Evening of the Good Samaritan

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  He turned, eschewing the dramatic possibilities of the moment, and addressed himself to the dean of theological studies: “Doctor Stoneham, will you say the blessing, please?”

  Jonathan Hogan did not eat very much; he was not a man who ever ate heartily. But there were those, eating crow along with their turkey or fish, who enjoyed the meal far less than he did. Such a man was Walter Fitzgerald. After the president’s address—it would be called in the morning papers one of his most notable speeches: The Purpose of a University—when the formal seating was abandoned, men of natural affinity drew together with an ease impossible before the dinner. Camaraderie prevailed. Professor Fitzgerald felt himself a lonely man. He was profoundly shaken by the outcome of the trustees’ meeting: that the opinion was unanimous he found hard to believe.

  Standing apart, he fell easy prey to a woman who had wanted all evening to tell someone of a new project. The head of the library school was preparing a bibliography of sources … on God knows what. Fitzgerald would have liked to get away from her. It was said she could always find a cripple in a room on whom to lavish the charity of her attention. He half-listened, his eyes straying from her round, eager face in pursuit of a way of escape. Suddenly the woman inquired after his wife and his daughter. “I wonder if she will be as beautiful as her mother.”

  Having discomfited him by the intimacy, she shot a smile up into his face and walked away, leaving him in no greater admiration of women certainly than he had been before her company. He turned and found himself in company he wanted even less.

  Jonathan Hogan seemed to be taking the president’s words as a personal vindication, accepting congratulations all around. If it occurred to him to regret his part in bringing notoriety upon the school, he was not showing it. Yet he was not arrogant. Even Fitzgerald would not say that. And when, as Fitzgerald had observed, the chairman of the Board of Trustees had not merely shaken hands with him, but had put his arm about him, he himself could scarcely do less now than offer Hogan his hand.

  “Well, Fitzgerald?”

  Fitzgerald said as they shook hands, “The important thing is that we trust one another. That’s the important thing.” He did not mean to be hypocritical. He said what he thought had to be said.

  Hogan understood him better, perhaps, than Fitzgerald understood himself: he was a man who fell so pitiably short of his own ideal he needed constantly to strike a pose; he reminded Hogan of an Elizabethan priest—all voice and no sacrament. His life was one long ceremony. Fitzgerald, an associate professor of philosophy, had come into Midwestern University with the present administration. His teaching background was fifteen years at a boys’ preparatory school where eight out of ten students went on to study for the priesthood. He was not a scholar, not in terms admissible to Hogan, for, his being a Thomist, Fitzgerald’s logic was proscribed; he believed in absolutes of truth. But it was typical of this administration that students wishing to study scholastic philosophy would be taught by a scholastic. Fitzgerald was the next best thing to a Jesuit. And there were times, such as the days just past, when he reminded Hogan of one: he was a lovely mixture of caution and righteousness.

  “That’s the important thing,” he said. “There you have it.”

  Fitzgerald looked sharply at him to see if he were speaking his own mind or trying to provoke him. It was hard to tell from Hogan’s face. His eyes were not unkind, but the lines at his mouth were perpetually sardonic, his smile always suggesting skepticism or, worse, mockery, an attitude Fitzgerald envied even while he condemned it. Hogan’s head nodded a little almost constantly, a tic of some sort pulling at his eye. That a man as frail as he should remain an atheist and a radical was to Fitzgerald incomprehensible.

  Hogan considered himself far less than a radical in his chosen field. He taught economics and identified himself with Keynes. He had been one of the men tapped by Washington in the early days of the New Deal. The economics suited him: he believed in capitalism if labor were strong enough to strike a balance in the bargaining; he thought its control until that time the proper province of government. But Washington politics appalled him, the maneuvering for power destructive of the whole ideal. He had not stayed there long.

  The library woman, making the rounds of several coteries, trying to find an opening for herself, unintentionally wheeled back to them. “There you are again!” she cried, shot her smile at them, and made off in another direction.

  “Damned woman,” Fitzgerald said.

  Hogan chuckled. He felt almost giddy with relaxation, benevolent even unto Fitzgerald.

  Fitzgerald cast a quick, scrutinous gaze over the company. Hogan forestalled his escape. “I have a favor to ask of you, professor. On the surface it may seem presumptuous, but I assure you in the end, it won’t be.”

  He was interrupted by the arrival of a short, stout, balding man who came up to them shaking his finger in anticipation of what he had to say. “There is a man! Ach, a man like a god, our Hawkins. Did you ever hear such words before? A poet. He should be an emperor. And a man of God, of religion. You hear me, Jonathan? The man is of God, I say. Do you deny it?”

  Hogan laid his hand on the shoulder of his friend. “Professor Fitzgerald, do you know Doctor Mueller?”

  The two men, already acquainted, merely nodded for Mueller was talking again, his accent coming through the more strongly the more rapid his speech. Its being Austrian, there ran through it a steady sound of buzzing. “Once I knew one other man like him, my good patron, the archduke, Otto, God preserve him. It is the only hope for Europe, a man like him. Cultured, liberal, a patron of music, of science … and yes, of women. His mother, the Empress Zita, what beauty! There now, I spit on Hitler!”

  Hogan smiled wryly and gently patted the back of his friend. Long and thin, short and thickset, they made a curious pair, a proper study in the variations in human anatomy. “Would God your Archduke Otto would do the same.”

  Mueller very nearly jumped up and down. He gave the effect of so doing even though his toes did not leave the floor. “He will! You will see. You will see.”

  “I am much afraid,” Hogan said softly, “it will be Hitler who will spit on the Archduke.”

  “Oh, that man,” Mueller said, shaking his jowl like a mastiff. “He is the greatest bastard in the world.”

  “Easily that,” Hogan said.

  Fitzgerald said, “The trouble with men like Hogan, Dr. Mueller, they think they are the only ones who hate Hitler.”

  “We are. At least, we are the only ones who hate him enough.”

  “And you are not even a Jew,” Mueller said, and gave him a hug. “It is wonderful. I love this man.”

  Fitzgerald cleared his throat. He was distinctly embarrassed. Foreigners were much too emotional, especially Jews.

  Hogan, also embarrassed, grinned, which made him look boyish and thus closer to his actual age than his infirmities ordinarily allowed.

  “I have interrupted you?” Mueller said.

  “Nothing that can’t wait,” said Hogan.

  “Why should it wait?” Mueller took from his pocket, leaving the pocket gaping, a paper bag. “I have here the sweets and the nut-meats, and biscuits I have already made into crumbs. My girls will be waiting at home like mice to collect them.” He shook Fitzgerald’s hand heartily and then took Hogan’s hand in both his own. “Jonathan, I am very proud of the President of this University, like the President of the country …”

  “So am I. Good night, Erich,” Hogan said affectionately.

  Mueller rollicked off, pausing soon, having something to say to almost everyone he passed.

  Fitzgerald said dryly, “He’s generous with his comparisons.”

  “With everything. He has a young wife and four girls, did you know? A confident man obviously—in America.” He glanced at Fitzgerald from under drawn brows. In his own way he was baiting the man who often baited him.

  Fitzgerald said, “A physicist, isn’t he?”

  Hogan nodded.

 
“I envy him,” Fitzgerald said. “Oh, not the four daughters. God knows one’s trial enough, but that abstract world of his, dabs of light on a black screen, a multiplicity of mathematical equations, a kind of music of the spheres and all so marvelously removed from responsibility in this unhappy world. How fortunate a refuge!”

  Hogan denied himself contemplation of the man’s fatuousness. “You have a touch of the poet, professor.”

  “My Irish origins.”

  Hogan doubted he was that proud of them.

  “You wanted to ask me something, Hogan. Do. I don’t care for crowds like this. You’re accustomed to crowds, of course.”

  “I’ve grown accustomed to them, yes,” Hogan said blandly. “Why, I have a son, professor, the younger of two—the older boy’s all right. For that matter, so is Marcus—all right. But this may amuse you, I’m a little fearful of where his social conscience may lead him.” To a man like Fitzgerald the words would have distinct political coloring. “I’m father enough, you see, to want certain of the solid opportunities for him. He’s a doctor of medicine. Wants to be a surgeon. What he needs is further residency in a good hospital.”

  Fitzgerald was stunned that Jonathan Hogan should come to him for help. If he had had his way, Hogan would have been dismissed from the University. He had made no secret of the opinion. It was a peculiar irony that it was he who was now silenced in effect, not Hogan, and the obligation of sportsmanship put upon him. And yet, the more he thought about it, he found an odd satisfaction in Hogan’s having come to him.

  “Where did he go to school?”

  “Rodgers University.”

  “You’ve always looked to the East, haven’t you?” He could not resist the barb. “May I ask where he interned?”

  Hogan named a small hospital on the west side of Traders City. “He’s had a couple of years’ residency there, too. But their surgery is, shall we say, conservative.”

  “And what is he doing now?”

  “Trying to get the tuberculars out of the county jail into the county sanatorium.”

  Fitzgerald gave a short laugh. Hogan’s directness was disarming. “I suppose you’d like me to speak to Winthrop. Is that it?”

  “I thought you might like to talk to the boy first. See if he’s worth your intervention.”

  Few men, and especially Walter Fitzgerald, can resist doing an enemy a kindness. Hogan had chosen his moment well, and only a little cynically. He suspected, as did a number of people, a relationship to exist between Alexander Winthrop and Fitzgerald’s wife. Presumably Winthrop would be indulgent of Fitzgerald in other matters. Fitzgerald, the unfortunate ass, continually boasted of his and Winthrop’s friendship. Hogan did not know Winthrop except by reputation. He was on the University Board of Trustees, he was City Health Commissioner, a man of politics, money and enormous influence in Traders City medicine. He also conducted, and it was curious that a man in his position should, the medical column in The Dispatch.

  “Let me be blunt, Hogan. Is your son political?”

  “Not since his undergraduate days. Sacco and Vanzetti was his last cause. He just about tolerates me.”

  Fitzgerald looked at him sharply, suspicious again, afraid of having his leg pulled. It prompted Hogan to wonder if his recommendation might not do the boy more harm than good. Yet in the end, Marcus must recommend himself. The problem was to get him Winthrop’s attention. “Of course, it’s a wise father that knows his own son,” he added.

  Fitzgerald said, “Have him come round to my house tomorrow afternoon. Do you know where I live?”

  Hogan nodded. He had come to know quite a lot about Walter Fitzgerald this semester, including the fact that along with ontology, cosmology and metaphysics, Fitzgerald lectured his students on atheistic communism and how to detect its disciples. He said, “Many thanks, professor,” and again shook hands with him.

  Fitzgerald was already at the cloakroom, surrendering his tab to the attendant, when he realized that the encounter with Hogan had so improved his sense of well-being that he was no longer eager to go home. He would not go back, however; he abhorred indecision in a man … and rather admired it in a woman. He did have work to do, and he too had a family although they were certainly not waiting up for him like mice; Mueller was a sloppy man to be a scientist. The cloakroom attendant came out and helped him on with his overcoat. He was surprised. He did not expect such courtesy in young people any more. He would have laid odds this lad was no radical.

  “Walter, let me drive you home.”

  Alexander Winthrop had come up quite unbeknownst to him, a rare and gratifying occurrence. He generally knew where Winthrop was in a room. “Have you time to stop for a nightcap?”

  “Why not?”

  Fitzgerald took Winthrop’s coat from the boy’s hands and held it himself. “I’ll be glad of the ride. It’s a bitter night.”

  “In more ways than one, eh?”

  “I’m glad to hear you say it.” He had suspected unanimity to have been hammered out of the board as out of a jury.

  “Don’t mistake me, Walter. I like that young upstart of a president.” Winthrop shrugged himself more comfortably into his coat.

  “Oh, so do I.”

  “You should. He hired you. But I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t.” He took a folded bill from his pocket and proposed to give it to the attendant.

  The boy demurred. “No charge, sir, thank you.”

  Winthrop said, “Do I insult you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t insult me.” He tossed the money on the half-door ledge, and taking Fitzgerald by the elbow, steered him to the side door where his chauffeur was waiting.

  The Fitzgerald house on Oak Street was not far from the campus and would in time be absorbed into it as were already most of the gray stone houses in the neighborhood. With their ample lawns and gardens and the great tall trees, these were the homes built before the turn of the century by the professional elite of Traders City, lawyers, architects, engineers, whose children now were likely to be raising their families in the north shore suburbs. The Fitzgeralds had bought the house soon after their marriage when they had come to the Midwest and largely with money provided by Elizabeth’s Boston aunt. Elizabeth had chosen the neighborhood because of the University and seeing further into her husband’s future than he himself dared look. She had kept the twelve-room house herself until he had grown used to the place so much beyond his own concept of their means. Then she had hired a maid and set herself to the earnest study of music. In the early days Walter had had to ride the streetcar an hour each way to the seminary where he taught and through slums as drab if not as old as those in which he had grown up in Philadelphia.

  “I like the smell of this house,” Winthrop remarked, drawing a deep breath. He often said these words, for the moment he opened the closet door to hang up his own coat he caught the pungency of cedar. And often there were flowers in a vase beside the hall mirror. Elizabeth Fitzgerald had a small greenhouse in the garden where she cultivated plants and blooms in all seasons.

  Fitzgerald thanked him. Mention of the smell of a house always carried for him the association of cooking cabbage which had seemed ever prevalent in the hallways of his youth. Rubbing his hands together he crossed the hall to his study, but Winthrop, instead of following, strode directly to the sliding doors of the parlor where, from outdoors, he had seen the light. With the softest of knocks and not waiting at all, he admitted himself. Fitzgerald followed him, having no choice. But he was very much aware that Elizabeth disliked being burst in upon. However, she looked over her shoulder and smiled, seeing them. She gave Winthrop her hand across the back of the sofa and drew him around to the fire.

  “I’ve sent Michaelson out to the kitchen,” Fitzgerald said, speaking of Winthrop’s chauffeur. “Has Annie gone upstairs?”

  “If she has, she’ll soon come down again. She can tell the minute a man comes into her part of the house.” Elizabeth was about to rise. “Will you want tea
or drinks, Walter?”

  “I’ll attend to it myself,” he said, and she sat back. “Brandy, Alex?”

  “That’ll be fine, thanks.” Winthrop stood, his back to the fireplace, his hands in his pockets, springing up and down a little on his toes. The room seemed smaller when he was in it, restless, generally impatient with the prospect of either small or precise talk. An evening among scholars, for all that he admired them, set his nerves on edge. He belonged, he said, among railsplitters, not hairsplitters. Nonetheless, no other honor had so gratified him as election to the Board of Trustees of Midwestern University.

  “Sit down for a little while, Alex,” Fitzgerald said.

  “I will, I will—thanks.” He was a large-boned man, a shade under six feet, solid but not fat. He had a square, tough jaw and a mouth not quite strong enough to go with it. He often, in determination, had to shoot out his lower lip by way of satisfying that inner demand for an outward show of purpose. His eyes were black, though sometimes in direct light—or seen in a moment of affection—they seemed to be a dark, limpid purple. Neither lotion nor brush could keep order in his soft black hair; at forty-eight he showed not a trace of gray in it.

  Fitzgerald started out of the room. “Shall I close the doors?”

  “Do,” his wife said. “There’s a draft when they’re open.”

  And remarking that the drapes across the garden windows should be heavier, he went out and rolled the door noisily closed behind him.

  Winthrop’s lips still bore the amused, tolerant smile he often gave Fitzgerald in Elizabeth’s presence. “Can you?” he said.

  “Can I what?”

  “Tell the minute a man comes into your part of the house?”

  “I knew you were here,” she said, and picking up the book she had been reading, turned its pages idly.

  He stared down at her, observing the heightened color in her high-boned cheeks. It quickened the course of his own blood. “Do you mind that I came like this?”

  “It’s rather tortuous, isn’t it?” Still she did not look at him.