Testimony of Two Men

by Taylor Caldwell

  At noon the sky turned brazen again, and the heat was appalling, and puffs of heavy wind were beginning to swirl fallen twigs and leaves in the gutters. At two o'clock the sky was very dark and boiling, and lightning snaked and thunder muttered discontentedly in the mountains. At three the storm broke.

  Just as the water began to fall in the semidarkness Marjorie Ferrier arrived home in a station hack, hurrying toward the house, the driver dashing behind her with her luggage.

  Jonathan, after a very light lunch, had felt so weary and numb that he had gone to his room and had fallen across the bed in a state approaching stupefaction. So, he did not hear his mother return. He did not hear the preliminary cannonading of the thunder. He slept heavily until five o'clock, to find a shrieking twilight about him again, and an infernal roaring in the air, and a pressure in the atmosphere like pouring steam. Someone had closed his open window and pulled in the shutters. His face and all of his body was sweating and his mouth was dry and he felt weak and dazed. For a moment he did not know where he was, what was the time of the day, or how it had come about that he was here at all.

  He sat up, stunned and blinking, wiping his face, staring about him, listening. Then, after a long time, he got to his feet, bathed in cold water, and sat down to smoke and think. Something had happened to him, but what it was he did not know. He only knew that a sort of quietus had come to him, an area of nonfeeling or -thinking.

  The room steadily darkened as the storm increased, but Jonathan did not light his lamps for over an hour. He tried to read, but the storm distracted his very slight attention, and so he confined himself to listening. Abruptly, the rain stopped but the thunder and lightning and wind intensified. There was a knock on his door, then the door opened.

  "Jon?" asked Marjorie.

  She stood on the threshold, very pale and quiet, her dark hair fluffed about her cheeks as if she had been sleeping. Her mouth was without color, and her eyes were unusually large and bright in the lamplight, as if she were feverish. She had taken off her traveling suit and wore a calico wrapper printed in gray and blue, and bedroom slippers.

  Jonathan sat in his chair and looked silently at his mother and did not move, but the hard muscles sprang out about his mouth and his hands tightened on the arms of his chair. Marjorie gazed at him and saw that his black brows had met above his eyes and that his eyes were sinning like black fire.

  "Jon?" she said again, and moistened her lips. "I came home, but you were sleeping, and I did not want to disturb you."

  She advanced into the room and the feverish brightness in her eyes had widened, and she began to breathe a little faster, as if she were very frightened. She clasped her hands tightly together. She said in a very low voice, "I know, dear. I read the Philadelphia papers last night. It's all over, Jon, it's all over."

  "Yes," he said, and stood up. "It's all over."

  They stared at each other in a silence broken only by the boisterous uproar outside, and the lamps flickered and somewhere a loose shutter crashed against a wall.

  "I must talk to you, Jon," said Marjorie.

  "And what will you tell me, Mama? More lies? More sweet evasions? You and old Martin were very clever about the whole thing, weren't you? A giggling little conspiracy of silence."

  A look of deep alarm and suffering ran over Marjorie's face. She sat down near the door as if her last strength had left her. "Jon," she whispered. He could see her hps move but could not hear her. He moved closer so that she would hear everything he said, and his look was so formidable, and totally unknown to her, that she cowered away from him as from a terrible stranger. She could not endure the look on his face and in his eyes.

  "Did you believe that swill in the papers?" he asked.

  She tried to speak, then coughed and put her trembling hand to her throat. "I—I felt there was something eke," she said.

  "Oh, indeed, Mama, there was a great deal more! But you know a lot of it, don't you? Sufficient to say now that before old Martin died, he made out a last affidavit and confession, and he finally told the truth he and you both knew. The truth, Mama."

  She swallowed, and even in her terror her expression questioned him.

  "And a lot you didn't know, if that is possible. I won't tell you about that. Perhaps Howard Best will be glad to enlighten you." His voice, normally harsh, had a sound in it she had never heard before, and her fright rose.

  "Where is darling Harald now?" he asked, and loomed over her so urgently that she thought he was about to strike her, and in that abysmal fear she said quickly, "He returned yesterday morning, Jon!"

  "Oh, yesterday morning." He looked down at her and smiled. "So, he is there with Jenny. He has been alone there with Jenny for a long time, and you knew what he was from the very beginning, and you did not care in the least for Jenny—alone with him, a man like him—so long as you could continue to protect him."

  "Oh, Jon, he would never harm Jenny!"

  "No more than he harmed Mavis. Is that it?"

  "Jon," she almost groaned, "if you know everything, as you say, then you must know what Mavis was!"

  "She was my wife."

  Marjorie put her hand to her thin cheek as if he had hit her in reality, but she looked up at him and her lips moved soundlessly.

  "My wife," he said. "A fool, mindless, wanton. Yes, all that, and more. But she was still my wife when he took her, as if she had been a common whore. She was still my wife when she conceived a child by him. She was still my wife when she died of her abortion, and he would still have lived, in all those lies, if it hadn't been for Howard Best."

  Marjorie was too stricken to speak. She could feel the painful lurching of her heart and could hear the thunderous explosions outside and could see, almost blinding her, the steady and fiery lightning.

  "My wife," said Jonathan. "It was nothing to you that he had done this thing to me, his brother. It was nothing to any of you. It meant even less when I was arrested for a crime that I had never committed, which I could never have brought myself to commit. If I had been hanged for that crime, you would still have kept your pretty lips well closed."

  "Oh, Jon!" she cried. "You cannot believe that! You don't believe that! If there had been any danger to you at all, if you had been convicted, we should have spoken, Martin and I!"

  "That is another lie," said her son, and his hand lifted as if indeed he would strike her, but now she sat upright and

  looked him fully in the face. "It was nothing to you, was it, Mama, that I spent those months in prison, that I spent those weeks in a courtroom before grinning crowds and reporters and had to listen in silence to the prosecuting attorney accuse me of every stinking thing under the sun, such as murdering my wife and my unborn child? No, it was nothing to you. You let it all happen to me. And when I came back here, you still did not speak, either of you, not even to me! You let a whole town malign me and despise me, and drive me out, and call me murderer to my face. Why, Mama?"

  Marjorie dropped her head a little. "We thought you were strong enough to bear it, Jon. We watched and waited and prayed. If there had been any danger— You forget. Harald is also my son, weaker than you, we thought. We thought he— we tried to protect him from you, Jon, and you from knowing. Can't you understand? Won't you try to understand? It was really for you that I kept silent." Her head bowed lower. "You are both my sons. By not speaking I thought—I thought I'd saved you both."

  He laughed abruptly. "And you never dreamed that the truth would come out, did you? It still would not have come out if a very nice little plot hadn't been laid against me by Kent Campion and various others, including the man who aborted Mavis and killed her. In the event that plot would have succeeded—tell me, Mama, would you have spoken .then?"

  She could only stare at him speechlessly, growing paler and paler. She put her hand tightly against her breast.

  "A plot to send me to prison, probably for life, for alleged abortions," said Jonathan. "That would have been comparatively easy, with my first tr
ial still fresh in people's minds, and the conviction that I was guilty of killing Mavis. Mavis has been the precipitant in this whole vicious mess, from the very beginning, but you helped very efficiently, Mama, very efficiently, and I congratulate you. While I was in prison, no doubt you were very pleased with yourself."

  She got to her feet, staggering a little. "Jon! You can't believe that! You don't believe it! I refuse to believe that you are taking yourself seriously."

  He said, "There is just one thing I want to know, and tell me the truth this time." His rage was rising, and the terribleness in his face was more than Marjorie could stand. "Did you know that he had seduced Mavis before you heard them both arranging for Mavis to be aborted?"

  "Yes," she said. "I knew. But I couldn't say anything to Harald or to Mavis. I was afraid that it would—it would cause something, and that you would know. Always I was trying to shield you, Jon, to protect you from knowing. I thought it would end, and it had ended, and it would all be over and no one would be hurt."

  He said very gently, "You were quite successful in a way. No one was hurt, except that Mavis died, and I was tried for murder, and my name blackened all over the country. Harald went his way, and everything was lovely, and he lived on Myrtle's money and tried to get Jenny to marry him, and— by God, now I know that all the time he was laughing in my face!"

  "Jon, won't you try to believe that it was all done to protect you?"

  "And to protect smiling, laughing Harald?"

  "Yes! Harald, too. He is also my son."

  He looked about the room, and his eye lit on something. "You can protect him no longer. I am going to find him and I am going to kill him." He walked across the room to one of his bags and he picked up his riding crop, which he had thrown there the last time he had used it. Marjorie saw, and she cried out, and when he was near her again, she grasped his arm and looked up into his face, that appalling stranger's face.

  "Jon! You must be out of your mind!"

  "I think I am," he said. "But that doesn't matter, does it? You can thank yourself for that, Mama."

  He flung her off and she fell heavily to her knees. She put up her hands to him like one pleading for her life. "Jon, think of Jenny!"

  "I am the only one who has been thinking of Jenny. Not you, not Harald. Just myself."

  "Oh, Jon, you believed all those lies about her, you believed them all, and now you can talk about 'thinking' of her!"

  He paused and looked down into her suddenly flooded eyes. "I've been doing a lot of thinking, Mama. Who began those lies about Jenny? I made a few inquiries since you were away. I traced at least two back to Harald. Ah, I see that you knew that, too."

  Marjorie put her hands over her face as she knelt.

  "And you let that go on, about Jenny and about me, and

  you kept your serene silence and never said a word in defense of anybody!"

  He made to step about her and she reached up and grasped the crop in his hand with both of hers. "Jon, you have a life to live, a future before you, you and Jenny, here or anywhere else. But one reckless thing— Jon, in the name of God, try to be reasonable, try to think!"

  He laughed again and wrenched the crop from her hands. "I've been thinking, Mama. I've been thinking of thousands of things."

  She tried, in her extremity, to grasp his ankle, his leg, but he was quicker than she, and then she saw his face, black and murderous in the flickering lightning, and she quietly lay down on the floor and closed her eyes.

  Jonathan ran down the stairs in the thunderous dusk, and flung open the door and was immediately outside, buffeted by the gale, almost blinded by the lightning. But no rain was falling. He ran through the dark and deserted streets, splashing through deep puddles, sending spray all about him. No lamps were lit. The city lay cowering under the exploding illumination of the storm, and Jonathan was all alone, racing like a madman through the streets, bounding across flooded curbs, flying toward the river and the little dock. He never remembered that wild flight, for he was conscious of nothing but his savage hunger for vengeance.

  The little dock, he found, had been washed away, but one boat was pulled up on the bank. He slid down the bank in a welter of wet and slimy mud and almost fell into the river. He scrambled back up and got into the boat, panting, drenched, smeared. His feet sank into deep water and he had to turn the boat over on its side to empty it. He found the oars, slippery and cold, and then the rain began again, brightened by lightning, torn by the wind. He pushed the boat into the river, and the river caught it and almost wrenched it from him, for the water was high and roaring and rushing and swirling. He finally struggled into the boat and sat down, and he did not notice that his hands were bleeding, for the boat spun out into the river and swung into circles and fled out into the night.

  It was a long time before he could control it, and now he was sweating and shivering in the fresh rain, and the river flared into violence under the lightning and then became a silent and hidden thing in the dark, tumultuous as if alive and filled with fury. He fought both the river and the boat. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the dusky bulk of the island behind him, lighted swiftly and regularly, its trees tossing, and it was like a struggling ship about to founder. His foot felt for the crop he had thrown into the boat, and he clenched his teeth and fought to gain the island in all that wildness and bellowing storm and night.

  He was a strong man, and he was still young, but if he had not been impelled by his rage and his new fear for Jenny, he would have been swept down the river, the boat would have been swamped, and he would have died in the water. But all the intensity of his nature was driving him toward the island, all the frustration and anger and despair and suffering of the past months, all the shame and the insults, the rejection and the jeers, the hopelessness. It seemed to him that Mavis was in the boat with him, laughing in the thunder, her golden hair flying in the wind, her face gleeful in the lightning. "You were a fool," he said to her, "a silly, thoughtless, soulless fool. But you didn't deserve that! No, you didn't deserve that I wanted to kill you many times, but I wouldn't have killed you, Mavis. No, I wouldn't have killed you and let you die alone in all that pain. If I had known, I'd have stayed by your bed, comforting you. If I had arrived before you died, I'd have been there, Mavis, for I loved you for many years, and loved you in a way, I think, even after you were dead, Mavis, even when I hated you."

  For the first time, even in the frenzy of his thoughts and the savagery of his purpose, he could feel sorrow for Mavis, dead in her youth, and pity, and regret.

  The rain dashed into his face, and he gritted his teeth and bent body and oars against the foaming water, and the boat heaved up and down between waves and fought with the swift current. Strange thoughts ran over his mind like dreams, like convolutions of nightmares. Then the boat grated on stones, and he had reached the island.

  He sat there, huddled and soaking, gasping and trying to get his breath, his bloody hands sliding on the oars. Then he could stand up, and jump to the slippery bank, and pull the boat up on it and throw the oars beside it. He reached for his crop, fumbling in the flaming dark, and he turned and climbed the flooded path, feeling for it when he could not see it. When he had reached the top, his clothing torn by the lashing bushes and trees, he had to halt to stop the laboring of his heart. Then he saw that the island was deep in the river, and the walls of it were hardly a curb above the swirl-

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Harald Ferrier was sitting in his study reading, for no other room in the castle attracted him, nor could he stand any other room and especially not the one he had shared with his dead wife. He listened to the storm uneasily. Unlike Jonathan, he could not remember that the island had once been almost inundated, for he had been too young then, but he wondered how much more the water would rise and if the walls could keep it out from the higher land. During the lull in the late afternoon he had gone out to inspect the damage and had almost been flung headlong several times by the gale. The damage
was very great. Some of the finest trees had been blown down and battered, and the gardens were completely destroyed. None of the windows of the castle had been broken because they were all mullioned and deep-set and narrow. But all the walks had disappeared and ran like brooks, and there was water at least a foot deep around the walls of the castle itself, where the earth could not absorb it.

  There had been storms over the valley and the state before, but he could not recall one as bad as this. He congratulated himself that he had thought to return yesterday, before it broke, otherwise he would have had to stay in Hambledon, and possibly in his father's house. He winced at the thought. He had never liked that house, had never felt that he was welcome there but only endured, a stranger tolerated becausing water. He stood and looked at it, as it appeared and disappeared in the lightning, and he thought, It will be almost covered by morning. He went on, falling, staggering, fighting, toward the faint light in the distance.

  he was harmless and bothered no one and never interfered, and because he had learned to smile when he was the most miserable and lonely and forgotten. Even though he visited his mother occasionally, he still felt like a guest and never believed that she had ever liked him in spite of her gentle ways and kindness. She had never cared for anyone but his brother, he thought, and his father had never cared for anyone but his older son. It was a beautiful house, but Harald had not found it beautiful and never had thought of it as home.

  As he was not vengeful by nature, or reckless, or bitter, he had not felt resentful all those years. He had made his own life. By temperament he was easy and adaptable and tolerant. It would have made him happy to have been loved and not overlooked, but as that happiness had been denied him, he had eventually accepted the fact. Now all he desired was Jenny and peace and his painting, and travel and ease and laughter and good wine and dinners. The world was a brutal place and so he had gracefully and smilingly retreated from it, never questioning it, never arguing with it, never fighting it, as Jonathan had always done from earliest childhood. Harald accepted what the world permitted him to accept, and he had no quarrel with it, for life was as it was and only a fool "kicked against the pricks." If he reached for something and the world of men denied it to him, he would search for something else he could have without a struggle. He had reached for women, and for Mavis, but never had pressed them, never had urged them, never had seduced them. They saw his hand and they took it, laughing, and he laughed with them. He had desired only the prettiest women, for he hated flaws and mediocrity, and his affairs had been gay if not very passionate. He told himself that he was—happily—incapable of strong attachments and emotion.