My Heart Laid Bare (30 page)

“You lie! You lie!—you black devil.”

Is it terror, or pride?—this refusal of Elisha to so much as raise a hand against the older man, for Abraham Licht is Father; and many years ago saved Elisha from the flood; and in his heart Elisha knows, whether there is sin or not,
he has sinned.

MILLIE CRIES HERSELF
into a delirium in Katrina's arms, and Katrina sighs impatiently, for it's all so absurd, such tears are so absurd, how grateful she is she's an old woman now and her heart calcified and protected against such hurt. And at last, as she knows he would, Abraham calls to her to bring Millie to him, into the parlor where by the light of a kerosene lamp her father and her lover are waiting. Millie grips Katrina's hand hard, but Katrina pushes her away.

Millie wipes her inflamed eyes, sulkily; seeing that something, unless it's everything, has changed. Father is very angry and has not forgiven them and Elisha is no longer her handsome young lover but a disheveled, shamed, confused young man; a very dark-skinned man; looking too desperately to her for solace.

“Elisha has decided to leave Muirkirk immediately tonight,” Father says evenly. “And it's his belief, my girl, that you've agreed to go with him.”

Millie blows her nose. Where in another, nose-blowing is a crude, commonplace act, in Millie, as in any stage ingenue, it's an act of sniffy, petulant defiance. Millie says, in a high childish voice, looking at Father
and not Elisha, that, yes, she will go with Elisha if that's what he wants—“If that's what he has told you.” Elisha says, rawly, that that
is
what he wishes—“And what you wish, too, Millie.” Father says, his voice still even, judicious and measured, “If you go away with Elisha, my girl, then you will never again come home to
me.
This, I hope you understand.” And Millie doesn't speak, though she's smiling. Dabbing at her nose with her embroidered little handkerchief. For her eyes, too, flash fire; and fire burns. Yet Elisha blunders forward, reaching his hand to her as if they were alone together. Saying, pleading, that Millie must come with him because they are promised to each other; they love each other; how many times they've vowed this. And Millie will—almost—take Elisha's extended hand, for it's a hand she loves, those slender fingers she has loved, swooning beneath their caress, she's kissed and stroked those fingers yet she can't seem to lift her arm, her arm has gone leaden, her spirit has gone leaden, her eyes are swollen and aching and ugly, she has rubbed them so hard the lashes are coming out, for it's wrong, it's unfair, it's cruel of these men to summon her to them as if in a court of law, putting her to such a test, demanding such a performance of her. And no preparation! Not a single rehearsal! Millie would whisper
I hate you both!
Elisha continues to speak, growing angry, impatient, but Millie can't concentrate thinking
Hate you both!—bullies. Leave me alone I want to sleep.
Abraham says nothing, merely smiling his hard, knowing smile, his eyes glinting like chips of glass; Millie can see that he is herself in her innermost soul . . . Father
is
her . . . as Elisha, a mere lover, can never be.

And so the scene plays out, until at last Millie sinks in a faint into Father's arms, at the jarring sound of a slammed door.

And so it happens that Elisha Licht departs Muirkirk forever in October 1913 and the following Sunday Millicent departs for Rhinebeck for an extended visit with the Fitzmaurices.

And so it happens that Abraham Licht will begin to forget Elisha, as one forgets any disagreeable episode; or, if forgetting is too extreme, he ceases to speak of Elisha; for, indeed, what's there to say?
The past is but the graveyard of the future, as the future is but the womb of the past.
And his thoughts are focused upon Rhinebeck, and the Fitzmaurice clan about which he will soon know as much information as he can garner.

Millie has ceased her silly schoolgirl tears. Millie has torn up a packet of letters, and tossed them into the marsh. Katrina never alludes to Millie's lost love except to lightly scorn it as an attack of nerves such as high-strung fillies often have, at certain phases of the moon; she never speaks of Elisha except to assure Millie that once she's away from Muirkirk and its unwholesome vapors she'll forget him—“As you've forgotten so much.” And Millie laughs a high, startled laughter, a laughter that seems to pierce her like pain, saying, “Oh, Katrina, I almost wish what you say isn't so; but I know
it is so
; and such is Millie's fate.”

W
hy—is it myself, transmogrified?”

So thinks the superintendent of the Camp Yankee Basin Mining Company, Mr. Harmon Liges, when, in the late afternoon of 9 April 1914, in the bustling lobby of the Hotel Edinburgh in Denver, Colorado, he
happens to catch sight of a stranger, a stocky young gentleman in a brown herringbone tweed topcoat and a matching cap, who closely—indeed, uncannily—resembles
him.
So unnerving is the similarity, Harmon Liges cannot simply pass by; stations himself behind one of the lobby's stately marble pillars, in order to stare at the man unobserved; feels a curious sensation of excitement mingled with repugnance, anticipation mingled with dread . . . for the stranger, apart from superficial differences, might be a virtual twin of his. Or so it strikes Harmon Liges.

Fascinated, even as he's obscurely offended, Liges studies the man in the tweed topcoat to satisfy himself that he
is
a stranger; and very likely a new arrival from the East, on the 4:45
P.M.
train from Omaha. Is he traveling alone, as he appears . . . ? Might he be on business? Yet he lacks the self-assured and expectant air of the businessman; seems to be, in fact, ill at ease in his new surroundings, though smiling a nervous, quizzical smile, even as the impertinent registration manager keeps him waiting. (“That is not the tack to take with the Edinburgh staff,” Liges thinks impatiently, “—they will only mark you down for a fool.”)

Like himself, the man is about thirty years old; of but moderate height, no more than five feet seven inches; thick-bodied; with a large-pored, slightly flushed skin; heavy dark “beetling” brows; and small, moist, pink, curiously prim lips. His head is innocently round beneath the tweed cap, his face moon-shaped, the ears somewhat protuberant; assuredly he is
not
handsome—though, to Liges's practiced and unsentimental eye, he is more attractive than Liges himself, being boyish and vulnerable in his manner, and clean-shaven, while Liges is guarded, and sports a close-trimmed Vandyke beard. (It is remarkable how this beard disguises Liges; how very simple a matter it invariably is, to radically alter one's appearance by way of a minor, though clever, change in grooming, dress, speech, bearing, etc.) In addition, while Harmon Liges is barrel-chested, muscular, and fiercely compact, with a fighter's unconscious habit of bringing his weight forward onto the balls of his feet, the Easterner is plump, harmless, burdened
by some thirty or forty pounds of baby fat, and a natural ungainliness in his movements.

Yet more significantly, Liges has cultivated the Westerner's skill of taking in all that is of importance in his surroundings, even as he appears oblivious of them; while the gentleman in the tweed topcoat, though glancing from side to side, and blinking, and smiling his sweet quizzical smile as if expecting a friendly acquaintance to step forward at any moment, very likely sees nothing at all.

“He has not seen
me
, in any case,” Harmon Liges thinks.

Since he has a pressing engagement with an agent for the Union Pacific Railroad in the gentlemen's bar of the Edinburgh, Harmon Liges does not linger by the marble column; having in any case learned that the stranger's name is Roland Shrikesdale III, his hometown is Philadelphia, and he intends to stay in Denver for an indeterminate period of time.

(“Indeterminate” being, after all, the amount of time most visitors spend in Colorado—or indeed, on earth generally.)

Again, at eight-thirty the next morning, entering the hotel's dining room for breakfast, Harmon Liges is given a shock by seeing across the room his “twin” of the previous day; whom, oddly, he seems to have forgotten in the intervening hours.

(Or had he in fact dreamt of the plump smiling man? Waking toward morning with a foul taste in his mouth, and an anxious, quickened heartbeat; and a sensation of arousal in his groin.)

Him—!

Yet again—!

Liges deliberately takes a table close by the stranger, though he finds the man's very presence disquieting. “
Is
it myself, transmogrified?” he thinks, watching the stranger covertly, “—or an unsuspected cousin, or
brother? For I have no doubt that Father has sired numberless bastard sons across the continent.” This morning the young gentleman, sportily attired in a suede coat, string tie, and trousers of a casual cut, is occupied in eating a lonely breakfast and halfheartedly reading the
Denver Gazette
, even as his gaze moves restlessly about the room. He too has an unevenly receding hairline, though his hair is considerably fairer and curlier than Liges's; his skin is similarly rough, yet mottled, and pasty-pale beneath, while Liges's is tanned. Indeed, he has the appearance of a man not fully recovered from an illness who hopes to speed his convalescence by journeying out West where the climate is supposed to be health-inspiring—in the much-publicized way of Teddy Roosevelt.

A rich man's pampered son and assuredly not a bastard, thinks Harmon Liges with a thrill of hatred—“Like myself.”

Shortly afterward, however, when breakfast is brought to him, Liges relaxes. Devours with his usual appetite beefsteak, eggs and potatoes; drinks several cups of black coffee; lingers over his own copy of the
Gazette
, though columns of print fatigue his eyes and arouse in him a vague feeling of resentment and an urge to do hurt; luxuriantly, he fouls the air about him with a long thin Mexican cigar; quite by accident glancing up as the gentleman across the way glances toward him . . . with that faint, simpering smile of the Easterner hoping to be made welcome. (Apparently the stranger doesn't note the similarity between himself and Liges, for Liges doesn't look like “himself” these days, having changed his appearance considerably, and practicably, from that of Elias Harden, who'd run a surprisingly successful gambling operation in Ouray, Colorado, the previous winter; just as Elias Harden bore but a superficial resemblance to Jeb Jones, an itinerant salesman for Doctor Merton's All-Purpose Medical Elixir, previously.) Inspired, Liges smiles warmly, bracketing the cigar; being so clearly a Westerner, he feels it his obligation to be kindly and welcoming to an Easterner. This smile is magic! For Father has said
Smile and any fool will smile with you.
The young man, lonely Roland Shrikesdale, leans
forward eager as a puppy, nearly spilling his cup of cream-marbled coffee, and smiles in Liges's direction.

So it begins. And no one to blame.

SO LIGES AND
Shrikesdale meet on the morning of 10 April 1914 in the spacious dining room of the Hotel Edinburgh, and Liges invites Shrikesdale to join him for more coffee; the young men talk amicably of travel in Colorado, and of hunting and fishing in the remote Medicine Bow Mountains, where Liges has been; an oddity of their meeting being that, though Harmon Liges introduces himself in a fairly forthright manner as the superintendent of the Camp Yankee Basin Mine, though in fact he's the former superintendent of this ill-fated mine, Roland Shrikesdale introduces himself as—
Robert Smith!

(“Which means that Shrikesdale is a name I should know,” Liges shrewdly reasons, “—for he hopes to hide his identity. But it's a name I shall know, shortly.”)

Yet during the several weeks of their friendship, up to the morning of his disappearance in the foothills of wild Larimer County, the nervous young Easterner continued to represent himself to Liges as “Robert Smith”—a harmless if puzzling bit of subterfuge Liges thought more appealing than not.
Always encourage it when a man will lie to you
Father has said
for, in the effort of lying, it will never occur to him that another might play his game, too.
And it pleased him who had no friends he could trust, in truth no friends at all, to be in the position of warmly “befriending” the incognito Easterner who declined to speak of his family except to indicate that they were “financially secure, yet sadly contentious” and that his widowed mother perhaps loved him “too exclusively”—all this while knowing that he was in fact befriending Roland Shrikesdale III of Philadelphia, principal heir at the age
of thirty-two to the great Shrikesdale fortune. (In Denver, Liges learned within a day or two that Roland was the son and grandson of the infamous “Hard Iron” Shrikesdales who'd made millions of dollars in the turbulent years following the Civil War: their investments being in railroads, coal mines, grains, asbestos and predominantly nails. Roland's mother was the former Anna Emery Sewall, heiress to the Sewall fortune (barrels, nails), a Christian female who'd brought censure and ridicule upon herself several years before by giving more than $1 million to the Good Samaritan Animal Hospital in Philadelphia, with the consequence that the animal hospital was better equipped than nearly any hospital for human beings in the region. The Shrikesdales
were
a contentious lot, quarreling among themselves over such issues as how to deal with striking miners in their home state: whether to use the militia or hire a battalion of even more bloodthirsty Pinkerton's men, and risk public criticism. (The Pinkerton mercenaries were hired.) Roland was an only child, rumored to be almost frantically doted upon by his mother; though appalled by the excesses of his family, particularly the cruelty with which they treated their workers, Roland stood to inherit most of the fortune when she died. Since there were numerous Shrikesdale and Sewall cousins of his approximate age, some of them involved in running the family's companies, it was believed that they would share in it as well—to some degree. Liges's sources concurred that Roland, or “Robert Smith,” was generally believed to be somewhat simpleminded; not mentally deficient exactly, but not mentally efficient; a passive, weakly affable, religious young man with little interest in the Shrikesdale riches, let alone in increasing them.)

“And ‘Robert' is so wonderfully trusting,” Liges thought. “The very best species of friend.”

SO IT HAPPENED
that Harmon Liges, ex-superintendent of the Camp Yankee Basin Mine, volunteered to show young Robert Smith the West,
and to be his protector; for trusting young men traveling alone in those days, and giving signs of being well-to-do, did require protection from more experienced travelers. What plans they made together! What adventures lay in store for Mrs. Anna Emery's sheltered child, whose imagination had been flamed, from early boyhood, by such popular tales of the West as Owen Wister's
The Virginian
, Bret Harte's “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” Mark Twain's
Roughing It
and Teddy Roosevelt's celebration of Anglo-Saxon masculinity in
The Winning of the West
and
The Strenuous Life.
Harmon Liges had never read these, nor would have wished to, but he took, it seemed, an almost brotherly delight in sharing with his charge plans of camping in the mountains; hunting, and fishing; visiting “a typical gold mine”; visiting “a typical ranch”; riding, by horseback, the treacherous canyon trails “as natives do.” In addition there were, here and there, such notorious establishments as the Trivoli Club in Denver, the Hotel de la Paix in Boulder, the Black Swan in Central City, and a few others to which, Liges said hesitantly, he'd bring Smith if Smith wished; though such places were likely to seem vulgar and lacking in dignity to a Philadelphian.

“‘Vulgar' and ‘lacking in dignity'? How so?” Robert Smith asked, blinking eagerly. “In what way, Harmon?”

“In a way of presenting females—I mean, women.” Liges frowned and stared at his hands, as if overcome by embarrassment. “That's to say—in the way such women present themselves. To men.”

It turned out that Smith had never traveled farther west before this than Akron, Ohio, where he, and his mother, had visited Sewall relatives; this trip to Colorado was the great adventure of his life. In fact, he'd left home in defiance of his mother's wishes . . . and he'd left home
alone
, which he had never done before. “So it may be that these are the very persons I ought to meet, if I'm to make a ‘man' of myself once and for all,” he said, shifting almost uneasily in his seat. “That is, of course, Harmon—if you'll be my guide.”

Since the days of Teddy Roosevelt's cattle ranching in Dakota, and his much-publicized hunting expeditions in the Rocky Mountains, Africa and elsewhere, it had become a tradition of sorts for men of good family to distinguish themselves in the wilderness (or, in most cases, as with Roosevelt himself, the quasi wilderness): that they might be declared fully and incontestably
male
, hundreds upon thousands of wild creatures must die. (In Africa alone, Roosevelt killed two hundred ninety-six lions, elephants, water buffaloes, and smaller creatures.) Though Harmon Liges had resided in the West less than five years, he had encountered a number of wealthy sportsmen during that time, bent on bagging as much “wild game” as possible, with the least amount of discomfort and danger; but never had he encountered anyone quite like Smith. It was usually the case, for instance, that such gentlemen traveled in small caravans, bringing cooks, valets, and even butlers with them up into the mountains, and camping in elegant walled tents, in the most idyllic of circumstances. (One of the most notorious of the luxury expeditions, hosted by Mr. Potter Palmer of the great Palmer Ranch in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1909, involved some fifteen covered wagons, approximately forty horses, and two servants for each of his twenty-five honored guests; the hunters bagged hundreds of wild animals and birds, but ate few of them, preferring the less “gamey” food they had brought with them in tins.) Yet here was the heir to the great Shrikesdale fortune, entirely alone in the West, unescorted, and unprotected—except for Harmon Liges.

On the whole, Liges thought that admirable.