“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.— Yet how can thou be sure? 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 many 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, geometrick 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 . . . discuss’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.
“Learnèd,” 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 only barking 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, Tenebræ 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 unchosen Philadelphia,— as if something outside, beyond the cold Wind, has 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 poison’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,— yet 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.”
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