The man of Plato's day, of the earlier days of the Pharaohs, of the caves, of Rome and Greece and Byzantium, of Persia and Arabia, was the man of the present, also, with the same weaknesses and viciousness, the same desires and hatreds and longings, the same passion and the same apathy, the same nightmares and fantasies. The ancient philosophers had talked of the "changing nature of man," but it had never changed. Only religion had sometimes breached that stubborn fortress of cruelty and poetry, of war and of greed, of childlike belief in progress and thaumaturgy, of pacification of evil gods and visions of eternal peace and brotherhood. Religion, however, had always sunken back, defeated, to await another crisis in man's history to wash again that unchangeable battlement, to dash rainbowed foam against stony walls, to dampen the seething wrath and mindless fury that lay within.
But Teddy Roosevelt, adamantly believing that man could be changed by "just laws" and government, did not know that. Law had never had much or permanent impact on man, and it never would, for it did not touch the primal spiritual essence which only religion could reach. Fads and fancies, "new" ideas, "new" ways of observing phenomena and "new" ways of responding to them—all these were so ancient and so tried and found wanting that it made intelligent men smile when they encountered the Teddy Roosevelts and their piteous hope and emphatic belief "in the future."
For a few hours Jonathan forgot almost everything as he reflected on the man who might possibly become President of the United States of America if Mr. McKinley died of his serious wound. He even forgot to drink. At sunset he actually went out to look at the sky and for the first time he was made uneasy. The enormous sunset, incandescent orange, filled the whole west, and it was sullen and threatening. Even the mountains, dark and rounded, appeared insignificant below that sultry panorama, at once sulphurous and jaundiced, hinting of danger and tempest. The falling sun burned in it, a great red eye, blurred of edge but flaming. The air was pent, hot, still, and the earth was like scorched bread, crumbling and powdery. As Jonathan watched, a great phalanx of black clouds began to boil over the mountains into the vast sea of orange and scarlet, and from them shot blinding bolts of primordial light. Then came the long boom of thunder, followed almost immediately by a tremendous flow of wind, and the dry trees rattled with a crisp and tormented sound, and the bronzed grass bent, and a livid shadow ran hastily over the earth.
Jonathan was fascinated by the spectacle, which reflected his interior mind and thoughts. He walked into his mother's garden, which, as it was on higher land, gave a view of the river. The water was liquid brass and the island stood in it blackly under the sunset and the increasing shadows. Then the rain came, huge plump drops falling with rapid splashing sounds, and the lightning nickered over all the country and the thunder howled hoarsely from the mountains. Jonathan ran inside the house, feeling a primitive exultation, a longing for destruction.
The cook and the maid were already running about, closing windows, struggling with shutters, catching blowing draperies, and moment by moment the house darkened and the storm rushed upon them. Jonathan wanted to shout with exultation as he helped the two women. He saw their pale and frightened faces in the dimming light, "Only a storm," he said between detonations of thunder.
The wind came heavier and heavier and the rain poured down the windows and gutters and eaves overran, chuckling and gargling, and the glass rattled in its frames and strong doors shivered. The noise was becoming deafening. It sounded as if dozens of rapid freight trains were roaring overhead. The three in the Ferrier house lighted gaslamps, and the yellow glow and the quiet within only intensified the gigantic tumult outside. It was hard to distinguish between the bellow of the wind and the crash of the thunder. Fiery glares lit up the premature twilight that had fallen on the countryside, immediately followed by explosions of incredible sound. Yet some of the mountains were still outlined against the ocherous light in the west.
Jonathan, standing near a window, could barely see the trees on the lawn, which were bent almost double as if in agony, throwing their leafy arms upward and about them, contorting themselves in fresh blows of the gale. They twisted, reeled, turned, stretching this way and that, anguished and nebulous shapes in hell. Sometimes they appeared to stagger, shaken to their heart-roots. Then branches were detached with a raging screech and shriek, and saplings were torn up and thrown across the grass. Jonathan went into the lighted kitchen to find his two employees sitting side by side, grasping each other. "I see we have the hurricane that was promised," he said. His easy attitude, his lack of fear, reassured them, until another enormous crash of thunder shook the old sturdy house and a flying branch struck a wall like a titanic whip.
"Never saw anything like it," said the cook.
"It will pass," said Jonathan. A glare of lightning lit the kitchen, brighter than any artificial light, and the two women saw his face and shrank.
But it did not pass. As the hours went on the storm increased in madness, and the wind quickened and trees fell and the river filled and the sepia land was flooded and ran with water, for the earth could not absorb it. At midnight the storm was worse, if possible. Now, between explosions of thunder, could be heard the bells and the rumblings of fire engines, and the sky, in all that rain, turned murky-red here and there. The air did not cool. It became hotter, seemingly, at midnight, especially in the closed house. Jonathan prowled from room to room, listening, exulting, trying to peer through steaming windows. Then a chimney was struck and the two women, in their upper bedrooms, screamed as they heard the tumbling bricks on the slate roof, and smelled the suddenly pervasive odor of ozone. Jonathan raced up the stairs to the eastern end of the hall and saw the bricks rolling down as the lightning lit them, and he waited for indications of fire. But the house had seen storms before, and the brick walls were impervious. Jonathan called up to the women, "It's all right. Just a small chimney."
Another lightning bolt showed him that at least three old giant trees had fallen on the lawn, and the ground was littered with leaves and branches and twigs. The heat was stifling, so Jonathan opened a casement with caution and immediately could smell the sharp electricity in the teeming air He inhaled it with pleasure, though water splashed on his face, and it recalled to him very clearly an earlier storm like this, when he had been a child. It had lasted two days, the farmlands had been flooded and thousands of stock had died in the fields and crops had been washed out and typhoid had struck the town of Hambledon. Two very tiny islands in the river had been completely drowned and had disintegrated, and the largest island, now called "Heart's Ease," had been almost entirely inundated and four squatter families had perished. In fact, the water did not recede from the island to its original level for several days, and it left behind it a residue of sticky mud and debris, which prevented it from being the local pleasure and picnic spot until almost two years had past.
Jonathan stood at the window and forgot the storm and thought of the island and Jenny alone there with one or two of the servants. It was the first time he had permitted himself to think clearly of Jenny since the day he had left her in the grotto. She had invaded his dreams, but he had known that if he was to "settle" things for himself in Hambledon, he must not let his mind wander to Jenny.
Now he could see the island as he had seen it as a child after such a storm as this, and for the first time since he had left Jenny the brutalized and rational part of his mind became dominant. He knew he could not see the island from the house now, after midnight and in the storm, but he went to the east hallway and looked through the window, straining toward the river. He waited for lightning to light up the water, but when it did, it only illuminated the rain and made of it a frightful and silvery cataract, like a living wall. There seemed hardly a pause between the blasts of thunder.
So intense was the storm that the lamps of the town had gone out for some reason or other, and Hambledon showed, in the valley, like a broken huddle of pottery in the black lap of the blazing and streaming mountains. The thuddings of the gale
mingled with the thunder, so that the whole universe seemed to have been caught up in unbearable noise and confusion and doom. As Jonathan still stood in the east hallway a closed shutter on a large window broke loose with a scream, and the glass gave way and above the uproar there would be heard the thin and splintery shattering. Jonathan ran downstairs, looking for the wrecked window, and he saw that a faint bluish mist filled all the rooms, a result of the strike at the chimney. He found the window. It was one of the four of his mother's drawing room, and water was already pouring in like a miniature falls and the carpet was dark with moisture and the parquetry floor swam in it. Careful of the shards of glass remaining in the frame, Jonathan leaned out into the drenching night and caught the shutters and brought them back to the window, but only after an effort that almost tore his arms from their sockets. He locked the shutters again. The wind savaged them, gushing through the apertures, and they rattled and shook. But they held. Jonathan watched them, panting, wiping water from his face and hands. His head was ringing with the constant and infernal noise.
He stood in the quiet room, and it was lit only by lightning and seemed apart from the disaster outside, calm in its lovely furniture, its beveled Florentine mirrors, its glancing prisms, its pale and paneled walls. There was a faint perfume here of spice and roses and lavender, and the lamplight gleamed on green brocade draperies and polished every piece of glass and silver. He looked about him and thought, "I shall never know this room again, but I'm afraid I will always remember it." For the first time an abysmal loneliness came to him, a desolation.
He did not know what to do. To attempt to work in the bursting noise, in this threatened house, in this most lonely house, was impossible. To try to read, to think, were equally impossible. He began to move through the house slowly, slowly, looking at objects, at vistas, at corners, at hallways, at stairs, as if he were a ghost revisiting a house still dearly beloved. He thought of this, and the mournful delusion was complete, for the light bluish mist was everywhere like a supernatural emanation. He went to his father's study and only here did the quietness of the house seem spurious, just as in Adrian's lifetime the "retreat" had been spurious. Jonathan surveyed the room, not frowning now, but with sadness. He thought for a moment that he could see the apparition of his father in that favorite chair, anxiously serene, determinedly contemplative, deliberately in repose. For the first time Jonathan did not smile at the apparition with indulgent if scornful affection. He closed the door gently behind him when he left the study, feeling the deepest of compassions for the affected and innocent man who had never studied here at all and had never known any depths of emotion except fear.
A sane area in his brain had cleared and he thought that now he could begin to think with some moderation and reason. He went to his crowded room, heaped with luggage and boxes, and he sat down in a big wing chair and listened to the storm, which seemed to be lessening. I will think, he said to himself. Instantly he was asleep, exhausted from the turmoil and hatred and anger and pain of the past days.
When he awoke, it was to wan, quiet and watery sunlight, and it was morning. He felt for his watch, then remembered that it was still at the jeweler's being repaired. He looked at his bedside table clock and saw that it was half-past nine. He had slept for seven hours. He was cramped and aching, nervously itching. He got up and went to the windows and saw the ruin outside, the dying branches and thick green carpet of tossed leaves, the shattered trees. His mother's gardens were devastated. Every late flower lay flat on the torn earth. The flower beds and much of the shrubbery, including the lilac bushes, were smashed. Here, too, trees had fallen, delicate mountain ash, young white birch, a tall blue spruce or two. But, in the quiet sunlight, so frail and uncertain, the birds were singing their last songs of the season, and the sky was a ragged blue. The eye of the storm was over this section of the state, and though the air was clean and washed, it held a certain premonition. And everywhere, in low places on the lawns and in the streets were deep puddles of sky-blue water.
Beyond the gardens, beyond the lawns and the buildings on the far side, Jonathan could see the river, a cobalt blue, cold, and rushing turbulently. It was only his imagination, of course, but it seemed to him that the island, whose western point he could see, had sunken in the water, which had risen very high in the past few hours. Jonathan told himself that it had only now reached its normal level. He wondered if the "castle" and its trees had been damaged to any extent
And then, without warning, it seemed incredible that he must leave here without Jenny. He leaned his hands on the sill of the window and let the sense of incredulity wash over him. He knew that he must control himself. There was nothing for Jenny in his coming life, for that life was already dark and bleak and without hope, and he must suffer in it until the end of his life or until— He thought of killing himself. The impulse was so immediate and so urgent that he could not breathe easily for several moments. It came to him it was the only solution. A life without Jenny and his work was not a life at all. It was only a mass of fallen stones, and he could not live in them. He gazed at the island and said aloud, "Jenny, Jenny." But he knew himself. He loved Jenny too much to take her and bring her into the ruins with him. For never again would he practice medicine or lift his hand to help any sufferer. He had done with the self-delusion that any man was worth saving, even himself.
I called others puerile and childish, he thought, yet all the time I was those things myself, secretly believing that somewhere there existed decency and honor and selflessness, in spite of what I said to many others. I chastised other people for their sentimentality, yet all the time I was revoltingly sentimental about pain and misery, despair and wretchedness. I laughed at young Bob Morgan's ingenuousness, but all the time I was even more ingenuous than he, and isn't that contemptible? I don't think I intended to leave this town at all! I think I just wanted it to repent and come to me and ask my forgiveness—so I could go on serving it with some self-respect! I made the gestures of departure ostentatiously and waited. There was nothing to wait for. But while I was the only one waiting, like a cowlicked country bumpkin with his feet shyly crossed and his finger in his mouth, hoping, the town was plotting vengefully against me. Why? I don't think the town knows, itself, and God knows I don't know. Perhaps my disposition, as Louis Hedler has said, and others, is not very endearing, but I never wronged a man, never betrayed one, never maliciously injured him. I gave of myself, and it was rejected.
Did I expect too much? Was I one of those whom Aristotle wrote: "The angry denouncers of men are the true lovers of men?" I don't know. I only know that whatever it was that I expected had no reality. Can one come to terms with truth and go on living? If others can, I am afraid I cannot. I am afraid I am as weak as my father. "Courage is the price." I don't have it.
He went back to his room and looked at the bags and suitcases, and a wave of exhaustion took him, and a feeling of the most awful loneliness and loss. He put Jenny from his mind forcibly. He undressed, bathed, shaved, and dressed again, in a haze of unreality which he welcomed, for it stopped him from thinking. But the sickness of loss remained. He went downstairs for breakfast and found a tremulous Mary who told him she had been afraid that the storm last night "was the end of the world." Jonathan smiled at her kindly, and she thought how withered and blasted he appeared, and how very pale. "I am afraid, Mary," he said, "that the world isn't that lucky." Mary retreated to the kitchen and informed the cook that "Doctor seems so strange," and the cook replied, as she was always replying these days, "He has his worries."
There was no mail, for the trains had been delayed, and the newspaper was only two pages today and was rilled with news of the storm and of reports that it had been extremely destructive over several states. President McKinley was reported to be recovering from his wound, though several Cabinet officers had gone to Buffalo under urgings from Vice-President Roosevelt.
What will I do with today? thought Jonathan. He went outside and was surprised to find that withi
n an hour the air had turned sultry again and was still and pent. He was amazingly tired and sluggish. The gardener came and wailed at the wreck of his careful work and Marjorie's. "Mrs. Ferrier isn't going to like this," said the old man, looking reproachfully at Jonathan. "It's bad along here, Doctor, very bad. Lots of windows got blown in, and I hear there's twenty people missing in town, and the news coming from the farms is bad, very bad. Water's rising in the river, too. It's going to flood. Farms is already flooded, they say, and stock drowned." He looked at the blue sky, with its rack of hurrying clouds. "They say it's all over, but it ain't I can tell. I lived a long time, and I know weather."
Jonathan walked about with him on the soaked earth, his hands in his trousers pockets. "Jim," he said, "what do you think about living, anyway?"
Jim turned slowly and studied him, and his browned and wrinkled face was solemn. "Well sir, Doctor, I guess you just have to stand it don't you?"
Jonathan was intrigued. "But why?"
Jim shrugged. "Why not?" he replied. "What else can a man do?"
What else can a man do? Was that a stupid answer or was it a very wise one?
Jonathan said, "Let me help you clean up. It's all a mess and a ruin, but we can put it together again, I suppose. We can even plant new trees where the old ones fell. We can plant the gardens again and pick up the dead branches."
The old man, who had bent to examine a precious and battered shrub, painfully straightened himself and he smiled at Jonathan. "Well, that's what I've just been saying, Doctor."
Robert Morgan, coming to the offices, paused on the steps and blinked, and could not believe it. Far across the long lawns he could see Jonathan Ferrier in his shirtsleeves, filling a wheelbarrow with debris and wielding a rake and tugging at dead branches, working near the old gardener. Then he was vigorously using a pitchfork for heavier debris. He stopped to light a cigarette and look at the sky. Well, well, thought Robert, and went into the offices smiling a little.
Testimony of Two Men Page 80
