The week after Ethel's return to town, she was surprised one afternoon
when in response to a note she had sent him her husband's partner came
to see her. She had thought it would be more difficult.
"Joe won't interrupt us," he said. "I put work in his way. He'll be
home late."
Tall, gaunt and angular, somewhat stooped, Nourse stood looking down at
her; and as, perplexed and excited, Ethel scanned his visage, so heavy
in spite of its narrow lines, she saw an expression in which contempt
was tempered by a sort of regret and weariness. And of course he was
awkward, too. She said to herself, "Be careful now."
"Won't you sit down?" she asked him.
"Thank you." And he took a seat.
"I wanted to see you," she began, but Nourse interrupted her.
"Would you object," he asked her, "if I do the talking for a while?
I've got it fairly clear in mind, just what I want to say to you."
"Why, yes, of course, if you prefer," she said, a little breathlessly.
"Well, Mrs. Lanier, I think I know about what you want--and I'm here to
say that I'll help you to get it--if in return you will leave us alone."
He stopped for a moment, and went on: "In the last few months, it has
seemed to me, you've been doing your best to bring on a clash between me
and your husband. Every week in the office is worse than the last. I
don't blame you for that, from your point of view. You felt I was
trying to make him eat and sleep in his office. I was--and I am. But
my point to you is that it won't be for long, and I'm doing this really
on your account--to get money enough to satisfy you." She looked up in a
startled way, but he went on unheeding. "You and I must understand each
other. Tell me how much you really need--and we'll get it, Joe and I.
And then I'll give him back to you nights--and in the daytime you leave
him to me."
He glanced at her with a weary dislike which gave her an impulse to say
to him, "Isn't this rather insulting?" But she did not speak. For
looking at him sharply, she caught in the man's heavy eyes a certain
grim, deep wistfulness which drew her a little in spite of his speech.
And she felt very curious, too.
"What do you think I really want?" she asked him, then. Her voice was
low.
"Money," he said.
"Where did you get that idea?"
"From your sister," he replied. "She sent for me, too--long ago."
"What for?"
"Money. She told me that we were not making enough--that I was holding
her husband back--from 'his career' she called it. She said that if I
kept him out of a certain job that meant money quick, she would break up
our partnership. She said she could do it, and she was right. My hold
on Joe wasn't in it with hers."
"What was your hold on him? What do you mean?" asked Ethel. Again her
voice was low. Nourse looked down at his big hands and answered very
quietly:
"I'm afraid you wouldn't understand." She bit her lip.
"But until I do learn what you want of Joe," she retorted sharply, "I'm
afraid that I can't tell you how much money I shall need." He glanced up
at her, puzzled. "Suppose you try me," she went on. And as the man
still frowned at her, "I learned the other day," she said, "that you
knew Joe long before he was married. I want you to tell me about that."
Little by little she drew him out. And as in a reluctant way, in
sentences abrupt and bald, he answered all her questions, again and
again did Ethel feel a little wave of excitement. For Nourse was
speaking of Joe's youth--of college and later of Paris, and then of a
group of young men in New York, would--be architects, painters and
writers who had lived near Washington Square; of long talks,
discussions, plans, and of all night work in the architect's office
where he and Joe had worked side by side. Joe had been a "designer"
there; he had been the brilliant one of the two, and the more
impassioned and intense and bold in his conceptions. There was a
feeling almost of reverence in the low, rough voice of Joe's friend. He
told how Joe had risen, until in a few years he became the chief
designer for his firm; and of how from other firms offers had come. To
keep him his employers had been forced to raise his salary, and to do
much more than that, for money didn't appeal to him then. They had
given him more important work--"job after job, and Joe made good." The
climax of this rising had come one night in the rooms they shared, when
Joe told his friend he had made up his mind to set up an office of his
own, though he was only twenty-nine.
"And he offered me a partnership." The big man's voice was husky now,
as, in a little outburst with a good deal of bitterness in it, he spoke
of the glory of the work of which he and Joe had once been a part. He
seemed appealing to Joe's wife to see, for God's sake, what it was in
Joe that had been lost. Then he stopped and frowned and stared at her.
"Oh, what's the use?" he muttered. But Ethel's voice was sharp and
clear:
"Oh, if you only knew," she cried, "how much good this is doing! I
won't stop to explain but--please--go on!" Her brown eyes threw him a
fierce appeal. And again she had him talking. He told of a plan for
apartment buildings Joe had conceived in those early days. "I don't say
it was practicable, I give it just to show you what the man had in him,"
he said. "Big ideas that strike in deep, the kind that change whole
cities." Instead of a street like a canyon with sheer walls on either
side, the front of each building was to recede in narrow terraces, floor
by floor, so letting floods of sunlight down into the street below and
giving to each apartment a small terrace garden. As she listened, Ethel
grew intent. It was not the mere plan that excited her, she was giving
small heed to the details. But this had in it what she had craved ever
since she had come to the city--beauty and creative work--and this had
been in Joe's "business"!
"There was only one point against it," she heard Nourse saying
presently. "Those terraces took a lot of space. Each one meant so much
rent was lost. For years, till the plan took hold of the town, it was a
money loser. . . . And Joe met your sister then." The voice had
changed, and its hostile tone brought Ethel back with a sharp turn. The
man, as though uneasy at the revelations he had made, was looking at her
as at first, with suspicion and dislike. "I won't go into details of
how she got her hold on Joe. You know how that's done, I suppose. I'm
speaking of the effect on his work. He soon put off that plan of
his--and any others of the kind. For now he had to have money. And he
has been putting it off ever since--not dropping it, he'll tell you,
only putting it off till he's rich. But if he isn't rich enough soon,
it'll be too late. For that part of him is nearly dead.
"But to go back to your sister. It was not only his money, it was his
time she needed. First it was a wedding trip, and after that late
hours--a short day in his office. And he wasn't half the man he had
been. He was thinking of the night before, and then of the night that
was coming. She came for him at five o'clock." He saw Ethel start, and
he added, "Just as you did later on.
"And when he did wake up to work, it was different--it was for money
alone. He began to throw over his ideals, and very soon there was only
me to hold him back. You see, he had had so many friends before he met
your sister, men and even women, too, who had been a spur to him. But
when he brought his wife around, they wouldn't have her, turned her
down--and that made her bitter against them all and she kept Joe from
them. All but me. I stayed in the office, and now and then I got some
of his friends and we would take him out to lunch. But then even that
stopped. Joe hadn't time. He was too busy getting the cash.
"He had dropped all pretence of any work that was really worth while,
and had turned his art into a business. He became a real estate gambler
and an architect, all in one. He got to speculating in land--and what
he built on it he didn't care, so long as it produced the cash. Oh, it
wasn't all at once, you know, you can't strangle the soul of a man in a
hurry--but by the time your sister died, the buildings Joe was putting
up were just about as common and cheap as the average play on
Broadway--crowd pleasers. He had lost his nerve. Everything had to be
popular. Play safe each time, on the same old flats that every woman
seems to love. A woman is conservative. To have and to hold, to get
and keep, to stand pat with both eyes shut--that's the average woman in
this town. And Joe had to play her.
"And because he still had a soul in him--and a stomach that turned--he
began to vary the dulness of it by becoming sensational. He did daring
things, cheap daring things--no real originality in it, but it took on
and caught the eye. Pictures of his buildings got into the real estate
pages of the Sunday papers. He hired a press agent then and went after
the publicity. And all I need to tell you of that, is that just the
other day the press agent came into the office with a scheme for a
string of buildings up on the new part of the Drive. They were to be
patriotic--see?--named after the presidents of our country--cheap and
showy terra-cotta--main effect red, white and blue." Ethel leaned back
with a little gasp. But Nourse added relentlessly, "And Joe didn't turn
him down."
She stiffened sharply in her chair and looked at Nourse with indignant
eyes, as though he alone were to blame.
"You mean to say my husband could even consider such a plan?"
"Why not? There's money in it--big--the publicity value would be
immense. It would make his name a joke of course, with every architect
in town--but think of all the talk, free ads! And that means tenants
pouring in--and money! Don't you like it? She would have--your sister
would, I mean. It was just such a scheme on a smaller scale that made
her send for me one day and tell me I could keep hands off or else get
out of the office. I gave in because I couldn't go--I couldn't quite
make up my mind to the fact that Joe was done for. So I stuck--and she
tried to break me--again and again. But Joe, for all the change in him,
had a loyal streak not only for me but for all he had once meant to do.
Even still he kept saying he'd just put it off, and that when he'd got
the money he'd turn back and we'd begin.
"And when his wife died, I began to have hope. The only blot on her
funeral was the fact that you were there--and you told me you intended
to stay. Her sister--the same story. I soon shook that off,
however--for I saw the way he turned to his work as a refuge from his
grief for her. I had my chance and I took it. When his mind was dull
and numb I began to slip in changes. And each change meant better work
and less easy money. And soon I was making headway fast; for Joe had
never cared for money for himself, but only for her--and she was dead.
So he let our profits go down and down, while what we did got more worth
doing. It even began to take hold of him--of the old Joe that was still
there.
"But after nearly a year of that, I had to laugh at myself for a fool.
For Joe began wanting money again, and I knew he was thinking of
marrying you. I fought, of course, and for a time I had some hope of
beating you. I remembered you as you had been at the time of your
sister's funeral. You had seemed so young and weak to me. But later,
when you were his wife and began taking half his time, keeping late
hours, draining him--for you women can drain a man, you know--then I
knew that you were strong, your sister's sister. I gave in. Or I
should say I took the only chance that was left. I threw over the
things we had dreamed of and got him to work for money hard--harder than
he'd ever done. I drove him! Why? Because I got him back that way.
By making him work for money for you I began to get him away from you.
In time I even got him to stay in the office late at night. I got him
to keep away from you nights. And there was more than that in my
scheme. For now we're making money enough to satisfy even you, I think.
I'm not sure--I'm never sure--your sister taught me never to be.
Perhaps you can't be satisfied. But if you can, I see a chance. Tell
me how much you really need. We'll get it. And then for the love of
God leave us alone before it's too late--before what's in the man is
dead!"
Nourse finished and rose, looking down at her. She sat rigid, keeping
herself in hand. Again and again she had been on the point of bursting
out, for the sheer brutality of so much he had told her had made it very
hard to sit still. But then as he had spoken of Amy, Ethel had kept
silent, watching his face intensely. How much Amy must have done to
have aroused such bitterness! A sense of reality in his talk, a clear
and sudden consciousness of having the real Amy held up here before her
eyes, had gripped Ethel like a vise. Till now she had no clear idea of
how much Joe had sacrificed. But all that finer side of him, that early
life, those dreams, those friends, had all been known to Amy. And Amy
had been willing to lose them all, to crush them out, for money, only
money, and money for such an empty life! Ethel shivered a little. Her
sister's picture was complete.
"No," she said, looking up at Nourse, "I'm not going to leave you alone.
What I've got to do now is to try my best to make you feel what I really
want, and what a mistake you've been making. Please listen, while I try
to be clear." Her expression was strained as she looked at him. She
smiled a little. "I am not like my sister. I'd rather not say much
about her now. She--had her good points, too--she's dead. And all you
need to know is this. You were wrong about me in those first months--I
was trying to get away from Joe. I had my own dreams and I wished to be
free. I even tried to earn my living. I worked for a while. But the
man I worked for--frightened me--and that threw me back on Joe. He was
poor then, so I nursed his child and ran his home on very little. And I
liked that. Believe me--please! I liked that! And I think the main
reason for it was that I was falling in love, not with her husband but
with the man whom you were bringing back to life. It was that in him,
that kind of ambition and that kind of life and friends, that I
wanted--oh, so hard! I was groping about to get them--but it's not easy
in New York. And meanwhile we were married, and about that part of it
you were right. I was selfish, I did want him all. I let everything
go, kept everything out--especially his business. I was jealous of you
as I was of his wife--of everything past--I wanted him new!
"Then my baby came, and it was a time when I did a good deal of
thinking. I--thought out my sister. I saw how different we were. What
she wanted I didn't want at all. So I set to work to change him--and I
thought I was doing it all by myself--just as you thought you were doing
it. Each of us was working alone--and we thought we were working in
spite of each other--against each other. I was against you in his
office, you were against me in his home. And because you hadn't any
idea of what I was trying, you made him work for money for me--to buy me
off! But I don't want money--alone, I mean! And when he came and said
he was rich, it frightened me--I wasn't ready--I had no friends! And so
the money only brought back my sister's friends in a perfect horde--and
with them her memory--her influence--her husband!
"Oh, can't you understand what I mean--and how I'm placed and what it's
like? Can't you believe that I want in him exactly what you want
yourself? But it hasn't been easy! Don't you see? I am only a second
wife! She's here--she has been--all the time--like a ghost--and we
never speak her name! But if you will only work with me--"
She stopped with a quick turn of her head. They listened, and heard
Joe's key in the door. In a moment he had entered the hall.
"Hello. Who's here?" he asked at once.
"It's I," said his partner, quietly, going out to meet him. And sitting
there rigid, she heard him continue in gruff low tones, "Something I'd
forgotten--a point in those Taggert specifications. I want to clear it
up tonight."