Testimony Of Two Men (113 page)

“I am afraid so, Jon,” said Father McNulty with pity.

“You did this to her!” said Harald to his brother, and his hazel eyes were on fire. “You killed her!” His wound had begun to bleed again, and a few drops fell down over his chin. His ruddy hair was soaked, and his handsome face was drawn and suffering.

“Shut up,” said Jonathan, and he turned to Harald and his expression was so daunting that Harald flinched. Then he turned to Robert. “Quick! What have you done for her?”

Robert told him. Jonathan listened acutely. He said, “That is good. And now I will see her myself.”

“I think,” said Robert, “that she wants to see both her sons, and as soon as possible. She wants to be sure you are-safe. Both of you.”

He met Jonathan’s polished hard eye straightly. “I will take you to her. Perhaps it might be best, though, if you both looked less like derelicts. We don’t want her to have another shock, as though you had been dredged up from the bottom of the river.”

“Where, Doctor, we’d now all be if it weren’t for you,” said Harald, and he was almost his gallant self again. “The police told us, and the river men.”

“Well save our lovely expressions of gratitude for later,” said Jonathan, and he dropped Jenny’s wrist as abruptly as he had taken it and was now leaping up the stairway. Harald watched him go and his face was not pleasant to contemplate. “Very masterful, my brother, isn’t he?” he murmured. “Full of all the amenities of civilized conduct.”

Jenny sat down on the French velvet sofa against the wall, and put her hands over her face, and Robert wanted to go to her and console her. But Harald was looking at her with naked love and misery, and he said, “Jenny, dear. Let us have some hope, if we can. You’re exhausted, and I think you should go to one of the guest rooms and lie down.”

“We’re having coffee and some refreshments in the morning room,” said Robert, and thought to himself, So here is another one of us! “Mrs. Ferrier is resting. There isn’t any immediate emergency, and perhaps you, Mr. Ferrier, and Miss Jenny, ought to change clothing and then join us.”

“I’ll have to put on one of his damned funereal suits,” said Harald, and tried to make his voice light. He still looked at Jenny. “We saw that the water was rising too high on the island to delay to pack any luggage. Jenny? Perhaps one of the maids can find something for you to wear.”

The girl was shivering. She dropped her hands and they saw her white and tearless face and her grief. “Jon will never forgive himself,” she said.

“I hope not,” said Harald. He said to Robert, “I won’t go near him even to ask for some clothing. Would you be kind enough, Doctor?”

Robert now understood the situation. He regarded Harald’s wounded cheek. “That’s a bad cut you have there, Mr. Ferrier. Let us find a bathroom where I can take care of it at once.” He hesitated. “A fall, perhaps?”

Jenny stared at Harald with the cold chasteness of her blue eyes, but Harald said almost gaily, “No, indeed. A gentle reminder from my brother that hereafter I must keep hands off his property. It seems he resented my kindness to his dead wife.”

Jenny said, in her strong clear voice, “How dare you say that! You know why he did it!”

Harald gave her a little bow. “But thanks to you, Jenny, he stopped just short of killing me.” He winked at Robert. “Call it a small brotherly altercation, if you will.”

Father McNulty, who had been listening with perturbation, said, “Mr. Ferrier, I know you are trying to make light of the situation, but Jon’s conduct was hardly—hardly—”

“Civilized,” said Harald.

“Oh!” exclaimed Jenny, and she colored vividly. “You are giving Dr. Morgan and Father McNulty the deliberately wrong impression, Harald! You know how unspeakable your own conduct has been!”

“Appalling, we Ferriers,” said Harald, smiling down into her eyes. “I should like you to keep that in mind, Jenny.”

“I certainly will,” said Jenny, and set her beautiful mouth firmly, and arched her neck. Then she stood up and walked quickly to the stairway and went upstairs, leaving behind her a pool of dirty river water.

The three men were silent until they heard Jenny in the upper hall, then Harald said musingly, “If I weren’t determined to leave this contemptible little town very soon, I’d enjoy the spectacle of the coming marriage between Jenny and my brother. Jenny is no Mavis. In many ways she is
a
good match for Jon, and I don’t mean that pleasantly.”

“He can be murderous,” said Robert, full of apprehension. “And Miss Jenny is still a young girl, and he is much older. But let us find that bathroom. I have my bag in the morning room and if you will wait a moment, I will get it.”

Harald was alone with the priest. He had begun to mop at his face with his wet handkerchief .and the priest gave him his own. “Thank you, Father,” said Harald, with his charming courtesy. “I’m sorry that you’ve seen the Ferriers at a disadvantage.”

“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.”

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.

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 others 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.”