FullReads

“Yeh,” Ray had said, a little hollowly, “yeh, French. Sure.”

But, somehow, these literary evenings never did materialize. It may have been a matter of getting the books. You could borrow them from the public library, but that made you feel so hurried. History was something you wanted to take your time over. Then, too, the books you wanted never were in. You could buy them. But buying books like that! Cora showed her first real display of temper. Why, they came in sets and cost as much as twelve or fifteen dollars. Just for books! The literary evenings degenerated into Ray’s thorough scanning of the evening paper, followed by Cora’s skimming of the crumpled sheets that carried the department store ads, the society column, and the theatrical news. Raymond began to use the sixth room–the unused bedroom–as a workshop. He had perfected the spectacle contrivance and had made the mistake of selling his rights to it. He got a good sum for it.

“But I’ll never do that again,” he said, grimly. “Somebody’ll make a fortune on that thing.” He had unwisely told Cora of this transaction. She never forgave him for it. On the day he received the money for it he had brought her home a fur set of baum marten. He thought the stripe in it beautiful. There was a neckpiece known as a stole, and a large muff.

“Oh, honey!” Cora had cried. “Aren’t you fun-ny!” She often said that, always with the same accent. “Aren’t you fun-ny!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Why didn’t you let me pick it out? They’re wearing Persian lamb sets.”

“Oh. Well, maybe the feller’ll change it. It’s all paid for, but maybe he’ll change it.”

“Do you mind? It may cost a little bit more. You don’t mind my changing it though, do you?”

“No. No-o-o-o! Not a bit.”

They had never furnished the unused bedroom as a bedroom. When they moved out of the flat at Racine and Sunnyside into one of those new four-room apartments on Glengyle the movers found only a long rough work-table and a green-shaded lamp in that sixth room. Ray’s delicate tools and implements were hard put to it to find a resting place in the new four-room apartment. Sometimes Ray worked in the bathroom. He grew rather to like the white-tiled place, with its look of a laboratory. But then, he didn’t have as much time to work at home as he formerly had had. They went out more evenings.

The new four-room flat rented at sixty dollars. “Seems the less room you have the more you pay,” Ray observed.

“There’s no comparison. Look at the neighbourhood! And the living room’s twice as big.”

It didn’t seem to be. Perhaps this was due to its furnishings. The Mission pieces had gone to the second-hand dealer. Ray was assistant manager of the optical department at Nagel’s now and he was getting royalties on a new smoked glass device. There were large over-stuffed chairs in the new living room, and a seven-foot davenport, and oriental rugs, and lamps and lamps and lamps. The silk lampshade conflagration had just begun to smoulder in the American household. The dining room had one of those built-in Chicago buffets. It sparkled with cut glass. There was a large punch bowl in the centre, in which Cora usually kept receipts, old bills, moth balls, buttons, and the tarnished silver top to a syrup jug that she always meant to have repaired. Queen Louise was banished to the bedroom where she surveyed a world of cretonne.

Cora was a splendid cook. She had almost a genius for flavouring. Roast or cheese souffle or green apple pie–your sense of taste never experienced that disappointment which comes of too little salt, too much sugar, a lack of shortening. Expert as she was at it, Cora didn’t like to cook. That is, she didn’t like to cook day after day. She rather liked doing an occasional meal and producing it in a sort of red-cheeked triumph. When she did this it was an epicurean thing, savoury, hot, satisfying. But as a day-after-day programme Cora would not hear of it. She had banished the maid. Four rooms could not accommodate her. A woman came in twice a week to wash and iron and clean. Often Cora did not get up for breakfast and Ray got his at one of the little lunch rooms that were springing up all over that section of the North Side. Eleven o’clock usually found Cora at the manicure’s, or the dressmaker’s, or shopping, or telephoning luncheon arrangements with one of the Crowd. Ray and Cora were going out a good deal with the Crowd. Young married people like themselves, living royally just a little beyond their income. The women were well-dressed, vivacious, somewhat shrill. They liked stories that were a little off-colour. “Blue,” one of the men called these stories. He was in the theatrical business. The men were, for the most part, a rather drab-looking lot. Colourless, good-natured, open-handed. Almost imperceptibly the Crowd began to use Ray as a target for a certain raillery. It wasn’t particularly ill-natured, and Ray did not resent it.