Back STreet (30 page)

“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 happiness, 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.

If the persistence of her various pressures upon him made him nervous and even unnerved him, and her lack of playfulness, as she grew older, her almost insane indulgence of her children, her tiny snobberies, her limitless faithfulness, her impeccable motherhood, her unassailable righteousness and conspicuous virtue, continued to drive him more and more surely and more and more securely to
the less exacting atmosphere of a woman who also fed him well and loved him not wisely but well, the fact remained that in the house on Fifty-third Street there resided, in virtue, the fitting complement for the growing solidarity of his life, his importance as a conspicuous citizen and high type of Jew, his success, his philanthropies, art-interests, and expanding ambitions.

It was difficult, indeed impossible, to explain, even to oneself, the tremendousness of trifles. Never, in this flat, “Ray, are you tired?” but, “Ray, I am tired.” Never, “Is it convenient for you, Ray, to hold dinner until eight tonight?” but, “Ray, have dinner at eight.” Never, “Are you depressed?” but, “I am depressed.” Never, “Can you?” but, “I cannot.” Never, “Do you prefer?” but, “I prefer.”

As he repeatedly said to her—and for some reason it pained her to hear it—she fitted him like an old glove.

The nearest she ever came to voicing some of the unconscious bitterness that on occasion would surge against him, was once when she said to him, quite playfully, “That is because I guess always I must be content to walk skulking along the back streets of your life.” And he, who was notoriously quick to take offense, had sulked days after this.

“Why, Walter, I meant what I said, but I’m not complaining. I like it. Suppose I do walk the back streets of your life. I love them because they are your life.”

He could turn sulky with a suddenness that never ceased to terrify, past master that she was at placating.

“I despise veiled discontent. I would much rather you would come out with what you have to say.”

“With what I have to say! Walter, silly, what in the world could I have to say in that respect?”

“That is precisely what I cannot understand. I cannot see much back street connected with all the comfort you need, a trip to Europe every couple of years. The fact that you cannot travel on the same ship with me or live in the same hotels, seems hardly to need discussion. I—”

“That is just sort of what I meant by back streets, Walter. Nothing more. Of course it is wonderful going to Europe, but I, being
piggy, would so love it if things were different, so piggy could cross on the same ship with you and not live in pensions around the corner from her Walter’s hotel. That’s all I meant.…”

“I see. In order to make things more thoroughly impossible and even more dangerous than they are?”

“Silly. Did I say anything like that? I was just trying to imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have to do it this way. That’s all I meant, Walter.”

He was difficult to placate; and, strangely enough, the tactics she employed to bring him round were precisely the ones he employed with Corinne when something petty had incurred her displeasure which, in its way, was as quick off the trigger with Walter, as his could be with Ray.

Often it occurred to him, as she sat humbled before him, coaxing, placating, how strange it was that his methods in coaxing his wife out of a mood of real or fancied wrong could be so identical with hers.

“Walter, I love you. Say that you love me.”

“Just let me alone for a while, Ray. I need to be alone.”

Rigidly he could withstand her importunings for a period of hours, submitting with averted face to her touch, to her pressure, to her chirpings and her pleadings. “Walter, if you really loved me you could not hold out against me this way.”

His capacity to remain silent was eternally baffling to her.

“Walter, sometime I’m going to try and get angry with you and stay that way, if only I could.…”

“I am not angry.”

“You are!”

“You are what you are, that’s all, and nothing can change you.”

“But, Walter, I only meant …”

“ ‘Back streets of my life.’ Do you think it’s pleasant or easy for me? A man in my position? Lies. Evasions. Fears. My children growing up. My affairs more and more in the public eye. It is danger every instant, and now I suppose you want a pair of marble front stairs on which to air the situation.”

Was this the Walter who could be so suave—the Walter who
practiced after-dinner speeches in this very room, after she had typed them on the machine she had recently acquired and mastered as a surprise to him? Was this the Walter she had seen ride up the avenue in high hat and a big Packard car, in the wake of some distinguished visiting personage who was being conducted to the mayor by the Citizens’ Committee? This snarling petty boy with the angry tan darkening his face.

“Oh, Walter, how can you think such things?”

“If you had any conception of what it means to live day and night the kind of life that could ruin you!”

Why hadn’t she the pride to throw his freedom in his lap? Hundreds of times that question had moved tormentingly in her breast, and each time her sole response had been to wind her arms about his neck, coax his reluctant eyes around to hers, placate him with every method at her command.

“Walter, isn’t our love worth it?”

“I suppose it is, or I couldn’t go on.”

“You know it is.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Walter, darling, you know it is.”

“All right, anything you say.”

This mood was terrible to her. Impenetrable, sometimes for hours.

“I’ll go now.”

“Walter, not this way. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t sleep. Don’t leave this way.”

“Well,” resignedly, “what do you want me to do?”

“Smile. Be bright. Be sweet.”

“Oh, I see. Smile because you feel as you do about the back-st—”

“Walter, if you don’t stop putting words into my mouth that I didn’t say, I’m going to treat you the way you would treat your little Irma if she were naughty, and stand you right over there in the corner. Darling, don’t you know that the back streets with you are more than Heaven would be with anybody else? I’m happier here than I would be sitting in the first row of your box at the opera. I’ve had lovelier times in my little pension in the rue Cambon in
Paris than anybody could have at the Crillon with you. I love the little ships I cross on and the flat I live in and everything about everything—Walter—darling—”

His resistance gave way, reluctantly, but surely. Reconciliation, when it did come, swept him, on a wave of contrition, into her arms.

“You shouldn’t torture me, Ray.”

“Oh, my darling, I’d cut off my right hand first.”

“You are my everything.”

“And you are mine.”

“Everything I have the strength or the purpose to do dates right back to you. I wouldn’t have the courage to face this terrible game called success, without you.”

“Oh, Walter, one minute I’m way down in the cellar and a danger and drain on you, and the next minute you put me up there on a pedestal. I’d rather be somewhere in the middle. It’s safer.”

“I can’t ever place you high enough. There is not an hour in the day that I am not leaning on you, even if it is one of the days we don’t meet. It isn’t only your advice about everything pertaining to my life, Ray. It’s more than that. It’s the knowledge that there is one person capable of something utterly selfless and unselfish where I am concerned. No children to come between, no social considerations, no worldly ambitions, no money-grabbing, no family politics, no consideration but me.…”