Testimony of Two Men

by Taylor Caldwell

  "I've been seeing them that way for some time," said the priest, with a faint smile. "But not at Mass. Or in the Confessional."

  "Oh, we're beyond absolution, I assure you, Father. Quite beyond absolution."

  "Only God knows that, not you."

  Harald smiled at him brightly. Robert came into the hall but stood at the foot of the staircase, and Harald joined him. They went upstairs together, and, with a sigh, the priest went back into the morning room. The storm was definitely quieting. The last cannonading of the thunder was echoing from the mountains, and the rain was only a whisper now and the gale only occasionally shook the windows and doors.

  They met outside Marjorie's shut door, Jonathan and Harald in dark silk dressing gowns, and Jenny wrapped in a cotton wrapper Mary had found for her. She looked like a tall strong child with her hair dropping down her back, still wet but gleaming, and the wrapper, a trifle too short, showed her fine ankles and part of her round legs. She was unconscious of her disheveled appearance and only looked in mute earnestness at Robert. He said to her gently, "I will take them in to see Mrs. Ferrier, Jenny, and perhaps a little later you can go in."

  Jenny became mutinous, but Jonathan said, "She needs to be disturbed as little as possible, Jenny, so kindly go downstairs and wait for us."

  Their eyes met and clashed. Then Jenny angrily bit her Up, tossed her damp hair and went downstairs with a very emphatic footfall. "A young lady of spirit, as I have said, Doctor," Harald murmured. "It is going to be very interesting." His cheek had been cleansed, treated with antiseptic, and the cut closed with court plaster.

  Robert opened the door softly and they entered the quiet lamplit room. Marjorie was awake again, and she looked at her sons and her mouth trembled. "Cain and Abel, Mrs. Ferrier," said Robert, "but I don't know which is which."

  Jonathan went at once to the bed and took his mother's wrist without looking into her eyes for a second. What he felt alarmed him and made a line of sweat come out below his black hair. He motioned to Robert imperatively, and Robert brought his bag to him and Jonathan took out the stetho- scope with hands that were very steady. He bent over his mother and listened to her heart, and one of her long fine hands raised itself slowly and rested on his head. But she looked at Harald and smiled tenderly, though her lips winced when she saw the evidences of his wound.

  "Adrenalin," said Jonathan, and Robert prepared the injection, and the nurses clustered at the foot of the bed. Then Jonathan did something Robert would not have dared to attempt. He drove the needle into his mother's breast, and she uttered the faintest of gasps, and her eyes shut spasmodically, and a gray shadow ran over her spent face.

  Jonathan sat on the edge of the bed. He looked, for the first time, at his mother's face, and held her wrist, and once his eyes shut as if he prayed. (Robert doubted it.) Harald came to the other side of the bed and took his mother's other hand, and was shocked at the coldness and dampness of it and for the first time since he had been a child he wanted to weep. His own hand was warm. He held Marjorie's hand strongly and comfortingly. He thought that he imagined it, but when he felt a dim returning pressure again he knew he had not. Now tears did come into his eyes, and he slowly knelt beside the bed and then let his forehead rest against it

  "Morphine," said Jonathan, "15 mg." His voice was calm and dispassionate. He looked at no one but his mother.

  "I gave her the same just hours ago," said Robert

  Jonathan repeated the order in the same tone and Robert, flushing at the affront, obeyed. Marjorie had begun to breathe rapidly, and again Jonathan listened to her heart, and his color became more and more deathly. He accepted the needle from Robert without a glance, and thrust it quickly into her limp arm. He said to the nurses, "Hot water bottles."

  "Do you think?" Robert began.

  "Doctors don't think. They act," said Jonathan.

  The nurses scurried for the bottles. Robert was seething. Then he heard a murmurous and monotonous refrain: "Christ, have mercy, Lord, have mercy." He saw that it came from Harald, whose face was hidden against the side of the bed. But he saw something else which startled him. Jonathan had glanced at his brother and the look on his face was both bitter and full of threat as if he had been mortally insulted. However, Harald kept up his prayer, in anguish, and Jonathan said nothing, and there was only that murmur in the room now and Marjorie's frantic breathing and the sound of the wind at the long windows.

  The nurses returned with the hot bottles in towels, and Jonathan flung aside the blanket and Robert saw Marjorie's feet, marble white and cold. Jonathan put the bottles against them, then covered his mother's long and slender body again, and resumed his watching. Marjorie began to sigh, over and over, deeply, and move her head.

  Then Jonathan spoke. "Mother? You are going to be all right. Do you hear me, dear? We are here with you. I won't leave you, Mother."

  "Oh, Jon," she whispered, from the depths of her pain. "Oh, Harald."

  She removed her wrist from Jonathan's grasp and took his hand, and her other fingers rested on Harald's bent head. Harald said in a muffled voice, "Forgive me, Mother."

  "Oh, my dear," she said.

  "I'm sorry," said Jonathan. "Believe me, dear, I'm sorry."

  She smiled then, a beautiful and peaceful smile and opened her eyes and they were clear and tender.

  "I'm very happy," she said. "I haven't been this happy for years."

  There was the slightest tinge of color in her mouth now. She closed her eyes and slept.

  Robert said, "You both don't deserve such a mother," and he turned and walked out of the room.

  Then the eyes of the brothers met, tentative, cold, wary. Jonathan said, "I hope you have a scar for the rest of your life." But he smiled. It hardly lifted the corners of his mouth.

  "And I hope that Jenny murders you," said Harald.

  It was midnight when Jonathan went downstairs to the morning room. Harald and Robert Morgan and Jenny were with Marjorie. Jonathan said to Father McNulty, "I think there is some reason to hope. Her heart is stronger and she is asleep. I will know better in a few hours. If she rallies, as I think she may, she will have to be in bed for months."

  He let himself drop in a chair and the priest poured a cup of hot coffee for him. Jonathan took it. He seemed to have grown much older and to be on the point of collapsing.

  "But, it will be a miracle," he said, as if to himself.

  "God frequently grants miracles," said the priest

  Jonathan's thick black eyebrows twitched.

  "Such as saving all of you," the priest added. "And preventing a fratricidal murder."

  "Which I still regret" said Jonathan,

  "Have a doughnut," said the priest, and passed the plate. Jonathan automatically took one and munched it He was still frowning.

  "You and your brother are an admirable pair," said Father McNulty, chewing a cake. "I don't know which I admire the more. From what I've heard your father was a kind and gentle soul, and your mother is remarkable for many things. It's very strange that they should have had such sons."

  "Spare me the homilies, Frank, and refill my cup."

  The pretty room was warm and bright and the wind had dropped to a soft mutter.

  "I suppose," said the priest, "that Hambledon will not lose your talents after all."

  "I haven't thought about it"

  "Of course you have. What will you do about Dr. Morgan?"

  "When the time comes, I will consider it."

  "May I offer you my congratulations on your coming marriage?"

  Jonathan looked up quickly. "Jenny?"

  "Who else?"

  "Time enough for that"

  "Certainly. I'm very sorry for the young lady." Jonathan gave a slight laugh. "I think, perhaps, in about a week or so."

  They ate and drank in a little silence. Then the priest said, "Don't regard what I have to say as a homily. I'm very tired, and I must go home. So, I will be brief. You have always maintained to me that the opinions of othe
rs are a matter of total indifference to you. But, on the contrary, you have been exaggeratedly sensitive to them. You did not have the fortitude to defy local opinion, at least in your mind. A man of courage would not have been so extremely disturbed by the hostility he met here, after the trial. He would have understood human nature. He would not have responded as violently as you have responded. He would not have planned to leave town. He would have presented a calm face to friend and enemy alike, treating both with reason, secure in himself and in his innocence. And finally the town would have come to its senses."

  He waited. Jonathan said nothing. So the priest went on. "It is ridiculous to demand that others understand us and know the truth about us. How is that possible? We can only do the best we can, in steady patience, and with inner reserves, knowing that we don't understand others, either.

  "Jon, you need to cultivate that serenity and detachment of mind that, while keeping you kindly in touch with your fellowman, will make you less vulnerable to him, and his opinion of you. You have entangled yourself with others entirely too much, both in love and in hate, and that is childish and immature. A sensible man is moderate in all things, and particularly in his dealings with those about him. That takes courage. And that will bring peace of mind."

  Jonathan bent his head, and the priest was encouraged, for he knew that Jonathan was thinking. Then Jonathan said, "It isn't in my nature to be lukewarm."

  "But you can practice outward restraint and balance and firmness."

  "And get ulcers."

  "And keep out of trouble. Mankind isn't very brave and strong, Jon. It is timid and is growing daily more timid. It is brave only when in a pack. Individually, man is lonely and lost and weak. He is frightened at demands that he have courage. It threatens what little security he possesses. And how insecure is man, God help him! He suspects that there are forces outside his little life which are tremendous and terrifying, so he establishes a ritual of magical cant to placate the terror, just as his earlier ancestors did. Yet, all the time, as our Lutheran brethren sang in their noblest hymn, 'A mighty Fortress is our God!'"

  He stood up and looked down gravely at Jonathan. "A man who trusts in man, who believes man is all, who thinks that man is capable of pulling himself up by his own bootstraps and attaining virtue and perfection all by himself, is to be pitied. His ignorance, his pathetic vanity, must make the angels weep. Worse still, his fellowman will inevitably teach him many rude and painful lessons. So, he will abandon his fellowman, or he will grow to hate and despise him. Both are evil."

  Jonathan said, "Somewhere in the nest of your homily, Frank, there may be an egg of truth. I will give it thought"

  "Give it plenty of thought Jon," said the priest Then Jonathan said, "I never told you. When I was seventeen, I had already decided to be a physician. Martin Eaton encouraged me. He began to take me through the hospitals and let me be in his office when he was attending patients. I was full then of God and raptures and everything else, in spite of a few jolts I had received when I was younger. I would be another St. Luke. Then, as I went with Martin on his rounds—I saw pain. Senseless, ugly, murderous, devastating, hopeless pain. Senseless. Now, don't talk to me about original sin! I saw the pain. I saw it especially in infants and little children, and in good old people who had never, I am sure, committed what you would call a mortal sin. I saw the helpless pain. And that's when I lost, when I decided—"

  "That a God who permitted pain like that either did not exist, or He was worse than the wickedest man?"

  "That's right, Frank."

  "Jon, I will leave you with just one bit of advice. I'm sure there is a Bible in this house. Find it. And read the Book of Job."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  In the next few days the Ferrier house was filled with flowers and gifts for Marjorie, and letters of happy congratulation to Jonathan because, as they said, "Our dear Senator, Kenton Campion, has proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you were innocent, as the majority of us believed from the beginning. Don't desert us now. We need you. We've always needed you."

  Only a week before Jonathan would have read those letters with rage and disgust and would have replied to the writers with stinging remarks and contempt. But now he laughed almost indulgently after his first angry reactions. "They believe Campion," he said to some friends, "Campion, who was always a liar and a mountebank, and they never believed me, though I don't lie. Somewhere there is some irony in the situation, but I never particularly liked the Hogarthian jokes of man or God. Human or Olympian humor of this sort used to make me ill. That is because, perhaps, I never appreciated slapstick or burlesque."

  "Now, Jon," said Louis Hedler. '"All's well that ends well.'"

  "Nothing ends well," said Jonathan. "I'm a confirmed pessimist." He eyed Louis with hard and unforgiving cynicism. "Let me congratulate you, Louis, on a broad comedy. I don't enjoy the spectacle of clowns as advocates. Truth, to me, should have a certain dignity, or am I being naive again?"

  "It depends on the point of view," said Louis Hedler. "By the way, am I right in believing that you will accept the post of chief of surgery at St. Hilda's?"

  "Were you serious?"

  "Of course, my boy. Though I am a little apprehensive concerning how you will treat the other surgeons. With somewhat less brutality, I hope?"

  "Not if they are in the wrong. The patient comes first."

  "Commendable. The patient must always come first. But it is not always necessary to make a Roman holiday of a surgeon's honest error, is it?"

  "Not if he is usually a competent man. But I want no diploma-mill hacks on the staff, Louis."

  Louis sighed. "You would be surprised how very competent those 'hacks' are sometimes, and how wrong the scientific fellas. But use your judgment, Jon, though I do hope there will be no public burnings."

  Hambledon emotionally forgave Jonathan for the crimes he had never committed, and so forgave itself and was prepared to grasp him to its bosom. It took all Louis Hedler's diplomacy to prevent Jonathan from explosive retorts at times, and all Father McNulty's admonitions. "Humor, humor, Jon," said the priest. "If a man lacks a sense of proportion and inner humor, he is a barbarian. He must always have some pity, even if he is the wronged one. Look at young Francis Campion, for instance. He has a lot to forgive his father, but now he is with him for a few days in Washington, and they were photographed affectionately together. Francis had to make his compromises, too. He will return to his seminary, and I think you should be proud of your own part in it."

  "Compromises!" said Jonathan.

  "Life is not nearly as simple as you have always believed,

  Jon," said the priest "It requires a great deal of courage and fortitude."

  Marjorie was now past the danger point. Then Jonathan's case became suddenly unimportant to the town, for President McKinley died of his wounds in Buffalo, and Vice-President Roosevelt became President Jonathan said to the priest, "Now we have Teddy, and all his exuberant ideas and his radical philosophies." The light of battle had returned to his eyes. "The future has become ominous. I think I will take part in it after all, for I will have children."

  Harald had diplomatically removed himself from his father's house and had gone to the Quaker Hotel. He could not endure seeing Jenny with his brother. He could not return to the island, for even the lower floor of the "castle" had been filled with mud and water. His lawyers agreed that his absence from the island in this emergency could not be construed as violating the terms of his dead wife's will.

  Jenny had told Jonathan of the contract planned between her and his brother. Jonathan had been pressing her for immediate marriage. Jenny had remarked firmly that "it was less than a year, and would not be decorous." Then Jonathan, smiling, had said, "Dear child, you are still a minor and won't be twenty-one until December. You can't sign any contract at all that would be valid. Didn't anyone tell you? But if you many me soon, I will be appointed your legal guardian and can make contracts in your name for you."

/>   Jenny had retorted, "It is you, Jon, who needs a guardian, not I."

  "Well? What is your decision? Are we going to free Harald from Hambledon and send him on his merry way, or are we going to imprison him until December, when you will come of age? There is another thing. I find it somewhat arduous to be under the same roof with you, my love, and not in your bed. Or will you be kind enough to leave your door open some night soon?"

  Jenny blushed. "Very well. I will marry you on September 30th." She hesitated. "What will people think?"

  "The hell with what they think, Jenny. We have our own lives to live."

  Jenny assisted the nurses in caring for Marjorie. Marjorie said, "Dear Jenny, now I will have a daughter soon. I have always felt that you were my daughter. I used to watch you when you were a child and I envied your mother. Do have daughters, Jenny. They are so satisfactory to a mother. While no man ever understood any woman, women do have glimpses of the interior workings of men, and mothers and daughters can laugh together at the unpredictable and irrational doings of husbands and sons and fathers. But we must never let our laughter be obvious. Men are such fragile and sensitive creatures."

  "And so very dangerous," said Jenny. "Sometimes I think I shouldn't marry at all."

  Her blue eyes were very wise and she looked so innocent in her wisdom that Marjorie wanted to cry. "Somebody has to marry them," said Marjorie. "Otherwise they'd revert fast enough to the cave."

  Jenny had suggested to Jonathan that the island be a museum, as he had once proposed, with his brutal jesting, that it should be. "And it will be supported by the Heger money," said Jenny. "There are so many treasures there, and it will be a landmark for those people who can never hope to see an authentic castle in Europe. We will add to the treasures, and have guards and guides." The island no longer had significance for her, nor was it a harbor now as once it was, and she often wondered why that was so.