My Heart Laid Bare Part 9

Honor is the subject of my story.

For G.o.d is theirs; and The Game, ours.

For years, for a quarter century, since the very morning of Thurston's birth, Abraham Licht had tormented himself, in idle hours, with dread of catastrophe involving one or another of his children. When he was caught up in his work, in the intricacies of The Game, why, then he had no time for such feverish imaginings!-then he had scarcely time for "Licht" itself!-but in the interstices, so to speak, of his professional life, it seemed he was prey like any man or woman to certain ign.o.ble fears. For these children were hostages to Fortune, indeed. For he had not counted on loving them so much.

"I suppose I do not care greatly about myself," Abraham Licht mused, "-for there is some doubt as to the existence of 'myself.' But no doubt, certainly, about the existence of my dear ones!"

(And though it could not be said, in the most precise terms, that the adopted Elisha was "his"-flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood-he loved the boy as deeply as the others.) As a younger man, as an impa.s.sioned lover, Abraham Licht had often fancied himself at the mercy of Woman's caprices; but with the pa.s.sage of years he had come round to believing that it was but his idea that rankled his heart, and not the women in themselves. For did a woman, even the loveliest of women, exist, apart from the aroused imagination of a lover? . . . had Arabella, and Morna, and poor Sophie, and one or two others, been as potent in the flesh as in the heated confines of Abraham Licht's mind? Two of the women, Arabella and Morna, lived yet, so far as Abraham knew; yet they seemed to him no more immediate, and distinctly less worthy, than Sophie who was dead. Ah, they had betrayed him so cruelly! . . . and Sophie as well! . . . and one or two others, harlots best forgotten.

Yet the women, Abraham Licht's "wives," had given him splendid children; which argued, however fleetingly, for their existence. And if he lost Thurston, whether to the hangman, or to exile, might he not father another son?-might he not acquire a new wife, as beautiful as any of the others, and father another miraculous being? For Abraham Licht was yet in the prime of life, no less handsome and vigorous than he had been in the days of his early manhood, arguably more handsome, more vigorous, the wisdom of the years upon him-the natural graying of his yet abundant hair-the natural weathering and creasing of his skin-the deepening of his voice-the sorrow glinting like mica chips in his gaze-Spirituality suffused throughout his well-proportioned figure.

Was he not Abraham Licht, most remarkable of men?-and might he not be again a lover, a bridegroom, again a father, holding his infant aloft, as if daring the hand of G.o.d Himself to strike it from him-?

"Father!-look here!"

How is it, so very suddenly?-here is Thurston, but a child again, in short pants, jacket, and striped school tie; his white-blond hair ablaze in innocent suns.h.i.+ne; his face healthily tanned, his eyes light, his smile dimpled and sweet . . . .He has trotted up quietly behind the Irish nursemaid, that he might, in a twinkling, wrest the handle of the baby carriage from her grasp . . . that pretty carriage, of the subtle shade of mother-of-pearl, bedecked with pink ribbons and Belgian lace, in which, in infant glory, beautiful Millicent rides! . . . and now, calling out to his father, his face uplifted, he pushes the carriage along the sidewalk, to Abraham Licht who awaits him . . . .

What a shock, to see the boy so young again, and so small: no more than nine years of age: which means that the family is living in the three-story brownstone in Stuyvesant Square, in one of the finest residential neighborhoods in Vanderpoel; moneyed again-at least for the s.p.a.ce of ten or twelve frenetic months; and able to afford clothes of the highest quality, and travel by Pullman car, and evenings at the opera, and a personal maid for Morna, and an Irish nursemaid for the baby, and a private Episcopal boys' school for Thurston and Harwood, and an elegant house in which Abraham Licht can entertain business a.s.sociates and potential investors . . . in the copper mine, is it? or, by the time of Millie's birth, in '92, has he already launched the problematic Santiago de Cuba Sugar Cane Plantation?

Faithless Arabella, the boys' mother, is gone from Abraham Licht's life; and Miss Morna Hirshfield, the parson's daughter, has taken her place; the f.e.c.kless young woman who has vowed, weeping, that she will love Abraham forever, and follow him wherever he wishes to go, and be a true Christian mother to his sons . . . .So little Thurston, dimpled and husky, rushes up to his father to claim his father's full attention: so happy in his prank, he appears oblivious of the fact that Abraham Licht is not bodily present on that sun-splashed sidewalk, but only regarding it, as it were, from an eerie pleat or tuck in time.

"Father!-look here!"

And now time has s.h.i.+fted abruptly, and Thurston is still younger, held aloft in Arabella's arms, to shout at the jailhouse window at which Abraham Licht, or a gentleman who very much resembles him, stands s.h.i.+vering (for the wretched place is unheated, and Abraham is suffering from a chest cold, and his cousin "Baron" Barraclough will not post bond for another forty-eight hours); the scene being Powhata.s.sie Falls, is it? Or Marion, Ohio?

How is such a thing possible?-Arabella, bareheaded, defiant, a young woman again, tears glistening on her cheeks, her feet set stolidly apart, brandis.h.i.+ng aloft the kicking child-their child, in reproach?-while the younger boy, Harwood, clutches at her skirt, wailing, and scarcely able to stand. Mrs. Abraham Licht, slightly drunk, come to visit her husband. Standing down there in the muddy courtyard, in the chill spring drizzle, that any idle jailhouse inmate might contemplate her in derision, and know her for what she is. Abraham vows: he will never forgive her, he cannot.

"Father!-help!"

Suddenly they are in the dim-lit parlor of the rectory, here, close at hand, Thurston and Harwood, mere boys, playing rather roughly together-now on the floor, and wrestling-striking each other swift savage blows-cursing like grown men-gasping for breath-rolling over, and over, and pummeling each other, panting, amid the furniture-now Thurston, red-faced, on top-now Harwood-cras.h.i.+ng against the spinet piano-overturning one of Sophie's little tables-"Father! help! he is killing me, help!"-Thurston's cry of pain as, enraged, Harwood sinks his teeth in his throat, just below the jaw, and, like any bulldog, will not release his bite, will not, will not! until Abraham Licht seizes him by the hair and thumps his head against the carpet.

So thoroughly repulsive an episode, he forgets it immediately upon waking; as, in life, he managed to forget it, many years ago.

Why was handsome young Abraham Licht so angry, now that he knew himself in love for the first time in his life?

The year was 1884, Abraham Licht was twenty-three years old, an agent for Pyramid Mail-Order Watches & Jewelry, Ltd. (headquarters and "warehouse" in Port Oriskany, New York); a fledgling journalist for the Port Oriskany Republican, whose publisher was his mentor; an actor of amateur status, yet "considerable histrionic gifts" (this, to quote from a review that appeared in the Republican, following a local production of the popular melodrama The Wayward Husband, in which Abraham Licht played a supporting role); a high-spirited well-bred gregarious fellow, mature for his years, a graduate, it was said, of Harvard College (or was it Yale?), who knew wines, horses, poker, music, politics-or, in any case, could speak zestfully on these subjects, and on numberless others.

What, precisely, were Abraham Licht's origins?-the organizer of Pyramid Ltd. (himself a youthful thirty-two years of age) believed his young friend hailed from "somewhere in the East"-Ma.s.sachusetts or Connecticut, perhaps; the publisher of the Republican, being originally from the Chautauqua Valley himself, believed he could hear, in curious dissonant tones, the nasal accent of the Valley; Mrs. Arabella Jenkins, whose lover he became, was entrusted with his secret-that following an alcoholic breakdown of his wealthy father, a Boston banker, of high social prominence ("Licht" being but an approximation of his Teutonic name), the young man had been disowned: a fortune held in trust for him, prized away by devious lawyerly means; his health so severely, if temporarily, shattered, he had been forced to his shame to withdraw from Harvard Divinity School with but a single semester remaining before graduation.

When he arrived in Port Oriskany by day coach, in the fall of '83, he knew no one in the entire city of twenty-eight thousand persons, and had no letters of introduction or recommendation. Yet within six months, it might be said that he knew everyone worth knowing. The attractive young bachelor dined as a guest at the Coliseum Club, and in numerous private homes (among them the homes of the mayor of Port Oriskany, and the pastor of the First Congregational Church, and the most prominent funeral director in the city, and the publisher of the newspaper); he sang in the choir of the Congregational Church, and attended all services and rehearsals faithfully; he partic.i.p.ated in amateur theatrical and musical evenings, content to a.s.sume minor roles, and not to upstage local talents; he soon displayed his amiable gifts for poker, as one who lost as cheerfully as he won, and did not win too frequently; he knew Thoroughbred horses, though he rarely allowed himself to place bets, as, in his eyes, doing so degraded the Sport of Kings; while basking in the attentions of charming young women, he did not slight their mothers, or elder sisters; he so impressed the publisher of the Port Oriskany Republican with his shrewd good sense as to ways and means of drumming up more advertising revenue, and presenting favored politicians in as human and seductive a light as possible, he might well have had a career there, had the Pyramid Mail-Order business been less challenging, and his own temperament less restless . . . .

(Though too young to be taken seriously by the party, yet Abraham Licht was approached upon several occasions as to his plans for the future: did he intend to remain in Port Oriskany, did he hope to marry a local girl and settle down, had he any interest in . . . serving the public? The Republicans had lately suffered considerable losses, following the surprising election of Cleveland, a Democrat, as governor of the state, on a rabble-rousing "reform" ticket; fresh blood was badly needed. The chairman of the state Republican caucus took him aside, and clapped him on the shoulder, and confided in him that, if he had a penchant for The Game-"and that is all there is in politics, son, 'success' being but Dead Sea fruit"-he might well make his way up the ladder of county and state offices; for vacancies regularly appeared from year to year as men died off, or were retired, or slipped from favor with the public. To this friendly overture, as to numerous others made to him, young Licht replied with great enthusiasm and pleasure, though with an air of evasiveness; for, as he admitted, his temperament was restless, and he hoped for more travel and adventure in life, before settling down with a wife and family.) THEN, WHETHER BY Destiny or crude Accident, it happened that Abraham Licht fell pa.s.sionately in love with Mrs. Arabella Jenkins, the young widow of one prominent Port Oriskany attorney, and the suspected mistress of another; and his flouris.h.i.+ng career in that city came to an abrupt end.

The occasion of their meeting was a musical Thursday evening at the Coliseum Club, where German lieder were being sung with melancholy spirit, and such perennial favorites of the drawing room as "The Angel's Whisper," "Come Back to Erin," and "Jeanie, with the Light Brown Hair." The most applauded event of the evening, however, was a piece by Schubert, for mixed chorus (three male voices, three female), piano, and violin, in which the brunette beauty Mrs. Jenkins shone to advantage, singing in a deep, rich, full, unfaltering alto voice, and, with seeming artlessness, commanding the attention of the entire room. Was she not, with her thick-lashed brown eyes, and her gleaming black hair, and her Junoesque proportions, a splendid woman indeed?

Abraham Licht stared, and stared, at Arabella Jenkins; and listened so intensely to her, the voices of the others faded.

Why, what could it mean-that her eyes moved so carelessly upon him, and drifted past?

He did not know her, but knew of her: knew certain romantic tales and rumors of her: that she had lost her well-to-do husband after only a few years of marriage, that she was childless, and showed little inclination to remarry; that she had lately become the secret beloved of a middle-aged Port Oriskany attorney, whose influence in the city was considerable.

A fallen woman, then, of a sort; yet, very clearly the undisputed queen of such gatherings as these; and one who, if Abraham Licht judged her correctly, thought rather highly of herself, basking in the applause she made a pretty show of disclaiming. (Yet, how sweet the hand-clapping and shouts of "Bravo!" surely were, to a woman unfettered by tiresome notions of modesty: knowing herself supremely herself: and calibrating her value by way of the admiring faces that surrounded her.) Abraham Licht, standing apart, continued to stare, unsmiling, at Mrs. Jenkins; joining but mechanically in the applause; feeling for her so ambiguous an emotion, or sensation, he could not have said if it was resentment, or tenderness, or confused anger.

And what did it mean, that she dared to glance so casually at him-and then away?

(AS TO YOUNG Licht's previous emotional life, his love-experiences, romances, courts.h.i.+ps, et al.-it seemed that he had had none; or did not remember them. For he remembered very little of his past, other than the fact that it was comfortably past, and could have no hold upon the present, let alone the future; and it was his a.s.sumption that all men and women shared identical inclinations. Had he made the conscious attempt, which he was unlikely to have done, Abraham could not have recalled any distinct events from his childhood: knowing only what he had been told, by a blacksmith and his family who took him in, that, at the approximate age of ten, he was found wandering sickly and delirious, and evidently amnesiac, on a country road south of the great Muirkirk marsh; in so confused a state, he could not even provide the blacksmith with his name, for several days.) Abraham Licht stared, and stared, and suffered a humiliating wave of heat that rose, it seemed, from his very bowels, to suffuse his face in a mottled blush; followed, within the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes, by a warring sensation of chill-of cold so very cold, he feared his teeth would begin to chatter. Why, was he ill? Was he mad? Was he himself, to succ.u.mb to a schoolboy's infatuation, for a woman several years his senior, and the possession of another man?

Ah, how he resented her, beforehand; how bitterly, how proudly, he resented Desire, that it rendered him so very suddenly, incomplete!

As for the woman-the evening's exertions had visibly warmed her, flesh and spirit alike: her rosy skin glowed with an interior heat, her pert upper lip gleamed with moisture, her ample bosom strained against the delicate silk of her bodice, she did, indeed, fairly bask, like a cat, in the effusive praise that lapped about her. And the well-to-do gentleman, her rumored lover, standing close by, with his unknowing wife at his side-he too basked in Arabella Jenkins's success, as if, by some oblique logic, it were his own.

"But he is not man enough for her," Abraham Licht thought, in a spasm of rage. "I shall show him!-I shall show her!"

Near the end of the evening Abraham Licht approached Arabella Jenkins, to compliment her like all the others on her exquisite alto voice; while staring at her so raptly, without even the formality of a smile, that, being of a sensuous temperament herself, and hardly a fainting virgin, Arabella could not fail to sense the drift of his intention; indeed, the peremptory beat of his desire.

He informed her in a lowered voice that he would come to see her the next day, and Arabella, rapidly fanning herself, said at once she was sorry, he could not; and Abraham amended, that he would come to her later that night, when the gathering of tiresome old fools and humbugs was dispersed, and the two of them might discuss the subtleties of Schubert's musical genius in greater privacy.

"I am very sorry," Arabella said sharply, with a look of genuine fright, "-but you cannot."

("AH, CAN I not?" says Abraham Licht, "-what is it, dear lady, Abraham Licht cannot do? Is it this-and this-is it this-and yet again this, dear lady, that Abraham Licht of all men cannot do?") IN THAT WAY young Abraham Licht succ.u.mbed to the violent pa.s.sion of love, for the first time in his life; his resentment overlaid, for the most part, by an emotion so intense as to approach delirium-for the woman was infinitely desirable, and the woman was his.

For, in the very early hours of a March day of 1884, they did become lovers, and unbridled lovers indeed, without an excess of ceremony.

For, it soon ceased to matter that Abraham Licht was but a youth of twenty-three, and near-penniless; and that Arabella Jenkins was twenty-eight, and possessed of a house and furnis.h.i.+ngs, and a small bank account.

For, being besotted on both sides equally, they soon gave no thought whether all the world-which is to say, a select scattering of Port Oriskany citizens-knew of their liaison and condemned it; or marveled at it in secret, as the match of two G.o.dly persons, of unusual physical beauty, and personal magnetism, and intelligence, and talent, and rare good luck . . . .

For, with the triumphant appearance of a man (Abraham Licht), the half-man (Arabella's middle-aged "protector") was banished forever; and could make no claim upon her. ("Though it fairly sickens me," Abraham said to Arabella, in a moment of chagrin, "-to think of a man, any man, even your former husband, touching you as I have touched you." "Why then, my dear, my darling, please do not think of it," Arabella begged, covering his warm face with kisses.) At length, Love so roused them to defiance, why not declare themselves lovers?-why not, scorning custom, publicly declare themselves not two, but one?-a matching of a sort never before seen in provincial Port Oriskany?

Why not elope?

Why not sell Arabella's property, and move to Manhattan, where each might pursue a career on the stage?-Arabella being gifted in both singing and acting, and Abraham being gifted in acting, and diverse sorts of showmans.h.i.+p? (And his promising baritone voice might be trained.) So the lovers planned, and plotted; and saw that Destiny lay all before them, had they but the courage to strike out for new territory. In a voice quivering with emotion, Abraham Licht one evening recited Mark Antony's great speech to Egypt's queen- Here is my s.p.a.ce, Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man; the n.o.bleness of life Is to do thus,-when such a mutual pair And such a twain can do't, in which I bind, On pain of punishment, the world to know We stand up peerless.

-even as he embraced his beloved Arabella, as if in defiance of their enemies. She was greatly moved, and asked Abraham where he had learned Shakespeare's verse with such accuracy and feeling; her young lover told her he'd succ.u.mbed to Shakespeare's genius as an undergraduate at Harvard, having fallen ill with an influenza for several weeks one winter, and being confined to his room, with the opportunity of submerging himself in the great tragedies. "For when one is confined in a small s.p.a.ce, with no promise of freedom for many days," Abraham said, with a stiffness of his jaws, and a steely-melancholy glint to his eye as if he were recalling an incarceration more onerous than merely the flu, "-there's no salvation quite like poetry, and no poetry quite like Shakespeare's."

SO IT HAPPENED that, one April day, the young lovers left Port Oriskany, eloping to Manhattan; and there experienced numerous adventures-as Abraham Licht might one day reveal in his memoir, these were too many, and too motley, to be described in a small s.p.a.ce. The essence of it was, Fortune did not smile upon us. Though we shook, and shook, and shook the dice, our lucky number never came up. How was it possible, their hopes for success on Broadway were thwarted repeatedly?-if Arabella was cast for a musical evening in which she excelled, it nonetheless did poorly and closed within a few days; if Abraham succeeded in winning, at last, a supporting role in a play-why, the actors were certain to be betrayed by their producer, and even the "stars" went unpaid. A highly regarded Broadway talent agent took them on-and was exposed by Hearst papers within a few weeks as an exploiter of youthful talent, wanted for bigamy in another state. Within six vertiginous months Arabella's money ran out and Abraham was forced to swallow his pride and take whatever employment he could, being too proud, as he told Arabella, to cable his family in Boston for aid, even as the couple moved from hotel to hotel, each less sumptuous than the former, and farther from their early euphoric dreams.

So they found themselves quarreling. And forgiving each other-pa.s.sionately, tenderly. Yet again quarreling. And again forgiving each other-with an air of desperation. "Hardly a stranger to misfortune, I'm not accustomed to making another share it with me," Abraham confessed to Arabella. "I feel sickened, ashamed. I feel-less a man." He might have said, too, that he was accustomed at times of misfortune to moving swiftly, leaving town without a backward glance; he would simply "plot" his way out of difficult financial predicaments; sometimes, when necessity forced his hand, he would disguise himself so casually, yet so ingeniously, "Abraham Licht" was never to be detected. But now, living with Arabella, a woman of pride, integrity and character, and in such intimate, cramped quarters, he couldn't escape seeing his misery mirrored in her beautiful eyes. And it began to upset him, that Arabella should be pa.s.sing judgment daily on his worth.

They quarreled about finances, and where next to move, and why Abraham didn't humble himself and ask his wealthy family for help: for, as Arabella tearfully pointed out, they could use the plea of her pregnancy-surely Abraham's father, a gentleman, would take pity on them? Surely he, and Abraham's mother, a gracious wellborn lady, wouldn't be so cruel as to reject an unborn grandchild? "Arabella, please. Say no more on this subject," Abraham said quietly, clenching his jaws. "You know nothing of my people-nothing of our tragic history."

Arabella replied, with an air of startling cynicism, "But what 'history' isn't tragic, if you look closely enough?"

Yet their most bitter quarrels were over what Abraham called Arabella's faithlessness: her moods of caprice and idleness when, to upset him, she smiled with easy favor upon other men; and always, in Arabella's vicinity, there were other men. As if any stranger should be raised to her lover's rank by a warm glance, or a sweet murmured word, or a charming quirk of Arabella's eyebrow.

Like many another lover in such a circ.u.mstance, Abraham chastised himself for his weakness. "If only I didn't love the woman so much! Surely the fault is in me, rather than in her."

For Abraham Licht had been born with the acuity of perception that allows us to know that our anger at another is probably nothing apart from our unexpressed anger at ourselves.

And, as a s.e.xual being, a man must know that while "manliness" is provoked by the female's physical charms, it is also, consequently, depleted by these charms. The power of Venus Aphrodite. The pagan G.o.ddess who tempts men, and exhausts them, through mortal women. The G.o.ddess is a ray of brilliant suns.h.i.+ne animating an otherwise lifeless, colorless landscape, gazing out of an individual woman's eyes, and arousing pa.s.sion in men which can never be fully satisfied. And, like the ray of suns.h.i.+ne, she pa.s.ses steadily and inexorably by; bodiless; without substance; without fidelity.

"And in this crime," the wounded lover muses, "-is there complicity?"

IN EARLY SUMMER of '85, Abraham decided that he and Arabella must quit Manhattan to live in the Chautauqua Valley, that their child might be born in more congenial surroundings; and he himself might make a fresh start in business. "After all," he told Arabella, with an air of mild bafflement, that his early promise had come to so little, "I'm not yet twenty-five."

Arabella said, with her air of subtle reproach in which (unless Abraham imagined it) a s.e.xual invitation lay coiled as a snake, "Twenty-five! Many a human being has been long dead and buried in the earth, and their bones dissolved to dust, by the age of twenty-five."

So the tempestuous couple moved to the crude village of White Sulphur Springs, where in the early, harsh winter of '85, a son, Thurston, was born; from there they moved to Contracoeur; next to Mulligar, where their son Harwood was born; then, as bad luck would have it, to the small city of Powhata.s.sie Falls, where Abraham Licht suffered an embarra.s.sing setback in his promising business career.

(Except, though Abraham was arrested and made to spend forty-eight repugnant hours in the country jail, he was not to be convicted of any crime. As records will show.) In all, he and Arabella lived together for five turbulent years. They were never officially man and wife, though Arabella gave birth to two strapping boys and their neighbors generally supposed them married. It had been an early, ardent hope of Arabella's that they would marry; but with the pa.s.sage of time, and the gradual escalation of their quarrels, her hope faded until she thought no more of it. And perhaps she wouldn't have wished it, in any case. For if she were Abraham Licht's wife under the law, the law that so definitely favored men, she would not be able to escape him, should she wish to escape him, quite so easily.

For though Arabella loved the fierce young Abraham Licht, a man so handsome women would stare after him in the street, she believed that for the sake of her soul as for the sake of her physical being (which could not tolerate another pregnancy-not in such impoverished circ.u.mstances) she felt she must leave him.

Their life together was wayward and unpredictable, and gave her little sustained happiness. Nor did motherhood appeal to her: her hungry babies were always "at" her, like her husband himself.

"Such hunger," Arabella thought, a panicked fluttering in her heart, "-can I satisfy it? And at what cost?"

If at times they were poor and transient, and objects of community suspicion, at other times they were unexpectedly flush with money from one or another of Abraham's business transactions, or gambling triumphs-and objects of community suspicion as well. They dined extravagantly, it seemed to Arabella, or they did not dine at all. They costumed themselves in fine clothes which, within weeks, ill became their diminished station in life. They traveled by first-cla.s.s train or carriage, or they did not travel at all-except to steal away, usually by night, from one or another residence. Sometimes Abraham adored her; sometimes, with no warning, he seemed to despise her as a temptress who allowed other men "to court her-to caress her-and to make love to her with their eyes" and who even deceived him, in a subtle way, with their sons. For didn't she love Thurston and Harwood more than she loved him?-when he spied upon his family, didn't it seem self-evident, they were happier without him, more relaxed, more inclined to laughter? "Born of her flesh, far more closely bound to her than ever a husband could be, a woman's children must usurp his place," Abraham reasoned, tormenting himself. "For if I could give birth, out of my loins, I know that would be true, for me."

Arabella denied such fancies, as she called them. If, having drunk too much, Abraham persisted, she lost her temper, saying what never failed to upset her young husband: "D'you know what you are getting to be?-mad."

Which was the deepest insult to his soul. And how to reply to such a charge, without flus.h.i.+ng hot and chagrined, or las.h.i.+ng out in stinging words of his own?

(Yet, Arabella was devious. As Abraham would one day discover. Hiding away what money she could, from unknown sources, over the months and years; encouraging Abraham to buy her expensive jewelry when he had money and the "spending fever" was on him. As if she'd planned to be female indeed, when the opportune time came.) FIVE YEARS OF turbulence and pa.s.sion; waxing, and waning; and waxing again; by no logic Abraham Licht could comprehend.

And bitterly I resented it, that I could not comprehend.

That life is a riddle, I could not comprehend.

That to be the teller of riddles is a destiny, while to be the one to whom riddles are told is but fate.

It infuriated him that Arabella was a beautiful woman who was his, and the mother of his children, yet so independent in her thoughts and emotions. "What do you want of me, Abraham, and of the world?" she frequently asked him, with a pretense of female bewilderment. "What do you want, why can't you settle down to one occupation, to one residence, to one life?-why, for G.o.d's sake, must you want so much? Like a giant baby at the nipple, too famished to be fed."

This so wounded Abraham, and enraged him, he saw himself in an instant in fine clothes, bathed in light, on a Broadway stage, confronted with a glamorous young woman, beguiling, seductive yet (as the audience well knew) duplicitous. With the ease of the matinee idol who understands how much, how uncritically he's adored, and quite shares in the adoration, Abraham laughed gaily and said, "Then will you marry me, my darling? Tomorrow morning? Yes?"

"Are you serious, or joking?"

Abraham laughed again. He heard, at a distance, the murmured approval of the audience, invisible to him but palpably there.

"Surely a man may be joking, yet serious? Serious, yet joking? If you know me at all, Arabella, you must know that."

Arabella gazed searchingly into his eyes. As so many others had, and would. And how futile, such a search. For my soul is not to be had cheaply. "Yes," she said finally, with an odd melancholy smile, "-I know."

The next night, in November 1888, Arabella slipped away from their boardinghouse in Vanderpoel while Abraham was out of town on business; leaving four-year-old Thurston and year-old Harwood behind, attended by a young neighbor girl, whom she'd befriended, and a brief, cruel message.

Farewell. Do not follow. Your "love" is too hungry. I am not to be consumed!

A.

Arabella took with her only her finer clothes, and her jewelry, and about $300 in cash of which Abraham knew; the word on the street was that she hadn't run off alone, but Abraham in his pride and fury refused to make inquiries. Nor would he hunt Arabella down.

"Your mother has left us. You must not ask of her. She has behaved badly, yet is not a bad woman. 'Crime? Then complicity.' We trusted her, we were fools, we are to blame. But not a word of her, ever-d'you understand?"

Wide-eyed, little Thurston nodded mutely, and one-year-old Harwood blinked and gaped with a baby's sweet acquiescence. For they were their father's sons after all.

OF THOSE FIVE years of Abraham Licht's young manhood and the first flowering of his genius he cares to recall primarily the wondrous hour of his eldest son's birth. In a rooming house in White Sulphur Springs, in a bed smelling of must and mildew and very shortly of the laboring Arabella's sweat, and finally of her blood; when after eleven agonizing hours the midwife at last shouted for him to enter the room and dazed, frightened, his heartbeat sounding in his ears, the young father stepped inside to be presented with a red-faced gasping infant boy, so heated, so perfect in all his proportions, so magically alive, wailing and squirming with life, tears ran freely down Abraham's cheeks. "My son? Mine?"

Arabella, her face drained of blood, gaunt as a death's-head, tried to smile at him, as in his astonishment he tried to smile at her. Yet for that instant they might have been strangers. For it was the squirming baby that drew all attention, as if a bright beam of light were s.h.i.+ning upon him. "Thurston. Thurston Licht. My son." Abraham was holding the baby in his awkward arms, trembling violently. The midwife smiled broadly at him, bemused by his youth, his handsome face, his new-father's look of commingled pride and terror. A shrieking hairless monkey, a beautiful creature only minutes old, with his father's features and spirited energy-obviously!

For wasn't the baby a form of Abraham Licht's very self, reentering the world, like an act of Hindu reincarnation, to conquer the world again? and yet again?

THE FATE OF "CHRISTOPHER SCHOENLICHT"

It could hardly be held against the bookmakers of Atlantic City and their sporting clients, that hundreds of bets were placed on the outcome of Christopher Schoenlicht's trial for first-degree murder, in December 1909, in the Atlantic County Courthouse: not whether the defendant would be acquitted (for that was never an issue), but whether he would be hanged by the public executioner, as the county prosecutor pa.s.sionately urged; or sentenced to life imprisonment, as Bullock, his attorney, yet more pa.s.sionately urged. For neither the prosecution nor the defense doubted that Schoenlicht, and Schoenlicht alone, was guilty of the murder of his "fiancee" Mrs. Eloise Peck; nor did young Schoenlicht himself deny the charge.

The interest of the trial, then, lay exclusively in its outcome; and its mystery, or mysteries, in several isolated elements-the background of the defendant (if, indeed, he had any: for no one could discover anything about him); his motive for the brutal murder, in circ.u.mstances in which he could not fail to be apprehended; what had become of the money and jewels he had taken from her room; why did he stubbornly refuse to speak to police, or even to defense counsel, when his life was at stake; and so forth. Though, being an open-and-shut case, with no courtroom surprises or reversals, the trial ran its course in four swift days, newspapers in Atlantic City and New York City sought to enliven proceedings by publis.h.i.+ng interviews with persons who claimed to be acquainted with the "Doomed Heiress" (as the papers called poor Eloise), and others, mainly employees of the Hotel Saint-Leon, who claimed to have known "Christopher Schoenlicht." Photographs of the deceased woman were run daily, as were companion photographs of the young man charged with her murder: though Schoenlicht now looked so drawn and fatigued, and carried his tall frame with such lethargy, it might be said that he was no longer a young man at all.

And in the courtroom itself, exposed to all eyes, with nowhere to turn that he might hide his face, Schoenlicht was the very image of sorrow: yet a sorrow of bone-weariness, and indifference: his skin grainy and flaccid, the flesh beneath his eyes puffy, and the eyes themselves glazed over, like those of a somnambulist. Was this Eloise Peck's das.h.i.+ng young lover, whom she had loved with such fatal results?-so observers wondered.

It was the wily Bullock's strategy, in the face of a succession of d.a.m.ning witnesses for the State (for who, in fas.h.i.+onable Atlantic City, had not seen Mrs. Peck hanging on the arm of Mr. Schoenlicht?), to argue to the court that his client was mentally infirm; mentally deficient; with no volition of his own, and no "free will"; sunk at the present time (as the gentlemen of the jury were invited to observe) into so pathological a torpor, very likely he did not see or hear distinctly; and could have no interest in his own fate. "To condemn a human being so helpless, and, indeed, so harmless now to society, would be an act of greater cruelty than the unpremeditated crime for which he is being tried"-so Bullock charged with such evident pa.s.sion, and such finely calibrated drama, Abraham Licht himself (who was paying the attorney his customary handsome fee) felt forced to admiration.