Testimony Of Two Men (33 page)

(He was to marry Myrtle Heger a little before Jonathan married Mavis Eaton, but no one believed that he loved the woman or that he had married her for anything but her money.)

The marriage of Mavis Eaton to Jonathan Ferrier, on a hot and golden June day, was considered a Statewide Event, and the Governor came, and so did Senator Campion, and, of course, the mayors of several cities. The Eatons were rich, and the Ferriers, and Jonathan was already establishing a famous reputation, and his mother came of an “old family.”

Jonathan, lying in a drunken sleep now in his father’s study, or rather sprawled in a leather chair, remembered that night in his dreaming. His dark and faintly sweating face was contorted, and his head moved uneasily, and even in his sleep he was conscious of a powerful nausea and enormous discomfort. He felt as if he were one ache, mentally and physically, and somewhere there was a loud and furious shrilling, as if millions of bees had gone mad.

He pulled himself sluggishly and painfully up from his heavy sleep, saw that it was very early morning and that the telephone on his father’s desk was throbbing unremittingly. Nothing stirred in the house. The low and slanting light of first morning was pulsing through the leaded windows. Cursing, wincing, Jonathan reached out and took up the telephone.

“Oh, Jonathan,” said Father McNulty’s voice in relief.
“I
hope I didn’t wake you too early. It’s almost seven, a quarter to.”

“Don’t mind me,” said Jonathan in a slow, thick voice. He swallowed. His throat felt swollen and very dry. “I’m always

awake, like the perfect doctor. Call me in a couple of hours, and perhaps I’ll answer then, and perhaps not.” He was not really awake. He blinked and shuddered at the light and his stomach seemed to have a tendency to climb into his chest. “Good-bye,” he said.

“Jon!” cried the priest. “Please listen for just a second or two. For God’s sake, Please listen. This is a matter of life and death—”

“In which I am no longer interested,” said Jonathan. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

“I haven’t slept all night,” said the priest. “I just came home myself, and I have a Mass at seven. You remember young Francis Campion? I heard you treated him for colitis or something three years ago. Senator Kenton Campion’s son.”

Jonathan yawned in agony. His head appeared to be dividing itself slowly and surely into separate sections. “What about it? I’m not the family doctor. They only called me because their own was away or something, after he almost killed the boy. Why don’t they call him if the kid’s sick again?”

The priest hesitated. “I think there is a personal reason. Family doctor, you know. There might be some—some embarrassment— You see, young Francis tried to hang himself last night, and only old Tom, one of the servants, heard him and saved his life. Hanged himself with the sash of his dressing gown—”

“You can be sure,” said Jonathan with bitterness, “that there is always some busybody around to take matters into his own damned interfering hands. When a man wants to die, let him die, say I.” He paused, then said with more interest, “Tried to kill himself? At twenty? I thought he was doing well in that seminary of his, studying for the priesthood. A fine priest he’ll make!” Jonathan chuckled, then coughed. “So, they called you to administer the proper spiritual punishment.”

“Jon, please listen. Tom called me. No one else would. Not the aunt. And the Senator’s in Washington, though he is due home today for the Fourth of July celebrations. You know the aunt.” The priest coughed in apology. “No doubt a very estimable lady but not one to know what to do. So Tom called me. But young Francis would not listen to me at all and refused to see me. I did stay at his bedside, and he never turned his head in my direction. I stayed until I had to leave for Mass.”

“A very piteous story,” said Jonathan. “But has it got anything to do with me? No.”

“I thought—I thought—” the priest stammered, “that you should see him. No, not for medical attention.”

Jonathan came up from the reddish sick fog in total amazement. “Are you out of your mind, Father? ‘Not for medical attention,’ you say. For what, then?”

“I heard that the boy—trusted—-you. Or something, Jon. It’s just an inspiration. He needs something. I think you can give it to him.”

“No,” said Jonathan. “Besides, if I saw him, I’d have to report it to the police.”

“You saved his life once. I think you could do it again, Jon.”

“Why should I? Let him go and give him your blessing, Father.”

The priest paused. “You will go, Jon, and immediately?”

“No,” said Jonathan, and hung up. He fell back into the depths of the leather chair. When he had strength enough, he would take a cold bath, prepare himself a large cold drink, put a cold cloth on his head and go to bed, and inform his mother that no one, under any circumstances, was to disturb him. Preferably forever. He felt profoundly ill and knew, after a moment’s reflection, that the illness was in his mind as well as in his abused body. Mavis. Was he to be cursed for all the days of his life by remembering her? She was part of his flesh, like an incubus, beautiful Mavis, laughing Mavis, coaxing, teasing Mavis. He could see her face as clearly as if she were in the room with him, and a heavy weight moved into his eyes, pressing them, filling them with moisture. There were times when he thought he had forgotten her or that he could live with the memory of her, and then when he was off-guard or had been drinking too much, the house was full of her footsteps and her laughter, the rustling of her dresses, the sound of her raucous singing. Then the pain returned, as bad as ever.

He pushed himself to his feet and was dizzy. Why don’t I have the courage to die? he asked himself. Why didn’t I have the sense to plead guilty and let the state hang me and so save me the trouble? Then he thought of young Francis Campion, twenty years old, who had tried to take his life a few hours ago. Now, what for, at his age? What could so disillusion a man of twenty as to drive him to death, and a budding priest, at that? Jonathan leaned on a table and in spite of himself he was interested. He also remembered the boy and how he had saved his life three years ago. That life had been saved almost as much by the boy’s will to live as by Jonathan’s skill. Yet, three years later he had looked for death, the only son of one of the richest men in the state, pampered, indulged, allowed to do what he wished at all times.

Jonathan found himself in his bathroom, naked to the waist, sloshing himself with cold water. He looked at his ravaged face with the bluish growth of beard and said aloud, “The hell with it.” He dried himself, dressed in riding clothes. He frowned at his shaking hands. He was all parched leather inside and he craved a drink. He knew he dared not drink water, for it would make him vomit. In complete physical misery, and walking carefully so as not to jar his head too much, he left his room.

Still, no one stirred in the house as yet, though it was almost seven. The house had the dry, aromatic odor of a hot summer morning, compounded of heat, a faint drift of dust, and withering flowers. Jonathan went out into the blaze of the early day and then to the stables.

He still did not know why he was going to see young Francis Campion, or what he was doing out so early in the day with a fearful hangover and a sense that life had become unbearable. He thought of Father McNulty with angry disfavor. Interfering young idiot! But these priests had the idea that human life was sacred or something, and should be preserved. He, Jonathan Ferrier, wished he could take some of them through the wards where people were dying of cancer, including little children, or wards of venereal disease, or tuberculosis, a thousand and one diseases of corruption and agony. Let them see for themselves with what respect their God regarded His own creation that He could bring it so low, far down to the base of screaming animalism, and then abandon it to decay and torture and unspeakable indignities. What God did not respect, man should not respect

Nearly all other houses in Hambledon were “houses,” but the Campion house was a “residence,” even to those who possessed a sense of humor. Jonathan was one of the few— and he originated the term—who called the house Pike’s Peak, because it not only was the highest building on the mountain that overlooked Hambledon but had a curious roof of blue slate, which did, indeed, rise to a peak directly in the top center of that pile of white stone masonry. Perched on top of that sharp peak reared a weathervane, huge and gilt, which could be seen turning from the streets of the town when the sun shone upon it. It had been built forty years ago by the late Mrs. Kenton Campion’s father, old Jasper Pike, so again Jonathan had a wry reason for his appellation. Mrs. Campion had inherited it together with a great fortune from her father’s coal mines, and it was considered Hambledon’s only authentic mansion in the grand tradition of mansions, for it had thirty rooms, all immense, a marble hall and stairway, teakwood paneling in the library, imported stained glass and statuary from Italy, fountains in glorious climbing gardens, furniture from every country including acres of Oriental rugs, silks, satins, brocades, exotic pictures, vases, cloisonne boxes and ornaments, lamps with gold and silver bases, shawls dripping everywhere in streams of color, buhl cabinets filled with crushes of
objets d’art
from the most exotic places, and enormous oval windows at least fifteen feet high and draped lavishly with delicate laces and swaths of material full of sparkling, genuine gold threads. The architect had not been decided upon the exact style he wished to produce, so he added a white marble colonnade along the front of the house which was incongruous surmounted by that soaring peak of glittering blue slate with its slit windows like a tower. Jonathan never glanced up at the mountain without saying, “Every town has its monstrosity. Hambledon has its Pike’s Peak, a nightmare of tasteless luxury, the dream of every vulgarian and illiterate in the world.”

No one else, with the exception of his mother, held the same opinion of the “mansion,” but Marjorie often remarked that that was because most people were more charitable than her son. Hambledon was proud of it, though it affected to laugh at it enviously. There was not a family, except for the Ferriers, who were not elated to be invited to a “soiree” there, or a tea, or a dance or a reception or a dinner. Governors of the state had been visitors, and mayors of various cities and rich, suspect politicians and businessmen and “aristocrats,” and even a President.

As a boy Jonathan had often thought how marvelous it would have been if the mountains overlooking the town had been graced by buildings of the Grecian or Roman order, all white porticoes and columns and walls, half hidden by summery greenery. But no one shared his opinion, for all the houses in that “select” area were pretentious, bulky and elaborate, immaculately gardened, and all the roads were private and maintained by the owners even in the winters, and every tree was cherished, said Jonathan, “within an inch of its poor wild life.” To his mind the Campion “residence” was the very worst of all.

Mrs. Kenton Campion had died some fifteen years ago, leaving her politician husband with that one small boy of his, Francis, and all her money. At that time Kenton had been a mere Congressman, but later he had been invariably reappointed by the State Legislature, over a period of sixteen years, as a Senator. He was often spoken of as becoming the Governor, and once he had been suggested by enthusiastic— and indebted—friends for second place on the Presidential ticket. However, at that time there had been some unreasonable resentment against wealthy men occupying all the available political positions and, though Kenton Campion steadfastly maintained that he was at heart a poor man—had not his grandfather been a journeyman peddler of pots and pans when he came from England?—no one truly believed that he had a poor man’s spirit, least of all Jonathan Ferrier, who called him the Marzipan Pear, an allusion which Senator Campion only too well understood but correctly believed that few others did. Marzipan, in any shape or form, was practically unknown in Hambledon, which was somewhat fortunate for Jonathan, considering that the Senator never forgave and never forgot a slight or a gibe.

He had inherited a small fortune himself from his grandfather and father, who had managed to buy out a small foundry in Pittsburgh, but it could not compare with the Pike fortunes. It was after his marriage to Henrietta Pike—a small and terrified little creature who could not believe that so magnificent a specimen of the masculine persuasion could look at her for an instant—that Kenton’s political future became established. He had been kind to Henrietta, and for this she was grateful all her life, for her father had not been kind, and so she had left him all her money without making any provision for her son, young Francis. A short time after her death, her husband’s widowed sister, a flushed woman then thirty-eight and childless, had come to manage the Campion “residence” and bring up the motherless boy. She was now fifty-three, a big, massive and handsome woman of awesome stupidity, good-natured in a bucolic way, and, as Jonathan confided to some as irreverent as himself, “absolutely devoted to all her bodily functions, even the grossest ones. She enjoys them all tremendously. A bowel movement or the emptying of a bladder is just that to everyone else. But not to Beatrice Offerton! They are delightful daily Events.”

He was not her physician, and so his remarks were no violation of the doctor-patient confidence. He had come to his conclusions about Mrs. Offerton by observing her, the slow but pleasurable—to her—flow of her great limbs and buttocks and breasts as she walked, the obvious cleanliness of her large body, invariably pink and fair and heavily scented and covered by a layer of rose-violet talcum powder, and the way she stroked her full, rosy and heavy neck as she slowly talked, or stroked her arms or hands like a lover. Her face, to all but Jonathan, was quite beautiful, somewhat larger than the ordinary woman’s face, with absolutely perfect features, which included great round blue eyes, a statuesque nose, and a capacious pink mouth with dimples, not to speak of masses of light chestnut hair like polished satin piled smoothly in a pompadour over a white low forehead that was guilty of not a single wrinkle. Her face was totally without expression at any time. She could smile, but even that smile meant nothing, for it was unchanging and smug. She carried with her, though she was not stout, even if massive, an aura of complete self-love and complacency, not the self-love of Mavis Eaton, which was aware of itself and others, but a self-love of the utmost simplicity and happy satisfaction, almost unconscious. She luxuriated in her body as a healthy animal luxuriates, and she had not a single thought in her head about anything, and never had held an opinion beyond the merits of food, soft touches of garments on her flesh, warmth in winter, coolness in summer, the pleasure of comfortable beds and the functioning of her body. Only one thing could exasperate her: Undue delay over meals or any other physical inconvenience which pertained to herself. She had never known a moment’s illness.