The Syme Papers (71 page)

‘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 pock
et watch as he checked the time; and Dr Polidori, rising above the 
rest, 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 barge
men, 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.

I do not think Sam slept; shadows from his guttering lamp played
beneath his door as I returned, drunker and unhappier still, to my
own bed at last.

A coach was ready in the morning, the horses steaming in the brisk dawn air, and I had only to stumble out of bed into a travelling sleep. A cold ache and a crooked neck awoke me at lunchtime. Then the coach rambled south through the soft afternoon, making the only stir in that windless perfect blue air. We spent the night with Cousin James – arriving in the thick, crackling evening, too sleepy to talk, or do anything but swallow crusts of old bread with fresh milk still warm from the long sun; leaving in the drenched morning, too sleepy to talk. James stood in the middle of the empty Main Street, neither waving nor moving till we were out of sight.

The bright lake opened through a gap in the trees and vanished again, as the coach rumbled on. Sam brought his right hand to his snuffling nose and drew Tom to him with his left. ‘I heard your protestations, remember that‚’ he said kindly. ‘Do not think yourself ill-used – or ill-loved – simply because I abuse my own prospects. There is nothing more you can do for me – that’s what grieves you. And that you seemed to plead the more heartless cause. No one doubts your good heart. If I no longer need your good offices – it is not they that failed me – but I who failed them. We give ourselves to Ideas – as if they were not ours – and we serve them and sacrifice others to them – as we would be ashamed to do in our own cause. I have done as much for you. I would not add my mother (or my father even, rot him) to the list of my neglect. Not though I have Truth on my side – never doubt that, either. Never doubt it, Tom. But we haven’t such right to it as we pretend.’