Evening of the Good Samaritan (14 page)

He shook his head and smiled down at her. “You’re wrong.” It was a lie, but it was the kind of lie he had to tell himself also, assuming that in time he would not know it from the truth.

“Alexander, do you know what would be a genuine boon to your candidacy? A wife. You could even do it for the newsreels.”

“I’ll think about it, Alicia,” he said, humoring her.

“Do. It’s the only way to seal things off, to stanch the wounds. Don’t you think I know? I lost a husband when we were still in love. I have a boy to prove it, twenty years his sister’s junior, and a child of passion. Don’t you believe me?”

“You were fortunate in love, Alicia,” he said, uncomfortable always when people spoke frankly of the intimacies of their own lives. He took her hand for a moment, using the show of affection to facilitate his escape. “I shall be back.”

“Too late, too late,” she cried, and waved him off with a delicate hand.

In calculated time he danced at last with Elizabeth, so dearly familiar that night and yet distant now as a virgin nun. They did not speak until the music stopped, the players changing songs. He said then as they touched hands again, “I don’t know how much I could bear of this.”

“There is not so much to bear, Alexander. And you’re going to be mayor of Traders City. Isn’t that enough?”

“I don’t know. Before God, I don’t know. There’s something about trying for office I think must spoil a man before he has a chance to prove himself worthy of it.”

“You’ve grown already, Alex. And there is something about high office, so I’ve heard, that raises even little men to greatness. And you have never been a little man.”

“I hope to God you’re right, Elizabeth.” Then, when he began to ache anticipating how soon this dance would end, he said, “I shall love you always … and be grateful.”

She threw back her head and looked at him from beneath the dark lashes he had felt so often brush his cheek. Her smile mocked him. “Ah, Alex, Alex, you do love sad songs.”

“Don’t you?” he said, sensing her doubt of his sincerity—or maturity.

“Not any more,” she said, her brows arched—if he had but known it—to help hold back the tears. “I’m feeling almost gay these days.”

“I’m glad,” he said, hurt to the core.

And, mercifully, the dance for them was ended there.

In the course of a half-hour Martha and Tony Fields came to know a number of things—at once important and not important—about one another. For example, they learned that she preferred Verdi to Beethoven and he Beethoven to Verdi, an order of preference which in not many years would be reversed for both of them. Verdi opera being so popular that season of opera in Traders City, it was scarcely fashionable of her to admit a taste for it; that she did admit it Tony professed he found refreshing. Martha supposed she should be flattered. But after that she kept watching for Marcus’s return.

She saw him as soon as he came into the ballroom, but when he stood so long outside the dance and if he saw her at all did not acknowledge it, she wondered if she had not imagined entirely his interest. She danced with George Bergner, and Bergner, seeing Marcus, contrived for reasons of his own to end their dance in his vicinity.

“Hello,” Bergner said, “the interview is over, is it?”

To Martha, Marcus said, “I was thinking, standing here.”

She felt the color rise to her face: he must know she had been waiting.

“Yes, George, the interview is over. I’ve just put your father in his car.”

“Did you make a deal?” George asked directly.

Marcus looked at him. “He seems to feel the need of legal counsel. We three are to meet Wednesday morning.”

George laughed. “I kind of hoped you’d tell him to go to hell. Somebody should some day.”

“I should think you’re in a better position to do it than most people,” Marcus said, and turned to Martha. “May I?”

She nodded, and Bergner left them. Martha said, “You don’t really want to dance, do you?”

“No, and I’m not very good at it. I don’t know what I’d like to do—get drunk, run barefoot in the snow. How would you like to go on a grand tour of the establishment? I understand there’s an art gallery somewhere.”

“I’d prefer that to the other possibilities you mentioned,” she said.

He smiled and they moved away from the dance. They had to go through the drawing room, on a servant’s directions; there several older people had gathered in quiet talk before the fire. They suspended their conversations and peered around, some of them eerily from behind the tall chairbacks, as the young couple passed: it was one of those pictures which fasten upon the mind forever.

Martha whispered, “Do you see them?”

“Yes.”

“Someday when I’m painting, I’ll remember. Except that I seem already to have seen a painting of them.”

Marcus stopped. “Say that again.”

“I don’t know just what I said. Only that as soon as I was seeing the picture of those people in my memory—it seemed I had first seen it long ago.”

“What happened to me tonight is a little like that,” Marcus said, and they went on. “I got my comeuppance. But I hadn’t really earned it. But then, I haven’t earned more than I got either—not in Dr. Bergner’s terms.” He wet his lips. “I didn’t have that foolish sort of dream—the famous surgeon saying to me, ‘My boy, you will be the greatest …’ You know, that sort of thing? I just wanted a little place of my own in medicine—but with a title to it. There’s the rub. I wanted the title, didn’t I?” He looked at Martha but answered himself. “Resident, resident surgeon at Mount Clement, I wanted to hear them say. And who did I want to hear say it? Not my father. My father, if anybody, knows that titles have no meaning.”

They went along and came then to a tiled passageway; the door from there opened upon a separate building, a wing built especially to house Dr. Winthrop’s collection of paintings. Marcus read the instructions for lighting the gallery.

“Have you been here before? Have you seen the collection?”

“No,” Martha said.

“And you paint, yourself?”

“Yes, but not very well.”

He looked at her, his hand upon the door. “Do you know that you don’t paint well?”

“No,” she said tentatively.

“And you don’t believe it for a moment, do you?”

“Perhaps for a moment,” Martha said.

“I’m glad I caught you in that one,” Marcus said, and grinned at her. “It makes me feel much better.”

He held the door and they entered a large room, the ceiling of which was lighted through smoked glass. The windows were of medieval stained glass, lighted from outside by spotlights.

“I never saw the sun at night,” Marcus said, looking from one window to the other, and then in paraphrase of the “purple cow” poem, “I never hoped to see it.” He let it end there, unable to think of another line.

“And so loud, too,” Martha said.

“The sun at night?” She nodded, and he said, “You have a nice way with words.”

They turned to the paintings, thirty-seven of them, individually lighted, masters all, or the work of masters, but neither Martha nor Marcus had anything to say as they moved from one picture to the next, and when they had circled the room and were again near the door, Marcus said, “Say in one word—how you feel about all of these: one word, that’s all you’ve got.”

“Dead.”

And it came easily, the word, for she had never had an experience quite similar. She would not have felt that way about two or three such paintings—after all, her awe of the great names in art would have bade her see what life there was and more—but the accumulative effect was numbing. And having said the word, she thought of being sealed within a tomb, the gorgeous crypt of an ancient monarch. “Aida,” she said, as they left the gallery. “I should have said Aida.”

“Very apt,” Marcus said. “I was afraid at first that I was jaded.”

“I wonder how Dr. Winthrop feels about them. I’ve never heard him talk about them at all.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know they’re here,” Marcus said. He turned off the gallery lights. “Now where shall we go? I think I want a drink. Do you mind?”

“I think I’d like one, too.”

When they reached the marble hall again, he took her hand for a moment, and with his other hand pointed a shaking finger at the north staircase. “I thought I was going to come down those stairs owning half the world because I’d found a place in it.”

“And you didn’t.”

“Oh, didn’t I, though? That’s exactly what I found—a place. He’s hiring me at a salary.”

Martha took champagne again while Marcus had a double whisky brought him, and they sat in the hall on a marble bench somewhat concealed beneath the arch of the stairway.

“I’m behaving badly,” Marcus said, “and I know it. I’ve just remembered something my father said when all this first came up—after I’d seen Winthrop—you know?” She nodded. “We were talking about Bergner, Dr. Bergner, and he said I’d have to judge him by his patience, that a humble man was patient …”

“You admire your father very much, don’t you, Marcus?”

“Yes. He’s fine.”

“How do you think he’ll feel about it?”

Marcus gave a short laugh and then turned that question over in his mind. “You know, I don’t suppose he’ll think it’s bad at all. He has a great deal of confidence in me.”

Martha held to the idea she was building on. “And it won’t matter to your father, Marcus, will it, that it came about in a way through papa?” She felt almost ashamed when he looked at her for having contrived the shaft. She had become a little enviously aware of Marcus’s regard for his father. This, together with her almost articulate realization that no one admired her father, prompted her to use that particularly feminine way of distracting a man: the insinuation of herself and an ailment of her own.

“Of course not,” he said. And when he saw the color rise, he realized that he had hurt her. He finished his drink, and it was a hard swallow.

“It’s all mixed up, isn’t it?” Martha said, and putting down her glass on the floor beneath the bench, she sat, her hands in her lap. “When I saw Dr. Bergner’s hands shaking that way, I think I could have guessed that he would hurt you.”

Marcus frowned: it was a strange observation.

“I knew a nun,” Martha went on, “whose hands shook like that. She was an artist. She’s in a sanatorium now, they say.” And she told him then about Sister Mathilde and Genevieve Revere’s painting. “I’ve not been able to tell that to anyone before. I don’t know why I’ve told you. There’s something a little wicked about it—not just morbid—isn’t there?”

“A little,” Marcus said. He was wise enough to hold back any glib explanation.

“But do you know what it is that I remember most about it, Marcus? The way she looked at me, so proud of being able to cry without the tears coming out of her eyes.”

“Self-discipline,” Marcus said, and his own thoughts leaped immediately to Dr. Bergner and his steadied hands.

“But in a wrong sort of way—like a cripple that’s stronger than most people who aren’t crippled. I suppose that’s cruel of me, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s much the truth,” he said.

“But why did I destroy the picture? That’s what troubles me. It was a terrible thing to do.”

He drew a deep breath. “God help us, Martha, when our consciences put us at the mercy of cripples.”

“That’s the difference between mercy and pity, isn’t it?” she asked after a moment.

“You insist on going to the heart of matters, don’t you?” He looked at her until she met his eyes. “Do you know, you’ve taken a great burden from me?”

Her smile was sudden. “I’m very glad.”

“Someday I shall tell you about it,” Marcus said, “but not now.”

“I suppose we should go back to the dance now,” Martha said.

He shook his head, but got up. “There’s a view I want to see, and I know with whom I want to see it.” He held out his hand.

She took it, rising, and they crossed the hall to the dining room. The long tables were already down, the velvet drapes drawn. They walked through the room hand in hand, and if the servants working there saw them, they never let on. Marcus parted the drapes and they stepped up on the dais, the darkness closing behind them. The trees, the snow, all outdoors was whisper-still as they gazed out. Suddenly a deer came out of the woods, right up to the terrace.

“I ordered that for you,” Marcus said.

“From Santa Claus?”

“There isn’t any Santa Claus,” he said. “But don’t you worry.” He put his hand to her cheek and turned her face to his and kissed her very gently, but lingeringly, for he felt the tremble of her lips. He wondered if she could hear his heart beat as he could hear it. “Now we had better go back,” he said a moment later.

“Yes.” The deer, when she looked, was gone. “Poor animal. I hope there’s something out there for him.”

“And for me,” Marcus said, parting the curtain so that a shaft of light shone upon them. “There’s nothing in this kind of living for me, Martha. You know that, don’t you?” He indicated with a toss of his head the house within.

“Nor for me. I know that, too,” she said, and went in before him.

O
N MONDAY OF THE
first week in April—the week before the primary elections—the tiger made his leap. Mike Shea declared all out for the mayor. Winthrop admitted that he was not altogether surprised, and only a little hurt; while he needed the regular party vote, he had come to the point where he was not going to be willing to pay for it; he had no intention of packing City Hall with men who could deliver votes but not much else. He even confessed to George Bergner on the afternoon the news broke that Mike could not very well have been expected to support a man who all but promised the destruction of his machine.

Bergner was sitting in the Winthrop headquarters, his back and backside aching from too many hours on a folding chair, his elbows slivered from the raw wood table top that rested on two sawhorses, and wondered if the time had come to give Winthrop a broadside of the truth. It was incredible to him that a man in Winthrop’s position could be so naïve. He was also convinced that he had been duped himself.

“It was my understanding, Alex, when I took on your campaign, that Mike was keeping hands off right down to the wire.”