His Second Wife Part 22

"Oh, yes he could," Joe's partner growled. "There's so much money in it!"

"If he puts that through I'm done for!" Ethel told herself that night.

"His name will be a perfect joke--among all the people I want to know!

And they'll all keep away from us as though he were running a yellow journal! And then her friends will crowd about--because we'll be so rich, you see! Oh, d.a.m.n money! d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n!"

She was lying sleepless on her bed, and Joe was sleeping by her side.

She sat up now and looked at his face in the dim light from the window.

"If you get very rich," she thought, "and middle-aged and very fat in body and soul, get to care only for building 'junk' and for going about with Amy's friends--I wonder what would I do then." Again the words of young Mrs. Grewe came up in her mind: "You can get out whenever you choose." She frowned. "But there are the children. And besides, I love you, Joe--yes, more than ever, and in a queer way! I'm fighting for what I love in you, but at the same time I love you all--every bit of you!" Breathing quickly now, she sank back on her pillow, and there she soon grew quiet again. "So we'll fight it out once and for all. You've got to drop this plan of yours." One evening that same week when Nourse had come to dinner, she led the talk by slow degrees to that other plan of Joe's--the one with terrace gardens. Soon she had Nourse talking about it, and seeing her husband grow morose she grew cheerily interested.

"Oh, I'm very dull, I suppose," she said at the end with a quizzical smile, "but I'm afraid I can't get it clear. Couldn't you draw it?"

Nourse smiled at this, for he saw what she was driving at.

"No, I'm poor at that," he said.

"Then, Joe, you sketch it out for me."

Joe put down his paper and began in surly fashion. But as he sketched more and more rapidly, she saw the thing take hold of him. With little exclamations and questions Ethel drove him on. She thought it a fascinating plan but the details puzzled her still, she said, and the rough sketch he had drawn was very unsatisfactory. She begged him to draw it on a large scale, and he set out to do so. But his hand was inexpert. Although once the most brilliant designer in town, for years Joe had stuck to the business side, and his hand had grown clumsy, his memory cold. Ethel had known of this from Nourse. And now probing by her questions as to details here and there, with Nourse helping at her side, she revealed Joe's weakness to himself. A scared angry look came into his eyes. Stubbornly he worked on and on, but the thing would not come as it used to!

And this revealing process continued until Nourse with masculine pity dropped out of the torturing and went home. But Ethel gently encouraged Joe, and in his dogged persistency he kept at it half the night. The more tired he grew, the worse was his work. And again and again, as she glanced at his face, she saw that frightened look in his eyes. It almost brought the tears in her own, but steadily she kept thinking:

"I'm scaring him badly, and that's what he needs. For years he has been telling himself that first he would make money and then he would work out his ideals. But he's frightened now. He's wondering if he has put it off too long?"

Pitilessly she goaded him on. Then at last she relented and began to persuade him to go to bed. How white and haggard and queer he looked.

Again a lump rose in her throat. Soon she was saying quietly:

"I should think that some day, dear, you'd want to go back to Paris and work."

He made no answer.

But in the weeks that followed, she dropped this thought again and again into his mind. Paris, study, work, old dreams--she played these against his business, against Amy and her friends and the flattery of f.a.n.n.y Carr, against that odious press agent and the plan for Riverside Drive.

"Has he turned it down?" she inquired of his partner.

"Not yet," was the answer. "It's still in the air.

"I wish this were over," Ethel thought. Joe's face had grown so queer and drawn that sometimes as she looked at him a sickening dread stole into her mind. "Is he really too old?" she asked herself.

One Sat.u.r.day night when he came home, with a sudden leap of compa.s.sion she saw what a day he had been through. "But he is through! Something has happened!" she thought. And she treated him very tenderly--both because of the state he was in, and more perhaps because she knew how bad it would be for both of them if he had decided against her.

"How has the work been going?" she asked. He looked at her almost with dislike.

"For a month," he said, "you've been trying to make me give up that Riverside scheme." He paused, and her heart was in her mouth.

"I haven't said so, have I?"

"No--you haven't said so," he growled.

"Well?"

"It's off. I've dropped it."

She started to embrace him, but saw at once it would be a mistake.

"Thank you, Joe," she said softly, and went into the nursery. It was so dark and quiet there. She had a cry.

CHAPTER XX

The next morning Emily Giles returned from a visit back in Ohio.

"How have things been going?" she asked. "Very well indeed," said Ethel, with a scarcely perceptible smile. She and Emily understood each other, though very little had ever been said.

"Mr. Lanier still working hard?"

"Yes, poor dear," said Ethel, "but it has been so good for him." And at that a look of grim relish came on Emily's sallow face.

"You know I'm getting to like this town," she remarked with a genial air. "I wonder what'll the winter be like?"

"Oh, I think we'll do nicely, Emily. I've quite a few plans in my head."

"I'll bet you have," said Emily. And she went to don her "uniform."

In these days, again and again a sense of being just on the eve of something very exciting gave Ethel a new zest in life.

One day in the hall downstairs she came upon young Mrs. Grewe. Ethel gave a little start and then swiftly reddened. And she saw the young widow smile at that, and it made her annoyed with herself for having been so clumsy. "I'll show her I'm not such a prude," she thought. And having learned that Mrs. Grewe had taken another apartment here, Ethel went to see her--with a safe little feeling that Mrs. Grewe would have too much sense to return the call. This would end it--pleasantly.

The visit was a decided success. Mrs. Grewe was back from Europe sooner than she had expected--for reasons she did not explain. "And now I'm looking about," she said, "for another old lady from Boston. I rent a new one every year." Ethel stayed for tea. For nearly eight months she had had no woman to talk to, but f.a.n.n.y Carr and Emily Giles. And she found it very pleasant to be chatting here so cosily. Not that she meant to keep it up. This sort of woman? H'm--well, no. But on the other hand, why not? After all, New York was a very big city.

"I'm never going to shut myself up in one little circle of people," she thought. "I mean to keep rubbing up against life."

There was an added pleasure, too, in the vague warm self-confidence which the young widow gave to her. "You can take care of yourself, my dear," said Mrs. Grewe's small l.u.s.trous black eyes.

"Well? Is he treating you better?" she asked.

"Yes," said Ethel.

"He's very wise." They smiled at each other.

"He's becoming quite sensible," Ethel said.

"And have you found those friends you wanted?"

"They're in sight," was Ethel's answer. Her hostess smiled good humouredly.

"You won't be able to keep me," she said. "He won't stand that--"