My Heart Laid Bare Part 13

It was seven weeks to the day before Christopher Schoenlicht was scheduled to be hanged, on a raw windy April morning in Muirkirk, that Elisha and Harwood had their terrible quarrel, never to be satisfactorily explained.

Seven weeks to 29 May; and Thurston languis.h.i.+ng in prison, and Father away, and the entire household under the strain-Is he to die?-He cannot die!-and it was winter still, snow on the ground in pocked and stubbled patches, and the marsh still frozen over, and the sky still a hard cold winter sky, so fierce a cobalt-blue one's eyes were pierced with light. Will nothing ever change? Will we be locked in winter forever?

EXCEPT: ELISHA OBSERVES his brother Harwood packing his valises, bound for Leadville, Colorado, where Father is sending him for six months; whistling thinly under his breath; his soiled golfing cap set sportily on his head, hair in lank greasy quills, a clumsily knotted tie bulging out of his vest coat. Elisha observes in silence, drawing his thumbnail slowly across his plump lower lip: Harwood, his brother whom he does not love and who has never loved him, bound for the West and a new career (but the Lichts are always beginning new careers, there is nothing remarkable about that), Harwood dapper and sly with his new pencil-thin moustache, his air of watchful gravity, his sense of purpose (but the Lichts have always been fired by purpose, there is nothing remarkable about that), yet alternating with his old "nervy" "p.r.i.c.kly" manner, so that the household is never quite settled when he's home: and everyone, even Father, has been waiting for him to leave.

Yet it's odd, Elisha thinks it extremely odd, that Harwood won't be in the East when Father requires help (surely Father will require help from both Elisha and Harwood is freeing Thurston?); that Harwood, with an excuse of illness (he who is never ill) failed to attend a single session of Thurston's trial; and seemed uneasy, even annoyed, when informed of its progress.

Harwood, who'd once sneered at Elisha when they were boys the mysterious ugly-sounding epithet "n.i.g.g.e.r" . . .

n.i.g.g.e.r? What's that?

By this time Harwood is aware of Elisha watching him. But stubbornly, defiantly, he won't turn. Continuing with his slow, awkward packing as if such an activity, involving folding, stacking together, a certain measure of gentleness and order, was new to him and untrustworthy. Harwood with thick neck and shoulders, torso solid with muscle, skin the hue and seeming texture of lard; snoutish nose, small resentful eyes; worried forehead; bristles of hair in ears; cheeks bunching upward in an unconscious grin or tic . . . the young man is shorter than Elisha by perhaps two inches but heavier by at least thirty pounds so Elisha thinks He will hurt me Elisha calmly thinks He will take pleasure in hurting me still more calmly, with resignation Yet it can't be helped.

Saying bluntly what he'd wished for months to say, in a level, easy voice, "Thurston would not have committed such an act but you would, you did, yes?" And Harwood, whistling, misses but a beat or two, a strand of hair slipping across his forehead, he makes no reply, and Elisha says, thumbs hooked in his belt in a casual swaggering gesture, "Then why are you going away now? why now?" and this time Harwood grunts a reply, not quite audibly, head ducked, securing the first of the valises, and then the other: they are expensive new purchases, handsome russet-brown leather, small bra.s.s buckles and trim, just to draw one's finger along the smooth hide, just to carry one in each hand, the weight, the splendid odor of the leather, the a.s.surance, the excitement: how Elisha envies his hateful brother, who will walk so calmly out of their lives, and out of their grief-!

Harwood is loading up a buggy in the front drive, Harwood is moving methodically, taking his time, Harwood is careful to give no indication that he is troubled by Elisha's presence, annoyed that Elisha follows him outdoors, asking in a voice that has begun to tremble, "Why now? why is he sending you away now?"-to which Harwood mutters a vague quick reply over his shoulder that has to do with the copper mine in Colorado, one or another "partners.h.i.+p," "no time to waste"-as Father has said. Elisha sees that his brother is edgy, resentful, perhaps even frightened: for Harwood of late is always frightened: since Thurston's arrest, since the trouble in Atlantic City, Elisha has noted that Harwood is always frightened: so he says again, softly, now slightly short of breath, daring to pull at his brother's sleeve: "Thurston would never have done it but you-you would!"

Being touched, Harwood is galvanized at once: he drops the valises in the snow, leaps away, turns crouching, head lowered and jaws working, eyes narrowed and mean: saying, as if the word gives him pleasure, as if he has been waiting to say it for a very long time: "n.i.g.g.e.r."

So they fight.

So it begins.

Suddenly the brothers are at each other, grappling, shoving, striking with fists-bare fists on bare flesh-shouting profanities-epithets of the sort the household has never heard-Elisha wild, rangy, aggrieved, Harwood slower and more calculating-Elisha is no fighter, hasn't been trained, hasn't any instinct, Elisha swings and misses, swings wide and misses, Elisha is thrown off balance as Harwood waits, knees bent, shoulders raised and hunched-he is cunning, a fighter by instinct, knows he can depend upon his weight, his strength, his entire body enlivened by the need to hurt, the ecstatic delight in hurting, for every fight is a fight to the death. Why otherwise does his fear so rapidly drain away, and this splendid manly strength suffuse his being?

The fight is no contest, as any sporting gentleman would see at a glance, for one of the young men is fighting out of emotion, and the other is fighting simply to do injury; one of the young men imagines the struggle a matter of justice, a means by which justice will be exacted out of pain, and the other young man knows that the fight, like all fights, is simply about fighting: the very word an incantation: fight.

To do injury, to give hurt.

In theory, to kill.

(But one must not allow oneself to go that far: at least, not in the presence of witnesses.) (For Millie has run up behind them, screaming for them to stop.) (And old Katrina is somewhere in the house. And little Darian and Esther.) A blow to Elisha's jaw so powerful that his body is thrown back like a rag doll, his eyes roll in their sockets, blood springs from his mouth-immediately there's a second blow, harder, crueler, with the force of a sledgehammer, against Elisha's unguarded chest, to his heart. A blow so hard that Harwood winces, his knuckles cracked.

And Elisha is down, half-sitting in soiled snow, bleeding from his torn mouth yet more profusely and alarmingly from the chest-for a surface artery has been broken. Harwood picks up his valises and strides jauntily to the buggy saying, through a mirthless twitchy grin, "Goodbye, n.i.g.g.e.r."

In this way Harwood Licht departs Muirkirk, for the vast open sky and windswept s.p.a.ces of the West.

WHAT OF ELISHA?-never in his life has this self-confident young man felt such physical shock; for Harwood, within minutes, has driven him into a place beyond pain, so numbed, so much in a state of visceral astonishment, he hardly feels pain; though knowing that, yes, pain will come-soon. Sprawled gracelessly in snow, panting through bloodied mouth like a dog, hardly aware even of Millie's cries, Elisha Licht, a.k.a. "Little Moses," thinks bemused Why, I am not a G.o.d after all, it seems.

What of Millie?-an equal shock overcomes her, for even as Elisha is being pummeled by Harwood, falling to the ground, handsome face no longer handsome but contorted in childlike fear, rich dark skin no longer dark but ashen, and bright blood soaking his stylish wing-collar s.h.i.+rt and close-fitted woollen trousers and sprinkled like dirty raindrops on the snow-even as these horrors occur, quite apart from Millie's sisterly wish that the brothers cease fighting, and her cries of "Stop! Stop!" she realizes suddenly that she loves Elisha, not as a brother, for Elisha is not her brother, but simply as Elisha, 'Lisha, a stranger she must no longer deceive herself she knows.

In that instant the old Millie, the child-Millie, dies.

In that instant the young woman Millie, seeing her beloved is fallen, and bleeding, and in need of aid, hurries to him, wasting no time in stifled little cries and screams; mature, deft and determined as never before in her life Millie tears open Elisha's s.h.i.+rt and rips a strip from her cotton petticoat and wads it and presses it against the mysterious wound with as much force as her strength allows; kneeling beside him in the snow, comforting him, partly embracing him, her arm cradling his head against her shoulder, her voice rapid and soothing, trying to show no alarm, for now such intimacy is allowed, now such intimacy is needed, when the wadded cotton is soaked with blood another must be quickly torn, and pressed against the broken artery, and Elisha, frightened Elisha, with none of his Negro swagger now, none of his coolness in her presence, trembles in terror murmuring, "Don't let me die, Millie!-don't let me die!" and Millie grasps him tighter and says, as if scolding, "Why, it's nothing, the bleeding will stop soon, he has not the power to hurt you."

SECRET MUSIC.

Something is wrong, gravely wrong, but when Darian wakes early one morning, before dawn, to a sound of wild geese flying overhead, he forgets the sorrow of the household-forgets that something is going to happen, something to change all their lives-and lies trembling with excitement. He will not open his eyes, he wants to keep the sound pure, a music that wakes him from sleep, unbidden, mysterious, fading even as he strains to hear: wild geese, Canada geese, their queer faint honking in the sky, why such sudden beauty, why any world at all, this world, and not simply-Nothing?

To express the life, the cert.i.tude, the quivering happiness that courses through him at such times-this, Darian thinks, must be what is meant by G.o.d.

BUT HE WILL not tell anyone, he will keep his secret to himself, this is G.o.d, trembling in his very body.

SUCH SOMBER CHILDREN, Darian and Esther!-forgotten children, perhaps, appearing younger than their ages; even Katrina feels sorry for them, is drawn into the parlor to listen to Darian playing the piano (but how odd, the compositions that child invents!), sits for an hour at a stretch with little Esther in her arms, in the window seat watching rain falling into the marsh.

"No one will ever come back, will they, Katrina?" the child asks drowsily. She is not agitated, not even curious, such questions have been asked many times before, they are a child's questions, not to be taken seriously. "And he will never come back, I know," Esther adds, after a confused pause, having forgotten (for she is so very sleepy suddenly) the name of her eldest brother.

YEARS LATER DARIAN is to recall: they are told that Thurston is away, traveling, on business for Father; he is in Mexico, he will be going to Cuba; returning home sometime in the summer . . . or a little later.

DARIAN WAS TOO small still to sit at the piano so Father hoisted him onto his lap, gripped his hands firmly in his, Darian's stubby fingers enclosed in Father's big fingers, and they played at making music, Like this, Father said gaily, and like this! this! striking chords haphazardly up and down the keyboard. (Darian's hands began to smart, in the morning they would be bruised.) In a loud full baritone voice Father sang fragments of a song ("Gott, der Herr, Ist Sonn' und Schild") while Darian, baby Darian, picked out the melody, frowning in a concentration so intense that droplets of perspiration appeared on his forehead. "Ah, can you do it? Can you?" Father cried. "As well as I . . . " With a flourish he tried to play as he sang, striking notes hurriedly and carelessly, the ring on his smallest right-hand finger clicking against the keys, his fingernails tapping, clicking, as well, everything rushed and frantic, until his two-year-old son squirmed in displeasure, and wrenched himself away. For this was not right, this was not the way it should be, the wrong notes and the wrong rhythms cut through him like a knife blade.

ON MONDAYS AND Thursdays Darian walks into the village to take his music lesson with Reverend Woodc.o.c.k, but his happiest times are alone, alone with the piano, hour upon hour and day following day, he is suspended at such times, Darian and not-Darian, he sits at the piano though his fingers are stiff and the nails blue with cold, outside the freezing rain pelts against the windows, against the roof, clattering against the chimney, the sound of the rain is constantly modulated by the wind, as the piano's notes, struck with different degrees of force, acquire mysteriously different textures and meanings: how happy he is! what peace! as if something has closed over his head protecting him from them.

There are flights of music that spring up, Darian has no idea how, out of the rain drumming on the roof, the thin howling wind, the harsh staccato cries of birds in the marsh . . . certain brittle strands of Bach, delicate turns of Mozart, the Civil War marching songs he has heard the band play in the square . . . the gospel hymns he has sung at the Church of the Pentecost where he is Darian and not-Darian simultaneously, clapping his hands, his heart swollen with joy, as Reverend Bogey strides about leading the congregation in song. And there is the sound of Millie's airy insincere laughter, the pretty twist to her lips, the anxious flash of her eyes . . . the sight of Elisha trying to sit up in the snow, blood streaming from his chest (his very heart?), soaking his white, white s.h.i.+rt, splattering onto the ground . . . and the ferocity of Father's embrace, the way he grips Darian beneath the arms, lifts him, kisses him, hard, his hot damp thrusting lips against Darian's mouth: ah, he has been away so long, so very long, it is his fate, it is Fate, he cannot bear it that he is required to be away so very long . . . .

Flights of music interrupted by m.u.f.fled blows, queer arrhythmic runs, sudden halts and starts . . . flights of music of such uncanny beauty Darian knows they are not his . . . though they stream through his aching obedient fingers, as sunlight shatters on a pool of standing water, transforming it without touching it. And, more precious, most secret, the music that has the power to draw Darian's mother Sophie to him . . . gliding silently through the rooms of the rectory . . . appearing in the doorway at his back . . . and he must continue playing, he must not hesitate, or miss a note, or turn his head . . . for if he makes a mistake she will vanish . . . he sees her by way of the music, he sees her through his fingertips, the girl with the riding crop, is it? the haughty young woman of the portrait, dark level gaze, the head tilted slightly to the left, and not the wan dying woman amid the bedclothes smelling of sickness . . . that wasted hand extended . . . Darian? Darian? the blistered lips, the eyes glazing over . . . not that woman, never that woman but the other, Darian's true mother, the handsome girl in the painting who nods in time with his music, who knows his music beforehand, who is his music.

He must continue to play without making a mistake, he must never become frightened, or excited, he must not turn his head, as Sophie advances . . . advances . . . to stand behind him, silent, for long ecstatic minutes at a time . . . .How happy, Darian thinks, G.o.d is everywhere but G.o.d is here! . . . and sometimes she will brush her fingertips against his hair or the nape of his neck, sometimes she will stoop to kiss . . . and then he cannot help his reaction: he s.h.i.+vers violently, loses the thread of the music, strikes a false note, and, when he turns his head, he sees that she has vanished.

But Darian knows she has been with him: so very close, her lips had touched his burning skin.

THE DESPERATE MAN.

Though sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead on 29 May 1910 at the State Correctional Facility at Trenton, New Jersey, surely "Christopher Schoenlicht" who is Thurston Licht, Abraham's eldest, beloved son, will not be hanged; nor will he be incarcerated for the remainder of his life.

"Preposterous!"-Abraham snorts in derision.

"Preposterous!"-Abraham fumbles to relight his stumpy Cuban cigar, which maddens him by so frequently going out.

How many weeks, how many months has Abraham pursued the challenge of how to save his son. It seems like years by now, as 29 May 1910 rapidly approaches. He will be saved, must be saved-but how? As if a gla.s.s were steamed or sc.u.mmy preventing me to see through. Preventing my vision. A sensation hitherto unknown to Abraham Licht, like Odysseus the man of twists and turns, the man of cunning, and calculation, and duplicity, this sensation of paralysis: his fierce mental powers flash like lightning in one direction, and in another, and still another-but to no avail. He will deny it to Katrina and Millie, but his health has been affected; he's lost weight, obviously; his face bears the look of an elegant Roman bust struck by a hammer and threaded with hairline cracks, about to crumple into pieces.

Yet, alone, in his study with the door shut against his family, he contemplates his image in a mirror and finds his spirit, if not his appearance, unchanged. Eyebrows s.h.a.ggy as steel wool, gaze cold, level and unflinching, the hastily shaven jaws adamant. So long as I have breath, strength, genius, and cash-I cannot go down in defeat.

Strange how Abraham Licht's talent for invention seems to be hindering him: for he hasn't too few ideas, but too many. "If only I could settle upon a strategy. If only-" Too excitable to remain seated, pacing in his study with the door shut against the others, clutching at his head, sighing, muttering to himself, angrily sucking at the d.a.m.ned cigar that has again gone out.

His first move was naturally, through (generously paid-off) connections in the Democratic party to apply to the Governor of New Jersey for clemency; for a commutation of Christopher Schoenlicht's sentence to life imprisonment. (With the possibility of an "executive pardon" in a few years when it would no longer arouse local interest.) Negotiations along these lines were going smoothly well into February, when an agent of his named "Albert St. Goar" met with the Governor in secret, at the Governor's private estate in Princeton, to pledge no less than $5,000 to the Governor's upcoming campaign, plus a scattering of smaller donations to "charitable inst.i.tutions" throughout the state. The Governor, robustly shaking St. Goar's hand, all but gave his word that Christopher Schoenlicht would not hang; a commutation of sentence was "a definite possibility." Nothing was said of plans for the young man's escape from prison, of course; for it was very likely that the Governor would disapprove.

Then suddenly, without warning, word came from the Governor's closest aide that the understanding was cancelled. And no further conversations between the Governor and Mr. St. Goar, or between Mr. St. Goar and any of the Governor's men, were to be arranged. "What has happened? How can this be?"-so Abraham Licht protested. Only belatedly learning that the Trenton Post, one of the state's "crusader" papers, was investigating the Governor's business connections since stepping into office; and what had seemed to Abraham Licht a fait accompli was rudely erased.

"And I'd already handed over twenty-five hundred dollars of the payment. G.o.d d.a.m.n me for a fool, and him for a knave!"

Only in his memoir would Abraham Licht confess to having been so swindled. It was not a fact he could bring himself to share with any living person at the time.

Next, even as Abraham spent long insomniac nights, with Elisha, poring over plans of the fortresslike prison, and a map of the city of Trenton, and consulted dozens of firsthand accounts going back to medieval times of successful prison escapes, he was arranging through an intermediary for meetings with prison officials: the underwarden, the resident physician, several guards, the Mercer County sheriff and deputies, even the county coroner. In addition, as Abraham lacked solid contacts in the New Jersey underworld, he was obliged to go in person, that's to say as Timothy St. Goar, a Manhattan businessman, to speak with several high-ranking criminals. His plan, increasingly desperate, was to apply for help both outside the prison and in, in the matter of freeing Thurston from his fate.

How friendly these gentlemen! To a man. Accepting "preliminary moneys" from me-in cash. Yet vague about future meetings. For, as the sheriff himself confided to Abraham, the prospect of freeing a man from both a sentence of death and "The Wall"-as the Trenton prison was known-was a daunting one. Not only had it never been done in the more than one hundred years of the prison's existence, it had never been attempted.

The Chautauqua earnings reaped by Abraham and Elisha were now nearly depleted. So much money, so quickly! "I can hardly believe it, Father," Elisha said, blinking tears from his eyes, "-we had more than four hundred thousand dollars. It was ours." Abraham tried to console him, pointing out that no amount of mere money, in the hope of saving Thurston, was wasted. He did resent, though, being fleeced by enforcers of the law-"Hypocrites! Trading on a father's grief." Elisha said pa.s.sionately, "We must get more money, then, Father. Tell me what to do, and I will do it."

BUT ABRAHAM LICHT wondered: Could he ever again risk one of his children in any desperate plan? At Chautauqua, he'd arranged for Elisha to carry a pistol; for purposes of practicality, the pistol had been loaded. What if-? Another person, or a police officer, had intervened with a gun-?

Abraham shuddered, as if he'd witnessed his beloved 'Lisha, his precious Little Moses, drifting, as in a dream, near the precipice of death.

TORMENTED BY VISIONS. The ma.s.sive fifteen-foot wall, made of coa.r.s.e stone and mortar. The labyrinth of inner walls and pa.s.sageways. The gatehouse. The bare expanse of the yard. Sentry stations, guard boxes, turrets. Hidden rifles on all sides, at all heights. The broad central chimney from which thick black smoke rises. Cellblocks A, B, C, D. The dismal row of cells of the condemned: distinguished from other cells by a certain rank, brackish odor that was said to waft about, all but visible in the air. Beyond were the warden's private quarters, a cheerless four-room apartment. And there was the kitchen, and the laundry room, and the infirmary. And the morgue.

How like a riddle, this labyrinth. How to break it, master it?

Escape by way of-what?-a tunnel. Yes, a tunnel. The most plausible would be from the outer wall to the infirmary, a distance, according to one of the maps, of about fifty yards.

The gallows platform, said to be a weatherworn grim structure, was even closer to the wall, probably less than twenty feet.

In a dream calling my son's name. As, wrists shackled, he ascends to the gallows. But when the fair blond young man turns to me it isn't Thurston but a stranger. Christopher Schoenlicht. Fixing me with a dead man's stare.

It is mid-April, it is the final week of April, suddenly it is 29 April; and nothing has been accomplished.

A great deal of money has been spent; and nothing has been accomplished.

Night after night, locked away in his room at the rear of the house, Abraham Licht and Elisha study the plans of the prison . . . the maps of the surrounding area . . . the pencil sketches that Abraham has made, of the prison and of the gallows.

(If Elisha has a secret of his own, a secret worry mounting to obsession, he hides his thoughts from his father. For his love for Abraham Licht and for his brother Thurston is such, his emotions count for very little at the present time.) One night Abraham moans almost inaudibly, "It cannot be done. He cannot be saved." A pencil slips from his fingers and rolls across the floor and a moment later, p.r.i.c.ked by a sudden thought, Abraham s.n.a.t.c.hes up the pencil again and says, to Elisha's relief, "Unless . . . "

THE ENGLISH REFORMER IN AMERICA.

In early May of 1910 there came to the States the celebrated Englishman Lord Harburton Shaw, president of the Commonwealth Prison Reform Society, and author of numerous controversial books, monographs, and articles on the subject of penal reform. (Lord Shaw's zealous five-part series on inequities in the law and the "barbarism" of capital punishment, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1908, stirred considerable debate in the British Parliament, and earned him both enemies and fervent supporters; of the several books of his which were published in the States, Criminal Justice and Criminal Injustice, of 1903, aroused the most controversy, and gained Lord Shaw a substantial following among like-minded American reformers.) It was Lord Shaw's hope that he might be allowed, during his brief three-week visit to the States, to speak with prison officials and prisoners alike, at a number of representative American prisons-among them, the New York Tombs, Blackwell's Island, Sing Sing, Rahway, Trenton, and Cherry Hill (in Philadelphia). While the famous reformer could not expect to travel incognito, he had requested that news of his arrival be kept from the papers, so far as it was possible, for he feared, with justification, being besieged by well-intentioned admirers, and having no time for the primary purpose of his journey.

Lord Shaw impressed his American hosts, including the flamboyant reform mayor of New York City, William Jay Gaynor, as an agreeably modest, soft-spoken gentleman; well into his sixties, yet fired with youthful vigor; white-haired, clean-shaven, somewhat hard of hearing in one ear; like many Englishmen, even of wealth and family, given to careless, or in any case indifferent, habits of grooming-as if, set beside the idealism of the inner man, such matters as fresh linen, well-scrubbed fingernails, the relations between gray Donegal tweed and brown gabardine, etc., were of little account. The ladies thought Lord Shaw "droll" and "a character-though charming." As Mayor Gaynor's guest at dinner the Englishman ate sparingly, and drank not at all; declined to be baited by opponents; never spoke intemperately despite his strong-held opinions; and comported himself, as even the Hearst papers acknowledged, like a true English gentleman-and not a public-minded American in whom zealous virtue might be confused with noisy egoism.

Though Lord Shaw was rumored to be extremely wealthy, he chose to travel with but a single servant, an Indian secretary-valet of no more than twenty-five years of age (a gracious young man from Calcutta, educated at Cambridge at Lord Shaw's expense), whom he treated rather more like a companion than a hireling; and he declared his preference, early on, for hotels of "modest" pretension, and not the palatial hotels in which his hosts wished to book him. In Manhattan, during his first several days, he quite won the hearts of those men who had resented his arrival, by discussing in detail his new philosophy of reform: this, to begin at the top and the bottom simultaneously, the conditions of jails and prisons being radically improved, capital punishment abolished, etc., and the salaries, living arrangement, bonuses, sick leaves, pensions, etc., for prison officials, being scaled upward as well. "For it has long been a disgrace," Lord Shaw told his avid listeners, "that the very persons who give their energies-indeed, very often their lives-to prison work, should be taken for granted by society, and carelessly cla.s.sed with the prisoners whom they 'serve.'"

It was Lord Shaw's contention too (an item that particularly struck the ear of Mayor Gaynor and his aides) that elected and appointed officials both be granted salaries proportionate to the highest-paid men in business: for by this measure they would be encouraged to remain in politics, serving the commonweal, and not deserting to more lucrative pastures; and, most importantly, they would be immune to bribery and corruption-long the scourge ("in England if not, perhaps, in America") of government.

Asked where such munificent salaries would derive from, Lord Shaw replied without hesitation, taxes.

The United States was the wealthiest nation on earth, after all; and here the rich were extravagantly rich. Had Lord Shaw not chanced to read, to his disgust, that there was an enormous estate in Philadelphia, staffed by ninety servants, where the silver plate alone was valued at five million dollars; and were not the objets d'art in the Fifth Avenue mansion of the Vanderbilts worth an estimated one hundred million dollars? The wealthy citizens of America would have to be severely taxed, and soon, if the nation was to avoid a complete overthrow of its government; and the taxes would have to be distributed to those men who had distinguished themselves as public servants. "Take from the rich and give to the politicians, as they and they alone have the nation's welfare at heart," Lord Shaw said, his British accent becoming steadily more clipped and p.r.o.nounced, and a faint blush of indignation rising to his cheeks.

Was it any wonder, then, that this English gentleman was praised at once by his hosts; declared a true aristocrat, in his scorn for material self-interest; heralded as a saint; and invited to visit any prison or house of detention he might wish, during his three-week stay in the country?

Lord Shaw's schedule was gratifyingly crowded.

On Blackwell's Island he and his young Indian servant were allowed to visit the lunatics' wing of the prison hospital, and to interview those inmates whom it was possible to interview without running the risk of personal injury; at the experimental Cherry Hill prison they were privileged to interview several long-term prisoners in their solitary cells, with no guard or bailiff in attendance. At "The Wall" in Trenton, by general consent the grimmest of the state penitentiaries, they were treated with unusual courtesy by the warden, who, having heard of Lord Shaw's radical ideas for reform, insisted upon inviting both him and his secretary-valet to dinner to discuss the matter in greater intimacy. (For by this time, in mid-May, it was known that Lord Shaw planned to write a series of articles on his American visit, singling out prisons and prison officials most deserving of financial largesse.) At Trenton, where executions were routinely held, Lord Shaw was made welcome to visit with the public executioner, the prison physician, the attending clergyman, etc.; to examine the gallows; and to spend as many hours as he wished among the condemned, interviewing the unhappy men sequestered there . . . at this time seven convicts ranging in age from approximately twenty-five to sixty-two. The next execution, Lord Shaw was told, would be on 29 May: one "Christopher Schoenlicht," convicted for the murder of his mistress, was scheduled then to be hanged.

Several of the condemned men, as it turned out, were clearly insane; a state of affairs Lord Shaw vigorously protested, as it was a sign of barbarism to put a madman to death. Yet, the warden's answer was a simple one: the men had not been insane at the time of sentencing-only after.

Of young Christopher Schoenlicht Lord Shaw hesitantly inquired, "Does the lad show remorse for his crime?" and the warden said, "Not in the slightest, sir-nor remorse for what lies ahead, at the end of the noose." "But does he seem in full possession of his faculties?" Lord Shaw worriedly asked, peering in at the haggard prisoner through the bars of his cell; and the warden replied, with a cruelly hearty laugh, not minding if the condemned man heard, "As full a possession as he will need, sir, in twelve days' time."

IT WAS SCHOENLICHT, of the seven condemned prisoners, whom Lord Shaw decided he would like to interview.

Did the prisoner object?

He did not.

Did the prisoner seem to care?

He did not.

So, with little ceremony, Lord Harburton Shaw and his Indian servant were escorted into the young man's dank cell, and the heavy door locked behind them; and, so very suddenly, so easily, they were alone at last . . . Thurston Licht and his father Abraham and his brother Elisha . . . standing for a long moment in silence, as the guard's footsteps slowly retreated.

The cells in this part of the prison were in four tiers, one above the other; ceilings were formed by two large, heavy stone slabs, which were of course floors of the cells above; communication between one cell to the next would be difficult indeed, except perhaps by way of the "soil" pipe that ran along the wall through the cells-yet, even so, Abraham Licht lifted a warning finger and whispered, "Thurston: say not a word; make not a move."

How astonished Thurston was, staring from the snowy-haired Lord Shaw to the turbanned Elijii, and back to Shaw again, like a man in a dream struggling to wake.

Poor Thurston had grown gaunt and stooped since being incarcerated; his skin had a jaundiced cast, and his hair, once so thick, had become thin and matted with filth, a dull pewter-gray; and his eyes!-not those of a youth in his mid-twenties but the narrowed, sunken, damp eyes of a man of twice that age.