His Second Wife Part 4

"You poor girl. I can't tell you how sorry I feel," she was saying.

"It's horrible. Tell me about it."

And Ethel in a lifeless voice recounted the tragedy of the night.

"Where's Joe?"

"In there, with his partner."

"Oh, Mr. Nourse. He would be." Mrs. Carr threw a glance of dislike at the door. "And you, my dear--I won't ask you now what are your plans.

Just let me help you. What can I do? There's that dinner tonight, to begin with. Have you let the people know?"

"Not yet--"

"Have you a list of the ones who were asked?"

"I think there's one on Amy's desk."

"Then I'll attend to it."

Soon f.a.n.n.y was at the telephone. Her voice, hard and incisive, kept talking, stopping, talking again, repeating it to friend after friend, and making it hard, abrupt and real, stripping it of its mystery, making it naked and commonplace, like a newspaper item--Amy's death. And Ethel sat rigid, listening.

"Amy's best friend! Oh, how strange!"

Suddenly she remembered things Amy had said about this friend--admiring things. She bit her lips.

"What a queer time for hating a person. But I hate you--oh, I hate you!" She went to the window and frowned at the street and slowly again got control of herself. "What's wrong with me? Why am I so dull I ought to be doing something. But what?" Again came the voice from the telephone, and again she clenched her hands. "How did you make Amy take you for a friend? Oh, what difference does it make?"

But it did make a difference. The presence of f.a.n.n.y got on her nerves; and when a little later two of the dinner guests arrived, to exclaim and pity and offer their help, she faced them and thought:

"You're all alike! You're all just hard and over-dressed! You're cheap! Oh, please--please go away!"

The two visitors seemed glad enough to find she did not want them here, that she was not going to cling to them and make this abyss she was facing a region they must face by her side. In their eyes again she caught the look she had seen on the face of the doctor. "After all, this is not my affair."

The two women left her. f.a.n.n.y, too, soon went out on an errand. And no other woman came to her that day. How different from the Ohio town.

Only once a girl came from the dressmaker's.

But just after f.a.n.n.y had gone out, Joe's partner came into the living-room. In the last few hours several times she had heard his voice as he talked with Joe. Deep, heavy and gruff, it had yet revealed a tenderness that had given to Ethel a sudden thrill--which she had forgotten the next moment, for her thoughts kept spinning so. But now as he looked down at her she saw in his gaunt lean face a reflection of that tenderness; and there was a pity in his voice which set her lip to quivering.

"The sooner we have this over," he said, "the better it will be for Joe."

"Yes."

"Tomorrow!"

"Yes."

"At four!"

"All right."

"I'll see to it."

"Thank you." There was a pause.

"Is there any special cemetery? You have any preference?" he asked.

"I don't know any in New York." And again there was a silence.

"You haven't been here long," he said.

"You'll be going back now to your home, I suppose."

"I haven't any."

"Oh," he said. She glanced up and saw a gleam of uneasiness in his steady tired eyes. She shrank a little.

"You have no relatives living?" he asked.

"None that I care about," she replied. She swallowed sharply. "They're scattered--gone West. We lost track of them."

"Oh. . . . Then do you intend to stay here?"

"For awhile--if Joe wants me."

"I'll take care of Joe." Though the voice was low, it had an anxious jealous note which made her shiver slightly.

"There's the child," she reminded him sharply. "Why not take it away?"

he asked. "Joe never cared for it, did he? Do you think it has been happy here?"

And at that she could have struck him. At her glare he turned away.

"Forgive me. Of course I--should not have said that." A pause. "Nor talked of your plans. I'm not myself. Sorry for Joe. Forgive me." He turned away from her, frowning. "I'll see to everything," he said, and she heard him leave the apartment.

And all the rest of the day and the night and through the morning which followed, no one else came but professional men, and Mrs. Carr. She came and went; and her voice grew familiar--hard, intrusive, naked. And the thought kept rising in Ethel's mind, like a flash of revelation in all the storm and blackness:

"This kind of a woman was Amy's best friend!"

The funeral was soon over, and of its ugly details only a few remained in her mind. She had a glimpse of Amy's face down in the handsome coffin, and at the sight she turned away with a swift pang of self-reproach. "I shouldn't have let f.a.n.n.y do that!" f.a.n.n.y had dressed her sister.

She remembered the low respectful voice of the building superintendent: "There's an afternoon tea on the floor below, so the casket and the funeral guests had better go down by the freight elevator."

She gave a strained little laugh at that and asked, "I wonder when I'll cry?"

The preacher, a tall kindly young man, came in and seemed about to speak; but after a look at her face he stopped. He had come from a church two blocks away. Joe and Amy had never been to his church, and it was Nourse who had brought him here. Nourse had learned of him from the undertaker.

Several boxes of flowers came.

Later from a milliner's shop two pretty autumn hats arrived.