The Eighth Day (3 page)

An additional odd fact about the Ashleys came to light during the trial: no relative of either John or Beata arrived in town to aid or comfort them.

In time the story entered legend and was retold more and more incorrectly. It was said that some thugs from New York had held up the train; they had been paid a thousand dollars each by Ashley's lady love, the widow of the man he murdered. Or that Ashley, with the help of his son Roger, had shot his way out of a posse of eleven men. Even after the State's Attorney's office had exonerated John Ashley, there were many people to be found who would narrow their eyes and say knowingly: “There was a lot
behind
that affair that never came to light.” The Ashley children and the Lansing children left Coaltown, one by one. Then first Mrs. Ashley, then Mrs. Lansing, moved to the Pacific Coast. It seemed as though time were gradually expunging the whole unhappy story as it had expunged so many others. But no!

About nine years later people began talking about the Ashley Case again. Newspapermen, ordinary citizens, even scientists took to visiting the periodical rooms in libraries to read the yellowing files of old newspapers. People were more and more interested in the “Ashley children”—each so distinguished in a different life-work. Everyone was interested in the “Ashley children” except the “Ashley children” themselves. They were the object of that particularly clamorous form of celebrity that surrounds those who are both ridiculed and admired, adored and hated. They were rendered increasingly conspicuous because they had called attention to themselves at so early an age and because they were vaguely associated with a background of tragedy and disgrace. It was generally recognized that they possessed a number of traits in common. Though only those who had known them in their early Coaltown years—Dr. Gillies, Eustacia Lansing, Olga Doubkov—knew the extent to which these were inherited from their parents, particularly from their father. They were without any competitive sense with its concomitants of envy and retaliation, though Lily and Roger were engaged in dog-eat-dog professions. They were without self-consciousness, had no deference whatever toward the opinion of others, and were without fear—though Constance spent over two years in jail, in six arrests in four countries, and Roger was burned in effigy at home and abroad. Lily and Constance had no vanity though they were among the most beautiful women of their time. All were without a sense of humor, though with the years they acquired a trenchancy of speech that resembled wit and were widely quoted. They were not self-regarding. Some who knew them best described them as being “abstract.” No wonder they puzzled their contemporaries and were variously charged with being ruthless, self-seeking, stony-hearted, hypocritical, and athirst for publicity. They would perhaps have aroused an even stronger antagonism had there not been something absurd about them, too—naïve, didactic, “small town.” All had big protruding ears (“swinging barn doors”) and big feet—Heaven's gifts to caricaturists. When Constance—on her endless crusades, “Votes for Women,” “Refuges for Destitute Children,” “Rights of Married Women”—climbed the steps of a platform (she was particularly loved in India and Japan) gales of laughter would sweep the multitude; she never could understand why.

So it was that as early as 1910 and 1911 people began to study the records of the Ashley Case and to ask questions—frivolous or thoughtful questions—about John and Beata Ashley and their children, about Coaltown, about those old teasers Heredity and Environment, about gifts and talents, and destiny and chance.

This John Ashley—what was there in
him
(as in some hero in those old plays of the Greeks) that brought down upon him so mixed a portion of fate: unmerited punishment, a “miraculous” rescue, exile, and an illustrious progeny?

What was there in the ancestry and later in the home life of the Ashleys that fostered this energy of mind and spirit?

What was there in this Kangaheela Valley as geographical matrix, as spiritual climate, to shape such exceptional men and women?

Was there a connection between the catastrophe that befell both houses and these later developments? Are humiliation, injustice, suffering, destitution, and ostracism—are they blessings?

Nothing is more interesting than the inquiry as to how creativity operates in anyone, in everyone: mind, propelled by passion, imposing itself, building and unbuilding; mind—the latest-appearing manifestation of life—expressing itself in statesman and criminal, in poet and banker, in street cleaner and housewife, in father and mother—establishing order or spreading havoc; mind—condensing its energy in groups and nations, rising to an incandescence and then ebbing away exhausted; mind—enslaving and massacring or diffusing justice and beauty:

Pallas Athene's Athens, like a lighthouse on a hill, sending forth beams that still illuminate men in council;

Palestine, for a thousand years, like a geyser in the sand, producing genius after genius, and soon there will be no one on earth who has not been affected by them.

Is there more and more of it, or less and less?

Is the brain neutral between destruction and beneficence?

Is it possible that there will someday be a “spiritualization” of the human animal?

It is absurd to compare our children of the Kangaheela Valley to the august examples of good and evil action I have referred to above (already in the middle of this century they are largely forgotten), but:

They are near,

They are accessible to our indiscreet observation.

The central portion of Coaltown is long and narrow, lying between two steep bluffs. Since its main street runs north to southeast, it receives little direct sunlight. Many of the citizens seldom see a sunrise or a sunset or more than a fragment of a constellation. At the northern end are the depot, the town hall, the courthouse, the Illinois Tavern, and the Ashley house, built long ago by Airlee MacGregor and called “The Elms”; at the southern end are the Memorial Park with its statue of a Union soldier, the cemetery, and the Breckenridge Lansing house, “St. Kitts”—named after the island in the Caribbean on which Eustacia Lansing was born. These two houses are the only ones in Coaltown possessing sufficient level space about them to be described as having “grounds.” An unhappy stream, the Kangaheela, flows through the valley on the eastern side of the main street; it widens into ponds behind both “The Elms” and “St. Kitts.” The town is larger than it appears to be. Since its center is confined within a narrow valley, the homes of many of its citizens are perched on the surrounding hills or line the roads that lead north and south. The miners live in communities of their own on Bluebell Ridge and Grimble Mountain. They have their company stores, their schools, and their churches. They seldom descend into town. Coaltown had expanded and shrunk several times during the nineteenth century. The mines had once given employment to as many as three thousand men and several hundred children. Waves of immigrants had settled briefly in the region and moved on—hunters and trappers, religious sects, miners from Silesia, and entire farming communities in search of good land. There were not a few abandoned churches and schoolhouses and cemeteries in the nearby hills and along the River Road. Dr. Gillies estimated that a hundred thousand persons had lived in the two counties; learning of the great Indian burial grounds near Goshen and Penniwick, he raised his figure.

There must have been a great shallow lake here to have produced all that sandstone, but the land rose and most of the water flowed off into the Ohio and the Mississippi. There must have been great forests to have produced all that coal and centuries of earthquakes to have lifted the hills and folded them over the forests like pancakes over jelly. The great cumbersome reptiles were unable to waddle away in time and left their imprints in stone—you can see them in the museum at Fort Barry. What stretches of time are required to complete the procession of a marsh to a forest. The professors have drawn up the time plan: so much for the grasses to furnish humus for the bushes; so much for the bushes to accommodate the trees; so much for the young of the oak family to take root under the grateful shade of the wild cherry and the maple, and to supplant them; so much for the white oak to replace the red; so much for the majestic entrance of the beech family, which has been waiting for its propitious hour—the war of the saplings, so to speak. The internecine warfare of the plants was joined by that of the animals. The blat of the deer struck terror in the forest as the great cats sank their teeth in the jugular vein; the hawk bore skyward the snake that held a fieldmouse in its jaws.

Then man came.

One of the finest “turtle mounds” in all the Algonquin region is near Coaltown, in Goshen, and there are three superb “snake mounds” to the north. In our time any boy with spirit in him had his collection of Indian arrowheads, pestles, and axes. The professors disagree as to the reason for the several massacres, for these were notably peace-loving tribes. One scholar attributes them to the custom of exogamic marriage—raids on the tribes of other totems in order to steal brides for their young braves. Another, however, holds that these aggressions were prompted by economic needs; the Bleu Barrés had depleted the game within their territory and were driven to encroach upon the Kangaheelas' land. Whatever the reason, an examination of the skeletons in the various necropolises reveals an appalling amount of mayhem.

In 1907, long after these tribes were thought to be extinct, a wandering ethnologist came upon a small community of Kangaheelas living and coughing in shanties at Gilchrist's Ferry on the Mississippi, sixty miles west of Coaltown. It was hard to understand how they lived; a few sold ill-made moccasins, pipes, arrows, and beadwork from roadside stands. One night, for whiskey, an old man told the story of his people. They were the envy of the other nations for the elegance of their dress, the splendor of their dances (Kangaheela means “sacred dance floor”), their wisdom, and for their proficiency in divination. Every male from his eighteenth year could repeat without mistake the Book of Beginnings and Endings, a recital that filled two nights and days interrupted by dances. The Kangaheelas were famous for their hospitality; places were reserved for guests from the other nations who may have understood a portion of the text. The council fire lit up the faces of thousands seated about the sacred dance floor. Glorious was the first night—the story of creation with its exhausting account of the warfare between the sun and darkness. This was followed by an account of the birth of the first man from the All-Father's nostrils—the first Kangaheela. A morning was given over to a catalogue of the laws and tabus he had instituted—matter so old that at times the words were unintelligible and the intention unclear. By noon the reciter entered upon the chronicle and genealogy of heroes and traitors—eight hours long. Just before the second midnight there was delivered the Book of Hard Prophecies given to us by the All-Father, three hours of humiliation and bitterness. The sins of men had turned the beauty of the earth into a midden. Brother had slain brother. The sacred duty of generation had been made a sport of the unthinking. The All-Father carries in His heart all the nations of the forest, but they will creep like the snake; their numbers will be reduced; the rejoicing at the birth of a child will be feigned.

There followed a long silence, broken at last by drumbeats and shouting. This was the Dance of the Kangaheela, the heart of the flint, dear to the All-Father as His eye. This is the dance which has been so widely copied. Even the Saysays of Michigan have been invited to perform it in their debased and trumpery version at world's fairs—admission: fifty cents; children a quarter. At the conclusion of the dance there was another silence—but all expectation, all held breath. The sachem seemed to descend into the furthest reaches of his body; he collected himself; he rose. This was the Book of Promises. Who can describe the consolation of that great song? The aged forgot their incommodities; to boys and girls it made clear why they were born and why the universe was set in motion. There are many peoples on the earth—more men than there are leaves in the forest—but He has singled out the Kangaheelas from among them. He will return. Let them
BLAZE THE TRAIL
against that day. The race of men will be saved by a few.

So much for the Indians. The professors estimate that there were never more than three thousand Kangaheelas alive at one time.

The white men came. They brought their account of the creation, their name for the All-Father, their laws and tabus, their catalogue of heroes and traitors, their burden of reproach, their hopes of a golden age. There was very little dancing, but a good deal of music, sacred and profane. They brought, too, a speculative turn of mind, unknown to the red man; its product was loosely referred to as philosophy. All the citizens, young and old, occasionally troubled their heads with questions about why are human beings alive and what's the sense of living and dying—what Dr. Gillies called “the four-o'clock-in-the-morning questions.” Dr. Gillies was Coaltown's most articulate and exasperating philosopher. In flat contradiction to the Bible he believed that the earth had been millions of years in the making and that Man was descended from you-know-what. Moreover, he talked of serious things in a way that left his listeners puzzled as to whether he was joking or not. A choice selection of the town's citizens was to remember for a long time an occasion when Dr. Gillies's speculative turn of mind was given a free rein.

It was on a New Year's Eve, but not just an ordinary New Year's Eve: it was December 31, 1899—the eve of a new century. A large group was gathered in front of the courthouse waiting for the clock to strike. There was a mood of exaltation in the crowd, as though it expected the heavens to open. The twentieth century was to be the greatest century the world had ever known. Man would fly; tuberculosis, diphtheria, and cancer would be eradicated; there would be no more wars. The country, the state, and the very town in which they lived were to play large and solemn roles in this new era. When the clock struck all the women and some of the men were weeping. Suddenly, they burst out singing, not “Auld Lang Syne,” but “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Soon they were throwing their arms about one another; they were kissing—an unheard-of demonstration. Breckenridge Lansing and Olga Sergeievna Doubkov—who hated one another—kissed; John Ashley and Eustacia Lansing—who loved one another—kissed, for the only time in their lives, and evasively. (Beata Ashley avoided gatherings; she was sitting beside the tall grandfather's clock at “The Elms,” surrounded by her three daughters, Lily, Sophia, and Constance.) Roger Ashley, fourteen years and fifty-one weeks old, kissed Félicité Lansing, to whom he would be married nine years later. George Lansing, fifteen, the town's “holy terror,” stricken dumb with awe at the portentousness of the occasion and by the behavior of the grownups, hid behind his mother. (Great artists tend to be ebullient in gloomy company and subdued in the midst of elation.) Finally the crowd dispersed; about twenty lingered under the great clock, seeking some further expression of an emotion that was giving place to reflection and questioning. They went into the Tavern in order—as they said—to drink something hot. The young girls were sent to their homes. The group entered the bar wherein no woman had ever been admitted and presumably would not be admitted again for a hundred years. They went into the back room. Mugs of hot milk, hot grog, and “Sally Croker” (spiced crabapples floating in hot cider) were passed around by the great Mr. Sorbey himself.