Testimony Of Two Men (37 page)

The palest shadow of despair ran like a ripple over Francis’ face and he lifted his head briefly from the pillow. “I won’t let them make Tom leave,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “They can’t do that to him just because—”

“Oh, but they will,” said Jonathan most cheerfully. “Now, if he’d been sensible enough to close the door when he saw what you were up to and had gone cozily back to bed, you’d have been found in the morning, and some doctor who’s a family friend could have been induced to sign a certificate saying you had died of ‘natural causes,’ and all Tom would have had to do, to live comfortably the rest of his life, probably without working, would have been to mention to Papa or Auntie, in private, that he knew what he knew and what about it? But the world’s full of damn fools, isn’t it, including you and me, and especially Tom?”

The young man did not answer. But slowly and with tremendous effort, he began to raise himself up in his bed. Jonathan watched him with no sign of curiosity or interest, and waited until Francis, heaving and gasping, had pushed up his pillows, settled himself upon them in a sitting position, and was looking at him again.

“Damn you,” said Francis Campion, struggling for breath. “Damn everybody. No one’s going to hurt poor old Tom. If —they do—I’ll let the whole damned world know why—”

“Good,” said Jonathan. “You might mention that to Papa and Auntie first, though. Save a lot of trouble. By the way, your father ought to be here in a couple of hours. He’s making his usual trumpet speech in Hambledon on the Fourth, and, as usual, you won’t be there.”

He wondered if he had lost the youth again, for Francis’ face had become expressionless and remote again, as if he were engrossed in unearthly thoughts. Then, to Jonathan
‘s
pleasure, Francis began to smile. It was not a bright and gleeful smile, but, as smiles go, it was at least visible, if faintly. “No,” he said, “I won’t be there.” Then he frowned.

“Unfortunately I will,” said Jonathan.

Now Francis was looking at him sharply, for he was remembering that he had not seen Jonathan since the doctor
‘s
indictment and trial and acquittal, and he was remembering other things.

“If I were you,” said Francis, and now there was actual life in that dim voice, “I wouldn’t go anywhere, I wouldn’t see anyone in this town, and I’d tell them all to go to hell.”

“Nice sentiments for a budding priest,” said Jonathan. “But I quite agree with you. However, unlike you, I do have thoughts for others I’d leave behind. I am staying here until my replacement is broken in, for I am not irresponsible like you. I want to make certain that my old patients aren’t going to be carved up by some diploma-mill hack or be treated by some nature lover with ‘true-blue-pure-herbs-from-nature’s-fields-and-dells.’ Now, if you were in my place, this town would have seen the backs of your heels a long time ago, and be damned to your patients. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“You have a sweet opinion of me,” said Francis Campion. Jonathan saw that every word caused him pain to speak and that his voice was rough with effort.

“Not as bad as the opinion you ought to have of yourself. Francis, I’m not lecturing you. I don’t care if you string yourself up again five minutes after I leave here. But you don’t have a right to cause poor old Tom misery, no matter what trouble, real or imagined, decided you last night to spit in the face of God and man and get the hell out of here.”

The thin and attenuated nostrils of Francis’ nose tightened, and Jonathan was alarmed to see how emaciated the young man was. He had never been buxom and had always been inclined to slenderness, but now most of his bones were visible under the pallid skin, and his fallen upper lip was indented by the teeth beneath. Whatever had driven Francis Campion to this point in time and space was no trivial thing.

But Francis was faintly smiling again. “What if I get myself a job, make enough money to leave Tom in comparative comfort—and then decide—”

“You have my congratulations in advance,” said Jonathan. “Cigarette?”

Francis stretched out his hand and took a cigarette from Jonathan’s silver case, and Jonathan struck a match and lit it. “However,” said Jonathan, watching carefully to see that Francis’ swollen throat did not close at the entrance of the smoke, as it was likely to, “that will take a considerable time, seeing that you are not possessed of a profession or a trade and are just about as helpless as Tom is himself. Perhaps, though, you could borrow a few thousand dollars. I’m sure Papa would repay the debt after you had been neatly laid away, with a sigh of relief.”

“Maybe you’d lend it to me,” said Francis. “I’ll give you my note.”

“Not I. By the way, you understand I am supposed to report your case to the police, don’t you?”

The thin white skin of the boy’s forehead wrinkled in dismal wretchedness.

“That would just about fix Papa’s little railway express wagon,” said Jonathan. “Especially if you try it again.”

The boy smoked a minute. Then he said, “For God’s sake, don’t tempt me!”

Jonathan began to laugh, and after a painful second Francis gave a thin answering croak. He began to cough and his cheeks turned scarlet; he choked. Then he drew a deep crowing breath. “Don’t struggle,” said Jonathan, alert on his chair. “Let nature take her course, and she’ll do the job for you without you lifting a hand.”

The crowing and heaving continued for a few minutes longer, until Francis’ face was dusky and his eyes starting, and just when Jonathan was about to go to the rescue, the crowing stopped, and Francis wiped his wet eyes. He put the cigarette aside. He said in a strangled voice, “But you won’t tell the police.”

“I don’t know. I ought to, I suppose. However, you didn’t send for me, Auntie didn’t send for me, and I’m not really the family physician. I’m attending nobody here, so, by a technicality this is none of my damned business. Ill have to look it up in
Medical Ethics.”

“No one sent for you?”

“No. Father McNulty was told by Tom that I had treated you for a couple of months when you were seventeen—when your regular family physician was off in Europe, and Father McNulty asked me to come to see you. To be perfectly candid, Francis, I don’t know why I am here. Auntie doesn’t want me. Auntie didn’t call me. If she weren’t a lady, she’d ask the gardener and his sons to come up here and drag me out and throw me on my ass outside. She’d be quite within her rights. I’m an intruder. I have no status. I’m not even a very good friend of your father’s, in spite of what you may have heard. Auntie hoped to keep all this quiet and in the family, but Tom had to interfere.”

Francis’ young face trembled all over. “You came just because Father McNulty asked you to, Dr. Ferrier?”

“That’s right. That’s the kind of simpleminded idiot I am.”

“Why did you come, really?”

“That’s really none of your infernal business, but, as I said, I don’t know myself.”

The quick smile jerked at Francis’ mouth again. “Just your sense of responsibility?”

“Maybe. After all, you did have a bad case of ulcerative colitis when you were seventeen, and I did pull you out of it after the hacks had almost killed you. The Chinese say that if you save a man from death or suicide, his life is on your neck as long as you live, and he is your personal responsibility. Harsh but realistic people, the Chinese, and very intellectual, and they do have a point. After all, when you interfere with a man’s manifest destiny, as ordained by mysterious Entities, then the curse is on you for interfering. So, perhaps I was cursed for saving you when you were seventeen, and Tom is now cursed for saving you, and it is possible that he and I together can work out a deal with the fates.”

A curious darkening touched Francis’ overly eloquent eyes, and his white lips hardened. Jonathan watched him without appearing to watch.

“As Auntie says, I don’t pry,” he remarked. “But, as it is a long time ago, just what did give you colitis? I’m not one of those New York and Boston doctors who are listening far too much these days to that Austrian hysteric and medieval witch doctor, Sigmund Freud, who appears to think that every ailment of the body has its seat in something he calls the unconscious or maybe it’s the Id, or perhaps the Superego. Frankly, I prefer to believe that a great many illnesses arise from what I call the Underego—to coin a term. A man just doesn’t have enough manhood, or courage, or self-esteem, or pride, to face life and kick the offal out of it but lies down under all the battering, and cries and works up an illness to get out of the fight. Freud has another weird idea, too. He thinks a lot of mental ills, which give rise to physical ills, too, are caused by refraining too much from tossing in the hay with some willing doxy. He hasn’t too much respect for what we call Judeo-Christian morality. Can make a man sick in his Id or something. Now I think that continence, if not carried to the point of absolute absurdity, or if undertaken with the full consent of the will, has a lot to recommend it.”

Francis was listening with that intensity of his which Jonathan had deplored as excessive three years ago.

“So,” said Jonathan, “what in hell was really troubling you when you were seventeen? Say I’m inquisitive.”

Francis looked away from him and stared down at his fingers, which he slowly began to flex and unflex. He said, “Will it help you ‘work out a deal with the fates’ if I tell you?”

“Maybe.”

Francis thought for a few moments and then said, “You know we are not supposed to reveal another’s sins—”

“I’m not up on doctrine lately, and besides it is no longer any concern of mine—”

Jonathan was a little astonished when Francis lifted his head very sharply and stared at him with a kind of fierceness and passion. But the youth’s voice was oddly quiet when he said, “It’s no concern of mine any longer, either. I’ve left the seminary. You asked me about what ailed me when I was seventeen. It was something that had gone on for a year. Perhaps more. Will it be much of a surprise to you to hear that I adored my father—up to then?”

“Frankly it would.” Jonathan was more than ever astonished. “I never admired Daddy.”

“I know.” And again Francis smiled. “I heard you call him the Marzipan Pear and even worse. I think I hated you when I was a child for that. Didn’t you also call him a mountebank?”

“Probably. It sounds like me.”

“Yes. It certainly does.” Francis turned his head and looked through the window. He did not look at Jonathan when he said, “I adored him. I thought he was a—saint.
I
thought he had—magnitude. He was never exactly too conscious that I was around, but when he did see me, he was quite affectionate. I didn’t discover for years that that was the way he treated everyone. Affectionately. Maybe he does really like people—That doesn’t matter, though. I thought he was a man—”

“Sun-crowned, holy, untouchable, heroic, Hercules in the guise of St. Augustine,” said Jonathan, when Francis became silent. “I see.”

The thin cheek colored. Francis turned to him now with a little anger. “Didn’t you think that of your father, too?”

“No, thank God. I didn’t. Even as a kid I had better sense. I thought my father pathetic, but I also thought he was a damned fool and a bore. That didn’t stop me from caring about him, though. Apparently you found out something about Daddy that disillusioned you, and instead of being sensible and saying to yourself, ‘My father is no better, or no worse, than other men,’ you tried to kill yourself off with colitis and run away from your disillusion.”

“You make me sound like a weakling!” Francis’ voice rose.

“Well, aren’t you? Never mind that you were sixteen or seventeen. You were a man, not a child, at that age. You had lived long enough to know this world has few heroes and saints and possibly none at all. What did Daddy do except be his dear old affectionate self, fully revealed to you at last as human clay? He’s too cautious to do anything really heinous, that is, too cautious ever to be found out. Did you find out something?”

“I did,” said Francis through a tight mouth. “Several things. It doesn’t matter how they happened, how I found out. It began when I visited him in his suite in Washington during a holiday when he couldn’t come home. I decided to give him a wonderful surprise,” Francis went on with old bitterness, “and so I didn’t tell him I was coming. A surprise! It was, too.”

Jonathan put his hands to his head in mock horror. “Don’t tell me!” he exclaimed. “You found Daddy in the Arms of a Woman who was not His Wife.”

“Laugh,” said Francis. “It probably sounds very funny to you, Dr. Ferrier, but it wasn’t to me. At sixteen.”

“Oh, my God,” said Jonathan. “There you were, at sixteen, and probably had been experiencing your own ‘carnal urges,’ as the Church calls them, and doing some hot breathing and fiddling at night. Did you think your father was a monk? A hermit? He was and is a full-blooded bastard and has always been known to have a fiery eye for the ladies, and he isn’t married. You did your father an injustice. Did you actually believe he should have devoted himself to Memories of Mama and kept himself immured from the world?”

“You make me sound like a young fool,” said Francis, leaning toward Jonathan now and showing deep offense.

“Of course. You were and are. Didn’t they ever tell you anything in that boys’ school you went to in Philadelphia or even in the seminary?”

Francis’ face became cold and grim. “Yes. But that wasn’t the reason—I mean, it was a shock at first, and then the priests talked to me, and though my father’s conduct still seemed disgusting, I realized it was quite normal. No, it wasn’t that. It was the other things I began to find out about him.”