“You know I have no Latin. What’s that mean?”
“Well—I’d translate it as the rage o’ the womb. Uncontrollable desire. I’ve seen it in some cases of women—low women down at the end o’ the town—and God forbid you should ever meet with such a thing. I mean, desire—well, sometimes a married woman, accustomed to that way of life—might feel something. On a hot night, for instance, in July. But many fine women never know any such trouble. So—what are we to make of it in poor Mary-Jim?”
“God! You tell me a terrible thing!”
“There are a lot of terrible things known to science, Hamish. And I don’t say that some terrible people don’t make capital of them. For instance this fellow Freud that we’re beginning to hear about now that we’re getting hold of medical books in German again. But nobody heeds him, and he’ll soon peter out—or be run out of the profession. But well-authenticated medical science, based on great experience—you can’t go against it.”
“Joe, you hint at a world ridden and rotted with sex.”
“I don’t hint. I know. Why do you suppose I’m a single man? Even though I know that Mary-Ben would have taken me years ago, and perhaps even now. It’s because I’ve seen too much, and I decided against it. Science has its celibates, as well as religion. And now the craze is for blathering about sex all over the place. Like that scoundrel Upper who was speaking in the public schools here, and telling innocent children God knows what! Did Francis say anything about him?”
“I never heard him mention the name.”
“Perhaps he escaped, then. He’s a frail lad. I don’t imagine anything like that has come into his head yet. When the time comes, I’d better have a talk with him. Put him on his guard.”
“Perhaps so. But—Joe, do you suggest that this—this trouble you say Mary-Jim had—might affect the child that’s coming?”
“I can say truthfully that I don’t know. But she has been leading the life of a married woman for many years now, and perhaps it’s burned itself out. That’s what we’ll hope.”
“Another like that one upstairs would kill Marie-Louise. It might finish me. Joe—can nothing be done?”
“Hamish, I told you once I wouldn’t kill, and that’s my answer now. Indeed, I’m sworn to keep that idjit alive; it’s my sacred profession. That’s why I had that wire affair made, to restrain his lust. Without it, he might rage and rip himself into the grave, but that’s not for me to encourage or condone. We must all of us just wait it out. But listen, Hamish: if family interests are moving to Toronto, why don’t you send Francis to school there? Mary-Tess and Gerry would keep an eye on him. I hear the Christian Brothers have a fine school in Toronto. Get him out of here. Get him away from these women. Just suppose by bad luck he happens on that thing upstairs. What a brother for him!”
Dr. Jerome finished his third drink, shook hands warmly with his old friend, and left, with the warm consciousness that he was a man who had done a duty certainly painful, but in the best interests of everyone concerned.
Still no pity for Francis, brother? said the Lesser Zadkiel, pausing in the unfolding of his story.
–I have told you repeatedly, said the Daimon Maimas, that pity is not one of the instruments with which such agencies as I do our work. Pity at this stage of his life would not make Francis better; it would dull his perceptions and rob him of the advantages I have managed for him.
–Rough on the bystanders, would you not say?
–The bystanders are no concern of mine. I am Francis’s daimon, not theirs. He has already met his Dark Brother. Everybody has one, but most people go through their lives without ever recognizing him or feeling any love or compassion for him. They see the Dark Brother in the distance, and they hate him. But Francis has his Dark Brother securely in his drawing-books, and more than that. He has him in his hand, and his artist’s sensibility.
–Nevertheless, my dear colleague, reluctant as I am to criticize or appear to teach you your business, is it good to conceal from everyone who the Dark Brother is, or how he came about?
–Well, in the obvious, physical sense, the Dark Brother in Francis’s life is the outcome of Mane-Louise’s well-intentioned meddling in London, when she made her daughter do everything she knew that might bring about a miscarriage. Those people thought a child had no real life until it was pushed into the outer world; they know nothing of the life in the womb, which is the sweetest and most secure time of all. If you jolt and shake and parboil the child, and batter it with cathartics and stun it with gin, you may kill it, or if it is very strong—and Francis the First was very strong or he wouldn’t have survived the dance they led him—you may have an oddity to deal with. But Francis’s Dark Brother is much more than an obvious, physical thing. He’s a precious gift from me, and I think I did rather well to seize my opportunity of bringing him to Francis’s notice so early.
–I suppose you know best, brother,
–I do. So let us go on and see how my gift to Francis shows itself. It’s begun by getting him out of Blairlogie.
Part Three
When the Senator confided to Dr. J.A. that the Cornish Trust was in prospect, he was not entirely candid with his old friend; the Trust had been in his mind for at least five years, and had been in the process of assemblage for the last three. The business of the Papal knighthood had somewhat hurried matters, so far as the O’Gormans were concerned, and Gerry and Mary-Tess had already bought a house in Toronto on fashionable St. George Street. Major Cornish and Mary-Jim were talking with an architect about building a house in the rising suburb of Rosedale, appropriately near the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor. The Senator spoke to Dr. J.A. at Easter, and it was less than a month before the O’Gormans moved to Toronto, and at once made themselves known at St. James’ Anglican Cathedral.
“It’s no use trying to get a trust company on its feet unless you’re seen and known where money is,” said Gerald Vincent to his wife. She agreed, because he knew Toronto better than she; had he not been making visits to it for the last eighteen months? But she wondered aloud if in a city sometimes called “the Rome of Methodism” it might not be better to ally themselves with one of the Methodist churches where affluence and the godliness of John Wesley were mingled in a peculiarly Torontonian brew. When she discovered that the Methodist ladies appeared in the evening in a characteristic sort of gown in which the bosom was hidden as high as to the chin, and no jewellery was worn except a few discreet, chunky diamonds (good investments), she plumped for the more easygoing Anglicans. In their first three months of Toronto residence, before the Trust opened its doors to the public, the O’Gormans had caused themselves to be noticed in Toronto society. Noticed—and favourably noticed.
The question that was asked, of course, was whether they were Old Money, or New Money? The difference, though subtle to the vast population which was No Money, was important. Old Money usually reached back to colonial days, and some of it was Empire Loyalist; Old Money was Tory of an indigo that put to shame the weaknesses and follies of such wobblers as the first Duke of Wellington; Old Money sought to conserve and strengthen whatever was best in the body politic and knew precisely where this refined essence was to be found; it was in themselves and all that pertained to them. Even in the early twenties of this century, Old Money clung to its carriages, at least for ladies making calls, and had other tribal customs that spoke of assured distinction. The high priests of Old Money frequently wore top hats on weekdays, if they were going to do something priestly with money. They fought furiously against short coats for dinner dress, and white waistcoats with tailcoats. They kept mistresses, if at all, of such dowdiness they might almost have been mistaken for wives. For them the nineteenth century had not quite ended.