"But you're coming back to have dinner with us?" the girl interrupted, thoroughly uneasy at the change in him.
"Not to-night. I have an engagement! Good-bye. I'll see you very soon. The hat's charming, Norma, I think you may safely order more of them by mail if you have to. Good-bye."
And with another odd smile, and his usually courteous bow, he was gone, and Norma was left staring after him in a state almost of stupefaction.
What was the matter with him? The question framed itself indignantly in Norma's mind as she automatically crossed the foyer of the hotel and went upstairs. Mechanically, blindly, she took off the big hat, flung aside the parasol, and went through the uniting bathroom into Mrs. Melrose's room. What on earth had been the matter with Chris? What right had he—how dared he—treat her so rudely?
Mrs. Melrose was in a flowered chair near a wide-opened window. She had put on a lacy robe of thin silk, after the heat and burden of the day, and her feet were in slippers. Beside her was a tall glass, holding an iced drink, and before her, on a small table, Regina had ranged the beautiful photographs of Leslie's baby that were to be the young mother's birthday surprise next week.
"Hello, dear!" she said, in the pleasant, almost cooing voice with which she almost always addressed the girls of the family, "isn't this just a dreadful, dreadful day? Oh, my, so hot! Look here, Norma, just see my little Patricia's pictures. Aren't theyperfectly lovely? I'msopleased with them. I was just——Regina, will you order Miss Norma something cool to drink, please. Tea, dear? Or lemonade, like your old aunty?—I was just showing them to Chris. Yes. And he thought they were just perfectly lovely; see the little fat hand, and how beautifully the lace took! There—that one's the best. You'll see, Leslie will like that one."
The topic, fortunately for Norma's agitation, was apparently inexhaustible and all-absorbing. The girl could sink almost unnoticed into an opposite chair, and while her voice dutifully uttered sympathetic monosyllables, and her eyes went from the portraits of little Patricia idly about the big room, noting the handsome old maple furniture, and the costly old scrolled velvet carpet, and the aspect of flaming roofs beyond the window in the sunset, her thoughts could turn and twist agonizingly over this new mystery and this new pain. What had been the matter with Chris?
Anger gave way to chill, and chill to utter heartsickness. The cause of the change was unimportant, after all; it was the change itself that was significant. Norma's head ached, her heart was like lead. She had been thinking, all the way down in the car—all to-day—that she would meet him to-night; that they would talk. Now what? Was this endless evening to drag away on his terms, and were they to return to Newport to-morrow, with only the memory of that cool farewell to feed Norma's starving, starving soul?
"Chris couldn't stay and have dinner," Mrs. Melrose presently was regretting, "but, after all, perhaps it's cooler up here than anywhere, and I am so tired thatI'm not going to change! You'll just have to stand me as I am."
And the tired, heat-flushed, wrinkled old face, under its fringe of gray hair, smiled confidently at Norma. The girl smiled affectionately back.
Five o'clock. Six o'clock. It was almost seven when Norma came forth from a cold bath, and supervised the serving of the little meal. She merely played with her own food, and the old lady was hardly more hungry.
"Oh, no, Aunt Marianna! I think that Leslie was just terribly nervous, after Patricia was born. But I think now, especially when they're back in their own house, they'll be perfectly happy. No reason in the world why they shouldn't be," Norma heard herself saying. So they had been talking of Acton and Leslie, she thought. Leslie was spoiled, and Acton was extravagant, and the united families had been just a little worried about their attitudes toward each other. Mrs. Melrose was sure that Norma was right, and rambled along the same topic for some time. Then Norma realized that they had somehow gotten around to Theodore, Leslie's father. This subject was always good for half hours together, she could safely ramble a little herself. The deadly weight fell upon her spirit again. What had been the matter with Chris?
At nine o'clock her tired old companion began preparations for bed, and Norma, catching up some magazines, went into her own room. She could hear Regina and Mrs. Melrose murmuring together, the running of water, the opening and shutting of bureau drawers.
Norma went to her open window, leaned out intothe warm and brilliant night. There was a hot moon, moving between clouds that promised, at last, a break in the binding heat. Down the Avenue below her omnibuses wheeled and rumbled, omnibuses whose upper seats were packed with thinly clad passengers, but otherwise there was little life and movement abroad. A searchlight fanned the sky, fell and wavered upward again. A hurdy-gurdy, in the side street, poured forth the notes of the "Marseillaise."
Suddenly, and almost without volition, the girl snatched the telephone, and murmured a number. Thought and senses seemed suspended while she waited.
"Is this the Metropolitan Club? Is Mr. Christopher Liggett there?... If you will, please. Thank you. Say that it is a lady," said Norma, in a hurried and feverish voice. The operator would announce presently, of course, that Mr. Liggett was not there. The chance that he was there was so remote——
"Chris!" she breathed, all the tension and doubt dropping from her like a garment at the sound of his quiet tones. "Chris—this is Norma!"
A pause. Her soul died within her.
"What is it?" Chris asked presently, in a repressed voice.
"Well—but were you playing cards?"
"No."
"You've had your dinner, Chris?"
"No. Yes, I had dinner, of course. I dined with Aunt Marianna—no, that was lunch! I dined here."
"Chris," Norma faltered, speaking quickly as her courage ebbed, "I didn't want to interrupt you, but you seemed so—so different, this afternoon. And I didn't want to have you cross at me; and I wondered—I've been wondering ever since—if I have done something that made you angry—that was stupid and—and——"
She stopped. The forbidding silence on his part was like a wall that crossed her path, was like a veil that blinded and choked her.
"Not at all," he said, quickly. "Where did you get that idea?... Hello—hello—are you there, Norma?" he added, when on her part in turn there was a blank silence.
For Norma, strangled by an uprising of tears as sudden as it was unexpected and overwhelming, could make no audible answer. Why she should be crying she could not clearly think, but she was bathed in tears, and her heart was heavy with unspeakable desolation.
"Norma!" she heard him say, urgently. "What is it? Norma——?"
"Nothing!" she managed to utter, in a voice that stemmed the flood for only a second.
"Norma," Chris said, simply, "I am coming out. Meet me downstairs in ten minutes. I want to see you!"
Both telephones clicked, and Norma found herself sitting blankly in the sudden silence of the room, her brain filled with a confusion of shamed and doubting and fearful thoughts, and her heart flooded with joy.
Five minutes later she stepped from the elevator into the lobby, and selected a big chair that faced obliquely on the entrance doors. The little stir in the wide, brightly lighted place always interested her and amused her; women drifting from the dining-room with their light wraps over their arms, messengers coming and going, the far strains of the orchestra mingling pleasantly with the nearer sounds of feet and voices.
To-night her spirit was soaring. Nothing mattered, nothing of her doubts, nothing of his coldness, except that Chris was even now coming toward her! Her mind followed the progress of his motor-car, up through the hot, deserted streets.
Suddenly it seemed to her that she could not bear the emotion of meeting. With every man's figure that came through the wide-open doors her heart thumped and pounded.
His voice; she would hear it again. She would see the gray eyes, and watch the firm, quick movement of his jaw.
Other men, meeting other women, or parting from other women, came and went. Norma liked the big, homely boy in olive drab, who kissed the little homely mother so affectionately.
She glanced at her wrist watch, twisted about to confirm its unwelcome news by the big clock. Quarter to ten, and no Chris. Norma settled down again to waiting and watching.
Ten o'clock. Quarter past ten. He was not coming! No, although her sick and weary spirit rose whenever there was the rush of a motor-car to the curb or the footstep of a man on the steps outside, she knew now that he was not coming. Hope deferred had exhausted her, but hope dead was far, far worse. He was not coming.
It was almost half-past ten when a bell-boy approached. Was it Miss Sheridan? Mr. ChristopherLiggett had been called out of town, and would try to see Mrs. Melrose in a day or two.
Norma turned upon him a white face of fatigue.
"Is Mr. Liggett on the telephone?"
"No, Miss. He just telephoned a message."
The boy retired, and Norma went slowly upstairs, and slowly made her preparations for sleep. But the blazing summer dawn, smiting the city at four o'clock, found her still sitting at the window, twirling a tassel of the old-fashioned shade in her cold fingers, and staring with haggard eyes into space.
Morethan a week later Annie gave a luncheon to a dozen women, and telephoned Norma beforehand, with a request that the girl come early enough to help her with name cards.
"These damnable engagement luncheons," said Aunt Annie, limping about the long table, and grumbling at everything as she went. Annie had wrenched her ankle in alighting from her car, and was cross with nagging pain. "Here, put Natalie next to Leslie, Norma; no, that puts the Gunnings together. I'll give you Miss Blanchard—but you don't speak French! Here, give me your pencil—and confound these things anyway——Fowler," she said to the butler, "I don't like to see a thing like that on the table—carry that away, please; and here, get somebody to help you change this, that won't do! That's all right—only I want this as you had it day before yesterday—and don't use those, get the glass ones——"
And so fussing and changing and criticizing, Annie went away, and Norma followed her up to her bedroom.
"I'm wondering when we're going to giveyouan engagement luncheon, Norma," said the hostess, in a whirl of rapid dressing. "Who's ahead now?"
"Oh—nobody!" Norma answered, with a mirthless laugh. She had been listless and pale for several days, and did not seem herself at all.
"Forrest Duer, is it?"
"Oh, good heavens—Aunt Annie! He's twenty-one!"
"Is that all—he's such a big whale!——Don't touch my hair, Phoebe, it'll do very well!" said Annie to the maid. "Well, don't be in too much of a hurry, Norma," she went on kindly. "Nothing like being sure! That"—Annie glanced at the retiring maid—"that's what makes me nervous about Leslie," she confessed. "I'm afraid we hurried the child into it just a little bit. It was an understood thing since they were nothing but kiddies."
"Leslie is outrageously spoiled," Norma said, not unkindly.
"Leslie? Oh, horribly. Mama always spoils everyone and poor Theodore spoiled her, too," Annie conceded.
"She told me herself yesterday," Norma went on, with a trace of her old animation, "that they've overdrawn again. Now, Aunt Annie, I do think that's outrageous! Chris straightened them all out last—when was it?—June, after the baby came, and they have an enormous income—thousands every month, and yet they are deep in again!"
"The wretched thing is that they quarrel about that!" Annie agreed.
"Well, exactly! That was what it was about day before yesterday, and Leslie told me she cried all night. And you know the other day she took Patricia and came home to Aunt Marianna, and it was terrible!"
"How much do you suppose the servants know of that?" Annie asked, frowning.
"Oh, theymustknow!" Norma replied.
"Foolish, foolish child! You know, Norma," Annieresumed, "Leslie comes by her temper naturally. She is half French; her mother was a Frenchwoman—Louison Courtot."
"It's a pretty name," Norma commented. "Did you know her?"
"Know her? She was my maid when I was about seventeen, a very superior girl. I used to practise my French with her. She was extremely pretty. After my father died my mother and I went to Florida, and when we came back the whole thing broke. I thought it would kill Mama! At first we thought Theodore had simply gotten her into 'trouble,' to use the dear old phrase. Butpas du tout; she had 'zemar-ri-agecertificate' all safe and sound. But he was no more in love with her than I was—a boy nineteen! Mama made her leave the house, and cut off Theodore's allowance entirely, and for a while they were together—but it couldn't last. Teddy got his divorce when he went with Mama to California, but he was ill then, though we didn't know it, poor boy! He lived five years after that."
"But he saw Leslie?"
"Oh, dear, yes!" Annie said, buffing her twinkling finger-nails, idly. "Didn't Mama ever tell you about that?"
"No, she never mentions it."
"Well, that was awful, too—for poor Mama. About four years after the divorce, one night when we were all at home—it was just after Mama and I came back from Europe, and the year before Hendrick and I were married—suddenly there was a rush in the hall, and in came Theodore's wife—Louison Courtot! It seems Mama had been in touch with her ever since wereturned, but none of us knew that. And she had Leslie with her, a little thing about four years old—Leslie just faintly remembers it. She had fought Mama off, at first, about giving her baby up, but now she was going to be married, and she had finally consented to do as Mama wanted. Leslie came over to me, and got into my lap, and went to sleep, I remember. Theodore was terribly ill, and I remember that Louison was quite gentle with him—surprised us all, in fact, she was so mild. She had been a wild thing, but always most self-respecting; a prude, in fact. She even stooped over Theodore, and kissed him good-bye, and then she knelt down and kissed Leslie, and went away. Mama had intended that she should always see the child, if she wanted to, but she never came again. She was married, I know, a few weeks later, and long afterward Mama told me that she was dead. Ted came to adore the baby, and of course she's been the greatest comfort to Mama, so it all turns out right, after all. But we're a sweet family!" finished Annie, rising to go downstairs. "And now," she added, on the stairs, "if there were to be serious trouble between Acton and Leslie——Well, it isn't thinkable!"
Leslie herself, charming in a flowered silky dress, with a wide flowery hat on her yellow hair, was waiting for them in the big, shaded hallway. The little matron was extremely attractive in her new dignities, and her babyish face looked more ridiculously youthful than ever as she talked of "my husband," "my little girl," "my house," and "my attorney."
Leslie, like Annie and Alice, was habitually wrapped in her own affairs, more absorbed in the question of her own minute troubles than in the most widespreadabuses of the world. When Leslie saw a coat, the identity of the wearer interested her far less than the primary considerations of the coat's cut and material, and the secondary decision whether or not she herself would like such a garment. Consequently, she glanced but apathetically at Norma; she had seen the dotted blue swiss before, and the cornflower hat; she had seen Aunt Annie's French organdie; there was nothing there either to envy or admire.
"How's the baby, dear; and how's Acton?" Annie asked, perfunctorily. Leslie sighed.
"Oh, they're both fine," she answered, indifferently. "I've been all upset because my cook got married—just walked out. I told Acton not to pay her, but of course he did; it's nothing to him if my whole house is upset by the selfishness of somebody else. He and Chris are going off this afternoon with Joe and Denny Page, for the Thousand Islands——"
"I didn't know Chris was here!" Annie said, in surprise.
"I didn't, myself. He came up with Acton, late last night. They'd motored all the way; I was asleep when they got in. I didn't know it until I found him at breakfast this morning——"
Norma's heart stood still. The name alone was enough to shake her to the very soul, but the thought that he was here—in Newport—this minute, and that she might not see him, probably indeed would not see him, made her feel almost faint.
She had not seen him since the meeting on the hotel steps nearly two weeks ago. It had been the longest and the saddest two weeks in Norma's life. It was in vain that she reminded herself that her love for him wasweakness and madness, and that by no possible shift of circumstances could it come to happy consummation. It was in vain that she pondered Alice's claims, and all the family claims, and the general claim of society as an institution. Deep and strong and unconquerable above them all rose the tide of love and passion, the gnawing and burning hunger for the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand.
Life had become for her a vague and changing dream, with his name for its only reality. Somewhere in the fog of days was Chris, and she would not live again until she saw him. He must forgive her; he must explain his coldness, explain the change in him, and then she would be content just with the old friendliness, just the old nearness and the occasional word together.
Every letter that Joseph brought her, every call to the telephone, meant to her only the poignant possibility of a message from him. She sickened daily with fresh despair, and fed herself daily with new hopes.
To-day she was scarcely conscious of the hilarious progress of the luncheon; she looked at the prospective bride, in whose honour Aunt Annie entertained, only with a pang of wonder. What was it like, the knowledge that one was openly beloved, the miraculous right to plan an unclouded future together? The mere thought of being free to love Chris, of having him free to claim her, almost dizzied Norma with its vista of utter felicity. She had to drive it resolutely from her mind. Not that—never that! But there must at least be peace and friendship between them.
At three o'clock the luncheon was over; it was half-past three when Leslie and she drove to the Melrose "cottage"—as the fourteen-room, three-story framehouse was called. Norma had searched the drive with her eyes as they approached. The gray roadster was not there. There was no sign of Christopher's hat or coat in the hallway. Alice was alone, in her downstairs sitting-room. Norma's heart sank like a lump of ice.
"Did you see Chris?" the invalid began, happily. "We had the nicest lunch together—just we two. And look at the books the angel brought me—just a feast. You saw him, Leslie, didn't you, dear? He said he caught you and Acton at breakfast. I was perfectly amazed. Miss Slater moved me out here about eleven o'clock, and I heard someone walking in——! He's off now, with the Pages; he told you that, of course!"
"He looks rotten, I think," Leslie offered. "I told him he was working too hard."
"Well, Judge Lee is sick, and he hasn't been in to the office since June," Alice said, "and that makes it very hard for Chris. But he says his room at the club is cool, and now he'll have two or three lovely days with the Page boys——"
Norma, who had subsided quietly into a chair, was looking at the yellow covers of the new French and Italian novels.
"And then does he come back here Monday, for the tennis?" she asked, clearing her throat.
"He says not!" Alice answered, regretfully. "He's going straight on down to the city. Then next week-end is the cruise with the Dwights; and after that, I suppose we'll all be home!"
She went on into a conversation with Leslie, relative to the move. After a few moments Norma went out through the opened French window onto the wide porch.It was rather a dark, old-fashioned side porch, with an elaborate wooden railing, and potted hydrangeas under a striped awning. The house had neither the magnificence of Annie's gray-stone mansion or the beauty of Leslie's colonial white and green at Glen Cove; it had been built in the late eighties, and was inflexibly ornate.
Norma went down slowly through the garden, and walked vaguely toward the hot glitter and roll of the blue sea. Her misery was almost unbearable. Weeks—it would be weeks before she would see him! He had been here to-day—here in the garden—in Alice's room, and she had not had a word or a sign.
Children and nurses were on the beach, grouped in the warm shade. The season was over, there were yellow leaves in the hedges, Norma's feet rustled among the dropped glory of the old trees. The world seemed hot, dry, lifeless before her.
"I wish I were dead!" she cried, passionately, for the first time in her life.
Suddenlyand smoothly they were all transported to town again, and the vigour and sparkle of the autumn was exhilarating to Norma in spite of herself. The Park was a glory of red and gold leaves; morning came late, and the dew shone until ten o'clock; bright mists rose smoking into the sunlight, and when Norma walked home from a luncheon, or from an hour of furious squash or tennis at the club, the early winter dusk would be closing softly in, the mists returning, and the lights of the long Mall in the park blooming round and blue in the twilight.
She was with Mrs. Melrose this winter, an arrangement extremely welcome to the old lady, who was lonely and liked the stir of young life in the house. Alice had quite charmingly and naturally suggested the change, and Norma's belongings had been moved away from the little white room next to Miss Slater's.
One reason for it was that Alice had had two nurses all summer long, and found the increased service a great advantage. Then Mama was all alone and not so well as she had been; getting old, and reluctant to take even the necessary exercise.
"And then you're too young to be shut up with stupid home-loving folk like Chris and me," Alice had told Norma, lightly.
"Your stupidity is proverbial, Aunt Alice," Norma had laughed. She did not care where she went anymore. Chris had greeted her casually, upon their meeting in October, and had studiously, if inconspicuously, ignored her. But even to see him at all was so great a relief to her over-charged heart that for weeks this was enough. She must meet him occasionally, she heard his name every day, and she knew where he was and what he was doing almost at every moment. She treasured every look, every phrase of his, and she glowed and grew beautiful in the conviction that, even though he was still mysteriously angry with her, he had that old consciousness of her presence, too; he might hate her, but he could not ignore her.
And then, in December, the whole matter reached a sudden crisis, and Norma came to feel that she would have been glad to have the matter go back to this state of doubt and indecision again.
Mrs. von Behrens was on the directorate of a working girls' club that needed special funds every winter, and this year the money was to be raised by an immense entertainment, at which generous professional singers were to be alternated on a brilliant programme with society girls and men, in tableaux and choruses. Norma, who had a charming if not particularly strong voice, was early impressed into service, because she was so good-natured, so dependable, and pretty and young enough to carry off a delectable costume. The song she sang had been specially written for the affair, and in the quaint dance that accompanied it she was drilled by the dance authority of the hour. A chorus of eight girls and eight men was added to complete the number, and the gaiety of the rehearsals, and the general excitement and interest, carried the matter along to the last and dress rehearsal with a most encouraging rush.
Annie had originally selected Chris for Norma's companion in the song, for Chris had a pleasant, presentable voice, and Chris in costume was always adequate to any rôle. Theatricals had been his delight, all his life long, and among the flattering things that were commonly said of Chris was that he had robbed the stage of a great character actor.
But Chris had begged off, to take a minor part in anotherensemble, and Norma had a youth named Roy Gillespie for her partner. Roy was a big, fat, blond boy, good-natured and stupid and rather in love with Norma, and as the girl was entirely unconscious of Annie's original plan, she was quite satisfied with him.
The dress rehearsal was on a dark Thursday afternoon before the Saturday of the performance. It took place in the big empty auditorium, where it was to drag along from twelve o'clock noon, until the preparations for the regular evening performance drove the amateurs, protesting, away. Snow was fluttering down over the city when Annie, with Norma, and a limousine full of properties, reached the place at noon; motor-cars were wheeling and crowding in the side street, and it seemed to Norma thrilling to enter so confidently at the big, dirty, sheet-iron door lettered:
"Stage Door. No Admittance."
As always to the outsider, the wings, the shabby dressing-rooms, the novel feeling of sauntering across the big, dim stage, the gloom of the great rising arch of the house, were full of charm. Voices and hammers were sounding in the gloom; somebody was talking hard while he fitfully played the piano; girls were giggling and fluttering about; footlights flashed up and down, in the front rows of seats a few mothers andmaids had gathered. There was the sweet, strong smell of some spicy disinfectant, and obscure figures, up the aisles, were constantly sweeping and stooping.
Annie had a chair in a wing. Her small fur hat and trim suit had been selected for comfort; her knees were crossed, and she had a sheaf of songs, a pencil, and various note-books in her hands. She was alert, serious, authoritative; her manner expressed an anxious certainty that everything that could possibly go wrong was about to do so. Men protested jovially to Annie, girls whimpered and complained, maids delivered staggering messages into her ear. Annie frowningly yet sympathetically sent them all away, one by one; persisted that the rehearsal proceed. Never mind the hat, we could get along without the hat; never mind Dixie Jadwin, someone could read her part; never mind this, never mind that; go on, go on—we must get on!
At five o'clock she was very tired, and Norma, fully arrayed, was tired, too. The girl had been sitting on a barrel for almost an hour, patiently waiting for the tardy Mr. Roy Gillespie to arrive, and permit their particular song to be rehearsed. Everything that could be done in the way of telephoning had been done: Mr. Gillespie had left his office, he was expected momentarily at his home, he should be given the message immediately. Nothing to do but wait.
Suddenly Norma's heart jumped to her throat, began to hammer wildly. A man had come quietly in between her and Annie, and she heard the voice that echoed in her heart all day and all night. It was Chris.
He did not see her, perhaps did not recognize her in a casual glance, and began to talk to his sister-in-lawin low, quick tones. Almost immediately Annie exclaimed in consternation, and called Norma.
"Norma! Chris tells me that poor old Mr. Gillespie died this afternoon.That'swhat's been the matter. What on earth are we to do now? I declare it'stoomuch!"
Norma got off her barrel. The great lighted stage seemed to be moving about her as she went to join them.
What Chris saw strained his tried soul to its utmost of endurance. He had not permitted himself to look at her squarely for weeks. Now there was a new look, a look a little sad, a little wistfully expectant, in the lovely face. Her eyes burned deeply blue above the touch of rouge and the crimson lips. Her dark, soft hair fell in loose ringlets on her shoulders from under the absurd little tipped and veiled hat of the late seventies. Her gown, a flowered muslin, moved and tilted with a gentle, shaking majesty over hoop skirts, and was crossed on the low shoulders by a thin silk shawl whose long fringes were tangled in her mitted fingers. The white lace stockings began where the loose lace pantalettes stopped, and disappeared into flat-heeled kid slippers. Norma carried a bright nosegay in lace paper, and on her breast a thin gold locket hung on a velvet ribbon.
She herself had been completely captivated by the costume when Madame Modiste had first suggested it, and when the first fittings began. But that was weeks ago, and she was accustomed to it now, and conscious in this instant of nothing but Chris, conscious of nothing but the possibility that he would have a word or a smile, at last, for her.
"Stay right here, both of you—don't move a step—while I telephone Lucia Street!" said the harassed Annie, her eyes glittering with some desperate hope. She hurried away; they were alone.
"Poor old Roy—he adored his father!" Chris said, with dry lips, and in a rather unnatural voice. Norma, for one second, simulated mere sympathy. Then with a rush the pride and hurt that had sustained her ever since that weary September evening in the hotel lobby vanished, and she came close to Chris, so that the fragrance and sweetness of her enveloped him, and caught his coat with both her mitted hands, and raised her face imploringly, commandingly to his.
"Chris—for God's sake—what have I done? Don't you know—don't you know that you're killing me?"
He looked down at her, wretchedly. And suddenly Norma knew. Not that he liked her, not that she fascinated and interested him, not that they were friends. But that he loved her with every fibre of his being, even as she loved him.
The revelation carried her senses away with it upon a raging sea of emotion and ecstasy. He drew her into a dim corner of the wings, and put his arms about her, and her whole slender body, in its tilting hoops, strained backward under the passion and fury of his first embrace. Again and again his lips met hers, and she heard the incoherent outpouring of murmured words, and felt the storm that shook him as it was shaking her. Norma, after the first kiss, grew limp, let herself rest almost without movement in his arms, shut her eyes.
Reason came back to them slowly; the girl almost rocking upon her feet as the vertigo and bewilderment passed, and the man sustaining her with an arm abouther shoulders, neither looking at the other. So several seconds, perhaps a full minute, went by, while the world settled into place about them; the dingy, unpainted wood of the wings, the near-by stage where absorbed groups of people were still coming and going, the distant gloom of the house.
"So now you know!" Chris said, breathlessly, panting, and looking away from her, with his hands hanging at his sides. "Now you know! I've tried to keep it from you! But now—now you know!"
Norma, also breathing hard, did not answer for a little space.
"I've known since that time we were in town, in September!" she said, almost defiantly. Chris looked toward her, surprised, and their eyes met. "I've known what was the matter withme," she added, thoughtfully, even frowning a little in her anxiety to make it all clear, "but I couldn't imagine what it was withyou!"
But this brought him to face her, so close that she felt the same sense of drowning, of losing her footing, again.
"Chris—please!" she whispered, in terror.
"But, Norma—say it! Say that you love me—that's all that matters now! I've been losing my mind, I think. I've been losing my mind. Just that—that you do care!"
"I have——" Tears came to her lifted blue eyes, and she brushed them away without moving her gaze from him. "I think I have always loved you, Chris—from the very first," she whispered.
Instantly she saw his expression change. It was as if, with that revelation, a new responsibility began for him.
"Here, dear, you mustn't cry!" he said, composedly. He gave her his handkerchief, helped her set the tipped hat and lace veil straight, smiled reassurance and courage into her eyes. "I'll see you, Norma—we'll talk," he said. "Oh, my God, to talk to you again! Come, now, we'll have to be here when Annie comes back—that's right. I—I love the little gown—terribly sweet. I haven't seen it before, you know; my crowd has done all its rehearsing at Mrs. Hitchcock's. Here's Annie now——"
"Christopher," said Annie, in deadly, almost angry earnest, as she came up desperate and weary, "you'll have to sing this thing with Norma. Burgess Street absolutely refuses. He's in the chorus, and he sings, but he simply won't do a solo! His mother says he has a cold, and so on, and I swear I'll throw the whole thing up; I will, indeed!—rather than have this number ruined. There's no earthly reason why you can't do both—of course the poor old man couldn't help dying—but if you knew——"
"My dear girl, of course I'll do it!" All the youth and buoyancy that had been missing from his voice for weeks had come back. Christopher laughed his old delightful laugh. "I'll have to have Roy's costume cut down, but Smithers will do it for me. I'll do my very best——"
"Oh, Chris, God bless you," Annie said. "You'll do it better than he ever did. Take my car and stop for his suit, and express whatever's decent—the funeral will be Saturday morning and we'll all have to go, but there's no help for it. And come to my house for dinner, and you and Norma can go over it afterward; you poor girl, you're tired out, but it's such a Godsendto have Chris fill in. And it will be the prettiest number of all."
Tired out? The radiant girl who was tripping away to change to street attire was hardly conscious that her feet touched the ground. The stage, the theatre, the fur coat into which she buttoned herself, the fragrance of the violets she wore, were all touched with beauty and enchantment.
Snow was still falling softly, when she and Annie went out to the car. Annie was so exhausted that she could hardly move, but Norma floated above things mortal. The dark sidewalk was powdered with what scrunched under their shoes like dry sugar, and up against the lighted sky the flakes were twirling and falling. The air was sweet and cold and pure after the hot theatre. Chris put them in the motor-car. He would see his tailor, have a bite of dinner at home, and be at Annie's at eight o'clock for the rehearsal.
"I'll do something for you, for this, Norma!" her aunt assured the girl, gratefully. Norma protested in a voice that was almost singing. It was nothing at all!
She felt suddenly happy and light. It was all right; there was to be no more agony and doubt. Alice should lose nothing, the world should know nothing, but Chris loved her! She could take his friendship fearlessly, there would be nothing but what was good and beautiful and true between them. But what a changed world!
What a changed room it was into which she danced, to brush her hair for dinner, and laugh into her mirror, where the happy girl with starry eyes and blazing cheeks laughed back. What a changed dinner table,at which the old lady drowsed and cooed! Norma's blood was dancing, her head was in a whirl, she was hardly conscious that this soaring and singing soul of hers had a body.
At eight she and Mrs. Melrose went to Mrs. von Behrens's, and Norma and Chris went through the song again and again and again, for the benefit of a small circle of onlookers. Hendrick, who had sworn that wild horses would not drag him to the entertainment, sat with a small son in his lap, and applauded tirelessly. Annie criticized and praised alternately. Mrs. Melrose went to sleep, and Annie's new secretary, a small, lean, dark girl of perhaps twenty-two, passionately played the music. Norma knew exactly how this girl felt, how proud she was of her position, how anxious to hold it, and how infinitely removed from her humble struggle the beautiful Miss Sheridan seemed! Yet she herself had been much the same less than two years ago!
Norma could have laughed aloud. She envied no one to-night. The mystery and miracle of Chris's love for her was like an ermine mantle about her shoulders, and like a diadem upon her brows. Annie was delighted with her, and presently told her she had never before sung so well.
"I suppose practice makes perfect!" the girl answered, innocently. She was conscious of no hypocrisy. No actress enjoying a long-coveted part could have rejoiced in every word and gesture more than she. Just to move, under his eyes, to laugh or to be serious, to listen dutifully to Annie and the old lady, to flirt with Baby Piet, was ecstasy enough.
They had small opportunity for asides. But thatwas of no consequence. All the future was their own. They would see each other to-morrow—or next day; it did not matter. Norma's hungry heart had something to remember, now—a very flood-tide of memories. She could have lived for weeks upon this one day's memories.
Norma and Chris were placed toward the centre of the first half of the programme on the triumphant Saturday night, and could escape from the theatre before eleven o'clock to go home to tell Alice all about it. Chris played the song, on his own piano, and Norma modestly and charmingly went through it again, to the invalid's great satisfaction. Alice, when Norma and her mother were gone, tried to strike a spark of enthusiasm from her husband as to the girl's beauty and talent, but Chris was pleasantly unresponsive.
"She got through it very nicely; they all did!" Chris admitted, indifferently.
"When you think of the upbringing she had, Chris, a little nameless nobody," Alice pursued. "When you think that until last year she had actually never seen a finger-bowl, or spoken to a servant!"
"Exactly!" Chris said, briefly. Alice, who was facing the fire, did not see him wince. She was far from suspecting that he had at that moment a luncheon engagement for the next day with Norma, and that during the weeks that followed they met by appointment almost every day, and frequently by chance more often than that.
In thebeginning, these were times brimful of happiness for Norma. She would meet Chris far down town, among the big, cold, snowbound office-buildings, and they would loiter for two hours at some inconspicuous table in a restaurant, and come wandering out into the cold streets still talking, absorbed and content. Or she would rise before him from a chair in one of the foyers of the big hotels, at tea time, and they would find an unobserved corner for the murmur that rose and fell, rose and fell inexhaustibly. Tea and toast unobserved before them, music drifting unheard about them, furred and fragrant women coming and going; all this was but the vague setting for their own thrilling drama of love and confidence. They would come out into the darkness, Norma tucking herself beside him in the roadster, last promises and last arrangements made, until to-morrow.
Sometimes the girl even accompanied him to Alice's room, to sit at the invalid's knee, and chatter with a tact and responsiveness that Alice found an improvement upon her old amusing manner. So free was Norma in these days from any sense of guilt that she felt herself nothing but generous toward Alice, in sparing the older woman some of the excess of joy and companionship in which she was so rich.
But very swiftly the first complete satisfaction in the discovery of their mutual love began to wane, or ratherto be overset with the difficulties by which Norma, and many another more brilliant and older woman, must inevitably be worsted. Her meetings with Chris, innocent and open as they seemed, were immediately threatened by the sordid danger of scandal. To meet him once, twice, half-a-dozen times, even, was safe enough. But when each day of separation became for them both only an agony of waiting until the next day that should unite them, and when all Norma's self-control was not enough to keep her from the telephone summons that at least gave her the sound of his voice, then the world began to be cognizant that something was in the air.
The very maids at Mrs. Melrose's house knew that Miss Sheridan was never available any more, never to be traced to the club, to young Mrs. Liggett's, or to Mrs. von Behrens's house, with a telephone message or an urgent letter. Leslie knew that Norma hated girls' luncheons; Annie asked Hendrick idly why he supposed the child was always taking long walks—or saying that she took long walks—and Hendrick, later speculating himself as to the inaccessibility of Chris, was perhaps the first in the group to suspect the truth.
A quite accidental and innocent hint from Annie overwhelmed Norma with shame and terror, and she and Chris, in earnest consultation, decided that they must be more discreet. But this was slow and difficult work, after the radiant first plunge into danger. Despite their utmost resolution, Chris would find her out, Norma would meet him halfway, and even under Leslie's very eyes, or in old Mrs. Melrose's actual presence, the telephone message, or the quicker signals of eyes and smile, would forge the bond afresh.
Even when Norma really did start off heroically upon a bracing winter walk, determined to shake off, in solitude and exercise, the constant hunger for his presence, torturing possibilities would swarm into her mind, and weaken her almost while she thought them banished. She could catch him at his club; she might have just five minutes of him did she choose to telephone.
Perhaps she would resist the temptation, and go home nervous, high-strung, excitable—the evening stretching endlessly before her—without him. Aunt Annie and Hendrick coming, Leslie and Acton coming, the prospect of the decorous family dinner would drive her almost to madness. She would dress in a feverish dream, answer old Mrs. Melrose absently or impatiently, speculating all the time about him. Where was he? When would they meet again?
And then perhaps Leslie would casually remark that Chris had said he would join them for coffee, or Joseph would summon her gravely to the telephone. Then Norma began to live again, the effect of the lonely walk and the heroic resolutions swept away, nothing—nothing was in the world but the sound of that reassuring voice, or the prospect of that ring at the bell, and that step in the hall.
So matters went on for several weeks, but they were weeks of increasing uneasiness and pain for Norma, and she knew that Chris found them even less endurable than she. The happy hours of confidence and happiness grew fewer and fewer, and as their passion strengthened, and the insuperable obstacles to its natural development impressed them more and more forcibly, miserable and anxious times took their place. Theirlove was no sooner acknowledged than both came to realize how mad and hopeless it was, and that no reiteration of its intensity and no argument could ever give them a gleam of hope.
If Norma had drifted cheerfully and recklessly into this situation, she paid for it now, when petty restrictions and conventions stung her like so many bees, and when she could turn nowhere for relief from constant heartache and the sickening monotony of her thoughts. She could not have Chris; she could not give him up. Hours with him were only a degree more bearable than hours without him.
When he spoke hopefully of a possible change, of "something" making their happiness possible, she would turn on him like a little virago. Yet if he despaired, tears would come to Norma's eyes, and she would beg him almost angrily to change his tone, or she would disgrace them both by beginning to cry.
Norma grew thin and fidgety, able to concentrate her mind on nothing, and openly indifferent to the society she had courted so enthusiastically a year ago. It was a part of her suffering that she grew actually to dislike Alice, always so suave and cheerful, always so serenely sure of Chris's devotion. What right had this woman, who had been rich and spoiled and guarded all her life, to hold him away from the woman he loved? Chris had been chained to this couch for years, reading, playing his piano, infinitely solicitous and sympathetic. But was he to spend all his life thus? Was there to be no glorious companionship, no adventure, no deep and satisfying love for Chris, ever in this world? Norma wished no ill to Alice, but she hated a world that could hold Alice's claim legitimate.
"Why should it be so?" she said to Chris one day, bitterly. "Why, when all my life was going so happily, did I have to fall in love with you, I wonder? It could so easily have been somebody else!"
"I don't know!" Chris answered, soberly, flinging away his half-finished cigarette, and folding his arms over his chest, as he stared through a screen of bare trees at the river. It was a March day of warm airs and bursting buds; the roads were running water, and every bank and meadow oozed the thawing streams, but there was no green yet. Chris had come for the girl at three o'clock, just as she was starting out for one of her aimless, unhappy tramps, and had carried her off for a twenty-five-mile run to the quiet corner of the tavern's porch in Tarrytown where they were having tea. "I suppose that's just life. Things go so rottenly, sometimes!"
Norma's eyes watered as she pushed the untasted toast away from her, cupped her chin in her hands, and stared at the river in her turn.
"Chris, if I could go back, I think I'd never speak to you!" she said, wretchedly.
"You mustn't say that," he reproached her. "My darling; surely it's brought you some happiness?"
"I suppose so," Norma conceded, lifelessly, after a silence. "But I can't go on!" she protested, suddenly. "I can't keep this up! I suppose I've done something very wicked, to be punished this way. But, Chris, I loved you from the very first day I ever saw you, in Biretta's Bookstore, I think. I can't sleep," she stammered, piteously, "and I am so afraid all the time!"
"Afraid of what?" the man asked, very low.
She faced him, honestly.
"You know what! Of you—of me. It can't go on. You know that. And yet——" And Norma looked far away, her beautiful weary eyes burning in her white face. "And yet, I can't stop it!" she whispered.
"Oh, Chris, don't let's fool ourselves!" she interrupted his protest impatiently. "Weeks ago,weeksago!—we said that we would see each other less, that it would taper off. We tried. It's no use! If we were in different cities—in different families, even! I tell myself that it will grow less and less," she added presently, as the man watched her in silence, "but oh, my God!—how long the years ahead look!"
And Norma put her head down on the table, pressed her white fingers suddenly against her eyes with a gesture infinitely desolate and despairing, and he knew that she was in tears. Then there was a long silence.
"Look here, Norma," said Chris, suddenly, in a quiet, reasonable tone. "I am thirty-eight. I've had affairs several times in my life, two or three before I married Alice, two or three since. They've never been very serious, never gone very deep. When we were married I was twenty-four. I know women like to pretend that I'm an awful killer when I get going," he interrupted himself to say boyishly, "but there was really never anything of that sort in my life. I liked Alice, I remember my mother talking to me a long time, and telling me how pleased everyone would be if we came to care for each other, and—upon my honour!—I was more surprised than anything else, to think that any one so pretty and sweet would marry me! I don't think there's a woman in the world that I admire more. But, Norma, I've lived her life for ten years. I want my own now! I want my companion—my chum—my wife. I've played with women since I was seventeen. But I never loved any woman before. Norma, there's no life ahead for me, without you. And there's no place so far—so lonely—so strange—but what it would be heaven for me if you were there, looking at me as you are now, and with this little hand where it belongs! My dear, the city is a blank—the men I meet might just as well be wooden Indians; I can't breathe and I can't eat or sleep. Get better? It gets worse! It can't go on!"
She was crying again. They were almost alone now. A red spring sun was sinking, far down the river, and all the world—the opposite shores, the running waters of the Hudson—was bathed in the exquisite glow. Norma fumbled with her left hand for her little handkerchief, her right hand clinging tight to Chris's hand.
"Now, Norma, I've been thinking," the man said, in a matter-of-fact tone, after a pause. "The first consideration is, that this sort of thing can't go on!"
"No; this can't go on!" she agreed, quickly. "Every day makes it more dangerous, and less satisfying! I never"—her eyes watered again—"I never have a happy second!" she said.
Chris looked at her, looked thoughtfully away.
"The great trouble with the way I feel to you, Norma," he said, quietly, "is that it seems to blot every other earthly consideration from view. I see nothing, I think nothing, I hear nothing—but you!"
"And is that so terrible?" Norma asked, touched, and smiling through tears.
"No, it is so wonderful," he answered, gravely, "that it blinds me. It blinds me to your youth, my dear, your inexperience—your faith in me! It makes me onlyremember that I need you—and want you—and that I believe I could make you the happiest woman in the world!"
The faint shadow of a frown crossed her forehead, and she slowly shook her head.
"Not divorce!" she said, lightly, but inflexibly. They had been over this ground before. "No, there's no use in thinking of that! Even if it were not for Aunt Alice, and Aunt Marianna, other things make it impossible. You see that, Chris? Yes, I know!"—she interrupted herself quickly, as Chris protested, "I know what plenty of good people, and the law, and society generally think. But of course it would mean that we could not live here for awhile, anyway! No—that's not thinkable!"
"No, that's not thinkable," he agreed, slowly; "I am bound hand and foot. It isn't only what Alice—as a wife—claims from me. But there are Acton and Leslie; there is hardly a month that my brother doesn't propose some plan that would utterly wreck their affairs if I didn't put my foot down. They're both absolute children in money matters; Judge Lee is getting old—there's no one to take my place. Your Aunt Marianna, too; I've always managed everything for her. No; I'm tied."
His voice fell. For awhile they sat silent, in the lingering, cool spring twilight, while the red glow faded slowly from the river, and from the opposite banks where houses and roofs showed between the bare trees.
"But what can we do, Norma? I've tried—I've tried a thousand times, to see the future, without you. But I simply can't go on living on those terms. There's nothing—nothing—nothing! I go to the piano, andbefore I touch a note, the utter blank futility of it comes over me and sickens me! It's the same in the office, and at the club; I seem to be only half alive. If it could be even five years ahead—or ten years ahead—I would wait. But it's never—never. No hope—nothing to live for! Life is simply over—only one doesn't die."
The girl had never heard quite this note of despair from him before, and her heart sank.
"You are young," he said, after a minute, and in a lighter tone, "and perhaps—some day——"
"No, don't believe that, Chris," Norma said, quietly. And with a gesture full of pain she leaned her elbow on the table, and pressed her hand across her eyes. "There will never be anybody else!" she said. "How could there be? You are the only person—like yourself!—that I have ever known!"
The simplicity of her words, almost their childishness, made Chris's eyes smart. He bit his lips, trying to smile.
"It's too bad, isn't it?" he said, whimsically.
Norma flung back her head, swallowing tears. She gathered gloves and hand-bag, got to her feet. He followed her as she walked across the darkening porch. They went down to the curving sweep of driveway where the car waited, the big lighted eyes of other cars picking it out in the gloom. The saturated ground gave under Norma's feet, the air was soft and full of the odorous promise of blossom and leaf. A great star was trembling in the opal sky, which still palpitated, toward the horizon, with the pale pink and blue of the sunset. Dry branches clicked above their heads, in a sudden soft puff of breeze.
Norma, as she tucked herself in beside Chris, felt emotionally exhausted, felt a sudden desperate need for solitude and silence. The world seemed a lonely and cruel place.
Almost without a word he drove her home, to the old Melrose house, and came in with her to the long, dim drawing-room for a brief good-night. He had not kissed her more than two or three times since the memorable night of the dress rehearsal, but he kissed her to-night, and Norma felt something solemn, something renunciatory, in the kiss.
They had but an unsatisfactory two or three minutes together; Mrs. Melrose might descend upon them at any second, was indeed audible in the hall when Chris said suddenly:
"You are not as brave—as your mother, Norma!"
She met his eyes with something like terror in her own; standing still, a few feet away from him, with her breath coming and going stormily.
"No," she said in a sharp whisper. "Notthat!"
A moment later she was flying upstairs, her blue eyes still dilated with fright, her face pale, and her senses rocking. Unseeing, unhearing, she reached her own room, paced it distractedly, moving between desk and dressing-table, window and bed, like some bewildered animal. Sometimes she put her two hands over her face, the spread fingers pressed against her forehead. Sometimes she stood perfectly still, arms hanging at her sides, eyes blankly staring ahead. Once she dropped on her knees beside the bed, and buried her burning cheeks against the delicate linen and embroideries.
Regina came in; Norma made a desperate attempt tocontrol herself. She saw a gown laid on the bed, heard bath water running, faced her own haggard self in the mirror, as she began dressing. But when the maid was gone, and Norma, somewhat pale, but quite self-possessed again, was dressed for dinner, she lifted from its place on her book-shelf a little picture of Chris and herself, taken the summer before, and studied it with sorrowful eyes.
He had been teaching her to ride, and Norma was radiant and sun-browned in her riding-trousers and skirted coat, her cloud of hair loosened, and her smart little hat in one hand. Chris, like all well-built men, was always at his best in sports clothes; the head of his favourite mare looked mildly over his shoulder. Behind the group stretched the exquisite reaches of bridle-path, the great trees heavy with summer foliage and heat.
Norma touched her lips to the glass.
"Chris—Chris—Chris!" she said, half aloud. "I love you so—and I have brought you, of all men, to this! To the point when you would throw it all aside—everything your wonderful and generous life has stood for—for me! God," said Norma, softly, putting the picture down, and covering her face with her hands, "don't let me do anything that will hurt him and shame him; help me! Help us both!"
A few minutes later she went down to dinner, which commenced auspiciously, with the old lady in a gracious and expansive mood, and her guests, old Judge Lee and his wife, and old Doctor and Mrs. Turner, sufficiently intimate, and sufficiently reminiscent, to absolve Norma from any conversational duty. The girl could follow her own line of heroic and resolute thought uninterruptedly.
But with the salad came utter rout again, and Norma's colour, and heart, and breath, began to fluctuate in a renewed agony of hope and fear. It was only Joseph, leaning deferentially over Judge Lee's shoulder, who said softly:
"Mr. Christopher Liggett, Judge. He has telephoned that he would like to see you for a moment after dinner, and will be here at about nine o'clock."
The dinner went on, for Norma, in a daze. At a quarter to nine she went upstairs; she was standing in the dark upper hallway at the window when Chris came, saw him leave his car, and come quickly across the sidewalk under the bare, moving boughs of the old maples. She was trembling with the longing just to speak to him again, just to hear his voice.
She went to her room, rang for Regina, meditating a message of good-night that should include a headache as excuse. But before the maid came she went quickly downstairs, and into his presence, as instinctively as a drowning man might cling to anything that meant air—just the essential air. They could not exchange a word alone, but that was not important. The one necessity was to be together.
Before ten o'clock Norma went back to her room. She undressed, and put on a loose warm robe, and seated herself before the old-fashioned fireplace. When Regina came, she asked the girl to put out all the lights.
Voices floated up from the front hall: the great entrance door closed, the motors wheeled away. The guests were gone—Chris was gone. Norma heard old Mrs. Melrose come upstairs, heard her door shut, then there was silence.
Silence. Eleven struck from Madison Tower; midnight struck. Even the streets were quieter now. The squares of moonlight shifted on Norma's floor, went away. The fire died down, the big room was warm, and dim, and very still.
Hugged in her warm wrap, curled into her big chair, the girl sat like some tranced creature, thinking—thinking—thinking.
At first her thoughts were of terror and shame. In what fool's paradise had she been drifting, she asked herself contemptuously, that she and Chris, reasonable, right-thinking man and woman, could be reduced to this fearful and wretched position, could even consider—even name—what their sane senses must shrink from in utter horror! Norma was but twenty-two, but she knew that there was only one end to that road.
So that way was closed, even to the brimming tide that rose up in her when she thought of it, and flooded her whole being with the ecstatic realization of her love for Chris, and of what surrender to him would mean.
That way was closed. She must tell herself over and over. For her own sake, for the sake of Aunt Kate and Aunt Marianna, for Rose even, she must not think of that. Above all, for his sake—for Chris, the fine, good, self-sacrificing Chris of her first friendship, she must be strong.
And Norma, at this point in her circling and confused thoughts, would drop her face in the crook of her bent arm, and the tears would brim over again and again. She was not strong. She could not be strong. And she was afraid.