His Second Wife Part 20

"It isn't the work I'd like for him," she said with a regretful sigh.

"Joe is getting to be like all the rest--he's making too much money."

She waited a moment and added, "I should so like him to be as he was when you knew him."

"I'll be curious to see how he has changed. You must let me see him,"

Dwight replied.

"Why yes, of course."

"Over in Paris he had so much. He was such a wonderful lad for dreams--with the most exuberant fancy in the way he used to talk of New York and what he wanted to do back here--to use the backyards and the roofs and turn them into gardens. This town, when Joe got through with it--well, from an aeroplane it was to look more or less like a bed of roses--or a hill town in Italy. But that was only his lighter vein.

When his fancy was really, working hard, he took department stores, hotels and huge railroad terminals and jammed them all together into one big building. How deep in the earth it was to have gone I really can't remember, nor how far up into the skies. But there was a garden at the top--or a meadow or prairie or something."

"Yes," thought Ethel, "I'm going to like him."

"Joe could talk of his plans all night," Dwight went on good-naturedly.

"And keep a poor lazy musician like me from my piano where I belonged."

"Was it you who taught him to play?" she asked.

"On the piano? It was," he replied. "Isn't his touch amazing? And so thoroughly Christian, too."

"Christian?"

"Yes. He doesn't let his right hand know what his left hand is doing."

They laughed. And from that laugh she emerged with eagerness in her brown eyes.

"Oh, please go on," she begged him. "I had no idea you knew him so well. Did he do nothing but talk over there?"

"He did--he worked like a tiger. Joe could stand more hard labour in one consecutive day and night than any fellow I ever met. And he could do it night after night. I remember dropping in on him for coffee and rolls one morning. A chap named Crothers and myself--" Ethel started at the name--"had just come home from the 'Quatres Arts Ball.' We found Joe in his room with the curtains drawn--he didn't know it was morning yet.

He had a towel bound round his head and was building an opera house for Chicago--or Kansas City--I'm not sure which. And he wasn't just dreaming of building it in his successful middle age--he was building it now, in a terrible rush, as though Kansas City were pus.h.i.+ng him hard.

Joe didn't live in the future, you see--he took the future and made it the present, and then lived in the present like mad."

Dwight tossed away his cigarette.

"But you say it's money now."

"Yes," she replied. "It's money." He smiled at her dejected tone.

"I wouldn't be so sad," he remarked. "Money isn't as bad as it seems."

"Oh, yes, and I want it," Ethel declared. "But I want the others so much more!"

When her car had come, she rose and said, "You and Joe must get together some time. Couldn't you call him up some day and get him to lunch with you?"

"Gladly." They went to the door.

"But don't be disappointed," she said, "if you find him changed even more than you think. Money has such a pull on a man."

"I know, but I rather like it."

"What?"

"Oh, don't be so indignant, please. I am an artist--honestly. But some of these men I've met over here--well, they fascinate me. Such boundless energy and drive ought to go into a symphony. Plenty of drums and cras.h.i.+ng bra.s.s. Good-bye, Mrs. Lanier," he added. "This has been a lucky day for me."

"Thank you. Don't forget about Joe. And meanwhile--till next Tuesday."

As she settled back in her car she thought,

"All right, Ethel, very good."

Twice a week, that autumn, she went to Dwight for lessons. But until some time had pa.s.sed, she did not mention it to Joe.

"When you meet him," she said to Dwight, "I'd rather you wouldn't speak of my lessons. I want my singing to be a surprise. And besides, I'd so much rather that any old friends of my husband's come to him through his partner. It seems so much more natural."

"I see," said Dwight. "But he doesn't," she thought, "and I'll have to explain."

"Later, of course, I'll tell him," she said, "But just now, in the state he's in, if you or any one else of his friends who knew him as he used to be should come and say, 'Sent by your wife, with her compliments and fervent hopes of your speedy resurrection '--oh, no, it wouldn't do at all." Dwight was watching her curiously.

"How many of us are there!" he asked. She looked at him in a questioning way.

"Of us," he explained, "Joe's old friends, who are to dig him up, you know."

"Only you, at present--and of course his partner. He smiled:

"Bill Nourse is not a very brisk digger."

"Well," she remarked, in a casual tone, "if you know of brisker diggers about--people who knew him--"

"Say no more. I'll search the town." Their eyes had met for an instant.

"Yes," she thought, "I'm getting on."

Dwight lunched with Joe soon after that, and later in the studio he and Ethel had a talk.

"In a good many ways," he a.s.sured her, "he struck me as the same old Joe--friendly and hospitable--he insisted on ordering quite a meal. But we didn't eat much of it. We talked."

"Of Paris!"

"Very much so. There's a lot of Paris in him yet." And he told of their long conversation.

"Now," she said, when she rose to leave, "if you'll just keep at him occasionally--while his partner does the same at the office, and I do what I can at home--"

"You insist on his being home every night?"

"That depends," said Ethel gravely.

"Suppose I take him some night to my club. We have quite a number of architects there."

"Oh, wonderful! How good of you!"