Mason & Dixon (102 page)

"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.