Evening of the Good Samaritan Read Free

tossed his head, his characteristically youthful gesture, and said, “I’ve been asked to say a word of apology and welcome—I shall say a good many more words later—but on behalf of the trustees and myself, I bid you, every man and woman, welcome and good appetite! But before we go to table, I want to read to you a release I have just handed to the press: ‘For immediate release: The Board of Trustees of Midwestern University, by unanimous vote, tonight reiterated the University’s belief in its responsibility for the teachings within its classrooms, and in the right of its members, outside the classroom, to any activity consistent with moral rectitude.
    “‘The University regrets the violent partisanship recently agitating the campus; the students have been reprimanded and have subsequently shown every intention of confining themselves to peaceable demonstration.
    “‘Accordingly, President Hawkins has respectfully requested the Commissioner of Police to withdraw the men on special assignment to the University campus.
    “‘Classes will convene at the usual hour Monday morning.’”
    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