Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (32 page)

"And even this," Julian said, "might have been a useful lesson, taken as such; but Man misunderstood his own chastening, and imagined that his sins had been forgiven, and put up effigies of the tortured demigod and the instrument on which he had been broken, and marked the event every Easter with a church ser vice and a colorful hat. And as God made Himself deaf to Man, so Man became deaf to God; and our prayers languished in the dead air of our cavernous churches, and do so to this day."

The carriage was silent in the aftermath of this cruel and frankly blasphemous narrative. Sam sighed and stared out into the rain. The vehicle's springs creaked as we bounced over wet cobblestones, a sound that reminded me of the creaking rope where Job Blake had been hung. Julian looked at Calyxa boldly, if a little apprehensively, while she pondered her response.

"That's a fine story," she said finally. "I like that story very much—thank you, Julian. I hope you'll tell me another one some day." She essayed a smile.

"Perhaps I'll make up one of my own, now that you've shown me how."

It was Julian's turn to gawk in astonishment. He slowly took the mea sure of Calyxa's sincerity. Then he grinned—perhaps the first genuine grin I had seen on him since the Saguenay Campaign.

"You're welcome!" he said. Then he turned his grin on me. "You married well, Adam! Congratulations!"

"Oy," said Sam, in the cryptic language of the Jews.

The future defied our expectations. The future always does, as I'm sure Julian would say. "There's no predicting Evolution," he used to say, "either in the long or the short term."

Still, the shock of our arrival in New York City can hardly be overesti-mated.

This is what happened.

Our train, although an Express, slowed at every switch yard, and the journey lasted all night. Calyxa and I had a stateroom to ourselves. We were awake until the early hours, and consequently slept past sunrise. We did not see anything of the City of New York until the porter knocked at the door to announce our imminent arrival.

We dressed quickly, and joined Sam and Julian in the passenger car.

I was sorry I hadn't arisen earlier, for we were already well within the boundary of Manhattan. I will not detail its wonders here—those will emerge in the later course of the story. But I knew something exceptional was going on as soon as we rolled into the columned interior of the great Central Train Station. Visible through the rain-streaked windows of the passenger car were many bays and depots where trains could embark or dispense passengers, and the one we approached was crowded with people in all kinds of colorful dress, many of them carry ing signs or banners. A wooden stage had been erected, and a band played patriotic songs. The exact details were hard to distinguish through the smudged and grimy glass, but the mood of excitement was unmistakable.

We asked a passing porter what the occasion was, but he didn't know.

"Someone famous in from the battle-front," he said, "probably."

Someone famous! It would be ironic, I thought, if we had come all this way with General Galligasken for a fellow traveler; but there was no hint that such was the case. We didn't know which passenger was being honored until we stepped out onto the platform. Then a ticket-taker pointed at us—at Julian, specifically—and the band promptly struck up a march.

"Dear God!" Sam said, paling, as he read the signs and banners held aloft by the crowd—and I read them, too, and my expression must have been equally gap-jawed.

WELCOME THE HERO OF THE SAGUENAY CAMPAIGN! said one.

NYC POLICE & FIREFIGHTERS SALUTE THE CAPTOR OF THE CHINESE CANNON!—another.

And a third said, simply,

HURRAY FOR CAPTAIN COMMONGOLD!

Sam trembled as violently as if he had looked at the jubilant crowd and seen, in its place, a firing squad.

Julian was even more bewildered. He opened his mouth and couldn't muster the strength to close it.

At that moment a white-haired woman came to the fore of the crowd. She was not young, nor especially thin, but her manner was vigorous and purposeful.

She was clearly an Aristo—she was dressed expensively and gaudily, as if she had marched through a milliner's shop and a tropical aviary and emerged with bits of both places adhering to her. She carried a wreath of flowers on which was laid a paper banner bearing the words WOMEN'S PATRIOTIC UNION OF NEW YORK WELCOMES CAPTAIN COMMONGOLD. The wreath was so extravagant that her face was all but concealed by it, until she lifted it up with the intent of settling it around Julian's neck.

Then she got a good look at the intended object of all this adoration, and froze as if she had been struck by a bullet.

"Julian?" she whispered.

"Mother!" cried Julian.

The wreath dropped to the floor. Julian's mother embraced him. The photographers in the crowd grew interested, and hoisted their cameras, and the reporters took their pencils from behind their ears.

Keep thy peaceful watch-fires burning,
Angels stand at all thy doors,
Washing from thy homes dissension
As the oceans wash thy shores.
—"A HYMN FOR AMERICA"

I was hastily introduced to Julian's mother as a friend from the Army, and Calyxa as my wife, and then we adjourned (at Mrs. Comstock's insistence) to a luxurious carriage, big enough to contain all five of us. A team of fine white horses carried us away from the noise and confusion of the rail station.

The upholstery of the carriage was lush, the city outside was astonishing ... but I was hardly conscious of any of those things. In fact I was in a stricken state. I did not yet fully understand the mechanism by which this unwelcome Welcome had worked out; but I was already convinced that I had upset the plans, and perhaps hastened the doom, of my friend Julian.

Calyxa was even more bewildered by this turn of events, for which her experience supplied no antecedent or explanation. The carriage might have been silent, each of us dwelling on private thoughts and fears, but for Calyxa's periodic demands to be "let in on the joke."

"I wish I could oblige you, Mrs. Hazzard," said Julian's mother, who had succeeded in committing our names to memory despite the chaotic conditions under which we were introduced. "But I'm not sure I understand it myself."

In fact Mrs. Comstock was exhibiting an admirable degree of level-headedness, as I saw it. She was a solidly-built woman of middle age, her coifed brown hair streaked at the temples with white. She occupied a central carriage-seat. Julian brooded to her left, while Sam on her right looked pale and stricken (except when he glanced at Mrs. Comstock, which action caused a ferocious blush to rise to his cheeks).

"Excuse me," Calyxa said, "and probably this question violates some etiquette I haven't been warned about, but
who are you exactly
?"

"Emily Baines Comstock," the older woman said gamely. "Julian's female parent, if you haven't inferred that fact already."

"The name 'Comstock' comes as a surprise," Calyxa said, casting me a sour glance.

I immediately confessed that I had deceived her about Julian's pedigree.

I apologized but cited my promise to Julian and Sam.

"I thought you were a Western lease-boy, Adam."

"I am! Nothing less, nothing more! I was befriended by Julian Comstock when he was sent to Williams Ford to protect him from possible conspiracies."

"Comstock," Calyxa repeated. "Conspiracies."

Julian roused from his brooding silence and said, "It's true, Calyxa, and it isn't Adam's fault he didn't tell you before now. I had hoped to remain a 'Com-mongold' for many more years to come. But the pretense is all blown up. The President's my uncle, yes, and he isn't charitably disposed toward me."

"And now that your identity has been revealed?"

"News of the scene at the rail station is bound to circulate quickly, the city being what it is . . ."

"And will your uncle try to kill you, then?"

Mrs. Comstock stiffened at these blunt words, but Julian just smiled sadly.

"I expect so," he said.

"Murderous relatives are a curse," nodded Calyxa, who considered herself knowledgeable in these matters. "You have my sympathy, Julian."

The plush carriage followed a street I would later learn to call Broadway, then turned aside into a fashionable district of antique houses with stone facades, either original or built up from authentic remains. I looked about as we dismounted, and everything I saw—a tree-lined street, gardens blooming with spring flowers, glass windows of gemlike clarity, etc.—spoke of Aristocracy and Own ership, and not timidly, but boastfully. Up a flight of stairs into the reception-room of the great house, then, where a small army of servants greeted the returning Mrs. Comstock and gaped at her son. Mrs. Comstock clapped her hands and said brusquely, "We have guests—rooms for Mr. and Mrs. Hazzard and Mr. Godwin, please, and if Julian's quarters are not in order they must be brought up to acceptable conditions. But only for the night.

Tomorrow we remove to Edenvale."

I looked questioningly at Julian, who told me in a low voice that Edenvale was the family's country Estate, located up the Hudson River.

Some of the servants began to welcome Julian personally. They seemed to remember him warmly from earlier times, and were astonished at his arrival, since (as I later learned) rumors of his death had been circulating freely. Julian smiled to see these old acquaintances; but Mrs. Comstock was impatient, and clapped the servants to their chores, and we adjourned to an enormous parlor. A girl in a white apron brought us iced drinks. I supposed this sort of hospitality was common among Aristos, and I tried to accept it as if I were accustomed to it, though such luxury exceeded anything in my experience, including what I had seen in the houses of the Duncan and Crowley families at Williams Ford—rustic retreats by comparison with the excesses and indulgences of Manhattan, if this was an example.

Calyxa, meanwhile, regarded it all with a painfully visible skepticism, and looked at the servant girl as if she wanted to indoctrinate her into Parmentierism, a project I hoped she would not undertake.

"I think I understand the outline of the misfortune," Julian said as we settled into the depths of our prodigiously-upholstered chairs. "Somehow the story of my experience in the war has been circulated in the city ... though I don't know how that could have come about."

I gritted my teeth but said nothing. I couldn't, until my suspicions were confirmed.

"You've been in the papers," Mrs. Comstock acknowledged. "Under your assumed name."

"Have I?"

Mrs. Comstock summoned the servant girl again. "Barbara, you know I banned cheap journals from the house..."

"Oh, yes," said Barbara.

"And I know that the ban isn't universally observed. Please don't deny it—we don't have time. Go down to the kitchen and see if you can find anything sufficiently degraded on the subject of 'Julian Commongold.' Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes! The cook reads them out loud to us," Barbara said, then blushed at the admission, and hurried off to find the papers.

She came back with a weeks-old copy of the
Spark
 and a crudely bound pamphlet. These specimens of urban journalism were passed among us to inspect.

The
Spark
 contained "the latest intelligence from the Saguenay front, including the capture of a Chinese Cannon!" This proved to be a truncated account of Julian's bravery at Chicoutimi, printed under the byline of Theodore Dornwood, "the
Spark
's famous front-line correspondent in the Saguenay Campaign."

Worse than this was the pamphlet, nearly a small book, which had been printed as a compilation of Mr. Dornwood's reporting, under the title
The Adventures of Captain Commongold, Youthful Hero of the Saguenay.
 It was selling briskly on all the better street-corners, the servant girl said.

Julian and Sam explained to Mrs. Comstock that Dornwood was a scoundrel who had debauched himself in Montreal all during the Campaign, and who made up his stories out of rumor and whole cloth.

But I looked into the pamphlet with careful attention, and my humiliation was complete. I confessed at once—I could do nothing else. "It's Dornwood's signature," I said haltingly. "But the words ... well ... the words are mainly my own."

They say it's a pleasant experience for any aspiring writer to see his work set in print for the first time. This occasion was an exception to that rule.

The pamphlet's paper cover featured an engraved illustration of "Julian Commongold" (rendered as an iron-jawed youth with a piercing gaze and immaculate uniform) astride the fender of a Dutch train-engine, waving an American flag several times larger than the version he had actually employed for the purpose, while a crowd of soldiers cheered at the capture of a supposed Chinese Cannon the size of an iron-mill smokestack. Apparently artists as well as journalists were expected to err on the side of drama, and this one had not stinted in the effort. Mrs. Comstock took the pamphlet from me and held it at arm's length, an expression of distaste playing about her features.

"Did you actually
do
 these things, Julian?" she asked.

"Some less florid version of them."

She turned to Sam. "And is this your idea of protecting him from harm?"

Sam looked stricken; but he said, "Julian is a young man with a will of his own, Emily—I mean, Mrs. Comstock—and he doesn't always yield to suggestion."

"He could have been killed."

"He nearly was—several times. If you regard this as a failure on my part, I can hardly contradict you." He explained the circumstances of our departure from Williams Ford and our unwilling enlistment in the Army of the Laurentians. "I did my best to keep him safe, and here he is intact, despite his recklessness and mine—I say no more."

"You may continue to call me 'Emily,' Sam—we never stood on ceremony.

I'm not unhappy with you, only confused and surprised." She added, "You shaved. You used to wear an admirable beard."