The Eighth Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

shadow. Dr. Gillies had no faith in progress, in the future of mankind. He knew more about Coaltown than any of its citizens. (As he had known much about Terre Haute, Indiana, during his first ten years of practice.) Coaltown was no worse and no better than any other town. Any community is a portion of the vast body of the human race. You may cut into Breckenridge Lansing or the Emperor of China; you will find the same viscera. Like the devil in the old story, you may lift the roofs of Coaltown or Vladivostok; you will hear the same phrases. His midnight reading of the great historians confirmed his sense that Coaltown is everywhere—though even the greatest historians fall victim to the distortion induced by elapsed time; they elevate and abase at will. There are no Golden Ages and no Dark Ages. There is the oceanlike monotony of the generations of men under the alternations of fair and foul weather.
    What would the twentieth century and its successors be like?
    He lied roundly because his eyes rested on Roger Ashley and George Lansing. He spoke as he would have spoken if Hector had been there. It is the duty of old men to lie to the young. Let these encounter their own disillusions. We strengthen our souls, when young, on hope; the strength we acquire enables us later to endure despair as a Roman should.
    â€œThe New Man is emerging. Nature never sleeps. Hitherto the sporadic great man, the lone genius, has carried the children of fear and inertia on his coattails. Henceforth, the whole mass will emerge from the cave-dwelling condition . . . ?”
    Oh, it was splendid!
    â€œ. . . ? emerge from the cave-dwelling condition where most men cower still—terrified of encroachment, hugging their possessions, in bondage to fears of the Thunder God, fears of the vengeful dead, fears of the untamable beast in themselves.”
    It was splendid.
    â€œMind and Spirit will be the next climate of the human. The race is undergoing its education. What is education, Roger? What is education, George? It is the bridge man crosses from the self-enclosed, self-favoring life into a consciousness of the entire community of mankind.”
    A number of his listeners had soon fallen asleep in the beatific air of the twentieth century—not John Ashley and his son, not Eustacia Lansing and her son.
    Olga Doubkov walked home with Wilhelmina Thoms, Lansing’s secretary at the mines.
    â€œDr. Gillies didn’t believe a word of it,” she said. “I did. I believed every word of it. And so did my father. I couldn’t walk straight if I didn’t.”
    It has never been satisfactorily explained why the early settlers of Coaltown (or Maple Bluffs, as it was first called) chose to center and expand their agglomeration in a sunless gorge when they might have built their homes, their first church, and their first school in the open meadows to the north and south. The town lay on a moderately important trade route. The itinerant vendors are still with us. Coaltown has always been a favorite with commercial travelers—fortunately for Beata Ashley and her children when the time came—even when Fort Barry, thirty miles to the north, and Summerville, forty miles to the south, offered larger returns. The Illinois Tavern of the Sorbeys, builder, son, and grandson, suited them. They assigned two nights to it in their itineraries. Its rooms were spacious; its thirty-five-cent dinners generous. The woodwork and brass fixtures in the saloon were installed in expectation of an ever greater prosperity. The genial smell of sawdust, spilt beer, and mash whiskey welcomed the tired wanderer. There were nightly games in the back room. Free transportation was available to a number of establishments a few miles south on the River Road—Hattie’s Hitching Post and Nicky’s We Have It. Business representatives (agricultural implements and wholesale pharmaceuticals) arrived by train; drummers (sewing machines,