matter over in my mind as long as I wanted to, seeing how I had to scratch for money, I’d be turning it over yet, and somebody else would have the patent.”
“And if I don’t make up my mind, somebody else will have Kurt?”
“Now, Ray, I’d sooner cut off my tongue than have you think I meant it that way.”
“I know you didn’t, goose!” She wished he had meant it that way. She wished she was anybody except herself, sitting there in Lincoln Park with the heartbreaking task of letting Kurt know she had already reached her decision.
Fool that she was! She knew, sitting there pecking at the wired bow, and trying to find a way to tell him, what had decided her. A chance meeting with a man to whom, nine chances out of ten, she would never be more than shiksa, had decided her. And even supposing things were different. A bank clerk in a town like Cincinnati, unless he had the unusual opportunity of a Friedlander for a relative, could live and die a bank clerk. Now, Kurt here, crude as he might seem, had a future. A girl would be crazy to choose between them. Kurt already had a dandy business head on him. Kurt was her own kind. Why, for all she knew, Walter Saxel was engaged this very minute to Corinne Trauer. Of course, he had said to her … Pah—they all said! A Jewish boy talking to a shiksa said anything that came into his head. For a girl like herself, without anything to fall back upon, her home about to break up, no relatives, Kurt was a godsend, that’s what he was. Men weren’t so quick on the trigger to talk marriage to a girl if she had the reputation for being fly; and, no getting around it, men did think that about her. Kurt was a godsend, and yet, just as surely as she was sitting there, her decision persisted. Pity smote her—for Kurt,who must now hear this decision, and for herself, because she was making it.
“Kurt, there is a great deal in what you say about the way to make up your mind to a thing. I’m a chickenhearted old coward, or I would have made up my mind long ago about us, for your sake, Kurt.”
“Ray, you’re not going to—”
“Honey, you going to be terribly upset if I tell you something? I’m the biggest fool ever walked in shoe-leather, but I can’t marry you, Kurt. Feel like—well, I just feel something terrible, putting it to you that way, but I know that’s the way you would want me to do it.”
He sat quite still, with his hands hanging loosely between his spread knees, and the light from a gaslight throwing pallor against his pallor.
“It’s you, Kurt, ought to be turning me down, not me you,” she said, closing her eyes on the spectacle of him sitting there in the fallen-forward attitude.
“I knew it,” he said, without moving, and his voice sounding to her, as she sat there with her eyes squeezed shut, like a buggy rumbling over an old wooden corduroy bridge. “Something decided you Sunday night, when you never showed up.”
“Why, Kurt …”
“Something decided you that night, Ray. I don’t say it would ever have been different in the long run; but the next time I heard your voice, when I called Monday early to take your bike down to the shop, something had dropped out of it. For me. Tell me, Ray!”
“I can’t, Kurt,” she gasped. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s just nothing—to tell.”
10
It was happening, and the marvel of it to Ray was that the part of her life which had not contained it seemed never to have existed. Terrible, in a way, because even that part of her life which had so recently held the darling figure of Adolph was part of the unreality of those yesterdays which did not contain Walter.
The years that did not contain him were so many dead segments of time, to be counted off rapidly, as you would count days off your fingers. Curiously unrelated yesterdays, through which you must have moved simulating eagerness, when it transpired you had never known eagerness before it began for you that warm Sunday
“And if I don’t make up my mind, somebody else will have Kurt?”
“Now, Ray, I’d sooner cut off my tongue than have you think I meant it that way.”
“I know you didn’t, goose!” She wished he had meant it that way. She wished she was anybody except herself, sitting there in Lincoln Park with the heartbreaking task of letting Kurt know she had already reached her decision.
Fool that she was! She knew, sitting there pecking at the wired bow, and trying to find a way to tell him, what had decided her. A chance meeting with a man to whom, nine chances out of ten, she would never be more than shiksa, had decided her. And even supposing things were different. A bank clerk in a town like Cincinnati, unless he had the unusual opportunity of a Friedlander for a relative, could live and die a bank clerk. Now, Kurt here, crude as he might seem, had a future. A girl would be crazy to choose between them. Kurt already had a dandy business head on him. Kurt was her own kind. Why, for all she knew, Walter Saxel was engaged this very minute to Corinne Trauer. Of course, he had said to her … Pah—they all said! A Jewish boy talking to a shiksa said anything that came into his head. For a girl like herself, without anything to fall back upon, her home about to break up, no relatives, Kurt was a godsend, that’s what he was. Men weren’t so quick on the trigger to talk marriage to a girl if she had the reputation for being fly; and, no getting around it, men did think that about her. Kurt was a godsend, and yet, just as surely as she was sitting there, her decision persisted. Pity smote her—for Kurt,who must now hear this decision, and for herself, because she was making it.
“Kurt, there is a great deal in what you say about the way to make up your mind to a thing. I’m a chickenhearted old coward, or I would have made up my mind long ago about us, for your sake, Kurt.”
“Ray, you’re not going to—”
“Honey, you going to be terribly upset if I tell you something? I’m the biggest fool ever walked in shoe-leather, but I can’t marry you, Kurt. Feel like—well, I just feel something terrible, putting it to you that way, but I know that’s the way you would want me to do it.”
He sat quite still, with his hands hanging loosely between his spread knees, and the light from a gaslight throwing pallor against his pallor.
“It’s you, Kurt, ought to be turning me down, not me you,” she said, closing her eyes on the spectacle of him sitting there in the fallen-forward attitude.
“I knew it,” he said, without moving, and his voice sounding to her, as she sat there with her eyes squeezed shut, like a buggy rumbling over an old wooden corduroy bridge. “Something decided you Sunday night, when you never showed up.”
“Why, Kurt …”
“Something decided you that night, Ray. I don’t say it would ever have been different in the long run; but the next time I heard your voice, when I called Monday early to take your bike down to the shop, something had dropped out of it. For me. Tell me, Ray!”
“I can’t, Kurt,” she gasped. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s just nothing—to tell.”
10
It was happening, and the marvel of it to Ray was that the part of her life which had not contained it seemed never to have existed. Terrible, in a way, because even that part of her life which had so recently held the darling figure of Adolph was part of the unreality of those yesterdays which did not contain Walter.
The years that did not contain him were so many dead segments of time, to be counted off rapidly, as you would count days off your fingers. Curiously unrelated yesterdays, through which you must have moved simulating eagerness, when it transpired you had never known eagerness before it began for you that warm Sunday
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