Testimony Of Two Men (5 page)

Jonathan laughed again. “There’s a rumor they like each other only too well! In the town they call her ‘Lilith.’”

Robert knew his Bible. He said, “Lilith? Wasn’t there
a
legend that she was Adam’s first wife, or something? ‘Now Lilith was a demon.’” He flushed again, his too-ready color. “I shouldn’t have said that”

“You aren’t offending me,” said Jonathan with enjoyment “I despise both of them, sweet Jenny and Harald. Not that I listen to gossip, which is plenty in the town. In a way, I suppose it’s all right, their living in the ‘castle.’ It should have been left to Jenny, anyway. The servants are there. Still—”

Robert felt an obnoxious taste in his mouth, and disgust He put the glasses to his eyes once more. The girl was still directing her hatred at the grove of trees. Then, as Robert watched, she bent her head and descended back the way she had come and disappeared. He saw the white flash of her neck through the trees.

“I still think she saw us,” he said.

“No. Impossible. She was just hating Hambledon in general. She doesn’t go into the town very often. When she does, she often calls on my mother, technically her grandmother. They are great friends. But she leaves at once if I appear. I don’t think she likes me.”

I wonder how many do? thought Robert, and was embarrassed.

“How about visiting the hermits?” asked Jonathan. “They
‘ll
be your patients, you know. You might as well know them.” His dark thin face was gleeful with a mirth that Robert could not understand, except that it had a flavor of malice.

“Oh,” said Robert. “Perhaps not today.” He was again very uneasy.

“Why not today?” Jonathan was suddenly very brisk. “They have three rowboats. One is always on this bank. Come on. Why are you rooted there?”

Robert did not know. He simply felt a reluctance to make the acquaintance of the ambiguous couple on the island. But Jonathan took his arm and firmly led him out of the grove. “I go over there at least twice a week, just for the fun of it,” he said. “There isn’t much fun in my life recently. Don’t be stubborn.”

Carrying his thick coat on his arm, Robert followed Jonathan. For some reason he set his hard black hat firmly on his head. They reached the bank of the river and saw that a row-boat with oars was pulled up on the thick grass. “Perhaps your brother isn’t at home,” said Robert hopefully.

“Now, where would he go? In Hambledon? How are you at rowing?”

But Jonathan took off his jacket and lifted the oars, after the two young men had pushed the boat down into the water. “You can row back,” said Jonathan. “It’s wonderful exercise, and doctors need it. They get too fat in their pompousness.”

Robert settled down in the boat as Jonathan strongly thrust the oars into the shining blue water. He had a new suspicion that Jonathan had intended this visit from the first, and his uneasiness grew. He told himself that he was not accustomed to “this kind” of people. All his life had been surrounded by people on whom one could depend, of whom one was sure. Good solid people, kind people, helpful, friendly people. Decorous, churchgoing people who always voted Republican and suspected “Papists” and Jews and “foreigners,” People who made Sunday calls and left cards and never swore or acted indiscreetly. People to whom adultery was only a word, and sin something persistently to be avoided. Women who were modest and not ambiguous, and never showed their ankles or uttered a naughty word; men who wore frock coats on Sundays and carried canes and talked in modulated voices. I am certainly a long way from Philadelphia! thought young Robert Morgan.

He looked at the bareheaded Jonathan Ferrier. Jonathan was as strange to him as a resident of Tangiers or Constantinople. He had a “foreign” look, lean, hard, dark, hidden. He was also a “Papist,” by his own admission, or at least had been so. Of course, his mother had been a Farmington and was a great lady. Robert dwelt heavily on that fact to conceal his feeling of estrangement and his sensation that he had, in some way, found himself in an alien country where the old signs were written in hieroglyphics and not to be deciphered. Yet, Hambledon was only a small city. It was just that the Ferriers were “different.” French, or Belgian? One never knew what “that sort” would do next. They were unpredictable, and Jonathan Ferrier was more unpredictable than most. Sinister? Robert thought of that as the hot sun glared in his eyes and the water threw back brilliant ripples of light. Probably sinister. Was it possible that he was really guilty of his wife’s and child’s murder after all? No, no. Of course not. A swell of water made the boat rock, and Robert clutched the sides quickly.

“Not seasick, I hope,” said Jonathan.

“No. But shouldn’t we have called first to see if we’d be welcome?”

“They don’t have a telephone. Myrtle could never stand telephones. She wanted the island to be very rustic.” Jonathan grinned, and his white teeth flashed at Robert. “If there is an emergency, they have a light, a lantern, to be lit on top of their stupid ‘castle.’ I know. That’s the way they’d call me for Myrtle. Or one of the servants would row over and roust me out of bed. Or look for me in the hospitals. Don’t worry. Jenny and Harald are used to me rowing over regularly.”

“It must be lonely for them.” Robert tried to talk over his anxious thoughts.

“No. Not really. Harald’s an artist. Remember? He likes his solitude. He says. And—Jenny’s there.”

“A young girl. Doesn’t she have friends in Hambledon?”

“A few. But she’s surly by nature and isn’t very popular. She’s been much worse since her mother died. Did I mention that she detests me? As for my brother, we’re not exactly devoted. Here, take the oars and try them out.”

The current was unexpectedly swift and the boat was pitching as well as rocking. The two men exchanged places cautiously, and even then Robert almost lost his balance. But Jonathan moved as easily and as lithely as a young boy and was settled before Robert even took up the oars. The sun was indeed very hot, and the current hard against the oars, so that Robert had to pull strenuously. He began to sweat. He glanced over his shoulder. The island seemed a long way off, the water bursting in little sprays against the prow of the steep bank.

“You honestly swam this?” asked Robert.

“It’s easy. I’m a good swimmer. But Harald can’t swim a stroke. That’s the delicate artist for you!”

Robert began to feel his fair skin burn, and his nose. Sweat sprang out at the roots of his reddish-yellow hair, and under his chin and between his shoulders. Jonathan was not watching him. He was watching the island and the closed tight look was on his face again, and he appeared to have forgotten Robert entirely.

“They have no gas and no electricity,” said Jonathan in an absent voice. “Myrtle didn’t want to spoil the rusticity. I told you she was a fool. So, they have oil lamps and a barge delivers coal in the winter for that stupid pile of rock, and they burn nice apple logs, very expensive, in the fireplaces. And once a week the servants bring in loads of groceries in the boats. If they didn’t get high wages, they wouldn’t work there, I can tell you. It must cost a fortune for all that pretentiousness.”

The water lapped at the boat and the sun glittered on the water and Robert became hotter every moment Jonathan looked at him critically. “You’re making better time than I do,” he said. “Swing around a little to the narrow tip of the island. There’s an opening in the enclosure there, and a path.”

Again Robert looked over his shoulder. The island’s wide indented prow was looming above him, he was glad to see. He could smell the flowering earth and the trees and hear the silence above the voice of the river. He dexterously turned the boat as directed.

“Here we are,” said Jonathan, and stood up, crossed the seat where Robert sat and reached out. He caught a rope dangling from a pile and tied up the boat swiftly. “All right; we’re anchored. You’ll have to jump a couple of feet, though.” Before Robert could even stand in the swaying boat, Jonathan had leaped onto the bank, which was steeper than the younger man had expected, and had much more of an incline. He jumped; his foot slipped on the damp brown earth, and he would have fallen back into the water had not Jonathan caught his arm.

“Steady, there,” said Jonathan. “And here’s the path. What? Putting on your coat? What for?”

Robert was acutely embarrassed. He looked angrily at Jonathan. But Jonathan was smiling up at the girl, and a more unpleasant smile Robert had never seen before.

“Why, Jenny,” he said in a coaxing voice, “didn’t you expect me, as usual? Jenny, dear, this is Dr. Robert Morgan, who is taking up my practice. Bob, Jenny Heger, my niece. Miss Jenny Heger.”

The girl glared down at them in silence, her hands on her hips. She did not acknowledge the introduction, beyond giving Robert a contemptuous glance. Then she swung about and left them, climbing rapidly like a deer, her long full skirts unfurling out behind her like a sail caught by the wind. Then she was gone. Robert replaced his hat. He was angrier than ever. “I don’t think we’re welcome,” he said.

“Oh, Jenny never welcomes anyone. Don’t let it bother you. She probably rushed off to inform the cook that she has company for lunch.”

“Lunch? I—I don’t think I want to stay.”

“But you must meet Harald, the genius with the paintbrushes!” Jonathan seemed ingenuously surprised. However, Robert was mistrusting him more and more. “Harald loves guests. He especially loves me. Come on. You have a tendency to grow roots wherever you stand. Don’t mind Jenny, the rustic plow girl. Badly brought up. That fool of a mother.

The girl was standing on the climbing path. She looked down at them with an ugly expression on her beautiful face.

“What do you want?” she demanded. Her voice was lovely in spite of her brutal words and the blaze of blue in her eyes.

If Jenny ever smiled, like a normal woman, the world would crack or the Apocalypse come down. Watch where you’re walking. This path is very steep and perpetually wet And full of roots. I nearly killed myself, walking up it, when I got the dramatic light signal from the roof one night.”

I don’t like him at all, thought Robert with misery. He mocks everybody. He mocks everything. He mocks me, too. Robert began to climb. The shadow of many thick rare trees and shrubs crowded along the path, and it was much cooler and the scent of earth was dank and musky in the shade. Jonathan climbed as easily as if the high path were a city pavement He pointed out the trees and the shrubs. “Old Pete was very lavish. He imported many of these vegetables. There’s even a cactus garden near the house; they take in the cacti for the winter. Monstrous things but interesting. Those oil wells! There’re even palms in pots, near what they call the tropical garden. Nothing’s been spared. Hundreds of thousands. Enough to build a new wing at the Friends’ Hospital for tubercular children.” His back was to Robert, and his voice had changed, become thin and vicious. “Not that I think a man shouldn’t enjoy his money. I’m not that much of a mousy prig. But he ought to have left something for the hospitals. And the kids. But not a cent”

Robert paused on the path to wipe his sweating face. He was again confused and uncertain. Jonathan continued to climb. He said, “Myrtle promised me that wing. All big serious eyes and trembling voice. She never did, of course. In fact, I had trouble getting her to contribute one hundred dollars a year to the hospitals. ‘Dear Pete’ had always counseled thrift, and Myrtle was thriftier than a razor, in spite of her general idiocy. Came by it honestly, Pennsylvania Dutch, not the rugged Amish, though. She’d put her hand on my arm and look at me sentimentally, and sigh, and mysteriously promise a fortune. Very coy. But nothing in her will. I should have known.” Jonathan looked back and was surprised to see Robert standing on the path. “What’s the matter? Are you flabby at your age?”

“No.” Robert was more bewildered than ever. “Do—do the hospitals mean that much to you, Doctor?”

The shade was very deep where Jonathan stood high on the path. He was silent, but Robert could feel the bitter penetration of his dark eyes. Then he said, “Once they did. But not now.” He climbed more quickly. Robert followed. Jonathan said, “Why so formal? Didn’t I tell you to call me by my Christian name?” But he did not look back. He seemed caught up in a gloomy aura all his own. His tall thin figure appeared to glide on the path, like a shadow itself. The path curved, and momentarily he was out of sight. Robert climbed, sunken in uneasy and contradictory thoughts. Now there was a sharp coolness between his shoulder blades. He shivered.

He suddenly arrived into broad sunlight, clean and bright, and the dank scent was gone and the heavy odor of wet moss and slimy earth. He could not understand it, but he felt overpoweringly grateful. All was good again, fair again, filled with simple kindliness and freshness, purged of anything nightmarishly murky or hidden or wicked, here in the sun of affirmation and purity. Yes, man was good, man was uncomplicated, man was the son of God!

He stood on level green grass, filled with warmth and ease. For a moment he did not see Jonathan Ferrier standing, waiting, at a little distance ahead of him on the lawns. Jonathan stared back at him curiously, and then after a moment he was sad. Poor devil. Poor, trusting boy. All was sweetness and light to him, was it? Nothing was complex, elaborated, devious, evil, distressing, embroidered, treacherous, cruel, infamous—no, not to Robert Sylvester Morgan, barely out of the womb. Poor devil, thought Jonathan Ferrier again. I must help him. He must see reality before he is too old to take it with equanimity, and then go on. He called back to Robert, “Here!”