Back STreet (50 page)

“I only meant, Aix being so small—”

“Oh, I see—you want me to enlarge it, eh?”

Oh. Oh. Oh. Tears were in her eyes, and each time she attempted the propitiating gesture of trying to take hold of his coat lapels, he pushed her away, unconciliatory.

“None of that.”

“Very well,” she said, sitting herself down firmly on a chair opposite him. “But just the same, I’m going to Aix this summer and you’re not going to hold me back. I won’t be punished for saying a little thing that had no meaning.”

“You are not going.”

“I am.”

“We’ll see.”

“Walter,” she cried, making fists of her hands and beating them up and down in the air, “oh, you make me mad. So mad. So mad.”

Finally, after hours of this, he permitted his head to be held between her hands, submitted to be kissed, and finally, thawing, took her into his arms.

“You’re a bad girl. I oughtn’t to let you lick me every time. You sail on the
Saxonia
, July sixth, one week after we leave on the
Paris
.”

“My dearest, you have forgiven me—haven’t you?”

“What can I do? You’re stronger than I am.”

“Don’t make me laugh, darling.”

“Tell you what I’m going to do, Ray. Something you’ll like.”

“What?”

“Corinne has got it into her head that after her cure she wants to take that Norway and Sweden trip with Irma and Mordecai. I’ve already begged off. While they’re at that, we’re going to have our holiday in the Alps after all. I’ve got it all planned! Zermatt. Blue ice. Cows. Chalet. Peace.”

“Oh, Walter!”

“This is one plan that is going through, Ray. Mark you that.”

It was easy to be happy after that, regardless or no of whether the trip to the Alps actually would materialize.

By a perversity as benign as it was unexpected, this, of all summers, proved to be one of pleasure and pleasurable surprise.

First of all, for two weeks, Corinne remained in Paris with the Friedlander spinsters to shop, while Walter hurried along to Aix-les-Bains ten days ahead of them.

Long, perfect, always cautious afternoons of drives or walks. Evenings in and out of the Casino, at will. Dinner in her little suite of the chocolate-ochre wallpaper roses, not just hotel cuisine, but served by a waiter trained to bring in dishes steaming hot from the Casino kitchens.

And even up to the day before the arrival of Corinne, Richard, and the young Pooles, they ventured the celebration of a day’s motor trip to Geneva, where she purchased a small silver wrist-watch for Emma, and, to a delight that was almost childish, was presented with an identical one from Walter, who told the salesman to wrap two—a delight, however, which was to precipitate one of their bitterest quarrels.

“From the way you behaved before that clerk,” he told her on the drive back, “you would think that you had never been presented with anything before.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out, “But I haven’t, Walter, at least so seldom.” But she did not.

“You don’t understand German. I do. I heard what one of the clerks said to another.”

“What could he have said, Walter? I was only being appreciative.…”

“Never mind what he said, but it made me small.”

“I’m sorry, dear. It was just the surprise.…”

“Precisely what you took pains to convey in the shop.”

“What did I say that was wrong?”

“Nothing. It was all subterfuge, which I dislike. Your subtle way of conveying larger dissatisfactions by petty pleasures. I don’t know about what—but perhaps because you’re not covered with gems.”

“Walter Saxel, if I knew the way, I’d get out of this car after a remark like that, and walk home.”

“Wouldn’t, if I were you.”

“You’re insulting and horrid, and if there is one thing I am not, and you know it, it’s the things you—you are insinuating,” she said, and began to cry.

“Oh, Lord, must I always live in a world of women who turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat?”

“Drop of a hat! You’ve slapped me in the face. You’ve hurt me to the core.”

“I know. I know. What about me? Innuendoes because I didn’t go in there, where likely as not I’m known from my newspaper pictures, and indulge in the conspicuous pastime of buying you an emerald brooch.”

“Well, I’ll say this for you, I’ve never known you take any such chance.”

It was out! She could have bitten off her tongue, and did press down on it to the limit of her endurance.

“I see,” he said slowly. “I see a great deal now that I’ve never seen before.”

“Walter, I didn’t mean that! You goaded me to it. Please don’t let us have the commonest kind of quarrel a man and woman can have. It’s so vulgar. Walter, have I ever mentioned money to you in all these years?”

“You’ve never had occasion to.”

Oh, how she could have unloosed then! The unspoken hurt of years of unnecessary deprivations. The second-rate hotels, from which, when he came to dine, he refused to eat the cuisine. The need to contribute to her table budget out of winnings and pickings from petty traffic with the Women’s Exchange. The necessity, always, to speculate with last year’s homemade clothes; the fact that for years she had needed, but never achieved, a successor to her one
fur coat, long since cut up into strips, so that the least-worn parts could be salvaged for collars and cuffs. The fact that had she gone to Miami, sure as fate, not one extra penny would have found its way into the bisque boy’s basket. His unobservance of her self-denials, when he was forever sending her out on the mission of purchasing remembrances for the stenographers and clerks about his office. The fact that at Christmas he sent his favorite candies, crystallized nuts from Bissinger’s in Cincinnati, to be consumed later by him, and a case of Cointreau, also to be consumed by him. The fact that, upon her graduation, he had never so much as offered to give her a sum of money for Emma. Not that she would have accepted. It was her proud and secret boast that not one cent of Emma’s education had come out of the Saxel coffer. But if only he had offered—oh, there were sore, hurt, bleeding places that he was having the temerity to stir.…

“There are some things we had better not discuss.”

“Now what do you mean by that? I am not afraid to discuss any subject under the sun.…”

“Of course not, dear, but some hurt more than others.…”

“Not me, when I feel I’ve done my part.…”

“I’ve done that too, Walter, where you are concerned.”

“Not saying you haven’t. But I hate to be made to seem small.”

She began to cry quietly into her handkerchief.

“Well, this is the sort of holiday a harassed busy man looks forward to when he tries to escape his affairs.”

Without raising her eyes from the handkerchief, she put out her hand toward his, which he withdrew.

“I’m sorry, dear. I was so innocent of harm—just happy—over the sweetness of the gift—”

“Funny way of showing it. A child could see through the sarcasm of the way you acted.”

“I—I—oh, what’s the use! What’s—the—use!” And racked with the scalding tears, knowing them to be only an irritant to him, she tried to check them, and trying, cried the more.

“Walter, whatever I am that is bad, I am not that. If I had wanted the things that money could buy, I could have—”

“Meaning I don’t supply them?”

“No, darling, no. I mean, if I were a gold digger—Don’t you see, dear, that’s why the little silver watch made me as glad as something more valuable might have made another person.” Again she could have bitten her tongue, but to her surprise he jerked her into his arms and kissed her with emotion.

“Don’t say any more, Ray. I know I’m a dog and you’re an angel. Try to understand, dear. Of course, I could deck you with diamonds. But I won’t! I want you like this—mine—alone—simple—plain. If I’m a selfish dog, I’m a selfish dog. But I’m going to take care of you in a different way. A way that will never cause you to regret the happiness you have given me. I’ve something worked out, now. My first act, when I get back to America, will be to take care of that little matter of my will. I take a solemn oath before God, Ray, it will be my first act. A Frenchman gave me the idea—it’s all very simple—”

“That is darling of you, Walter. It will mean a lot—that kind of security against the future. But for now, this is all I need or ask, or want, darling—and please believe me when I tell you that the little watch—”

“Don’t hurt me anymore by rubbing salt into the wound of my rottenness. We’ll have a good dinner tonight, Ray, and after that—after that—”

“Dearest dear.”

“It’s our last free-and-easy evening before our holiday in the Alps. You won’t see much, if anything, of me during the next few days. Corinne and the children arrive on an early-morning train—no Casino tonight, dearest—just us—alone—”

“Dearest dear.”

As it turned out, they were forced to spend the evening quietly, because he insisted upon ordering sent over from the Casino kitchens, an elaborate specialty known as canard tour d’argent, a rich concoction of pressed duck, prepared with wine-sauce, and for two hours suffered pangs of dyspepsia that distressed him.

But withal, sweet was the cleansed air of after their quarrel, and pressed against her eyelids and along her throat and against her hair
were his kisses, as he bade her good night, his arms still ringing with the passion of having held her for the long, close hours of their intimacy.…

It was two mornings following, that her Paris edition of the New York
Herald
arrived as usual by mail, and she opened it to read a first-page headline that, read and reread as she would, did not penetrate beyond causing within her the wildest impulse to risibility she had ever known. Off and off, her mind kept skidding, only to be jerked back to the point of her lunatic-looking eyes.

Head of Banking House of Friedlander-Kunz Dies Suddenly at Aix-les-Bains

Somebody had stuffed up a rat-hole. She was in that rat-hole. That was one way it had of seeming to her. Then again, she was one of those Russian dolls made out of painted wood, with no feet, but a hemispherical base, so that, topple over as she would, back up she came bobbing. That was quite wonderful. It was apparently of no volition of her own that she rose again after each impact. It was just her being humanly resilient.

Yes, that was very curious. She would never have dreamed she had within her capacity for so much resistance. She would never have dreamed anyone had. The capacity of human beings, the capacity of herself, to go on breathing when the body was little more than a mausoleum!

The mausoleum moving about her room in the little Hotel Choiseul, warming the Babe’s food over a spirit-lamp, washing out silk stockings to hang them over an umbrella to dry. The mausoleum was careful to henna her hair, even though she had not been out for four days now. But you could never tell. They might come after her. Need her. They—meaning, oh, my God, they, meaning perhaps a doctor, to say it had all been a mistake. They—meaning Richard, to tell her something that had been left by Walter, for him to tell her privately. They, meaning—well, anyway, they might want her. They might need her. Corinne might!

Corinne was such a baby. Such a terrible baby. Oh, my God,
what a terrible baby to be left, that way. She knew, because Walter had told her some of Corinne’s babyish little fears. She knew, because Walter had told her, without ever realizing that he had told her, that Corinne, for instance, was afraid of the dark. Away back in the days before the more common use of electricity, when they had lived in the Lexington Avenue house, devices had been installed, so that no gas-jet was ever turned off, but a tiny blob kept burning so that it could be jerked up with a chain. Corinne was full of fears. She would never put on one of the ropes of her magnificent registered pearls if Walter did not first test the safety clasps, to make sure. On board ship, all his meals had to be taken with her, up on deck, beside her steamer chair, where he fed her as you would a bird, because she felt half ill. She wanted him home every possible birthday anniversary, and holiday, to meals, and at least once a week, preferably Friday nights, because it was frightening to her not to have frequent evidence of solidarity of family. Her superb chinchilla wrap, for which he had paid thirty-five thousand dollars at a Paris exposition, had been Corinne’s choice because it was such tender little-baby fur, off an animal that could never have hurt you while it lived.

If this much had seeped through to her, Ray, think of what she did not know of the loneliness that must have fallen like a felled tree, across the heart of the babied Corinne! His solicitudes, his indulgences, his generosity, born partly, at least, out of the carking sense of treason that must have been his, had been so constant. Her life had been cradled and lined in chinchilla by him. His image must hang aching and glorified in her poor babyish heart.…

If things were only so that she could go to her, instead of sitting bottled like the rat that had been corked into its hole!

And yet to hold back, to make no step, even though the precaution seemed elaborate, would have been the way he wanted it. Terrible to sit there passive, the four days. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. And yet that is how he would have wished it.

The Paris
Herald
had carried a subsequent column.

“Private services for Walter D. Saxel, the New York banker-philanthropist, were held in the villa of Hotel Bernasçon on
Friday—brief address delivered by the Hon. James Reedy, ex-ambassador to Turkey—lifelong friend of the deceased. Tributes were also paid by M. Felix Gateau, president of the Paris Bank of Exchange, Baron Meyer Friedlander, of Frankfurt-am-Main, Mr. David Kuhn, New York banker and lifelong friend of the deceased.… The remains, accompanied by Mrs. Saxel, Mr. Richard Saxel, Mr. and Mrs. Mordecai Poole II, will be taken to New York for final interment.”