Doctor Bryson nodded assent. Kimberly spoke on with a certain intensity. "If every act of a man’s life had been a brave one," he continued, "his suicide would be all the more the act of a coward. I don’t believe that kind of a man can commit suicide. Understand, I am considering the act of a man--not that of a youth or of one immature."
"Well, I don’t care what you are _considering_, Robert," declared Dolly with unmistakable emphasis, "we will _talk_ about something else."
The conversation split up. Kimberly, unruffled, turned to Alice and went on in an undertone: "I am going to tell you Francis’s views on the subject anyway. He has the most intense way of expressing himself and the pantomime is so contributing. ’Suicide, Mr. Kimberly,’ he said to me one day, ’is no good. What would a man look like going back to God, carrying his head in his hand? "Well, I am back, and here are the brains you gave me." "What did you do with them?" "I blew them out with a bullet!" That is a poor showing I think, Mr. Kimberly, for business. Suicide is _no_ good.’"
"But who is this Brother Francis," asked Alice, "whom I hear so much of? Tell me about him."
"He is one of the fixtures at The Towers. A religious phenomenon whom I personally think a great deal of; an attendant and a nurse. He is an Italian with the courtesy of a gentleman worn under a black gown so shabby that it would be absurd to offer it to a second-hand man."
"To me he _is_ an extraordinary combination."
"That also is curious. The Kimberlys are cantankerous enough when well; when ill they are likely to be insupportable. Not only that, but kindness and faithfulness are some of the things that money cannot buy; they give themselves but never sell themselves. When my uncle fell ill, after a great mental strain, we hired nurses for him until we were distracted--men and women, one worse than another. We tried all colors and conditions of human kind without finding one that would suit Uncle John. I began to think of throwing him into the lake--and told him so. He cried like a child the day I had the set-to with him. To say the truth, the old gentleman hasn’t many friends left anywhere, but early impressions are a great deal to us, you know, and I remember him when he was a figure in the councils of the sugar world.