Testimony of Two Men

by Taylor Caldwell

  "I suppose you do," he said with sadness. She jerked a little with her own surprise, and then, to his greater amazement, she colored violently and unbecomingly.

  "What do you mean?" she demanded.

  "The stories," he said.

  "About Jon? I don't believe them in the least!" Her voice was vehement.

  Then it came to him that Jenny knew nothing about the tales concerning herself, and he was sad and freshly moved, and filled with the desire to protect her. But, why was her face so red now, and so almost challenging?

  "Does Jon ever talk about me?" she asked. Her voice was trembling.

  "Jon? Why no. Why should he?"

  "Oh." The color left her face and she seemed to be relieved,

  "He wouldn't talk about his relatives, anyway," said Robert.

  "I'm not his relative!" said Jenny. "His brother is my stepfather—but Jon is no relative of mine!" She looked at the water and said, "Isn't it beautiful? The sun on the sails, and the color of the mountains and the water? I've seen so many paintings of faraway places—the Rhine, the downs of Devon, the Seine, the Riviera, and the Orient. But none seems to me so beautiful as here, and I want to spend my life on my island."

  She looked at him with that touching candor of hers and said, "You know, everyone thinks Papa built the castle for Mama. But he built it for me. It was a secret between us, so that Mama wouldn't feel neglected." He couldn't tell in what direction her thoughts were flowing, but he was enchanted when she smiled a real smile this time and he saw her small and brilliant teeth. "Mama and I had secrets, too. She said gentlemen did not appreciate intelligence in ladies and that it was the duty of ladies to play the fool to keep the gentlemen happy. She also said that a man never really forgives a woman for marrying him." She laughed for the first time and he thought it an endearing and childlike sound. "Mama deceived Papa, and Harald, and almost everyone else, into believing she was only comfortable and fluffy. But she was really very sharp."

  "I am sure," said Robert, "that it would be impossible for a stupid lady to have a daughter like you."

  She blushed and drew away from him a little, and her eyes were suspicious. Then, they brightened with anxiety. "What do you mean?" she asked.

  "Why, Miss Jenny, you are the handsomest young lady I have ever seen in my life!" He spoke with deep sincerity and Jenny watched him closely for a few minutes after he had spoken. Then she was smiling again.

  "Do you honestly think so?" she asked, not in flirtation but with a real desire to know. "That is, as children say, cross your heart and hope to die?"

  He lifted his yellow-gloved hand and crossed his heart and Jenny was openly pleased. "Why?" she asked with disturbing directness.

  "Didn't you ever look at yourself in a mirror?"

  "Yes. Of course. I am very plain."

  He glanced at her with disbelief, but again she was perfectly sincere.

  "Who told you that, Miss Jenny?"

  "Why, Papa. And he was quite right. They used to call me a great gawk in school. You see, I am so tall and thin, and have big hands and feet—and I don't look well in pretty clothes. I'm not gracious, not charming. I don't know what to do with myself!"

  Robert drew up the buggy under the shade of a giant elm, fastened the reins and turned fully and solemnly to the girl, and she instinctively shrank back from him a little. But he did not touch her. He said, "Jenny, I want to tell you now that I've seen many beautiful girls and women in my life, in big cities over all the eastern part of the country, and there is none who could match you. Did you ever ask yourself why I wished you to come with me today? Did you think it was my Christian kindness of heart?" He smiled into her eyes, which were widening slowly. "It was my selfishness. I wanted to be with a lovely woman, a great lady, and that is what you are, Jenny. A great lady."

  She pondered over every word he had said, weighing his truthfulness, his actual meaning, and finding nothing wanting at all. She looked faintly incredulous. She adjusted her hat, smoothed her gloves, bit her lower lip, but never took her eyes from his.

  "Has nobody ever told you that before?" he asked.

  "No. That is," and she hesitated, "two did, but I didn't believe them. I still don't. Oh, yes, Aunt Marjorie told me, too, but she is very kind and so I couldn't believe her. Truly, you don't find me repulsive?"

  "Jenny!" He wanted to take this woman, who was still a child in her mind, in his arms and kiss her hard and repeatedly, but he knew that that would frighten and outrage her. He was so sensitive to her by now, so full of the acuteness of love. "Jenny, you are as repulsive as a rose, as ugly as a young green tree, as hideous as a butterfly! Now, is that sufficient?"

  She laughed reluctantly. "Perhaps to you, and thank you," she said.

  He saw that she trusted him, and he was elated. He said after a moment, "Who were the 'two' who told you what I've told you in all honesty?"

  Now her blue eyes left him and she looked down at the dust cover that lay over her knees. "They don't matter. One was Harald, and the other was Jon."

  "Well, Harald should know. He's an artist, a painter, and they are very perceptive of beauty. And Jon—well, I understand he is quite a connoisseur of women." He added this delicately, but it was apparent at once that she took his remark on its face, for she nodded.

  "Mavis was the prettiest woman I ever saw," she said. "She was like the princess in the fairy tales I read as a child. Rapunzel. The Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella. Snow White. She was all of them, Mavis. Of course, she was a lot older than I was, four years. She was—dazzling. People always stared at her, absolutely hypnotized. I wanted to look at her for hours —but she was never still."

  "You mean, jiggling with her hands and her head, the way the ladies all do now—except you, Jenny? The fashionable jiggling, pretending to animation or something?"

  She giggled. She actually giggled. He thought it an adorable sound. "They do look as if they have the palsy, don't they?" she said. "No, Mavis wasn't like that. It wasn't that she was quiet. On the contrary. She laughed all the time, boisterously. It was the only ugly thing about her, and I thought how it spoiled her appearance. But others seemed to like it!" She shook her head in wonder. "They always talked about Mavis' laugh, as if it were marvelous. Perhaps I was the one who was wrong. I don't like noisy people."

  "Mavis was noisy?"

  "Well, yes. I know that sounds unkind, but it is the truth. She was noisy. And cuddly. She was always cuddling against people, and laughing that raucous laugh of hers," and now Jenny's voice rose with honest indignation. "She would do that with Jon when they were first married, and I felt sorry for him, for she embarrassed him. But no one else was embarrassed. I think Jon annoyed Mavis."

  "He's too severe, perhaps?"

  "I never thought so." She was again surprised. "In fact, I began to think him frivolous, light-minded, superficial, since Mavis—died."

  There was no limit to the power she had of astonishing him. "Jon—frivolous? He seems very bitter to me, and I've heard he was harsh, though I know better. He is the most unhappy man I've ever known. But grim men like Jon always make disastrous marriages, and heaven only knows why."

  The buggy was jogging along again now and the sweet dusty breeze blew over their faces and Robert was filled with a huge content. So, this was what love was like, was it? A kind of peace, a contentment, a radiant serenity, a quietness and sweetness of the spirit. Sweetness, above all. Everything had a shine to it to his eyes, the sun, the earth, the tall dry grasses along the road, the quiet water, the hills. He saw Queen Anne's lace in the grass and heard the bees and thcicadas, and he wondered at the beauty of the world when it was lit by this inner illumination of passion and tenderness. There was more to love than desire, the Jon Ferriers to the contrary. Desire was the least part of love, though it was its foundation, its earth. Above the roots rose the living tree with the rosy fruit and the jade leaves, the everlasting tree which not even death could cause to decay, for it was changeless and immutable, imperishable and fash
ioned out of some loveliness deep in the sullen and restless human spirit.

  "Yes," said Jenny, "it was disastrous for both of them, Mavis and Jon."

  There are some who would call this gossip, thought Robert Morgan. But Jenny is as guiltless of the intent to gossip as an infant. She speaks whatever comes to her mind without malice or cruelty. Now he was afraid for her. She had no one in the world of her own, no way of protection, no wall against her vulnerability. Her only defense would be marriage, and he was more than ready to offer that defense.

  "Jon is bitter because his friends believe he killed Mavis," said Jenny. "No one told me, but I know. Otherwise, he is jaunty, if you don't like the word 'light-minded.' You don't, do you? Oh, he was never afraid of anything. He despises everything, and he was that way before Mavis died. He never took anyone seriously."

  For the first time it came to Robert disagreeably that their only real conversation so far, on this gorgeous day, had been of Jonathan Ferrier. He could not remember that he had instigated this conversation, but he did not like it. He preferred to talk about himself to Jenny, and he wanted to inspire her regard. So far, she had shown no open interest in him, though at least she was now talking and not merely answering "yes." That indicated trust, and the young man's heart rose as light as a bird.

  Unfortunately, a surrey was approaching them on the narrow road, filled with four young women. They had just come round a bend, and now the air echoed with their gay laughter, their little squeals and their high and girlish voices. The horse trotted along briskly, the fringe on the surrey swayed, and the girls held their hats. Robert cautiously guided his horse to the extreme right of the road to let the equipage pass with its pretty burden. Then, as it was beside him, the driver halted it, and he saw the pink dimpled face and auburn hair and sparkling eyes of Maude Kitchener. Her mouth was like a plump rosebud, but it stopped smiling when she saw his companion.

  "Oh, Dr. Morgan!" she trilled. "How are you today? Oh, and do you know Betty Gibson, Susie Harris, Emiline Wilson? Girls, this is Dr. Morgan—the gentleman I have been telling you about—" She stopped and blushed furiously. The girls eyed Robert with animated curiosity and some sly smiles, and it was evident, even to the young man, that perhaps Maude had been somewhat too confiding about him to her friends. In their turn the girls openly admired his magnificent apparel and his face, but when they glanced at Jenny, nasty smirks appeared on their young mouths, and Robert saw that, too. He had taken off his hat, and it lay on his knees.

  "A pleasant ride, ladies?" he asked.

  "We've been to lunch at Emiline's aunt's," said Maude. Her sweet voice was subdued. She regarded Jenny with trouble. "How are you, Jenny?"

  Jenny had become stiff and remote again. Her nod was jerky. "Very well, thank you," she replied, and the stammering note was back in her voice.

  The other girls said nothing at all to Jenny but averted their eyes from her and talked in a lively fashion with the young doctor, of whom they had heard so much, particularly from Maude, who had hardly stopped talking of him all through lunch. They did not know whether to pity her or to be a little happy that the young man, whom she had hinted was "much taken" by her and practically ready to propose, had found that unspeakable Jenny Heger more to his liking than Maude Kitchener, at least for this day. But, then, everyone knew what that hussy was, and gentlemen will be gentlemen, even such a nice, handsome young man like this.

  Robert was not so obtuse that he did not observe the snub given Jenny, and so it was he who put on his hat and lifted the reins and said good-day to the young ladies. He was the one who drove off first. The surrey moved off behind him with less vigor, he thought with some satisfaction. The only nice girl among them had been Maude Kitchener, and he felt warm toward her. Women!

  "Really, that creature!" said Emiline Wilson. "Whatever in the world does he see in her?"

  "Guess!" said Susie Harris, with a naughty giggle. Betty Gibson hit her on the shoulder coyly and said, "Don't be lewd, Susie."

  "If I had any interest in him at all," said Emiline in a meaning tone, "I'd tell him all about her, that I would. It's disgraceful. He probably believes she's respectable. Poor man."

  "He hasn't been here long," said Maude. Then she added, "But, of course Jenny is respectable! You mustn't be mean, girls. You know as well as I do that it is all lies, that people say of Jenny. We went to school with her. If—if Dr. Morgan likes her, it's no wonder. She's so very beautiful."

  The girls chorused "No!" with loyal emphasis, and Maude was pleased.

  "This is really a very stupid town," said Emiline. "I don't suppose anyone has invited Dr. Morgan to dinner except the Ferriers. Have they?"

  All but Maude answered in the negative. She knew that her parents had invited Robert on many occasions, but he had been in the hospitals or on house calls or otherwise engaged. But he had promised to dine with the Kitcheners next Monday and had expressed his gratitude to Mrs. Kitchener. So Maude said, "He's been so busy, and he is to have dinner at our house on Monday."

  The girls spoke their happy envy of Maude, and they all began to laugh again. But Maude remembered how Robert had looked at Jenny before they had driven away, and she wanted to cry.

  Robert found his promised spot a few minutes later. He turned his buggy up a rambling little side road, and it mounted steeply. Then at the top it was like a small and grassy knoll, with one huge oak in the very center. Below them was brush and untended shrubbery, behind them was a lonely meadow, and before them lay the river scintillating in blue lights in the sun, the mountains rising above it like a green barrier. Buttercups and wild daisies and Indian paintbrushes huddled in the thick warm grass, which was not too high, though very dense. Robert held up his hand to Jenny and this time she took it to alight, and at the first touch he had had of her Robert was struck as by lightning and turned very pale. It was a moment before he could help Jenny to the step and then down to the grass, where she stood smoothing her white skirt with her gloved hands and looking about her with shy pleasure.

  "Do you like it, Jenny?" he asked.

  "Oh, it's wonderful," she said. She took off her hat, and her hair, hastily pinned as usual, began to drop about her face. She tried to restore her attempts at a pompadour, but it was useless, so with a shrug she merely shook out her hair and let it fall on her shoulders and down her back.

  Now she began to laugh uncertainly as she helped Robert anchor the checked tablecloth on the grass, for here it was breezy under the tree. She ran about, finding good stones for the anchoring, and brought them back gleefully in both hands. She showed keen interest in the food, laid the plates and the silver and polished the goblets with a napkin. Then she sat down, folding her legs like an Arab, and laughed again with pleasure.

  "What fun picnics are!" she exclaimed. "Mama and I used to have them before she—married—Harald, and I was just a child. On the island, of course. We told each other lots of secrets, and the trees were so thick and the rose gardens were unbelievable. The rose gardens," she added, and her face changed and she was not smiling any longer.

  "Beautiful gardens," said Robert. As the host, he filled Jenny's plate first and she stared down unseeingly at the large portions he had given her. He opened the wine bottle and poured the pale golden liquid into the glasses.

  "What?" said Jenny, coming back with a start.

  "What? Oh, I said your rose gardens are beautiful."

  Jenny picked up a fried chicken leg, eyed it absently, then began to eat it. Her mood appeared to pass. Fresh color came up under her sunburn. The weight of her black hair fell across her ears, and her lashes gave another spiked shadow on the rose of her cheek. Robert could hardly eat for enchantment and new and deeper contentment. He had loved her for her beauty from the beginning, and for her redoubtable innocence. Now he loved her, besides, for what he had guessed about her, and her simplicity. He lifted his wineglass high, and her blue eyes followed it.

  "To you, dear Jenny," he said.

  She picked up her own g
lass at once, smiled back at him, and said, "To you, Doctor." He wished she had shown some coquetry, and that she had called him by his Christian name. But still he was content. He had not dreamed at first that she would be so responsive to him, and so childishly happy in this picnic. He looked at the river, which was not so blue as Jenny's eyes. He could smell pine near him, aromatic and exciting, and the grass gave off a hot fragrance sweeter than any manufactured perfume. Jenny was part of it. She was alone in this shining silence with him. There was no one else.

  She drank the wine eagerly. "Oh, this is delicious," she said. "I don't like it as a rule, but I do like this. Is it a French wine?"

  He gave her the bottle to study its label and was gratified to see that she was impressed. "Why, it's—1890," she said. "Eleven years ago. What a long time!"

  "To you, perhaps. You were only nine then, weren't you, Jenny? But I was much older."

  She glanced at his young face and his luxuriant mustache, and then he saw another side of Jenny, subtle and amused. She smiled at him frankly and shook her head, and the breeze lifted her hair and tossed it. "You are really very young," said Jenny, and he did not know whether to be pleased or displeased. "You believe the world is good, don't you? Do you recall what Machiavelli said: 'A man of merit who knows the world becomes less cheered, as time goes by, by the good, and less grieved by the evil, he sees in the world.'"

  He considered that, then nodded. "Don't you believe the world is good, too?"

  "No, I truly don't. People think I am foolish and ignorant, but I'm not. I listen. I hear. I see. I think. I read. I walk alone by myself. I am never lonely—by myself. I watch the birds. Nothing very much surprises me."

  For some reason Robert thought of Jonathan Ferrier and did not know why. The thought came from nowhere, and it jolted him.

  "No one but a fool would think you foolish and ignorant, Jenny."

  Again she gave him that amused and subtle smile. "You must chatter all the time, in this world, and be doing something in a rush, or something you call important, or going somewhere very fast, or returning from somewhere just as fast, to be thought clever and sophisticated. But if you are contented with your own self, and don't like confusion and only your own thoughts, and the work you love to do, then you are mad, they say, or you don't like your fellowman, and are even un-Christian." She shook back her hair. "They forget, or never knew, what Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It: 'And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot.' If they gave that a little thought, they'd stop being in such a hurry—nobodys going nowhere, and pathetically trying to be somebodys going somewhere. But very few people are 'somebodys.'"