“I follow his ideas,” said Jonathan. “Yes.”
“Jenny thought it very touching. She is such a simple young woman. There are times when I’m sure that Jenny thinks children are procreated by osmosis or something.”
Jonathan could not help laughing. He sat down near his mother and eyed her with genuine pleasure. Then he said, and he stopped smiling: “Somehow, I don’t think Jenny believes that. No, I don’t think she believes that.”
So, you did teach her something, then, Jonathan, thought Marjorie. A rather strenuous lesson, from the look of you.
“So,” Marjorie continued, “Jenny believed her father and so she became abnormally shy with people, thinking she offended them with her ‘ugliness.’ Then she was much taller than the other girls at school, and this is the day of the little dimpled darling, Jon, and the cupid’s bow lips, and ‘the head no higher than my heart.’ You are really a stupid race, you men! Never mind. Then she was secluded on that island, even though her father was dead. He had built the schloss for her, contrary to the popular notion that he had built it for Myrtle. She not only feels compelled to live there but she loves the fantastic thing. I don’t think Jenny ever once considered that a man might want her—” She stopped, for Jonathan was looking at her grimly.
“She does now,” he said. “All right. I must tell you something before Jenny does, or even if she doesn’t, you’ll wonder why she never wants to come here again. I tried to rape her tonight. Do you understand me?”
Though Marjorie more than suspected that and was delighted at the thought, she knew that propriety demanded some quite contrary reaction from her. So she sat upright, arranged her features into an outraged expression, and exclaimed, “Jon! How could you, how dare you, a defenseless young girl alone and unprotected! How terrible, how dreadful, how unbelievable of you!”
He waved his hand wearily. “Very well, I’m
a
blackguard,
a
dog, a despoiler, a stinker, a hound—think them all. I’m all of them. Well. I didn’t succeed. Jenny fought me off like
a
wildcat, like a female cougar. Partly, it was her fault. She called me—something. I think that precipitated the whole thing, though perhaps not. So, while we’re being so bloody frank, as our English cousins call it, I might as well say that she convinced me that she was what is prissily called a ‘pure’ girl, and that I was particularly loathsome to her anyway. That stopped me. Of course, had I continued the little wrestling match, I’d have discovered the whole truth in a minute or two for myself, and that, of course, would have been beyond repair.”
“Yes,” said Marjorie, “it indeed would have. Women don’t like to be taken by force.”
“Like hell they don’t,” said Jonathan. “Mama dear, I’m not
a
little boy. I’ve known a considerable number of women. But Jenny wouldn’t have liked it, to use an understatement. Did you say you didn’t know the name of the man she’s in love with?”
“I didn’t say.” Marjorie considered what Jonathan had told her and now she felt a trifle disturbed. Would Jenny ever forgive her son? Yes, she would, eventually. She might even look into a mirror and study herself very soon and wonder what there was about her that had aroused Jonathan so and had incited the attack upon her. Once let a woman suspect she has charms that could drive
a
man to assault her, and she will love him then—if she had never before—for desiring her. Things were progressing very nicely, thought Marjorie. She gave a great yawn and then regarded her son seriously.
“Jonathan, you have behaved atrociously, as you know yourself. I don’t have to tell you that. If Jenny were not fond of me, she might prefer charges against you. This isn’t a light matter. Poor Jenny. By the way, what
did
make you lose your head like that?”
“It’s not important,” he said. “Men are always losing their heads over some damned woman, figuratively or literally.” He smiled at her. “You’ve called us men ‘a stupid race.’ No doubt. Say I lost my head. Jenny’s a very beautiful girl and
a
very desirable one, and I was having one of my moods today, and tonight, and there Jenny was, apparently available, though I don’t suppose you understand that.”
“Yes, I do. Still it was an abominable thing. Jenny’s only twenty, and a very young twenty, and you are an experienced man of thirty-five, and a widower. You’re almost old enough to be Jenny’s father. In some cultures you would be.” She paused and watched him closely. “I don’t suppose, while this joyous caper was going on, that you gave
a
single thought to Mavis?”
He looked at her blankly. “Mavis?” He was more blank than ever and Marjorie thought, Thank God, then, it is all over. “What has Mavis to do with it?”
“Nothing, to be sure!” Marjorie almost sang. “Dear, do let me bathe that ugly scratch. I presume Jenny did that to you, and it’s all you deserve.”
He carried a fresh glass of whiskey into his bedroom, then looked at it with distaste and put it down. He went to the window and looked out at the hot and breathless night, so Still now that all festivities had ended and the fireworks already forgotten. He craned for a glimpse of the river, which held the island in a watery moat, and he thought of Jenny. Then he thought of Mavis.
The old misery and despair did not return to him now, and when he thought of Mavis, he could hardly remember her appearance, though she was dead much less than a year. He could only faintly recall her raucous laughter. He was amazed. She was like someone he had not thought of for many years and whom he had hardly known. He stood quietly and waited for the sickness of mind to come, as always it had come, but it did not. Where the memory of Mavis had lived there was an empty place but not a wretched one. It was like a room being prepared for a new guest, for the first stranger had gone forever. Mavis no longer had the power to make him suffer and hate and turn away from living.
He felt intoxicated with relief and gratitude. The infection of Mavis had been dissipated. He could even think of her now with a kind of remote pity, recalling her youth and the swift ending of her life and the grave which he never visited but which was always covered with flowers from her aunt and uncle and others who had loved her. He went into her dressing room and then her bedroom, and lit a lamp and looked at the beauty there and the rosy lamps and pretty furniture. The very ghost of Mavis’ perfume floated toward him, but Mavis would never wear it again. He closed the door upon her room as one closes the door on someone who would never wake again.
Now he could think of Jenny. It was, possible-—though he did not actually believe it—that he would never see her again, or that, if seeing, she would never speak to him. He had done a violent and unpardonable thing to her, but women have rarely held that against a man. He dismissed the thought of her loving someone else as totally inconsequential and not to be given serious consideration. What did young Jenny know of love, anyway? He would contrive means of putting himself near her. She would not be able to avoid him! He chuckled. Then, after many months—but not too many —she would be forced to take him seriously, she would begin to think about him. How long would it take? A year, perhaps, if he could wait that long. Sweet Jenny. He remembered how she had felt in his arms and the touch of her mouth and her warm breath and how—how could he have forgotten that for a minute?—she had not resisted for a few seconds in that gloomy library and had let him kiss her throat
He turned from the window, smiling. He felt young as he had never felt young even when he had been a boy. He felt rejuvenated, alive, tingling, excited and expectant. For the first time he considered the thought that it was probable that life indeed had moments when it was desirable to be alive, and even rapturous. He was thirty-five and so he was not really young, and he could never give himself enthusiastically ever again to joy, or even truly believe in it, but there could be some contentment, some purpose, some infrequent happiness, in existence. Above all, there could be a purpose, and that was even more than enough for any man and much more than the majority of humanity ever could know.
When Jonathan entered his offices whistling the next morning, he found, as he expected, young Robert Morgan already there studying the files, which the elderly spinster “typewriter” had laid before him on Jonathan’s desk. Robert stood up, easily flushing as always, and said, “Good morning. I didn’t mean to take over your desk when you are still here, but the lady placed the files here and—”
“Perfectly all right,” said Jonathan. Robert stared at the court plaster on his face. He said, “An accident?”
“Just a romp with an unusually spirited lady last night,” said Jonathan. He appears very lively this morning, thought Robert Morgan. He watched Jonathan as he flipped through the files, and nodded.
“We enjoyed yesterday, my mother and
I,”
said Robert. Jonathan lifted his black eyes quickly to him, and the whites of them were very clear and bluish as if he had slept well. “Good, Bob.” He was brisk. He was the teacher. This was to be a strictly business session. Jonathan thoughtfully whistled as he kept glancing through the files. But he did not sit down at his desk. He had tacitly turned it over to the younger man.
“I see you’ve separated the goats from the sheep,” he remarked, “the hypochondriacs from the authentically sick. Don’t underestimate or despise the goats too much. They are the backbone of a doctor’s practice, and his bank account, for invariably they have money. They are even interesting. They can produce the most bizarre and fascinating of illnesses and symptoms—and pay well for your fascinated attention, too. Just a word of advice: Don’t discourage them overtly. Don’t underplay their complaints or lose patience. More than anything else, don’t be too quick to assure them that they are as sound as a dollar. That’s indefensible in a prudent physician. They’ll only take their purses to a more sympathetic man, and then where will you be? Harassed and bedeviled by the really sick, who have too much bad luck and misery to remember to pay the doctor promptly—if they ever pay at all.”
Robert laughed. Then he was grave again. Jonathan continued: “The difference between a hypochondriac and the really sick is that the former wants to believe he is ill—but not frighteningly ill—and that his doctor takes him seriously and is attentive to his suffering—but the really sick wants to be reassured that he is in good health or soon will be, and that he is in excellent hands. The hypochondriac wants to brood sentimentally about death, but the sick man can’t think of it without terror and demands an assurance that it is still far from him. That’s your clue. Watch your patient’s face while you consider him and talk with him. If he has a little tear in his eye, even before you examine him, you’ll find him in fine shape. If his eye looks at you imploringly and with fear, then you can get down to the ugly bare roots of the matter, and you won’t be disappointed.”
“You’re pretty cynical,” said Robert, laughing again. “I never heard that at Johns Hopkins. There were even some doctors there who said that hypochondriacs really are sick-in their minds. And that their sickness is caused by psychic distress.”
“A man,” said Jonathan, “or even a woman, who has psychic distress is not in straitened financial circumstances. He hasn’t time for such illness, unless he is a mental case. But a hypochondriac, you will learn, is usually highly intelligent and sane and pleasingly solvent. He can afford holidays and self-pamperings. The authentically sick, on the other hand— and in most cases—don’t have psychic symptoms too often in any measure. They are too busy trying to save their lives, and to pay their bills, and to keep their jobs. I’m not speaking of genuine anxiety, of course, which can frequently kill, but we don’t encounter that very often, and it never rises out of affluence, boredom, discontent and cravings for different pleasures, as pseudoanxiety rises in the hypochondriac. Someone told me once that when a man feels ‘divine discontent,’ he needs a change of chefs or a change of mistresses. You won’t find ‘divine discontent’ in the honestly ill. He just wants to get well and back to work. But the hypo lad wants his doctor to tell him that he’s overworking and needs a long, long rest, preferably an extended sea voyage, and preferably with a lady who isn’t his wife.”
Robert shook his head, smiling.
“I
still say you are a cynic.”
“No. I just know people, and what I know about them doesn’t keep me in a state of glee.”
Robert glanced cautiously at the shut door behind which the clicking of the typewriter was very emphatic. “I’ve noticed that,” he said, lowering his kind young voice. “I noticed it yesterday. You didn’t seem to be enjoying yourself much.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
Now Robert’s easy color was rising again, but he affected to be studying a new file. “You didn’t seem to like most of the people there. Not even that lovely young lady, Miss Jenny Heger.”
Jonathan, sitting in a comfortable chair which was reserved for patients, stopped in the motion of lighting a cigarette. Then he slowly blew out the match.
“Jenny? My niece-in-law, if you can call her that? What about Jenny?”
His voice had changed so sharply that Robert was startled. “I mean,” he said, “that she’s exceptionally—well, comely, winsome. Any man would be charmed.”
“And I wasn’t charmed?”
Robert turned and looked at him. He did not understand that tone, and now Jonathan was regarding him with what could only be cold displeasure. Robert was bewildered.
“I shouldn’t have been so personal,” he apologized. “Excuse me. Now, this Mrs. Summers—”