The Eighth Day (44 page)

Anne was her father's favorite and walked the earth with the assurance that such predilection confers. Life presented few obstacles which obstinacy, clamor, and rudeness could not remove. She was all Lansing—an angel of cerulean blue eye, of cornsilk hair, of inborn certitudes. She was a little lady at ten and a formidable matron at thirteen. Her best friend was Constance Ashley—Constance, who came from a home where no voices were ever raised and no claims for privileged attention ever advanced. Children arrive at amnesties that diplomats might envy. Constance made clear the limits beyond which she would not be browbeaten, but the friendship was often in jeopardy.

Félicité's mother on the island of St. Kitts had enjoyed two half-hours of happiness daily: at dawn before the altar, at midnight above her snowy trousseau. Félicité's dream was to combine them—she hoped to enter the religious life. She attended the convent school at Fort Barry until she became aware that her presence was necessary in her home. She renounced the joy she felt in the life at St. Joseph's and entered the high school in Coaltown. She resembled her mother in appearance, though taller; she had none of her mother's vivacity. She was an exemplary student and would have excelled in schoolwork many times more difficult. At the age when many girls keep diaries and guard them under lock and key, she wrote her diary in Latin. She was an accomplished needlewoman and dressed herself with a taste and distinction that astonished even her mother. It was understood in the family that no one entered Félicité's room, though the door stood open all day. She would have wished it to be white, but white rooms were labor lost in Coaltown. It was blue, with touches of deep red and purple; it was at once simple and rich. Her skill in embroidery was everywhere present, in curtains, counterpanes, table runners, and antimacassars. She had been enthralled by Miss Doubkov's icons and had imitated them in her own way. Religious pictures—set on backgrounds of velvet and surrounded with gold lace and colored beads—glowed from the walls. The silks on her prie-dieu changed with the feasts and the seasons. The room was neither a cell nor a chapel—it was a place of waiting and of preparation for great happiness. From time to time in the day's work, when Félicité was absent, her mother would lean against the door frame gazing into the room. “The children we bring into the world!”

Like her sister, Félicité had been a stormy child. She had won her contained disposition by daily struggle, year after year, winning at the same time a measure of detachment from the “world.” She was moving toward abstraction. She loved her mother. She loved her brother passionately. But these loves were already imbued with the love of the
creature
which was enjoined upon her. Through these same disciplines she had found her way to a love for her father and younger sister. She had no friends. Félicité was respected, but not liked. During the stormy scenes at “St. Kitts” she never left the room—not when Anne lay rolling and screaming on the hearthrug (“I will not go to bed!” “I will not wear the blue dress!”); not when her father hurled one wounding phrase after another at his wife and son. She seldom spoke; she moved nearer to her mother and brother and listened to her father with unshaken gaze. A man's severest judges are his children and he knows it—severest of all when they are silent. She stood by her mother, but there was a barrier between them. They sewed together; they read together the classics of French literature; they partook of the sacrament side by side. They were mother and daughter in deep admiration and fellow suffering, but there was no laughter. Eustacia was born with an apprehension of the comical incongruities in life and, for all her trials, found amusement everywhere. It was an element in her nature that she could not share with her older daughter. (George caught—and could return—every inflection of his mother's wit, rare though the flashes were.) Year after year, before and after her father's death, Félicité postponed her great decision in order to be of use in the family at “St. Kitts.”

Mother and daughter had more in common, however, than they were fully aware of. Both were journeying; both were waiting; both were straining to understand. They were present at a woeful drama, but they never doubted their prayers and patience and love would yield some enlightenment—for all. We came into the world to learn. They had lived among wonders all their lives. (Hadn't they, for example, mastered their ugly senseless tempers?) They never doubted that some miracle would arrive.

Fortunately, George had two friends: John Ashley and Olga Doubkov. Ashley “covered” Lansing's incompetence at the mine by gradually assuming most of the functions of his superior and endeavored to furnish him wholesome occupation by associating him in the experiments and inventions. (At the trial these good offices were variously interpreted; it was charged that he was bent on usurping Lansing's position, and that in the experiments he made a systematic theft of Lansing's brilliant ideas.) There was little Ashley could do, however, to correct Lansing's method of “making a man” out of George. He did what he could. He managed to extract from the boy a succession of plans for his lifework—at twelve he wanted to invent flying machines; at thirteen he wanted to go to Africa to save the lions from extermination; at fourteen he wanted to join a circus. It was early in George's fifteenth year that an occasion presented itself that greatly advanced the friendship.

The Lansing children were subject to illness and accident. In the early fall of 1900 George suffered a succession of colds and sore throats. It was decided that his tonsils should be trimmed or removed. Lansing directed his wife to take the boy to Dr. Hunter in Fort Barry and pass the nights before and after the operation in the Farmer's Hotel there. Her daughters went with her, though Félicité spent the nights at the convent school.

John Ashley seldom left Coaltown, but on that Friday—as it happened—he had business in Fort Barry. The negotiation dragged on and required his remaining there overnight. He went to the railroad station and asked Jerry Bilham, the conductor, to tell Coaltown's stationmaster to inform Mrs. Ashley that he would not be home until the morrow. The Farmer's Hotel was full, but the great Mr. Corrigan arranged that a cot be set up for him in the pantry. Ashley did not see Mrs. Lansing or her son during the day, but he came upon Anne on the hotel porch and listened to a long self-important explanation of her presence in Fort Barry. Ashley had failed to bring sufficient pocket money to buy his dinner at the hotel; he went to a lunchroom and ordered a bowl of soup. By ten o'clock all were sleeping soundly except Eustacia Lansing and her son. George was tossing and babbling in his sleep. His mother rose, lit the gaslight, and spoke to him.

“George! George, dear! It's nothing. Hundreds of people have their tonsils taken out every month. You'll have forgotten all about it in a week. You won't have sore throats any more.”

“Is it almost morning? What time is it, Mama?”

She told herself it was the break in routine that was unsettling. George had not slept away from his own bed more than eight times in his life—he had been Roger's guest at “The Elms”; there had been some hunting trips with his father. She had not slept ten times away from “St. Kitts” since her arrival there. She talked of the ice cream the doctor had prescribed for him, of the improvement in his condition for athletics.

They had this secret. She would tell him about the most beautiful island in the world, about the blue sky and water, about how she ran a store when she was only a few years older than he was, about her large handsome laughing mother, fanning herself on the verandah, about her father in his beautiful white uniform, about the young men on the island who were always singing and serenading. She talked of these things with no one else. It was understood that she would someday take him there; he would take
her
there, in fact. George was devout. He wanted to go to the church; he wanted to kneel at the very spot where she had knelt. From time to time she spoke of his father's visit to St. Kitts, but George made no comment. He never mentioned his father. She sang a song in her
patois
and George fell asleep. She moved over to a large wicker chair by the window and looked down at the town square. All was dark.

“Dark as my life,” she thought, but caught herself short. “No! No! My life is hard but not dark. Something's coming. Something's unfolding. My mistake is going to be redeemed.” How could she wish her life to have been different, if that difference would remove—would annihilate—her children? “We
are
our lives. Everything is bound together. No smallest action can be thought other than it is.” She groped among the concepts of necessity and free will. Everything is mysterious, but how unendurable life would be without the mystery. She slipped to her knees and buried her face in her arms on the seat of the chair.

The moon rose.

Toward midnight George gave a loud cry and sprang up in his bed like a leaping fish. “No! No!”

“Sh, George, Mama's here.”

“Where am I?”

“We're at Fort Barry. Everything's all right, dear.”

George began to sob. He shook his head from side to side; he struck it against the bedstead. Anne awoke and chanted, “Crybaby! Sissy!” He refused a glass of water. He struck his mother's hand from his forehead. Half an hour later he was still weeping as from some bottomless despair. His mother paced to and fro, distraught. She thought of sending for Father Dillon. Suddenly she became aware of the sound of voices in the corridor—some guests were returning to their rooms, shepherded by the great Mr. Corrigan himself.

“Keep your voices down, gentlemen. There are a lot of people sleeping in the house . . . ? Joe! Joe! . . . ? Herb! . . . ? That's not your room. Come along, here . . . ? Lift your feet, Joe—that's right!”

Eustacia Lansing dressed and woke Anne. She told her to dress and go downstairs. “Tell Mr. Corrigan that your brother has an attack of nerves. Tell him to wake Mr. Ashley and ask Mr. Ashley to come here to talk to your brother.”

Anne enjoyed her mission and performed it ably. Ashley came to their room.

“It's nightmares, John. I can't do anything with him. Dr. Hunt's taking out his tonsils tomorrow.—Anne, be quiet and get into bed.”

Anne was kneeling on her mother's bed, hissing, “Sissy! Sissy!”

Ashley crossed the room and sat down beside her. He asked confidentially: “Why do you say that, Anne?”

“Boys don't cry.”

“I know. That's what Coaltown thinks.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“Coaltown's a very small place, Anne. There are millions of people who never heard of Coaltown. There are an awful lot of things that Coaltown doesn't know. I wouldn't like to think that you and Constance are just little Coaltown girls that don't know very much—just little country girls that only think what Coaltown thinks.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Ashley?”

“Didn't you ever hear that the biggest and strongest men cry sometimes?”

“No . . . ? Papa never cries. Papa says—”

“Abraham Lincoln cried. And King David cried. You know that. And we were just reading aloud the other night about how Achilles cried—you couldn't find a braver man than Achilles. The book said that great tears fell on his hands. Your brother's going to be a very strong man and sometimes he's going to cry.”

Anne was silent. George held his breath. Ashley took the chair by George and gestured to his mother, directing her to move away as far as possible. He spoke in a low voice.

“I know about bad dreams, George. I know all about them.—You don't like having your tonsils out tomorrow?”

“No. I don't care about that. It . . . ? isn't that.”

“Everybody laughs at dreams, but they can be very bad. And very real. I used to have them after I got this scar on my jaw. Can you see it? I got that from a pitchfork when I was haying. I was just about your age.—Can you remember your dream?”

“Not . . . ? all of it.”

“Nobody can hear us.”

“He was chasing me.”

“Who?”

“It was like a giant. He had a round knife like they cut high grass with.”

“A sickle or a scythe?”

“It was like a sickle.”

“Do you know who it was chasing you?”

“No, it was like a giant. He was laughing like it was a game, but . . . ?”

“You got away all right.”

“I don't want to go to sleep again. I turned around and I did something at him. And he . . . ? burst. It was awful, Mr. Ashley. It was all squashy under my feet, like maybe I killed him or something. I only wanted to stop him.”

Here George turned his head to the wall and lay trembling.

“I see. I see. Yes, it's a bad dream you had. No wonder you're shaken up. But in a way it's a good dream, too. A man has to defend himself. It's a growing-up dream, George.”

“Will he be there again, if I go to sleep?”

“Come to the window and look out. Look, the moon's just come up. See the Soldiers' Monument? See him there with his chin up? Men had to fight. They didn't want to fight and they didn't want to kill. Do you know any men who fought in the Civil War?”

“Yes, I know lots, Mr. Ashley: Mr. Killigrew at the depot and Dan May's grandfather, and, I think, Mr. Corcoran.”

“Yes, he was a drummer boy. Think of what they went through, George; and yet see how quiet it is down there. Listen! . . . ? Take some deep breaths of that air before you get back in bed. It's better than the air in Coaltown, I can tell you that!—One of the reasons you had a bad dream is because your throat's clogged up. It's a good thing that Dr. Hunter's going to get rid of that tomorrow.—George, why don't you ever work on a farm, summers, like my boy does? You're strong already, but that kind of work makes a man really strong. You know it's hard—hoeing and haying all day and milking and carrying middlings to the pigs. Now you'd better get back into bed.”