My Heart Laid Bare Part 28

"Well-are they to join us? For the wedding, and the rest?"

"No, dear. I don't believe so."

Millie stares at her father, maddening in his ambiguity.

"Excuse me, Father: do you mean you've told them about Eva and the wedding, or you have not?"

"So many questions, Millie! This isn't an audition for a fluffy Broadway comedy, you know. You need not be arch and brittle with me."

Millie pouts, Millie lets the table knife fall with a reproachful thump. It worries her that Father may be sharing more of his plans lately with Harwood than with her; not that Millie's pride has been wounded, though of course it has been wounded, but that Father may be misled by Harwood, and bring them all to a disastrous end.

Millie thinks of Darian and of Esther . . . though it's an effort. Her young brother and sister whom she loves, or would love if she could spend time with them; if life in Philadelphia weren't so . . . consuming. Only the other day she received from Darian a copy of a song he'd written "For Millie's Voice Alone Alone"-she took it to the piano and tried to peck out the tune, but there didn't seem to be any tune. A queer composition, so many sustained notes above high C "in an angry elegiac tone." Did Darian seriously expect her to sing this song? She had yet to reply to his preceding letter, or letters; she hoped he would forgive her. Guiltily she asked Abraham Licht if he'd sent flowers as he planned for Darian's concert debut, and if he'd remembered to pay Darian's tuition for the semester, and Abraham Licht said, annoyed, "I am the boy's parent, Millie. I hope I fulfill a parent's responsibilities."

Nor has Millie taken time to thoroughly reply to Esther's letters, which are of even less interest (to be truthful) than Darian's. Esther writes, writes, writes about Muirkirk as if Muirkirk were the hive of the universe and not a dreary backwater village of no significance; her letters are churned out in a breathless schoolgirl hand, filled with allusions to people who've become, to Millie, no more than names: the Deerfields, the Woodc.o.c.ks, the Ewings, the Mackays . . . and many more. The last time Millie saw Esther, she'd been surprised by her sister's size: the girl is taller at twelve than Millie at twenty-three. (Both are a year older now.) Unlike poised, practiced Millicent, Esther is shy and yet talkative; rawboned and eager; graceless, gawky and well-intentioned, but not what one would call charming. "A female lacking in charm must have a good heart," Abraham Licht once said, in another context; yet he might have been speaking of his own younger daughter. Esther has wavy dark hair inclining to coa.r.s.eness, like a dog's fur; her eyes are warm, intelligent, hazel-brown, of no special distinction; her frame boyish, with long gangling limbs and lean hips. Esther had shocked Millie by saying she wished to turn eighteen as quickly as possible and join the American Red Cross volunteers in France. "Why Esther," Millie responded, "-how can you say such a thing? The mere thought of blood is repulsive. And we're not yet in the war." Esther said eagerly, "Oh but there're many American girls and women working for the Red Cross, Millie, just as there're many American men who've joined up with the Allies. The innocent victims of war need our help, you know, whether the United States has formally declared war or not." Millie saw the logic of this; yet still the prospect of working with bodies, let alone wounded bodies, let along the dying, made her feel faint. Esther went on to tell Millie that, through church, she knew a woman who'd done volunteer work with the Red Cross Children's Bureau in France, and another woman volunteer at a refugee hospital in Beauvais; and yet another woman who'd been near the front lines to work with the wounded and disfigured. There was a Red Cross unit in Paris attached to a clinic where artificial limbs and faces (metal masks of paper thinness) were fitted to mutiles, as they were called. "Only imagine, Millie, being allowed to do such work!" Esther said with s.h.i.+ning eyes. "And there's so much of it to be done."

Said Millie, "I'm sure, yes, there is."

Esther begged Millie to intercede with Father, so that she might begin her nurse's training as soon as possible in Contracoeur, but though Millie vaguely promised her she would, she hadn't said a word. It made her feel faint just to think of . . . mutiles. Poor stricken men (and women?) fitted with metal masks for the remainder of their lives.

Abraham Licht calls Millie back to herself by saying, in a more normal voice, the stock market listings set aside amid toast crumbs and congealing bacon grease, "To answer your original question, Millie: I've decided that it's wisest to keep news of the wedding from Darian and Esther for the time being. All news, I mean, of their having a stepmother."

"Oh Father. Isn't that . . . extreme?"

A frown. Abraham Licht rises from the breakfast table rather abruptly.

"I mean, Father . . . won't you ever see Darian and Esther? With Eva? They aren't to be forgotten, are they?"

Still Abraham Licht frowns, glowers; as if confronted with a singularly slow-witted daughter.

"Oh! I see," Millie says, embarra.s.sed. "It's Eva you don't want to know about them. One stepchild, Matilde, is more than enough. I see."

"Indeed, yes," Abraham Licht says, in a better mood now that Millie hasn't disgraced herself, and on his way out of the room, "-one is more than enough."

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.

A tattered dream, a remnant of the previous windblown night. She'd been a child again in Muirkirk in thrall to her mad, vengeful mother. A child again, conceived in sin. A wretch whom only Jesus Christ might save.

Your mother was a religious lunatic, Father has said.

Your father is the only savior you require. Reason, sanity and strategy.

Standing at one of the tall windows of her bedroom in the sixth-floor apartment of the Rittenhouse Arms staring at the snowy square below: the crescent walks, the frozen fountain at the center, the great leafless elms. Having given so much pain to the woman who was my mother it's fitting that I endure pain for pain's very sake.

Still, Millie's frightened. What will become of her after her father marries Eva Clement-Stoddard? Must she marry, too? And . . . whom?

At a festive though crowded soiree at Longue Vue, the country estate of the Marcus Van Hornes, Albert St. Goar draws his daughter away from the circle of young bloods that has surrounded her, to whisper in her ear: "Do you see, Matilde, that woman across the way, chatting with Roland and his mother?-in the green crpe de chine dress-her hair that flaming chestnut-red? Yes: she is the one I mean. She's Senator Collis Swift's wife Lucille-so we were introduced, a few minutes ago-she and her husband, up from Virginia, are houseguests of the Van Hornes-yes, a reasonably attractive woman, for her age. Now what I should like you to do, dear," St. Goar says, speaking now rapidly, and gripping Matilde's arm, "-what I should beg you to do, is not to meet her-not to be introduced, as such-but, as soon as the lady strolls away from Roland and Mrs. Shrikesdale (which will not be long: they are so boring, those two), position yourself close by her, and, looking gaily past her, as if to a far corner of the room, call out the name 'Arabella'-keeping a resolute gaze past her; and we will see what her response is."

St. Goar is staring at the lady in question as if transfixed; as agitated as ever Matilde has seen her dignified father in public. Yet he doesn't allow her to interject a question; he has no time. "Be off, be off, my dear!" he whispers, "-and we will see what we will see."

So Matilde cheerfully obeys; she's always happiest obeying Father when the task is easily executed, and tinged with an air of mystery.

And when she stations herself close behind the lady in question (who is handsome, though slightly stout, and heavily rouged), and calls out in a light though piercing soprano voice, "Arabella!-oh, Arabella!" while making a pretense of waving gaily at someone on the far side of the room, Senator Swift's wife responds in a manner most striking: she doesn't turn toward Matilde-doesn't so much as glance in Matilde's direction-instead, she stands rigid, her expression frozen, as if a current of electricity pulsed through her body; and it's clear to the keen-eyed observer at least that the lady in green steadfastly refuses to turn-that all of her muscular strength, and the strength of her will, goes into the act of not turning.

Then a moment later all has changed; and Matilde has swept past; and Senator Swift's wife has the opportunity to glance around, covertly, casually, yet with an air of vague relief, to see that this "Arabella" was hardly meant for her; and that there can be no reason in this company, in the year 1916, that it might be meant for her.

Suddenly, with no warning-for how could there have been a warning-on the evening of 18 December, at a dinner dance hosted by a couple whose names Millicent has temporarily misplaced-suddenly, there comes her Savior.

Calling out, in a startled voice: "Mina-?"

And she who has been cavorting among the mirrors in the Gold Room, by no means drunk (for she has had only two or three gla.s.ses of champagne) yet not, perhaps, entirely sober (for it is so very tedious to remain sober), whirls about, not very gracefully, and sees-but whom is it she sees?

A young man of about thirty, a stranger; yet alarming in the eagerness with which he bounds up to Matilde, and the boyish delight with which he addresses her.

Yet in the next instant the young man is apologetic and deeply embarra.s.sed, for of course this isn't "Mina Raumlicht" whom he has so rudely accosted but "Matilde St. Goar"-who confusedly offers him her hand and in violation of proper etiquette dares to introduce herself.

And the blus.h.i.+ng young man introduces himself-"Warren Stirling, of Contracoeur. More recently of Richmond, Virginia, where I've joined an uncle's law firm."

(Warren Stirling. Does the name strike a chord, evoke any response? You would not think from Matilde's composed face that, yes it does.) " . . . very sorry to have upset you, Miss St. Goar," Warren Stirling is saying, still holding Matilde's delicate gloved hand, and speaking pa.s.sionately, "-but you so much resemble a girl I once . . . knew. 'The La.s.s of Aviemore' I called her-a romantic fancy of which she knew nothing just as, I should make clear, she knew nothing of me. You might be sisters, Miss St. Goar-you might almost be twins. Though years have pa.s.sed . . . we are all a bit older now."

"And what was the name again?" Matilde asks carefully.

Warren Stirling repeats the name. Reverently.

Matilde says, "Mr. Stirling, I am sorry to disappoint."

FOLLOWING WHICH, THINGS happen swiftly.

In three hours and forty-five minutes, to be exact.

And in the course of several hastily arranged meetings for the following day, the next day and the next.

For Warren Stirling's devotion to the lost Mina Raumlicht is readily transferred to the living Matilde; and Matilde, dazed and shaken and forgetful of her hauteur, is irresistibly drawn to him. ("He loves me," she thinks. "Isn't that argument enough, that I am to love him? And Warren Stirling is good.") In a burst of tears and candor at their third rendezvous, in a tearoom on Rittenhouse Square, she confesses to Warren Stirling that her name isn't Matilde but Millicent, or Millie; "Matilde" being a caprice of her willful father's following the death of her mother, whose name was Millicent, when Millie was twelve.

"'Millie'-a lovely name. 'Millicent.' It suits you perfectly," Warren Stirling says, gazing upon her with tender eyes.

"My father, you see, is a strange man," Millie hears herself saying, "-a powerful and even cruel personality. For me to feel affection for any other man, any man not him, would be interpreted, I'm afraid, as a betrayal of him."

Warren says, squeezing Millie's gloved hands, "Why, I wouldn't wish you to betray your father, Millie, in becoming my-bride," and Millie says, suffused with happiness, "Nor would I, Warren-but what must be, must be. 'As above, so below.'"

"THE BULL": L'ENVOI

Poor Anna Emery Shrikesdale: though she was only in her mid-seventies her bones had grown so light and brittle, her left thighbone snapped of its own while Roland was helping her to walk; and so ravaged was she by the subsequent pain, and so generally demoralized by the predicament of being yet again bedridden, the poor woman never recovered, but lay for hours in a delirium, during which time she wept, and raved, and prayed, and begged for Roland to remain close by her; and abruptly, in the early morning hours of 19 December 1916, pa.s.sed into a comatose state-from which her physician said it was "highly unlikely" that she would recover.

"Do all you can to save my mother," Roland said, agitated. "Yet do not, you know, dare to exceed the boundaries of 'natural law'-do not extend the poor woman's suffering by a single minute!"

For hours Roland maintained a strict vigilance by Mrs. Shrikesdale's bedside, as all the household staff noted; stroking her limp hand, speaking to her in an encouraging, boyish voice, even for some heartrending minutes singing to her one or another lullaby which, long ago, she had sung to him. Then, growing restless, he called for newspapers-for a bite to eat, and several bottles of ale-and went so far as to light up a cigar in the very sickroom!-being distracted by his worry for Mrs. Shrikesdale, no doubt, and not entirely possessed of his usual good judgment. (However, Roland meekly put out the cigar when reprimanded by Mrs. Shrikesdale's physician.) Following which, it was afterward estimated that, between the hour of midnight and one o'clock (of 20 December), Roland slipped away from his mother's bedside, and from Castlewood Hall itself-never, to the astonishment and horror of all of Philadelphia, to return.

IT WAS A discreetly kept secret at this time that Roland Shrikesdale III, while a loving and dutiful son to his mother, and a pious churchgoing Christian, and in society a gentleman famously ill at ease with women, had yet acquired since his return from the West a very different sort of repute in one or another of the Philadelphia sporting houses: being known, for example, not without affection, and some awe, as "The Bear" (owing to the prodigious quant.i.ty of hair growing on much of his body) at the Clover Street establishment of Mrs. Fairlie, and "The Bull" (owing to his prodigious s.e.xual powers) at the Sansom Street establishment of Madame de Vionnet. Rather more as a gesture of good breeding than out of an actual intent to deceive, Roland customarily gave a false name at such places-"Christopher," "Harmon," "Adam," etc.-and so accommodating was the atmosphere, so diplomatic the persons with whom he was likely to come into contact, only a very few members (all, of course, men) of Roland's own set knew of his double ident.i.ty.

(For such is the expression-"double ident.i.ty"-crude and sensational, indeed-to come into play, after that tragic event which newspapers throughout the East were to headline as Roland Shrikesdale's Second Demise.) It was directly to Madame de Vionnet's brownstone that Roland drove that night in his Peugeot; it was in the favored Blue Room on the second floor that the grieving young man spent several recuperative hours in the company, as was his custom, of two of Madame de Vionnet's most attractive girls-who afterward testified to The Bull's undimmed ardor and prowess. That poor Roland didn't give a hint of the distress he obviously felt for his dying mother was in keeping, Madame de Vionnet said, with the rich young man's good manners; for he wasn't one of those tedious gentlemen of whom, alas, there are many, who insist upon bringing their troubles with them to the very place where such distractions are to be overcome.

Following this interlude Roland said good-bye to the girls and to Madame de Vionnet, tipping her handsomely. He left the brownstone by a side door to make his way through the softly falling snow to his lemon-yellow Peugeot parked close by. Yet, about to unlock the automobile, suddenly, so suddenly he didn't have time to think, he was accosted by two, or was it three men, of his approximate size and weight, who bore quickly upon him and whose faces he couldn't see as they pinioned his arms to his sides and yanked his hat down over his eyes. "Mr. Shrikesdale," said one, in a falsetto voice, "-we've been sent by Anna Emery to fetch you to her at once." Roland, struggling, protested, "But-I'm fully capable of driving home myself-I'm on my way to her at this very moment." A second man, drawing a brawny forearm beneath Roland's chin so he was forced onto his toes, choking and sputtering, unable to breathe, said in a similarly high-pitched, jeering voice, "Mr. Shrikesdale!-we have been sent by your long-dead father to fetch you to him at once, with the greatest dispatch."

"ALBERT ST. GOAR, ESQUIRE"

I s't so?-to 'bestride the narrow world like a Colossus'-!" speaks Abraham Licht softly to his mirrored reflection as at a quarter past five on the afternoon of 21 December he at last completes his exacting toilet. "Indeed yes: it's so."

By way of a hand mirror he spends some minutes critically examining himself from all sides, and finds the vision gratifying-though certain gray-grizzled hairs and the creased forehead, in this light, show glaringly; and it's as he feared, a slight excess of weight has had a deleterious effect upon the Roman line of his jaw. Yet as always formal attire, in this instance white tie and tails and a prominent French collar, enhances his natural aristocratic bearing and gives a spark, of sorts, to his spirits.

A spark or a smoldering flame?-within the hour the bridegroom-to-be will have dropped by Eva Clement-Stoddard's house to escort her out to Langhorne Hall; and all of Philadelphia will begin a.s.sembling there to celebrate the engagement of Mrs. Clement-Stoddard to Albert St. Goar, Esq.

At which time Admiral Clement will announce the date of the nuptials: 30 March 1917.

"Am I content?-very nearly. Am I fulfilled?-very nearly. Have I conquered all?-very nearly."

And I love the woman.

The deep-set eyes, the winking secrets, the smile, it is a genuine smile, Abraham Licht's smile, superimposed for a dizzying moment upon the smile of Albert St. Goar.

And G.o.d saw that it was good.

AND AT THIS moment the doorbell to the apartment sounds and St. Goar's manservant hurries to answer it.

SO EXCITED IS Abraham Licht at the prospect of the evening ahead-the apotheosis, or nearly, of all he has yearned for in his lifetime-he has decided to be lenient in the matter of his daughter's strange behavior this past week. He attributes Millie's frequent absences from the apartment and the flurried distraction of her manner to the fact of his imminent marriage. (For of course Abraham knows nothing of Warren Stirling, not even the young man's name; nor of the couple's plans rapidly taking shape for a wedding-or a secret elopement-of their own.) "Millie is jealous, Millie is frightened of the future-poor girl, I quite understand. As if I, her father, would abandon her. Never!" He's decided, too, not to vex himself right now with anxiety over Darian . . . from whom he received just that morning a startling, impertinent letter.*

"I shall deal with Darian in good time," Abraham Licht thinks uneasily, "-and only hope the lad will have the tact not to spring his nasty surprise on poor Esther."

Of these distressing matters Abraham Licht doesn't think, for it begins to seem to him that the glimmering earthly globe is but the size of an apple to be s.n.a.t.c.hed up in hand, and devoured!-and the days, months and years of warfare leading to this consummation are as nothing-"Mere chaff in the wind." Even if he wished, he couldn't summon back that terrified child of six or seven who was discovered exhausted and starving one day along a country road near the great Muirkirk marsh; he couldn't summon back the boy he was, the hungry young man he'd become, the lover, the father . . . .As for the many women in his life, upon whom so much of his pa.s.sion has been centered, he refuses to recall them. They disappointed him: but Eva Clement-Stoddard will not.

There's the hope, too, that he and Eva will have a child together. A son?-but even a daughter would do! To replace those who've been faithless.

SO JUBILANT IS he, so pleasantly enlivened by a gla.s.s of sherry he's been sipping during his lengthy and exacting toilet, Abraham isn't concerned at first over the mysterious, heavy packages which have been delivered by messenger to ALBERT ST. GOAR, ESQ.-wrapped in stiff silver paper with gilt ribbons and bows and numbering at least one dozen; of odd sizes-one appears to be a hat box, another is cylindrical, others are long and narrow like florists' boxes, the rest are rectangular. If there's an edge of mockery to the accompanying card, SALUTATIONS & CONGRATULATIONS HAIL & FAREWELL "ALBERT ST. GOAR, ESQ."

Abraham isn't in a mood to take note. Instead it seems to him in the celebratory mood of the day that out of nowhere these handsomely wrapped presents should arrive, and that they should be sent anonymously.

"d.a.m.n! I have so little time," Abraham thinks, glancing at his gold pocket watch, one of Eva's heirloom gifts. "But I can't resist opening one or two of these now; maybe they contain something that will amuse my darling."

So, briskly, whistling a favorite aria from Don Giovanni, he unwraps one of the moderate-sized packages, noting its peculiar heaviness. Not clothing, clearly-an objet d'art?

In fact it's a tin stamped with the familiar heraldry of Fortnum's Food Shop, London. ("That's right: Albert St. Goar is formerly of London.") The lid has been hammered securely down so he has some difficulty prying it loose; has to use a b.u.t.ter knife, for leverage; then, staring inside, astonished he sees-a hunk of raw meat? Leg of lamb? beef? covered in dark, kinky hairs? He feels a tinge of nausea. Why would meat from the butcher's shop be delivered in so crude a manner-the inside of the tin reeking with fresh blood, and bone marrow, gristle and torn flesh hideously exposed?

"How disgusting," Abraham exclaims. "And in Philadelphia of all places."

With shaking hands, yet with that stoic fort.i.tude that has characterized his entire life and career, a sense that we must proceed to the end even if the end be bitter, Abraham tears off the wrappings of another tin, and pries it open to discover-dear G.o.d!-a bloodless-white naked human foot with misshapen toes and nails ridged with grime, attached to the remains of an ankle.

From this, grimly, teeth clenched, Abraham proceeds to a smaller tin containing several pounds of intestines heaped together in an unspeakable slippery ma.s.s.

INDEED IT'S A pity as Abraham Licht would one day note in his memoir that, imagining himself a lucky man he'd been in truth luckless, a p.a.w.n of the G.o.ds, for had he begun the unwrapping with the hat-box package containing Harwood's head I would have immediately comprehended the horror of the situation and would have been spared proceeding further.

* Darian's letter, astonis.h.i.+ng from a son who'd seemed so long obedient and reasonable, was a harsh, unwarranted attack upon Abraham Licht as a "deceitful father." Darian charged him with causing the death of his and Esther's young mother Sophie and, following her death, seeking to erase her memory. Darian's letter was scribbled in anguish, and obvious haste, covering four sheets of notebook paper and concluding: You cheated us of our Mother so I will cheat myself of all that is Father. I swear I will never see you again. I will never speak with you again. I will never be a son to you again SO LONG AS I LIVE.

P.S. I have arranged to pay my own tuition for the term at Vanderpoel & will not be returning next year.

Darian