She slept that night exhausted, woke up early the next morning and lay
motionless on her bed: at first staring bewildered about the room, and
then, with a sharp contraction of her brows and a quick breath, looking
intently up at the ceiling. A vigilant look crept into her eyes, for at
once instinctively she was on guard against letting the feelings of
yesterday rise.
"What a selfish little beast I've been. Did I help in the funeral? Not
a bit. Did I comfort poor Joe? Not at all. I was occupied wholly with
my own morbid little soul. Now we're going to stiffen up, my love, and
try to be of some use to Joe, and do as Amy would have liked." She began
to tremble suddenly. "No, we're not going to think of her! It's
dangerous! Be practical! To begin with, I must clear things up. I'll
have a little talk with Joe. Poor Joe--it's going to be pretty
dreadful. I'll stick by him, though, and I've got to learn how to keep
him from going out of his mind." More staring at the ceiling. "One
thing I know. I shan't wear black. Amy detested mourning, and Joe will
see life black enough as it is. . . . Thank Heaven there's the
housekeeping to do. That shall run smoothly if it kills me! . . .
All right, now suppose we get out of bed."
About an hour later, from behind Amy's silver coffee pot, Ethel had her
talk with Joe. She felt ill, but she bit her lips and smiled. She had
dressed her hair becomingly and had donned a blue silk waist, one of the
countless pretty things that she had bought with Amy. Her brown eyes
had a resolute brightness.
"We'll have to help each other," she said. "And there's Susette to be
thought of. The best way, I guess, is not to try to do much planning
ahead just now. But I'd like to stay here if you want me, Joe. There's
no other place where I want to be."
He gave her a grateful tired smile. His hair was a bit dishevelled, and
over his blunt kindly face had come a haggard lost expression. His
voice was low:
"Thank you, Ethel--you're a brick. I want you here at first, God knows.
Later I'll try to fix things so that you can feel more free. You're
only a kid, with a life of your own. Big city, you know, and you'll
find your place."
He stared over at the window, where the sun was streaming in.
"Another cup of coffee, Joe?"
"No, thanks." he rose slowly, and added, "Let's go now to--Amy's
desk--and fix up the housekeeping part of it."
Later he said, "I'll see the nurse and the other two maids and tell 'em
they're to take orders from you." He paused a moment. "And Ethel--if
you're to stay here, I want it to be as nearly like it was as I can." he
gave a wincing frown. "I mean on the money side," he said. "I'll give
you a check the first of each month. You'll need things of your own, of
course--as she did. I want it just like that."
"Thank you, dear." She saw a muscle in his cheek suddenly begin to
twitch, and she thought, "It won't be easy."
When Joe left for his office, she went with him to the door.
She turned at once to the housekeeping. Her talks with the waitress and
the cook left her both a little relieved and a good deal disappointed.
For there seemed to be nothing for her to do; she was made to feel that
things would run best with the least possible interference. She learned
with surprise that hitherto the cook had done all the ordering.
"All I need to know is how many is coming," said the cook.
"There won't be any one for awhile."
"Then it's very simple, ma'am." On the woman's face was a look which
said, "Just you keep out of my kitchen."
It was the same in her talk with the nurse. That tall gaunt creature
briefly explained that, "Mrs. Lanier bought clothes Spring and Fall,
and then she left the child to me. I go out every Thursday and every
other Sunday--afternoon and evening. Lucy the waitress takes my place.
The rest of the time I've managed alone." She looked around in a jealous
way and asked, "I suppose you'll want things as before?"
"Yes, for the present," Ethel said. She felt the woman glance at her
sharply as she turned toward the door.
She went into her sister's room, sat down and had a little cry. But the
sunlight was streaming in through the pretty chintz curtains there; and
its softness and its ease, its luxury and blithe content, stole into her
spirit and quieted her. She sat looking about.
"What is there for me to do?"
It came over her that the cook and the nurse could tell her just about
what they pleased. She had no means of checking them up, for Amy had
never talked of such things. It had all been pretty clothes and shops,
in those brief exciting weeks, and shrewd counsel about men and what it
was they wanted of women. How appallingly shallow and meaningless those
conversations now appeared. They gave no comfort or support. The
remembrance of the terror in Amy's eyes at the thought of death rose
vividly in Ethel's mind, and she got up and walked the floor.
"We'll fight this down--we'll fight this down," she kept repeating
determinedly. And as soon as she was quiet again: "What is there for me
to do? Why Joe, of course--and heaven knows he'll be enough. He's the
hardest kind, he doesn't cry, he keeps it all inside of him." She drew a
deep breath. "How about this room?" She frowned and looked around her.
"No, I don't think he wants anything changed. For the present at least,
I'll leave it alone. But he ought not to be reminded of her by every
little thing he sees."
She looked into the closets. In Joe's she found some of Amy's things.
She put them back in her sister's closet and then gently closed the
door. As she stood there a moment longer, she had a curious feeling of
Amy's presence by her side.
"Now, my dear, we'd better go out for a walk," she told herself as she
turned away. But she threw a glance behind her.
In the weeks that followed she and Joe were more intensely alone
together than she could have imagined.
At first a few of Amy's friends kept dropping in every now and then.
But although their intentions were kindly enough, Ethel felt repelled by
them. She resented their having been Amy's friends. For swiftly and
quite unconsciously, in her resolute groping in the dark for solid
ground on which to stand, she was building up an ideal of her
sister--and these women jarred on that. They came to her direct from a
world, her sister's world, which she now vaguely felt to be cheap,
shallow, disillusioning. And she needed her illusions. By nature frank
to bluntness, she was not good at hiding dislikes; and her uneasy
visitors soon realized with relief that they were not wanted here.
Fanny Carr still came for a time. For some reason that Ethel could not
understand, this shrewd person seemed reluctant to let go her hold as a
friend. She was most solicitous about Joe and tried to come when he was
at home. But as Ethel's dislike of the woman deepened in intensity,
gradually Fanny's visits, too, grew less frequent and then ceased.
During the first week or two, Joe's partner almost every night came home
with him to dinner and took him out for evening walks. But his talk was
all of business. It seemed to Ethel that purposely Nourse shut her out
of the conversation. His manner to her, though not unkind, was like
that of the cook and the nurse. "The less you meddle here," it said,
"the better it will be for Joe. Leave him to me."
Gleams of this feeling came in his eyes. It showed now and then so
openly that even Joe took notice. He stopped bringing his partner home,
and he drew closer to Ethel now, as together they cherished the memory
of the woman who was gone.
And slowly, in this companionship, this loneliness, this quiet, Joe grew
very real to her, and appealing in his grief. Everything else seemed so
remote--but he was close. "He needs me." It was a bright spot in the
dark. At times this darkness had no end, it stretched away to eternity;
but at least she did not face it alone. Of Joe's grief she could have
no doubt. Each week his blunt strong features displayed more lines of
suffering; his high cheek-bones showed hard and grim. He was grateful,
affectionate at times, but more often silent, and she saw in his eyes
what frightened her. He had so few resources here. In his office was
his work, just as it had always been; but at home there was nothing; his
wife was gone, and he seemed restless to get out.
"Let's go somewhere," he would mutter.
She went with him for strolls in the evenings. Often they walked on and
on till both were ready to drop with fatigue, but she stuck doggedly by
his side. One evening they passed the open door of a church. It was
lighted, and the deep low rumble of an organ floated out. Joe stopped a
moment irresolute, and then started to go inside. But a glance through
the door revealed to him that the church was nearly empty; and he turned
away as he would have turned from any show on Broadway which was so
obviously "not a hit."
"Sometimes on Sunday mornings I seem to hear 'em, preachers, droning and
shouting all over the land," he told her once. "What's in it? What do
they know about God or where you go when you are dead? Nothing, no more
than you or I!"
His voice was harsh and bitter then, but the next instant it was kind.
With his arm about her he was saying:
"Don't, Ethel--please--don't take it like that! I was a brute! I won't
again! I'll keep it inside! I'm sorry, dear!"
"Oh, Joe," she whispered, "if we only knew!"
So these two faced eternity.
But only at moments. They looked away. For she saw how good it was for
Joe to have the distractions that he craved; and so on their long walks
at night she took him to the noisy streets, or into the movies, where
his mind appeared to stop and find some rest. Best of all, she
discovered, was to go with him in the small car which he used for his
business. Driving this car through crowded streets amid a clamour and
blare of horns and shouts and peals of laughter, the look on Joe's face
made Ethel see how this dulled his grief, how he lost himself and his
questionings and became a mere part of the town. What a glamourous
seething town! There was something terrific to her in its laugh. If
you stopped to think and ask yourself, "What are we all doing here?" how
soon it jostled you back into line!
So passed another fortnight. Then Joe grew quieter, and with relief she
saw he was ready to stay home. She herself felt tired and relaxed; and
it was good to sit at home on these December evenings and feel that both
had partly emerged from the sea of doubts in which they had been
plunged. He had come out of it, she soon learned, with an image of his
wife that even Ethel vaguely felt was swiftly becoming so ideal as to
have little or no resemblance to the woman who had died. But eagerly
she helped him in this building of Amy's memory. She dwelt upon Amy's
appealing side, her lovable moods, her beauty and dash, her unerring
instinct for pretty things, her unselfishness, her anxious planning for
Ethel's good.
And all this fitted in so well with the picture Joe was making of the
wife who had been so true to him, who had never had a thought or a wish
for anything but his career. How cheerfully she had given up all sorts
of pleasures, trips abroad, a house in the country, summer vacations.
Year after year she had spent the hot months almost wholly in town
because he could not afford to leave, although she herself had had many
chances to go to friends in the mountains or up along the seashore.
Instead she had stayed with him in town; and in the evenings always she
had been waiting, good-humoured and gay, ready to stay home or go out;
with never a word of complaint for the delay of his prosperity, but only
encouragement and praise.
At times, as Joe talked on and on, in this mood of hungry wistful love
and humility and self-reproach, Ethel would bring herself back with a
jerk to the Amy she had known; but again she would feel herself borne
along upon the tide of his belief, and she was glad that it was so. So
the picture grew. Nor was it only when they talked. For often in long
silences, when she thought he was reading his paper, she would glance up
from her book and find him staring into the past. And again at the
piano, smoking and playing idly, his music made her realize how his mind
was groping back through the years, picking and choosing here and there
what he needed to build up his ideal.
This music at times made her curious, wondering what kind of a man he
had been before Amy took him in hand.
"Where did you learn to play like that, Joe?" He frowned a little.
"Oh, long ago."
He did not seem to care to go back of his marriage. So Ethel let him
continue his building; and though at times she smiled a little at some
of his fond recollections, still her own deep adoration of her older
sister, the whirl of happy memories of that vivid month in town, and the
sense of all that Amy had been planning to do for her, combined now with
her desperate loneliness to put Ethel in a mood where she gladly and
loyally believed almost anything good of her sister.
Christmas was only one example of many similar incidents. They had a
small Christmas tree for Susette, and they hung up her stocking as well,
and went out Christmas Eve and bought candy canes and dogs and dolls and
picture books. And although this was Ethel's idea, it was made to
appear as only the thing which Amy would have done had she lived.
So in these two hungry souls, groping for something bright and deep and
strong upon which they could live, swiftly and unawares to them both the
picture of Amy was stamped deep, idealized and beautified. In life it
had been fascinating, but now it was almost heroic as well. It was as
though the small gloved hand, which Ethel had noticed so many times, in
death had increased the power of its light, firm, tenacious hold.
Ethel began to feel more free, for Joe was no longer on her mind. More
than once, in fact, she was surprised at the way he seemed to be
settling down. She felt a deeper change in him, something she did not
understand. The worn harassed expression she had so often seen on his
face while his wife had been alive, the look of a man driven and drained
of his vitality, was now gone; and in its place was an unconscious look
of content. He often stayed very late at the office; and more and more
in his evenings at home he went to his desk and became absorbed in
documents and blue print plans.
"What a refuge a man's business is," she thought with a twinge of envy.
And wistfully she began to look about for some resource for herself.
She felt the youth within her rise, but the city seemed so vast and
strange. In her loneliness the big building of which her present home
was a part, seemed doubly huge, impersonal, hard; and so did every other
building on that block appear. She felt lost, left out amid ceaseless
tides of gaiety on every hand. She took long determined walks, and on
these walks she donned the smart attractive clothes that she had bought
with Amy. She strove to keep her mind on the sights, the faces of
people afoot and in cars, the adorable things in shop windows. And she
chatted busily to herself in order to keep on admiring. This old habit
of hers, of soliloquy, had grown upon her unawares, as a refuge from her
loneliness. Sometimes she even talked aloud. Sturdily she told
herself:
"You've only begun. You'll get up out of this, Ethel Knight--just wait.
Can't you give a few months to Amy now?"
And scowling at her "morbidness" in feeling dreary and forlorn, she
resolutely scanned the papers for news of lectures, plays and concerts.
She went to a few in the afternoons, and dressed for them as carefully
as though they were great social affairs. And in the intermissions when
a buzz of talk would rise, she would begin with quick animation to
converse with herself and be gay, or alert and argumentative. Her lips
would move inaudibly. Now and then she would brightly smile and nod
across the house at some friend she pretended to have seen. She
enrolled for a course of lectures upon "Mental Science." She resumed her
reading of magazines and books on all kinds of topics. It made her
think of high school days, and hungrily she reached back for that old.
zest and inquisitiveness about everything under the moon and stars.
And through this searching she caught hints of the presence in the city
of a life wider and deeper than shops and yet not antagonistic--a life
of gaiety, grace and ease, but with it all the brilliancy to which Amy
had been blind; the rich ferment of new ideas in women's lives,
discussions, work of many kinds, art, music, "movements" all combined
into one thrilling pulsing whole. And again she felt within herself
that rising tide of youth and eager vitality.
"Oh, what couldn't I do, my dear, if I only had a chance? Why doesn't
somebody see it at once--notice me now, right here on the street? You,
madam, in that limousine--look out and see me--don't go by! You're
losing the chance of a lifetime! You're missing me--me--Ethel Knight!"
As the dame in her car sped smoothly by, Ethel suddenly laughed aloud.
But her laughter had a dangerous note, and she added fiercely, biting
her lip:
"Now, don't be silly and burst into tears!"
"Ma'am?" said a voice.
She stopped with a jerk and looked up into the startled eyes of a
massive young policeman. Her last remark had been spoken directly up
into his face, and the youth was blushing visibly.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Excuse me!"
"Certainly, ma'am."
And she hurried on.
This loneliness lasted several weeks. Then Joe grew dimly aware of it,
and came to her assistance with awkward efforts to comfort her. He was
at home more often at night. His gruff voice took on a kindlier tone,
and in an offhand manner intended to seem casual he would ask where she
had been that day or what book she was reading. And they would discuss
it for a while. He took her to the theatre and to a concert now and
then. They went for rides at night in his car, and he talked to her
about his work. She could feel his anxious friendliness. "What a dear
he is to me," she thought.
As time went on this companionship grew so natural to them both that
more than once Ethel felt in herself a content which made her a little
uneasy. As in his blunt kindly way Joe drew closer to her now, she had
an awkward consciousness of being in her sister's place. No, not that
exactly. Still, she did not care to think of it. She kept out of Amy's
room. It had subtly changed and become Joe's room--to her mind at
least--though by little things he said and did she knew that Joe was
keeping that idealized image of his wife still warm and living in his
mind.
But was he--altogether? At times she would frown to herself a bit. Joe
loyal? Yes, of course he was, she would indignantly declare. In a
novel Ethel had once read, the hero who had lost his wife had taken his
grief in this same silent way; and the author had laid it down as a law
that all quiet widowers are the kind who never, never marry again. This
thought had taken root in her mind; and she applied it now to Joe.
Soon at his suggestion she began to use some of Amy's things. One night
when they were going out, he helped her slip into her sister's soft
luxurious sable cloak. And as she turned, she detected a queerly
uncertain look in Joe's eyes. But in an instant it was gone, and she
soon dismissed her uneasiness. For through the weeks that followed he
became engrossed in his business and barely noticed her at all.