Part 23 (2/2)
In the hot dry summer of 1914, through the vast territories of Wyoming, Colorado, and, in most concentration, New Mexico, hundreds of notices were posted to the effect that a Philadelphian named Roland Shrikesdale III was missing; having been last seen in mid-April, in Denver, at the Edinburgh Hotel. A $50,000 reward was offered to any person or persons with information leading to Shrikesdale's whereabouts, said information to be delivered to local law enforcement agents, or telegraphed to Mrs. Anna Emery Shrikesdale, the missing man's mother, in Philadelphia. Shrikesdale was described as a gentleman of refined habits-thirty-three years old-measuring five feet seven inches, and weighing approximately one hundred eighty pounds-with brown eyes, a mole near his left eye, and fair brown curly hair. His photograph, starkly reproduced, showed the head and shoulders of an unhealthily plump young man with a squinting smile.
The newspapers took avidly to the story, as Shrikesdale was princ.i.p.al heir to one of the great Eastern fortunes; and great pathos derived from the fact that the missing man's mother was so intent upon finding him she'd embarked westward herself by train, only to be struck down by illness two hours out of Philadelphia. Invalided in Castlewood Hall, Mrs. Shrikesdale bravely allowed rapacious reporters to interview her in the hope that their stories, reprinted across the country, often with likenesses of Roland (she offered them the use of photographs, chalk drawings, even an oil portrait painted at the time of his graduation from Haverford College, by William Merritt Chase) would bring him home. She never doubted for an instant, she said, that her boy was alive-she knew he would be found soon (”For G.o.d would not punish us so cruelly, I am sure”); yet feared he'd been taken ill, or was lost or injured in the wilderness. The West was so inhumanly vast!-the state of New Mexico alone, about which one never heard, appeared of monstrous size on the map.
”Yet I am certain-I know-that Roland is alive,” Mrs. Shrikesdale declared.
In the last letter received from her son, dated 15 April, on the stationery of the Edinburgh Hotel, Roland spoke excitedly of traveling south by train to New Mexico, for ”fis.h.i.+ng, hunting, and Adventure”; his companion being a Westerner of whom he had grown exceedingly fond, and whom, he said, he would trust with his life. (”Harmon is a gentleman of Christian yet manly sensibility, Mother,” Roland said, ”-the likes of which are so rarely to be found in Philadelphia! If ever you two meet, I am sure you will like each other, Mother, but I doubt very much that he could be enticed to come East.”) In evident haste Roland had added a postscript to the effect that, since he would be off in the wilds for an indeterminate period of time, Mrs. Shrikesdale should not expect to hear from him again for five weeks, until mid-May at the very earliest.
As she had begged her son from the first not to embark upon so fool-hardy a trip (undertaken, as Roland mysteriously insisted, for the sake of his ”physical and spiritual health”), Mrs. Shrikesdale was gravely worried at this point; and stirred quite a fuss in the family, well before mid-May, with her proposal that Roland's cousins-Bertram, Lyle, and Willard-be sent to fetch him home. (As Roland's mere existence clouded the happiness of these hot-tempered young men, who stood to inherit a great deal of money if in fact he were dead, this naive proposal on Mrs. Shrikesdale's part was met with extreme resistance.) By the end of May, however, when no word came from Roland, the family at last reported him officially missing; and, not trusting to law enforcement authorities alone, hired a team of Pinkerton's best detectives to go west at once. For Roland was surely alive, as Anna Emery Shrikesdale insisted. For G.o.d would not be so cruel to her, a poor widow, who had always adored Him.
Thus was launched, with more fanfare than the Shrikesdales might have wished, the search for young Roland, the ”Missing Heir,” or the ”Missing Millionaire,” as the press called him; with a great deal of feverish excitement throughout the West, and vigorous compet.i.tion among law enforcement officers and civilians alike for the $50,000 reward. (Which was, at the desperate mother's insistence, gradually increased to $75,000 by early autumn, when Roland was finally found.) In New Mexico in particular, it was marveled that a new gold rush seemed to have begun, for bounty hunters cropped up everywhere, looking for Roland Shrikesdale III; and men who bore only a glancing resemblance to him were brought forward, often forcibly-sometimes bound and manacled, and thrown over the backs of mules! In Las Cruces, northwest of El Paso, a man led federal officers to a shallow grave in which, he claimed, lay the remains of Roland Shrikesdale III: these being but the bleached bones of someone who had been dead a very long time, very likely the victim of murder. In Central City, Colorado, a female employee of the infamous Black Swan sporting house announced to reporters that she had married the young heir shortly before he disappeared, had a ring (ten-carat diamond in a cheap gold-plated setting) to prove it; and was carrying his child. Yet more audaciously, in Pueblo County, Colorado, a bearded ruffian of no less than forty years of age made his claim to the sheriff that he himself was Roland Shrikesdale III!-and demanded that the reward money be handed over to him at once.
The search reached a peak of sorts in midsummer, and then began to subside, as a consequence of both the unusual heat and aridity of the season, and the perplexing news from abroad, which began at last to take precedence in newspapers over more local affairs. No one could quite comprehend what was happening in Europe: why, on 1 August, did Germany formally declare war on Russia?-and then, on 3 August, on France? Within a matter of days Germany invaded Belgium-England declared war on Germany-even j.a.pan, a world away, declared itself in a state of war with Germany; and President Wilson hastily proclaimed the neutrality of the United States. How was it possible that all of Europe had gone to war over one or another trifling a.s.sa.s.sination, of some obscure Austrian duke or archduke, with a name no one could remember? . . . What were Americans to make of such behavior? So, when a stranger appeared on the outskirts of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on the morning of 8 September, afoot, alone, in a dazed and disoriented state, his face caked with dried blood and his clothing badly torn and stained, no one guessed at first that this might be the missing Roland. He could not speak coherently, even to supply his name, or to explain what had happened to him; and he had on his person no identification, and no personal effects other than a broken pocket watch.
A few hours later, however, identification was tentatively made by a deputy marshal who brought with him the Shrikesdale poster, and all of Fort Sumner was aroused.
For surely this was the missing millionaire: being approximately thirty-three years of age; of medium height, and stocky-though at the present time his face was gaunt, as if he'd lost weight quickly; his hair was indeed brown, and might be said to be curly; his eyes too were brown, or nearly so (for in certain lights brown and silvery-gray resemble each other closely). If he didn't look altogether like the smiling young man on the poster, being, after all, rather the worse for wear after his ordeal in the desert, it was remarked that his clothing, though badly torn and filthy, appeared to be of an uncommon cut; and it seemed clear that, even in his initial feverish state, when the only coherent word he could utter was Mother! he was an Easterner of genteel upbringing.
Surely it was he, and no one else!
And the reward would be divided up among the half dozen Fort Sumner residents who had found him!
A shame, some observers noted, that the millionaire's handsome face would very likely be permanently scarred by an ugly wound running from his left temple to his jaw that had narrowly missed, it seemed, gouging out his left eye; deeply embedded with dirt and sand, and badly infected beneath its encrustation of coagulated blood. While the wound was being drained and treated by a Fort Sumner doctor, the injured man moaned in pain and terror, and spoke of a landslide-he and his companion trapped-thrown, along with their horses, over the edge of a cliff-pitched down a canyon wall amid a nightmare of rock, dirt, and sand-his friend (the name sounded like Herman, or Harmon) killed immediately-both horses crippled-only he surviving; yet barely alive; and unable to move for hours from where he'd fallen.
How many days ago the tragic accident had occurred, he had no idea; nor did he know where it had taken place. The very name New Mexico seemed to mean nothing to him.
Nor did the name Roland Shrikesdale mean anything.
(Although the doctor attending him believed that the injured man evinced some peculiar agitation, a distinct fluttering of the pulses, when the name was spoken close to his ear.) Questioned the following day by local authorities, who were certain by now that this was the missing millionaire, he was incapable of collecting his thoughts well enough to answer. Within minutes he began to weep in hoa.r.s.e gulping sobs; and so squirmed and writhed in his bed, he seemed on the verge of a convulsive fit. In a delirium he cried out ”Mother!” And, less frequently, ”Harmon!” and ”G.o.d have mercy!”
Clearly he was a victim of amnesia, brought about by the injury to his head, or sunstroke, or a deadly combination of both; and it was thought purposeless to interrogate him at the present time.
So he was allowed to rest, pa.s.sing in and out of consciousness, and waking to extreme confusion, as if he had not the slightest idea where he was, or that he was now safe.
(A MIRACLE, FORT Sumner thought, that a lone man, afoot, could have survived for more than a day or two in the blistering desert heat, let alone drag himself free of a landslide.
But of course miracles do happen, from time to time.
And bring with them distinct rewards, for the deserving.)
The first Pinkerton detective to arrive at Fort Sumner made a cursory examination of the sick man, studying several likenesses of Roland Shrikesdale III he had on his person, and declared that this surely was Shrikesdale; for one had to allow after all for the man's ravaged state.
The second Pinkerton detective, arriving early the next day, was less certain: for, in his opinion, the amnesiac's eyes were not exactly brown . . . and, even allowing for his present condition, wasn't his forehead rather broad and square, and his jaw strong, whereas Roland Shrikesdale's face was represented as plump and innocently round? Yet, after a few hours' deliberation, the man finally came to the conclusion that of course this must be Shrikesdale; for the odds against there being two lost men in this part of the world who so closely resembled each other were unthinkable.
The official identification of Roland Shrikesdale III was made the following week, by Anna Emery's most trusted attorney, Montgomery Bagot, sent out to Fort Sumner to fetch poor Roland home.
And of course it was Roland, as Bagot saw at once.
He had known his client's son, after all, since a very young age; and was confident that he could recognize him anywhere, in any state of health.
And it seemed clear to him that the sick man recognized him, though, weakened by fever, he could do no more than smile faintly, and extend a limp dry hand for Bagot to shake.
”My dear Roland,” Bagot said, deeply moved, ”-your mother will be so happy when I cable her the good news!”
”YET I'M NOT altogether certain that I am 'Roland Shrikesdale,'” the afflicted man told Bagot, fixing him with anxious eyes, and smiling that pale cringing smile Bagot remembered so well-which, in his opinion, now that he saw it once again, was one of Roland's most typical mannerisms, of which Roland himself was surely unaware. ”For, you see, Mr. Bagot, I can't remember. I remember the roar of a landslide, and a sudden nightmare of rock, pebbles, dirt, sand-I remember the frenzied whinnying of horses-the sensation of falling-being thrown-amid great terror and helplessness-as if G.o.d in His wrath had reached down to destroy my companion and me, for what offense I can't know. This horror I remember clearly, Mr. Bagot-but it has blotted out everything else.”
So the man Bagot knew to be Roland Shrikesdale repeated during their long railway trip east, speaking sometimes in a favored whisper from his invalid's bed, and sometimes in the high-pitched reedy voice Bagot recognized unmistakably as Roland's. When Roland's physician declared him well enough to leave his bed, the two men sat together companionably by a window of their private Pullman car-which was very like a luxury suite in a hotel of the first rank, equipped with every modern convenience, beautifully furnished and staffed by as many as five expertly trained Pullman Negroes. Bagot scrutinized his young charge with lawyerly tact, noting that Roland's eyes in direct suns.h.i.+ne weren't exactly brown but a steely mica-gray; his hair appeared coa.r.s.er and a shade or so darker; the distinct mole near his left eye was gone, as a consequence, perhaps, of his injury. Yet the man was Roland-without a doubt. For who else might he be?
Indeed, the self-effacing young heir had always doubted himself since early boyhood, Bagot recalled. He'd been intimidated by his father and babied by his mother and rendered unfit to hold his own in even childish games and compet.i.tions like croquet and badminton. The prospect of a debutante ball had more than once rendered him unable to walk, let alone dance. It had been a fear of the dictatorial Elias that Roland would never prove ”man enough” to marry, let alone sire a son to continue the n.o.ble Shrikesdale lineage by way of him; shortly before his death in 1901 Elias had spoken of breaking up Roland's inheritance and diverting much of it to his brother Stafford's three strapping boys, who would surely marry in time, and would surely sire any number of Shrikesdale sons. Yet a minor contretemps over another issue arose between Elias and Stafford, and the matter of the inheritance was abruptly dropped; and at Elias's death the immense fortune remained entire-weighing rather heavily, Bagot suspected, on the inadequate shoulders of both Anna Emery and Roland.
Even as their train entered central Philadelphia, and the Pullman men prepared for them to disembark, Roland told Bagot yet again in a craven voice that he didn't know if he was the man Bagot a.s.sured him he was; and Bagot, impatient after so many days of confinement in Roland's company, said curtly, ”Then who do you imagine you are-?”
To which the agitated youth could give no reply.
The legendary reunion of Anna Emery Shrikesdale and her son Roland at Castlewood Hall, after Roland's absence of one hundred eighty-five days, was as ecstatic as newspapers throughout the nation proclaimed; for Mrs. Shrikesdale, though in poor health and handicapped with blurred eyesight, hadn't the slightest doubt that the sickly young man restored to her was her Roland-”For which G.o.d be praised.”
How ardently she'd prayed for his safe return!-pleaded and bargained with her G.o.d! Even before it was self-evident that Roland had fallen into a misadventure out West, Anna Emery had been canny enough to donate $140,000 to a charity home for unwed mothers in the city; by the end of the summer she'd given equal sums to a foundlings' hospital, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, the International Red Cross, and, not least, the Episcopalian Church. Anna Emery's sense was of Roland-pale, plump, s.h.i.+vering, paralyzed with terror-held hostage by G.o.d Himself, that G.o.d and Anna Emery might come to terms satisfactory to both.
So, when Montgomery Bagot at last cabled her with the news that the man believed to be Roland was indeed Roland, and that Roland was, apart from superficial alterations, very much himself, Anna Emery was so suffused with joy that she climbed out of her sickbed, to her nurse's astonishment, and, lowering herself to her knees, gave thanks to G.o.d for His kindness.
”I had never doubted You,” she declared.
ANNA EMERY SHRIKESDALE, nee Sewall (the granddaughter and daughter of governors of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), was just five feet tall, with a small, round, compact figure, not exactly fat (except in her stomach and hips) but tight and rotund, like a fruit swollen nearly to bursting. At the age of sixty-nine she retained a vague girlish manner; was somewhat vain about her appearance-particularly her hair, which had grown too thin not to require the supplement of an elaborately coiffed pearly-gray wig; and suffered from such a variety of ailments, both female and general, her physician scarcely knew how to attend to her. Following Elias's mysterious death (the distraught widow was told only that he had died of heart failure; in truth he'd died of a syphilitic infection of the spine), her nerves had so deteriorated that she started like an infant at ordinary sounds and movements; suffered frequently from hypertension headaches and fainting spells; and could not always control the palsied trembling of her hands. ”Ah, you frightened me-!” Anna Emery would exclaim, laughing breathlessly, and pressing her hand to her bosom, when her companion had done no more than make an innocuous remark or gesture, or drawn breath to speak.
It was believed by some Philadelphians that Anna Emery began to lose her health after the ordeal of Roland's birth (Roland being the Shrikesdales' sole surviving child, born when Anna Emery was thirty-eight); by others, more intimately acquainted with the Sewall family, that she had always been a nervous and high-strung girl. She wept easily; laughed easily; feared company, yet pressed herself upon both men and women, chattering with an earnest sort of gaiety. At the age of fifteen she underwent a religious experience of some sort, never satisfactorily explained to her family, and pleaded with them to allow her to convert to Catholicism, and join a cloistered order of nuns; but of course the Sewalls, being a resolutely Protestant family, forbade their daughter to entertain such fantasies. At the age of twenty-four Anna Emery became engaged to a lively young bachelor-about-town who shortly thereafter threw her over for another, prettier, young heiress; and, after a period of intense shame and humiliation, when she scarcely dared show her face in society, she consented to marry the fifty-two-year-old Elias Shrikesdale-a wealthy widower known for his financial coups in the railroad, grain, and asbestos markets, but not otherwise admired in Philadelphia society. Anna Emery suffered several miscarriages-gave birth to a baby girl, who subsequently died at the age of eight months-and finally, after years of barrenness, gave birth to Roland, whom she adored immediately as the redeeming fact of her life. ”Now I see why G.o.d has made me suffer!” the radiant mother exclaimed, hugging her baby hungrily to her bosom. ”Now I see all.”
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