The Syme Papers (75 page)

‘Kitty, see that he thinks of something other than Sam’s great the
ories for a week or two. It will do him good.’

‘I think so too, Phidy. I will do my best.’

They had a full moon for their river journey, and I was lonelier
when they left.

Sam and I slept at the Dewdrop that night, and stayed a while
over our last glass of ale.

‘It is some destiny, Sam, I said, half-joking, ‘that Easy should
come just as we gave up hope. I look on it as proof of our triumphant
fate.’

‘On the contrary, it is a proof of my theories, of mathematics. In
all justice, I lost my right to success when I turned from
Philadelphia. But life is only a question of conjunctions, and the
seasons they usher in.’

He was right, too, and the season that followed ended in another
conjunction, of men and circumstances, that yielded a rare and
great eclipse.

‘What are you thinking, Sam?’

‘That I shall miss Tom. And that I have always envied him.’
Then, after a pause, ‘Remember what I said. Think on it tonight,
Phidy, and do only as you please.’

‘I will.’

‘Then drink up. There is work to be done in the morning, of one
kind or another.’

I had a task that night and sat at the table by my bed, writing
another letter to my father. How lightly I dropped a fine coat upon
the floor now; left a cravat dangling loosely over the back of a chair.
My hair unkempt
–
those fine brown locks falling at their own sweet
will about my face, so that I knuckled them from my brow, more
than once, before the letter was done. Some ease at least had been
learned; a certain
primness
forgotten. Did I stay because I could
not bear to lose such changes I had rung upon myself? Did I fear my
father’s anger at my delay, and so delay the more? Did I remain
because I mistrusted the vicissitudes of my own home more than
Sam’s? ‘My
dear Sir,’ I began. ‘I am sorry to write you only with
news of another postponement, though it may be a happy one, I
hope, and find both our circumstances
improved
on my return

Or did I linger simply because I could not part from Sam
–
yet.

The first order of the day was to secure lodgings. Easy found us a
house on Whippet Lane, in a formerly grand though never genteel
neighbourhood of Pactaw, away from the river, towards the low hills
in the west. The lane once led to the racetrack. But Pactaw had suf
fered greatly in the last decade from
enthusiasm,
which had
drowned out those loose games in the tide begun twenty years before
with the sermons at Cane Ridge. Church End had become the fash
ionable quarter. The track now was simply a round brown field that
grew out of the end of the street and then fell away into trees.

Hotels and taverns had lined the street in its heyday, when
Pactaw was an English town, a drunken night’s rest for merchants
sailing up the Potomac, or farmers bringing their goods to Norfolk,
and thence the world. The buildings were still grand, though some
what fallen in. All the business had shut down. A distant rumour of
a man, Mr Talbot from New York, had bought up much of the lane,
and split the great houses into apartments and let them,
mostly to large families whose parents had known better lives:
schoolteachers and newspapermen, and in one case the large and 
shouting brood of a theatrical match. Ours, once the least and
darkest of the inns, had been left to itself and now, by revolution,
had become the smartest house by ‘the Races’, as we all still called
the muddy field at the bottom, where torn papers and bedraggled
pamphlets among the leaves announced its old and busier purpose.
It was a draughty, ghostly, windy, cold place, gone in the tooth. The
cheap glass in the window panes had grown fat and cloudy at the
bottom, so Sam and I saw the world through a Hamburg fog, except
for the sky, which shone through the thin pane on top, clear as win
ter air. We had no need of a cook and turned the kitchen into our
parlour; spent divers afternoons by the great iron stove, smoking our
pipes and warming our hands flat on the sour metal, saying little
or nothing, happy in our common cause against the cold. It was so
cold when we first moved in that we burned the chairs.

I missed the Boathouse, sure. Sam had a taste for dilapidation;
this, I argued, was taking things too far. Yet I was never happier in
America (which means never happier in the world) than by the
Races
–
where I got Sam to myself at last.

The second order of business was to see Easy’s father. We set off
one dark November morning west from the Potomac for a visit of a
few days. An oriole woke Sam and me at black dawn, and then Easy
called for us in his carriage. The bird’s call ran through my sleepy
head to the tune of the horses’ hoofs all the six-hour journey, across
the Rappahannock River, even to the long avenue of black elms
cutting through the plantations towards the Harcourt mansion. The
song ceased only as we sat down to lunch.

Easy grew silent in his father’s shadow. He bent his eyes to his
plate and hid his hands as well, as if they might reveal him. I mar
velled to see Sam deferential.

‘Superior grounds‚’ Sam said, ‘and such magnificent sentinels, those great black elms.’ And even, ‘Mr Harcourt, your son I mean, sir, has boasted of your facility – shall I call it that? – in the last war … I would be delighted to hear the particulars.’

It hurt my heart to see it, for Sam was truly a great man, and Mr
Harcourt a mere bull, with the cleverness only of sharp horns. He
was a bull in shape too, with a barrel chest, and heavy dark brows 
and a red face. His back ran straight as a pike but his arms hung
curiously loose and idle, as they do in men whose strength lies in
their ribs. The
exploits
Sam enquired after proved to be no soldier’s
stories, but the commercial rogueries of a man who made a treasure
in the late war with England. (In which Sam risked a great deal
more than a fortune.) Sam always hated ‘money tricks’, as he called
them. He left such to Tom, and I felt a sudden shame to hear him ask
after Harcourt’s facility’.

I wondered at Sam’s desire to please and reflected that a rich man
can draw honey from the voice even of a stubborn old soldier like
Sam, who hated common proprieties. I heard
money
in Sam’s accent,
the sad, tinny sound cluttered his true note
–
like a groschen rattling
on a piano string. But then I thought more kindly and considered
that even a noble hope
– especially
a noble hope
–
can put a false
catch in the throat of a man an inch from his purpose. How many
ways our own desires deceive us.

My shyness and a glass of claret, I’m afraid, had led me to a rather superior silence. I watched Jeb Harcourt’s thick wrists tear bread, while he talked on. ‘The rotten – quite literally, mind you – rotten English harvest in the year eleven … simply a question of knowing the ports – and the captains … as to pretended embargoes …’ and so on. To be fair to Bull Harcourt, he spoke honestly and without fuss, though indeed he did pride himself on just those qualities. The thought struck me then, how just such a creature as Syme (even without any hope of advantage) might fall under the spell of someone like Harcourt – a man of good parts who knows the world and his trade in it. And being ashamed to call it envy, he might call it something else. ‘Do not be deceived,’ Sam told me afterwards, ‘Harcourt is more than just shrewd, for all his bluster.’

We ate snow-goose for dinner. And the claret was very good.

For a day and a half Easy and I were thrust upon each other’s
company. Mr Harcourt assumed that Sam was the only man of
substance and business among us. Sam was flattered, and, with
manners borrowed from his father, quickly dressed himself as a
man of the world. Easy was accustomed to this neglect. And oddly,
in that grand house, with the long, flat fields all round, I felt foreign 
as well as strange. My accent hung in the air like oversweet
tobacco.

Ezekiel was not an Easy companion. He was too tall to be quiet
–
his eye peered down an inch, even, above my own
–
and yet he
was
quiet, made a man feel awkward. His character grew clear to me in
that house. His father, strong and practical and rich, had left his son
to his own fancies. At thirty, Easy was still frightened of him. But
he fell in naturally with clever, ineffectual men, who talked philoso
phy and art, topics his father knew little about and cared less for. So
Easy had something to say. At the foothills of middle age, he had
learned to dress well and amuse men who prided themselves on their
nice sense of amusement. And then I thought, This is how he has
fallen in with us.

But for once he had found a pursuit with hard science behind it,
or at least something like it. So he brought the protégé to see his
father, who liked what he saw and took it to himself. This left the
two of us together. We went for a ride that afternoon in the early
dusk, well wrapped about, to the chatter of brisk hoofs. It grew dark
early but it was too cold to talk, so the dark suited us. We returned
to a bright fire and a glass of brandy glowing in it. I could hear Sam
above us, in the map room, intoning a familiar lecture to Mr
Harcourt. At last he sounded sensible and himself. The warm sting
of the brandy brought the sense back to my hands and heart. Now I
was happy, hearing our prospects argued in such sure and assuring
tones above. Then Easy turned to me, and said something that
clouded my comfort, though I liked him better for the confession.

‘Shall I tell you my secret, Phidy.’ He held his shy damp hands
before the fire. ‘It is that I like other people overmuch.’ My heart
went to him, though I found nothing to say. Soon after we sat down
to supper.

That evening, after Mr Harcourt had retired to his study and
Easy had gone to bed, I came to Sam’s rooms. Half a moon shone
through his black window and lay on the floor at our feet. Sam could
not keep silent for excitement and talked like a swarm of bees.

‘I could have wished you to see more of Mr Harcourt this after
noon
‚’
Sam said, ‘for he makes an interesting study
–
and is no fool 
neither. For one, he has read more deeply in Greek than either you or I. I began my little tale of creation, hey Phaedon, etc. – and he completed it for me in sonorous tones – much pleased with himself, to be sure. And then he is the acquaintance
–
and often
more
than
friend
–
of the chief American literary figures of our day. Last week that fellow Cullen Bryant slept on this bed. Harcourt says he has dined out with Irving. I tell you what it is, Phidy – he is a true American – of a species just now beginning to flourish. There was a different breed in old revolutionary days – Jeffersons and Frenchified folk – some more English than the English. I should know, my father was among them. But this Jackson has set up a new flag – and he is finding the men to raise it …’

There was more in that vein. He was happy as a schoolboy with
a brand-new teacher. I saw only then how discouraged he had
become in this past year and how much he had shrunk in his own
esteem.

Perhaps he saw this for himself, for his spirits ebbed and he sat
on his bed, with his large hands on the large knees of his short
legs, and rocked somewhat to and fro. Then he said, ‘I am frightened, Phidy,’ and I knew his meaning, but he went on. ‘What if I
should not deserve his faith?’ Then he undressed and I stayed,
though we both were exhausted of speech. I sat on the green-backed
chair by the basin and lingered until he was content and breathed
happily, and then I snuffed the lamp and retired to my own cold
room and bed.

The next evening, after supper, the Bull called us to the drawing room. We sat down and he talked. ‘I shall get to the nub of it quickly. You tell me, Mr Syme, that you are right and that everybody else is wrong. Fine. I am no judge of that. I know enough of history and the masses to have no great respect for either. Nothing to me seems more likely than that we are all blundering about on an eggshell For me the question has always been: Can I guess what way the blundering will go? And where the shell will crack? I am a lawyer and a landowner, not a scientist. But I am also a citizen with an eye to our country’s honour. Don’t let that put you out, Mr Miller. I have money and don’t mind spending it on what 
my son calls “the Questions”. You tell me, Mr Syme, that your
theories could christen a new American Science. That’s the line I
like. Stick to it.

‘I don’t know what you came here expecting but this is what you’ll get. I want those ideas to get about. I never saw the use of burrowing away in a library so you could stick another book on the shelves when you’ve finished. One thing I know about is business, I will buy you a magazine. My son tells me that you live on Whippet Lane. You know about the Tracks then. Two streets away is the old
office of the
Pactaw Racing Times.
That closed down with the
Races. Nobody’s there, but upstairs the old press still stands. That’s
yours. I have agents from Williamsburg to Baltimore to see that what you print gets around. I think in terms of twelve months. I want six magazines to come out in that time. If you can, contract articles from other scientists. Remember, this is to be the forum for the new American Science. That’s the line. Call it what you like, just make sure it says “New American Science” big and black underneath it on the cover. As for the rest, how to live and such, I’ll see you men taken care of.’