by Fannie Hurst
Then and there he had no terms to demand or offer, no subterfuge to attempt, or advantage to follow up.
“How could you do such a thing to me, Ray? My God, how could you?”
They were seated in an all-night oyster bar across the street from the hotel, where there would be no closing hour to restrict talk.
“Don’t ask me that, Walter, any more than you’d ask a crazed person to explain a deed.”
“I’ll never, to my dying day, forget that afternoon when I walked into the Medes and the clerk handed me your note. It’s a wonder I didn’t drop dead, Ray.”
“Oh, my poor boy! Oh, my poor boy! Oh, my dear boy!” were the phrases that were being borne along the quick stream of her inner sobbing; but she just sat twisting her hands and twisting her lips against the need not to cry there in the incandescent unprivacy of the oyster bar.
“I couldn’t have done that to you, Ray, no matter what. Whatever good my trip to Mount Clemens may have done me up to then, I returned to New York a sicker man than I left it; digestion gone, twinges back; a wreck.”
Then he had not remained. He had been shot to pieces. (Oh, my boy—my dearest boy!)
“I know now what it means to suffer like a dog in a gutter. You’ve taught me that, Ray, if it gives you any satisfaction to know it.”
It should! It must! Now was the time to follow up an advantage. An incredible undreamed advantage. He was humbled, no doubt of that. Frightened too. Walter needed her! The thing to do now was to keep a stiff upper lip against the flooding tenderness, and demand! How often the girls had said it. The more you demand, the more they respect you. It was a weakness to keep feeling the mind skid off the rail of practicality into the marsh of encroaching tenderness. Now was the moment of advantage. Demand! There were sore hurt places deep down in her heart. Time and time again, the girls, talking among themselves, had asked: “What about you? Suppose a taxicab were to run over him? What about you, who have given the best years of your life? Is your bread buttered? Has he settled on you? Is there a clause in his will? Fool! Fool! He won’t thank you. He will think less of you. Fool. Fool. Fool.”
“It’s been hell, Ray, that’s what it’s been. We took a house at Deal Beach after we got back, and the Friedlander girls joined us with the children there. That left me free to stay in town when I wanted. To walk the streets in torment when I wanted. To go to the flat and suffer like the dog that you wanted me to be.”
The flat! Then he hadn’t broken it up. It was there, waiting. Dear, stuffy, poky little heaven—oh, my dear—
“What’s the use going into it all? I don’t know, Ray, about women. I suppose you’re within your rights. I suppose the situation was one to justify what you did. God knows, I don’t profess to understand the complicated workings of the whole business. I only know that after all these years, accommodating ourselves as we have to what is what, it seemed to me, well, it couldn’t occur to me that anything in one half of my life could have anything to do with your half. You’re there. That half is yours. It is as if for you the other half didn’t exist. My duty lies in that half just as certain as my duty lies in your half.… That’s not a bad religion, Ray. Doing my duty all round—”
(Now, now was the time! Yes, what of your obligations to me? To me who have given the best of my life. To me, who am about to continue to throw my life to the winds in order to live on the fringe of yours. What about me, Walter? Must I swallow not only the degradation, which is a lump in my throat—in my being—at this minute, but every lack of consideration as well? What about me, Walter?)
Curious that the words lay unspoken behind two lips that were splinters of wood that would not open. (What about me, Walter? Me. Me. Me.)
“I’ve been lax in lots of ways, Ray. It usually happens so with a woman as wonderful as you are. A man knows he’s not worthy and stops trying.”
(What a darling thing to say.)
“I’ve made up my mind along certain lines, though. God knows there never was a less calculating woman than you. Too little so, for your own good. But I know there are times you must have asked yourself, Ray, just what provision is there for you in my affairs? As a matter of fact, so far as my will goes, there isn’t any. Not that the thought hasn’t come to me time and time again! It’s been because of the delicacy of the situation. How to write you into such a document. Understand? But I’m going to fix all that now, Ray. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to my feelings in the matter of you. Life is uncertain. You’re entitled to a sense of security in case anything should happen to me. Problem is, just how to go about it, but I’m going to see a certain lawyer in regard to it right off. That’s all that kept me shy of the whole thing this long time. Delicate matter writing you into my will. But don’t you worry, Ray. I’d as soon cut off my right hand as see you suffer.…”
“Walter, don’t go on, darling. It hurts me so. It twists the heart out of me. I don’t want anything except—oh, you’ll never know what it has been—these weeks—these months—these eternities. If I never knew it before, I know it now. Anything that is right to you, is right to me. It’s because I love you so terribly, so senselessly, I guess, that I seem to want rights, observances, conditions that I haven’t the right to want. Only go on continuing to need me in your life, Walter, as I continue to need you. That is all I have a right to ask or expect. I see that now.”
“Is it enough, Ray, that I am out here?”
“Yes, Walter.”
“That I have suffered—”
“Yes, Walter.”
“That I mean to try and do everything within reason that you need and want?”
“Yes, Walter.”
“That there are certain—er—a—aspects of life—you must have the wisdom to understand and that do not touch you at all?”
“Yes, Walter.”
“You’ve often said yourself, Ray, about—about Corinne—it’s our homemade ethics, I guess, but it always helps me—you’ve wanted as much as I, that she—she shouldn’t ever be hurt—”
“I have.”
“Then remember that, when certain feelings overtake you. It ought to be a satisfaction to you, Ray, instead of feeling as you do—”
“Oh, Walter, you don’t understand. You don’t understand.”
“Corinne is not complex, Ray. She is as nearly a happy woman as it is possible for a woman to be, and that, in the face of the fact that you and I still have each other. Isn’t that—”
“Oh, it is! It is!”
“She has everything, so far as she knows. The deceit hurts us more than her innocence of what is going on could possibly ever hurt her. That is all we need to watch, Ray, you have said so yourself a thousand times, that we hurt no one. That may not always hold water as a text; but since I need you, Ray, with a need that is making me very humble tonight, it is better than no text.”
“It is mine too, Walter, to get what we can without hurting, only—”
“No only’s now. We’re agreed on that. It isn’t only in my daily life, Ray, that your being out of it has left such a terrible hole. I need you as my sounding board. I need to think out loud to you. In my work, in my affairs, even in matters concerning my children, it helps me make decisions to have you there—always—no matter where I am. I need you because you are not only one thing, but because you are everything, besides. Come back to me, Ray.”
She knew she was going to say it, and she was glad she was going to say it, and she wanted to hurry to say it before the tears might blur it. Madness, perhaps, to say it, but dear beyond telling in the saying.
“My dear darling, bless you for forgiving and taking me back.”
BOOK FOUR
37
It seemed almost yesterday that she had sat embroidering, for Richard’s fourteenth birthday, the names of the states on the frame that was to contain the twenty-eight Presidents from Washington to Wilson, and now here were nearly three additional presidential terms rolled around and Richard about to be twenty-one.
&nb
sp; This fact, combined with his impending graduation from Yale, was exciting Walter more than anything she could remember since the quick days of reorganization and immense business adjustments that had followed the Armistice.
Well, it was no small thing, this coming-of-age of the apple of Walter’s eye, a boy to be proud of, even in a family where every child had so normally thrived and developed! Irma, at nineteen, from occasional glimpses and photographs, filled with the promise of an alien, unoriental beauty that was neither Friedlander, Trauer, nor Saxel, was already carrying her small head on her shoulders as if it were a pail brimful with water. And then, across the wide gap, the five-year-old Arnold. From a newspaper-reproduction of a group portrait by Halmi, of Corinne and her children, painted when Richard was eighteen and Arnold two, Ray had cut out the heads and shoulders of all three of the children, mounting them in a small album. From time to time there were additions to this collection, particularly as Richard began to do conspicuous things on the polo- and debating-teams at college; and at sixteen, Irma’s photograph as Celia in the Spenser School production of “As You Like It” had already appeared in the Spur.
Then there were two or three snapshots. “Mrs. Walter D. Saxel and daughter Irma snapped by a Times photographer on Fifth Avenue, New Year’s Day.” “Mr. and Mrs. Walter D. Saxel, Miss Irma Saxel, and Richard Saxel, about to board the S.S. Mauretania.” And: “Miss Irma Saxel, daughter of Walter D. Saxel, banker, philanthropist, who will sell poppies at the Falkland Hospital Benefit.”
Quite a gallery, even while the children were young, which she had managed to eke out of cuttings and clippings, to say nothing of the even clearer word-gallery of their portraits which, down the years, Walter had hung in her mind.
Clearest of all hung Richard’s. From his very babyhood he had exhibited qualities that were as admirable and endearing to her as they were to Walter.
“He has a genuine sense of responsibility, that youngster has,” Walter had explained to her from the time he was six or seven. “Watches over his little sister as much as his mother or nurses. Tell that boy to do a thing and you don’t need ever to give it another thought, because you know it will be done, and right! Wish a lot of men in the bank had qualities like him.”
Well, and here was Richard now, twenty-one, a Yale graduate, cum laude, crack polo player in the amateur class, fair at all sports, and no mean debater, about to enter the banking house of Friedlander-Kunz.
Little wonder that his father, ever since his return from commencement at New Haven, had been in a state of excitement that bordered on those days following the Armistice.
“I’ll never forgive myself for not insisting that you see that sight, Ray. You and I feel pretty much the same about the pity of having missed education, and this spectacle would have done your heart good, and, if I do say it, the boy held his own with the sons of fathers that can buy and sell me five times over.”
“His mother must be proud!”
“She has cause. The boy has come clean since the day he was born. I’m not supposed to say it, because he’s mine, but if I had been allowed the pick yesterday of every man on that graduating-platform, my pick would have been the clean-cut young fellow, fourth from the left.”
She leaned over on the couch, where, as usual, they were sitting after the table containing the remains of the evening meal had been dragged off to its corner, and kissed him. What a small boy he was! In many ways, as Walter described him, this son of his seemed more the man of banking affairs and worldly concern than his father. But that was because this was the side of his life, in the flat here alone with her, where he could afford to let go. Be himself. Cast aside rigmarole of rostrum, directors’ table, husband, financier, philanthropist, and national and even international affairs, into which his peculiar services of vast financial importance during the war called him in firsthand contact with prime and cabinet ministers, and table-conferences with the President of the United States.
Here was her part in his life, to exercise her philosophy of life, that where she was concerned he need have no philosophy of life. To make him laugh. Walter, not notable for sense of humor, laughed here in this flat. To make him play. Walter played here. On rostrums, in his office, even in his own home, he was not a ready laugher. He was young here, capable of the kind of boyish thing that had impelled her to lean over and kiss him for what he had just said about Richard.
“You darling!”
“Now what was there darling about that?” he asked, pleased.
“Just you being you. Honestly, I believe that in lots of ways Richard is older than you are.”
“If levelheadedness means anything, he is. Should have seen the way he took the idea of taking his place under Eagan in the appraisal department. Another boy would have—”
“Ah, but you’ve been such a wonderful influence in Richard’s life, Walter.”
“I said to him: ‘Son, it is a modest beginning, that of appraiser of real estate on which the bank is considering advising mortgages. It is thoughtful, careful work, that requires the kind of consideration you must give the woman and often the widowed investor. I consider the philosophy unsound that a rich man’s son needs necessarily to start in overalls. Years of unnecessary hardship may be more destructive than constructive.’ As a matter of fact, now that I recall it, I think those were your words, Ray.”
Foolish Walter, to look so sheepish! Of course they were her words. She had argued heatedly against Walter’s original idea of farming Richard out as runner to a small brokerage firm in Chicago, under an anonymity that, in the end, once his identity leaked out, would mean newspaper publicity and false exploitation. “Let him have his simple beginnings and work his way alone, but why bend too far backward. Starting a rich man’s son down at the bottom of the ladder in overalls is fodder for headlines and more fad than fact. Treat him naturally, Walter. There is nothing unusual in any average young man finding himself working as assistant appraiser in a bank. Years of unnecessary hardship can make work more destructive than constructive.”
Of course those had been her words! Oh, Walter, Walter; and his constant surprise and embarrassment at finding himself quoting her expressions.
“Comes back at me like a flash: ‘I’m glad you’re starting me regular, Father. Treat me average. That’s what I am, until I prove otherwise, one way or another.’ As if it didn’t take more than the average to be capable of sizing up the situation like that!”
“You’ve great joy coming to you out of that boy, Walter.”
“Yessir, I think I have, Ray. In fact, I’ve no kick coming on any of them.”
“Indeed you haven’t. They’re children to be proud of. All this postwar jazz, hip-flask generation you read about doesn’t seem to have really touched yours.”
“It’s not in our ribs, much of that kind of thing.…”
How Walter’s face had filled out, or was it just from the beaming look it wore when these discussions of his children arose? No, under hair that was plentifully more gray than black, there were soft little jowls to his cheeks now, and even though you could never imagine him stout, undoubtedly the area under his waistcoat had thickened and the old straight look to his back had become slightly saggy. Strangely, and sometimes a little meanly, she was glad of these inroads into the face and figure of Walter. It made her less fearful of her own mirror.…
The trouble with dyeing one’s hair to keep the gray down was that after a while, as if too tired to endure under the effort to remain glamorous, it refused to take the coloring. Result, the effect ran crazily to red rusts, greenish tints, with the gray itself persisting through. It was terribly worrisome, because the effect of the dye was to harden and make grim the features without sufficiently eliminating the evil.
It made her welcome, in spite of herself, the little sacs of loose fowl-like skin under Walter’s eyes and along his jowls, and the thinning spot that by now was almost bare and shiny on the back of the top of his head. Dear little welcome tracks of time that made
her own seem the less terrifying.
“When you beam like that, Walter, you look adorable.”
He was annoyed, and rightly, she told herself. It had slipped, a remark that could be warranted to annoy any man, let alone one like Walter.
“Oh, cut that out, Ray. I’m not beaming.”
“Well, you don’t need to get mad about it, dear.”
“No use making a man feel a fool. Women are funny.”
“Men are funnier,” she said, feeling that everything she was saying was somehow going against his grain, and yet not quite knowing how to right her manner, which, goodness knows, had been well-meaning.
“Walter dear, speaking of funny, I think we need a little more comic relief in your speech for the junior group at the Empire State Club next week. I read it over to myself last night, and it struck me those young men might find it heavy sledding.”
“Meaning that my audiences find my talks heavy sledding?”
“Of course not, dear! If you aren’t the one to be touchy tonight. That isn’t at all what I meant, and you know it. My point is that one who can be as wise and witty at the same time as you can be, cannot afford to be too much one or the other.”
As if over and over again there were not this inevitable preamble leading up to the inevitable revision of the cut-and-dried tracts which he ostensibly brought for typing.
“Of course, Walter, I realize that these young men look to you as the symbol of dignified success.” (Success, success, that was the noun to wave before him as the white flag of truce! Success. Success. The word made him wet-lipped.) “But my idea is, the more lightly you treat yourself, the more seriously they are going to be willing to take you. It’s human nature. I’ve seen so many of your audiences, Walter, remain a little stiff, if you happened to be saying things about yourself that they would be perfectly eager to say about you themselves, but which they resented coming from you. And then, on the other hand, time and time again, I’ve seen them warm up after you’ve given them a laugh or two at your expense, and then eat out of your hand during the rest of the speech. Remember the time you got the entire Bankers’ Convention roaring from the very start when you told them how the Maharajah of Something-or-other had mistaken you for his tailor, when you walked into his apartments at the Savoy, in London, with some documents in your hands that were virtually going to change the history of his country?” She had written that, against his protest, into his notes. “Well, that’s all I mean here, dear. Get those young fellows with you and for you from the very start. Keep humorous and they’ll let you be wise. And if I were you, dear, I’d step on the word ‘Hun.’ The war vocabulary is already out-of-date and out of hate.”
