At almostthis same moment Norma's self was the subject of a rather unusual talk between Christopher Liggett and his wife.
Christopher had come softly into his house, at about half-past ten, to find Alice awake, still on the big couch before her fire. Her little bedroom beyond was softly lighted, the white bed turned down, and the religious books she always read before going to sleep laid in place by Miss Slater. But Alice had no light except her fire and two or three candles in old sconces.
She welcomed Christopher with a smile, and he sat down, in his somewhat rumpled evening dress, and smiled back at her in a rather weary fashion. He often told her that these rooms of hers were a sanctuary, that he tested the men and women he met daily in the world by her fine and lofty standard. It was part of his utter generosity to her that he talked to her as frankly as if he thought aloud, and it was Alice's pride and joy to know that this marriage of theirs, which had so sadly and suddenly become no marriage at all, was not as one-sided as the world might have suspected. Her clear, dispassionate viewpoint and her dignified companionship were not wifehood, but they were dear and valuable to him none the less, a part of his life that he would not have spared. And he could still admire her, too, not only for the exquisite clearness of her intellect, her French and Italian, herknowledge of countries and affairs, but physically—the clear, childish forehead that was as unwrinkled as Leslie's, the fair, beautifully brushed hair, the mouth with its chiselling of wisdom and of pain, and the transparent hand from which she shook back transparent laces. She was always proud, always fresh and fragrant, always free for him and for his problems, and it was proverbial in the circle of their intimates that Chris admired Alice with all his heart, and never felt himself anything but the privileged guardian of a treasure.
To-night he dropped into a chair before her fire, and she watched him for five or six restful minutes in silence.
"Stupid dinner?" she ventured.
"Rotten!" he answered, cheerfully. "I was late, but I got in to hear Hendrick's speech. The Vice-President was there, everyone else I knew. I cut away finally; I'm done up."
"I thought you picked up Hendrick on your way and went together," Mrs. Liggett said, sympathetically. "I'm sorry it was dull—I suppose men have to go to these political things!"
Chris was leaning forward, his locked hands dropped between his knees, and his eyes on the fire.
"Hendrick and I stopped at your mother's," he said, deliberately, "and she was so upset that I sent Hendrick on alone!"
Alice's eyes lighted apprehensively, but she spoke very quietly.
"What was it, Chris? Leslie getting saucy?"
"Oh, no, no! It was a complication of things, I imagine!" Christopher took out his cigarette-case, looked at its moiré surface reflectively, and selected asmoke. "She was tired—she'd been out in the snow—Leslie had gone off with Annie to some débutante affair—I daresay she felt blue. Alice, do you remember a woman named Kate Sheridan?"
The question was sudden, and Alice blinked.
"Yes, I do," she answered, after a moment's thought, "she was a sort of maid or travelling companion of Mama's. We called her Mrs. Sheridan—she was quite a superior sort of person."
"What do you remember about her, dear?"
"Well—just that. She came when I was only a child—and then when Annie was ill in Paris she went abroad with Mama—and I remember that she came back, and she used to come see me at school, for Mama, and once she took me up to Grandma's, in Brookline. She was a widow, and she had a child—or two, maybe. Why, Chris?"
Her husband did not answer, and she repeated the question.
"Well," he said, at last, flinging the end of his cigarette into the fire, "she came to see your mother to-day."
Alice waited, a little at a loss. To her this had no particular significance.
"She had her niece with her, young girl about eighteen," Christopher said.
"Well—whatofit?" Alice demanded, with a sort of superb indifference to anything such a woman might do.
He looked at her through his round eyeglasses, with the slight frown that many of life's problems brought to his handsome face. Then the glass fell, on its black ribbon, and he laughed.
"That's just what I don'tget," he said, good-humouredly. "But I'll tell you exactly what occurred. What's-His-Name, your mother's butler——"
"Joseph."
"Joseph. Joseph told me that at about four o'clock this Mrs. Sheridan came in. Your mother had told him that she was expecting the lady, and that he was to bring her upstairs. With her came this girl—I can't remember her name—but it was something Sheridan—Nora Sheridan, maybe. Leslie carried the girl off for tea, and the woman stayed with your mother.
"Well, at five—or later, this Mrs. Sheridan ran into the hall, and it seems—she's all right now!—it seems that your mother had fainted."
"Mama!" Alice said, anxiously, with an incredulous frown.
"Yes, but don't worry. She's absolutely all right now. Leslie," Christopher went back to his narrative, "Leslie cried, and I suppose there was a scene. Mrs. Sheridan and the girl went home—Leslie dressed and went out—and your mother immediately telephoned Lee——"
"Judge Lee?"
"Yes—she said so. Lee's up in Westchester with his daughter, she couldn't get him——"
"But, Chris, why did she want her lawyer?"
"That's just it—why?Well, then she telephoned here for me—I was on my way there, as it happened, and just before eight Hendrick and I went in. I could see she was altogether up stage, so I sent Von on and had it out with her."
"And what was her explanation, Chris?"
Christopher laughed again.
"I'll be darned," he said, thoughtfully, "if I can makehead or tail of it! It would be funny if it wasn't that she's taking it so hard. She was in bed, and she had been crying—wouldn't eat any dinner——"
"But, Chris," Alice said, worriedly, "what do youmakeof it! What did shesay?"
"Well, she clasped my hand, and she said that she had an opportunity to undo a great wrong—and that I must help her—and not ask any questions—she was just acting as you and I would have her act under the circumstances——"
"What circumstances?" Alice said, at an utter loss, as he paused.
"She didn't say," he smiled.
"Oh, come, now, Chris, she must have said more than that!"
"No, she didn't. She said that she must make it up to this girl, and she wished to see Lee about it immediately."
"To change her will!" Alice exclaimed.
"She didn't say so. Of course, it may be some sort of blackmail." Christopher looked whimsically at his wife. "As I remember my father-in-law," he said, "it seems to me improbable that out of the past could come this engaging young girl—very pretty, they said——"
"Father! Oh, nonsense!" Alice exclaimed, almost in relief at the absurdity. "No, but it might be some business—some claim against the firm," she suggested.
"Well, I thought of that. But there are one or two reasons why it doesn't seem the solution. I asked your mother if it was money, and she said no, said it positively and repeatedly. Then I asked her if she would like this Sheridan woman shut up, and shewas quite indignant. Kate!—Kate was one of the most magnificent women God had ever made, and so on!"
"Well, I do remember Mrs. Sheridan as a lovely sort of person," Alice contributed. "Plain, you know, but quite wonderful for—well,goodness. It's funny—but then you know Mama is terribly excitable," she added, "she gets frightfully worked up over nothing, or almost nothing. It's quite possible that when Kate recalled old times to her she suddenly wished that she had done more for Kate—something like that. She'd think nothing of sending for Judge Lee on the spot. You remember her recalling us from our wedding-trip because she couldn't find the pearls? All the way from Lake Louise to hear that they had been lost!"
"I know," Christopher smiled. "She is—unique,ma belle mère. By George, I'll never forget our rushing into the house like maniacs, not knowing what had happened to Leslie or Acton, and having her fall sobbing into your arms, with the pearls in her hands!"
"Mama's wonderful," Alice laughed. "Chris, did you eat any dinner?"
He considered.
"But I'm really not hungry, dear," he protested.
Alice, superbly incredulous, rang at once. Who was in the kitchen? Well, she was to be asked to send up a tray at once to Mr. Liggett. "Now that you asked me, the dinner had reached the point of ice-cream in a paper tub, as I sat down," he remembered. "You're a little miracle of healing to me, Alice. When I came in here I didn't knowwhatwe were up against, as a family. Your mother wished the girl pensioned——"
"Oh, Chris, not really?"
"I give you my word!" But he was enough his usual self to have taken his seat at the piano, now, and was looking at her across it, while his fingers fitted themselves lazily to chords and harmonics.
"I'll tell you something, if you'll promise to stop playing the instant your supper comes up!"
"I'll promise!"
"Well, then—the new Puccini is there!" She nodded toward the music-shelves, and he turned to the new score with an eager exclamation. Fifteen minutes later she had to scold him to bring him to the fire again, and to the smoking little supper. While Alice sipped ginger ale, Christopher fell upon his meal, and they discussed the probable presentation of the opera, and its quality.
But an hour later, when she was in bed, and Christopher was going back to the piano for another half-hour of music, she caught his hand.
"Chris, you're not worried about this Sheridan matter?"
"Worried? No, dearest child, what is there to worry about? It isn't blackmail, apparently it's nothing but an overdose of imagination on your mother's part. If the girl really was promised something, or has—for example!—old stock, or if her father was an employee who did this or that or the other—Mrs. Sheridan's husband was employed by your father at the time of his death, by the way—why, it's easy enough to pay the claim, whatever it is! The girl seems to have made a nice impression—your mother tells me she's sold me books, but that doesn't mean much, I buy books everywhere! No, I don't think you'll ever hear of her again. But your mother willbe here in a day or two; see what you can make of it all!"
"Oh, of course, it's nothingwrong!" Alice said, confidently.
And Christopher returned to his beloved piano, relieved in mind by his wife's counsel, refreshed in body by the impromptu supper, and ready for the music that soothed in him all the restless and unsatisfied fibres of his soul.
Annie, who signed herself "Anne Melrose von Behrens," was the real dictator in the various circles of the allied families, and had a fashion of finding herself supreme in larger circles, as well. Annie was thirty-seven or eight, tall, thin, ash-blonde, superb in manner and bearing. Nature had been generous to her, but she had done far more for herself than Nature had. Her matchless skin, her figure, her hands, her voice, were all the result of painstaking and intelligent care. Annie had been a headstrong, undisciplined girl twenty years ago. She had come back from a European visit, at twenty-three, with a vague if general reputation of being "a terror." But Annie was clever, and she had real charm. She spoke familiarly of European courts, had been presented even in inaccessible Vienna. She spoke languages, quoted poets, had great writers and painters for her friends, and rippled through songs that had been indisputably dedicated, in flowing foreign hands, to the beautiful Mademoiselle Melrose. Society bowed before Annie; she was the sensation of her winter, and the marriage she promptly made was the most brilliant in many winters.
Annie proceeded to bear her sober, fine, dull, and devoted Hendrick two splendid sons, and thus riveted to herself his lasting devotion and trust. The old name was safe, the millions would descend duly toyoung Hendrick and Piet. The family had been rich, conspicuous, and respected in the city, since its sturdy Holstein cattle had browsed along the fields of lower Broadway, but under Annie's hands it began to shine. Annie's handsome motor-cars bore the family arms, her china had been made in the ancestral village, two miles from Rotterdam, and also carried the shield. Her city home, in Fifth Avenue, was so magnificent, so chastely restrained and sober, so sternly dignified, that it set the cue for half the other homes of the ultra-aristocratic set. Annie's servants had been in the Von Behrens family for years; there was nothing in the Avenue house, or the Newport summer home, that was not as handsome, as old, as solid, as carven, as richly dull, or as purely shining, as human ingenuity could contrive to have it. Collectors saved their choicest discoveries for Annie; and there was no painter in the new world who would not have been proud to have Annie place a canvas of his among her treasures from the old.
If family relics were worth preserving, what could be more remarkable than Annie's Washington letter, her Jefferson tray, her Gainsboroughs of the Murisons who had been the only Americans so honoured by the painter? Melrose and Von Behrens honours crowded each other—here was the thin old silver "shepherdess" cup awarded that Johanna von Behrens who had won a prize with her sheep, while Washington was yet a boy; and here the quaint tortoise-shell snuff-box that a great prince, homeless and unknown, had given the American family that took him in; and the silver buttons from Lafayette's waistcoat that the great Frenchman had presented Colonel Horace Murison of the "Continentals."
These things were not thrust at the visitor, nor indeed were they conspicuous among the thousand other priceless souvenirs that Annie had gathered about her.
"Rather nice, isn't it?" Annie would say, abstractedly, when some enthusiastic girl pored over the colonial letters or the old portraits. "See here, Margaret," she might add, casually, "do you see the inside of this little slipper, my dear? Read what's written there: 'In these slippers Deborah Murison danced with Governor Winthrop, on the night of her fifteenth birthday, July 1st, 1742.' Isn't that rather quaint?"
Annie could afford to be casual, to be abstracted. In her all the pride of the Melrose and Murison families was gathered; hers was an arrogance so sure of itself, a self-confidence so supreme, that the world questioned it no more than it questioned the heat of the sun. The old silver, the Copleys, and the colonial china, the Knickerbocker "court chests" with their great locks of Dutch silver, and the laces that had been shown at the Hague two hundred years before, were all confirmed, all reinforced, as it were, by the power and prosperity of to-day. It was no by-gone glory that made brilliant the lives of Hendrick and Anne Melrose von Behrens. Hendrick's cousins and uncles, magnificent persons of title, were prominent in Holland to-day, their names associated with that of royalty, and their gracious friendship extended to the American branch of the family whenever Hendrick chose to claim it. Old maps of New York bore the boundary lines of the Von Behrens farm; early histories of the city mingled the names of Melrose and Von Behrens among those of the men who had served the public need.
Wherever there was needed that tone that only names of prominence and wealth can bestow Annie's name was solicited. Wherever it appeared it gave the instant stamp of dignity and integrity. She had seen this goal dimly in the distance, when she stepped from her rather spoiled and wilful girlhood into this splendid wifehood, but even Annie was astonished at the rapidity with which it had come about. Mama, of course, had known all the right people, even if shehaddropped all social ties after Papa's death. And Hendrick's name was an open sesame. But even so it was surprising, and it was gratifying.
In appearance Annie had no problem. If she was not a beauty she was near enough to being one. She was smart enough, and blonde enough, and splendidly dressed enough to be instantly identifiable, and that was all she desired. Financially, Annie had no problem. Her own inheritance and her husband's great wealth silenced all question there. The Murison pearls and the famous diamond tiara that her father had given her mother years ago had come to Annie, but they were eclipsed by the Von Behrens family jewels, and these were all hers, with the laces, and the ivories, and the brocades. Life could give nothing more to Annie, but not many women would have made so much of what Annie had. There was, far down and out of sight, a little streak of the adventuress in her, and she never stopped halfway.
A young wife, Annie had dutifully considered her nursery.
"Hendrick's is the elder line, of course, although it is the colonial one," Annie had said, superintending a princely layette. The child was a son, his father'simage, and nobody who knew Annie was in the least surprised that fortune had fallen in with her plans. It was the magnificent Annie who was quoted as telling Madame Modiste to give her a fitter who would not talk; it was Annie who decided what should be done in recognizing the principals of the Jacqmain divorce, and that old Floyd Densmore's actress-wife should not be accepted. Annie's neat and quiet answer to a certain social acquaintance who remarked, in Annie's little gallery, "I have seen the original of that picture, in one of the European galleries," was still quoted by Annie's friends. "Thisisthe original!" Annie had said quite simply and truthfully.
Leslie admired her aunt more than any one else in the world. Grandma was old-fashioned, and Aunt Alice insignificant, in Leslie's eyes, but stunning, arrogant, fearless Aunt Annie was the model upon which she would have based herself if she had known how. Annie's quick positiveness with her servants, her cool friendliness with big men, and clever men, her calm assurance as to which hats she liked, and which hats she didn't, her utter belief in everything that was of Melrose or von Behrens, and her calm contempt for everything that was not, were masterly in Leslie's eyes.
Annie might have been a strong royalist had she been born a few generations earlier. But in Annie's day the ideal of social service had been laid down by fashion, and she was consequently a tremendously independent and energetic person, with small time for languishing airs. She headed committees and boards, knew hundreds of working girls by name, kept a secretary and a stenographer, and mentioned topics at big dinners that would not have shocked either oldGoodwife Melrose of Boston, or Vrouw von Behrens of Nieu Amsterdam, for neither had the faintest idea that such things, or their names, existed.
Withal, Annie was attractive, even her little affectations were impressive, and as she went about from luncheons to meetings, swept up to her model nursery to revel in her model boys, tossed aside regal furs and tore off princely rings the better to play with them, wrapped her beautiful figure in satins and jewels to descend to formal dinners, she was almost as much admired and envied and copied as she might fondly have hoped to be. She managed her life on modern lines of efficiency, planned ahead what she wished, tutored herself not to think of anything undesirable as being even in the range of possibility, trod lightly upon the sensitive souls of others, and asked no quarter herself, aimed high, and enjoyed her life and its countless successes to the full.
Of course there had been setbacks. Her brother Theodore, his most unfortunate marriage to a servant, his intemperance, the general scandal of his mother's violent detestation of his wife, all this was most unpleasant. But Louison, the wife, upon sufficient pressure, had brought her child to the Melroses, and had doubtfully disappeared, and Theodore had returned from his wanderings to live, silent and unobtrusive, in his mother's home, for several years, and to die with his daughter beside him, and be duly laid in the Melrose plot at Woodlawn. And Leslie—Leslie had repaid them all, for all of it.
Alice was another disappointment, or had been one, to Annie. For Alice, after having achieved a most unexpectedly satisfactory marriage, and having setup her household gods in the very shadow of her sister's brilliant example, as it were, had met with that most unfortunate accident. For a few years Annie had been utterly exasperated whenever she thought of it. For Christopher was really an extraordinary husband for Alice to hold, even in normal circumstances. He was so outrageously, frightfully, irresistibly popular with women everywhere, his wife must needs keep a very sharp, albeit loving, eye upon him. A sickly wife—a wife who was a burden and a reproach, that would be fatal to them all!
But Alice had showed unsuspected courage and pride in this hard trial. She had made herself beautiful, well-informed, tactful; she had made herself a magnet to her husband's friends, and his home the centre of a real social group. Annie respected her for it, and helped her by flashing into her rooms not less often than every alternate day, with gossip, with books, with hints that showed Alice just where her course in this or that matter must lie.
So Alice had come to be an actual asset, and now to her Aunt Annie's tremendous satisfaction, Leslie promised to add one more feather to the family cap by announcing her engagement to Acton Liggett. Annie smiled to herself whenever she thought of it. When this was consummated she would have nothing left but the selection of suitable wives for Hendrick Junior, now aged ten, and Piet, who was four years younger.
Two or three days after the ending of the big snow-storm, and the beginning of that domestic storm that was destined strangely to change some of the lives nearest her, Annie went in to have luncheon with hersister. It was a brilliant sunshiny winter day, with crossings swimming in melting snow and roofs steaming brightly into the clear air.
Annie went straight upstairs to Alice's room, with the usual apology for lateness. She kissed Alice lightly on the forehead, and while Freda was coming and going with their meal, they discussed the little boys, books, politics, and the difficulties of the city in the snow.
But when they were alone Annie asked immediately:
"What on earth is the matter with Mama, Alice?"
"You mean about——? Did she tell you?"
"No; she didn't have to. Leslie ran in yesterday afternoon, and told me that Mama has been in bed since Saturday! I telephoned Sunday morning, but Hendrick and I were taking the boys up to his uncle's house, in Westchester, and—as she didn't say one word about being ill—I didn't see her that day, nor yesterday, as it happened, for we didn't come down until noon. When Leslie came in, there were other people there for tea, and I didn't have a chance to speak to her alone. But I went over to Mama this morning, and she seems all broken up!"
"What did she tell you?" Alice asked, anxiously.
"Oh, my dear, you know Mama! She wept, and patted my hand, and said that it was sad to be the last of your own generation, and she hoped you and I would always have each other, and that she had always loved us, and tried to do her best for us——"
Alice laughed.
"Poor Mama! She gets so worked up!" she said.
"But what do you make of it?" demanded Annie. "She talked of this Kate Sheridan—I remember herperfectly, she came to Paris when I was so ill, years ago. Poor Mama cried, and said that she wished to do something for Kate. Now you know, Alice," Annie went on reasonably, "nobody is tying Mama's hands! If she wants to educate this young girl—this Norma person—to please Kate, or all her children for that matter, she doesn't have to go into hysterics, and send for Judge Lee. She said she didn't feel at all well, and she wanted to secure to Kate some money in her will I told her it was ridiculous—she never looked better in her life! I wish she could get over to see you, Alice; you always soothe her so. What on earth does Chris make of it?"
"Well, I'll tell you what we've done," Alice smiled. "Chris went to see her Sunday, and they had a long talk. He tells me that she was just as vague and unsatisfactory as ever, but calmer, and she finally admitted that all she really wanted to do was to befriend this niece of Kate Sheridan. Of course Chris and I think Mama has one of her funny notions about it, but if the child's mother had befriended Mama, for example, a thousand years ago, or if Mama had borrowed five dollars from Kate, and forgotten to return it, you know that would be enough to account for all this excitement."
"Yes, I know!" Annie admitted, with her favourite look of intolerant, yet indulgent, scorn.
"Well, it seems the girl is in Biretta's Bookshop, and Chris has often bought books of her. So to quiet Mama he promised that he would bring her out here to have tea with me some day soon. Mama was delighted, and I think she hopes that a friendship willcome of it." Alice threw herself back into the pillows, and drew a great breath as if she were weary. "I only want to please Mama!" she finished.
"You're an angel," Annie said, absently. "I suppose I could get the truth out of Mama in five seconds," she mused. "It looks to me rather like blackmail!"
"No; she said not!" Alice contradicted, quickly.
"Well, it's all so silly," the elder sister said, impatiently. "And coming just now——" she added, significantly.
"Yes. I know!" Alice agreed, with a comprehending look. And in lowered tones they began to talk of Leslie's possible engagement.
Norma Sheridansaw the engagement announced in a morning paper two weeks later, and carried the picture of pretty Miss Melrose home, to entertain the dinner table. The news had been made known at a dinner given to forty young persons, in the home of the débutante's aunt, Mrs. Hendrick von Behrens. Miss Melrose, said the paper, was the daughter and heiress of the late Theodore Melrose, and made her home with her grandmother. Mr. Liggett was the brother of Christopher Liggett, whose marriage to Miss Alice Melrose was a social event some years ago. A number of dinners and dances were already planned in honour of the young pair.
Norma looked at the pictured face with a little stir of feelings so confused that she could not define them, at her heart. But she passed the paper to her aunt with no comment.
"You might send them two dozen kitchen towels, Mother," Wolf suggested, drily, and Rose laughed joyously. Her own engagement present from her mother had been this extremely practical one, and Rose loved to open her lower bureau drawer, and gloat over the incredible richness of possessing twenty-four smooth, red-striped, well-hemmed glass-towels, all her own. Norma had brought her two thick, dull gray Dedham bowls, with ducks waddling around them, and these were in the drawer, too, wrapped in tissue paper. Andbeside these were the length of lemon-coloured silk that Rose had had for a year, without making up, and six of her mother's fine sheets of Irish linen, and two glass candlesticks that Rose had won at a Five-hundred party. Altogether, Rose felt that she was making great strides toward home-making, especially as she and Harry must wait for months, perhaps a year. Norma had promised her two towels a month, until there were a whole dozen, and Wolf, prompted by the same generous little heart, told her not to give the gas-stove a thought, for she was to have the handsomest one that money could buy, with a stand-up oven and a water-heater, from her brother. Rose walked upon air.
But Norma was in a mood that she herself seemed unable to understand or to combat. She felt a constant inclination toward tears. She didn't hate the Melroses—no, they had been most friendly and kind. But—but it was a funny world in which one girl had everything, like Leslie, and another girl had no brighter prospect than to drudge away in a bookstore all her life, or to go out on Sundays with her cousin. Norma dreamed for hours of Leslie's life, the ease and warmth and beauty of it, and when Leslie was actually heralded as engaged the younger girl felt a pang of the first actual jealousy she had ever known. She imagined the beautiful drawing-room in which Acton Liggett—perhaps as fascinating a person as his brother!—would clasp pearls about Leslie's fair little throat; she imagined the shining dinner tables at which Leslie's modestly dropped blonde head would be stormed with compliments and congratulations.
And suddenly molasses peppermints and dish-washing became odious to her, and she almost disliked Rose for her pitiable ecstasies over china bowls and glass-towels. All the pleasant excitement of her call upon Mrs. Melrose, with Aunt Kate, died away. It had seemed the beginning of some vaguely dreamed-of progress toward a life of beauty and achievement, but it was two weeks ago now, and its glamour was fading.
True, Christopher Liggett had come into Biretta's bookstore, with Leslie, and he and Norma had talked together for a few minutes, and Leslie had extended her Aunt Alice's kind invitation for tea. But no day had been set for the tea, Norma reflected gloomily. Now, she supposed, the stir of Leslie's engagement would put all that out of Christopher's head.
Wolf was not particularly sympathetic with her, she mused, disconsolately. Wolf had been acting in an unprecedented manner of late. Rose's engagement seemed to have completely turned his head. He laughed at Norma, hardly heard her words when she spoke to him, and never moved his eyes from her when they were together. Norma could not look up from her book, or her plate, or from the study of a Broadway shop window, without encountering that same steady, unembarrassed, half-puzzled stare.
"What's the matter with you, Wolf?" she would ask, impatiently. But Wolf never told her.
As a matter of fact, he did not know. He was a silent, thoughtful fellow, old for his years in many ways, and in some still a boy. Norma and Rose had known only the more prosperous years of Kate's life, but Wolf remembered many a vigil with his mother, remembered her lonely struggles to make a living for him and for the girls. He himself was the type that inevitably prospers—industrious, good, intelligent, and painstaking, but as a young boy in the working world he had early seen the terrors in the lives of men about him: drink, dirt, unemployment and disease, debt and dishonour. Wolf was not quick of thought; he had little imagination, rather marvelling at other men's cleverness than displaying any of his own, and he had reached perhaps his twenty-second or twenty-third summer before he realized that these terrors did not menace him, that whatever changes he made in his work would be improvements, steps upward. For actual months after the move to New York Wolf had pondered it, in quiet gratitude and pleasure. Rent and bills could be paid, there might be theatre treats for the girls, and chicken for Sunday supper, and yet the savings account in the Broadway bank might grow steadily, too. Far from being a slave to his employer, Wolf began to realize that this rather simple person was afraid of him, afraid that young Sheridan and some of the other smart, ingenious, practically educated men in his employ might recognize too soon their own independence.
And when the second summer in New York came, and Wolf could negotiate the modest financial deal that gave him and the girls a second-hand motor-car to cruise about in on Sundays and holidays, when they could picnic up in beautiful Connecticut, or unpack the little fringed red napkins far down on the Long Island shore, life had begun to seem very pleasant to him. Debt and dirt and all the squalid horrors of what he had seen, and what he had read, had faded from his mind, and for awhile he had felt that his cup could hold no more.
But now, just lately, there was something else, and although the full significance of it had not yet actually dawned upon him, Wolf began to realize that a change was near. It was the most miraculous thing that had ever come to him, although it concerned only little Norma—only the little cousin who had been an actual member of his family for all these years.
He had heard his mother say a thousand times that she was pretty; he had laughed himself a thousand times at her quick wit. But he had never dreamed that it would make his heart come up into his throat and suffocate him whenever he thought of her, or that her lightest and simplest words, her most casual and unconscious glance, would burn in his heart for hours.
During his busy days Wolf found himself musing about this undefined and nebulous happiness that began to tremble, like a growing brightness behind clouds, through all his days and nights. Had there ever been a time, he wondered, when he had taken her for granted, helped her into her blessed little coat as coolly as he had Rose? Had it been this same Norma who scolded him about throwing his collars on the floor, and who had sent his coat to the cleaner with a ten-dollar bill in the pocket?
Wolf remembered summer days, and little Norma chattering beside him on the front seat, as the shabby motor-car fled through the hot, dry city toward shade and coolness. He remembered early Christmas Mass, and Norma and Rose kneeling between him and his mother, in the warm, fir-scented church. He remembered breakfast afterward, in a general sense of hunger and relaxation and well-being, and the girls exulting over their presents. And every time that straight-shouldered, childish figure came into his dream, thatmop of cloudy dark hair and flashing laugh, the new delicious sense of some unknown felicity touched him, and he would glance about the busy factory self-consciously, as if his thoughts were written on his face for all the world to read.
Wolf had never had a sweetheart. It came to him with the blinding flash of all epoch-making discoveries that Norma was his girl—that he wanted Norma for his own, and that there was no barrier between them. And in the ecstasy of this new vision, which changed the whole face of his world, he was content to wait with no special impatience for the hour in which he should claim her. Of course Norma must like him—must love him, as he did her, unworthy as he felt himself of her, and wonderful as this new Norma seemed to be. Wolf, in his simple way, felt that this had been his destiny from the beginning.
That a glimpse of life as foreign and unnatural as the Melrose life might seriously disenchant Norma never occurred to him. Norma had always been fanciful, it was a part of her charm. Wolf, who worked in the great Forman shops, had felt it no particular distinction when by chance one day he had been called from his luncheon to look at the engine of young Stanley Forman's car. He had left his seat upon a pile of lumber, bolted the last of his pie, and leaned over the hood of the specially designed racer interested only in its peculiarities, and entirely indifferent to the respectful young owner, who was aware that he knew far less about it than this mechanic did. Sauntering back to his work in the autumn sunlight, Wolf had followed the youthful millionaire by not even a thought. If he had done so, it might have been a half-contemptuousdecision that a man who knew so little of engines ought not to drive a racer.
So Norma's half-formed jealousies, desires, and dreams were a sealed book to him. But this very unreasonableness lent her an odd exotic charm in his eyes. She was to Wolf like a baby who wants the moon. The moon might be an awkward and useless possession, and the baby much better without it, still there is something winning and touching about the little imperious mouth and the little upstretched arms.
One night, when he had reached home earlier than either of the girls, Wolf was in the warm bright kitchen, alone with his mother. He was seated at the end of the scrubbed and bleached little table; Kate at the other end was neatly and dexterously packing a yellow bowl with bread pudding.
"Do you remember, years and years ago, Mother," Wolf said, chewing a raisin, thoughtfully, "that you told me that Norma isn't my real cousin?"
Kate's ruddy colour paled a little, and she looked anxious. Not Perseus, coming at last in sight of his Gorgon, had a heart more sick with fear than hers was at that instant.
"What put that into your head, dear?"
"Well, I don't know. But it's true, isn't it?"
Kate scattered chopped nuts from the bowl of her spoon.
"Yes, it's true," she said. "There's not a drop of the same blood in your veins, although I love her as I do you and Rose."
She was silent, and Wolf, idly turning the egg-beater in an empty dish, smiled to himself.
"But what made you think of that, Wolf?" his mother asked.
"I don't know!" Wolf did not look at her, but his big handsome face was suffused with happy colour. "Harry and Rose, maybe," he admitted.
Kate sat down suddenly, her eyes upon him.
"Not the Baby?" she half whispered.
Her son leaned back in his chair, and folded his big arms across his chest. When he looked at her the smile had faded from his face, and his eyes were a trifle narrowed, and his mouth set.
"I guess so!" he said, simply. "I guess it's always been—Norma. But I didn't always know it. I used to think of her as just another sister—like Rose. But I know now that she'll never seem that again—never did, really."
He was silent, and Kate sat staring at him in silence.
"Has she any relatives, Mother?"
"Has—what?"
"Has she people—who are they?"
Kate looked at the floor.
"She has no one but me, Son."
"Of course, she's not nineteen, and I don't believe it's ever crossed her mind," Wolf said. "I don't think Norma ever had a real affair—just kid affairs, like Paul Harrison, and that man at the store who used to send her flowers. But I don't believe those count."
"I don't think she ever has," Kate said, heavily getting to her feet, and beginning to pour her custard slowly through the packed bread. Presently she stopped, and set the saucepan down, her eyes narrowed and fixed on space. Then Wolf saw her press thefingers of one hand upon her mouth, a sure sign of mental perturbation.
"I know I'm not worthy to tie her little shoes for her, Mother," he said, suddenly, and very low.
"There's no woman in the world good enough for you," his mother answered, with a troubled laugh. And she gave the top of his head one of her rare, brisk kisses as she passed him, on her way out of the room.
Wolf was sufficiently familiar with the domestic routine to know that every minute was precious now, and that she was setting the table. But his heart was heavy with a vague uneasiness; she had not encouraged him very much. She had not accepted this suggestion as she did almost all of the young people's ideas, with eager coöperation and sympathy. He sat brooding at the kitchen table, her notable lack of enthusiasm chilling him, and infusing him with her own doubts.
When she came back, she stood with her back turned to him, busied with some manipulation of platters and jars in the ice-box.
"Wolf, dear," she said, "I want to ask you something. The child's too young to listen to you—or any one!—now. Promise me—promise me, that you'll speak to me again before you——"
"Certainly I'll promise that, Mother!" Wolf said, quickly, hurt to the soul. She read his tone aright, and came to lay her cheek against his hair.
"Listen to me, Son. Since the day her mother gave her to me I've hoped it would be this way! But there's nothing to be gained by hurry. You——"
"But you would be glad, Mother! You do think that she might have me?" poor Wolf said, eagerly andhumbly. He was amazed to see tears brimming his mother's eyes as she nodded and turned away.
Before either spoke again a rush in the hall announced the home-coming girls, who entered the kitchen gasping and laughing with the cold.
"Whew!" panted Norma, catching Wolf's hands in her own half-frozen ones. "I'm dying! Oh, Wolf, feel my nose!" She pressed it against his forehead. "Oh, there's a wind like a knife—and look at my shoe—in I went, right through the ice! Oh, Aunt Kate, let me stay here!" and locking both slender arms about the older woman's neck, she dropped her dark, shining head upon her breast like a storm-blown bird. "It's four below zero in Broadway this minute," she added, looking sidewise under her curling lashes at Wolf.
"Who said so?" Wolf demanded.
"The man I bought that paper from said so; go back and ask him. Oh, joy, that looks good!" said Norma, eyeing the pudding that was now being drawn, crackling, bubbling, and crisp, from the oven. "Rose and I fell over the new lineoleum in the hall; I thought it was a dead body!" she went on, cheerfully. "I camedownon my family feature with such a noise that I thought the woman downstairs would be rattling the dumb-waiter ropes again long before this!" She stepped to the dumb-waiter, and put her head into the shaft. "What is it, darling?" she called.
"Norma, behave yourself. It would serve you good and right if she heard you," Mrs. Sheridan said, in a panic. "Go change your shoes, and come and eat your dinner. I believe," her aunt added, pausing near her, "that youdidskin your nose in the hall."
"Oh, heavens!" Norma exclaimed, bringing her face close to the dark window, as to a mirror. "Oh, say it will be gone by Friday! Because on Friday I'm going to have tea with Mrs. Liggett—her husband came in to-day and asked me. Oh, the darling! He certainly is the—well, the most—well, I don't know!——His voice, and the quiet,quietway——"
"Oh, for pity's sake go change your shoes!" Rose interrupted. "You are the biggest idiot! I went into the store to get her," Rose explained, "and I've had all this once, in the subway. How Mr. Liggett picks up his glasses, on their ribbon, to read the titles of books——"
"Oh, you shut up!" Norma called, departing. And unashamed, when dinner was finished, and the table cleared, she produced a pack of cards and said that she was going to playThe Idle Year.
"... and if I get it, it'll mean that the man I marry is going to look exactly like Chris Liggett."
She did not get it, and played it again. The third time she interrupted Wolf's slow and patient perusal of theScientific Americanto announce that she was now going to play it to see if he was in love with Mary Redding.
"Think how nice that would be, Aunt Kate, a double wedding. And if Wolf or Rose died and left a lot of children, the other one would always be there to take in whoever was left—you know what I mean!"
"You're the one Wolf ought to marry, to make it complete," Rose, who was neatly marking a cross-stitch "R" on a crash towel, retaliated neatly.
"I can't marry my cousin, Miss Smarty."
"Oh, don't let a little thing like that worry you," Wolf said, looking across the table.
"Our children would be idiots—perhaps they would be, anyway!" Norma reminded him, in a gale of laughter. Her aunt looked up disapprovingly over her glasses.
"Baby, don't talk like that. That's not a nice way to talk at all. Wolf, you lead her on. Now, we'll not have any more of that, if you please. I see the President is making himself very unpopular, Wolf—I don't know why they all make it so hard for the poor man! Mrs. McCrea was in the market this morning——"
"If I win this game, Rose, by this time next year," Norma said, in an undertone, "you'll have——"
"Norma Sheridan!"
"Yes, Aunt Kate!"
"Do you want me to speak to you again?"
"No, ma'am!"
Norma subsided for a brief space, Rose covertly watching the game. Presently the younger girl burst forth anew.
"Listen, Wolf, I'll bet you that I can get more words out of the letters in Christopher than you can!"
Wolf roused himself, smiled, took out his fountain pen, and reached for a sheet of paper. He was always ready for any sort of game. Norma, bending herself to the contest, put her pencil into her mouth, and stared fixedly at the green-shaded drop light. Rose, according to ancient precedent, was permitted to assist evenly and alternately.
And Kate, watching them and listening, even while she drowsed over the Woman's Page, decided that after all they were nothing but a pack of children.
To Leslie Melrosehad come the very happiest time of her life. She had always had everything she wanted; it had never occurred to her to consider a fortunate marriage engagement as anything but a matter of course, in her case. She was nineteen, she was "mad," in her own terms, about Acton Liggett, and the engagement was the natural result.
But the ensuing events were far more delightful than Leslie had dreamed, even in her happy dreams. All her world turned from its affairs of business and intrigue and amusement to centre its attention upon her little person for the moment, and to shower her with ten times enough flattery and praise to turn a much steadier head. Presents rained upon Leslie, and every one of them was astonishingly handsome and valuable; newspapers clamoured for her picture, and wherever she went she was immediately the focus for all eyes. That old Judge Lee should send her some of his mother's beautiful diamonds; that Christopher and Alice should order for her great crates of specially woven linen that were worthy of a queen; that Emanuel Massaro, the painter of the hour, should ask her to sit for him, were all just so much sheer pleasure added to the sum total of her happiness in loving the man of her choice and knowing herself beloved by him.
Leslie found herself, for the first time in her life, a person of importance with Aunt Annie, too. Thesocial leader found time to advise her little niece in the new contingencies that were perpetually arising, lent Leslie her private secretary for the expeditious making of lists or writing of notes, and bullied her own autocratic modiste into promising at least half of the trousseau. It was Annie who decided that the marriage must be at a certain Park Avenue church, and at a certain hour, and that the reception at the house must be arranged in a certain manner, and no other. Hendrick or Judge Lee would give away the bride, Christopher would be his brother's best man, and Leslie would be given time to greet her guests and change her gown and be driven to Alice's house for just one kiss before she and Acton went away.
Acton had begged for an Easter wedding, but Leslie, upon her aunt's advice, held out for June. If the war was over by that time—and everyone said it must be, for so hideous a combat could not possibly last more than six or eight months—then they would go to England and the Continent, but otherwise they might drift through Canada to the Pacific Coast, and even come back by San Francisco and the newly opened Canal.
Meanwhile, Annie entertained her niece royally and untiringly. Formal dinners to old family friends must come first, but when spring arrived Leslie was promised house parties and yachting trips more after her own heart. The girl was so excited, so bewildered and tired, even after the first two weeks, that she remained in bed until noon every day, and had a young maid especially detailed to take her dressmaker's fittings for her. But even so she lost weight, her cheeks burned and her eyes glittered feverishly, and her voice took an unnaturally high key, her speech a certainshallow quickness. Acton's undeviating adoration she took with a pretty, spoiled acquiescence, and with old family friends she was charmingly dutiful and deferential, but always with the air of sparing a few glittering drops to their age and dulness from the overflowing cup of her youth and beauty and power. But with her grandmother and aunts she had a new attitude of self-confidence, and to her girl friends she was no longer the old intimate and equal, but a being who had, for the moment at least, left them all behind. She would show them the new silver, the new linens, the engagement-time frocks that were in themselves a trousseau, and wish that Doris or Marion or Virginia were engaged, too; it was such fun! And with older women, the débutantes of six and eight and ten years ago, who had failed of all this glory, who could only listen sweetly to the chatter of plans and honours, and look in uncomplaining admiration at the blazing ring, Leslie was quite merciless. The number of times that she managed to mention her age, the fact that Madame Modiste had tried to give her fittings after three o'clock under the impression that she was a schoolgirl, and the "craziness" of "little me" going over all the late Mrs. Liggett's chests of silver and china, perhaps only these unsuccessful candidates for matrimony could estimate. Certainly Leslie herself was quite unconscious of it, and truly believed what she heard on all sides, that she was "adorable," and "not changed one bit," and "just as unconscious that there was anything else in the world but Acton, as a little girl with her first doll."
Christopher and Alice, in the first years of their married life, had built a home at Glen Cove, andChristopher made this his wedding present to his brother. Necessarily, even the handsomest of country homes, if ten years old, needs an almost complete renovation, and this renovation Acton and Leslie, guided by a famous architect, began rapturously to plan, reserving a beautiful apartment not far from Alice in Park Avenue for autumn furnishing and refitting.
All these activities and interests kept the lovers busy, and kept them apart indeed, or united them only in groups of other people. But Acton could bring his pretty sweetheart home from a dinner now and then, and come into the old Melrose house for a precious half hour of murmuring talk, or could sometimes persuade her to leave a tea or a matinée early enough to walk a few blocks with him.
In this fashion they slipped away from a box party one Friday afternoon, and found themselves walking briskly northward, into the neighbourhood of Alice's house. Leslie had had, for several days, a rather guilty feeling in regard to this lovely aunt. It was really hard, rising at noon, and trying to see and please so many persons, to keep in close touch with the patient and uncomplaining invalid, who had to depend wholly upon the generosity of those she loved for knowledge of them. So Leslie was glad to suggest, and Acton glad to agree, that they had better go in and see Aunt Alice for a few minutes.
As usual, Mrs. Liggett had company, although it proved only to be the pretty Miss Sheridan who had called upon Leslie's grandmother on the first day of that mysterious indisposition that had kept the old lady bedridden almost ever since.
Alice looked oddly tired, but her eyes were shiningbrightly, and Norma was charmingly happy and at ease. She jumped up to shake hands with Acton with a bright comment that he was not in theleastlike his brother, and recalled herself to Leslie before offering her all sorts of good wishes. Norma, hoping that it would some day occur, had indeed anticipated this meeting with Leslie by a little mental consideration of what she should say, but the effect was so spontaneous and sincere that the four were enabled to settle down comfortably to tea, in a few moments, like old friends.
"Miss Sheridan—or Norma, rather—and I have been having a perfectly delicious talk," said Alice. "She loves Christina Rossetti, and she knew the 'Hound of Heaven' by heart, and she has promised to send me a new man's work that sounds delightful—what was it? Something about General Booth?"
"If I haven't chattered you to death!" Norma said, penitentially. And Leslie added: "Aunt Alice, youdolook tired! Not that talking poetry ever would tire you!" she hastened to add, with a smile for Norma.
"No, I'm not—or rather, I was, but I feel wonderfully!" Alice said. "Pour the tea, Kitten. What have you two little adventurers been doing with yourselves?"
"Mrs. Dupré's party—Yvette Guilbert," Leslie said. "She is quite too wonderful!"
"I've always wanted to see her, and I've always known I would adore her," Norma interpolated, dreamily.
Alice glanced at her quickly.
"Does she give another matinée, Leslie?"
"Two——" Leslie looked at Acton. "Is it two weeks from to-day?" she questioned.
"I'll send you seats for it," Alice said, making a little note on her ivory memoranda pages, as she nodded to Norma. The colour rushed into Norma's face, and she bit her lip.
"But, Mrs. Liggett—honestly—I truly didn't mean—I only meant——" she began to stammer, half laughing. Alice laid her hand upon Norma's reassuringly.
"My dear, you know I don't think you hinted! But I want to do it. I can't"—Alice said, smiling—"I can't do anything for little Miss Aladdin here, and it gives me the greatest pleasure, now and then——"
"I want to tell you something about Mrs. Liggett," Acton said; "she's got a grasping nature and a mean soul—you can see that! She's the limit, all right!" He smiled down at her as he gave her her teacup, and Leslie laughed outright. Acton was a person of few words, but when he chose to talk, Leslie found his manner amusing. Christopher, coming up to join them fifteen minutes later, said that from the noise they made he had supposed at least fifty persons to be in his wife's room.
Did Norma, as she gave the master of the house her hand, have sudden memory of all her recent absurd extravagances in his name—the games, the surmises, the wild statements that had had Chris Liggett as their inspiration? If she did, she gave no sign of it beyond the bright flush with which she greeted her oldest acquaintance in this group. Christopher sat down, content to be a listener and an onlooker, as he sipped his tea, but Norma saw that his wife's look of white fatigue made him uneasy, and immediately said that she must go.
He made no protest, but said that the car was at thedoor, and she must let him send her home. Norma agreed, and Acton asked if he and Leslie might not use it, too. The three departed in high spirits, Alice detaining the radiant and excited Norma long enough to exact from her the promise of another visit soon, and to send an affectionate message to Mrs. Sheridan from "Miss Alice." Then they went down to the big car, an exciting and delightful experience to Norma.
Leslie was left first, and Acton, pleading that he was already late for another engagement, was dropped at his club. Then Norma had the car to herself, and as it smoothly flew toward the humble doorway of the Sheridans, could giggle, almost aloud, in her pleasure and exhilaration at an afternoon that had gone without a single awkward minute, all pleasant, harmonious, and vaguely flattering. And the wonderful Mrs. Liggett had asked her to come soon again, and had made that delightful suggestion about the concert. The name of Yvette Guilbert meant little to Norma, but the thought that Alice Liggett really wanted to hold her friendship was nothing less than intoxicating.
She looked out of the car, the streets were bare of snow now, there was not a leaf showing in the park, and the ground was dark and unpromising. But a cool, steady wind was blowing through the lingering twilight, men were running after rolling hats, and at least the milliners' windows were radiant with springtime bloom. Children were playing in Norma's street, wrapped and muffled children, wild with joy to be out of doors again, and a tiny frail little moon was floating in the opal sky just above the grim line of roofs. Norma looked up at it, and the pure blowing air touched her hot face, and her heart sang with the sheer joy of living.
Christopherhad gone down to the door with his brother and the girls, and had sent a glance up and down the quiet, handsome block, feeling in the moving air what Norma felt, what all the city felt—the bold, wild promise of spring. He turned back into the house with something like a sigh; Acton and Leslie in their young happiness were somehow a little haunting to-night.
The butler was starting upstairs with the papers; Christopher took them from him, and went back to Alice's room with his eyes idly following the headlines. The pretty apartment was somewhat disordered, and looked dull and dark in the half light. Christopher walked to a window, and pushed it open upon its railed balcony.
"Chris!" whispered his wife's voice, thick and dry in the gloom.
Aghast in the instant apprehension of something wrong, he sprang to her couch, dropped to his knees, and put an arm about her.
"Alice! What is it, my darling?"
She struggled for speech, and he could see that her face was ashen.
"Chris—no, don't ring. Chris,who is that girl?"
Christopher touched the chain that flooded the couch with rosy light. He bent in eager sympathy over his wife's relaxed form.
"Alice, what is it?" he asked, tenderly. "Don't worry, dear, don't try to talk too fast! Just tell Chris what frightened you——"
Alice laughed wretchedly as she detached the fingers he had pressed anxiously upon her forehead.
"No, I'm not feverish!" she assured him, holding tight to his hand. "But I want you to tell me, Chris, I must know—and no matter what promise you have given Mother—or given any one——"
"Now, now, now!" he soothed her. "I'll tell you anything, sweetheart, only don't let yourself get so excited. Just tell me what it is, Alice, and I'll do anything in the world for you, of course!"
"Chris," she said, swallowing with a dry throat, and sitting up with an air of regaining self-control, "you must tell me. You know you can trust me, youknow——! That girl——"
"Butwhatgirl—what are you talking about, dear? Do—do try to be just a little clearer, and calmer——"
"Who"—said Alice, with a ghastly look, sweeping the hair back from her damp forehead—"who is that Norma Sheridan?"
"Why, I told you, dear, that I don't know," her husband protested. "I told you weeks ago, after your mother made that scene, the night of Hendrick's speech, that I couldn't make head or tail of it!"
"Chris"—Alice was regarding him fixedly—"youmustknow!"
"Dearest, couldn't your mother simply wish to befriend a girl whose parents——"
Alice flung her loosened hair back, and at her gesture and her glance at the little carafe on her table he poured her a glass of cold water. Drinking it off, and raisingherself in her cushions, she stretched her hand to touch the chair beside her, and still without a word indicated that he was to take it. With a face of grave concern Christopher sat down beside her, holding her hands in both his own.
"Chris," she said, clearly and quickly, if with occasional catches of breath, "the minute that girl came into the room I knew that—I knew thathorrorhad come upon us all! I knew that she was one of us—one of us Melroses, somehow——"
"Alice!" he said, pleadingly.
"But Mama," she said, with a keen look, "didn't tell you that?"
"She told me only what I told you that night, on my honour as a gentleman! Alice, what makes you say what you do?"
"Ah, Chris," his wife cried, almost frantically, "look at her!Lookat her! Why, her voice is Annie's, the same identical voice—she looks like my father, like Theodore—she looks like us all! She and Leslie were so much alike, as they sat there, in spite of the colouring, that I almost screamed it at them! Surely—surely, you see it—everyone sees it!"
He stared at her, beginning to breathe a little quickly in his turn.
"By George!" she heard him whisper, as if to himself.
"Do you see it, Chris?" Alice whispered, almost fearfully.
"But—but——" He got up and walked restlessly to the window, and came back to sit down again. "But there's a cousinship somewhere," he said, sensibly. "There's no reason to suppose that the thing can'tbe explained. I do think you're taking this thing pretty hard, my dear. What can you possibly suppose? There might be a hundred girls——"
His voice fell. Alice was watching him expectantly.
"Mama felt it—saw it—as I do," she said. "You may be very sure that Mama wouldn't have almost lost her mind, as she did, unless something had given her cause!"
They looked at each other in silence, in the utter silence of the lovely, cool-toned room.
"Alice," Chris said in a puzzled voice after awhile, "you suspect me of keeping something from you. But on my honour you know all that your mother told me—all that I know!"
"Oh, Chris," she said, with a sort of wail. "If I don't know more!"
Her husband's slow colour rose.
"How could you know more?" he asked, bewilderedly.
Alice was unhappily silent.
"Chris, if I tell you what I'm afraid of—what I fear," she said, presently, after anxious thought, "will you promise me never, never to speak of it—never even to think of it!—if it—if it proves not to be true?"
"I don't have to tell you that, Alice," he said.
"No, of course you don't—of course you don't!" she echoed with a nervous laugh. "I'll tell you what I think, Chris—what has been almost driving me mad—and you can probably tell me a thousand reasons why it can't be so! You see, I've never understood Mama's feverish distress these last weeks. She's been to see me, she's done what had to be done about Leslie's engagement, but she's not herself—you can see that!Yesterday she began to cry, almost for nothing, and when I happened to mention—or rather when I mentioned very deliberately—that Miss Sheridan was coming here, she almost shrieked. Well, I didn't know what to make of it, and even then I rather wondered——
"Even then," Alice began again, after a painful pause, and with her own voice rising uncontrollably, "I suspected something. But not this! Oh, Chris, if I'm wrong about this, I shall be on my knees for gratitude for the rest of my life; I would die, I would die to have it just—just my wretched imagination!—A thing like this—to us—the Melroses—who have always been so straight—so respected!"
"Now, Alice—now, Alice!"
"Yes, I know!" she said, quickly. "I know!" And for a moment she lay back quietly, stroking his hand. "Chris," she resumed, composedly, after a moment, "you know the tragedy of Annie's life?"
Chris, taken by surprise, frowned.
"Why, yes, I suppose so," he admitted, unwillingly.
"Chris, did it ever occur to you that she might have had a child—by that fiend?"
Chris looked at his wife a moment, and his eyes widened, and his mouth twitched humorously.
"Oh, come now, Alice—come now!"
"You think it's folly!" she asked, eagerly.
"Worse!" he answered, briefly, his eyes smiling reproach.
Alice's whole tense body relaxed, and she stared at him with light dawning in her eyes.
"Well, probably it is," she said, very simply.
"Of course it is," Chris said. "Now, you are dead tired, dear, and you have let the thing mill about inyour head until you can't see anything normally. I confess that I don't understand your mother's mysterious nervousness, but then I am free to say that I don't by any means always understand your mother! You remember the pearl episode, and the time that she had Annie and Hendrick cabling from Italy—because Hendrick Junior had a rash! And then there was Porter—a boy nineteen years old, and she actually had everyone guessing exactly what she felt toward him——"
"Oh, Chris, no, she didn't! She simply felt that he was a genius, and he hadn't a penny," Alice protested, reproachful and hurt.
"Well, she had him there at the house until his mother came after him, and then, when he finally was sent abroad, she asked me seriously if I thought two hundred dollars a month was enough for his musical education!"
"Yes, I know!" Alice said, ruefully, shaking her head.
"Now this comes along," said Christopher, encouraged by the effect of his words, "and you begin to fret your poor little soul with all sorts of wild speculations. I wish to the Lord that your mother was a little bit more trusting with her confidences, but when it all comes out it'll prove to be some sister of your grandfather who married a tailor or something, and left a line of pretty girls to work in Biretta's——"
"But, Chris, she reminded me so of Annie to-day I almost feltsick," Alice said, still frightened and dubious.
"Well, that merely shows that you're soft-hearted; it's no reflection on Annie!" Chris said, giving her herpaper, and opening his own. But Alice did not open her paper.
A maid came in, and moved about noiselessly setting chairs and rugs in order. Another soft light was lighted and the little square table set before the fire. The cool fresh air drifted in at the half-open window, and sent a delicate breath, from Alice's great bowl of freesia lilies, through the peaceful room. The fire snapped smartly about a fresh log, and Alice's great tortoise-shell cat came to make a majestic spring into her lap.