Testimony Of Two Men (72 page)

Thelma had written him recently that Tom seemed much improved, “and able to take short rides every day.” What had the poet, William Blake, said: “Cruelty has a human heart, and jealousy a human face.” It took a poet to be pithy and full of verity, and only the ignorant called them decadent or ladylike or other demeaning terms. They were a virile breed. Jonathan recited some of his favorite poems to himself and looked at the river. The island was partly behind him now. A little mist was rising from the water into the heated air, and the island seemed adrift, a fairy place, and Jonathan thought of Jenny and Robert Morgan, and chuckled but not very agreeably. He would have to corner the elusive Jenny very soon and no more delicate approaches. Jonathan remembered what Ibsen had said: “One should never put on one’s best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.” Nor should he put on his best trousers to fight for love, either.

The river had a dreamlike quality today, its current hardly visible, hardly running, its surface like pale blue silk and as smooth. The ferries chugging from side to side were busy with holidayers, and there were boats out with sails, and rowboats moving placidly with picnickers looking for a likely spot along the shore, and the sun was a yellow haze and the mountains on the other side of the river were gauzy shapes of green. It was what countrymen called “a pretty day.” Humid and hot, but languorous and peaceful, and voices called and laughed from the river and from the gardens that bordered the narrow road. But now the houses and the gardens were becoming farther and farther apart, and the country was approaching, smelling of dust and hay, and the peculiar excitation of the lovely and carnal earth.

Here and there along uncultivated stretches of land little humpy and jagged roads tumbled out to join the River Road, and as Jonathan approached one on his left a buggy came smartly hurtling toward him, and his horse, predictably, reared in pretended fright. For an instant he stood against the sun with Jonathan standing in the stirrups and raised from the saddle, then he dropped his legs at a quick touch of the crop. The buggy also came to an abrupt stop, and there was young Father McNulty’s face peering out from under the dusty top.

“Jon!” exclaimed the priest, and against all knowledge of horses he flung down the reins of his own and jumped from the buggy. “I’ve been calling you! What a Godsend you are to appear like this!”

“For God’s sake,” said Jonathan, and alighted, and went to the buggy and caught and fastened the reins. “Your horse could bolt, you damned city man! Good thing she’s a tame mare and I’m not riding a stallion.” He stood in the hot yellow dust of the road and regarded Father McNulty with no pleasure at all.

But Father McNulty was too fervid with gratitude to care. He grasped Jonathan’s arm and pointed up the little road. “You know the McHenrys.”

“No, I don’t, and moreover I don’t want to know them.”

“Young manager of the Hambledon Lumber Mills. From Michigan.”

“Good. Hope Prissy Witherby pays him a good salary. She was the town doxy, you know, temporarily reformed. Prettiest legs between here and New York, and as for her other qualities, what is it the advertisements say? ‘One trial will convince you.’ “

“Jon.” The priest smiled. “Don’t try to shock me.” He stopped smiling. “It’s young Mrs. McHenry I’ve been visiting.

Peter called me. I’m afraid the girl is going mad. I could do nothing with her at all. Matilda is the loveliest girl.”

“What’s wrong with the rites of exorcism? Out of business in this scientific twentieth century?” He moved toward his horse, and the priest grasped him again.

“Jon, I prayed to find you. I’ve been calling you. This is a terrible emergency. I want you—”

“I’m no alienist,” said Jonathan. “I’ve had no training in mental illness. Send her off to Philadelphia. I know just the man.”

“You did wonders with young Campion.”

“Oh? Matilda tried to commit suicide? Well, why did you interfere—again?”

“Please, Jon. No, she didn’t try to kill herself, but she is distracted enough to think of it. I am afraid she is losing her mind, and Peter is desperate. They have such a delightful little girl, too, Elinor. It’s a tragedy.”

“I told you I’m no alienist, for God’s sake, and besides,
I
don’t much believe in them. No, I’m on my way to my farm, and if you’ll kindly let go of my sleeve, I’ll be obliged.”

“You are the only one who can help her,” said the priest.

Jonathan stared at him incredulously. “You must be out of your mind yourself!”

“I’ve always had a certain feeling about you, Jon, and you are so compassionate.”

Jonathan burst out laughing and shook his head and went to his horse.

“Priests have intuitions,” said Father McNulty. “That’s why I know about you.”

Jonathan put his foot into a stirrup and looked back with annoyance. “I’ve heard about those intuitions. They’re invariably wrong. Old Father McGuire, whom you succeeded, was all full of the damnedest intuitions about my father, and not one of them had any reality. We must have a chat about that soon. Besides, if you need a doctor, there’s my replacement, Bob Morgan, who’s so full of loving kindness that it makes me want to puke sometimes. Call him for Matilda on Monday. He’s out riding with my lady at the present time.
I
hope they aren’t indulging in the pleasantest pastime of all, the only one that matters.”

“I prayed to find you,” said the priest in a voice of such urgent humility that Jonathan paused. “And then there you were. It was God’s answer to my prayer. You can’t overlook that, Jon.”

“God and I parted company when I was seventeen,” said Jonathan, “and one of these days I’ll tell you about that, too, and make an agnostic of you.” He mounted his horse. Father McNulty caught one of the reins, and the horse stepped back, almost on him, and Jonathan, with an oath, had to apply the crop again.

“Christ!” Jonathan exclaimed. “Don’t you know anything about horses at all? You are a menace. You shouldn’t be driving that buggy for a minute.”

“I know about people,” said the priest with pale resolution. “I know about you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Jonathan looked down at him with amused wonder. “You’re a persistent devil, aren’t you? What’s the matter with their own physician?”

“They’ve been here only two months. They came for Matilda’s health. Please, Jon. I can’t wait until Monday for Matilda, and besides I doubt young Dr. Morgan could help that poor girl. You need only to talk to her for a few minutes. Please.”

“They’re well off, I suppose?”

“Moderately so. What—”

“And servants?”

“A housekeeper, and a second maid, and a gardener. What—”

“I have the perfect cure for the lady,” said Jonathan, “and it will cost her husband—unfortunate devil—nothing. Let him discharge the servants and make the young lady roll up her sleeves and pin up her skirts and get to scrubbing, cleaning and cooking and washing and ironing, and tending the garden. Then her megrims will be gone—presto—overnight. Nothing like hard grim work to cure a sick mind.”

The priest said, “Not always, Jon. And there’s that darling little girl, Elinor. Think what this is doing to the child—and she is only nine years old.” He smiled up at Jonathan pleadingly, but also with artfulness. “She reminds me of little Martha Best.”

“That’s a lie, and I hope you confess it,” said Jonathan. He sighed. He looked at his watch. “All right, considering that I’d have to ride you down if I don’t. I’ll look at the delicate, pampered lady for exactly five minutes and that’s all.”

With more expertness than Jonathan would have believed, the priest turned his buggy around on the narrow side road and rode off in a spume of yellow dust and Jonathan followed. The road climbed, and then at the top where it leveled there was an old farmhouse, restored, mellow and warm in its nest of trees and sun, with ancient lawns about it and a white picket fence and a pretty bed of flowers near the door. Cicadas shrilled in the burning heat, but otherwise there was no sound and no sight of any human being. The place seemed deserted. As the leaves moved, the sun struck on small latticed windows and on dark old wood, and laced the stone path with dancing shadows. Jonathan remembered that this was “the old Barrow Place,” once a farm, and sold long ago.

“Tie up your horse to that tree,” said Jonathan. “It’s a good thing she’s an intelligent elderly mare, or you’d not have a horse by now. She’s patient with fools, I can see.” His voice echoed from the lonely land. The priest opened the broad and weathered door and they stepped into a cool and dusky hall with a bare and polished floor and a few good prints on the paneled walls and one Spanish table, dark and impressive with a mirror over it. There was a scent in the air of potpourri and wax. Jonathan looked about him with approval There was nothing vulgar or modern here, and everything expressed dignity and breeding and the self-restraint of the truly mannered person. His glance into rooms off the hall showed him the same calm and solid elegance and paucity of elaborate decoration, and the distinction of the old furniture, a mixture of early Victorian and Spanish. Whoever the McHenrys were, they were not cheap in any meaning of the word.

At the end of the hall was a noble staircase of very dark wood, as polished and bare as the floors, and now there were hurrying footsteps coming down them and a young man appeared, very handsome, very Spanish in appearance—the Iberian complexion and features but the rugged tall breadth of the Irish—and dressed only in trousers and a white shirt without a collar. His thick black hair was rumpled and when he saw the two intruders he hastily tried to smooth it down with fine hands. Jonathan approved of him at once and shook hands with sincere appreciation when he was
_N
introduced to Peter McHenry. “God answered my prayer, you see, Peter,” said the priest. Jonathan winked at Peter, but Peter nodded his head with total acceptance.

“Where is Matilda?” asked Father McNulty.

“I persuaded her to lie down. Elinor is resting, too.” The young man turned to Jonathan. “We came from Detroit be- cause of Matilda’s health, you see, to a quieter place near the mountains, and not so bad a winter. So kind of you to come, Doctor. Matilda hasn’t been very well since Elinor was two years old—that’s seven years ago. We had a doctor in Detroit, but he was baffled.”

“I probably will be, too,” said Jonathan. “You have some very good doctors in Detroit. What seems to be wrong with your wife?”

The young man was so anxious and disturbed that he did not invite his guests into one of the rooms off the long hall. He stared at Jonathan. “The doctors can’t find out. That’s what’s so frustrating. It isn’t physical, they say, yet she has high blood pressure, at her age! She’s only twenty-eight, for God’s sake! She’s a very equable person, Matilda, and well-controlled, and quiet, and amusing when she wants to be. She can’t sleep, and she seems disturbed most of the time.”

“Hysterical, too, I suppose.”

“Hysterical? Matilda?” Peter McHenry gave a short laugh. “She never was! Never. Not even when she’s most depressed.”

“Depressed, eh? And what is her chief complaint?”

Peter hesitated. “I don’t think she has any. Matilda never complains about anything. She is homesick, I know, and misses her family—wonderful people, better than mine, I’m just a Mick—but she never mentions it. She is used to the city but loves it here in the country. But sometimes she looks at me, sort of distracted, you know. Empty. Frightened. As if there was something she couldn’t deal with and didn’t rightly know what it was, anyway.”

Probably bored, thought Jonathan. He felt sorry for Peter McHenry and felt dislike for his wife. Mick or not, he was possibly too good for her. He looked up to meet Peter’s black and shining eyes, so like his own, with the whites a brilliant gleam in the duskiness of the hall. A good and intelligent man, and his wife? A pampered, whining fool. “I’d like to see Mrs. McHenry,” he said. “Though I must tell you I am no alienist—never had any patience with their magical abracadabra anyway, and their Viennese incantations, and their high priest, Freud. Certainly there is such a thing as—well—let us call it mental disturbances for the moment—but I’ve discovered that almost invariably they have a physical basis. To put it more crudely, a man, though of previous sound reputation, can go berserk if aroused, and almost anyone can kill under enough provocation. You see, I’m a pragmatist.”

Peter had listened seriously. “And now,” said Jonathan, looking at his watch ruefully, “let’s go to Mrs. McHenry. Incidentally, I’d like to see her alone after you’ve introduced me to her.”

They climbed the broad staircase in silence, came upon a long hall with six doors leading from it. Peter opened one and said with the false brightness of acute anxiety, “Darling, Father McNulty has brought his friend, Dr. Ferrier, to see you.”

The blinds had been pulled against the sun, and the big square room was partly dark, and Jonathan saw here again the elegant mixture of Victorian and Spanish furniture. A thin young woman in a flowing white dress was lying on a chaise longue, and she lifted her head quickly from a posture of utter exhaustion. Peter raised a shade and the green light outside struck her face, and Jonathan saw that Matilda McHenry vividly resembled his own mother in her youth. There were the same clear hazel eyes and fine features and the cloud of soft dark hair and the sensitive mouth and the look of pure candor, and the same restraint in dress. She held out her thin hand to Jonathan, and when she smiled, it was his mother
‘s
smile, charming and a little reserved.