His Second Wife Part 24

"Did she come up?" she breathlessly asked.

"No, Mrs. Lanier, she's waiting below."

"Did she give her name?"

"Yes--Mrs. Carr."

"Oh." Ethel gasped and sank down in a heap. "All right, ask her to come up," she said, in a tone of indifference.

When the maid had gone, she almost called her back. She did not want to see f.a.n.n.y Carr. Still--why not? Oh, let her come. And in the two or three minutes that followed, Ethel pa.s.sed from a mood of depression to one of easy good-natured contempt. She was no longer afraid of f.a.n.n.y, for Ethel was getting Joe in hand. "And as soon as I do," she reflected, "and my husband makes a name as an architect doing great big things, what harm can f.a.n.n.y do me?" As she thought of the brilliant people who were so soon to be her friends, she looked upon f.a.n.n.y Carr and her like with no more hatred but only compa.s.sion. What stupid lives they were leading.

And so when f.a.n.n.y came into the room Ethel received her kindly.

But f.a.n.n.y rather smiled at that. She looked a bit seedy as to her dress, and yet she had a confident air. She took in the fine clothes of her handsome young hostess, and Ethel's very gracious air and the almost pitying tone of her voice--and then with a hard little smile, "My, what a change," said f.a.n.n.y softly. Ethel frowned at her tone. This might be rather awkward.

"You mean this way of doing my hair?" she rejoined good-humouredly. "I was hoping you would notice it."

"Does he?" asked f.a.n.n.y.

"What do you mean? Oh, Joe never--"

"No. Dwight, my dear." The hard voice of her visitor had become suddenly low and clear. Ethel looked at the woman then and slowly reddened to her ears. And the consciousness of blus.h.i.+ng made her all the angrier.

"What on earth do you mean!" she demanded. Her voice too was very low, and it trembled only a little; but there was a glint in her brown eyes.

f.a.n.n.y gave a tense little laugh.

"Look here," she said. "Don't let's waste time. Joe may be coming home, you know, and we must get this over first."

"We'll soon get it over." Ethel's voice was shaking ominously. f.a.n.n.y noticed and spoke fast.

"Well, then, it's just this," she said. "You've made up your mind to cut Joe off from all his old friends, including me. And I might have stood for that--"

"How kind!"

"If I hadn't learned of the raw deal you're giving him. Strip him of friends and then treat him like this? Oh, no, not if I can help it!"

Plainly f.a.n.n.y was working herself into a rage to match that of her hostess.

"You'd better be very clear, Mrs. Carr," Ethel exclaimed, leaning forward. Her visitor looked straight back at her, and answered:

"Very. I mean Dwight."

Ethel rose abruptly.

"That will be enough, I think."

"Oh, will it?"

Ethel wheeled upon her:

"What a--loathsome mind you have! Will you leave me, please!"

"No, I'll show you this. And then we'll get to business." And f.a.n.n.y produced a large envelope, from which she took out a few typewritten pages. "Just look these over," she advised, "and then tell me whether I shall go." And as Ethel hesitated, "You'd better. They're very important."

Ethel took them and read them, and as she did so her rage and scorn changed first into bewilderment and then into a sickening fright She felt all at once so off her ground. She had always heard of detectives and their reports of shadowed wives, but that sort of thing had just been in the papers and had never seemed very real. "This is about me!"

she thought. It told of every meeting she had had with Dwight, in his studio and in other places, once at the Ritz where they had dined and gone to the opera, twice in the Park where they had walked. Such clean times, all three of them, but how cheap and disgusting they now appeared! For here were bits about Dwight's past, his record with women--two were named. He had been a co-respondent once! And his studio was described in detail, with emphasis on a big lounge in one corner! . . . Suddenly it was laughable! And so she laughed at f.a.n.n.y! And f.a.n.n.y replied:

"You mean he won't believe it!"

Ethel went on laughing. Joe wouldn't believe it. She wished he would come and turn this woman out on the street. She felt relief unspeakable.

"You've forgotten," f.a.n.n.y added, "that you lied to him about your friend."

"How dare you say that?"

"Because I have the facts. On the second of December Joe brought Dwight to dine with you, and you acted as though you'd never met. I gathered that from Joe himself when I saw him the next day. While the truth of it was you'd been seeing Dwight ever since the first of October."

"Yes? That will be easy enough to explain." But Ethel felt herself turning white. She sank down and thought, "Now you'll need all your nerve. Don't get faint, you've got to think clearly." But she was not given time.

"And all that had been going on while you were supposed to be home with the baby." Mrs. Carr leaned forward briskly. "Now the thing for you to do is exactly what I tell you. But before I do that, there's just one thing I wish you to understand about me. If you want to keep Joe, keep him. I don't want him--I never did. I've laughed at you again and again for what you thought I was trying to do. All I want is to be let alone to go on with Joe as I always have. What I mean by that you won't understand, because you don't understand my life. A woman like me in this city needs one man who'll be her friend--the big brother idea--to help and advise her, carry her through when she's down a bit. And Joe has always been like that.

"Why? Because of Amy. When she first came to New York, you remember, it was on a visit to me. I had known her back in boarding school.

Well, the visit lengthened out. I saw how crazy she was for the town, and I was fairly well off then, so I let her stay and gave her a home--let her meet my friends, Joe included. I had a husband at the time who was in the real estate business. He knew Joe. So I took Joe and handed him over to Amy. And though she would have been glad enough to forget the debt, Joe wasn't that kind. So that's my hold on him--perfectly clean and above-board. And I need him in my business.

There are times when I'm down and need his money, other times when I need his name. But that is all. And if he has been fool enough to marry a giddy young girl like you, that's his own look-out--I won't interfere. I mean I won't interfere with you so long as you don't interfere with me. You let me go on with Joe as before, and he'll never see these papers."

With a sudden fierce impulse, in spite of herself, Ethel crumpled them up in her hands.

"Don't be a fool," said f.a.n.n.y. "They're only copies. Give them back."

Ethel did so, mechanically. "Now what will you do? Which way will you have it? He may be here any minute now."

She waited, but got no reply. She saw the girl s.h.i.+ver a little.

"What's the use of being so solemn and scared?" she impatiently asked.

"You're running no more risk than before. So far as I'm concerned, my dear, you can go right on with Dwight if you wish. All I'm asking is a square deal."

"But she'll ask and ask," thought Ethel. "She'll ask of me anything she wants. And she'll get me so tangled in other lies that then I wouldn't have even a chance of making Joe see how things really are."

This thought cleared her mind a little.

"No," she said. "You can tell him."

"What!"

Ethel looked down at her hands in her lap, and noticed how tightly they were clenched. She smiled at them.

"Tell him."

"You're sure of that?"