Ernest Poole
His Second Wife
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066195076
Table of Contents
CHAPTER II
"Well, Ethel my love, we're here at last! … It must be after midnight. I wonder when I'll get to sleep? … Not that I care especially. What a quaint habit sleeping is."
She had formed the habit long ago of holding these inner conversations. Her father had been a silent man, and often as she faced him at meals Ethel had talked and talked to herself in quite as animated a way as though she were saying it all aloud. Now she sat up suddenly in bed and turned on the light just over her head, and amiably she surveyed her room. It was a pretty, fresh, little room with flowered curtains, a blue rug, a luxurious chaise longue and a small French dressing table. Very cheerful, very empty. "It looks," she decided, "just like the bed feels. I'm the first fellow who has been here.
"No," she corrected herself in a moment, "that's very ignorant of you, my dear. This is a New York apartment, you know. All kinds of other fellows have been in this room ahead of me; and they've lain awake by the hour here, planning how to get married or divorced, or getting ready to write a great book or make a million dollars, or sing in grand opera or murder their child. All the things in the newspapers have been arranged in this spot where I lie! Now I'll turn out the light," she added, "and sink quietly to rest!"
But in the dark she lay listening to the strange low hub-hub from outside. And it made her think of what she had seen an hour before, when at the open window, resting her elbows on the sill, she had begun to make her acquaintance with her backyard—a yawning abyss of brick and cement which went down and down to cement below, and up and up to a strip of blue sky, and to right and to left went stretching away with rows and rows of windows. And now as the murmurs and quick low cries, piano music, a baritone voice and a sudden burst of laughter, came to her ears, she gravely named her neighbours:
"Wives and husbands, divorcees, secret lovers, grafters, burglars, suffragettes, actresses and anarchists and millionaires and poor young things—all spending a quiet evening at home. And that's so sensible in you all. You'll need your strength for tomorrow."
From the city far and near came numberless other voices. From street cars, motors and the L, from boats far off on the river this calm and still October night, from Broadway and from Harlem and the many teeming slums, came the vast murmuring voice of the town. And she thought:
"I'm becoming a part of all this!" She listened a little and added, "It breathes, like something quite alive." She smiled and added approvingly, "Quite right, my dear, just breathe right on. But don't go and breathe as though you were sleeping. Keep me company tonight."
Suddenly she remembered how in their taxi from the train, as they had sped up Park Avenue all agleam with its cold blue lights and she had chattered gaily of anything that came into her head, twice she had caught in her sister's eyes that glimmer of expectancy. "Amy feels sure I will be a success!" Ethel thrilled at the recollection, and thought, "Oh, yes, you're quite a wag, my love; and as soon as you get over being so young you'll probably make a name for yourself. No dinner or suffrage party will ever again be quite complete without your droll dry humour. … I suppose I ought to be going to sleep!"
And she yawned excitedly. From somewhere far in the distance there came to her ears the dull bellowing roar of an ocean liner leaving dock at one o'clock to start the long journey over the sea.
"I'm going to Paris, too!" she resolved. Her fancy travelled over the ocean and roamed madly for awhile, with the help of many photographs which she had seen in magazines. But she wearied of that and soon returned.
"Well, what do I think of Amy's home?"
She went over in her memory her eager inspection of the apartment. The rooms had been dark when they arrived; for they had not been expected so soon, and a somewhat dishevelled Irish maid had opened