"Oh, Ethel, go slow, you little fool. This is every penny you have in the world."
But the adorable things she saw, and the growing hunger she felt as she began to notice with a more discerning eye the women in shops and on the streets—just why they were so dashing and how they got this and that effect—all swept aside her caution, the easier because of the fact that everything she bought was charged.
One evening in a large café she sat watching Amy who was dancing with her husband. It was at the time when the new style dances were just coming into vogue. In Ohio they had been only a myth. But Amy was a beautiful dancer; and watching her now, Ethel reflected, "She expects me to be like that. If I'm not, she'll be disappointed, ashamed. And why shouldn't I be! What do you ever get in this world if you're always saving every cent? You miss your chance and then it's too late. I'll be meeting her friends in a few weeks more. I've simply got to hurry!" And with Amy's dancing teacher she arranged for lessons—at a price that made her gasp. But the lessons were a decided success.
"You've a wonderful figure for dancing," the teacher said confidingly, "and a sense for rhythm that most of these women haven't any idea of." He smiled down at her and she fairly beamed.
"Oh, how nice!" sighed Ethel. Something in the little look which flashed between them gave her a thrill of assurance. And this feeling came again and again, in the shops and while she was seated at luncheon in some crowded restaurant, or on the streets or back at home, where even Joe was beginning to show his admiring surprise.
"You're making a fine little job of it," she heard him say to Amy one night.
She caught other remarks and glances from strangers, men and women. And Ethel now began to feel the whole vast bustling ardent town centred on what in her high-school club, as they read Bernard Shaw, they had quite frankly and solemnly spoken of as "Sex." All the work and the business, the scheming and planning and rush for money, were focussed on this. And for this she was attracting those swift admiring glances. What she would be, what she wanted to be, what she now ardently longed to become, grew clearer to her day by day. For the picture was there before her eyes. Each day it grew more familiar, as at home in Amy's room she watched her beautiful sister, a stranger no longer to her now, seated at her dressing table good-humouredly chatting, and meanwhile revealing by numberless deft little things she was doing the secrets of clothes and of figure, and of cheeks and lips and eyes, with subtle hints behind it all of the ancient magic art of Pan. She felt Amy ceaselessly bringing her out. This gave her thrills of excitement. And looking at her sister she asked:
"Shall I ever be like that?"
And they kept talking, talking. And through it all the same feeling was there, the sense of this driving force of the town.
With the sturdy independence which was so deep a part of her, Ethel strove to hold up her end of these intent conversations and show that she had views of her own. She was no old-fashioned country girl, but modern, something different! They had discussed things in her club which would have shocked their mothers, discussed them long and seriously. They had spoken of marriage and divorce, of love and having children, and then had gone eagerly on to suffrage, jobs and "mental science," art, music and the rest of life. She had gathered there an image of New York as a glittering region of strong clever men and fascinating women, who not only loved to dance but held the most brilliant discussions at dinners livened by witty remarks—a place of vistas opening into a world of great ideas. And now with her older sister, she questioned her about it all, the art and all the "movements," the "salons" and the clever talk. She asked:
"Do you know any suffragists? Do you know any men who write plays or novels, or any musicians or painters—or actresses?" And again and again by an air of assurance Ethel tried to hide her dismay, as her sister subtly made all this seem like a school-girl's fancies.
"Yes," Amy would say good-humouredly, "there are such people, I suppose—plenty of them, all over town. And they talk and talk and hold meetings, and they go to high-brow plays—and some women even work. But it doesn't sound very thrilling, does it? I don't know. They never seem to me quite real."
And then Amy would go on to hint what did seem real to her in life. And again that picture of the town, all centred on what emerged from the shops and poured into the cafes to dance, was painted for her sister.
But behind her smiling manner of one with an intimate knowledge of life, Amy would glance at the girl by her side in a curious, rather anxious way. For vaguely she knew that years ago when she herself had come to New York, she too had had dreams and imaginings of what her young sister called "the real thing." And she knew that these had dropped away—at first in the struggle, which for her had been so intense and narrowing, to gain a foothold in the town; then through rebuffs from the clever friends of Joe Lanier when she married him; and later through a feeling of lazy acceptance of her lot. But Ethel's talk and Ethel's eyes recalled what had been left behind. And Amy thought of her present friends, and again with a little uneasy pang she put off their meeting with Ethel. For they did not seem good to her then, and the picture she found herself painting of their lives and her own appeared a bit flat and trivial in the light of Ethel's eagerness. They dressed and went shopping, they went to tea dances, they dined in cafés or in their homes, rushed off in taxis to musical plays, and had supper and danced. They loved and were loved, they "played the game."
"My dear," she said decisively, "it's not what you say that interests men; it's how you look and what you have on."
But despite her air of assurance and her own liking of her life, she felt the picture growing flat, and so she added quietly:
"Oh, my friends aren't all I'd like. They never are, if you've anything in you. If you really want to be somebody—" and here her whole expression changed to one of resolute faith in herself—"you need just one thing, money. And you can't do anything about that, you have to wait for your husband. Joe's a dear, of course, and he's working hard. And he's getting it, too, he's getting it!" A gleam of hunger almost fierce came into her clear violet eyes. "I want a larger apartment—I've picked out the very one. And I want a car, a limousine. I know just how I'll paint it a mauve body with white wheels. And I want a house on Long Island. I've picked out the very spot—just next to Fanny Carr's new place."
As her sister spoke of these ideals, again Ethel had that feeling of church, but only for a moment.
"Who's Fanny Carr?" she asked alertly.
Amy was slowly combing her hair, and she smiled with kindly tolerance, for her little confession had brought back her faith in herself and her future.
"Fanny was a writer once—"
"Oh, really!"
"Yes. She ran a department on one of the papers." It had been the dress pattern page, but Amy did not mention that. Instead she yawned complacently. "Oh, she dropped it quick enough—she thought it rather tiresome. She's one of the cleverest women I know. She'd have got a long way up in the world, if it weren't for her second husband—"
"Her second?"
"Yes. The first one didn't do very well. She told me once, 'If you want to get on, change your name at least once in every three years.' Her second, as it happened, was no better than the first. But she was clever enough by then to get an able lawyer; and when it came to the divorce, Fanny succeeded in keeping the house, the one out on Long Island."
"Oh," said Ethel tensely. Her sister shot a look at her.
"I don't care especially for Fanny's ideas about husbands," she said.
"But at least she has a love of a home." And Amy went on to explain to
her sister the value and importance of being able to give "week ends."
Again the gleam came into her eyes.
"It's money, my dear, it's money. They are the same women in Newport exactly—just like all the rest of us—only they are richer. That's