Testimony Of Two Men (93 page)

“Jenny?” said Jonathan, turning from his brother.

“It’s quite true,” she said in a muffled voice. “It was very stupid of me. I—I thought you—and Harald—had conspired together to kill my mother, for her money.” She suddenly put her hands over her face. “How could I have been so stupid, so ignorant? I thought, that night just before she died, that the injection you had given her—I didn’t know she was already dying and that you tried to save her.”

“And all this time,” said Harald in an affectionate voice, “the poor child believed we were brother-murderers. At least Jenny had not thought so badly of me; she thought I was guilty of only one murder, or the instigator of one. You were the real brute. With your little deadly needle.”

“Christ,” said Jonathan. He stared at the girl with disgust. Then he said sharply, “Jenny, you can’t have been that big
a
fool, can you, not even you?”

His tone made her shrink. She could only sit with her covered face and dolorously shake her head. Even when Jonathan picked up his coat and hat and pushed past his brother, she did not look up. Harald had lit a cigarette and was smoking it tranquilly. Jonathan stopped a short distance from the grotto and said with harsh contempt, “So that is why you were always running from me, Jenny, like a whipped mouse! If you hadn’t conjured up that wild fancy in your mind, Jenny, would you have let me share your bed with you that night?”

“Oho,” said Harald. “What a lovely vision arises in my brain! When was ‘that night,’ Jenny? Was our Jon too ardent, too pressing? He has no finesse, you know.”

Jonathan raised his hard brown hand and slashed his brother across the face, and Harald fell back against the side of the grotto. Then Jonathan went off, the sound of his enraged departure slashing through the silence for several moments.

Jenny was weeping. Harald smoked and watched her kindly until she could cry no more. She fumbled in her pocket for her handkerchief and blew her nose fiercely like a child. Harald said, “Nature can be very dramatic and heroic, but she inevitably ends on a ludicrous note. We weep out our hearts, then have to blow our noses or pay a visit to the water closet. Very banal. Jenny, this isn’t such a tragedy as you now think. You’ve seen Jon at his worst, if that’s possible. He never waited for explanations; he never does. He makes up what he considers his mind and never hears the defense. Think what you’ve escaped, Jenny.”

She blew her nose and glared at him with anguish and anger.

“I know, my dear. You’re blaming me. But I did it for your own good. You see, Jon wasn’t treated so unjustly by you, after all. Perhaps you never knew it, but there are some very vile tales going the rounds about you, in Hambledon, and he—”

“About me?” shouted Jenny, springing
to
her feet. “Me?”

“You, my sweet. That you are my mistress and probably the playmate of many other gentlemen, too.”

“Oh, what a filthy liar you are!” Jenny screamed, advancing on him.

“Jenny, compose yourself, pray.” His mocking tone halted her. “Jon believed them all, every one. He has made many obscene jokes about you, Jenny, in my company and in the company of others. He has made them, with some slight reservations, to my mother, too. If you don’t believe me, ask her. You might ask others also, in Hambledon.”

Jenny’s long black lashes, wet and matted, blinked rapidly at him. She was thinking, even while fresh tears ran down her face. She remembered the covert smiles she had been enduring in Hambledon since her mother had died, the avoidances, the snubs. She had always been miserably shy. She had thought that her increased shyness had brought out the half-hidden sneers she had detected in the town and that her “plainness” was becoming more and more evident and was arousing hostility. Her father had told her she had no “graces,” and she had come
to
think of herself, in her early maturity, as a clodhopper, quite deserving of smirks and indifference. She recalled Jonathan’s perverse remarks,
too,
which she had not understood.

Then on July Fourth, Jonathan had attacked her in her father’s house, where her mother had died, when she was alone and with no defender. She had forgotten what he had said to her in the library, and while he struggled with her in her room, for she had been too guilt-ridden later, and too remorseful to remember. Now she recalled, with sick cold horror, his taunt that she was withholding from him what she gave so freely to his brother. She remembered that she had struck him across the face as he had just struck Harald. How could she have forgotten? How could she have forgotten his manifest contempt for her, his jeers, his laughing accusations that she was “coy”?

Her face turned scarlet now as she faced the smiling Harald, who was dabbing carefully at his cheek, touching his lips with his handkerchief, then examining it for blood. “Are you thinking of confirmation, Jenny?” he asked. “If so, I am glad. If Jon had any respect for you, he would not have tried to force himself—as I gather he did—on you ‘that night,’ nor would he have attempted to do the very same thing today in this grotto, when he thought you were alone on the island, without me to protect you, and far from the house. He treated you like a trollop, Jenny, a drab, a slut. Surely even you are clever enough to realize that? A gentleman does not try so crudely to seduce a young girl, especially a girl like you, unless he believes her beneath respect. His offers of marriage—Jenny! Had you—er—succumbed to him, let us put it nicely, he would have laughed in your face afterward. Believe me, I know my brother. He has a bad reputation among women.”

“Jon could think those things about me?” muttered Jenny in pathetic wonderment.

“Jenny, Jenny, haven’t you been listening? Isn’t it evident that he did and still does? Isn’t his conduct enough for you?”

“Oh!” cried Jenny, and put her hand to her cheek and turned her devastated face aside in shame and sorrow and bitter loneliness.

“I know this is hard, my sweet,” said Harald, exultant. “But how much better it is for you to know it now than later, if I had not come to your rescue. Think of what you would have endured then. Jon’s a bad man, Jenny. He was cruel to his wife, Mavis, and drove her out of his life, though you choose not to believe it. He is ruthless with women, absolutely ruthless. A woman serves but one purpose for him. The female part of the whole damned town adores him, except when it has reason to hate him. Now, isn’t that strange? I will forget modesty for a moment and remark that compared with me he has no charm or appearance.”

“I hate you both,” said poor Jenny. “I despise you both.” Then she flung back her hair and marched to the archway of the grotto. But Harald smiled at her, shaking his head and not moving.

“You don’t despise me, sweet Jenny. You despise what I’ve told you, and is that fair to me? You wronged me terribly in your thoughts, and I’ve forgiven you, and wasn’t that magnanimous? Who else would forgive such an awful accusation so easily, except someone who loves you?”

“Please,” said Jenny in a broken voice, “please let me go.
I
-—I can’t stand it any longer. Please.”

“Of course,” he said with gentleness, and moved aside and she passed him in a rush and he heard one loud sob from her as she ran toward the castle.

“Dear Jon,” thought Harald. “One good turn deserves another. I do believe one of my teeth cut the inside of my cheek. At any rate, I think you’ve seen the last of Jenny, and she of you. Will I invite you to the wedding? I must give that long and serious thought.”

Miss Amelia Forster regarded Howard Best with horror and disbelief as he sat opposite her in the deserted waiting room, for this was Saturday afternoon and Robert Morgan was in the hospitals and Jonathan was not to be found. Howard had called Miss Forster, whom he knew well—his father had been a schoolmate of hers and she was a friend of the family—and asked her if he could consult her in Jonathan’s offices. Miss Forster, as the daughter of a minister and a member of the Ladies Aid, had been accustomed to taking orders all her life and so, though she had had plans for a picnic lunch with her sister’s family, it never occurred to her to mention that she had a previous engagement. Moreover, Howard’s voice had been properly grave and insistent and resembled her father’s voice in his sterner moments.

So Howard sat alone with her on this hot and dusty afternoon, the latter part of August, and gave her a circumspect outline of that section of Louis Hedler’s story which intimately concerned the office and herself, and asked that the matter be confidential.

She began to cry silently, her thin white nose turning quite red. She removed her spectacles and wiped her eyes. Her stiff muslin leg-of-mutton sleeves took on a wilting air for a moment or two. Then she briskly patted her gray pompadour and sat up straight and folded her lean hands on her desk. She said in a very quiet voice, “Howard, you know that it is all lies about Dr. Ferrier.”

“Yes, Amelia, I know. But it is going to be very hard to convince others.”

“But to think Dr. Ferrier, who is so kind and so good—
a
little strait-laced, but I like that in gentlemen—so old-fashioned but so
good,
could be the victim of so much
hate,
and
malice
and lies and
cruelty!
To think there could be a plot to take away his license—”

“And to send him to prison,” said Howard.

Amelia gasped. “What a wicked,
wicked
world!”

“I never heard much to the contrary. But it’s not surprising, is it? ‘The children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light.’ Isn’t that what the Bible says?”

The minister’s daughter said, “The wicked flourish like
a
green bay tree. A rich man’s wealth is his strong city. I have seen servants upon horses and princes walking as servants upon the earth. —Money answereth all things.’ Yes, the Bible says all this, and it makes one wonder, does it not?”

“I wonder all the time,” said Howard. “But—we—believe that great error arises from private interpretations of the Bible, Amelia. Please don’t take offense and bridle that way. We aren’t going to have a discussion about sects. Now, please look at these receipted bills, November 10th and November 21st of last year, made out to Miss Louise Wertner and Miss Mary Snowden, of this town, respectively, one for fifty dollars, one for seventy-five. Did you receipt these bills a short time ago?”

The spectacles now in place, Miss Forster examined the bills closely and said with firmness, “Yes, indeed. I remember the young ladies well, on that day, rather small and pale.”

“Did you recognize them at all? From an earlier date?”

“No. But Doctor has a large practice, you know. It is impossible to remember all who come and go within these walls, especially if they are not regular patients. To my own knowl- edge
I
never saw these young ladies before they came in to pay their bills, and I accepted the money in cash and receipted these bills.” She rested an angular forefinger on them.

“I see.” Howard pondered with some melancholy. “And this is your handwriting?”

“Indeed, yes. And the bills were typed on this Oliver, and in my fashion. No one forged those bills, Howard,” and she gave him a faint smile. ” ‘Complete physical examinations.’”

“So, these bills were sent out last November, as dated, after Jon examined the girls?”

Miss Forster frowned. “Why no, Howard. The girls did not bring bills with them.”

Howard sat up, catching his breath. “What do you mean, Amelia?”

“They came in, hours apart, and they both said they had forgotten to bring the bills, but the amount was so-and-so, and the bills were dated on those dates. Now, I accepted the money, of course, and I typed out fresh bills, and I receipted them and—”

“Three weeks ago?” shouted Howard and jumped to his feet with a wild expression.

Miss Forster stared at him, somewhat frightened. “Why, yes,” she stammered. “I told you so, Howard. Was I wrong to accept the money when they had no bills? Is it absolutely senseless to believe that people would come into this office and say they owe the doctor money, and offer it, when they don’t owe it at all, and you simply must not—”

“Wait!” Howard was breathlessly elated. He sat down and regarded Miss Forster with a beatific smile. “Let me understand this clearly. You, to your knowledge, never saw these young ladies before, but they came in a short time ago, told you they owed Jon money, mentioned the amount, and claimed they had forgotten to bring the bills? But the dates were for last November?”

“Quite correct,” said Miss Forster.

“And three weeks ago—on that very date—you made out new bills?”

“Quite correct.”

“And receipted them, then and there, and accepted the money?”

“To be sure.”

“Then, as far as you can recall, you never sent out bills for those amounts last November?”

“Not as far as I can recall, but it was so long ago, nearly nine months, When I accepted the money. I went for the young ladies’ files—to note down the payment, of course, so no new bills will be sent.”

“Darling Amelia! Let me see those files!”

She blinked at him. “But there weren’t any, Howard.”

“There weren’t any?” He was incredulous, but deeply smiling.

“No, indeed. It worried me a little too. I mentioned it to Doctor later, and he wasn’t disturbed. You see, he often destroys records which are no longer active. I think it very incorrect myself, but we’d need a warehouse, considering his practice, and if the bills are paid and the patients do not appear again within six months or a year, he destroys the records and—”