Her first month in town was a season of shopping and of warm
anticipations--and then came a sudden crash. Afterward it was hard to
remember. For tragedy entered into these rooms, and it was not easy to
look back and see them clearly as they had been. That first month
became confused, the memories uneven; in some spots clear and vivid, in
others hazy and unreal.
"I want you to be gay, my dear," Amy told her at the start. "You've
been through such a lonely time. And what earthly good will it do poor
Dad to have you go about in black? You're here now and you've got to
make friends and a place for yourself. If he were alive I know he'd
agree. He'd want you to have every chance."
So they started in to shop. And though Ethel had her memories, her
moods of homesick longing for the old soldier who was gone, these soon
became less frequent. There was little time to be lonely or sad.
Amy herself felt new youth these days. Relieved of the first uneasiness
with which she had gone to Ohio to bring her young sister to New York,
surprised and delighted at finding how the awkward girl she had known
had developed since the last time they had met, Amy now took Ethel about
to get her "clothes fit to be seen in." And as with intent little
glances she kept studying "Ethel's type" in order to set off her charms,
the slightly bored expression, the look of disillusionment left Amy's
pretty countenance. For Ethel's freshness had given to Amy new zest and
belief in her own life, in its purpose and importance. To get Ethel
clothes, to show her about, to find her friends, to give her a gay
winter in town and later to make a good match for her--these aims loomed
large in Amy's mind. She felt her own youth returning, and she
prolonged this period. She wanted Ethel all to herself. She even shut
her husband out.
"You can rest up a bit," she told him, "for what's coming later on." And
Joe, with a good-natured groan at the prospect of late hours ahead, made
the most of the rest allowed to him.
Each morning the two sisters fared forth in a taxi. And Amy began to
reveal to her sister the dazzling world of shops in New York: shops
large and small, American, French and English, shops for gowns and hats
and shoes, and furs and gloves and corsets. At numberless counters they
studied and counselled, and lunching at Sherry's they shopped on. And
the shimmer and sheen of pretty things made life a glamourous mirage, in
which Ethel could feel herself rapidly becoming a New Yorker, gaining
assurance day by day, feeling "her type" emerge in the glass where she
studied herself with impatient delight.
There were little reminders now and then of what she had left behind
her. One day in a department store, as they stood before a counter
looking at silk stockings, all at once to Ethel's ears came the deep
tones of an organ, and turning with a low cry of surprise she looked
over the bustling throngs of women to an organ loft above, where a girl
was singing a solo in a high sweet soprano voice. In a flash to Ethel's
mind there came a vivid picture of the old yellow church at home. And
with a queer expression looking about her at the crowds, she exclaimed,
"How funny!" She was again reminded of church when one afternoon in a
large darkened chamber she sat with scores of women whose eyes were
fixed as though in devotion upon a softly lighted stage where "models"
kept appearing. What lovely figures some of them had. Others rather
took her breath, and gave her the feeling she'd had before in her
sister's bedroom. But then as her eye was caught again by the rapt
faces all about, she chuckled to herself and thought, "There ought to be
candles and incense here!"
She was appalled at the prices. And as the exciting days wore on,
uneasily in her room at night she would sit down with pencil and paper
and ask, "How much did I spend today?" Her father had left her nothing
but the shabby old frame house. This she had sold to a friend of his,
and the small fund thus secured she had resolved to husband.
"Oh, Ethel, go slow, you little fool. This is every penny you have in
the world."
But the adorable things she saw, and the growing hunger she felt as she
began to notice with a more discerning eye the women in shops and on the
streets--just why they were so dashing and how they got this and that
effect--all swept aside her caution, the easier because of the fact that
everything she bought was charged.
One evening in a large café she sat watching Amy who was dancing with
her husband. It was at the time when the new style dances were just
coming into vogue. In Ohio they had been only a myth. But Amy was a
beautiful dancer; and watching her now, Ethel reflected, "She expects me
to be like that. If I'm not, she'll be disappointed, ashamed. And why
shouldn't I be! What do you ever get in this world if you're always
saving every cent? You miss your chance and then it's too late. I'll
be meeting her friends in a few weeks more. I've simply got to hurry!"
And with Amy's dancing teacher she arranged for lessons--at a price that
made her gasp. But the lessons were a decided success.
"You've a wonderful figure for dancing," the teacher said confidingly,
"and a sense for rhythm that most of these women haven't any idea of."
He smiled down at her and she fairly beamed.
"Oh, how nice!" sighed Ethel. Something in the little look which
flashed between them gave her a thrill of assurance. And this feeling
came again and again, in the shops and while she was seated at luncheon
in some crowded restaurant, or on the streets or back at home, where
even Joe was beginning to show his admiring surprise.
"You're making a fine little job of it," she heard him say to Amy one
night.
She caught other remarks and glances from strangers, men and women. And
Ethel now began to feel the whole vast bustling ardent town centred on
what in her high-school club, as they read Bernard Shaw, they had quite
frankly and solemnly spoken of as "Sex." All the work and the business,
the scheming and planning and rush for money, were focussed on this.
And for this she was attracting those swift admiring glances. What she
would be, what she wanted to be, what she now ardently longed to become,
grew clearer to her day by day. For the picture was there before her
eyes. Each day it grew more familiar, as at home in Amy's room she
watched her beautiful sister, a stranger no longer to her now, seated at
her dressing table good-humouredly chatting, and meanwhile revealing by
numberless deft little things she was doing the secrets of clothes and
of figure, and of cheeks and lips and eyes, with subtle hints behind it
all of the ancient magic art of Pan. She felt Amy ceaselessly bringing
her out. This gave her thrills of excitement. And looking at her
sister she asked:
"Shall I ever be like that?"
And they kept talking, talking. And through it all the same feeling was
there, the sense of this driving force of the town.
With the sturdy independence which was so deep a part of her, Ethel
strove to hold up her end of these intent conversations and show that
she had views of her own. She was no old-fashioned country girl, but
modern, something different! They had discussed things in her club
which would have shocked their mothers, discussed them long and
seriously. They had spoken of marriage and divorce, of love and having
children, and then had gone eagerly on to suffrage, jobs and "mental
science," art, music and the rest of life. She had gathered there an
image of New York as a glittering region of strong clever men and
fascinating women, who not only loved to dance but held the most
brilliant discussions at dinners livened by witty remarks--a place of
vistas opening into a world of great ideas. And now with her older
sister, she questioned her about it all, the art and all the
"movements," the "salons" and the clever talk. She asked:
"Do you know any suffragists? Do you know any men who write plays or
novels, or any musicians or painters--or actresses?" And again and again
by an air of assurance Ethel tried to hide her dismay, as her sister
subtly made all this seem like a school-girl's fancies.
"Yes," Amy would say good-humouredly, "there are such people, I
suppose--plenty of them, all over town. And they talk and talk and hold
meetings, and they go to high-brow plays--and some women even work. But
it doesn't sound very thrilling, does it? I don't know. They never
seem to me quite real."
And then Amy would go on to hint what did seem real to her in life. And
again that picture of the town, all centred on what emerged from the
shops and poured into the cafes to dance, was painted for her sister.
But behind her smiling manner of one with an intimate knowledge of life,
Amy would glance at the girl by her side in a curious, rather anxious
way. For vaguely she knew that years ago when she herself had come to
New York, she too had had dreams and imaginings of what her young sister
called "the real thing." And she knew that these had dropped away--at
first in the struggle, which for her had been so intense and narrowing,
to gain a foothold in the town; then through rebuffs from the clever
friends of Joe Lanier when she married him; and later through a feeling
of lazy acceptance of her lot. But Ethel's talk and Ethel's eyes
recalled what had been left behind. And Amy thought of her present
friends, and again with a little uneasy pang she put off their meeting
with Ethel. For they did not seem good to her then, and the picture she
found herself painting of their lives and her own appeared a bit flat
and trivial in the light of Ethel's eagerness. They dressed and went
shopping, they went to tea dances, they dined in cafés or in their
homes, rushed off in taxis to musical plays, and had supper and danced.
They loved and were loved, they "played the game."
"My dear," she said decisively, "it's not what you say that interests
men; it's how you look and what you have on."
But despite her air of assurance and her own liking of her life, she
felt the picture growing flat, and so she added quietly:
"Oh, my friends aren't all I'd like. They never are, if you've anything
in you. If you really want to be somebody--" and here her whole
expression changed to one of resolute faith in herself--"you need just
one thing, money. And you can't do anything about that, you have to
wait for your husband. Joe's a dear, of course, and he's working hard.
And he's getting it, too, he's getting it!" A gleam of hunger almost
fierce came into her clear violet eyes. "I want a larger
apartment--I've picked out the very one. And I want a car, a limousine.
I know just how I'll paint it a mauve body with white wheels. And I
want a house on Long Island. I've picked out the very spot--just next
to Fanny Carr's new place."
As her sister spoke of these ideals, again Ethel had that feeling of
church, but only for a moment.
"Who's Fanny Carr?" she asked alertly.
Amy was slowly combing her hair, and she smiled with kindly tolerance,
for her little confession had brought back her faith in herself and her
future.
"Fanny was a writer once--"
"Oh, really!"
"Yes. She ran a department on one of the papers." It had been the dress
pattern page, but Amy did not mention that. Instead she yawned
complacently. "Oh, she dropped it quick enough--she thought it rather
tiresome. She's one of the cleverest women I know. She'd have got a
long way up in the world, if it weren't for her second husband--"
"Her second?"
"Yes. The first one didn't do very well. She told me once, 'If you
want to get on, change your name at least once in every three years.'
Her second, as it happened, was no better than the first. But she was
clever enough by then to get an able lawyer; and when it came to the
divorce, Fanny succeeded in keeping the house, the one out on Long
Island."
"Oh," said Ethel tensely. Her sister shot a look at her.
"I don't care especially for Fanny's ideas about husbands," she said.
"But at least she has a love of a home." And Amy went on to explain to
her sister the value and importance of being able to give "week ends."
Again the gleam came into her eyes.
"It's money, my dear, it's money. They are the same women in Newport
exactly--just like all the rest of us--only they are richer. That's
all--but it is everything. Put me in a big house out there, and my
friends wouldn't know me in a few years."
A cloud came on her face as she looked in the glass.
"But that's just the trouble. A few years more and I'll be too late.
You've got to get there while you're young. And there's so little time.
You lose your looks. It's all very well for some women to talk about
ideas and things--and travel and--and children. I did, too, I talked a
lot--oh, how I wanted everything! But one has to narrow down. Thank
heaven, Ethel, you've years ahead. I've only got a few more left--I'm
already thirty-one. And my type ages fast in this town, if you do the
things you're expected to do. But you--oh, Ethel, I want you to marry
well! Not a millionaire--that's rather hard, and besides he'd probably
be too fat--but the kind who will be a millionaire, who has it written
all over his face and makes you feel it in his voice! Don't sell
yourself too cheap, my dear! Don't go running about with men who'll
keep you poor for the rest of your days. They talk so well--some of
them do; and it sounds so fine--ideas and books and pictures and--I knew
one who was an architect. And it's all very well for later on, but what
you've got to do right at the start--while you have the looks and
youth--is to find the man who can give you a house where all those other
people will be tumbling to get in--because you'll have the money--you'll
be able to entertain--and give them what they really want--in spite of
all their talking."
Once more, with a weary sigh, she dropped the religious intensity, and
smiled as she wistfully added:
"That's where some man can put you. They do, you know, they do it.
Some man does it every day. You can see his name in the papers. Dozens
of wives get to Newport each year. And what do they do it on? Money!
"That's romance enough for me, my dear. And if you want work and a
career, the most fascinating kind I know is to study the man you've
married--find what's holding him back and take it away--what's pushing
him on and help it grow! You've got to narrow, narrow down! You may
want a lot of children. They're loves, of course, to have around. But
you run a big risk in that. I could give you so many cases--mothers who
have just dropped out. If you want to really get on in this town,
you've got to stick to your husband and make your husband stick to you!
There are things about that you will learn soon enough. It comes so
naturally, once you are in it--married, I mean. And that's your hold.
"And if you love him as I love Joe," she added almost in a whisper, "you
find it so easy that often you forget what it is you're trying to do,
what you're really doing it for. You're just happy and you shut your
eyes. But then you wake up and use it all--everything--to drive him on.
You can do that while you are still young and have what he wants--the
looks, I mean--and can make him see that any number of other men would
be glad to step into his shoes. But you give them only just enough to
keep your husband from feeling too safe. You hold them off, you make
him feel that he's everything to you if he'll work and give you what you
ought to have! And unless you're a fool you don't listen to this talk
of women's rights and women doing the work of men. You keep on your own
ground and play the game. And you keep making him get what you
need--before it's too late!" All at once she gave a sharp little laugh.
"It's a kind of a race, you see," she said.
The night after this talk, Ethel lay in her bed, and tried to remember
and think it out. How new and queer and puzzling. So many vistas she
had dreamed of had been closed on every hand.
"What's the matter with me?"
The matter was that her old ideals and standards were being torn up by
the roots, roots that went deep down into the soil of life in the town
in Ohio. But Ethel did not think of that. She scowled and sighed.
"Well, this is real! I was dreaming! And after all, this is much the
same, but different in the way you get it. This is New York. One thing
is sure," she added. "Amy needs every dollar Joe can make--and she must
not have me on her hands. I've got to find what I really want--a job or
a man--and be quick about it!"
It threw a tinge of uneasiness into those breathless shopping tours.
And it changed her attitude toward Joe. He had not counted for much at
first; he had been a mere man of business; and business men had had
little place in her dreams of friends in the city. But watching him now
she changed her mind.
Joe Lanier was what is called "a speculative builder." He was an
architect, building contractor and real estate gambler, all in one. He
put up apartment buildings "on spec," buildings of the cheaper sort,
most of them up in the Bronx, and sold them at a profit--or a loss, as
the case might be. He dealt in the rapidly shifting values of
neighbourhoods in the changing town. "The gamble in it is the fun," he
remarked to Ethel one evening. Joe was just the kind of a man, as Amy
had told her sister, to make a big sudden success of his work.
Unfortunately he was tied to a partner, Nourse by name, who held him
back. This man Amy keenly disliked. She said that Nourse was a perfect
grind, a heavy tiresome creature who thought business was everything in
the world.
"Sometimes I really believe he forgets it's for making money," Amy
declared. "He's as anxious about it as an old hen, and he wants it
steady as a cow. He detests me, as I do him. He has stopped coming
here, thank heaven. And the time is not so far away when I'll make Joe
see that he's got to lose his partner."
Joe's image gained steadily in importance to Ethel's awakening eyes. Of
his force as a man, all that she saw made her more and more certain that
Amy was right. Joe was the kind who was bound to succeed. He not only
worked hard, his work was a passion. At night and on Sunday mornings he
could sit for hours absorbed in the tiresome pages of real estate news
in his paper. He went out for strolls in the evenings; one night he
asked Ethel to come along; and his talk to her about buildings, the
growth of the city by leaps and bounds, now in this direction, now in
that, caught her imagination at once. Joe felt the town as a living
thing, as she had felt it that first night. Different? Yes, this was
business. But even business, to her surprise, as Joe saw and felt it,
had a strange thrilling romance of its own.
And she soon noticed something else that drew her to Joe. Almost every
evening he would sit down at his piano and start playing idly. As a
rule he played dance music, popular songs from Broadway. But sometimes
leaning back he would drift into other music. And though his hand would
bungle and only sketch it, so to speak--in his black eyes, scowling
slightly over the smoke of his cigar, would come a look which Ethel
liked. But vaguely she felt that Amy did not, that it even made her
uneasy. For almost invariably at such times, Amy would come behind him,
her plump softly rounded arm would find its way down over his
shoulder--and little by little the music would change and would come
back to Broadway.
When Joe heard one evening that Ethel was "mad to learn to sing," he
took her by the arm at once and marched her over to the piano. And they
had quite a session together--till Amy suggested going out to a new
cabaret she had heard of that day. Her voice sounded hurt and strained.
And Ethel from that night on dropped all mention of singing.
Her curiosity deepened toward this city love affair, this husband and
wife who apparently had left so many things out of their lives, things
vital in the Ohio town. The sober wee girl in the nursery kept just as
quiet as before. Often Ethel opened that door and went in and tried to
make friends with its grave shy little inmate and the hostile nurse.
And returning to her room she would frown and wonder for a time. But
the pretty things piling in from the shops, and the gay anticipations,
soon crowded such questioning out of her mind. Swiftly this household
was growing more real, the rooms familiar, intimate; the day's routine
with its small events were becoming parts of her life. Her own room was
familiar now, for by many touches she'd made it her own. And the
dining-room and the living room, where she grew acquainted with Joe,
these too assumed an intimate air. Most of all, her sister's room grew
more and more vivid in her thoughts, though this was still far from
familiar, It held too much, it meant too much.
"Shall I ever live with a man like that?"
The way they looked at each other at times! The way they seemed keeping
watch on each other. If Joe were out very late at night, Amy would
almost invariably grow uneasy and absentminded, and there would be a
challenging note in the way she greeted him on his return. On one such
occasion Ethel was in Amy's room. She went out when Joe came in; but a
queer little gasping sigh behind gave her a start and a swift thrill,
for although she did not turn around she knew they were in each other's
arms. And again, late one afternoon when the sisters came home and
found Joe at work with a tired anxious look on his face, his wife came
up behind him. And the picture of her small gloved hand upon Joe's
heavy shoulder remained in Ethel's memory. It seemed so soft and yet so
strong.
"She can do anything with him she likes. When I marry somebody how will
it be?"
Upon the living-room mantel was a photograph of Amy. And on the smooth
and pretty face with the lips slightly parting, and in the smiling
violet eyes, there was the expression of something which Ethel did not
quite name to herself--for she had forgotten the night long ago in her
high-school club when they had sturdily tackled the word "sensual" and
what it meant. But the picture grew familiar and real, filled in by the
living presence here of this woman who so carefully tended her beautiful
body, her glossy hair, her cheeks and lips; this sister with so many
moods, now intent and watchful, now good-humoured, indolent, now
expectant, hungry, now smilingly content and gay.
And as the picture grew more real, warm and close and thrilling, it
symbolized for Ethel that mysterious force which she could feel on every
side, driving the throngs of humanity--in this city where so many things
she had once deemed important were fading rapidly away. That hungry
hope of a singer's career, that craving for work and self-education,
trips to Paris, London, Rome, books, art and clever people, "salons,"
brilliant discussions of life; and deeper still, those mysterious dreams
about having children and making a home--all began to drop behind, so
quietly and easily that she barely noticed the change.
For this was happening in a few weeks, in the first whirl and excitement
of those dazzling streets and shops, those models, gowns, hats, gloves
and shoes. "It's not what you say that interests men--it's how you look
and what you have on." The image of her sister grew vivid in Ethel's
eager mind. And with it came the question, now ardent though still a
little confused:
"Shall I ever be like that?"