Testimony Of Two Men (34 page)

This was the amiable, dull, dimpling, talcum-scented woman who had been assigned as a substitute mother to an overly sensitive and physically tense little boy, who found living to be excruciatingly joyous or excruciatingly painful, depending on mood or circumstance. “Beatrice may be a cow, though I don’t really intend to insult a cow, and not have a brain of any dimension at all,” her loving brother had confided to intimates, “but she will be capital for Frank, who is a trembling little stick of a boy. He’s just like my poor lamented Henrietta. He can’t be tranquil about anything. He has rhapsodies or melancholies, all very delicate of course but unnerving to a steady fella like myself. He can laugh one minute and cry like a little girl the next, and no one ever knows why. Beatrice is just the mother for him, placid, easy, incapable of being disturbed; she looks at life like a damned picture of herself, and she was always that way even when we were children. I never saw Beatrice in a temper in my life except once when the seamstress had put six ruffles on her party dress instead of seven, and even then it wasn’t much of a rage. Frank will calm down with Beatrice guiding him. No children of her own, you know, and like all stupid big women, she loves children.”

Beatrice loved nothing but her body and her appetites. Francis Campion had grown to young manhood and had made no more impression on Beatrice Offerton than the gardener’s puppy. If asked, she would have admitted she was fond of the boy, and so she was when she thought of him— which was seldom—or saw him, but it was a dim far fondness without a touch of maternal concern or tenderness. She was expert in only one thing: she was a wonderful manager of that bloated mansion on the mountainside, and servants adored her, and she pampered them. They were so necessary to the perfect, warm, flushed and enjoyable functioning of her body. She was ageless. At fifty-three she looked no older than thirty-eight, and the brightness of her coloring and the glowing softness of her hair had not diminished in the least. She attended them with the only passion of which she was capable.

Her friends called her “sweet” or “lovely,” and “so restful, so understanding.” They would have been surprised to learn that she was hardly aware of them and their existence. She smiled and dimpled when they visited her, or she them, but her mind was always conjecturing whether or not the cook had been careful with the pastry this time or whether her hostess had remembered that she adored maple-walnut layer cake, or rum tarts or English trifle.

Senator Campion had his delicious young female friends in Philadelphia and Washington, pleasant young creatures who were grateful for the first luxuries of their starveling lives, the first regular meals and handsome clothing and carriages and furs and an occasional jewel. They generally occupied flats in discreet buildings which were filled with their kind, especially in Washington, and were devoted to their benefactors and protectors, who were careful not to leave evidences of their regular occupancy and visits behind them or any casual note which could be used for blackmail purposes. All messages were written and carried by clerks, and infrequently telephoned because of “Central.” Senator Campion’s little friends rarely occupied the comfortable flat for more than six months, or even less, he having a tendency to tire of a current pretty face. But he always sent the girls—none of them over twenty—on their way with a nice thick packet of bills and all the clothes and furs he had bought for them, and the jewel or two, and as they had no means of speaking spitefully to avid newspaper reporters—lacking tangible proof—they remembered him with affection. He was careful, before acquiring them, to have them examined scrupulously by aware physicians, and to have reports of them given to him regularly by the porters in his employ, to be certain that they did not entertain younger and more attractive men in his absence. It was not his intention to acquire any venereal disease.

He was no more vicious than the general run of politicians and was more genial than most, even in that genial profession. He was a rascal and, being intelligent and shrewd, he was a little more of a scoundrel than his colleagues, but this was not accounted against him in Washington, where he was much admired for his wardrobe, his taste in little friends, his grand manners, his appearance, his wit, his reputation for kindliness, his way of knowing the current President intimately, his interesting speeches in the Capitol, his wine cellar and table, his knowledge of horseflesh as well as womanflesh, his generosity with friends, his even temper and bright smile, his sharp sense of finance and the influential brokers, his friendship with powerful men in New York and Washington, and the fact that in a time of ponderous political bores he was never a bore. Nor was he a hypocrite when among close friends, and he could always appreciate a bawdy joke on himself as well as the teller.

It was his appearance, and his deep and musical voice, which had made Jonathan Ferrier call him a Marzipan Pear. He was a big man, as tall as Jonathan himself, and massive, as his sister was massive. But whereas she was possessed of a figure, being carefully corseted at all times, Senator Campion did indeed resemble a large pear in build, and had a big expanse of belly—usually covered by the most expensive and tasteful of waistcoats in soft, subdued weaves and rich colors. His watch chains were finely handmade and clinked with jeweled seals and trinkets, but he always carried his father’s big gold repeater watch, which he fondly referred to frequently, and displayed. (This watch was notable for reassuring nervous constituents, and so the cynical sometimes called him “Old Turnip,” though he was but fifty-five.) As he was an affable man and hugely enjoyed life—except in Hambledon, which he loathed—he projected an atmosphere of friendship and intimate concern and affection to everyone, invaluable traits for a politician. This was not entirely hypocrisy, though he used these blessings constantly. He genuinely liked most people, especially those who loved him, and was a great favorite in Washington for his gifts of character. Even though it was known that he was exigent, could be ruthless when it served his purpose, and exploited his office even more than did the others, and was inordinately ambitious, and never blinked at lying, these were not counted as detriments. After all, he was a politician, and he himself delighted in repeating what Cicero had said: “Politicians are not born. They are excreted.”

Like his sister, he had a face larger than life, flushed constantly and somewhat fat and jowly and with a very fair complexion, and blue eyes and a big, well-formed nose and rich lips. But where Beatrice’s face expressed the most profound stupidity, his expressed alertness and intelligence. He had her serenity of forehead and her light chestnut hair—thick and wavy and tended, without gray—but there was a certain liveliness about him which endeared him to most men and almost all women, a certain gaiety of manner which few recognized as the lightheartedness of the true scoundrel. He also had a sharp ear for nuances. He could be utterly grave with a clergyman, involved with an insistent constituent to the exclusion of all else for the moment, and was the joy of any party any hostess wished to give in his honor. Though the present President was not of his Party, he was invited more often to the White House than any other Senator, or even Cabinet officers, and the President and he, he would say, “had a perfect meeting of minds.”

There was no man, he would say, but that he could cherish, if permitted, and no man whom he would not understand and with whom he could not sympathize. But there was indeed one, and that one was Jonathan Ferrier, and there was a pleasant mutual hatred between them. “Pleasant,” the Senator would say, “for, after all, his father was my dear friend and I always had a sensibility for Marjorie. In fact, I considered marrying her when she became a widow. But Jon is a difficult young man, and then there was that unfortunate affair of Mavis—a lovely girl, I was her godfather. Ah, dear. A little brightness went out of this old world when Mavis—died. A little golden color, a scent— Yes. But if I must admit it, I came at once to Jon’s defense. I had many a talk with—” But no one ever knew with whom he had that “talk,” if any. However, the impression remained that if it had not been for dear Senator Campion’s intercession—at some unnamed level —things might not have turned out so agreeably for Jonathan Ferrier. But was he grateful? Not at all! He never wasted an opportunity to make an unpleasant remark about “Old Marzipan Pear” and “his cello notes. A damned smiling fraud and a really incredible rascal.” Jonathan thought he knew all about the doings of the Senator and followed his career avidly. “You have to admire him, he’s so monumental a farce and such a dangerous one,” Jonathan would say. “He would sell out his country for a few more oil wells or a trade concession. But, then, what politician would not?”

Only Jonathan—and he had no actual proof except his intuition—was aware that the Senator, in spite of his personal wealth, was incredibly greedy and avaricious and that, like his sister, he was incapable of a really tender attachment to anyone but himself.

These were the guardians and the guides and the directors of conscience to the little boy Francis Campion, a boy somewhat too sensitive, inclined to emotionalism, and with a passionate devotion to and an interest in all that was gently beautiful and harmless, and who, in some unnamed and inexplicable manner, had come to love God and had directed his adolescent years to dreaming of the Beatific Vision and unworldly delights, and had desired, finally, to serve his God for the rest of his life. There had been no pious servant to point the way, nor a friend, nor clergyman, nor a relative. He had found his way himself, through only God knew what dark thickets of loneliness and childish despair and silence and friendlessness, through what echoing abysses and frozen fields. Father McNulty had said, “God finds His own,” which Jonathan thought total nonsense.

Jonathan had noticed the little boy on the streets of Hambledon, in his father’s carriage, accompanied by his queenly aunt, and though he had been but twenty, and even younger at the time, he had been struck by the white hurt of the child’s face, the eager, hopeful eyes, the shy ways, the sudden bashful smiles, the grave and gentle politeness. He appeared to need protection, and though Jonathan would have jeered at the idea that he himself could never resist wishing to give protection to the helpless, it was indeed that very protectiveness in his nature which had made him remember a not very attractive little boy over the next fifteen years. He saw Francis Campion very seldom, perhaps not more than once a year or so, and he thought of him as a white mouse, with his pale thin face, his dark eyes always seeking, his thin dark hair, his very slight body and nervous small mannerisms. He had the mouth of a girl in his childhood, a little tremulous, always a little parted. It was not until he was seventeen that it became both quiet and firm and resolute and his expression somewhat exalted as if he were acquainted with visions. Jonathan saw him then, when he had treated him for colitis, and he had barely been able to elicit any recital of symptoms from the reserved boy. At the end, however, though Jonathan did not know it, Francis Campion had come to trust him and had wistfully desired to be his friend. At eighteen, Francis went away to his seminary, to the serene acceptance of his aunt and the ire of his father, who had but this one child. “It is true his mother was a Papist,” he would say to annoyed friends and constituents, “but I never encouraged him. But, then, is it not true that our children, in spite of our best efforts at all times and our sedulous prayers, often disappoint us? And don’t we deserve a little sympathy?” The sympathy was always forthcoming, and the forgiveness, for many had disappointing children of their own. And the Catholics in the state, through the kind offices of one of the Senator’s friends, were duly informed that he had a son studying for the priesthood. This did not vex the Senator.

Now Francis Campion, unaccountably home from his seminary, had tried to kill himself last night in the enormous pile of the “mansion,” in his lonely room. He had failed, but just barely.

Jonathan thought of him as his horse climbed the steep but well-kept narrow road, and he angrily cursed his vicious headache and the young man who was the cause of his early exposure to the heat of the day and his sweltering climb up the mountainside. Here there was no sound but that of gently rattling lawn mowers and the hiss of hoses, or the soft yapping of a contented dog far off in some garden. The grind and clatter of the streetcars below and the usual rumble of traffic and the voices of hurrying people did not reach up here to this heat-blazing but fragrant area of great homes, vast guarded lawns hidden by walls or high hedges, hotly scented trees glittering in the slightest of mountain breezes along the road, and an occasional little darting brook running between fallen stones. It was all brilliant and shining hush, with a few sleepy bird twitters or a low rush of wings, or the startled flash of a squirrel or a rabbit in the sun-struck tall grasses between the trees that threw uncertain fretwork on the hot white dust which Jonathan’s horse was treading upward. It was so warm that the sky was the color of pale milk, and the sun had an actual weight on Jonathan’s shoulders, like the pressing of heated iron. Lawns below might be blasted brown, even this early in the summer, but the lawns he glimpsed on passing were purely green and plushy and the gardens were fervent with color and gravel walks were sparkling with moisture and the careful use of rakes. There was an odor of pine and roses and cut grass and wetted dust in the clean and incandescent air, which was so bright that every object appeared to be touched with iridescence, even the dust of the road.

Here lived the very rich “old” families and the rich “new” families, removed from each other by long sloping lawns and flowering hedges and firm white walls exploding with scarlet roses and creepers. Sun broke blindingly on distant hothouses and clean slated roofs. Above them all towered the fantastic roof of “Pike’s Peak,” with its mighty weathervane fiery under the sky. Stopping to wipe his sweating face and blink the dust from his eyes, Jonathan irately glanced down at Hambledon, swimming in a bluish heat haze, and at the river, which resembled white flame in the sun. It was hot enough here, God knew, but down there it was unbearable in the valley. Still, Jonathan was more and more outraged that he had permitted himself—and how the hell had that happened?—to be persuaded to make this climb when he should have been in a cool darkened room in his mother’s house with a cold cloth on his head, a pitcher of ice at his bedside and a cold sweating drink in his weak hand.