The Eighth Day (56 page)

“Felicity, this is what you can do. Take that money from Papa's inventions. Give it to George and tell him to go out of the country—to China, to Africa. But first have him write a full confession. When he's been gone several months we'll send the confession to the State's Attorney.”

Félicité seized his hands. “Yes, Roger. Yes! Then your father can come back.”

Now she wept. “But I must hurry home. I'm so afraid that he'll disappear as suddenly as he came. Help me put out the fire. Anne! Anne! We're going. Thank you, Roger.”

At the same time, at the same hour, George Lansing was lying full length, face down, on the floor of Miss Doubkov's sitting room, his head toward the icons. Miss Doubkov was standing beside him reading in Old Slavonic the Prayer of Contrition.

He had told his story. When his panting for breath had prevented his continuing Miss Doubkov had bound a wet towel about his forehead. Now his exhaustion was such that he could barely repeat the words after her. When she had finished she leaned down and held a crucifix before him. He kissed it.

He rose. She led him to the desk by the window and put pen, ink, and paper before him. “Write down what I dictate to you:
‘I, George Sims Lansing, on the afternoon of May 4, 1902, shot and killed my father Breckenridge Lansing on the lawn behind our house. I had left town on the previous evening, but returned the next noon riding on the underside of a freight car. I hid in the woods. . . . ?'
”

While she was dictating she moved in and out of her four small rooms, collecting sums of money from various hiding places.

“Now address the envelope: ‘The State's Attorney, The State of Illinois. . . . ?' Now go into the bathroom and wash your face. Sit down in my bedroom until I call you.”

She wrote a letter and called him.

“You are taking the twelve-twenty train for Chicago. Go out by my back stairs. Take the path behind the courthouse. Don't get on the train at the station; jump on it when it starts to cross the bridge by the water tower. Go straight to Canada—to Halifax. Take a ship to St. Petersburg. When my father came to America from Paris we arrived in Halifax. There was a sort of Russian club there to welcome Russians and to help them make plans. Buy some workmen's clothes as soon as you can and roll in the dirt in them. You are from a small town in Alberta where my father worked for a while. Until you get to Russia you must act the part of a stupid, ignorant backwoods boy from that small Russian colony in Alberta. You know scarcely any English and your Russian's bad because you're stupid. . . . ? Don't get angry at anybody. Don't quarrel with anyone. Be an idiot. I have written a statement here. It says that you are an orphan . . . ? honest and industrious . . . ? a good Christian. You had a fever when you were a child that left you a little slow. The letter is written in English, but it is signed by the Pope of that small town in Alberta. When you reach Halifax look for Russians. Tell everybody you must go to Russia to find your grandmother. She is in Moscow. You do not know her address. There is her name. . . . ? I do not know how you will manage all this. I do not know where you will get papers, but we must leave some things to God. Here are two hundred dollars. . . . ? Now you have time only to write one or two sentences for your mother and sisters. I shall see your mother this afternoon. I shall tell her everything. Can I give her your promise that you will make your confession soon?”

“Yes, Olga Sergeievna.”

“When you get to Russia, write me. Write in Russian. Do not write to your mother for several years.” She continued in Russian: “God bless you, dear Ghyorghy. God fill your heart and soul with true repentance and free you of that great load of mortal sin. You have taken a life and you doubly owe a life to God and to His creation. The Mother of God is a source of consolation to all—particularly to us who are wanderers and exiles. May she make Herself known to you. . . . ? Go! Go, dear boy. . . . ?”

He bowed low over her hand. Without a word he left the house.

At four that afternoon Olga Sergeievna called at “St. Kitts.” Eustacia knew at once from the expression on her face that grave matters were in the air. She called Félicité, who stood beside her chair throughout the half hour.

Olga Sergeievna told them everything. She laid his short note on the table. She reported his solemn promise.

“
Chère Eustachie
, when I hear from George over there I shall send his story to Springfield.”

Eustacia pressed Félicité's hand. In a low voice she said, “Shouldn't you tell Beata now?”

“That's for you to decide. I should wait.”

Suddenly Eustacia's sad but not stricken face lit up with joy. “I shall tell it all to Roger tonight.”

Félicité said softly, “
Maman
, Roger knows almost all of it already. I had a talk with him about it this morning.”

Eustacia looked at her in wonder. “Olga,” she asked, “has he some money?”

“He has money. He has hope. He has courage. He has religion. He has intelligence. Go rest, Eustachie.”

Eustacia kissed her, murmuring, “And pray.”

Vista after vista . . . ? range beyond range.

The greatest Russian actor during the early years of this century first called attention to himself by behaving as a clown in the various taverns where he was engaged as waiter. He discovered an old derelict actor to work with
—
George speaking French; his associate, German. George played dreamy waiters, enthusiastic waiters, embittered waiters to his fastidious diner. He was particularly fine as an angry waiter, for he was said to have the face of an angry feline. George spilled soup on his guest, trod on his toes, found knives and forks in his pockets. The din was terrific; the room filled up. They were invited to cause consternation and havoc in more expensive restaurants. They were engaged as clowns in a pleasure park at the edge of the city. Posters appeared announcing
“G
HYORGHY
.”
The step to the theatre followed rapidly. He was engaged as a low comedian and was particularly admired as a player of old men. Before long he arrived at a position where he was able to select his own roles. He refused all invitations to leave Russia. Visitors from abroad reported that he was
—
in his own translations
—
the finest Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Falstaff, Malade lmaginaire, Tartuffe they had ever seen. Olga Sergeievna, writing Eustacia from Moscow in 1911, said that she had been enjoying the company of a friend, a remarkable young “opera singer.” They had talked much of their earlier lives in France
—
in Charbonville
—
remembering old days with laughter and tears and much love. Finally he wrote himself. He sent pictures of his children. The last letters from both were dated 1917. They seem to have disappeared in that turbulent time.

When Roger arrived at Porky's store at four o'clock he found Porky's cousin Stan (Standfast Rawley) in the street holding the bridles of two saddled horses. Stan was an old friend, even more taciturn than his cousin. He worked in Bilbow's livery stable. The young men shook hands. Stan disappeared. Porky and Roger mounted the horses and began the ascent.

The members of the Covenant Church in Herkomer's Knob lived in identical frame houses surrounding their tabernacle. This was one of the many communities that survived, like vestigial pockets, from the days of the Great Wilderness—moving westward from Virginia to Kentucky and Tennessee and beyond. Their isolation was a result not only of their religious beliefs, but of the large amount of Indian blood in their veins. Since on the old frontier it was white men who married or lived with Indian women—no full-blooded Indian ever married a white girl—it was the men's names that were transmitted, spelled as they were heard. Most of the families on the Knob were named Gorum, Rawley, Cobb, O'Hara, and Ratliff. For generations they engaged in hunting and trapping, but when game became scarce their young men descended into Coaltown, first to work in the railroad yard or in the livery stables. They were sober by custom and upbringing and were known to be extremely trustworthy and industrious. They served as janitors in the bank, the jail, the court house, and the hotel. Men of the open air and of free movement they could not adjust themselves to working in stores, nor would they go underground as miners. In school their boys and girls—with the sole exception of Porky—made no friends outside of their own number. They were unsmiling, joyless, dogged. The older men never came to town save to pay their taxes, coins in hand. The community was known to be poor. As one of the distinguished economists in the Illinois Tavern saloon put it, they were “mouse-farm poor.” The women made homespun garments and wove bedspreads. The men made utilitarian objects from the hides of horse and deer. They did not sell these products in Coaltown (it had become apparent to some that they detested Coaltown), but carried them a considerable distance to other markets. Some of their middle-aged women came down the hill and worked as “hired girls” in homes, but always with the understanding that they would be back on Herkomer's Knob by seven o'clock. There were many beehives on the Knob and much clover. The honey was sold elsewhere; the Ashleys and the Gillieses prized it as gifts. Their young people attended the town's schools through the eighth grade; their deportment was that of solemn little men and women. Their clothes of homespun were spotlessly clean and smelled of lye soap. Their given names were the source of much amusement. Some were taken from the Bible, but the larger number were from the two works that always accompanied the earliest adventurers from Virginia into the Wilderness:
Pilgrim's Progress
and Plutarch's
Lives.
There was many a Christian and a Good Works, and many a Lycurgus, an Epaminondas, a Solon, and an Aristides. The plantation owners in the East had drawn from Plutarch the tyrannicides and warriors—Cassius, Cincinnatus, Horatius, and Brutus; the members of the Covenant Church elected the sagacious. All the boys were exceptional athletes, but were forbidden by their elders to take part in the high school's Saturday afternoon games, which were conducted under the imagery of revenge, hatred, and extermination.

Throughout the seventies and eighties the members of the community were much derided as “screechers,” “jumpers,” and “holy rollers,” but gradually their honesty and the austerity of their lives began to command a puzzled respect. For years the young men had married girls from their own congregation and everyone on Herkomer's Knob was soon many times his own cousin. The dangers resulting from this practice were brought to their attention in the middle sixties. Dr. Gillies's predecessor—elected, as Dr. Gillies was later, to be the community's physician—explained to them the deleterious consequences of consanguineous marriage. The Elders listened to him, impassive but astonished. Fortunately, Dr. Winsted was an admirable lecturer. Thereafter it became the custom for certain elders to journey eastward visiting churches allied to their own. From these trips they brought back brides and grooms for their young people, without relinquishing any of their own. Dr. Gillies presumed, without knowing, that some money was exchanged during these negotiations.

Rumors persisted, however, that the sobriety of the congregation on Herkomer's Knob was not all that it appeared to be. It was said that their Sunday-evening services culminated in leaping and shouting and “speaking in tongues”—“downright orggies,” as the eminent moral philosophers in the Illinois Tavern saloon called them. As no outsider had been within fifty yards of the tabernacle for longer than three minutes this description could not be confirmed.

Porky left Roger before his grandfather's house, leading away the horses.

The Deacon was sitting in a rocking chair on his narrow front porch. A blanket was spread across his knees. His skin was very brown, his eyes were like his grandson's of a black without luster. The faces of Indians show little change between thirty and seventy.

“Forgive me for not getting up, Mr. Ashley,” he said, indicating by a gesture that Roger was to sit in the straight chair beside him.

He turned and looked long at his guest. Roger felt a prompting of awe, then of affection. He had never known a grandfather. At last the Deacon spoke:

“Did you know that your father came to the help of our Covenant Church when it needed help?”

“No, Deacon,” said Roger with surprise.

There fell one of the long Indian pauses to which Roger was accustomed. They were like wholesome breathing.

“You must have been about eleven years old at the time. Our church then stood over yonder on that steep slope. Come spring there was a week of solid rain. There were mud slides all over the mountain. One night, in the middle of the night, the church rolled down into the valley. It turned over many times and broke up like kindling.” Another long pause. “The next week, soon as the roads were fit to travel, your father drove up here. He gave the elders one hundred and fifty dollars.” Pause. “It was a shake more than he could afford. You know that your father was not a rich man?”

“I've only come to realize that these last years, Deacon. At home Father never talked about money.”

“We paid him back slowly, now a little, then a little; but every cent of the money we gave him he used in ways to help our children. Your father had eyes wide open, Mr. Ashley. Did you know it was your father who sent Aristides to Springfield to learn the shoemaking trade?”

“No, Deacon.”

“Your father's mouth wasn't wide open, like his eyes were.”

Long pause.

“To the day he brought us that money not one of us older ones had exchanged a word with him. But he knew all our young ones. Your father had a feeling for young ones. Young ones appreciate it when it's someone not in their own family. We had been watching him and when he brought us that money we knew that he had been watching us.” Pause. “Can you tell me what your father's religious views were?”