His Second Wife Part 18

"My plan is simple," he replied. "Leave Joe to me. Keep him quiet at night so he can work, and I'll show you another husband." She shook her head.

"He'd only make more money."

"Tell him you don't want it, then!" She smiled at him.

"Too simple," she said. He looked at her.

"I thought it would be too simple for a woman," was his answer.

"It's worse than that," she replied. "It's blind. You've never been married--apparently--not even to one woman--while Joe, you see, has been married twice. To you a man's life is all in his office--but half of Joe's is in his home--and you'll have to change that half of him, too.

I told you her friends are about--and they have her memory on their side--and so I can't get rid of them until I get some friends of my own."

"Then get them."

"How? Go out on any street and call up, 'Heigh there' at the windows?"

She leaned forward quickly and sternly: "The friends I want are the people he knew--the ones you told me of. That's my plan. Put me in touch with some of them, and let me bring them in touch with Joe. And I'll show you a different partner." He looked at her.

"Well, that's too simple, too," he said.

"Why is it?" she demanded.

"Because in those first years of his marriage I went to them so often, in just the way you're thinking of. I got some of the men he used to know to come to his office and take him to lunch. And it did so little good they quit. They all got sick of it--and they're through."

Ethel leaned forward intensely:

"But it will be different now! Before, they had Amy here working against them! I'm here now, and I'll be on their side!" He frowned, and she cried impatiently, "You don't believe me, do you! You don't believe I can do anything--or even that I want to!"

He looked at her for a moment.

"Yes," he said, "I almost do."

"Then please give me a chance," she said, very low. And by her eager questions she began to draw out of Nourse the information she wanted.

It did not come easy, for the past seemed buried deep in his memory. As one by one he spoke of Joe's friends he would add, "But he's dead," or, "He's gone West." He had kept track of them, after a fas.h.i.+on, but he had seen them little of late. What a lonely life he had led, she thought.

She wondered if he had grown too old and hopeless to be of any help.

She fought down her discouragement.

"There was Crothers," he was saying. "He's an architect, and he's doing good work. He never had Joe's boldness, but he always had a fine sense of things, and at least he has stuck to his ideals. He could do more to bring Joe back than any other man I know."

"Then we must get him!"

"That will be hard."

"Why will it?"

"Because some years ago I tried to get Crothers into our firm. The two of us together might have kept Joe from the mere money jobs and made it a firm to be proud of. Crothers was ready to come in, and I had nearly succeeded in bringing Joe to agree to it."

"Then what was the matter?"

"Your sister. Joe had told her he was thinking of some move in his business which would keep him poor awhile. And she flew into quite a rage. That was another time she sent for me." Nourse leaned grimly back in his chair. "She told me that if I ruined her husband's 'career,' as she called it, she'd break us apart once and for all. She wouldn't have Crothers in the firm--not only because it meant money lost, but because Crothers' wife had turned her down." Ethel looked at him sharply.

"Oh--he has a wife," she said.

"Yes, and she wasn't your sister's kind. She was a college woman who wanted to be a great painter--and when the painting petered out, she shut her jaw and said, 'Never mind. If I can't paint landscapes I can make them.' And she took up landscape gardening. She married Burt Crothers soon after that, but she stuck to her work and in course of time it fitted in with her husband's. He and Sally have struggled along up-hill, and though they've never made much money they've had a lot of fun out of life."

"She sounds so nice," Ethel hungrily murmured.

"Oh, yes, she's nice enough," he said, "until you go against her. Then Sally gets mad, and stays that way. And she got that way," he added, "when we turned her husband down. She hadn't liked your sister. In fact, when Joe married and brought his wife and the Crothers together, it wasn't a go. She called your sister 'hopeless.' And when Joe's wife came back at her by keeping Crothers out of our firm, then war was declared."

Nourse broke off and looked at Ethel.

"So you see what you're up against," he said. "Yes, I see," said Ethel.

At every door to her husband's youth, Amy seemed to be barring the way.

She gave an impatient little shrug. "If I could only show them!"

"What?"

"That I'm different! And the hole I'm in! And what it is I want in Joe! . . . Can't you go and talk to them?" There was impatience again in her eyes. He saw it and smiled wearily.

"You think I'm mighty weak," he said, "with not much fight left in me.

You're right, I guess. But you don't know what I've been through in the last seven years. I stuck to Joe--and they didn't like that. Sally said I had knuckled down to Joe's wife. So she hasn't asked me there in years. And if I were to go to her now, I'm afraid my opinion of you wouldn't count."

There was another silence. Again that dull weight of discouragement fell, and again she shook it from her.

"Nevertheless," she said quietly, looking him full in the face, "I mean to have Crothers in our firm." She saw the mingled liking and compa.s.sion which came in his eyes, and she bit her lip to keep down the wave of self-pity which arose in her.

"Perhaps you will," she heard him say. His voice sounded a long way off. She brought herself back to him with a jerk.

"Of course I will! We will, I mean! You and I are to work together, you know. Now will you please tell me," she continued grimly, "one person who knew my husband and who will be so very kind as not to call for the police the minute I come into view?" A moment later she started forward. "Oh, please!" she cried. "Do that again! You chuckled!

Don't deny it! Go on and really laugh with me!" Her voice, unsteady and quivering, broke into a merry laugh, and in this Joe's partner joined.

Then she said sternly. "You give me a friend!"

Nourse thought for a moment. "There's only one left on the list," he replied.

"His name, please--"

"Dwight."

"Business?"

"Music. He shows rich girls how to sing. She stared at him.

"But look here," she said emphatically. "I'm a rich girl--I'm very well off--and I certainly propose to sing! I used to, in the choir at home--and I was told I had quite a voice! And I meant to take lessons in New York--of a tall dark man with curly hair--"

"Dwight," said Nourse, "is fair and fat."

"Never mind. Then he probably has blue eyes. And they twinkle at you--in the friendliest way--"

"Young woman, I'm your husband's friend."