Regina, coming through the hallway at seven o'clock, was amazed to encounter Miss Sheridan, evidently fresh from a bath, a black hat tipped over her smiling eyes, and her big fur coat belted about her. Norma's vigil had lasted until after two o'clock, but then she had had four hours of restful sleep, for she knew that she had found the way.
She left a message with Regina for Mrs. Melrose; she was going to Mrs. Sheridan's, and would telephone in a day or two. Smiling, she slipped out into the quiet street, where the autumn sunlight was just beginning to strike across the damp pavements, and smilingly she disappeared into the great currents of men and women who were already pouring to and fro along the main thoroughfares.
But she did not go quite as far as her aunt's, after all. For perhaps fifteen minutes she waited on the corner of the block, walking slowly to and fro, watching the house closely.
Then Wolf Sheridan came out, and set off at his usual brisk walk toward the subway. Norma stepped before him, trembling and smiling.
"Nono—for the Lord's sake! Where did you come from?"
He took her suit-case from her as she caught his arm, drew him aside, and looked up at him with her old childish air of coaxing.
"Wolf——! I've been waiting for you. Wolf, I'm in trouble!" She laughed at his concern. "Not real trouble!" she reassured him, quickly. "But—but——"
And suddenly tears came, and she found she could not go on.
"Is it a man?" Wolf asked, looking down at her with everything that was brotherly and kind in his young face.
"Yes," Norma answered, not raising her eyes from the overcoat button that she was pushing in and out of its hold. "Wolf," she added, quickly, "I'm afraid of him, and afraid of myself! You—you told me months ago——" She looked up, suffocating.
"I know what I told you!" Wolf said, clearing his throat.
"And—do you still feel—that way?"
"You know I do, Norma," Wolf said, more concerned for her emotion than his own. "Do you—do you want me to send this—this fellow about his business?"
"Oh, no!" she said, laughing nervously. "I don't want any one to know it; nobody must dream it! I can't marry him, I shall never marry him. But—he won't let me alone. Wolf——" She seemed to herself to be getting no nearer her point, and now she seized her courage in both hands, and looked up at him bravely. "Will you—take care of me?" she faltered. "I mean—I mean as your wife?"
"Do you mean——" Wolf began. Then his expression changed, and his colour rose. "Norma—you don't mean that!"
"Yes, but I do!" she said, exquisite and flushed and laughing, in the sweet early sunlight.
"You mean that you will marry me?" Wolf asked, dazedly.
"To-day!" she answered, fired by his look of awe and amazement and rapture all combined. "I want to be safe," she added, quickly. "I trust you more than any other man I know—I've loved you like a little sister all my life."
"Ah—Norma, you darling—you darling!" he said. "But are you sure?"
"Oh, quite sure!" Norma turned him toward Broadway, her little arm linked wife-fashion in his. "Don't we go along together nicely?" she asked, gaily.
"Norma—my God! If you knew how I love you—how I've longed for you! But I can't believe it; I never will believe it! What made you do it?"
Her face sobered for a second.
"Just needing you, I suppose! Wolf"—her colour rose—"I want you to know who it is; it's Chris."
"Who—the man who annoys you?" Wolf asked in healthy distaste.
"The man I'm afraid of," she answered, honestly.
"But—Lord!" Wolf exclaimed, simply, "he has a wife!"
"I know it!" the girl said, quickly. "But I wanted you to know. I want you to know why I'm running away from them all." Relief rang in her voice as his delighted eyes showed no cloud. "That's all!" she said.
"Norma, I can't—my God!—I can't tell whether I'm awake or dreaming!" Wolf was all joy again. "We'll—wait a minute!—we'll get a taxi; I'll telephone the factory later——" He paused suddenly. "Mother's in East Orange with Rose. Shall we go there first?"
"No; you're to do as I say from now on, Wolf!"
"Ah, you darling!"
"And I say let's be married first, and then go and see Rose."
"Norma——" He stopped in the street, and put his two hands on her shoulders. "I'll be a good husband to you. You'll never be sorry you trusted me. Dearest, it's—well, it's the most wonderful thing that ever happened in my whole life! Here's our taxi—wait a minute; what day is this?"
"Whatever else it is," she said, half-laughing and half-crying, "I know it is my wedding day!"
To Roseand her mother, Wolf's and Norma's marriage remained one of the beautiful surprises of life; one of the things that, as sane mortals, they had dared neither to dream nor hope. Life had been full enough for mother and daughter, and sweet enough, that March morning, even without the miracle. The baby had been bathed, in a flood of dancing sunshine, and had had his breakfast out under the budding bare network of the grape arbour. The little house had been put into spotless order while he slept, and Rose had pinned on her winter hat, and gone gaily to market, with exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents in her purse. And she had come back to find her mother standing beside the shabby baby-coach, in the tiny backyard, looking down thoughtfully at the sleeping child, and evidently under the impression that she was peeling the apples, in the yellow bowl that rested on her broad hip. Rose had also studied her son for a few awed seconds, and then, reminding her mother that it was past twelve o'clock, had led the way toward tea-making, and the general heating and toasting and mincing of odds and ends for luncheon. And they had been in the kitchen, talking over the last scraps of this meal, when——
When there had been laughter and voices at the open front doorway, and when Mrs. Sheridan's startled "Wolf!" had been followed by Rose's surprised"Norma!" Then they had come in, Wolf and Norma, laughing and excited and bubbling with their great news. And in joy and tears, confused interruptions and exclamations, explanations that got nowhere, and a plentiful distribution of kisses, somehow it got itself told. They had been married an hour ago—Norma was Wolf's wife!
The girl was radiant. Never in her life had these three who loved her seen her so beautiful, so enchantingly confident and gay. Rose and her mother had some little trouble, later on, in patching the sequence of events together for the delighted but bewildered Harry, Rose's husband. But there could be no doubt, even to the shrewd eyes of her Aunt Kate, that Norma was ecstatically happy. Her mad kisses for Rose, the laughter with which she described the expedition to bank and jeweller, the license bureau and the church in Jersey City—for in order to have the ceremony performed immediately it had been necessary to be married in New Jersey—her delicious boldness toward the awed and rapturous and almost stupefied Wolf, were all proof that she entertained not even the usual girlish misgivings of the wedding day.
"You see, I've not been all tired out with trousseau and engagement affairs and photographers and milliners and all that," she explained, gaily. "I've only got what's in my bag there, but I've wired Aunt Marianna, and told her to tell them all. And we'll be back on Monday—wait until I ask my husband; Wolftone, dear, shall we be back on Monday?"
She had the baby in her lap; they were all in the dining-room. Rose had been assured that the bride and groom were not hungry; they had had sandwiches somewhere—some time—oh, down near the City Hall in Jersey City. But Rose had made more tea, and more toast, and she had opened her own best plum jam, and they were all eating with the heartiness of children. Presently Norma went to get in Aunt Kate's lap, and asked her if she was glad, and made herself so generally engaging and endearing, with her slender little body clasped in the big motherly arms and her soft face resting against the older, weather-beaten face, that Wolf did not dare to look at her.
They were going to Atlantic City; neither had ever been there, and if this warm weather lasted it would be lovely, even in early spring. It was almost four o'clock when the younger women went upstairs for the freshening touches that Norma declared she needed, and then Wolf and his mother were left alone.
He knelt down beside the big rocker in which she was ensconced with the baby, and she put one arm about him, and kissed the big thick crest of his brown hair.
"You're glad, aren't you, Mother?"
"Glad! I've prayed for it ever since she came to me, years ago," Mrs. Sheridan answered. But after a moment she added, gravely: "She's pure gold, our Norma. They've sickened her, just as I knew they would! But, Wolf, she may swing back for a little while. She's like that; she always has been. She was no more than a baby when she'd be as naughty as she could be, and then so good that I was afraid I was going to lose her. Go gently with her, Wolf; be patient with her, dear. She's going to make a magnificent woman, some day."
"She's a magnificent woman, now," the man said,simply. "She's too good for me, I know that. She's—you can't think how cunning she is—how wonderful she's been, all day!"
"Go slowly," his mother said again. "She's only a baby, Wolf; she's excited and romantic and generous because she's such a baby! Don't make her sorry that she's given herself to you so—so trusting——"
She hesitated.
"I'll take care of her!" Wolf asserted, a little gruffly.
There was time for no more; they heard her step on the stairs, and she came dancing back with Rose. Her cheeks were burning with excitement; she gave her aunt and cousin quick good-bye kisses, and caught the baby's soft little cheek to her own velvety one. She and Wolf would be back on Sunday night, they promised; as they ran down the path the sun slipped behind a leaden cloud, and all the world darkened suddenly. A brisk whirl of springtime wind shook the rose bushes in Rose's little garden, and there was a cool rushing in the air that promised rain.
But Norma was still carried along on the high tide of supreme emotion, and to Wolf the day was radiant with unearthly sunshine, and perfumed with all the flowers of spring. The girl had flung herself so wholeheartedly into her rôle that it was not enough to bewilder and please Wolf, she must make him utterly happy. Dear old Wolf—always ready to protect her, always good and big and affectionate, and ready to laugh at her silliest jokes, and ready to meet any of her problems sympathetically and generously. Her beauty, her irresistible charm as she hung on his arm and chattered of what they would do when they started housekeeping, almost dizzied him.
She liked everything: their wheeling deep upholstered seats in the train; the seaside hotel, with the sea rolling so near in the soft twilight; the dinner for which they found themselves so hungry. Afterward they climbed laughing into a big chair, and were pushed along between the moving lines of other chairs, far up the long boardwalk. And Norma, with her soft loose glove in Wolf's big hand, leaned back against the curved wicker seat, and looked at the little lighted shops, and listened to the scrape of feet and chatter of tongues and the solemn roll and crash of the waves, and stared up childishly at the arch of stars that looked so far and calm above this petty noise and glare. She was very tired, every muscle in her body ached, but she was content. Wolf was taking care of her and there would be no more lonely vigils and agonies of indecision and pain. She thought of Christopher with a sort of childish quiet triumph; she had solved the whole matter for them both, superbly.
Wolf was a silent man with persons he did not know. But he never was silent with Norma; he always had a thousand things to discuss with her. The lights and the stir on the boardwalk inspired him to all sorts of good-natured criticism and speculation, and they estimated just the expense and waste that went on there day by day.
"Really to have the ocean, Wolf, it would be so much nicer to be even in the wildest place—just rocks and coves. This is like having a lion in your front parlour!"
"Lord, Norma—when I got up this morning, if somebody had told me that I would be married, and down atAtlantic City to-night——!"
"I know; it's like a dream!"
"But you're not sorry, Norma; you're sure that I'm going to make you happy?" the man asked, in sudden anxiety.
"You alwayshave, Wolf!" she answered, very simply.
He never really doubted it; it was a part of Wolf's healthy normal nature to believe what was good and loving. He was not exacting, not envious; he had no real understanding of her giddy old desires for wealth and social power. Wolf at twenty-five was working so hard and so interestedly, sleeping so deeply, eating his meals with such appetite, and enjoying his rare idle time so heartily, that he had neither time nor inclination for vagaries. He had always been older than his years, schooled to feel that just good meals and a sure roof above him marked him as one of the fortunate ones of the earth, and of late his work in the big factory had been responsible enough, absorbing enough, and more than gratifying enough to satisfy him with his prospects. He was liked for himself, and he knew it, and he was already known for that strange one-sightedness, that odd little twist of mechanical vision, that sure knowledge of himself and his medium, that is genius. The joy of finding himself, and that the world needed him, had been strong upon Wolf during the last few months, and that Norma had come back to him seemed only a reason for fresh dedication to his work, an augury that life was going to be kind to him.
She was gone when he wakened the next morning, but he knew that the sea had an irresistible fascination for her, and followed her quite as surely as if she had left footprints on the clear and empty sands. He found her with her back propped against a low woodenbulkhead, her slender ankles crossed before her, her blue eyes fixed far out at sea.
She turned, and looked up at him from under the brim of her hat, and the man's heart turned almost sick with the depth of sudden adoration that shook him; so young, so friendly and simple and trusting was the ready smile, so infinitely endearing the touch of the warm fingers she slipped into his! He sat down beside her, and they dug their heels into the sand, and talked in low tones. The sun shone down on them kindly, and the waves curved and broke, and came rushing and slithering to their feet, and slid churning and foaming noisily under the pier near by. Norma buried her husband's big hand in sand, and sifted sand through her slender fingers; sometimes she looked with her far-away look far out across the gently rocking ocean, and sometimes she brought her blue eyes gravely to his. And the new seriousness in them, the grave and noble sweetness that he read there, made Wolf suddenly feel himself no longer a boy, no longer free, but bound for ever to this exquisite and bewildering child who was a woman, or woman who was a child, sacredly bound to give her the best that there was in him of love and service and protection.
She showed him a new Norma, here on the sunshiny sands, one that he was to know better as the days went by. She had always deferred to his wisdom and his understanding, but she seemed to him mysteriously wise this morning—no longer the old little sister Norma, but a new, sage, keen-eyed woman, toward whom his whole being was flooded with humility and awe and utter, speechless adoration.
At nine o'clock, when nurses and children began tocome down to the shore, they got to their feet, and wandered in to breakfast. And here, to his delight, she was suddenly the old mad-cap Norma again, healthily eager for ham and eggs and hot coffee, interested in everything, and bewitchingly pretty in whatever position she took.
"I wish we had the old 'bus, Nono," Wolf said. He usually spoke of his motor-car by this name. "They've been overhauling her in that Newark place. She was to be ready—by George, she was ready yesterday!"
"We'll go over—I'll come over and meet you next Saturday," his young wife promised, busy with rolls and marmalade, "and you'll take me to lunch, and then we'll get the car, and go and take Rose and the baby for a ride!"
"Norma," the man exclaimed, suddenly struck with a sense of utter felicity, and leaning across the table to stop, for the minute, her moving fingers with the pressure of his own, "you haven't any idea how much I love you—I didn't know myself what it was going to mean! To have you come over to the factory, and to have somebody say that Mrs. Sheridan is there, and to go to lunch—Dearest, do you realize how wonderful and how—well, howwonderfulit's going to be? Norma, I can't believe it. I can't believe that this is what love means to everybody. I can't believe that every man who marries his—his——"
"Girl," she supplied, laughing.
"Girl—but I didn't mean girl. I meant his ideal—the loveliest person he ever knew," Wolf said, with a new quickness of tongue that she knew was born of happiness. "I can't believe that just going to Childs' restaurants, or taking the car out on Sunday, or anyother fool thing we do, means to any man what it's going to mean to me! I just—well, I told you that. I just can't believe it!"
Two days later they came home for Sunday supper, and there was much simple joy and laughter in the little city apartment. Aunt Kate of course had fried chicken and coffee ice-cream for her four big children. Harry Junior, awakening, was brought dewy and blinking to the table, where his Aunt Norma kissed the tears from his warm, round little cheeks, and gave him crumbs of sponge cake. Rose and Harry left at ten o'clock for their country home, leaving the precious baby for his grandmother and aunt to bring back the next day, but the other three sat talking and planning until almost midnight, and Kate could feast her eyes to her heart's content upon the picture of Wolf in his father's old leather chair, with Norma perched on the wide arm, one of her own arms about her husband's neck and their fingers locked together.
It was settled that they were to find a little house in East Orange, near Rose, and furnish it from top to bottom, and go to housekeeping immediately. Meanwhile, Norma must see the Melroses, and get her wedding announcements engraved, and order some new calling cards, and do a thousand things. She and Wolf must spend their evenings writing notes—and presents would be arriving——!
She made infinitesimal lists, and put them into her shopping bag, or stuck them in her mirror, but Wolf laughed at them all. And instead of disposing of them, they developed a demoralizing habit of wandering out into Broadway, in their old fashion, after dinner, looking into shop windows, drifting into little theatres, talking to beggars and taxi-cab men and policemen and strangers generally, mingling with the bubbling young life of the city that overflowed the sidewalks, and surged in and out of candy and drug stores, and sat talking on park benches deep into the soft young summer nights.
Sometimes they went down to the shrill and crowded streets of the lower east side, and philosophized youthfully over what they saw there; and, as the nights grew heavier and warmer, they often took the car, and skimmed out into the heavenly green open spaces of the park, or, on Saturday afternoon, packed their supper, and carried it fifty miles away to the woods or the shore.
Beforeshe had been married ten days Norma dutifully went to call upon old Mrs. Melrose, being fortunate enough to find Leslie there. The old lady came toward Norma with her soft old wavering footsteps, and gave the girl a warm kiss even with her initial rebuke:
"Well, I don't know whether I am speaking to this bad runaway or not!" she quavered, releasing Norma from her bejewelled and lace-draped embrace, and shaking her fluffed and scanty gray hair.
"Oh, yes, you are, Aunt Marianna," the girl said, confidently, with her happy laugh. Leslie, coming more slowly forward, laughed and kissed her, too.
"But why didn't you tell us, Norma, and have a regular wedding, like mine?" she protested. "I didn't know that you and your cousin were even engaged!"
"We've worked it out that we were engaged for exactly three hours and ten minutes," Norma said, as they all settled down in the magnificent, ugly, comfortable old sitting-room for tea. She could see that both Leslie and her grandmother were far from displeased. As a matter of fact, the old lady was secretly delighted. The girl was most suitably and happily and satisfactorily married; justice had been done her, and she had solved her own problem splendidly.
"But you knew he liked you," Leslie ventured, diverted and curious.
"Oh, well——" Norma's lips puckered mischievously and she looked down.
"Oh, youwereengaged!" Leslie said, incredulously. "He's handsome, isn't he, Norma?"
"Yes," the wife admitted, as if casually. "He really is—at least I think so. And I think everyone else thinks so. At least, when I compare him to the other men—for instance——"
"Oh, Norma, I'll bet you're crazy about him," Leslie said, derisively.
Norma looked appealingly at the old lady, her eyes dancing with fun.
"Well, ofcourseshe loves her husband," Mrs. Melrose protested, with a little cushiony pat of her hand for the visitor.
"I don't see that it's 'of course'," Leslie argued, airily, with a little bitterness in her tone. Her grandmother looked at her in quick reproof and anxiety. "The latest," she said, drily, to Norma, "is that my delightful husband is living at his club."
"Now, Leslie, that is very naughty," the old lady said, warmly. "You shouldn't talk so of Acton."
"Well," Leslie countered, with elaborate innocence, turning to Norma, "all I can say is that he walked out one night, and didn't come back until the next! Of course," she added, with a suppressed yawn that poorly concealed her sudden inclination to tears, "of courseIdon't care. Patsy and I are going up to Glen Cove next week—and he can live at his club, for all me!"
"Money?" Norma asked. For Leslie's extravagance was usually the cause of the young Liggetts' domestic strife.
Leslie, who had lighted a cigarette, made an affirmative grimace.
"Now, it's all been settled, and Grandma has straightened it all out," old Mrs. Melrose said, soothingly. "Acton was making out their income tax," she explained, "and some money was mentioned—how was that, dear?—Leslie had sold something—and he hadn't known of it, that was all! Of course he was a little cross, poor boy; he had worked it all out one way, and he had no idea that this extra—sixteen thousand, was it?—had come in at all, and been spent——"
"Most of it for bills!" Leslie interpolated, bitterly. Norma laughed.
"Sixteen thou——! Oh, heavens, my husband's salary is sixty dollars a week!" she confessed, gaily.
"But you have your own money," the old lady reminded her, kindly, "and a very nice thing for a wife, too! I've talked to Judge Lee about it, dear, and it's all arranged. You must let me do this, Norma——"
"I think you're awfully good to me, Aunt Marianna," Norma said, thoughtfully. "I told Wolf about it, and he thinks so, too. But honestly——"
Even with her secret knowledge of her own parentage, Norma was surprised at the fluttered anxiety of the old lady, and Leslie was frankly puzzled.
"No, Norma—no, Norma," Mrs. Melrose said, nervously and imploringly. "I don't want you to discuss that at all—it'ssettled. The check is to be deposited every month, or quarter, or whatever it was——"
"Don't be a fool, Norma, you'll need it, one way or another," Leslie assured her. But in her own heart Leslie wondered at her grandmother's generosity.
"Everybody needs more money. I'll bet you the King of England——"
"Oh, kings!" Norma laughed. "They're the worst of all. I don't know about this one, but they're always appealing for special funds—all of them. And that's one thing that makes Wolf so mad—the fact that all they have to do, for ridiculous extravagances, is clap on a tax."
But Leslie and her grandmother were not interested in the young engineer's economic theories. The old lady followed Norma's spirited summary merely with an uneasy: "You mustn't let your husband get any socialistic ideas, Norma; there's too much of that now!" and Leslie, after a close study of Norma's glowing face, remarked suddenly:
"Norma, I'll bet you adollaryou're rouged!"
Before she left, the visitor managed a casual inquiry about Aunt Alice.
Aunt Alice was fine, Leslie answered carelessly, adding immediately that no, Aunt Alice really wasn't extremely well. Doctor Garrett didn't want her to go away this summer, thought that move was an unnecessary waste of energy, since Aunt Alice's house was so cool, and she felt the heat so little. And Chris said that Alice had always really wanted to stay in town, in her own comfortable suite. She liked her second nurse immensely, and Miss Slater was really running the house now, the third nurse coming only at night.
"But Aunt Alice never had a nurse at night," Norma was going to say. But she caught the stricken and apprehensive look on the old lady's face, and substituted generously: "Well, I remember Aunt Alice told me she had one of these wretched times several years ago."
"Yes, indeed she did—frightened us almost to death," Mrs. Melrose agreed, thankfully.
"And how is—how is Chris?" Norma felt proud of the natural tone in which she could ask the question.
"Chris is fine," Leslie answered. She rarely varied the phrase in this relation. "He's hunting in Canada. He had a wire from some man there, and he went off about a week ago. They're going after moose, I believe; Chris didn't expect to get back for a month. Aunt Alice was delighted, because she hates to keep him in town all summer, but Acton told me that he thought Chris was sick—that he and Judge Lee just made him go."
Well, her heart would flutter, she could not stop it or ignore it. Norma found no answer ready, and though she lifted her cup to her lips, to hide her confusion, she could not taste it. The strangeness of Chris's sudden departure was no mystery to her; he had been shocked and stunned by her marriage, and he had run away from the eyes that might have pierced his discomfiture.
Still, her hands were trembling, and she felt oddly shaken and confused. Leslie carried the conversation away to safer fields, and shortly afterward Norma could say her good-byes. Everybody, Leslie said, walking with her to the corner, wanted to know what the bride wanted for a wedding-present. Norma told Wolf, over their candle-lighted supper table, an hour or two later, that he and she would be bankrupted for life returning them.
Yet she loved the excitement of receiving the gifts; naturally enough, loved Rose's ecstasies over the rugs and silver and mahogany that made the little New Jersey house a jewel among its kind. It was whatNorma had unhesitatingly pronounced an "adorable" house, a copy of the true colonial green-and-white, quaint and prim enough to please even Leslie, when Leslie duly came to call. It stood at the end of a tree-shaded street, with the rising woods behind it, and Norma recklessly invested in brick walks and a latticed green fence, hydrangeas in wooden tubs and sunflowers and hollyhocks, until her stretch of side garden looked like a picture by Kate Greenaway.
When it was all done, midsummer was upon them, but she and Wolf thought that there had never been anything so complete and so charming in all the world. The striped awnings that threw clean shadows upon the clipped grass; the tea table under the blue-green leaves of an old apple tree; the glass doors that opened upon orderly, white-wainscoted rooms full of shining dark surfaces and flowered chintzes and gleaming glass bowls of real flowers; the smallness and completeness and prettiness of everything filled them both with utter satisfaction.
Norma played at housekeeping like a little girl in a doll's house. She had a rosy little Finnish maid who enjoyed it all almost as much as she did, and their adventures in hospitality were a constant amusement and delight. On Saturdays, when Rose and Harry and Aunt Kate usually arrived, Wolf could hardly believe that all this ideal beauty and pleasure was his to share.
The girls would pose and photograph the baby tirelessly, laughing as he toppled and protested, and kissing the fat legs that showed between his pink romper and his pink socks. They would pack picnic lunches, rushing to and fro breathlessly with thermos bottles and extra wraps for Miggs, as Harry Junior was usually called.Once or twice they cleaned the car, with tremendous splashing and spattering, assuming Wolf's old overalls for the operation, and retreating with shrieks into the kitchen whenever the sound of an approaching motor-car penetrated into their quiet road. Mrs. Sheridan characterized them variously as "Wild Indians", "Ay-rabs", and "poor innocents" but her heart was so filled with joy and gratitude for the turn of events that had brought all these miracles about, that no nonsense and no noise seemed to her really extravagant.
It was an exceptionally pleasant community into which the young Sheridans had chanced to move, and they might have had much more neighbourly life than they chose to take. There were about them beginners of all sorts: writers and artists and newspaper men, whose little cars, and little maids, and great ambitions would have formed a strong bond of sympathy in time. But Wolf and Norma saw them only occasionally, when a Sunday supper at the country club or a Saturday-night dance supplied them with a pleasant stimulating sense of being liked and welcomed, or when general greetings on the eight-o'clock train in the morning were mingled with comments on the thunderstorm or the epidemic of nursery chicken-pox.
When Rose and Harry were gone, on Sunday evenings, Wolf and Norma might sit on the side steps of the side porch, looking off across the gradual drop descent of tree-tops and shingled roofs, into a distant world silvering under the summer moon. These were their happiest times, when solitude and quiet spread about them, after the hospitable excitements of the day, and they could talk and dream and plan for the years ahead.
She was an older Norma now, even though marriagehad not touched her with any real responsibility, and even though she was more full of delicious childish absurdities than ever. The first months of their marriage had curiously reversed their relationship, and it was Norma now who gave, and Wolf who humbly and gratefully accepted. It was Norma who poured comfort and beauty and companionship into his life, who smiled at him over his morning fruit, and who waited for him under the old maple at the turn of the road, every night. And as her wonderful and touching generosity enveloped him, and her strange wisdom and new sweetness impressed him more and more, Wolf marvelled and adored her more utterly. He had always loved her as a big brother, had even experienced a definite heartache when she grew up and went away, a lovely and unattainable girl in the place where their old giddy dear little Norma had been.
But now his passion for his young wife was becoming a devouring fire in Wolf's heart; she absorbed him and possessed him like a madness. A dozen times a day he would take from his pocket-book the thin leather case she had given him, holding on one side a photograph of the three heads of Rose, his mother, and the baby, and on the other an enchanting shadow of the loosened soft hair and the serious profile that was Norma.
And as he stood looking at it, with the machinery roaring about him, and the sunlight beating in through steel-barred windows sixty feet high, in all the confusion of shavings and oil-soaked wood, polished sliding shafts streaked with thick blue grease, stifling odours of creosote and oily "wipes", Wolf's eyes would fill with tears and he would shake his head at his own emotion, and try to laugh it away.
After awhile he took another little picture of her, this one taken under a taut parasol in bright sunlight, and fitted it over the opposite faces; and then when he had studied one picture he could turn to the other, and perhaps go back to the first before his eyes were satisfied.
And if during the day some thought brought her suddenly to mind, he would stop short in whatever he was doing, and remember her little timid upglancing look as she hazarded, at breakfast, some question about his work, or remember her enthusiasm, on a country tramp, for the chance meal at some wayside restaurant, and sheer love of her would overwhelm him, and he would find his eyes brimming again.
So thesummer fled, and before she fairly realized it Norma saw the leaves colouring behind the little house like a wall of fire, and rustled them with her feet when she tramped with Wolf's big collie into the woods. The air grew clearer and thinner, sunset came too soon, and a delicate beading of dew loitered on the shady side of the house until almost noon.
One October day, when she had been six months a wife, Norma made her first call upon Annie von Behrens. Alice she had seen several times, when she had stopped in, late in the summer mornings, to entertain the invalid with her first adventures in housekeeping, and chat with Miss Slater. But Chris she had quite deliberately avoided. He had written her from Canada a brief and charming note, which she had shown Wolf, and he and Alice had had their share in the general family gift of silver, the crates and bags and boxes of spoons and bowls and teapots that had anticipated every possible table need of the Sheridans for generations to come. But that was all; she had not seen Chris, and did not want to see him.
"The whole thing is rather like a sickness, in my mind," she told Wolf, "and I don't want to see him any more than you would a doctor or a nurse that was associated with illness. I don't know what we—what I was thinking about!"
"But you think he really—loved you—Nono?"
"Well—or he thought he did!"
"And did you like him terribly?"
"I think I thought I did, too. It was—of course it was something we couldn't very well discuss——."
"Well, I'm sorry for him." Wolf had dismissed him easily. On her part, Norma was conscious of no particular emotion when she thought of Chris. The suddenness and violence with which she had broken that association and made its resumption for ever impossible, had carried her safely into a totally different life. Her marriage, her new husband and new home, her new title indeed, made her seem another woman, and if she thought of Chris at all it was to imagine what he would think of these changes, and to fancy what he would say of them, when they met. No purely visionary meeting can hold the element of passion, and so it was a remote and spiritualized Chris of whom Norma came to think, far removed from the actual man of flesh and blood.
Her call upon Annie she made with a mental reserve of cheerful explanation and apology ready for Annie's first reproach. Norma never could quite forget the extraordinary relationship in which she stood to Annie; and, perhaps half consciously, was influenced by the belief that some day the brilliant and wonderful Mrs. von Behrens would come to know of it, too.
But Annie, who happened to be at home, and had other callers, rapidly dashed Norma's vague and romantic anticipations by showing her only the brisk and aloof cordiality with which she held at bay nine tenths of her acquaintance. Annie's old butler showed Norma impassively to the little drawing-room that was tucked in beyond the big one; two or three strangers eyed thenewcomer cautiously, and Annie merely accorded her a perfunctory welcome. They were having tea.
"Well, how do you do? How very nice of you, Norma. Do you know Mrs. Theodore Thayer, and Mrs. Thayer, and Miss Bishop? Katrina, this is—the name is still Sheridan, isn't it, Norma?—this is Mrs. Sheridan, who was with Mama and Leslie last summer. You have lots of sugar and cream, Norma, of course—all youngsters do. And you're near the toast——" And Annie, dismissing her, leaned back in her chair, and dropped her voice to the undertone that Norma had evidently interrupted. "Do go on, Leila," she said, to the older of the three women, "that's quite delicious! I heard something of it, but I knew of course that there was more——"
A highly flavoured little scandal was in process of construction. Norma knew the principals slightly; the divorced woman, and the second husband from whom she had borrowed money to loan the first. She could join in the laughter that broke out presently, while she tried to identify her companions. The younger Mrs. Thayer had been the Miss Katrina Davenport of last month's brilliant wedding. Pictures of her had filled the illustrated weeklies, and all the world knew that she and her husband were preparing to leave for a wonderful home in Hawaii, where the family sugar interests were based. They were to cross the continent, Norma knew, in the Davenport private car, to be elaborately entertained in San Francisco, and to be prominent, naturally, in the island set. Little Miss Bishop had just announced her engagement to Lord Donnyfare, a splendid, big, clumsy, and impecunious young Briton who had made himself very popular with the youngergroup this winter. They were to be married in January and her ladyship would shortly afterward be transferred to London society, presented at court, and placed as mistress over the old family acres in Devonshire.
They were both nice girls, pretty, beautifully groomed and dressed, and far from unintelligent as they discussed their plans; how their favourite horses and dogs would be moved, and what instructions had been given the maids who had preceded them to their respective homes. Katrina Thayer was just twenty, Mary Bishop a year younger; Norma knew that the former was perhaps the richest girl in America, and the latter was also an heiress, the society papers having already hinted that among the wedding gifts shortly to be displayed would be an uncle's casual check for one million dollars.
"And of course it'll be charming for Chris, Mary," Annie presently said, "if he's really sent to Saint James's."
Norma felt her throat thicken.
"Chris—to England—as Ambassador?" she said.
"Well, there's just a possibility—no, there's more than that!" Annie told her. "I believe he'll take it, if it is offered. Of course, he's supremely well fitted for it. There's even"—Annie threw out to the company at large, with that air of being specially informed in which she delighted—"there's even very good reason to suppose that influence has been brought to bear by——But I don't dare go into that. However, we feel that it will be offered. And the one serious drawback is naturally my sister. Alice—poor child! And yet, of us all, Alice is most desperately eager for Chris to take it."
"I should think," Norma said, "that Aunt Alice couldalmost be moved——?"
"Oh, she would be!" Annie agreed, with her quick, superior definiteness. "That's the very question. Whether the north Atlantic passage, say in May, when it oughtn't to be so hard, would be too much for her. Of course it would tire her and shake her cruelly, no doubt of that. But Hendrick even talks of some sort of balanced bed—on the hammock idea—and Miss Slater would see that everything that was humanly possible was done. I believe it could be managed. Then she would be met by one of those big, comfortable English ambulances, at Southampton, and taken right to her apartment, or hotel, or whatever Chris arranges."
"Not so much harder," Norma ventured, "than the trip to Newport, after all."
"Well, she didn't go to Newport last summer," Annie said, "but she is certainly better now than she was then, and I believe it could be done; I really do. We're not talking a great deal about it, because nothing is settled, but if it becomes definite, I shall certainly advise it."
Norma drank her tea, and listened, and threw in an occasional word. When the other women rose to go, she rose, too, perhaps half-hoping that Annie would hold her for a more intimate word. But Annie quite suavely and indifferently included her in her general farewells, and Norma had cordial good-byes from the two young women, and even a vague invitation from the older Mrs. Thayer to come and see her, when Katrina was gone.
Then she was walking down the Avenue, with her head and heart in a confused whirl of bitterness and disappointment. The three quarters of an hour in Aunt Annie's big, dim, luxurious palace had been like a dose of some insidious poison.
The very atmosphere of richness and service and idleness, the beauty of wide spaces and rich tones, the massed blossoms and dimmed lights, struck sharply upon senses attuned to Aunt Kate's quick voice, Rose's little house with its poverty and utility, and Wolf's frank enjoyment of his late and simple dinner. The conversation, with its pleasant assumption of untold wealth of power and travel and regal luxuriousness, burned its memory across Norma's mind like a corroding acid. They were not contemptible, they were not robbers or brutes or hideous old plutocrats who had grown wealthy upon the wrongs of the poor. No, they were normal pleasant girls whose code it was to be generous to maids and underlings, to speak well of their neighbours, to pay their bills and keep their promises.
"They make metired!" she tried to tell herself, walking briskly, and filling her lungs with the sweet fresh air. It was twilight, and the north-bound tide of traffic was halting and rushing, halting and rushing, up the Avenue; now held motionless at a crossing, now flowing on in mad haste, the lumbering omnibuses passing each other, little hansoms threading the mass, and foot passengers scampering and withdrawing, and risking all sorts of passages between. The distance was luminous and blue, and lights pricked against it as against a scarf of gauze.
Oh, it was sickening—it was sickening—to think that life was so grim and hard for the thousands, and so unnecessarily, so superlatively beautiful for the few! What had Mary Bishop and Katrina ever done, that they should travel in private cars, fling aside furs that had cost as much as many a man's yearly salary, chatter of the plantation near the beach at Hawaii, or of reaching Saint James's for the January Drawing-Room!
Norma stopped to give twenty-five cents to an old Italian organ grinder, and worked him into her theme as she went on. Whyshouldhe look so grateful for her casual charity, he, seventy years old, Katrina and Mary averaging less than twenty!
She reached Aunt Kate's flat in a thorough temper, angry, headachy, almost feverish after the rich scones and the rich tea, and the even less wholesome talk. The apartment house seemed, as indeed it was, grimy and odorous almost to squalor, and Aunt Kate almost hateful in her cheerfulness and energy. This was Wednesday, and on Wednesday evenings she was always happy, for then Wolf and Norma came to dinner with her. To-night, busily manipulating pans and pots, she told Norma that she had rented the two extra bedrooms of the apartment to three young trained nurses, ideal tenants in every way.
"They'll get their breakfasts here, and—if I'm away—there's no reason why they shouldn't cook themselves a little dinner now and then," said Aunt Kate, in her rich, motherly voice. "They were tickled to death to get the two rooms for twenty dollars, and that makes my own rent only seventeen more. I asked them if that was too much, and they said, no, they'd expected to pay at least ten apiece."
Norma listened, unsympathetic and gloomy. It was all so petty and so poor—trained nurses, and apple pie, and Aunt Kate renting rooms, and Wolf eager to be promoted to factory manager.
She wanted to go back—back to the life in which Annie really noticed her, gave her luncheons, included her. She wanted to count for something with Mary and Katrina and Leslie; she wanted to talk to Chrisabout his possible ambassadorship; she wanted them all to agree that Norma's wit and charm more than made up for Norma's lack of fortune. While she brushed her hair, in the room that would shortly accommodate two of the three little nurses, she indulged in an unsatisfying dream in which she went to London with Alice—and that autocratic little Lady Donnyfare.
Lady Donnyfare! She would be "your ladyship!" Nineteen years old, and welcomed to the ancestral mansion as her little ladyship!
Norma set the dinner table for three, with jerks and slams that slightly relieved her boiling heart. She got the napkins from the sideboard drawer, and reached for the hand-painted china sugar bowl that was part of a set that Aunt Kate had won at a fair. She set the blue tile that she had given Aunt Kate on a long-ago Christmas where the brown Rebecca teapot would stand, and cut a square slice of butter from the end of the new pound for the blue glass dish. And all the time her heart was bursting with grief and discontent, and she was beginning to realize for the first time the irrevocable quality of the step she had taken, and just how completely it had shut her off from the life for which she thirsted.
Wolf came in, hungry, dirty, radiantly happy, with a quick kiss for his mother and an embrace for his wife into which her slender figure and cloudy brown head almost disappeared. Lord, he was starving; and Lord, he was dead; and Lord, it was good to get home, said Wolf, his satisfaction with life too great to leave room for any suspicion of his wife's entire sympathy.
She told them, over the meal, of Mary and Katrina, in whom their interest was of a simple and amazed quality that Norma resented, and of Chris's prospect,which did awaken some comment from Mrs. Sheridan. They were a clever family, she said.
But now Wolf, bursting with long suppression, suddenly took the floor with his own great news. Voorhies, the fifty-year-old manager of the California plant, had been drifting about the Newark factory for several days, and Wolf had talked with him respectfully, as a man of twenty-five, whose income is three thousand a year, may talk to a six-thousand-dollar manager, and to-day Voorhies, and Jim Palmer, the Newark manager, and Paul Stromberg, the vice-president, had taken Wolf to lunch with them, apparently casually, apparently from mere friendliness. But Voorhies had asked him if he had ever seen the West; and Stromberg had said that he understood Sheridan's family consisted merely of a young wife, and Palmer had chanced to drop carelessly the fact that Mr. Voorhies was not going back to California——!
That was all. But it was enough to send Wolf back to his work with his head spinning. California—and a managership of a mine—and six thousand! It must be—it must be—that he had been mentioned for it, that they had him in mind! He wasn't going even to think of it—and Norma mustn't—but Lord, it meant being picked out of the ranks; it meant being handed a commission on a silver platter!
Norma tried not to be cold, tried to rise to the little he asked of her, as audience. And she had the satisfaction of knowing that he noticed nothing amiss in her manner, and of seeing him go off to sleep, when they had made the long trip home, with his head in a whirl of glorious hopes. But Norma, for the first time since her marriage, cried herself to sleep.
Thebitterness stayed with her, and gradually robbed her life of everything that was happy and content. Her little household round, that had been so absorbing and so important, became tedious and stupid. Rose, who was expecting her second confinement, had her husband's mother with her, and in care of the old baby, and making preparations for the new, was busy, and had small time for the old companionship; the evenings were too cold for motoring now, even if Wolf had not been completely buried in engineering journals and papers of all sorts.
Norma did not call on Annie again, but a fretted and outraged sense of Annie's coolness and aloofness, and a somewhat similar impression from Leslie's manner, when they met in Fifth Avenue one day, was always in her mind. They could drop her as easily as they had picked her up, these high-and-mighty Melroses! She consoled herself, for a few days, with spectacular fancies of Annie's consternation should Norma's real identity be suddenly revealed to her, but even that poor solace was taken away from her at last.
It was Aunt Kate's unconscious hand that struck the blow, on a wild afternoon, All Hallow E'en, as it happened, when the older woman made the long trip to see Rose, and came on to Norma with a report that everything was going well, and Miggs more fascinating than ever.
Mrs. Sheridan found Norma at the close of the short afternoon, moping in her unlighted house. She had been to the theatre with Wolf and a young couple from the house next door, last night, and had fallen asleep after an afternoon walk, and felt headachy, prickly with heat and cold, and stupid. Yawning and chilly, she kissed her aunt, and suggested that they move to the kitchen. It was Inga's free night and Norma was cook.
"You'll stay and surprise Wolf, he'd love it," Norma said, as the visitor's approving eyes noted the general order and warmth, the blue-checked towels and blue bowls, the white table and white walls. The little harum-scarum baby of the family was proceeding to get her husband a most satisfactory and delicious little dinner, and Aunt Kate was proud of her.
"Did you make that cake, darling?"
"Indeed I did; she can't make cake!"
"And the ham?"
"Well"—Norma eyed the cut ham fondly—"we did that together, out of the book! And I wish you'd taste it, Aunt Kate, it is perfectly delicious. I give it to Wolf every other night, but I think he'd eat it three times a day and be delighted. And last week we made bread—awfully good, too—not hard like that bread we made last summer. Rolls, we made—cinnamon rolls and plain. Harry and Rose were here. And Thanksgiving I'm going to try mincemeat."
"You're a born cook," Aunt Kate said, paying one of her highest compliments with due gravity. But Norma did not respond with her usual buoyancy. She sighed impatiently, and her face fell into lines of discontent and sadness that did not escape the watchingeyes. Mrs. Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding, one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar. Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some trouble hideously like infantile paralysis.
Norma knew that Aunt Kate would have liked to have her offer to take at least one of the small and troublesome children for two or three days, if not to stay with the unfortunate Kitty Barry outright. She knew that there was almost no money, that all the household details of washing and cooking were piling up like a mountain about the ailing woman, but her heart was filled with sudden rebellion and impatience with the whole miserable scheme.
"My goodness, Aunt Kate, if it isn't one thing with those people it's another!" she said, impatiently. "I suppose you were there, and up with that baby all night!"
"Indeed I got some fine sleep," Mrs. Sheridan answered, innocently. "Poor things, they're very brave!"
Norma said nothing, but her expression was not sympathetic. She had been thinking of herself as to be pitied, and this ruthless introduction of the Barry question entirely upset the argument. If Mary Bishop and Katrina Thayer were the standard, then Norma Sheridan's life was too utterly obscure and insignificant to be worth living. But of course if incompetent strugglers like the Barrys were to be brought into the question, then Norma might begin to feel the solid ground melting from beneath her feet.
She did not offer the cake or the ham to Aunt Kate,as contributions toward the small Barrys' lunch next day, nor did she invite any one of them to visit her. Her aunt, if she noted these omissions, made no comment upon them.
"I declare you are getting to be a real woman, Norma," she said.
"I suppose everyone grows up," Norma assented, cheerlessly.
"Yes, there's a time when a child stops being a baby and you see that it's beginning to be a little girl," Mrs. Sheridan mused; "but it's some time later before you knowwhat sortof a little girl it is. And then at—say fifteen or sixteen—you see the change again, the little girl growing into a grown girl—a young lady. And for awhile you sort of lose track of her again, until all of a sudden you say: 'Well, Norma's going to be sociable—and like people!' or: 'Rose is going to be a gentle, shy girl——'"
Norma knew the mildly moralizing tone, and that she was getting a sermon.
"You never knew that I was going to be a good housekeeper!" she asserted, inclined toward contrariety.
"I think you're going through another change now, Baby," her aunt said. "You've become a woman too fast. You don't quite know where you are!"
This was so unexpectedly acute that Norma was inwardly surprised, and a little impressed. She sat down at one end of the clean little kitchen table, and rested her face in her hands, and looked resentfully at the older woman.
"Then youdon'tthink I'm a good housekeeper," she said, looking hurt.
"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma,it'll all be in your hands now," Mrs. Sheridan answered, seriously. "You're a woman, now; you're Wolf's wife; you've reached an age when you can choose and decide for yourself. You can be—you always could be—the best child the Lord ever made, or you can fret and brood over what you haven't got."
The shrewd kindly eye seemed looking into Norma's very soul. The girl dropped her hard bright stare, and looked sulky.
"I don't see whatI'mdoing!" she muttered. "I can't help wanting—what other people that are no better than I, have!"
"Yes, but haven't you enough, Norma? Think of women like poor Kitty Barry——"
"Oh, Kitty Barry—Kitty Barry!" Norma burst out, angrily. "It isn't my fault that Kitty Barry has trouble;Ihad nothing to do with it! Look at people like Leslie—what she wastes on one new fur coat would keep the Barrys for a year! Eighty-two hundred dollars she paid for her birthday coat! And that'snothing! Katrina Thayer——"
"Norma—Norma—Norma!" her aunt interrupted, reproachfully. "What have you to do with girls like the Thayer girl? Why, there aren't twenty girls in the country as rich as that. That doesn't affectyou, if there's something you can do for the poor and unfortunate——"
"Itdoesaffect me! I can't"—Norma dropped her tone, and glanced at her aunt. She knew that she was misbehaving—"I can't help inheriting a love for money," she said, breathing hard. "I know perfectly well who I am—who my mother is," she ended, with a half-defiant and half-fearful sob in her voice.
"How do you mean that you know about your mother, Norma?" Mrs. Sheridan demanded, sharply.
"Well"—Norma had calmed a little, and she was a trifle nervous—"Chris told me; and Aunt Alice knows, too—that Aunt Annie is my mother," she said.
"Chris Liggett told you that?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, with a note of incredulity in her voice.
"Yes. Aunt Alice guessed it almost as soon as I went to live there! And I've known it for over a year," Norma said.
"And who told Chris?"
"Well—Aunt Marianna, I suppose!"
There was silence for a moment.
"Norma," said Mrs. Sheridan, in a quiet, convincing tone that cooled the girl's hot blood instantly, "Chris is entirely wrong; your mother is dead. I've never lied to you, and I give you my word! I don't know where Miss Alice got that idea, but it's like her romantic way of fancying things! No, dear," she went on, sympathetically, as Norma sat silent, half-stunned by painful surprise, "you have no claim on Miss Annie. Both your father and mother are dead, Norma; I knew them both. There was a reason," Mrs. Sheridan added, thoughtfully, "why I felt that Mrs. Melrose might want to be kind to you—want to undo an injustice she did years ago. But I've told myself a thousand times that I did you a cruel wrong when I first let you go among them—you who were always so sensible, and so cheerful, and who would always take things as they came, and make no fuss!"
"Oh, Aunt Kate," Norma stammered, bitterly, her lip trembling, and her voice fighting tears, "you don't have to tell me that in your opinion I've changed forthe worse—I see it in the way you look at me! You've always thought Rose was an angel—too good to live!—and that I was spoiled and lazy and good-for-nothing; you were glad enough to get rid of me, and now I hope you're satisfied! They've told me one thing, and you've told me another—and I guess the truth is that I don't belong to anybody; and I wish I was dead, where my f-f-father and m-m-mother are——!"
And stumbling into incoherence and tears, Norma dropped her head on her arm, and sobbed bitterly. Mrs. Sheridan's face was full of pain, but she did not soften.
"You belong to your husband, Norma!" she said, mildly.
Norma sat up, and wiped her eyes on a little handkerchief that she took from the pocket of her housewifely blue apron. She did not meet her aunt's eye, and still looked angry and hurt.
"Well—whoamI then? Haven't I got some right to know who my mother and father were?" she demanded.
"That you will never hear from me," Mrs. Sheridan replied, firmly.
"But, Aunt Kate——"
"I gave my solemn promise, Norma, and I've kept my word all these years; I'm not likely to break it now."
"But—won't Ieverknow?"
Mrs. Sheridan shrugged her broad shoulders and frowned slightly.
"That I can't say, my dear," she said, gently. "Some day I may be released from my bond, and then I'll be glad to tell you everything."
"Perhaps Wolf will tell me he's nothing to me, now!" the girl continued, with childish temper.
"Wolf—and all of us—think that there's nobody like you," the older woman said, tenderly. But Norma did not brighten. She went in a businesslike way to the stove, and glanced at the various bowls and saucepans in which dinner was baking and boiling, then sliced some stale bread neatly, put the shaved crusts in a special jar, and began to toast the slices with a charming precision.
"Change your mind and stay with us, Aunt Kate?" she said, lifelessly.
"No, dear, I'm going!" And Aunt Kate really did bundle herself into coat and rubber overshoes and woolly scarf again. "November's coming in with a storm," she predicted, glancing out at the darkness, where the wind was rushing and howling drearily.
Norma did not answer. No mere rushing of clouds and whirl of dry and colourless leaves could match the storm of disappointment that was beginning to rage in her own heart.
Yet she felt a pang of repentance, when cheerful Aunt Kate had tramped off in the dark, to Rose's house, which was five blocks away, and perhaps afterward to the desolate Barrys', and wished that she had put her arms about the big square shoulders, and her cheek against her aunt's cheek, and said that she was sorry to be unreasonable.
Rushing to another extreme of unreason, she decided that she and Wolf must go see Rose to-night—and perhaps the Barrys, too—and cheer and solace them all. And Norma indulged in a little dream of herself nursing and cooking in the Barrys' six little cluttered rooms, and earning golden opinions from all the group. There was money, too; she had not used all of October's allowance,and to-morrow would find another big check at the bank.
Wolf interrupted by coming in so tired he could hardly move. He ate his dinner, yawned amiably in the kitchen while she cleared it away, and was so sound asleep at nine o'clock that Norma's bedside light and the rustling of the pages of her book, three feet away from his face, had no more effect upon him than if the three feet had been three hundred.
And then the bitter mood came back to her again; the bored, restless, impatient feeling that her life was a stupid affair. And deep in her heart the sense of hurt and humiliation grew and spread; the thought that she was not of the charmed circle of the Melroses, not secretly and romantically akin to them, she was merely the casual object of the old lady's fantastic sense of obligation. Aunt Kate, who had never said what was untrue—who, Norma and her children firmly believed, could not say what was untrue—had taken away, once and for all, the veil of mystery and romance that had wrapped Norma for three exciting years.
For Leslie, and Katrina, and Mary Bishop, perhaps, travel and the thrill of foreign shores or European courts. But for Wolf Sheridan's wife, this small, orderly, charming house on the edge of the New Jersey woods, and the laundry to think of every Monday, and the two-days' ordering to remember every Saturday, as long as the world went round!
For a few days Norma really suffered in spirit, then the natural healthy current of her life reëstablished itself, and she philosophically determined to make the best of the matter. If she was not Aunt Annie's daughter and Leslie's cousin, she was at least their friend.They—even unsuspecting of any strange relationship—had always been kind to her. And Aunt Marianna and Aunt Alice had been definitely affectionate, to say nothing of Chris!
So one day, when she happened to be shopping in the winter briskness of the packed and brilliant Avenue, she telephoned Leslie at about the luncheon hour. Leslie when last they met had said that she would confidently expect Norma to run out and lunch with her some day—any day.
"Who is it?" Leslie's voice asked, irritably, when at last the telephone connection was established. "Oh,Norma! Oh——? What is it?"
"Just wondering how you all were, and what the family news is," Norma said, with an uncomfortable inclination to falter.
"I don'thearyou!" Leslie protested, impatiently. The insignificant inquiry did not seem to gain much by repetition, and Norma's cheeks burned in shame when Leslie followed it by a blank little pause. "Oh—everyone's fine. The baby wasn't well, but she's all right now."
Another slight pause, then Norma said:
"She must be adorable—I'd like to see her."
"She's not here now," Leslie answered, quickly.
"I've been shopping," Norma said. "Any chance that you could come down town and lunch with me?"
"No, I really couldn't, to-day!" Leslie answered, lightly and promptly.
A moment later Norma said good-bye. She walked away from the telephone booth with her face burning, and her heart beating quickly with anger and resentment.
"Snob—snob—snob!" she said to herself, furiously, of Leslie. And of herself she presently added honestly, "And I wasn't much better, for I don't really like her any more than she does me!" And she stopped for flowers, and a little box of pastry, and went out to delight her Aunt Kate's heart with an unexpected visit.
But a sting remained, and Norma brooded over the injustice of life, as she went about her little house in the wintry sunlight, and listened to Wolf, and made much of Rose and the new baby girl. By Thanksgiving it seemed to her that she had only dreamed of "Aïda" and of Newport, and that the Norma of the wonderful frocks and the wonderful dreams had been only a dream herself.