Evening of the Good Samaritan Read online

  She walked along the crisped sand where the water had come up in a slow eddy and had been caught and transmuted to ice. She thought then of Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Maiden and the devil carrying the mirror up to heaven that he might mock the angels. She had never altogether understood the story as a child, but something like that seemed to have just happened to her. Bits of driftwood lay among the dunes, the color of flesh, and shaped by the constant wash of the lake, some pieces, to the delicacy of an elbow or a shoulder or a breast. She took her hand from her glove, for it was cold, and with only the remotest consciousness of an association, warmed it beneath her coat at her own breast.

  She walked to within sight of Dr. Winthrop’s mansion, high on a bluff to the north. He was her father’s friend, not hers. Martha turned back. In the school basement she lingered at the radiator until she was warm, and then went upstairs and knocked at the door of the dean’s office. She asked permission to go home for the rest of the week-end.

  Mother St. John bade her telephone home and if they would expect her, she might go, of course. A wise woman, the nun did not even ask a question. But after Martha had gone, she thought a moment on the girl’s usual Saturday morning activities, and then wrote a note on her calendar pad unmeaningful to anyone except herself. She wrote: “Leonardo da Vinci.”

  4

  MARTHA HAD ATTENDED CONVENT boarding school through high school and into this, her second year of college. It never occurred to her to wonder why she, an only child, was sent away to school. She was only a little happier there where she had practically no time to herself than at home where she was left very much alone. Her mother was away a good part of most days. And Annie’s care, as far back as Martha could remember—beyond food, her insides, a clean head and an occasional Irish fairy story—consisted largely of saying “Don’t” to things she was unlikely to have done more than once in any case: Don’t go too near the lily pond; don’t climb the rose trellis; don’t eat the snow berries. Her mother maintained music rooms in the International Building on Lake Front Avenue where she taught piano and voice. Martha very nearly stopped there that Saturday afternoon on her way home. She did not do it, however, knowing her mother did not approve such surprises; she liked to have everything prescheduled. Martha dearly loved houses where people just dropped in.

  Her father was not to be interrupted either, she discovered when she got home. He was in his study, “talking very serious with a young man,” Annie said. “Just change your dress and come down to the kitchen. I have a surprise for you.”

  Martha no longer needed to change her dress whenever she came into the house, but it was one of the things Annie simply could not understand. Whenever Martha tried to explain it, after the whole rigmarole Annie would say, “All right. Just this once, put on an apron and come down the way you are.” Martha took her overnight case upstairs, trying not to feel sorry for herself. She had begun to feel sorry for Sister Mathilde, although she did not think she could ever again walk into her art class. She took from her suitcase a small black notebook in which she was in the habit of writing down impressive passages from her reading. She turned to a line from Galsworthy which she had recently entered: “Peace? There is no peace. There is life and there is death.” How true! How cruelly true. And what was to be said to Genevieve Revere about her horrid water color?

  She was distracted from her melancholy by the wafting up from the kitchen of the smell of fresh spice cake. Before she had finished washing her hands the aroma was fairly irresistible. She went down the stairs at a giddy clip, and very nearly collided with a man coming out of her father’s study.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to run you down. But there’s kind of a blind spot here when you come from upstairs.”

  He looked at her, surprised but unperturbed. His smile was more courtly than warm, she thought, and that she admired. “It is a busy intersection,” he said gravely. With a nod he proceeded toward the front door. He was tall and seemed to her rough-hewn, his features being so pronounced—almost squared off, like a modern painting. He moved at an unhurried pace, but he was going away nonetheless.

  “I’m Martha Fitzgerald,” she said proudly and loudly, having to say it to his back.

  He turned, his hand on the knob of the front door. “I’m Marcus Hogan, and if I weren’t already ten minutes late to an appointment, I’d not be guilty of running away from the scene of an accident like this.”

  Martha gave him a wide and sudden smile, so ingratiated was she with his way of saying things, and he lingered a second or two just looking at her. “I wish it weren’t such an important appointment,” he said. Then with a little bow, he turned and was gone. There was in his manner something almost supercilious, a quality she by no means despised, being taken at the moment with Pride and Prejudice.

  From behind the lace curtains she watched him down the steps and into his car, which was old and noisy when first he started it. Before he drove off he tipped his hat in the direction of the house. Martha drew back quickly, the color naming into her cheeks.

  She hesitated outside the study door, then tapped lightly and opened it. Professor Fitzgerald scowled. He half-expected young Hogan to reappear on some pretext or other, just by way of catching him off-balance. Hogan, he supposed, had his father’s skepticism of the motives behind all charity—even when he had himself applied for it.

  “May I come in, papa?”

  “Oh, it’s you, is it? Of course, you may come in. When was it otherwise?” He stood up to greet her, but waited for her to come around his desk and kiss him. He sat down again and motioned her into the chair recently vacated. “Sit down, my dear.”

  Martha was aware of the warmth where Marcus Hogan had been sitting. “Annie said you had a serious engagement.”

  Professor Fitzgerald made a non-committal noise. “Not all that serious. What brings you home of such a sudden?”

  Martha shrugged. “Restless, that’s all. You’ve had a haircut.”

  Her father smiled and smoothed the hair about his temples and at the back of his head. It was almost pure white. “Yes, but a bit too short this time, I’m afraid.” He was always inordinately pleased when she noticed a fresh haircut, and never entirely satisfied with the haircut itself.

  “Is he a student of yours, papa—the person who was here?”

  “No.”

  “Is he very nice?”

  “I never saw him before today in my life. I shouldn’t want to say.”

  Martha smiled in the sudden, deep way she had, as though something irresistibly amusing had occurred to her. “What did he sell you, papa?”

  Fitzgerald leaned back in his chair and laughed. No one in the world could relax him except this child, this girl, this maiden. “A bill of goods, I shouldn’t wonder. But I mustn’t be too hard on him. The hardest thing for any man to sell is himself. He’s a young M. D. trying to get started. He wants a recommendation from me to Dr. Winthrop.”

  “But you don’t even know him.”

  “I do know his father,” Fitzgerald murmured.

  “I think I could give him a recommendation,” Martha said airily so that her father knew she was not being altogether serious.

  “On what grounds, pray?” There was the lushness of Irish rhythm in his voice whenever he made a joke or teased her.

  “Personality.”

  “Oh-ho.” Her father nodded his head. “Personality—that will take him a long ways with Dr. Winthrop. He’ll be here to dinner tomorrow, by the way.” Martha lifted her head. “Dr. Winthrop,” Fitzgerald added quickly.

  But the color had leaped again to Martha’s face. It irritated her father. There was something very nearly indecent about growing up. He had thought his daughter had blessedly escaped the “boy crazy” phase. Now it would seem she was merely retarded in reaching it. “You’ll be home, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Martha said, but this was one more thing which seemed to have gone awry. Ordinarily she would have contrive
d to return early to school, discovering it to be Dr. Winthrop’s Sunday, for she did not enjoy his visits; nor did she like to ride out to the North Shore with him afterwards in the back seat of the limousine. It was reasonable that he propose to drop her at St. Cecilia’s, passing there on his way home, but he was always trying to find out what went on inside of her, as though he were someone to whom she should tell her inmost thoughts. “Now that we’re alone,” he would say, or, “Now that I’ve got you to myself …” And he was forever trying to cheer her up while most of the times she felt perfectly cheerful already.

  “I’m glad,” her father said. “I think it hurts him sometimes, the way you manage not to be here for his visits. The amenities are the least of our obligations. I know you don’t like him, and that hurts me, too, you know.”

  “I’ve never said I didn’t like him, papa.”

  “There are a number of things your mother never says to me, also, but she makes them amply plain all the same.” He regretted saying that. It was not relevant. Martha he knew to be completely unlike her mother in temperament, in character. The girl was open where her mother had turned in upon herself years ago, leaving him no more than an observer of something he nominally possessed. And yet he would have sworn Elizabeth was not a cold person. Early in their marriage he would have said she was rather too passionate for a woman.

  Martha did not say anything, merely looking at her hands which she clasped in her lap. Her throat felt as though they were clasped inside of it.

  “For example, I’m about to recommend this young medic—who seems to have beguiled you with a charm which utterly evaded my powers of observation. I shall recommend him against every personal inclination. He’s untidy, he’s arrogant—and he’s cocksure of himself. He’s too old for that. Self-assurance becomes very young people and the old folks in whom we have to tolerate all the follies left to them.”

  “Why do you—recommend him?” Martha said.

  “Noblesse oblige. Do you know what that means?”

  Martha nodded. She knew what it meant, but she did not see how it pertained.

  Fitzgerald pulled his high collar away from his throat. “Besides, I suspect he’s a good doctor.”

  Martha smiled just a little and he saw that her lower lip was trembling. She was very near to tears.

  “I’m not scolding you, my dear,” he said, trying to keep the severity in his tone lest too abrupt a change bring on the deluge. “You’re not in trouble at school, are you?”

  She shook her head that she was not.

  “Out of money?”

  She started to shake her head “no,” changed her mind and nodded in the affirmative. It was always the easiest way out, to pretend that everything could be fixed up by a supplement to her allowance.

  Fitzgerald laughed as the phone on his desk rang. It was Winthrop, returning the call he had put in to his office while Hogan was with him. “It’s nothing that can’t wait now, Alex. I had a young doctor here wanting an introduction to you.”

  “Quite a number of them do. What’s his name?”

  “Marcus Hogan.” Fitzgerald took his wallet from his pocket and motioned to Martha that she was to take five dollars from it.

  “The name’s familiar,” Winthrop said.

  “Jonathan Hogan’s son,” Fitzgerald said.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “I thought it a bit thick, myself.”

  But at the other end of the phone Winthrop was laughing heartily.

  “I don’t often presume to intervene, Alex,” Fitzgerald said when Winthrop’s laughter subsided.

  “It strikes me as a damned funny exception.”

  “I think the young man has something to offer.”

  “Do you, Walter? Why didn’t he come to me in the first place? I’m not exactly inaccessible. I’m beginning to think I’m one of the most accessible men in the city.”

  “He doesn’t know you, Alex.”

  “Knows you well enough, however, doesn’t he?” Winthrop said dryly.

  Martha was taking an unconscionable amount of time to get her money and leave him.

  Martha felt herself to be taking too long, also, but she did not want to go until she could catch his eye and whisper her thanks, at least. Finally she arose from the chair and leaning over him, brushed his cold, moist forehead with her lips. He drew away from her, or from the distraction of her hovering over him, Dr. Winthrop still talking on the other end of the phone. But Martha felt the repulsion. There were times one wanted to kiss someone, anyone almost. She went out of the room without looking back.

  At last Winthrop said, “Have him set up an appointment with my secretary then.”

  “Thank you very much, Alex … By the way, Martha will be home to dinner with us tomorrow.”

  “I know.”

  “All right, Alex. We shall expect you at two.” He hung up the phone, thinking that Winthrop could not possibly know, Martha’s having called and asked her mother if she might come home only that morning. Fitzgerald put it down to Winthrop’s unwillingness to admit there was anything he did not know. That was the kind of ego the man had.

  5

  ALTHOUGH DR. WINTHROP WAS her father’s friend, it was Martha’s opinion that the person who gave him the full measure of devotion in their house was Annie Moran. She read his newspaper column every day—it was entitled simply ALEXANDER WINTHROP, M.D.—and was forever quoting it as the living gospel on the arthritis, or the whooping cough, or rupture, or measles. Now and then she even wrote in to him. He would answer questions on “any decent disease,” Annie said in one of the peculiar distinctions of hers which made Martha wiser if not specifically enlightened. Annie would scour her kitchen to the gleaming point and pronounce it fit for Dr. Winthrop himself, a reference, presumably, to the public sanitation for which his office was responsible. A word of praise from him at the dinner table was enough to turn Annie’s face beet red.

  Annie came from the same place in Ireland as Professor Fitzgerald’s parents. In fact, she was on visiting terms with a number of cousins whom he himself never saw. Whenever she was put out with Martha’s mother, she would speak of the cold wind from the north. “We’ve both felt the cold wind from the north now and then,” she would say in the wake of a quarrel between Professor and Mrs. Fitzgerald, allying herself with the professor. Martha at such times felt a stronger loyalty to her mother. Otherwise, she was almost afraid to love her, giving herself up more to a sort of worship. She loved to watch her, a dark, graceful woman whom Martha in no way resembled, and to listen to her play the piano. She often looked at Martha with an expression of love in her eyes, but she rarely touched the girl, and never, never kissed her, offering always her cheek to the girl’s kiss and with her eyes closed as though the moment were altogether painful. She had been born in the north of Ireland into a family which had shown a Spanish strain from the days following the flight and wreck of the Armada, and she had grown up at the time of the Gaelic revival and of the Young Gaelic League, her home the gathering place of poets and rebels. The tales of such young men filled Martha’s childhood with strange contrasts, for she liked also Annie’s West Country peasant lore. Her father was almost completely silent about his youth. There had been a great deal of religiosity in it, Martha gathered. Her mother, while a Catholic, only occasionally went to church, and almost never to the Sacraments. Her father said it was due to Jansenism in her part of Ireland. Her mother was a woman of great reserve and a sharp wit and was admired, Martha knew, in the University circles where her father was merely tolerated. She could tell it in the occasional gatherings in the house, and it hurt her the more because her father seemed not to see it, to think, rather, that people came primarily on his account. It was torture, afterwards, to Martha, hearing him say, for example, “I don’t think it was necessary, Elizabeth, the way you cut poor old Duff to ribbons.”

  “He’ll not bleed, Walter. He’s too fatuous.” (Her puns ordinarily delighted Martha.)

  “A wit like yours
is unbecoming in a professor’s wife. Frankly, I was embarrassed.”

  “Were you? And for me, Walter?”

  “Yes, for you, damn it. I don’t want people feeling sorry for me.”

  Martha wished at such moments she might leave the house and not come home again. She could not remember ever having loved both her parents at the same time. That Sunday, sitting opposite Dr. Winthrop at the dinner table, she tended to feel more strongly drawn to her mother, perhaps because her father had his friend. They talked of everything, the two men, except Marcus Hogan, a subject Martha had dimly hoped might come up. Suddenly, then, she became aware that without her knowing it the subject had come up, and in a dreadful way because Martha’s father didn’t really know what Dr. Winthrop was talking of either.

  He was saying: “… And this fellow is so puffed up with his own importance—an importance that doesn’t mean anything to him unless he can make sure other people see it—that he goes around like a peacock exploding his tail.”

  Elizabeth Fitzgerald said, “Exploding his tail; that’s an extraordinary image, Alexander.”

  “Damn near good, isn’t it? Where was I?”

  “Exploding a tale,” she said.

  “Elizabeth, for heaven’s sake,” Fitzgerald said.

  “Exactly,” Winthrop said. “You never get him on the phone that he isn’t talking to somebody else at the same time. He’ll get me on the wire for some damn fool thing. It won’t make sense to me. Then all of a sudden I’ll realize he’s got somebody sitting next to him he wants to impress with his own importance. That’s taking advantage, let me tell you.”

  “There are people like that,” Fitzgerald said. “May I cut you another slice of beef, Alex?”

  “Thank you, Walter,” he said expansively. He even winked at Martha when their eyes met.

  Having been in her father’s study when Dr. Winthrop returned his call the day before, she knew very well he was talking now about her father and to her father. But before her father would understand—or maybe it was just before he would admit understanding, for she could remember the cold sweat on his forehead and it was glistening again now—Dr. Winthrop would have had to name the subject of the call, Marcus Hogan. She looked down at her plate and loathed the man opposite her as never before. A cat got that kind of satisfaction out of pawing a wounded mouse.