_ CHAPTER VII
Joe did not say, "I told you so." It was after eight that evening when he came home from his office, and she was annoyed at the delay, for she wanted to have her confession of failure over and done with. As she waited restlessly, she envied him his business life. How much simpler everything was for a man! Her nerves were on edge. Why didn't he come! At last she heard his key in the door and sharply pulled herself together. "How I detest him!" she thought to herself.
"Hello, Ethel." His voice from the hallway had a gruff and tired sound; but a moment later when he came in, it was with his usual friendly smile. "Sorry I kept you waiting. I've had a mean day at the office."
"So have I," said Ethel, and with a frown she plunged right in. The sooner this was over the better. But when she had finished and looked up, she detected no triumph on his face. He was watching her so queerly.
"Well," he said, "I ought to be sorry, I suppose--but I can't exactly say I am."
"Why not?" At her sharp challenge he grimly smiled.
"Because this kind of puts us--in the same boat--two of a kind."
"What on earth do you mean?" she demanded. And then with a rueful grimace he said:
"Because I too have bumped my head." As at that she felt a swift little thrill of surprise and liking for Joe, he continued, "I've been a fool. You're always a fool when you take a chance and aren't able to get away with it. You're a fool--because you missed out. I'm a fool--because I missed out. We both of us took chances. And I got very badly stung. We've got to be poor for a little while." Joe drew a deep breath and smiled again. "I've dreaded this. I've put off telling you for a week--I don't like eating humble pie. But it's all right now, God bless you--we can eat it side by side."
"Why, Joe, dear, how nice!" she sighed. "Go on and tell me. What will it mean?" He held up his hand.
"Hold on a minute, can't you? Let me make my little speech. I've made it so many times in my mind."
"All right, you poor dear, just start right in."
"Well," said Joe, "it begins like this." And his face grew a little portentous, with humour and a deeper feeling mingled awkwardly together. "You've been about as good to me as one fellow could be to another. I know what a hell it must have been, and the stiff upper lip was all on your side. I don't want to talk about it, but--when Amy died the life went out--of my business too. Later I got back my nerve, and because my job was all I had left I tried to make it more worth while. I've got a few old dreams in me--I mean I've always wanted to build something better than flats in the Bronx. So I--well, I took a chance and failed. I'm in debt and my only chance to scrape through is to cut down here as low as we can. I've figured out our expenses, and--"
He walked for a moment. She quickly rose, went to him and took his arm and said:
"A very fine speech. We'll go in to our dinner now--and later we'll get a pencil and paper, and we won't stop until everything's right."
There came for Ethel busy days.
The next morning she went to the nursery and told the nurse she would have to go. "I'm sorry," she added and then stopped short, startled by the woman's face. The way her eyes went to Susette made something leap in Ethel's breast. The nurse wheeled sharply:
"What have I done! What's the matter with me?" Her voice was strained.
"Nothing. There has been nothing at all." Ethel found it hard to speak. "You've been--quite wonderful with Susette. The trouble is that Mr. Lanier has found he must cut expenses."
"Oh. Then why am I the one?" She broke off and grew rigid, but her thought struck into Ethel's mind: "Why am I the one? Why don't you go! What good are _you_ here?"
"I'm sorry," Ethel repeated. "I wish I could keep you, but I can't. I'll have to take care of Susette myself--"
"You?"
"Yes, and you'll have to teach me how."
"I won't!"
"You mean you'll let her suffer because you haven't shown me things? No, no, I'm sure you'll be sensible. You'll stay on a few days and help me, and meanwhile I'll do all I can to find you a good position. I only hope I can get you back again in the autumn. You see it may only be for a time." She went to the nurse, who now had her arms about the child. "I'm so sorry. Remember I want you back."
There were tears in Ethel's eyes as she left the nursery. "Whew!" She went into her own small room. "I wonder if I'll ever feel like that about a child?" She stared a moment and added, "That was real enough, poor thing." She drew a resolute breath. "Well, no use in feeling like a criminal, my dear. Now for the cook and the waitress."
She rather took satisfaction in that, for she had disliked both of them keenly. She gave them until the end of the week, and in the meantime telegraphed for Emily Giles, who for over five years had helped her keep house for her father at home. Of medium height, spare, thin chested and thin lipped, her hair already streaked with grey, Emily had been less a servant than a grimly devoted friend. Since Ethel's departure, she had been head-waitress at the small hotel.
"Emily will come," thought Ethel, "unless she's dead or paralysed."
And Emily came.
"Well, Miss Ethel, here I am," she said on her arrival. She said, "Miss Ethel" quite naturally, although she had always said "Ethel" before. But her tone made it sound like, "Well, kid, here I am. Now let's see what kind of a mess it is you want me to get you out of."
With the aid of a book entitled, "How To Live Well On Little," together they puzzled and contrived.
"The things that have gone on in this kitchen," Emily muttered more than once, as her sharp grey eyes peered here and there, now into drawers and closets, now at the many unpaid bills. "When that cook of yours wasn't grafting she must have been getting drunk on your wine." As the record was unfolded of years of careless extravagance, Ethel would frown and turn away, for it seemed disloyal to pry so deep. Poor Amy was dead and buried.
With Emily she went marketing, and they beat down and bullied mankind. Emily was so good at that. And at home they worked out a schedule of housekeeping on a rigidly economical scale, dividing the work between them. All this was rather pleasant. The trouble came in the nursery, where more than once the face of the stricken woman there made it hard to keep one's mind keen and clear for all the intricate details of the careful mothering in this room, from which barely a sound had ever gone out to disturb the peace of Amy's home.
But it was soon over. The nurse had taken her departure and Ethel had moved to the nursery. And now the routine of her day brought such a change in Ethel's life as deeply affected her future course--though at first she had but little time to stop for self-analysis. At five in the morning she was roused by the low, sweet chirrup of Susette, who was peering over the edge of the crib. And her day from that time on was filled with a succession of little tasks, which at first puzzled and wearied her, made her often anxious and cross, but then attracted her more and more. What a change from the month before, from Mr. Greesheimer to Susette! She became engrossed in the washing and dressing and feeding of her tiny charge. Anxiously she watched Susette for the slightest sign of illness; and in this watching she grew to know the meaning of certain looks and gestures, baby talk. Susette became a person, wee but very intimate.
In the park on those lovely days of May, Ethel liked to feel herself a part of the small world of nurses and mothers who chatted or sewed while children played and motor cars went purring by. There were little distractions; for Susette was a sociable creature, and the small friends she discovered brought Ethel into conversation with the women who had them in charge. Several of the mothers were French--very French in the way they dressed, in the way they sewed, in their quick gestures, shrugs and smiles and their pretty, broken English. They lent a piquant novelty to motherhood in Ethel's eyes.
At times she thought of Amy. Why had Amy missed all this! How had she been able to keep away from this adorable child of hers! Ethel saw in the windows of shops the most tempting garments for small girls. And Amy had had money to spend! Susette's wardrobe was "simply pathetic!" And often, sitting in the Park and watching on the road nearby the endless procession of automobiles and the women like Amy so daintily clad, and puzzling and remembering innumerable little things from her first gay month in town--in Ethel's mind the picture of the sister she had adored began to change a little, and to lose its hold upon her. Amy beautiful, indolent toward Susette and the household; Amy tense, with a jealous, vigilant light in her eyes, when it was a matter of Joe and her love or the money so passionately desired.
But these recollections she would dismiss with excuses for her sister. "There are two kinds of women," Ethel sagely told herself. "Mothers and wives. And she was a wife. It may be I'm a mother." And little by little, in spite of herself, her worship of her sister changed to a pitying tolerance. The question, "Shall I ever be like that? "--once so full of eagerness--had already been answered unconsciously. "Poor Amy, she's dead. She lived her life. I'm going to live another."
Just what life it was to be was as unsettled as before. For as she grew used to this mothering, the old adventurous hunger for life welled up again within her. For long periods she forgot the child and sat frowning into space, her mind groping restlessly for ways and means to find herself and get friends of her own, independence, work and gaiety, a chance to grow and "be somebody here!" She had her angry, baffled moods.
But from these Susette would bring her back. "What's your life to be, you poor little dear? And if you don't worry, why should I!" And resolutely she would turn to the small, absorbing life of the child.
This went on for many months. It changed her feeling toward the town, for now she had a foothold here. It changed her feeling toward Amy, whose picture had begun to blur. But that queer sensation of intimacy, of being in her sister's place, was even deeper than before. For now she was mothering Amy's child--her child and her husband. _