My Heart Laid Bare Part 6

For Father is home now and it is time to be happy now.

(IT'S PROPER CLOTHES and provisions we need, it's mending the roof we need, Katrina says, and Father says in an undertone, But Katrina you know I will provide, haven't I always provided, O Katrina we're rich again, rich as kings, don't fuss! And Katrina says, We've been rich before haven't we?-which is why I know enough to fuss.) WHERE IS MILLIE? the children ask.

Coming home soon, darlings: tomorrow! Father says.

Where is Elisha? the children ask.

Coming home soon, darlings: day after tomorrow! Father says.

And where is Thurston, where is Harwood-?

Soon, soon! A victory banquet, soon!

MY DARLINGS, MY dear ones, what have I missed?

Father's white shirt open at the throat, Father's shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, Father's cigar and the laughing expulsion of Father's smoky breath, now it is time, it is time, it is time to explore the property, now it is time to examine everything anew, the garden that belongs to Katrina, the damage done by porcupines, the damage done in a windstorm last month, spiky thistles everywhere amid the graves, briars grown so high, so high, snails, slugs, the crumbling stone wall, the blue heron and his mate at the edge of the pond, the owl's nest in the dead tree, a wasp's nest under the eaves, the lichen encrusting the gravestones, Father is tall, a giant, his hat tilted back on his head, they cannot see where his restless eyes shift, they cannot hear his every word, amid the graves, the old churchyard, Mother's grave, pausing to brush a cobweb from the granite, pausing with cigar clenched between his teeth, head bowed, eyes narrowed, Ah how he loved her! and promised her never never to take her children away with him into the world!-as Darian squats to pluck nervously at tiny weeds, as Esther burrows trembling against his trousered leg (knowing it is her fault, as cruel Katrina has hinted, that Mother died and is buried here in the churchyard, she must be blamed, all the world will one day blame her), the sudden expulsion of tobacco smoke, the angry sob, the abrupt alteration of mood, Father hauling Darian to his feet, Father seizing Esther's frightened little hand, stepping high in the gra.s.s, marching, singing, swinging their arms in their old noisy song- "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!

The boys are marching!"

Father lays a finger alongside his nose, winks and confides in these, his youngest children, his angel-children, certain secrets he would not wish Katrina to overhear. Children, the earth is owned by the dead! There are many more dead than living, children! Count 'em up, children, should you doubt your father!-count 'em up!-the earth is theirs, dear children and, ah! the world is ours. A vast breath, his chest deepening, swelling, eyes grown bright, hard-muscled jaws relaxing finally in a smile.

The world, dear children, is ours-so long as we claim it.

So long as we have the courage, dear children, to claim it.

LATER, FATHER'S MOOD changes abruptly and he wants to be alone.

Wants to wander in the marsh, alone.

As always, alone.

(He has been quizzing them playfully yet seriously on their studies, posing little mathematical problems; listening with interest to Esther's singing, her thin wavering sweet little voice; listening to Darian playing a Mozart rondo on the organ, but more severely, snapping his fingers to scold when Darian's small hand fails to stretch an octave and a wrong key is struck-"Shame on you, son. When Amadeus Mozart was your age, he wasn't just playing music like that perfectly, he was composing it." Disgusted now suddenly he's had enough of children, even angel-children, Sophie's darlings, he wants to be alone, to wander in the marsh alone, to vanish from their sight, to elude even Katrina's sharp possessive eye, to have no one trailing after him and adoring him calling him Father.) It is forbidden to follow so of course heartsick Darian does not follow.

AT THE KEYBOARD, left behind. Abandoned. A nine-year-old with a peaked narrow face, large glistening-brown eyes, a fluttery rheumatic heart. Slender fingers trailing over the yellowed ivory keys. The distinctly flat C above high C. The F-sharp that grates on the ear. Keys that stick in the humidity, keys that no longer sound, the crude pumping of the pedal, flies buzzing high overhead, trapped against the windows, the airless heat of the church interior, jammed with old furniture amid the pews, rolled-up carpets secured with baling wire, piles of aged leatherbound books with gilt t.i.tles . . . Music is Darian's solace, music is Darian's companion, the foot-pedal organ like the spinet piano is but a vehicle to render music audible; music which would otherwise exist solely in his head, yet how beautifully there, with what purity, precision; his small clumsy hands can't violate such music, such music can't be betrayed by any mortal failing. I who have never lived will outlive you the simple notes of the Mozart rondo promise, in such is the highest happiness. Though Darian is only nine years old, and small for his age, a "runt of an angel" Father has sometimes teased, he knows that this is so; and he is happy. As treble notes, ba.s.s notes, inverted scales, powerful chords range up and down the creaking keyboard. His hands moving with their own antic life. Their own volition, desire. The woman at the bottom of the marsh is singing, the woman at the bottom of the marsh is calling, the woman at the bottom of the marsh commands Come to me! come to me! come to me! he hears, he does not hear, his fluttery heart beats panicked as a bird trapped inside his ribs like those occasional birds trapped inside the church flinging themselves against the windows, but he hears nothing, he is responsible for nothing, he is not even responsible for his little sister whom he adores, like magic his fingers move where they will, as in one of Katrina's tales something will happen as it will, no one can stop it, no one can guide it, no one can predict it, how Darian's small aching hands leap and strike and frolic where they will, he hears the woman singing in the marsh and knows that Father has gone to her but it is forbidden for Darian to go to her, it is forbidden for him even to know of her, to have such intimacy of her, hunched as he is at the keyboard of the old organ in the Church of the Nazarene, Risen, in Darian Licht's long dream of childhood.

The cruelest dream is not Darian's alone. It is a dream of the household. A dream shared by all the children, in turn-that Father has children elsewhere.

And there will be a time (if they disappoint him, if they are clumsy, or slow, or cowardly) when he will not return to Muirkirk.

For hasn't Father hinted of such, himself?

For there is evidence: daguerreotypes, cameos and drawings of other children they have discovered . . . children like themselves, and children near-grown, and mere infants, swaddled in white, on their mothers' and nursemaids' knees . . . .Millicent once declared in her bright angry voice that it didn't matter who these children were, they weren't Lichts. Yet another time, on another day, examining a faded cameo she had discovered in a trunk of old clothes, the likeness of a child with eyes wistful and lovely as her own, curly blond ringlets as charming as her own, she said, sighing, "Oh, but suppose she is my sister, somewhere! And one day Father allows us to meet . . . ."

Elisha s.n.a.t.c.hed the cameo from Millie's fingers and regarded it with a queer little smile, not quite derision and not quite sympathy. He said, "This girl is most likely dead and gone by now, how old do you think she'd be in real time-!"

(Elisha has said that nothing of Father's-nothing that is stored in the church, at least-belongs to "real time.") But he is mistaken, isn't he?-for one of the oil portraits, the most beautiful portrait of all, is of Darian's and Esther's mother Sophie.

FATHER KEEPS THE portrait hidden in a locked room at the very rear of the church, his "vault" as he calls it. He allows Darian and Esther to look at it only in his presence, perhaps he fears they will ruin its delicate cracking surface with their fingers, their furtive caresses . . . .When it is time, and only Father knows the correct time, he takes them into the secret room, he draws off the dusty velvet cloth with reverent fingers, crouching solemn and transfixed before the painting, Darian in the crook of his left arm, Esther in the crook of his right, Why, is this their mother! Is this poor Sophie, who lies buried now in the churchyard! Their eyes mist over with tears and at first they cannot see clearly. In the painting Sophie is alive again, as they cannot remember her, a girl again, no more than twenty years old; younger than Thurston and Harwood are now. As the artist has rendered her she is extremely handsome, with fair creamy skin, l.u.s.trous dark eyes, gleaming black hair pulled smartly away from her forehead; a small pensive smile playing about her lips; yet a mature, composed tilt to her head, an air of startling self-a.s.surance. How easy to imagine that this woman, their mother, is gazing at them; she sees and recognizes them; that glisten of interest in her beautiful eyes is her love of them. Darian and Esther marvel that their mother has scorned to costume herself in the stiff, fussy clothes worn by other women portrayed in other paintings stacked carelessly about the church; Sophie wears a smart riding habit, dove-gray, with pert, mannish, raised shoulders, black velvet trim at the collar, a ruffled white blouse. Beneath her left arm she carries a riding crop as if, only a moment before, she'd strolled casually into the room . . . and has turned her head, casually, to glance in their direction.

You? Of course I know you. You two children are my secret, and I am yours.

Father tells them quietly that of course their mother was of aristocratic birth. "Her maiden name was Hume. The Humes of New York-Old New York-English-Dutch-German stock. One of the great shipbuilding fortunes. Of course, they disowned Sophie for marrying me," Father says, staring at the portrait with such intensity the children begin to be frightened, "as if Abraham Licht were not their equal! As if I, an American, am not the equal of any living man! But I stole her from them," he adds, laughing. "And I broke their hearts."

Father is breathing audibly, as if he has just run up a flight of steps. Impossible to tell if he is angry, or deeply moved; or behaving in this way for their benefit. To educate us. In the cosmology of that mysterious time before we were born.

Esther has begun to fidget; Darian has begun to find his mother's face too terrible to gaze upon; those eyes! Mercifully, the visit is over. Father draws the black velvet cloth reverently back over the canvas.

IT IS FORBIDDEN to ask questions but it is not forbidden to play (if they are careful) in the storeroom, in the old church, among Father's inheritances.

(Not all the items are "inheritances," however. Some are called "payment for debts." Others are called "gifts.") Here, amid the battered oak pews, pushed into the corners and crowding even the pulpit and the hickory cross, are trunks, and wardrobes, and stacks of china, and tarnished silver plate, and crystal, and panes of stained gla.s.s; furniture of every kind-divans, and S-backed chairs, and tables, and lamp stands, and settees, and desks, and giant sideboards, and chandeliers with dripping prisms; marble statuettes; carpets of various lengths, rolled up cruelly and bound, tight, with fraying twine; s.e.xtants, and astrolabes, and telescopes, and great framed maps of North America; globes of the Earth, where entire continents have faded to near invisibility; gentlemen's and ladies' and children's clothing-top hats, tuxedos, traveling cloaks, chesterfields, boiled shirtfronts, detached collars, women's gowns, feathered boas, capes, cloaks, fur stoles, fur hats, even a riding habit and smart curved hat; wigs-ah, what a variety of wigs; and jars and tubes of theatrical makeup; election campaign material for one JASPER LIGES (said to be a "remote uncle," whom the children have never met) who unsuccessfully ran for Congress on the Democratic ticket out of Vanderpoel, New York, in 1902; cigar boxes elegant as jewel boxes stuffed with tickets and ticket stubs (lotteries, racetrack, railway, steamboat, the Metropolitan Opera); a stack of yellowing copies of a five-page newspaper, Frelicht's Raceway Tips; soiled, dog-eared "shares" in such companies as The Panama Ca.n.a.l, Ltd., North American Liberty Bonds, Inc., Banting Cotton Goods Co., X. X. Anson & Sons Copper, Ltd., The Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoleon, The Byrd Expedition, and Hollowell Aerocraft; a single handsome golf club; a pile of mud-encrusted croquet mallets; an aged, discolored drum; a tarnished bugle, property of U.S. Army; a violin with three snapped strings; a flute in poor condition; a carton of mounted and stuffed creatures-snakes, pheasants, racc.o.o.ns, rabbits; shelves of worn leatherbound books-Hugo, Dumas, Hoffman, Poe, the entire works of Shakespeare, the entire works of Milton, The Ill.u.s.trated Don Quixote, dog-eared books on medicine, agriculture, necromancy, the settlement of New Netherlands, horse breeding, cabinet making, a tattered pamphlet on mesmerism, studies of phrenology, vegetarianism, astrology, Home Cures & Emetics, The Complete Poems of Longfellow, Tales of the North, Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, The Dictionary of the English Language (Including a Rhyming Index); a squat wooden barrel filled with every variety of footwear-mens and ladies' and children's shoes, formal shoes, work shoes, high-top boots, slippers, etc.; and immense gilded mirrors, propped haphazardly against the walls, reflecting, it seems, bygone times-in which poor Darian and Esther tiptoe diaphanous as ghosts, fearful to look too closely at their own images.

What a curious world it is, Darian thinks. Already, he has tried to speak of it in his little musical compositions. Or rather to hint of it. Father's world of inheritances, payments for debts, gifts from mysterious admirers. For, as Father is in the habit of saying, with a wink, "The man or woman who doesn't adore you is the man or woman who hasn't-yet-made your acquaintance."

And there, against the front wall of the old church-interior, is the foot-pedal organ which Darian has been able to play this past year, wearing Father's boots so that he can reach, just barely, the pedals; it's a crude, hearty, boisterous musical instrument very different from the spinet piano that had been Sophie's, in the parlor; Darian loves the noises that ring out with a wild, deranged glory, as if G.o.d were shrieking through the pipes. Darian has mastered most of the hymns in the books Reverend Woodc.o.c.k has given him: "A Mighty Fortress Is Our Lord," "Rock of Ages," "Soldiers in Christ," and his favorite for its treble runs like crashing icicles, "For the Sound of the Lord is Joy, Joy."

Hearing her brother play the organ, Esther stands transfixed, her small cameo of a face radiant with wonder; at times, when the notes crash noisily, she giggles, presses her little hands over her ears and begs him to stop. (If Darian knows how to play nice, Esther says, why doesn't he play nice? He knows how much she likes "Chirping Crickets" on the parlor piano, "Fire-b.a.l.l.s Mazurka," Father's favorite marching songs, and "The La.s.s of Aviemore," "Carry Me Back to Old Virginnie" which Father and Elisha sing in bawling unison, like old black slaves . . . why doesn't he play nice if he knows how? And Darian says coolly, his child's pride stung, "Music isn't meant to be nice, it's meant to be-music.") Father's youngest children, his angel-children as he calls them, share a peculiarity: they are afraid to be alone.

And there is no reason for them to be alone when they have each other.

It is forbidden to ask too many questions but it is never forbidden, in fact it's encouraged, for these bright, inquisitive children to read aloud to each other from Father's library of old mildewed leatherbound books; to take as many parts, "voices," as they wish. Such activities delight Father. It is encouraged, too, that they dress in certain of the clothes, or costumes, in the closets. And the wigs. And the shoes, the boots. There is even an antiquated makeup kit, paints hardened and cracked, brushes stiff as sticks. How Father laughs in delight, seeing his youngest son in a spiky black wig, and his younger daughter in an enormous flower-festooned hat; seeing the children in drooping silk vests and beaded satin jackets, in petticoats stiffened with dirt . . . a moustache painted inexpertly on Darian's upper lip, flaming spots of rouge on Esther's round little cheeks . . . what waves of childish hilarity, waves of sudden panic, for who are they now? whom have they become? as in a silken top hat Darian prances about, an ebony cane slung through his arm, and in a beribboned lace frock little Esther stumbles after him, humming, clapping her hands like a Broadway ingenue . . . who are they now, whom have they become?

"THEY'RE NOT FIT for The Game. Even if I hadn't promised their mother. I have an instinct for such things."

They'd overheard Father tell the older children this, one winter evening by candlelight. Father's pungent-smelling Cuban cigar settled in the corner of his mouth. Father's expression was somber yet affectionate. No one, not even Millie, who loved to contradict, wished to contradict Father on this point. He'd been discussing plans with the others, his plans for them, the "projects" they would be pursuing in the months ahead, the "investments," the "dramatis personae"-handsome Elisha in shirtsleeves sprawled by the fire like a lazy ebony-dark panther; Millie in silk slacks and an aqua brocaded kimono, languidly brushing her waist-long hair; Thurston in rumpled riding clothes, smiling and dreamy, smoking one of Father's cigars; and scowling Harwood sipping at a tankard of ale, his glance flicking briefly onto Darian and Esther as if he'd never seen them before, and took not the slightest interest in whether they were fit, or not fit, for The Game.

Father pursued his line of thought as Father had a way of doing, speaking of certain of his children as if they weren't present and avidly, anxiously listening; one day, Darian would think It was as if G.o.d spoke His thoughts aloud, and we were inside them. Stroking sleepy Esther's baby-fine hair, drawing a forefinger along Darian's jaw, musing philosophically, "No. They are unsuited. It can never be. Though they are children of Abraham Licht, they are not such robust children as you." For Father was addressing the elder children, who basked in the pleasure of his pride, even Harwood, sipping ale, not so scowling now, though the creases remained in his brow.

"KATRINA? WHAT DOES Father mean-we're unfit for The Game? What is The Game? Katrina?"-so Darian and Esther plagued Katrina, in the months to come when Father, as well as the others, was absent from Muirkirk. And Katrina would say, with a shrug, "There is no Game, there is only life itself. Your father knows, but doesn't wish to know." "But, Katrina," they begged, plucking at her sleeves, "-The Game, what is The Game?" But Katrina turned away with a dismissive wave of her hand. And they gazed at each other in exasperation and hurt, that they were silly little children, and never to know what their elders knew, and never to play The Game their elders played, whatever that Game was.

"Here I am. But no, no-I prefer to be alone. Thank you, dear Katrina. I said alone."

Mud-splattered, bleeding from a dozen nicks and scratches on his face, one side of his throat inflamed by insect bites, Father returns at last after three hours tramping in the marsh. He slams through the rear of the house, locks himself in the bath, sits down at 9 P.M. for supper with so ravenous an appet.i.te, poor Katrina can't serve him quickly enough, or plentifully enough, though she's been preparing food much of the afternoon. Father eats, and drinks several tankards of cold dark br.i.m.m.i.n.g ale; lights up one of his cigars; and feels, suddenly, an overwhelming wave of fatigue.

He had not wished, truly he had not wished that Xalapa, beautiful Xalapa would be put down, that hadn't been his plan, truly it hadn't been his plan, may G.o.d have mercy on my soul if there be a G.o.d and if I possess a soul. Such fatigue! It's a mercy, he can't brood upon mistakes for very long. Abraham Licht isn't a man to brood for very long. His head nods, wily Katrina removes the drooping cigar from his fingers. Since his itinerant boyhood, when alertness and alacrity kept him alive, Abraham has had the gift of sleep when he knows himself safe; sleep doesn't steal upon him by degrees, but overpowers him at once. He is a Contracoeur pine, he has boasted, the magnificent tree that is rumored to have no natural ceiling to its height, nor depth to its roots; the Contracoeur pine is a tree of exquisite beauty and strength that can grow forever-and live forever. (If no circ.u.mstances intervene.) Just as Day beckons to Abraham Licht, stirring his imagination like a lover's, so does Night draw the man down, down, down to a voluptuous consummation in sleep. So that I must wonder who I am: if the Abraham Licht who dwells in shadows isn't the supreme self, and the Abraham Licht of day the imposter.

He sleeps for ten hours. For twelve hours. For fourteen.

Waking at last refreshed, and smiling again. Kissing little Esther and little Darian, who squeal with delight, that Father is returned to them yet again.

From four o'clock until six on weekday afternoons, and from nine o'clock until noon on Sat.u.r.day mornings, Darian and Esther are tutored by the village schoolmaster. For Abraham Licht can't tolerate the thought of his sensitive angel-children attending the Muirkirk school, a one-room schoolhouse attended by eight very disparate (and often rowdy) grades. Of course, he tutors them himself when he can, as he did with the four elder children: he lectures them on Science, Grammar and Elocution; on History, Art, Music, Etiquette and the Ancient World; on Mathematics (both applied and pure). He a.s.signs them the great soliloquies of Shakespeare, in which, in his estimate, all the natural wisdom of the world is contained, in miniature.

"For if you know Shakespeare, children, you know all."

What a boon it would be, if one of Abraham Licht's children had a natural talent for the stage! But Thurston, years ago, was slow to memorize lines, and recited them so woodenly it was painful to hear; Harwood, being Harwood, was surly and stammering; Elisha could memorize lines of difficult verse with no trouble, as if imprinting them in his mind's eye after a single reading, but he spoke with an annoying glibness, mocking the elevated poetry. (For Elisha was destined for satire, it seemed. "Inside my black skin, my black soul.") And there was Millicent, lovely yet exasperating, who recited verse as if she were reciting popular song lyrics, pursing her mouth in mock sobriety, crinkling her smooth brow, wringing her hands as she murmured "Out, out d.a.m.ned spot!" in the throes of conscience as Lady Macbeth, then lapsing, with a wink at her audience, into a Paul Dresser tune- "A wild sort of devil,

But dead on the level,

Was my gal Sal."

Now Darian and Esther were made to memorize pa.s.sages of demanding, riddlesome verse, as Abraham Licht listened frowningly, without much pleasure; for, as he's suspected, these two of his children are not suited for The Game; with no talent for making of themselves ventriloquists, no apt.i.tude for the most innocent sort of duplicity. Darian, trying so hard to please his father, stumbles over lines repeatedly; Esther, only six years old, is perhaps too young for the exercise. Yet, for all her prettiness, she seems to lack the spirit for self-display that is so natural in Millie, a certain glisten to the eyes, an animation like flame. "No matter, I suppose," Father says, sighing, "-for neither you, Darian, nor you, Esther, need ever leave the protection of Muirkirk, if you don't want to; and life will spare you its grim trials."

IT'S A SURPRISE, then, that the children fare so much better with their tutor (whom Abraham Licht is rumored to pay generously); as pupils, they're eager to learn, and love reading-"I'd rather read than anything," little Esther declares with childish pa.s.sion. And Reverend Woodc.o.c.k continues to marvel at Darian's gift for music. Is this an inherited talent?-is the slender, shy child but the father's son? Darian has had a little difficulty learning to read music but he plays with remarkable intuition, "by ear"; Woodc.o.c.k tells friends that the child doesn't seem to pick out notes, like most keyboard musicians of his acquaintance, including himself, but plays "as if the music already exists in his head-as a stream of water is but a continuous stream, from its source to its destination." In Muirkirk there are a number of moderately talented pianists and organists, most of them female, and Woodc.o.c.k himself is a competent musician, but nine-year-old Darian is altogether different. Already he has mastered such favorites of the amateur's repertoire as Gottschalk's "The Last Hope" with its glimmering arpeggios, Chwatal's "The Happy Sleighing Party" with its merry twinkling bells, Lange's "Crickets," Behr's feverish Mazurka and a number of stalwart, thumping Christian hymns; and works by such masters of the keyboard as Spohr, Meyerbeer, Mozart and Raff.

It is Bach's Two- and Three-Part Inventions, however, which Woodc.o.c.k was reluctant to a.s.sign, that most intrigue the boy, and draw forth every reserve of his precocious talent. How he strains himself, quivering at the keyboard of the old upright piano in the Woodc.o.c.k parlor; how his small hands strain, and stretch-for Darian has a reach of only six notes in his left hand and five in his right, and hasn't yet mastered the trick of eliding octaves with grace. Still, Darian plays, and plays, and plays; if he makes mistakes, he insists upon beginning from the start, and playing through; a child-perfectionist, amazing to see. (Abraham Licht has warned Reverend Woodc.o.c.k that Darian shouldn't be allowed to overexcite himself, he isn't a strong boy, he suffered rheumatic fever when very young, his health is problematic.) Unlike any other pupil of Woodc.o.c.k's acquaintance, Darian begs his teacher to give him difficult a.s.signments and to insist that he play them not just "well" but "very well-as they are meant to be played."

Sometimes Darian brings Woodc.o.c.k musical compositions of his own. Woodc.o.c.k is charmed by these, if baffled. The musical scores are neatly written in ink, with no erasures or emendations; they are pastiches of Mozart, Chwatal, Meyerbeer, Bach-but very oddly designed, and in the playing illogical to the ear. Woodc.o.c.k's response is always, "Promising, Darian! Very promising. But you should know, son, to save yourself grief, that the great music for the piano and organ is European, and has largely been written by this time in history. American music is 'popular'-for childlike tastes exclusively."

Darian broods, and gnaws at his lower lip; seems about to protest, but finally does not. Yet he continues to write his queer little compositions and to show them, bravely, or perhaps boldly, to the bemused Woodc.o.c.k.

It is forbidden to inquire of (Death) . . . for Father, as Katrina warns, is not on friendly terms with (Death); and she has not the time.

Yet it isn't forbidden, in fact it's greeted with delight, when Darian composes a lovely little dirge for Old Tom the barn cat when he dies; Darian leading the funeral procession playing a flute while Esther shakes a strip of tiny bells, and Katrina herself carries the body wrapped in red silk and placed in a box, to be buried at the edge of the churchyard. Father, who loves all things theatrical, puffs on his cigar and applauds-"Bravo! That's the att.i.tude to take, my dears."

It is forbidden to inquire of (G.o.d) . . . for Father, as Katrina warns, is not on friendly terms with (G.o.d); nor has she had much encouragement along such lines.

Yet it isn't forbidden to Darian and Esther to attend Sunday school and church services at the Methodist Church, where kindly Reverend Woodc.o.c.k is minister; nor is it forbidden, so long as Father doesn't explicitly hear of it, to Darian to hike to the far side of Muirkirk to attend prayer services at the Lutheran church, and at the Episcopal church, and, several miles beyond, the clapboard Church of the Pentecost, where the smiling perspiring Reverend Bogey leads the congregation in song, in hand-clapping and foot-stomping-"What a Friend I Have in Jesus," "When I Looked Up, and He Looked Down," "This Little Light of Mine." Darian listens, enthralled. His heart beats rapturously. Almost I could believe in Jesus my savior, the music was so joyous.

What a handsome, mysterious couple: is the young woman-Millie? And the brown-skinned man-Elisha? Millie with her hair elegantly braided and an ostrich-feather hat on the plaited crown, laughing at their amazed faces, leaning out of the two-seater motorcar to greet them Why, don't you know who I am? Your own sister who adores you? Come give Millie a kiss! Two kisses! And there beside her is a man they can't at first identify though surely it must be Elisha, who else but Elisha, yet looking so much older than his age in prim wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, wearing a humble cloth cap and plain drab-brown clothes, and his hair gone gray and his shoulders stooped . . . is it Elisha? Esther has jammed a finger in her mouth, blinking, shy and indecisive, Darian is a little more confident, even as Father gives the game away striding down the walk roaring with laughter, and the brown-skinned man leaps out of the driver's seat of the motorcar with the agility of an acrobat, tosses away his wire-rimmed gla.s.ses and cap and flashes his dazzling Elisha-grin reaching for them. You! Darian and Esther! Don't you know your own brother 'Lisha?

THE CATECHISM OF ABRAHAM LICHT.

Crime? Then complicity.

Complicity? Then no crime.

No crime? Then no criminal.

No criminal? Then no remorse.

All men are our enemies, as they are strangers.