Testimony Of Two Men (48 page)

“I don’t know why I stand this, year after year,” said Jonathan, picking his way among tables, and trying to avoid dishes and glasses on the grass, and little children.

“It’s very innocent. And harmless,” said Father McNulty. “There must be several thousand here. It’s very happy.”

Jonathan looked at him sharply. Then he said, “Isn’t it, though?”

“Naive, perhaps,” said the priest, and stopped to acknowledge a sheepish greeting. “But public celebrations go back to man’s deepest spiritual history.”

The noise was more tumultuous. “I see old Campion has arrived, in all his magnificence,” said Jonathan. “Prepare, as usual, for a mellow ripe speech full of glory. There’s Beatrice with him, anticipating goodies. But no Francis.”

“He left last night for New York,” said the priest “He’s going to France.”

“Good,” said Jonathan. “That should be a full education for him.”

“He’s going to a monastery in the Alps,” said Father McNulty.

Jonathan stopped abruptly. “The hell you say,” he said. “Did you contrive that?”

“Now, dear,” said Marjorie, seeing the darkness on her son’s face. “Oh, here we are. Isn’t it nice.”

The band became less martial and more lively. “Tell Me Pretty Maiden,” it pleaded in strident trumpet tones, and the crowds began to sing and cheer and laugh boisterously. The Ferrier table was a little apart, in deep shade, and there were fewer children running on the grass. A small silence seemed imposed on the table, an awkwardness. Two men stood up, young Robert Morgan and Mr. Albert Kitchener. Robert seemed uncommonly flushed and he had a wide vacant smile and his blue eyes appeared bemused, and he was more of a gentle golden bear than Jonathan had seen him only yesterday. He wore a gray alpaca summer suit and a blue-striped shirt, and his white high collar and stiff cuffs seemed to glitter.

Mr. Kitchener and his wife, Sue, were distant relations and they matched each other remarkably in that they both resembled bright rosy baked apples, even to the cinnamon-colored hair. Mr. Kitchener’s mustache was also of that color, very large and bushy. Both were short and round and sweet and inviting in appearance, with brilliant gray eyes like crystal, dimpled chins and pink cheeks, and both had an air of comfortable innocence, placidity and affection. Their daughter, Maude, twenty-two, was their only child, as small and dimpled and pink as themselves, a trifle plump but endearingly so, and her hair was a vivid auburn and escaped in thick glossy waves and ripples from under her wide gauzy hat. The girl wore a sprigged muslin frock with a lace collar and wide lace cuffs, and apparently their dressmaker had been enamored of the girlish theme, for she had made an identical one for Sue Kitchener except that the sprigs were pale lavender. The three had an old-fashioned and contented appearance, as if nothing in their lives had ever disturbed them. Mr. Kitchener was a prosperous lawyer who never accepted a criminal case. He had cozy offices with five clerks and an assistant, and had inherited considerable money. Jonathan Ferrier was fond of the three Kitcheners but found them dull if pleasant and soothing company. It was obvious that they were fond of him also, for Albert Kitchener chuckled at him, shook his hand heartily, Mrs. Kitchener smiled happily and Maude gave him an absent gray look and smiled shyly. Jonathan wondered at that absentness but soon found the reason. The girl was fascinated by Robert Morgan, and even as she smiled at Jonathan her eyes moved mistily to Robert and stayed there.

Mrs. Morgan had the small cold and secret smile of the naturally malicious woman, and it merely became colder as she haughtily acknowledged the newcomers, without a glance, of course, at the priest, whom she ignored even when he was presented to her. It did not surprise Jonathan and his mother that she was dressed very unsuitably on this hot day, and in an old style. Her black silk poplin dress was obviously uncomfortable, with its short mantle that swathed her angular shoulders, and she even wore a widow’s bonnet and white ruching at the top of her collar, which was so high, so boned, that it seemed to be pushing into the withered flesh under her chin. Her light eyes examined Jonathan severely, and even with contempt, then withdrew from him to dwell even more severely at the other guest, Jenny Heger.

Jenny, Jonathan saw at once, was dressed as bunchily and as unprettily as always, in a blue and white checked shirtwaist, a heavy blue duck skirt, black-buttoned shoes and a broad black patent-leather belt. Her hat, a big coarse cartwheel of yellow straw, was useful for shading her from the sun but for no other purpose, certainly not to enhance her appearance, with its dusty black ribbon and despondent bow. She sat in stiff silence on her part of the bench after the introduction to Father McNulty, and stared at the table, her hands clenched together in her lap. Unlike the other ladies, she wore no gloves, and her fingers were tanned and her nails were not slightly tinted as were the Kitchener females’. But nothing could really dim the white luster of her face, the extraordinary blueness of her eyes, the stern loveliness of her palely colored mouth, the delicate aquilinity of her nose, and the mass of glistening black hair rolled impatiently under her hat and allowed to droop in a large bun at her nape. Not even the starched wide blue and white checked collar of her shirtwaist could hide the slenderness of her long neck, the contour of her superb young shoulders, and the classical lines of her breast. She made pretty little Maude, who had been a belle in Hambledon since she had reached puberty, appear al- most common in her rose-sprigged muslin, white gloves and laces, and charming hat.

Jonathan felt that all the others retreated into mere colored photographs in the presence of this strange girl, and had but two dimensions, and that even her silence was electric in the midst of the friendly remarks and light laughter about the table. This annoyed him fiercely, as it always did, and he was even more annoyed that his neck felt hot and moist and that his hands were becoming tense. She said nothing to him, and he said nothing to her. But Marjorie said, “Jon, do sit next to Jenny, and I really must sit next to Albert. I have so many things to say to him.”

Jonathan wanted to say, “I’d prefer to sit across from Maude,” for the girl always delighted him with her cheerful inanity and soft conversation, and her air that the world was a truly lovable and romantic and exciting place. But Marjorie was already smiling along the table at Mrs. Morgan, who bent her head as if being gracious to a lady-in-waiting, and smiling, too, at Mrs. Kitchener, who had gently patted the spot next to her for Father McNulty. Unfortunately, he would have Mrs. Morgan on his left, and she ostentatiously withdrew to the limit of the bench to accommodate him. Jonathan gave her a hard look and was somewhat surprised to see that Jenny gave her a similar one. He sat beside Jenny, almost unbearably conscious of her nearness, careful not to let his sleeve touch hers, and feeling, as always, that indescribable tenseness not only in his hands but in his whole body, and a curious sense of being unnerved. He had never tried to explain it to himself, though often he had thought it was revulsion and, sometimes, detestation for what she was in spite of her youth, and her lack of feminine graces and social amenities and ugly dress. He did not know that Jenny had been long convinced that she was most unattractive, awkward, ungraceful and undesirable. Had he known, he would have been incredulous. He did not know that Peter Heger had recognized his daughter’s disturbing beauty even when she had been only a child, and had jealously, and knowingly, informed her that she could never expect to be courted for, as he said, she was most unlike other young ladies and ought to have been his son and not his daughter. Jenny, who had adored him passionately, had never once in her short life, not even when looking in the mirror, doubted him for a moment. Her father had recognized her physical disabilities and had wished to shelter her from the harshness of a world that
 
loved only dimpled prettiness, and she was too tall, even as a child, and too slender, and her hands and feet were too large.

Only Harald Ferrier had called her “lovely Jenny,” and she had thought it mockery. His insistence on marrying her, of course, was to insure that he could leave the island at will and stay away as long as he desired, for though the money would then be Jenny’s, it would, to all effect, also be his.

It was Marjorie Ferrier who, in her long and tender conversations with the girl over many years, had guessed all about Peter Heger and his infatuation with his beautiful daughter and his wish to keep her with him and isolate her. There was no ugliness with which Marjorie was not familiar in human nature, and what she did not know from experience she intuitively guessed. She had tried, as subtly and as skillfully as possible, to assure Jenny that she was remarkably beautiful, but the girl had no self-confidence and as yet, no inner fortitude. She had been grateful for Marjorie’s suggestions that she dress more becomingly, but had replied with heartbreaking simplicity, “But why, Aunt Marjorie? Nothing will help. Besides, I don’t want to get married, really, and I don’t like to be in the company of other people, anyway. They frighten me so. I prefer the island and the gardens and my books, and thinking of Papa, and taking care of his roses. I wasn’t popular at school in Hambledon, you know. I was head and shoulders over the other girls and they used to laugh at me. I’m still as tall as most men. No, I must be contented with what I have.”

But what Jenny had was nothing, Marjorie would sadly reflect, and it was only because she was so pure of heart and so distressingly honest and so courageous—though in the wrong directions—and so adamantly untouched. All the reading she had done, the studying, the reflections, had not broken into that marble tower and had not touched poor Jenny with flame and longing and desire. Marjorie had gone so far as to send Jenny some books by Zola and others of earthy richness, and Jenny later had reported, “They were very interesting, I think, but a little crude, and besides, they were French—or Italian or Roumanian or Russian—and they didn’t seem quite real to me. Maupassant? Well. Was it necessary for him to write
that?””
Poor Jenny’s face had become . quite red and she had been overcome with discomfiture and had changed the subject.

Damn Peter Heger, Marjorie would think. I hope there is a special hell for fathers who distort their children’s minds like this and destroy their natural impulses, and lie to them.

Marjorie looked at Jonathan’s face, where the white lines of flesh had come out around his mouth, and where the facial bones were sharper than usual. He was conducting an apparently casual conversation with that young Dr. Morgan—who was staring so abjectly at Jenny and with so much ardent fascination and so there was really no reason for Jonathan’s seeming so overwrought and physically rigid, as if about to spring up and run away. But Marjorie smiled secretly to herself, and she hoped for some overwhelming catastrophe, or something, to reveal to Jon what he really should know about himself. Look at him there! As taut and unbending as Jenny, with his straw hat pushed back from his sweating forehead, and his jerking cheek and lip muscles, and his hands perched tightly on his thighs and his overattentiveness—as if his life depended upon it!—to the very commonplace remarks young Robert was making to him. He was saying, “Aha, aha, yes,” in a very emphatic voice, and at length the bemused Robert became aware of this exaggeration and turned to him and said, “Eh? Oh, yes, it was very interesting.” He seemed a little puzzled. He became silent. Now he stared openly and helplessly at Jenny, who was no more aware of him than a bird.

Marjorie saw that Robert Morgan was much “taken,” as the saying was, by Jenny. Robert interrupted Jonathan’s remarks by saying to Jenny—as if Jonathan had not been speaking at all—“Miss Heger, I often look across the water at your marvelous island, your charming island.” His voice actually trembled. “I wish you would permit me to visit it again, soon.”

Jenny started. She turned her head slowly and met his eyes, and a painful scarlet ran up from her throat and breeched like fire into her white cheeks. “I—” she said, and swallowed. She was in misery. “Perhaps you could—perhaps someday—”

“Soon?” he pleaded, and colored himself, astonished at his presumption.

She tried to smile. She could only nod, then look again into the distance, past Mrs. Morgan, who was greatly shaken and had turned quite ashen, and past the tumult everywhere present on the grass. Maude Kitchener, who was sitting next to Robert, looked dismayed. She timidly touched his arm, and he turned to her, bemused, his blue eyes excited. “We have the same gardener as the island,” she said in her sweet voice. “Our gardens are very similar. I hope—I hope—” Then the poor girl blushed at her own boldness. She had been sitting in bliss near Robert. Once she had believed herself in love with Jonathan, but she had been very young then, before he had married that awful Mavis Eaton. Yes, she had thought of him again since Mavis had died, and she had had her dreams. But she had met Robert today and had since been delirious, overcome by the sudden light in the scene, a sort of feverish incandescence, and her heart had been doing very odd things indeed, and everything had appeared to be exquisitely radiant and musical and trembling with delicious agitation. Even the raucous German Brass Band had been playing, to her ears, the most remarkable and enchanting , music, sensual and insidious.

“Very nice,” said the bemused Robert, who had not heard her stammer. He returned again to his rapt contemplation of Jenny’s averted face.

Then Jonathan became aware of all this. He looked at the helpless longing on the young doctor’s face, and the passionate intensity and slavish desire, and he looked at Jenny, beside him, and her cold withdrawal and her obvious misery. Jonathan could not believe it. Wasn’t the Childe enough for her, that she must set out to bedazzle this hulk of gold and rosy innocence? And what was there to bedazzle in the frump? At the very least she should dress like a young woman and not an old, poverty-stricken witch. Then he was struck by his own thoughts and considered them and was more in a rage than before. He wanted to take Jenny’s shoulders in his hands, hold them, and then at this appalling thought he felt suddenly and distinctly ill and heavily shaken.