"But until I do learn what you want of Joe," she retorted sharply, "I'm afraid that I can't tell you how much money I shall need." He glanced up at her, puzzled. "Suppose you try me," she went on. And as the man still frowned at her, "I learned the other day," she said, "that you knew Joe long before he was married. I want you to tell me about that."
Little by little she drew him out. And as in a reluctant way, in sentences abrupt and bald, he answered all her questions, again and again did Ethel feel a little wave of excitement. For Nourse was speaking of Joe's youth—of college and later of Paris, and then of a group of young men in New York, would—be architects, painters and writers who had lived near Washington Square; of long talks, discussions, plans, and of all night work in the architect's office where he and Joe had worked side by side. Joe had been a "designer" there; he had been the brilliant one of the two, and the more impassioned and intense and bold in his conceptions. There was a feeling almost of reverence in the low, rough voice of Joe's friend. He told how Joe had risen, until in a few years he became the chief designer for his firm; and of how from other firms offers had come. To keep him his employers had been forced to raise his salary, and to do much more than that, for money didn't appeal to him then. They had given him more important work—"job after job, and Joe made good." The climax of this rising had come one night in the rooms they shared, when Joe told his friend he had made up his mind to set up an office of his own, though he was only twenty-nine.
"And he offered me a partnership." The big man's voice was husky now, as, in a little outburst with a good deal of bitterness in it, he spoke of the glory of the work of which he and Joe had once been a part. He seemed appealing to Joe's wife to see, for God's sake, what it was in Joe that had been lost. Then he stopped and frowned and stared at her. "Oh, what's the use?" he muttered. But Ethel's voice was sharp and clear:
"Oh, if you only knew," she cried, "how much good this is doing! I won't stop to explain but—please—go on!" Her brown eyes threw him a fierce appeal. And again she had him talking. He told of a plan for apartment buildings Joe had conceived in those early days. "I don't say it was practicable, I give it just to show you what the man had in him," he said. "Big ideas that strike in deep, the kind that change whole cities." Instead of a street like a canyon with sheer walls on either side, the front of each building was to recede in narrow terraces, floor by floor, so letting floods of sunlight down into the street below and giving to each apartment a small terrace garden. As she listened, Ethel grew intent. It was not the mere plan that excited her, she was giving small heed to the details. But this had in it what she had craved ever since she had come to the city—beauty and creative work—and this had been in Joe's "business"!
"There was only one point against it," she heard Nourse saying presently. "Those terraces took a lot of space. Each one meant so much rent was lost. For years, till the plan took hold of the town, it was a money loser. . . . And Joe met your sister then." The voice had changed, and its hostile tone brought Ethel back with a sharp turn. The man, as though uneasy at the revelations he had made, was looking at her as at first, with suspicion and dislike. "I won't go into details of how she got her hold on Joe. You know how that's done, I suppose. I'm speaking of the effect on his work. He soon put off that plan of his—and any others of the kind. For now he had to have money. And he has been putting it off ever since—not dropping it, he'll tell you, only putting it off till he's rich. But if he isn't rich enough soon, it'll be too late. For that part of him is nearly dead.
"But to go back to your sister. It was not only his money, it was his time she needed. First it was a wedding trip, and after that late hours—a short day in his office. And he wasn't half the man he had been. He was thinking of the night before, and then of the night that was coming. She came for him at five o'clock." He saw Ethel start, and he added, "Just as you did later on.
"And when he did wake up to work, it was different—it was for money alone. He began to throw over his ideals, and very soon there was only me to hold him back. You see, he had had so many friends before he met your sister, men and even women, too, who had been a spur to him. But when he brought his wife around, they wouldn't have her, turned her down—and that made her bitter against them all and she kept Joe from them. All but me. I stayed in the office, and now and then I got some of his friends and we would take him out to lunch. But then even that stopped. Joe hadn't time. He was too busy getting the cash.
"He had dropped all pretence of any work that was really worth while, and had turned his art into a business. He became a real estate gambler and an architect, all in one. He got to speculating in land—and what he built on it he didn't care, so long as it produced the cash. Oh, it wasn't all at once, you know, you can't strangle the soul of a man in a hurry—but by the time your sister died, the buildings Joe was putting up were just about as common and cheap as the average play on Broadway—crowd pleasers. He had lost his nerve. Everything had to be popular. Play safe each time, on the same old flats that every woman seems to love. A woman is conservative. To have and to hold, to get and keep, to stand pat with both eyes shut—that's the average woman in this town. And Joe had to play her.
"And because he still had a soul in him—and a stomach that turned—he began to vary the dulness of it by becoming sensational. He did daring things, cheap daring things—no real originality in it, but it took on and caught the eye. Pictures of his buildings got into the real estate pages of the Sunday papers. He hired a press agent then and went after the publicity. And all I need to tell you of that, is that just the other day the press agent came into the office with a scheme for a string of buildings up on the new part of the Drive. They were to be patriotic—see?—named after the presidents of our country—cheap and showy terra-cotta—main effect red, white and blue." Ethel leaned back with a little gasp. But Nourse added relentlessly, "And Joe didn't turn him down."
She stiffened sharply in her chair and looked at Nourse with indignant eyes, as though he alone were to blame.