Fugitive as a Dream.
Alas, ’twas not so much the Years
As Day by thieving Day,—
With Debts incurr’d, and Interest Due,
That Dreams were sold to pay,—
Until at last, but one remain’d,
Too modest to have Worth,
That yet he holds within his heart,
As he is held, in Earth.’ ”
That other Tract, across the Border,— perhaps nearly ev’rything, perhaps nearly nothing,— is denied him. “Is that why I sought so obsessedly Death’s Insignia, its gestures and formulae, its quotidian gossip,— all those awful days out at Tyburn,— hours spent nearly immobile, watching stone-carvers labor upon tomb embellishments, Chip by Chip,— was it all but some way to show my worthiness to obtain a Permit to visit her, to cross that grimly patroll’d Line, that very essence of Division? She only wishes me back in the stink of mills, mutton-grease, Hell-Clamor, Lanthorns all night, the People in subjection, the foul’d wells of Painswick, Bisley, Stroud, styling it ‘Home,’— Oh, is there no deliverance!”
She accosts him one night walking the Visto. “Seems sad, doesn’t it,” she chuckles. “Trust me, Mopery, there are regions of Sadness you have not seen. Nonetheless, you must come back to our Vale, ’round to your beginning,— well away from the sea and the sailors, away from the Nets of imaginary Lines. You must leave Mr. Dixon to his Fate, and attend your own.”
“You don’t care for him, do you?”
“If we are a Triangle, then must I figure as the Unknown side. . . . Dare you calculate me? Dead-reckon your course into the Wilderness that is now my home, as my Exile? Show, by Projection, Shapes beyond the meager Prism of my Grave? Do you have any idea of my Sentiments? I think not. Mr. Dixon would much prefer you forget me, he is of beaming and cheery temperament, a Boy who would ever be off to play. You were his playmate, now that is over, and you must go back inside the House of your Duty. When you come out again, he will no longer be there, and the Dark will be falling.”
On their last visit to New-York, at the very end, waiting for the Halifax Packet, they dash all about the town, looking for any Face familiar from years before. Yet they are berated for their slowness at Corners. Carriages careen thro’ Puddles the size of Ponds, spattering them with Mire unspeakable, so that they soon resemble Irregulars detach’d from a campaign in some moist Country. The Sons of Liberty have grown even less hospitable, and there is no sign of Philip Dimdown, nor Blackie, nor Captain Volcanoe. “Out of Town,” they are told, when they are told anything.
“Let’s drink up and get out of here, there’s no point.”
“We can find them. That’s what we do, isn’t it? We’re Finders, after all.”
“The Continent is casting off, one by one, the Lines that fasten’d us to her.”
Yet at last, seated among their Impedimenta, Quayage unreckon’d stretching north and south into Wood Lattice-Work, a deep great Thicket of Spars, poised upon the Sky, Hemp and City Smoak, two of a shed-ful of somberly cloak’d travelers waiting the tide, they are aware once more of a feeling part intra-cranial, part Skin-quiver, part fear,— familiar from Inns at Bridges, waiting-places at Ferries, all Lenses of Revenance or Haunting, where have ever converg’d to them Images of those they drank with, saw at the edges of Rooms from the corners of Eyes, shouted to up or down a Visto. This seems to be true now, of ev’ry Face in this Place. Mason turns, his observing Eye protruding in alarm. “Are we at the right Pier?”
“I was just about to ask,— ”
“— I didn’t actually see any Signs, did you?”
They are approach’d by a Gentleman not quite familiar to them. A Slouch Hat obscures much of his Face. “Well met,” he pronounces, yet nothing further.
“Are ye bound for Falmouth?” Mason inquires.
“For Pendennis Point, mean ye, and Carrick Roads?” His tone poises upon a Cusp ’twixt Mockery and Teasing, which recognition might modulate to one or the other,— yet neither can quite identify him. “That Falmouth?”
“There is another, Sir?” Dixon, maniatropick Detectors a-jangle, gets to his feet, as Mason Eye-Balls the Exits.
“There is a Falmouth invisible, as the center of a circle is invisible, yet with Compasses and Straight-Edge may be found,” the Stranger replies. At that instant, the company is rous’d by a great Clamor of Bells and Stevedores, as the Packet, Rigging a-throb, prepares to sail. There will be perhaps two minutes to get aboard. “We must continue this Conversation, at Sea,”— and he has vanish’d in the Commotion. Each Day, on the Way over, Mason and Dixon will look for him, at Mess, at Cards, upon ev’ry Deck, yet without Issue.
Mason’s last entry, for September 11th, 1768, reads, “At 11h 30m A.M. went on board the Halifax Packet Boat for Falmouth. Thus ends my restless progress in America.” Follow’d by a Point and long Dash, that thickens and thins again, Chinese-Style.
Dixon has been reading over his Shoulder. “What was mine, then . . . ? Restful?”
73
As all History must converge to Opera in the Italian Style, however, their Tale as Commemorated might have to proceed a bit more hopefully. Suppose that Mason and Dixon and their Line cross Ohio after all, and continue West by the customary ten-minute increments,— each installment of the Story finding the Party advanc’d into yet another set of lives, another Difficulty to be resolv’d before it can move on again. Behind, in pursuit, his arrangements undone, pride wounded, comes Sir William Johnson, play’d as a Lunatick Irishman, riding with a cadre of close Indian Friends,— somehow, as if enacting a discarded draft of Zeno’s Paradox, never quite successful in attacking even the rearmost of the Party’s stragglers, who remain ever just out of range. Yet at any time, we are led to believe, the Pursuers may catch up, and compel the Surveyors to return behind the Warrior Path.
Longer Sights, easier Grades, wider Night Skies, as the landscape turns inside-out, with Groves upon the Prairie now the reverse of what Glades in the Forest were, not so many chains ago. Far less ax-work being requir’d, soon the Axmen are down to Stig alone, who when ask’d to, becomes a one-man assault force on behalf of the Astronomers. The Musick, from some source invisible, is resolutely merry, no matter what it may be accompanying.
One late Autumn, instead of returning to the Coast, the Astronomers will just decide to winter in, however far west it is they’ve got to . . . and after that, the ties back in to Philadelphia and Chesapeake will come to mean that much less, as the Pair, detach’d at last, begin consciously to move west. The under-lying Condition of their Lives is quickly establish’d as the Need to keep, as others a permanent address, a perfect Latitude,— no fix’d place, rather a fix’d Motion,— Westering. Whenever they do stop moving, like certain Stars in Chinese Astrology, they lose their Invisibility, and revert to the indignity of being observ’d and available again for earthly purposes.
Were they to be taken together, themselves light and dark Sides of a single Planet, with America the Sun, an Observation Point on high may be chosen, from which they may be seen to pass across a Face serene and benevolent at that Distance, tho’ from the Distance of the Planet, often, Winter as Summer, harsh and inimical.
Into the Illinois, where they find renegade French living out a fantasy of the Bourbon Court, teaching the Indians Dress-making, Millinery, Wine-Growing, Haute Cuisine, orchestral Musick, Wig-Dressing, and such other Arts of answering Desire as may sustain this Folly. They believe Mason and Dixon to be Revolutionary Agents.
Descending great bluffs, they cross the Mississippi, the prehistoric Mounds above having guided them exactly here, by an Influence neither can characterize more than vaguely, but whose accuracy is confirm’d by their Star observations, as nicely as the Micrometer and Nonius will permit. They stay at villages of teepees where Mason as usual behaves offensively enough to require their immediate departure, at
a quite inconvenient time, too, for Dixon and his Maiden of the day, who’ve both been looking forward to a few private moments. Instead, the Astronomers spend the rest of their Day running from the angry Villagers, and only by Fool’s Luck do they escape. They subsist upon Roots and Fungi. They watch Lightning strike the Prairie again and again, for days, and fires rage like tentacles of a conscious Being, hungry and a-roar. They cower all night before the invisible Thunder of Bison herds, smelling the Animal Dust, keeping ready to make the desperate run for higher ground. They acquire a Sidekick, a French-Shawanese half-breed Renegado nam’d Vongolli, whose only loyalty is to Mason and Dixon, tho’ like the Quaker in the Joak, they are not so sure of him. When they happen across an Adventurer from Mexico, and the ancient City he has discover’d beneath the Earth, where thousands of Mummies occupy the Streets in attitudes of living Business, embalm’d with Gold divided so finely it flows like Gum, it is Vongolli, with his knowledge of Herbal Formulae, who provides Mason and Dixon with the Velocity to avoid an otherwise certain Dissolution.
Far enough west, and they have outrun the slowly branching Seep of Atlantic settlement, and begun to encounter towns from elsewhere, coming their way, with entirely different Histories,— Cathedrals, Spanish Musick in the Streets, Chinese Acrobats and Russian Mysticks. Soon, the Line’s own Vis Inertiæ having been brought up to speed, they discover additionally that ’tis it, now transporting them. Right in the way of the Visto some evening at Supper-time will appear the Lights of some complete Village, down the middle of whose main street the Line will clearly run. Laws continuing upon one side,— Slaves, Tobacco, Tax Liabilities,— may cease to exist upon the other, obliging Sheriffs and posses to decide how serious they are about wanting to cross Main Street. “Thanks, Gentlemen! Slaves yesterday, free Men and Women today! You survey’d the Chains right off ’em, with your own!”
One week they encounter a strange tribal sect, bas’d upon the worship of some celestial Appearance none but the Congregation can see. Hungry to know more about the Beloved, ignoring the possibility of a negative result, recklessly do they prevail upon the ’Gazers to search scientifickally, with their Instruments, for this God, and having found its position, to determine its Motion, if any. It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus. The Lads, stunn’d, excited, realize they’ve found the first new Planet in all the untold centuries since gazing at the Stars began. Here at last is the Career-maker each has dreamt of, at differing moments and degrees of Faith. “All we need do is turn,” cries Mason,— “turn, Eastward again, and continue to walk as we ever have done, to claim the Prize. For the first time, we may forget any Obligations to the current Sky,— for praise God (His ways how strange), we need never work again, ’tis t’ta to the Mug’s Game and the Fool’s Errand, ’tis a Royal Entrance at Life’s Ridotto, ’tis a Copley Medal!”
“Eeh!” Dixon amiably waves his Hat. “Which half do thou fancy, obverse or reverse?”
“What?” Mason frowning in thought, “Hum. Well I rather imagin’d we’d . . . share the same side,— a Half-Circle each, sort of thing. . . .”
Yet by now they can also both see the Western Mountains, ascending from the Horizon like a very close, hitherto unsuspected, second Moon,— the Circumferentor daily tracking the slow rise in vertical angle to the tops of these other-worldly Peaks. They are apt to meet men in skins, and Indians whose Tongues none of the Party can understand, and long strings of Pack-Horses loaded with Peltry, their Flanks wet, their eyes glancing ’round Blinders, inquiring . . . Survey Sights go on now for incredible Hundreds of Miles, so clear is the Air. Chainmen go chaining away into it, and sometimes never come back. They would be re-discover’d in episodes to come, were the episodes ever to be enacted, did Mason and Dixon choose not to turn, back to certain Fortune and global Acclaim, but rather to continue West, away from the law, into the savage Vacancy ever before them. . . .
“The Copley Medal!” Dixon trying to get into the spirit of things.
“Attend me,— nothing would lie beyond our grasp. We would be the King’s Own Astronomers, living in a Palace, servants to obey our desires! Weighty stipends, unlimited Credit! Wenches! Actresses! Observing Suits of gold lamé! Any time, day or night, you wanted,— what do you people eat? Haggis! You want a Haggis after Midnight, all you need do is pull upon a bell-cord, and hi-ho!”
“Tha’ve certainly sold me,” nods Dixon, gesturing with his broad hand at the Sun-set, which happens tonight to be wildly spectacular. “Yet all those,— ”
Mason nods back, impatiently. “They will have to live their lives without any Line amongst ’em, unseparated, daily doing Business together, World’s Business and Heart’s alike, repriev’d from the Tyranny of residing either North or South of it. Nothing worse than that, whatwhat?”
“How, then. Should we never again come West?”
“Should we ever be permitted to? Either by the King, or by the Americans? Think not, Lensfellow. If we do turn, and go back now, ’twill have to be a Continental D.I.O., forever.”
“How Emerson will despise me. . . .”
“As you’ve already taken money from the Royal Society,— isn’t that, in his View, unredeemably corrupted?”
“Thankee, I’d nearly forgotten . . . ?”
“Lethe passes to each and all,— yet vivid in Attention must the Degree of our Day’s Sinfulness be ever kept.”
“What ever did Sinners do, before there were those to tell them they were sinning?”
“However blissful their Ignorance, why they suffer’d.”
“Bollocks. They enjoy’d themselves,” Dixon mutters. “I was there. Another expell’d from Paradise, another Lad upon the North Road, seeking his daily Crumbs. . . .”
Countryfolk they meet again are surpris’d to see them, sometimes shock’d, as at some return of the Dead. Mothers drive their small ones like Goslings away to safety. Bar-room habitués reprove them at length,— “You weren’t ever suppos’d to be back this way,— ”
“Ev’ryone said you’d done with all that to-and-fro by ’sixty-eight, left it to the other side of th’ Ohio, and ’twould be Westward from there and then on, for you two, or nothing.”
“We took yese in among us,— allow’d ye to separate us, name us anew,— only upon the Understanding, that ye were to pass through each of our Lives here, but once.”
“We believ’d you exactly that sort of Visitor, not . . . the other sort. We’ve enough of those here, the Lord knows, already,— Indian, White, African, aswarm well before the Twilight,— we hardly need more.”
“How dare you come back now, among these Consequences you have loos’d like Vermin?”— and so on. Babies take one look at them and burst into tears inconsolable. Boys but recently initiated to the ways of the Rifle take playful shots at them. A recently wed couple assault them, screaming, “Yes you came the proper pair of bloody little Cupids, didn’t you, then just went polka-dancing away, leaving us to sort out his mother, the recruiting Sergeant, the Sheriff, the other Girl,— ”
“— whilst ev’ry low-life you gentlemen caus’d to be suck’d into town in your Wake is ogling the Queen of Sheba, here, who never could keep her eyes to herself, and say what you will, Wife, my dear Mother has ever shewn the born grace and sense of the true lady.”
“D’you hear that then, you miserable cow? once again as I’ve ever been telling all you Scum, none of you’s good enough for my Boy Adolphus, ’specially not you, fifteen stone of unredeem’d Slut, my gracious just look at you,— ”
“Bitch!” the wife two-handedly swinging at her mother-in-law’s Head a great Skillet, which none of the men present are hasty in rushing to deflect,— the older woman dodges the blow, and from somewhere produces a Dirk. In a moment, someone will have to load and prime a Pistol. All this having res
ulted from the award-winning “Love Laughs at a Line” episode, which seem’d but light-hearted Frolick that first time through.
In the next Village east, the Creature they thought they had so rationally and with up-to-date methods prov’d to be but a natural Phenomenon has re-emerged, and holds in its sinister emprise the lives of that half of the Populace living upon one side of the Line . . . yet for some reason, it is reluctant to cross and continue its depredations upon the other. The Line is believ’d to present some Barrier, invisible but powerful enough to hold back the Being, to preserve those across it from the Fate of their former Neighbors. Brave townsfolk slip out after dark, dig up and move the Boundary-Stones, as far as they dare, some one way, some another. The Line thro’ here soon loses all pretense to Orthogony, becoming a Record in Oölite of Fear,— whose, and how much,— and of how a Village broke in two.
In some Towns they are oblig’d to turn back Westward, often waiting until Dark to creep cautiously eastward again, for the Population will hear of them in no other way but Westering. When it seems there’s a Chance that someone may listen, Mason and Dixon both try to explain about the new Planet,— but very few care. It breaks slowly upon the Astronomers, that with no time available for gazing at anything, this people’s Indifference to the Night, and the Stars, must work no less decisively than their devotion to the Day, and the Earth for whose sake something far short of the Sky must ever claim them, a stove, a child, a hen-house predator, a deer upwind, the price of Corn, a thrown shoe, an early Freeze.
At last the Post Mark’d West appears. A Joint Delegation from the American and Royal Societies, alerted by Jesuit Telegraph, is there to greet them. A new and iridescent generation of Philadelphia Beauties in full Susurrus and Chirp line both sides of the Visto. A Consort of Crumhornes is on hand, playing Airs and Marches. ’Tis the Ineluctable Moment of Convergence. Will somebody repent, ere they arrive?
When they reach the Post Mark’d West, one swerves a bit North and the other South of it, and on they go, together, up the East Line, to the shore of Delaware, into a Boat and across, dropping by, that day, to visit the McCleans at Swedesboro.
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