Evening of the Good Samaritan

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it?”

  The ground was littered with handbills. Martha stopped to pick one up.

  “Don’t!” Reiss cried, and then more gently, “Communist agitation. Always, everywhere.”

  Elizabeth said, “Doctor Reiss, which way is our hotel?”

  “Herr Doktor?”

  Reiss stopped. They were beneath one of the floodlights. A man with an open-collared shirt detained him and spoke to him in German. Reiss’ face seemed green, but all color was distorted in the cruel light. Reiss made a noise in his throat as though he were demonstrating hoarseness, and the man laughed and derisively repeated the noise, looking toward three other men who had joined them. Two of these, curiously, Martha thought, were wearing white stockings. It was much later she learned this to be their agreed-upon Storm Trooper emblem.

  “Hör mal, Jud!” the man said into Reiss’ face.

  Dr. Reiss stood very erect, clicked his heels and pulled in his chin, military fashion. “Ich bin kein Jüde.”

  “Nein?” Again the man laughed.

  Reiss turned slowly to Elizabeth. “This is my sister,” he said in German, “an American, Mrs. Fitzgerald, and my niece.”

  The man stood a moment, looking from Reiss to Elizabeth and back. He was a head taller than Reiss, blond, and by no means brutish-looking. He clicked his heels and bowed to the women. He turned to Reiss and thrust out his hand in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!”

  “Heil Hitler,” Reiss said, but he scarcely raised his hand.

  The young men gave the Nazi salute and then laughingly ordered Reiss to go.

  Elizabeth said, “We shall go back to the hotel and have our dinner there. We can have it sent up to us.”

  Reiss did not say anything until they were out of the park. “The fools,” he said then, his voice scarcely louder than a hoarse whisper. “The stupid fools, all of them!” In their sitting room a few minutes later he repeated the words.

  “I don’t know what they are,” Elizabeth said. “I doubt that it is that, but it is something more terrible. I want to leave in the morning, Martha. We can rejoin the tour later if you wish.”

  “So soon,” Reiss said. He was still quite pale beneath the tan. “I am ashamed,” he said. “I behaved badly in your eyes.”

  “Do not feel badly—not on our account, doctor. There is a time for bravery, a time when it means something. It is not anything you can put on, like a dress shirt, in order to entertain your guests.”

  “You are very kind. But you must understand, Mrs. Fitzgerald, I could not afford to be searched tonight. Otherwise, I might have managed a certain … bravura. For your good impression. You see, I was carrying this communication for Doctor Mueller.” He drew a letter-sized envelope from his inside pocket. “If things get very bad here, Doctor Mueller has relatives, you see. I have only friends.”

  He was not backward, Elizabeth thought, but few Austrians were. “I am to give that to Doctor Mueller?” she said.

  “If you will be so kind. You may assume it is a letter to him.”

  Elizabeth took the open envelope from him and sealed it in his presence.

  “Thank you very much, dear friend.”

  She put it in her leather writing box. Very soon he was quite gay again and begged her to play the piano for him until their supper was served.

  17

  ELIZABETH RETURNED TO TRADERS City at the end of September. She had misgivings about leaving Martha in Europe, although their visit after Austria to England, Ireland and Paris had been reassuring. And there was among the nuns whom Martha would attend a fine imperturbability that suggested the rock of Peter himself. Indeed, if she had had the courage of her own preference, she also would have stayed on in Europe. Not on the continent, but in the Ireland of her childhood, which seemed to have changed very little since she had been sent from it without a by-her-own-leave. Her brother made it plain, though the word was not spoken, that if ever she chose, McMahon Manor was hers to mistress. The word was his, but by its association she was turned homeward the more determinedly.

  She came back leaden-hearted, if anything a little more contemptuous of Walter Fitzgerald than she had been on leaving. That he accepted her return to the Sacraments as making something of a connubial demand upon himself would have been farcical, did it not carry one so close to the edge of madness. Two people trying to oblige the forms of love without passion—one, presumably, without understanding and the other without desire—was obscene. Immoral, surely. It was little wonder the French priest had asked if she would be able to receive her husband. She had thought so then, a continent away from him. Walter’s demands had from the beginning been modest.

  No one likely would ever know how much Walter Fitzgerald understood, not even he. It was one of the consolations of his philosophy that there were many things man was not meant to understand. For example, to understand a murderer he would have thought very nearly criminous in itself. Willing as he was to judge, he was as ready to admit the imperfectability of man. Otherwise, as he saw it, there would be no reason for law, divine or temporal. One of the reasons he held Alexander Winthrop in such high esteem was Winthrop’s regard also for the forms. He was a man who might have been a wastrel and worked; he was not well educated, but he was a trustee of the University; he did not practice medicine, but he could administer—and had done so—others’ practice of it; he had never held elective office, but he was going to be mayor. Of that Walter Fitzgerald was absolutely certain. He believed every placard in the city that said so, every radio broadcast. He saw nothing incongruous in his having himself raised the money to buy the air time on which it was said—or that Michael Shea was financing identical statements on behalf of the Democratic candidate as were the Republicans for theirs.

  It was, he kept telling Elizabeth, the cleanest campaign in the history of Traders City, for which, along with George Bergner, he took a fair share of the credit.

  “I understand Marcus is getting along very well,” Elizabeth said on one of his mentions of the name Bergner. “It was perspicacious of you, Walter, to have helped him.”

  They were finishing luncheon on the terrace, for the day was warm with the autumn sun. He wiped his lips and put his napkin in the ring. “It was also perspicacious of me not to have expected gratitude from them.”

  “That is always wise,” she said, “no matter of whom.”

  “Clergymen of three faiths have spoken out—a dozen professors have stumped—yes, stumped, for Alex. But not a word on his behalf from Jonathan Hogan.”

  “I met him at luncheon, you know, Walter—him and Doctor Mueller for whom I brought a letter.”

  “I know. You told me.”

  As it turned out, the envelope Reiss had given her contained more than a letter. Unknowing, herself, she had carried out of the country for him a draft on the Bank of Austria for a great deal of money; but this she had not told Walter.

  “He does not look at all well—Marcus’s father. Perhaps that’s why he hasn’t helped you.”

  “He hasn’t looked well in years. That’s not the reason. He manages all right for these Communist fronts.”

  “I understand he withdrew his name from some anti-Fascist group—I forget which.”

  “You still take the opposite side, Elizabeth. When I say white, you say black. There is only one thing I ask out of Martha’s sojourn in Europe: I pray to God she will forget Marcus Hogan.”

  “I wonder if you would feel that way, Walter, if you realized the alternatives.”

  “I think I would. Anthony Fields, for example. He’s in love with her. He came to see me while you were gone.”

  “How nice. They say his sister is a Communist.”

  “You’re repeating filthy rumor, Elizabeth. Sylvia Fields has been working heart and soul for Alex’s election.”

  “My only point was—I don’t think Marcus has any politics. But you identify him with his father’s.”

  “They’re very close, those two—close
r than I have ever got to my daughter.” He frowned and then suddenly looked up. “Do you think there’s any chance ever of Martha’s becoming a nun?”

  “It never entered my mind. At least, it hasn’t for years.” Sometimes, when Martha had been in high school, and she had watched the girl go off to church with her father so often, she had thought about that possibility.

  “Would it trouble you a great deal if she did, Elizabeth?” The question was by no means casual. Nor was it sarcastic. He was, she realized, testing the sincerity of her own return to religious practice.

  “I have been thinking lately,” she said, out of God knows what wild subconscious, “of setting such an example myself.”

  “How interesting, how very interesting,” he said in a tone of sudden and complete understanding, and he smiled.

  “Christ have mercy,” she said scarcely above her breath, and more in exclamation than in prayer. She gathered the luncheon things onto a tray and took them indoors.

  18

  ON THE THIRD OF October, just a month before elections, Dr. Winthrop received a phone call from Mike Shea. It was their first communication since the day after the primaries. Winthrop felt a little sick when he took the phone and no better on hearing the smile in Mike’s voice. He could see the cold blue eyes as clearly as if he were face to face with Mike himself.

  “Oh, a fine campaign, Alex. You’re to be congratulated, win, lose or draw.”

  “A clean one anyway, Mike.”

  “Clean as a whistle. I was just saying to the mayor a few minutes ago, a man like Winthrop—what a shame it is to tear down the gorgeous picture he’s created of himself for the people of Traders City.” So it had come at last, Winthrop thought, and he supposed he had known all along that it would come. “And do you know what the mayor said to me, Alex? He said, ‘Mike, do we really have to do it?’ And I said, ‘Well, I tell you what we can do—we can put it up to Alex himself.’ And as the mayor and I said then, we have a moral duty here to put it up to him before it goes to the people. It’s like reading, you know: it isn’t so much what gets into print that’s bad; it’s what comes into people’s minds reading it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mike.”

  “Don’t you now? I was hoping if I made a parable out of it, I wouldn’t have to be more explicit. Or do you want me to be?”

  “That’s up to you, Mike.”

  “Ah, Alex … I don’t even like to say the word ‘cuckold.’ It’s a dirty, old-fashioned word, isn’t it?” He paused. “Are you there, Alex?”

  “I am.”

  “And a man’s best friend … Mind now, I wouldn’t be the one to gainsay temptation of the flesh. The world and all its palaces are as nothing to them …”

  Very gently Winthrop hung up the phone. Shea could be no worse an enemy angry than benevolent, and to be righteous himself, he could no more listen to what Mike had to say than he could acknowledge there was a grain of truth in it. He called Walter Fitzgerald and told him that he would be at the house within the hour to speak to him and Elizabeth. Arriving there, he discovered that Elizabeth had a guest.

  Fitzgerald said, “She has our protégé to tea.”

  “Hogan?”

  Fitzgerald nodded. “He won’t be staying long—such a busy man these days.”

  Winthrop was amused despite the grimness of his own mission. All summer long Fitzgerald’s resentment of the Hogans had been building. As his loneliness had increased, he had increasingly focused the blame for his wife and daughter’s absence on them. “You don’t forget easily, do you, Walter?”

  “Ingratitude is one of the basest things I know.”

  “You’ll know of something baser before you’re much older,” Winthrop said. “Where are they?”

  He went into the dining room himself where Elizabeth was pouring tea at a small table overlooking the garden. “Alexander!” she said, “What a lovely surprise.” She did not look at him, not directly ever now, merely glancing toward him to acknowledge his presence.

  Marcus stood up and extended his hand, a confident man, unashamed of his past, sure of his future. Winthrop had probably never envied anyone before in his life. He said, “I’m very proud of you, Hogan.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Winthrop,” Marcus said. “It means a great deal to me that you are.”

  Their hands met in a firm clasp and they looked for an instant directly at one another. It was a better moment for him, Winthrop thought, than he deserved, and there was honor in it as there was not in the thing he was about to do. “I’m sorry to interrupt your tea, but it is absolutely necessary that I talk with Elizabeth and Walter immediately.”

  Curiously, the last time Marcus had gone to tea with Elizabeth Fitzgerald—at her studio then—he had not got to finish it either. She too remembered it. “Our teas are ill-fated, Marcus. We must try for dinner some time soon. I shall call you.” She got up. “Please finish and don’t hurry. Annie made the cake especially for you. I shall come back as soon as I can.”

  Marcus did not mean to watch them, but he glanced over his shoulder, thinking one of them had spoken to him, and saw Winthrop slowly nod his head, perhaps affirming a questioning look. As soon as they were gone, he left the house himself, going out by way of the terrace, and carrying with him a piece of cake which he ate in the car.

  Elizabeth had never liked her husband’s study: the leather chairs were cold and odorous, the prints of the wild geese forlorn. A hunter’s horn and a rifle hung over the fireplace although Walter himself had a distinct aversion to the sport. She had once thought, looking in, it was so much a man’s room it did not need a man in it. It was entirely apt that what must now be acted out be done here.

  Winthrop stood, his hands behind his back, his shoulders hunched, his head down. “I don’t know how to say this to you. I can begin by apologizing—particularly to Elizabeth. I got a call from Mike Shea this afternoon, Walter. He’s threatening to link Elizabeth’s and my name in scandal if I don’t withdraw from the race.”

  Fitzgerald sat for a moment, his forefingers pointed together, the fingernails touching his teeth. “We had to assume he’d use such tactics when he got desperate.”

  “I’m genuinely sorry, Elizabeth,” Winthrop said.

  She roused herself and said flatly, “So am I.” She had rather expected, returning to the church, and in the way of the prodigal, to have been spared retribution.

  “Are you surprised?” Fitzgerald said to his wife. “I’d always thought you were made of more worldly stuff than that.” Of Winthrop he asked, “Just what is he proposing to say?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I hung up on him, but it’s along the lines that Elizabeth and I were having an affair behind your back.”

  “Not to my face?” Fitzgerald said. The remark disclosed a self-flagellation that turned Elizabeth cold. “If you can get him to repeat whatever it is publicly,” Fitzgerald went on, “you can sue him for slander, can’t you?”

  “Of course. But the harm will have been done to you and your family, Walter.”

  Fitzgerald looked at his wife. “Isn’t it fortunate you persuaded me to allow Martha this year abroad, Elizabeth?”

  She simply could not look at him. “It will reach her there, too, I’m afraid. But it is better.”

  Fitzgerald laid his head on the back of the chair and studied the ceiling. “I suppose he must have something that seems like evidence on which to base such charges. Have you any idea what it could be?” He gave a dry laugh. “I’ve never thought you two got on together at all.”

  Winthrop said, “I’ve always been very fond of Elizabeth, Walter. I’ve considered you a lucky man.”

  Fitzgerald nodded and made a noise of agreement. “I suppose maybe that’s what he’s got hold of.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Walter.”

  “I’ve sometimes wondered if your friendship for me hadn’t something in it of covetousness of my wife. And it has given me an odd kind of satisfaction.�
� He sat up in his chair and spoke out harshly. “She could take in any man, any man at all. I’ve seen her do it time and again. And I’ve profited by it, I’m well aware, in the patronage of men more successful than myself. I’ve profited by their lusting eyes, and watching, I’ve thought to myself, you poor benighted fools. What woman is what she pretends to be? Not my wife. My wife has the body of Venus—forgive me, Elizabeth—and the soul of Famine. And what none of you knew, Alex, what none of you knew …” His voice sank almost to a whisper “… I could not have lived with her otherwise.” He hunched forward and buried his face in his hands.

  Elizabeth thought she was going to faint; her mouth was dry, her lips almost numb and the taste in her throat was sickening.

  Winthrop felt as though something was crawling up his back. It was not easy to watch a man, even a fool, make a spectacle of himself. And the odd idea occurred to him that even if he and Elizabeth were to confess their affair to Walter right now, he would not believe them. And this, of course, was the situation that was going to make it possible for him to spit in the blue, blue eye of Mike Shea.

  “I could withdraw from the race,” he said. “Reasons of health. I am sure there are a few doctors around town who would be willing to certify to it.”

  Fitzgerald slowly drew his face out from the cover of his hands. “No.”

  Winthrop said, “Elizabeth, say the word. It’s your good name at stake here.”

  “I think I am going to be sick,” she said, and managed somehow to get out of the room before it happened.

  Fitzgerald said, “Alex, we shall fight them to the last scrap of courage. Let them dump their garbage where they will.”

  Mike Shea’s charges, handed to the evening papers, created a furor in the city: they were going to be good for many a headline. Yet they did Shea’s candidate very little good. In fact, it was not long before Mike could begin to calculate the harm it was doing him. Shameful as might be the charges against Winthrop, if true, the people felt it was even more shameful of the mayor to bring them up at this time. It was a desperate move, and nobody wanted to vote for a desperate candidate.