your Oath, Will."
"Ask her."
"I did. Mindful as ever, she went on, as, 'The name may've come up. Who knows? Your Father talks unendingly, but I can't recall much of anything he's said,— So now, I really shall have to take your sworn Word, Willy. And hope you do understand, how serious this is."
"How,— should I ever lie to you? 'Tis I,— remember me? the taller one?"
Without considering, Doc reaches up, for the Hand that is not there,— finding his brother's shoulder instead, which will have to do.
When news reach'd Mason that Dixon had died, he went about for the rest of the Day as if himself stricken. "I'd meant to see him this Summer," he repeated over and over. At last, "I must go up there."
"I'll come with you," offer'd Doctor Isaac.
"The Boy works for his Bread," the elder Mason growl'd, "— he's not a Man of Science,— leave him be."
"Hire a Weaver for a Se'nnight,— there are plenty of them to choose from. I'll pay ye back any sum it loses ye."
"With what? Stardust?"
Presently, curses ringing in their Ears, Mason and his son were out upon the North Road together, bundl'd against the Cold, stopping in at ev'ry Tavern upon the Way. Mason, for some reason, found himself unable to stop looking at Doc, recalling that the Lad had never been out of these Hills, nor even down to Oxford. Out on the Road like this, he seem'd suddenly no longer a Child. They stopt overnight in Birmingham, and again in York, they ate and drank with Waggoners and Fugitives and commercial travelers.
As they lie side by side in bed, Mason finds he cannot refrain from telling his Son bedtime stories about Dixon.
"He was ever seeking to feel something he'd hitherto not felt. In Philadelphia he was fascinated by Dr. Franklin's Leyden Jar, as with the Doctor's curious History, cheerfully admitted to, of self-electrocution thereby, on more Occasions than he can now remember...."
"Here's the Lumina of the Lab," leading the Surveyors among Globes of Glass, Insulators of Porcelain, a Miniature Forge, a Magnetizing Station, Gear-trains of Lignum Vitae, and Engine out of which protrudes a great Crank, Bench-tops strewn with Lenses, Lamps, Alembicks, Retorts, Condensers, Coils,— at length to a squatly inelegant wide-mouth'd Vessel, in a dark corner of the Work-room. "Three-inch Sparks from this Contrivance are routine. And when ye hook a Line of 'em up,s in Cascade? Well. Many's the time I've found myself out upon the Pavement, no memory of Removal from where I'd been, and a Hole in the Brick Wall between, about my Size and Shape. Here now, just take hold of this Terminal,—
Mason, aghast of course, and not about to touch any Terminal, withdraws, upon the Pretext of Business with Dr. Franklin's Assistant, a gnomelike Stranger nam'd Ingvarr, whose unsettling Grin and reluctance to speak provoke from Mason increasingly desperate Monologue,— whilst for his part, Dixon is eagerly hastening to handle all the Apparatus he can find, that might have Electrick Fluid running thro' it.
"EEHH aye, thah' was a good one! And here, whah's this, with the three great Springs coomin' out?"
"Ah. Yes, two go into the Ears, thus,— and the other, with this Y-Adapter, into your...Nostrils, there we are! Now, then!"
"Master! Master!" Ingvarr scuttling near.
"Not now, Ingvarr.. .unless of course you'd like to assist in a little.. .Spark-length Calibration?"
"Aiyee! No, Master!"
"There now Ingvarr, 'tis but a couple of Toes,— callus'd quite well I see, more than enough to withstand the 'lecktrick Tension...try not to squirm, there's a good fellow,—
"It tickles!"
"Fine with me, as Howard says to Howard, only please try not to kick that Switch to the main Battery, lest Mr. Dixon,— oh, dear.—Ingvarr. What did I just say?”
So forcefully that his Queue-Tie breaks with a loud Snap, Dixon's Hair springs erect, each Strand a right Line pointing outward along a perfect Radius from the Center of his Head. What might be call'd a Smile, is yet asymmetrick, and a-drool. His Eyeballs, upon inspection, are seen to rotate in opposite Senses, and at differing Speeds. Releasing Ingvarr, who makes himself scarce, Franklin opens the Switch at last, and Dixon staggers to a Settee. "Sir," the Doctor in some concern, "I trust you've not been inconvenienc'd unduly?"
"Suppose I us'd Tin-Foil," Dixon, upon his back, replies, "— instead of Silver,— how many of these Jars should I need, to...reproduce that Effect?"
Next morning, at Breakfast, Doc is curious to know, "Did you ever cast his Horoscope?"
"Quite early on, tho' I never told him. His natal Moon, in Aquarius...? and in Leo, the sign of his Birth, he's bless'd with a Stellium, of Mercury, Venus, and Mars,— Mars being also conjunct his Sun,— tho' both are regrettably squar'd Jupiter and Saturn. His Bread, that is, ever by the sweat of his brow...so did it prove to be,— yet Vis Martis enough, and
more, for the Journey He may've done my Horo on the sly, for all I
know. Rum thing not to know of someone, isn't it? But he knew how to
cast a Chart, and had the current Year's Ephemeris by Memory
Damme, he knew his Astronomy,— tho' I teas'd him with it now and then....
"Meant to bring you to see him one day. He'd heard enough about you...."
"You spoke of me?"
"You, Willy, the Babies. We talk'd about our Children. He had two Girls, young Women I should say,—
"Arrh.. .and you were hoping...?"
"Who? What? D'you take me for a Village Busybody such as your Aunt Hettie?"
"Two Sons," explains Doc, "Two Daughters. And a Father wishing, as Fathers do, to be a Grand-Father."
"Sure of that?”
"Mason-Dixon Grand-Babies." He risks casting at his Father a direct look of provocation, that Mason finds he may no more flinch from, than answer to. For the next Hours, then, neither speaks more than he must,— at ease, for the first time together, with the Silence of the Day. 'Twas what Dixon ever wish'd from him,— to proceed quietly.
"I thought if ever I did this," Doc tells his father later, out upon the Road, " 'twould be alone. And headed the other way,— to London."
"You're like me. At your Age, I couldn't wait to be out of the Vale."
"Why'd you ever come back?"
"You were here, and Will.. .and your Mother...."
Doc flashes him a thoughtful look. "You never speak of her." Here they are, fallen upon the Drum-head of the Day.
" 'Tis twenty years. Perhaps I've pass'd beyond the need to."
"But then— "
Mason sees the struggle the Lad is having between going on, and keeping silence. "Of course. We must speak of her. Whatever you wish to know of her. I shall try."
"It doesn't have to be right away."
Snow is nearly upon them, and night soon to descend. Shelter has not so far presented itself. At the last of the Day-light, providentially, at the Edge of York, they smell wood-smoke with a sensible Fat Component, and follow their Noses to The Merry Ghosts, which is in fact a Haunted Inn, as the apple trees planted too close to it testify, growing directly away from the Structure, as far as their roots will permit, often at quite unstable Angles.
"Not promising," mutters Mason.
"What choice?"
As they step into the busy Saloon, all, to the wiping of Mouths, falls dead silent. Faces gather'd in a Circle about a Dark-Lanthorn and a Heap of stolen Purses, look up in varying degrees of annoyance. A gigantick and misanthropick Tapster comes out of the Shadows. "Private Party tonight, Gents."
"Where's the next Inn?" Mason is about to inquire, when Doc speaks up,— "Here then, Coves, 'tis Mason and Mason, High Tobers of Greenwich, rambling Bearward, and Zoot Cheroot sez me early-and-late, or 'tis
be-wary of the Frigidary, for the Gloak that quiddles.—Oh and Pints for all, that's if we may...?"
' 'We'?" inquires Mason. The Tapster withdraws, the Bitter flows, those staring resume Business. Mason and Doc find a Corner where they may pretend themselves confederates upon the Toby, plotting Deeds dark enough to allow them to be left in Peace.
' 'Tis a Ring," explains Doc. "They're dividing up the Day's Spoils. Later we'll see the night Brigade come on."
"How do you know all this?"
"Read about it in Ghastly Fop. 'Tis a Weekly, now, did you know?"
"I didn't."
"The Coach brings it to Stroud."
'Round the Footpads' table perplexity rules. "What did he say?" asks the Brum Kiddy. "Is that London Canting?"
"Clozay le Gob," he is advis'd. "You're too young, yet."
"But what's it mean?" the Kiddy persists.
"Here's what you do, Kid,— just go over there and ask 'em what they said."
Mason and Mason get an identifiable Joint for Supper, and the best room upstairs to sleep in. "They'll murder us in our sleep, suggests Mason.
"We're not going to sleep." By and large Doc is correct. The Traffick in front, as back in the Courtyard, of The Merry Ghosts is prodigious and unceasing. Confidences at best dangerous to hear are scream'd heedlessly back and forth all night.
"I thought it was suppos'd to be haunted," Mason objects. "How can anyone tell, in this Tohu-Vabohu?"
"Unless..." Doc looks out the Window. Among all the roarings, whistles, wheel-rumbling, and low Song, there is not a Visible Soul below. The snow is falling now. Mason sits by the window waiting for traces of these outspoken Spirits to show up against the white Descent. At some point, invisible across the room, Doctor Isaac will ask, quietly, evenly, "When did you meet? How young were you?"
At Bishop they learn'd that Dixon had been buried in back of the Quaker Meeting-House in Staindrop. Doctor Isaac stay'd with his Father, step for
step. At the grave, which by Quaker custom was unmark'd, Mason beseech'd what dismally little he knew of God, to help Dixon through. The grass was long and beaded with earlier rain. A Cat emerg'd from it and star'd for a long time, appearing to know them.
"Dad?" Doc had taken his arm. For an instant, unexpectedly, Mason saw the little Boy who, having worried about Storms at Sea, as Beasts in the Forest, came running each time to make sure his father had return'd safely,— whose gift of ministering to others Mason was never able to see, let alone accept, in his blind grieving, his queasiness of Soul before a life and a death, his refusal to touch the Baby, tho' 'twas not possible to blame
him The Boy he had gone to the other side of the Globe to avoid was
looking at him now with nothing in his face but concern for his Father.
"Oh, Son." He shook his Head. He didn't continue.
"It's your Mate," Doctor Isaac assur'd him, "It's what happens when your Mate dies."
Solitude grew upon him, despite his nominal return to the social Web-work. Neighbors near and far, including owners of textile mills he would once never have spat upon, believing him vers'd in ev'ry Philosophick Art, kept bringing him repair jobs. The work-shed grew clutter'd with shafts and weft-forks, pirn winders and pistons, silk-reels and boiler gauges. Scents of Lavender, wild Roses, and Kitchen-Smoke pass'd in and out with Bees and Wasps, thro' the unmortar'd walls, pierc'd ev'rywhere with bright openings to the sunlit Garden outside, and the abiding Day. Mason might be found sitting at a Pine Table, bow'd over a curious Mirror. The beings who visited had names, and Titles, and signs of Recognition. Often they would approach through Number, Logarithms, the manipulation of Numbers and Letters, emerging as it were from among the symbols—
His principal income in those years came from pen-and-paper Work, laborious, pre-mechanickal, his only Instrument a set of Logarithmick Tables,— reducing and perfecting Mayer's solar and lunar Data. These form'd the basis of the Nautical Almanac, which Maskelyne edited, and in whose Introduction the A.R. was generous in acknowledging Mason's work. Mason came to believe that thro' Taurean persistence he had refin'd the values to well within an error that entitl'd him to the £5,000
Prize offer'd by the Board of Longitude. But "Enemies" succeeded in reducing it to an offer of £750, which he refus'd, upon Principle, tho' Mary at the news withdrew in Dismay.
Did he now include among his Enemies Maskelyne?
The A.R. had shar'd with Mason his delight over the new Planet,— he had taken it for a Comet,— wishing Mr. Herschel joy of his great Accomplishment. Suddenly the family of Planets had a new member, tho' previously observ'd by Bradley, Halley, Flamsteed, Le Monnier, the Chinese, the Arabs, everyone it seem'd, yet attended to by none of them. 'Twas impossible to find an Astronomer in the Kingdom who was not wandering about in that epoch beaming like a Booby over the unforeseen enlargement of his realm of study. Yet to Mason was it Purgatory,— some antepenultimate blow. What fore-inklings of the dark Forces of Over-Throw that assaulted his own Mind came visiting?— small stinging Presences darting in from the periphery of his senses to whisper, to bite, to inject Venoms...Beings from the new Planet. Infesting— Mason has seen in the Glass, unexpectedly, something beyond simple reflection,— outside of the world,— a procession of luminous Phantoms, carrying bowls, bones, incense, drums, their Attention directed to nothing he may imagine, belonging to unknown purposes, flowing by thick as Eels, pauselessly, for how long before or after his interception, he could never know. There may be found, within the malodorous Grotto of the Selves, a conscious Denial of all that Reason holds true. Something that knows, unarguably as it knows Flesh is sooner or later Meat, that there are Beings who are not wise, or spiritually advanced, or indeed capable of Human kindness, but ever and implacably cruel, hiding, haunting, waiting,— known only to the blood-scented deserts of the Night,— and any who see them out of Disguise are instantly pursued,— and none escape, however long and fruitful be the years till the Shadow creeps 'cross the Sill-plate, its Advent how mute. Spheres of Darkness, Darkness impure,— Plexities of Honor and Sin we may never clearly sight, for when we venture near they fall silent, Murdering must be silent, by Potions and Spells, by summonings from beyond the Horizons, of Spirits who dwell a little over the Line between the Day and its annihilation, between the number'd and the unimagin'd,— between common safety and Ruin ever solitary....
The Royal Society by then had divided into "Men of Science," such as Maskelyne and Mr. Hutton, and "Macaronis," such as Henry Cavendish and Mr. Joseph Banks, a Dispute culminating for Maskelyne, with his own set of Enemies, at the Instant he found his name absent from the List of Royal Society Council Members for 1783-84, and had an Excursion into Vertigo unsought. At this Cusp of vulnerability, Mason, with the Exquisiteness of a Picador, launch'd his Dart.
At The Mitre, of all Places, amid pipe-fumes and the muffl'd ring of pewter upon oak, they ended up waving half-eaten Chops in lieu of pointed Fingers. From an innocent discussion of the Great Meteor of the Summer previous, they abruptly surrender'd to Earthly Spite.
"If they are Souls falling to Earth," becoming incarnate, then 'tis of Moment, which Point of the Zodiack they appear to radiate from."
"Like most of them that night, this had its Radiant in Perseus. If that's any help to you."
Mason mimicking the preacherly rise and fall, "Perseus, home to most baleful Algol, the Ghoul-Star,— when upon its Meridian, directly above New-York, the American Sodom,— the Star that others nam'd Lilith,— or Satan's, or Medusa's, Head...would the Soul I seek, emerge and fall from a region so attainted? Never. You know that very well. You little Viper. What have you ever lost?"
Even Mun, who loved a brisk Punch-up as well as the next truculent Sot, now chose rather to pull his Brother away, first to another Table, and presently out the Door and on to another Tavern altogether. "You'll not dismiss me again," cried Mason. "I fail'd to see Hatred for what it was,— believing you but a long-winded Fool, ever attempting to buy my regard with Gifts in your power,—
"I may have priz'd your good opinion," Maskelyne in that meek Tone Mason knew promis'd a Stab unannounc'd.
Striking instead, "Why should it matter to you? Certainly not out of Respect for the better Astronomer,—
" 'Twas plain Recompense, no more than that. Schiehallion, which you rejected,— Day-Labor for the B. of L., without which your Family should have starv'd,— all in my humble Gratitude, for being allow'd, once, to approach Bradley,—
"Better we'd starv'd,— for you came closer than you ought,— the worse for him."
"An Usurper? Is that what you make of me? Must I now be slain? Can you never get beyond it?"
"No need to slay a Man who isn't There."
Maskelyne understood that Mason meant, not There upon the Royal Society Council. His parsonical Scowl dropp'd from forehead to Eyes, as we clench our Faces sometimes, against Sentiment. No records survive, however, of when Nevil Maskelyne did, or did not, weep. What he did do now, was turn away from Mason, and for the first time, and the last time, not turn back to face him. The last Mason saw of him was the back of his Wig. The next year, after several dramatick Votes and Skirmishes, tho' not all that many Stick-enhanc'd Injuries, ev'ryone in the Royal Soc. ended most frightful Chums, and Maskelyne was back on the Council, remaining so thereafter, Year upon Year, till his Passing.
Mason struggles to wake. He arises, glides to the Door, and emerges from an ordinary Modern House, in one of the plainest cities on Earth, to find ascending before him one single dark extended Petroglyph,— a Town-enclos'd Hill-side, upon which lie the all-but-undamag'd remains of an ancient City, late Roman or early Italian temples and public buildings, in taupes and browns, Lombardy Poplars of a Green very dark— There is writing on some of the Structures, but Mason cannot read it. Does not yet know it is writing. Perhaps when Night has fallen, he will be able to look up, to question the Sky.
"I think he's waking." She is up and a-bustle, the children secreting themselves in corners, older ones shepherding younger ones to nearby rooms. Mary beckons Franklin in.
Mason is gone gray, metallic whiskers sprout from his Face, even his eyelashes are grizzl'd. Franklin is surpriz'd to find that Mason has lost his Squint, that as the years have pass'd, his Face has been able somehow to enter the Ease of a Symmetry it must ever have sought, once he abandon'd the Night Sky, and took refuge indoors from the Day.
"I trust you will soon be out of this Bed, Sir."
"Whilst I'm of use," Mason says, "they shan't seek my dissolution, not in the thick of this Dispute over the Bradley Obs so-call'd, these being, many of them, my own. No one wants to repeat what went on between Newton and Flamsteed. Excepting perhaps one of Kabbalistick Turn, who believes those Arrays of Numerals to be the magical Text that will deliver him to Immortality. Or suspects that Bradley found something, something as important as the Aberration, but more ominous,— something France may not have, or not right away, and Jesuits must not learn of, ever,— something so useful and deadly, that rather than publish his suspicions, or even reduce the data any further, Bradley simply left them as an exercise for anyone strongly enough interested. And what could that be? What Phantom Shape, implicit in the Figures?"
"Ah, you old Quizzer," Franklin tries to beam, Mason continuing to regard him, not pleading, but as if it didn't matter much what Franklin thinks.
' 'Tis a Construction," Mason weakly, "a great single Engine, the size of a Continent. I have all the proofs you may require. Not all the Connexions are made yet, that's why some of it is still invisible. Day by day the Pioneers and Surveyors go on, more points are being tied in, and soon becoming visible, as above, new Stars are recorded and named and plac'd in Almanacks—"
"You've found it, have ye? This certainly isn't that Curious Design with the trilling Cost that you sent me along with your Letter."
"Sir, you have encounter'd Deists before, and know that our Bible is Nature, wherein the Pentateuch, is the Sky. I have found there, written ev'ry Night, in Astral Gematria, Messages of Great Urgency to our Time, and to your Continent, Sir."
"Now to be your own as well, may an old Continental hope, Sir."
Mary looks in. "Well, young Mary," Mason's eyes elsewhere, unclaimable, "it turn'd out to be simple after all. Didn't it."
"You're safe, Charlie," she whispers. "You're safe." She prays.
Mary would return to England with the younger Children,— William and Dr. Isaac, Rebekah's Sons, would stay, and be Americans. Would stay,and ensign their Father into his Death. Mr. Shippen, Revd Peters, Mr. Ewing, all Commissioners of the Line twenty years earlier, now will prove, each in his Way, their Salvation upon this Shore.
"Since I was ten," said Doc, "I wanted you to take me and Willy to America. I kept hoping, ev'ry Birthday, this would be the year. I knew next time you'd take us."
"We can get jobs," said William, "save enough to go out where you were,—
"Marry and go out where you were," said Doc.
"The Stars are so close you won't need a Telescope."
"The Fish jump into your Arms. The Indians know Magick."
"We'll go there. We'll live there."
"We'll fish there. And you too.”
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