“Quick! Quick! Maman! Quick, let me try it.”
People began to say that Eustacia was working too hard at the store. She was beginning to look old. She would be an old maid. Her sisters were serenaded. Marjolaine was engaged to be married by Christmas.
Breckenridge Lansing had not been three days on the island of St. Kitts when suddenly Eustacia Sims regained all her lost beauty between a Tuesday and a Wednesday.
Breckenridge Lansing was good at the start of everything he started. He went from island to island organizing the delivery of bay oil and rum. Everywhere he met with success. For him barrels and carboys and kegs rolled from plantation warehouses and were stamped with the address of his company’s laboratories in Jelinek, New Jersey. Entertainments were improvised for him. There were dances by candlelight in the courtyards of great estates. He was taken hunting. Mothers bedecked their daughters for him. Men soon tired of his company. He had a number of the likable traits of a boy, but these men were not accustomed to the conversation of boys. Among the women he won all hearts, including that of Eustacia Sims.
For years, thereafter, Eustacia was to ask herself, tormentedly: how? why?
One morning in early December, years before Lansing’s visit, the citizens of Basseterre lifted their eyes to behold a great fourmasted schooner gliding into the port. On each yard a dozen youths were standing, dressed in white, their arms outspread. This was a strange apparition, but what followed was no less spectacular. The training ship Gdynia of the Polish navy was making a tour of the world. It carried two hundred midshipmen between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. A people with dark hair and dark eyes, like these islanders, assume that their coloring—together with all the characteristics that accompany it—is human nature itself, is Man. It has no secrets from them. They have resigned themselves to it—perfidious, self-advertising, backsliding. But lo! the two hundred midshipmen and their officers came ashore bringing with them the wonder of another Man—the vulnerable candor of blue eyes, the promise of innocence invested in honey-colored hair. When Gregory the Great first saw British slaves in the market place of Rome, he exclaimed, “Not Angles but Angels.” The fourmaster Gdynia continued its journey around the world, but another Gdynia floated, white sails furling, through the imaginations of the island women, a ship manned by incorruptible knights of rose and gold, with cerulean eyes.
Dr. Gillies, who worried ideas as a dog worries old bones, used to say: “Nature’s trying to get rid of extremes. There was too much dispersion in the last million million years. I see in the paper how there aren’t so many blondes left in France; they have to go to Sweden and England to fill those girly-girly shows. We’ll all be brown-haired soon. The churches in Russia are hard put to it to find more basses that can make the chandeliers rock, and in Berlin there’s an awful dearth of tenors. We’ll all be baritones from now on. Nobody’11 be tall or short or dark or light. Nature can’t stand extremes. She’s throwing opposites into each other’s arms to hurry the business. The Bible says that ultimately—when the golden age comes—the lion will lie down with the lamb. I see it coming.”
“Charles, stop it!”
“The violent man will be attracted by the gentle and prudent girl. The owl will lie down with the petrel. Ineffective somnolent wisdom will couple with stormy vitality. Eggs, eggs, interesting eggs. Look at you and me, Cora!”
“Oh, go along with you.”
“Darwin’s never tired of showing us how nature selected types for adaptation and survival.”
“I won’t have that man mentioned in my house, Charles!”
“Well, maybe NATURE after hundreds of millions of years has begun selecting for intelligence and mind and spirit. Maybe NATURE is moving into a new era. Breed out the stupid; breed in the wise. Maybe that’s why Stacey married Breck. NATURE commanded it. She wanted some interesting babies for her new idea.—We keep on saying that we ‘live our lives.’ Shucks; Life lives us.”
“That’s bad grammar.”
Breckenridge Lansing had the commonplace face of an Iowa druggist’s assistant, but his eyes were of a light cornflower blue and hair was of a silver gold. To the business men of the Antilles he represented fair dealing; to Eustacia Sims he gave promise of children like those that hover among the clouds in altar paintings.
The office in New York was pleased with Lansing’s work. He returned to the States, teeming with projects and ideas. He adroitly blocked any suggestion that he return to the Caribbean. He knew already that he was one who could not repeat a success. He was sent to the laboratories in New Jersey. He leaned over the steaming vats, half closed his eyes and murmured “hmm,” judiciously. He picked up a smattering of ideas concerning the processes from the men about him. He submitted some notions for improvement, but his first reception had begun to wear thin. There are certain by-products of coal tar that are put to similar uses through similar processes. The company sent him to Pittsburgh to explore the possibilities of combined research and combined patents. The Pittsburgh company was struck with admiration for his intelligence and energy (“Best young man we’ve seen in a long time,” . . . ? “bright as a penny”) and offered him a position. He accepted promptly. He liked change. There were good card-playing fellows everywhere; there were animals to be shot everywhere; the kind of women he liked liked him and they could be found everywhere. Before he moved to Pittsburgh, he returned to Basseterre and married Eustacia Sims. The charming young couple spent only a year in Pittsburgh. Lansing was sent, with many a congratulatory handshake, to the “Poor John” mines in Coaltown, Illinois.
Eustacia Sims on the island spent some agonizing hours in her church. She was marrying outside her faith. But several events in the town during those last months seemed to confirm her resolve. They extended her knowledge of what could be expected by women married to a dark-haired, dark-eyed male. She sold the larger part of her trousseau; she put her hand in the store’s till and withdrew what she thought was due her. Lansing never knew that she had over a thousand dollars concealed in the back of her grandmother’s mirror and in the seams of her clothing. Some doubt might be entertained as to whether Eustacia Sims was ever married, truly married. She bound herself by vows in three ceremonies—one in the Queen’s registry office, one in a Baptist church, and one in a church of her own faith. They were all crowded into three days, because Lansing must return to his position in Pittsburgh. The only ceremony that meant anything to her was performed in a little church on the farther side of the island. She was married by an uncle who loved her dearly. He stretched the rite as far as it could go. (Lansing had given his promise that he would receive “instruction” at the earliest possible moment.) Eustacia did not notice—or, perhaps, did not choose to notice—certain lacunae in the ceremony. She certainly heard a nuptial blessing. Lansing twice placed a wedding ring on her finger. He had bought it in New York, but unfortunately on the eve of leaving that harbor he had lost forty dollars in a card game among strangers. Eustacia—bright-eyed saleswoman that she was—knew at once that the ring was of plated brass. She dipped into her own savings and replaced it with one of purest gold.
They were very popular on the ship that carried them to New York—he for his wit, she for her beauty. (Her wit was as remarkable as her beauty, but she lost it within three days; it returned like a famished dog, eight years later.) On the seventh and last night the captain raised his glass to the most attractive couple he had ever had the privilege of conveying. The passengers rose from their chairs and shouted.
Eustacia had the sensation of climbing mountain after mountain of despair. She could perhaps become accustomed to the discovery that he was obsequious to wealth and office—a trait she had fled from in her father; that he browbeat servants—a trait that she had fled from in her mother; that he was stingy in small things and spendthrift in large. Perhaps the thing that most affronted her was the constant play in his fancy with assassination. On the deck, in the dining saloon he aimed imaginary guns at his fellow passengers: “Click! Got �
��em where the camel got the needle!” “Got to raise my sights. There! Sorry, madam! Goodnight!” “Wait till the old giraffe comes round again.”
“But, Breckenridge, let them live.”
“All right, Stacey, if you say so, honey. Just one more for the sharks.”
He was silent only in sleep. It is the privilege of a bridegroom to introduce a sheltered girl to a store of witty anecdotes that has hitherto been closed to her. There is a small proportion of jokes about sexual relations that does not conceal—like a bludgeon in a bouquet—an aggressive contempt for woman. Breckenridge Lansing may have heard some of these, but his memory was not able to retain them.
The attractive young couple disembarked in New York on St. Valentine’s Day, 1878. Eustacia had never seen snow; she had never felt the cold. As soon as she was able she stumbled through the snowdrifts to a church of her faith. Toward the end of the hour on her knees she assumed the yoke as punishment for her disobedience. She had made a mistake, but she trusted that the sacrament of marriage would, in some unforseeable way, support her.
They went on to Pittsburgh and from Pittsburgh to Coaltown. Neither place could boast a salubrious climate—least of all for a daughter of sun and sea. They lost three children. We have seen how Lansing readily let the reins of administration pass first to Miss Thoms, then to Ashley. But every man must establish some area in his life where he is a success. He was a success in clubs and lodges; he was a great success in those taverns up the River Road where his laughter, stories, and horseplay reanimated a company that was not always joyous. Several times a week he drove his team home as the sun rose. Staggering, he released his horses to the croquet lawn. It was not necessary for him to climb any stairs; he could slip into bed in an abandoned playroom on the first floor. He released his horses to the croquet lawn—an all but unimaginable example of bad husbandry—not because he was drunk, but because he was tired. He was exhausted with that multiplication of fatigue that follows exertions spent—above a ground bass of self-doubt and despair—in search of pleasure. Eustacia early learned that she had been spared one burden—her husband was not a drinking man. Alcohol disagreed with him. To Breckenridge Lansing this was a deep mortification, for heavy drinking played a large part in the image he had received in childhood of what is required of a man. Nevertheless, he drank and talked in large terms about his drinking. He had learned all the devices of concealment. He emptied his glass in flower pots and spittoons; he exchanged his full glasses for half-filled glasses around the table. He even carried a goose feather with which, apart, he could empty his stomach.
Lansing was proud of his wife—more than that, he had fallen obscurely in love with her; but he was afraid of her. She managed the house and his income in exemplary fashion. She dispensed with a “hired girl” and employed an occasional cleaning woman. This was much to her husband’s indignation; a self-respecting householder provided his wife with “help.” Eustacia’s reason was that she did not wish the often stormy scenes at “St. Kitts” to be reported to Coaltown. She invested his money; she advised him in many matters; she wrote his speeches for lodge meetings and for Fourth of July celebrations. He was the foremost man in town. It was hard enough for him that Eustacia was always right; it was harder that she never alluded to her endowments; she never crowed. He loved her, but he shrank from seeing himself reflected in her eyes. On her part, she learned to endure everything in him except the failings of her father. There are few things so conducive to despair as seeing the recurrence of weaknesses in those close to you; it enables you to read the future. Her father had been indolent. She begged Breckenridge to return to the New York office; she offered him the store in Basseterre. She never descended to vituperation. The violent quarrels did not begin until she saw the way in which Breckenridge chose to bring up their son George.
The John Ashleys arrived in Coaltown in 1885. They bought the house that was thought to be haunted by the long tragedy of the Airlee MacGregors.
The Lansings lived rent free, in the house assigned to the managing director of the mines. It was of blackened red brick, without verandahs, and stood among mournful yews and cedars. Behind it a wide lawn, edged with great butternut trees, led down to the pond. Until Lansing christened it “St. Kitts,” it was known in town after the name of his predecessor as the “Cayley Debevoise” house. The Debevoises, philoprogenitive and childlike themselves, lived in the happy tumult of their eleven children—six of their own and five nephews and nieces they had adopted The rugs were in tatters, the chairs unsteady; some of the windows were sealed with brown paper for there was indoor catchball on rainy days. There was no dining room at all. Since they ate in the kitchen, the dining table was in the way of perpetual games and had been moved outdoors under the grape arbor. The clocks had broken down. The railings on the front and back porches were left unmended. Why mend them when there are always at least three children between nine and twelve? Little Nicholas and little Philippina were dressed in clothes that had been successively worn by at least three brothers or sisters or cousins. Happy Debevoises, where are you now?
From the first, Lansing admired John Ashley and imitated him, stumblingly. He went so far as to pretend that he, too, was a happily married man. Society would have got nowhere without those imitations of order and decorum that pass under the names of snobbery and hypocrisy. Ashley converted his Rainy Day House into a laboratory for experiment and invention. Lansing built a Rainy Day House behind “St. Kitts” and revived his interest in “snake oils.” Perhaps it was the influence of the Debevoises, perhaps the example of the Ashleys, that enabled Eustacia to bear a child that lived, then another, then a third. The Lansings were older than the Ashleys, but their children were closely of an age: Félicité Marjolaine Dupuy Lansing (she was born on St. Felix’s Day; the Iowa Lansing names had been carried to Heaven by the dead infants) and Lily Scolastica Ashley; George Sims Lansing and Roger Berwyn Ashley; then Sophia alone; then Anne Lansing and Constance Ashley. Eustacia Lansing carried well her torch of hypocrisy or whatever it was. In public—at the Mayor’s picnic, on the front bench at the Memorial Day exercises—she played the proud and devoted wife. Creole beauty is short-lived. By the time the Ashleys arrived in Coaltown Eustacia’s tea-colored complexion had turned a less delicate hue; her features had lost much of their doelike softness; she was decidedly plump. Nevertheless, everyone in Coaltown, from Dr. Gillies to the boy who shined shoes at the Tavern, knew that the town could boast two handsome and unusual women. Mrs. Ashley was tall and fair; Mrs. Lansing was short and dark. Mrs. Ashley—child of the ear as a German—had no talent for dress, but a magical speaking voice, and she moved like a queen; Mrs. Lansing—child of the eye as a Latin—was mistress of color and design, though her voice cut like a parrot’s and her gait lacked grace. Mrs. Ashley was serene and slow to speak; Mrs. Lansing was abrupt and voluble. Mrs. Ashley had little humor and less wit; Mrs. Lansing ransacked two languages and a dialect for brilliant and pungent mots and was a devastating mimic. For almost twenty years these ladies were in and out of one another’s house, as were their children. They got on well together without one vibration of sympathy. Beata Ashley lacked the imagination or freedom of attention to penetrate the older woman’s misery. (John Ashley was well aware of it, but did not speak.) One art they shared in common: both were incomparable cooks; one condition: both were far removed from the environment that had shaped their early lives.
For these two families the first ten years went by without remarkable event: pregnancies, diapers, and croup; measles and falling out of trees; birthday parties, dolls, stamp collections, and whooping cough. George was caught stealing Roger’s three-sen stamp; Roger had his mouth washed out with soap and water for saying “hell.” Félicité, who aspired to be a nun, was discovered sleeping on the floor in emulation of some saint; Constance refused to speak to her best friend Anne for a week. You know all that.
In Coaltown the principal meal, weekdays, was at noon. Supper was at six and consisted of “lefto
vers.” No one invited friends in to a meal, with one exception: church members, in turn, invited their minister and his family to Sunday dinner. Relatives from out of town were scarcely considered to be guests; the women helped cook the dinner and wash the dishes. Beata Ashley astonished the town by inviting friends to a late meal by candlelight from which the children were absent. The Lansings were always present, occasionally Dr. Gillies and his wife, or a retired judge who had known city life, and some others. Mrs. Lansing returned the invitations. Twice a year members of the mine’s Pittsburgh directorate descended on the town on a tour of inspection. They put up at the Illinois Tavern, but were invited to “St. Kitts” and “The Elms” for dinner. They received the surprise of their lives—a surprise which did not abate on repeated visits: Beata Ashley’s tranquil distinction; Eustacia’s wit and beauty, together with the flamboyance of her clothes and that grain de beauté which nature had planted with the most calculated art on her right cheekbone; the variety of subjects discussed and the quality and the originality of the food. (Their wives had to pay for it: “Isn’t there anything else in the world to eat except roast beef and stewed chicken?” “Do you have to talk about the servants all the time?”) At these dinners John Ashley spoke little, yet all eyes were constantly turned toward him. It was for him that the men were judicious, but easy; the women charming, and Lansing discreet. The visitors expressed to him their gratification at the improvement in the mine’s returns. Casually, all but unobtrusively, he directed the commendation to Breckenridge Lansing.
One thing of remark happened during those first ten years. Eustacia Lansing fell consumedly in love with John Ashley.
As we know, John Ashley saved no money. He had married an accomplished housekeeper and had bought an orchard, kitchen garden, and henhouse. From time to time he suppressed in himself the concern as to how he would provide a better education for his children. He had a vague notion that he would be able to make some money out of the “inventions” that he was evolving in the Rainy Day House. He had become engrossed in locks. He bought up old safes collected from the ashes of buildings that had burned to the ground. He studied timepieces and firearms. Lansing, imitating him sedulously in his Rainy Day House, dropped his interests in lotions and cosmetics and tried his hand at mechanics. Ashley encouraged him warmly in these interests. The younger man followed with great concern Lansing’s dissipation on the River Road, his sloth, and his neglect of Eustacia. They launched out on projects together; Ashley kept up the pretense that Lansing was an invaluable co-worker. Lansing brought to these projects his vision of their success, of the enormous amounts of money they would bring. But year after year Ashley delayed forwarding his designs to the Patent Office; to himself, he seemed always on the point of improving them. To maintain Lansing’s enthusiasm he wrote their combined names, beautifully, on the various folders that contained the mechanical drawings. But tinkering with coils and springs and bits of steel was not sufficient to distract Breckenridge Lansing long from the fields where he was second to none.
The Eighth Day Page 33
