Читать книгу Parris Mitchell of Kings Row - Henry Bellamann - Страница 6

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Just after one o’clock Judge James Holloway emerged from his columned house on Cedar Street. He was dressed in a much crumpled linen suit. The suit had been fresh that morning, but the Judge had spent the forenoon in a hammock under his favorite shade tree, as the crisscross of wrinkles testified.

He put on a wide-brimmed panama hat and slowly opened a huge black cotton umbrella. He glanced once, rather ruefully, at the condition of his linens. “Looks like a terrapin’s hide,” he muttered. No matter. He made his way majestically toward the square.

The Judge’s costume was a concession to progress. Less than five years ago he had worn black broadcloth and a high beaver hat at all seasons. Under his overhanging eyebrows his glance shone irascibly. Everyone knew Judge Holloway. His cronies liked him. Many people were a little in awe of him. “The best criminal lawyer in the state, by God.” Witnesses feared him as the devil, and juries wept when he played the varied registers of his eloquence.

The tall figure was as well known as the courthouse itself. He stopped from time to time to exchange greetings with friends or to call out some impudence to ladies sitting on front porches. A great ladies’ man, the Judge. He loved the world and all the good things in it. He laughed at it and with it. He drank its beauty and its charm and found the draught refreshing. The earth was his home. He saturated his mind with the rich flavors of a pagan literature, and valued a gracious gesture above a pious deed.

Judge Holloway was giving himself a treat today. He intended spending the afternoon with his friend Miles Jackson, editor and publisher of The Gazette. Jackson was a man of brains. Damned fine man, the Judge thought as he crossed the square. He’s got sense and tells a good story. The latter was a prime qualification in Holloway’s estimation. He chuckled as some choice obscenity crossed his memory. I mustn’t forget to tell that to Jackson.... Hot as hell today. The old man’s eyes blinked in the glare.

Miles Jackson’s office was a dingy room, a mad clutter of papers, books, and pamphlets. The room was hot and reeked of the various and ancient smells peculiar to print shops.

Jackson himself was standing behind the heaped-up table turning the pages of a bound newspaper file. The Judge nodded and sat down, fanning himself with his floppy panama. Jackson continued turning the pages, and Judge Holloway lighted a long, misshapen stogie. No need for conventional amenities between these two. Holloway’s ribald story retreated to some far corner of his mind for future reference. The moment was not favorable. He was as quick to feel the mood of an individual as he was to sense the temper of a jury.

Miles Jackson’s figure was heavy and bulgy from years of slumping in a swivel chair. His massive head was majestically modeled. Large gray eyes moved under the most luxurious eyebrows in Kings Row. People often wondered how he could see at all through the thicket of bristles that hung over his eyeglasses and seemed to reach out in all directions like angry tentacles. When he spoke his voice was surprisingly low and mellow—the voice of a man who has meditated much and who expresses his meditations in appropriate richness. When he indulged in some flight of sarcasm his voice rose in pitch and sharpened perceptibly.

The editor flicked a page and made a sound which his friend recognized as an invitation. The Judge, adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles, peered at the column, then quickly glanced at the dated line topping the sheet.

“Hm, that Tower suicide. Didn’t realize how long ago that happened.”

He read slowly through the half column, then leaned back in the rickety chair, removed his spectacles, and tapped them thoughtfully against his thumbnail. “I wonder now what the truth of it was?”

Jackson pulled himself up on the table, took out his corncob pipe, filled it, and gave it the careful attention of an habitual pipe smoker.

“There you go, like all the rest of them, Jim. Everybody wants to know what the real truth of a story is.”

The Judge nodded and endeavored to repair a seemingly hopeless fissure in the side of his stogie.

“That’s what your real business is, and mine—trying to answer that old question.”

Jackson drew at his pipe before answering.

“Yes, I always had an idea that the truth was the prime concern of a newspaperman. Can’t say that I’d ever thought the profession of law was similarly concerned.”

Judge Holloway ignored this. Jackson leaned back against a stack of books and locked his fingers about an uplifted knee. The Judge settled himself more comfortably and put his feet on the table. This was what he had come out for.

“Jim,” Miles began, “I’ve asked the same question a good many times myself, and I’ve never answered it. Most people believe an editor knows more about the truth than anyone, but that he won’t print it, or doesn’t dare, or that out of pure cussedness he likes to keep the public fuddled. Now, that’s half a truth—and half a truth is just about in the neighborhood of what we know about the simplest thing that happens out there on Poplar Street, isn’t it?”

“Maybe truth is just relative?”

“That’s something to think about. Puts a lot more juice in dried-out facts and opens up a general argument. I like that. It adds an element of mystery to the commonplace.”

The Judge nodded and turned to the file again. Jackson refilled his pipe and laid it carefully on the table beside him.

“I like to look through those files. They run back sixty years. The Gazette was a weekly then. I often read up on the old stories and compare them with the way they’ve worked out or changed in thirty or forty years. It’s quite a study in human nature—and human error.

“I was just thinking, Jackson. Take these columns of Personal Mention. All the comings and goings, the hints of courtships, the marriages and births—it’s a biography of Kings Row, that’s what it is, a biography of the town.” The Judge knocked the loose flakes from his disintegrating stogie and continued. “And I suppose you’d say that deep down under all that somewhere is a final aspect that we’re hunting for.”

“I doubt it, Jim, I doubt it. I’ve never found a tale yet to have any more truth in it just because it’s old.”

Holloway grunted. “There’s a popular notion that truth will come to light. That’s poppycock. Truth won’t out.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’ve been a lawyer for fifty years and I’ve seen men come and go in that old office of mine in mortal fear of that same truth they talk about. It’s strange how much they claim for truth—the power it has to work for good—and how afraid they are some little bit of it may leak out!”

“Or that I might print a few stray paragraphs of it.”

“Exactly. I lay there in my hammock this morning trying to take a nap, though I’ve never been able to sleep in the daytime. I lay there thinking about some old tales that went the rounds of Kings Row years and years ago and how little any of us ever knew about what was really behind them. I suppose if you could get at the truth of some things we might know something more about the way the world is planned, if it has any plan at all.”

“Are you talking about the plan we hear about in church?”

“No, I’m not. I’m afraid the church is getting to be just so much sand for ostriches to bury their scared heads in, or for sly old birds like Fulmer Green to hide behind—”

“Watch your metaphors, Jim.”

“Damn the metaphors. Look at that stogie, Jackson. What in the hell do you suppose it’s made of?”

“Smells like Jimson weed.”

“Tastes like Jimson weed.”

“Why don’t you smoke a pipe, Jim?”

“Smells worse and tastes worse.”

Jackson opened a desk drawer and proffered a box of very long, very black cigars. “Here, switch to one of these.”

“Customer’s treat?”

“No. Gift from your friend, Fulmer Green. He wants an editorial lead on the waterworks. Think I’d better give it to him?”

Judge Holloway did not answer immediately. He shook the ash from his cigar and twisted it slowly around to assure himself that it was burning evenly. “Let him have it,” he grunted. His brows drew down in a reminiscent effort and he made absent-minded attempts to smooth the “terrapin hide” across his knee.

The courthouse clock struck two. It was as if the drowsy town itself had waked for a moment to take note of passing time. The bell vibrated strongly, and then the waves of sound lessened as they spread out across houses and treetops to lose themselves in the warm haze of the countryside. Kings Row settled itself for another hour’s doze.

The Judge set his heavy gold watch ahead two minutes. The town clock kept better time than his watch did.

Jackson straightened up and extricated a thick silver turnip from his waistband pocket. It was seven minutes slow, but that was near enough. He returned the watch to its tight fit and folded himself up again.

“That Tower tragedy, now. How did you figure that business, Jim?”

Judge Holloway gnawed his lower lip for a moment, then restored his cigar to its rightful place before he mumbled, “My theory’s no more likely to be right than yours.”

“I never could figure out why Dr. Tower left all his property to Parris Mitchell.”

“Just liked the boy, I guess. Thought he had brains enough to make use of it the right way.”

“Parris is pretty well off, I take it?”

“Plenty to keep him from worrying. The Tower money set him up—that and the sale of the von Eln place to the state, to say nothing of the money Drake McHugh piled up for him.”

“Remember that was made by using the Tower estate for capital.”

“Well, the Tower suicide wasn’t caused by money worries, that’s certain. I wonder what happens to make a smart man like Tower murder his pretty daughter and blow his own brains out?”

“Lord knows! The fellow was always queer—an unfriendly cuss. Don’t believe he ever liked anybody but Parris Mitchell—or let anybody else come to his house. I never understood why Marie von Eln ever sent Parris to read medicine with Tower in the first place.”

“He was an able man, no doubt about it.”

“I reckon so.” Jackson turned his massive head toward the window. “I reckon—look, isn’t that Parris headed this way now?”

“Looks like it. Think I’ll wait and speak to him. Long as I’ve been handling his business, I never feel I know anything about him. He never talks about himself.”

“Other folks do the talking.”

“Mysterious chap, I’d say.”

“Mysterious? No such thing. Don’t forget, Jim, that boy was brought up by his grandmother, Marie von Eln, one of the finest women in the world. He gets his foreign manners from her. Why, he spoke French and German, I reckon, before he ever learned English. But there’s nothing mysterious about him.”

“Well, he’s different from the other young men hereabouts. Seems a cool customer to me. Acts as though he held himself still inside by some tremendous control—kind of quiet and watchful. But I like him. I like him. He’s got good manners.”

“Fine folks he comes from. His mother and father died before he was a year old, and his grandmother raised him. She didn’t stand for any interference in the rearing of her grandchild from those Virginia swells—his pa’s people.”

At that moment Parris Mitchell walked in through the open door.

“Well, Mitchell, don’t tell me you’re taking a holiday!” Judge Holloway said.

“Don’t make me feel guiltier than I do, sir. But occasionally I have to break away to keep my own sanity.”

“Don’t blame you,” the Judge said. “After talking all day to people who don’t know your language, you need it.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Judge. They are mentally unbalanced, but they understand what I say to them. And I understand what they are trying to say, too. I learn something from them every day.”

“Stuff and nonsense, Mitchell! Don’t tell me you take their ravings seriously.”

“But I do, sir.” Parris’ voice was grave. “A psychiatrist learns a lot from the patient. And everything he learns helps him to become a better doctor. It’s a magic circle, you see.”

“You can’t kid me. I think it’s poppycock.” Judge Holloway dismissed the topic with a toss of his head.

“About that new wing at the hospital, Mitchell—” Jackson puffed at his corncob pipe before finishing his sentence. “Ran into Paul Nolan down at Hyde’s last night and got the dope. He was mighty proud of getting that appropriation last spring.”

“Wonder what kind of rabbit foot he used on that skinflint legislature?” Holloway said. “They’ve been cutting down on everything in the state—getting ready for the next election.”

“Playing up to the taxpayers, in other words. They don’t give a damn what happens to our eleemosynary institutions. Glad Nolan got his new building, though. Smart fellow, Paul.”

“Paul’s smart all right and one of the finest men I know, and in this case he had the backing of Kings Row,” Parris said.

“Yeah? You’re forgetting that bastard Green.” The Judge’s voice was edged. “Made a special trip over to the capital to try to block it. Damned pup. I can’t savvy what Fulmer Green’s got against the State Hospital. My money says he’s got it in for Nolan.”

Miles Jackson shot a quick glance at Parris. “And it’s my bet that Nolan isn’t the only one. How about it, Parris?”

Parris shrugged. “I wonder,” he said, “if he’s really such small potatoes as to take out an old grudge by trying to block our plans out there?”

“He’s got the memory of an elephant. He never forgets a slight or a defeat.”

“If I remember rightly,” Parris sounded a bit rueful, “he always won out.”

“All the same, my lad, you managed to show him up a time or two. Remember the time you made him back down—in print—about that St. George sale?”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes—that. And several other times you showed him up as a bad actor. He won’t forget those things. He could be dangerous,” Miles warned. “If he keeps meddling in your affairs, Parris, why don’t you lace into him? Hold him up to ridicule. That would get him quicker than anything else.”

“I shan’t need to do anything about Fulmer,” Parris said confidently.

“Why not—if he acts up?”

“Look, Miles, I deal with people’s minds. I know how minds work. Fulmer will defeat himself—if he runs true to form.”

“What makes you think so? He gets by with an awful lot of dirt.”

“Give him time. Psychologically, men of his type destroy themselves. I’m no fighter. I deal with ideas. I’m no two-fisted guy to get out and lick the stuffing out of somebody just because I don’t like the color of his eyes or the cut of his hair.”

“That sounds all right—but what do we do when he’s ‘destroyed himself,’ as you so optimistically predict?” Miles scoffed.

“We preen ourselves and mutter something that sounds remarkably like ‘I told you so.’ ”

Miles grunted. “That’s not enough. Nothing but gore would satisfy me when I think of that young whippersnapper pushing folks around like chessmen.”

“Trouble with him is that he’s scared stiff,” said the Judge. “Nobody in his position would drink so much if he wasn’t scared out of his boots about something or other.”

“Scared he’ll get found it—that’s all,” Miles jeered.

“Come to think of it,” Parris said, “I don’t believe I’ve seen him for several months.”

“That’s because you don’t take proper cognizance of our public affairs, my friend. He’s always on hand at our band concerts, our home-coming days, and even the opening game of the baseball season.”

Holloway chuckled appreciatively. “Trust Fulmer to be in the limelight.”

“Parris,” Miles asked, “how do you explain the unholy affection Fulmer has for that wastrel brother of his?”

“You’re full of questions I can’t answer this afternoon, Miles. I’d never thought about it.”

“It might be worth thinking about. Maybe you psychiatrist birds have some sort of a three-syllable name for it, but a plain man like me just takes it for granted that Fulmer is fooled by the young scamp.”

“Does it work both ways—the affection, I mean?” Parris was interested.

“Got your curiosity roused, eh? Maybe you can figure out just what kind of a complex it is.”

“Not necessarily a complex at all,” Parris said. “Could be a carryover from some childhood sense of responsibility.”

“By golly, you could be right,” the Judge agreed. “When Rod Green died, Fulmer took over the care of the kid. That sanctimonious mother of theirs was too wrapped up in church work to bother with the boys.”

“Hear, hear!” Parris laughed. “Judge Holloway’s getting to be a psychologist, too.”

“Psychologist or not,” the Judge said, “I think there’s something kind of unwholesome about Fulmer’s attachment to that good-looking scamp. It looks—shall I say unhealthy?”

Miles Jackson’s eyebrows twitched. “You might,” he said, “if you’re afraid to put it in plainer language.”

The Judge rose from the rickety chair with caution. “Well, if you get anything figured out—anything interesting—let me know. Seems to me there’s a statute on our books that takes care of unusual behavior. I shouldn’t mind trying it out. Guess the time has come for me to make a pretence of opening my alleged office. Going my way, Mitchell?”

“Not today, sir. I’m going to wander over to the old place across the creek. I don’t get there often. It looks rather forlorn, I’m told, after four years of neglect.”

“Should think it would. This country goes back to wilderness in a hurry. Never saw such fecundity except in the tropics. Drop in at the office any time you can. You’ll keep an eye on your lawyer, young man, if you’re sharp. And how’s your wife? Mrs. Holloway sees her occasionally at Sarah Skeffington’s.”

“Elise is not standing the heat too well, I’m afraid. Good old Sarah,” he added, “she’s been almost a second grandmother to me.”

“As fine a woman as ever lived—but getting old. You young folks ought to drop in to see her more often than you do. Well, s’long, son—stop by with your wife next time you’re in the neighborhood.”

As Judge Holloway’s umbrella, substituting for a cane, beat a rhythmic tattoo on the paved walk of Federal Street, Parris felt almost as though he might turn and find his grandmother at his side, for, of all the people in Kings Row, these three, Sarah Skeffington, the Judge, and Miles Jackson, had been closest to her.

Miles Jackson stood idly looking after the two men who had just left his office. Leaning against the door facing, his hands thrust into his pockets, he gave himself over to reviewing the feud that had existed for so many years between Fulmer Green and Parris Mitchell.

It wasn’t exactly that Kings Row had taken sides in the matter, but the town was reminded of it from time to time by some overt act on the part of Fulmer and the seemingly unimpassioned but often effective reaction on the part of the young doctor. By George, people ought to take sides, and to stick by their choices, good or bad; otherwise, the town would never get anything settled.

“Trouble is,” he muttered angrily, “the mass of people is inert. It only moves under calamity or catastrophe.”

Miles shrugged aside his annoyance. The extreme materialism of these people, he thought reasonably, makes them unaware—incapable of perceiving spiritual values. But it was the same everywhere, he supposed. Everything that is good or bad about this country is good or bad about Kings Row. For every Parris Mitchell here there are a hundred thousand Parris Mitchells—and that is impressive. For every Fulmer Green there are a hundred thousand Fulmer Greens—and that, too, is impressive.

That Benny Singer affair had been the first adult clash between Mitchell and Green. Benny was undoubtedly the town half-wit, and as such he should have been protected from the outrageous persecution of hoodlum boys. When a crowd of them one day threw rocks at the Singer house, breaking the windows and hurting his dog, Benny fired a gun into the crowd and killed two of the gang. Parris, called in as an alienist, had done his best to have the boy committed to the asylum, but Fulmer, as the new Prosecuting Attorney, had pushed the case with malign persistence and had succeeded in sending Benny to the gallows. Miles grunted disdainfully, remembering that Fulmer had acted only to further his political aspirations.

And then there had been that scurrilous article in The Evening Chronicle accusing Parris of a crooked deal in the sale of the St. George tract of land to the State Hospital. Parris had forced Fulmer to retract, Miles recalled gleefully, and, in fact, had forced Fulmer to give up the publication of The Chronicle, which was nothing more than an organ for boosting Fulmer as a rising force in state politics. Kings Row had applauded. It had been vastly entertaining to see Fulmer eat crow.

There had been other run-ins, too, Miles remembered with wry amusement. In a town like Kings Row there were always opposing forces. Well, Parris didn’t seem to be worried. Nice guy, Parris Mitchell.

Kings Row was a little fearful of new ideas, Miles reminded himself. And certainly Parris was an exponent of the new. Modern society, he mused, has a way of guarding itself against the impact of the novel. It has in mind the retention of its individuality—and there was undoubtedly a lot of “we-sentiment” in this town. Too much.

There must be a good deal of tension, too, underneath the seeming placidity, Miles reflected. He grinned wickedly as he added, “Man has dwelt too long in the murky shadow of the knowledge tree.”

Turning back to his desk, he closed the file he and the Judge had been discussing earlier. “The biography of Kings Row,” the Judge had called it. By Jove, he wished he knew more about that Tower business. There must have been more to that than ever came out. Somehow, he felt Parris could enlighten him if the boy would talk. But Parris had a way of keeping his mouth shut. You never heard Parris sounding off about other people’s affairs. He didn’t sound off about his own, for that matter. But for some reason the recollection of that strange, tragic death of Dr. Tower and his lovely young daughter clung like a faint shadow to the progress of Parris Mitchell. Conversations about the young doctor—and there were many—were likely to take a turn beginning with “Yes, but—”

Miles settled down in his old swivel chair and went to work on an editorial on the waterworks. He’d not say what he suspected about Fulmer Green’s connection with the contract. It would come out soon enough. Fulmer could not resist boasting when he had put over a sharp deal. He’d be sure to let it out. Maybe Parris was right when he said Fulmer would destroy himself.

Miles shrugged a kink out of his right shoulder. “Doggone,” he said aloud, “I’m getting old. I need a vacation. Maybe I could get Drew Roddy to come down and take over while I got in a good fishing trip. Do Drew good to come out of his shell for a while.”

As Parris walked, his thoughts moved away from the two men with whom he had been talking, away from the town to the old place across the creek where he had spent his childhood, down the years to the boy’s mind and its first meetings with the realities of Kings Row and the dim world beyond.

He was brought back sharply as he passed Pomeroy Lane. Again he speculated on the mystery of Davis Pomeroy. Was there indeed a mystery, or was it another of those Kings Row fancies that were still so hard to separate from the truth? But as he looked up the hill at the imposing length of white stables, the big house, the magnificent trees, he scoffed at the idea of its being a sinister place, full of frightening things.

With teasing insistence his thoughts returned to the von Eln place; his grandmother’s dominating presence; his childhood sweetheart, little Renée Gyllinson, whom he could not remember without that familiar stab of pain; Elise, his wife, that first time he saw her standing in the orchard against a backdrop of apple blossoms, her silvery blond hair glinting in the sun. How strange it had seemed to him, returning for the first time to that familiar scene after five years in Vienna, that he should find there a grown-up Renée smiling at him. He had even called her Renée, so strong had been the resemblance. She had laughed and said, “My name is Elise, and I live here with my father.”

Even after she spoke with that charming foreign accent, it was hard to believe that she was not at least a projection of Renée. He had felt a sudden rush of protectiveness, a feeling that had grown stronger as the days passed. Gradually his memory of Renée had been dimmed and Elise remained. But all this was in the past. Now, Elise, gentle, frail little Elise, was his wife. She still appealed to the protective instinct she had awakened in him at that first meeting. Sometimes a passing wish that she would “grow up” had to be forcibly banished from his mind. But he often felt he had married a memory—a dear, sweet image from his youth.

For a time after his marriage he had been able to shut out that other memory—the painful memory of Cassandra Tower. Cassandra, whose strange and urgent passion had left its mark on him, had left him emotionally shy, physically averse to demonstrative outbursts. Perhaps that was why Elise, with her timid childish affection, had brought him such contentment—such escape.

He smiled as the word “escape” formed in his mind. His thorough training in the field of psychiatry had taught him much about his own motivations, and while he refused to dwell on them, his recognition was quick and sure.