_ CHAPTER XXV
Mrs. Crothers lived in a small brick house on a side street close to Washington Square. As Ethel looked out from her automobile, how dear and homey it appeared, with such a quiet friendly face. "Now for the plunge." She went up the low steps and rang the bell. Thank Heaven it was a rainy day, for when the maid came Ethel went right in, and the rain made that seem natural. At least no door had been shut in her face. She wanted to get inside this house!
"Is Mrs. Crothers at home?" she asked. The maid was not sure. Ethel gave her a card and was shown into a long cosy room with an old-fashioned air, where a small coal fire looked half asleep. She began to look around her. The walls were lined with book-shelves, with only a picture here and there. No wall-paper. "How funny." She frowned and added, "But it's nice." There was but little furniture, and plenty of room to move about. "What a love of a mirror." It was of gilt, and it reached from floor to ceiling between the two front windows. Gravely she looked at herself in the glass. "Oh, I'm not very excited."
The maid reappeared, and said, "Mrs. Crothers asks you to excuse her. She's sick with a headache this afternoon."
"Oh, what a lie!" thought Ethel. She stood for a moment irresolute, her heart in her mouth. "I will, though!" she decided, and took out another card. "Then take her this little note," she said. And she wrote: "I know I am being quite rude--but if the headache is not too severe will you see me just for a little while! I would not bother you--honestly--but it is something so important--and it must be settled today." It took two of her cards, and even then it was horribly crowded and hard to read. "Never mind," she thought. "That's as far as I'll go. If she can't read that I'm done for!"
The maid had taken the message upstairs.
"Now I've done it, I've gone too far. I'm done for--oh, I'm done for! Well, look about you, Ethel, my love--it's the last look you'll ever get at this room! How dear it is, what taste, what a home. Books, pictures, a piano of course--and the very air is full of the things that have been said here after dinner, over coffee and cigarettes, by all the people you want to know. Not rich nor 'smart' like Newport--just people with minds and hearts alive to the big things that really count, the beautiful things! . . . Good-bye, my dears--you're not very kind."
"She'll be down in a moment," said the maid.
"Thank you!" Ethel had wheeled with a start; and again left alone, she stood without moving. "Well, here you are--you've got your chance! And how do you feel? Plain panicky! Never mind, that's just what will catch her attention! Be panicky! Oh, I am--I am!" And her courage oozed so rapidly that when her hostess came into the room, and with a smile that was rather strained, said "I am so glad to see you--" the girl who confronted her only stared, and suddenly shivered a little. Then she forced a smile and said, "How silly of me to shiver like that."
"Come here by the fire and sit down." Mrs. Crothers' voice was suddenly kind. "Now tell me how I can help you," she said.
"Thank you. Why, it's simply this. I've had trouble with Joe, my husband--just lately--in the last few days. And the trouble is so serious that--it's my whole life--one way or the other. At least it--certainly feels so! And I have no women friends I can go to. They're all his--hers, I mean."
"Hers!"
"Yes. My sister's. She is dead--but very much alive at times--through the friends she left behind her. I've been fighting them all my life, it seems--ever since I married Joe!"
"Why were you fighting them?" Ethel frowned:
"Because they--well, they were all just fat--in body and soul--the women, I mean--and the men were just making money for food and things to keep them so. Do you know what I mean--that kind of New Yorker?"
"I do," said Mrs. Crothers. "Was that the cause of your trouble with Joe!"
"Partly--yes. You see when I tried to shake them off, they wouldn't be shaken--they hung on--because Joe was growing rich all of a sudden. Oh, I got pretty desperate! But then I learned of other friends that Joe had had here long ago--before he married _her_, you know. And I hunted for them--one by one. I could feel they were just what he needed, you see. I mean that back among such friends I hoped he'd stop just making money and get to work--on things he had dreamed of! You understand?"
"I think so--but not fully. Go on in your own way, my dear. Don't try to think. Keep talking."
"Thank you. I was in love with him. There was nobody else, man, woman or child--except Susette. She was Amy's little girl. You see, Mrs. Crothers, when Amy died I was there--I had just come to town. So I stayed with Joe to look after Susette. Then later on I began to feel that he was beginning to care for me. And I didn't like that--on Amy's account, for I worshipped her then. So I broke away and took a job. . . . Oh, what in the world am I getting at!"
"Don't try to think. Just tell me. You took a job. What was it?"
Ethel told of Greesheimer, and then of coming back to Joe, of his poverty and of her nursing Susette, of dreaming of children, of falling in love, of marriage and the birth of her boy.
"But all the time Amy had been there. Do you understand! Like a spirit, I mean! She had Joe first! She had shaped him!"
"Yes--"
"And so when he loved me even more, I do believe, than he ever loved her--still he did the thing she would have wanted. Amy had taught him to show his love by loading money on his wife. And that was what started everything wrong. For he got rich--for my sake--and the money brought Amy's friends back in a horde! Oh, now I'm repeating! I've said all that--"
"Please say it again! You're doing so well!" Ethel told about Fanny and the rest. "I tried to like them--honestly! But I simply couldn't!" she cried.
"Why couldn't you? Tell me plainly just what it was you wanted."
"What I wanted? Plainly? Oh, dear--I can't exactly--"
"What kind of people?"
Ethel frowned.
"Not just eaters!" she exclaimed. "I wanted men and women who--well, who were seeing something big--and beautiful and real in life! Life is so hard and queer in this town--so awfully crowded and mixed up--and empty, somehow. You know how I mean? But they see something in it all. Not clearly--it's way off, you know. And they're busy of course, and by no means saints. They have their worries and their faults and pettiness--they're human, too, But they're looking for something really worth while! Oh, I can't express it--I really can't!"
"Oh, yes you can, you've done quite well," said Mrs. Crothers steadily. "And now to narrow this down to Joe, you wanted him to be like that--in his work and so in his life with you. Was that it?"
"Yes! And he used to be! You must know that!"
"Yes--I knew that. Your husband and I were once very good friends."
"That's it, and I guessed it!" Ethel cried. "I was making wild guesses in the dark. And at last I put my finger on his partner, and we had a talk. It was a talk, a hard one--but I made him believe me in the end. And he told me a little about you--and I wanted to meet you, oh, so much! But he seemed to be out of touch with you, so he took me to Mr. Dwight instead. I had always wanted to sing, you know--and the rest of it--well, Mr. Dwight must have told you."
"Only a little," was the reply. "I don't yet fully understand. How did all this bring trouble with Joe? It's something serious, you said--"
"It's something very nasty." And Ethel began telling of Fanny's revelations. In the midst of it the door-bell rang.
"One moment." And Sally went into the hall. "Whoever it is, say I've a headache," Ethel heard her tell the maid. "The same old headache," Sally remarked as she grimly pulled the portieres. They waited in a tense little silence till the visitor had gone. "And Alice," Sally called to the maid. "If any one else comes, say I'm out." She turned back to Ethel, smiling:
"Suppose you stay to supper. I'll telephone my husband to dine at his club--and we'll go right on with this talk of ours. We'll go on," she added determinedly, "until we have Joe so in our toils that he'll be yours so long as he lives."
Ethel suddenly sniffed and swallowed hard, and said, "Oh, what a dear you are to me!"
Sally looked at her queerly.
"This is to be a talk without tears, but much good sensible planning," she said. "I don't blame you a bit for having been frightened--you've been through an ugly time. But I think with a little common sense--"
"I know," said Ethel, "that's just what I need. And that is why I came to you."
"Thank you," Sally smiled again. "Now go on about Mrs. Carr."
The talk went on, with interruptions for supper and Sally's two small children, far into the evening. And Mrs. Crothers did her share--filling in for Ethel the picture of Joe's old life, his work and dreams, and his first marriage. She told of several meetings with Amy. And all the time she kept watching, probing into this young second wife, skilfully raising Ethel's hopes, her vivid freshness and her youth, her hunger for a life she saw only in dazzling glimpses.
"Do you want my advice about meeting Joe! Then here it is," she said at the end. "I needn't say don't go on your knees--"
"You needn't!"
"I thought so--you're not that kind. And I wouldn't explain too much about Dwight, and those little things you did with him. Make Joe take you on faith or not at all. Have a long talk and make him listen--don't give him a chance to say a word. Talk right on and give him the picture of his two wives, and then let him choose--between letting you go, while he takes her friends, or dropping them and keeping you and finding what he had before. I can help you in that--but before I do, I think you've got to lay a ghost. She's in the way of everything. She has been in your home long enough. And her strength is the fact that you and Joe never mention her name to each other. I wonder if you realize how great a danger that has been. At any rate I'm very sure that you must break the silence now. It has been like a spell between you." _