Testimony Of Two Men (68 page)

“Jon never cared about anyone but his father.”

“Don’t believe it, Mother. He took good care of dear Papa’s tender little sensibilities, but you were the object of his real affections. He thought he didn’t have yours, so he decided that you weren’t very intelligent in not appreciating the golden salver he was offering, containing his heart’s blood or something. Maybe his head.”

Marjorie was still disbelieving and she smiled at Harald in denial. “Perhaps you are as wrong about Jon as he is about you. You two were always incompatible. I think you both try very hard to find something tangible to dislike each other about, when it’s only a matter of—a matter of—”

”’ I do not like you, Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell.’ “

“Exactly,” said Marjorie. “It isn’t uncommon between brothers or anyone else.”

Harald stood up. “When is he leaving Hambledon, with that rasping tongue of his? To afflict some other community?”

“I suppose soon, when young Robert is well established. But, it’s a very strange thing. He hasn’t talked much about it lately.” Then Marjorie looked at her son with her hazel eyes darkening and becoming deeper and more watchful.

In turn, he lost his amiable look. He went over to the portrait and affected to be studying it, and his voice was careless when he said, “I wish he’d leave very soon. It would be better for him. Much better. And very much safer, safer above all.”

Marjorie was silent. When Harald turned to her again, her face held nothing but pain, and she showed every sign of intense weariness. “You mean Hambledon has robbed him of purpose?” she said after several moments.

“No,” said Harald. “I don’t mean that at all,
I
mean Mavis.”

“Where, in God’s name, did you buy that suit?” asked Jonathan on a very warm Saturday late in July. He surveyed Robert and laughed.

“You provincials,” said Robert. “I bought it in New York last spring. It is jealousy, my dear man, which suffuses your cheek with yellow, and envy which has jaundiced your eye. Your remark was poltroonish. Consider the fit, the style, the flair.”

“I can’t,” said Jonathan. “I’m partially blinded as it is. What did the morning’s patients think of it?”

“Stunned,” said Robert. “Stunned to awe.”

“I bet,” said Jonathan. Robert’s suit was of lightweight wool in a gigantic plaid design embracing black, white, a splash of green, a quick run of red thread here and there, and even a shy hint of orange. The long coat was stylishly cut back. With this he wore a high white collar, the points of which were open just below the chin, and flared outward, and he had crowned the whole attire with a lavish silk tie repeating the plaid and fastened with an enormous pearl tiepin. His pointed boots shone like black coal, and a pair of yellow leather gloves and a pearl-gray fedora completed the costume. He slowly pivoted to allow Jonathan to survey all the glory, and he touched the tips of his red-gold mustache and jauntily struck a pose.

“Not even lascivious little Perry Belmont ever dared to wear a suit like that,” said Jonathan. “You look like an overgrown jockey. All you need now is an automobile. I’m thinking of getting one, myself, from England.”

Robert was impressed. “Do you know Perry Belmont, personally?”

“I not only know the stocky little lecher but I know most of his ladies, too, who are mad for him and why I never knew. He does have a Nero sort of appearance, a wicked eye and a fat nose. Maybe these are attractions to the ladies. The short men seem to enchant them, especially if the Little Corporals look Napoleonic, and Perry does.” Jonathan shook his head. “He was Minister to Spain, and that cost him a fortune and I hear he upturned the señoritas like a cyclone through a forest. They all fell down and pulled up their skirts at the mere sight of Perry. Or, at least he says so.

“He and I were guests of Cornelius K. G. Billings, the racing boy, last year, and we both belong to the New York Riding Club, and I bought a mare for fifteen thousand dollars from Cornelius, and she wasn’t worth five thousand. Never trust a rich man; he’ll flay you with pleasure and sell your hide and call it Morocco. Well, Cornelius gave the club a banquet at the famous restaurant, Sherry’s, and damned if he hadn’t sodded the floor with earth and grass, and we arrived on horseback, were taken up to the banquet hall in elevators, still on horseback, and we still sat on the horses while we were served caviar and champagne and a dinner cooked by the best chefs in the world, and all on heavily gold-plated fine silver, complete with solid gold dinnerware. And there were lackeys, of course, to clean up the manure behind the horses and wash down the sod, and there we sat, on our prize animals, in formal evening wear. I thought it was the most outrageous, the most depraved, the most infantile and brutish affair I ever attended in New York, and I have attended some marvels. I hear it cost Cornelius about twenty-five thousand dollars, which would have helped to found a hospital somewhere for tuberculosis.” His face had turned contemptuous. “The only animals there who could really boast of aristocracy and decency were the horses. I felt embarrassed for them and wanted to apologize to them. I did apologize to my own horse.”

“I’ve read a lot about those things, in New York,” said Robert, “and what they call the Four Hundred. That makes good subject matter for William Jennings Bryan—the lavish and degraded and vulgar spending of enormous amounts of money, and the overgrown crowded mansions, and the gaudy jewelry and the vice—and the social diseases, as they are discreetly called. It’s not folly; it’s cheap garishness. The average workman is lucky to have a wage of twelve or fifteen dollars a week! No wonder half, or more, of his children die before they are five years old! And he’s an old man at forty.”

“True,” said Jonathan. “But let’s not glorify the working-man either. I admit his state in America is far worse than anywhere else in the world except, perhaps, Egypt and Arabia and the darkness spots of Africa. But he’s human, too. He is beginning to utter loud and bitter cries over his condition —and I’m glad of that and I’d like to see him strongly unionized—but let him get power and he’ll be just as bad as the bluebloods, as they like to call themselves, in New York or London or Paris or Berlin. It’s that old thing called human nature. You can’t trust it. Well. Who is the lucky young lady who is going to be paralyzed by your costume today?”

Robert carefully pulled on his yellow gloves. It was obvious they had never been worn before. “Miss Jenny Heger,” he said, giving much attention to the buttons of the gloves and seeming to have a small difficulty with them. “I wrote to her last week and asked if she would care for a ride along the river, and a picnic, in my company.”

“Jenny?” said Jonathan.

“Miss Jenny. I am not on less formal speaking terms with her,” said Robert. “I received a kind little note in reply, and I must confess I was both pleased and surprised, and she accepted my invitation.”

Jonathan leaned against his desk and crossed his ankles.
“I
don’t believe it,” he said. “Jenny has never accepted any young man’s invitation before.”

“She accepted mine.” Robert was very relieved that Jona- than had shown no intense interest or annoyance, though why he should do either Robert could not understand. He only knew that any mention of Jenny heretofore aroused Jonathan to inexplicable emotion or lascivious remarks. He smiled a little and looked up at Jonathan, who was lighting
a
cigarette. “I know she is a very bashful young lady, and I will try to gain her confidence.”

Jonathan’s polished black eyes surveyed the suit and accessories contemplatively. “That ought to scare her to death, rather than reassure her,” he said. “What if there is an emergency at the hospital?”

“Don’t you remember?” asked Robert. “You kindly offered to attend to that for me, seeing that I haven’t had a day’s leisure since I arrived. And we doctors do need recreation, as you’ve said yourself, or we’ll soon not be worth anything to our patients.”

“Did I say that?” said Jonathan. “One of my more careless moments.” He seemed casually amused. “You’ll quite outshine poor Jenny, who doesn’t possess, I have heard, one single pretty gown.”

Robert ran his hand over his fine gold watch chain and took out his watch. He was more and more relieved. He said, “My mother once remarked that it seemed strange that Miss Jenny did not employ a companion, an older woman,
in loco parentis,
as it were.” What his mother had really said was, “It is an affront to the morals of the whole community that that young woman is so brazen in her conduct, and so careless of public opinion and the sensibilities of gently bred young ladies, that she does not have with her some elderly female of impeccable background and position in this city to protect her from gossip and give her respectability.” Remembering, Robert blushed, and Jonathan saw it.

“Jenny? An elderly female companion?” Jonathan laughed. “Jenny, I can assure you, can take very good care of herself.”

“But there is, after all, your brother living in the same house with her, and he
a
young man still, and only the servants.”

“Isn’t he protector enough for Jenny?” asked Jonathan.

The term, Robert recalled, was ambiguous. He began to feel a little heat of anger against Jonathan. “Just what do you mean by protector?” he demanded.

Jonathan said, “Now, what do you think I mean? Technically, he’s her stepfather, the husband of her dead mother. Don’t develop an evil mind, Bob.”

“I’m not the one with an evil mind!” said Robert, and felt a hard constriction in his chest. “I’ve seen Miss Jenny only a few times since the Fourth of July, on the streets and in the shops, and a more lovely and innocent young lady I have never seen in my life!” He seemed to swell. “We’ve talked a little, here and there, and she’s very shy and timid and seems afraid and awkward. I—I like Miss Jenny very much! I do, indeed. Eventually, I hope that she will take me seriously.”

Jonathan whistled. He eyed Robert and not with kindness, and then with a slow thoughtfulness. “We have progressed, haven’t we?”

“I hope so. I fervently hope so!” said Robert, and shook an invisible speck of dust from his hat and prepared to leave. Then he had another thought. “Why doesn’t your brother supplement her income so she can leave the island for a more —a more—protected residence?”

“I hear he did,” said Jonathan. “But she refused. I told you. She regards him as an interloper, a criminal blackguard who married her mother for her money—and she is quite right, Harald makes no pretense otherwise, and it was an amiable marriage—and she considers the island hers, as it was her father’s, and she stands guard over it. She’ll never leave it unless she is first sandbagged and blindfolded by someone, and somehow I can’t see you in that role.”

“Hardly,” said Robert. “But still, if she marries, she may change her mind.”

“My dear noisy-suited friend,” said Jonathan, “I should not blow up my hopes if I were you. Jenny and my mother are almost as close as mother and daughter, and my mother has hinted to me several times that Jenny’s affections are firmly fixed on some mysterious stranger.”

Robert’s face actually paled, and Jonathan frowned. “If that were so, she would not have accepted my invitation,” he said.

“Perhaps the gentleman is unattainable,” said Jonathan.

“Then, all the more should she be diverted,” said Robert, and took himself off in his sartorial glory.

Jonathan had not seen Jenny since that evening when he had tried to seduce her somewhat strenuously. He had often rowed over to the island on the pretense of amusing himself by mocking his brother, but when Harald was there—which was infrequent—Jenny appeared to be absent, or at least she made no appearance. Jonathan had idly asked about her once or twice and Harald had shrugged, had remarked that she was “in town,” or was not feeling well, or, “God knows,
I
don’t know where she is!” Harald seemed less easy lately, less nonchalant and less smiling, and to be absorbed in some thoughts of his own. He was restless. If one so affable and pleasant could be said to be brooding, then Harald was brooding. In view of what Marjorie had said, this was interesting to Jonathan. He wanted to say, “Insofar as Jenny is concerned, sweet brother, you might as well give up, and perhaps I should, too, though damned if I will until the day
I
die.”

When she visited Marjorie, Jonathan did not know, though he suspected. Marjorie did not mention the girl except to remark at one time that Jenny was not visiting her as often as usual. This was understandable, considering that she probably feared his unexpected arrival in the house.

There was one thing which had relieved him excessively: It was most evident that Jenny had never told Harald of his brother’s attack on her. She could easily have done so. Harald would then, at her insistence, have forbidden Jonathan to come to the island any longer. (It would have been interesting to see if he could summon up a rage or engage in fireworks or threats for the first time in his life.) But, for some strange reason, Jenny had not told him, and this was exciting in itself, nor had she written asking him never to go there any longer, nor had she asked Marjorie to convey the message.

But he had not seen her. The infuriating thing was that Robert Morgan had seen her on the streets and in the shops he was prowling for his mother, and she had actually accepted an innocent invitation from him. The implications of this nagged at Jonathan. He liked Robert immensely; he felt for him the strong brotherly affection he had never felt for his own brother. It annoyed his pride and his opinion of himself that he should, this hot Saturday afternoon, think many uncomplimentary things of his young replacement, and also of Jenny.