His Second Wife Part 10

"I like to settle these things ahead. So if you'll just name the amount--" he stopped. For the clergyman straightened up as though at an insult. Joe reddened. "Look here," he blurted, "I didn't mean--"

"Oh, that's all right." The other man was smiling queerly. "How long have you been in New York?" he asked.

"Nine years."

"Ever been inside of a church?"

"No, I can't say that I have."

"Then why do you want to get married here?"

Joe smiled frankly. "The bride's idea."

"I thought so," said the preacher. A glint of humour came into his eyes. "You asked me what it would cost to get married. If you'll go down to City Hall, it will cost you exactly two dollars. But if you care to be married here--well, there's an old scrub-woman I know who for nine years every Sunday has come to this church and put a quarter in the plate to keep this inst.i.tution going for you. And if you care to use it now it will cost you just what it has cost her. Figure it out and send me a check, or else go down to City Hall."

"I'll pay up," was the prompt reply.

At home he told Ethel about it with keen relish at the joke on himself.

And Ethel smiled rather tensely and said:

"Don't let's make a joke of it, dear. Let's make it as much of a one as we can."

But there was little or nothing to do. And the next afternoon in church it felt so queer and unreal to her as she stood with Joe in front of the pulpit. Behind her in the shadowy place were only Susette and Emily and the building superintendent's wife. No long rows of faces--caring.

Only the hard murmur of the busy street outside. No excited whispers here, no music and no flowers, no bridesmaids and no wedding gown.

"I p.r.o.nounce you man and wife."

Then what?

She took Susette tight in her arms for a moment. Then Emily--thank G.o.d for her!--was whispering fiercely in her ear:

"It's going to be all right, my dear! In a minute you're going to laugh or cry! Laugh! It's better! Laugh! . . . That's right!"

Joe had his small car waiting outside; and waving good-bye to Emily, who was taking Susette to the park, they sped away to the river and off into the country. Soon they were talking excitedly.

It was after dark when they returned, and as had been already planned they went to a cafe to dine, a gay place crowded full of people, music throbbing, voices humming. Ethel wanted it like that. She wanted to be lifted through. Joe alarmed her now. "Oh, don't--don't be so considerate!" she wanted to exclaim to him. "What good does it do?" As they smiled at each other, again and again she had to fight down an impulse to cry--or shiver. She would bite her lips and turn away and watch people, then turn quickly back and start talking rapidly.

At home, alone in Amy's room, she sat at the dressing table there, her movements swift and feverish. She had often looked at herself of late in her mirror in the nursery, but now she did not look into the gla.s.s.

Her hands were cold. In a very few minutes she called to Joe.

And a little later, on her old bed by the cradle in the nursery, she lay violently trembling and staring intently up at the ceiling.

"What has happened?" she asked. "Whose fault was it? Mine?" With a strange thrill of fear and repulsion, she clenched her teeth and held herself until the fit of trembling pa.s.sed. "Is this real, Ethel Knight?

Do you mean to say this is what love is--just this, just this?" She shook her head and bit her lips. She asked, "Am I tied to this man for life? I am not! I can't be! This isn't real--it isn't me!"

The night was a blur, like a bad dream. Once she remembered jumping up and quickly locking the nursery door. But that was the beginning of a return to her senses. "I needn't have done that," she thought. "It wasn't fair. It was even rather insulting." This thought made her quieter. And later, as the night wore on, a feeling of having been unjust and foolish little by little emerged from the chaos and began to steady her. But again the old dismay and dread and loathing would come back with a rush. All at once her body from head to foot would grow cold and rigid. And the power which a year ago with her sister she had excitedly sensed as the driving force of this whole town, now loomed brutal, savage! The thought rose suddenly in her mind, "Amy. She was his wife! Five years!" And then in a revealing flash, "Her love was like that! She taught him!"

With a bound that feeling of intimacy with her sister leaped to a climax--burned!

It was long till she could quiet herself. She had to do it by walking the floor. . . . Thank heaven for the daylight and the small, round face of Susette peering over the edge of the crib. Soon she had the child in her bed and they were looking at pictures.

Later she went back to her husband. It cost her no slight effort of will, and it was a relief to find him gone. On her dresser he had left a note:

"I am sorry, dear--it was all my fault. I was a fool--a clumsy fool.

But remember there is plenty of time--and be certain absolutely that everything will be all right."

She read it more than once that day, and it helped her prepare for the evening. When Joe came home and took her in his arms, she knew at once that he meant her to feel there was nothing to be afraid of.

"I've got to be down at the office tonight," was all he said. But in his voice, low, kind and rea.s.suring, like that of a big brother, there was a promise which gave her a thrill of grat.i.tude and deep relief.

With it came some self-reproach, which caused her again to struggle, alone, and then go to Amy's room to sleep. She lay listening there for hours, carefully holding herself in check. When she heard his key in the hall door, she sharply stiffened, held her breath. . . . She heard him go into the small guest room which had been hers a year before. . . . And then she cried softly to herself. With the blessed relief of it, her love for Joe was coming back.

CHAPTER X

One evening about two months later Ethel was dressing for dinner. As usual they were dining alone, but long ago she had taken the habit of dressing each night as though there were people coming. Amy had taught her to do that; and after the death of her sister she had always made a point of "keeping up" for Joe's sake, although often it had been an effort. But it was no effort now. She had been here for nearly an hour, absorbed in this pleasant, leisurely art that had such a new meaning and delight. To keep being different, revealing her beauty in new ways, to see if he'd notice, to laugh in his arms and feel her power over Joe, had brought back her old zest for pretty clothes, and she had been wearing all the things she had bought when she first came to town.

Last year's clothes, for they still smilingly called themselves "poor,"

although Joe was doing much better now. Last year's clothes, and the styles had changed, but in ways which Joe, poor dear, was too blind to notice.

The room in which she was dressing had somehow a.s.sumed a different air.

Although in the main it was the same as when Amy had been here, and her picture was still on Joe's chiffonier--still subtly by degrees it had changed. Some of Ethel's clothes were lying about, her work-bag and a book or two; the dressing table at which she was sitting had been covered in fresh chintz, and Ethel's things were on it. Joe's picture and Susette's were here, and a droll little painted bird was perched above the mirror.

As she glanced into the gla.s.s, gaily she thanked herself for the charms which she was deftly enhancing--in the glossy black hair, smooth and sleek, in the flushed cheeks and the red of her lips and the gleaming lights in her brown eyes. She nodded approvingly at herself. "You're a great help to me, Mrs. Lanier."

In the gla.s.s she could see her husband; she felt his glances from time to time. This evening after dinner they were going out somewhere. To what, he would not tell her. There had been many of these small surprises. . . . Now her pulse beat faster, for he had come behind her. A sudden bending, a quick laugh, a murmur and a silence. Then at last he let her go; but as she drew a deep, full breath and shot a side look up at him, he laughed again, low, tensely, and bent over as before.

Left alone, she smiled again into the gla.s.s. It was hard to believe--too wonderful--this amazingly intimate feeling, this living with somebody, body and soul. And what a child she had been before, a child in that solemn young resolve to marry Joe, this good, safe man, and raise a large family carefully. It had been like a small girl thinking of dolls. And like a small girl she had been in her panic on the night of her wedding, she thought. How silly, ignorant, funny!

No--she frowned--it had been real, pretty ugly while it lasted. But like a bug-a-boo it had gone. And this good, safe man had become transformed in this amazing intimacy and had become a wild delight: a man to laugh at, tease, provoke, and cling to, silent, in a flame; a man to mother, study out, probe into deep with questions; a man to plan and plan with.

"This love is to be the love of his life! It's to make us work and grow, make us fine and awake and alive to everything worth living for!

No laziness for you, my dear, no soft, cosy kitten life! You're to be a woman, a real one! Don't let there be any mistake about that!"

In the other room Joe was at his piano, and the music he was playing had nothing to do with--any one else. She did not say, "with Amy." She frowned a little and cut herself short, as she so often did in her thinking, these days, when it touched upon her sister. She could feel Amy here at so many points, and she did not want to be jealous.

"I wonder where we're going tonight."

What was it Joe was playing? Music she had heard before. She did not like to ask him and so betray her ignorance. "I ought to know this!

What is it?" she asked herself impatiently. "Why, of course! It's from 'Boheme'!" She smiled as she felt he was playing to her. With the thrill now so familiar, she felt her power over him. She remembered little tussles in which she had been victorious. They had all been over his business. Joe, the poor darling, had formed the idea (she did not say from his first wife) that if a man is in love with a woman he must express it by loading her down with things which cost a lot of money, that he must work for her, slave for her! But Ethel was putting an end to that. They had taken back Susette's old nurse, for it was unfair to one's husband to be a child's slave if there was no need. But she had refused to get other servants. Emily Giles was still in charge, and though Emily of her own accord had gone to a shop on Fifth Avenue and purchased caps and ap.r.o.ns, "the nattiest things this side of France,"

she wore them with a genial air and spoke of them as "my uniform." Ethel took care of her own room and helped Emily with the cleaning. She had kept expenses firmly down, and she had refused to be loaded with gifts.

When Joe had urged that his affairs were going so much better now, she had said in her new decisive voice:

"I'm so glad to hear it, my love, for it simply means you've no earthly excuse for staying late at your office. I don't mean I want you to loaf, you know," she had gone on more earnestly. "I want you to work and do, oh, so much, all the things you dreamed of doing--over there in Paris. But I'm not going to have you make your business a mere rush for a lot of money we don't need!" She had gone to him suddenly. "And just now I want you so."

By these talks she had already worked a change. No more hasty breakfasts to let him be off by eight o'clock. They had breakfasted later and later each day; she had made an affair of breakfast. And as at last he kissed her and tore himself away from his home, she had smiled to herself delightedly at the guilty look in his eyes. This kind of thing would cause a decided coolness, no doubt, between Joe and his partner. So much the better, she had thought, for she detested that man Nourse, and in his case she could quite openly admit, "I'm jealous of you and your business devotion! Your time is coming soon, friend Bill!"

The office was half way uptown, and several times in the last few weeks she had gone there for Joe at five o'clock, and once at four-thirty, as though by appointment. She chuckled now as she recalled the black look of his partner that day. Yes, four-thirty had been a blow!

"Where are we going this evening?"