His Second Wife Part 17

"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 partners.h.i.+p. 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 impa.s.sioned 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 partners.h.i.+p." 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 G.o.d'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 s.p.a.ce. 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 G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+vered 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.

"h.e.l.lo. 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."

CHAPTER XVII

What impression had she made? How far had she overcome the heavy weight of dislike and suspicion Amy had rolled up in his mind? As Ethel's thoughts went rapidly back over the things Nourse had told her, again and again with excitement she felt what a help he could be if he would.

Here lay the gate to her husband's youth.

"If only he'll believe in me! Shall I send for him? No," she decided.

"If there's any hope, he'll come again."

She waited three days. Then he telephoned, "Can I see you today at four o'clock?" She answered, "Yes, I'll be very glad." And she felt a little faint with relief as she hung up the receiver.

When he came in, that afternoon, one glance at him made her exclaim to herself, "He half believes! He's puzzled!"

"Well, Mrs. Lanier," he began at once, with more friendliness now in his heavy voice, "if I've made any mistake about you, I'm sorry. But you must show me first. If you're real about this, you look to me like a woman who would have thought it all out in the last few days and formed a plan. What is it?"

His abruptness rather took her breath for a moment. Then she said, "Yes, I have a plan, but so have you. What is it?" At her quick retort she saw a smile of grim relish come over his large features.