_ CHAPTER IV
Ethel had been about four weeks in town, and now she was to meet Amy's friends. Amy was giving a dinner the next evening in her honour; and to let the cook and the waitress have a rest on the preceding night, Joe took Amy and Ethel out to dine in a cafe. His business had gone well that week and Joe was a genial husband. They had a sea-food supper and later he took them to a play. When they came home, Ethel went to her room, for she felt very tired. It was not long before she was asleep.
She was awakened by Joe, half dressed.
"Amy is sick!" he said sharply. "Go in and help her, will you? I'll try to get a doctor!"
On Amy's bed, a little later, Ethel saw a face so changed from the one of a few hours before, that she felt her heart jump into her throat. Amy's face was ugly and queer, distorted by frequent spasms of pain. But worse was the terror in her eyes.
"Ethel, I think I'm dying!" she cried. "Something I ate--it poisoned me!" There was a violent catch in her breath.
"Amy! Why, you poor little darling!" Ethel held her sister tight, asked quick anxious questions and did things to relieve her, but with little or no success. It seemed hours till Joe came back. With him was a doctor, who made an examination and then took Joe into the hall. Ethel followed anxiously. She heard the doctor questioning Joe, and she heard him say:
"I'm afraid it's ptomaine.
"What does _that_ mean?" Joe fiercely inquired. But before Ethel could hear the reply she was called back into the bedroom, where on her bed with both hands clenched Amy was saying:
"I can't bear this! Make him give me something--quick!"
The rest of the night was a blur and a haze, of which Joe was the centre--Joe half crazed and impatient, making impossible demands.
"You can't get a nurse in a minute, my friend, at five A. M.," the doctor cried. "I'm doing my best, if you'll give me a chance!"
The fight went on. The nurse arrived, and turning to Ethel the doctor said, "Get him out of this." And she took Joe into the living-room. But there with a sudden curse and a groan he began to walk the floor.
"This doctor--what do we know of him? He was all I could find! We haven't been to a doctor in years! . . . Ah--that's it!" And he went to the telephone, where in a few moments she heard him saying tensely, "Bill, old man, I'm in trouble." And she thought, "It's his partner."
"What have you done?" she asked him.
"Got Bill Nourse on the 'phone. He's bringing another doctor."
"But Joe! You should have asked this one first!"
"Should I?" was his distracted reply.
The second physician soon arrived, and was as surprised and annoyed as the first one when he found how he had been summoned. In a moment with angry apologies he was backing out of the door. But Joe caught his arm.
"You two and your etiquette be damned! Go in and look at that woman!" he cried. And with a glance into Joe's eyes, the second doctor turned to the first, muttered, "Hold this man. He's crazy "--and went into the bedroom.
It was long before Ethel forgot the look that appeared on Joe's face when the second physician came out and said:
"I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."
She went in with Joe to Amy. And her sister looked so relieved, the lines of pain all smoothed away. Heavily drugged, she was nearly asleep. Her hand felt for Joe's and closed on it, and with a little nestling movement of her soft lovely body she murmured smiling:
"Oh, so tired and sleepy now."
Again, in spite of her grief and fright, Ethel noticed how her sister's hand closed on that of her husband. In the months and years that followed, she recalled it vividly so many times.
Joe sat there long after Amy was dead.
The doctor signed to Ethel to come into the living-room.
"Are you to be in charge?" he asked. She looked at him and shivered. She felt a pang of such loneliness as she had never known before.
"I know nobody--nothing--I don't know how you arrange," she said. "I've only been a month in town."
The doctor gave her a curious look of pity and uneasiness. It was as though he had told her, "I'm sorry, but don't count on me for help. I'm busy. This is New York, you know." He said:
"I'll see to the undertaker." She shivered again, and he added, "Don't you know some older woman here?"
This reminded her of the dinner which Amy was to have given that night. A lump rose in her throat. She waited a moment and then she said:
"Yes, I know of several."
"That's good. You'd better send for them." And soon afterward he hurried away.
But just as Ethel was rising to go to the telephone, there was a ring at the door. She opened it, and a tall man, rather stooped, with iron grey hair and moustache, a lean but rather heavy face and deep-set impassive eyes, came in and said:
"I'm Joe's partner--Nourse, you know. How is it going? Better?"
"She's dead."
"God!" With that low exclamation, she thought she saw a gleam of shock but then of triumph come in his eyes. He went into Joe's room, and closed the door; and with a mingling of relief and of sharp hostility she felt at once how she was shut out. Who was she but a stranger now? She thought of Amy, and with a quick cry Ethel began to walk up and down in a scared hunted fashion. She stopped with a sudden resolute clenching of her teeth, and said, "Now I've got to do something! If I don't, I'll go right out of my mind!" But what? She stared about her, then went to the windows and threw back the curtains. It was well along toward noon. Daylight flooded into the room, with one yellow path of light which came down from the distant sun.
"I'll go out and get her some flowers."
When she came back a half hour later, Ethel still had that resolute look. The door of Joe's room was still closed and she saw Nourse's hat in the hall. She turned and went to the telephone, stopped and frowned.
"Yes, that's the next thing."
She called up Amy's friend Fanny Carr. But at the sound of the woman's voice which came back over the wire, Ethel gave a start of dismay. For it had a jarring quality, and although it was prompt in its exclamations of shocked surprise and sympathy and proffers of help--the words, "You poor child, I'll come over at once!"--made Ethel inwardly beseech her, "Oh, no, no! Please stay away!" Aloud she said, "Thank you," put up the receiver and stood staring at the wall. Was this Amy's best friend?
"I want some one I know!" She thought of Susette. She went at once to the nursery, kissed the wee girl and sat down on the floor. And as they built a house of blocks, Ethel could feel herself softening, the strained tight sensation going. Suddenly in her hot dry eyes she felt in a moment the tears would come.
"What's to become of me and this child?"
She turned with a start and met the unfriendly eyes of the nurse. They had a jealous light in them.
"You'll stay here, of course," said Ethel. "Surely you are not thinking of going--"
"No. Are you?"
A little cold sensation struck into her spine at the tone of that question.
"I haven't decided yet on my plans. Hadn't you better take Susette out to the Park?"
"All right."
"And keep her there as much as you can--till it's over."
"All right," said the nurse again.
Ethel went out of the room. Were there only strangers here?
Just after that Fanny Carr arrived, and Ethel had a feeling at once of a shrewd strong personality. A woman of about medium height, still young but rather over-developed, artificial and overdressed, with a full bust and thick red lips and lustrous eyes of greenish grey--her beauty was of the obtrusive type that is made to catch the eye on the street and in noisy crowded rooms. When Fanny kissed her, Ethel shrank. "I mustn't do that!" she exclaimed to herself. But the other woman had noticed it and shot a little look at her.
"You poor girl. I can't tell you how sorry I feel," she was saying. "It's horrible. Tell me about it."
And Ethel in a lifeless voice recounted the tragedy of the night.
"Where's Joe?"
"In there, with his partner."
"Oh, Mr. Nourse. He would be." Mrs. Carr threw a glance of dislike at the door. "And you, my dear--I won't ask you now what are your plans. Just let me help you. What can I do? There's that dinner tonight, to begin with. Have you let the people know?"
"Not yet--"
"Have you a list of the ones who were asked?"
"I think there's one on Amy's desk."
"Then I'll attend to it."
Soon Fanny was at the telephone. Her voice, hard and incisive, kept talking, stopping, talking again, repeating it to friend after friend, and making it hard, abrupt and real, stripping it of its mystery, making it naked and commonplace, like a newspaper item--Amy's death. And Ethel sat rigid, listening.
"Amy's best friend! Oh, how strange!"
Suddenly she remembered things Amy had said about this friend--admiring things. She bit her lips.
"What a queer time for hating a person. But I hate you--oh, I hate you!" She went to the window and frowned at the street and slowly again got control of herself. "What's wrong with me? Why am I so dull I ought to be doing something. But what?" Again came the voice from the telephone, and again she clenched her hands. "How did you make Amy take you for a friend? Oh, what difference does it make?"
But it did make a difference. The presence of Fanny got on her nerves; and when a little later two of the dinner guests arrived, to exclaim and pity and offer their help, she faced them and thought:
"You're all alike! You're all just hard and over-dressed! You're cheap! Oh, please--please go away!"
The two visitors seemed glad enough to find she did not want them here, that she was not going to cling to them and make this abyss she was facing a region they must face by her side. In their eyes again she caught the look she had seen on the face of the doctor. "After all, this is not my affair."
The two women left her. Fanny, too, soon went out on an errand. And no other woman came to her that day. How different from the Ohio town. Only once a girl came from the dressmaker's.
But just after Fanny had gone out, Joe's partner came into the living-room. In the last few hours several times she had heard his voice as he talked with Joe. Deep, heavy and gruff, it had yet revealed a tenderness that had given to Ethel a sudden thrill--which she had forgotten the next moment, for her thoughts kept spinning so. But now as he looked down at her she saw in his gaunt lean face a reflection of that tenderness; and there was a pity in his voice which set her lip to quivering.
"The sooner we have this over," he said, "the better it will be for Joe."
"Yes."
"Tomorrow!"
"Yes."
"At four!"
"All right."
"I'll see to it."
"Thank you." There was a pause.
"Is there any special cemetery? You have any preference?" he asked.
"I don't know any in New York." And again there was a silence.
"You haven't been here long," he said.
"You'll be going back now to your home, I suppose."
"I haven't any."
"Oh," he said. She glanced up and saw a gleam of uneasiness in his steady tired eyes. She shrank a little.
"You have no relatives living?" he asked.
"None that I care about," she replied. She swallowed sharply. "They're scattered--gone West. We lost track of them."
"Oh. . . . Then do you intend to stay here?"
"For awhile--if Joe wants me."
"I'll take care of Joe." Though the voice was low, it had an anxious jealous note which made her shiver slightly.
"There's the child," she reminded him sharply. "Why not take it away?" he asked. "Joe never cared for it, did he? Do you think it has been happy here?"
And at that she could have struck him. At her glare he turned away.
"Forgive me. Of course I--should not have said that." A pause. "Nor talked of your plans. I'm not myself. Sorry for Joe. Forgive me." He turned away from her, frowning. "I'll see to everything," he said, and she heard him leave the apartment.
And all the rest of the day and the night and through the morning which followed, no one else came but professional men, and Mrs. Carr. She came and went; and her voice grew familiar--hard, intrusive, naked. And the thought kept rising in Ethel's mind, like a flash of revelation in all the storm and blackness:
"This kind of a woman was Amy's best friend!"
The funeral was soon over, and of its ugly details only a few remained in her mind. She had a glimpse of Amy's face down in the handsome coffin, and at the sight she turned away with a swift pang of self-reproach. "I shouldn't have let Fanny do that!" Fanny had dressed her sister.
She remembered the low respectful voice of the building superintendent: "There's an afternoon tea on the floor below, so the casket and the funeral guests had better go down by the freight elevator."
She gave a strained little laugh at that and asked, "I wonder when I'll cry?"
The preacher, a tall kindly young man, came in and seemed about to speak; but after a look at her face he stopped. He had come from a church two blocks away. Joe and Amy had never been to his church, and it was Nourse who had brought him here. Nourse had learned of him from the undertaker.
Several boxes of flowers came.
Later from a milliner's shop two pretty autumn hats arrived.
The guests began arriving--silent, awkward strangers--ten or twelve.
She heard the nurse come in with Susette and take her back to the nursery.
There was no music. Not a sound.
At last the silence was broken by the minister's low voice. Thank heaven that was kindly. He was brief, and yet too long; for from the apartment one flight below, before he had finished, the festive throb of a little orchestra was heard.
He prayed just a minute or two.
Then they followed the coffin out into the hall and back and down by the freight elevator.
A motor hearse was waiting below.
When the burial was over, she came home alone with Joe. She sat in the living-room watching his face, while the dusk grew mercifully deep. Then she made him eat some supper and take something to make him sleep. And later in her own small room she lay on her bed, dishevelled, tearless, her mind stunned, her feelings queer and uneven, now surging up, now cold and still.
"Where has she gone? What do I know? . . . What do I believe? Where is God? . . . What is life? What am I here for?"
With a pang she recalled the town in Ohio where she and Amy had been born, and her thoughts went drifting for awhile. Pictures floated in and out, pictures of her life at home. She was hungry for them now, the old stays and firm supports, the old frame house, her father and the God in the yellow church, the quiet river, the high school and that friendly group of eager girl companions, with work, discussions, young ideals, plans and dreams of life and love. . . . All up by the roots in a few swift weeks!
"Shall I go back?" she asked herself. "Do I want to go--now that Dad is dead, and most of the girls have gone away, scattered all over the country?" Again she lapsed. "I'm too dull to think." She let the pictures drift again. Church sociables, a Christmas tree, dances, suppers and buggy rides, picnics by the river. How small and very far-away and trivial they now appeared. All had pointed toward New York. "Go back and marry, settle down? Do I want to? No. And anyhow, there's Joe and Susette. My place is right here--and I'm going to stay. But what is it going to mean to me? What do I want in this city now?"
In the turmoil, startled, she looked about her for a purpose, some ideal. But the old beliefs seemed dim; the new ones, garish and confused. She recalled those faces of Amy's friends. "Yes, cheap and tough, for all their clothes!" Or was it just this ghastly time that had made them all appear so?
Again she thought of her sister dead. "Oh Amy--Amy! Where have you gone?" And at last, quite suddenly, the tears came, and she huddled and shook on her bed. _