Mason & Dixon Read online

  “Ah! Well now ye’ve brought the Topick up,— ”

  “Sir. Ye may speak lightly in London of these things, but here we may, only at our Peril. You have not yet seen Squalor, Sir,— be advis’d that you now live in the Metropolis of that Condition.”

  Mason is sweating heavily, thinking, Dixon has left me alone here with a dangerously insane person. And, and why did Waddington really have to leave so quickly? Hey? Fool?— why, ’tis plain as Day, his Departure had Panick written all over it! Obviously, one must live in perpetual caution, here, never to Alarm Maskelyne. Ahhrr. . . .

  Mason begins by trying to slow down his usually convulsive shrugging. “I’m . . . but newly come.”

  “What are you saying? Hey? That I should have left with Waddington? How? Why are you caressing your Hat so forcefully? Obs of Sirius must be taken as far apart as possible, mustn’t they,— at least six months of what the World no doubt sees as Idleness, whilst the Planet, in its good time, cranketh about, from one side of its Orbit to the other, the Base Line creeping ever longer, the longer being the better . . . how is any of that my fault?” Is he expecting an answer? They have pass’d thro’ the level part of the Town, and begun to climb.

  “You think me neglectful?” Maskelyne with an unsettl’d frown. “You can tell me freely, how I seem to you. Alone in this place, how am I to know anything, even of how I look? Wore my Wig for a while, but ev’ryone gave it such queer Stares? There’s not a Looking-Glass of any useful size ’pon the Island. Too luxurious to merit the Lading. No one here knows how he appears to anyone else, save for some Maidens down by the Bridge, who are said to possess Rouge-Boxes with miniature mirrors set inside the Covers, that allow them to View their Features, tho’ one at a Time. All that is not thus in Fragments, is Invisible. And if my Character as well be experiencing some like ’Morphosis, some Veering into Error, how am I to know? Perhaps you are sent, upon this Anti-Etesian Wind unbearable, as Correction,— to act as my moral Regulator.— How we’ve all long’d for one of those, hey?”

  With any number of ways to respond to this, Mason chooses a Silence, which he hopes will not be taken as unsociable, and they climb on.

  As the Island’s only Harbor out of the Wind, James’s Town knows slumber but fleetingly. Sailors speak of it, before and after coming ashore, as of a place visited in an Opium Dream. Musick ev’ry time a Door or shutter comes open, Torches trailing scarves of flame ever rising. Chuck-farthing players in the Alley-way. Ornamental Lanthorns scarcely bigger than the Flames they hold, dangling from the Wrists of young Ladies with business at this Hour,— “All the Rage in Town just now,” Maskelyne assures Mason. “These Girls flock to the Indiamen as much for the Shopping, as for the Sailors,— taking up one novelty upon the next, discarding each as lightly as they choose another . . . a mix’d lot, as you see, African . . . Malay . . . the odd Irish Rose. . . .”

  “Oo Reverend, who’s your attractive friend?”

  “Now now, Bridget. . . . Yes, a lovely Day to you,—” waving amiably. “Not that one ever lacks for wholesome Activities, here, one can pick-nick up the Valley. Visit Sandy Bay. Improve one’s mind, study Vortices, learn Chinese. Drink.” He pretends now to reel in astonishment before an Entry, in a Wall more Brick than Lime, above which swings a Sign depicting a White Luminary with the face of a Woman of the Town, multiply-patch’d to indicate Behavior she might, upon Acquaintance, prove to be a Good Sport about.

  “Ah, ha. Amazing! Why, here again’s The Moon. Care to pop in?” Inside, a chorus of pleasant-looking young Women begin to sing,—

  Well Sailor ahoy,

  Put down that Harpoon,

  You’re a fortunate Boy,

  For ye’ve beach’d on The Moon,

  And we Moon Maidens hope,

  We shall know ye quite soon,

  ’Tis the end of our Rope,—

  We need Men, in The Moon.

  [refrain]

  Ah, Men in The Moon,

  A miraculous Boon,

  Midnight and Noon, we need

  Men in The Moon!

  What but Maskelyne’s local? “Usual Sir Cloudsley, Gov? and the Madeira for your friend? Mr. Mas-son, excellent. Mr. Dixon fortunately embark’d, I trust?”

  “Once again, a Pleasure,” Mason squints.

  The landlord, Mr. Blackner, is that extremity of Quidnunc which, given enough time, necessarily emerges upon a small Island surrounded by Ocean for thousands of Soul-less leagues in ev’ry direction, where the village-siz’d population have only one another to talk about, and anyone newly arriv’d is feasted upon with an eagerness match’d only in certain rivers of South America. Everyone comes to know what everyone else knows,— and the strange mind-to-mind Throb may be felt distinctly, not to mention apprehensively, by the New-comer.

  As soon as Mr. Blackner, by way of this remarkable intelligence-gathering Mirror, discover’d Maskelyne’s connections to Clive and the East India Company, he began announcing the news to Visitors, some of them no more than common Seamen, with a jerk of the Thumb in Maskelyne’s direction,— “That’s Clive of India’s brother-in-law, over there. Right by the Crock of Gin?”

  “Out in the Wind a bit too long again, Mr. B.”

  “My Oath,— the Celebrated Super-Nabob his brother-in-law, right before your eyes,— and he has two Brothers, and Clive of India’s their brother-in-law, too.” Sometimes actually bringing over to Maskelyne the wary pint-clutching Visitor, “Here, Nevil my Lad,— who’s your brother-in-law? Go ahead, tell him.”

  Annoying himself each time, Maskelyne, reluctant to fuss, wishing only to have it over with, replies, “Aye, ’tis Lord Clive.”

  “But,— Clive of India?” the shrewd Visitor will wish to make sure.

  “That very Hero, sir, has the great good fortune to be married to my sister.”

  “Ah yes, yes,” their Host far too avid, “that of course’d be Miss Peggy.”

  For this sort of thing he has receiv’d nearly audible glares,— ’tis a finely pois’d arrangement here at The Moon. In return for suffering the familiarities of a celebrity-mad Knit-wit, Maskelyne is allow’d to run up a Tab, already legendary even in a hard-drinking port like this, that might finance a small War,— chargeable to the Royal Society of course, and beyond them, should they demur above a sum Mr. Blackner is not certain of (which will disagreeably prove to be but five shillings per Day), to the wealthy-without-limit Clive of India. Maskelyne may also feel the weight of Family Tradition, his brother Edmund, known as Mun, ten years before, on his way out to the Carnatic as a young Company Writer, having also visited The Moon, and not cared for it much,— suggesting it might, however, be just young Nevil’s sort of place. Maskelyne is still trying to work out what that might be.

  Later, up at the Upper Observatory upon Alarum Ridge, Mason tries to have a look at the Plumb-line Suspension without appearing too blatant about it, Maskelyne having grown ever more fretful,— not to mention resentful. On the Day of the Transit, Mason and Dixon had obtain’d Times for all four contacts internal and external of Venus and the Sun, whilst here at St. Helena, just at the crucial moment of first contact, a Cloud had appear’d, and made directly for the Sun. How Maskelyne’s heart must have sunk. He’d been warn’d not to place his observatory too low, had known of Dr. Halley’s difficulties with the early Fog that often fill’d the great Ravine. Upon hearing of Maskelyne’s ill-fortune, Mason understands that his Task will be never to appear pleas’d in front of him,— nor for that matter to respond to any of his Stiletto-Flourishes, which will prove to be frequent.

  “Of course not all are chosen for the Cape,— you Lads had the Pearl of the Lot, damme ’f you didn’t.” Maskelyne’s voice, in such times of stress, edges toward a throat-bas’d Soprano.

  “ ’Twas the only port we could make in time.” If Mason repeats it once, in this St. Helenian Sojourn, he does so
a thousand times,— suggesting an average of ten times per Day.

  “Damme if you’re not simply bless’d, aye, and blessèd as well, I’ve a Curacy, you may trust me in that Article. As for the rest of us, why, what matter that all Curricula are brought in the ill-starr’d Instant each to the same ignominious Halt, poor Boobies as we be.

  “Yet there go I, repining at what really was too much, too quickly,— not only the Weather, you do appreciate, for even had the seeing been perfect that day, there’d yet have been the d—— ’d Sector, do forgive me, ’tis the matter of the Plumb-line, falsum in unum Principle, how can I trust anything I may see thro’ it, now?

  “Especially here. Somewhere else it might not have matter’d as much, but it’s disturbing here, Mason,— don’t you think? Aren’t you feeling, I don’t know,— disturb’d?”

  “Disturb’d? Why, no, Maskelyne, after the Cape I find it quite calming here, in a Tropical way, pure Air, Coffee beyond compare,— from Bush to Oast unmediated!— the Sky remarkably productive of Obs,— what more could a man ask?”

  “What more—” slapping himself smartly once upon each cheek, as if to restrain an outburst. “Of course,— I am being far too nice, aye and no doubt namby-pambical as well,— ha ha, ha,— after all, what’s being confin’d upon the Summit of a living Volcanoe whose History includes violent Explosion, hey? which might indeed re-awaken at any moment, with nought to escape to in that lively Event, but thousands of Leagues of Ocean, empty in ev’ry direction,— Aahckk! Mason, can y’ not feel it? This place! this great Ruin,— haunted . . . an Obstinate Spectre,— an ancient Crime,— none here will ever escape it, ’tis in the Gases they breathe, Generation unto Generation,— Ah! ’Tis it! There! Look ye!”— pointing beyond the circle of Lanthorn-light, his features clench’d uncomfortably.

  The first time Maskelyne carried on thus, Mason became very alarm’d. He already suspects that the Island enjoys a Dispensation not perhaps as relentlessly Newtonian as Southern England’s,— and as to whose Author’s Identity, one may grow confus’d, so ubiquitous here are signs of the Infernal. Howbeit, after some number of these Seizures, Mason no longer feels quite so oblig’d to react. It is thus with some surprize and a keen rectal Pang that his leisurely Gaze now does detect something out there, and quite large, too, that should not be,— a patch of Nothing, where but the other moment shone a safe Wedge of Stars Encyclopedically nam’d. “Um, this Observatory, Maskelyne? The Company’s provided you some sort of, that is, . . . Armory?”

  “Ha! a set of French Duelling-pieces, with the Flints unreliable. Take your pick,— does it matter? against What approaches, Shot is without effect.” The Visitant,— by now more than Shadow,— has crept toward the Zenith, engrossing more and more of the field of Stars, till at length rolling overhead and down toward the Horizon.

  “Weatherr,” Mason almost disappointed. With that, rain begins to fall, dense and steaming, sending him cursing outside to make secure the sliding Roof, whilst Maskelyne occupies himself inside with a fresh Pipe, snug as Punch in his Booth. Mason feels less resentful than resign’d, preferring anyway the certain uproar of Elements he knows, to the spookish fug of Maskelyne’s Sermons upon the Unknown. Soon the Rain-Fall is spouting from all three corners of his Hat at once, regardless of what Angle he places his Head at.

  Later, Obless, reluctant to sleep, they open another bottle of Mountain. Outside this ephemeral Hut, anything may wait. Mountains sharp and steep as the Heights of Hell. The next Planet, yet without a name,— so, in The Moon, have they been solemnly assur’d.— A little traveling Stage-Troupe, is St. Helena really, all Performance,— a Plantation, sent out years since by its metropolitan Planet, which will remain invisible for years indeterminate before revealing itself and acquiring a Name, this place till then serving as an Aide-Mémoire, a Representation of Home. Many here, Descendants of the first Settlers, would never visit the Home Planet, altho’ some claim to’ve been there and back, and more than once. “What if ’twere so?” declares Maskelyne. “Ev’ry People have a story of how they were created. If one were heretickal enough, which I certainly am not, one might begin to entertain some notion of the Garden in Genesis, as an instance of extra-terrestrial Plantation.”

  Maskelyne is the pure type of one who would transcend the Earth,— making him, for Mason, a walking cautionary Tale. For years now, after midnight Culminations, has he himself lain and listen’d to the Sky-Temptress, whispering, Forget the Boys, forget your loyalties to your Dead, first of all to Rebekah, for she, they, are but distractions, temporal, flesh, ever attempting to drag the Uranian Devotee back down out of his realm of pure Mathesis, of that which abides.

  “For if each Star is little more a mathematickal Point, located upon the Hemisphere of Heaven by Right Ascension and Declination, then all the Stars, taken together, tho’ innumerable, must like any other set of points, in turn represent some single gigantick Equation, to the mind of God as straightforward as, say, the Equation of a Sphere,— to us unreadable, incalculable. A lonely, uncompensated, perhaps even impossible Task,— yet some of us must ever be seeking, I suppose.”

  “Those of us with the Time for it,” suggests Mason.

  One cloudless afternoon they stand in the scent of an orange-grove,— as tourists elsewhere might stand and gape at some mighty cataract or chasm,— nose-gaping, rather, at a manifold of odor neither Englishman has ever encountered before. They have been searching for it all the long declining Day,— it is the last Orange-Grove upon the Island,— a souvenir of a Paradise decrepit. . . . Shadows of Clouds dapple the green hill-sides, Houses with red Tile roofs preside over small Valleys, the Pasture lying soft as Sheep,— all, with the volcanic Meadow where the two stand, circl’d by the hellish Cusps of Peaks unnatural,— frozen in mid-thrust, jagged at every scale. “Saint Brendan set out in the fifth century to discover an Island he believ’d was the Paradise of the Scriptures,— and found it. Some believ’d it Madeira, Columbus was told by some at Madeira that they had seen it in the West, Philosophers of our own Day say they have prov’d it but a Mirage. So will the Reign of Reason cheerily dispose of any allegations of Paradise.

  “Yet suppose this was the Island. He came back, did he not? He died the very old Bishop of the Monastery he founded at Clonfert, as far from the Western Sea as he might, this side of Shannon. Perhaps that was Paradise. Else, why leave?”

  “A Riddle! Wondrous! Just the Ticket! Why, ere ’tis solv’d, we may be back in England and done with this!”

  “The Serpent, being the obvious Answer.”

  “What Serpent?”

  “The one dwelling within the Volcanoe, Mason, surely you are not ignorant upon the Topick?”

  “Regretfully, Sir— ”

  “Serpent, Worm, or Dragon, ’tis all the same to It, for It speaketh no Tongue but its own. It Rules this Island, whose ancient Curse and secret Name, is Disobedience. In thoughtless Greed, within a few pitiably brief Generations, have these People devastated a Garden in which, once, anything might grow. Their Muck-heaps ev’rywhere, Disease, Madness. One day, not far distant, with the last leaf of the last Old-Father-Never-Die bush destroy’d, whilst the unremitting Wind carries off the last soil from the last barren Meadow, with nought but other Humans the only Life remaining then to the Island,— how will they take their own last step,— how disobey themselves into Oblivion? Simply die one by one, alone and suspicious, as is the style of the place, till all are done? Or will they rather choose to murder one another, for the joy to be had in that?”

  “How soon is this, that we’re talking about?”

  “Pray we may be gone by then. We have our own ways of Disobedience,— unless I presume,— express’d in the Motto of Jacob Bernouilli the second,— Invito Patre Sidera Verso,— ‘Against my father’s wishes I study the stars.’ ”

  Mason pauses to squint and shake his head free of annoyance. “How do you know anything of my Father’
s wishes? Do you mean, that because he is only a Miller and a Baker, he would naturally oppose Star-Gazing, out of Perverse and willful Ignorance?”

  “I mean only that in our Times, ’tis not a rare Dispute,” Maskelyne assures him. “Reason, or any Vocation to it,— the Pursuit of the Sciences,— these are the hope of the Young, the new Music their Families cannot follow, occasionally not even listen to. I know well the struggle, mine being with Mun especially, tho’ Peggy as well would rag me . . . they cozen’d me once into casting her Horoscope, with particular reference to the likelihood of her being married any time soon. ’Twas but a moment’s work to contrive the Wheel of a Maiden’s dreams,— Jupiter smiling upon Venus in the house of partnerships, Mars exactly at the mid-heaven, Mercury with smooth sailing ahead, not a retrograde body in sight. Was I thank’d? Rather, one simple Horo, and ’twas ‘Nevil the Astrologer,’ thenceforward.”

  “Not as insulting as ‘Star-Gazer,’ anyway.”

  “And what if I did cast a Natal Chart or two whilst at Westminster,— and of course later, at Cambridge, when I found I could get sixpence,— well. I suppose you’ve lost respect for me now,” this being their second week up on the Ridge, with confession apt to flow like the “water that cometh down out of the country” noted in ancient Maps of this place.

  “You got sixpence? I never did better than three, and that was with all the Arabian Parts thrown in as Inducement.”

  “Oh, don’t I remember those, Lens-brother,— ’tis our Burden. Kepler said that Astrology is Astronomy’s wanton little sister, who goes out and sells herself that Astronomy may keep her Virtue,— surely we have all done the Covent Garden turn. As to the older Sister, how many Steps may she herself indeed already have taken into Compromise? for,