CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Robert Morgan and Jenny Heger were only a quarter of a mile behind Jonathan. Robert had met the girl at the little dock on the mainland side, though he had wanted to go to the island and row her to the shore. However, when he arrived in his smart new buggy he found her waiting for him, diffidently smiling and silent. He knew nothing of women’s clothing, but somehow he immediately guessed that her apparel was new, and he was delighted that she had gone to this trouble for him and cared enough to do so. She wore a frail white shirtwaist all tinily tucked from chin to waist, with frills, here and there, of white lace, and her skirt was of expensive white silk with a black patent-leather belt and a glittering buckle. She wore white stockings and slippers, and her ankles were occasionally visible as the wide skirt flared with her movements. Her head was covered with a new hat of Leghorn, a very pale gold, and heaped with snowy roses of silk, and there were actually white gloves on her hands.

Her beautiful face was sunburned, a disgusting defect in ladies, but she carried no parasol as a “proper” young lady would have done. The extra color in her cheeks and on her lips made her appear more vivid than usual. She was “rosy” or “dewy,” as his mother called sweating—a euphemism that made Robert laugh—and her upper lip was beaded artlessly with water, and her forehead too. She smelled of lavender soap and sachet. When she strode to Robert’s buggy, still not speaking, she walked like an elegant young man, sure and free, not mincing as other girls minced, setting her feet down firmly yet not hard. She climbed in before he could help her. He thought that she wished to avoid his touch but saw at once that she was acting in full simplicity. He climbed in after her, picked up the reins, then smiled down into the profound and shining blue of her eyes and noticed, again, the total candor of her heroic face and the dimple in the white chin.

“I brought a really nice lunch,” said Robert. “The hotel put it up for me. We aren’t quite settled, yet, my mother and I, in our new house, so we’re still at the hotel. We expect to move into our house on Monday. Well, it’s a nice lunch, I think. Cold chicken and salad and buttered new bread and strawberry shortcake and cheese, and a good bottle of white wine, with goblets. I hope you enjoy it.”

“Yes,” said Jenny. She had naturally accepted the fact of the lunch, unaware that ladies usually prepare the picnic collations. It was the first time she had spoken, but at least she was smiling faintly and shyly at him, and studying him with the frankness of an honest child. Yet, for the first time, he wondered uneasily why she had really accepted his invitation. It was not quite in character for Jenny Heger, the young and frightened recluse about whom such appalling stories were told in the town.

They drove off along the River Road. “A wonderful day,” said Robert. “I’m so glad you consented to go with me, Miss Jenny.”

She was silent. She was looking at the river as if she were all alone, and at the island. Robert drew the thin buggy cover over her clothing to protect her from the dust and she was not even aware of it.

“I found an admirable spot, when I was visiting patients the other day,” Robert went on. “Very beautiful, very secluded. Very cool, even in this weather. With a view of the river, too.”

“That’s nice,” said Jenny, in her strong clear voice, and then she looked at him with that lovely but uncertain smile. “It was good of you to invite me, Doctor.”

He hesitated. His kind eyes smiled down at her. His red-gold mustache was very bright in the sun. “It was my pleasure, Miss Jenny. But I hope it isn’t exclusively my pleasure.”

She was unaccustomed to gallantries he saw at once, for she pondered his hint with amusing seriousness. Then she said, “I like it, too. The only picnics I’ve ever gone to were those given by Aunt Marjorie. Mrs. Ferrier, you know.”

“A charming lady,” said Robert.

“Yes,” said Jenny.

All at once the conversation died, to Robert’s disappointment. But it was enough for him that Jenny was beside him, her elbow sometimes touching his sleeve as the buggy rolled over uneven places in the road. She exhaled freshness and youth and innocence. Then Robert knew that he had loved this girl from the very beginning, and he was deeply moved. Because of the dangerous and sudden intensity of his emotions he looked for easiness. He wondered what she liked, this mysterious girl, and what amused her. He had heard she had had a good schooling, and then when she was fifteen her mother had hired a tutor for her for two years to complete that schooling. (There were tales about that also, in Hambledon.) Yet, she had gone nowhere. She had seen nothing of the world. The only point of reference between him, Robert Morgan, and Jenny Heger, was Jonathan Ferrier. But he did not wish to talk about Jonathan, above everything else.

It was Jenny who indirectly approached the subject. He saw that it was awkward, even painful, for her to initiate a subject, so he was not surprised when she stammered, “Do you like Hambledon, Doctor?”

“Yes. Very much. I could have remained in Philadelphia, and I was offered staff positions in New York and Boston, but I wanted a small town. I don’t know why, Miss Jenny. But now I know, I think.”

He waited for her to ask for further elucidation, but she did not. She said, “New York. Boston. Paris. London. Vienna. St. Petersburg. I—I think of them often. I’d like to go. I think.”

“Perhaps you will, someday.” He thought with what joy he would take Jenny to those far-off places, and what he would show her. They would explore, for the first time, together.

“Yes,” said Jenny, but there was no conviction in her voice. She waited a moment and then with that painful difficulty she said, “So, you will remain here.”

“Yes.” (Damn that monosyllable!)

“And Jon—Dr. Ferrier—will truly go away?”

“Yes.” (He was falling into a helpless game.)

“Soon?”

“Yes.” (At least she was talking!)

“Where to?” asked Jenny. He was surprised that she was interested in a man she so obviously loathed. However, perhaps she was eager for him to get out of her sight.

“I don’t know,” said Robert. (Why weren’t they talking about himself, and, best of all, their own future?) “I don’t think, though, that he’ll ever come back to Hambledon. Never again. I have a feeling his mother will go with him, too, for it’s doubtful he’ll ever remarry. The town treated him abominably, as you know.” Now he was curious to know her own reaction to the murder trial. She said nothing. So, he went on, “How anyone can believe that Jonathan Ferrier killed his wife and—er—his child, is beyond credibility.”

Jenny turned and looked at him gravely, and shook her head. “Jon never did that, Doctor. Never. He—he couldn’t have—he was away at the time. Of course, I once read that anyone is capable of anything. But Jon didn’t do that, he didn’t do that.”

He was surprised at her mixture of sophistication and ingenuousness. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Miss Jenny. But you and I make up a minority in this town, you know.”

“Yes.” She paused. “I didn’t think Jon was such a coward.”

“Coward?”

“Running away. He should stay—and fight.”

“I think so, too. But how can you fight cobwebs, even if they are poisonous?”

“I do,” said Jenny. Now her face was exceptionally pale under all that sunburn, and he could see the sudden whiteness around her mouth.

“I suppose you do,” he said with sadness. She jerked a little with her own surprise, and then, to his greater amazement, she colored violently and unbecomingly.

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

“The stories,” he said.

“About Jon? I don’t believe them in the least!” Her voice was vehement.

Then it came to him that Jenny knew nothing about the tales concerning herself, and he was sad and freshly moved, and filled with the desire to protect her. But, why was her face so red now, and so almost challenging?

“Does Jon ever talk about me?” she asked. Her voice was trembling.

“Jon? Why no. Why should he?”

“Oh.” The color left her face and she seemed to be relieved.

“He wouldn’t talk about his relatives, anyway,” said Robert.

“I’m not his relative!” said Jenny. “His brother is my stepfather—but Jon is no relative of mine!”

She looked at the water and said, “Isn’t it beautiful? The sun on the sails, and the color of the mountains and the water? I’ve seen so many paintings of far away places—the Rhine, the downs of Devon, the Seine, the Riviera, and the Orient. But none seems to me so beautiful as here, and I want to spend my life on my island.”

She looked at him with that touching candor of hers and said, “You know, everyone thinks Papa built the castle for Mama. But he built it for me. It was a secret between us, so that Mama wouldn’t feel neglected.” He couldn’t tell in what direction her thoughts were flowing, but he was enchanted when she smiled a real smile this time and he saw her small and brilliant teeth. “Mama and I had secrets, too. She said gentlemen did not appreciate intelligence in ladies and that it was the duty of ladies to play the fool to keep the gentlemen happy. She also said that a man never really forgives a woman for marrying him.” She laughed for the first time and he thought it an endearing and childlike sound. “Mama deceived Papa, and Harald, and almost everyone else, into believing she was only comfortable and fluffy. But she was really very sharp.”

“I am sure,” said Robert, “that it would be impossible for a stupid lady to have a daughter like you.”

She blushed and drew away from him a little, and her eyes were suspicious. Then, they brightened with anxiety. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Why, Miss Jenny, you are the handsomest young lady I have ever seen in my life!” He spoke with deep sincerity and Jenny watched him closely for a few minutes after he had spoken. Then she was smiling again.

“Do you honestly think so?” she asked, not in flirtation but with a real desire to know. “That is, as children say, cross your heart and hope to die?”

He lifted his yellow-gloved hand and crossed his heart and Jenny was openly pleased. “Why?” she asked, with disturbing directness.

“Didn’t you ever look at yourself in a mirror?”

“Yes. Of course. I am very plain.”

He glanced at her with disbelief, but again she was perfectly sincere.

“Who told you that, Miss Jenny?”

“Why, Papa. And he was quite right. They used to call me a great gawk in school. You see, I am so tall and thin, and have big hands and feet—and I don’t look well in pretty clothes. I’m not gracious, not charming. I don’t know what to do with myself!”

Robert drew up the buggy under the shade of a giant elm, fastened the reins and turned fully and solemnly to the girl, and she instinctively shrank back from him a little. But he did not touch her. He said, “Jenny, I want to tell you now that I’ve seen many beautiful girls and women in my life, in big cities over all the eastern part of the country, and there is none who could match you. Did you ever ask yourself why I wished you to come with me today? Did you think it was my Christian kindness of heart?” He smiled into her eyes which were widening slowly. “It was my selfishness. I wanted to be with a lovely woman, a great lady, and that is what you are, Jenny. A great lady.”

She pondered over every word he had said, weighing his truthfulness, his actual meaning, and finding nothing wanting at all. She looked faintly incredulous. She adjusted her hat, smoothed her gloves, bit her lower lip, but never took her eyes from his.

“Has nobody ever told you that before?” he asked.

“No. That is,” and she hesitated, “two did, but I didn’t believe them. I still don’t. Oh, yes, Aunt Marjorie told me, too, but she is very kind and so I couldn’t believe her. Truly, you don’t find me repulsive?”

“Jenny!” He wanted to take this woman, who was still a child in her mind, in his arms and kiss her hard and repeatedly, but he knew that that would frighten and outrage her. He was so sensitive to her by now, so full of the acuteness of love. “Jenny, you are as repulsive as a rose, as ugly as a young green tree, as hideous as a butterfly! Now, is that sufficient?”

She laughed reluctantly. “Perhaps to you, and thank you,” she said.

He saw that she trusted him, and he was elated. He said after a moment, “Who were the ‘two’ who told you what I’ve told you in all honesty?”

Now her blue eyes left him and she looked down at the dust cover that lay over her knees. “They don’t matter. One was Harald, and the other was Jon.”

“Well, Harald should know. He’s an artist, a painter, and they are very perceptive of beauty. And Jon—well, I understand he is quite a connoisseur of women.” He added this delicately, but it was apparent at once that she took his remark on its face, for she nodded.

“Mavis was the prettiest woman I ever saw,” she said. “She was like the princess in the fairy tales I read as a child. Rapunzel. The Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella. Snow White. She was all of them, Mavis. Of course, she was a lot older than I was, four years. She was—dazzling. People always stared at her, absolutely hypnotized. I wanted to look at her for hours—but she was never still.”

“You mean, jiggling with her hands and her head, the way the ladies all do now—except you, Jenny? The fashionable jiggling, pretending to animation or something?”

She giggled. She actually giggled. He thought it an adorable sound. “They do look as if they have the palsy, don’t they?” she said. “No, Mavis wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that she was quiet. On the contrary. She laughed all the time, boisterously. It was the only ugly thing about her, and I thought how it spoiled her appearance. But others seemed to like it!” She shook her head in wonder. “They always talked about Mavis’ laugh, as if it were marvelous. Perhaps I was the one who was wrong. I don’t like noisy people.”

“Mavis was noisy?”

“Well, yes. I know that sounds unkind, but it is the truth. She was noisy. And cuddly. She was always cuddling against people, and laughing that raucous laugh of hers,” and now Jenny’s voice rose with honest indignation. “She would do that with Jon, when they were first married, and I felt sorry for him, for she embarrassed him. But no one else was embarrassed. I think Jon annoyed Mavis.”

“He’s too severe, perhaps?”

“I never thought so.” She was again surprised. “In fact, I began to think him frivolous, light-minded, superficial, since Mavis—died.”

There was no limit to the power she had of astonishing him. “Jon—frivolous? He seems very bitter to me, and I’ve heard he was harsh, though I know better. He is the most unhappy man I’ve ever known. But grim men like Jon always make disastrous marriages, and heaven only knows why.”

The buggy was jogging along again now and the sweet dusty breeze blew over their faces and Robert was filled with a huge content. So, this was what love was like, was it? A kind of peace, a contentment, a radiant serenity, a quietness and sweetness of the spirit. Sweetness, above all. Everything had a shine to it to his eyes, the sun, the earth, the tall dry grasses along the road, the quiet water, the hills. He saw Queen Anne’s lace in the grass and heard the bees and the cicadas, and he wondered at the beauty of the world when it was lit by this inner illumination of passion and tenderness. There was more to love than desire, the Jon Ferriers to the contrary. Desire was the least part of love, though it was its foundation, its earth. Above the roots rose the living tree with the rosy fruit and the jade leaves, the everlasting tree which not even death could cause to decay, for it was changeless and immutable, imperishable and fashioned out of some loveliness deep in the sullen and restless human spirit.

“Yes,” said Jenny, “it was disastrous for both of them, Mavis and Jon.”

There are some who would call this gossip, thought Robert Morgan. But Jenny is as guiltless of the intent to gossip as an infant. She speaks whatever comes to her mind without malice or cruelty. Now he was afraid for her. She had no one in the world of her own, no way of protection, no wall against her vulnerability. Her only defense would be marriage, and he was more than ready to offer that defense.

“Jon is bitter because his friends believe he killed Mavis,” said Jenny. “No one told me, but I know. Otherwise, he is jaunty, if you don’t like the word ‘light-minded.’ You don’t, do you? Oh, he was never afraid of anything. He despises everything, and he was that way before Mavis died. He never took anyone seriously.”

For the first time it came to Robert disagreeably that their only real conversation so far, on this gorgeous day, had been of Jonathan Ferrier. He could not remember that he had instigated this conversation, but he did not like it. He preferred to talk about himself to Jenny, and he wanted to inspire her regard. So far, she had shown no open interest in him, though at least she was now talking and not merely answering “yes.” That indicated trust, and the young man’s heart rose as light as a bird.

Unfortunately, a surrey was approaching them on the narrow road, filled with four young women. They had just come round a bend, and now the air echoed with their gay laughter, their little squeals and their high and girlish voices. The horse trotted along briskly, the fringe on the surrey swayed, and the girls held their hats. Robert cautiously guided his horse to the extreme right of the road to let the equipage pass with its pretty burden. Then, as it was beside him, the driver halted it, and he saw the pink dimpled face and auburn hair and sparkling eyes of Maude Kitchener. Her mouth was like a plump rosebud, but it stopped smiling when she saw his companion.

“Oh, Dr. Morgan!” she trilled. “How are you today? Oh, and do you know Betty Gibson, Susie Harris, Emiline Wilson? Girls, this is Dr. Morgan—the gentleman I have been telling you about—” She stopped and blushed furiously. The girls eyed Robert with animated curiosity and some sly smiles, and it was evident, even to the young man, that perhaps Maude had been somewhat too confiding about him to her friends. In their turn the girls openly admired his magnificent apparel and his face, but when they glanced at Jenny nasty smirks appeared on their young mouths, and Robert saw that, too. He had taken off his hat, and it lay on his knees.

“A pleasant ride, ladies?” he asked.

“We’ve been to lunch at Emiline’s aunt’s,” said Maude. Her sweet voice was subdued. She regarded Jenny with trouble. “How are you, Jenny?”

Jenny had become stiff and remote again. Her nod was jerky. “Very well, thank you,” she replied, and the stammering note was back in her voice.

The other girls said nothing at all to Jenny but averted their eyes from her and talked in a lively fashion with the young doctor, of whom they had heard so much, particularly from Maude who had hardly stopped talking of him all through lunch. They did not know whether to pity her or to be a little happy that the young man, whom she had hinted was “much taken” by her and practically ready to propose, had found that unspeakable Jenny Heger more to his liking than Maude Kitchener, at least for this day. But then, everyone knew what that hussy was, and gentlemen will be gentlemen, even such a nice, handsome young man like this.

Robert was not so obtuse that he did not observe the snub given Jenny, and so it was he who put on his hat and lifted the reins and said good-day to the young ladies. He was the one who drove off first. The surrey moved off behind him with less vigor, he thought with some satisfaction. The only nice girl among them had been Maude Kitchener, and he felt warm toward her. Women!

“Really, that creature!” said Emiline Wilson. “Whatever in the world does he see in her?”

“Guess!” said Susie Harris, with a naughty giggle. Betty Gibson hit her on the shoulder coyly, and said, “Don’t be lewd, Susie.”

“If I had any interest in him at all,” said Emiline, in a meaning tone, “I’d tell him all about her, that I would. It’s disgraceful. He probably believes she’s respectable. Poor man.”

“He hasn’t been here long,” said Maude. Then she added, “But, of course Jenny is respectable! You mustn’t be mean girls. You know as well as I do that it is all lies that people say of Jenny. We went to school with her. If—if Dr. Morgan likes her, it’s no wonder. She’s so very beautiful.”

The girls chorused “No!” with loyal emphasis, and Maude was pleased.

“This is really a very stupid town,” said Emiline. “I don’t suppose anyone has invited Dr. Morgan to dinner, except the Ferriers. Have they?”

All but Maude answered in the negative. She knew that her parents had invited Robert on many occasions, but he had been in the hospitals or on house calls or otherwise engaged. But he had promised to dine with the Kitcheners next Monday, and had expressed his gratitude to Mrs. Kitchener. So Maude said, “He’s been so busy, and he is to have dinner at our house on Monday.”

The girls spoke their happy envy of Maude, and they all began to laugh again. But Maude remembered how Robert had looked at Jenny before they had driven away, and she wanted to cry.

Robert found his promised spot a few minutes later. He turned his buggy up a rambling little side road, and it mounted steeply. Then at the top it was like a small and grassy knoll, with one huge oak in the very center. Below them was brush and untended shrubbery, behind them was a lonely meadow, and before them lay the river scintillating in blue lights in the sun, the mountains rising above it like a green barrier. Buttercups and wild daisies and Indian paintbrushes huddled in the thick warm grass, which was not too high though very dense. Robert held up his hand to Jenny and this time she took it to alight, and at the first touch he had had of her Robert was struck as by lightning and turned very pale. It was a moment before he could help Jenny to the step and then down to the grass, where she stood smoothing her white skirt with her gloved hands and looking about her with shy pleasure.

“Do you like it, Jenny?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said. She took off her hat, and her hair, hastily pinned as usual, began to drop about her face. She tried to restore her attempts at a pompadour but it was useless, so with a shrug she merely shook out her hair and let it fall on her shoulders and down her back.

Now she began to laugh, uncertainly, as she helped Robert anchor the checked tablecloth on the grass, for here it was breezy under the tree. She ran about, finding good stones for the anchoring, and brought them back gleefully in both hands. She showed keen interest in the food, laid the plates and the silver and polished the goblets with a napkin. Then she sat down, folding her legs like an Arab and laughed again with pleasure.

“What fun picnics are!” she exclaimed. “Mama and I used to have them before she—married—Harald, and I was just a child. On the island, of course. We told each other lots of secrets, and the trees were so thick and the rose gardens were unbelievable. The rose gardens,” she added, and her face changed and she was not smiling any longer.

“Beautiful gardens,” said Robert. As the host, he filled Jenny’s plate first and she stared down unseeingly at the large portions he had given her. He opened the wine bottle and poured the pale golden liquid into the glasses.

“What?” said Jenny, coming back with a start.

“What? Oh, I said your rose gardens are beautiful.”

Jenny picked up a fried chicken leg, eyed it absently, then began to eat it. Her mood appeared to pass. Fresh color came up under her sunburn. The weight of her black hair fell across her ears, and her lashes gave another spiked shadow on the rose of her cheek. Robert could hardly eat for enchantment and new and deeper contentment. He had loved her for her beauty from the beginning, and for her redoubtable innocence. Now he loved her, besides, for what he had guessed about her, and her simplicity. He lifted his wineglass high, and her blue eyes followed it.

“To you, dear Jenny,” he said.

She picked up her own glass at once, smiled back at him, and said, “To you, Doctor.” He wished she had shown some coquetry, and that she had called him by his Christian name. But still he was content. He had not dreamed at first that she would be so responsive to him, and so childishly happy in this picnic. He looked at the river which was not so blue as Jenny’s eyes. He could smell pine near him, aromatic and exciting, and the grass gave off a hot fragrance sweeter than any manufactured perfume. Jenny was part of it. She was alone in this shining silence with him. There was no one else.

She drank the wine eagerly. “Oh, this is delicious,” she said. “I don’t like it as a rule, but I do like this. Is it a French wine?”

He gave her the bottle to study its label, and was gratified to see that she was impressed. “Why, it’s—1890,” she said. “Eleven years ago. What a long time!”

“To you, perhaps. You were only nine then, weren’t you, Jenny? But I was much older.”

She glanced at his young face and his luxuriant mustache, and then he saw another side of Jenny, subtle and amused. She smiled at him frankly, and shook her head, and the breeze lifted her hair and tossed it. “You are really very young,” said Jenny, and he did not know whether to be pleased or displeased. “You believe the world is good, don’t you? Do you recall what Machiavelli said: ‘A man of merit who knows the world becomes less cheered, as time goes by, by the good, and less grieved by the evil, he sees in the world.’”

He considered that, then nodded. “Don’t you believe the world is good, too?”

“No, I truly don’t. People think I am foolish and ignorant, but I’m not. I listen. I hear. I see. I think. I read. I walk alone by myself. I am never lonely—by myself. I watch the birds. Nothing very much surprises me.”

For some reason Robert thought of Jonathan Ferrier and did not know why. The thought came from nowhere, and it jolted him.

“No one but a fool would think you foolish and ignorant, Jenny.”

Again she gave him that amused and subtle smile. “You must chatter all the time, in this world, and be doing something in a rush, or something you call important, or going somewhere very fast, or returning from somewhere just as fast, to be thought clever and sophisticated. But if you are contented with your own self, and don’t like confusion and only your own thoughts, and the work you love to do, then you are mad, they say, or you don’t like your fellowman, and are even un-Christian.” She shook back her hair. “They forget, or never knew, what Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It: ‘And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot.’ If they gave that a little thought they’d stop being in such a hurry—nobodys going nowhere, and pathetically trying to be somebodys going somewhere. But very few people are ‘somebodys.’”

He had not thought her capable of making such a long statement, but as he saw the flush on her cheek and her empty glass he knew that the wine had taken her shyness from her, and that Jenny was herself with him, and he blinked his eyes rapidly.

He refilled her glass and she watched him with that touching pleasure. “As for myself,” she said, “I am content to be a nobody, going nowhere. That’s the nice thing about being a nobody: You don’t feel you have to go somewhere—and there’s no somewhere, really.”

Now her face changed again, and she looked down into the wineglass with sudden melancholy. “Nowhere,” she repeated. “Nowhere at all.”

“Oh, come, Jenny. You are young and the world is open to you.”

“No,” she said. “I’m afraid it opened, once, when I was sixteen, for about three minutes. Three whole minutes. And then it closed again, and that was all there was to it, and all there ever will be.”

“Tell me,” he said, wanting to know more and more about this enigmatic girl.

She shook her head. “There’s nothing to tell. It was all in my imagination.”

She put down her plate from her knee, and quickly drank the wine. In a more worldly woman it would have been a theatrical gesture, for effect. In Jenny it was swift desperation. Again, for apparently no reason, Robert thought of Jonathan Ferrier.

“Jenny,” he said, “why don’t you go away for a while, to see something of what you should see?”

“Oh, I can’t, Doctor. I couldn’t leave my island. But if Harald ever leaves permanently, which he won’t, then I could leave it for a little while, myself.”

That sounded strange to Robert, and he frowned. “You see,” said Jenny, with all earnestness, “I couldn’t leave the island alone to him. Could I?”

“Why not?”

“Well, when I came back it wouldn’t be the same to me.”

He was baffled. “One day, when you are married, you will leave the island and never go back except for a visit.”

“No. I’ll never leave the island. And I’ll never get married.”

A vague dimness came over the earth for Robert and nothing was very bright any longer. He said, “You’ll change your mind, Jenny, when you find someone who loves you.”

To his horror and concern he saw her eyes fill with tears, and she shook her head. She put the empty wineglass on the cloth and it rolled from her and she watched it.

“Hasn’t anyone spoken of—well, love to you, Jenny?”

She only shook her head over and over.

The breeze grew stronger and it lifted away the leaves and the sunshine fell on Jenny’s hair in a shaft of pure light, and Robert thought, How lovely is the sunlight on a woman’s hair!

He wanted to say, “I love you, Jenny, my sweet Jenny. Let me tell you how much I love you.” But he knew it was too soon. He would only alarm her away, send her off into her silences again. There was someone else like that whom he knew. Jonathan Ferrier. The slightest extension of stronger friendship or personal concern given by anyone to him sent him off into one of his cold remarks or a ribald aphorism. He rejected the close touch as much as Jenny feared it and would reject it. Robert did not like the resemblance.

He decided to change the subject. “What do you particularly like to read, Jenny?”

She had swallowed her involuntary tears. “Poetry,” she said. “I like Homer, in Greek, and I especially like Ovid, in Latin.”

Robert was impressed. Another woman who confessed this would make him recoil, but in Jenny it was quite natural and part of her.

“So much of the essence is lost in translation,” said Jenny. “Don’t you think so?”

“I’m afraid my Latin extends only to medicine,” said Robert.

She laughed suddenly. She looked about her with that frank candor he found so touching and lovely. She stared at the water. Then she said, “Did you like Aunt Marjorie’s picnic on the Fourth?”

“Very much. She is a delightful lady.”

“It was a ridiculous speech,” said Jenny.

“Wasn’t it? I’m afraid I didn’t listen to it very much. But Jon and Father McNulty thought it ‘ominous.’ I believe that all politicians are ominous, myself.”

Jenny had taken a long grass in her hand and was pulling it through her fingers. Her head was bent and he could not see her face.

“Won’t it be very hard for you to take all Jon’s practice, when he has gone?” she asked. “It’s a very large practice, I heard.”

“I hope to do my best,” he said, and heard the stiffness in his own voice.

“Yes,” said Jenny. She wound the grass over her fingers and pulled it hard.

“He may come back from time to time to help me, if he can.”

She looked up so suddenly that he was startled. “Did he promise you that?”

“No. He didn’t. He said that when he left here he was finished with the town forever, and with everyone in it.”

“But you feel he will come back?”

“No, I don’t, Jenny. Why should he? He didn’t abandon the town. The town abandoned him, and for no good and worthy reason.”

“Did he—recently—say he would never come back?”

“Only this morning.”

Jenny drew a long breath and he heard it. “But, he has his house and his farms.”

“I hear he is looking for a buyer for his farms, except for one. The house is really his mother’s. No, he won’t be back. He is leaving before the first of September, he told me a few days ago.”

“Four weeks,” said Jenny.

“Yes.”

He was bored and unaccountably disturbed by the conversation. He let himself lie back on the grass, his arms folded under his head. He did not know why he said, “Then, again, he may take someone with him. A lady calls him up at least once a week and he sounds very pleased to hear her. It isn’t a patient, I know. He uses his ‘personal’ voice when he talks to her.”

The sky was suddenly blotted out for him by Jenny’s head, bending over him.

“A woman?” she said, and there was deep shadow on her face. “A woman calls him?”

“Yes. I don’t know who she is, Jenny. I do know he calls her ‘dear.’”

“Oh.” Then Jenny said in a flat voice. “Perhaps he is thinking of marrying her.”

Robert deliberately yawned. “Who knows? Why don’t you lie down, too, Jenny, in this soft thick grass, before we go back?”

She did not hesitate at all. She stretched herself beside him, and he could hear her light breathing, and could see her profile. It was blank and pale. Then she closed her eyes and her head was like a fallen statue’s in the grass. He felt the poignancy, the lost and broken abandonment, of it. Something had gone wrong in this halcyon day which had begun so vividly and with so much joyful contentment, and he did not know what it was.

He saw her hand near his hip, and he carefully lifted one of his arms from behind his head and let his hand wander to hers, and then her fingers. He expected her to snatch her hand away, but she did not. Nor did she open her eyes or move. Her fingers were cool and flaccid under his, but still it was enough for him, at this time, just to hold her hand and to feel again the sweet contentment of his love for her. He wished they needed never to go home, and that they might spend eternity here like this, with the wind blowing over them and the dark green tree arching over them, and butterflies in the grass, and the faint sound of the lighted river just slightly disturbing the scented air.

He drowsed. He began to have a curious half-dream or fantasy. He thought that he awakened and when he did so Jenny was not there, and it was autumn, and the bronze and red leaves were falling all about him, and the river roared, and he was full of cold desolation for he knew he would never see Jenny again, and that she had gone away forever.

He came awake with a violent start. Jenny indeed was not beside him. But she had gathered up all the dishes and the linen and had put them neatly in the basket, and she was standing, looking at the river and winding up her hair.

Her back was to him. He could see the long and slender lines of her figure, the lithe grace of her waist, the fine modeling of her shoulders and arms. She had forgotten him. What she was thinking of he could not remotely guess, but he knew that she was lost in her own dreams, or thoughts, as he had been lost in his. Her hands pinned up her hair now. Her arms dropped to her sides. She sighed, and turned.

“Well,” he said. “It seems I fell asleep.”

“Yes.”

“It must be late.”

Jenny looked at the watch pinned to her shirtwaist. “Five o’clock,” she said. Her face was quite still and indifferent, but when he caught her eyes she gave him, again, her shy and diffident smile. “It’s late.”

“Not very.” He hesitated. “Jenny, will you have dinner with me?”

She replied with haste, “Oh, I couldn’t!”

He did not ask why. He got up, found his coat and put it on. He brushed himself down. He put on his hat. Jenny watched him, and when he glanced at her she was smiling gently, as one smiles at a child of whom one is fond. “I want to thank you for a lovely day, Doctor,” she said.

“Jenny, why don’t you call me Robert, or Bob?”

“Very well. Robert.” He had never heard his name said before like that, or so it seemed to him. He was quite cheered. They went to the buggy, and found that the horse had eaten all his oats, and they climbed into the vehicle and turned homeward. They were halfway to Hambledon when Robert said, “You forgot your hat! We’ll go back at once.”

“No, no. Please. It doesn’t matter at all. It really does not.”

She means it, thought Robert. Had she accomplished something with the hat, and her new clothes? The thought was very queer to Robert, himself, and yet he could not shake it off. He could hardly speak the rest of the way, and Jenny made no remark. The world was less glowing to Robert now, but he was still resolutely planning to meet Jenny again, and very soon.

“You will go somewhere with me again, Jenny, in the near future?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

He was so elated that he wanted to bend toward her and kiss her cheek. But she was looking at the gardens along the way and seemed to be absorbed in them. They arrived at the little dock, hardly more than a plank or two, where the island boats waited. There was only one left. “Harald must be home,” said Jenny, and she appeared disappointed.

Robert was helping her out of the buggy when they heard the brisk tattoo of horse’s hoofs, and there was Jonathan Ferrier on his horse, looking down at them and smiling broadly. He touched his hat with his crop and said, “How was the picnic?”

“Splendid,” said Robert, and felt less cordial to Jonathan than usual. “Here, Jenny, take my hand.” She did so, in silence, and Jonathan watched her descend as if her every movement was intensely interesting to him.

“How did you enjoy it, Jenny?” he asked.

Jenny had jumped to the ground. She did not know where to look. As if involuntarily pulled, her eyes rose to look at Jonathan. And then Robert saw the deep and ugly crimson on her face, the heavy tears in her eyes, and her trembling chin. She stood like that, stricken, and she and Jonathan could not look away from each other, and Robert saw it all, and he knew.

Jenny, at last, walked toward the boat and Robert followed her on legs that felt like stone. Yes, he knew. He knew now why Jenny had gone with him. She had gone to hear him, Robert, speak of Jonathan Ferrier, and give all news of him. She could ask him, with openness, things which she could not ask his mother.

“Let me row you over, Jenny,” said Robert and his voice was dull.

“No. Please. I like to row,” said the girl, not looking at him. She jumped into the boat. She still did not look at him. But just as she rowed away she did look once again at Jonathan, and the crimson was still in her face and her mouth was shaking. Robert watched until she was only a dark figure on the gleaming golden water of the evening river. He forgot Jonathan. When he turned Jonathan was still there, on his horse.

“I wouldn’t,” said Jonathan, “take Jenny too seriously, if I were you.” Then he touched Robert lightly but smartly on the shoulder with his crop, and rode off.

The jocular blow stung Robert. Had it really been jocular, or friendly? Robert looked after Jonathan until he had disappeared. Jenny, he thought. Jenny, I’m not going to give up. I don’t know what this is all about, Jenny, but he isn’t the man for you, nor are you the woman for him. I won’t give up, Jenny. I have something more wholesome and something more of life to give you than a wrathful man who will soon have no home of his own. I have youth to give you, and hope, and peace, and some fun and laughter, and travel, and I have all my love and no terrible memories. From those, I will protect you.