Back STreet

by Fannie Hurst

  “Successful beyond my dreams, Ray.”

  “And now—”

  “And now—nothing, except these good old times with my good old Ray.”

  “Good old Ray.” It was the first time those three words had been assembled for her. She was not sure that she liked them. Good—old—Ray.

  “Bad old Walter,” she said playfully.

  His eyes widened as he looked at her.

  “Bad?”

  Now why had she said that? What good was it going to accomplish at this moment? There would be time to establish her self-respect, with herself, at least, by somehow bringing him to judgment for his incredible omissions, and the pain and danger and cruelty and mental anguish he had bequeathed to her during his absence.

  “Dear old Walter.”

  He had the look, all right, of a man with whom all is right in the world. His and Corinne’s world. All of the squashed-down jealousies that had been pecking her for months came pushing now to the surface. Walter and Corinne and their children. The habit of solidarity must be upon him. Corinne, toward whom, with her mind, she entertained conscience and respect and deep humiliation, was nevertheless a scald across her heart. She and Walter had traveled together, gone into the same staterooms and hotel suites and closed the door after them—together. Signed hotel registers as Walter D. Saxel, wife, and children. All the lean, waiting, scorching months that she had been sitting there in the midst of her terrible embarrassment, the solidity had been solidifying. Unless you were of the stuff that heroines in plays are made of, it was impossible to yield him to that solidity. Yield him? It seemed to Ray, alive to his nearness, thawed to happiness in a way that made her feel as if all her veins were little ice-bound streams suddenly released by spring, that, as never before—that as never before—here lay perfection.

  “Walter, Walter, life is so short. We must never again be apart.”

  “Never, Ray. I needed you terribly.”

  “Say that again.”

  “Terribly. Time and time again it seemed that I must cable for you. Just someone to talk to, Ray. Someone to whom I could think aloud. I’ve been in large affairs, Babe. Of course you read all about how everything went through.”

  She had not. It had never occurred to her that actually this matter of a state loan was of sufficiently large significance for press notification.

  “And Walter, Walter, it was all your doing!”

  “Naturally the papers did not treat it from that angle. I wasn’t mentioned, but my wife’s uncle is enormously pleased, and so is the firm, and of course it is known all over the banking circles.”

  His wife’s uncle! If only he would stop putting it that way. He did it so unconsciously. So solidly. So satisfiedly. Sometimes, on those rare occasions when these forbidden rages crept out like poisonous little mice from their corners, one had to stamp them down and stamp them down. After all, one was there to take what one could get. The fringe of his life. The fringe of his time. If need be, the fringe of his affections. Beggars were not choosers. Thieving beggars who took what was not their right, were not choosers. Take what you can get. Have no conscience about it, because all that life holds for you lies in what you can get out of the fringe to his life. What she does not know, is not hurting her. She has the entire pudding and you are only asking an occasional currant. Take what you can get. Keep what you have, greedily.

  “These have been the most strenuous, nerve-racking months of my life, Ray, but they have been worth it, the endless delays and all. I’ve my pace now. This game no longer has me frightened. I’ve been through hell, though, getting that pace. I’ve needed you, Ray.”

  “Oh, my dear boy!”

  “And I’ve needed this part of my life, Babe. Needed it until it seemed to me I must fly my way across the ocean. Negotiating with men in fezzes who don’t speak your language even when they speak Oxford English, and trying to swing big affairs of state with an international background the size of Cincinnati, Ohio, for equipment, is more of a strain than a fellow realizes until after it’s over. Time and time again I’d have given the whole bunch of tan-skinned plenipotentiaries for a fifteen-minute look-in on this. I feel like a man who is all of a sudden out of a pair of tight boots into his carpet slippers.”

  “Never, never let it happen again, Walter,” she said, with her lips against the back of his hand. “It has been terrible for me, Walter. Terrible.”

  “I’ll tell you the entire story another day, when I’m not dead-beat, Babe; I’ll tell it to you from my first step off the boat in France, when the general manager of the Paris branch met me with some secret diplomatic news that changed the whole affair at the very beginning. I’m tired with my brain and tired with my bones. Is it any wonder, girl?”

  “No, dearest, no.”

  “Did you think about me a great deal, Babe?”

  “You know I did. About nothing much else.”

  “I need to relax. I’ll get to relax—here.”

  “My dear. My dear.”

  “I’ve been like a tightly wound clock, for months now. Rest me, Ray.”

  “My dear. My dear.”

  “I need to be rested, by you.”

  “Ray will rest you. Lie here, my love.”

  His eyes closed; but his lips, against her hand, opened intermittently to whisper. “Tired. Dog-tired. I’m tired. Rest me, Ray. I’m tired.”

  “My poor tired dear. Rest. Rest.”

  “I’m tired—tired—”

  As he sat there, his weight relaxed more and more against her, and her arm, of pressure, began to grow numb, a tom-tom beating itself softly into her brain:

  Hayfoot. Strawfoot.—“I’m tired. I need to relax.—I’ve been like a tightly wound clock.—I’m tired.—I need to relax.—”

  I. I. I. I. I.—Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.—I. Me. I. Me. I. Me.—I. I. I. I. I.

  “I’ve been so pressed, Ray. So pushed. So dazed by it all. I’ve been so dazed.”

  I. I. I.

  “I like to feel your hand.”

  I. I.

  “I could fall asleep like this. Only I must be going …”

  I.

  “I never knew how really tired I was …”

  I. I.

  “I’ll need you, Babe, more than ever now.”

  “My dear.”

  “I will.”

  I.

  “I’m so tired.”

  I.

  While he slept, her arm, which she could not relax, took on the feeling of something disembodied from its socket, and the tom-tom in her brain became slow anger.

  Not one word, not one question, apparently not one direct concern for the interminable weariness of her waiting months. The worse-than-weariness, the interminable torment, deprivation, yes, actual want. There were soft little paunches sagging slightly from his sleeping face. Indulgences. The soft nonalcoholic face of a man who dined too well. A face that had not been denied.

  The planes of her own face, which he had described as a little peaked, were flat. A lean denied face. Not one question. Not one concern. Me. I. I. Me. Not one realization. And it would go on being like this. Trapped by the incredible quality of her folly; trapped there with her arm as numb as it ever would be in its grave, while he slept, relaxed against it. Soiled, sordid, three-cornered predicament. Prisoner to this infatuation which had no ending; prisoner to his happiness, his desires, his well-being. If only he had asked once, just once! It was anger’s turn now; and as her eyes grew dry and hot, he stirred and reached up to stroke her cheek while his eyes remained closed.

  “That five hundred dollars that I stuck in the bisque basket a night or two before I left—I hope it lasted out all right, Babe. Should have wired you more, but kept thinking every next boat would be mine, and didn’t want to risk anything further by wire—”

  Before she need reply, he had dropped off again, this time relaxing against the cushion, leaving her arm free of its weight.

  What had happened flashed at once to her as clearly as a cameo. Even b
efore she rose, to tiptoe over to the sideboard, where the bisque boy stood in his accustomed place, it was all clearly defined in her mind in its dreadful irony. There was the bisque boy all right! What had occurred was no more than a small incident that had happened to her once before. The bills, inserted by Walter into the fishboy’s basket, must have slipped out and rolled down onto the ledge of an “X” of unfinished woodwork reenforcing the back of the sideboard.

  There they were! A roll of greenbacks, with a rubber band around it, caught in the upper half of the crisscross of woodwork. Nothing to be surprised about. You pulled out the sideboard a little, and there they were! Things happened that way. She started to laugh. Sh-h-h. One must not wake Walter. What if one could not stop laughing. She began to mash her hand against her mouth, to mash back the growing laughter.

  Finally, because she could not crowd back the growing, crowing laughter, she went into the clothes closet of the bedroom, and there, crouched in the darkness among such muffling objects as her hanging dresses, let laughter have its way.…

  BOOK THREE

  29

  The year that Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States, Walter’s eldest child, Richard, became fourteen. These events synchronized indelibly in the mind of Ray, because her plan for Walter’s birthday gift to his son was a long, framed panel, containing the photographs or pictures of the full line of Presidents of the United States, with those of Taft, Roosevelt, and Wilson autographed.

  At Ray’s instigation Walter had written to ex-President Roosevelt, to President-elect Wilson, and had sent a messenger to Washington for the Taft signature.

  The extent to which Ray had set her heart on Richard’s having his birthday gift from his father set off with the finishing touch of that signed photograph of the new President, was little short of fanatical. The photograph was procured all right and, mounted in its frame, which Ray had designed so that it could be enlarged for the photographs of future Presidents, stood wrapped and waiting, on Richard’s birthday, for Walter to deliver it to his son. The frame itself was a labor of infinitesimal detail, which had cost at least half a year of minute labor. Of embossed leather, with the names of the various states and territories tooled in it, each name was intertwined with its own official or unofficial flower, the four corners of the panel studded with goldenrod embalmed under crystal disks.

  “It’s the kind of gift, Walter, a boy can remember his father by all his life,” Ray tried to impress upon him during the long period of its making. “Richard is getting to be old enough now for educational presents. Not just toys that cost a lot of money. That’s why I was so anxious for you to get little Irma the ‘Lilliputian Travel Series,’ instead of that doll’s house.”

  “Something in that, of course,” Walter had conceded over and over again, but with impatience toward the end. “Her mother wanted her to have that doll’s house because it won the prize at some exhibition or other. I’ll get her the travel set. As to Richard, that’s all very well. I agree. But what is the use putting your eyes out over the embroidery and all that fancy-work of flowers around the names? The boy won’t appreciate the amount of work that went into it.”

  “I want him to know the flowers of the states.”

  “Rubbish. Leave that to his teachers.”

  “It’s not rubbish for an American boy to know things like that.”

  “Well and good, but don’t get that fagged look around your eyes. It makes you look cross-eyed. Ever know that, Ray? When you get tired nowadays, you take on a curious out-of-focus look.”

  “Why, Walter,” she said, rising and crossing to the mirror, and coloring as she always did when he made reference to her personal appearance, “what in the world put that into your head?”

  “Won’t do you any good to look now. You’re fed and rested. I’m talking about one of your fagged days, when I come in and find you cockeyed from bending over that blamed frame.”

  “Well, I never,” she said. “You do get the funniest ideas, Walter. Here you’ve been wearing glasses for ages, and I don’t even need specs for sewing.”

  They had just completed dinner in the fashion they had been completing these weekly and biweekly occasions year in and year out; and over in the corner, with the snowy cloth flung to conceal the remains of repast, was the table, which presently, after Walter’s departure, she would clear away, in a manner so routinized and familiar to her.

  There hung in the portieres and curtains and upholstery of her more-than-ever-overstuffed rooms the same old highly seasoned odors. A faint aroma from a jelled concoction of pig’s-knuckles, which under her hand became delicacy. The rich smell of her inimitably brewed coffee. Walter’s favorite fish dish of pike, under lemon sauce, from a recipe culled from the old Wielert’s days. There seemed to be something of subconscious pride in Walter’s attitude toward the inviolability of the changelessness of this flat. Even the two trips to Europe of these late years—Ray each time following discreetly, by another ship, in the wake of “Walter D. Saxel and family”—had not jarred the precious immutability of life in this flat.

  Traipsing around Europe, with Ray in the uncertain offing, tucked into this pension or that, somewhere near his pretentious hotel, was one matter; snug here, aloof, insulated in these rooms that were security and relaxation to him, was another. A dear, indispensable another.

  With practically every other pattern of his life moving, shifting, jutting off into new forms, and the past decade one that had brought pomp and circumstance into his life, here was the one permanence, the one stability, the one rock against which swift tides pulled in vain.

  At least, this was how Ray, when nothing in his attitude or his actions seemed explicable, tried to explain to herself the inexplicable.

  Why did Walter, in his forties, and already a vastly rich man—sitting securely, if not in the exact kind of chair that had been occupied by Felix-Arnold Friedlander during his lifetime, at least in one of high authority in the banking house—permit luxury to permeate every aspect of his life except that which he shared with Ray? The luxury of the new four-story home in Fifty-third Street, not a stone’s throw from the Avenue. The luxury of a wife who wore chinchilla in her box at the opera. The luxury of a summer home called Castle View. The luxury of permitting himself philanthropy while still in his forties.

  And yet, when it came to Ray, whom in the social scheme of things a man would ordinarily reckon as his luxury deluxe, the lack of indulgence that had been characteristic in the beginning, when conceivably his financial conservatism might have been the result of inability to afford, persisted.

  But now: the two new one-hundred-dollar bills which he left monthly in the bisque basket on the sideboard did not mean what the sum would formerly have implied. The scale of the value of the dollar had been a diminishing one that decade, as the scale-price of living rose. There had been a thirty-three-and-one-third-percent increase in the rental of the flat; and, even before the World War, the low cost of living that had marked the turn of the century was a thing of the past.

  Two hundred dollars a month still meant that an occasional bout at the races, usually in the company of women neighbors whom she met from time to time, or the sale, through the Women’s Exchange, of embroidered sofa-pillows with which handiwork she had followed up the demise of the fad for painted china, was a considerable aid in such little side luxuries as the overelaboration of her menu, or a gift for Emma, who was twelve and whose father still read gas-meters.

  It was ironically characteristic that Walter usually failed, through forgetfulness, to reimburse her for outlays such as the presidential picture-frame. Or, more than once on their trips to Europe, railroad tickets and steamship reservations had been sources of embarrassment to her, because up to almost the last minute he had failed to provide her with the necessary additional funds. Well, she told herself over and over again, there was only one reason. He wanted to keep intact that which had given him the most happiness. And what had given Walter the most happ
iness, of that she felt proudly sure, rightly sure, sure in a way that made the unendurable endurable, was the unwavering stability of his life with her. Here was stability without the complications of ambition, the unease of responsibility, the inevitable dilemmas of family. Here was surcease from those things which maddeningly and paradoxically he simultaneously both wanted and despised. It was as if those things which could matter so passionately in the growing complexities of his rôles of banker, philanthropist, member of the Mayor’s Citizens’ Committee, Harmonie Club vice president, chairman United Jewish Charity Drive, parent, husband and, in small way, art collector, need matter not at all, here, in the fastness, except insofar as he was sure of avid and sympathetic interest and abetment of all his plans.

  No strain here, no conflict. No struggling to get on. No children who, even while you doted on them, had a tendency to pull at tired nerves as if they were so many hurting ganglia. No Corinne, who had changed surprisingly little from the unnervous, prettily plump little person of Richmond Street, except in the elaborate paraphernalia of externals, which gave her life somewhat the aspect of a simple girl walking down a boulevard, attired in a pagoda.

  Change, change, everywhere except here. And the way to keep change out of here was to keep small, intact, unnervous, unambitious, untempted and untempting, the unadorned changeless Ray, who, in her middle thirties, had she only had the acumen to realize it, had gained flavor with the curious deepening quality characteristic of the type of woman who matures too soon. As Kurt had exclaimed of her, “Why, Ray, you look younger than you did at eighteen.” In a measure that was true, because at eighteen she had looked way and beyond her years.

  Corinne, now, had ripened out of her swiftly transient girlhood into this little dowager who easily looked her rôle of mother, and whose lust for the position and power and wealth of her husband and children was the animating force of her life. That was right. That was what it should be. A man sat at the opposite end of his long and elaborate table from Corinne, as her hair began regally to gray, and her pearls, more than ever, were no creamier than her flesh, and gloried in this wife and mother who graced his board as fitting complement for the growing solidarity of his life.