His Second Wife | Page 8

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 all--but it is everything. Put me in a big house out there, and my friends wouldn't know me in a few years."
A cloud came on her face as she looked in the glass.
"But that's just the trouble. A few years more and I'll be too late. You've got to get there while you're young. And there's so little time. You lose your looks. It's all very well for some women to talk about ideas and things--and travel and--and children. I did, too, I talked a lot--oh, how I wanted everything! But one has to narrow down. Thank heaven, Ethel, you've years ahead. I've only got a few more left--I'm already thirty-one. And my type ages fast in this town, if you do the things you're expected to do. But you--oh, Ethel, I want you to marry well! Not a millionaire--that's rather hard, and besides he'd probably be too fat--but the kind who will be a millionaire, who has it written all over his face and makes you feel it in his voice! Don't sell yourself too cheap, my dear! Don't go running about with men who'll keep you poor for the rest of your days. They talk so well--some of them do; and it sounds so fine--ideas and books and pictures and--I knew one who was an architect. And it's all very well for later on, but what you've got to do right at the start--while you have the looks and youth--is to find the man who can give you a house where all those other people will be tumbling to get in--because you'll have the money--you'll be able to entertain--and give them what they really want--in spite of all their talking."
Once more, with a weary sigh, she dropped the religious intensity, and smiled as she wistfully added:
"That's where some man can put you. They do, you know, they do it. Some man does it every day. You can see his name in the papers. Dozens of wives get to Newport each year. And what do they do it on? Money!
"That's romance enough for me, my dear. And if you want work and a career, the most fascinating kind I know is to study the man you've married--find what's holding him back and take it away--what's pushing him on and help it grow! You've got to narrow, narrow down! You may want a lot of children. They're loves, of course, to have around. But you run a big risk in that. I could give you so many cases--mothers who have just dropped out. If you want to really get on in this town, you've got to stick to your husband and make your husband stick to you! There are things about that you will learn soon enough. It comes so naturally, once you are in it--married, I mean. And that's your hold.
"And if you love him as I love Joe," she added almost in a whisper, "you find it so easy that often you forget what it is you're trying to do, what you're really doing it for. You're just happy and you shut your eyes. But then you wake up and use it all--everything--to drive him on. You can do that while you are still young and have what he