His Second Wife

by Ernest Poole

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.