_ 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.
"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 fashion, 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 compassion 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."
"Never mind if you are. You're not enough. I want more of his friends. Now tell me--where did the fat man study? Abroad?"
"In Paris."
"Oh!" she cried. "Were he and Joe together there?"
"They were, for a while--"
"Oh, how nice!" She laughed at him. "What a dear you've been to me," she said. "You like me, don't you!"
"Yes--I do."
"Quite a good deal!"
"All right," he said. She was watching his face. "This is new to him," she was thinking.
"You believe I don't want money!"
"Yes--"
"Nor friends like Amy's!"
"You don't seem to."
"And I don't. I want friends like you and this Mr. Dwight--and that odious Sally Crothers who won't even let me in at her door. And her husband--yes, he'll do. Why how the circle widens!"
"So far," Nourse reminded her, "I'm the only circle you've got."
"Yes, and a very nice one. And now you're going to be a dear, and go to this man Dwight and say what a remarkable voice I have--and tell him all my other points, and the hole I'm in and the money I have. Don't forget that--the money I have--for my acquaintance with Mr. Dwight leads me to believe that wealth is a great inducement with him. It makes his blue eyes twinkle so."
"Very well," Nourse answered grimly. "But when you get them twinkling, what are you going to do with him?"
"Sing with him," was her firm reply. "And between songs _talk_ with him--of Paris and my husband, and the great ideals I have--and the delicious dinners I have--for he's fat, you know, and he loves his meals--and then ask him to come to dinner, of course." She scowled. "That," she said severely, "is all I can tell you at present. My plans for resurrecting Joe will have to be made as I go along--step by step and friend by friend." All at once she turned on him fiercely. "There's that pity again in your eyes! 'Oh, how young,' you are thinking. Then let me tell you, Mr. Bill Nourse, that you are not to pity me! If you do," she cried, "the time will come when you will be pitying yourself--for being cast off like an old leather shoe--from one of the most brilliant and attractive circles in this town! Do you know what you almost do to me--you, the one friend I have in New York? You make me feel you've almost lost your faith and hope in everything--that you're nearly old! You make me wonder if I'm too late--whether my husband is nearly old, and the dreams he had in him cold and gone! You scare me--and you've got to stop! You've got to be just exactly as young as I am--this very minute! You've got to borrow some youth from me--for I have plenty to go around--and help me make this fight for friends! It may not come to anything--for the soul of this city is hard as nails! This music man may turn me down--or be perfectly fat and useless! Who knows? But how can I tell till I meet the man? And when will you go and see him? Today or tomorrow? I haven't very much time, you know, for any more shilly-shallying! I want some action out of you--"
She faced him flushed and menacing, and he took her hand and said:
"You'll get it. Where's your telephone!"
"Right there in the hall!"
"I'll call up Dwight."
"Wait! Is he married?"
"No."
"Thank God!" _