He was growing more tired every moment. When he reached the stables where he kept his town horses, he could hardly drop down from the saddle and lift his bag. One of the stableboys came to him eagerly. "Good evening, Dr. Ferrier! My, this horse looks tuckered out."
"He is." Jonathan watched the horse being led away. Soon he would not ride this horse. He would have his farms. Would he ever visit them again? He did not know. He hoped not. He ought to sell all but one, and keep that one for his mother, who loved it. He would give the matter thought tomorrow. He glanced up the street and saw the dark Winters house, where Robert and his mother would live, and between his house and the Winters one he saw his offices, unlighted, silent. He had little more to do there. In fact, he had little more to do with living at all. He thought of the whiskey in his offices, and hesitated. Then he went up the long walk to his house, and the shadows of the trees fell over him and these old familiar creatures did not belong to him any longer, either.
The house was old and strong and high and broad and long, and there were lights in a few windows. His grandfather had added this huge porch, which extended all about the house. The porch was secluded and resembled a colonnade, but it was all wood and painted a solid white. Here on rainy days he had played with his brother or had sat alone, listening or reading, or talking with his father. What had they talked about? He did not remember. His father's voice came back to him, grave, thoughtful, musing. But damned if he could remember one single thing his father had said on all those days, through the years! It was very odd, however, that he could recall almost all that his mother had said to him briefly, on the few occasions she had talked to him on this porch. Jonathan stood there now, looking down the long shadowy reaches of the deserted boards and the still chairs and tables in the faint light that came through the windows and from the far-distant streetlamp. It was on a hot summer dusk that she had said to him somewhat sternly, "You really must stop laughing at Harald. You don't know how you hurt him." He had been fifteen then.
And it was on an early spring evening when he was returning from school that he had paused here. It had been raining all day and now the whispering sound of it was on the air, rustling mysteriously through new leaves and a wind was sighing down the long porch, which was empty. Then he had heard a sound of sobbing, dismal and faint, and he had turned and walked a short distance down the porch, which echoed with his footsteps in the fragrant half light, and he had found Harald, then twelve years old, crouched on the floor with his head and right shoulder pressed against the brick wall of the house. He had lifted his head at Jonathan's approach and had stopped his sobbing, but he still crouched there desolately.
Jonathan said, "What the hell are you doing here, crying like a baby?"
Harald did not answer for a moment or two, and then he said, "Father laughed at one of my paintings. He said I had no talent."
Jonathan knew his father's taste in painting. He liked smooth satiny surfaces and subdued colors and artful postures and, even then Jonathan had to admit it, sentimental and obvious subjects. He particularly liked, for instance, a painting called "The Storm," which depicted an overfed youth, all Hyacinthine curls, racing against a background of velvety dusk with a maiden with large plump legs and daintily disposed garments and flowing hair. The youth had ar- ranged a big cloak over the maiden's head and it billowed with silken highlights. Jonathan had not liked it, but he did not know why. A good, and expensive, copy of it had "graced" the living room mantle until Adrian Ferrier's death —when Marjorie had removed it
Jonathan had said bluntly to his brother, "I don't know if you have any talent. But I do know that Father doesn't have any."
Harald had caught his breath, and then had slowly risen to his feet. He tried to see Jonathan in the wet gloom. "Do you mean that, Jon? Honestly, do you mean it?"
"Sure I mean it You're such a baby! Crying out here, as if it's important. If you have talent it will show. That's all it should mean to you. If you start listening to people and their advice, you'll never amount to anything."
"Don't you listen?" Harald had come closer to him and Jonathan had felt his ardent intensity, and he had stepped back with distaste.
"Never," Jonathan had said with total firmness. "That is, I only listen to people who know what they're talking about"
"But how can you tell?"
"Instinct, kid, instinct" And Jonathan had walked away and left him.
He stood alone on this hot July night, completely exhausted and beset, and he remembered that rainy twilight and Harald's shadowy look of hope. It was certainly strange how things returned to a man when he least expected them and when his defenses were down. "Instinct," he repeated with contempt. "Where was my instinct when I most needed it? Where is it now?"
He opened the hall door and went inside. The hall was long and wide and beautifully proportioned and the ceiling was high. It was Marjorie who had painted the dark wood in her favorite shade of pale gray with soft silver moldings, and it was she who had removed the heavy old dark furniture and had replaced it with graceful pieces exquisitely arranged: A marble console with a tall thin mirror on one side, two Louis XIV gilt chairs with white velvet upholstery, a sofa, and a table of the same period bearing an exquisite marble statuette of a faun and a lamb. The curving stairs at the rear had also been painted gray and were carpeted with blue plush in a dim shade. Marjorie had removed the wall lamps and had hung a majestic crystal chandelier, arranged for gas, from the ceiling. A few of the lamps were lighted now, and threw a golden shadow down on the Aubusson rug, which was colored in shades of misty rose and blue and yellow. There was nothing else here but tranquillity and space and unobtrusive hues and silence.
Marjorie came through a door at the left of the graceful stairway, and her thin silk dress in a tint of mauve rustled as she moved. She smiled but her hazel eyes were anxious. "Dear Jon," she said, "I was worried about you. Why, you look so tired." She glanced down at his hands. She saw they were red and the skin appeared dry and so she knew he had been operating—a thing he had sworn never to do again in Hambledon. He saw her glance and he said, "Yes. I did, and I still don't know why. Don't ask me who; I'll tell you later."
She came to him and kissed him on the cheek and she saw how weary he was and how ghastly his color. She said, "I've waited dinner for you, of course. And"—she paused a second —"and I've laid out your whiskey and soda, and you must have a drink before dinner."
"Thank you," he said. "I'll go upstairs and wash and change."
"Oh, don't change. Do you know how romantic you look in riding clothes?" She smiled again. "I never saw another man who looked so in jodhpurs and boots. Just freshen. I'll wait for you in the living room." Her smile was still fixed as she watched him go upstairs. He walked heavily and slowly and he did not look back. His dark head was bent. She sighed, tightened her hands together and went out of the hall.
She sat down in the large parlor and never had it seemed so empty before to her and so lonely. As a bride and a very young matron she had again used her taste here, removing the ponderous and frowning furniture and introducing the delicacy of an earlier age, including painted walls in a silvery shade and a dimmed Oriental rug that almost covered the polished floor. A lovely Florentine mirror hung where the despised "Storm" had once hung, and the white and carved fireplace had no fire and only a basket of pale yellow roses, which filled the room with a cool scent of tea. The silken draperies at the tall windows were the color of the roses and they fell about long lengths of weblike imported lace. The windows were slightly ajar, and the hot wind moved them. Now Marjorie, waiting for her son, could hear thunder prowling among the mountains and she saw a flash of lightning.
There will be a storm, she thought vaguely. She had been so listless all day, and her head had ached, and she thought, now, I'm really very tired of living. I won't be able to stand it when Jon leaves. He mustn't leave. Yes, I suppose he must It's too dangerous for him here, too dangerous for— Her mind fluttered away in fear. She looked a
t the silent and shimmering furniture, at the Empire settees in blue and soft rose, at the waiting chairs in white and yellow, at all the crystal and marble and silver and at the gilded buhl cabinets which sheltered her collections of china and objets d'art, and it seemed to her that no one had ever lived here and no one ever would. The restless pain in her heart was not totally physical; it was like a rat gnawing in the dark under her breast
There were a cook and a maid in the kitchen, but they were far distant behind thick doors. Marjorie could hear nothing in the breathless silence but a surly grumbling among the mountains. Not even the trees stirred in that slight and burning wind. She thought of the empty bedrooms upstairs on the second floor. Two only were used, hers and Jon's, and once she had anticipated the sound of grandchildren there. But there would be no grandchildren. Jonathan would never marry again, and Harald lived, a widower, on that foolish island and dared not leave it for more than five months a year. Even when he left it, he did not come to sleep here. His room had no tenant, and no others did. The domestic staff slept on the third floor and they went up a back staircase and had their own living quarters. How could she, Marjorie, endure it here alone after Jonathan went away, the only living thing on the second floor, the only tenant of these great rooms, the only person to walk the gardens or watch the snow fill up the trees?
She did not think of her dead husband. His ghost would not keep her company.
She started when someone took her wrist firmly, and she said, "Jon! I didn't hear you come in."
But he was counting her pulse and scowling a little. "Heat too much for you?" he asked, laying her hand down on the arm of the chair.
"A little. Will you mix me a drink also?"
Jonathan went to the silver tray on a marble table. He poured a large amount of whiskey into one glass, added only a little soda, then poured a smaller amount of liquor in the other glass but a considerable quantity of soda. He brought the latter to his mother. Then, standing, he drank deeply of his tall crystal glass as if he could not swallow the liquid fast enough. He had almost drained the glass before he took it from his mouth. He smiled down at his mother, then seated himself. Marjorie kept her face carefully bland.
"I cooked the dinner for you tonight, Jon. But I'm afraid it's very heavy on a night like this. Wiener schnitzel; you always liked it."
"I still do. But you shouldn't have bothered."
"It's no bother." She moved restlessly. "I do hope it'll be nice on the Fourth. Whom shall we invite—it's very late now —for our usual picnic?"
"I've already invited Bob Morgan and his mother. I know. She's all whalebone, flatus and fraudulent copperplate."
Marjorie sipped at her glass. "And I've invited people, too. Didn't I tell you? Rose and Albert Kitchener, and their daughter, Maude. She's such a nice girl, and so very pretty and talented, and intelligent. Such beautiful eyes and curly auburn hair, and a delightful figure."
"For Harald?"
"No, dear. Harald left today for Philadelphia. What a bad memory I have! Didn't I tell you that he is to have a show in Philadelphia on the fifth? He's already shipped twenty canvases. You know that private and very exclusive gallery on Broad Street? Yes."
"Yes," said Jonathan. He stood up and filled his glass again. "It will cost him a nice penny."
"He can afford it. And the owner has been advertising for two weeks, and issued invitations and there has been such a wonderful acceptance. It will be very successful."
"Why didn't you go, too?"
"Oh, I don't know. I've gotten out of the habit of going to Philadelphia. Most of my relatives are dead now, and it makes me feel very sad, and I was a reserved sort of girl and didn't make many friends. Many of them have moved away. I should have gone, I suppose."
"And you didn't want to leave me alone on the Fourth."
"Well, dear, it would have been lonely for you." She looked at him. "I also invited Jenny."
"What? Without Harald?"
"Jon. Please don't sneer. It makes you look quite ugly and you are really a very handsome man. Yes, you are."
Jonathan said in a mocking and musing voice, "Childe Harald. I don't understand his impressionistic style, but he may be good at that. He'll shock the hell out of Philadelphia, and so I wish him well. How did you shuck Jenny from that island?"
His mother was watching him very carefully again. "I just invited her, and she accepted. Poor Jenny."
"I know. She'd mourn for our Harald. It's a wonder he didn't pack her up and take her with him."
"Jon, dear. Is it possible that you don't know that Jenny-dislikes—Harald? Are you that blind? You know very well that she grimly stays on that island because it is her home, and her father built that house, and she adored him, and she regards Harald as an impudent intruder. She won't let him have it alone. She just sits and stands there, waiting for the day when he won't come back again."
"Oh, Mother. I don't believe that for a minute. She stays there because of our Harry."
"You really do believe the gossip of the town, Jon? Oh, no, you simply can't! You, above all! Jon, Harald wants to marry Jenny. He told me so himself."
The glass became very still in Jon's hand, the yellow liquid as quiet as stone. Marjorie watched her son's dark face and heavy brows and hidden eyes with great intentness.
"Harry? He wants to marry Jenny?"
"Yes. He's asked her dozens of times."
"I don't believe it," he said. "I've been there very often, and I've watched her. She stares at him as if she's—hungry. She listens to every word he says as if it came from God. She follows him all around with those big blue eyes of hers. She isn't aware of anyone else when he's around. It's not just the town gossip. I wouldn't consider that for an instant. But I've seen Jenny—looking at Childe Harald. And I'm acutely sensitive to people; I have to be. When he moves near her, she actually trembles. And she waits. She's a woman in love."
Yes, thought Marjorie. But she said, "Jenny is only twenty, Jon. And though I don't like to say it, you really don't know much about women, and especially not about young women."
"No," he said. "You are quite correct. I didn't know." He was thinking of Mavis. His mother saw the clenching of his facial muscles. He stood up as if to hide from her and again refilled his glass. Her anxiety came back to her, sharper than ever. He stood by the table and his face was turned away from her. "You ought to have provided me with sisters."
"Well, it's too late for that, I'm afraid." Marjorie smiled painfully. Jon did not look at her. "Dear," she said, "if Jenny does as you say, it is because she hates Harald. She's watching him all the time. I even think she is afraid of him, in a way. I think she thinks—"
"What?" He sauntered back to his chair. "What does sweet Jenny think, if anything?"
But Marjorie sipped at her glass. "What she thinks of Harald is wrong. I can't tell you what she told me. It—it is probably just her imagination. She's so young and she's always been so secluded, and girls have fantasies."
"She certainly has a fantasy about our Harry. Mother, I may not know all the mysterious thoughts that flitter around a girl's head like bats and butterflies, but I do know a woman in—"
But she said with quietness, "In passion, Jon? Most probably. But in love, Jon? I don't think you could ever detect that!"
"I don't want to. I doubt most women could love, anyway. They don't have the capacity. It's all frivolity to them, and pretentious houses and clothes and jewelry and teas." He waved his hand. "And darling little children and places in society and mean little ambitions. Tell me"—and now he turned abruptly to her—"did you love my father?"
The pallor about Marjorie's mouth increased. She said, "I thought I did. In the beginning. Then I didn't. It took a long time."
"Well, what did happen to all that love?"
"Jon, do you want me to tell you?"
"Yes, now that we're in a romantic and melting mood."
"Very well. Your father wasn't very intelligent, Jon. I know that hurts you to hear tha
t. You loved him so much. And he loved you dearly and always wanted you near him. I don't think he cared about anyone else, especially not Harald. I was just, eventually, the gracious mistress of his house. Jon? Does that hurt you very much?"
He went back to his chair. There was a dull flush on his cheekbones. He considered his mother for a long hard moment. "My father was kind," he said at last. "I appreciate kindness. There's so damned little of it in this world. If a man is kind he should be celebrated."
"He wasn't kind to Harald."
"Because Harald is a fool."
"Why?"
"He listened to my father. He had a way of trailing him."
"Yes, I know. Poor Harald."
"Wasn't he kind to you? It seems to me he was the soul of consideration."
"He never saw me, really, after you were born, Jon."
"Were you jealous?" He smiled at her incredulously and with amusement.
"No. I'd long given up caring."
He considered that. Then he said, "If he was such a fool, as you seem to think, then he'd have been devoted to Harald."
"But he never knew he was—a fool—and that makes a difference."
"A fool. What was he to you, Mother, really? Your opinion?"
"It seems odd to say that so distinguished a man, and so aristocratic, had many, many pretensions."
"To what?"
"To taste. To intelligence. To worldliness. To cosmopolitanism. He was really naive. And naivete in a mature man isn't so beguiling, Jon. Except to superficial people, and I'm not superficial. He could talk eloquently; he knew poetry, he thought He had a wide acquaintance with literature and art and music. Yet, he never felt them at all, where it matters. One thinks that only the vulgar are pretentious. But the pseudo-cultured, vaguely feeling some inadequacy, are desperate to be considered more sensitive than they are." She sighed: "It's very pathetic, in an ordinary man, to struggle to be more than he is, and your father struggled. It was wretched for me to know that and I was so sorry. When he saw he couldn't impress me any longer, he abandoned me and avoided me. I don't blame him. I should have been more tolerant but I wasn't."
Testimony of Two Men Page 18