Evening of the Good Samaritan (60 page)

“Don’t you think they should have got a divorce?”

“Yes, now I think so. I should have been horrified then. But no more than I was finding out about Alexander and mother. That was worse. Only I didn’t know it at the time. But I remember I lost that intimate sense of Marcus for a time. I didn’t even want to see him, I thought … until his cablegram came. I still have that. Also the Baroness Schwarzbach’s invitation to spend the holiday with her …”

“And that was when you got to know Nathan.” Tad pulled the tuft from the quilt.

“Mother and I had met him earlier that summer in Vienna. But he was in Paris then and came to see me at school. I remember that, too, the old nun, the portress, sitting just outside the parlor door, so that we could see her foot and hear the rattle of her beads … But I’ve told you all this before … about the New Year’s ball.”

“Did you go to the ball with Nathan?”

“It was in the Baroness’ home. So that it wasn’t a matter of going with anyone. But all that holiday he was very kind. He took me shopping for New Year’s presents. And we went up to the Latin Quarter to look for some of Julie Mueller’s friends, and bought cognac for all the artists.”

“Did he make a pass at you?” Tad went to work loosening another tuft.

“I suppose you could call it that—on the night of the ball.”

“The dog,” Tad said. He got up and dug his hands into his pockets.

Martha said: “I didn’t feel that way about it, Tad. I think I was flattered, and I suppose that’s what he intended.”

“Didn’t you tell him you were in love with Marcus?”

“Yes. And that was how it ended.”

“Oh,” Tad said, disappointed.

Martha realized she had reached the point of dishonesty: Nathan had known of Marcus before. One always reached the point of dishonesty and either stopped or plunged ahead as though the point had not been reached and passed. But that was the night, she thought, by which her marriage to him was foresworn. She went to the window and opened it wide for a moment.

Tad, watching her, thought he had got on to something else. “Was Nathan ever married before?”

“No.” But she hesitated before answering.

“You don’t even know for sure, do you? Tell me the truth, mother. You don’t even know.”

“I suppose you’re old enough now, Tad, to know what I was too young to realize then: he and the Baroness were—intimate friends.”

“Lovers, you mean?” Tad burst out incredulously.

She had told him fearing he would hear it from someone else, visiting in New York. “Once long ago they were,” she said quietly.

Tad’s mind was aflame: “Did he leave her for you?” he persisted. “Is that what’s making you feel guilty now, mother? Is that why you don’t go there?”

“No. I just don’t like leaving home,” she said. But she felt utterly ineffectual. She was sick of defending Nathan and the part of herself that had become part of him. She could feel despair like a giant hand closing down upon her. With a great effort she turned away from it. “Should I have told you so much, Tad?” She took his hands in hers to still them. “I’ve often thought you understood too much, knowing too little. It’s been the other way around with me: I’ve known too much for the little of it I was able to understand. I’ve tried to be honest with you today, but I haven’t altogether managed it. I don’t know what total honesty is. Perhaps there is no such thing. We are conditioned by so many things—our childhood, our faith or lack of it, those whom we love and hurt seeking to hurt ourselves hurting them: you do that sometimes. There is a twist and tangle to all of us. I haven’t learned much in my almost forty years, but this I think is true: without love, without sacrificial love, the potential for evil in us is very great. I don’t think I could live if you were in danger and I couldn’t save you—you, Annie, Nathan, I’m almost sure a stranger—if I saw death approaching, I should have to try. And I think that’s about the best of me. I’m by no means sure it’s enough in a human being.”

She let go of his hands and began rubbing her own together as though to bring warmth into them.

“But Marcus and your grandfather Jonathan were quite something else. Their souls were not pinched up like mine. Even when they were wrong, they were good men with vision and humility, and what I can only call a sort of cosmic charity. Dr. Mueller has it. Mother St. John whom I’ve told you about, the dean at St. Cecilia’s. She had faith. My religion, I’ve come to think now never got beyond credulity. And it might have been enough. I expect it is for most people.” She stopped abruptly and smiled at him. “Now, do you think we’ll know each other when you come home again?”

“Mother, if Nathan were unfaithful to you now, would you divorce him?”

Martha stared at him, her smile slowly diminishing. “What did you say, Tad?”

He tried to stand his ground, but he knew from the pallor of his mother’s face that he should not have said it after all. But he could only repeat: “If you thought Nathan …”

Martha cut him off. “I have never thought of the possibility. And if my speaking frankly this afternoon has put that idea in your mind, I regret it with all my heart.”

Tad looked at her and away. Her eyes were green and angry and the vein showed on her forehead.

“You do not play with emotions, Tad. You don’t improvise things like that to gratify your own fancy.”

“I said
IF
,” the boy retreated.

“I know you said
IF
. That’s what I’m talking about.”

He went to the dresser and gathered his wallet, his nail clippers and his watch. “That isn’t any worse than some other things I’ve thought about him. And it didn’t happen just today. I was able to say it to you today, that’s all.”

Martha went to the door. There she paused, waiting. For the same old apology, he supposed.

“Tad, I don’t like your leaving with this blackness in your heart.”

“You don’t like my staying either,” he said, looking at her only through the mirror. “Peace at any price. I can’t apologize, mother. I would if I could. But I just can’t any more.”

“I understand,” Martha said. “Bring your things when you’re ready.” And going out, she closed the door behind her.

T
AD RETURNED TO SCHOOL
with somewhat less than a scholar’s enthusiasm. Nor was he in any of Professor Covington’s classes that semester. Their first meeting of any length occurred when Covington suggested an hour’s walk one afternoon in mid-October. They set out across the farm along the stubbled corn field where the stalks were cocked, row upon row like Indian teepees. Tad asked if the teacher knew the McCutcheon cartoon called “Injun Summer.” It did not seem to mean much to Covington who was not a Midwesterner. They exchanged accounts of the summer, neither of them striking fire to the other’s imagination, and both of them had thought from time to time during those months of this exchange as being one of its rewards.

Covington asked whose classes Tad was in.

Tad said: “I want to learn more French and some Italian. Maybe I’ll go abroad next year.”

“Add a little Dutch and I’ll give you a job,” Covington said.

“Do you mean it, Mr. Covington?”

“Well, I hadn’t meant it literally, but I can think about it.”

Gusts of wind blew up as they walked, the raw east wind from the ocean which at the farmland’s edge bowed the trees and stripped them early of their leaves. The taste of the sea was in it that day, and overhead the clouds rode faster and faster across the sky as though racing to be off the horizon before the sun’s setting.

“Did you like Grandpa Jon’s book? Did it help you?”

“More in its sources, I’m afraid, than in its summary.”

“Isn’t it any good?”

“I shouldn’t say that. I just didn’t find it as good as I had hoped. I got the feeling it was the work of a man who set out to prove something—not to find something. Will you want to go into the city when we get organized this year? I suppose not since most of my gang will be freshmen.”

“I expect to be going in on my own quite a lot this year, sir. But thanks.”

Covington picked up an oak tree twig, two empty acorn cups at the end of it. He broke one off. “We used to make pipes of these as kids and stuff them with corn silk.”

“Mr. Covington, do you remember who the woman was sitting next to Nathan at dinner that night at Madame Schwarzbach’s?”

“It seems to me she was a designer,” Covington said. It gave him no cheer to see where Tad’s mind was again. Indeed the more he thought of it, the more uneasy he became. “I recall her husband sat across the table from them.”

Tad smiled.

“Why?”

“I met her on the street the other day. That’s all.”

Covington suspected that to be a lie, but nothing was to be gained by challenging it. He threw the bit of oak away.

They climbed a gate rather than open its complicated latch, and walked through a glade of bent pines. The wind made the sound among them of constant sighing. The only other sound was that of crows, loud, desolate and unrelieved. Covington wished that they had gone into the village for coffee instead. Only when they came out of the grove and stood on the high ridge from where they could see the ocean—a mile beyond the flatland that lay in a steep drop below them—did either of them speak again, Covington proposing that they return by way of the road.

“It’s a bleak day,” Tad said. “I like it.”

“Wuthering—that’s the word for it. There are times it would suit me better,” Covington said.

“Mr. Covington, if I call on Madame Schwarzbach now and then, you won’t consider it disloyal of me, will you?”

“I’d be curious to know to whom you are being loyal,” the teacher said.

“To myself.”

“A better man I never knew,” Covington said with attempted levity. Then: “I don’t suppose you want to tell me any more about it than that.”

“There isn’t anything to tell much … yet. She and Nathan once were lovers. Would you have thought so?”

“It crossed my mind,” Covington said. “But I’m sure it’s not so now.”

“So am I,” Tad said.

Covington’s relief was brief.

Tad added: “I think she must loathe him as much as I do … but I want to be sure.”

Covington sucked in a deep breath of the cold, raw air. “All right, Tad, even if it’s so and you find out—what purpose will it serve?”

“I’ve got to know,” the boy said.

On their way back to the campus, going by the highway, they had to wait at the railway tracks for the passing of the train to New York City. Tad remarked: “I wish I were on that.”

Covington said: “You might as well be for all the good it’s going to do you to be in school in your frame of mind.” Before they parted he said: “Come and see me whenever you have a chance, Tad. I promise that I won’t interfere.”

“Thank you, sir.” They shook hands.

Tad wrote what he considered an ingratiating letter to the Baroness that night asking if he might come to tea when next he was in New York. In a week’s time he had not received a reply. He wrote again, suggesting this time that he wished to talk with her on an important matter. Having not heard from her by the following Saturday, he went into New York and while there telephoned her. A maid answered and then John came to the phone to say that Madame Schwarzbach was not feeling well and therefore was not accepting calls or callers.

Tad passed his eighteenth birthday that Hallowe’en, and came very close to failing his first quarter’s examination. He did so poorly for one who had stood second in a class of 480 at the end of his freshman year that when Nathan Reiss came East and Tad asked permission to stay overnight in New York with him, he was refused. He was allowed to go in town for dinner, but expected to sign on campus before midnight.

The dean of studies called Covington in to discuss the problem of the boy.

It was a day of heavy fog and Tad hurried to get off campus lest all permissions be canceled because of the weather. When Nathan had called, he said that George Bergner had come East with him to be present at a testimonial luncheon. “I had hoped Sylvia might also come. After all, she too is responsible. It is for The Plan I am being honored.”

“And mother?” Tad had asked.

“She is not well. And considering the weather, I am pleased she did not come.”

So was Tad this time.

In his haste to catch the first train, he chanced the shortcut which took him close to Covington’s quarters. His luck did not hold: he ran almost into the teacher’s arms.

Covington had but an hour before come from the dean of studies’ office.

“What are you going in town for, Tad?”

The boy’s eyes were glittering. “To pay my homage to the great man. This is the day he’s crowned king of the Jews.”

“Let’s have the translation for that,” Covington said irritably.

“The Conference of Jewish Women gave him a testimonial luncheon. I’ve got to hurry, sir.”

Covington caught his arm. “I have a good notion to campus you for the day. Your marks are disgraceful, the weather is filthy, and I don’t like anything about this trip.”

“If you do,” the boy said in quiet insubordination, “I shall go
A.W.O.L
.”

G
EORGE BERGNER AND TAD
were not likely to have been friends under any circumstance. George detested brilliance, having felt himself its victim in so many ways, and there was, he sensed, about the youngster the unmistakable mark of it. But George was no longer the friend of any man: he was one man’s servant. When Tad arrived at the Imperial Hotel in the late afternoon it was George who was waiting for him in Reiss’ room.

“I’m sorry to be late,” Tad said, “but I couldn’t get a cab in this weather.”

“So is Nathan late,” Bergner said. “He hasn’t time to pack for himself, but he has time to be late.”

The room was muggy with a sort of body warmth as though a man had been sweating in it for a long time. George himself looked untidy, his suit wrinkled and there was the glisten of sweat on his bald head. But Nathan’s luggage, open on the rack, was neatly packed. The room was hung with heavy draperies, furnished ornately, and decorated with pictures of pasturelands and seascapes weightily framed in gilt. A bottle of brandy, a third empty stood open on the writing desk. The Gideon Bible there was also open, and when Tad paused, noticing it, Bergner said: