My Heart Laid Bare Part 24

Following this, though Anna Emery's health was never stable, she hardly minded; for she had her son, who loved her nearly as much as she loved him.

Within months of Roland's birth Elias Shrikesdale began to travel more frequently on business. It seemed he was rarely at Castlewood though, as observers noted, he might be glimpsed at one or another of his Philadelphia clubs, or at the racetrack, or in Manhattan, often in the company of an attractive young singer or actress whom he made no effort to introduce to acquaintances. He explained to Anna Emery and the Sewalls that he was simply too busy with his own affairs, financial and political, to concern himself with domestic matters. If Anna Emery and little Roland spent the summer in Newport, Elias might visit a weekend or two; if they went abroad for six months, he might decline to accompany them at all. A man's life, Elias said, couldn't be shared with a woman; at least not the sort of women one found in Philadelphia society.

"We must go, after all, where life quickens us," he declared.

Observers marveled at Anna Emery's allegiance to her husband, no matter his infidelities, his public rudenesses and questionable business practices. She may have believed, like most women of her cla.s.s and era, that moneymaking was a man's vocation that had no relationship to ethics or even to the law. She refused to hear any criticism of Elias even from her own family; refused to read any newspaper, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, that chided him for ungentlemanly behavior in the public sphere. (The most serious charges were brought against the Shrikesdales at the time of the 1902 strike of the newly organized United Mine Workers in eastern Pennsylvania, when Elias and his brother Stafford hired a small army of mercenaries to break the strike. A number of miners were killed, many more were injured and several of their houses burnt to the ground in mysterious blazes. Following the breaking of the strike, however, the Shrikesdales enjoyed their most profitable years, and stock in the company rose to new heights.) After President Teddy Roosevelt forced negotiations on the anthracite mine owners in Pennsylvania who'd refused to discuss contracts with the union, or to listen to union requests at all, Elias and Stafford jested angrily of ways in which Roosevelt might be "cut down": there being the recent excellent example of Mark Hanna's flunkey McKinley shot in the fat belly as he reached out complacently to shake his a.s.sa.s.sin's hand, and the example of Old Abe, or Old Ape, shot in the back of the head in Ford's Theater-"Better late than never." As the Shrikesdale brothers retained a powerful security force, such jests were perhaps half serious. Certainly they spoke of possible stratagems for "the perfect a.s.sa.s.sination-to be credited to Bolshevik terrorists" in the presence of others, even at formal dinner parties at Castlewood; yet, oddly, Anna Emery took no note of them, retaining the dignity of her station as a Philadelphia grande dame for whom the ways of men are inscrutable and not to be questioned, still less challenged.

After Elias's death, however, Anna Emery rarely spoke of him. As if, dying at the advanced age of eighty-four, he'd cruelly abandoned her and was to be blamed for her financial predicament, as she called it, though as Montgomery Bagot and other advisors insisted, Anna Emery Shrikesdale was one of the richest women in the Northeast. Still it was her nervous complaint, made to relatives and friends, that she and Roland were "at the mercy of fortune-unless G.o.d intervenes."

This, despite the fact that, at the time Roland disappeared into the West, and reappeared as a battered amnesiac, Anna Emery was earning by way of Shrikesdale holdings, investments and income more than $7,000 an hour.

ECCENTRIC AS ANNA Emery Shrikesdale became in her seventh decade, she wasn't unlike a number of Philadelphia dowagers of her circle who worried obsessively about money, no matter the size of their fortunes. They were fully capable of giving away enormous sums to charity, or, upon impulse, paying as much as $400,000 for a painting promoted by Joseph Duveen; then they reacted by cutting their household budgets to the bone, or going without buying a single new item of clothing for a full season. Anna Emery took a sort of grim pride in the very dowdiness of her attire; she refused to heat many of the rooms in Castlewood Hall (including the servants' quarters); guests at her infrequent dinner parties were dismayed to confront fish, b.u.t.ter, sauces, and linen of less than the highest degree of freshness. Young Roland, his mother's son to his fingertips, behaved in much the same way-dressing unfashionably, procuring the cheapest seats at the theater, showing a prim sort of disdain for the usual diversions and sports of his cla.s.s, like polo, yachting, and horse racing-but in Roland such parsimony had philosophical underpinnings. If spending money could add a cubit to a man's height, he said severely, we would be surrounded by giants and not, as we are, by pygmies.

Had Roland allowed it, Anna Emery would gladly have spent a good deal of money on him. But he cared only for books, evenings at the theater and concert hall, and occasional retreats, as he called them, to "lonely and unexpected" parts of the world where his name and face were unknown. So, the ill-considered trip to Colorado in the spring of 1914, made, as Roland declared, for the sake of his physical and spiritual salvation.

"If you leave me now, Roland, I am afraid we will never see each other again on this earth," Anna Emery said; and Roland, hardening himself against her tears, said, "If I do not leave now, Mother, I will not be able to tolerate myself on this earth."

No expense was spared in Anna Emery's effort to locate her missing son, whether she paid out extraordinary sums for the design and printing of the soon-famous poster, and its distribution everywhere in the West; or allowed her private detectives unlimited expense accounts. (One of the detectives dared submit a tally sheet for $11,000 in expenses alone, for the single month of July; which sum Anna Emery promptly paid.) Bagot, whom Anna Emery believed an old friend, as well as one of the shrewdest lawyers in Philadelphia, was paid $8,000 simply to go out to Fort Sumner, make the crucial identification, and bring poor Roland home.

And of course it was Roland-as Anna Emery saw at once when Bagot led him into the room, though her poor heart was pounding, and her eyes had misted over in tears.

Her Roland, after so many days away!-her boy!-one side of his face grotesquely bandaged, and his hair darker and coa.r.s.er than she recalled; his lips less moistly pink and soft; his very figure thickened, and given a fearful simian cast by all he'd endured. Anna Emery had been warned that Roland suffered from a temporary amnesia, could not recall his name or anything pertaining to his circ.u.mstances, etc., yet it amazed her to see for a brief flickering moment how he stared at her, eyes narrowed in that old squinting habit, yet luminous, with dread, exaltation, and wonder.

"Mother-?"

In the next instant he was crouched beside her bedside, weeping in her embrace. "My darling Roland, my baby, G.o.d has sent you back to me," Anna Emery cried. And so it was.

Sharp-eyed old Stafford Shrikesdale saw within seconds of their meeting that this "amnesiac nephew" of his, talked of obsessively through Philadelphia, and heralded in the national press, was an imposter. Yet so stunned was he, so thrown off balance by the audacity of the man's game, Stafford could do no more than stare at him and stammer a faint, faltering greeting and, to his subsequent chagrin, shake the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's hand.

Which was cool, moist and clammy yet momentarily hard in its grip as never in the past, that Roland's uncle could recall.

And the squinting flash of the imposter's eyes, nothing like Roland's watery gaze.

Yet: there was poor Anna Emery, radiant and quivering with joy, clinging to her boy's arm and clutching at Stafford's as if to bring the two into an unlikely embrace. It was as everyone said: Anna Emery was convinced that this man was her lost son Roland, and who would wish to quarrel with her, at least at such a time? She was urging the stranger, "Roland, dear, try to remember your uncle Stafford, please! Your late father's brother. Do try." The thick-bodied young brute gave every appearance of trying, staring at Stafford Shrikesdale with narrowed eyes, his mouth working mutely as if . . . as if he were genuine. And when he did at last speak, it was in Roland's very voice. "Y-Yes, Mother. I will try. If but G.o.d will help me."

So sharp-eyed old Stafford Shrikesdale went away from his first encounter with his "amnesiac nephew" both knowing that the man was an imposter and shaken in his conviction. For what if? . . . Couldn't an ordeal in the Southwest, great physical hardship have altered Roland Shrikesdale?

STAFFORD'S SONS, WHO were Roland's cousins, and never very close to the pampered, petted sickly creature, found themselves, as usual, in sharp disagreement. For each saw what was obvious; and was filled with contempt for anyone who disagreed.

Said Bertram, "He isn't Roland. Any fool can see."

Said Lyle, "But he must be Roland-how could he deceive so many people, and Aunt Anna Emery most of all?"

Said Willard in his ironic, lawyerly voice, "The man's way of speaking, the nervous little inflections and his squinting smiles and sighs, the way he wriggles his shoulders and b.u.t.tocks like a female, and carries himself, and is-it's Roland, G.o.d d.a.m.n him. Yet at the same time if one looks carefully, as I've done, studying him from the rear, and the side, from a distance and at close range-it seems to be our cousin in the form somehow of another man, a stranger a few years older than he, or as we remember him."

"Willard, are you mad? What are you saying?" Bertram interrupted. "'Our cousin in the form of-' What?"

"-not so fleshy as Roland but more muscular," Willard continued, irritably, "-with a slightly different mouth and chin-and those eyes. Yet the expression of the face, that sort of droopy doggy hopefulness-"

"I would have said he looks younger than Roland. Than Roland would have been."

"Younger? Surely older."

"I mean-for one who's endured such an ordeal. How many days wandering in the desert? And those injuries . . . "

"His eyes are darker than Roland's."

"Lighter, I should say. Steelier."

"I believe he knew me. I could have sworn-it is our cousin."

"Aunt Anna Emery is a silly old woman, and half-blind. You know everyone laughs at her."

"-pities her, I should have said."

"If I went away, and was lost, and suffered injuries, and almost died, and returned to Philadelphia-you would wish, I suppose, not to know me," Lyle said hotly, "-in order to defraud me of my position-yes? Is that it?"

"You, Lyle? What has this to do with you?"

"It has to do with us all. If Roland can be dismissed-so can we all."

"But that's absurd. You are not Roland. You are not an imposter."

"This man's head is larger than Roland's, I swear. His forehead squarer."

"Yet he's wearing Roland's hats, it seems. You saw him."

"His neck-it's thicker, obviously. Like a young bull's."

"Yet this might be Roland, toughened and made 'manly' by the West."

"No longer a virgin."

"Roland? Impossible."

"That man-? Certainly, possible."

"Yet I was thinking, G.o.d help me-I like him much more than I did, when we were boys."

"This Roland, or-?"

"His ears don't stick out so much as they did. But the points are sharper."

"Hairs in his ears. Like my own."

"His eyebrows are more gnarled-"

"The man's presence somehow more real. More of a physical fact."

"As poor Roland never seemed a fact."

They stood for some time smoking their cigars, pondering.

At last Lyle said impatiently, "He must be Roland. No one has said he isn't."

"Except Father. And us."

"I haven't said it isn't Roland, not exactly," Willard said.

"Well, I have," said Bertram. "I know the man is not Roland."

"Look, it's inconceivable that a stranger could deceive so many of us, beginning with Bagot. Bagot is no fool. Many of the relatives have seen him, and granted some of them are idiots like Aunt Anna Emery, yet they would sense if Roland weren't Roland; the Sewalls were all so fond of him. The servants at Castlewood appear to accept him-not that they matter greatly. But-there is Bagot. How d'you account for Bagot?"

"A fellow conspirator," Bertram said bitterly.

"Not Bagot!"

"Surely. The man isn't to be trusted, he has never been on our side."

"Father spoke at length to Bagot-"

"And Bagot was, Father said, rude."

"To Father?"

"To Father."

"Well, he'll regret that."

"They will all regret that."

"In the meantime-"

"What of the man's handwriting? A sample-"

"It was that, partly, Father saw Bagot about."

"And-?"

"This Roland's handwriting is very close to the old-allowing for a certain shakiness. He isn't well, after all; they say he nearly died in New Mexico."

"He may have died-but this one lives."

"And he will live to regret it. If, of course, it is not the right man."

"-an imposter, a brazen criminal, hoping to deceive the Shrikesdales, of all people-"

"That would be intolerable."

"-inconceivable!"

"Not to be borne."

"Yet," said Willard, breathing harshly, "-perhaps it is Roland after all?-and we are the ones who have somehow changed in our perceptions. For it isn't likely, nor would any jury be inclined to think so, that a man's very mother-"

"Anna Emery is not this man's mother," said Bertram.

"She is Roland's mother-that is in fact all that she is."

"No, you are speaking carelessly. She is a woman of advanced years, susceptible to all sorts of sickly fancies, on the verge, if she has not already crossed over, of senility, as any forceful attorney might argue."

"But simply to erect so preposterous a case, with the man's very mother testifying in his behalf-"

"-we would be laughed out of court, we would never live it down-"

"Anna Emery Shrikesdale is not this man's mother. She is Roland's mother; and this man, as I keep telling you, is not Roland Shrikesdale. He is not our cousin."

"Then who is he?-and how can it be humanly possible, that he so closely resembles Roland?"

Said Bertram contemptuously, "That's your idiotic notion, that the man resembles Roland. Father and I see clearly he does not."

"I hope, Bertie, you won't embarra.s.s the family by trying to demonstrate that Aunt Anna Emery doesn't know her own son," Lyle said curtly. "The wisest course of action is to stop thinking about this; to continue with our lives as if nothing were wrong."

Willard said, with lawyerly aplomb and disdain, "On the one hand, I counsel extreme caution. On the other, if the man is an imposter, this is doubtless what he wishes. Consider the fortune that's at stake: more than two hundred million dollars, as Father calculates. Of our money! And it's intolerable that a criminal should inherit Castlewood Hall and our name, without our putting up a fight. Yet-"

"Yet-?"

"-the prospect of an open legal disagreement, a lawsuit dragged through the civil court, terrifies me. As a man of the law, I know what we might expect. For the defense would be formidable, if not unshakable, with poor Aunt Anna Emery testifying for 'Roland' as her beloved son, and the Sewalls, and Bagot, and the Pinkerton men-their testimony would weigh heavily in the court. I'm afraid it's all but hopeless. Unless-'Roland' reveals himself by accident."

"Certainly 'Roland' will reveal himself," said Bertram. "I'll see to that."

"But how? Without tipping our hand?" Willard said. "The man must be devilishly clever-in fact, he frightens me."

"Ah, then you side with me!" Bertram said.

"I don't necessarily side with you," Willard said stiffly.

"You admit the possibility, however."

"There is always a 'possibility'-in the law. Yet another possibility remains that this man is our cousin and that his memory will eventually return-queerer things have happened in the annals of law, believe me. And we Shrikesdales would be committing a grave injustice if we took action against a blood relative-"