The Eighth Day (46 page)

“I'll have to speak it when I go to Russia.”

“Finish your supper and we'll think about it.”

“I've thought about it already.”

Breckenridge Lansing was not told about these lessons. They were conducted in the linen room under the Illinois Tavern or in the Rainy Day House. Eustacia insisted on paying for them and Miss Doubkov accepted half the price offered her. Miss Doubkov had no experience of teaching languages, but she suspected that her pupil's progress was remarkable. He himself devised their form: he entered a hotel in St. Petersburg and engaged a room; he ordered a meal in a restaurant and, becoming a waiter, served it. In Moscow he bought a fur hat, a dog, a horse. He went to a theatre. He revisited the theatre by the “artists' entrance.” He put questions to the leading actors. He went to church and even learned some of the liturgy in Old Slavonic. He went to taverns and fell into conversation with young men of his own age (twenty-three and twenty-four!). He discussed good and bad government with them. He reminded them that Russia was the greatest country the world had ever seen. His progress between lessons astonished his teacher. (In Russian: “
Well, Olga Sergeievna, I take walks and I talk and I pretend I'm in Russia.”
) Miss Doubkov gave him the dictionary that her father had bought in Constantinople thirty-five years ago. She lent him her New Testament, which he read with his mother's French version. “Mama, it's like a different book in Russian. It's like it's more a man's book.” There came the day when he asked his teacher, in a low voice, to repeat those words which she had said to him in Russian—

“Which words, George, son of Breckenridge?”

“The first words I ever heard in Russian.”

She repeated them slowly, as best she could remember them. He needed no translation. To the impassioned will nothing is impossible. He was finding direction. His voice deepened. He was helpful about the house. He cleaned the eaves, hung out laundry lines, smoked out hornets' nests, dried the dishes. He was not only punctual at meals, but during his father's frequent absences he set out to replace him. He praised what was set before him. He inspirited the conversation. He had inherited his mother's gift of mimicry and told long stories about the schools from which he had been ejected. Particularly fine was his account of Dr. Kopping, a Protestant clergyman and director of the Pines Point Boys' Recreational and Educational Camp. Dr. Kopping, “just another boy himself at heart,” closed each day with a short talk about the council fire, inculcating the manly virtues. Anne would run around the table and throw herself at him. “George! George! Do the housemother at St. Regis's! Do Dr. Kopping again!” The virulence of these caricatures made his mother uneasy. She had reason to be. George did not mimic his father in her presence, nor in Félicité's, When they were out of the room, however, he regaled Anne with some astonishing portraits—her father killing birds and rabbits, her father exhausted after his hard day's work at the mines, her father “washing his hands” of George, her father fulsomely endearing himself to her, to “Papa's little angel.” In a very short time Anne doted on her brother; in a very short time she discovered that her father was ridiculous. Anne accepted correction from George. He seemed to know that little Russian princesses do not scream and stamp their feet, when it is time to go to bed. When they go to bed they make a curtsy to their mother and say, “Thank you, dear mother, for all that you have done for me.” They curtsy also to their older sisters. And if they have been very good, one or other of the princes, their brothers, carries them upstairs to bed in his arms and says a prayer over them in Old Slavonic. If George was planning to be an actor, he did not wait for the glitter of the footlights; he played the head of a noble household at “St. Kitts.”

All the Lansings were impassioned conversationalists; though Félicité's interventions were rare they were pondered. There was reading aloud; any scene from Molière or Shakespeare set in motion a long discussion. Night after night Eustacia despaired of getting them to bed at ten-thirty. It was Anne who benefited most from these hours of wide-ranging conversation. There was now a new Anne, maturing rapidly. She led her classes in school. She completed the overnight assignments in a mere quarter of an hour in order to take part in the evening's symposium. Occasionally Breckenridge Lansing returned at ten from some lodge meeting. On opening his front door he would be aware for a few seconds of the warmth and intellectual energy of this home life, and of the sudden silence introduced by his presence. One evening he admitted himself soundlessly and stood listening in the hall:

“
Maman
, Miss Doubkov says that Russian writers are the greatest writers that ever lived. And the greatest of them all was a Negro. Papa says that Negroes aren't even people and that it's no use teaching them to read and write.” (“
Chéri
, everyone can have his opinions.”) “Well, Papa's opinions are pretty silly most of the time.” (“George, I don't want you to talk about your father like that. Your father is—”) “His opinions! I don't care what he says about
me
, but when he says about
you
—” (“George! Talk about something else!”) “When he says about you that you haven't any more brains than what God gave a gopher—” (“That's just his joke.”) “It was a
BAD JOKE
. And when he broke that shell on the mantel that your mother sent you—” (“George, it was just a shell!”) “He
STAMPED
on it! It came from the place that you were
BORN
at!” (“The older we grow, the less we're attached to things, George.”) “Well, I'm attached to my pride,
Maman
—and to
YOUR
pride.”

Lansing did not risk eavesdropping a second time.

One of the reasons Eustacia did all she could to render these evenings engrossing (she cut clippings from periodicals; she sent to Chicago for books and for reproductions of paintings) was to keep George off the streets. George inside the walls of “St. Kitts” was a changed human being; outside them, he continued to infuriate the town. He was the “holy terror” and the Big Chief of the Mohicans. No amount of supplication on his mother's part could alter that. He listened to her with a stormy face, his arms folded, his gaze on the wall over her shoulder.

“
Maman
, I've got to have some fun. I'm sorry, but I've got to have some fun.”

Eustacia knew well that the outrages were conceived and executed with one sole purpose—to drive his father to distraction. He rejoiced in his father's contempt. He, too, seemed to be waiting for something—for his father to strike him, or to order him out of the house forever? Under the rain of his father's sneers and denunciations he stood with lowered eyes, motionless and with no shade of impertinence in his manner.

“Do you realize that you've brought disgrace on your mother and myself?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you realize that there's not
one
self-respecting person in this town who has a good word to say for you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why do you do it?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“I don't know, sir! Well, in September I'm sending you to a new school I've heard about where they don't stand for any nonsense.”

The Mohicans soon outgrew reversing road signs and tinkering with the town clock. They did little damage to health or property; they merely affronted decorum and right thinking. They staged complicated, well-rehearsed practical jokes that ridiculed banks, the laying of cornerstones, revivalist meetings. There was only one of the Mohicans' recreations that brought the Chief of Police to the door. It terrified Eustacia. The boys enjoyed riding “possum clancy.” Hoboes, by hundred and thousands, traveled about the country on freight trains. When a long train pulled into a railroad yard it often dropped a score of these passengers, like blackberries off a bough. When they found entrance to empty cars or lay on top of them or crouched on couplers, they were said to be riding “roost”; when they stretched out on the undersides of the cars, clutching or strapping themselves to the “riggers,” they were riding “possum clancy.” It was exciting and dangerous. George and his friends often traveled to Fort Barry or Summerville and back in a single night.

“George! Promise me never to ride those freight trains.”

“
Maman
, you know I took a vow never to make any promises.”

“For my sake! George, for
my
sake!”

“
Maman
, won't you let me give you just
one
hour of Russian lesson a week?”

“Oh,
chéri
, I couldn't learn Russian. When would I use it?”

“Well, when I'm in Russia and get settled down, you and the girls are coming over to live with me.”

“George!!—Who would take care of your father?”

She begged him to stay in one of those schools—at least six months! “I want you to have an education, George.”

“I'm better educated than the fellows in those schools. I know algebra and chemistry and history. I just don't like
examinations.
And I don't like sleeping in a room with three or eight or a hundred other people. They stink. And they're so babyish.—You're an education, Maman.”

“Oh, don't say a thing like that!”

“Papa went to college and he hasn't any more education than a flea.”

“Now, George! I won't have you saying such things. I won't have it.”

Eustacia had a greater concern: was George subject to “fits”? Was he, perhaps, “crazy”? She had no clear idea what “fits” were, nor did she know any marks by which to distinguish insanity. At the beginning of this century such afflictions and dreads were too shameful to discuss with anyone except one's family doctor, and then in undertones. But the Lansings' family doctor was extremely hard of hearing. Even if Eustacia had respected Dr. Gridley's skill, she could not have brought herself to shout the details of George's behavior. Years ago Breckenridge Lansing had quarreled with Dr. Gillies. Dr. Gillies had contradicted him with characteristic finality on a matter of medical knowledge. Lansing did not lightly brook contradiction. He had taken a year of premedical training in his youth. His father was the best pharmacist in the state of Iowa and Breckenridge had assisted him for over two years in the family drugstore. He knew more about medicine “in his little finger” than that old horse doctor had acquired in a lifetime of practice. He refused to greet Dr. Gillies on the street. He instructed Eustacia that henceforward they would consult Dr. Jabez Gridley, the doctor serving the mine's infirmary. Dr. Gridley was a superannuated “Poor John” employee, like so many others. In addition to being “deaf as a post,” his eyesight was failing. If you described your wound, burn, boil, or rash to him, he could occasionally be of service to you. Eustacia consulted her various household manuals—
A Home Book of First Aid
and
While Waiting for the Doctor
—and learned that the boy did not exhibit the classical symptoms of epilepsy. Moreover, she knew that he was so thoroughly an actor that it was difficult to distinguish between his abandoning himself to imaginative fantasies and his being out of his senses. He would beat with his fists on the floor and bay like a famished wolf; he would tear around the room in circles and dash up and down the stairs shouting “mahogany” or “begonia.” In his love of danger he would balance himself on the roof and gables of “St. Kitts” under the full moon, or would climb the taller butternut trees and swing from treetop to treetop at three in the morning. He would cross Old Quarry Pond with ropes when the ice was already cracking to the accompaniment of the most musical pings. The townspeople and even his subjugated Mohicans were in no doubt that he was “crazy as a galoot.” Eustacia had a high opinion of Dr. Gillies (whose wife was perfectly aware that he was “slavishly” admiring of Mrs. Lansing) and had frequently consulted him without her husband's knowledge. She paid for these visits—Félicité's anemia and Anne's ear-aches—out of her own pocket. She called on him now. Dr. Gillies consented to have a long talk with George. George gave a remarkable performance of intelligence, equilibrium, wit, and good manners. Dr. Gillies was not deceived.

“Mrs. Lansing, get that boy out of Coaltown or you'll have trouble.”

“But
how
, Doctor?”

“Give him forty dollars and tell him to go to San Francisco to earn a living. He'll be able to take care of himself very well. He's not crazy, Mrs. Lansing; he's just
caged.
You run a great risk when you cage a living human being. There'll be no fee for that consultation, Mrs. Lansing. I had a very interesting talk”—whereupon Dr. Gillies gave a long low laugh.

Eustacia shrank from fulfilling the doctor's recommendation, but held ready a purse containing forty dollars.

The measure of Breckenridge Lansing's unhappiness could be gauged by the extent of his boasting. He was the happiest man in the United States. It had taken twenty years of hard work and careful management, but—by golly!—those mines were producing as they had never produced before. A well-run loving American home—that's the ticket! There's nothing like returning at the end of the day to one's own family. His listeners lowered their eyes.

He was not only unhappy but frightened. He loved his clubs and lodges, but in spite of the fact that he was the first citizen in town he was no longer elected to their prominent offices. The men in Coaltown were divided into two classes—those who wore high starched collars even in the hottest weather, and those who did not. The former group did not frequent the taverns up the River Road. They were not addressed by their first names in Hattie's Hitching Post. They did not return at dawn from Jemmy's shack where, between card games, whole nights were spent in attempts to whip up bloody fights between roosters, dogs, cats, foxes, snakes, and drunken farmhands. If a respectable family man felt the need of a little diversion and dissipation, he arranged a business trip to St. Louis or Springfield or Chicago. Lansing did not at first understand some warnings that were thrown out to him by the governors of his clubs. Within the memory of man no member had ever been ejected from those august assemblies, but a limit to their patience could be foreseen.