His Second Wife Part 11

It was delightful to be so free, she told herself repeatedly. Friends?

They didn't need any friends. For the present they had each other--enough! "Yes, and for some time to come!" But there always came to her a little qualm of uneasiness when her thinking reached this point. How were friends to be found in this city?

"Oh, later--later--later!"

And rising impatiently with a shrug, she went into the nursery. The nurse had been so glad to get back that most of her old hostility toward Ethel had vanished. Still there were signs now and then of a sneer which said, "You'll soon be paying no more attention to this poor bairn than her mother did before you." And it was as well to show the woman how blind and ignorant she was--to make her see the difference.

"Boheme" was the surprise that night. It was Ethel's first night at the opera. And looking up at the boxes, at the women she had read about, the gorgeous gowns and the jewels they wore, and watching them laugh and chatter; or looking far above them to the dim tiers of galleries reaching up into the dark; or again with eyes glued on the stage feasting upon Paris, art, "Bohemia," youth and romance; squeezing her companion's hand and in flashes recollecting dazzling little incidents of the fortnight just gone by--her mind went roving into the future, finding friends and wide rich lives shimmering and sparkling like the sunlight on the sea. As that Italian music rose, all at once she wanted to give herself, "To give and give and give him all!" The tears welled up in her happy eyes.

"However! To be very gay!"

Later that evening in a cafe she leaned across the table and asked excited questions about "Boheme" and Paris. What was Paris really like?

The Latin Quarter, the Beaux Arts? What did he do there, how did he live? In what queer and funny old rooms? Did he live alone or with somebody else? Something was clutching now at her breast. (Farrar had sung "Mimi" that night). "Don't be silly!" she told herself. "Oh, Joe!" she said, and she looked down at the fork in her hand which she was fingering nervously. Then she looked quickly up and smiled. "What man did you room with? Any one?" He was smiling across the table still.

"You inquisitive woman," said his eyes.

"No, I lived alone," he replied. "And I sat at a drafting board--with a sweater on--it used to be cold."

"Oh, you poor dear!"

"And I worked," he continued, "like a bull pup. And along toward morning I tied a wet towel around my head--"

"Oh, Joe!" Ethel's foot pressed his, and they laughed at each other.

"But there must have been," she cried, "so much besides! Joe Lanier, you are lying! There were cafes--and student b.a.l.l.s and fancy dress--and singing--and queer streets at night!"

"That's so," he answered solemnly, "the city of Paris did have streets.

You walked on them--from place to place."

"Joe Lanier--"

"First you put the right foot forward, then the left--you moved along."

"Joe! For goodness sakes!"

"Look here. Do you know what I want to do with you?"

"No." And Ethel shook her head. She did know, precisely, and it was her motive for all this talk.

"Take you there--and get rooms in the Quarter--not too far from the Luxembourg--"

"Oh, Joe, you perfect darling!"

He went on describing all they would do, in the cafes and on the streets, in old churches and at plays and at the Opera Comique, where she must surely see "Louise." They began excitedly planning ways and means, expenses, his business and when he could get away. He sobered at that, and she cried to herself, "Now he's thinking of his friend Bill!

Oh, what a detestable, tiresome worm!"

Then a man who was pa.s.sing their table stopped in surprise as he recognized Joe, bowed, smiled and said something and went on, and joined a hilarious group down the room. And Ethel saw him speak to them and she felt their glances turned her way. Joe had grown suddenly awkward, his face wore a forced, unnatural smile, and he was talking rapidly--but she heard nothing that he said. The whole atmosphere had changed in an instant.

For those people over there were some of Amy's friends, no doubt, amused at Joe and his young second wife, amused that Joe had not had the nerve to ask them to his wedding. Ethel could feel herself burning inside. A mistake not to have asked them? No! What had they to do with it? What right had they, what hold on Joe? They had been a mighty poor lot of friends, with empty minds and money hearts, just clothes and food, late hours and wine! They had been decidedly bad for him, had drawn him off from his real work and plunged him into the rush to be rich! A voice within her, from underneath, was asking, "Or was it Amy?" But she paid no heed to that. It asked, "Are you sure they are all so bad?

Have you taken the trouble to find out?" But angrily she answered that she wanted friends of her own, that she couldn't be just a second wife.

"I've got to be all different, new! I've got to be--and I will, I will!" She swallowed fiercely. Besides, it was what Joe needed, exactly! He showed already what it had meant to be rid of such friends!

Had he ever talked of Paris before, or his dreams and ambitions or anything real? But the voice retorted sharp and clear:

"Why hide it then? Why let this foolish dangerous habit of never mentioning Amy's name keep growing up between you and your husband? It may do a lot of harm, you know. What are you afraid of?"

Nothing whatever, she replied. She decided to speak of it then and there. She would be perfectly natural, and ask him, "Who are your friends over there? Some people Amy used to know?" And she grew rigid all at once. Her throat contracted and felt dry. Angrily she bit her lip . . . But the habit of silence was too strong. . . . Soon, with a carefully pleasant smile, she was attending to his talk and by her questions drawing out more and more of his life abroad.

"His work," she thought, "that's the strongest thing to hold his mind away from those people." And soon she had him talking of the Beaux Arts, architecture, plans and "periods" and "styles," things she was quite vague about, but she did not have to listen now. That was always so safe, she told herself. She was even a little jealous of this puzzling, engrossing work, which could so hold her husband's mind. She frowned.

That was as it should be; a man's work was his own concern. But his living, his home, what he did at night?

"This can't go on," she decided. "There will have to be friends for both of us. I need them, too. Oh, how I need one woman friend! And where shall I find her? Somewhere in this city there must be just the people I want--if only I could reach them!"

And presently she was saying aloud in a lazy careless tone of voice:

"Sometimes I get wondering, Joe, if there isn't a Paris in New York."

CHAPTER XI

It was a few weeks later. A doctor had been there and gone, and returning into the living-room Ethel sank down on a chair with a quiet intensity in her eyes. For some time she had not been feeling herself, but she did not want to worry Joe, and so at last she had telephoned to the clergyman who had married her.

"You may not remember me," she had said, "but you married me in December. Perhaps you'll recall it if I say there were only three friends at the church."

"Oh, yes, I remember it--perfectly."

"Thank you. I'm not quite well and I have no friends to turn to, so I'm wondering if you could recommend a good doctor I could see."

The doctor recommended had just paid his visit. And now as the dusk deepened she had the strangest feelings. Her year and a half in the city seemed hurried and feverish as a dream. Her mind ran back into the past and on into the future. Only a few days before, the round robin letter had come again. In it the girl who had married the mining engineer out West had told of having a baby in a little town in Montana.

Ethel had thought of the doctor then.

She rose now and got the letter and re-read it slowly. Presently she put it down and began crying softly, though she felt neither sad nor frightened. Her life had so completely changed. All those girl friends, so scattered; all those years, so far behind. It was like getting on a ship, she thought, to start across the ocean. "You can't get off, you must go across. Oh, Ethel Lanier, how happy you'll be."

But the happiness seemed a long way off.

How quiet it was. The nurse came in with Susette from the park. Ethel went into the nursery and kneeling down she began to unb.u.t.ton Susette's little jacket. The child's plump face was so rosy and cold. She kissed it suddenly.

"Martha," she said, "I'll need you here for a long time now. I'm going to have a baby."

She reddened then and held her breath. Queer, how she had blurted it out! She had not meant to tell any one yet. But the look of dawning joy and relief in Martha's eyes made her glad she had spoken. Plainly the nurse had been dreading the time so fast approaching when she would have to leave Susette, who was now nearly four years old. But all she said to Ethel was this:

"I'm glad to hear it, Mrs. Lanier. I hope you'll be very careful now."

She shot a look as keen as a knife, which asked, "Do you really want a child? Or are you like her? Was it a mistake?"

And Ethel went quickly out of the room. In the living-room her eye was caught by Amy's photograph on the table. She had always kept it there.

In her cleaning she had put it back. Emily, too, had put it back. They had never spoken Amy's name. But Ethel faced the picture now for some moments steadily. Somehow it had lost its beauty, it looked weak and soul-less, without power any longer over Ethel's future. "Poor Amy.

Oh, how much you missed." And she added, "I'll never be like that." For an instant she let her mind dwell on the past, on how Susette's coming must have been--unwelcomed by her mother.

"But this one will be welcomed! Our love is so--so different! This will bind us, oh, so close! It's done now, you're tied for life!" She had never felt it so before. The months of her marriage had been so exciting, and even in the long summer's thinking her love had seemed always a little unreal. "But this is real--inside of me!" Her fancy went careering ahead, with joy and wonder, a thrill of dismay. "I was so free, with my life to choose! I could have been almost anything!

But now it is settled. This is my life. We talk and we talk about being free--and then all at once--a baby."