His Second Wife Part 2

"Who's f.a.n.n.y Carr?" she asked alertly.

Amy was slowly combing her hair, and she smiled with kindly tolerance, for her little confession had brought back her faith in herself and her future.

"f.a.n.n.y was a writer once--"

"Oh, really!"

"Yes. She ran a department on one of the papers." It had been the dress pattern page, but Amy did not mention that. Instead she yawned complacently. "Oh, she dropped it quick enough--she thought it rather tiresome. She's one of the cleverest women I know. She'd have got a long way up in the world, if it weren't for her second husband--"

"Her second?"

"Yes. The first one didn't do very well. She told me once, 'If you want to get on, change your name at least once in every three years.'

Her second, as it happened, was no better than the first. But she was clever enough by then to get an able lawyer; and when it came to the divorce, f.a.n.n.y succeeded in keeping the house, the one out on Long Island."

"Oh," said Ethel tensely. Her sister shot a look at her.

"I don't care especially for f.a.n.n.y's ideas about husbands," she said.

"But at least she has a love of a home." And Amy went on to explain to her sister the value and importance of being able to give "week ends."

Again the gleam came into her eyes.

"It's money, my dear, it's money. They are the same women in Newport exactly--just like all the rest of us--only they are richer. That's all--but it is everything. Put me in a big house out there, and my friends wouldn't know me in a few years."

A cloud came on her face as she looked in the gla.s.s.

"But that's just the trouble. A few years more and I'll be too late.

You've got to get there while you're young. And there's so little time.

You lose your looks. It's all very well for some women to talk about ideas and things--and travel and--and children. I did, too, I talked a lot--oh, how I wanted everything! But one has to narrow down. Thank heaven, Ethel, you've years ahead. I've only got a few more left--I'm already thirty-one. And my type ages fast in this town, if you do the things you're expected to do. But you--oh, Ethel, I want you to marry well! Not a millionaire--that's rather hard, and besides he'd probably be too fat--but the kind who will be a millionaire, who has it written all over his face and makes you feel it in his voice! Don't sell yourself too cheap, my dear! Don't go running about with men who'll keep you poor for the rest of your days. They talk so well--some of them do; and it sounds so fine--ideas and books and pictures and--I knew one who was an architect. And it's all very well for later on, but what you've got to do right at the start--while you have the looks and youth--is to find the man who can give you a house where all those other people will be tumbling to get in--because you'll have the money--you'll be able to entertain--and give them what they really want--in spite of all their talking."

Once more, with a weary sigh, she dropped the religious intensity, and smiled as she wistfully added:

"That's where some man can put you. They do, you know, they do it.

Some man does it every day. You can see his name in the papers. Dozens of wives get to Newport each year. And what do they do it on? Money!

"That's romance enough for me, my dear. And if you want work and a career, the most fascinating kind I know is to study the man you've married--find what's holding him back and take it away--what's pus.h.i.+ng him on and help it grow! You've got to narrow, narrow down! You may want a lot of children. They're loves, of course, to have around. But you run a big risk in that. I could give you so many cases--mothers who have just dropped out. If you want to really get on in this town, you've got to stick to your husband and make your husband stick to you!

There are things about that you will learn soon enough. It comes so naturally, once you are in it--married, I mean. And that's your hold.

"And if you love him as I love Joe," she added almost in a whisper, "you find it so easy that often you forget what it is you're trying to do, what you're really doing it for. You're just happy and you shut your eyes. But then you wake up and use it all--everything--to drive him on.

You can do that while you are still young and have what he wants--the looks, I mean--and can make him see that any number of other men would be glad to step into his shoes. But you give them only just enough to keep your husband from feeling too safe. You hold them off, you make him feel that he's everything to you if he'll work and give you what you ought to have! And unless you're a fool you don't listen to this talk of women's rights and women doing the work of men. You keep on your own ground and play the game. And you keep making him get what you need--before it's too late!" All at once she gave a sharp little laugh.

"It's a kind of a race, you see," she said.

The night after this talk, Ethel lay in her bed, and tried to remember and think it out. How new and queer and puzzling. So many vistas she had dreamed of had been closed on every hand.

"What's the matter with me?"

The matter was that her old ideals and standards were being torn up by the roots, roots that went deep down into the soil of life in the town in Ohio. But Ethel did not think of that. She scowled and sighed.

"Well, this is real! I was dreaming! And after all, this is much the same, but different in the way you get it. This is New York. One thing is sure," she added. "Amy needs every dollar Joe can make--and she must not have me on her hands. I've got to find what I really want--a job or a man--and be quick about it!"

It threw a tinge of uneasiness into those breathless shopping tours.

And it changed her att.i.tude toward Joe. He had not counted for much at first; he had been a mere man of business; and business men had had little place in her dreams of friends in the city. But watching him now she changed her mind.

Joe Lanier was what is called "a speculative builder." He was an architect, building contractor and real estate gambler, all in one. He put up apartment buildings "on spec," buildings of the cheaper sort, most of them up in the Bronx, and sold them at a profit--or a loss, as the case might be. He dealt in the rapidly s.h.i.+fting values of neighbourhoods in the changing town. "The gamble in it is the fun," he remarked to Ethel one evening. Joe was just the kind of a man, as Amy had told her sister, to make a big sudden success of his work.

Unfortunately he was tied to a partner, Nourse by name, who held him back. This man Amy keenly disliked. She said that Nourse was a perfect grind, a heavy tiresome creature who thought business was everything in the world.

"Sometimes I really believe he forgets it's for making money," Amy declared. "He's as anxious about it as an old hen, and he wants it steady as a cow. He detests me, as I do him. He has stopped coming here, thank heaven. And the time is not so far away when I'll make Joe see that he's got to lose his partner."

Joe's image gained steadily in importance to Ethel's awakening eyes. Of his force as a man, all that she saw made her more and more certain that Amy was right. Joe was the kind who was bound to succeed. He not only worked hard, his work was a pa.s.sion. At night and on Sunday mornings he could sit for hours absorbed in the tiresome pages of real estate news in his paper. He went out for strolls in the evenings; one night he asked Ethel to come along; and his talk to her about buildings, the growth of the city by leaps and bounds, now in this direction, now in that, caught her imagination at once. Joe felt the town as a living thing, as she had felt it that first night. Different? Yes, this was business. But even business, to her surprise, as Joe saw and felt it, had a strange thrilling romance of its own.

And she soon noticed something else that drew her to Joe. Almost every evening he would sit down at his piano and start playing idly. As a rule he played dance music, popular songs from Broadway. But sometimes leaning back he would drift into other music. And though his hand would bungle and only sketch it, so to speak--in his black eyes, scowling slightly over the smoke of his cigar, would come a look which Ethel liked. But vaguely she felt that Amy did not, that it even made her uneasy. For almost invariably at such times, Amy would come behind him, her plump softly rounded arm would find its way down over his shoulder--and little by little the music would change and would come back to Broadway.

When Joe heard one evening that Ethel was "mad to learn to sing," he took her by the arm at once and marched her over to the piano. And they had quite a session together--till Amy suggested going out to a new cabaret she had heard of that day. Her voice sounded hurt and strained.

And Ethel from that night on dropped all mention of singing.

Her curiosity deepened toward this city love affair, this husband and wife who apparently had left so many things out of their lives, things vital in the Ohio town. The sober wee girl in the nursery kept just as quiet as before. Often Ethel opened that door and went in and tried to make friends with its grave shy little inmate and the hostile nurse.

And returning to her room she would frown and wonder for a time. But the pretty things piling in from the shops, and the gay antic.i.p.ations, soon crowded such questioning out of her mind. Swiftly this household was growing more real, the rooms familiar, intimate; the day's routine with its small events were becoming parts of her life. Her own room was familiar now, for by many touches she'd made it her own. And the dining-room and the living room, where she grew acquainted with Joe, these too a.s.sumed an intimate air. Most of all, her sister's room grew more and more vivid in her thoughts, though this was still far from familiar, It held too much, it meant too much.

"Shall I ever live with a man like that?"

The way they looked at each other at times! The way they seemed keeping watch on each other. If Joe were out very late at night, Amy would almost invariably grow uneasy and absentminded, and there would be a challenging note in the way she greeted him on his return. On one such occasion Ethel was in Amy's room. She went out when Joe came in; but a queer little gasping sigh behind gave her a start and a swift thrill, for although she did not turn around she knew they were in each other's arms. And again, late one afternoon when the sisters came home and found Joe at work with a tired anxious look on his face, his wife came up behind him. And the picture of her small gloved hand upon Joe's heavy shoulder remained in Ethel's memory. It seemed so soft and yet so strong.

"She can do anything with him she likes. When I marry somebody how will it be?"

Upon the living-room mantel was a photograph of Amy. And on the smooth and pretty face with the lips slightly parting, and in the smiling violet eyes, there was the expression of something which Ethel did not quite name to herself--for she had forgotten the night long ago in her high-school club when they had st.u.r.dily tackled the word "sensual" and what it meant. But the picture grew familiar and real, filled in by the living presence here of this woman who so carefully tended her beautiful body, her glossy hair, her cheeks and lips; this sister with so many moods, now intent and watchful, now good-humoured, indolent, now expectant, hungry, now smilingly content and gay.

And as the picture grew more real, warm and close and thrilling, it symbolized for Ethel that mysterious force which she could feel on every side, driving the throngs of humanity--in this city where so many things she had once deemed important were fading rapidly away. That hungry hope of a singer's career, that craving for work and self-education, trips to Paris, London, Rome, books, art and clever people, "salons,"

brilliant discussions of life; and deeper still, those mysterious dreams about having children and making a home--all began to drop behind, so quietly and easily that she barely noticed the change.

For this was happening in a few weeks, in the first whirl and excitement of those dazzling streets and shops, those models, gowns, hats, gloves and shoes. "It's not what you say that interests men--it's how you look and what you have on." The image of her sister grew vivid in Ethel's eager mind. And with it came the question, now ardent though still a little confused:

"Shall I ever be like that?"

CHAPTER IV

Ethel had been about four weeks in town, and now she was to meet Amy's friends. Amy was giving a dinner the next evening in her honour; and to let the cook and the waitress have a rest on the preceding night, Joe took Amy and Ethel out to dine in a cafe. His business had gone well that week and Joe was a genial husband. They had a sea-food supper and later he took them to a play. When they came home, Ethel went to her room, for she felt very tired. It was not long before she was asleep.

She was awakened by Joe, half dressed.

"Amy is sick!" he said sharply. "Go in and help her, will you? I'll try to get a doctor!"

On Amy's bed, a little later, Ethel saw a face so changed from the one of a few hours before, that she felt her heart jump into her throat.

Amy's face was ugly and queer, distorted by frequent spasms of pain.

But worse was the terror in her eyes.

"Ethel, I think I'm dying!" she cried. "Something I ate--it poisoned me!" There was a violent catch in her breath.

"Amy! Why, you poor little darling!" Ethel held her sister tight, asked quick anxious questions and did things to relieve her, but with little or no success. It seemed hours till Joe came back. With him was a doctor, who made an examination and then took Joe into the hall. Ethel followed anxiously. She heard the doctor questioning Joe, and she heard him say: