‘We spend lifetimes of love and doubt – on what lies before us and behind us. We turn and turn to catch – what flees behind our backs – tiptoeing years; and yearn forwards – gazing to know what some cloud portends for the next day.
‘But we never question what lies beneath our feet. That at least, we seem to say, is sure. There is nothing there to trouble us. So we move onward, look upward, curious – indeed, we mock the downward gazers – hunched old men and babies with their faces to the floor.
‘Yet it has always seemed to me – that theirs is the most practical curiosity. We have slight hopes of prying into the stars. The past behind us is – too tight – for our clever fingers; nothing lies ahead but what we put there. Yet the ground beneath our feet awaits our consideration. I have always been puzzled by the story of Babel. Why did they wish for a tower? A curious race, I believe, would have looked below – and dug a great pit towards the heart of God – for there at least lay hopes of an answer.
‘So I ask you now – to suspend your faith an hour – and dig with me some ways below our feet.’
They were caught; that light hook that pulls us by the ear and thought deep into another man’s mysteries had stuck, though slight, and drew us towards him.
I knew the argument well, that question of mass (‘I shall begin with a calculation – an error no greater than a man’s hand …’), the list of possibilities, dismissed one by one. I knew it well, but I had never heard him speak so … lovingly before. He had changed: the massive, restless strength was gone, but something sweeter had replaced it. That great energy, for which I loved him, had ebbed with grief, but left behind to my surprise a surer faith. He knew – this fact never struck me more forcibly – he knew that he was right. And so he spoke with less bluster. He marshalled his arguments one by one, slowly, inevitably – he did not circle his audience with a restless swarm of proofs and considerations. He left things out – trusting the main path, as though he walked a familiar way again, noting the points of interest to himself, secure in the faith that we would follow. We did.
There was something else. It seemed as though some pent-up joy had been loosened by his mourning, and that he now tasted it again. We tasted it too. The cook came in at one point (a great supper was laid on for the elect). Some usher must have alerted him – of what, I can only guess: ‘Believe him, believe him; it’s all true!’ I saw him in the doorway, wiping his great farmer’s hands on his knees. He listened unmoving for a while, then began to nod, slowly at first, then longer, happier, great sweeps of his great head up and down, as though he said, Now you see, this is what I have been trying to prove all along, with my duck … and my lobster salad … and particularly my marzipan torte!
I guessed then (wrongly, alas!) that Sam would not come this way again. This was the end. He talked slow and long because it was the last time. I wondered what had settled him, as he laid each familiar thought glowing to rest one by one. His mother’s death? He was a young man, remember. We were all young men. He stopped short at her death, as an older son might not have, turning to look at that great gap behind him, forever empty, unfilled, unfillable. He would turn back home, I knew, at least for a time.
Another thought occurred to me, less kind, more jealous. I am suspicious of this thought myself. He was quits because of Tom, that pure man, selfless in the cause. Sam wished to be free of Tom, his tireless shadow, striding always a pace before. I turned to look for Tom. He sat by the great door, with the cook smiling and nodding beside him. Tom’s chin propped upon his hands, his hands buttressed by his elbows, his elbows laid upon his knees. He was half-asleep, but he waited there to greet the men ‘who might be of some use, perhaps, in your business, Sam’, as they walked out. Then he looked up for the sweet close to Sam’s valediction. The proof was over.
‘There are further questions to be asked‚’ Sam said, and paused, putting aside his notes. Five hundred feet shuffled and resettled, and you may be sure their owners stared at them now, and beneath them. There was a quick shower of coughs and sneezes, and Sam gathered himself for the end. ‘We have begun to stop at the answers – a great mistake – one which the churchmen do not make. The answers are our harbours. From there, the lesson begins. We have a page before us – richer than all our books. It is written in a thousand languages – in water and leaf – in finger prints and firmaments. One might puzzle over it for centuries. But it is only the first page.
‘We should take our thoughts in earnest – and accept the coin of our intellects at the market-place of ordinary life. I will have no half-measures – none of the legerdemain of our own philosophical constitutions – that can propose with our pen and tongue – what we reject with our hearts and our stomachs. Let us not turn as Hume did – to the light of day and breakfast – and forget the dark book on which we spent our nights. What can we learn from this hollow earth?
‘I draw two lessons – that touch me deeper – puzzle me more profoundly every day. I wonder ever more at the wisdom of such an Architect. The first is this – that God delights in device. Spheres under our feet – hurl themselves – in endless rotations – below. They shine only in dark air – but they shine. These spheres are built for Beauty, sure – and Size – and Sweep – but also for sheer, bloody-minded, heartbreaking Complexity. The Architect delights in shapes – in speed – in gambits. There is a rush to these inner spheres – that must please him – as a sharp wind and a flying sea delight a sailor – who understands that such tides – such bouts of breeze – require this course – these sails – set hard and sharp at just such an angle. I marvel each minute that the heavens below us do not break apart – that the Creator who watches over His work trusts and revels in His nice eye.
‘The second lesson moves me less to wonder – more to Grudge. We do not stand on rocks – but fleeting, turning, HOLLOW balls. There is no core – no anchor – no Bone set fast below – but layer upon layer, and at the Heart, a gap. Imagine an onion – as rich and revealing at the first sharp cut below the skin as at the last. This troubles me – we are scientists – would like a final resolution. When Galileo argued that the sun – not this slight satellite – lay at the centre of things – the churchmen, appalled, knew well what stood at stake. Light and Heat and Mass lie at the heart of this Space – not we. A great lesson. WE cower in the distant shadows. They were right to imprison him. They understood him and took him at his word. What shall I say to you – as I propose – that the earth beneath is hollow? Where is the hope or the lesson in that?
‘The core haunts me, I tell you,’ he said, brisker now, rubbing his hands. ‘It troubles my sleep – like a deed undone or a lost love. The core of cores – the seed at the heart of the fruit. If nothing is there? Nothing at all, at the centre? Tap your foot, again, again – imagine the echo in that space.
‘Slow and stubborn I learn its lesson – the lesson of the onion: to go deeper in time or thought is only to go on. We touch no core – no heart – where the proof lies. We simply continue – as we must – but with this in mind. Do not look for final answers. There are no mysteries or veils – only layers – followed by others like themselves. I do not know if there is any consolation in this. And I dwell – as little as I may – on that appalling gap where the root should be.’
Silence followed, long enough for the first chill air of the evening to come with a shadow through the window. And then they stood, in ragged and then swelling numbers, to applaud; a lady holding the lap of a pink dress in one hand, cheering with the flutter of a fan; farmers beating thick palms, red as beets; Tom for sheer delight dancing like a puppet, strung against the back wall; the cook’s face breaking apart at the cheekbone in his smile; the scientists from Pennsylvania tapping a smart pace with their rolled notes; the little man from Harvard standing on tiptoe to see above a great green lady caught in her chair and positively roaring; even Ben Silliman striking a brisk palm against the back of the hand that held his pocket watch as he checked the time; and Dr Polidori, rising above the r
est, spitting out half-chewed ‘bravos!’ and conducting the assembly with long arms; and I, loving and happy, while the echoes of his praise doubled and redoubled in my heart.
And yet and yet and yet – did I believe him? Now is not the time, Phidy, I thought – though never did my doubts oppress me as then, in that great applause, in my high joy. It is over, Phidy; give it peace. No good can come of it; and yet and yet, some harm came-Tell him! ‘I doubt, Sam. I am uncertain … ‘– you have, Phidy, ten times told him, in your way – no, tell him plain: ‘The path is wrong, perhaps the path is wrong.’ Did I owe him such sheer honesty, that no lies or love or joy could grow on the face of it? On his great day, when Independence Hall ran over with his praise? Perhaps, but there is more blame to come, and greater. And then the noise died and the people fled and it was an ordinary late afternoon among rows of scattered chairs. And by nightfall it did not seem to matter any more.
*
We left Sam to his devices that afternoon. He went up to his room to nap, and Tom and I sought out some local tavern and drowned our joy in a nut-brown liquid very much like it. Then, just before the great supper, as night fell black and flat on Chestnut Street and our heads rang with the faint echoes of an afternoon drink, we sought him out. Arm in arm, we rumbled up the stairs of the Liberty and burst upon his room. Sam was in bed. ‘Come on, man,’ I cried, kicking the foot of the bed and lighting a candle. ‘The best is to come!’
‘Come on, philosopher‚’ added Tom, softer. ‘You have a reputation to make.’
‘I shan’t come down‚’ Sam said. He lay with his head against the bedboard, propped on cushions, and rubbed his palms together slow and thoughtless, with the dry swish of skin. The room stank of grief, the dull sweat of crying. But there was no trace of that left in him and his eyes were clear as bells.
‘Go on, Tom – go yourself, you have earned the dinner, and Phidy too. This is your occasion. I have done with it.’
Tom sat down in the stiff low chair by the door. Perhaps because I had expected something of this, I spoke out first. ‘Come on, Sam, don’t be a fool. Throw something on and come down. The hard part is done. The mayor is expected, the dean of Pennsylvania College, Dr Silliman from the Journal of American Science, besides a dozen wealthy young men looking for a cause … This is your great debut – your dance-card is full.’
‘Sam‚’ Tom said at last, then paused. ‘You owe me this at least.’ Syme had no answer for that, and I felt again suddenly how small my part was in this play. ‘This is your great chance.’
‘My chance for what, Tom? A lectureship? The ear of the mayor – somewhat red and hairy, it must be admitted. A long article in the Inquirer, perhaps even the Journal of American Science itself? A hundred subscriptions? I doubt even that many would sign, and we need twice that.’
‘To prove that you are right‚’ Tom said, answering Sam’s first question. ‘This is your chance to prove that you are right.’
‘I know that I am right. That is the only satisfaction I desire.’
‘NO, IT IS NOT!’ Tom roared, with his blood up at last. ‘Else what have I to do here, Sam? These two years?’
‘I am sorry, Tom.’ Sam for once was the calmer of the two. I looked for somewhere to sit down, could not find it, and leaned against the window sill. I was – curious.
‘Among other things, this is a chance to mix with your own, Sam. Not a dim but hopelessly enthusiastic young newspaperman and a German country doctor sent away by his pa. These men are your kind. You belong among ‘em.’
‘I belong at home with my own pa. I belong with bargemen – farmers – clerks – trinket-shop ladies. All men whose belief is not a faculty of their wit, but their faith and thoughtfulness. I assure you that I will not find such men at that dinner.’
‘Is that why you left the university and pursued your career with the army? And then left the army to join us? To escape men of wit?’
‘You know the story behind that. This is unkind of you, unlike you.’
‘Do you fear these little men so much, that they will find you out?’
‘I have found them out‚’ Sam cried, stirred up at last. ‘What have I to win?’
‘A lectureship, influence, commissions, companions, subscriptions. A chance to pursue this thought you have had and broadcast it from an appropriate height. To prove it to the World, and, Sam, you know as well as I that the world does not reckon much of the faith of bargemen, farmers, clerks and trinket-shop owners.’
‘Tom, I am sick at heart and wish to leave this business. At least for a time. I do not like these occasions – not in this disposition you see me in. I have not stirred through the hours, nor slept. I only stared at the door and waited for you to come in – to put the bellows to me as I knew – and now I wait until you leave me so I can sleep. I have proved this thing to myself and there is no other judge so hard and grudging – nor yet so generous when satisfied of the case. I am satisfied. Today I was satisfied.’
‘I know you better, Sam. You have never been happy alone. You will dry up in a month, then burn away. Phidy, have you nothing to say?’
What had I to say? I could as well leave a great blank gap to the bottom of the page, then scatter a thousand inky thoughts upon it, running over one another in every direction, till not a single one was clear enough to read. What could I say? Only that afternoon, in the roaring middle of Sam’s greatest applause, I had felt that awkward, terrible wriggle of doubt that runs through and rots our dearest loves and faiths. And turns us from our friends.
‘Tom, let’s leave him for a night. He has done his work, let us do ours. We can consider it again in the morning. He is not fit to come down now. We may do our griefs as well as our loves mischief with false good humour. He has no heart left for a feast.’
I would like to say that I gave that answer because the one clear thing I knew was that Sam’s magical theories were wrong. That I answered as I did because I hoped to protect him from the great, heart-breaking disappointment that would come of pursuing his calculations. There seemed little point in telling him my doubts then, and for that night at least I may be pardoned this dishonesty. But this doubt had nothing to do with my answer, as I came to understand clearly in the months to come. I think that even then I guessed the real root of it. I saw perhaps that Sam’s failure was my chance – my chance to beat out Tom for the watchpost at Sam’s side.
‘Do you know?’ Sam began quietly, mostly to Tom, as we prepared our dress for dinner. ‘Ben Silliman took my hand – in both his – as I left the lecture. Apologized – that was his word – for our misunderstandings; said he hoped to bring me round the office of the Journal – some day. Have a chat. There was time enough at dinner – he promised – for all we had to say to each other. His very words: “all we have to say to each other”. I never guessed – success – meant joining Ben Silliman, and his kind.’
‘I shouldn’t worry about that‚’ Tom said, looking him in the eye. ‘This is the end of it. I will have nothing to do with this theory again.’ Sam caught his gaze and held it; said nothing, pressing his knuckle to his lip, a countenance neither in sorrow nor in anger, though he would not budge until Tom turned first aside, blinking sharply and pinching the sniff in his nose, to clatter out.
I followed Tom down the stairs to the great dinner. ‘Why Ben Silliman?’ I whispered to him, closing the door behind me.
‘Sam could never abide’, Tom answered, in plain matter of fact, ‘the favour of lesser men. Condescension, he would say. Why do you suppose we found him where he was – where he will remain.’
Why Sam stopped short there I can only guess. I have touched on this before – the natural desire of the great man to turn aside from triumph, at the last minute, the battle won. The need for failure itself, a fitting injustice. Perhaps that, and a son’s grief, and a long day, and a tired heart. (Alas, that this was only a postponement.)
We still had the dinner to endure. Our first apologies for Sam’s ‘present indisposition’
were met with great cries of ‘Shame! Shame!’ and ‘Fetch him! Drag him out!’ but those soon gave way to other shouts: ‘More wine! The red stuff! Another dish of potatoes!’ Tom sat among his cronies from the Inquirer, and with his great gift for happiness laughed and drank as merry as a schoolboy sipping his first punch. He had some spell with which he could suspend a thought, wingless, rootless, fluttering just above his head, until he called it down, and considered it, and engaged it. Perhaps that was the halo about his head, a ring of worries, put off, smoothed out, balanced so delicate he must keep still.
I remember chiefly from this occasion the bright glitter of silver, the smoking lamps, and the headache raging like a lost child at the foot of my skull It must have been the effects of the afternoon’s ale. I sat with Dr Polidori – Pollydolly, as Sam once called him – who spoke at great length of arms, and with much mastication of vowels, of the Astounding Prospects of Mr Syme. ‘He might do something, Dr Müllet, he might reach an eminence …’ – and here he sketched the eminence in question with a flourish of forks, and placed it somewhere just above the boiled chicken – ‘if he would let himself be taken in …’ He never explained to me what was meant by this taking in, though he implied that he had in mind about an inch and a half in the length of sleeve. I did not ask him – for though I mocked dear Polly dolly, I could not help but – no, I shall not write ‘agree’. For I remember this too from the dinner, for I had seen it a hundred times before: I remember how the first flush of delighted belief that greeted Sam’s oratory at its height gave way (in a minute or an afternoon) to admiration. And how short a step it was from admiration to affection; and from there, by a natural and inevitable process, that shining vision of an unguessed world gave way to a good piece of advice.
The saddest effect that followed Sam’s Cause was not disbelief nor even mockery, but the complacent concern of lesser men – my own, I am rather afraid, included. How often did I see proud Ben Silliman glance at the time and look about him, unused to disappointment; as if Sam, like a wooden cuckoo, would appear upon the hour. Whenever his glass emptied of sweet red, or his companion, the lady mayoress herself in a green gown, began to pall, he lifted the thick gold watch from his fob and pinched his florid nose, wrinkling his brow in a very public show of private concern. Shook the device, pressed it to his ear, to hear the seconds ticking over, proving time passed at its usual rate. Then returned the watch to some silk recess of his girth, shaking his head now as if to say that the usual rate left little time for such men as Sam to squander his own.
The Syme Papers Page 55