My Heart Laid Bare (3 page)

Edgar E. and Seraphina, hearing such words, exchanged a glance. A twitching of the lips meant to signify a smile. Brother-sisterly complicity. Since the Warwicks as a family strongly disapproved of gambling, they needed to be convinced that, in truth, this was not gambling; it was, however, a delicious opportunity to beat gamblers, as Dr. Frelicht said, at their own game. Could anything be more just—?

WHERE THE WARWICKS
went, in spring 1909, there the “astrological sportsman” must be invited as well. Else Seraphina in particular would have taken offense.

Colonel Fairlie, reluctantly giving way and including Frelicht in a clubhouse dinner honoring Lord Glencairn, complained that his nerves were rubbed raw by the man's very presence. Who was this Frelicht, what was his background, had he any decent occupation other than that of self-ordained gambler-mystic? Was he the fool he seemed? Was he simply very clever? Edgar E. and Seraphina teasingly pricked their acquaintances' curiosity by hinting at coups Frelicht had accomplished at other racetracks, but the details were scant, for the success of Frelicht's method depended upon its secrecy; and, being but human, brother and sister wanted to keep their find to themselves. Yet there were hints, elliptical and tantalizing, that he had once been a Shakespearean actor, perhaps a singer (hence the power and range of his voice), he had pursued a career in science (hence the Ph.D.); he might have been a seminarian in his youth; a musician; a tiller of the soil; a railroad agent; an explorer; a journalist. (Assuredly he had been a journalist. For, at Colonel Fairlie's dinner, when the gentlemen retired for brandy and cigars, Frelicht fell to talking confidentially with old Blackburn Shaw and told him, in a sudden rush of emotion, that he had lost his eye to the “Spanish enemy” in the
Maine
explosion . . . .The
New York Journal
had commissioned him to write a series of articles on the Cuban revolution, along lines sympathetic to American interests, and, as a special friend and advisor to Captain Charles Sigsbee, he had been aboard ship when the
Maine
anchored in infamous Havana Harbor. Only imagine, two hundred sixty-six American lives lost! To this day, Frelicht said, he feared for his own life since certain Spanish agents had vowed to kill him.)

Had he a wife? No. Not living.

Had he children? No. Not living.

And where, customarily, did he make his home?

“Where I am honored and respected,” he said, looking his interlocutor full in the eye, “and where I can be of service.”

A bower of tropical flowers, orchids, descending from the ceiling: purple, lavender, pearly-white, black. Linen-draped tables in a horse-shoe pattern overlooking a pond in which small golden carp swam and cygnets, black and white, nervously paddled. A young woman harpist from Dublin; rose-tinted shades over candles set in antique candelabras; Negro waiters in red jackets with gold brocade, red fezzes with black tassels, immaculate white gloves, serving the Colonel's sixty-odd guests from seven until midnight . . . .Lord Glencairn and his Lady, the guests of honor; the beautiful Polish actress Alicja Zielinski and her gentleman companion; the L. H. Vanderbilts; the James Ben Ali Hagins; the Blackburn Shaws; Senator and Mrs. Gardner Simms; Elias Shrikesdale; the Cone-Pettys; Edgar Warwick and his sister Seraphina, the widow of Isaac Dove; and many another party including “A. Washburn Frelicht” in white tie and tails, who, to his credit, guessing himself not fully welcome in the Colonel's clubhouse (being the only gentleman present not a member of the Jockey Club—the only gentleman who did not sport a diamond stickpin in his lapel, a gift of the Colonel's), ate and drank sparingly, and inclined his handsome head to listen, rather than to speak. Did he, amid the numerous champagne toasts, amid courses of fresh clams, and vichyssoise, and salmon, and squab, and roast beef, and Virginia baked ham, and, at the very end, colored ices in such artful equestrian shapes (Stone Street, and Xalapa, and Sweet Thing, and Glengarry, and Midnight Sun, and Warlock, and Jersey Belle, and Meteor, and Idle Hour, ingeniously rendered at four inches in height) everyone lamented that they must be eaten—did he sense how roundly he was being snubbed by the other sporting men?—how idle and mocking were the questions put to him of his “astrological science”—?

Not at all. For here, in A. Washburn Frelicht, we have a gentleman. Charming. Amiable. Well informed. Imperturbable. A holder of moderate opinions, political and otherwise. No admirer of Taft—no admirer of a lowered tariff. No admirer, assuredly, of Senator La Follette—the insurgent Wisconsin
warrior much vilified in the Republican press for his campaign against the railroads. Dr. Frelicht is well-spoken and witty with the ladies; cultivated, yet not so cultivated to offend; with the men, he is shrewdly deferential. Seeming to suspect no drollery, no scorn, no scarcely suppressed laughter behind his back. If the muscled shoulders tighten beneath the handsome fabric of his blazer, if the goateed underjaw extends itself as if to block an improvident word, if the single good eye emanates chill even as the ruddy cheeks burn with an impassioned fever, is there anyone in this company equipped to
see
?

The solitude of the pilgrim. Depend upon it, we are invisible in this world.

Gradually, at Colonel Fairlie's table, it becomes clear that Frelicht believes in his own betting stratagem—“In the infallibility of the Zodiac,” as he several times, portentously, declares. The man is a fool—yet a gentleman. A mystic of sorts. The specific details surrounding his and the Warwick's betting, the amount of cash involved, the
horse to win
, are naturally not revealed; but Frelicht speaks freely, even rhapsodically, of the Heavens, the astral plane, the “star-consciousness in which Past, Future and Present commingle like flame absorbing flame, or water, water.” It is stirring to hear the man speak, his words are beautiful if purely nonsensical and self-delusory, yet so poetically expressed that many a lady (the Colonel's own Belinda, in truth) might well be swayed, for suddenly the company is hearing of the Great Nebula of Orion . . . the reign of the Pleiades . . . how Andromeda inclines to Pisces and to the bright bold star of Aries . . . how the rings of Saturn quiver with electric charges . . . how the Moon exerts its secret tides upon the human psyche.

Frelicht concludes by saying with a deferential smile that he sympathizes with those who are doubtful of his beliefs, as, until very recently, he was a doubter himself; a kinsman of Shakespeare's Cassius, who so arrogantly claimed that man's fate lay not in the stars but in himself. “Now, however, it has been revealed to me that any man, or woman”—with a glance at the beaming Seraphina across the table from him—“sufficiently initiated into the science of the sky is at the same time initiated into the science of the Earth. ‘As above, so below'—this is but ancient wisdom.”

Luckily, Colonel Fairlie changes the topic before one of the scowling gentlemen at the table can ask Frelicht a rude question, such as why the Heavens were to be interpreted through
him,
and risk insulting Seraphina.

YET AFTER DINNER
, when the gentlemen gather together in the Colonel's oak-panelled smoking room, over brandy snifters and Cuban cigars, things look up for Frelicht, indeed yes.

For there is ninety-year-old Blackburn Shaw, of the famous Shaw Farm, a patriarch of the racing world, revered by all, laying a proprietary hand on young Frelicht's arm, angrily lamenting the decline in Thoroughbred racing and breeding since the War, no horses like the great horses of his grandfather's day, Diomed, Arisides, Ten Broeck, Lexington, Hindoo (“Hindoo!—there was a horse!—did you know, Dr. Frelicht, that Stone Street is sired out of Hindoo, the greatest stallion of all?”)—now times are changed, even gentlemen are breeding horses not for sport and beauty but for the market, in fact there are fewer and fewer
gentlemen
remaining in America—why, did Frelicht know that in the old days the highest qualities in a Thoroughbred were vigor, stamina, courage, sheer stubborn
heart
—if an animal couldn't do three four-mile heats in less than eight minutes, why sir he would be turned out to pasture and his trainer with him—but now—since the War—since the turn of the century—now all that matters is “dash”—and a race is no sooner started than it is over. In the early years of the sport, too, stallions were far more virile than they are now: Hindoo, for instance, put out to stud at the advanced age of twenty, was so unquenchable in his appetite, so fired with lust, he would gallop out of his stable as if at the starting post!—serving all mares at his disposal with unflagging zeal, and siring one prizewinner after another. Whereas now, Shaw says pettishly, while his companion frowns in sympathetic disapproval, “Foals are half the time aborted in the womb, it seems; and stallions lose their virility almost as soon as they lose their racing legs.”

Frelicht, stroking his goatee, murmurs sadly that he had not known, sir, things were at such a pass.

What is even worse, jockeys can no longer be trusted: those agile little colored boys who'd performed so well in the past! Nor could grooms be trusted, white or black. Nor trainers. It was common knowledge that races were being bought and sold every day—horses, poor dumb innocent beasts, were being fed drugs to slow their heartbeat, or stimulate it—any low trick to upset the “odds”—as if “odds” were king!—jockeys cunningly held their mounts back, the more skilled jockeys the more likely to pass off such trickery undetected—or they set their mounts too cruel a pace—threatened one another—sometimes assaulted one another—turned up at the stables drunk, or themselves coked to the gills. Worse yet (here the old man tugged at Frelicht's arm, whispered fiercely into his ear), owners could not be trusted, even those who prided themselves on being gentlemen—“Even certain members ‘in good standing' of the Jockey Club.”

At this charge, however, Frelicht respectfully demurred; though he wasn't a horseman himself, and not a member of this prestigious club, yet he could not allow himself to believe . . . (Speaking earnestly, quietly, with no sign that he guessed how most of the gentlemen in the room were listening. Stroking his goatee with meditative fingers.)

This, the deaf old patriarch chose not to hear; and continued for several minutes more, lamenting the passing of the old days, the stability of the Union, before the rabble-rouser Lincoln went to war, and men were confounded to be told, like it or not, that they were but descendants of apes! In the end, though, smoking the heavily fragrant cigar his host had given him, pleased by the avid attentiveness of A. Washburn Frelicht, Mr. Shaw pressed upon that young man one of his business cards, and extracted from him a promise that, when Frelicht's affairs next brought him to New York City, he would be a guest of Shaw's at his Long Island farm, to stay as long as he wished.

Thank you, Mr. Shaw, thank you very much, perhaps I will.

Now all transpires swiftly as if, indeed, preordained.

And time-locked Earth where mortals abide but a
remembering-forward.

The band ends “The Star-Spangled Banner” with a solemn military flourish; the white silk purses heavy with prize money are hung at the finish line, for the winning jockeys to seize after the race; promptly at 4:50
P.M.
the bugler blows first call; and here are the horses—at last, the nine Derby horses!—trotting out of the paddock to the track, parading ceremoniously to the right, then, at the clubhouse turn, wheeling slowly around to trot to the starting post, ears erect, tails flicking with nervous excitement, the jockeys in their bright silk costumes standing in their irons, here is Shep Tatlock on the tall bay colt Stone Street, here is Bo Tenney on the beautiful chestnut-red Xalapa, here is Parmelee on Midnight Sun, horse and rider both black as pitch, here is little Jenk Webb on Glengarry, little Moses White on Sweet Thing . . . .The jockeys are told their positions, the horses are assembled at the starting line, milling, crowding, jostling one another, Stone Street visibly nervous, Midnight Sun stamping the dirt, so unruly he has to be held by his tail, Idle Hour misbehaving, tossing his head . . . .

(Frelicht's companions sit quietly and calmly as he. Though doubtless their hearts beat, quickened, like his. For
is
the race preordained?
Is
it written in the Heavens that an investment of $44,000 will yield some $400,000 in a scant five minutes of earthly time?)

Sunshine harshly bright as if diamond-refracted, cold May winds from the Chautauqua Mountains north of the racecourse; a hard dry track, an ideal track; now the horses are assembled behind the elastic web barrier; now—but now Midnight Sun, prancing excitedly, breaks through the webbing and has to be led back; and all the horses quieted; and now the red flag is waved, and the webbing flies violently up, and the race has begun—

Stone Street in his inside post position breaks away at once, Xalapa nearly beside him, Sweet Thing close behind, the others are caught briefly in a
jam-up, cagey little Parmelee on Midnight Sun pushes free (has Parmelee, in a gesture so swift no one has seen, yanked at Glengarry's saddle cloth to throw the horse off stride?), Warlock is being nudged into the rail, Jersey Belle and Meteor and Idle Hour are already lengths behind, out of the race. Now the leaders are passing the grandstand, now the clubhouse, but isn't Stone Street being ridden strangely, isn't he beginning to weave . . . Xalapa and Sweet Thing rapidly gaining, overtaking . . . and Midnight Sun on the outside, Parmelee using his whip, Parmelee and Sweet Thing's rider involved in some sort of altercation. But Xalapa, at the front, is suddenly the crowd's favorite, passing Stone Street on the inside as they come into the backstretch; and suddenly it is clear that Shep Tatlock is drugged, or drunk, or sick, pulling his horse's head from side to side, dropping back to third place, to fourth, to fifth, weaving across the track . . .