Random Winds (12 page)

“I said,” Meig demanded, “what do you think of the idea?”

“Excuse me. I wasn’t—I didn’t quite understand.”

“Good God, man, pay attention! I asked you how you’d like to spend a couple of years in London, studying with Braidburn.”

What sort of a charade was this? To study with Braidburn? Why, even Dr. Albeniz would be awed at the thought of it!

“Like it, Mr. Meig? It would be—it would be paradise! But it’s impossible!”

Meig laughed. It struck Martin that he had never seen the man laugh until now, hadn’t ever seen his teeth.

“It’s not impossible at all. I told you I could get any favor I asked him for.”

Yes, yes, Martin thought, I suppose people like these always do know somebody who will do them a favor. It’s a chain, a network all over the world. If I had a voice and wanted to study for the opera, he’d know the best voice teacher in Italy, one who didn’t take any more pupils but who would take me. And he became aware that his heart was beating very fast.

Meig leaned forward now, lowering his voice. “Of course, I can’t expect you to understand without giving you the whole story. So now let’s go to my problem. I have angina.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Nobody does. I go to a doctor in Albany because I don’t want anyone around here to find out. Most especially not Jessie. I mustn’t frighten her.”

“If you’ll excuse me, do you think that’s wise? If anything were to happen to you, it would be harder for her not to have been prepared, and Jessie is nothing if not a realist.”

“You know her rather well, then.”

“We’ve had a lot of talks this past summer and fall. I can tell you I think she can cope with things far better than most of us.”

“She’s a bright girl Both my girls are. They’re like their mother. Soft, too. Especially Fern. Curious about everything. Music. Pictures. Books. Jessie’s got all that but not as soft. She’s got a little of me in her.”

Jessie would be amused to hear that “Father’s a Babbitt,” she’d told Martin once, not unkindly. “He calls Uncle Drew ‘arty’ because he collects books, although he does make allowances since Uncle Drew is rich, after all.”

Now Meig looked away at a point on the wall above Martin’s head. “Damned injustice! My wife never drew a happy breath after Jessie was born.” He looked back at Martin. “It’s been hard, all around, very hard. We weren’t always fair to Fern, either, I suppose, keeping her away from lively places where young people meet each other. But we were always torn between her and what was best for Jessie.”

Martin moved restlessly. All of a sudden, it seemed to suit this cool and haughty man to confide in him! All of a sudden, and why? And what did it have to do with neurosurgery in London?

“Now let me tie all this together. I have angina, I have a daughter who will be alone in the world on the day I die. Fern has a life of her own now in England, and there are a couple of relatives in New York who also have their own lives. So what’s to become of Jessie? That, young man, is my problem.”

Martin was silent.

“When I’m gone and she’s lonely, some clever operator will think she has millions, which she hasn’t, and hell marry her. After a while hell leave her. Oh, there’s little you can tell me about the world! I’ve seen it all.” Meig stood up, poured more brandy and sat down again. “If I could only see her well and wisely married before I die—Marriage used to be, and in Europe among some groups even today, still is, a family contract It’s a sound, planned arrangement involving friendship and mutual interests. And that’s not bad as a foundation, when you consider it carefully.”

Was it possible he was going to say what Martin thought he might be going to say?

“Well. I’ve turned this over and over in my mind for a hundred hours, and I want to make an honest proposition.” Meig took a deep breath. “Marry Jessie.”

Martin felt his mouth drop open.

“I’ll see to it that you get the best medical training in the
world. I’ll subsidize you until you can support yourself. And I’ll give you enough to maintain your mother. She won’t have to know it comes from me. She can think you’re getting paid over there and it’ll save her pride. I understand all about pride, you see. Yes, marry Jessie, and make a life for yourself.”

One couldn’t just get up and stalk out of a man’s house. One couldn’t tell him he was out of his mind. Martin was stunned.

“You don’t have to give me your answer now. Think it over. Take plenty of time. On second thought, not plenty, because I don’t know how much time I’ve got, and I’d like to close my eyes knowing that she’s cared for and protected by a man of decent character. I’m a keen judge of people, and I would put my life’s savings on this table in front of you and leave the room.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Meig. But I have to tell you that I hadn’t thought of marriage for years yet. As you say, I am—at least I hope I am—a responsible man, and marriage isn’t something that one just—”

“Martin, let’s do without diplomacy, shall we? This is a time for plain talk. You’re thinking, and I don’t blame you, that Jessie Meig isn’t precisely what you had in mind when you thought of choosing a wife. I’d be a fool if I didn’t know that! But I also know, and you do too, that burning love affairs usually go up in smoke anyway. Now, Jessie is an unusual human being. You’ve said so yourself. She’s intelligent, she’s good company and she thinks the world of you. Anybody can see she does. She’d be a trusted companion all your life.” He paused. “And she’d have reason to be grateful to you.”

Martin winced and Meig saw it.

“Yes, I did say ‘grateful’! What’s wrong? But you’d be grateful to her, too, wouldn’t you? Because without her you’d spend the rest of your life here, going to waste.”

Martin stood up to get his coat.

“Will you at least think about it?”

“I understand what you’ve said, Mr. Meig, but—”

Meig waved him aside. “Your impulse is to say ‘no, absolutely
not.’ You think if you accept, you’ll be selling yourself. Dishonoring yourself. Isn’t that so?”

“I feel—” Martin began and was interrupted again.

Behind the strict, rimless glasses the eyes were shrewd, “Sentimentality, Martin, sentimentality!”

Martin had one foot out of the door.

“Of course she doesn’t have the remotest idea of what I’ve been saying and must never find out, whatever you decide.”

Martin was horrified. “No need to worry about that!”

“Very well, then. Just give it some thought, that’s all I ask.”

It was such a cold night that, unless you knew better, you could lose an earlobe. In spite of the arctic air, Martin sweated. The shame of it! He looked back at the house, wondering which of the second-story lights came from Jessie’s room. And with flashing insight, he thought he could feel how it would be for her, proud as she was, if she could know what had just passed between her father and himself.

The proposition was, of course, unthinkable. Yet it had been well-intentioned, born of desperation. That this arrogant, private man should have revealed himself like that to a stranger! What must he have seen in that stranger? Ambition, obviously, but much more also: loyalty and kindness and honor. No question about that. He trusts me, Martin thought. Then his thoughts veered.

He dares to think I can be bribed!

Don’t be a pompous ass, Martin; he didn’t mean it that way!

It’s a bribe, all the same!

He’s terrified and wants to see his house in order. A human being has revealed his sorrow before you, Martin!

But the thing’s impossible. And now a fine friendship has been spoiled for good. How can I feel free in that house anymore?

It was the most weird encounter, weird and sad! The wind rushed and the night was inexpressibly lonely. The planet was small and shriveled with the cold. And he went to bed thinking of loneliness.

For two weeks he stayed away. Then it occurred to him that such an abrupt disappearance would be a cruel hurt to Jessie. And indeed, it had been.

“I thought maybe my father had made you angry the last time you were here,” she said, looking anxious.

“No. Why should you think that?”

“Because he can be so superior and cold. He antagonizes people.”

“Well, he wasn’t. Anyway, I don’t antagonize so easily.”

“That’s not true. The truth is exactly the opposite.”

“You’re right, as usual,” he admitted, and she laughed.

Seated as usual in the great wing chair, with her cheeks gone pink from the fire’s heat, and the pinpoint sparks of gold in her ears, she could have been so lovely! If only—And he wondered whether anyone would ever marry her. Would anyone ever love her? Respect, admiration, companionship—these would come easily in all the virtuous ways through which human beings relate to one another. And surely even tenderness could come. But love?

She said softly, “You’re very quiet, Martin.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be.” He brought himself back into the moment. “By the way, I finished
Main Street
. I meant to return it tonight, but I forgot to bring it.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes. It has the ring of truth. Depressing truth.”

“I’ve something else for you, quite different.” She ran across the room to the shelves. She always ran. Did she think it made her less visible to run?

“Here. It’s Rolland’s
Jean-Christophe
, a beautiful story of a musician in Paris. Especially good for you.”

“Why for me?”

“Because it’s a story of a struggle. Always, even when he was a child, he knew he was going to be a composer, a great one. He faced everything—loneliness, poverty, rivalry; but he never gave up.”

“And did he win in the end?”

“Read it.” She forced his eyes to meet her own. “You’re a tenacious man, you know? You’ll get what you want. I feel it in you.”

A sudden brightness came into the little face, a fervor so glowing that it seemed he was seeing past the frail barrier of her forehead, seeing deep into her with shocking clarity.

She loved him.

Good God! He hadn’t intended that! Hadn’t intended to weaken or mislead this vulnerable small girl! What had he done? How had this come to be? Clumsily he flipped the pages of the book she had put into his hands.

“Seems like something I’ll hate to put down,” he said.

“Yes.”

Did he deserve to feel such guilt and shame? Truly he hadn’t been aware that this was happening. Nor perhaps had she. Well, it would have to be stopped, that was all. Brought abruptly to a halt before any more damage was done.

He simply wouldn’t come here again.

And swiftly, with such grace as he could summon, he escaped from the house.

There are days on which troubles accumulate and peak. One oversleeps and there is not time for breakfast. One is late for the first appointment and for all the others after that. It rains on the wet snow; then the rain turns to sleet and the roads turn to ice. It is March and one is sick of winter, but there are weeks and weeks of it still ahead.

The office was crowded all the morning with coughs, sore throats and a rampant case of measles that should have stayed home instead of polluting the waiting room.

The last case in the afternoon would have broken Martin’s heart if he had allowed it to. Elsie Briggs was thirty-four, unmarried and the youngest of a large family. Hers was the old story of the daughter who stayed home to take care of her parents, wearing herself out for the senile and incontinent, locking herself away from life behind four dismal walls. And Elsie Briggs was finally breaking down. They would be taking her to the state hospital on Friday because there was nothing else to do with her. There was no outpatient care; there was no place other than the bleak state institution. Martin shuddered. In this mood he closed the office for the day and went to the car.

Ordinarily, he would not have answered a summons fifteen miles north in the mountains, especially in weather like this. But these were old patients who had bought a remote farm and moved away. Their parents had been his father’s patients. Pa would have gone, he told himself grimly.

Sliding and struggling up the hills, each one more steep than the last, the flimsy car shook through fierce cross-winds. The windshield wipers clacked. All was gray: dim fields, gray air, steady snow. After two miserable hours, he pulled into a yard to find what he had expected: unpainted boards, a ramshackle porch, no light poles. If anybody needed cutting or stitching he would turn the car to let the headlights shine into the room. Rural poverty like this in the twentieth century!

In the bare kitchen stood a huddle of five runny-nosed babies and a thin mother, terrified because her husband was sick. Who was to tend to the man’s work?

The man had pneumonia. Martin left medicines and a sheet of instructions.

“Keep taking his temperature regularly,” he told the woman. “Can you get out to a phone to call me tomorrow?”

She was concerned about his bill. “I can’t give you anything now, Doctor, but I’ll be at my sister’s right near your place in a couple of weeks. Ill bring it then.”

“Dont worry about it,” he said gently, knowing quite well that he would never be paid, knowing also that he wouldn’t want to be paid. For who could touch dollars that would deprive these children of something they needed? And heaven knew, they must need everything from oranges to shoes!

So he left to slide and slip, downhill this time, the fifteen miles homeward. In the city or under some better system—though God knows what system in places as remote as these—this patient would be taken care of in a hospital. At least, somebody would see him tomorrow. In this weather he surely couldn’t get back soon enough. And this frustration, along with so many others, nagged him as he drove.

I don’t know anything. I’m not an expert obstetrician,
cardiologist or orthopedic surgeon. I’m not an expert anything. That arm of Wagnall’s that I set last week wasn’t done right. I know it wasn’t.

My father’s kind hands lay folded over his black vest in the coffin. He gave the best care he could. He tried. My God. he did! And that’s better than nothing, better than no care at all! A man has to be satisfied with it My father was satisfied.