Testimony Of Two Men (83 page)

He had indeed been shaken, and considerably frightened and alarmed, at Jenny’s mad accusations but not for long. He knew a great deal more about erratic human nature and its irrational storms than did his brother, and nothing much surprised, jolted or bewildered him. So his first consternation was not long in disintegrating, leaving him more and more amused by the moment, and feeling more and more pity for Jenny, who had carried this bloody suspicion so long in her naive mind. Jenny, Jenny, he thought with affection, if I had indeed wanted to do away with your mother, I’d have done it with far more finesse and certainly would not have trusted Jon, or dreamed of trusting him to help me. How little you know of anybody!

Now his usual urbanity and tranquil spirits returned, and he at last fell asleep, reflecting that if Jenny married him or not, he would still have the income from her mother’s vast estate. But he did not permit himself to think that Jenny would actually reject him. After all, who else wanted her, who would marry a girl with a small income of one hundred dollars a month, with only prospects, it is true, of eventually inheriting a great estate? But those prospects were far in the future, and young men had little faith in the future. They wanted the Now.

With Jenny as his wife he would not only have the one woman he had ever wanted to marry with any desire and passion and love, but he would have that lovely money as well. They would sell that damned island or rent it. It meant nothing to Harald as he drifted off into a peaceful sleep. He had a happy dream that the island had been broken and smashed by a hurricane and he and Jenny, aboard a luxurious liner, watched it drift away in chunks. And laughed.

Robert Morgan walked gloomily through the bouse his
mother and he had bought. It was a beautiful house, of noble proportions, and not afflicted by the Victorian “wood lace” which Jonathan Ferrier so despised and which he had taught Robert to despise also. But Jane Morgan, who had been born in that very sort of a Victorian house, deemed it beautiful and “refined” and indicative of “culture” and taste. So she had brought the heaviest and the ugliest of her inherited furniture to this house in Hambledon, and had hung the darkest and most impenetrable draperies at the windows—which she had also swathed in somber lace—and the shining floors had been covered from wall to wall with dim carpets. She kept the shutters at least half shut and so a house once radiant with light became dusky and secretive and cold. Every possible corner was crowded with “antiques” of dubious value, and cabinets leaned darkly against pale paneled walls filled with what Jane conceived of as
objets dart
but which had been made lavishly in factories in Sevres in imitation of Dresden and Meissen. Marble fireplaces had their mantelpieces draped in dull velvet, red or brown or deep blue, with ponderous fringes, and upon this velvet she had placed fraudulent ormulu clocks, false Staffordshire ware, tall vases corroded with gilt and of weird and depressing shapes, conch shells, little china trays, and crystal holders filled with dried flowers or wisps of pussywillow.

Even the big mirrors she installed here and there reflected only swart shadows, dejected images, shut and looming doors. The whole effect suggested dinginess, funereal sullenness. It did not seem the same house Robert had bought, airy, bright, clean, the windows glittering, the doors opening on gardens.

After the second night she had spent in the changed house she said to her son, “Robert, the birds are very disturbing in this town, very disturbing indeed. They awaken me early in the morning and impinge on my nervous state. I have not been able to sleep for more than eight or nine hours a night since we were unfortunate enough to arrive here.”

Robert looked about him and was more depressed than ever. Was it possible that he had never noticed before how vile and uncouth his mother’s taste was, and how coarse? But he had seen the Ferrier house and other houses of light and comfort in Hambledon, including the house of the Kitcheners, which, though it did not possess the elegance and charm of the Ferrier house still had distinction of color, openness and warmth and innocent gaiety and homeliness. How could he have dreamed of bringing Jenny Heger to this house— which he now referred to as “my mother’s house”? His mother had cleverly, and as if with malice, destroyed every perspective, every grace.

He said, “Mother, I don’t find the birds disturbing. And you are not an invalid. It isn’t normal to sleep for more than nine or even eight hours.”

“Robert! Have you forgotten that I am indeed an invalid and have arthritis?”

“None of your joints are swollen.”

“You have not seen my—limbs—or my feet, nor have you felt the pain in my shoulders and my back. I do not understand you, Robert. I have done everything to please you, consented to this little town, to this home, which I did not admire from the beginning. There were other homes more suitable—”

“Houses,” said Robert.

Jane raised her voice imperatively. “I repeat, I do not understand you, Robert! We were discussing the birds. Can we not trap them or at least buy one or two cats to destroy them! How the Almighty could create such noisy creatures, to disturb the peace of humanity, is beyond my comprehension! Once I rather admired them but do so no longer. They are surely useless—”

“Mother,” said Robert, “if all the birds in the world disappeared, man could not survive more than seven years thereafter. That is a scientific fact. You don’t like these beautiful trees either, and I believe you mentioned that you ‘wondered’ why God had made them, too. If trees disappeared from the face of the earth, we should soon have Only a desert in which we could not live. Rainfall would cease, grass would die, and we’d become a barren world. It is only mankind,” said Robert in a louder and relishing tone, “who could disappear totally and never be missed by anything which lives. To tell the truth, he’s a worthless creature!”

Jane looked at him narrowly. “I must say, Robert, that you sound like your dear friend, Dr. Ferrier. Blasphemous. Did not the Almighty make man to have dominion over this world and the rule of everything? Then, everything else could disappear—and in many cases it would be an improvement —and man would still be triumphantly alive.”

“Not at all,” said Robert. “He would be dead, and sometimes, during my contacts with my dear fellowman, I think that would be a delightful consummation. Seeing that you are quoting the Bible—again—let me remind you that it states that God made the creatures of the earth, the land and the sea and the sky, and forests and lakes and streams, before He inflicted man on them, and He blessed them first. If He did, indeed, give man ‘dominion’ over these blameless things, then it was not to incontinently destroy them or injure them but to protect them, for surely they are beautiful and man is as surely not.”

“Blasphemy!” cried Jane with horror.

“I have begun to believe,” said Robert, looking again about the large and dreary room which Jane had designated as the parlor, “that man is the blasphemy by his very existence.”

“That is not Christian, Robert!”

Robert was enjoying himself. “It may not be Christian in your sense of the word, Mother, but it is certainly true. The cities are beginning to encroach on the countryside all over the world. If they were at least beautiful, and if they respected the world, and cherished it and guarded its resources, that would not matter too much, though I dread the thought that there won’t be any quiet sanctuaries in the future, and no blessed silences, and only the discordant voices of people. However, I probably won’t be here then, and that’s one blessing of mortality.

“Incidentally,” said Robert, more and more enjoying himself and getting revenge for the destruction of his beautiful house, “I believe the Bible mentions that only man is corrupt, full of sin, vicious, murdering for murder’s sake, and practically irredeemable. Not even the serpent or the tiger—and not even the mosquito or housefly—is condemned in such vigorous language. ‘Man is wicked from his birth and evil from his youth.’ I don’t recall that said about tadpoles or the lowly louse or bedbug. Just about men.”

Jane had begun to smirk in a peculiar way. “I see that your friend has really changed your Christian attitude, Robert. But—and how grateful I am for this!—he won’t be here much longer!”

“True,” said Robert, and it came to him that in spite of what had happened, apparently with such lightness between him and Jonathan, he would miss Jonathan more than he had thought it possible to miss another human being. As he was young and optimistic, he had almost recovered from the shock of that day’s encounter, and had seen Jenny a number of times on the island, and she had been shyly kind and had welcomed him with obvious pleasure and trust. He had begun to hope. She had not spoken to him of Jonathan again, and Jonathan had not mentioned her recently.

“A wanderer on the face of the earth. He will be that, Robert.”

“Possibly for a little while. I know that he has had many magnificent offers from New York and Philadelphia and Boston. One hospital even offered to make him Chief-of-Staff, and another of the surgical division.”

“He will never realize any of them, my dear Robert.”

Robert turned on her quickly. “What do you mean by that?”

Jane smiled with deep satisfaction. “I do associate for your sake, Robert, to incline people to you. During those associations with the ladies in this miserable little town I have heard —hints.”

“Of what?” Now Robert was alarmed and disturbed.

“I am not at liberty to tell you,” said his mother, setting her mouth primly. “Moreover, I am not one to gossip, nor do
I
permit confidences.”

Robert was silent, studying her and frowning. He had felt that something was wrong concerning Jonathan in this town during the past few weeks, but he had dismissed it as his imagination. He was treated kindly by new colleagues, but he noticed that faces changed when he mentioned Jonathan, and the subject was dismissed. He had come to the conclusion that as Jonathan was leaving, he was no longer important to the medical world in which he moved in Hambledon, for it was a parochial town and concerned only with its own, and Jonathan was not now part of that closed society.

” ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the Hands of the Living God,’ ” Jane quoted with pleasure.

“It is, indeed,” said Robert. “Mother, if you have heard of anything concerning Jonathan I insist that you tell me, for he is my friend.”

Jane nodded grimly. “He is no man’s friend, but has set his face against everyone, and so I am most happy that he will indeed be leaving soon, or perhaps he will be forced to leave. That is what I have heard, Robert, and all I have heard, from many indignant ladies, who also hinted that never again will he be permitted to practice anywhere. Certainly—”

“For God’s sake!” Robert suddenly shouted. “What in hell are you talking about? What fool women’s gossip have you been listening to?”

His mother rose with slow vast dignity, lowering her eyes before this violence, and, forgetting her canes for once, marched as if preceded by heralds out of the room, and in silence. Robert seethed, watching her go. He knew his mother. She would tell him nothing. He had deeply offended her. Now she would not speak to him for days except on occasions of deepest necessity, until he would be forced to apologize or she would find her own silence no longer sufferable.

He slammed out of the house into the hot sunlight of the morning, and it was as if he had been delivered from a dank tomb. But his mind was greatly perturbed and anxious. He wondered if he should tell Jonathan. He recalled that Jonathan had lately seemed very lighthearted and pleasant and amiable, and his tongue had been less abrasive. Jonathan, who knew Hambledon, as Robert did not, would surely be aware by this time if some danger had begun to threaten him, some inconceivable danger. He decided not to repeat his mother’s malignant gossip. What had she said, really, except to repeat remarks of spiteful women?

His concern for Jonathan, however, removed the last hostility and estrangement he had felt since that day by the river, and his thoughts of him were again brotherly and full of respect. If no one else missed him in Hambledon, he would be missed by Robert Morgan. Perhaps, thought Robert, when he is established somewhere else, he will send for me. I like Hambledon very much. But if Jon asked me to join him, I would.

Senator Kenton Campion got out of his fine ‘victoria—his sister’s—and looked at Dr. Martin Eaton’s great and monstrously ugly house and thought, as he always thought, that if “Pike’s Peak” was ridiculous for Hambledon, Dr. Eaton’s house should be razed in the interest of public beauty, after public condemnation. It was no worse, he reflected, than other houses on River Road, and it did have remarkably lovely gardens and linden trees, and had a fine back view of the water and expansive grounds, but still it was hideous and an insult to an eye that winced at deformities.

He stood on the walk and looked up at the little silly turrets and small absurd towers and the appalling stained-glass hall window that glowered in the very center of the chestnut-colored wood facade and seemed to enhance the putrid yellow hue of the shutters and shingles. Ghastly, ghastly, thought the Senator, climbing the stairs to the cool shadows of the deep long porches and pulling the bell. He was almost always good-tempered. The Eaton house increased his feeling of well-being because it was so repulsive, so rich, so pretentious and so without grace. His eyes shone like polished glass. A maid admitted him to the great parlor with all its clutter of china, elks’ horns, clocks, vases and dark velvet furniture, and, of course, its shutters pulled against the radiant morning sun. It was dusky here, though not cool, and the Senator felt his way to the center of the room, considered a deep chair, then decided against it. He was too portly to sink himself into that mass.