Testimony Of Two Men (114 page)

He waited. Jonathan said nothing. So the priest went on. “It is ridiculous to demand that others understand us and know the truth about us. How is that possible? We can only do the best we can, in steady patience, and with inner reserves, knowing that we don’t understand others, either.

“Jon, you need to cultivate that serenity and detachment of mind that, while keeping you kindly in touch with your fellowman, will make you less vulnerable to him, and his opinion of you. You have entangled yourself with others entirely too much, both in love and in hate, and that is childish and immature. A sensible man is moderate in all things, and particularly in his dealings with those about him. That takes courage. And that will bring peace of mind.”

Jonathan bent his head, and the priest was encouraged, for he knew that Jonathan was thinking. Then Jonathan said, “It isn’t in my nature to be lukewarm.”

“But you can practice outward restraint and balance and firmness.”

“And get ulcers.”

“And keep out of trouble. Mankind isn’t very brave and strong, Jon. It is timid and is growing daily more timid. It is brave only when in a pack. Individually, man is lonely and lost and weak. He is frightened at demands that he have courage. It threatens what little security he possesses. And how insecure is man, God help him! He suspects that there are forces outside his little life which are tremendous and terrifying, so he establishes a ritual of magical cant to placate the terror, just as his earlier ancestors did. Yet, all the time, as our Lutheran brethren sang in their noblest hymn, ‘A mighty Fortress is our God!’”

He stood up and looked down gravely at Jonathan. “A man who trusts in man, who believes man is all, who thinks that man is capable of pulling himself up by his own bootstraps and attaining virtue and perfection all by himself, is to be pitied. His ignorance, his pathetic vanity, must make the angels weep. Worse still, his fellowman will inevitably teach him many rude and painful lessons. So, he will abandon his fellowman, or he will grow to hate and despise him. Both are evil.”

Jonathan said, “Somewhere in the nest of your homily, Frank, there may be an egg of truth. I will give it thought”

“Give it plenty of thought Jon,” said the priest Then Jonathan said, “I never told you. When I was seventeen, I had already decided to be a physician. Martin Eaton encouraged me. He began to take me through the hospitals and let me be in his office when he was attending patients. I was full then of God and raptures and everything else, in spite of a few jolts I had received when I was younger. I would be another St. Luke. Then, as I went with Martin on his rounds—I saw pain. Senseless, ugly, murderous, devastating, hopeless pain. Senseless. Now, don’t talk to me about original sin! I saw the pain. I saw it especially in infants and little children, and in good old people who had never, I am sure, committed what you would call a mortal sin. I saw the helpless pain. And that’s when I lost, when I decided—”

“That a God who permitted pain like that either did not exist, or He was worse than the wickedest man?”

“That’s right, Frank.”

“Jon, I will leave you with just one bit of advice. I’m sure there is a Bible in this house. Find it. And read the Book of Job.”

In the next few days the Ferrier house was filled with
flowers and gifts for Marjorie, and letters of happy congratulation to Jonathan because, as they said, “Our dear Senator, Kenton Campion, has proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you were innocent, as the majority of us believed from the beginning. Don’t desert us now. We need you. We’ve always needed you.”

Only a week before Jonathan would have read those letters with rage and disgust and would have replied to the writers with stinging remarks and contempt. But now he laughed almost indulgently after his first angry reactions. “They believe Campion,” he said to some friends, “Campion, who was always a liar and a mountebank, and they never believed me, though I don’t lie. Somewhere there is some irony in the situation, but I never particularly liked the Hogarthian jokes of man or God. Human or Olympian humor of this sort used to make me ill. That is because, perhaps, I never appreciated slapstick or burlesque.”

“Now, Jon,” said Louis Hedler. ‘“All’s well that ends well.’”

“Nothing ends well,” said Jonathan. “I’m a confirmed pessimist.” He eyed Louis with hard and unforgiving cynicism. “Let me congratulate you, Louis, on a broad comedy. I don’t enjoy the spectacle of clowns as advocates. Truth, to me, should have a certain dignity, or am I being naive again?”

“It depends on the point of view,” said Louis Hedler. “By the way, am I right in believing that you will accept the post of chief of surgery at St. Hilda’s?”

“Were you serious?”

“Of course, my boy. Though I am a little apprehensive concerning how you will treat the other surgeons. With somewhat less brutality, I hope?”

“Not if they are in the wrong. The patient comes first.”

“Commendable. The patient must always come first. But it is not always necessary to make a Roman holiday of a surgeon’s honest error, is it?”

“Not if he is usually a competent man. But I want no diploma-mill hacks on the staff, Louis.”

Louis sighed. “You would be surprised how very competent those ‘hacks’ are sometimes, and how wrong the scientific fellas. But use your judgment, Jon, though I do hope there will be no public burnings.”

Hambledon emotionally forgave Jonathan for the crimes he had never committed, and so forgave itself and was prepared to grasp him to its bosom. It took all Louis Hedler’s diplomacy to prevent Jonathan from explosive retorts at times, and all Father McNulty’s admonitions. “Humor, humor, Jon,” said the priest. “If a man lacks a sense of proportion and inner humor, he is a barbarian. He must always have some pity, even if he is the wronged one. Look at young Francis Campion, for instance. He has a lot to forgive his father, but now he is with him for a few days in Washington, and they were photographed affectionately together. Francis had to make his compromises, too. He will return to his seminary, and I think you should be proud of your own part in it.”

“Compromises!” said Jonathan.

“Life is not nearly as simple as you have always believed,

Jon,” said the priest “It requires a great deal of courage and fortitude.”

Marjorie was now past the danger point. Then Jonathan’s case became suddenly unimportant to the town, for President McKinley died of his wounds in Buffalo, and Vice-President Roosevelt became President Jonathan said to the priest, “Now we have Teddy, and all his exuberant ideas and his radical philosophies.” The light of battle had returned to his eyes. “The future has become ominous. I think I will take part in it after all, for I will have children.”

Harald had diplomatically removed himself from his father’s house and had gone to the Quaker Hotel. He could not endure seeing Jenny with his brother. He could not return to the island, for even the lower floor of the “castle” had been filled with mud and water. His lawyers agreed that his absence from the island in this emergency could not be construed as violating the terms of his dead wife’s will.

Jenny had told Jonathan of the contract planned between her and his brother. Jonathan had been pressing her for immediate marriage. Jenny had remarked firmly that “it was less than a year, and would not be decorous.” Then Jonathan, smiling, had said, “Dear child, you are still a minor and won’t be twenty-one until December. You can’t sign any contract at all that would be valid. Didn’t anyone tell you? But if you many me soon, I will be appointed your legal guardian and can make contracts in your name for you.”

Jenny had retorted, “It is you, Jon, who needs a guardian, not I.”

“Well? What is your decision? Are we going to free Harald from Hambledon and send him on his merry way, or are we going to imprison him until December, when you will come of age? There is another thing. I find it somewhat arduous to be under the same roof with you, my love, and not in your bed. Or will you be kind enough to leave your door open some night soon?”

Jenny blushed. “Very well. I will marry you on September 30th.” She hesitated. “What will people think?”

“The hell with what they think, Jenny. We have our own lives to live.”

Jenny assisted the nurses in caring for Marjorie. Marjorie said, “Dear Jenny, now I will have a daughter soon. I have always felt that you were my daughter. I used to watch you when you were a child and I envied your mother. Do have daughters, Jenny. They are so satisfactory to a mother. While no man ever understood any woman, women do have glimpses of the interior workings of men, and mothers and daughters can laugh together at the unpredictable and irrational doings of husbands and sons and fathers. But we must never let our laughter be obvious. Men are such fragile and sensitive creatures.”

“And so very dangerous,” said Jenny. “Sometimes I think
I
shouldn’t marry at all.”

Her blue eyes were very wise and she looked so innocent in her wisdom that Marjorie wanted to cry. “Somebody has to marry them,” said Marjorie. “Otherwise they’d revert fast enough to the cave.”

Jenny had suggested to Jonathan that the island be a museum, as he had once proposed, with his brutal jesting, that it should be. “And it will be supported by the Heger money,” said Jenny. “There are so many treasures there, and it will be a landmark for those people who can never hope to see an authentic castle in Europe. We will add to the treasures, and have guards and guides.” The island no longer had significance for her, nor was it a harbor now as once it was, and she often wondered why that was so.

Jonathan prudently estimated the cost. “I think a large wing for tuberculosis at St. Hilda’s and another wing for the study of cancer at the Friends’ would be more practical.”

“I have money enough for it all,” said Jenny, with a large gesture.

“After what Harald takes?”

“Jon, don’t be mercenary. We can do it all. What is money for but to be used?”

“Jenny, when you look at me with such innocence, you almost convince me.”

“People need medicine for their souls as well as for their bodies, Jon.”

He kissed her ardently. “Perhaps you will minister to my soul tonight, Jenny?”

“On September 30th,” she said. “Not a day sooner. I think we should inform Father McNulty.”

Jonathan had long consultations with Robert Morgan. “I will buy back my practice, Bob. You can then be my associate, if you can bear staying in Hambledon.”

“I don’t know,” said young Robert. “I will sell the practice back to you, as you obviously intend to stay here.” His kind face was wretched.

Jonathan said, “Bob, you are young, and, as I’ve quoted to

you often enough, ‘Men have died and worms have eaten them—’”

” ‘But not for love.’ Yes, that’s a favorite saying of yours, isn’t it, and I don’t believe you mean a word of it. You went thundering over to that island to kill your brother, I’ve heard, but if Jenny hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have gone mad and practically swum over there in the hurricane. You’d have lain in wait for him someplace, and perhaps smeared him over the landscape—before
a
good audience. No doubt to teach others
a
lesson.”

Jonathan chuckled. “Perhaps. Still, the story, spread by
a
few ‘good’ friends, hasn’t done my reputation much harm. On the contrary.”

“The populace does love a swashbuckler,” said Robert. “You are out of date.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Jonathan, thinking of the new President in the White House. “People are still romantic. When
a
nation stops being romantic it stops being a nation or a force in the world. By the way, I hear Maude Kitchener has set her cap for you,”

“You hear too many things,” said Robert, and thought of Jenny, and wondered how he could endure living in Hambledon knowing she was the wife of another man. If Jenny had married him, he would have contrived to send his mother back to Philadelphia and have rescued his house, his beautiful house. It was almost worth marrying for, to save its beauty.

“Women are very sinister,” said Jonathan. “You might be wise to run.”

It was a cool September evening and Father McNulty was in the Confessional at St. Leo’s Church. He had been there for over two hours, listening with sad compassion to the endless repetition of human error and human sin and human fallibility and human arrogance. He was young, but he felt as old as death and life. He was also getting hungry and cramped.

Someone entered the Confessional and knelt down and the priest waited. The penitent was silent. Then Father McNulty saw
a
familiar long dark head through the grill, and then, with growing joy and astonishment, he heard a familiar voice.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—”

The priest sighed. “And about time,” he said, and prepared to listen. He was sure that the penitent thought he had a remarkable story to tell, but it was as old as man, as old as the very stars.