My Heart Laid Bare (45 page)

Millie says suddenly, as if she's only just now thought of it, “You
seem to be forgetting, Father, that you should be giving warning to Darian and Esther to expect a new stepmother soon. And you should bring them to Philadelphia to meet Eva, you know.”

“No, dear. I am not. Forgetting, I mean.”

Abraham Licht doesn't glance up but continues to make checks against stocks.

“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 Woodcocks, 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 coarseness, 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
mutilés
, as they were called. “Only imagine, Millie, being allowed to do such work!” Esther said with shining 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 . . .
mutilés.
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, embarrassed. “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 soirée 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 crêpe 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 glasses 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 embarrassed, 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 blushing 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 passionately, “—but you so much resemble a girl I once . . . knew. ‘The Lass 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 passed . . . 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.'”

P
oor 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, passed 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 quantity of hair growing on much of his body) at the Clover Street establishment of Mrs. Fairlie, and “The Bull” (owing to his prodigious sexual 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 identity.

(For such is the expression—“double identity”—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.”