The Eighth Day (47 page)

Lansing had set out to found that greatest of all institutions—a God-fearing American home. He held that a husband and a father should be loved, feared, honored, and obeyed. What had gone wrong? His conduct was not above reproach—he knew that; but no red-blooded man's is. His father's hadn't been. In the conduct of affairs he knew himself to be intelligent, conscientious, and diligent. He conceded that he had no talent for details. His strength lay in vision and planning; one could always leave details to spiritless drones. Lansing was wretched, frightened, and bewildered.

During the trial Breckenridge Lansing's character emerged without blemish. Humans shield humans whose frailties do not threaten their property and whose virtues do not devaluate their own. Ashley was that alien body from another climate—from the future, perhaps—who, in all times and places, has been expelled.

In the world inhabited by the Lansings of Iowa and Coaltown, it was generally understood that no man is ever sick. Sickness among males ends at fifteen and begins again, among the less hardy, at seventy. This lent a fine irony to the daily greetings—“Well, Joe, how are you?” “Just bearing up, Herb; just creeping around.” When, therefore, in February, 1902, Breckenridge Lansing confessed to his wife that he wasn't feeling well, that his “food wasn't sitting good,” and that there was a “sort of burning and a sort of pinching” in his stomach, Eustacia realized the extent of his suffering at once. He refused at first to see Dr. Gillies and asked for Dr. Gridley. When Eustacia pointed out that he would be obliged to shout the details of his discomfort within the hearing of half Coaltown, he consented to receive Gillies, “that old horse doctor.” Eustacia was waiting on the front steps at the close of Dr. Gillies's visit.

“Mrs. Lansing, he doesn't want to tell me anything. Do you think he's feeling real pain?”

“Yes, I do.”

“He wouldn't even let me palp him for more than a minute. Told me I was fooling around in the wrong area. Gave me detailed orders about just where I should palp. I told him there was a possibility that he was very ill. I advised him to see Dr. Hunter in Fort Barry, or even to go to Chicago. He said he wouldn't put foot out of this house. Where's a desk? I want to write you some instructions.”

The doctor sat down and thought. Turning, he looked Eustacia in the eye. “I'm writing a list of questions about his symptoms. Send one of the children over to me every noon with a bulletin.—Mrs. Lansing, the whole town knows that your husband's refused to speak to me on the street for six years. That disqualifies me from operating on him or from being of much use. You should ask Dr. Hunter to come down and see him. The sooner the better. Does he get on well with Dr. Hunter?”

Eustacia raised her eyebrows.

“You have a hard time ahead, Mrs. Lansing. I'll do what I can.”

Lansing insisted that his bed be made up on the first floor in the “conservatory” off the dining room. The word “pain” was never mentioned in the house; there was much talk about whether he was comfortable or not. He subsisted on gruel and beef tea, though occasionally he bellowed for a steak. When he was uncomfortable he was given some drops of laudanum. For days at a time he appeared to recover. At the first sign of comfort he dressed and walked the length of the main street. John Ashley called every day and brought him a large sheaf of office bulletins to sign, thus enabling him to carry on admirably his duties at the mine.

The town followed Lansing's illness with great interest. During the trial the conviction lay at the back of the judge's and jurymen's minds that Ashley and Eustacia Lansing had for months been trying to poison the murdered man.

Night after night, night after night, Eustacia sat near him or stretched herself out on a sofa. He insisted that the kerosene lamp with its wide soothing translucent green shade remain alight until sunrise. He gave up all desire to sleep; he slept in the day. He wanted to talk. Silence oppressed him. There was always hope that in talk, talk, talk he could alter the past, conjure the future, and impose an estimable image of himself upon the present. At first there were some attempts at playing checkers or parchesi or at reading aloud from
Ben-Hur
, but the patient was too occupied with his thoughts to attend those interests. Outside the glass door opening on the lawn the owls hooted, harbingers of spring; on a still night they could hear the croaking of the young frogs in the pond. Under the green lampshade Eustacia sewed or, lying on the couch, stared at the ceiling. Often her fingers turned the beads under her long shawl.

Even a healthy man, awakened by accident at three in the morning becomes aware of his heart beating on toward its final exhaustion, of his lungs pulling his weight like a locomotive on a lonesome landscape resolutely carrying its load to the Pacific, to some ultimate discharging station. But Breckenridge Lansing, already frightened, must distract his mind in talk from those “pinchings and burnings.” Finally the sky lightened. There are few human ills for which the coming of day does not seem to bring an alleviation.

Night after night they talked. At times he tended toward the maudlin, but Eustacia would have nothing of it. She could handle his self-esteem roughly. She alternated severity and balm. There is a certain comfort in being reprimanded justly—but only at intervals and within limits. He seemed eager to confess to any shortcomings that were not essential.

Three in the morning (Easter, March 30, 1902):

“Stacey!”

“What, dear?”

“Do you have to do that damned sewing all the time?”

“Oh, you know us women. Sewing doesn't take up our whole attention. We can hear and see everything that's going on around us. What did you want to say?”

Silence.

“Stacey, sometimes I've said things to you I didn't mean. I didn't mean them, really.”

Silence.

“Well, say something. Don't just sit there like a dummy.”

“Yes, Breckenridge, sometimes you were a very stupid man.”

“What do you mean,
stupid
?”

“Well, I won't give you a big example. I'll give you a little one. Do you remember saying to me two nights ago, ‘You don't know what I feel, Stacey. You've never been sick'—do you remember that?”

“Yes. It's true. What's stupid about that?”

“You forget, Breckenridge, that I lost three children. I was in what you call ‘discomfort'—great ‘discomfort'—for twenty and even forty hours.”

Silence.

“I see what you mean. . . . ? I'm sorry, Stacey. Do you forgive me?”

“Yes, I forgive you.”

“Don't just
say
you forgive me.
Really
forgive me.”

“I do, Breckenridge. I do.”

“Stacey, will you call me Breck just once?”

“You know I don't like nicknames.”

“Well, I'm sick. Do me a favor. Call me Breck. When I get well you can call me anything you want.”

Eustacia was playing a game for high stakes. According to her lights, within such means as were at her disposal (
faute de mieux
, as she wryly told herself), she was preparing her husband for death. She was trying to assist a soul to birth—to being born into self-knowledge, contrition, and hope. This project was conducted under peculiar difficulties. Any word faintly savoring of edification threw Lansing into a rage—a blasphemous rage. He had been for a short time a student preparing himself to be a clergyman; he was able to scent edification from afar and possessed a wide vocabulary with which to sneer at it. In addition, these conversations were often overheard by a third person. For several years George had seldom entered or left the house by any of the doors on the first floor. He came and went by his window—from the boughs of trees, by spikes driven into the wall, by climbing the back porch and swinging along the eaves. It now became his custom to prowl about the house. His mother could hear his footsteps on the soft ground of a late spring thaw. George had been described as having “the face of an angry lynx”; he had also the soft pads. Eustacia had the hearing of the felines and knew when her son's ears were glued to the half-open window. Lansing's voice was often raised in anger; he hurled objects about. George was there to protect his mother.

Eustacia's project was not only difficult, but perhaps impossible.

Three in the morning (Tuesday, April 8):

Lansing awoke abruptly from a doze. “Stacey!”

“Yes, dear?”

“What's that you're doing?”

“I'm praying for you, Breck.”

Silence.

“What are you praying for—that I get better?”

“Yes. And there's a phrase in your Bible that I like: I'm praying that you be ‘made whole.'”

Silence.

“I bet you think I'm going to die.”

“You know very well I know nothing about such things. But, Breck, I think that you're really sick. I think you should go somewhere where you'd be better taken care of.”

“I won't go, Stacey. I won't. There aren't any horses better than you are. I'd go crazy in any other place.”

“But I'd be there, too.”

“They'd have some old hen in grey-and-white stripes. They wouldn't let you sit by me like this.”

“I wish I were an old hen in grey-and-white stripes. I have this fear all the time that I don't
know
enough.”

“Stacey, I love you. Can't you get that into your thick head: that I love you? I don't want to be off in some damned hospital where you'd only be allowed in for half an hour a day. Stacey, will you listen—just once—to what I say? I'd rather die with you near me than live forever and ever without you.”

Eustacia ground her fingernails into the arms of her chair. We came into the world to learn.

Lansing forbade his children to enter the room. They were not even permitted to greet him from the door. He was temporarily indisposed; he would see them when he recovered. He forbade Eustacia to report his illness to his father, to his sister, to his brother Fisher. His mother had died. He let Ashley know that a visit every other day was sufficient. One late afternoon Eustacia was called to the front door. Beata had brought a covered dish of her famous German chicken and noodles. Lansing was furious. Gifts of food were brought only to homes that contained an invalid.

Day after day, night after night. Eustacia seldom left the room. She noticed that her patient's dreams during the day differed from those that occupied his intermittent sleep at night. By day he dreamed of hunting. He shot animals. He even imagined himself to be leading troops in the Spanish War, to great effect. He shot Spaniards. The assassination of President McKinley in the previous year preyed upon his mind—he was alternately killer and victim. At night he wandered lost, in strange places, up and down stairs, in the interminable corridors of mines. He called upon his mother.

No one at “St. Kitts” slept soundly. George prowled. Eustacia came upon her daughters sleeping in the guest room, in the sewing room, on sofas, in armchairs. There was much making of cocoa in the early hours.

Two in the morning (Wednesday, April 16):

“Girls, bring your cups into the sitting room. There's something I want to talk to you about. I've looked everywhere for George. I don't know where he can be.”

Félicité and Anne sat on the floor at her feet. George suddenly made his appearance at the door and stood listening.

“
Mes très chers
, it may be some time before your father recovers his full health. We're going to do everything we can to make him comfortable, but we must think of ourselves, too. You know that vacant store on Main Street where Mr. Hicks used to sell hardware? I'm going to rent it. We're going to open a store of our own. We're going to take turns waiting on the customers.”

“Maman!”

“The window will be arranged by Félicité, who has the best taste in the world. It will be changed often. You haven't forgotten that I ran a store all by myself when I was seventeen. Anne's inherited that. She has a very good head for management and details. She'll be our best saleslady and cash girl.”

“Maman! . . . ? Ange!”

“There'll be things for George to do, too. I'll come to that in a minute.—What do young people do now after supper? They walk up and down Main Street just to pass the time. But the store windows are all dark. Besides, everybody knows what's in them. Félicité's beautiful window will be lighted until nine o'clock. One week the window will be for girls and women. I can see Félicité putting some velvet on the bottom, maybe in waves. There'll be red leather diaries with little locks on them and memory books and silks and wools. And wedding presents and birthday presents—card cases, scissors, and a thousand things. And books like those I sent to Chicago for—
Know Your Cat
and
Daisy's Trip to Paris
and
The Golden Treasury of Poetry.
”

“Maman!”

“But when people think that our store's only for girls, they'll get the surprise of their lives. There'll be a week for boys and men. That's where George can help us. Fishing rods and flies; a geologist's hammer and the surveyor's maps of Grimble and Kangaheela counties. George will lend us his collection of minerals and Félicité will arrange them so that you can spend an hour looking at them. There'll be books—
Snakes of the Central States, The Indian Tribes of the Mississippi Valley, Mushrooms and Toadstools
, the book about how to care for your dog, and
With Clive in India
and all the Henty books. And Roger Ashley will lend us his collection of Indian arrowheads. Don't you think the young people would look in that window—and buy things?”

Anne flung her arms about her mother's knees. “Oh,
Maman
, when can we start?”

“We'd have a lending library, of course, and a lot of things that have to do with art—crayons and watercolors and books about how to draw. And when we'd made some money I think we'd open another store and—guess!—put Miss Doubkov in it! So there'd be another window lighted at night. And she could ask Lily Ashley or Sophia to help her. But that's not all—”