His Second Wife Part 16

"At least the ghosts are friendly." She suddenly compressed her lips and looked about: "However!" She went to the telephone in the hall: "Please hurry up those porters! I'm up here waiting to begin!"

And in the days that followed, she was far too engrossed in "settling"

to spare any time for brooding on phantoms. "A home of my own and a life of my own, to be lived with my own husband!" But when at last they were settled, and Joe in a dear, genial mood had gone about admiring, and taking no notice apparently of the scarcity of Amy's things--he turned to Ethel with an air which was meant to be easy and natural:

"Well, now that we're taking a fresh start, the time has come for a little talk."

"What about?" she asked, endeavouring to make her smile as easy as his.

"It will take about one minute." His gruff voice was low and kind. "I'm not going to force my friends on you. If you want to make friends of your own, go ahead. And when you get them let me know--and they'll be mine, too, if I have to break a leg in the effort. I'll dance in front of them, so to speak, until they're all enchanted. But in the meantime, on your side, I want you to let me down easy with these people I once knew. I don't want to hurt them or be a cad. A few I may keep in touch with for years."

"f.a.n.n.y!" flashed into Ethel's mind.

"And all I ask of you is this. You'll soon be going away for the summer. Let's do the decent thing--just once--and have a little party here. I give you my word we won't do it again."

"All right, Joe--that's fair, of course--and I'll do my best to make it exactly what you want."

And in the dinner that she gave, Ethel lived up to her bargain. The dinner was large; there were twenty guests. The caterer was as before, and so were the food and the flowers. And all through the evening Ethel was gracious and affable. But behind her affability, hidden but subtly conveyed to each guest, was a serene good-bye to them. This was their dismissal. Did they all feel it, every one? To her at least it seemed so. Again and again she caught the men throwing looks of regret at Joe, and the women glancing about the rooms as though in search of what was gone. Amy's things! Oh, more than that. The whole atmosphere was gone. This was the home of the second wife.

"Well, dear, did I live up to our bargain?" she asked her husband when they were alone.

"You did," said Joe. He looked at her then in such a puzzled, masculine fashion. What she had done and how she had done it was plainly such a mystery to him. "You did," he repeated loyally. She slipped her arms about his neck.

"Thank you, love," she answered. And in a moment or two she murmured, "Have them again in the Fall if you like."

"No," said Joe. "Once was enough."

"Now," she asked herself the next day, "let's try to see what all this means." She was almost speaking aloud. She was growing so accustomed to these sociable little chats with herself. "It means that I am getting on. But f.a.n.n.y Carr will still be about. She won't come here except just enough to keep up appearances, but she'll still have her business dealings with Joe in the management of her property. He means to keep in touch, he said, 'with a few of them'--meaning her, of course--and his tone conveyed quite plainly that I am to leave him alone in that until I can produce friends of my own. Whereupon, my dear," she threw up her hands, "we come back to exactly the same point at which we have been all along. Where am I going to find friends?" And she gave an angry, baffled sigh. "Oh, d.a.m.n New York!"

As she glared viciously about the pretty, sunny living room, the image of its former tenant rose up in her memory. And Ethel's expression changed at once, became intent and thoughtful. How much more attractive was Mrs. Grewe than were any of Amy's set. Immoral? Yes, decidedly.

But what did "immoral" mean in this town? Who was moral? f.a.n.n.y Carr?

Did these wives and divorcees do any good with their "moral" lives? She recalled what Mrs. Grewe had said: "And whether you marry or whether you don't, for the life of me I can't see any difference." And again: "With your face and figure, my dear, you don't have to put up with any one man." Ethel sat frowning straight before her.

"What kind of a life am I going to find? I'm going to stay with my husband--that's sure. I'm in love with him and he with me. That much is decided."

She rose abruptly, and walking the floor she firmly resolved to "be wholesome" and look on the bright side of things. In the next few weeks she busied herself with the small affairs of her household. There was plenty to occupy her mind. There were finishing touches to give to the rooms; there were Spring clothes to buy for Susette; and the baby was ready for short dresses and a baby carriage. There was the life in the nursery, a cheerful little world in itself. There was Martha, grown more friendly now, and Emily and the new waitress, Anne, and the telephone girl and the chauffeur and the clerks in various shops who had become acquaintances--altogether quite a circle of people who greeted Ethel on her rounds. One day as she pa.s.sed a laundry shop she spied this sign in the window: "Fine linen respectfully treated." And Ethel chuckled at the thought that she herself was treated like that. On the whole it was rather pleasant, though, and she made the most of it. She was being carefully "wholesome."

Now it was well along in June, time for the children to go to the seash.o.r.e, so she began to hunt for a place. At the traveller's bureaus she visited she found the clerks more than ready to give advice by the hour to this gracious young creature so stylishly clad. And she had soon selected a quiet little resort in Rhode Island.

But what was Joe doing all this time? She did not mean to keep prying, but for the life of her she could not help throwing out casual inquiries. His reply was always, "Business"; and he would go on to give her details--all of which were tiresome. How much was he seeing of f.a.n.n.y Carr and her detestable money affairs? His manner, engrossed as it had grown, and even irritable at times, made Ethel feel he was putting her further and further out of that part of his existence which now interested him most, the part that lay outside his home. Was it all business, all of it? "And when I go to the seash.o.r.e, he'll be here five nights a week!" Sometimes he came in so late at night! Business? At such an hour? "Now carefully, carefully, Ethel Lanier." But in spite of herself the smiling words of young Mrs. Grewe recurred to her mind: "Most of them are married men."

Ethel's doubts, however, were all ended late one night, when at the sound of his key in the door she got out of bed and came into the doorway of her room. Joe was standing in the hall. He did not see her.

In fact, his eyes, when he switched on the light, seemed to see nothing in the world but the package of business papers he took from his overcoat. His face was haggard but intent. He turned and went into his study to work. And any suspicion of f.a.n.n.y Carr, or of any other friend of Joe's, was swept at once from Ethel's mind. Her rival was his business.

And later at the seash.o.r.e, where she had so many hours alone, she thought about this work of his with deepening hostility. Her mind went back into the past. How his office had always absorbed him. What a refuge it had been in the months that followed Amy's death. "I wasn't the one who first made him forget. Oh, no, it was his business!" And now, as it had weaned him once from his grief for the woman who had died, it was at him again to draw him away from the woman who was living.

There had been a time when it was not so, when she could keep him late at breakfast and make him come home early at night, still fresh enough to read and talk, discuss things, go to the opera, take up his music, plan a trip to Paris. "Oh, yes! Then we were making a start!" But now this wretched work of his had got him worse than ever before--and she blamed his partner for that. She recalled how Nourse had disliked her, she remembered what Amy used to say about the man's worship of business.

Yes, with his detestable greed for money, only money, Nourse was doubtless driving Joe. "You're making him just a business man, without a thought or a wish in his head for anything beautiful, really fine, ambition, things he dreamed of and told me about when he was mine--things that would have led us both to everything I wanted--"

She set her lips and whispered:

"All right, friend Bill, then it's you or it's me!" And all the rest of the summer she set herself determinedly to breaking up the partnership.

"Joe, dear," she said pleasantly, when he had come out for the week end, "why don't you ever bring your partner with you over Sunday?" And at his quick look of surprise, "It seems too bad, I think," she added, "never to have him with us."

"I thought you didn't like him," he said. Ethel gave a frank little smile.

"I didn't--but that was a year ago. And besides, he didn't like me, you see. But people do change, I suppose--and as long as he means so much to you, I should so like to be friendly."

It turned out just as she had expected. Nourse declined the invitation.

"I'm sorry," she said when her husband told her. She felt her position strengthened a bit. At another time she suggested that Joe's partner be asked to spend the rest of the summer with him in the apartment back in town. It was doubtless so much cooler at night than Nourse's bachelor quarters. And Emily Giles could take care of them both. But this overture, too, Bill Nourse declined. She could just imagine him doing it, the surly, ungracious tone of his voice, the very worst side of the man shown up. Joe often now looked troubled when Ethel talked of his partner.

But toward the end of the summer in one such talk he gave her a shock.

It was after Nourse had again refused an invitation to come to the seash.o.r.e.

"He's queer," said Joe, "and he can be ugly. Being polite is not in Bill's line. I told him so myself today--and we had quite a session.

"Oh, Joe, I'm sorry," Ethel said.

"You needn't be. Bill Nourse and I will stick together as long as we live." Ethel looked at him sharply, but he did not notice. "Because,"

he said, "with all his faults, his queerness and his grouches, Bill has done more than any man living to--well, to keep something alive in me--in my work, I mean--that I want later on--as soon as I've made money enough." She stared at him.

"You mean that he--your partner--wants something more than money?" It was a slip, but she was stunned. He turned and looked at her and asked, in a voice rather strained and husky:

"Do you think Bill cares about money alone?"

"Why, yes!"

"That's funny." But Joe's laugh was grim. "If Bill had had his way with me, I'd have had a name as an architect that would have been known all over the country--instead of being what I am, a gambler in cheap real estate."

She questioned him further, her manner alert, her eyes with a startled, thoughtful look. But he did not seem to want to talk.

"Then why," she asked herself in a daze, "if Bill is so against this business, does he keep at it day and night? Oh, yes, we'll have to look into this--as soon as I get back to town! You've got to come and see me, and explain yourself, friend Bill." She frowned in such a puzzled way. "You, a friend? How funny!"

CHAPTER XVI

The week after Ethel's return to town, she was surprised one afternoon when in response to a note she had sent him her husband's partner came to see her. She had thought it would be more difficult.

"Joe won't interrupt us," he said. "I put work in his way. He'll be home late."

Tall, gaunt and angular, somewhat stooped, Nourse stood looking down at her; and as, perplexed and excited, Ethel scanned his visage, so heavy in spite of its narrow lines, she saw an expression in which contempt was tempered by a sort of regret and weariness. And of course he was awkward, too. She said to herself, "Be careful now."

"Won't you sit down?" she asked him.

"Thank you." And he took a seat.