His Second Wife Part 19

"Never mind if you are. You're not enough. I want more of his friends.

Now tell me--where did the fat man study? Abroad?"

"In Paris."

"Oh!" she cried. "Were he and Joe together there?"

"They were, for a while--"

"Oh, how nice!" She laughed at him. "What a dear you've been to me,"

she said. "You like me, don't you!"

"Yes--I do."

"Quite a good deal!"

"All right," he said. She was watching his face. "This is new to him,"

she was thinking.

"You believe I don't want money!"

"Yes--"

"Nor friends like Amy's!"

"You don't seem to."

"And I don't. I want friends like you and this Mr. Dwight--and that odious Sally Crothers who won't even let me in at her door. And her husband--yes, he'll do. Why how the circle widens!"

"So far," Nourse reminded her, "I'm the only circle you've got."

"Yes, and a very nice one. And now you're going to be a dear, and go to this man Dwight and say what a remarkable voice I have--and tell him all my other points, and the hole I'm in and the money I have. Don't forget that--the money I have--for my acquaintance with Mr. Dwight leads me to believe that wealth is a great inducement with him. It makes his blue eyes twinkle so."

"Very well," Nourse answered grimly. "But when you get them twinkling, what are you going to do with him?"

"Sing with him," was her firm reply. "And between songs _talk_ with him--of Paris and my husband, and the great ideals I have--and the delicious dinners I have--for he's fat, you know, and he loves his meals--and then ask him to come to dinner, of course." She scowled.

"That," she said severely, "is all I can tell you at present. My plans for resurrecting Joe will have to be made as I go along--step by step and friend by friend." All at once she turned on him fiercely. "There's that pity again in your eyes! 'Oh, how young,' you are thinking. Then let me tell you, Mr. Bill Nourse, that you are not to pity me! If you do," she cried, "the time will come when you will be pitying yourself--for being cast off like an old leather shoe--from one of the most brilliant and attractive circles in this town! Do you know what you almost do to me--you, the one friend I have in New York? You make me feel you've almost lost your faith and hope in everything--that you're nearly old! You make me wonder if I'm too late--whether my husband is nearly old, and the dreams he had in him cold and gone! You scare me--and you've got to stop! You've got to be just exactly as young as I am--this very minute! You've got to borrow some youth from me--for I have plenty to go around--and help me make this fight for friends! It may not come to anything--for the soul of this city is hard as nails! This music man may turn me down--or be perfectly fat and useless! Who knows? But how can I tell till I meet the man? And when will you go and see him? Today or tomorrow? I haven't very much time, you know, for any more shilly-shallying! I want some action out of you--"

She faced him flushed and menacing, and he took her hand and said:

"You'll get it. Where's your telephone!"

"Right there in the hall!"

"I'll call up Dwight."

"Wait! Is he married?"

"No."

"Thank G.o.d!"

CHAPTER XVIII

The next morning at eleven o'clock she met Dwight in his studio, and in a brisk pleasant businesslike way she began to tell him of her voice--what singing she had done at home and how she had always meant to take lessons when she should come to New York to live.

"To find out how much of a voice I really have, you know," she said.

Her manner was more affable now. "But my husband and my baby have kept me rather busy, you see, and so I've put it off and off--until just lately I began to look about and make inquiries. And then by good luck I learned of you--from my husband's partner."

"You're Joe Lanier's wife, aren't you?" he asked.

"His second," she said with emphasis. And a moment later she told herself, "Yes, his eyes do twinkle, and he seems to be quite nice. He isn't so excessively fat, and he has a big wide generous mouth, and I like his eyes. But he thinks my coming like this a bit queer, and he's wondering what's behind it." She downed her excitement and went on in the same resolute tone she had used with such success on Nourse. No personal conversation just yet, she would show him she meant business.

And so she stuck to the lessons.

"If you'll take me as a pupil," she said, "I'd like to begin immediately."

"Let me try your voice," he proposed. He went to the piano, and there his manner had soon changed. From genial and curious it grew interested. He spoke rather sharply, asking her to do this and that, and she felt as though she were being probed. "You have a voice," he said, at the end. "Not a world shaker," he added, smiling, "but one that interests me a lot." She beamed on him.

"You'll take me, then?"

"a.s.suredly."

"Oh, that's so nice." They decided on the time for her lessons. Then she glanced at her wrist watch. "Will you see if my car is waiting!"

she asked. "I had him take the nurse and baby up to the Park--and he ought to be back by now, I think." But as Dwight went to the telephone, she added excitedly to herself, "Now if that idiot of a chauffeur is as late as I told him to be, you and I will have quite a talk, Mr.

Dwight."

"It isn't here yet," he informed her.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I'll have to walk." She smiled and held out her hand to him. "Will you send the chauffeur home!"

"If you like," he replied good-humouredly. "But I'd much rather you'd wait here--if you have nothing pressing." And as she hesitated, "It's not only your voice, you know--I used to be quite a friend of Joe's."

"Oh, yes, I remember his telling me. Over in Paris, wasn't it?"

Soon they were talking easily. Dwight had lit a cigarette, and Ethel could see he was studying her. She tried to look unconscious.

"I've wanted to go to Paris all my life," she told him. "How long is it since you left?"

"Only a year." She looked at him.

"Is there a Paris in New York?"

"I'm not sure yet--I'm new, you see."

"So am I," she confided frankly. And at that he gave her a swift glance which made Ethel add to herself, "Yes, he could be very personal."

She asked him what he had found in New York as a contrast, coming from abroad. She spoke of the high buildings here, and from that she pa.s.sed quite naturally to her husband's business.