Testimony of Two Men

by Taylor Caldwell

  Mrs. Morgan had the small cold and secret smile of the naturally malicious woman, and it merely became colder as she haughtily acknowledged the newcomers, without a glance, of course, at the priest, whom she ignored even when he was presented to her. It did not surprise Jonathan and his mother that she was dressed very unsuitably on this hot day, and in an old style. Her black silk poplin dress was obviously uncomfortable, with its short mantle that swathed her angular shoulders, and she even wore a widow's bonnet and white ruching at the top of her collar, which was so high, so boned, that it seemed to be pushing into the withered flesh under her chin. Her light eyes examined Jonathan severely, and even with contempt, then withdrew from him to dwell even more severely at the other guest, Jenny Heger.

  Jenny, Jonathan saw at once, was dressed as bunchily and as unprettily as always, in a blue and white checked shirtwaist, a heavy blue duck skirt, black-buttoned shoes and a broad black patent-leather belt. Her hat, a big coarse cartwheel of yellow straw, was useful for shading her from the sun but for no other purpose, certainly not to enhance her appearance, with its dusty black ribbon and despondent bow. She sat in stiff silence on her part of the bench after the introduction to Father McNulty, and stared at the table, her hands clenched together in her lap. Unlike the other ladies, she wore no gloves, and her fingers were tanned and her nails were not slightly tinted as were the Kitchener females'. But nothing could really dim the white luster of her face, the extraordinary blueness of her eyes, the stern loveliness of her palely colored mouth, the delicate aquilinity of her nose, and the mass of glistening black hair rolled impatiently under her hat and allowed to droop in a large bun at her nape. Not even the starched wide blue and white checked collar of her shirtwaist could hide the slenderness of her long neck, the contour of her superb young shoulders, and the classical lines of her breast. She made pretty little Maude, who had been a belle in Hambledon since she had reached puberty, appear al- most common in her rose-sprigged muslin, white gloves and laces, and charming hat.

  Jonathan felt that all the others retreated into mere colored photographs in the presence of this strange girl, and had but two dimensions, and that even her silence was electric in the midst of the friendly remarks and light laughter about the table. This annoyed him fiercely, as it always did, and he was even more annoyed that his neck felt hot and moist and that his hands were becoming tense. She said nothing to him, and he said nothing to her. But Marjorie said, "Jon, do sit next to Jenny, and I really must sit next to Albert. I have so many things to say to him."

  Jonathan wanted to say, "I'd prefer to sit across from Maude," for the girl always delighted him with her cheerful inanity and soft conversation, and her air that the world was a truly lovable and romantic and exciting place. But Marjorie was already smiling along the table at Mrs. Morgan, who bent her head as if being gracious to a lady-in-waiting, and smiling, too, at Mrs. Kitchener, who had gently patted the spot next to her for Father McNulty. Unfortunately, he would have Mrs. Morgan on his left, and she ostentatiously withdrew to the limit of the bench to accommodate him. Jonathan gave her a hard look and was somewhat surprised to see that Jenny gave her a similar one. He sat beside Jenny, almost unbearably conscious of her nearness, careful not to let his sleeve touch hers, and feeling, as always, that indescribable tenseness not only in his hands but in his whole body, and a curious sense of being unnerved. He had never tried to explain it to himself, though often he had thought it was revulsion and, sometimes, detestation for what she was in spite of her youth, and her lack of feminine graces and social amenities and ugly dress. He did not know that Jenny had been long convinced that she was most unattractive, awkward, ungraceful and undesirable. Had he known, he would have been incredulous. He did not know that Peter Heger had recognized his daughter's disturbing beauty even when she had been only a child, and had jealously, and knowingly, informed her that she could never expect to be courted for, as he said, she was most unlike other young ladies and ought to have been his son and not his daughter. Jenny, who had adored him passionately, had never once in her short life, not even when looking in the mirror, doubted him for a moment. Her father had recognized her physical disabilities and had wished to shelter her from the harshness of a world that loved only dimpled prettiness, and she was too tall, even as a child, and too slender, and her hands and feet were too large.

  Only Harald Ferrier had called her "lovely Jenny," and she had thought it mockery. His insistence on marrying her, of course, was to insure that he could leave the island at will and stay away as long as he desired, for though the money would then be Jenny's, it would, to all effect, also be his.

  It was Marjorie Ferrier who, in her long and tender conversations with the girl over many years, had guessed all about Peter Heger and his infatuation with his beautiful daughter and his wish to keep her with him and isolate her. There was no ugliness with which Marjorie was not familiar in human nature, and what she did not know from experience she intuitively guessed. She had tried, as subtly and as skillfully as possible, to assure Jenny that she was remarkably beautiful, but the girl had no self-confidence and as yet, no inner fortitude. She had been grateful for Marjorie's suggestions that she dress more becomingly, but had replied with heartbreaking simplicity, "But why, Aunt Marjorie? Nothing will help. Besides, I don't want to get married, really, and I don't like to be in the company of other people, anyway. They frighten me so. I prefer the island and the gardens and my books, and thinking of Papa, and taking care of his roses. I wasn't popular at school in Hambledon, you know. I was head and shoulders over the other girls and they used to laugh at me. I'm still as tall as most men. No, I must be contented with what I have."

  But what Jenny had was nothing, Marjorie would sadly reflect, and it was only because she was so pure of heart and so distressingly honest and so courageous—though in the wrong directions—and so adamantly untouched. All the reading she had done, the studying, the reflections, had not broken into that marble tower and had not touched poor Jenny with flame and longing and desire. Marjorie had gone so far as to send Jenny some books by Zola and others of earthy richness, and Jenny later had reported, "They were very interesting, I think, but a little crude, and besides, they were French—or Italian or Roumanian or Russian—and they didn't seem quite real to me. Maupassant? Well. Was it necessary for him to write that?"" Poor Jenny's face had become . quite red and she had been overcome with discomfiture and had changed the subject.

  Damn Peter Heger, Marjorie would think. I hope there is a special hell for fathers who distort their children's minds like this and destroy their natural impulses, and lie to them.

  Marjorie looked at Jonathan's face, where the white lines of flesh had come out around his mouth, and where the facial bones were sharper than usual. He was conducting an apparently casual conversation with that young Dr. Morgan—who was staring so abjectly at Jenny and with so much ardent fascination and so there was really no reason for Jonathan's seeming so overwrought and physically rigid, as if about to spring up and run away. But Marjorie smiled secretly to herself, and she hoped for some overwhelming catastrophe, or something, to reveal to Jon what he really should know about himself. Look at him there! As taut and unbending as Jenny, with his straw hat pushed back from his sweating forehead, and his jerking cheek and lip muscles, and his hands perched tightly on his thighs and his overattentiveness—as if his life depended upon it!—to the very commonplace remarks young Robert was making to him. He was saying, "Aha, aha, yes," in a very emphatic voice, and at length the bemused Robert became aware of this exaggeration and turned to him and said, "Eh? Oh, yes, it was very interesting." He seemed a little puzzled. He became silent. Now he stared openly and helplessly at Jenny, who was no more aware of him than a bird.

  Marjorie saw that Robert Morgan was much "taken," as the saying was, by Jenny. Robert interrupted Jonathan's remarks by saying to Jenny—as if Jonathan had not been speaking at all—"Miss Heger, I often look across the water at your marvelous island, your charming is
land." His voice actually trembled. "I wish you would permit me to visit it again, soon."

  Jenny started. She turned her head slowly and met his eyes, and a painful scarlet ran up from her throat and breeched like fire into her white cheeks. "I—" she said, and swallowed. She was in misery. "Perhaps you could—perhaps someday—"

  "Soon?" he pleaded, and colored himself, astonished at his presumption.

  She tried to smile. She could only nod, then look again into the distance, past Mrs. Morgan, who was greatly shaken and had turned quite ashen, and past the tumult everywhere present on the grass. Maude Kitchener, who was sitting next to Robert, looked dismayed. She timidly touched his arm, and he turned to her, bemused, his blue eyes excited. "We have the same gardener as the island," she said in her sweet voice. "Our gardens are very similar. I hope—I hope—" Then the poor girl blushed at her own boldness. She had been sitting in bliss near Robert. Once she had believed herself in love with Jonathan, but she had been very young then, before he had married that awful Mavis Eaton. Yes, she had thought of him again since Mavis had died, and she had had her dreams. But she had met Robert today and had since been delirious, overcome by the sudden light in the scene, a sort of feverish incandescence, and her heart had been doing very odd things indeed, and everything had appeared to be exquisitely radiant and musical and trembling with delicious agitation. Even the raucous German Brass Band had been playing, to her ears, the most remarkable and enchanting , music, sensual and insidious.

  "Very nice," said the bemused Robert, who had not heard her stammer. He returned again to his rapt contemplation of Jenny's averted face.

  Then Jonathan became aware of all this. He looked at the helpless longing on the young doctor's face, and the passionate intensity and slavish desire, and he looked at Jenny, beside him, and her cold withdrawal and her obvious misery. Jonathan could not believe it. Wasn't the Childe enough for her, that she must set out to bedazzle this hulk of gold and rosy innocence? And what was there to bedazzle in the frump? At the very least she should dress like a young woman and not an old, poverty-stricken witch. Then he was struck by his own thoughts and considered them and was more in a rage than before. He wanted to take Jenny's shoulders in his hands, hold them, and then at this appalling thought he felt suddenly and distinctly ill and heavily shaken.

  Marjorie stood up and said. "Now, let's spread the tablecloth, shall we? Sue, dear, push those folds down to Mrs. Morgan, so it will be straight. I do hope that everyone will like what we've brought."

  "Quite adequate, I am sure," said Mrs. Morgan in a stilted voice as she pushed a fold in Father McNulty's direction. He was talking to Mrs. Kitchener and finding her a most agreeable and sympathetic lady. Mrs. Morgan was most upset. What had come over Robert? Why was he staring at that frightful young woman like that? Everyone in town knew what she was and spoke about it as a "scandal." She, Jane Morgan, had heard quite sufficient, thank you! The girl had been bad, bad from the very beginning. There had been that schoolmaster when she had been only sixteen, in Miss Chiltenham's School, right here in Hambledon. (Jane had heard that story but yesterday.) The schoolmaster had left under hushed and furtive circumstances, but the girl had remained serenely at school! Money! It always came down to that. The Heger money; it would buy anything, even immunity against the town's indignation and shame. How brazen she was! To be cohabiting with her dead mother's husband, in her mother's own home on that island, flagrantly, without regard for decent Christian public opinion! Shameless, shameless. And here was Marjorie Ferrier, of the Farmington's of the Main Line in Philadelphia, the Farmingtons, the mother of a murderer who had escaped judgment only because he was rich and powerful, and the mother of another son who lived with his dead wife's daughter, flaunting his sin, his adultery, in the Face of High Heaven! "We don't understand Marjorie," some of Jane's new friends had said with sadness. "Such a fine family. But we have heard—mind, it is only gossip, you know—that she actually drove poor gentle, sweet, kind Adrian to his death with her coldness and hardheartedness. Everyone knew that only Harald mattered to her. Well, it was very dreadful, of course, but then blue blood did run out and become depraved and vicious. The Ferriers were the best example of that. Yes, and that's why Marjorie cannot only tolerate that Heger hussy but invite her to her house! Perhaps"—soft laughter—"she hopes to persuade her son Harald —that silly painter—to marry the girl and get her money, too, or something, or at least to stop the scandal."

  Marjorie and Mrs. Kitchener and Maude were spreading the picnic dinner on the table and laying out the silver and napkins and glasses. "Cold lemonade," said Marjorie, "and an old-fashioned strawberry shrub—dear Maude does like that —and, on ice, beer for the gentlemen."

  "Robert does not drink," said Jane Morgan. She gave Marjorie a reproving and significant glance. Marjorie smiled. "Perhaps he will make an exception today," she said in her quiet and lovely voice. Jane gave Robert a quelling look, but he was still staring at that hideous trollop. What was wrong with him? Could it be that he was horrified by her, having confronted Evil for the first time and finding it hypnotizing? Poor innocent boy. She must speak of it delicately tonight. "I like beer," said Robert, but did not look away from Jenny, who again seemed as far away from this place as the edge of the ivory moon which was peering like a ghost from the sunlit sky.

  Can it be that it was only a year ago that Mavis had been here with the family? thought Marjorie. Only a year ago, on such a hot and brilliant and noisy day? She and Jon, with all the other dignitaries of the town, had then sat for the speeches on those broad, chair-filled steps of the City Hall. How beautiful she had looked that day, all gilt and rose and white lace and white parasol and white lace gloves and white silk slippers, laughing as usual, tapping men's arms coquettishly, and laughing, laughing, laughing, and Jon beside her, constrained and dark and silent and brooding. Everyone seemed turned, on those stairs, toward Mavis, like sunflowers to the sun, eager for the gift of her beauty and her laughter and her hoarse jokes and her affectionate taps and recognition, delighting in her coaxings and cajolings, her joyful teasings, fawning at the very shimmering sight of her, a gold and white rose of a girl, her snowy tulle hat laden with pink flowers and ribbons. Near her, her fatuous uncle had grown crimson with pleasure and love as he watched her, and even Flora, that sallow stick of a woman, had looked maudlin. But, then, so had everyone else—except Jonathan Ferrier. Now all that beauty and lust and life and verve and laughter were closed forever in the black earth, and no one would hear that boisterous laughter again or feel the patting of her hand.

  Marjorie sighed. She could not feel sorry that Mavis was dead, she who had been such a plague to the Ferriers and such a calamity. But it was sad when the young died, however wicked they were, and heartless and grasping and lying. Hambledon was less bright since Mavis' death, even though it had been a false and brassy brightness.

  Jonathan was looking at Jenny's hand lying near him on the table. She had made no effort to help his mother, and he was contemptuous and angry, for he could not know that Jenny was shy to the point of agony. But he looked at her hand, long, slender, tinted by the sun to a golden color. And then he wanted to press his own hand hard on hers, to press it so strongly that his flesh, and hers, became one flesh, moving together, inseparable. Such a stricken hunger for this consummation sprang up in him that he again stiffened with real physical pain, and stunning disgust at himself, and new hatred for the girl. So, she could entice him, too, could she? Compared with her, Mavis had been an innocent schoolgirl, an amateur. Was she laughing at him secretly, knowing that wild impulse in him? He looked at her white profile, so stern and remote, and he thought he saw a satisfied glint in the corner of her eye. She was not yet twenty-one, but she was already lewd and lascivious and without shame, already practiced. He looked at that quiet hand and did not see its vulnerability, its helplessness.

  Why doesn't Dr. Morgan look at me? Maude Kitchener was thinking. Why does he stare at Jenny Heger that way? She isn't even prett
y, quite plain, to be sure. So big, so pale, and so cold. She, Maude, had not believed a single word said about Jenny since she had been almost a child, nor had Sue Kitchener, for there was really nothing wrong to believe. Jenny had always been a retiring girl, turning miserably red if someone spoke to her unexpectedly, and her clothing awful and thick and unstylish, but a wonderful scholar, winning all the prizes at school. Maude, of the gentle heart, had tried to be a friend to that reserved and silent girl, and Jenny had been diffidently grateful at first but then had seemed to find all social intercourse painful in the extreme, and so had frightened off Maude and some of the other girls who might have been her friends. Poor Jenny. But why was that wonderful young Dr. Morgan staring at her so and ignoring herself?

  Robert was thinking quite mawkishly, "Why, she is alabaster and fire!" He was taken by the thought, repeated it to himself with intense pleasure and sentimentality. Alabaster and fire. That described Jenny, his Jenny, his beautiful alien Jenny, like a classic statue in the midst of all this hot and blazing hubbub, concerned with things not of this world. She finally felt his staring and looked up at him and saw his kind blue eyes, and she blushed, tried to smile and could make only a grimace.

  Mrs. Kitchener thought: How lovely it is when dear friends get together like this! Everyone is so happy and at ease, even that poor young Jenny. Sue was so gleeful at this thought that she smiled at her husband, beside her, and pressed his warm plump hand, and was pressed affectionately in return. Lovely, lovely world, sweet world, thought Sue.