She did not see Mrs. Grewe again, she did not want to see her. It was
not until from the telephone girl she learned that the charming young
widow was gone, that Ethel went up to her new home. In a little while
her furniture would begin to pour in, but as yet the rooms were empty,
flooded with warm sunshine. She looked about and thought of the life
which had been here, and then of Mrs. Grewe's advice and her last
smiling admonition. She could almost hear the voice.
"Is every place I live in to be haunted?" Ethel asked herself. And then
with a humorous little scowl: "Now see here, young woman, the sooner you
learn that every apartment in this city has a complete equipment of
ghosts, the better it will be for you. I don't care who lived here, nor
how she lived nor what she said. I don't need her advice, and her life
is not to affect mine in the slightest!" She stopped short. Of whom was
she speaking, Mrs. Grewe or Amy? There were two of them now! Both had
given her advice, and in each case the life portrayed had been very much
alike, so much so as to be rather disturbing. Things were certainly
queer in this town!
"Very well, my dears," she said amiably, "if I must be haunted, it's
much more gay and sociable to have two instead of one. Remember tea
will be served at five, and from the present outlook there's little
chance of our being disturbed by the intrusion of any live woman in New
York."
"At least the ghosts are friendly." She suddenly compressed her lips and
looked about: "However!" She went to the telephone in the hall: "Please
hurry up those porters! I'm up here waiting to begin!"
And in the days that followed, she was far too engrossed in "settling"
to spare any time for brooding on phantoms. "A home of my own and a
life of my own, to be lived with my own husband!" But when at last they
were settled, and Joe in a dear, genial mood had gone about admiring,
and taking no notice apparently of the scarcity of Amy's things--he
turned to Ethel with an air which was meant to be easy and natural:
"Well, now that we're taking a fresh start, the time has come for a
little talk."
"What about?" she asked, endeavouring to make her smile as easy as his.
"It will take about one minute." His gruff voice was low and kind. "I'm
not going to force my friends on you. If you want to make friends of
your own, go ahead. And when you get them let me know--and they'll be
mine, too, if I have to break a leg in the effort. I'll dance in front
of them, so to speak, until they're all enchanted. But in the meantime,
on your side, I want you to let me down easy with these people I once
knew. I don't want to hurt them or be a cad. A few I may keep in touch
with for years."
"Fanny!" flashed into Ethel's mind.
"And all I ask of you is this. You'll soon be going away for the
summer. Let's do the decent thing--just once--and have a little party
here. I give you my word we won't do it again."
"All right, Joe--that's fair, of course--and I'll do my best to make it
exactly what you want."
And in the dinner that she gave, Ethel lived up to her bargain. The
dinner was large; there were twenty guests. The caterer was as before,
and so were the food and the flowers. And all through the evening Ethel
was gracious and affable. But behind her affability, hidden but subtly
conveyed to each guest, was a serene good-bye to them. This was their
dismissal. Did they all feel it, every one? To her at least it seemed
so. Again and again she caught the men throwing looks of regret at Joe,
and the women glancing about the rooms as though in search of what was
gone. Amy's things! Oh, more than that. The whole atmosphere was
gone. This was the home of the second wife.
"Well, dear, did I live up to our bargain?" she asked her husband when
they were alone.
"You did," said Joe. He looked at her then in such a puzzled, masculine
fashion. What she had done and how she had done it was plainly such a
mystery to him. "You did," he repeated loyally. She slipped her arms
about his neck.
"Thank you, love," she answered. And in a moment or two she murmured,
"Have them again in the Fall if you like."
"No," said Joe. "Once was enough."
"Now," she asked herself the next day, "let's try to see what all this
means." She was almost speaking aloud. She was growing so accustomed to
these sociable little chats with herself. "It means that I am getting
on. But Fanny Carr will still be about. She won't come here except
just enough to keep up appearances, but she'll still have her business
dealings with Joe in the management of her property. He means to keep
in touch, he said, 'with a few of them'--meaning her, of course--and his
tone conveyed quite plainly that I am to leave him alone in that until I
can produce friends of my own. Whereupon, my dear," she threw up her
hands, "we come back to exactly the same point at which we have been all
along. Where am I going to find friends?" And she gave an angry,
baffled sigh. "Oh, damn New York!"
As she glared viciously about the pretty, sunny living room, the image
of its former tenant rose up in her memory. And Ethel's expression
changed at once, became intent and thoughtful. How much more attractive
was Mrs. Grewe than were any of Amy's set. Immoral? Yes, decidedly.
But what did "immoral" mean in this town? Who was moral? Fanny Carr?
Did these wives and divorcees do any good with their "moral" lives? She
recalled what Mrs. Grewe had said: "And whether you marry or whether
you don't, for the life of me I can't see any difference." And again:
"With your face and figure, my dear, you don't have to put up with any
one man." Ethel sat frowning straight before her.
"What kind of a life am I going to find? I'm going to stay with my
husband--that's sure. I'm in love with him and he with me. That much
is decided."
She rose abruptly, and walking the floor she firmly resolved to "be
wholesome" and look on the bright side of things. In the next few weeks
she busied herself with the small affairs of her household. There was
plenty to occupy her mind. There were finishing touches to give to the
rooms; there were Spring clothes to buy for Susette; and the baby was
ready for short dresses and a baby carriage. There was the life in the
nursery, a cheerful little world in itself. There was Martha, grown
more friendly now, and Emily and the new waitress, Anne, and the
telephone girl and the chauffeur and the clerks in various shops who had
become acquaintances--altogether quite a circle of people who greeted
Ethel on her rounds. One day as she passed a laundry shop she spied
this sign in the window: "Fine linen respectfully treated." And Ethel
chuckled at the thought that she herself was treated like that. On the
whole it was rather pleasant, though, and she made the most of it. She
was being carefully "wholesome."
Now it was well along in June, time for the children to go to the
seashore, so she began to hunt for a place. At the traveller's bureaus
she visited she found the clerks more than ready to give advice by the
hour to this gracious young creature so stylishly clad. And she had
soon selected a quiet little resort in Rhode Island.
But what was Joe doing all this time? She did not mean to keep prying,
but for the life of her she could not help throwing out casual
inquiries. His reply was always, "Business"; and he would go on to give
her details--all of which were tiresome. How much was he seeing of
Fanny Carr and her detestable money affairs? His manner, engrossed as
it had grown, and even irritable at times, made Ethel feel he was
putting her further and further out of that part of his existence which
now interested him most, the part that lay outside his home. Was it all
business, all of it? "And when I go to the seashore, he'll be here five
nights a week!" Sometimes he came in so late at night! Business? At
such an hour? "Now carefully, carefully, Ethel Lanier." But in spite of
herself the smiling words of young Mrs. Grewe recurred to her mind:
"Most of them are married men."
Ethel's doubts, however, were all ended late one night, when at the
sound of his key in the door she got out of bed and came into the
doorway of her room. Joe was standing in the hall. He did not see her.
In fact, his eyes, when he switched on the light, seemed to see nothing
in the world but the package of business papers he took from his
overcoat. His face was haggard but intent. He turned and went into his
study to work. And any suspicion of Fanny Carr, or of any other friend
of Joe's, was swept at once from Ethel's mind. Her rival was his
business.
And later at the seashore, where she had so many hours alone, she
thought about this work of his with deepening hostility. Her mind went
back into the past. How his office had always absorbed him. What a
refuge it had been in the months that followed Amy's death. "I wasn't
the one who first made him forget. Oh, no, it was his business!" And
now, as it had weaned him once from his grief for the woman who had
died, it was at him again to draw him away from the woman who was
living.
There had been a time when it was not so, when she could keep him late
at breakfast and make him come home early at night, still fresh enough
to read and talk, discuss things, go to the opera, take up his music,
plan a trip to Paris. "Oh, yes! Then we were making a start!" But now
this wretched work of his had got him worse than ever before--and she
blamed his partner for that. She recalled how Nourse had disliked her,
she remembered what Amy used to say about the man's worship of business.
Yes, with his detestable greed for money, only money, Nourse was
doubtless driving Joe. "You're making him just a business man, without
a thought or a wish in his head for anything beautiful, really fine,
ambition, things he dreamed of and told me about when he was
mine--things that would have led us both to everything I wanted--"
She set her lips and whispered:
"All right, friend Bill, then it's you or it's me!" And all the rest of
the summer she set herself determinedly to breaking up the partnership.
"Joe, dear," she said pleasantly, when he had come out for the week end,
"why don't you ever bring your partner with you over Sunday?" And at his
quick look of surprise, "It seems too bad, I think," she added, "never
to have him with us."
"I thought you didn't like him," he said. Ethel gave a frank little
smile.
"I didn't--but that was a year ago. And besides, he didn't like me, you
see. But people do change, I suppose--and as long as he means so much
to you, I should so like to be friendly."
It turned out just as she had expected. Nourse declined the invitation.
"I'm sorry," she said when her husband told her. She felt her position
strengthened a bit. At another time she suggested that Joe's partner be
asked to spend the rest of the summer with him in the apartment back in
town. It was doubtless so much cooler at night than Nourse's bachelor
quarters. And Emily Giles could take care of them both. But this
overture, too, Bill Nourse declined. She could just imagine him doing
it, the surly, ungracious tone of his voice, the very worst side of the
man shown up. Joe often now looked troubled when Ethel talked of his
partner.
But toward the end of the summer in one such talk he gave her a shock.
It was after Nourse had again refused an invitation to come to the
seashore.
"He's queer," said Joe, "and he can be ugly. Being polite is not in
Bill's line. I told him so myself today--and we had quite a session.
"Oh, Joe, I'm sorry," Ethel said.
"You needn't be. Bill Nourse and I will stick together as long as we
live." Ethel looked at him sharply, but he did not notice. "Because,"
he said, "with all his faults, his queerness and his grouches, Bill has
done more than any man living to--well, to keep something alive in
me--in my work, I mean--that I want later on--as soon as I've made money
enough." She stared at him.
"You mean that he--your partner--wants something more than money?" It
was a slip, but she was stunned. He turned and looked at her and asked,
in a voice rather strained and husky:
"Do you think Bill cares about money alone?"
"Why, yes!"
"That's funny." But Joe's laugh was grim. "If Bill had had his way with
me, I'd have had a name as an architect that would have been known all
over the country--instead of being what I am, a gambler in cheap real
estate."
She questioned him further, her manner alert, her eyes with a startled,
thoughtful look. But he did not seem to want to talk.
"Then why," she asked herself in a daze, "if Bill is so against this
business, does he keep at it day and night? Oh, yes, we'll have to look
into this--as soon as I get back to town! You've got to come and see
me, and explain yourself, friend Bill." She frowned in such a puzzled
way. "You, a friend? How funny!"