Andthen suddenly she was delighted to have a friendly little note from Alice, asking her to come to luncheon on a certain December Friday, as there was "a tiny bit of business" that she would like to discuss; Chris was away, she would be alone. Norma accepted with no more than ordinary politeness, and showed neither Wolf nor his mother any elation, but she felt a deep satisfaction in the renewed relationship.
On the appointed Friday, at one o'clock, she mounted the familiar steps of the Christopher Liggetts' house, and greeted the butler with a delighted sense of returning to her own. Alice was in the front room, before a wood fire; she greeted Norma with her old smile, and with an outstretched hand, but Norma was shocked to see how drawn and strangely aged the smile was, and how thin the hand!
The room had its old scent of violets, and its old ordered beauty and richness, but Norma was vaguely conscious, for the first time, of some new invalid quality of fussiness, of a pretty and superfluous cluttering that had not been characteristic of Alice's belongings a year ago. Alice, too, wore newly a certain stamp of frailty, her always pure high forehead had a faint transparency and shine that Norma did not remember, and the increasing accumulation of pillows and little bookcases and handsome stands about her suggested that her horizon was closing in, that her world was diminishing to this room, and this room alone.
The strange nurse who smilingly and noiselessly slipped away as Norma came in, was another vaguely disquieting hint of helplessness, but Norma knew better than to make any comment upon her impressions, and merely asked the usual casual questions, as she sat down near the couch.
"How are you, Aunt Alice? But you look splendidly!"
"I'm sowell," said Alice, emphatically, with a sort of solemn thankfulness, "that I don't know myself! Whether it was saving myself the strain of moving to Newport last summer, or what, I don't know. But I haven't been so well foryears!"
Norma's heart contracted with sudden pity. Alice had never employed these gallant falsehoods before. She had always been quite obviously happy and busy and even enviable, in her limited sphere. The girl chatted away with her naturally enough while the luncheon table was arranged between them and the fire, but she noticed that two nurses shifted the invalid into an upright position before the meal, and that Alice's face was white with exhaustion as she began to sip her bouillon.
They were alone, an hour later, playing with little boxed ices, when Alice suddenly revealed the object of the meeting. Norma had asked for Chris, who was, it appeared, absent on some matter of business for a few days, and it was in connection with the introduction of his name that Alice spoke.
"Chris—that reminds me! I wanted to speak to you about something, Norma; I've wanted to for months, really. It's not really important, because of course you never would mention it any more than I would, and yetit's just as well to have this sort of thing straightened out! Chris told me"—said Alice, looking straight at Norma, who had grown a trifle pale, and was watching her fixedly—"Chris told me that some months before you were married, he told you of some—some ridiculous suspicions we had—it seems absurd now!—about Annie."
So that was it! Norma could breathe again.
"Yes—we talked about it one morning walking home from church," she admitted.
"I don't know whether you know now," Alice said, quickly, flushing nervously, "that there wasn't one shred of foundation for that—that crazy suspicion of mine! But I give you my word—and my mother told me!—that it wasn't so. I don't know how I ever came to think of it, or why I thought Mama admitted it. But I've realized," said Alice, nervously, "that it was a terrible injustice to Annie, and as soon as Chris told me that you knew it—and of course he hadno businessto let it get any further!—I wanted to set it straight. Poor Annie; she would be perfectly frantic if she knew how calmly I was saddling her with a—a terrible past!" said Alice, laughing. "But I have always been too sensitive where the people I love are concerned, and I blundered into this—this outrageous——"
"My aunt had told me that it was not so," Norma said, coolly and superbly interrupting the somewhat incoherent story. "If I ever really believed it——!" she added, scornfully.
For her heart was hot with rage, and the first impulse was to vent it upon this nearest of the supercilious Melroses. This was all Alice had wanted then, in sending that little overture of friendship: to tell the little nobodythat she was nothing to the great family, after all, to prevent her from ever boasting even an illicit relationship! It was for a formal snub, a definite casting-off, that Norma had been brought all the way from the little green-and-white house in New Jersey! Her eyes grew very bright, and her lips very firm, as she and Alice finished the topic, and she told herself that she would never, never enter the house of Liggett again!
Alice, this load off her mind, and the family honour secure, became much more friendly, and she and Norma were talking animatedly when Leslie and Annie came unexpectedly in. They had been to a débutante luncheon, and were going to a débutante tea, and meanwhile wanted a few minutes with dear Alice, and the latest news of Mrs. Melrose, who was in Florida.
Aunt and niece were magnificently furred and jewelled, magnificently unaware of the existence of little Mrs. Sheridan of East Orange. Norma knew in a second that the social ripples had closed over her head; she was of no further possible significance in the life of either. Leslie was pretty, bored, ill-tempered; Annie her usual stunning and radiantly satisfied self. The conversation speedily left Norma stranded, the chatter of engagements, of scandals, of new names, was all strange to her, and she sat through some ten minutes of it uncomfortably, longing to go, and not quite knowing how to start. She said to herself that she was done with the Melroses; never—never—never again would even their most fervently extended favour win from her so much as a civil acknowledgment!
There was a step in the hall, and a voice that drove the blood from Norma's face, and made her heart begin the old frantic fluttering and thumping. Before shecould attempt to collect her thoughts, the door opened, and Chris came in. He came straight to Alice, and kissed her, holding her hand as he greeted Annie and Leslie. Then he came across the hearthrug, and Norma got to her feet, and felt that his hand was as cold as hers, and that the room was rocking about her.
"Hello, Norma!" he said, quietly. "I didn't expect to find you here!"
"You haven't seen her since she was married, Chris," Alice said, and Chris agreed with a pleasant "That's so!"
He sat down, and Norma, incapable of any effort, at least until she could control the emotion that was shaking her like a vertigo, sank back into her own chair, unseeing and unhearing. The gold clock on the mantel ticked and tocked, the other three women chatted and laughed, and Chris contributed his share to the general conversation. But Norma's one desperate need was for escape.
He made no protest when she said hasty farewells, but when she had gone rapidly and almost blindly down the stairway, and was at the front door, she found him beside her. He got into his fur-collared coat, picked up his hat, and they descended to the sidewalk together, in the colourless, airless, sunless light of the winter afternoon.
"Get in my car!" Chris said, indicating the roadster at the curb.
The girl without a word obeyed. His voice, the motion of his clean-cut mouth, the searching glance of his quick, keen eyes, acted upon her like a charm. Alice—Wolf—every thing else in the world vanished from her thoughts, or rather had never been there. She wasdrinking again the forbidden waters for which she had thirsted, perhaps without quite knowing it, so long. The strangeness, the strain, the artifice of the last eight months fell from her like a spell; she was herself again, comfortable again, poised again, thrilling from head to heels with delicious and bubbling life—ready for anything!
Now that they were alone she felt no more nervousness; he would speak to her when he was ready, he could not leave her without speaking. Norma settled back comfortably in the deep, low seat, and glanced sidewise at the stern profile that showed between his high fur collar and the fur cap he had pulled well down over his ears. The world seemed changed to her; she had wakened from a long dream.
"No—not the old house!" she presently broke the silence to tell him. "I go to New Jersey."
He had been driving slowly out Fifth Avenue, now he obediently turned, and threaded his way through the cross-street traffic until they were within perhaps a hundred feet of the entrance to the New Jersey subways. Then he ran the car close to the curb, and stopped, and for the first time looked fully at Norma, and she saw his old, pleasant smile.
"Well, and how goes it?" he asked. "How is Wolf? Tell me where you are living, and all about it!"
Norma in answer gave him a report upon her own affairs, and spoke of Aunt Kate and Rose and Rose's children. She did not realize that a tone almost pleading, almost apologetic, crept into her eager voice while she spoke, and told its own story. Chris watched her closely, his eyes never leaving her face. All around them moved the confusion and congestion of Sixth Avenue; overhead the elevated road roared and crashed, but neither man nor woman was more than vaguely conscious of surroundings.
"And are you happy, Norma?" Chris asked.
"Oh, yes!" she answered, quickly.
"You are a very game little liar," he said, dispassionately. "No—no, I'm not blaming you!" he added, hastily, as she would have spoken. "You took the very best way out, and I respect and honour you for it! I was not surprised—although the possibility had never occurred to me."
Something in his cool, almost lifeless tone, chilled her, and she did not speak.
"When I heard of it," Chris said, "I went to Canada. I don't remember the details exactly, but I remember one day sitting up there—in the woods somewhere, and looking at my hunting knife, and looking at my wrist——"
He looked at his wrist now, and her eyes followed his.
"—and if I had thought," Chris presently continued, "that a slash there might have carried me to some region of peace—where there was no hunger for Norma—I would not have hesitated! But one isn't sure—more's the pity!" he finished, smiling with eyes full of pain.
Norma could not speak. The work of long months had been undone in a short hour, and she was conscious of a world that crashed and tumbled in utter ruin about her.
"Well, no use now," Chris said. He folded his arms on his chest, and looked sternly away into space for a minute, and Norma felt his self-control, his repression, as she would have felt no passionate outburst of reproach. "But there is one thing that I've wanted fora long time to tell you, Norma. If you hadn't been such a little girl, if you had known what life is, you could not have done what you did!"
"I suppose not," she half-whispered, with a dry throat, as he waited for some sign from her.
"No, you couldn't have given yourself to any one else—if you had known," Chris went on, as if musing aloud. "And that brings me to what I want to say. Marriage lasts a long, long time, Norma, and even you—with all your courage!—may find that you've promised more than you can perform! The time may come——
"Norma, I hope it won't!" he interrupted himself to say, bitterly. "I try to hope it won't! I try to hope that you will come to love him, my dear, and forget me! But if that time does come, what I want you to remember is this afternoon, and sitting here with me in the car, and Chris telling you that whenever—or wherever—or however he can serve you, you are to remember that he is living just for that hour! There will never be any change in me, Norma, never anything but longing and longing just for the sight of you, just for one word from you! I love you, my dear—I can't help it. God knows I'vetriedto help it. I love you as I don't believe any other woman in the world was ever loved! So much that I want life to be good to you, even if I never see you, and I want you to be happy, even without me!"
He had squared about to face her, and as the passionate rush of words swept about her, Norma laid her little gloved hand gently upon his big one, and her blue eyes, drowned in sudden tears, fixed themselves in exquisite desolation and despair upon his face.
Once or twice she had whispered "I know—I know!"as if to herself, but she did not interrupt him, and when he paused he saw that she was choked with tears, and could not speak.
"The mad and wonderful sacrifice you made I can't talk about, Norma," he said. "Only an ignorant, noble-hearted little girl like you could have done that! But that's all over, now. You must try to make your life what they think it is—those good people that love you! And I'll try, too!—I do try. And you mustn't cry, my little sweetheart," Chris added, with a tenderness so new, and so poignantly sweet, that Norma was almost faint with the sheer joy of it, "you mustn't blame me for just saying this, this once, because it's for the last time! We mustn't meet——" His voice dropped. "I think we mustn't meet," he repeated, painfully and slowly.
"No!" she agreed, quickly.
"But you are to remember that," Chris reiterated, "that I am living, and moving about, and going to the office, and back to my home, only because you are alive in the world, and the day may come when I can serve you! Life has been only that to me, for a long, long time!"
For a long minute Norma sat silent, her dark lashes fallen on her cheek, her eyes on the hand that she had grasped in her own.
"I'll remember, Chris! Thank you, Chris!" she said, simply. Then she raised her eyes and looked straight at him, with a childish little frown, puzzled and bewildered, on her forehead, and they exchanged a long look of good-bye. Chris raised her hand to his lips, and Norma very quietly slipped from her seat, and turned once to smile bravely at him before she was lost in theswiftly moving whirlpool of the subway entrance. She was trembling as she seated herself in the train, and moved upon her way scarcely conscious of what she was doing.
But Chris did not move from his seat for more than an hour.
Norma went home, and quickly and deftly began her preparations for dinner. Inga had been married a few weeks before, and so Norma had no maid. She put her new hat into its tissue paper, and tied a fresh checked apron over her filmy best waist, and stepped to and fro between stove and dining table, as efficient a little housekeeper as all New Jersey could show.
Wolf came home hungry and good-natured, and kissed her, and sat at the end of her little kitchen table while she put the last touches to the meal, appreciative and amusing, a new magazine for her in the pocket of his overcoat, an invitation from his mother for dinner to-morrow night, and a pleasant suggestion that he and she wander up Broadway again and look in windows, after his mother's dinner.
They talked, while they dined, of the possibility of the California move, and Wolf afterward went down to the furnace. When the fire was banked for the night, he watched the last of the dinner clearance, and they went across the cold dark strip of land between their house and a neighbour's, to play three exciting rubbers of bridge.
And at eleven Wolf was asleep, and Norma reading again, or trying to read. But her blood was racing, and her head was spinning, and before she slept she brought out all her memories of the afternoon. Chris's words rang in her heart again, and the glances that had accompanied them unrolled before her eyes like some long pageant that was infinitely wonderful and thrilling. Leslie and Annie and Alice might snub her, but Chris—their idol, the cleverest and most charming man in all their circle!—Chris loved her. Chris loved her. And—from those old dreamy days in Biretta's Bookstore, had she not loved Chris?
Another morning came, another night, and life went its usual way. But Norma was wrapped in a dream that was truly a pillar of cloud by day, and of flame by night. She was hardly aware of the people about her, except that her inner consciousness of happiness and of elation gave her an even added sweetness and charm, made her readier to please them, and more anxious for their love.
Wolf almost immediately saw the change, but she did not see the shadow that came to be habitual in his young face, nor read aright his grave eyes. She supposed him perhaps unusually busy, if indeed she thought of him at all. Like her aunt, and Rose, and the rest of her world, he was no more now than a kindly and dependable shadow, something to be quickly put aside for the reality of her absorbing friendship for Chris.
Despitetheir resolve not to see each other in the two weeks that followed Alice's luncheon, Norma had seen Chris three times. He had written her on the third day, and she had met the postman at the corner, sure that the big square envelope would be there. They had had luncheon, far down town, and walked up through the snowy streets together, parting with an engagement for the fourth day ahead, a matinée and tea engagement. The third meeting had been for luncheon again, and after lunch they had wandered through an Avenue gallery, looking at the pictures, and talking about themselves.
Chris had loaned her books, little slim books of dramas or essays, and Chris had talked to her of plays and music. One night, when Wolf was in Philadelphia, Chris took her to the opera again, duly returning her to Aunt Kate at half-past eleven, and politely disclaiming Aunt Kate's gratitude for his goodness to little Norma.
He never attempted to touch her, to kiss her; he never permitted himself an affectionate term, or a hint of the passion that enveloped him; they were friends, that was all, and surely, surely, they told themselves, a self-respecting man and woman may be friends—may talk and walk and lunch together, and harm no one? Norma knew that it was the one vital element in Chris's life, as in her own, and that the hours that he did not spendwith her were filled with plans and anticipations for their times together.
One evening, just before Christmas, when the young Sheridans were staying through a heavy storm with their mother, Wolf came home with the news that he must spend some weeks in Philadelphia, studying a new method of refining iron ore. It was tacitly understood that this transfer was but a preliminary to the long-anticipated promotion to the California managership, but Wolf took it very quietly, with none of the exultation that the compliment once would have caused him.
"I'll go with you to Philadelphia," Norma said, not quite naturally. She had been made vaguely uneasy by his repressed manner, and by the fact that her kiss of greeting had been almost put aside by him, at the door, a few minutes earlier. Dear old Wolf; she had always loved him—she would not have him unhappy for all the world!
In answer he looked at her unsmilingly, wearily narrowing his eyes as if to concentrate his thoughts.
"You can't, very well, but thank you just the same, Norma," he said, formally. "I shall be with Voorhies and Palmer and Bender all the time; they put me up at a club, and there'll be plenty of evening work—nearly every evening——"
"Norma'll stay here with me!" Aunt Kate said, hospitably.
"Well"—Wolf agreed, indifferently—"I can run up from Philadelphia and be home every Saturday, Mother," he added. Norma felt vaguely alarmed by his manner, and devoted her best efforts to amusing and interesting him for the rest of the meal. Afterdinner she came in from the kitchen to find him in a big chair in the little front parlour, and she seated herself upon an arm of it, and put her own arm loosely about his neck.
"What are you reading, Wolf? Shall we go out and burn up Broadway? There's a wonderful picture at The Favourite."
He tossed his paper aside, and moved from under her, so that Norma found herself ensconced in the chair, and her husband facing her from the rug that was before the little gas log.
"Where's Mother?"
"Gone downstairs to see how the Noon baby is."
"Norma," said Wolf, without preamble, "did you see Chris Liggett to-day?"
Her colour flamed high, but her eyes did not waver.
"Yes. We met at Sherry's. We had lunch together."
"You didn't meet by accident?" There was desperate hope in Wolf's voice. But Norma would not lie. With her simple negative her head drooped, and she looked at her locked fingers in silence.
Wolf was silent, too, for a long minute. Then he cleared his throat, and spoke quietly and sensibly.
"I've been a long time waking up, Nono," he said. "I'm sorry! Of course I knew that there was a difference; I knew that you—felt differently. And I guessed that it was Chris. Norma, do you—do you still like him?"
She looked up wretchedly, nodding her head.
"More"—he began, and stopped—"more than you do me?" he asked. And in the silence he added suddenly: "Norma, I thought we were so happy!"
Then the tears came.
"Wolf, I'll never love any one more than I do you!" the girl said, passionately. "You've always been an angel to me—always the best friend I ever had. I know you—I know what you are to Rose, Aunt Kate, and what the men at the factory think of you. I'm not fit to tie your shoes! I'm wicked, and selfish, and—and everything I oughtn't to be! But I can't help it. I've wanted you to know—all there was to know. I've met him, and we've talked and walked together; that's all. And that's all we want—just to be friends. I'm sorry——" Her voice trailed off on a sob. "I'm awfully sorry!" she said.
"Yes," Wolf said, slowly, after a pause, "I'm sorry, too!"
He sat down, rumpling his hair, frowning. Norma, watching him fearfully, noticed that he was very pale.
"I thought we were so happy," he said again, simply.
"Ah, Wolf, don't think I've been fooling all this summer!" his wife pleaded, her eyes filling afresh. "I've loved it all—the peach ice-cream, and the picnics, and everything. But—but people can't help this sort of thing, can they? It does happen, and—and they just simply have to make the best of it, don't they? If—if we go to California next month—you know that I'll do everything I can——!"
He was not listening to her.
"Norma," he interrupted, sharply, "if Liggett's wife was out of the way—would you want to marry him?"
"Wolf!—what's the use of asking that? You only—you only excite us both. Aunt Aliceisn'tout of the way, and even if she were, I am your wife. I'm sorry.I'll never meet him again—I haven't been a bit happy about it. I'll promise you that I will not see him again."
"I don't ask you for that promise," Wolf said. "I don't know what we can do! I never should have let you—I shouldn't have been such a fool as to—but somehow, I'd always dreamed that you and I would marry. Well!"—he interrupted his musing with resolute cheerfulness—"I've got to get over to the library to-night," he said, "for I may have to start for Phily to-morrow afternoon. Will you tell Mother——"
Norma immediately protested that she was going with him, but he patiently declined, kissing her in a matter-of-fact sort of way as he pulled on the old overcoat and the new gloves, and slamming the hall door behind him when he went.
For a minute she stood looking after him, with a great heartache almost blinding her. Then she flashed to her room, and before Wolf had reached the corner his wife had slipped her hand into his arm, and her little double step was keeping pace with his long stride in the way they both loved.
She talked to him in her usual manner, and presently he could answer normally, and they bought peppermints to soften their literary labours. In the big library Wolf was instantly absorbed, but for awhile Norma sat watching the shabby, interested, intelligent men and women who came and went, the shabby books that crossed the counters, the pretty, efficient desk-clerks under their green droplights. The radiators clanked and hissed softly in the intervals of silence, sometimes there was whispering at the shelves, or one of the attendants spoke in a low tone.
Norma loved the atmosphere, so typical a phase ofthe great city's life. After awhile she idly dragged toward her three books, from a table, and idly dipped into them: "The Life of the Grimkés"; "The Life of Elizabeth Prentiss"; "The Letters of Charles Dickens."
Nine struck; ten; eleven. Wolf had some six or seven large books about him, and alternated his plunges into them with animated whispered conversations with a silver-headed old man, two hours ago an utter stranger, but always henceforth to be affectionately quoted by Wolf as a friend.
They indulged in the extravagance of a taxi-cab for the home trip. Norma left Wolf still reading, after winning from him a kiss and a promise not to "worry", and went to bed and to sleep. When she wakened, after some nine delicious hours, he was gone; gone to Philadelphia, as it proved.
Breakfasting at ten o'clock, in a flood of sweet winter sunshine, she put a brave face on the matter. She told herself that it was better that Wolf should know, and only the part of true kindness not to deny what, for good or ill, was true. The memory of his grave and troubled face distressed her, but she reminded herself that he would be back on Saturday, and then he would have forgiven her. She would see Chris to-day, to-morrow, and the day after, and by that time they would have said everything that there was to say, and they would never see each other again.
For it was a favourite hallucination of theirs that every meeting was to be the last. Not, said Chris, that there was any harm in it, but it was wiser not to see each other. And when Norma, glowing under his eyes, would echo this feeling, he praised her for her courage as if they had resisted the temptation already.
"I've thought it all over, Chris," she would say, "and I know that the wisest way is to stop. And you must help me." And when Chris answered, "Norma, I don't see where you get that marvellous courage of yours," it did not occur to Norma to question in what way she was showing courage at all. She lived upon his praise, and could not have enough of it. He never tired of telling her that she was beautiful, good, brave, a constant inspiration, and far above the ordinary type of woman; and Norma believed him.
On the day before Wolf's first week-end return from Philadelphia, Chris was very grave. When he and Norma were halfway through their luncheon, in the quiet angle of an old-fashioned restaurant, he told her why. Alice was failing. Specialists had told him that England was out of the question. She might live a year, but the probability was against it. They—he and Norma—Chris said, must consider this, now.
Norma considered it with a paling face. It—it couldn't make any difference, she said, quickly and nervously.
And then, for the first time, he talked to her of her responsibility in the matter, of what their love meant to them both. Wolf had his claim, true; but what was truly the generous thing for a woman to do toward a man she did not love? Wasn't a year or two of hurt feelings, even anger and resentment, better than a loveless marriage that might last fifty years?
This was a terrible problem, and Norma did not know what to think. On the one hand was the certainty of that higher life from which she had been exiled since her marriage: the music, the art, the letters, the cultivated voices and fragrant rooms, the wealthand luxury, the devotion of this remarkable and charming man, whose simple friendship had been beyond her dreams a few years ago. On the other side was the painful and indeed shameful desertion of Wolf, the rupture with Aunt Kate and Rose, and the undying sense in her own soul of an unworthy action.
But Rose was absorbed in Harry and the children, and Aunt Kate would surely go with Wolf to California, three thousand miles away——
"I am not brave enough!" she whispered.
"Youarebrave enough," Chris answered, quickly. "Tell him the truth—as you did on your wedding day. Tell him you acted on a mad impulse, and that you are sorry. A few days' discomfort, and you are free, and one week of happiness will blot out the whole wretched memory for ever."
"It is not wretchedness, Chris," she corrected, with a rueful smile. But she did not contradict him, and before they parted she promised him that she would not go to California without at least telling Wolf how she felt about it.
Rose and Harry joined them for the Saturday night reunion. Norma thought that Wolf seemed moody, and was unresponsive to her generous welcome, and she was conscious of watching him somewhat apprehensively as the evening wore on. But it was Sunday afternoon before the storm broke.
Wolf was at church when Norma wakened, and as she dressed she meditated a trifle uneasily over this departure from their usual comfortable Sunday morning habit. She breakfasted alone, Wolf and his mother coming in for their belated coffee just as Norma, prettily coated and hatted and furred, was leavingthe house for the ten-o'clock Mass. They did not meet again until luncheon, and as Wolf had explained that he must leave at four o'clock for Philadelphia, Norma began to think that this particular visit would end without any definite unpleasantness.
However, at about three o'clock, he invited her to walk with him to the station, and join his mother later, at Rose's house, in New Jersey, and Norma dared not refuse. They locked the apartment, and walked slowly down Broadway, as they had walked so many thousand times before, in the streaming Sunday crowds. Before they had gone a block Wolf opened hostilities by asking abruptly:
"Where did you go to church this morning?"
Norma flushed, and laughed a little.
"I went down to the Cathedral; I'm fond of it, you know. Why?"
"Did you meet Chris Liggett?" Wolf asked.
"Yes—I did, Wolf. He goes to the church near there, now and then."
"When you telephone him to," Wolf said, grimly.
Norma began to feel frightened. She had never heard this tone from Wolf before.
"I did telephone him, as a matter of fact—or rather he happened to telephone me, and I said I was going there. Is there anything so horrifying in that?" she asked.
"Just after you went out, the telephone operator asked me if the Murray Hill number had gotten us," Wolf answered; "that's how I happen to know."
Norma was angry, ashamed, and afraid, all at once. For twenty feet they walked in silence. She stole more than one anxious look at her companion; Wolf's facewas set like flint. He was buttoned into the familiar old overcoat, a tall, brown, clean-shaven, and just now scowling young man of the accepted American type, firm of jaw, keen of eye, and with a somewhat homely bluntness of feature preventing him from being describable as handsome, or with at best a rough, hard, open-eyed sort of handsomeness that was as unconscious of itself as the beauty of a young animal.
"Wolf, don't be cross," his wife pleaded, in illogical coaxing.
"I'm not cross," he said, with an annoyed glance that humiliated and angered her. "But I don't like this sort of thing, Norma, and I should think you'd know why."
"What sort of thing?" Norma countered, quickly.
"The sort of thing that evidently Mr. Christopher Liggett thinks is fair play!" Wolf said, with youthful bitterness. "Harry saw you both walking up Fifth Avenue yesterday, and Joe Anderson happened to mention that you and a man were lunching together on Thursday, down at the Lafayette. There may be no harm in it——"
"Theremaybe!" Norma echoed, firing. "You know very well thereisn't!"
"You see him every day," Wolf said.
"Idon'tsee him every day! But if I did, it wouldn't be Harry Redding's and Joe Anderson's business!"
"No," Wolf said, more mildly, "but it might be mine!"
Norma realized that he was softening under her distress, and she changed her tone.
"Wolf, you know that you can trust me!" she said.
"But I don't know anything about him!" Wolf reminded her. "I know that he's twice your age——"
"He's thirty-eight!"
"Thirty-eight, then—and I know that he's a loafer—a rich man who has nothing else to do but run around with women——"
"I want to ask you to stop talking about something of which you are entirely ignorant!" Norma interrupted, hotly.
"You're the one that's ignorant, Norma," Wolf said, stubbornly, not looking at her. "You are only a little girl; you think it's great fun to be married to one man, and flirting with another! What makes me sick is that a man like Liggett thinks he can get away with it, and you women——"
"If you say that again, I'll not walk with you!" Norma burst in furiously.
"Does it ever occur to you," Wolf asked, equally roused, "that you are my wife?"
"Yes!" Norma answered, breathlessly. "Yes—it does! And why? Because I was afraid I was beginning to care too much for Chris Liggett—because I knew he loved me, he had told me so!—and I went to you because I wanted to be safe—and I told you so, too, Wolf Sheridan, the very day that we were married! I never lied to you! I told you I loved Chris, that I always had! And if you'd beencivilto me," rushed on Norma, beginning to feel tears mastering her, "if you'd beendecentto me, I would have gotten over it. I would never have seen him again anyway, after this week, for I told him this morning that I didn't want to go on meeting him—that it wasn't fair to you! But no, you don't trust me and you don't believe me, and consequently—consequently, I don't care what I do, and I'll make you sorry——"
"Don't talk so wildly, Norma," Wolf warned her, in a tone suddenly quiet and sad. "Please don't—people will notice you!"
"I don't care if they do!" Norma said. But she glanced about deserted Eighth Avenue uneasily none the less, and furtively dried her eyes upon a flimsy little transparent handkerchief that somehow tore at her husband's heart. "If you had been a little patient, Wolf——" she pleaded, reproachfully.
"There are times when a man hasn't much use for patience, Norma," Wolf said, still with strange gentleness. "Youdidtell me of liking Liggett—but I thought—I hoped, I guess——!" He paused, and then went on with sudden fierceness: "He's married, Norma, and you're married—I wish there was some way of letting you out of it, as far as I am concerned! Of course you don't have to go to California with me—if that helps. You can get your freedom, easily enough, after awhile. But as long as he's tied, it doesn't seem to me that he has any business——"
His gentle tone disarmed her, and she took up Chris's defence eagerly.
"Wolf, don't you believe there is such a thing as love? Just that two people find out that they belong to each other—whether it's right or wrong, or possible or impossible—and that it may last for ever?"
"No," said Wolf, harshly, "I don't believe it! He's married—doesn't he love his wife?"
"Well, of course he loves her! But this is the first time in all his life that he has—cared—this way!" Norma said.
Wolf made no answer, and she felt that she had scored. They were in the station now, and weavingtheir way down toward the big concourse. Norma took her husband's arm.
"Please—please—don't make scenes, Wolf! If you will just believe me that I wouldn't—truly I wouldn't!—hurt you and Aunt Kate for all the world——"
"Ah, Norma," he said, quickly, "I can't take my wife on those terms!" And turning from the ticket window he added, sensibly: "Liggett is tied, of course. But would you like me to leave you here when I go West? Until you are surer of yourself—one way or another? You only have to say so!"
She only had to say so. He had reached, of his own accord, the very point to which she long had hoped to bring him. But perversely, Norma did not quite like to have Wolf go off to Philadelphia with this unpalatable affirmative ringing in his ears. She looked down. A moment's courage now, and she would win everything—and more than everything!—to which Chris had ever urged her. But she felt oddly sad and even hurt by his willingness to give her her way.
"All right!" he said, hastily. "That's understood. I'll tell Mother I don't want you to follow, for awhile. Good-bye, Norma! You're taking the next tube? Wait a minute—I want aPost——"
Was he trying to show her how mean he could be? she thought, as with a heartache, and a confused sense of wrong and distress, she slowly went upon her way. Of course that parting was just bravado, of course he felt more than that! She resented it—she thought he had been unnecessarily unkind——
But her spirits slowly settled themselves. Wolf knew what she felt, now, and they had really parted without bitterness. A pleasant sense of being her ownmistress crept over her, her cheeks cooled, her fluttering heart came back to its normal beat. She began to hear herself telling Chris how courageous she had been.
It was too bad—it was one of the sad things of life. But after all, love was love, in spite of Wolf's scepticism, and if it soothed Wolf to be rude, let him have that consolation! What did a little pain more or less signify now? There was no going back. Years from now Wolf would forgive her, recognizing that great love was its own excuse for being. "And if this sort of thing exists only to be crushed and killed," Norma wrote Chris a few days later, "then half the great pictures, the great novels, the great poems and dramas, the great operas, are lies. But you and I know that they are not lies!"
She was unhappy at home, for Aunt Kate was grave and silent, Rose wrapped in the all-absorbing question of the tiny Catherine's meals, and Wolf neither came nor wrote on Saturday night. But in Chris's devotion she was feverishly and breathlessly happy, their meetings—always in public places, and without a visible evidence of their emotion—were hours of the most stimulating delight.
So matterswent on for another ten days. Then suddenly, on a mid-week afternoon, Norma, walking home from a luncheon in a wild and stormy wind, was amazed to see the familiar, low-slung roadster waiting outside her aunt's door when she reached the steps. Chris jumped out and came to meet her as she looked bewilderedly toward it, a Chris curiously different in manner from the man she had left only an hour ago.
"Norma!" he said, quickly, "I found a message when I got to the office. I was to call up Aunt Marianna's house at once. She's ill—veryill. They want me, and they want you!"
"Me?" she echoed, blankly. "What for?"
"She's had a stroke," he said, still with that urgent and hurried air, "and Joseph—poor old fellow, he was completely broken up—said that she had been begging them to get hold of you!"
Norma had gotten into the familiar front seat, but now she stayed him with a quick hand.
"Wait a minute, Chris, I'll run up and tell Aunt Kate where I am going!" she said.
"She's gone out. There's nobody there!" he assured her, glancing up at the apartment windows. "I knew you would be coming in, so I waited."
"Then I'll telephone!" the girl said, settling herself again. "But what do you suppose she wants me for?" she asked, returning to the subject of the summons."Have they—will they—send for Aunt Annie and Leslie, do you suppose?"
"Leslie is in Florida with the Binneys, most unfortunately. Annie was in Baltimore yesterday, but I believe she was expected home to-day. Joseph said he had gotten hold of Hendrick von Behrens, and I told my clerk to get Acton, and to warn Miss Slater that Alice isn't to be frightened."
"But, Chris—do you suppose she is dying?"
"I don't know—one never does, of course, with paralysis."
"Poor Aunt Alice—it will almost kill her!"
"Yes, it will be terribly hard for her, harder than for any one," he answered. And Norma loved him for the grave sympathy that filled his voice, and for the poise that could make such a speech possible, under the circumstances, without ever a side glance for her.
Then they reached the old house, ran up the steps, and were in the great dark hallway that already seemed to be filled with the shadow of change.
Whispering, solemn-faced maids went to and fro; Joseph was red-eyed; the heavy fur coats of two doctors were flung upon chairs. Norma slipped from her own coat.
"How is she, Joseph?"
"I hardly know, Miss. You're to go up, please, and Regina was to tell one of the nurses at once that you had come, Miss." He delivered his message impassively enough, but then the human note must break through. "I've been with her since she was married, Miss—nigh forty years," the old man faltered, "and I'm afraid she is very bad—very bad, indeed!"
"Oh, Ihopenot!" Norma went noiselessly upstairs,Chris close behind her. Did she hope not? She hardly knew. But she knew that all this was strangely thrilling—this rush through the tossing windy afternoon to the old house, this sense of being a part of the emergency, this utter departure from the tedious routine of life.
A serious-faced nurse took charge of them, and she and Chris followed her noiselessly into the familiar bedroom that yet looked so altered in its new lifeless order and emptiness. The clutter of personal possessions was already gone, chairs had been straightened and pushed back, and on the bed that had lately been frilled and embroidered in white and pink, and piled with foolish little transparent baby pillows, a fresh, flawless linen sheet was spread. Silence reigned in the wide chamber; but two doctors were standing by the window, and looked at the newcomers with interest, and a second nurse passed them on her way out. Norma vaguely noted the fire, burning clear and bright, the shaded light that showed a chart, on a cleared table, the absence of flowers and plants that made the place seem bare. But after one general impression her attention was riveted upon the sick woman, and with her heart beating quickly with fright she went to stand at the foot of the great walnut bed.
Mrs. Melrose was lying with her head tipped back in pillows; her usually gentle, soft old face looked hard and lined, and was a dark red, and the scanty gray hair, brushed back mercilessly from the temples, and devoid of the usual puffs and transformations, made her look her full sixty years. Her eyes were half-open, but she did not move them, her lips seemed very dry, and occasionally she muttered restlessly, and a third nurse,bending above her, leaned anxiously near, to catch what she said, and perhaps murmur a soothing response.
This nurse looked sharply at Norma, and breathed rather than whispered: "Mrs. Sheridan?" and when Norma answered with a nod, nodded herself in satisfaction.
"She's been asking and asking for you," she said, in a low clear tone that oddly broke the unnatural silence of the room. Norma, hearing a stir behind her, looked back to see that both doctors had come over to the bed, and were looking down at their patient with a profound concern that their gray heads and their big spectacles oddly emphasized.
"Mrs. Sheridan?" one of them questioned. Norma dared not use her voice, and nodded again. Immediately the doctor leaned over Mrs. Melrose, and said in a clear and encouraging tone: "Here is Mrs. Sheridan now!"
Mrs. Melrose merely moaned heavily in answer, and Norma said softly, to the doctor who had spoken:
"I think perhaps she was asking for my aunt—who is also Mrs. Sheridan!"
Before the doctor, gravely considering, could answer, the sick woman startled them all by saying, almost fretfully, in a surprisingly clear and quiet voice:
"No—no—no, I want you, Norma!"
She groped blindly about with her hand, as she spoke, and Norma kneeled down, and covered it with both her own. Mrs. Melrose immediately began to breathe more easily, and sank at once into the stupor from which she had only momentarily roused.
Norma looked for instruction to the doctor, who presently decided that there was nothing more to begained for a time; she joined them presently, with Chris, in the adjoining room. This was the same old room of her first visit to the house, with the same rich old brocaded paper and fringed rep draperies, with the same pictures, and a few new ones, lined on the mantel.
"Where are Mrs. von Behrens and Leslie?" Doctor Murray, who had known all the family intimately for years, asked Chris.
"Is it so serious, Doctor?" Christopher asked in turn, when he had answered. The doctor, glancing toward the closed door, nodded gravely.
"A matter of a day or two," he said, looking at the other old doctor for confirmation. "She was apparently perfectly normal last night, went to bed at her usual hour," he said, "this morning she complained of her head, when the maid went in at ten, said that she must have hurt it—struck it against something. The maid, a sensible young woman, was uneasy, and telephoned for me. Unfortunately, I was in Westchester this morning, but I got here at about one o'clock and found her as she is now. She has had a stroke—probably several slight shocks."
"Why, but she was perfectly well day before yesterday!" Norma said, in amazement. "And only ten days ago she came back from Florida, and said that she never felt better!"
"That is frequently the history of the disease," the second doctor said, sagely. And, glancing at his watch, he added, "I don't think you will need me again, Doctor Murray?"
"What are the chances of her—knowing anybody?" Chris asked.
"She may very probably have another lucid interval," Doctor Murray said. "If Mrs. Sheridan could arrange to stay, it would be advisable. She asked for her daughters, but she seemed even more anxious that we should send for—you." He glanced at Norma, with a little old-fashioned bow.
Mrs. Sheridan could stay, of course. She would telephone home, and advise Aunt Kate, at once. Indeed, so keen was Norma's sense almost of enjoyment in this thrilling hour that she would have been extremely sorry to leave the house. It was sad, it was dreadful, of course, to think that poor old Aunt Marianna was so ill, but at the same time it was most dramatic. She and Chris settled themselves before the fire in the upstairs sitting-room with Doctor Murray, who entertained them with mild reminiscences of the Civil War. The storm was upon the city now, rain slashed at the windows and the wind howled bitterly.
There was whispering in the old house, quiet footsteps, muffled voices at the door and telephone. At about six o'clock Chris went home, to tell Alice, with what tenderness he might, of the impending sorrow. Regina, who had been weeping bitterly, and would speak to no one, brought Norma and the doctor two smoking hot cups of bouillon on a tray.
"And you mustn't get tired, Mrs. Sheridan," one of the nurses, herself healthily odorous of a beef and apple-pie dinner, said kindly to Norma, at about seven o'clock. "There'll be coffee and sandwiches all night. This is a part of our lives, you know, and we get used to it, but it's hard for those not accustomed to it."
At about nine o'clock in the evening Chris came back. Alice had received the news bravely, he said; there hadbeen no hysteria and she kept admirable control of herself, and he had left her ready for sleep. But it had hit her very hard. Miss Slater had promised him that she would put a sleeping powder into Alice's regular ten o'clock glass of hot milk, and let him know when she was safely off.
"She is very thankful that you are here, she was uneasy every instant that I stayed away!" he said softly to Norma, and Norma nodded her approval. Long before eleven o'clock they had the report that Alice was sleeping soundly under the combined effect of the powder and Miss Slater's repeated and earnest assurance that there was no immediate danger as regarded her mother.
Chris and Norma and the doctor and two of the nurses went down to the dining-room, and had sandwiches and coffee, and talked long and sadly of the briefness and mutability of mortal life. When they went upstairs again the doctor stretched out for some rest, on the sitting-room couch, and Norma went to her own old room, and got into her comfortable, thick padded wrapper and warm slippers. The night was still wet and stormy, and had turned cold. Hail rattled on the window sills.
Then she crept into the sick-room, and joined the nurses in their unrelenting vigil. Mrs. Melrose was still lying back, her eyes half-open, her face darkly flushed, her lips moving in an incoherent mutter. Now and then they caught the syllables of Norma's name, and once she said "Kate!" so sharply that everyone in the sick chamber started.
Norma, leaning back in a great chair by the bed, mused and pondered as the slow hours went by. Thesoftened lights touched the nurses' crisp aprons, the fire was out now, and only the two softly palpitating disks from the shaded lamps dimly illumined the room.
Annie and Theodore and Alice had all been born in this very room, Norma thought. She imagined Aunt Marianna, a handsome, stout, radiant young woman, in the bustles and pleats of the early eighties, with the flowing ruffles of Theodore's christening robe spreading over her lap. How wonderful life must have seemed to her then, rich and young, and adored by her husband, and with her first-born child receiving all the homage due the heir of the great name and fortune! Then came Annie, and some years later Alice, and how busy and happy their mother must have been with plenty of money for schools and frocks, trips to the country with her handsome, imperious children; trips to Europe when no desire need be denied them, all the world the playground for the fortunate Melroses!
How short the perspective must look now, thought Norma, to that troubled brain that was struggling among closing shadows, nearer and nearer every slow clocktick to the end. How loathsome it must be to the prisoned spirit, this handsome, stifling room, this army of maids and nurses and doctors so decorously resigned to facing the last scene of all. Why, the poorest child in the city to-night, healthily asleep in some unspeakable makeshift for a bed, possessed what all the Melrose money could not buy for this moaning, suffocating old autocrat.
"I should like to die out on a hillside, under the stars," thought Norma, "with no one to watch me. This is—somehow—so horrible!"
And she crept toward the bed and slipped to her kneesagain, forcing herself against her inclination—for somehow prayers seemed to have nothing to do with this scene—to pray for the departing soul.
"Norma," the old lady said, suddenly, opening her eyes. She looked quietly and intelligently at the girl.
"Yes, dear!" Norma stammered, with a frightened glance toward the nurses.
These were instantly intent, at the bedside. But Mrs. Melrose paid no attention to them. She patted Norma's hand.
"Late for you, dear!" she whispered. "Night!" Obediently she drank something the nurse put to her lips, and when she spoke it was more clearly. A moment later Doctor Murray had her pulse between his nerveless fingers. She moved her eyes lazily to smile at him. "Tide running out, old friend!" she said, in a deep, rich voice. The doctor smiled, shaking his head, but Norma saw his eyes glisten behind his glasses.
Suddenly Mrs. Melrose frowned, and began to show excitement.
"Norma!" she said, quickly. "I want Chris!"
"Right here, Aunt Marianna!" Norma answered, soothingly. And Chris was indeed leaning over the bed almost before she finished speaking.
"I want to talk to you and Chris," the old lady said, contentedly closing her eyes. "Everybody else out!" she whispered.
The room was immediately cleared. "It can't hurt her now!" Doctor Murray looked rather than said to Norma as he passed her. Chris watched the closing doors, sat beside the bed's head with one arm half-supporting his mother-in-law's pillows.
"We're all alone, Aunt Marianna," he said. "Leslieand Annie will be here in the morning, and Alice told me to tell you that she hoped——"
"Chris," the sick woman interrupted, gazing at him with an intense and painful stare, "this child here—Norma! I—I must straighten it all out now, Chris. Kate knows. Kate has all the papers—letters—Louison's letters! Ask Kate——"
She shut her eyes. Norma and Chris looked at one another in bewilderment. There was a long silence.
"So now you know!" Mrs. Melrose said, presently, returning to full consciousness as naturally as she had before. "I told you, didn't I?" she asked, faintly anxious.
"Don't bother now, Aunt Marianna," the girl begged in distress. "To-morrow——"
"Louison," Mrs. Melrose said, "was Annie's French maid—very superior girl!"
"I remember her—Theodore's wife," Chris said, eager to help her.
"And she was this girl's mother," Mrs. Melrose added, clasping Norma's fingers. "You understand that, Chris?"
"Yes, darling—we understand!" Norma said, with a nod to Chris that he was to humour her. But Chris looked only strangely troubled.
"Annie's poor baby lived—Kate brought it home from France, and we named it Leslie," the invalid said, clearly. "I couldn't—I couldn't forget it, Chris. I used to go see it—at Kate's. And then, when it was three, I met Louison—poor girl, I had been cruel to her—and Theodore was far off in California—dying, we knew. And I met Louison in Brooklyn. And I had a sudden idea, Chris! I told her to go to Kate, and getAnnie's baby, and bring it to me as if it was her own. I told her to! I told her to say that it was her baby—Theodore's baby. And she did, Chris, and I paid her well for it. She brought Leslie here, and Annie never knew—nobody ever knew! But I never knew that Louison had a baby of her own, Chris—I never knew that! Louison hated me, and she never told me she had a little girl. No—no—no, I never knew that!"
"Then Leslie—is—Annie's child by Müller, the riding master!" Chris whispered, staring blindly ahead of him. "And what—what became of the other child—Theodore's child?"
"Louison kept her until she was five," the old lady explained, eagerly, "and then she wanted to marry again, and she had to go live in a wild sort of place, in Canada. She didn't want to take the little girl there, and she remembered Kate Sheridan, who had had the other baby, and who had been so good to it—so devoted to it! And she went there, Chris, and left her baby there."
"And that baby——" Chris began.
"Yes. That was Norma!" Mrs. Melrose said. "It is all Norma's, the whole thing—and you must take care that she gets it, Chris. I—even my will, dear, only gives Norma the Melrose Building and some bonds. But those are for Leslie, now, all the rest—the whole estate goes to Theodore's child—Norma. You must forgive me if I did it all wrong. I meant it for the best. I never knew that you were living, dear, until Kate brought you here three years ago. She didn't dare do it until your mother died; she had promised she would never tell a living soul. But Louison softened toward the end, and wrote Kate she must use her own judgment. And Kate—Kate—knows all about it——"
The voice thickened. The old lady raised herself in bed.
"That man—behind you, Chris!" she gasped. Chris put her down again, Norma flew for help. The muttering and the heavy breathing recommenced. Nurses and doctors ran back, Regina came to kneel at the foot of the bed.
Another slight stroke, they said later, when they were all about the fire in the next room again. Norma was white, her eyes glittering, her bitten lips scarlet in her colourless face. Chris looked stunned.
But he found time for just one aside, as the endless night wore on. Annie had arrived, superbly horrified and stricken, and Acton was there. Mrs. Melrose was still breathing. The sickly light of a winter morning was tugging at the shutters.
"Norma," Chris said, "do you realize what a tremendous thing has happened to you? Do you realize who you are? You are a rich woman now, my dear!"
"But do you believe it?" she asked, in a low tone.
"I know it is true! It explains everything," he answered. "It will be a cruel blow to Leslie—poor child, and Annie, too. Alice, I think, need never know. But Norma—even though this doesn't seem the time or the place, let me be the first to congratulate you on your new position—my old friend Theodore's daughter, and the last of the Melroses!"
At seven o'clock in the morning Norma, exhausted with excitement and emotion, took a hot bath, and finding things unchanged in the sick-room, except that the lights had been extinguished, and the winter daylight was drearily mingling with firelight, went on downstairs for coffee and for one more conference with the blinking nurses and the tired old doctor. She found herself tooshaken to eat, but the hot drink was wonderfully soothing and stimulating, and for the first time, as she stood looking out into the street from the dining-room window, a sense of power and pride began to thrill her. Old people must die, of course, and after this sad and dark scene was over—then what? Then what? Then she would be in Leslie's long-envied place, the heiress, the important figure among all the changes that followed.
"If you please, Mrs. Sheridan——!" It was Joseph, haggard and white, who had come softly behind her to interrupt her thoughts. She glanced with quick apprehension toward the hall stairway. There had been a change——?
"No, it was the telephone, Miss." Norma, puzzled by the old butler's stricken air, went to the instrument. It was Miss Slater.
"Norma," Miss Slater said, agitatedly, "is Mr. Liggett—there?"
"I think he's with Aunt Annie, upstairs, but he's going home about eight," Norma answered. "There is no change. Is Aunt Alice awake? Mr. Liggett wanted to be there when she woke!"
"No—she's not awake," the other woman's voice said, solemnly. "She went to sleep like a child last night, Norma. But about half an hour ago I went in—she hadn't called me—it was just instinct, I suppose! She was lying—hadn't changed her position even——"
"What's that!" Norma cried, in a whisper that was like a scream. The grave voice and the sudden break of tears chilled her to the soul.
"We've had Doctor Merrill here," Miss Slater said. "Norma, you'll have to tell him—God help us all! She's gone!"