The Eighth Day (13 page)

“How interesting! How interesting!” said Mrs. Hopkinson.

“I know you're going to be successful,” said Miss Mallet.

For Mrs. Ashley his every word carried a stupefying boredom. The evening came to an end without music. He was to leave in the morning. Mrs. Ashley made it clear that his room had been promised to someone else. She would serve him at breakfast; he would not see the girls again. They went into the house. Mrs. Hopkinson, Miss Mallet, and Constance bade him an almost tearful goodbye; his eyes were on Lily. Mrs. Ashley was still shaken by her daughter's disobedience on the previous evening. Lily had gone about her duties with her accustomed efficiency, but had not once glanced in her mother's direction nor spoken an unnecessary word. She had not even wished her good night. Four times during the day her mother had sought the moment to tell Lily that she had seen a ring disappear into his pocket on the previous evening. She was now preparing to forestall a protracted leave-taking. Great was her astonishment when Lily gave Mr. Malcolm her hand, a pleasant “Good evening,” and again tripped unconcernedly up the stairs.

It was a week of spring cleaning; furniture was being moved from room to room. Sophia was sleeping with Lily. After the house was dark Constance knocked at the door and entered.

“Lily? Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel terrible? I mean, because he's going away tomorrow?”

“No.”

“But you do like him a lot, don't you?”

“I'm tired, Connie.”

“Well, he loves you. Anybody can see that. —Why isn't Mama nice to him?—Do you like him, Sophie?”

“Yes, but not ‘Ebenezer.'”

“It's been fun. You sang wonderfully last night, Lily. As good as the gramophone. Why aren't you sorry he's going away?”

“I'm sleepy, Connie. Goodnight.”

“Well . . . ? I think if people really like people, they come back and see them.”

There was a knock at the door. Their mother entered the room.

“It's late, girls. You should get your sleep.”

“Yes, Mama. I just came in to tell Lily that I was so sorry that Mr. Malcolm was going away tomorrow.”

“We're used to guests coming and going, Constance. We can't look on them as friends.”

“But, Mama, when can we have friends? We can't live forever and ever without friends.”

“Since we're all here together, I want to tell you some things I've been thinking over. Tomorrow I'm going shopping with Sophia.”

“Mama! . . . ?
Downtown!
?”

“Sophia and I are going to the bank. We're going to start keeping our money in the bank. We're going to think of that money as being saved up so that Lily can go to a very good teacher for her voice. I've been thinking of other things, too. Do you remember the supper parties that your father and I used to give? Well, you and I are going to give a supper like that once a month. We'll begin by asking the doctor and his wife and Mrs. Guilfoyle and the Dalziels and then on other nights Miss Thoms and Miss Doubkov. And each of you can name a friend you want.”

“Mama!”

“And I think that maybe next fall Sophia and Constance can start going to school.”

Constance flung herself upon her mother: “Oh, Mama! You're the best mama in the world!”

“Now, Constance, go to your room. There are some things I want to say to your sisters.”

Constance left the room. Lily said, with the suggestion of a yawn, “Mama, I'm tired. I don't want to talk.”

Sophia divined the extent to which the words had wounded her mother. “Mama,” she said, “I think Lily's coming down with a cold. I'm going down to make her some hot milk-and-honey. I think we ought to let her try and sleep now.”

All these brave projects were delayed. Three hours later Mrs. Ashley was awakened by hearing her name called in the corridor. She lit a lamp and opened her door. Mr. Malcolm, looking feverish and disheveled, asked if he could have a hot-water bottle and a mustard plaster. He refused Mrs. Ashley's offer to send for Dr. Gillies. He knew what his complaint was; he had suffered from it before. It was a “cold on the liver.” He was in considerable pain, but he was manly about it.

In the morning Dr. Gillies saw the patient. Mrs. Ashley was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.

“What seems to be the trouble, Dr. Gillies?”

“Just a slight indigestion, I think.”

“Doctor, please get him out of the house as soon as possible.”

“Well—”

“I don't believe he's ill. He's not ill at all, Dr. Gillies.”

“What?”

“Do help me! Send him to the hospital at Fort Barry, or get him into the infirmary at the mines or move him to the Tavern. Anyway, help me get him out of the house.”

“He has a fever. It's a slight fever, but there's no doubt about it.”

“He hung his head over the side of the bed. Any schoolchild can do that. —Dr. Gillies, I told him that he must give up his room, but he's fallen in love with Lily.”

“I see. I see. Poor fellow! —Mrs. Ashley, we'll starve him.”

“Oh, Dr. Gillies, you're a saint!”

“A cup of tea and an apple for breakfast. Chicken broth and a piece of toast for lunch and supper.”

“Thank you! Thank you! Please write it down—and he's not to leave his room. Write that down, too. Quarantine the creature.”

Sophia was the nurse. In the middle of the afternoon Lily called on the patient. He was sitting up in bed in a citified silk dressing gown. Lily left the door open. Her manner was as impersonal as that of royalty visiting her wounded soldiers. She read to him from the works of W. Shakespeare.

“‘
There's no news at the court, sir, but the old news. That is, the old Duke is banished.' “

“Miss Ashley, I know the best teacher who could teach you dancing and everything. You could be a big star.”

“You must save your voice, Mr. Malcolm. If you're not quiet I must go away. ‘. . . ?
have put themselves into voluntary exile with him, whose lands and revenues enrich the new Duke. . . . ?'”

“Lily! Lily! Come away with me. We'll be the greatest team in the country. You're not listening to me. Within two weeks we could get engagements at club meetings and banquets.”

“Do I have to leave the room, Mr. Malcolm?”

After she had left the room with a pleasant “Good afternoon,” Mr. Malcolm strode to and fro in torment. Suddenly his eyes fell upon an object on his dresser. Under some tissue paper lay a large piece of marble cake. She had carried what he thought was a bag of books. She had made a few gestures of setting the room to rights.

The next afternoon more reading, more impassioned pleas, more rebukes.

“Lily, if it's serious music you want, I could get you an appointment with Maestro Lauri. He's the best teacher in Chicago. He trains singers for grand opera. I bet you he'd teach you free.”

“If you get excited, Mr. Malcolm, I'll have to leave.”

“Lily, you could be singing in churches and getting paid for it, right off. I've done it, but you're a hundred times better than I am.”

“You must be calm!”

“I'm not calm. Lily, I love you. I love you.”

“Mr. Malcolm!”

He flung himself out of bed. His fingernails dug into the carpet. “Tell me what I can do. Say something
human!
You gave me that piece of cake. You must know I'm
here.
Come to Chicago with me. In Coaltown you'll just
wither.
”

She looked at him a moment in silence and wonder. She did not yet know that she was a great actress—that the knowledge of how men and women behave in extremity was at the center of her lifework. Slowly she put her hand into her bag of books and brought out a slice of the best apple pie in southern Illinois. “Get well soon, Mr. Malcolm. Good afternoon.”

Ten minutes later Lily was again seen on the streets of Coaltown. She carried a pair of shoes in a paper bag. It was the busy hour. A faint smile on her face, she bowed right and left toward the gaping citizenry. She entered the post office and gazed meditatively at her father's portrait. She continued down the street and entered Porky's store. He showed no astonishment.

“Porky, I have no money, but I'll pay you back in a few months. Will you fix these shoes so that they can stand wear? Fix them up as good as you can. Could you give them to me at the house about Friday?”

She then returned to the top of the street and climbed the stairs to Miss Doubkov's apartment. Miss Doubkov was on her knees before a dressmaker's dummy, altering the hem of a dress.

“Well, Lily!”

“Miss Doubkov, I'm running away to Chicago with that Mr. Malcolm.”

Miss Doubkov rose slowly—and with no awkwardness—from the floor. “It's time for a cup of tea,” she said. “Sit down.”

Lily waited. Finally, when they had taken their first sips, she received the signal to speak.

“He says that he can find work for me, singing at clubs and in churches. He knows the teachers there. He says he can take me to see a very good teacher who teaches grand opera.”

“Go on!”

“Nothing you can say will stop me, Miss Doubkov. I've come to you to ask you one favor. Can I tell him that he can write letters to me through you?”

“Drink your tea.”

Pause.

“I can't stay in Coaltown one more month. I've got to sing and I've got to learn how to sing. Soon I'll be too old to get started right. I've got to know about life too. You can't learn much about life in Coaltown. I want to learn how to play the piano, too. Nobody could practice the piano in a boardinghouse—even if I had time. I work from morning till night, Miss Doubkov.”

She spread out her hands and turned them over.

“Do you love this man?”

Lily laughed, blushing slightly. “No, of course not. He's just an ignorant boy! But he can
help
me. That's all I need. He's not a bad man—you can see that for yourself. I'll go to Chicago and marry him.”

“Did he ask you to marry him?”

“He . . . ? got down on the floor and he cried and told me he loved me.”

“He didn't ask you to marry him.—Lily, he's married already.”

“How do you know?”

She told her.—“Besides, I think he's a Pole and a Roman Catholic.”

Lily waited a moment and said, level as her glance, “Anyway, there aren't many men who'd marry an Ashley.”

“You!” said Olga Sergeievna, rising. “Drink your tea and be quiet for a moment.”

She went into her bedroom and kitchen. Money was hidden about there, like a squirrel's provisions. After a few minutes she returned with a frayed silk purse.

“Here's fifty dollars. Go to Chicago. Let that man introduce you to these teachers, but don't have anything else to do with him.”

“I'll borrow thirty dollars of you. I'll send it back as soon as I can.”

Olga Sergeievna extracted twenty dollars and put the purse in the pocket of Lily's coat. Lily rose. “Can Mr. Malcolm send letters to you?”

“Yes.—Sit down and be quiet a moment.” Deliberately, speculatively, her lower lip pressed upon her upper, she opened and examined cupboard after cupboard. “Take off your dress.”

Being fitted is favorable to meditation.

“Lift up your arms. . . . ? Face the window!”

“Sophie should go away, too. And Connie. It's not the work that's killing us at the house. It's that Mama never goes into town and that she never mentions Papa. I'd have died long ago if it hadn't been for your visits, Miss Doubkov, and your liking my singing.”

“Face the icons.”

“And the reading aloud in the evening: The Shakespeare and
Jane Eyre
and
The Mill on the Floss
and
Eugénie Grandet
. . . . ? It's not like Mama to stay shut up in the house. At first I thought it was because she was afraid to face people; or that she just hated them. But Mama's never been afraid of anything. She doesn't care what other people think. Mama doesn't hate people; she's indifferent to everybody. To her all the boarders that come in and out of the house are just paper dolls. The first boarder she's really hated is Mr. Malcolm. She loathes him. Because he's so fiery.”

“Put your elbows up, as though you were fixing the back of your hair.”

“The reason she doesn't mention Papa is that she wants him all to herself. She doesn't even want us to have ‘our Papa.' I think she doesn't go into the street because she doesn't want to meet Mrs. Lansing. She's afraid that Mrs. Lansing may have her own ‘our Papa.' I'll tell you something I never told anybody before. Early in the trial somebody left a letter in our mailbox. There was nobody's name signed to it. On the envelope it said, ‘For Mrs. Ashley.' Almost no letters came to our house; Papa and Mama never got any letters from their relations. I took the letter in to Mama, but during the trial Mama wasn't interested in anything except that. She told me to open it and tell her what it said. . . . ? It was all about God punishing sin and people going to hell, and it said that Papa had been meeting Mrs. Lansing for years in the Farmer's Hotel at Fort Barry. I lied to Mama. I said it was about a church bazaar. Three or four more letters came. I burned them up. . . . ? They were just ugly foolishness. Papa didn't go to Fort Barry more than once a year and he usually came back on the afternoon train. And Mrs. Lansing only went to Fort Barry on Sunday, with the children, so that they could go to their Catholic church. . . . ? But I think Mrs. Lansing did love Papa. I hope she did and I hope he knew it. You couldn't tell whether Papa loved Mrs. Lansing or not, because he had a way of liking every woman in this town. Didn't he?”

“Yes, he did. Stand up straight.”

“I wouldn't be shocked if Papa and Mrs. Lansing did love each other. Mrs. Lansing's a very different kind of person. She doesn't feel indifferent to
anybody
. . . . ? Mama didn't see any of those letters, but maybe she knew that Mrs. Lansing felt deeply about Papa. Mama's not the kind who would be angry or jealous, but maybe she didn't go out in the street because of that. One night, late, Mama told me to get dressed and go for a walk with her, and, Miss Doubkov, we stopped for a long time in front of the Lansing house, just looking. I felt that Mama wished she could know—and yet didn't want to know—the ‘Papa' that maybe Mrs. Lansing carried in her heart.”