Testimony Of Two Men (98 page)

“I beg Marjorie Ferrier’s forgiveness in breaking my silence. She will know at the last that I did it for her son Jonathan, and not out of weakness or present fear of death. But what the results will be I do not know. I no longer care, except for Flora, my wife, who has been my dear companion and friend for many years and who will have to endure living when
I
am dead. The time has come to exonerate Jonathan Ferrier and protect him from the plot gathering against him. As I forgive him may he forgive me, and may he remember, as I do now, the years when I regarded him as my son.

The stark and blazing silence and heat in the study had increased. Howard could hardly breathe for emotion and physical oppression. He gently laid down the papers, contemplated them for a moment, then said quietly, “Martin? I have finished.”

The lightless eyes opened sluggishly and looked with
a
dazed expression upon the younger man. Then Martin groaned as if from deep in his flesh rather than from his throat, and he pulled himself up in his chair with all the effort of his body. “Yes,” he said. His look, his manner, forbade Howard to remark on the dolorous saga he had read, and Howard thought, with increasing compassion, that Jonathan Ferrier was not the only one in this miserable affair who was proud.

“I wish it notarized,” said Martin. “I have witnesses here, or you may have your own, for there must be witnesses.”

“Yes,” said Howard. “I will arrange it all tomorrow.”

Martin shook his monolithic head and for the last time, Howard was to remember, he smiled. “You lawyers,” he said again. “It is always ‘tomorrow’ to you. Tomorrow. But it must be today. Now. Why does tomorrow always fascinate you so much? The law’s delay—’ Call your office. Ask for your seal and your witnesses. At once.”

He looked imperatively at Howard. “I may die tonight,” he said, “then it will all be of no use.”

Why, indeed, not today? Howard telephoned his office and then he sat with Martin and drank some of his whiskey, and neither said a word. The papers lay between them like something with a life of its own, palpitating. There were many things Howard wished to say to this dying father. He wished to tell him that he had still been unjust to Jonathan Ferrier in his remarks that Jonathan had been harsh to his young wife and had rejected her. He wished to tell Martin that quite a little clique had known Mavis’ true character, and her love affairs, and that a few, if not more, knew her heartlessness, craft and malice and self-absorption. But that would bring no peace to Martin Eaton, but only distress.

Two clerks, one with the seal, arrived in fifteen minutes, sweating with zeal and the heat, Howard did not permit them to read the papers; he merely had Martin initial each page, followed by the initials of the clerks. The clerks were eager to read, but Howard was deft. He needed but their acknowledgment that they had seen Martin sign each page, and then his signature at the end, repeating the one he had already written. Then he asked Martin to raise his right hand and swear that everything he had written in the affidavit had been true, that he had made the affidavit of his own will and desire and had written it in his own hand. This done, Howard put his notary’s seal on each page, very carefully. It was not necessary, but he knew Jonathan’s enemies.

Martin chuckled as he laid down his pen and nodded when Howard refilled his glass. “Campion,” he said in his dry rustle of a voice. He looked into the glass, then raised it and stared at Howard directly. “To justice,” he said, and laughed for the last time in his life.

When Howard arrived at his pleasant house on the street which Jonathan had derided—Rose Hill Road—he said to his pretty wife, Beth: “Don’t ask me questions, dear, or for explanations. But you must never see Claude Brinkerman again. We must find someone else when you have the baby.”

“Well, really, Howard, he is the best,” Beth replied with surprise, and looked at him searchingly. “I have recommended so many of my friends to him.”

“You must never do that again!” he said with such emphasis that she was quite astonished and stared at him.

“Why Howard! You look—distracted. So pale, so concerned, so very, very grave. Is something wrong, dearest?”

“Very wrong, Beth. But you must do as I wish, for I know things you do not know. I’ve had a terrible three hours.
I
can’t tell you. Just do as I say.”

She continued to stare at him with wifely conjecture. Then she said, “Very well, Howard, you must have your reasons. I wish
I
had had your advice before, though. Only last November I sent my little milliner to him—a very talented girl with ribbons and plumes, she made my Christmas hat, and we both liked it so much that I permitted her to display it in her little window for a few days. You liked it, too, remember? Fawn, felt, with yellow ribbons and orange plumes, quite becoming, and you said— What’s the matter, Howard?”

“Beth!” He had jumped to his feet. “What is your milliner’s name?”

“Why—why—how extraordinary you are, Howard, and how peculiar you look! And what does it matter? It’s Mary Snowden.”

Howard smacked his hands together hard and clenched his teeth visibly with triumph. “I thought I’d heard that name before, by God! Beth! Why did you send that girl to Claude Brinkerman last November?”

“For goodness sake, Howard! What questions you ask! It won’t mean anything to you, and it is a little indelicate. She had female trouble.”

“What in hell’s that?”

Beth dropped her pretty eyes. “Inwardly,” she said with
a
prim purse of her hps.

“Well, for God’s sake, Beth, what
is
it? ‘Inwardly’ covers a lot of territory, I can see for myself. Please, Beth, forget you’re a lady for a moment. You don’t know how deadly serious this is. Let’s be frank. Was the girl pregnant?”

“Howard! How can you say such a dreadful thing about a poor, talented, good hard-working girl! So nice—so—almost —a lady. Well-mannered. Clever. Of course she wasn’t pregnant. She isn’t married!”

“Darling Beth, I love you. You are a treasure, a true treasure. I wish I could tell you how much you’ve helped me.” He kissed her. She pushed him gently away so she could examine his face.

“Howard, are you perfectly well?”

“Bully, as Teddy Roosevelt would say. Fine, as he’d also say. Last November, you say it was, when you sent Mary Snowden to Claude Brinkerman?” He paused. “You would not, by the most remote chance of course, know a Louise Wertner, seamstress, would you?”

“Indeed I do,” said Beth. “She is a friend of Mary’s. Not so talented or so original, so I give her only ordinary sewing, alterations on old clothes, mending linen, and such. Why, Howard, she often comes here to use our sewing room, especially in the spring and fall. You must have seen her yourself, once or twice, at the least, a very meek, quiet girl, always keeping her eyes down and moistening her lips, poor thing. Neither girl is exceptionally prosperous, though I do encourage Mary, who should be more appreciated—”

“Beth, you did say that these girls know each other? Well?”

“I believe so. Howard, what does it matter with that class? Why are the girls so important to you?”

“Beth, has Louise Wertner ever suffered from female trouble, too?”

“Now, Howard, don’t be ridiculous! How is it possible for me to know? Mary only mentioned it to me last November, when I remarked that she looked a little ill.” Beth hesitated. Howard, she thought to herself, had one thing in common with all other husbands: a certain thriftiness. But she had had something on her tender conscience for several months, and so she sighed. “Howard, I bought four hats from Mary, and the bill wasn’t as large as I said. I had Mary ‘pad’ it, as we say. You see, she needed fifty dollars, and so I helped her out. I hope you aren’t going to be cross? She did go to see Claude and that was his fee for a slight, a very slight—correction—in his office. Exorbitant, for the poor, but he does have a reputation. Are you cross?”

“I couldn’t be more delighted,” said Howard with fervor. So the girls did not know each other, did they? “Buy yourself a dozen hats, my darling, tomorrow. Or at least one.”

That night Martin Eaton died peacefully in his sleep. There was no autopsy, but his condition was known, and it was his physician’s opinion that he had suffered another stroke. Only Howard Best, of all in Hambledon, wondered a little, and with sorrow, and then with relief. All that was Martin Eaton had abandoned this world, which had brought him small comfort and had left him bereft in his final years.

It was not expected that Jonathan Ferrier be present at the funeral services nor be a pallbearer. Nor, indeed, was he there.

“I am afraid to leave you, Jon,” said Marjorie Ferrier. “I don’t know what has gone wrong, but something most certainly has. Is it Jenny?”

“Sweet Jenny? No.”

“I don’t believe you. You have been a different, even a terrible person since the day you told me you were going to see Jenny and arrange—”

“Mama, I don’t want to talk about it, if you please. I’m a grown man now, or hasn’t it crossed your mind?”

Marjorie looked at him with deep worry as he sat opposite her at the breakfast table. For three days he had eaten almost nothing, but he was drinking again and with gloomier determination than ever before. He had spent his time on his farms, had put up two for sale, had not gone to the hospitals more than once, had seen Robert Morgan but twice and then only briefly in the offices. But at night she heard him walking up and down in his room. His bedroom furniture was laden with clothing and other things and there was a huge trunk in the hall upstairs which she had used on her honeymoon. His wastebaskets were heaped each morning, filled with torn letters, old records, notebooks. Suitcases and bags stood around the walls, half filled. There was a growing pile of cast-off clothing in one corner. Marjorie had thought with dreariness, if it weren’t that it meant that Jon was definitely leaving, I’d be glad to see all that rubbish cleaned out of drawers, wardrobes, closets and attic at last!

So, he was leaving, and very soon, and there was no more talk of Jenny. Marjorie had written the girl just recently that she was to be in Philadelphia for a week or more, and that, as Harald was also leaving, it would be safer for Jenny to be in the Ferrier house in Hambledon. So far, Jenny had not replied. A lovers’ quarrel? It was absurd to think that of either Jonathan, who was nearly thirty-six, or Jenny, whose natural restraint prevented her from overt quarreling. Then, it must be serious, and Marjorie felt faint and sick when thinking of the matter. Were her hopes again to come to nothing? Was this house always to be desolate? She saw it boarded up, shuttered, lost in snow and wind with dark windows, silent, abandoned. Even worse, she saw it inhabited by strangers.

It had been a strong but ugly house when she had come to it as a bride. The ugliness had been in the furnishings, in the small if high boxy rooms, in the lack of many windows in the too-stringent pattern of the gardens. She had removed walls and painted wooden paneling; she had deftly, over a few years, rid the house of its ponderous furniture. She had created windows in gloomy little pockets of hallways and in many of the rooms. She had brought grace and style and color and elegance to the house. But until these last few days she had had no particular feeling with regard that years can make their own pathways through the heart and through unsuspected places, and the thought of leaving this house brought her astonishing pain. There had been all the months since “the trouble,” as it was daintily referred to by her friends, and she had known—and welcomed—Jonathan’s intention to leave Hambledon forever. But in a way which seemed very strange to her these days, she had not truly believed that Jonathan would go and that she would be left bereft in this house, which she had loved all the years without once suspecting it. It was no longer a house to her but a home, and the transition had come as silently as an evening mist. Her earlier fears, and her conviction that Jonathan, for his own sake, must leave Hambledon, were almost forgotten.

She could not remain here alone. For weeks she had been studying the house with a secret joy and anticipation. There would be the new suite of rooms for Jenny and Jonathan, a new white marble fireplace in their bedroom. There were rooms she had looked at with delight, hearing them filled with the cries and laughter of young children. She had planned a nursery garden, sheltered and fenced, with swings and sandboxes and wooden rocking horses and dolls. Now it had vanished like all her foolish hopes, and the house seemed a mournful weight on her spirit and a reproach. To leave it shuttered, bolted and shrouded would be impossible, for it was a living thing with a personality of its own, serene, calm, soft yet steadfast. Yet, to know it known to strangers, in all its nooks and entries and passageways, and to think of strange eyes peering from the windows, was intolerable.

But even more intolerable was the change, physical and in personality, in her son. In an incredibly short time he had become even more gaunt than when he had been released from prison, more taciturn, shorter of temper and sardonic when forced to speak. He appeared very ill. In the worst years with Mavis he had not seemed so tense and distracted and his eye had not had so hard a glitter of incipient violence. That violence was there, even when he was answering the most commonplace question, or asking such a question. It was like something held in him but not held strongly enough. There were times when Marjorie stammered when speaking to him for fear of unloosing that tiptoed savagery.