The stricken doctor continued his dry soft weeping as if he had not heard. "You won't do that to me, Jon. I need the money. I'm forty-six years old. In the past six months I've made five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars! Four of them went to pay off old debts. I have six operations scheduled. Next week. One hundred dollars apiece—six hundred dollars. A fortune. I must have that money, Jon." He spoke with quiet and desperate firmness.
"You're not going to make it. You're not going to murder anyone else in this hospital or anywhere else." Jon spoke heavily, for his instincts were informing him that rage could not shake this unfortunate man, nor threats, for something more terrible was destroying him, even more terrible than the morphine he was giving himself. "Listen to me, Tom, if you can. Try to focus on me. Look at me, damn you, and stop that ridiculous womanish crying! Tom, I'm your friend. I know how hard it's been for you and Thelma."
"No," said Dr. Harper. "You don't know, Jon. Look at me, Jon. I'm dying."
"I don't believe it!"
"It's true. I have what you call the Beast, Jon. I have gastric cancer."
"Who told you?" Jonathan's voice was rough because he did not want to believe this monstrous thing.
"Jon, I'm a doctor, too. You know how we are. If we suspect something is wrong with us, or we have a few symptoms, we are the ones who get medical advice last, and besides we're too busy. Then, we know all there is to know, and that makes cowards of us. It isn't ignorance that makes us cowards, contrary to the old saw. It's knowledge. It started several months ago. For a considerable time I'd been having epigastric pain, and I thought, 'Oh, if I don't stop taking on so much, I'll be developing an ulcer,' so I took the usual antacids. I began to lose weight, and Thelma said I was working too hard, which I was—all those debts. Then I lost my appetite and started to vomit—and about three months ago I had that famous coffee-ground vomitus. I examined my blood. Anemia, and then I found occult blood in my stools. The classic picture; nothing vague. My mother died of cancer, you know. Now I don't sleep very much—except—"
He made an exhausted and vague movement of his thin and trembling hands and then dropped them on his knee.
"You know the prognosis of that, Jon."
"Would you mind if I examined you?" Jonathan still did not believe it. Tom Harper silently stood up and removed his clothing. Jonathan was aghast to see his rib cage clearly visible; his legs were only bone covered with a thin layer of muscle and skin. Tom lay down on the examination table, and Jonathan silently examined him for the most part, asking questions only when necessary. Once he said, "If only to God we had an X-ray machine here in town!"
"What if we had? It would just be interesting to doctors but not for me, Jon. Well?"
"Get dressed." Jonathan carefully washed his hands so that he would have something to do and so calm himself. He wiped his hands on a clean towel, then sat down near his friend.
"I suppose you know that it's already metastasized to the liver? And to the supraclavicular lymph nodes and peritoneum?"
"Yes, I know. As a doctor and as a patient—I know."
"Why the hell didn't you come to me months ago?"
"To have you tell me the truth?"
"I've seen two rare operations, Tom—resection. I can do it myself. I assisted at one, in New York."
Tom smiled drearily. "How long did the patient survive after that?"
"A year longer than he would have done without an operation. But another is still surviving, not in a rare and roaring state of health, but he's still alive."
"If he were a doctor, would he be able to keep up his practice?"
"No. Frankly, no."
"You see," said Tom, "it would have been worthless to me, even if I had survived. What would I do without medicine? I can't do anything else. And there are my children and my wife. Well. Now you know. I can keep going on morphine, Jon. It keeps the pain down enough. I'll be making enough money to give Thelma a little breathing space. There's five thousand dollars in life insurance—all I could afford. The boys won't have much chance, but at least they're healthy. I've got to go on, Jon. I can't stop."
Jonathan looked down at his narrow, polished boot. He swung it back and forth, his hps pursed as if whistling. His manner was nonchalantly thoughtful, but he was thinking rapidly. Tom Harper finished dressing. He, too, washed his hands mechanically at the basin, then, sighing, he smoothed his damp hands over his thick brown hair.
"Tom," said Jonathan, "you are a country-born boy. You lived on your father's farm until you entered medical school. And twelve or fourteen years ago he sold the farm so you could continue? But you know farming.
"I have three farms. One of them is about two hundred acres. I have a tenant farmer there, in a house by himself. The farmhouse is big, with running water, and comfortable and has been renovated. It's very old, but it's a fine house. The farm is stocked with some truck. Three hundred head of cattle, Holsteins. My bulls have won a lot of prizes, and my cows, too. The farm's perfectly equipped; it brings me a good income, even after my tenant farmer gets his share, and he gets a very generous share. Excellent man, with a family, and his house isn't far from the main house. A good school two miles away. Highway nearby—less than an hour's drive to Hambledon. A church a mile away. Rolling country.
"I want you to go and live in that farmhouse, Tom, and take Thelma—who's a country girl herself—and your four children. A healthy and tranquil life for all of you. And I guarantee you this, and will sign a contract with you to that effect: Thelma is to occupy that house during her lifetime, unless she marries again, and the children with her until they leave permanently for marriage or career. And the income from the farm, after the tenant farmer's share, goes to you, as long as you live, and to Thelma, as long as she lives, or until she marries again, which I doubt she will do. There'll be no fine print, Tom, but just as I've told you.
"I've seen temporary remissions in what you have, Tom. A life without strain and with peace, and with the knowledge that your children are provided for—Thelma can save from the income for their education—and your wife, too, will prolong your life for a few months, perhaps. You'll have peace of mind, above everything else. And, Tom, I will, within the next few days, arrange that all expenses of the farm be paid by me, and all improvements, even to the seed and fertilizer, new machinery, and everything else. You'll have no extraneous expenses. If Thelma dies prematurely, your children will live there under the same provisions.
"Now, what do you think about that?"
Tom said nothing. He merely looked at Jonathan with tortured stupefaction, his emaciated face working without a sound. His hands knotted together, and then he wrung them over and over.
Jonathan said, "There's the little village of Russellville down the road, and old Dr. Jonas fives there and practices what he can practice. But he is a good man, a Dr. Bogus himself. Occasionally, when you feel well enough, you can help him out—once in a while. No night calls, no deliveries, no operations, of course. Simple diagnoses. You know the farming regions, and people.
"Tom, your addiction to drugs comes from your pain, and I know that only morphine can relieve it. So, take a good supply with you, a very good supply, but use it only when absolutely necessary. For you know as well as I do that as long as it's possible for a cancer patient to function even a little adequately, it's best to keep the dosage as low as it can be. Or later—nothing will help the pain except death. And we want to postpone that as long as we can for Thelma's sake and the sake of your children. On the farm, without stress and the necessity to work as a surgeon, you will find that you can keep the dosage pretty low for a long time and save its real benefits—for the last."
He stood up. He could not look at his friend's face now; it was too much for him. "Do you want me to tell Thelma for you, Tom? Will it be better that way? Or shall I go with you now and we'll tell her together? She's a sensible woman, Thelma."
"Jon," said Dr. Harper, in a very low and rusty voice. "Yes, Tom?"
"I've
got to tell you something, Jon. I can't accept your offer without telling you first, and perhaps after I've told you, you will withdraw it, and I wouldn't blame you."
Jonathan smiled. "All right, tell me. It can't be very important."
Tom threw back his head so that his thin and contorted neck reared out of its high stiff white collar. He stared at the ceiling and groaned. Then he reached up his hand and covered that straining face and spoke from behind them.
"Jon, weeks before you were arrested—it was accepted that you had been—away, I went to Humphrey Bedloe and spoke to him in private. I swore that if he repeated what I said to anyone, or called me in before witnesses, I'd deny I ever said it, and I'd deny it on the witness stand.
"Jon, I told Humphrey Bedloe that I had seen you, right here in Hambledon, on the day your wife told her uncle that she had had that criminal abortion which caused her death."
Jon stood as if struck in the center of the room, and slowly his face became terrible.
Tom continued. "Humphrey went to the sheriff and told him but did not give my name. He knew it was his duty. He said only that he had 'information.' It was on that little 'information' that you were arrested, Jon. It doesn't seem possible that in this day and age that would happen, without a sworn statement before the proper authorities, and questioning, but it did. This town hates you, Jon. It's always hated you—that is, the important part of it if not your patients, and even some of them do, also. They wanted to believe the worst of you, Jon. Out of envy, and because you—you have an abrasive way sometimes, and you have no patience with lies and hypocrisies and pretensions, and malice, without which most people could not live a full life. And you let people know what you think, and that's not forgivable."
He had dropped his hands heavily to his knees again, and he inclined his head like a man totally undone and broken, but his eyes looked at Jon unflinchingly and with anguish.
"With what I told Dr. Bedloe, and what Martin Eaton did, too, it was enough. Perhaps one without the other wouldn't have carried weight. My weight carried, Jon, it carried weight."
"What really did you tell Bedloe?"
"I—well, I said that I had seen you not far from your house, as I was in the neighborhood. I said I had seen you walking along the river bank, deep in thought. You—you had a bag with you, a piece of luggage. And then you walked in the direction of the station. Bedloe didn't doubt me, Jon. He never had reason to doubt me before and has had no reason to doubt me now. Don't hold it against him, Jon, that he removed you from the staff of the Friends' even before you were indicted. It was my doing."
Jonathan said with soft wonder, "You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch."
He went to the door and unlocked it. Tom said behind him, "Yes. Yes. I'm much worse than that. You canceled the five thousand dollars I borrowed from you, Jon. You called it a 'gift to medicine,' and 'a public duty.' I tried to think it was only that, Jon; I would not let myself think for a moment that it was the greatest generosity and kindness in the world. I even persuaded myself that you did only what you ought to have done and that in a way I was your benefactor, and not you mine. That's the way people are, Jon, that's the way they are, but I don't think you ever knew that."
Jonathan's tall back was to Tom Harper. He put his hand on the doorknob and began to turn it.
Only a few weeks ago, perhaps less, he would have turned it and would have gone out, and that would have been the end of it and there would have been nothing left to do but to make certain that Tom Harper was removed from staff and his patients taken from him. But there had been some dark and still unknown unrooting in the deeper places of his mind lately. He stood at the door and faced Tom Harper again.
"Why?" he said. "Just tell me why. I want to know."
Tom sighed despairingly. "Jon, my father sold his farm to help put me through medical school, and there was very little left after the mortgage. Your father bought that farm, Jon, about fourteen years ago. It's yours now. And you've always been rich, and that was another thing, and you didn't have hundreds of cold black nights going through medical school, when you wondered whether you'd make it or not, and you were hungry, and you couldn't afford to sleep because you had to work outside to make expenses. It wasn't your fault, Jon, that I went through that, and my father, too, but there it was. That is the way people are. I took your five thousand dollars—that's the way people are."
"Yes, so it is," said Jonathan. "I always had a low opinion of humanity and now you've dropped it down another thousand or so fathoms, Harper. I was ten years—more—behind you in age. I didn't know when my father acquired the farms he left me. You have no accusations to throw at anyone, Harper. My father bought that farm because it was offered for sale through a county agent. He neither knew nor cared why it was being sold. Why should he have? If it had not been your father's farm, it would have been another. My father liked land. I knew nothing about it. My father was the only one who wanted to buy that farm and he paid the money asked. He wasn't guilty of 'exploitation' or deliberate cruelty. But that's what you thought, wasn't it?"
"That's what I made myself think, Jon. I must have been insane all those years. Thelma thinks you are the most wonderful man in the world, and sometimes I'd say to her, 'Sweetheart, if you only knew!' "
"Well, it was a nice boost to your ego! It put you on the level with Jonathan Ferrier or even made you his superior. The funny thing is that I never considered you 'below' me, Harper, and I never considered you inferior! To me, always, you were a fine doctor and surgeon, far above the average. We were at least equals. I was proud to help you—because
you were a member of a profession which seems to me to be the most important in the world.
"Now that I've seen some specimens lately, I'm not convinced. And you've helped, Harper, you've helped."
"I know, Jon, I know. Say anything you want to me. It isn't half what I deserve."
The sick man bowed his head on his chest. Jonathan looked at him with the greatest hate and bitterness and thought: He wants me to feel sorry for him, to pat his shoulder, to laugh heartily and say it's nothing, and the farm arrangements will go on!
Then another thought came to him. Tom Harper had had no compulsion but one of conscience to tell him what he had done. He had had only to keep silence—and accept. Yet, in this desperate business he had deliberately risked what could have been the answer to his catastrophic situation. He had sacrificed himself, his wife and children in order to feel honorable again and in order to right an injustice.
Jonathan slowly came back into the room. "Why did you tell me, anyway?"
"I had to—after your offer. Do you think for a moment I could have accepted it, even for Thelma and my children, knowing what I had done to you out of envy and malice and resentment, when none of it was your fault at all and you had given nothing to me but kindness?"
"I see," said Jonathan, and frowned at the floor.
"Men don't reason with their minds," said Tom Harper. "They reason with their guts, their emotions. That's why the world is what it is. I took your friendship and all that went with it, but because you are rich and I was and am poor, I think I hated you, Jon, while, at the same time, I liked and respected you and was your friend. Complicated, isn't it?"
"Not very," said Jonathan. "We're a pretty ambiguous race, and all at once I'm beginning, halfway, to believe in the dogma of original sin."
It was absurd, but a fraction of an old prayer he had learned as a child came to him, as if spoken aloud: "And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
A lovely sentiment but unrealistic and, in a way, snide. If
you don't forgive an appalling crime against you, and one which might have caused your death if it had been successful, then you won't be forgiven your tiny venial sins, either. Mad idea, thought Jonathan with harsh amusement. Justice, in a
rational world, should always be measure for measure. The old boys were more sensible: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
If I remember rightly, you are now supposed to forgive the sons of bitches the worst offenses against you and not only forgive them but ask that they be forgiven, too. That was doubtless all right for Christ, but men are not God. No wonder there were practically no Christians in the world. The whole thing was against reason and logic and, above all, against human nature.
Jonathan said with hard contempt to Tom Harper, "All right, get off your knees, I've absolved you and you can leave the Confessional. Let's go and talk to Thelma. And if you tell her one word of what you've told me, you'll regret it the rest of your life. You're not going to burden Thelma with your crime so that you can wallow in her forgiveness, too, and perhaps even get her to pity you, for Christ's sake!"
"Jon," said Tom, "I swear this to you, and you know I am dying: I would never have let you be convicted. It was in my mind—I must have been crazy—that your arrest would pull you down a notch, as they say, and make you less haughty and proud and arrogant. You weren't those things, I know. I just thought you were. Because, God help me, in your position, that's just what I'd be and so would ten thousand other men."
"Shut up," said Jonathan. "I don't know who's forgiven you. I haven't. I'm going to do what I suggested but not for you, Harper. If it were you alone, you could rot along with your disease, and I'd never give you another thought. But why should your innocent wife and children suffer?" His dark face had flushed with rage and his eyes sparkled.
"You know what this is going to do to me the rest of my life, Jon? It's going to make me do penance, and perhaps sometime you can be superhuman enough to forgive me."
"That will be a long summer day in my dotage, Harper. When you are dead and forgotten, even by me."
"Did you hear what Jon Ferrier did to that unfortunate Tom Harper—his best friend, or almost that—the other day? He forced him to resign his hospital privileges just because Tom took a little morphine occasionally, for heaven's sake!" This was said by Jonathan's colleagues and "friends," with head-shakings and compassionate duckings. "But, then, Jon was always a vindictive man. I'll never forget the time he refused to testify in behalf of Jim Spaulding, in court, when