Robert Wilson - Julian Comstock - A Story of 22-nd Century America

“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.

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 ‘Commongold’ 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 Ownership, 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.