Testimony Of Two Men (66 page)

Her hair was fair and abundant and beautifully coiffed under the hat, and she had a small and mischievous face, very piquant and lively, with large light brown eyes and impressive lashes, and a dimple in a pink cheek. The eyes flashed seductively at Jonathan, roving rapidly from his face to his feet. She sighed and smiled. “Mrs. Beamish,” she murmured.

Jonathan was intrigued. He said, “I am taking no new patients, Mrs. Beamish. You were told that. But Dr. Morgan will see you.” (That would be a nice figure to examine.) He waved to her to precede him and she swept by him in a sweet rustle and embowered in a rich and enticing perfume, which Jonathan appreciated immensely.

Once alone with him in the office, she turned, gave him another view of the deep dimple, sighed and smiled. “Oh, Doctor.” Her voice was light and caressing. “I’m so sorry, but I just couldn’t see anyone but you—after all I have heard.” The fine eyelashes fluttered like moths and threw a dainty shadow on her round cheeks. “I really couldn’t.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Jonathan, inspecting the figure again. “The town is full of good doctors, and Dr. Morgan is one of the best. He’ll admit it himself.”

She trilled with delight, then coquettishly tapped Jonathan on the arm with her parasol. She shook her head. “No, only you, Doctor. I heard Dr. Morgan isn’t married—” She dropped those wonderful eyelashes modestly.

“Oh,” said Jonathan. “I’m not, either. By the way, I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing you before.”

“I’ve lived in Hambledon only a few months,” said the young lady, waving a little gloved hand and so setting the perfume in motion again. “I have a slight—chest. I was told, in Scranton, that the air here is very good for such things.”

And the chest is very pretty, too, thought Jonathan approvingly. “That’s silly. Of course, Scranton is smokier, but not too much. So, you are from Scranton?”

“Yes. I’m not well-known there either, Doctor. You see,
I
come from a very unimportant working-class family. Poor but honest. But I married well. A gentleman from—from Chicago. He was visiting in Scranton, and liked it, and so we were married.”

“But he likes Hambledon better?”

Again she sighed, and the lively face became sorrowful.
“I
am a widow, sir.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jonathan. Her sigh was very beguiling.

“A lonely widow,” said Mrs. Beamish.

“Oh, I doubt that!” said Jonathan gallantly. But she shook her head and gave him a sidelong vision of her lashes and tilted nose. A very alluring baggage! Jonathan was beginning to have some idea about the lady and he doubted she was inconsolable and that she would reject the suggestion of a quiet and private little dinner somewhere, with good wine. He knew just the place and knew it well.

“It is very hard for a lone woman to become acquainted with genteel people in a strange city,” said Mrs. Beamish with a sorrowful but fetching glance. Now Jonathan heard her ac- cent, common and uncultured, but nice for all that. Commonness was not to be despised in a very pretty woman; on the contrary.

“Well,” he said, and looked at the card as if considering. “If you insist, Mrs. Beamish. But I warn you that if your condition demands long treatment, I shall have to turn you over to Dr. Morgan.”

“What a treasure you are!” she exclaimed. Robert appeared with his patient from the inner examination rooms, and seemed surprised and pleased to see Mrs. Beamish. “I shall examine Mrs. Beamish,” said Jonathan with a grave voice, and winked at Robert. “If you don’t mind, Doctor. Then she is yours.”

“That,” said Robert, “will be my pleasure.” The girl tittered but not disagreeably, and gave Robert a flirtatious glance. Jonathan opened the door and let the young lady go in. Robert shook his head at him and smiled.

“Disrobe, please,” said Jonathan, and removed his coat and put on a white jacket. Mrs. Beamish surveyed the immaculate room with its table and its formidable array of cabinets with fearful instruments in them. She seemed a little daunted. “Disrobe?” she said.

“Well, I can hardly examine you with that dress on, and your corsets, can I?” Jonathan asked with reason. “I’ll go into the other examination room, while you at least take the dress off and loosen the corsets.”

When he returned, she looked more fetching than ever, in her white silk and lace petticoats and what was known as a camisole, all white ribbons and embroidery. The bosom did excellently for itself without the whalebone. She had taken off her hat, too, and her hair was very bright and fluffy. Most appealing, thought Jonathan. He sat down near her and took one of her small plump hands. “Now, tell me what you think is wrong,” he said. “Chest, again?”

She dropped her eyes. “Well, no, Doctor. I’m afraid it’s female trouble. Inwardly.”

“That’s where it usually is,” said Jonathan. “I’ve never seen it elsewhere. Now, my dear, I am a doctor, and I’m sure other doctors have examined you before for one thing or another, so shall we put aside the modesty for a few minutes and get down to questions?”

She laughed at him demurely. She answered the questions readily enough. She had pain in her right side very often, every month. “Probably just ovulation,” said Jonathan.

“Quite often a little painful.” Oh, but this pain was agonizing! It tore her apart. She screamed, really she did. Nothing helped at all. It went on for days. She couldn’t sleep or rest or eat. It was frightful. Her face became quite awed and pale.

Ovarian cyst? thought Jonathan. He asked more questions. She was a little vague. Her knowledge of her own anatomy was very sketchy and grotesque. When he said “ovary,” she stared at him blankly. “You know,” he said in a jocular voice. “Where the eggs are.”

“Eggs? Doctor, I’m not a hen!”

“Nevertheless, you do lay an egg every month, I assure you,” he said. She looked offended. He gently slapped the white silken thigh and said, “Now, I’ll examine you. Just lie down on this table, please. And here are the stirrups. Put your feet in them.”

“Stirrups?”

“Have you never been examined this way before?”” asked ‘ Jonathan.

“No. It was always just my chest.”

“We’ll examine that, too, after this. Now, just don’t be so stiff. Lie down. That’s a nice girl. Cover yourself with this little sheet. And up with the feet. I won’t hurt you.”

But she looked at the dilating instrument with real terror, half concealed though it was with a napkin. She pulled her knees together. “It won’t hurt you,” said Jonathan. “Perhaps a little discomfort, but you’re a big girl now, and you’ve been married.”

His amused voice reassured her, and she endured the extensive examination with only a wince or two. After the first flurry she appeared to lose her modesty and concentrated her attention on the instrument, and didn’t mind Jonathan’s careful peering.

“All right,” he said after about five minutes, “you can sit up now.” He carried the instrument away to a basin to await sterilization. The girl sat up and arranged the sheet very carefully over her legs. Jonathan came back to her, smiling.

“I have good news for you,” he said, “though it’s sad that your husband is not alive to hear it. You are nearly three months pregnant.”

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Beamish, and fell back on the table and began to cry. “Oh! Oh, poor Ernest! Not to have known about it, and he did want a baby sol He died two months ago, Doctor.”

“Unfortunate,” said Jonathan with real regret, both for the deceased Mr. Beamish and for himself. “Well, now, you must take the best of care of yourself, and rest as much as possible, and be brave, and walk quietly every day. I will give you a little booklet—”

Mrs. Beamish suddenly gave vent to peal after peal of tearing and tortured screams, so loud that even those in the waiting room could hear them. While Jonathan, stunned and motionless, looked at her in absolute amazement, she rolled back and forth on the table, howling.

“Doctor, please, please, please! Oh, Doctor, you are killing me! Oh! Oh!”

There was a loud knock on the door, which Jonathan did not hear, being petrified by the screams, and then Robert rushed in, very agitated. He looked at the convulsed and half-naked girl on the table and then at Jonathan. “What the hell?” he asked.

“Hysterical,” Jonathan could manage at last. “She’s a widow and pregnant. Legitimately, I assume. Here,” he said to Mrs. Beamish. “Stop that!”

“My God, you can hear her on the street,” said Robert, quite shaken.

Jonathan deftly slapped the girl’s face and she stopped at once. Tears ran down her cheeks. She looked at Robert imploringly. “He hurt me terribly when he did it,” she sobbed. “Hurt me terribly. I didn’t know it would be that bad.”

“Nonsense,” said Jonathan. “You never let out a whimper. Go on, now. Get dressed.” He said to Robert, “Just the usual pelvic. A robust piece.”

Robert looked at the girl, frowning. “I think you’d better leave her to me,” he said. But the girl was hastily dressing, crying quietly and shaking. She did not put on her hat or gloves, but instead she galloped out of the examination room, raising her voice in loud and frenzied sobs and staggering visibly. She rushed past the astonished spinster at the typewriter and the aghast and staring patients, and she exclaimed at the door, “He almost killed me, and he said it wouldn’t hurt!” Then she fled outside.

“For God’s sake,” said Robert. “What did all that mean?”

Jonathan shrugged. “We get all kinds,” he said. “I just think she’s upset, knowing she’s pregnant and her husband recently dead. She’ll calm down and be back in a week or so.” He heard a carriage draw up outside and looked through the window. “And a very nice vehicle she has there, too,” he said. “A good pair of mares.”

Robert was uneasy. “You never saw her before? Where has she been hiding?”

Jonathan explained. “I still don’t like it,” said Robert, perturbed. “If she goes yelling like that to another doctor, it would hurt your reputation.”

Jonathan laughed. “Nothing can hurt my reputation any longer,” he said. “No. She’ll be back. If only to look at you.”

Marjorie Ferrier read all the newspaper clippings pertaining to her son Harald’s show in Philadelphia, and she almost cried with gratification and sadness. “Wonderful, dear,” she said to Harald. “How very successful! I am glad you were so appreciated and sold so many. We must send these clippings to the local newspapers.”

“Three thousand dollars,” said Harald. “Not too bad. But, then, there were collectors from New York who know the coming trend in painting. By the way, I was offered five thousand for one—five thousand!—but refused it.”

“But why?”

He smiled at her with her own fine hazel eyes. “I saved it for you. I want you to have it. It was the only portrait, and one of the few I ever did.”

He lifted a large canvas and carefully removed the several burlap coverings, and then exposed it to the vivid July light in the morning room.

It was a portrait of Jenny Heger. It depicted her in profile against a faintly umbrian interior, like rich but muted sunshine. She wore a dress of bluish-white of no particular style, except that her throat was visible and the top of one smooth shoulder. A small high casement window, mullioned, had been thrown wide open and the girl appeared to be looking out at nothing at all but a bleak and glaring light, a nothingness stark and empty. There was not a shadow, not an outline, of a single thing in that remorseless and almost blinding illumination, at once desolate and haunted. Her expression was brooding and quiet and very still, as if she knew that she was contemplating a barren glow in which nothing would ever move or live. Her black hair had a wild and disheveled appearance, suggesting that she had thrown it aside in haste when she had run hopefully to this casement, only to let it fall heavily down her back in her devastated realization. One hand was lifted in a gesture intended to smooth that hair, and then she had left it in that lonely gesture, halfway to her cheek. Her mouth was only slightly colored, and apart in childlike wonderment and sorrow, and the blue of her eyes appeared to shimmer in the abandoned brilliance.

The whole impression of the painting was of coldness, of forsaken and solitary dejection, of faith left forlorn and deserted and betrayed in a hollow light. Harald had not used the traditional bland style of painting. The paint was rough and strong and bold and full of vitality and passion, very moving and exciting, conveying powerful emotion both in the girl and in the viewer.

“Oh,” said Marjorie, and she winked strongly several times. “How very beautiful. And—how very terrible. How you have caught poor Jenny ! When did she pose for you, dear?”

“She never did. I didn’t need her to pose, Mother.”

“No,” said Marjorie, still looking at the portrait, enthralled and deeply moved. “I suppose you didn’t, Harald. No, I suppose you didn’t. It is just like Jenny and conveys so much. I —well, I must confess that I never knew how much you—” She stopped.

“How much I understand and care for Jenny?” Harald’s handsome face smiled easily, but his eyes were ambiguous. “I thought you knew. Anyway, it is yours, Mother, because you are so fond of Jenny, and I want you to have it.”