Part 4 (1/2)
Father has taught: The Game is never to be played as if it were but a game.
And the spoils we reap, but spoils.
So Christopher sleeps truly, exhausted from love; and, when he wakes, wakes truly; and ”loves” truly . . . for it would be cruel of him to come between Mrs. Peck and G.o.d's wishes for that improvident lady.
Except: on the evening of 23 June 1909, in the s.p.a.ce of a quarter hour, the lovers' plans are as completely devastated as if an earthquake had struck Atlantic City, and the elegant Saint-Leon razed to the ground.
And what glorious plans the lovers had had: to be married in the eyes of G.o.d, as soon as the divorce decree from old Mr. Peck was finalized; more immediately, to dine early on the twenty-third, and to attend a musical evening (the much acclaimed operetta The Fortune Teller) at the new Gaiety Theatre.
Grown fatigued by an afternoon of indolence on the beach, Mrs. Peck lay down in the sumptuous four-poster bed for a brief nap; slept fitfully; woke, and slept again, and woke, or seemed to . . . disturbed by raised voices in the adjacent room. ”Christopher? Is that you?” she whispered. The voices ebbed, and she lay for a while in a pleasurable trance not knowing if she'd heard accurately or had been dreaming; lazily calculating whether it was too early for her to summon a maid, to draw her bathwater. The evening at the Gaiety would be festive and public, covert eyes moving upon her and Christopher, and so her toilette must be impeccable.
Again the voices were raised: masculine voices. One of them was Christopher's, unmistakably. But whose was the other?
”My dear boy, in an argument of some sort? Can it be?”
Excited, thrilled, Eloise quickly wrapped herself in her new emerald-green crpe de Chine robe; powdered her unfortunately puffy face; made an attempt to smooth down her matted hair. No time! no time! At the door she paused to listen, for Christopher did sound angry, as she'd never before heard him; and who could it be who dared to answer him in such a provocative tone? Not a hotel servant, surely?
Eloise listened. Christopher was being threatened?
Or, no: Christopher was threatening another person.
. . . Another young voice, whining, childish, slurred with drink, a bullying intimacy; a brotherly tone alternating with one of crude malice.
Money, evidently, was the issue.
Someone was demanding money of her Christopher.
And Christopher was saying in a lowered voice that there was no money to be had, d.a.m.n it. No money to be had-yet.
The other, unknown party laughed harshly, saying he didn't intend to leave this d.a.m.ned hotel without some cash; no less than two hundred dollars. He was flat broke, his Baltimore plans had gone bust, he'd been lucky to have escaped with just a beating! . . .
Eloise was shocked to hear how Christopher cursed his companion, and commanded him to leave at once before the woman overheard, and everything would be ruined.
. . . two hundred did I say, s.h.i.+t three hundred's what I meant.
Christopher stammered there was no money to be had yet! . . . no money of any significance.
The old b.i.t.c.h's got jewels, don't she? Come on. Before I lose my f.u.c.kin' sand-frawd.
In this way, recklessly, the two young men quarreled with an old, heated intimacy; even Christopher seemed to have forgotten where he was; and, on the other side of the door, Eloise Peck stood paralyzed, her pretty crpe de Chine wrapper fallen open to reveal her sad, slack figure, and her eyes filling with tears in one of those intervals of horror that mimic, and sometimes augur, the termination of a life.
Here is how the catastrophe occurred.
Christopher, as he was known to Mrs. Peck, had gone swimming, alone, in the late afternoon, along a stretch of windy deserted beach a quarter mile from the Saint-Leon; returned to the hotel suite, and since Mrs. Peck was asleep, enjoyed a cigar, and one or two small gla.s.ses of Swiss chocolate almond liqueur, out on the balcony overlooking the frothy, winking surf; was roused from his reverie by a surrept.i.tious knocking at the door, at 5:25 P.M., and giving no thought who it might be, suspecting it was one or another flunky of the Saint-Leon bringing Mrs. Peck some trifle she had ordered, went to open it; and saw to his astonishment his younger brother Harwood, in a disheveled state.
Before Christopher could speak, Harwood pushed his way inside, and, seeing they were alone, began to demand money from him. He was in a bad way, Harwood said; his life was in danger; he needed money, and he needed it immediately; and Thurston must provide it.
Christopher was so rattled at the sight of this brother of his, of whom he'd never been fond, whom he'd never trusted, in this place where his brother should not have been, he could only stammer that there must be some mistake: he wasn't Thurston, but Christopher-”My name is Christopher Schoenlicht.”
Harwood said contemptuously he didn't give a d.a.m.n what Thurston's name was or wasn't; he needed money; and it was obvious that, here, money was to be had. He knew all about Thurston's liaison with some wealthy old female and he wanted his share. ”My luck has temporarily run out,” he said, ”-and now, 'Christopher,' I want some of yours.”
Still Christopher stammered that there must be some mistake: he wasn't Thurston, but Christopher: and unless Harwood left at once, he would be forced to eject him.
”'Eject' me, eh! Will you! Oh will you!-just try it, fancy boy!” Harwood laughed, lowering his head like a bulldog about to leap to the attack, and clenching his fists. ”Dare to touch me, and see what happens.”
In the course of his precocious career, the young man who currently called himself ”Christopher Schoenlicht” had encountered a number of upsetting situations, and calculated his way out of several tight spots; even at panicked moments he recalled a favorite epigram of his father's-”'The worst is not so long as we can say, This is the worst'”-though he couldn't have named its source, whether the Bible, or Shakespeare, Homer or Mark Twain. Yet, his drunken brother Harwood standing belligerently before him in a place and at a time where Harwood was, by all the rules of The Game, not to be, these words ran rapidly through his head-”This is the worst!-this.”
For it had never happened before, that any of the Lichts had put another so at risk.
Brothers by blood are brothers by the soul.
Control, and control, and again control: and what prize will not be ours?
Christopher, or Thurston, had last spoken with Harwood several months ago at the old country place, as the family called it, in Muirkirk, in the Chautauqua Valley of upstate New York, around the time of Harwood's twenty-second birthday. Afterward, as usual, the brothers had gone in separate directions, for they had quite separate destinations: Harwood to Baltimore, to attach himself to a relation of some sort, a ”cousin” of their father's, with whom he was to organize a racing lottery, and Christopher, or Thurston, with his very different gifts, to return to Manhattan and to his quick-blooming romance with the wealthy Mrs. Peck. When he was apart from his brothers and sisters, Thurston rarely gave them much thought, for how could thinking along sentimental, familial lines be productive?-as Father might say. He did allow himself moments now and then of reverie, smoking a cigar, sipping a rare liqueur, as he'd been doing on the balcony of the hotel suite just now; at such times he contemplated the Muirkirk home as one might contemplate a place of refuge; he might indulge himself in a mental colloquy with his father, whose spiritual presence he required to get him through knotty times. (Like ”making love” with Mrs. Eloise Peck.) As Mr. Licht had instructed his children, it was always wisest to say How would Father deal with this?-not How should I deal with this?-when they were faced with difficult situations.
But how would Father deal with this?-Christopher, or Thurston, asked himself, as his unwanted brother Harwood prowled about the luxurious room, sniffing doglike at vases of Mrs. Peck's favorite flowers, pearl-pink roses; picking up items (a cashmere net scarf of Mrs. Peck's, from India) as if to appraise them, and tossing them down; repeating, like a demented parrot, that he needed money, he needed cash, wasn't going to leave until he got cash, he knew that the ”wealthy old wh.o.r.e what's-her-name-'Peek?' 'Poke?' 'Pig?'”-gave Thurston money, for certain she gave him presents, and he wanted his share.
Had Thurston, or Christopher, happened to have seen his brother on the street in Atlantic City, he would probably not have recognized him at first: the stocky young man hadn't shaved in days, and seemed to have suffered a beating-his upper lip was swollen, and his left eye luridly discolored. He was wearing a soiled golfing cap Thurston had never seen before, and a rumpled navy blue gabardine suit that fitted his muscular shoulders tightly; his white s.h.i.+rt, poorly laundered, was open at the throat, and missing a b.u.t.ton. It was clear too that he'd been drinking.