His Second Wife

by Ernest Poole

At times, as Joe talked on and on, in this mood of hungry wistful love and humility and self-reproach, Ethel would bring herself back with a jerk to the Amy she had known; but again she would feel herself borne along upon the tide of his belief, and she was glad that it was so. So the picture grew. Nor was it only when they talked. For often in long silences, when she thought he was reading his paper, she would glance up from her book and find him staring into the past. And again at the piano, smoking and playing idly, his music made her realize how his mind was groping back through the years, picking and choosing here and there what he needed to build up his ideal.

This music at times made her curious, wondering what kind of a man he had been before Amy took him in hand.

"Where did you learn to play like that, Joe?" He frowned a little.

"Oh, long ago."

He did not seem to care to go back of his marriage. So Ethel let him continue his building; and though at times she smiled a little at some of his fond recollections, still her own deep adoration of her older sister, the whirl of happy memories of that vivid month in town, and the sense of all that Amy had been planning to do for her, combined now with her desperate loneliness to put Ethel in a mood where she gladly and loyally believed almost anything good of her sister.

Christmas was only one example of many similar incidents. They had a small Christmas tree for Susette, and they hung up her stocking as well, and went out Christmas Eve and bought candy canes and dogs and dolls and picture books. And although this was Ethel's idea, it was made to appear as only the thing which Amy would have done had she lived.

So in these two hungry souls, groping for something bright and deep and strong upon which they could live, swiftly and unawares to them both the picture of Amy was stamped deep, idealized and beautified. In life it had been fascinating, but now it was almost heroic as well. It was as though the small gloved hand, which Ethel had noticed so many times, in death had increased the power of its light, firm, tenacious hold.

Ethel began to feel more free, for Joe was no longer on her mind. More than once, in fact, she was surprised at the way he seemed to be settling down. She felt a deeper change in him, something she did not understand. The worn harassed expression she had so often seen on his face while his wife had been alive, the look of a man driven and drained of his vitality, was now gone; and in its place was an unconscious look of content. He often stayed very late at the office; and more and more in his evenings at home he went to his desk and became absorbed in documents and blue print plans.

"What a refuge a man's business is," she thought with a twinge of envy.

And wistfully she began to look about for some resource for herself. She felt the youth within her rise, but the city seemed so vast and strange. In her loneliness the big building of which her present home was a part, seemed doubly huge, impersonal, hard; and so did every other building on that block appear. She felt lost, left out amid ceaseless tides of gaiety on every hand. She took long determined walks, and on these walks she donned the smart attractive clothes that she had bought with Amy. She strove to keep her mind on the sights, the faces of people afoot and in cars, the adorable things in shop windows. And she chatted busily to herself in order to keep on admiring. This old habit of hers, of soliloquy, had grown upon her unawares, as a refuge from her loneliness. Sometimes she even talked aloud. Sturdily she told herself: