The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (92 page)

 

 

The waiter arrived with their lunch. Agatha waited until he had placed
the dishes on the table. Pat was chewing on a piece of steak when she
continued: "Saul, since Pat is enjoying his meal so thoroughly, let him
read those letters."

 

 

Pat took the papers that Saul extracted from his briefcase and looked at
them casually, continuing to eat. There were three letters from different
doctors stating that they had examined Agatha Latham, giving her extensive
tests. Each letter attested that Agatha Latham had passed numerous mental
examinations, and concluded that Agatha Latham was perfectly sane.

 

 

One of the letters was from a prominent New York psychiatrist whose name
Pat recognized. It stated that he was present when Agatha Latham had
dictated the provisions of her last will and testament to Saul Angle.
The letter stated that Agatha Latham was sound in mind and body and was
under no pressure from outside parties.

 

 

Pat knew that there was more to the letters than appeared on the surface,
but he waited, egging Agatha on. "Even if you are as nutty as a fruitcake,
Agatha, it is no concern of mine." He handed the letters back to Saul.
"I hope you didn't arrange this luncheon just to prove to me that you
are sane."

 

 

"When you are alone in the world, and have accumulated as much money as
I have," Agatha said, "there are any number of people who have plans for
when you are gone. It is quite possible that there are people who would
contest my will. I haven't become rich by taking wild chances." Agatha
smiled, obviously enjoying herself. "While what I do with my money is
no concern of yours, Patrick, in this case it may affect your life
more than a little. . . ." She sipped her Scotch while Pat listened
impatiently. "Without going into details, I'm leaving my niece, Margery
Latham, securities worth one million dollars. The balance of my estate,
approximately one hundred and twelve million dollars, I'm leaving to
Challenge Incorporated."

 

 

Pat stopped eating and stared at Agatha, astonished. "I don't care
what the letters say, Agatha, you really must have a screw loose
somewhere. Does Alfred know this?"

 

 

"He'll read it in the papers, tomorrow. The reason that I wanted to tell
you first, Patrick, is that with this money, and his own investment skill,
Yale is going to be able to make Challenge a very powerful force in the
world. I believe that rather than fight him, you have the chance to make
your declining years a monument to the Marratt name."

 

 

Pat's look was incredulous. "What do you mean . . . go tub thumping for
this screwball religion of his?" Pat shook his head. "Agatha, I don't
believe all this baloney about loving everybody else. In a few years
you will be known as a wealthy crank who subsidized a simpleton. Pardon
the expression, but your money will be pissed away on a lot of screwball
ideas before you're cold in your grave." Pat put his napkin beside his
plate. "If you don't mind, Agatha, I've had a bellyfull."

 

 

He stood up and looked at his watch. "Frankly, I have an appointment
at three o'clock. You and Angle can stay here as long as you like. The
lunches will be put on my account." Pat gave Saul a grim look. "I don't
know what tricks you may have up your sleeve, but the district attorney
assures me that when this trial is over the least thing that will happen
is that Yale Marratt will be minus one wife! It may not have occurred to
either of you, but my guess is that when Yale's matrimonial balloon is
punctured, Challenge Incorporated will crash to the ground along with it."

 

 

Agatha and Saul watched Pat stride across the dining room. Saul ordered
coffee for both of them from the waiter. "Well," Agatha sighed, a sad
expression on her face, "I didn't accomplish much, did I?" Saul looked
at her thoughtfully but didn't answer. "What do you think, Saul?" Agatha
asked. "Is Pat right? Will you lose? Will Yale, Anne, and Cynthia be
forced to separate?"

 

 

Saul stirred his coffee. "Agatha, this is a Christian country. Everything
that is written in this book of theirs is nothing more or less than an
extension of Christ's views. But if there is one thing that Christians
have never really learned to do consistently, it is to love one another.
In a way, it is unfortunate that the views embodied in Challenge must
receive their first test with a thing of this kind." Saul shrugged.
"Perhaps bigamy is so repugnant to Christians because it seems so
impossible. By the rules that Yale, Cynthia, and Anne have established
for each other, it takes a kind of denial that is incomprehensible
to most peoople who have never denied themselves; particularly the
luxuries of anger and suspicion and hatred. The Jews and the Eastern
nations may understand this kind of marriage better because the large,
loosely-integrated polygamous households, where they exist, function on a
male axis with the father or chief of the tribe in full responsibility.
In the Western world where the mother is the chief symbol, bigamy is
equated with a form of enslavement. Of course you and I know, having
seen it in action, that this marriage of Yale, Anne, and Cynthia exists
without compulsion. In fact, its very strength is based on a high degree
of free-wheeling individuality. That kind of marriage is something new
under the sun. To make it work takes a kind of brain that most people
don't have."

 

 

Saul smiled at Agatha. "I'm not answering your question because I don't
know what will happen tomorrow or after. There are some imponderables
in this situation which could have interesting results. First, Yale
Marratt is a frighteningly tenacious man." Saul scowled. "Obviously,
inherited from his father. Second, he has two women who really believe
in him. And third, he has an old lady who, one of these days, will have
put in his hands the thing our society understands . . . dollars . . . a
hundred million of them."

 

 

"I only wish it were a billion of them. We spend billions for wars.
A hundred million is inadequate to fight all the hatreds in the world that
breed wars." She was silent for a moment. "I have never asked you, Saul,
whether you approve of what I am doing. It is much easier, I suppose,
for all of us to go along with the old truisms. The world has survived and
grown fat on wars, hatred, and bigotry. Man is basically an animal in his
responses. We need wars to clean out the excess population. . . ." Agatha
shook her head. "It's too easy. Isn't it better for me, at eighty, to
hope that perhaps for the first time in the world there exists a body of
beliefs that could be commonly understood by all men? Beliefs not based on
fear of the state, or established religions, but beliefs rooted in a calm,
youthful confidence that through recognition of the wonder of man, all
men could lift themselves out of the mire . . . by their own bootstraps."

 

 

"I don't know whether Challenge is the answer, Agatha," Saul admitted,
"but I do know that my own actions should affirm to you how I feel. After
all, I'm here . . . led on by the same piper's tune. . . ."

 

 

Saul chuckled. "I told Yale that Challenge was a Byronesque idea . . .
a religion for the young and beautiful. Not for men like me . . . beak
nosed and ugly. The old and the ugly could either not remember or would
never have participated in the physical or mental awareness that he
calls for in the Eighth Commandment.

 

 

"Yale didn't answer me until later that night. We were in the library.
Rachel, my wife, was there; and Anne and Cynthia. Yale asked Anne whether
she thought I was ugly. All of us could see that Anne was puzzled,
wondering what Yale was driving at. She stared at me for a moment with
that frank, disarming look of hers and said: 'Saul, no man is ugly to
a woman in love . . . and I'm in love with you.'"

 

 

Saul grinned. "I'm not the type that blushes, but she had me off-base.
Rachel was bewildered. Anne was delighted with our reaction. She asked:
'Why is everyone in this world so willing to grasp at hate, and so
embarrassed and circumspect with love? I don't mean a sickening, sad-apple
kind of love that the do-gooders and religionists preach. I mean what
Mat Chilling, and now Challenge, is trying to say . . . that if you
open your mind to the ineffable wonder of each living human being then
there is no ugly man or woman. If one man is God . . . then all men are
Gods. Once you truly understand this, you will know that hate and evil
in the affairs of men can be vanquished from the world.'

 

 

"You see, Agatha," Saul continued, "Yale didn't prompt Anne. He knew she
would answer me . . . I envy what the three of them have accomplished for
themselves, at least. And, as a Jew, it amuses me that, if you sift the
philosophy of Challenge, it is nothing more or less than what Socrates
. . . or Jesus after him . . . preached to the world."

 

 

Saul shrugged. "Socrates drank hemlock and Jesus let himself be nailed to
the cross. Neither of these symbolic acts did much in the last analysis
to wake men to their possibilities." Saul touched Agatha's gnarled hand
in a quick gesture of understanding. "I sometimes think one of the best
things about Challenge is the Tenth Commandment which has both courage and
humor: 'Challenge will never cease to challenge. No thing, no beliefs,
not even the Commandments of Challenge are sacred or inviolable.'" Saul
chuckled. "'For the world is like a big thoroughbred horse, so big that
he is a bit slow and heavy, and wants a gadfly to wake him up. . . .' Come
on, Agatha . . . we have work to do."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Epilogue

 

 

Saul Angle stood up and addressed the court. "Your honor, I realize that
at this juncture you must be under the impression that the defense has no
case at all, and the logical thing under the circumstances would have been
for the appellant to have entered a plea of guilty. Ordinarily I might
have concurred in this opinion, but close study of the laws governing
bigamy, and the manner in which they have become laws and statutes of
this country, led me to feel with the defendant that their validity
for human beings today should be re-examined and questioned. These laws
were for the most part devised before the turn of the century when our
country had a vastly different moral outlook on life than now dominates
most of this culture. We are now living in a society, for example, when
one marriage in four ends in divorce, and this percentage seems to be
on the increase. Marriages of this kind, contrasted with the bigamous
marriage of the defendant, seem far more deleterious to the welfare of
the state than a responsible marriage of three human beings who care
deeply for each other.

 

 

"In the proclaimed, principles of their secular religion called Challenge,
the defendant and his wives have already received wide publicity,
and are in fact living their lives according to these principles. The
defendant is aware that he has broken the law as it now stands on the
statute books of this state, as well as the federal law. Today we hope
to convince the jury, despite the evidence they have heard and despite
the necessity of the bench to charge the jury under the law to bring in
a verdict of 'guilty' . . . we hope to open the minds of this jury to
the fact that the law is written by human beings for human beings. It
is not beyond the province of men or of this society or of this jury to
set the wheels in motion that will write new laws based on new times and
new conditions facing civilized man everywhere in this world of conflict
and hate. It is possible that our generation can write laws governing
marriage which are more attuned to present reality. This jury stands on
the threshold of a new era. Recognizing that the law as it now exists
evidently concedes that the easy divorce and remarriage system society
has created is nothing in essence but 'tandem polygamy,' you, ladies
and gentlemen of the jury, by bringing in a verdict of 'not guilty'
will have the unusual opportunity to be charter thinkers and point the
way to a revision of the moral code of our time."

 

 

Saul's vibrant black eyes swept the courtroom, and rested on the jury.
"To accomplish our purpose, in cross-examination of the defendant and his
wives, we will examine carefully how these three people have united,
and we will consider the alternatives that were available to them. In
weighing the alternatives we will consider whether society as a whole
would have benefited by Yale divorcing or having his marriage to either
of these women annulled.

 

 

"This case is of particular interest because the defendant, while he is
not on trial for the views set forth in the book,
Spoken in My Manner
,
is editor and publisher of this book. In no sense should it be assumed
that the defense in this case is based on proving that bigamy is one
of the tenets of the secular religion called Challenge. This is not
the issue. The defendant himself does not believe that all men should
be permitted bigamous marriages. Our plea of 'not guilty' is based on
the fact that we believe that whatever your decision as a jury and as
men and women, the law must eventually be rewritten to permit marriage
forms, such as bigamy, which have built-in responsibilities to the
state. The availability of this type of marriage would in many cases
solve the problems of divorce by allowing variationism within marriage,
and at the same time would insure the sanctity of the home. Moreover,
this modern marriage law would open a new life for thousands of women
who in the preponderance of females in most societies have no opportunity
to live a full life.

 

 

"In a social structure which in the past fifty years is breaking down
into smaller and smaller family units, it is conceivable by its variety
and strength the bigamous or even polygamous household would have a unity
now lacking in the very narrowness of our present family units."