Chapter 325 - Utah, One Week Ago part 10

Several years after his maker purchased the house on Hyde Street, Sydney took a train to Texas, his first time away from the vampire for more than a night or two since he was made an immortal. He meant to bring his mother to San Francisco so that she might share in his good fortune. He thought, perhaps, he might even give her the Blood. He discussed the matter with his maker before he departed and Gon gave Sydney his blessing. "But of course," Gon said, as if it went without saying. "If my mother had not died before I was made this thing that I am, I would have done the same." It seemed only right: to grant the woman who had given him life Life Everlasting.

He traveled by rail to Abilene, then hired a private coach to deliver him to Green Gulch. But when Sydney arrived in Green Gulch and inquired after his mother, he discovered that she had died shortly after his shootout with Dutch Jacobson. No one knew exactly what it was that had killed the woman. She was found lying face down on the floor beside her bed, wearing only a nightgown. There were signs in the room that she had suffered some fatal malady shortly after he left—soiled linens and several empty bottles of patent medicine on the nightstand-- but no one knew what the illness might have been or how long she was sick before she succumbed to the disease.

No one harassed Sydney while he was in town, not even when he visited his mother's grave on Pauper's Hill and there was no longer any doubt of his identity (though some folks believed him to be the son of the man who had killed Dutch Jacobson and not the man himself). It seemed they all had more pressing concerns, and besides, the boy was rich now, and in America wealth was often shield and armor when it came to law enforcement. Not even the sheriff of Green Gulch dared to challenge him. In fact, most of the locals—those who remembered him, at least-- feted him as if he were some returning hero, and a few of the town's more enterprising individuals sought him out for loans or charity, or to propose some business venture in which he might invest. One fellow, a former crony of the deceased Dutch Jacobson, even tried to blackmail him. That imprudent individual was never heard from again, except as a few gurgling gas bubbles in Sydney Meadow's transmuted digestive tract.

Sydney gave what he could to the needy, dismissed out of hand the greedy and undeserving, mourned his mother modestly, then returned to San Francisco.

In fiction, a long journey often denotes a beginning or an end. Though Sydney was not well read, his journey to Green Gulch was indeed an ending. It was the end of his Golden Age, although he did not know it at the time. When he returned to San Francisco he found his maker restless and distractible. When he asked what was wrong, Gon took a letter from the inside pocket of his jacket and waved it in the air like some piece of incriminating evidence. While Sydney was away, the ancient blood drinker had received a letter from his lover Zenzele, imploring him to come to her in Geneva. "Return to me," the missive read. "I love you. I miss you." There was more, but Sydney's maker did not read it all. Gon ripped the letter to shreds, casting the pieces into the air like confetti.

"She will drive me mad!" he exclaimed, then raked his fingers through his hair like a maniac. Indeed, hair disheveled, eyes blazing, he looked like a madman. "I am no pet to be stroked and put aside at whim!" his maker declared. "If she yearns for me, let her come here to San Francisco!"

And he maintained that vow for several months, long enough for Sydney to forget all about the letter. Then without warning, in December of 1899, Sydney's master announced that he had booked passage overseas and meant to depart for Geneva on the morrow.

He was no longer so outraged by his lover's presumptuousness. He seemed ebullient, brimming over with good cheer. "Come with me to the Old World," he pleaded with Sydney. "We will tour Europe together, you and I. It is not like this raw new continent. Everything here is so new. The cities have no memories. The dreams of its people are shallow and childish. What is the oldest edifice here? Two hundred years old? Perhaps three? There are temples in the Old World that are thousands of years old! To pass within their corridors is to pass through the halls of Time itself, to plunge into the depths of man's most ancient past!"

But Sydney declined.

Sydney was a little offended by Gon's scorn for his country, but that was not the reason he declined his maker's offer. Sydney's decision to part ways with his master was a more fundamental one. His journey to Green Gulch to retrieve his mother had awakened in him a hunger for independence. He had gone from mother to master with no intervening period of self-determination, and he found now that he craved it, had craved it from the moment he stepped foot back in the great painted lady on Hyde Street. From the moment he returned to San Francisco, he felt as if the city, as if civilization itself, were pressing in on him like the moving walls of some fanciful trap room. He felt that he would be crushed to death if he did not free himself of his master and the encumbrances of all their material possessions.

He craved freedom, as he never had before. His maker's love, all their wealth and material possessions, seemed like the bars of a cage—a gilded cage, but a cage all the same-- and he wanted out. It was a physical yearning that hardened his heart, even against his beloved maker.

Finally, Gon relented. "I understand," he said. "I knew this day would come. It comes for every vampire child. It is no different for immortals than it is for a mortal father and son. I just did not expect it so soon."

"Then I have your blessing?" Sydney asked.

"Of course," Gon said. "Oh, Sydney, of course you do! I love you as I love all my children! Though I have only had you for a little while, I will miss you terribly."

Later, at the Port of San Francisco, as he prepared to board a steamer for Zarubino, surrounded by all of his baggage, his maker embraced him. "You have become a fine vampire," he said, his eyes moist with blood tears. "I am very proud of you."

"And you have been the father I never knew," Sydney replied.

He held the ancient immortal as dockworkers moved briskly around them, loading his master's luggage. He was surprised, now that the time had come, just how reluctant he was to let the man go. How long would it be before he met his maker again? A hundred years? A thousand? Finally, Gon pushed the boy away.

"I have made you executor of all my American assets. You shall want for nothing."

"I shall want for nothing," Sydney smiled, waving aside his master's talk of material wealth. He did not wish to be burdened by property, or bank accounts, or the welfare of the many mortal servants his master was leaving behind in his care. He meant to discharge their staff, close up the house on Hyde Street and leave town as soon as was practical. He would button up his maker's affairs here in San Francisco because he was a good son, but he meant to stay no longer than was absolutely necessary.

"Seek me out if you find yourself unbearably lonely," Gon said. "I am sure I will not linger in Geneva, but it is not hard to find a vampire as famous as yours truly. They gossip of my movements in all the coven houses of the Old World. Vampires are notorious chinwags. It helps to fill the long hours."

"I will," Sydney promised.

"And be careful," Gon warned him. "There are other Eternals. Many of them will destroy you if you chance to cross their path. It is not unlike the infanticide of the African lion—"

"Yes, yes, I know, father," Sydney chuckled. "I will be careful."

His maker looked as if he would say more, and then he clamped his lips together with a self-deprecating smile and turned abruptly. Sydney watched as his master glided up the gangplank and moved to stand with his fellow passengers, who were waving excitedly from the rails to their own attending well-wishers. His maker nodded solemnly to Sydney and Sydney tipped his hat. Minutes later, the great ship departed. Sydney watched until the vessel had receded into the misty darkness, and then he returned home.