Testimony Of Two Men (47 page)
“Unfortunately. It encourages the liars and the demagogues to come out.” But he still studied her. He seemed to see her in an unusually clarified light, and for some reason his uneasiness increased. She was tucking white napkins carefully about a basket and he saw the slight tremor of her hands. “We’re not leaving here until you go back into the house and take your digitalis,” he said. He laid his hand on the silken shoulder of his favorite mare and she turned her head and nuzzled his fingers.
“Very well,” said Marjorie. “But I am feeling well, truly.” She returned to the house, walking slowly up the walk, and her thin figure appeared too weary to him He frowned again. He had felt for his mother the usual concern of a physician, but now that concern was intensified. He lit a cigarette and stared up and down the wide and quiet street, not seeing it, nor the deep blue shadow of the trees, nor the glow in the sky. The roofs of the houses were still in the sun, and windows glistened, and there was a scent of wetted dust in the silent air, and new-cut grass, and leaves glittered where they caught the light.
He became aware of the distant crackle of firecrackers and the odor of punk in the hot breeze, and an occasional childish shout. He heard the noisy explosion of giant crackers, and the laughter of women in a garden. Here and there he could see the flutter of brave flags on lawns, red and white and blue. It was very peaceful, very shining, very happy, as a nation celebrated its Day of Independence. It reminded Jonathan of the days of his own boyhood, when he sat on this very curb or walked along this very flagged walk, lighting firecrackers and holding smoldering punk and seeing the flags unfurled to the sun. He could even see today, his brother Harald walking carefully behind him and wincing at the noise he evoked. Harald preferred sparklers at sunset and watching the fireworks in the town park. He would hold his ears when Jonathan lighted a giant cracker. “You can be blinded that way,” he would protest when Jonathan held the cracker a little too long and the fuse almost spluttered to its end. Then he would shrink at the explosion and start up on the lawn, and Jonathan would laugh.
He always loved safety, thought Jonathan with the old disgust. And pleasantness and nice little voices and amiability and jokes and laughing. Nothing contentious for our Childe, nothing controversial, nothing dangerous. Just easiness, acceptance. Was he, is he, a coward? It’s a strange thing: People seem to love cowards and hate bravery or daring. They can be brave enough with fife and drum and flags and celebrations and patriotic songs, and they can even be brave enough for war. But moral courage is something else, indeed, and principles. The men who were willing to die for their God are no longer being born, and Tom Paine and Erasmus and Savonarola wouldn’t even be permitted to speak today, nor would the writers of the
Federalist Papers,
nor old Tom Jefferson. “Governments are invariably the enemies of their people,” Cicero had said, and Jefferson had echoed him. No one remembered that any longer, certainly not the sort of people who loved cowards.
“Why are you glaring?” asked Marjorie at his elbow.
“Was I?” He helped her into the surrey and she sank on the seat with a sigh. “I was just thinking that Americans haven’t any guts now. They are beginning to clamor for legislation for ‘reforms’ these days, when the reforms should begin in themselves.”
“A new world brings new problems and demands new solutions,” said Marjorie. “Isn’t that what Mr. Roosevelt is always saying?”
“Governments have said that ever since the beginning of history,” said Jonathan, taking up the reins. “It’s the first step to tyranny. The old problems never change because human nature is not changeable.”
“Except through religion,” said Marjorie. Jonathan snorted. He held the reins tightly as he drove the mare down the street, for one had to be watchful of mischievous children who might throw a firecracker in the path of a nervous horse. Marjorie was waving to an occasional friend on the walk, and then between the houses they could see the glitter of the river and the green and blue flanks of the mountains.
“So peaceful, so tranquil,” said Marjorie. “What a lot we have to be thankful for these days! No more wars, just plenty and hope and peace and industry. We are a blessed nation.”
Jonathan snorted again. “I wouldn’t count on its continuance,” he said. “We are beginning to flex our muscles, like the old Roman Republic. We are no different from the old boys.”
But Marjorie was smiling at the sunlit quiet, which was broken only by the short explosions of the fireworks and the warm voice of the trees in the hot wind. “We are so prosperous now,” she said. “The Grover Cleveland depression is over. People are so hopeful, so enthusiastic, over this new century.”
“You sound like the Marzipan Pear,” said Jonathan, and turned the horse down the street leading to the square. They could already see the high flags rippling against the sky and could hear the distant hum of the crowd and there was the long booming of a cannon on the lawn of the city hall. This marked the beginning of the yearly festivities. The air was permeated with the smell of powder and a great deal of punk smoke lifted in the breeze, creating a bright little fog. Now the German Brass Band struck up a martial song, a Sousa march, and there was a prolonged cheering.
Jonathan tied up the horse near a water trough, and in the shade. The mare snorted anxiously. She was answered by other horses tethered up and down the street. Jonathan patted her again, spoke to her quietly and gave her a cube of sugar. She rolled her eyes at him apprehensively. A policeman strolled up. “I’ll be watching them all, Doctor,” he said,
touching his cap to Marjorie. “No firecrackers on this street.” He laughed. “Lots of manure, though.”
Jonathan helped his mother down and again glanced at her face. It was no longer flushed. She looked increasingly tired. He gathered up the two big baskets and permitted her to carry two smaller ones. They walked along the street toward the square. The houses, on their long silent lawns, were shuttered against the sun on the upper floors, and the big porches were empty. Chinese wind-crystals made a frail music, heard even above the hubbub in the square, their tinkling nostalgic and thin. It made Jonathan think of the silent and sun-filled Sundays of the summers of his boyhood, when everything appeared to be suspended in clear light and lonely shadow and there was no sound at all but that delicate and vagrant chiming, and only an occasional clopping of a horse on cobblestones. How endless those Sundays had seemed! From dawn to twilight—they were long days, hushed and still. Were they peaceful? He could not remember that he bad ever truly felt peace, even as a child, but only agitation and as strong if nebulous longing. High Mass, with his father, had begun that restlessness even during the scent of incense and the solemn chanting and the lost sound of bells. Returning home, there had been the vast hot dinners in the big dining room with the shades half drawn against the sun, and then his parents had napped—and the loneliness had begun and the more acute restlessness. No children ran in the streets, playing. The birds spoke sleepily in the hot and dusty trees, and the Chinese wind-crystals chimed and the sun, striking here and there through branches, had been like fire on the walks and the stones. Endless hours, unbroken hours. To please his father he read only religious books on Sundays, and little homilies, and had stared at the pastel pictures that alleviated “pious writings.” and he had been bored to death, and the disquiet had begun to feel like actual pain.
What had he wanted? He tried to remember when there was nothing to remember but that keen yearning. What did he want now? Nothing. Nothing.
“Jon!” said a voice behind them, and Jonathan started and he turned with his mother. Father McNulty, plump and radiant, was at their heels, golden eyes glowing, and young face shining with sweat. He, too, carried a small basket with a blue-checked napkin covering it. He beamed at them. “It was very kind of you to invite me, Mrs. Ferrier,” he said, shaking her hand. His shabby habit had a greenish tint. Then he laughed joyously at Jonathan. “I have my own horse and buggy now!” he cried. “Senator Campion insisted. Five hundred dollars! I have only two hundred more to pay. The Senator is really very generous. He is paying the livery bills.”
“How nice,” said Marjorie.
“Dee-lightful, as Teddy would say,” said Jonathan. “Why don’t you scrounge the other two hundred from your rich parishioners?”
Marjorie said with haste, “How kind of the Senator. Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“Marvelous,” said the young priest, wiping the wet forehead under the black hat. “I haven’t very much here, Mrs. Ferrier. My aunt thanks you for the invitation, but she has one of her headaches. Unfortunate. But she baked a very nice chocolate cake.”
“I love chocolate cake,” said Marjorie. “It will be delicious with the iced tea.” She looked at him fondly. He was such a nice young man, so innocent, so kind. She hoped the Kitcheners would not snub him, nor that frightful Mrs. Morgan. There were such unkind things in the press these days about the “Roman Menace.” That is, in what Jon called “the yellow press.” Only two weeks ago three newly arrived Irish laboring families had had the windows of their little shacks broken, here in Hambledon, and filthy things scrawled on their sidewalks. No one had protested except Jonathan, in an angry letter to the local newspaper, which had not increased his popularity.
Father McNulty ambled along with them, talking with filial deference to Marjorie. “I like these celebrations,” he said. “Small cities are much warmer than larger ones, and more personal.”
“That they are,” said Jonathan. He could smell the sweet fragrance of chocolate.
“Now, dear,” said Marjorie.
“So much kinder and more brotherly,” said Jonathan. “So much more loving.”
Marjorie was startled to see the strangely keen and compassionate glance the young priest gave Jonathan, for it was not young and not innocent. Then it faded into sadness. They were all silent, their footsteps echoing thinly.
The square opened before them, its lawns spread with crowded picnic tables, and the whole area alive with shouting and running children. It was far hotter here in spite of the thick trees and the open space in the center, with its bronze statue of General Sherman flanked with old cannon. The City Hall, the pride of Hambledon, stood far back on its green rise of grass, its white Grecian pillars blazing in the sun, its flags flying, and its broad steps, filled with chairs, waiting for the dignitaries. There was a lectern, waiting but empty. Everywhere flags spread to the burning blue sky, and the German Brass Band, in its round wooden stand near General Sherman, was playing with fervent gusto, and boys threw firecrackers into the air and their parents gossiped at filled tables, and babies shrieked, and young girls sauntered looking at the closed shops, their dresses and hats bright with color, and young men, in blazers and stiff straw hats, watched them. The light poured down blindingly on the band, turning tuba and trumpet to painful gold, and the stout uniformed men, with eyeglasses and blond mustaches, puffed so fiercely that their faces were scarlet. Drums thundered, flutes shrilled, children shouted and ran, women called comfortably from tables in the shade. Men laughed hoarsely. They had removed coats and collars, and some were furtively drinking beer from cold bottles beneath great and ancient elms. Some even sat on the steps of the First Presbyterian Church, which faced the City Hall from across the street, and drank defiantly, and called back and forth to friends fanning themselves at a distance. It was a lively and jubilant sight, full of noise and voices and brazen music and startling color, bobbing with women’s flowered hats, feverish with young faces flashing into the sun and then into shadow. The heat was already pungent with the odor of crushed grass and gunpowder and food and dust and sweating bodies and aromatic leaves.
In places of honor, near the bandstand, sat row upon row of middle-aged men in blue uniforms, the Grand Army of the Republic, the veterans of the Civil War, and behind them sat the young veterans of the Spanish-American War with their jaunty Rough Rider hats. They alone seemed without joy, sitting sternly in their sweltering uniforms and staring at General Sherman as if at a tribal god, and disapproving of all the uproarious vivacity about them. Many of the young veterans were affecting a Teddy Roosevelt mustache, especially the more boyish ones, and some even had his pince-nez, the lenses brilliant in the sun. The Civil War veterans were more hirsute, with brown, red, blond or gray or dark beards, with an occasional white one marking an older officer. They all wore their ceremonial swords and many had ribbons and medals of valor, and too many had crutches beside them and canes, and here and there was a blind veteran with black patches over his eyes.
“Can you find our table, Jon?” asked Marjorie Ferrier. Father McNulty had taken one of her baskets, and she had not protested.
“I think I see a crow,” said Jonathan, nodding farther down the crowded lawns. “Yes, it’s Mrs. Morgan.”
“Now, Jon,” said Marjorie.
They walked among vehement tables, and Marjorie smiled and nodded but Jon walked alone with the priest. Jonathan’s face was full of distaste, and the priest was diffident. Only occasionally did someone greet Father McNulty, the men rising shyly, the children becoming silent, and then the men sat down and did not, for a while, look at their neighbors but appeared apologetic and pretended to be absorbed in the food on their paper plates. The German Brass Band detonated in its deafening rendition of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The crowd roared and scores stood up to look at the dignitaries of Hambledon, who were now filling the seats on the City Hall steps, and hats and caps were shook in the air and boys yelled, and firecrackers exploded in long cacophony. The cannon boomed, and the smoke rose in yellow spirals. The veterans stood up and saluted. The flags seemed to ripple more enthusiastically and the sun to become hotter and brighter and the various odors to increase in intensity. Women fluttered handkerchiefs, children shouted, babies in their buggies screamed. Agitated palm fans made a waving confusion of their own, catching the sun like round mirrors.