“Perhaps if Mademoiselle, as a gesture of good intent, would put aside her,— ehm,—” cajoles Mr. Barnes.
“We call it a Pistol, the same as men do,” twirling the Weapon by its trigger-guard. “Now that you have spoken to the Lady in Breeches, perhaps you could have a word with the man in skirts.”
“He’s not a real Jesuit,” Mason assures her.
“Or, perhaps all too real!” the Captain with a look of evil glee,— “for suppose I was never Zhang, but rather Zarpazo, all the Time! HA,— ha-ha!” His Laugh, tho’ hideously fiendish enough, seems practis’d.
“Or,” replies Mr. Barnes, “that you are neither, but yet another damn’d Fabulator, such as ever haunt encampments, white or Indian, ev’ry night, somewhere in this Continent.”
“Too many possible Stories. You may not have time enough to find out which is the right one.”
“Best thing’s draw up a Book, for there’s certain to be wagering upon the Question?” offers Guy Spit.
Ethelmer, downstairs, alone, at the Clavier, hair loos’d, apostrophizes a Thermometer,— throughout which the Listener may imagine a series of idiotic still-life Views, first of the Thermometer, registering some low temperature,— then of Ethelmer, singing to it, then back to the Thermometer again, and so forth.
Say, Mister Fahrenheit,
She doesn’t treat me right, [advert to Thermometer]
Wish you could warm up that Lady of mine,— [then back to ’Thelmer, &c.]
Look at you, on the wall,
Don’t have a, care at all,—
Even tho’ our love has plung’d,
To minus ninety-nine,— now, Doctor
Celsius, and ev’ryone else, yes,
Say, you’ve plenty to spare,—
Don’t let us freeze, can’t you
Send some Degrees, from where-
-Ever you are, out there,—
Damme,
Mister Fahrenheit,—
Here comes another night,
I shall once again be shiv’ring through,
With no help from your Scale,
’Tis all Ice and Hail, and
I’ll turn-into a Snow-man, too.
“Where’s Brae, ’Thelmer?” DePugh, self-Mesmeriz’d, having lost his way to the Larder.
“Dreaming. As to what, I can only say with certainty, that ’tis not of me.”
“Romance, you did your best.”
“Ah. But not my worst.”
56
“Now here is something curious.” The Revd produces and makes available to the Company his Facsimile of Pennsylvania’s Fair Copy of the Field-Journals of Mason and Dixon, “copied without the touch of human hands, by an ingenious Jesuit device, and printed by Mr. Whimbrel, next to The Seneca Maiden, Philadelphia, 1776.”
“Cycles, or if you like, Segments of eleven Days recur again and again. Here, in 1766, eleven days after setting out southward from Brandywine, is Mason paus’d at Williamsburg, the southernmost point of his journey,— next day he leaves for Annapolis, and eleven days later departs that City, to return to work upon the Line,— a very Pendulum. In April, just after crossing the North Mountain, they must wait in the Snow and Rain, from the sixth thro’ the sixteenth before resuming. The culminating Pause, of course, is at the Line’s End, between 9 October of ’67, when the Chief of the Indians that were with them said he would proceed no farther west than the Warrior Path, and the 20th, when the Party, turning their backs for the last time upon the West, began to open the Visto eastward— unto their last Days in America,—” turning the Pages, “— from 27 August of ’68, when accounts were settl’d and the work was officially over and done with, till 7 September, their last night in Philadelphia before leaving to catch the Halifax Packet at New-York. Again and again, this same rough interval continues to appear,— suggesting a hidden Root common to all. And Friends, I believe ’tis none but the famous Eleven Missing Days of the Calendar Reform of ’52.”
Cries of “Cousin? we beseech thee!” and “Poh, Sir!”
“Those of us born before that fateful September,” observes the Revd, “make up a generation in all British History uniquely insulted, each Life carrying a chronologick Wound, from the same Parliamentary Stroke. Perhaps we are compell’d, even unknowingly, to seek these Undecamerous Sequences, as areas of refuge that may allow us, if only for a moment, to pretend Life undamaged again. We think of ‘our’ Time, being held, in whatever Time’s equivalent to ‘a Place’ is, like Eurydice, somehow to be redeem’d.— Perhaps, as our Indian brothers might re-enact some ancient Adventure, correct in all details, so British of a certain Age seek but to redeem Eleven Days of pure blank Duration, as unalienably their own. . . .
“Pull not such faces, young Ethelmer,— one day, should you keep clear of Fate for that long, you may find yourself recalling some Injustice, shared with lads and lasses of your own Day, just as uncalmable, and even yet, unredeem’d.”
Mason for a while had presum’d it but a matter of confusing dates, which are Names, with Days, which are real Things. Yet for anyone he met born before ’52 and alive after it, the missing Eleven Days arose again and again in Conversation, sooner or later characteriz’d as “brute Absence,” or “a Tear thro’ the fabric of Life,”— and the more he wrestl’d with the Question, the more the advantage shifted toward a Belief, as he would tell Dixon one day, “In a slowly rotating Loop, or if you like, Vortex, of eleven days, tangent to the Linear Path of what we imagine as Ordinary Time, but excluded from it, and repeating itself,— without end.”
“Hmm. The same eleven days, over and over, ’s what tha’re saying . . . ?”
“You show, may I add, an unusual Grasp of the matter.”
“Why then, as it is a periodick Ro-tation, so must it carry, mustn’t it, a Vis centrifuga, that might, with some ingenuity, be detected . . . ? Perhaps by finding, in the Realm of Time, where the Loop tries either to increase or decrease its Circumference, and hence the apparent length of each day in it. Or yet again not rotate at all, the length of the Day then continuing the same,— ”
“Dixon. Everything rotates.”
“A Vorticist! Lord help us, his Mercy how infrequent!” Emerson, believing Vorticists to be the very Legion of Mischief, had so instructed ev’ry defenseless young Mind he might reach.
“Very well,— if you must know,— lean closer and mark me,— I have been there, Sir.”
“ ‘There,’ Sir . . . ?”
Mason is gesturing vigorously with his Thumb, at the Eye, much wider than its partner, that he uses for Observation.— “Tho’ I’ve ever tried not to recollect any more than I must,— at least not till a zealously inquisitive Partner insists upon knowing,— yet the fact is that at Midnight of September second, in the unforgiven Year of ’Fifty-two, I myself did stumble, daz’d and unprepared, into that very Whirlpool in Time,— finding myself in September third, 1752, a date that for all the rest of England, did not exist,— Tempus Incognitum.”
“Eeh . . .”
“Don’t say it,— I didn’t believe it myself. Not until it happen’d, that is,— no Discomfort to it, only a little light-headedness. At the Stroke of the Hour, whilst I continued into the Third, there came an instant Trans-halation of Souls, leaving a great human Vacuum, as ev’ryone else mov’d on to the Fourteenth of September.”
“Not sure what that means, of course. . . .”
“You’d have felt it as a lapse of consciousness, perhaps. Yet soon enough I discover’d how alone ’twas possible to be, in the silence that flow’d, no louder than Wind, from the Valleys and across those Hill-villages, where, instead of Populations, there now lay but the mute Effects of their Lives,— Ash-whiten’d Embers that yet gave heat, food left over from the last Meals of September Second, publick Clocks frozen for good at midnight between the Second
and the day after,— tho’ some where else, in the World which had jump’d ahead to the Fourteenth, they continued to tick onward, to be re-wound, to run fast or slow, carrying on with the ever-Problematick Lives of the Clocks. . . .
“Alone in the material World, Dixon, with eleven days to myself. What would you have done?”
“Had a Look in The Jolly Pitman, perhaps . . . ?”
A look of forbearance. “Aye, as my first thoughts were of The George in Stroud, . . . yet ’twas the absence of Company, that most preoccupied me,— seeking which, in some Desperation, before the Sun rose, I set out. Reasoning that if I had been so envortic’d, why so might others—” breaking off abruptly, a word or two shy (Dixon by now feels certain) of some fatal confidence, that Rebekah would have stood at the heart of.
Young Charles was to reason eventually, that the pain of separation had lain all upon his side, for she was to bid him good morrow upon the fourteenth, as she had good night upon the second, without a seam or a lurch, appearing to have no idea he’d been away cycling through eleven days without her. Nor had whatever he liv’d through in that Loop, caus’d any perceptible change in the Youth she kiss’d hello “the very next day” in the High Street in Stroud, brazen as a Bell.
Meanwhile there he was, alone, with the better part of a Fortnight before he’d be hooking up again with his Betroth’d, as smoothly as if he’d never been gone,— and, Damme, he would be off. “Were there yet Horses about?” Dixon wishes to know.
“Animals whose Owners knew them, made the Transition along with them, to the fourteenth. ‘Most all the Dogs, for example. Fewer Cats, but plenty nonetheless. Any that remain’d by the third of September were wild Creatures, or stray’d into the Valley,— perhaps, being ownerless, disconnected as well from Calendars. I found one such Horse, a Horse no one would have known, as well as two Cows unmilk’d and at large. I rode past miles of Crops untended, Looms still’d and water-wheels turning to no avail, Apples nearly ripe, Waggons half-laded, the Weld not yet a-bloom, nor the Woad-mills a-stink, till at length from the last ridge-line, there lay crystalline Oxford, as finely etch’d as my Eyes, better in those days, could detect, nor holding a thread of Smoak in it anywhere. . . .”
“You were making for Oxford . . . ?”
“Aye, with some crack’d notion I’d find Bradley there. . . . Being a young Bradleyolator, as were all Lens-fellows of that Day, especially ’round Gloucestershire . . . tho’ later, in my Melancholy, I might see more vividly his all-too-earthly connections with Macclesfield and Chesterfield, and beyond them, looming in the mephitic Stench, Newcastle and Mr. Pelham. At that Moment, in my Innocence, I believ’d that Bradley, our latter-day Newton, insatiately curious, must have calculated his way into this Vortex,— with the annoying Question of why he should, kept beyond the Gates of conscious Entertainment.”
“Did you find him there?”
“I found Something . . . not sure what. What surpriz’d me was the sensible Residue of Sin that haunted the place,— of a Gravity, withal, unconfronted, unaton’d for, lying further than simple Jacobite Persistence. . . . I’d of course collected, in some dim way, that Bradley had advis’d Macclesfield,— his great Benefactor, after all, perhaps even in partial return upon Milord’s Investment,— as to ways of finding the movable Feasts and Holy Days and so forth, under the New Style,— and that Macclesfield had taken credit for the philosophical labor, as Chesterfield for the Witticisms and Bonhomie, that it took eventually to bring the Calendar Act into Law. Yet, though Bradley seldom sought Acclaim, preferring to earn it, neither would he refuse credit due him, unless there were reason to keep Silence,— such as the unexpected depth of his complicity in an Enterprise so passionately fear’d and hated by most of the People.”
Both reach for the coffee at the same time, Dixon elaborately deferring to Mason’s over-riding need for any Antistupefacient to hand.
“I don’t know that in the entire Cycle I caught a Wink of Slumber,— ’twere but a Devourer of precious Time, when all the Knowledge of Worlds civiliz’d and pagan, late and ancient, lay open to my Questions.”
“Yet I guess I know this Tale,— ’tis the German fellow,— Faust isn’t it?”
“But that he, at least, was able to live in the plenary World,— I, alas, was alone.”
“Eeh . . . ?”
“Well, . . . as it turn’d out, not alone, exactly. . . .”
“I knew it,— some Milk-maid, out on a tryst, eeh! am I near it? stray’d too close to the Vortex? Whoosh! Pail inverted, Skirts a-flying,— So! how’d it go?”
“Pray you.— ’Twas something I never saw,— certainly not Mr. Bodley’s Librarian, Mr. Wild,— and they were more than one. After Night-Fall, as I burn’d Taper ’pon Taper wantonly, only just succeeding in pushing back the gloom about me, would I hear Them rustling, ever beyond the circle of light, as if foraging among the same ancient Leaves as I.”
“Mice, or Rats, maybe . . . ?”
“Too deliberate. They seem’d to wish to communicate.”
“And this was down among those Secret Shelves, where none but the Elect may penetrate?”
“You know about that?”
“Of course,— Emerson gave us a brief inventory. Aristotle on Comedy, always wanted to read thah’,— all the good bits that Thomas left out of the Infancy Gospel . . . ? Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Hypatia . . . ?”
“What sav’d me,” impassively on, “was hunger,— an abrupt passage of indecipherable Latin returning my attention at last from lighted Page to empty Stomach. I recall’d that Pantries and Wine-cellars all over the Town lay open to my Hungers,— apprehensive, light-headed, I rush’d from the Library, too a-tremble to keep a taper lit, up ladders creaking in the absolute Dark, down corridors of high bookshelves,— Presences lay ev’rywhere in Ambuscado. I dared not lift my eyes to what all too palpably waited, pois’d, upon the ancient Ceilings, wing’d, fatal. . . . Then! a sudden great whir at my face,— scientifickally no doubt a Bat, tho’ at the moment something far less readily nam’d,— provoking a cry of Fear, as at last I broke out into the open air of a Quadrangle, yellow in the Moonlight. . . .”
“Wait! that’s it! The Moon,— ”
“Indeed, among any amateur Astronomer’s first questions. How should the Moon behave, seen from inside this Vortex?”
“And, and?”
“Ever full,— ever fix’d upon the Meridian.” An insincere Chuckle. “Yes, eleven days of Light remorseless, to be fac’d alone in a city of Gothickal Structures, that might or might not be inhabited, whilst from all directions came flights of the dark Creatures I hop’d were only . . . Bats.”
“Tha don’t mean,— ”
“As the Timbres, nearly Human, of the ceaseless Howling I hop’d came only from . . . Dogs. . . .”
“Not— ”
“Oh, and more.— ’Twas as if this Metropolis of British Reason had been abandon’d to the Occupancy of all that Reason would deny. Malevolent shapes flowing in the Streets. Lanthorns spontaneously going out. Men roaring, as if chang’d to Beasts in the Dark. A Carnival of Fear. Shall I admit it? I thrill’d. I felt that if I ran fast enough, I could gain altitude, and fly. I would become one of them. I could hide beneath Eaves as well as any. I could creep in the Shadows. I could belong to the D——l,—anything, inside this Vortex, was possible. I could shriek inside Churches. I could smash ev’ry Window in a Street. Make a Druidick Bonfire of the Bodleian. At some point, however, without Human prey, the Evil Appetite must fail, and I became merely Melancholy again.”
“Thee abandon’d thy Studies of the Ancient Secrets? For a mere Tickling of thy Sensorium, done with how swiftly . . . ? Mason,— dear Mason.”
“In fact,” Mason unmirthfully, “I was prevented from ever returning. Exil’d from the Knowledge. As I cross’d into the Courtyard before Duke Humfrey’s, I encounter’d a Barrier invisible, whi
ch I understood I might cross if I will’d, tho’ at the Toll of such Spiritual Unease, that one Step past it was already too far. What that Influence was, I cannot say. Perhaps an Artifact of the Vortex. Perhaps an Infestation of certain Beings Invisible. I receiv’d, tho’ did not altogether hear, from somewhere, a distinct Message that the Keys and Seals of Gnosis within were too dangerous for me. That I must hold out for the Promises of Holy Scripture, and forget about the Texts I imagin’d I’d seen.”
“Tha didn’t want to hear thah’, I guess?”
Mason seizes, cradles, and hefts his Abdominal Spheroid. “Meditating upon bodily Resurrection, I arriv’d at the idea of this being resurrected, and without delay proceeded to a Bacchic interlude, in which you’d not be interested, being too prolong’d, and besides, too personal.”
“Well . . . now . . . ?”
“Gone was the Chance that might have chang’d my Life. It lay at the Eye of that Vortex,— to cross the Flow of Time surrounding it, was I oblig’d to aim a bit upstream, or toward the Past, in order to maintain a radial course to the Center. . . .”
“And there, whilst with Taurean stubbornness tha kept at i’ . . . ?”
“Well now, odd as it may seem, soon as I’d penetrated the Barrier, I understood my Holiday was over,— I tried to pull back, but too late,— I was in the vortickal Emprise. . . . To my Relief, some, at least, of the dark Presences that had caus’d me such Apprehension, prov’d to be the Wraiths of those who had mov’d ahead instantly to the Fourteenth, haunting me not from the past but from the Future,— drawing closer, ever closer, until,— First I heard the voices of the Town, then at the edges of my Vision, Blurs appear’d, and Movement, which went suddenly a-whirl, streaking in to surround me, as in the mesh of prolong’d Faces, only hers stood firm.— And when I join’d her again, before I could think of what to say, she kiss’d me and declar’d,— ‘Somebody got in late last night.’
“The only proof I had that ’twas not a Dream was the Bite I receiv’d whilst in my Noctambulation of the City.—
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