Mason & Dixon (101 page)

"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,—

[Dixon] For the bleary-eyed lad from the coal pits,

[Mason] And the 'Gazer with big-city Style,—

[Both] We came, we peep'd, we shouted with surprize,

Tho' half the time we couldn't tell the falsehoods from the lies,

[M] I say! is that a—
  
[D] No, it ain't! [M] I do apologize,—

[Both] This Astronomer's Life, say,

Pure as a Fife, hey,

Quick as a Knife, in

The Da-a-ark!

[M] Oh, we went,—

Out to Cape Town, [D] Phila-

Del-phia too,

[Both] 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,

[M] I say, was that— [D] I hope not! [M] Who

The Deuce said that? [D] 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...?"