Mason & Dixon (26 page)

Below them the lamps were coming on in the Taverns, the wind was shaking the Plantations of bare Trees, the River ceasing to reflect, as it began to absorb, the last light of the Day. They were out in Greenwich Park, walking near Lord Chesterfield's House,— the Autumn was well advanced, the trees gone to Pen-Strokes and Shadows in crippl'd Plexity, bath'd in the declining light. A keen Wind flow'd about them. Down the

Hill-side, light in colors of the Hearth was transmitted by window-panes more and less optickally true. Hounds bark'd in the Forest.

Bradley was fifty-nine that year, Macclesfield four years younger, calling him James this, James that. The older man was in perpetual bad health, did not hunt, ride, nor even fish, had married foolishly, had been entirely purchas'd long ago, Aberration, Nutation, Star Catalogue, and all, tho' he'd denied it successfully to himself.... "Ev'ryone lies, James, each appropriate to his place in the Chain.... We who rule must tell great Lies, whilst ye lower down need only lie a little bit. This is yet another thankless sacrifice we make for you, so that you may not have to feel as much Remorse as we do,— as we must. Part of noblesse oblige, as you might say.. .is it so strange that the son of a lawyer who bought and then destroy'd in shame a once-honorable Title, should seek refuge in stargazing? They betray us not, nor ever do they lie,— they are pure Mathe-sis. Unless they be Moons or Planets, possessing Diameter, each exists as but a dimensionless Point,— a simple pair of Numbers, Right Ascension and Declination....Numbers that you Men of Science are actually

paid, out of the Purses of Kings, to find."

"Fret not, Milord," replied Bradley, as if he were being paid to soothe the Patron, "— among Brother Lenses, all are welcome."

"Can you warrant me, that you did just now not insult me, James?"

Bradley imagin'd he caught a certain playfulness of Tone, but was unsure how much to wager upon that. "I have listen'd to my Lord insult himself for this last Hour,— why should I wish to join in, especially considering the respect I hold him in?"

"As a Lensman only, of course."

"You make it difficult."

They trudg'd thro' fallen Oak Leaves that sail'd and stirr'd about their Calves. They smell'd Chimney-Smoke. Blasted Autumn, invader of old Bones.

"Here," Mason explains to a small Audience at The George, "purely, as who might say, dangerously, was Time that must be denied its freedom to elapse. As if, for as long as The Days lay frozen, Mortality itself might present no claims. The Folk for miles around could sense a Presence,— something altogether too frightening for any of the regular servants at Shirburn Castle to go near. Macclesfield had to hire Strangers from far, far to the east."

"The Indies?"

"China?"

"Stepney!"

His Lordship, as Mason relates, requir'd a People who liv'd in quite another relation to Time,— one that did not, like our own, hold at its heart the terror of Time's passage,— far more preferably, Indifference to it, pure and transparent as possible. The Verbs of their language no more possessing tenses, than their Nouns Case-Endings,— for these People remain'd as careless of Sequences in Time as disengaged from Subjects, Objects, Possession, or indeed anything which might among Englishmen require a Preposition.

"As to Gender,— well, Dear me but that's something else again entirely, isn't it, aye and damme if it isn't— Howbeit,— thro' the good Offices of an Hungarian Intermediary,—

Protest from all in the Company.

"Hey? Genders? Very well,— of Genders they have three,— Male, Female, and the Third Sex no one talks about,— Dead. What, then, you may be curious to know, are the emotional relations between Male and Dead, Female and Dead, Dead and Dead? Eh? Just so. What of love triangles? Do they automatically become Quadrilaterals? With Death no longer in as simple a way parting us, no longer the Barrier nor Sanction that it was, what becomes of Marriage Vows,— how must we redefine Being Faithful... ?" By which he means (so the Revd, who was there in but a representational sense, ghostly as an imperfect narrative to be told in futurity, would have guess'd) that Rebekah's visits at St. Helena, if sexual, were profoundly like nothing he knew,— whilst she assum'd that he well understood her obligations among the Dead, and would respond ever as she wish'd. Yet how would he? being allow'd no access to any of those million'd dramas among the Dead. They were like the Stars to him,— unable to project himself among their enigmatic Gatherings, he could but observe thro' a mediating Instrument. The many-Lens'd Rebekah.

"Thro' the Efforts of Count Paradicsom, in any Case, a Band of these Aliens the Size of a Regiment, were presently arriv'd in Gloucestershire.

Bless us. Nothing like it since the Druids. They march'd in through the Castle gates playing upon enormous Chimes of Crystal Antimony, and trumpets fashion'd from the Bones of ancient Species found lying upon the great unbroken Plain where they dwell, their Music proceeding, not straight-ahead like an English marching-tune, but rather wandering unpredictably, with no clear beginning, nor end."

"Uniforms?"

"A sturdy sort of Armor head to toe, woven of the low Desert Shrubs of their Land."

"Ah, military chaps,— imposing, as you'd say?"

"Asiatick Pygmies," Mason says, "actually. Yet despite their stature, any Mob would have thought twice about challenging their right to colonize th' Eleven Days.

"Their Commission, that is, their Charter if you like, directed them to inhabit the Days, yet not to allow the Time to elapse. They were expected to set up Households, Farms, Villages, Mills,— an entire Plantation in Time."

"And say, do they live there yet? or, rather, 'then'? and have any of the days elaps'd, despite these enigmatick Gaolers?"

"Now and then, a traveler's report.... Geographickally, they're by now diffus'd ev'rywhere obedient to the New-Style Act,— some to America, some out to India,— vacant India! return'd unto wild Dogs and Serpents... the breeze off the Hoogli, blowing past the empty door-way of a certain...Black Hole?— and wherever they are, temporally, eleven days to the Tick behind us. Tis all an Eden there, Lads, and only they inhabit it, they and their Generations. 'Tis their great Saga,— the Pygmies' Discovery of Great Britain. Arriv'd they cannot say how, nor care, they sleep in our beds, live in our Rooms, eat from our Dishes what we have left in the Larders, finish our Bottles, play with our Cards and upon our Instruments, squat upon our Necessaries,— the more curious of them ever pursuing us, as might Historians of Times not yet come, by way of the clues to our lives that they find in Objects we have surrender'd to the Day, or been willing to leave behind at its End,— to them a mystery Nation, relentlessly being 'British,' a vast Hive of Ghosts not quite van-ish'd into Futurity...."

"Then...”

"Aye and recall," Mason's Phiz but precariously earnest, "where you were, eleven days ago,— saw you anyone really foreign about? Very short, perhaps? Even...Oriental in Aspect?"

"Well,— well yes, now that you,— " recalls Mr. Hailstone, "right out in Parliament-Street, it was, a strange little fellow, head shaved ev'ry-where, red damask robes with gold embellishments, what could in the right circs be call'd a fashionable Hat, a sort of squat Obelisk,— and as cryptickally inscrib'd. Not that I paid all that much Attention, of course, tho' a good number of Citizens, themselves by way of Brims and Cockades displaying Headgear Messages a-plenty, were loitering about, trying to decipher this Stranger's Hat.. .the odd thing was, he didn't pay any of us the least heed. Imagine. Stroud Macaronis pok'd at him with their Sticks, Irish servants pass'd Leprechaun remarks, respectable Matrons of the town ventur'd to chuck him under the Chin. All reported a surprizing transparency, some a many-color'd Twinkling about the Fringes of his Figure."

"Of course,— for you saw him as he was, in the relative Vacuum of his Plantation,— whilst he, for his Part, believ'd you all to be prankish Ghosts he must not acknowledge, fearing who knows what mental harm. You haunted each other."

"Thus, from the Cargo of Days, having broken Eleven, precious, untranspir'd, for his Masters to use as they will, having withal conspir'd to deliver our Land unto these strange alien Pygmies, stands Bradley tonight, before the Lord's Assizes, his Soul in the gravest Peril, let us pray," and Revd Cromorne proceeds to what we in the Trade call Drop the Transom, voice falling to a whisper, Eyelids fluttering over Eyeballs of increas'd Albedo, Do excuse me, I'm talking to God here, be with ye as soon as we're done,—

Is Mason going to get angry and into a fight? Will he stand and announce, "This is none of God's judgment,— to be offended as gravely by Calendar Reform as by Mortal Sin, requires a meanness of spirit quite out of the reach of any known Deity,— tho' well within the resources of Stroud, it seems." And walk out thro' their stunn'd ranks to the Embrace of the Night, and never enter the place again? No.—
 
He buys ev'ryone another Pint, instead, and resigns himself to seeking out his Family tomorrow,— tho' sure Agents of Melancholy, they sooner or later feel regretful for it, whilst Regret is just the sort of Sentiment that regular life at The George depends on having no part of. The Landlord is kind and forthright, the Ale as good as any in Britain, the Defenestration of the Clothiers in '56 has inscrib'd the place forever in Legend, and Good Eggs far outnumber Bad Hats,— yet so dismal have these late Hours in it been for Mason, as to make him actually look forward to meeting his Relations again.

20

The Boys circle about, not sure of him, tho' Doc has come running, as he has done each time, at the sound of the Horse, his own Motion far ahead of his earthly feet, the moment he spies Mason, stopping short and gazing intently. "Hello! All well, Papa?"

"Why, yes." Alighting, "Hello, Doctor Isaac. How's ev'ryone faring here?"

"Oh...we're all good?" He reaches up without hesitation to take Mason's hand, and they go in.

Today Mason is patient, and by and by the two have settl'd inside his slacken'd Perimeter. They live with their Aunt Hester, Mason's sister, and her husband, Elroy. Mason, having ridden up to the house prepar'd spiritually for Disrespect, Recrimination, bad Coffee, also finds Delicia Quail, the Clothier's daughter, in a colorful pongee gown at least an order of Magnitude too riotous for any casual Visit in these Parts. Before long it is distressingly clear, that she suffers from that uncontroll'd Need to be a Bride, known to Physicians as Nymphomania, in whose cheerful Frenzy nuances vanish, and ev'ry unattach'd man is a potential Husband.

"You're young enough," she ticks off item by item, "Your Sons need a Mother and I've been tending kids all my life. I can bake a Sally Lunn, whose Aroma alone is guaranteed to add Inches to any Waistline, even one as trim as your own, Charlie Mason. My Puddings are Legend even in Painswick. I was brought up in the Anglican Faith, and with enough Spirits to drink, am said to be a merry companion. What were you looking for, exactly, in a second wife?"

" 'Licia, a Joy seeing you again, till this instant I wasn't aware I was looking. Yet I must have been, mustn't I?" At this moment, were he attending, he might have heard, from the direction of St. Kenelm's church-yard, a certain subterranean Rotation.

"What a faraway soul you can be, Mr. Mason," she smiles effort-fully,— "must 1 instruct you, that 'tis universal, upon this Planet, for a young widower to seek a new wife as soon as decency permits? Even wait an extra day, if he's shy."

"Thankee. So have I heard, and keep hearing, from so many well-wishers. Were I not under unbreakable Obligation,—

"To whom? The Royal Society? A Room-ful of men in Wigs, droning away in the candle-light, that's where you'd rather be, than home at the Hearth with your next Wife, and little ones? And the Custard,— ruin'd! How could you!" to appearance self-persuaded, she draws back from him. "What sort of night-crawling creature are you, then?"

"Oh, be a friendly Girl," prays Mason.

"I am not dramatizing at the moment, Charles."

"Kiss me right now, Sweet-Heart."

"Twittering London Fop," she snarls, making to go off. The Boys come running in. "Auntie 'Licia!" "Don't go!" She gathers them in, flashing Mason a There-you-see Smirk, over their small nuzzling heads. "The time you took for your long Sea-Journey might be excus'd, as a remedy for excessive Grief. But you're back now, aren't you?"

"Not entirely, for now there's something else up. So I may be off again, and fairly soon,— "

"What?" shrieks Hester. "Where to, now? There's no work in England? You had a secure job at Greenwich once, what happen'd to that?"

"Times change, Hetty. I enjoy'd that Post by way of the Newcastle Gang, who languish now at politickal Death's Door. New sorts of Whig control the Appointments." Bradley is gone, that's it,— yet he will not whine,— not in front of the Boys. Nor may anyone 'round here even recognize the Name. "The Pay's said to be good,—

"Were I you," advises Delicia Quail, "I should stick to the matter of the Longitude, for that is where the Money's at.”

"You have studied the Question.—
 
True that in the short term, there'll be plenty of Almanack work, Lunars being the only practickal method at sea right now, and much cheaper than any Time-piece. But soon enough, sturdier offspring of Mr. Harrison's Watch will be showing their noontide Faces all about the Fleets, and Lunars will have had their day. The best we wretched Lunarians can ever hope for, is to share the Prize, which will prove at last a Tart cut too many ways to satisfy any. The real Fees nowadays, 'Licia, are to be earn'd abroad. For the first time real money is finding its way even into Astronomy,— Public Funds paying for entire Expeditions. It ages me to recall that Bradley, in discovering the Aberration, was obliged to rely upon the Generosity of those Nobility who shar'd his Passion for the Stars,"— an opening for someone at least to offer Condolences. None does.

"Where is it this time, Charlie?" asks his Sister Anne, but turn'd seventeen and eager to be out of the House, where she is an unpaid 'round-the-clock Menial.

"There're only Rumors, nothing's decided,—