Back STreet

by Fannie Hurst

  “Be good.” How dear of him. You did not say that kind of thing to just anyone. It somehow denoted the close concern of someone beloved for a beloved one. Be good! As if there existed lure outside him.

  Summer that year came into the small Michigan town with a flurry of precocious floral finery. June roses bloomed against the white-frame flanks of the houses, private boardinghouses, and small sanatoriums that lined the quiet, tree-bordered streets. And along the St. Clair River, as you went motorboating out into the open lake, willows in full green flush hung like women drying their hair over the reflecting mirror of water; and the open fields along the banks looked and smelled to Ray, who sometimes took the riverlake ride in an excursion launch that made the trip every afternoon, redolent of the Ohio summers that were packed away in memory after memory.

  The walks were pleasant too, along the roads that skirted these meadows, except for the rather new fact that on the highways automobile traffic had become sufficiently general to create dust and commotion.

  But even that had its compensations. It was quite a game to learn the different makes on sight. Saxon. Cadillac. Kurt-Sussex. Moon. Corinne would probably choose hers from one of the many Detroit factories or showrooms. A Pierce-Arrow perhaps, a Cadillac, or a Kurt-Sussex. As she trudged along the road, it was interesting to speculate what make of car Corinne and Walter were purchasing, perhaps at that very moment. What a lavish husband he was. Heavy new pearls had gleamed on Corinne’s throat that one night she had glimpsed her at the lotto table in the Casino; her hands had flashed with jewels that she wore well and with restraint, and there were diamond specks on the edges of the white aigrets in her beautiful, prematurely white hair. What a lavish husband and what a parsimonious lover. Horrid, when you put it like that. Lover. Seemed to lose all its connotation, used in that connection, and became just a soiled and horrid word. But, anyway, it was supposed to be the other way around. Women in her position were supposed to furnish a glamor that was expensively provided in the form of furs, jewels, and the gay accouterments of indiscretion. But here, in the fragrant, jeweled, and always superbly furred Corinne, was reflected the lavishness of an indulgent husband. Ray it was who coped with the unexciting mediocrity of scheming to make ends meet, remaking last year’s blouse into this year’s guimpe, and, for want of a jewel, following the current fad of link bracelets hung with small gilt and silver bangles.

  As she killed time, these long days—walking, taking the motor-boat excursion trip out into the lake—thoughts like these flowed in ceaseless little runnels along their well-worn ruts in her mind.

  He wants to keep me unglamorous. Safe. His. And even in that she found consolation. If he didn’t care, he couldn’t write me a thing like “Be good.” The note containing the phrase lay tucked against her breast. Be good. How easy to be good.

  Evenings she was now free to venture into the Casino. This she did against her better judgment, but drawn irresistibly, as the dull after-dinner periods of the Medes Hotel began to close her in, toward the frame house of drawn blinds and discreet Negro servitors.

  There was camaraderie, and the hospitality of sandwiches, pretzels, wine-cup, and beer, and a sequence of green felt-covered tables that never failed to flick her with excitement. Even lotto, at a dollar the game, and played to the drone of a voice calling numbers off wooden disks picked from a cotton bag, was not beneath her intense concentration.

  There was something about gaming.…

  But, for the most part, poker, vingt-et-un, roulette and the slot machines claimed her evenings. The last were endlessly diverting. Sometimes your fifty-cent piece, dropped into the slot, would yield the delightful profit of three, four, five, even ten times your investment, clattering into the metal cup. Discipline herself as she would, it was difficult for her to get through an evening without at least one or two forays into the small vestibule where stood a row of these iron men of chance.

  Occasionally, one of the guests, feeding coins into these metal maws, staked her. One night, on a run of luck, instigated by one of these chance stakes, she drew quite a crowd around her, because she succeeded in emptying in quick succession, out of three machines, the sum total of about thirty-nine dollars.

  Oh, there was something about gaming.…

  During Walter’s absence, despite the fact that at one time she was well over four hundred dollars ahead of the combined games of slot machines, poker, vingt-et-un, her final winnings resulted in little over ninety dollars, which, however, enabled her to pay, as she put it to herself, for Emma’s lavaliere.

  With the trifling sum of her lotto winnings, she bought herself, in one of the poky little shops of the town, five yards of dotted swiss, and, mornings after her sulphur bath, sewed away in an attempt to copy a frock she had admired on one of the women at the Casino.

  One evening, along with a Mr. De Lima, who had requested an introduction from the clerk at the Medes, she went to the Grove Hotel for dinner. De Lima, a theater-orchestra conductor from Kansas City, oleaginous of eye and with a serious rheumatic condition which impaired his gait, was only one more variation of species long familiar to her, but the warm floral atmosphere of the Grove, as contrasted with her own narrow drummer’s-delight of a hotel lobby, with its chairs facing a plate-glass window, which in turn faced the street, was pleasantly exhilarating, bringing back the warm gay odors of days long past, when the tony Ray Schmidt had been habitué in the smartest lobbies of the smartest hotels in Cincinnati.

  Heads no longer swung around now to her entrance. Years of practice in neutralizing her appearance to avoid attraction had toned her down to a quiet, well-dressed figure without dash, but still with the slim, trim appearance of a small sloop under sail. There were gray streaks in her hair to be coped with now. Not the white scallops of hair that fell along Corinne’s brow, softening it, but streaks of fading hair which were hardening to the features and which she dyed out. The dyed effect was what brought out, most of all, the rather brittle aging look. Otherwise the figure, despite the sedentary years spent mostly indoors or at inactive occupations, had kept its striking slimness. A slender, quietly distinctive woman, presumably in middle thirties, effective in brown silk that left her still-good shoulders bare, and harmonized well with the swarthy clarity of her skin, dined at the Grove that night without attracting more than a glance from the women. It was the men who still, while they might not swing a head, threw out the glance that lingered.

  “Can you make me acquainted wiz ze tall one, wiz ze sporty figure and the stay-by-me eyes?” had been De Lima’s manner of request to the clerk for his introduction.

  In a way, even though De Lima was to prove troublesome before she dismissed him that night, the surging recurrence of old excitements was pleasant. After dinner, there was dancing on the tiled floor of the lobby, De Lima, in spite of his impaired gait, initiating her into the curved enchantments of the tango. Men and women, out of a world that corresponded to the secure one of Walter and Corinne, danced or sat indulgently about the bright lobby, or gathered about the cigar-stand to shoot dice for souvenir inkstands, woolly bears, or dolls on small music boxes.

  The easy, half-carnival atmosphere of the health resort, after aches and pains had been tucked out of sight and youth would be served, was faintly in the key of Aix, even Cannes. Later still, there were sandwiches and horse’s-necks, and then a final fling into the Casino. That was the night she created a stir, on a fifty-cent piece handed her by an enormously fat, badly crippled Minneapolis banker, by once more practically depleting three of the row of slot machines.

  “My lucky three! My three iron babies!” she said, as the excitement of gambling mounted.

  In the end, however—and the end, to her, was the closing of the Casino—it was she who fed the last fifty-cent piece out of the contents of her purse to her iron babies, who not only gulped back what they had momentarily yielded, but more than twenty-five dollars of her own.

  There was something about gaming.…

  But wrenching
herself free of the routine embrace of De Lima that night, when he took her home to her hotel—and she had, not without force, to literally push him from the door—it struck her drearily that even while the evening of gaming and dining had been a blessed relief in aridity, there was no longer any use at pretenses. That part of her life, as represented by the De Limas, was finished.

  De Lima had sickened her of his tiresomeness, as all men had for years and were sure to now.

  And yet, the very next day was to come an occurrence on a clap of small thunder, so unexpected, so sudden, and so genuinely exciting was her meeting, on the main street of Mount Clemens, with Kurt Shendler.

  There had sped past her, too quickly for her to note its make, although true to habit she attempted it, an enormous red touring car, with a horn attachment that was louder and faster than any she had ever heard. It was a commotion in any street, that car, low, swift, and conspicuous.

  Suddenly, as if it had raced around the block (which it had), this car bore down upon her again from the rear, coming to a quick stop at the curb beside her. It was a Kurt-Sussex, light dancing on its red-enamel and nickel fixings; and there, leaning from its steering wheel, with his goggles pushed back, Kurt!

  “I knew it! By Jove, it seemed to me that I couldn’t be right, and yet I am!”

  “Kurt!”

  “I saw that walk and that figure with not more than a pinch of the end of my eye as I shot by, and I said to myself, ‘There is only one walk and one figure like that, or I’m crazy.’ And back around the block I come, saying to myself: ‘You’ve got water and Ray on the brain. You’re seeing things.’ And bless my soul—bless my soul—”

  “Kurt!” Yes; and Kurt with flesh on his bones and a big linen duster having to balloon a little over embonpoint, and face shaven smooth of the old mustache, and looking as she had never dreamed he had it in him to look. Sturdy. Filled out. But Kurt all right. Every inch the old Kurt, plus the strange and unconscious authority of success.

  They drove for three hours that afternoon along the roads she had trolleyed and trudged. He was at home here, masterful, prideful of every inch of the way, eager to cram into their first five minutes recital of years.

  “Just goes to show, a man’s mind leads him to what is on it. I don’t know as I realize it all the time, Ray, a man dassent brood, and certainly I didn’t today, but there aren’t many days pass that you don’t pop into my mind one way or another. Just funny you didn’t happen to today, until I clapped eyes on you. Tell me what brings you here.”

  “Why, I came out here, Kurt—why, I came out, I guess, to pay you sixty dollars I’ve been owing you for some time back. I’m fooling, Kurt. Can’t you take a joke!”

  “Speaking of that, Ray, all jokes aside, it hurt me to have you send that money back to me at that time, as if a little loan from me burnt your fingers. Think I’ve got that sixty dollars tucked away in a collarbox for remembrance.”

  “I’m fooling, Kurt. I’m just here—for a change.”

  “Not ailing, are you, Ray?”

  “Do I look it?”

  He did not press her, breaking into new volubility at every turn.

  “Great country around here. God’s country, every inch of it.”

  “It’s been good to you, Kurt.”

  “You bet your life it has, and I know it. You never thought I’d be vice president of the firm that manufactures the car you’re sitting in, now did you, Ray?”

  “Kurt,” she said, slowly, turning toward him, “You—don’t—mean—to—tell—me—you’re—the—Kurt—of—the—Kurt-Sussex—”

  “You—don’t—mean—to—tell—me—you—never—knew—that!”

  Her jaw fell, her face fell, as if they were disintegrating there before him, like the celebrated one-hoss shay.

  “Why, I never knew—why, I never dreamed—I never put two and two together. Kurt-Sussex never meant anything to me except the make of a fine car, and to think all the time it—it was my Kurt.”

  “There is just no limit to this industry, Ray. Remember I used to tell you that. Well, then I didn’t know the half of it. Remember the time down in New York I told you about a fellow named Henry Ford who was going to make a pile for himself one of these days? Bet you gave me the laugh on that many a time. Well, what’s happened to Ford is happening, on a smaller scale, at present, to the rest of us. Ford is no mere millionaire now. He’s many times a millionaire, and I’m here to tell you, Ray, that nothing short of that is going to satisfy me. I’m going to take you around and show you some of the fairy tales that are happening in this industry. How many cars do you think we turned out last month? Why, I tell you, girl, you’ve got a liberal education coming to you. If this war were already over, as, mark my word, it’s going to be before this year is out, I’d show you things that would make your eyes bug out.”

  “Eyes bug out!” Why, she hadn’t heard that since the Cincinnati days. Or, “dassent.” And to think the Kurt-Sussex—our Cincinnati Kurt.

  “I don’t want to seem braggy, Ray, but I do kind of want you to know a lot of things that will surprise you. I own all this land as far back from both sides of the road as you can see, that we’re passing now. It’s the old Barcliff estate, and I’m just about going to quadruple my investment, and that day is not far off.”

  “Of course, you live in Detroit, Kurt.”

  “Just batching it, around the Frontenac Hotel. Lived there six years now. Next best thing to a home I’ve been able to work out.”

  The Frontenac! Chances were he had seen Walter there and Corinne. Chances were, too, that as she rode, swift and sure, along the bright roads, he was putting two and two together. If strangers in opera houses were wagging, wasn’t it fair enough to assume that Cincinnati wagged too?

  As a matter of fact, he had not run into Walter, whom he did not even know; and, strangely enough, while doubts, which he kept jammed down tightly in his mind throughout the years, did sometimes pop up, the name of Walter Saxel was never associated in his mind with her. Things were as they were, with Ray. Just no telling about a woman. About all there was to it.

  It made things easier if you never permitted certain thoughts even to take shape. Not that anything mattered—she was what she was—her every act another turn in the spiral of her desirability.

  “Let me drive you back to Mount Clemens now and go into the Grove Hotel to visit one of my associates on business. He is there, laid up with rheumatism, and I came down to talk over some little matters with him. And then you let me drive you down to the Frontenac for dinner, and anything you say afterward.”

  “Not the Frontenac tonight, Kurt. I’ve a reason for not wanting to be seen there this particular evening.”

  “All right, just as you say. Take you out to Belle Isle then, and treat you to a good old-fashioned fish dinner. You’ve got to stay around here for a while, Ray, and get acquainted with God’s land.”

  How good it was to be sitting there securely beside this decent, effervescent Kurt, who, beyond her imaginings, had filled out into someone personable, and who, in his middle age, bore little resemblance to the gangling fellow of earlier years. Time, or success, or both, had mellowed Kurt; put firm, genial flesh on his bones; even corrected his eyesight. Behind pince-nez that sat firmly across the unirritated bridge of his nose, the eyes now looked clear and enlarged. A new, bluff, western kind of fellow, in good, gray, checked clothes beneath his linen duster, and gray in his tan hair. How good to be sitting there with this eager, catering friend, irrestrainable in his excitement and desire to impress and please her. It made her feel as if for years she had been unbearably tired—so tired that the very withes of her being were twisted nerves being relaxed, and her mouth, which sometimes felt like a tight hard snake’s-nest, felt moist and young as a girl’s. How good.

  “You’ve got to give me a whole day to take you through our plant, Ray. I want to ride you out along Woodward Avenue, too, and show you some of the prettiest homes you ever saw in your life. As I reca
ll it, you like horse races. I don’t know much about them, but that’s a great sport hereabouts. You’re going to know there’s such a state as Michigan on this old U. S. map before you leave it. We can show a thing or two, even to New York.”

  How good. How good. Presently, in one of her semi-evening-gowns—a brown lace she had dyed and made herself—and a brown lace hat with a brown motor-veil, which she tied under the chin, they were on the drive to Belle Isle, wind in their faces and the edge of the veil snapping backward in the breeze.

  “Ray, as my soul is my own, if I had the pick of surprises the world over, this one today would be my choice.”

  “Kurt, I don’t know but what it would have been mine too.”

  “You know, Ray—now don’t think I’m stirring up old dust, it’s going to lie just as flat as you want it to—but there is a mighty sad side to the lay of things between us. I don’t know much about your life, except what you choose to tell me, and if you don’t know by now that I’m not quizzing, you ought to; but, without asking you a single question, or caring a damn what has been, I certainly could make your life what you deserve it to be, Ray, without saying much about what I could do for myself.”

  “You’re salt of the earth, Kurt, and don’t think I don’t know it.”

  “Well, we won’t bury Jake tonight,” he said, and struck off on a dissertation of the Detroit land-boom that, during this period of crucial world conditions, was being held off like a lion at bay.

  “Why, there’s no limit to what’s ahead for this town. Has anything been able to stop it? Not on your life!”

  They dined on crayfish, as they used to in Cincinnati, asparagus with hollandaise, and nothing would do but a quart of very dry champagne, which she scarcely touched to her lips and Kurt touched not at all, except in the same mime of toasting the occasion.

  “I feel twenty tonight, Ray. Besides, from the look of the thing, this may be about the last glass of wine you and me will be able to drink above the table in your old U.S.A. Yes, sir, I feel twenty tonight.”